Encyclopedia of Archaeology, Three-Volume Set, Volume 1-3

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Professor Deborah M Pearsall The Frederick A Middlebush Chair in Social Sciences Department of Anthropology University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, MO USA

Professor Deborah M.Pearsall

Deborah M. Pearsall was born in Detroit, Michigan, USA. She grew up in various places in the upper Midwest and graduated from high school in Avon Lake, Ohio. She returned to Michigan for college, where she attended the University of Michigan and majored in Anthropology. It was also at Michigan that she became interested in paleoethnobotany—the study of plant-people interrelationships through archaeology—and studied with Richard I. Ford. After graduation from college, she enrolled in graduate school at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana and began studying with South American archaeologist Donald W. Lathrap. There she became interested in Ecuador, and participated in Lathrap’s excavations at Real Alto, an ancient agricultural village. The study of macroremains and phytoliths from Real Alto became her dissertation research, and she received a Ph.D. in Anthropology in 1979. In addition to continuing to work in Ecuador, Deborah has conducted research in Peru, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, Hawaii, Guam, and the Midwestern U.S., and has supervised students working in these and other regions. She has taught anthropology and carried out paleoethnobotanical studies at the University of Missouri in Columbia since 1978. She is the author of Paleoethnobotany, A Handbook of Procedures (Academic Press, 2000), Plants and People in Ancient Ecuador: The Ethnobotany of the Jama River Valley (Wadsworth, 2004), The Origins of Agriculture in the Neotropics (coauthor with D. R. Piperno, Academic Press, 1998), and editor of this encyclopedia. She enjoys gardening—especially growing old English roses—and writing, and lives on 80 acres outside Columbia with her husband Mike DeLoughery.

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Takeru Akazawa Kochi University of Technology Kochi Japan Pedro Paulo A Funari Department of History Universidad Estadual de Campinas Sao Paulo Brazil Julian Henderson Department of Archaeology University of Nottingham Nottingham UK Augustin F C Holl Department of Anthropology University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI USA Joyce Marcus Museum of Anthropology University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI USA

M Rafique Mughal Department of Archaeology Boston University Boston, MA USA Daniel T Potts Department of Archaeology University of Sydney Sydney, NSW Australia Patty Jo Watson Washington University at St. Louis St. Louis, MO USA Steve Weber Department of Anthropology Washington State University Vancouver, WA USA Zhijun Zhao Institute of Archaeology Beijing China

FOREWORD Archaeology today has become a truly international undertaking, and it has done so by employing what has become a new and universal language. The record of the human past is a material one, recorded in the earth, in the buried remains of vanished civilizations and in the material traces which past communities have left behind. As this book clearly documents, those traces, the carefully excavated settlements and burials of early human groups and their artifacts, which they made and used, can today be made accessible in what we may call the language of archaeology. That language, intelligible in every part of the world, is able to transcend the limitations of written history. For narrative history, as set down in writing, is inevitably confined to the literate civilizations whose very early texts come down to us from just a few locations in the Old World. The universal language of archaeology, however, knows no such bounds. Instead it addresses the human use of material culture wherever human beings have lived. It draws upon a broad range of techniques – from stratigraphic excavation to radiocarbon dating, from aerial photography to molecular biology – which now make it possible to speak of a world archaeology, in which the experiences of every country and people can take their place. This book sets out in a coherent way to make that language clearly and directly intelligible to the reader, so that the basic techniques of archaeology can be understood. It goes on to apply those techniques to the entire human story. Its broad sweep takes us from the emergence of the first humans, initially in Africa, and their early out-of-Africa dispersals, through the whole gamut of human experience, dealing with the rise of farming communities, the dawn of civilizations, the formation of the first cities, and so down to the present, and to the postcolonial era in every part of the world. The good news is that every land, every inhabited area of the earth, does have its archaeology. Each community has a past, which today can be investigated with the use of the now-universal techniques of investigation described here. The scope is vast. The story unfolds here on a continent-by-continent basis. Only in recent decades has it been possible to put together such a survey. For it was radiocarbon dating that opened the way for early developments in every part of the world to be dated. Suddenly the chronology of early Australia or of southern Africa became just as secure and just as available as the comparable chronologies for Europe or for the ancient Near East. The whole scope of human achievement in every part of the world is becoming known through the practice of archaeology. The authors of this survey have produced an up-to-date account not only of the methods which constitute the language of archaeology but also of the principal findings which now allow us to speak of a world archaeology. The authorship of the Encyclopedia of Archaeology reflects the cosmopolitan status of archaeology today. It is truly international, with Chinese scholars writing many of the entries for China, African scholars for Africa. The coverage is, of course, global, covering every continent (including Oceania) and every period. It is also multifacetted, giving insights into the different schools of archaeological thought, which flourish today. It recognizes that philosophical themes (Marxist archaeology; Postprocessual archaeology) must rub shoulders with social topics (Ethnicity, Rise of political complexity), and both of these with issues of contemporary concern (Who owns the past?, Politics of archaeology). These in turn are found side-by-side with some of the key scientific subdisciplines (archaeometry, phytolith analysis, taphonomy), which today provide much of the vocabulary for that universal language of archaeology. The outcome is that this work will be read with profit in every part of the world. It will be as welcome in South America (where the Amazon basin for once achieves necessary coverage) as in Europe, as appropriate in Japan as in Mesoamerica. It reflects well the changing nature of archaeology, with the fast developing range of new research methods and the changing realities of a postcolonial world where the past of every area and region is of interest. Colin Renfrew

INTRODUCTION

Archaeology is a subject that fascinates us. From Egyptian tombs to a frozen Alpine wayfarer, from cities buried under volcanic ash to stone arrowheads turned up by the plow, archaeology is in the news and in our backyards. It is paradoxical that a subject that so easily captures the imagination is so difficult to access. Superficial media treatments and picturebook atlases and site guides on the one hand, jargonheavy scholarly books and narrowly focused articles on the other – there are few ways to learn about the real world of archaeology outside the university classroom or the dig site. The aim of the Encyclopedia of Archaeology is to change this, to make all aspects of archaeology accessible to a broad audience, from educated laypersons and university students eager to learn about the field, to scholars intent on broadening and updating their knowledge of the discipline. No existing work provides the breadth and depth of coverage achieved here. It has been my privilege and pleasure to work with over 260 talented archaeologists from around the globe during this project. In the pages that follow, they will introduce you to archaeology through contributions arranged in an easy-to-use, alphabetical format. From the moment I was invited to undertake this project, I knew that I wanted the Encyclopedia of Archaeology not only to showcase archaeological knowledge at the beginning of the twenty-first century, but to convey how archaeologists work, and to illustrate the diversity of issues and theoretical paradigms that drive our research. From this grew an underlying four-part structure for the Encyclopedia of Archaeology: Archaeology as a discipline The practice of archaeology Archaeology at the beginning of the twenty-first century: A world overview Geographical overviews Topics and issues that cross-cut geography Archaeology in the everyday world

The ‘Contents list by subject’, which follows this Introduction, illustrates how individual contributions are grouped conceptually within this framework. Each contribution to ‘Archaeology as a discipline’ places emphasis on the broad approach and subject matter of part of the field of archaeology, and provides historical context when appropriate. Here you will be introduced to schools of thought as distinctive as cognitive and evolutionary archaeology, learn of the historic roots and philosophy of the field, and read overviews of subjects from archaeoastronomy to forensic archaeology to urban archaeology. Contributions to ‘The practice of archaeology’ describe the nuts and bolts of how archaeological research is conducted, and incorporate case studies as illustrations of modern archaeological practice. Topics range from fieldwork, through analysis of artifacts and biological materials, to approaches to interpreting the archaeological record. Among our authors you will find experts and innovators in archaeological methodology. ‘Archaeology at the beginning of the twenty-first century: A world overview’ is a wide-ranging review of our knowledge of the past. Archaeological sites and cultural traditions are placed in regional and temporal context in contributions in the ‘Geographical overviews’ section. Each article is written by an archaeologist with hands-on research experience in the region, and includes maps and illustrations of sites and artifacts. Look up an archaeological site in the index (or use the search function in the online version) and you will be guided to the regional and topical articles that discuss it. Or just browse and learn the latest on the archaeology of East Africa, Micronesia, or the Lesser Antilles. Regions are ordered in the ‘Contents list by subject’ west to east, and north to south, and within regions contributions are ordered chronologically or by subregion, as deemed appropriate.

x Introduction

Contributions to ‘Topics and issues that cross-cut geography’ are in-depth articles on cutting-edge research in archaeology. Case studies, often from more than one region of the world, illustrate each topic. Here you will be introduced to research on subjects as diverse as extinctions of big game, social inequality, and daily life in ancient cities. Contributions on related subjects are grouped in the ‘Contents list by subject’. Finally, ‘Archaeology in the everyday world’ steps back from the approaches, methods, and findings of archaeology to look at archaeology as a profession. In this section are contributions on the ethical and legal aspects of practicing archaeology today, popular culture and archaeology, and archaeology and stakeholder communities.

The Encyclopedia of Archaeology would never have come to fruition without the hard work of the members of the Editorial Board, who assisted in developing the subject list, fine-tuned the geographical overview sections, suggested authors for contributions, and reviewed completed manuscripts. They each have my wholehearted thanks. I also thank the following friends and colleagues for their assistance and advice: Robert A. Benfer, Jr., J. Scott Bentley, Jane C. Biers, Christine Hastorf, Janet Levy, Naomi Miller, Hector Neff, Elizabeth Reitz, Ralph Rowlett, and Peter Warnock. Deborah M. Pearsall

A AFRICA, CENTRAL Contents Foragers, Farmers, and Metallurgists Great Lakes Area Sudan, Nilotic Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas

Foragers, Farmers, and Metallurgists Scott MacEachern, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary bantu languages A closely-related group of languages in the Niger–Congo family, now spoken through much of Africa south of the equator. The ‘Bantu expansion’ is the process – still not entirely understood – through which early Bantu languages spread to the east and south from their homeland on the Nigerian–Cameroon border, beginning perhaps 5000 years ago. Lupemban A Middle/Late Pleistocene stone tool industry, found in different areas of sub-Saharan Africa and descended from the Sangoan and eventually the Acheulean traditions. It is characterized by the extensive use of bifacial and core-tools. It is often assumed to be associated with forest environments, where these tools were used for woodworking and other functions. microlithic Stone tool industries characterized by the use of small tools, usually made by carefully breaking stone blades into predetermined shapes or by the production of very small blades. Microliths are defined as being <3 cm in length, and are often used as elements in composite tools. ‘semi-domesticates’ Plants that are not planted by humans and that do not need human assistance to reproduce, but yield products important to the human communities in the area. Because of their importance, people often protect and encourage the growth of semi-domesticates, for example, through weeding of competing species. tazunu Funerary monuments found in the western Central African Republic, first built in the early first millennium BC. They consist of a group of upright standing stones, usually between 1 and 3 m in length, set in an artificial platform that often contains one or more rectangular chambers.

Tshitolian A Holocene stone tool industry of western Central Africa, characterized by a heavy-duty bifacial tool component originating in the Middle/Late Pleistocene Lupemban industry, as well as a variety of different types of arrowheads and microlithic tools.

Archaeologists know less about the prehistory of Central Africa through the last 10 000 years than about any other part of the continent. This is only in part because of the difficulties of working in tropical forest: indeed, some of the least-known areas are in the woodlands along the northeastern fringes of the Congo Basin. More important have been the effects of decades of political instability and an underdeveloped infrastructure that goes back to the colonial period. Over the last decade, however, some parts of Central Africa – especially in the northwest – have yielded a great deal of information on ancient occupations in this period. Moisture levels in Central Africa increased dramatically from the terminal Pleistocene, much drier than the present, to the early Holocene, which would have been generally wetter than today. This corresponded to a great increase in forests over the same period. However, models of a uniform expansion of tropical forest out of Late Pleistocene refugia are oversimplified. There seems to have been a great deal of local diversity in plant associations, as well as significant regional variations in rainfall, temperatures, and seasonality, through this period. Instead of thinking about environmentally determined depopulations and repopulations over Central Africa as a whole, we must imagine human communities adapting to a wide variety of circumstances and resources in different areas and at different times.

2 AFRICA, CENTRAL/Foragers, Farmers, and Metallurgists

The beginning of the Holocene saw all of Central Africa occupied by foraging communities. Little evidence of these populations is left, aside from their stone tool industries, which show a good deal of continuity from the Late Pleistocene. Not surprisingly, in the center of the continent, these industries are diverse, with stone tool-kits in the northwestern part of Central Africa showing some similarities with adjacent areas of West Africa, eastern industries exhibiting some resemblances to East Africa, and so on. Perhaps most uniquely Central African is the Tshitolian industry, found primarily in the west, in Republic of the Congo and Democratic Republic of the Congo, northwestern Angola, and parts of Gabon. The Tshitolian seems to be derived from the Late Pleistocene Lupemban industry, and shares with the Lupemban an important component of heavy-duty bifacial tools, as well as arrowheads and microlithic tools. In other parts of Central Africa, microlithic industries predominate and the bifacial tools are rare or absent. We know little about the lifeways of these populations, but the available evidence indicates that for the most part they were

Nigeria

broad-spectrum, mobile hunter-gatherers. Late Pleistocene lakeshore sites like Ishango in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, with their extraordinary bone harpoon points and evidence for fishing and hunting, exhibit striking similarities to Holocene sites in similar environments in East Africa, but there is no firm evidence for the persistence of this lacustrine adaptation in Holocene Central Africa (Figure 1). Just after 7000 years ago, significant innovations appeared in the economic and technical adaptations of communities in the northwestern part of the region. On what is now the frontier between southeastern Nigeria and Cameroon, archaeologists working at sites like Shum Laka have found evidence for consumption of nuts from the incense tree (Canarium schweinfurthii), a wild species that would be increasingly exploited by humans over the succeeding millennia, as well as the first evidence for pottery in the region. At the same time, larger bifacial (but not Tshitolian) tools appear among the microlithic stone tools that earlier dominated in this area, as does the first evidence for ground/polished stone tools. In later periods, such tools would be used in horticulture and forest clearance.

Chad Sudan

Shum Laka

Tazunu sites

Central African Republic

Cameroon Bioko Eq. Guinea Pit Sites Gabon

Republic of the Congo Tshitolian

Ishango

Uganda

Rwanda

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Burundi Tanzania

Upemba sites

Angola

Zambia

Figure 1 Some of the sites and traditions mentioned in the text. The extent of archaeological traditions is approximate.

AFRICA, CENTRAL/Foragers, Farmers, and Metallurgists 3

The Early-/Mid-Holocene appearance of these new cultural elements signals the origins of a very different adaptation to life in Central Africa, one eventually involving increased sedentism, a concentration on particular wild plant foods and increased levels of environmental manipulation. Over the next four millennia, these elements would come to dominate archaeological assemblages in this part of the region, as important ‘semi-domesticates’ such as oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) were added to local economies. This adaptation would culminate in the farming villages of southern Cameroon and Gabon, during the first millennium BC. These sites are characterized by the occurrence of large numbers of deep pits, probably used for storage and garbage disposal; these pits frequently contain pottery, Canarium, and oil palm remains, and also in some cases the remains of domesticated plants and animals, including millet, banana (originally a Southeast Asian domesticate), and sheep/ goats. These pit sites are probably related to sites of a similar period in western Democratic Republic of the Congo. The spread of these communities into Central Africa from the northwestern part of the region is likely associated with the spread of Bantu languages, since the origins of those languages are in the Grassfields region around Shum Laka and the archaeological evidence agrees in general with linguistic evidence for the early expansion of Bantu languages. After the middle of the first millennium AD, few pits are found in sites in this area: the reason for this is unknown, but probably involves changes in settlement patterning during this period. The prehistory of other regions is not as well known through the mid-Holocene, but ground and polished stone axes similar to those found around Shum Laka occur in different parts of Central Africa. In some cases, for example, at Tchissanga and related sites on the coast of Republic of the Congo and in the Central African Republic (CAR), these are found with different kinds of pottery; in other cases, as on the Uelian sites of northern Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Angola and elsewhere, they exist as isolated discoveries, without significant cultural context. In very few cases have these occurrences been dated, but those dates that do exist indicate a Mid-/LateHolocene time period, and these sites are probably evidence of processes of economic intensification similar to those in the northwest – which, indeed, may be their ultimate origin. On the island of Bioko, now part of Equatorial Guinea, the use of stone tools, especially axes, would persist until the nineteenth century. In western CAR, these developments are, by the early first millennium BC, associated with the appearance of the tazunu sites, megalithic sites in which upright standing stones are usually set in low artificial

mounds. These are likely to have been funerary monuments, although not all excavated examples contain inhumations, and a tradition of tazunu construction may have continued in the area until a few centuries ago. The construction of these impressive monuments, and their association with single burials (where any are found), would seem to imply the existence of some degree of social ranking in western Central African Republic through this period (see Africa, Central: Great Lakes Area). The appearance of iron artifacts would eventually transform the economies and even the ideologies of Central African societies, but this did not happen immediately. Indeed, the available archaeological evidence indicates that early iron technologies were incorporated into the already-existing cultural systems discussed above, and that traditional assumptions of an Iron Age, a sudden break with earlier practices, seem to be particularly misleading in this case. The first evidence of iron production (in fact, very frequently the slag by-products of iron smelting and forging) appears on sites in northwestern Central Africa during the first millennium BC. Establishing the precise timing of that appearance is difficult, in part because of difficulties with radiocarbon calibration during the middle of that millennium. However, both a habitation site associated with the tazunu of the CAR and one of the pit sites in southern Cameroon have yielded dates for iron working of about 2600 years ago, and so between the ninth and the sixth centuries BC. This generally agrees with dates on some West African iron-working sites as well, but more work remains to be done on the origins of this technology in subSaharan Africa. Sites with iron from this area, in Gabon and in Republic of the Congo, became more common by the late first millennium BC, and through the ensuing centuries in other areas of Central Africa, until by perhaps AD 800 iron was being used throughout Central Africa (except on Bioko, as noted above, and perhaps by isolated foraging groups elsewhere). Over this same period, the use of stone tools for the most part ceased, presumably replaced by iron. In general, this parallels the introduction of iron into East Africa, although the exact routes by which that introduction took place are unknown. Over the ensuing centuries, as iron technologies became established through the region, we see the development of larger-scale societies, the extension of trade networks and evidence for increasing social complexity in some parts of Central Africa. This is most strikingly demonstrated in the Upemba Depression of southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a remarkable series of high-status grave

4 AFRICA, CENTRAL/Great Lakes Area

sites, dating to between the eighth and eighteenth centuries AD, indicate the processes of social differentiation and ideological development that culminated in the historically known Luba state. There is scattered archaeological evidence for significant trading networks and iron and copper production in western Democratic Republic of the Congo at the same time period, as well. In other areas – the Central African Republic and northwestern Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example – the village-level societies that developed in the first millennium BC and early first millennium AD remained the dominant economic and political units into the colonial period. As in much of the rest of Africa, there has been little archaeological investigation of recent centuries, and still less of the period of European contact. Over the last two millennia, archaeological data are increasingly supplemented by data from linguistic and historical research. These sources provide information on social and cultural processes that are not easily approached archaeologically – the details of the expansion of Bantu languages, the developing relations between farmers and foragers (Pygmy/BaTwa) in Central Africa and the interplay between ideology and sociopolitical relations across the region as a whole, for example. Only through such integrated approaches will researchers be able to approach a more complete picture of the Central African past. See also: Africa, Central: Great Lakes Area; Africa,

Historical Archaeology.

Further Reading Clist B (2005) Des premiers villages aux premiers Europe´ens autour de l’estuaire du Gabon: Quatre mille´naires d’interactions entre l’homme et son milieu. Doctoral thesis, Universite´ Libre de Bruxelles. Cornelissen E (2002) Human responses to changing environments in Central Africa between 40,000 and 12,000 BP. Journal of World Prehistory 16: 197–235. de Maret P (1999) The power of symbols and the symbols of power through time: probing the Luba past. In: McIntosh SK (ed.) Beyond Chiefdoms: Pathways to Complexity in Africa, pp. 151–165. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Klieman KA (2003) ‘The Pygmies Were Our Compass’. Bantu and Batwa in the History of West Central Africa, Early Times to c. 1900 CE. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Lanfranchi R and Clist B (eds.) (1991) Aux origines de l’afrique centrale. Libreville/Paris: Centre Culturel Francaise de Libreville, Se´pia. Lavachery P (2001) The Holocene archaeological sequence of Shum Laka Rock Shelter (Grassfields, Western Cameroon). African Archaeological Review 18: 213–248. Lavachery P, MacEachern S, Bouimon T, et al. (2005) Kome´ to Ebome´: archaeological research for the Chad Export Project, 1999–2003. Journal of African Archaeology 3: 175–193.

Mbida CM, van Neer W, Doutrelepont H, and Vrydaghs L (2000) Evidence for banana cultivation in central and animal husbandry during the first millennium BC in the forest of southern Cameroon. Journal of Archaeological Science 27: 151–162. Vansina J (1990) Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa. Series. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. Zangato E (1999) Socie´te´s Pre´historiques et Me´galithes Dans le Nord-ouest de la Re´publique Centrafricaine. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Great Lakes Area Augustin F C Holl, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary earthwork Any early structure built from a mound or bank of earth, often created as fortification. forager Someone who hunts for food or provisions. iron smelting A process of heating and melting iron ores and concentrates and then separating the desirable molten metals such as copper from other elements. kingdoms Peak periods of development in ancient history.

The Interlacustrine area is flanked on both east and west by important freshwater lakes; Lake Victoria, L. Tanganyika, L. Kivu, and L. Albert. It is stretched over the eastern boundary of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Northern Tanzania, and the western fringe of Kenya. Several important Stone Age sites have been excavated at Matupi cave, Katanda sites of the Semliky valley, as well as Munyama cave in Uganda. Late Stone foragers using microliths were spread out in small groups over this vast area. The arrival of iron-using Bantuspeaking farmers in the first millennium BC triggered significant long-term increase in settlement size and density. The volcanic soils in this highly humid area are fertile, productive, and support some among the highest population density of Africa today. Evidence for iron smelting dating from the first half to the middle of the first millennium BC (900–500 BC) is documented at Gasiza I and Mirami III in Rwanda and the BuHaya region in Northwestern Tanzania. These Urewe farming communities were later joined by livestock herders from the Nile watershed. Bananas and other Southasian species took root and prospered in the fertile Interlacustrine zone. Bananas, one of the Malayo-Polynesia plants, were thought to have

AFRICA, CENTRAL/Sudan, Nilotic 5

reached Africa during the first millennium BC or very beginning of the first millennium AD. Bananas (Musa sp.) phytoliths from a core drilled at Munsa in Uganda and dated to the fourth millennium BC point to an earlier than thought introduction (see Africa, Central: Foragers, Farmers, and Metallurgists; Sudan, Nilotic). The Great Lakes region and the Savanna-land south of the equatorial rainforest witnessed the development of complex chiefdoms and kingdoms during the second millennium AD. In the Great Lakes region, the development at Ntusi, Munsa, Bigo, Kibiro, Mubende, and other earthworks sites is remarkable. Large-scale cattle husbandry is documented at Ntusi. Kibiro witnessed an impressive intensification in the production of salt from the local brackish springs. An agricultural colonization took place in western Uganda. However, tracing the precise evolutionary trajectory of any of the Great Lakes, past polities is still hampered by the lack of sustained long-term archaeological research and terminological uncertainties. Archaeological survey, and the analyses of the ceramic material collected was used by Robertshaw to develop a model of the development of social complexity. Four areas, Nyantungo in the west, Kibale in the north, Munsa/ Kakumiro in the Northeast, and Kasambya in the southeast, were sampled to document variations in settlement patterns and pottery shapes, design, and decoration. Most of the surveyed sites (>90%) are small homesteads/hamlets measuring less than 1 ha in size. Large sites without earthworks seem to have been positioned at defensive locations. While, with a certain range of variation, earthworks sites may have been part of small and competing polities. After the sixteenth century AD, these rival and competing polities came to be united under the rulership of the Bito dynasty that created the Nyoro kingdom in Western Uganda. Rwanda and Burundi on the western side of the Interlacustrine zone also developed rival but small chiefdoms. In general and all over the Lacustrine zone, iron working was strongly associated with rulership. See also: Africa, Central: Foragers, Farmers, and Metallurgists; Sudan, Nilotic; Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas.

Further Reading Connah G (1996) Kibiro: The Salt of Bunyoro, Past and Present. Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern Africa. Ehret C (1998) An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History, 1000 BC to AD 400. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Lejju BJ, Robertshaw P, and Taylor D (2006) Africa’s Earliest Bananas? Journal of Archaeological Science 33: 102–113. Reid A (1997) Lacustrine states. In: Vogel JO (ed.) Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa, pp. 501–507. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press. Robertshaw P (1994) Archaeological survey, ceramic analysis, and state formation in Western Uganda. The African Archaeological Review 12: 105–131. Robertshaw P (2003) Explaining the origins of state in East Africa. In: Vogel (ed.) East African Archaeology: Foragers, Potters, Smiths, and Traders, pp. 149–166. Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Schoenbrun DL (1998) A Green Place, A Good Place: Agrarian Change, Gender, and Social Identity in the Great Lakes Region to the 15th Century. Portsmouth: Heinemann.

Sudan, Nilotic Kathleen Nicoll, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Acheulian Designating, or of, a Lower Palaeolithic culture characterized by skillfully made bifacial flint hand axes. artifact Any object manufactured, used, or modified by humans. Common examples include tools, utensils, art, food remains, and other products of human activity. Aterian A stoneworking tradition that is considered an evolved style of the Palaeolithic of North Africa; it includes distinctive tools with shanks (i.e., tangs) for mounting to a handle, and basically worked leaf-shaped points. calcareous Containing calcium carbonate minerals. chert A very fine grained rock formed in ancient ocean sediments. It often has a semi-glassy finish and is usually white, pinkish, brown, gray, or blue-gray in color. It can be shaped into arrowheads by chipping. It has often been called flint, but true flint is found in chalk deposits and is a distinctive blackish color. dispersal The process in which an organism spreads out geographically. flint A hard, brittle microcrystalline form of quartz commonly found in sedimentary limestone or in chalk deposits, or otherwise any kind of stone that can be flaked. lithic Stone tools or projectiles. lithic scatter A spatially discrete, though sometimes extensive, scatter of lithic artifacts recovered from the surface, for example, by fieldwalking, rather than from a particular archaeological context. megalith An arrangement or structure of extremely large stones, possibly aligned. microlith Small tools that may be any of a variety of shapes, and which have been produced from microblades. These are too small to have been used without hafting, some were set edge to edge in a groove in a bone or wood shaft and so served as cutting tools, while others would have been functional as barbs. Neolithic Refers to the first era of village farmers in any region. nomad A member of a group of people who move according to the seasons from place to place in search of food, water, and grazing land.

6 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sudan, Nilotic optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) Quaternary geologic age-dating technique used to determine the depositional age of sediments by considering mineral grains as dosimeters that ‘accumulate’ energy over time as a function of natural environmental radiation. The technique is based on the solid-state properties of mineral grains rather than isotopic decay of constituent elements (like K–Ar or radiocarbon dating). pastoralism The form of agriculture specifically known as animal husbandry; it includes the tending and use of animals such as camels, goats, cattle, yaks, llamas, and sheep. It also contains a mobile element, moving the herds in search of fresh pasturelands and water resources. Pleistocene A geologic period, usually thought of as the most recent Ice Age, which began about 1.8 million years ago and ended with the melting of the large continental glaciers creating the modern climatic pattern about 11 500 years ago. pluvial A term commonly used to refer to a time period characterized by increased precipitation and reduced evaporation, resulting in enhanced moisture conditions. prehistoric The period prior to written records for a given area; note that the absolute date for the prehistoric period varies from place to place. social complexity Refers to patterns in society at levels from the individual to the group, as it relates to various human adaptive systems both comprising and surrounding a society. Complexity can refer to the rituals, culture, and practices of communities, regional systems, or empires. stratified A term that refers to sediments with primary (undisturbed) characteristics, that have been deposited or laid down in successive layers. Often the succession of layers can provide a relative chronological sequence, with the earliest at the bottom and the latest at the top.

Today the central African landscape west of the Nile River is hyperarid, with <10 mm annual rainfall; the modern Saharan region generally lacks sufficient surface water to sustain nomadic pastoralism, and settlement is localized around permanent oases and wells. The prehistoric records discovered in the desert landscape are sparse (Figure 1), and sites are commonly associated with ancient sources of water, including streams, springs, and lakes relict from ‘pluvial’ time periods of enhanced rainfall. Palaeoenvironmental evidence suggests that the region has remained arid with occasional semi-arid periods when the region received around 300 mm annual rainfall, and the Sudano-Sahelian vegetation zone extended northward. The changing climatic conditions and ready availability of water resources were key factors in determining when this marginal region could sustain life and cultural activities. The geoarchaeological record informs the emerging spatial and temporal reconstruction of the alternate aridification and peopling of the Sahara since the Later Pleistocene, the period
250 000– 10 000 years ago.

A Brief History of Explorers and Archaeologists Some of the first artifactual finds from the region called the ‘Western’ or ‘Libyan’ Desert and ‘the

Sudan’ were documented by Ralph A. Bagnold and members of the Long Range Desert Group, a British army unit active during World War II. In the 1930s, excavations on Lake Qarun-Fayum and the Kharga Oases by Gertrude Caton-Thompson and Elinor Gardiner provided the first integrated investigations into the prehistory and palaeoenvironment of the region; ironically these women were not granted membership into the Royal Geographical Society, although their reports have stood the test of time and paved the way for later researchers. Field studies in the 1970s by the Combined Prehistoric Expedition discovered some important stratified sites of Middle Stone Age–Early/Middle Palaeolithic typology, which predate the last phase of glaciation. Aterian artifacts at the site at Bıˆr Tirfawi, for example, are interstratified with calcareous lake beds that likely date to the period 125 000–90 000 years ago. Farther to the north, the Dakhleh Oasis Project has studied the remains of several prehistoric periods (Aterian through Graeco-Roman) since the 1980s. Acheulian hand ax finds older than 300 000 years were documented in the Bıˆr Kiseiba and Selima Sand Sheet regions by Smithsonian Institution researchers conducting fieldwork in the 1990s. Today, various international teams of scientists continue to decipher prehistoric archives from the Gilf Kebir, the defunct former tributaries of the Nile in northern Sudan, the Tibesti and Fezzan, and the Niger and Chad Basin.

The Fossil Record Although the Fayum is famous for its Oligocene fossil ape-like primates such Aegyptopithecus, no hominid fossils have been discovered from the broader region. Isolated Late Pleistocene lithic scatters and workshops exist, but related skeletal remains are extremely rare from Saharan North Africa. One of the most significant finds dating to the Middle Palaeolithic is an early anatomically modern human (H. sapiens sapiens) skeleton discovered along the Nile Valley
250 miles south of Cairo. At Taramsa, an anatomically modern child (aged 8–10 years) was deliberately buried in an open-air chert extraction site, which places the skeleton in direct context with worked tools and the quarry rock. A series of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates from correlative eolian sands suggests an age for the burial between 49 800 and 80 400 years ago, with a mean age of 55 000. As one of the few well-dated sites in the region, Taramsa provides insight regarding origin of modern humans as preserved within the Nilotic region, one of the likely passageways ‘Out of Africa’ as modern humans dispersed from East Africa to Eurasia.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sudan, Nilotic 7

32⬚ Mediterranean Sea

30⬚

Cairo Fayum EGYPT

28⬚

Nile River

Great Sand Sea

Taramsa

26⬚

Kharga Dakhleh Gilf Kebir LIBYA

Bîr Sahara

24⬚ Bîr Tirfawi Kiseiba Nabta

22⬚

Selima Sand Sheet

Gebel Uwien'at

20⬚

SUDAN

CHAD

18⬚

16⬚ Wadi Howar White Nile

map scale

200 km E 24⬚

Blue Nile

after Nicoll, 2001 28⬚

32⬚

Figure 1 Location of key sites mentioned from the northeastern Sahara, an area covering 92 000 000 km, and including the Western Desert of Egypt, northwest Sudan, and the adjacent parts of Libya and Chad, which together are about the size of western Europe.

Geoarchaeological Records from the NE Saharan Region Spatiotemporal patterns of prehistoric occupation suggest changes in the loci where people congregated, possibly as a function of changing water resource availability over time as the environment fluctuated between a habitable savanna and an inhospitable desert. The earliest occupation is associated with the artifacts of the Acheulian tradition of the Lower Paleolithic, and these finds are commonly associated

with groundwater-fed lakes, springs, and streams (wadis) with headwaters at higher elevations in the Plateaux escarpments. The chronology is inferential and not well constrained, but likely spans the period before 500 000 to 300 000 years ago, and is distinct from the Acheulian tradition of the Nile Valley. The archaeological record of the Middle Palaeolithic is better known, and several sites contain in situ living floors and diverse faunal assemblages, which reflect favorable climatic conditions. Much of

8 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sudan, Nilotic

the Middle Palaeolithic chronology is relative, and is based on taxonomic comparisons with diagnostic artifacts defined in units dating from 250 000 to
38 000 BP. The two oldest units, the Mousterian and the Aterian, occur in both the Western Desert and Nile Valley, but the comparative local economic patterns are markedly different. Lithics and faunal remains recovered from valley sites suggest reliance on fishing and Bos hunting. Alternately, in the Western Desert, hunting of large game was preferred over the capture of smaller animals. Large groundwater-supported lakes at Bıˆr Tirfawi and Bıˆr Sahara were favored settlement locales, although other environmental settings also were exploited and reoccupied. Within the Western Desert, the Aterian technocomplex is associated with the latest Pleistocene wet period, which preceded a long hyperarid episode that persisted until the early Holocene. The precise duration of the hyperarid interval remains unconstrained. There is no evidence for local rainfall or spring activity in the region west of the Nile between
40 000 and 11 000 BP, and human activity was confined to the valley, as preserved in Khormusan variants of the latest Middle Palaeolithic and other Late Palaeolithic complexes. The region beyond the Nile Valley was not reoccupied until the onset of suitable climate conditions
12 000 BP, when effective precipitation was enhanced due to the incursion of monsoonal rains from tropical Africa. Occasional rains created seasonal ponds and sustained vegetation that attracted game and people to a region that was otherwise desert. Savanna grasses, trees, and bushes enabled the subsistence of hares, gazelle, and a few small carnivores. Even during the Early Holocene climatic optimum
11 000–5500 cal BP, however, the region remained quite dry and drought prone (see Africa, South: Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers). Characteristic tools and microliths, pottery, and ostrich eggshell beads are present at wadis, springs, and small depressions known as pans and playas, places where rainwater ponded after storms. Most of the terminal Paleolithic/Neolithic assemblages are located alongside water features fed solely by rainfall.

Neolithic Pluvials and the Emergence of Social Complexity: Examples from Nabta Playa Evidence across the northeastern Sahara suggests discrete phases of Neolithic activity during the Holocene climatic optimum. The sequence at Nabta Playa

reveals three wet–dry phases bracketed by radiocarbon dates. The accompanying stratigraphic and cultural record reflects critical transitions from foraging to food production strategies involving domestication and animal husbandry, and points toward emerging traditions of social complexity. The first settlements at Nabta Playa date between 11 000–9300 cal years ago, and include herders of domesticated(?) cattle who carried distinctive ceramic vessels decorated with wavy impressed patterns; this pottery is among the oldest known in Africa. In a similar manner to modern West African peoples, the Nabtans may have regarded their cattle as economic units of power, social status and prestige, as well as ‘walking larders’ that supplied milk and blood, rather than meat. Once the playa dried up, people migrated to areas with more water, possibly to the Nile in the east or areas further south (see Africa, West: Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists; Africa, South: Herders, Farmers, and Metallurgists of South Africa). After 9000 years ago, larger settlements were established at Nabta; small huts were arranged in straight lines, and walk-in wells were dug to supply the Nabtan residents with enough water to stay for longer periods. People survived on a number of wild edible plants (sorghum, millets, legumes, tubers, fruits) and small animals, including hares and gazelles. Around 8800 years ago (7800 BP, uncalibrated), pottery was produced locally. Around 8100 years ago, there is evidence for the domestication of larger animals, goats and sheep (see Animal Domestication). Between 8000 and 7000 years ago, Nabta was abandoned during two major droughts. As hyperarid conditions developed, the water table dropped, deflation persisted, and conditions became uninhabitable. The people returning to Nabta after the droughts were a complex society with an enhanced degree of organization and control, possibly centered around some ritualistic belief system associated with livestock. Excavated items supporting this inference include sacrifices of young cows and their burial in clay-lined and roofed chambers covered by stone slabs. Nabtans also constructed 25þ complex building structures with surface and subterranean features, including a shaped stone that could represent the oldest sculpture in Egypt. They also erected megaliths, alignments of large stones, and an astronomical ‘calendar circle’ like Stonehenge that marked the solstice at 6500 BP. Another significant find near Nabta is the first Neolithic cemetery in Egypt. A series of richly furnished graves date to
6400 and 6000 radiocarbon years BP (uncalibrated), and demonstrate patterns of local pastoralists who practiced transhumance during

AMERICAS, NORTH/Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas 9

the later Neolithic period. In this manner, the Nabtan culture once again reflects that Saharan people had affliations with, and profound effects upon, the incipient Egyptian civilization that emerged from the Nile Valley as the region progressively aridified. See also: Africa, North: Nubia; Sahara, Eastern; Africa, South: Herders, Farmers, and Metallurgists of South Africa; Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers; Africa, West: Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists; Animal Domestication.

animals from the wild, foraging and hunting without significant recourse to the domestication of either. Indian Ocean trade Monsoon based trade linking the Indian sub-continent with coastal regions of east Africa and the southern African hinterland. slash-and-burn agriculture The cutting and burning of forests or woodlands to create fields for agriculture or pasture for livestock, or for a variety of other purposes. Zimbabwe Culture Refers to the states and material culture linked with the ancestral Shona speakers between AD 1100 and 1900. Mapungubwe is the earliest Zimbabwe Culture State, followed by Great Zimbabwe, and the Torwa-Changamire and Mutapa states. Drystone walls (known as Dzimbahwes – houses of stone), built using the precise placement method (without mortar) are the best known manifestation of this culture.

Further Reading Burroughs WJ (2005) Climate Change in Prehistory: The End of the Reign of Chaos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kuper R and Kro¨pelin S (2006) Climate-controlled Holocene occupation in the Sahara: Motor of Africa’s Evolution. Science 313: 803–807. Midant-Reynes B (1992) The Prehistory of Egypt. Oxford: Blackwell. Nicoll K (2004) Recent environmental change and prehistoric human activity in Egypt and northern Sudan. Quaternary Science Reviews 23: 561–580. Phillipson DW (1998) African Archaeology, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rice M (2003) Egypt’s Making. The Origins of Ancient Egypt 5000–2000 BC, 2nd edn. London: Routledge. Shaw T, Sinclair P, Andah B, and Okpoko A (eds.) (1995) The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns. London: Routledge. Wendorf FA and Schild RA (1980) Prehistory of the Eastern Sahara. New York: Academic Press.

Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas Innocent Pikirayi, University of Pretoria, Tshwane, South Africa Shadreck Chirikure, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary agro-pastoral A mode of production that combines field culture and husbandry with the use of pasture areas. colonization The act or process of establishing a colony or colonies. Colonization encompasses all large-scale emigrations of an established population to a ‘new’ location, such as immigration, the establishment of expatriate communities, and the use of guest workers. hunter-gatherer society A society whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and

Introduction The Zimbabwe plateau and adjacent regions (Figure 1) form part of the southern African subcontinent, south of the Zambezi, north of the Limpopo Rivers. In physiographic terms, it is part of High Africa, with elevations ranging from 500 to more than 2500 m above sea level. A moist savannah woodland biome dominates the plateau, and gives way to a dry woodland scrub further west, which becomes the Kalahari semidesert. The climate is largely tropical, although the higher escarpments to the east could be described as montane (see Africa, South: Kalahari Margins).

Hunter-Foragers Stone tools attributed to the Oldowan, Acheulian, and post-Acheulian traditions represent evidence of hominid/hominoid hunter-forager activity in southern Africa. Homo sapiens or early modern humans populated this region from the Middle Pleistocene up to about 40 000 years ago. They are associated with the development of abstract forms of human behavior such as the use of ochre, ostrich egg shell containers, and distinctive stone tool technologies. Tool assemblages representative of the Bambata (Stillbay) tradition have prepared cores, rare crescents, bifacial and unifacial points, denticulates, and multifaceted striking platforms. Related traditions include Tshangula and Zombepata in the western and northern parts of the plateau. Similar developments occur in the adjacent Zambezi valley, in the Batoka gorge and the Gwembe Valley. The emergence of modern humans 40 000 years ago witnessed a change toward advanced stoneworking techniques, evidenced by microlithic technologies. Such tools robustly assisted humans to cope with increasingly colder climatic conditions culminating with the Last Glacial Maximum around 18 000 years ago. Also, they were adapted to the complex hunting and gathering practices that developed since then.

10 AFRICA, EAST/Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas

Kadzi

MUTA

Zombepata Mutota

PA ST

Zvongombe

e

llag

t Vi

r Swa

ATE Nhunguza

Zambezi

, Diana s Vow

900 1200

Redcliff

Sawmills

Danamombe

TORWA STATE Gokomere Great Zimbabwe

Bambata

12

00

Khami

INDIAN OCEAN

Tshangula

90

0

MAKGADIKGADI PANS Schroda Mapungubwe 0

200 km Key Middle/late stone age sites

First millennium CE agro-pastoral sites

State capitals

Figure 1 Map of the Zimbabwe plateau showing archaeological sites associated with important cultural developments from the Middle Pleistocene.

An important development during the terminal Pleistocene and continuing into the Holocene relates to hunter-forager artistic and ritual traditions. These are paintings and engravings, found in caves, rock shelters, and open spaces. This ‘art’ is a product of shamanistic rituals and ceremonies connected with healing and rainmaking (Figure 2). Some of this art played a role in instructive teachings during certain ceremonies such as initiation, while other art may have expressed the local cosmological world of myths and symbolism. Some depict intergroup rivalries or conflicts. A majority of the art was authored by San hunter-gatherers, and depicts paintings dominated by the eland, an animal important to their ritual life. Other painting traditions are attributed to herder Khoekhoen and Bantu agro-pastoralists, and these continue into recent historical periods.

Early Herders In the western regions of the plateau and adjoining Kalahari sandveld, sheep, goats, and cattle were known earlier than the permanent settlements associated with the first crop farmers, and have been recovered in some later Holocene forager-hunter contexts. They date 2000–3000 years ago and, given the absence of their wild prototypes, may have been introduced in the region from further north. Events associated with early pastoral societies in the region are attributed to ancestral San and Khoekhoen communities, whose languages are related to those of some hunter-forager groups in eastern Africa. The spread of their language and other aspects of culture are, however, still in dispute. The archaeological horizons of sites with Bambata pottery have no signs of

AFRICA, EAST/Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas 11

Figure 3 Example of pottery made by agro-pastoralist farmers between cal CE 400 and 600. This Happy Rest potsherd was recovered from an extensive village site on the margins of the plateau in the Tswapong Hills of Botswana. Photo: P. Fredrikson.

Figure 2 Late Stone Age rock art from Diana’s Vow, in eastern Zimbabwe. The painting depicts a Shaman in trance. Photo: P. Taruvinga. (National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe).

experimentation like those in northern parts of the continent. Presumably, processes of complex interaction and shifting identities between resident hunterforagers and pastoralists and hunter-herders have formed the archaeological record that we see. The depiction of domestic animals on rock art not only attests to some of these events, but also signifies their importance in early pastoral economies (see Animal Domestication).

Agro-pastoral Communities Settled farmers identified with the speakers of ancestral Bantu languages were established in much of southern Africa, including the Zimbabwe plateau by the early first millennium CE. Their origins lie somewhere in the northern Equatorial rain forests. It remains unclear how they spread over much of the region in a fairly short period of time. The process may have involved ‘slash-and-burn’ agriculture whereby after few years, communities would abandon a piece of land due to marginal fertility of the soils, and move on to another. This process is dated from the third century BCE and continues throughout the first and early second millennium CE, attesting

to the expansion and spread of farming activities and iron production in southern Africa. Archaeological sites yielding well-fired, thickbodied ceramics decorated with either grooved or comb-stamped designs identify the expansion and spread of agro-pastoral societies (Figure 3). Most sites exhibit metalworking, the keeping of livestock, and pole-and-daub structures of permanent settlement. This pottery has been recovered from the Lake Victoria interior and coastal regions of eastern Africa, much of central Africa, the northern highveld and the eastern coastal zones of South Africa. This pottery is identical in both structure and design. Archaeologists have ascribed it to traditions or cultures which are further divided into time segments (phases), and geographical areas (facies). On the Zimbabwe plateau, such traditions include Gokomere-Ziwa, Zhizo, Kadzi, and Chinhoyi and they are all associated with early farming and iron-using communities who grew Bambara groundnuts, cucurbits, sorghum, and cow peas. They supplemented these with wild grasses and plant foods, wild animals, and marine resources. Cattle were very important in the sociopolitical and economic organization of these societies. This significance was expressed through a binary-coded settlement system known as the Central Cattle Pattern. Residential units surrounded cattle byres, which were the domain of men. Archaeologists unveiled this settlement pattern at Tabazingwe in western Zimbabwe, Kgaswe on the margins of the Kalahari and Schroda in northern South Africa (see Plant Domestication). From CE 600, these early farmers established large village settlements in the plateau and adjacent areas. Mainly situated along fertile agricultural soils and river basins, village sites covered areas averaging at least 5 ha in extent. Archaeological evidence from sites

12 AFRICA, EAST/Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas

such as Kadzi and Swart Village in northern Zimbabwe, Schroda in the Limpopo Valley, and various sites in the Tswapong Hills of Botswana attest to these villages as hubs of religious, economic, and political activities. Craft specialization was well developed as shown by the ubiquity of concentrated remains of iron- (Figure 4) and ivory-working. This was strongly interwoven with the development of intraregional trade and the integration of the Zimbabwe plateau area into the world system through the Indian Ocean long-distance trade that connected the interior

Figure 4 Multiple fused tuyeres from a possible specialist iron smelting village, Tswapong Hills, Botswana.

of southern Africa with parts of Asia and the Persian Gulf. In this long-distance trade network, local products including ivory and iron were exchanged for exotic goods such as glass beads.

The Development of Social Complexity and the Zimbabwe Culture States During the late first millennium CE, intensive agricultural production and long-distance trade saw the rise of powerful elites who dominated the economy and politics of the region. The interplay of these factors with ideology and ritual led to the establishment of the early states or kingdoms. Mapungubwe, located in the Shashe-Limpopo Basin is but one example. Mapungubwe has dry-stone-walled areas that housed the elite on the hilltop. Ritual objects were used as insignia for political office while prestigious gold objects and glass beads expressed their wealth. Craft specialization was a hallmark of these early kingdoms with metal-working, bead-making, and weaving flourishing. After close to a century of prospering, environmental degradation and shifting trade opportunities occasioned the rise of a more powerful system at Great Zimbabwe some 300 km to the north. After eclipsing Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe controlled long-distance trade with the Indian Ocean

Figure 5 Photograph of the Great Enclosure and Valley enclosures at Great Zimbabwe.

AFRICA, EAST/Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas 13

while the Swahili traders acted as intermediaries in a world system that linked widely separated geographical areas of the world. Local products such as gold, cattle, agricultural produce, and ivory, among others, were exchanged for exotic Persian wares, Chinese blue-on-white porcelain, and glass beads. The power and wealth of the ruling elite was invested in very impressive dry-stone-walled structures, the largest stone structures south of the Egyptian pyramids (Figure 5). Religion was important in the governance of the state and the recovery of skillfully made soapstone birds and ritual objects demonstrates this. The existence of abundant exotic and status goods at Great Zimbabwe when contrasted with the paucity of craft manufacturing evidence adduces that the elites controlled the distribution rather than primary production of goods. Such mechanisms were well supported using tributary modes of production. In a question of history repeating itself, the factors largely responsible for the rise of Great Zimbabwe led toward its demise. A rapidly deteriorating environment and the shifting trade routes led to the emergence of two successor states, the Mutapa in the north and Khami in the southwest by the end of the fifteenth century. The Mutapa state occupied the northern Zimbabwe plateau and adjacent Zambezi valley lowlands. Archaeology and oral history attest to a continuation of Great Zimbabwe influence. Early Mutapa kings had access to large and exploitable quantities of alluvial and hydrothermal gold, which became an important part of the economy of the state. The gold wealth was invested in monumental architecture and former Mutapa capitals – Zvongombe, Mutota, Kasekete, and Nhunguza – were built in the architectural styles of Great Zimbabwe. The predatory activities of merchant capital represented by the Portuguese traders became the Mutapa’s nemesis. The state ceased to be a significant political player by the late eighteenth century, and by the nineteenth century, was clearly just a mere chiefdom, largely subservient to Portuguese whims. Another successor state to Great Zimbabwe developed at Khami in the southwestern plateau area. The Torwa state was built and operated along the lines of Great Zimbabwe with the kings living on elaborate dry-stone-walled terraces and in enclosures.

Long-distance trade was an important part of the state and exotic goods have been recovered there. A civil war and Portuguese meddling sounded the death knell to the state leading to the rise of the Rozvi-Changamire state based at Danangombe in the late seventeenth century. The Rozvi-Changamire state was an important political entity, which at one time played the power broker in the Mutapa state. One of its leaders Changamire Dombo is credited with expelling the Portuguese from the plateau, for their gluttonous and belligerent behavior in the Mutapa state. Like most states that arose on the plateau, civil wars caused by succession disputes gradually weakened the state. Successive groups of Nguni people leaving southeastern Africa hastened the collapse of the state with the Ndebele occupying the vacuum arising from the aftermath. On its part, the Ndebele state was highly militarized to prevent annihilation by numerically superior opponents. Using advanced methods of warfare, they managed to subjugate some groups on the plateau. However, the influx of guns from the Portuguese meant that such groups could resist the Ndebele whose state ended with the colonization by the British South Africa Company in CE 1890. See also: Africa, South: Kalahari Margins; Animal Domestication; Modern Humans, Emergence of; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading Beach DN (1994) The Shona and Their Neighbours. Oxford: Blackwell. Huffman TN (1996) Snakes and Crocodiles: Power and Symbolism in Ancient Zimbabwe. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Pikirayi I (2001) The Zimbabwe Culture: Origins and Decline in Southern Zambezian States. Walnut Creek, California: AltaMira Press. Pwiti G (1996) Continuity and Change: An Archaeological Study of Farming Communities in Northern Zimbabwe, AD 500–1700. Studies in African Archaeology 13. Uppsala, Sweden: Department of Archaeology, Uppsala University. Walker N (1995) Late Pleistocene and Holocene HuntersGatherers of the Matopos: An Archaeological Study of Change and Continuity in Zimbabwe. Studies in African Archaeology 10. Uppsala, Sweden: Department of Archaeology, Uppsala University.

14 AFRICA, EAST/Ethiopia and Eritrea

AFRICA, EAST Contents Ethiopia and Eritrea Foragers Madagascar and Surrounding Islands Swahili Coast The Horn of Africa

Ethiopia and Eritrea Augustin F C Holl, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Aksum A kingdom formed from at least the first century AD in southwestern Ethiopia which developed into an empire including northern Ethiopia, Sudan, and southern Arabia. forager Someone who gathers food or provisions, especially forcibly. Horn of Africa A peninsula of East Africa that juts for hundreds of kilometers into the Arabian Sea, and lies along the southern side of the Gulf of Aden. Tigray The northern-most of the nine ethnic regions (kililoch) of Ethiopia.

Paleontological and Stone Age research is particularly dynamic in Ethiopia. Major Australopithecus sites are found along the Ethiopian part of the East African Rift Valley, from the Omo Valley in the south to the fossils’ bearing formations of Djibouti in the Northeast. Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands are nonetheless considered as important centers of African plant domestication and agricultural innovation but archaeological research on this and related topics, even if seriously improved during the last two decades, is still lagging behind. Teff (Eragrostis teff ), noog (Guizotia abyssinica), as well as finger millet (Eleusine coracana) are part of the locally domesticated plants grown in association with Near Eastern crops such as wheat, barley, chick pea, lentil, and fava bean. Food-producing societies combining agricultural production with livestock husbandry lived in the lowland and Eritrean plateau as well as Tigray from the Middle Holocene onward. During the first millennium BC, South Arabic culture and influence expanded across the Red Sea and took roots in Ethiopian highland areas of Eritrea and Tigray. Archaeologically, this new situation is indicated by

the sudden appearance of writing, monumental stone architecture, and sculpture. Iron technology may have been part of this new ‘cultural package’ that triggered the sixth to seventh century BC process of urbanization in Highlands Ethiopia. Urban centers emerged at such places as Yeha surrounded by at least 30 other known sites among which the Hawelti–Melazzo complex. Yeha grew out of an earlier mixed farming village and became the main urban center of the Daamat kingdom in the fifth to fourth century BC. It was a relatively small town, 7.5 ha in size, with however spectacular stone monuments, the temple, and the Great Beal Gebri. The former is a massive rectangular building, 18.5 m long, 15 m wide, with preserved plain walls measuring 11 m in height. The latter consists of a series of square-section massive monolithic pillars that may have been part of a cultic complex with some affinities to the Moon Temple at Marib. The Daamat kingdom collapsed during the later part of the first millennium BC but very few is in fact known about the causes and consequences of its demise. Smaller polities emerged. Stelae were used to mark elite burials, and exchanges seem to have been predominantly with the Nile Valley. Aksum was one of these small polities that developed in the area during the later part of the first millennium BC and the early centuries of the first millennium AD. Aksum appears to have been settled in the first century AD. A few centuries later, in the third–fourth century AD, it achieved regional primacy, controlled great amount of wealth, developed a centralized monarchical system, adopted Christianity as state religion, and launched an extensive expansionist policy. As suggested by Phillipson and Anfray, Aksum’s political control extended at several times to regions beyond the modern borders of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Large areas of southern Arabia were ruled from Aksum at intervals between the third and sixth century AD. It is likely that Meroe in the Sudanese Nile Valley was conquered by an Aksumite army under King Ezana, but the nature and consequences of this episode remain poorly understood.

AFRICA, EAST/Foragers 15

The town of Aksum, at the foot of two hills, Beta Giyorgis in the west and May Qoho in the east, was extended in a deep gorge oriented north–south. The surrounding land was rich, water abundant, building stone ubiquitous. The town itself was stretched along approximately one mile west–east with its width along the north–south axis measuring no more than 500 m. Massive architectural complexes have been excavated. Some were storage facilities, elite residences, and religious buildings. Elite and royal burials carved in the bedrock and marked by lavishly sculpted stelae were located in a central position overlooking the rest of the town complex. The largest stelae appear to mark the graves of the kings of Aksum immediately prior to their adoption of Christianity in the midfourth century. These stelae are the most remarkable monuments of the Aksum ‘skyline’. Now fallen and broken, the largest of these, was originally 33 m long, and 520 tons in weight, probably the largest single block of stone which people anywhere, at any time, have attempted to stand on end according to Phillipson (see Africa, East: Foragers; The Horn of Africa). Very early in its history, Aksum became a trade hub linking the Red Sea to the Nile Valley and the Roman world from the north to the rest of the continent. It was visited by merchants from Egypt, Syria, Arabia, and even India. Adulis was its main and only harbor on the Red Sea. The economic growth and expansion of the Romans was one of the key factors for the quick pace of development of Aksum as a thriving economic metropolis. At the peak of its power and influence, the core of the ‘Aksumite civilization’ extended over a territory measuring 300 by 160 km, from 13 /17 latitude north and 38 /40 longitude east, with an access to the Red Sea at Adulis. Aksum kingdom collapsed during the eighth century AD partly because of the success and fast expansion of Islam and its corollary political and economic isolation in a predominantly Muslim world. The overexploitation of local resources, intensive erosion of the deforested land, as well as a short arid spell may have accelerated the depopulation and demise of the Aksumite metropolis in the eighth–ninth century AD. See also: Africa, East: Foragers; Madagascar and

Surrounding Islands; Swahili Coast; The Horn of Africa; Asia, West: Arabian Peninsula; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading Anfray F (1990) Les Anciens Ethiopiens: Siecles d’Histoire. Paris: Armand Colin.

Bard KA, Coltorti M, DiBlasi MC, Dramis F, and Fattovitch R (2000) The environmental history of Tigray (northern Ethiopia) in the Middle and Late Holocene: A preliminary outline. African Archaeological Review 17: 65–86. Brandt SA (1984) New perspectives on the origins of food production in Ethiopia. In: Clark JD and Brandt SA (eds.) From Hunters to Farmers: The Causes and Consequences of Food Production in Africa, pp. 173–205. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brandt SA (1986) The Upper Pleistocene and Early Holocene prehistory of the Horn of Africa. The African Archaeological Review 4: 41–82. Butzer KW (1981) Rise and Fall of Axum, Ethiopia: A geoarchaeological interpretation. American Antiquity 46(3): 471–495. Phillipson D (1998) Ancient Ethiopia: Aksum: Its Antecedents and Successors. London: British Museum Press. Phillipson D (2000) Archaeology at Aksum, Ethiopia, 1993–1997. London: The British Institute in Eastern Africa.

Foragers Sibel Barut Kusimba, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Eburran An East African obsidian industry of the central Rift Valley, Kenya. forager Someone who hunts for food and provisions. hunter-gatherer A member of a people subsisting in the wild on food obtained by hunting and foraging. Later Stone Age The third and final phase of Stone Age technology in sub-Saharan Africa, dating from more than c. 30 000 years ago until historical times in some places. Middle Stone Age The second part of the Stone Age in sub-Saharan Africa, dating from c. 150 000–30 000 years ago and roughly equivalent to the Middle Paleolithic elsewhere in the Old World. Pastoral Neolithic A general term for the pre-Iron Age food-producing societies of East Africa.

Introduction The concept of the forager is derived from ethnographic examples of hunting-and-gathering people. These lifeways are based on the exploitation of wild plant foods and in Africa, ethnographic cases include people from the Botswanan Desert, the San, and also various Central African groups associated with tropical forests. Archaeological hunter-gatherers are different from ethnographic examples, even in the same environments. Because of the diversity of cultures bundled under the hunter-gatherer rubric, rejection of the term ‘hunter-gatherer’ has been suggested. It is possible that our trusted cubby holes

16 AFRICA, EAST/Foragers

for ‘hunter-gatherers’, ‘pastoralists’, or ‘farmers’ misrepresent a prehistoric world frequently less economically specialized than that of the ethnographic present. Nevertheless, few would argue that terms like huntergatherer be rejected. Instead, we can try to appreciate how environment and history have created variability in hunting-and-gathering societies. Three basic time periods of African Foragers will be reviewed in East Africa, including the Middle Stone Age, Later Stone Age, and transition to food production.

Middle Stone Age To some archaeologists, Middle Stone Age (MSA) shows the gradual accumulation of the modern hunter-gatherer repertoire. The repertoire, as far as the MSA is concerned, might include: diversity in the style of lithic artifacts and projectile weapons, backed microliths and composite tools, bone tools and bone points, hunting success, exploitation of fish, and other smaller resources which could represent the beginnings of a broad-spectrum or intensification process in the case of evidence of fishing, land use patterns characterized by a San-like aggregation and dispersal and repeated occupation of rock shelters, cultural use of space and activity areas within sites, increased artifact trade, and the making of beads and use of ochre. These behaviors and artifact types are thought to be related to ways of thinking, including symbolic behavior, innovation, and planning that are ‘modern’, in the sense that they are associated with Homo sapiens. At Blombos Cave on the southern coast of South Africa, MSA levels dating to 77 000 years ago have yielded more than 30 worked bone awls and points and 8000 pieces of worked ochre, two of which are incised with parallel lines as well as beads. However, other sites of the African MSA also show evidence of artifact design and geographic diversity; use of microliths, backed tools, and hafted tools; hunting proficiency; worked bone; fishing, mollusk gathering, and small animal procurement; and use of symbolic artifacts such as beads and ochre. The MSA is characterized by Levallois and other prepared core methods of stone tool manufacture. A common tool type in the East African MSA is the Stillbay point, or points from discoidal core reduction. Important MSA sites include the ones in Northern Tanzania, such as Nasera Rockshelter and Mumba Rockshelter, Mumba Hohle, Olduvai Gorge, and a recent excavation from Loiyangalani near Olduvai Gorge, where bone artifacts and fish bone have been reported. Southwestern Tanzania also has MSA localities reported along the Songwe River. In Kenya, sites have been found in the Kenya Rift Valley, including Prospect Farm and Lukenya Hill, and in

Ethiopia at Porc Epic Cave and Aduma. The East African MSA is rarely found with ostrich eggshell beads, as reported from Mumba and the Loiyangalani site, but is quite often associated with the so-called ‘Kenya Stillbay’ industry which includes small and large points which may be spear points.

Later Stone Age The Later Stone Age (LSA) is marked by the transition from the discoidal and Levallois core reduction methods to leptolithic or small tools. The sequence of LSA lithic industries at Lukenya Hill, Kenya documents the appearance and increasing proportions of time of microlithic tools, also associated with modern human behavior. Other early LSA sites show increasing use of bone tools, the exploitation of fish using specialized technology, and the use of bored stones for plant food gathering. LSA sites also contain early evidence of artifacts related to personal adornment. Often these are blade tools. Lukenya Hill contains at least five early LSA archaeological sites, including GvJm 62, GvJm 46, GvJm 22, and GvJm 16. Analysis of these sites shows that the proportions of microlithic tools and the use of nonlocal obsidian from the Central Rift Valley of Kenya, about 150 km from Lukenya Hill, increase over time. Other important early LSA sites include Enkapune ya Muto, whose assemblages show that ostrich eggshell beads, hafted microliths, and small round steep scrapers similar to those made at GvJm62 were made and used there (see Africa, Central: Foragers, Farmers, and Metallurgists; Africa, West: Early Holocene Foragers). Other significant LSA industries are found in the Eburran Industry of the Central Rift Valley in Kenya. The Eburran Industry represents hunter-gatherers well-adapted to Rift Valley highlands and lake basins in East Africa, who used abundant obsidian to make microlithic tools and hunted a variety of ungulates associated with woodlands and forests. After 3000 BP, many Eburran sites appear to be associated with the origins of food production, in particular the keeping of goats, such as at the site of Enkapune ya Muto. LSA people are also associated with fish exploitation and the making of pottery, as evidenced in the Kansyore midden sites of Lake Victoria.

The Transition to Food Production The problem of the transition from hunting and gathering to food production has been approached by examining how economies changed through diffusion and innovation of domesticated plant and animal species and the interactions of hunters and others who were herders/farmers. Many reviews of the

AFRICA, EAST/Madagascar and Surrounding Islands 17

origins of domesticated plants and animals in Africa have emphasized on the early and indigenous development of food production, the impact of cattleborne disease, patterns of indigenous development and diffusion, the role of arid and unpredictable environment, and the evidence of early domesticated plant foods in Africa. Several scholars have compared the ethnographic record of hunter-gatherers and food producers, both from the perspective of understanding the process of the adoption of food production and understanding hunter-gatherer–food producer interaction. Important cases of food-producer/farmer interaction include that of Eburran and Pastoral Neolithic sites in the Central Rift Valley, that indicates the association of Eburran sites with domestic stock and in lower altitude locations, which presumably reflects interaction with plains pastoralists; the Tsavo case of southeastern Kenya, where hunter-gatherers known as the Waata persisted until the twentieth century by exchanging hunted meat and ivory tusks with Oromo and Wambisha pastoralists; and the case of montane hunter-gatherers variously known as Okiek or ‘Ndorobo’ whose interaction with Maasai and other pastoralists involved exchange of honey and meat for agricultural products and animal secondary products. See also: Africa, Central: Foragers, Farmers, and Metallurgists; Great Lakes Area; Africa, West: Early Holocene Foragers; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient.

Further Reading Andah B (1993) Identifying early farming traditions of West Africa. In: Shaw T, Sinclair P, Andah B, and Okpoko A (eds.) The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals, and Towns, pp. 240–254. London: Routledge. Bellwood P (2004) The First Farmers: Origins of Agricultural Societies. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Bollig M (1987) Ethnic relations and spatial mobility in Africa: A review of the peripatetic niche. In: Rao A (ed.) Kolner Ethnologische Mitteilungen Volume 8, The Other Nomads: Peripatetic Minorities in Cross-Cultural Perspective, pp. 179–228. Cologne: Bohlau Verlag. Burch ES (1998) The future of hunter-gatherer research. In: Gowdy J (ed.) Limited Wants, unlimited Means: A Reader in HunterGatherer Economics and the Environment, pp. 201–217. Washington, DC: Island Press. Cronk L and Dickson B (2000) Public and hidden transcripts in the East African highlands: A comment on Smith (1998). Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 20: 113–121. diLernia S and Manzi G (1997) Before Food Production in North Africa. Forli, ABACO. Henshilwood C and Marean C (2003) The origin of modern human behavior: Critique of the models and their test implications. Current Anthropology 44: 627–652.

Kent S (1996) Cultural Diversity among Twentieth Century Foragers: An African Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kuhn S and Stiner M (2001) The antiquity of hunter-gatherers. In: Panter-Brick C, Layton R, and Rowley-Conwy P (eds.) Hunter-Gatherers, An Interdisciplinary Perspective, pp. 99–142. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schrire C (1980) An inquiry into the evolutionary status and apparent identity of San hunter-gatherers. Human Ecology 8: 9–32.

Madagascar and Surrounding Islands Douglas William Hume, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Bantu language Group belonging to the Niger-Congo family. By one estimate, there are 513 languages in the Bantu grouping. Borneo Located at the center of the Malay archipelago and Indonesia. Administratively, this island is divided between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. Madagascar Island Nation in the Indian Ocean, off the southeastern coast of Africa. It is home to 5% of the world’s plant and animal species (more than 80% of which are indigenous to Madagascar).

Current archaeological research in Madagascar is concerned with a relatively narrow band of time from approximately 2000 year BP, the generally accepted period of first contact, to the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the advent of historical records and European contact. Although the peopling of Madagascar is arguably a recent event, little is known regarding the early settlements. The lack of archaeological evidence is due to a variety of factors: quick environmental decomposition of sites, sparse use of sites by transient populations, and lack of funding to research the area. Other forms of evidence, such as linguistics, and genetic and ethnological data, are also used to develop the chronology of events during the settlement of Madagascar. Though early arguments postulated that the first Malagasy inhabitants were from one origin, historical, linguistic, genetic, and archaeological evidence suggests multiregional influences from Southeast Asia, East Africa, South Asia, and the Near East. A hybridization of many

18 AMERICAS, NORTH/Madagascar and Surrounding Islands

influences is therefore probable, in which several waves of settlement/colonization occurred and each group introduced or reintroduced technologies or other cultural traits. Prior to settlement, maritime people, who were exploiting the area’s offshore resources, visited Madagascar and traders used Madagascar for temporary shelter and restocking of supplies. As trading became more important, the camps’ temporal and spatial existence increased over time. This temporary nature of the early settlements contributes to the difficulty in tracing the sequences of events from first settlement to permanent settlements and finally a formation of a distinct Malagasy culture. Linguistically, there has been difficulty in deciphering the origin of the Malagasy language due to movement of people, the number of Malagasy dialects created, and the inability to define a protoMalagasy language. Through comparative linguistics, analysis of loan words, and the phonology, morphology, and vocabulary of the Malagasy language suggest two possible origins: the Barito Valley of Borneo and the Bantu language of Eastern Africa. Genetic analysis shows that both East African and Indonesian gene frequencies are evident within the general population at approximately equal ratios throughout Madagascar. The introduction of the sickle cell gene indicates an infusion of genes from people of central or east Africa, north of Zambezi. The ethnological evidence connecting Madagascar and other cultures such as Southeast Asia, Africa, India, and the Near East that have similar traits is ambiguous. Many similarities are better explained by environmental constraints than by direct linkage with a specific group. There are examples of shared knowledge; for example, growing of millet in dry areas of Madagascar is thought to have been borrowed from East Africa and the growing of rice in wetter areas borrowed from Indonesia. Madagascar has had exposure to a variety of cultural traits, but the existence of a cultural trait does not imply genetic relationships, but may rather result from either direct or indirect trade between two genetically distinct groups. The earliest archaeological evidence of human activity in Madagascar are the four radiocarbon-dated dwarf hippopotamus (Choeropsis madagascariensis) femurs that show human modification. The femurs, found in southern Madagascar (Lamboharana and Ambolisatra), yielded two reliable dates, 1970  60 and 1740  50 years BP. What has been most puzzling in Madagascar’s ecological history is the extinction of Madagascar’s megafauna, such as the dwarf hippopotamus, approximately 2000 years ago. Although a

catastrophic fire event, calamitous drought in southern Madagascar, first-contact overkill, introduction of cattle, and hypervirulent disease have all been blamed for the extinction of Madagascar’s megafauna, it is more likely that the causes worked in synergy: the introduction of exotic and invasive species, climatic changes, and arrival of humans caused these extinctions. Another early archaeological site in Madagascar is Sarodrano, 1490  90 years BP. However, this early date is questionable due to site disturbance and further study of the site is impossible due to its destruction by a cyclone. Other early settlements dated to the ninth–tenth centuries AD include the following: Irodo (Tafianatsirebeka) – a northeastern coast settlement that produced shellfish, farming, and chloro-schistite vessel production and trade; Andransosoa – a southeastern inland cattle pastoralist; and Talaky – a southern coastal fishing village. During this early period (first to tenth century AD), only traces of transient visits have been found, which may be a reflection of the limited areas surveyed along Madagascar’s coast and not a measure of what settlement sites are actually there. After AD 1000, permanent occupation sites along the entire Madagascar coast and one central highland site have yielded evidence of rice agriculture, bovid herding, fishing, iron smelting, and local trading, but no direct link to Southeast Asia, East Africa, South Asia, or the Near East. In addition, it cannot be determined if the economic and technological diversity in evidence from sites of this period is the result of in situ evolution or imported from another area. From the twelfth century AD, the settlements in the west began to grow to significant size and duration. Mahilaka was the first major port in the region; its decline in the fourteenth century AD was followed by settlements developing along the east coast. Cores taken from lakes and bogs from this time have found fluctuating levels of grassy and brushy vegetation along with arboreal pollen, showing a negative correlation. This indicates a variable deforestation by anthropogenic means and therefore a variable human population concentration and rate of environmental modification. By the fourteenth century AD, the archaeological evidence indicates a relatively uniform cultural pattern in the southern region. It is currently unknown what caused this explosion of settlements during this period of history in Madagascar. Settlements during this period were associated in clusters surrounding a central site, which may have been the political and/or social elite. In addition, trade goods originating in South China, Southeast Asia, the Near East, and Europe are evident

AMERICAS, NORTH/Swahili Coast 19

throughout Madagascar by this time, indicating increased external contact. Of the polities that emerged during the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries AD, only the Merina of the central highlands of Madagascar has the archaeological evidence to suggest the formation of a state. In particular, a hierarchy of a capital, subsidiary centers, villages, and hamlets along with frontier military sites provides evidence that a state level system was needed for control, because the level of control needed for these sites is more than a loose political unit could manage. During this period, the effects of European trading enabled the earliest written accounts of the Malagasy political situation to be recorded. With the advent of European trading, political power became subject to the control of trade goods and some kingdoms (e.g., the Bara) collapsed while others increased their influence (e.g., the Sakalava). Beginning in the sixteenth century, several groups were heavily involved in trade with the Europeans (mostly French, Dutch, and Arabs). Others (e.g., Tandroy, Karembola, and Mahafaly peoples in southern Madagascar) were not actively involved in trade, yet still received European goods by importing them through their neighbors. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the beginnings of what has been termed the ‘Bara state’ collapsed due to disputes between the sons of the dead ruler and, subsequently, the interior Maroserana ruler, Andriamanely, captured the area and installed his family members as local rulers. The southern kingdoms of Madagascar did not consolidate their power and remained divided from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. The result was their lack of political influence on interior and northern groups. Whether groups were in direct trade with the Europeans or received goods through indirect trade, the impact of the goods that the Europeans brought to Madagascar was felt throughout the island. See also: Africa, Central: Great Lakes Area; Sudan,

Nilotic.

Further Reading Deschamps H (1972) Histoire de Madagascar, 4th edn. Paris: Berger-Levrault. Dewar RE (1984) Extinctions in Madagascar: The loss of the subfossil fauna. In: Martin PS and Klein RG (eds.) Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution, pp. 574–593. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press. Dewar RE and Wright HT (1993) The culture history of Madagascar. Journal of World Prehistory 7: 417–466. Marks S and Cray R (1975) Southern Africa and Madagascar (c.1600–c.1790). In: Gray R (ed.) Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 4, p. 384–468. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Pearson MP (1997) Close encounters of the worst kind: Malagasy resistance and colonial disasters in southern Madagascar. World Archaeology 28: 393–417. Wright HT and Rakotoarisoa JA (2004) The rise of Malagasy societies: New developments in the archaeology of Madagascar. In: Goodman SM and Benstead JP (eds.) The Natural History of Madagascar, pp. 112–119. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Swahili Coast Adria LaViolette, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary caliphate The Islamic form of government representing the political unity and leadership of the Muslim world. city-state A region controlled exclusively by a city, usually having sovereignty. colonialism The extension of a nation’s sovereignty over territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled or displaced. urbanism The study of cities – their economic, political, social and cultural environment, and the imprint of all these forces on the built environment.

The many towns and hinterland communities of the Eastern African coast share broad cultural commonalities that emerged in the first millennium AD, in what came to be called Swahili civilization. The Swahili coast extended along some 2500 km, from modern Somalia to Mozambique and incorporating Kenya’s Lamu archipelago, Tanzania’s Pemba, Unguja (Zanzibar), and Mafia Islands, the Comoros Archipelago, and northwestern Madagascar. This expanse corresponds with the western edge of the monsoonal wind system, facilitating travel and communication on the coast itself and among ports along the Indian Ocean rim. The pre-Swahili history of the coast is known largely through archaeological research, augmented by rare documents and interpretations drawn from historical linguistics. In the centuries prior to the founding of Swahili settlements, the coast was home to an array of smallerscale societies subsisting on pastoralism and mixed farming and fishing, and who shared archaeological and linguistic connections with interior peoples. The use of Urewe and Kwale ceramics in both areas exemplifies shared lifeways of coastal and interior regions in the Late Stone and Early Iron Ages.

20 AMERICAS, NORTH/Swahili Coast

Archaeological work at pre-/proto-Swahili sites dating to the first centuries AD, such as Unguja Ukuu in Tanzania, provides evidence of relatively small mixed farming settlements, some with impressive trade ties beyond the coast. The first written document pertaining to the coast is a merchants’ guide, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. The Periplus was written in AD 40 by a Greek sailor, who wrote of trade along the Red Sea, Eastern African, and Indian shores while on a Roman ship. He references places such as Rhapta, the Romans’ southernmost port of trade, thought to have been on the central Tanzanian coast. Rhapta is described as under the authority of the governor of Muza in the southwestern Arabian Peninsula, but subsequent historical and archaeological evidence have not confirmed this depiction. Exported goods listed included ivory and rhino horn from the interior and nautilus and turtle shell from the coast, while imports included metal implements, glass, and some foods. Another, second-century source is Ptolemy’s Geography, a Graeco-Roman compendium containing sailing coordinates for coastal locations. Both documents are consistent with archaeological evidence that some coastal Early Iron Age populations were engaged in trade and social relations with Mediterranean and Indian Ocean societies. The documentary record is then largely silent until the late first millennium, when Arab and other accounts begin. By the sixth to tenth centuries AD, archaeological evidence reveals a distinct coastal Swahili lifeway. Its characteristics included: (1) use of Tana Tradition or Triangular Incised Ware ceramics; (2) technologies such as iron smelting and boat construction; (3) the building of mostly rectangular earth-and-thatch houses; (4) household economy based on millet agriculture, husbandry, and fishing; (5) obtaining imported goods including glazed ceramics, glassware, metal jewelry, and stone and glass beads from the Persian Gulf and beyond; and (6) conversion to Islam from the eighth century onward. Few of these traits are exclusive to the coast but the combination emerged as characteristically coastal, and ultimately Swahili. The settlement of the coast by people with this archaeological signature marks a transition from the previous mosaic of coast and interior groups, although the early Swahili maintained many cultural practices of the pastoral and farming/fishing peoples on the coast and hinterland from whom they were derived. Nearly all known Swahili settlements were on or within 20 km of the coast. Islam grew to great importance in Swahili life. The earliest evidence to date for its practice is from the excavation of an eighth-century timber mosque at Shanga in the Lamu Archipelago. A series of mosques of increasing size and formality were subsequently superimposed. This sequence attests to contacts

between proto- or early Swahili with Muslim traders or missionaries. Earlier understandings of the formation of Swahili society presumed that Arab and Persian immigrants colonized and converted coastal people for the purpose of developing trading opportunities. However, archaeological and linguistic evidence now points convincingly to the African origins of Swahili culture, while still acknowledging that some immigration and an openness to select foreign influences was fundamental to Swahili life. By the ninth century, economic connections between Eastern Africa and the Middle East had grown in scale to include the export of thousands of slaves from the interior. The slaves were transported through coastal centers including Unguja and Pemba to destinations in modern-day Iraq where they labored on drainage projects at the head of the Gulf of Basra. In AD 868, a massive uprising, the Zanj Revolt, weakened the Caliphate based in Basra and led to a downturn in interest in slaves from Swahili sources. The revolt indicates the presence and influence of Africans in Asia at that time, but more research is needed to understand the full texture of this influence. The spiritual transformation of the Swahili coast had sweeping effects, but these were neither uniform nor rapid. Representatives of several Islamic sects gained influence in different areas. Conversion did not eliminate but rather incorporated local spiritual practices. By c. AD 1200, however, all large Swahili settlements and many smaller ones featured stonebuilt mosques as centerpieces of Islamic practice and community organization. The wealth and power of Swahili towns waxed in the eleventh to fourteenth centuries, as measured by the scale and number of settlements, material culture, and expanding trade relationships to the interior and along distant Indian Ocean shores. Building in stone became the hallmark of the most elite dwellings and public and ritual structures. In the ninth century, Swahili elites adopted a method of mortared and plastered limestone construction that originated on the Red Sea shores. The resulting architecture – elaborated, multistoried, more permanent than earth and thatch – may have been critical to anchoring relationships of certain Swahili lineages with foreign traders, a practice seen ethnohistorically and which contributed to the prosperity of towns and regions at large. However, earth-and-thatch houses continued to characterize villages, and were even common within the new larger settlements marked by elite stone buildings, called ‘stonetowns’. While stone architecture became the basis of initial reconstructions of Swahili society, contemporary archaeological research is investigating the full range of Swahili houses and public buildings in town and countryside.

AMERICAS, NORTH/The Horn of Africa 21

Many Swahili settlements have been described as urban (even ‘city-states’ or ‘states’) (see Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Urban Archaeology) marked by complex relations between centers and their surrounding regions. These centers differed in their internal class structures and political styles. Coastal regions became more distinct from one another with localized historical trajectories. The shared visual icons of Swahili stonetowns are compelling, but should not overshadow these important differences between regions along the coast. Major stonetowns that have been investigated archaeologically include Shanga, Manda, and Gede in Kenya; Chwaka, Ras Mkumbuu, Tumbatu, and Kilwa in Tanzania; and Mahilaka in Madagascar. Certain towns created epic histories, passed down orally and ultimately formalized as written chronicles, such as those known from Pate and Kilwa. The chronicles, as well as other sources, often discuss sociopolitical relationships: the ties between Swahili and interior peoples, marriage alliances with Indian Ocean families, acts of generosity by local leaders to their populations. Life in the stonetown polities continued but with intensified farming, fishing, craft production, Islamic practice, and long-distance trade. Gold obtained from Zimbabwe Plateau (see Africa, Central: Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas) societies became a leading export from the coast, along with ivory, iron, animal products, and mangrove poles. Imports featured glazed ceramics from East, Southeast, and Southwest Asia; a range of personal items such as beads and other jewelry; cloth; and religious texts. Coins were minted in some of the largest centers. Rock crystal and other stone was worked into beads and traded, and iron and copper alloys were produced locally. From the sixteenth century onward, the effects of European and Arab colonizers became increasingly felt. The Portuguese reached the Swahili coast for the first time in 1498. Their presence in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is known from documentary sources, and architectural remains in Mombasa, Malindi, Kilwa, and on Pemba and Unguja. The construction of Fort Jesus in Mombasa in 1593 was the most striking presence the Portuguese achieved in this period. They were defeated there in 1697 after a long siege, ending the first phase of their colonialism on the Swahili coast. Portuguese settlement and cultural impact is not well understood at present and future study is warranted. At a regional level, their aggressive intrusions in the Indian Ocean contributed to the long-term decline of Swahili autonomy and power. Sections of the Swahili coast came under attack from Omani Arabs immediately after the Portuguese were defeated, such that from 1498 onward the Swahili

struggled against colonialist incursions of various scales and levels of success. Swahili urban and rural life prevailed, although disruptions in long-distance trade and losses of regional autonomy weakened the strength of the entire coast and its ties to the interior and the Indian Ocean. The Swahili coast was not united under a single political authority until the Omani Sultanate colonized it in the early nineteenth century. See also: Africa, Central: Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Urban Archaeology.

Further Reading Allen J de V (1993) Swahili Origins. London: Heinemann. Chami FA (1994) The Coast of East Africa in the First Millennium AD: A Study of the Iron Working Farming Communities. Uppsala: Societas Archaeologica Upsaliensis. Chittick HN (1974) Kilwa: An Islamic Trading City on the East African Coast. Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern Africa. Croucher S (2006) Plantations on Zanzibar: An Archaeological Approach to Complex Identities. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Manchester. Freeman-Grenville GSP (1962) The East African Coast: Select Documents from the First Century to the Early Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon. Garlake PS (1966) The Early Islamic Architecture on the East African Coast. Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern Africa. Horton MC (1996) Shanga: The Archaeology of a Muslim Trading Settlement on the Coast of East Africa. London: British Institute in Eastern Africa. Horton M and Middleton J (2000) The Swahili. London: Blackwell. Juma A (2004) Unguja Ukuu on Zanzibar: An Archaeological Study of Early Urbanism. Uppsala: Societas Archaeologica Upsaliensis. Kusimba CM (1999) The Rise and Fall of Swahili States. Walnut Creek: AltaMira.

The Horn of Africa Rahul Oka, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL, USA Chapurukha M Kusimba, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Early Common Era Refers to the period between 100 BC and 100 CE that witnessed a significant increase in interregional and transoceanic trade linking the Indian Ocean world, East and Central Asia, and the Mediterranean and also the rise of stable empires and states in Asia, Southern Europe, and Africa. vertical archipelago effect First described in the Andes but also in the Himalayas and Hawaii; rapidly changing elevations

22 The Horn of Africa within a relatively small lateral area causes highly variable yet circumscribed environment and leads to the development of interdependent and exchanging settlements along the vertical landscape practicing a wide variety of subsistence activities.

The Horn of Africa is a cultural area comprising the modern nations of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Archaeological research over the past century shows an unbroken sequence of human occupation from the Middle Stone Age to the present. It has also been blessed with a unique location: on the crossroads of Asia and Africa, at the mouth of the Red Sea, and offering easy land access between western ports on the Red Sea and the Nile River. Epigraphic evidence from Egypt identifies this region as Punt and an active trading partner of Egypt during the reign of Queen Hapshetsut. Archaeological evidence suggests that the trade links between the Horn of Africa and the Mediterranean world (Egypt) as well as Southwest Asia can be traced as far back as 2500 BC. The Horn of Africa boasts greater geographical diversity than any other area in Africa: from the baking plains along the Eritrean and Somali coasts, the largest and highest land plateau, the cooler Ethiopian highlands, the lowland tropical Nile headwaters to the north, and the arid dry lowlands to the northwestern, western, and southwestern regions along the borders with Sudan and Kenya. The wider range of geographic and hence climatic variability creates a ‘vertical archipelago’ effect allowing for a larger variety of sustainable resources and related subsistence activities, and the contemporaneous development of a regional exchange network between settlements. The Somali Coast (that includes the actual ‘horn’ or the jutting coastal plain along the Gulf of Aden and the northwestern Indian Ocean), the Eritrean (and Djiboutian) Coast along the Western Red Sea, and the Ethiopian highlands have thus been interconnected from earliest times and this regional exchange has played a great role in the development of social complexity in the Horn from 800 BC onward. The Horn of Africa is also the region of many ‘firsts’ and ‘onlys’. Important food crops such as teff, ensete, finger millet, nug, and coffee were first domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands and this is the only region in sub-Saharan Africa to use domesticated cattle and the plow for agricultural purposes. ‘Geez’ is one of the three indigenous writing systems in Africa and was developed during the development of the Aksumite polity. This region is also home to a two millennia long development of incipient state formation in sub-Saharan Africa: from Aksum (also

called Axum) (second century BC to ninth century CE), Zagwe (tenth century to fourteenth century CE), Solomonid (fourteenth century to seventeenth century), and Amharic Gondar (seventeenth century to twentieth century). The monarchs of these polities have practiced and hailed themselves as the ‘protectors’ of Christianity from the conversion of King Ezana of Aksum in CE 330, to the Amhara kings of the twentieth century, making the Ethiopian highlands the longest-lived Christian-ruled area in the world. Consequently, much focus of historical research has been on this indigenous adoption of and syncretic processes affecting Christianity, regarding the aforementioned highland states as islands of Christianity pitted against indigenous religions and later against Islamic incursions from the coasts. This paradigm is now being challenged as the positive contributions of traditional African religions and Islam are being acknowledged, as are the impacts of nonChristian peoples of the Horn, including the Somali, the Oromo (formerly called the Galla), the Afar, and the Saho. Recent historical and archaeological work on the antiquity and spread of Islam has underscored the role played by Asian and African Islamic traders and settlers in Red Sea ports, including Adulis, Massawa, the Dahlak Islands on the Eritrean Coast, and Berbera, Zeila, Ras Hafun, and Mogadishu on the Somali Coast. The Dahlak Islands, Adulis, Berbera, and Ras Hafun have been active since the Early Common Era and played a significant role in the rise of Aksum and the latter highland polities. Trade goods recovered in both the coastal ports as well as Aksum (and subsequent states) include products from South Asia (glass beads, coins, cloth), Rome (ceramics, amphorae), Egypt, and even China (iron, porcelains, silk). In return, the highland and coastal ports provided infrastructure for secondary production and regional and transoceanic trade in food grains, animal products such as elephant and hippopotamus tusk ivory (raw, cut, and carved), skins and hides, precious stones, rock crystals, gold, slaves, beeswax, and gum Arabic. Emergent trends and future directions of archaeological research seem to favor this regional approach for understanding social complexity. The rest of this essay will summarize the recent archaeological–historical work along the three zones of the Horn of Africa: (1) the Northern Coast along the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden (Eritrean, Djiboutian, and northern Somali Coasts); (2) the Southeastern Somali Coast, also known as the Benadir Coast (along the northwestern Indian Ocean); and (3) the Eritrean– Ethiopian highlands. The bulk of archaeological work in the Horn has concentrated on the highlands but

The Horn of Africa 23

there have been a few projects working on the coasts, tied into the larger coastal archaeological projects further south along the East African coast.

Northern Coast The northern coast of the Horn of Africa is characterized by the ports of Adulis, Massawa, Saad-Din, Berbera and Zeila, as well as the Dahlak Islands off the coast of Eritrea. Excavations at these sites have also underscored the importance of the northern coast as the forum for contacts with Southern Arabia as far back as the second millennium BC. Analysis of similarities in material culture as well as evidence on constant interaction suggests an interdependent development of complexity on both sides of the Red Sea, especially in the pre-Aksumite period. The ports of Adulis and Massawa were significant for the external connections of the emerging Aksum polity during the Early Common Era and show evidence of Aksumite and southern Arabian interactions and trade. Artifacts recovered include gold, ivory, and a human skeleton in chains or manacles suggesting the existence of slave trade. The Dahlak Islands were sources of tortoiseshell and ambergris, but also were known pirate bases and hence played an important role in controlling the Red Sea trade until their conquest in the tenth century CE. The ports of Zeila and Saad-Din show intensive merging of agricultural and pastoral activities by providing specialized infrastructure for pastoral exchange and trade as well as being important centers of transoceanic trade. The north coast was regarded as part of the territory controlled by the given highland polity. However, regardless of hinterland influence, these ports were probably semi-autonomous. From the eighth century, Islam started to spread across the Horn but found its strength in the coastal ports of the northern coast. The aforementioned ports as well as new ports such as Aydhab and Suakin (further north) were part of coastal Islamic polities of Shewa, Falasha, Gojjam, and Damot (late ninth century and tenth century) and Ifat (Yifat) (eleventh century CE) are usually seen as engaging in conflict with the highland Christian polities of Zagwe. It is clear from recent analysis that the religious conflict did not significantly affect the trading relationships as the highland states continued to use the aforementioned ports for their commercial and diplomatic activities. Trade continued even during the conflicts between the Ethiopian polity and the emergent Islamic states of Adal and Harar between and through the fourteenth century to sixteenth century CE. The territorial conquest of most of the Horn by Imam Ahmad bin Ibrahim al-Ghazi or Ahmad Gran˜ of Harar between

CE 1529 and 1543 was brought to an end by the arrival and action of the Portuguese acting as coreligionist partners of the Ethiopian state of Gondar. Though the late first and early second millennium periods have undergone historiographic scrutiny, largely through the lens of the Christianity versus Islam conflict, this and the subsequent periods have not been subjected to significant archaeological research, especially in the hinterland.

Benadir Coast Archaeology of the Benadir zone has also been confined to the coastal area and to the large ports. The bulk of this research has concentrated on Ras Hafun and Mogadishu. Presence of South Asian, ‘Mesopotamian’, Roman, Early Sassanian, and Egyptian ceramics suggests that Ras Hafun was active in the Early Common Era trade. However, the main trading port on the Benadir Coast was the city of Mogadishu and the articulated settlements of Brawa, Merca, Warsheikh, and Kismayo. While most of the other ports on the Somali coast have declined, the Mogadishu port cluster is still active and formed the basis for ongoing trade between the hinterland and coast of southern Somalia from the seventeenth century to the present. Unlike the northern coast, there was no hinterland polity associated with the ports on the Benadir coast until the sixteenth century CE. Analysis of imported Persian, Indian, Egyptian, and Chinese trade wares in these ports suggests that Mogadishu, Brawa, and Merca arose between the ninth and tenth centuries within a similar context as the ports further south along the Kenyan, Tanzanian, and Mozambique coasts: The coastal settlements were articulated with hinterland agricultural and pastoral groups. The ports provided forums for exchange of hinterland and overseas products. The elites of Mogadishu and other ports were linked through kinship, blood-brotherhood, and marital alliances with hinterland pastoral and agricultural groups and depended on these for protection. It is not inconceivable that the trade boom and demand for African products c. CE 1500 led to the rise of the Islamic Ajurann Confederacy (CE 1500–1700) and state development among the Somali in the Benadir hinterland. This period is also known for major demographic movements in the Benadir hinterland, including the migration of the Oromo pastoralists and their wars with the Somali to the northeast and the Amhara to the north in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, leading to their southerly migration over the next two centuries. Not only did these migrations precipitate political changes in the Horn of Africa but also central and eastern Africa.

24 The Horn of Africa

Ethiopian–Eritrean Highlands

Summary

The bulk of archaeological excavations in the Horn has focused on the highlands, where the ‘firsts’ and the ‘onlys’ are concentrated, particularly on the site of Aksum–Tigray in the northern Ethiopian–Eritrean highlands. Though the early and mid-twentieth century efforts focused on the stelae, monumental architecture, artwork, and epigraphic research to reconstruct the development of the Aksumite state from the Early Common Era to its demise in the late first millennium CE, recent work has focused on tracing the beginnings of pre-Aksumite settlement. The early development of complexity in the Ethiopian highlands has now been tentatively traced to the early first millennium BC and interactions with the Hadramaut and Southwestern coast of Arabia have now been traced to the second millennium BC. Archaeo-botanical and zoological approaches have also moved away from mere establishment of antiquity to understanding the regional and evolutionary context of plant and animal domestication in the Horn of Africa. In particular, recent work in South Asia dates the African domesticates to 2000 BC. Not only does this suggest the deep antiquity of interconnections between the Horn of Africa and Asia but also the larger transregional context of domestication involving transfer of ideas, products, and technology. Current reconstructions of the demise of Aksum vary from blaming the declining climate conditions from the mid–late first millennium CE to the emergence of Islamic power along the northern coast from the late eighth century, concentrated in the ports of Massawa, Adulis, the Dahlak Islands, and Zeila. The latter argument has also been made for the fall of the subsequent polities of Zagwe, the Solomonids, and Gondar. However, it is clear that there are multiple and path-dependent causes for the decline of the highland polities and these need to be explored further in a regional context. Recent archaeological and historiographic approaches have aimed at understanding the post-Aksum polities beyond just establishing king-lists and reigning periods. The difficulty presented to researchers interested in the latter settlement and political history of the highlands is the shift in settlement organization and political infrastructure. Whether in response to conflicts with Islamic polities such as Adal and Harar and/or pastoral groups such as the Somali and the Oromo, climate, and environmental changes, the elites of Zagwe, Gondar, and the Amhara moved their capitals periodically, making their archaeological signatures ephemeral and difficult to locate.

Apart from being the home of many ‘firsts’ and ‘onlys’ in Africa, the Horn of Africa has also played an important role in the development of global, commercial, and religious processes over the last two millennia. Due to the problems in navigability of the Red Sea north of Aydhab and Suakin, traders seeking routes to the Mediterranean had two choices: make port at Mocha or Jeddah and take the overland routes up the western coast of Arabia or make port at the Eritrean ports and take the shorter overland route to the Nile and sail up the Nile to Alexandria and Aleppo. The continuity of ports and the overland routes in the Horn attest to the significance of the second passage for Indian Ocean and Mediterranean trade. Though the religious conflict in the Horn is far more complex than a simple picture of isolated Christian highland versus the traditional hinterlands, the Islamic lowlands, and/or the coast, it is also true that these divisions played a role in the generation of larger conflicts such as the jihad of Imam Ahmad Gran˜ and the Portuguese involvement, as well as the major Oromo and Somali migrations. It could also be argued that the nineteenth-century Mahdist revolt in Sudan was linked to similar and concurrent processes in the Horn of Africa. Current sociopolitical situations are not conducive to archaeological research, especially along the coasts and immediate hinterlands of Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia. Even so, future projects (especially those focused on regional approaches and on late first and second millennium developments) will prove immensely significant in understanding the role played by the Horn in the development of African and global modernity. See also: Africa, East: Ethiopia and Eritrea; Foragers; Madagascar and Surrounding Islands; Swahili Coast; Africa, North: Nubia; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading Ahmed HS (1996) Exchange, Trade, and the Development of Urbanism in Somalia. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International. Fattovich R (1990) Remarks on the pre-Aksumite period in northern Ethiopia. Journal of Ethiopian Studies 23: 1–33. Insoll T (2003) The Archaeology of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jama AD (1996) The Origins and Development of Mogadishu AD 1000 to 1850: A Study of the Urban Growth along the Benadir Coast of Southern Somalia. Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University.

AFRICA, HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 25 Kapteijns L (2000) Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. In: Levitzion N and Pouwels R (eds.) The History of Islam in Africa, pp. 227–250. Oxford: James Currey. Munro-Hay S (1991) Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press. Pankhurst R (1998) The Ethiopians. Oxford: Blackwell. Phillipson D (1998) Ancient Ethiopia. London: The British Museum.

Schmidt P (2006) Historical Archaeology in Africa. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Tamrat T (1990) The Horn of Africa: The Solomonids in Ethiopia and the states of the Horn of Africa. In: Ki-Zerbo K and Niane DT (eds.) General History of Africa: Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century, pp. 169–180. Berkeley, CA: James Currey; Paris: UNESCO.

AFRICA, HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY Paul J Lane, University of York, York, UK

Introduction

ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Historical archaeology first emerged as a distinct subfield of the broader discipline in North America during the mid-twentieth century. However, many of the definitions and approaches that now dominate the field are not entirely suited to the African continent. This is partly because in many areas, especially away from the coastal zones, the temporal depth of documentary sources is fairly limited, and a European presence in these areas only dates from the nineteenth century. A key feature of historical archaeology, regardless of which definition is preferred, is that it seeks to integrate and interrogate both strictly archaeological types of sources (such as artifactual, ecofactual, structural, and architectural remains and their contextual, spatial, and temporal associations and characteristics), with other nonarchaeological sources that can be broadly defined as ‘historical’. In this respect, a useful distinction can be made between ‘external’ and ‘internal’ sources. By the former is meant sources produced by outsiders, either as direct observers, or as often in African contexts, transcribers and copiers of verbal accounts provided by others. Thus, examples might include the large number of published first-hand accounts of voyages of discovery and exploration in Africa by different individuals of European origin that begin to appear from c. CE 1500 onward, and especially after 1800; the numerous official documents produced by the different European colonial powers that are now lodged in archives in Africa, Europe, and elsewhere; the records kept by different trading companies, ship captains, and others engaged in commercial activity; personal diaries and letters written by European missionaries, explorers and administrators; and also the various pre-1500 CE descriptions and guides to parts of Africa written in Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Chinese. By internal sources is meant the range of historical sources produced by, in this case, different African

Glossary Atlantic slave trade The sale and exploitation of African slaves by Europeans that occurred in and around the Atlantic ocean from the 15th century to the 19th century. Most slaves were transported from West Africa and Central Africa, to the New World. colonialism A practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another. contract archaeology Archaeological work carried out on behalf of, and paid by, a commercial firm or public body in advance of land development that has the potential to impact on archaeological remains. emporium A trading center. entrepoˆt A port through which exports and imports pass, and thus links a coastal zone with its hinterland. genealogical reckoning A way of establishing a chronology based on the history of the descent of families and which typically assumes that each generation represents between twenty to thirty years, hence, for instance a family tree that names six generations could cover between 120 and 180 years of history. hieroglyphic symbols Hieroglyphic symbols are a form of writing which uses little pictures to represent actions or things. historical archaeology Historical archaeology is a branch of archaeology that concerns itself with ‘historical’ societies, that is, those that had systems of writing. Holocene An epoch of geological time that began 10 000 years ago and is the second and current epoch of the Quaternary period. littoral The stretch of land adjacent to a coast, in other words, a coastal belt. metaphor An implied comparison, normally expressed as a figure of speech, between two things that are not normally treated as if they have anything in common; an extension of this process can lead to the development of a symbol, whereby the comparison is no longer implied and the second term comes to stand for the first, as in a cross being a symbol of Christianity. slavery a social-economic system under which certain persons – known as slaves – are deprived of their personal freedom and compelled to provide their labor or services. writing system A writing system is a type of symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.

26 AFRICA, HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

societies. Most obviously, these include the oral traditions and histories, myths, and personal memories that have been transcribed by professional historians and anthropologists. However, there also exist various texts written in the local vernacular for certain parts of the continent, as well as some indigenous writing systems, notably the Vai script developed in what is now Liberia, the Nsibidi script found in Cross River State, Nigeria, and the Barnum hieroglyphs that occur in Cameroon. Just as archaeological sources are subject to a wide range of processes that can affect their formal, spatial, biochemical, and contextual characteristics which may influence the integrity of the scientific information they carry, so too can oral, textual, and documentary sources be subject to a wide range of factors that may introduce different kinds of bias and selectivity (see Historical Archaeology: Methods). For the African continent, both the specific and general value of oral traditions as reliable sources of historical information have been discussed at some length and various methods of source criticism devised. There is also widespread recognition of the need for detailed source criticism when handling documentary and archival sources. In terms of the latter, racial bias is obviously one factor, but many others also came into play. Equally, European perceptions of and attitudes to Africans were by no means uniform, varying between individuals, different nationalities, and different kinds of sources.

Attempts to Verify Classical Texts In common with other parts of the world, much of what might be considered historical archaeology on the African continent has been concerned with the verification of various written historical sources, especially those concerning the pre-modern era. Outside of Egypt and Nubia, where texts written using the hieroglyphic script first emerged in an archaic form perhaps as early as 3400–3200 BCE, the main areas where this has been attempted are Libya and adjacent parts of North Africa, the East African Swahili coast, and Sudanic West Africa. In the former two areas, the primary relevant texts are those written by Greek and Roman authors (although for more recent centuries, Arabic sources are also of value), while for West Africa, the earliest documentary sources derive from the writings of Arabic scholars such as Ibn Batuta and Al Bekri. In all three areas, scholars have tended to give primacy, until recently, to the available written sources, with the result that certain misrepresentations and distortions within these texts assumed the status of historical fact (see Writing Systems). Perhaps the best-known example of this concerns the use by successive generations of archaeologists of

the text known as The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, which probably dates to around CE 40. The Periplus includes a description of a sea voyage along the East African coast from a trading emporium known as Opone just south of the Somali Peninsula, to the ancient town of Rhapta, as well as details of some of the products exported from Africa, that included ivory, ambergris, and slaves. As these were mostly nondurable raw materials for which evidence is unlikely to be preserved in archaeological contexts except under special circumstances, the text provides valuable information about the trade. Understandably, it has been used from an early stage in research on the Swahili coast to supplement the evidence gleaned from archaeology of the wide range of durable products that were being imported. The Periplus contains much less information about the societies that occupied the East African coast, apart from descriptions of various landmarks and other ports that lay along this route. Some of the topographic features of the coast, such as the Lamu archipelago and Mount Kilimanjaro, are readily identifiable from the descriptions, and using these in conjunction with the sailing directions that are also provided, scholars have sought to link some of the known archaeological sites with the various ports and settlements named in the Periplus and the other important early text, Claudius Ptolemy’s Geography (c. CE 150). Few if any of these, including Rhapta, however, have been identified unambiguously. Moreover, the two texts provide conflicting information about the geographical location of several of the places named, making it especially difficult to derive an accurate topography of the East African littoral during the late first millennium BCE to early first millennium CE from these sources alone. Thus, for instance, Pemba or Zanzibar would be the best estimates for the location of the island of Menouthias based on the information given in the Periplus, whereas the coordinates given in the Geography would place this island much further south in the vicinity of Madagascar. This discrepancy, in turn, has a bearing on the possible location of Rhapta. From the description provided in the Periplus, Rhapta lay about 88 miles to the south of Menouthias, which would place it near Bagamoyo or Dar es Salaam in modern Tanzania. Whereas, in the Geography, Rhapta is said to lie far to the north of Menouthias situated on a small island set in a river, which could be a reference to the Lamu archipelago close to the modern border between Kenya and Somalia. In view of such problems, scholars no longer regard the Periplus and Ptolemy’s Geography as detailed guides to site locations, but instead as valuable, but ambiguous, testimony to the existence of long-distance trading links between East Africa and the Mediterranean world in the first few centuries of the Christian Era.

AFRICA, HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 27

Uses of Oral History in African Archaeology One aspect of historical archaeology in sub-Saharan Africa that distinguishes it from comparable work in many other parts of the world, particularly North America and Europe, is the greater integration of oral histories. This is partly because the growth of scholarly study of the oral history and traditions of African societies coincided with a rise in interest in the later Holocene archaeology of the continent, and especially that concerning the origins and spread of food production, metal-working, urbanism, and complex political systems. As part of this intellectual trend, the use of such traditions became a common component of most archaeological surveys, principally as a means of providing an overview of the more recent history of the area under investigation. Moreover, a particular characteristic of a great many oral traditions concerning different African societies is the emphasis placed on migration as the primary driving force of social change. The first generation of Africa’s historians to be trained in the Western academic tradition were thus often keen to see their archaeological counterparts provide material verification that the routes and stopping places described in the oral accounts, were indeed associated with the settlement histories of specific ethnic groups. It is rare however, to find unequivocal confirmation of this kind in the archaeological record, and attempts to link the various oral traditions with specific archaeological sites commonly encounter several difficulties. One region where archaeological investigations were initially guided by oral histories but subsequently generated a complete rethinking of the historical and metaphorical significance of these is the Great Lakes area of East Africa. Here, several important archaeological sites have long been associated in oral traditions with an elite known as the Bacwezi. According to at least one set of traditions, the Bacwezi had been the historical rulers of a large region centered in the lush grasslands of western Uganda, which, by calculating from genealogical data, would appear to have existed sometime during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries CE. A number of extensive complexes of ditched earthworks, including the sites of Bigo, Munsa, Kibengo, and Kasonko, are known from this area. During the 1950s and the 1960s, various archaeological campaigns were undertaken at some of these in an attempt to provide a clearer understanding of their date and function, and their link with the Bacwezi dynasty. The discovery at Bigo of an enclosure similar in form to that found at some of the later royal capitals in Uganda, and a suite of radiocarbon dates from the

site suggesting occupation between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries CE, led to the conclusion that Bigo was indeed the capital of the pastoral Bacwezi kingdom, and that the other sites were part of the same political system. Reappraisals of these investigations, however, have called into question many of historical interpretations that were used to guide the archaeological excavations, and highlighted some of the more general problems associated with trying to substantiate oral traditions archaeologically. Moreover, the results of more recent field investigations at Munsa and Kibengo indicate that despite some superficial similarities these not only differ from one another but also from Bigo, in terms of their site inventories and material culture traditions. Thus, rather than belonging to a single state, each of these sites probably represents the center of an independent polity that was in competition with its neighbors over resources and control of the local populace. Other scholars have argued that the Bacwezi ‘myth’ must be seen as a symbolically loaded, metaphorical account of trends in the region’s history and changing power relations, rather than as a literal description of actual historical events and relationships. In the Kagera region of northwest Tanzania, for instance, oral traditions link the more recent, immigrant Bahinda ruling dynasty with the Bacwezi, and indicate that the power and authority of the Bahinda clans was generally associated with control over ironworking, rainmaking, and fertility rites. However, genealogical reckoning places the period of Bacwezi rule up to 20–25 generations ago and thus significantly earlier than has been estimated from the Ugandan traditions. Moreover, excavations at Katuruka, the former capital of Rugamore Mahe, one of the Bahinda rulers of the Kiamutwara kingdom during the seventeenth century CE, led to the discovery of iron smelting remains associated with the very beginnings of settled farming in the region and dating to around 500 BCE. Although similar remains of early farming and iron smelting communities were found at many of the other ritually important places within the historical topology of the Bahinda landscape, in other respects there was a lack of direct settlement continuity as evidenced by typological differences between the early farming (or Early Iron Age) ceramics and those associated with the second millennium CE kingdoms. On the basis of this, it has been suggested that whereas the Bacwezi may have been indigenous rulers of smallscale polities during the first millennium CE or possibly earlier, later leaders, unconnected with Bacwezi, subsequently manipulated traditions and appropriated the archaeological remains of the Bacwezi’s evident iron smelting abilities to legitimize their own assumption to power.

28 AFRICA, HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Africa, Europe, and the Age of Exploration Direct and indirect trading contacts between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa have been in existence since at least the first few centuries CE. However, European contacts only intensified from the early part of the fifteenth century. Under the sponsorship of Prince Henry the Navigator (1394–1460), various Portuguese-led voyages of exploration to the West African coast took place during the 1430s to 1480s, and in 1487–88, Bartolomeau Dias’ vessel arrived at the Cape of Good Hope, staying there briefly before returning to Lisbon. He was followed a decade later by Vasco de Gama, whose fleet of three ships rounded the Cape in 1497, and moved north along the East African seaboard over the coming months, stopping at Mombasa and Malindi, before setting sail across the Indian Ocean. By c. 1530 there were Portuguese, British, French, and Dutch outposts on the Gold Coast, and by 1652 a Dutch colony at the Cape, by which time Danish and Swedish traders were also active along the West African seaboard. Initially, access to Guinea gold was the main objective behind Portuguese activity along the West African coast and this lead rapidly to the establishment of a fortified settlement on the coast of what is now Ghana in 1482, close to a preexisting Akan settlement. Known initially as Castle Sa˜o Jorge da Mina, the fortress and trading post that grew up around it eventually came to be called Elmina (i.e., ‘the mine’, after its proximity to the gold mines inland). It was the first and largest European trading post to be built in the region. It was captured by the Dutch in 1637, and later ceded to the British in 1872, only to be destroyed the following year by a British military force following a dispute with the local inhabitants over its control. The settlement was then abandoned. There is extensive documentation, in a variety of forms, including maps and illustrations as well as written accounts and archival sources, concerning Elmina. These indicate that over time the population of Elmina became increasingly heterogeneous, as Dyula and Mande traders from further north, along with members of different ethnic groups in Elmina’s hinterland, were drawn to the settlement adding to the indigenous Akan population. At times there was also a sizable slave population, drawn from throughout the region, as well as a range of Europeans of different nationalities and a growing mulatto community. As well as attempting to define the spatial extent and the settlement and architectural history of Elmina, archaeological research at the site has focused on tracing the evidence for cultural change and continuity. Somewhat surprisingly, given the economic importance of Elmina, its role as a

trading entrepoˆt and the increasingly diverse origins of its population, local cultural traditions appear to have been more resilient than might have been expected. Ancestral rituals, the use of space in houses, domestic building technologies, and local foodways, all exhibit considerable continuity over almost 400 years of occupation. This is not to deny change – at the time of its destruction, Elmina was a far more urban, cosmopolitan place linked to the wider world through trade and international politics, and home to new social classes of Africans, than had been the case when the Portuguese arrived. The detailed analyses of artifact and building traditions, burial practices and related evidence, nevertheless, do caution against the simple assumption that significant material culture change, and especially the increased presence of goods of foreign manufacture, necessarily equates with culture change.

The Impacts of Slavery While there is evidence, such as documented at Elmina, that many African societies and cultures were quite resilient in the face of increasing contact with Europeans, the incorporation of these societies into the Atlantic world system that this brought about did have profound changes. In West Africa, one of the main effects was a change in the orientation of trade routes from the older north–south, trans-Saharan axis to an east–west one with a coastal focus. The transSaharan routes had operated for centuries, and were under direct or indirect control of the Islamic empires of North Africa, and, the steady redirection of trade away from these areas had economic consequences there as well. European demands for raw materials and local produce also encouraged intensification of trading and a consequent commodification of local West African economies. These developments, coupled with an increased importation of firearms stimulated changes in the nature of local political systems. These included the establishment of more centralized kingdoms, such as those of Dahomey and Ashante. Gold was rapidly replaced as the main commodity by slaves – it is estimated that at least 11 million Africans were exported from the continent during the Atlantic slave trade until its abolition, and some scholars put the figures even higher (see Enslavement, Archaeology of). In contrast to the amount of historical research on the Atlantic slave trade, the ‘historical archaeology’ of slavery across the continent has only recently begun to be addressed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the low status of slaves and circumstances behind their presence at a site, archaeological investigations at most of the European trading posts on the West

AFRICA, HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 29

African coast have typically produced only ephemeral material traces of the trade. At Elmina, the most systematically investigated of all such trading posts, and despite considerable documentary evidence concerning Elmina’s position within the system and over 100 000 artifacts recovered from the excavations, the material testimony of slavery amounts to little more than a few items. The excavation of a slave lodge at the early eighteenth century site of Vergelegen, built as the residence for the governor of Cape Town, South Africa, similarly failed to produce much in the way of material evidence that could be linked to the lives of those who had occupied the lodge, other than the burial of a middle-aged slave woman. Although ongoing research at slave collection points such as Gore´e Island, Senegal, is beginning to recover a wider range of material items, it is possible that the main material culture legacy of Africa’s slaves may reside more in the stylistic traditions that developed in the New World, than in actual artifacts recovered from the different places of collection and embarkation on the African coast. Archaeological studies of sixteenth to eighteenth century CE sites in the interior, on the other hand, frequently offer more concrete evidence for the impacts of slavery on local communities. In parts of Togo, for instance, the increased availability of iron products of European manufacture helped precipitate a decline in what had previously been a flourishing and specialized iron-smelting industry practiced on a large scale. Detailed investigations of the shifting trends in material culture production and consumption in the vicinity of Begho and Banda, west-central Ghana, provide some of the clearest indications of the long-term consequences of the growth of trade and West Africa’s incorporation into the Atlantic world system, and its impact on local material culture traditions. Comparisons between sites and stratigraphic levels that date to the periods before the arrival of Europeans, the initial century of contact (albeit indirect), and subsequent centuries have shown that several significant changes took place. At sites such as Namasa, Begho, Nyarko, and Kuulo Kataa, founded (and in some cases also abandoned) prior to the Portuguese arrival at Elmina, differentiated craft production in iron, pottery, and textiles appears to have developed but was not uniformly distributed between different villages. This uneven distribution was offset by regular exchange of local products between villages, and settlements were linked into the trans-Saharan trade networks. By CE 1590, the cultivation of maize and tobacco, both New World crops, had been incorporated into local farming practices, and stimulated the creation of a new class of locally produced ceramic artifact in the form of clay smoking pipes. At this stage, these exhibit

considerable stylistic diversity, and they may well have served as emblems of certain social distinctions. Localized specialization in textile manufacture was beginning to break down, however, with more households engaging in the craft. Imported glass beads had also become more widely available. By the end of the eighteenth century, industrially produced beads and textiles, with highly standardized forms were steadily replacing their local equivalents, and by the end of the nineteenth century the earlier, stylistically diverse tobacco pipes had been replaced by highly uniform imported clay pipes of European manufacture. New aesthetics of taste also emerged, although in many cases they involved a reworking of older practices.

Archaeology of Colonialism Another strand of historical archaeology in Africa encompasses the issues of ‘colonialism’. This has mostly been approached from the perspective of European expansion, especially in South Africa. This is partly due to the greater numbers of trained archaeologists there, who tend to be better resourced than many of their counterparts elsewhere on the continent (outside of North Africa), and the longer established tradition of contract archaeology which, especially in urban areas, provided an important stimulus to the growth of historical archaeology. It is also because compared with other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa has a much longer history of European colonialism, commencing with the establishment of a staging-post in Table Bay by the VOC (Dutch East India Company) under Commander Jan van Riebeeck in 1652. Consequently, not only have more traces of colonialism survived, but also there has been a much longer history of transformation of relations between colonial powers and indigenous inhabitants. Since at least the 1970s, the archaeological traces of Dutch, British, and Afrikaaner colonialism have been the subject of increasingly intensive study from a variety of perspectives. The body of material on the historical archaeology of South Africa and the broader region, consequently, is significantly larger than for elsewhere. Subthemes that have been addressed within the region include the archaeology of impact, the creation of distinctive colonial architectural styles, Christian missions, military encounters, industrialization, and class distinctions. Whereas much early work focused on documenting the archaeological remains of the colonizing powers, more recently, attention has been given to documenting the archaeology of the colonized, and the various ways in which African societies resisted or tried to lessen the impacts of colonial rule. Excavations at Oudepost I, a small VOC outpost situated c. 120 km north of Cape Town on the edge of

30 AFRICA, HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Saldanha Bay in the Western Cape, for instance, were explicitly designed to measure the degree of impact on local societies on the frontier of the Dutch colony and the variable nature of interaction between colonized and colonizer. The site was occupied from 1669 to 1723, and structural remains comprised a small, irregularly shaped stone fort, a two-roomed rectangular building that probably served as the main dwelling for the fort’s garrison, and a small rectangular structure of indeterminate function, all built of stone. The excavated remains provide insights into the conditions in such outposts, and the diets and material possessions of the soldiers. The composition of the artifact and faunal assemblages and their spatial patterning also raised issues concerning the nature of the interactions between the occupants of the fort and local indigenous populations, and the identity of those indigenes. The high percentage of wild fauna represented in the assemblage, despite the availability of livestock from colonial centers further south, for instance, led the excavators to challenge the archival evidence and suggest that over time the occupants of Oudepost would have had a significant impact on the wild food base of the surrounding indigenous Khoikhoi population. Although Khoikhoi were principally pastoralists, the material culture recovered from the site was more similar to that found on pre-contact Late Stone Age hunter-gatherer sites in the region. To the excavators, this further suggested that the colonial presence ultimately undermined the subsistence strategies of local stock-keeping communities, who had always relied on hunting to supplement their diet especially during droughts and other periods of climatic stress, forcing them to abandon herding and into bondage on white settlements and farms. Comparable studies have demonstrated that the impacts of colonialism were sometimes more muted and that new forms of practice often emerged within African societies that helped to subvert colonial ideologies. There is also evidence to suggest that older material practices often proved more resistant than is implied by the available documentary sources. A good example of the latter is provided by recent work on the nineteenth century Tswana towns of Phalatswe and Ntsweng in Botswana. Specifically, despite the existence of documentary and pictorial sources which would seem to imply widespread changes in daily practice as a consequence of Protestant evangelism, it is evident from the material remains of houses, pots, metal tools, and other items, that at least in these contexts members of the local Tswana polities retained a degree of control over their material world, and were able to accommodate the new religion and direct it toward achieving their own political goals.

Conclusion Historical archaeology as practiced on the African continent is a diverse and varied subfield of the broader discipline. Whereas some favor an emphasis on the integration of oral histories and testimonies with material remains, on the grounds that the former are more authentically indigenous than written texts, others consider that the focus of historical archaeology should be on the consequences of European contact and subsequent colonialism. Between these two poles, there are many other approaches that place greater value on the interpretive possibilities offered by the existence of multiple sources of information about the past for any period, rather than on placing limits on the temporal or conceptual boundaries of the subfield. Others still have observed that the concept of historical archaeology is not only redundant, since all archaeology should be concerned with addressing historical questions, but also serves to reinforce an artificial divide, and the prejudicial baggage that comes with such a distinction, between history and prehistory, which much archaeological practice on the continent seeks to counteract. Rhetoric aside, and whether one uses the appellation ‘historical archaeology’ or not to describe the kind of studies outlined above, two things are abundantly clear. First, recovery and analysis of the archaeological traces of the last 500 years of human activity on the African continent has the potential to provide novel insights into the histories of the continent’s diverse populations, while simultaneously providing an important testament to their successes and failures, their struggles for equity and recognition, and the ways in which they gave meaning to their lives. Some of these insights could perhaps have been gleaned from careful reading of other historical sources, but most could only have been exposed by sustained archaeological research. Without a concept such as ‘historical archaeology’, however defined, to inspire and guide this research it is questionable whether archaeologists would have devoted, and continue to devote, as much attention to these time periods as they clearly deserve. Second, whether investigating the archaeology of the last 500 years or that of earlier time periods, the interpretation of archaeological remains is always enriched when alternative sources are available to interrogate. The challenges archaeologists face are first, how to develop methodologies and theoretical frameworks that are appropriate to each of these different classes of historical information, and second, how to maintain a critical and questioning perspective so as avoid taking too much of that evidence for granted. Many of the studies outlined above indicate how archaeologists have attempted

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to do this, and whether these approaches have stood the test of time or have now been superseded. Whether one considers these types of study as exemplars of historical archaeology, or not, they have clearly made significant contributions to our understanding of the substantive history of different parts of the continent. See also: Africa, West: Villages, Cities, and States; Enslavement, Archaeology of; Historical Archaeology: Methods; Writing Systems.

Further Reading Boone J, Myers E, and Redman C (1990) Archaeological and historical approaches to complex societies: The Islamic states of medieval Morocco. American Anthropologist 92: 630–646.

DeCorse CR (2001) An Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast, 1400–1900. Washington: Smithsonian Press. DeCorse CR (ed.) (2001) West Africa during the Atlantic Slave Trade. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Edwards DN (2004) The potential for historical archaeology in the Sudan. Azania 39: 13–33. Hall M (1993) The archaeology of colonial settlement in southern Africa. Annual Reviews in Anthropology 22: 177–200. Pikirayi I (1993) Acta Arkeologica Upsaliensis, Studies in African Archaeology 6: An Archaeological Identity of the Mutapa State: Towards an Historical Archaeology of Northern Zimbabwe. Uppsala. Reid DAM and Lane PJ (eds.) (2004) African Historical Archaeologies. London: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Schmidt PR (2006) Historical Archaeology in Africa. London: Altamira Press. Stahl AB (2001) Making History in Banda: Anthropological Vision’s of Africa’s Past. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wessler K (ed.) (1998) Historical Archaeology in Nigeria. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.

AFRICA, NORTH Contents Egypt, Pharaonic Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic Nubia Sahara, Eastern Sahara, West and Central

Egypt, Pharaonic Thomas Hikade, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Book of the Dead Funerary texts on papyrus or sometimes amulets that were usually placed inside the coffin. The collection of some 200 spells was derived from the earlier Pyramid and Coffin Texts. Called ‘spell for coming forth by day’ by the ancient Egyptians. cartonnage Material made of linen or papyrus mixed with plaster. Cartonnage was most commonly used for mummy masks, coffins, and other funerary equipment. The earliest catonnage mummy masks date to the First Intermediate Period. Coffin Texts Collection of funerary texts written on coffins and introduced during the First Intermediate Period. More than 1000 spells should guarantee survival in the afterlife. Maat Egyptian goddess symbolizing order or connective justice. She is shown as a seated woman with an ostrich feather on her head.

nome Greek term used for Egyptian provinces. Lower Egypt consisted of twenty nomes and Upper Egypt of twenty-two. nomarch Provincial governor of a nome with increasing power and influence from the end of the Old Kingdom to the Middle Kingdom. Pyramid Texts Earliest Egyptian funerary texts that could be found in some royal pyramid chambers and corridors from the Fifth to the Eighth Dynasty. Some scholars have argued that the spells were a description of rituals during the funeral of the king. serdab Arabic word for cellar. It was a chamber inside an Old Kingdom private mastaba-tomb that housed a statue or statues of the deceased but could also be found in the royal mortuary complex of King Djoser of the Third Dynasty. vizier Highest official in the Egyptian administration after the king. The office is first attested in the Second Dynasty.

Introduction In 1798 when Napoleon’s troops landed in Egypt they were accompanied by 167 scientists whose task was to document not only the geography, flora, and fauna of modern-day Egypt but also the remains of Ancient Egypt. With the publication of the

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De´scription de l’E´gypte almost 20 years later, the foundation stone for Egyptology was laid. The expedition by the German Egyptologist Richard Lepsius in 1842–46 to Egypt and Nubia yielded further knowledge about Ancient Egypt. During the first half of the nineteenth century, however, field work in Egypt was still primarily the search for curiosities and treasures and lacked scientific method. It was not until 1881 when W. M. F. Petrie set out to survey the Great Pyramids at Giza and subsequently excavated dozens of sites throughout Egypt with a clear concept and methodology of excavating that Egyptian archaeology truly began. It is the connection of archaeological material and the evidence from thousands of inscribed objects from Ancient Egypt that makes modern Egyptology such an intriguing subject. Today there are more than 300 foreign missions working in Egypt and many countries even have their own national research centers and institutions in Cairo. Early excavation work often concentrated on cemeteries that were easily accessible as they were often situated in the dry sand of the lower desert or cut into the limestone cliffs along the Nile Valley. Thus, Egyptian archaeology is best known from its burials. Yet, in the last decades more and more settlement archaeology has taken place and our knowledge of the daily lives of Ancient Egyptians has been improved widely.

Old Kingdom (Third–Eighth Dynasty, c. 2686–2160 BC) The Old Kingdom, also called the Pyramid Age, is a continuation of the Early Dynastic Period. It was a time of long, uninterrupted economic prosperity and political stability. The central administration was at the capital at Memphis under a vizier who was the highest official. Upper Egypt, the land south of the capital, and Lower Egypt, the Nile Delta to the north, were divided into ‘nomes’ that were governed by nomarchs who maintained strong ties with the court. The state was able to consolidate its borders in the south and north and maintained long-distance trade with the Levant and Nubia. A redistributive economic system with palaces, temples, royal domains, and mortuary complexes served as centers for collecting, storing, and distributing mainly agrarian produce. The long reign of Pepi II (c. 2278–2184 BC) at the end of the Sixth Dynasty has often been seen as a time of stagnation and decline that ultimately brought down the regime of the central government but other factors such as worsening climatic conditions causing droughts and famine may have contributed to the fragmentation of the centralized regime and the growth of regional power in the hands of the nomarchs.

At the top of Egyptian society stood the divine king. His funerary complex became the focus of royal ideology and ignited large-scale building programs never seen before. More than a dozen pyramids, as stairways to heaven for the deceased king, were built close to the capital in the area of Giza and Saqqara. Royal Tombs

Royal tombs of the Early Dynastic Period were built almost entirely of sundried mud-bricks, wood, and reed with the use of stone limited to the interior of tomb chambers and stelae which were large stone slabs with the kings’ name on them. It was at Saqqara in the Third Dynasty that Egypt’s first monumental stone structure was erected for King Djoser (c. 2667– 2648 BC). His funerary complex, including the Step Pyramid and ceremonial buildings, transformed the organic building materials into their limestone equivalent (Figures 1 and 2). The enclosure wall of the complex measured 544  277 m and was 10.5 m high. The Step Pyramid itself, located to the north of a large courtyard measured 121  109 m and its six steps stood 60 m tall. The pyramid was actually begun as a mastaba, the Arabic word for ‘bench’, which the tomb resembled. It was enlarged twice before it was altered into a four-step pyramid and finally augmented to six steps. Underneath the pyramid lay a shaft (7 m square and 28 m deep) culminating in the burial chamber. Originally made of limestone with stars on the ceiling it was later replaced by a granite chamber. Nothing of the king’s interment was found. Also underground was a system of about 400 rooms and corridors, totaling almost 6 km in length. The whole gigantic royal complex at Saqqara symbolizes the focal point of Egyptian society and culture in the Old Kingdom: the divine king. There were at least two more step pyramids of the Third Dynasty before, at the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty under King Snofru (c. 2613–2589 BC), the final design of a true pyramid was realized. The design of the pyramid complex is very standardized. Each has an axis with an east–west orientation, which underlines the structure’s solar aspect. From the valley temple at the eastern entrance (Figure 3), a causeway leads further to the west and ends in the mortuary temple, situated at the foot of the east side of the pyramid. This temple has several chambers including an inner sanctuary furnished with a stela, which is set directly against the pyramid. Despite this standardized pattern, however, no two pyramids were exactly alike. The interior chambers and ascending and descending passages were always different. Starting in the Fifth Dynasty, the walls of these chambers and corridors could be decorated with the so-called Pyramid Texts, a collection of funerary texts of about 800 spells.

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Figure 1 Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara (Third Dynasty).

Figure 2 Festival court of Djoser complex at Saqqara (Third Dynasty).

The main building material for the pyramid was limestone although granite was also used for the lower casing blocks. In the pyramid temples basalt was also sometimes used for the floors. Separate smaller pyramids were erected for the queens while higher officials, often blood relatives, were buried in the limestone mastaba tombs in the necropolis nearby. Private Tombs

To date, dozens of Old Kingdom cemeteries have been found throughout the country. The major cemeteries for officials, however, were at Saqqara,

Helwan Dahshur, Giza, and at Abusir, where they could remain close to the king in the afterlife also. While the majority of the Egyptian population was buried in simple pits in the desert sands, the wealthier could afford rock-cut tombs or mastaba tombs. An early mastaba tomb comprised a subterranean structure with a shaft, a burial chamber and store rooms (Figure 4). The store rooms disappeared by the Fourth Dynasty. The superstructure was made of mud-brick or stone and its layout became more and more elaborate with the addition of multiple rooms which effectively turned it into a funerary chapel. Scenes of daily life, mostly related to farming, herding, and craftwork, were depicted on the walls of

34 AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic

Pyramid

Satellite pyramid

Pyramid temple

Causeway

Valley temple

Figure 3 Standard pyramid complex of the Old Kingdom.

Shaft Serdab with statue

Chapel with false door

Facade sealed with casing blocks

Burial chamber with sarcophagus

Figure 4 Mastaba tomb of the Old Kingdom.

these rooms, along with representations of the tomb owner, his relatives, and his household members. During the funerary cult the family could bring their offerings to the deceased which they presented on an altar in front of the false door. In a hidden chamber, called a serdab, a statue of the deceased was placed, thus allowing him to accept these offerings symbolically. An offering formula on the wall next to the false door secured the eternal sustenance of the deceased. Sun Temples and Provincial Temples

A special temple, which was built in addition to the pyramids, developed during the Fifth Dynasty. It was a temple dedicated to the sun god Re. It had similar architectural features to the pyramid complexes including a valley temple functioning as a gate or

entrance and a causeway leading to an upper temple which formed the main focal point of the compound: an obelisk-like structure erected of stone blocks rising up on a pedestal. In one case the pedestal was 20 m high and the obelisk 36 m tall. An open space in front of the obelisk contained an altar where offerings were presented. Located on one side of the large courtyard were magazines and rooms that have been interpreted as slaughterhouses. Parts of the upper temple were decorated with royal jubilee scenes and scenes from nature. The whole structure was surrounded by an enclosure wall. Outside the wall a brick-built model of a solar boat for the god was found. Six sun temples are known from texts but only the ones of King Niuserre and Userkaf from the Fifth Dynasty have been found at Abu Gurob, 10 km southwest of Cairo.

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While royal building activities were concentrated around the capital at Memphis, temples in the rest of the country largely comprised sanctuaries which were built and maintained by local communities. Provincial temples followed no specific design and were often of modest size. The Old Kingdom temple on the island of Elephantine opposite modern Aswan, for example, consisted of mud-bricks enclosing a niche between granite boulders and measured only c. 7  7 m.

First Intermediate Period (Ninth–early Eleventh Dynasty; c. 2160–2055 BC) At the end of the Old Kingdom large-scale royal building programs came to a halt. Yet, with the increasing prosperity of the provinces and a rise in population, it became necessary for the provinces to be administered locally rather than from the royal residence at Memphis, and the nomarchs lived and were even buried in their nomes. Ultimately, the central government collapsed and foreign trade seems to have ceased. The Ninth/Tenth Dynasty established a power basis at Herakleopolis some 100 km upstream from the old capital at Memphis. However, these dynasties never controlled the whole country and civil war broke out. In Upper Egypt Ankhtifi, nomarch of the third nome of Upper Egypt, tried to gain control over neighboring territories by force. The fragmentation of the country and violence only ended when one of these regional rulers, Mentuhotep II, defeated all others and united Egypt again. Based on texts the First Intermediate Period has often been seen as a very unstable period with civil war and even cannibalism caused by famine. A different picture emerges from excavations of cemeteries from the First Intermediate Period, however, which indicates a redistribution of wealth as well as cultural innovations. All the archaeological evidence points to an increased effort to prepare tombs of the deceased for the afterlife rather than a decline in tomb-building caused by economic hardship. In general, mastaba tombs and rock-cut tombs had already become larger at the end of the Old Kingdom and this process continued. Tombs contained several chambers for multiple burials. Grave goods took the form of wooden offering bearers, statues, and even whole miniature copies of workshops. The cartonnage mask, a colored mask made from linen and gypsum to cover the head of the mummy, was introduced. Religious texts, the socalled Coffin Texts, were inscribed on the coffins of the elite and stressed the importance of social ties, these mirroring the change in tomb architecture allowing for multiple burials.

Middle Kingdom (later Eleventh–Thirteenth Dynasty; c. 2055–1650 BC) The Middle Kingdom dates from the victory of Mentuhotep II of Thebes over his rivals at Herakleopolis and the re-unification of Egypt. Initially residing in Thebes, the Twelfth Dynasty (c. 1985–1773 BC) moved to a new capital called Amemenhet Itj-tawj, possibly in an area south of the old residence at Memphis, close to the Fayum Oasis. Archaeologists have yet to find and excavate this new capital. Passing on from father to son, the Twelfth Dynasty stayed in power for almost 200 years. The central administration followed in the footsteps of the Old Kingdom with a vizier at the top, a treasury, a ministry for supervising the harvesting and managing of the crops, a ministry for cattle and fields, and a ministry for labor, responsible for the building programs of the state. The king was still the absolute divine ruler but his legitimacy was based on representative theocracy and not on direct rule as in the Old Kingdom. Foreign affairs were dominated by the conquest of Lower Nubia and various raids into the Levant, which brought back Asiatics as slaves. Asiatics also moved voluntarily to the Nile Delta and settled there. Domestically the Twelfth Dynasty is credited with an irrigation program in the Fayum Oasis for new cultivation. Regarding religion, a new concept of the underworld, the kingdom of Osiris, saw the rise of this god. In addition, the concept of Maat (translated often as order or connective justice), a guideline of how Egyptians should live and treat each other, became popular. A wealth of literary texts was composed during the Middle Kingdom, and many of these were later considered classics. The language of these texts, Middle Egyptian, remained in use for sacred texts until the end of the Pharaonic period. All the achievements of the Middle Kingdom made it the ‘classical’ Egyptian age that was revered in later periods. Yet the Middle Kingdom ended in fragmentation when the Thirteenth Dynasty had to give way to pressure from the Hyksos, Asiatic rulers in the eastern Nile Delta, and moved their residence to Thebes in the south. The Mortuary Complex of Mentuhotep II

Under Mentuhotep II a unique mortuary temple was erected in the limestone escarpment of Deir el-Bahri on the west bank at Thebes (Figures 5 and 6). The complex once had a valley temple near the edge of cultivation and from there a causeway more than 1 km long led to a huge court in the west surrounded by a sandstone wall. Inside the courtyard, the discovery of the roots of sycamores and tamarisks in tree pits indicates that an alley once existed here. It was

36 AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic

Figure 5 Mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II at Western Thebes (Eleventh Dynasty).

Bab el-Hosan Upper hall Middle court Central core

Ramp

Alley of trees

Hypostyle hall

Causeway

Amun sanctuary

Lower hall

Figure 6 Mortuary temple of King Mentuhotep II (Eleventh Dynasty).

also in the courtyard that the initial royal tomb, today known as Bab el-Hosan, was found. A ramp at the end of the alley led to a platform topped by a core building and an ambulatory. The core building might have been crowned in different ways. A pyramid (for which there is no archaeological evidence), a mastaba-like structure, or a mound of soil resembling the primeval mound from which the land of Egypt once emerged, are all possible options and would all be in accordance with Egyptian beliefs. A further arrangement of courtyards and a hypostyle hall continued to the west until finally, the sanctuary and the royal tomb itself were cut into the rock escarpment. Foundation deposits in the four corners under the platform and the core building, which consisted of food offerings, ceramic, and wooden models of

people and objects like bread and vessels, as well as mud-bricks with tablets with the royal name on them give an intriguing glimpse into the rituals accompanying the construction of the temple. Middle Kingdom Pyramids

The kings of the Twelfth Dynasty deliberately repeated the Old Kingdom tradition of pyramid building along the desert edge west of the Nile Valley. The new construction method, however, consisted of a mudbrick core with a grid of stone walls. The finish was still done with limestone casing blocks. Although the new construction method was far more economical, it is no indication that the Egyptian kings could not afford solid stone pyramids. Today the limestone casing blocks have been stripped away and the Middle

AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic 37

Figure 7 Pyramid of King Amenemhat III at Hawara (Twelfth Dynasty).

Kingdom pyramids are in a very bad condition with the mud-brick core exposed to the elements (Figure 7). The Settlement of Lahun

About 1200 m east of the pyramid of Senusret II (c. 1877–1870 BC), W. M. F. Petrie discovered the remains of a pyramid town called Lahun. A pyramid town is essentially the settlement that housed the workmen building the pyramid complex along with the officials overseeing the work. Subsequently, it became the home for those responsible for the royal funerary cult. Lahun was a planned town with a rigid grid system. It included an enclosure wall and a wall that divided the settlement in half. One side contained about a dozen large houses with as many as 70 rooms and covering up to 3000 m2. The other side had more than 200 houses, but their maximum size was less than 200 m2. This size disparity clearly reflects the hierarchy in the town, with a few elite individuals living in luxury while the majority lived in modest dwellings. Based on the size of granaries at Lahun, a population of up to 9000 persons has been proposed, but according to a papyri archive found at the site which sometimes lists six persons per household, the population might have been much smaller. Lahun is also important for the discovery of Minoan sherds and Egyptian imitations of Minoan pottery. Nubian Fortresses

In the wake of its aggressive foreign policy in the south, a string of fortifications were built during the Twelfth Dynasty in order to secure trade routes and to protect the border. According to textual evidence,

Egypt built at least 17 military installations starting c. 100 km south of Egypt’s border at Elephantine. Fifteen of these mud-brick built fortresses were excavated during several rescue campaigns. Following the construction of the High Dam at Aswan, the fortresses now lie beneath the waters of Lake Nasser. The forts are all very close to each other, often only 3–10 km away or just lying across the narrow stretch of the Nile. Their proximity to one another made signaling by smoke or beacon quite simple. There were two types of fortresses: first the plain type which had an almost square layout that bordered the Nile on one side. Some of the outer walls, which measured up to 460  215 m and were more than 5 m thick, contained towers with loop holes for archers and were possibly topped by crenellations. Inside these mud-brick walls, a system of ditches and ramparts formed the first line of defense around the citadel, which had storage facilities and housing for the soldiers and officials. The second type of fortress was built on granite formations which could not be easily leveled. Thus, they had not a straightforward rectangular layout but possessed a more irregular shape.

Second Intermediate Period (Fifteenth–Seventeenth Dynasty; c. 1650–1550 BC) During the Thirteenth Dynasty dynastic stability ended and dozens of kings reigned in quick succession. They came from different lineages and some of them were possibly even of Asiatic origin. Royal mortuary cults for the Twelfth Dynasty kings ceased.

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Yet, contacts with the Levant were maintained and more and more Asiatics came to Egypt. When the central government finally fragmented, several rulers emerged with authority over small kingdoms in the Nile Delta. One group of these rulers, the Hyksos (Rulers of Foreign Lands), of the later Fifteenth Dynasty, gained power, conquered Memphis, and established their residence at Avaris (modern Tell el-Daba) in the eastern Nile Delta. The rulers of the Seventeenth Dynasty in Thebes, the successors of the Thirteenth Dynasty, started what they saw as a ‘war of liberation’ against the Hyksos who had sealed an alliance with the Kushite kings of Nubia and had sandwiched Upper Egypt between the two powers. In a series of battles, the Theban rulers were finally able to defeat the Hyksos and the first king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Ahmose (c. 1550–1525 BC), drove them out of Egypt. The Hyksos Capital at Avaris

Although only limited areas of the Hyksos capital at Avaris have been excavated, they have revealed an occupation that possibly stretches from to the First Intermediate Period to the early Eighteenth Dynasty. The earliest archaeological settlement remains stem, however, from a workmen’s village of the early Twelfth Dynasty. The remains of an enclosure wall that were found to the north led to the assumption that the whole settlement was once surrounded by a mud-brick wall. The settlement was home for more than one thousand people. A hiatus separates this settlement from the end of the Twelfth Dynasty when the site was resettled by Canaanites. The houses had a central wide room typical of a style prevalent in Syria from the fourth millennium BC. Furthermore, there were cemeteries attached directly to the houses, a custom derived from Middle Bronze Age SyroPalestine. Surprisingly, foreign pottery from the Levant makes up only 20% of the assemblage, although burials of males showed that half of them had weapons of Levantine origin and possibly indicate that they were in the service of the Egyptian crown. The layers dating to the Thirteenth Dynasty revealed an Egyptian palace in layout with attached gardens and a cemetery with donkey, goat, and sheep burials. The donkey burials especially are a foreign element in Egypt but are well known during the Middle Bronze Age in the Levant. This evidence clearly shows that the administration of the palace was in the hands of Asiatics. By the middle of the eighteenth century BC the site was partially abandoned, most likely due to an epidemic, before being resettled. Foreign ceramics now made up to 40% of the assemblage and the site increased dramatically, covering an area of 250 ha, three times the size of the contemporary city

of Hazor in modern Israel. International trade flourished in the Hyksos period with imports from the Aegean and the Levant. In the Hyksos period, Avaris also had a huge citadel with vineyards and gardens.

New Kingdom (Eighteenth–Twentieth Dynasty; c. 1550–1069 BC) After the expulsion of the Hyksos the pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty set out to form one of the most powerful states in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. Internal reforms and a restructuring of the administration and military enabled Egypt to march into and occupy foreign territories where she installed her own administration. Dozens of military campaigns in the Levant are recorded by pharaohs such as Amenophis II and especially Thutmosis III, who ruthlessly exercised his imperialistic policy. The eastern desert of Upper Egypt and increasingly Lower Nubia became the classic gold sources of Egypt. Large-scale expeditions were sent out to mine turquoise and copper in the Sinai Peninsula. The southern border of Egypt was set as far south as Gebel Barkal, a trading and religious center near the fourth cataract. Trade relations were maintained throughout the Mediterranean and pottery from Cyprus, Crete, Mycenae, and the Levant can be found at many sites in Egypt. By the time of the reign of Amenophis III (c. 1390–1352 BC), a prosperous, wealthy, and influential Egypt had reached its first New Kingdom zenith. This period, however, also saw domestic turbulence and turmoil arising from the religious reforms of Akhenaten (c. 1352–1336 BC), the son of Amenophis III, who abandoned the old pantheon and installed the god Aten as the sole god for Egypt. Early in his reign Akhenaten severed all links with the religious capital of Thebes and its principal god Amun by relocating the capital to Akhetaten (Horizon of Aten), modern Tell el-Amarna. Worshipping one god only was a profound disturbance for ordinary Egyptians who had always been used to having direct contact with many gods. Consequently, when Akhenaten died, so also died his religion of the Aten. Under Tutankhamun (c. 1336–1327 BC), the first attempts at a religious restoration of the old cults were launched while during the subsequent Nineteenth Dynasty, there ensued an active persecution of the Aten cult. In the administration many civil officials were replaced by military personnel and the army became the most influential domestic power. Internationally, Egypt was faced with the expansionist Hittite empire and they finally clashed at the Battle of Qadesh where the army of Ramses II met theHittite troops of Muwatalli. Ramses II did not achieve his goal of driving the Hittites out of Qadesh and

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the whole campaign ended in a stalemate that resulted in a peace treaty in the twenty-first regnal year of Ramses II. After this Egypt had a relatively calm and prosperous period until the so-called Sea Peoples caused serious turmoil in the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the thirteenth century BC. First Pharaoh Merenptah (c. 1213–1203 BC) and later Ramses III (c. 1184–1153 BC) had to fight battles against the Sea Peoples on land and at sea in order to secure Egypt’s sovereignty. These international disruptions were too great, however, and combined with internal economic problems Egypt began losing her international power. At the end of the New Kingdom Egypt had to withdraw from the Levant altogether. Tell el-Amarna

The city of Amarna was built on virgin soil and covered an area of about 13  5km (Figure 8). The city was made up of palaces, houses, and temples which had to be built quickly to accommodate the many thousands who were to move there from Thebes. A major royal road running north–south was built and it was flanked by palaces and temples. Some temples like the so-called House of the Sun Disk were up to 750 m long and 230 m wide. They housed hundreds of altars for the offerings to Aten. Palaces were lavishly decorated and spread throughout the city. Private houses were located in the suburbs to the north and south of the Central City. Some larger houses or villas had more than forty rooms covering more than 1000 m2. The standard design was tripartite with two public sections consisting of a vestibule, long hall and central hall. The third section was the private area with bedrooms and bathrooms. Around these villas were clusters of smaller houses. Remarkably, the houses at Amarna differ in size rather than design, and most features were constantly repeated. By no means should Amarna be seen as an organic settlement however, since its standardization was mostly due to the time pressure of building the city. Deir el-Medineh

The workmen’s village of Deir el-Medineh was founded under King Thutmosis I (c. 1504–1492 BC) in order to house the men who built the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings (Figure 9). It was a state-run community where almost all supplies for daily life were provided by the crown. At its peak the village consisted of some 70 houses alongside the main road and was surrounded by a 6–7 m high enclosure wall. Forty to fifty houses were built outside the compound. An average house had four rooms with an entrance room 40–50 cm below street level. The original houses were complete mud-brick structures without foundations. Later houses had a basement of

stones and sometimes stone walls extending up to 2.5 m in height. The major feature in the entrance area was the mud-brick bench-like structure, possibly a small shrine. The next room had one or two columns and it contained a kind of divan. At the rear were the bedroom, the kitchen, and storage facilities. A staircase also gave access to the roof providing further living space. The inhabitants of Deir el-Medineh were buried in tombs on the hill slope nearby. The tombs had a superstructure with a chapel which was sometimes crowned by a small pyramid and a substructure with a shaft and a burial chamber that was often colorfully decorated. Next to the village around 5000 limestone flakes and broken pottery sherds were found with many inscriptions from the villagers. They consist, among others, of contracts, files of lawsuits, prayers, and school texts. In conjunction with the archaeological evidence and other papyri concerning Deir el-Medineh, the settlement has become the best-known village of the Late Bronze Age. The village was abandoned under Ramses XI (c. 1099–1069 BC) when the Valley of the Kings was also abandoned as the royal burial ground. Luxor and Karnak Temple

During the early New Kingdom building activity was conducted on all major temples such as Karnak and Luxor Temple. Both temples were located in Upper Egypt at Thebes. The temple at Karnak goes back to the time of Sesostris I and was the major cult center for the Theban triad of the gods Amun, Mut, and Khonsu. From the Middle Kingdom until the Thirtieth Dynasty Karnak remained a site under permanent construction as each pharaoh added and extended to this temple called ‘The most select of Places’ (Figure 10). The continuous addition of pylons (tower-like entrance gates), courtyards, columned halls, obelisks, and chapels means that the temple has to be read archaeologically from the inside out with the oldest part not at the front of the first pylon but almost in the middle of the compound. One of the most impressive buildings at Karnak is the Great Hypostyle Hall with 134 papyrus columns rising up to 21 m (Figure 11). The hall was once roofed and illuminated through windows placed high up the wall right under the ceiling. The foundation of the great hypostyle hall goes back to Amenophis III (c. 1390– 1352 BC), but the decoration was initiated under Sety I (c. 1294–1279 BC) and finished under Sety’s son Ramses II (c. 1279–1213 BC). The Great Hall has both raised relief dating to the time of Sety I and sunken reliefs which were generally used on the outside walls to increase the effect of shadow and sunlight. The latter, more economical technique was used during the immense building program of Ramses II.

40 AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic

STELA V TELL EL-AMARNA NORTH CITY

NORTH TOMBS

NORTH PALACE

STELA U

NORTH SUBURB

om

b

T al

y

to

GREAT ATEN TEMPLE

Ro

CENTRAL CITY

GREAT PALACE SMALL ATEN TEMPLE

WORKMENS⬘S VILLAGE MAIN CITY

Nile River

SOUTH TOMBS

Royal Road KOM EL-NANA

MARU-ATEN

STELA N STELA M

0 0

1

2 kms 1 min

Figure 8 Capital of Pharaoh Akhenaten at Tell el-Amarna (Eighteenth Dynasty).

The inner walls were reserved for the depiction of rituals and processions while the outer fac¸ades were decorated with the campaigns of Sety I and Ramses II to Palestine and Syria.

The temples of Karnak and Luxor were linked through a system of roads, each flanked with sphinxes. As with Karnak, Luxor temple was dedicated to Amun or Amun-Ra and dates back to the reign

AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic 41

Niche

Workroom /bedroom

Shrine Street

Kitchen Reception room

Second room Cellar Cellar

M 01

5

10

15

20

Figure 9 Workmen’s village at Deir el-Medineh (New Kingdom).

Figure 10 View over Karnak Temple from east.

42 AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic

of Hatshepsut (c. 1473–1458 BC) (Figure 12). The core at the southern end was built under Amenophis III. Under Akhenaten work was interrupted at Luxor but resumed under Tutankhamun (c. 1336–1327 BC).

The giant pylon was erected by Ramses II and decorated with scenes and texts of the Battle of Qadesh against the Hittites. In the first millennium further additions were made by Shabaka (c. 716–702 BC) who built a kiosk outside the temple, and by Nectanebo I (380–362 BC) who embellished the sphinx alley with hundreds of statues. Under Alexander the Great the worship of the emperor was established here and this tradition was continued until the Roman period, when the temple finally became a military camp from the fourth to sixth century AD. While the cult at Karnak focused on the worship of the gods, Luxor temple focused more on the worship of the king and his relationship with the gods. Later on, several churches were built in Luxor temple and in the thirteenth century AD, the mosque of Abu el-Hagag, which is still in use today, was built in the first courtyard. Western Thebes

Figure 11 Great Hall at Karnak (Nineteenth Dynasty).

On the west bank at Thebes in the Valley of the Kings, the New Kingdom pharaohs established their final resting place. As a point of departure from earlier periods, however, the mortuary cult was separated from the king’s actual burial place. Thus, the mortuary temple of each king, with the classic design of a god’s temple with pylons, courtyards, columned halls and inner sanctuaries, was erected at the edge of the river plain. Although the scenes on the walls of these temples show overwhelmingly rituals and cultic activities, they also commemorated historical events such

Figure 12 Luxor Temple from the south with pylon of Ramses II (left), colonnade of Amenophis III/Tutankhamun (right) and the mosque of Abu al-Hagag (center).

AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic 43

as the Battle of Qadesh of Ramses II and the battle against the Sea Peoples by Ramses III. The tombs consist of a series of descending corridors and chambers cut into the limestone cliff. While earlier tombs have a bent axis, later tombs possess a straight axis echoing the topography of the underworld. The wall decorations show scenes and texts from afterlife books such as the Book of the Dead or the Book of Caverns. Most of the royal mummies were relocated to safer places in the Theban necropolis by the end of the New Kingdom and today many are in the Cairo Museum on display. The most famous tomb in the Valley of the King is that of Tutankhamun. In 1922 it was found largely intact and unplundered and it gives a good insight into the riches that once went into the tombs of the New Kingdom pharaohs, especially in view of the fact that this king was a relatively insignificant ruler. In western Thebes thousands of higher and lower officials and priests possessed rock-cut tombs. The standard layout during the Eighteenth Dynasty comprised an open courtyard and possibly a shaft, and it was surrounded by a wall (Figure 13). Inside was a broad hall and a corridor giving the whole a T-shaped form. From here sometimes a sloping passage led to the burial chamber underground. During the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties the courtyard often had a pylon and columns while the tomb structure was topped by a pyramid, crowned by a capstone (pyramidion), and attached chapel (Figure 14). A Theban specialty were the so-called funerary cones. They were made of clay and placed on the fac¸ade above the tomb entrance. They were stamped on the top with the name of the tomb owner and his titles. In contrast to Thebes, in the north at Saqqara, tombs of high officials were designed like temples with pylons, courtyards, and columned halls. Scenes of daily life and mortuary rituals characterized the wall decoration at the beginning of the New Kingdom, but over time only religious and mortuary themes tended to prevail.

Third Intermediate Period (c. 1069–664 BC) The Third Intermediate Period comprises the TwentyFirst to Twenty-Fifth Dynasties. The Libyans played a dominating role in the time of the Twenty-First to Twenty-Fourth Dynasties. Their homeland was the Cyrenaica where they originally had an economy based on pastoral nomadism. Major areas of Libyan settlements in Egypt were located between Memphis and Herakleopolis, and in the oases of the Western Desert, but most were situated in the western Delta. While there is no distinct material culture linked to

Frieze of funerary cones

Statue niche

Courtyard

Entrance

Shaft

Courtyard wall

Rock

Figure 13 Early New Kingdom Theban tomb.

Pyramidion

Pyramid chapel

Pyramid

Portico Rock Pylon

Figure 14 Late New Kingdom Theban tomb.

the Libyans in Egypt, their very un-Egyptian names, such as Takelot, Sheshonq, and Osorkon, make it clear that they maintained their ethnic identity. The first king of the Twenty-First Dynasty was Smendes who ruled in the new northern capital at Tanis, while the south was controlled by the High Priest of Amun. Seeing the weakening power and influence of the High Priest in Thebes Sheshonq managed to install his son there and to some degree Egypt was united again under his rule. Subsequently, however, rival dynasties fought for the crown, and in fact the Twenty-Second to Twenty-Fourth Dynasties ruled simultaneously in different parts of the country. Major sites were Tanis, Bubastis, and Sais. Since these Delta sites have been little explored, however, our knowledge is rather poor. The Third Intermediate Period ended with the

44 AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic

Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, a house of rulers that came from Kush in the South who conquered Egypt and ruled Egypt without rivals from c. 715–656 BC. Tanis

The city is strategically well located in the eastern Nile Delta, just north of the former capital of the Ramesside kings. Many stone blocks were taken from that earlier site to erect the new residence. Even statues and reliefs from the Old and Middle Kingdoms were re-used at Tanis. The new rulers of the Twenty-First Dynasty abandoned the Valley of the Kings and had their tombs built within the sacred precinct of a temple. In general, the idea of lifelong planning for a tomb disappeared and many private and sometimes royal burials were placed in existing New Kingdom tombs or mortuary temples. Nevertheless, the richer burials contained beautifully decorated coffins of the highest quality. When French Egyptologist Pierre Montet started to excavate at Tanis in the 1920s, he was convinced that he had discovered the capital of the Ramesside kings and wanted to find documents and monuments that would confirm the Biblical account of the Exodus. Surprisingly, he came across the royal tombs of the Twenty-First and Twenty-Second Dynasties, which were situated in the large mud-brick enclosure (430  370 m) of the Amun temple. Of the six subterranean tombs, all but the one of the third ruler of the Twenty-First Dynasty, Psusennes I, were robbed. The tombs were built of stone and mud-brick and were of modest size. The tomb of Psusennes contained not only the body of the king but the mummy of his successor, Amenemope, as well as the body of a general. With a golden mask on his face the king was placed in a silver coffin. This in turn was put inside an anthropoid sarcophagus of black granite which itself was placed in a rectangular chest of pink granite. Many precious objects of silver, gold, and lapis lazuli were discovered at Tanis in the spring of 1939. The outbreak of World War II, however, meant that these treasures are less well known than those of Tutankhamun.

Late Period (Twenty-Sixth –Thirtieth Dynasty; 664–332 BC) The rulers of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, with the help of Assyria, drove the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty out of Egypt and reunited the country. Egypt maintained good connections with Assyria and also established trade contacts with the Levant. Egypt also opened up international trade with the Mediterranean world and with such positive economic prospects, many foreigners made their way to Egypt. King Amosis

(570–526 BC) established flourishing contacts with Greek cities such as Delphi, Corinth, and Samos. In 560 BC Egypt even occupied Cyprus, and Amosis made alliances with Babylon and Croesus of Lydia against the Persian Empire. Many Greek mercenaries were employed by the Egyptian pharaoh and were stationed throughout the country. The kings of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty made their capital at Sais in the western Nile Delta. Due to the utilization of ancient mud-bricks as fertilizer on fields today and the proximity of the modern village of Sa el-Hagar, few remains of this capital have survived. Nonetheless, recent archaeological work has traced the beginning of the settlement as far back as the fourth millennium BC. In 525 BC Egypt became a satrapy of the Persian Empire. The Persian king Cambyses was crowned as Pharaoh in Memphis and became first king of the Twenty-Seventh Dynasty. Although Persian troops were garrisoned throughout Egypt, the administration remained in the hands of the Egyptians and in general, Egyptian culture and religion remained intact. King Darius even erected a temple in the el-Kharga Oasis in honor of Egyptian deities. Nevertheless, antiPersian sentiments were growing in Egypt and by 405 BC the Persians were driven out of Egypt. Significant building programs stretching from the Delta to the southern border at Elephantine were not resumed until the reign of the founder of the Thirtieth Dynasty, Nectanebo I (380–362 BC), determined to bring back Egypt’s old glory. Between 360 and 342 BC several attempts by the Persians to re-conquer Egypt failed. In 343 BC, however, the Persians were ultimately successful and they ended the rule of Egyptian pharaohs once and for all. In 332 BC Egypt fell prey to Alexander the Great and between 30 BC and 395 AD Egypt was part of the Roman Empire. See also: Africa, North: Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic; Nubia;

Sahara, Eastern; Sahara, West and Central.

Further Reading Arnold D (2003) The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egyptian Architecture. Princeton: University Press. Baines J and Malek J (2000) Atlas of Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Phaidon Press. Bard KA (1999) Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. London/New York: Routledge. Bietak M (1996) Avaris, Capital of the Hyksos. London: British Museum Press. Kemp BJ (2006) Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of Ancient Civilization. London/New York: Routledge. Lehner M (1997) The Complete Pyramids. London: Thames and Hudson. Reeves N (1996) The Complete Valley of the Kings. London: Thames and Hudson.

AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic 45 Schulz R and Seidel M (eds.) (1998) Egypt: The World of the Pharaohs. Cologne: Ko¨nemann. Shaw I (ed.) (2000) The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shaw I (2003) Exploring Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic Fekri Hassan, University College London, London, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Maadi-Buto Twelve sites, named after the type site of Maadi in the western Delta. Naqada A district and town about 30 km north of Luxor on the west bank of the Nile in southern Egypt (Upper Egypt), including villages such as Toukh, Khatara, Danfiq and Zawayda. Predynastic Period Traditionally the period between the Early Neolithic and the beginning of the Pharaonic monarchy beginning with King Narmer.

Communities settled along the banks of the Nile from the border with Nubia to the shores of the Mediterranean were brought together 5000 to 4700 years ago to form a single state under the rule of powerful kings, who were later referred to as ‘Pharaohs’. The Egyptian state depended on the agricultural productivity of the Nile Valley and the Delta. Agriculture was introduced in Egypt 2000 years earlier (see Plant Domestication). The earliest food-producing (Neolithic) communities in Egypt were established on the western margin of the Delta at Mermida Beni Salama and around the Faiyum Depression (Figure 1). These sites indicate that wheat and barley were cultivated and that domestic sheep, goat, and cattle were herded. Except for a breed of cattle which was ‘kept’ in the Eastern Sahara around Nabta Playa and Bir Kisseiba, domesticated species of animals and plants were introduced from Southwest Asia. Initially, a small community sheltering in flimsy huts, the inhabitants of Merimda Beni Salama developed into a well-organized community living in a large village with mud huts. Graves were found with the settlements, but grave goods were rare. The repertoire of the last occupation at Merimda which lasted until about 4100 BC included polished dark red/black pottery, bifacial tools, figurines, and other bone, ivory, and shell items. At El-Omari, near Helwan, burials included an individual with a scepter

and valuable grave goods, perhaps indicative of the rise of local paramount chiefs. In Upper Egypt, the earliest food-producing communities are in the Badari region where small encampments, probably of herders, date back to 4400–4200 BC. These sites signal the beginning of the period commonly referred to as the Predynastic. The Badarian Early Predynastic sites contain a variety of brown, red, and occasionally black pottery with a shiny, burnished surface with ripples. This Rippled pottery is produced from very fine untempered Nile silt. The Badarian pottery is a variant of a burnished pottery present in Late Neolithic sites of the Egyptian Sahara. Badarian personal items included hairpins, combs, bracelets, and beads made out of ivory and bone. Palettes were also found. A variety of clay and ivory figurines are also represented in the Badarian. A component of the Badarian is known as the ‘Tasian’ which perhaps represents greater affinities with highly mobile groups that moved between Nubia and the Assyut region via desert routes. South of Badari, in the Nagada region (between Danfiq and Ballas), are numerous Middle and Late Predynastic village settlements and remnants of two towns (North Town and South Town) as well as extensive cemeteries dating from 3800 to 3500 BC. Two archaeological units on the basis of pottery types are identified during that period (Figure 2). The earliest ceramic assemblage zone called Naqada I (or Amratian) is generally characterized by a high frequency of Black-Topped Polished Red and White Cross-Lined pottery. This zone marks the Middle Predynastic dating from 3950 to 3650 BC. It was succeeded by the Late Predynastic Naqada II (also known as the Gerzean), dating from 3650 to 3300 BC, which is characterized by Rough pottery, and marked by the presence of Decorated and Wavy-Handled pots (Figure 3). Naqada I and Nagada II sites extend from Badari to Hierakonpolis. The majority of Predynastic sites in the Nagada region belong to Naqada I. The sites range in size from a few thousand square meters to 3 ha. They represent overlapping occupations of scores of huts in small villages and hamlets in a string along the edge of the former floodplain. Small postholes and the wooden stub of a post suggest flimsy wickerwork around a frame of wooden posts. The abundance of rubble and mud clumps indicates that many dwellings were constructed from local Nile mud and desert surface rubble. The houses contained hearths and storage pits. In some cases graves were dug into the floor of houses. Trash areas were interspersed with domestic dwellings. The houses included animal enclosures as indicated by thick layers of dung. The faunal remains indicate exploitation of cattle, sheep/goats,

46 AMERICAS, NORTH/Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic

Figure 1 Location map of principal Predynastic sites in Egypt.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic 47 Sequence date 80 Nagada IIICD Early dynastic Emergence of unified state ca. 3200 BC Late

72 71

Nagada III A1-A2 Protodynastic Formative stage of unification Late ca. 3300 BC

63 62

Nagada IIcd (Gerzean) Development of regional polities and states 51 Rough

50

43

ca. 3500 BC Decorated

42

Nagada IIab Emergence of petty states ca. 3650 BC

35

Nagada I (Amratian) Wavy handled Formation of provincial polities

34

31 White cross-lined Black polished

30 Black top pottery Polished red

ca. 3895 BC

Figure 2 Changes in the material, form, and decoration of Predynastic–Early Dynastic pottery have been used to generate pottery types and pottery assemblage zones. The absolute chronology of the assemblage zones, Nagada I, II, and III (called after ‘Nagada’, also known as ‘Naqada’ in Upper Egypt), span the period from c. 3950 to c. 3000 BC. This period was characterized by significant political transformations that led c. 3200 BC to the emergence of a unified Egyptian state (please refer to http://www.petrie.ucl.ac.uk for colored photographs and an excellent introduction to the pottery and other objects found in Predynastic tombs).

and pigs. Hunting was limited. However, fishing and fowling were important. Nagada I and II sites in Upper Egypt reveal pronounced progressive transformation of social organization and increasing complexity (Figure 4). The tombs yielded a rich variety of grave goods including copper objects, flint knives, amulets, stone vessels, pendants, hairpins, combs, and slate palettes. Only a few graves contain large numbers of special goods, and the distribution of grave goods indicates the emergence of tiered social hierarchy by Nagada I. By Nagada II, the elite segregated their burial grounds from those of the commoners. Their graves were larger and well endowed with grave goods (see Social Inequality, Development of). The rise of a local elite was embedded in a religious ideology linked with mortuary rituals as indicated by the standardization of the placement of the dead who were buried in a flexed position with heads to the south facing west. However, there were regional differences in the prevalence of this orientation. The iconography of Nagada II pottery and a variety of

figurines from mud and vegetable substances suggest that the incipient ideology included notions of female– male duality associated with concepts of life, death, and apparently life after death. Centered on grave goods and funerary rituals, the ideological technology of the emerging elite promoted trade within and beyond Egypt for elite mortuary goods. Hierakonpolis in the south was a conduit for trade with Nubia, whereas Maadi and later Buto in the Delta provided trade links with Southwest Asia. During the period when the Nagada I and II pottery types were emerging and spreading in Upper Egypt, communities in the Delta shared a distinct pottery assemblage, referred to as the Maadi–Buto Horizon. By the middle of the Late Predynastic, the pottery types common in Upper Egypt became prominent in the Delta. It is unlikely that this is an indication of a population replacement or a military conquest. It is most probably a result of the adoption by the Delta elite of the funerary ideology and practices of Upper Egypt with its intricate rituals, elaborate burials, and fancy grave goods. This was facilitated by the close

48 AMERICAS, NORTH/Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic

Figure 3 A diagnostic type of pottery (Decorated) that became common in Nagada II (Gerzean). Painted in red over a buff background, the ‘decorations’ show a variety of motifs and themes. Many, as in the case of this pot, show zigzag lines suggestive of water, trees, and boats with many oars and two cabins. These pictorial representations reveal the first steps toward writing and are most probably symbolic of religious beliefs concerning the journey from the land of the living to the land of the dead. Source Petrie WMF (1974) Prehistoric Egypt, London: Aris and Phillips.

Figure 4 Detail from Narmer’s palette (now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo) showing Narmer, the first or second king of a unified Egypt, in a ceremonial procession. The procession is led by standard-bearers who may represent the domains or main allies of the king. The palette has been interpreted in many ways, but is most likely symbolic of the emergence of a powerful king who commands the Delta and Upper Egypt. The palette also shows well-developed hieroglyphic signs as a part of a writing system that emerged 200 years earlier.

trade links between the two main trade centers of Hierakonopolis and Buto and by the use of boats bypassing overland donkey routes. It appears that the Middle Predynastic was a period of incipient state formation on a regional scale, with

at least two prominent states or petty kingdoms namely Hierakonpolis and Nagada in Upper Egypt, and perhaps several town-principalities in the Delta. By about 3300 BC, Hierakonopolis seems to have extended its power over Nagada so that it began to dominate the area north of Nagada from a new stronghold at Abydos, establishing a far more suitable strategic geopolitical position within a shorter distance from Middle Egypt and the Delta than that of Hierakonpolis at the southern border of Egypt. Considering the narrow floodplain at Hierakonpolis and access to a more extensive floodplain north of Abydos, the leaders of Hierakonpolis would have buffered themselves from droughts which appear to have become more prevalent as Nile flood discharge began to diminish c. 3300–3200 BC, coincident with the transition to hyperarid conditions in the Eastern Sahara. It is also likely that the residents of the desert regions surrounding the Nile Valley and the Delta who struggled through the transition from wetter conditions before 6200 to 4100 BC might have been forced to raid the prosperous villages in the Nile Valley and the Delta giving rise to occasional skirmishes. This would have provided the elite with another legitimizing opportunity – the portrayal of the chiefs as ‘warriors’ smiting enemies. This was expressed in the use of the mace-heads as symbols of authority and in the depiction of battle scenes on commemorative ceremonial palettes. There is also the possibility that some of the ferocious desert warriors were integrated within settled agrarian communities. Given the benefits to small communities either for defense or food security against droughts and food shortages, and for the tendency of elites to aggrandize and strengthen their position through bigger tombs, more and more costly grave goods of rare materials and better artisanship, a trend was set for large political entities like the expanding Hierakonpolitan ‘kingdom’ to get bigger by annexing small polities. This perhaps demanded no or little use of force or intimidation since an alliance with a larger power may be conceived as beneficial to small polities. The transition from the level of regional complexity to that of multiregional complexity, extending from Hierakonpolis to Abydos and perhaps beyond, made it imperative to co-opt regional chiefs and rulers within the demonstrative structures of the expanding kingdom thus attenuating the grip of kinship as a social bond among the elite. This also necessitated syncretic religious ideologies that incorporated a pantheon of regional and local deities. Alliances may have also been fostered by inter-regional royal marriages. This may explain the important role of royal wives in the development of the Egyptian state and the role of women in the ideology of kingship.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Nubia 49

Royal wives were perhaps the link between the king and his allies, and their position as mothers of future kings consolidated their role, within religious ideology, as divine mothers. Although the bull might be a more likely religious entity in hunting societies, the cow is perhaps equally important, or even more important, in a herding community. Cow burials were already manifest among cattle keepers of the Eastern Sahara before 5000 BC. Narmer’s palette depicting the king as a bull is surmounted by two large cow heads. During this formative stage of Egyptian kingship, writing was developed within a ritual, royal context and is attested on ivory labels predating Narmer’s palette which carries phonetic signs of his name. Narmer was succeeded by Aha who together with his successors began to lay the foundation of a unified Egyptian state heralding the Dynastic Period. They established an administrative capital at Memphis close to their Delta allies while maintaining Abydos as a religious capital and a royal burial ground. The unification suffered periodic setbacks, especially during the Second Dynasty. By the time Zoser established his reign, he was able to build a monumental steppyramid of unprecedented dimensions as his royal tomb, a clear indication that a mighty Pharaoh ruled

Africa, North/Greek Colonies

over a state society with an elaborate administrative structure. See also: Africa, North: Egypt, Pharaonic; Plant Domestication; Political Complexity, Rise of; Social Inequality, Development of; Writing Systems.

Further Reading Adams B (1988) Predynastic Egypt, Aylesbury: Shire Egyptology 7. Bard K (1999) Predynastic period, overview. In: Bard K (ed.) Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, pp. 23–30. London: Routledge. Hassan FA (1988) The Predynastic of Egypt. Journal of World Prehistory 2: 135–185. Hassan FA (1999) Epipalaeolithic cultures, overview. In: Bard K (ed.) Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, pp. 15–16. London: Routledge. Hendrickx S, Friedman RF, Cialowicz KM, and Chlodnicki M (eds.) (2004) Egypt at its Origins. Studies in Memory of Barbara Adams. Brussels: Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta. Peters Publishers. Maisels CK (1999) Early Civilizations of the Old World. London: Routledge. Midant-Reynes B (2002) The Prehistory of Egypt. Oxford: Blackwell. Wenke RJ (1999) Neolithic cultures, overview. In: Bard K (ed.) Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, pp. 17–22. London: Routledge.

See: Europe, South: Greek Colonies.

Nubia Donatella Usai, Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente (IsIAO), Rome, Italy ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary African cattle The ongoing discussion about cattle domestication in Africa envisions the existence of an indigenous species, Bos opisthonomous, froh the domesticated form have originated. alternately pivoting stamp technique Pottery decoration technique realized with a comb impressed into the clay and lifted alternately on the extremities of the edge. Bucrania (sing. Bucranium) From greek boVB (cow) and wrani´on (skull). Pise´ Building material composed mainly of mud or clay not molded in bricks.

The Nubian contribution to the Nile Valley cultural development has been considered, for quite a long time, secondary to that of Upper and Lower Egypt (Figure 1). Nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars, strongly influenced by the size and extent of archaeological remains scattered along the Nile, regarded Nubia, at the southern periphery of the Egyptian world, only as ‘a corridor’ to Africa. This ‘middle-land’ was, in fact, the theater for remarkable cultural changes that preluded to the formation of complex societies and were the precursors of the later urban pharaonic theocracy (see Africa, North: Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic). For a more detailed geographic description of the area a distinction between Egyptian and Sudanese Nubia seems to be appropriate. Egyptian Nubia, or Lower Nubia, encompasses the area from Jebel es

50 AMERICAS, NORTH/Nubia

EGYPT Sodmein Cave

Elkab Jebel es Silsila I Cataract

Gilf Kebir Plateau

LOWER NUBIA

Kiseiba Nabta II Cataract

Abka IX

UPPER NUBIA III Cataract Kerma-EI Barga Kawa-R12

SUDAN

IV Cataract

V Cataract

South Dongola Reach

ra

Esh shaheinab

Ghaba kadada

ba

dam VI Cataract

At

uqad

Multaga

M Wadi

Wadi Howar

Kabbashi

Khartoum Hospital Site 10W4 ue Bl le Ni

ile

eN

400 km

Whit

0

Figure 1 Location map of sites mentioned in the text. ã 2008 Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Silsila to the frontier between Egypt and Sudan, or the II Cataract, and the Sudanese Nubia, or Upper Nubia, from the II Cataract to the Southern Dongola Reach. It is from the core of this region that new archaeological

data arrive which motivated new thoughts on the overall Nile Valley recent prehistory cultural sequence. The Mesolithic is a key period in the prehistory of man, one when the seeds of the transition from a

AMERICAS, NORTH/Nubia 51

hunting-gathering-fishing economy to food production were laid down. Among the archaeological evidence left by Near Eastern Mesolithic communities are the first permanent structural remains, sometimes related to ritual activities, and faunal assemblages bearing the earliest evidence of domesticated species and cereals remains produced by more systematic gathering activities. This evidence may be interpreted as the beginning of a process that will produce a fully Neolithic economy. The Nile Valley was and is still considered to be peripheral to the areas where this process took its first steps but, without denying a possible contribution to the neolithization of Nile Valley coming from Near Eastern regions, it seems that also Mesolithic Nubians were involved in a process of social and economic changes evidenced, apparently, by successful animal domestication. The Mesolithic population, in Nubia as well as in Central Sudan, is made up by hunter-gatherer-fisher communities that were producing pottery vessels some centuries before their appearance in the Near East where a Pottery Neolithic dates to around 6800 BC. The first discovery of Mesolithic pottery in the Sudanese Nile Valley was made by A.J. Arkell at the Mesolithic site of Khartoum Hospital. Two types of decoration, among others, characterize Mesolithic pottery production: incised Wavy Line (Figure 2) and impressed Dotted Wavy Line (Figure 3). During the years of the Nubian Salvage Campaign (1960–1968) a site, Abka IX, with ‘similar’ material was found also in Nubia and radiocarbon dated 8260  400 BP. At the time the date was considered too old and rejected

because of the high range, but recent archaeological discoveries in much more controlled contexts proved its being reliable. It is now accepted that a ceramic Mesolithic culture behind regional character was widespread along the Nile Valley and adjacent areas, from Central Nubia down to Central Sudan and further south, during the VIII–VII millennium BC. Nothing which can firmly be related to this culture has been found, until now, in the Upper and Lower Egyptian Nile Valley, neither in the adjacent deserts and oases. A VII millennium BC site, Elkab, located in the Nile Valley, between Luxor and Aswan, produced a lithic industry with an Epipalaeolithic character, some bone tools but no pottery. The adoption of pottery technology within Sudanese Mesolithic societies has been correlated with an increased sedentary lifestyle. Until recently no evidence, other than the pottery itself, suggested such a reduction in mobility. Most Mesolithic sites along the Nile Valley have been, in fact, deeply affected by postdepositional natural and human disturbances. Nevertheless, very recent and still largely unpublished excavations revealed semi-subterranean huts at El Barga, in the Kerma Basin, at a seasonal Late Mesolithic site near Khartoum (Figure 4) and pise´ walled dwellings at a VII millennium BC Mesolithic settlement along the left bank of White Nile again south of the Sudan capital. Nile river-versus-desert seasonal movements and vice versa were practiced by the Mesolithic huntergatherer-fishers at the beginning of the Early Holocene when, according to palaeoenvironmental data, deserts, to the west and the east of the Nile, became less inhospitable with the formation of many seasonal water pools.

Figure 2 Sample of Early Mesolithic potsherds with typical Wavy Line incised decoration, realized with a Nile catfish spine. ã 2008 Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

52 AMERICAS, NORTH/Nubia

Figure 3 A fragment of Late Mesolithic pottery decorated with Dotted Wavy line impressed pattern. This decoration is realized with the alternately pivoting stamp technique. ã 2008 Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 4 Excavation at a Late Mesolithic prehistoric seasonal camp south of Khartoum. The site, 10-W-4, revealed a series of semisubterranean huts with refusal pits. ã 2008 Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The pioneering researches conducted by F. Wendorf at Nabta Playa and Kiseiba Plateau sites in the Western Desert, 100 km to the west of the Nile, at the height of the II Cataract, produced the most interesting, although debatable, data concerning these Mesolithic groups. The structures excavated at these desert sites, and the faunal and palaeobotanical assemblages suggest that strictly scheduled seasonal movements may have provided a semi-sedentary life in a sort of residential mobility congruent with pottery production.

Fishing activity, whose practice is strongly evidenced especially in Mesolithic Central Sudan sites, may also have encouraged a less mobile lifestyle. Demographic growth may also have been responsible for an increased territorial control and, as a consequence, of less mobility. It is important to underline that, as suggested for the Near Eastern Mesolithic societies, this increased sedentary way of life may have favored experimentation in animal domestication, as in the case of the

AMERICAS, NORTH/Nubia 53

African cattle. Most reliably these first experiments took place in Nubia at the end of the VIII-beginning of the VII millennium BC. The first evidence for cattle domestication comes from different sites in the Nabta–Kiseiba Western Desert. Few fragments of possibly domesticated cattle recovered at these sites date to the beginning of the VIII millennium BC. Some scholars reject this ancient occurrence, for different reasons, not least the questionable contextual associations. The presence of a few domestic cattle bones at Western Desert sites led the excavators to speak of an Early Neolithic phase, but the overall faunal assemblage is made up of wild species suggesting more caution is necessary. However, evidence of domestic cattle was recently found in Sudanese Nubia, in the Kerma Basin, at the Mesolithic site of El Barga and dated to the VII millennium BC. Domestic sheep and goat appeared in the Nile Valley and in Nubia later on, around the VI millennium BC, as witnessed by sites like Sodmein cave in the Red Sea Mountain, Nabta–Kiseiba, in the Western Desert, and El-Barga, in the Kerma Basin. As it is genetically proved that sheep and goats originate in the Near East, it is probably here that we have to envisage influences from outside the valley. Cattle herding became increasingly important in Nubian societies; hence, pastoralism became the basic subsistence economy of these populations. The emergence of cattle domestication seems limited, up to now, to the Nubian region. No evidence has been produced by sites along the Nile Valley north Chronology

Lower-Upper Nubia

7000 BC 6000 BC

Mesolithic (Western Desert-EI Barga)

6000 BC 5500 BC

Early Neolithic (Western Desert-EI Barga)

5500 BC 5000 BC

?

5000 BC 4500 BC

Middle Neolithic A (Kadruka 13-21, R12)

and south of Nubia. Moreover, no evidence of this kind was produced by the many prehistoric sites located in the desert north and south of the Nabta/ Kiseiba region. Central Sudan societies seem to retain their hunting-gathering-fishing economy until the middle of the V millennium BC. When the first Neolithic groups appear in Central Sudan (see Africa, Central: Sudan, Nilotic), they show a material culture which displays strong similarities with that produced by Nubian groups whose socioeconomic structure had already changed to a pastoral one more than a millennium before. If this picture will be confirmed by future archaeological investigations it will be interesting to work out whether the long-lasting Mesolithic social and economic way of life in Central Sudan has been culturally or environmentally determined. Palaeoenvironmental studies documented a climatic deterioration around the VI millennium BC. It affected firstly the Nubian region and only many centuries later the Central Sudan and may have produced, at the same time, an acceleration in subsistence economy transformation in Nubia as well as favoring the maintenance of the hunter-gatherer-fisher subsistence model of Central Sudan Mesolithic populations. At present the Early Neolithic of Central Sudan seems to correspond to the Middle Neolithic of Nubia (Figure 5). Some of the social and cultural aspects of these V and IV millennium BC Neolithic groups are so similar that there is no wonder that all along the valley there were strong and permanent interrelations. Central Sudan

Mesolithic (Khartoum Hospital, Saggai etc.)

Late Mesolithic (Kabbashi, 10-W-4 etc.)

Early Neolithic (Shaheinab, EI Ghaba, Kadero etc.)

4500 BC 4200 BC

Middle Neolithic B (Kadruka 1, R12, Multaga)

4200 BC 3100 BC

?

Late Neolithic (EI kadada)

3100 BC 2700 BC

Pre-Kerma

?

Figure 5 Nubian and Central Sudan chronological sequence according to new data provided by recent excavations in the region. ã 2008 Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

54 AMERICAS, NORTH/Nubia

N

G. 110 Figure 6 One of the richest graves excavated at the Middle Neolithic cemetery R12, in Lower Nubia, close to the Egyptian town of Kawa. The body, of an adult male, was covered by 108 objects. ã 2008 Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 7 A sample of valuable stone axes recovered at R12 cemetery. ã 2008 Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Nubia 55

Figure 8 Tools made from animal bones or containers made from a hippopotamus tooth are very common at Middle Neolithic Nubian cemeteries. ã 2008 Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 9 Caliciform beakers are considered ritual containers as they have been found only in cemeteries. They are characteristics of Nubian and Central Sudan Neolithic. ã 2008 Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Nubia’s Neolithic is known mainly from the excavation of few of the many mound-like burial grounds dotting the Nubian landscape. These cemeteries produce the image of a ranked society with some form of incipient elite. A few graves (Figure 6), in each cemetery, are accompanied by an exceptional number of objects: pots, stone axes, mace-heads, ivory bracelets, necklaces made of semiprecious stone beads, containers made from hippopotamus teeth and bucrania (Figures 7 and 8). The number of bucrania varies according to the individual’s social position, whether achieved or acquired though kin relationship. Red and yellow ochre was often used to cover the body, which sometimes lay on an animal skin. Some graves also contain complete skeletons of an ovicaprine. One pot, in particular, seems to have had a ritual character. It is the caliciform beaker (Figure 9). This container, decorated in different ways, probably according to different regional tastes, is present only in grave contexts.

Many of the Nubian Neolithic settlements, seemingly, were destroyed by erosion or Nile flooding. They appear, in fact, as dense scatters of archaeological material. The lack of structural remains at Neolithic sites, in contrast with the evidence provided by hundreds of burial grounds sometime of very large size, has been considered as attesting the high mobility of these Neolithic herders and their living in rather ephemeral dwellings. However at Kerma, an extensive excavation revealed the structural organization of a Neolithic village, dating to 4500 BC, witnessed by thousands of postholes. While no stratified deposits survived at the site the study of postholes distribution has made possible the reconstruction of the plan of an otherwise lost ancient and complex settlement.

See also: Africa, Central: Sudan, Nilotic; Africa, North: Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic; Sahara, Eastern; Animal Domestication.

56 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sahara, Eastern

Further Reading Arkell AJ (1949) Early Khartoum. London: Oxford University Press. Blench RM and MacDonald K (2000) The Origins and Development of African Livestock: Archaeology, Genetics, Linguistics, and Ethnography. London: University College London Press. Guilane J (ed.) (2003) Aux marges des grands foyers du Ne´olithique. Pe´riphe´ries de´bitrices ou cre´atrices? Paris: Editions Errance. Honegger M (2004) Settlement and cemeteries of the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic at el-Barga (Kerma region). Sudan & Nubia 8: 14–19. Honegger M (2005) Kerma et les de´buts du Ne´olithique Africain. GENAVA LIII. 239–249.

Salvatori S and Usai D (2004) The cemetery R12 and a possible periodisation of the Nubian Neolithic. Sudan and Nubia 8: 33–37. Usai D and Salvatori S (2005) The IsIAO archaeological project in the El Salha area (Omdurman South, Sudan): Results and perspectives. AFRICA LX (3–4): 474–493. Vermeersch PM (1978) Elkab II: Epipale´olithique de la valle´e du Nil e`gyptien. Leuven: University Press. Wendorf F, Schild R, and associates (eds.) (2001) Holocene Settlement of the Egyptian Sahara. New York: Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Publishers. Wengrow D (2006) The Archaeology of Early Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Africa, North/Roman Eastern Colonies

See: Asia, West: Roman Eastern Colonies.

Sahara, Eastern

Introduction

Elena A A Garcea, University of Cassino, Cassino, Italy ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Aterian A North African tradition with lithic assemblages, often made with the Levallois technology, consisting of side-scrapers and denticulates, as well as end-scrapers, perforators, and burins. Tanged tools and bifacial foliates are considered as the diagnostic features, but other, more frequent, elements include bulbar basal thinning and bifacial retouching. cultivation Any form of human activity that increases the yield of harvested or exploited plants without domestication. delayed return strategy A long-term system of resource exploitation based on delayed and planned consumption, involving food processing and storage. dotted wavy line pottery Ceramic impressed decoration made with a rocker technique using a toothed comb to produce alternately upwards and downwards fans of dotted curved lines. Middle Stone Age (MSA) A specific African age/stage system, which comprises the Early Stone Age (ESA), the Middle Stone Age (MSA), and the Later Stone Age (LSA). European-based terms such as Middle Paleolithic and Mousterian are often used to describe North African industries, even though they relate to specific cultural units and particular stratigraphic positions that do not apply to Africa. pastoralism The economic subsistence strategy that relies on the exploitation of domestic livestock for food production. It implies raising and moving herds for grazing according to seasonal availability of pasture. Western Desert This is a desert located west of the Nile River that occupies western Egypt and eastern Libya. Its main regions are the Great Sand Sea and several oases, including Siwa, Farafra, Baharia, Dakhleh, and Kharga.

The most thorough and detailed studies on the prehistory of North Africa come from the land included within the present borders of Egypt and northern Sudan. The Eastern Sahara is presently almost uninhabited by people or animals, but it has not always been so. The Nile River and the Sahara Desert have affected each other on both cultural and environmental levels and Eastern Saharan populations have often acted as intermediaries between Central Saharans and Nilotic peoples, often even linking populations and traditions between East and North Africa. The Eastern Sahara covers a surface of more than 2 million square km, which is the same size as western Europe, and is often referred to as the Western Desert, being located west of the Nile River. However, the Eastern Sahara also extends east of the Nile River, reaching the coast of the Red Sea, and to the west it extends to eastern Libya.

Environment and Climate in the Eastern Sahara The main geographic features of the Eastern Sahara are the Great Sand Sea and several oases, the main ones being, from north to south, Siwa, Farafra, Baharia, Dakhleh, and Kharga. The Fayum Oasis, which was formerly a lake, has been another very important water reservoir. Unlike in Lower (northern) Egypt, in Upper (southern) Egypt, the flood plain of the Nile is only a few kilometers wide and the desert extends near the river. The desert is not as flat as one may think: mountains and deep depressions exist in several parts,

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sahara, Eastern 57

including the Gilf Kebir plateau, south of the Great Sand Sea, which has an altitude of about 2000 m. In spite of the elevated areas, no rivers or streams fed by precipitation, drain into or out of the Western Desert. Nevertheless, the oases live, thanks to freshwater provided by the Nile or local groundwater. Important environmental changes affected the Eastern Sahara during the shifts corresponding to the glacial and interglacial stages in continental Europe. Although there were no glaciations in most of North Africa, the environment dramatically changed as the sea level of the Mediterranean withdrew by up to 70 m and precipitation totally disappeared. Consequently, the Sahara became a hyper-arid desert, drier than at present. During the Penultimate Glacial, corresponding to oxygen isotope stage (OIS) 6, dated between about 186 000 and 127 000 years ago, a series of sand sheets, formed by winds, covered the Eastern Sahara. Later, lacustrine and fluvial sediments were recorded at Bir Tarfawi, indicating the occurrence of lake basins and a moist climate during the Last Interglacial of OIS 5, dated to 127 000– 71 000 BP. Furthermore, a significant drainage network was active during various periods of OIS 5 in southwestern Egypt and northwestern Sudan. The following Last Glacial period of OIS 4, dated to 71 000–57 000 BP, witnessed abrupt climatic changes with the formation of sand sheets again, as clearly shown in the Selima region, across the Egyptian– Sudanese border. The remaining part of the Upper Pleistocene featured a harsh environment and dry climate. Although the climate during OIS 3 (57 000– 24 000 BP) improved, it was not as temperate as OIS 5, and OIS 2 (24 000–11 000 BP) was much more arid than at present. Considerable climatic ameliorations occurred only in the Eastern Sahara at the beginning of the Holocene. Groundwater levels started to rise about 9300 years BP and the aquifers rose to levels as much as 25 m higher than today. Freshwater lakes and swamps formed in the lowlands and a fluvial system developed in the uplands, attracting animals and favoring human occupation in many areas of the Eastern Sahara. Rainfall decreased from south to north, forming lacustrine sediments in the south, below 22 N, and playa sediments between 10 and 22 N. Such favorable conditions lasted until about 6000 years ago, when the landscape started to dry up again and, by 3000 BP, the Sahara became the desert we know today.

and the oases in the Western Desert played an essential role by offering water and food resources to the humans who ventured into a landscape that was much drier than their native land. A series of water springs at Kharga Oasis, central-western Egypt, about 150 km west of the Nile, sustained various Middle Stone Age (MSA) human groups using the Levallois technique and producing side-scrapers, Mousterian points, and some denticulates (Figure 1). A later complex was also found at Kharga Oasis, which included tanged tools and bifacial foliates that could be assigned to the Aterian. Tanged pieces were recorded further southeast, at Wadi Dungul, which seems to be the easternmost Aterian site. In fact, the Aterian, which takes its name from the type of site of Bir el Ater, in northeastern Algeria, is a typical late MSA tradition of the Sahara and the Maghreb and does not occur in the Nile Valley. Lithic assemblages are often made with the Levallois technology and comprise typical ‘Middle Paleolithic’ tools, such as side-scrapers and denticulated, as well as ‘Upper Paleolithic’ tools, such as end-scrapers, perforators, and burins. Tanged tools and bifacial foliates were considered as the diagnostic features, but other more frequent elements include bulbar basal thinning and bifacial retouching. At Bir Tarfawi, in southwestern Egypt, between 175 000 and 70 000 years ago, a sequence of five

The Spread of Early Anatomically Modern Humans Anatomically modern humans are found earlier in southern and eastern Africa then in northern Africa, dating to 250 000 years BP or earlier. The Nile Valley

Figure 1 Map of sites cited in the text.

58 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sahara, Eastern

lacustrine events indicated the successive expansions of a lake where people could live and hunt a variety of large animals that are now extinct in the area, including gazelle, warthog, and ostrich, living in a wooded savanna with rainfall of 500 mm per year. They produced a typical MSA industry which included some bifacial foliates that were not significant enough to be assigned to the Aterian. Another MSA site was found at Bir Sahara East, not far from Bir Tarfawi, which revealed a long human occupation, as indicated in a long stratigraphic series. As the age of the earliest level associated with the MSA belongs to the early OIS 6, it is clear that human groups were skilled enough to cope with the severe environmental conditions of the Penultimate Glacial in the Sahara. The age of these populations, their development of MSA technologies, and their abilities to adapt to dry environments and live in open grassland suggest that they were fully modern humans. The technological shift from the production of Acheulean to MSA industries, with a correlated replacement by modern humans, occurred in the late OIS 8 and the cultural progression toward modern behavior took place during the MSA.

The Reoccupation of the Sahara after 10 000 Years Ago The Aterian was the latest Upper Pleistocene cultural entity in the Sahara and the Maghreb, but it did not last until the end of the Pleistocene or the beginning of the Holocene at 10 000 BP. The dated stratigraphic series from Bir Tarfawi and Bir Sahara East show that no human occupation survived after 70 000 BP in the Eastern Sahara and other dated sites in the Central Sahara confirm that the region became a hyper-arid desert that had to be abandoned for a very long time, until wetter conditions returned. These populations dispersed around the northern and, possibly, southern margins of the Sahara, definitely disappearing around 40 000 BP, but did not go in the direction of the Nile Valley. Smaller groups with different industries were settled in the Maghreb and the North African littoral between 40 000 and 20 000 BP. Later, between 20 000 and 10 000 years ago, the population considerably increased and produced various technocomplexes in the Maghreb, North African Mediterranean coast, as well as the Nile Valley, but still no human resettlement occurred in any place of the Sahara during this period. At the end of the Pleistocene, around 12 000 years ago, the Nile suffered catastrophic inundations that caused a dispersion of Nilotic peoples toward the Eastern Sahara. During the Early Holocene, water was largely available from the Nile and its tributaries and rains were sufficiently frequent to keep permanent playas located in various places of the Western

Desert, from Siwa Oasis to Nabta Playa. Nevertheless, humid and dry phases still alternated throughout the Holocene. Systematic reoccupation of the Eastern Sahara took place after 10 000 years BP, when the first Early Holocene humid phase supported milder conditions. During the Holocene, humid and arid phases continually alternated, displaying eight humid and eight dry phases from the beginning of the Holocene until today at Nabta Playa. It has been suggested that, after every dry episode, the area was completely abandoned, and new people moved back again into the southwestern desert of Egypt at the onset of humid phases. In the area of Nabta Playa and Bir Kiseiba, the earliest cultural horizon of the Early Holocene is the El Adam variant, which is dated between 9500, or possibly 9800, and 8900 BP. The lithic tool-kit includes a large quantity of backed bladelets, struck from single and opposed platform cores, followed by end-scrapers, perforators, and notches. The microburin technique is frequent. Lower and upper grinding stones and ostrich eggshell containers and beads are common. The subsequent variants are El Kortein, dated from 8800 to 8500 BP, and El Ghorab, dated from 8400 to 8200 BP, the latter corresponding to an important lacustrine episode. Scalene triangles become a dominating aspect of the El Ghorab variant and backed bladelets are still frequent. Grinding stones are common and pottery is present, but is still very rare. This cultural unit has some affinities with the Masara phases at Dakhleh Oasis. The latest Early Holocene variant is El Nabta, dated between 8200 and 7900 BP, which flourished during the maximum humid interphase recorded in the area and dated between 8050 and 7300 BP. Burins dominate in the tool-kit, together with continuously retouched tools, backed bladelets, notches, and denticulates.

The Earliest Cattle Herding The North African aurochs (Bos primigenius ssp. or Bos primigenius mauritanicus) is a wild endemic species that could live in the Maghreb and the Nile Valley, but not in the Sahara. Genetic mtDNA evidence has indicated that the ancestors of African and Eurasian cattle separated at least 22 000 years ago. As the Egyptian cattle is morphologically different from the Eurasian humpless cattle (Bos taurus) and the zebu (Bos indicus), the earliest African domestic cattle could not originate from either Europe or Asia, but was domesticated independently. The Eastern Sahara has provided chronological, paleoecological, and linguistic clues to assert domestication of aurochs in the Western Desert, which

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sahara, Eastern 59

definitely occurred earlier than in the Nile Valley. The earliest domesticated cattle bones are associated with the El Adam variant and are dated from 9500 BP at Nabta Playa, and from 8840 BP at Bir Kiseiba. As these dates are older than those of the earliest cattle in the Near East, they corroborate the independent domestication of cattle in the Eastern Sahara. Second, paleoecological evidence shows that large herbivores, including cattle, could not survive in a wild state in the dry environment and scarce vegetation of the Eastern Sahara without management by herders, who brought their livestock into the desert oases after the summer rains. Third, linguistic arguments show that the Nilo-Saharan language family had root words related to pastoralism and food production in the languages known in the Eastern Sahara and the Sahelian belt. In the Proto-Northern Sudanic language, there are root words referring to cattle pastoralism that go back to 10 000 years ago, and in the ProtoSaharan-Sahelian language, words for pastoralism, as well as cultivation, date from 9000 years ago. Although domestic cattle existed at Nabta Playa and Bir Kiseiba beginning from the El Adam variant, remains of wild game were more frequent in the archaeological sites, as cattle were rarely killed, whereas wild animals, such as small gazelle, hare, and occasionally large gazelle, were hunted for meat consumption. Cattle could be exploited for milk and blood, which represented almost inexhaustible supplies for proteins. For these reasons, cattle were defined as a ‘walking larder’. Furthermore, they could have another role, not directly related to diet, but to socioeconomic prestige and property, establishing the first social differentiation based on material possessions.

The Earliest Production and Spread of Pottery The earliest pottery in the Eastern Sahara was found at Bir Kiseiba and Nabta Playa, dating to the tenth millennium BP. It first appeared at a few sites of the El Adam variant and showed impressed decorations on the outside surface forming simple impressions and dotted zigzags made with the rocker technique. It has been suggested that pottery was unusual when it was first invented and that its function was not related to ordinary use, but to social status, symbolizing luxury possessions. Pottery became more frequent in the El Nabta variant, dated between 8200 and 7900 BP. This increase in ceramic production has been related to an intensified use by larger groups that occupied the area for longer periods. The ceramic decorative types from El Nabta also include a typical Saharan decoration exhibiting dotted wavy lines. This type of decoration appears in the earliest pottery of the Central

Sahara, also dating from the tenth millennium BP, whereas in the Upper Nile Valley it is present, but appears from the middle of the eighth millennium BP, suggesting that it was introduced there from the Sahara. Its occurrence in the Eastern Sahara at a later period than the earliest pottery, but before the Nile Valley, corroborates a west–east movement of some Saharan traditions, such as dotted wavy line pottery. Further considerations on the distribution and spread of early pottery and the populations who produced it come from the Gilf Kebir and the Great Sand Sea. A potsherd from the Wadi el Akhdar in the Gilf Kebir was dated to 9080 BP, whereas another one from the same site was dated to 6400 BP. Other dates obtained on more reliable materials span from 7700 BP. The earliest pottery in the Great Sand Sea is undecorated and dates to 7200 BP. These two areas are in an intermediate position between the Central Sahara and the Nile Valley. As the ecological conditions in the Gilf Kebir were slightly better than in the surrounding lowland areas, even during the phases of climatic deterioration, they could have encouraged contacts with Central Saharan groups and often acted as a ‘refugium’ for populations coming from the Central Sahara. The location of these areas and their availability of resources contributed to the diffusion of Central Saharan traditions toward the Nile Valley, through the Eastern Sahara.

Caprine Herding The origin of caprine domestication in North Africa is different from that of cattle. Domestic caprines were introduced from the Near East as no wild forms of sheep or goat existed in North Africa. Domestic sheep (Ovis aries) is descendant from the Asiatic mouflon (Ovis orientalis), and domestic goat (Capra hircus) originates from the scimitar-horned Capra aegagrus of western Asia. They were brought into North Africa as domesticates around 7000–6700 years ago. Although some zooarchaeologists question the early chronology of cattle domestication in the Western Desert and consider the first uncontroversial dates for domestic cattle in the Nabta Playa and Bir Kiseiba area at 7700 BP, caprine herding was still later than cattle herding. Even if we take the later date for cattle domestication, it was still earlier in the Western Desert than in the Nile Valley. The earliest domestic caprines appeared in Mediterranean North Africa between 7000 and 6400 years BP, at Haua Fteah (Cyrenaica, Libya), and in the Fayum at the end of the sixth millennium BP. In the Western Desert, they were dated, at Dakhleh Oasis, from 6900 to 6500 BP, and at Sodmein cave, in the Red Sea hills, between 7000 and 6300 BP.

60 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sahara, Eastern

At Nabta Playa, they appear during the El Ghanam variant, which is dated from 7100 to 6600 BP, although they do not seem to be present from the beginning of this phase. It has been suggested that they were introduced into the Eastern Sahara either directly from the Near East or from coastal North Africa where they arrived from the Levant and from there spread into the Eastern Sahara. Caprines have different herding necessities than cattle: they can survive in drier environments and are better adapted to cope with reduced grazing lands. As a matter of fact, an impoverished environment in the Eastern Sahara is reflected in the significant reduction of living sites dating to the El Ghanam variant and in the increase of dug-out water wells that indicates a lowering of the water table in the region. Herders were forced to develop a highly mobile nomadic settlement pattern, supplementing their diet with the gathering of tubers and fruits. At the same time medium and large size herbivores decreased and gazelle-hunting was reduced and could no longer be the major source of meat.

The Development of Sedentism Several stone-built structures, forming circular huts, were found at Dakhleh Oasis associated with the Masara C cultural unit dated to 8700–8600 BP. They were strategically located on a sandstone ridge that was protected from seasonal floods so that they could be occupied during the wet seasons. The area they occupied was significantly smaller than the territory previously exploited, suggesting a contraction of resources in some selected locations. The Masara C unit has been paralleled with the El Kortein variant at Bir Kiseiba. Furthermore, at both Bir Kiseiba and Nabta Playa, a complex settlement system with habitation structures was developed during the El Nabta variant, dated to 8200–7900 BP. The largest site at Nabta Playa is E-75–6, which yielded about 20 huts, more than 30 storage pits, 3 wells, and numerous hearths. The huts were either oval or round, with shallow basin floors, encircled with postholes. Their shape suggested that they were built with wooden poles tight in the center at the top of the roof, and the walls were covered by reeds, skins, or mats. The huts contained several hearths that were seasonally reused. The chronology of this site indicated that it remained in use for more than 800 years. Sedentism in North Africa was not a form of preadaptation leading to agriculture. It was a typical strategy adopted by foragers, or forerunning pastoralists as in the case of Nabta Playa and Bir Kiseiba, associated with the exploitation of a broad spectrum

of wild resources. These people continually occupied the same sites for long periods of time in restricted areas with concentrated water and food resources. Sedentary lifestyle favored an increased social organization and the rise of sociopolitical complexity with a delayed-return economy. Such an economic strategy implied the intensification of resource exploitation and scheduled consumption with considerable investments of capital, labor, and skills. It was a particularly efficient subsistence practice for North African populations as it allowed them to cope with irregular precipitations and to manage drier periods of reduced rainfall. Scheduled consumption increased awareness of predictable access to locally available food resources and generated techniques of delayed consumption of seasonally available products with the development of storage facilities. As sedentism with a delayed return strategy grew, local wild resources became unable to sustain the increased needs for set-aside provisions, and North African dwellers had to switch to nomadic pastoralism as the only sustainable form of food production in their environment. In the Eastern Sahara, this happened during the El Ghanam variant, when pastoralism became the predominant subsistence base and was extended to caprine herding.

The Origins of Cultivation and Farming The process leading to agriculture was very slow in the Eastern Sahara and farming, progressing inevitably to plant domestication was not the final goal. At least two important stages of selective cultivation without farming or genetic modification were successfully reached. They represent, respectively, cultivation with small-scale clearance and minimal tillage, and cultivation with larger-scale clearance and systematic tillage. Thus, cultivation is an elaborate form of plant exploitation without domestication. At Nabta Playa and Bir Kiseiba, a new economy of intensive plant collection came into being, during the El Nabta/El Jerar humid interphase dated from around 8000 to 7300 years BP. During this period, numerous large, bell-shaped storage pits indicated intensive exploitation and preservation of fruits, tubers, and seeds, including large quantities of wild sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) and two kinds of millet (Panicum turgidum and Echinochloa colona). In some particularly favorable years, sorghum may have been cultivated with the de´crue, or dry farming, technique. This system requires sowing seeds over flooded land without irrigation, and collecting with a technique that implies cross-pollination, which, unlike self-pollination, prevents the propagation of the genetic changes typical of domestication. Such a

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technique could have required shaking the harvest into baskets, instead of using sickles or removing the entire plant. At Farafra Oasis, a site in the Hidden Valley was located on the shore of an ancient water basin and exhibited numerous habitation structures with hearths containing numerous plant remains, including burnt cereal grains that have suggested independent protoagricultural activities. Three main occupation phases were identified, the earliest being dated between 7670 and 7320 BP, the second around 6750 BP, and the latest at 6190 BP. Grasses include Brachiaria, Cenchrus, Digitaria, Echinochloa, Panicum, and Setaria, belonging to the millet group, and Sorghum, which represents 40.6% of the paleobotanical samples. The high frequency of Sorghum may be due to the large size of its grains, which could have been preferred for their size and better nutritional properties. Furthermore, Sorghum is particularly suitable for this semidesert environment as it can tolerate hot and dry conditions, as well as salty soils. The area with circular structures, stone-lined hearths, and over 180 plant samples, most of them belonging to Sorghum, was dated between 7100 and 6700 BP. As there are no signs of genetic change, it is most likely that the plants were collected by hand and exploited using soft material artifacts, such as wood, whereas stone tools were only used later. Tamerix and Acacia, which were exploited for fuel, could also have been used the manufacturing of wooden implements. Cultivation practices began in the Western Desert at a significantly earlier date than in the Nile Valley. On the other hand, full domestication of sorghum and pearl millet took place in Africa in a still undetermined time, but not before the fourth millennium BP, whereas barley and emmer wheat were not local domesticates, but imported from southwest Asia into the Nile Valley. They are attested to in the Delta and lower Nile Valley from the end of the seventh millennium BP. However, as they required a humid habitat with constant fresh water, which was not available outside the Nile Valley, they were unsuitable for the Eastern Sahara.

Harris DR (1996) Domesticatory relationships of people, plants and animals. In: Ellen R and Fukui K (eds.) Redefining Nature: Ecology, Culture and Domestication, pp. 437–463. Oxford: Berg. Hassan FA (ed.) (2002) Droughts, Food and Culture. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Hoelzmann P (2001) A palaeolimnological N–S transect through the Eastern Sahara. In: Gasse F, Battarbee R, and Stickley C (eds.) Past Climate Variability through Europe and Africa. An International Conference. Aix-en-Provence: Centre des Congre`s. Lanssen-Erz T, Tegtmeier U, and Kro¨pelin S (eds.) (2002) Tides of the Desert: Contributions to the Archaeology and Environmental History of Africa in Honour of Rudolf Kuper. Ko¨ln: HeinrichBarth-Institut. McDonald MMA (1998) Early African pastoralism: View from Dakhleh Oasis (South Central Egypt). Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17: 124–142. Nelson K (2002) Holocene Settlement of the Egyptian Sahara, Vol. 2: The Pottery of Nabta Playa. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Stahl AB (ed.) (2005) African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. van der Veen M (ed.) (1999) The Exploitation of Plant Resources in Ancient Africa. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Vermeersch PM, VanPeer P, and Moeyersons J (1996) Neolithic occupation of the Sodmein area, Red Sea Mountains, Egypt. In: Pwiti G and Soper R (eds.) Aspects of African Archaeology. Papers from the 10th Congress of the PanAfrican Association for Prehistory and Related Studies, pp. 411–419. Harare: University of Zimbabwe. Wendorf F and Schild R (1998) Nabta Playa and its role in northeastern African prehistory. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17: 97–123. Wendorf F and Schild R (eds.) (2001) Holocene Settlements of the Egyptian Sahara: The Archaeology of Nabta Playa. Vol. 1. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Press. Wendorf F, Schild R, and Close AE (eds.) (1993) Egypt during the Last Interglacial: The Middle Paleolithic of Bir Tarfawi and Bir Sahara East. New York: Plenum Press.

See also: Animal Domestication; Modern Humans, Emergence of; Plant Domestication.

Glossary

Further Reading Barich BE (1998) People, Water and Grain: The Beginnings of Domestication in the Sahara and the Nile Valley. Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider. Close AE (ed.) (1984) Cattle-Keepers of the Eastern Sahara: The Neolithic of Bir Kiseiba. Dallas: Southern Methodist University. Garcea EAA (ed.) (2001) Uan Tabu in the Settlement History of the Libyan Sahara. Firenze: All’Insegna del Giglio.

Sahara, West and Central Barbara E Barich, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, Rome, Italy ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Aterian Prehistoric culture dating to the middle Palaeolithic (30 000 BC) in the region around the Atlas Mountains, north and west Africa, and Sahara. climatic oscillations Refers to the drastic variation in the Earth’s global climate or in regional climates over time. It describes changes in the variability or average state of the atmosphere over timescales ranging from decades to millions of years. Tenerian culture Saharan Neolithic culture in the Te´ne´re´ Desert and extending from northeastern Niger into western Chad, Africa, dating from 6500 to 4500 BP.

62 AFRICA, SOUTH/Sahara, West and Central

Western and Central Sahara

animal husbandry, which led to the rise of pastoralism; the rock art works that appeared within the mountains of Tassili n’Ajjer, Acacus, Aı¨r, and Tibesti, and, finally, the first copper metallurgy which is found alongside evidence for social complexity. During the Pleistocene the Sahara underwent several phases of aridity alternating with periods of better climatic conditions, which were related to the

The western and central Sahara, which extends from Libya to Mauritania, enclosing the modern countries of Algeria, Niger, and Mali (Figure 1), was at the center of important cultural phenomena that were of fundamental importance to the history of the entire African continent. Among the most important of such phenomena we can mention the early experiments in

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European glacial phenomena. This was mainly due to the fact that during the glaciations, cold intrusions from the Arctic stopped the tropical monsoon from rising above the equator, thereby blocking the mechanism that brought the rains to the Sahara.

The Beginnings of Human Occupation The oldest documented human occupation in the western and central Sahara belongs to the Acheulean industry. Acheulean hand axes from the now dry basin of the ancient Lake Shati, in southern Libya, have been dated to 125 000 BP, and were deposited during a wet phase (corresponding to the oxygen isotopic stage 5 – OIS 5). An arid phase, seen in dune formation, separates the Acheulean occupation from the first traces of the Aterian, a Middle Stone Age industry whose presence in the Sahara has been dated to OIS 4 (70 000–59 000 BP). The Aterian represents an important occupation phase of the Saharan area by communities that hunted large mammals (buffalo, elephant, rhinoceros, antelope), as well as carrying out marginal gathering activities, and who made their temporary bases near water sources, such as springs, lakes, and rivers. It is thought that the Aterian was the last documented occupation of the Sahara before a further very severe arid crisis, contemporary with the Wu¨rm glaciation in Europe, and this caused the Aterian hunters to abandon the area, probably in order to push on toward wetter lands, toward the coast, and the tropical regions.

From Hunter-Gatherers to Food-Producers The Wu¨rm glaciation is evident throughout the large extent of the Sahara as a long arid episode, which reached its peak around 20 000 years ago, causing a severe contraction of human occupation, if not a complete abandonment of the area by human groups. In the Sahara, therefore, the beginning of a marked transformation in lifestyle, a prelude to food production activities, coincided with the return of the rains at the end of Pleistocene (12 000–10 000 BP) and with the resettlement of the region. In the transitional phase between the Pleistocene and the Holocene, cultural groups were strongly based on the exploitation of aquatic resources, a life style that the archaeologist Sutton called ‘aqualithic culture’. In Mali a lacustrine phase, between 8500 and 6900 BP, can be seen in the stratigraphic sections of the ancient lakes that lie next to the extensive dunes. Finely stratified sediments, which contain the remains of aquatic fauna, shells, and diatoms (freshwater plants), are clear signs of the presence of permanent lakes in the

past. The huge cemeteries that have been discovered in the Taoudenni region (Hassi el Abiod, Ine Sakane) have permitted notable observations to be made regarding, in particular, palaeoanthropological characteristics. An important cultural sequence is also evident in the mountainous regions of Algeria, where huntergatherer groups left remains of their material culture, in particular a characteristic pottery type, in temporary camps such as Amekni and Ti-n-Hanakaten. Other human settlements in the central Sahara appear in the area of the modern state of Chad, but are only known from surface scatters and ceramics collected by French and German archaeologists. In contrast, in Libya and Niger there are full stratigraphic sequences that allow the transformation of lifestyle to be studied: from a wide range of environmental exploitation strategies (including hunting, gathering, and fishing activities) to an economy that was specialized in pastoralism (cattle, sheep/goat). The Tadrart Acacus Massif in Libya that, along with the Algerian Tassili n’Ajjer, is one of the most important rock art (see Rock Art) complexes in the Sahara, has provided the various phases in this sequence, allowing light to be shed on the initial stages of domestication, which is not always visible in archaeological research. The lower layers (c. 9100 BP) of Ti-n-Torha East, in northern Acacus, show occasional occupation and a wide range of environmental exploitation strategies – with a strong incidence of plant food linked to the first appearance of ceramics (Figure 2). Other sites, such as Uan Afuda and Uan Tabu, show instead a lesser interest in the exploitation of floral resources and, on the other hand, a greater specialization in the exploitation of fauna. For example, Uan Afuda was laid out as a specialized camp for Barbary sheep (Ammotragus lervia) hunting and herding. In the upper layers (8500–8000 BP), Ti-n-Torha East becomes a real proto-village, with a series of hut foundations built against the rock walls of the wadi that was suitable for the needs of a semi-permanent settlement (Figure 3). The composite sequence obtained from the three sites of Ti-n-Torha (East, North, and Two Caves Shelters) covers the entire period from Early to Middle Holocene (Figure 4). On the basis of material culture and archaeozoological evidence, the author suggests an autochthonous transition model (i.e., a local development model, without external influences) from pre-domestication to forms of incipient domestication. The Libyan situation finds notable parallels, stratigraphic and chronological, to the situation seen in Niger. The first discoveries made here, in the Aı¨r region, were by J. Desmond Clark in the 1970s. A full reconstruction of the regional sequence is due to the subsequent research of J. P. Roset who, in the 1980s, made

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Figure 2 Ceramics with impressed decorations from Ti-n-Torha East (Libya). Photo Barbara Barich, unpublished.

Saharan ceramic production in the Early Holocene. The faunal remains found have been attributed to wild animals and even fish, while the abundance of grinding stones is evidence of the importance of plant gathering. Hydrogeological studies in Niger have shown that an initial climatic recovery with the return of the rains, came at the end of the Pleistocene, around 13 000 years ago. It was then followed by a further dry phase in 9500 BP, just at the beginnings of the Holocene sequence. These data give support to the existence in Niger of a Palaeolithic (or Epipalaeolithic) occupation phase, as had been suggested by J. Desmond Clark. Figure 3 The Ti-n-Torha East settlement (Libya). From Barich BE (1998) People, Water and Grain – The Beginnings of Domestication in the Sahara and the Nile Valley. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider.

known the more-or-less contemporary sites of Temet 1 (9650–9450 BP), Ti-n-Ouaffadene (9360–9080 BP), and Adrar Bous 10 (9220–8840 BP), which are all tied to the lake expansion in the wet phase of the Early Holocene. The lithic complex of these contexts, as seen in Temet 1, continues the Epipalaeolithic tradition which, however, is already associated with pottery. The oldest examples have been found in Tagalagal, in the Bagzanes mountains (Aı¨r) and dated to between 9500 and 9200 BP. The Tagalagal ceramics have a variety of forms and well-developed decoration. Among these the ‘dotted wavy line’ decoration is noteworthy, as it is the most characteristic motif of the

Pastoralists and Saharan Rock Art During the 6000–5000 BP period (cal. 5000–4000 BC) the pastoral culture was widespread throughout the central and western Sahara. The presence of pastoralists was everywhere associated with elaborate rock art works that seem to have had, at least partly, the role of marking sacred places, where particular initiation ceremonies were carried out. In Niger, the sites of Dogomboulo in the Fachi area (7100–6600 BP) and Rocher Toubeau (5650–5500 BP), are the first examples of the Tenerian, a pastoral culture of the Middle Holocene. It is characterized by thick bifacial tools, such as gouges (flaked axes), discs, arrow heads, and polished hand axes. The Tenerian economy included animal husbandry, hunting, and gathering of wild cereals. An almost entire skeleton of a domestic ox

AFRICA, SOUTH/Sahara, West and Central 65

Figure 4 Panoramic view of the Auis and Ti-n-Torha wadis, in northern Acacus. Photo Barbara Barich, unpublished.

(Bos taurus), found in Agorass n’Tast, was dated to 6250–5250 BP. In the same area evidence for gathering of wild plant species has been found, imprints in clay vessels show the presence of Brachiaria and Sorghum. The Tenerian reached its peak around 5000 BP and was particularly widespread along the eastern side of Aı¨r, between Adrar Bous and Areschima.

The Spread of Pastoralism in the Late Holocene There is a clear chronological gap in the distribution of pastoral sites outside those areas discussed so far, both toward the Sahel and in the sub-Saharan regions. On the basis of the available data there is no evidence of domesticated animals (see Animal Domestication) on the northwestern edges of the Sahara, in the area between the Algerian and Moroccan lands of Atlas and Aure`s to the north, and Tanezrouft to the south, along the border between Algeria and Mali. This area seems to have been inhabited by mobile groups who continued in the hunting/fishing/gathering tradition (the culture of Hassi el Abiod). Based on this evidence, it can be stated that the northwestern part of the Sahara did not act as a corridor for the movement of domesticated livestock from the north (Aure`s) toward western Africa. In the Middle Holocene (6000–5000 BP) the greatest concentration of pastoral sites, such as the famous Adrar Bous, is seen along the western side of the Te´ne´re´, and it was probably from here that the Saharan pastoralists spread out toward the south and southwest, reaching the Atlantic coast of the western Sahara at Tintan and Chami, the Adrar des

Ifoghas and Tilemsi Valley in Mali, Azawagh Valley in Niger, pushing on to Dhar Tichitt in Mauretania, Kintampo and Ntereso in Ghana, where they introduced sheep/goats and decorated ceramics, developing new dynamics that led to the first agriculture in the region. Between the mid-fifth and the mid-fourth millennium BP (cal. 3500–2500 BC) Niger (Azawagh, the Aı¨r region, Ighazer-Tigidit, and the Termit Massif) saw the immigration of new groups with an organizational structure, including the presence of elites who built monumental tombs; these pastoral warriors were distinct in their palaeoanthropological profile from the previous population. Since the funerary monuments were primarily intended for males, we can argue that they were created for prestigious figures – leaders – within an aristocratic organization similar to a chiefdom. For the groups in the Agadez region there is evidence, from the third millennium BC, for the first attempts at copper metallurgy, which makes that area one of the oldest metalworking centers in Africa. See also: Africa, North: Sahara, Eastern; Animal Domestication; Rock Art.

Further Reading Aumassip G (2001) L’Algerie des premiers hommes. Paris: Ibis Press. Barich BE (ed.) (1987) British Archaeological Reports, International Series 368: Archaeology and Environment in the Libyan Sahara: The Excavations in the Tadrart Acacus, 1978–1983. Oxford: BAR. Barich BE (1998) People, Water and Grain – The Beginnings of Domestication in the Sahara and the Nile Valley. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider.

66 AFRICA, SOUTH/Herders, Farmers, and Metallurgists of South Africa Cremaschi M and Di Lernia S (eds.) (1998) Wadi Teshuinat, Palaeoenvironment and Prehistory in South-western Fezzan. Firenze: Edizioni all’Insegna del Giglio. Garcea EAA (ed.) (2001) Uan Tabu in the Settlement History of the Libyan Sahara. AZA Monographs N.2. Firenze: Edizioni all’Insegna del Giglio. Hassan FA (ed.) (2002) Droughts, Food and Culture – Ecological Change and Food Security in Africa’s Later Prehistory. New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow: Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Publishers.

Holl AFC (2004) Holocene Saharans, An Anthropological Perspective. London, New York: Continuum. Kuper R and Klees F (eds.) (1982) New Light on the Northeast African Past. Koln: Heinrich Barth Institut. Lequellec J-L (1998) Art rupestre et pre`histoire du Sahara. Paris: Editions Payot. Paris F (1996) Les se´pultures du Sahara nige´rien du Ne´olithique a` l’Islamisation (2 vols.). Paris: Orstom. Tillet Th (ed.) (1997) Sahara – Pale´omilieux et Peuplement Pre´historique au Ple´istoce`ne Superieur. Paris: L’Harmattan.

AFRICA, SOUTH Contents Herders, Farmers, and Metallurgists of South Africa Interaction of Farmers, Herders, and Foragers Kalahari Margins Late Holocene Foragers Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers

Herders, Farmers, and Metallurgists of South Africa Simon Hall and Shadreck Chirikure, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Bantu A large group of related languages spoken over much of sub-Saharan Africa. hunter-gatherer A way of life in which subsistence is based on the hunting of animals and the collection of wild plants rather than settled agriculture. Iron Age The period during which iron was utilized by people from about 3000 years ago, that in Europe, followed the Copper and Bronze Ages. In southern Africa the ‘Iron Age’ was introduced and did not develop from the local Later Stone Age and it was not preceded by a Copper or Bronze Age. Mapungubwe A World Heritage site in northern South Africa at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo Rivers. It was the capital of an ancestral Shona-speaking Kingdom that flourished between AD 1220 and 1290 and which had influence over parts of modern-day eastern Botswana and southern Zimbabwe. mixed farming A form of intensive agriculture consisting of domesticated animal and crop production as food sources where the maintenance of soil fertility results from the use of animal manure as fertilizer.

Introduction Archaeological research into the origins of food production in South Africa was only placed on a systematic footing from the 1960s. Radiocarbon dating that helped establish a well-dated 2000-year ceramic sequence was a significant contribution to this shift. The chronology of Early Farmers refuted a dominant apartheid narrative that asserted a shallow time depth for Bantu-speaking farmers in South Africa. Since the early 1990s the exposure of this suppressed archaeology has become an important part of a new democratic history. Research themes over this period have emphasized refining ceramic culture history sequences, settlement patterns and lifeways, and cognitive archaeology using ethnographic models to understand settlement space and the scale of political power (Figures 1 and 2).

The First Mixed Farmers between AD 400 and 1000 The earliest good evidence for full mixed cereal and livestock farming is dated to between AD 400 and 600. Livestock associated with pottery known as Bambata, however, predates unequivocal agropastoralism by 200–300 years and is known from Southwestern Zimbabwe, Botswana, and northern South Africa. This Bambata Pottery is enigmatic and some suggest

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next to rivers on deep alluvial soils. Where preservation allows, villages comprised a central cattle enclosure associated with metal working and ash dumps surrounded by a domestic, ring of huts and granaries. This was surrounded by a domestic ring of huts and granaries. There has been much debate as to whether this settlement layout can be interpreted through an ethnographic model called the Central Cattle Pattern, derived from late ninteenth- and twentieth-century Nguni-speaking ethnography. Huffman argues that cattle were probably socially and politically a key resource, particularly as a medium for bridewealth, from the inception of the early first millennium AD mixed farming ‘package’. Others have suggested that cattle only developed social importance toward the end of the first millennium. Hunter-gatherers were drawn toward settlements and entered into exchange and barter relationships with Early Farmers. Most farmers were selfsufficient in terms of basic livestock, cereal, ceramic, and metal production, but some settlements were larger and others had dumps associated with central cattle enclosures and which contained the debris of prestige craft work and fragments of ceramic helmet

that it is the start of the Early Farmer sequence while others link it to pioneer pastoralists or huntergatherers. It may be part of a general process that resulted in the appearance of early sheep and pottery in the Cape. Whatever the case, food production did not evolve from the local Later Stone Age. A ‘package’ comprising village life, cattle, sheep, and goats, domesticated crops such as sorghum and millet, pottery, and iron and copper metallurgy was introduced from north of the Limpopo River. This is evident because the ceramics are the southernmost expression of a much wider Early Farmer ceramic style found in central and East Africa called the Chifumbaze Complex. The Chifumbaze Complex is the archaeological expression for the complex southward movement of speakers of Bantu languages. Early farmer settlements are only found in the northern and eastern areas of the country (Figure 1). This distribution falls within the summer rainfall region and reflects the rainfall and temperature tolerances of the primary cereal crops, sorghum, and millet. Farmers sought warm, lower altitude tree, and grassland habitats and built their homesteads

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masks. The ethnographic model infers that these central zones were male activity areas and suggest shallow political hierarchies in which some production and ritual were centralized.

The Rise of Social Complexity between AD 900 and 1300 Between AD 900 and 1000, the junction of the Shashe and Limpopo Rivers saw a significant shift in political hierarchy within the Zhizo phase. A settlement known as Schroda was far larger than contemporary Zhizo settlements in the region and can be identified as the capital of an emerging chiefdom. This correlates with the intensification of trade links with entrepots such as Chibuene and Sofala on the southeast African coast. The Shashe/Limpopo area supported large elephant herds. Ivory and probably gold were exported where they entered complex trade networks with Swahili, Arab, and Indian centers around the Indian Ocean rim. Many of the thousands of glass trade beads at Schroda originated in Indonesia. At AD 1000, a new ancestral Shona-speaking chiefdom entered the Shashe/Limpopo valley, wrested power from Schroda and intensified trade links with the coast (see Political Complexity, Rise of). A new and larger capital was established at K2 and the number of smaller contemporary settlements increased significantly. Increasing political power and wealth was underwritten through the control of exotic trade goods that now included cloth. This is reflected by changes in the organization of the capital, where the central cattle enclosure was moved out of the town and suggests that political power was no longer

based only on cattle. James Denbow has shown that contemporary Toutswe farmers in Eastern Botswana to the west of K2 were also deeply enmeshed in trade relationships. These extended deep into the Kalahari and connected with the Okavango area of North Western Botswana and both pastoralists and hunter-gatherers were involved in commodity production and exchange. Despite this regional trade, however, Toutswe political hierarchies never matched those of the Shashe/Limpopo because access to exotic trade goods was limited. Early in the thirteenth century, K2 was abandoned and the town moved only 1 km away to Mapungubwe Hill (Figure 2). The status of elites found full expression with their occupation on top of the hill, deliberately separated from the commoner section of the town below. The establishment of the Mapungubwe state initiated the Zimbabwe Culture sequence. This represents a class-based system in which ruling elites, as sacred leaders, centralized political and ritual power, particularly rain making. Gold was assimilated into an elite value system and expressed in the thousands of gold beads, gold-plated rhino, bowl, and sceptre found in the royal cemetery on Mapungubwe Hill (Figure 3). The state extended its control into eastern Botswana though the boundaries are not yet fully established. Agricultural production was extensive, and the distribution of commoner homesteads on the edges of the Limpopo indicates that floodplain agriculture was important. The Mapungubwe State collapsed around AD 1300, possibly because of climatic and political factors. The main continuity in the Zimbabwe Culture was north of the Limpopo River with the rise of Great Zimbabwe, the capital of the Zimbabwe State that dominated much of present-day Zimbabwe.

Figure 2 Mapungubwe, the capital of the thirteenth-century Mapungubwe state.

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Figure 3 The gold rhino from the royal cemetery at Mapungubwe.

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Figure 4 Distribution of Later Farmers. Taken from Mitchell P (2002) The Archaeology of Southern Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Later Farming Communities in the Second Millennium AD There is a significant break in the ceramic sequence south of the Limpopo River, dating to the eleventh century AD in present-day Kwazulu-Natal, and in the fourteenth century in the areas just south of the Limpopo River. New ceramic styles and different

settlement preferences mark the appearance of new Bantu-speaking farmers (Figures 4 and 5). The newcomers were ancestral Nguni and Sotho/Tswanaspeakers who initiated the history of the majority of contemporary South Africans. On linguistic and cultural grounds, the origins of these new groups are in East Africa.

70 AFRICA, SOUTH/Herders, Farmers, and Metallurgists of South Africa

Figure 5 The central area of Molokwane, a stone wall western Tswana town dating between the eighteenth century and 1827.

By the fourteenth century, ancestral Sotho/Tswanaspeakers were established in the Limpopo region. By the end of the fifteenth century, they had expanded southwards to the edge of the southern grasslands. In the north, Sotho combined with Shona-speakers who had moved south across the Limpopo River, and by the sixteenth century had intermarried and melded to develop Venda as a language and an identity. Below the escarpment to the east, ancestral Nguni-speakers, known as Blackburn, had first settled the coastal area by the twelfth century AD. From AD 1300 a second phase had developed known as Moor Park. They moved beyond the mixed habitats of the major river valleys and expanded onto the higher grasslands over the escarpment to the west, as well as southwards along the coast to the edge of the viable summer rainfall zone. These Nguni farmers were the first to use dry stone walls to mark homestead boundaries and internal activity areas. Moor Park settlements are frequently found on steep-sided hills that may indicate the defense of agricultural resources in the harsher climatic conditions at the beginning of the Little Ice Age. Climatic downturns may also have encouraged dispersals by Nguni-speakers, one at AD 1600 and another at AD 1700, over the escarpment into the western Sotho/Tswana dominated interior. Here they initially resisted Sotho/Tswana-speakers but were soon culturally assimilated. From the sixteeenth-century, Sotho-Tswana speakers had pushed further south across the Vaal River and onto the grassland habitats of the Eastern Free State and by the seventeenth century had reached the climatic and environmental limits of sorghum and millet farming. The use of dry stone walls to delineate settlements was widespread by this time, particularly on the treeless habitats of the southern grasslands. There is a relatively direct historic relationship

between this archaeology and the ethnographic ‘present’, and analogy allows settlement structure to be ‘read’ in some detail. In addition, as Tim Maggs has shown, this period comes within the reach of oral records which attach specific identities to settlement types and individual settlements. Archaeological evidence, including rock art, ethnohistoric records, and linguistic research show that complex interactions between hunter-gatherers and farmers continued well into the nineteenth century. In the second half of the eighteenth century a process of political centralization gathered momentum among western and eastern Tswana-speakers. The oral records describe considerable tension between competing chiefdoms. The archaeological correlate is the aggregation of homesteads into large towns, some of which were clearly defensive (Figure 5). The first Europeans to visit some of them recorded populations of up to 20 000 people. The factors responsible for political centralization vary between demographic surges, drought, the introduction of maize, and the colonial frontier pushing from the Cape Colony in the south and from the south east African coast. Toward the end of the eighteenthcentury elephant ivory was a major trade item, and competition over ivory, cattle, women, and other resources for local use and trade were intense. The best-known response to colonial pressure came in the early nineteenth century when the Zulu state, under Shaka, rose to power in the east. Colonial historians of early nineteenth-century history blamed Shaka for the mfecane, a period of political instability between the early 1820s and the late 1830s. Revisionist historians see African state formation and increased militarism as a response to colonial pressures of which the Great Trek northwards from the Cape Colony was an inseparable process. With this event, the frontier

AFRICA, SOUTH/Interaction of Farmers, Herders, and Foragers 71

started to close and by the end of the nineteenth century South African farmers had all but lost their independence. See also: Africa, Central: Great Lakes Area; Zimbabwe

Plateau and Surrounding Areas; Africa, South: Kalahari Margins; Political Complexity, Rise of.

Further Reading Hall M (1987) The Changing Past: Farmers Kings and Traders in Southern Africa, 200–1860. Cape Town: David Philip. Hammond-Tooke WD (1993) The Roots of Black South Africa. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball. Huffman TN (1996) Snakes and Crocodiles: Power and Symbolism in Ancient Zimbabwe. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Leslie M and Maggs T (eds.) (2000) African Naissance: The Limpopo Valley 1000 years ago. South African Archaeological Society Goodwin Series 8. Cape Town: South African Archaeological Society. Mitchell P (2002) The Archaeology of Southern Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Interaction of Farmers, Herders, and Foragers Andrew B Smith, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

animals (cattle, sheep, goats) or traditional African grains (sorghum, millet) to be found in southern Africa, but how these were transferred is still disputed. It used to be thought that the introduction of domestic food products was initially done by immigrant Iron Age farmers into South Africa, but it is now clear that these farmers only arrived about 1800 years ago, and the sheep bones found mostly in cave sites of the Western and Southern Cape predate their arrival by at least 200 years. The Khoekhoen (‘Hottentots’) are known historically as the herders of the Cape, and were some of the earliest sub-Saharan Africans to be met by European travelers in the fifteenth century. Their wealth in cattle made them a focus of attention, as their animals were used to refresh the ships plying the East India trade. Once sheep were excavated from sites at the Cape dating to 2000 years ago, and especially when excavations began at Kasteelberg on the west coast of South Africa, north of Cape Town, and dates of over 1800 years emerged in association with large numbers of sheep bones, it was immediately assumed that the shepherds were ancestors of the historic Khoekhoen. Today, not everyone agrees with this assumption, so there is some debate on the development of pastoral society in South Africa. There are thus two components to the arguments on the origins of food production in southern Africa: (1) how the animals and plants got there, and by whom; (2) what happened once these commodities arrived and spread to the Cape.

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Khoisan Herders Glossary farmer Someone who works on or operates a farm. forager Someone who hunts for food and provisions. herder A worker who lives a semi-nomadic life, caring for various domestic animals. Khoekhoen A general name which the herding people of the Cape used for themselves. Khoisan A collective name that originally referred to the linguistic and biological groupings of aboriginal people of southern Africa. It has now taken on a cultural meaning in the popular literature. Soaqua A name given to hunters by the Khoekhoen of the Cape. The word means ‘people different from ourselves’ and became associated with those without livestock, or people who stole livestock.

The Debate on Early Food Production in Southern Africa The arrival of food producers to southern Africa was the end of a long process of gradual dispersal. The route of domestic animals into the subcontinent had to be from the north, as there are no wild progenitors of the

Khoisan people are the aboriginal inhabitants of southern Africa. Although they must have formed a single genetic population at one time, linguistically there are three distinct groups whose click languages are mutually unintelligible. This suggests separation over a considerable period of time. Recent physical anthropological work by Morris has suggested that there are no Khoisan skeletons to be found north of the Zambezi River, so any involvement of Khoisan people with domestic animals had to take place either along the Zambezi, or the rivers systems to the west, such as the Kavango River. This immediately implies the movement of domestic stock to southern Africa by non-South Africans, either farmers or pastoralists coming most probably from East Africa via a tsetsefree corridor (Figure 1), although movement via Angola from the Congo cannot be ruled out. The reason for this lack of clarity is due to large areas of Central Africa being poorly understood archaeologically, and small groups of migrating pastoral people may leave very little signs of their passing

72 AMERICAS, NORTH/Interaction of Farmers, Herders, and Foragers

Ngamuriak

Proposed route of sheep circa 2000 B.P. Distribution of ripple-rim ceramics c. 2000 B.P. Bambata Lowland rain forest

Geduld Falls Rock

Distribution of species of morsitans tsetse

Spoegrivier Kasteelberg Die Krans Boomplaas Witklip Die Kelders Blombos

Figure 1 Possible route of movement of domestic stock in Southern Africa 2000 BP. Taken from Smith AB (2006) Excavations at Kasteelberg and Origins of the Khoekhoen in Western Cape, South Africa.

(see Africa, East: Foragers; Africa, North: Sahara, Eastern; Africa, West: Early Holocene Foragers). Support for an East African connection comes from linguistic work by Ehret which indicates that words for ‘ram’, ‘young ram’, and ‘milk ewe’ in Khoe languages came from a putative East Sahelian language that existed in East Africa. Khoe-speaking hunters still live along the Kavango River in the Caprivi, and the river systems of northeastern Botswana south of the Zambezi. This is also the base of the language spoken by the Khoekhoen of the Cape. Thus, it would appear that the Khoekhoe ancestors probably came from the area of the Kavango and Zambezi. The questions is: when did this happen? One scenario would have domestic sheep arriving in Caprivi via pastoralists or agriculturalists from East Africa and transferred to Khoe-speaking hunters who adopted sheep herding, and who spread southwards, eventually reaching the Cape some 2000 years ago. The initial arrivals were small groups who are difficult to see archaeologically, and it is from this population that the early sheep bones and pottery were transferred to hunters who occupied the small rock shelters (Figure 2). Once the herders became established, and their flocks grew, Smith suggests they used Kasteelberg as an aggregation point for harvesting seals, and at the same time used the fat mixed with ochre in ceremonies.

An alternative is suggested by Sadr that the people inhabiting such sites as Spoegrivier Cave, Die Kelders Cave, Blombos Cave, and Kasteelberg ‘G’ open-site were indigenous hunters of the Cape who occupied these sites before and after the introduction of sheep and pottery, and who obtained sheep via internal exchange systems to become independent herders. This scenario would further suggest that the Khoekhoen, as known historically, were later arrivals at the Cape, and who were the people who introduced cattle and lugged pottery.

Southern African Iron Age Farmers The arrival of Iron Age farmers to South Africa brought the widest range of domestic plants and animals. These people have been divided into three groups; (1) the Kwale branch of East African Urewe Tradition; (2) the Nkope branch of the Urewe Tradition; and (3) the Kalundu Tradition from the Congo. They brought with them ceramics whose designs can be traced further north. They also brought an African language, known as Ntu, which is part of the Niger– Congo family, and has its roots in the Cross Rivers area of West Africa. They introduced iron technology which was crucial for making tools to clear fields in the slash-and-burn system used, and for weapons. Huffman believes that the layout of the

AMERICAS, NORTH/Interaction of Farmers, Herders, and Foragers 73

Figure 2 Excavated sites at Kasteelberg, Vredenburg Peninsular, Western Cape province, South Africa. Taken form Smith AB (2006) Excavations at Kasteelberg and the origins of the Khoekhoen in the Western Cape, South Africa.

homesteads, which he calls the Central Cattle Pattern, with huts surrounding the cattle kraal, and with burials in the central cattle area, can trace its origins to the earliest arrivals. Not everyone agrees. Lane is skeptical that such a tradition can survive without change for such a long period. Huffman’s system of decorative symbols on ceramics currently has the strongest voice, and adherents would say the system also carries through to the present.

Relations between Hunters and Food Producers Since the evidence indicates that food production was introduced from the north, and that the ancestors of modern Bantu-speaking farmers also came from the north, we can assume at least a partial connection, certainly as far as domestic plants are concerned. The impact of the arrival of Iron Age farmers some 1800 years ago on the aboriginal Khoisan hunting population along the southeast coast of southern Africa may initially have been minimal, as the first farmers needed to adjust to local conditions. This would have been particularly true of the introduction of cattle which Gifford-Gonzalez says needed to deal with epizootic diseases carried by wild animals, such as buffalo and neonate wildebeest, and which are potentially fatal to cattle. By 1500 years ago, the highveld of South Africa was being colonized, and the biological evidence suggests that aboriginal hunters were subsumed into Iron Age populations as African farmers took wives from among the hunters. This resulted in hypergyny (one-way gene flow), since few hunters could have had access to the cattle

needed for bride-wealth payments to obtain farming wives. At the Cape, the historical evidence hints that hunters (called Soaqua) continued to maintain a separate existence to the Khoekhoen, right up to the colonial period in the seventeenth century. This leads to the Dutch perceived separation of ‘Bushmen’ and ‘Hottentots’, as hunters and herders respectively, with the Khoekhoen being the dominant group. In fact, a description by the governor of the Cape, Simon van der Stel, in 1685 epitomizes their relationship: ‘‘We find that these Soaquas are just the same as the poor in Europe, each tribe of Hottentots having some of them and employing them to bring news of the approach of a strange tribe. They steal nothing from the kraals of their employers but regularly from other kraals . . . possessing nothing . . . except what they acquire by theft.’’ The historian Elphick challenged this separation, and suggested by the colonial period there was only one group of ‘Hottentots’, and that the Soaqua were Khoekhoen who had lost their stock through theft or disease, and were on the downward part of a cycle of fortune. The separation between Khoekhoen and Bantuspeaking farmers was ecological. The Cape is a winter rainfall area, so was not available to agriculturalists with summer rainfall crops. Iron Age people never spread to the Cape, leaving the southwest and Atlantic coastal areas open for pastoralism, while in the dry interior the hunters held sway until later in the historic period when deep underground water could be tapped using wind-driven pumps. See also: Africa, East: Foragers; Africa, North: Sahara,

Eastern; Africa, West: Early Holocene Foragers.

74 AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins

Further Reading Ehret C (1998) An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History, 1000 BC to AD 400. Oxford: James Currey. Elphick R (1977) Kraal and Castle. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Gifford-Gonzalez D (2000) Animal disease challenges to the emergence of pastoralism in sub-Saharan Africa. African Archaeological Review 17(3): 95–139. Huffman TN (1980) Ceramics, classification and Iron Age entities. African Studies 39: 123–174. Huffman TN (1986) Iron Age settlement patterns and the origins of class distinction in southern Africa. Advances in World Archaeology 5: 291–338. Lane P (1994–95) The use and abuse of ethnography in Iron Age studies of southern Africa. Azania 29/30: 51–64. Morris AG (2002) Isolation and the origin of the Khoisan: Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene human evolution at the southern end of Africa. Human Evolution 17(3–4): 231–240. Sadr K (2003) The Neolithic of southern Africa. Journal of African History 44: 195–209. Smith AB (2005) African Herders: Emergence of Pastoral Traditions. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Smith AB (2006) Excavations at Kasteelberg and origins of the Khoekhoen in Western Cape, South Africa. Oxford: BAR International Series 1537.

Kalahari Margins James Denbow, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

Okavango–Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers. In the north, the Okavango Delta, one of the largest inland deltas in the world, provides a counterpoint to the otherwise flat and thirsty sands of the Kalahari sandveld into which it drains. From the Makgadikgadi salt pans to the Limpopo River, greater physiographic relief prevails on the more fertile soils of the hardveld, which today support over 80% of the region’s population. While the climate of the Kalahari has remained relatively stable over the past two millenniums, the archaeological record indicates that a number of important cultural and economic transformations have occurred, first as domesticated livestock were introduced to supplement forager subsistence strategies and, later, as more sedentary agropastoral communities settled the more productive regions of eastern Botswana and along the margins of the Okavango Delta (Figure 1). By CE 1000 changes in the internal dynamics of subsistence production, enhanced by the establishment of local trade networks that carried game products, metal goods, and other valued objects, led to more regional political formations and the appearance of the first chiefdoms (see Political Complexity, Rise of). Connections with longer-distance trade networks in luxury goods that reached, through intermediaries in the Limpopo valley, eastward to the Indian Ocean accompanied these internal changes, eventually underwriting the more complex political and social formations of the historic period.

ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Foragers to Herder-Foragers: 100 BCE–CE 700 Glossary Great Zimbabwe The name given to the remains of stone, sometimes referred to as the Great Zimbabwe Ruins, of an ancient Southern African city, located at 20
160 S 30
540 E in present-day Zimbabwe which was once the center of a vast empire known as the Munhumutapa Empire (also called Monomotapa or Mwene Mutapa Empire). chiefdom Any community led by an individual known as a chief. Chiefdoms are characterized by pervasive inequality of peoples and centralization of authority. Iron Age The stage in the development of any people where the use of iron implements as tools and weapons is prominent. The Iron Age is the last principal period in the three-age system for classifying prehistoric societies, preceded by the Bronze Age. In sub-Saharan Africa this system must be modified because no Bronze Age comes between the Late Stone Age and the Iron Age. Instead, the Iron Age follows directly from, and in some areas overlaps with, the Late Stone Age.

Introduction This chapter discusses the period between approximately 100 BCE and CE 1700, encompassing those parts of the Kalahari region lying between the

The Appearance of Sheep and Cattle

Beginning around 2000 years ago archaeological data from the Okavango region at sites such as Toteng 1 and Lotshitshi indicate that domesticated cattle and sheep were added in small numbers to the subsistence economy of Late Stone Age (LSA) populations living by hunting, gathering, and, in some cases, fishing. While early dates for herder-foraging in northern Botswana were once viewed with skepticism because of potential problems of association between charcoal samples and the domestic animal bones they were meant to date due to mixing in the loose Kalahari sand, the most recent calibrated AMS (accelerator mass spectroscopy) dates from Toteng, done directly on cattle and sheep bones, place the appearance of both in northern Botswana between 200 BCE and 100 CE. The domesticated animal remains at the site predate levels containing Bambata ceramics by several hundred years, indicating that the economic changes associated with herder-foraging spread independently from pottery making and/or use.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins 75

Serondella Tsodilo Hills

Divuvu and Nqoma

Okavango Delta

Lotshitshi

Toteng Hippo Tooth

Makgadikgadi Pans

Tora Nju

Kaishe Toutswe

Bosutswe Botswana

Kgaswe K2 and Mapungubwe

Losé

Gaborone

0 0

50 100 km 50

100 mi

Administrative districts Geographic features Sandveld/ hardveld boundary Figure 1 Selected archaeological sites in northern and eastern Botswana. ã 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Bambata Ware

Calibrated dates for the appearance of Bambata ware at Toteng range between CE 215 and 555, which brackets a date between CE 250 and 530 for a few Bambata ceramics from the Late Stone Age site of Lotshitshi near Maun. A bone apatite date of CE 790–1010 for Bambata ware from the site of Hippo Tooth extends this distribution eastward along the Ngami–Botletli River System to the southern edge of the Makgadikgadi salt pans (Figure 2). Bambata ware has also been collected from the surface of several other, presently undated, sites in the Makgadikgadi where it accompanies LSA materials. Since cattle and sheep are not indigenous to southern Africa, there has been debate about the ultimate source of these domesticates for hunters and gatherers living below the Kunene–Okavango–Zambezi Rivers. Some argue for a source in the earlier pastoral Neolithic of East Africa, while others propose more western origins – either in the Early Iron Age of northern Angola

and the Congo, or perhaps even the Cameroon. Debate also surrounds the nature of the ceramic assemblages classed as Bambata, with some arguing for indigenous production of these ceramics by local hunter-gatherers while others suggest that the ceramics were obtained through trade with Early Iron Age communities, perhaps even as fragments used for ritual purposes or curiosities rather than as functional vessels. Apart from generalized stylistic resemblances to some ceramics from Benfica in western Angola, however, no presently known Iron Age sites north or south of the Okavango–Zambezi Rivers appear to be definitive. Sources for these early wares are unknown. What is certain is that a diversity of hunting, gathering, fishing, and herding adaptations developed along the rivers, deserts, swamps, and other ecological zones in Botswana at the beginning of the Common Era. Precisely how stone-using foragers and herderforagers interfaced and interacted with arriving agropastoral populations after CE 500 is uncertain,

76 AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins

Figure 2 Bambata ceramics recovered from the LSA site of Hippo Tooth. ã 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

but it is likely that a variety of interactive forms developed that ranged from intermarriage and assimilation, to fleeting interaction and trade and perhaps even competitive or antagonistic relationships – especially along the western parts of the Boteti River where the presence of Khoi-speaking herder-foragers appears to have inhibited Iron Age settlement until 400– 500 years ago. During the mid-nineteenth century, historic accounts indicate that some indigenous Khoe populations in this region, such as the Deti, kept large herds of cattle that might have put them in direct competition with Bantu-speaking agropastoralists for grazing and water rights. Further east, along the southern and eastern margins of the Makgadikgadi salt pans,

Early Iron Age settlements such as Kaishe were well established by the tenth or eleventh centuries; ruins at Tora Nju and other locations extend agropastoral settlement, social stratification, and Zimbabwe hegemony into this region during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Early Iron Age Communities on the Eastern Margins of the Kalahari Between CE 600 and 800 settled communities of mixed farmers and herders appeared along the western and southern fringes of the Okavango and Chobe Rivers at sites such as Divuyu and Serondella, the

AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins 77

southeastern margins of the Makgadikgadi at Kaishe, and in the hardveld of eastern and southern Botswana. Studies of cave sediments in the Tsodilo Hills, along with changes in prehistoric site distributions in central and eastern Botswana over the past 2000 years, suggest that climatic conditions were wetter during the last half of the first millennium CE. While agropastoral communities had considerable overlap with indigenous hunters and gatherers in their use of wild plants and animals, water points, firewood, and other natural resources, they also introduced more intensive systems of land use as fields were cleared for sorghum, millet, cow peas, and a variety of other crops. More regulated systems of land rights were also needed to manage growing herds of cattle, goats, and sheep, with their increased labor, grazing, and water demands. Cattle Wealth and Early Chiefdoms in Eastern Botswana: CE 700–1000

Between approximately CE 600 and 800 most settlements were small, mixed farming communities that combined animal husbandry and agriculture with a significant input from game and wild plants. Ceramic styles link these communities culturally to settlements known as Zhizo in Zimbabwe. Local distinctions in ceramic style, however, suggest they were a separate facies known as Taukome. By CE 700 domestic herds were large enough to leave an easily recognizable imprint on village layout in the form of centralized deposits of unburned and vitrified dung, surrounded by houses constructed of pole and a mixture of dung

and mud known as daga. This pattern recurs widely across southern Africa and is known, as the Central Cattle Pattern (CCP). Over the next 500 years, herds continued to prosper and grow, producing dung deposits over 2 m deep and 60 m in diameter in the centers of some villages. These animals provided the economic capital that permitted social and political differentiation between CE 900 and 1100. Increased social stratification based upon differential holdings of cattle and small stock is reflected in regional settlement patterns as large, long-term settlements such as Toutswemogala (Figure 3) and Bosutswe were surrounded by smaller, more ephemeral satellite communities whose locations shifted when fertile land, firewood, and other productive resources were exhausted. In concert with the increasing scale of political centralization and emerging chiefly authority exercised on a regional level, as reflected in these regional changes in settlement structure, ceramic assemblages become more standardized in form and decoration and are known as the Toutswe tradition (see Africa, South: Herders, Farmers, and Metallurgists of South Africa). Trade in Specularite and Social Differentiation in Northwestern Botswana

Social differentiation based upon intensification of commodity production and wealth accumulation was also occurring at the Tsodilo Hills in northwestern Botswana (Figure 4a and 4b) where intensive specularite mining took off between CE 800 and 1100. Control of the specularite mines at Tsodilo enabled

Figure 3 Aerial view of Toutswemogala showing the characteristic Cenchrus-covered midden that commonly developed in association with the animal kraals at deeply stratified Early Iron Age settlements in the eastern Kalahari. A smaller Cenchrus midden can be seen at the base of the hill. ã 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

78 AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins

Divuyu Nqoma

(a)

DIvuyu

1000 m 500 m

0

Nqoma

10 m

20 m

Location of Iron Age sites in the Tsodilo Hills (b) Figure 4 (a) A view of the ‘female’ hill at Tsodilo taken from the top of the ‘male’ hill showing the locations of Divuyu and Nqoma. (b) Topographic map of the Tsodilo Hills showing the locations of Divuyu and Nqoma. ã 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

the Iron Age occupants at Nqoma to procure unparalleled quantities of iron and copper jewelry. Even glass beads, cowry, and conus shells from the east coast reached the site, making it the most distant inland entrepoˆt in eastern and southern Africa to have obtained luxury goods from the Indian Ocean trade in the first millennium (Figure 5). Finds of Nqoma style ceramics in the lower levels of Bosutswe suggest that at least some of these luxury goods were directed westward through emerging Toutswe chiefdoms rather than following routes along the Zambezi River. By

the beginning of the second millennium, however, specularite sources in eastern Botswana may have replaced those of Nqoma, leading to an attenuation of these trans-Kalahari connections. Perhaps in consequence, Nqoma was abandoned as an elite settlement around CE 1100. East Coast Trade and Early Chiefdoms in East-Central Botswana: CE 1000–1200

Glass beads, marine shells, and even chickens imported from the east coast begin to appear in

AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins 79

small numbers after CE 800, but apart from the differential distribution of livestock holdings there is little other material evidence for social stratification other than a tendency for the longer-term elite settlements to be established on rocky hilltops. Whether

Figure 5 An eleventh century ivory copy of a Conus shell bead recovered from the excavations at Nqoma. Nqoma, more than 1500 km from the coast, is the most distant interior settlement so far known to have been able to import luxury items such as glass beads and cowry shells from the Indian Ocean. ã 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

rocky hilltops were chosen for defensive purposes, or for their symbolic associations with power and rainmaking, or a combination of both, is not known. Caches of glass beads and other status goods found at small sites such as Kgaswe indicate that access to luxury goods was not restricted to the elite on hilltop settlements and suggest that status differentiation was more fluid than it was to become later. Although more than 60 Toutswe period burials have been excavated, none has been found with distinctively rich grave goods that would attest to more developed class distinctions, such as those that make their appearance after CE 1200 (Figure 6). The presence of central animal kraals (a term now widely used in southern Africa to denote animal pens or byres) at all sites – from the smallest to the largest – during the Toutswe period contrasts with what is found after CE 1200 when only smaller sites continue to be organized according to the CCP. Kraals disappear from elite centers such as Bosutswe, suggesting that an important change in herd management had occurred, with animals being shifted from high-status locations to smaller, commoner settlements. Whether this was in response to ecological difficulties brought about by overgrazing around large centers, or it represents a symbolic shift associated with the establishment of more rigid social hierarchies and class differentiation, is presently unclear. But there is no doubt that new spatial and

Figure 6 Toutswe burial from Bosutswe. Analysis of the skeletal material from Bosutswe indicates a population with better nutritional health than that from Mapungubwe at the same time period. ã 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

80 AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins

Figure 7 The site of Bosutswe on the eastern edge of the Kalahari. The large mound in the center of the site is formed from the remains of substantial elite houses that date to the period after CE 1200 when most of the commoner Toutswe population was moved off the hilltop. ã 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Bosutswe Bronze bangle with glass bead Gold bangle

through the wearing of quantities of glass beads, copper and bronze jewelry, and cloth apparel (Figure 8). Metal production, rainmaking, trade in specularite, and other activities imbued with ritual and economic significance become more centralized at elite centers at this time (see Social Inequality, Development of).

Class Formation: Political and Economic Restructuring after CE 1200

2 cm

Figure 8 The elite at Bosutswe used metal jewelry to index their social status. While they were able to acquire small quantities of gold, they were not powerful enough to compete with the elite at Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe for this commodity. In consequence, they turned to the use of high-tin bronze bangles that, if kept polished, mimicked the appearance of gold. ã 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

material coordinates were mapped onto social distinctions and evidence from Bosutswe indicates that the elite now lived alone on the hilltop, spatially separated from their subordinates (Figure 7). They ate from distinctively decorated ceramics patterned after those from Mapungubwe and known as Lose´ ware, and differentiated themselves in other ways

At the beginning of the thirteenth century a political change occurred as the Bosutswe elite living in the center of the hilltop aligned themselves with the elite at Mapungubwe by adopting new ceramic styles that evoked those of Mapungubwe. They further differentiated themselves from their followers by constructing large, double-walled houses with sunken interiors similar to those found at Mapungubwe. Commoners, on the other hand, continued to use Toutswe ceramics until approximately CE 1300. Remains of burned structures containing Toutswe ceramics on top of Boutswe date this period of transition to around CE 1200 and suggest that force may have been involved in the transformation of the hilltop from a Toutswe village, replete with houses and animal kraals, to the secluded residence of a small number of elite families (Figures 9 and 10). Late thirteenth century dates for Toutswe ceramics at CCP villages in the surrounding area suggest that a more rigid system of class differentiation developed that was similar to that now attested between Leopard’s Kopje and Leokwe peoples in the Limpopo valley.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins 81

Figure 9 Remains of a burned house containing Toutswe ceramics at Bosutswe. The burning, which dates to the thirteenth century, could suggest that the removal of commoner residences from the hilltop after CE 1200 involved the use of force. ã 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

100 W ceramic seriation 0% 10% 20%

Level 1 2 3 4 5, 6, 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14, 15 Class 1e Class 1f Class 1c

Level 1 2 3 4 5, 6, 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14, 15 Class 12

Class 2b

Class 2a

Class 1a

Class 2c

Class 1b

Class 13 Class 9 Class 6 Class 6b Class 5a

Class 3a Class 7 Class 4a 4b Class 11 Class 8 Class 2d Class 2e Class 3b Class 4d

Figure 10 Changes in ceramics over time at Bosutswe. The dramatic change in ceramic classes above level 4 date to the period when elite residences inspired by Mapungubwe were built at Bosutswe. Ceramics of Class 4d originate in the Okavango region and indicate trade westward across the Kalahari. Classes 4a and 4b, on the other hand, belong to the Leopard’s Kopje and Eiland traditions in South Africa and suggest that changes in trade networks from west to east occurred after CE 1000. ã 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

82 AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins

Imported glass beads, along with locally made gold, bronze, and copper jewelry, were worn by the new Bosutswe elite as an index of their status. The earliest spindle whorls date from this period and suggest that cotton cloth was worn by the elite as another mark of social distinction. Finds of bronze prills, along with the crucibles used in melting copper and with remains of iron forge bases, further suggest that

Figure 11 Agate disks recovered from a fourteenth century cache of more than 100 at Bosutswe. Such stones may have figured in rainmaking and other rituals. ã 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

the Bosutswe elite had centralized control over metal production and exchange. The high tin content of some of the Bosutswe bronze indicates it was locally produced rather than manufactured from reworked Mapungubwe bronze. Metalworking has a well-known association with the spiritual realm in the ethnographic record and smelters, who were often associated in Central African tradition with kingship, played important roles as spiritual mediators and sometimes diviners. Other evidence suggesting that the Bosutswe elite now controlled spiritual resources include the recovery of a cache of over a hundred thin, snow-white agate disks from the floor of an elite structure in the center of the hilltop along with glass beads, bronze bangles, and the canine teeth from at least four hyena – an animal often associated with the supernatural (Figure 11). Such agate disks would not be out of place in contemporary divination kits or rain-controlling paraphernalia and it is possible they served these functions in the past as well. The period between CE 1300 and 1500 saw the rise and then collapse of Great Zimbabwe to the east. While ruins of Zimbabwe type occur northeast of the Bosutswe region, and even to the west along the margins of the Makgadikgadi pans, none are known in the region running from Bosutswe to Toutswe. Bosutswe and other Lose-affiliated sites appear to have been able to maintain their distinct cultural identity while interacting with Zimbabwe communities from which rolled-rim, graphite burnished wares of Zimbabwe style, along with a lead–tin ingot, and other unusual commodities were obtained.

Figure 12 Remains of a large, circular stonewall located on an island in the Makgadikgadi pans. Local Khoe-speaking populations still leave offerings of coins and other objects at the site. ã 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Late Holocene Foragers 83

The Forging of Contemporary Identities: the Proto-Historic Period between 1500 and 1700 The impact of the political restructuring that occurred in the Bosutswe region as Great Zimbabwe and then Khami rose to power is presently poorly known. In the Francistown area south of the Shashi River, the presence of Zimbabwe and Khami stonewalled settlements suggests that political and cultural developments there were closely aligned with southwestern Zimbabwe. Related ruins on the southern and eastern edges of the Makgadikgadi pans, however, suggest a more divergent historical trajectory – one that incorporated Khoe-speaking as well as Bantu peoples into a more complex and multiethnic political matrix (Figure 12). Bosutswe continued to be occupied by households using a cruder form of Lose ceramics. But at the end of its occupation around CE 1700, the remains of seven widely spaced stone-walled ellipses were constructed that probably served as household windbreaks – the hilltop was no longer the preserve of an exclusive elite. Similar stone ellipses are found on hilltops far to the west along the southern margins of the Makgadikgadi, but these are yet to be investigated by archaeologists. Their relationship to the cultural sequence at Bosutswe, and to the Zimbabwe and Khami period ruins in this area is also unknown. In addition, walled-off promontories that dominate the eroded headlands of the sandveld– hardveld boundary between Toutswe, Bosutswe, and the Makgadikgadi suggest that some eighteenth century settlements were sited with defense as a consideration. But the political and economic context of such unrest is uncertain, leaving the historical relationship of these ruins to contemporary constructions of social and cultural identity along the margins the Kalahari tantalizingly close, but unresolved. See also: Africa, South: Herders, Farmers, and Metallur-

gists of South Africa; Interaction of Farmers, Herders, and Foragers; Animal Domestication; Political Complexity, Rise of; Social Inequality, Development of.

Denbow JR (1990) Congo to Kalahari: Data and hypotheses about the political economy of the western stream of the Early Iron Age. African Archaeological Review 8: 139–176. Denbow JR (2002) Stolen Places: Archaeology and the politics of identity in the later prehistory of the Kalahari. In: Falola T and Jennings C (eds.) Africanizing Knowledge: African Studies Across the Disciplines, pp. 345–374. Transaction Publishers Rutgers: Summerset. Denbow JR and Thebe PC (2006) Culture and Customs of Botswana. Westport: Greenwood Press. Denbow JR and Wilmsen EN (1986) The advent and course of pastoralism in the Kalahari. Science 234: 1509–1515. Huffman TN (2005) The stylistic origin of Bambata and the spread of mixed farming in southern Africa. Southern African Humanities 17: 57–79. Lane P, Reid A, and Segobye A (1998) Ditswa Mmung: The Archaeology of Botswana. Gaborone: Pula Press and the Botswana Society. Leslie M and Maggs T (eds.) (2000) Goodwin Series, Vol. 8: African Naissance: The Limpopo Valley 1000 years Ago. Cape Town: South African Archaeological Society. Miller D (1996) The Tsodilo Jewellery: Metal Work from Northern Botswana. Rondebosch: University of Cape Town Press. Miller D (2001) Metal assemblages from the Greefswald sites, South Africa: K2, Mapungubwe southern terrace, and Mapungubwe hill. South African Archaeological Bulletin 56: 83–103. Robbins LH, Murphy ML, and Campbell AC (1998) Intensive mining of specular hematite in the Kalahari ca. AD 800–1000. Current Anthropology 39: 144–149. Robbins LH, Murphy ML, Brook GA, et al. (2000) Archaeology, palaeoenvironment, and chronology of the Tsodilo Hills White Paintings Rock Shelter, northwest Kalahari Desert, Botswana. Journal of Archaeological Science 27: 1085–1113. Robbins LH, Campbell AC, Murphy ML, Brook GA, Srivastava P, and Badenhorst S (2005) The advent of herding in southern Africa: Early AMS dates on domestic livestock from the Kalahari Desert. Current Anthropology 46: 671–677.

Late Holocene Foragers Judith Sealy, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Further Reading Calabrese JA (2000) Interregional interaction in southern Africa: Zhizo and Leopard’s Kopje relations in northern South Africa, southwestern Zimbabwe, and eastern Botswana, AD 1000 to 1200. African Archaeological Review 17: 183–210. Campbell AC, Denbow JR, and Wilmsen EN (1994) Paintings like engravings: Rock art at Tsodilo. In: Dowson T and LewisWilliams D (eds.) Contested Images: Diversity in Southern African Rock Art Research, pp. 131–158. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

forager Often used synonymously with ‘hunter-gatherer’ (see below). Some authors, following Binford, restrict the term to groups who move frequently to new sources of food or other resources, such as the Kalahari San. Holocene Geological period that extends from the present day back to about 10 000 radiocarbon years, approximately 11 430  130 calendar years BP (between 9560 and 9300 BC). hunter-gatherer Society whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, using foraging and hunting, without significant recourse to the domestication of either.

84 AMERICAS, NORTH/Late Holocene Foragers

Introduction Our knowledge of past foragers in southern Africa is geographically uneven (Figure 1). Most work has been done in coastal areas, where the high visibility of shell middens attracts attention, and where wavecut caves and rock shelters provide attractive sheltered camping sites for ancient and modern people alike. A few such areas have been the subjects of intensive study, but the archaeology of large areas of the subcontinent is known poorly, if at all. Despite efforts to correct this bias, our reconstructions continue to be heavily dependent on long sequence cave sites, where good preservation of organic materials allows for study of a wider range of remains than is the case at most open sites. These problems notwithstanding, the study of foraging people in southern Africa offers special opportunities, due to the preservation of a rich archaeological record and to the continuing existence of Khoisan groups, descended from these Late Holocene populations, who pursued a foraging lifestyle into the second half of the twentieth century.

The Mid-Holocene In mid-Holocene times, between about 8000 and 4000 BP, the arid central parts of South Africa were thinly populated, probably because warmer and likely drier conditions made already marginal environments unattractive. People were, however, living in the

coastal areas of South Africa, in the northern parts of the country, and in Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. Stone artifact assemblages from this time are characterized by very small, highly standardized artifacts, especially tiny scrapers, and in many places, crescent-shaped ‘segments’ that may have been used in arrowheads and/or as general-purpose small cutting tools (Figure 2). The composition of assemblages changed over time (segments were especially timerestricted) but the small size of the artifacts, the relatively high proportion of retouched pieces, and a preference for fine-grained stone raw material was maintained. In the southern Cape, this tradition is called the ‘Wilton’; these assemblages extend into Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe, where other names have been used. The similarity of these microlithic artifact assemblages over long distances shows that people subscribed to a shared set of social norms, at least as far as the accepted way to make tools was concerned. ‘Wilton’ artifacts include types very similar to items collected from recent San or ‘Bushmen’, including ostrich eggshell beads and beaded items, ostrich eggshell flasks, and bored stones used as digging stick weights, among others. Archaeologists are confident that the lifestyles of mid-Holocene foragers shared many similarities with those of people who continued to live by hunting and gathering into the twentieth century. Striking parallels have been demonstrated by David Lewis-Williams and others who have drawn

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Figure 1 Map showing major geographical features of South Africa and sites mentioned in the text.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Late Holocene Foragers 85

Mid-Holocene artifact assemblages are not, however, uniform. Lyn Wadley has excavated two approximately contemporary sites in the Magaliesberg, north of Johannesburg. Jubilee Shelter yielded many standardized, formal, microlithic stone artifacts, often made from carefully chosen, fine-grained stone not available in the immediate vicinity of the site. These were found together with bone tools, ostrich eggshell beads and bead-manufacturing debris, and other items. Cave James contained a very different kind of artifact assemblage with informal tools, made mostly from local raw material, suggesting much more ad hoc manufacture. There were few nonlithic artifacts, and much less evidence of craft activities. Wadley has interpreted this difference as the result of seasonal aggregation and dispersal of hunter-gatherer groups, with formal artifact assemblages and formal rules of behavior characteristic of aggregation-phase campsites.

4000 to 2000 BP Figure 2 Microlithic ‘Wilton’ stone artefacts: segments (top) and scrapers (bottom). Scale in mm.

Figure 3 Rock painting from Game Pass Shelter, Drakensberg, showing eland, large cloaked figures and (at top) small running humans.

from beliefs and practices of recent San communities to gain insight into the world views expressed in the complex and often very beautiful rock paintings found in many mountainous areas of southern Africa (Figure 3). Most of these paintings have not, so far, proved amenable to direct dating, but portable cobbles with paintings on them have been recovered from excavations, and can be dated by association with the levels in which they were found. Some are more than 6000 years old. Rock-painting traditions continued into the last few centuries, as images of colonial settlers and soldiers attest.

After about 4000 BP, populations grew substantially, and the interior of South Africa was re-occupied. In areas where detailed studies have been done, notably the Eastern and Western Cape Provinces and the Thukela River Basin of KwaZulu-Natal, we can see that lower-ranked food sources were added to the diet, including freshwater fish and shellfish, and there was greater emphasis on plant foods. Hilary Deacon has suggested that people may have practiced ‘fire-stick farming’ – burning the veld to promote the growth of geophytes, whose starchy corms were an important food item. These are just the type of changes one would expect if there were more people needing to be fed. In at least some areas, growing population density led to competition for resources, the emergence of more settled, territorial lifestyles and, no doubt, restructuring of earlier networks of trade and communication. At the same time, we also see evidence of increasing regional differentiation in artifact-making traditions. At some sites, microlithic tool-kits persisted, while at others, they were replaced by macrolithic assemblages. In a broad sense, this variation is likely to be one facet of the greater social and economic complexity of the last few millennia, but there is still much to explore in the links between material culture, economy, and identity (see Africa, South: Interaction of Farmers, Herders, and Foragers; Kalahari Margins). These groups may not have been ‘foragers’ in the strict Binfordian sense. Storage pits, a feature of sites in the southern and Eastern Cape in the last few millennia, point to elements of delayed return strategies. Those pits whose contents are preserved seem

86 AMERICAS, NORTH/Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers

to have been used mainly to store the oil-rich fruits of Pappea capensis. It is unclear just how economically important these were – the fruit is edible, but the oil was also used as a cosmetic, which may have been its main use. In the Eastern Cape, infants and young children who died were sometimes richly endowed with grave goods, especially ostrich eggshell beads. Simon Hall and Johan Binneman have suggested that these items may have been given in gift exchanges, and/or they may indicate a degree of ascribed status. These features hint at emerging complexity among Late Holocene hunter-gatherers in more productive environments. Mid- and Late Holocene hunter-gatherers were physically similar to their recent Khoisan descendants: small, lightly built people at the most gracile end of the range of documented human variation. Why this should be so is something of a mystery. It has been suggested that recent Kalahari foragers were short in stature because populations had had to adapt to scarce resources, but this clearly does not apply to equally small populations in resource-rich areas of the subcontinent; it is, therefore, probably not a major factor in the Kalahari either. People were particularly short between 4000 and 3000 BP, for reasons that are not yet well understood, but are likely to be linked to competition and conflict associated with increasing population density and the drive to intensify production. Examination of Late Holocene human skeletons has yielded remarkably little evidence of disease or trauma. Accidents or falls that resulted in broken bones or other injuries to the skeleton seem to have been rare. There are a few documented cases of interpersonal violence, all of which date to the third millennium before present – perhaps also related to conflicts to do with the re-configuration of society at that time. Overall, emerging reconstructions of Late Holocene hunter-gatherers indicate a dynamic society, with different trajectories in different regions. As in late hunter-gatherer communities in other parts of the world, there is evidence of ‘intensification’; there is no way of knowing whether this might eventually have developed into domestication, if food production had not been imported into the region.

saw the first iron-using agriculturists, who also kept sheep and cattle, move in during the first few centuries AD. Relations between food producers and foragers were complex, with evidence of interaction ranging across the spectrum from cooperation to clientship to conflict. In time, independent foragers were largely excluded from regions settled by farmers, although they continued to live until very recently in less contested areas.

New Ways of Life

Glossary

The foragers’ world was altered forever around 2000 years ago by the importation of food production from further north in Africa. In the western and southernmost parts of Africa, the first domestic sheep appeared around 2000 years ago, and by 1600 BP herding had become an important new way of life. The northern and eastern parts of the subcontinent

Early Holocene The early part of the geological Holocene period that extends from the present day back to approximately 11 430  130 years BP. forager Someone in search for food, in the context of hunter–gatherer interactions. Middle Stone Age (MSA) Period in the development of human technology between the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods of the Stone Age.

See also: Africa, Central: Great Lakes Area; Africa, East: Foragers; Africa, South: Interaction of Farmers, Herders, and Foragers; Kalahari Margins; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient.

Further Reading Deacon HJ and Deacon J (1999) Human Beginnings in South Africa: Uncovering the Secrets of the Stone Age. Cape Town: David Philip. Hall S (2000) Burial and sequence in the Later Stone Age of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. South African Archaeological Bulletin 55: 137–146. Hall S and Binneman J (1987) Later Stone Age burial variability in the Cape: A social interpretation. South African Archaeological Bulletin 42: 140–152. Mitchell P (2002) The Archaeology of Southern Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pfeiffer S (in press) The health of foragers: People of the Later Stone Age, southern Africa. In: Cohen MN and Crane-Kramer G (eds.) Ancient Health. Gainesville: University of Florida. Sealy J (2006) Diet, mobility and settlement pattern among Holocene hunter-gatherers in southernmost Africa. Current Anthropology 47: 569–595.

Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers Colin A Lewis, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

AFRICA, WEST/Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers 87 Late Pleistocene (also known as Upper Pleistocene or the Tarantian). Latter part of the geologic timescale from 1.8 million to 11 550 years BP. Later Stone Age (LSA) Period in the development of human technology that is traditionally the last part of the Stone Age.

Middle Stone Age Parts of southern Africa were occupied by peoples of Middle Stone Age (MSA) cultures during the Birnam Interstadial (35 000 to 24 000 year BP) of the latter part of the Late Pleistocene. Characteristically, the stone tools of the later MSA were triangular and irregular flakes, blades, points, knives, scrapers, and cores, as at Rose Cottage Cave in the Caledon Valley of the Free State, near the Lesotho border (Figures 1 and 2). Comparable tools have been discovered in unconsolidated deposits at Sehonghong in the Senqu (upper Orange River) Valley in Lesotho, in Strathalan Cave B near Maclear in the foothills of the Southern Drakensberg in the Eastern Cape, and elsewhere.

Middle Stone Age/Later Stone Age Transition At Sehonghong, tools that are considered transitional between the MSA and the Later Stone Age (LSA) were discovered in deposits dating between 27 500 and 23 000 year BP (Figure 3). These and all other dates are calibrated radiocarbon dates, the sigma ranges are not shown. At Strathalan Cave B longer and

broader flake-blades were produced ‘toward the end of the MSA’ and date to between 28 250 and 27 250 year BP (Figure 4). Occupation floors excavated at Strathalan Cave B and dated to 33 900 and to between 28 250 and 27 250 year BP, contained patches of packed grass that were presumably used as bedding and were located near hearths, as well as twigs, corm scales, other plant debris, and bone fragments (Figure 5). These remains indicate that the inhabitants ate corms of Watsonia as well as other plant foods, and meat derived from rock hyrax (dassies) and from various antelopes including eland, blesbuck, wildebeest, springbuck, and klipspringer. The MSA dwellers of the area probably used fire to stimulate the production of edible corms and to encourage the growth of new and sweet grass in order to attract game to the area. Fire was also important for warmth at a time of deteriorating climate. Strathalan Cave B was occupied at 25 000 year BP but was abandoned by 24 000 year BP, when extremely cold conditions existed in the adjacent Drakensberg during the Bottelnek Stadial, which began 24 000 year BP but ended before 15 000 year BP. Palaeoclimatic conditions are evidenced at altitudes above 1800 m by rock glacier and gelifluction (head) deposits and, although dated less certainly, by moraines and protalus ramparts. No further evidence of human occupation of the Southern Drakensberg exists until 12 000 year BP, when the Ravenscraig rock shelter, near Barkly East (Figure 1), was occupied. Lesotho and the interior

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Figure 2 Stone tools characteristic of the later Middle Stone Age, from Rose Cottage Cave, Free State, South Africa. 1, flake; 2, 3, point; 4, blade; 5, 6, core reduced piece; 7, point with reduced butt; 8, scraper; 9, knife; 10, spall; 11, adze; 12, core rejuvenation flake; 13, blade. Reproduced from L Wadley (1991) Rose Cottage Cave: Background and a preliminary report on the recent excavations. South African Archaeological Bulletin 46: 125–130, with permission from the South African Archaeological Society.

Figure 4 Long and broad flake blades from Strathalan Cave B, produced ‘toward the end of the MSA’: 1, flake-blade; 2–6, retouched flakes; 7, point. Reproduced from Opperman H (1996) Strathalan Cave B, north-eastern Cape Province, South Africa: Evidence for human behaviour 29,000–26,000 years ago. Quaternary International 33: 45–53, with permission of Elsevier/INQUA.

Figure 3 Formal stone tools of the later MSA, Sehonghong, Lesotho. 1–4, scrapers; 5, flake; 6–9, knives. Reproduced from PJ Mitchell (1994) Understanding the MSA/LSA transition: The pre-20 000 BP assemblages from new excavations at Sehonghong rock shelter, Lesotho. Southern African Field Archaeology 3: 15–25, with permission from the Board of the Trustees of the Albany Museum, Grahamstown.

AFRICA, WEST/Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers 89

of South Africa were apparently unoccupied during the Bottelnek Stadial and earlier part of the succeeding Late Glacial, which lasted from 15 000 until 11 500 year BP.

Areas at lower altitudes and on the coastal side of the Great Escarpment (Drakensberg) were occupied during the Bottelnek Stadial, as at Howison’s Poort near Grahamstown, Nelson Bay Cave near Plettenberg Bay, Melkhoutboom Cave between Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth, and Boomplaas near Oudtshoorn.

Howieson’s Poort: A Problem Type-Site

Figure 5 Plant remains on an occupation floor dating to 33 900 year BP, Strathalan Cave B. Photographed and reproduced by permission of H. Opperman.

Excavations in a rock shelter in Howison’s Poort (misspelt Howieson’s in the archaeological literature) revealed the presence of artifacts of both MSA and LSA character (Figures 6 and 7) and the whole artifact assemblage was named the Howieson’s Poort industry. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal from excavations at the Howieson’s Poort type-site in 1965 (Figure 8) indicated that the artifacts had accumulated between 23 000 and 10 500 years ago (the calibrated dates are here rounded to the nearest 500 years). These dates were initially considered too young, since artifact

Figure 6 Artifacts of mixed MSA/LSA character from the Howieson’s Poort type-site: (a), obliquely backed blades; (b) retouched unifacial points. Reproduced from Deacon J (1995) An unsolved mystery at the Howieson’s Poort name site. South African Archaeological Bulletin 50: 110–120, by permission of the South African Archaeological Society.

90 AFRICA, WEST/Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers

Later Stone Age Industries

Figure 7 Segments, such as occur both ‘‘in a restricted time slot in the MSA. . .and in the middle Holocene during the LSA’’ (Deacon, 1995): Howieson’s Poort type-site. They were probably mounted onto handles to form cutting tools. Reproduced from Deacon J (1995) An unsolved mystery at the Howieson’s Poort name site. South African Archaeological Bulletin 50: 110–120, by permission of the South African Archaeological Society.

assemblages of similar character at Klasies River Mouth and elsewhere in Africa are thought to center on 70 000 year BP. Geomorphological examination of fluvial sediments in Howieson’s Poort, supported by radiocarbon dating, has shown that flood plain deposition began on the floor of the Poort around 10 750 year BP, as fluvial and associated processes reworked sediments from the valley sides in the Early Holocene. This time period was apparently moister than the preceding Late Glacial and Bottelnek Stadial. The sediments at the Howieson’s Poort type-site have not been reworked into the valley floor deposits, presumably due to their favored location within the rock shelter. The stratigraphic layer within which the artifacts occur (Figure 8, layer 4) is the thickest unit at that site and includes roof spalls such as might have taken place under cold and frosty conditions during the Bottelnek Stadial. There is no geomorphological reason to doubt the radiocarbon dates from the archaeological type-site. The Howieson’s Poort industry, at least at the type-site, may be much younger than was previously believed and possibly form part of the LSA rather than the MSA.

Three LSA industries have been widely recognized in South Africa: Robberg, Oakhurst Complex, and Wilton, the last of which is younger than the Early Holocene. Backed tools, scrapers of various sizes, unretouched microlithic bladelets, and bladelet cores are characteristic of the Robberg industry (Figure 9). This industry was identified at Nelson Bay Cave on the Robberg Peninsula (after which it has been named), near Plettenberg Bay, where it post-dates 22 000 but pre-dates 14 000 year BP. The same industry dates from somewhat before 18 000 but ended before 12 250 year BP at Melkhoutboom and from after 24 000 but before 17 000 year BP at Boomplaas. Artifacts typical of the Robberg have also been found at some sites inland of the Drakensberg, as at Rose Cottage Cave where they pre-date 15 000 year BP. The Robberg industry apparently existed more recently in Lesotho and adjacent upland areas than elsewhere in the subcontinent. Non-stone tools associated with the Robberg include bone and ostrich eggshell beads, tortoise-shell bowls and polished bone points. At Nelson Bay Cave the fauna associated with the Robberg industry was animals typical of opencountry, grassy habitats, including giant buffalo, an equine that may have been a quagga, springbok, and alcelaphine antelopes: blesbok/bontebok, wildebeest, hartebeest, and a giant alcelaphine. They indicate that after 22 000 but before 14 000 year BP there were extensive grasslands on the coastal plateau in the Plettenberg Bay area and not the present climax vegetation type of closed evergreen forest. Virtually no remains of sea mammals occur in Robberg industry levels at Nelson Bay Cave, presumably because sea levels were much lower than at present and the cave was therefore located too far from the coast for them to be exploited by its human inhabitants. The Oakhurst Complex is named after a type-site near Wilderness on the southern Cape coast. End, round, and D-shaped scrapers; duckbill scrapers with parallel sides and outward splay toward their terminus; wide-ranging polished stone tools, and few microliths are typical of the complex (Figure 10). At Ravenscraig, in the Southern Drakensberg, Oakhurst assemblages date from 12 000 year BP but are at least 2000 years older at sites that include Bushman Rock Shelter in Mpumalanga. They have also been reported from the south and west coasts of the subcontinent as well as from the Free State, Lesotho, KwaZuluNatal, and elsewhere. The Albany industry is a regional variant of the complex in coastal and adjacent areas, while the Lockshoek industry is a variant in the Karoo.

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Figure 8 View of excavation into deposits of the Howieson’s Poort type-site, showing the position of radiocarbon-dated charcoal samples with their calibrated dates and laboratory analysis numbers. The stratigraphic layers are also shown as is the compass orientation of the section. Layer 4 contained most artifacts. Layer (5) was ‘sand of decomposed bedrock’. Reproduced from Deacon J (1995) An unsolved mystery at the Howieson’s Poort name site. South African Archaeological Bulletin 50: 110–120, by permission of the South African Archaeological Society, but with calibrated dates.

Figure 9 Distribution and characteristic artifacts of the Robberg industry showing bladelet cores and bladelets (left), large and small scrapers and backed tools. Reproduced with permission from Deacon HJ and Deacon J (1999) Human Beginnings in South Africa: Uncovering the Secrets of the Stone Age. Cape Town: David Philip.

The Albany industry dates from 14 000 to 10 000 year BP at Nelson Bay Cave, 12 250 to 8000 year BP at Melkhoutboom, pre-dates 17 000 but ended

before 7250 year BP at Boomplaas, and existed before 11 250 but ended before 7500 BP at The Havens Cave in the Baviaanskloof, some 50 km inland from the

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Figure 10 Sites at which the Oakhurst Industrial Complex has been dated, with typical artifacts. After Deacon HJ and Deacon J (1999) Human Beginnings in South Africa: Uncovering the Secrets of the Stone Age. Cape Town: David Philip, by permission of HJ and J Deacon, with map after Wadley L (2000) The Early Holocene layers of Rose Cottage Cave, Eastern Free State: Technology, spatial patterns and environment. South African Archaeological Bulletin 55: 18–31, by permission of the South African Archaeological Society.

coast west of Port Elizabeth. The Albany industry has also been reported from many sites in the Grahamstown area and elsewhere. Seals were an important source of food during Albany times at Nelson Bay Cave, indicating that sea level had risen and the sea was near the site by 14 000 year BP after reaching a low of 130 m below that of the present during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Other important sources of meat were rock hyrax, Hippotragus spp., grysbok/ steenbok, bushpig, reedbuck, and Cape buffalo. The last reported occurrences of eland and warthog in deposits at the cave, which are associated with Albany industry levels, and the advent of bushbuck, indicate that open grasslands were being replaced by more bushy vegetation, probably as a result of increasingly wet climatic conditions as the Late Glacial was succeeded by the Early Holocene. An increase in bushy vegetation at this time also occurred on the highlands of the Free State, as near Rose Cottage Cave, possibly due to increasingly moist conditions associated with the extension of the summer rainfall region into the area in the Early Holocene. Shellfish were an important part of the diets of Albany industry foragers at Nelson Bay Cave and elsewhere in coastal areas. During Robberg and Oakhurst Complex times the inhabitants of southern Africa were foragers who may have followed seasonal migratory patterns in order to exploit the available food resources, and who occupied established (but temporary) dwelling sites. They probably lived in family/kin groups that varied in size from season to season. The population of the subcontinent, as judged from the number of

sites at which archaeological evidence has been found, was probably thinly spread and low in numbers. Major environmental changes took place during Robberg and Oakhurst Complex times, as earlier in the Quaternary. The detailed response of the human inhabitants of southern Africa to those changes, during the Late Glacial and the Early Holocene, remains to be established.

Acknowledgments Stephan Woodborne and Marc Pienaar of the Quaternary Dating Research Unit in Pretoria are thanked for calibrating dates for this overview. See also: Africa, West: Early Holocene Foragers.

Further Reading Deacon HJ (1976) Where Hunters Gathered. South African Archaeological Society Monograph Series, 1, 229 pp. Cape Town: South African Archaeological Society. Deacon HJ and Deacon J (1999) Human Beginnings in South Africa: Uncovering the Secrets of the Stone Age. Cape Town: David Philip. Deacon J (1995) An unsolved mystery at the Howieson’s Poort name site. South African Archaeological Bulletin 50: 110–120. Inskeep RR (1978) The Peopling of Southern Africa. Cape Town: David Philip. Klein RG (1972) The Late Quaternary mammalian fauna of Nelson Bay Cave (Cape Province, South Africa): Its implications for megafaunal extinctions and environmental and cultural change. Quaternary Research 2: 135–142. Lewis CA (2005) Late Glacial and Holocene palaeoclimatology of the Drakensberg of the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Quaternary International 129: 33–48.

AFRICA, WEST/Early Holocene Foragers 93 Mitchell PJ (1994) Understanding the MSA/LSA transition: The pre20 000 BP assemblages from new excavations at Sehonghong rock shelter, Lesotho. Southern African Field Archaeology 3: 15–25. Opperman H (1996) Strathalan Cave B, north-eastern Cape Province, South Africa: evidence for human behaviour 29,000–26,000 years ago. Quaternary International 33: 45–53. Singer R and Wymer JJ (1982) The Middle Stone Age at Klasies River Mouth in South Africa. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Wadley L (1991) Rose Cottage Cave: Background and a preliminary report on the recent excavations. South African Archaeological Bulletin 46: 125–130. Wadley L (1997) Rose Cottage Cave: Archaeological work 1987 to 1997. South African Journal of Science 93: 439–444. Wadley L (2000) The Early Holocene layers of Rose Cottage Cave, Eastern Free State: technology, spatial patterns and environment. South African Archaeological Bulletin 55: 18–31.

AFRICA, WEST Contents Early Holocene Foragers Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists Villages, Cities, and States

Early Holocene Foragers Joanna Casey, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary terra cotta cigars Flattened, elliptical items made of sandstone or, rarely, clay that are often scored or pecked on one or both sides. They are known only from Kintampo Complex Sites (3000–4000 years ago) in Ghana. Their function has never been determined, but abrasion on many specimens suggests grating or rasping.

The end of the Pleistocene brought dramatic climate change to West Africa. During the last glaciation in the Northern Hemisphere, Africa underwent a period of extreme aridity when the Sahara Desert expanded well beyond its current limits, and savanna and forest zones were compressed toward the coasts. Much of West Africa was unpopulated during this time, but during the early Holocene a humid phase brought plants, animals, and people back to the region. Understanding the Holocene foragers is made difficult by a number of factors. Certainly the archaeological evidence over this vast region is not as complete as one would prefer due to preservation problems and the difficulty of acquiring adequate research coverage. Equally significant is the nature of the data itself. Artifact types such as ceramics, grinding stones, and

ground stone tools that are usually associated with farming communities appear early in sequences, long before there is any evidence for domestic crops. When domestic plants and animals do appear, foraging continues to play an essential role in subsistence activities, and it is often unclear whether we are seeing mixed economies, or the interactions of subsistence specialists. With the return of humidity to the Sahara, there were no major geographical barriers to the movements of people throughout West Africa, yet researchers have tended to specialize in one of three areas: the Sahara, the sahel, or the forests and savannas (see Africa, North: Sahara, West and Central). Although the differences in these areas may be more perceived than real due to a lack of communication among researchers, there is increasing evidence that contact between these regions was infrequent until relatively late in antiquity. The terminal Pleistocene arid episode ended at around 12 000 BP with geological and palynological evidence indicating the appearance of rivers and lakes with their attendant flora and fauna. The earliest evidence for human reoccupation of the Sahara comes from small lithic scatters, characterized by blades and bladelets and sometimes shouldered Ounanian points. Little is known about the people who made the artifacts that are found in the central Sahara, but the resemblance of their artifacts to materials from North Africa suggests that they had a northern origin. At around 9500 years ago, ceramics appear at the sites of Amekni, Ti n Torha, and Tagalagal in the central Sahara (Figure 1). These are the

94 AFRICA, WEST/Early Holocene Foragers

Hoggar

Ti n Torha Uan Afuda Uan Muhugggiag

Amekni Tibesti

Adrar Bous

Air

Dhar Tichitt Tilemsi Valley Ounjougou Kourounkorokale

Yagala Kamabai

Tagalagal

Lake Chad

Rim Maadaga

Rop Dutzen Kongba

Birimi K6

Yengema Kokasu

Agarade Bosumpra

Sopie

Kpone Bingerville

Figure 1 Location of sites mentioned in the text.

Mejiro Iwo Eleru

Sumpa

Shum Laka

Afikpo Map Area

AFRICA, WEST/Early Holocene Foragers 95

earliest known ceramics on the continent, indicating that they developed independent of outside influences. Grinding stones are also in abundance at most sites and suggest an intensive use of wild grains. Faunal evidence from all sites indicates exploitation of local fish and game. Selective hunting techniques were used at Ti n Torha, and the penning of Barbary sheep is documented at Uan Afuda. At around 7500 years ago, a short but intense dry period caused a readjustment in many parts of the Sahara. Parts of the eastern and central Sahara appear to have been briefly abandoned, while in other parts people shifted their settlements with the shrinking shorelines of the lakes. In the central Sahara, people increasingly settled around the permanent water sources from which they exploited both aquatic and terrestrial resources (see Africa, North: Sahara, Eastern; Sahara, West and Central). Sites from this time are characterized by the presence of bone harpoons, numerous fish bones, and ceramics bearing wavy line motifs. Initially, the broad similarity among the sites led researchers to consider it to be one vast culture complex stretching from Senegal to the Red Sea and lasting for 3000 years. Recent research however indicates that the similarities among the sites are very superficial and can largely be attributed to similar subsistence orientations. Variations in the contributions of various plants and animals, and in the raw materials, techniques of manufacture, and styles of lithics and ceramics indicate significant regional differences that have been obscured by the focus on wavy lines and fish. The return of humidity is marked by pastoralists entering the Sahara. The earliest cattle date to 5950–5700 years BP at Adrar Bous and Uan Muhuggiag, but cattle spread rapidly throughout the Sahara and by 4000 years ago were in the Tilemsi Valley and Mema regions of Mali, and as far south as Lake Chad. Over much of the Sahara, the appearance of cattle, sheep, and goats is not accompanied by a significant change in material culture. While this may indicate the adoption of domestic animals by the settled foragers, it is also likely that the foragers and herders developed reciprocal relationships similar to those witnessed today between farmers, fishers, and herders in the inland delta of the Niger River, and among farmers and herders right across West Africa (see Africa, West: Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists). Identifying the sites of mobile pastoralists is notoriously problematic because they leave so few remains, and in West Africa it is complicated by the difficulty of distinguishing early domestic cattle from indigenous West African buffalo (Syncerus caffer). Domestic animals are attested to by the presence of bovid bones in archaeological sites, but at many of

these sites, wild animals continue to play a crucial role in the subsistence economy. South of the Sahara a different scenario prevails. During the terminal Pleistocene dry phase, forests and savannas continued to exist along the coast and probably as far north as 11 . While the area could have been a refuge for people who had abandoned the Sahara, there is little evidence for this. The post-Pleistocene rise in sea levels may have obliterated the evidence for coastal sites, but it is notable that there is little reliable evidence elsewhere for occupation between 20 000 and 13 000 years BP. Shum Laka, in Cameroon, may be an exception. Here cultural deposits go back 30 000 years, and the environment appears to have seen only minor change during the terminal Pleistocene. The earliest Holocene occupations south of the Sahel contain microliths, although it is sometimes difficult to determine whether individual authors are referring to formed, geometric microliths or simply to the small size of the lithic material. Microliths occur at many early sites in Central Africa, starting at around 40 000 BP, and appear at Shum Laka around 30 000 BP, presenting the possibility that the spread of microliths south of the Sahel came from the east. The earliest microlithic sites in West Africa include Bingerville-Highway (Coˆte d’Ivoire), Iwo Eleru (Nigeria), and Rim (Burkina Faso) which date to 13 000–11 000 years ago. Similar assemblages are found at Maadaga (Burkina Faso), Rop, Afikpo, Mejiro Cave, Dutzen Kongba (Nigeria), and Kourounkorokale (Mali). Some of these sites are overlain by microlithic assemblages bearing ceramics and ground stone tools, a trend that appeared throughout sub-Sahelian West Africa around 6000 years ago and continued until the first millennium AD. Shum Laka and Ounjougou (Mali) have early occurrences of this sort, while Iwo Eleru and Bosumpra (Ghana) are slightly later. Other sites from this period include Sopie, Kokasu (Sierra Leone), Yengema, Yagala, Kamabai (Liberia), Sumpa (Cameroun), Agarade Rock Shelter (Togo), and Kpone Shell Midden (Ghana). Nonmicrolithic occurrences with large format flakes, core tools, and prepared core technologies also occur at a small number of sites south of the sahel from the Late Pleistocene through the midHolocene. These sites were thought to be further evidence for central African affinities, but the wide and patchy distribution of these sites, along with their variability, suggests that they relate to specialized heavy-duty activities and adaptation to poor-quality raw material rather than to cultural migrations. At around 4500 years ago, the climate became arid again, and people started to leave the desert. The most dramatic response to the increasing aridity is witnessed at Dhar Tichitt in Mauritania where cattlekeeping people increasingly fortified their settlements

96 AFRICA, WEST/Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists

with stone enclosures and moved closer and closer to the shrinking water sources. Seed impressions on ceramics show an increasing reliance on wild and ultimately domestic millet by 3700 years BP. Some time after 4000 years ago, settlements start to appear in sub-Saharan West Africa. The Kintampo Complex, known only from Ghana, is the earliest of these. Kintampo sites share a material culture characterized by ground stone tools, grinding stones, ceramics bearing comb-stamped decoration, and projectile points styles that resemble those found farther to the north. The fossile directeur of the Kintampo Complex is the ‘terra-cotta cigar’, a flattened elliptical object of unknown function, made from fine-grained sandstone and scored, pecked, and/or abraded on both sides. Individual Kintampo sites have produced fishhooks, beads, and figurines. Reliable subsistence information has been scarce. The best evidence is from K6 Rock Shelter where the assemblage was dominated by wild species with evidence for an increase over time in species that prefer settlements and cleared areas. Much has been made of the domestic animal bones found at some Kintampo sites. While the cattle bones have been dismissed, the bones from one or two domestic caprines have been confirmed at K6. While these bones demonstrate that domestic animals were present during Kintampo, their contribution to the economy is unclear. Domestic millet found at Birimi in northern Ghana indicates that the Kintampo people did cultivate domestic crops, but Kintampo sites are found in diverse ecosystems, some outside of the area in which millet will grow. Furthermore, Kintampo sites are characterized by the presence of tools specific to the extraction of local resources. Both these factors, and the high incidence of wild plant and animal species in Kintampo sites suggest that farming was most likely only a part of a complex subsistence strategy.

Monographs in African Archaeology No. 51; BAR International No. 906. Oxford: Archaeopress. Casey J (2005) Holocene occupations of the forest and savanna. In: Stahl AB (ed.) African Archaeology, pp. 225–248. London: Blackwell. Cornelissen E (2003) On microlithic quartz industries at the end of the Pleistocene in Central Africa: The evidence from Shum Laka (NW Cameroon). The African Archaeological Review 20(1): 1–24. Garcea EAA (2004) An alternative way towards food production: The perspective from the Libyan Sahara. Journal of World Prehistory 18(2): 107–154. Haour AC (2003) One hundred years of archaeology in Niger. Journal of World Prehistory 17(2): 141–179. Huysecom E, Ozainne S, Kaeli F, Ballouche A, Rasse M, and Stokes S (2004) Ounjougou (Mali): A history of holocene settlement at the southern edge of the Sahara. Antiquity 78: 579–593. Lavachery P (2001) The Holocene archaeological sequence of Shum Laka rock shelter (grasslands, western Cameroon). The African Archaeological Review 18(4): 213–247. MacDonald KC (1997) Kourounkorokale revisited: The Pays Mande´ and the West African microlithc technocomplex revisited. The African Archaeological Review 14(3): 161–200. Mohammed-Ali AS and Kabir ARK (2003) The wavy-line and dotted wavy line pottery in the prehistory of the central Nile and the Sahara-sahel belt. The African Archaeological Review 20(1): 25–58. Muzzolini A (1993) The emergence of a food-producing economy in the Sahara. In: Shaw T, Alexander J, and Opoko A (eds.) The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns, pp. 227–239. London: Routledge.

See also: Africa, North: Sahara, Eastern; Sahara, West and Central; Africa, South: Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers; Africa, West: Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists; Animal Domestication.

Neolithic A period in the development of human technology that is traditionally the last part of the Stone Age. herders Workers who live a semi-nomadic life, caring for various domestic animals, especially in places where these animals wander unfenced pasture lands. cultigens Organisms, particularly cultivated plants, that do not have a wild or uncultivated counterpart. These are species that were domesticated (grown and selected by humankind) from so far back in antiquity, and have undergone such drastic transformation under prehistoric human selection, that the plant ancestry is essentially unknown.

Further Reading Breunig P and Neumann K (2002) From hunters and gatherers to food producers: New archaeological and archaeobotanical evidence from the West African sahel. In: Fekri H (ed.) Droughts, Food and Culture: Ecological Change and Food Security in Africa’s Later Prehistory, pp. 123–155. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Casey J (2000) The Kintampo Complex: The Late Holocene on the Gambaga Escarpment, Northern Ghana. Cambridge

Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists Peter Breunig, J. W. Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary

West Africa is bounded on the north by the Sahara, on the east by Lake Chad, on the south by the Gulf of Guinea, and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean. Distinctive vegetation zones running in an east–west

AMERICAS, NORTH/Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists 97

direction are the result of decreasing precipitation from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahara in the north. Between the tropical rain forest along the southern coastline and the Sahara Desert, the vegetation changes from Guinean to Sudanian to Sahelian savanna. This relatively close proximity of rather different environments and their considerable shift during the last millennia most likely influenced the appearance and development of herders and farmers in West Africa. During early Holocene times, vast areas of the Sahara resembled today’s Sahelian vegetation zone. It is in this region that important cultural innovations like the manufacture of pottery and the development of pastoral economy took place. Whether pastoral beginnings go back to the eighth millennium BC, as presumed on the basis of finds from the eastern Sahara, has been questioned. However, its existence in the central and eastern Sahara during the fifth millennium BC is beyond dispute. At this time, domesticated cattle appeared along with ovicaprids. While cattle might have been domesticated autochthonous, domesticated ovicaprids (sheep and goat) are believed to come from the Near East, because the fossil record and modern biogeography both indicate that their wild progenitors never lived in Africa. After a flourishing period, the Saharan livestock herders were affected by the final desiccation of the Sahara caused by the southward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. As a consequence, herders migrated into the moister southern regions. Archaeological data indicate that they started expanding into West Africa at around 2000 BC. Formerly existing disease barriers like the tsetse belt also shifted further south so that the vast grasslands in West Africa became suitable for pastoral occupation. The migration from the Sahara to West Africa is conclusive for several reasons. First, the dates for the earliest evidence of cattle get younger the more southerly the sites are located. Then, since the earliest domesticated animals have no local counterparts in sub-Saharan Africa, they must have been imported to West Africa. Finally, in some cases, the cultural material from the Sahara and the new homeland further south show similarities. How far farming and the beginning of plant cultivation were part of these migrations is one of the most important questions of sub-Saharan archaeology. With regard to the location of the wild progenitors of the African cultigens and theoretical considerations on the cultural context of initial farming, the southern Sahara is seen as the key area where the most important food crops of sub-Saharan Africa, pearl millet and sorghum, were originally cultivated.

Like anywhere else on earth, the appearance of herders and farmers with their food-producing economy constitutes a fundamental break in the prehistory of West Africa. Its occurrence is considered the prelude to a new era classified as the ‘West African Neolithic’. Herders and farmers are represented differently in the archaeological record. While the pastoral activities of herders are generally less visible, farmers and their sedentary communities usually produce abundant archaeological remains. Contrary to other Neolithic centers in the world, for instance, the Near East, the African evidence indicates a considerable time gap between the appearance of herders and farmers. However, this ‘cattle before crops’ pattern is not very pronounced in West Africa. Here, in most cases, domesticated animals and plants (see Animal Domestication; Plant Domestication) appear almost simultaneously or with only a slight time difference. The early food-producing communities must have met favorable conditions in West Africa, because both herding and farming activities spread very rapidly in manifold ways. One of the areas where comparably intensive research on early herders and farmers has been carried out is the Tichitt–Walata escarpment in Mauritania (Figure 1). The dry-stone architecture and the considerable size of the villages along the escarpment are unique among contemporaneous settlements in West Africa. Not only is it the northernmost food-producing complex in West Africa, but recent investigations have also shown that the area is among the earliest evidence of farming activities, dated to about 1800 BC. Another example for an early agropastoral society is the Kintampo culture in Ghana, located in the forest fringe and woodland savanna zones. The Kintampo people settled in rock shelters or hamlets consisting of huts spread over areas of up to 2 ha. They possessed domesticated animals, in particular sheep/goat and probably cattle, and cultivated pearl millet. In addition, there is evidence for the exploitation of the oil palm and a range of wild resources typical for the environment of the forest fringe and woodland savanna. Whether Kintampo emerged as a result of Saharan migration or represents a case of local intensification is discussed controversially. The floodplains and margins of the Inland Niger Delta constitute another focal point of agropastoral origins in West Africa. This region was home to a variety of cultural groups with different economic adaptations, appearing in the archaeological record during the second and early first millennium BC. One group is known as the Kobadi Neolithic of specialized fishers without domestic livestock or cultigens. Other groups have

98 AMERICAS, NORTH/Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists

Figure 1 West Africa: geographic zones and archaeological areas mentioned in the text.

pastoral components, for example, Ndondi Tossokel, which originated from the Tichitt tradition in Mauritania or Winde´ Koroji. Early food-producing groups can also be found in the Sahelian zone of the Chad Basin in northeast Nigeria. Mobile herders arrived here in the early second millennium BC and became sedentary farmers or agropastoralists as documented by numerous village-like settlements dating from about 1500 BC onwards. In addition to such key areas of early food production, there are regions of marginal significance, where traces of herding cannot be detected by archaeological means or only appeared after the farming economy had established. After a period of prospering development in the second millennium BC, the early herders and farmers apparently were faced with a crisis in the first millennium BC, probably stimulated by another severe drought. In many regions, cultural sequences faded away and gave way to completely new developments. Among the economic innovations of the first millennium BC were new cultigens. While pearl millet was the only cultivated plant before, other important crops such as sorghum, African rice, cowpea, bambara groundnut, and okra as well as agro-forestry activities appeared between 500 BC and AD 500. They formed the basis of a productive Iron Age subsistence system where food security was more predictable than before. During the same period, large settlements, partly fortified, and site-size hierarchies emerged, followed by the development of urban centers, social

stratification, and inter-regional trade during the latter half of the first millennium AD. As a concomitant phenomenon of increasing cultural complexity, craft specialization is supposed to have developed during the first millennium BC (see Craft Specialization). Different concepts of craft specialization are discussed. Some accordant aspects highlight that craft specialization requires an economy able to produce surplus commodities in order to support craftsmen. It also intensifies the inequality among the members of a community, and thus favors the development of rank or class systems. But apart from these theoretical considerations, it is important to identify the existence of craft specialization in the archaeological record. Craft specialization can appear at the household level, as a form of part-time specialization concerning objects of daily use such as pottery, bone tools, mats, and basketry. In West Africa, this form of specialization possibly originated among the early herders and farmers of the second millennium BC, or even earlier in a hunter-gatherer context. A more complex craft specialization beyond the household level appears to have developed only during the first millennium BC. From this period onwards, evidence for concentrations of manufacturing by-products in specific sections of settlements is found. Another important innovation of the first millennium BC is iron metallurgy. While its origin and spread in sub-Saharan Africa is a matter of a longrunning debate, there is no doubt about its technological advancement and the demand for specialists to

AMERICAS, NORTH/Villages, Cities, and States 99

conduct iron smelting and processing. Together with early iron metallurgy, art appears as another impressive case of craft specialization. Undoubtedly, the earliest art of West Africa, the expressive terracottas of the Nok culture in central Nigeria, were created by specialists belonging to a stratified society and not by herders and farmers as a result of leisure activities. As a conclusion, the first millennium BC was a period of crises, discontinuities, and innovations with paramount importance for subsequent times. Fundamental economic, technological, and social changes took place and were the basis for developments which led to the formation of civilizations and empires only a few centuries later. See also: Animal Domestication; Craft Specialization; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading Breunig P and Neumann K (2002) Continuity or discontinuity? The 1st millennium BC – Crisis in West African prehistory. In: Lenssen-Erz T, Tegttmeir U, Kro¨pelin S, et al. (eds.) Africa Praehistorica 14: Tides of the Desert. Contributions to the Archaeology and Environmental History of Africa in Honour of Rudolph Kuper, pp. 491–505. Ko¨ ln: Heinrich-Barth-Institut. Holl AFC (1998) Livestock husbandry, pastoralisms, and territoriality: The West African record. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17: 143–165. MacDonald KC (1996) The Winde´ Koroji complex: Evidence for the peopling of the eastern Inland Niger Delta (2100–500 BC). Pre´histoire et Anthropologie Me´diterrane´ennes 5: 147–165. Magnavita C, Kahlheber S, and Eichhorn B (2004) The rise of organisational complexity in mid-first millennium BC Chad Basin. Antiquity 78, no. 301, project gallery. http://antiquity.ac. uk/projgall/magnavita/index.html. McIntosh SK (2001) West African Late Stone Age. In: Peregrine PN and Ember M (eds.) Encyclopedia of Prehistory 1, Africa, pp. 323–338. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Munson PJ (1971) The Tichitt Tradition: A Late Prehistoric Occupation of the Southwestern Sahara. PhD Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Neumann K (2005) The romance of farming: Plant cultivation and domestication in Africa. In: Stahl AB (ed.) African Archaeology, pp. 249–275. Malden: Blackwell. Smith AB (1992) Pastoralism in Africa: Origins, Development and Ecology. London: Hurst. Stahl AB (1993) Intensification in the West African Late Stone Age: A view from Central Ghana. In: Shaw T, Sinclair P, Andah B, and Okpoko A (eds.) The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns, pp. 261–273. London: Routledge. Van Neer W (2002) Food security in Western and Central Africa during the Late Holocene: The role of domestic stock keeping, hunting and fishing. In: Hassan FA (ed.) Droughts, Food and Culture: Ecological Change and Food Security in Africa’s Later Prehistory, pp. 251–274. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Watson DJ (2005) Under the rocks: Reconsidering the origin of the Kintampo tradition and the development of food production in the savanna-forest/forest of West Africa. Journal of African Archaeology 3(1): 3–55.

Villages, Cities, and States Susan Keech McIntosh, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary flotation Use of water to separate plant materials from archaeological deposits. Holocene A geological epoch covering the period from the retreat of the ice sheets at the end of the last glacial period between 11 000 and 12 000 years ago to the present. lineage A group tracing descent from a common ancestor.

In West Africa during the later Holocene, villages occupied by multiple family or lineage-based groups appeared, enabled by new subsistence technologies, including agriculture, that increased output and supported a larger number and density of people. Greater sedentism, either seasonally or year round, is reflected by labor investment in durable construction technologies and large quantities of items that are not easily portable, such as grindstones and pottery. Although the development and spread of village life associated with food production has been a source of interest and detailed investigation in the Near East since the 1950s, comparable studies in West Africa involving excavation and recovery of archaeobotanical samples are relatively recent and rare (see Paleoethnobotany). Our understanding of early village life and subsistence in West Africa is therefore fragmentary at present and likely to change significantly as new data become available. This applies equally to the development of cities and states (see Africa, West: Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists). The earliest unambiguously identified villages in West Africa were built between 3500 and 2500 BP (1800–800/400 cal BC) on the 60–100 m high escarpment (dhar) that extends for c. 400 km from Tichitt to Walata and Nema in southeast Mauritania (Figure 1). These settlements had multiple, dry-stone-walled compounds large enough to accommodate several huts or houses, granaries, and livestock (Figure 2). Some of the dhar settlements are extremely large, measuring 30–95 ha, with 200–600 compounds, suggestive of towns or central places in an emergent urban/ political hierarchy (Figure 3).These agropastoralists hunted, herded cattle, sheep and goats, and cultivated pearl millet, a drought-tolerant African cereal that was first domesticated in the Sahel of Mauritania or Niger, according to DNA analysis.

ALGERIA

Atakor

TASS ILI

SAHARA

TEGDAOUST

Senegal

JA

mb

ig

er

ia

Ba

N

GUINEA-BISSAU

ni

JENNEJENO

FUTA JALLON

CHAD Lake Chad

MOUHOUN BEND

HAUSA

BURKINA FASO

LIBERIA

NIGERIA

BIRIMI

SIERRA LEONE

IVORY GHANA COAST Lake Volta

GAJIGANNA ZILUM KURSAKATA GE ME

KANO

Lake Kainji Nig er

NOK

OLD OYO

nue

Be

IFE

MANDARA MOUNTAINS

YORUBA EDO BENIN CITY

Ch ari

ne go Lo

GUINEA

BENIN

Ga

KAWKAW

TOGO

GAMBIA

GHANA

ME MA IN L N A DE IGE ND LT R A

SENEGAL

NIGER BEND

KUMBI SALEH

NIGER

AI R

MALI NEMA

TAKRUR

MSV

LIBYA

R RA AS AD IFOR S E D

MAURITANIA

TICHITT

AC

TROPIC OF CANCER

AC U

100 AMERICAS, NORTH/Villages, Cities, and States

CAMEROON Mount Cameroon

2000 m 1000 m 500 m 0m

COUNTRIES SITE

NATURAL FEATURES AND REGIONS Lakes and Rivers EARLY STATE

Figure 1 Sites and regions mentioned in the text.

Figure 2 Dry-stone compound walls at the site of L’ouedi (c. 900 BC) atop the Tichitt escarpment. ã P. Munson.

At the village settlement of Birimi in northern Ghana, pearl millet was also cultivated by 3500– 3000 BP, and was the dominant plant species recovered from flotation samples. Three dozen burnt clay house floors have been mapped in this extensive

site belonging to the Kintampo complex. Further south in central Ghana, Kintampo is also associated with the appearance of villages and subsistence intensification involving oil palm exploitation. In northeastern Nigeria, on the Bama Deltaic soils that once

AMERICAS, NORTH/Villages, Cities, and States 101

Figure 3 Plan of walled compounds at Dakhlet el Atrouss, one of the largest villages on the Tichitt escarpment. ã R. Vernet.

bordered Lake Chad, small, ephemeral pastoralist camps occupied between 3500 and 3000 BP were replaced by larger, more sedentary settlement mounds up to 7 ha in extent occupied by agropastoralists who cultivated pearl millet. Several of the mounds have been excavated and over 100 have been surveyed and identified as part of the Gajiganna complex. As the shore of Lake Chad retreated after 3000 BP, settlers moved onto the newly exposed lakeplain in northern Nigeria and Cameroon and southern Chad, and established village settlement mounds (e.g., Kursakata, Mege) with a subsistence economy based on herding, fishing, and millet cultivation. To the northwest, older Gajiganna settlement mounds were abandoned, and larger, fortified villages with extensive storage pits, such as Zilum, were built in the same area (Figures 4 and 5). It seems that with the appearance of iron c. 2500–2200 BP and the addition of new domesticates, such as African rice and fonio, permanent village settlements were established in the Mema and Inland Niger Delta of Mali (Ja, Jenne-jeno), and in the Nok area of Nigeria, where first millennium BC sites with stone walls have recently been found. Village settlements were well established in many areas of West Africa by the first millennium AD. In some of these areas of early village settlement, sites continued to expand and develop center-andhinterland articulated systems of urban character. The Inland Niger Delta and its margins have been the focus of considerable fieldwork on these systems, which frequently involve closely clustered mound sites on the floodplain. At Ja, and in the Me´ma, the development of larger-scale settlement systems is claimed to have occurred in the first millennium BC.

At Jenne-jeno, it seems to date to the mid-first millennium AD (Figure 6). Clustered settlement mounds are not restricted to the Middle Niger; they have also been documented on the Mouhoun Bend in northern Burkina Faso in the first millennium AD. Based on excavations and survey at the mounds of the Jenne-jeno Urban Complex (Figure 7), it has been suggested that the distinct mounds were inhabited contemporaneously by different groups of functionally integrated economic specialists who resisted assimilation into a single town settlement. In this scenario, political power was weakly centralized, a view that is at odds with earlier theories that locate cities exclusively within state systems. The field research necessary to fully evaluate this hypothesis is still in its early stages. The development of new ideas about urban origins in West Africa has occurred at a time of increasing interest by archaeologists in the nature of the premodern city. It is now understood that many earlier ideas about urbanism, such as V. G. Childe’s wellknown trait-list of essential features that included writing and monumental architecture, were developed with reference to Western sequences of historical development and excluded much of sub-Saharan Africa from consideration. Investment in monument building, for example, is now seen to be a common, but not inevitable aspect of early cities. The absence of monumental architecture in large areas of West Africa likely reflects lack of suitable building materials (such as stone) in some areas and the prevalence of extensive, slash-and-burn agricultural systems that required settlement relocation after several decades, thus working against permanent installation of

102 AMERICAS, NORTH/Villages, Cities, and States

Figure 4 Magnetic anomalies at Zilum show a ditch and rampart encircling the settlement, plus hundreds of large pits. Courtesy of P. Breunig and C. Magnavita.

Figure 5 Outline in section of a large storage pit at Zilum. ã C. Magnavita.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Villages, Cities, and States 103

Figure 6 Aerial view of the settlement mounds in the Jenne-jeno Urban Complex. Jenne-jeno is in the foreground. The town of Djenne´ is on the upper left. ã R.J. McIntosh.

E

NN

JE

- Ancient sites 0

km 1.0

BANI R .

JENNEJENO

Figure 7 Plan of the settlement mounds of the Jenne-jeno Urban Complex.

populations at one location for long periods. In some areas, the location of the capital city frequently shifted. Ecological constraints linked to a value system that conceived of space as social (rooted in kin groups and genealogical proximity), rather than as a particular physical place, produced some early African urban

configurations that looked quite different than the cities of the West. The vast system of earthen embankments (iya) demarcating settlement boundaries in the YorubaEdo region of Nigeria is a prime example of a very non-Western configuration. Over 16 000 km of

104 AMERICAS, NORTH/Villages, Cities, and States

UTE IYA Ikokhan

Ihovbor Oria

Idumwowina Ute Ugbowo

0

1 km

N

Urora

Uselu

Lwogban Aduwawa

Uzama villages

Ohovbe 1

Oregbeni old canoe port

Ogbesan

palace

BENIN CITY

Ikpoba Stream

Ihimwirin Ugbeku

0

5

10 km

Figure 8 Map of earthworks (iya) around Benin City and Ute in southwestern Nigeria. From Darling P (1984) Archaeology and History in Southern Nigeria: The Ancient Linear Earthworks of Benin and Ishan, p. 89. Oxford: BAR, ã P. Darling.

embankments enclosing more than 500 interconnected settlements in a 6500 km2 area have been mapped around Benin City (Figure 8). These systems enclosed villages/towns/capitals and the agricultural lands that supported them. The total vertical height of ramparts, measured from the bottom of the ditch to the top of the bank, generally ranged from 3 to 9 m, and occasionally up to 20! The massive labor inputs required to create them imply that substantial populations were involved. Initial construction is thought to have

begun in the later first millennium AD, and multiple episodes of wall construction have been documented at the early city-state of Ife, which had inner and outer embankments enclosing an area of 20 km2. Neither the chronology, settlement layout, nor the political organization of most of these enclosured settlements has been documented, with the exception of Ife, Old Oyo, and Benin City. At the center of each of these three cities was an extensive palace inhabited by a powerful divine king, with a marketplace opposite.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Villages, Cities, and States 105

In northern Nigeria, fired brick city walls up to 20 km in length surrounded the cities and towns of Hausaland from at least the sixteenth century, but their antiquity has not been investigated archaeologically (see Cities, Ancient, and Daily Life). Historical written and oral sources speak to us of powerful kings, states, and trading empires in the late first/second millennium AD in both savanna and forest. The archaeological research needed to illuminate the early development of these polities and to provide details on the forms of political economy, and the social and religious institutions they incorporated is still in its infancy. Ritual practice involving lifelike brass heads depicting royalty was important at Ife, and clearly involved sophisticated craft specialists attached to the royal families. Ife’s role as a powerful ritual center may have been an important key to its growth and influence. In other areas, such as the early states of Takrur, Ghana, and Kanem, trade may have been the most influential factor. In the first millennium AD and even earlier, copper moved considerable distances from sources in the Sahara and southeastern Nigeria. Salt almost certainly moved long distances as well along trade networks that extended east–west and north–south. Ultimately, as pack camels became widely used in the desert, and with the arrival of the Arabs in North Africa in the seventh century, regular, trans-Saharan trade routes were established. These extended deep into West Africa to the sources of gold, incorporating earlier exchange networks. Trade entrepots and political centers, such as Tegdaoust (probably the site of Audaghust, mentioned by early Arab authors) and Kumbi Saleh (presumed to be the capital of Ghana), developed on the southern margin of the desert, strategically placed to service and to levy taxes on the trade. There is a great deal that we still do not know about the earliest emergence of towns and states in West Africa, including detailed comparative chronologies and contexts, specific historical trajectories, associations between degree of urbanization and specific political forms, and the nature of relations

between towns and their hinterlands as well as among interacting polities. That research is sure to continue to provide some surprises, including significant discoveries in unsuspected areas. Archaeologists have only begun to reconstruct the rich and diverse history of complex societies in West Africa. See also: Africa, West: Early Holocene Foragers; Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists; Cities, Ancient, and Daily Life; Paleoethnobotany.

Further Reading Andah B (2003) Genesis and development of settlements in the Guinea and savanna regions. In: The Development of Urbanism from a Global Perspective, electronically published by Uppsala University. http://www.arkeologie.uu.se/afr/projects/ BOOK/Andah/Andah.htm. Casey J (2005) Holocene occupations of the forest and savanna. In: Stahl AB (ed.) African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction, pp. 225–248. Oxford: Blackwell. Connah G (1980) Three Thousand Years in Africa : Man and His Environment in the Lake Chad Region of Nigeria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Connah G (2001) African Civilizations, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Darling P (1984) Archaeology and History in Southern Nigeria: The Ancient Linear Earthworks of Benin and Ishan. Oxford: BAR. Holl A (1986) Economie et Socie´te´ Ne´olithique du Dhar Tichitt. Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations. Holl A (2002) Land of Houlouf: Genesis of a Chadic Polity, 1900 BC–AD 1800. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Museum. LaViolette A and Fleisher J (2005) The archaeology of sub-Saharan urbanism: Cities and their countrysides. In: Stahl AB (ed.) African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction, pp. 327–352. Oxford: Blackwell. McIntosh RJ (2005) Ancient Middle Niger: Urbanism and the Self-Organizing Landscape. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McIntosh SK (ed.) (1995) Excavations at Jenne´-Jeno, Hambarketolo, and Kaniana (Inland Niger Delta, Mali), the 1981 Season. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ogundiran A (2005) Four millennia of cultural history in Nigeria (ca. 2000 BC–AD 1900). Journal of World Prehistory 19(2): 133–168.

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AGENCY Tamara L Bray, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary habitus Concept originally introduced by Marcel Mauss but later to become closely associated with work of Pierre Bourdieu; can be understood as those aspects of culture that are anchored in the body or daily practices of individuals, groups, societies, and nations, including the totality of learned habits, bodily skills, styles, tastes, and other non-discursive knowledges. modernity Term used to describe the condition of being ‘modern’; typically viewed as the historic period beginning in the nineteenth century associated with the Enlightenment, notions of progress, and the quest to rationally understand, master, and live comfortably in the world that came to dominate western thought and action of this era. new archaeology See ‘processual archaeology’. post-processual archaeology A movement within archaeology developed in the late twentieth century in reaction to perceived sterility of processual archaeology; label indicates both an engagement with postmodernism, its parent theory, as well as emergence from processual archaeology; rather than signifying any new orthodoxy, post-processualism encompasses a diversity of approaches, including structural-symbolic, contextual, feminist, phenomenological, and Marxist archaeologies; while differing in significant ways among themselves, what these different post-processual approaches share is a rejection of the idea of scientific objectivity, recognition of the indeterminacy of archaeological data, and the relevance of one’s standpoint or position with regard to the interpretation of the past. practice theory Seeks to explain the relationship between human action, on the one hand, and the extant system, or structure, on the other, by focusing on how the system shapes practice and how practice changes or reproduces the system. processual (new) archaeology Refers to both a phase and a theoretical orientation in American archaeology that dominated the field in the 1960s and 1970s; emphasized a systemic and adaptive view of culture, the search for general laws to explain human behavior and culture change, a positivist approach to science, and the rigorous use of the scientific method. praxis Understood as a theory of knowledge concerning people’s practical engagement with the world that has Marxist roots. structuration Concept and theory developed by Anthony Giddens in an attempt to reconcile fundamental dichotomies bedeviling the social sciences (e.g., agency vs. structure, subjective vs. objective, and micro vs. macro perspectives); approach focuses not on individual actors or the social totality but rather on social practices ordered across space and time that bridge these realms. structure Refers to a particular and complex organization of relations that both enable and constrain agency and social action. systems theory A trans-disciplinary meta-theory that gained currency in archaeology in the early 1960s; sought to discern rules governing the behavior of complex entities conceptualized holistically as configurations of interacting parts; provided a nomenclature for describing the organization and interdependence of any given configuration of parts connected and joined together by webs of relationships.

Introduction Over the past 20 years, agency has become an important concept in the toolbox of archaeological theory. Understood generally, if rather simplistically, as emphasizing the role of the individual in the creation of social conditions and outcomes, agency theory has had a common-sense appeal to archaeologists from a variety of theoretical backgrounds. With the collapse of consensus regarding a unitary approach to the past that has left in the wake of processual archaeology, agency theory became de rigueur in the discipline beginning in the late 1980s. As various scholars have noted, however, the concept of agency has been uncritically adopted by many as ‘good to think with’. As a result, there is considerable ambiguity surrounding the notion of agency as used within archaeology. Generally speaking, ‘agency’ may be understood as an umbrella term for the more subject-centered approaches to archaeological inquiry. The focus in agency theory is on the individual, human action, intentionality, and indeterminacy. While the concept has been fairly malleable in the hands of archaeologists, there are a few common elements within its various constructions that help to define a general sense of the term. These include a recognition of the importance of actions and motivations of agents; the idea that agency must be a socially significant quality of action rather than being simply reducible to action itself; that social life is materially and historically enabled and constrained; and that agency and structure exist in a dialectic relationship. Overall, agency may be understood as a key element in action-oriented social theory that views people as active agents in prehistory.

General History of Concept The significance of the concept of agency for social analysis and theory was most thoroughly explicated by Anthony Giddens. A sociologist by training, Giddens’ work was not aimed at anthropologists, yet his ideas held strong appeal as his account of agency was seen as a way of overcoming various two-headed monsters with which anthropology had wrestled for years. Among these ‘‘central problems’’, to use Giddens’phrase, were the relationships between structure and agency, society and the individual, free will and determinism, and social change versus social reproduction. In his writings, Giddens investigated the concept of agency in relation to structure, action, and power. These terms and notions comprise the core elements of

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a new orientation that began to emerge in anthropology in the 1970s, which came to be labeled ‘practice theory’. The roots of contemporary practice theory can be traced to Marx, his concern with production, and the idea of praxis. The notion of praxis may be understood as a theory of knowledge concerning people’s engagement with the world. In seeking to explain the relationship(s) between human action and systems or structures, e.g., how the system shapes practice and how practice changes or reproduces the system, practice theory provides for an ‘actionoriented’ account of social organization. Within this framework, structure (or the system) is understood as both the medium and the outcome of action. In other words, structure is the unintended outcome of the agent’s bringing about of effects at the same time that it is the medium through which those effects are achieved. As such, structures do not exist at any point in time or space but are always in a process of becoming (rather than being). This process of becoming is what Giddens refers to as ‘structuration’. Power, and the social relations through which it is manifest, are directly related to the agent’s transformative capacity, or her ability to produce form through work upon the world. Power is a necessary implication of the logical connection between human action and transformative capacity. In an insightful analysis of emerging theoretical trends in anthropology written two decades ago, Sherry Ortner identified practice (or praxis or action) as the key symbol of a newly developing disciplinary paradigm. She suggested that the interest in practice theory noted in the early 1980s related to increasing disenchantment with the normative views of culture and societies that had held sway within the discipline for generations. Highlighting the work of Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, and others, she outlinedhow the study of practice was not to be viewed as an antagonistic alternative to the study of systems or structures but rather as a necessary complement to such work.

History of Use in Archaeology As with most things theoretical in archaeology, interests in agency first took hold in anthropology and subsequently trickled down. Like many elements of the post-processual program that emerged in archaeology in the 1980s, concern with the role of human agency can be traced directly to dissatisfaction with various tenets of the new archaeology of the 1960s and 1970s. Given the systems-theory framework within which processual archaeology was constructed, its empirical orientation, and its principal concern with long-term processes, there was little room for the individual

or intentionality in archaeological investigations of this period (see Processual Archaeology). In the wake of the various critiques of behavioralism, ecosystems, and cultural evolutionary theory that were subsequently developed, a variety of alternative, post-processual approaches began to coalesce around an explicit concern with individual agents and agency. As a reaction to the functional and deterministic emphases of the new archaeology, agency was initially conceived in opposition to the view of prehistoric peoples as simple pawns in some highly orchestrated game. It took as its starting point the idea that humans are able to monitor the effects of their actions and act in novel and creative ways as opposed to being simple stimulus-response reactors caught up in larger, pre-existing sets of processes and systems. Among the different post-processualists contributing to an interest in agency-oriented questions in archaeology were the structural-symbolic, feminist, and Marxist contingents. Others who followed a more continuous trajectory from processual archaeology to the present and maintain a strong neoevolutionary bent have also embraced the concept of agency. Given the range of interest in the idea of agency as a useful explanatory device, it is little surprise that the concept has developed in so many different directions within the field.

Practice and Agency in Archaeology The concepts of practice and agency are closely bound up in the literature and often seem to be used interchangeably. While human agency is necessarily realized through practice, the notion of practice cannot be simply reduced to action because it has a strong element of political and social significance built into its definition. In practice theory, social agents are typically understood as individuals with goals, intentions, and subjectivities who operate within materially and historically given circumstances only partly of their own making. People are assumed to be competent and knowledgeable social actors who may conduct their daily affairs and relations both in strategic and intentional ways, and in routinized, nondiscursive ways. Their actions have both intended and unintended consequences. In the dialectical relationship between the structure within which social actors operate and the consequences of their action, or agency, both structure and agent are continuously and interactively remade. Several key terms are found within the lexicon of practice theory, the most important among these being agent, agency, structures, and structuration. Agents are the active subjects, the individuals, and social collectivities whose actions are typically understood to be purposive, determined, and knowledgeable. Agents enact

108 AGENCY

rather than possess agency and do so in the context of the socially, materially, and historically given structures of daily life. Agency is the dynamic process through which people construct and express their identity, participate in social life, and materially shape their existence. While agency constitutes a form of involvement with the world expressed through the material practices of mindful agents, it is important to note that not all agents possess the same skills, competence, knowledge, awareness, or foresight. Agency is best understood not as a thing but rather as a quality of many things and the relationships among these. The structures within which agents and agency operate are constituted by the principles and resources that orient social conduct, including the cognitive and cultural ordering of the world. The structures that shape human agency are visible only through the effects of that agency as translated into social action. In the mutual interdependence of structure and agency, or what has sometimes been called the duality of structure, the structural properties of a system are seen as both the medium and the outcome of the social practices they organize and orient. The concept of structuration, or the process of a structure’s becoming through the action and agency of knowledgeable actors, describes this recursive relationship and underscores the virtual quality of structures, which do not exist at any point in time or space but rather exhibit tendencies in action. The idea of structuration refers to ‘‘the ongoing production, maintenance, and transformation of societal institutions as well as the material, social, and symbolic conditions within which people exist and through which they reproduce and transform themselves’’ (Dobres 2000: 133). Archaeologists who take practice theory as their analytical framework tend to divide into one of two camps fissuring along the dimension of intentionality. On one side are those who view the intentionality of agents and their actions as the key aspect of agency. Within this school of thought, individuals are typically assumed to act strategically to advance their own interests. The social agents in these scenarios tend to be portrayed as rational actors interested in maximizing some element of their economic, political, or symbolic capital, their motives often taken to be autonomously constructed and universal. An extreme version of this view informs some of the Darwinian and evolutionary ecology approaches that have adopted the concept of agency. At the other end of the spectrum are those who stress the nondiscursive qualities and unintended outcomes of mindful human action as most significant. From this perspective, what agents want or intend is often irrelevant to the real social consequences of

their actions. The most important effect is rather seen to be the unwitting reproduction of the social structures within which agency is enacted. While it is recognized that social agents do often act with explicit intent and goals, it is simultaneously understood that they also often act in routinized, habitual ways in the course of everyday life. Acknowledgement of both kinds of agency in archaeological investigation comes closest to the theoretical concerns and analytical frames developed by Bourdieu and Giddens. As various scholars have noted, the study of agency cannot be separated from a study of structure. Agency only exists in a dialectical relationship to structure. In other words, one cannot talk about the agency of individual social actors without simultaneously taking into account the cultural background of those actors and the cultural structures within which those actors operate. While agency and structure are analytically distinct, they are nevertheless entwined each can be seen as the product of the other when viewed at different points in time. To understand human agency in the past, it is critical that archaeologists engage the mutuality of structure and agency, focusing equally on the antecedent historical conditions – the habitus from which the actor draws, as well as on individual action and intent.

Archaeological Studies Using the Agency Theory In North America, archaeologists have utilized practice theory and the concept of agency in a variety of research contexts ranging from the study of prehistoric technologies to concerns with the emergence of social inequality to the negotiation of social identities. Various recent studies of the Mississippian period and the rise of chiefdoms in the American bottomland, for instance, have made explicit use of agency theory in attempts to explain the transition from egalitarian to hierarchical societies in this region. Archaeologist Timothy Pauketat, who emphasizes the mutually enabling and constraining nature of the relationship between practice, agency, and structure in his work at the site of Cahokia, offers a particularly good example. In looking to explain the construction of the enormous mounds that characterize Mississippian centers and the massive amounts of labor they represent, he focused on the interests and agency of different segments of society. He argues that the practices associated with mound building were based in a pre-existing social structure but that as the scale and materiality of these practices changed, so too did the structures within which they were enacted. The end result for the Mississippian peoples was the

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hardening of social differences, the emergence of a hereditary elite, and the creation of a powerful chiefdom – unforeseen consequences of the interplay of agency, practice, and structure. In another archaeological study focused on the politics of identity and resistance, Stephen Silliman explores the role of agency in interpreting indigenous responses to the colonial enterprise in nineteenthcentury California, emphasizing both the agency of the native population and the material practices of everyday life. Archaeological excavations at the Mexican land-grant site of Rancho Petaluma in northern California produced a wealth of both westernmanufactured and traditional native goods that were found in close association with one another across the site. Attending to the large quantities of lithic debris and stone tools recovered, the investigator argued that the continuing reliance on this category of material culture represented a political choice on the part of native residents – one that speaks to processes of contestation and negotiation as well as the agency of native peoples within the changing structures and practices of everyday life. Focusing on the role of lithics as material agents, he concludes that their presence at this historic period site signified a conscious strategy on the part of indigenous workers to activate or solidify precolonial identities and associations.

Critiques of Agency Theory in Archaeology One of the most important critiques of agency theory to date has been the anti-essentialist argument brought to bear by feminist scholars in particular. Most often, the active agents with whom our models of prehistory are populated are conceived as a homogeneous lot having similar basic traits, skills, and goals. Typically, these agents are constructed as essentialized acultural, ahistorical, and atomistic beings with rational, capitalist, cost/benefit analyzing impulses. As Joan Gero notes, though it is not often articulated, it also seems to be commonly assumed that since these individuals have agency by definition, they are gendered male and colored powerful. In answering this critique, some have called for historicizing the notion of agency, identity, and the individual by situating these notions in their own unique culture historical context. A taking to heart of the dialectical relationship within which agency and structure exist would seem to obviate this problem as structures are not uniform across time or cultural space and hence we would not expect agency to be either. As is true for most forms of archaeological interpretation, agency-centered models are also vulnerable

to the projection of our own values onto the past. Such concern has been expressed with regard to the inherent emphasis placed on the autonomy of the individual and individual agency in practice theory. Various scholars have suggested that such an orientation simply mirrors contemporary western society and politics. Similarly, while the issue of having and constructing personal identities is a pervasive theme of modernity, it has not necessarily been so prevalent a concern in other times and places. From an epistemological standpoint, the privileging of agency as the most significant element in theories of social change necessarily grants individuals and their self-interested actions primacy at the expense of other modes of social interaction such as empathy or concordance. In sum, the uncritical application of agency theory in archaeology runs the risk of reproducing, if not naturalizing, the political relations and asymmetries that structure our present lives. Another point of concern revolves around the tendency to conflate agency with the actor and thus assume that evidence of agency is evidence for individuals or subjects in the archaeological record. It has been noted that while agency is a socially significant quality of action, it must be understood as both more and less than mere action. As with gender studies, becoming caught up in the search for individuals risks displacement of what should be the primary objectives of identifying and understanding the contexts, structures and intersubjective dynamics through which agents expressed themselves. The task is not so much to recover agency archaeologically as to recognize that human agency is inherent in the material remains. As Marcia-Anne Dobres has repeatedly pointed out, we do not have to find individuals in order to theorize about processes of agency in prehistory. Many scholars have argued for the central importance of agency in archaeological interpretation and the productive utility of working within this paradigm is attested by numerous recent studies. It should be clear, however, that the study of agency cannot be divorced from the study of the structures, systems, and habitus within which past lives were lived. It is also clear that archaeologists need to generate more nuanced understandings of agents and agency by incorporating concerns with social heterogeneity, gender, and identity into their analytical frameworks. Agency-based theories also need to broaden the concept of the individual beyond the liberal western sense of ‘free agents’ to include a more relational perspective. Agency should not be understood as simply located within bounded human bodies but rather within the wider sets of human relationships that make up the social person.

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Beyond human agency, such a theoretical orientation also holds much promise for furthering our models and understandings of material culture. Given that social agency is not co-terminous with the human body, we may begin to consider how objects, as material extensions of the agency of those who produced them, participate in this system of social relationships. Following Alfred Gell’s pioneering work in this area of investigation, we may begin to think about how personhood is augmented, extended, and distributed among the many objects fashioned and employed in social action. See also: Engendered Archaeology; Evolutionary Archaeology; Philosophy of Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology.

Further Reading Bourdieu P (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dobres M-A (2000) Technology and Social Agency: Outlining a Practice Framework for Archaeology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Dobres M-A and Robb J (eds.) (2000) Agency in Archaeology. London: Routledge. Gell A (1998) Art and Agency. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gero J (2000) Troubled travels in agency and feminism. In: Dobres M-A and Robb J (eds.) Agency in Archaeology, pp. 34–39. London: Routledge. Giddens A (1979) Central Problems in Social Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press. Giddens A (1981) A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, Vol.1: Power, Property, and the State. Berkeley: University of California Press. Giddens A (1984) The Constitution of Society: Outline of a Theory of Structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press. Johnson M (1989) Conceptions of agency in archaeological interpretation. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 8(2): 189–211. Ortner S (1984) Theory in anthropology since the sixties. Comparative Studies in Society and History 26: 126–166. Pauketat T (2000) The tragedy of the commoners. In: Dobres M-A and Robb J (eds.) Agency in Archaeology, pp. 113–129. London: Routledge. Saitta D (1994) Agency, class, and archaeological interpretation. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 13(3): 201–227. Silliman S (2001) Agency, practical politics, and the archaeology of culture contact. Journal of Social Archaeology 1(2): 190–209.

AGRICULTURAL FIELDS, IDENTIFICATION AND STUDY M G Elgar, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary anthrosol A soil horizon created by human activities such as cultivation, irrigation, middening or mining. biolipid A hydrocarbon-containing organic compound derived from plants or animals that is relatively stable over time. Analysis of biolipid residues may be used to help identify the original source of decayed plant or animal material. bioturbation The disruption and mixing of soils and sediments by organisms, especially by burrowing or boring (e.g., roots, earthworms), which has the effect of homogenizing the original strata. lynchet A bank of earth commonly formed at the edges of fields from plowing. midden A prehistoric refuse deposit that may contain artifacts as well as organic remains such as plants, bones and shell. plaggen soil A surface anthrosol formed by long-term manuring and mixing of the soil, usually from cultivation. soil micromorphology The study of soil morphology by microscopic methods, usually by studying thin-sections under a polarizing microscope.

Introduction The study of agriculture incorporates natural variables (e.g., climate, geology) with cultural variables (e.g., technology). The off-site emphasis of field systems requires different methodological and theoretical frameworks to the overall study of agriculture. Detailed investigations of fields reveal the practices behind agricultural production and contributes to understanding human agency and long-term human– landscape interactions. These inquiries also place agriculture in its ecological setting revealing relationships between fields, topography, and environmental conditions. For instance, we frequently find terraces in hilly regions, whereas irrigation networks are found in arid lands. Practices of this kind transform natural land into agricultural substrates following culturally defined blueprints. Alterations to the landscape – landscape modifications – are generally enduring and are frequently cumulative in their impacts. These qualities lend regional investigations of fields to questions of agricultural intensification and the long-term maintenance of farming systems.

AGRICULTURAL FIELDS, IDENTIFICATION AND STUDY 111 Table 1 Methods and applications for the study of agricultural fields by scale of analysis Scale

Primary methods

Archaeological features

Human practices

Region/ Landscape

Aerial photography Geographic Information Systems Pedestrian survey Published maps (e.g., political, property, geological, soil) Regional palaeoclimate reconstruction Remote sensing Satellite imagery

Field systems: walls, raised or ridged fields, terraces, lynchets, leveled land Water management: irrigation channels, aqueducts, drainage, water storage features Occasionally: furrows, plow marks

Adaptation to local conditions Degree of landscape modification Extent of bounded land General production capacity Land units where field units visible Water management and catchment area

Garden/Field

Architectural analysis Feature mapping Pedestrian survey

Architectural style Artifact assemblages (e.g., hoe tips) Construction materials Dimensions of field features such as raised platforms or furrows Evidence of reconstruction

Cultural associations Construction techniques and material sources Landscape history (construction, remodeling, abandonment) Planning Tillage methods

Seed bed

Coring and excavation Botanical: pollen, phytoliths, macrobotanicals Dating methods Geoarchaeology: bulk soil analyses (e.g., organic matter, nutrients, particle size, biolipids); soil micromorphology

Exposed soil to reveal: plowzone, amendment and depletion, anthropogenic soils, plow features Botanical remains Buried artifacts, crop, furrow and irrigation features Dates of architectural features Infilling and disruption of irrigation features Soil properties

Climate change Crops Cultural associations Long-term landuse impacts Soil amendment (e.g., burning, fertilization, middening), Soil depletion or overuse Tillage methods

Field system research strategies are scalar and three levels of analysis are considered here: (1) regional/ landscape, (2) garden/field, and (3) the seedbed (Table 1). These strategies are not exhaustive and the primary literature offers additional approaches.

Identifying Field Systems Intensive agriculture frequently involves the construction of landscape architecture such as field walls, terraces or lynchets, raised or ridged field features, and irrigation systems (e.g., canals, aqueducts, wells, water storage features) (Figure 1). These features enclose natural land, aid crop production, and engender land tenure. Field boundaries may appear in political and property maps and, as they are frequently maintained for generations, historical maps may identify archaeological fields in regions with long agricultural histories. Aerial photography and satellite imagery capture landscape architecture where it is still standing or is near the surface and modern vegetation is minimal (Figure 2). Remote sensing (e.g., ground-penetrating radar, magnetrometry) can identify subsurface field systems, particularly buried field walls and irrigation features. Geological and soil maps help evaluate natural resources. The value of these proxy records should be evaluated through reconnaissance and

survey of actual field systems on the ground. Geographical information systems (GISs) are employed to integrate these multiple spatial data sets, speed mapping of landscape architecture, and calculate the cultivated area. Irrigation systems rely on natural rainfall and hydraulic patterns, which should underpin their archaeological investigation. Changing water tables and tectonics may complicate the reconstruction of irrigation systems and need to be addressed in field investigations. Abandoned irrigation features can be excavated to help deduce why they failed (e.g., gradual silting up, catastrophic infill). In a study that critically applies many of the methods highlighted here, Tony Wilkinson (2003) investigated Near Eastern agricultural landscapes and the role of irrigation. Divergent agricultural adaptations were identified in the rain-fed northern uplands and the irrigated fields of southern Mesopotamia. Reflecting the role of agriculture in complex polities, this study provided insight into different configurations of community organization, political inequality, and authority systems. This exemplifies the potential contribution of field system research to central questions in archaeology. The identification of extensive agriculture (i.e., swidden or slash-and-burn) provides a greater challenge to archaeologists. Scarce landscape architecture

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Figure 1 Inca terraces at Moray, Peru.

Figure 2 Aerial photograph of a Later Bronze Age field with plaggen A horizon defined by dark soil mark at Welland Bank Quarry, south Lincolnshire, UK. Copyright Charles A. I. French.

limits the utility of aerial images and maps. Short occupation may leave little trace on the soil. When abandoned, extensive fields may blend into the surrounding uncultivated ecology. In some instances, burning and fertilization alter vegetation and soils aiding in identification. In other instances, rare constructed features within areas of swidden cultivation support the identification of cultivated areas.

Gardens and Fields Pedestrian survey, feature mapping, and assessment of architecture are used to study gardens and fields.

Ideally, a statistically representative number of fields will be selected for study from the total cultivated area. Variations in elevation, topography, architecture, and associations to other archaeological features should be considered in field selection. As in other kinds of architecture, variations in design, construction materials, and quality of field architecture can provide information into such issues as planning, labor, and prestige. The collection of artifact assemblages from fields may shed light on farming implements and cultural associations. The surface vegetation in old fields is another line of evidence as it often differs from adjacent uncultivated land.

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The Seedbed

Crops

In ancient fields, excavation and coring reveal the seedbed (plowzone or A horizon), which may be on the modern surface or buried. Agricultural soils are impacted by soil type, environment, crops, cultivation regime (e.g., intensive or extensive), tools, and cultural traditions. Geoarchaeological techniques are employed to determine the fertility and stability of palaeosols. Common bulk soil analyses include quantification of crop-limiting nutrients (e.g., organic matter, phosphorus, nitrogen), soil particle size, and magnetic susceptibility. Intact soil blocks are analyzed through soil micromorphology (thin section analysis) to reveal preservation conditions by identifying soil structure, the distribution of soil constituents, and bioturbation. Geoarchaeological analyses of fields are best compared to uncultivated lands for accurate assessment of human impacts. Triplicate replication of soil conditions (i.e., collecting samples from three fields with similar physical settings) further controls for variations across agrarian landscapes (Figure 3). When preservation is outstanding, excavation may unearth anthropogenic features such as plow marks and furrows (cf. Figures 2, 4a, and 4b). Differences in soil color, nutrient concentration, and soil particle size are used to identify land-use impacts. Long-term soil management is seen from the development of plaggen soils, dark nutrient-rich anthropogenic soils resulting from repeated applications of fertilizer-like dung (Figure 5). In arid regions, nutrients such as phosphorous may be retained for millennia. In contrast, overuse and erosion are revealed by reduced concentrations of silt, clay, and soil nutrients when field soils are compared to uncultivated controls.

Studies of cultigens often originate in settlements where macrobotanical remains indicate the consumption and use of cultivated plants (see Plant Domestication). In contrast, macrobotanical remains excavated from within fields are only reliable from intact palaeosols because of the potential for modern contamination, augmented by industrial tillage, bioturbation, and organic decay. Pollen and phytoliths may be more stable in fields and can provide in situ confirmation of cultigens when recovered from secure contexts. Phytoliths are preserved under different conditions than pollen and may also reflect different crop species than pollen (see Phytolith Analysis; Pollen Analysis). Regional palaeoenvironmental reconstructions, contemporary agronomic studies, and surface vegetation provide additional insight into ancient cropping regimes. Increasingly, research into cultigens combines several methods with attention to sampling and preservation conditions. Dating

Bioturbation, poor preservation of macrobotanicals, and modern disturbance also impact dating strategies. Dating may be further complicated by the sequential use of fields for different activities (see Dating Methods, Overview). Buried contexts under standing features, such as field walls or aqueducts, may provide secure contexts for recovering datable material. Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) is increasingly used to date humic acids in soil (see Luminescence Dating). Surface and excavated artifact collections from gardens and fields provide additional chronological information.

Figure 3 Schematic of triplicate sampling pattern (S ¼ sample collection point). Copyright Chris Stevens.

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Figure 5 Plaggen soil in terraced field (highlands of Yemen). Copyright Charles A. I. French.

Figure 4 Thin sections of soils from ancient fields. (a), Plow marks in well-preserved buried palaeosoil, Welland Bank Quarry, south Lincolnshire, UK. Copyright Charles A. I. French. (b), Bioturbated palaeosoil from a pre-Columbian terrace (Paca, Peru).

Agriculture, Landscape, and Society Field system research reveals the human ingenuity behind food production systems adapted to diverse ecosystems. For instance, tropical adaptations include Asian rice paddies, Mesoamerican chinampas, and raised fields in South America. Each system provides a signature on the landscape. This can be illustrated by rice paddy fields which are made by leveling and walling to pond water, dramatically changing natural topography and soils. In contrast, responses to arid lands, limited by water and soil nutrients, are seen in an array of different technologies. For instance, abandoned grid-like landscape features in Arizona were found through an intensive multidisciplinary study to have produced agricultural crops in a desolate landscape. Cultural and environmental contexts are therefore essential components of field system research. Additional lines of evidence may be found in art, historic documents, and modern correlates. Egyptian

farming methods are recorded in art and hieroglyphs (e.g., collections of the British Museum). The Romans employed centurion field systems and recorded field allocations. Experimental farming with replica tools and old crops provide heuristic models to reconstruct annual yields, labor requirements, and soil responses to different treatments (e.g., the experimental Butser Ancient Farm, United Kingdom). Ethno-archaeological studies with nonindustrial farmers provide further data for reconstructing crop rotation cycles, labor allocation, and natural constraints on farming. Research methods for off-site agricultural landscapes reflect analytical scale, environmental conditions, field architecture, and palaeosol preservation. Ground reconnaissance to verify published data in maps and aerial images provides a baseline for regional studies and also detailed assessments of individual fields. Field system research is multidisciplinary and often requires specialist research methods to provide evidence for specific cultivation practices.

Acknowledgments Thanks are due to Charly French and Chris Stevens for permission to use figures. See also: Dating Methods, Overview; Geoarchaeology; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Methods; Phytolith Analysis; Plant Domestication; Pollen Analysis; Soils and Archaeology.

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Further Reading Doolittle WE and James AN (2004) The Safford Valley Grids: Prehistoric Cultivation in the Southern Arizona Desert. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Hastorf CA (1993) Agriculture and the Onset of Political Inequality before the Inka. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Goldberg P and Richard IM (2006) Practical and Theoretical Geoarchaeology. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Miller NF and Gleason KL (1994) The Archaeology of Garden and Field. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Thomas K (ed.) (1990) Soils and early agriculture. World Archaeology 22(1). Wilkinson TJ (2003) Archaeological Landscapes of the Near East. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

AGRICULTURE Contents Biological Impact on Populations Social Consequences

Biological Impact on Populations Patricia M Lambert, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary bioarchaeology The study of the human biological component of the archaeological record. dental attrition The wearing or grinding down of teeth. fertility Birthrate of a population. malocclusion Abnormality in the way the teeth of the upper and lower jaw fit together. morbidity Disease rate, proportion of diseased to healthy in a population. morphology Shape, form. mortality Death rate of a population. occlusal Chewing surface of a tooth. palaeopathology The study of disease in former/ancient times as evidenced in human remains from archaeological contexts. robusticity Expression of relative size and strength of bones or teeth, or of a skeleton more generally, for example, increased robusticity of long bones.

Introduction Questions concerning the biological impacts of the economic transition from foraging to farming have formed a central focus of research in bioarchaeology since the late 1970s. Researchers examining this transition have generally compared diet, health, and workload of mobile/semimobile forager antecedents and later sedentary agriculturalists to identify differences

and therefore changes associated with the adoption of an agricultural mode of subsistence. The groundbreaking volume, Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture, published in 1984, represents the first major effort to gather together such studies from a number of world regions to address questions concerning the impetus for and biological consequences of agriculture. Much of the research available at that time focused on skeletal samples from the Americas, particularly North America, and these studies still predominate in the literature. However, research efforts over the intervening years have expanded this geographic purview to include different types of agriculture and agricultural transitions in many world regions. As research accumulates, some general trends are emerging in certain aspects of health and workload, but it is also becoming apparent that the ‘transition’ and consequent health impacts were not uniform in all times and places, or even unidirectional. This growing awareness of variability in the agricultural experience has led to an increasing research emphasis on how different environmental and behavioral correlates of agriculture influence the skeletal markers used to reconstruct the different lifeways and health impacts associated with this economic transition.

Osteological Evidence for Dietary Change One of the important challenges of studying the transition from foraging to farming has been documenting the timing and nature of this transition. Traditionally, archaeologists have studied palaeobotanical, faunal, and artifactual evidence to document the types of

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food resources available and presumably consumed by people at a particular locale. Bioarchaeology adds a different dimension to the study of diet and dietary change through the analysis of the biological impacts different subsistence regimes had on the teeth and bones of ancient practitioners (see Osteological Methods; Paleopathology). Dental indicators and bone chemistry are the most important lines of skeletal evidence for diet. These are discussed in greater detail below. Reconstructing Diet from Dental Indicators

Figure 1 Carious lesions in the mandibular molars of a farmer from North Carolina. 100 90 80 % molars with cavities

A number of dental indicators are used to gain insights into the nature of foods consumed. These include dental disease (dental caries, periodontal disease, alveolar abscesses, and antemortem tooth loss), tooth wear, chipping, dental calculus (plaque), and patterns of dental occlusion and associated craniofacial robusticity. These are not necessarily mutually exclusive and indeed are often interrelated. This discussion focuses on worldwide patterns of three indicators that have proven particularly useful for assessing changes in diet: dental disease, dental wear (attrition), and craniofacial morphology. Dental caries is a disease process caused by the bacterial fermentation of dietary carbohydrates, which produces acids that erode tooth enamel (Figure 1). Because caries-causing oral bacteria such as Streptococcus mutans thrive on carbohydrates, dental caries is more prevalent in individuals and populations consuming carbohydrate-rich foods (Figure 2). Such foods tend to be more heavily processed and thus do not have the cleansing properties of greens and other fresh foods that require heavy chewing, which also contributes to dental disease. Cereal food production in particular is a primary factor in declining dental health with the transition to agriculture; grains are valuable cultigens because they store well, but properties such as hard texture and low water content that enhance storage result in the need for hulling, grinding, and/or cooking before consumption. Highly processed foods stick to the teeth and feed the oral bacteria such as S. mutans that adhere to tooth surfaces. Although changes in dental disease with the advent of agriculture are far from uniform, a general trend toward increasing dental caries and antemortem tooth loss is evident in both New and Old World contexts. In the New World, maize is the most important cause of increasing rates of dental disease due its relatively high sugar content, and observed changes in dental health throughout the Americas are often marked when people make the shift from foraging to maize farming. For example, this pattern of declining

Southeast farmers Southwest farmers California fisherpeople

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Figure 2 Comparison of dental caries rates in foragers and farmers.

dental health with agricultural intensification has been documented in northern Chile and coastal Peru in South America, in Mesoamerica, and in various regions of North America including the Southwest, Great Basin, Great Plains, and Eastern Woodlands. Hence, an increase in dental disease has often been used as a proxy measure of corn consumption and the shift to maize agriculture in New World contexts. In the Old World, the agricultural base was often more diversified, potentially including several grains or legumes and domesticated animals; the consequences to dental health were correspondingly more varied. In the Levant, for example, there is little evidence for increasing prevalence of dental caries at the Neolithic transition, though a considerable decline in

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dental health is evident later in the agricultural sequence. On the other hand, when prehistoric farmers (wheat, rice, barley) of western India made the reverse transition to foraging, there was a substantial reduction in dental caries prevalence, evidence for the cariogenic nature of the agricultural diet there. Overall, dental health decline is more prominent than stasis or improvement in the Old World, but the changes are not uniform or generally as severe as those documented in the New World. It should also be noted that other diets can also result in an increase in dental disease, so it is important to seek corroborating evidence that agricultural products were responsible. For example, on the offshore islands of the Santa Barbara Channel, California, a region where agriculture never took hold prehistorically, early inhabitants had relatively high rates of dental caries that subsequently declined through time. It is uncertain what led to dental disease in this environment, but one possibility is the consumption of sugary roots and tubers, a hypothesis supported by the presence of digging apparatus in archaeological sites of the time. In Portugal, foragers had fairly comparable rates of dental disease relative to later agriculturalists, probably due to the consumption of cariogenic wild foods such as sticky fruits and honey. These cautionary tales illustrate the importance of multiple lines of evidence in reconstructing diet and identifying agriculture from visual examination of teeth. Unlike dental caries, dental wear shows a decline in most world regions with the transition to agriculture. This is because processed foods are softer and require less chewing, which reduces the loss of enamel on the occlusal surfaces of teeth, although use of sandstone mortars and metates for processing grain crops may introduce grit into these staple foods and lead to increased wear. The form of dental wear also tends to differ between foragers and farmers: the worn molars of foragers tend to be flat, whereas those of agriculturalists tend to be angled and often have a cupped appearance attributed to the consumption of softer foods. This change in degree and type of wear is evident at the foraging–farming transition in the southern Levant, for example, although wear rates tend to track the stage of transition and earlier farmers show more comparable wear to foragers than later farmers. Other dental signs of an agricultural diet observed in skeletal series worldwide include a reduction in the size of the jaw and concomitant malocclusion of teeth. Chewing hard-textured foods tends to stimulate growth of the jaw bones, producing jaws that can accommodate the permanent teeth. Soft-textured foods require little chewing, on the other hand, resulting in narrower dental arches, tooth crowding, and

misalignment of teeth. In consequence, facial form tends to change with the transition to agriculture, with agriculturalists having less robust facial features than their forager antecedents. This pattern is evident in the Eastern Woodlands of North America, in the Balkans region of central Europe, in the Nile Valley of Africa, and in the southern Levant region of the Middle East, where a reduction in craniofacial robusticity is evident from the Natufian to Neolithic transition with the adoption of agropastoralism. Bone Chemistry

Studies of bone chemistry have added an important dimension to the study of diet and dietary transitions because they provide an independent line of evidence and document the relative importance of certain types of food for individuals and populations. Stable isotopes of several elements (carbon, nitrogen, strontium), as well as a number of trace elements (e.g., barium, calcium, strontium, zinc), have been used to track changes in diet. These elements are important components of the foods we consume and are incorporated into our bone tissues during normal bone growth and maintenance. The two elements that have proved to be most useful in bone chemistry research on dietary transitions and agricultural origins are carbon and nitrogen. Each element has two stable forms (stable isotopes) that differ in proportion according to types of foods consumed. Carbon-13 (13C) is a very small proportion of the total carbon in foods (12C predominates), but is more abundant in tropical cultigens (C4 plants) such as corn, millet, and sorghum, and in coastal and estuarine sea grasses due to the manner in which carbon is incorporated into the tissues of these plants. Consumers of these foods also have relatively more 13 C in their bone (and dental) tissues than those consuming most other foods (plants that follow the C3 photosynthetic pathway and the animals that consume them). Nitrogen-14 (14N) is the more common form of nitrogen, but 15N is relatively more abundant in marine versus terrestrial food chains and also tends to concentrate up the food chain. When carbon and nitrogen values are used in combination, it is possible to derive more nuanced interpretations of diet and dietary change because it becomes possible to differentiate marine resources such as fish and sea mammal meat from terrestrial plant resources like corn, and thereby identify the role of cultigens in the diet. Stable isotope studies have probably been more important for documenting the agricultural transition in the New World than Old World due to the primary importance of a single, C4 grain crop (maize), and the rarity of domesticated animals that led early Americans to depend more heavily on this storable

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cultigen. For this reason, carbon-13 enrichment can generally be taken to reflect a transition to maize agriculture in most American contexts, except in coastal regions such as those of the Georgia Bight or southern Peru, where nitrogen values are needed to differentiate corn from marine foods. Studies of stable isotopes from several midcontinental regions in North America have also shown, however, that the timing and duration of this economic transition were far from uniform, and these differences are likely important for understanding extant and emerging data on the health consequences of farming in the New World. Peoples of the Old World had a number of important grain crops, most of them C3 plants (e.g., wheat, rye, barley, rice), although millet and sorghum were tropical cultigens important in some regions and time periods. Here, the shift toward enriched carbon-13 values signals either the increasing use of millet and/ or sorghum, or increased emphasis on marine foods. In northern China, for example, 13C values indicate a substantial emphasis on millet (13C enrichment) during the Neolithic that later shifted to rice and wheat (decrease in 13C) and more recently to maize (13C enrichment). A shift in coastal regions of the Old World from enriched to less-enriched carbon-13 values, on the other hand, may signal increased emphasis on C3 cultigens such as wheat, barley, rye, or rice, as has been documented in Neolithic samples from coastal Scandinavia and Greece.

Changes in Patterns of Health and Disease with Agriculture Reconstructing Health from Osteological Indicators

A number of skeletal indicators are used by bioarchaeologists to reconstruct patterns of health and disease associated with agricultural transitions. These include linear enamel hypoplasia, porotic hyperostosis/cribra orbitalia, periosteal lesions, juvenile and adult stature, and mortality patterns. Linear enamel hypoplasia refers to depressed bands that form in tooth enamel when childhood growth is disrupted by nutritional insufficiency, infectious disease, or other significant stressors that interrupt the metabolic process (Figure 3). These dental markers serve as a general indicator of health during infancy and childhood. Porotic hyperostosis refers to porous lesions of the cranial vault and eye orbits (cribra orbitalia) that form in response to iron deficiency anemia, although in recent years palaeopathological research has demonstrated a link between porous cranial lesions and scurvy (Figure 4). These lesions also tend to form in childhood due to dietary deficiencies or blood loss

Figure 3 Enamel hypoplasia in a maxillary canine tooth. Photo credit: Korri D. Turner, Soil Systems, Inc.

Figure 4 Cribra orbitalia.

due to parasites and bacterial infection, and thus provide another but more specific indicator of childhood health experience. Periosteal lesions (Figure 5) are plaques of bone that form on external (cortical) bone surfaces when the connective tissue that covers bone (the periosteum) becomes separated from the cortex due to various biological processes. Although there are numerous conditions that can cause these lesions (e.g., trauma, scurvy, vascular disease), bacterial infection is among the more prominent, and periosteal lesions therefore tend to be viewed (albeit not quite correctly) as a proxy measure of infectious disease experience. In combination, these lesions provide a reasonably good measure of childhood stress levels, particularly when used in a comparative framework. Periosteal lesions can also provide information on the disease and injury experiences of adults. Stature estimates based on long bone measurements and mortality patterns based on age distributions of cemetery samples have also been used to

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Figure 5 Periosteal lesion on the midshaft of a tibia.

assess health status of individuals and populations at economic transitions. People who experience poor nutrition and ill health during the growth years do not achieve their genetic height potential, and adult stature can therefore provide a good measure of cumulative health experience during the growth years. Growth curves for juveniles have also been used to characterize subadult health, but can be difficult to interpret for cemetery samples. This is because the curve is necessarily based on the measurements of children who died at a particular age rather than all the children of that age in the living population, and therefore reflects the stature of the least healthy members of each age group. Ratios of subadults (especially, infants and young children) to adults in cemetery samples can provide information on age-based differences in mortality and offer insights into patterns of morbidity in a population. However, there are a number of challenges to reconstructing mortality profiles from death assemblages that are discussed below. Almost everywhere in both New and Old World contexts, the osteological indicators described above provide a cumulative picture suggesting greater decline than improvement in health with agriculture, although this difference is often most evident in comparisons of foragers and full-scale, sedentary agriculturalists. Health changes associated with the actual transition period are much more variable due to differences in how quickly the transition took place, how much the agricultural diet differed from that of earlier foragers, and the degree to which demographic factors such as sedentism and growth

rate altered with the introduction of agricultural production. The general pattern of health decline observed in many settings has led to the conclusion that disease risk increased with agriculture, and there are certainly reasons to believe this might be so. When people begin to grow their food, they become tethered to a particular place in a way that foragers are not. Sedentism increases disease exposure through accumulation of food refuse and human waste, both sources of parasitic and bacterial infection. These accumulations also attract vermin such as rats, known to carry bubonic plague, hantavirus, typhus, rabies, and other diseases transmissible to humans. In tropical environments, clearing of agricultural fields or construction of irrigation systems can create breeding grounds for mosquitos and the infections such as malaria and West Nile virus they can transmit. Such health problems were apparently created in ancient Bahrain with the transition from nonirrigating to irrigation agriculture. In addition, agricultural populations often rely heavily on storable staple foods such as corn and wheat that do not contain the range of vitamins and minerals available from the mixed diet of most foragers, potentially rendering agriculturalists more susceptible to pathogens as a result of poor nutrition. Food storage itself can also lead to increased problems with gut infection due to spoilage from bacteria and molds. There are, however, also health advantages of an agricultural economy. The production of surplus, storable foods can reduce the impact of lean periods that for foragers may lead to malnutrition and death. This may account for the lack of stature decline, or in some cases even an increase in stature, documented in some regions of the southeastern United States and elsewhere with agriculture. Surplus food can also permit incapacitated members of a society that cannot contribute to subsistence efforts due to sickness, injury, or old age to survive where they might not in a mobile society. In addition, the injured and ill need not be mobile to survive, but can rest and regain strength. Food production also permits shorter birth spacing, resulting in increasing fertility rates and therefore relatively more children each generation. Some researchers question whether the health risks among prehistoric agriculturalists were actually greater than their foraging antecedents, despite osteological evidence suggesting that this was the case. For example, age distributions of agriculturalist samples frequently show a higher ratio of infants and young children to adults, a pattern interpreted to reflect an increase in infant mortality and a decrease in life expectancy at birth. However, it has become clear that, while age distributions can provide a

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good measure of fertility, they are a poor measure of mortality. This is because changes in birthrate have a much greater impact on demographic profiles than changes in death rate. Fortunately, alternative methods have been developed to derive more accurate estimates of fertility and mortality from archaeological cemetery samples. One method designed to eliminate problems associated with the underenumeration of infants and inaccurate estimation of age in older skeletons uses the proportion of individuals over 30 years to the proportion of individuals over >5 years to estimate fertility. Another method uses birth rates calculated from age distributions of skeletal samples and growth rates based on settlement data to estimate fertility and mortality. Estimates based on these revised methods suggest that early American horticulturalists experienced an increase in both fertility and mortality rates relative to contemporaneous foragers. However, similarly high rates appear to have been experienced by both foragers and farmers living in the Americas between about 1500 and 500 years ago (when most groups made the transition to sedentary agriculture), and it has been argued that population growth and high mortality may have been the impetus for agriculture rather than a consequence of it. Increasing morbidity also appears to generally characterize the transition to agriculture, but some scholars have argued that this too is a product of changing patterns of infant survivorship. In foraging societies, it is hypothesized that at-risk infants may not survive infancy due to limiting factors such as the need for greater birth spacing and annually occurring lean periods, and thus be eliminated from the population before developing any skeletal record of ill health. Survivors in these societies are therefore the healthiest born and would be expected to fare better in life. On the other hand, if at-risk infants in agricultural societies survive due to better provisioning and stability, they may nonetheless suffer the consequences of greater frailty. These survivors thus may develop the signs of ill health that osteologists use to reconstruct patterns of health and disease. Agricultural skeletal samples would thus look sicker because they include sickly survivors, whereas foragers would look healthier because susceptible infants died before they could develop these signs. However, although these problems (the osteological paradox) introduce challenges to estimating life expectancy and mortality accurately, skeletal samples nonetheless provide a record of disease experience for those who did survive. In this sense, agriculturalists generally show more signs of ill health and disease than their forager antecedents (or contemporaries), and illness thus appears to have been a more prominent aspect of everyday life in these societies.

Infectious Disease

The skeleton provides only a very limited picture of infectious disease experience with the transition to agriculture. This is because most diseases do not affect the bones and those that do tend to affect them in nonspecific ways. However, what evidence there is suggests that infectious disease generally increased when people made the shift from foraging to farming. We can see this pattern most clearly in the changing prevalence of two chronic infectious diseases that commonly affect the skeleton in distinctive and therefore identifiable ways: treponemal disease and tuberculosis (TB). Treponemal disease, a bacterial infection that affects the bones in some (reports vary from 1 to 50þ%) cases, tends to result in periosteal lesions of the long bones (especially, the tibias; Figure 6) and destructive lesions of the cranial vault (caries sicca) and nasal region. TB, a mycobacterial infection, may stimulate periosteal lesions of visceral (internal) rib surfaces in pulmonary TB and tends to affect the vertebrae, hips, and knees with destructive lesions in the skeletal form of the disease (Figure 7). Though neither disease causes bone lesions in all or even most cases, knowledge of the likelihood of bone lesions in each disease can facilitate a more accurate estimation of morbidity levels in the population. Emerging studies of pathogen DNA will likely enhance our understanding of the impact of these diseases prehistorically. The history and antiquity of treponemal disease is best known from sites in North America, and primarily serves as a disease index in New World contexts. This is because its appearance and prevalence in the Old World to date is less well documented and understood. In North America, evidence for some form of the disease predates the transition to agriculture by several thousand years. However, most evidence derives from population samples postdating AD 1000.

Figure 6 Anterior bowing and disfiguration of the tibias due to chronic periosteal reaction in a case of treponemal disease.

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Figure 7 Destructive lesion of a lumbar vertebra in a probable case of skeletal tuberculosis.

The link in this increasing prevalence appears to be one of increased population density and sedentism, important demographic correlates of both agriculture and infectious disease. The earliest cases of tuberculosis have been found in the Old World at sites in the Mediterranean and North Africa, where the domestication of herd animals such as cattle, a well known carrier of the pathogen, may have brought people into contact with the disease as early as 8000–9000 years ago. Early on, it was probably not crowding and sedentism that led to infection, but rather proximity to animal reservoirs of the disease. In the New World, the earliest, well documented cases of tuberculosis occur in South America, where the initial mode of transmission remains unclear, although domesticated camelids in some Andean regions may later have served as a reservoir for tuberculosis initially introduced by humans. However, the greatest visibility of tuberculosis in the New World is very late in the prehistoric sequence, much of it postdating AD 1000. An opportunistic infection, tuberculosis differentially affects those with compromised health and tends to thrive in crowded living conditions. Its apparent association with agriculture, especially well documented in North America, again may reflect the health risks that tend to occur when people become sedentary, increase in number, and live in closer proximity to one another. Perhaps the most direct evidence for the impact of agriculture on infectious disease rates is the increase in dental caries rates noted above. The health consequences of dental disease are often underestimated due to modern perceptions of its minor impact on overall health relative to other diseases. However, in the absence of modern dental care, dental caries progresses from superficial tooth erosion to invasion of

the dentin, death of the tooth, abscessing, and eventual tooth loss. This process is painful, produces a foul odor, and can be dangerous. The proximity of the teeth to major blood vessels connecting to the heart and brain means that bacteria can more readily be transmitted to these organs than from most other regions of the body. Once dental disease sets in, the pain and fragility of diseased teeth also limits a person’s diet to foods that require less chewing. When the teeth are gone, the diet is further restricted to foods such as gruels that lack essential nutrients and that can act as a medium for bacterial growth. Thus, the increased tooth decay and loss commonly seen in agriculturalist samples, particularly in the Americas, was likely associated with a decline in nutrition that rendered people more susceptible to infectious pathogens. In this way, dental disease likely played an important role in the patterns of morbidity and mortality we see archaeologically with the agricultural transition.

Change in Workload with Agriculture One of the big questions concerning the transition from foraging to farming is how this transition impacted workload: did farming offer a relief from the constant quest for food or did it impose a heavier burden on those now responsible for its production? Answers to these questions lie in the study of the skeletal changes associated with mechanical stresses: degenerative joint disease and structural changes in bone morphology – an area of study known as biomechanics. Degenerative joint disease (osteoarthritis) refers to destructive changes of joint surfaces that primarily occur in response to mechanical stress and physical activity, although other contributing factors such as age, sex, and weight also play a role in the development and severity of joint damage. Biomechanics refers to the application of engineering principles to the study of living tissue; in other words, the functional properties of bone are understood in terms of the same loading modes that affect steel beams and other building materials (e.g., tension, compression, bending, sheer, torsion). These two indices account for the majority of studies focused on changes in workload with agriculture, although there is growing interest in a third method involving study of muscle attachment sites (musculoskeletal markers, or MSMs). Degenerative Joint Disease as an Indicator of Workload and Activity Patterns

Comparative studies of degenerative joint disease are more limited than other types of studies described above, but those available have generally documented a decline in osteoarthritis in both New and Old World settings with the transition to agriculture.

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In western Europe, for example, Mesolithic samples tend to show more osteoarthritis – particularly in the back and upper limbs – than Neolithic samples, suggesting that foragers experienced greater biomechanical stress than later farmers. In North America and particularly in the Southeast, where many of these studies have been conducted, osteoarthritis has been shown to decline in a number of joint surfaces with this economic transition. In Alabama and the Georgia Bight, declines are evident in the bones of the neck and lower back, the elbows, and knee joints. Within the Georgia Bight, the skeletal remains of upland agriculturalists show more osteoarthritis than those of lowland agriculturalists, suggesting that topography influenced workload, and thus the mechanical stresses placed on the joints of agriculturalists living in this region. Several studies from the American Southeast also document a shift to greater sexual dimorphism in the severity and patterning of osteoarthritis with the transition to agriculture, as well as a tendency for males to be more affected than females. These data imply that, although workload or at least mechanical loading of joints may have declined overall, the sexual division of labor became more pronounced with food production. There are exceptions to this pattern of decline in osteoarthritis, however. In Portugal, Mesolithic foragers show few signs of osteoarthritis, whereas several severe cases are present in a sample of Neolithic farmers, particularly in the bones of the neck – perhaps from carrying heavy loads on the head. At the Dickson Mounds site in Illinois, degenerative joint disease (DJD) increased in the vertebras with agricultural intensification in comparison to earlier agriculturalists, indicating that changes in the intensity of production could result in rising prevalence of osteoarthritis. These cases once again illustrate the variability that exists in samples classified as agriculturalists. Biomechanical Measures of Workload and Activity Patterns

Studies of biomechanical properties of long bones provide an independent means of assessing workload and activity patterns, and have often been used in conjunction with patterns of osteoarthritis. Crosssectional geometry is arguably the most accurate method for identifying activity-based changes from bone morphology, although external measurements have also produced useful results. In cross-sectional geometry, cross-sectional data on bone mass and distribution relative to the long axis of a bone are obtained from computed tomography images or actual cross sections of bone. These measurements provide insights into mechanical loading of bones and therefore types and levels of physical activity. Much

of the data currently available derive from studies of North American samples, and indicate that bone mass and distribution differed between prehistoric foragers and farmers, but not always in predictable ways. In Georgia Bight populations, for example, the transition to agriculture was accompanied by a decline in bone strength (and thus, mechanical loading), whereas in northwestern Alabama bone strength increased with agriculture. Emerging research on European populations has documented a decline in bending and torsional strength of femurs and tibias with the Neolithic transition, a pattern consistent with many American agriculturalist samples and one supporting archaeological evidence that mobility declined with the transition to agriculture. Studies of cross-sectional geometry in North American samples also indicate that men and women did not always experience this economic transition equally in terms of workload. Male foragers, for example, tend to have greater torsional strength of the femur midshaft (larger midshaft diameters) than male agriculturalists, whereas females show no consistent difference according to subsistence strategy. These data suggest that the decline in mobility evident with food production is particularly reflective of changes in the activities of men. Women, on the other hand, tend to have structural properties that correlate with ruggedness of the local terrain, supporting the hypothesis that women in both contexts were more tethered to the home base and domestic tasks performed there. The humeri of agriculturalists also show sex differences in structural properties that appear to reflect distinct gender roles. Samples from prehistoric Alabama and Georgia Bight populations generally show a decline in left/right asymmetry with agriculture, but this pattern is particularly evident for females. One likely explanation is an increasing emphasis on two-handed tasks such as maize pounding and grinding that were habitually performed by women. These examples document the variable impacts that the transition to agricultural production could have on different members of the same society. They illustrate another aspect of the complexity that emerges when attempts are made to characterize the biological impacts of agriculture in a broad comparative manner.

Conclusion There is a large and growing body of literature on the biological impacts of economic transitions, although many world regions have yet to be explored in this way. As studies accumulate, it becomes increasingly possible through more inclusive intra- and interregional comparisons to refine our understanding of the causal mechanisms behind observed changes in

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diet, health, and workload. These causal mechanisms are not always the same or as straightforward as originally envisioned, but with a greater knowledge of the variability that characterized the agricultural transition comes a better understanding of how the physical and social environment can influence human biology and a greater appreciation of the human capacity for biocultural adaptation in an ever-changing world. See also: Agriculture: Social Consequences; Animal Domestication; Health, Healing, and Disease; Paleodemography; Paleopathology; Plant Domestication; Stable Isotope Analysis; Trace Element Analysis.

Further Reading Buikstra JE (1994) Diet and disease in late prehistory. In: Verano JW and Ubelaker DH (eds.) Disease and Demography in the Americas. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Cohen MN and Armelagos GJ (eds.) (1984) Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture. Orlando: Academic Press.

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Cohen MN and Kramer GC (eds.) (2007) Ancient Health: Skeletal Indicators of Agricultural and Economic Intensification. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Eshed V, Gopher A, and Hershkovitz I (2006) Tooth wear and dental pathology at the advent of agriculture: New evidence from the Levant. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 130: 145–159. Lambert PM (ed.) (2000) Bioarchaeological Studies of Life in the Age of Agriculture: A View from the Southeast. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Larsen CS (1997) Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Behavior from the Human Skeleton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCaa R (2002) Paleodemography of the Americas: From ancient times to colonialism and beyond. In: Steckel RH and Rose JC (eds.) The Backbone of History: Health and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere, pp. 94–126. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Powell ML and Cook DC (2005) The Myth of Syphilis: The Natural History of Treponematosis in North America. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Roberts CA and Buikstra JE (2003) The Bioarchaeology of Tuberculosis: A Global View on a Reemerging Disease. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Wood JW, Milner GR, Harpending HC, and Weiss KM (1992) The osteological paradox: Problems of inferring prehistoric health from skeletal samples. Current Anthropology 33: 343–370.

See: Plant Domestication.

Social Consequences Brain D Hayden, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary aggrandizers People who excessively promote their own self-interests over the interests of other community members, thereby attempting to acquire more power, wealth, and privilege than others. chiefdoms Political organizations in which one central authority (the chief) in a dominant community exerts political control over other authorities and communities in a hierarchical fashion. Hereditary social and economic classes typify chiefdoms although they sometimes also occur in transegalitarian societies without political hierarchies. complex hunter-gatherers Societies that generally can extract resources via hunting, fishing, and gathering wild foods in enough abundance to establish higher population densities, greater sedentism, surpluses, private ownership of resources and prestige items, and social and economic inequalities. complexity Fundamentally refers to levels of political and socioeconomic specialization and differentiation that occur

to varying degrees beyond ‘egalitarian’ societies. Typically, the magnitude of socioeconomic inequalities, centralization of political power, and craft specialization indicate levels of complexity. Complexity does not refer to relative elaboration of linguistic, kinship, or artistic products. corporate groups Groups of people (often related) who identify themselves as a social entity persisting over time and who share rights and responsibilities in the control of resources and relationships with other groups, for example, a landowning descent group. egalitarian societies Societies in which basic access to resources and produce is shared and in which no family is subject to hierarchical control from another family, although individuals may exhibit hierarchical relationships in terms of age, sex, marriage rights, or ritual knowledge. heterarchies Sociopolitical organizations in which multiple social groups (often corporate groups) share equally in the exercise of power within a community, in contrast to hierarchical organizations where there is a single center of power that dominates. prestige items Items that function primarily to achieve social or political goals. In contrast to practical items, prestige items often have no practical function and involve excessive costs in their manufacture or procurement. secret societies Voluntary ritual societies that typically involve the most powerful or ambitious members of a community who claim to protect the community’s supernatural

124 AGRICULTURE/Social Consequences interests. Various supernatural secrets are divulged to members as they progress from lower to higher ranks with ever-increasing costs of taking on new ranks. sedentism A relatively permanent year-round residence, in contrast to mobile settlements that move from place to place over the course of a year. More appropriately, one should refer to relative degrees of sedentism or residential mobility. transegalitarian societies Societies that are between true egalitarian societies and the stratified societies characteristic of chiefdoms and states. Transegalitarian societies exhibit private ownership, significant socioeconomic inequalities, although these are often not hereditary, prestige items, and surplus production. These societies can be based on hunting and gathering wild foods, fishing, trading, horticulture, or herding.

Neolithic societies ... must also be defined by their social values based around sedentary existence, the acquisition and storage of produce and goods, close kin groups and descent from ancestors, and a symbolic division of the world into constituent and often opposing parts. (Whittle 1994:136–137)

Even at the time of Alisdair Whittle’s synthesis, there were strong dissenting opinions about the underlying essence of the Neolithic as is clearly evident in the chapters in the same volume that preceded his (see Europe: Neolithic). In these chapters, Stephen Mithen documents the development of sedentism, storage, and cemeteries (therefore the importance of corporate kin groups and ancestors) in the Mesolithic. Similarly, Paul Mellars compares Upper Palaeolithic population densities in southwest France to later agricultural population densities, while Olga Soffer has shown that large-scale storage of food really begins in the Upper Palaeolithic. In addition, Nicholas Cauwe has argued that Neolithic burial practices can be traced back to the Mesolithic and even the Palaeolithic, while Andre´ Leroi-Gourhan long ago established a very strong case for the symbolic division of the Upper Palaeolithic symbolic world into constituent and often opposing parts. Moreover, Whittle’s subsequent claim that Neolithic myths became somehow more complex is difficult to assess, much less substantiate, especially given the complex symbolism that characterized the Upper Palaeolithic in southwestern Europe. I wish to argue that population levels, sedentism, storage, permanent architecture, pronounced socioeconomic inequalities, ancestor worship, corporate social groups, complex myths and symbols all typify complex hunter-gatherers well before the Neolithic. They are not new elements introduced with the Neolithic, and they cannot be used to distinguish or define the Neolithic. A major division persists in the discipline of archaeology between researchers like Whittle (Ian Hodder, Richard Bradley, Julian Thomas),

who view the Neolithic as a fundamental change in cognition that created changes in other domains of culture (notably in the economic, social, and political domains), versus those researchers like Mellars and the author who view the Neolithic as essentially a continuation of complex hunter-gatherer technology, values, practices, and social structures with the eventual addition of more intensified means of production such as domesticated animals and plants which eventually made even more complex types of organization and ideology possible. The question arises that if these social and ideological aspects were well established in the Mesolithic or even the Upper Palaeolithic, how could they represent a ‘new ‘cognitive revolution that could have created the Neolithic? Obviously, how the Neolithic is defined results from the outlook one adopts. From the author’s perspective, the cognitive revolution as a cause for, and core of, the Neolithic has serious shortcomings. The more traditional (and generally accepted) view is that the Neolithic was essentially a technological (domestication) phenomenon that brought about other changes in culture and created the first complex cultures. Yet, as we shall see, this view is not quite accurate either.

Cultivation, Food Production, and Domestication A key issue is determining precisely when ‘cultivation’ and ‘domestication’ actually began. There is considerable uncertainty concerning when both cultivation and domestication began as well as what the economic impact that these practices had during the initial 1000–2000 years after they appeared. As David Harris argued over 15 years ago, the distinction between these two concepts is important. ‘Domestication’ involves some genetic changes from wild forms (e.g., the larger sizes of grains and changes in their dispersal structures). These changes can be readily observed in archaeological botanical remains (see Animal Domestication; Plant Domestication). The archaeological occurrence of domesticated forms clearly implies that some form of cultivation or planting existed as well as the selective use of seeds for planting (or animals for breeding). However, a number of palaeoethnobotanists now suggest that prior to the appearance of domesticated forms, many complex hunter-gatherers were involved in forms of cultivation that did not result in the creation of domesticated forms. That is, complex huntergatherers were tilling the soil and planting crops just as later groups practiced, but without seed selection

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which could result in detectable genetic changes. Similarly, as we shall see later, complex hunter-gatherers frequently raised wild animals for pets or for ritual feasts without breeding them or changing their genetic characteristics. Unfortunately, cultivation or other intensified food production practices are much more difficult to establish for prehistoric communities when there is a lack of indication for domestication. However, clues sometimes do exist such as the occurrence of species at sites outside their normal ranges, the occurrence of weed species typical of cultivated fields, types of sickle gloss that indicate disturbed earth (as in prepared fields), construction of terraces or simple irrigation or drainage features, changes in the species of animals exploited as well as emphasis on certain ages and on males, erosion patterns on animal teeth from bits, settlement pattern shifts to areas of prime farmland, as well as higher population densities and greater sedentism. These characteristics all seem to indicate the likelihood that food production and cultivation, and perhaps animal rearing, may have been taking place for centuries or millennia before the first definite indications of domestication. Nevertheless, the occurrence of domesticated forms has been the defining hallmark of the Neolithic since V. Gordon Childe first proposed this definition in 1953. ‘Food production’ is another term often used in discussing or defining Neolithic societies. It is frequently used as a synonym for ‘domestication’. However, it would probably be more logical to view cultivation (without domesticated forms) as a type of food production as well. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this section, ‘food production’ is used in its more usual sense, as implying the use of domesticated species. Palaeoethnobotanists have increasingly entertained concepts and interpretations of pre-Neolithic cultivation and animal rearing (without any genetic morphological changes in species) documented back to 13 200 BP and even suggested that these practices may extend centuries or milleniums further back in the Near East. Such views correspond well to what is known about cultivation and animal-rearing practices (without domestication) of ethnographic complex hunter-gatherers which can be viewed as similar to the complex hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic in Eurasia. In Japan and Siberia, the Ainu and other complex hunter-gatherers captured bear cubs and raised them for a year before sacrificing and consuming them at their winter bear feasts. Evidence for bears being held in captivity has also emerged from the European Mesolithic, while in the Near East, bulls appear to have been held in captivity before

domestication (presumably for feasts, as in Japan). Similarly, even among simple horticulturalists in the Amazon basin, Warren DeBoer reports that wild peccaries and tapirs are captured, kept, and fattened for feasts. The Lillooet complex hunter-gatherers of the northwest interior captured and kept birds, foxes, marmots, and bears as pets. On the Northwest coast of North America, groups of complex hunter-gatherers constructed terraced gardens in which they grew clover and cinquefoil roots for feasts. The gardens were owned, guarded, and tended using all the techniques of later horticulturalists without resulting, as far as we know, in genetically modified ‘domesticated’ plant varieties. The same techniques were used by complex huntergatherers of the Northwest interior, resulting in larger sizes of roots due largely to the reduction of soil compaction, weeding out of plant competitors, and spacing plants for more optimal growth. No genetic changes have been established as the result of these practices even though the techniques used may go back thousands of years. Similarly, no genetic changes resulted from the capturing and raising of bears in Japan or Siberia, even though these practices probably extend thousands of years back into the prehistory of Asia. But even after the first genetically modified domesticated plants appear in the Near East and the New World, their role in the overall economy of early Neolithic communities appears to be almost inconsequential for the first 1000–2000 years in terms of the proportion of domesticated to wild plant and animal remains. In fact, some of the most widely recognized early ‘Neolithic’ communities in the Near East failed to produce any evidence of domesticated plant or animal use (e.g., Jerf el Ahmar, Asikli, Gobekli, and Nativ Hagdud). Similar patterns occur in the Japanese Jomon.

Complex Hunter-Gatherers Increasingly, it now appears that food production (with domesticates) was only one strategy among many intensification techniques that characterized complex hunter-gatherer and subsequent horticultural subsistence. To understand what social, political, and cultural changes actually took place as the result of food production and domestication, we must first develop a better understanding of the cultures that these developments emerged from. In the Near East, in Japan, and perhaps elsewhere, domestication developed among complex hunters and gatherers, notably the Natufian and Jomon cultures. However,

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the first well-documented complex hunter-gatherers to appear in the archaeological record lived in the periglacial savannahs of Upper Palaeolithic of southwestern Europe, about 35 000 years ago. These were exceptionally rich environments for hunting, unparalleled anywhere in the world for their biomasss and diversity. Upper Palaeolithic technology was well adapted to taking large numbers of animals. While these regions were too cold to support the domestication of plants, some archaeologists like Paul Bahn have argued that horses were probably tamed, bridled, and kept. However, with the disappearance of the southwestern European savannahs after the Ice Age, these savannah cultures collapsed and reverted to more simply organized societies with lower populations and minimal art or prestige items. Some people argue that the Upper Palaeolithic cultures migrated north and developed into the historic Saami reindeer hunters and herders. Elsewhere in the world, complex hunter-gatherers only began to appear with the advent of the Mesolithic, some 10 000–15 000 years ago when new technological developments rendered other environments highly productive. Some of these technological developments included the first systematic forms of fishing (using hooks, nets, and weirs) and the first effective use of grass seeds (procured and processed with grinding stones, sickles, and probably baskets). These and other similar technological developments opened up vast quantities of new resources in some environments, making it possible to establish economic, social, and ritual structures based on the production of dependable surpluses. Some of the most common types of environments where these complex forms of societies developed were riverine or coastal areas in which large quantities of fish could be procured, or areas like the Near East where large quantities of cereal grains could be harvested. The result was a more widespread emergence of complex types of hunter-gatherers than had previously existed (only in periglacial savannahs during the Upper Palaeolithic). These cultures are referred to as ‘complex hunter-gatherers’ to distinguish them from the simpler forms of hunter-gatherers that existed in the Middle and Lower Palaeolithic, and in some cases continued to exist in less productive environments up until contemporary times. Whether food producing or not, archaeological and ethnographic complex hunter-gatherers had a number of resource and social characteristics in common, including: . intensified techniques of food production and usually storage;

. a predictable production of surpluses; . recognition of private ownership of some resources and products (especially stored produce); . pronounced socioeconomic differences within communities (including hereditary elites and slavery, in the more developed cases; see Social Inequality, Development of); . heterarchical sociopolitical structures with inverted social pyramids; and . the rise to prominence of some aggrandizers using an array of strategies including transegalitarian types of feasting, wealth exchanges, use of wealth to obtain marriage partners for elite families (via bride-prices or dowries), investments of wealth in offspring, wealth-based alliances and conflicts, development of prestige items (for social and political transactions), and a wealth-based restriction of access to supernatural powers (often via secret societies). None of these traits appear to any significant degree among simpler hunter-gatherers. In fact, many of these traits are the complete antithesis of simple hunter-gatherer values and practices. Simple huntergatherers eschew any idea of social classes, slavery, economically based hierarchies, private ownership of essential resources, or wealth. Rather, they emphasize communal ownership and unrestricted access to essential food resources, sharing, egalitarian practices, and freedom of movement. Complex hunter-gatherers with the above social and material characteristics appear to have emerged before food production in key areas like the Near East, Japan, and Europe and to have continued their basic form of sociopolitical organizations fundamentally unchanged during the first several thousand years of the Neolithic. In fact, it can be argued that it was the competitive social and political forces in the early complex hunter-gatherer communities that provided the relentless driving force behind increasing surpluses via food production (with or without domesticates). In this respect, it will be especially useful to examine the role of prestige items and feasting in terms of the pressures that they created for intensifying production.

Feasting and Prestige Items How can surplus food production be used to anyone’s benefit? There are a number of possibilities, but two of the most important and recurring ethnographically documented strategies involve using surplus food to create prestige goods and to hold feasts, both of

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which are central features among almost all complex hunter-gatherers. In terms of prestige items, one can use surplus food to ‘pay’ or support other individuals to produce finely crafted items or to travel to distant places to procure exotic materials. Thus, obsidian, shells, beads, and exotic stone materials occur at many complex hunter-gatherer sites, even if they are hundreds of kilometers from the sources of raw materials. Among ethnographic transegalitarian societies, prestige items were used in five important ways, and we may expect that they were used in similar ways among prehistoric complex hunter-gatherers. The functions of prestige items included: 1. as a means to establish debts (due to the essentially reciprocal contracts involved in gift giving and the high investments entailed); 2. as a means of displaying economic and social success; 3. as a means of confirming, validating, or emphasizing the value of important social transactions (especially marriages, alliances, the taking of important positions, and peacemaking); 4. as a means to convert surplus food into other desirable materials (wealth) or relationships; and 5. as a substitute for human life (payments for brides or as compensations for injuries or deaths in lieu of revenge killings or the reciprocal transfer of children in marriages). The traditional models of cultural complexity and technological advances (as reflected in the opening quotation of this article) consider features such as sedentism, monumental architecture, pottery, metal use, calendars, record-keeping, slavery, and various forms of wealth as the result of the domestication of plants, animals, and agriculture. However, it is evident from both ethnographic and archaeological remains that all of these features actually occur first among complex hunter-gatherers and are related to the development of the kinds of prestige economies discussed above. Thus, most of the major technological and social changes usually considered as resulting from domestication are clearly not the result of domestication but stem from much more fundamental transformations that begin in complex hunter-gatherer societies and also continue into agricultural societies, becoming even more developed in the most productive agricultural contexts. Because of the advantages conferred by prestige items for the five purposes mentioned above, there should have been significant pressures within complex hunter-gatherer societies to increase food production

in order to produce or acquire prestige items on an ever-increasing scale. Once surplus production became the basis for acquiring mates, military allies, and decision-making power, people must have begun to compete in order to see who could produce the most surpluses. And this appears to be a new cultural phenomenon beginning with the appearance of complex hunter-gatherers. However, aside from increasing surpluses in order to produce more prestige items, an even more effective way of using surplus food was in feasts. In fact, the most valued foods used in feasts can be considered prestige items. It is no coincidence that the usual context in which almost all types of prestige items were displayed was in feasts, often as gifts creating debts. Feasts were used for a wide variety of purposes, including all of the purposes prestige items were used for (see Food and Feasting, Social and Political Aspects). Above all, feasts constituted extremely effective means of converting surplus food production into other desired materials or relationships (whether debts or alliances). The ability of individuals to marry and reproduce, survive hostile attacks, and defend their own interests in the community depended, to a large degree, on the successful cultivation of support networks within and between communities. The production of surpluses for feasting was the most important means of creating these networks, and it is not surprising that considerable competition among support groups (usually loosely kin-based) and communities characterized a great deal of feasting. People tried to outdo competing groups in terms of the size and lavishness of feasts in order to obtain the best marriage partners, the most wealth, the most influence in decisions or disputes in villages, and the best military assistance. There are repeated references in the ethnographic literature of complex hunter-gatherers and simple horticulturalists to the effect that the most powerful forces that intensified production were not periodic food shortages, but the social and political competition between factions and communities over desirable marriages, alliances, and decisionmaking roles. Because surplus production and the control of the most productive resource sites (whether fishing sites, patches of fertile land, or hunting locations) conferred so many advantages for people in complex huntergatherer societies, it is to be expected that these sites would have been owned or controlled by the most ambitious families and that these rights would have been passed down from generation to generation. In this context, ancestor worship and the establishment

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of corporate kin groups would be very advantageous. Not surprisingly, ownership of resource sites and the importance of ancestors characterize most ethnographic complex hunter-gatherers, whether on the Northwest coast or elsewhere. Thus, the type of religious, social, and mythological structures that are often thought to characterize food-producing Neolithic societies (strongly centered on ancestor worship and corporate kin totems) occur among complex hunter-gatherers and probably appeared well before domestication. In sum, complex hunter-gatherers and simple horticulturalists share many important basic characteristics. While it is not possible to discuss all of these in detail in this short section, some of the most salient features include similar or overlapping population densities, settlement sizes, levels of sedentism, technologies, use of prestige items, types of feasts, socioeconomic inequalities, secret societies, human sacrifice and slavery, ancestor worship, corporate kinship groups, cemeteries, and a heterarchical type of sociopolitical organization. The only aspects that seem to distinguish simple horticultural societies from complex hunter-gatherers are the techniques that they use to intensify production: some groups include cultivation and domestication among the array of intensification techniques used, others such as fishing or reindeer-herding societies do not. Thus, at a general level, we may refer to both complex hunter-gatherers and simple horticulturalists as a single type of society. The term ‘transegalitarian societies’ is used herein. Transegalitarian societies exhibit the characteristics listed as well as the previously discussed features of prestige items. Most pastoral nomad societies also fit the characteristics of transegalitarian societies, although their economic base is different from both complex hunter-gatherers and simple horticulturalists.

The Real Consequences of Food Production If most of the social and technological changes typically viewed as the outcome of food production and domestication really began earlier in Mesolithic or complex hunter-gatherer contexts, then what were the real consequences of food production and domestication? It could be argued that for the first millenium or two after the appearance of domestication, there are not any fundamental changes. At most, there may be some intensification of production (with initial domesticated forms) and elaboration of social, ritual, political, and technological trends

begun in Mesolithic types of societies as well as shifts in settlement patterns to take advantage of the best food-producing areas. However, over the long term, it was possible to gradually modify and increase the productivity of plants and animals through genetic manipulation and labor investment (weeding, tilling, watering, fertilizing, mulching). In this fashion, food production using domesticates eventually provided the potential of expanding the resource base in an elastic fashion (almost without ultimate upper limits) that other forms of intensified collection of wild foods did not. Certainly, fishing and the production of nonfood prestige items could not be modified in this fashion. Thus, the immediate social consequences of food production (using domesticates, especially for occasional feasts) may not have changed the basic way of life from that of complex hunter-gatherers to any significant extent. However, ultimately, with refinements in the genetic productivity of crops, food production made it possible to support denser populations, larger communities, greater surpluses, and more complex sociopolitical systems.

The Near Eastern Example More archaeological and biological research devoted to the study of early domestication has been conducted in the Near East than anywhere else in the world (see Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant). Although far from complete, the sequences and conditions pertaining to initial domestication in the Near East are the best that are currently available. Thus, it is worth examining the archaeology of this area to illustrate some of the points presented in the preceding section. While there are a few indications of special burials and prestige items in the Upper Paleolithic sites of the Near East, it is not until the Mesolithic Natufian cultures that very clear indications of complex hunter-gatherers emerge in the area. The Natufian culture emerged about 13 000 years ago and lasted until 10 500 years ago. It exhibited a wide range of complex hunter-gatherer characteristics, including: . settlements in unusually rich environments encompassing ‘‘endless vistas’’ of ‘‘vast supplies’’ with 250 riparian and other plant food species, and ‘‘meat in whatever amounts were needed’’ (Hillman 2000, 366, 370–371, 384; Moore et al., 2000, 480); . relatively high population densities; . large settlements of several hundred people; . permanent architecture and indications of high levels of sedentism;

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. many prestige objects including shells, carved basalt objects, obsidian, raptor bird wings and claws, and other exotic stone materials (some transported over hundreds of kilometers); . corporate kin groups and burial areas; . heterarchical organization; . socioeconomic inequalities; and . elaborate feasting. Settlements in the ‘core’ Natufian area constitute some of the best examples of transegalitarian hunter-gatherers that have been archaeologically documented. It is especially significant that there are good indications of relatively large-scale feasting by corporate kin groups (especially in funeral contexts), and considerable sociopolitical competition, all before any significant occurrence of domestication. On the other hand, several authors have argued that cultivation (without domestication) and the ownership of prime cultivation plots probably characterized these Natufian communities. The Natufian cultures develop into Pre-Pottery Neolithic A cultures with more substantial plastered architecture but no perceptible change in practical technological tools. Unfortunately, there are no plant remains from this period to assess the status of domestication in these societies. In the succeeding (and derivative) early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) sites (from 10 500 to 8500 years ago), domestication is clearly attested in many sites. However, domesticates were of only very minor significance in most of these early PPNB sites and appear to be completely absent from some of them (Gobekli, Jerf el-Ahmar, Asikli, Nativ Hagdud). By the end of the PPNB, domesticated goats, sheep, pigs, and cattle appear at many sites. Clearly they were being kept, herded, and bred by this time, and we might expect that the raising of wild animals (arguably for feasting) predated their domestication by several centuries, if not more. The change in settlement patterns, at or before this time, to site locations associated with fertile soils suitable for growing crops is a strong indication that some cultivation was taking place and that the products were of considerable importance, at least in terms of their values if not in terms of the quantities of food produced. The basic PPNB economy appears to have been similar to earlier complex hunter-gatherer subsistence regimes, emphasizing intensified techniques for collecting plants, including, in some cases, their cultivation. These aspects are consonant with interpretations mentioned previously concerning surplus production and the role of feasting, prestige economies, and competition between aggrandizers or corporate kin groups.

By the end of the PPNB, there was a veritable explosion of sites together with a major increase in the importance of domesticated plant forms in the subsistence economy. I suggest that genetic selection of the previous centuries and millenniums culminated at this time in new varieties that were much more productive than their wild counterparts. As a result, growing domesticated crops could finally compete with (or outcompete) the gathering of wild foods in terms of returns for effort invested. Thus, domesticates began to be grown as the major staples, since they provided the greatest return, whereas previously they were more labor intensive to produce and thus used only for special occasions like feasts. The increased productivity of domesticated varieties eventually provided a decisive turning point in making possible larger political organizations and more complex societies. The major forces of change had been established in the Mesolithic, and the development of genetically modified cultivation and breeding varieties whose productivity could be ever increased, provided the means to catapult social and political complexity to new levels. With each increase in social and political complexity, a concomitant but geometrical increase in surplus production was required to fund the ever-augmenting needs of the political apparatus which continued to be based on feasting, prestige items, and status. At first, few important changes occurred in the Near East, even after the adoption of domesticates which probably only provided marginally better returns than wild resources. At this time, the pottery-using Hassunan culture (5800–5000 BC) emerged in the north Mesopotamian Plain in the Baghdad region. Evidence for domestication comes from the charred remains of several basic plants which may have become staples such as barley, einkorn and emmer wheat, linseed, as well as goats and sheep (probably always used for feasts). Hassunan settlements were restricted to areas where dry farming could be practiced, although some evidence of very simple irrigation occurs at a few sites. As with the preceding PPNB and Natufian cultures, there were significant prestige objects. At Hassunan sites, these included jewelry of turquoise and shells, the earliest true seals, and quantities of obsidian. However, there were no pronounced differences in house sizes or grave goods in the communities or any significant monumental architecture such as fortifications or large temples. All these characteristics fit the models of transegalitarian horticultural societies at their simple or intermediate levels (despot or reciprocator forms) with no fixed leadership, monumental architecture, or entrenched stable economic inequalities. In terms

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of general levels of complexity and organization, they might be compared to traditional communities in New Guinea or the Amazon. The following Halaf culture (5000–4300 BC) provides a number of significant indications of increasing complexity, albeit still in the realm of transegalitarian types of cultures, perhaps at the more complex, entrepreneur level. The subsistence base does not seem to change dramatically, although one might expect some genetic improvements in crop yields over time. What clearly does change is the quantity and diversity of prestige items as well as the appearance of monumental architecture. The prestige items take the form of increased amounts of jewelry, obsidian, seals, stone bowls, as well as the appearance of native copper jewelry, and fine pottery manufactured by full-time specialists. Monumental architecture occurs in the form of rock-cut fortification ditches and apparent ritual structures (tholloi) up to 6 m in diameter. Fortifications might be expected to reflect an increase in conflict and competition due to the increased production of surpluses, wealth items, trade, and the advantages to be gleaned from controlling such commodities. However, it was not until the succeeding Ubaid period (4300–3500 BC) that the first good indications of socially and politically stratified societies appeared in favorable locations, especially where this culture spread into the south. Wherever water could be brought to the soils of the southern plains, the land was transformed into the most productive among any in Western Asia. These areas are composed of fertile silts laid down by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, much in the way that the Nile annually deposited fertile silts in its lower reaches. In lower Mesopotamia, when combined with irrigation technology and crops capable of high yields, unparalleled surpluses could be produced. These conditions produced chiefdoms that rapidly developed into the first civilizations of the Old World, the Sumerians. Indications of chiefdoms can be detected during the Ubaid period in terms of the enhanced prestige items (including the first true smelted copper items with axes as well as jewelry), substantial use of irrigation (although still at a basic technological level), much more significant monumental standing architecture (at Tepe Gawra, 20 buildings surround a central sanctuary and courtyard 20 m on a side), rich burials for some families in plastered tombs, numerous seals, and sites up to 25 ac in size. In neighboring Khuzistan, separate clusters of sites occur, each containing a somewhat larger central site indicating the existence of separate polities (each displaying a political hierarchy such as typifies chiefdoms). This is a pattern that became much more

pronounced at the end of the period and became much more elaborated in the Sumerian period with the formation of city-states. With the move into the very productive niche of the lower floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, surpluses based on domesticated food production rapidly escalated and cultural changes occurred so fast that that some scholars even question whether a chiefdom phase of development really preceded state formation in Mesopotamia. In the author’s opinion, this is an extreme and unwarranted interpretation of the archaeological record. Whether one wishes to term the aggrandizers who were pushing their selfinterested proposals for changes, ‘big men’, ‘great men’, ‘entrepreneurs’, ‘chiefs’, or some other epithets, is irrelevant to the argument that it was these individuals who were responsible for creating the cultural changes that emerged before, during, and after food production based on domesticates. These individuals created the strategies that took advantage of surplus production and created the intense pressures for ever more intensified surplus production. It seems clear that over the millenniums, food production based on domestication did eventually create a much more productive subsistence base than food production based on wild species could ever achieve. When combined with favorable environments and technology, domesticates made it possible to produce food surpluses on a scale unprecedented among complex hunter-gatherers. These food surpluses in turn could be used to produce ever more prestige goods, sponsor ever more lavish feasts, and support ever greater political complexity. The upshot was the creation of the first state-level polities: the Sumerian city-states that Samuel Noah Kramer has likened so eloquently to contemporary industrial societies. While it may be true that Sumerian states provide our first glimpse of modern types of societies replete with high degrees of social and economic complexity, specialization, writing, law codes, commerce, and social ills, at a more basic level, the values and practices that laid the foundation for these kinds of features really appeared first among complex huntergatherers. It was domestication that permitted the full development of the potential of this new type of culture. However, the basic logic of private ownership, surplus production, investment, and use of prestige goods, has not changed since complex hunter-gatherers first pioneered these developments. As we emerge today from the industrial period and enter a new nuclear/cybernetic period, we have yet to realize the full potential of the type of cultural and ecological system that began with complex huntergatherers. The forms of surplus energy that we

AGRICULTURE/Social Consequences 131

now use have expanded from food production to combustible fuels, wind, water, solar, and nuclear fuels, but the fundamental strategy of producing surplus energy and devising strategies to convert that energy into desirable commodities and relationships has not changed. Today, it is impossible for growth and change to continue at the present pace. Our cultures must create a more stable equilibrium in the coming centuries. Exactly what form culture will take at that future time is difficult to predict, but it will ultimately owe its existence to the expanded production of surplus energy that domestication initially made possible. The increase in the level of complexity beyond transegalitarian communities is the real legacy of food production and domestication. It opened a Pandora’s box of productive potential that continuously stretched the system established by complex hunter-gatherers to ever more complex limits. We are still expanding that same basic system and its limits in our own society. It is worth reflecting on the pervasive role prestige goods play in our own social system today and how this system will develop in the foreseeable future. The author’s argument here is that in the last 30 000 years, especially the last 10 000 years, we have created a new type of ecological system without parallel in the natural world around us. There is no other species that can readily convert available surplus production into other survival and reproductive benefits. Other species may be able to adapt genetically in order to convert extra resources into bodily appendages or displays that confer selective advantages, but none can convert extra resources to benefit themselves in an immediate fashion. Only humans can do this. See also: Animal Domestication; Asia, East: Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers; Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Mesolithic Cultures; Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad; Europe: Neolithic; Europe, Northern and Western: Mesolithic Cultures; Food and Feasting, Social and

Political Aspects; Paleoethnobotany; Plant Domestication; Social Inequality, Development of.

Further Reading Deur D (2002) Rethinking precolonial plant cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America. The Professional Geographer 54: 140–157. Deur D (ed.) (2005) Keeping It Living. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Hayden B (1995) Pathways to power. In: Price T and Feinman G (eds.) Foundations of Social Inequality, pp. 15–86. New York: Plenum. Hayden B (1998) Practical and prestige technologies. Journal of Archoeological Method and Theory 5: 1–55. Hayden B (2001) Richman, poorman, beggarman, chief: The dynamics of social inequality. In: Feinman G and Price T (eds.) Archaeology at the Millenium, pp. 231–272. New York: Kluwer/ Plenum. Hayden B (2004) Sociopolitical organization in the Natufian: A view from the Northwest. In: Delage C (ed.) BAR International Series: The Last Hunter-Gatherers in the Near East, pp. 263–308. Oxford: Archaeopress. Hayden B (2007) Une societe hierarchique ou egalitaire? In: Beaure S de (ed.) La vie quotidienne au Paleolithique Superieure, pp. 197–208. Paris: Editions CNRS. Hillman G (2000) The plant food economy of Abu Hureyra 1 and 2. In: Moore A, Hillman G, and Legge A (eds.) Village on the Euphrates, pp. 327–398. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moore A, Hillman G, and Legge A (2000) The significance of Abu Hureyra. In: Moore A, Hillman G, and Legge A (eds.) Village on the Euphrates, pp. 475–526. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Peacock S (1998) Putting Down Roots: The Emergence of Wild Plant Food Production on the Canadian Plateau. PhD Dissertation, University of Victoria. Peacock S (2002) Perusing the pits: The evidence for prehistoric geophyte processing on the Canadian Plateau. In: Mason S and Hather J (eds.) The Hunter-Gatherer Archaeobotany, pp. 45–63. London: Institute of Archaeology. Pringle H (1998) The slow birth of agriculture. Science 282: 1446–1450. Whittle A (1994) The first farmers. In: Cunliffe B (ed.) The Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of Europe, pp. 136–166. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Willcox G (1998) Archeobotanical evidence for the beginnings of agriculture in southwest Asia. In: Damania A, et al. (eds.) The Origins of Agriculture and Crop Domestication, pp. 25–38. Aleppo, Syria: ICARDA.

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AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN Contents The Greater Antilles and Bahamas The Lesser Antilles

The Greater Antilles and Bahamas Mary Jane Berman, Miami University, Oxford, OH, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary anthropomorphism The attributing of human attributes to non-human beings or inanimate objects. archipelago A chain of islands. colonization The establishment of permanent settlements in a new area, a special form of migration in which migrant groups settle in previously uninhabited locales. hallucinogen A psychoactive substance that induces altered consciousness and sensory experiences. lipidary The cutting, shaping, polishing, and finishing of materials such as stone, mineral, and gemstones to produce functional or decorative items. migration The movement of people from one locale to another. rain shadow Dry region on the surface of the earth that is leeward or behind of a mountain with respect to the prevailing wind direction. raptorial Any of numerous carnivorous birds that hunt and kill other animals. shaman A religious practitioner who possesses the power to communicate with supernatural forces on behalf of individuals or groups to heal or malign them. zoomorphism The attributing of animal attributes to humans or inanimate objects.

Introduction Geography

Located in the northern Caribbean basin, the Greater Antilles (Figure 1) consists of the islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic). The Bahamas archipelago consists of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos, BWI. Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico, the Caribbean’s largest, oldest, most geologically complex, and most physiographically and environmentally diverse islands, are characterized by topographically varied landforms created by

metamorphic, volcanic, and sedimentary activity. In contrast, the Bahama archipelago is made up of a series of low-lying carbonate islands composed of Pleistocene and Holocene eolianite ridges and swales formed by sedimentary processes. Climatically, the area is characterized as the subtropics. The greatest amounts of precipitation fall June–November, coinciding with the hurricane season. Dry seasons occur February–March and in May. Precipitation varies greatly. More precipitation falls on the islands’ higher elevations and the northern and eastern sides; the southern and western sides, and the mountains’ leeward side receive less precipitation (rain shadow effect). In Hispaniola the mean rainfall varies between 1000 and 5000 mm, whereas in the Bahama archipelago mean rainfall ranges from 350 to 1250 mm. There is little annual change in mean air temperature. Diversity in vegetation is attributed to latitude, elevation, rainfall amounts and seasonality, topography, and edaphic conditions. There are 13 life zones ranging from tropical desert scrub to subtropical rainforest; the dry forest life zones dominate. Marine (beach, intertidal, reef, deep-water) environments support shellfish, fish, marine mammals, and turtles. Estuaries serve as marine fauna nursery grounds. Terrestrial environments support mammals, reptiles, invertebrates, and amphibians. Birds inhabit a variety of habitats. Time–Space Systematics

Caribbean archaeologists use different schemes to name, classify, and systematize the temporal, spatial, and cultural relationships of the prehistoric people they study. The most widely used system was conceived by Irving Rouse who created it to chart the migratory routes and culture histories of the people who colonized the Caribbean. In his system, prehistory is divided into periods; each period is characterized by archaeological cultures defined by lithic or ceramic assemblages grouped on the basis of shared traits (see Time and History, Divisions). In an assemblage, the most inclusive cultural unit is the series (designated by -oid), which is divided into a subseries (designated by -an). The minimal unit is the style, which represents a local expression of a subseries. The style is typically named for the first site in which it was

AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas 133 Florida Atlantic Ocean

N

Gulf of Mexico San Salvador Middle Caicos Grand Turk Cuba Hispaniola Belize

Jamaica

MESOAMERICA

Puerto Rico

Caribbean Sea

Trinidad

Venezuela 0

400 km

SOUTH AMERICA

Figure 1 Map of the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas archipelago. Courtesy of Perry L. Gnivecki.

found and described. Critics believe the system simplifies and obfuscates the range and sources of cultural variation present in the archaeological record. Cuban archaeologists use an evolutionary scheme based on stages consistent with Marxist cultural materialism (see Marxist Archaeology). Chanlatte Baik has developed a system for Puerto Rico, while Dominican archaeologists employ one based on local sequences.

Period I: Peopling of the Caribbean Throughout prehistory, the peopling of the Caribbean was due to multiple migrations from more than one place and by people of varying ethnic and linguistic affiliations. The earliest evidence of human occupation of the Caribbean, which dates to 5500 BC, comes from the Banwari Trace site in southwestern Trinidad. These people, who entered the Antilles from mainland South America, are known as the Ortoiroid culture. They practiced what archaeologists call an Archaic subsistence economy characterized by fishing and gathering. They manufactured and used groundstone, shell, and flaked stone tools, and lived in small mobile or semi-sedentary communities. By 2500 BC, the Ortoiroid had made their way through the Lesser Antilles, bypassing some islands (see Americas, Caribbean: The Lesser Antilles) to Puerto Rico. At 4200 BC or thereabouts, Cuba was the first island of the Greater Antilles to be settled. The

colonizers, who are known as the Casimiroid peoples, settled in Cuba and then migrated to Hispaniola. These first settlers probably came from Belize in Central America, since there are similarities between stone tools found there and in Cuba that date to this time period. A computer simulation that employed wind and water currents and other variables important to maritime travel suggests though that these people may have come directly from South America. The Casimiroid people made tools that include large macroblades, core tools, scrapers, burins, and awls, anvils, and hammerstones. Their perishable technology, which likely constituted most of their material culture, has not been recovered. They lived in open-air sites and rock shelters and many of their sites appear to be workshops where they made stone tools. In Cuba, people occupied the coast and inland river valleys; rock shelter and open-air sites have been found in the Seboruco and Levisa River Valleys. The Levisa Rock Shelter (3190 BC) is one of the best studied sites from this time period. Sites on Hispaniola include the Vignier III site (3630 BC) in Haiti and the Barrera-Morda´n (2610–2165 BC), Casimira, Honduras del Oeste, and Tavera sites in the Dominican Republic. The Maruca and Angostura sites in Puerto Rico indicate that the island was settled around 4000–5000 BC. We know little about the subsistence practices of these people, other than they hunted terrestrial

134 AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas

species such as hutı´as (a Capromyid rodent), iguanas, and snakes. Although the people also collected shellfish, it did not constitute a large part of the diet and there is no evidence for fishing. In Cuba, overpredation resulted in the extinction of the giant sloth. Sites dating to this time period or attributed to this culture have not been found in Jamaica, or the Bahamas. By around 2000 BC to about 200 BC, the descendants of these people engaged in fishing, shellfish collecting, and plant gathering, and manufactured groundstone tools. Like their predecessors, they, too, lived in open-air sites and rock shelters. They probably also managed or tended fruit trees. Inter-island variation in material culture, settlement patterns, and dietary choices emerged. Such differences can be attributed to a combination of local cultural, environmental, and functional factors. In Cuba, sites dating to this time period are located along the coast and in the interior. These people manufactured distinctive Strombus gigas shell artifacts, including gouges, cups, and hammers; groundstone artifacts such as unique polished stone balls (spheroliths) and groundstone daggers, which served as burial accompaniments; polished ovoid stones, corazones, which have not been reported elsewhere in the Caribbean (Figure 2); stone rings, wooden objects, and pendants. They made blade tools, which

Figure 2 Heartstones (corazones). Cuba. Stone. 12.5 cm (white), 12.3 cm (yellow). Collection of the Montane´ Anthropological Museum, University of Havana. Photograph by Kristine Edle Olsen.

were smaller and of poorer technical quality than those from the earlier period and flake tools eventually replaced them. Microlith tools have been found at a few sites. Complex, abstract, highly imaginative, geometric pictographs occur at the Punta del Este caves located on the Isla de la Juventud. Other important sites include Cayo Redondo and Cueva Funche (2050 BC); later occupations of the Levisa rockshelter, and burial sites from caves and open-air sites such as Cueva de El Purial (1110 BC) and Canı´mar Abajo (2750 BC). In western Cuba, people practicing an Archaic economy were not supplanted by later ceramic-making groups as they were elsewhere on the island; these communities persisted until the fifteenth century or later. Sites in Haiti (2660 BC– AD 240) and the Dominican Republic (2030 BC–AD 145) are located in river valleys and coastal areas. Here the people hunted sloths, manatees, crocodiles, sea turtles, and whales, and collected shellfish. They made large stemmed spearheads, backed blades, and end scrapers, which they used to hunt these animals. It is believed that they are responsible for the local extinction of the sloth. They also made and used a wide array of groundstone tools including conical pestles, single- and double-bitted axes, rectangular hammer grinders, balls, hook-, fan-, and pegshaped objects, metates, mortars, incised bowls, and body adornments such as beads, and pendants. The people gathered or casually cultivated plants and fruit trees. Dried Zamia sp. leaves, Clusea rosea seeds, palm nuts, and maize pollen have been identified from sites in the Dominican Republic. There is considerable regional diversity in the material culture from Puerto Rico during this time period and it resembles both Casimiroid and Ortoiroid cultural traditions. Some archaeologists have attributed this variation to the presence of culturally distinct peoples, differences in site function, or varying raw material properties and availability. The people were mobile fisher-foragers who lived in small, open-air sites or rock shelters. A few larger communities may have been semi-sedentary. Settlements are located in coastal settings adjacent to mangrove swamps. The people engaged in low-level or casual root, seed, and tree crop cultivation and management. Food remains such as avocado and yellow sapote have been found at the Marı´a de la Cruz site. At Maruca and Puerto Ferro, starch grain analysis of groundstone artifacts has revealed evidence for domesticated maize, manioc, beans, sweet potato, and yautı´a (cocoyam). There is support from the Maisabel site that these people burned the landscape to create horticultural plots or regenerate natural areas with wild plants. Animal foods included shallowwater mollusks, marine fish, land crabs, and minor amounts of reptiles, turtles, and birds. The diet varied

AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas 135

by locale. Terrestrial resources seem to have been favored at rock shelter sites such as Cueva Tembladera and Cueva Gemelos, while the occupants of coastal, open-air sites such as Maruca and Cayo Cofresı´ emphasized foods from marine or littoral sources. The people manufactured flake tools and groundstone tools that included small mortars, and conical manos, which are highly diagnostic of this time period. Use-modified stone tools include edge grinders, manos, and discoid nutting stones. At Maruca, some of the chert used to make the flaked stone tools has been sourced to Long Island (Antigua) (see Americas, Caribbean: The Lesser Antilles) and there is evidence from other sites of stone materials from other islands. The people also made tools from Strombus gigas such as celts, gouges, and picks that resembled those from Cuba. They also manufactured shell and bone points, net weights, and carved and drilled shell ornaments. Sites in eastern Cuba [e.g., Caimanes III (AD 200), Belliza], eastern Dominican Republic [Punta Cana (340 BC–AD 830), Honduras del Oeste and el Barrio (230 BC–AD 420), and el Caimito (305 BC–AD 120)], and throughout Puerto Rico contain low densities of plain, small, low-fired ceramics that are globular and boat-shaped in form. Undecorated and decorated sherds (with incisions and punctation, mirroring designs found on stone bowls and wooden objects) have been found. It has been argued that people from the Middle Orinoco, coastal Columbia, or elsewhere in northern Latin America introduced pottery to these islands. Another argument claims that these people adopted ceramics from the Cedrosan Saladoid peoples who settled eastern Dominican Republic (see below). Some archaeologists propose that these people ‘borrowed’ and incorporated ceramic technology from neighboring societies or other areas in the circum-Caribbean. It has also been suggested that ceramics evolved independently of external causes.

Period II: Early Ceramic Age Around 500 BC, new groups of people entered the Caribbean from the Orinoco and other river basins of Venezuela and Guiana. These ceramic-making and -using, full-time sedentary horticulturalists are known as the Saladoid. It is believed these people came from the Lower Orinoco, then went to Trinidad and ultimately made their way to the Greater Antilles, establishing sites in the Lesser Antilles along the way. In the Greater Antilles, evidence for Saladoid peoples can be found in Puerto Rico and at least one site in eastern Hispaniola. It appears that the Saladoid peoples bypassed the Windward Islands and moved directly to the Leeward Islands, Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. By 300–250 BC, they had settled Puerto

Rico. Chanlatte Baik suggests that a separate group migrated directly to Puerto Rico from another portion of the Orinoco River Valley around this time. According to Rouse, there are at least two Saladoid groups or subseries: the Cedrosan and Huecan Saladoid. The Huecan is believed to be a variant of the Cedrosan Saladoid that diverged from the Saladoid somewhere in the Orinoco region. Chanlatte Baik and others regard the Huecan materials as a separate and unrelated cultural phenomenon that consists of the La Hueca complex dating to 200 BC and AD 200. In Puerto Rico, Cedrosan Saladoid components are present at the Hacienda Grande, Maisabel, Paso del Indio, and Tibes sites, among others. Huecan materials are found exclusively at the Sorce´ site (Vieques Island) and Punta Candelero (on mainland Puerto Rico within view of Sorce´). In the Lesser Antilles, Huecan and Cedrosan Saladoid assemblages cooccur in the same deposits, but in Puerto Rico they are spatially separate. At the Sorce´ site, Saladoid materials overlay the Huecan materials. The relationship between the Cedrosan Saladoid and the La Hueca complex is poorly understood; neither is found elsewhere in the Greater Antilles nor the Bahamas. Cedrosan Saladoid ceramics are characterized by elaborate painted designs in white-on-red (WOR), white-on-red with orange slip, black paint, and negative-painted designs, in a variety of vessel shapes. These are considered to be the finest example of Caribbean ceramics (Figures 3 and 4). Vessels often had modeled and incised zoomorphic adornos and strap and loop handles. Cedrosan Saladoid potters also produced zone-incised cross-hatched (ZIC) wares. In contrast, the Huecan Saladoid ceramic assemblages lack painted wares and are characterized by ZIC pottery and modeled handles (Figure 5). In some examples, the incisions were filled with white or red paint. A variety of flaked and groundstone artifacts unique to the La Hueca complex have been found exclusively in Huecan deposits and flaked stone and groundstone manufacturing techniques differed between Cedrosan and La Hueca peoples. While both Cedrosan Saladoid and La Hueca complex people produced carved stone figurines made from nonlocal materials, bird-head pendants (Figure 6) resembling raptorial birds (condors, king vultures, or combinations of these species) have only been found at Punta Candelero, where they were manufactured, and at Sorce´, which is thought to have served as the port-of-trade. The unique flake tool and lapidary traditions lend further proof of the distinctiveness of the Cedrosan and La Hueca complex peoples and to the possibility of separate origins. During this period, three-pointed stone, shell, and coral artifacts known as zemı´s, a designation describing spiritually-imbued objects

136 AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas

Figure 3 Saladoid (WOR) bowl. Puerto Rico. Ceramic. Height: 7.7; width: 15.2 cm. Centro de Investigaciones Arqueolo´gicas, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

Figure 6 Bird-beak pendant. La Hueca Culture. Puerto Rico. Jadeite and serpentine. Height: 5.1; width: 4.1 cm. Centro de Investigaciones Arqueolo´gicas, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

Figure 4 Saladoid (polychrome) bell-shaped vessel. Puerto Rico. Ceramic. Height:15.2; width: 27.9 cm. Centro de Investigaciones Arqueolo´gicas, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

Figure 5 Huecan-Huecoid zone-incised cross-hatched (ZIC) tabular-shaped rim handle sherds. Puerto Rico. Ceramic. Centro de Investigaciones Arqueolo´gicas, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

associated with the later Chican Ostionoid and Taı´no cultures, appeared, suggesting the onset of zemı´ worship. Snuffing vessels, believed to have been used to ingest hallucinogens, have been found, too. Cedrosan Saladoid sites were located on coastal plains and in interior alluvial valleys. Sites consisted of a central plaza surrounded by multiple domestic structures, believed to house extended families. It is believed that Saladoid society was egalitarian. Burial groupings located in the plazas are thought to represent lineal descent groups. The two known Huecan sites are smaller than their Cedrosan Saladoid counterparts and are also inferred to have been organized along egalitarian lines. The Sorce´ site is made up of seven small mounds arranged in a horseshoe pattern. Little perishable technology has been recovered, although archaeologists infer that the people used gourds as containers, made cordage and netting, wove baskets, and manufactured wood canoes, paddles, and other items. Polished and groundstone axes and adzes were made from fine-grained materials, including various kinds of greenstone. Axes and adzes were also manufactured from Strombus shells. During this period, three-pointed stone, shell, and coral artifacts known as zemı´s, a designation describing spiritually-imbued objects associated with the later Chican

AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas 137

Ostionoid and Taı´no cultures, appeared, suggesting the onset of zemı´ worship. Snuffing vessels, believed to have been used to ingest hallucinogens, have been found, too. Archaeobotanical remains indicate that the Cedrosan Saladoid and Huecan peoples practiced arboriculture and cultivated or collected herbaceous plants and seed crops such as Panicum grasses (see Paleoethnobotany). The cultivation of root crops, such as manioc, has been inferred from ceramic objects believed to be griddles. Manioc was believed to have been brought to the Antilles by Saladoid peoples from South America; we now know that it was grown by earlier peoples practicing on Archaic subsistence economy. The diet consisted further of hutı´a, fish, turtles, shellfish, iguanid lizards, and land crabs. Marine mammals may have contributed to the diet. The hutı´a, which is found at both Cedrosan and Huecan sites, represents an imported species. The dietary remains from Vieques also include remains of the spiny rat and a possible peccary, which represents a South American import, as well as a variety of aquatic and terrestrial species of birds. The Saladoid persisted for almost 1000 years in Puerto Rico. Rouse believes that the Casimiroid of Hispaniola created a frontier that prevented the Saladoid from expanding westward. Evidence for Saladoid intrusion exists in the eastern Dominican Republic (c. AD 240) There are no Saladoid sites in Cuba, the Bahamas, or Jamaica.

Period III: Population Expansion and New Ceramic Traditions Around AD 600, changes in ceramic and lithic assemblages occurred on Puerto Rico. Rouse attributes these to the Ostionoid series that emerged from the Saladoid series. In contrast, Chanlatte Baik and others argue that the Ostionoid resulted from the interaction of the Huecan and Cedrosan Saladoid peoples with Archaic populations; others believe the Ostionoid represents a separate migration from South America; another recent argument places the origins of the Ostionoid among the Archaic cultures of Hispaniola. By the end of the seventh century, the Ostionoid culture had expanded westward to the Dominican Republic; by the eighth century, it had spread to Grand Turk, BWI; and by the mid-ninth century, it was present in Jamaica and central Cuba. In Puerto Rico, Ostionoid culture is known from the Punta Ostiones, Maisabel, Tibes, and Bronce sites, among others, and from Paso del Indio, Puerto Rico’s deepest, best-stratified site. The Coralie site (Grand Turk), thought to be an Ostionoid colony or outpost, was occupied and reoccupied by people from AD 700–1100.

The earlier occupation represents an early, if not the first, peopling of the Bahama archipelago. Archaeobotanical evidence indicates that Ostionoid peoples harvested wild plants, tended or managed fruit trees, and cultivated root-tuber crops. For many years, it was argued that a dietary shift took place between the Saladoid and Ostionoid periods whereby terrestrial resources (Saladoid) were supplanted by marine resources (Ostionoid). This is also known as the crab-shell dichotomy. While zooarchaeological and carbon isotope evidence is contradictory, it is generally agreed that where such subsistence change is observed, local factors are responsible and that marine resources contributed significantly throughout both periods. Guinea pigs, recovered from several sites, including Tibes, represent a faunal import from South America. Terracing and raised fields (montones) are found during this time period in Puerto Rico. People established settlements in new areas; in some regions, residences decreased in size, suggesting that they were occupied by nuclear families. On the eastern side of Puerto Rico, there is evidence of centralized settlement patterns. Civic-ceremonial and ballcourt sites, mostly in the southeastern part of the island, appear. There is also an increase in the number and size of zemı´s. Architectural settlement and artifact changes are believed to relate to the emergence of institutionalized social hierarchy. Tibes (Figure 7) is the oldest civic-ceremonial and possibly the first prehistoric political center in the Caribbean. Located in south-central Puerto Rico, it contains nine ballcourts, three dance plazas, causeways, and residences believed to have been occupied by emerging elites. Anadenanthera sp. wood and seeds of evening primrose (Oenothera sp.), a mild narcotic, were both found dating to the ceremonial occupation. Anadenanthera sp. is one of the possible sources of cojoba, the primary hallucinogenic substance used by the Taı´no to induce visions. This is the earliest archaeological evidence of the plant in the Caribbean. Ostionoid pottery consists of red-slipped boatshaped, straight-sided, and open vessels that often contain loop handles, sigmoid applique´s, and simple modeled head lugs (Figure 8). Red paint and black smudging on vessel exteriors is sometimes present. New kinds of flaked stone tools and different methods of tool production also differentiate the Ostionoid from the Saladoid. The people also made stone and shell artifacts with anthropomorphic and zoomorphic images. Sometime during the AD 600s, another pottery subseries, the Meillacan Ostionoid, emerged in the Cibao Valley of northern Hispaniola and is believed to represent an in situ development from the Ostionoid.

138 AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas

Figure 7 (a) Central section of the southern stone row of the main plaza of Tibes (Structure 6). Ball Court 2 is visible in the background. Puerto Rico. Photograph courtesy of L. Antonio Curet. (b) Ball Court 1 of Tibes facing east. Puerto Rico. Photo courtesy of L. Antonio Curet.

Figure 8 Ostionan Ostionoid boat-shaped vessel with strap handles. Puerto Rico. Ceramic. Height: 41; width: 32; thickness: 21.1 cm. Museo de Historia, Antropologı´a y Arte, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

Contrasting views suggest, though, that the Meillacan diffused from the Guyana Highlands, that it emerged centuries earlier from the Punta Cana tradition of eastern Dominican Republic (see below), and that it is unrelated to the Ostionoid series. The Meillacan and Ostionan cultures overlapped temporally in the Turks and Caicos and elsewhere; moreover, Ostionan pottery has been found in association with Meillacan sherds at sites in Hispaniola, suggesting that the latter did not necessarily supplant the former. Meillacan pottery is thin, hard, and unpainted. Decorations include modeling, punctuation (Figure 9), zoned incision, and anthropomorphic and zoomorphic applique´ figures located on the shoulder or rims of hemispheric and boat-shaped vessels. Some argue

AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas 139

Figure 9 Meillacan Ostionoid sherd with punctation. Illustration courtesy of Mary Jane Berman.

that Meillacan ceramic decoration drew upon Courian Casimiroid stone work designs; such an argument lends support that the Meillacan were direct descendants of Archaic cultures, with no links to the Ostionoid or represents the merging of Archaic and Ostionoid cultures. Meillacan ceramics or local versions with Meillacan designs appear almost contemporaneously in the ninth century in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, eastern and central Cuba, and the central Bahamas. A combination of exploration, colonization, and high levels of interisland interaction (trade, exchange) is likely responsible for the extensive spread of the Meillacan style. The earliest evidence of Palmetto ware, a locally made Bahamian pottery with Ostionan and Meillacan traits, signifies the appearance of a distinct Lucayan culture at AD 700–900 at the Three Dog and Dune #2, Pigeon Creek sites on San Salvador Island. Ceramic assemblages from northern and eastern Cuba exhibit both Meillacan and Ostionan traits, as does the White Marl pottery of Jamaica. Meillacan peoples and people influenced by Meillacan culture practiced root crop and seed horticulture in home gardens and mounded fields, tended or managed fruit trees, gathered wild plants, and fished and collected shellfish from marine and estuarine waters. Starch grain analysis on chert microliths from the Three Dog site has revealed evidence of maize, chili peppers, and several root and tuber crops, suggesting that the peoples who settled the central Bahamas brought these plants with them from their homelands in Hispaniola and Cuba (see Starch Grain Analysis). Sites in the Bahamas, Cuba, and Jamaica are small, reflecting the activities of horticultural-fishing groups. Meillacan outposts, including specialized shell bead production sites, were established on Middle Caicos and Grand Turk, BWI. The Meillacan culture did not penetrate Puerto Rico.

Figure 10 Chican Ostionoid bowl. Dominican Republic. Ceramic. Height: 14; width: 20.6; thickness: 18.7 cm. Collection of El Museo del Barrio, gift of Brian and Florence Mahony. El Museo del Barrio, New York City (PC92.1.4). Photograph by Bruce Schwarz.

Around AD 800, a new pottery, Chican Ostionoid, emerged in the southeastern Dominican Republic. By AD 1200, this ceramic style and its regional variants became widespread in Hispaniola (except for the southwestern peninsula), Puerto Rico, Jamaica, the Turks, and Caicos, and ultimately eastern Cuba, which the Chican peoples settled in (approximately) AD 1450. It has been argued recently that Chican pottery, like Meillacan pottery (see above) can also be traced to Punta Cana pottery due to resemblances in decorative characteristics. According to this argument, the Meillacan and Chican traditions are unrelated to the Ostionoid and should be referred to by their own series (rather than subseries) names (Meillacoid, Chicoid).

Period IV, AD 1200–1500 By AD 1200, Taı´no culture on Hispaniola was fully established; most of the characteristics observed by the Spanish, who arrived three centuries later, emerged during this period. Both Chican Ostionoid and Meillacan pottery and their local variants persisted into the fifteenth century in northern Hispaniola, central Cuba, Jamaica, and the central and northern Bahamas (which was settled by this time). Chican pottery is characterized by constricted open, boat-shaped, or constricted bottle-shaped vessels with carved or broad-lined curvilinear incisions sometimes in line and dot patterns (Figure 10). After AD 1200, pottery became more elaborate. Modeled-incised lugs depicted zemı´s, animals, gods, and caciques wearing ear spools and elaborate headdresses adorned the sides of vessels. At numerous sites in Hispaniola, Meillacan and Chican ceramics are found in the same strata.

140 AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas

Basketry-impressed Palmetto ware, which appears after AD 1100 in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos, reflects complex Lucayan basketry traditions (Figure 11). Throughout Hispaniola, Cuba, the Bahamas, and Jamaica, there was an increase in the number, type, and size of settlements. Except for western Cuba where a foraging subsistence economy was practiced, people grew manioc (the staple crop), maize, gourds/ squashes, varieties of peppers, tobacco, sweet potato, papaya, avocados, peanuts, yautı´a and other roots and tubers, engaged in arboriculture, and collected wild plants. Terraced fields are reported from Puerto Rico; irrigation was practiced in parts of Hispaniola. In the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos, fields were created in low-lying interdune areas. During this time, fish and shellfish dominated the meat portion of the diet, with minor contributions from iguana, hutı´a, and other animals. By the late fifteenth century, the Greater Antilles, Bahamas, and Turks and Caicos consisted of many linguistic and ethnic groups that interacted with one another through trade, exchange, marriage, and political alliances. Although culturally diverse, the people who lived here are known collectively as the Taı´no, meaning ‘good’ or ‘noble’ in classic Taı´no. The Indians of Hispaniola used this term when speaking to the Spanish in order to differentiate themselves from other groups. At the onset of Spanish entry into the Americas, the people of the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas, and the Turks and Caicos spoke at least three languages (classic Taı´no, Ciboney Taı´no, and Macorı´s) and two dialects, Ciguayo and Guanahatabey. Hispaniola was organized into five large and several smaller stratified chiefdoms or cacicazgos made up of: caciques (paramount ruler-chiefs) and their immediate families; nitainos, believed to be nobles, who assisted the caciques; and naborias or laborers. The behiques (shamans), who served as advisors and healers, were considered nitainos. A cacicazago consisted of 70–100 villages made up of several thousand people. Inheritance was matrilineal; residence patterns

may have been avunculocal. Caciques were invested with religious and political power, controlling economic, craft, and artistic labor, production, and distribution. Puerto Rico, eastern Cuba, and Jamaica were divided into smaller-sized, less politically complex polities, but more and bigger ballcourts were constructed during this time in Puerto Rico suggesting some form of social restructuring from the previous period. The Turks and Caicos and Bahamas may have been organized into small, less stratified cacicazagos. Hunting-gathering populations (Guanahatabeys) lived in western Cuba and southwestern Hispaniola. The Taı´no cosmological system consisted of a pantheon of deities such as Yu´cahau, the god of cassava, Attabeira, the fertility goddess, and 12 lesser deities. Zemı´s were ancestor-gods and/or shamanic spirithelpers who possessed spiritual, political, and/or healing powers. They were made from stone, shell, bone, coral, wood, ceramic, woven cotton, and other materials and resembled a combination of human, animal, and supernatural creatures drawn from a pantheon of spirits and ancestors (Figure 12). The objects often differed in material, style, and decorative treatment from island to island. Zemı´ were often depicted in rock art. The ingestion of hallucinogens such as cojoba was an integral part of spiritual life facilitated by the use of elaborate paraphernalia including inhalers, vomiting sticks, snuff tables, and spoons. Shamans (behiques) and shaman-caciques served as the expert translators of these experiences and were sometimes depicted in their altered states (Figure 13). The Taı´no and their Chican Ostionoid predecessors of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola played a ballgame on leveled courts or plazas (bateyes). Differences in shape, appearance, size, and number reflect interisland political and cultural differences. For example, there are fewer ballcourts on Hispaniola, but they are larger than those found on the other islands. Two teams made up of about 20–30 players vied with

Figure 11 Mold and cast of Lucayan basketry-impressed pottery. San Salvador, Bahamas. Photograph courtesy of Mary Jane Berman.

Figure 12 Three-pointer zemı´ with shell inlay. Puerto Rico. Stone. Height: 20.0; width: 8.3; thickness: 7.9 cm. Museo de Historia, Antropologı´a y Arte, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas 141

Figure 13 (a) Zemı´ of Deminan Caracarakol effigy jar (frontal view). Dominican Republic. Ceramic. (b) Zemı´ of Deminan Caracarakol effigy jar (back view). Dominican Republic. Ceramic. Height: 40.5 cm. Collected by Theodoor de Booy. National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution (05/3753). Photograph by David Heald.

one another to send the ball toward its goal. Hands and feet were not allowed to come into contact with the ball, nor was it permitted to touch the ground. The ball was made from rubber and other materials. In Puerto Rico, ballgame participants wore elaborately decorated stone artifacts known as stone collars and elbow stones on their waists and arms that helped keep the ball afloat (Figure 14). The competitions helped to resolve social tensions, serving also as occasions for feasting, trading, and alliance creation. Women-only teams were known to play. In recreating Chican mythology and ancestral genealogies, the petroglyph-zemı´s lining the Caguana (Puerto Rico) ball court, served as visual reminders of history and social organization. Low stools (duhos), which conveyed caciques’ and behiques’ position, wealth, prestige, authority, and power were used during ceremonies and other special occasions, including ballgames (Figure 15). They also served as gifts and elite burial accompaniments and caciques and behiques sat on them during the ingestion of cojoba. It is believed that the caciques sat on the stools with curved backs, while the behiques sat on ones that lacked backs.

The Taı´no also expressed themselves in music and dance. Ceremonies (areytos) signaling battles, marriages, and deaths of important personages and other significant events took place in the central plaza of the cacique’s village, which was larger than the surrounding ones. The arrival of Columbus and the Spanish in 1492 brought devastation and upheaval. The earliest evidence of Spanish presence in the Americas, known from glass beads, European ceramics, and a variety of metal objects, comes from the Long Bay site on San Salvador, Bahamas. After visiting several Bahamian islands and eastern Cuba, Columbus left a garrison of men at En Bas Saline in northern Hispaniola in December 1492. Upon his return in December 1493, there was no sign of them. A few weeks later, he established a settlement to the east at La Isabela. Within a few short years, other settlements and a chain of forts were built. Initially the two groups exchanged gold and food for European trinkets, but Spanish abuses soon triggered Indian resistance that was matched in 1494–95 by brutal Spanish reprisals, resulting in the eventual, near-universal enslavement of the Taı´no. Then, in 1495–97, the Spanish

142 AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas

Figure 14 Collar with decorated panel. Puerto Rico. Stone. Height: 9.5; width: 21.1 cm. Museo de Historia, Antropologı´a Arte, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

warfare, and relocation, severely decimated the population. The Spanish conquered Puerto Rico (1508), Jamaica (1509), and Cuba (1510), establishing the encomienda system. Indian women married Spanish men or served as their concubines. Indian plant foods were incorporated into the European diet. On each of the large islands, unknown numbers of Indians fled to the mountainous interior, where they established maroon communities. With the exception of these groups, by the mid-sixteenth century or earlier, the Taı´no and the Lucayans had virtually disappeared as cultural entities. Their biological and cultural heritage survive today in the people of Hispaniola, Cuba, and Puerto Rico; many aspects of diet, medicinal knowledge, crafts, spiritual beliefs, and vocabulary draw on Taı´no culture. By 1511, Africans were systematically imported to replace the Indians as slave labor. The beginning of contemporary Caribbean culture, drawing on Amerindian, African, and European beliefs, practices, and lifeways was established. See also: Americas, Caribbean: The Lesser Antilles; Animal Domestication; Marxist Archaeology; Paleoethnobotany; Plant Domestication; Starch Grain Analysis; Time and History, Divisions.

Figure 15 High-backed wooden duho. Puerto Rico. Wood. Height: 38.0; width: 20.3. Museo de Historia, Antropologia Y Arte, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

commanded that tribute (gold, cotton, food, labor), organized and negotiated through the caciques, be paid them every 3 months. The system was unsuccessful. In 1497, repartimiento, a system of forced Indian labor, was instituted, whereby the Crown gave land to the Spanish to be used for farming and ranching. Indians were assigned to Spaniards for whom they worked and received education in Christianity and ‘civilization’. In 1503, the encomienda system was established on Hispaniola; Indians paid tribute, worked in the mines for 4–6 months, and returned to their villages for the rest of the year (demora). The intentional and accidental import of Old World animals (cows, pigs, rats, mice) and plants (e.g., wheat, sugarcane, weeds) and deforestation due to the establishment of settlements and forts all contributed to major ecological changes. Within two decades, diseases (e.g., measles, smallpox, influenza), for which the aboriginal populations lacked immunities, physical abuse, overwork, food shortages, malnutrition,

Further Reading Bercht F, Brodsky E, Farmer JA, and Taylor D (1997) Taı´no, PreColumbian Art and Culture from the Caribbean. New York: The Monacelli Press. Curet LA (2005) Caribbean Paleodemography: Population, Culture History, and Sociopolitical Processes in Ancient Puerto Rico. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press. Dacal Moure R and Rivero de la Calle M (1984) Arqueologı´a aborigen de Cuba. La Habana: Editorial Gente Nueva. Granberry J and Vescelius GS (2004) Languages of the PreColumbian Antilles. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press. Keegan WF (2000) West Indian archaeology 3. Ceramic Age. Journal of Archaeological Research 8(2): 135–167. Newsom LA and Wing ES (2004) On Land and Sea: Native American Uses of Biological Resources in the West Indies. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press. Paga´n Jimenez J, Rodrı´guez M, Chanlatte Baik LA, and Narganes Storde YM (2005) La temprana introduccio´n y uso de algunas plantas dome´sticas, silvestres, y cultivos en Las Antillas precolombinas. Dia´logo Antropolo´gico 3(10): 7–33. Rouse I (1992) The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People who Greeted Columbus. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Siegel PE (ed.) (2005) Ancient Borinquen: Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Native Puerto Rico. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press. Wilson SM (1990) Hispaniola: Caribbean Chiefdoms in the Age of Columbus. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press.

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The Lesser Antilles Corinne L Hofmann, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary cross hatching Fine line incision in a cross-hatched pattern. caliviny Buff or black painted circular motifs on a plain or red slipped surface, in use throughout the entire Troumassoid sequence in the southern Lesser Antilles, notably on St. Vincent, where more than 20 sites have been documented yielding Caliviny pottery. This pottery has also been found on St. Lucia, Martinique, the Grenadines, and Barbados. Cayo Late Ceramic Age pottery style on Grenada, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Dominica, and Guadeloupe with affiliations to the Koriabo complex of the Guianas, itself a member of the Koriaban subseries of the Polychrome Tradition of Amazonia. head lugs Modeled zoomorphic or anthropomorphic representations, added to vessel as handles or lugs when both were in a plastic or leather-hard state. Huecan Saladoid subseries Pottery style identified in Puerto Rico, Vieques, and the northern Lesser Antilles as far south as Marie-Galante. The origin of this Early Ceramic Age style, the so-called Huecan problem, has been debated since its first discovery. Some scholars view it as a separate Huecoid series, resulting from an independent migration from the South American mainland, others as Huecan Saladoid, a separate subseries that developed independently out of the Saladoid series. Recently, also affiliation to Central America has been suggested. incision Linear or curvilinear grooves applied to the vessel surface once the clay was leather-hard. Kalinago Island Carib of colonial times who refer to the Guianas as their original homeland. Cayo pottery has been correlated to the Island Carib. Maloca Large communal house known from Tropical Lowland peoples of South America. The ‘maloca’ accommodates a wide range of activities such as living, sleeping, food preparation, working, storing, meeting, dancing, and worshipping. modeled applique Pre-modeled clay sometimes of a geometric shape attached to the vessel, when both were in a plastic or leather hard condition. Ortoiroid Series that extends from the coastal zone of Venezuela and the Guianas through the Lesser Antilles and Puerto Rico during the Archaic Age. The toolkit consists of ground stone and shell tools as well as flint. Series Cultural complexes or ceramic styles that developed from a common ancestor. A subseries is a spatial and/or temporal division of a series.

Introduction Archipelagic Environment

The Lesser Antillean archipelago separates the Caribbean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean, forming a series of stepping-stone islands between South America and

the Greater Antilles (Figure 1). The Lesser Antilles include Trinidad, the Windward (Tobago to Dominica) and Leeward Islands (Guadeloupe to Saba), and the Virgin Islands. Most islands are intervisible; there are only two wider straits of sea, the Grenada passage and the Anegada passage, both c.150 km wide (see Americas, Caribbean: The Greater Antilles and Bahamas). Natural Island Setting

The arc comprises volcanic and limestone islands situated on the margin of the Caribbean Plate. The inner arc, from Marie-Galante northward after outer arc, encompasses geologically younger islands consisting of active and recently extinct volcanoes. The geologically older islands of the outer arc are made up of marine sediments overlaying the volcanic foundation. This divergence affects the ecological and climatological characteristics of the islands. Trinidad and Tobago sit on the continental shelf and their terrestrial flora and fauna reflect this South American mainland allegiance. The many islets located near the main islands play an important role in the exploitation of natural resources. Communicating Communities: Mobility and Exchange in the Lesser Antillean Archipelago between 6000 BC and AD 1492

The discontinuous distribution of subsistence resources and great variability in the availability of raw materials are the driving forces behind the highly mobile nature and diversified procurement strategies of the Archaic Age groups and the establishment and maintenance of the intensive insular contact networks during the Ceramic Age. The favorable position of the Lesser Antilles between the mainland and the Greater Antilles stimulated exploratory voyages and migration processes, linked two major centers of cultural development and encouraged the establishment of interconnecting exchange networks. Both regions were of great importance for the sociocultural development of the Lesser Antilles throughout the preColumbian era (Figure 2). Mobility patterns and material distributions evidence that the archipelagic interaction networks evolved through time as a result of the shifting and expansion of group territories, fission and fusion of local groups, and the increasing complexity of sociopolitical organization. This complicated web of social relationships also involved the sharing of myths, tales, songs, dances, and ritual knowledge.

144 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles

Dominican Republic

Puerto Rico

Virgin Islands Anguilla St. Martin

St. Barths

Vieques St. Croix

Saba St. Eustatius St. Kitts

Barbuda Nevis

Antigua Guadeloupe La Désirade Marie-Galante

Les Saintes Dominica

Martinique

St. Lucia Barbados St. Vincent

Aruba Curaçao

Grenadines Bonaire Grenada

Los Roques

Margarita

Tobago Paria Trinidad

Orinoco Delta Venezuela

Or

o inoc

0

100

200

300 km Guyana

Figure 1 Map of the Lesser Antilles.

Archaic Age (6000 BC–500 BC) Early Occupation by Seasonal Hunter-FisherCollectors

Archaic Age groups came into Trinidad from northern South America by 6000 BC and by around 2500 BC various islands of the Lesser Antilles had seen human occupation. Archaic Age sites are to be

found from Trinidad to the Virgin Islands. Antigua was the most densely occupied island, likely due to the presence of major flint sources. Lifeways and Settlement

Early island dwellers were well adapted to the varied environmental conditions and differential distribution

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles 145

Northern South America Orinoco

Coastal Guyana

Trinidad

Antilles Windward islands

Leeward islands

Virgin islands

Puerto Rico

2000 Cariban and Arawakan speaking peoples 1500

Koriabo Macapaima Arauquinoid

1000

Mon Repos

Mayoid

Bontour

Island Carib Cayo Suazan Troumassoid Anse Trabaud

Morne Cybèle Freeman's Bay Mamoran Mamora Bay Troumassoid Mill Reef

Troumassan Paquemar Troumassoid Espérance

Chican Ostionoid Magens BayEsperanza, Capá Salt River II Santa Elena Modified Ostiones Elenan/Ostionan Magens Bay- Ostionoid Salt River I Monserrate

500

cal AD 0 cal BC

Palo Seco

Barrancoid Los Barrancos

Coral Bay-Longford

Diamant

Cuevas

Cedrosan Saladoid Indian Creek

Cedros Vivé Barrancas

Ostiones

Erin

Guarguapo

Mabaruma

Prosperity

Hacienda Grande/La Hueca

Morel/Hope Estate

500

1000 Ortoiroid

Casimiroid

Ronquinan Saladoid 2000

Colonial period

3000 Ortoiroid 4000

Neoindian epoch/Ceramic Age Mesoindian epoch/Archaic Age

6000 10 000

Paleo-Indian epoch/Lithic Age

Figure 2 Chronological chart of Archaic and Ceramic Ages covering northern South America, Lesser Antilles, and Puerto Rico (after Rouse 1992).

of resources throughout the archipelago. On the coast they relied heavily on reef fish and shellfish exploitation while in inland locations they foraged crabs and birds in combination with plant gathering or managing. The combination of flint, groundstone, and shell artifacts at sites of this period has been defined as the Ortoiroid series (Figure 3). The apparent co-evality of the Archaic populations and the earliest Ceramic Age settlers indicate possibilities for transfer of information and knowledge between these groups. Resource Mobility

The Archaic Age hunter-fisher-collectors moved around the islands adapting to a subsistence and settlement system living semi-permanently and alternately in coastal and inland settings. They adopted an annual mobility cycle encompassing multiple islands, each representing a unique resource patch

within the environmentally heterogeneous region (Figure 4). Communities relied upon seasonality markers as animal cycles, the succession of xeric, moderately humid and wet seasons, and hurricanes to structure their activities through time and across place.

Early Ceramic Age (400 BC–AD 600/800) Intensification of Island Occupation by Horticultural Sedentary Groups

By 400 BC Puerto Rico and the northern Lesser Antilles saw the appearance of two Ceramic subseries, Huecan and Cedrosan, of the Saladoid series, a pottery tradition originating in South America. The remaining Lesser Antilles beyond Trinidad were only occupied from AD 200 on and the continuous influx of local groups from the mainland totally transformed the natural and cultural landscape

146 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles

Figure 3 Ortoiroid toolkit.

March

September

December

June Figure 4 Yearly Archaic archipelagic resource and mobility cycle in the northern Lesser Antilles.

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles 147

Early Ceram mic Age

Morel

Golden Rock

Late Ceram mic Age

Anse à la Gourde

Kelbey's Ridge II

?

Figure 5 House structures and burial practices between 400 BC and AD 1500 in the Lesser Antilles.

of the islands. By AD 350/400 all the islands had seen occupancy and sites increased considerably in number and size. Lifeways and Settlement

Communities lived in more or less permanent settlements in diverse ecological settings, people taking on a broad-spectrum subsistence economy consisting of a combination of horticulture, hunting, fishing, and food collecting. Excavations at Golden Rock, St. Eustatius, revealed house plans of various shapes and sizes, including a large 19 m2 roundhouse, which recalls Amazonian ‘malocas’ for extended families (Figure 5). Human and dog burials were located outside the houses (Figure 6). Grave inventories comprise beads and amulets of quartz, amethyst and greenstone, conch shells, and ceramic vessels.

Figure 6 Morel dog burial.

Huecan and Cedrosan Saladoid ceramics are characterized by a large variety of vessel shapes including hemispherical, bell-, boat-, and kidney-shaped bowls, occasionally provided with D-shaped handles and

148 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles

Figure 7 Huecan and Cedrosan Saladoid ceramics (not to scale).

highly decorated with curvilinear incising, zonedincised crosshatching (ZIC), white-on-red painting (WOR), and modeled-incised head lugs representing a mainland faunal imagery. A so-called ‘Saladoid veneer’ masks the underlying heterogeneity of pottery styles, evidencing the complicated nature and diverse origin of the series (Figure 7). Social Organization and Establishment of Regional and Local Contact Networks

Saladoid society was egalitarian; communities participated in ceremonial activities on a household level. Exotic items, semi-precious raw materials, and mainland iconography reflect the existence of regional networks linking South America to the Lesser Antilles. Local networks for the distribution of raw materials existing from the onset of occupation gained importance over time. Such interaction networks spreading Antiguan flint and St. Martin greenstone were present in the northern Lesser Antilles from the heydays of island occupation.

Late Ceramic Age (AD 600/800–AD 1492) Consolidation of Independent Local Polities

Over time, the stabilized conditions afforded by island adaptation and increased population density resulted in the formation of more localized microregions, acting independently with respect to resource procurement and social matters. Local ceramic styles developed but still evidence the enduring influence of the mainland in the southern Lesser Antilles. Those in the northern Lesser Antilles show affiliations to the Greater Antilles, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Lifeways and Settlement

Site structure at Anse a` la Gourde, Guadeloupe, shows a doughnut-shaped midden encircling a habitation area and a ‘plaza’ with houses of various shapes between 5 and 12 m in diameter (Figure 8). The deceased were buried within the residential space and under the house floors indicating a shift from

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles 149

N 0 Atlantic Ocean Midden area Ivlidden

Midden area Vacant area Habitation area

Midden area Contourline, 0.5 m interval Contourline, 2.5 m interval

Anse à la Gourde, Troumassoid settlement

Figure 8 Settlement structure at the site Anse a` la Gourde, Guadeloupe (AD 1000–1350).

Figure 9 Postholes and human burials under house floor at Anse a` la Gourde.

25 m

150 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles

Figure 10 Late Ceramic Age pottery in the Leeward Islands.

earlier practices. Burials reflect varied mortuary practices, internal differentiation, and personalized treatment (Figure 9). In the Leeward Islands red-painted ceramics with incised and modeled applique´s of the Mamoran Troumassoid subseries replaced the bicolor and polychrome painting of the Cedrosan Saladoid. Ceramics affiliated to the Chican Ostionoid subseries of the Greater Antilles, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands also characterized the complexes in the Leewards around AD 1200. Ceramic decoration included incised designs and anthropo-zoomorphic modeling on nonpainted surfaces (Figure 10). In the Windward Islands, the Saladoid ceramics were replaced by the Troumassan and subsequent Suazan Troumassoid subseries. White-on-red painting was replaced by monochrome red-painted ceramics with incised motifs and anthropomorphic and zoomorphic modeling. Caliviny-painted scrolls accompanied the Troumassoid sequence between Grenada and St. Lucia. The Suazan Troumassoid subseries,

distributed from Tobago to Guadeloupe, was long regarded as the crudest pottery in the Antilles, but also comprises a finer ware. In a final stage these islands witnessed the appearance of Cayo and other ceramic styles related to the mainland. Trinidad remained under continual influence of coastal Venezuela with the advent of the Arauquinoid series. Its final ceramic style, Mayoid, may have originated in the Guianas (Figure 11). Social Organization and Exchange Relationships

Long-distance exchange diminished over time; lapidary items decreased in number and were replaced by objects made of local rock types. The level of sociopolitical integration oscillated between both extremes in the range of tribal organization. A number of sociopolitical polities were established encompassing several settlements or islands. One of these polities was formed around the island of Anguilla. Interisland

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles 151

Figure 11 Late Ceramic Age pottery in the Windward Islands.

trade and exchange networks existed in which lithic materials, ceramics, and ceremonial paraphernalia circulated between the islands but also between the Lesser and the Greater Antilles. On the southern Lesser Antilles similar networks existed with South America. At the end of pre-Columbian occupation there was a pan-regional interaction sphere in which exotic items circulated between elites of the Greater Antilles and both South and Central America in which the northern and southern Lesser Antilles operated jointly (Figure 12).

Epilogue The Demise of the Native Population of the Lesser Antilles

After European colonization, diseases and slavery rapidly decimated the native population of the Lesser Antilles. Nonetheless, missionary accounts from the mid-seventeenth century still attest to a sizeable

indigenous population on several islands of the southern Lesser Antilles. Ties with the mainland were secured until colonial times with the intrusion of the ‘Kalinago’ or so-called ‘Island Caribs’ historically documented but archaeologically only tenuously attested, who held the assertion to have conquered the islands out of the Guianas. Various chroniclers note intensive inter-island interactions, as well as long-distance voyages undertaken by Carib from the mainland to Dominica and vice versa. Carib live to this day on Dominica and several other islands of the southern Lesser Antilles (Figure 13).

Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge Arie Boomert and Alistair Bright for their useful comments and linguistic improvement of the text. Alistair Bright has provided some of the photographs of the ceramics and made the scheme in Figure 3. Medy Oberendorff made the drawings of Figures 1 and 4.

152 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles

Figure 12 Ceremonial paraphernalia (coral face, shell mask, lithic threepointer, diorite and quartz beads, and bone snuff inhaler).

Figure 13 Carib Territory, Dominica.

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya 153 See also: Americas, Caribbean: The Greater Antilles and Bahamas.

Further Reading Boomert A (2000) Trinidad, Tobago and the Lower Orinoco Interaction Sphere. An Archaeological/Ethnohistorical Study. PhD Disseration, University of Leiden. Heerhugowaard: Plantijn Casparie. Crock JG (2000) Interisland interaction and development of chiefdoms in the Eastern Caribbean. PhD dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, University Microfilms, Ann Arbor. Drewett P (2000) Prehistoric Settlements in the Caribbean: Fieldwork in Barbados, Tortola and the Cayman Islands. For the Barbados Museum and Historical Society. London: Archaeotype Publications.

Delpuech A and Hofman CL (eds.) (2004) Late Ceramic Age Societies in the Eastern Caribbean. BAR International Series 1273. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. Hofman CL, Bright AJ, Boomert A, and Knippenberg S (2007) ‘Island rhythms: The web of social relationships and interaction networks in the Lesser Antillean archipelago between 400 BC and AD 1492’. Latin American Antiquity (in press). Keegan WF (2000) West Indian archaeology 3. Ceramic Age. Journal of Archaeological Research 8(supplement 2): 135–167. Knippenberg S (2006) Stone artefact production and exchange among the Northern Lesser Antilles. PhD dissertation, Leiden University. Righter EC (ed.) (2002) The Tutu Archaeological Village Site: A Multi-Disciplinary Case Study in Human Adaptation. London: Routledge. Rouse IB (1992) The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Wilson SM (ed.) (1997) The Indigenous People of the Caribbean. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

AMERICAS, CENTRAL Contents Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya Early Cultures of Middle America Historical Archaeology in Mexico Lower Central America Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica The Olmec and Their Contemporaries

Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya Anabel Ford, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary agroforestry A collective name for land-use systems and practices where woody perennials are deliberately integrated with crops and/or animals on the same land management unit. anthropogenic Caused by human activity. chert A variety of silica that contains microcrystalline quartz, often called flint. cultivar A cultured variety of plant. ecological diversity A variety of biological communities or ecosystems in a given area. hieroglyphics A system of ancient writing using a combination of logographic, syllabic, and pictographic elements. Milpa A multicrop planting system based on maize, beans and squash on the same plot-turns into a treasure hunt.

obsidian A volcanic glass and fine raw materials for the chipping of stone tools. polyculture An agricultural system where different crops are planted at the same time in the same space. prismatic blade A long, narrow, specialized lithic flake with parallel margins that may derive from a polyhedral blade core, often triangular in cross section with several facets or flake scars on the one surface. smallholder A farmer who lives on and works cultivating a small portion of the lands. stelae A stone slab with an inscription or design which was used as a monument.

Introduction Mesoamerica in the Classic period was a time of great political and economic development from the Mexican Highlands in the north to the Maya lowlands in the south (Figure 1). There were wide regional interactions among the elite leadership and extended trade relationships all within the context of an essentially agrarian Stone Age economy. Major centers of power emerged around the region,

154 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya

Chichen Itza

Tajin Teotihuacan

MESOAMERICA

Monte Alban

Tikal

N

0

250

El Pilar

Kaminalijuyu

500

Kilometers

Figure 1 Mesoamerican with major sites indicated. Courtesy of the Anabel Ford.

including Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico, Monte Alban in the Oaxaca Valley, and Tikal in the Maya lowlands. This overview focuses on Maya civilization, situating it within a framework of the overall developments of the Classic period. Mesoamerica was a world without animal husbandry, without metals for agriculture, and without roads for commerce. Without all these attributes, often deemed essential for the development of complex societies, the ancient Mesoamericans thrived. What they did have – an intimate knowledge of landscape, a dynamic management of water, a fabulous repertoire of cultivars – provided a substantial foundation for organization and growth. This is the story of Classic Mesoamerica. Our knowledge of Classic Mesoamerica has been enriched over the past decades by research addressing some of the more complex and subtle components: the social, political, and economic aspects of the cultures. Importantly, while early on only the most glamorous aspects of culture were investigated, current research has brought in fieldwork and interpretations of rural as well as urban sectors. While there is still much focus on the development of centers and the elite process of the evolution of civilization, our understanding of Mesoamerican societies has become

Table 1 Major centers of Classic Mesoamerica Region

Culture

Time period

Main center

Central Mexico Oaxaca Gulf Coast Volcanic Highlands Maya Lowlands

Teotihuacan Zapotec Huastec Maya

AD 100–600 AD 200–750 AD 800–1200 AD 400–700

Teotihuacan Monte Alban Tajin Kamilnaljuyu

Maya

AD 250–900

Tikal

more balanced when compared to the initial focus on only the sensational and monumental. Nonetheless, the basic definitions and characteristics of Mesoamerican cultures rely heavily on the elite and ceremonial characteristics relegating the adaptive characteristics to a lesser role. Classic period Mesoamerica emerged in the first millennium of our current era (Table 1) within a complex and heterogeneous ecological landscape from contemporary central Mexico, down through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras embracing the arid highland plateaus of Mexico and Oaxaca, the dramatic volcanic highlands of Guatemala, and the lowlands of the Gulf Coast, the Pacific, and the Yucatan. Within this diverse setting, all below the Tropic of Cancer, major archaeological civilizations

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya 155

evolved to become large population centers and regional economic powers with far-flung exchange relationships across the Mesoamerican landscape. In the Classic period, political and economic institutions of the region reached a level of complexity that incorporated all the basic qualities of civilization: centralized administration, major public works, sumptuary rules, military readiness, occupational specialization, and political intrigue. The region embraces considerable environmental diversity. The Valley of Mexico and the large Valley of Oaxaca dominate the core of Mesoamerica. These areas are characterized by temperate climate. The valleys are flanked by mountains and punctuated by active volcanoes that played an important role in the prehistory of the region. Tropical lowlands typify the Gulf Coast plains of Veracruz and extend to the Yucatan Peninsula in the south. The Maya lowlands are situated on limestone bedrock dominated by tropical forests. The area includes the greater Yucatan, the adjoining Pete´n of Guatemala and Belize as well as the Caribbean zone of Honduras. The Pacific volcanic highlands complete the complex setting presenting an agriculturally fertile and seismically active geography. Mesoamerica is well known for the cultures that arose in this dynamic context, each taking advantage of facets of their locale to build their regional presence. The Classic period is traditionally linked to the Maya long count as it appeared and was read on ancient Maya stelae. It was in the Maya area that the full development and use of writing and mathematics was honed to a level that is understood now to reveal political relations, alliance building, intercenter genealogies, and standard styles. Other areas of Mesoamerica clearly used stylistically similar iconographic representations to make historic statements,

but were cursive and with subtle meanings. They were broad icons that were used across space and time. The mat, for example, signified the throne and it is recognized before the time of the Maya, used throughout the Classic period, and it was understood throughout Mesoamerica. Developmentally, the Classic period is most esteemed for its elite traditions that hold stylistic sway across the varied landscape. The Classic was a time of spectacular investments of art and architecture and, while each area has distinctive means of rendering these features, they all display exuberance in stone work, painting, mosaics, ceramics, and most particularly in the monumental architectural undertakings of temples, plazas, and palaces. The region shares one important additional foundation, the subsistence system known as milpa with the important cultivar, maize. From the Mexican Plateau to the Maya Lowlands, maize formed a fundamental part of the Mesoamerican diet. Recognized at the time of Spanish invasion as the staple, grain yields per hectare in the Valley of Mexico were greater than that known in Europe at the same time (Figure 2). The Mesoamerican subsistence strategy, called the ‘high-performance milpa’, is an agroforestry polyculture based on the triad of maize–beans–squash intercropped with other edibles and a myriad of useful herbs and shrubs. Proficiently developed as cultivated fields within a context of managed regeneration, the system imitated the natural ecological cycle, whether it was in the arid highlands or the humid lowlands. These adaptations resulted in an astonishing array of approaches, many without any visible land modifications and largely dependent on rainfall, and all providing support for developing the hierarchical societies found among the Classic period civilizations.

Figure 2 Contemporary mano and metate for grinding corn from the Pete´n, Guatemala. Courtesy of Anabel Ford.

156 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya

Characterization of the Mesoamerican Classic While the foundation of Mesoamerican civilization is based on agriculture; art, architecture, and exotic exchange goods form the great constellation of attributes used to identify Classic Mesoamerica in general and it is the rendering of details that is used to distinguish the main areas.

Figure 3 Plazas flanked by palaces and temples such as this one at El Pilar. Courtesy of BRASS/El Pilar Program.

Art is one of the most identifiable aspects of Mesoamerican traditions. So wonderfully resplendent are the portable art objects that they have become the focus of intense collection, degrading the archaeological contexts of the ancient pieces. The archaeological source of objects is universally from regal settings: tombs and caches, dedications of temples and buildings, and in other royal sectors. The awesome polychrome vases, the delicately carved jade, the remarkable polished pendants, and other crafted stone, shell, and coral items and adornments make up the glamor of the elite assemblages. When recovered in careful excavations, these artifacts provide vital information from personal histories to general standards. When removed from the archaeological context and collected as art, the objects lose their inherent cultural value and lack all the critical contextual data that could have garnered. The public architectural form of Mesoamerica employs the basic platform to compose pyramidal structures, terraces, patios, and buildings arranged around plazas (Figure 3). This tradition dates back before the Classic period and holds for all the major areas of the region, the theme playing out in major and minor constructions as well as residential forms. A longstanding tradition was to construct a new edifice over an old one, at once honoring the ancient place and constructing a current statement. The construction layers are reminiscent of an onion, earlier phases capped by later ones with the ultimate result of something higher and wider than the last (Figure 4). The components of Mesoamerican public architecture relied on local materials, represent major construction projects, and include dedicatory offerings within

LC: Late Classic period EC: Early Classic period LPC: Late Preclassic period MPC: Middle Preclassic period 2 Building episodes

245 m 244 m 243 m 2 LC 1 4C 3 EC 5

4

6

4 LPC

6 LPC

7 MPC 8 MPC

Bedrock 9 MPC

1m

5

10

15

20

25 m

Figure 4 Multiple superimposed layers of construction typical of Mesoamerican public architecture. This example is from El Pilar. Courtesy of BRASS/El Pilar Program.

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya 157

the buildings. The constructions typically consisted of open and paved plazas, pyramid temples with rising platform terraces, multi-roomed buildings or palaces with internal rooms, and monolithic

Figure 5 Stela and altar of Twin Pyramid complex at Tikal.

sculptures, stelae and altars commemorating important events (Figure 5). Outer surfaces were usually plastered and painted. Red was a dominant color, and multicolored iconographic representations could adorn the surfaces harking to the ideological and political importance of the building. Major displays of control and power are embedded in public architectural presentations. The overall footprint of the Mesoamerican center and the height of the structures within the center played significant roles as an ostentatious demonstration of power and are a rough reflection of population control. Centers like Teotihuacan, in the northern Valley of Mexico, could not be missed on the landscape where the main public monuments sprawled over more than 900 ha (hectares), dominating every view and commanding the area (Figure 6). This contrasts with the Zapotec center in Oaxaca, Monte Alban, covering 200 ha, yet situated visibly high on a striking hilltop dominating the three arms of the valley (Figure 7). The prominences of the public features of highlands civilizations are distinct from the lowland Maya area. Tikal, covering about 150 ha, is large by any standard, but the landscape does not emphasize the size in the same way as the centers of the highlands. Long-distance trade and exchange is another important feature of Classic period Mesoamerica. It is recognized most prominently for minerals that are procured from specific highland sources and found at distant locations in special ceremonial contexts. Materials include obsidian, jade, pyrite, hematite, and other stones polished for masks, mirrors, plaques, scepters, pendants, mosaics, and beads. Shells and corals from the sea also circulated and appear as garment decoration and as necklaces, belts, and other adornments. All these products were restricted to elite use and ritual disposal. They are recovered in tombs and recognized in paintings and carvings. From the ancient artistic representations, many perishable items, primarily derived from lowland tropical resources, were also exchanged and circu-

Figure 6 Teotihuaca´n in the Valley of Mexico. Photograph by Macduff Everton 04328.

158 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya

Figure 7 Monte Alban overlooking the Valley of Oaxaca. Photograph by Macduff Everton 04228 m.

Figure 8 Obsidian prismatic blade core and blades. Courtesy of BRASS/El Pilar Program.

lated among the elite: feathers, pelts, incense, honey, and cacao. Obsidian, a volcanic glass, is one of the most widely distributed items, and occurs in the form of prismatic blades (Figure 8). Artifacts of obsidian have been recovered farther than a 1000 km from the volcanic sources. This is most evident with the green Pachuca obsidian mined outside of Teotihuacan and recovered at Maya centers such as Tikal and El Pilar. Other sources from the Mexican Volcanic Belt (e.g., Orizaba, Otumba, and Ucarea), and the Central American Volcanic Axis (e.g., Chayal, Ixtepeque, and San Martin Jilotepeque) are well known from a variety of archaeological contexts. For example, the distinctive Pachuca as well as the Otumba obsidians have been recovered in dedicatory deposits at Tikal, even though the majority of the obsidians were from

the nearer sources of Guatemala, such as Chayal. Intriguingly, special caches and burials at major centers in the Maya area, such as Tikal’s splendid Burial 116 enshrined in Temple 1, were strewn with obsidian waste flakes as the final cap of the offering. Jade, jadeite, and greenstone were an especially prized resource revered by the elite and used in many regal and ritual contexts. Jade is highly restricted and rarely recovered outside of ceremonial contexts. Jade carvings come in many forms – human figures, delicate ear spools, composite belts, elaborately carved pectorals, mosaics for masks, as well as beads for necklaces and clothing adornment. Many jade objects maintained their value across time and space. Objects were curated long after their production and Preclassic Olmec ‘antiques’ have been recovered from later Classic sites or at distances as far

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya 159

south as Costa Rica. The best-documented jade sources are from the Montagua Valley of Guatemala.

Cultural Regions Founded on Stone Age Technologies The magnificent Mesoamerican achievements attributed to the Classic period are all developed in the context of Neolithic Stone Age technologies, without draft animals, metal tools, and the plow, so familiar to Indo-European civilizations. This may appear to be a great disadvantage, but it was not. Maintaining animals is an additional production burden for farm families, and without that burden, the Mesoamerican farmers were able to focus entirely on their landscape. The domesticated plants from Mesoamerica include a shrub that produces chocolate or cacao and the orchid that produces vanilla. More plants in today’s markets have their origin in Mesoamerica than Europe, and maize is now a fundamental staple all over the world. The strength of the Mesoamerican agricultural strategy was founded on maize polyculture, relying on an intimate knowledge of the immediate habitat for subsistence. Working the landscape with both intensive infield home gardens and extensive outfield high-performance milpas shaped this subsistence system. The dynamics of the Mesoamerican subsistence system utilized a rotational sequence for maintaining production. The system employs cutting and burning used as an environmental management tool at the outset. Then selecting, planting, and growing native plants, managing volunteer plants and cultivars to promote a managed regeneration dependent on the indigenous ecosystem. The high population levels of the Classic period correlate with an intensive agricultural and natural resource management scheme that was integrated into the subsistence system. This is a system still found today among traditional farmers. It relies on the smallholder farming strategy of investing knowledge and skill to increase the productivity of scarce fertile land versus the large-scale strategies of investing in capital improvements to increase the productivity of scarce labor. The result is a complex managed field design with domesticated crops and managed tree growth on fields once the maize crop cycle was complete. The intensification of this essential system took on varied forms depending on the region and resources. Teotihuacan evolved a system in part employing irrigation of the arid plateau on which it is situated. Similarly, the Zapotec of highland Oaxaca relied on investments in flood water irrigation. In contrast, the humid lowlands of the Maya relied principally on

rainfall agriculture with few land modifications such as at the great population center of Tikal. There are notable exceptions where either steep slopes required terracing or perennial swamps justified draining. The Classic Maya

The Maya area, unlike the highland valleys in Mexico, is spread out across the tropical ridge lands and hills of lowlands, today a forested landscape rarely higher that 300 msl. Local topography of the absorbent limestone bedrock creates well-drained ridges interspersed with perched lakes and wetland depressions. Rain falls mainly between June and December and varies annually from 3000–4000 mm in the south to less than 500 mm in the northwest Yucatan. Drinking water during the dry season is scarce as there is little rain. The ancient Maya constructed reservoirs, or aguadas, to accommodate their dry season drinking water needs. The Classic period has traditionally been hinged to the stone carving of the Maya calendar. The majority of the Classic period stelae have carved hieroglyphs and appear to commemorate marriages, alliances, meetings, and wars and could be viewed as the official history. The nature of this official history is fast being revealed with the combined research of linguistics, art, and archaeology. Once thought only to commemorate the worship of time, we now know that important political information is canonized on these stelae. The source of strife, the importance of coalitions, and the ritual of marriage highlight the reported regal relationships. Fractious and fragile, information on the stelae underscore the impact of the distant relationships, where centers were dispersed and the independence readily exerted in the absence of a strong capital as with Teotihuacan or Monte Alban. Farming settlements are distributed across the Maya area, clustering in the best agricultural zones of the well-drained upland ridges and hills that are unevenly dispersed across the lowlands. Centers are situated in prominent extensions of well-drained uplands, and the greater the extents, the higher settlement density, and the larger the centers (Figure 9). Nohmul, with 15 ha of public architecture, is one of the largest centers in Northern Belize. Settlement density is around 79 structures per sq km and the uplands cover only 15% of the local zone. The large center of El Pilar, located north of the Belize River, covers about 60 ha, has an average of 160 structures per sq. km distributed within the surrounding uplands that represent 39% of the zone. In contrast, Tikal, among the largest centers of the Classic period Maya covering more than 150 ha, supports up to

160 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya

200 structures per sq km found predominantly in uplands that make up 49% of the local zone. Farmers were attracted to the good soils of the uplands and that was where the centers grew. The Maya cultivated the forest as garden with maize polyculture and orchards with important fruit and hardwood tress as well as palms, managing cultivated fields in an orchestrated system of regeneration. Traditional Maya farmers today, drawing on their legacy, have one of the most diverse domestic systems on the planet. Signatures of their former gardens abound in the feral forest of today where 90% of the dominant plants of the forest are useful to people: avocado, allspice, vanilla, mahogany, cedar to name a few. This was created by millennia of accumulated knowledge and skill in the forest. The economic landscape of the central Maya Lowlands 200 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 North Belize

Belize River

Central Patén

Settlement density (km2) Ridge lands (%) Center size (in hectares) Figure 9 Economic landscape of the central Maya Lowlands BRASS/El Pilar Program.

Many perishable elite materials such as colorful feathers for headdresses, resins for incense and gum, pelts for adornment, honey for sweetener, as well as cacao as a medium of exchange were produced in the lowlands. Most of these resources that would have balanced the trade between the highlands and lowlands could only dependably thrive in forested habitat. Consequently, the vitality of the Mesoamerican trade and exchange system, as well as Maya subsistence, depended on the management of the Maya forest as a garden. The Maya lowlands are known for many centers, but Tikal was the largest by far (Figure 10). Tikal established its dominance in the Classic period around AD 250. By AD 600, the center held considerable sway over most of the southern lowlands. As Tikal was growing early on, the center embraced Mexican Teotihuacan themes that were prominently displayed on stelae and in architecture, yet these appear, like those of Zapotec of Monte Alban, to be translated into the local vernacular. Despite its evident influences, Tikal was subject to checks by neighbors, such as Uaxactu´n, Caracol, Naranjo, and Calakmul vying for power. The growing interpretations of the hieroglyphic record attest to the delicate balance of power and alliance that was the charge of Classic Maya rulers. Texts carved in stone on stelae suggest tenuous coalitions punctuated by startling acrimony twisting and turning political events. These official texts were only one aspect of the story. The juggling of power noted in the readings of the stelae of major centers can be seen in the lower-order settlements as well. Major centers have conspicuous temples and monuments to demonstrate their control of labor. Not so for the community level elite; it was their community production that would link them to the hierarchy. The culmination of the Classic period Maya dates to around AD 900–1000. This is called the Classic Maya Collapse and is known for the abandonment of building and maintenance of the major centers, such as Tikal and El Pilar. It is said that the collapse

Figure 10 Tikal and the Pete´n Rainforest. Photograph by Macduff Everton 04505 m.

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya 161

was based on poor resource management and that today we are witnessing the repeat of those errors. Pollen and sediment data from lake cores south of Tikal have been interpreted as supporting this proposition. Yet today, the dominant plants of the Maya forest are replete with economic uses. Such a coincidence cannot be by chance. It is difficult to imagine that the Maya civilization, after having developed over more than 2000 years in Maya forest and supporting substantial populations, could have turned around to destroy it in only 100 years. New data demonstrate that the Maya adaptation was innovative and that the biodiversity of the Maya forest today is entirely anthropogenic. The Maya Collapse represented a major change in Maya cultural traditions, but this did not occur all at one time or uniformly across the area. It has been assumed that the population underwent a major decline, but what is more likely is that the society transformed. There is no doubt that the maintenance of the major architecture and the support of the regal ritual traditions so elaborated in the Classic Period were indeed jettisoned, but there is no evidence that the populations disappeared. Major centers flourished north of the Tikal area after AD 1000. These include many of the major centers of the Yucatan, such as Chichen Itza´, Uxmal, Sayil, and Becan. Far from disappearing, the Maya were present when the Spanish invaded Mesoamerica in the 1500s. Today, vital communities of Maya exist, impacted, as with all traditional communities, by the great changes wrought by globalization. Among them, traditional Maya farmers manage hundreds of plants in their own forest gardens and their knowledge of the forest demonstrates that it abounds with useful plants. Given these facts, it is obvious that the forest was not destroyed.

Classic Mesoamerican Traditions We have begun to unravel the remarkable prehistory of Mesoamerica. The diversity of the geography and the common themes of the region demonstrate its importance in the history of civilization. Early interpretations about the ancient Mesoamericans are constantly being challenged and refined with new data and perspectives. Once it was thought the Maya were peaceful while the central Mexicans were bellicose. The discovery of the graphic murals of Bonampak in 1945 squelched that idea forever. Teotihuacan was thought to have no writing systems, yet recent research has proposed that the large murals revealed on pyramid and platform facades are actually iconic glyphs. Writing systems

were thought to have been confined to the Maya; however, now earlier systems are known. Once the Mesoamerican environment, and especially the tropical Maya lowlands, were thought to have been stable so that any changes would have necessarily been caused by humans. Today, with new palaeoclimatic studies, it is clear that there has been significant climatic change and that the prehistoric cultural innovations and adaptations were more likely a response to, not the cause of, these changes. In addition, ever more precise laboratory methods have provided greater access to radiocarbon dating for settings that initially were thought to be impossible. These are but a few of the new developments that promise to challenge our current interpretations and bring more interdisciplinary thinking to the understanding of Mesoamerican prehistory. See also: Americas, Central: Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica; The Olmec and their Contemporaries; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Political Complexity, Rise of; Social Inequality, Development of.

Further Reading Blanton R, Kowalewski S, Feinman GM, and Finsten LM (1981) Ancient Mesoamerica: A Comparison of Three Regions. London: Cambridge University Press. Bray F (1994) Agriculture for developing nations. Scientific American 271(1): 18–25. Campbell DG, Ford A, Lowell KS, et al. (2006) The feral forests of the eastern Pete´n. In: Erickson C and Balee´ W (eds.) Time and Complexity in the Neotropical Lowlands. New York: Columbia University Press. Fedick S (2003) In search of the Maya forest. In: Slater C (ed.) Search of the Rain Forest, pp. 133–164. Durham: Duke University Press. Fedick SL and Ford A (1990) The prehistoric agricultural landscape of the central maya lowlands: An examination of local variability in a regional context. World Archaeology 22(1): 18–33. Macri MJ and Ford A (1997) The Language of Maya Hieroglyphs. San Francisco, CA: Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute. Martin S and Grube N (1995) Maya superstates: How a few powerful kingdoms vied for control of the Maya lowlands during the Classic period (A.D. 300–900). Archaeology 48(6): 41–46. Netting RM (1977) Maya subsistence: Mythologies, analogies, possibilities. In: Adams REW (ed.) Origins of Maya Civilization, pp. 299–333. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Sabloff JA and Andrews PA (1981) Handbook of Middle American Indians: Archaeology. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Voorhies B (1982) An ecological model of the early Maya of the central lowlands. In: Flannery KV (ed.) Maya Subsistence: Studies in Memory of Dennis Edward Puleston, pp. 65–95. New York: Academic Press. Warman A (2003) Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Wilken GC (1987) Good Farmers: Traditional Agricultural Resource Management in Mexico and Central America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

162 AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America

Early Cultures of Middle America Robert N Zeitlin, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary atlatl A Nahuatl (Aztec) word describing a compound throwing weapon consisting of a shaft with a hook at one end into which a spear or dart is inserted. The shaft acts as an extension of the hunter’s arm, providing much greater force and velocity to the thrown dart. Use of the atlatl in the New World extends back at least 12 000 years, when it enabled Native Americans to more effectively hunt large Ice Age animals. Much later the Aztecs found it more effective than the bow and arrow in penetrating the metal armor of the Spanish conquistadors. maize Commonly referred to as ‘corn’ or more properly Indian Corn, maize (Zea mays ssp. mays) was first domesticated in Middle America and then spread throughout much of the Americas where it became a staple pre-Columbian food. Because there is no known wild form of maize its origin has been a matter of long-standing inquiry. Although several theories have been offered, it is most widely believed that the progenitor of maize was an annual race of teosinte (Z. mays ssp. Parviglumis), a wild grass native to the Balsas River drainage of southern Mexico. However, the specific process of genetic mutations that produced what we know as the maize cob is still disputed by botanists. Under one reconstruction the teosinte tassel spike, the plant’s male reproductive organ, evolved into the maize ear; another claims that the maize ear developed directly from the teosinte ear. The earliest known archaeological remains of domesticated maize cobs, dated 6250 BP, were found at Guila´ Naquitz Cave in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. mano and metate A paired tool set used throughout Middle America to grind maize and other seeds. The mano (‘hand’ in Spanish) is a coarse-grained cylindrical or rounded stone which is rubbed back and forth on the metate, a stone slab or basin on which the seeds are placed. Manos and metates are first found with Early Archaic archaeological remains when seeds and other plant foods became a more important dietary component; they continue to be familiar household implements in rural Middle America. Middle America Refers to the areas of Mexico, upper Central America, and the neighboring islands. The term encompasses and is often used coterminously with the culture area of temporally varying boundaries known as Mesoamerica, the locus of pre-Columbian high civilization, bordered on one side by the semi-nomadic hunting and gathering societies of northern Mexico and on the other by the chiefdoms of lower Central America. mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) Unlike most DNA which is located in the cell nucleus, mtDNA is located in the mitochondria (organelles in complex cells that convert food molecules into energy). In mammals mtDNA is inherited only from the mother and mutations are passed from mother to child. Because of its high mutation rate mtDNA can be employed to trace matrilineage over many generations. Research has revealed that mtDNA of Native Americans falls into four lineages called A, B, C, and D as well as a residual X lineage also found in some European populations. Another mutation occurring in Native

American as well as Southeast Asian, Melanesian, and Polynesian populations has suggested that between 6000–12 000 years ago people migrated across the Pacific or up the east coast of Asia into the Americas. phytolith Rigid deposits in many plants resulting from absorption of groundwater containing dissolved minerals. The most useful for archaeology are opal phytoliths, consisting of silica deposited between or within the plant cell walls and often preserved as mineralized copies of the cell long after the plant dies. Consequently they can serve to identify plant species when all other parts have decayed. Pleistocene The geologic epoch, commonly referred to as the last Ice Age, extending from approximately 1.65 million to 10 000 years ago. It precedes the current Holocene epoch. Four major cycles of global glaciation occurred during the Pleistocene, within each of which there were numerous minor advances (stadials) and retreats (interstadials). At its maximums, glacial ice in North America extended as far south as the 40th parallel and sea levels were lowered worldwide by more than 100 m. stable isotope analysis Differing quantities of isotopes are incorporated in animal tissue from the foods consumed over a lifetime. Consequently, measuring the ratios of the stable isotopes of carbon (13C and 12C) and nitrogen (15N and 14N) in preserved bone collagen and dentin can provide insight into the diets of ancient peoples. For example, the photosynthetic pathway in tropical grasses such as maize (referred to as the C4 pathway) differs from that of trees and shrubs (the C3 pathway), the latter of which discriminates against 13C. The resulting differences in 13C/12C ratios between C4 and C3 foods consumed by the Archaic period inhabitants of Middle America and incorporated in their bones and teeth have been used to estimate the date at which maize became a dietary staple. Similarly, 15N/14N ratios have served to identify diets with a primarily marine versus terrestrial food component.

Introduction When, how, and why the first native people arrived in Middle America and the story of their transformation from itinerant hunters and wild food gatherers to the architects of imposing states and empires are subjects that intrigue archaeologists and the lay public alike. Beyond questions about initial entry, some of the most interesting, albeit baffling, issues involve the early periods of the area’s prehistory, when the idea of farming originated as a subsistence alternative to hunting and gathering and when permanent villages, with the social and political arrangements that living within them entailed, began to dot a landscape that had previously hosted only temporary encampments. Definitive answers to these questions are still elusive, but recent archaeological research is beginning to provide insight into the patterns and processes of development.

Dating and Chronology Methods and Conventions

Essential to understanding the pre-Columbian evolution of Middle American culture and society is the construction of a reliable chronology. To do so

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depends on accurate age determinations, and while a number of methods are available to archaeologists, radiocarbon (14C) dating stands out as the technique most widely applied whenever organic materials are available for analysis. Unfortunately the accuracy of this method is affected by temporal variations in cosmic radiation and radioactive atmospheric carbon, resulting in dates that can be hundreds of years more recent in time than their actual calendar equivalents. Calibration formulae have been developed, but until recently they were not applied to published dates. Moreover, calibration for the earliest periods of Middle American prehistory is still imprecise. Consequently, even today some published dates are calibrated while others are not. To avoid confusion, in this article uncalibrated dates will be differentiated by use of the lower case suffix, bc or bp (before present) while calendar dates will be denoted by upper case BC or BP Where no other indication is given, terms such as ‘years ago’ used in the text refer to uncalibrated dates. In addition to calibration errors, older methods of 14 C determination, because of their sample size requirement, could not directly date small plant, bone, or other organic fragments but instead relied on the stratigraphic association of these materials with larger quantities of datable carbonized substances, such as charcoal from cooking areas. The inability to date materials directly led to significant errors where the archaeological specimens had been vertically displaced by animal burrowing, human activity, or other forms of soil disturbance. Accelerator mass spectroscopy (AMS), a newer radiocarbon dating technique, has solved the problem by enabling very small organic samples – seeds and even pollen, for example – to be directly dated. Many archaeological specimens have been re-analyzed by AMS technology, sometimes resulting in significantly altered dates.

Paleoindian subperiod begins, and may extend 35 000 years back in time, or even earlier. The Paleoindian period ends and the Archaic, subdivided into Early, Middle, and Late subperiods, begins somewhere between 9000 and 7000 bc, at the onset of the Holocene, the epoch following the last major glacial advance. During this interval worldwide temperatures at times averaged up to 2  C. warmer than today, the glaciers that shrouded the higher latitudes of North America retreated to the sub-Arctic, seawater levels rose dramatically and, in Middle America, generally drier conditions prevailed. Profound changes in plant and animal life also occurred, perhaps the most conspicuous being the disappearance of many species of Ice Age megafauna, a phenomenon that had begun toward the end of the Paleoindian period and ended around 7000 bc with the extinction of the indigenous American horse. Although the evidence for any kind of causal relationship is ambiguous, loss of these large animals occurred at a time when the inhabitants of Middle America were abandoning their nomadic hunting and wild-food gathering way of life for an agriculturebased subsistence economy, with most people eventually residing in permanent settlements. By 2300 bc pottery was being manufactured in Middle America, which by definition marks the end of the Preceramic era and its final Archaic period. Some archaeologists, however, prefer to extend the Archaic to 1500 bc or later, by which time agriculture provided the bulk of food and the previously nomadic hunter-gatherers had settled in permanent villages. The variance in dates delineating the Paleoindian and Archaic periods, while having the appearance of imprecision, denotes ranges of years extending over centuries, rather than discrete points in time. As an example, there is no single date pinpointing when agriculture was adopted.

Periodization

Archaeologists refer to the years from the time of earliest human presence in the Americas to the development of fully sedentary, agricultural societies as the Lithic or Preceramic era, based on the fact that a stone tool technology dominated and pottery had not yet been invented. This era is commonly divided into two chronological periods, known as the Paleoindian and Archaic (Figure 1). The Paleoindian period, divided into Early and Late subperiods, commences toward the end of the last Ice Age, with the first evidence of human habitation. The beginning date of the Early Paleoindian subperiod is a matter of ongoing controversy, but is now generally agreed to have occurred earlier than 12 500 calendar years ago, when the Late

The Path to Middle America Answers to questions about how, why, and from where Middle America was initially populated require the overall colonization of the New World to be considered. An Asian source of emigration is strongly indicated by biological relationships between its inhabitants and Native Americans. One line of evidence shows that both ancient and modern Northeast Asians and Native Americans, including those living in Middle America, share a number of unique nonmetric dental characteristics, including shovel-shaped incisors, single-rooted upper first premolars, and threerooted lower first molars, all indicative of a common genetic origin.

164 AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America Date

Period

Typical Events

Formative/Preclassic

Settled village life throughout Mesoamerica

Late Archaic

Pottery appears Collecting subsistence strategy Maize pollen in Tabasco

Middle Archaic

Maize pollen in lowland Belize Maize cobs at Tehuacán Maize phytoliths at Chantuto Earliest maize at Guilá Naquitz

Early Archaic

Manos and metates Domesticated bottle gourd Domesticated squash Avocado cultivation Foraging subsistence economy Holocene epoch

Late Paleoindian

Extinction of Pleistocene megafauna Carved Tequixquiac camelid sacrum Tepexpan human burial Clovis and fishtail Points Iztapan mammoth kill sites Mobile microbands Ice free corridor through Alaska

Early Paleoindian

Peñon III woman Earliest migrations to America Bering Land Bridge Pleistocene epoch

2000 bc

3000 bc

5000 bc

7000/9000 bc

10 500 bc 12 500 years bp

35 000 years bp …or earlier Figure 1 Chronological table for the Paleoindian and Archaic periods.

A few archaeologists argue for a European source of pre-Columbian immigration, based on perceived technological similarities between stone implements of the Solutrean tradition of southern France and Iberia and those of the Clovis toolmakers, variants of whose distinctive fluted lanceolate projectile points are found throughout North and Central America. Other shared traits include a custom of pebble decoration and burial of lithic artifacts in red ocher filled caches. This hypothesis drew fleeting support from the notoriously misinterpreted characterization of an ancient human skull from Kennewick, Washington, 14C dated 7300– 7600 BC, as morphologically ‘Caucasoid-like’, similar to some European populations. Although migrations by boat dating back 50 000 years or more are known for places such as Australia and Melanesia, the 5000 km of stormy ocean separating the European and American continents would have been daunting, even if a route

along the North Atlantic ice rim that then connected Ireland and the Grand Banks had been taken. Another difficulty with a hypothesis of direct European origin stems from the fact that the Solutrean tradition ended some 16 500 years ago, over 4000 years prior to the appearance of Clovis points. Proponents of the European origin hypothesis have recently proposed that preClovis American sites such as Meadowcroft and Cactus Hill bridge this gap. New radiocarbon dates on bone samples from four skulls that had languished for years in a collection housed at the Mexican National Museum of Anthropology have added to this controversy. The oldest, dubbed ‘Pen˜on Woman III’, was shown to be 12 700calendar years old. Particularly interesting is that, like the Kennewick Man, these ancient skulls are dolichocephalic (long and narrow headed) in contrast to the typically brachycephalic (short and wide) Native

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American crania. Their resemblance to native Southeast Asian, Polynesian, Australian, and Japanese populations has led some scholars to speculate that the skulls indicate a discrete wave of immigration into the New World following the Pacific coast and islands, a movement that also would have entailed the use of watercraft. Ongoing studies of Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), nuclear DNA, and Y-chromosomes may eventually help to resolve these questions. MtDNA analyses consistently reveal genetic relationships between modern Native American, Asian, and Siberian peoples. One study, however, has isolated a lineage of mtDNA in modern Native Americans not found in ancient individuals of Asian origin. Named ‘X’, it occurs in Europeans but also shows a partial relationship to Mongolian lineages. Overall, the current data favor an Asian versus European origin of New World peoples, either as a single wave of migration or, strengthened by estimates of mtDNA mutation rates, a series of separate migrations beginning as early as 40 000 years ago. Discounting the dubious likelihood of oceangoing voyages directly across the Pacific, the entryway for Asian migrants into the Americas would almost certainly have been through the narrow Bering Strait from Siberia into Alaska. During the final Wisconsin stage of the Pleistocene, c. 70 000 to 10 000 years ago, worldwide climate was much colder than today for long stretches of time. Ocean levels were lowered by as much as 150 m during these frigid intervals, as surface water became locked up in glacial ice. At those times the beds of the shallow Bering and Chukchi seas were exposed, resulting in a 1500 km wide ‘land bridge’, known to geologists as Beringia, connecting Siberia to Alaska. The verdant tundra that developed in this broad area offered an attractive habitat for herds of large, cold-adapted herbivores as well as for the hunter-gatherers that exploited them and, in so doing, wandered unwittingly to its Alaskan border. Once on the Alaskan mainland it is not clearly understood how and over what routes the early migrants moved onto the rest of the continent. This dilemma stems partly from the difficulty in recovering archaeological evidence in the inhospitable Alaskan environment and partly from the fact that, with rising sea levels, confirmation of human habitation along what was the Ice Age coast now lies deeply submerged. Until recently it was believed that the main route south was by way of an ice-free corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets, following the Yukon and McKenzie river basins (Figure 2). But recent geological evidence indicating that this area was probably glaciated until about 12 000 years ago casts doubt on this hypothesis. Furthermore, for centuries afterwards the succeeding wetlands may not have supported enough

food resources to sustain the wandering Paleoindian hunter-gatherers. An alternative hypothesis, which posits a maritime route into the Americas, is gaining increasing attention as archaeologists evaluate the abundant subsistence potential of the fish, sea mammals, shellfish, and birds along the Pacific coast. A littoral ‘highway’ is envisioned that may have become ice-free long before interior regions. Tantalizing evidence in support of this hypothesis includes human femora, radiocarbon dated 12 960 years BP recovered on Santa Rosa Island, located over 60 km off the coast of Southern California, along with chipped stone artifacts and marine shells found at Daisy Cave on the adjacent San Miguel Island, dated c. 12 000 BP. Further south, on the Peruvian coast, stone tools, hearths, and associated marine fauna are reported from Quebrada Jaguay and Quebrada Tacahuay, two prehistoric fishing camps with radiocarbon dates in the range of 12 500 to 12 700 calendar years ago. Proponents of the coastal migration hypothesis recognize that early migrants would have had difficulty traversing the rugged Pacific littoral entirely on foot, and posit the use of boats. Although there is no direct archaeological evidence of watercraft in the Americas for this early period, certainly they would have been required to reach the Santa Rosa and San Miguel Island sites. Linguistic theory lends another line of support to the maritime hypothesis, inasmuch as the high diversity of mutually unintelligible aboriginal languages along the Pacific coast of North and Central America suggests a lengthy process of divergence from an ancestral tongue. It is altogether possible that the early immigrants to the New World made use of a coastal route and somewhat later in time, after the Yukon-McKenzie River corridor became free of ice and wetlands, an inland pathway.

The First Paleoindian Migrations While we will never know the precise day the first hunter-gatherer set foot in the Americas, the idea of initial entry by 30 000 to 40 000 years ago is considered possible by some archaeologists. One serious impediment to verification is the fact that the earliest human skeletal remains so far recovered from New World archaeological sites are no more than 13 000 calendar years old. Given the paucity of skeletal evidence the dating of earliest migration relies primarily on artifactual material. Until recently the oldest such evidence fully endorsed by the archaeological community was a widespread distribution of North American sites associated with the Clovis projectile point technology, the earliest of which date

166 AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America

SIBERIA

Chukchi Sea

GR

Beringia

EE

NL

Alaska

D

ime l a ntic Marit Route

r orrido ie C enz cK illeran Cord eet h Ice S

ifi c

astal Route Co

Pa c

AN

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Laurentide Ice Sheet

At

Bering Sea

Kennewick Meadowcroft Cactus Hill

Santa Rosa and San Miguel Islands

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Clovis

l sta oa P a c ifi c C

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rat Mig

Quebrada Jaguay Quebrada Tacahuay

ion Route

N

0 0

1000 mi

Monte Verde

1000 km

Tierra del Fuego

Pleistocene Migration Routes Archaeological site Migration Route

Figure 2 Map of possible Pleistocene migration routes.

c.11 000–12 000 years bp. Named after the locale in New Mexico where in 1932 it was first identified, the bifacially flaked, lanceolate-shaped Clovis point is distinguished by a flute or channel at its base, probably used to facilitate fastening to the tip of a thrusting spear or atlatl (spear thrower) dart. The longstanding claim by ‘Clovis first’ proponents that it was the New World mother culture has been quashed by the recent dating of archaeological sites with unequivocal evidence of earlier human occupation. In addition to the early coastal habitation

noted above, prominent among the pre-Clovis sites is Monte Verde, located about 20 km inland from the Pacific Ocean in southern Chile. Settlement at Monte Verde by 13 000 14C years bp (11 500–10 500 BC) is well documented, with wood, bone, ivory, cordage, and simple stone artifacts, along with food remains and the vestiges of timber structures, all recovered in good archaeological context from waterlogged deposits that inhibited organic decay. Lower stratigraphic levels of the Monte Verde excavations, provisionally assigned a date of 33 000 years bp, are still

AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America 167

under investigation. At the far end of the age spectrum, but treated with a degree of skepticism by most archaeologists, is the Topper site in South Carolina, where artifact-bearing sediments are claimed to be at least 50 000 years old.

The Earliest Archaeological Sites in Middle America Paleoindian sites in Middle America dating to the earliest time of occupation are scarce, hindered by the fact that population density was low, residence was transitory, and material possessions minimal (Figure 3). Perhaps equally significant, the small number of known sites may be attributed to the relative lack of attention paid to Middle America’s Early Paleoindian prehistory, given the allure of the area’s more spectacular later periods. One of the best known, though still controversial, Early Paleoindian occupations is located in highland Mexico, near the present-day city of Puebla, where a cluster of what appears to have been transient hunting camps was discovered adjacent to the Valsequillo Reservoir. Excavations at five of the sites, which the investigators designated Hueyatlaco, Tecacaxco, El Mirador, El Horno, and Cualapan, resulted in the

recovery of numerous stone tools alongside the fossilized remains of various large, Ice Age animals, including mammoths, mastodons, camels, horses, four-horned antelopes, saber-tooth tigers, and dire wolves. The Hueyatlaco excavations exposed ten stratigraphic layers of alluvial deposits ranging in age from modern times back to the Pleistocene. Below the top stratum of recent debris were two levels of deposit, the upper of which contained a bifacially flaked stemmed projectile point along with a variety of percussion- and pressure-flaked cutting, piercing, and scraping implements, reflecting a well-developed lithic technology. In association with these implements were abundant bone remains of Pleistocene megafauna. The lowest artifact bearing ‘unit’ at Hueyatlaco, along with equivalent levels at other Valsequillo sites, revealed a cruder tool-making technology in which fragments were simply smashed off one side of a stone flake to produce a sharp edge that was then marginally retouched by pressure-flaking into an implement of desired form. Along with these tools were the remains of mastodon, camel, horse, and other animals. At the adjacent El Horno site, similar stone tools, some showing signs of use, were found alongside a butchered mastodon. The simple, unifacially flaked

SIE RR

S IE

San Isidro, Calsada

Middle America Paleoindian Sites

RR

AM

Tamaulipas

AD

AM

Highland areas (Altitude over 1000 meters)

AD

RE

Site

IEN

D CI OC

OR

RE Rancho la Amapola

TA L

EN

Gulf of Mexico

TA

L

Plateau of Mexico

Tequixquiac Tepexpan, Ixtapan

Loltún Cave

Yucatán Peninsula

Tlapacoya Valsequillo

MEXICO

August Pine Ridge

Tehuacán

SI E

RR

AM

AD

Cueva Blanca

RE

D EL

SUR

Caribbean Sea

Ladyville

Isthmus of Tehuantepec

PACIFIC OCEAN

Actun Halal

BELIZE

GUATEMALA Quiche Basin

HONDURAS

La Esperanza El Bosque

EL SALVADOR N 0 0

300 mi 300 km

Figure 3 Map of Middle American Paleoindian sites mentioned in the text.

168 AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America

stone implements, along with the absence of spear or projectile points, are thought by some archaeologists to be part of an early lithic tradition, with roots extending as far back as 40 000 years in time, antecedent to the production of bifacially flaked tools. Questions arise as to how mastodons, mammoths, and other formidably large animals could have been hunted without projectile or spear points, given the simple stone tools found in the lower levels of the Valsequillo excavations. One explanation is that the early inhabitants and their contemporaries elsewhere in Middle America were foragers whose principal diet consisted of smaller animals and plant foods, the remains of which were not preserved as they were at Monte Verde. Only when a mastodon or mammoth had been handicapped by sickness, injury, or other impediment would it have been pursued. Alternatively, it is possible that the excavations at Valsequillo failed to recover existing evidence of points, or that they had been produced from bone, wood or other perishable materials. A series of five radiocarbon dates were obtained from fossilized freshwater mollusks recovered from a stream-eroded gully adjoining the Valsequillo Reservoir. The dates, in stratigraphic sequence, span the period from approximately 35 000 years bp at the lowest level to 9150  500 years BP near the surface of the gully. Midway down the stratigraphic profile, a shell sample in direct association with a flake scraper was dated to 21 850  850 years bp, which the investigators proposed as representative of the site’s time of occupation. In 1962–66, when the Valsequillo project took place, pre-Clovis sites were typically greeted with disbelief. Although that is no longer so, the Valsequillo dates are still considered problematical by many archaeologists on grounds that the shell used for radiocarbon dating is an unreliable medium, and the integrity of the streambed stratigraphy is problematical. A project underway at the Mexican National Institute of Archaeology (INAH) and the National Museum of Anthropology proposes to validate these dates. Other dates from the Valsequillo excavations obtained through an experimental tephra hydration assay of volcanic pumice, from fission track analysis of obsidian, and from uranium series analysis of bone, range from 245 000 to 600 000 years BP and are universally rejected, as they would connote the implausible existence of a New World population antecedent to the evolution of modern Homo sapiens. In 2005 a British geoarchaeological team working under the shadow of the Toloquilla Volcano, in the vicinity of Valsequillo, announced the discovery of what they claimed to be a large cluster of fossilized human footprints imprinted in volcanic tuff

(concretized volcanic ash) at an abandoned quarry. Optically Stimulated Luminescence, a technique that calculates when sediment grains were last exposed to heat or light, was used to date what appeared to be burnt clay fragments within the Cerro Toloquilla tuff, leading to assertions that the footprints were more than 40 000 years old. Later, samples of the tuff were taken to the Berkeley Geochronology Center where they were dated at 1.3 million years BP by 40Argon/39Argon and Palaeomagnetic techniques, which would make the ‘Toloquilla footprints’ – if that is really what they are – impossibly ancient. Another questionable Early Paleoindian occupation in Middle America is the El Bosque site, in Nicaragua, near the southernmost periphery of Middle America. Excavations uncovered crudely flaked stone tools along with mastodon, giant sloth, and horse remains. Radiocarbon dates extend from 18 100 to over 35 000 years in the past. One of the lithic implements has been classified a primitive ‘chopper’, a simple bifacial implement type some prehistorians profess to be characteristic of the earliest tradition of New World toolmaking, preceding in time the unifacially flaked tools found in the lower stratigraphic levels at Valsequillo. Doubts have been expressed about the early dates for the site and even whether the lithic finds are actual artifacts. A more probable Early Paleoindian occupation is reported at Tlapacoya, located near Lake Chalco in highland Central Mexico. Eight seasons of interdisciplinary fieldwork at the site from 1965–73 produced a large number of stone tools, animal bones, and plant remains, some recovered in or around what appear to be ancient hearths. From a suite of radiocarbon determinations, a sample from a circular hearth dated 21 700  500 years bp was selected as an indication of the age of the site. Two other cooking areas, replete with the remains of stone tools and animal bones, many from now extinct Pleistocene mammals, suggest a series of temporary campsites along the ancient lakeshore. Many of the artifacts from the earliest dated locality were crudely made flakes and blades similar in form to those from the lowest Hueyatlaco excavation levels. Several bifacially flaked obsidian implements were also found in association with the animal bones and hearths. Remarkably, the nearest source of obsidian is located more than 50 km from the site, indicating that the Tlapacoya hunter-gatherers either ranged widely or had established exchange relationships with adjacent groups. However, the more sophisticated obsidian flaking technique used to produce the implements, atypical of Early Paleoindian toolmaking, raises reservations about their association with the early radiocarbon dates.

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Also in Central Mexico, the Rancho La Amapola site in San Luı´s Potosı´ was, at the time of its occupation, situated in an area resplendent with lakes, marshes, streams, and springs, making it an attractive habitat for humans and other animals. Several seasons of excavation between 1977 and 1980 produced remains of mammoth, mastodon, horse, camel, dire wolf, short-faced bear, glyptodon, giant sloth, and other now-extinct megafauna, but only three definite artifacts: a point carved from a horse tibia, a limestone hammerstone, and a discoidal chalcedony scraper. A charcoal sample from what was believed to be a cooking area was dated at 31 850  600 years bp; another radiocarbon determination from the stratigraphic level in which the scraper was found produced a date of 33 300  2700–1800 years bp. In the lowlands of Middle America, only two sites, both in caves on the Yucatan Peninsula, offer insights into possible Early Paleoindian occupation. Neither have the confirmation of radiocarbon dating. Loltu´n Cave, in the Puuc Hills of northern Mexico, is dated solely by the association of crude stone and bone tools with the remains of mastodon and other Pleistocene age animals in the lowest stratigraphic levels of excavations. Projectile points are lacking. Upper strata have evidence of occupation by pottery-making peoples. Analysis of the stone tools and their faunal association has led to speculation that occupation may extend back in time as early as 40 000 years. Actun Halal Cave in western Belize also relies on the association of stone tools with the remains of extinct megafauna for its Early Paleoindian assignment. Among the lithic artifacts associated with the fragmentary remains of horse, spectacled bear, and peccary are a crude, bifacially flaked cobble, possibly a chopper, and a discoidal-flaked core. The core, however, is reported to be similar to artifacts found in fluted biface assemblages elsewhere in Middle and North America, which would suggest that the site may actually date to the Late Paleoindian period.

lifeways of the people that made them can only be inferred from sites further north in the United States. The dozen or so Clovis finds from highland regions of Middle America area are distributed geographically from Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Durango in northern Mexico, to San Luı´s Potosı´, Quere´taro, Tlaxcala, Puebla, and Oaxaca in the Mexican central and southern highlands, down to Guatemala and Costa Rica. In the lowlands only three Clovis finds have been reported, all from Belize. Two are from Ladyville, north of Belize City, and the other was found near August Pine Ridge (Figure 4). As noted above, the Actun Halal Cave site might also date to this period. Another diagnostic Late Paleoindian artifact, contemporaneous and morphologically akin to Clovis, are the so-called Fishtail projectile points. Also fluted, they are distinguished from Clovis points by a characteristic stemmed base. Their origin appears to have been in South America, where they were first encountered at Fell’s Cave in the Tierra del Fuego region of Chile. Four are currently known from Belize, all surface finds, where they have been provisionally dated c. 9000–7000 years bc, based on their resemblance to better known examples at Madden Lake in Panama and the Quiche´ Basin of Guatemala (Figure 5). The August Pine Ridge Clovis point exhibits a degree of fishtail-like basal narrowing, suggesting that southern Middle America may have been the meeting point of the two traditions. Although no faunal remains have been associated with the Belize points, the open savanna environment where some of the specimens were found would have provided an appealing habitat for large, grazing animals. At the Fell’s Cave

The Late Paleoindian Period A hallmark artifact of the Late Paleoindian period is the Clovis point. So effective for hunting was this implement that its design proliferated among Paleoindian peoples throughout much of North and Middle America. For the first time a tool was available to confidently confront the large animals that had previously been an attractive but elusive and often dangerous source of food. In Middle America scattered Clovis points have been recovered from both highland and lowland regions, although all are isolated surface finds. Lacking context, their use, age, and the

0

1

2

cm Figure 4 Fluted Clovis point from August Pine Ridge, Belize. Courtesy of Fred Valdez, Jr., drawn by Dee Turman.

170 AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America

site, radiocarbon dated 9050 and 8770 years bc, Fishtail points were recovered in association with the remains of horse, mylodon, and other now-extinct Pleistocene animals. Appearing somewhat later in time than Clovis and Fishtail points are a variety of large, unfluted lanceolate-shaped projectile points and knives, many of them dazzling in their technological refinement.

0

They are best known from the North American Southwest and Plains under such type names as Angostura, Dalton, Plainview, and Scottsbluff, but variants extend into other areas, including Middle America. At the La Calsada Rockshelter in the highland Mexico state of Nuevo Leo´n, similar tools have been radiocarbon dated to the beginning years of the Late Paleoindian period. While still associated with the hunting of Ice Age megafauna, these implements are increasingly found at sites with bison, antelope and other modern prey, reflecting the changing composition of animals on the post-Pleistocene landscape during the final millennia of the Late Paleoindian period. Also exemplifying this complex in Middle America are the Santa Isabel Iztapan finds, where the dismembered skeletons of two mammoths were discovered along the shores of ancient Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico. Spear points comparable to Lerma, Scottsbluff, and Angostura types were found near the animals, along with an assortment of chert and obsidian knives and other butchering tools that were probably responsible for the many cut marks found on the fossil bones (Figure 6). As at the earlier Tlapacoya site, the fact that the obsidian and chert from which many of the tools were manufactured were procured from sources many kilometers away indicates the mobility of these hunters or their participation in an early network of exchange with other bands. The location of the kill site suggests that the

5 cm

Figure 5 Fishtail point from the Lowe Ranch Site (BAAR 35E), Belize. Reproduced with permission of the Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA.

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Figure 6 Projectile/spear points found in association with the Santa Isabel Iztapan mammoths. a. Scottsbluff point; b. Lerma point; c. Angostura point.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America 171

animals were driven into or had attempted to escape along the swampy shore of the lake and were butchered on the spot. In the North American Southwest and Plains regions the recovery of many large animal bones in Late Paleoindian period archaeological sites suggested that a ‘big game hunting tradition’ had evolved, a tradition that was ultimately shown to be inapplicable to Middle America. The initial negative evidence was provided by the Tehuaca´n Archaeological-Botanical Project, a ground-breaking interdisciplinary study based in the highlands of Puebla, Mexico. The ambitious objective of the project was to reconstruct in a single place – the Tehuaca´n Valley – a complete sequence of social and cultural development, from the time of earliest human settlement to the beginning of urban civilization. Excavations at Tehuaca´n revealed that the earliest human occupants of the valley, between 12 000 and 9000 years ago, manufactured a variety of bifacially flaked stone tools, including Lerma- and Plainviewlike projectile points. Judging from the association of these implements with the remains of animals such as horse and antelope, it was apparent that big game hunting had indeed been practiced by these early settlers. But notably, analysis of the many bones recovered from birds, gophers, jackrabbits, rats, and turtles revealed that smaller animals actually constituted the bulk of the diet for the Tehuaca´n inhabitants. Recovered from an early stratigraphic zone in the valley’s Coxcatla´n Cave, for example, were nearly 400 jackrabbit bones, including in a one square meter unit, the feet of over 40 animals that had been slaughtered in a single session. The tendency of jackrabbits to congregate suggested that they were hunted in communal drives, involving people from several otherwise independent bands. However, as the environment changed during the Holocene, social species of animals, such as jackrabbits and pronghorn antelopes, appear to have been supplanted by more solitary types, such as cottontail rabbits and white-tailed deer, a population shift that would have entailed the abandonment of communal hunting for the stalking of single animals by individuals or small groups of hunters. Along with the fauna, the recovery in the Tehuaca´n Valley of food remains from wild plants such as avocado, agave, and opuntia further indicates a much broader spectrum of subsistence than that implied by a ‘big game hunting’ model. Subsequent archaeological excavations at Cueva Blanca, several hundred kilometers further south in the Oaxaca Valley, corroborate the Tehuaca´n reconstruction. Overall the Late Paleoindian mode of subsistence in highland Middle America appears to have involved generalized

foraging, with small game constituting the bulk of the diet, supplemented by the occasional larger animal and the seasonal availability of wild food plants. Population density is estimated to have been very low, clustered into small, mobile ‘microbands’ consisting of four to eight related individuals. Mostly independent, several bands may have temporarily joined each year for hunting and perhaps social activities. The need to not overexploit the limited wild food carrying capacity of the habitat in places such as the Tehuaca´n and Oaxaca valleys would have induced the small bands to remain dispersed for most of the year. Another of the defining attributes of the Late Pleistocene period is the dramatic disappearance of over 32 genera of large Ice Age animals, among them the mammoth, mastodon, horse, camel, tapir, ground sloth, dire wolf, saber-tooth tiger, and glyptodont. Since prior environmental fluctuations during earlier phases of the Ice Age had not resulted in similar extinctions, the growth of human population and the attendant development of more efficient hunting techniques have been proposed as the principal causal factor. Support for this Pleistocene Overkill hypothesis is strongest on the North American Plains where there is archaeological evidence of a shift in hunting strategy from the stalking of solitary prey to the often wasteful slaughter of entire animal herds in a single episode. Critics of the hypothesis respond that many of the species that became extinct were not hunted and some that were, such as the modern bison, did not perish. Evidence from the Tehuaca´n ArchaeologicalBotanical Project indicates that at least for Middle America predation of Pleistocene megafauna was not intense enough to have accounted for their extermination. Overall, the explanation for the extinctions may lie in a combination of climatically induced environmental change and more intensive hunting.

The Origins of Middle American Art and Ideology The delicate pressure flaking that produced the superbly made lanceolate projectile points and knives of the Late Paleolithic reveals a degree of attention to manufacture that far exceeded purely functional requirements. Archaeologists do not know whether the diversity and refinement of the implement types resulting from this extra effort is accounted for by an aspiration for greater creativity and beauty or by a more utilitarian need, such as a desire by indigenous groups to differentiate themselves through a distinguishing ‘signature’ as they became more territorially bounded. Whatever the case, to the extent it can be called art, the effort was applied to practical implements.

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Figure 7 The Tequixquiac carved camelid sacrum.

The earliest known example in Middle America – and indeed one of the oldest in the New World – of what would be a purely aesthetic work, is a carved camelid sacrum, fashioned in the shape of what appears to be the head of a peccary or canid (Figure 7). The object was discovered in 1870 at Tequixquiac, in the Central Mexican state of Hidalgo, deeply buried in a thick layer of Late Pleistocene sediments known as the Upper Becerra formation. For many years the carving’s antiquity was questioned, but subsequent investigation at the Tequixquiac site revealed its association with Late Paleoindian stone and bone tools and the remains of camel, ground sloth, mammoth, mastodon, and other Ice Age animals. Also found in the Upper Becerra deposits, adjacent to Lake Texcoco at a location less than two kilometers away from the ‘Iztapan mammoth’ finds, was a female skeleton, buried in a face-down, flexed position. Because it was felt that the pit in which the skeleton was placed might be intrusive from a more recent stratigraphic level, the antiquity of the burial, like that of the carved camelid sacrum, was questioned. Subsequent fluorine and nitrogen analyses of bone samples tended to verify the contemporaneity of the Tepexpan skeleton with the nearby mammoths but more recent radiocarbon analysis indicates that the bones may be only 2000 years old. If the earlier date is correct Tepexpan Woman would be the earliest example of an intentional human burial, suggesting that by the Late Paleoindian period belief in an afterlife was part of Middle American ideology.

The Archaic Period in General The long Archaic period, beginning sometime after 9000 bc, can be divided into Early, Middle, and Late subperiods (see Figure 1). Comparable to the Old

World Mesolithic, it was a time of profound transformation, culminating in the appearance of permanent settlements supported by a subsistence economy primarily based on agriculture. In Middle America domesticated animals – and only the turkey, Muscovy duck, dog, and honeybee can be included in this category – never figured significantly in the PreColumbian diet. Maize, beans, and squash, three of the early plant domesticates, became Middle America’s staple foods, although by the sixteenth century, when the Spanish arrived, over forty other cultivated species were being consumed. In Middle America’s highlands the first steps toward agriculture can be traced to the Early Archaic, when wild plants appear to have become an increasingly important component of the diet. At this time populations settled into more defined territories, replacing a mobile lifeway with scheduled rounds of shorter moves to take advantage of the seasonal availability of locally available plants and animals. By the Late Archaic, in some highland regions, particularly where resources were sparse, ‘foraging’ of this kind gave way to a ‘collecting’ strategy, where small task groups made transient forays to specific food sources, leaving the main community behind in more permanent settlements. Food collecting strategies may have developed in lowland regions as well, although there is not yet enough evidence to be certain. The practice of food collecting promoted cultivation when non-local plants were brought back to the settlement where they could be watered, weeded, and better protected from predators. In addition, accidentally dropped seeds from wild food plants would have sprouted in the disturbed soils around the camp. From there it was only a short step to creating domesticates by selecting seeds, cuttings, and issue from the most productive cultigens. The resulting domesticated plants (see Plant Domestication) addressed human needs, but often at the cost of their ability to survive in the wild. Once agriculture was fully embraced, it permitted (some prehistorians would argue that it required) those of its practitioners who were not already doing so to forego their mobile lifeway. Contrasted to subsistence dependent on a finite supply of wild plants and animals, the intensifiable nature of horticulture allowed for the support of densely populated villages and, eventually, for the large towns and cities that appeared in later periods. The Archaic transformation in Middle America was not uniform, but varied in timing and possibly in process from region to region. Like the previous Paleoindian period, most of what we currently know about it derives from investigations in highland regions where the more arid environment is more

AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America 173

conducive to preservation. Practical difficulties of research in the hot, often wet and densely forested, lowlands of Middle America are exacerbated by the three-meter post-Pleistocene rise in sea level that has inundated early coastal sites; by higher groundwater levels and encroaching wetlands that frustrate excavation; by stream and river erosion that has destroyed some sites while deeply burying others under alluvial sediment; and by a paucity of cave sites where archaeological remains tend to be better preserved (Figure 8). Only in the last few decades has this unbalanced perspective begun to be rectified, often through sophisticated collection and analytical techniques. Even so, almost nothing is known about the lowland Early Archaic, particularly in the more interior tropical forest regions, although from evidence of Paleoindian occupation it could be inferred that at least some of these places were inhabited. The emerging picture from the better known lowland Middle and Late Archaic suggests that the path its inhabitants took to a horticulture-based economy was, with the possible exception of tropical domesticates such as manioc, conditioned by earlier developments in the highlands.

SIE

To fully appreciate the changes that occurred during the Archaic, it is instructive to first examine their earliest manifestation on Middle America’s northeastern periphery. There, at Frightful Cave, Fat Burro Cave, and Nopal Shelter in Coahuila and Calzada Rockshelter in Nuevo Leo´n, a Mexican extension of the North American Desert Culture has been found. Beginning as early as 9000 bc, these caves, and undoubtedly many others in this harshly rugged area, were occupied seasonally by small bands of mobile foragers who left behind a bountiful array of artifacts. Utilitarian items included small, percussion flaked projectile points for attachment to darts propelled by wooden atlatls, along with stone scrapers, choppers, hammerstones, fiber cordage, sandals, baskets, mats, fire drills, and tongs. Hinting of a rich ceremonial life were scarifiers for bloodletting or tattooing, musical rasps, ornamental shell beads, and hallucinogenic plants. Food remains, some recovered from grass-lined storage pits, indicate a diet heavily dependent on wild plants, supplemented by meat from small and medium sized animals of modern species. Cobblestone manos (grinding stones) along with fragments from flat milling bases for

Middle America Archaic Sites

Coahuila Cave Sites Calsada

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Highland areas (Altitude over 1000 meters)

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The Early Archaic

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San Andres

Tehuacán

Middle Balsas Basin

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Santa Luisa Zohapilco

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Loltún Cave

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Figure 8 Map of Middle American Archaic sites mentioned in the text.

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more efficient processing of seeds and other plant parts were used for the first time by people who retained a nonagricultural subsistence regime but who showed an increasing interest in plant foods. Further south, in the Sierra de Tamaulipas, the lowest, ‘Infiernillo phase’ excavation levels at several cave sites dated c. 7000–6000 bc reveal an Early Archaic artifact inventory similar to that of the Desert Culture, including a food complex that relied primarily on wild plants such as runner beans, agave, and opuntia. A critically important distinction was that by the end of the Archaic period, at around 2400 BC, maize (Zea mays) was being cultivated. The discovery, first published in 1958, but with a now corrected sequence of dates, stimulated a still ongoing search throughout Middle America for earlier places of plant domestication. A number have been found, among them the Santa Marta Rockshelter and Aguacatenango II–III in Chiapas, Mexico, some surface surveyed locations in Guatemala’s Quiche´ Basin, and a series of habitation sites near La Esperanza, Honduras. However, to this day, much of what has been learned since the Tamaulipas project has been a product of investigations in just three highland regions: the Tehuaca´n Valley, the Valley of Oaxaca, and the Basin of Mexico. From the Tehuaca´n Valley, information about the Archaic derives from the Tehuaca´n Archaeological– Botanical Project, previously noted for its Paleoindian period research. Several hundred cave and open-air archaeological sites were surveyed, nine of which were chosen for excavation. Along with the many artifacts, copious food remains were recovered, including both macrobotanical specimens and human coprolites (fossilized feces). Based on their stratigraphic position and the typology of artifacts, the materials were originally assigned to one or another of three sequential Archaic phases, El Riego (7000– 5000 bc), Coxcatla´n (5000–3400 bc), and Abejas (3400–2000 bc), mirroring the division of the Archaic into Early, Middle, and Late subperiods. Although the specific dates assigned the excavated materials and their cultural implications have been extensively amended since the 1960s when the project took place, the general sequence of developments is still widely used to model the transition from hunting and gathering to horticulture in highland Middle America. The earliest Archaic food plants recovered from the Tehuaca´n excavations consisted exclusively of wild species such as foxtail millet, mesquite, and acacia, from which seeds and pods were harvested; pochote, which has edible roots and seeds; maguey leaves and hearts, collected for roasting; and chupandilla, cosahuico, ciruela,and opuntia (prickly pear), desired for their fruit. Along with the appearance of manos and metates – the grinding stones and basins that were

to become the ubiquitous plant processing tools in Middle America – the food remains indicated the increasing importance of plants in the diet of the Tehuaca´n foragers (Figure 9). By 7000 BC, the first tentative step toward plant domestication at Tehuaca´n was taken in the form of attention the Valley’s Archaic foragers paid to avocados (Persea americana). Because these trees required regular watering, they appear to have been transplanted to locations where they could be better tended, a procedure amounting to simple cultivation. By 5960 BC, toward the end of the Early Archaic period, morphologically domesticated squash (Cucurbita pepo) was being cultivated in the Valley; by 5200 BC there is evidence for the domesticated bottle gourd (Lageneria siceraria); and somewhat later, chile peppers (Capsicum frutescens). Some tiny fossilized maize cobs from the Tehuaca´n caves were also determined to be domesticates, as it was observed that they were unable to disperse their tightly attached seed grains without human assistance. The survival of this maladaptive morphology could only have been the product of purposeful selection for a set of genetic traits that made the plant more attractive for harvesting and consumption, but which had the effect of preventing its reproduction in the wild. Charcoal from the archaeological strata in Coxcatla´n Cave from which the primitivelooking cobs were recovered was radiocarbon dated

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cm Figure 9 Archaic period oblong mano fragment (above) and metate-milling stone from Tehuaca´n.

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Figure 10 Maize cob remains from Tehuaca´n. From left to right: Middle Archaic Coxcatla´n phase; Late Archaic Abejas phase; Late Formative/Early Classic; last two on the right date to the Postclassic period. Photograph courtesy of the R.S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA.

c. 5500 BC and until recently that terminal Early Archaic date was accepted as marking the initial domestication of maize in Middle America (Figure 10). Recent analysis of bottle gourd samples from the same level at the cave verified their domestication at a date just a few hundred years later. However, subsequent direct AMS determinations on maize cobs from the Valley’s San Marcos and Coxcatla´n caves, produced a suite of revised dates, none earlier than 3555 BC, well into the Middle Archaic. Consequently, most archaeologists now reject the original 5500 BC date, attributing it to post-depositional intrusion of the cobs into earlier stratigraphic levels of Coxcatla´n cave. Excavations at Guila´ Naquitz and Cueva Blanca, two cave sites in the Valley of Oaxaca, have greatly augmented the Tehuaca´n archaeological record. At Guila´ Naquitz (Figure 11), nine AMS determinations on seeds and fruit stems of squash (C. pepo) indicate that a domesticated variety was being cultivated by 8000 BC, over 2000 years prior to the Tehuaca´n specimen,

making it Middle America’s earliest dated domesticated plant. Domesticated bottle gourds (L. siceraria) followed shortly thereafter at 7970 BC Nevertheless, the more than 20 000 plant specimens recovered at the site reflect an Early Archaic diet consisting mainly of wild plants. Acorns appear to have been most important, but runner beans, maguey, seeds and pods of mesquite, prickly pear cactus leaves and fruit, pin˜on and susi nuts, hackberries, and onions were also among the wild plants eaten (Figure 12). In addition, faunal remains show that deer, cottontail rabbits, mud turtles, collared peccary, raccoons, and a variety of birds were hunted by the small family bands that occasionally occupied the cave during fall seasons. Flaked stone tools, classified as belonging to the Early Archaic Naquitz phase in the Oaxaca Valley, show little standardization. Among them are crude blades, notched flakes, and denticulate scrapers, typically produced from locally available chert (Figure 13). Metates and manos for processing plant foods were made from local ignimbrite and stream-borne cobbles.

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Figure 11 Guila´ Naquitz Cave. A person is standing in front of the cave entrance. Photo courtesy of Kent V. Flannery and Joyce Marcus, Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan.

Figure 12 Wild plant food remains from Guila´ Naquitz Cave. a–b: acorns; c–f: pin˜on nuts; g–i: West Indian cherry seeds; j–m: yak susi hulls; n: mesquite seeds; o: hackberry seeds; p: prickly pear cactus fruit; q: wild onion bulb; r–s: chewed agave fiber quids. Photograph courtesy of Kent V. Flannery and Joyce Marcus, Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan.

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Figure 13 Early Archaic period stone tools from the Oaxaca Valley. a: notched flake; b: denticulate scraper; c: crude blade. Redrawn from K.V. Flannery (ed.), Guila´ Naquitz. Archaic Foraging and Early Agriculture in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Figure 14 Net bag fragment from Guila´ Naquitz. Photograph courtesy of Kent V. Flannery and Joyce Marcus, Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan.

Knotted netting fragments, cordage, coiled basketry, fire drills, a drill hearth, and some roasting sticks round out a typical Early Archaic artifact assemblage (Figure 14). The Middle and Late Archaic in the Highlands

The Middle and Late Archaic were times of growing reliance on horticulture among the highland populations of Middle America. At Tehuaca´n, coyol palms and sapote trees, like avocados, alien to the region, were brought into the Valley and domesticated. Other domesticated plants were two additional varieties of squash (C. moschata and mixta), bottle gourds, common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), and, as indicated

above, maize. By the Late Archaic, tepary beans (P. acutifolius) and jack beans (Canavalia ensiformis) were added to the list. Toward the end of the Archaic, maize, initially a primitive grass of marginal food value, had evolved into a nutritious and storable grain staple. In the Oaxaca Valley increasing residential permanence is inferred from Gheo-Shih, a Middle Archaic open air camp where occupation has been dated c. 8600 years BP Excavation at the 1.5 ha site revealed an unusual architectural feature interpreted as a ‘dance ground’, similar to those found among historic period Great Basin hunter-gatherer bands. The feature consists of two parallel rows of boulders, twenty meters in length, bounding a seven meter-wide space that had been kept clean of the projectile points, grinding stones, scrapers, pebble ornaments, and other lithic remnants of occupation found elsewhere at the site. Gheo-Shih appears to have been an encampment where several family microbands, totaling 25–30 individuals, congregated for ceremonies and other social activities during the rainy season, when food supplies were ample. Still lacking was a food source adequate to enable year-round residence. That the occupants of the Oaxaca Valley had begun to experiment by the Middle Archaic with the cultivation of maize has been confirmed by a series of direct AMS dates on some primitive-looking but domesticated cobs from excavations at Guila´ Naquitz Cave (Figure 15). The dates, averaging 6250 calendar years ago (approximately 4250 BC), are the earliest currently recognized for domesticated maize, predating by as much as 800 calendar years the oldest Tehuaca´n specimens. The absence of wild maize in

178 AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America

Figure 15 The two oldest maize cobs in the New World, from excavations at Guila´ Naquitz Cave, dated c 6250 calendar years ago. The lower cob is approximately 2.5 cm long. Photo courtesy of Dolores Piperno, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

deeper excavation levels at the site has led to the conclusion that the initial place of maize domestication lay outside the Oaxaca Valley. Currently favored is the region around the middle Balsas River Basin, in the states of Guerrero and Michoaca´n, where DNA and isozyme studies point to a local variety of teosinte (Z. mays ssp. parviglumis), a wild annual grass with naturally disarticulating grains, as the probable ancestor of domesticated maize. Indications of a continuing movement toward residential permanence in the Oaxaca Valley appear at the Late Archaic Cueva Blanca site, near present-day Mitla. From artifacts and faunal remains it appears that the seasonal inhabitants of the rockshelter were all-male deer hunters. Whereas the previous foraging lifeway had entailed an annual cycle of movement requiring entire bands to travel from one seasonally available food source to another, a ‘collecting’ strategy is inferred from the Cueva Blanca remains. Under this strategy, deer hunters, as well as other small task groups, made transient forays from a semi-permanent base to specific locations of food and other resources, camping temporarily at places like Cueva Blanca. An alternative path to highland sedentism that circumvents the transitional collecting strategy was theoretically possible in regions of rich, locally available resources. Zohapilco, in the highlands of Central Mexico not far from the Paleoindian Tlapacoya encampments, may exemplify this alternative. Its setting on the shore of Lake Chalco, surrounded by abundant wild plant and animal populations, is thought to have enabled Zohapilco’s Middle Archaic inhabitants to remain in one location throughout the year. The limited archaeological excavation, consisting of a single long trench, failed to expose evidence

of permanent structures, so the actual nature of occupation remains to be verified. Excavation strata, dated 5059–4250 bc, revealed pollen and seeds from wild plants such as teosinte, amaranth, portulaca, goosefoot, tomatillo, and squash, along with the bones of fish, waterfowl, deer, rabbits, turtles, snakes, and the amphibian axolot. With the exception of dogs, there is no evidence of domestication. The associated lithic assemblage included obsidian projectile points and flakes, large bifaces, macroblades, notched flakes, scrapers, mullers, and metates. Not until the Late Archaic do domesticates appear at Zohapilco, in the forms of maize, amaranth, tomatillo, pumpkin, chile pepper, and chayote. Elsewhere in the highlands of Middle America there is no indication at present of permanent, year-round villages until the beginning of the Formative/Preclassic period. The Lowland Middle and Late Archaic

Future archaeological investigation will be required to determine whether the lack of evidence for Early Archaic occupation in the lowlands of Middle America is simply a failure of discovery or, less likely, whether those regions had been abandoned by their previous Paleoindian inhabitants, only to be resettled thousands of years later. Although this remains an open question, research in coastal and near coastal regions is at least beginning to cast light on the subsequent Middle and Late years of the Archaic. During that time plant domestication and farming spread throughout much of the area and, at the end of the period, permanent villages were established. Whether lowland village life arose without the support of horticulture, as some scholars have argued, or was tied to a developmental sequence that ran from

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foraging to collecting, and finally to horticulture, as exemplified by the Valley of Oaxaca, is another debated question. A sedimentary core drawn from a small freshwater lake at San Andre´s, near the Gulf Coast of Tabasco, Mexico, was aimed, in part, at addressing this issue. Pollen in the core sediment indicating the appearance of domesticated maize along with forest clearance, presumably for agriculture, was initially dated c. 5000 bc The C14 dates were obtained from fossil clams, which appeared at the same level in the core as the maize pollen and were therefore assumed to be contemporaneous with it. This would have put the development of agriculture long before any known permanent settlement in Middle America. Doubt about the date was cast by the subsequent AMS analysis of another sedimentary core from the adjacent Veracruz coastal plain. In this sample the maize pollen itself was analyzed, producing a date c. 2500 BC, 2500 years more recent than the Veracruz determination and over 1700 years later than the highland Oaxaca domesticated maize cobs. The discrepancy in the two Gulf Coast dates has been attributed to soil bioturbation in the Tabasco core, resulting in a flawed association between the clams and maize pollen. The Veracruz date is corroborated by another pollen sequence from the nearby Tuxtlas region. Together these dates support the hypothesis that maize was initially domesticated in the Balsas Basin, then diffused to a number of highland regions, and only later spread to the lowlands. The small number of archaeological sites currently providing evidence of early plant domestication, however, makes any model of diffusion very provisional. A lowland site whose inhabitants appear to have lacked an early interest in horticulture is located on the northern Veracruz coast. At Santa Luisa, where occupation seems to have been comprised of multiple deltaic island encampments, the resource rich coastal habitat apparently was the source of subsistence. Plant remains are missing from the Middle-Late Archaic Palo Hueco phase, dated 4000–2400 bc, nor were there any of the grinding implements commonly used for plant processing. Scatters of fire-cracked cobbles are thought to have been used in cooking the oysters, fish, land crabs, and small mammals whose remains were found in abundance. Obsidian nodules, obtained from a geological source several hundred kilometers away in Quere´taro, along with locally available sandstone, served to produce crude blades, flakes, and bifaces, probably used in food preparation. The evidence of Middle Archaic obsidian procurement at Santa Luisa is an indication that long-distance contacts had been established with the highlands.

Although the concentration of nearby resources and density of food remains at Santa Luisa led the site’s investigator to describe it as a ‘permanent village’, it is equally likely that occupation was only seasonal, by foragers making their annual food gathering rounds, and later as either base or satellite camps for people engaged in a system of food collecting. If the latter, it remains to be determined if and when more inland sites within the system engaged in horticulture. Further insight into the relationship between lowland horticulture and settlement might be drawn from a more comprehensively studied cluster of Middle and Late Archaic sites on the Pacific coast of Chiapas, Mexico. The inhabitants of these sites, known as the Chantuto people, were probably collectors who exploited the lagoon estuarine environment from inland base camps. Six of the sites consisted of massive shellmounds, and at Cerro de las Conchas, the earliest of them, a series of radiocarbon dates brackets occupation between 7500 and 5300 calendar years ago (c. 5500–2300 BC), squarely within the Middle Archaic. Excavation indicated that the site consisted of accumulated refuse from consumption of the marsh clams (Polymesoda radiata) that grew in abundance in the lagoon estuarine environment. Aside from the voluminous burned and unburned clamshells, the limited cultural remains were comprised of waterworn cobbles, believed to have been heated by the Chantuto inhabitants to boil or steam clams, along with ark shells (Anadara spp.) that served as multipurpose cutting and scraping tools. No evidence of plant use was found dating to the site’s Middle Archaic occupation. Tlacuachera, the largest of the Chantuto shellmound sites, was dated to the Late Archaic, although occupation may have begun earlier, as excavations never reached the bottom levels of debris. The mound consisted mainly of layer upon layer of burned and unburned shells, the litter from years of clam consumption. Excavation within one of the bedded layers uncovered a clay floor, estimated to have measured 24 by 48 m, with a thickness of 10–20 cm. The labor investment in transporting the large quantity of clay to the site would have been substantial. Nevertheless, the untrampled clamshells suggest that the encampment was not occupied for extended periods of time. A pattern of postholes on the floor marks the location of two oval-shaped structures that may have served as temporary shelters. Although no supporting evidence was found, the investigator proposed that another activity at the site might have been the drying of shrimp, a practice common along the coast today.

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3 cm

Figure 16 Late Archaic/Early Formative lithic artifacts from Pulltrouser Swamp, Belize. a: Lowe/Pedernales-like projectile point, C14 dated 2210 BC; b: constricted/sole-shaped uniface, C14 dated 1275 BC Drawings courtesy of Mary D. Pohl, Department of Anthropology, Florida State University.

Phytoliths from plants indicating forest clearance as well as from maize were dated c. 3500 BC at Tlacuachera. With regard to maize, stable-carbonisotope analysis of bone samples from two human skeletons buried in the clay floor stratum suggests that by 2000 BC it was making a substantial contribution to the Chantuto diet. From the lowest cultural level at Vuelta Limo´n, another Chantuto site located some 20 km inland, phytolith analysis broadens the evidence for a gradual Late Archaic adoption of maize farming in the region. Several hundred kilometers southeast, on the Pacific coast of Guatemala, near Sipacate, fossil maize pollen from a sediment core echos the Chantuto findings. Other Late Archaic sites have been identified on the Pacific coast northwest of the Chantuto region at Puerto Marquez, Guerrero and San Blas, Nayarit; a number of shellmound sites in Sinaloa and Sonora may also date to this period. On the opposite coast of Middle America, an effort to reconstruct a comprehensive picture of cultural change, from Paleoindian hunting and gathering through the introduction of agriculture and settled village life, was initiated in 1980 by the Belize Archaic Archaeological Reconnaissance. The BAAR project was envisioned as a companion to the Tehuaca´n Archaeological–Botanical Project under the premise that lowland and highland cultural developments would have followed similar paths. During four field seasons, about 150 possible preceramic sites were recorded, several of which were selected for excavation. With few samples recovered for radiocarbon analysis, a provisional chronology of developments, spanning the years from 9000 to 2000 BC, was constructed by cross-dating projectile points and other lithic artifacts with better known equivalents from other regions. Subsequent investigation at other sites in the Belize region, primarily through the Colha Project, has shown a number of the BAAR artifact assignments

to be erroneous. Lowe projectile points and adze-like constricted unifaces, for example, originally employed to identify the Early Archaic, are now known to have been produced much later in time, with specimens radiocarbon dated at 2210 BC and 1275 BC, respectively (Figure 16). Consequently, there remains a long gap in knowledge about cultural developments in the Belizian lowlands, extending from the end of the Paleoindian period until the final centuries of the Middle Archaic. The known sequence of development in Belize resumes around 3400 BC, when remains of domesticated maize and manioc (Manihot esculenta) are found in the northwestern part of the country at the Blue Creek site, corresponding in age to the earliest Chantuto evidence. Additional radiocarbon dates from Kob Swamp, adjacent to the Hondo River, reveal maize and manioc there at about the same time. At Cobweb Swamp, near the archaeological site of Colha, manioc pollen is reported c. 2500 BC. There is also evidence throughout the region of deforestation, probably to clear land for agricultural use.

From Nomadic Hunting and Gathering to Village Based Farming Societies: Toward Explaining the Processes of Development Despite the current paucity of data, some tentative generalizations can be made about cultural developments in the periods immediately following the first Paleoindian arrivals in Middle America. What is securely known is that a subsistence economy initially founded on hunting and wild plant gathering evolved by the end of the Archaic period into a dependency on agriculture, just as a pattern of group mobility was supplanted by residence rooted in permanent villages. As agricultural productivity approached a threshold where it could provide a relatively reliable, storable, and intensifiable source of food, it enabled the small

AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America 181

bands of loosely affiliated families to coalesce into larger, more permanent entities and, early in the Formative/Preclassic period, into chiefdoms, some incorporating hundreds of people in villages and towns, interacting within a hierarchical social and political system where one’s status was ascribed at birth rather than by personal achievement. While present archaeological knowledge is inadequate to provide definitive answers to questions about the cultural and environmental processes that drove these developments, a number of hypotheses are worth examining. To begin with it must be understood that horticulture, more labor-intensive than hunting and wild-food gathering in most Middle American regions of the time would have afforded no purely economic advantage to its practitioners unless something happened to undermine theestablished equilibrium between population and habitat. Although the number of Middle America’s inhabitants had indeed increased by the Middle Archaic to the point where group mobility was commonly replaced by a loose territorialism, there is little evidence that population pressure played a direct role in the adoption of agriculture. On the contrary, while there was feedback between the growth of population and agriculture, rapid population increase did not occur until much later, after agriculture had become well established, and then for other reasons. Nor do post-Pleistocene vegetation alterations, animal extinctions, and climatic change, despite transforming the habitat, seem to have been sufficient in themselves to turn Middle America’s inhabitants into farmers. A broader utilization of available wild resources would have been a far more effective response. Alternatively, a desire to better cope with year-toyear inconsistency in plant food availability due to drought and other natural events, particularly in marginal post-Pleistocene habitats, has been proposed as having encouraged experimentation with plant cultivation. That the first such experiments apparently occurred in low productivity thorn-scrub-cactus habitats of highland Middle America supports this hypothesis. Somewhat later, on the Pacific Coast, periods of reduced rainfall are cited as having intensified the shift to a horticultural mode of subsistence. As indicated above, the initial step toward domestication may have occurred unintentionally when early collectors brought wild food to their campsites, in the process inadvertently scattering seeds or plants in the disturbed soils where they tended to flourish. From that point, recognizing the advantage of relocating and nurturing desirable species would have been fairly obvious. The appearance of avocados and other non-local plants in the Early Archaic Tehuaca´n Valley exemplifies this rudimentary stage

of plant cultivation. Intentional selection of seeds, cuttings and offspring from plants with economically beneficial traits would have been the next step toward domestication. The process of maize domestication is of particular interest to paleobotanists and archaeologists as it is believed to have involved a series of fortuitous genetic mutations that transformed a wild grass of marginal economic value into Middle America’s premier food plant. Although the details continue to be argued, the most widely accepted reconstruction holds that a subspecies of teosinte (Z. mays subsp. parviglumis), a plant with small seed heads, each loosely holding no more than 12 kernels, was the progenitor of the modern maize plant, with its several hundred kernels tightly attached to a cob. Lacking a cob, the ancestral teosinte was designed to shatter its seeds which, encased in tough glumes (fruitcases), were able to survive the digestive tracts of consuming animals and, once deposited in the soil, self-propagate. By selecting for the characteristics that produced soft glumes and multiple large, tightly attached kernels, Archaic period horticulturalists fashioned a nutritious, bountiful food plant (Z. mays subsp. mays), easy to harvest, store and digest, but by definition a consummate domesticate, unable to reproduce on its own. Regional time differences in the appearance of maize horticulture in Middle America raise questions about whether the processes of adoption were the same in resource-rich localities as has been outlined for more patchy highland environments. From the small number of archaeological sites with dated evidence of domesticated maize one can at least begin to speculate about the pattern of diffusion. In the highlands the earliest known appearance of domesticated maize is in the Oaxaca Valley at 4250 BC; evidence is found further to the northwest c. 3555 BC at Tehuaca´n, and by 2400 BC in Tamaulipas. By 3500–3400 BC maize is reported at a number of coastal lowland locations, from Blue Creek on the Caribbean to the Chantuto sites on the Pacific, although not until 2500 BC on the Gulf Coast. It’s delayed appearance at places such as highland Zohapilco and on the Gulf Coast seems anomalous, but might be attributed to the reliable year-round abundance of wild food if not gaps in research. By 2000 BC, at the end of the Late Archaic, maize horticulture is widespread throughout most of Middle America. The appearance of maize in Pacific and Caribbean coastal sites raises questions about a longstanding hypothesis that in such well-endowed habitats the initiation of settled village life would not have depended on an agricultural economy. Under this premise it is appealing to consider another pathway

182 AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico

to agriculture. In one version of the process, leaders of complex hunter-gatherer societies are deemed to have initially adopted agriculture not to fulfill subsistence needs but to produce food surpluses for the purpose of sponsoring feasts and other forms of conspicuous consumption. Through these displays ambitious leaders would have gained prestige, followers, allies, and authority. In an extension of this model, exchange of prestige goods with highland peoples, illustrated by the widespread presence of highly valued highland obsidian in Archaic period coastal sites and the concomitant ornamental marine seashell found in the highlands, would have brought maize seed along with other high-status goods to the coast where they were redistributed by status-hungry leaders to individuals within and beyond their community. The precocious appearance of chiefdom societies, religious complexity, and architectural sophistication in the ensuing Early Formative period along Middle America’s Pacific lowlands lends support to this hypothetical reconstruction. Once adopted on the coast, agriculture would have spread to lowland localities further inland where it provided the subsistence basis for later Olmec and Maya societies. More research will be needed to determine whether this model is valid for the lowlands and perhaps other regions of Middle America. See also: Americas, Central: Classic Period of Meso-

america, the Maya; Lower Central America; Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica; The Olmec and their Contemporaries; Extinctions of Big Game; New World, Peopling of; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading Bonnichsen R and Turnmire KL (eds.) (1999) Ice Age Peoples of North America: Environments, Origins, and Adaptations of the First Americans. Corvallis, Oregon: Center for the Study of the First Americans. Oregon State University Press. Doebley J (2004) The genetics of maize evolution. Annual Review of Genetics 38: 37–59. Jablonski NG (ed.) (2002) The First Americans. The Pleistocene Colonization of the New World. San Francisco, CA: Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences, No. 27. Lohse JC, et al. (2006) Preceramic occupations in Belize: Updating the Paleoindian and Archaic record. Latin American Antiquity 17(2): 209–226. MacNeish RS (1981) Tehuaca´n’s accomplishments. In: Sabloff JA (ed.) Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 1. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. Marcus J and Flannery KV (1996) Zapotec Civilization. How Urban Society Evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. London, England: Thames and Judson Ltd. Meltzer DJ (2003) Peopling of North America. Development in Quaternary Science, vol. 1, pp. 539–563.

Pearsall DM (1995) Domestication and agriculture in the New World tropics. In: Price TD and Gegauer AB (eds.) Last Hunters – First Farmers, pp. 157–192. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press. Pohl MP, et al. (1996) Early agriculture in the Maya Lowlands. Latin American Antiquity 7(4): 355–372. Smith BD (2005) Reassessing Coxcatlan Cave and the early history of domesticated plants in Mesoamerica. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United State of America 102: 9438–9445. Straus LG, Meltzer DJ, and Goebel T (2005) Ice Age Atlantis? Exploring the Solutrean-Clovis ‘connection’. World Archaeology 37(4): 507–532. Voorhies B (2004) Coastal Collectors in the Holocene. The Chantuto People of Southwest Mexico. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida. Zeitlin RN and Zeitlin JF (2000) The Paleoindian and Archaic cultures of Mesoamerica. In: Adams REW and MacLeod MJ (eds.) The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Vol. II, Mesoamerica, Part 1, pp. 45–121. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Historical Archaeology in Mexico Thomas H Charlton, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA Patricia Fournier, Escuela Nacional de Antropologı´a, Mexico City, Mexico ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary audiencia Spanish imperial administrative unit for political, judicial, and fiscal ends. capilla (English, chapel). Usually associated with a church complex or with a section of a community. Casa de Cultura Regional museum of archaeology, history, and contemporary art and handicrafts. Ciudadela (English, citadel). Large building in Mexico City built in the late eighteenth century to house a state monopoly on tobacco. Later used for other activities. Classic period period from CE 300 to 900; subdivided into Early (c. CE 300–600), and Late (c. CE 600–900). Colonial period Culture period from c. CE 1521 to 1820. Precise starting date varies from region to region. May be subdivided into Early (c. CE 1521–1620), Middle (c. CE 1621–1720), and Late (c. CE 1721–1820). convent (Spanish, convento). Meaning varies by context. Residential section of a church or Mission complex housing male regular or secular clergy. Also refers to the complex in which cloistered nuns live (nunnery). hacienda Large and often ostentatious rural residential estate associated with animal husbandry and agricultural activities. Generally, late appearance in central Mexico but may be earlier in northern regions. Independence period Also known as Republican period. Culture period from CE 1821 to the present. indios principales Indigenous community leaders.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico 183 palaces Large, luxurious elite residential structures of the Colonial period and the nineteenth century, particularly in the Historic Center of Mexico City, are often referred to as palaces even though they had no direct governmental functions. Postclassic period Preconquest indigenous culture period from c. CE 900 to c. CE 1519–1520. presidios Fortified sites usually in the northern borderlands, most dating from the eighteenth century. ranch (Spanish, rancho). Small rural residential complex associated with animal husbandry and agricultural activities. Occurs in all three Colonial periods and during the Independence period where small ranches were associated with large haciendas.

Introduction For background on the history of historical archaeology in Mexico, three articles are useful starting points. One of these, by Patricia Fournier and Ferna´ndo Miranda, published in 1992, presents a general overview of the development of historical archaeology in Mexico until the early 1990s, emphasizing its relationship with the conservation of Colonial and Republican period monumental buildings, as well as salvage projects. The second (by Elsa Herna´ndez Pons), published in 1998, in the memoir edited by Enrique Ferna´ndez Da´vila and Susana Go´mez Serafı´n, presents a well-thought-out statement of the

development and current (pre-1998) status of Mexican historical archaeology. A third article by Araceli Peralta, also in the Ferna´ndez Da´vila and Go´mez Serafı´n edited memoir, presents a geographically and typologically organized summary of some studies in historical archaeology in the Basin of Mexico. Religious, civil (secular), and production (industrial, ranching, and farming) archaeological site categories are included in the Peralta paper. In our treatment of Mexican historical archaeology, we expand on the format in this paper by including studies from outside the basin, and by elaborating on the categories used. We have included six tables with this article, organizing by area and identifying by topic the papers included in the abovementioned memoir. These papers probably present the best current cross-section of approaches and topics under active consideration in Mexican historical archaeology. Of the total papers published in the Memoir of the First National Congress on Historical Archaeology, eighteen are on investigations in Mexico City (Table 1); ten on investigations in the Basin of Mexico and adjacent areas in the central plateau (Table 2); eight on investigations in the highlands of Oaxaca

Table 1 Studies in Mexico City Reference

Area

Theme

Ban˜os Ramos (1998)

Mexico City, Historic Center

Flores and Pe´rez Rivas (1998) Fournier (1998)

Mexico City, Tlatelolco Mexico City, the Templo Mayor and Tlatelolco Mexico City, the Templo Mayor Mexico City, Historic Center Mexico City, Historic Center Mexico City, Historic Center

Salvage archaeology and historical study of the old Convento de la Concepcio´n Documentary sources and maps related to Tlatelolco Interpretations of the ceramics recovered from the two sites

Fournier and Charlton (1998) Garcı´a Samper (1998) Gonza´lez Leyva (1998) Herna´ndez Pons, Nieto, and Feria (1998) Lo´pez Palacios (1998) Nieto (1998) Peralta (1998) Pe´rez Rivas and Flores (1998) Pe´rez and Corona (1998)

Mexico City, Historic Center Mexico City, Historic Center Mexico City and the adjacent Basin of Mexico Mexico City, Historic Center Mexico City, Historic Center

Sala and Santaella 1998 Salas (1998) Santa Cruz and Moreno (1998)

Mexico City, Historic Center Mexico City Mexico City, Historic Center

Temple (1998)

Mexico City, Historic Center

Tovar (1998)

Mexico City, Historic Center

Zapata 1998

Mexico City, Tlalpan

Majolica chronology Historical study of the iconography of a church Documentary studies of the architecture of a chapel Excavations in the old Convento de Betlemitas Chronology of glazed candeleros Analysis of hooded figurines recovered from various sites Archaeological and documentary studies of religious and industrial public structures Documentary study and salvage exploration of urban zones Salvage archaeology in the Biblioteca de Finanzas Pu´blicas in the National Palace Excavations in the old Convento de San Jero´nimo Historical and archaeological study of an industrial structure Historical and archaeological study of the old Convento de Santo Domingo Study of lebrillos recovered in salvage excavations and in the Metro Study of historic documents related to a guild in the Convento de Santo Domingo Connections between archaeology and history with a proposal for investigation in the parish of Tlalpan

In Ferna´ndez Da´vila E and Go´mez Serafı´n S (eds.) (1998) Primer congreso nacional de arqueologı´a histo´rica, memoria. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologı´a e Historia.

184 AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico Table 2 Studies in the Basin of Mexico and adjacent Central Highlands Reference

Area

Theme

Alvarez Santiago (1998) Brambila and Avilez (1998)

Puebla, Puebla Jilotepec, Hidalgo

Cedilla Ortega (1998)

Puebla, Puebla

Cedillo Vargas (1998)

Tepozotlan, State of Mexico Otumba, State of Mexico

Urban and industrial studies related to urban renewal Historical and architectural studies of religious and secular structures of the sixteenth century Salvage archaeology and historical studies related to religious and industrial structures Hydraulic construction in religious structures

Charlton and Otis Charlton (1998) Contreras (1998) Co´rdova (1998) Martı´nez Magan˜a (1998) Oviedo (1998) Pastrana and Fournier (1998)

San Francisco Tlaxcala, Tlaxcala Huejotzingo, Puebla Huichapan, Hidalgo Pachuca and Real del Monte Sierra de las Navajas, Hidalgo

Historical and archaeological studies of the sixteenth century Historical and architectural studies related to salvage archaeology in an old convent Historical and archaeological studies of the convent group of Huejotzingo Historical and archaeological studies of a religious architectural group Industrial archaeology of mining Exploitation of obsidian during the Colonial period

In Ferna´ndez Da´vila E and Go´mez Serafı´n S (eds.) (1998) Primer congreso nacional de arqueologı´a histo´rica, memoria. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologı´a e Historia.

Table 3 Studies in Oaxaca and Veracruz Reference

Area

Theme

Alvarez Franklin (1998) Ferna´ndez and Go´mez (1998b)

Cuilapan, Oaxaca Oaxaca City, Oaxaca

Ferna´ndez and Go´mez (1998c)

Oaxaca City, Oaxaca

Ferna´ndez and Go´mez (1998d)

Oaxaca City, Oaxaca

Go´mez and Ferna´ndez (1998a)

Oaxaca City, Oaxaca

Go´mez and Ferna´ndez (1998b)

Oaxaca City, Oaxaca

Herrera (1998)

Oaxaca City, Oaxaca

Matadamas (1998)

Teotitla´n del Valle, Tlacolula, Oaxaca Co´rdoba, Veracruz

Historical studies of a ruined religious building complex Archaeological studies in the old Convento de Santo Domingo de Guzma´n Archaeological studies of the hydraulic works in the old Convento de Santo Domingo de Guzma´n Studies of lime production in the old Convento de Santo Domingo de Guzma´n Studies of local majolica recovered from the old Convento de Santo Domingo de Guzma´n Studies of the ceramics recovered from the old Convento de Santo Domingo de Guzma´n Studies of the botanical remains recovered from the old Convento de Santo Domingo de Guzma´n Archaeological salvage of the historical architecture, with preColumbian and historical archaeology Salvage archaeology and historical documents

Miranda and Becerril (1998)

In Ferna´ndez Da´vila E and Go´mez Serafı´n S (eds.) (1998) Primer congreso nacional de arqueologı´a histo´rica, memoria. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologı´a e Historia.

and one on the highlands of Veracruz (Table 3); six refer to investigations in the northern and western areas of Mexico (Table 4); six lack a specific geographical association, with one being on nautical archaeology, three being analyses of documents (historiography and/or interdisciplinary), one an ethnohistoric study of Spanish–indigenous interaction, and one a brief history of historical archaeology in Mexico (Table 5), and finally three papers deal with research in the Maya area and one in the State of Tabasco (Table 6). Strictly speaking, archaeological scholars investigating the Late Postclassic civilizations of the central (Aztec) and southern (Zapotec, Mixtec) Mexican

highlands or the Classic and Postclassic Maya civilization in eastern Mesoamerica (Yucatan Peninsula and the highlands of Chiapas and Guatemala extending into parts of Honduras and all of El Salvador, as well as the Belize lowlands) can be said to be conducting historical archaeological research, insofar as they use available relevant textual documentary sources in conjunction with traditional archaeological materials. Indeed, some of the earliest historical archaeology carried out by Mexican scholars was a by-product of research into the Templo Mayor in Mexico City. Noguera’s research in the 1930s perceptively identified and described some of the diagnostic ceramics for the Colonial period but the main

AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico 185 Table 4 Studies in north and west Mexico Reference

Area

Theme

Arciniega (1998) Brown (1998) Crespo and Cervantes (1998) Mendoza (1998)

San Blas, Nayarit El Carrizal (northern border) The states of Quere´taro and Guanajuato Guanajuato, Guanajuato

Moguel and Carballal (1998) Valencia (1998)

Culiaca´n, Sinaloa Aquascalientes, Aguascalientes

Historical and archaeological studies of urban structure Historical and archaeological studies of the Spanish expansion Studies of historical religious structures and documents related to otomı´ families Historical architecture and interventions for the conservation of religious structures Salvage archaeology in various areas in and near Culiaca´n Salvage archaeology and historical studies

In Ferna´ndez Da´vila E and Go´mez Serafı´n S (eds.) (1998) Primer congreso nacional de arqueologı´a histo´rica, memoria. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologı´a e Historia.

Table 5 Studies in Veracruz related to underwater archaeology, historiography, the history of historical archaeology, and ethnohistory Reference

Area

Theme

Luna (1998) Spores (1998) Herna´ndez Aranda (1998) Corona (1998) Herna´ndez Pons (1998) Martı´nez Torres (1998)

Coastal waters

Underwater archaeology and documentary studies of the colonial period Historiography, guide to the documents Historiography, use of documents Historiography, use of documents Short history of historical archaeology Ethnohistory; the monks and the natives based on the use of indigenous plants

In Ferna´ndez Da´vila E and Go´mez Serafı´n S (eds.) (1998) Primer congreso nacional de arqueologı´a histo´rica, memoria. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologı´a e Historia.

Table 6 Studies in Chiapas, Quintana Roo and Tabasco Reference

Area

Theme

Lee Whiting (1998)

Chiapas and Guatemala Chicomuselo, Chiapas Quecchula, Chiapas Chetumal, Quintana Roo Tabasco

Documentary and archaeological studies along the Camino Real

De la Cruz and Lee Whiting (1998) Navarrete (1998) Corte´s de Brasdefer (1998) Ledesma (1998)

Archaeological studies of a foundry Historical and archaeological studies of the church of Quecchula Historical and archaeological studies in Oxtankah Historical studies of the Franciscan foundations in the Sierra Tabasquen˜o

In Ferna´ndez Da´vila E and Go´mez Serafı´n S (eds.) (1998) Primer congreso nacional de arqueologı´a histo´rica, memoria. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologı´a e Historia.

orientation of the study was on the Aztec Late Postclassic main temple buildings. In this paper, however, we restrict the practice of historical archaeology to the period of initial European contact and conquest (c. 1519–21) continuing through the Colonial period (to 1820) and the period of Independence (1821–present), within the borders of Mexico today.

Historical Archaeology in Mexico: An Overview

origin, from sites occupied during the Colonial and Independence periods and found within the modern boundaries of Mexico. The problem orientations of investigations into these data generally include one or more of the following: (1) a study of the variable contact period interaction situations between indigenous and intrusive cultures, (2) a study of subsequent continuities and changes within both the indigenous and the intrusive European cultural traditions, and (3) a study of the emergence of new cultural and ethnic traditions, throughout the Colonial and Independence periods.

Subject Matter

Research Trends and Disciplinary Origins

The subject matter of historical archaeology in Mexico includes archaeological remains and relevant historical documents, both indigenous and European in

There are many different research approaches within postconquest historical archaeological investigations practiced in Mexico today. Such a diversity of

186 AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico

approaches is common in the current worldwide burgeoning field of historical archaeology and reflects, according to K. Kelly in 2005, a dynamic and a recently emerging field, in Latin America in general, and for this article, in Mexico specifically. In Mexico, the field of historical archaeology has multiple origins, domestic and foreign, and multiple disciplinary backgrounds. As we suggest later on, the majority of foreign influences come from North American archaeology. As practiced, Mexican historical archaeology contains varying proportions of the disciplines of history, ethnohistory, cultural and historical geography, archaeology, and anthropological archaeology in the mix. The amount of each in any investigation depends upon (1) the time period addressed, (2) the cultural functions and structures under investigation, and (3) the disciplinary backgrounds and institutional affiliations of the investigators. As a result, Mexican historical archaeology is not a monolithic structure in origin, practice, or theory. There is considerable variation between the investigations carried out within the borders of the national state and we may speak of ‘‘many historical archaeologies’’ (with apologies to Leslie Byrd Simpson). Since the late 1970s, Mexican scholars have increasingly reflected on the relevance of historical archaeology for increasing our level of knowledge of the past by combining, in various ways, archaeology and history, and by increasing protection of Mexico’s cultural heritage. Such reflections form part of their search to validate and integrate this still-evolving field of research. Some considerations have focused on the terminology or nomenclature to be used to denote the field. Names suggested within these discussions include archaeohistory, the archaeology of capitalism, colonial archaeology, historical archaeology, world systems archaeology, and industrial archaeology (see Industrial Archaeology), all reflecting aspects of a multi-faceted Mexican historical archaeology which takes into consideration the significant political and economic changes in a worldwide setting following CE 1492. Despite this ‘war of words’ over the designation of a recent development in Mexican archaeology in general, it is generally understood that what is practiced as historical archaeology in non-Mexican settings is what is practiced in Mexico today. Historical archaeology in Mexico is a discipline which makes use of both archaeological and historic data studying the material remains of any postcontact historical period. This is possible whenever there is a documentary record providing additional information about the materials and contexts recovered in archaeological investigations. Historical archaeology in general, and in Mexico in particular, studies the

materials related to European cultural expansion throughout the world beginning in the fifteenth century and ending with industrialization or the present day, depending on local conditions. As so defined, historical archaeology can make important contributions to contemporary anthropology by examining the processes of European expansion, exploration, and colonization as well as those of culture contact and imperialism. These processes form a basis for one of the most dynamic periods in world history, reflected both in documents and material culture, recovered by archaeological investigations (see Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline). Discussions have also addressed the relationships of Mexican historical archaeology to current archaeological theoretical perspectives ranging from historical particularism, to culture history, processual (new archaeology) (see Processual Archaeology), postprocessual (see Postprocessual Archaeology), and Marxist archaeology (see Marxist Archaeology), alone or in various combinations. In some projects, theoretical positions have included critical theory and Iberoamerican social archaeology. In addition, there have also been debates about legal issues related to the national patrimony as well as more mundane, but relevant, topics such as artifact taxonomic systems. Historical Archaeology Institutional Contexts – INAH

As noted above, investigations in Mexico are varied in part because of their many different institutional contexts. Today the major institutional context includes, as mandated by law in 1972, the Instituto Nacional de Antropologı´a e Historia (INAH), whose relevant dependencies in Mexico City and in the regional state offices are obligated to carry out archaeological salvage and rescue operations, not only for preconquest remains but also for those of the Colonial and post-Independence periods whenever archaeological deposits and structures would be adversely affected by contemporary activities. Examples of such activities include Mexico City’s still ongoing Metro construction, along with, there and elsewhere, the maintenance and construction of roads, sewer and water systems, dams, reservoirs, canals, and water supply systems. Also included are architectural restoration projects, building expansion, and building demolition. Site reports from such operations in salvage and rescue historical archaeology in Mexico, although not widely distributed, provide valuable information on associated artifacts and architecture, and on laboratory and technical analyses of the materials recovered. Initially, the results of such research were

AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico 187

not always fully published. However, there are now increasing numbers of books and articles presenting the results of research, thus enriching the record for Mexico and for Hispanic America as well. At times, many of these data have been used to examine general theoretical questions of culture contact and acculturation along with the construction of Colonial and Independence period social systems, identities, and meanings. Such questions would be addressed by both documentary records and archaeological material correlates. Historical Archaeology Institutional Contexts – Academic Settings Domestic and Foreign

Although academic historical archaeology in Mexico does include the salvage and rescue of historical archaeological materials, more frequently archaeologists from academic settings try to combine such salvage and rescue operations with problem-based research projects tied to a variety of theoretical perspectives on social and cultural dynamics and evolution. In general, these would be related to studies of those processes leading to the modern world and to capitalism. In Mexico, the rise of national systems and national identities as well as the appearance of new social and ethnic identities would characterize these studies. Formal academic training in historical archaeology in Mexico is relatively rare. Undergraduate courses in historical archaeology have occasionally been offered at the National School of Anthropology and History in Mexico City, and at the University of the Americas in Cholula, Puebla. The Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi will include historical archaeology as part of the bachelor’s program. However, there is only one graduate program in historical archaeology at the National School of Anthropology and History. There are very few active full-time professional historical archaeologists in Mexico, most being Prehispanic archaeologists who have extended their interest through chance or design into the historic periods. Regional Cultural and Administrative Variability in Time and Space

Further differentiation in the subject matter of Mexican historical archaeology is introduced by the great degree of Prehispanic regional cultural variability within Mesoamerica between various state systems such as the Maya, the Zapotec, the Aztec, and the Tarascans. In the immediately adjacent culture areas to the north such as the Greater Southwest, the peninsula of Lower California, and northeastern Mexico, there were many non-state-level cultures ranging from hunting and gathering nomadic people to sedentary agrarian villages.

The Spanish empire governed these areas, from Panama to what is now the Southwest United States, through three audiencias (Guatemala, Mexico, and Guadalajara) with political, judicial, and fiscal powers. Although they overlap, the borders of Mesoamerica, with complex state systems, the Greater Southwest with village agriculturalists, and the peninsula of Lower California and northeast Mexico with hunters and gatherers, do not coincide completely with those of the audiencias or of Mexico today. Communities may have participated in several larger cultural, political, and economic systems during their existence. Beyond the variations present in indigenous cultures and imperial administrative structures, additional complexity was provided by the different regional origins of Spanish settlers from the Iberian Peninsula. Many of these regional cultural variations and their impact on Hispanic America have been discussed in detail by George Foster in his 1960 monograph on culture and conquest. In addition, there was extreme variability in the kind of church institutions introduced initially for Christian conversion and subsequently maintained for the spiritual care of the indigenous people as well as Spanish settlers. Variations occurred in the order of regular clergy present and the nature of the transition to secular clergy in some areas. Additional regional and local differences in Mexico were brought about by demographic decline due to disease, the acquisition of land and the introduction of Spanish-owned ranchos and haciendas, and the exploitation of metal ores and petroleum resources. The impact of these too would vary according to the time period and political situation in the imperial center of Spain, and during the Independence period, in Mexico City, capital of the new republic.

Themes of Historical Archaeological Investigations in Mexico Recent urban expansion and economic development have severely impacted the physical remains of Mexico’s past, both Prehispanic and postconquest. Given the almost five centuries of Colonial and Independence period construction in Mexico, major population increases during the twentieth century associated with urban renovation, expansion, and industrialization, along with an underlying pervasive concern for the preservation and rehabilitation of the cultural heritage of Mexico, it should not be surprising that historical archaeology has come of age in Mexico during the last half of the twentieth century. These processes are especially true for all areas within the orbit of Mexico City, but also increasingly relevant for provincial cities and small towns in the countryside, also undergoing similar population and

188 AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico

economic growth. In one sense, historical archaeology is most abundant in urban settings where most of the religious, secular, and private buildings occur. Much recent historical archaeology has accompanied, in various guises, the saving, restoration, refurbishing, and recycling of imperiled buildings, some religious, some governmental, some industrial, and some private residences (the latter when especially luxurious and occupied by members of Mexico’s colonial elite, being referred to as palaces). In many cases, such structures are located in the older sections of cities in Mexico, such as the Historic Center (Centro Histo´rico) of Mexico City. Religious Institutions through Their Buildings

Of all the themes of historical archaeology in Mexico, a shared, widespread interest in the preservation and investigation of religious buildings from the very beginnings of Mexico through the nineteenth century is the greatest unifier of the practitioners of historical archaeology today. Mexico is the legal owner of all religious buildings in the country, and they are everywhere, throughout the country, in various stages of use and disintegration. They range in time from the early sixteenth century to the twentieth century. These buildings are a legacy of anticlericalism which can be seen in the expulsion of the Jesuits and the appropriation of their possessions, through the Liberal Reforms of the nineteenth century, the socialist revolution of the early twentieth century, and the subsequent closing of the churches. The recognition in the twentieth century that many of these monumental structures could be refurbished and used to attract tourists marks the beginning of an official positive interest in those buildings. Although archaeology is usually carried out at such sites, frequently the archaeological part of the investigations has been subordinated to the architectural rehabilitation of the structures. Missions, their convents, and indigenous residential areas Early interest in missions and their associated convents was expressed by American scholars after the acquisition of substantial areas of Mexico by the United States in the nineteenth century. Such interest continues today as demonstrated by the three volumes edited by D. H. Thomas. Archaeological investigations were in part stimulated by cultural geographers under the tutelage of Carl Sauer in the Southwestern US and in northern Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s. Elizabeth Graham in her 1998 article on mission archaeology has detailed many of these studies, including the Maya areas in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, along with those borderlands from California to Florida once under

Spanish and later, in places, Mexican control before being ceded to the United States. Studies of missions often emphasize first-contact and conversion contexts because of the importance of the Church in converting the indigenous peoples. As first-contact contexts, these are linked with those historical and archaeological studies interested in contact within a broader cultural framework. Research on a sixteenth century town church and associated residential convent in central Mexico by Charlton in 1969 and published in 1973 deals essentially with the same topic. In central Mexico, when many towns were abandoned at the end of the sixteenth century due to depopulation as a result of introduced epidemic diseases, the churches and residential complexes were also abandoned. Since these missed out on later Colonial and Independence period modifications such as towers and facade updates in eighteenth century style, they preserve the structure of the church when it had a major conversion mission-like function. Examples of continuing studies of mission sites and artifacts occur in northwestern and northern Mexico at Casas Grandes, Chihuahua. Similar studies of mission sites have been carried out in the Mexican state of Durango, the peninsula of Baja California, and in the American state of New Mexico. Many mission studies have been part of current consolidation of standing buildings related to efforts to increase tourism in Mexico. There are some additional studies in D. H. Thomas’ edited volume I for these regions, and in volume III for the Maya area in Mexico and Central America. Ledesma in 1998 reported on research and consolidation at a mission site in the Sierra de Tabasco founded in 1537 but occupied sporadically until 1709 when it was permanently abandoned (Table 6). Carlos Navarrete investigated another similar site in Chiapas in the 1960s, while Ferna´ndo Corte´s de Brasdefer investigated Oxtankah, a mission site in Quintana Roo. It should be remembered that mission archaeology is in part evidence of the initial spread of Spanish culture in Mexico (and areas to the south and north now outside of Mexico’s borders). Such missions are generally later in time in the northern and southern areas than those churches that began as missions in central Mexico. Today, such sixteenth century mission churches or chapels, when they have survived, are usually treated as parish churches rather than as missions (see Table 4). Mexico City convents (nunneries) Since the 1970s, Mexico City has been the locale of major conservation projects that included as part of the research the architectural history of the affected buildings as well as information about the different archaeological materials recovered, mostly human burials and, in

AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico 189

some cases, ceramics and other artifacts. As noted previously, we have summarized in six tables the Mexican archaeological and historical investigations published in a memoir on Mexican historical archaeology, edited by Ferna´ndez Da´vila and Go´mez Serafı´n in 1998. The studies have dealt with numerous convents (nunneries) including that of San Jero´nimo, home of the famous seventeenth century nun, Sor Juana Ine´s de la Cruz. Fournier carried out studies of the European and oriental tradeware and published these in 1990. Other examples of nunneries studied in Mexico City include La Concepcio´n (see Table 1) and the Colegio de San Joaquı´n of the Carmelite Order. Mexico City convents (monasteries) Monasteries have also recently been studied in Mexico City. The Convento de Betlemitas was founded in the final third of the eighteenth century and entrusted to the Order of Nuestra Sen˜ora de Bethlem whose main charges were the care of ill but convalescing patients and the education of children from poor families. Architectural restoration of the extant structures was combined with extensive archaeological excavations. The remaining architecture of Santo Domingo, a Dominican foundation, has also been investigated through archaeology and documents (Table 1). Convents (monasteries and nunneries): Investigations in other regions of Mexico Outside of Mexico City (see Tables 2 and 3), but still in the Basin of Mexico, studies of hydraulic works were carried out at the Jesuit monastery complex of Tepozotla´n. Outside of the Basin of Mexico, but still in the Central Highlands, there have been similar recent studies at the monasteries of San Francisco, Tlaxcala, and Huejotzingo, Puebla, in the high plateau of Mexico, directly east of the Basin of Mexico. In the city of Puebla, archaeological excavations were carried out exposing the remains of the sixteenth century Convento de San Francisco as well as at the Convento (Nunnery) de San Jero´nimo. We may also include here rescue archaeology described by Mendoza Garcı´a in the city of Guanajuato in architectural studies accompanied by archaeology at the Templo de San Diego. To the south, in the City of Oaxaca, major restoration and investigation were conducted at the Convento de Santo Domingo de Guzma´n. The Casa del Artesano in Huichapan, Hidalgo, to the north, is another provincial example of archaeological research during the refurbishing of part of the complex for a Casa de Cultura. Mexico City churches Mexico City has had numerous historic preservation projects which included

the architectural histories of church structures and information from the associated archaeological materials, including burials and ceramics and other artifacts. These are mostly stand-alone churches but often have convent-like residences attached to them. Herna´ndez Pons has noted that archaeological research located the first cathedral of Mexico City, the Capilla de Necatitla´n, as well as complementing engineering work during attempts to stabilize the present cathedral. Other churches of note in Mexico City are Santa Teresa La Antigua, La Santa Cruz y Soledad de Nuestra Sen˜ora, San Juan de Dios, the parish (in Xochimilco) of San Bernardino de Sena, and the Jesuit chapel of San Pedro and San Pablo. Herna´ndez Pons et al. list many others (Table 1). Although not a church, the Palacio de la Inquisicio´n did carry out church-related business and has also been investigated archaeologically. Churches and chapels in other regions of Mexico These include churches in many different areas (see Tables 3 and 4). In San Luis Potosı´, there have been minor archaeological operations at the Chapel of Aranzazu. Alvarez Franklin describes the search for documentation on a now-ruined church in Cuilapan, Oaxaca. Also in Oaxaca, Matadamas carried out salvage archaeology at a Prehispanic mound behind, and possibly extending under, a sixteenth century church in Teotitla´n del Valle. Crespo and Cervantes have carried out an ethnoarchaeological and documentary study on household oratorios among Otomı´ families in Quere´taro and Guanajuato. Secular Institutions through Their Buildings

The structures mentioned here include Colonial and Independence period governmental structures, hospitals, private residences (often referred to as palaces), presidios, and monuments. There is uneven archaeological treatment of these structures with heavy emphasis being placed upon those in Mexico City, and much less on similar structures in other areas. As is the case for religious structures, the historical archaeology carried out is usually associated with major restoration and maintenance of these structures and is always in a secondary role to the restoration and architectural history. Secular structures: Governmental, medical, and residential Mexico City These include the Palacio Nacional, on the east side of the Zo´calo near the Metropolitan Cathedral. This site was a center of governmental power before and during the Colonial and Independence periods. The Castillo de Chapultepec has served as a fortified hilltop, a military school, and

190 AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico

the residence of Maximilian and Carlota before becoming a present-day museum. Other structures examined archaeologically are the Hospital Real de los Naturales and the Hospital del Amor de Dios, which at the end of the Colonial period was converted into the Fine Arts Academia de San Carlos. Residences studied include La Casa del Marque´s del Apartado. Research by Eduardo Matos Moctezumas in the Centro Histo´rico of Mexico City has extended to include excavations to provide information on the urban character of the city as well as to identify many houses whose occupants are known. Monuments archaeologically investigated in Mexico City (see Table 1) include that of the Molino del Rey, erected to commemorate the Mexican heroes of the war with the United States in 1847. Secular structures: Urban archaeology Outside Mexico City We have included here a study of the evolution of a town plan in San Blas, Nayarit, described by Arciniega, and the circular town plan of Culiaca´n, Sinaloa, reported by Moguel and Carballal. The archaeology undertaken by INAH in the city of Aguascalientes as part of a modern urban project designed to develop an underpass system for traffic and reported by Valencia also falls into the category of urban salvage or rescue archaeology, some of which did more than merely define areas of previous occupations based on test pits. In the city of Guanajuato, excavations were conducted around the Teatro Juarez (1873–94) preparatory to carrying out restoration plans. Research was also carried out in the Palacio de Corte´s in Cuernavaca during the restoration of the building. In Me´rida, the Casa Montejo has been investigated and restored. Presidios in the northern borderland and the northwest of Mexico have been focal points of archaeological investigation, often emanating from across the United States–Mexico border, similar to the impulse for the study of religious buildings, especially missions, and as we shall note, ceramics. Not only were northern presidios studied archaeologically but so were some nineteenth and twentieth century forts in Puebla and Veracruz (see Table 4). Secular structures: The archaeology of industry Industrial archaeology as part of historical archaeology is taking its first few steps in Mexico (see Tables 1–3 and 5). More historians than archaeologists have shown an interest in Mexican industrial development. In part, this is due to the absence of legal protection and required archaeological investigations at sites from the late nineteenth and the twentieth century unless they are in a historic district or are important time-markers on their own.

Some recent research incorporating studies of industrial sites have been published in the Ferna´ndez Da´vila and Go´mez Serafı´n edited volume. Salas carried out investigations at the tobacco factory of the Ciudadela in Mexico City on the foundations of the late eighteenth century structure. Archaeological research in the city of Puebla by Alvarez Santiago encountered the foundations of textile factories first established there in 1884. Mining, a major Colonial and Independence period activity, has been studied by Oviedo Ga´mez at Pachuca and Real del Monte in the northeast Basin of Mexico. Another industrial site, Molino de Papel in the southeast of the Basin of Mexico, is mentioned by Peralta. The production of lime and ceramics at the Convento de Santo Domingo de Guzma´n should be considered an industrial site, albeit of a much smaller scale than the nonhousehold industries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The same is true for the production of Colonial period obsidian scrapers (probably for cattle hides) at the famed Cerro de las Navajas obsidian mines used in the Prehispanic period, as related by Pastrana and Fournier. Although greater than household production, the level of scraper production is not in the same league as that of nineteenth and twentieth century industrial production. In northwest and northern Mexico, mining facilities including towns have been surveyed in the Pima–Opata region of Sonora as well as in Chihuahua, Durango, and the state of New Mexico. In the state of Chiapas, De la Cruz and Lee (Table 6) have reported on the archaeology of a foundry. Secular structures: The archaeology of ranching and farming Ranches and haciendas Ranches and haciendas in rural areas are the physical manifestation of a system which ensured that land and labor were available for food production for the cities. The buildings were the residences and working areas of Spaniards or members of the Indian elite. These buildings today, where they are extant, belong to individuals or to towns. Although the land was nationalized after the 1910–20 revolution, the buildings were, for the most part, not taken over by the government, being included in a small parcel of land left with the former owners. They differ from religious buildings in another way; the system they represent was and is detested by the local village farmers who had to work in the system because of land shortages. There is great regional variability in the scale and timing of such buildings. Of interest are the ranches and haciendas where the laborers were housed instead of commuting daily to their work. The owners

AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico 191

of these enterprises had taken control of land either by renting it through compliant indios principales or by purchasing it outright. Although we have a good sequence of such ranches and haciendas in the northeastern Basin of Mexico, we lack excavation of a single structure at any one time. At the moment, Harold Juli is conducting excavations at a nineteenth century hacienda in Puebla. Underwater archaeology The underwater or nautical archaeology of Colonial period sites has become a valuable adjunct to terrestrial historical archaeology because of the ability to date with some certainty the ships being excavated. This is important because of the good associations between the dated shipwreck and the artifacts, including ceramics, found on board as Marken has noted in 1994. The main proponent of these studies has been Pilar Luna Erreguerena. She includes a brief overview of Mexican underwater archaeology in a paper in the Ferna´ndez Da´vila and Go´mez Serafı´n edited volume with an example of the search for the 1631 fleet. Later, in 2001, she co-edited a volume of papers on underwater archaeology. Regional Projects

These types of projects, surveys, and excavations undertaken by Mexican and American archaeological teams, working individually or in collaboration, in central and northern Mexico as well as in the Maya lowlands and other regions, are usually derived from avowedly scientific research agendas, based on a variety of theoretical frameworks. Such projects include those directed by Fournier in the Mezquital Valley and Charlton in the Teotihuacan Valley. Rani Alexander carried out similar research in the Yucatan as did R. B. Brown and Fournier in Chihuahua, and Janine Gasco in the Soconusco. The basic point of these projects is to recover archaeological materials from indigenous sites at the time of contact and beyond, in some cases up to the time the project was carried out. This means dealing with the reaction of the indigenous people to the new economic, social, and political order brought by the Spanish conquerors. The key to understanding these developments are the settlement patterns which include the native communities and the introduction of ranches and haciendas as a means whereby the Spaniards, and the Mexican elite after Independence, appropriated labor and land at the expense of the indigenous people. At times, missions, forts, and road systems are important as well. Artifact Analyses

One of the trends leading to historical archaeology in Mexico was an interest by collectors, and then by

archaeologists, in gaining a solid ceramic chronology, especially from majolicas. This led such scholars as John Goggin to carry out excavations in the 1940s in Mexico at various historic sites, usually church and convent complexes. Studies of majolicas continue today with the use of neutron activation analyses. Studies of all kinds of materials, such as ceramics including figurines, obsidian, and metal tools, are represented in the Ferna´ndez Da´vila and Go´mez Serafı´n edited volume (Tables 1–3). Osteological Studies of Burials

Human skeletal remains have been located in Colonial period cemeteries in both rural and urban contexts. Descriptive osteological analyses have been carried out defining the age structure and health status of the deceased. Added to these studies have been analyses for lead poisoning and dietary data through isotopic analyses (see Stable Isotope Analysis).

Conclusions Mexican historical archaeology is alive and well. Although it is necessary to combine two disciplines in innovative ways to develop research questions and to interpret data recovered, this does not seem to be an impediment in its growth. The growth of Mexican historical archaeology is tightly linked to salvage archaeology when buildings or urban streetscapes are being modified. Such a link will undoubtedly continue for the foreseeable future. At the same time, archaeologists are increasingly recognizing that the inclusion of a postconquest component in regional studies will enlarge upon the written word alone in understanding how today is linked to the past. See also: Africa, Historical Archaeology; Americas,

North: Historical Archaeology in the United States; Americas, South: Historical Archaeology; Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline; Methods; Industrial Archaeology; Marxist Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Stable Isotope Analysis; Underwater Archaeology; Urban Archaeology.

Further Reading Andrews AP (2006) Historical Archaeology in the Maya Area: A Working Bibliography. http://faculty.ncf.edu/andrews/ research/habib.htm accessed Feb 2007. Charlton TH (1973) Post-Conquest Developments in the Teotihuacan Valley, Mexico, AD 1400–1969, Part I, Excavations. Report

192 AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America No. 5, Office of the State Archaeologist. Iowa City: Office of the State Archaeologist. Ferna´ndez Da´vila E and Go´mez Serafı´n S (eds.) (1998) Primer congreso nacional de arqueologı´a histo´rica, memoria. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologı´a e Historia. Foster GM (1960) Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology 27: Culture and Conquest, America’s Spanish Heritage. New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc. Fournier P (1990) Evidencias arqueolo´gicas de la importacio´n de cera´mica en Me´xico, con base en los materiales del exconvento de San Jero´mino. Coleccio´n Cientı´fica 213. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologı´a e Historia. Fournier P and Miranda F (1992) Historic sites archaeology in Mexico. Historical Archaeology 26: 75–83. Graham E (1998) Mission archaeology. Annual Review of Anthropology 27: 25–62. Herna´ndez Pons E (1998) Arqueologı´a histo´rica en Me´xico: Antecedentes y Propuestas. In: Ferna´ndez Da´vila E and Go´mez Serafı´n S (eds.). pp. 1–26. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologı´a e Historia. Kelly KG (2005) Historical archaeology. In: Maschner HDG and Chippindale C (eds.) Handbook of Archaeological Methods vol. II, pp. 1108–1137. New York: AltaMira Press. Luna P and Roffiel R (coordinators) (2001) Memorias del congreso cientı´fico de arqueologı´a subacua´tica ICOMOS. Coleccio´n Cientı´fica 435. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologı´a e Historia. Marken MW (1994) Pottery from Spanish Shipwrecks 1500–1800. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. Noguera E (1934) Estudio de la cera´mica encontrada donde estaba el Templo Mayor de Me´xico. Anales del Museo Nacional de Arqueologı´a, Historia y Etnografı´a 1, 5th Epoca, pp. 267–282. Mexico: Talleres Gra´ficos de la Nacio´n. Thomas DH (ed.) (1989–1991) Columbian Consequences (3 vols.). Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Lower Central America Anthony Ranere, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Holocene A geologic time period from c. 10 000 BC to the present when the climate approximated to that witnessed today. Intermediate Area An archaeological culture area that includes Lower Central America and northwestern South America; so named because it sits between the Mesoamerica and Peru culture areas. Late Pleistocene A geologic time period from c. 16 000 to 10 000 BC at the end of the last glaciation when mean annual temperatures were c. 5–8 C below modern values. swidden A form of agriculture where forest patches are cleared, burned, and planted for a short time period (2–5 years is common) and abandoned when crop yields drop; also known as shifting cultivation or slash-and-burn cultivation. terrane A geological unit that has been transported from a distant location and then accreted onto the edge of another plate during subduction.

Introduction Central America (CA) is normally considered to encompass all countries south of Mexico and north of Colombia – that is, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. While this is a convenient definition in terms of modern political boundaries, it does not serve us well in looking at the region’s prehistory. During the Late Pleistocene, Early Holocene, and Middle Holocene (c. 15 000–3000 BC) (all dates mentioned in this article are calibrated unless specifically identified as 14C dates) an argument could be made that a discussion of Central American prehistory should encompass an area extending from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to the southern end of the Panama Isthmus and perhaps beyond. During the Late Holocene (3000 BC to present), the cultural trajectories in the northern and southern portions of CA diverged into the widely recognized ‘Mesoamerican’ cultural pattern and a less well-defined ‘Intermediate Area’ cultural pattern. These patterns, of course, extended both north and south of CA. The boundary between these two areas initially falls in western Honduras but late in prehistory, the southern boundary could be extended along the Pacific Coast as far south as the Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica. In this overview, the territory from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to the Panama–Colombian border will be under review for the early portion of Central American prehistory. Once the division between Mesoamerican and Intermediate Area cultures becomes clear, this review will focus on the southern part of CA or what is often referred to as Lower Central America (Figure 1).

The Landscape Central America has only been a terrestrial bridge between the North and South American continents for about 2.5 million years. Previously, much of CA was a narrow peninsula at the southern end of North America and earlier in the Miocene, an island arc that existed in the area where eastern Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama are today. The geology of CA owes many of its features to its placement in the region where there are a number of geological plate boundaries. The subduction of one plate under another has led to uplifting and folding of the crust to form highlands and the volcanic arc that gives much of CA its distinctive character. The sliding of one plate by another along the Motagua Fault in Guatemala and Honduras results in frequent earthquakes, some of them quite massive. Earthquakes are also common along the volcanic arc in CA where the Cocos Plate is diving down below the Caribbean Plate.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America 193

Lower Central America

Northem Central America

Figure 1 This digital image of Central America shows both landscape topography and ocean bathymetry. Northern Central America falls within the Mesoamerican cultural area while Lower Central America falls within the Intermediate cultural area. Reproduced with permission from NASA. Image can be found at http://visibleearth.nasa.gov.

N

Volcanic rocks Marine sedimentary basins

Nicaragua

Old subduction zones Exotic terranes

Nicoya Trench

30

60

mi

Volcanoes

Costa Rica

0

South America

Panama Osa

COCOS RIDGE

Burica Coiba Trench Panama Transform Fault

Azuero

Figure 2 A geologic map of Lower Central America that shows the location of exotic terranes and part of the Panama transform fault that separates the Cocos and Nazca plates. From Coates AG (1997) The forging of Central America. In: Coates AG (ed.) Central America: A Natural and Cultural History, pp. 1–37. New Haven: Yale University Press. Reproduced with permission.

Plate movements have also carried exotic terranes (a geological unit that has been transported from a distant location and then accreted onto the edge of another plate during subduction) into this area between the North American and South American plates adding to the diversity of geological formations in CA. Some of these terranes, like the Maya Terrane, which extends from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec

to the Motagua Fault, and the Chortis Terrane, which extends south from the Maya Terrane into central Nicaragua, are large and make up significant portions of CA. Other terranes, like those that form the core of the Pacific Coast peninsulas of Nicoya, Osa, Burica, and Azuero in CR and Panama, are much smaller additions to the Central American landscape (Figure 2).

194 AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America

The closing of the seaway between the Caribbean and the Pacific 2.5 million years ago led to what is know as the Great American Faunal Interchange in which the faunas of North and South America that had been isolated for millions of years were suddenly provided the opportunity to expand into new territory and did so in quite dramatic ways. North and South American floras, equally isolated, also intermingled for the first time in millions of years. The emergence of the Central American Isthmus had equally dramatic effects on the character of the oceans on either side of the isthmus and the life forms that each supported. The initiation of strong glacial cycles shortly after the closure of the Central America seaway (and perhaps triggered by this closing) also affected the character of the region. Sea levels varied as much as 180 m and, at times of maximum glaciation, exposed the continental shelf and greatly increased the land area of CA. The geologically recent uplifting of oceanic crust and repeated volcano activity have created the highland core of the Panama–Costa Rica corridor. The relatively low ranges east of the Panama Canal give way to increasingly high mountains moving west into the Talamancan Range of western Panama and Costa Rica where numerous peaks exceed 3000 m in elevation. In Panama, coastal lowlands tend to be more extensive on the Pacific side of the isthmus than on the Caribbean side, while the situation is reversed in Costa Rica. Extensive lowlands along the Caribbean coast of Honduras and Nicaragua extend across the isthmus to the Pacific Coast in the Nicaraguan depression that holds the large lakes of Managua and Nicaragua. The continental divide dips to only 45 m above sea level (asl) in this region, even lower than the 180 m asl is found where the Panama Canal is now located. North of the Nicaraguan depression, the interior of CA consists of highlands whose cores are ancient uplifted deposits of the Chortis and Maya terranes with more recent additions resulting from the volcanic eruptions that formed the southern portion of the highlands bordering the narrow Pacific coastal plain. The highlands end at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a lowland depression where the continental divide dips below 250 m. The great limestone platform that forms the lowlands of the Peten, Belize, and the Yucatan peninsula was raised above sea level at the end of the Cretaceous by the collision between the Maya and Chortis terranes. The susceptibility of limestone to dissolution by water has produced the distinctive karst topography of this vast lowland region with its cenotes, vast underground caverns, and dearth of surface water. The diversity of landscapes from coastal lowlands to mountainous interiors of diverse geological substrates

support an equally diverse biota. CA, as described by Spanish chroniclers in the sixteenth century, was a mosaic of forests, savannas, and agricultural fields; a landscape that had been modified by humans over the course of thousands of years. In the absence of human interference, the current climate of CA would support a range of vegetation formations from tropical rain forests and various seasonal forest formations to savannas and thorn scrub formations. All of CA lies between 7
130 at the Panama–Colombia border to 21
360 at the northern tip of the Yucatan peninsula, firmly within the tropics. Seasonal variation in temperatures is modest; over the course of a year, average monthly temperatures vary only by 1–6
C. Mean annual temperatures vary from 20–27
C as one moves upwards from the lower elevations of tierra caliente (hot lands – up to 1000 m in elevation) to 15–19
C in the midelevations of tierra templada (temperate lands – from 1000 to 2000 m asl) to below 15
C at the highest elevations of tierra fria (above 2000 m asl). Rainfall amount and distribution are highly variable across the Central American landscape, with some areas receiving upwards of 5000 mm annual rainfall evenly distributed throughout the year, and others receiving less than 1000 mm annually concentrated in a 6–7-month wet season. Rainfall tends to be higher and more evenly distributed throughout the year in Caribbean watersheds. Pacific watersheds tend to have lesser amounts of rain that is more seasonally distributed. During the months from December through April, the northeast trade winds blowing out of the Bermuda–Azores highpressure cell sweep over the warm Caribbean and bring moisture-laden air to the region. As these warm, moisture-laden winds are forced upward by mountain slopes, they cool and drop their moisture on the Caribbean side of the Central American Isthmus. As the air mass warms on its descent down the leeward side of the mountains, it has no excess moisture to yield as rain and, as a consequence, much of the Pacific side of Central America has a 4–6month dry season when little rain falls. Differences in bedrock geology, soils, elevation, rainfall, vegetation, and oceans have resulted in landscapes with highly diverse resources and equally diverse adaptations that human populations have made to them over time.

History of Archaeology Early attention to archaeological remains in Central America focused on the architecture and statuary of the region’s ancient cities and towns and on the handsomely crafted gold, shell, semiprecious stone, and

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elaborate ceramics that often accompanied the burials of important people. Early researchers writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries made contributions that can still be profitably consulted. Works by Walter Lehmann (all of CA), Carl Hartman (Costa Rica), E. G. Squier (Nicaragua and Honduras), Carl Bovallius (Nicaragua), J. F. Bransford (Nicaragua and Costa Rica), Earl Flint (Nicaragua and Costa Rica), Anastacio Alfaro (Costa Rica), William H. Holmes (Panama), and Sigvald Linne (Panama) fall within this category. A focus on chronology with an emphasis on ceramics characterized much of the archaeological research in CA during the first twothirds of the twentieth century and beyond. Over the course of his long career, Samuel Lothrop wrote major monographs on ceramic sequences in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, but is perhaps best known for his two-volume report on excavations at the Sitio Conte cemetery in Panama. Other researchers contributed to building regional chronologies in CA: among them are Doris Stone (Honduras, Costa Rica), Wolfgang Haberland (El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama), Claude Baudez (Honduras, Costa Rica), Michael Coe (Costa Rica), Stanley Boggs (El Salvador), and Matthew Stirling (Costa Rica, Panama). This work focused almost exclusively on the last 2000 years of prehistory when populations were living in permanent settlements with agriculturebased subsistence economies that generated highly visible refuse and often above-ground architectural features. The excavation of the Monagrillo site in Panama, reported by Gordon Willey and Charles McGimsey, extended the age of pottery production in Central Pacific Panama back an additional 2500 years, to 3000 BC. Charles McGimsey’s excavation of the nearby Cerro Mangote (6810  110 BP (c. cal 5700 BC)) was the first stratified Preceramic site excavated in CA. The transformation in archaeological approaches that occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s was reflected in a host of new orientations for archaeological projects undertaken in Lower Central America by a cohort of then young archaeologists, many of whom are still active in the field. Settlement patterns, the use of animal and plant resources, exchange systems, the first colonizers, the origins of agriculture, and the evolution of social complexity are just some of the topics that came under investigation. Our current knowledge of Central American prehistory, as outlined in the following sections, owes a great deal to the research of Richard Cooke, Francisco Corrales, Robert Drolet, Pat Hansell, Paul Healy, John Hoopes, Fred Lange, Olga Linares, Dolores Piperno, Anthony Ranere, Michael Snarskis, and Payson Sheets, among others.

Early Human Occupations Central America landscapes have changed in many important ways since the first human groups entered the region during the last major glaciation (Figure 3). Temperatures were c. 5–6
C lower than they are today and rainfall was reduced by perhaps 30–40%. The massive glaciers in the world’s polar regions held enough water to lower sea levels over 100 m and expose the continental shelf, which for parts of CA, added significant areas of dry land, particularly along the Pacific site of Panama and the Caribbean side of Belize, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Reconstruction of Late Pleistocene vegetation at coring localities in Panama (La Yeguada, El Valle, Monte Oscuro, and Gatun Lake), Costa Rica (La Chonta), and the Peten region of Guatemala (Lakes Salpeten and Quexil) indicates that areas now receiving in excess of c. 2000 mm of rainfall annually would have been forested during the last glacial stage, whereas areas with annual rainfall below c. 2000 mm were likely to have had open savanna or low scrub vegetation. These more open formations would have been located on the Yucatan Peninsula, including the Peten and Belize, along the Pacific coastal plain from El Salvador to northwestern Costa Rica, and the Pacific coastal plain along Panama Bay. Still in all, large areas on the Pacific side of CA receive over 2000 mm of rain annually, including an area stretching from central Costa Rica to Central Panama and the area near the Colombian border. Most of the Atlantic watershed of CA receives well over 2000 mm of rain annually. While it seems clear that the late glacial landscape of CA contained more extensive open habitats than at any time during the Holocene (that is, until massive forest clearing for cultivation was underway), it was still a largely forested landscape. The Late Pleistocene landscape in CA was populated by at least 15 genera of large herbivores that did not survive to see the Holocene. These include the mastodon-like gomphotheres (Cuvieronius tropicus and Haplomastodon), mammoth (Mammuthus), megalonychid and megatheriid giant ground sloths, including the huge Eremotherium, glyptodonts (Glyptodontidae), giant armadillos (Pampatherium and Chlamytherium), a horse (Equus (Amerhippus)), the rhinoceros-like Toxodon, the camel-sized Macrauchenia, Paleolama, giant capybara (Neochoerus), flat-headed peccary (Platygonus), and bear (Arctodus). Included in this list are browsers, grazers, and omnivores adapted to a range of forest, forest edge, and open thorn scrub/savanna environments. While none of these taxa has been found in association with human artifacts in CA (bone was not preserved in the sites excavated to date with Late Pleistocene cultural

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Figure 3 A map showing the reconstructed vegetation of Central America during the Late Pleistocene and the coring localities that provided the information for this reconstruction. The location of major Paleoindian localities are also indicated. Adapted from Ranere AJ and RG Cooke (2003) Late Glacial and Early Holocene occupation of Central American tropical forests. In: Mercader J (ed.) Under the Canopy. The Archaeology of Tropical Rain Forests, pp. 219–248. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Reproduced with permission.

deposits), some have been found in archaeological sites of northern South America (see Americas, South: Northern South America). At the site of Tibito´ in the Bogata Basin, Cuvieronius, Haplomastodon, and Equus (Amerhippus), as well as extant fox (Cerdocyon) and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus), were associated with human activities 14C dated to 11 740  110 BP (11 638 BC). Haplomastodon was found in association with an El Jobo lanceolate point at Taima-Taima, Venezuela, dated c. cal 13 400 BC. The same layer as the mastodon and El Jobo point also yielded glyptodont, mylontid sloth, horse, bear, and felid remains. Elsewhere in Venezuela (at the site of El Vano), El Jobo points have also been found in direct association with the giant ground sloth Eremotherium rusconii. We can say very little about the nature and timing of the earliest migrants into and through the Central American Isthmus; those who were ancestral to the groups documented further south in sites like Monte Verde in Chile, Taima-Taima in Venezuela, and Tibito´ in Colombia, among others. There are no firm archaeological sites that reflect the presence in CA of any groups older than the Paleoindian Clovis populations.

Diagnostic Paleoindian fluted points of the Clovis and Fluted Fish-tail types have only been found in two stratified sites in CA that have reported radiocarbon dates, Los Tapiales in the Guatemalan Highlands and Cueva de los Vampiros in the Pacific coastal plain of Panama. Los Tapiales is an open-air site located at an elevation of 3150 m in what is currently an alpine meadow. 14C dates of 11 170  200 BP (c. cal 11 200 BC) and 8810  110 BP (c. cal 7960 BC) bracket deposits from which 100 tools and nearly 1500 flakes were recovered, including a fluted point base and a channel flake. The excavators, Ruth Gruhn and Alan Bryan, view the occupation as short term and believe that the 14C date of 10 710 þ 170 BP (c. cal 10 700 BC) is the best estimate of its age. At Vampiros, cave deposits bracketed between 14C dates of 11 550  140 BP (c. cal 11 460 BC) and 8970  40 BP (c. cal 8150 BC) contained the blade portion of a Fluted Fish-tail point and overshot thinning flakes characteristic of Clovis-reduction techniques (but not Fish-tail-reduction techniques). Similarly aged deposits have been excavated at three other Central American sites; La Piedra de Coyote (14C dates of 10 650  1350 BP (10 250 BC) and 10 020  260 BP (9680 BC)), located in the Guatemalan Highlands

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near Los Tapiales, Aguadulce Shelter (14C dates of 10 725  80 BP (c. cal 10 825 BC), 10 675  95 BP (c. cal 10 785 BC) and 10 529  284 BP (c. cal 10 490 BC)), located in the coastal plain of Central Pacific Panama near Vampiros, and Corona Shelter (14C date of 10 440  650 BP (c. cal 10 115 BC)), located in the foothills of Central Pacific Panama. Although no clearly diagnostic tools were recovered, all three sites yielded bifacial thinning flakes consistent with those produced in manufacturing fluted points. Although undated, a number of Clovis and Fluted Fish-tail points have been found in Central America, some as part of surface site assemblages and some as isolated finds. The site of Turrialba (also known as Finca Guardiria), at 10 ha in area, is by far the largest Paleoindian site known for CA. It is located at an altitude of c. 700 m on terraces of the Reventazo´n River in the Atlantic watershed of Costa Rica. The region receives 4000 mm of rain annually and would be covered in evergreen forest if not for human intervention. The entire site area has been cultivated and all of the over 28 000 flakes and tools have been recovered from the surface or the plow zone. Large numbers of fluted Clovis points were recovered, as well as bifacial preforms and other tools often found with other fluted point assemblages, that is, snubnosed keeled scrapers, end-scrapers with lateral spurs, burins, and large blades. Another important Clovis site is the La Mula West workshop, Central Pacific Panama, where erosion has left workshop debris and the rare finished tools exposed on the ground surface or buried in reworked deposits. Over 80 biface fragments were recovered from the site, including 12 basal fragments that had been either fluted or basally thinned. Spurred end-scrapers, burins, gravers, and blades were recovered at La Mula West as well. The only near-complete specimen recovered would be lost in a collection of early North American Clovis points. The lithic reduction sequence reconstructed on the basis of the broken bifaces and manufacturing debris, including a number of overshot flakes and hundreds of thinning flakes, is nearly identical to the sequence reported for North American Clovis workshops. Although there is no direct date for the La Mula West assemblage, 15 years before its discovery, an isolated hearth 14 C dated to 11 300  250 BP (c. cal 11 215 BC) was found eroding out of sediments near the site. This seems an appropriate age for an assemblage that shares the same lithic reduction sequence and projectile point form as the early Clovis assemblages in North America (Figure 4). Two additional sites in Panama have yielded bifaces and workshop debris that can be assigned to the Paleoindian period. One, the Neito quarry/

workshop, is located in the Azuero Peninsula west of La Mula West and contains the same translucent chalcedony material preferred by the La Mula West Clovis flintknappers and evidence of similar reduction techniques. The second site, the Westend workshop, is located in the Chagres River drainage near the Panama Canal on the shores of an island in Lago Alajuela (Madden), an artificial lake that stores water to supply the operation of the Panama Canal locks. At low water, workshop debris covering an area c. 1 ha in size is exposed on the eroded surface. Although thousands of thinning flakes are present (most with small, heavily ground platforms) only two preforms and no finished points were recovered. However, elsewhere on eroded shorelines of Lago Alajuela, six Fish-tail points and one ‘waisted’ Clovis point have been picked up. The preponderance of Fish-tail points in the lake basin and the absence of overshot flakes in the Westend assemblage indicate that Fish-tail points and not Clovis points were the desired end product. Additional isolated fluted points of both Clovis and Fish-tail varieties have been found in a number of different contexts in CA, including the Belize Lowlands, Guatemala Highlands, both the lowlands and highlands of Costa Rica, and the foothills and coastal plain of Pacific Panama. While Paleoindian sites and isolated finds are relatively few in number, they are found in a wide range of geographic and ecological settings. Paleoindian lithic remains have been found above the Late Pleistocene tree line (Los Tapiales and Piedra de Coyotes) in highland Guatemala, in montane closed-canopy forests elsewhere in Guatemala (Guatemala and Ocozocoautla valleys) and Costa Rica (Turrialba and the Arenal region), in lowland closed-canopy forests (Lago Alajuela in the Chagres Basin), and in open savanna/thorn scrub lowlands (Belize, northwest Costa Rica, and Central Pacific Panama). Paleoindian groups were clearly able to move about through the entire range of geographic and environmental settings found in CA during the Late Pleistocene. This ability may have more to do with an emphasis on hunting rather than on gathering by these populations; Clovis and Fish-tail points are, after all, hunting weapons and no specialized plantprocessing tools have been found at Paleoindian sites. Hunting techniques are relatively easy to transfer from one environment to another and meat eating is not a hazardous undertaking. On the other hand, learning what plants can be safely consumed in newly encountered environments, or learning how to render the plants safe for human consumption can be a timeconsuming process. The picture that is emerging of CA Paleoindians is one of small mobile groups moving though a range of environments in pursuit

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(i) Figure 4 Artifacts from the Clovis workshop of La Mula West, Panama: a and b, point preforms broken in manufacture; c–f, overshot flakes, a characteristic feature of Clovis point manufacture where the opposite side of the preform is removed in the thinning process; g–i, late-stage fluted preforms broken in the manufacturing process.

of game but perhaps tethered to high-quality sources of stone for manufacturing their skillfully made projectile points.

Archaic Hunter–Gatherers and the Introduction of Agriculture Palaeoenvironmental records from lake cores in both northern and southern regions of CA document the changing landscapes resulting from the warmer and moister climate that marked the Late Pleistocene/ Early Holocene transition. Mean annual temperatures increased 5–6
C while annual rainfall increased 30–40%. As a result, forests expanded into previously open habitats in many parts of CA and

plant species moved 600–900 m higher in elevation (Figure 5). At least 15 genera of megafauna that once roamed through CA were now extinct, including the mastodont-like gomphotheres (Cuvieronius tropicus and Haplomastodon), mammoth (Mammuthus), megalonychid and megatheriid giant ground sloths, including the huge Eremotherium, glyptodonts (Glyptodontidae), giant armadillos (Pampatherium and Chlamytherium), a horse (Equus (Amerhippus)), and, perhaps, the rhinoceros-like Toxodon, the camel-sized Macrauchenia, Paleolama, giant capybara (Neochoerus), flat-headed peccary (Platygonus), and bear (Arctodus). The cultural response to this changing landscape was a gradual increase in the importance of plant

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foods in the diet. Emphasis is on ‘gradual’ here since tool assemblages during the period from 10 000 to 6000 BC were still dominated by bifacial projectile points and other tools important in hunting and butchering activities. Archaic sites are found in the same regions that have yielded Palaeo-Indian sites, but in larger numbers. In a probabilistic survey of seven 500 m-wide transects covering a total distance of 74.5 km in the Santa Maria Valley of Central Pacific Panama, 16 Archaic components have been identified compared to seven Palaeo-Iindian components. Although more impressionistic, this same pattern appears to hold elsewhere in CA. The overall population of CA remains small during the Early Holocene and hunting remains important, to judge by the lithic assemblages. Faunal remains are generally not preserved in these sites, but at the Santa Marta Rockshelter, Chiapas, at the northern boundary of CA, white-tailed deer, red deer (or mazama), peccary, tapir, squirrel, agouti, and armadillo were recovered in layers with 14C dates of 7320  300 BP (c. cal 6180 BC) and 6910  310 BP (c. cal 5795 BC). Nonetheless, there are clear signs of an increased emphasis on plant foods by the middle of this period

in the form of specialized plant-processing tools, palaeobotanical evidence for forest clearing, and microfossil remains of both wild and domesticated plants. The initial cultivation and domestication of plants was early and remarkably widespread in tropical America. Archaeologists, palaeobotanists, and molecular biologists are still trying to determine the time, place, and ancestral species for many of the crops brought under domestication in the Americas. We do know, however, that this process was underway both in north and south of CA by the ninth millennium BC and that a number of these crops were being cultivated in CA shortly thereafter. Our earliest evidence of agricultural activities in the form of actual plant remains comes from the Aguadulce, Carabali, and Ladrones shelters as well as from other sites in Central Pacific Panama. Microfossil remains of several domesticates including maize (pollen, phytoliths, starch grains), squash (phytoliths), arrowroot (phytoliths, starch grains), leren (phytoliths, starch grains), manioc (starch grains), and bottle gourd (phytoliths) have been recovered in multiple contexts dating from the sixth and seventh

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Figure 6 Maize (Zea mays) starch grains from Gran Cocle´ sites: a, Rio Cobre; b and c, Cueva de los Ladrones; d, Aguadulce Shelter; e and f, Zapotal. Scale bars ¼ 10 mm. From Dickau R (2005) Resource Use, Crop dispersals, and the Transition to Agriculture in Prehistoric Panama: Evidence from Starch Grains and Macroremains. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Temple University, Philadelphia. Reproduced with permission.

millennium BC (Figure 6). A 16 700-year long record from the Yeguada Lake core preserves a record of vegetation disturbance by human populations beginning around 11 000 BC in changes in pollen, phytolith, and charcoal flux. Gradual increases in the amount of forest burning reflected in the Yeguada sequence from c. 11 000 to 6000 BC, with a noticeable jump in charcoal influx around 7600 BC, is consistent with the archaeological survey and excavation data that indicate modest increases in the population density over this time period in the region and early cultivation of at least one domesticate (arrowroot) by 7600 BC. The escalation of burning likely represents the use of small kitchen or house gardens in a still primarily forested landscape. A major increase in charcoal along with secondary forest and open-terrain taxa in the pollen and phytolith records at 6000 BC identifies the initiation of intensive slash-and-burn agriculture

in the area. Yeguada Lake is located at 650 m asl in the Santa Maria River watershed, the setting for a probabilistic archaeological survey that identified a twofold increase in sites during the Early Preceramic time period (9600–6000 BC) relative to the previous Palaeo-Indian Period and a nearly eightfold increase in sites (from 16 to 124) between the Late Preceramic Period (6000–3900 BC) and the previous Early Preceramic Period. A second core from Monte Oscuro on the Pacific coastal plain also gave clear indication of extensive forest clearance for swidden agriculture. Maize phytoliths from the Monte Oscuro core at 6000 BC and maize pollen from the Yeguada core at 5630 BC complements the microfossil records of maize and other early domesticates from archaeological sites in the region. Excavated sites and lake core sequences that extend back into the Middle and Early Holocene (i.e., before c. 4000 BC) are not common in CA. Rockshelter excavations in western Panama have sequences going back only to 5500–6000 BC. However, they do provide evidence of plant cultivation in the way of starch grains for many of the same plants identified from Central Panama. Lake core sequences in eastern Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize and Tabasco, Mexico all show that forest clearance and swidden agriculture was widespread in CA by 2000 BC or earlier. A shift away from complete reliance on terrestrial resources to the use of coastal resources is first recorded at around 6000 BC at opposite ends of the region. The site of Cerro Mangote, located on the Pacific shores of Central Panama, contained abundant remains of fish, mollusks, and crabs as well as mangrove-associated species of birds and raccoons. Maize starch grains recovered from Cerro Mangote tools indicate that like other Central Panama sites, farming was part of the subsistence package. Moreover, marine shell and faunal remains from marine and estuarine species are found in a number of coastal plain and foothill sites up to 40 km inland during this 6000–3900 BC Late Preceramic period. This evidence, plus the fact that Cerro Mangote appears to have been seasonally occupied in the Late Dry Season/Early Wet season, points to a settlement system of seasonal transhumance for the region during the Late Preceramic. On the Pacific coast of Chiapas, the earliest Chantuto phase shell middens date to 5500 BC. Because the early Chantuto phase sites were primarily shellfish-collecting stations, with some additional exploitation of coastal lagoon/estuary system resources to be sure, they too probably represent groups who are farming away from the coastline in Chiapas; maize phytoliths dating to 3500 BC were recovered from one of the Chantuto middens.

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There is a major shift in technology as Central American populations turn to a greater reliance on plant species, both cultivated and collected, after 6000 BC. In many parts of CA, best documented in Panama and the Pacific coastal zone of Chiapas, bifacial flaking disappears from the technological repertoire of these populations to be replaced by industries characterized by random reduction of cores to produce flakes that are used with little or no modification. Bipolar reduction is used when the raw material consists of small pebbles. Various kinds of handstones and bases also appear in assemblages as early as 7000 BC in Panama and perhaps as early in Chiapas to judge from the assemblages recovered from the Santa Marta Rockshelter. The dominant tools in Panama are edge ground cobbles and associated cobble/boulder bases, tool types that are also widespread at this time in parts of northern South America. The archaeological record for CA becomes very much richer with the introduction of ceramics into the material culture of its inhabitants. In part, this is simply a consequence of the ease with which ceramic sites can be located compared to earlier sites that only preserve stone tools. However, in part this richness reflects the increasingly sedentary communities and productive economies based on agriculture that subsidized a range of activities and interactions beyond those dictated by subsistence requirements. This is not to say that the introduction of ceramics is everywhere associated with major sociocultural changes in societies. The earliest pottery yet documented in CA,

the 3900–1250 BC Monagrillo pottery type from Central Panama, is found associated with the same lithic assemblages in use during the earlier Late Preceramic period. Indeed, many of these Late Preceramic sites continue to be occupied during the Early Ceramic. Sites do tend to be larger, and are found in larger numbers in the Caribbean watershed, but the pattern of seasonally occupied settlements, swidden agriculture, and the exploitation of a wide range of terrestrial and aquatic resources carries over from earlier times with little change (Figure 7). The timing of the appearance of pottery in CA is quite variable, as is the character of the pottery. Monagrillo pottery is rather poorly constructed: lowfired pottery made of local clays in limited shapes with infrequent incised and red-painted decorations. It cannot be definitively linked with any of the earlier pottery types from South America. In contrast, the early Tronadora pottery complex found from Central Costa Rica to the Pacific coastal region of Nicaragua, partially contemporary with Monagrillo ceramics at c. 2500–1250 BC, looks like it has evolved from some as-yet-unidentified predecessor. Contemporary or near-contemporary ceramic complexes (La Montan˜a, Chapparo´n, Los Suen˜os, Curre´) are documented from other regions in Costa Rica (Figure 8). Yet the first appearance of pottery moving north from this region gets younger. The Bara complex found along the Pacific coast of Guatemala dates from 1600 BP, and complexes in the highlands of Guatemala and along the Atlantic watershed are younger still. Interaction

Figure 7 Aerial photograph of Monagrillo, the type site for the earliest pottery in Central America. The site is on a peninsula currently extending into a salt flat, but when the site was occupied (c. 3500–1200 BC) the peninsula was surrounded by water.

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Figure 8 Sherds from early ceramic complexes in Costa Rica: a–n, La Montan˜a; o–z, Chaparro´n. Photo Maritza Gutie´rrez. From Snarskis MJ (1981) The archaeology of Costa Rica. In: Benson E (ed.) Between Continents/Between Seas: Pre-Columbian Art of Costa Rica, pp. 15–84. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

among groups throughout CA and beyond was clearly a long-standing and ongoing process. The adoption and passing on of South American domesticated plants to Mexico and Mexican domesticates to South America is an easily documentable consequence of this interaction. One senses, however, that while Central American communities appreciated the utility of pottery, they chose to manufacture pots to their own standards. Moreover, given the variation in timing for the first appearance of pottery in adjacent areas – Central Panama adopted pottery by 3900 BC, western Panama not until 650 BC – not all groups were immediately convinced of its utility.

Settling Down Widespread permanent settlements in CA were not established until after groups had been growing crops for several thousand years. Productive agricultural systems capable of supporting permanent villages are found throughout the region dating back to between 4500 and 2500 years ago. By this time, the alignment of the northern sector with Mexico above the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and that of the southern sector with northern South America, give meaning to the concepts of ‘Mesoamerica’ and, perhaps to a lesser extent, the ‘Intermediate Area.’ In the area now

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designated Mesoamerica, the development of stratified societies first into chiefdoms (see Americas, Central: The Olmec and their Contemporaries) and later into ancient states (see Americas, Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya) occurred relatively rapidly. In contrast, settled village agriculture did not lead immediately to stratified societies in Lower Central America; indeed, in some regions like the western Costa Rican Highlands and the lowlands along the Atlantic coasts of Nicaragua and eastern Panama, the egalitarian nature of these agricultural societies continued right up until contact. Stratified societies or chiefdoms did evolve in a number of Lower Central American regions from Central Honduras through Atlantic Costa Rica to Central Pacific Panama, but this emergence did not follow fast on the heels of the appearance of large permanent settlements. The different cultural trajectories witnessed between the northern and southern sectors of CA almost certainly had their roots in the Late Preceramic Period (c. 6000–3900 BC). Genetic and linguistic divergence among modern Chibchan-speaking populations in Lower Central America both point to a time depth of c. 7000 years for the initial isolation of populations and languages. The cultural boundary between Gran Cocle´ (Central Panama) and Gran Chiriquı´ (western Panama/eastern Costa Rica) is clearly identifiable in the archaeological record by 5500 BC (Figure 9). The emergence of large sedentary agricultural villages is the most obvious indication that a major threshold had been crossed in CA. Other indications include the introduction of well-made ceramics, differential treatment of the dead (specialized cemeteries for social elites situated apart from the villages), the appearance of craft specialization, and the initiation of regular intra- and inter-regional exchange. The explosion of craft specialization and the production of luxury goods has no precedent in Late Preceramic/ Early Ceramic periods even in places like Gran Cocle´ where a number of such sites have been recorded and excavated. Specialization is not limited to esoteric goods like shell ornaments and various object and adornments of semiprecious stone. Utilitarian objects like polished stone celts, metates, manos, and chipped stone stemmed points and blades also appear to be in the hands of specialists. Even so, most scholars see this first period of permanent settlement as representing egalitarian tribal societies where status was achieved, much like the ‘Big Man’ societies of highland New Guinea, rather than ascribed or inherited as would be the case for chiefdoms. While most researchers working in Lower Central America see continuity in the cultural sequences and presumably in the populations responsible for them, there are clear influences from both Mesoamerica

and South America where craft specializations have longer histories. In some cases, prestige goods recovered from Lower Central America can be traced to neighboring regions. Such is the case for obsidian blades and other tools recovered in Northeast Honduras and the Greater Nicoya region of Pacific Nicaragua, and some of the jade objects recovered from sites in Costa Rica. The use of spiny oyster (Spondylus) shell as the raw material of choice for prestige goods along the Pacific coast of Panama was likely inspired by a similar but earlier use of Spondylus along the coasts of Ecuador and Peru. Some of the gold pieces recovered from Panama and Costa Rica may have been fabricated in Colombia, although it now seems clear that most of the gold objects found in Lower Central America were manufactured there.

The Emergence of Hierarchical Societies Full-blown chiefdoms, similar in most details to those described by the early sixteenth-century Spanish chroniclers, make their appearance over much of Lower Central America during the first millennium AD, a judgment based on a wide range of archaeological evidence. Estimated sizes of a chiefly territory based on either ethnohistoric or archaeological data range from 60 to 300 km2 and estimated populations from 1000 to 10 000 persons. Chiefs and the chiefly elite lived in large villages or towns inhabited by upwards of 2000 persons. A number of features distinguished chiefly centers from other settlements in addition to size. While these distinguishing features varied from place to place, they include specialized residences for the chiefs and chiefly elites, often built on raised platforms, monumental stone statuary, and accumulation of wealth in the form of prestige goods. Nowhere is the wealth accumulated by the elite in Lower Central America more visible than at the famous Sitio Conte cemetery in Gran Cocle´ first excavated in the 1930s by Samuel Lothrop. The cemetery was in use over the 200-year period between AD 750 and 950. The personages buried here are predominantly adult males including all the central figures. The amount of funerary ceramics, gold, worked semiprecious stone, jewelry, the accompanying skeletons of numerous males and females (sacrificed captives and concubines?) – all point to the accumulation of luxury items in quantity as markers of high social status. Grave 74, excavated by J. Alden Mason, contained the following items: 3496 beads, 188 ear rods, 91 stone and gold ear rods, 45 gold appendages for ear rods, 87 bells, 29 medallions (repousse´ disks with geometric designs), 17 chisels, 13 plaques (repousse´ disks with figurative designs), 4 cuffs, 2 pendants, 23 overlays for bone, resin, and ivory objects,

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Figure 9 A map showing the approximate boundaries between the subregions of Lower Central America. The base map is from the Houghton Mifflin website http://www.eduplace.com/ss/maps/pdf/cent_amer_pol.pdf

6 wristlets or anklets, 30 miscellaneous overlays, 4 nose ornaments, 2 nose clips or ear-rings, 1 bar, and a copper bell. Sitio Conte along with the contemporary ceremonial center El Can˜o just across the river, with its monolithic columns, paved causeway, and earthen burial mounds, represents an elite precinct without parallel in Gran Cocle´. It is the uniqueness of the Sitio Conte/El Can˜o complex that has led Cooke to propose the emergence of a larger social group than the chiefdom. The central place that wealth accumulation held as a marker of elite status in Gran Cocle´ can be seen in

cemeteries associated with other chiefly centers of the region. Grave goods in these cemeteries include many of the same items recovered at Sitio Conte´ albeit on a more modest scale. Most of these cemeteries have been looted and the associated grave goods widely dispersed in both private collections and museums. An exception is the cemetery at Cerro Juan Diaz along the east coast of the Azuero peninsula, a site that served at various times during the last 2000 years before contact as a major settlement and ceremonial center as well as a cemetery. Although badly looted, archaeological fieldwork carried out over a 10-year

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(f) (e) Figure 10 Late Preceramic polychrome vessels from Gran Cocle´, Panama: a–e, Macaracas style vessels from the site of Cerro Juan Dı´az; f, Montijo Transitional Style vessel from Las Huacas cemetery. From Cooke RG, Sa´nchez HLA, and Udagawa K (2000) Contextualized goldwork from ‘Gran Cocle´’, Panama. In: McEwan C (ed.) Pre-Columbian Gold, pp. 154–176. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers.

period has resulted in proper chronological placement for luxury items like gold, semiprecious stone, and shell as well as ceramics and more utilitarian objects (Figures 10 and 11). Elsewhere in Lower Central America, large stone sculptures are a hallmark of chiefly centers. At the western Panama highland site of Barriles, the hierarchical character of the society is embodied in the sculpture of a man wearing a conical hat, a gold pendant suspended from his neck, and a human trophy head in each hand seated on the shoulders of another man, perhaps a captive (Figures 12 and 13). Other monumental stone sculptures from Barriles include large (2 m long) legged metates adorned with human heads and large barrel-shaped forms that gave the site its name. Barriles also contained a 30  50 m raised platform paved with stone slabs and boulders, paved causeways and petroglyphs. Further west in this Gran Chiriquı´ region, large sites with ceremonial precincts first appear around AD 400–600, as was the case with the Barriles site in the highlands of western Panama. These sites contain mounds, carved stone barrels, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic statues, and ceramic figurines wearing conical hats similar to those recovered in western

Panama. A unique addition to the ceremonial furniture are symmetrical stone spheres ranging up to 2.5 m in diameter and 15 tons in weight. The large ceremonial center of Rivas and associated Panteo´n de la Reina ridge-top cemetery in the Rio General watershed yielded evidence that indicated the presence of some sort of social network or alliance that incorporated multiple chiefdoms. Rivas was initially a habitation site, but sometime after AD 1000 it was transformed into a ceremonial center whose apparent use was in mortuary ritual culminating in the burial of elite personages in graves dug into the ridge that rose above the Rivas site. The uniqueness of this ceremonial center–cemetery complex recalls the Sitio Conte–El Can˜o ceremonial–cemetery complex in Gran Cocle´ (Figure 14). In the Central Highlands and Atlantic watershed regions of Costa Rica, evidences of social stratification are found in a number of burial sites dated between AD 300 and 700. The cemetery El Tres de Gua´cimo, tentatively dated between AD 400 and 500, contained at least 25 elite burials marked by low stone mounds along with another 100 or more additional graves. These elite burials contained a large number of jade objects, gold ornaments, tubular beads, mace heads,

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Figure 11 Gold objects from Gran Cocle´, Panama: a, from El Can˜o excavations; b–d, from Tomb 2 at Mira Flores; e, from El Cafetal; f, from Tomb 47 at Las Huacas; g–i, from El Can˜o; j–m, from Cerro Juan Dı´az, Operation 3. From Cooke RG, Sa´nchez HLA, and Udagawa K (2000) Contextualized goldwork from ‘Gran Cocle´’, Panama. In: McEwan C (ed.) Pre-Columbian Gold, pp. 154–176. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers.

slate mirror backs, ceramics, and over 60 metates. The gold objects in this site suggest ties to Gran Cocle´ and northern Colombia, and the jade objects to Mesoamerica. Other cemeteries in this region have yielded reworked Olmec jades and Maya artifacts like slate mirror backs, some with hieroglyphic inscriptions. After AD 1000 a number of large villages with mounds and other architectural features are found in the Atlantic watershed. The largest site, Guayabo, was 1 km2 in size and contained over 50 mounds (many of them stone lined), paved causeways, stone statues, and an underground water system. The cobble-lined circular mounds, paved causeways,

and stairs of these Costa Rican sites recalls similar architectural features of the Tairona sites of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia and serves to reinforce the shared cultural features among groups stretching from Costa Rica south into Colombia (Figure 15). Northwest Costa Rica and the Pacific lake districts of Nicaragua form the archaeological region of Gran Nicoya. This area is sometimes considered part of Mesoamerica and, in fact, three groups speaking Mesoamerican languages, the Chorotega, Nicarao, and Subtiaba were in residence in Gran Nicoya when the Spanish arrived. The timing of the arrival

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for these groups is not entirely clear, but they were in the area long enough to adopt many of the local traditions. Nonetheless, until the arrival of these Mesoamerican groups, perhaps as late as the fourteenth century, the cultural patterns in Gran Nicoya seem very much a part of the Lower Central America/ Intermediate Area sphere. As was the case in some other Lower Central American areas, the strongest evidence for the emergence of hierarchical societies comes from large elite cemeteries. Las Huacas, located on the Nicoya Peninsula and first excavated by

Hartman at the turn of the twentieth century, contained graves with jade pendants, mace heads, and large numbers of metates dating to the period of AD 300–500. Although the details of the grave associations have long been lost, Las Huacas has been interpreted as a specialized cemetery for the elite from several settlements and perhaps more than one polity. In northeastern Honduras, at the northern boundary of Lower Central America, social complexity is most clearly seen in villages with large-scale public architecture. Located on a terrace above the Talgua River, the Talgua Village site, dated between AD 600 and 900, contained 80 house mounds, the largest reaching 2.5 m in height. Some of the mounds were faced with cobbles, recalling the pattern seen in the Atlantic watershed of Costa Rica. An unusual feature of this site was the discovery of a plaza covering at least 1000 m2 constructed of river cobbles to a depth of 2 m. The Altas de Subirana site in the Culmı´ Valley contains house mounds, stone causeways, paved plazas, and stone monoliths, all features that predated AD 600. Unlike the rest of Honduras, there is little evidence of Maya influence in this northeast region at the time large village sites make their first appearance. This is equally true of later centers like the Rio Claro site, dated between AD 1000 and 1400. The site included over 50 mounds constructed of clay and faced with boulders in an area of 8.5 ha. Some of the long low mounds held long houses up to 50 m in length. The site had a central mound 7 m in height with two opposing boulder ramps overlooking the larger of two plazas at the site. The elaborately carved large-legged metates, stone sculptures, and pottery of Northeast Honduras all suggest southern rather than Mayan/Mesoamerican influences.

Summary Figure 12 Stone sculpture from Barriles, Panama of one man wearing a conical hat and holding two trophy heads sitting on the shoulders of another. From Stone DZ (1972) Pre-Columbian Man Finds Central America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

The results of archaeological, linguistic, and genetic research to date in Lower Central America point to cultural continua over much of the area from a

Figure 13 A large ceremonial metate with human trophy heads carved around the perimeter of the sculpture. From Stone DZ (1972) Pre-Columbian Man Finds Central America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Figure 14 A plan view of a portion of the Rivas site, Gran Chiriquı´, Costa Rica showing the use of boulders on the edges of house mounds, plazas, and other enclosures. Adapted from Quilter J (2004) Cobble Circles and Standing Stones: Archaeology at the Rivas Site, Costa Rica. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Reproduced with permission.

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Figure 15 A plan view of the Guayabo de Turrialba site showing cobble-faced house mounds, cobble-delineated enclosures, paved causeways, and artificial watercourses. From Fonseca ZO (1981) Guayabo de Turrialba and its significance. In: Benson E (ed.) Between Continents/Between Seas: Pre-Columbian Art of Costa Rica, pp. 104–111. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Reproduced with permission.

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common source, presumably the Paleoindian Clovis culture that once existed throughout the area over 12 000 years ago. The increase in population, decrease in mobility, increased reliance on local plant resources, and the addition of cultivation to the subsistence base all fostered divergent cultural trajectories in different subregions of CA. The archaeological cultures of Gran Cocle´ and Gran Chiriquı´, for example, are clearly differentiated by at least 6000 BC. By the sixteenth century, Gran Cocle´ and Gran Chiriquı´ and all other Lower Central American subregions held numerous autonomous polities, oftentimes speaking mutually unintelligible languages, yet they remained valid cultural areas. This suggests that groups within each subregion interacted with each other to a greater extent than with groups in neighboring subregions. Nonetheless, Central American populations embraced new technologies from outside the region, including agriculture, ceramics, metallurgy, shell and lapidary arts, while preserving their cultural traditions. See also: Americas, Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya; Early Cultures of Middle America; Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica; The Olmec and their Contemporaries; Americas, South: Northern South America; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction in the Lowland Neotropics; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading Coates AG (ed.) (1997) Central America: A Natural and Cultural History. New Haven: Yale University Press. Cooke RG (2005) Prehistory of native Americans on the Central American Land Bridge: Colonization, dispersal, and divergence. Journal of Archaeological Research 13(2): 129–187. Hoopes JW (2005) The emergence of social complexity in the Chibchan World of Southern Central American and Northern Colombia, AD 300–600. Journal of Archaeological Research 13(1): 1–47. Lange FW (ed.) (1992) Wealth and Hierarchy in the Intermediate Area. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks. Lange FW (ed.) (1996) Paths to Central American Prehistory. Niwot, CO: University of Colorado Press. Lange FW and Stone DZ (eds.) (1984) The Archaeology of Lower Central America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Linares OF and Ranere AJ (eds.) (1980) Adaptive Radiations in Prehistoric Panama. Peabody Museum Monographs, 5. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Piperno DR and Pearsall DM (1998) The Origins of Agriculture in the Lowland Neotropics. San Diego: Academic Press. Ranere AJ and Cooke RG (2003) Late Glacial and Early Holocene Occupation of Central American Tropical Forests. In: Mercader J (ed.) Under the Canopy. The Archaeology of Tropical Rain Forests, pp. 219–248. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Sheets PD and McKee BR (eds.) (1994) Archaeology, Volcanism, and Remote Sensing in the Arenal Region, Costa Rica. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica Susan Toby Evans, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary altepetl Pronounced ahlTAYpeht, a Nahuatl (Aztec) word meaning ‘water-hill’ which signified the city-state in the Aztec empire. animatism A belief that inanimate things (objects, landscape features, natural phenomena) are imbued with a living spirit. This concept was fundamental to the belief systems of the peoples of ancient Mesoamerica. Aztec Empire The polity forged by the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan (which later became Mexico City) and its allies. At its height, at the time of the European intrusion into Mexico in AD 1519, it drew wealth from city-states from much of the area covered by modern Mexico. calpulli A land-holding social unit in Aztec society of Postclassic Mesoamerica. Each calpulli consisted of families with shared rights to farmland, and a local civic-ceremonial focus consisting of an administrative headquarters (usually the palace of the local lord) where policy matters would be discussed and tribute accumulated, a shrine, a ‘young men’s house’ (telpochcalli) to coordinate training for military and public service. Mesoamerica An archaeological culture area consisting of much of the extent of modern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and parts of Honduras and El Salvador. It is one of the six areas in the world where civilization and state-level political organization arose independently. Quetzalcoatl Pronounced KETZahlCOHaht, a Nahuatl (Aztec) word meaning ‘feathered serpent’ and referring to an important deity in Mesoamerica from the Olmec culture of the Formative period through the Late Postclassic period. Quetzalcoatl was a bringer of life to humankind, and patron of the fine arts. Templo Mayor The Great Temple of the Aztecs in their main capital, Tenochtitlan. Recent excavations have revealed seven construction stages, and these remains and associated buildings form an archaeological park in the heart of Mexico City.

Mesoamerican Culture History The Postclassic period (AD 900–1521) in Mesoamerican culture history is the final pre-Columbian era in a long sequence that extends back to the first humans in the geographical region we know as ‘Middle America’. Middle America comprises the modern countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama. Middle America’s northern boundary is defined by the arid reaches of northern Mexico and its southern boundary is the junction of Panama with South America. ‘Mesoamerica’ is a culture area, and it lies completely within Middle America, and consists of most of modern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and parts of Honduras and El Salvador.

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Mesoamerica is defined by the widespread presence of a set of shared traits, but perhaps the most important of these was the cultivation of maize (corn) as a staple crop. The cultural limits of Mesoamerica are the same as the cultivation limits of maize over consistently large areas. The high caloric and protein value of maize permitted the development of large and dense population aggregates, farming villages, and, eventually, diverse and sophisticated cities. Crop surpluses supported the growth of nonfarming specialists, artisans who created material goods, and administrators who organized the economic, political, and spiritual sectors of society. Mesoamerica’s culture history began before maize was cultivated, with the nomadic hunters of the Palaeoindian period. By the end of the succeeding Archaic period, mobile hunter-foragers were experimenting with cultivation of progenitors of domesticated maize. The next period, the Formative, is initiated by the establishment of farming villages with maize cultivation. By AD 1000, the Olmec culture had established societal and artistic complexity in Mesoamerica, and by the close of the Formative period, in the third century AD, Mesoamerica’s first true cities were rising. The next period, the Classic, was first defined by the sequence of dates in the native calendar of the Maya culture. The dates were carved onto standing monuments (stelae) that extolled the accomplishments of Maya kings, and this practice was thought to begin at around AD 300 and continue until AD 900. Although the definition of this ‘Classic’ period was based on limited information, subsequent archaeological research found that it was a time of cultural accomplishment all over Mesoamerica. Not only were there Maya kingdoms, but, in the Central Highlands of Mexico during the Early Classic period, the great city of Teotihuacan was in its prime, as was the city of Monte Alba´n in the Oaxaca Valley (see Americas, Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya). By the Late Classic period, these legendary places were losing power, and political importance was shifting to other centers, such as El Tajı´n in the lowlands of the Gulf of Mexico and Xochicalco in the Central Highlands. By AD 900, the great Maya ceremonial centers were being abandoned. The Postclassic period was thus first defined in contrast to the presumed idyllic cultures of the Classic, and Postclassic traits such as militarism and mercantilism were thought to represent a kind of cultural degeneration. We now know that peoples of the Classic period were enthusiastically and frequently engaged in hostilities and in trade, so these traits seem to be long-term trends in Mesoamerican culture history, and not specific to the Postclassic

period. Most scholars use AD 900 as the point at which the Postclassic period begins, and use AD 1521 as the end date, because in that year the dominant political confederation, the Aztec Empire, was defeated by combined forces of the armies of native societies antagonistic to the Aztecs, and the Spaniards led by Herna´n Corte´s.

Phases of the Postclassic Period This span of time of over 600 years encompassed three distinct phases. The Early Postclassic, AD 900– 1200, was the era during which the great cities of Tula and Chiche´n Itza´ dominated the cultural landscape, both apparently strongly influenced by the cult of the Feathered Serpent (Quetzalcoatl in Nahuatl, the Aztec language), which spread over Mesoamerica. During the Middle Postclassic, AD 1200–1430, citystages flourished in many regions, and in some areas, such as Michoaca´n and the Central Highlands of Mexico, ambitious rulers began to consolidate these small polities into larger confederations. The Late Postclassic, AD 1430–1521, saw these aggregates grow to empires known, respectively, as the Tarascan empire (ruled from the city of Tzintzuntzan in Mexico’s Michoaca´n region), and the Aztec empire (ruled principally from the city of Tenochtitlan, which became Mexico City). A large part of the territory of what is now modern Mexico came under the sway of one or the other of these major capitals, and the rest of Mesoamerica interacted with them through trade or war. The Late Postclassic period is sometimes called the Aztec period because Aztec culture dominates our view of this time. Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, was conquered in 1521 but remained the most important city in Colonial period New Spain (as Mexico was then called), and remained the capital, its present name (Mexico City) being derived from the name of the dominant Aztec group, the Mexica (pron. maySHEEkah). Furthermore, Aztec history and customs were amply documented, which is not true of other Late Postclassic cultures. We have eyewitness accounts by the Spanish conquistadores themselves (Hernan Corte´s’s letters, Bernal Dı´az del Castillo’s accounts), and later accounts by Spanish clergy and laymen interested in Aztec culture (e.g., by Fray Diego Dura´n, Fray Bernardino de Sahagu´n, Alonso de Zorita). Most books in the native style were destroyed as promoting heresy against the Catholic religion of the Spaniards, but a few were saved as oddities or were copied, providing another important source of information, and are widely available today

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in facsimile editions (e.g., Codex Borgia, Codex Mendoza, Codex Telleriano-Remensis). Members of Aztec noble families also wrote histories in this Early Colonial period (Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxo´chitl’s Obras Histo´ricas; the Annals of Cuauhtitlan). Because information about Aztec culture dominates the repertoire of sources, scholars tend to use it often to interpret the customs and history of other cultures in Mesoamerica, those of the Postclassic, and those much earlier. This practice is sometimes necessary because of the difficulty of interpreting the material culture record recovered by archaeology, in cases where no written documentation exists. Thus, for many reasons, the once-mighty Aztecs have cast a long shadow over Mesoamerican culture history. Their empire flourished a mere 90 years, however, which puts into perspective the importance of understanding other cultures of the 600-year-long Postclassic period. Early Postclassic Period, AD 900–1200

In the Early Postclassic period, Mesoamerica’s Classic period regionalism was overcome by shared cultural trends that spread quickly over vast areas. This process is exemplified by the emergence of two dominant sites: Tula in the Central Highlands of Mexico and Chiche´n Itza´ in the lowland Yucata´n peninsula. The sites are nearly at the same latitude, but 1000 mi apart. They share an architectural style which is characteristic of Tula’s locale, the Central Highlands of Mexico, but it is far from clear that Chiche´n Itza´ was built under Toltec influence. In fact, some scholars argue that Chiche´n predates Tula, but because we do not have the same kind of chronometric dates from both sites, the issue cannot, at this time, be resolved. Tula In Tula’s period of greatness, AD 900–1150, the site covered nearly 16 km2 (c. 6.4 mi2) and had a population estimated at 60 000. The city had been constructed on a new grid that obliterated an earlier and much smaller settlement. Its ceremonial center echoed certain features of Teotihuacan, but the architecture was innovative in its use of massive blocky pyramids, colonnaded buildings, and huge sculptures. Pyramid B is topped by enormous figures, males in battle gear, and also by columns with attributes of important Postclassic deities such as Tezcatlipoca, the all-powerful trickster god, and Quetzalcoatl (‘quetzal-bird serpent’ or ‘feathered serpent’), bringer of life and patron of fine craft work and important aspects of knowledge, such as keeping the books of history and divination. Other deities known from Tula who are important throughout the Postclassic period are Tlaloc (the storm god), Xipe

Totec (flayed skin god who represented agricultural renewal), Tlazolteotl (the wise old woman to whom confessions were made), and Xochiquetzal, a goddess who oversaw human sexuality and textile arts. The importance of ritual human sacrifice is stressed in bas relief sculpture depictions, and by the free-standing ‘chacmool’ form, a reclining figure used as a sacrificial altar. Tula’s size and grandeur was probably based on a combination of militarism and trade. Trade routes ran to the West Mexico and north as far as the Puebloan cultures of what is now the United States Southwest. Those cultures flourished at the same time as did Tula, and show traits such as the use of the ball court and certain trade goods that indicate contact with Mexican cultures, but do not show that the Toltecs of Tula had an empire that inspired the development of Puebloan cultures. The Toltecs carried distinctive trade goods by which we can track their contacts, direct or indirect, with areas to the south and east. One item diagnostic of Toltec trading patterns, and also found in later cultures, was the wheeled ceramic figurine, typically depicting a dog or other animal, its feet pierced to accept front and rear axles that bore wheels. These figurines have been called toys, but they almost certainly served a sacred rather than an entertainment function. Mesoamericans revered any object or phenomenon that seemed to possess a lifelike vitality, because they believed that the world around them was animated by spiritual forces, and anything that moved had this energy. The use of the wheel in Mesoamerica was never extended to practical applications, as it was in the Old World. For one thing, there were no domestic animals large enough to pull a conveyance like a cart (all goods were carried in packs by human porters, or, where possible, in canoes), and so there was no springboard for the inventive design of gears and machinery, as happened in the Old World. Another item diagnostic of Toltec trade was Plumbate ware, with a distinctive glossy deep gray finish. It was produced along the Pacific coast of Chiapas and Guatemala, but was found at both Tula and Chiche´n Itza´, as well as at countless other sites contacted by Tula in the Early Postclassic period. A further stimulant to trade was the development, in West Mexico, of metalworking. This was apparently a set of techniques first introduced from South America by sea contacts along the Pacific Coast. In the first stage of Mesoamerican metalworking (AD 600/800–1200), copper was smelted and poured into casts. Simple forms were further worked by hammering, and more complicated forms were cast using

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the lost-wax technique. The most popular items produced by the lost-wax method were bells, small spherical tinkling devices that were worn in groups in the costumes of lords, deity impersonators, and long-distance traders. Metal’s ability to produce sound was one of its most important features in Mesoamerican culture. Another was its reflective brilliance, and in the second stage of metalworking (AD 1200– 1521), gold and silver were used to produce a range of decorative devices. Alloys of several metals were developed. Thus, Mesoamerica can be said to have achieved a ‘Bronze Age’ technology, but it was seldom used to produce utilitarian objects, in contrast to the metalworking traditions of the Old World. Metal objects were widely traded, and while Toltec merchants may have strongly influenced the flow of trade in western and northern Mexico, trade along the lowlands edging the Gulf of Mexico was in the hands of Maya ethnic groups variously known as the Chontal, Putu´n, and Itza´. These traders took goods along the coast around the Yucata´n peninsula and also into the interior. In 1502, on his fourth voyage to the New World, off the east coast of Yucata´n, Christopher Columbus saw a canoe at least 15 m (c. 50 ft) long, with 25 oarsmen plus the traders and their families, and goods including woven cotton mantles, obsidian blades, copper ax forms (thin sheets of copper used as currency), and cacao beans to be processed into chocolate. Thus the goods included tropical lowland products (cotton, cacao) and those from the highlands far to the west (obsidian, copper), indicating that these traders were handling a wide variety of goods from all over Mesoamerica. Chiche´n Itza´ This other great center of the Early Postclassic was a Maya site colonized by the ethnic Itza´ group in the ninth century AD. Its name means ‘mouth of the well of the Itza´’ and the well probably refers to the great Sacred Cenote (sinkhole), or Well of Sacrifice, 24 m (c. 80 ft) in diameter, with its water level an equal distance below the ground surface. Into this well were thrown all manner of precious materials such as carved jades, copper bells, and carved wooden items, and also human sacrifices, but forensic methods are powerless to determine whether or not the skeletal remains are those of beautiful virgins, as popular legends report. Chiche´n Itza´’s architecture reflects two distinct traditions, Maya and Central Mexican, and in some cases a fusion of the two, such as in the Caracol, a circular structure with features permitting tracking of astronomical events. Other buildings are more clearly in the Central Mexican style, and these huge structures dominate the area extending south from the

Sacred Cenote. The Castillo is a 23 m (c. 75 ft) high four-sided stepped pyramid decorated with feathered serpent motifs. The Temple of the Warriors and its associated buildings are of the same style as Tula’s Pyramid B complex, and show the same use of columns on top of the pyramid, and colonnaded halls at its base. Surviving murals at the Temple of the Warriors show battle scenes, and also canoes in use that are of the same type as the one Columbus saw. The Great Ball Court at Chiche´n Itza´ is Mesoamerica’s largest, 146 m (c. 479 ft) long and 37 m (121 ft) wide, and it is one of 13 at the site. The ball game was played all over Mesoamerica, and the action was somewhat like that of soccer: teams or solo players moved a rubber ball around a court, trying to score goals. Europeans would not know about rubber-ball-centered sporting events until the sixteenth century, when an Aztec team toured Europe, but in Mesoamerica this ancient tradition dates back to at least 1500 BC, the time of the earliest known formal ball court (Paso de la Amada, in Chiapas, Mexico). Countless games were probably played on any cleared field, however. We know from Late Postclassic sources that teams and equipment had become formalized and that gambling on the outcome was common. It should be noted that in Mesoamerica the ritual component of these games was essential, and that the rubber ball was an expression of vitality that was critical to this spiritual aspect. Mesoamericans believed in animatism: objects, landscape features, and natural phenomena that are regarded as passive or inanimate to the Western mind were regarded as having sacred living spirit, and the rubber ball, with its capacity to move would be regarded as sharing in the animatism that enlivened the world, and which must be revered. Elsewhere in the Early Postclassic Chiche´n Itza´ is thought to have gone into decline at about the same time as did Tula, in the latter part of the twelfth century AD. The Itza´ established a new center at a Yucata´n site called Mayapan, which had a smaller and shabbier copy of the Castillo pyramid. Mayapan’s wall enclosed a closely packed area of mostly residential buildings, covering 4.2 km2 (1.7 mi2), with a population that may have numbered 12 000. Members of the Itza´ group also pushed into the Guatemala Highlands, establishing sites among groups such as the Quiche´ Maya. Toltecized groups also pushed into southern Mesoamerica, establishing Nahuatl-speaking enclaves as far south as El Salvador. Cholula was located in the Puebla Valley in the eastern Central Highlands of Mexico, and had a long history before becoming a major capital in the

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Postclassic. Its Postclassic identity was shaped by the arrival of migrants from the north, who defaced its Great Pyramid, though it remained, by volume, the largest structure in the pre-Columbian New World. The major ceremonial focus at Cholula became the Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl (demolished after European intrusion), marking the city as the pre-eminent center for worship of the feathered serpent god, and drawing pilgrims to the site. The migrations that brought adherents of the cult of Quetzalcoatl to Cholula were part of what seem to have been widespread population displacements. Ethnohistorical accounts written down in the native tradition, but after the European intrusion, said that Cholula’s established ethnic groups were displaced by migrants from the northwest. These migration accounts figure in the ethnic histories of many groups in the Postclassic, and some scholars believe that such migrations were exaggerated in order to glorify the courage and hardiness of tribal ancestors. However, overwhelming archaeological evidence indicates that there were many significant shifts in cultural patterns all over Mesoamerica, ranging from ceramic styles and mortuary practices to agricultural techniques and layouts of residences. Furthermore, some languages became widespread over many areas, and these include Nahuatl and its close variants, and also Mayan, which became important along the eastern gulf lowlands which border the Central Highlands of Mexico. These changes are typical effects of migrations. Many migration accounts dealing with the Central Highlands cite a place of origin called Aztla´n, whose heart was a cave called Chicomoztoc. In Mesoamerica, caves were regarded as sacred apertures of the living earth, perfectly suitable for the origin point of revered progenitors. In fact, Cholula, which is geographically placed between Tula and the gulf lowlands, seems to have been influenced from both directions, and also by its proximity to the increasingly important city-states of the Mixteca, whose territory extended from the southwestern Puebla plain down into the Valley of Oaxaca and to the Pacific coast. These Mixtec regions were never strongly unified; their political system was based on the independence of small cities, each ruling its surrounding hinterland, the rulers related to each other through generations of marriage alliance, and all claiming divine descent. The Mixtecs kept track of genealogical matters through their painted books (see, for example, the Codex Borgia), and the masterful cartoon-like style of their illustrated writing system became a kind of symbolic shared script over the Central Highlands in the Postclassic period. The association between Mixtec towns and Cholula was close,

and Cholula became an important center of ceramics in this style, which became known as ‘Mixteca-Puebla style’. Middle Postclassic Period, AD 1200–1430

This stretch of over 200 years marks a transition between the proliferation of small states focused upon modest cities, and the beginning of the Aztec Empire, centered upon the Basin of Mexico in the Central Highlands of Mexico, and Tarascan Empire, based in the Michoaca´n region of western Mexico. These were to become two huge and complex states that transformed the territories they conquered, and influenced many others beyond their reach. ‘Aztec’ is a modern word, a shorthand term developed by scholars to refer to the Nahuatl-speaking ethnic groups who saw themselves as descended from migrants from Aztla´n. Thus, there were ‘Aztecs’ all over the Central Highlands of Mexico by AD 1200, but the Aztec Empire of the Late Postclassic was in great part the work of one of these groups, the Mexica, mentioned above. Specifically, the most powerful segment of the Mexica was the group called the Tenochca, who founded the city of Tenochtitlan in about AD 1325, and since that time their city has grown from a modest temple pyramid surrounded by a few huts to the largest metropolis in the Americas, Mexico City. But in AD 1200, the Mexica was just one of many ethnic groups that had moved, over many years, from a homeland that had become inhospitable. Their migration accounts describe many stops where they settled and worked for a while, and Tula in its prime was among them. After these stops of several years each, they would move on, finally reaching the Basin of Mexico, where, unfortunately, other groups before them had claimed all the arable land. So they camped on a barren abandoned lava flow and lived off the lizards that flourished there. In time their toughness and their willingness to serve existing city-states as mercenary soldiers impressed their neighbors, and they were given permission to settle in other more comfortable locales, but in each case their aggressiveness frightened their hosts into rescinding hospitality. Finally, they occupied a swampy island in the Basin of Mexico’s central lake and there established Tenochtitlan. By about AD 1376, they had permission to establish their own noble dynasty; their first ruler, Acamapichtli, was descended from a union between a Mexica and a noble from Culhuacan, a basin town that claimed a line of descent from the rulers of Tula. For about 50 years, the ennobled Mexica flourished on their island, establishing closer ties with other noble lineages in the basin and serving as highly

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regarded mercenaries for the Tepanecs, the most powerful ethnic group in the basin. The Tepanec confederation was comprised of sets of local citystates, the Mexica among them. But tensions arose between the Tepanecs and the Mexica, and the latter joined forces with other disaffected client states and overthrew Tepanec authority in about AD 1430, taking over the confederation that would become the core of the Aztec Empire. The Aztecs are among the most familiar of preColumbian cultures; the Tarascans are not. In part, this is because the Aztecs controlled much of the area first encountered by the Spaniards in AD 1519, the gulf lowlands. Their influence was very widespread, and their language, Nahuatl, had become a lingua franca over a large area. However, while the Aztec empire expanded in many directions, in the late fifteenth century it was blocked, one valley west of their heartland, the Basin of Mexico, by the eastern outposts of the Tarascan domain, whose history during the Middle Postclassic bears parallels with that of the Mexica. The Tarascan core area, Michoaca´n, was an ethnically mixed region, and the Tarascans established themselves near Lake Pa´tzcuaro in the Early Postclassic. The founder of the Late Postclassic dynastic line, Tarı´acuri, unified the core region around Pa´tzcuaro in the early fourteenth century. The Tarascan language, Pure´pecha, is something of an isolate, resembling no other Mesoamerican language. However, the Tarascans shared in many typically Mesoamerican traits: a solar vague year (365 rather than the modern 365.25 day solar year); a calendar of 18 months of 20 days each, plus 5 extra days at the end; the veneration of caves, mountains, and springs; veneration of serpents and butterflies; the importance of human sacrifice, and autosacrifice (self-infliction of penitential wounds); and the ball game. Another trait that they shared with the Aztecs, to the east, was the practice of forging tribute empires out of city-state confederations. Late Postclassic Period, AD 1430–1521

In the Early and Middle Postclassic periods, over much of Mesoamerica, the dominant political format was the city-state. In the Nahuatl language the term was alte´petl, ‘water-hill’, conveying the geographic ideal of a town’s location, on a hill near water. In a larger sense, the alte´petl concept was similar to the Classical Greek polis in that it encompassed an independent political unit consisting of a central community and the hinterland it governed. Each such city-state was basically self-sustaining, though exploitation of local resources would encourage specialization in craft production and trade. In the

alte´petl, tributes from local farmers sustained the central town’s governing elite, including the hereditary nobles who ran the government and markets, and the priests who ran the temples and schools. These tributes were the profit from the local political system, and any ambitious ruler could see that if several city-states could be joined into a confederation, part of their tribute profit would be channeled up to the city-state heading the confederation. In the Basin of Mexico, this is what the Tepanecs had done, and the Late Postclassic begins when this confederation was taken over, after the ‘Tepanec War’, by the Mexica of Tenochtitlan and their close allies, the Acolhua of Texcoco (another city in the Basin of Mexico) and Tepanec separatists, the three ethnic groups forming a ‘Triple Alliance’ that would forge an empire. Social structure and ownership of resources One important transformation of traditional culture occurred among the Mexica at the time of the Tepanec War, and this was the institution of private ownership of farmland by individual nobles. As the Mexica rulers told the story much after the fact, the commoners were reluctant to fight the Tepanec War, so the lords promised that if the effort was unsuccessful, they would henceforth serve the commoners. However, if the war was successful, the commoners would relinquish their rights to conquered lands. This alleged pact highlights an important turning point: the spoils of war, the lands of Tepanec commoners, were not distributed among the Mexica commoners as had been the custom, but seem to have become a kind of private property of individual Aztec lords. Prior to this, and in common with many ancient civilizations, land and other property were held by corporate groups (such as the Aztec commoners’ calpulli land-holding groups), or land would be held by a temple dedicated to a god, or by the government, to be used by rulers and lords to support the costs of office. But in the case of the spoils of the Tepanec War, land became a commodity for an individual’s use and choice of disposition: it could be conveyed as an inheritance, or gambled away on a ball game or board game (patolli). Of course, the lands confiscated after the Tepanec War advantaged the elites, not the commoners, but the arrangement also insured that Tenochtitlan’s character would be firmly urban, because its resident commoners did not have the opportunity to establish farms on the mainland, but stayed in their island city. The commoners in Aztec society constituted the vast majority of the population, by far the most numerous social class. There was considerable variation in affluence and privilege within this class, with

AMERICAS, NORTH/Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica 215

most commoners working at farming and artisanry; they would tend the fields assigned to them in their calpulli rural village, and each household would produce the simple goods required for day-to-day life (wooden and stone tools, textiles). Some households would specialize in the production of items like ceramic vessels or votive figurines, and trade these in local and city markets, where other goods and specialty imported items could be obtained. Some farmers, such as those whose lands were confiscated by victorious nobles in war, became reduced in status to the level of tenant farmers. A few commoners were as wealthy and powerful as nobles. In fact, some commoners who distinguished themselves in warfare were awarded noble status with its privileges, which included the rents from farms worked by tenant farmers, the right to wear certain insignia and garments, and the right to attend the daily gathering of nobles in the main courtyard of the local palace. Other important commoners were the long-distance traders, the pochteca, who not only moved valuable goods (jaguar skins, jade, precious metals, and fine textiles) over great distances, but also served as spies when the Triple Alliance lords wanted to expand the empire into some unpenetrated part of Mesoamerica. Native histories recount several instances of pochteca merchants being killed in the line of duty, upon which the Aztec empire’s armies would march to the scene and annex the territory, sometimes sending the local population back up to Tenochtitlan to carry the loot and end their lives as human sacrifices. Aztec society also encompassed slaves, people who were owned by others and were servants, but there was no class of slaves; these were individuals who had been reduced to this status through criminal activity or plain bad luck. If their families could afford it, their freedom could be purchased. If not, they risked being purchased to serve as a human sacrifice (see Social Inequality, Development of). During the Late Postclassic period’s first 89 years, from 1430 to the arrival of Corte´s in 1519, the Mexica and their allies would expand the original confederation of a few city-states into an empire drawing tribute from dozens of regions extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific coast. They would also expand the political structure of the citystate, first into the simple amalgamation of city-states into confederations, and then, as the organization grew and became more complicated, the Mexica streamlined it so that the political empire of the Aztecs was a vast profit-making enterprise, its provinces ruled by tame local lords or Mexica military governors, overseen by accountants and bureaucrats, and kept intact by fear of Mexica reprisals.

Customs of Aztec warfare, for example, dictated that vanquished warriors be captured alive so that they could be sacrificed to the gods. Human sacrifice was ostensibly a means of repaying the gods for the gift of life to humankind, but it was also an important means of maintaining respect for the power of the Aztec empire to inflict pain. The major venues for human sacrifice in the Late Postclassic period were the temple pyramids in each city. One of the largest was Tenochtitlan’s Great Temple (Templo Mayor). The temple itself has recently been excavated and is now visible in Mexico City, and its seven episodes of building, starting in the early fourteenth century, were occasions for human sacrifice on a massive scale. The major expansion that was dedicated in 1487 probably brought the temple-pyramid’s height close to 100 ft (c. 30 m), with two temples topping the pyramid, dedicated to Tlaloc and to Huitzilopochtli, the Mexica patron deity of war. The dedication ceremony is said by one source to have involved over 80 000 victims, though others put the number at 20 000, which is far more likely, given the logistics of guarding, feeding, and sacrificing such a large number of people. The victims would have been war captives and other unfortunates sent by allies as human tribute, and also civilians from towns that resisted incorporation into the empire. Watching from pavilions in the area surrounding the temple were rulers from citystates both allied and hostile. The latter would have been brought to the city under cover, to avoiding alerting the commoners who fought the wars that there was collusion between rulers. While the ostensible motive for the ceremony was spiritual, to honor the gods, the political message was clear: the fate of those who resisted the Aztec Empire was death, sacrifice to Aztec gods. The spectacular size of this 1487 ceremony and the pomp associated with it would have made it the largest celebration in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, yet like many displays of political propaganda from all of human history, this one’s glitter and gore hid an uneven conquest record and an uncertain future. The emperor at the time was Ahuitzotl, who vigorously pushed out the boundaries of the Aztec empire. He was also responsible for the last great construction effort to beautify Tenochtitlan. The lake-bound city was subject to periodic flooding, and after extensive damage by one during his reign, Ahuitzotl rebuilt it, taking care to include gardens and plantings among the temple complexes and palaces. By AD 1519, when the Spaniards arrived, the city held about 125 000 people, twice the size of contemporaneous cities in Spain.

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The emperor who succeeded Ahuitzotl was Motecuzoma the Younger (aka ‘Montezuma’), who reigned from 1502 until 1520. In 1519, when Corte´s and his company arrived, they were lodged in the second greatest palace in Tenochtitlan. They had Motecuzoma live with them as a protected hostage, and although many Tenochca and Texcocans wanted to rise up against the Spaniards and kill them, Motecuzoma’s fatalism and compromised position made action difficult. The Spaniards and Motecuzoma and his courtiers lived together for six months and their shared pastimes consisted of feasting, gambling, hunting, and being entertained by courtesans; these were patterns of courtly life that were familiar in Late Postclassic Mesoamerica and Renaissance Europe. The eyewitness accounts that the Spaniards wrote of life among the Aztecs emphasize the many familiar aspects of this civilization. The Iberian Peninsula had just undergone a long series of battles to drive Moslem populations back to Morocco in northwestern Africa, and the conquistadors often likened the Aztecs to the ‘Moors’, as they called Moroccan Moslems. The palace architecture was similar, as was the practice of polygyny (‘many wives’ for one husband), and the general social order, with its large group of farmer-artisans supporting a much smaller and wealthy group of bureaucrats and scribes, merchants, luxury artisans, and nobles. But for all these societal parallels, the Spaniards possessed certain advantages in the battle of one great civilization against another. One obvious advantage the Europeans had was metal and simple machinery, including guns. This suite of technologically sophisticated devices and implements was probably of less importance than the diseases they brought to a people with no resistance to them. Smallpox and measles raced ahead of invading armies, destroying and demoralizing the natives. The Spaniards also brought horses, much larger than any Middle American mammal, and fierce war dogs. They also fought battles differently; the Aztecs fought to take captives, not to kill, and grouped whole cadres of soldiers under the direction of standard bearers. The Spaniards killed Aztec standard bearers and as many soldiers as they could, thus removing Aztec officers, who were also nobles. The conquest of the Aztec empire was finalized with the fall of Tenochtitlan in the summer of 1521, after a siege lasting 3 months which destroyed much of the city. Corte´s successfully lobbied to make the Aztec capital the site of the new capital of the Spanish colony, New Spain, and the Spaniards organized their newly conquered vassals into work parties to build the city. The organization of the Aztec empire was, however, left largely in place, a workable means

of drawing taxes from a huge conquered population that persisted at least until the end of the sixteenth century. Elsewhere in Mesoamerica, the Spaniards continued the conquest, with the fall of the Tarascan empire in 1530. Some areas, however, resisted conquest. Deep in Yucata´n, the last remnant of the Itza´ remained independent at their capital of Tayasal until 1697. In time, however, all of Mesoamerica became Spanish provinces, and the concerted efforts toward conversion to Christianity, eradication of ancient cultures, and isolation of New Spain from contacts with nations other than Spain worked toward making the ancient cultures there a shadowy presence. See also: Americas, Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya; Early Cultures of Middle America; Lower Central America; The Olmec and their Contemporaries.

Further Reading Berdan FF, Blanton RE, Boone EH, Hodge MG, Smith ME, and Umberger E (1996) Aztec Imperial Strategies. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Codex Borgia (1993) (c. 1500) The Codex Borgia. Dı´az G and Rodgers A, restorers, Byland BE, intro- and commentary. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. Codex Mendoza (1992) (c. 1541–42) Codex Mendoza. Volume 3: A facsimile reproduction of Berdan FF and Anawalt PR (eds.) Codex Mendoza. Berkeley: University of California Press. Codex Telleriano-Remensis (1995) (1563) Codex TellerianoRemensis, Manuscrit Mexicain 385, Bibliothe`que Nationale of Paris. Facsimile reproduction, Part I of Codex TellerianoRemensis: Ritual, Divination, and History in a Pictorial Aztec Manuscript, by Keber EQ, pp. 1–104. Austin: University of Texas Press. Corte´s H (1986) (1519–26) Letters from Mexico. Pagden A (trans. and ed.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. de Landa FD (1978) (1566) Yucata´n before and after the Conquest. Translated with notes by Gates W (orig. 1937) New York: Dover. de Sahagu´n FB (1569) (1950–82) General History of the Things of New Spain (Florentine Codex). Anderson A and Dibble C (transl.), 13 vols. Santa Fe, NM: The School of American Research and the University of Utah. de Zorita A (1994) (1566–70) Life and Labor in Ancient Mexico: The Brief and Summary Relations of the Lords of New Spain. Keen B (trans. and intro.) Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Dı´az del Castillo B (1956) (1560s) The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico. Garcia G (ed.), Maudslay AP (trans.), Leonard IA, intro. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy. Dura´n FD (1994) (1581) The History of the Indies of New Spain. Translated, annotated, and introduced by Heyden D. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Evans ST (2004) Ancient Mexico and Central America: Archaeology and Culture History. London: Thames and Hudson. Pollard HP (1993) Tarı´acuri’s Legacy: The Prehispanic Tarascan State. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Smith ME and Berdan FF (eds.) (2003) The Postclassic Mesoamerican World. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

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The Olmec and Their Contemporaries Mary DeLand Pohl and Christopher von Nagy, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary complex (ceramics) A term used to denote a recurring pattern of association of pottery vessel types, decoration, pot color, or technical attributes found within a region. Pottery complexes are demarcated both temporally and spatially. Early Formative period A period in Mesoamerican history marked by sedentism, social ranking, and inter-regional trade networks that culminate in the Early Horizon. Epi-Olmec During the Late Formative period, after the abandonment of the influential center of La Venta c. 400 BC, Soke populations both continued earlier Olmec traditions and exhibited cultural variability at sites such as Tres Zapotes and El Marquesillo in southern Veracruz. Formative period (Mesoamerica) Generally the first two millenniums of settled life in Mesoamerica, the second and first millennium BC, when villages, towns, and, later, cities and other features of Mesoamerican cultural and political-economic life begin to appear. The initial blush of sedentism is associated with mixed economies in many areas of Mesoamerica with maize playing a variable part. By the second half of the first millennium BC, however, the agrarian economy was focused on the traditional dependence on maize and lysine-producing beans. horizon Distinctive cultural traits such as art styles and architectural plans appear over a wide area. The Olmec horizon style occurs from West Mexico to El Salvador. Archaeologists recognize an Early Horizon primarily influenced by San Lorenzo and a Late Horizon primarily influenced by La Venta. interfluve A region, generally of elevated terrain, between two drainage systems. isotopic data Several isotope systems preserved in human osteological material are of relevance to archaeology. Plant and marine metabolic processes are characterized by isotopic fractionation, that is the discrimination of one kind of isotope or element over another. Isotopic variants of carbon (12C and 13C), nitrogen (14N and 15N), and strontium substitution for calcium are example systems. In some environments, the degree of dependence on maize, a xeric tropical grass, on marine resources, and the general tropic level of the population may be tracked. logograph A component of a writing system that represents a phonetic word as a single graphical sign. Middle Formative period A period in Mesoamerican history marked by the formation of small to medium-scaled, rank-based societies with polity centers marked by an emerging architectural tradition characterized by the creation of plazas, platform structures, and pyramids. The cultural foundations of Mesoamerican political economies, including concepts of kingship, the calendar, writing, among others, develop during this period if not earlier. palaeodistributary A senescent distributary channel of a river delta often still visible on the surface to some degree demonstrating various stages of infilling and lateral erosion by younger distributaries. Deeper palaeochannels may be completely buried. Ancient levees associated with palaeochannels are often associated with older settlement systems.

palaeolevee An ancient levee associated with a buried or partially infilled palaeodistributary. quincunx An arrangement of five dots within a square or rectangle such that the four apexes of the quadrangle are each associated with a dot and the remaining dot is positioned in the center equidistant from the apex points. settlement hierarchy Archaeologists deduce modes of sociocultural integration by examining patterns of settlement on the landscape. A hierarchy of site types exhibiting at least three tiers (e.g., primate center, regional center, farming village) marks a state-level society.

Introduction Shortly before the Spanish Conquest, Aztec priests buried an ancient Olmec carving as an offering in their paramount temple, the Templo Mayor, at the heart of their capital Tenochtitlan in central Mexico. This small greenstone figure, a 2000-year-old object originally from distant Gulf Coast lands, symbolizes the fundamental place that the Olmecs held in Mesoamerican culture. It represents the crystallization of a constellation of cultural traits that first appeared in the Formative period and were to continue as the foundation of indigenous culture in Mesoamerica as late as Aztec times. These cultural traits were tangible signs of significant social changes that took place in Formative Mesoamerica. This was the time of a transition in social structure that led to the emergence of rulers who centralized power and institutionalized social hierarchy. Traditionally, scholars have considered the Olmec to have represented an advanced chiefdom type of society. Nevertheless, evidence emerging for multi-tiered settlement patterns, imposing palace structures, and gifting relationships with elites in distant lands strongly suggests that the Olmec had a state-level society. Here we trace the emergence of core Mesoamerican social structure and cultural traits and examine the role of the Olmec in shaping their development. We focus on the Olmec sites of the Mexican Gulf Coast region. There is disagreement over the role played by the Olmec polities of southern Veracruz and western Tabasco during the roughly thousand year-long period during which the Mesoamerican (see Americas, Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya; Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica) cultural framework of rulership, gift economics, trade, gaming, religiosity, literacy, and historical praxis emerged. Over the course of the twentieth century, one group of scholars came to favor a ‘mother culture’ model giving the Olmec preeminence in the formation of Mesoamerican cultural patterns. Another group of scholars has favored a more decentralized vision of inter-regional cultural hybridization whereby emerging polities across the central core of Mesoamerica mutually contributed to, and participated in, the discourse

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Olmec archaeology began in earnest with the work of Mathew Stirling. Stirling began in the Gulf Coast Olmec region in 1938 with the intention of investigating major sites, including Tres Zapotes in Veracruz. Later work at Tres Zapotes was undertaken by Christopher Pool. Philip Arnold and Susan Gillespie, among others, have worked at a variety of Early and Middle Formative Olmec sites within the Tuxtlas Mountains. San Lorenzo became the focus of an intensive project during the late 1960s under the direction of Yale University’s Michael Coe and Richard Diehl. Coe and Diehl were the first to develop a well-researched ceramic chronology tied to radiocarbon dates. Ann Cyphers and her coworkers undertook later work at San Lorenzo. Stacy Symmonds, Carl Wendt, and others have conducted systematic research in the Coatzacoalcos basin adjacent to San Lorenzo. The nearby ritual shrine site, El Manatı´, with its sequence of spring-focused caches of ceremonial celts and wooden busts, was excavated by Ponciano Ortı´z Caballos and Ma. del Carmen Rodriguez. Following Frans Blom’s initial visit to La Venta in Tabasco, Stirling excavated the site and was followed by Heizer, Drucker, and the Mexican archaeologist Pin˜a Chan. More recently, work at La Venta was renewed by Rebecca Gonza´lez Lauck and coworkers. William Rust documented a network of settlement beyond the polity core, possibly similar in organization to that documented by Cyphers and colleagues around San Lorenzo. Work at several sites subsidiary to La Venta by archaeologists, including Mark Raab at Isla Alor and Mary Pohl and Kevin Pope at San

of creation of statecraft and its attendant systems of rituality and symbol. The most important of the Olmec contemporaries are the sites of Coapexco, Tlapacoya, and Tlatilco in the in the Basin of Mexico, Chiapa de Corzo, San Isidro, and Libertad in Chiapas, Chalcatzingo in Morelos, Teopantecuanitla´n in Guerrero, La Blanca in west Guatemala, and Chalchuapa in El Salvador. The investigations are the work of archaeologists such as Grove, Gillespie, Cyphers, Niederberger, Tolstoy, Paradis, Martı´nez Donjua´n, Love, and Clark and other New World Archaeological Foundation archaeologists.

Background of Olmec Studies Scholars recognize that the Olmec were a key factor in the foundation of Mesoamerican culture, but there is disagreement about what the term Olmec refers to and who the Olmec were. Historically, the term Olmec has signified a particular art style, a constellation of cultural traits, the materialization of an emergent rituality associated with developing Mesoamerican political economies, and a regional archaeological culture that developed within the Gulf coastal lowlands of the Mexican state of Veracruz and adjacent Tabasco during the centuries between roughly 1500 and 400 BC (Figure 1). The first recognition of the distinctive complex of art associated with the archaeological Olmec is attributed to Jose´ Melgar who published an account of a colossal carved head at Tres Zapotes in 1871.

22⬚N

20⬚N Chalcatzingo

18⬚N

Tres Zapotes

La Venta San Lorenzo

Juxtlahuaca

16⬚N

Pijijiapan Mazatan 14⬚N Chalchuapa 500 km

12⬚N 104⬚W

100⬚W

96⬚W

92⬚W

88⬚W

84⬚W

80⬚W CvN

Figure 1 Map of the Olmec region within Mesoamerica showing important sites mentioned in the text. The three major Olmec sites, San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes are shown with 50 km radius circles, approximations of possible zones of primary economic interaction. La Venta acquired resources, boulders and cobbles for grinding stones, larger stone for sculpture and architectural elements, and volcanic ash for pottery temper, from as far or further afield than the 50 km circle shown here. Both San Lorenzo and La Venta acquired raw materials for sculpture from the Tuxtla Mountains. Secondary and tertiary centers associated with each Olmec capital are well contained within these circles.

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Andre´s, has provided detailed ceramic, palynological, and subsistence history for the La Venta region. Further east, following initial work by Edward Sisson, Christopher von Nagy undertook a systematic survey of the Plan Chontalpa region documenting a network of ancient Olmec settlement along a series of ancient distributary channels. Significantly, these projects have provided robust palaeobotanical, zooarchaeological, and palynological data on subsistence systems. Historical linguists such as Terrence Kaufman have determined that speakers of the Mixe-Soke language group, specifically the Soke, are the probable descendents of the ancient Olmec.

Olmec Political Economies The Olmec represent the culmination of milleniums of lowland Mesoamerican cultural development that resulted in a burst of sociopolitical change during the course of the second millennium BC, reaching an apogee during the Early Horizon period that saw San Lorenzo’s dominance and participation in the foundations for later Mesoamerican political and economic systems during the Middle and into the Late Formative periods. During the roughly 1600 years represented by these developments, the societies of the southern Gulf lowland region of Veracruz and the adjacent Tabasco Coastal Plain underwent fundamental economic and cultural transformations that saw the rise of a mixed agrarian economy in the rich, seasonally flooded lowlands of the region, followed later by shifts toward the classic Mesoamerican maize-based subsistence economy, the emergence of complex social and political-economic networks reflected in archaeological settlement hierarchies, the differentiation of society into a ranked and

occupationally differentiated population, the emergence of kingship, political rituality, and the development of the foundations of writing. A diverse subsistence base, consisting of wild plant and tree use, a range of domesticated species, wild mammal, reptile, and fish species, as well as coastal shellfish, constituted a rich, cyclic resource base that provided a calorie and protein base that allowed for the florescence of complex culture in the region. Within the exceptionally rich region of the riverine and deltaic lowlands (Figure 2), this resource base fueled the emergence of complex networks of communities ranging from small hamlets located along natural levees, larger villages and village clusters, some with evidence of community structures, to towns and polity capitals such as San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes. Though the complexity of the San Lorenzo region appears unmatched during the Early Horizon, later developments in the Olmec region are part of the developing mosaic of Mesoamerica and demonstrate multifaceted linkages with other regions. Stylistic links, commodity and gift exchanges, and outright expansions out from the Olmec Gulf Coast lowlands suggest a complex picture of interrelationships and rivalries. Chronology of the Olmec Heartland

In general terms, the chronology of the Olmec can be divided into the Initial Formative, Early Formative, Middle Formative, corresponding to the Olmec proper, and the Late Formative, characterized by a series of Epi-Olmec societies that continued to experiment and innovate. Archaeological evidence for very early populations is largely absent, either buried under meters of alluvium, laterally eroded by meandering channels, or lying unremarked and potentially deflated

Figure 2 Modern canoe in a palaeodistributary of the Grijalva River delta. Photograph by Christopher von Nagy.

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in upland areas where erosion may have dominated long-term landscape processes. The earliest evidence for a ceramic-using population corresponds with the Ojochi or Pellicer ceramic complexes of the Coatzacoalos river basin, El Manatı´, and the western Grijalva delta in Tabasco (see Table 1 and Figure 3). This pottery tradition demonstrates significant stylistic links to southern Chiapas paralleling the linguistic suggestion of a northern immigrant group of Sokean speakers. Cultural patterns, such as ritual beverage consumption, are an important aspect of the pottery tradition from this early period through to the beginning of the post-La Venta Epi-Olmec period. The apogee of San Lorenzo and the Coatzacoalcos River region coincides with the last part of the Early Formative period and, due to the widespread appearance of Olmec iconography on pottery and other artifacts, is sometimes termed the Early Horizon. Early

Formative populations are present but poorly understood in the area of Tres Zapotes and are present in low density in the Tuxtlas. Like the Coatzacoalcos floodplain, the western Grijalva delta has a substantial Early Formative occupation to the east of La Venta. The Middle Formative period marks a population expansion into new areas, such as Laguna de los Cerros, the fringe of the Grijalva delta where La Venta is located, but a general collapse in the Coatzacoalcos lowlands. Dense populations are documented along a number of distributary channels in the Grijalva delta. The Middle Formative Olmec region is marked by several ceramic horizons, which like the Early Horizon complexes, document connections ranging from coastal Chiapas to the south, the Usumacinta region to the east, and Central Mexico to the west. In the east, an increasingly evident Maya presence is noted at the end of the Olmec period. This

Table 1 Overview chronology of the Olmec Complex 1500–1250 BC 1775–1500 cal BC

Pre-Early Horizon complexes Figure 3 column A Early Ojochi complex pottery around San Lorenzo and Pellicer complex pottery in Tabasco mark the beginning of the documented ceramic traditions of the Olmec region. Bottles, simple to slightly complex bowls, simple dishes, plain and red slipped vessels dominate collections at this point. Tecomates are very common. Reduplication of botanical forms – squash and gourds – is an important aspect of this tradition. Rimmed vessels similar to Oco´s examples from southern Chiapas are common. Increasingly common use of differential firing of, in particular, bottles for ritual beverage consumption.

1250–900 BC 1450–1005 cal BC

Early Horizon complexes Figure 3 column B Early Horizon phase pottery from the Olmec area manifests a series of changes linked to the formation of an extensive horizon marked by distinctive gouge-incised and ‘Olmec’ iconography and curvilinear, often pars pro toto references to elements of the broader emergent Early Formative signary. Drop in the frequencies of bottles indicating important changes in the social use of fancy pottery. Dishes with flared sides, outcurved dishes, plain and striated tecomates, and rim bolstering manufactured of white-clear through, black clear through, white-slipped, and differentially-fired pottery are typical elements of assemblages. Some areas of interior Chiapas, such as the Grijalva corridor at the now flooded site of San Isidro demonstrate strong similarities to coastal pottery traditions.

900–400 BC 1005–400 cal BC

Middle Horizon complexes Figure 3 columns C, D, and E Ceramically, the Middle Formative can be divided into successive complexes. Initial Middle Formative complexes are characterized by flared bowls and dishes, some with massively everted rims, and commonly decorated with variations on the ‘double-line break’ motif, plain smaller tecomates, and larger cooking tecomates, later ollas, are common forms (column C). Perhaps as early as 700 BC a ceramic shift occurs with the appearance of composite silhouette dishes with flared walls and a variety of other novel forms (column D). A wide range of forms was produced, including flared wall serving dishes and plates linked to public feasting and rituality. Sometime around 500 BC shifts in bowl and plate design occur with the introduction of saddle-rimmed bowls (column E), wide-rimmed, flared-wall dishes, and changes in surface decoration. Repeated, close stylistic similarities to coastal Chiapan pottery.

400–BC 400–cal BC

Epi-Olmec complexes The failure of La Venta around 400 BC marks the end of the thousand year period generally understood as ‘Olmec.’ Sites such as Tres Zapotes continued as major focal points of population. Innovations in the Late Formative or Epi-Olmec period such as the development of a fully developed writing system occurred during this period. At Tres Zapotes and other sites around the Tuxtlas there is an essential continuity in the types and forms produced. In Tabasco, the collapse of La Venta coincides with the spread of Maya ceramics into western Tabasco.

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(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

Figure 3 Ceramics of the Olmec region. (a) Pre-Early Horizon bottles and contemporary forms. (b) Early Horizon gouge-incised and selected contemporary forms. (c) Selected Early Middle Formative forms associated with Early La Venta and neighboring sites. (d) Middle Formative forms associated with the apogee of La Venta. (e) Middle Formative forms associated with the terminal Formative occupation at La Venta with design similarities to Tuxtla and Tres Zapotes forms. Redrawn from von Nagy 2003 and (vessel B3) Coe MD and Diehl RA (1980) In: The Land of the Olmec. The People of the River. Austin, TX: The University of Texas Press.

phenomenon is also evidenced in the Isthmus focus of Epi-Olmec societies such as Tres Zapotes and the society that produced the La Mojarra stela, lasting until the arrival of increasingly strong Central Mexican influence ultimately tied to Teotihuacan. Calendar dates for Olmec ceramic phases and complexes are based on an increasingly large and reasonably well-contextualized set of radiocarbon assays, including samples from well-delineated middens in bell-shaped or larger pits or on palaeobotanical remains using accelerator dating. Nonetheless, many dates still derive from charcoal recovered in fill and less ideal contexts. Early Olmec dates calibrate well, but Middle Formative date calibration presents a particular and yet unresolved challenge due to changes in the production of upper atmosphere 14C. Dates in the range of roughly 800–400 BC (c. 1005–400 cal BC) are exceptionally difficult to use. Calibrated probability ranges allow for errors of a hundred years or more. A date in the uncalibrated range of 750–400 BC has a high probability of falling within any portion of this range. Due to this problem, phase and complex boundaries should remain tentative. Olmec Subsistence Strategies and Food Ritual

Olmec foodways comprised a varied diet. Patterns of consumption of maize, sunflower, and manioc as well as wild foods such as squash and nuts of the corozo plam established in the Archaic period by c. 5000 BC underwent elaboration during the Early and Middle Formative periods after 1500 BC. Domesticated beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) were added to the menu. Domesticated dog (Canis familiaris) was the single most important source of meat (10% of the vertebrate

remains) at San Lorenzo in the Early Formative period. Early Formative Olmec also focused on aquatic resources, particularly snook (Centropomus or robalo), an estuarine fish that would have been available near San Lorenzo during the rainy season floods, and mud turtles (the closely related species Claudius, Kinosternon, and Staurotypus). Larger terrestrial mammals such as deer were scarce. A shift in the Middle Formative period set the course for dietary preferences characteristic of later Mesoamerican cultures (Figure 4). Data available for the La Venta client site of San Andre´s show a new focus on white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), especially in deposits that represent remains of feasting. This shift might have had ritual symbolic significance in terms of an Olmec predator/prey or victor/ vanquished ideology with deer representing the prey. Later elites, such as the Maya, would copy this hallmark of the Olmec diet. Maize was a significant element of the diet as well as the iconography and early glyphs though its position was more restrained than seen in later Mesoamerican cultures. San Andre´s excavations uncovered maize cobs radiocarbon dated to the seventh century BC, and maize starch grains and residues have been detected on grinding stones from Middle Formative feasting contexts at the site. Nevertheless, carbon isotope data from human bone found in the same feasting refuse indicates that maize made up only about 50% of the diet. The Classic period Maya, by comparison, ate a diet of up to 90% maize. Maize and sunflower consumption may have been a marker of Olmec ethnic identity. Some present-day Nahuatl-speakers believe that consumption of maize

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Figure 4 Formative period botanical remains from San Andre´s, Tabasco. (a) Maize (Zea mays); (b) Chile pepper (Capsicum annuum); (c) sunflower achene (Helianthus annuus); (d) calabasa silvestre (Cionosicyos macrantha). Identifications and photographs by David Lentz.

is a way of taking in the energy of the sun, and past sunflower seed consumption might have had similar connotations. Unequivocal representations of maize and sunflower are unexpectedly rare in Olmec iconography as well as in well-preserved archaeological deposits, however. One iconographic example of maize is an engraving on a royal scepter that shows maize poking out of the belly of a composite crocodilian animal, and the same element appears transformed into a glyph on a serpentine block from Cascajal that is inscribed with early writing. Actual remains of Olmec offerings yielded a different emphasis, namely the abundance of the natural land. Botanical remains that Ponciano Ortiz and Marı´a del Carmen Rodrı´guez recovered from the sacred spring at El Manatı´ included offerings of local wild vegetation (leaves, fruit pits, nuts) rather than cultigens.

The Settled Landscape Mesoamerica is a geographically diverse region in which a mosaic of early polities and regional populations participated in inter-regional connections manifested by the exchange of goods and spread of representational systems and political-economic structures embodied in the appearance of Early Horizon style and later Middle Formative, motifs, icons, and design conceptualizations. These early polities and centers of population are frequently associated

with riverine floodplains, valley floors, and other landscape zones of relatively high natural productivity and fertile soils that could support the emergent agricultural economy. In lowland coastal Mesoamerica, Early Formative sedentary populations are often associated with swamp and estuary environments where resource availability was relatively high. In Chiapas along the Pacific Coast, for instance, archaeological settlement, macrobotanical, ground stone, iconographic, and isotopic evidence indicate that the rise of sedentism and the formation of small polities were associated with these high productivity ecozones. Only later during the Middle Formative period did the subsistence economy begin to assume its classic Mesoamerican form. Current research in the Olmec region strongly supports the implications of this historical model. The Olmec inhabited a diverse and enormously productive natural landscape, a mosaic of landforms, soil types, and risk factors comprising seasonally flooded, subsiding deltaic and river floodplain lowlands, generally lateritic rolling coastal plain interfluve and upland, and the volcanic highlands of the Tuxtla Mountains. A diversity of resources and challenges characterize the region. Current settlement data demonstrate that during the Early Formative period most of the region’s population was probably concentrated along river corridors where the combination of rich, annually renewed soils, migratory birds, floodplain and delta-inhabiting mammals, and, importantly, seasonally and annually available fisheries resources made these ideal locations for a population pursuing a mixed economy based on a variety of crops, fisheries, and other resources. Later, during the Middle Formative period, population appears to have expanded onto adjacent upland areas. A series of major rivers disgorges waters from highland and coastal plain watersheds across the Gulf Coastal plain. North to south these rivers include the Papaloapan, the San Juan, the Coatzacoalcos, the Uspanapa, the Tonala´, the Grijalva, and far to the east beyond Olmec territory, the Usumacinta. In Veracruz, rivers cut through a rolling terrain of laterized uplands forming interfluve-demarcated river floodplains with complex riverine depositional features that, towards the coast, are of late Holocene date and correlate with the stabilization of sea-level rise. The Tabasco Coastal plain is a vast low lying deltaic plain composed primarily of Late Holocene deposits of the Grijalva and Usumacinta rivers, along with a series of smaller rivers such as the Tonala´. Documented Olmec settlements are present within the western portion of this delta in a region of surfaceexposed, relatively undisturbed palaeodistributaries of the Grijalva delta of second through first millennium BC dates. Fragments of settlement systems that

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escaped later erosion through active channel meandering document Olmec settlement configurations at various points in time. Conspicuous by its absence is a robust sample of Olmec households. Little is known about the density of houses on or off of welldocumented sites in the many small ‘tells’, or accretions of settlement, of the Coatzacoalcos floodplain and Tabasco Coastal Plain. San Lorenzo and the Coatzacoalcos Floodplain

The major polity capital of San Lorenzo is embedded in a landscape composed of Holocene floodplain features, in particular, palaeochannels with attendant meanders, cut-offs, and other typical river floodplain landforms. Archaeologist Stacy Symonds conducted extensive survey of the sustaining area of San Lorenzo, documenting surviving components of the settlement system. Settled localities include the San Lorenzo plateau and points along the boundaries of the floodplain, as well as numerous locations along levees. Many hamlets were raised above nominal flood stage either through accretion of the house lot or hamlet mound or through the deliberate construction of raised flood platforms, palafitos in local parlance. By the apogee of San Lorenzo, a three- to four-tiered settlement hierarchy evolved in the area. Sculpture is associated with the primate center, as well as with second-tier settlements, such as Loma del Zapote. San Lorenzo spreads some 500 ha across the plateau with a central core of dense occupation approximately 300 ha in area. Within this core were palaces such as the Red Palace and ritual areas. Loma del Zapote may have encompassed an area of as much as 400 ha. Work around San Lorenzo has revealed some data on Olmec households. Ann Cyphers’ work on the main plateau documented the development of terracing associated with Olmec domestic architecture. Within the hinterland, individual houselot locations associated with artificial platforms on palaeolevees were common in some areas. These small artificial or accretional mounds range from 18–40 m across and probably represent the accumulated deposits of single successive households. Unfortunately, little is known about the structure of Olmec houselots and households in these lowlands. Augering and excavation of a handful of houselots suggests that a central house structure may have been surrounded by a cleared lot of up to 50 m in width. Large, shallow excavated hearths are a feature, perhaps common, of such households. La Venta and the Tabasco Coastal Plain

La Venta is embedded in a dynamic deltaic environment constructed over the course of Late Holocene

following the deceleration and stabilization of sealevel rise. Cyclically deposited delta distribution channels, upland margins, salt-dome rises, and estuary flanks served as focal points of settlement. In Tabasco, the dominant site form is a low tell, locally known as an isla, comprised of successive midden, house floor, house collapse, and platform deposits. A three to four tier settlement system around La Venta focused on the Barı´ and Blasillo palaeodistributaries. San Andre´s is one of the larger sites in this system. The presence of sugar and other extensive cultivation to the east of La Venta in the Plan Chontalpa area allowed for a detailed study of tell density and distribution along a single major distibutary channel. Archaeologist Christopher von Nagy demonstrated a high density of slightly clustered tells along this channel. These tells range in height from tens of centimeters to meters above the crest of channel levees. A significant proportion of occupations is shown to be embedded in the matrix of the levee and are invisible in surface survey, however. Buried sites are common, as are zones were channel activity that postdates the formation of sites has largely obliterated traces of occupation. Data from San Andre´s, near La Venta, suggest that houses may have been placed on low earthen foundations as high as several tens of centimeters. They may also have had floors raised slightly over the exterior. Shallow, excavated hearths are present in the floors at this site. Also present at San Andre´s are a series of deep, large pits. These may have been used for storage, although some evidence suggests their use for the creation of high temperature fires. Large pits similar to those at San Andre´s are also present at La Venta. Small pavements of extensively reburned sherds are also a feature at San Andre´s. Tuxtlas Settlement

Settlement in the Tuxtlas paints a different picture from that associated with major lowland polities. Here, a settlement hierarchy was lacking until the Late Formative period. Amber VanDerwarker has shown that the nature of the broad-based subsistence system was a significant factor in the lack of development of hierarchy in the Tuxtlas. Hierarchy developed in conjunction with emergence of a strongly maize-focused subsistence economy and after recovery from a series of Early and Late Formative volcanic eruptions that devastated the region.

The Ritual Landscape The Olmec were the first in Mesoamerica to institutionalize kingship with elites closing rank at the top of a hierarchical social order. Olmec material culture,

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including ceremonial offerings of precious imported materials, large-scale urban architecture, and monumental sculpture, provides a road map to that fundamental social process, demonstrating the stages by which it evolved. A sacred landscape formed the platform upon which early kings founded their authority. The juxtaposition of an area of high ground with a water source characterized this landscape, which the Aztecs were later to call Water Mountain. It represented the place of creation, the source of life, or the navel of the world, the moral locus of royal power. In the Gulf Coast region, worship at hills associated with springs have been traced back to the early third millennium at El Manatı´, according to Ortiz Caballos and del Carmen Rodrı´guez, coincident with the spread of agricultural communities and the evolution of crops such as maize. By the Early Formative period (1600–1200 BC) offerings of highly polished celts of exotic greenstone, some oriented to the cardinal directions, had been deposited together with rubber balls in the spring, which symbolized the point of entry into other worlds. Emergent kings co-opted this sacred template at San Lorenzo (San Lorenzo Phase, 1150–900 BC), commandeering what was then a high island plateau strategically located in the middle of a Coatzacoalcos River tributary according to data produced by Michael Coe, Richard Diehl, and Ann Cyphers. The heart of the ritual center was a royal processional way aligned along the north–south axis of the plateau. Lining this processional way were at least 10 colossal stone heads representing portraits of past and present rulers. Sarcophagus-shaped thrones linked living kings directly with their ancestors, who are visible from cave-like openings in the stone. The founding of Middle Formative centers marks a departure from the glorification of individual rulers and their royal bloodlines and the new objective of creating a heavenly place notes John Clark. As kings consolidated political power in the Middle Formative period (900–400 BC), they used the force of mimesis or mimicry to capture the ritual power of a sacred landscape. These Late Phase Olmec centers featured the ambitious construction of huge pyramids replicating the primordial sacred mountain. La Venta’s elites built atop a prominent salt dome that already dominated a now-extinct riverine environment. The pyramid is 30 m (98 ft) high and has a volume of about 100 000 sq. m (130 800 sq. yd). Carolyn Tate notes that the salt dome, now carrying its human-made mountain, was aligned to three real mountains arrayed in a triangular configuration to the south. The number three, expressed everywhere in the world (for example in majestic mountains, the celestial star cluster

of Orion’s Belt, down to the humble stones of the domestic hearth) was itself a magical entity that infused the Olmec world-view. La Venta’s plan accessed all three levels of the Olmec universe. The pyramid touched the heavens. Serpentine mosaic pavements in the form of the quincunx, comprising the four directions and the center, as well as mirror-studded, cruciform caches of celts symbolizing the world tree, represented the surface of the earth. Huge pits filled with many layers of massive serpentine blocks represented seas deep within the earth according to Kent Reilly. La Venta Olmec innovated with stone stelae carved with images of deities and royal narrative scenes, which they inserted into the earthly plane. Sacred directionality and verticality encoded within the architecture of La Venta is reduplicated in incised and carved scenes throughout the Olmec world on larger sculpture and smaller ceremonial items such as greenstone celts. Following the sacred water-mountain template, Olmec royal ceremonial plans included constructed water features to symbolize access to the earth’s fertility. Drains made of imported basalt must have had ritual as well as utilitarian uses, judging from associated sculpture. A San Lorenzo drain system went through a stone deity figure and led to a boulder carved into a basin in the shape of a huge duck. La Venta sculptors chose a more explicit image of fertility, fashioning a large basin in the form of a woman’s vulva. Olmec ceremonial precincts were alive with color. Traces of plaster and paint on one of the San Lorenzo stone heads and in the mouth of a Teopantecuanitlan deity together with the presence of an uncarved stela excavated by Rebecca Gonza´lez Lauck at La Venta indicate that artisans painted their stone monuments. San Lorenzo’s stone sculptures were arranged in ensembles and set in a huge plaza paved with red sand and yellow gravel. La Venta’s color scheme was stunning. Brown soil shot through with thousands of tiny bits of greenstone shimmered. Blue-green serpentine pavements were filled with clays and sands in olive green, blue, yellow, black, gray, pink, cinnamon, and purple hues, all imbued with symbolic meaning. Many of these offerings were buried soon after their construction and were invisible to ritual celebrants. Red paired with its contrasting color green was a dominant color combination. Red cinnabar covered jadeite offerings, and the whole site was covered in a cap of red clay in its final construction phase. La Venta’s cosmic character derived from its celestial orientation. The hallmark Olmec site orientation to 8 west-of-north, its significance still obscure, was an ancient alignment that appeared early and persisted through the Olmec period. Olmec kings chose to found a ceremonial center on La Venta’s salt dome

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because its long axis is oriented to this sacred principle. The line that ran through the center of La Venta’s ceremonial precinct also matches this orientation and points directly to the central mountain of the cluster of three south of the center. The mountain is visible from the top of the pyramid. The central bars of each of La Venta’s mosaic pavements further parallels this alignment, and the four elements of the quincunxes are positioned at the intercardinal points where the sun rises and sets at the solstices. Olmec ceremonial centers also had a strong orientation to the sun as the principal animating force of nature. Most importantly the elevated ground, the plateau at San Lorenzo and the salt dome at La Venta for example, would catch the first rays of the sun at sunrise. The Enclosure at the heart of Early Formative (1000–800 BC) Teopantecuanitla´n featured Olmec-style monumental sculptures positioned so that the shadows cast by two of them passed through the center as the sun rose and set on the spring equinox. Loma del Zapote, located on the river below the San Lorenzo summit, featured sculptures of a kneeling humans facing the rising and setting sun. Backs of colossal carved heads at San Lorenzo itself are angled so that the king’s portraits faced upwards towards the sky. The present-day Mije term for the annual time periods and stations in the calendar, wi:npeht, means ‘eye rising’, perhaps explaining the orientation of the sculptures’ eyes. A key new solar feature of great significance in the La Venta cosmic city (Complex D) was an E-Group configuration that was designed to track movements of the sun. A long platform and a radial structure were arranged opposite each other on the east and west sides of a plaza. Standing on the radial platform looking east, an observer could track the solstices at either end of the long structure and the equinoxes in the center. This architectural arrangement was widely copied at Soke sites along the Grijalva such as Chiapa de Corzo and at Maya sites in the Mirador Basin in northern Guatemala, according to John Clark. The E-Group is central to Classic Maya site planning, including to the site of Uaxactun, where the construction was first identified in the area archaeologists designated as Group E. The Olmec kings posed as shamans dressed up as the sharp-eyed harpy eagles, allies of the storm and sun gods, a conceit that embodied the rulers’ insight into unseen forces of fecundity. The Olmec eagle-king painted sitting on a sarcophagus throne over the entrance to Oxtotitla´n cave has huge eyes. Olmec elites may have enhanced their vision with psychotropic substances that produced ecstatic trance. The snuffing trays were likely greenstone ‘spoons’ with a central depression, scored or incised with a figure in

flight, a common vision associated with ingestion of drugs, or topped with the crenellated eyebrow of the harpy eagle, another reference to supernatural vision. A San Lorenzo sculpture (Loma del Zapote Monument 11) shows male figure wearing such a ‘spoon’ suspended from his neck, ready for use. The ballgame, so central to all Mesoamerican cultures, mimicked the sun’s cosmic cycle into and out of the Underworld. Olmec kings politicized the ballgame, adding human sacrifice, probably including war captives. A San Lorenzo carving depicts a jaguar mauling a probable ballplayer, and La Venta Stela 2 shows the king with a harpy eagle on his back attacking rival players with animal guises, one the whitetailed deer. These carvings support the idea suggested above that Olmec kings had adopted a theory of history expressed as the relationship of the victor to the vanquished (or predator/prey) known for the later Maya. Blood needed to be drawn to ensure plenty of lifegiving water as well as sun. Children and infants were sacrificed during the Early Formative San Lorenzo phase at the El Manatı´ spring and in the Middle Formative period in the pillared enclosure in the sacred compound at La Venta (Monument 7, Tomb A). Human remains were placed as offerings under monuments at San Lorenzo. La Venta’s Altar 4 shows an eagle-clad king holding a captive tied to a rope, and human bones occurred in feasting refuse at its client site San Andre´s. Kings performed autosacrifice to draw their own blood on behalf of the community as well, judging from real and jadeite effigy stingray spines deposited in caches in La Venta’s sacred precinct. Pilgrimage to sacred hotspots was a core attribute of Olmec ritual life. At the height of San Lorenzo’s power, pilgrims traveled to El Manatı´ springs to deposit sacred insignia of kingship such as wooden busts of male and female ancestors accompanied by precious jadeite jewelry and scepters, one with a shark’s tooth and a bird effigy at either end. A finely carved dark greenstone footprint effigy captures the essence of the journey. La Venta’s sacred spot was probably Rı´o Pesquero, the now-destroyed Veracruz site from which many gorgeous jadeite objects have come. The jadeite representations of the king from Rı´o Pesquero constitute a radical departure from the ancestral wooden busts or even the royal colossal heads of the Early Formative period. The Rı´o Pesquero engravings show the king as a divine being. One celt shows him as the embodiment of the world tree in the center of the quincunx holding the harpy eagle as a ceremonial bar. Caves as well as springs were pilgrimage destinations to enhance the king’s divine status. Both natural features provided portals to other worlds and access to supernatural power and abundance as well as

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B

Monument 13

E

A

Celts from cache

Tombs A, B, and E

Structure A-2 Basalt column fence

Adobe platform Mottled sandy clay fill Mosaic pavement

Necropolis Complex A

Serpentine block offering Tomb C

Figure 5 Perspective view of Complex A, La Venta. After Drucker P (1952) La Venta, Tabasco: A Study of Olmec Ceramics and Art. Washington, DC: Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, figures 10, 14, 19, 20, 22, 47, and 61.

sacred, life-giving water. Murals in Juxtlahuaca and Oxtotitla´n caves in Guerrero preserve a record of Olmec painting traditions in the service of pilgrimage and ritual. A male striding figure is an iconic image in Formative Mesoamerican art; it occurs on early stelae with evidence for writing and the calendar at sites such as La Venta and Takalik Abaj, for example. Middle Formative La Venta elites expanded the pilgrimage phenomenon, notes John Clark, installing royal Olmec images all along routes of travel as well as in remote locations. Along the ancient east–west intercoastal Pacific overland route with access by river to the Grijalva Basin, they carved the rock face at Pijijiapan with the image of a ruler flanked by two women in front of a cave entrance for instance. An example of a remote location is a sculpture of an eagle-helmeted ruler raising a four-segmented pole representing the world tree way at the top of San Martı´n Pajapan volcano in the Tuxtla Mountains. The image of the ruler duplicates that of one (Monument 44) found at the Stirling Acropolis, the royal palace at La Venta, establishing the mountain top as the king’s royal domain. La Venta’s rulers understood that enactment of ceremonies on sacred stages kept the universe in play and

kept them in power as divine kings (Figure 5). They likely designed La Venta’s sacred landscape to draw pilgrims to worship at the ceremonial center itself. Many participated in the animation of the world. The feet of pilgrims wore down a pavement at the center of La Venta’s ceremonial precinct. Music, drinking, and feasting were core elements of the action. La Venta Offering 3 contained miniature greenstone flutes along with beads in the shape of brewing pots. At San Andre´s, the La Venta client site 5 km to the northeast of the ceremonial center, feasting refuse contained large platters, drinking cups, and brewing jars. La Venta’s Altar 7 (Figure 6) brings the oracular element from the caves to the ceremonial precinct. The central image is a huge duck-billed head projecting form a cave niche. To the duck’s right is a figure with bubble-like speech signs floating up to a sacred crossed band sign in a cartouche, a glyph-like element probably referring to portals to the gods. The condition of the altar and the associated imagery suggest night ceremonies. On the back of the altar, nocturnal kinkajou and owl figures join the diurnal harpy eagle. The surface of the altar was flaked off as though by strong heat, perhaps from torches staked

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Figure 6 La Venta Altar 7. Most altars have a seated figure in the niche. This altar is unique because it has a masked colossal head with a duck’s beak mask in the niche. The use of such masks may have been linked to oracular speech in the context of ritual or dance. The bucal mask is compared to a pottery waterfowl beak from the nearby site, San Andre´s. Line component after Follensbee (2000: figure 105).

nearby. Numerous grooves over the top of the altar suggest that the celebration involved the ritual sharpening of axes. Olmec kings built their palaces within the ceremonial precincts. Ann Cyphers has excavated the impressive Red Palace at San Lorenzo, a substantial construction with its platform substructure, red floors, and basalt roof support, steps, and drain. The Stirling Acropolis is believed to have been the residence of La Venta’s paramount elites, but it remains unexcavated. The difference between the Red Palace and the Stirling Acropolis was that the Red Palace was a royal residence while the Stirling Acropolis, surrounded by the pyramid, E-Group, and the ballcourt, was a sacred one. The colossal heads have captured archaeologists’ attention as the portraits of male Olmec rulers. The figures’ helmets have been thought to denote male ballplayers. La Venta figurines and sculpture demonstrate that women as well as men wore helmet-style headgear, however, and one must recognize that some of the colossal heads may represent royal women as well as men, suggests Billie Follensbee. There is a good possibility that the Olmec may have been bilateral, as were most pre-Columbian Mesoamerican societies. Several images portray a male ruler flanked by one or two women. The Pijijiapan relief, La Venta Stela 5, and La Venta Offering 4 are examples. The older women may represent the founding lineage. A tumpline carried by the woman on Stela 5 makes multilayered reference to her as both a nurturing bearer of food as well as the sacred relics that ‘planted’ La Venta as a sacred center. This description of Olmec ritual precincts underlines the thematic commonalities among sites but demonstrates how Mesoamerica’s first kings advanced their

status from royal to divine through their architectural and iconographic programs. Olmec elites played on basic human psychological instincts such as desire for communion with higher powers, altruism towards the community, and attraction to memorable events in a world that is essentially unmemorable. Anyone who has witnessed the pull of the present-day regional, now Christian pilgrimage to Tila, La Venta’s successor, can attest to the compelling, even coercive, power that such phenomena exert. Olmec kings used monumental constructions to advertise their power and monopolize labor and material resources, thereby preventing contenders from mounting any serious challenge to their authority. Competition played a part in driving the evolution of royal power. The Early and especially the Middle Formative periods saw the growth of royal pilgrimage centers competing with San Lorenzo and La Venta. Teopantecuanitlan and Chalcatzingo offered access to alternative versions of sacred landscape, caves and the water-mountain topography. The evidence for captives and sacrificial victims in the context of feasting and the ball game suggests that physical coercion, warfare, and raiding were a factor in the political landscape. In this regard, the Olmec differed from their contemporaries in Oaxaca, where warfare played a significantly more overt role in state formation. The Oaxaca pattern of physical coercion was to become the dominant one in Mesoamerica culminating in the Aztec state. Writing and the Calendar

Olmec elites developed writing in connection with their ritual practices, including the celebration of calendrical cycles. Mesoamerican people devoted enormous effort to developing and observing calendrical events, which focused on divination and prophecy. Olmec religious

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Figure 7 San Andre´s roller stamp. Date indicative signs are compared to the Epi-Olmec Long Count initial series glyph from Stela C at Tres Zapotes. San Andre´s is a subsidiary elite site of the Olmec polity capital, La Venta, located some 5 km from the center. Redrawn after Pohl, et al. 2002.

art is filled with iconographic messages. The evolution of writing involved the conversion of these images to language messages whereby the reader gets the writer’s precise message through representations of words, syllables, or consonants and vowels of a language. Writing was an important tool of early kings because it allowed them to capture and transmit the power of a message in a manner similar to their ability to capture the power of the sacred landscape by reproducing it (Figure 7). The representation of walking provides a good example of the process. The Early Formative greenstone carving of a footprint from El Manatı´ is essentially a proto-glyph. The image conveys the action, and the medium conveys its sacredness. The footprint sign then appears transformed into a written verb accompanying a striding figure on Middle Formative Monument 13 from La Venta. Early iconographic and writing technology relied heavily on the roller stamp, which acted as a small printing press. The inked stamp would leave its mark when rolled across the human body, cloth, or bark paper. A Middle Formative greenstone mask from Rı´o Pesquero demonstrates how the living human body was a prime medium for the transmission of written messages, which were also considered to have a life of their own. The fact that most early writing was probably applied to skin and other perishable materials accounts for the scarcity of evidence for its existence. Another early illustration of the evolution of writing occurs on an Early Formative roller stamp from Tlatilco in the Basin of Mexico dating to c. 1100 BC. The stamp shows a possible early Venus glyph aside a canonic Olmec-style head, all aligned with the quincunx and an early version of the flowershaped k’in glyph, a logograph denoting the word for ‘sun’ or ‘day’. Through iconographic image and written word, the roller stamp conveys the message of the sacred center of the world in connection with calendrical ritual. The stamp’s message summarizes the essence of Olmec religious culture.

Data from San Andre´s are significant given the fragility of evidence for Formative period writing and the shaky context of most early finds. San Andre´s has yielded firmly dated evidence for writing on a roller stamp and on greenstone plaques that formed jewelry, perhaps an earspool. The artifacts occurred in the context of ritual feasting refuse that could be dated through both radiocarbon assay and pottery chronology to c. 650 BC. One greenstone plaque features the royal double merlon motif inside a cartouche signifying its status as a written word. These glyphs are logographs, signs that represent words or concepts. The writing demonstrates that the Olmec had the 260-day divinatory almanac, which they were probably instrumental in developing and disseminating throughout Mesoamerica. This sacred calendar was comprised of a sequence of 13 numbers and 20 named days, whose permutations took 260 days to cycle through. The San Andre´s roller stamp shows the glyph for the day sign three ajaw. In addition to the San Andre´s find in a feasting deposit, calendrical notations have also been reported from other special contexts, Oxtotitla´n cave and Teopantecuanitla´n, where one of the monoliths in the ceremonial Enclosure bears a flower and two bars, possibly a very early record of the 10-Flower day sign. The Olmec used one or more logographs to advertise special messages and events in public contexts, and they also wrote longer texts, perhaps for more esoteric purposes. The Cascajal serpentine block, 26 cm by 21 cm, found in a quarry north of San Lorenzo and El Manatı´, contains strings of glyphs that in some cases demonstrate patterned structure. Many of the pictograph-like glyphs represent objects of ritual significance, such as the maize cob, flaming bundle of faggots, ‘spoon’, and throne. The fact that the block had a concave face suggests that its text was erased and re-inscribed, perhaps many times. The block probably dates to the end of the Early Formative period or the Middle Formative period.

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Early Mesoamerican writing is characterized by variability in form. Many glyphs are idiosyncratic and evidently went extinct. Others such as the calendrically-oriented ajaw and k’in glyphs persisted and were adopted by other groups such as the Maya, who went on to develop Mesoamerican writing and the calendar most fully. Local, Regional, and Extra-regional Exchange through Trade and Gifting

Olmec social, political, and religious structure demanded that energy be focused on importing substantial amounts of material into this stoneless, Gulf Coast floodplain habitat. Tons of basalt came to San Lorenzo, by river raft and overland, from the Tuxtla Mountains some 60 km to the northwest where remains of stone working have been found at Cerro Cintepec volcano. Stone masons carved high-quality, finegrained porphyritic basalt into royal sculptures while coarser stone went for utilitarian technologies such as maize-grinding tools known as manos and metates. La Venta’s elites expanded on San Lorenzo’s stone sources. To the north, the island of Roca Partida in the Bay of Campeche provided naturally formed basalt columns for the sacred enclosures in Complex A. Most of the stone sources for monuments and offerings came from the south, however. Cerro Zempoaltepec provided schists, andesites, and diorites for sculptures. Olmec elites were the first to designate greenstones (jadeite, serpentine, schist, gneiss, green quartz) as the standard of sacred preciousness symbolizing the life force in water and vegetation in Mesoamerica. The standard evolved over time according to Olaf Jaime’s study of over 1000 artifacts from El Manatı´ (1600 BC), El Macayal (1200–1000 BC), La Merced (1000–600 BC), and La Venta (1000–400 BC). The Olmec used distinctive blue-green, black, and dark green jadeite and serpentine in the Early Formative period (1600–1200 BC). Sources for these stones occurred at a distance of up to 1000 km from the Gulf Coast region in eastern Guatemala’s Motagua Valley, especially the Tambor River area. Craft workers carved beads, celts, and representations of animals out of this extremely hard stone, transforming them into sacred objects of power through their labor. In Middle Formative times (1000–400 BC), as Olmec elites at La Venta engaged in conspicuous consumption by constructing earthen mounds accompanied by massive serpentine offerings and caches, the dark greenstones gave way to serpentine and yellow-green jadeite. The Middle Formative sources were closer, that is, the Oaxaca-Puebla area (Cuicatlan, Sierra de Juarez, Tehuitzingo), perhaps influenced by rise of competing polities and balkanization of

frontiers Jaime suggests. Quality of stone working declined significantly in many cases. Many of the greenstone artifacts were deposited in an unfinished state. William Rust uncovered evidence of serpentine working areas in Complex E, to the northeast of La Venta’s sacred Complex A. Olmec elites at La Venta monopolized the most desirable yellow-green stone, leaving their client supporters to make do as best they could in the face of poor supply lines. Allison Perrett’s study of greenstone from the subsidiary site of San Ande´s showed that the material was unexpectedly abundant but was inferior in color and texture, exhibiting a blue-green hue compared with La Venta. Evidence for serpentine debitage at San Ande´s, though scarce, demonstrates that the material was worked locally, however. Complex networks of long-distance trade and exchange define Formative period Gulf Coast urban societies. Obsidian and ceramics provide the best opportunity to gauge the extent of these connections because the material is plentiful, many sources are known, and scientists can trace the sources accurately. The data indicate that the Olmec drew on diverse resources from a broad geographical area and probably used social alliances to facilitate these supply lines. Sharp-edged obsidian was in high demand in Mesoamerica, and trade in prismatic obsidian blades is closely associated with the emergence of elites. The obsidian data, which are based on systems of visual identification assisted by neutron activation analysis, demonstrate that the Olmec drew on a surprising number of sources though only a few dominated. Robert Cobean showed that the obsidian from the Early Formative San Lorenzo phase at San Lorenzo came predominantly from Guadalupe Victoria, Puebla, in Central Mexico, which at c. 300 km to the northeast was the closest source to the site. Other obsidian came from El Chayal, Guatemala, perhaps with participation of inhabitants of Kaminaljuyu´. The probable route for the El Chayal obsidian was along the Soconusco coast and over the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The La Venta obsidian data indicate major changes in obsidian production and procurement in the Middle Formative period. As many as nine sources were represented at La Venta. Travis Doering reports that the dominant sources changed to Paredo´n in Central Mexico and to San Martı´n Jilotepeque in Guatemala, each more than 500 km from La Venta in opposite directions and not the closest available. Obsidian may have moved from Central Mexico south via the trade center of El Viejo´n on the Veracruz coast. The Guatemalan obsidian indicates a change in route along the Motagua river to western Guatemala and then down the Grijalva river via the trading site

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of San Isidro to the Gulf Coast. Whereas obsidian blades had previously been manufactured near the quarry sites, now macrocores were traded and manufactured into blades in elite-controlled workshop areas such as at La Venta Complex D. The La Venta site had high quantities of the golden-green Pachuca obsidian from Central Mexico, confirming the fact that it was a highly prized commodity. There is strong circumstantial evidence of elite involvement in obsidian manufacture and distribution at La Venta. A spent obsidian core incised with the sacred insignia of a harpy eagle was placed in a royal offering (Tomb C) in the most holy precinct of Complex A. Moreover, the obsidian from the subsidiary site of San Andre´s, 5 km northeast of the paramount center, came from the same sources as those at La Venta. The San Andre´s obsidian showed no evidence of local manufacture, and it was a scarce commodity, occurring primarily in the ritual feasting context. Inhabitants of San Andre´s completely utilized what obsidian they were able to obtain from La Venta using bipolar flaking techniques. Recent neutron activation analysis by Jeffrey Blomster of carved white ware fine paste ceramics and source clays from San Lorenzo and six other regions in Mesoamerica indicates the presence of long-distance trade in ceramics extending from the Olmec region to the Highlands. In this study, fine paste Early Horizon ceramics were demonstrated to be both of local manufacture and imported from the San Lorenzo region. The implications of this study place Early Formative San Lorenzo in a paramount position vis a` vis the social interaction, gifting and trade systems that underpinned the formation of the Early Horizon beginnings of Mesoamerica. There are clues to the social impact of this geographically extensive, labor-intensive economic activity, for example, in the formation of alliances along trade routes. The enactment of social relations typically involved gifting of pottery in Mesoamerica, and the neutron activation data tracing the movement of pots out of the Gulf Coast heartland are tangible testimony to alliance corridors. Middle Formative Grivalva sites with strong Olmec influence provide hints that these alliances might have involved marriage between royal Olmec women and local lords. For example, New World Archaeological Foundation excavations at Chiapa de Corzo uncovered the burial of a woman, possibly an imported

Americas Migrations

royal female lineage founder, accompanied by La Venta-style pottery. Ephemeral pieces of evidence from sites such as this in the Grijalva drainage provide hints of complex social relationships generated by Olmec trade and exchange.

The Olmec in Mesoamerican History The Olmec are significant because they show the evolution of complex society in Mesoamerica. The urban centers, multi-tiered settlement systems, monumental constructions, craft production, and elaborate trade and exchange systems document the fact that the Olmec were developing the state. A comparison between San Lorenzo and La Venta reveals how Olmec kings advanced their status from royal to divine, as they redesigned their centers as cosmic cities, expanded their settlements, and widened their trade networks. The dynamic of competing pilgrimage centers was a key factor in centralization of power, one that was eventually to feed warfare on and offstage in the Late Formative and especially the Classic periods. Later Mesoamerican rulers, particularly the Soke and the Maya, were to model themselves on the Olmec by copying their architectural plans, including pyramids, stelae, altars, and E Groups, adopting their writing systems, and mining their sites for jadeite paraphernalia with which to purchase holiness. See also: Americas, Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya; Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Writing Systems.

Further Reading Benson EP and de la Fuente B (1996) Olmec Art of Ancient Mexico. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art. Clark JE and Pye ME (2000) Olmec Art and Archaeology in Mesoamerica. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Coe MD and Diehl RA (1980) In the Land of the Olmec. The People of the River. Austin, Texas: The University of Texas Press. Diehl R (2004) The Olmecs. America’s First Civilization. New York: Thames and Hudson. Drucker P (1952) La Venta, Tabasco: A Study of Olmec Ceramics and Art. Washington, DC: Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution. Grove D (1970) The Olmec Paintings of Oxtotitlan Cave, Guerrero, Mexico. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks. Grove D (ed.) (1987) Ancient Chalcatzingo. Austin: University of Texas Press. Pool C (2007) Olmec Archaeology and Early Mesoamerica. New York: Cambridge University Press.

See: New World, Peopling of.

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AMERICAS, NORTH Contents American Southwest, Four Corners Region Arctic and Circumpolar Regions California and the Sierra Nevada Eastern Woodlands Great Basin Historical Archaeology in the United States Plains Plantation Archaeology Rocky Mountains Sub-arctic

American Southwest, Four Corners Region Paul F Reed, Center for Desert Archaeology, Bloomfield, NM, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Archaic period Archaeologically defined period of human occupation in Four Corners region, from 5500–600 BC. Chaco Canyon Ancient center of Puebloan society and culture in northwest New Mexico, which reached its peak from AD 1050–1100. Clovis culture (also Llano culture) A prehistoric Native American culture that first appears in the archaeological record of North America around 11 000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age. Dine´tah Ancestral homeland of Navajo people, located in northwest New Mexico. Dine´tah phase Earliest period of Navajo residence in Four Corners region, from AD 1450–1630. Folsom complex An early archaeological complex of North America characterized by a distinct leaf-shaped projectile point called a Folsom point. Four Corners The survey point at the intersection of the four US states of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona and the high desert plateau region surrounding that point in the southwestern United States. Gobernador phase Period of Navajo occupation in Four Corners region from AD 1630–1755. Palaeo-Indian period Earliest archaeological period of human occupation in the Four Corners Region, from ca. 10 000–5500 BC.

In this article, we will explore the lives of ancient peoples in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest from about 10 000 BC until AD 1755. This region is illustrated in Figure 1. We will do this in a logical fashion – by starting with the beginning of

human occupation (which archaeologists describe as the Palaeo-Indian period) and ending with the latest archaeological period of occupation (by the Navajo people). We will discuss the archaeological findings and lifeways of four cultural groups or periods over this 12 000-year span of human occupation: PalaeoIndian groups, Archaic groups, ancient Puebloan people, and the Dine´ or Navajo tribe. The first two groups – Palaeo-Indian and Archaic – are not discrete ethnic or cultural groups. Rather, archaeologists use Palaeo-Indian and Archaic to refer to discrete periods of time in the early history of North America. Because of the great antiquity of Palaeo-Indian and Archaic sites and the sparse nature of their archaeological remains (consisting primarily of worked stone tools and lithic chipping debris), it is difficult to identify discrete ethnic or cultural groups in these periods. Acknowledging that we cannot specify ethnic groups for these early periods, we will nevertheless discuss these periods in a similar fashion to the later sociocultural and ethnic groups (the ancient Puebloans and the Navajos) in this article.

Palaeo-Indian Period (10 000–5500 BC) The Palaeo-Indian period (c. 10 000–5500 BC) represents the first conclusive evidence of human occupation in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. In comparison to other areas of the West and Southwest (e.g., the Middle Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico or Colorado’s Western slope), the Four Corners region has seen little in the way of Palaeo-Indian research. Although PalaeoIndian sites have been found throughout the region, very few have been excavated. Thus, the general discussion of Palaeo-Indian lifeways and archaeology that follows is based largely on evidence from surrounding regions of North America.

232 AMERICAS, NORTH/American Southwest, Four Corners Region

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The Palaeo-Indian period is characterized as a time when the ancient inhabitants depended primarily on hunting of large game animals. During this time, archaeologists believe that the dominant subsistence strategy involved hunting a limited number of large mammals – what archaeologists describe as megafauna including mammoths, mastodon, giant sloths, and ancient bison. This is not to say that plants were not gathered and eaten – they were. Nevertheless, residential sites were located primarily in areas on the migration routes of the megafauna. Gathering and

use of plant materials occurred as a secondary activity in these locales. Thus, the majority of Palaeo-Indian sites represent areas where large mammals were killed and butchered. These sites contain large spear points and other tools are found in association with the butchered bones of large mammals. Four complexes or temporal phases have been defined for the Southwest Palaeo-Indian people: Clovis (10 000–9000 BC), Folsom (9000–8000 BC), Plano (8000–7000 BC), and Cody (7000–6000 BC). Figure 2 illustrates Clovis period stone tools. General

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Figure 2 Photograph of Clovis period tools, including distinctive fluted spear points. Photograph by Jonathan Mabry.

changes in adaptation and stone tool kits occurred during the transition from one phase to the next. Distinctive projectile point styles are used to separate these phases. In general, the Clovis complex is marked by the hunting of large and currently extinct megafauna (e.g., mammoth, mastodon). The Folsom complex continued the tradition of big game hunting except that large and now-extinct bison was the usual prey. During the Plano phase, a continuation of Folsom traits continued. In fact, some researchers believe that the Plano complex is not temporally separate from the Folsom. The Cody complex is viewed as a time when hunting essentially modern bison comprised the primary subsistence pattern. Some Palaeo-Indian sites are known from across the Four Corners region, including southeast Utah and southwest Colorado. Similarly, a few Clovis and Folsom projectile points have been reported from northeast Arizona: near the Hopi villages and in the Cow Springs–White Mesa area. The San Juan Basin of northwest New Mexico also has several documented Palaeo-Indian sites.

Archaic Period (5500–600 BC) Many archaeologists understand that the succeeding Archaic period (5500–600 BC) in the Four Corners region developed out of the existing Palaeo-Indian adaptation. However, archaeologist Cynthia IrwinWilliams suggested that the Palaeo-Indian occupants abandoned the region when bison herds could no longer be supported and migrated east. In this view, Archaic people of the northern Southwest were immigrants to the area. In another view, archaeologist Jesse Jennings suggested that the Archaic period dates back to 8000 BC in some areas and that

Archaic folks were contemporaneous with the PalaeoIndians. At this point, sufficient evidence does not exist to prove or refute any of these alternatives. IrwinWilliams’s Archaic sequence is presented below, as it is most specific to the Four Corners region. In addition, other Archaic sequences have been proposed, most notably Alan Schroedl’s for the northern Colorado Plateau, which is briefly discussed below. In general, the Archaic period is characterized by the replacement of the previous big-game hunting adaptation with a subsistence (food gathering) strategy focused on a mixed utilization of a large variety of plants (wild grasses, seeds, nuts, fruits, roots, or tubers) and animals (including deer, elk, antelope, bison, rabbits, and a variety of rodents). Plant resources were particularly important and a seasonal pattern of exploitation, with groups moving frequently, is inferred. In 1973, archaeologist Cynthia Irwin-Williams developed a cultural sequence for the Archaic occupation of the northern American Southwest based on her work in the Arroyo Cuervo area of northwest New Mexico (Table 1). The sequence is called the Oshara tradition and has five phases (periods of time): Jay phase (5500–4800 BC), Bajada phase (4800–3200 BC), San Jose phase (3200–1800 BC), Armijo phase (1800– 800 BC), and En Medio phase (800 BC–AD 400). Figure 3 illustrates the changes in projectile points and other stone tools through the phases defined as part of the Oshara tradition. During the Jay phase (5500–4800 BC), people located their habitation sites predominantly at or around canyon or drainage heads. These sites were generally small and seemed to represent a full range of activities: hunting, plant gathering, and stone tool manufacture. A wide variety of stone tools have been found on Jay sites, including well-made projectile

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points. According to Irwin-Williams, ground stone was absent. However, more recent research in the Four Corners area has documented the presence of ground stone artifacts on Jay phase sites. The basic Table 1 Cynthia Irwin-Williams’s 1973 Oshara Tradition Phase

Dates

Jay Bajada San Jose Armijo En Modio

5500–4800 BC 4800–3200 BC 3200–1800 BC 1800–800 BC 800 BC–AD 400

Jay adaptation appears to have involved a mix of both hunting and plant gathering activities. Numerous Jay phase sites are known in the Four Corners region. As envisioned by Irwin-Williams, the following Bajada phase (4800–3200 BC) represents continuous development from the preceding Jay phase. Regional population increased, as indicated by an increase in the number of occupied sites. Sites used by people in the Bajada phase seemed to show task-specific organization; that is, groups of people went on short-term trips from home base camps to gather plants, find suitable raw material for stone tools, hunt, or undertake other activities. Cobble and rock ovens and Material culture

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Figure 3 Chart showing changes in Oshara Tradition phases. From Irwin-Williams C (1973) The Oshara Tradition: Origins of Anasazi Culture. Contributions in Anthropology 5(3). Portales: Eastern New Mexico University, figure 7, with permission.

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roasting pits made their first appearance during this phase and stone tools were more refined, perhaps suggesting a better adaptation to the plants and animals used as food resources. Bajada phase sites are known from across the Four Corners region. During the San Jose phase (3200–1800 BC), dramatic changes occurred in relation to earlier phases. The number and size of sites, and, thus, people on the landscape, increased dramatically. Larger, more specialized activity sites with numerous fire pit or hearths and underground ovens were used for the first time during the San Juan phase. The tool assemblage was diversified with the appearance of large chopper tools, pounders, and basic grinding stones (i.e., shallow basin metates and one-hand manos). Quite a few San Jose phase projectile points (mounted on darts and throw with an atlatl) were serrated (with jagged edges), suggesting that a sharp cutting edge was important. Figure 4 illustrates the use of the atlatl in the ancient Southwest. Overall, the distribution of sites and tools suggests that a mixed subsistence strategy was practiced, using both plant and animal foods. Resource exploitation became more systematic, intensive, and inclusive. Numerous San Jose phase sites have been found in the Four Corners region. During the subsequent Armijo phase (1800– 800 BC), a critical change in subsistence occurred that was to influence the later course of Archaic and Early Puebloan development across the region: the introduction of maize or corn agriculture. Corn represented a

Figure 4 Figure illustrating use of the atlatl to throw darts. From Fagan, B. (1991) Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a Continent. London: Thames and Hudson, with permission.

dependable, seasonal resource that provided sufficient food for large numbers of people, and that also had the potential to provide a surplus. Interestingly, although corn was introduced to the Four Corners region by at least 1200 BC (and probably earlier), the basic Archaic period subsistence pattern did not change dramatically (see Puebloan section below for a more thorough discussion of maize agriculture). Habitation sites during the Armijo phase were very large and the number and density of sites documented indicates substantial population growth across the region. Tools increased in variety and number and ground stone became common. An elaboration of ceremonial items is also apparent. Most important, perhaps, is that a pattern of seasonal aggregation first appeared during the Armijo phase. Groups of people who were normally dispersed across the landscape through the winter months began to aggregate into larger settlements in the summer. Although practiced, maize agriculture was not critical to the subsistence pattern during this phase. In relative terms, Armijo phase sites occur frequently in the San Juan Basin, New Mexico, and across the Four Corners region. Although the succeeding En Medio phase (800 BC– AD 400) was included in Irwin-Williams’s Oshara tradition, many Southwest archaeologists believe that the latter portion of the phase (c. 600/400 BC– AD 400) represents the Basketmaker II occupation of the Early Puebloans (see discussion below). IrwinWilliams believed that the people of the Oshara tradition evolved into the Early Puebloans but she never identified the precise period for this transformation. During the early portion of the phase (800–100 BC), agriculture became increasingly important and population continued to grow. Use of ground stone tools (basin-shaped metates and onehand manos) increased proportionately with increasing dependence on agriculture. Also, the presence of a strong seasonal, annual cycle of movement is clear by this time, as groups moved across the landscape to find and exploit different resources (e.g., gathering pin˜on nuts at higher elevations in the fall and harvesting grasses at lower elevations in the late spring). En Medio phase sites are common across the Four Corners region. In 1976, Alan Schroedl developed a cultural sequence for the Archaic period on the Colorado Plateau that differed significantly from Irwin-Williams’s formulation. Schroedl’s sequence has four phases: Black Knoll (6300–4200 BC), Castle Valley (4200– 2500 BC), Green River (2500–1300 BC), and Dirty Devil (1300 BC–AD 500). The phases are differentiated based on diagnostic projectile points and perceived changes in population. The Black Knoll phase

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is characterized by Pinto and Northern Side-notched points. During the latter part of the phase (5000– 4200 BC), Schroedl postulated a dramatic increase in population, as evidenced by an increase in the density of artifacts on sites. The subsequent Castle Valley phase saw the widespread occurrence of Rocker, Sudden, and Hawken Side-notched points early in the period. Schroedl suggested that the population increased after 3000 BC, following a slight decrease earlier in the phase. During the latter portion of the phase, Humboldt and McKean projectile points became common. The third phase is the Green River, which is characterized first by San Rafael Side-notched points, and later by Gypsum projectile points. Finally, the Dirty Devil phase witnessed the continuation of Green River point styles. Schroedl postulated a low population during this final phase. Schroedl’s sequence was built largely upon data from several cave sites in southern Utah and northern Arizona: Danger Cave, Hogup Cave, Sudden Shelter, and Cowboy Cave. Before discussing the ancient Puebloan sequence, a perspective on the Archaic is offered here that differs considerably from both Irwin-Williams and Schroedl. In 1986, archaeologists Mike and Claudia Berry undertook a critical review of the Archaic period in the American Southwest. They made several important points: (1) most of the Archaic models currently used in the Southwest are deficient in one way or another, (2) models currently used are of little utility in understanding change through time, (3) models currently used are not supported by the chronological evidence, and (4) the premise of in situ cultural development is simply not supported by the data. Berry and Berry did not undertake a comprehensive review of Irwin-Williams’s sequence because very little of the relevant data had been published. Berry and Berry were skeptical that the Oshara tradition data would support Irwin Williams’s concept of in situ, gradual evolution from Jay phase hunter-gatherers to Later Puebloan agriculturalists. With regard to the northern Colorado Plateau Archaic sequence, Berry and Berry noted that a plot of absolute chronological dates produced a pattern that is more indicative of intermittent occupation than gradual increase in occupational intensity through time. Specifically, they highlighted a 1000-year gap in the occupation of the Colorado Plateau from 4000 to 3000 BC. Schroedl also evidently observed this gap but nevertheless chose to define a phase (Castle Valley) to fill the gap. This is a clear example of what Berry and Berry called phase-stacking to achieve the illusion of continuity. Another discontinuity is present in Schroedl’s Dirty Devil phase, from 1000 BC to AD 1. Berry and Berry suggested that Schroedl ignored this gap to allow for continuity.

As an alternative to models of gradual evolution and in situ development for the Archaic period, Berry and Berry offered a punctuated (or intermittent) model. They argued that the Southwest is essentially an arid and inhospitable environment that invited exploration by Archaic hunter-gatherers only during specific periods of increased effective moisture and proportionately greater biotic productivity. Thus, to believe that any area in the Southwest was continuously occupied throughout the period is incorrect. Rather, Archaic groups came and went as conditions allowed. In this view, Archaic peoples are seen as adapting to local environments and making small adjustments in their use of various stone tools and in their seasonal migrations. Also inherent in this view is the belief that, at certain times, large portions of the Southwest were simply not hospitable to human groups. Thus, temporary abandonment of many areas across the Southwest is to be expected. Berry and Berry constructed a basic summary of the Archaic era using period designations only as organizational devices. Period I, dated from 8000 to 3000 BC, is characterized by sparse population of the entire Southwest. The period is correlated with a general time of decreased moisture, the Altithermal, which limited the productivity of the area. Culturally, the groups that occupied the area are unknown. The culmination of the period was a widespread abandonment from 4000 to 3000 BC. Period II, dating from 3000 to 1000 BC, saw an intensive occupation across the Southwest. A reversal of effective moisture levels occurred and resource productivity was high. Unprecedented levels of cultural activity were achieved during this period. Period III lasted from 1000 BC to AD 500. Berry and Berry characterized this period as post-Archaic because of the introduction of maize agriculture. Although agriculture did not have an immediate impact, it set into motion a cycle that completely revolutionized the Archaic way of life and set the stage for Formative (Puebloan) developments. Nevertheless, hunting-gathering continued to be of considerable importance during this period, as well as later in the Puebloan period. In what is perhaps the most significant deviation from conventional southwestern wisdom, Berry and Berry posited a major influx of people during this period, as represented by stylistically diverse projectile points. They suggested that the inception of maize agriculture probably represents an influx of people from some external (and unknown) source area. This suggestion is in sharp contrast to the model of continuous in situ development that has been postulated for the Archaic to Puebloan transition by other Southwestern archaeologists.

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The work of Berry and Berry is important, as it adds a new perspective on the Archaic period and encourages archaeologists to examine their data and their preconceived notions of the archaeological record. In a general sense, their work parallels that of other Southwest archaeologists who have expressed dissatisfaction with traditional and gradualistic interpretations of the archaeological record. Given the incomplete nature of the Archaic database, however, alternative interpretations are clearly possible. The gaps that Berry and Berry have identified may represent actual abandonments or discontinuities, or they may merely reflect the differential nature of the data. Similarly, the inception of agriculture is not necessarily attributable to the influx of new people. Indeed, some archaeologists postulate that hunter-gatherers took to agriculture to maintain their lifestyle and remain foragers. Phil Geib’s recent summary of the radiocarbon record for the central Colorado Plateau evaluated both the traditional view of Archaic occupancy of the area and Berry and Berry’s punctuated model. Geib plotted more than 130 radiocarbon dates from 64 sites and weighted the raw data to produce a bar graph. Geib considered the influence of different factors (including preservation and sampling factors) on the distribution of dates, concluding that although preservation was not a significant factor, sampling bias in the form of lower visibility of certain sites may be responsible for some of the patterning seen in the chronology. Biases aside, Geib’s analysis did not identify the gaps in the record observed by Berry and Berry. The Middle Archaic gap, identified by Berry and Berry between 6000 and 5000 BP is not evident in the record for the central portion of the plateau. The decrease in radiocarbon-dated sites does reflect, in Geib’s view, a change in settlement pattern and lower population density but does not constitute a complete abandonment of the plateau, as suggested by Berry and Berry. A second occupation hiatus described by Berry and Berry, and interpreted as another complete abandonment of the area, occurred between 3000 and 2500 BP. During this period, the number of radiocarbon dates dips but some sites are still occupied. In sum, Geib’s work provided support for a model of long-term continuity in Archaic occupation of the central Colorado Plateau and he saw no evidence to support the idea that the Archaic period as a sequence of major population abandonments and intrusions on a pan-regional scale (as proposed by Berry and Berry). Nevertheless, he did not discount the importance of migration as a factor influencing changes during the Archaic period, and Geib acknowledged that more data are needed, particularly for the Middle Archaic.

Ancient Pueblo (Anasazi) Cultural Sequence The arguments of Berry and Berry notwithstanding, many Southwest archaeologists support the position that the Early Puebloan people developed from Oshara tradition and other Late Archaic groups who practiced incipient agriculture across the northern Southwest. Although local temporal sequences have been developed for a number of areas, the generalized Pecos Classification (developed by A. V. Kidder in 1927) is still used by most archaeologists to provide regional consistency and for reference (Table 2). The first period defined for the ancient Puebloans is Basketmaker II, which, as discussed above, overlaps the latter portion of the En Medio phase as defined by Cynthia Irwin-Williams. Basketmaker II Period (600 BC–AD 500)

The Basketmaker II period is dated between 600 BC and AD 500 in different parts of the northern Southwest. Basketmaker II, as currently defined at maximum, then, is as long as the remainder of the ancient Puebloan sequence. Basketmaker II is a critical stage in Puebloan development because it was during this time that the use of cultigens became a significant part of subsistence. The spread of agriculture, in turn, led to a more sedentary lifestyle. General traits of the period include construction and use of small pit houses, large storage cists, shallow grinding slabs, corner and side-notched dart points, the atlatl, one-hand manos, and cradleboard burials. The importance of agriculture, along with the initial use of ceramic containers, is what separates the Puebloans during the Basketmaker II period from earlier and contemporary Archaic populations. Figure 5 illustrates Early Pueblo corn agriculture with use of a digging stick. Various models relating to the adoption of agriculture among the Puebloans have been proposed, many of which have overlapping elements. From an evolutionary point of view, the adoption of agriculture may be seen as providing a selective advantage for the Puebloans that the gathering of wild plant foods did Table 2 A. V. Kidder’s 1927 Pecos Classification. Modified for the Four Corners region of the American Southwest Period

Dates

Basketmaker II Basketmaker III Pueblo I Pueblo II Pueblo III Pueblo IV and V

600 BC–AD 500 AD 500–750 AD 750–900 AD 900–1150 AD 1150–1300 Post AD 1300

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Figure 5 Depiction of early Puebloan corn agriculture using a digging stick. Salmon Ruins Museum collection.

not. In the absence of strong selective pressure, explaining why the use of cultigens would have become important is difficult. The most important selective advantage of cultigens is their dependability and predictability as contrasted with natural plants. Thus, initial use of cultigens probably relates to their seasonal predictability in given areas. It has also been suggested that hunter-gatherers who could most easily fit the demands of cultivation into their seasonal rounds would be most likely to practice agriculture. There are, of course, other parameters involved in the adoption of agriculture, but for the present discussion, understanding that the predictability of cultigens was a key factor is sufficient. In any case, there is good evidence that the Early Puebloans in certain areas (e.g., Cedar Mesa, Utah and Black Mesa, Arizona) were largely dependent on maize agriculture by the Early Basketmaker II period. Recent work has broadened our understanding of the Late Basketmaker II period, and the transition to Basketmaker III and Pueblo I. Using data from a project on the Rainbow Plateau of Arizona, Phil Geib and Kimberly Spurr identified perhaps the earliest use of pottery in the northern Southwest at AD 200. They also found good evidence of the transition between Basketmaker II and III between AD 200 and 450, filling a gap that Mike Berry and other archaeologists had identified. Geib and Spurr identified maize-dependent groups during the Basketmaker II interval. Other findings were related to turkey domestication and early use (by about AD 200) of the bow and arrow. Perhaps the most important contribution Geib and Spurr made is the understanding that

the transition from Basketmaker II to III was not a smooth, coordinated process. The traits they discussed – initial manufacture of pottery, dependence on maize agriculture, use of the bow and arrow, turkey husbandry, and the introduction of beans into the Puebloan diet – were not linked together as a suite and were not all introduced at the same time. Rather, these traits developed at different rates on the Rainbow Plateau and across the northern Southwest. Studying early pottery production, Lori Reed, Dean Wilson, and Kelley Hays-Gilpin contributed significantly to a new understanding of the Late Basketmaker II and Early Basketmaker III interval. Although archaeologists have observed brown ware pottery at Puebloan sites for at least 40 years, Reed and her colleagues were among the first to address the brown ware problem regionally. Archaeologists in the Southwest are accustomed to a simple dichotomy in pottery: brown is Mogollon and gray is Puebloan. In reality, a Puebloan brown ware tradition underlies the gray in most areas. This research documented the widespread occurrence of Puebloan brown ware and proposed combining many types previously split out, offering a few combined types that bring coherence to our understanding of brown ware pottery across the region. A large Basketmaker II population is inferred for Black Mesa, Arizona; a dramatic increase from Archaic times is apparent. By 600 BC, a firm commitment had been made to agriculture on Black Mesa. Basketmaker II settlements across the Southwest generally occur on terraces above major drainages and have been documented throughout the greater San

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Juan Basin and across the Four Corners region. These sites date in the interval from 800 BC to AD 400 and most contain maize. Lithic tool kits at these Early Basketmaker sites are indicative of an Early Puebloan adaptation, with debitage, cores, and tools showing use of local raw materials. The use of stone raw materials and the core reduction strategies reflect a more constricted range of movement in the region relative to earlier Archaic people, with fast, efficient reduction of locally available stone raw materials to produce usable tools. Basketmaker III Period (AD 500–750)

Recent work suggests that the Basketmaker III (AD 500–750) period was different than portrayed in conventional southwestern wisdom. Perhaps because of the contrast in A. V. Kidder’s original 1927 Pecos Classification (Basketmaker vs. Pueblo), southwestern archaeologists have viewed both Basketmaker periods (II and III) as transitional between the huntinggathering cultures of the Archaic period and the agricultural Puebloans, beginning in Pueblo I. In contrast, some Basketmaker II sites represent the remains of groups dependent on agriculture. Furthermore, by Basketmaker III, sedentary agricultural populations were living across the region. Such adaptations have been documented in the Mesa Verde, Colorado, area, in the La Plata Valley, New Mexico, on Cedar Mesa, Utah, and at several locales along the eastern and western slopes of the Chuska Mountains, among other areas. This revised view of Basketmaker III, with fully sedentary populations dependent on maize agriculture, is supported by recent stone tool and lithic studies, studies of pottery production and technology, and the latest rock art research. Figure 6 shows two Early Pueblo corn granaries in a rock shelter in southeastern Utah.

Basketmaker III remains in many areas of the northern Southwest apparently represent in situ continuity from Basketmaker II. Important characteristics of this period across the Southwest include large, formal pit houses, the introduction and use of the bow and arrow, two-hand manos and trough metates, gray ware and early red and unslipped white ware ceramics, and an increasing dependence on agriculture. Long, linear blocks of adobe rooms are associated with Late Basketmaker III sites. Figure 7 illustrates the floor of an abandoned Basketmaker III pithouse. Basketmaker III sites are relatively common on southern Black Mesa and in the Low Mountain area of Arizona, but are apparently absent from northern Black Mesa. In the San Juan Basin, Basketmaker III sites are relatively common and are scattered throughout the area. Pueblo I Period (AD 750–900)

The Pueblo I period (AD 750–900) in the Southwest is generally characterized by the extensive use of surface rooms and pueblos, constructed mostly of masonry or jacal. Kivas of various sizes where religious ceremonies were presumably held became common during this period. The widespread production and use of both neckbanded gray ware and early black-on-white painted ceramics is also a defining trait of the period. Agricultural production continued to be of importance for Puebloan subsistence. Areas with significant Pueblo I populations include Mesa Verde, Dolores area, the upper La Plata River Valley, and Chaco Canyon. In the Western Pueblo area, Pueblo I is viewed as an elaboration of patterns established during the preceding period. This period apparently represents a time of

Figure 6 Photograph of early Pueblo granaries in a rock shelter in southeastern Utah. Photograph by author.

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Figure 7 Early Puebloan (Basketmaker III period) pithouse at Cove, Arizona. Photograph by author.

continued low population density in the Glen Canyon area. Site frequencies are low, much as they are in areas further to the north and east. It is possible, of course, that many Pueblo I sites are obscured by the more obtrusive Pueblo II deposits and simply have not been identified. In the San Juan Basin, Pueblo I sites, although not as common as those of earlier or later periods, are present in moderate numbers; because of this, little population change is inferred for the Four Corners region during this period. Pueblo II Period (AD 900–1150)

The period from AD 900 to 1150, described as the Pueblo II period, is thought by many archaeologists to represent the apogee of ancient Puebloan cultural development. This view is due largely to the impressive remains found in Chaco Canyon (centrally located in the San Juan Basin, southeast of our Four Corners region) and the system that evolved around it. However, Pueblo II represents the time of greatest population dispersal across the entire Southwest, and much of this activity was clearly beyond the Chacoan realm. Across the Southwest, Pueblo II is a period of dramatic increase in site frequency and population. Salient traits of the period are multiple-room masonry structures with associated kivas and formalized middens, numerous black-on-white, red, orange, polychrome, and corrugated ceramics, extensive exchange networks and the development of alliances, sophisticated agricultural practices, and large complex sites. Figure 8 shows a Gallup black-on-white ceramic bowl. This basic pattern is apparent in the Western Puebloan area of northeast Arizona and southeast

Figure 8 Photograph of Gallup black-on-white ceramic bowl, distinctive of the Pueblo II period. Photograph by Lori Stephens Reed.

Utah. The majority of sites in lower Glen Canyon date to this period, indicating an intensive occupation. Site location in the canyons and valleys was apparently linked to the presence of alluvium and arable land. These lowland sites appear to be relatively limited functionally. Highland sites, in contrast, exhibit more evidence of a broad range of functions and activities, and appear to have been occupied yearround. Puebloan settlement on Black Mesa peaked during this period and then declined; the area was effectively abandoned by Late Pueblo II.

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Chacoan Society during the Pueblo II Period Ancient Puebloan society in Chaco Canyon at its peak (AD 1050–1100) was characterized by a number of traits that set it apart from previous, contemporary, and subsequent Puebloan communities and sites. First, Chacoan structures, known as great houses, were built in a monumental style (with three or four stories typical) similar (but unrelated) to the European Medieval castles of the same period in the Old World. Pueblo Bonito is the largest and grandest of all the great houses (Figure 9). Chacoan great houses are distinct from the majority of Puebloan structures of earlier and later periods because of their symmetrical construction and massive architecture described as core-veneer. The massive walls (up to a meter thick) consisted of a

rubble, dirt, or masonry core with inner and outer veneers of carefully selected, shaped sandstone slabs (Figure 10). The imposing size and height of these structures, and other factors, support the idea that the great houses were landscape monuments (in addition to having other functions). As monuments, the great houses were intended to impress and awe local residents, as well as outsiders. One of the more compelling aspects of the Chacoan landscape was the network of roads that were constructed between about AD 1050 and 1100. Perhaps 400 miles of roads have been detected using aerial photography and many segments have been ‘groundtruthed’, – confirmed by a field inspection. Typically, the roadways are very wide (up to 9 m or about 30 ft)

Figure 9 Photograph of Pueblo Bonito (Chaco Canyon) in 1921, prior to major excavations by Neil Judd and the National Geographic Society. Salmon Ruins Museum collection.

Figure 10 Photograph of fine Chacoan masonry in wall of Tower Kiva (built at AD 1090) at Salmon Pueblo. Photograph by author.

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across, and run straight across huge expanses of territory, climbing steep mesas and descending directly into canyons. Moving beyond the confines of Chaco Canyon proper, we see that the flourishing society centered at Chaco was quite far-flung (Figure 11). Archaeologists are literally finding new Chacoan-affiliated sites, outliers, every few years in increasingly remote areas. Nevertheless, at the present time, perhaps 150 Chaco outliers dating between AD 1050 and 1125 are known. As a group, these sites are similar to those found in Chaco, but are generally smaller in size, have fewer rooms, fewer kivas, many do not meet Chacoan standards for architecture, and most are surrounded

by clusters of smaller sites (villages, smaller pueblos, and nonresidential, farming, and other special-use areas). Notable exceptions include the ancient Aztec and Salmon communities in the Middle San Juan region, both of which were as large and well constructed as any great house in Chaco Canyon. Figure 12 is an historic photograph of Salmon Pueblo, taken by Timothy O’Sullivan in 1874. In extent, Chacoan outliers are found across four modern American states. Chimney Rock Pueblo lies several miles west of Pagosa Springs, Colorado, and represents the northeastern outpost of Chacoan settlements. Guadalupe Pueblo lies far to the south of Chimney Rock in New Mexico, in the southeastern portion

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Figure 12 Historic photograph of Salmon Pueblo in 1874, taken by photographer Timothy O’Sullivan of the Wheeler Expedition. Note the photographer posing in the middle of frame. Salmon Ruins Museum collection.

of the Chacoan world. Moving across New Mexico to the northwest, the Cottonwood Falls great house in southeast Utah lies near the northwest edge of Chacoan influence. Lastly, Wupatki in northeast Arizona is the westernmost example of a site that shows evidence of Chacoan contact and influence. This far-flung area was larger than New England, and illustrates the vast spread of Chacoan material culture (things like architecture and pottery) and religious-ceremonial influence in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Although they share traits in common with each other, and with great houses in Chaco Canyon, almost every outlier identified thus far has unique characteristics. Thus, understanding the relationship between Chaco Canyon and outlying sites of Chacoan age and affiliation is one of the challenges for Puebloan archaeologists. In fact, the very word itself – outlier – implies a relationship between a center (Chaco Canyon) and a site outside the center (an outlier) that was probably highly variable from site to site. In recent years, Chacoan archaeologists have begun to question these relationships and concentrate more of their research on the outlying sites. This new work has led some to question the existence of an integrated Chacoan ‘system’. In place of an integrated, centrally controlled society, some archaeologists have proposed that the Chacoan world is better described as a confederation of largely independent political entities. Outside Chaco Canyon itself, and an area referred to as the Chaco Core, this is the view adopted here: that the larger Chacoan system was a loose confederation of affiliated but mostly independent Puebloan villages that looked to Chaco Canyon as a religious-ceremonial and economic center.

Pueblo III Period (AD 1150–1300)

The Pueblo III period (AD 1150–1300) across the northern Southwest is characterized by aggregation, continued production of black-on-white and corrugated ceramics, an increase in the production of polychrome ceramics, continued importance of agriculture, and perhaps minor population decreases throughout the period. During Pueblo III times, most of the Colorado Plateau saw the culmination and termination of its Puebloan occupation. Early in the period, a continuation of the earlier Pueblo II adaptation is apparent. Later, after AD 1250, several new patterns emerged. Population was consolidated and aggregated into fewer and larger sites, and the total number of sites decreased. Defensible locations were occupied in the Kayenta region and elsewhere, and there are indications that warfare was ongoing. Figure 13 shows Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. The collapse of the Chacoan system occurred in Early Pueblo III, by AD 1150. Later in the period (c. AD 1200), many sites experienced a resurgence in population. In the Middle San Juan region, Aztec Ruins and Salmon Ruins reached their peaks in the mid1200s as local and regional population boomed. The greater Mesa Verde region also reached its zenith during the Late Pueblo III period, by AD 1260. Finally, many other former Chacoan sites, including Chaco Canyon itself, were revitalized with new populations and growth in the mid-late-1200s. The end of the Pueblo III period is marked by widespread abandonment of most areas across the Colorado Plateau (for habitation purposes) and concentration of population into a few areas (e.g., the Hopi mesas and Little

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Figure 13 Photograph of large defensible Pueblo III site of Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. Salmon Ruins Museum collection.

Colorado areas in Arizona, the area around Zuni, New Mexico, and the many pueblos located along the Rio Grande and its tributaries in New Mexico). Pueblo IV and V (post-AD 1300)

During the Later Pueblo IV and V periods, Western Puebloan groups aggregated in a few locations – Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, and the Little Colorado River area. The Eastern Pueblo area received many of the people emigrating from the Four Corners region, and large villages grew along the Rio Grande and its tributaries. Little or no evidence of Pueblo IV or V occupation is present in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. Although wandering groups of Puebloans probably made limited use of the area, no permanent occupation of the area occurred until Navajo groups arrived in the AD 1400s.

Navajo Cultural Sequence At the present time, archaeological discussion of Early Navajo remains in the San Juan Basin and adjacent areas is complicated by the absence of a current, accurate model for the arrival of Athabascan peoples (Navajo and various Apachean groups) in the Southwest. Nevertheless, early tree-ring dates derived from recent excavations at Early Navajo locales in the upper San Juan area make it clear that older models placing the Navajos in the Southwest after the time of Spanish contact, after AD 1540, must be revised. Recent work by archaeologist John Torres-Nez (among others) suggests that Early Navajo

folks entered the northern Southwest in the AD 1400s and took a migration route (from the north) along the western slope of the Rocky Mountains through the modern state of Colorado (see Americas, North: Rocky Mountains).

Dine´tah Phase The earliest period of Navajo occupation in the San Juan drainage area is termed the Dine´tah phase, defined as the period during which the Navajo settled in the Southwest. Although extensive work in the Navajo Reservoir District (Dine´tah area) was conducted during the 1950s and 1960s, no indisputable evidence of Navajo occupation prior to AD 1700 was uncovered. Thus, in the final report, archaeologist Frank Eddy chose not to use the Dine´tah phase, instead identifying the period from AD 1550 to 1700 as Indeterminate Navajo. Nevertheless, more recent research has confirmed the original definition of the Dine´tah phase, and extended its beginning. Briefly sketched, the Navajo occupation of the upper San Juan area began between AD 1400 and 1500. This topic remains a controversial one, although most Early Navajo researchers now agree that the Navajo were present in northwestern New Mexico by AD 1500. Our view is that the Navajo probably entered the northern reaches of Dine´tah early in the fifteenth century, but were not established before the late AD 1400s. Site LA 55979, a Navajo habitation located in Dine´tah that is tree-ring dated to AD 1541, certainly supports this interpretation.

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Figure 14 Photograph of early Navajo Gobernador phase forked-pole hogan, Redrock Valley, Arizona, with Prayer Rock in the background. Photograph by author.

Dine´tah phase sites (between AD 1450 and 1630), are characterized by brush structures, forked-pole hogans, light ceramic and lithic artifact scatters, and hearths. Dine´tah structures often contain east- or southeast-facing doorways and frequently have associated ash piles to the east or southeast, similar to modern Navajo structures and homestead layouts. Although the Navajo of the Dine´tah phase were assumed by Navajo Reservoir Project archaeologists to have been nonagricultural hunter-gatherers who lived in highly mobile bands, recent research indicates that at least some Dine´tah phase groups were practicing agriculture and were perhaps as agriculturally dependent as were later Gobernador phase populations. Of particular significance is that the earliest, best-dated Dine´tah phase site (LA 55979) contains abundant evidence of corn, including burned cobs, and some evidence of beans, which indicates that maize, at least, and perhaps beans, were grown by the inhabitants. Contact with other groups, such as the Eastern and Western Pueblos, began during the Early Dine´tah phase and continued on a limited basis into the Gobernador phase. During the 1500s and early 1600s, the Spanish were apparently uninterested in the more mobile inhabitants of the Dine´tah region. Spanish attention was focused on the sedentary Pueblo villages along the Rio Grande. Navajo–Puebloan interaction and exchange in the Early Dine´tah phase has been demonstrated by the presence of Jemez Black-on-white and Jeddito Yellow Ware ceramics on several dated sites. Other materials such as Pedernal chert from the Jemez-Abiquiu District, obsidian from the Jemez Mountains and the Flagstaff, Arizona area, and copper pigments from the Ojo Caliente

District have been recovered from Dine´tah phase sites. These raw materials were undoubtedly obtained through trade networks or by means of procurement expeditions. As suggested by Reed and Reed the social contact and exchange relationships established between the Navajo and Puebloan groups during the Dine´tah phase provided a means for Puebloan people to seek refuge with the Navajo during the Pueblo Revolt (AD 1680) and Spanish Reconquests (AD 1692 and 1696). Figure 14 shows an Early Navajo forked-pole hogan in northeastern Arizona.

Gobernador Phase The Gobernador phase (AD 1630 and 1755) was originally defined as a period of extensive Puebloan influence manifested by the influx of Pueblo refugees fleeing the Spanish Reconquest. This phase is evidenced by the presence of high numbers of northern Rio Grande and Hopi ceramics, the manufacture of Gobernador Polychrome ceramics (which resemble Puebloan ceramic styles), the construction of defensive structures or pueblitos (which resemble Puebloan architecture), and the appearance of Puebloan-style masked dancers and kachina-like figures in Navajo rock art. This evidence of Puebloan influence is augmented by historical documentation of increased Navajo–Puebloan political interaction and trade and by the presence of Puebloan groups among the Navajo following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Beginning in the early 1600s, Navajos began producing a polychrome ceramic now known as Gobernador Polychrome (in addition to their characteristic utility ware, Dine´tah Gray). The occurrence of this polychrome ceramic at Navajo sites is considered one of

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the primary temporal markers for the Gobernador phase. The similarity of Gobernador Polychrome to contemporary Puebloan polychrome vessels (e.g., Rio Grande Glaze Ware, Tewa Polychrome, and Sikyatki Polychrome) prompted early researchers to suggest that it was produced by Pueblo refugees. Considering that Gobernador Polychrome occurs at sites dating at least 50 years prior to the Pueblo Revolt, it is unlikely that it was initially produced by Pueblo refugees. The multistylistic character of Gobernador Polychrome, incorporating design styles, design layouts, and color patterning present on both Eastern and Western Pueblo pottery, further supports Navajo production and innovation. Given the social ties that probably existed between the Navajo and Pueblo and the fact that Navajo tradition acknowledges intermarriage between the two cultural groups, we recognize the potential influence resulting from a Puebloan potter marrying into a Navajo family. Nevertheless, Gobernador Polychrome ultimately represents a Navajo ceramic type produced over a period of approximately 150 years in the Dine´tah region. Along with defensive pueblitos, Gobernador phase sites exhibit a wide range of variability in habitation types. Dwellings may include any combination of forked-stick hogans, masonry-walled pueblitos, lean-tos, and ramadas. The range of site complexity for habitations is difficult to specify, but pueblito sites range from 1 to 35 rooms and may have as many as eight associated hogans. A great variety of traded ceramics is found at habitation sites, as well as at associated limited activity, non-habitation sites. These ceramics include Rio Grande Glaze Ware, Rio Grande Biscuit Ware, Jemez Black-on-white, Tewa polychromes, and Eastern Keres, Zuni, and Hopi wares. Obsidian from the Abiquiu and Jemez areas is also present.

Evidence of imported ceramics (e.g., Rio Grande Glaze Ware and Biscuit Ware, Jemez Black-on-white, Tewa Polychrome) and lithic raw materials (e.g., obsidian from the Abiquiu and Jemez, New Mexico areas) is more abundant during the Gobernador phase than during the Dine´tah phase; this has been attributed both to exchange and to the presence of Pueblo refugees at Navajo pueblito sites. Gobernador phase sites contain ceramics produced by both Eastern and Western Pueblo groups. However, no archaeological data beyond the presence of trade ware ceramics and Puebloan-like architecture demonstrates that the pueblito sites were built or occupied by Pueblo refugees. The only data that support this inference are from historic Spanish documents. Figure 15 shows an Early Navajo pueblito site from the early eighteenth century. Many researchers of Navajo archaeology and culture have focused on the acculturative processes operating during the Gobernador phase and the changes that took place in Navajo population and culture. James Hester and Joel Shiner discussing their work on Gobernador phase sites in the Navajo Reservoir in the 1960s, explained Navajo acceptance of Puebloan traits as a fusion of Puebloan and Navajo characteristics that changed Navajo culture forever. Ethnologists Bailey and Bailey echoed this theme, suggesting that Gobernador phase Navajo were biological and cultural hybrids, neither Athabascan nor Puebloan, but a product of both. As discussed above, there is little evidence to support the largescale, permanent presence of Puebloans among the Navajo that would have been necessary to constitute a site unit intrusion and a truly hybridized culture. By contrast, we, and other researchers, explain the presence of Puebloan pottery and architecture, and the resultant influences on Navajo culture, largely as

Figure 15 Photograph of early Navajo site, Frances Canyon pueblito, northwest New Mexico. Photograph by author.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 247

a result of interaction and diffusion, along with ‘migration’ of small numbers of Puebloans who became part of Navajo groups. The origin of at least two Navajo clans is attributed to Puebloan refugees – the Black Sheep clan (with refugees from San Felipe) and the Coyote Pass clan (with individuals from Jemez). Such an interpretation accords well with the hypothesis presented here and, again, does not provide support for a complete transformation of Navajo culture and hybridization with Puebloan culture. Rather, Navajo culture incorporated Puebloan people, ideas, and certain customs, but remained essentially Athabascan. The entire concept and definition of the Gobernador phase is undergoing revision. Archaeologists Reed and Reed have discussed the evidence indicating that the manufacture of Gobernador Polychrome began as early as the 1630s in some areas, more than 60 years prior to the purported beginning of the Gobernador phase. Ron Towner’s work on the dendrochronology of the area suggested that most of the pueblito sites were not constructed until the 1720s, more than 30 years after the main exodus of Puebloan people from the Rio Grande area is assumed to have occurred. Thus, it is probably a misnomer to describe these sites as ‘refugee’ phenomena. In addition, a study of pueblito location and visibility has suggested that the pueblito system was largely a defensive response to Ute raiding that is ethnohistorically documented to have increased in scale and intensity after 1720. The suggestion that the construction of the pueblitos was a response to Ute pressure is not, however, new. Roy Carlson made such a suggestion in 1965 while reporting on Earl Morris’s work from the 1920s. In sum, recent work has changed our understanding of the Early Navajo Gobernador phase and the cultural evolution and history of the Navajo people. See also: Americas, North: California and the Sierra Nevada; Great Basin; Plains; Rocky Mountains.

Further Reading Cordell LS (1997) Archaeology of the Southwest. San Diego: Academic Press. Dykeman DD (ed.) (in press) Navajo Lifeways. Boulder: University of Colorado Press. Frison GC (1991) Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains, 2nd edn. San Diego: Academic Press. Hogan P (1989) Dine´tah: A Reevaluation of the Pre-Revolt Navajo Occupation in Northwestern New Mexico. Journal of Anthropological Research 45(1): 53–66. Irwin-Williams C (1973) The Oshara Tradition: Origins of Anasazi Culture. Contributions in Anthropology 5(3). Portales: Eastern New Mexico University.

Judge WJ (1973) The Paleo-Indian Occupation of the Central Rio Grande Valley, New Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Matson RG (1991) The Origins of Southwestern Agriculture. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Pitblado B (1994) Paleoindian Presence in Southwest Colorado. Southwestern Lore 60(4): 1–20. Reed PF (ed.) (2000) Foundations of Anasazi Culture: The Basketmaker-Pueblo Transition. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Reed PF (2004) The Puebloan Society of Chaco Canyon. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Towner RH (1993) Defending the Dine´tah: Pueblitos in the Ancestral Navajo Homeland. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press. Towner RH (ed.) (1996) The Archaeology of Navajo Origins. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press. Varien M and Wilshusen RH (eds.) (2002) Seeking the Center Place: Archaeology and Ancient Communities in the Mesa Verde Region. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press. Vierra BJ (ed.) (1994) Archaic Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology in the American Southwest. Portales: Eastern New Mexico University.

Arctic and Circumpolar Regions William W Fitzhugh, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary biface A stone tool formed by removing flakes from both faces or sides. burin A tool flaked into a chisel point for inscribing or grooving bone, wood, leather, stone or antler. colonization Colonization occurs whenever any one or more species populates a new areas. Colonization encompasses all large-scale emigrations of an established population to a ‘new’ location, such as immigration, the establishment of expatriate communities, and the use of guest workers. ethnography The branch of anthropology that deals with the scientific description of specific human cultures. Eskimo/Inuit The indigenous people of the Arctic, from eastern Siberia to Greenland. lithic analysis The analysis of stone tools and other chipped stone artifacts using basic scientific techniques to determine source of the raw material and function of stone tools. permafrost Soil or rock that remains below 0  C throughout the year, and forms when the ground cools sufficiently in winter to produce a frozen layer that persists throughout the following summer. potlatch An elaborate ritual of redistribution and gift-giving practiced by the peoples of the Northwest coast. ungulate Mammals with hoofs, in the Arctic this includes the Siberian staiga antelope, musk-ox, and caribou and reindeer (reindeer are domesticated caribou).

248 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

Introduction In 1576, when Martin Frobisher landed on Baffin Island in the Eastern Canadian Arctic, he was welcomed by a hail of arrows from Inuit. (The term ‘Inuit’ is used in this article to refer to the current native residents of the Canadian Arctic and Greenland and their immediate ancestors, formerly called ‘Eskimos’. Eskimo is a term of uncertain origin but probably derives from a northern Algonquian Indian group which later came to be applied to Labrador Inuit and by extension to all native peoples of the Arctic from Alaska to Greenland. The term ‘Eskimo’ remains in use to refer collectively to prehistoric peoples and cultures of the North American Arctic and as a term referring to all native groups, including Sugpiak, Yup’ik, Siberian Yupik, Inuit, and Kalladlit (Greenlanders) where no other term exists.) Their physical features, reinforced bows, iron tools, and copper ornaments encouraged the Cathay Company’s search for a northwest passage to the Orient (Figure 1). Frobisher’s discovery of an Asian population living successfully in an Arctic environment raised questions

that intrigued Europeans of the time, and historians and anthropologists ever since. Who were their ancestors? Where did they come from? How long have they lived in the Arctic? And how did they manage to survive – even flourish – in one of Earth’s most hostile environments? During the past century, anthropologists and archaeologists have discovered some answers. Some have come from the Inuit themselves; however, most come from archaeological finds in frozen Arctic soils. From these remains we have learned how Arctic peoples adapted to and occupied the harshest regions on Earth for thousands of years, making unique contributions to society through such inventions as the kayak, insulated clothing, snow goggles, toggling harpoons, etc. Studies of northern peoples also have led to better understanding of human origins and history. Paradoxically, Eskimos – one of the last people to be drawn into contact with Western society – retained traditions established by humans adapting to Arctic conditions during the last Ice Age. Consequently, Eskimos, northern Indians, and Siberians are our

Figure 1 Martin Frobisher’s encounter with Inuit near Kodlunarn Island, outer Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island, in 1576. Drawn by John White. (British Museum Library).

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 249

only ethnographic analogs for interpreting human life in the Upper Palaeolithic, when Arctic environments extended far south of their modern boundaries and covered most of Europe and Central Asia. Much of human history in Eurasia during the past 70 000 years was lived under arctic and subarctic conditions, and this experience became a prerequisite for entering the Americas via Bering Strait. Not only were America’s first peoples arctic-adapted, but the residue of their experience and that of subsequent Beringian immigrants is part of the cultural and biological heritage of all New World peoples, past and present. This article summarizes the history of arctic cultures and modern research themes in the North American sector of the circumpolar region. Survival in Arctic regions requires special technological, social, economic, and spiritual systems. In the following sections, we consider how these conditions have been met to sustain humans and their cultures over thousands of years. Geographic coverage conforms primarily to the tundra, but includes some subarctic coastal regions in Alaska and Labrador occupied by Eskimo peoples (Figures 2 and 3).

The Arctic Environment To the uninitiated, the Arctic is a vast expanse of featureless tundra, mountains, or sea ice that seems at first

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glance inimical to human life. Yet, within this sea of uniformity is a surprising diversity of landforms, geography, biota, marine conditions, and climates. The region itself is huge. Ranging from 51 N in southern Labrador to 83 N in North Greenland, Arctic tundra and shrub tundra encompass mountains, plains, deserts, and bogs, and host a diverse biota of land and sea mammals, avifauna, invertebrates, fish, and – not least – a plague of insect pests. These resources are not distributed evenly, spatially or seasonally. While humans can easily starve in winter on the interior barrens, the nearby coast may be alive with food resources. Some areas devoid of life for months erupt into a cornucopia of food during a brief season of abundance each year, while others are permanent ecological hot spots (see Seasonality of Site Occupation). In addition to seasonality, weather – always the Arctic wild card – has a huge impact on animals and their availability to hunters. Although Arctic regions are less diverse than temperate and tropical regions, some species are present in great concentration. Subarctic and Arctic marine zones have more diverse food chains and greater number of species than northern forest and Arctic tundra regions, and therefore have greater ecological and cultural stability, while the latter have simple food chains, low species diversity, and frequent disruptions from fire and winter icing, and their boom-andbust population cycles make human life precarious.

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250 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

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To survive under these conditions, Arctic peoples developed variants of four major ethnographic adaptation types: (1) specialized adaptations to caribou hunting on the northern interior (Nunamiut and Caribou Inuit); (2) specialized adaptations to coastal and marine resources (Aleut, St. Lawrence Island Yupik); (3) generalist adaptations involving dual economies with winter hunting on the interior and summer hunting and fishing on the coast (Inupiat Eskimos, Central Inuit); or (4) herding of domestic reindeer, a technology not practiced in North America but prevalent in Eurasia. Resource-rich areas like the Bering and Chukchi Seas, Foxe Basin–Hudson Strait, and Davis Strait– Labrador Sea have supported human populations on a long-term basis and fostered some of the highest levels of Arctic cultural development. River outlets where fish, seals, and white whales congregate also have high population potential. Other areas, including much of the Canadian High Arctic and northern Greenland, have few resources and little or episodic settlement history. Over-hunting by humans – either by itself or superimposed on natural animal or climatic cycles that resulted in freezing of polynias (ice-free zones) or icing of ungulate foraging grounds – has been a frequent cause of human extinction or abandonment in High Arctic regions. Similar catastrophes occurred in Alaska due to severe storms, volcanism, earthquakes, and tidal waves. Resource variation that results in ecological ‘patchiness’ has led archaeologists to use ecological and

biogeographical concepts like ‘hot spots’, ‘core areas’, ‘peripheries’, and ‘voids’ to help interpret Arctic culture history. In general, long-term settlement and continuity occurs in areas where animal resources are more predictable and abundant. In contrast, resource-poor or unstable regions tend to have episodic settlement history and less cultural and demographic continuity. For these reasons, human communities in the Arctic tend to be widely spaced and have low populations, except in the most productive resource zones. Early contact population sizes closely follow scaling factors determined by resource abundance and predictability, and these gradients also determined limits on cultural complexity and sociopolitical development. Extremely high population levels, complex art, social hierarchies, warfare, and presence of craft specialists found among Northwest Coast and Pacific Eskimo cultures are more weakly expressed north of the Aleutians in Alaska and are even less well-developed in the Central Canadian Arctic and Greenland. However, these patterns are only general tendencies; variation in technology, social conditions, human response, leadership, and a host of other conditions intersect ecological constraints (see Cultural Ecology). Instances of artistic florescence have occurred in the midst of economic and social privation, as seen during a period of starvation at Ammassalik in East Greenland in the late 1800s, or the blossoming of Late Dorset art during a period of climatic change and cultural upheaval c. AD 1000–1300.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 251

Western Arctic: Alaska

Palaeo-Alaskans

The North American Arctic (including Greenland) was the last large continental area except Antarctica to be occupied by humans (Figure 4). Considering that Arctic-adapted humans migrated from Asia into Alaska c. 20 000–15 000 BP across the grassy Arctic tundra of the Bering Land Bridge, it is remarkable that the Canadian Arctic, Greenland, and northern Labrador remained uninhabited until 4200 BP. (Unless otherwise stated, dates given as ‘BP’ or ‘years ago’ are in uncalibrated radiocarbon years; ‘AD’ or ‘BC’ dates indicate calendar or calibrated radiocarbon years. In general, dates are given as BP except for the last thousand years, when calendar dates areused to facilitate comparison with historical records.) Similarly, while Palaeo-Indian archaeological sites are abundant south of the retreating ice sheets 11 000 years ago, the Eastern Arctic was not colonized until well after the disappearance of glacial ice and establishment of modern conditions 5000– 6000 years ago. This delay in occupation is mirrored in much earlier times by the east-sloping trend in Eurasian Arctic colonization: 40 000–60 000 years ago in Western Siberia, 35 000–28 000 in the Lena and Yana River basins, 15 000–13 000 in Alaska, and 4200 in Greenland.

Following the initial peopling of Alaska from Siberia, probably between 15 000 and 13 000 BP, a variety of complexes appear in central and southern Alaska between 11 000 and 7000 BP. Although having different names (Beringian, Denali, Palaeo-Arctic, PalaeoIndian, Nenana, Late Tundra) and slightly different meanings, these complexes or traditions (whose organic assemblages are rarely preserved) share small microblades, various biface styles, and burins, slotted bone points, and a variety of unifacial scrapers and knives. Complications of dating, small sample size, and classification history make it difficult to extract cultural information from these assemblages, and some have suggested they may all be seasonal, functional, refuse, or chaıˆne-ope´ratoire variants of a single cultural tradition. All of these groups descend generally from Late Dyuktai Palaeolithic and Early Sumnagin Mesolithic traditions of Siberian big game hunters and lived in mobile camps primarily in forested regions. These assemblages form the basis for later interior Alaskan and Northwest Canadian traditions that continue using bone points armed with microblade insets and include bifaces that begin to be broadly side or corner notched. Known as Northern Archaic in Alaska and Northwest Microblade in the

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252 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

Yukon, their sites are found at interior lake, river, and forest locations where large game and fishing provided resources for peoples whose lives were probably similar to ethnographic Athapaskans. The major exceptions to this pattern are the Anangula and Akmak sites, from radically different settings. Akmak, a northern interior riverine site probably dating about 9500 BP, has a large core, blade, and burin assemblage similar to Anagula but also has a microcore industry, large bifaces, and disk scrapers. Anangula, by contrast, is a marine-oriented site in the Eastern Aleutians dating c. 8000 BP whose setting required a sea mammal economy supplemented by coastal foraging; its unifacial technology based exclusively on a macrocore and blade industry may be a local version of Siberian Mesolithic industry (see Maritime Archaeology). Anangula and other early sites along the Pacific coast of Alaska and northern Northwest Coast were occupied by core and blade-using people who exploited a wide range of coastal and marine resources, probably using barbed harpoons. Anangula is larger and was occupied for a longer period than contemporary interior sites, and by 8000 BP its people used oil lamps and lived in large multiseason coastal base camps similar to those of most other ethnographic North Pacific peoples. Further, this implies a strong distinction between coastal and interior peoples in adaptation and settlement patterns, a feature which has also continued, culturally, linguistically, and to some extent biologically, until the present. It also suggests that maritime-adapted coastal communities, now inundated, must have been present along the Pacific coasts of Alaska at even earlier dates. Clovis-like fluted points are found occasionally in northern and western Alaska and northwesternCanada where they are thought to date to 11 000– 9000 years ago; however, their context and associations are poorly understood, and most archaeologists consider them a late northern variant of classic Clovis culture.

model’ that links development of cultural complexity to economic intensification in a predictable, highproductivity marine resource zone. Laughlin also tackled the Eskimo origin problem from the perspective of Aleut cultural geography. Whereas Collins and Jenness had emphasized the Bering Strait and its Siberian connection as the nexus for Eskimo origins, Laughlin proposed Aleuts descended from early maritime peoples of the southern coast of the Bering Land Bridge who retreated to the Alaska Peninsula and from there colonized the Aleutian Chain. The Anangula blade site was a crucial link in his argument and became the foundation for his belief in the movement of proto-Eskimo populations north along the Bering Sea coast, thereby founding the Eskimo maritime cultural tradition that later spread to Chukotka, Canada, and Greenland. Laughlin’s Eskimo theory, now discounted in favor of a Siberian–Beringian origin, was developed before much was known about the prehistory of the Aleutians or mainland southwest Alaska (Figures 5 and 6). Recent work in both areas reveals a 9000 year history of occupation by a succession of increasingly specialized sea-mammal-hunting societies whose

Aleutian Islands and Pacific Coast

The idea of long-term cultural continuity in the Aleutian Islands was vigorously promoted initially by William S. Laughlin, who not only envisioned 10 000 years of continuity in maritime technological development and subsistence technology but also saw persistence in religious ritual, human biology, and language. Laughlin’s ‘Aleut survival’ model based on gradual culture change, limited population influx, isolation from Asia, and slow cultural diffusion from the Alaska mainland has proven a convincing application of biogeographic theory to Arctic prehistory. Today, these ideas are expressed in terms of a ‘maritime stability

Figure 5 Aleutian barbed harpoon for hunting whales with aconite poison, c. AD 1000 (23.6 cm; SI-NMNH A395958, 395999).

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 253

Figure 6 Ivory figures with Asiatic facial features, seal effigy crest, hair topknots, and marked limb joints. Found at Port Moller, Alaska, but of unknown age and function (SI-NMNH A492418, 6, 7, left to right).

Figure 7 ‘‘Natives of Oonalaschka, and Their Habitations,’’ by John Webber, artist on Captain James Cook’s expedition to the North Pacific in 1778 (courtesy of Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History, SI-NMNH).

peoples lived in large central-place villages (Figures 7 and 8). Developing out of an Anangula base with the addition of a ground slate (in Kodiak), biface industries (in the Aleutians), and use of atlatl/spear thrower-propelled harpoon darts and nontoggling harpoons by at least 7000 BP, these early maritime cultures soon displayed signs of social hierarchy,

political complexity, and artistic traditions comparable to Northwest Coast cultures. These features are strongly expressed in the Margaret Bay and Kachemak phases in which dwellings and settlement size increase together with signs of warfare and ritual (perhaps cannibalistic) treatment of human remains, probably slaves, are evident. The last thousand years display increasing

254 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions Radiocarbon years BP

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Palaeo-Arctic (presumed across entire region) Figure 8 Culture history of southwest Alaska. LIA stands for Little Ice Age.

population growth, multifamily dwellings, chiefly hierarchy, and other results of social, economic, and political intensification later documented by European explorers and Russian traders and missionaries. Growing success in maritime adaptation is documented by progressive expansion of settlement westward, requiring increasingly longer water passages from the Alaska Peninsula, reaching Umnak and Fox Islands by 8000 BP, Amchitka and Rat Islands by 4500 BP, and Near Islands by 2500 BP. The existence of distinct archaeological traditions in the Aleutians, Kodiak, Bering Sea, and Northwest Coast suggests that the divisions seen today in ethnicity, language, and human biology are rooted thousands of years in the past. Rough conformity with environmental zones affirms the influence of geography on origins and maintenance of cultural traditions in this region. At the same time, migration, diffusion, and other types of culture contact occur across these boundaries. Similarities in harpoons, spear-throwers, graphic styles, wooden bowl and ladle forms, house

types, kayaks, ceremonial hats, labrets, and other personal ornaments indicate cultural borrowing was widespread across porous, shifting Indian–Aleut– Eskimo borders, driven by institutional warfare, slave-taking, potlatch ceremonialism, trade in exotic materials, craft and art specialization (see Interpretive Art and Archaeology; Craft Specialization; Figure 9). Language borrowing and genetic mixing is also documented. More distant influences like slat armor, fortified village and refuge sites, and sinew-backed bows reached this region from Siberia and Bering Strait. Throughout this sequence, continuity and gradual elaboration of cultural forms are dominant features of the southern Eskimo–Aleut tradition. Despite mixing on its southern border with Indians, the Kodiak and Aleutian traditions remained Eskimo/Aleut in general type and were subject to periodic influences from the Bering Sea. Following introduction of microblades with the earliest Asian settlers, the next major intrusion occurred shortly after 4000 years ago when Arctic Small Tool tradition

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 255

(ASTt) peoples appeared on the Alaskan Peninsula and in Cook Inlet from the north. Although not penetrating Kodiak Island, its influence reached the Eastern Aleutians. This Siberian Neolithic-related tradition, including a tool kit based on microblades and delicate collaterally flaked bifacial arrowpoints, knives, and bipoints, as well as burins, arrived in Alaska so

suddenly that it almost certainly reflects the movement of Siberian people into Alaska. Known as Western ASTt in Alaska, its expansion into southwest Alaska comes with cooling climate and a southward expansion of sea ice to the Alaska Peninsula, and lasted until c. 3300 BP, coincident with a major phase of volcanism, after which it amalgamated with the pre-existing Aleutian and Sugpiak traditions of the Pacific coast. Western Alaska

Figure 9 Funerary mask from the Unga Island whaler’s burial cave in the Shumagin Islands, collected by William Healy Dall in the early 1870s (NMNH A13002).

Siberian ASTt people appeared a few hundred years earlier, c. 4500 BP, in Norton Sound, carrying the first bows and arrows to appear in Western North America (Figure 10). Known here as the Denbigh Flint Complex, the new armament helped them spread rapidly, exploiting caribou and salmon. At least initially, marine mammal hunting was not an ASTt specialty; however, sealing, including sea-ice hunting (which is suggested at a few sites), may also have been practiced and became common by Choris times. The largely aceramic Western Arctic Small Tool tradition (Figure 11) establishes the basis for the ceramic Norton Tradition and its Old Whaling, Ipiutak, and Norton/Near Ipiutak phases until the onset of Western Thule tradition about AD 1000. Norton lithics display evolved Denbigh styles with delicate arrowpoints and harpoon endblades, skin scrapers, and ground burin-like tools; decorated Asian-derived ceramic vessels also appear for the first time, suggesting longer periods of coastal settlement, sufficient firewood, and sea mammal hunting. Toggling harpoons, darts, and antler arrowheads are present, and

Figure 10 Arctic Small Tool tradition artifacts from the Cape Denbigh, Seward Peninsula, Alaska (University of Alaska Museum).

256 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions Alaska Northern Kotzebue-Barrow

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Figure 12 Old Bering Sea harpoon counterweight or ‘winged object’, depicting semi-human spirit-controller (SI-NMNH).

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Figure 11 Prehistory of Western Alaska.

lip labrets – another Asian introduction – appear. Large coastal and interior settlement sites with cemeteries are found for the first time, and a growing seasonal specialization on sea mammal hunting begins to rival the importance of caribou. Toward the end of this period, c. 1500 BP, Ipiutak village and cemetery sites at Point Hope exhibit an elaborate burial cult with strong links to Siberian shamanism and masking, and artistic elaboration of tools, implements, and ritual objects bearing images of fantastic creatures. Not least, forged iron traded from Siberia makes its first appearance in America in the form of tiny slivers used for engraving tools. This seemingly small technological change accelerated the development of one of the world’s greatest native art traditions and may have contributed to the Thule movement into Canada. Beginning about 2000 BP, concurrent with Late Norton tradition sites on the Alaska mainland, a highly specialized maritime hunting tradition known as Thule or Northern Maritime began to emerge at sites on St. Lawrence and Punuk Islands and along the shores around Bering Strait, appearing first in Chukotka. After developing for nearly 1000 years, about AD 1000, it suddenly spread east into Canada and Greenland where it is known as Eastern Thule. The origin of Eskimo culture is most closely linked to the Western Thule tradition and its ASTt predecessors. The early phases of this tradition display implements with highly decorative fine-line engraving depicting

beastly helping spirits, animal spirit masters, and semi-human transformational spirit beings to aid the hunt and protect the hunter from harm (Figure 12). Similar tattooed designs have been found on frozen human bodies dating to the Okvik/Old Bering Sea cultures that initiate this tradition. Ivory engraving was initially done with stone tools at Okvik sites, but in later OBS, Punuk, Ipiutak, and Thule phases forged Siberian iron was universal. Deep middens and large sod house villages signify large populations and a flourishing economy based on the huge migrating herds of walrus that pass annually through Bering Strait. However, whaling harpoons and float gear in OBS sites indicate that shortly after 2000 BP, people began to hunt large whales, and by Punuk times (c. 1500–1000 BP) whaling had become the economic mainstay for many communities, enabling population growth and clan-based sociopolitical development. Punuk also brought an increase in warfare, signaled by the appearance of Asian bone slat armor, sinew-backed bows, execution burials, fortified sites, and other trappings of conflict (Figure 13). Punuk’s successor, Western Thule, become increasingly enmeshed in a growing cycle of trans-Beringian trade, raiding, and warfare fueled by pressure from Cossacks in Western Chukotka and, after 1750, by direct ship-based Russian and European trade to coastal native groups (see Ships and Seafaring). Beginning about 2000 years ago, another economic revolution took place. While North Pacific and Beringian peoples were learning to hunt large marine

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mammals, peoples of the Siberian interior began herding reindeer and using dog- or reindeer-drawn sleds. More than just a novel technology, reindeer herding and animal-powered sleds transformed Siberian peoples from hunters to herders and reverberated throughout every aspect of their lives (see Animal Domestication). Freed from precarious lives as hunters, sled traction enabled people to travel long distances in both winter and summer, and by the sixteenth century Chukchi herders had become skilled warriors and traders who successfully resisted the incursions of Russian Cossacks, with whom they fought as well

Figure 13 Armor vest of bone slats and walrus hide from nineteenth century Bering Strait Eskimo. Slat armor first appears about 2000 years ago in Chukotka Old Bering Sea sites (SI-NMNH CL-596).

as traded. Chukchi became powerful middlemen, exchanging Russian and Chinese iron, tobacco, tea, beads, and other goods with Bering Strait Eskimos in return for Alaskan furs, jade, hides, and ivory. Despite its rapid spread throughout northern Eurasia, probably from a South Siberian origin about 2000 years ago, reindeer herding never crossed Bering Strait until the 1890s, when it was introduced in a government experiment to alleviate Eskimo starvation resulting from the near extermination of whales and walrus by American vessels. While these developments were taking place, Northwest Alaskan Eskimos were experiencing more centralized leadership and social control that came with manning whaling crews and dealing with Siberian traders and warriors. One result was that hunting art and ceremony lost its artistically based spiritual value in the communities north of Norton Sound and began a slow decline, until by historic times it survived mainly in southwest Alaska and the Aleutians (Figure 14). South of Bering Strait, the coast was too shallow for large whales, and Thule and Siberian influence was diminished, although warfare became prevalent here also in the late prehistoric period. Somewhat isolated in the resource-rich Yukon–Kuskokwim delta, Bering Sea Central Yup’ik Eskimos fished and hunted seals and walrus, and by historic times had the highest density of any Eskimo population in the Arctic. Living in permanent villages, they maintained a complex ceremonial life, created world-class art comparable to Pacific Eskimos and Northwest Coast Indians (Figure 15), and continued to produce elaborately decorated hunting implements styled in an evolved form of Old Bering Sea art that shows little influence from Punuk or Western Thule culture. Unfortunately, there

Figure 14 Toggling harpoon heads from Ipiutak, Punuk, Old Bering Sea, and Late Punuk cultures (left to right) illustrating decline in decoration of hunting implements in Western Alaska Eskimo cultures between AD 500 and 1000, coincident with the advent of whaling (SI-NMNH A346914l , A346907, A353767; Univ. of Alaska UA85–150–1261).

258 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

Figure 15 Yup’ik Bering Sea Eskimo tunghak festival mask from Lower Yukon River depicting the spirit-controller of game who lived in the moon. Collected in 1879 by Edward Nelson (SI-NMNH 33118).

is almost no archaeological record of the intervening 1500 years in this deeply sedimented, permafrost delta region.

Eastern Arctic: Canada and Greenland The appearance of Punuk whalers in Bering Strait set the stage for the second major cultural wave to wash out of Alaska into the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, disrupting and eventually replacing the Palaeo-Eskimo tradition that had migrated from Alaska 3000 years earlier (Figure 16). Set against the cultural and environmental diversity of Alaska, the Eastern Arctic sequence of Pre-Dorset, Dorset, and Thule cultures appears unilineal and deceptively simple. The Eastern Arctic also exhibits considerable regionalism and cultural diversity, with periods of parallelism in Canada and Greenland and a varied history of European contact. Its independence from Alaska, relative lack of engagement with subarctic Indian cultures, and long periods of cultural stability are its most distinctive features. Excepting the Thule revolution, its prehistory is dominated by a gradualist approach to change, perhaps a cultural response to tightly constrained environmental conditions. Unlike Alaska, where forest cover, submergence, volcanism, earthquakes, tidal waves, and coastal erosion have hindered site discovery, geology and botany in the Eastern Arctic have been friendlier to the archaeologist. Postglacial isostatic uplift has preserved sites associated with former shorelines; absence of shrub and forest cover facilitates site discovery; and limestone bedrock, permafrost, and low

summer temperatures have preserved organic remains throughout much of the region. Culturally and environmentally, the Eastern Arctic is a very different world from the trans-Beringian and Pacific Alaska region. The coast from Barrow to the Mackenzie River, although having abundant caribou, is poor in coastal shelter and marine mammal resources and has long been known as a population void and a cultural and linguistic boundary. Alaskan cultures rarely penetrated further east, and Eastern Arctic cultures rarely influenced Alaska. Once across this threshold, a new ecological ‘basin of attraction’ opens, drawing people eastward. The Mackenzie Delta offers rich fish and beluga resources, and the Canadian Arctic coasts and islands have herds of musk-ox and caribou. The Arctic islands and mainland both have char and other fish. Seals are widely available but lack concentration except in Foxe Basin, Hudson Strait, and the Davis Strait and Labrador Sea coasts, where harp seals, walrus, and sea birds also are abundant. Beluga are present in river mouths and along the southern Arctic coasts, whereas narwhal frequent High Arctic waters. Large whales – bowheads and Greenland right whales – frequent the larger island passages and Davis Strait– Labrador Sea regions, while humpbacks have a subarctic Atlantic range. All of these resources are subject to fluctuations and periodic collapse from factors such as changes in climate, ocean temperature, and sea ice distribution; closing and opening of ice-free polynias; icing of caribou and musk-ox pasture; and forest and tundra fires, predation, and other disruptions. Lacking the insurance policy of Alaska’s large fish runs, Eastern

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2500 Key: Neo-Eskimo (Inuit) Culture Palaeo-Eskimo Culture Greenlandic Norse Figure 16 Culture classification of North Alaska and Eastern Arctic prehistory.

Arctic peoples had to solve subsistence problems with their wits and their feet. Wide-ranging transport, interregional social and economic networks for informationsharing, dispersed demographic structure, flexible social organization, adaptable technologies, intimate knowledge of environmental conditions, and other cultural practices were prerequisites for survival. In the Western Arctic, these characteristics were often overshadowed by trade, politics, and military issues. For human exploitation, this ecological structure created a patchwork of local environments ranging from core or focal resource zones with relatively longterm sustainability, to resource-poor zones where human survival was possible only for short periods or under favorable conditions. This characteristic is best exemplified in Greenland, where Christian Vibe demonstrated correlations between animal population levels, climate, and drift ice cycles, with profound implications for cultural history. Similar models have helped explain episodic, short-term occupations of High Arctic Canada and Greenland, where occupation sequences correlate with warm climate, open polynias, and presence of driftwood and musk-ox or caribou. In these locations, a small pioneering group may exploit local ‘resource capital’ for a few generations during a warm period, only to face an eventual crisis from unsustainable hunting practices, colder climates, or changed ocean currents.

Eastern Palaeo-Eskimo Tradition

About 4200 BP, small bands of ASTt hunters expanding east from northern Alaska colonized Canada’s Arctic Islands, northern Hudson Bay, Greenland, and northern Labrador. Known in three regional variants, Early Pre-Dorset in the central Arctic, Independence I in the High Arctic (Figure 17), and Saqqaq in West Greenland, they hunted caribou and musk-ox with spears and bows and arrows and took sea mammals with small barbed male-socket and open-socket harpoons. Climatic conditions were warm, and driftwood from Siberia and Alaska was widely available. Winter and summer dwellings were simply tents bisected with axial pavements with central fireplaces for roasting and cooking with boiling stones. During the late Early Palaeo-Eskimo period, soapstone oil lamps and slab box boiling stone hearths begin to appear (Figure 18). In addition to harpoons and leisters, stone tools were flaked from colorful cherts and agates and had ritual and aesthetic as well as functional qualities. Over the roughly 1500 year tenure of the Early Palaeo-Eskimo tradition, tool styles changed gradually: serrated edges gave way to straight edges and facial grinding on burins and bifaces increased, and in West Greenland Saqqaq became a dominant feature of lithic technology. Toward the end of this period, Early PalaeoEskimo culture evolved into a new complex known

260 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

Figure 17 Independence I culture artifacts from Peary Land (courtesy of Smithsonian HNAI 1984/Arctic, vol. 5, p. 530, fig. 2).

in northern Greenland as Independence II and in Labrador and Newfoundland as Groswater; it is also sometimes known as Transitional Palaeo-Eskimo (c. 2800–1800 BP). Continuities in axial house form and tools link this phase with Pre-Dorset and Independence I cultures, with whom it also shared subsistence and settlement systems based on winter land hunting and summer coastal hunting of seals and walrus. Soapstone lamps became more common; box hearths were rare; and in Newfoundland a burst of spectacular artistry developed in the manufacture of delicate bifacial points. A remarkable feature of the period is its ‘horizon-style’ distribution. Nearly identical architecture and tool styles occurred throughout the Eastern Arctic; lithic materials and

other commodities were traded great distances; and territorial boundaries reached southern Hudson Bay, southern Labrador, Newfoundland, and eastern Quebec, where it lasted as an outlier until 1800 BP. The centuries after 2500 BP in northern Hudson Bay gave rise to the first phase of the Late Palaeo-Eskimo Dorset culture. With continuity from late Early Palaeo-Eskimo technology and housing, Early Dorset produced several innovations, including improvements in harpoon technology, ground burin-like gravers, tip-fluted points, and introduction of rectangular soapstone cooling vessels. While axial architecture continues, shallow semi-subterranean houses appear for the first time, and their seaward location indicates winter hunting of seals and walrus at the off-shore

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Figure 18 Late Pre-Dorset axial pavement house with box hearth and central oil lamp hearth at Nukasusutok-2 site near Nain, Labrador.

ice edge. Concurrently, hunting of land game declines and a growing economic focus on maritime resources begins, coincident with the onset of the coldest period in the Holocene. Middle Dorset (2200–1200 BP) appears earliest in the Central Arctic core area and replaces or transforms Early Dorset in Labrador about 1800 BP, lasting until c. 1400 BP. Except in Newfoundland, where a regional Groswater-influenced variant develops, Middle Dorset technology changes are largely stylistic. Winter sod houses become larger, deeper, and sometimes have shallow entrance passageways (Figure 19). Intensification of sea mammal hunting from fall to spring from sina-oriented land-based villages reaches its peak, producing thick middens filled with the bones of seals, walrus, ducks, divers, and sea birds, sometimes caribou. Middle Dorset middens often contain ritual objects like masks, effigies, bone shaman’s teeth, and art pieces carved from soapstone, ivory, antler, and sometimes wood, as well as complex multi-ply cordage made from musk-ox hair. During this period, Dorset sites shift southward, disappearing from High Arctic Canada and northern

Greenland, and large village sites like Port au Choix develop in western Newfoundland near winter harp seal-hunting grounds. Late Dorset (1300–700 BP) brings warmer climate that induced a resurgence of Dorset people back to the High Arctic islands and western Victoria Island, probably by population expansion from Central Arctic and Baffin core areas, and initiated changes in housing and settlement patterns. In Labrador, Middle Dorset sod dwellings are replaced by large fall tent camps with axial pavements having two or three hearths, and lithic tools document stylistic change from Middle Dorset implements. Abandonment of winter-long dwelling sites suggests people had developed a more specialized adaptation to winter ice hunting and were living in snow-house dwellings at the ice edge. As a result, Late Dorset middens are thin and often lack organics due to absence of permafrost. Where preservation occurs, especially in the Central Arctic, Late Dorset exhibits an explosion of animal carvings, human figurines (Figure 20), amulets, human-face mask petroglyphs, shamans’ paraphernalia, and ornaments, in addition to finely crafted boxes,

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Figure 19 Plan of Middle Dorset winter house at Koliktalik, near Nain, Labrador.

containers, harpoons, and other implements. This period also exhibits a striking new settlement type: large summer gathering sites containing multifamily ‘longhouses’ with rock walls and internal hearth alcoves, or sometimes just wall-less open-air hearth rows (Figure 21). Scores of longhouses, interpreted as seasonal gathering sites to affirm social solidarity, facilitate trade and spouse exchange, and conduct religious ceremonies, have been found throughout Dorset territory, absent only in Labrador, where this phase is missing until after 900 BP due to Indian occupation of the coast. Late Dorset people also began to obtain meteoric iron from the Cape York meteor fall in Greenland for use as knife and harpoon blades, and occasional pieces of smelted Norse copper and iron. Ronald Nash once described the Palaeo-Eskimo tradition as a tightly constrained system. This is an

apt description for a culture that adapted to harsh environmental pressures by fine-tuning its program rather than exploring new approaches, technologies, or subsistence strategies. Palaeo-Eskimos were highly traditional people whose house architecture, tool types and styles, and general way of life changed little over hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. Some of their customs were strangely maladaptive, like the disappearance of the bow and arrow and the twist drill, both present in Early Palaeo-Eskimo culture. What did change was a gradual shift from a land- to a marinedominated economy, from surface tents to sod houses, and, in Late Dorset, introduction of snow-house dwellings. Dorset people also developed an increasingly integrated social network involving trade and ritual exchange, and more elaborate shamanistic art evolved. Dorset people seem not to have interacted with Indians,

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 263

even when they occupied southern Labrador, Newfoundland, and Quebec territories where Indian groups were close neighbors. Other than possible Choris influence in the Early Dorset Lagoon Complex in the Western Canadian Arctic, there is little evidence of interactions to the west and marginal contact with the Norse. Pre-Dorset and Dorset people seem to have lived in a self-circumscribed world, interacting only with each other and their spirits. That they did so successfully for 3000 years is a remarkable achievement

for a network of small societies inhabiting a vast region linked only by tenuous threads of social contact and economic exchange. Archaeologists have sought to explain both continuities and discontinuities in Palaeo-Eskimo cultural sequences with the aid of ecological and biogeographic models. Although research and debate continue, archaeological evidence supports the general validity of a biocultural ‘core area’ and ‘core pulsation’ models in Eastern Arctic prehistory. Long-term cultural continuity and evolutionary development is most evident in the resource-rich Central Arctic corridor from Igloolik to the Atlantic coast, while discontinuous sequences and voids are documented in peripheral regions, including Greenland. Secondarily, the causes of culture change in the northern peripheries is usually absence or depletion of resources due to climate change or unsustainable hunting, whereas abandonment and repopulation of extended southern peripheries like Labrador and Newfoundland is a function of interethnic (Indian) competition. Eastern Neo-Eskimo Tradition

Figure 20 Middle Dorset soapstone figurine from Shuldham Island, Saglek, Labrador (The Rooms/Newfoundland Museum).

Sometime after 1000 BP, the archaic spiritual prism through which Dorset people viewed their world shattered. The sudden arrival of groups of Alaskan whale-hunters may not have been catastrophic initially, because the Alaskans were few and their settlements were confined to the northernmost waterways of the Central Arctic. Successful bowhead hunts provided huge stores of meat, oil, and dog food, making it unlikely that Early Thule people competed directly with Dorset hunters at first. However, the appearance of outsiders with sinew-backed bows, large umiaks, sleds drawn by teams of wolf-like dogs, capable of taking large whales, and having different beliefs and spirits and a more competitive style of interaction

Figure 21 Late Dorset longhouse foundation, Ellesmere Island (photograph by Peter Schledermann).

264 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

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Figure 22 Neo-Eskimo traditional house types from West Greenland: (a) Classic Thule; (b) eighteenth-century Communal house; (c) developed Thule.

honed by the more intense Alaskan social scene must have sent shock waves through Dorset society. First identified by Therkel Mathiassen at village sites in the Thule District of northwest Greenland, Mathiassen later found Thule sites throughout the Central Canadian Arctic (Figure 22). Later, after sites with similar tools and house types were found in Alaska, the Thule designation was applied to the entire group, subdivided into Western Thule and Eastern Thule. With the discovery of Western Arctic harpoon heads and pottery in the earliest Thule villages in Canada and Northwest Greenland, Bering Strait was quickly identified as the original NeoEskimo homeland. Later studies in Barrow showed the Birnirk culture, c. eighth to tenth century, to be the most likely parent for the eastward Thule migration, which was then thought to have taken place between AD 900 and 1000. Re-analysis of radiocarbon dates by David Morrison and Robert McGhee have refined earlier views of the Thule migration. Rather than being a massive influx, evidence now suggests movements by one or more small Alaskan founding groups over a century or more beginning about AD 1200. The earliest Thule culture sites in Canada and Greenland date to 1300 and probably originated, not from Birnirk sites at Barrow, but from Punuk sites in Bering Strait. McGhee and Allen McCartney had earlier suggested that the Thule movement was initiated by climatic warming that opened leads in the formerly ice-bound Canadian Arctic islands, allowing Pacific bowhead whale migrations and their Thule pursuers to move east. Biologists have documented genetic exchange between the Pacific and Atlantic stocks dating to this period; but proof that Punuk whalers moved east only to access new whaling opportunities is circumstantial. While this remains a likely scenario, the Thule movement may have resulted from a desire by Alaskan whalers to

replace expensive Siberian iron with a cheaper commodity from the Cape York meteor fall in northwest Greenland, or from reports of Norse trade. This revision has required rethinking the muchdebated Dorset–Thule transition, which posited a two-stage model: avoidance and acculturation. The first stage explained the absence of Dorset–Thule contact from AD 1000 to AD 1300 as the result of mutual avoidance, Dorset extinction, or complete Dorset assimilation by Thule people. After AD 1300, the appearance of Dorset Parallel harpoon heads, snow-knives, soapstone lamps and pots, and other Dorset tool types in ‘modified’ or ‘developed’ Thule sites suggested a second phase of contact dominated by acculturation. Inuit oral traditions speak about contacts with ‘Tunit’, a large, clumsy people who first inhabited the country and hunted walrus and built large stone structures. These stories are often thought to describe Dorset longhouses; but they may as likely be late Thule survivors, whose sites were constructed with large rocks. This issue has been connected with the ancestry of the Sallirmiut (Sadlermiut), an Inuit people of northern Hudson Bay who some believe was a Thule-acculturated Dorset group. At present, the best evidence for Thule–Dorset chronological overlap comes from East Hudson Bay, Ungava, and Labrador, where Dorset sites continued until AD 1400–50. The later Thule migration dates shorten the period of Dorset–Thule overlap to little more than a century, providing a better explanation for the limited evidence of contact and exchange. It also helps explain why Norse did not encounter Thule people in West Greenland until c. 1350 (Figure 23). In both Canada and Greenland, a case can be made for Dorset elements persisting in Thule and later Inuit societies in what Gullv calls the ‘parallel tradition’ – the persistence of ancestral Alaskan and Dorset harpoon head styles and other

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Figure 23 Culture distributions in the Eastern Arctic between AD 900 and 1500.

elements from Early Thule to the modern day. (This characteristic of dual styles has been described in other archaeological instances as a ‘co-tradition’.) First European Arrivals: The Norse

Unlike Europe, nineteenth-century North America never experienced a period of romantic nationalism celebrating the historical origins of its people, language, and culture in the 1830–70s. (However, emergence of the ‘mound-builder’ myth that began in this period responded to a romantic recreation of a lost Pre-Columbia Indian culture.) At that time still a nation of immigrants, there was little conception of a distinct ‘Canadian’ or ‘American’ identity. Nevertheless, immigrant groups searched for ways to reconnect with their former European homelands, and for

Scandinavian immigrants this meant discovering Vikings in America. (Although the term ‘Viking’ is often used interchangeably with ‘Norse’, the former properly refers to marauding, non-Christian Scandinavian warrior-farmers of the eighth to tenth centuries in Europe, who were known in their Nordic homelands as Danes, Norwegians, or Swedes. Those who settled in Iceland and Greenland and visited North America (Vinland) in the tenth to thirteenth centuries are more properly known as Norse, who by this time were Christianized and rarely went ‘a-Viking’. Nevertheless, popular usage of ‘Viking’ continues in North America even though it is culturally and chronologically incorrect; see . By the 1840s, the Icelandic Vinland sagas had been translated into English and Norse sites were

266 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

thought to exist in New England; in 1893, a replica Viking ship crossed the Atlantic and visited the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago; and in 1898 the Kensington ‘rune stone’ was found in Minnesota by Swedish immigrant farmer Olaf Ohman. Although discounted by archaeologists and linguists, the Kensington Rune Stone continues to find support among Scandinavian–American avocational scholars. So far, the only verified Viking site west of Greenland is at L’Anse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland. Arguably occupied by Leif Erikson and subsequently by Thorfin Karlsefni and his wife Gudrid around the year 1000, the site was used as a staging location or ‘gateway’ for exploring the region Norse called ‘Vinland,’ notably, Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Although saga accounts describe both friendly and hostile relations with ‘skraelings’, the only archaeological evidence of Native American contact at L’Anse aux Meadows is a Late Dorset soapstone lamp found in the site’s smithy. A Norwegian coin dating to the reign of Norwegian King Olaf Kyrre (AD 1065–1080), minted seven decades after the Vinland voyages, found at the Goddard site on the coast of Maine is the only authentic Norse artifact south of Newfoundland. By contrast, excavations at Dorset and Thule sites in Arctic Canada and Greenland have produced scores of Norse materials and implements, most dating to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. These pieces include artifacts made from Norse copper and iron, a figurine depicting a Norseman wearing a long tunic (Figure 24), bronze bowl fragments, a bronze trade balance arm, cordage spun from sheep wool, and from a single site on Ellesmere Island across from Thule, Greenland, a trove of Norse goods including woven wool sailcloth, a carpenter’s plane, iron rivets, pieces of chain mail, and other objects that Thule Inuit probably scavenged from a wrecked Norse expedition. The wide distribution of these finds (Figure 25) suggests a pattern of Norse contacts with Late Dorset and Early Thule people between AD 1250 and 1350, when Norse were seeking ivory for European trade. These contacts ceased when the Norse Western Settlement was abandoned around 1350, when the Little Ice Age began to set in, reducing farm and wool production, restricting navigation and trade with Europe, and bringing seals and Inuit hunters south into Norse territories. By 1450, the last remaining Norse holding, the Eastern Settlement, was abandoned and taken by Inuit, and Greenland disappeared from European history for 300 years. Until recently, studies of Norse Greenland had a strong medievalist and historical orientation. New findings based on anthropological, interdisciplinary, and international approaches have turned past theories

Figure 24 Eskimo carving of a European in a long tunic found in a fourteenth-century Thule house in southern Baffin Island (Photograph by Peter Harholdt, NMNH CMC Je-Dq-7: 325*).

like Norse demise from Inuit–Norse hostility, Inuit absorption, miscegenation, or migration to the New World on their heads. Greenland Norse were Christian farmers, not pagan Vikings, and in their heyday (c. AD 1000–1300) developed a society that flourished on the outer fringe of Europe, raising scores of churches and delivering wool, ivory, falcons, narwhal tusks, polar bears, and other Arctic commodities to European markets, churches, and courts. Their expansion across the North Atlantic took place in AD 800–1000 during a warm climatic period that made even Greenland suitable for Nordic animal husbandry. Discovering Southwest Greenland unoccupied, Erik the Red established two settlements in 985 and within 15 years his son Leif embarked on his Vinland explorations. When this venture failed due to its distance from Greenland and resistance from Native Americans, the Norse turned to building their Greenland colony into a thriving Christian

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Figure 25 Distribution of Norse artifacts found in Dorset and Thule sites in the Eastern Arctic. An Indian arrowhead from the Newfoundland–Labrador region was found in the Sandnes Viking graveyard in Greenland. Not shown is the Goddard site, in Maine, which produced a Norwegian penny in a Late Woodland Indian context.

society with a peak population of 3000–5000. Although there were no further attempts to colonize Vinland, ships from Greenland and Iceland traveled to Markland (Labrador) periodically for timber, fur, hides, and other products – trading or losing a Norwegian penny to Natives in the process – and some voyages must have been made to Baffin, Ellesmere, and the Thule District to account for Norse finds in Dorset and Thule sites in these regions. As the warm climate turned cooler in the 1300s, life became more difficult and the northernmost Norse farms began to be abandoned. Western voyages to Canada ceased and the Norse implemented new agricultural practices and supplemented their diet with marine resources. The appearance of sea ice, seals, and walrus soon brought Thule people south into the Norse districts, and while Norse and Inuit interacted, as they had earlier in the Disko-Upernavik walrus hunting grounds the Norse called the nordrsetur, they did not adopt Inuit technology or dress, and until the very end of the Eastern Settlement, remained European and Christian, maintained their churches, and imported the latest in European clothing fashion.

But by this time the Norse and their animal numbers had grown too large to be sustained under the deteriorating climatic regime. Their decline and eventual disappearance resulted from production losses, isolation from Iceland and Europe, and unwillingness to adopt an Inuit-style hunting way of life. Outside their colonies, Norse presence did not transform the cultures or lives of Dorset or Thule or Indian groups. Other than introducing highly sought-after new materials – copper, bronze, and iron for refashioning into their own cultural types; colored woven cloth and beads for use as accents in adornment and clothing styles; hardwoods for certain tools, and possibly stave construction for buckets and pails – Norse impact on Inuit material culture was minimal. Even the Norse-influenced Inussuk (Inugsuk) culture of West Greenland (c. AD 1400–1600) that utilized artifacts (spoons, shears, buckets, bodkins) traded or scavenged from abandoned Norse sites remained squarely in the Thule tradition. More important than artifact imports was Inuit recognition that Europeans could supply novel and useful raw materials. The military danger was minimal for

268 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

well-armed Thule people; however, Dorset were severely disadvantaged by their lack of bows, dogs, and large boats. Like Dorset–Thule and Norse–Thule contact studies, Norse interactions with Dorset culture have become a topic of recent study. Patricia Sutherland has begun exploring the possibility that fabric weaving, European wood and wood-working techniques, metal, carved images of Europeans, and twisted cordage found in Dorset sites result from exchange or contact with Norse. While Norse materials are found with some regularity in twelfth- and thirteenthcentury Dorset sites and have been attributed to both direct and indirect contact, the idea that Dorset adopted Norse technologies like fabric weaving and wood-craft skills remains unproven. Historic Period

Toward the end of the fourteenth century, major culture changes were underway throughout much of the Eastern Arctic. The Norse colonies were in final decline; an Inussuk Thule variant was forming in West Greenland; and Thule people in the Central Arctic were finding it difficult to hunt whales as the Arctic passages became choked by ice. Loss of whale products needed for dog food and winter survival required a subsistence shift toward winter breathing-hole sealing and snow-house settlements on the ice. The new summer land-based and winter ice-hunting pattern remained the basis for Inuit life in the Central Arctic until the twentieth century. Elsewhere, in Baffin, Labrador, and Greenland, Thule people continued to hunt whales in the more open Atlantic waters but changed radically in other ways as a result of European engagement. In the mid1500s, as Thule culture expanded south along the Labrador coast, displacing Dorset and Innu (Indian) groups, they became attracted by European activities in southern Labrador and Newfoundland. Sixteenthcentury Basque records tell of Inuit raids and sporadic encounters that mark the earliest instance of Inuit engagement with modern Europeans in the Eastern Arctic, 200 years before post-Norse European contact began in Greenland and 300 years before Europeans began to regularly visit the Central Arctic or Alaska. Nevertheless, in West Greenland, Baffin, and Labrador, the Thule whaling economy persisted into the eighteenth century (Figure 26), when these societies entered a period of reorganization stimulated by European contact, despite Little Ice Age conditions. By this time, Eastern Inuit were involved in a flourishing trade in baleen, whale oil, walrus ivory, and sea mammal hides with Dutch and other European vessels operating in the Davis Strait–Labrador Sea region. The introduction, first, of metal tools and wooden

boats and, later, of a widening array of European products resulted in major changes in economy, settlement patterns, housing forms, and social and, eventually, religious life. Inuit communities increased in number and size, and despite demographic reversals from epidemics, achieved population peaks during the late eighteenth to nineteenth century. Indian Cultures in Labrador

While Palaeo-Eskimo and Neo-Eskimo groups have lived along Labrador’s tundra coast for the past 4000 years, their occupancy of this Arctic/Subarctic transition zone represents only a part of the geographic and chronological scope of this Arctic transition region (Figure 27). With the exception of the Torngat Mountain range of northern Labrador which was a glacial refugia during the late glacial period, the entire region was covered with glacial ice at the end of the Pleistocene. When ice retreated into the interior, Indian groups moved north into the ice-free coastal zone of southern Labrador by 9000 years ago and by 7000 BP had reached northern Labrador and discovered the Ramah Bay quarries, whose unlimited supplies of distinctive, high-quality chert made it the favored stone tool material for almost all later Labrador cultures. The early Indian cultures dating to 9000–3500 BP are known as the Labrador Maritime Archaic tradition. Allied with a closely related tradition reaching south to Maine, these were a seafaring people who developed a complex maritime-based culture at the edge of the Arctic. Even without Arctic adaptations such as oil lamps and skin boats, they were successful hunters of land and sea mammals and developed toggling harpoons, made large wood boats, and displayed elaborate artistic and ceremonial traditions, including rock mound burials and in later times cemeteries containing red ocher graves furnished with large deposits of tools and ornaments of potlatch proportions. Ceremonial intensification in mortuary traditions was paralleled by developments in settlement patterns from single-family dwellings to large kin-based longhouses accommodating 25–30 family units and long-distance trade in Ramah chert, copper, and other exotic materials. About 4200 BP, their world was shaken when Palaeo-Eskimos arrived in northern Labrador from the Central Arctic, moving into the central coast and displacing Maritime Archaic peoples who had been using the north coast Ramah chert quarries for two millennia. Despite this setback, Late Maritime Archaic people reached an accommodation with Pre-Dorset people and for 500 years maintained a summer settlement enclave in the midst of Pre-Dorset territory where they hunted caribou and quarried Ramah chert, which they used and traded to others

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 269

Figure 26 Greenland Inuit whaling in Greenland from 1925 reprint of Hans Egede’s Description of Greenland, 1741 (courtesy of Joseph F. Cullman 3rd LIbrary of Natural History, SI-NMNH).

far to the south in one of the most remarkable trade distributions of any material known in prehistoric America. After 3500 BP, the Maritime Archaic disappeared from Labrador and was replaced by a succession of Dorset, Inuit, and Indian cultures ancestral to the region’s modern Innu peoples. When temperatures were warm, these Indian cultures expanded to the coastal tree limit in northern Labrador and utilized Ramah chert; during cooler periods (2800–1500 BP) the Labrador coasts were taken over by southward expanding Dorset Palaeo-Eskimo groups, and Indian groups retreated into forested regions. After 1300 BP, proto-Innu peoples moved onto the coast again, and Dorset people withdrew from Newfoundland and Central Labrador, initiating a long period of Indian occupancy and Ramah chert use that continued until Thule whale-hunters moved south and replaced them throughout the coast after AD 1400.

The culture and environmental history now available makes Labrador a model region for studies of long-term culture and environmental interactions at the Arctic/Subarctic border. In many instances, climate and environmental change appear to have stimulated shifts in Indian and Eskimo boundaries and culture areas. The growth of Maritime Archaic complexity between 9000 and 3500 BP during a period of warm, stable climate contrasts strongly with the succeeding 3000 years of cooler conditions in which a succession of Indian cultures experienced many technological, stylistic, and settlement shifts. Most territorial changes in this Indian–Eskimo territorial ‘see-saw’ resulted from periodic Eskimo expansions during which Indians lost access to the resource-rich coastal zone and were confined to the interior and its unpredictable caribou economy. At other times, Indian groups took over coastal regions and forced Eskimos to retreat into Arctic regions of Labrador.

270 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

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Figure 27 Culture history of Labrador demonstrating tundraforest zone history and shifting boundaries of Eskimo and Subarctic Indian cultures (after Fitzhugh 2002, p. 129).

Less clear is why later Indian cultures exhibit 300–400-year cycles of culture change – perhaps from resource instability, ethnic conflict, and repopulation from different cultures to the south. One thing is certain: many of the changes seen in the culture history of the Arctic have been strongly influenced by environmental and climatic change. (See http://forces. si.edu for a presentation accompanying the Smithsonian’s exhibition, Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely, illustrating interactions between climate, environment, animals, and human cultures and activities in the Arctic over the past 15 000 years.)

Conclusion: North America and the Circumpolar Arctic This entry is not complete without reference to the rest of the Arctic world. Ultimately, all native peoples of the Americas have Asian origins, but as the foregoing discussion has documented, Alaskan cultures have a long history of direct and indirect contacts

with Asia. All of Alaska’s earliest cultures with the exception of fluted points have Siberian antecedents. Asian-derived Mesolithic microblade traditions dominated Alaska’s mid-Holocene cultures, and Alaska’s cultural development after 4000 BP exhibits many instances of Asian contacts, influences, and population movements. Unlike other areas of the Americas, its Arctic peoples and cultures have participated in circumpolar Eurasian Arctic and Far East cultural history for thousands of years, and owe more to these influences than to other Native North American cultures. Arctic peoples in Eurasia as well as in the Americas have been dynamic and highly resourceful. They developed new technologies, pioneered new territories, and found ways to broaden or intensify their resource base by adding specialized strategies for exploiting climatically harsh but ecologically productive Arctic seas. Proceeding from terrestrial hunters to generalized coastal foragers, to hunters of seals, sea lions, walrus, and eventually highly specialized hunters of large whales – and in Eurasia, herders of domesticated reindeer – Arctic peoples not only learned to support larger, more permanent communities, but they also expanded contacts with neighbors and other cultures, and in Alaska, Chukotka, and Scandinavia developed complex social and political systems, engaged in regional warfare, and interacted with their southern neighbors. Even though the Eastern Arctic had harsher climate and fewer resources and opportunities, its cultures survived for 4500 years, produced world-class art, and successfully engaged Europeans for 1000 years, and it is they through their contacts with Martin Frobisher and later explorers and scientists who gave us the concept, ‘Eskimo’. See also: Americas, North: Sub-arctic; Animal Domesti-

cation; Craft Specialization; Cultural Ecology; Interpretive Art and Archaeology; Maritime Archaeology; New World, Peopling of; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Seasonality of Site Occupation; Ships and Seafaring.

Further Reading Crowell AL, Steffian AF, and Pullar GL (eds.) (2001) Looking Both Ways: Heritage and Identity of the Alutiiq People. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press. Damas D (ed.) (1984) Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 5: Arctic. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Dumond DE (1987) The Eskimos and Aleuts, rev. edn. London: Thames and Hudson. Dumond DE (ed.) (2001) University of Oregon Anthropological Papers, Vol. 58: Archaeology in the Aleut Zone of Alaska: Some Recent Research. Eugene: University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History. Fitzhugh WW (2002) Yamal to Greenland: Global connections in circumpolar archaeology. In: Cunliffe B, Davies W, and Renfrew C

AMERICAS, NORTH/California and the Sierra Nevada 271 (eds.) Archaeology: the Widening Debate, pp. 91–144. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fitzhugh WW and Ward E (eds.) (2000) Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Giddings JL and Anderson DD (2006) National Park Service Publications in Archaeology, No. 20: Beach Ridge Archaeology of Cape Krusenstern. Washington, DC: Department of the Interior. Gilberg R and Gullv HC (eds.) (1996) Ethnographic Series 18: Fifty Years of Arctic Research: Anthropological Studies from Greenland to Siberia. Copenhagen: The National Museum of Denmark. Grnnow B (ed.) (1998) The Paleo-Eskimo cultures of Greenland: New Perspectives in Greenlandic Archaeology. Copenhagen: Danish Polar Center. Gullv HC (1997) Meddelelser om Gronland. Man and Society 23: From Middle Ages to Colonial Times. Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Studies of the Thule Culture in South West Greenland 1300–1800 AD. Copenhagen: Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland. Gullv HC (ed.) (2003) Greenland Prehistory (in Danish). Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Maxwell M (ed.) (1976) Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology 31: Eastern Arctic Prehistory: Paleoeskimo Problems. Washington, DC: Society for American Archaeology. Maxwell M (1985) Prehistory of the Eastern Arctic. Orlando: Academic Press. McGhee R (1996) Ancient People of the Arctic. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Schledermann P (1996) Komatik Series 5: Voices in Stone. A Personal Journey into the Arctic Past. Calgary: Arctic Institute of North America, University of Calgary.

Relevant Websites http://forces.si.edu – Forces of Change, Smithsonian National Musuem of Natural History. http://www.mnh.si.edu/ – Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History (NMNH).

California and the Sierra Nevada Michael R Walsh, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Bison antiquus Extinct Pleistocene ancestor of the American buffalo, Bison bison. California pattern Hunting and gathering lifestyle fundamentally dependent on the acorn as a food staple. logistical strategy Settlement system that features a permanent or semipermanent residential village which serves as a home base from which seasonal resource collecting excursions are carried out.

metate Stone slab with a coarse, flat-to-slightly concave surface used for grinding and pulverizing seeds and other plant products. Stationary compliment to the ‘mano’. Word of Uto-Aztecan origin. mano Hand-held stone used to grind seeds and other edible plant materials. Compliment to the ‘metate’. Word derived from Spanish ‘hand’. protoagriculture Purposeful manipulation of wild plants to increase their productivity. Includes culling, watering, pruning, and intentionally burning tracts of land to promote new growth. site furniture Artifacts purposefully left at selected site locations in anticipation of future use during scheduled return visits. Typically heavy or cumbersome tools. Firmly suggests habitual seasonal movements within a defined territory. tomol Ocean-going canoe of the Chumash, southern California. Permitted deep-sea fishing and long-range trade, and was thus a significant source of wealth and prestige for its owner. Word derived from Chumash language.

Humans have been in all parts of modern California since at least the end of the Pleistocene Era, 10 000 to 14 000 years ago. Extinctions and other factors brought to an end the Ice Age focus on hunting of large game animals, and for the next 6000 years or more hunter-gatherers in California diversified their ways of life in adaptation to increasingly variable local environmental conditions. Regional cultural and technological adaptations were so successful that steady population growth was essentially universal, and population growth encouraged inventive measures to increase environmental productivity. Without the practical option of agriculture, many of California’s huntergatherers turned to the acorn 3000 to 4000 years ago. Until that time the acorn was little-used in California, perhaps as a ‘starvation food’, but regional population growth eventually warranted the complex leaching process needed to render the acorn edible. Thus began what archaeologists refer to as the ‘California Pattern’. This way of life is unified by the economic significance of the acorn, but is expressed in regional cultural histories and local adaptations so varied that California has become a premier location for studying hunter-gatherer diversity not just through time, but also over space. Geographic divisions of the sort shown in Figure 1 have a tendency to lump general culture histories, although it must be emphasized that significant intra-regional variability characterizes the prehistory of California.

Ice Age Hunters All Pleistocene Californians are known as PalaeoIndians, with a benchmark provided essentially by the appearance of the Clovis spear point: PalaeoIndian sites are either Clovis sites or pre-Clovis sites. Pre-Clovis sites are assumed to be greater than 10 000–14 000 years old, and are inevitably the

272 AMERICAS, NORTH/California and the Sierra Nevada

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Figure 1 Regional divisions and selected California localities in California.

subject of heated controversy. Nowhere is the controversy more apparent than at Calico, perhaps the most famous archaeological site in California. Located in the Mojave Desert, the Calico Site (Figure 1) has revealed deeply buried sediments yielding thermoluminescence and uranium/thorium dates of 135 000 and 200 000 BP, respectively, among the oldest dates ever proposed for occupation of the New World. Despite their apparent extravagance, it is not the dates themselves that are at issue. The controversy revolves around whether more than 20 000 stones recovered

from these mid-Pleistocene strata are indeed tools manufactured by humans. The overwhelming consensus among professional archaeologists today is that they are not, but instead are ‘geofacts’, rocks that were cracked and faceted by natural processes. An assemblage of undisputed stone tools has been recovered from Calico, but from substantially later deposits near the site’s surface. Most archaeologists today believe that Pre-Clovis discoveries will eventually be made in California, but almost certainly not at the Calico Site.

AMERICAS, NORTH/California and the Sierra Nevada 273

Less nebulous is California’s Clovis Period (c. 14 000–10 000 BP) but there is still room for controversy. Most of the evidence for Clovis comes from the shores of long-dead lakes, suggesting a distinctive lacustrine focus on the hunting of large game animals. However, archaeologists recognize that a dramatic rise in sea level over the last 10 000 years may have obscured an untold number of ancient sites along the Pacific coast, and that historical disturbances (mining, agriculture) and natural processes of erosion may have concealed or destroyed ancient sites in Valley and Foothill contexts. So it is perhaps the lack of data, or rather a bias in the data that has led to the characterization of a technologically and economically unified Ice Age in California. Moreover, problems plague many or most of the 400 Clovis points confirmed statewide. This is because the majority of Clovis points have been isolated finds, lacking in additional archaeological associations, or surface finds lacking stratigraphic context. More vexing still, the majority of Clovis points from California have been recovered by private collectors, and many points have come to the attention of archaeologists only some years after their initial collection. Perhaps the most significant region for the study of Clovis people in California is at Tulare Lake in the southern San Joaquin Valley (Figure 1). An overwhelming majority of the Clovis points discovered in California have come from the shores and near vicinity of this extinct, ancient lake. In addition, a wide variety of stone tools have been recovered, especially scraping tools and tools presumed to be used for working wood and bone. Extinct mammal species abound, including Colombian mammoth, sloth, and Bison antiquus. In combination, Tulare Lake has a remarkable potential for study of Clovis hunting, tool manufacture and use, typology, and raw material selection. Unfortunately, nearly all of the Clovis materials at and around Tulare Lake have been churned and displaced by twentieth-century agricultural practices, and a wide majority of Clovis artifacts – including all of the points – were collected privately. To date, reports of extinct fauna in association with Clovis remains are anecdotal at best, and extensive, intact Clovis deposits have yet to be investigated by professional archaeologists from start to finish. Still, no place in California holds the promise of Tulare Lake for further understanding of Clovis people in California. Two additional regions have yielded multiple Clovis finds: 20 fluted points have been recovered from the Borax Lake region of the North Coast Range and 15 have been reported from the shores of China Lake in the northern Mojave Desert (Figure 1). Although these finds have a better record of controlled recovery

than is the rule at Tulare Lake, many are from surface contexts. These lakes also reveal Pleistocene fauna but, as at Tulare Lake, none is unambiguously associated with Clovis artifacts. So far, the ancient shores of Tulare, Borax, and China Lakes have provided by far the best window to the Clovis Period, but the view is far from clear at this time.

Early Holocene Diversification At the close of the Pleistocene, warmer temperatures and decreased precipitation led to desiccation of ancient lakes and widespread extinction of megafauna. This begins the Early Holocene epoch, in which native Californians diversified their lifestyle in accordance with minor differences in local environmental conditions. While archaeological assemblages suggest continued emphasis on hunting of large modern mammals, diet diversified to include increasing amounts of regionally distinctive plant foods, smaller mammals, and small amounts of freshwater and marine shellfish. Increased numbers of sites, as well as discovery of limited-use sites, suggest a highly mobile lifestyle, probably of small family groups foraging far and wide over the course of the year, rarely returning to the same location twice. Among the best known of these Early Holocene cultures are the San Diegito who plied the coastal regions, hills, valleys and deserts of southern California between about 7000–8000 and 10 000 BP. Large, coarse stone knives and projectile points suggest continued emphasis on large mammals such as deer; but bone assemblages from San Diegito sites suggest greatly increased hunting of small mammals, especially rabbits. Additional crude stone implements include drills and engraving tools, perhaps used to work bone or wood. Although bone tools are not characteristic of San Diegito sites until the later stages of the era, wooden objects are not expected to preserve, and may have been present throughout the time frame. The potential for wooden tools, as well as a wide variety of heavy scraping and chopping tools, hints at increased levels of plant exploitation, or something more than focused butchering of game. By the end of the San Diegito Period, grinding implements of stone (manos, metates) appeared, suggesting expansion of the diet to include hard seeds; bone awls indicate basket-making, a craft probably designed to assist in gathering plant foods; and the San Diegito expanded their diet to include small quantities of marine shellfish. In all, the San Diegito entered the time frame as focused hunters of large game and exited as generalized hunter-gatherers. The expansion of habitat and dietary breadth was probably encouraged by,

274 AMERICAS, NORTH/California and the Sierra Nevada

and in turn permissive of, steady population growth despite what was, from the Clovis perspective at least, a deteriorated environment. Synonyms for the San Diegito time frame include the statewide designations Early Holocene, Early Archaic, and the Western Pluvial Lakes Tradition; the Lake Mojave Tradition of the deserts; Buena Vista of the Central Valley; and the Borax Lake (Post) Pattern of northern California.

Middle Holocene Elaboration and Innovation Where Early Holocene cultures entered new ecological niches, the Middle Holocene (c. 4000–7000 BP) developed elaborate and innovative strategies and technologies designed to more fully exploit those niches. The Middle Holocene lifestyle gradually came to revolve around gathered plant foods. In most regions, hunting of small mammals surpassed deer and other remaining large mammal species in importance. It is also during this timeframe that evidence is found for the first concerted efforts to methodically exploit the Pacific littoral, especially for shellfish. But particularly noteworthy is that, by the end of the phase, the acorn began to be exploited, around 4000 BP. The general time frame 4000–7000 BP is here designated as the Milling Stone Horizon, and represents a time when California’s ‘hunter-gatherers’ first became ‘gatherer-hunters’. As the designation implies, Milling Stone sites are dominated by large grinding slabs, basin metates, manos, and significant numbers of hammerstones, choppers and large ‘scraper-planes’, all of which are known ethnographically as plantprocessing tools. Significantly, projectile points and other flaked stone tools greatly diminished in frequency. In coastal regions, shellfish were gathered in great quantities, while parts inland increasingly saw rabbits and other small mammal species supplant deer as the usual target species. Emphasis was on gathering (plants, shellfish) while taking of game appears to have been largely opportunistic. But the Milling Stone is characterized by more than a general shift in subsistence resources: it witnessed significant changes in social and economic organization. Milling Stone sites suggest increased size of the basic social group. Whereas Early Holocene assemblages suggest at most two or three families in brief residence, and often just a single family group, traveling groups of the Middle Holocene Milling Stone may have numbered 5–10 families or more (20–50 people). In addition, Milling Stone gatherer-hunters appear to have returned time and again to preferred locations, leaving behind at each campsite entire tool kits, or ‘site furniture’. Formal cemeteries with multiple interments

first appeared during the Milling Stone and further suggest repetitive and anticipated reoccupation of habitual territories. These sites also record the first significant amounts of ‘nonutilitarian’ items, including shell and bone beads, shell and stone pendants and perforated ‘cog-stones’. Cog stones, also called ‘donut stones’ in view of their size and appearance, often feature the toothed circumference of a gear, and rival the metate as the ‘type artifact’ of the Milling Stone south of Santa Barbara County. Their function is enigmatic, although many archaeologists suspect they are weights for digging sticks or, in delicate examples, symbolic representations of digging stick weights. That a ‘digging stick weight’ should become emblematic of a culture clearly demonstrates the primacy of the collecting strategy in the Milling Stone economy. Evidence from the central Pacific coast (Figure 1) further suggests the primacy of plant gathering, which may have been so important that gender-based division of labor disappeared. In particular, there appear to be no clear gender distinctions in the nature of grave goods or other aspects of human interment. Stereotypical gender divisions may have become obscured in the face of the primacy of plant collection and the diminished role of hunting in the diet. The statewide pattern of the Milling Stone emphasis on gathering of plant foods is truly violated only in the desert regions of the state, but only in the sense that Milling Stones never outnumber presumptive hunting gear. The timeframe in the desert is referred to as the Pinto Period, named for the Pinto Basin in the eastern Mojave Desert where it was first defined. Nevertheless, Pinto people shared changes in overall organization with their Milling Stone contemporaries, including repetitive site visitation within habitual territories, increased size of the traveling group, and increased reliance on small mammals and plant foods. Regional synonyms for the Milling Stone include the state-wide designations Middle Holocene and the Middle Archaic Period, the Early Milling Stone and the Encinitas Tradition of southern California in general, the Pauma Culture of inland San Diego County, the La Jolla Period of coastal San Diego and Orange Counties, the Topanga Culture of Los Angeles County, the Oak Grove Period of Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, the Borax Lake Pattern of the North Coast Range and, as noted, the Pinto Period in the deserts.

Late Holocene Intensification The success of the Milling Stone adaptation is measured by steady population growth which, despite the technological mastery of plant and other

AMERICAS, NORTH/California and the Sierra Nevada 275

collectable foods, eventually outran productivity. In order to maintain the status quo, gatherer-hunters investigated alternative resources to supplement the diet. One of these alternatives was the acorn, and the Milling Stone lifestyle came to an end. But certain changes and innovations effected during the Milling Stone carried over, and indeed in greatly increased scale. These changes included developments in social and political organization represented by increased size of the traveling group, as well as in scheduled reoccupation of preferred localities and notions of territoriality. The adoption of the acorn as a food staple was by no means a statewide simultaneous ‘event’. In certain regions, the shift to an emphasis on acorns coincided directly with the advent of the Late Holocene Period, c. 3500–4000 BP. In other regions, the Milling Stone strategy prevailed for another thousand years or more. This argues strongly that the development was driven by population growth. Population thresholds were met at differing times in different places. Only then were the labor-intensive requirements of an acorn economy adopted. Once adopted, however, the acorn economy had dramatic effects on social structure, settlement and mobility patterns, and political organization. As a cumulative effect, intensified resource acquisition both permitted and encouraged continued population growth, necessitating still more intensified labors, including reinvigorated hunting and, where possible, extensive use of littoral resources, especially shellfish. Because the acorn ripens in the fall, acorn dependence required wholesale change in the nature of scheduling, and Californians became more fully organized along logistical principles. The notion of the ‘home base’ grew into one of the ‘home village’ that transcended generations, and villages were placed ‘logistically’ at locations within reasonable distance to many different resource-collecting locales. Collecting expeditions forayed from villages to these various resource ‘patches’ in their season, an efficient strategy that allowed surplus to be gathered and stored for use during the lean winter months. The logistical strategy thus placed a high value on prime collecting localities, many at some distance from the home village, and encouraged further the previously introduced concept of territory. It is during this time frame that archaeologists begin to see assemblages that are clearly attributable to specific ethnographic groups, suggesting that territories carved out in the beginning of the Late Holocene were maintained for numerous generations. Among the first Californians to show the logistical strategy and to exploit the acorn were the Windmiller of the Sacramento River Delta (Figure 1). Windmiller People (named for a site located on

the Windmiller farm) first appeared around 4500 BP, but their peak occupation of the Sacramento Delta appears to have been between 2500–4000 BP. The Windmiller are primarily known from excavations of large cemeteries, which were placed on high ground above the Delta flood levels. Although the focus on grave goods may bias the data somewhat, the Windmiller interred their dead with quantities of everyday items in addition to nonutilitarian artifacts, which has provided a wealth of information about their overall material culture. Windmiller material culture suggests a distinct divergence from the Milling Stone emphasis on hard seeds and other plant foods as well as from the strategy of continual mobility. Large quantities of projectile points as well as a wealth of faunal remains (deer, elk, pronghorn, rabbits) suggest a re-emergence of hunting as a significant occupation. Additionally, tridentform bone spears, shell and bone fishhooks, and baked-clay ‘netsinkers’ suggest three distinct methods for obtaining salmon and other fish from the Delta. In combination, seasonality in selected animal and fish species suggest that the Windmiller wintered in the Delta, and summered in the Sierra foothills. But more significantly, certain Windmiller sites show numbers of crude stone mortars and cobble pestles, ‘type artifacts’ for an acorn-based economy. Since the Delta region is practically devoid of oak trees, it is clear that the Windmiller practiced logistical forays for Central Valley and Sierra foothill acorns in the fall, as a supplement to winter fishing in the Delta and summer hunting in the Sierra Nevada. Windmiller divergence from Milling Stone patterns was more than merely dietary. Windmiller grave lots show huge quantities of ornaments and other nonutilitarian items. Among the latter are enigmatic ‘charmstones’, polished cigar-shaped objects of finegrained stone such as alabaster, marble, or schist. Although their function is far from clear, charmstones were apparently highly treasured, and are typically found in only the most opulent grave lots. These and similar ‘wealth items’ such as steatite pipes, stone and bone beads, and shell pendants tend to be concentrated in male graves, suggesting gender-based status differentiation, which may reflect the reemergence of hunting as a significant pursuit. However, occasional discoveries of women, children, and even infants with immense quantities of grave goods suggests ascribed, or inherited status, a clear and further divergence from the more egalitarian Milling Stone. Windmiller burials are occasionally observed with ‘nightstick’ fractures to the forearms, skull fractures, and points embedded in bone. This evidence for interpersonal violence may be a corollary to the logistical strategy, which may have occasioned a heightened

276 AMERICAS, NORTH/California and the Sierra Nevada

sense of territoriality and defense of property or stores. A further corollary of the logistical strategy is purposeful acquisition of surplus for storage, which often results in an unequal distribution of food and other items, and which may in turn translate to ‘wealth’. Inequalities in wealth may account for dramatic differences observed among individuals in the abundance of associated grave goods. In short, Windmiller graves suggest there were ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. While by no means inevitable, both heightened territoriality and the concept of ‘wealth’ may be viewed as a consequence of the shift to an intensive, logistically organized acorn-based economy. The Windmiller Culture provides a provocative example of the shifting economy in California and its consequences. Although not always precisely contemporary, regional synonyms for the development of the logistical, acorn-based economy, with frequent local variations, include the state-wide designation Early Pacific Period; the Campbell Tradition of coastal southern California; the University Village Complex, the West Berkeley Facies, and the Early Bay Pattern of the San Francisco Bay area; the Early Horizon of central California; The Martis Complex of the high Sierra Nevada; the Middle and Upper Archaic of the north coast; and the Gypsum Period of the deserts.

Late Holocene Specialization and Complexity The final prehistoric period is here labeled the ‘specialization and complexity’ phase. This development was extremely variable across the state, in both timing and in the degree to which it was expressed. With the notable exception of the desert regions, the spread of the acorn economy was completed during this timeframe, and most groups saw continued population increase. In all cases California’s natives continued to hone their technologies in order to increase the efficiency of resource extraction within a given territory. Among the most significant developments was the practice of actively managing resources to improve productivity. Sometimes referred to as ‘protoagriculture’, resources were manipulated by selective culling, pruning, and even watering of wild plants. One common form of resource manipulation took the form of wholesale burning of entire tracts of land, setting into motion natural forces of ‘ecological succession’ that produces a bounty of new shoots, greens, and seeds. With increased overall productivity came increased yields for storage, which fostered continued population growth. This phase also witnessed manufacture of local goods for the specific purpose of interregional exchange. As territories became more and more stringently protected, control

over the distribution of prized but highly localized resources such as obsidian or salt was possible, and could be turned to local advantage as trade items. The second facet of this phase – complexity – is considerably less widespread statewide, but far more pervasive than previous generations of anthropologists have considered. In selected cases – notably in coastal areas – disparities among individuals in the distribution of surplus resources, as well as in access to monopolized goods and crafts were put to the task of creating a true society of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. Using surplus to personal advantage is one road to the rise of chiefly society, a level of political complexity that is uncommon among hunter-gatherers, yet characteristic of selected regions of California. The earliest evidence for highly complex political organization in California is found in the San Francisco Bay area, where great mounds of shell, bone, charcoal, artifacts and human remains have intrigued archaeologists since the early twentieth century. University Village near Stanford University, and the West Berkeley and Emeryville mounds on the eastern Bay shore (Figure 1), along with over 100 smaller mounds have revealed literally tons of archaeological remains. The contents of these mounds have contributed to an understanding of San Francisco Bay area material culture that is perhaps unparalleled in California. Only recently, however, have archaeologists begun to explore the sociopolitical implications of the mounds themselves. Many archaeologists now believe that the shell mounds were not simply accumulated, but were purposefully built. One line of evidence for this notion is that the mounds are not in fact simply undifferentiated piles of debris, but instead contain intact features including residential architecture, sweathouses, and hearths. Ceremonial activities are indicated by cemetery areas, as well as purposeful caches of nonutilitarian items such as charmstones, whistles, pipes, and obsidian knives. Ritual interments of mammals, such as bears, and large birds, including condors are found, and reflect some form of ceremonialism. Finally, there are stratigraphic indications that soil was purposefully deposited as fill to expand the sizes of the mounds. The mounds thus appear to be mixtures of living and ceremonial space, not mere piles of trash but landmarks along the Bay, visible for miles around as sociopolitical landmarks. The timeframe c. 2500–1000 BP was the Golden Age for shell mounds in the San Francisco Bay area. During this time mounds were occupied year-round, and logistically organized expeditions ranged inland for acorns and game and to the Bay waters for shellfish, fish, and sea mammals. Burial evidence suggests that violence peaked at this time, perhaps reflecting

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the importance of territorial claims. Elaborate grave treatment accorded a few individuals suggests dramatic status and/or wealth distinctions. Population size steadily increased along with increased political complexity, until the scale of resource acquisition that fostered the lifestyle could no longer be maintained. For instance, there is firm evidence for human over-predation on shellfish species, land mammals, and sea mammals until existing human populations were forced to disperse, leaving the mounds behind. Many people moved inland, where foothills surrounding the Bay saw a distinct rise in regional population size. Those that remained broke into smaller groups, coming down to us as the Costanoan-Ohlone, an ethnographic group that, in the historic era, had no sociological or political analogs to the complex political systems represented by the mounds of San Francisco Bay. Although people survived, the prehistoric system evidenced by the San Francisco Bay mounds simply collapsed when high population densities could no longer be maintained. At about the same time that the Bay area culture was undergoing population dispersal, the coast along Santa Barbara, Ventura, and northern Los Angeles Counties began to show distinctive signs of increasing political and social complexity. Over the next 700 years – until the time of European contact – the ancestors of the Chumash developed intricate social, ceremonial, economic, and political networks that are unparalleled among hunter-gatherers anywhere in the world. The ancestral Chumash shared with their Bay area counterparts an exceedingly productive natural environment, combining rich inland resources – acorns and other plant resources, plentiful game – with a bountiful littoral zone teeming with shellfish, fish, and sea mammals. Where the San Francisco Bay area saw skyrocketing population numbers lead to overpredation and resource depletion, however, the ancestral Chumash found a technological solution that opened several previously untapped (or little-used) ecological niches. The Chumash designed and built perhaps the most sophisticated watercraft found in North America, and from these they accessed the resources not only of the open sea, but of the largely untapped Channel Islands as well. Where the San Francisco Bay area saw greatly intensified resource acquisition during the Golden Age of mounds, Chumash resource acquisition became not just more intensive, but more extensive as well. The larger ramifications of the canoe on Chumash society can hardly be overstated. The Chumash canoe (or tomol) was made of redwood planks retrieved as driftwood, held together with sinew and dowels and

caulked with tar and pitch, reaching lengths of 7 m or more. Canoes were exceedingly difficult and timeconsuming to manufacture, and essentially required the full-time efforts of expert engineers and apprentice laborers. The tomol-makers developed their own hereditary guild, passing down specialized tools and painstaking techniques from one generation to the next: a social class. The extensive effort necessary to tomol manufacture required a form of patronage in order to free the specialists from daily resource collection activities, and only the wealthiest individuals could wield the surplus necessary to commission a canoe. In the end, canoe owners were rewarded with valuables obtained in exchange with the Channel Islands as well as high-prestige open-sea resources such as swordfish, tuna, and dolphin. Canoe owners thus turned wealth into prestige, and in turn into still more wealth. Where newly gotten wealth is turned to still more sponsored labor, the cycle is selfperpetuating, and an elite class is born. At the time of European contact, Chumash society featured specialized classes of craftsmen engaged not only in manufacture of the tomol, but also in manufacture of special stone tools (microdrills), stone bowls, and a host of ‘nonutilitarian’ items. Among the latter were beads which came to serve as a standardized form of currency, an extremely rare development among hunter-gatherers. Although the archaeological record is largely silent on the subject, it is logical to assume that specialists may have dominated other facets of Chumash society, such as hunting, fishing, and perhaps canoe navigation. Not only responsible for sponsoring manufacture of specialists’ goods, tomol owners were responsible for distribution of goods across the Channel as well as up and down the coast, giving canoe owners enormous control over the growth and development of Chumash society. Eventually, the Chumash came to be organized around hereditary chiefs who held sway at the village as well as regional levels, a form of political organization that is truly anomalous among hunter-gatherers. Much of the wealth and prestige that eventually spiraled into hereditary power is probably attributable to control over the tomol. It is fascinating but ultimately futile to speculate about the political and social developments that were truncated by the arrival of the Spanish in 1769. But in addition to the Chumash, several Native California groups were beginning to turn surplus into wealth, and wealth into power during the general time frame from AD 1000 to historic contact. These groups included the Gabrieleno, or Tong-va of the Los Angeles coast and basin, the Yokuts of the southern Central Valley and southern Sierra foothills, the Pomo of the North Coast Ranges, and the salmon-fishers of

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the northwestern state, including the Hupa, Yurok, and Karok. In each case, a wealthy natural environment and specialized technology, combined with a focus on resources that could be stored, promoted both population growth and inequality in the distribution of surplus.

economic intensification, and technological specialization. But this generality masks a tremendous amount of cultural diversity, as economic systems and technological adaptations were distinctively tailored to local conditions. It is important to recognize that the trends presented above are accurate in their sequencing but highly variable in their timing as well as their expression. Not all of the developments presented above were simultaneous across the state; nor did all of the developments presented above take place in equal intensity everywhere in the state. For

Summary At the broadest level, the entire prehistory of California is one of steady population growth,

OREGON Tolowa Karok Shasta

Yurok

North

KlamathModoc

Hupa

Achomawi

Chimariko Wiyot Bear River Mattole Lassik Sinkyone Wailaki

Wintu

Atsugewi Yana

Nomlaki

Yahi

Yuki

Kato

Maidu Pomo

NEVADA

Patwin

N SI BA

Interior Miwok

T EA

R

G

Wappo

E

C

N VI

O

PR

Coast Miwok

Panamint Shoshone

Costanoan/Ohlone Yokuts

Tubatulabal

Esselen Salinan

Kawaiisu Vanyume PACIFIC OCEAN

Kitanemuk

Chumash

Chemehuevi

Alliklik Serrano

Cahuilla

0 0

100 Kilometers 100 Miles

Figure 2 California Native cultural/linguistic groupings in the historic era.

Juaneño Cupeño

Kumeyaay MEXICO

ARIZONA

Luiseño Gabrielino

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instance, Milling Stone foragers in the North Coast Range and in the southern Sierra foothills continued to hunt to a degree unknown or impossible in southern California; Central Valley Californians such as the Windmiller began to exploit the acorn hundreds of years earlier than their northern California counterparts, and perhaps thousands of years earlier than those in the southern reaches of the state; and desert hunter-gatherers almost certainly never developed the sorts of wealth distinctions inferred for the San Francisco Bay or the Santa Barbara coast. Regional variations, both large and small, in the nature of resources, of resource timing and productivity, and in local population dynamics have resulted in a range of cultural variability that is unmatched for any California-sized region in the New World (Figure 2). It is this staggering degree of cultural variability, noted in the ethnographic era and demonstrated by linguistic variability, that has thwarted archaeologists’ century-long effort to generate a state-wide chronology and a common culture-historical nomenclature. Despite recognition of a common California Pattern, in the end California’s Native populations defy all but the broadest of generalities.

Epilog At the time of European contact in 1769, California was more densely populated than any region of comparable size anywhere in North America. Most anthropologists agree that at least 310 000 people lived in the state, with credible estimates ranging to as many as 710 000 people. It took at least 10 000 years of steady growth to reach this number. Less than 150 years after the Spanish arrived, in 1911, a starving and exhausted Yahi Indian named Ishi wandered into a northern California town looking for food. At the time he was heralded as the Last Wild Indian in California. Disease and other privations visited by Spanish missionaries, Mexican ranchers, and American gold miners had taken a terrible toll on Native Californians. But Ishi was not the last Indian in California. An energetic Native American community exists today and appears to be strengthening as elders are encouraging young Indians to learn the native language and lore, reinvigorating pride in ancestry and curiosity about tribal history. It cannot be said that a century or more of cultural decimation has not left its mark on Native Californians. But Native Californians have shown themselves to be a highly resilient people, weathering and drawing strength from every challenge that has arisen since the Ice Age. See also: Americas, North: Great Basin; Rocky Mountains; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient.

Further Reading Arnold JE, Walsh MR, and Hollimon SE (2004) The archaeology of California. Journal of Archaeological Research 12: 1–73. Chartkoff JL and Chartkoff KK (1984) The Archaeology of California. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Erlandson JM and Colten RH (eds.) (1991) Hunter-gatherers of Early Holocene Coastal California. Los Angeles: UCLA Institute of Archaeology. Erlandson JM and Glassow MA (eds.) (1997) Archaeology of the California Coast during the Middle Holocene. Los Angeles: UCLA Institute of Archaeology. Erlandson JM and Jones TL (eds.) (2002) Catalysts to Complexity: Late Holocene Societies of the California Coast. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. Fagan B (2003) Before California: An Archaeologist Looks at Our Earliest Inhabitants. Lanham and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. Moratto MJ (1984) California Archaeology. (Reprinted with a new Introduction by Coyote Press, Salinas, CA. 2004.) Orlando: Academic Press. (Reprinted with a new Introduction by Coyote Press, Salinas, CA. 2004.)

Eastern Woodlands Timothy R Pauketat, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary adze A hafted wood-shaping tool used to, among other things, hollow out dugouts. American Bottom A 120-km-long expanse of floodplain wherein sits the Cahokia site, between present-day St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. Archaic In eastern North America, the Early Holocene period during which food collectors settled into regional landscapes, residing at least part of the year in base camps, and, later in the period, built the first mounded centers (c. 8000–500 BC). band A social and economic group of hunter-gatherers who tend to be united by kinship and marriage ties. base camp A semi-permanent or seasonally reoccupied settlement of hunter-gatherers from which smaller groups of hunters or collectors organize more focused forays. biface A chipped-stone tool with opposing flat sides and one or more sharp cutting edge. chiefdom A small centralized society with a government based on hereditary chiefs whose power is believed legitimate by most of the population. confederacy A loose political alliance of formerly autonomous societies lacking a strong central government. corporate kin group People related by blood who identify with each other and share in work activities. geoglyph A nonportable symbolic motif of monumental proportions, such as an effigy mound. gorget A two-holed ornament worn suspended around the neck or sown onto a garment. Mississippian A cultural complex and time period denoted by historically contingent territorial and hierarchical societies,

280 AMERICAS, NORTH/Eastern Woodlands maize agriculture, monumentality, and readily identifiable political–religious imagery (AD 1050–1500s). monumental architecture Any construction of earth, wood, or stone built for public or religious – not domestic – reasons. mortuary center A place that owes its cultural significance to its use in interring the dead. Palaeo-Indian In North America, the Late Pleistocene period during which Clovis-making people hunted big game and filled up the continent (c. 10 200–10 000 BP). proto-state An urban or urbanizing centralized society characterized by a division of labor, cultural pluralism, and a complex central government. sedentism The condition of living in single permanent settlements for an entire year, year after year. shaman A religious specialist or medicine man or woman able to communicate with the spirit world. tumuli Elevated earthen constructions. Woodland A period of time, usually subdivided into early, middle, and late subunits, following the Archaic in eastern North America that saw the widespread adoption of pottery technology, the domestication of native cultigens, the efflorescence of Hopewellian mortuary cults, and, later, the adoption of the bow and arrow and maize agriculture (c. 500 BC–AD 1050/1500s (depends on location)).

Introduction Centuries after the early eleventh century Norse settlement of L’Anse Aux Meadows, in Newfoundland, Jacques Cartier’s wooden ship sailed up the St. Lawrence River. It was 1535, and Cartier’s men encountered a thousand sedentary horticulturists living at Hochelaga, a large Iroquoian longhouse village within present-day Montreal, Quebec. To the north, between these horticulturalists and the Arctic Inuit (who would chase off the Norse settlers) were bands of Montagnais-Naskapi hunter-gatherers who traded with, and kept their distance from, the French. To the east and south, from Prince Edward Island to New England, were territorial Algonquian-speakers – Micmacs, Pasamaquoddy, Penobscots, and Abenakis – who did things differently and would later form a confederacy administered by elected district leaders and war captains. Playing the European powers off against each other, the Iroquois also confederated and waged war on their neighbors to achieve dominance and control over the burgeoning fur trade. The reach of their war parties stretched hundreds of kilometers, as their later attacks on the westward-migrating Miami in the Illinois country attest. Twenty-two years before Cartier’s arrival at Hochelaga, ocean-going Spaniards led by Ponce de Leon had discovered peninsular Florida. Afterward, and given the successes of Pizarro in Peru and Cortes in Mexico, the Spanish began to colonize the coastal Southeast in the 1520s. This was, in turn, followed in 1539 by a major entrada into the heart of the Southeast, led by veteran conquistador Hernando de Soto.

Southeastern North America would never be the same. De Soto and later representatives of New Spain brought disease, missionaries, ranching, and slave traders that drained the interior southeast of its native life. Mississippian polities collapsed, their remnant populations migrating to other locations. Some, such as the Timucuans of peninsular Florida, were completely eradicated. In the succeeding two centuries, accommodation and resistance to the colonial powers, now including France and Britain, took the form of political reconsolidations or confederations, relocations, reassertions of ‘traditional’ identities, and infrequent violent rebellions.

The First Americans Of course, the emplacement of Europeans in North America was not the first colonization of the continent. The first Americans were probably a disparate lot of immigrants arriving during the Ice Age (or Pleistocene epoch) in the eastern Woodlands by way of western North America. Before that, most believe, the original immigrants had arrived in boats from Asia. An ancient European Palaeolithic origin for some of them remains a possibility, in part because one of the earliest ‘Palaeo-Indian’ settlements in North America is in Virginia. Actually, various archaeologists now believe that these earliest human colonists arrived before the Palaeo-Indian period, more than 16 000 years ago; their remains were found deeply buried in places such as Meadowcroft Rockshelter in western Pennsylvania (and other New World sites; see Figure 1). Because they were first, they were few in number and their sparse populations make their remains, for all archaeological intents and purposes, virtually invisible. If correct, then the Palaeo-Indians, those people who made the well-known ‘Clovis’ projectile points at c. 10 200–10 000 years BP, were not the first Americans (Figure 2). Instead, Clovis culture represents ‘the beginning of the archaeological visible portion’ of the ‘peopling’ of eastern North America. In the eastern Woodlands, their readily identifiable ‘fluted’ projectile points (specially thinned at their bases for hafting) come in a variety of sizes and have been found in direct or suggestive association with the remains of caribou, elk, bison, and mastodon, among other extinct animals from sites as distant as the sinkholes of Florida to the glacial fronts in New York, Ontario, and southern Michigan. Whether the Pleistocene megafauna were driven extinct by the Palaeo-Indians remains an open question, but there is regional settlement evidence that these huntergatherers did not merely radiate across a virgin landscape, killing megafauna as they went. Instead, the

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Figure 1 Select archaeological sites in eastern North America.

Palaeo-Indians ranged hundreds of kilometers within identifiable territories. Some ‘bands’, for instance, traveled annually between base camps and outlying ‘retooling’ sites – places where they made new chipped-stone bifaces – in Illinois and Indiana or Ohio, Michigan, and southern Ontario. While archaeologists will continue to debate the peopling of the continent until incontrovertible evidence is found, they have paid less attention to an equally significant research question highly relevant to today’s warming world: the relationship of the late Palaeo-Indian people to the beginning of the warmer Holocene (at c. 9000 BC), with its rising sea levels and

disappearing megafauna. Inland, there are various regional manifestations of the Late Palaeo or earliest Early Archaic peoples, one of which is the midcontinental Dalton culture. Large Dalton period base camps probably sported a series of surface dwellings that housed a number of families. In Arkansas, archaeologists observe that the Dalton people abutted their Plains ‘Plano-period’ contemporaries who made fluted Folsom points. Unlike their Clovis culture precursors, the Dalton people and other Early Archaic folks ranged far less widely. In addition, for the first time, the ancient people made and used numerous groundstone and

282 AMERICAS, NORTH/Eastern Woodlands

Figure 2 Clovis point (length c. 10 cm).

woodworking tools, notably including Dalton adzes, probably indicating the increased reliance on local plant foods and the construction of dugout canoes, respectively. There were also formal cemeteries, although the best-known Early Archaic cemeteries are not in Arkansas. They are in coastal Florida, where bodies were staked to the bottom of ‘charnel ponds’ or bogs of the drowned seacoast. Buried with the dead at sites such as Windover were items of clothing, atl-atls (spearthrowers), beads, engraved bird-bone tubes, and other bone tools, projectile points, and assorted wooden objects.

Archaic Developments While population densities probably varied widely across the eastern Woodlands, dramatic social changes were underway by the sixth millennium BC, changes that justify the identification of a Middle Archaic period. Undoubtedly, these social changes were related to a nearly two-millennium-long dry and warm period – the Hypsithermal. Some have posited that, for certain regions, the climatic regime necessitated concentrations in lower well-watered locations. For other regions, the correlation is less certain. What is clear, however, is that base camps grew larger and more permanent in many areas. In Kentucky and Tennessee, clear evidence of interpersonal violence, such as scalping marks, appears during the Middle Archaic period. At Koster, along the Illinois River, the first permanent housing also dates to the Middle Archaic period, as do low burial mounds on the bluff above (also

known as the Elizabeth site). Under those mounds were group burials of men and women presumed to have been members of important corporate kin groups. Something similar is seen at sites in southern Illinois, and along the Green and Tennessee Rivers in Kentucky and Tennessee, where burials of single bodies interred with sex-specific objects (including, here or there, a shaman buried with unusual bundles of objects) were interred in formal cemeteries. In the mid-South, the Middle (and Late) Archaic burial mounds were sometimes built of mollusk shells. These and other Middle Archaic mounds are most common from Florida westward across the Gulf Coast. Some, as at Tick Island in Florida, are formal layered burial mounds consisting of layers of burials alternating with mollusk shell midden. They were, in short, the first true monumental architecture. The earliest dated earthen mound complex is found in southern Louisiana, at Monte Sano, and dates to 5000 BC, or the beginning of the Middle Archaic period. Ten other related Middle Archaic mound sites are known in northern Louisiana, the largest being Watson Brake, dated to 3600 BC. The site’s 11 earthen tumuli vary in height, one reaching 7.5 m. These were built around an oval 370
260 m2 plaza, the construction and experience of which may have instantiated social inequalities within and between corporate groups. All 11 sites might have been pieces of a larger planned regional complex, the construction of which ended by 2500 BC, well before the next significant monumental construction in Louisiana, called Poverty Point. The most enigmatic of Archaic places, Poverty Point appears to have been a planned ‘reinvention’ of the earlier Middle Archaic tradition. Built between 1600 and 800 BC, it was a huge earthen complex covering 5 km2 and composed of 750 000 m3 of mounded earth. The site’s semicircular central plaza is surrounded by concentric rings of loaf-shaped mounds, probably used to elevate houses. Behind its amphitheater-like loaf mound and plaza core is a looming 20-m-high bird-effigy mound. Other mounds mark key points in the distance. Poverty Point was, in short, the first sedentary town site in the eastern Woodlands. The refuse of the many hundreds of sedentary residents at this complex includes the debris from manufacturing a variety of bodily ornaments, tools, fetishes, and fired clay ‘Poverty Point objects’. The latter were superheated and used to cook food indirectly, perhaps in large central gatherings. Incised on some of these objects, carved into ornaments, or etched onto steatite bowls are representations of upper-world birds, underworld monsters, and the plants, animals, and spiders’ webs that existed between these worlds.

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Along with the craft objects, these appear to have been made on-site for use on-site. Some ended up in outlying regions. However, it is possible that pilgrims visiting this anomalous central place dispersed the Poverty Point objects by carrying them back to their own homelands. Other Late Archaic sites near Poverty Point appear to replicate the great center, albeit at smaller scales. Perhaps these were small-scale pilgrimage centers in the Poverty Point mould and, if so, Poverty Point and its outliers could have had profound historical impacts on the entire mid-South. Minimally, the people of Poverty Point appear to have acquired exotic materials from across the mid-continent and South, from Texas and Indiana to Alabama. A few Poverty Point objects turn up at sites as far north as southern Illinois. Numerous cultural complexes that date to the Late Archaic period (c. 2000–500 BC) also feature evidence of long-distance exchange – from the Benton sphere in Mississippi to New York’s Lamoka culture and the St. Lawrence Basin’s Maritime Archaic. The exchanged goods – from groundstone ax-heads to projectile points and atl-atl weights – often assume ‘hypertrophic’ (larger-than-life) or exaggerated proportions. Hence, researchers reason that these objects were more than ordinary tools with practical use values. The exchanged objects were meant to be conspicuous, seen as well as used. This is the period of the Old Copper culture, Great Lakes region people who made and traded copper tools, some hypertrophic. Perhaps such expansive exchange networks, if not the socially complex relations that each exchanged item objectified, were simple functions of the larger numbers of people living at sometimes large ‘base camps’ around the eastern Woodlands (see Exchange Systems). Possibly, group territories and ethnic boundaries segmented the eastern Woodlands, with groups producing styles and hypertrophic goods that projected the veneer of traditional continuity. Perhaps increased populations and territorialization, in turn, encouraged people to tend wild plants in portions of the Midwest and midSouth (or vice versa). Squash cultivation is known to date from 5000 BC, while other starchy and oily seeded plants – chenopodium, amaranth, sunflower – were brought under cultivation by the second or third millennium BC (see Plant Domestication). There are also some indications of another sort of social change near the end of the Late Archaic period in some portions of the mid-continent: fewer or smaller base camps and more or larger mortuary centers. Pottery appeared first at about 2500 BC at Stallings Island, South Carolina, although it took a millennium for the technology to be adopted across the South’s Coastal Plain, finally picked up by Midwesterners

after 1000 BC. Perhaps this was because, initially, ceramic pots here or, earlier, in the Coastal Plain were not ideal cooking containers. Many were not used over open fires, as often presumed, but might have served in social gatherings or feasts. In the North, the sociality of pot making and using might have been related to mortuary gatherings. At this time, low mounds were increasingly used to bury human remains, some bedecked with stone pendants or gorgets, some interred with caches of skillfully chipped bifaces, and some sprinkled with red pigment. Archaeologists have named certain regional manifestations of these burial cultures Red Ocher, Glacial Kame, and Meadowood. In the South, the Tchula period people succeeded Poverty Point’s grandeur with, at best, modest mound centers populated by few people who ate, as best we can tell, few of the cultigens known elsewhere from eastern North America, save squash.

Woodland Gatherings These subcontinent-wide developments have in the past been identified as the Early Woodland period (500–150 BC), owing in part to the settlement evidence and in part to the appearance of pottery. But there is considerable diversity of cultural practices until the subsequent Middle Woodland period (150 BC–AD 400), when a transregional horizon, sometimes called the Hopewell Interaction Sphere, was established across the Midwest, down the Mississippi River valley, and up the St. Lawrence (where it is called Point Peninsula). The nomenclature remains vaguely informative, as the period seems to have been defined by a heightened traveling of people to far-off places, if not also, especially around the Great Lakes, the establishment of distant marriage alliances. In Illinois, the common occurrence of ephemeral Middle Woodland sites along remote interior corridors might signal the existence of overland trails (Figure 3). There was an economic basis to this cultural expansion. Midwestern horticultural practices had, by the Early Woodland period, resulted in the domestication of a suite of starchy and oily seeded crops, identified as the Eastern Agricultural Complex. The intensification of horticultural production is clearly evident in present-day Illinois, where Woodland people also innovated small chipped-stone hoe blades. The human populations in certain portions of the Midwest reached a new maximum, particularly in the Illinois River valley. There, the Havana tradition people lived in hamlets around special mortuary sites where the socially prominent were buried in log crypts that were, after some period of time, mounded

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Figure 3 Middle Woodland conical mound, Illinois.

over with earth (see Social Inequality, Development of). At or shortly after this same time, the ‘Adena’ people of Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia followed suite, and began to raise accretional burial mounds to great heights, some reaching 20 m. These were not insular people. Their society appeared built on gatherings of outlying people to commemorate corporate ancestors via elaborate mortuary rites that were, primarily, ceremonies of the living. The smoking of high-nicotine tobacco, domesticated in the Caribbean and grown in eastern North America by the Middle Woodland period, was central to the ceremonies, possibly indicating the emphasis (also seen in Middle Woodland art) of transcendental experience. By 50 BC, the mortuary gatherings appear to have reached a pinnacle, drawing into them the people of the Mississippi valley and adjacent portions of the Deep South, whose Marksville and Copena traditions reinvented or emplaced versions of the Midwest’s Hopewellian cults in the South. At that time, the native Ohioans of the Scioto tradition, at the type site of Hopewell and at hundreds of other sites around southern Ohio, constructed great earthen enclosures – circles, squares, and polygons – connected, at times, with enclosed processional avenues (or bounded linear spaces). The individual enclosures were great unroofed open-air gathering sites, not residential settlements. Each was bounded by embanked earth, the outer embankments standing up to 3 m high, blocking views if not also constraining bodily movements (Figure 4). The largest enclosures covered 20 ha. Openings at their corners or side walls allowed passage into and out of the sacred interior. Some of these openings, or other key points within

the embanked spaces, were punctuated by small platform mounds – veritable earthen stages for some performance at that spot. Certain of these stages and the associated enclosures were constructed in such a way as to make the entire space a virtual uterine or ‘Mother Earth’ geoglyph, the experience of which would merge people’s sensibilities with mythic events. Hopewellian cosmology, that is, was a lived cosmography. Presumably, great processions passed from one to another, the longest avenue, the Great Hopewell Road, stretching 48 km from the Newark earthworks to the numerous enclosed spaces of Chillicothe, Ohio. Some are also aligned to celestial events – movements of the sun, moon, and stars – affirming a grand design intended to be experienced by pilgrims. Presumably, persons who embodied the social collectivities hosted such gatherings. Perhaps it was their bones that were later kept in Ohio’s charnel houses and, later, buried under huge Hopewellian burial mounds. Finally, perhaps it was such hosts who, late in this mere two- or three-century span, formed a unique political alliance or confederation. The construction of composite geometric enclosures in the Scioto valley, rather than isolated squared, circular, or polygonal embankments, may have created – through mound-building – a political-ritual confederation, a veritable ‘triple alliance’ in Ohio. Fantastic hoards of ritual objects were uncovered at the Hopewell site, in Ohio, from burials or from the floors of dismantled and mounded-over charnel houses. There were things made out of mica from North Carolina, copper from the Appalachians, pipestone from Ohio and Illinois, and grizzly bear teeth and obsidian (a black volcanic glass) from Wyoming.

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As noted earlier, the means whereby such exotic materials were acquired probably included occasional forays or expeditions of acquisition. Given the concentrations and provenience of some such material, such as obsidian, it is likely that ‘trade’ relations between Illinois, Ohio, and Louisiana communities did exist up until AD 400 (see Ritual, Religion, and Ideology). The accumulations and ritualized deposition of the valued materials or craft objects manufactured from them characterized many Hopewellian mortuary sites from Ohio west across Illinois and south into the Marksville homeland. Emphases on select exotic or colorful raw materials pervaded daily life as well, seemingly indicating the centrality of ancestral observances and reckonings to personal and collective identities. As indicated by the elaborate abstract decorations on pots, fabric, bone tools, and more, those identities were intimately associated with a cosmos comprised of upper and lower worlds and supernatural animals, including falcons and the long-necked spoonbills and flamingoes (Figure 5). However, by AD 400, the Middle Woodland experiments were subverted, abandoned, or in some other way brought to a close. From the Scioto south to

Pinson mounds, Tennessee and Marksville, Louisiana, the construction of burial crypts, elaborate charnel houses, earthen platform mounds, and embanked enclosures ceased as sites of Hopewellian happenings. The reasons are not known with any degree of certainty. However, there is renewed general agreement among archaeologists that what followed did involve a de-emphasis of the mortuary commemorations and panregional gatherings, if not also a ‘collapse’ of long-distance alliances or trade relations. With the exception of the Deep South, the subsequent ‘Late Woodland’ period used to be described, perhaps appropriately, as bland and uninteresting, comprised of Good Grey cultures. However, south of the Appalachians in Georgia and northern Florida, the formation of community identities through the promotions of apical ancestors continued, albeit untethered to the now-terminated Hopewellian Interaction Sphere. Major Middle–Late Woodland cultural phenomena are termed by archaeologists Weeden Island and Swift Creek, dating from about AD 300 to 850, with central sites featuring large platform mounds including Kolomoki, Swift Creek, Mandeville, and Napier. At the small short-term three-mound site

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Figure 5 Carved stone effigy-bird smoking pipes, left, and earthware pot showing abstract long-necked bird motif, right. From plate XLVI[2] and figures 173–174, Squier EG and Davis EH (1848) Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley : Comprising the Results of Extensive Original Surveys and Explorations. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

of McKeithen, archaeologists found evidence of a planned center of 100–200 people living around an open oval plaza. One platform mound elevated a scaffold or space for the disarticulation of dead bodies. Another was a burial mound. The third elevated a communal building or leader’s house. As discovered atop that platform mound, the final events of the McKeithen center involved the dead leader, red-dyed hair and arrowhead in hip, lying in state on the floor of the surmounting building. Perhaps comparable to such Weeden Island centers are the post-Marksville Baytown (c. AD 400–700) and later Coles Creek (c. AD 700–1100) mounded centers in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Some of these, such as the now-destroyed Troyville site, possessed singular qualities: layout, mound shape, or mound size. Coles Creek sites are compact centers with well-defined four-sided pyramidal mounds around rectangular plazas, at least some of which were themselves constructed (i.e., land-leveled) features. For many, it is unclear how many people lived on site. Hamlets, presumably home to sedentary food producers, surrounded them within a day’s walk or so. In many cases, what was grown by such people seems limited to some part of the Eastern Agricultural Complex. Maize was not a staple in the Lower Mississippi valley before AD 1000. The Coles Creek centers of the mid-South are significant in part for how many there were and, related to this, how ‘insular’ they appear. As with Late Woodland societies generally, there is little evidence of a program of cultural outreach of the sort seen in preceding periods. Each center, that is, appears isomorphic with localized community identities. Substantial communal labor was invested in each center, but the basis of

labor mobilization is unclear. From the Coles Creek components at some sites, there are hints of once-powerful corporate persons, perhaps ceremoniously buried political leaders who embodied community identity. These seem indicated by the skeletons of extended adult men who were buried with the bodies of women and children, in one case including 13 infants. In another case, an adult male was buried on the surface of a platform mound wearing a deer-antler headdress. Next to him were the bodies of three adolescents and two adult females, one of whom had a chipped-stone projectile point still embedded in her right arm. At about the same time, far to the north in and around present-day southern Wisconsin, equally insular but more transient Late Woodland peoples maintained special mortuary sites, burying bones in or near low-effigy mounds. The mound sites of these semi-sedentary Effigy Mound culture people appear to reveal corporate identities tethered to zoomorphic mythical ancestors – thunderbirds, waterspirits, and bears (earth creatures). Territories seem marked by concentrations of one or another supernatural entity, and the distribution of different sorts of effigy mounds across this northern region is uneven. The transregional pattern of localized or insular communities, and the occasional projectile pointembedded body, might suggest that much of eastern North America was an increasingly divided and dangerous landscape. Perhaps not surprisingly, in the midst of the Late Woodland period, around AD 600, people in most eastern locations adopted the stealthy bow and arrow (over the traditional atl-atl and spear) as the weapon of choice. The timing of this adoption suggests a relationship to some larger set of social conditions, not the least of which might have been territorialization and the negotiation of tensions between evermore circumscribed groups. These changes seem to have led, in New York and Ontario, to the rise of corporate villages better known at contact as the longhouse settlements of maize-growing northeasterners. Here, after AD 800, maize emerged as a staple crop. Maize, a Mesoamerican crop, had actually been introduced during the Middle Woodland period centuries earlier. However, maize production initially seems to have had little impact, and it was not significantly intensified until c. AD 800 in the central Mississippi valley. There, maize intensification seems to closely correlate with the growth of populated sedentary villages, some of which, particularly in southeast Missouri, southern Illinois, and adjacent portions of southern Indiana, western Kentucky, and Tennessee, grew large as the centers of farming communities. Between AD 800 and 1050, two of the largest such centers were situated within 30 km of each other in

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the American Bottom region of southwestern Illinois: Pulcher and ‘old’ Cahokia. Both comprised contiguous clusters of houses around small courtyards and both were populated by hundreds of terminal Late Woodland maize-, squash-, and starchy seed-growing farmers. One to several modest platform mounds – modest versions of contemporaneous Coles Creek tumuli farther south – occupied centerstage at Pulcher and, presumably, old Cahokia by the beginning of the eleventh century. Whether corporate leaders, similar to those of their southern mound-building neighbors, existed at that time is unclear.

Mississippianization Less unclear is what happened next. The decades of the middle eleventh century witnessed tremendous social and political change, sparked apparently by unique events or people in the American Bottom. At that time, Cahokians rebuilt their village into a veritable planned urban center, eastern North America’s only pre-Columbian city, around oversized earthen pyramids and a 19 ha plaza. In outline, the new central complex is reminiscent of Coles Creek centers, perhaps indicating historical linkages between the two. However, Cahokia far exceeds in scale and internal organization anything known up to that time in the lower valley. Extensive excavations in and around Cahokia since the late 1950s verify great central festivals, construction projects, new (wall-trench) house styles, feasts, and theatrical mortuary rites – featuring human sacrifice – from the earliest phase of this earliest and archetypal ‘Mississippian’ polity. The population of this proto-urban place swelled rapidly, reasonable estimates for the late 11th century ranging from about 10 000 to 15 000 people at Cahokia proper. From the beginning and over the next century and a half, approximately 120 earthen pyramids were built at ‘new’ Cahokia. An art style developed that emphasized the relationship of gendered human or superhuman characters, agricultural production, and cosmic forces (Figure 6). More people lived in a series of outlying towns and two nearby sister complexes, East St. Louis and St. Louis, each with 45 and 26 earthen pyramids, respectively. Surrounding this entire central complex, and within 50 km radius, were rural farmsteads and farming villages. Interspersed among them were ‘nodal’ sites – farmsteads and villages – that appear to have assisted in the administration of a Cahokiacentric tributary economy. At least some of these farmers of greater Cahokia, if not significant numbers of the early Cahokians themselves, were immigrants or

Figure 6 Mississippian ceramic bottle depicting mother and nursing child, found near the Cahokia site, Illinois.

the children of immigrants – farmers who moved in from outlying areas including far-off southern Indiana and southeast Missouri. Archaeologists studying the Eastern Plains, midSouth, and northern Midwest recognize changes in local cultures simultaneous to the construction of new Cahokia. The largest impact might have been in the Illinois River valley due north of greater Cahokia. There, Cahokian settlers or affiliates founded places such as the Eveland site and its cemetery (called Dickson Mounds). The effects were equally profound farther north, in southern Wisconsin, where centuries of Effigy Mound building ceased and collared-wareusing people migrated from old homelands to new southern Wisconsin locations. Most notably, after AD 1050, a few prominent Cahokian or Middle Mississippian outposts, ritual centers, colonies, or copy-cat sites were built, especially in the unglaciated ‘Driftless Area’ along the upper Mississippi river. Although located further to the east, the unusual Aztalan site is most famous. This settlement was superimposed over an earlier Effigy Mound landscape and very nearly hidden along the Crawfish River. Its two small platform mounds, extensive palisade system, wall-trench architecture, and hybrid artifact assemblages seem a mix of local Late Woodland and Mississippian peoples. But there are other such sites that also look like physical intrusions into northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. Of these, the Trempealeau site is located near the

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northern edge of the Driftless area, its terraced platform mound built on a high blufftop overlooking the surrounding landscape. The John Chapman site sat at the southern end of the Driftless area, its singleplatform mound (that contained some sort of beaded human burial perhaps in association with a Mississippian temple) and village area built in the midst of pre-Mississippian Effigy Mounds and even older Woodland burial mounds. There was nothing quite so obviously intrusive among the early Mississippian settlements south of Cahokia. There, towns appeared after AD 1050 at places such as Angel in Indiana, Kincaid in southern Illinois, and Obion in Tennessee. The pottery and lithic assemblages from all of these sites suggest that, minimally, the local people were in contact with or emulated Cahokia to the north. Farther south, there are less obvious signatures of such contact or sustained intercourse. In Alabama and northern Georgia, the terminal Late Woodland period leading up to the twelfth century saw palisade constructions and pervasive small-scale violence. In the Black Warrior and Tombigbee valleys of Alabama and eastern Mississippi to the Etowah valley in northern Georgia, the first glimmers of Mississippianism began as the founding of modest towns with one or two earthen platforms: Lubbub Creek, Moundville, and Etowah among them. Elsewhere in Georgia, the earliest Mississippian towns appear to have been ‘site-unit intrusions’ – entire populations moving into new localities and building unprecedented pyramidand-plaza complexes surrounded by palisades; Macon Plateau and Cool Branch are the best known cases. Their founding populations probably derived from Tennessee or northern Alabama, respectively. The transformations of southeastern society that accompanied the Mississippian period may be best understood at Moundville. Recently redated to the early twelfth century, the Moundville I phase followed the pre-Mississippian intensification of maize production (at c. AD 1000). This first Mississippian phase saw the appearance of the same ‘wall-trench’ architectural styles and ‘shell-tempered’ pottery seen to the north, a century earlier. Yet these were merely harbingers of the regional political consolidation to follow (during Moundville II) at or just after AD 1200. As at Cahokia, Moundville underwent a massive planned reconstruction that saw establishment of a 20 ha plaza and the construction of some 30 earthen pyramids around its perimeter (Figures 7 and 8). Built at the same time and enclosing the entire complex was a massive circumferential palisade wall with large evenly spaced bastions. Inside, highstatus Moundvillians were arrayed around specific

Figure 7 Plan map of the Moundville site, Alabama. Adapted from Pauketat TR (2007) Chiefdoms and Other Archaeological Delusions. Walnut Canyon, CA: AltaMira.

platform mounds in substantial houses, where they used discrete sets of ritual materials in cultish performances, each perhaps the exclusive prerogative of specific kin groups. Like all such southeastern Mississippian places, Moundville’s preeminence eventually faded, replaced by other towns elsewhere, a process sometimes described as ‘cycling’. All across the Southeast, polities large and small and more or less hierarchical rose and fell every century or two. Early on, the people of many such places drew inspiration from Cahokia as a founding city and, some would argue, art style. By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, however, the political cults, formerly known as the Southeastern ceremonial complex(es), that seemed to mobilize communal labor (and politicize community identities) had begun to lose their meaning, even as interpolity war making reached new levels in parts of the Southeast. Entire histories, or cycles of chiefdom development, could be truncated by war parties from another polity.

Historical Ends Hernando de Soto witnessed the fragility of it all on his entrada in 1539–43, his passage and the swirl of historical circumstances to follow bringing down the curtain on the larger purely native history of the Southeast. Native historic-period ‘chiefdoms’ or ‘confederacies’ described in European accounts may or may not have been typical of the earlier Mississippian

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Figure 8 View of Moundville’s plaza and perimeter mounds.

period. There was great variability in their subsistence base, historical trajectories, and linguistic background. Many Southeastern polities were made up of Muskogean speakers. But far to the west were Caddoan speakers. In the Midwest, perhaps around Cahokia, Siouan languages might have been prevalent. Even farther north, around the Great Lakes, Algonquian and Iroquoian speakers predominated. In any event, it seems likely that various colonialera polities, from the Natchez of southern Mississippi to the Powhatan of northern Virginia, created powerful governments based on ancient principles. Like them, great native confederacies and proto-states, such as the League of the Iroquois, were not mere reactions to European contact. Instead, the political, ritual, and communal diversity of ancient forerunners, from the Hopewellian Scioto valley and insular Coles Creek provinces to proto-urban greater Cahokia, indicates that an archaeological understanding of the complexity of eastern Woodlands history needs to be understood in similar terms as those known to historical accounts: as ancient contacts, colonies, wars, alliances, and identity formations. Understood in that way, the ancient history of the eastern Woodlands has immediate and sometimesprofound implications for native and non-native people today and is essential for any fuller appreciation of world history. See also: Agriculture: Social Consequences; Americas, Central: Lower Central America; Craft Specialization; Exchange Systems; Image and Symbol; New World, Peopling of; Plant Domestication; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Social Inequality, Development of.

Further Reading Adovasio JM and Pedler D (2005) The Peopling of North America. In: Pauketat TR and Loren DD (eds.) North American Archaeology, pp. 30–55. Oxford: Blackwell. Anderson DG (1994) The Savannah River Chiefdoms: Political Change in the Late Prehistoric Southeast. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Carr C and TroyCase D (eds.) (2005) Gathering Hopewell: Society, Ritual, and Ritual Interaction. New York: Kluwer Academic/ Plenum. Doran GH (ed.) (2002) Windover: Multidisciplinary Investigations of an Early Archaic Florida Cemetery. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. Farnsworth KB and Emerson TE (eds.) (1986) Early Woodland Archaeology. Kampsville, IL: Center for American Archeology. Hall RL (1997) An Archaeology of the Soul: North American Indian Belief and Ritual. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Knight VJ, Jr. and Steponaitis VP (eds.) (1998) Archaeology of the Moundville Chiefdom. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Milanich JT, Cordell AS, Knight VJ, Jr., Kohlern TA, and Sigler-Lavelle BJ (1984) McKeithen Weeden Island: The Culture of Northern Florida AD 200–900. Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Minnis PE (ed.) (2003) People and Plants in Ancient Eastern North America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Pauketat TR (2004) Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pauketat TR (2007) Chiefdoms and Other Archaeological Delusions. Walnut Canyon, CA: AltaMira. Sassaman KE (2004) Complex hunter-gatherers in evolution and history: A North American perspective. Journal of Archaeological Research 12: 227–280. Smith BD (2002) Rivers of Change: Essays on Early Agriculture in Eastern North America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Squier EG and Davis EH (1848) Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley: Comprising the Results of Extensive Original Surveys and Explorations. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

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Great Basin William R Hildebrandt and Kelly R McGuire, Far Western Anthropological Research Group, Inc., Davis, CA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary adobe Building material of sun-dried earth and straw. aggregation Aggregate: a group of many distinct parts or individuals. alluvial Composed of alluvium – clay, silt, sand, gravel, or similar material deposited by running water. atlatl A device for throwing a spear or dart that consists of a rod or board with a projection or hook at the end to hold the weapon in place until released. cal BP Calibrated radiocarbon years before present, adjusted to match tree-ring dates and correspond more closely to calendar years. intermontaine Situated between mountains. lanceolate Shaped like a lance with a tapering point and sometimes a tapering base. megafauna Animals of very large size (such as bison or mammoths). playa The flat bottom of an undrained desert basin that becomes a shallow lake when it rains. pluvial lake A lake which experiences significant increase in depth and extent as a result of increased precipitation and reduced evaporation. sedentism Sedentary: staying in one place, not migratory.

Introduction The Great Basin occupies about 165 000 square miles of the intermontane West, encompassing most of the state of Nevada, as well as parts of California, southern Oregon, western Utah, and small portions of Idaho and Wyoming (Figure 1). As its name implies, it has no outlet to the sea, with its rivers and streams generally emptying into low desert lakes and playas, such as the Carson Sink and Great Salt Lake Desert, or simply disappearing through evaporation or absorption into the ground. In addition to its desert valleys, much of the Great Basin is rippled with a series of massive northwest–southeast-trending mountain ranges, many with peaks in excess of 10 000 ft. The abrupt shifts in elevation, and their corresponding rainfall and temperature regimes, produce a spectacular range of plant communities and habitats, with vast expanses of sagebrush and shadscale in lower valleys, stands of pinyon and juniper at mid-elevations, and pockets of conifer forests on the highest peaks. The Great Basin is the home of the ethnographic Paiute and Western Shoshone, whose simple but exquisitely adapted desert lifeways loom large in the development of American anthropology. The Great

Basin provided the theoretical backdrop for Julian Steward’s pioneering work on cultural ecology, as well as his conception of the family band. This extraordinary landscape, and the people who have inhabited it over the last 13 000 years, continue to provide a laboratory for the study of human adaptation and the environment, and more specifically for the relationship between simple hunter-gatherer societies and the deserts they inhabit. The natural and cultural histories of the Great Basin, however, have been far from static. Major shifts in Late Pleistocene and Holocene climate regimes, with their concomitant effects on environmental productivity, have long been recognized. At the close of the last Ice Age, for instance, immense lakes such as Lahontan and Bonneville covered vast tracts of the Great Basin (Figure 2). These lakes shrank and in some cases completely evaporated, as warmer and dryer conditions set in during the Early Holocene. The Middle Holocene, dating to about 8000–4000 years ago, was marked by even more severe droughts that altered major hydrological and ecological systems, fundamentally shifting the course of landscape evolution. By the Late Holocene, with shorter but often still extreme droughts, climatic conditions were greatly improved. Through all of this, human beings have attempted to wrest a living from this landscape, changing and adapting to this challenging desert realm. The following presentation tracks the chronological progression of prehistoric lifeways in the Great Basin within this dynamic natural context. We emphasize general themes and patterns, at the expense of more detailed local examples and explanations. Chronology

While archaeologists have proposed several regional chronological sequences and schemes, we divide time into five broad periods (cal BP ¼ calendar years before present): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Palaeo-Indian 13 500–8000 cal BP, Early Archaic 8000–4000 cal BP, Late Archaic 4000–1400 cal BP, Formative (Fremont) 1400–600 cal BP, Recent Prehistoric Post-600 cal BP.

The Palaeo-Indian period (13 500–8000 cal BP) While there have been occasional claims of a more ancient Pleistocene occupation, most archaeologists now agree that the earliest definitive human use of the Great Basin is reflected by the fluted projectile points recognized across the New World as ‘Clovis’ points (Figure 3), named for the place in New Mexico where they were first found. These artifacts have been recovered almost exclusively from the surfaces of

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Figure 4 Stemmed points. By Tammara Ekness Norton. Figure 3 Clovis point. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

ancient landforms, such as playa margins, rather than from intact buried deposits. Thus they have not been found in the Great Basin in contexts suitable for radiocarbon dating and cannot be directly dated; instead they are assumed to date in the range of Clovis points found elsewhere in North America, that is, between 13 500 and 11 500 years old. In western North America, Clovis points have been found in association with the bones of now-extinct megafauna (e.g., mammoth and large bison), suggesting that these early populations were focused on biggame hunting. This also may have been the case in the Great Basin, but it has not yet been demonstrated. Great Basin Clovis peoples are thought to have been highly mobile, traveling in small groups and settling around lakes and along rivers where game also tended to congregate. Millingstones, the hallmark of Archaic and other, later-dating prehistoric occupations, are generally absent from Clovis sites. Prehistoric occupation of the Great Basin toward the latter end of the Palaeo-Indian Period (between 11 500 and 8000 cal BP) is documented by various large lanceolate and stemmed projectile points (Figure 4) which typically occur with a variety of heavy coretools, cores, stone knives, domed scraping tools, and chipped-stone crescents. Often referred to as the Western Pluvial Lakes tradition, and like the Clovis pattern that preceded it, archaeological assemblages dating to this time generally occur around the former shores of now-extinct pluvial lakes and other ancient landforms. Evidence of this later pattern, however, is found throughout the Great Basin, suggesting larger populations. While archaeologists have tended to view Western Pluvial Lakes peoples mostly as big-game hunters, many sites from this period have a wide variety of artifacts that reflect both hunting (projectile points, flaked stone cutting implements) and plantfood processing (grinding slabs, handstones). These

tools have been found with significant concentrations of small game, fish, and shellfish remains, clearly reflecting a wider subsistence focus than just the hunting of large game. There is no question, however, that Western Pluvial Lakes populations wandered far and wide in pursuit of the plant and animal resources they so depended on. Evidence for this is provided in the obsidian source profiles of projectile points and other tools dating to this time. Obsidian is a volcanic glass that was preferred by prehistoric stone workers for making their tools. Each obsidian flow exhibits its own distinct chemical signature, which can be identified using techniques known as X-ray fluorescence (XRF) mass spectrometry or instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA). By matching the proportions of trace elements in an obsidian artifact with those from a known volcanic glass flow, archaeologists can determine the quarry where the material was obtained, and how far the toolmaker carried it before eventually discarding it. This information is then used to reconstruct broader settlement patterns, on the assumption that the distribution of the discarded obsidian reflects the travel patterns of the particular group of people who discarded it. Archaeological sites of the Western Pluvial Lakes Tradition usually contain a wide variety of obsidians from different, far-flung source locations. This pattern, which has been seen throughout the Great Basin, is interpreted as evidence of a population’s high mobility and large geographic range. Although no one knows the origin of these earliest inhabitants of the basin, recent discoveries of human skeletal remains and re-analyses of older museum collections have shed new light on this old question. Radiocarbon dating of human remains and associated artifacts found in the Carson Sink area during the 1940s showed them to be in excess of 9000 years old. One of these burials, recovered from Spirit Cave (Figure 5), represents one of the oldest and

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best-preserved sets of human remains ever recovered in North America. What is even more noteworthy, however, is that these skeletal remains, as well as some found elsewhere in North America, are morphologically different from those of the ancestors of modern Native Americans. These findings probably indicate that there were multiple migrations of different groups from northeast Asia into North America and eventually into the Great Basin. This line of scientific inquiry is somewhat controversial, because many contemporary Native American tribes who call the Great Basin home believe that their direct ancestors were the original inhabitants of these lands, and that their people were created here. The Early Archaic (8000–4000 cal BP) As we have noted, there is compelling palaeoenvironmental evidence indicating that the transition into the Early Archaic (Middle Holocene) period was marked by a shift to both warmer and dryer climates in the Great Basin. A number of archaeologists have speculated that this Middle Holocene warm period may have either reduced human populations or led them to totally abandon the central Great Basin during this interval. As evidence, they point to a series of caves and rock shelters in the region that have human occupation sequences at least 9000 years long, but show evidence of abandonment during parts of the Middle Holocene warm period. This drought may have been more severe,

and its effects on human populations more extreme, at the early end of this period (c. 8000–5500 cal BP), but it is likely that dry conditions prevailed until about 4000 cal BP. In this scenario, better-watered areas along the western, northern, and eastern portions of the Great Basin may have sustained occupation during this time or even acted as refuges for populations who were forced to abandon the central Basin. Other archaeologists, while acknowledging that this was a time of severe environmental stress and declining populations, argue that large tracts of the Great Basin were never completely abandoned. Early Archaic artifact assemblages, and the lifeways they represent, show more regional variation than their Palaeo-Indian counterparts. In the southwestern Great Basin, many of the sites dating to this time are characterized by Pinto-series projectile points (Figure 6) and increasing numbers of milling tools, but retain many of the large, percussion-shaped cores, knives, and scraping tools characteristic of the earlier Western Pluvial Lakes tradition. It follows that lifeways associated with these two assemblage types – those of small, mobile bands with geographically extensive foraging ranges – were also little changed. Along the northern tier of the Great Basin, however, a completely different pattern emerged at this time, marked by the presence of Northern Side-notched dart points (Figure 7). As nearly as can be reconstructed, these points are distributed in a

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Figure 6 Pinto Series points. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

Figure 7 Northern Side-notched Point. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

fan-like pattern across the Columbia Plateau and the northern Great Basin, suggesting cultural influences from the north during this period. The best known of these site complexes is located in Surprise Valley, California, in the northwestern part of the basin (Figure 8). They contain formal, semi-subterranean house structures which date to between 6500 and 4500 years ago. Stylistically, distinctive artifacts found in these deposits include large side-notched projectile points, antler wedges, mortars with ‘V’-shaped bowls and pointed pestles, ‘T’-shaped drills, tanged blades, and flaked stone pendants. All of these artifacts and features appear to be of northern derivation, with comparable forms identified at numerous sites on the Columbia Plateau. The Late Archaic (4000–1400 cal BP) A major restructuring of the subsistence-settlement strategies used by Great Basin peoples occurred during the Late Archaic period. The small, highly mobile groups that characterized much of the Early Archaic were replaced by larger aggregations of people living in more permanent settlements. These settlements result in an archaeological record characterized by large accumulations of midden (organic-rich sediments

created by human occupation) and artifacts, as well as elaborate house structures and storage facilities. This higher degree of sedentism was probably supported by a more intensive collection and storage of plant foods, which is evidenced in the archaeological record by an increased frequency of milling equipment and the recovery of a wide range of wild seeds. A good example of a Late Archaic village was discovered in Owens Valley, within the southwestern portion of the Great Basin. Excavations at CA-INY-30 (Figure 9) revealed the presence of house structures made from frames of wooden poles covered with thatched roofs made from tule reeds. The houses contained a rich assortment of tools, including caches of obsidian knives, projectile points, and bone awls. Several storage pits were also found, one with a large accumulation of pinyon nuts. Midden deposits adjacent to the houses produced food remains indicating a multiseason occupation. Fall was marked by pinyon nuts, winter by migratory water fowl, while spring and summer were indicated by a variety of smallseeded plants like Indian rice grass. This new village-based pattern was accompanied by the emergence of several other settlement types, including specialized hunting camps. Excavations at these sites indicate that large-game hunting became more important than at any other time in Great Basin prehistory, and much of this hunting was focused on bighorn sheep killed high in the mountains. One of the best examples of this comes from the White Mountains, where projectile points, knives, and butchered sheep bones were discovered at sites located more than 10 000 ft above sea level. These remote habitats had rarely been used until the Late Archaic, when small groups of hunters armed with atlatls and darts tipped with Elko points (Figure 10) began killing sheep among the craggy alpine peaks, and transporting the meat down to the lowland villages. The focus on large-game hunting expanded well beyond the simple goal of providing food for people living in the lowland villages. Archaeologists interpret this from the explosion of ritualistic behaviors associated with hunting that emerged during this period. Perhaps the most obvious example of this behavior can be seen in the increased production of petroglyphs (artistic images pecked into natural rock outcrops), most of which portray bighorn sheep, often associated with human hunters (Figure 11). Sheep petroglyphs are found throughout the Great Basin, but the highest concentrations are located in the volcanic Coso Mountains of southeastern California, where thousands of engravings were created during the Late Archaic period. Other ritual activities were indicated by the severed heads of mountain sheep cached in remote mountain caves, and the

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Figure 9 Location of CA-INY-30. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

manufacture of split-twig sheep figurines found at many sites in the southernmost reaches of the basin. This period of cultural elaboration was accompanied by the interregional exchange of many commodities,

the most conspicuous being obsidian. As we have noted, obsidian occurs naturally at a limited number of locations, and these places can be identified with XRF or INAA analysis. Obsidian can also be

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dated, because when a new surface of the material is exposed to the atmosphere by a stone worker, it begins to absorb small amounts water, forming a hydration rim. The longer an artifact is exposed,

Figure 10 Elko points. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

the thicker the hydration rim becomes. Measuring these hydration rims, and calibrating them against radiocarbon dates on organic remains (e.g., an obsidian artifact found in a burnt house structure), allows archaeologists to estimate how quickly the hydration rim develops on a particular type of obsidian. This in turn allows us to convert a hydration rim reading (measured in microns) to an approximate date range. The data that have already been generated by these techniques show that the Late Archaic stone workers produced thousands of obsidian blanks, which were exported across hundreds of miles to meet the demands of hunters throughout the region. Some of the obsidian artifacts were traded over the Sierra Nevada and across the Central Valley of California, and ultimately reached the Channel Islands off the Santa Barbara coast, more than 50 miles out to sea.

Figure 11 Petroglyphs of hunters and bighorn sheep. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

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The Formative Period (1400–600 cal BP) For a brief period between about 1400 and 600 cal BP, a farming culture known to archaeologists as the Fremont, occupied significant portions of the Great Basin (Figure 12). They ultimately settled in much of what is now Utah, and appear to have borrowed many of their farming techniques from neighboring Anasazi populations living in the Southwest. Although some Fremont groups focused on the cultivation of maize, constructed extensive pit-house villages with adobewalled granaries, and created elaborate forms of pottery and rock art, others lived in smaller settlements and used a mixed economy reliant on both hunting/ gathering and agricultural production. The first hints of Fremont culture can be found at sites dating between 2500 and 1400 cal BP, which begin to show evidence of a few pit houses with slab-lined pits containing corn, though it was not until after about 1400 cal BP that full-scale village life emerged among these people. A good example of a major Fremont settlement is the Nawthis Village, located in Utah just east of Salina. Many of the houses there were composed of deep, circular pits covered with superstructures of timber and mud (Figure 13). Storage facilities were usually built above ground, and consisted of several rectangular rooms made of adobe and lined with large slabs of stone (Figure 14). Typical Fremont artifacts include the bow and arrow tipped with Rose Spring points (Figure 15); grayware

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pottery, sometimes painted with geometric designs; rod and bundle basketry; leather moccasins; polished stone balls; and ceramic human figurines. As with Late Archaic peoples, rock art was important to the Fremont. A signature icon of this culture is the engraving of broad-shouldered humans wearing elaborate necklaces, earrings, and headdresses. Subsistence remains from these sites indicate that maize, beans, and squash were important staples, but were supplemented with wild foods such as pinyon nuts, chenopod seeds, cattails, Indian rice grass, and various types of game. Ditches were sometimes constructed to irrigate crops, beginning at the mouth of a canyon and directed downstream across an alluvial fan and into the cultivated fields. Many of the canyon sites also contain pole and mud-walled granaries built into overhangs and crevices in hard-to-access places. These facilities probably indicate that people living in even the largest villages took to a more mobile hunter-gatherer lifeway from time-to-time, and used these caches to help secure their stored resources while they were away. The Fremont also occupied much smaller settlements, particularly along the northern and western margins of their territory. These sites often contain two or three houses, representing just a few families, or small deposits in caves and rock shelters created by part-time hunter-gatherers traveling away from their home villages. Why the Fremont chose to farm at

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Figure 13 Circular pit from Nawthis Village. From Exploring the Fremont by David B. Madsen.

Figure 14 Storage facilities from Nawthis Village. From Exploring the Fremont by David B. Madsen.

Figure 15 Rose Spring points. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

certain times and be hunter-gatherers at others remains an important research issue for Great Basin archaeologists. Most researchers believe that the decision to farm was based largely on the changing availability of the most lucrative wild foods in the

region, such as pine nuts and mountain sheep. If these resources were readily available, then people would spend little energy farming. But if human populations over-harvested these wild commodities, or their productivity dropped due to climatic changes, then people would focus on the more labor-intensive cultivation of domesticated plants. Sometime around 600 BP, the Fremont culture disappeared from the archaeological record. No one really knows why this occurred. Many archaeologists think that severe droughts associated with what is known as the Medieval Climatic Anomaly or the Medieval Warm Period (1000–600 cal BP) made it impossible to irrigate crops on a regular basis, and that a new group of

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hunter–gatherers moved in and took over the territory. This new group, which spoke languages belonging to the Numic family (Paiute, Shoshone, Ute), either pushed the Fremont back toward their agricultural neighbors in the Southwest, or assimilated them into the new lifeway through intermarriage. While we cannot be sure which of these actually happened, analysis of ancient DNA from Fremont skeletal materials shows greater affinities with the Anasazi than with the Numic, providing some support for the Fremont being displaced from the Great Basin. The Recent Prehistoric Period (post-600 cal BP) The Recent Prehistoric period was marked by major shifts in land use resulting from the rapid spread of Numic populations across the region. Linguistic data indicate that Numic speakers originated in the southwestern corner of the Great Basin and spread quite quickly. By the time non-native people entered the region, much of it was occupied by people speaking similar (Numic) languages. If these people had lived here for a very long time, their languages would have diverged – in the way that Latin, which spread over much of Europe during the Roman Empire, evolved in different areas into French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. That a Northern Paiute person living just east of Yosemite could speak to someone living on the Snake River indicates a relatively recent spread of a single population, perhaps occurring during the last 500 years or so. Unlike the large, centralized villages that characterized much of the Fremont and Late Archaic cultures, Numic peoples used smaller settlements inhabited by one or a few independent households on a seasonal basis, and are marked by brownware pottery and new projectile point types (desert side-notched/ cottonwood triangular points; Figure 16). Increased amounts of milling gear and specialized basketry, including a new type of seed beater, indicate a greater reliance on small-seed resources, while animal bones from these sites reveal that rabbits contributed much more to the diet than mountain sheep or deer. The declining importance of big-game hunting was also evidenced in the uplands, where the specialized hunting camps of the Late Archaic Period fell into disuse, or were replaced by the small family settlements. These changes in subsistence and settlement were accompanied by declines in the production of rock art and in the inter-regional exchange of obsidian. Petroglyphs portraying human figures and elaborate hunting scenes were no longer made and, in many cases, the older engravings were defaced by a style known to archaeologists as Numic Scratching. Late Archaic obsidian production sites at the quarries were also abandoned and replaced by small-seed processing stations

Figure 16 Desert side-notched and cottonwood points. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

in places that were never used for this purpose before. Not surprisingly, obsidian hydration data from the California coast show no evidence that obsidian tools entered the region after about 800 years ago providing additional evidence for the collapse of the earlier commerce between the western Great Basin and populations living west of the Sierra Nevada. Great Basin archaeologists do not have a clear understanding of why these changes occurred during the Recent Prehistoric period. Some have argued that people living in the Numic homeland (probably the Owens Valley of southeastern California), one of the most arid parts of the basin, developed an adaptation that could deal successfully with the harsh desert conditions in the local area. When the climate deteriorated during the medieval climatic anomaly, making life much more difficult for the Late Archaic and Fremont people, the door was left open for the Numic and their small-group desert adaptation, allowing them to take over much of the Great Basin. The success of this mobile lifeway was clearly evidenced at historic contact, as every habitat was occupied by people using simple but ingenious forms of technology and social organization to make a living in one of the most challenging parts of the North American continent. See also: Americas, North: American Southwest, Four

Corners Region; California and the Sierra Nevada; Plains; Rocky Mountains; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient.

Further Reading Barlow KR (2005) A formal model for predicting agriculture among the Fremont. In: Kennett DJ and Winterhalder B (eds.) Behavioral Ecology and the Transition to Agriculture, pp. 87–102. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

300 AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in the United States Beck C (ed.) (1999) Models for the Millennium: Great Basin Anthropology Today. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press. Bettinger RL and Baumhoff MA (1982) The numic spread: Great Basin cultures in competition. American Antiquity 47(3): 485–503. D’Azevedo WL (1986) Great Basin. In: Sturtevant WC (ed.) Handbook of North American Indians 11. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. Grayson DK (1993) The Desert’s Past: A Natural Prehistory of the Great Basin. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Heizer RF and Baumhoff MA (1962) Prehistoric Rock Art of Nevada and Eastern California. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Madsen DB and Rhode D (1994) Across the West: Human Population Movement and the Expansion of the Numa. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press. Madsen DB and Simms SR (1998) The Fremont complex: A behavioral perspective. Journal of World Prehistory 12(3): 255–336. McGuire KR and Hildebrandt WR (2005) Re-thinking Great Basin foragers: Prestige hunting and costly signaling during the Middle Archaic period. American Antiquity 70(4): 693–710. O’Connell JF (1975) In: Bean LJ (ed.) The Prehistory of Surprise alley, Anthropological Papers 4. Romona, CA: Ballena Press. Stine S (1994) Extreme and persistent drought in California and Patagonia during Mediaeval time. Nature 339: 546–549. Willig JA, Aikens CM, and Fagan JL (1988) Early Human Occupation in Far Western North America: The Clovis–Archaic Interface, Anthropological Papers 21. Carson City, NV: Nevada State Museum.

Historical Archaeology in the United States Barbara J Little, National Park Service, Washington, DC, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Cultural Resource Management (CRM) A branch of archaeology that is concerned with developing policies and action in regard to the preservation and use of cultural resources. ethnicity A sense of being different than other groups because of cultural tradition, ancestry, national origin, history, or religion. material culture The buildings, tools, and other artifacts that includes any material item that has had cultural meaning ascribed to it, past and present. modernism International cultural movement after World War I expressing disillusionment with tradition and interest in new technologies and visions. National Historic Preservation Act A federal statute that established a federal program to further the efforts of private agencies and individuals in preserving the Nation’s historic and cultural foundations. National Register of Historic Places The United States’ official list of cultural resources worthy of preservation. Such resources include districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects significant in history, architecture, archaeology,

engineering, and culture. The National Park Service, which is part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, administers the National Register. preservation The act of sustaining and maintaining cultural and natural resources identified as significant and/or threatened and that warrant protection. reconstruction the act or process of reproducing by new construction the exact form and detail of a vanished building, structure, or object, or a part thereof, as it appeared at a specific period of time.

Roots of Historical Archaeology in the United States Very early instances of historical archaeology in the Americas begin with the 1796 search for evidence of a settlement on St. Croix Island to fix the boundary between the United States and Canada. Half a century later James Hall excavated the foundations of Miles Standish’s home and in 1897 the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA), which owned portions of James Island, uncovered the brick foundations of the 1639 church at Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. In the United States, the preservation movement started during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and led to passage of the Antiquities Act which, in 1906, established the basic preservation policies of the federal government. In 1935, the Historic Sites Act built upon the ideals of noncommercial value and public benefit. Historical archaeology has been associated with the preservation movement and the needs of historic places since at least the 1930s. As it flourished in the context of the preservation movement, its early use was mainly confined to discovering architectural remains. When historical archaeology got its start in the 1930s, it joined the social history of the time in creating and supporting national mythology. Jamestown and Williamsburg, in particular, provide examples of government and private interest in the historic past. The work done at each and the interpretations offered have greatly influenced the shape of colonial historical archaeology. The 1920s and 1930s saw Rockefeller’s establishment of Colonial Williamsburg, which set new standards for historic preservation and used excavations to inform architectural restorations and reconstructions. Jamestown and Yorktown became part of the National Park Service in 1934. Some of the first large-scale excavations in historical archaeology in the country took place in Jamestown in the 1930s, alongside quite a few other projects, many of them funded by Federal relief monies. During the 1940s and 1950s, historical archaeology was not tied to the intellectual pursuits of

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prehistorians who worked in museums and academic departments but to the commemorative pursuits of preservationists and park interpreters. The preservation movement provided a home to archaeologists whose work on historic period sites was not valued by academic colleagues. In addition to undertaking salvage work, historical archaeologists excavated sites mainly for the purposes of reconstruction and visitor interpretation, in some cases rewriting the details of history. For example, Hale Smith’s excavations at the Scott Miller site near Tallahassee and John Griffin’s work at San Luis de Talimali comprised the first archaeology of Spanish missions in Florida. Archaeology systematically dismantled the local mythical identification of certain ruins as ‘missions’ as research revealed sugar mills and plantation buildings instead. JC Harrington excavated Fort Raleigh and Fort Necessity National Battlefield in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Accurate reconstruction of the forts relied upon archaeological information. The 1950s excavations at Jamestown were done in preparation for the 350th anniversary celebration in 1957. In the 1960s the new social history emerged and had a lasting impact on the field. One of the defining debates for historical archaeology during the 1960s raged as its practitioners struggled to define their work and create a separate profession. Would that profession be historical or anthropological? At times, that debate threatened to destroy the field because it was treated as the primary theoretical issue facing the discipline. However, the founding of the Society for American Archaeology (SHA) in 1967 brought some measure of academic legitimacy to the field. During the 1970s anthropology as a whole was moving closer to history, although prehistoric archaeology was not following suit. In turn, historians became enamored of anthropology, discovering culture, but not necessarily material culture. Growing awareness of pluralism and social history influenced the topics taken up by historical archaeologists. Much of the research starting in the 1960s and particularly in the 1970s was focused on subcultures of American society. Ethnicity was embraced as a subject to which historical archaeology could make real contributions in anthropology. Charles Fairbanks initiated the historical archaeology of African–Americans with his investigations of plantation slavery. While historical archaeology continued to work on the contact between Native and European Americans, it also developed strong interests in plantations and plantation slavery, the frontier, subsistence, ethnicity, and method. Within the Preservation Movement, the most influential legislative developments occurred during the 1960s and 1970s. The National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), passed in 1966, established the

National Register of Historic Places and created the field now known as Cultural Resource Management (CRM). The new requirements of the NHPA stimulated the growth not only of history and architectural history but also of historical archaeology because of requirements for survey and excavation of archaeological sites from all time periods. The volume of historical archaeology done in the United States increased dramatically with the legislated needs of CRM. The sheer volume of projects driven by legal requirements to evaluate sites in terms of their proven or potential information value (criterion ‘d’ of the National Register eligibility criteria) stimulated the field to define important questions of historic period sites that can be addressed fully only by incorporating archaeology. There would be far fewer archaeologists and far less archaeology done without the organizing structure of CRM. Given the dearth of historical archaeologists in American universities, it is unlikely that archaeologists would have turned their attention toward the research domains of social history without the surge of research supported through CRM. With this impetus, the topics addressed by historical archaeologists increased dramatically to embrace urban settings, occupational categories, landscape, mining, ranching, households, farmsteads, industry, consumer choice, burials, and battlefields along with methodological developments. In the 1980s archaeology as a whole was beginning a new period of critical self-examination and, in response, reactionary entrenchment. Since then numerous debates have taken place about the pros and cons of processual and post-processual archaeology. Historical archaeology has gone through its own periods of growth and change, and its practitioners have often been the most successful with approaches that seek to uncover intention, social relations, and ideology along with economy, function, and structure.

Approaches and Subject Matter Both the geographic and analytic scales at which historical archaeologists work vary considerably. Scholars have argued for fruitful scales of analysis from the global world system, to regions, to communities, to household, and even to individual artifacts. Because historical archaeology in the United States is somewhat fragmented, practitioners struggle to define unifying questions, looking for ‘questions that count’. Some archaeologists look to social historians and cultural anthropologists to define important questions. Certainly some of the questions concern race, class, and gender and are of current political and sociological import.

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One of the unifying commonalities in the discipline is the inevitable focus on material culture. Historical archaeology in the United States has matured into a diverse discipline using a wide range of material culture, historical documents, and theoretical frameworks. The range of issues is broad. Practitioners experiment with the methodologies and theoretical approaches needed to address topics such as ideology, resistance, ethnic and gender identity, power relations, and capitalism, beyond but not abandoning traditional concerns like chronology, subsistence, and land use. Whatever the approach or topic, artifacts lie at the core of the discipline. Interpreting material culture depends upon archaeological context. Without such context, artifact analysis is limited to aesthetic opinion and market value. Every archaeology student trained in the United States is told repeatedly that without context, artifacts are meaningless. Similarly, the contexts themselves are broadened to encompass not only stratigraphic levels and features, but also societies and cultural patterns. As the questions become more complex, broader contexts are required. Historical archaeology makes significant contributions to material culture studies as it broadens the sources for writing history. Several disciplines beyond archaeology, such as the history of technology, materials science, and art history are interested in artifacts. Because things are central to human expression, Material Culture Studies has emerged as a new discipline. Under this umbrella, many disciplines are making the leap from studying isolated objects to a more comprehensive look at meanings of objects in broader contexts. The influence of anthropology is at least partly responsible for this transition but material culture studies in many disciplines are broadening the contexts they study. The focus on material culture invites interdisciplinary cooperation and synergistic research. Several archaeologists suggest that capitalism be considered the proper primary focus of the discipline and argue that such a focus solves a long-standing problem of an atheoretical and eclectic stance in the discipline. Capitalism is recognized as important because it focuses on the development of the current dominant ideology of the modern Western world. There are weaknesses though, not the least of which is a Western/European centered viewpoint that may serve to omit cross-culturally relevant work incorporating written documentation such as that on Old World precapitalist states, political maneuvering between Native American groups, medieval Europe, or African cultures documented through oral history. The European emphasis comes from the history parentage of historical archaeology. The anthropology parent provides an emphasis on the ‘other’. Historical

archaeology need not shortchange either outlook but may examine the dynamic interplay between and within societies and social groups in various positions of power and powerlessness. In the United States such a historical archaeology is nearly always centered on time periods and people embedded in or buffeted by the complex context of capitalism. Research on the culture of capitalism seeks to understand the most pervasive changes of the past half-millennium: how did people make sense of capitalism’s economic, technical, and social transformations and their cultural effects? A focus on capitalism in this case begins with mercantile capitalism from the fifteenth century rather than solely on forms of industrial capitalism from the eighteenth century. Capitalism as world system serves as a way to keep myriad issues connected. Within the world system of capitalism there are different spatial and temporal scales of analysis and different foci for research. Within the United States the phenomenon of capitalism is not limited by region or time period; it is not unique to East Coast industrialism. Although capitalism supports and is supported by dominant cultural ideologies, neither it nor the ideologies are transcendent or all-encompassing; they are challenged, changed, and embraced. An archaeology of capitalism cannot be confined within the United States. Instead it is worldwide in scope. Therefore, historical archaeology considers the development of the modern world system, with all the ‘haunts’ of modernism, in cross-cultural perspective. In looking to capitalism and the development of contemporary society and the modern world as unifying concepts, historical archaeologists turn their attention around the globe to areas colonized or otherwise affected by Europeans. Capitalism is not monolithic, as regional differences in indigenous culture, historical contingencies, and ecological setting are understood to influence as well as be influenced by Europeanled economic conquest. The cross-cultural approach is needed to understand the contemporary ‘modern world’ that is truly diverse.

Goals of Historical Archaeology in the United States As a social science, historical archaeology’s goals are to systematically investigate, describe, and explain human activities in the past through the study of material culture, broadly conceived. As one of the humanities, historical archaeology seeks knowledge of the past in order to gain insight into the human condition. As a practice, historical archaeology in the United States is situated within the private sector in CRM firms, the government sector at all levels of government, and the academic sector, although it is

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weakly represented in the latter. Because so much historical archaeology is done as public archaeology that is funded or mandated by legal requirements, it is meant to provide public benefits. Therefore, its goals must reach beyond professional research goals toward the needs of the many participants and the public who use and value it. Public benefits involve not only the knowledge and understanding gained through research, but also the use of sites and collections for such purposes as entertainment, education, community cohesion, and economic development. Research goals of historical archaeology include preservation and site interpretation, historical supplementation, reconstructions of past life ways, understanding modernization and globalization, and contributions to archaeological science. Each of these is particularly challenging in a discipline that often struggles to be truly interdisciplinary. Partly due to its development in tandem with historic preservation and historic places, historical archaeology is often used to document architectural and landscape details for management and public interpretation. Excavated artifacts also provide information for historic furnishing specialists who select material for display, for example, in historic house museums. Historical archaeology supplements history in the sense that it can fill in gaps created by biased and incomplete records. Archaeology, often, may correct history derived from documents by providing alternative questions and interpretations. Supplementing history by filling in gaps calls attention to those gaps and to an appreciation of their importance. The goal of supplementation, then, is more usefully thought of as historical challenge. History thus supplemented is history re-conceptualized. The details of everyday life must be considered in the reconstruction of lifeways, which can be thought of as historical ethnography. There are parallel goals with prehistoric archaeology in describing life in the past in terms of foodways, settlement patterns, domestic life, economic relationships, social structure, and ideology. The reconstruction of past cultures and lifeways and the description of processes such as acculturation or Creolization and frontier adaptation intersect with global processes of imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism and contribute to the histories of disenfranchised people as well as to those of the privileged. Thus, understanding modernization and globalization is a goal that is firmly embedded in the approach that sees the investigation of capitalism as a useful unifying approach in the discipline. As historical archaeology was being defined professionally, there were high hopes for its potential as a laboratory for anthropology, particularly concerning

processes such as colonization and acculturation. Potential for consideration of such processes continues to expand in the discipline. The idea of colonization, for example, may be dissected into dynamically related packages of power, domination, hegemonic negotiation, and resistance on many levels. Acculturation or Creolization, as it more accurately may be conceptualized, may be investigated as complicated economic, political, and symbolic negotiations. Historical archaeology has been used as a laboratory for more general archaeological science to be perfected through ethnoarchaeology and a ‘science of material culture’. At times, similar goals have been expressed for modern material culture studies. Such work includes tests of seriation, refuse patterning as a mirror of ethnicity, status indicators, and the observation and prediction of the effects of formation processes upon the archaeological record. Some historical archaeologists work to develop methods that will further the aims of prehistory and contribute to cross-cultural research, particularly among complex societies.

Time Periods, Issues, and Representative Sites Major issues include formation and maintenance of separations based on race, ethnicity, class, and gender. The archaeology of the African–American experience has expanded considerably. There is also research on historic sites occupied by Native Americans, often in conflict or other contact with European–Americans; Asians, especially Chinese immigrants; and Dutch, English, French, Spanish, and other European nationalities. Archaeology is increasingly common at historic house museums, typically expanding from an initial focus on the ‘great man’ history of the place to examine the rest of the household and settlement. Domestic sites of all time periods, locations, and economic class yield insights into the transformations of everyday life. Workers’ housing and boardinghouses provide the opportunity to investigate the effects of industrialization and the changing face of work and labor. Gender presents a special challenge that is being met in innovative ways. An explosion of archaeology of African–Americans has often focused on plantation slavery but has expanded to consider the changing roles and situations of black Americans as slave and free, rural and urban. Plantation studies have undertaken to provide accounts of single plantations, experiment with Stanley South’s pattern-recognition technique, illuminate unique material expressions, and critique the archaeological treatment of slavery. Post-Civil War tenant plantations and Southern farms and the

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varying situations of free blacks provide opportunities for theorizing, analyzing, and describing strategies of power, expressions of all levels of ideology, and dynamic interactions among those attempting to dominate and those attempting to resist. The archaeology of slavery documents both covert slave resistance on plantations and overt resistance through sites of the Underground Railroad. Dividing time within historical archaeology in the United States results in relatively short periods marked approximately by centuries. Some issues are specific to particular time periods, but most continue through several periods, ranging from the earliest explorations and effects of inter-cultural contact and ethnic diversity fueled by immigration, from the sixteenth century through the era of the Great Depression and until today to include modern material culture. Many types of sites are common to all the time periods, including domestic sites, farms, shipwrecks, gardens and other landscapes, and Native American settlements. Exploration and Early Settlement

This time period of approximately the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries covers diverse issues, directly related to contact between native groups and both Europeans and Africans as well as adaptations that settlers from the old world made to new physical and social environments. Plantations and missions were established immediately when Europeans settled in the new world. Some notable site types are failed or abandoned colonies, early plantations, missions, fur trading posts, and early settlements along the East coast and in the Southwest. The Grand Village of the Natchez on the Mississippi River was the main village of the Natchez society occupied before 1682 until 1730. Two platform mounds

held the home of the leader known as the Great Sun in the main temple. French colonists described this village and some of the rituals they observed in this highly stratified society, providing accounts that help interpretations of Mississippian cultures in the Southeastern US. In 1565 the Spanish founded St. Augustine, which served as capital of Spanish Florida for most of the period until it was ceded to England in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris. The second Spanish occupation lasted from 1784 until 1821, when La Florida became a US territory. Archaeology has been particularly important for interpreting women’s roles as culturebrokers in Native American and Spanish interaction. It has also revealed the adoption of aboriginal diet and food ways in the development of a Creolized culture. In addition, archaeologists have documented the decline of local indigenous people and the influx of other native groups from Georgia and South Carolina. These and many other investigations have made it clear that ceramic assemblages indicate far more than functional use; they may inform about symbolic interaction and group competition. On Jamestown Island, in 1893 the APVA acquired more than 20 acres surrounding the old church tower and in 1934 the National Park Service acquired the rest of the island to establish Colonial National Historical Park. Projects of the 1930s and 1950s are well known (see above). Since 1994, APVA has discovered remains of the triangular 1607 James Fort, including the palisade wall lines, the east cannon projection, several cellars, a building, and several graves (Figure 1). Only a portion of the fort has been eroded away by the James River, although it was accepted for years that the fort had been lost. Analyses of hundreds of thousands of artifacts dating to the first half of the seventeenth century reveal details and patterns of the early colony, including

Figure 1 Reconstruction in progress of the barracks and palisade of James Fort, Jamestown, Virginia, in preparation for the 400th anniversary in 2007.

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the discovery that the Virginia Company supplied the colony with up-to-date medical supplies and copper stock with which to fashion jewelry to trade with the Powhatan Indians. The work on Martin’s Hundred by Ivor Noel Hume is a well-known excavation in the Chesapeake region. Within these 20 000 acres along the James River, the administrative center known as Wolstenholme Towne consisted of a palisade fort and several domestic buildings. Native Americans attacked settlements along the James River in 1622, devastating the European population. The burning of Wolstenholme Towne sealed a time capsule of early seventeenth-century plantation life that has been extensively excavated and has been interpreted for the public by Colonial Williamsburg. Virginia’s first governor, Sir George Yardley, established Flowerdew Hundred in 1619 as one of many plantations along the James River. Archaeological surveys located dozens of sites related to European settlement and have yielded important insights into early relationships between European and African– Americans. Excavations also revealed a previously unknown small-scale iron smelting industry operating in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Excavations of St. Mary’s City revealed Pope’s Fort, dating to 1645 and related to the English Civil War and the Protestant rebellion against Lord Baltimore; investigations of the 1630s Jesuit Chapel uncovered burials of some of Maryland’s founders. Analysis of the town not only located several structures, including the 1635 governor’s residence and state house, a lawyer’s lodging, private homes, and public inns, but also indicates that Maryland’s first capital did not develop haphazardly but was a planned settlement incorporating concepts of Baroque urban design. Eighteenth-Century Life

The character of European settlement in several regions changed from frontier to settled community. Plantations continued to be important but cities became increasingly so. This century saw the development of the Age of Reason, including new rules of behavior and hence new material culture, and the beginning of the industrial revolution within AngloAmerican colonies. Plantations continued to be vital parts of the economic and social landscape until the end of the Civil War. Spain’s missions continued to be vital to their colonies in California and the Southeast. Some notable site types include missions, fur trading posts, cities, and battlefields and forts of the French and Indian War, and of the American Revolution. The African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan in New York City was the burial site for that city’s enslaved population throughout the 1700s. The 1990s excavation, study, and reburial of over 400

individuals marks a watershed in historical archaeology in the United States in terms of public involvement. Analysis of the skeletal remains and burials reveal some direct connections to African cultural practices and symbolism as well as the physical hardships and effects of enslavement. Fort Necessity in Western Pennsylvania was the 1754 scene of a pivotal conflict between England and France in the French and Indian War. Archaeology revealed that long-held assumptions about the fort’s precise location, size, and shape were wrong. Excavation identified the stockade and outer entrenchments and permitted an accurate reconstruction as a circular fort, which is managed by the National Park Service. The Archaeology in Annapolis project excavated over 20 sites in Maryland’s capital, including formal gardens, colonial mansions, a print shop and artisans’ dwelling, and evidence of the baroque town plan. The project has explicitly focused on the development of the culture of capitalism and an innovative and influential public program. Archaeology at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s plantation, and at Poplar Forest, Jefferson’s ‘other’ plantation, has provided insight into lives, work conditions, and accomplishments of white and black servants and slaves. As on other plantations, the analysis of food remains has been important for understanding ethnic and economic variability. Of particular importance is the analysis and understanding of a distinct culture that developed among African–Americans. In addition, the archaeology investigates Jefferson’s landscape design and the purposeful shaping of these places. Nineteenth-Century Life

While manufacturing and iron production began in the colonies during the seventeenth century and crafts began to turn into industries in the eighteenth century, it is during the nineteenth century when full-blown industry and accompanying commerce appear. Industry changed the structure of wage labor, yet slave labor continued in agricultural, industrial, commercial, and domestic settings. The California gold rush stimulated migration West within the continent and also stimulated Chinese immigration. Notable site types include plantations, railroad sites, and many other types of sites associated with Manifest Destiny, Chinese terraced gardens, industrial sites including workers’ housing, battlefields, encampments, and other locations directly associated with the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. Work at the early nineteenth-century Russian colony of Fort Ross in California goes beyond traditional studies of acculturation. Analysis in the context of mercantile colonialism reveals that Native American

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workers did not buy European goods, but acquired them as discarded items. They recycled materials such as nails and ceramic and glass sherds into objects that were useful in the Native American context and within a complex set of Native cultural strategies Investigations at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia show peoples’ responses to changes in industry as the armory was transformed from a work place run by artisans to a factory of wage laborers run by the military (Figure 2). Workers were not silent about their disintegrating social and economic position. Reactions on the job to harsher work conditions and longer hours included work slowdowns, sabotage and, in one extreme case, murder. Families also made different consumer choices in this chaotic environment. During the early nineteenth century, when the lives and livelihoods of craftsmen appeared unthreatened and secure, the households of management and labor tended to follow the same fashions in choosing their domestic goods. Later, in mid-century, the managers continued to adopt new styles. In contrast, laborers re-adopted old styles even while both cost and availability made the new and fashionable household goods accessible to the average armory worker. At the Boott Mills industrial complex in Lowell, Massachusetts, excavations of the mill girls’ boardinghouses reveal that workers frequently disregarded corporate rules about behavior, particularly

Figure 2 Stratigraphic layers at the nineteenth-century Harpers Ferry Armory in West Virginia.

concerning the consumption of alcohol. Other artifacts indicate that the mill workers sought to create distinct individual identities for themselves. In 1865 the Steamboat Bertrand, bound from St. Louis for the newly discovered goldfields of Montana, sank in the Missouri River north of Omaha, Nebraska. In 1969 the vessel’s hull was completely excavated, yielding tools, clothing, food, and equipment which were in remarkably good condition because they had been preserved in an anaerobic, only slightly acidic, environment. Visitors to the DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa may view the collection storage area that protects the cargo collection of 200 000 artifacts. The objects bound for the mining towns may not be what one would expect to find on the raucous nineteenth-century American frontier. In addition to necessities, there was olive oil and mustard from France, bottled tamarinds and a variety of canned fruits, several varieties of alcoholic bitters, powdered canned lemonade, and brandied cherries. Such an inventory challenges assumptions about merchants on the frontier and provides an important resource for researchers of frontier life and consumer culture. Like-a-Fishhook Village on the Missouri River in North Dakota was occupied c. 1845–85 by Hidasta, Mandan, and Arikara people who farmed and traded with Europeans. Excavations of this multicultural village revealed both traditional and modified housing built by members of these three distinct tribes and extensive evidence of the fur trade as well as the presence of Fort Berthold. In 1983 an accidental grass fire exposed the surface of Little Bighorn Battlefield, providing the opportunity to examine the ground surface and to conduct archaeological investigations into this battle, which is one of the most famous of many conflicts over control of land and life in the American West. On June 25, 1876 the Seventh US Cavalry, led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, engaged the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians in a battle that was part of the United States government’s military campaign against the tribes who refused to live within the boundaries of the Great Sioux Reservation and who were struggling to continue their traditional way of life. Because none of the 7th Cavalry combatants survived, there were no eyewitness accounts from whites. Historians had long held that the extensive Indian testimony was not accurate. Specific questions concerned where the participants of the battle took up positions and how they moved about the field. The archaeologists used geophysical techniques and excavation to translate artifact patterning into behavioral dynamics through the use of modern firearm identification procedures. The innovative archaeological methods created during these investigations changed the way that

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battlefield archaeology is done and raised expectations for results. Archaeological discoveries challenged historical details and versions of the battle and the findings support the idea that the Indian battle accounts are more accurate than those of the soldiers who buried the dead. In another example of archaeology supporting ‘alternative’ history and challenging an accepted perspective is provided by an archaeological project commissioned by the Northern Cheyenne to document escape routes taken during the Outbreak from Fort Robinson, Nebraska, in 1879. Archaeological results successfully challenged official Army-based accounts of the escape by providing data that bolstered Cheyenne oral tradition. This is one of many examples where oral history and archaeology are mutually supportive in providing data and perspectives that contribute to a more accurate history in which biases and the politics of knowledge are acknowledged. Excavations at the Millwood Plantation on the Savannah River in South Carolina provide insight into the transition between plantation slavery from the 1830s until the Civil War to post-war tenant farming lasting into the 1920s. Changes in settlement pattern reveal the search for greater freedom among formerly enslaved workers as quarters were replaced by clustered housing which was in turn replaced by more dispersed and independent houses. Twentieth-Century Life

The economy of the United States continued to change after the upheavals of the Civil War and Reconstruction and with the impact of the Depression of the 1930s. Demography continued to change with immigration, anti-immigration laws, and internal migration. Notable site types include tenant farms, sites associated with mining, including mines themselves and mining camps; saw mills, logging camps, boom towns, work camps, and sites of conflicts between labor and capital. Historical archaeology of mining spans several centuries and documents not only the extraction and refinement processes, but also the social life and culture of miners. The early twentieth-century remains of Reipetown in eastern Nevada reveal interesting anomalies of a mining town without evidence of internal class distinctions. No material culture evidence indicates consumer differences among documented households of ethnic Slavs, Greeks, Italians, Mexicans, and Japanese. The Ludlow Massacre of striking coal miners and their families by the Colorado National Guard in April 1914 sparked an important turning point in labor relations in the United States. Archaeologists of the Ludlow Collective investigate this site not only to document the material evidence of the tent

colony and its destruction but also to revive the memory of working class struggle.

Disclaimer The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent any official position of the US National Park Service. See also: Americas, Central: Historical Archaeology in Mexico; Americas, North: Plantation Archaeology; Americas, South: Historical Archaeology; Historic Preservation Laws; Industrial Archaeology.

Further Reading Crowell AL (1997) Archaeology and the Capitalist World System: A Study from Russian America. New York: Plenum Press. Deagan K (1983) Spanish St. Augustine: The Archaeology of a Colonial Creole Community. New York: Academic Press. Deetz J (1993) Flowerdew Hundred: The Archaeology of a Virginia Plantation, pp. 1619–1864. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Feguson L (1992) Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Early Africa America, 1650–1800. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Hardesty DL and Little BJ (2000) Assessing Site Significance: A Guide for Archaeologists and Historians. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Little BJ (2007) Historical Archaeology: Why the Past Matters. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Mullins PR (1999) Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African American and Consumer Culture. Klewer Academic/Plenum. Orser CE, Jr. (2002) Encyclopedia of Historical Archaeology. London: Routledge. Orser CE, Jr. (1988) The Material Basis of the Postbellum Tenant Plantation: Historical Archaeology in the South Carolina Piedmont. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Shackel PA (1996) Culture Change and the New Technology: An Archaeology of the Early American Industrial Era. New York: Plenum Press. Wall DD (1994) The Archaeology of Gender: Separating the Spheres of Urban America. New York: Plenum Press.

Plains W Raymond Wood, University of Missouri – Columbia, Columbia, MO, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary earthlodge An earthlodge refers to a kind of semi-permanent house, supported by four or more center posts and covered with a layer of earth and sod with a covered entry hall. fluted point A projectile point with a distinctive longitudinal groove on both faces, left after removal of a channel flake from the base of the point.

308 AMERICAS, NORTH/Plains wickiup Hut used by the nomadic Indians of the arid regions of the western and southwestern US, usually with an oval base and a rough domed frame covered with reed mats, grass, or brushwood.

Introduction The Great Plains of North America encompass the vast grasslands that lie between forested eastern North America and the Rocky Mountains; to their north the region is bounded by the boreal forests of Canada, and to the south by the Gulf Coastal Plain. The region is subject to climatic extremes of the continent’s interior, plus the aridity resulting from lying in the rain shadow of the Rockies. This vast region nonetheless is environmentally very diverse, containing forested montane areas as well as large river systems. Major streams drain from the Rockies toward the east, and provide valley-bottom habitats that bisect this great grassland, and in the east their expansive riverbottoms provided fertile land for the gardens of later peoples (see Figures 1 and 2). The region provided a perfect setting for the American bison, an animal that remained the preferred choice of prey for Native Americans for 11 000 years, though pronghorns and other smaller game were not neglected. Estimates of the historic bison population on the plains range from some 30 million upwards to twice that number. These huge beasts, though smaller than their Clovis- and Folsom-era ancestors, provided raw material for an astonishing range of needs: food, shelter, tools, and weapons – from housing to fly swatters. Folsom hunters were the first to develop techniques for killing bison in large numbers, techniques that were refined over the succeeding generations, and that included driving them over cliffs and into corrals and natural enclosures. For generations killing weapons were spears, or darts cast using an atlatl, or spear-thrower. The bow and arrow did not arrive on the plains until about the time of Christ. Historically, a bison-skin tipi was used by every group on the plains, though some semi-sedentary late farmers used it principally while they were away from their villages on the hunt. Archaeological evidence for use of the tipi goes back perhaps 5000 years, though its perfect adaptation to the needs of nomadic life on the Great Plains suggests that it has far greater antiquity. Except for differences between three-pole and fourpole foundations, there is astonishingly little variation in these conical dwellings across the plains, which were quickly erected and even more rapidly dismantled (see Figure 3).

Palaeo-Indian Cultures The earliest soundly documented inhabitants of the Great Plains were Clovis hunters, living between

about 9900 and 9200 BC, though tantalizing but inconclusive suggestions of prior human occupations persist (Figure 2). Most readily identified by their distinctive fluted lanceolate points, Clovis sites denote a mobile hunting and gathering society best known for its exploitation of mammoths (more recently, mastodons have been added to their prey), though they depended on lesser game for most of their subsistence. In the Eastern Plains and in southeastern United States, the Clovis point appears to have evolved into the fluted Dalton point. On the Western Plains, however, Clovis points were replaced by Folsom points, which were made using a different fluting technique, in which a single flake was detached from each side of the base, rather than multiple flakes (see Figure 4). Folsom hunters ranged the plains between about 9000 to 8000 BC. Their sites reveal an abrupt change in hunting: kill sites now contain large numbers of an extinct species of bison instead of animals that were stalked individually. These Palaeo-Indian hunters lived during a time of dramatic environmental and climatic change. During Clovis times the glacial climate of North America was slowly warming. Mammoths, mastodons, giant bison and ground sloths, and other giant ice-age fauna had vanished by Folsom times, probably due to changes in their food supply because of changing vegetational patterns, though human hunting may also have contributed to their demise. Though little is known of their social life, the presence of high-quality stone for making chipped-stone tools that originated hundreds of kilometers away implies either highly mobile bands or the genesis of long-distance trade. A succession of peoples who made a wide range of new and different kinds of unfluted lanceolate projectile points occupied the plains between about 8000 and 6000 BC. Collectively, these cultures are called the Plano complexes, and the points they made include Agate Basin, Plainview, Milnesand, and Hell Gap points. A group of sites in the Northern Plains containing materials known as the Cody complex includes points of varying form described as Alberta, Scottsbluff, Eden, Firstview, and Kersey points. Other terminal Palaeo-Indian complexes include Allen/Frederick. Many of these sites consist of localities where large numbers of bison were killed and butchered, a continuation of the Folsom practice of collective kills.

Plains Archaic Cultures Hunting and gathering continued to be important for the next several thousand years, during what is sometimes called the Archaic period, dating between about 6000 and 500 BC (Figure 5). Global temperatures had been increasing since the retreat of glacial ice and,

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we rt h No rn ste

No rth ea s Mi

te rn

dd

le

s Plain

Mis s o

ur

i

s Plain

Central plains

Southern

Plains

Figure 1 Spatial divisions of the Plains area. After Lehmer (1971) Introduction to Middle Missouri Archeology. National Park Service, Anthropological Papers No. 1. Washington, DC: US Department of the Interior.

Figure 2 Typical Plains view showing the interfingering of stream-bottom vegetation and upland grasslands. In the foreground is the Ray Long site, southeast of the South Dakota Black Hills. Photo by Richard P. Wheeler, National Anthropological Archives.

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Figure 3 A Skin Lodge of an Assiniboin Chief. After Karl Bodmer.

cm

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Figure 4 Clovis and Folsom points: (a, b) Clovis points; (c, d) Folsom points. From Jack L. Hofman and Russell W. Graham, The Paleo-Indian Cultures of the Great Plains. In W. Raymond Wood, editor, Archaeology of the Great Plains (1998), Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

though the timing varies with geography, temperatures peaked in what is known as the Hypsithermal climatic episode, some 5000 to 3000 BC, then gradually began to cool to modern conditions. The effects of this warming peak and its accompanying droughts on human and animal activities must have been locally very severe, but people never abandoned the region. The record for this period is quite patchy because of poor preservation and inadequate sampling, but across the plains we nevertheless find an increasing number of distinctive complexes, largely defined on the basis of a rapidly expanding inventory of very diverse projectile points that include Logan Creek,

Gore Pit, McKean, and Pelican Lake. Lifeways were adjusting to a time of rapidly changing climate that led to striking modification in the flora and fauna upon which humans depended. Bison remained a staple in their diet, but there is now more evidence for the use of plant resources because, as opposed to the rare presence of grinding tools in late PalaeoIndian times, there is the almost universal use of manos and metates for grinding seeds and other vegetal foods. In the Eastern Plains, simple fiber-tempered pottery that dates to between 2600 and 1000 BC was unexpectedly found at the Nebo Hill site, near Kansas City.

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Time

Period

Historic

Plains villagers

Plains nomads

Coalescent

1500 1250

Taxon

Plains village

Middle Central Southern Oneota Missouri Plains Plains

1000 750 Keith Besant

500 Woodland 250 Kansas City Hopewell

AD 1 500

Pelican Lake 1000

McKean

2000 Archaic 3000 Gore Pit

4000 5000

Logan Creek

6000 7000

Plano

Agate Basin Hell Gap

Cody

8000 Folsom 9000 BC

Palaeolndian

Clovis

Figure 5 Chronological periods on the Great Plains, with a few representative cultural units.

Plains Woodland Cultures Beginning about the time of Christ or a little earlier, the eastern part of the plains began to witness the development of a wide variety of cultures that made elongate pottery vessels with conoidal bases, corner-notched projectile points, and that sometimes erected small burial mounds, elements that had their ultimate origin in eastern United States and, indeed,

these were presaged in scattered late Archaic sites in the American Midwest. Some of these emerging plains Woodland complexes, including the so-called Kansas City Hopewell, clearly were inspired by Middle Woodland influences in northeastern United States. Still other Woodland elements appear to have diffused onto the plains and were overlaid on a variety of pre-existing Archaic bases. These Woodland complexes extend west

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to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, up the Missouri River into Montana, north into southern Canada, and south into Oklahoma and Texas. Archaeologists believe that a good case can be made in many instances for a continuum between the indigenous Archaic peoples and Woodland populations, but a dramatic change in hunting took place with the introduction of the bow and arrow, and in cooking by the widespread use of pottery. Good examples of architecture appear during this time. Oval house patterns, probably resembling small dome-shaped structures covered by hides or bark, like wickiups, probably sheltered a nuclear family, and we may presume small hamlets of such structures typified their settlements. Representative complexes include Besant in the Northern Plains, and the Keith Phase in the Central Plains. Wild plant foods continued to be gathered, as always, but in about AD 250 the Kansas City Hopewell began the limited cultivation of maize, squash, and marshelder. Other groups and later Woodland sites in the Eastern Plains also contain sunflower seeds, though the cultivation of maize and other cultivated crops apparently did not extend into the western High Plains (see Figure 5).

Plains Village Traditions About AD 900 this pattern of incipient agriculture was overturned by settled peoples who lived in the valleys of major streams, built substantial dwellings capable of housing an extended family, and maintained a developed agricultural system. Gardens were prepared and tilled using sharpened bison scapulas lashed to a wooden handle. River floodplains supported small gardens containing maize, squash, and marshelder, to which were everywhere added beans, sunflowers, and gourds that contributed significantly to their diet, though bison hunting remained important. People were now tied at least seasonally to their fields though, like their historic descendants, they surely went on long-distance hunts on the High Plains, principally west of their villages. Three major traditions may now be seen among the newly developed semi-sedentary gardeners along the eastern rim of the Central and Northern Plains. Each of them is believed to have developed, in ways that are not yet clear, from local Woodland origins. Their houses are larger than those of earlier times, and are capable of housing an extended family. In the Central Plains small hamlets and the individual homesteads of these gardeners are known as the Central Plains Tradition, dating between about AD 900 and 1300. The tradition encompasses three major subdivisions: Upper Republican, along the Nebraska–Kansas boundary; Nebraska, along the Missouri River in

Nebraska and Iowa; and Smoky Hill, in north-central Kansas. Their hamlets of nearly square houses, set on terraces or hills above river floodplains, were supported by four or more center posts, and had a covered entry extending from one side; they were probably covered with earth. Bell-shaped pits were used for storing household goods and garden produce. Well-made globular pottery vessels and a wide range of utilitarian and nonutilitarian artifacts distinguish between these three subdivisions. Their small communities apparently enjoyed relative peace with their neighbors, for none is known to have been fortified. During the same time, to the north, along the banks of the Missouri and its major tributaries in northwestern Iowa and in North and South Dakota, was the Middle Missouri Tradition. Characterized by long rectangular gabled houses with extended entries on one end, they were clustered in villages of varying size, usually built on the rim of high terraces overlooking the river. The walls of their houses probably were banked with earth, but their roofs do not appear to have been covered with earth as were those in the Central Plains. Villages often were fortified by a ditch that enclosed the town margins not facing the riverbank, and was reinforced along its inner rim by a palisade of closely set posts, often augmented by bastions. It is clear that these people were menaced by some of their neighbors: perhaps by nomads, or perhaps by other villagers competing for the same resources. These communities evolved through three consecutive stages: the Initial, Extended, and Terminal Middle Missouri stages. Some Terminal Middle Missouri towns consisted of one hundred or more houses, tightly packed within bastioned defensive ditches (see Figure 6). Sometime after about AD 1350 the distinctive architecture and artifacts of the Central and Middle Missouri Traditions become blurred, in what is known as the Coalescent Tradition. The architecture of the gardening tribes from Nebraska to North Dakota soon consisted of circular earth-covered lodges supported on a four-post foundation, and retaining a covered entry (see Figure 7). Dwellings of many early Coalescent sites are scattered and without visible defenses, but later ones are uniformly large and heavily fortified (Figure 5). The nature of the processes that led to these changes is obscure, but there is little doubt the Arikaras were responsible for introducing the new circular earthlodge in the north. The arrival of the Dakota Sioux from the Eastern Plains is presumed to be a major stimulus for their defensive measures. The historic Siouan-speaking Mandan and Hidatsa Indians are lineal descendants of the Middle Missouri Tradition; the historic Caddoan-speaking Arikara and Pawnee Indians developed from the Central Plains Tradition. The Crows broke away from the Hidatsas in

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Figure 6 Aerial view of Double Ditch State Historic Site, North Dakota, a prehistoric to historic Mandan Indian site. Photo by Russ Hanson, courtesy of National Park Service.

Figure 7 Early historic Arikara earthlodge floor, Cheyenne River site, South Dakota. (National Anthropological Archives, negative 39ST1-84).

late prehistoric times to become nomads. Historically, a number of tribes along the eastern rim of the plains adopted the same general lifestyle just described for the earthlodge-dwelling tribes, including the Omahas, Poncas, and Otos. So did the Cheyennes and some of the Eastern Dakota Sioux – such as the Santees and Yanktonais – but in the historic period they abandoned this way of life for a fully nomadic one. Though it is somewhat marginal to the Great Plains, in the late prehistoric period another major complex occupied the region extending from Lake Michigan to the Missouri River, and from southern

Minnesota to central Missouri, roughly centered on the state of Iowa. Sometimes called a ‘pottery culture’ because of its distinctive if highly variable ceramics, the Oneota Tradition emerged in about AD 900, probably having its antecedents in regional Woodland groups. They share many elements with village groups on the plains, including agriculture that used hoes made from bison scapulae. Many Oneota sites are very large, some covering more than one hundred acres. Earthen enclosures are known at a few of them, and other sites are associated with burial mounds, though there are extensive

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cemeteries along the Missouri River, such as at the Blood Run site. The people were hunters, fishers, and gatherers who depended heavily on seasonally available resources near their villages. Maize was their major crop, but beans, squash, and sunflowers also were grown. Oneota culture persisted in many variants into the historic period, and has been identified as ancestral to the historic Chiwere Siouan-speaking Winnebago, Ioway, Otoe, and Missouri; and as the Dhegiha Siouan-speaking Osage, Kansa and, probably, the Omaha and Ponca tribes in the Central Plains and its margins.

Southern Plains Small village groups also began to appear on the Southern Plains in about AD 800 or 900. Living in permanent houses and practicing both agriculture and hunting and gathering (focusing on bison), they possessed a rich inventory of tools and weapons befitting a sedentary life. Set near the floodplains of major streams, and growing maize, beans, and squash, their homes assumed various forms: some had stone-slab foundations, while others were wattleand-daub structures. Thousands of these villages are scattered across the Southern Plains, differentiated by their architecture, pottery, and other possessions. It is believed that most or all of them developed from indigenous Woodland groups, with the architecture of the western groups borrowed from Puebloan groups to the southwest, and the more easterly ones borrowing from the eastern woodlands. Many of the groups are believed to be related to historic Caddoan groups who lived further to the east and north. Upper Canark Complex villages, scattered across the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma and adjoining regions, were characterized by houses having stone-slab foundations, some of them having several

Figure 8 The American bison. Photograph by W. Raymond Wood.

rooms. The best-known subunit of that complex is the Antelope Creek Phase, centered in the Texas panhandle. Isolated homesteads, small hamlets, and large unfortified villages denote peaceful times, though their westernmost villages in southeastern Colorado are built in defensive settings. A number of other village complexes are known in central Oklahoma and northern Texas, several of which are assigned to the Redbed Variant. Dating to about AD 800 or 900–1450, their hamlets or small villages of rectangular or oval wattle-and-daub homes were confined to the valleys of major rivers. Like their earlier western neighbors, they depended heavily on bison, though the abundance of this animal appears to have fluctuated through time. Some of these groups are surely related to the historic Wichita Indians. The Wichitas emerge into history as the descendants of the Great Bend Aspect of south-central Kansas. Dating between AD 1450 and 1700, their large villages were built on terraces or hillsides near streams. Circular or oval homes were built on the surface or in shallow pits; they are believed to represent the kind of pole and grass-thatched structures described by Francisco de Coronado and Juan de On˜ate in the 1500s. Fragments of chain mail and other metal goods from some Great Bend sites identify them as the Wichita villages known to the Spaniards as Quivira.

Transition to the Historic Tribes Nomadic bison hunters continued to live on the High Plains in the west throughout prehistory, though the bison they were hunting after about 8000 BC were now of modern size (see Figure 8). Though we have little information on these people in late prehistoric times, their way of life was a very ancient one, and persisted with remarkably little change from Archaic

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times until the historic arrival of guns and the Old World horse. Things were to change dramatically with the arrival of these two elements. Native North American horses had become extinct after Clovis times, but their re-introduction by the Spanish in the southwest soon led to their diffusion north into the Great Plains and thence west into the Columbia River area by the early 1700s. Horses meant that burdens could be pulled more easily than by the dogs previously used, and hunters could range over vastly greater areas in search of game. The introduction of guns by French traders furthered this revolution in hunting and in warfare. Because the Spanish in the American southwest prohibited the sale of guns to Indians, Native American markets on the plains – especially in the north – saw a brisk trade as the guns obtained from French traders to the northeast were traded for horses that originated in the Spanish settlements. Plains Indians now had great mobility and the ability to kill game and enemies at heretofore impossible distances. This led to the historic stereotype of the mounted Indian warrior. These new elements radiated throughout the plains, leading to such diverse changes as larger tipis, and the ability of a man to have multiple wives. Profits made by such middlemen traders as the Mandans made them extremely wealthy. By historic times there was a plains-wide trading system, interwoven with relations with far-flung groups that, indeed, formed a pan-continental trading network. In the plains this trade was fostered by the famous plains sign language, a pidgin that permitted easy communication between groups who spoke radically different languages. Trade was also facilitated by the Calumet Ceremony, which involved the ‘adoption’ of individuals across tribal boundaries, and placed trade in a social setting that was familiar and comfortable to both parties. Exchanges between the gardening tribes and the nomadic hunters and gatherers was one of the mechanisms that led to such striking similarities between the tools and weapons of these two groups who were, on the face of matters, so distinctive in their way of life. Another effect of white contact was the precipitous decline in population that resulted from the introduction of several diseases that were previously unknown in North America and to which they had no immunity. The principal killer was smallpox, as it often led to the deaths of more than 90% of its Indian victims. The number of deaths from smallpox, measles, mumps, whooping cough, and other diseases across the plains cannot be calculated, but between about 1750 and 1837 the number of Arikara villages was reduced from perhaps 33 villages to a single town, and the number of Mandans (see Figure 9) declined from some 12 000 to about 125 individuals. Nomadic tribes such as the Sioux and Cheyennes

Figure 9 Mandeh-Pahchu, a young Mandan Indian. After Karl Bodmer.

were less affected, for they were not tied to crowded and disease-prone villages as were the sedentary tribes. Population reduction led to many social changes from marriage patterns to political organization. Reduction in the numbers of the villagers living along the Missouri made it simpler for the Dakota Sioux to expand from the northeastern rim of the plains west across that river into the Western and Northwestern Plains, radically altering the balance of power on the plains. European-made goods, or artifacts fashioned from European materials, quickly entered the lives of Native Americans from the instant that Europeans arrived on the scene. These introduced items had an accelerating effect on traditional native crafts, ultimately eliminating many of them by the substitution of new goods. Replacement took place either as a raw material for traditional goods, or the traditional good was abandoned in preference to newly acquired implements like steel knives and metal cooking pots. The arrival of guns, horses, new technologies, and alien diseases had irreversible effects on plains Indian life – changes that culminated when they were confined to reservations following the Indian Wars in the late 1800s.

Historic Sites Archaeology Archaeologists have not neglected historic sites across the plains. Documented historic Indian sites have been systematically excavated in efforts to tracehistoric groups into the prehistoric past. In addition, early efforts by historic site archaeologists such as Smithsonian scholar G. Hubert Smith and his colleagues led to the excavation of military and furtrading posts in reservoirs that were to be flooded

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by federal dams in the mid-1900s. Among such sites were Fort Stevenson, North Dakota (a post-Civil War military post), and Forts Pierre and George (furtrading posts, mid-1800s). State historical societies and universities soon began investigating other such sites, and with the advent of federal legislation in the mid-1900s, mandated cultural resource surveys were locating many additional kinds of sites, and follow-up excavations were taking place in such diverse sites as stage stops and abandoned pioneer towns. Historians have been full-fledged partners in planning and interpreting such projects, and the murky corners of the history of the Great Plains continue to be illuminated by these interdisciplinary studies. See also: Americas, North: Eastern Woodlands; Great

southeastern United States. The term is inappropriate for similar pottery recovered from Caribbean sites. diaspora The scattering or dispersal of a people. African diaspora usually refers to the forced dispersal of Africans from Africa to other places in the world, including the Americas, Asia, and Europe. ethnogenesis Often defined as the making of an authentic culture. It refers to a process in which a new cultural group emerges from the mixture of two or more, displaced cultural groups. panopticon An observation tower or other device used for surveillance. The ideal panopticon is designed so that those being observed never know when or by whom they are being observed. Some panopticons were subtly built into a landscape by placing an owner or manager’s house on an elevated area making it possible to observe field or factory workers in both their living and working areas. Panopticons emerged during the industrial revolution, and emanated from capitalism. They were placed in a variety of institutions, including prisons, factories, even schools.

Basin.

Further Reading DeMallie RJ (ed.) (2001) Plains Vol. 13: Handbook of North American Indians. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. Frison GC and Mainfort RC (eds.) (1996) Archeological and Bioarcheological Resources of the Northern Plains. Fayetteville: Arkansas Archeological Survey, Research Series No. 47. Hofman JL (ed.) (1996) Archeology and Paleocology of the Central Great Plains. Fayetteville: Arkansas Archeological Survey, Research Series No. 48. Hofman JL, Brooks RL, Hayes JS, et al. (1989) From Clovis to Comanchero: Archeological Overview of the Southern Great Plains. Fayetteville: Arkansas Archeological Survey, Research Series No. 35. Holder P (1970) The Hoe and the Horse on the Plains. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Lehmer D (1971) Introduction to Middle Missouri Archeology. National Park Service, Anthropological Papers No. 1. Washington, DC: US Department of the Interior. Wood WR (ed.) (1998) Archaeology on the Great Plains. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

Plantation Archaeology Theresa A Singleton, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary agency An analytical concept used widely in the social sciences to examine how people either act individually or collectively to influence the social conditions within which they are enmeshed. colonoware Term used to describe a broad category of handproduced earthenware found on eighteenth-century sites in

Archaeologists have conducted investigations of plantations in North America since the 1930s. Early studies, however, were primarily undertaken either to recover archaeological data used in the architectural restoration of plantation buildings or to determine whether or not extant ruins dated to the plantation era. The systematic study of plantations as agricultural factories or settlements that could provide insights into understanding the living conditions and cultural lives of plantation residents began in earnest in the 1970s. Although archaeological studies of plantations were first undertaken in the United States, plantation archaeology is no longer limited to or primarily undertaken within the United States. Archaeologists are studying plantations throughout the world. In the Americas, the Caribbean ranks second to the United States in the number of investigations, and is now a major region for new and innovative studies of plantation archaeology. Increasingly, studies are being undertaken in South America, particularly in Brazil, and preliminary work has begun on haciendas (a type of plantation) in Peru and Argentina. A plantation is typically defined as an agricultural enterprise in which some form of bound labor produces a crop for someone else that is sold in a market, usually an international one. Philip Curtin uses the term ‘plantation complex’ to include the economic, political, and social order that emanated from the development of plantations. He places the origin of the plantation complex following the Crusades when sugar produced on plantations in the Eastern Mediterranean was sold for consumption in Europe. Plantation archaeology seeks to understand the cultural, economic, political, and social dimensions of the plantation complex through the study of material culture. In North America, archaeologists have studied numerous, plantations, primarily in the southern United

AMERICAS, NORTH/Plantation Archaeology 317

States and dating from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, that were engaged in the production of various staple crops: cotton, tobacco, rice, indigo, sugar, and hemp. Despite the diversity in plantations investigated, the work is still uneven as some areas have received a great deal of more attention than others. For example, more plantation sites have been studied in Virginia than any other state while some states like Texas, Alabama, or Mississippi have had very few studies. Although the vast majority of plantations in North America were in the southern United States, archaeologists have begun to study northern plantations in New York and Rhode Island, once a part of the northeastern breadbasket. These plantations produced grains and other food crops often earmarked for provisioning Caribbean plantations. Most plantation archaeology focuses on the workers, usually enslaved laborers, or tenant-andwage laborers of post-emancipation plantations. While archaeologists utilize diverse theoretical perspectives, two general ways of conceptualizing plantations predominate. The first framework approaches the plantation as a birthplace of African diaspora cultures. These studies examine identity formation, cultural interaction, and exchange among enslaved people, and with other ethnic and racial groups. A major emphasis of these studies is to interpret the cultural traditions and practices of African diaspora communities; therefore, these studies are more often thought to be studies of the African diaspora rather than strictly of plantations. The second framework approaches the plantation as a capitalist mode of production, and seeks to untangle the complex social and political relations characteristic of plantation production. These studies analyze the ways in which plantation laborers whether slave or free, were subjugated into subordinate social positions. Some studies highlight power struggles between plantation owners and laborers, as seen in slave/worker resistance to planter hegemony. Most studies of plantation archaeology consider both conceptions of a plantation to some degree, because plantations were at once a capitalist enterprise as well as a setting for the ethnogenesis of African diaspora cultures (see Americas, North: Historical Archaeology in the United States; Americas, South: Historical Archaeology). Plantations studies in the United States that give primacy to understanding African diaspora interpret a variety of archaeological materials as evidence indicative of African-American identity or cultural practices. Clay-walled housing, handcrafted pottery and pipes, and other objects have been interpreted as exhibiting African influences. Studies of colonoware (a category of pottery made during the colonial period) have been of paramount importance in

developing this line of inquiry. These undecorated earthenwares are found on plantation sites in South Carolina and Virginia. It appears that both Native Americans and African-Americans made colonoware, and those associated with AfricanAmericans were formed into globular shapes that were used for cooking, preparing, and serving food. The use of these wares suggests that enslaved Africans and their descendants influenced some culinary practices on plantations. Another group of artifacts – pierced coins (possibly worn as amulets), cowries, cosmograms on pottery, even the contents in some below-ground storage pits found in slave houses – have been interpreted as African-influenced religious practices. These objects recovered from slave houses and trash deposits singularly may not have been important, but when combined with the oral testimony left by those who were formerly enslaved, these kinds of objects were used in a variety of African-American conjuring and healing practices that were a part of African-American folk religions. Some studies of the African diaspora are less concerned with analyzing continuities and changes to African heritages in the Americas, but more in interpreting the everyday lives of Africans and African-American on plantations. While all studies of slave quarters ultimately contribute to the study of slave living conditions, some studies are specifically directed toward the examination of living conditions and enslaved people’s access to personal and household possessions. One goal of these studies is to understand the lived experiences of enslaved people by evaluating slave agency, defined here as the capability of enslaved people to take some control of their situations on their own terms. Examples of slave agency inferred from archaeological findings are seen in efforts of enslaved people to shape their material lives beyond the meager plantation rations and other items provisioned to them. These efforts include: cultivating gardens, hunting, and fishing; recycling broken or discarded objects to make other kinds of tools and implements; crafting objects for sale or for their own use; and purchasing household and personal objects. In studies of plantation archaeology framed to analyze social relations associated with capitalist production, the layout of plantations and the use of plantation space has been a major focus. This research has shown that social inequalities and hierarchies of plantation societies were incorporated into plantation design. Plantations were designed to maximize productivity and control laborers and, at the same time, appeal to the esthetic sensibilities of the planter class. On some plantations, slave/worker quarters were removed or screened from commanding

318 AMERICAS, NORTH/Rocky Mountains

views of the planter house, gardens, and administrative buildings. Whereas in other cases, a panopticon – a watchtower or some other device – was built into the landscape to observe areas where enslaved people lived and worked at any time. Linear arrangements of slave houses permitted easy access and inspection of premises, and became the standard layout for most antebellum (1830–60) plantations. Enslaved people responded to slaveholder control of slave living spaces by creating their own sense of space, both inside and outside their dwellings. On many plantations in the Upper South (Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky), enslaved people dug storage pits below earthen floors or floorboards within their dwellings to store food and valuables. On occasion, these storage pits became a source of conflict between slaveholders and enslaved people because slaveholders were concerned that these storage areas were being used to hide pilfered goods. The ubiquitous presence of storage areas, however, particularly in eighteenth-century slave houses in Virginia, suggests that slaveholders accommodated slave laborers’ desire to make and use these pits. Enslaved laborers also designated outdoor places for social gatherings away from the watchful eye of slaveholders and overseers, whenever possible. Archaeologists are just beginning to investigate such places which could be located in or near slave cemeteries, places of worship, or wooded areas not far from slave houses or agricultural fields. Plantation archaeology continues to grow and provide new and important information on many aspects of plantation life, organization, and production. Current studies are analyzing slave household formation and gender, among other themes. Perhaps the greatest contribution this research has made is to document the lives of enslaved and other bound laborers who left too few written records of their own so that their stories could be told. See also: Americas, Central: Historical Archaeology in Mexico; Americas, North: Historical Archaeology in the United States; Americas, South: Historical Archaeology.

Further Reading Berlin I (1998) Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University. Curtin PD (1998) The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Epperson T (2000) Panoptic plantations: The garden sights of Thomas Jefferson and George Mason. In: Delle JA, Mrozowski SA, and Paynter R (eds.) Lines that Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, Gender, pp. 58–77. Knoxville: Tennessee.

Ferguson L (1992) Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Colonial African America, pp. 1650–1800. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Fritts R (1998) Inventing New England’s Slave Paradise: Master/ Slave Relations in Eighteenth-Century Narragansett, Rhode Island. New York: Garland Publishers. Galle JE and Amy LY (eds.) (2004) Engendering African-American/s Archaeology: A Southern Perspective. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Kelso W (1984) Kingsmill Plantations, 1620–1800: An Archaeology of Rural Colonial Virginia. Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Orser CE, Jr. (1988) The Material Basis of the Postbellum Tenant. Plantation. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Otto JS (1984) Cannon’s Point Plantation, 1974–1860: Living Conditions and Status Patterns in the Old South. New York: Academic Press. Singleton TA (2005) Before the revolution: Archaeology of the African diaspora on the Atlantic Seaboard. In: Pauketat T and Loren D (eds.) North American Archaeology, pp. 319–336. Boston, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Wilkie L (2000) Creating Freedom: Material Culture and AfricanAmerican/s Identity at Oakley Plantation, Louisiana, 1840– 1950. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.

Rocky Mountains Bonnie L Pitblado, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary archaic As traditionally defined, the period of North American prehistory from c. 7500–2000 (dates vary somewhat by region), when humans continued hunting and gathering, but intensified and diversified their subsistence base versus the earlier Palaeoindian period. forager In this chapter, the term forager is used as a synonym for ‘hunter-gatherer’ (see definition, below). Sometimes this term is used to refer more specifically to hunter-gatherers with a ‘residential’ mobility strategy (a group moves frequently from camp to camp to camp; rather than establishing a base camp and sending out task forces to bring resources back to the base, in a pattern called ‘collecting’). The term forager is used synonymously with hunter-gatherer in this chapter because Rocky Mountain hunter-gatherers used the landscape flexibly, with the same group potentially ‘foraging’ at one time of year and ‘collecting’ at another. hunter-gatherer An adaptive strategy that entails to various degrees in various settings, the hunting of large and small game, gathering of vegetable resources, and sometimes fishing. This lifeway contrasts with a horticultural or agricultural strategy, which emphasizes cultivation of plants and/or animals and typically sees reduced mobility. mobility A general term for human movement across a landscape. Understanding mobility requires documenting how far a group moves, but also the particular way in which it utilizes a landscape. Over the course of a year in the mountains, a group might simply migrate up and down a mountain, or they might move in a large circle around it. A group might camp at a large

AMERICAS, NORTH/Rocky Mountains 319 base camp for an extended period of time, sending out small parties to gather resources and return them to camp. Or, an entire group might move frequently from camp to camp to camp. Palaeoindian The period of North American prehistory from c. 11 500 to 7500 (dates vary somewhat by region), when humans lived alongside now-extinct forms of megafauna, including mammoth, mastodon, camel, and after about 11 000 years ago, giant bison. The term Palaeo-American is synonymous with Palaeoindian.

Introduction Within the context of the American West that encompasses them, the Rocky Mountains are unique. The structure of the Rocky Mountain landscape, patterns of human use over the past 11 000 years, even the history of archaeological inquiry – all of these distinguish the Rocky Mountains from their archaeologically better-known neighbors: the grasslands of the Columbia Plateau and Great Plains (see Americas, North: Plains) and the deserts of the Great Basin (see Americas, North: Great Basin) and Colorado Plateau (see Americas, North: American Southwest, Four Corners Region). In a way that the lowland Far West and Great Plains by definition do not and cannot, the Rocky Mountains encompass tremendous environmental variability in a highly compressed physical space – a structural difference with important implications for prehistoric human use of these dynamic settings. For example, whereas Plains residents throughout 11 000 years of prehistory organized their subsistence and land-use strategies around the hunting of large grazing mammals (see Americas, North: Plains) on a flat landscape (and sometimes in the adjacent mountains), Rocky Mountain-based hunter-gatherers always exploited a highly varied faunal and floral resource base and moved extremely flexibly up, down, and around the mountain landscape. Agriculture, which revolutionized prehistoric subsistence and mobility on the Colorado Plateau and played a crucial role in parts of the Great Basin and along some Plains river systems, was never adopted to any significant degree by prehistoric Rocky Mountain hunter-gatherers, and thus rarely if ever influenced their decisions about when and where to move. As for archaeological research itself, the Rockies have only recently been subjected to intensive investigations. The first systematic archaeological research in the western United States focused on Southwestern agricultural sites and began well over a century ago (see Americas, North: American Southwest, Four Corners Region). Plains archaeology likewise registers a long history of inquiry, with classic Palaeoindian sites like Folsom and Clovis documenting by 1927 that the first Americans lived alongside

now-extinct ice-age animals (see Americas, North: Plains). The remarkable preservation of textiles, subsistence debris, and even ancient human remains in dry caves of the Great Basin have for many decades lured professional archaeologists to work in that setting as well (see Americas, North: Great Basin). The Rocky Mountains, on the other hand, were traditionally viewed by archaeologists as marginal to a broad-scale understanding of the prehistory of western North America, a point punctuated by the dates of the first archaeological conferences focusing on subregions of the west. The first ‘Pecos Conference’, an informal gathering of Southwestern archaeologists, was held in 1927; the first Plains Anthropological Society meeting in 1931; and the first Great Basin Anthropological Conference in 1954. Rocky Mountain archaeologists, however, had to wait until 1993 to attend the first-ever Rocky Mountain Anthropological Conference in Jackson, Wyoming. The overarching goal of this contribution is to summarize what archaeologists have learned not just since 1993, when the subdiscipline could finally sustain its own conference, but from the earliest inklings that the Rocky Mountains may have been more to prehistoric people than a snow-capped backdrop to daily lowland activities and an impediment to travel. The chapter first introduces the Rocky Mountain region and environment, and then discusses elements that make the archaeological record of the Rocky Mountains unique: its prehistoric chronology and general observations about land use through time and site types and the many reasons why prehistoric people used the Rocky Mountain landscape.

Defining the Rocky Mountains and Their Environments Geologically speaking, the Rockies are young landforms, having emerged about 65 000 000 years ago when colliding continental plates drained an inland Cretaceous sea and uplifted the earth to elevations exceeding 4000 m above sea level (m asl). Volcanic activity, some in the ancient past and some more recent, has further shaped the Rocky Mountain landscape. Streams carved and continue to carve drainages that originate at the Continental Divide – the backbone of the Rockies – and carry rainfall and snowmelt east to the Atlantic Ocean or west to the Pacific. During the Pleistocene (Ice Age), 1.8 million to 11 000 years ago, powerful mountain glaciers sculpted craggy Rocky Mountain peaks and gouged out giant U-shaped montane valleys, putting the finishing touches on a dynamic and rugged landscape.

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investigation. With a few notable exceptions, such as Denver University archaeologist E.B. Renaud, who conducted surveys in the Southern Rockies in the early 1930s, most early archaeologists implicitly and sometimes explicitly concluded that a region so rugged and treacherous could not have supported prehistoric human occupations. Their turn-of-thecentury mindset was not equipped to reconcile that a region that claimed the lives of westward-bound European-American settlers, could have sustained substantive, even year-round occupations by indigenous Americans. Archaeologists have since recognized, however, that the very ruggedness – the steep vertical rise – that inspires and intimidates, also translates to a diverse resource base for a host of plants and animals – including humans. Ascending Mount Elbert (or any other Rocky Mountain peak) reveals ever-changing ecological communities as one traverses the mountain’s flanks to its summit. Table 1 lists the environmental zones of the Rocky Mountains, their elevation

Extending approximately 4800 km (3000 miles) from Alberta and British Columbia south to northern New Mexico, the Rocky Mountains encompass large portions of eastern Idaho, western Montana, central and western Wyoming, and central Colorado (Figure 1). The highest individual Rocky Mountain peaks are located in Colorado, with 4401 m (14 440 ft) asl Mount Elbert the highest of all. Elevations of peaks at northern latitudes are more modest in absolute terms than those located farther south. In the Canadian Rockies, for example, the highest mountain is 3954 m (12 972 ft) asl Mount Robinson, 447 m (nearly 1500 ft) lower than Mount Elbert. When most people conjure an image of the Rocky Mountains, they envision the jagged, snowcapped peaks of the towering giants that inspired innumerable pioneer stories, paintings, and songs (Figure 2). This pervasive, imposing image may be the single most important reason why it took archaeologists so long to recognize that the Rockies were a viable home for prehistoric people and a viable region for

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Figure 2 Rocky Mountain grandeur: The sort of imposing vista that convinced early archaeologists that throughout prehistory, the mountains were more a backdrop to the life of grassland and desert people than a viable region to make a living.

Table 1 Environmental zones and characteristic resources of the Rocky Mountains Zone

Elevationa

Florab

Fauna

Other resources relevant to humans

Foothills

1500–2400 m 5000–7900 ft

Mule deer, rabbit, coyote, fox, fowl, lizard, snake

Rock outcrops forming overhangs for shelter; sandstone for grinding tools

Montane

2400–2900 m 7900–9500 ft

Moose, elk, mule deer, black bear, bobcat, marmot, porcupine, fowl

Outcrops of chert, quartzite (and occasionally obsidian) to quarry for stone to make tools

Parks

1800–3000 m 6000–10 000 ft

Often dense herds of bison and pronghorn, elk, mule deer, rabbit, rodent, game and other birds

Chert and quartzite outcrops and cobble sources to quarry for stone to make tools

Subalpine

2900–3500 m 9500–11 500 ft

Elk, bighorn, mountain goat, mule deer, black bear, lynx, weasel, hare, rodentc

Respite from scorching heat of lowland summer

Alpine

> 3500 m > 11 500 ft

Elk, bighorn, mountain goat, mule deer, marmot, weasel, pika, ptarmigan

Passage across the continental divide

Riparian (Streams, lakes, etc.)

All elevations and zones

Pin˜on pine, juniper, oak, prickly pear, thistle, blue grama, milk vetch Ponderosa, lodgepole, and limber pine, Douglas fir, aspen, strawberry, blueberry, gooseberry, dandelion Grasses (including edible ricegrass), shrubs, bistort, wild plum and rose, sego lily, chokecherry Engelmann spruce, aspen, bristlecone pine, glacier lily, elderberry Mosses, alpine anemone, dwarf clover, scarlet paintbrush Water birch, cottonwood, mountain alder, willow, cattail

Beaver, fish, swan, goose, duck, frog, toad

By definition, water; stream cobbles to quarry for stone to make tools

a

Elevations are approximations, and those given are more typical for the Southern (higher) Rockies. The same life zones and resources characterize peaks at more northerly latitudes, but they occur at somewhat lower absolute elevations. b Thousands of plants and animals occupy the various life zones of the Rocky Mountains. A very few characteristic examples are listed in this table. c Most of the larger species are seasonal (summer–early fall) residents of the high country; smaller species survive the winter by hibernating.

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Figure 3 Schematic diagram representing the variability in Rocky Mountain resources by environmental zone. Table 1 complements this figure, listing approximate elevations of Rocky Mountain environmental zones, as well as typical flora, fauna, and other resources (relevant to prehistoric humans) of each zone.

ranges, and a few examples of the literally thousands of species of flora and fauna that occupy them. Figure 3 illustrates these data visually, with icons representing the plants, animals, and other resources relevant to human survival (e.g., sources of raw material for chipped stone tool and groundstone production) of the major Rocky Mountain life zones.

The Rocky Mountain Archaeological Record Having provided a sense for the unique physiographic and environmental properties of North Americas Rocky Mountains, we turn now to archaeologists’ current understanding of when, how, and why prehistoric people occupied them. Prehistoric Chronology and Land Use

Archaeologists have known since the 1960s, when National Park Service Archaeologist Wilfred Husted first proposed the theory, that humans have occupied the Rocky Mountains on a sustained basis for at least 10 000 years – nearly as long as people are known to have occupied North America generally. The first archaeologically recognizable North American culture, Clovis (see New World, Peopling of), penetrated the Rockies, but left only a light signature of their tenure, 11 500–10 800 radiocarbon years before present. Clovis spear points have been recovered as isolated surface finds throughout the Rocky Mountains, but Rocky Mountain Clovis sites are limited in number, type, size, and elevation (they are particularly rare in the subalpine and alpine zones, probably

because some – though not all – Rocky Mountain peaks were still glacier-covered during the latest Pleistocene). By subsequent Folsom time, 10 800–10 200 radiocarbon years before present, evidence suggests that Palaeo-Americans had started to move into the Rocky Mountains on a more sustained basis. Though many archaeologists associate them intimately with the High Plains, Folsom people and their contemporaries frequently hunted bison in large Rocky Mountain parks (e.g., Figure 4), including Colorado’s Middle Park, San Luis Valley, and Gunnison Basin. A few of their kills occurred during the winter months, suggesting that some of these early occupants may have utilized the Rocky Mountains on a year-round basis. Folsom folk also occasionally camped in rockshelters in the Bighorn Mountains of northern Wyoming, and in open foothills settings farther north, in the Elkhorn Mountains of west-central Montana. If there is any doubt as to whether or not some Folsom bison hunters utilized the Rockies on a yearround basis, there is no doubt that after Folsom time, prehistoric groups moved into this niche and never looked back. A few residential sites, most exceptionally two large rockshelters in the foothills of northwestern Wyoming – Mummy Cave in the Absaroka Range and Medicine Lodge Creek in the Bighorn Mountains – show human occupation beginning in the very early Holocene and continuing through the recent historic past. Such deeply stratified, continuously used sites have played an immeasurably important role in characterizing 10 000 years of human use of the Rocky Mountains.

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Figure 4 High altitude (c. 3100 m (10 170 ft) asl) mountain meadow – reasonably considered a park – in the Upper Rio Grande Basin of southern Colorado. This photograph was taken from the Black Mountain Folsom site, a hunting camp nestled today at the fringes of subalpine forest. Margaret Jodry excavated the site in the 1990s.

From approximately 10 000–7500 radiocarbon years before present, Palaeoindians utilized all environmental zones of the Rocky Mountains, exploited local Rocky Mountain stone raw materials, and manufactured spear points that differed from those of their contemporaries living either on the Plains to the east or in the Far West. In addition to hosting what seminal Central Plains and Rocky Mountain archaeologist George C. Frison has termed ‘Foothill-Mountain’ groups (year-round late Palaeoindian residents), the Rockies were also used seasonally by lowland late Palaeoindian people needing or wanting such resources as chipped stone and groundstone raw material, vegetable and nut crops (notably pin˜on) that grow only in the mountains, and large game (perhaps because it is more pleasant to hunt bighorn by a columbine-ringed alpine lake than bison by a desiccated Plains playa in August). Archaeologists lack sufficient numbers of sites to offer well-substantiated models for how late Palaeoindians moved around the mountain landscape, but available evidence suggests that like subsequent Archaic hunter-gatherers, late Paleoindians organized their mobility strategies according to seasonal constraints and resource needs of both the short and long term. The Archaic era is, throughout North America, traditionally defined as the period of prehistory ushered in by an intensification and diversification of resource use by hunter-gatherers as the last of the megafauna went extinct; and ushered out when groups adopted agriculture. Neither of these defining phenomena was particularly noteworthy in the Rocky Mountains. Earlier mountain-based, postFolsom Palaeoindians used the same broad spectrum

of plant and animal resources that later Archaic people did, and Rocky Mountain residents never adopted agriculture to an appreciable degree. Nonetheless, because the term ‘Archaic’ is so ensconced in the North American archaeological literature, Rocky Mountain archaeologists use the term, but view it as a chronological designation (for the period c. 7500– 2000 radiocarbon years before present), rather than as a label for a unique adaptive posture. During the Rocky Mountain Archaic, huntergatherers left behind increasingly obvious signatures of a year-round presence on the landscape. Numerous foothills-zone rockshelters with long histories of occupation, and a significant number of subterranean house structures – often located in parkland settings and some reflecting winter occupation – represent residential mountain base camps. Palaeoclimatic research at Rocky Mountain localities from Canada to New Mexico indicates that environmental conditions fluctuated over the course of the Archaic. Changing environmental conditions engendered concomitant shifts in land-use strategies of Rocky Mountain hunter-gatherers. For example, winter residences in mountain parks are more commonly associated with intervals of warmer or more equable temperatures, whereas foothills rockshelters were preferred winter base camps during colder spells. Under all environmental conditions, site types, sizes, and distributions suggest that mountain-adapted, Archaic foragers utilized the landscape flexibly, sometimes foraging logistically from residential base camps for up to a season at a time and at other times moving residentially from campsite to campsite (see Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient).

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Archaeologists refer to the period immediately following the Archaic as the Formative or Late Prehistoric; and to the period following that as the Protohistoric. The term Formative connotes the adoption of corn agriculture and is misleading when invoked to label Rocky Mountain people who only rarely cultivated plant species of any kind (although some mountain archaeologists still use it). In any event, the terms Formative and Late Prehistoric both refer to post-Archaic residents who lived alongside others, such as the Hisatsinom (Anasazi) and Fremont, who did engage in agriculture or horticulture (and who in some cases – notably the Fremont – used the Rockies occasionally or regularly); and prior to the arrival of the first Europeans in North America. Once Europeans began recording their encounters with indigenous cultures of North America, including in the Rockies, archaeologists refer to the period as the Protohistoric. Throughout the Formative/Late Prehistoric and the Protohistoric, Rocky Mountain residents continued flexibly exploiting a diversity of plant and animal resources. The major change for them – as for so many Native Americans – came with the adoption of European-introduced horses in the 1700s. The horse not only permitted mountain-dwellers who embraced it to use their land differently—typically much more expansively – but also for theretofore pedestrian-based tribes from adjacent regions to penetrate the Rockies either for the first time or to a greater extent than they had previously. Adoption of the horse caused such profound changes in the fabrics of mounted societies that trying to glean insights into settlement patterns of pedestrian Rocky Mountain foragers from later, mounted counterparts – even of the same ethnicity – is problematic at best. On the other hand, early European explorers who entered the Rocky Mountains for various reasons (passage west, trapping, prospecting, ethnographic interest), encountered Rocky Mountain populations that either never embraced the horse (as in the case of the Toyani, a Shoshone band of the Middle Rockies) or whose members could recall how the group made a living prior to the adoption of the horse (as in the case of many Ute bands of the Southern Rocky Mountains and the Kootenai of the Northern Rockies). Such accounts provide concrete evidence for how some groups of Rocky Mountain hunter-gatherers occupied the mountain landscape. They demonstrate that different bands – and even the same bands in different years – utilized Rocky Mountain resources in an extremely flexible and local-resource-dependent fashion. First Nations in the Rockies and beyond often rendezvoused to nurture social ties and exchange

resources, but they also frequently fragmented into groups of small sizes and varying age and gender compositions, to take advantage of mountain resources available at different times of year and in discrete places. Even before indigenous people of the Rocky Mountains and elsewhere adopted horses, some bands of the Shoshone and Ute used the Rockies on a seasonal basis, spending other parts of the year hunting bison on the Plains, or hunting and gathering in the Far West. Such groups interacted regularly with mountain-based bands, in some cases visiting the Rocky Mountains expressly for this purpose. This historically documented flexibility in resource use, settlement strategy, and group membership by populations based in the mountains year-round and their contemporaries (often relatives) based elsewhere but using the mountains on a seasonal or occasional basis is highly consistent with the archaeological evidence of human use of the Rocky Mountains for 10 000-plus years. Predominant Rocky Mountain Site Types

Having summarized who occupied the Rocky Mountains during the latest Pleistocene and Holocene and discussed how hunter-gatherers used the mountain landscape for over ten millennia, it remains to relate common archaeological site types of the Rocky Mountains, and to discuss how they pertain to the above chronology. As a result of their geologic history, the Rocky Mountains are rich in accessible tool stone (e.g., Figure 5). Sandstone, chert, and quartzite represent uplifted sedimentary (sometimes metamorphosed) sea beds. Obsidian deposits resulted from volcanic flows in the Rockies of Northern New Mexico, Yellowstone National Park, and Southern Idaho. When prehistoric people found and used primary (outcrop) or secondary (e.g., stream-cobble) deposits of any of these rock types, the resultant site is called a quarry. Macroscopic, petrographic, and geochemical fingerprinting of artifacts made of various stone types has permitted archaeologists to trace the movement of ground stone (typically sandstone or basalt) and chipped stone (usually chert, quartzite or obsidian) tools within the Rockies and in some cases, well beyond their borders. Documenting at Rocky Mountain sites the use of stone that occurs naturally only in that region has bolstered the argument that some prehistoric groups used the Rockies on a year-round basis (the presence of stone that originated elsewhere would weaken such an argument). On the other hand, documenting

AMERICAS, NORTH/Rocky Mountains 325

Figure 5 Primary outcrop of high-quality Windy Ridge quartzite. The Windy Ridge quartzite quarry is located about 10 km from Rabbit Ears Pass in the Gore Range of northern Colorado. The quarry extends to elevations as high as 3050 m (10 000 ft) asl. Diagnostic artifacts of this raw material span 11 000 years of prehistory, indicating the quarry was long-known and long-used.

the presence of Rocky Mountain stone at sites outside the Rockies – as commonly occurs – reveals the importance of Rocky Mountain raw material to others who visited the Rockies to obtain the stone themselves, or traded to get it. An extreme example illustrating the value placed on some Rocky Mountain stone comes from Midwestern Moundbuilder sites, where Yellowstone obsidian has been recovered as far east as the Hopewell heartland (see Americas, North: Eastern Woodlands). The uplifted sandstones (and sometimes other rock types) common in many Rocky Mountain foothills settings were not only quarried for the manufacture of groundstone tools, they also form natural overhangs that prehistoric people used for shelter – sometimes for extended periods of time, and often in winter. Only the earliest Clovis people appear not to have availed themselves of the natural protection afforded by textured geological formations of the Rockies. From Folsom time on (although perhaps only occasionally in Folsom time), archaeological rock shelters from the Northern to Southern Rockies served residential functions for mountainbased hunter-gatherers. Many such sites, including Mummy Cave and Medicine Lodge Creek (Figure 6), mentioned previously, enjoy better preservation conditions than open sites, and have afforded archaeologists glimpses of sometimes numerous storage pits – which can indicate both long-term and winterseason occupation – as well as plant and animal remains that can and have revealed season(s)-of-use of the sites.

Although prehistoric mountain residents often mitigated difficult winter conditions by seeking out naturally sheltered long-term residential camps, they also frequently camped in open settings throughout all the environmental zones of the Rocky Mountains. Sometimes these camps, like rock shelters, were used over the longer term; sometimes, the occupations were ephemeral. Camps occupied for longer periods of time and/or in winter show greater architectural investment than those used for the short term or during milder times of year. At the high-investment end of the spectrum, for example, the central-Colorado Yarmony site was occupied repeatedly between 7000 radiocarbon years before present and the Late Prehistoric period and includes two 6500–6000 yearold pit houses. One of the pit houses is associated with the burial of a 60 year-old woman, and both pit houses and the burial represent winter base camp activities. The Rockies contain a plethora of other prehistoric house styles as well, including particularly common basin structures, which represent a lower labor investment than deeply excavated pit houses. And, the mountains are home to many thousand short-term camp sites, where hunter-gatherers rested for a matter of days and either did not build shelters at all, or built shelters so ephemeral that they do not register in the archaeological record. Ethnographically documented wickiups, brush structures used by recent indigenous foragers of the Great Basin and Rocky Mountains, are examples of structures with little chance of being preserved in open mountain settings

326 AMERICAS, NORTH/Rocky Mountains

Figure 6 The Medicine Lodge Creek site, located in the foothills of the Absaroka Range, northwestern Wyoming. Note the natural overhang produced by the sandstone outcrops characteristic of many foothill regions throughout the Rocky Mountains. Prehistoric people used Medicine Lodge Creek and other rockshelters in the vicinity repeatedly for 10 000 years.

for more than 50 years, much less for several thousand. However, they were probably as commonly used throughout Rocky Mountain prehistory as nylon pup-tents are used today by Rocky Mountain backpackers. A vital source of sustenance for year-round and seasonal Rocky Mountains residents from 11 000 radiocarbon years before present through the Protohistoric period were the region’s large mammals. Full-time residents hunted species like mule deer, pronghorn, elk, moose, bison, and bighorn in all zones ranging from the foothills through the treeless alpine. Seasonal residents from adjacent grasslands and deserts may have taken particular advantage of the pleasant conditions of the Rocky Mountain high country in summer and early fall to hunt elk and bighorn, and/or of dense congregations of large grazers in mountain parks and foothills in the winter months. How mountain hunters harvested their prey depended on the target species, environmental structure, and season, but a site type common in the Rockies – though highly varied in form – is the game drive. One of the most efficient ways to obtain large quantities of meat at once, without horses, game drives assume a variety of forms ranging from long stone walls above timberline to wooden fences with corral catch-pens at their terminus in lower zones. Many drives have associated hunting blinds made of stone or brush (the latter must often be inferred for lack of preservation), where members of the hunting party positioned themselves to nudge the animals along a drive system or dispatch them (Figure 7).

Rocky Mountain archaeologists James Benedict and E. Steve Cassells have meticulously documented many alpine game drives in the Colorado Front Range, demonstrating how intricate and extensive such systems can be. When archaeologists encounter a game blind at a high elevation with panoramic views, they must consider the possibility that the feature truly represents that economic function, and is not, instead, the site of a vision quest. Even today, many Native Americans view particular loci, and sometimes whole Rocky Mountain landscapes, as sacred places. From an archaeological perspective, vision quest sites take many forms, and are sometimes identified as much by what is not present at the site as by what is present. Vision quest sites are typically located in high, remote places with commanding views. When present, artifacts tend not to represent the mundane debris of everyday life (as one might see at a short-term camp site), but are likely instead to be special objects, such as complete pottery vessels or never-launched projectile points. Many vision quest sites show evidence for prehistoric use, sometimes over long time frames. Some show use by contemporary First Nations people.

Conclusion This chapter has provided a flavor for the prehistory of the Rocky Mountains, both in terms of the archaeological record that prehistoric people left behind and the lifestyles they led. A key theme of the chapter has

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Figure 7 A game blind associated with an alpine game drive system in the Devil’s Thumb Pass area of the Indian Peaks Wilderness, west of Boulder, Colorado. This blind, like the many others associated with game drives in the vicinity, provided cover for hunters waiting to ambush elk and bighorn sheep. Sites associated with Devil’s Thumb game drives have been dated to older than 9000 radiocarbon years before present through the recent past.

been flexibility. From the time people first occupied the Rocky Mountains over 10 000 years ago, they have taken full advantage of the suite of subsistence resources available on a vertically oriented landscape and of the many potentially successful land-use options available for exploiting those resources at any given moment. Archaeological evidence suggests that from the dawn of human use of the Rockies, some groups chose to live there full-time, occupying all environmental zones (though not always in the same way from culture to culture, or even from year to year). Evidence also suggests that again, even during the earliest period of use, other groups viewed the Rockies as a seasonal retreat from the grasslands to the east or arid lands to the west. This pattern of multiple-use continued throughout the Archaic, Formative/Late Prehistoric, and Protohistoric periods, culminating in historic and ethnographic accounts of Shoshone, Ute, and other indigenous mountain groups that mesh neatly with reconstructions of prehistoric land use. Reasons why prehistoric people used the Rockies were as varied as the environmental zones that morph so dramatically with elevation and latitude. For some, the Rocky Mountains were home-sweet-home, meeting every conceivable human need during every season of the year. For others, the Rockies were a place to temporarily rendezvous with friends and family, escape the heat of a Plains or Great Basin summer, hunt bighorn or elk via communal game drives or bison in mountain parks, procure raw materials for

making chipped stone and groundstone tools, harvest pin˜on or other pine nuts to store for winter consumption back at a Far Western residential base, or pay homage to the spirits who dwell there. In fact, as any resident of Jackson, Wyoming or any Plains, or Far Western travel agent will attest, although the details may have changed a bit, the mountains continue to play a vital and dynamic role in the lives of contemporary westerners who rely on them for economic, social, and spiritual fulfillment. See also: Americas, North: American Southwest, Four

Corners Region; Eastern Woodlands; Plains; Sub-arctic.

Further Reading Cassells ES (1997) The Archaeology of Colorado, 2nd edn. Boulder: Johnson Books. Frison GC (1991) Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains, 2nd edn. San Diego: Academic Press. Husted WM and Edgar R (2002) National Park Service, Midwest Archaeological Center and Southeast Archaeological Center, Special Report No. 4, Technical Report Series No. 9: The Archaeology of Mummy Cave, Wyoming: An Introduction to Shoshonean Prehistory. Lincoln: National Park Service. Janetski JC (2002) Indians in Yellowstone National Park. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Madsen DB and Metcalf MD (eds.) (2000) University of Utah Anthropological Papers 122: Intermountain Archaeology. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Pitblado BL (2003) Late Paleoindian Occupation of the Southern Rocky Mountains. Niwot: University Press of Colorado. Stanford DJ and Day JS (eds.) (1992) Ice Age Hunters of the Rockies. Niwot: University Press of Colorado.

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Sub-arctic Bryan C Gordon, Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau, QC, Canada ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Barrenlands Treeless tundra north of the Prairies, west of Hudson Bay, east of the Mackenzie River and south of the Arctic Ocean. Dene call it dechinule, ‘land of little sticks’. beamer Long bone split lengthwise and sharpened along its length to remove hair from skins. blade Pressure-removed parallel-sided stone flake less (microblade) or greater (macroblade) than 10 mm in width. burin (spalls) Small grooving or planning tool for shaping bone and antler. Sharpened by removing spalls to create a new cutting edge. chitho Flat oval scraper of lightly abrasive stone, used to soften hides for clothing. core Roughly chipped rock or bone mass used to make flakes from which tools are made. eulachon From Chinook language. Also candlefish because it contains so much oil it can burn, is a small anadromous smelt (Thaleichthys pacificus) caught during Northwest Coast spawning, and an important human food source and trade item when processed as an oil. flesher Long bone with diagonally cut and serrated end for removing fat from a hide. hammerstone A cobble used to break cores for flakes or long bones to extract marrow fat. point Tip attached to a lance, spear, or dart used to kill game. pushplane Steep-sided, turtle-shell-shaped stone tool used to plane wood. scraper Steep-sided tool for stripping membrane from a hide; precedes chitho use. Taltheilei Named after Taltheilei Narrows draining the East Arm into Great Slave Lake. thrusting lance Lance kept in the hand and used for jabbing caribou to mortally wound. uniface Artifact chipped on one or both (biface) sides, usually applied to stone knives. wedge Tapered flaked stone for splitting bone, antler, or wood.

Introduction The Western and Central Canadian Subarctic, stretching from Alaska east to Hudson Bay and north to south from the Beaufort Sea to the northern parts of the four western provinces (Figure 1), has been home to Indian peoples for at least 12 000 years in the west and for somewhat less time since deglaciation in the east. Some archaeologists believe humans entered the New World 14 000–16 000 years ago, just before the 11 000 year-old Clovis fluted projectile points found in New Mexico. Clovis points occur across North and Central America but not in South America, where some earlier sites occur, leading other archaeologists to believe a pre-Clovis population

crossed Alaska before 20 000 years ago. The reality is unclear because archaeological sites that old often have unclear associations between their artifacts and radiocarbon dates. The presence of fluted points (see Glossary) at Charlie Lake Cave and Pink Mountain 100 km farther north, Old Crow Flats and many Alaskan sites, suggests a reverse or northward migration of hunters bearing Clovis-like points (Figure 1). Three migration routes from Asia into the New World through the Subarctic have been proposed, none of them well documented and none of them having the earliest Clovis fluted points, although later fluted points occur. Peoples using the Mackenzie Valley route may have ascended the Yukon River west through the unglaciated interior of Alaska, then north around the Continental Divide and south along the Mackenzie Valley. But this valley was too heavily glaciated at the time of the expected first arrivals. A similar Intermountain route through Alaska but southeast through the southern Yukon would also have encountered closed mountain and continental glaciation. Lately, interest has been sparked in a proposed pre-Clovis movement by boat down the West Coast. But finding archaeological sites on the ocean floor became almost impossible when postglacial meltwater inundated the route milleniums ago. About 6000 years ago, the early people of the southwest Yukon and northern British Columbia lived in small fishing camps and hunted for mixed game as well as caribou. There they developed into the Dene (the ‘people’) or Athabaskan culture. From 10 000 to 8000 years ago in the District of Mackenzie, Palaeoindians from the south followed retreating ice and caribou herds north into the Barrenlands to be later replaced by a possible amalgamation of Palaeoindian and Archaic forest peoples (Shield Archaic) as the climate warmed. These Shield Archaic people retreated south during a cold climatic interval, leaving the Barrenlands open to Inuit-like Pre-Dorset coastal hunters arriving from the northwest. The Pre-Dorset hunted migrating herds, just as had the Indians before them. When the climate warmed, the Pre-Dorset probably returned to the north and Indians again hunted caribou on the Barrenlands, this time in groups related through language and archaeology to the Dene, who from 4000– 6000 years ago had evolved in Alaska, the Yukon and British Columbia. These Dene, predecessors of the tribes of the Mackenzie Valley, Northwest Territories and northern Prairie Provinces, began to move east 2600 years ago. Mirroring the migration paths of the early Dene, the archaeology of all cultures will be discussed from north to south in the Yukon and British Columbia, down the Peace River

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Figure 1 The earliest cultures. ã 2008 Bryan Gordon. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

to northern Alberta, up the Mackenzie Valley, and then east to the Northwest Territories and northern Prairie provinces. Linguistic and genetic data supplement Dene prehistory and define historic Dene location: Gwich’in in northern Yukon, Ha¨n and Tutchone in central and southern Yukon, Tahltan-Kaska-Tsetsaut in northern British Columbia; Sekani-Beaver, Carrier, Chilcotin and Nicola in its Central Plateau, Chipewyan-SlaveyYellowknife in the northern Prairie Provinces and Northwest Territories; Dogrib-Bear Lake, Mountain or Nahanni and Hare in the northern Mackenzie District; Sarsi in southern Alberta, and Navaho and Apache in the American southwest. Greatest linguistic divergence is in the northwest, the proposed area of Dene emergence. From there the Dene migrated south and east via the Peace River to the Mackenzie Valley and Barrenlands (2600 years ago), to the coast of Oregon and California (l500 years ago), and south on two migration routes: to the American Southwest (850–1150 years ago) and to southern Alberta (250 years ago). Their language group came to occupy the largest area of all North American Indians.

Northern Yukon The earliest occupation of Canada’s subarctic was in the Bluefish Caves, northern Yukon, while older Old Crow, Yukon, Pleistocene exposures are secondary depositions (Figure 1). Bluefish Caves were used sporadically by a few hunters from 25 000 to 12 000 years ago. Possibly humanly altered mammoth bone in the Old Crow area is two–three times older than that in the 12 000-year-old non-microblade Nenana complex in Alaska. Microblades and their cores, and burins and their sharpening spalls (see Glossary) found at Bluefish Caves resemble those in the more recent 10 500 year-old Denali complex in Alaska and are also reminiscent of similar artifacts in Siberia’s Dyuktai culture. Whether the microtools in Bluefish Caves are associated with the earliest occupation is controversial. If they are, they may be tied to interior Alaska’s 11 000 year-old Healy Lake and 14 000 yearold Swan Lake microblade sites. Microblade-using cultures existed from central Siberia to eastern Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories, their Siberian ancestors reaching central

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Alaska 14 000 years ago, the southern Yukon and northern British Columbia before 6000 years ago, and the western Mackenzie District by 4500 years ago. Three cultural traditions (historical and technological), accounting for their presence and based on their use of microblades, have been proposed by archaeologists: Northwest Microblade, Northern Archaic, and Palaeo-arctic. The fact that different tool types exist within each tradition at different times and locations makes them awkward markers through which to coordinate cultural interpretations. This is shown in the overall archaeological sequence (Table 1) by the absence of firm dividing lines or the use of hatched lines. In the northern Yukon at a time later than microblade cultures, archaeological sites along the Porcupine River show greater affinity with southwest Yukon than with central Alaska. Ancestral Gwich’in stratified sites are Rat Indian Creek, Old Chief and Klo-Kut. Lithics include whetstones, maulheads, hammers, notched and contracting stemmed small Klo-Kut or Kavik arrowheads (so named from two northern sites where they have been found; see Figure 2a), adzeblades, axheads, boiling stones, scrapers (Figure 2c), and wedges. Bifacial stone tools (shaped on their two faces or sides) were less common in later phases when more bone and antler tool manufacturing took place (Figure 2). Rat Indian Creek is one of the Yukon’s bestcontrolled excavations, with 17 radiocarbon dates in seven levels spanning 2430  60 years ago to White Contact. Early and late uses of boulder spalls, chitho scrapers (Figure 2d) and bone, antler and pebble cores are similar, but bifacial chert tools decrease and scrapers and cores change 1200 years ago. The level 6/6A components lack burins but correlate with many sites in western and central Alaska and the pre-800 yearold Taye Lake phase in the southwest Yukon. It has similar points and bifaces to Aishihik. Its post1220 year-old tools resemble those found in Alaska, southwest Yukon and northwest Mackenzie District. The Old Chief sequence resembles that of Rat Indian Creek, with Klo-Kut contracting stemmed points appearing in the Old Chief phase 1300 years ago, indicating the adoption of the bow and arrow and suggesting continuity from the Old Chief phase to the Klo-Kut site. The latter is located just downriver at Old Crow. Klo-Kut, a Gwich’in spring caribou water-crossing site beginning 1700 years ago, includes artifacts like those in the upper levels of Rat Indian Creek and continues the Dene sequence forward to White Contact in the 1800s. Continuity within the archaeological sequence in Porcupine River sites supports a hypothesis of in situ development. Ancestral Gwich’in adopted their bifacial stone

technology and contracting stem Klo-Kut (Kavik) arrowheads from Alaskan tribes, the Klo-Kut arrowhead being an excellent marker for tracing Dene to the southwest Yukon and to the Interior Plateau of British Columbia. Some archaeologists tie Yukon Dene outmigration with land temporarily affected by 1200 year-old White River ashfall from a nearby Alaskan volcano, an event concurrent with the Tanana-Gwich’in language split. But the ashfall never reached the Porcupine Gwich’in, and would not have affected their movement. Indications of heavy pre- and post-Contact fishing exist at the nearby Dechyoo Njit camp. There, Dene used long, round-fronted snowshoes for hunting on fresh snow and short, pointed, upturned snowshoes for breaking trails. Subsistence came from ice fishing and hare- and ptarmigan-snaring in late winter, and hunting for porcupine, spruce grouse, caribou, and moose. In the far northwest, the Gwich’in hunted the Porcupine caribou herd in spring and summer, and sub-herds and other animals in winter. They extensively used wooden caribou fences, but only mid-Contact period fence remains have survived. A Black Fox Creek fence had protohistoric stoneadze-cut stumps, but older ones are inferred because 8000 years of stable spruce forest-tundra may have allowed stable caribou migration routes and provided wood for fence construction. For this, two long rows of poles, oriented transversely across low valleys, converged in a brush corral interlaced with rawhide snares where 80–150 caribou were trapped and killed with arrows and lances.

Southern Yukon The occurrence of extinct bison bone in the southwest Yukon led early researchers to believe that grassland dominated the post-glacial landscape, but forest pollens show a lengthy stable forest environment. A nonmicroblade Northern Cordilleran tradition (Figure 3) is the earliest documented human group and precedes the 8000–4500 year-old Little Arm phase, which has microblade cores, burins and microblades, but no notched points. Microblades like those at Little Arm occur in the Otter Falls, Canyon and Moosehide sites. Dating between the Little Arm and Taye Lake phases, the Annie Lake site has microblades and distinctly styled concave-based points. Microblades disappear in the 4500–1600 year-old Taye Lake phase (4500– 1600 years ago), but it has notched points, large barbed bone points, stone wedges, boulder spalls, several endscraper types, discoidal scrapers, burins, and extensive use of obsidian occur. The side-notched points resemble those at Mummy Cave, Wyoming,

Table 1 Generalized archaeological sequence of the Western and Central Canadian Subarctic

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One Dene Klo-Kut or Kavik (a) and four Late Taltheilei (b) arrowheads, scraper (c) and three chithos (d) Figure 2 Dene Klo-Kut (Kavik) arrowhead, Taltheilei arrowheads, scraper and chithos (clockwise from top left). ã 2008 Bryan Gordon. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

their style probably diffusing north from the Plains via northern British Columbia, as such points are absent in northern Alberta and the Mackenzie Valley. Technologically continuous toolkits that extend in time from Taye Lake phase through the Aishihik phase until White Contact suggest all represent Dene (Table 1 – shaded area) (Figure 3). The 1600 to 150 year-old Aishihik phase marks the introduction of the bow and arrow. This phase’s nine components include copper artifacts, small barbed bone points, Klo-Kut arrowheads, bifaces, and ground adzes, like those at Rat Indian Creek and Klo-Kut. While all three later phases have tabular bifaces, chitho scrapers, concave-based points, and wide endscrapers, Aishihik phase has thinner, rounder endscrapers, more unifaces, and more stone wedges than Taye Lake. Diagnostic of Dene are chitho scrapers and Klo-Kut arrowheads, while hearth traces surrounded by artifacts and boiling stone fragments are all that remain of most camps, suggesting that families boiled some of their meat or fish. People depended on salmon but took woodland caribou and upland game. Archaeological continuity and linguistics agree with the concept that Dene developed in situ in eastern Alaska and the southwest Yukon, developing from the Little Arm phase over 6000 years into the Dene-speaking tribes. In the Yukon, these tribes included Gwich’in, Ha¨n, Tutchone, Kaska and Tagish. European goods are found in the most recent levels of many sites.

The 1200 year-old White River ashfall was 3–5 cm thick in populated areas of the southwest Yukon several hundred kilometers from the volcanic vent (Figure 4). Some archaeologists maintain that this eruption caused a Dene exodus, with a populationdisplacing domino effect all the way to the American Southwest, where the Navajo-Apache formed from a Dene root (see Section on Move Through Saskatchewan). However, any major displacement based on this winter ashfall is unsubstantiated. Research after Washington’s Mount. St. Helens eruption shows that distant volcanic effects were tolerable to aquatic invertebrates and flora. While fish decreased initially due to ash suspension in the water affecting the fish food chain, spawning recovered in less than 2–3 years. In the Yukon, humans and game were several hundred kilometers away, far enough to be clear of any catastrophic consequences from the eruption itself. The level above the ash in the Tatlmain Lake site north of Carmacks had fewer fish remains (9%) than the level below the ash (25%), but fish recovered soon thereafter. World history does not record a terrestrial volcanic event capable of fully disrupting extensive human resources where flexible cultural mechanisms could counteract it, but such an event may have indirectly fostered a change in human technology. Post-ashfall firing of trees killed by ash accumulation may have opened the forest, favoring the adoption from Alaska of the arrow over the dart for hunting. New Ice Patch research in the Kluane region of the southwest Yukon suggests an abrupt switch to the bow and arrow, with little overlap of darts or spears spanning the period of ashfall on 10 AMS dates. The youngest dart dates 1260  60 years, the oldest arrow; 1300  60. While darts were tipped with stone points, arrows were made of bone and antler, some archaeologists suggesting this was done using copper carving tools. The southwest Yukon Dene also mined native copper nuggets along the White River, both to make arrowheads and for trade. Before and after White Contact in the early 1800s, eulachon oil (see Glossary) was traded from the coastal Tlingit by the Kaska and Tutchone for copper and furs. The Tagish were drawn into the fur trade as middlemen, and over time, adopted Tlingit social customs (Figure 4).

West of the Continental Divide Northern British Columbia

Microblades began in north coastal British Columbia, their makers moving up the rivers and over passes to the undated Callison site with its many Taye Lake traits, and Grizzly Run on Mount Edziza, Stikine drainage, with its many microblades (Figures 1 and 5).

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Figure 3 The early cultures. ã 2008 Bryan Gordon. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This was a quarry site, high and far from water, where microblades were made, but taken elsewhere to be used. Contemporaneously, the Rattlesnake Hill fishing station far to the south on the Thompson River has fish remains, but no microblades. Some rare cases of microblades older than 7000 years occur on the Interior Plateau, but their use ended 4000–5000 years ago, contemporaneous with those of Yukon’s Little Arm phase and Mount Edziza and the appearance of pithouses probably derived from the south (Figure 5). Almost nothing is known about the ancient people of British Columbia’s rugged interior, especially between Hazleton–Lower Liard and the Rockies. Unlike the coast, the interior ranges could not support many people. The rivers with salmon were mainly controlled by coastal people, but some degree of accommodation with the interior Dene likely occurred, especially far upriver. Along these east–west ecotones leading to the coast, midsized early-looking points are ubiquitous but undated. It is likely some were ancestral to Early Taltheilei points that occur after 2700

years ago along the Peace River. Taltheilei points (see section on the Barrenlands) are a distinctive marker for Dene that were first defined around Great Slave Lake. They are ubiquitous east of the Continental Divide and occur occasionally in northern British Columbia. A better understanding of Taltheilei shouldered points and artifact associations is needed by archaeologists studying British Columbia, if they are to identify them confidently. Too large for arrows, many may have been dartheads until their makers carried them down the Peace River to the Barrenlands, where they would have been used to tip thrusting lances at caribou water-crossings. Complicating interpretations, some Late Palaeoindian-like points persist long after small notched and stemmed forms are found elsewhere. Notched and stemmed forms are in the 3600– 3200 year-old Skeena River Kitselas Canyon site, the 4000–2400 year-old Shuswap Horizon on the Plateau and the 5600–3500 year-old Plains McKean complex. Tracing pre-Contact Dene movements in British Columbia is tenuous because the tribes at Contact

334 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic

lnuit

Ho

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huk

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c lika

Beaufort Sea Koyukon Kutchin

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an

Tanaina

a

Ah tna

Moun tain

ane

Klu

ska

Sla vey

Sekani

t

tsau

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lnuit

Yellowknife Dog rib

Ka

an Tahlt

git

Chipewyan

Bea ver

Ca

rrie

Sa

r

rs

i

CAN

ADA

Sites with chithos

c. 800 AD

PACIFIC COAST ATHAPASKANS

and

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Tlin

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gisn

803 AD White River ash distribution east

0 500 km km © Bryan Gordon

Har e Lak & Be ar e

Han

Gulf of Alaska

NORTHERN ATHAPASKANS

Proposed origin of the Navajo-Apache from Chipewyan c. 800 AD

Algonkian (Cree?)

USA

APACHEAN ATHAPASKANS

Navajo-Apach e arrival in Sout hwest after 1200 AD

Figure 4 Proposed origin of the Navajo-Apache from the Chipewyan c. AD 800, including the distribution of the White River ashfall. ã 2008 Bryan Gordon. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

are too difficult to differentiate through their toolkits. Kaska artifacts in the far north of British Columbia resemble those of the Beaver, Sekani and Slave. For example, Late Fisherman Lake material from the southwest Mackenzie District of the Northwest Territories could be Kaska or Slave because the Kaska were Fort Simpson traders before the Slave pushed them up the Liard River to British Columbia. To the west, the rugged Stikine and Cassiar Ranges were occupied only by scattered, seasonal Tahltan Dene hunters. Along the Stikine River, the Tahltan caught seasonally abundant fish using nets and weirs. They hunted caribou with the aid of traps, snares and fences, the last extending 5–16 km to prominent headlands. To augment their construction, fences were interlaced with deadfalls and branches. Snares were placed in open portions. In 1821, Fort Halkett was built on the upper Liard River, followed in 1838 by a Hudson’s Bay Company post on Dease Lake.

We know little about Interior Plateau Dene, although Klo-Kut arrowheads occur in the early phases. The Ulkatcho and Chinlac site pithouses north of Anahim Lake have barbed bone points, eared endscrapers, bone beamers and awls, and birchbark, but their Carrier occupants were recent immigrants. They ate caribou, then moose when caribou retreated west into the mountains. Taltheilei-like points were replaced by side-notched arrowheads, but the only preserved Dene bow is a 50  5 cm Tahltan, for example, tapered at each end with flat inner and round outer surfaces. It had been rubbed with beaver castor and wrapped in hide for toughening. Twisted caribou sinew was used to make bowstrings. It is associated with 75-cm-long saskatoon berry cane arrows with notched caribou bone, antler or obsidian points. Late Taltheilei Dene spread south to the Oregon and California coasts to form the Pacific Dene about 1500 years ago (Figure 6), but little can be said until

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic 335 Bering Sea

Beaufort Sea

The Early Intermediate Cultures bp = years before present

Whi rl Lake

121 Arc Shie ld h 650 aic sit es 0–3 500 bp

Gulf of Alaska

Pre sou Dorset th c . 35 moving NT 00 b p Do ck s Microblade Nor thwest Tradition Pointed Mtn. ins N. Pla s Cal ion s lis incur site on C middharlie L. le pr 4 ehis bur 000 bp Kit i t o s r i c ns & m Bezya Ca ela icro ny s blad on es No Ar r the ch rn aic

Re tre h

© Bryan Gordon

CAN ADA USA

ut

500 km

so

0 km

at

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Figure 5 The early intermediate cultures, including their movements. ã 2008 Bryan Gordon. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

more excavation reveals their routes. Bridging the gap somewhat are similar Interior Plateau and central California rectangular houses. Unfortunately, Interior Plateau pithouses have mixed components and mixed radiocarbon estimates because older soil from the pit was often piled upon younger soil around its edge during house construction. In both Interior Plateau and Pacific Dene in the White Contact period, there were unique puberty and curing rites. A warrior status from raiding was initiated and focus switched from group to individual, a widespread Dene trait. Coquille arrowheads in the Standley site in Oregon are reminiscent of Klo-kut ones, but their context in large coastal villages with highly visible shell middens does not compare well with small single-family dwellings in the interior. New British Columbia research should be continued away from pithouses, with a view to tying Plateau and Pacific Dene by focusing on hide smoothers like chithos, Klo-Kut arrowheads, stylistic artifact differences, and sequential radiocarbon dates (Figure 6).

East of the Continental Divide Northeast British Columbia and Alberta

On the east side of the Rockies near Fort St. John, the earliest signs of Palaeoindians are at Charlie Lake Cave in a Palaeoindian level dating about 10 500 years ago, with lanceolate, fluted spear points and square-stemmed Cody-Alberta points (Figure 1). They were found on the surface and likely diffused from the contiguous Plains. At Charlie Lake cave and the Farrell site, 5000–6000-year-old stemmed and notched points precede 2900–2500 year-old points suggestive of the Oxbow type on the Plains, followed by smaller post-1500 year-old notched arrowheads. In northeastern British Columbia, the pre-1830 Beaver people hunted bison on the Peace River prairie and woodland zones, and moose, woodland caribou, sheep and goats in the hills. The oldest artifacts in northern Alberta may be macroblades similar to Clovis culture specimens found farther south. Later lanceolate points resembling

336 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic

Ing

al i k

k chu lika Ho

Bering Sea

Beaufort Sea

Inuit

Proposed Dene movement south across B.C. Plateau to become Pacific Dene (Athabaskan) c. 500 AD

Koyukon Kutchin

Kolchan n na Ta

Tanaina

a

tn Ah

Har e Lak & Bea e r

Han

a

ntain Mou

Gulf of Alaska

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500 km

© Bryan Gordon

ska

Sla vey

Chipewyan

ut

tsa

Tse

NORTHERN ATHAPASKANS

CANAD

A

PACIFIC COAST ATHAPASKANS APACHEAN ATHAPASKANS

Inuit

Yellowknife Dog rib

c. 500 AD

PACIFIC OCEAN

tan Tahl

0 km

Ka

and

USA

Pacific Coast Dene

Figure 6 Proposed Dene movement South across the British Columbia Plateau to become the Pacific Dene (Athabaskan) c. AD 500. ã 2008 Bryan Gordon. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

the Agate Basin Northern Plano and Hell Gap points of the northern Plains were found on the surface of the Gardiner Narrows and Beaver River Quarry sites, as was an Alberta-Scottsbluff point found near Fort Mackay south of Lake Athabasca (Figure 1). All date about 10 000 years ago on the Plains, but are probably much younger in northern Alberta. A notched burin (see Glossary) and spalls from burin sharpening, microblades and cores came from the 4000 year-old Bezya site, while a microcore came from near Fort Vermillion (Figure 5). These may show ties to the southwest Yukon’s Little Arm phase and to the southwest Mackenzie District’s Pointed Mountain site. The Middle Prehistoric phase along the southern forest fringe includes 5500–2500 year-old notched Oxbow points, representing diffusion, trade or actual Plains people. The Eaglenest Portage site has stemmed and notched points, some being Middle Prehistoric projectiles, others Late Taltheilei arrowheads. The Gardiner

Narrows and Satsi sites, with 3500–2700 year-old Arctic Small Tool tradition points, demonstrate that their Inuit-like bearers came quite far south and even adapted to game other than tundra caribou. Gardiner Narrows and Satsi are not that far from the Karpinsky site, where all Taltheilei phases are represented. The Taltheilei tradition originated in northern British Columbia from a Yukon Na-Dene tradition and went east via the Peace River to Alberta (Figure 7). This is the only viable portal through the Rockies for groups larger than small, scattered mountain bands and is in the right location for these events. The presence of large sites, like Peace Point on the Peace River gives credence to the importance of waterways to human movement. Unfortunately, most sites have been buried or washed away, although a number of Albertan sites point to derivation from the west by way of the Peace River drainage. A precursor to 2450–2600 year-old narrow, thick, Earliest Taltheilei lanceheads has not

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic 337

but none is well stratified and few are radiocarbondated. The fact that some points resemble those of Late or Middle Taltheilei and also resemble points found farther south in the Alberta foothills has been the basis of a postulated Rockies foothills route of the Yukon Dene to the American Southwest. A protohistoric foothills migration by Dene hunters is better documented, when Dene left western Lake Athabasca through Beaver territory to cross the far Northwest Plains along the Rockies foothills to become the Sarsi (Figure 8). Indeed, Sarsi and Beaver are close relatives, sharing oral traditions even after Sarsi became Plains hunters. Early historic Sarsi took advantage of annual bison migrations, following them south to amalgamate with and finally dissolve in the dominant southwest Alberta Blackfoot (Figure 8). A pre-1650 location for Sekani was just north of the Sarsi on the Alberta Plains, while Carrier and

been found on the Peace River, but one thin, wide, shouldered point found in British Columbia in the late nineteenth century by Morice resembles Early Taltheilei points. Perhaps looking for Taltheilei origins in the earlier Taye Lake phase in the Yukon is logical because both Taltheilei and Taye Lake have similar overall toolkits, with the exception that side-notched points (in Taye Lake) are absent in Early Taltheilei. And there are the Taltheilei-like points mentioned earlier on the Northwest Coast and Interior of British Columbia. More survey is needed (Figure 7). The Karpinsky site in western Alberta is pivotal in tying Taltheilei origin to the Peace River and British Columbia. Judging from the form and non-parallel flaking of unprovenanced Early and Middle lanceheads, it has points of all phases, suggesting the Peace River was a regularly used route. The heavily surveyed northern Alberta Oil Sands have 1000 sites,

Inuit

alik Ing

k

chu

lika

Ho

Bering Sea

Beaufort Sea

Koyukon

Pre-600 BC Dene movement from British Columbia down the Peace River

Kutchin

Kolchan n Ta a

an

Tanaina Ah

re HaP re Lak & Bea e r

tna

Han

Pre-tain n Mou

Gulf of Alaska

Tutchone ish

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Yellowknife Dog rib

Tag

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Figure 7 Pre-600 BC Dene movement from British Columbia down the Peace River to the Barrenlands. ã 2008 Bryan Gordon. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

338 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic

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al i k

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Bering Sea

Inuit

Proposed Dene movement south to become Sarsi c. 1650 AD Beaufort Sea

Koyukon Kutchin

Kolchan n Ta an

Tanaina

a

a

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Gulf of Alaska

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Ka

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and

Inuit

Yellowknife Dog rib

Sla vey

Chipewyan

Bea ver c. 16 50 A D

tn Ah

Har e Lak & Bea e r

Han

Sarsi

- Blac kfoot

Cree

CANADA USA

Figure 8 Proposed Dene movement South to become the Sarsi c. AD 1650. ã 2008 Bryan Gordon. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Sarsi were adjacent to one another east-west, a condition requiring the Beaver to be farther east than at present. Linguistic data show southern disruption of Sekani and Sarsi, who share enough traits to indicate extensive earlier contact, something they have in common with the Carrier. Evidence also exists for the Sekani being farther east, later to be forced up the Peace River from the Alberta Plains by the Cree. If the Sarsi, on their movement south, carried the chitho or hide abrader, it disappeared or changed completely because it is absent in the Old Women’s phase of Alberta. Northwest Territories-Western Mackenzie District

East of the Yukon and British Columbia, microblade technology occurs only in the late Northwest Microblade tradition and is often associated with flake burins (made by spalling the edge of a flake). Mackenzie Valley and Great Bear Lake microblade assemblages are variants of earlier Alaskan and

Yukon cultures. Simultaneous to the Middle Shield Archaic in the Beverly range of the Thelon River, the 5000–3500 year-old Great Bear River and Franklin Tanks sites near Great Bear Lake have lanceheads, knives, choppers, endscrapers, and microblades mixed with an Arctic Small Tool burin. The nearby NT Docks site has a bladelike assemblage related to the lower level of the Whirl Lake site and dating about 5000 years ago (Figure 5). The lower level at Whirl Lake shows more southern as well as Alaskan and Yukon influence. It and the NT Docks, Pointed Mountain, and Bezya (Alberta) sites all could be defined as 4000–5000 year-old Northwest Microblade variants. But in all assemblages, composition is inconsistent; some have microcores, others have stemmed, notched, and leafshaped points under possible Plains influence. The Great Bear Lake Taltheilei people made lance and arrow heads like those in the Eastern Mackenzie District, plus scrapers, knives, adzes, whetstones, drills and small native copper awls, and

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic 339

knives. Bone, wood, antler, hide, and fur items have not survived the acid soil. Permanent White contact was established when the Hudson’s Bay Company built Fort McPherson on the lower Peel River in 1840, followed two years later by La Pierre House on the Yukon’s Bell River and seven years later by Fort Yukon at the junction of the Porcupine and Yukon Rivers. The reputed co-occurrence of notched points, burins and microblades continues to obscure the definition of the Northwest Microblade tradition. The Pointed Mountain site has Taye Lake burins, plus microblades; other sites do not. Tenuous ties have been drawn across the Continental Divide between the 1500–2300 year-old Mackenzie complex and late Taye Lake-early Aishihik point types, notched endscrapers and burins. The 1400 year-old Fish Lake complex retains side-notched points, but its microblades may, in fact, be parallel-sided flakes. The co-occurrence of crudely flaked notched points with microblades taken from cores using a refined technique seems odd. They occur in thin soils and may represent separate technologies. Contiguous with Yukon Gwich’in sites are those in the Mackenzie Delta and Anderson Plain. Whirl Lake near Arctic Red River and the Anderson Plain have similar dwellings. The Whirl Lake dwelling lacks timbers and was probably covered with birchbark and skin, while Anderson Plain pithouses had beams supporting a low turf roof. Both areas have birchbark trays for holding fish, while Whirl Lake shows a varied subsistence of pike, waterfowl, moose, caribou, muskrat, beaver, and dog or wolf. A 10 cm bone snowshoe netting needle decorated with stylized ‘beavers’ represents a rare Dene art object. East of the Rockies, thrusting lances partially replace the atlatl because they were better tools for killing caribou at close range, as was necessary at water-crossings and corrals. Where rapid-fire hunting was needed on frozen lakes and in open space, the bow and arrow was superior for small subherds, but prior to the bow, the atlatl was used in winter. The change to side-notched arrowheads spread east of the Rockies, down the Peace River to the Northwest Territories to form part of the AD 800–1200 Late Taltheilei phase. Early Taltheilei began 2100 years ago on Great Bear Lake, eventually evolving into the Hare, who used lance and arrowheads until White Contact. Little is known about the Mountain Dene on the Nahanni River, as epidemics and famine reduced them. Up the Liard River as far as Fisherman Lake, Spence River points resembling Prairie Side-Notched arrowheads are interpreted as Slavey Dene.

Northwest Territories-Central Mackenzie District

The Mackenzie District includes the Bathurst caribou range north of Great Slave Lake and east of Great Bear Lake. Its earliest inhabitants were a 6000–3500 year-old Archaic group called Acasta, its side-notched lanceolates being a possible southern modification (Figure 3). A link may exist between its edge-burinated flakes, called Donnelly burins, and multi-gravers and those in Little Arm phase. Other items are large bipointed knives, scrapers, planes, gravers, burins, wedges and a whetstone. Acasta’s 15–25 huge 3–4 m diameter hearths were used in heat-treating quartzite to make it more suitable for flaking. One hearth had charred caribou, bear, beaver, hare, and fish bone. Rare Oxbow, narrow concave-based Duncan and larger convex-based side-notched Pelican Lake points found near Great Slave Lake’s East Arm represent Middle Plains influence. Dene prehistory is recognized throughout the subarctic by generalized toolkits: bifacial knives, scrapers, wedges, hammerstones, pushplanes, and chithos. Points are the most diagnostic tool for differentiating phases. But most Barrenland surface sites have collections mixed from two or more phases because they are situated at caribou water-crossings used over and over again for millennia. Stratified sites are rare in the Bathurst caribou range, so attempts were made to separate assemblages through estimating the age of raised beach ridges and dating charcoal in isolated hearths. As these were too crude to properly separate the 10 complexes in the 2500–160 year-old Taltheilei Shale tradition, the complexes were assigned to the three well-dated Taltheilei tradition phases in the Beverly caribou range (Table 1). Thus, the Central Mackenzie phases translate as follows: Hennessey is Early Taltheilei; Taltheilei and Windy Point are Middle Taltheilei; and Waldron River, Narrows, Lockhart River, Fairchild Bay, Snare River, and Reliance are Late Taltheilei. Earliest Taltheilei lanceheads are absent in the Bathurst caribou range, casting doubt on Dene movement across the Mackenzie Mountains via the Liard River and strengthening the theory of migrations via the Peace River. Early Taltheilei points are shouldered. Middle Taltheilei lanceheads are stemmed. Late Taltheilei is characterized by notched arrowheads, indicating introduction of the bow and arrow. The last prehistoric phase in the Bathurst caribou range is ancestral Yellowknife, but it would also include Dogrib. In historic times, both Dogrib and Yellowknife built caribou fences on lake ice in March and April, and both hunted migrating Bathurst caribou in the spring. The Bathurst range was taken over by the Dogribs in the mid-nineteenth century after years of friction and two battles with the Yellowknife.

340 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic Eastern Mackenzie District (Barrenlands), Northern Saskatchewan, and Manitoba

Hearne was first to record Dene groups following the caribou when he crossed the Barrenlands in 1771. Later ethnographic reports and archaeology confirmed that caribou was the controlling factor in the development of Dene groups on the Barrenlands, in northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba. All Dene groups had to follow the caribou within its wintering area and migration corridor to and from the calving grounds if they were to survive. Alternative food was insufficient to sustain them. Distance between herd ranges and the timing of each respective herd’s migration prevented any one human group from hunting more than one range. Such is the nature of joint culture and herd occupancy that tools and dialects reflect this dependence. Within each caribou range, tools become more homogeneous with time, and differ from those in adjoining ranges because of limited contact between groups. This pattern has been evident since the first peoples entered the Barrenlands. Within the Beverly Range, stratified sites provide a cultural sequence from then until Contact. The association of the Dene tribes with caribou ranges continued into historic times. From northwest to southwest, and with respect to tribal division and range, the Satudene (Hare and Dogrib) occupy the Bluenose caribou range; the Dogrib and Yellowknife occupy the Bathurst range; and the Western and Eastern Chipewyan occupy the Beverly and Kaminuriak ranges (Figure 4). The earliest people to enter the Barrenland range of the Beverly caribou were Northern Plano who followed the retreating continental ice sheet north. They occupied 34 water-crossings, each having at least one Northern Plano lancehead and dating to 8000–7000 years ago (Figure 3). Northern Plano artifacts are also seen to the south, at Black Lake in northern Saskatchewan. Northern Plano may have merged into Shield Archaic people 6500–3500 years ago, as 121 Beverly sites show no substantial interruption in artifact frequencies, particularly in knives (Figure 5). But their earliest radiocarbon-dated (6120 years ago) small, crude, side-notched point looks nothing like the elegant, long, unnotched Plano points. In time, the Shield Archaic people retreated with incoming very cold climate from the Arctic coast. Hard on their heels were 3500–2700 year-old Arctic-adapted Pre-Dorset people who moved south during this cold period. They left distinctive microblades and cores, burins and spalls, and other refined tools at many Bathurst, Beverly (246 sites), and Kaminuriak caribou range sites (Figure 9). To the southeast, Pre-Dorset artifacts are found at Black

Lake, Saskatchewan, and near Churchill, Manitoba, at the Twin Lakes and Seahorse Gully sites (see Americas, North: Arctic and Circumpolar Regions) (Figure 9). With climatic warming, Earliest and Early Taltheilei people moved into the Beverly range via the Peace River (Figure 7), leaving 190 sites in the Beverly range. From 2600 to 1800 years ago, they used long thick lanceheads, then thin shouldered lanceheads. The 1800 to 1300 year-old Middle phase expanded to occupy 355 Beverly sites, reflecting a cultural efflorescence. It also spread east to the Kaminuriak range of Manitoba and southern Nunavut leaving well-made stemmed points as evidence of mass hunting at water-crossings. The 1300 to 200 year-old Late phase people adopted the bow and arrow that is recognized in crude notched arrowheads. These people evolved directly into protohistoric Chipewyan, met by Hearne on the lower Dubawnt River and on the Thelon River’s ‘Arctic Oasis’ at its junction with the Hanbury, where the richest stratified sites occur. The Chipewyan used the bow horizontally, as probably did their Late Taltheilei ancestors. Along the Dubawnt and Thelon rivers, upturned stone slab shooting blinds and stone pile or brush fences used by these bowmen, mark the Beverly caribou migration corridor. The Thelon corridor was especially depended upon, as seen in 16 blinds and 15 fences near water-crossings on the upper Thelon River. The high quality quartzite, dominant in Taltheilei toolkits, was collected on the tundra and carried hundreds of kilometers south in the fall when the people migrated into the forest. By winter, local stone was under several meters of snow and was of poor quality. Thus, repeated sharpening over the winter of the tools they had carried from the tundra reduced the size of tools in forest sites. Scrapers and knives were serrated and four-sided in the forest zone for easier winter handling and use on frozen hides and meat. Chithos either became more worn because of use on frozen hides or from prolonged winter use before they could be replaced in summer.

Dene Move through Saskatchewan to the Southwestern United States Three routes from Subarctic Canada to the American Southwest have been proposed. The Intermountain one is the least promising because the Hare, Bear Lake, Dogrib, Yellowknife and Chipewyan are not mountain Dene and there is little supporting data. A Foothills route has been suggested because some arrowheads are supposedly similar along Alberta’s foothill sites, but others disagree on their specific traits. Furthermore, notched quartzite cobble axes

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic 341

Beaufort Sea

The Late Intermediate Cultures bp = years before present

500 km

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son riak t 350 al mo carib 0–1 vem ou 700 en bp ts

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Gulf of Alaska

P se Bat reas hu Do on rst rs 35 al c e 00 mo arib t –1 ve ou 70 m P 0 b en p ts se Bev re-D as erl or on y c se t a a 35 0 0 l mo r ibo –1 v u 70 eme 0b nts p Kam Pre-D sea inu orse

Ol Ch d De ief ne

CAN USA

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Figure 9 The late intermediate cultures, including seasonal movements of Barrenland hunters and caribou herds. ã 2008 Bryan Gordon. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

and adzes like those of the northern Yukon Dene are present in Saskatchewan sites, but are absent in Alberta. These and unproven arrowhead similarities mitigate against a Foothills route. The most plausible route for southern Navajo-Apache migration is via the open Plains (Figure 4). Evidence of a Plains route south appears in Late Taltheilei times, as indicated in Plains Side-Notched arrowheads mixed with Taltheilei side-notched arrowheads and other artifacts at Black Lake near Lake Athabasca. The Plains path crosses the Churchill and Saskatchewan Rivers via an archaeologically unknown area west of AD 500–1000 Laurel and AD 1250 Selkirk peoples of Manitoba, and it remains unknown if the Dene contacted them. Crude quartzite Late Taltheilei side-notched arrowheads (Figure 2b) merge into fine chert Plains Side-Notched arrowheads across Saskatchewan. This is the first suggestion of Late Taltheilei fading into the dominant Plains culture, as Taltheilei knappers honed their skills using

superior Plains chert. On the North Saskatchewan River, Taltheilei is inferred to be present by Middle Plains Period ovoid and notched knives and gouges and pushplane-shaped endscrapers very like those of Late Taltheilei. Over a millenium ago, at the northern edge of the Saskatchewan parkland and prairie, some Late Taltheilei or ancestral Chipewyan bands became more dependent on bison and less on caribou. Gradually being drawn to the seasonal movements of the bison going south to the short grass prairie of southern Saskatchewan, some bands adjusted fully to the bison’s ‘spoke-and-rim’ migrations, often ending in winter far from where they started in spring. Bison move into the short grass prairie in summer and out to the aspen parklands to the north, the foothills to the west, or the woodlands to the east in autumn. Hunters beginning their seasonal hunts may move into the short grass prairie from one direction and out another, especially after a drought. In the process,

342 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic

and likely being driven by drought effects on moving bison, several Chipewyan bands kept moving south, rather than north, west or east. The stable AD 900– 1200 Neo-Atlantic Episode grassland may have first attracted ancestral Chipewyan to the Plains, while the AD 1200–1550 Pacific Episode climatic deterioration may have hastened their move south (see Americas, North: Plains). Supporting this hypothesis of a southern Chipewyan movement via the archaeological record is their speech, which most clearly resembles Navajo. Navajo has the greatest retention of Chipewyan words. Minimal Chipewyan linguistic divergence puts the Navajo within the AD 800–1200 date range of Taltheilei side-notched arrowheads (Table 1). The relationship between Chipewyan and Navajo is also supported by three skeletons excavated near Colorado’s Trinidad Reservoir. They have Dene-specific first molars, suggesting the Navajo or ancestral Chipewyan were there from AD 750–1000. If so, they arrived in the southwest well after the Avonlea phase of the Northern Plains, and well before the Dismal River phase of the Central Plains, the previously accepted indicators of Dene or Athapaskan presence. They arrived well before Coronado’s 1541 notations of Apache in his journal. The Apache, diverging similarly to Navajo from Chipewyan, moved south as a unit. The Navajo and Apache split in eastern Colorado, the Apache retaining a Plains orientation while the Navajo evolved into a new Southwest-adapted culture. Some linguists say the split was farther north based on the Chipewyan ‘t’ and ‘d’ sounds diverging and reappearing later and separately in Navaho and Apache. Ancestral Chipewyan may be found in the American Southwest using a testable Preceramic Dene phase. To do this, one must ignore the earliest pottery of the Navajo and their five-pole hogans and ubiquitous triangular arrowheads. Instead, one should consider side-notched arrowheads and look for the remains of simple brush shelters or tipis, arrowshaft smoothers, hide abraders, bone fleshers and beamers, large retouched flakes and knives, dog transport, and the sinew-backed double-curved bow released horizontally. Drawn to the chest, this archery technique reduced accuracy, pull and range by two-thirds, but favored a hidden approach and gave the Apache-Navajo distinct military advantages when entering new areas.

There are many gaps in the prehistory of the Subarctic Dene. The Dene west and east of the Continental Divide and north and south of the 49th Parallel appear on first impression to be so different. Yet there is an underlying similarity, not just in their language and social structure, but in the fact that they were inveterate borrowers from other cultures. This has presented immense challenges to archaeologists, but, hopefully, we can make them more visible by examining their whole culture area, the largest in North America. See also: Americas, North: American Southwest, Four

Corners Region; Arctic and Circumpolar Regions; Eastern Woodlands; Plains; Rocky Mountains; New World, Peopling of.

Further Reading Clark DW (1991) Archaeological Survey of Canada, Canadian Prehistory Series: Western Subarctic Prehistory, 152. Yukon: Archaeological Survey of Canada. Fladmark KR (1986) British Columbia Prehistory. Yukon: Archaeological Survey of Canada. Gordon BC (1996) Archaeological Survey of Canada, Mercury Series 19: People of Sunlight, People of Starlight-Barrenland Archaeology in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Yukon: Archaeological Survey of Canada. Hare PG, Greer S, Gotthardt R, and Farnell R (2004) Ethnographic and archaeological investigations of alpine ice patches in SW Yukon, Canada. Arctic 57(3): 247–259. Krauss ME and Golla VK (1981) Northern Athapaskan Languages. In: Helm J (ed.) Handbook of the North American Indians. Subarctic Vol. 6, pp. 67–85. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. Kroeber AL (1959) Reflections and tests on Athapaskan glottochronology. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 47: 241–258. LeBlanc R (1984) The Rat Indian Creek Site and the Late Prehistoric Period in the Interior Northern Yukon: Archaeological Survey of Canada, Mercury Series 120. MacNeish RS (1964) Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Paper 6: Investigations in the southwest Yukon: Archaeological Excavations, Comparisons, and Speculations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Noble WC (1981) Prehistory of the Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake Region. In: Helm J (ed.) Handbook of North American Indians. Subarctic, vol. 6, p. 97–106. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. Workman, W (1978) Prehistory of the Aishihik–Kluane area, southwest Yukon Territory, Canada. Archaeological Survey of Canada, Mercury Series 74.

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AMERICAS, SOUTH Contents Amazon Basin Early Cultures of the Central Andes Early Villages Historical Archaeology Inca Archaeology Inca Ethnohistory Northern South America Southern Cone

Amazon Basin Anna C Roosevelt, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Archaic period Early Holocene period of often-complex hunter-gatherer cultures. diffusion The spread of archaeological cultures. Formative period Period between about 5000 and 2000 years ago when people first used cultivated plants as staple foods. hypoplasia A horizontal line of reduced enamel formation that forms in a child’s teeth when growth slows because of an illness or period of famine. interfluves Nonflooded land between the main rivers. Manioc Tropical shrub of the Euphorbiaceae family whose fibrous, starchy roots are a staple food in Latin America and the Caribbean. New Archaeology A period of theoretical and methodological innovation in American archaeology that emphasized the formation and testing of explicit hypotheses. Oriente Eastern Ecuador, which lies in the Amazon basin. osteology The study of bone morphology. palaeoindian period New World cultural period of early hunting and gathering cultures dating to the later Pleistocene and Early Holocene. paradigm An overarching theoretical approach to scientific causality from which a group of related theories and hypotheses is derived. photogrammetry Three-dimensional mapping carried out by binocular resolution of dual, offset photographic images. phytolith A silica-rich, plant-cell wall structure that can be preserved in soil, recovered, and identified to species. Pleistocene Geological period of the Ice Age between c. 2 million and 10 000 years ago. pressure-flaked a method of flaking stone to shape artifacts by pressing the rock surface. radiometric dating Dating methods that use the behavior of radioactive materials to measure the amount of time since a material was used or buried. stable isotope analysis Study of vegetation cover or diet by mass spectrometric analysis of nonradioactive isotopes extracted from plants, fauna, or soils.

varzea Brazilian Portuguese term for alluvial floodplain land. Xanthosoma Tropical South American root crop of the Aroid family distantly related to Asian taro.

Interpretive Themes in Amazonian Archaeology The dominant theme of archaeologists’ interpretations of Amazonia is the question of the role of the tropical forest in human cultural and biological evolution. Environmental determinism was the explicit paradigm of the first archaeologists to espouse a theory; Betty J. Meggers and Clifford Evans of the Smithsonian Institution. Like many early scientific archaeologists, they believed that the tropical forest environment strongly limited human cultural evolution. Influenced by theoreticians such as Julian Steward, they considered the habitat so poor in resources that early foragers could not have penetrated it. The archaeological sequence thus only could have begun in late prehistory when pottery-using migrants from agricultural Andean civilizations invaded Amazonia. In the tropical environment, their cultures would have deteriorated into horticultural village societies and foraging bands. Their small, shifting settlements and limited subsistence activities would have left the forest essentially virgin of human impacts. Archaeologists who came to work in Amazonia after Meggers and Evans suggested variations to the environmental determinist hypotheses. They argued that, although poor interfluvial resources might have limited cultural developments, humans in the rich alluvial floodplains could have intensified agriculture and fishing and developed complex cultures. Donald Lathrap’s idea was that manioc had been the staple, whereas Anna Roosevelt thought that maize would have been a staple in some areas. Lathrap felt that competition over floodplain resources had led to migrations into the interfluves, where peoples’ cultures would have deteriorated in the poor environment. Roosevelt thought

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that the deterioration only happened after the European conquest of Amazonia. For earlier occupations, Lathrap doubted that Palaeo-Indian hunter-gatherers could have survived on Amazon resources, whereas Roosevelt thought that they could. The early theoretical thinking of scientific archaeologists about Amazonia was consistent with the main paradigm of the New Archaeology movement of the 1970s, itself an extrapolation from Julian Steward’s ideas. Like New Archaeologists, the early Amazonianists assumed that the environment shaped the trajectories of local cultural evolution. In their explanations, agriculture was the basis for village sedentism and the evolution of state societies involved agricultural intensification, population growth, monumental public works, and high art. The phase of field and lab research that followed the early phase of theory making in Amazonia has motivated the revision of many early theoretical ideas and the formulation of some significantly different understandings of human history and prehistory there. By the 1990s, archaeological field research had revealed an unexpectedly long and complex cultural sequence for Amazonia. The discovery of tropical forest Palaeo-Indians and Early Holocene ceramic foragers and farmers constituted problems for neoevolutionary optimal foraging theory and for diffusionary explanations that attributed Amazonian cultures to Andean intrusions. The diverse complex cultures unexpectedly found in interfluves as well as floodplains complicated 1970s theories about the role of intensive agriculture in social evolution, and the apparent lack of stratification and centralized rulerships in some of the complex cultures encouraged alternative explanations from heterarchy theory. Moreover, recognition of the historical role of the European conquest in the disappearance of the complex societies undermined adaptationist explanations of ethnogenesis in Amazonia. Finally, evidence that the environment itself might have coevolved with prehistoric humans has placed in doubt aspects of theory and practice in conservation biology. Since the first and second phases of systematic theoretical thinking, however, the debates among Amazonian archaeologists have not really moved into new directions. Although a few archaeologists are addressing issues from historical ecology, critical theory, and heterarchy, many continue with assumptions from New Archaeology theory. Current theoretical arguments often focus on minor refinements of conclusions, rather than questions about the appropriateness of paradigms. Such questions include: whether a particular Palaeo-Indian group lived in savanna or rainforest, whether a complex society’s site catchment was varzea or interfluvial forest, whether it had manioc or maize as a staple, whether

certain complex societies had classes and central rule, and where certain cultures originated. However given the role of the tropical forest as an archtype in determinist evolutionary theory, the new evidence for more mutual causality, greater complexity, and more lines of development than expected makes Amazonian prehistory a potent stimulant for major new paradigms. A new paradigm that acknowledged the human role in the evolution of habitats and cultures and recognized the dynamic character of the interrelationships might well transform general theory not only in anthropology but throughout the natural sciences and beyond.

Research Methodology The methodology of research in Amazonia has had a trajectory somewhat comparable to that of North American archaeology. It begins with an early prescientific period of free-ranging observation and inference. Then comes an early scientific period of theoretical writing whose research is not explicitly oriented to theoretical problems. There is a final period of field research with explicit problem-oriented design and an expansion of research for cultural resource managment. In each period, however, there are many researchers who do not fit into the trajectory. During the prescientific period, scholars working in Amazonia noted a diversity of archaeological sites and materials but did not use systematic research methods or relate their findings to general theories. However, their important, open-minded empirical observations were the basis of an eventual rethinking of early modern scientific theory by scholars of the first phase of scientific interpretation and the subsequent period of problem oriented research. For example, Charles Hartt, Alfred Russel Wallace, and H. H. Smith, and Joao Barbosa Rodrigues were all aware of preceramic sites and rockpaintings. Domingos Soares Ferreira Penna, Joseph Steere, and Hartt all recognized that there had been early pottery cultures subsisting on fishing, rather than agriculture; and Ladislav Netto, Orville Derby, and Hartt all recognized that there had been populous indigenous prehistoric complex cultures with high art, urban-like centers, and extensive earthworks. In the subsequent early scientific period, work by the Smithsonian group and their affiliates as well as by Lathrap and his associates (c. 1948 through 1975) focused mainly on excavating and descriptively analyzing pottery styles to define archaeological cultures, despite the fact that the New Archaeology had developed a quiver of refined archaeological methods and systematic measurement techniques. The narrow research interests of the early scientific archaeologists

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in Amazonia prevented them from exploiting the theoretical implications of prescientific researchers’ observations and interpretations. Thus, neither the Smithsonian group nor Lathrap’s group realized at that time that there had been Palaeoindian cultures and early Pottery Archaic cultures in Amazonia. When the Smithsonian Institution began producing radiocarbon dates, the dates definitely contradicted their presumption of late human arrival and prehistoric cultural deterioration. But the institution’s scholars found it impossible to integrate the early dates into their short chronology of the human occupation. Lathrap’s group, although aware of some of the early dates, nonetheless concentrated on late prehistory. So it was that only in the 1980s and 1990s were new groups of archaeologists able to establish the outlines of a long archaeological sequence by discovering new cultural phases with stratigraphic excavation techniques and intensive dating of multicomponent sites. Only then, too, were sites systematically instrument-mapped, allowing community analysis for the first time. The archaeologists who created this longer sequence were inspired by the US New Archaeology (or processual archaeology) movement of the 1960s and 1970s to broaden data gathering with techniques from archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, and human osteology and to sharpen analysis by the application of accelerator dating, geoarchaeology, geochemistry, computerized topographic mapping, informatics, and statistical analysis. It was this quiver of techniques that revealed the types of settlements and subsistence technologies not envisioned by the environmental determinists. By the 1980s, critical theory archaeologists opposed to processual archaeology had raised questions about the organizational mode and economic base of complex societies, and in Amazonia, these questions stimulated the use of methods that could better define prehistoric organization and economy. Within-site settlement subsurface mapping, regional settlement surveys, subsistence analysis, and cemetery analysis all have been recruited to test hypotheses. Of special theoretical significance have been the complex site plans and corpus of dated and biological remains that archaeologists have recovered in stratigraphic context with the new data gathering techniques. Aggregate information from pollen, macroscopic biological remains, as well as skeletal analyses has allowed more informed inferences about change in environment, subsistence, socioeconomic differentiation, and health patterns. Osteological techniques pioneered in the New Archaeology period have showed in the Amazonian populations a persistence of robust good health through prehistory, with a decline only in postconquest times. This sequence of data, along with the settlement data, did not support

the idea that the Amazon lacked sufficient subsistence resources for prehistoric populations. Not all Amazonian researchers buy into the idea of problem-oriented research or operationalized field methods. Many do not use the methods of data collection and analysis popularized by the New Archaeologists, and many do not subject their theoretical arguments to empirical tests. For example, some researchers argue for particular chronologies but do not carry out systematic radiometric dating and statistical analysis to make their case. Some researchers define land-use areas without justifying them with remote images or empirical soil classifications. Others make claims about ancient subsistence but do not feel the need to test them with fine-screening, quantified biological identifications, or stable isotope analysis for palaeodietary information. Others making claims about settlement patterns do not make instrument maps of sites to justify their arguments. Researchers on rock art do not use photogrammetric or laser mapping to record images precisely nor chemical analyses to trace pigments.

History of Research at Sites In the period from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century, researchers mainly from natural science fields and cultural studies took great interest in the archaeology of the Amazon. They traveled widely, made astute observations, carried out excavations, reached insightful interpretations, and published extensively. However, their use of theory was unexplicit and their data gathering and analysis unsystematic. Their work was ignored until the late twentieth century, when it became the basis for a critical review of theories and a new stage of problem-oriented field research. The early natural science researchers described a wide range of materials in sites, including diverse biological remains, and already recognized most of the cultures now accepted by archaeologists at the time of this writing. Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Hartt published on the rock paintings at Monte Alegre; J. Barbosa Rodrigues, Hartt, and H. H. Smith noted the existence of projectile points in the Taperinha–Monte Alegre area. Domingos Soares Ferreira Penna and his invitees, Hartt and Joseph Steere, reported on research at early pottery shellmounds at Taperinha, the mouth of the Amazon, and elsewhere. Hartt’s research team excavated on Marajo Island, at Taperinha near Santarem, and at Monte Alegre in Para. Ladislav Netto published an ambitious analysis of iconography and social organization at the Marajoara culture. Curt Nimuendaju surveyed and collected extensively, documenting the incised and punctate pottery horizon near Santarem and ceramic and standing stone sites just north of the mouth of

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the Amazon. He also ventured a still-influential reconstruction of the ethnohistoric Tapajo society of Santarem, which he associated with the Santarem archaeological pottery culture. Unfortunately, important early reports were published in Portuguese and stayed generally unknown to North Americans, but erudite scholars such as Helen Constance Palmatery disseminated important excerpts in their own English syntheses on Amazon archaeology. Also writing in English, Erland Nordenskiold synthesized lowland South American archaeology and ethnology in comparative schemas, pioneered research at lowland mound sites in the Llanos de Mojos, Bolivia, and inspired many others to work in the area. The materials collected by them from that area have mostly lain unpublished in European museums. The Peruvian and Columbian Amazon regions have less recorded work from this period. By the end of World War II, scientific archaeology had become established as a discipline, and government funding for foreign area studies supported archaeological research abroad. As mentioned above, in Amazonia, the early scientitific archaeologists of the postwar period focused on the definition and analysis of pottery cultures. Despite their theorizing on the history of human adaptation to Amazonia, they did not do systematic empirical research on settlement pattern, chronology, or human ecology. Meggers and Evans wrote their dissertations on their mid-twentieth century research on archaeological sequences at the mouth of the Amazon in Brazil. Their theory about the invasion and deterioration of Andean cultures was framed before radiocarbon dating. In the late 1950s they expanded research to British Guiana and in the 1960s to Venezuelan Guyana. Meggers and Evans then worked in the Napo River valley of the Ecuadorian Amazon, finding a local sequence that only later was understood to demonstrate a sequence contrary to their theory of the colonization of the Amazon. Their prote´ge´s in Brazil, British Guiana, and Uruguay carried on their effort by identifying cultures at many new sites in Amazon. The new cultural phases they found in eastern Amazonia included presumptive Formative and Archaic cultures, which by definition embodied a longer human occupation in the Amazon than their theories allowed for. In addition, dates from their excavations on Marajo suggested that the Polychrome horizon was older in Amazonia than in the Andes and that some mound constructions there dated back to Formative times. However, Meggers and Evans expressed doubts about those dates and argued against the idea that there had been early ceramic fishing cultures and early preceramic cultures. Lathrap wrote his dissertation on his late 1950s excavations at sites in the vicinity of Pucallpa in the

Ucayali River valley of the Peruvian Amazon. He argued, despite very incomplete dating, that these showed an indigenous cultural development, rather than foreign invasions and collapse. His PhD students at the University of Illinois, Urbana, added to his data by focusing on specific cultures. Together, they pushed the beginnings of the Upper Amazon sequence back into the first 1000 years before Christ, and they documented the existence of complex, populous societies at least by the time of the first European accounts. Although the Smithsonian group limited access to dig permits in the Brazilian Amazon, Lathrap students were able to use Brazilian museum collections and archives on the Marajoara culture to document that the area had a richer resource base and longer indigenous sequence than Meggers and Evans had hypothesized. Numerous Brazilian researchers of the later twentieth century carried out regionally focused research for museums, universities, and public archaeology contracts. In advance of the Carajas region iron-mining development, a team led by Marcos Magalhaes of the Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi excavated caves and rockshelters and defined and dated new Early Archaic and Late Formative cultures at Gruta do Gaviao and other sites. Archaic zooarchaeological finds from Gaviao were analyzed for subsistence information by Mara Imazio da Silveira. In the lower Tapajos River area, Denise Cavalcante Gomes excavated late Formative period sites for her dissertation. On Marajo Island, an interdisciplinary team from the Museu Goeldi did geophysical survey and test excavation at several sites. Their research, though illuminating for methodology and culture history, was not explicitly problemoriented. Edith Pereira, also of the Goeldi, conducted intensive long-term research and publication on the rock art of Para, a necessary first step allowing for interpretive analysis in the future. Researchers Vera Guapindaia at the Museu Goeldi and Denise Cavalcante Gomes at the University of Sao Paulo have systematically analyzed the technology and style of pottery from Santarem in museums. At the same time North American archaeologists and Brazilians began long-term problem-oriented research inspired by processual archaeology concepts and methods. Roosevelt’s team conducted long-term research on the history of cultures and habitats in the Lower Amazon. They used detailed instrument mapping, geophysical survey, extensive stratigraphic excavations, and exhaustive soil processing to test theories on the history of human adaptation in Amazonia. Their research sites include Santarem, Taperinha, Monte Alegre, Marajo Island, and the Curua River. A major focus of that research has been dating and analysis of biological remains and artifacts in stratigraphic context. To augment excavation data,

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the team also sampled, dated, and chemically analyzed biological collections in museums. Renato Kipnes has excavated and synthesized information from Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene sites throughout the southern Amazon and southeastern Brazil. Delores Piperno, with collaborators including Deborah Pearsall, has analyzed sediment cores from water bodies in Ecuador and Brazil to collect microfossils for data on subsistence and environmental change. In aid of transportation planning, Brazilian Denise Schaan then of the University of Pittsburgh headed a team that carried out the first extensive regional surveys, geophysical mapping, and test excavations on Marajo at the mouth of the Amazon. Her dissertation assessed the sociopolitical organization of the Marajoara culture as a possible complex chiefdom. Also in the lower Amazon, Vera Guapindaia has researched open sites and cave urnburial cemeteries of the late prehistoric Maraca culture. Her inventories reveal that the famous burial urns depicting humans seated on effigy stools include men and women in equal numbers. Dirse Kern has led teams that systematically investigated the chemistry of anthropogenic ‘black Indian soils’ for the first time. In the upper Xingu, Eduardo Neves of the University of Sao Paulo and Michael Heckenberger now of the University of Florida investigated the settlement pattern of a cluster of large, late prehistoric ‘round’ village sites, as units of a possible complex chiefdom. The team also has carried out preliminary testexcavation and site survey at terra firme sites near extensive varzea at the mouth of the Rio Negro, looking at the nature and production of the black Indian soils as elements of prehistoric land management. In the upper Amazon, several Peruvian researchers, including Monica Teixeira, mapped and test-excavated architectural, funerary, and habitation sites along the Andean slopes of the Amazon drainage. In Bolivia, Clark Erickson established a long-term research on agricultural earthworks and habitation sites of the Llanos de Mojos. European researchers have worked both on the history of Inca contact in Andean slopes of the Bolivian Amazon and also on large enigmatic earthworks in the Bolivian Llanos. In Ecuador, researchers led by Ernesto Salazar have mapped and test-excavated numerous diverse mounds in the rich archaeological zone of the Faldas de Sangay area, studied earlier by Pedro Porras, a collaborator of Betty Meggers.

The Human Developmental Sequence in Amazonia Palaeo-Indian foragers 11 000 to c. 9000 in main floodplain and 10 000–4000 BP elsewhere

The earliest human occupation discovered as yet in Amazonia is Late Pleistocene in age but is distinct

from the Clovis big-game-hunting, fluted-point culture of North America (see Figures 1 and 2). The occupation consists of small and widely dispersed groups with a culture of broad-spectrum foraging on tropical forest and river resources. Identified environmental plant remains document humid tropical forest vegetation, not grassland. Vegetation around campsites seems to have been disturbed, possibly by purposeful burning, and by Late Paleoindian times, people may have cultivated a few trees, roots, shrubs, and herbs. The most detailed evidence on their culture comes from the multicomponent site of Cavern of the Painted Rock at Monte Alegre in the Lower Amazon (see Figure 3 and 4). The preceramic layers of the 2-m deep deposit produced over 60 radiometric dates between c. 11 000 and 10 000. The food remains recovered there document consumption of very numerous palm and tree fruits and seeds, abundant, mostly-small fish, turtles, a small amount of shellfish and small game. No grass was identified among the plants remains. The material culture is dominated by red pigment and numerous flaked stone tools of both fine- and coarse-grained siliceous rocks. The occurrence of such tools at Polychrome rock art sites and the fact that nearly all the pigment of the same chemical composition is in the Palaeoindian layers suggest that Palaeoindians were responsible for many of the paintings. These early Amazonians made finely pressure-flaked triangular and/or stemmed two-faced points and limaces (unifacial endscapers) more comparable to Late Paleolithic Eurasian and Beringian cultures than to Clovis cultures. They also flaked heavy cutting tools from coarse, tough rocks. Such tools may have been for woodcutting or digging. On the Caqueta River in Colombia, test excavations at Late Paleoindian Pen ^a Roja, a ninth millennium preceramic site, found abundant palm fruits, phytoliths of a starchy root crop, Calathea allouia, curcurbits such as bottle gourd, but no faunal remains. Grinding tools were abundant, and flaked ones were rare, but the latter included bifacial pressure flaking. Phytoliths revealed the presence of forest but not grasses. Surface finds of lithics and rock paintings have been made both in interfluves and floodplains of the Brazilian Amazon and from stratified sites in central and southeastern Brazil. The radiocarbon dating of these sites is comparable to the Amazonian Palaeoindian dates: c. 11 000–8000 BP. Skeletons from those Brazilian sites closely resemble Palaeoindian and early Archaic skeletons documented in the Andes coast and western North America. In interfluvial Amazonia, the preceramic stage continues until the Formative, between c. 4000 and 2000 BP, in contrast to parts of the main floodplains, where the pottery stage has already begun by 7500. Compared with floodplain sites, sites relying on the

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Figure 2 Quartz crystal projectile point from Cachoeira do Chacorao, Tapajos River Brazil. Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi, Belem, Brazil.

dispersed resources of the interfluves have a wider range of plant and animal species in them. The Early Holocene interfluvial preceramic culture of Carajas is particularly well known. Wide area excavations at Gruta do Gaviao (see Figure 5) and other sites have revealed a very broad-spectrum economy of broad collecting, fishing, and hunting. There, small fruits of diverse trees and palms, numerous fishbones, shellfish, bones of diverse small game, and rare larger game were recovered. The artifact tradition was characterized by coarse flaking of white or colored crystalline quartz. Recently discovered Early Holocene preceramic sites in the interior of French Guiana also have abundant grinding stones, but food remains and flaked lithics have not been reported yet. The Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene preceramic cultures were not foreseen in traditional Palaeoanthropological theory about Amazonia, which assumed that Palaeoindians would be exclusively adapted by hunting big game in cool open habitats and thus would not colonize Amazonia, where game is comparably rare. Considered with the Late Pleistocene Patagonian small-game hunters and newly discovered southern Peruvian marine foragers, the new cultures of the Amazon are further evidence that early Palaeoindians developed the kinds of diverse regional cultures that theoreticians had only expected to see in the Early Holocene, when the big game went extinct and modern climates had formed. The diversity and regionalism of these new early cultures have inspired a rethinking of the role of environment and subsistence in the evolution of Palaeolithic cultures worldwide. Archaic shellfishing and fishing cultures with pottery, c. 7500–3000 BP

Figure 3 Monte Alegre Hills, Brazil. By Nigel Smith.

Another new group of Amazonian cultures are the Pottery Archaic cultures of the Amazon floodplains and estuary. These unexpected cultures, the earliest pottery

Figure 4 Cavern of the painted rock and rock painting details, near Monte Alegre, Brazil. By Anna Roosevelt.

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Figure 6 Incised and punctate Early–Mid Holocene Archaic Pottery, Taperinha, near Santarem, Brazil.

Figure 5 Caverna do Gaviao, Early Holocene Preceramic Site, Carajas Region, Brazil. By Marcos Magalhaes.

cultures yet known in the Western Hemisphere, appear to have been supported not by agriculture but by intensive harvesting of aquatic resources. Spatially, the sites are associated with river floodplain lakes and coastal estuaries. One possible interpretation, then, is that after most local regions of Amazonia had been colonized by Paleoindian cultures, some local populations solved the problem of increasingly constricted catchments by intensifying their exploitation of local resources. Nine sites of pottery-making fisherpeople, dated to the Early Holocene by more than 30 radiometric assays, some of them directly on the pottery, have been excavated along the flooplains of the Lower Amazon, Amazon mouth, and the Guianas’ coasts. The Taperinha culture was found at the mouth of the Tapajos River in the Lower Amazon (see Figure 6 and 7); the Mina culture was defined in the Salgado area just south of the Amazon mouth; and sites of the Alaka culture occur along the coast of Guyana north of the mouth of the Amazon. The sites of these cultures tend to be shell middens, several of them relatively large, from 5 to more than 20 ha in area and 5 to more than 10 tall. These fishing peoples subsisted mainly on intensive aquatic foraging focused on small fish and shellfish. Carbonized plant remains are much less common at these sites than in earlier and later sites. (Shellfish are one of the few faunal food sources with considerable carbohydrate content.) Pollen cores of the period from Prainha on the edge of the Amazon opposite Taperinha

show human disturbance of the forest but no evidence of cultivation in the form of cultivated-plant pollen. Despite the apparent lack of agriculture, people made substantial cultural achievements, including the firstknown Amazonian villages, structures with prepared floors, artificial mounds (of shell), and pottery. The pottery is predominantly tempered with sand and decorated only occasionally, with paint in some regions and incision and punctation in others. Stone tools are not common, but include flakes, boiling stones, and rocks used for grinding. Both bone and shell tools and ornaments also were made. Flexed burials have been found at several sites and so have turtle-feasting areas. One skeleton analyzed at Taperinha was a pre-teen whose excellent teeth showed no dental caries associated with starchy food nor hypoplasias from severe or repeated childhood diseases or famines. The existence of large, apparently sedentary settlements of very Early Holocene fishing peoples using pottery in Amazonia has encouraged revision of thinking about the role of subsistence in the evolution of human technology and of settlement pattern in the Americas. The new Amazonian Pottery Archaic cultures seem quite parallel to early pottery-making cultures along coasts, lakes, or rivers in the southeastern US, north central Africa, Southeast Asia, south coastal China, and Japan. Following the hypotheses of geographers and botanists, it seems likely that the relatively sedentary settlements of the intensive fisherpeople caused landscape changes encouraging weedy types of species that were the forebears of domesticated plants. But since the plant remains of only a few sites have been studied systematically, tracing the origins of Amazonian staple crops archaeologically is an important task for future work. In addition, osteological and chemical analyses

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Figure 7 Taperinha shellmound, near Santarem, Brazil. By Anna Roosevelt.

need to be carried out on skeletons from Mina and Alaka phase sites, for comparison with those from Taperinha and Monte Alegre. One or two microfossil specimens in Ecuadorian Oriente lake pollen cores have been claimed to represent staple maize cultivation at 6000 BP, but the core levels with the maize were not directly dated. Future research that directly dates a whole suite of botanicals from such sequences can help clarify this important economic transition. The total lack of maize-type isotopic chemistry in Amazonian human skeletons until after the time of Christ, however, seems clear evidence that maize, if present as early as 6000, could not have been a staple food. In experimental tests, when humans or animals have eaten appreciable quantities of maize, their bone chemistry always shows the isotopic effect of the maize. People whose bones show no such effect cannot, therefore, have been staple maize eaters.

Figure 8 Formative period pottery effigy pipes and stamp, decorated with Zoned Incised Hachure, from Sambaqui Ponta do Jauari, near Alenquer, Brazil, Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi, Belem.

Formative Horticultural Cultures, c. 4000–2000 BP

Formative pottery cultures, which have been found throughout Amazonia, are thought to have subsisted by horticulture, supplemented by foraging, especially on fish, turtles, other small game, and tree fruits. The particular role of different crops is not yet welldocumented and seems to have varied from site to site and region to region. Numerous maize pollen exines and phytoliths have been identified in Upper Amazon pollen core levels from about c. 3000 years old, but maize carbon patterns have not been detected in any Formative human skeletons yet analyzed in the Amazon. For example, two Aroxi-culture Formative skeletons dated between c. 3600 and 3200 BP (on a palm fruit, a human molar, and a human cranium) from Cavern of the Painted Rock at Monte Alegre lacked any maize signal, as did three skeletons from the Olaya site in the Ucayali, Peru, dating to about 2000 years ago. All these individuals had carbon signals typical of people who eat plants of a large

group that includes manioc, an important staple in the Amazon today. Other crops of similar carbon signature may also have been cultivated in the Formative: the minor ‘root’ crops, such as sweet potato and Xanthosoma, local seed crops, and shrub, palm, and tree fruits. In Formative sites of this apparent transition to reliance on cultivated plants for calories, shellfish are no longer common among excavated food remains, presumably because cultivated plants are a more productive and storable carbohydrate source. Also, palm fruits, so common in Palaeoindian sites, were rarer in Formative sites. Like pottery Archaic skeletons, the Formative skeletons from Monte Alegre have excellent teeth that have no caries or hypoplasias. However, Formative sites have been mapped and excavated in few regions. Only a handful have been screened and floated for food remains, and only a couple have had skeletal studies. Most seem of moderate size, but site like Faldas de Sangay in the Upper

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Amazon of Ecuador and the Castanheira site of the Ananatuba culture on Marajo Island at the mouth of the Amazon have artificial earth mounds, sometimes in structured groupings. In fact, many late prehistoric Polychrome horizon Marajoara mounds have Formative pottery in their basal layers, as does the late prehistoric Santarem site of the Incised and Punctate horizon. Some Marajo Island Formative sites, such as Castanheira, also have large adobe semitubular stoves common later on in Marajoara mounds. Such substantial built facilities are considered evidence for relative site permanence and complexity at this time. Researchers at Sangay have documented the existence of large, organized mound centers with both residential and ritual constructions and a rich material culture.

While the dating at Sangay is still preliminary, there seems a possiblity of a Formative age for some of the mounds. Many local pottery styles of the Amazonian Formative are linked to regional pottery traditions/horizons related to the Saladoid and Barrancoid horizons of northern South American and the Caribbean. Among these Amazonian Formative pottery styles, two supraregional groupings have been defined: the Zoned Incised Hachure horizon (see Figures 8 and 9) and the Incised Rim Horizon. Formative pottery, regardless of horizon, tends to be rather complex in form and elaborately decorated, especially by incision and modeling on rims and shoulders. Among the forms are griddles, keeled and flanged bowls and jars,

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Figure 10 A Marajoara Polychrome horizon burial urn, Guajara, Brazil. By Sal Catalano.

adorno-rim bowls with geometric and zoomorphic iconography, carved pottery paint stamps, tobacco effigy pipes, and other ritual objects possibly associated with rituals of shamanism. Although there is continuity from Palaeoindian cultures to indigenous cultures today, the Formative is the most important cultural influence for the late prehistoric complex cultures. Of all the archaeological stages in the Amazon, too, the Formative seems the one most similar to modern ethnographic cultures there. Some Formative settlements were more complex architecturally than modern ones, a difference could be elucidated when archaeologists excavate sites of the ethnohistoric period of ethnogenesis. Polychrome Mound-building Cultures, c. 2000–1000 BP

The Polychrome horizon links a series of diverse, long-lived cultures with elaborate and often largescale decorated pottery with geometric, zoomorphic, and human imagery (see Figure 10). All share a characteristic style of bold, complex polychrome painting, often combined with modeling, incision, and excision. Despite lacking evidence of statelike or imperial political organization, many Polychrome cultures had large spheres of interaction, extensive residential mound complexes, shamanic female figures, diverse ritual objects, drug-paraphernalia, feasting facilities, and numerous, large urn-burial grounds. The secondary urn burial cults could represent ancestor worship, and some authors think that the female images and some rich female burials may reflect matrilineal descent myths and female ritual and political roles. Although the horizon was assumed to represent an invasion from the Andes, radiocarbon dates are earlier in the eastern basin, not in the western, Andean

Amazon headwaters. It seems to begin about the time of Christ in the east, the late first millennium AD in the Middle Amazon, and not until the early second millennium AD in the west. Some Polychrome cultures in the Upper Amazon, Northwest Amazon, and Guianas survived the European invasion. Records of the conquest period mention not only polychrome pottery but also elaborate polychrome robes, and indigenous people in many parts of the basin today still make and use pottery, clothing, and ornaments in related styles. In some regions Polychrome horizon prehistoric sites are numerous and very large, indicating relative population density (see Figure 11). Most details about the lifeways come from the mouth of the Amazon. Subsistence economies based on agroforestry, plant collecting, fishing, and horticulture appear highly intensive. Bones of very small fish and nourishing seeds of common trees, shrubs, and herbs dominate residential facilities and garbage dumps, but valuable cultivated tree fruits, such as the palm, acai Euterpe oleraceae), and the bones of huge fishes (more than 1–2 m long) are common in feasting facilities. Only a few seeds of maize have been identified, and they come from a hard-kerneled, pod-pop race. Large skeletal collections in museums show a rather healthy, muscular population relying on a varied diet. In contrast to earlier periods, some skeletons’ bone chemistry is shifted toward maize and away from C-3 tropical forest plant groups. This change may reflect an increased deforestation and possible low-level maize consumption. The bone chemistry varies from person to person, possible evidence of socioeconomic differentiation. The plants and isotopes nonetheless indicate much better-preserved forest cover than in the current cattle pastures. People’s jaws show evidence of gum inflammation but not pyorrhea. Most crania have all their teeth, and, though teeth are worn, very few bear enamel hypoplasias from famine and childhood sickness. Skeletal infectious lesions also are mostly lacking. Many people are as tall as modern North Americans, and the only notable bone pathology is occasional cribra orbitalia, considered to indicate moderate intestinal parasite infections. Crania are narrow with projecting occiputs, a long-term Amazonian pattern unlike Andean morphologies. A few people’s crania have been purposely shaped in the Bishop’s Miter pattern, a possible symbol of rank. Incised and Punctate Horizon, c. AD 1000–1600

By about 1000 AD the influential incised and punctate cultural horizon known for its elaborate modeled representational pottery and fine-line polychrome painting had spread widely in Amazonia and beyond. In its greatest extent, the horizon reached from the

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Isthmus and Caribbean to the Guianas and Andes foothills, and throughout the Amazon basin. In Amazonia, styles of the horizon are found as far as the southern Amazon tributaries in Brazil, the southwestern Amazon tributaries in Bolivia, and eastern Ecuador. The earliest dates for the horizon, c. AD 500, are from the Middle Orinoco, but most regional styles have not been dated in detail. In some areas, such as the frontier zone between Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, forms of the earlier Polychrome horizon continue, and in others people seem to have developed independent local sytles, like Maraca culture, famous for cave urn cemeteries, and the Arua culture on eastern Marajo. In other areas, such as the Lower Tapajos, no sites of the period have been dated, suggesting abandonment after

the Formative. Along the Guianas coasts and Upper Amazon in Peru, cultures combine features of several horizons. Although archaeologists tend to assume that different cultural horizons coincided with different language families, early ethnohistory does not show that coincidence. Within particular horizons, different unrelated languages were spoken, and distinct horizons could speak languages of the same family. The best-known Amazonian style of this horizon is named after Santarem city in the Lower Amazon. This local culture began about AD 1200 and ended at about 1500, just before the European conquest, contrary to common assumption that it was a conquest-period phenomenon (these dates are treering-calibrated). As in other styles of the horizon, large and small female figures (see Figure 12) and

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Figure 12 Incised and Punctate Horizon pottery effigy Jar, Santarem, Brazil. Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi, Belem, Brazil.

adorno bowls, jars, and bottles comparable to earlier local cultures continued to be popular in pottery wares, but new images of raptors, predatory animals, and large terracotta images of males were present, accoutred with feather crowns, rattles, and shoulder bags. Both male and female figures are shown with alter ego animals on their shoulders, an apparent reference to shamanic spirit possession. Burials are rare at sites, perhaps because most were bowl cremations. Elaborate carved stone weapons, tools, figures, and fine lapidary works were produced in quantity. New ground-stone weapons, such as arrow-points, axes, and semicircular, may represent an increase in organized armed conflict, like that described by European chroniclers passing through the area in 1540–1541. Contact sources also suggest that greenstone ornamental carvings functioned as women’s ornaments and were widely traded. In many parts of Amazonia, late prehistoric people built major constructions, regardless of their cultural affiliation. At Santarem, people laid out roads, erected house mounds (see Figure 13), and dug wells. Early contact travelers describe large turtle corrals, too. In the lowlands of Bolivia and the Guianas, large mounds and causeways were built, and tens of thousands of hectares of floodplain were raised and ridged for cultivation, apparently. Such developments indicate the need to expand food production. In Ecuador large centers with numerous ritual, figurative, and residential mounds and elaborate pottery of the horizon date to this period. On Marajo, earlier mounds continued to be occupied and added to, and new, independent styles develop. In the Upper Xingu and central Brazil, people built very large round villages, some of which had defensive moats and raised connecting roads. In the

largest, there were multiple concentric rings of houses. In many such areas, full cultural sequences are not yet worked out, so regional cultural affiliation and sequence of subsistence and political organization remain obscure. In the better-known regions, human pressures on ecosystems seem to increase in late prehistory. Site sizes, site clustering, Indian black-soil deposition, and facility-construction rates increase in many areas. Skeletal evidence from the Ucayali Valley in Peru and pollen evidence from eastern Ecuador suggest a narrowing of daily subsistence to maize and small fish. Without detailed studies of human skeletons of the period, though, it is not known whether dental health and stature changed because of these pressures. At Santarem, small fish were common daily fare, but, skeletal isotopes, the role of staple plant foods at Santarem remains uncertain. By the time of the conquest there, tithes of maize beer had become a necessity for communal feasts there, according to early chronicles. In the prehistoric site, turtles, large fish, and valuable cultivated fruits were reserved for feasting or elite activites. Prehistoric vegetation isotopes near major sites in many parts of the Amazon: Marajo, Santarem, Manaus, and Pucallpa in the Ucayali, indicate appreciable thinning of forest during the period, presumably for fuel, building material, and agricultural clearing around the large population centers. Ethnohistoric Transition and Ethnogenesis, c. AD 1540–Present

The period following the European invasion saw rapid change in the nature of archaeological materials and sites as indigenous cultures and populations were eliminated or transformed by contact in the Brazilian mainstream and part of Atlantic coasts. Groups in the interfluvial and Andean foothill areas changed more slowly than mainstream ones. In early ethnohistoric times, many mainstream groups were brought into missions, where they were subect to acculturation, miscegenation, poor health, corporal punishment, and forced labor. Explicit policies aimed at eliminating indigenous males and mating the females with white male settlers were enforced, and indigenous languages eliminated. By the mid-nineteenth century, many mainstream populations in the Brazilian Amazon had become Portuguese-speaking peasants and smallholders, of whom DNA studies reveal a predominance of female indigenous and male Europen genetic patterns. In some areas, such as eastern Marajo, religious orders and settlers took the land for ranches, and local people became tenants and unpaid laborers. Military leaders of the conquest gained baronies over large properties, such as the municipality of Santarem. The interfluves and foothills became refuge areas where indigenous societies dispersed and survived.

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Ethnographic accounts of their lifeways depict smaller sites, more nomadic populations, less intensive food production, and more ephemeral material culture than was seen in the late prehistoric archaeological cultures. For example, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, small, ephemeral house compounds of Jivaroan or Quechua speakers are thinly dispersed over large nucleated archaeological mound complexes rich in pottery and stone artifacts. In the southern Amazon, ethnographic round villages have been reduced to single rings of houses or incomplete rings, and some no longer farm, make pottery, or make stone artifacts, and none build mounds. Thus, ethnographic life patterns once explained as adaptations to the environmental limitations of tropical forest seem more likely to be adaptations to life in postcolonial nations.

Despite the systematic changes in indigenous lifeways after the conquest, there is much continuity between ethnographic and prehistoric societies. Manioc and maize are still important plants, larger game and tree fruits still figure in feast food, and fish are often the main daily protein source. Personal and object ornamentation, although less elaborate today, includes elements clearly depicted in ancient designs. The complex, nonlinear history of human ecological adaptation in Amazonia has some unexpected implications for the future of conservation biology in Amazonia. In most areas, indigenous people live much more lightly on the land than their ancestors did. There is thus little ecological justification for removing them to ‘protect’ reserve land, and once vacated, park land is difficult to protect from settlers

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and extractive businesses. Rather, reserves need to help indigenous people stay on, both for the sake of their survival and for the continuation of their cultural knowledge, an indispensible source of expertise on the habitat for the future. See also: Americas, South: Early Cultures of the Central Andes; Early Villages; Historical Archaeology; Northern South America; Southern Cone.

Early Cultures of the Central Andes Danie`le Lavalle´e, CNRS – UMR 8096 ‘‘Arche´ologie des Ame´riques,’’ Nanterre Cedex, France ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Further Reading Bevan B and Roosevelt AC (2003) Geoarchaeological exploration of Guajara, a prehistoric Earth mound in Brazil. Geoarchaeology 18(3): 287–331. Erickson C (1980) Sistemas agricolas prehispanicos en los llanos de mojos. America Indigena 40(4): 731–755. Hartt CF (1885) Contribuicao para a Ethnologia do Valle do Amazonas. Archivos do Museu Nacional 6: 1–174. Heckenberger M and Neves E (1999) Village size and permanence in Amazonia: Two archaeological examples from Brazil. Latin American Antiquity 10(4): 535–576. Imazio da Silveira, M (1994) Estudo Sobre Estrategias de Subsistencia de Cacadores-Coletores Pre-historicos do Sitio Gruta do Gaviao, Carajas, (Para). Masters Thesis, Arqueologia, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil. Lathrap D (1970) The Upper Amazon. New York: Praeger Publishers. McEwan C, Barreto C and Neves E (eds.) (2001) Exploring the Amazon, explaining the unknown: Views from the past. In: The Unknown Amazon: Culture in Nature in Ancient Brazil, pp. 232–251. London: The British Museum Press. Magalhaes M (1994) Archaeology of Carajs: The Pre-historic Presence of Man in Amazonia. Rio de Janeiro: Companhia Valle do Rio Doce. Meggers BJ (1971) Amazonia: Man and Nature in a Counterfeit Paradise. Chicago: Aldine Publishers. Meggers BJ and Clifford E (1957) Bureau of American Archaeology 167: Archaeological Investigations at the Mouth of the Amazon. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. Nimuendaju C (2004) In Pursuit of a Past Amazon: Archaeological Researches in the Brazilian Guyana and in the Amazon Region (a posthumous work compiled and translated by Stig Ryden and Per Stenborg and edited by Per Stenborg) Ethnological Studies 45. Goteborg Ethnographic Museum. Roosevelt AC (1992) Early Pottery in the Amazon: Twenty Years of Scholarly Obscurity. In: Barnett WK and Hoopes J (eds.) The Emergence of Pottery: Technology and Innovation in Ancient Societies, pp. 115–131. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. Roosevelt AC (1999) The development of prehistoric complex societies in Amazonia, a tropical forest. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 9: 13–33. Roosevelt AC, Douglas E, and Brown L (2002) Migrations and Adaptations of the First Americans: Clovis and Pre-Clovis Viewed from South America. In: Jablonski N (ed.) Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences No. 27: The First Americans: The Pleistocene Colonization of the New World, pp. 159–236. Berkeley: University of California Press and the California Academy of Sciences. Schaan, DP (2004) The Camutins Chiefdon: Rise and Development of Social Complexity on Marajo Island, Brazilian Amazon. Ph.D. Dissertation, Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, PA.

Andes A mountain system of western South America extending more than 8045 km (5000 miles) along the Pacific coast from Venezuela to Tierra del Fuego. Ayacucho Basin A valley in southern Peru, north of the city of Ayacucho, with a series of caves – notably Pikimachay (Flea) Cave and Jayamachay (Pepper) Cave – which were the site of a complex of unifacial chipped tools (basalt and chert core tools, choppers, unifacial projectile points) and bone artifacts (horse, camel, giant sloth) dating between 15 000 BC and 11 000 BC. A human presence has been suggested in the Ayacucho Basin at that time, which would correspond with the ‘first wave’ of immigrants to the New World. bioindications Indications by organisms used for biological monitoring. geomorphology A branch of geology concerned with the form and development of the landscapes. highlands A mountainous or hilly section of a country. sedentism The process of settling down, that is, one of becoming more sedentary.

Introduction Under the term Central Andes, we include the ensemble of territories extending from southern Ecuador to northern Chile, including Bolivia and northwest Argentina, between approximately the second and twentieth southern latitude degrees. This ensemble is structured by the Andes Cordillera, the second largest mountain range in the world after the Himalayas, whose highest summits attain between 6000 and 7000 m. On each side of this formidable barrier extend two completely opposed worlds: to the west a semidesert piedmont and narrow coastal band that is gradually being transformed into desert by an increasingly dry climate from north to south, and to the east a warm and humid piedmont that is covered by tropical forest. Despite different but equally strong environmental constraints – from west to east, the desert, high altitudes, and warm and humid forest – this mosaic of territories has never been an obstacle to human occupations or movements. According to present knowledge, the earliest peopling of this region probably began around 15 000 years ago.

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Current and Past Environments A desert climate, which is surprising at these latitudes, occupies the whole Pacific border of the central Andes zone. This situation originates from a very particular climatic phenomenon: under the influence of trade winds that continually blow from the southeast, superficial ocean masses (warm) are pushed from the south to the north, but due to the Coriolis force, are deviated to the west at the level of the Peru–Ecuador border. This drifting of waters to the open sea is known as the Humboldt Current. Along the coast, this movement is compensated by the rising of deep waters with temperatures 5 to 8 lower than those usually measured on the surface at these latitudes. Upon contact with these cold waters, the air coming from the ocean cools down and its humidity is condensed. A sea of clouds is formed, covering the coastline with a very dense fog during much of the year. Rainfall is nonetheless very rare, occurring only episodically when the warm equatorial current, called El Nin˜o because its effects are generally felt around Christmas, approaches the continent and brings warm water to the coast. Torrential showers can then result. More generally, the absence of rainfall explains the aridity of the ground, though the humidity of the air allows the growth of numerous epiphytes on the sand, and in some sectors, the formation of ‘fog oases’, or lomas, which live on ‘thin air’. To the south, on the borders of Peru and Chile, this aridity increases and attains higher altitudes. Extending from the coast until nearly 3000 m, the Atacama Desert is the most arid in the world. Following the coastal desert plain and the dry mountainous foothills of the western piedmont of the Cordillera, the highlands correspond to the ensemble of territories located above 3000 m and constitute a geoclimatic unit in which the altitude plays an essential role. Between the more or less parallel, N–S oriented chains, vast, high plateaus extend at altitudes between 3800 and 4800 m, reaching their maximum amplitude in Peru and Bolivia. Called pa´ramo in Colombia and Ecuador, and altiplano or puna in Peru to the south, this undulating high steppe, cut by deep valleys and bordered by bald mountain peaks and ice-covered summits, constitutes the archetypal Andean landscape. The vegetation is sparse and not very variable: clusters of graminae grouped under the generic name Ichu, low, thorny bushes, and in the sheltered depressions a few thin coppices of quinuales (Polylepis). Below the puna level, a shrubby steppe carpets the slopes and basins located between 2300 and 3800 m altitude. In Peru, this is the ‘quechua’ level, which is well watered, wooded, and green. It

is the most habitable, and perhaps earliest occupied level of the Andean region. Finally, the climate of the eastern Andes piedmont, with its uneven relief, is permanently hot and humid. Between 1800 and 3000 m, this ‘cloud forest’ (selva nublada) level is carpeted with an almost impenetrable maze of bamboos, ferns, and vines, dominated by a few large trees. Rainfall occurs almost daily and is often violent. Due to their extension, multiple levels and variable relief, expositions and rainfall amounts, the central Andes present a great diversity of landscapes and climates, resulting in a mosaic of ecological contexts that are both very different and close to each other. But was this true in the past, when humans first began to occupy the region?

Climatic Changes during the Final Pleistocene The landscapes described above have changed relatively little since the beginning of the Holocene, that is, since 10 000 years ago. Paleoclimatic studies have nonetheless revealed a somewhat warmer and more humid period between approximately 8000 and 3000 BP, related to what is known as the Climatic Optimum. In contrast, major environmental modifications occurred at the end of the Pleistocene, between 14 000 and 10 000 BP. We will explore those that had a direct influence on the modes of human occupation. In the high Andes, before 14 000 BP, and even during the last great glacial advance of the Quaternary between 21 000 and 14 000 BP, the ice fields never formed an uninterrupted barrier. From Ecuador to northern Peru, where the altitude is largely compensated by the latitude, the ice-covered sectors remained separated from each other by basins or plateaus with more temperate climates. Only the central Andes of Peru, above 4000 m, were covered with ice. The Andes of Bolivia, northern Chile, and northwest Argentina remained free of ice except for a few isolated massifs above 4500 m. During this time, the high plateaus and intra-mountainous basins had open landscapes, which were usually treeless and, depending on the latitude and altitude, covered with prairies, savannas, deserts, or tundras. The eastern piedmont of the Cordillera was also covered with savannas, punctuated by a few wooded enclaves. Beginning in 14 000 BP, the glaciers began to retreat. After the last short cold phase of the Late Glacial period, around 11 000/10 000 BP, the general climatic warming gradually leads to our current climatic conditions. Accompanied by the re-establishment

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of a seasonal rhythm of precipitations, this warming led to a general increase in vegetal cover at high altitudes. In the northern Andes, pa´ramos developed, while the eastern piedmont was progressively invaded by tropical forest. In the Andes of Peru and Bolivia, the deglaciation cleared vast extensions of high plateaus where a climate less humid than that of the north favored the extension of vast carpets of puna and altiplano graminae. Further south, this rapid warming resulted in the extension of high altitude deserts, the Dry Puna and Salt Puna of Atacama and southern Bolivia. Along the Pacific coast, the sea level during the last glacial maximum was around 100 m lower than it is today and the coastal plain was probably 2 times wider. Beginning in 12 000 BP, the sea level began to rise and coastal zones were gradually submerged. We must remember, however, that while the melting of Andean glaciers was rapid (a few centuries or even a few dozen years), that of the inlandsis glaciers extended over several thousands of years. For this reason, while the Andean glaciers attained their current limit everywhere around 10 000 BP, the level of the Pacific was still 50 m lower than its current level. This slow rise in sea level continued over thousands of years until around 6000 BP when it exceeded the present level by 2–4 m. This ‘transgression’, though compensated in part by the slow elevation of continental masses liberated from the weight of glaciers (isostasy), resulted in the submersion of all human occupations older than 6000 BP along the low coasts. Though the climatic fluctuations that occurred from 14 000 to 10 000 BP led to only moderate landscape modifications, we can easily imagine that human occupations were largely dependent on them. At the time when the maximum extension of the glaciers stretched over vast cold and humid surfaces, the valleys and intra-mountainous basins of the lower altitudes remained sheltered and relatively dry. They thus constituted favorable zones for occupation by small hunter–gatherer groups, while the higher zones remained uninhabitable. During the phases of glacial regression, on the other hand, the increase in herbaceous vegetal cover at high altitudes contributed to the multiplication of faunal species, notably herbivores, cervidae, and camelidae. The vast open spaces of the high plateaus thus presented advantageous conditions for mobile hunter groups.

First Researches, First Milestones Our knowledge of Andean prehistory is still imperfect, and research specifically aimed at identifying the oldest traces of human occupation began only around 60 years ago. In 1946, the work of Junius Bird at

Huaca Prieta on the northern coast of Peru revealed the existence of a ‘preceramic’ period during which, around 2500 BC (Huaca Prieta was shortly after one of the first Andean sites dated by the C14 method, invented by Willard Libby in 1949), early horticulture was already practiced. The same year, Harry Tschopik excavated test pits in rock shelters in the central Andes of Peru, at 3340 m altitude. This work revealed knapped stone industries, and those found in the deepest levels were not found in association with ceramic remains. In 1961, Robert Bell excavated the site of El Inga in the highlands of Ecuador at 2550 m altitude. Finally, in 1958, Augusto Cardich published the results of his first excavations at Lauricocha in Peru (4100 m) and announced to a stupefied scientific community the oldest absolute date then known in the Andes: 9525  250 BP. This discovery clearly marks the beginning of prehistoric research in the Andean highlands.

The First Occupations (Before 10 000 BP) Given the environmental conditions described above, it is not surprising that the oldest traces of human presence, prior to the definitive retreat of the glaciers, were detected in moderate altitude regions that were never directly affected by glaciations. These were either regions where the glaciers were small, such as on the Colombia plateaus, or valleys and intra-mountainous basins not attained by the extremities of the glaciers, all located at an altitude below 3000 m. The first traces date to around 15 000 BP: Pikimachay Cave (2850 m), in the Ayacucho basin of Peru, yielded an occupation sequence that appears to begin around 14 000 BP with the Ayacucho phase (14 150  180 BP). We must note, however, that Richard MacNeish wanted to push the occupation nearly 10 000 years back. According to him, during a first Paccaicasa phase (25 000–15 000 BP), crude stone tools (choppers and large flakes) associated with Quaternary fossil fauna (toothless Scelidotherium and Megatherium, horse Equus Amerhippus, fossil cervidae and a large carnivore) indicate the passage of small bands of hunters that would have tracked down this large prey in their den before butchering and consuming them. However, this phase remains very hypothetical for several reasons. First, the C14 dates were obtained, not from charcoal (the level contained no evidence for the use of fire), but from the bone of a Scelidotherium, a large toothless animal that inhabited the cave at the time, as is proved by the presence of its excrements. This evidence shows that the carcasses could have been present there without necessarily being brought in by humans, and perhaps even long before the passage of humans. Second, the ‘tools’ attributed to this phase (with the exception

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of four objects that could have fallen from the upper levels) consist of more or less amorphous, chipped fragments of volcanic tuff, which is the same material in which the cave is hollowed out and which is not apt for stone knapping. According to numerous specialists, these unlikely tools are probably no more than simple flakes detached from the cave wall. During the following Ayacucho phase (14 150  180 BP), on the other hand, a more abundant and clearly identifiable lithic industry – more than 200 tools, including choppers, crude bifacial pieces, and large flakes, sometimes retouched (but no projectile points) – made on exogenous (thus imported) materials indicates that the site was occupied by hunters whose prey still included not only a few Pleistocene species (megatheridae, horse and the fossil camelidae, Palaeolama), but also, already, smaller, modern species (camelidae and rodents). Meanwhile, in this phase, as in the precedent, no traces of fire were discovered. One other site that must be noted is Guitarrero Cave, also in the Peruvian Andes, at 2580 m, in the Callejon de Huaylas. At this site, Thomas Lynch established one of the longest sequences in Peruvian prehistory. However, the oldest date obtained for the lower occupation level – complex I, 12 560  360 BP – is still strongly debated since the two other dates obtained for the same complex do not exceed 9500 BP. Moreover, this deep level yielded only modern fauna, to the exclusion of all Pleistocene megafauna species. For these reasons, we do not retain this site among those occupied 10 000 years ago. At Pikimachay Cave, on the other hand, Pleistocene megafauna, which begins to disappear at 11 000 BP and whose extinction is complete in the Andes at 9000 BP, is well represented. At present, this site is thus the only one that could attest to a peopling of the Andean mountains during the Final Pleistocene, as well as the utilization of a tool industry lacking projectile points. However, both of these propositions are strongly contested by many specialists of prehistory in the Americas. This extreme rarity of ancient sites in the central Andes (as in the northern Andes of Colombia and Ecuador), despite a recent multiplication of research projects, thus tends to indicate that the Cordillera was peopled relatively late and that the population density remained low for a long time. This is also true on the Pacific coastal plain where, as we will see later, the first traces of occupation also do not exceed 10 000 years. It is still surprising that if humans were indeed present in Brazil more than 20 000 years ago, they did not reach the Andean regions until 10 000 years later. Specialists have not yet found a satisfactory explanation for this, except perhaps – and this remains hypothetical – that movements along the low zones of the Atlantic coastal

plain, after an obligatory passage by the Panama isthmus, would have presented fewer natural obstacles than a passage along the Andean Cordillera or by a maritime route along the coast. Another possibility is that over thousands of years, the sporadic passage of probably very small human groups left only scarce traces in the Andes, which are today barely perceptible. The lifeways of this period remain difficult to characterize. Current evidence indicates the presence of small, very mobile groups with relatively crude tools reflecting the use of simple techniques. The use of projectile points, and thus of projected arms, seems to have been unknown (or perhaps forgotten?), unless only clubs or wooden spears with fire hardened points, or bone points, were used. It is also probable, though we have no preserved evidence, that humans knew very early on how to successfully exploit a natural environment rich in diverse resources. Depending on the season, they could have complemented hunted resources with trapped ones, as well as with the collection of edible berries, seeds, and tubers where they could be found. Finally, no human skeleton or skeletal part older than 11 000–10 000 BP has been discovered in the Andean zone (as is also true in the rest of Latin America), and the physical appearance of these first occupants thus remains unknown.

Early Archaic: The Time of Specialized Hunters (10 000–8000 BP) The rapid climatic warming, accentuated from 10 000 BP on, marks the beginning of a new phase of Andean prehistory, which is much richer in evidence and presents clearer milestones than the preceding one. It is possible that the sudden proliferation of sites discovered indeed reflects a true increase in population density. Occupation of the Highlands

The pa´ramos of Ecuador Only a few ancient occupations have been discovered in the Ecuadorian Andes. Only three sites at middle altitudes were occupied between approximately 10 000 and 8000 BP: Cubila´n (between 10 300  170 and 9100  120 BP), Chobshi (between 10 010  430 (?) and 8430  200 BP) and El Inga (around 9000 BP?). At Cubila´n (3100 m), Mathilde Temme revealed the remains of an open-air camp and a knapping workshop, both containing high-quality lithic tools made on jasper (flake tools and stemmed or foliate bifacial points), but lacking fauna. Chobshi Cave (2400 m), which was probably occupied a little later, was excavated

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by Thomas Lynch. It yielded a similar lithic assemblage in association with cervidae (Odocoileus virginianus) and rodent remains. The site of El Inga, a vast obsidian knapping workshop, is more problematic. Its stratigraphy is unclear and, worse, it was excavated in the early 1960s by artificial levels. More than 80 000 knapped lithic objects were collected there, including beautiful bifacial points whose so-called Fishtail form incited its discoverer, Robert Bell, to attribute an age of 9000 years or more to the site, despite C14 dates all later than 8000 BP. This ancient date is now highly contested. The basins and punas of Peru The most significant increase in population density seems to have occurred in the Peruvian Andes at the beginning of the postglacial period. On the high plateaus newly liberated from their ice, the extension of the great grassland steppes favored the growth of ungulate populations. In this context, starting at approximately 9000 BP, the caves and rock shelters located between 4000 and 4500 m on the puna of Junı´n in central Peru – Lauricocha (4100 m), Pachamachay (4250 m), Telarmachay (4420 m), Panaulauca and Uchumachay (4050 m) – began to be intensively utilized by hunters of cervidae (O. virginianus and Hippocamelus antisensis) and camelidae (Lama vicugna and Lama guanicoe). These groups gradually became specialized hunters of the latter (vicun˜as and guanacos), as is demonstrated by the studies of Jane Wheeler at Telarmachay. At the same time, between 10 000 and 8000 BP, human occupation also increased in the moderate altitude (2500–3000 m) basins and valleys, though in this context environmental modifications played a less significant role than on the high plateau. As already discussed, the only site probably occupied since the preceding period (Pikimachay Cave, Ayacucho phase) is located in the Ayacucho basin of southern Peru. During the phases Puente (11 000–9000 BP) and Jaywa (9000–7800 BP), the same location seems to have been more intensively populated and occupations in caves and rock shelters continued and multiplied (Pikimachay, Puente, and Jaywamachay). According to MacNeish, these occupations were seasonal and corresponded to, within the different ‘microenvironments’ defined, the presence of ‘microbands’ associated with a season and subsistence strategy favoring, depending on the case and the time, hunting, trapping, or vegetal resource collection. In the large valley of Santa, or Callejon de Huaylas, in northern Peru, Guitarrero Cave (cited above) was more certainly occupied by camelidae and cervidae hunters at around 9000 BP (Complexes II and IV) than during the preceding period, though an older date of 12 560  360 BP has been advanced by

Lynch. Its occupants used a classic tool kit for the period, including foliate and lozenge-shaped points, end scrapers and side scrapers on flakes, and bone tools. The originality of Guitarrero is that the remains of cultivated chili peppers (Capsicum chinense) have been identified as early as 9000/8000 BP (Complex IId, 8800–8200 BP), along with two species of beans (Phasaeolus lunatus then, a little later, Phasaeolus vulgaris), making these the oldest known cultivated species in the Andean zone. However, as we will see later, these dates have recently been questioned. Guitarrero is also one of the rare Andean sites where it was possible to collect certain elements that are usually absent in the highland sites: fragments of cords and ties made from diverse vegetal materials, a scraper still enveloped in a skin and several intensively used fire drills. Another site, this one in the open-air, signaled by the same author in the same region at Quishqui Puncu, yielded more uncertain remains of an occupation between 10 500 and 8500 BP. These dates must be considered with caution, however, due to the disturbed nature of the deposits, in which fragments of wood and glass were found. Dry Punas and Salt Punas in the central-south Andes At the other extremity of the central Andean zone, the cold and arid highlands of the Andes in the extreme south of Peru, Bolivia, and northern Chile were little affected by the final glacial maximum, though climatic conditions dryer than those in the north led to the formation of high altitude deserts. In this context, no trace of human occupation dating to the end of the Pleistocene has yet been found. Human occupation seems to have begun little before 10 000 BP, and was apparently associated with two distinct adaptive strategies in rather different environments: from the north to the south in the Dry Puna of the Peruvian–Chilean borders, and in the Salt Puna of Atacama in Chile, scattered with large salares. The natural refuges of the latter, more southern zone – Tuina 1 (10 820  630 BP), Pichasca (9890 BP), San Lorenzo (10 400  130 BP), and Chulqui (9590 BP) in Chile – seem to have been occupied a little earlier than the former – Toquepala (9580  160 BP) and Caru´ (8190  130 BP) in southern Peru, Las Cuevas (9540 BP), Tojo-Tojones (c. 9500 BP), and Patapatane (8160 BP) in Chile. In both cases the occupation is attributed to vicun˜a (Lama vicugna), guanaco (L. guanicoe), and especially rodent (Lagidum viscacia) hunters who completed their meat diet with the intensive collection of wild plants. Also in both cases, the human groups seem to have practiced some sort of seasonal ‘transhumance’ between the different ecological niches of the western slope of

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the Cordillera. The two cases are differentiated by their choice of camp locations, a little lower in the Dry Puna (2500/3000 m) than in the Salt Puna (3000/4000 m), and by the types of bifacial points used, most small and triangular. In both cases, these points are associated with a highly comparable flake tool kit that is classic for the period (scrapers, knives, denticulates, etc.) and numerous bone tools. Not far away, on the high plateaus of northwest Argentina, the first known human occupations are similar and contemporary. At the natural refuges of Inca Cueva and Huachichocana, located between 3500 and 3800 m and occupied from 9600/9000 BP, the cultural inventory is nonetheless richer. In the deepest level (9230  70 BP) of shelter no. 4 of the Quebrada Inca Cueva, Carlos Aschero found, in association with a lithic industry similar to that of Tuina in Chile, numerous rodent bones and, especially, the remains of diverse constructions, such as postholes, hearths, and pits filled with vegetal remains. In Huachichocana Cave, where occupation began at 9620  130 BP, Alicia Fernandez-Distel also notes, in association with a banal lithic industry for the period (foliate and triangular bifacial points, flake tools), numerous remains of wood and basketry objects, along with vegetal remains. Among the latter are beans and chili peppers (Capsicum sp.), which botanists believe were cultivated at the beginning of the occupation (level E3). These would thus be among the oldest domesticated vegetal species in the Andean zone, along with those found at Guitarrero Cave in Peru at around the same time. Finally, the site of Asana, located in southern Peru at 3430 m, excavated by Mark Aldenderfer, is exceptional for several reasons. First, because it is an open-air camp, while all the other sites we have described, with the exception of Cubila´n and El Inga in Ecuador, and perhaps Quishqui Puncu in Peru, are located in natural refuges (caves or rock shelters). Second, because its occupation sequence covers nearly six thousand years (9820  150 to 4000 BP) and is thus currently the most complete known for this southern mountainous part of Peru. Finally, because excavations over large surfaces revealed the remains of habitation structures (circular structures enclosing hearths) and differentiated activity zones. Activities and lifeways during the Early Archaic The human occupations during this period are thus much more numerous than in the preceding one (and we have only cited the most representative and welldocumented ones) and certain common traits that characterize the Central Andean Hunting Tradition can be distinguished:

1. Almost all the sites yielded evidence for an intensive exploitation of animal resources of a variable nature depending on the region: cervidae and numerous rodents in the north; cervidae, and especially camelidae in the central Andes; cervidae and rodents again in the south. The majority of the activities identified in the habitats is related to the treatment and utilization of animal materials (butchery, culinary activities, skin working, fabrication of hunting instruments and appropriate tools). Stone scrapers are among the most frequent tools, along with bone spatulas and scrapers, often with traces of red ochre, used to scrape and soften skins. 2. Almost all the sites, but especially those located in the basins and middle altitude valleys, also show evidence for the exploitation of various vegetal species for technical and alimentary purposes. This is shown by the frequent presence of grinding instruments in the rock shelter sites, as well as rare, but well-attested remains of vegetal material productions, such as cords, weaving and basketry, at Guitarrero (Peru), Inca Cueva 4, and Huachichocana (Argentina). 3. Most of the habitat structures (when they could be observed) show evidence for long, repeated occupations: low stone walls or aligned posts, diverse types of hearths and pits were all constructed and reshaped many times. 4. The data collected suggest a seasonal exploitation of the territory, whether through the large herbivore hunting, small animal trapping, or the collection of vegetal resources. Moreover, the practice of an annual cycle of nomadic movements seems to be well attested, while its limited amplitude indicates an objective to optimally exploit the diverse resources accessible within a range of some dozen kilometers. 5. Human burials were found in a few natural refuges. They are the oldest known in the Cordillera, though they do not exceed approximately ten thousand years. Their presence demonstrates that the dead were respected and that their burial was sometimes accompanied by an elaborate ritual ceremony. The burials are most often single, as at Lauricocha and Telarmachay. The bodies were deposited in extended or flexed position in pits located in the back of the rock shelters and accompanied by body ornaments or tools. At Telarmachay, a woman around 20 years old was buried in this way with an assemblage of skin working tools (stone end and side scrapers, bone smoothers and awls still covered with red ochre). Nearby, the skeleton of a child a few months old was halfcovered with a necklace of marine shell beads (showing evidence for long distance exchanges already during this period) and a series of polished bone pendants. At Lauricocha, a 12-year-old child

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was buried with several stone and bone tools and turquoise beads. Another child was covered with a brilliant iron ore powder. Most of the burials also contain traces of red ochre, which was sprinkled over the bodies either for ritual purposes that are unknown to us, or more mundanely, to prevent them from rotting. Our knowledge of the human type of this period is still poor. The adult individuals were generally dolichocephalous with a high face. They seem to have been very muscular but rarely more than 1.6 m tall. 6. Starting at 10 000 BP, the lithic industries become more elaborate and diverse than before, including bifacial armatures of various forms: foliate or pentagonal (especially in the central Andes); triangular (southern Andes), stemmed, or exceptionally, Fishtail points (Ecuadorian Andes). Foliate points of the Ayampitin type are the most largely and abundantly represented. They were identified as early as 1940 in the eponymous site of the eastern Argentinean piedmont, where they are nonetheless more recent. This diversity of armature forms suggests the existence of differentiated traditions, or perhaps social units, as much as it indicates different adaptations to the available materials and hunted prey. The Fishtail points found at El Inga are particularly problematic. These points are more or less oval with a large stem that indeed resembles a fish tail. On one of their two faces, most have a small, thin, vertical and proximal removal scar, or ‘fluting’. While they are characteristic of numerous ancient sites in the extreme south of Chile and Argentina, dated to between 11 000 and 10 500 BP, in the central Andes they have been found only at El Inga, and, in very small numbers in the Paijan region on the northern coast of Peru (cf. infra). Therefore, along with their unquestionable technical originality, these points present a distribution that is difficult to explain at the scale of the subcontinent. Many specialists believe they derive directly from the Clovis points of North America, which characterize the Llano Paleoindian tradition between 12 000 and 10 000 BP. For the most conservative specialists, they would thus provide direct evidence for the arrival, from the Great Plains of North America, of the first hunters that peopled South America approximately 11 000 years ago. Others take a more nuanced stance, seeing only the diffusion, still from North America, of a technical trait adopted by populations already present in South America. Still others, though very few, believe they reflect a sort of ‘synthetic product’ originating in South America: to the proximal fluting technique arriving from North America would be added the basal narrowing already

known in the extreme south where bifacial shaping and projectile points would have been invented independently, the combination resulting in the famous Fishtail points. It is not difficult to guess that the adherents of the first explanation are the same as those who continue to deny the appearance of humans in South America earlier than 11 000 BP, while the others have since accepted without restriction the idea of a more ancient peopling (see New World, Peopling of). Finally, for this period we must note the few isolated finds of apparently cultivated vegetal species. Though this evidence is still fragile, the importance of these remains will become exceptional if their authenticity is confirmed and if other discoveries are made. The cultivated chili peppers at Guitarrero at 8800 BP, along with the beans and chili peppers at Huachichocana at the same time, would attest to the very early practice of a primitive horticulture in a few favorable biotopes, while in all other zones a predation economy dominated. Due to the disturbed stratigraphies of both of these sites, however, we cannot rule out the hypothesis that these remains are intrusive. Moreover, several of the dates announced for these vegetal remains, which were obtained indirectly (not on the vegetal remains themselves, but on elements in their context thought to be associated), have recently been revised through the AMS technique. According to Lawrence Kaplan, the cultivated beans identified by him at Guitarrero have a maximum age of 5000/4500 BP. Occupation of the Coastal Plain and Pacific Littoral

Though we are beginning to have a good knowledge of the hunter-gatherer occupations in the mountainous regions where natural refuges are numerous, finding and reconstructing their occupation modes is more difficult in open zones, such as the Pacific coastal plain. This task is highly complicated by a paleoclimatic element: the slow postglacial rising of the sea level probably submerged many occupations near the shore, and only those located more inland or at sufficiently elevated points along the coast would have been preserved. In addition, this sea level rising affected more or less extended surfaces according to the width of the continental shelf. The sectors most submerged were those where the shelf extends the furthest offshore and where the coastal plain is the lowest, as on the northern coast of Peru in the central Andes. In the extreme south of Ecuador, only one site dated to around 10 000 BP is currently known, but it has furnished very rich information. On the semidesert peninsula of Santa Elena, Karen Stothert studied the remains of the stratified camp of Las Vegas OGSE-80,

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today located 4 km from the shore but probably less in the past. According to Stothert, during the Early Las Vegas phase (10 000–8000 BP), in an environment close to the modern one – savannas inland and mangrove swamps on the coast – a small group of 25–50 individuals lived by fishing and mollusk collection, especially the mangrove species Anadara tuberculosa, complemented by terrestrial hunting (cervidae, fox, and small fauna) and the collection of wild vegetal species for alimentary (Opuntia cactus, prosopis sp., algarrobo berries) and technical (rush, wood) purposes. Because all these resources were accessible in close proximity during the whole year, Stothert proposed that this was a permanent occupation. The groups occupied circular huts composed of a wooden frame and rush covering. In contrast to what we observe in the sites of the Cordillera occupied at the same time (El Inga, Cubila´n), the material culture developed by the inhabitants of Las Vegas 80 is surprisingly poor. The barely specialized technical equipment includes lithic flakes with little or no retouch, used cobbles (hammerstones and grinding stones) and a few bone and shell instruments, but no bifacial tools or projectile points. Complex fishing tools are also absent, unless the more elaborate objects made from perishable materials – baskets, mats, nets, wooden tools – were not preserved, as is the case in the highland sites, except for Guitarrero. In the extreme north of Peru, in a similar environment at the foot of the Amotape hills, James Richardson revealed the tenuous remains of surface occupations that correspond to a similar lifeway combining terrestrial hunting and the collection of mangrove mollusks. However, the dates obtained (between 11 200  115 and 8125  80 BP, on shell) must be confirmed by further research. Further south, in the Cupisnique region, Claude Chauchat discovered and conducted a detailed study of a cultural and industrial complex contemporary with, but totally different from, the Paija´nian complex, dated to between 10 720 and 7490 BP. Dozens of open-air occupations, including lithic raw material quarries, knapping workshops, and camps, were identified on the interior of the coastal desert plain, during a period somewhat less arid than today. According to Chauchat, small groups of very mobile hunter-gatherers moved between the first foothills of the Andes and the coastline, currently around 15 km away but probably 30 at the time (the sea level was then 50 m lower than today). These human groups lived by fishing, as well as hunting, trapping, and collecting small desert species (rodents and lizards). Their lifeways were similar to those observed in the north but differed in that they possessed a very elaborate lithic industry, including very well made flake

tools and bifacial tools. Among these, Paija´n points – long, narrow-stemmed pieces with a very sharp distal extremity – were unique in America. Their high wounding capacity, along with their fragility, suggests that they could have been used for fishing with a harpoon rather than for hunting. According to Chauchat, this type of point could be the result of a local adaptation of Fishtail points, which are well represented in the southern part of the continent (the Fell points of Patagonia) but until then present in the central Andes only at El Inga (Ecuador). However, in the Paija´n workshop of Quebrada Santa Maria, located rather far from the coast at the foot of the western Cordillera, Jesus Bricen˜o discovered several fragments of Paija´n-type points associated with Fishtail points. For Bricen˜o and Chauchat, this demonstrates that Paija´n points represent a local adaptation of Fishtail points to a new form of resource exploitation (coastal fishing replaced terrestrial hunting), but the evidence is still not fully convincing. The Paijanian cultural complex seems to have extended over a large part of the Peruvian coastal desert to the south, and even until 2000 m altitude on the western piedmont. As at Cupisnique, most of the occupations detected were open-air sites (El Volca´n in the Huarmey Valley, lomas de Anco´n on the central coast, Pozo Santo near Ica). Only one stratified rock shelter site was recognized by Paul Ossa at Quirihuac. Finally, at Paija´n, Chauchat also discovered a human burial dated to 10 200  180 BP, which is one of the oldest human remains known in South America. If we continue to descend along the Pacific coast, we arrive in southern Peru where diverse coastal occupations of a different type, dating from around 10 000 BP, were recently studied. From north to south, these are the sites of Quebrada Jaguay, Ring Site (or El Anillo), and Quebrada de los Burros. All three of these sites are fisher-gatherer camps located a few kilometers from the shore. At Quebrada Jaguay, detected in 1970 by Fre´de´ric Engel, then re-excavated and studied by Daniel Sandweiss starting in 1996, the first occupation dates to between 11 200 and 10 500 BP and continues until 8000 BP. During the entire sequence, the economy seems to have been based on the exploitation of marine resources consisting mainly of mollusks, especially the beach species Mesodesma donacium (wedge clam), as well as on fishing. Sandweiss notes the existence of ‘domestic’ structures such as postholes and hearths, which would be evidence for the construction of a ‘house’. The lithic material includes abundant knapping waste products but few shaped pieces and no bifacial projectile points. Ring Site was excavated from 1983 to 1985 by James Richardson and Daniel Sandweiss. Its deep,

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stratified shell midden with a circular form (hence its name) indicates an occupation by a small community that exploited the same resources during the same period. The deepest levels, however, did not yield lithic tool remains or fishing instruments. A date of 10 575  105 BP, obtained (on shell) for the earliest level, is questioned by the excavators themselves. The other dates obtained do not exceed 9000/8000 BP. Further south, not far from the Chilean border, the camp of Quebrada de los Burros has been excavated since 1996 under the direction of Danie`le Lavalle´e. It was occupied from 9500 BP in a similar economic context where fishing was the principal alimentary resource, associated with the collection of mollusks (mainly M. donacium and Concholepas concholepas). The domestic structures are numerous and varied, including constructed terraces, windbreaks, and hearths. The lithic industry is also abundant, providing evidence in particular for the fabrication of bifacial weapons. Specialized fishing instruments are also present from the beginning, including shell and bone barbs, weights of composite fishhooks or lines, and harpoon foreshafts. Finally, in northern Chile, several occupations of the same type and age are known. From north to south, Acha 2 (8900  150 BP), Tiliviche-1b (9760 BP), and La Chimba (9680  160 BP) attest to a well-established occupation by fisher-gatherers. The data provided by all of these more or less contemporary coastal camps are difficult to synthesize because the scope of the excavations conducted is very unequal. All demonstrate the predominance of an economy based on marine resources, but each site also yielded a small quantity of terrestrial faunal remains (mammals and birds), showing that terrestrial hunting was a secondary activity. For most of the sites, a seasonal occupation during the austral summer is suggested, leading to the hypothesis that the groups migrated to the highlands during the winter months. Meanwhile, no proof for such a long distance ‘transhumance’ has yet been found. Moreover, it seems to be well demonstrated that the occupation of the Pacific coast probably occurred as early as that of the central Andean inland territory. If we consider the perfect mastery of the maritime environment demonstrated in the earliest stages of all the sites cited here, along with the presence of very specialized technical equipment and the probable use of boats, suggested by the nature and size of some of the pelagic fish captured, the hypothesis of an arrival of human groups by a maritime route, independent of the terrestrial paths, cannot be ruled out, though further research is indispensable to confirm this hypothesis.

Middle Archaic: The Beginnings of a Production Economy (8000–5000 BP) Following the period between 10 000 and 8000 BP, during which a rich diversity of elaborate strategies were implemented by human groups in order to adapt and exploit environments that were also very diverse, the cultural development of the central Andean zone began to follow a new rhythm at 8000 BP. New lifeways were gradually developed, though those based on hunting and gathering did not immediately disappear. The innovations, which nonetheless concerned only a few regions, were of two types: a progressive generalization of horticulture and the appearance of animal husbandry. In southern Ecuador, the site of Las Vegas was most densely occupied between 8000 and 6500 BP (Late Las Vegas phase). Marine resources played a less important role than before (50%) while the collection of vegetal species intensified. Some, such as Cucurbitaceae and perhaps a primitive maize, began to be cultivated. The space covered by habitations and domestic waste augmented, indicating an increase in population size. The large dumping areas also served as cemeteries: one of them contained the primary or secondary burials of at least 192 individuals, making it the largest ensemble of skeletons known in the central Andes during this period. The most famous one, a double sepulture of a man and woman buried together and apparently embracing, has become famous as The Lovers of Sumpa. On the Peruvian coast, the fisher-gatherer camps already occupied for nearly 2000 years show a significant population increase from 7000 BP. This is demonstrated at Ring Site and Quebrada de los Burros by an enlargement of domestic areas and increased in deposit densities. But it is on the coast of Chile that the occupation density is greatest (it is also here that the most research has been conducted). The numerous shellfish collector camps of the Camarones Complex (7800–5600 BP), which extend along the southern littoral of Arica – Quiani, Chinchorro, Camarones 14, Pisagua, and Punta Pichalo, among the most important – were occupied by a population of fishers with sophisticated fishing equipment, notably fishhooks shaped from the valves of the large mussel Choromytilus chorus. This is the origin of the name Shell Fishhook Culture first given to this complex by Junius Bird. A little later, the occupants of Tiliviche and Aragon, though located nearly 40 km from the shore, lived mainly on marine resources and used similar equipment. The Camarones Complex, and the succeeding Quiani Complex (5600–3200 BP), in which fishhooks

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made from cactus thorns replaced those made from shell, constitute the successive phases of the Chinchorro Tradition. This tradition, present from the Antofagasta latitude in Chile to the Ilo in Peru, is defined by its mortuary practices. Following extremely complex processes, the bodies were eviscerated, dried, and then stiffened with wood elements and ligatures. They were then covered with a coating of painted clay, which depending on the period was first black and then red. A ‘black mummy’, recently dated to 7800 BP, confirms that the Chinchorro mummies, more than 2000 years older than the first known Egyptian mummies, are the oldest in the world. In the highlands, the natural refuges of the Cordillera continue to be occupied during this time by bands of seminomad hunter-gatherers whose lifeways remain astonishingly similar to those of the preceding period. Meanwhile, it is during the same period that horticultural practices were developed and generalized, though they perhaps first appeared as early as the Early Archaic in northern Peru (Guitarrero) and northwest Argentina (Huachichocana). The stratigraphic contexts of these sites are, however, questionable (cf. supra). Also at Guitarrero, more reliable evidence of squash (Cucurbita sp.) and gourd (Lagenaria sp.) cultivation appears at around 7000 to 6000 BP, as well as in the Ayacucho basin (Piki phase, 7700– 6300 BP). Meanwhile, the role of these plants was never as significant as that of maize, which, though it was not the first cultivated, rapidly became of singular importance. Later, all of the ‘Andean high civilizations’, which first appeared during the second millennium BC, would be based on the intensive cultivation of this plant. A primitive domestic maize was again observed at Guitarrero between 7600 and 4000 BP (Complex III) and, less certainly, at Ayacucho between 6500 and 5000 BP (Chihua phase). In both of these regions, these elements provide evidence for the manipulation of several vegetal species and already elaborate horticultural practices, if not true agriculture. Meanwhile, in all regions, the majority of alimentary resources continued to be obtained through hunting, trapping, and the collection of wild edible plants, still in a nonsedentary context. The history of maize is complex and its origin is still far from clear. Though there is near consensus that this plant originated in Mexico, its diffusion and domestication are still poorly understood. For certain researchers, the diffusion of an already-domesticated maize would have occurred very early starting from Mexico. For others, it was a still wild maize that attained the central Andean zone, where it would have been independently domesticated, one or more

times, in the central and southern Andean zones. In any case, all of the available data suggest that in the central Andean zone the culture of three essential plants – beans, squash, and maize – known as the ‘American trilogy’, would have begun earlier in the Cordillera than on the coast. The history of the species whose mountainous origin is certain – potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) and other exclusively Andean tubers such as oca (Oxalis tuberosa), olluco (Ullucus tuberosus), and mashua (Tropaeolum tuberosum), as well as maca (Lepidium meyenii) and quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) – is still poorly known. The distinction between wild and cultivated species is sometimes difficult and palynological analyses are still lacking. Paradoxically, the only concrete evidence of cultivated potatoes comes from the coast and is no older than 4000 BP (at Huynuma in the Casma Valley of Peru), indicating a more ancient domestication than in the highlands. Unlike the vegetal species, the Andean animal species suitable for domestication were very rare: two camelidae, vicun˜a (Lama vicugna) and guanaco (L. guanicoe), and guinea pig (Cavia sp.). Of these three species, only the first two would later play a significant role in the cultural development of the central Andes. We have seen that as early as 8000 BP on the punas of central Peru, the hunting of camelidae existed as a result of the behavior of these animals themselves: vicun˜as and guanacos live in small family groups that, in contrast to cervidae, circulate within a stable, defined territory from 1 year to the next. For the hunters, they were thus a certain and regular source of food. A growing familiarity between the hunters and these animals is almost certainly at the origin of the control that seems to have been exercised over wild herds from 6500 BP. At Telarmachay, where this in situ process of camelidae domestication was first revealed, a first domestic species, the alpaca (Lama pacos), was present between 6000 and 5500 BP, and a second, the lama (Lama glama) between 5500 and 3800 BP. Meanwhile, it is very likely, though the archaeological evidence is still lacking, that similar experiments leading to the same results occurred at different locations in the highlands, notably on the Bolivian altiplano. In the southern Andes, a few elements suggest that an independent, but somewhat later, zone of camelidae domestication could have existed in Chile on the border of the Atacama desert basin (Puripica-1 and Tu´lan-52, between 5000 and 4000 BP), while in the northwest Argentinean puna, alpaca is present in the Tomayoc rock shelter at 3500 BP. We must nonetheless ask whether the appearance of domestic camelidae in these two

AMERICAS, SOUTH/Early Cultures of the Central Andes 367

regions could have been the consequence of migratory movements that transferred pastoral practices from the central Andean punas. According to MacNeish, guinea pigs were first tamed in the Ayacucho basin as early as the Piki phase (7700–6300 BP) and then fully domesticated in Peru during the Cachi phase (5000–3700 BP). It is moreover surprising that this animal, which exists in a wild state throughout the highlands, is not represented in any of the high-altitude Peruvian sites (Lauricocha, Pachamachay, Telarmachay, etc.). It is also absent from the alimentary remains of sites in the Andes of Chile and Argentina, but could later have been independently domesticated in the Colombian Andes. The first villages

It is finally during the Middle Archaic that the first sure signs of sedentarization appear in a process that seems to have first developed along the Pacific Coast. Though it is a little later than the possible semisedentary occupation of the site of Las Vegas in Ecuador (Early Archaic), the ‘village’ site of the fishers of Paloma 613, studied by Fre´de´ric Engel, Robert Benfer, and Jeffrey Quilter, on the central coast of Peru, is better attested. In the beginning of its occupation, from 7800 to 7000 BP, this site was still a seasonal camp like so many others, before becoming fully sedentary at around 7000 BP. The habitat consisted of around 100 hemispherical huts made from reeds and rush, and more than a thousand burials were found in proximity or even within the habitations themselves. Multiple analyses conducted on this site have shown that 90% of the diet was composed of small fish, marine mammals, and mollusks. Vegetal resources were first exploited for nonalimentary purposes (combustibles, hut covers) and it was not until 5500/5000 BP that a primitive horticulture was practiced (squash, gourds, and perhaps beans), which contributed only a minor complement to a diet that remained essentially marine based. Paloma was abandoned a little before 5000 BP, without having developed a true agrarian economy. Between 6000 and 5300 BP, the village of Chilca 1, also discovered by Fre´de´ric Engel, was established not far from Paloma. Here also, the beach was not far away and spontaneous vegetation was abundant, particularly in the nearby lomas. The occupation included ensembles of grouped huts like those at Paloma. The mode of life was also analogous and the horticulture of squash and beans is attested. We thus cannot deny the importance of the ocean in the lifeways of the coastal populations and their role in the early process of sedentarization. But it is also true that the ocean, in spite of its rich resources, could not assure these populations a level of security equal

to that provided a little later by agricultural products. No one can challenge the fact that within the coastal societies already sedentarized or in the process of becoming so, it was not until the use of domestic plants became systematic that a qualitative advance occurred, which, within a few centuries, would lead to the appearance of complex societies. At the end of the period considered in this article, the central Andean zone thus presents a contrasted scenario. On the coast, fixed villages appeared with a territorial attachment that undoubtedly led to new ways of life, a new perception of daily space, and new relationships between the members within a community. At the same time, alongside these societies, hunter-gatherer groups organized in (apparently) egalitarian societies subsisted. As we saw, in the highlands the first sedentary occupations seem to have appeared at a later date, though, paradoxically, certain vegetal species were cultivated earlier. It is finally during the succeeding Late Archaic period (5000–3800 BP) – also called Final Preceramic – that a new type of occupation will appear. An economy dominated by agriculture, from then on well established, and the beginnings of a social hierarchy will be reflected in the edification of spectacular, ‘public’ architectural complexes, marking a prelude the dawning of the Andean Civilization. See also: Americas, South: Early Villages; Northern South America; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading Aldenderfer M (1998) Montane Foragers: Asana and the SouthCentral Andean Archaic. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Arriaza B (1995) Beyond Death: The Chinchorro Mummies of Ancient Chile. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. Benfer R (1990) The Preceramic Period site of Paloma, Peru: Bioindications of improving adapatation to sedentism. Latin American Antiquity 1: 284–318. Bonavia D (1997) La domesticacio´n de las plantas y los origenes de la domesticacio´n de las plantas en los Andes centrales. Revista Histo´rica 37 (Lima): 77–107. Chauchat C (1992) Pre´histoire de la coˆte nord du Pe´rou: le Paijanien de Cupisnique. Bordeaux: CNRS Editions. Clapperton C (1995) Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology of South America. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Dillehay T (2000) The Settlement of the Americas. A new Prehistory. New York: Basic Books. Lavalle´e D (dir) (1985) Telarmachay. Chasseurs et pasteurs pre´historiques des Andes. Paris: Editions ADPF-ERC. Lavalle´e D (2000) The First South Americans.The Peopling of a Continent from the Earliest Evidence to High Culture. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Lynch T (1980) Guitarrero Cave. New York: Academic Press. Macneish R, et al. (1980–83) Prehistory of the Ayacucho Basin (3 vols.). Ann Arbor: R.S. Peabody Foundation for Archaeology, University of Michigan Press.

368 AMERICAS, SOUTH/Early Villages Nun˜ez L and Santoro C (1988) Cazadores de la puna seca y salada, Estudios Atacamen˜os (9). Antofagasta: Universidad del Norte. Pearsall D (1992) The origin of plant cultivation in South America. In: Cowan CW and Watson PJ (eds.) The Origins of Agriculture: An International Perspective, pp. 173–205. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. Rick J (1980) Prehistoric Hunters of the High Andes. New York: Academic Press. Silverman H (ed.) (2004) Andean Archaeology. Blackwell. Stothert, K (1988) La Prehistoria temprana de la Peninsula de Santa Elena, Ecuador. Cultura Las Vegas, Museo del Banco Central del Ecuador, Guayaquil and Quito.

Early Villages Robert A Benfer, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, MO, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Ayllu An extended family unit for the Inca, whose history was traced through ancestral mummies. BP Radiocarbon years before the present, which is set by convention to 1950. Since the number of radiocarbon years is not always the same as the number of calendar years, it is possible to adjust them into years calibrated by comparison of tree-rings from long-lived Bristlecone pine trees. catchment The region used for obtaining resources. In coastal Peru´, a village catchment could extend from beneath the ocean to altitudes in excess of 3500 m. Cribra orbitalia A special kind of pitting in the upper part of the frontal bone that forms the back of the eye socket; the pitting may become smooth with healing. It is associated with childhood anaemia as a response of the body in producing more red cells in this region, the most available one, of the body skeleton during early childhood. ENSO El Nin˜o Southern Oscillation. The interaction of the tropical Pacific ocean with the global atmosphere that results in sporadic episodes of changing ocean currents and hence climate, especially along the western coast of South America. fog oasis In Peru´, the coastal hills between 200 and 800 m above mean sea level are shrouded in fog from about June until November. Trees, before nearly all have been cut down in modern times, condensed the fog and in many years, the hills had a savana-like appearance. Such foggy hills are called lomas in Peru´. lomas See fog oasis. palaeodemgraophy Modeling demographic properties such as estimated remaining life expectancy and fertiilty from the distribution of the dead. Since emigration or immigration can dramatically effect the relation between the properties of the dead and living, assumptions of stability or other data, such as living floor areas, are necessary to support such reconstructions. parental investment The varying economic investments parents might make in children with respect to their own maintainance; investment might vary by gender where there are economic differences in their values. periosteal lesions Additional bone on the surface of a bone that has a woven appearance; it is usually the results of infection, either mechanically from punctures in the skin or from some chronic infectious diseases.

Preceramic period Alternatively called Archaic, in Peru´, is the time between the end of the Holocene until 1500 BC. The Late Preceramic overlaps the Initial Period of Ceramics in the north and central coastal regions, as Tom and Sheila Pozorski have demonstrated and Leonid Velarde has recently shown for even the early part of the Late Preceramic in central Peru´. Needed changes in periodization will not be discussed here. stable isotopes As used here, the concentrations of carbon and nitrogen isotopes, which exhibit a pattern across varied food sources and can be reliably measured in human osseous tissue. village As used here, a settlement in which more than 50 persons are usually in residence. We use both floor area and palaeodemography to estimate village size. virtual reality Three-dimensional structures from digital models, which can be entered and manipulated. In Paloma World (available at my web site: http://rcp.missouri.edu), wire-frame models were covered with texture from photographs of a reconstructed house and the background at the site. Details were modeled separately.

Introduction With the onset of the Holocene, sedentary village life appeared in widely scattered locations around the Earth. Farming, facilitated by domesticated animals, produced a diet that, when supplemented by hunting, gathering, and fishing, describes one path from a nomadic life to a settled one. Full-time fishing is another possibly more ancient path. There are wellknown examples of both economies in the Neolithic of Asia and in the Middle East. The earliest villages from the Archaic (Preceramic) stage of the Western Hemisphere are those of fishermen.

Earliest Villages One can define the archaeological signature of a village as one left by multiple, clustered domestic structures of between approximately 80 and 1500 inhabitants. Larger settlements are more conveniently referred to as towns, smaller ones as hamlets. Early dispersed settlements would be difficult to distinguish from hamlets without very widespread excavation. The end of the last glacial period saw the first agglutinated villages in the archaeological record in the Eastern Hemisphere. Farming villages emerged at Xinglongwa sites such as Jiahu in inland China, by 9000 years ago. These sites are characterized by having large domestic structures and ceramics. In the Middle East, Pre-Pottery inland Neolithic sites, such as Biedla in Jordan, were also occupied by 9000 BP. Jomon fishing ceramic-using villages in Japan date to 10 000 BP. In the Western Hemisphere, the Peruvian preceramic site of Paloma, Peru´, was a small settlement at 7800 BP, growing to a peak of several hundred before abandonment after 5000 BP, when monumental aceramic Late Preceramic sites began to be constructed to the north. Valdivian sites from Ecuador, such as

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Real Alto, began to appear at about that time with pottery and a variety of cultigens. James Zeidler and Deborah Pearsall have shown that Valdivian peoples moved up the middle valleys from the earliest settlements in coastal Ecuador, suggesting initial and perhaps continuing association with fishing. Andean villages today are derived from long established patterns. They are divided into at least two allyus, between or among which marriages are typically arranged, so villages tend toward endogamy. A single village may also exist in two physically different locations, often separated by altitude, so that resources from different ecological zones are available to a single group. Households vary in success with those having the richest nexus of kin from which reciprocal aid is available doing better than less successful neighbors. Today in the Andes, a complete nuclear family with reciprocal relations among kin and nonkin is vital to sustain life. Modern villages may have elaborate social interactions with other groups such as herders. Multiple ethnic groups may have settlements close to one another in the same valley. Persistence of any village requires successful reproduction. Since half of the children born in preceramic times would die before the age of four years, and the last-born children would have to be cared for by someone other than the mother – whose life would usually end during her reproductive period – considerable community investment would have been necessary in child rearing. Unlike modern customs, preceramic village burial was often in or adjacent to domestic structures in early villages, presumably by family. Thus, early villages, before monumental architecture, display the domestic architecture of families. Conditions for Sedentism in Early Villages

Early Jomon fishermen lived year-round in their villages; shells show daily and seasonal growth increments. Early settled village life can appear variously with or without intensive cultivation of plants, domestication of animals, or the pottery needed to store and process produce. The preceramic Paloma fishing village was occupied throughout the year, at least in some years. Environmental Factors of Early Sedentism

In the Early Holocene, improvements in food production would have been stimulated by increasing carbon dioxide from the carbon released by melting glaciers. The establishment of modern patterns of ocean currents sometime after 5000 BP produced stable beaches. Flood plains and hills above the beaches would also be fruitful for collecting and hunting, and for cultivation of plants. By 5000 BP, the long period of warm, humid environment, the Holocene

Global Climatic Optimum (GCO), was ending. The result was an increased unpredictability of a new cooler and dryer climate. People had to adjust no longer sustainable systems of subsistence to these more variable conditions. These cultural changes were important and can be compared with adjustments to later climatic shifts as discussed by DeMonocal. They may have led to the abandonment of fog oasis sites like Paloma for river valley settings. Villages arise from hamlets during the beginning of the GCO.

Early South American Settlements Earlier Pleistocene hamlets, such as Monte Verde, Chile and early Paijan sites in Peru´ reported by Tom Dillahay, may have had substantial wooden dwellings. In central coastal Peru´, Frederic Engel excavated well-preserved but isolated structures close to beaches at Paracas and Quipa with dates between 9000 and 10 500 BP. Other early fishing camps on the Peruvian coasts are this old or older but lack visible domestic structures. Early fishing settlements are known for the length of the Chilean coast. In Ecuador, Karen Stothert’s excavations at OGSE-80 in the Santa Elena Peninsula possibly suggest early agglutinated households by 8000 BP. However, these sites more likely represent hamlets than villages, probably occupied seasonally, as Piperno and Pearsall note.

Paloma, Chilca Valley, Peru´ The Middle Preceramic site of Paloma, Peru´, is one of the most intensively studied sedentary villages from the Middle Holocene of the Americas. The site is situated 3.5 km from the modern beach on an alluvial fan at an elevation of 200 m above mean sea level, just below a fog oasis. Paloma lies 8 km from the Chilca River (Figures 1–3). Frederic Engel conducted the first excavations. The author directed subsequent excavations in four more seasons between 1976 and 1990 in cooperation with Engel, Alice N. Benfer, and Glendon F. Weir. Paloma presents three important archaeological resources: (1) its preservation of organic materials is good to excellent, (2) its well-stratified deposits show clearly separable village occupations over time, and (3) it was extensively excavated and analyzed. A list of 25 theses and partial list of publications is available at the PalomaWorld web site at http://coas.missouri. edu (hereafter, PalomaWorld). There were excavations of parts of 50 structures, 400 storage pits, 35 hearths, and 201 human interments over four field seasons. A series of 26 radiocarbon dates registers earliest occupation at 7800 BP, with a series of subsequent stratified villages occupied until

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about 4700 BP. The final occupation at Paloma was one in which the population began to relocate to a nearby river valley at the site of Chilca 1. Paloma is the largest site excavated from this time period; however, Engel has located two other similar, but unexcavated villages, closer to the coast in the same valley. The Paloma site is comprised of oval pit houses, three mortuary structures, and shell middens.

Many structures were in the low shell mounds. A few of the earliest domestic structures at Paloma are small and perhaps do not indicate year-round village sedentism. Large, sturdy houses in clusters were widespread by 6500 BP. Figure 4 shows what a domestic structure (S. 103) looked like during excavation; in it some burial pits and storage pits have been excavated but one storage pit is awaiting excavation. Excavation in this structure, but not in most, continued below the floor to the cut originally made by its builders to create an oval depression for the house.

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The design combined two major strategies, a small probability sample of test pits stratified by depth of deposits and extensive lateral excavations (Figure 3). We were surprised to find that domestic structures were buried throughout the alluvial fan, whether there were surface indications or not, and pleased to learn that structures encountered in the probability sample were not distributed differently from those found in lateral excavations. The total excavations were of approximately 2500 m2, which is approximately 10% of the alluvial fan on which the site is situated.

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Stratigraphy

We were able to establish three well-defined strata located throughout the alluvial fan below the fog oasis. Two domestic structures from earlier strata had to be grouped into a single level #400 for the purpose of analysis since they were from strata that were not widely distributed across the site. Dating

Of 26 radiocarbon determinations, only one did not correspond to the level assigned by our stratigraphy;

another sample from the same structure did. The three site-wide recognizable zones are dated as follows: . #100 Reoccupation, 4000 BP. It had rectangular subterranean stone structures and open areas with scattered living areas indicated by midden to the north and east of the Paloma alluvial fan; this occupation is not discussed here. . #200 4700–5100 BP. A level whose presence was announced by a layer of rotted, often purple, shells, the decay of which suggests abandonment.

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. #300 5100–5300 BP. A level topped by thick caliche (calcium carbonate) in areas and always containing more grass than either level above or below; the soil was most often orange in color. . #400 5300–7800 BP. A level of darker soil containing large hearths. The earliest date (7800 BP) applies to only a few small structures from nonsite wide strata. The later strata suggest occupations of persistent villages.

Settlement Pattern The settlement pattern makes clear why good stratigraphy was obtained in what is normally a difficult context, that of a stratified series of villages. The reason is that, once abandoned, structures were never disturbed. Burials within the structures were also never drastically disturbed; abandoned houses were abandoned household cemeteries. Figure 5 shows the central core of the structures from our virtual reality representation of Paloma, which can be visited at a web site, http://coas.missouri.edu, and hereafter, Paloma World. These more structures show a settlement pattern of agglutinated structures that never intrude upon earlier ones. Other structures, presumably a part of other complete clusters, were also encountered. Vradenburg and his associates found an interesting shift in total house floor area over time. Using a figure of 9.4 m2 of roofed area per person and a 50-year maximum life for a house suggested an average population of about 60 between 6500 and 5300 BP,

the time of the site-wide occupation of level #400. Using the same procedures, we calculated a population of about 450 in level #300, the level whose abundant grass suggests maximum moisture. We estimate the lower bound for #200 as about 200 inhabitants who, over time, moved to the nearby river valley. Not surprisingly, palaeodemographic study of the human remains showed a decrease in growth rate in the final occupation at Paloma even though the actual local population of fog oasis and river valley was expanding. Other evidence of sedentism includes the more than 400 storage pits, many containing plant or animal food. For example, one grass-lined pit was full of anchovies with heads removed; others contained ground anchovies, and many contained stored plant materials, all suggesting a sedentary life dependent upon stored foods (see Figure 4).

Architecture at Paloma We found three special mortuary structures, but living structures were the most common structures at Paloma. Domestic Architecture

All structures were semi-subterranean in profile. The original excavated area was flattened by filling it with sand and then laying down small, fine mats twined from wild plant fibers. Most structures were round to oval, with some tending to rectangular. Roof supports were occasionally of willow poles but more often groups of cane bound together and set into trenches. Roofs were covered with fine mats over which grass

Figure 5 Paloma core excavations showing parts of three villages; plans superimposed over virtual reality reconstruction; excavation units are 6  6 meter squares. S. 101 in level 200 is discussed in the text.

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was interlaced. Although it virtually never rains at this elevation, a fine mist from the winter fog, ‘garua’, can wet all exposed surfaces in the winter. The roofs of structures would have condensed water from the fog in this rainless land; excavated house poles were often encased in caliche at their base. Stone-lined wells of unknown antiquity are found in the nearby fog oasis. Abandoned houses formed depressions, sometimes visible on the surface; condensing water turned the collapsed roofs to caliche. The depressions were used later for discard of garbage. Large basaltic passive grinding stones, batanes, were sometimes cached on or under the roof of houses that had been abandoned. Human burials were found under the floors or sometimes on the floors of dwellings. Mortuary Structures

In addition to the more common practice of burial within the household, several special mortuary structures were found. One, S. 137, is associated with #200 but lies south of the core #200 group and is not depicted in Figures 5 or 6 (see the virtual reality ‘interactive site dig’ for details at Paloma World). S. 137 resembled a domestic structure in construction technique except that it was only about 60 cm in height. Inside were four burials, the only four not buried in a fetal position. One had been disarticulated before reburial, the only instance of this practice. The other three appear to have been buried in a state of rigor mortis. One explanation for all four individuals dying together could be poison from a red tide. Another, structure, S. 28, contained seven infant burials but no adults, which, if not due to very bad luck in raising babies, suggest that it may have had a special mortuary function. An unusual burial, one extremely well preserved (Tomb 159), was that of a juvenile male missing one leg and exhibiting deep grooves in

Figure 6 Paloma virtual reality reconstruction of S. 101 and nearby dwellings looking to the south.

the corresponding fore arm and hip. He had died from wounds probably inflicted by a shark. He was buried in a miniature structure made in the same fashion as a full-sized domestic structure. A Paloma Household

S. 101 was found just west of a low shell mound (Figure 6). It and adjacent S. 129 (Figure 7a) are the two best-preserved structures at the site. They were both from level #200. Over 14 person-months were devoted to the excavation of S. 101; extensive field notes are available at Paloma World (where it is listed as H. 101). S. 101 and S. 129 together comprise a domestic household. One is a larger living unit (S. 101), and the other smaller structure, whose presence marked the edge of a shell mound, is the kitchen (S. 129). S. 101 is shown in plan and profile view in Figures 7b and 7c. A reconstruction (Figure 7d) by Bernardino Ojeda is in the Museo de la Nacio´n, Lima, Peru´. That reconstruction lacks the covering grass, as do our representations here and elsewhere, in order to show architectural details. Figure 7e shows a similar modern living unit/kitchen pair from the Andes. S. 101 was somewhat unusual in that it was the only structure that we could be sure had a flat roof, which was preserved by its charring in a fire. We were able to trace ash over a caliche lens from S. 101 to the nearby structure, S. 129. The two structures returned the same radiocarbon date, 5010  60 and 5010  80 BP. Most houses had a patio area delimited by posts, and S. 101 is no exception. It is possible that an outer oval of posts might have functioned as the outer wall of the dwelling with the inner more circular row of posts being for support. However, study of partially burned but largely intact poles, mats, and grass from S. 101 suggest that the area was really a patio for the house. At Paloma, there were hearths both within the central oval of posts and outside them but within the outer ring. Larger communal health areas are sometimes found among clusters of houses. We encountered more than 35 hearths. Storage pits averaged about eight per household, and many had preserved grass linings and storage contents, such as headless anchovies. Some domestic structures showed re-occupation, with several living floors; S. 101 had three floors, each with indications of partial coverage by fine mats. This pattern argues that the dwelling was being used for multiple years, perhaps abandoned temporarily in an ENSO year when much of the marine biomass shifted to the north. Our finding of five cached batanes in a domestic structure could indicate an abandonment that was meant to be temporary but, in fact, became permanent for an extended family. There was an average of four burials interred in and around each of the 55 domestic structures. Few completely excavated houses lacked

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Figure 7 S.101/129 domestic cluster of living and cooking structures at Paloma and similar household above Huara´z, Peru´ (a) Map of site area containing S.101 (domestic structure) and S.129 (kitchen), in black; (b) plan of S 101 omitting most interments and some storage pits to show architectural details; (c) profile of S.101; (d) reconstruction of S.101 by Bernardino Ojeda, in the Museo de la Nacion, Lima, Peru´ (grass covering omitted to show details); (e) Modern sleeping structure and kitchen, on road to Chavı´n de Huantar above Huara´z, Peru´.

burials. Palaeodemographic study showed that, due to high infant mortality, approximately one-half of an extended family of eight might die in a generation (see Paleopathology). The kitchen structure S. 129 contained a burial of a woman more than 50 years old when she died. She was suffering from a chronic infection indicated by periosteal lesions on her lower limb bones. There were extensive food remains in S. 129, which is why we identified it as a kitchen. S. 129 was architecturally interesting in that posts were found only in the northern extension shown in Figure 7a. Between that small circle and the longer open oval-shaped, main cooking area, we found a packed earth step. More intensive processing of food appears to have required a separate kitchen structure in the #200 village.

The treatment of the dead also changed in #200. There appeared a new pattern, one that suggests the beginning of what would become a continent-wide emphasis on ancestor veneration. At the same time, treatment of the deaths of children was elaborated. Ancestor Veneration

Tomb 100 (shown at the bottom of Figure 7b) had small hearths just outside the limits of the burial pit. Remains of fire inside burial pits were more common. Fires had frequently been set before the body was placed in the grave, resulting in the burning of mats, skin, and even scorching of bone. Claude Cauchet reported a burial from the north coast dated to 10 200 BP that had been placed on a layer of embers

ASIA, EAST/Early Villages 375

Jeffrey Quilter, a crew chief in the 1976 excavation, published a description of Paloma burials. In a nonmetric multidimensional scaling of interments coded for mortuary content by Sharon S. Brock, the author found statistically significant differences in the dimension weights by strata that quantified an increasing emphasis on children that Quilter had also indicated. More elaborate burials for children may have reflected an increasing investment in them. An unusual orientation of the young, and the pattern of interment by gender in the last major occupation at Paloma, may be another reflection of cosmological belief systems imported from the tropical lowlands. Male/Female Dualism

In an analysis by Kate Pechenkina and Robert A. Benfer it was found that males in #200 were buried

T20

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with another layer of charcoal and ashes covering the body. At Paloma, we found embers and burned areas under sides of burials but not ashes covering the body. In Late Preceramic La Galgada, Terrence Grieder and his colleagues also reported burials interred over a layer of charcoal. Another use of fire, one that suggests ancestor veneration, was the case in which a male was placed on the floor mat or in a shallow depression, and the house was then burned down over him. In the case of the best-preserved example, Tomb 109 in S. 101, a coiled basket was placed on top of the body, and a large metate put on top of the burned roof. The Shuar of Ecuador buried an important male in a house in which he had lived and then burned it to the ground. At Paloma, burned houses may have served to mark the claims of lineages to the few highly productive beach sites. These would be the ones with good fishing and access to sweet water and carbohydrateproducing lomas or river. Besides venerating ancestors with special treatment involving fire, relatives attempted to preserve the dead. We have found that salt comprised more than one-half of the volume of some burial fills through research at the Missouri Research Reactor by Jeremy Edward (MU dissertation; MU theses are available online). These fishermen lived only a few kilometers from coastal salt deposits. At La Galgada, distant from salt mines, in the Late Preceramic, large salt crystals covered by a layer of charcoal served as the base for two burials. These rituals for venerating and preserving ancestors are related to modern tropical lowland belief systems and are thus suggested as ancient for the continent. They prefigure the mummy cult of the Inca by 4000 years. They can be compared with the Chinchorro cult of far southern Peru´ and northern Chile.

M

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Figure 8 Composite # 200 Paloma burials. Note males and females are separable by an imaginary line through the infant burials. The hypothetical house is approximately 3  4 m in dimensions. (The 114 azimuth marks the austral summer solstice.) Drawing by Ekaterina Pechenkina.

in the eastern part of houses, females, in the west, with most infants along a northeast/southwest line dividing the two (see Figure 8). The dimension of gender is a powerful indicator of dualism at Paloma, but this pattern was restricted to #200 burials. The line along the orientation of most infant burials could be viewed as tracing the nightly extreme of the Milky Way. We know that later Andeans would see the Milky Way as representing fertility. Could these new mortuary customs emphasizing dualism and the Milky Way have been brought by new peoples to the coast at the beginning of the #200 occupation? Coastal Relations with Other Peoples

Maria Rostworworski has suggested from ethnohistoric and linguistic studies that there was complete population replacement of central Peruvian coastal peoples by highland peoples at an early time. Highland incursions of the coastal valleys are known from later periods. Studies of the dental traits of the human remains from Paloma by Christy Turner III suggested that the last Paloma occupation before abandonment was by people whose dental characteristics were very different from those of earlier inhabitants. It is possible that the new mortuary customs came from the lowlands through highland intermediaries. Other relations with distant peoples are shown by trace element analysis of obsidian. Mike Glascock found that all but one piece of obsidian from Paloma came from the Quispisisa source near the headwaters of the Pisco River. From that location, the highland river systems are directly accessible from the coast.

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A bone implement from a monkey suggests contacts to the far north or the lowlands over the Andes. In palaeoethnobotanical studies, Glendon Weir found no significant plant remains at Paloma originating from more than 1000 m, so movement of obsidian or monkey bone was most likely due to chance encounters with highlanders as either group foraged the lower western slopes of the Andes.

Other Biological Studies at Paloma The primary research for the excavations was toward study of the evidence for early sedentism in a system of human/environment interactions in a fragile habitat. Fuelwood was one organic material that was critical in the arid environment, and it serves as a useful indicator of anthropogenic and natural changes. Fuelwood and Construction Materials

The fog oasis, which provided water and plant resources to these early villagers, became degraded over time. We can demonstrate this by changes in fuelwood, charcoalized twigs, and building material. Glendon Weir and Philip Dering found a significant decline in average diameter and variance as well as in quality of the fuel wood. Figure 9 shows results of a midden excavation. Both fuel wood and wood for construction show the same pattern, increasing use until the last village in #200, when use of wood for construction dramatically decreased as its use in fires increased. The environmental degradation suggested overexploitation of fuelwood at Paloma. A region-wide 100

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trend of decreasing moisture at this time has been documented by glacial cores from the Huascara´n glacier. Thus, inhabitants were forced to remove more of the shrubs from the fog oasis rather than continuing a sustainable harvest of dead twigs and branches. However, no wood from tree trunks was ever used as fuelwood at Paloma. Had the trees themselves been used for wood, the fog oasis vegetation would have quickly collapsed. This is because the trees condense the moisture from the fog that permits the lomas to bloom. In response to a dryer and more variable climate, both maritime and terrestrial resources became more intensively exploited. Changes in the lomas were consequential for water production, perhaps the major reason for abandonment. The beginning of more frequent ENSO events after 5000 BP is known from, among other evidence, changes in mollusks reported by Daniel Sandweiss, and changes in the frequency of different species of fish reported by Elizabeth Reitz. By 4700 BP, the last Paloma families had moved to the nearby river valley site of Chilca 1 where year-round water was available. The sister sites were occupied simultaneously for centuries, prefiguring some later Andean village settlement patterns.

Health, Diet, and Activities from the Skeleton and Teeeth Health

Surprisingly, despite the hygienic challenges of living in a permanent settlement, health improved over time at Paloma. Stature, one of the best indicators of childhood health, increased significantly over time at Paloma. Kate Pechenkina and her associates found through study of limb bone lengths that Paloma fishermen were taller as adults than any later peoples were. Cross-sectional growth of limb bones during childhood was always faster at Paloma than at three comparative sites, suggesting that the stature increase in adults was due to improving childhood health and diet at Paloma. Stature was significantly greater at Paloma (males 165 cm, females 155 cm) than at Real Alto (males 162 cm, females 151 cm). The inhabitants of the larger Valdivian villages probably suffered from more hygienic problems of sedentism than did Paloma. Another useful indicator of adult health is anemia, which registers first in the bones of children. Anaemia declined over time at Paloma only to become more prevalent in subsequent time periods. Periosteal lesions on bones, caused by either a treponemal agent or infection following wounds, decreased between levels #300 and #200 but increased in sites from following time periods.

ASIA, EAST/Early Villages 377 Diet

Palaeodemography

Dan Edwards and the author of this article found that dental wear decreased significantly over time at Paloma, probably as more processed small fish were eaten. The dental wear pattern of Paloma fishermen was easily distinguished from the cusp-like wear of farmers by Peer Moore-Jansen. Carious lesions, ‘cavities’, were nearly absent in the teeth of these fishermen. Lesions were more frequent at Real Alto where almost 9% of individuals had at least one, a value typical of a high carbohydrate diet. Bone chemistry confirms the dental patterns at Paloma. Stable isotopes furnished by Michael J. DeNiro are presented in Figure 10. The average suggests a diet almost exclusively from the sea. Ba/Sr elemental concentrations in bone (analysis by J. H. Burton) provide identical findings based on a different set of factors. Levels of fluoride measured by Jeremy Edward at MURR were high at Paloma, as was expected. He also showed an intriguing change in fluoride levels, with sexual dimorphism in earlier levels, to about equivalent consumption of the two genders in level 200. Gender differences in diet appear to have disappeared. In an MU thesis, Eric White found that more than 70% of the batanes were recovered in #200 despite the number of structures being approximately equal among the strata. Glendon Weir’s study of the contents of the surfaces of the batanes showed their use for both grinding plants but also small fish. Ground fish, with the meal stored in grass-lined pits, would have provided food for both men and women, especially in ENSO years when marine yields would have been lower. Apparently, the adjustment was successful. The #200 peoples show improved health. Such improved health could be translated into higher fertility and longer lives.

We estimated life expectancy from the distribution of the dead by age groups, using plausible levels of population growth rates. Fewer infant burials in #200 argue for greater investment in children, who, as discussed above, showed less stunting of growth. The lack of scars of pregnancy in the public and ilium bones of women younger than 24 years suggests that marriage was delayed, reducing fertility. High levels of cadmium in human bone samples likely reduced male fertility, perhaps most strongly in #200. Adult life expectancy increased over time at Paloma only to decrease in subsequent time periods at other sites. In Ecuador, Ubelaker also found a decline following the Preceramic period. A recent compilation of studies by Mark Cohen shows a similar decline in health and life expectancy of adults is associated with initial experiments with intensive agriculture in prehistoric peoples widely scattered around the earth.

d 15N and d 13C in bone collagen d 15N (per mil) Marine +25.0 vertebrate eaters +20.0

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Elizabeth Reitz found that the diet was one typical of fishermen, an interpretation that accords with that from the bone chemistry and dental patterns. Fish and sea lions were important components of the diet, augmented by shellfish. Remains from juvenile sea lions are found. These animals are resident in summer, whereas guanaco (ancestral to llamas), deer, and fulmar (a gull-like bird), also present, would have been attracted to the fog oasis in the winter when it blooms. The single bone from a monkey was from Atelles spp. Reitz concluded that overall, most calories were obtained from the sea. She noted a shift over time toward smaller animal species. Nevertheless, plants constituted a minor but important component of the diet. Palaeoethnobotany

Marine invertebrate eaters

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Figure 10 Human bone carbon and nitrogen isotope levels for Paloma. Data from analysis by Michael J. DeNiro; figure by Ekaterina Pechenkina.

The identification of the plant macrofossils has been completed by Deborah Pearsall following the earlier work of Glendon Weir and Philip Dering. Pearsall studied plants from over 100 storage pits and other contexts from levels #200 and #300. She found plant remains more ubiquitous in #200 than #300. Charred begonia plants were the most common edible plant in #300. Glendon Weir had found evidence that the tuberous begonia was cultivated; its masticated roots were common. Amancay (Hymenocallis amancaes), a lily, was also important. Uncharred begonia and charred bottle gourd were equally common, with rare examples of charred cotyledon pieces. There is also an unknown charred tuber/root. Gourds became less common over time. Maize was found in two areas: one was an intrusive offering (dated to more recent times), the other, a

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single cupule. One important new food plant appears in #200, Phaseolus, the common bean. Much smaller seeds appeared to be secondary to root and tuber foods in the samples collected from 1 and 0.5 mm screens, possibly because they passed through them. Human Coprolites

Study of plant and animal remains from several hundred desiccated human fecal remains was made by Glendon H. Weir and Phillip Dering. These demonstrated that grass caryopses (grass ‘fruits’ of ‘seeds’) in fact were one of the major plant foods consumed. The smaller seeds apparently passed through our fine screens. Seeds of plants other than grasses in the coprolites included chenopods (Chenopodiacaea), solanaceous (Solanacae), and composites (Compositae). Evidence of the preparation of these foods is observed in finding charcoal and fragments of stone in coprolites, perhaps from grinding. Parasitological studies of large samples of coprolites by two specialists (Karl Reinhard and Michael Kliiks) produced no ova or other indications of intestinal parasites. Fishermen may have unusually good sanitary habits. Frequent immersion in the sea would have reduced fecal transmission from person to person. At the site, we found a latrine area composed of coprolites. Some coprolites were adhering to a shell that experiments showed made an adequate substitute for toilet paper. Taken together, the coprolites, macrofossils of plants, faunal remains, and bone chemistry identify the diet as one of fishermen who were extracting as much from the fragile terrestrial environment as possible. Indicators of diet predict habitual subsistence activities necessary to produce and process food. Habitual Activities

Anna McNair studied humeral and femoral shape at Paloma (MU Honor’s Thesis). She found significant shifts over time in humeral shape. Humera were wider at the elbow in the early levels and associated with more robust muscular development. This robustness decreased over time at Paloma, a trend stronger in males than in females. This decrease is associated, surprisingly, with an increase in large grinding stones. More recently, Alexander Robling in an MU dissertation confirmed that there was a decrease in the amount of physical work at Paloma over time from studies of bone turnover rates and geometric properties of the femur. Sexual dimorphism was also seen to diminish so that in #200 women show almost as heavy development of musculature as men. Another recent MU dissertation by Mathew Rhode showed that entheses, muscle markings on bones, at Paloma

produced a pattern similar to preceramic Chilean fisher populations. Women could have been hauling nets, carrying babies, carrying shellfish the 3.5 km uphill to the village, swimming while pushing nets, or managing plants and collecting. Men would have fished, hunted larger marine prey, and dived for shellfish. Auditory osteomas, bony growths produced by exposure to cold water (‘surfer’s ear’), were restricted to males, which correspond to the pattern observed on the west coast of South America, where men and not women dived for mollusks. Dancing is implied by the widespread presence of rattles. The custom became more evident in later Initial Period with the construction of numerous sunken circular platforms. Habitual activities could be reflected in aspects of technology; however, the material technology at Paloma was a simple one.

Technology Artifacts were scarce, with nonfiber objects averaging only a few per cubic meter of excavation. Lithics

Eric J. White found no difference in the frequencies of types of laurel leaf-shaped stone points over time. However, higher-quality lithic stone points became less common. Stone points were not frequent at the Paloma villages, and, indeed, they are infrequent in fishing sites from middle and late coastal preceramic periods from Ecuador to southern Peru´. White also noticed a dramatic decline in wood polish in scrapers from #200. This finding is congruent with decrease in wood use for construction shown in Figure 9. Manos and smaller grinding stones were common. Boiling stones for cooking in gourds were sometimes found in hearths with their inferior surface caked with carbon. There was usually one batan per household. Obsidian flakes were encountered throughout the deposits, and their source was in the highlands, as discussed above. In a single pit, rocks of all the types observed at Paloma were cached together, in the house of the presumed village knapper. A few stone beads were found in other contexts. Fiber Objects

Two reports on fiber objects are available in English at the Paloma World web site. Twined mats and netted apparel were found around the head and waist of buried individuals. Apart from string and rope, these were the most common fiber objects. All of the fiber was from wild plants, except for the intrusive cotton offering dated much later.

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Of special interest is the charred simple basket in the shape of flat circular tray discussed above with S. 101 (upper right corner of Figure 7b). Its date of 5010 BP suggests that it may be one of the oldest examples of a true coiled basket known for the Western Hemisphere, which can be distinguished from earlier simple twined objects often reported as ‘basketry’ in North America.

a consumable artifact has been discussed above. Split cane was also used for fire starters and to construct wall coverings and sleeping/mortuary mats. Penguin feathers were relatively common in burials, presumably as adornments; other feathers were probably from birds that were eaten.

Summary Bone Implements

Paloma bone artifacts include points, needles, bullroarers, and fishhooks. Thirty-three bodkins, flat spatula-shaped bone objects with a perforation at the proximal end, varied in size and amount of polish. Most were found with burials. Bone spatulas, flat, polished bones lacking a perforation, were sometimes made from sea mammal bone, perhaps reflecting the scarcity of land mammal bone, which has more compact bone. We recovered pendants, punches, and fragments of barbs, as well as ‘atlatls’ or spear throwers. Awls were present. Individual tubular bone beads were flat with a wide range in size. Twenty-four beads were found as a necklace in an interment, all of which are tubular avian bones. Two bone objects were recovered that may have functioned as knives. Gourds

Bottle gourds (Lagenaria siceraria) were found principally in burials. Most were undecorated. One fragment, from S. 36 is over 6500 years old, which is older than other reported decorated gourds. The fragment has a painted design of brown over an orange background. Gourds were fashioned into rattles, sometimes with a stick handle, worn shell fragments and pebbles from the beach, and seeds. Rattles are found in about 20 of the 201 burials and the frequent presence of gourd fragments in other burials suggests that the practice of interring rattles was actually more common. One infant burial had a complete rattle; other fragments were found in burials of children and adults of both genders. Some gourds had been broken and repaired by sewing segments back together, suggesting the maintenance of an important heritage treasure. Shell, Wood, and Feathers

Large shell implements showed abrasion from use. Shell beads, pendants, and necklaces were found. Complete and fragmentary fishhooks were recovered. Wooden stoppers or floats and a handle that may have given purchase to a fishing net were excavated. One piece of wood was used as a fire drill. Fuelwood as

Villages do not require pottery or intensive plant production to grow and prosper. Paloma fishermen cultivated some plants. Villages more focused on farming came later, as represented by Valdivian sites such as Real Alto in Ecuador. Valdivia culture persisted over a long time, whereas in central Peru´ dramatic changes in settlement pattern and monumentality of structures followed abandonment of the earliest fishing villages. Early Ecuadorian villages were larger than early Peruvian ones. The Valdivian sites are associated with larger numbers of species of domesticated plants and represent more densely settled populations, and people were less healthy as adults than were the Paloman fishermen. Findings from the Paloma Project support the celebrated hypothesis by Michael Moseley that maritime resources were the critical ones in the development of Andean civilization, at least at the level of the first permanent villages. The larger Valdivia sites support Moseley’s more recent reformulation of the hypothesis, that fishing and farming resources formed necessary parts of a dual economy. In Peru´, the large, complex monumental sites that followed Paloma date to earlier times than equivalent ones in Ecuador. Thus, early villages in Ecuador and Peru´ suggest two paths that permitted populations to grow from villages to towns. Present evidence favors the hypothesis that resources from the sea and the land were necessary for the precocious construction, between 5000 and 4000 BP, of large, monumental Peruvian sites such as Chupacigarro/Cara´l, Aspero, and El Paraı´so. Adjustment to the dryer and more variable climate encountered at the ending of the GCO may have been the stimulus for important changes in subsistence practices. Cotton, essential for construction of large nets, was domesticated after the abandonment of fog oasis sites and resettlement in river valleys. Increased farming of agricultural food products may also have been simultaneously pursued. With large cotton nets, yields of fish could have been dramatically increased over a wider variety of beach habitats. Subsistence level fishing at Paloma was replaced by fishing that produced the large surpluses necessary to tide agriculturalists and fishermen over during ENSO years when all their food crops could be lost to flood or drought and marine foods would also be scarce.

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Acknowledgments The field and laboratory work was made possible by four awards from the NSF and additional awards from the University of Missouri-Columbia that provided vital bridging support. The author especially thanks the laboratories that conducted analysis of Paloma materials through their own resources.

Prehistoric Population, pp. 150–151. Occasional Paper No. 24, Carbondale, IL: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Weir G and Dering P (1986) The lomas of Paloma, human– environment relations in a central Peruvian fog oasis: Archaeobotany and palynology. In: Matos MR (ed.) Andean Archaeology, pp. 18–44. Los Angeles: UCLA. Zeidler JA and Pearsall DM (eds.) (1994) Regional Archaeology in Northern Manabı´, Ecuador. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Memoirs in Latin American Archaeology, No. 8.

See also: Americas, South: Early Cultures of the Central

Andes; Northern South America; New World, Peopling of; Osteological Methods; Paleodemography; Paleopathology; Stable Isotope Analysis; Trace Element Analysis.

Relevent Website http://coas.missouri.edu – University of Missouri-Columbia, The College of Arts and Science.

Further Reading Benfer RA (1990) The Preceramic period site of Paloma, Peru: Bioindications of improving adaptation to sedentism. Latin American Antiquity 1: 284–318. Benfer RA (1999) Proyecto de excavaciones en Paloma: El Valle de Chilca, Peru´, El Perio´do Arcaico en el Peru´. Hacia una definicio´n de los orı´genes. Boletin de Arqueologia PUCP 3: 213–237. Cauchet C (1988) Early hunter-gatherers on the Peruvian coast. In: Keatinge RW (ed.) Peruvian Prehistory, pp. 41–66. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Damp J (1984) Architecture of an Early Valdivia village. American Antiquity 49: 573–585. DeMonocal PB (1991) Cultural responses to climate change during the Late Holocene. Science 292: 667–673. Engel F-A (1987) De las begonias al Maiz. Lima: Centro de Investigaciones de Zonas Aridas, Universidad Nacional Agraria, La Molina. Grieder T, Mendoza AB, Smith CE, Jr, and Malina RM (1988) La Galgada, Peru: APreceramic Culture in Transition. Austin: University of Texas Press. Moseley MM (2003) The Incas and Their Ancestors. London: Thames and Hudson. Pechenkina EA, Vradenburg JA, and Benfer RA (n.d.) Disease and the effects of intensive agriculture on the central coast of Peru´. In: Cohen, M (ed.) Recent Investigations into Paleopathology and the Origins of Agriculture. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. Piperno DR and Pearsall DM (1998) The Origins of Agriculture in the Lowland Neotropics. London: Academic Press. Quilter J (1989) Life and Death at Paloma: Society and Mortuary Practices in a Preceramic Peruvian Village. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Reitz EJ (1988) Faunal remains from Paloma, an Archaic site in Peru. American Anthropologist 90: 310–322. Rostworowski de Diez Canseco M (1998) Ensayos de Historia Andina II. Lima: Institute de Estudios Peruanos. Sandweiss DH, Richardson JB, Reitz EJ, Rollins HB, and Maash KA (1996) Geoarchaeological data from Peru for a 5000 year BP onset of El Nin˜o. Science 273: 1530–1533. Shady R, Hass J, and Creamer W (2000) Dating Caral, a preceramic site in the Supe Valley of the central coast of Peru. Science 292: 723–726. Vradenburg JA, Benfer RA, and Sattenspiel L (1997) Evaluating archaeological hypotheses of population growth and decline on the central coast of Peru´. In: Paine RR (ed.) Integrating Archaeological Demography: Multidisciplinary Approaches to

Historical Archaeology Andre´s Zarankin, UFMG, Belo Horizonte, Brazil Melisa A Salerno, DIPA-IMHICIHU-CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary historical archaeology The archaeological study of historically documented cultures. diffusionism An anthropological theory of spread of culture stating that similarities in tools, practices, or other features between cultures result from their being spread from one culture to another rather than being arrived at independently. post-processualism A form of archaeological theory which is related to the broader development of postmodernism. urban archaeology The milieu of old and new artifacts populating the urban landscape. ethnicity A sense of being different from other groups because of cultural tradition, ancestry, national origin, history, or religion.

Introduction Historical archaeology in South America has experienced an accelerated growth since the mid-1980s, a process which was particularly intensified during the 1990s. This growth has been reflected in the creation of several projects of investigation, the appearance of specific courses in college curricula, the spread of national and international meetings, and the increasing number of papers published by different South American archaeologists in the first years of the third millennium. This article intends to offer an overview of the history and development of historical archaeology in South America. In order to accomplish this objective, we discuss – among other topics – the relationship between historical archaeology in South America and

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historical archaeology in the rest of the continent, its origins, theoretical frameworks, problems of investigation, and local achievements.

conformation at a local level, highlighting the role of agents in the definition of the practices they use to construct their identities.

Historical Archaeology in America

South America

The development of historical archaeology in South America is closely connected to the history of the discipline in the United States. Since the second half of the twentieth century, American historical archaeology defined itself as a distinct field of study oriented towards the discussion of Europeans’ past in the New World. As a consequence, it managed to take distance from prehistoric archaeology, related to anthropology and the analysis of cultural others (aboriginals). Historical archaeology in South America rapidly adopted this perspective. Historical archaeology was conceived in all manners of ways along time, generating a lot of controversy within the discipline. Some authors considered that historical archaeology represented the study of material culture associated with historical or literate periods. In the meantime, other researchers defined it as a methodology which combined the interdisciplinary use of archaeological and documentary evidence. This perception limited the specificity and autonomy of the field, transforming it into the ‘handmaiden’ of history. In recent bibliography, historical archaeology has been understood as a discipline concerned with the analysis of modernity – associated to European expansion and the consolidation of capitalism. Specifically, conformation of modern society has been explained as a result of changes involving everyday life. Ideas used to describe this social order stemmed from the analysis of nineteenth-century English colonies in North America. Finally, they were completed with the study of Georgian Order’s genealogies in England, where archaeologists sought to extend modernity’s time and space boundaries to understand its origins. Nowadays, modern society is associated with the appearance, spread, and maintenance of capitalist practices. It implies a change in relationships among individuals, as well as between individuals and things. It has been proposed that individualism, segmentation, standardization, and consumerism are key concepts to analyze transformations in practices during modernity. Following this idea, some archaeologists try to identify sets of rules which might be applied to understand material culture and lifestyles in recent past. This theoretical perspective – along with its variants – is commonly used to explain conformation of modern society in different geographical contexts. In recent years, several South American archaeologists have started to discuss the singularities of social

There have been investigations in historical archaeology since the very beginnings of professional archaeology in South America, but these projects only became systematic in the 1960s. Nevertheless, studies in historical archaeology during the 1960s and 1970s were usually restricted to excavations conducted by nonarchaeologists – such as amateurs, historians and architects. In general, their investigations looked forward to finding correlations between material and documentary data, rescuing valuable historical objects and structures, supplying information to restoration activities, or simply satisfying researchers’ personal curiosity. It was not until the 1980s that archaeology acquired a program of investigation of its own. As a consequence, it became understood as a distinct discipline, specialized in the study of material culture and interested in offering an alternative way to construct discourses about the past – considering or not the existence of written documents. On the other hand, historical archaeology enjoyed an independent status for the first time. In this way, archaeologists began to create multiple visions of recent history, which could be opposed to or different from ‘master narratives’. Historical archaeology has shown a heterogeneous development in South America. According to Pedro Funari, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay have traditionally stood out in this field of study. As a matter of fact, professionals from these three countries have written most of South American modern literature on historical archaeology. The heterogeneous development of South American historical archaeology might also be recognized in the nationality of the authors who published their papers in any of the 16 volumes of Historical Archaeology in South America, the only specialized magazine that has ever been published for the region. Historical Archaeology in South America was edited by Stanley South in 1994, 1995, and 1996 (University of South Carolina), and presented articles written by South American archaeologists in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. Ninety percent of them were produced by Argentinean, Uruguayan, and Brazilian archaeologists. Pedro Funari explains this situation, pointing out that in some South American countries – such as Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and, to some extent, Venezuela – the lack of interest in historical archaeology might be closely associated with the use of archaeology as a privileged tool to build national identities based on the search of precolonial splendor.

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There are few authors – such as Pedro Funari or Gustavo Politis – concerned in explaining the development of historical archaeology in South America. But there are plenty of professionals who discuss the state of affairs of historical archaeology in particular countries – such as Tania Andrade Lima, Pedro Funari, and Marı´a Gaspar in the case of Brazil; Andre´s Zarankin and Marı´a Ximena Senatore in Argentina; Julio Sanhueza in Chile; Nelsys Fusco and Jose´ Marı´a Lo´pez Mazz in Uruguay; and Monika Therrien in Colombia.

Theoretical Frameworks in South American Historical Archaeology Problems of investigation, as well as the way in which scientists approach them, are intimately bound to the selection of theoretical frameworks. In South America, several conceptual currents have been popular along time: diffusionism, processualism, and post-processualism, among others (Table 1). Their characteristics are briefly summarized below: The main objective of diffusionist investigations was to provide spatial, chronological, and technological orderings of past cultural groups. As a consequence, archaeologists coined several concepts such as ‘phase’, ‘horizon’, ‘cultural area’, or ‘industry’ to describe them. Within a normative idea of culture, people were defined as bearers of fixed cultural characteristics. In general, identification of cultural traits in the archaeological record led to the recognition of different identity groups. Moreover, transformations in objects were explained as results of specific mechanisms which spread cultural features from

nuclear centers – where they were invented – to marginal areas. Diffusionism in historical archaeology was associated with investigations which classified findings according to biological criteria (European, aboriginal, African, or ‘mestizo’ artifacts), or ended up justifying – even in an explicit manner – European conquest through the use of concepts such as ‘acculturation’. As Charles Orser Jr. stated, diffusionist perspectives thought of archaeology as an appropriate tool to help history. In this way, numerous researchers accounted for things recovered in archaeological sites and did not propose larger discussions. It was characteristic of diffusionism to present exhaustive descriptions of artifacts and structures found in excavations. This was considered the only way to insert archaeological sites within previously defined culturehistory sequences. In the 1980s, investigations in historical archaeology turned to use different processualist models, such as Stanley South’s ‘pattern recognition’, Susan Spencer Wood’s ‘consumer choice’, or Pam Cressey and John Stephens’ ‘city-site’ approaches. On the other hand, post-processualist ideas became popular in the late 1990s – for instance, Mark Leone, Randall McGuire, and Robert Paynter’s neomarxist models, or Ann Yentsch’s proposals for the analysis of gender. There are some historical archaeologists who, despite taking into account world theoretical contributions, prefer to generate their own conceptual frameworks to deal with the conformation of local societies. In this respect, it is relevant to distinguish the efforts made by some South American researchers, such as Pedro Funari, Tania Andrade Lima, Marcos

Table 1 Development of main theoretical frameworks in South American historical archaeology Time span

Theoretical framework

Place of birth

Main idea

Some other features

1970. . .

Diffusionism

Europe

Diffusion centers

1980. . .

Processualism

USA

1990. . .

Postprocessualism

Although its origins might be found in England, historical archaeology in South America uses North American authors as references for this theoretical framework

Universal laws of behavior. One and only real past Individual actions. Multiple and subjective pasts

Diffusionism is associated with the process of European colonization (acculturation) and its justification Processualism keeps on looking for universal patterns of behavior (now inside European society) In most cases, postprocessualism has been aimed to propose critical analysis of difference and exploitation inside first world societies

It is necessary to make it clear that marks next to dates indicate coexistence of different theoretical currents along time. Nowadays, although investigations in historical archaeology generally adhere to a normative and traditional conception of archaeology, the three conceptual frameworks presented in this table coexist at the same time.

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Abuquerque, Veleda Lucena, Luis Symanski, Marı´a Ximena Senatore, Carmen Curbelo, Marcos Torres de Souza, Andre´s Zarankin, and Monika Therrien.

Subjects of Investigation South American historical archaeology has traditionally focused on several subjects of investigation, which emerged bound to different theoretical frameworks. Nowadays, historical archaeology shows a heterogeneous production, ranging from investigations interested in studying Europeans’ settlement strategies to projects involved in analyzing today’s garbage. In this section, we present an overview of South American investigations in historical archaeology, bearing in mind that most part of these studies have been conducted by Argentinean, Brazilian, and Uruguayan archaeologists. South American Colonial Archaeology

Historical archaeology has already proved its potential for the study of European settlement in America. From different perspectives and in several geographical locations, historical archaeology has been able to shed light on social, economic, ideological, and ecological aspects of the process of colonization. Archaeological analyses on the subject have usually focused on Hispanic urbanization, daily life in religious missions, colonial enclaves, and the relationships between Europeans and native populations. Urban centers The origins of historical archaeology in the American continent were associated to the study of valuable historical sites, often related to European colonization. As a consequence, first investigations on the subject – usually directed by historians, architects, and amateurs – were oriented towards the analysis of city foundations (see Urban Archaeology). In Argentina, there have been relevant antecedents of these investigations since the 1970s. Among them, it is important to take note of the archaeological project developed by Agustı´n Zapata Golla´n in the Spanish city of Santa Fe la Vieja (1573–1660). Although Zapata Golla´n was not an archaeologist, his work was pioneering and might be taken as the starting point of colonial historical archaeology in Argentina. Zapata Golla´n used archaeology as a methodology to validate historical data regarding location and identification of Santa Fe. His investigations on different aspects of the city’s daily life were published one year after his death. Many archaeological remains were recovered in excavations conducted by Zapata Golla´n. These artefacts represent the material base of the site and have been the object of several partial studies over a period of time. Particularly, Carlos Cerruti studied the origin

and characteristics of Santa Fe’s wine containers in order to become acquainted with regional production and internal channels of communication during the colonial period. Additionally, he studied the characteristics of Hispanic–aboriginal contact, taking into account the analysis of archaeological polychrome pottery. After Cerruti, other archaeological projects were conducted by Marı´a Teresa Carrara, Ne´lida de Grandis, Andre´s Zarankin, and Marı´a Ximena Senatore. Another archaeological site which was intensively excavated is Las Ruinas del Km75, usually associated with the old city of Concepcio´n del Bermejo (1585– 1632). As in the case of Santa Fe la Vieja, first works on the site were conducted by nonarchaeologists – mainly, Eldo Morresi – who started systematic investigations in the late 1960s. Buenos Aires has become a subject of intense investigations. Since the 1980s, architect Daniel Scha´velzon has excavated different areas of the city. He has published several works, describing and classifying archaeological remains, as well as discussing Buenos Aires’ past cultural life. Besides Scha´velzon, other archaeologists studied specific problems of investigation in the city, such as fauna (Mario Silveira), industry (Marcelo Weissel), architecture (Andre´s Zarankin), and pottery (Marı´a Ximena Senatore). At the present time Marı´a Ximena Senatore is analyzing different urban projects intended to integrate Patagonia with Spanish domains. Her project focuses on a comparison between European and aboriginal strategies for the use of space and contact. Her case studies are the eighteenth-century village of Floridablanca in San Julia´n, Santa Cruz, and the sixteenthcentury settlement of Nombre de Jesu´s in Cabo Vı´rgenes, Santa Cruz (Figure 1). In Brazil, several Portuguese colonial cities – which still remain inhabited – have developed their own

Figure 1 Archaeological excavations at Floridablanca (eighteenth century, Patagonia).

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archaeological projects. Among them, it is possible to take note of Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, San Pablo, Recife, and Porto Alegre. For instance, Salvador – capital of the state of Bahia and first capital of Brazil – has been object of many excavations headed by Carlos Etchevarne. His investigations have been mainly interested in analyzing Bahia’s history from a material point of view. Other cities, which, due to their accelerated growth, have developed remarkable archaeological programs, are San Pablo and Porto Alegre. In San Pablo, the work of Margarida Andreatta has been prominent since 1980, when she started to conduct several rescue excavations in different areas of the city. In the case of Porto Alegre, Fernanda Tocchetto has run an interesting study on the transformations of local society, focusing on consumer choice, discard patterns, urban growth, and pottery typologies, among other subjects. Uruguay has been a pioneer in colonial urban studies. Since the 1980s, two different cities have been studied in detail; Colonia del Sacramento and Montevideo. In the case of Colonia, Nelsys Fusco has analyzed the succession of Portuguese and Spanish occupations, supplying information about the history of the city and broadening the importance of cultural tourism in the area. On the other hand, Carmen Curbelo has developed her investigations and rescue works in Montevideo and Punta del Este. In Chile, despite Omar Ortiz Troncoso and Mauricio Massone’s early investigations in colonial sites like Rey Don Felipe, studies in the field have been sporadic. It was only in the 1990s that new systematic projects, generally associated rescue archaeology (such as the widening of Santiago’s subway service or the excavations at the cemetery of Pampilla), took place. There are other case studies of colonial cities in South America. For instance, it is important to consider the investigations of Monika Therrien in Bogota´, Carlos Lo´pez and Marta Cano Echeverri in Pereira (Colombia), Ross Jamieson in Cuenca (Ecuador), and Jose´ Marı´a Cruxent in Cubagua (the most ancient colonial city of Venezuela). Jesuitical missions Investigations on Jesuitical missions (particularly, in the area surrounding the limits of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil) date back to exploratory trips headed by Argentinean researcher Juan Bautista Ambrosetti in the early years of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, in spite of their magnificence and importance, missions were not considered by archaeological projects until the 1980s. At that time, Beatriz Rovira conducted her PhD project applying analytical models proposed by Stanley South and Bernard Fontana to the study of

Jesuitical villages. She focused her work on Nuestra Sen˜ora de la Candelaria Mission. Her goal was to study the expansion of European societies over guarani populations. As a conclusion, she proposed the existence of a ‘village despotic or communitarian despotic’ mode of production in the missions during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the 1980s, Brazil developed new archaeological projects in Jesuitical villages. In this way, Arno Kern offered an overview of the historical, ethnographical, and cultural nature of guarani groups who lived in reductions. At the present time several archaeologists are working in the missions, taking part in restoration activities or ethno-archaeological investigations. Colonial Archaeology: Other Subjects

Archaeology of ethnicity Since the expansion of post-processual theoretical frameworks, the discipline started to discuss the role of social minorities in history. We refer to ethnic, age, and gender groups who were not considered by official narratives. In this context, the analysis of African American populations became relevant in South American historical archaeology. Without the shadow of a doubt, the most important project developed on the subject was the study of Palmares’ Quilombo (Alagoas, Brazil), which constituted a long-lasting example of slave resistance in the American continent. This project was directed by Pedro Funari, Charles Orser, Jr., and Michael Rowlands during the 1990s. The results obtained by these professionals allowed them to discuss new problems in South American Historical Archaeology, such as identity, material culture (understood as an active element in the construction and negotiation of identities), public archaeology, and social use of the past. Camila Agostini was one of the first archaeologists to study African pipe collections excavated in the region of Vassouras (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), as well as the permanence of African cultural traditions in present Brazilian society. Another researcher interested in studying African American groups – in this case, in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina – was architect Daniel Scha´velzon. In his book Buenos Aires Negra, he analyzed Buenos Aires’ archaeological collections in order to distinguish a characteristic African ‘type’ of artifacts. He also took note of the importance of African American ethnic groups – nowadays, almost invisible – in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Buenos Aires. On the other hand, Terrance Weik worked with the idea of ‘African diaspora’ in Latin America. In his opinion, archaeological research focused on maroon and slave societies has contributed to broaden the understanding of complex processes of cultural production.

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Interest in ethnicity does not exclusively refer to African American groups, but to diverse postcontact identities, including relationships between conquerors and conquered societies, usually analyzed by an ‘archaeology of contact’. In general, most studies conducted in colonial urban centers and religious missions consider these problems of investigation. Nevertheless, there are other projects which deal with contact at a regional level, such as Rafael Gon˜i’s studies in Neuque´n (Argentina), Alicia Tapia’s in la Pampa (Argentina), Franz Scaramelli and Kay Tarble’s in Orinoco (Venezuela), among many others. In recent years, some archaeologists adopted an ethno-historical perspective to analyze ethnic processes of integration and transformation. These investigations often use written documents as their most important source of evidence, considering material culture as a mere correlate of hypothesis generated by other media. Archaeology of mining sites Investigations in historical mining sites have traditionally discussed strategies of economic exploitation – including extractive techniques or site organization – and, on rare occasions, ideological and social aspects of workers’ daily life. Nowadays, archaeology of mining sites is attracting archaeologists’ attention more than ever. In Brazil, investigations on the subject have mainly focused on a series of structures known as ‘encanados’, which consist of stone alignments used during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries to divert water courses in search of gold. Some years ago, Marcos Torres de Souza developed an archaeological project to analyze the social construction of space in an urban mining center in Goia´s. At present, Carlos Magno Guimara˜es and the members of his team are studying several systems of mining exploitation in the area of Minas Gerais. Their objective is to discuss production and daily life in colonial mining communities. One of the first antecedents of mining archaeology in Argentina was Humberto Lagiglia’s work on colonial mineral exploitation in Mendoza. At present, Vı´ctor Durand is studying nineteenth-century mineral production in the same area. In the case of Chile, Bente Bittmann has headed the only archaeological study concerned with analyzing the nitrate plants which flourished throughout Atacama Desert from the late 1800s to the 1940s. Archaeology of wine production This subject was mainly taken into account by Prudente Rice in Peruvian sites. Wine cellars, kilns, and other structures were excavated to study wine production during Spanish colonial period. Some time before Rice’s investigations, another group of American archaeologists, including

Collin Beck, Eric Deeds, Shelia Pozorski, and Thomas Pozorsky studied traffic routes in the region. Archaeology of fortifications The colonial period might be characterized by the need to protect conquered territories from aboriginal or other European groups. As a consequence, thousands of fortifications were built along coastlines with the aim of protecting newly founded cities. Other forts, even though in lower proportions numerically, were established in the continent. Many of these structures were excavated, and some of them were restored to be used as tourist attractions. Marcos Albuquerque is probably the most prominent South American archaeologist in this field of study. Since the 1970s, this archaeologist and a group of collaborators have excavated several fortifications in the northeastern area of Brazil. Archaeology of materials In order to study a specific period or social group from an archaeological perspective, it is important to know and identify its cultural remains. Having this objective in mind, archaeologists created several typologies and classifications, which, in the case of colonial artifacts, took into account the information given by different kinds of written documents (from inventories to paintings or photographs). Until the end of the 1980s, Kathleen Deagan, John Goggin, and Robert Lister and Florence Lister’s works were used as the basic bibliography for the classification of archaeological materials in South America. After the development of several historical projects in the region, local classifications of archaeological remains were produced by different researches, such as Daniel Scha´velzon, Marcos Albuquerque, Fernanda Tocchetto, and Monika Therrien. On the other hand, hundreds of papers were published with the results of the analyses performed on specific types of materials – mainly glass, china, and metal (Figure 2). Archaeology of South American Modern Society

In this section, we discuss different problems of investigation regarding the construction of modern societies and national states in the area. Among them, we consider the expansion of country boundaries towards the end of the nineteenth century, the appearance and consolidation of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, industrial archaeology, twentiethcentury archaeology, and archaeology of repression. Since the 1990s, and generally under the postprocessualist umbrella, archaeology of ‘modern society’ has been one of the topics that has attracted more attention among researchers.

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Figure 2 Nineteenth-century whiteware recovered from archaeological excavations in Buenos Aires.

Figure 3 Archaeological excavations at ‘Club Atle´tico’ clandestine center of detention (Buenos Aires).

Archaeology of discourses, practices, and identities Without social identity there is no society. As a consequence, to understand modern society it becomes necessary to have an idea of the changes experienced in the use of objects and the construction of new identities – including ethnicity, status, gender, and age – in different times and spaces. These transformations express new hierarchies and power relationships. Interest in material culture and identity forces archaeologists to develop investigations concerned with discussing the singularities of local contexts within the process of capitalist expansion. It also makes it possible to deconstruct macro-identities generated by hegemonic discourses, meaning white occidental discourses, rescuing the multiple identities on which modern South American society was built and still works. One of the most outstanding studies within this theoretical framework is currently conducted by Tania Andrade Lima. This archaeologist analyzed the conformation of bourgeoisie and gender relationships during nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro, as well as food consumption, hygiene, and mortuary practices. Other investigations which deserve to be mentioned are conducted by Fernanda Tocchetto, who studies Porto Alegre’s society; Claudia Plens, who takes into account the organization of space in San Pablo’s nineteenth-century workers’ villages; Monika Therrien, who considers the structuring of consume in Bogota´; Andre´s Zarankin, who analyzes transformations in domestic and scholar architecture in Buenos Aires; and Melisa Salerno, who discusses the diversity of dress practices in modern society.

researchers is the expansion of national states’ internal boundaries during the second half of the nineteenth century. In Argentina, several forts have been excavated with the aim of understanding conquer strategies over aboriginal populations and their territories, as well as ethnic relationships between aboriginals and white groups. For instance, we can mention Rafael Gon˜i’s investigations in Fuerte Blancagrande (Buenos Aires) and Facundo Go´mez Romero’s in Fortı´n Min˜ana (Buenos Aires).

Archaeology of the expansion of national boundaries Another subject which is gaining importance among

Archaeology of repression Archaeology in South America has proved its political commitment with human rights causes. Particularly, it has supplied tools for the study and elucidation of dictatorships’ consequences in the region. The Equipo Argentino de Antropologı´a Foresense (EAAF) gives us a clear example. Excavating common graves in cemeteries and army bases (not only in Argentina, but also in several countries of the continent) it was able to shed light on the killing of thousands of people during military regimes, giving back the remains to their families. At present, different archaeological projects are excavating clandestine centers of detention (Figures 3 and 4). With that aim, they seek to construct a ‘material memory’ of genocide, analyze repressive strategies expressed in spatial organization, and study unnoticed practices of resistance. Underwater archaeology It is worth noting the development of underwater archaeology (with a historical orientation) in South America. It was not until the 1990s that this field became a serious part of archaeology in some South American countries. Today, two particular projects stand out for their capacity and work. They are directed by Dolores

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Figure 4 Picture painted by survivors at an archaeologically excavated clandestine center of detention.

Elkin (Argentina) and Gilson Rambelli (Brazil). These researchers and their collaborators have excavated dozens of shipwrecks from different time periods, offering valuable information on consumption, goods transport, ships’ traffic, and sailors’ daily life.

Funari P and Zarankin A (eds.) (2004) Arqueologı´a Histo´rica en Ame´rica del Sur: los desafı´os del siglo XXI. Bogota: Uniandes. Funari P, Zarankin A and Stovel E (eds.) (2005) Global Archaeological Theory: Contextual Voices and Contemporary Thoughts. New York: Kluwer/Plenum. Funari P and Zarankin A (eds.) (2006) Arqueologı´a de la Represio´n y la Resistencia en Ame´rica Latina en la Era de las Dictaduras (De´cadas de 1960–1980). Co´rdoba: Brujas. Scha´velzon D (2000) The Historical Archaeology of Buenos Aires: A City at the End of the World. New York: Kluwer. Tocchetto F, Oliveira A, Cappelletti A, Symanski L, and Ozo´rio S (2001) A Faianc¸a Fina em Porto Alegre: Vestı´gios Arqueolo´gicos de uma Cidade. Porto Alegre: Unidade/SMC. Zanettini P (2002) Arqueologia e Reconstituic¸a˜o Monumental do Parque Estadual de Canudos. Salvador: Centro Euclydes da Cunha. Zarankin A and Senatore M (eds.) (2002) Arqueologia da Sociedade Moderna na Ame´rica do Sul. Buenos Aires: Del Tridente.

Inca Archaeology Michael A Malpass, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Conclusion Nowadays, South American historical archaeology is fully integrated with the investigation agenda of the region. As a matter of fact, almost every meeting in archaeology offers the opportunity to attend a symposium on historical archaeology. On the other hand, historical production has been intensified and archaeologists have been able to spread their investigations out from the continent. In spite of these achievements, South American historical archaeology is still searching for its own identity. Particularly, it is trying to transform itself into a tool of social change, which might be able to construct a critical history of the exploitation and poverty of the region. See also: Americas, Central: Historical Archaeology in Mexico; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline; Methods; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Urban Archaeology.

Further Reading Albuquerque M and Lucena V (1988) Forte Real do Bom Jesu´s: Resgate Arqueologico de um Sitio Histo´rico. Recife: CEPE. Andrade Lima T (1993) Arqueologia Histo´rica no Brasil: Balanc¸o Bibliogra´fico (1960–1991). Anais do Museu Paulista: Histo´ria e Cultura Material, Nova Serie 1: 225–262. Funari P (1997) Archaeology, history and historical archaeology in South America. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 1: 137–148.

Glossary Acllacunas Conquered women who worked full time for the Incas doing a variety of domestic and/or religious activities. Ayllu The basic political unit of pre-Inca and Inca life, these were essentially extended family groups but they could adopt non-related members, giving individual families more variation and security of the land that they farmed. Chasquis (or chaskis) Message carriers who relayed information from anywhere in the Incan empire. Huaca A sacred place in the landscape. M’ita Obligatory labor service owed the Incas by their conquered people. Mitima A person separated from her/his place of birth, typically a colonist moved by the Incas for economic or political reasons. Panaca A corporate group consisting of a dead king, his wives and descendants, exept for the son who succeeded him as king. Quipu (or khipu) Recording devices used in the Inca Empire and its predecessor societies in the Andean region. A quipu usually consists of colored spun and plied thread from llama or alpaca hair or cotton cords with numeric and other values encoded by knots in a base 10 positional system.

Introduction Environments

The Incas were the last and greatest civilization to exist in South America before the arrival of European conquerors in the sixteenth century. They both drew on institutions of the existing cultures that they conquered and developed their own unique practices

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that allowed them to create the most extensive empire in the New World. Their rule extended from the modern border between Ecuador and Colombia to south central Chile, including large segments of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, northwest Argentina, and Chile (see Figure 1). To appreciate the Inca achievement in conquering this vast area, one has to note that western South America includes many distinct environments, from coastal deserts to tropical forests. These environments can be grouped into three major types, highland, arid coast, and tropical forest. The highland is a broad term for the regions that lie above 1000 m. For much of central Peru, the heartland of the Inca empire, the Andes mountains run in north–south trending chains, with deep valleys separating the high peaks of the chains. Altitudinal variation can be extreme, with the bottoms of the valleys lying at altitudes of around 1500 m while the adjacent peaks are well above 6500 m. Rainfall occurs during the southern hemisphere summer, between October and May though the number of months and quantity of rain is variable from north to south. During the austral winter, skies are sunny, but night temperatures may drop below zero, especially in the higher altitudes. Because of the proximity of the area to the equator, day temperatures can still reach relatively high levels, making the daily temperature variation in the winter quite high. One distinctive part of the highland zone is the region known as the Altiplano, a high, flat region that lies in southern Peru and northern Bolivia, centered on Lake Titicaca. This entire region lies near or above 4000 m, so is above the tree line, making it a vast grassland. The region is near the limits of plant agriculture, but it is ideal for the herding of ‘camelids’, llamas and alpacas. The arid coast extends along the western margin of South America from the Peru–Ecuador border to south central Chile, and from sea level to roughly an altitude of 1000 m. This zone is wide in far northern Peru, narrows considerably through central Peru, and then broadens out again in southern Peru and northern Chile. The Atacama Desert in the latter region is the world’s driest, with less than 10 mm of precipitation falling yearly. Cutting across this arid region is a series of rivers that have their sources in the western cordillera of the Andes. In central Peru, these rivers are approximately 25–30 km apart, but the intervalley distance widens in both far northern Peru and in Chile. The rivers are also much more deeply incised in southern Peru and Chile, restricting agriculture to a narrow strip on either side of the rivers. Rainfall does not typically fall in the arid coastal zone. During the winter, fogs come in over the coast

from the ocean, blanketing the region below 800 m. During the summer, the warmer coast causes the cool onshore moisture to rise against the western slopes of the Andes. Because rain originates in eastern South America, the Andes catch most of the rain before it can reach the western coast, which also contributes to the latter’s aridity. The third environmental zone is the tropical rainforest. This region extends along the eastern flanks of the Andes from Ecuador to Bolivia. The rainforest proper lies below 300 m in altitude, but the zone that extends upward from that altitude to around 1500 m is called ‘montan˜a’, a thickly forested region. High year-round temperatures and summer rainfall make this region one with very high biological diversity. People

The societies that occupied these three environments were as varied as the environments. There were simple fishing communities in the Lake Titicaca area of southern Peru, and powerful state-level societies such as the Chimu of the north coast of Peru. These represent the extremes, and in most areas, both the early Spanish documents and archaeological work done indicate that societies were organized into groups of villages under the control of a powerful chief or chiefs. Some of these could be quite large, such as the Colla and Lupaca of the Altiplano, while most were considerably smaller. Coastal communities of northern and central Peru appear to have been at the higher end of the complexity scale during the period just prior to Inca expansion. As noted above, the Chimu was an empire that stretched from northern Peru to the central coast, near modern Lima. On the central coast, the Chincha society developed a hierarchical organization that was based on highly specialized occupations. In contrast, the societies of southern Peru and Chile were small and lacked significant political integration. Chronology

The period of Inca expansion occurred just prior to the appearance of Spanish explorers along the western coast. The generally stated dates for the empire are from CE 1428–1532. These dates are from the Inca king list that was recorded by Spanish officials after their conquest of the Incas. They represent a best guess at the beginning of Inca expansion, as the Incas did not keep track of a person’s age. Archaeological work in recent decades suggests the conquests began earlier than this, but perhaps decades, not centuries, earlier. All evidence points to a relatively rapid expansion.

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In the most commonly used central Andean chronological scheme, the period of Inca expansion is called the Late Horizon. A horizon is a period when a large area displays evidence of a common influence, be it a religion or conquest. The Late Horizon succeeds the Late Intermediate Period, the time when there was regional development of local polities but little large-scale integration. This period dates between CE 1000–1428.

Sources on the Inca Ethnohistory

No pre-Hispanic culture in South America, including the Incas, developed a writing system, so there are no indigenous records of what life was like prior to the arrival of Europeans. When the Spaniards arrived along the coast of South America in CE 1532, the Inca empire was at its largest extent, though in the throes of a civil war between two half-brothers (see below). During and after their conquest of the Incas, Spanish officials and priests began to record information about the Incas, both through observations and interviews with surviving Inca individuals. The important point about this is that the history that was recorded was the Inca version, and that of the dominant faction of the Incas. There are relatively few documents that deal with non-Incas, although as time wore on, litigation brought by non-Incas began to show up in court records. In addition, there are some chronicles that discuss what life was like before the Incas came. Still, what we know from these early Spanish documents is one version, and one that was an oral tradition as well. When Inca society is described below, it is well that the reader remembers that this is a skewed view; if a history had been written by a conquered people, or a member of the lower social groups, it might have looked very different (see Americas, South: Inca Ethnohistory). Another drawback to using ethnohistorical documents is the limitations of the writers. Spanish officials were writing about a culture that was very foreign to them, and they described it in terms that they understood from their own experiences. They also chose to write about those aspects of the Inca society that were important to them, like economic activities, politics, and religion. Daily life and material culture were less important. Spanish writers could also be opinionated, and take the sides of certain factions of the Inca, a point noted by recent authors on the Incas. Still, these documents provide a wealth of information that is not available about the earlier cultures, despite the cautions needed in taking them as the truth. D’Altroy provides a useful guide to the best of the sources on the Inca.

Archaeology

A complementary source of information on the Incas is the archaeological record. Archaeology can provide information about those aspects of culture that ethnohistorians neglect. What kinds of tools, houses, settlements, items of personal adornment that cultures used are the principal data of archaeology. Less accessible are things like religious beliefs, social structure, marriage patterns, and language. As is evident in other articles in this encyclopedia, the archaeological record has its own drawbacks, the most obvious being that the understanding we gain from it about past cultures is fundamentally one of interpretation. Scholars can look at the same evidence and come to different conclusions. Much of this is due to the incompleteness of the record, but some is also due to the viewpoint of the archaeologist. Archaeology provides a good test of the ethnohistorical record. The book entitled Provincial Inca. Ethnohistorical and Archaeological Assessment of the Impact of the Inca State provides several case studies of how the two sources of information used together provide a better understanding of the nature of the Inca impact on its vassal polities than either source individually.

Historical Overview of the Inca Expansion Early Inca History

Most early Spanish chroniclers agree that the Inca expansion occurred during the reigns of three Inca kings: Pachakuti Inca Yupanki, Thupa Inca Yupanki, and Wayna Qhapaq, kings 9, 10, and 11 on the conventional king list. (Inca names are spelled using Quechua orthography, while other terms use more traditional Spanish orthography.) It is with the reign of Pachakuti, designated as occurring around CE 1428, that the empire is said to begin. Their exploits will be recounted later. What is much less certain is what happened prior to this time, and in fact what the origins of the Inca as a distinct political and ethnic entity were. Inca oral traditions state that the Incas were founded by the first king, Manqo Qhapaq, who emerged from a cave in the town of Pacariqtambo along with his three brothers and their wives, who, in some accounts, were also sisters. They traveled north to find a place to settle along with other people who came out of adjacent caves. When a golden rod was flung into the air and embedded itself deep in the ground, the Incas knew they had found their new home. They proceeded to displace the inhabitants of the region, and set up their capital of Cuzco. The history of the next seven kings is one of local affairs,

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often mentioning conflicts with groups nearby. Contradictory reports in different chroniclers’ accounts indicate that the actual triumphs and defeats that occurred for these early Incas may never be known. It is precisely at this point that archaeology becomes useful. Two major pottery styles, Imperial Inca and Killke, or pre-Inca, are associated with sites in the Cuzco region. The former was associated with the last four Inca kings, beginning with Pachakuti. The Killke was said to date earlier, though it was only later after radiocarbon dating was invented that the dates of approximately CE 1000 for this style were assigned. The general idea was that the Killke style was associated with the first eight kings, and the imperial style with the later kings. Archaeological research by Brian Bauer and Alan Covey in the Cuzco Valley and regions to the north and south has advanced our understanding of early Inca political history beyond the Spanish documents. In the Cuzco valley during the Late Intermediate Period, there are a few much larger settlements among the smaller ones, indicating a developed political landscape. In addition, the sites in the vicinity of Cuzco are located on low hills or in the valley itself, suggesting little concern for defense. Outside the Cuzco Valley, Bauer and Covey’s work indicates that some regions, like Paruro, south of Cuzco, were incorporated early, without any evidence of conflict. Sites are not located in defensible positions, nor is there evidence of a marked change from pre-Inca to Inca times. Other areas, like the region of the Quilliscaches to the northwest, apparently fought the Incas until they were subjugated. Here, fortified sites are located on high ridge tops for defense. Taken together, the archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence argues for an earlier political development of the Killke people around Cuzco. The conclusion of these researchers is that the Incas used different strategies of coercion, alliance building, and marriage exchange to consolidate the region around Cuzco before they began their imperial expansion outwards. The lessons they learned set the stage for the imperial expansions of the fifteenth, or perhaps late fourteenth, century. The Inca Expansion

Most sources on the Incas suggest that a critical battle fought at the capital of Cuzco between the Incas and their powerful neighbors from the west, the Chanka, was the critical point that set the Incas on the road to expansion. In this battle, Wiraqocha Inca and other lords had abandoned Cuzco in the face of the Chanka approach, and it was the prince Inca Yupanki who rallied support to drive the Chankas away. After the

battle, Inca Yupanki took the political power from his father and also the new name Pachakuti Inca Yupanki. Upon securing the throne, Pachakuti traveled south to secure the lands around Lake Titicaca, no doubt to prevent an attack from the powerful groups who lived there. Some sources suggest alliances with the groups in this region were already made by Wiraqocha Inca, in which case, it is possible that Pachakuti formalized the alliances. Others state that Pachakuti conquered them. He then conquered other groups farther south and east, before returning to Cuzco. Subsequently, Pachakuti and his generals conquered north along the spine of the Andes, bringing the agricultural core of the central Andes into the empire. Sometime during this period, the mighty Chimu were defeated, and much of the central and north coasts were brought into the empire. At some point the chroniclers state that he turned the armies’ controls over to his designated heir, Thupa Inca, and returned to reorganize the capital of Cuzco. Upon his father’s death, Thupa Inca assumed the ‘fringe’ (a tassel worn on the forehead as symbol of the kingship) around CE 1470, and continued the expansion north with his generals into Ecuador, founding a second capital at Tumipampa. Around the time of his father’s death, Thupa began a series of expeditions into the eastern lowlands that generally were unsuccessful, due to the inhabitants’ habits of not facing the Inca armies head on, but by fighting and fleeing into the jungle. During one of these, the Altiplano groups staged a major rebellion, which brought Thupa Inca out of the jungle to face the threat. Over a series of campaigns and many years, the Qolla and Lupaka were defeated. Thupa then continued the conquests southward, annexing much of southeastern Bolivia and northwestern Argentina, then crossing over the Andes into Chile. The southward expansion stopped at the Maule River, either due to Thupa Inca’s desire to return to Cuzco after several years’ absence or sufficient resistance from groups south of the river. Much of the central and northern parts of Chile were conquered on the trip north, either by Thupa himself or his generals. Whether the far south coast of Peru and far northwestern Chile fell at this time or some other is not certain. There are relatively few ethnohistorical documents that deal with this region, and the archaeology is likewise sparse. Sometime during the final decade of the fifteenth century, Thupa Inca died and his heir, Wayna Qhapaq, succeeded him. This eleventh king spent most of his rule in the northern provinces, first subduing the fiercely resistant Chachapoyas of the northern Peruvian montan˜a, and then fighting the groups

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of central and northern Ecuador. It took him decades to move the northern border to its final location near modern Colombia. Sometime around CE 1528, he contracted a virulent disease, probably an introduced European one that had moved down into South America from Mexico, and died, along with his designated heir. This set up a war of succession between two rivals to the fringe, to be discussed in the final section. Basic military gear consisted of spears, spear throwers, shields, slings, and war clubs. Bows and arrows, while known, were apparently not used in most instances. Andean warfare was mainly fought by hand-to-hand combat, so the group with the largest army was likely to emerge victorious. After a certain time, the Inca almost certainly could field a very large number of warriors, enough to tip the scale in their favor. They also had a series of excellent generals to lead their armies, and the chronicles are full of the stories of how these generals won battles through skillful strategies, trickery, and other means. The Inca also practiced a carrot-and-stick approach to conquest. They would send emissaries into regions to be annexed, offering the terms of subjugation. The local groups could either submit or be conquered, and it is apparent that in some circumstances, diplomacy won the day. The other factor that allowed the Incas to achieve their imperial success was their effective administrative system. It is one thing to conquer a large and powerful political enemy; it is quite another to keep that enemy subjugated and doing the activities you demand of them. The system to be described below, whose development is attributed to Pachakuti Inka, apparently was largely successful in this goal, though rebellions and resistance were frequent.

The Incas of the Early Sixteenth Century The following sections are a composite reconstruction of the way the Inca empire existed at its height. Due to the large amount of archaeological work done on Inca occupations in their provinces, variation in Inca practices can be identified. It is now clear that the monolithic view of the Inca as having a one-sizefits-all imperial rule is incorrect. The Incas tailored their ideal model of statecraft to the particular circumstances of individual conquered ethnicities. Still, discussing the model as it has been generated from the ethnohistorical records is useful as a starting point. Social Structure

The basic unit of Inca society and most others that they conquered was the household. This was a residential unit that lived together, and typically consisted of a

nuclear family and unmarried adults. Households belonged to ‘ayllus’, groups of families that shared a common ancestor and place of origin, and often shared labor in subsistence activities. Ayllus were typically grouped into two parts, in Quechua, the language of the Incas, called ‘hanan’ (upper) and ‘hurin’ (lower). These divisions were largely for ritual purposes, though they also allowed larger groups within a community to participate and divide labor equitably, such as to clean out an irrigation canal or reservoir. For the Incas of the Cuzco region, social structure and status were based on the relationship to the founding kings. Each king founded a new ayllu that included the king, his wives, and their children, then subsequently, all their children’s children, etc. The former king’s ayllu became a panaca, a kind of corporate group charged with taking care of the king’s mummy and all his estates and possessions. This occurred because the kings were semi-divine, so required their material goods even after death. The ten royal panaca, each with its king’s mummy, were the highest elite in Inca society. Below the ten royal panaca were ten non-royal ayllus, which were said by some chroniclers to be the descendants of the people who accompanied Manqo Qhapaq from Pacariqtambo to Cuzco. They enjoyed the status of being elites in Inca society, which allowed them certain privileges not available to commoners. A final elite group in Inca society consisted of the Incas by Privilege. These were ayllus of ethnic groups who lived in the vicinity of Cuzco, and had been drawn into the Incas’ sphere of influence early on. They were treated as Inca nobility, and were therefore able to serve in specific posts in the empire, which is one possible reason for their elevation to Inca status (see below). Below the Inca elites were a level of conquered leaders, called ‘curacas’, who served posts in the Inca political hierarchy. They had duties that were related to the numbers of households under their command, but the more powerful ones had a status that could rank nearly as high as an Inca by Privilege. They could own land, have servants and wear particular kinds of high status clothing. Finally, at the bottom of the social hierarchy were the commoners, the great mass of conquered people with no political leadership positions. Political Structure

The Incas called their empire Tawantinsuyu, the Four Parts Together. The empire was divided into four parts, Chinchaysuyu, the northern part, Collasuyu, the southern part, and Antisuyu and Cuntisuyu, the eastern and western parts, respectively (Figure 1). As can be seen, the parts were highly unequal, both in terms of geographic area and population. The capital

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Figure 1 Map of Inca empire at its greatest extent, with four divisions (suyus) included.

was Cuzco, the navel of the universe, located at the intersection of the four parts. Within each suyu, there was a series of provinces, each corresponding roughly to the territory of a conquered group. However, the Inca used a decimal system of administration, and each province was supposed to have either 20 000 or 30 000 households. If a conquered ethnicity had that number, they could form a single province. If it were smaller, it might be lumped with other small ethnicities to make a province; if it were larger, it could be broken into more than one province. Administratively, the political hierarchy was also organized in decimal units. At the top was the king, the ruler of the entire empire. Below him were four ‘apos’, or suyu heads. Each province had a governor, or ‘tocricoq’. Below the governor were heads of different decimal units of households, in descending order of

10 000, 5000, 1000, 500, 100, 50, and 10. These were the curacas mentioned in the previous section. It is in the administrative hierarchy that the Incas combined social and political aspects. The curacas were hereditary leaders who served as the decimal official for the appropriate sized number of households that he had ruled before the Inca conquest, if possible. The most able son of a curaca followed his father in that role. However, this only applied to the curacas; the apos were typically close relatives of the king, brothers or uncles, and this was the one position that was not hereditary. Because the intrigues surrounding the designation of a new heir were considerable, the king needed apos who he knew he could trust. Since the descendants of previous kings’ apos might be in opposing factions, this position had to be one made by appointment. Governors were typically of the Inca class and were appointed at first, but then the position became hereditary. The large number of political officials that were required by this administrative system suggest the reason for the inclusion of local leaders: there simply were not enough capable members of the Inca elite to fill all the positions. With approximately 80 provinces in the empire, this would have meant thousands of individuals were needed. This might also indicate a rationale for the Inca by Privilege group, to help fill the higher levels of the bureaucracy with loyal members of the Inca elite. The inclusion of local lords was also an effective means to rule, because it meant a local, familiar leader would be in charge of fulfilling the responsibilities of the empire. Local leaders were required to learn Quechua, and their sons, who would inherit their positions, were taken to Cuzco for training in imperial policies, including Quechua, quipu use (see below) and other duties. When their fathers died, the Incas returned new leaders who had better experience and skills to do the empire’s bidding. Economic Structure

D’Altroy and Earle discuss two kinds of finance systems that were employed by the Incas, staple finance and wealth finance. The former involves the production of food and basic services that allow the empire to maintain itself. The latter refers to special kinds of goods, luxury items mostly, that are restricted to the elite segments of society. Understanding the different ways these two financial systems operated is a key to comprehending the Incas’ success at empire building. Upon the conquest of a group, the land was divided into three parts, one for the use of the state, one for the Inca religion and one remained for the use of the local population. Camelid herds were divided

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similarly. It is likely that in many cases this policy was implemented slowly, by using the local population to increase productivity through the construction of new fields and irrigation systems. One part of the conquered people’s responsibility to the Incas was to work the fields of the state and religion first, assuring that the productivity required by the empire was fulfilled. Collectively, this staple finance production is often called an agricultural tax on the conquered people, though it could also be called tribute. Another part of the responsibility owed to the Incas was labor, an obligatory amount that was called ‘m’ita’. Every household owed the Incas m’ita every year: this was always done in rotation, and directed through the local curaca. What the person did depended on the needs of the empire and the skills of the individual. Much m’ita was fulfilled by simply delivering food from its point of origin to an Inca administrative center. Many men served their m’ita in the army, and it was this system that allowed the Incas to field the large military that achieved success in warfare. Other jobs included construction worker, wood collector, potter, toolmaker as well as many other occupations. All households were required to provide one piece of clothing to the empire as well. This cloth was used by the army and other state officials. An important feature of m’ita was that a person simply showed up to do the required work. All the necessary materials and tools were provided by the state, and food and drink were provided as well. Thus, no one was required to provide anything of her/his own. When one’s rotation of work was done, one returned home and was replaced by someone else. While much work was locally done, other activities, such as warfare, might require a person to be gone for long periods. To reduce the negative effect this might have on agricultural productivity, other community members were required to do the fieldwork of m’ita laborers. All of the above refers to the staple finance of the empire. Wealth finance was conducted in a different way. Luxury items, such as jewelry, fine cloth, high quality pottery, and gold and silver objects, were produced in workshops controlled by the Incas. Many of these were in Inca administrative centers, built along the Inca highway as service centers for the empire. The best craftspeople were taken to Cuzco to work directly for the Inca elite of the capital. Regarding craft production, most crafts were produced either in the households of conquered people, or in the administrative centers. There were some specialized communities where everyone worked in one craft, such as the weaving center at Milliraya northwest of Lake Titicaca. Crafts were generally

standardized, both in forms and decorations. Cloth was the most important craft, and three different qualities were made. Decorations included geometric designs, and checkerboard patterns on the finest grade. Pottery had several basic forms, among them the ‘aryballos’, or storage vessel; plates with duck heads and tails, for eating; and beakers for drinking. Designs were largely geometric, as with the textiles, including diamonds and triangles, the fern or feather motif, and bands of decoration separated by large open zones of color. Silver and gold metallurgy was mostly for jewelry and eating utensils, such as plates and cups. Small silver and gold llama figurines were often included in important burials (see below). Copper and bronze were also used, the latter for tools. All of this economic activity generated enormous amounts of information. In the absence of a writing system, the Incas used a device known as a ‘quipu’ to maintain their records. A quipu is a system of knotted strings that hang from a central cord. The location of the knots, the number of knots and the color of the string all provided information about what was being tracked and where it was from. Special individuals, called ‘quipu camayoqs’, were in charge of this important activity. Special Categories of People

Both staple and wealth finance required the development of specialized groups of individuals by the state, groups who were full-time workers, not m’ita laborers. The quipu camayoqs were one of these groups. ‘Yanacuna’ were a special group of individuals who were attendants to the Inca elite. These people were not just servants, but could be given positions of responsibility as well. They were recruited from the ranks of conquered people, though using what criteria is unknown. A particularly rebellious group, the Chachapoyas of northern Peru, were often used as yanacunas by the Incas, suggesting it was a way of breaking down ethnic loyalty. A group of women were selected from among conquered peoples at a young age to serve as ‘acllacuna’. The women did a variety of tasks for the Incas, including food and beer preparation, spinning and weaving of fine cloth and even entertainment. They were schooled in special sectors of administrative centers, and also functioned in religious activities. Acllacuna could also be given as wives to officials as rewards for service well done. A final special group of workers for the Inca state was the ‘mitimaes’. These were people living away from their place of birth. The Inca moved groups around their empire, both for economic and political reasons. If a region was underutilized for food

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production, mitimaes might be brought in to increase it. Villages that were rebellious could be moved across the empire to separate them from their ancestral homes, religious places and neighbors. Such mitimaes would also serve economic purposes, generally agricultural work. Mitimaes were not required to do m’ita labor. Inca Infrastructure

A successful empire must facilitate communications and logistical support for its armies and outposts, and provisions for all its subjects. This requires both food and material to be provided along the main lines of travel. As the empire expanded, the staple and wealth finance systems had to be planned and developed. Like the Romans and other Old World civilizations, the Incas created a large road system, which at its height included over 40 000 km of marked roadway. The road system actually consisted of two main trunks, a highland one and a coastal one (Figure 2). Connecting roads linked the two across the Andes from north to south. In swampy regions, the roadbed was elevated by infilling with rocks and soil. Chasms formed by rivers were crossed with suspension bridges, and the road rose up the mountainsides with wellplaced stone steps. Along the coast where there were fewer obstacles and the terrain was more level, the road might have markers only indicating the direction of the road between river valleys, with more clearly marked entrances and exits from the valleys. All along the highland trunk was a series of large administrative centers that were in effect small cities. The best preserved of these is Hua´nuco Pampa, located in the northern highlands west of the modern city of Hua´nuco. Research there indicated the city had a hospitality center for people coming into the city, a large ceremonial plaza in its center, complete with an ‘ushnu’, a platform where rituals could be conducted. Other parts of the city included housing for m’ita workers, craft workshops, an area where acllacuna are thought to have lived and worked, and over 4000 storehouses on a hill overlooking the city. An area of exquisitely fitted stone marks the location of the king’s quarters, a place that included baths and food preparation areas. The administrative centers were located where they could draw on populations from a wide area, but also provide goods and services for those regions. Hua´nuco Pampa, for example, served five different ethnic groups. While the usual flow of goods and labor was into the centers, they also served as buffers against agricultural failure. If a group suffered a severe frost or drought, such that insufficient food was produced to feed the population, they were given food

from the storehouses, though they were supposed to repay the food in a year of greater abundance. The administrative centers were located several days’ walks from each other along the highland trunk. No major center has been found along the coastal road, although there are centers like Incawasi in the Can˜ete Valley which was created to provide support for the conquest of the valley. In the region of Chile, there are very few administrative centers the size of Hua´nuco Pampa, likely because the population density of conquered people was much less in this desolate vicinity. Located approximately every 20 km along the roads between the major centers were ‘tambos’, smaller centers that provided some services but on a smaller scale. Travelers along the roads, located about one day’s journey apart, could stop at these centers for food and rest. The roads were strictly for the use of people on official business, not just anyone. They were used for communications, at least along the main highland road. A system of runners, called ‘chasquis’, was used for sending messages along the road system. Every 6–9 km was a small structure where the runners stayed, and as one approached, he would call out, and another runner would get up to hear the message, then set out running for the next outpost. It is said a message could be sent from Lima to Cuzco in a week, though how messages were prevented from becoming muddled is unclear. Archaeology of the Provinces

The preceding information is a description of a static system, a snapshot of the empire as it has been described by various Spanish sources. Archaeological research in different regions has indicated that this model is more difficult to corroborate archaeologically than one might expect. The typical indicators of an Inca presence – square houses with trapezoidal niches and doorways, ceramics in the form of aryballos with diamond or feather patterns, finely fitted stonework – are sometimes difficult to identify. Two examples will serve to illustrate the issues. John and Theresa Topic found that the presence of the Inca highway running through the province of Huamachuco in northern Peru was the best indicator of the Inca presence, and that new Inca settlements, both tambos and storeroom complexes, were located along the route. They were able to identify the provincial capital as having been located in the modern city of Huamachuco, on several subtle architectural and artifactual pieces of evidence. However, differentiating occupations dating to the Late Horizon, when the Inca had conquered the region, was daunting

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Figure 2 The Inca road system. Reprinted from The Inka Road System, Hyslop J (1984), with permission from Elsevier.

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because there were so few good Inca-style ceramics, and so much continuity from earlier styles. The inclusion of ethnohistorical information allowed the Topics to understand the subtle way that the province was organized by the Incas, which would have been difficult without the written sources. Thomas Lynch identified the major Inca occupations in the region of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. There he found the highway was again the major indication of Inca presence, and that Inca sites tended to be located along it. Local settlements were found near, but not on, the road. There were no fitted stone constructions anywhere, and the main site, Catarpe Tambo, had relatively few Inca ceramics. In contrast, Inca pottery was common in tambos along the road. The importance of Catarpe was indicated more by the presence of architectural features such as long halls called ‘callancas’ and the orientations of major buildings. With few ethnohistorical records for this region, the fine nuances of imperial control were not able to be distinguished as they could be in areas with more documents, like Huamachuco. Inca Religion

The Incas had a complex set of religious beliefs, including a host of deities, sacred places, oracles, and ancestor worship. Like many ancient societies, life was a set of actions dictated in large part by religious beliefs. No major decision was made without consulting with the priests about possible outcomes. The Incas, like many of their contemporaries, had a belief that founding ancestors played a role in the daily affairs of their descendants. For the Incas, these ancestors were the early kings, and their bodies were mummified and maintained by their panacas. As semi-divine, the kings were brought out at important ceremonies, given food and drink, and treated as if they were alive. The ancestors were important in providing good harvests, so their veneration was particularly important to assure the food supply. The major deities of the Incas included a creator god, Wiracocha, Inti, the sun god, and Mama Quilla, the moon goddess, Inti-Illapa, the thunder god, and several celestial gods associated with stars and planets. While Wiracocha created the world, and the other gods, he was not a major figure of reverence, having few if any rituals or temples dedicated to him. In contrast, Inti appears to have been the most important god, at least during the reign of the last few kings. Inti was the god of harvests, which explains something of his importance, and also of warfare. The sun temple in Cuzco, the ‘Coricancha’, was the most important temple in the empire, and all administrative centers

likewise had sun temples. Mama Quilla, the moon goddess, was the wife of Inti, and was served by priestesses. Inti Illapa was the god of thunder and lightning, and was associated with rainfall. Another aspect of Inca religion, and one shared again with many of their contemporaries, was the idea that certain places, called ‘huacas’, were sacred. Many things could be ‘huacas’ – springs, large rocks, tombs, fields, mountains – and not all of them were sacred to all people. Huacas could be of local or national importance. The Incas linked many of the huacas in the vicinity of Cuzco into a complex sacred landscape called the ‘ceque system’. This system was a set of imaginary lines that originated at the Coricancha and radiated out in all four directions. According to Brian Bauer, the lines were not necessarily straight, although that might have been the ideal. The lines were also associated with the four suyus and linked huacas; particular social groups in Cuzco conducted rituals at the huacas along the lines. The schedule of rituals defined a complicated calendar that even experts do not understand well. In addition to the huacas near Cuzco, there were many others spread across the empire. Many high peaks were considered the homes of powerful deities by local people, and the Incas often co-opted these by placing shrines at their summits. Especially in the southern part of the empire, special shrines including human sacrifices of children and adults, were located at the summits of the highest mountains. Oracles were also important parts of the Inca and pre-Inca religions of the Andes. There were four major oracles, including one near Cuzco, where people could go to get advice. The Oracle of Pachacamac, located near modern Lima, was an ancient one, dating at least to CE 500. The Incas took control of it, and allowed it to continue as an oracle, but built their own sun temple and other structures nearby. Rituals Great and Small

Rituals were extremely common in Inca life, and could involve something as simple as burning some coca leaves or as complicated as sacrificing a child after ascending a mountain peak above 6000 m. Rituals were conducted to assure that deities were pleased or to ward off malevolent spirits. Some rituals were daily events, like the offering of llamas and cloth to Inti every morning at the Coricancha, while others were only conducted at special occasions, like the investiture of a new king. All rituals involved some kinds of sacrifice, though the great majority were either llamas or guinea pigs. Food, ‘chicha’, or corn beer, and coca were also used, and fine cloth, seashells, gold and silver could

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be used as well. The ceremony defined the material to be sacrificed. There was a full calendar of ceremonies marking out the Inca year, although there were two major festivals: ‘Capac Raymi’ in December and ‘Inti Raymi’ in June. These fell on the summer and winter solstices, respectively. Both involved several days’ festivities and ceremonies, including male puberty rites during Capac Raymi, and great displays of the present and past rulers (in the latter case, their mummies) during Inti Raymi. Large quantities of llamas, chicha and coca were sacrificed to assure the successful completion of the rituals. One of the most important rituals was called the ‘Capac hucha’, a ritual conducted in Cuzco, but then in every part of the realm, to glorify the Inca gods. Children of about ten years of age were summoned from villages all over the empire to Cuzco, where they were dressed in the finest clothes and paired as if they were husband and wife. They were paraded through the streets from the Coricancha, past the royalty, both living and dead, and to one of the main plazas in town. Some of the children were sacrificed to Wiracocha and Inti, then to other gods and huacas in the vicinity of Cuzco. Priests then took other children and items throughout the empire, making subsequent sacrifices along the way. Particular attention was given to the powerful huacas of high mountains, as mentioned above. Technology

The Incas are probably best known for their extraordinary stonework, where rocks weighing many tons

were fitted together very tightly. Such stonework was exceptional, but no less impressive were other aspects of their technological achievements, such as their agricultural and irrigation systems. High-quality Inca stonework was restricted to the most important buildings in the empire, and served to both emphasize the functions of such structures and the importance of the Inca system that constructed them. Hua´nuco Pampa is a good example of this, as the majority of the buildings are of fieldstone and no great effort was put into their construction, but at the main entry buildings and the royal residence are found, the fitted stones and architectural embellishments, such as carved pumas, to impress the person entering them of their importance. The Coricancha in Cuzco has some of the best stonework in the empire, as befits its importance in Inca ideology, and many of the residences of the kings and their panacas also were of finely dressed stone. The foundations of many of these still can be seen in Cuzco, where they continue to stand, despite five hundred years of seismic activity, a tribute to the skills of Inca engineers. Inca agricultural systems are equally impressive. Everywhere the Inca went, they constructed or reconstructed agricultural terraces to maximize productivity (Figure 3). Systems were designed to distribute water from canals many kilometers long that came down from springs or glacial melt water higher up and then flowed down feeder canals to the systems. Sometimes reservoirs were built to store water into the dry season. These systems, like the buildings just described, continue to function to the present day.

Figure 3 Inca agricultural system at Pisac. Note projecting rocks used as steps from one terrace to another. Photo by author.

398 ASIA, EAST/Inca Ethnohistory The Spanish Conquest

To understand how a group of 168 Spaniards could bring down the Inca empire, it is necessary to briefly discuss the events leading up to their appearance. With the death of Wayna Qhapaq and his heir from a European disease, the empire was left with no king. Two main rivals soon emerged, Washkar, a son who lived in Cuzco, and Atawalpa, a son by a different mother who lived in Ecuador. Washkar sent armies north to Ecuador to defeat Atawalpa, but the latter’s armies were much better seasoned, having spent many years in wars of expansion against local groups. The armies of Atawalpa defeated the forces of Washkar repeatedly, as the latter retreated down the spine of the Andes toward Cuzco. In a final series of battles fought outside Cuzco, Atawalpa’s generals decisively defeated Washkar and took him prisoner. In a grisly display of retribution, nearly all of Washkar’s kin were killed, and Washkar himself was brought north to face Atawalpa, who was now coming south to take control of the empire. The year was 1532. As Atawalpa was resting in Cajamarca, in northern Peru, word came to him that the Spaniards had arrived and were killing and robbing the northern coastal provinces. He sent a contingent of forces under a loyal general to bring them to Cajamarca. He agreed to meet them in the main plaza of the town, a place where such meetings of important leaders would typically occur, but also a location that was perfect for an ambush. There were few entry or exit streets from the plaza, and the callancas on the sides were well suited to hiding soldiers and horsemen. When Atawalpa and several thousand of his personal guard arrived, they were met by a priest, who offered Atawalpa a book of prayers. When Atawalpa threw the book down and rose from his litter, Pizarro gave the order to attack. In the ensuing carnage, most of the Inca warriors were killed, and Atawalpa was captured. Not a single Spaniard died. Atawalpa agreed to fill a room half-full of gold and twice fill it with silver for his ransom, an offer the Spaniards could not refuse. As the months passed, reinforcements arrived from Panama, and the Spaniards made exploratory trips to the coast. However, after the ransom was paid and melted down, it became apparent that something had to be done about the Inca king. Pizarro ordered Atawalpa garroted, and buried unceremoniously. He placed a son of Washkar on the throne and began to travel to Cuzco. After both victories and defeats, Pizarro and his troops entered Cuzco unchallenged, exactly a year after they had arrived in Cajamarca.

See also: Americas, South: Inca Ethnohistory; Northern South America; Southern Cone.

Further Reading Bauer B (1992) The Development of the Inca State. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bauer B (1998) The Sacred Landscape of the Inca: The Cusco Ceque System. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bauer B and Covey RA (2002) Processes of state formation in the Inca heartland (Cuzco, Peru). American Anthropologist 104(3): 846–864. Burger R, Morris C, and Matos Mendieta R (in press) Variations in the Expression of Inka Power. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks. D’Altroy T (2002) The Incas. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Hyslop J (1984) The Inka Road System. New York: Academic Press. Hyslop J (1990) Inka Settlement Planning. Austin: University of Texas Press. Malpass M (1993) Provincial Inca. Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Assessment of the Impact of the Inca State. Ames: University of Iowa Press. Morris C and Thompson DE (1985) Hua´nuco Pampa: An Inca City and Its Hinterland. London: Thames and Hudson. Pa˚rsinnen M (1992) Tawantinsuyu: The Inca State and Its Political Organization. Helsinki: Societas Historica Finlandiae.

Inca Ethnohistory R Alan Covey, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary imperial provinces Peripheral populations or territories administered directly or indirectly by the central government of the empire. historiography The study of the practice of history, including the study of historical method and the historical development of history as an academic discipline. religious integration The use of ritual activity or religious belief to incorporate and govern peripheral populations Spanish conquest Colonization of the Americas with the arrival in the Western Hemisphere of Christopher Columbus in 1492. From early small settlements in the Caribbean, the gradual expansion to include Central America, most of South America, Mexico, and southern and central portions of today’s United States.

Sources and Historiography All known written accounts of the Inca realm were produced after Europeans arrived in the Andean

ASIA, EAST/Inca Ethnohistory 399

region in the early 1530s. Although the Incas used a record-keeping device – the khipu, a system of knotted cords – for bureaucratic functions, it remains debatable to what extent it was employed in a standard fashion for encoding historical content, or to what degree modern researchers might expect to decode such information. Complicating questions of precontact historicity is the fact that more than one Inca ruler is said to have destroyed existing khipu records, purged the specialists who kept them, and commissioned the production of new imperial narratives. The malleability of accounts of the Inca past is an important starting point for considering the different sources of Inca ethnohistory and their appropriate use for modern scholarship. In considering written sources produced in the 1530s and after, distinction may be made between eyewitness accounts made at the time of the European invasion, chronicles assembled in the first century after conquest, and administrative

documents written throughout the Colonial Period (Table 1). Eyewitness Accounts

In June and July of 1533, members of the Pizarro expedition melted down and distributed gold and silver that had been brought to the Inca city of Cajamarca to ransom Atahuallpa, the ruler held by the Spaniards. Some members of the Pizarro expedition returned to Spain from Cajamarca bringing treasure and news of the Inca realm to royal officials. Eyewitness accounts of the Inca empire reached European readers soon after the Pizarro expedition and its Andean allies had arrived in Cusco, the Inca capital, at the end of 1533. Accounts of Spanish activities in Andean South America continued to be written for decades afterward. Some (e.g., the chronicles of Pedro Pizarro and Diego de Trujillo) were not produced until 1570 or

Table 1 Twenty-five important published sources of Inca ethnohistory Author [date] Eyewitness documents Hernando Pizarro (1533) Francisco de Xe´rez (1534) Pedro Sancho de la Hoz (1543) Inca Diego de Castro Titu Cusi Yupanqui (1570) Diego de Trujillo (1571) Pedro Pizarro (1571) Witness-aided chronicles Pedro de Cieza de Leo´n (c. 1550) Juan de Betanzos (1551–1557) Bartolome´ de Las Casas (1550s) Polo de Ondegardo (1571) Diego Ferna´ndez (el Palatino) (1571) Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (1572) Miguel Cabello de Balboa (1586) Martı´n de Murua (1590 and later) Jose´ de Acosta (1590) Garcilaso de la Vega, ‘‘El Inca’’ (1609) Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala (c. 1615) Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua (c. 1615) Bernabe´ Cobo (1653) Administrative/Other Cristo´bal Vaca de Castro (1543) Domingo de Santo Toma´s (1560) Polo de Ondegardo (c. 1560) Hernando de Santilla´n (1563) Juan de Matienzo (1567) Cristo´bal de Molina (1573)

Title

Letter to Oidores of Santo Domingo, Panama, 23 November, 1533 Verdadera relacio´n de la conquista del Peru´ y provincia del Cuzco Relacio´n para S. M. de lo sucedido en la conquista y pacificacio´n de estas provincias de Nueva Castilla y de la calidad de la tierra Relacio´n de la conquista del Peru´ y hechos del Inca Manco II. . . Relacio´n del descubrimiento del reyno del Peru´ Relacio´n del descubrimiento y conquista de los reinos del Peru´ Segunda parte de la cro´nica del Peru´. . . Suma y naracio´n de los incas Apologe´tica historia sumaria Relacio´n acerca del linaje de los Incas y como conquistaron y acerca del notable dan˜o que resulta de no guardar a estos yndios sus fueros Primera y segunda parte de la historia del Peru´ Historia indica Miscelanea austral, pt. 3: Historia del Peru´ Historia general del Peru´ Historia natural y moral de las Indias Primera parte de los comentarios reales de los Incas Nueva coro´nica y buen gobierno Relacio´n de antigu¨edades deste reyno del Piru´ Historia del Nuevo Mundo Ordenanza de tambos, distancia de unos a otros, modo de cargar los indios y obligaciones de las justicias respectivas Le´xicon o vocabulario de la lengua general del Peru´ Instruccio´n contra las cirimonias y ritos que usan los indios conforme al tiempo de su infidelidad Relacio´n del origen, descendencia, polı´tica, y gobierno de los Incas Gobierno del Peru´ Relacio´n de las fa´bulas y ritos de los Incas

400 ASIA, EAST/Inca Ethnohistory

later, and should be seen as projects intended to justify the Conquest and mitigate its effects. Descriptions of functioning Inca institutions are invaluable for modern scholars, but eyewitness information falls far short of ethnography. Spanish writers were principally concerned with detailing their own experiences in a hostile and strange world, using terms picked up from Moors and Caribs to fashion a lens for viewing an Andean Other. Some eyewitness accounts employ the language of the Reconquista, referring to the invading Spanish force as cristianos and describing native temples as mosques (mezquita). Aspects of circum-Caribbean culture provided another means of conceptualizing the Andean world, as seen in the use of terms for local elites (cacique), their houses (bohio) and seats of authority (duho), and maize beer (chicha) served during ceremonial encounters. It would take years for Spaniards to begin to understand the natural and cultural world of the Incas on its own terms. Witness-aided Chronicles

The earliest extant Inca histories that draw on extensive native testimony were produced around 1550, part of a second-generation historiography that capitalized on an improving knowledge of Quechua and an interest among political and religious figures in Inca history and customs. The fact that Inca histories were not published widely in the sixteenth century indicates that the native past was of more interest to officials at the Spanish court than to the literate public of Europe. The most detailed sources (viz., Juan de Betanzos, Pedro de Cieza de Leo´n, Polo de Ondegardo) relied principally on accounts of Inca elite men living in Cusco. These chronicles provide a great deal of culturally sensitive information regarding Inca

customs and accounts of the past, although narratives are heavily colored by the interests of the chronicler and the experience of his witnesses. Spanish writers in the 1550s and 1560s assembled information on elite life at the Inca capital, religious activity, political administration, and the relationship between the imperial capital and provincial regions. The year 1570 marks a crucial point in the production of Inca historical narratives. As part of his program of administrative consolidation, the viceroy Francisco de Toledo and the royal cosmographer Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa gathered Andean and Inca elites and administered questionnaires regarding Inca history and customs. Sarmiento de Gamboa produced a historical narrative that synthesized the often conflicting accounts of the elite Inca lineages, and he linked key points in the Inca past to European calendar dates and the reigns of Spanish monarchs and Catholic popes. Chronicles produced after 1570 tend to follow the same general sequence of rulers, suggesting that a more standardized version of the Inca past – one that was developed with the participation of elite Inca lineages that were prominent in Cusco’s early Colonial society – coalesced as time went on (Table 2). Native Andeans recounted historical narratives to Spanish administrators in the years following the Conquest, but the first substantial treatments of Inca culture by Andean authors were produced in the first years of the seventeenth century. The factual accuracy of these chronicles is often questioned by modern scholars, and the authors often emphasize their identities as good Christians and loyal Spanish subjects. Still, the chronicles of Garcilaso de la Vega, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, and Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua provide some interesting perspectives on Andean cultural organization.

Table 2 A list of Inca rulers, with calendar dates # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Ruler

Khipukamayuq account

Cabello Balboa

Sarmiento de Gamboa

Va´zquez de Espinosa

Manco Capac Sinchi Rocca Lloque Yupanqui Mayta Capac Capac Yupanqui Inca Rocca Yahuar Huaccac Viracocha Inca Pachacutic Inca Yupanqui Tupa Inca Huayna Capac Huascar

Start
AD 1060 Ruled to age 70þ Ruled 50þ yrs Ruled 50 yrs Ruled 60þ yrs Ruled to age 80þ Ruled 40þ yrs Ruled 70þ yrs Ruled to age 80þ

AD 946–1006 1006–1083 1083–1161 1161–1226 1226–1306 1306–1356 1356–1386 1386–1438 1438–1474

AD 565–665 665–675 675–786 786–890 890–980 980–1088 1088–1184 1184–1285 1294–1397a

1473–1493 1493–1525 1525–1532

1397–1464a 1464–1524 1524–1532

AD 1031–1071 1071–1105 1105–1141 1141–1171 1171–1211 1211–1261 1261–1291 1291–1351 1351–1411 1411–1441 1441–1481 1481–1523 1523–1532

Ruled to age 80þ Ruled 50þ yrs Over 2 yrs, 4 months

a Not the dates given by Sarmiento de Gamboa (who lists AD 1088–1191 and 1191–1258), which overlap with earlier rulers. Dates listed are the length of rule given by Sarmiento de Gamboa and subtracted from the final ruler date.

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Bernabe´ Cobo’s 1653 chronicle provides a convenient point for marking the commencement of secondary syntheses of primary source material. The Jesuit priest consulted a wide range of published sources and manuscripts, and also interviewed Andean informants. His writing is structured as a scholarly work on Inca culture, but its relevance is hindered by the feedback of European cultural values onto the subject material. Descriptions of primogeniture, anthropomorphic divinities, and the importance of creator worship and afterlife are but a few concepts that are not prominent in the earliest chronicles. Archival Documents

A wide range of administrative documents can be brought to bear on Inca society. The earliest include encomienda grants, Cabildo records, and legal proceedings over lands and native labor. The consolidation of Spanish colonial rule – particularly under the viceroy Francisco de Toledo in the 1570s – led to the collection of witness testimony on the Inca empire (informaciones), as well as census documents and tribute records (tasas). Standardized provincial reports (relaciones geogra´ficas) were conducted in several regions in the 1580s, and the 1590s saw Spanish administrators visiting lands held by native Andeans and criollos to establish boundaries (composiciones de tierras). Wills, lawsuits, and other legal documents are sometimes useful for tracing descent and land tenure in the final years before the European invasion. Use of Documents

A detailed documentary record of Inca culture and history began to be produced about 20 years after the Conquest. As John H. Rowe observed in 1946, this resource informs us most consistently about elite life in the Inca capital in the years bracketing the European invasion; projecting this material outward onto the Inca provinces or back into the imperial past can be problematic. Regional approaches to archival documents and the systematic collection of archaeological data will put future researchers in a position to reconsider aspects of Inca ethnohistory, and the published chronicles should not necessarily be given interpretive priority.

Ethnohistoric Descriptions of Tawantinsuyu, the Inca Empire Inca ethnohistory provides incomplete but often colorful descriptions of Tawantinsuyu, including myths of ancestral origins and the rise of imperial society, descriptions of expansion and provincial administration, and accounts of elite life in the imperial heartland.

The Rise of Inca Civilization

The Incas identified themselves as highland maize farmers whose founding ancestors came from a distant origin place and settled in the Cusco Basin, where they introduced the fundamental features of Inca social order and established dominance over autochthonous groups. Accounts of the earliest Inca rulers often have a legendary element, featuring acts of superhuman strength, miraculous birth, and a permeable boundary between the mundane and the supernatural. Although no clean divide exists between myth and history in Inca narratives, accounts of rulers from the Hanan (Upper) Cusco moiety – that is, from the sixth ruler and after on the traditional dynastic list – describe qualitative changes in Inca society in the generations leading up to the first imperial campaigns. The most detailed chronicles describe how Inca elites extended their control over the Cusco Basin and established many features of a centralized state government. They then began to conquer and administer new territory in the neighboring Sacred Valley and along caravan routes to coca-producing regions in the lowlands. Inca rulers used marriage alliances with elite women from neighboring groups to limit conflict and simultaneously increase the pool of labor tribute available to intensify maize agriculture throughout the Cusco region. While the Inca elite forged alliances with some groups, they conquered others militarily and reduced them to subordinate status. By the reign of Yahuar Huaccac, or Viracocha Inca, all but the strongest regional rivals had been brought under Inca hegemony or direct administration, and the Inca state began to incorporate non-Quechua speakers living in the upper Vilcanota Valley and Titicaca Basin (see Americas, South: Inca Archaeology). Many chroniclers and modern scholars have credited Pachacutic Inca Yupanqui with the innovation of the imperial order, although archaeological research in the Inca heartland now suggests more gradual processes of state formation, territorial expansion, and administrative consolidation. When the Cusco region was invaded by a neighboring ethnic confederation (the Chancas), Pachacutic is said to have successfully defended the Inca capital with the help of a few friends and the divine aid of the creator deity. He then personally crafted the essential elements of Inca imperial society, much like the first Inca ancestors who brought Inca culture to the Cusco Basin. The ‘great man’ account of Inca imperial origins was firmly fixed in contemporary Inca scholarship by John H. Rowe. In a series of influential publications in the 1940s, Rowe noted that the ethnohistorical and archaeological records indicated that most Inca provincial regions had been annexed or conquered only

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in the last century or so before the Conquest. These observations challenged the interpretation of Philip Ainsworth Means, who had argued that accounts of late, punctuated expansion were the result of Spanish propaganda aimed at challenging the temporal depth of Inca ‘good government’. Rowe’s late expansion paradigm is still upheld by the archaeological evidence in provincial regions, although the glorification of a single individual obscures the dynamic processes occurring in the Cusco region in the 150–200 years before the first imperial campaigns. It is worth making an observation regarding the gradualist chronicles, whose substantive weaknesses are now so well known. The gradualist paradigm is most common among native Andean writers – in particular, the khipukamayuq narrative and the chronicles of Guaman Poma de Ayala, Pachacuti Yamqui, and Garcilaso de la Vega – who credit Manco Capac, the founding ancestor, with the establishment of Inca cultural order and the initial organization of the imperial heartland. These chronicles are rather late, and some authors are from Inca provincial regions, raising the question of whether the gradualist paradigm represents an official imperial history that was promoted in provincial regions even as royal lineages preserved and performed contradictory narratives glorifying their own ancestors in the imperial capital. Patterns of Imperial Expansion

Inca imperial expansion campaigns began around AD 1400 with the conquest of highland farming and herding groups living outside of what the Incas considered to be their imperial heartland (Figure 1). The conquest and administration of the first imperial provinces followed strategies that were developed as the Inca state expanded in the Cusco region between c. 1250 and 1400. Chronicle descriptions suggest that military intervention was justified when rulers of other groups used titles that contradicted the peerless status of the Inca ruler, or in instances where they rejected the offers of ‘friendship’ – or, more precisely, peaceful subordination – that his messengers brought. Early campaigns targeted areas with compatible social structures and political economy, and the prospect of lavish gifts and marriage alliances was often enough to win new allies, although areas with multiple competing groups frequently saw one group align itself with the Incas while the other resisted militarily. The incorporation and administration of highland valleys was relatively straightforward for the Incas, but imperial strategies had to be modified to deal with lowland groups of different degrees of political complexity. The south-central coast was ecologically

marginal and sparsely populated, and the Incas contented themselves with a more indirect presence by developing colonies in the piedmont where new hydraulic works brought new tracts of maize land under cultivation. By contrast, the south and central coast of Peru was divided among several small states. These had centralized administrative hierarchies, specialized economies based on intensive maize agriculture and fishing, and religious systems that were integrated with pan-regional pilgrimage centers such as Pachacamac and Pariacaca. To the north of these polities lay the Chimu´ empire, which dominated the lower valley and flood plain areas along a stretch of roughly 500 km of coastline. As with earlier campaigns along the axis of highland valleys, Inca expansion to the coast involved diplomacy and warfare, but imperial administration was more limited than in the highlands, and established as a parallel to local hierarchies. At the time of the European invasion, Inca armies were involved in protracted campaigns to consolidate control over rebellious provinces and extend imperial control over lowland areas on the eastern Andean escarpment. Inca military organization was evolving into a more permanent standing fighting force, and campaigns along the northern frontier occupied Tupa Inca Yupanqui and Huayna Capac personally for 40 years or more. The documentary record indicates that the final decades of Inca expansion involved the time-consuming sequence of (1) military invasion, (2) establishment of a system of fortifications, (3) resettlement of local populations, and (4) introduction of colonists to implement provincial rule. This signals a developmental trajectory for Inca expansion policies, a departure from earlier practices of establishing an initial phase of indirect rule while intensifying resources for funding provincial administration. Reliance on an experienced fighting force and the permanent colonization of settlers from pacified provincial regions suggests a distinct imperial relationship with the occupants of regions targeted for later phases of territorial annexation. The Incas described the Amazonian piedmont as culturally and environmentally foreign, yet they invested heavily in the gradual resettlement of highland farmers into lower elevations while maintaining an uneasy interaction with native groups. Accounts of the Imperial Heartland

Because Cusco’s Inca elite served as informants for many of the chronicles and administrative documents available today, descriptions of life in the imperial capital and its hinterland are much more detailed than those of provincial regions. The lineages of Inca

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Cusco

Viracocha Inca 0

500 km

Inca Yupanqui (Pachacutic) 0

500 km

Tupa Inca Yupanqui

Huayna Capac

0

0

500 km

500 km

Figure 1 Reported conquests during the reign of Inca emperors. Based in part on Pa¨rssinen 1992.

rulers dominated the economic and social life of the region lying within about 50–70 km of Cusco. The imperial heartland was radically transformed by provincial territorial expansion. Many (but not all) local groups were granted honorary Inca status, and, as Quechua speakers, were drawn on heavily to serve as

colonists in provincial regions. An influx of temporary labor colonists (mitmaqkuna), retainers (yanakuna), and production specialists complemented the transfer of population between heartland and province, and the Cusco region in the early sixteenth century was ethnically diverse and densely populated. For example,

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at least 10 ethnic groups lived on the estate of Huayna Capac at Yucay at the time of the Conquest. The imperial heartland was economically variegated; honotary Inca groups retained certain rights to traditional lands, while royal lineages and the state religion possessed and managed improved farmlands for intensive maize agriculture, as well as substantial tracts of pasture for herding. Inca rulers and their wives also owned plots of coca lands in low-lying valleys near Cusco. Local groups provided labor tribute to the Inca elite, but mitmaqkuna and yanakuna accounted for the bulk of the work on a system of royal estates where production focused on high-yield varieties of maize, as well as the cultivation of exotic foods for elite enjoyment. Estates were putatively managed by the royal Inca lineages on behalf of the dead rulers who had developed them, and the mummies of dead Inca lords and ladies played important roles in ceremonial and administrative life in and around the capital. These estates were inherited following a system of split inheritance, where the ruling title was inherited by one son and his sister-wife while all other descendants possessed the resources comprising the royal estate. The state religion focused on veneration of the sun as the ancestor of the Inca elite, and the ritual calendar and regional shrine system organized water and land resources, emphasizing a maize agriculture schedule. Important ritual events in the capital involved demarcating divisions among the Inca elite, as well as distinctions between Incas and provincial groups. Sacred objects from provincial regions were kept in Cusco, and provincial elites and sacrificial victims traveled to the capital to be vested with administrative power or sanctified. Some rituals were celebrated in Inca cities in the provinces and culminated with a pilgrimage to the capital. Ritual occasions helped to maintain an economic link between the imperial heartland and provinces. Staples produced in the provinces tended to be stored there and used to maintain administrative and ceremonial life and imperial infrastructure, but wealth goods were brought to the capital where they were stored, worked into prestige goods, and redistributed to loyal subjects. Craft specialists resided in the capital, and Inca rulers would give gifts of fancy cloth, precious metals, as well as special privileges. Eyewitness accounts of Cusco at the time of the European invasion attest to the vast wealth of the empire and the extent to which it was concentrated in the capital. Imperial Interactions in Provincial Regions

Recent studies of the Inca empire emphasize the variability of provincial strategies, but some general features can be identified for the empire as a whole.

Basic infrastructure consisted of a highway system (qhapaq n˜an) that linked highland and lowland regions (Figure 2). Posts for messengers (chaski) were placed at intervals along the highways, and waystations (tampu) were built about a day’s travel apart. These facilities were maintained by local populations and stocked with stores for the use of Inca officials and traveling armies. Larger complexes of storage structures (qollqa) were found at important installations and new administrative cities that were built every 100 km or so along the principal highland highway. Higher-order administrative sites often were built around a large open plaza and included an administrative palace, a sun temple, and an akllawasi – a cloister where select provincial girls were taught by female specialists to weave state textile designs and prepare ceremonial foods and maize beer.

Religious Organization Religion provided a critical link between Cusco and provincial regions, and religious organization varied substantially throughout the empire (Figure 3). To promote its intensive maize economy in directly administered provinces, the Inca state established its own sun cult in new cities along the royal road, constructing temples and akllawasi compounds. The reverence of local numina and sacred objects (wak’a) continued in these regions, as did veneration of ritual elements associated with extensive polycropping and herding. The state required that some local wak’a be housed in Cusco, and underwrote festive activities for others. Pilgrimage centers at Pachacamac, Pariacaca, Raqchi, and Titicaca provided a region-wide religious integration along parts of the coast in the Lake Titicaca area. In these areas the Incas co-opted creation myths and took steps to control pilgrimage by constructing religious facilities at established centers. Female ritual specialists (mamakuna) were established at pilgrimage centers and at some highland oracles, although local priests appear to have retained their positions. The transformation of the Copacabana Peninsula and nearby islands in Lake Titicaca signals a more direct control over highland pilgrimage than was achieved along the coast. The southern half of the Inca empire lacks documentary references to sun temples and akllawasi. In this region the Incas appear to have made direct sacrificial appeals to important mountains (apu) by leaving human sacrifices on their peaks. Such sacrifices may have been conducted as part of the qhapaqhucha ritual, although it is difficult to correlate the documentary record with the archaeological evidence. In general, the establishment of the sun cult is strongly

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Quito ECUADOR Tomebamba BRAZIL Cajamarca Huamachuco Huánuco Pampa PERU Pumpú Xauxa Vilcashuamán Pachacamac CUSCO La Centinela (Chincha) Hatun Qolla Chucuito Chuquiabo Chan Chan

Paria PA

CIF

IC

OC

EA

BOLIVIA

N

New administrative center

ARGENTINA

Established local center

0

500 km

Figure 2 The Inca road system, with some new administrative cities and existing local centers shown.

correlated with regions where the documentary record also describes the establishment of provincial infrastructure and decimal administration. Areas under more indirect administrative control also saw a less marked presence of the imperial cult.

Administrative Organization Inca administrators governed the most directly integrated provinces – those located beyond the boundaries of the imperial heartland but generally in highland valleys to the northwest and southeast – by means of decimal administration that was imposed when a province was (re)conquered. The decimal hierarchy consisted of nested administrative positions (kuraka) staffed by local elites and supervised by Inca governors and inspectors. Subject populations

provided labor service, and Inca officials monitored population levels and service requirements, punishing a local kuraka who failed to meet state demands. Service was worked in rounds by a proportion of the population, and it appears that local elites were responsible for deciding who would satisfy a given service category. Canny local elites were able to increase their wealth and prominence through the implementation of imperial labor demands, organizing caravan transport and pursuing their own exchanges and resource extraction alongside the imperial system. While provincial decimal officials managed local labor tribute mobilization, the principal administrative activities took place in Inca cities, which reproduced essential open spaces and administrative and religious institutions that moderated encounters between Inca administrators and local elites. Decimal

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Catequil

Pachacamac Chinchacamac

Pariacaca Raqchi Titicaca

Sun Temple with Akllawasi

Important Wak'a High Elevation Sacrifice

0

500 km

Sun Temple 0

500 km

Figure 3 Religious integration in the Inca empire. Information on high elevation sacrifices from D’Attroy, TN (2002).

administration appears to have been linked to population movement between the imperial heartland and provinces – Quechua-speaking colonists from Cusco’s Inca-of-Privilege groups were settled into some provincial regions to facilitate consolidation strategies, while provincial populations were resettled as labor colonists and retainers. Coastal regions do not appear to have been as affected by decimal reorganization or obligate resettlement. Ethnic Incas were not heavily settled into coastal state territories, nor did coastal polities provide large populations of mitmaqkuna or yanakuna for service in the imperial heartland. Craft specialists (e.g., Chimu´ silversmiths) are known to have been relocated to the capital, and the production and distribution of craft goods and wealth objects changed in coastal regions under Inca governance. According to some documents, Inca administration on the coast was limited to state interests while the local political economy remained under the existing ruler. Imperial officials were established at important coastal centers and looked after whatever new agricultural lands could be developed – particularly in the mid- and upper-valley areas – as well as retainers and female ritual specialists (mamakuna) placed in the valley. Coastal elites tended not to control significant territories beyond what was needed to protect irrigation

intakes that watered the flood plain of their valleys, and the Incas were able to invest in economic intensification further inland, employing strategies similar to those already described for highland valleys. Patterns of decimal administration in highland provinces and parallel administrative structures in coastal states indicate that the fiction of local economic autonomy was important throughout the empire, while the Inca state invested labor tribute in improving farmland and developing intensive agriculture in areas that were unused or under-utilized. Such a system reduced the prospect of conflict during the initial annexation of a new province, but gradually made local elites redundant or dependent on the state for their status and its communication. Provincial rebellions were common, particularly after an Inca ruler died, and local uprisings justified the state in confiscating resources and imposing a more extractive administrative apparatus. The degree of military investment on the imperial frontier indicates that the Incas were in no hurry to consolidate administration along the coast, but also suggests an important development in imperial strategies. A direct occupation was required in the highland valleys of the frontier zones, but the Incas left local exchange networks in place in some areas to acquire lowland goods whose provenance lay outside

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of direct administrative control. Highland groups like the Can˜aris were massively reorganized, with large proportions of the population resettled as mitmaqkuna, brought to Cusco as yanakuna, or pressed into more or less permanent military service. Conquest and Colonialism

The documentary evidence provides our most complete means of reconstructing the Spanish Conquest and imposition of colonial administration in Inca territory. Eyewitness accounts present important discrepancies, and, with the exception of the 1570 account of Titu Cusi Yupanqui, the Andean voice is almost completely absent in the reconstruction of the story. Although the story of the Pizarro invasion was told by Spaniards, administrative documents from the Cusco region provide important details for reconstructing the decades-long process of administrative reorganization that transformed the Inca imperial heartland into a Spanish provincial region.

Prospects for Future Study The study of Inca ethnohistory remains dynamic, as long as certain intellectual constraints are recognized. First, the discovery (and subsequent transcription and publication) of previously unknown eyewitness documents and chronicles is likely to remain as rare as it has been in the past century. While this corpus remains relatively static, administrative documents still hold a vast unrealized potential, and Inca archaeology is proceeding at an unprecedented pace. Archaeological analytical techniques have advanced dramatically, and the present database permits important regional perspectives that surpass the accuracy of documentary observations. These conditions encourage new historiographic practices – gleaning regional perspectives through the careful study of personal names and toponyms in administrative documents – as well as new interdisciplinary relationships. See also: Americas, South: Inca Archaeology; Ethno-

history.

Further Reading D’Altroy TN (2002) The Incas. New York: Blackwell. Parssinen M (1992) Tawantinsuyu: The Inca State and its Political Organization. Helsinki: Societas Historica Finlandiae. Pease F (1995) Las cro´nicas y los Andes. Lima: Instituto RivaAgu¨ero, Pontificia Universidad Cato´lica del Peru´-Fondo de Cultura Econo´mica. Porras Barrenechea R (1986) Los cronistas del Peru´ (1528–1650) y otros ensayos. Lima: Banco de Cre´dito del Peru´. Rostworowski de Diez Canseco M (1999) History of the Inca Realm. H. Iceland, trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rowe JH (1946) Inca culture at the time of the Spanish Conquest. In: Steward J (ed.) Handbook of South American Indians, Vol. 2: The Andean Civilizations, pp. 183–330. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin, 143. Washington, DC: US Goverment Printing Office. Zuidema RT (1995) (1964) El sistema de ceques del Cuzco: La organizacio´n social de la capital de los Incas. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Cato´lica del Peru´.

Northern South America J Scott Raymond, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Chavin A religious cult of Peru, dating to the first millennium BCE, and characterized by a distinctive iconographic art style. Clovis tradition A North American, Late Pleistocene cultural tradition, believed to have been associated with the hunting of large game animals and with distinctive fluted spear points. fluted spear points Distinctively shaped spear points associated with the Clovis tradition in North America and the Magellan Tradition in South America. A flute (or channel) was created by the removal of a flake from one or both faces of the point. South American variants usually have a narrow base resembling the tail of a fish. Holocene The present epoch in the geological timescale, beginning at the end of the Pleistocene approximately 10 000 years ago. mangroves Trees and shrubs that grow in tropical lagoons and estuaries. megafauna Large animals such as mammoths, mastodons, and giant ground sloths of the Pleistocene. Magellan tradition A South American cultural tradition, believed to have been associated with the hunting of large game animals and with distinctive fishtail-fluted points. obsidian hydration A dating method that relies on the measurement of the diffusion of atmospheric water into obsidian. Olmec A Mesoamerican religious cult, dating to the first millennium BCE and associated with a distinctive iconographic art style. Pleistocene The geological epoch that began about 3 million years ago and ended approximately 10 000 years ago with the beginning of the Holocene. It is sometimes called the Ice Age. tapir The largest native game animal of South America. Tapirs are solitary forest herbivores, distantly related to the horse and rhinoceros.

The Setting Northern South America comprises a diverse and varied tropical landscape that extends from the island of Trinidad in the east to the Pacific shores of Colombia and Ecuador (Figure 1). The northern coast is bathed

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Caribbean Sea 24 20 5 Panama 19 6 8

1

Ve

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z ne

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Colombia 23

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Figure 1 Map of northern South America. The following correspond to the numbers on the map: 1, Paria Peninsula; 2, Goajira Peninsula; 3, Gulf of Venezuela; 4, Lake Maracaibo; 5, Sierra de Santa Marta; 6, Magdalena River; 7, Cauca River; 8, Sinu´ River; 9, Esmeraldas River; 10, Guayas River; 11, El Inga; 12, Taima Taima; 13, Las Vegas; 14, Bogota´; 15, El Abra; 16, Santa Maria Valley; 17, Santa Elena Peninsula; 18, Cerro Mangote & Monagrillo; 19, San Jacinto 1 & San Jacinto 2; 20, Puerto Hormiga; 21, Valdivia; 22, Real Alto; 23, San Agustı´n; 24, Tairona culture.

by the Caribbean Sea and backed across northern Venezuela by an eastward extension of the Andes mountains, which embrace a series of fertile highland valleys. From the Paria Peninsula in the east to the Goajira Peninsula in the west the Caribbean coast is a semi-arid desert, the native vegetation consisting mainly of cactus and thickets of thorny shrubs and trees. The Gulf of Venezuela, which opens onto the Caribbean near the Colombian frontier, connects to the south with Lake Maracaibo, South America’s largest lake, which is surrounded by tropical forests, savanna grasslands, and swamps. Rising more than 6000 m above the Goajira Peninsula stands the Sierra de Santa Marta, snow-topped mountains with a vista of the Caribbean. To the west lie the extensive alluvial lowlands of northern Colombia, comprising swamps, lakes, savannas, forests, and dissected by the lower courses of the Magdalena, Cauca, and Sinu´ Rivers. The landscape rises again in northwestern Colombia where a low chain of the Andes extends northward to form the Isthmus of Panama. This region, where North America meets South America, is the wettest part of the Western Hemisphere, with annual rainfall ranging between 6 and 8 m. Heavy rainfall, with associated forests, lagoons, and swamps, continues south along the Pacific coast to the central littoral of Ecuador, where drier conditions prevail (see Americas, Central: Lower Central America). The interior of western Ecuador is a wet tropical lowland region, dominated by two river systems, the

Esmeraldas River in the north and the larger Guayas in the south. The Andes in Ecuador form a narrow chain, trending north–south, punctuated by a series of highland basins and snowcapped volcanoes. Tropical forests cover the mountain slopes to the west and to the east. Passing north into Colombia, the Andes are divided into three separate chains by the Cauca and Magdalena River Valleys. The eastern chain contains the high grassland region known as the Sabana de Bogota´ and continues eastward into Venezuela.

Pleistocene Ecology The Pleistocene environment encountered by the first migrants to northern South America differed in some important respects from that of today. In the mountainous regions, cooler average temperatures meant that plant and animal communities were situated at lower elevations than they are today. The most dramatic difference, however, was along the coast. At the time of maximum world glaciation, c. 18 000 years ago, sea levels were nearly 120 m lower than today and broad segments of continental shelf were exposed. Average rainfall was less, meaning that some of today’s forested areas were more open and that savanna areas were more expansive, possibly making the environment more attractive to large ungulate fauna such as mastodons and horses. Missing in northern South America were the large herds of grassland

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animals such as the bison in North America or the wild camelids of southern South America.

The First Migrants The Isthmus of Panama is the gateway to South America, but because of the dense vegetation and the swampy terrain of the region south of the Panama Canal, archaeologists have struggled to understand how the first human migrants to South America, usually envisioned as hunters of big game, managed to survive their journey through an environment perceived as inhospitable to hunters. The current archaeological evidence, however, not only attests clearly to the presence of humans in South America during the last few millenniums of the Pleistocene, but also to the presence of human settlers in the forests of Panama. These humans, whose ancestors had traversed the Bering Land Bridge from Asia and spread across North America and down through Mexico and Central America, had adapted their technologies and their economies to a wide variety of environments, and they capably exploited the resources of the forests and savannas that existed in Panama in the Late Pleistocene. The earliest evidence of human presence in Panama, which dates to about 11 000 years ago, is not as early as the earliest evidence from southern South America. Monte Verde, for example, a site in south-central Chile, dates to 12 500 years ago. To explain this discrepancy, some archaeologists have suggested that the first migrants to the continent practiced a maritime economy and settled along the shore. Rising sea levels in the Holocene would have erased the evidence of their campsites, except in instances where the shoreline was elevated or, as in the case of Monte Verde, when they established campsites away from the coast. Alternatively, of course, it may be that the population density of the first humans in Panama was not sufficient to leave lasting evidence of their presence. The earliest cultural remains from Panama are not as yet firmly anchored in time. They consist of fluted spear points in the North American Clovis tradition and fishtail-fluted or Magellan tradition of South America, as well as assemblages of waste flakes from the manufacture of such points. The spear points have not yet been found in excavated contexts, but rather as surface finds on the eroded shores of the tropical lakes. The conclusion that they date to about 11 000 years ago is based on their distinctive shapes and manufacturing technology which are closely similar to the dated Clovis and Magellan traditions. The flake assemblages, however, are from excavated contexts and are a current focus of archaeological

research in Panama, research which very likely will yield reliable radiocarbon dates. Fishtail points, many of which are fluted, have been found elsewhere in northern South America, including Colombia, Ecuador, and Trinidad. Most of the finds are from undated surface contexts. The El Inga site in the northern highlands of Ecuador is a rare exception. El Inga, however, lacks reliable stratigraphic context and appears to have been a workshop where stone points were manufactured over several thousand years, using volcanic glass from a nearby outcrop. Obsidian hydration analysis of some of the fishtail points suggests a date in the range of 9000 years ago. None of these sites, including those from Panama, has yielded clues about the subsistence practices of the early migrants. The inference that they were big-game hunters is based on the extrapolation of evidence from Patagonia where fishtail points have been found in association with Pleistocene megafauna. The only evidence of the hunting of megafauna in northern South America comes from the site of Taima Taima, situated in the Maracaibo Basin of Venezuela. At Taima Taima, the remains of a mastodon were excavated and found to be in association with a stone spear point. The animal had apparently become stuck in a bog and was dispatched by humans. The point belongs to the El Jobo tradition, which is distinctively different from that of the fluted-fishtail points and limited in its distribution to northern Venezuela. Stomach contents of the mastodon dated to about 14 000 years ago, slightly older than Monte Verde. Taima Taima is hardly strong support for the idea that the first settlers of northern South America were big-game hunters – in fact, quite the opposite. It would seem that the people occupying the Maracaibo Basin in the Late Pleistocene were opportunistic hunters, who took advantage of a trapped mastodon to have a rare feast or temporarily fill their larder, much like the historically recorded peoples of the southern Chilean coast who, on the rare occurrence of a beached whale, seized the opportunity to gather together in multifamily groupings and practice communal rituals. In the absence of further evidence, we can only speculate about their food economy, but it is possible that the El Jobo hunters were exploiting a broad range of plant and animal foods and that the use of spear points to kill game constituted only a small part of their economic activities. Further evidence of broad-spectrum huntergatherers in northern South America during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene has been found in western Ecuador and highland Colombia. In Ecuador, the Las Vegas culture, which dates from the Late Pleistocene to the Mid-Holocene, is characterized by a simple stone-tool technology. Rather than spending

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the time and effort to manufacture finished stone tools or weapons, the Las Vegans used an expedient technology. They collected the locally abundant cobbles and nodules of stone, smashed them, and then picked out flakes that could be used as tools. Most of the flakes were almost certainly used to make more refined tools out of wood, bone, tooth, and cane, none of which has survived in the warm tropical climate. Modern-day hunter-gatherers of the Neotropics, however, make a range of tools from organic materials, including cane arrow points that are sharp enough to cut through the thick, elephant-like hide of a tapir. Evidence of Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene human occupation in Colombia comes principally from the region surrounding Bogota´, the middle Magdalena valley, and the highland region near Popaya´n, and also in the Amazonian lowlands of Colombia, discussion of which is beyond the scope of this article. The Abriense complex, first discovered at El Abra cave in the Sabana de Bogota´, exemplifies a stone tool technology similar to that of Las Vegas, in that the tools are stone flakes, expediently removed from cobbles and used without further modification. Again, the assumption is that they were used to produce more refined implements and weapons from organic materials. Tequendamiense, a second stone industry dating to the late Pleistocene, has also been discovered in the region of Bogota´. The Tequendamiense industry made use of stone material imported from the Magdalena Valley and, in contrast to Abriense technology, used bifacial retouch to shape and sharpen the edge of flakes. Among the rolling hills and valleys of the middle Magdalena Valley, the probable source of the Tequendamiense raw material, assemblages with stone projectile points have been found. The points are triangular with a stemmed base, and do not resemble either the El Jobo or the fishtail points. In the Ecuadorian highlands at El Inga yet another point type, a long narrow point with a bulbous stem, occurs in apparent association with some of the fishtail points. In the terminal Pleistocene, then, there seems to have been a diversity of stone-working technologies and styles in northern South America. Evidence of subsistence is absent or minimal at these Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene sites. Las Vegas, however, which is represented by more than 30 sites in the Santa Elena region of Ecuador, has yielded remains of bone and shell. The people were hunting, fishing, and collecting a very broad range of food resources that included near-shore and shoreline sea life, as well as land game, including deer, peccaries, giant anteaters, and several species of small rodents and birds. A large number of wild plants were without doubt also exploited, and some plants were undergoing morphological changes indicative of domestication. Direct

evidence of plant foods has not survived in the early archaeological record of southwestern Ecuador, but microscopic bits of silica, known as phytoliths, have been recovered and identified with respect to the plant genera (and sometimes species) from which they derived (see Phytolith Analysis). The large size of squash and bottle gourd phytoliths suggests that both plants were being intensively cultivated by humans and well on their way toward domestication. Squash was probably initially exploited for its tasty, nutritious seeds. The phytoliths also indicate that Calathea allouia, a tropical root crop commonly known as lleren, was also being cultivated. It seems, then, that as early as the terminal Pleistocene, populations in the tropical regions of northwest South America were practicing horticulture as a complementary adjunct to their broad-spectrum hunting, fishing, and collecting economy.

Holocene Environmental Changes The worldwide warming of temperatures at the end of the Pleistocene led to a gradual rise in sea level and inundation of the coastal plains. Rivers, which had deepened their channels during the Pleistocene, began flooding annually and filling in their lower channels. By the time the sea level began to stabilize c. 6000 years ago, vast alluvial wetlands had been created in northern Colombia and western Ecuador, and thousands of tropical lagoons existed along the littoral zones. These ecological changes expanded the habitats for crustaceans, mollusks, fish, and amphibians, creating new subsistence opportunities for humans. In the mountainous regions, there was a vertical shift in the distribution of biological communities to higher elevations, which probably only minimally enhanced hunting in the northern Andes, but had more significance for the eventual development of highland farming. Tropical forests expanded as rainfall increased, but significant grassy savannas survived, most notably in the lowlands of northeastern Colombia.

Social and Economic Changes during the Early to Middle Holocene The social and economic changes that occurred during the Early and Middle Holocene are most clearly documented in the archaeological records of the tropical lowlands of western Ecuador, northern Colombia, and in the Santa Maria valley of Panama. In all three regions, a broad range of food resources was being exploited, from both land and sea, but through time there was greater concentration on

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particular resources – especially calorie-rich plant foods. At the same time, it is evident that territoriality was important, as well as community solidarity. The people of the Las Vegas culture (c. 10 500 to 6500 years ago), established a centrally located ‘base camp’ on the Santa Elena Peninsula of Ecuador. The camp was strategically located near water, in what was a seasonally dry landscape, and near areas of enriched plant growth. From that camp, individuals or small foraging groups could set out to exploit various resource patches that were mostly within less than a day’s hike from the camp. Mangrove lagoons, rocky sea cliffs, sandy beaches, hunting areas, and seasonally productive seed, berry, fruit and root localities were within range. Exploitation of these resources is attested by the remnants of small ‘lunchtime’ or overnight camps that were apparently visited repeatedly by the human groups. During the dry season, it is likely that groups of foragers trekked deeper into the interior valleys, but the archaeological evidence of those journeys has not yet been discovered. By 8000 years ago, the phytolithic record indicates that maize had been added to the inventory of plants cultivated by the Las Vegans. Grinding stones were used for processing some foods, but food storage containers have not survived in the archaeological record. The base camp of the Las Vegans not only served as a logistic depot for the foraging groups but also as sanctified ground that represented the existence and continuity of their society. Nearly 200 skeletons were excavated from the site, most of them apparently buried beneath the floors of small huts. Funerary rites, at least, and probably other periodic and/or seasonal rituals were carried out at the site, some rites probably drawing together all members of the community and reaffirming their common heritage. Such solidarity would have become increasingly important as population density increased, which would have intensified competition for resources, in turn requiring defense of territorial boundaries. In Panama, a similar scenario was unfolding. About 7000 years ago, a camp was founded at the site of Cerro Mangote, which was situated near the Pacific shore. Because of the abundance of mollusk shells in the midden, the site was initially interpreted as a shellfish-collecting camp, but subsequent more detailed investigations have revealed that at least half of the foods consumed at the site were from plants and game collected and hunted from the terrestrial environment. Contemporary sites and small encampments have now been identified in nearby caves and more distant hills to the east. The sites in the hills have been linked to progressive deforestation of the region, resulting from successive small-scale fires

believed to have been set by humans wishing to expand game grazing areas and/or practicing slash-andburn agriculture. The latter inference is based on the discovery of microbotanical remains of maize, arrowroot, and other domesticated plants extracted from grinding stones that archaeologists have excavated from the cave sites. Many human burials have been excavated at Cerro Mangote, and the chemical analysis of their bones indicates that their diet was composed partly of maize. The economic picture in Panama, then, during the Early to Middle Holocene, is one in which human groups were highly mobile, ranging over a considerable territory, exploiting a wide range of resources from sea and land, and at some point beginning to incorporate domesticated plants into their food base. Cerro Mangote may have been a base camp from which daily treks were made to nearby resource hot spots, but the nearby temporary campsites are not as evident as those associated with Las Vegas in Ecuador. The concentration of human burials, however, suggests that Cerro Mangote was consecrated as a place of the ancestors and that, although its community members trekked over a wide area in pursuit of food, they gathered together to venerate and bury their dead and to reaffirm their common heritage. In Colombia, the most detailed record for this segment of time comes from the San Jacinto hills and the alluvial plains of the lower Magdalena River Valley. This is a large area extending from the Caribbean coast to the savannas 180 km inland, an area that probably encompassed the territory of more than one social group. The excavated record begins in the hills at the site known as San Jacinto 1. Recorded in the stratigraphy of San Jacinto 1 are a series of seasonal occupations ranging in time from c. 6000 to 5300 years ago (Figure 2). The excellent preservation and clear delineation of each stratum is unique for sites of comparable age from the Neotropical lowlands. The site was situated on the point bar of a small stream and was occupied during the dry season; annual floods buried the occupation debris. The salient features of the site are shallow pits that were renewed with each occupation. The linings of the pits were burnt, and many of the pits were associated with fire-cracked stones and carbonized plant residues. An abundance of wild grass seeds was recovered from the carbonized remains, but as yet no domesticated species have been conclusively identified. The broken remains of ceramic vessels and grinding stones were also found in significant numbers. The function of San Jacinto 1 clearly differs from that of Cerro Mangote or the main site of the Las Vegas culture. All the evidence points to it having been a seasonal camp, occupied annually for the

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Figure 3 A ceramica adorno in the shape of a bird head from San Jacinto 1. The fabric of the pottery is fiber-tempered. (Photo by Vic Krantz)

Figure 2 Excavations at San Jacinto 1, Colombia. (Photo by Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo)

purpose of harvesting, processing, and possibly storing wild plants, particularly wild grass seeds that grew on the point bar. Heated rocks were used in the pits to steam the grass seeds. With the exception of the Taperinha pottery of the Central Amazon, the San Jacinto ceramics are the oldest yet discovered in the Americas. The ceramic vessels show no evidence of having been used for cooking; rather the large jars were probably used to detoxify, ferment, and/or store the seeds after processing. A high percentage of the vessels is elaborately decorated with incised, excised, and modeled motifs, indicating that pottery played a social-symbolic role (see Image and Symbol; Pottery Analysis: Stylistic); the vessels were likely used in feasting and rituals that accompanied the harvest (Figure 3). No base camp or network of temporary camps has yet been found contemporary with San Jacinto 1. Within less than 1000 years, however, San Jacinto 2, which may qualify as a base camp, but is as yet unexcavated, and a number of other sites were established in the region, some near the coast, associated with wetland environments. The distinctive ceramic

style of San Jacinto continued. Vessels were manufactured, in greater quantities and with still more elaborate motifs. The people of the wetland sites focused on shellfish, turtles, and other local resources. No domesticated plants or other evidence of agriculture have yet been found in association with these sites, but it is plausible, given the record from Panama, that they were linked with as yet undiscovered farming communities situated in the San Jacinto Hills. Puerto Hormiga, the best known of these sites, was organized in a doughnut shape, with a central cleared area with household garbage around the periphery. Other sites of the same period, including San Jacinto 2, show evidence of similar planning, suggesting that settlements were organized according to a culturally determined pattern. Whether or not there were permanent villages at that time (c. 5000 years ago) in northern Colombia, however, remains to be investigated.

Mid-Holocene Sedentary Villages In Ecuador, the Middle Holocene saw the establishment of permanent villages. Beginning around 5500 years ago, villages were established in the small tropical valleys of the southwestern corner of the country. Farmers also settled the floodplains of the Guayas Basin about that time. The northern lowlands of Ecuador may have experienced similar settlement, but that evidence, if there was any, was buried several millenniums ago by layers of volcanic ash strewn over the region from eruptions in the Andes. These earliest recorded villages ranged in size from 2 to 12 ha in area. They were commonly situated on

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Figure 4 Sherds from the rims of early Valdivia ceramic bowls, Loma Alta site, Ecuador. (Photo by Gerald Newlands)

low hills. Like the Colombian site of Puerto Hormiga noted above, the settlements were arranged in an oval pattern, with huts distributed around a cleared central arena. In some instances, there was a break at one end of the oval, giving the settlement a horseshoe shape. Well-made ceramics of the Valdivia style occur in abundance at each of the sites. Again, like the Puerto Hormiga ceramics, a high percentage was decorated, suggesting that ceramic vessels played an important social role (Figure 4). For the first time in the archaeological record of South America, figurines, made of stone and slightly later of ceramic, also occur and in large numbers (Figure 5). Some were found in probable ritual contexts, but the majority come from domestic trash heaps, suggesting that they were mainly used in household rituals that occurred with some frequency. Judging by the varied locations of the sites, a variety of resources was exploited, but all of the village settlements are associated with rich valley bottom land, signaling a common reliance on agricultural produce. The warm wet conditions have not been conducive to the preservation of plant remains, but microscopic botanical remains have been recovered from the floors of the houses, from storage pits, from food-grinding tools and residues of pottery, indicating that maize, manioc, arrowroot, beans, and other

Figure 5 Valdivia stone figurines from the Loma Alta site, Ecuador. Thousands of these figurines have been recovered from early Valdivia sites. (Photo by Gerald Newlands)

tropical staples were being farmed. Those living in the interior parts of the valleys probably relied mainly on hunted game such as deer or peccary for their meat, while those living near the ocean ate more seafood. The presence of shells and fish bones at the interior sites, however, attests to the transport of some seafood inland, and it seems likely that commodities were being exchanged between communities up and down valley. Between 5000 and 4000 years ago, hierarchies emerged among sites within and between valleys. At some of the larger sites, for example, Real Alto, the central arena became a ceremonial precinct. Small mounds and other ceremonial facilities were constructed within the central plazas. Among the rituals conducted were funerary rites. Some individuals were still buried beneath house floors, but there was also community-wide veneration of some of the dead, who were buried in a funerary mound. Satellite hamlets have been discovered and were probably connected through a social network to the ceremonial centers. The relative size and patterned distributions of houses within the larger settlements suggest the existence of status differences associated with kinship and residence (see Social Inequality, Development of; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites).

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Over the next two millenniums, there was a steady increase in population size and density throughout most of the western Ecuadorian lowlands. Efficient agricultural systems were established; craft specialization developed, and intraregional exchange expanded, as well as long-distance trade with populations in the highlands and along the coast. Prestige goods, including spondylus shells and obsidian, were among the goods traded over long distances. Monumental earthen mounds associated with fancy pottery hint at the rise of an elite class. Unfortunately, archaeology has only begun to explore the remains of these hierarchical societies, so we can only guess at their size and structure. The pace of change toward sedentary villages in Panama seems to have been slightly slower than that in Ecuador. Monagrillo, which replaced Cerro Mangote around 2500 BCE, is the only possible candidate for a sedentary village. Covering an area of 1.4 ha, it is 8 times the size of Cerro Mangote. Fishing nets were in use, enabling the fishermen to catch a range of fish species that were inaccessible to the Cerro Mangote residents. The presence of pottery suggests a degree of sedentism, but in contrast to the San Jacinto and Valdivia pottery, Monagrillo pottery was poorly fired and plain – clearly pottery played a different social and symbolic role in Panama at this time than it did in northern Colombia or western Ecuador. The sites in the hills continued to exhibit a pattern of small, temporary settlements, probably associated with the expansion of slash-and-burn agriculture. It was not until 500 BCE that settlement in the river valleys is evident, and then, based on research in the Santa Marı´a Valley, suddenly large sedentary villages were established, associated with well-made pottery and containing abundant carbonized remains of maize. The suddenness of the change may be more apparent than real, in that earlier, smaller settlements in the Santa Marı´a Valley may as yet lie undiscovered under the alluvial bottomlands.

Regional Development in the Common Era By early in the Common Era, a mosaic of polities ruled by hierarchies of local elites existed over most of northern South America in both the highlands and lowlands. Although details of this pattern varied through time, probably reflecting the waxing and waning of the power and influence of local lords, regional diversity and local political independence continued until the time of Spanish contact. There is no evidence that any of the polities developed state-level bureaucracies. Until the conquest of the Ecuadorian highlands by the Incas in the sixteenth

century, there were no conquest states. At odds with the pattern of local independence and diversity are systems of symbolic imagery and linguistic relationships that point to a common cultural heritage and persistent contact over a large part of northern South America and Lower Central America. Populations speaking Chacoan, Pae´zan, and Misumalpan languages occupied parts of Colombia and Panama, and Carib and Arawak speakers occupied northeastern Colombia and northwestern Venezuela; however, Chibchan languages constituted the core and dominant language family of northern South America and their populations were distributed from Ecuador to Costa Rica at the time of Spanish contact. Bioanthropological studies also indicate that there was a high degree of genetic affinity among Chibchan speakers. There were no ‘great art styles’ or religious iconographies that linked the pre-Hispanic populations of northern South America. Beginning around 700 CE, however, the use of gold and tumbaga as a medium for representing symbols of status and power became common throughout the region. Many of the gold objects were body adornments such as necklaces, breast plates, and nose ornaments, which signaled the status of the wearer (Figure 6). Although distinct regional styles emerged around 900 CE, common themes are shared among all of the styles, many of which can be traced back to images formerly represented in stone and pottery. The wide distribution of common themes may be explained in part by a widely shared ideology derived from a common cultural heritage, but some ethnohistoric evidence from Colombia and Panama suggests that local lords traveled to distant locations to acquire knowledge and brought back golden images and other objects to symbolize their command of esoteric knowledge and strengthen their authority at home. Early Hispanic chronicles also report that the native lords of the northern Ecuadorian and southern Colombian highlands retained exchange specialists known as mindales, who traveled long distances to acquire goods of high prestige for their lords. Archaeology attests to widespread distribution of precious metals, shells, emeralds, and other gem stones throughout northern South America. The San Agustı´n culture of the upper Magdalena Valley in Colombia has long drawn the attention of archaeologists. San Agustı´n is best known for its megalithic carved images of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic creatures. Its iconography has been compared to that of the Chavin in Peru and the Olmec in Mexico, and sometimes used to support arguments that there was a direct historical connection between the two (see Americas, Central: The Olmec

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and their Contemporaries). San Agustı´n, however, seems to be a largely independent development in Colombia, and beginning no earlier than the last century BCE, it postdates the development of Olmec

Figure 6 A gold icon in the Tairona style of northeast Colombia. (Photo courtesy of Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin -Preussischer Kulturbesitz. V A 62459)

and Chavin by nearly a millennium. San Agustı´n comprised several polities in the upper Magdalena region. Populations were concentrated near the clusters of stone statuary and were associated with burial mounds. The veneration of ancestors is a familiar theme in northern South America, a practice, as noted earlier, that can be traced back to the Early Holocene. It seems that the elite of the polities legitimized their status through claimed descent from real or mythical ancestors. The Tairona culture, ancestral to the ethnographically documented Kogi of the Santa Marta Mountains in northeastern Colombia, exemplifies what some anthropologists have called theocratic chiefdoms. The Tairona built terraced sites interconnected with stone-paved pathways and stairways throughout mountainous landscape. Ciudad Perdida, hidden in the cloud forest, is the best known of the Tairona sites (Figure 7). Drawing on the studies of the Kogi, religion was probably the source of power and authority among the Tairona, and the leaders were probably priests. Ciudad Perdida and other similar sites would have served as ceremonial retreats managed by the priests and occupied only on ritual occasions. Among the most important technological achievements of the people of the northern Andes was the development of raised-field agriculture. Thousands of hectares of swampy wetlands were converted to agricultural lands in the lower Sinu´, Magdalena, and Guayas Basins through the construction of earthen ridges and platforms elevated above the floodwaters. Similar features were built in the Sabana de Bogota´

Figure 7 Ciudad Perdida, a site of the Tairona culture in the Sierra de Santa Marta, Colombia. Note the stone masonry and the terracing. (Photo by Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo)

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for the purpose of raising the level of agricultural lands and for draining inundated areas. These highly productive fields greatly increased the carrying capacities in their respective areas and account for concentrations of populations in those areas. There is little evidence of warfare in the archaeological record of northern South America. Some sites are situated on hilltops which would have served as good defensive locations, but evidence of fortifications or other hints of warfare is rare. We know from the early Spanish chronicles, however, that warfare was rampant within the region. Despite their common heritage and shared ideologies, many polities seem to have been engaged in almost constant competition and warfare; yet, there is little evidence of territorial expansion. It has been said that leaders use warfare to remind their subjects of the need for powerful leadership; perhaps the lords and chiefs of northern South America were using warfare as a political device, presaging the modern world.

ruler, were actively pushing their frontier into what is now southern Colombia. In previous years, they had succeeded in conquering several polities of the Ecuadorian highlands, some of which, most notably the Can˜ares, put up strong resistence. Possibly because the pre-Hispanic peoples of Ecuador were not accustomed to centralized rule, Paz Inca was difficult to sustain, and the Inca rulers found it necessary to put down frequent insurrections. Nevertheless, they established several administrative centers in highland Ecuador and extended the Inca highway as far north as present-day Quito (Figure 8). The largest centers were at Tomebamba, today mostly covered over by the city of Cuenca, and at Quito. Each center was constructed according to standard Inca settlement plans and built in their distinctive stone masonry. Although the Incas had relationships with some of the polities of the western lowlands of Ecuador, they did not succeed in conquering that region.

Conclusion Inca Conquest In the decade before the Spanish arrived, the Incas under the leadership of Huayna Capac, their eleventh

Nun˜ez de Balboa’s discovery of the Pacific Ocean in 1513 came after more than a decade of Spanish exploration of northern South America, and it initiated

Figure 8 Ingapirca, an Inca administrative/ceremonial site in the southern highlands of Ecuador. Note the dressed stone masonry distinctively associated with Inca architecture. (Photo by J. Scott Raymond)

ASIA, EAST/Southern Cone 417

an intensified exploration and conquest of the region. The gold ornaments and icons possessed by the natives had initially attracted the Spaniards to the region, but within less than two decades they turned their attention to Peru, where looting and pillaging was a much more profitable enterprise. Although the native societies of northwestern South America suffered dramatic declines and deculturation following the conquest, many have survived to the present day and represent a cultural continuity that extends back to prehistoric times. Ethnographic and historic data potentially constitute an important means of fleshing out the scant evidence derived from the archaeological record and some archaeologists have begun to carry out such research. Much more needs to be done, especially on the archaeological side. Despite the many decades of research, our knowledge of these ancient societies remains superficial. Looting continues to outpace archaeological research, and the native societies are mostly in rapid decline. Within a few decades, it will be too late. See also: Americas, Central: Lower Central America; The

Olmec and their Contemporaries; Americas, South: Early Villages; Image and Symbol; Phytolith Analysis; Plant Domestication; Pottery Analysis: Stylistic; Social Inequality, Development of; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites.

Further Reading Helms MW (1979) Ancient Panama: Chiefs in Search of Power. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Lathrap DW, Collier D, and Chandra H (1975) Ancient Ecuador: Culture, Clay and Creativity 3000–300 BC. Chicago: The Field Museum of Natural History. Oyuela-Caycedo A and Bonzani RM (2005) San Jacinto 1: A Historical Ecological Approach to an Archaic Site in Colombia. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press. Oyuela-Caycedo A and Raymond JS (eds.) (1998) Recent Advances in the Archaeology of the Northern Andes. Los Angeles: UCLA, The Institute of Archaeology. Quilter J and Hoopes JW (eds.) (2003) Gold and Power in Ancient Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Ranere AJ and Cooke RG (2002) Late Glacial and Early Holocene occupation of Central American tropical forests. In: Mercader J (ed.) Under the Canopy: The Archaeology of Tropical Rain Forests, pp. 219–248. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Raymond JS and Burger RL (eds.) (2003) Archaeology of Formative Ecuador. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Reichel-Dolmatoff G (1988) Goldwork and Shamanism: An Iconographic Study of the Gold Museum. Medellı´n, Colombia: Editorial Colina.

Southern Cone Gustavo Politis and Patricia Madrid, Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires and Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary biface A two-sided stone tool, manufactured through a process of lithic reduction, that displays flake scars on both sides. bolas A throwing weapon similar to the surujin made of weights on the ends of interconnected cords, designed to capture animals by entangling their legs. They are most famously used by the South American gauchos, but have been found in excavations of pre-Hispanic settlements, especially in Pampa and Patagonia, where indigenous peoples used them to catch guanaco and n˜andu. hypsithermal period The period about 4000 to 8000 years ago when the Earth was apparently several degrees warmer than it is now. uniface A specific type of stone tool that has been flaked on one surface only. Such tools can be placed into two general classes: (1) modified flakes and (2) formalized tools, which display deliberate, systematic modification of the marginal edges and were often formed with a definite purpose in mind.

The Southern Cone The Southern Cone includes the territories of Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and southern Brazil. This region was probably the last colonized by Homo sapiens at the end of the Pleistocene. Current evidence indicates a human presence in the region no earlier than the very end of the Pleistocene, at around 12 500 years BP. Late Pleistocene foraging societies evolved through the Holocene in different ways, producing distinct historical trajectories. Foraging was the main subsistence strategy until the arrival of Europeans in Patagonia, the pampas, and in most parts of the campos and Chaco. In some places, especially in the south and central Andes at around 5000 years BP, the domestication of plants and camelids occurred, producing important changes in demography, settlement patterns, technology, and social organization. Some of these societies reached a chiefdom level of sociopolitical organization and in the fifteenth century, became part of the Inca Empire. The cultural development of the Southern Cone societies is organized in this work following climatic, environmental, and chronologic criteria: Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene, Middle Holocene, and Late Holocene. In order to better understand the complexity and diversity of social processes that took place during the Late Holocene in certain geographic areas

418 Southern Cone

of the Southern Cone, this period is also divided considering significant cultural changes (i.e., Formative Period, Regional Developments, etc.).

The Environment The Andean mountain range runs the full length of the western side of South America forming the ‘backbone’ of the Southern Cone. To the west, there is a strip of land between the Pacific coast and the mountains. Rainfall decreases from south to north, reaching extreme aridity in northern Chile and southern Peru. East of the Andes there are extensive plains and a ‘plateau’ (the planalto) that reach the Atlantic coast, forming a mosaic of environments. Major uninterrupted South American grasslands stretch from southern Brazil through Uruguay and Argentina. There are two main subregions: the campos of southern Brazil and Uruguay (northeast of the Rı´o de Plata) and the pampas of Argentina (southwest of the Rı´o de Plata). Between the Andes and the campos is the region known as Chaco – a flat and dry forested landscape – and a gallery tropical forest of the Uruguay and Parana´ Rivers. In the lower portion of the Southern Cone is the Patagonian region, located between 39
and 55
south latitude. Most of this space is a treeless plateau which is deeply cut by several major rivers with courses flowing in a mainly west to east direction. The Straight of Magallanes separate continental Patagonia from Isla Grande of Tierra del Fuego. This island is the largest of an archipelago in the southern Chilean territory which is composed of hundreds of smaller islands. The southern Andes are part of the Andean Cordillera. They comprise several subregions: the subtropical forest (a narrow band which extends along the foothills of the eastern mountain ranges), the puna (a high altitude dry plain located between 3400 and 4500 masl), and the valleys and quebradas (located below 3000 masl). In the south, below 38
south latitude, the cordillera is covered by a dense forest of Notophagus (Figure 1).

Early Peopling The earliest secure evidence for human occupation of the region east of the Andes is the open-air site of Arroyo Seco 2 (Figure 2), where initial occupation dates to c. 12 200 years BP. A large number of sites have been detected in the pampas especially in the Tandilia mountain range (Cueva Tixi, Cerro La China, Cerro El Sombrero, etc.). These sites are small caves or rockshelters with an early component in association with fishtail projectile points (Figure 3). These sites have been consistently dated between 10 000 and 11 000 years BP. West of the cordillera, the oldest

evidence of human occupation is at the Monte Verde site, dated between c. 12 300 and 12 800 years BP. This component has been interpreted as a forestadapted economy, based primarily on the collection of wild plant foods and secondarily on the scavenging and/or hunting of large and small animals. Both Monte Verde and Arroyo Seco 2 sites indicate that humans were in the Southern Cone on both sides of the Andes reaching south of 38
south latitude before 12 000 years BP. Moreover, a number of sites in the pampas as well as in the Cordillera and in the Central Valley of Chile (such as Tagua–Tagua) indicate that humans were well established in this latitudinal belt between 10 500 and 11 000 years BP. In the Patagonian plateau, the oldest secure group of dates come from archaeological sites in rockshelters and caves the Rio Deseado basin (Los Toldos, Piedra Museo, El Ceibo, Cerro Tres Tetas, etc.). These sites indicate a human presence in the 47
to 50
latitudes around 11 000 years BP. At the end of the Pleistocene in the southern tip of Patagonia, the South American mainland and the island of Tierra del Fuego were connected and formed a continuous mass of land. This area was occupied roughly at the same time, indicating that humans arrived shortly after de-glaciations, at c. 10 500 to 11 000 years BP. In this area, fishtail projectile point was also a distinctive tool in many sites (Fell’s Cave, Palli Aike, Cueva del Medio, etc.). In the campos of Uruguay, the occupation of early hunter-gatherers has been dated c. 11 000 years BP. All reported sites are open-air sites located in three areas: the Uruguay-Cuareim River, the middle basin of the Rı´o Negro, and the Atlantic Coast. During the Late Pleistocene, the campos of Uruguay and the pampas of Argentina shared several common features, such as the fishtail projectile point technology and other technological traits (i.e., reduction sequences, type of lithic raw material). This suggests some kind of relationship or shared knowledge between these two sub-regions. In the Brazilian campos, the sequence of hunter-gatherer occupation known as the Umbu Tradition began with the Uruguaı´ Phase and dates between c. 10 800 and 8500 years BP. In terms of technology, small bifacial stemmed chalcedony projectile points associated with side and end scrapers, retouched flakes, and unipolar and bipolar (flaked in both ends) artifacts made on basalt, chalcedony, quartz, and chert are typical. During the Late Pleistocene and into the Early Holocene, a variety of herbivores were hunted by early foragers in the region. Among them, guanaco (Lama guanicoe) was the main resource in the pampas, Patagonia, and in the Andean Cordillera, while deer (Ozotoceros and Blastoceros) was principally

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hunted in the campos. Extinct megafauna such as giant ground sloth, ground sloth, extinct horse, and glyptodonts were secondary or occasional resources in the pampas and in Patagonia. West of the cordillera, mastodon and extinct species of horse were hunted and consumed. The timing and cause of Pleistocene fauna extinction are still part of an open debate, although increasing data from pampas sites suggest the survival of some species until the Early Holocene (between c. 7000 and 8000 years BP). It is likely that the impact of early foragers on large herbivores, not only by hunting but also by fires in the grasslands and forests, would accelerate this process of extinction. At the end of the Early Holocene, pampas huntergatherers began to exploit marine resources and to

occupy, at least seasonally, the Atlantic coast. The first evidence came from the La Olla 1 and 2 sites (i.e., seal processing loci) and the Monte Hermoso 1 site (with human footprints) which date between 6640 and 7920 years BP and are located on the Atlantic coast. At c. 6000 years BP, the first evidence of marine adaptation is recorded in southern Patagonia in the Beagle Channel (the Tunel site), where shell middens have been found.

The Middle Holocene Changes During the Middle Holocene period, significant environmental and cultural changes occurred. This period is characterised by climatic changes related to what is

420 Southern Cone Lípez

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Southern Cone 421

known as the Hypsithermal (a period when higher temperature and/or humidity are recorded): a time at c. 7000 years BP, when the sea level rose above the current level. However, there is no consensus on its magnitude (between 2.2 to 12 masl. depending on the author) and the chronology of the maximum ingression. During the Middle Holocene in both the cordillera and tropical lowlands, nomadic foragers reduced their mobility in many areas and started to cultivate domesticated plants. In the Andes, management of

Figure 3 Fishtail projectile points from the Tandilia hill range. Photo courtesy Nora Flegenheimer.

camelids may have started milleniums before, resulting in true domestication by this time. After the extinction of megafauna, guanaco continued to be the primary game-animal resource until the Late Holocene, especially in the pampas, Patagonia, and in the cordillera. Besides meat and fat, guanaco also provided excellent hide for making clothes and shelter, bone for tool raw material, bone marrow with high nutritional values, and even blood which might have been consumed during drought periods. The camelid was a fast and agile animal and these characteristics support the idea that a cooperative hunting strategy must have been employed. A variety of projectile points and the bola stone (boleadora) were the main hunting weapons. In the eastern campos of Uruguay and southern Brazil, the Middle Holocene human occupation is characterized by hunter-gatherers-fishers who specialized in exploitation of the palm fruit butia´ (Butia capitata) (Figure 4). On the Atlantic coast, subsistence was complemented by seal-hunting and the gathering of mollusks. The first evidence of a shell midden on the coast of Uruguay dating to the Middle Holocene (c. 4000 years BP) would suggest an incipient adaptation to the exploitation of marine resources. On the inland grasslands, hunting was oriented toward deer (Blastoceros and Ozoteceros) and complemented with coypo (Myocastor). Alochtonous siliceous raw material was used to manufacture distinctive mid-size stemmed triangular projectile points. During this period, the first evidence for mound construction comes from the eastern sector of the campos, mostly

Figure 4 Relict of a forest of Butia´ palm in the border of the Uruguay River.

422 Southern Cone

Figure 5 Typical cerrito in the Laguna Merim Basin (Uruguay) during excavation. Photo courtesy Jose´ M. Lo´pez Mazz.

in the Laguna Merim Basin. The mounds, locally called cerritos de indios (in Uruguay) or aterros (in Brazil), are circular or elliptical earth structures of about 20–40 m in diameter and up to 7 m high (Figure 5). Some occur alone and others are found in clusters with up to 50 in one locality. The function and construction process of these mounds are currently under debate. A few decades ago, Brazilian archaeologists proposed that mounds were some kind of platform constructed for habitation during seasonal flooding. More recently, Uruguayan researchers propose that the mounds were mainly funerary structures for complex hunter-gatherers due to the recurrence of human burials in several locations. For Lo´pez Mazz, the older structures (c. 4000–3000 years BP) seem to be oriented to mark and order territory as well as to legitimate the exclusivity of the resources, while after c. 2500 years BP. some structures began to specialize toward ceremonial activity and funerary practices. Iriarte and collaborators recently proposed that as early as 4190 years BP., the Los Ajos site became a circular plaza village which grew as a result of multiple overlapping domestic occupations associated with a wide range of activities. In some sites they found phytoliths and starch grains of squash (Cucurbita sp.), maize (Zea mays), beans (Phaseolus sp.), and Canna sp. rhizomes. This evidence indicates an early domestication at c. 3600 years BP. In the rest of the campos, and in the southern planalto, the archaeological record of hunter-gatherers during the Early and Middle Holocene was subsumed under the Umbu´ Tradition. This concept encompasses a variety of lithic material which includes some distinctive projectile points

and an economy based on hunting, gathering, fishing, and collecting mollusks. Since the nuts of two genera of palms, Arescastrum and Butia´, have been consistently recovered in these sites, it is considered that these species would have been ‘managed’ by these populations. It was also proposed that the Humaita´ Tradition integrated a group of sites, basically located in the forest of the planalto, with a distinctive technology of big bifacial artifacts including the curved clavas. However, for some authors both traditions seem to be very similar and differences would be related to site functionality rather than to two different populations. In general terms, the archaeological evidence shows continuity between the Early and Middle Holocene population although there is some intraregional differentiation. Most researchers interpret the main changes that occurred in the Middle Holocene a result of the transformation that happened within the Early Holocene populations in several dimensions. This has been the explanation for the emergence of the cerritos and the continuity of basic adaptive patterns and technology of the hunter-gatherers of the pampas, the campos, and Patagonia.

The Late Holocene Diversification (c. 3000–500 BP) During the Late Holocene, the process of regional differentiation which began to become visible during the Middle Holocene produced a wide variety of historical trajectories and adaptive patterns. Moreover, several significant changes occurred, such as reduction in residential mobility and the development of

Southern Cone 423

wide intraregional interaction networks. Along with other important innovations, such as pottery and horticulture, this suggests the development of social complexity. This process is well exemplified in the cerritos of the eastern campos and in the Andes. During this time at least three main subsistence strategies can be identified among the pampas foragers: the hunter-gatherer of the xerophitic forest, the hunter-gatherers of the open grasslands, and the hunter-gatherers-fishers of rivers and lagoons. During this period, guanaco was the main food resource in addition to pampas deer, armadillo, and rhea. Plain and incised pottery is also present in this area at c. 3000 years BP although in low frequencies. During the Late Holocene, changes in mobility, subsistence, and technology would indicate a process of economic and social intensification. In Patagonia, the Late Holocene hunter-gatherers were heavily dependent on guanaco although on the slopes of the cordillera, the gathering of pin˜ones (the fruits of the pehue´n Araucaria araucana) from the forest was a significant, although seasonal, resource. In the Delta and in the lower Parana´ and Uruguay Rivers, the archaeological record shows some peculiarities in the basic hunter-gatherer-fisher adaptive pattern. In one way, it could be partially explained by the penetration of a ‘branch’ of the Dominio Amazo´nico, region which forms a subtropical forest in the delta and along shores of the main rivers. Plant resources, especially fruit of the pindo´ palm (Syagrus romanzoffiana), were exploited recurrently on the island of the Delta. Moreover, the historical record of the sixteenth century indicates that the lower Parana´ and Uruguay Rivers were occupied by several ethnic groups (Chana´, Chana´-Timbu´, Mbegua´, etc.) and some of them practiced small-scale horticulture. In the lower and middle Parana´–Uruguay region, several changes occurred during the Late Holocene. Between 2500 and 5000 years BP, pottery entered into the area and around 2000 years BP, the first canoe people are recorded in this fluvial area. It seems that horticulture also became a part of their subsistence during this time, probably in the last 2000 years and related to the expansion of the Tupi-Guarani people. In the lower Parana´-Uruguay region, a rich pottery tradition known as the ‘Goya–Malabrigo Culture’ appeared c. 1000 years BP. Well represented in many sites on the floodplain and islands, this pottery is characterized by abundant zoomorphic representations (i.e., mainly birds). Subsistence patterns were based on a mixed economy of small and medium mammals, birds, fish, mollusks, and products from the forest (i.e., especially palm fruits). Small-scale tropical horticulture might also have been practiced although archaeological evidence is still inconclusive.

In the southern planalto, several traditions have been proposed (Itarare´, Casa de Pedra, and Taquara) which would reflect the regional continuities of the Humaita´ Tradition as a result of the adoption of pottery, horticulture, the construction of pit-houses, and certain techniques of lithic polishing. However, the recent work of Noelli challenges this interpretation by proposing that this Late Holocene population was the southern expansion of the Ge´ linguistic family, being ancestors of the ethnographic Kaingang and Xokleng groups. The early Ge´ population of the area would have been displaced from the proximity of the main rivers to the higher and colder region of the planalto by the Guaranı´ Indians between 2000 and 1000 years BP. The Guaranı´ are a group of populations, well known in archaeological, historical, linguistic, and ethnographic terms, belonging to a Tupi cultural matrix. The origin of these populations would be in the Madeira-Guapore Basin, in the southwest of Amazonia. In a process of continuous demographic growth and territorial expansion, they spread through several regions of southeastern South America, including most of the campos and the planalto, part of Chaco, and the northeastern part of the pampas. They reached their southern limit, the lower Parana´-Plata Rivers, at least at c. 700 years BP. In terms of social–political organization and kinship, the Guaranı´ formed several nuclear families around a political/religious leader. The subsistence of the Guaranı´ population was quite generalized, based on horticulture, gathering of plants and insects, hunting, and fishing. They cultivated about 39 plant genera subdivided in at least 159 cultivars; among them were manioc (Manihot esculenta), sweet potato (Ipomea batata), maize, and beans. In spite of the great geographical expansion and the tendency to systematically incorporate non-Guaranı´ people, pottery maintains a great uniformity. The typically painted and corrugated pottery is found in distant locations, thousands of kilometers apart and with very little variation indicating that it was produced in the context of a rigidly stylistic and highly standardized pattern. The chronological span of dated Guaranı´ sites in the region is between c. 2000 and 200 years BP but it has to be taken into account that well-established Guaranı´ populations are still living in the region. The Guaranı´ expansion into the tropical and temperate lowlands of the Southern Cone produced significant cultural changes. They introduced several cultigens, and some technological and stylistic patterns, but overall, they spread a new mode of life among the local population. When the European Conquest began at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the life of foragers of the pampas, campos, and Patagonian foragers

424 Southern Cone

changed dramatically. Adoption of the horse, a new relationship with a neighboring group, and the disarticulation of the traditional economic cycle were some of the results of this asymmetrical interaction. When wild horses and cattle flooded the pampas, the Chilean Araucanos arrived as they were attracted to this new marketable resource. By then, the local foragers remained trapped between the well-organized Araucanian chiefdom and the slow advance toward the south of the colonial frontier. By mid-eighteenth century, the few campos foragers became extinct and the pampas foragers that still existed were integrated with the Araucanos and disappeared as a distinctive ethnic group. At the end of the nineteenth century, with military campaigns organized by the Argentinean government, the Patagonia Indians known as the Tehuelches, as well as the Araucanos, were either killed by the military or, after a period in prison, relocated to marginal and poor areas.

The Agricultural and Herder Societies from Southern Andes The first societies that began to domesticate plants and animals in the Southern Cone inhabited a diversity of environments in both the highlands and lowlands. In the highlands these environments include deserts, quebradas, river valleys, and the subtropical forest of the eastern slope of the Andes (the sierras subandinas). The first practice related to animal domestication is linked with camelids, medium-sized animals that are adapted to arid environments. This family has four South American species: two nondomesticated (guanaco (Lama guanicoe) and vicun˜a (Vicugna vicugna)) and two domesticated (llama (Lama glama) and alpaca (Lama pacos)). Recent genetic studies suggest that the llama descended from the guanaco and the alpaca resulted from an interbreeding between guanaco and vicun˜a. The llama had a central place in the Andes not only for its meat and wool but also for its capacity for carrying burdens. Related to this domestication process in the highlands, during the archaic period (10 000 to 3000–2500 years BP), important changes occurred: reduction in the range of mobility, the development of residential areas with the emergence of the first villages, and the adoption of new technologies. However, many societies, especially the llama herders, maintained some dimension of mobility in order to move their herds on a seasonal basis. The domestication of camelids in the highlands implied a long process of intensification which includes predation–protection–domestication before the full establishment of agro-pastoral societies. Some evidence

from northern Chile and northwest Argentina suggest an independent center of camelid domestication, between 5000 to 3000 years BP, probably earlier than in the Central Andes. In sites such as Quebrada Seca 3, Inca Cueva 7, Huachichocana III, Tula´n 52, Puripica 1, camelid bones, fibers, guano, and corrals for maintaining them in captivity, have all been found. Clear evidence of agro-herder societies in the puna and quebrada are dated at c. 2500 to 1200 years BP. However, the archaeological record of caves in the Argentine northwest suggests that the process started earlier at c. 5000 years BP in places with extreme aridity but with a diversity of microenvironments. In northern Chile there is also early evidence at sites such as Chiu Chiu 200 and Turi-Toconte which suggests a pastoral way of life with seasonal mobility between the high vegas and can˜adones, and the precordillera and puna. The incorporation of domesticated camelids produced important changes in settlement patterns which generated some degree of sedentarism although at the same time maintaining a high logistic dynamic. Hunting and fishing remained an important economic complement on the coast. While camelid domestication would have a local development in the southern Andes, plant domestication had a strong alochtonous influence since the first domesticated species are from the tropical lowlands east of the cordillera. The domestication of plants was a complex process which becomes visible archaeologically at around 4000 years BP in caves of the high quebradas. However, both the domestication of wild species and introduction of already domesticated plants appeared at different times in each region and they also included a variety of species. Evidence is found in sites such as Casa Cha´vez Montı´culo and Tebenquiche in the southern puna, and in Quebrada de Inca Cueva-IC c.7-(more than 4000 years BP) in the headwater regions of quebradas and valleys above 3000 m a.s.l.. Remains of squash (Lagenaria siceraria), which were used as containers, together with textiles and basketry were found at these sites. At the Huachichocana cave site, remains of chilli (Capsicum baccatum), beans (Phaseolos vulgaris), and maize (Zea mays) where found. In the Cuyo region (south central Andes) remains of squash (Cucurbita sp.) and quı´noa (Chenopodium quinoa) were dated at c. 4500–3700 years BP (i.e., sites of Los Morrillos, Agua de la Tinaja, and Gruta del Indio). Only around 2300 years BP did maize arrive in this region. In central Chile, there is evidence for Chenopodium sp. at around 3000 years BP. After this period, there are remains of domesticated plants on the Pacific coast, in the valleys, and within the cordillera.

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In the Pacific coastal valleys (Chile) between 9000 and 4000 years BP, there is certain continuity and stability in societies along with a clear maritime economy. This is represented by the world famous Tradition of Chinchorro, whose elaborated human burials are extremely well preserved due to aridity in this area. After 4000 years BP, these people began to slowly experiment with plants. In this context, there was a shift toward the settlement of valleys, suggesting a search for new residential space and better land for cultivation in a desert environment. Nu´n˜ez Atencio proposed that the first cultivars were adopted from primary domestication centers in the tropical lowlands and adapted to the narrow slopes of the mesothermic valleys west of the Andes. This is the case for bean remains found at the site of San Pedro Viejo de Pichasca dating between 8000 and 6000 years BP. However, other sites on the coast of Arica such as the cemetery Morro 2/2 (dated c. 2800 years BP) still maintained a subsistence based on marine resources. Around 1700 years BP, complex cemeteries are recorded in tumuli such as Alto Ramı´rez, in the Azapa valley, where several cultivated plants (squash, chilli, cotton, manioc, maize, and beans) are found placed as offerings.

The Formative Period in the Southern Andes (c. 3000–1000 years BP) At around 2000 years BP, there was a transition toward a settlement subsistence pattern related toagro-pastoral societies. Early villages integrated more complex systems linking settlement with different functions. This new organization is known as the Formative Period and was characterized by a high degree of sedentarism and intensive pottery production. Little is known about the causes which produced the emergence of pottery in the southern Andes. At around 3000 years BP, there was a diversification of pottery shapes and styles on both sides of the Andes. Pottery appears in sites with a maritime economy such as the Faldas del Morro site (northern Chile, ca. 2800 years BP.) and in agro-pastoral societies such as Inca Cueva-Alero 1 (northwest of Argentina, c. 2900 years BP). It is not clear yet if this is a technology of local origins, alochtonous, or both. Mun˜oz postulated that the origin of pottery is related to two different traditions; one on the coast and the other on the altiplano. Pottery with geometric designs and feline figures dates to between 3000 and 1700 years BP in northern Chile and shows strong similarities with the altiplano tradition from the north of the Titicaca Lake. These stylistic patterns along with other evidences show a major social interaction in the context

of these early villages. Toward the east of the cordillera in the tropical forest slope at around 2600 years BP, there is an intensive use of pottery known as the San Francisco Tradition. For Ventura, this tradition has a long local development and was utilized for early long-distance exchange between the valley of Tarija (Bolivia), the puna, and other eastern tropical valleys. Around 3000 BP, pottery occurred in the heads of the Quebrada de Humahuaca (in the northwest of Argentina) and in the neighboring puna. Pottery allowed new and more efficient modes of food processing. It also became a useful means for transport and storage which amplified the spectrum of the exploited resources, both wild and domesticated. Along with other technologies such as metallurgy, textiles, and basketry, which not only had a utilitarian function, but they were also used as bases for symbolic representations. Between 3000 and 1400 years BP, agro-pastoralist society, which favored more stable and complex villages, was established in many areas of the highland. Around 2500 years BP, pottery was associated with this village pattern and began to diversify in multiple decorative techniques (incised, painted, and modeled) and styles which where used to define archaeological sequences in several sectors of the highlands of the Argentine Northwest. In general terms, these groups had circular houses dispersed throughout cultivated fields as well as houses which aggregated around a central patio and typically included tombs and a granary. In the valliserrana area of the Argentine Northwest, several styles or cultural entities were defined: Saujil (2400 to 1300 years BP), Tafi (2100 to 1100 years BP) and in the mesothermic valleys, Condorhuasi (2200 to 1500 years BP) and Cie´naga (2200 to 1400 years BP). Among them, Alamito (1800–1500 years BP) stands out due to the distinctive pattern of its villages. This pattern contains mounds, platforms, and enclosures which were made on stone and adobe and situated around communal or ritual plazas. It is not clear yet if the Alamito sites are villages with a specific and complex pattern or cultic centers related to the Condorhuasi. Intense long- and short-distance trade of raw material, manufacture, as well as both ordinary objects and ceremonial items, characterize these village societies. This interaction favored information exchange and connected very distant groups from the Pacific coast to the sub-Andean hills and to the tropical forest. This exchange network was very ancient but during this period it became well established. The San Pedro de Atacama oasis in the puna of Chile, was probably the most important center of this network; from here llama caravans traveled widely across the

426 Southern Cone

south central Andes and Pacific coast. Exchange items included salt, obsidian, lithic shovels, pottery, as well as clay pipes and cebil (Anadenanthera sp.), a hallucinogenic drug from the tropical forest. Late Formative societies developed during the first centuries of the Christian era, when there was an increment in demography and in the exchange network. During this period, there was a clear development of ritual practices. Fine pottery (polished and painted like the Vaquerı´as Style) appeared in a variety of sites and in different environments associated with the llama caravans and with long-distance interethnic contacts. This pottery is associated with a cultic phenomena represented by the use of hallucinogens in association with ritual paraphernalia such as tablets, tubes, clay and stone pipes, and mortars with feline motifs. The use of arsenical bronze as a sort of technology of power at a grand scale can be seen in objects such as plates with high symbolic value. Between 1500 and 1000 years BP, there was a clear manifestation of social regional integration which included chiefdoms with increasing inherited social inequalities. A representation of this is found in the cultural group known as Aguada (c. 1600 to 1000 years BP) centered in the Ambato Valley (Catamarca, Argentine northwest), whose symbolic and ideological pattern expanded in the valleys of the Andes. Among this group, the feline complex plays a central role and was probably the expression of a shared pan-Andean cosmology. It has been proposed that the Aguada were linked with the Tiwanaku expansion, basically based on contacts – via the San Pedro de Atacama oasis – between these two areas. However, it seems that the Aguada cosmology is a local development related to the early cultic phenomena of El Mollar and El Alamito.

The Regional Developments and the Inca Expansion (c. 1000 Years BP to Hispanic Conquest) Between c. 1000 years BP and expansion of the Inca Empire into the southern Andes during the fifteenth century, many political centers in dense and conglomerate settlements, articulated with dependent villages, emerged. This process was associated with a high differentiation in the organization of the village pattern composed of residences, workshops, storage places, and formal areas for human burials (cemeteries). An intense production as specialization characterizes this period, which also resulted in multiple pottery styles (i.e., Santa Marı´a, Bele´n in Argentine northwest) (Figures 6 and 7). Between c. 900 and 1430 years BP, several sites of Quebrada

Figure 6 Pottery style Santa Marı´a, Ampajango (Catamarca, Repu´blica Argentina). Collection Mun˜iz Barreto, Museo de La Plata. Photo courtesy Marı´a Delia Arena.

Figure 7 Pottery style Bele´n, Azampay (Catamarca, Repu´blica Argentina). Collection Mun˜iz Barreto – Museo de La Plata. Photo courtesy Marı´a Delia Arena.

de Humahuaca (i.e., Estancia Grande, CAL-20, Los Amarillos, San Jose´, La Isla, Juella, Campo Colorado, Volca´n), the north-central Calchaquı´ valley (i.e., Borgatta-SSalCac 16-, Valde´z-SsalCac 12-), central Chile (i.e., Aconcagua Culture), and of the Norte Grande of Chile (i.e., Caserones 1, Pica-Tarapaca´) are representative of this period. Agricultural practice was intensive and included terraces or andenes in the mountain slopes and cultivated fields in the valley bottom. New varieties of maize, beans, and squash were introduced, which resulted in the production of a food surplus. Corporative enterprises developed in order to maintain larger populations with centralized and marked hierarchies. This period is known in the regional cultural sequence as ‘regional developments’,

Southern Cone 427

based on the existence of many political centers that emerged in this period having alliances and conflict between them. Some examples include Humahuaca, Calchaquı´ and Yocavil, Bele´n, Sanagasta, Angualasto in the Argentine northwest; Salar de Atacama in northern Chile and Lı´pez in southern Bolivia. The increase in size and number of settlements and the development of a settlement hierarchy produced social tension which in turn derived in conflicts that generate population displacement toward higher and better-protected localities. These changes are well documented at the quebradas and valleys in the Argentine northwest. As a result, defensive walls were built to create well-protected fortifications such as Quitor en el Salar de Atacama (Chile); Tucute in Casabindo, La Huerta in Humahuaca, and the urban center of Tastil in Quebrada del Toro (Argentine). Upon the foundation of these hierarchical societies, the Inca Empire expanded its domain during the fifteenth century and transformed their structure and organization as they became part of the southern province of the Tawantinsuyu, the name of the Inca Empire whose capital was in Cuzco (Peru´). The imperial expansion sought to increase their mineral resources, which were especially abundant in northern Chile. They also sought to add more local labor force which was needed by the estate during the expansion phase. The Inca created an infrastructure which integrated settlements specialized in the production of certain items (i.e., Potrero-Chaquiago),

Figure 8 Inca site Tolombo´n. Photo courtesy Vero´nica Williams.

defensive stone structures known as pukara (such as Pucara´ de Andalgala´, Fuerte de Tolombo´n-Argentina-, El Ta´rtaro-Central Chile-), waystations or tambos (i.e., Las Cuevas IV-Argentina-, Ojo de Agua-Central Chile-), administrative centers (i.e., Cortaderas, Shincal, Potrero-Chaquiago-Argentina-, Cerro la Cruz-Central Chile-), and a complex road system that crossed thousands of kilometers (Figures 8 and 9). They also re-used and rearranged previous villages imposing architectural traits such as the rectangular enclosure, trapezoidal entrance (vanos), and small niches (i.e., Casa Morada de La Paya, Guitia´n in Salta, Fuerte Quemado in Catamarca). The incorporation of the Inca throne – a platform known as ushnu – is a singular archaeological indicator not only of the Inca domination but also of the strategic importance of the site where it is placed. Some examples of ushnu are Vin˜a del Cerro and Chena in Chile, and Watungasta, Nevado del Aconquija, and Potrero de Payogasta in Argentina. Many objects, such as pottery, show the integration of local elements with Inca shapes and/or motifs (Imperial Inca style) and result in mixed styles, such as Inca Paya, widely distributed in northwestern Argentina, northern Chile, and southern Bolivia (Figure 10). During the sixteenth century, these populations were decimated by the Spanish Conquest and many were incorporated into a form of slavery known as the encomienda. Episodes of intense resistance from

428 Southern Cone

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Figure 9 Plan of Inca administrative center Potrero-Chaquiago. Courtesy Vero´nica Williams.

most of these people blended into the criollo populations and lost their ethnic identity. Only in some places, such as the high puna, do some groups still maintain their traditional way of life. See also: Americas, South: Inca Archaeology; Animal Domestication; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient; New World, Peopling of; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading

Figure 10 Aribaloide Inca, Aguada orilla norte (Catamarca, Repu´blica Argentina). Collection Mun˜iz Barreto, Museo de La Plata. Photo courtesy Marı´a Delia Arena.

local groups, such as the Quilmes, occurred in the early years of conquest, resulting in brutal repression by the Spaniards. In many cases, the surviving indigenous populations were relocated hundreds of kilometers away or placed in Reducciones. As a result,

Berberia´n E and Nielsen A (eds.) (2001) Historia Argentina Prehispa´nica, 2 vols. Co´rdoba: Editorial Brujas. Dura´n Coirolo A and Bracco Boksar R (2000) Arqueologı´a de Tierras Bajas Tropicales. Uruguay: Ministerio de Educacio´n y Cultura, Montevideo. Hidalgo J, Schiappacasse V, Niemeyer H, Aldunate C, and Solimano I (eds.) (1989) Culturas de Chile. Prehistoria. Desde sus Origenes hasta los Albores de la Conquista. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Andre´s Bello. Kern A (1999) Prehistoria do Rio grande do Sul. Porto Alegre, Brasil. McEwan C, Borrero L, and Prieto A (eds.) (1997) Patagonia. London: The British Museum Press. Pearsall D (1992) The origin of plant cultivation in South America. In: Cowan CW and Watson PJ (eds.) The Origins of Agriculture: An International Perspective, pp. 173–205. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Politis G and Alberti B (eds.) (1999) Archaeology in Latin American. London: Routledge. Tarrago´ M (ed.) (2000) Nueva Historia Argentina. Tomo I. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana.

AMINO ACID RACEMIZATION DATING 429

AMINO ACID RACEMIZATION DATING Rainer Gru¨n, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary amino acid Used for the synthesis of proteins. There are about 20 different amino acids in nature, consisting of four building blocks attached to a central carbon atom at angles of about 120
in respect to each other: a carboxylic group (COOH), an amino group (NH2), a hydrogen atom and a radical group (e.g., H in glycine, CH3O in serine or C2H3O2 in aspartic acid). chiral A three-dimensional form that consists in two configurations that are not superposable on their mirror images. chiral atom Central atom, onto which chemical groups can be attached to form isomers or stereoisomers. dextrorotatory Turning a plane of polarized light to the right. dromaius Extant emu. epimerization The process when a stereoisomer has two or more chiral carbon atoms but only one is changed in the conversion. genyornis Extinct giant flightless bird in Australia. isomer Consisting of the same elements in the same proportions, with the same molecular weight, but, as a result of a different arrangement of their constituents, forming different substances with different properties. lævorotatory Turning a plane of polarized light to the left. racemization The process in which one optically active stereoisomer is converted into a mix of lævorotatory and dextrorotatory forms. ratite Belonging to a class of birds with a keel-less sternum, such as ostrich, emu, and cassowary. stereoisomer Isomers differing in their spatial arrangement.

Amino acid racemization (AAR) dating is a technique that is based on chemical reactions. Amino acids occur in two chiral forms (they are not superposable on their mirror images, see Figure 1). Amino acids are optically active, which means that a plane of polarized light will be rotated while passing through the substance. The chiral forms are labeled L (lævorotatory: turning a plane of polarized light to the left) and D (dextrorotatory: turning a plane of polarized light to the right). The symmetries are similar to left and right hands and, informally, L-amino acids are called ‘left handed’ and D-amino acids ‘right handed’. Nearly all living organisms exclusively produce L-amino acids; therefore, in living tissues the ratio of D-amino acids over L-amino acids (¼D/L ratio) is zero. After the death of the organism, L-amino acids convert into D-amino acids by a reversible process called racemization. For some amino acids, the racemization process takes place over geological time frames. As a result, the D/L ratio can be used for dating until equilibrium is

achieved (usually D/L 1). In ideal circumstances, AAR dating may be applicable to samples as old as 1 million years.

Basic Principles Amino acids are formed from four basic building blocks, which are attached to a central carbon atom at angles of about 120
in respect to each other (Figure 2): a carboxylic acid group (COOH), an amino group (NH2), a hydrogen atom, and a radical group (in the simplest case of glycine this radical group is a hydrogen atom, others are CH3O for serine, C2H3O2 for aspartic acid, etc.). A given amino acid can occur in two, nonidentical mirror images (except for glycine, which has two H-atoms), in which the central carbon is a chiral atom. The two forms are called stereoisomers (Figures 1 and 2): they have the same composition and molecular weight but differ in their spatial orientation. Racemization is the process, in which one optically active stereoisomer is converted into a mix of lævorotatory and dextrorotatory forms. Epimerization is the process when a stereoisomer has two or more chiral carbon atoms but only one is changed in the conversion (see Carbon-14 Dating; Dendrochronology). The calcified tissues (bones, teeth, shells, egg shells, etc.) and proteins of living organisms are closely

COOH

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Figure 1 Amino acids contain four different building blocks linked by a central carbon atom: a carboxylic group (COOH), an amino group (NH2), a hydrogen atom, and a radical group, which determines the specific amino acid. Except for glycine, which has two hydrogen atoms, amino acids have two chiral forms, which are not superposable. They are stereoisomers, that is, molecules with the same composition and molecular weight, but different spatial orientations.

430 AMINO ACID RACEMIZATION DATING L-aspartic

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Figure 2 Racemization and epimerization of the two most commonly used amino acids in geochronology. a, L-aspartic acid changes into D-aspartic acid via an intermediate step, where the hydrogen atom is removed, forming a carbon anion (carbanion). The hydrogen atom can be re-attached in two near equivalent positions, if it is on the opposite side, the D-aspartic acid is formed. With time, the resultant solution will become a racemate, that is, contain an equal mixture of L- and D-forms. The solid lines present bonds lying in the paper plane, while the blue triangles connect groups projected forward and the red-dashed triangle groups behind the paper plane. b, Racemization and epimerization of L-isoleucine. The rate constants of the two directional epimerization reactions are different; therefore, the solution will equilibrate at an A/I (alloisoleucine/isoleucine) ratio of about 1:3. a, After Hare PE, von Endt DW, and Kokis JE (1997) Protein and amino acid diagenesis dating. In: Taylor RE and Aitken MJ (eds.) Chronometric Dating in Archaeology, pp. 261–296. New York: Plenum Press. b, After Miller GH and Brigham-Grette J (1989) Amino acid geochronology: Resolution and precision in carbonate fossils. Quaternary International 1: 111–128.

associated. There are about 20 different amino acids used in the synthesis of proteins. Virtually, all living organisms produce exclusively L-amino acids. Enzymic reactions during life prevent D-amino acids from forming in most tissues, with the notable exception of eye lenses and teeth. There has been some interesting work attempting to establish the time of death of people based on the degree of racemization in teeth in forensic and archaeological contexts. After the death of the organism, the proteins break down,

resulting in a mix of free amino acids, peptides (containing a small number of amino acids), and fragments of proteins. If the initial D/L, or A/I (alloisoleucine/isoleucine) ratio is zero (or close to zero; typically <0.02), and if the geological reaction rate is known, an age can be in principle derived until the reaction reaches equilibrium (usually D/L 1; for A/I 1.3). Like all chemical reactions, the racemization rate is temperature dependent; geological reaction rates can be deducted from

AMINO ACID RACEMIZATION DATING 431

high-temperature heating experiments. The general effect of the time/temperature dependence of the racemization of a geological sample is shown in Figure 3. Because of the nonlinear relationship between the D/L ratio and time, D/L ratios change rapidly in young samples and more slowly in older ones. This means that the precision of AAR, assuming more or less constant analytical errors, diminishes with the age of the samples. An additional problem arises with the fact that the temperature at a given locality may have changed dramatically over Quaternary timescales. This necessitates calibration of the AAR results by independent isotopic dating techniques (see below). On the other hand, if the ages of samples are independently known, AAR values can be used to reconstruct the climatic history of a geographical area.

Measurement Amino acids are quantitatively measured with chromatographical methods: there is a range of technical variants, such an ion-exchange high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC), gas chromatography (GC), and more recently, reversed phase liquid chromatography (RPLC). Each method has specific advantages and disadvantages in sample preparation and measurement resolution. All measurement techniques have a fact in common that the analysis, compared to other dating techniques, is very fast and relatively inexpensive. This allows the analysis of a large number of samples within a reasonably short time.

different reaction rates and geographical areas with different temperature histories.

Errors Figure 4 shows the principles of error calculation for amino acid age estimations. It is assumed in this example that a sample with a D/L ratio of 0.3 and an independent age of 125 000 years was used as the calibration point, a certain time/temperature function was fitted to the calibration point and a temperature uncertainty of 1.5
C was assigned to the average storage temperature. A measured D/L ratio of 0.5 would result in an age of 350 000 years, a typical measurement uncertainty of 5% would result in an age error of 40 000 years. The error from the temperature envelope results in age error of about 60 000 years; the overall error would be in the 90 000 years range. The correct error may be significantly larger because of uncertainties in the measurement of the D/L ratio and independent age estimate of the calibration point. Because of the large uncertainties caused by extrapolations, it is usually advisable to produce several calibration points with different ages. This allows age interpolations, which are usually associated with significantly smaller errors.

AAR Dating of Bones During the 1970s a large number of papers were published reporting amino acid dating results on bones using either isoleucine or aspartic acid. Rutter

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If the racemization rates over time were precisely known, AAR could be used as an independent, numerical dating technique. However, the temperature at a given locality may have changed dramatically over its archaeological history. To address this problem, calibration points are obtained by dating samples with independent geochronological methods, such as radiocarbon or U-series. To minimize effects of the unknown temperature history, it is usually attempted to obtain a series of calibration points of different geological age (Figure 6c, below). It has to be noted that the calibration curves apply only to one species and to a limited geographical area with closely similar temperature histories. For dating or correlating samples of unknown age, it is usually assumed that these experienced the same thermal history as those samples of the calibration curve. Wehmiller and Miller discussed in detail how calibration data of one species and one geographical area may be transferred to other species with

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Figure 3 Principles of age and temperature dependency of the D/L ratio. At a constant temperature the D/L ratio is a function of time; on the other hand, if the age of the sample is known, the D/L ratio can be used for estimating the average storage temperatures. After Wehmiller JF and Miller GH (2000) Aminostratigraphic dating methods in Quaternary geology. In: Noller JS, Sowers JM, and Lettis WR (eds.) Quaternary Geochronology Methods and Applications, pp. 115–120. Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union.

432 AMINO ACID RACEMIZATION DATING T+∆

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Figure 4 Principles of error calculation of an amino acid age estimation. A sample with a D/L ratio of 0.30 and an independent age estimate of 125 000 years is used as calibration point. The data point is fitted with a kinetic model for the current mean annual temperature or estimate of the average temperature for the last 125 000 years. The kinetic equation may have been derived from heating experiments (in this case a parabolic function was applied). Errors of the age estimate arise from the analytical uncertainty of the D/L measurement and the uncertainty, in the average storage temperature (here ¼ 1.5
C). Additional random errors would arise from any uncertainty in the measurement of the calibration point, systematic errors from the application of alternative kinetic functions. After Wehmiller JF and Miller GH (2000) Aminostratigraphic dating methods in Quaternary geology. In: Noller JS, Sowers JM, and Lettis WR (eds.) Quaternary Geochronology Methods and Applications, pp. 115–120. Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union.

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Figure 5 The varying A/I ratios show that the epimerization in shells is influenced by structural differences. For site-to-site comparisons, samples have to be analyzed from exactly the same position within the shells. After Hearty PJ, Miller GH, Stearns CE, and Szabo BJ (1986) Aminostratigraphy of quaternary shorelines in the Mediterranean basin. Geological Society of America Bulletin 97: 850–858.

samples can be used for geochronological purposes. This may be due to the fact that samples from caves have experienced less temperature and humidity changes than those in open-air sites.

AAR Dating of Mollusk Shells and Blackwell provided a comprehensive compilation of AAR data, including a large variety of age estimates on hominids, for example, from Border Cave, Swartklip, and Eyasi and those of the palaeoindians from Laguna, Del Mar, San Jacinto, and Sunnyvale. In particular, the results from the palaeoindian samples with ages of up to 70 000 years caused some controversy, perhaps because other, independent dating methods yielded significantly younger ages for these samples. Hare et al. discussed in detail that AAR ages of bones are notoriously unreliable and may deviate from independent age estimations by up to an order of magnitude. This has been attributed to the porosity of bones, which allows for a number of chemical processes to interfere with the AAR process (leaching, algal and bacterial contamination, precipitation of secondary minerals, variable geochemical conditions in the surrounding matrix, inhomogeneity of D/L ratios in different bones from the same skeleton, etc.). Some newer studies on cave bear teeth seem to imply that the D/L ratios extracted from dentine

AAR of mollusk shells is complicated because shells contain different structural layers. While the amino acid composition of each layer may be constant, there are significant differences between structural layers. As a result, protein degradation and racemization may proceed at different rates for the structural layers of a single shell sample (see Figure 5). Nevertheless, when collecting and analyzing samples from specific locations of a single species, it is possible to discriminate amino acid zones for the various oxygen isotope stages. However, for samples older than the last interglacial (marine isotope stage 5, 125 000 years ago), AAR analysis is usually not able to distinguish one interglacial from another.

AAR Dating of Ratite Egg Shells The 1990s has seen a rapid expansion of AAR dating of ratite (a class of birds with a keel-less sternum, such as the ostrich, emu, cassowary, etc.) egg shells. This is due to the fact that these have been recognized as approximating a closed system, with respect to

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Further Reading

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the A/I calibration curve for both Genyornis and Dromaius eggshells (Figure 6c). The flat part of the D/L ratio between about 20 000 and 60 000 years as such would prevent any stand-alone AAR dating attempt in this range. However, Miller et al. went to great lengths to independently date the geomorphologically youngest units in the various areas of study, finding that independent ages on Genyornis eggshells were always older than 40 000 years. Ostrich eggshells are ubiquitous in African archaeological sites, from Egypt to South Africa, and their AAR dating analysis may provide a powerful tool to unravel African archaeology and palaeoanthropology. In a recent compilation of AAR data from Boomplaas, Apollo 11, and Border Cave, Miller et al. concluded that the age of the Howieson’s Poort industry was bracketed by limiting dates of 56 000 and 80 000 years and was most likely centered on 66 000 to 5000 years.

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Figure 6 a, Amino acid age estimates for the extant Dromaius (emu). The data spread over the last 120 000 years with peaks around the Holocene and 60 000–70 000 years. Superimposed are the number of independently dated sites. b, Amino acid age estimates for the extinct Genyornis. No samples independently dated to younger than 45 000 years were found. c, Calibration curve for the amino acid age estimates. After Miller GH, Magee JW, Johnston BJ, et al. (1997a) Pleistocene extinction of Genyornis newtoni: Human impact on the Australian megafauna. Science 283: 205–208.

leaching/uptake of organic solutions. In one of the most elaborate AAR studies on more than 1000 different eggshell samples, Miller et al. showed that the giant bird Genyornis, a member of the extinct Australian megafauna, disappeared around 50 000 years ago. They found that samples of Dromaius (extant emu) from widely scattered sites yielded AAR ages of between 0 and 120 000 years (Figure 6a), whereas Genyornis yielded only AAR ages of >45 000 years (Figure 6b). The AAR age estimates were based on

De Torres T, Ortiz JE, Garcia MJ, et al. (2001) Geochemical Evolution of amino acids in dentine of Pleistocene bears. Chirality 13: 517–521. Hare PE, von Endt DW, and Kokis JE (1997) Protein and amino acid diagenesis dating. In: Taylor RE and Aitken MJ (eds.) Chronometric Dating in Archaeology, pp. 261–296. New York: Plenum Press. Hearty PJ, Miller GH, Stearns CE, and Szabo BJ (1986) Aminostratigraphy of quaternary shorelines in the Mediterranean basin. Geological Society of America Bulletin 97: 850–858. Miller GH, Beaumont PB, Deacon HJ, Brooks AS, Hare PE, and Jull AJT (1999) Earliest modern humans in southern Africa dated by isoleucine epimerization in ostrich eggshell. Quaternary Science Reviews 18: 1537–1548. Miller GH and Brigham-Grette J (1989) Amino acid geochronology: Resolution and precision in carbonate fossils. Quaternary International 1: 111–128. Miller GH, Magee JW, Johnston BJ, et al. (1997a) Pleistocene extinction of Genyornis newtoni: Human impact on the Australian megafauna. Science 283: 205–208. Miller GH, Magee JW, and Jull AJT (1997b) Low-latitude glacial cooling in the Southern Hemisphere from amino acids in emu eggshells. Nature 385: 241–244. Rutter NW and Blackwell B (1996) Amino acid racemization dating. In: Rutter NW and Catto NR (eds.) Pleistocene Dating Methods: Problems and Applications, pp. 125–166. Geotext 2, Ottawa: Geological Association of Canada. Wehmiller JF and Miller GH (2000) Aminostratigraphic dating methods in Quaternary geology. In: Noller JS, Sowers JM, and Lettis WR (eds.) Quaternary Geochronology Methods and Applications, pp. 115–120. Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union.

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ANIMAL DOMESTICATION Hans-Peter Uerpmann, University of Tubingen, Tubingen, Germany ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary animal domestication Adapting animals to close coexistence with humans for serving as pets or suppliers of animal products (e.g., meat, milk, wool, etc.) or for providing labor and other services. cultural anthropology The scientific study of the development of human cultures based on ethnologic, ethnographic, linguistic, social, and psychological data and methods of analysis. morphological character An aspect describing the form and structure of an organism or any of its parts. tameness Status of animal behavior where humans are conceived like conspecifics without fear or aggression.

Introduction: What Is Animal Domestication? In its proper sense, animal domestication means the process of transformation from wild to domestic animals. However, the term is also used to denominate the domestic status of animals. It derives from the Latin word for house – domus – and indicates that domestic animals are incorporated into the human household. This means that important aspects of their livelihood (like behavior, nutrition, reproduction, range of movements, life span, etc.) are under human control and that humans at their will can use domestic animals for whatever is possible. In contrast, wild animals are independent in all these respects. While freedom to us appears as a very important aspect of life, it should not be forgotten that domestic animals also have enormous advantages over their wild conspecifics. Human control also includes protection against predation, starvation, uncontrolled population growth, negative climatic influences, and so on. Well-managed domesticates can reach population levels far above those of their wild conspecifics using similar environments. In addition, they often can expand with human support to geographical regions and environments, which are not accessible for the wild forms. Therefore, within the biological system of concepts, animal domestication can be described as a special form of symbiosis between humans and certain animals, which has advantages for both participating species. Scientific explanation of the evolutionary processes leading to the development of symbiotic relationships is always a challenge for the biologist. In the case of

explaining the origins of animal domestication this is even more complex, because those who want to understand the domestication processes are themselves involved as ‘domesticators’. Therefore the biological system of concepts is not sufficient for a scientific approach to the historical understanding of animal domestication. Such an approach must be compatible with the concepts of cultural anthropology as well.

Animal Domestication in the Context of Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology Within the archaeological context, the term animal domestication is often reduced to the processes leading to the domestication of food-producing animals during what is called the Neolithic revolution. This is understandable, because the development of active food production had the most profound impact on the development of mankind after the invention of tools and the use of fire. The fundamental impacts of animal domestication on human history are today mainly dealt with by cultural anthropology, but were part of human self-awareness from early on. The distinction of herder and hunter as part of the dichotomy between ‘civilized’ and ‘wild’ is already found in the cuneiform literature of Mesopotamia. Indeed, the domestication of certain animals is part of the transition from a foraging life to that of farming, which also includes the domestication of certain plants. There is no doubt that questions of when, where, why, and how people first domesticated these particular plants and animals are central to the understanding of the history and development of mankind and have received the attention of scholars and philosophers throughout the formation of human self-understanding. The present contribution will, however, not concentrate on these anthropocentric aspects of animal domestication. It will instead deal with domestication as a series of processes between humans and specific animals, which strongly depended on particular environments and on special ways of biological interference between the two sides and which had different results depending on the involved animal species.

The Role of the Domesticator The role of humans as domesticators has to be addressed first, because it seems that this role is basically identical regardless of the animal counterparts involved in particular domestications. As a general attitude,

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many archaeologists consider animal domestication as a process consciously initiated by humans for special purposes. As a common notion, the domestication of meat-producing animals is considered as human reaction to a shortage of protein supplies provoked by a range of potential causes. The dog was domesticated as hunting companion, and the horse for pulling the chariot – just to mention a few examples of purpose-oriented reasoning for causes of domestication processes. The likelihood that such reasons initiated domestications is very low, however, because as a general rule the usefulness of a particular domestic animal could not be imagined beforehand, when that species was only known as a fugitive and in some cases even dangerous wild animal. When looking into the known details of actual domestication processes, and when taking into account the available knowledge about biology and behavior of the species involved, explanatory scenarios can be developed for specific situations, which lead to the domestication of particular animals without postulating a purpose. In plain words, this means that domestications may just have happened when a very particular set of circumstances allowed it. The specific usefulness of the respective domestic animal could then be recognized and would have been the reason for its further propagation. A major reason for skepticism against considering humans as active, purposeful domesticators should be the fact that so few animals were domesticated. Situations of protein shortages must have happened many times during all periods of early human history. Among the rich variety of African ungulates there would most certainly have been species which were appropriate for domestication. The argument that humans themselves first had to develop particular capabilities for managing domestic animals must be considered, but does not explain the actual observations. These questions will be taken up again when discussing the evidence for the earliest domestication of meat-producing animals. The alternative to purposeful domestication is the unconscious development of close man/animal connections leading to a symbiotic relationship. As humans are the only mammals who have domesticates, the basic behavioral features must be looked for on the human side. They can easily be found in a common attitude toward very young animals, which almost inevitably triggers nursing instincts in humans. The relevance of this feature for animal domestication has long been realized, but – in spite of more recent reconsiderations – has not really been recognized in its fundamental importance for animal domestications. Complete taming of animals usually can only be achieved when it starts very early during

their individual development. Together the nursing instinct on the human side and the potential for complete taming on the side of very young animals provide a starting point for a close man/animal relationship on an individual basis.

Basics of the Domestication Process Tameness is a fundamental precondition for domestication. Among the mammals exceptions are only found in some recent domesticates, like minks or other species bred for their pelts. In such cases, the necessary control over the animal is achieved by caging. Taming on the other hand provides mental control over the animal, which nevertheless must usually be supported by fencing or other suppressive means of physical control. However, many animal species can be tamed, but only a few of them became domesticates. Domesticates are different from their wild relatives. A tamed wolf is not a dog. This indicates that taming is only a first step in the direction of domestication. For its completion it is necessary that tame individuals start to reproduce and that their offspring remain and breed under human control over several generations. During this time, both the circumstances of living together with humans and the direct results of human control will more or less consciously influence reproductive success of particular individuals. Thus, a selection of special biological traits will soon become manifest in an animal population, which is breeding under human control. As soon as clear differences can be observed, the respective population can be recognized as domesticated. The domestication process thus requires the following steps: 1. gaining complete control over individual animals, preferably by taming; 2. assembling tamed (or otherwise controlled) groups of animals containing both sexes and keeping them together over periods long enough to start intra-group breeding; and 3. continued intragroup breeding of the tame (or otherwise controlled) stock and avoiding largescale cross-breeding with the wild population. The easiest way to achieve step 1 is the nursing of very young individuals taken from the wild population. The second step is the most difficult one, because it requires keeping the raised animals till sexual maturity and beyond. In addition these animals must be kept in a way, which allows for their repertoire of reproductive behavior to be performed successfully. Once these difficulties are overcome, the third step will become easier and easier with each successful breeding

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cycle, because there will be a very efficient natural selection for animals that are capable to survive and reproduce under these particular circumstances. In addition, human selection will favor particular external features, which help to distinguish domestic and wild stock – like aberrant colorations, hanging ears or twisted horns, etc. Early breeders will soon have realized that cross-breeding with wild animals is not desirable, because such crosses will have hampered the accumulation of those inherited behavioral features which are favorable for a close coexistence with humans. A widespread hypothesis of how step 1 might have been achieved during the domestication of meatproducing animals is based on the assumption of some kind of management of wild animal populations through human hunters. This has remained a theoretical concept, though, lacking reflections on the practicability of such management. Actually, specialized hunters must have had some sort of control over their favorite prey animals. This control, however, is achieved by monitoring, not restricting, the movements of a wild animal population. Selective pressures exerted by specialized hunters will have favored better avoidance on the animal side, not a mutual approach. Real physical control of hunters over a mature wild population is absolutely illusive in the case of wild sheep or goats in their natural mountainous habitats, because their ability to move in such terrain is by far superior to that of humans. Other animals, like wild cattle, are simply too strong as adults to be physically controlled. Only in theory, fencing would have been a way to obtain control over a mature population of wild herbivores, because a fenced area would either have been too small to provide fodder for a long enough period, or too large to sufficiently restrict the movements of the animals. In conclusion, it remains difficult to imagine realistic scenarios for a domestication process starting from a mature wild animal population within its natural habitat.

How to Identify Domestication? Research into the beginnings of animal domestication requires methods for a distinction between the remains of wild and domestic animals. These need to be orientated at detecting the changes, which differentiate the archaeological leftovers of hunters from those of early animal keepers. In principle, there are two sets of data potentially yielding information about the wild or domestic status of the animals, whose remains are found at an archaeological site. One of them are the data yielding information about morphological characters of the individual animals,

which are known to change during the domestication process. The other one concerns the whole population of animals, which was exploited for meat by those who left the bone finds behind. This last approach is based on the assumption that an accumulation of bone finds as leftovers of meals will reflect the demographic structure of the live animal population from which the consumed animals were taken. The Demographic Concept

For an explanation of the demographic concept of identifying domestication the following scenario should be imagined. A group of hunter-gatherers regularly exploits the wild ungulates living in their surroundings for venison. Whenever meat is needed or wanted, hunters leave the camp and shoot the first animal which comes into their reach. This kind of ‘hunting at random’ is repeated over and over again. After a larger number of cycles, every individual animal of the exploited wild population would have had the same chance to end up on the skewer over the campfire of the hunters. Those which actually did would presumably form a random sample of the whole population. The next assumption is that the dumped bone offal of these animals will still reflect their taxonomic identity and their ages and sexes. The archaeozoologist, who would later evaluate these finds, would then be able to reconstruct the species, age, and sex composition of the population of wild ungulates, which was exploited by the hunters and gatherers who left the bone-finds behind. The results would finally reflect the demographic structure of the exploited animal population. Thus, demographic results for the animal remains from archaeological sites at the verge of animal domestication can be compared with expectations based on the results from other sites of older or younger date, or with expectations based on the demographic features of modern wild animal populations from comparable environments. If the archaeological sample yields a demographic result, which does not seem compatible with that of a hunted fauna, one may argue for a pattern, which depended on slaughtering early domesticates. The application of this concept can be difficult due to the nature of the animal remains found at sites from the periods of incipient animal domestication. Often such materials do not provide samples large enough to obtain results of statistical significance. A more theoretical difficulty derives from the extreme plasticity of wild animal populations and the wide range of demographic changes which may occur naturally under the influence of predation, environmental change, or other natural causes. Attempts to prove domestication through the demographic approach

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need to demonstrate a deviation from the wild status in great detail. All the influences must be considered, which might have had an effect on the respective prehistoric animal populations. Particular difficulties are to be expected, when incipient domestication in the form of keeping some few tame animals cooccurs with ‘normal’ subsistence hunting (see HunterGatherers, Ancient). In principle, though, this is a valid approach, which also has a potential to identify domestication in its very early stages. The Morphological Concept

The other way to identify domestication is based on the changes which are caused by domestication in the respective animals. These changes will only become evident after the domestication process is well on its way. Depending on the nature of the changes implied, this may be a span of five to ten generations, for which the respective animal population must have lived under human control. In absolute time, this may be a span between 15 and 50 years, depending on the reproductive cycle of the species involved. Compared to the accuracy of the available methods for dating the archaeological contexts, from where the respective animal remains come, this time span is almost negligible. Therefore the temporal disadvantage of this approach seems less important than the increased security of the results as compared to the population approach. There are many characters in animals that change under the influence of domestication. However, most of them do not affect the skeletal system, which is the primary source of information with regard to archaeological periods. Nevertheless, there are a number of features that can be recognized in the skeleton as well. The skull for instance is very sensitive to changes in the neural system under the influence of domestication. The reduction in brain size recognizable in most modern domesticates also affects the skull and its proportions. But often skulls are not well enough preserved at early sites to provide the necessary evidence; and if a well-preserved specimen is found, it only represents one single animal and does not provide insights into changes at the population level, which are required as a basis for valid extrapolations. Horn cores, the inner bony support of the horns of sheep, goat, cattle, and other bovids, are more often preserved in numbers large enough to be of statistical significance. Under the influence of the human preference for individualistic characters among the animal companions, horns become variable in form and size during the domestication process. This is reflected in the horn cores as well. Twisted and medially flattened horn cores of Neolithic goats have often been used as evidence for their domestic status.

However, changes in the horns do not have a required function during domestication. They are accepted, both by the humans and the animals if they occur, but do not occur by necessity. Therefore, these changes can only be used as evidence for domestication in the positive case. The negative case does not exclude domestication. According to empirical observations, the overall size of animals is the best indication for their wild or domestic status, at least during the early stages of their relationship with humans. As a general rule animals become smaller during the initial phase of domestication. Many reasons have been discussed for this observation, but it must be admitted that the dependencies of body size at a population level are not yet fully understood by paleobiology. The major factors explaining size reduction in early domestication will be suppression of the natural selection of partners during reproduction and increased tolerance of smaller animals to temporary shortages in the supply of fodder. A preference of the humans for more docile animals may have acted in the same direction. In any case, a clear decrease in size during early stages of domestication is visible in dogs, sheep, goats, cattle, horses, and other animals. Later, after the herders and farmers had learned how to manage and breed their animals well, the size of domestic animals often increased, reaching the sizes of the wild ancestors again or even surpassing them. The initial appearance of domestic dromedaries in southeast Arabia will be used as an example for this kind of approach to identify domestication based on animal size. Columns 2 and 3 of Figure 1 represent the marked drop in the sizes of dromedary bone finds from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age in the respective layers of Tell Abraq, a stratified site in the United Arab Emirates. While the sizes of the finds from the Bronze Age levels correlate with the sizes of dromedary finds from Umm an-Nar (column 1), a slightly earlier site further south in the UAE, the finds from the Iron Age levels are comparable in size to the dromedary finds from Muweilah (column 4), another Iron Age site not far from Tell Abraq. It is obvious that the dots in columns 3 and 4 represent populations of smaller dromedaries than those in columns 1 and 2. The indicated shift in dromedary size from the Bronze to the Iron Age is interpreted as transition from hunting wild dromedaries before about 1200/ 1000 BC to using domestic ones in the period thereafter. Some further explanations are necessary to understand Figure 1. Dromedary sizes are indicated there in the form of size index values. The LSI or ‘logarithmic size index’ is calculated from bone measurements by relating them to the respective measurement of the

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0.1

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−0.1 Figure 1 Diminution of logarithmic size-index values for dromedary bone finds from archaeological sites in the United Arab Emirates at the shift from the Bronze to the Iron Age.

skeleton of a so-called standard animal. The skeletal size of the standard animal defines the zero line of the graph marked by the arrow on the right side. Symbols above the zero line indicate animals larger than the standard animal, and those below are from smaller dromedaries. Calculation of the size index is simple, because it is defined as the difference between the decadal logarithms of a measurement x of a bone find and the respective bone measurement s of the standard animal: LSIðXÞ ¼ log x
log s The advantage of using size indices for the evaluation of animal size as represented in archaeological bone finds lies in their comparability throughout the different skeletal elements. Otherwise individual bone measurements would only be comparable with their exact homolog in other series of measurements. It is important to use this method on a population base and not to overinterpret individual deviations – as for example the lowest value in column 1 of Figure 1, which might be considered to represent a domestic dromedary, but probably only represents an exceptionally small wild animal. The applicability of this method will of course always depend on the presence of a sufficient number of measurable bone finds and on a standardized way of measuring both the archaeological finds and the skeletons of standard animals.

A Short History of Animal Domestication Dog (CANIS)

The oldest domestic animal is the dog. Its wild ancestor is the wolf, Canis lupus. (The scientific nomenclature of domestic animals is not regulated by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. The system applied in this article is based on Uerpmann (1993).) There are indications for increasing approaches between humans and wolves at Upper Paleolithic sites in Central Europe. For instance, wolf bones are quite frequently found at mammoth hunter’s sites in Moravia. While hunting and killing animals does not appear to be an approach leading into domestication, it has to be assumed that hunting the adults would often have led to catching the very young ones alive. Wolf puppies are wonderful pets. As said before, raising young animals probably was the basic cause of animal domestication. However, domestication must not be seen as the inevitable outcome of this activity. At first, the raising of young ones only creates tame animals – animals that know how to behave in human society. Domestication may follow, but only if the adaptations to coexistence with humans are inherited to further generations. In the case of the assumed tame wolves of the Upper Paleolithic, reproductive isolation from the wild wolves does not seem to have been complete. Differences between tame and wild individuals,

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caused by human preferences for particular properties of the ‘pre-dogs’, will have accumulated but slowly. Therefore, it remains difficult to detect these differences in the fossil record consisting of scattered bone finds. Good osteological evidence for dogs is not available before the Mesolithic. On the animal side, this must have been due to increased genetic isolation between tame and wild wolves – an isolation which had to be due to changes in the relation between humans and early dogs. We may speculate that increased importance of tame wolfs or ‘pre-dogs’ for finding game in a more vegetated landscape was a reason for paying more attention to these hunting companions. There is evidence for early dogs from Britain, Denmark, and other parts of Europe, and from the Near East as well, where we also find indications for an affective relation between humans and early dogs. Skeletal remains of young wolves or dogs are sometimes found in human graves. Particular evidence for the process of domestication is also stored in the genetic code of animals. Comparative analysis of the DNA sequences of dogs and wolves yielded the most important information that – contrary to former assumptions – the North American wolves were not domesticated. PreColumbian dogs in America derive from animals which came from Asia together with the human population. Whether all dogs derive from East Asia, as also suggested from DNA evidence, remains questionable. The assumption that dog domestication should have happened in an area where the local wolves had a gene pool broad enough to contain most of the basic genetic variation of dogs would be plausible only if domestication was a natural evolutionary process. However, the primary cause for the approach between wolves and humans was the interspecific social capabilities of the latter. How would these people have been capable to realize which wolf population had enough genetic variability to encompass more than 95% of the respective variability of modern dogs? A polycentric or widespread origin of dogs throughout the former mammoth steppes of Eurasia would also be compatible with the DNA patterns of modern dogs (see DNA: Ancient; Modern, and Archaeology. From the fossil record, it is difficult to reconstruct what the very early dogs looked like. They were smaller than wolves, but may not have looked very different. The manifold differences between recent dogs and wolves will have evolved after this initial phase when it became important for dogs not to be mistaken for a wolf. Wolves became enemies when humans started to have other domestic animals than dogs. Domestic sheep and goats are easy prey for

wolves, but humans were not willing to share this base of their subsistence with the wolf. Sheep (OVIS) and Goats (CAPRA)

Sheep and goats were the next animals to become domesticated after the dog. Again, a lot of speculation is necessary to imagine a probable scenario for this process. The usual answer is that – for whatever reason – people at a certain point of their development needed additional or more secure sources of animal protein and that they therefore started to domesticate meat-producing animals. This answer is insufficient, however. Early hunters and gatherers experienced food shortages all the time, and – apart from the meat-‘eating’ dog – did not domesticate any meat-‘producing’ animals. The subsistence of the Magdalenian culture in western Europe, which flourished during the Late Pleistocene and created marvelous works of art found in the caves of southern France and northern Spain, was mainly based on hunting wild reindeer and horses. These large herbivores populated the open landscapes created by the cold and dry climate of the final Ice Age. The spread of forests at the transition to the Holocene dislodged these animals to the north and east. Severe shortages must have resulted for the Magdalenian hunters. They did, however, not react by domesticating reindeer or horse, although both species can be domesticated, as was proved much later when other conditions led to their incorporation into the human sphere. Looking at the long history of hunting and gathering as subsistence strategy, periodic shortages must have occurred many times and under many different sets of environmental conditions. Actually, the conditions which lead to the domestication of sheep and goats were unique and very special. The same changes of global climate, which brought an end to the Magdalenian base of subsistence, favored the expansion of grasslands in the part of the Near East which is called the Fertile Crescent. These changes were not only favorable for the grasseating animals of that area, which in turn could be used by human hunters, but also yielded direct profit for the humans, because among the grasses of that area were the wild cereals. Rich stands of wild barley, rye, and wheat provided enough corn not only for the harvest season, but also for storage through larger parts of the year. These provisions lead to increased sedentism, including the origin of villages and even larger agglomerations of more or less permanent houses. The house – being part of the domestication concept – came into existence. While the cereal harvest provided a carbohydrate base for human nutrition, animal protein still had to

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be obtained by hunting. The whole fauna of the area was exploited by the sedentary harvesters. Animal bones found in their settlements range from the large aurochs to turtles, fish, and even snails. The fact that even minor sources of protein were exploited is an indication that sedentism is not really compatible with efficient hunting. In particular, the larger and more fugitive prey would soon avoid the vicinity of permanent settlements. Nevertheless, these communities would also have brought back very young animals to the settlements when their mothers had been taken during a hunt. Actually, structured villages are much better for bringing up orphaned animal babies than ephemeral camps of hunters and gatherers. Particularly in the more mountainous and therefore more ecologically diverse areas of the Fertile Crescent, the Protoneolithic villages of the ‘hunting harvesters’ probably will soon have housed a veritable zoo of tame young animals. While growing older, their fate will have depended on their compatibility with humans. It should be reminded that young animals reared by hunters and gatherers are generally not considered as economic resources. Depending on their specific patterns of behavior, adolescent animals might leave their foster communities on their own – probably soon falling prey to carnivores or hunters of other communities due to a lack of knowledge about living in the wild. The more social ones might try to stay, but human tolerance for an adolescent aurochs or stag would have been limited. Thus the duration of time during which reared animals could stay with their foster communities depended on factors like size, aggressiveness, required food, etc. Among the animals taken by the hunting harvesters of the Fertile Crescent, sheep and goats are the ones which had the potential to stay long enough with their human foster communities to reach sexual maturity and to actually breed in this sort of deliberate captivity. The conscious observation of spontaneous breeding and proliferation of these herd animals within human communities must have been the trigger for the Neolithic revolution of human subsistence. While the above considerations only highlight the preconditions on the animal side of the domestication process, it is obvious that more or less conscious – but in any case complex – processes on the human side had to accompany the incorporation of beloved household animals into a revolutionary new subsistence strategy. A prolonged period of several generations of coexistence with tamed animals, where compunction hampered slaughtering and conscious exploitation, may have been necessary for these processes to develop. However, once the potential of controlled breeding of animals for meat production was recognized, a whole set of new social possibilities

and necessities had to be managed and adopted on top of the changes brought about by the prior adaptation to harvesting and incipient cereal cultivation. It is obvious, however, that a unique coincidence of particular biogeographical factors and climatic conditions was necessary to trigger these adaptations. Apart from the Fertile Crescent, similar situations seem to have existed at the Pleistocene/Holocene transition in parts of Southeast Asia and in Central America. There, however, the final step of animal domestication was less successful due to the local lack of suitable middle-sized animals. While in Southeast Asia the domestic pig became a provider of meat on the level of small communities, the little animals like guinea pigs and turkeys first domesticated in Central America and northern South America could only reach this position on a family level. Cattle (BOS) and Pig (SUS)

In the Near East, the incorporation of domestic sheep and goats into human subsistence economies was soon followed by the domestication of cattle and pigs. However, little is known about the actual processes leading to the addition of these animals to the livestock. One may assume that having domestic sheep and goats created the intellectual space for consciously adding other animals to the existing herds. Where this happened first within the Fertile Crescent is still unknown. The best available evidence for early pig and cattle domestication at present comes from the vertex of the crescent in the river systems of Euphrates and Tigris (Figure 2). When the Neolithic economy started to spread into Europe, a complete set of domestic animals consisting of cattle, pig, sheep, and goat provided a highly adaptable base of meat production, which could easily be adjusted to different local conditions and which provided the best possible insurance against catastrophic events, which rarely affect the different species to the same extent. It is interesting to read from the genetic evidence carried along by European livestock, that the European aurochs was not domesticated by the Neolithic farmers. Mitochondrial DNA, which is exclusively carried along the maternal line of inheritance, reflects a Near Eastern origin of European domestic cattle. A separate domestication is suggested for African cattle, and well documented for the humped or zebu cattle in South Asia. For modern domestic pigs, there is genetic evidence for multiple domestications. It seems that the basic Neolithic stock of pigs in Europe was later replaced by locally domesticated animals. In South and East Asia, early pig domestications may have contributed to the independent development of food-producing economies.

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Donkey (ASINUS) and Horse (CABALLUS)

Based on cattle, swine, sheep, and goats, the subsistence economy of the Neolithic period flourished in Europe, the Near and Middle East, and North Africa for several thousand years without other animals being added to the stock. In Europe, it is the appearance of the horse which marks the first important addition. This is different in southwest Asia and northeast Africa, because there the donkey initiated the expansion of the domestic squad. Apart from donkey and horse, these additions later also included the Bactrian camel and the dromedary. All these additional animals were mainly used as beasts of burden and for riding. The domestication of the donkey is still poorly understood. The wild ass, Equus africanus, occurred in arid to semi-arid regions throughout northern Africa from Somalia in the east to the coast of the Atlantic in the west, but also on the Arabian Peninsula including the dry parts of the Levant and Mesopotamia up to the foothills of the Taurus and Zagros Mountains. For a long time, palaeozoologists were not aware of the Asiatic part of the range of the wild ass, because its fossil remains were confounded with those of the socalled Asiatic wild ass, Equus hemionus. Therefore, the older literature considers Egypt as the only center of donkey domestication, and the donkey is sometimes seen as the only African species among the domestic mammals. However, up to now, the earliest finds of donkey bones are from the famous site of Uruk in Mesopotamia, where they are dated to the last quarter of the fourth millennium BC. This indicates

that Mesopotamia was one center of domestication of this species. The other one certainly was in the Nile valley (Figure 2), where ancient Egyptian sources also illustrate how donkey domestication might have taken place. Ancient Egyptian art gives insight into many aspects of the natural environment. Animals are quite prominent in all sorts of illustrations and the accuracy of animal depictions is most impressive. It is often possible to identify particular species of wild birds or fish from the pictures, and it is therefore not astounding that various wild mammals can easily be recognized. From such sources we know that the ancient Egyptians kept asses, ibex, Oryx antelopes, various gazelles, and other wild species in captivity. As these depictions usually belong to particular social contexts, it may be assumed that these motifs represent activities of outstanding members of the society. From Mesopotamia, there is evidence for special gardens where wild animals were kept. What can be inferred from depictions in Egypt and from texts in Mesopotamia might well be interpreted as a reaction to the alienation from nature at a time when villages started to become towns or even cities. Whatever the reason was to have captive wild animals at that time, it will in any case have had the potential to add new animals to the domestic stock, because breeding animals in captivity must inevitably always have been the first step toward their domestication (see above). However, with regard to domestication of the donkey, the last word has probably not yet been written.

442 ANIMAL DOMESTICATION

It seems most likely that the horse was domesticated after the example of the donkey. Wild horses did not exist in the centers of early civilization where the donkey was domesticated. Their natural adaptation to the continental steppes of the Northern Hemisphere gave them a huge range during the cold phases of the Pleistocene, reaching from the Iberian Peninsula through Central Europe to Russia and Siberia and even across the then existing Bering Land Bridge over to Alaska and farther into North America. The spread of forests in the Post Pleistocene confined the wild horses to areas which retained an open, grass-dominated vegetation. The extent of such areas varied quite a lot during the Holocene, and therefore it is still difficult to determine exactly where wild horses would have been available for domestication. Obviously, there is a core area of steppes from Eastern Europe into Central Asia where wild horses always lived until they were exterminated in recent historic times. But in addition to that, more or less isolated populations existed on the Iberian Peninsula, temporarily in France and Central Europe, but during cool and dry climatic phases also in the Danube Plains and in the highlands from Central Anatolia to Armenia and northwestern Iran (Figure 2). If the assumption is correct that the donkey was the example for the domestication of the horse, the area mentioned last is crucial for the beginning of this process. However, actual research has been very limited until recently. There is evidence for the presence of domestic horses in Armenia at the beginning of the last quarter of the third millennium BC (unpublished results of recent research by the author). It is still not known, however, whether these animals were domesticated locally or imported from an earlier center of horse domestication elsewhere. In any case, the domestic horse made its appearance in ancient Mesopotamia at the very beginning of written history at the shift from the third to the second millennium BC. In Central Europe, it arrived during the second millennium BC, while on the Iberian Peninsula an independent domestication may have happened before. These views are in contrast to the older assumption that the horse was domesticated in the east European steppes during the fourth millennium BC. However, the evidence for this assumption is now widely considered as insufficient. The Camelids: Bactrian Camel (BACTRIANUS), Dromedary (DROMEDARIUS), Llama (LAMA), and Alpaca ( ALPACA)

The Bactrian or two-humped camel is the most enigmatic domestic species with regard to its early history.

Assumptions about the beginnings of its close connection to humans reach back into the Neolithic period, but there is no real evidence available. Its wild ancestor, Camelus ferus, is still found in remote parts of the Central Asian deserts, but was formerly more widespread, reaching west to the shores of the Caspian Sea and into Iran. One of its earliest appearances as a domestic or at least tame animal is documented by a Mesopotamian seal-cutter, who carved a schematic animal with a curved neck and two cylinders on its back into a seal sometime before the middle of the second millennium BC. Two persons are sitting face to face on the two cylinders on the back of the animal, indicating that the animal, which the seal-cutter apparently had not seen himself, could be ridden. There are other indications in the glyptic tradition of southwest Central Asia and Iran which indicate that the Bactrian camel may have been domesticated in that part of the world, perhaps as early as the third millennium BC. For the time being, however, no biological evidence is available for this process. The dromedary or one-humped camel is slightly better known than the Bactrian camel. It appears in the historical record and art of the Near East toward the end of the second millennium BC. From the same time onward, its bone remains become more and more common among the faunal remains studied from the same area. The problem about this species for a long time was its wild ancestor. There are no wild dromedaries today. Assumptions went as far as to believe that the one-humped dromedary was but a domestic variant of the Asiatic two-humped camel. However, the lack of evidence for wild dromedaries is only due to the bad conditions for fossil bone preservation in the Arabian deserts, which were the ecological niche, to where wild dromedaries retreated during the final Pleistocene. In the Pleistocene, they occurred in a very large form (Camelus thomasi) not only in southwest Asia but also in North Africa. As a real desert animal, the wild dromedary lost a large part of its former habitat, when climatic conditions became moister toward the Holocene. Therefore, the better-explored areas of North Africa and the Near and Middle East, which are also the areas preferred by the human inhabitants, became void of wild dromedaries. With progressing archaeological research in some parts of Arabia, this gap in our knowledge has started to close. Apparently, the dromedary was the latest addition among the large mammals to the domestic stock. The historical, pictorial, and morphological evidence indicate domestication toward the end of the second millennium BC. Why and how this happened is still a matter of speculation. Apart from the general fact

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that this must have been on the Arabian Peninsula, the exact whereabouts are also still unknown. The morphological evidence, used as an example earlier (Figure 1), does not indicate a transitional period in the area of southeast Arabia from where the data come. Whether this indicates that domestic dromedaries arrived there fully domesticated, or whether their morphological changes happened too fast to be visible on the archaeological timescale, is not yet known. The domestic South American camelids llama (LAMA) and alpaca (ALPACA) were also quite enigmatic with regard to their domestication history for a long time. It seems fairly well established now that they originated from the two local wild species guanaco (Lama guanicoe) and vicun˜a (Vicugna vicugna), respectively. Their domestication may have started as early as the fourth millennium BC, but the circumstances of this process are not clear at all. The role of the camelids within the early prehistoric development of the human populations of the respective areas in the South American Andes is difficult to assess at a regional level. Changes observed at individual sites are difficult to interpret as long as it remains difficult to correlate them to the general environmental history of the area and to more widespread changes in human subsistence and settlement patterns. Nevertheless, the domestic South American camelids must have played an important role during the development of advanced civilizations in that part of the world. The Cat (CATUS) and Other Small (Semi-) Domesticated Carnivores

Among our domestic animals, the cat has remained the most independent creature till today. In particular, with regard to reproduction, human control over this species is not too efficient. This independence sheds some light on the process of domestication of this species as well. As young cats are very attractive pets, one may well assume that cat domestication started in the same way as the domestication of the dog. Rearing young wild cats would have created a tame population living within human settlements, but without genetic isolation from the wild population in the surroundings. Therefore morphological and other changes due to domestication would not have accumulated. This goes well with the observation that the many mummified cats found in old Egyptian contexts cannot really be distinguished from the North African wild cat, Felis silvestris libyca, although one may well assume that they lived tame among the humans. Transformation of the cat into a ‘real’ domestic animal will therefore have depended

on the disappearance of the wild cats within the range of the tame ones. This would have happened when human settlements became towns or cities and thus too large for the tame cats to reach the surrounding wilderness where the wild tomcats would have waited for them. Another important factor may have been the introduction of domestic fowl in human settlements. As a wild cat would not have hesitated to consider a chicken as prey, the tolerance for these animals within settlements will have disappeared quickly after the domestic chicken arrived in the Middle and Near East, from where it spread farther to the Mediterranean and Europe (see below). Taming of wild cats may have happened anywhere in the huge range of the wild cat. Cats will have been welcome in settlements because they act as control of rodent pests. Their domestication will, however, have depended on genetic isolation from the wild surroundings. Therefore the appearance of real domestic cats is fairly late in the archaeozoological record. For Europe, this is generally the time of the Roman Empire. Another small carnivore, the mongoose Herpestes edwardsi, lives in South Asia in a semi-domestic condition till today. There is no control over its reproduction. Therefore the animal has not developed domestic characters, but can be considered as a candidate for real domestication as soon as contacts will be lost between the tame and the wild population. The ferret is a domestic polecat (Mustela putorius), and has passed the line between tame and domesticated, because it displays obvious differences from the polecat, like a whitish color, and also has skull characters which can be interpreted as domestication changes. Its domestication seems to have occurred during the Middle Ages. Other members of the mustellid family, like the mink, are among the very recent domesticates. They owe their status not so much to conscious domestication, but simply to the fact, that these species were bred in captivity for the production of pelts. Captivity – not tameness – achieved genetic isolation from the wild population in these cases. The isolation produced changes in coloration which are sufficient to consider these animals as domestic, because they live under human control and they are different from their wild relatives. Domestic Fowl: Chicken (GALLUS) and Other Small Domestic Animals

The wild ancestor of domestic chicken, the Bankiva hen (Gallus gallus), lives in South Asia from India to Vietnam and southern China. Its domestication must have started in that area and is not yet really known. It must have spread from India to the west during the

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second millennium BC, because there is a historical document from the time of Tuthmosis III in Egypt, which mentions ‘‘the bird which lays an egg every day.’’ It is unknown how the domestic chicken reached Egypt so early, because the known harbor sites on the shores of the Arabian Peninsula have not yielded chicken bones among the faunal remains from the second millennium, although maritime contacts to the Indus civilization are indicated there in large style by all sorts of transported goods. Early in the first millennium BC, chicken spread from the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean to the Aegean and as far west as southern Spain. In Central Europe, it appears as indication of Mediterranean contacts during the final phase of the Hallstatt civilization soon after 500 BC. Obviously, it filled a niche at that time of transformation from rural to township life. As small animals, which can make their living on what remains as offal from the human table, chicken could even be kept in cities. Another small animal which could give a city dweller the feeling that he was in charge of some food production himself is the domestic rabbit (CUNICULUS). This is clearly a European addition to the domestic stock, because its wild ancestor, Oryctolagus cuniculus, occurred only in the southern and eastern coastland of the Iberian Peninsula and in southern France. Among the small wild animals kept in Roman times in so-called leporaria, it was the only one that started reproduction in captivity. Breeding under human control in isolation from the wild population was again the starting point of domestication. Like few other animals, the rabbit took enormous advantage from its close companionship with humans, because with human help it could spread its range almost worldwide. Recent Domestications

Since the beginnings of city life in the Near East and the wider Mediterranean, more small animals like the carp, doves, ducks and geese, and also the bee and the silk worm have entered the human sphere and more domestications are going on today. Quite a number of species have become domesticated under the eyes of modern science, but this is rarely verbalized. There is no doubt that the guppy fish and many other species which populate the fish tanks of the civilized world are now domestic animals. The same is true for budgerigars, canaries, and some other popular species of birds, and also for some small mammals, which have developed forms under human control, which do not occur in the wild. None of these domestications were planned. They just happened because people started

to keep animals for momentary reasons – not with the aim of transforming them into something that could not be foreseen. Those animals which were able to reproduce under the man-made conditions became domesticated. Others, which did not, have remained ‘wild’, because reproduction in isolation is the most important precondition of domestication. This is also the case for the largest animal, which lives close to humans: the Indian elephant is the best example, that tameness is not domestication. There are no domestic elephants, because breeding these animals in captivity is difficult. It is also not ‘necessary’ in the case of the elephant, because the tame females are easy to handle, have a long life expectancy, and up to now could easily be replaced by taming a new young wild elephant. It will be interesting to observe, if someone will have the idea to really domesticate the Indian elephant, when it becomes more and more difficult to find reproducing wild herds. The observation of modern domestications is an important reason for being sceptical about intentional domestications in the past. Favorable conditions of human life are a plausible reason for changing relations with particular animals in terms of keeping them alive for some time instead of eating them immediately. On the other hand, food shortages and the dubious human capacity to foresee what will be needed in the future – together with the fact that the economic success of domestication could not be predicted – are unlikely to have stimulated a process which in any case took too long to produce an immediate response for the individual who started it. See also: DNA: Ancient; Modern, and Archaeology; Plant Domestication; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient.

Further Reading Benecke N (1994) Der Mensch und seine Haustiere. Stuttgart: Theiss. Cauvin J (1994) Naissance des divinite´s, naissance de l’agriculture. La revolution des symbols au Neolithique. Paris: CNRS. Clutton-Brock J (1999) A Natural History of Domesticated Mammals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davis SJ and Valla FR (1978) Evidence for the domestication of the dog 12 000 years ago in the Natufian of Israel. Nature 276: 608–610. Galton F (1865) The first steps towards the domestication of animals. Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London NS 3: 122–138. Levine M, Renfrew C, and Boyle K (2003) McDonald Institute Monographs: Prehistoric Steppe Adaptation and the Horse. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Lewis-Williams D and Pearce D (2005) Inside the Neolithic Mind. London: Thames & Hudson.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 445 Savolainen P, Zhang Y, Luo J, Lundeberg J, and Leitner T (2002) Genetic evidence for an East Asian origin of domestic dogs. Science 298: 1610–1613. Serpell J (1989) Pet-keeping and animal domestication: A reappraisal. In: Clutton-Brock J (ed.) The Walking Larder: Patterns of Domestication, Pastoralism and Predation, One World Archaeology 2, pp. 10–21. London: Unwin Hyman. Uerpmann H-P (1993) Proposal for a separate nomenclature of domestic animals. In: Clason A, Payne S, and Uerpmann, H P (eds.) Skeletons in Her Cupboard. Festschrift for Juliet Clutton-Brock, Oxbow Monographs, 34, p. 239–241. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Animal Remains

Uerpmann H-P (1996) Animal domestication – Accident or intention? In: Harris DR (ed.) The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia, pp. 227–237. London: UCL. Uerpmann H-P and Uerpmann M (2002) The Appearance of the Domestic Camel in South-east Arabia. Journal of Oman Studies 12: 235–260. Vigne J-D, Dollfus G, and Peters J (1999) Les de´buts de l’e´levage au Proche-Orient, donne´es nouvelles et re´flexions. Note e´ditoriale. Pale´orient 25/2: 5–10. Zeuner FE (1963) A History of Domesticated Animals. London: Hutchinson.

See: Archaeozoology.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHAEOLOGY Patricia A McAnany, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary agency The ability of humans, operating singly or collectively, to shape their social circumstances and effect change in their social and physical environment. anthropology The study of humanity across space and through time. Throughout most of the Americas, archaeology is classified as one of four subfields of anthropology (along with sociocultural anthropology, linguistics, and biological/physical anthropology). archaeological culture A constellation of material remains across space and through time for which there is an observable redundancy in stylistic and technological characteristics. archaeological surface survey A systematic study of the distribution of archaeological materials across a landscape that generally is conducted by a team of archaeologists who traverse an area on foot and maintain a constant distance from each other. Chaco Canyon Located in the northwestern corner of the state of New Mexico, the canyon was occupied by Pueblo peoples around AD 1000 who built large multiroomed and multistory architectural complexes with associated great kivas (subterranean ritual structures). Colonial Period Era (roughly 1500–1900) of expansion of western European peoples around the globe and colonization of parts of Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. direct historical approach Method of working back in time from ethnographically known groups of people to the archaeological past. This method was utilized widely in the United States by cultural historians, particularly in the Great Plains and the Southwest. gender The social construction of roles and tasks associated with a particular sex.

ideology Thought processes and beliefs materialized in ritual and social practices. indigenous peoples Generally but not always refers to colonized peoples with a demonstrably long history of occupation within a region and generally but not always with a language, dress, and traditions that are distinct from a politically and economically dominant culture also living within the boundaries of a single nation-state. Maya region The area in which Mayan speakers lived in the past and also today; includes southern Me´xico, Belize, Guatemala, and western Honduras. Mesa Verde Located in the southwestern corner of the state of Colorado, this region was occupied by Pueblo peoples who, between AD 1100 and 1300, often lived in compact villages constructed within large rockshelters. Mississippian ‘culture’ Term that refers to people living along the Mississippi River and its major tributaries between AD 800 and 1300 and who constructed massive platform mounds. The largest Mississippian site is located on the east side of the Mississippi River across from St. Louis, Missouri, and is called Cahokia. pottery seriation The archaeological method of building a relative chronology by studying stylistic changes in pottery and correlating these changes with stratigraphic sequences observed through excavation. prehistoric archaeology The investigation of material remains from the time before written texts. scientific method The formal logic and methods of scientific investigation of phenomenon that generally emphasize empiricism and hypothesis-testing. sedentism The act of becoming sedentary; within archaeology it generally, but not always, is correlated with the transition from a lifestyle of hunting, gathering, and collecting that involves frequent residential moves to a pattern of residing in a more permanent residence for part or all of an annual cycle. social practice The full constellation of activities by which humans engage with each other and their material world. subjectivity Interpretation based on personal opinions or feelings rather than on external facts or evidence.

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Historical Background The codification of archaeology as a distinct field of study apart from history was established in Europe by the nineteenth century. Likewise, the discipline of anthropology – broadly construed as the study of humanity – can be traced to the post-Enlightenment period and the colonial encounters of Europeans with peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. But blending the broad theoretical issues of anthropology with the archaeological study of specific material remains of the past took place in the Americas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Throughout most of the Americas, archaeology is classified as one of four subfields of anthropology (along with sociocultural anthropology, linguistics, and biological/ physical anthropology). Likewise, within American universities archaeology generally is taught as part of the curriculum of a department of anthropology. Archaeology as practiced in Europe and many other parts of the globe has a less anthropological and a more historical bent. This proclivity is particularly apparent in classical and biblical archaeology where historical texts can play a large role in determining the location of archaeological research and often lead the interpretation of excavated materials. Even prehistoric archaeology (the investigation of material remains from the time before written texts) within Europe often is viewed as a tool with which to investigate the deep history of historically known cultural groups. The goals of this type of archaeology, therefore, tend to be historical and somewhat particularistic. In contradistinction, anthropological archaeology tends to focus on broad themes – such as social identity or the domestication of plants and animals – which are investigated with archaeological information from one or more parts of the world. Cross-cultural comparisons are encouraged within anthropological archaeology and are not thought to violate the historical uniqueness or singularity of a ‘culture’. Here, ‘culture’ is used to refer to a constellation of material remains across space and through time for which there is an observable redundancy in stylistic and technological characteristics that, by convention, allow archaeologists to refer to such a bundle of material things as a culture. An argument can be made that anthropological archaeology arose in the Americas because early scholars pursuing archaeological research in this part of the world largely were of European ancestry with insufficient appreciation for the deep history of indigenous peoples of the western hemisphere. Indeed, many American archaeologists/physical anthropologists of the early twentieth century – such as Ales

Hrdlicka – spent their entire career disputing evidence that indigenous peoples had a presence in the Americas for more than a few thousand years. During the nineteenth and even the early twentieth century, the monumental structures that had been built in the Americas before sixteenth century European incursions – the soaring pyramids of the Maya region or the massive platform mounds of the Mississippi Valley – were routinely credited to shipwrecked Egyptians or some other circum-Mediterranean classical culture. Cultural evolutionists of the Victorian era were of the opinion that civilization had arisen only in Europe and the classical world and so reasoned that evidence of colossal pyramids or elaborate palaces in the Americas must have been the result of ancient migrations from areas of acknowledged civilizations. Of course, we now know that the peopling of the Americas was well underway by the close of the last Ice Age (the Pleistocene, generally thought to have ended about 12 000 years ago) and that, over the course of the deep history of the western hemisphere, plants and animals were domesticated and civilizations merged and were eclipsed in a manner that was independent of events that took place in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Nevertheless, the earlier, erroneous notion of a shallow time depth to the first peopling of the Americas favored the investigation via archaeological techniques of broad comparative topics over the construction of deep and chronologically controlled local prehistories, such as were under construction in other parts of the world. Although anthropological archaeology germinated in the milieu of Colonial Period bigotry and racism, it soon outgrew its questionable origins. As knowledge of the temporally deep occupation of the Americas grew through the first half of the twentieth century, anthropological archaeologists began to refer to their study of the past as culture history and some employed an approach called the ‘direct historical approach’ to link ethnographically known groups – such as Southwestern USA Pueblo peoples – with earlier Pueblo ruins such as Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde. In this way, archaeology in the western hemisphere came to be anthropological because of its use of ethnography as a starting point of inquiry. At the same time, this research was decidedly historical in focus, more particularistic in its goals, and employed and further refined many archaeological techniques, such as pottery seriation, that had been pioneered by European archaeologists. The flowering of a distinctly American anthropological archaeology that privileged broad research issues over historical sequences and embraced the scientific method began in the late 1950s and

ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 447

continued through the 1970s. This brand of anthropological archaeology – often called processual or new archaeology – reengaged with the broad themes of cultural evolution but rejected the prejudicial, unilineal schemes of earlier evolutionists. Asking ‘why’ societies had changed, anthropological archaeologists of this era investigated remains of the past in order to test theories regarding mobility and settlement patterns as well as major social transformations such as the advent of sedentism, plant and animal domestication, social ranking within societies, civilization, and urbanism (see Processual Archaeology). Realizing that archaeological sites were a skewed sample of what had once existed, archaeologists concerned themselves with issues of sampling, designed their studies so as to minimize bias, and elevated archaeological surface survey to a recognized stage of field research. During this era, the emphasis on theorybuilding and quantitative techniques lent a tone of abstraction to archaeological interpretations. Moreover, in the search for explanatory theory priority was accorded to environmental and technological factors – the forces of production as per Marx – while ideology and religious beliefs (in Marxian fashion) were considered epiphenomenal and not central to social change (see Marxist Archaeology). Through the 1960s and the 1970s, social change within the USA – the rise of feminism as well as black and red power movements – began to infiltrate anthropological archaeology and had an impact on both contemporary practice and interpretations of the past.

Anthropological Archaeology at the Twentieth Fin de Sie`cle The excesses and trans-Atlantic impact of the processual brand of anthropological archaeology resulted in a critique of this approach beginning in the 1980s by more historically trained British archaeologists who argued that beliefs and symbol systems played a central role in structuring archaeological remains. Labeled postprocessualism, this type of archaeology tends to privilege the interpretation of specific archaeological contexts over cross-cultural comparison. Closer scrutiny of archaeological interpretations of the past from a feminist perspective also revealed a constructed past in which females were underrepresented and female-gendered labor somewhat denigrated. This critique gave rise to the study of gender within archaeology and more broadly to the study of the means and methods by which social identities were constructed and expressed materially. Likewise, there is a concern among contemporary anthropological archaeologists (regardless of whether

they self-identify as processualists or postprocessualists) to understand the past on more human and less abstract terms, to see the past as having been inhabited by a diverse array of persons with agency and social practices that are somewhat knowable. In effect, the archaeological definition of ‘culture’ has been socialized and can include a focus on practice, subjectivities, and human engagement with a materiality that colloquially is referred to as ‘the archaeological record’. Current research can be characterized as combining the strengths of both processualism and postprocesualism and to embrace a variety of topics such as hierarchy, trade, religion and ritual practice, economic and political forms, gender, identity, the human body, and landscapes (both experiential and reconstructive approaches). Methodologically, the role of scientific techniques (often called archaeometry) within anthropological archaeology continues to grow as DNA, chemical, and molecular techniques of analysis mature. The current atmosphere within which North American anthropological archaeology is conducted has been influenced greatly by the 1990 passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). This legislation mandated that museums curating Native American skeletons and associated grave accoutrements (and in receipt of federal funding) make a complete inventory of their holdings and notify descendant tribal leaders in order to initiate consultation and possible repatriation of the remains and artifacts to tribal jurisdiction. The effect of this law changed the balance of power between archaeologists and Native Americans and ushered in a new era of consultation and dialogue between North American archaeologists and the descendents of those whose artifactual and architectural remains are studied by archaeologists. This enfranchisement of indigenous peoples into the practice of archaeology, likewise, has led to an emphasis on less destructive techniques of investigation, an avoidance of mortuary contexts, and a concomitant emphasis on both the ethics of archaeological research and the preservation of cultural heritage. As self-appointed stewards of the past, many North American anthropological archaeologists have oriented their work towards preservation of the past through enhanced programs of public and community education. In this regard, anthropological archaeology as practiced within the milieu of twenty-first century globalism exhibits an ‘applied’ edge as archaeologists engage with descendent and local communities and also struggle to combat the adverse impact of rampant tourism, unstoppable looting of archaeological sites, and site destruction caused by urban and industrial expansion.

448 ANTIQUITIES AND CULTURAL HERITAGE LEGISLATION See also: Agency; Biblical Archaeology; Classical Ar-

chaeology; Culture, Concept and Definitions; Engendered Archaeology; Marxist Archaeology; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology.

Further Reading Binford LR (1962) Archaeology as anthropology. American Antiquity 28: 217–225. Dı´az-Andreu M (ed.) (2005) The Archaeology of Identity: Approaches to Gender, Age, Status, Ethnicity, and Religion. London: Routledge. Hodder I (ed.) (1982) Symbolic and Structural Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hodder I and Hutson S (2003) Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kehoe AB (1998) The Land of Prehistory: A Critical History of American Archaeology. New York: Routledge. O’Brien MJ, Lyman RL, and Schiffer MB (2005) Archaeology as a Process. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Patterson TC (1995) Toward a Social History of Archaeology in the United States. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace. Scarre C and Scarre G (eds.) (2006) The Ethics of Archaeology: Philosophical Perspectives on Archaeological Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trigger BG (2006) A History of Archaeological Thought, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wolf E (1997) Europe and the People without History, 2nd edn. Berkeley: University of California Press.

ANTIQUITIES AND CULTURAL HERITAGE LEGISLATION Don D Fowler, Reno, NV, USA

Introduction

ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Ethical concerns in archaeology have become increasingly important since the 1970s. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ethics as ‘‘a set of moral principles ... rules or standards of right conduct’’ that define ‘‘a body of obligations and duties for individuals in a society or in a particular profession or area of life.’’ Archaeologists adhere to codes of ethics that define professional research standards and obligations and duties to the cultural heritage and all peoples associated with that heritage. After 1945, many nations developed new or additional heritage legislation. In archaeology, the focus was on ‘salvage’ operations – saving objects and data before destruction by largescale projects such as dams and highways. By the 1970s, a ‘conservation ethic’ became pervasive and new national legislation developed to reflect conservation principles. New archaeological codes were written to incorporate those principles. After 1990, the globalization of archaeology required that archaeological ethics be developed that are applicable in both international and national contexts. Contemporary archaeological codes of ethics may be considered in five contexts: (1) legal instruments, (2) relationships with indigenous peoples, (3) professionalism, (4) conservation principles, and (5) archaeology and partisan politics.

Glossary antiquities Archaeological objects from ancient cultures, e.g., stone tools, pottery vessels, metal objects, and items of personal adornment. architectural conservation The process through which the material, historical, and design integrity of mankind’s built heritage are prolonged through carefully planned interventions. cultural heritage (‘‘national heritage’’ or ‘‘heritage’’) The legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future generations. indigenous peoples Cultural groups (and their descendants) who have a historical continuity or association with a given region, or parts of a region, and who formerly or currently inhabit the region. They maintain, at least in part, their distinct linguistic, cultural and social and organizational characteristics, and in doing so remain differentiated in some degree from the surrounding populations and dominant culture of the nation-state. salvage archaeology (sometimes called ‘‘preventive’’ or ‘‘rescue’’ archaeology) Archaeological survey and excavation carried out in areas threatened by, or revealed by, construction or other development, such as the building of a dam to flood an area where sites of interest might exist; or even before the onset of war. Unlike traditional survey and excavation, salvage archaeology must be undertaken at speed.

ANTIQUITIES AND CULTURAL HERITAGE LEGISLATION 449

Legal Instruments Archaeology is increasingly conducted in a global context defined by international legal instruments. These are promulgated by organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union. The instruments provide a superstructure of public international law and ethics that functions on a consensual and confederate basis. The instruments relating to cultural heritage give organizational, procedural, and ethical guidance for developing heritage laws and policies at international and national levels. The codes of ethics and practice of most archaeological associations increasingly reflect international instruments relating both to cultural heritage and human cultural rights.

Relations with Indigenous Peoples International declarations, beginning with the 1948 UNESCO Universal Declaration of Human Rights, have set forth basic human rights. These include the right to full access to, and control by, the individual and her/his self-defined group over their cultural heritage and its expression in sites, buildings, structures, objects, rituals, and traditional knowledge (see Native Peoples and Archaeology). Archaeological ethical codes and standards of practice respect those rights. The World Archaeological Congress (WAC) 1991 First Code of Ethics: Members’ Obligations to Indigenous Peoples states that members are (see World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws): 1. to acknowledge the importance of indigenous cultural heritage, including sites, places, objects, artifacts, human remains, to the survival of indigenous cultures; 2. to acknowledge the importance of protecting indigenous cultural heritage to the well-being of indigenous peoples; 3. to acknowledge the special importance of indigenous ancestral human remains, and sites containing and/or associated with such remains, to indigenous peoples; 4. to acknowledge that the important relationship between indigenous peoples and their cultural heritage exists irrespective of legal ownership; 5. to acknowledge that the indigenous cultural heritage rightfully belongs to the indigenous descendants of that heritage; 6. to acknowledge and recognize indigenous methodologies for interpreting, curating, managing, and protecting indigenous cultural heritage;

7. to establish equitable partnerships and relationships between members and indigenous peoples whose cultural heritage is being investigated; 8. to seek, whenever possible, representation of indigenous peoples in agencies funding or authorizing research to be certain that their view is considered as critically important in setting research standards, questions, priorities, and goals. The WAC Code incorporates by reference the 1989 WAC Vermillion Accord on Human Remains: 1. Respect for the mortal remains of the dead shall be accorded to all, irrespective of origin, race, religion, nationality, custom, and tradition. 2. Respect for the wishes of the dead concerning disposition shall be accorded whenever possible, reasonable, and lawful, when they are known or can be reasonably inferred. 3. Respect for the wishes of the local community and of relatives or guardians of the dead shall be accorded whenever possible, reasonable, and lawful. 4. Respect for the scientific research value of skeletal, mummified, and other human remains (including fossil hominids) shall be accorded when such value is demonstrated to exist. 5. Agreement on the disposition of fossil, skeletal, mummified, and other remains shall be reached by negotiation on the basis of mutual respect for the legitimate concerns of communities for the proper disposition of their ancestors, as well as the legitimate concerns of science and education. 6. The expressed recognition that the concerns of various ethnic groups, as well as those of science, are legitimate and to be respected will permit acceptable agreements to be reached and honored.

Professionalism Archaeology as a science creates new knowledge about the human situation and how it came to be. New knowledge becomes part of the human commons, available to everyone. This requires the preservation of, and access to, knowledge in publications, documents, and records held in libraries and archives, and artifacts and associated documentation held in trust by public institutions for exhibit and restudy. Archaeologists have an ethical obligation to comply with this requirement, and current codes reflect this commitment. Public support of archaeology brings with it public scrutiny of expenditures of funds and expectations of professionalism. Thus, professional ethical

450 ANTIQUITIES AND CULTURAL HERITAGE LEGISLATION

concerns in archaeology center on expertise, integrity, intellectual honesty and accountability. The ethical codes of contemporary archaeological associations reflect these concerns. For example, the American Register of Professional Archaeologists (RPA 2006) states, ‘‘Archaeology is a profession, and the privilege of professional practice requires professional morality and professional responsibility, as well as professional competence, on the part of each practitioner.’’ The RPA code and those in other countries go on to spell out what professional ethical responsibilities and levels of professional competence should be.

Conservation of Cultural Heritage The ethical concerns relating to conservation are how to avoid or minimize the loss of archaeological data in the face of land-altering developments, looting, or ideologically motivated destruction of sites and monuments. The conservation ethic states that, if at all possible, extant archaeological sites should be left intact and held in stewardship for future study. All the professional archaeological codes of ethics include statements about the corporate and individual responsibility to conserve the archaeological heritage. In reality, ethical judgments about what constitute ‘appropriate mitigation measures’ for each threatened site must weigh the financial and legal feasibility of achieving de facto long-term conservation against excavation costs. When an intact site is judged to be particularly at risk from looting, the decision usually is to excavate at least a significant portion and thus conserve the information.

Looting and Trafficking in Antiquities A major ethical, legal, and conservation problem is the looting of archaeological sites to satisfy the intense, worldwide demand for antiquities on the illicit antiquities market. Because looting destroys context and information, archaeologists have a professional and ethical responsibility to combat it. Since 1970, many museums and museum associations have promulgated codes of ethics stating that objects must have proper provenance before they are purchased. But, there is simply too much money and demand worldwide to stem the flow of artifacts and art objects to wealthy collectors and unscrupulous museums. UNESCO and various nation states have tried to slow or stop the looting and trafficking, but with little success. A basic ethical principle centers on archaeologists, museum staff members, or professional journals not providing authentication to collectors or antiquities dealers for objects lacking clear and uncontested provenance.

Archaeology and Partisan Politics Archaeology has often been used in support of nationalist ideological, or other partisan political agendas. Archaeological sites, objects, and data are used by partisan groups as evidence of prior possession of lands or as symbols for negotiation of conflict. There are many extant examples, for example, Israelis and Palestinians, and various minority groups in Europe, Africa, India and the USA. All use archaeology to advance their ideological, social, and political agendas, especially claims of precedence and prior occupation. Partisan politics pose difficult ethical issues for archaeologists. Archaeology has standards of acceptable evidence, and, like other sciences, is self-correcting. Data are collected and vetted, and hypotheses formed to account for them; as contrary data accumulate, hypotheses are changed. Data are not ‘objective’ or ‘value free’, but seen as ‘valid’ within a particular theoretical framework. Partisan political groups take archaeological data and transmute them into ‘true’ statements to support demonstrations of legitimacy, authenticity, autochthony, or other causes. In such situations, archaeologists’ first ethical responsibility should be to make their data, and interpretations thereof, as objective and accurate as possible within current archaeological practice and theory. Although archaeologists have an ethical responsibility to oppose egregious misuse of their data and interpretations, how those data and interpretations are used by others, once they enter the commons knowledge base, cannot be controlled. See also: Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Illicit Antiquities; Native Peoples and Archaeology; World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

Further Reading Fowler DD, Jolie EA, and Salter MW (2007) Archaeological ethics in context and practice. In: Maschner H and Bentley A (eds.) Handbook of Archaeological Theory, pp. 31–48. Lantham: Altamira Press. Zimmerman LJ, Vitelli KD, and Hollowell-Zimmer J (eds.) (2003) Ethical Issues in Archaeology. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. Brodie N, Doole J, and Renfrew C (2001) Trade in Illicit Antiquities: Destruction of the World’s Archaeological Heritage. Cambridge: McDonald Institute, University of Cambridge. Register of Professional Archaeologists (RPA) (2006) Code of Conduct and Standards of Research Performance. http://www. rpanet.org/conduct.htm (see also for links to other professional archaeological codes of ethics. Scarre G and Scarre C (2006) The Ethics of Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. UNESCO (2006) Conventions and Declarations Relating to Cultural Heritage and Ethics. http://portal.unesco.org. World Archaeological Congress (WAC)(1990) First Code of Ethics. http://www.wac.uct.ac.za/archive.

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY 451

Applied Archaeology

Archaeology.

See: Ethnoarchaeology; Forensic Archaeology; Interpretive Art and

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY David H Kelley, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary alignment Physical markers on the ground pointing towards a definable astronomical phenomenon. deity A supernatural being worshipped as controlling some part of the world or some aspect of life or who is the personification of a force. archaeoastronomy The study of ancient alignments and other aspects of the archaeological record and their relationship to ancient astronomical knowledge and events. ethnography The branch of anthropology that deals with the scientific description of specific human cultures. myth A story which has deep explanatory or symbolic resonance.

The Phenomena, Their Relationships to Events on Earth, and Interpretations of Their Meaning Life on Earth is conditional on and conditioned by the Sun. Perceptually, to those on Earth, we are at the center with Sun, Moon, planets, and fixed stars revolving around us with variations which are difficult to explain. The Sun maintains a fixed path relative to the stars, but seasonally different paths relative to the Earth. We can define the ecliptic, the horizon, the galaxy, and see how these vary relative to each other and to the planets. Eclipses of the Sun and Moon return with sufficient regularity to be predicted even without understanding the causes. Such erratic phenomena as meteor showers and comets nonetheless have some regularity. Meteorites, novas, and supernovas do not show such patterning. Weather patterns are geographically intermediate between heaven and earth, patterned both seasonally and geographically, yet notoriously difficult to predict in detail. Many human and animal activities are directly affected by Sun and Moon. No one ignores the alternation of day and night, and seasonal changes alternate rainy and dry periods, cold and warm periods, affecting plant growth, seasonal birth and mating patterns,

and even deaths. Light at night was provided in a changing pattern by the Moon, appreciated by poachers and other night life. The moon’s gravitational effects, especially tides, were important to marine life, shore dwellers, and mariners. Gravitational effects on plants have been little studied by modern biologists, but are a strong part of the belief systems of small farmers. Eleven-year sunspot cycles affect temperature and probably precipitation. Finally, those most noticeable of lunisolar phenomena, eclipses, have direct results. Solar eclipses are accompanied by temperature changes, often followed by cloud formation and rain; bird and animal behavior changes abruptly. People have also noted temporally associated phenomena – stars or planets becoming visible at sunrise or sunset mark different daily and seasonal activities. Even the correlation of the 60-year Jupiter cycle with 60-year peaks in rain activity may have been noted. Interpretations of the phenomena we are considering have been varied but important in many cultures around the world. A religious interpretation, attributing volition, personality, and wilful action to planets and stars (including Sun and Moon) was widespread. Visible phenomena were regarded as analogs of human behavior, carried out by deities, following all too human motivations. In an astrological approach, the movements of the heavenly bodies were regarded as entirely mechanical and predictable but causality was attributed to temporal association in many inappropriate ways, and it became far too particularistic in its application to individuals. Scientific studies try to determine which relationships are producing what behavioral effects including everything from physical damage to social pressures.

Relationships of Astronomy to Archaeologically or Ethnographically Determinable Activities and Beliefs There are three major problems in our knowledge of astronomy in much of the world. First, the knowledge

452 ARCHAEOASTRONOMY

itself was often regarded as a secret which should only be imparted to those willing to abide by the rules and capable of learning. This was true in many parts of Africa, in some areas of inner Asia, in Australia, Micronesia, parts of Polynesia, and much of North and South America. Second, the ignorance of those who recorded the data, whether ancient Greeks and Romans, Jesuits in China, or modern anthropologists is often appalling. A third problem is that those geometrically or mathematically inclined individuals who would best understand a straightforward statement seem least equipped to recognize mythical statements of astronomical data, openly presented. Saturn, sleeping for a year with each of his 28 daughters, is regarded as a ribald tale or a moral warning against incest, rather than an account of the planet passing through defined segments of the sky in its sidereal revolution. When each of Saturn’s daughters is assigned an animal form, associated with a kinship group and a specified geographical location, the observer may deny that there is any astronomical intent possible. It is precisely such linkages of heavenly phenomena with earthly phenomena which provide the basis for archaeoastronomy. Kin groups are frequently related to specific stars of asterisms. They have acknowledged obligations to their communities in terms of ritual – sometimes related to myths about ‘their’ associated stellar group. Specific art forms may be produced only by specified kin groups and the iconography may identify figures of myths. The identification of deities may depend upon minor characteristics used in identifying their kin group. Such factors cannot be studied adequately except in the context of the social group which produced them, insofar as it is known. It is widely accepted that astronomy in the tropics was conceptualized differently than in more northernly areas. The horizon was more important and zenith passage was often noted. The nadir was sometimes calculated. The gegenschein was more obvious and rainbows were related to planetary phenomena. It is maintained that east and west were more important than north and south and that solstices were regularly observed while the equinoxes were less important or ignored. The rising and setting points of the planets both north and south of the equator were sometime incorporated into calendars. Some scholars maintain that interest in the stars was largely restricted to tropical stars. In terms of emphasis, these views have some validity, but tropical areas share most characteristics with nontropical areas. Archaeoastronomy started with the study of alignments. These may be recognizable either as repeated

phenomena or as occurrences in special situations – for example, forming an outline of an asterism such as the wall of Chang An, or in a defined camping situation such as that of some Siouans, or in connection with a solstitial ceremony, or a particular temple deity. Shapes in art and architecture may reflect patterned planetary movements or asterisms. At some periods in some areas the colors had clearly defined astronomical connotations. In other times and other areas, these may have been adjusted to other symbolic values of colors. Continuities in color associations may reflect either continuous knowledge of persisting astronomical conditions or acceptance of tradition. As we recognize particular connotations, we should be able to determine usages appropriate for specified times and places. This should indicate specifiable historical relationships and dates. Changes in color may have reflected either changes in the astronomical conditions or cultural differences in color connotations. All of these factors produce a potential for much better understanding of archaeological cultures, for recognizing cultural contacts, and sometimes for dating particular remains, occasionally with high precision.

Culture History Paleolithic

Although there have been a number of attempts to demonstrate that astronomy was associated with Paleolithic ritual and belief, none are fully satisfactory. Alexander Marshack showed that certain bones from Paleolithic sites were incised periodically at short intervals. His explanation was that nights were being counted, measuring lunations and ultimately determining ritual activities. The general interpretation seems plausible but the details lack adequate confirmation. A number of scholars, notably Michael Rappengluck, have claimed that cave paintings represent asterisms. Unfortunately, a substantial subjective element enters into such identifications unless there are very obvious arbitrary components which are hard to find in the paintings of hunting groups. Australia

In much of aboriginal Australia, there was a close linkage between art, myth, kinship, and astronomy, and it is the one place in the world where continuity from the Paleolithic is probable. Astronomical details are rarely attested and may differ between tribal groups but may usefully be mentioned as indicators.

Table 1 The World Chronology 4600 BCE to the Present N.B. Australia has nothing definitely datable in this time range. EuropeMesopotamia
4600


4500
4400
4300
4200
4100
4000
3900
3800
3700
3600
3500

Lacmariaquer Menhirs


3102 Kaliyuga era


2700
2600


2400
2300

Chinese Pole Star

Megalithic ‘yard’ Stonehenge, eclipses?


2100

Gnomon Gudea, of Lagasheclipse?

North America

South America
4600


4500
4400
4300
4200
4100
4000
3900
3800
3700
3600
3500


4500
4400
4300
4200
4100
4000
3900
3800
3700
3600
3500


3400
3300
3200


3400
3300
3200


3000

Medicine Wheels


2900
2800


2767: Sirius calendar, Pyramids stellar alignments


2500

Egyptian Sun Worship


2400
2300

365 day calendar


2200
2100


3100

Egyptian Lunar Calendar


3000


2700
2600

Inanna in Sumer Crucuno: Pythagorean Triangles all Tropical Year Points

Mesoamerica


4600


2900
2800

Early Stonehenge


2200

Africa


2700
2600

Cantograndeequinoxes, solstices


2400
2300 Fox Temple, winter solstice

Star Clocks


2500


2200
2100

Continued

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY 453


2500

MicronesiaPolynesia


3100

Brugh-na-Boinne


3000
2900
2800

China-JapanKorea

Dissignac, Midwinter Solstice


3400
3300
3200


3100

India-Tibet, S.E. Asia

4600 BCE to the Present N.B. Australia has nothing definitely datable in this time range. EuropeMesopotamia

India-Tibet, S.E. Asia


2000


1900
1800
1700

China-JapanKorea
1952: Mass Conjunction

Mull and Argyll S. declination of moon


1600

28 lunar mansions


1500
1400

Enuma Anu Enlil


1200

astrolabes, culmination stars.


762: Solar Eclipse Eclipse prediction


400


200


100 0

Babylonian influence Eratosthanesmeasured sphere of the earth Hipparchos, Eudoxosepicycle precession system

Alexandrian Greek Techniques


433 Jupiter cycles, comets, star maps

Chang-An

Mesoamerica

North America

South America


2000


2000


1900
1800
1700


1900
1800
1700


1600


1600


1300

Extensive stellar mythology


700
600
500


300

Africa


1500
1400


1300


1100
1000
900
800

MicronesiaPolynesia


1321: Sothic Cycle (Sirius)


1500
1400

Alignments, Tropical Year,


1300

Zenith Passage
1257: Abu Simbel


1200


1200


1100
1000
900
800


1100
1000
900
800

Chavin-sculpture, light play, alignments.


700
600
500


700
600
500


400


400


300


300


200


100 0

Namoratunga alignments, lunar-stellar

New Fire Ceremonies

Siouan earth topography reflects sky and kin groups Hopewelliancardinal points, solstice shadowcasters


200


100 0

454 ARCHAEOASTRONOMY

Table 1 Continued

100

Claudius Ptolemyeclipses,

200

planetary cycles, astrology

Ujain as the Tropic Observation Point; eclipse prediction, planetary cycles, epicycles, era count

300

Buddhist cosmology expanding

Izapa

200 Star maps?

Abu Ma’shar

Cosmological Temple Architechture

900
100 to present 1000

1054: Supernova

1100 1200

1400 Copernicus

650: MocheSaturn

400

500 600 700

Star Navigation

800

Xochicalco

800

Named lunar nights, eclipse prediction?

900

Tikal, Palenque

900

Haamonga-aMaui ChaucerAstrolabe

Tihuanacu

700 Borobudur and Angkor Wat

300

Nazca Linessolstices, equinoxes

500 600

Korean Observatory

800

Stellar alignments of temples

1000

1100 1200

‘Flying’ ceremony

1054: Supernova

Kogi-new fires, winter solstices, solar eclipses

Chichen Itza, serpent hierophany

1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000

1000

1100 1200

1300 Aztec

Hopi

Pole-climbing with new fire. Rigel, Pleiades Inca

1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY 455

1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000

200

100

major and minor lunar standstills

400

500 600

1300

Planetary tables of mean motion, Eclipse calculation Ball-games

300

400

700

100

456 ARCHAEOASTRONOMY

Names often cross linguistic boundaries. Paintings of supernatural figures in red, black, and yellow may go 40 000 years or more into the past but are being produced and renewed today. Repainting is regarded as vital in permitting a particular class of sprits to be reborn again as humans or related animals or plants. Only humans related to the particular spirit may repaint it. The land of the dead is a defined section of the Milky Way sharply divided into the Eagle– Hawk moiety (in Aquila, the Eagle) and the Crow moiety associated with Canopus (in Ursa Major). Crow stole fire from one of the Pleiades girls, or stole the missing Pleiad, herself, who became Alcor (in Ursa Major). The Rainbow Snake of daytime becomes the Milky Way at night, which may also be conceived as a river or (among the Tasmanians) a pathway. Brothers who are culture heroes ascended to the sky either by a chain of spears or a pine tree, which burned down. The brothers were forced to stay in the sky as alpha and beta of Gemini. One of the most remarkable sets of paintings of spirit beings are associated with a moon goddess, Wandjina, in the Kimberleys. The oldest paintings here include Pleistocene animals and may be as old as 30 000 years, but modern initiates can still identify many spirit people. Another version of the dualism of Eagle–Hawk and Crow maintained that they were chiefs among the birds who ruled the land before humans were present. European Megalithic

For more than 3000 years, seafarers of Europe built gigantic monuments with large stones (sometimes many tons in weight). These began with burial tumuli, with openings to the southeast, occasionally precisely aligned on the winter solstice. A passage grave at Dissignac in Brittany, about 4500 BC, contains grave goods and is decorated by designs of shepherds’ crooks and axes (Table 1). The chamber would have been lit up at the winter solstice. At Loc Mariaquer, around 3500 BC, two giant menhirs were created, the taller more than 600 high and weighing more than 340 tons. Such massive monuments had symbolic value, could have served as major navigational markers, and could have been used to measure the movements of anythng visible in the sky. Geometric figures (especially circles, near circles, stone lines, and rectangles) were common. Thom defined a measuring unit, the Megalithic Yard, on British evidence and found that it was used at Crucuno in Brittany to build a rectangle of 30  40 units, with a diagonal of 50 units. The diagonals marked the rising and setting points of the solstitial

sun, the 40 unit sides marked due east and west, and the 30 unit sides marked true north and south. This is the simplest of Pythagorean triangles, with alignments dependent entirely on the latitude. In terms of Thom’s ideas, this was ideal verification. The date was about 2600 BC. In Ireland, the Brugh-na-Boinne complex of about 3100 BC has three major burial mounds with a great deal of decoration, closely related to Brittany. A long window passage leads to the great interior dome of Newgrange, lit by the winter solstice rising sun. A quartzite covering makes a glittery palace for the reborn Sun God. Equinoxes and the summer solstice are also marked at the complex and a sun dial is present. Somewhat later, construction at Stonehenge continued from about 3000 to 1100 BCE. Summer and winter solstices are marked as well as major and minor standstills of the Moon. Whether there was an interest in predicting eclipses continues to be a disputed issue. The northern site of Callanish in the Outer Hebrides was buried deep in peat accumulating from about 1000 BCE. The monuments date from about 2200 to 1500 BCE. There is a very clear N–S alignment, with roughly cruciform angles extending from a central circle. Lunar extremes are more doubtful and claimed stellar alignments much disputed. Thom’s claims of very high precision in Megalithic sites are rejected by most specialists in Megalithic astronomy, but it is more widely accepted that the extreme positions of the Moon were being observed on the basis of independently studied Scottish sites. Similar results have been found with North European and Mediterranean sites; the range of phenomena is similar. The most distinctive of local Megalithic cultures is that of Malta (c. 3600–2600 BC) where large Megalithic temples show stellar alignments and numeracy was obviously central to astronomy. Charlemagne’s cathedral at Aachen (Aix) duplicates the dimensions and latitude of Stonehenge. The intended astronomy at either site is still poorly known. Neither do we know whether Aachen copies Stonehenge, or whether common astronomical interests determined comparable measurements. In either case, Aachen provides evidence which may eventually be crucial for interpreting Stonehenge and other Megalithic monuments. The Far East

In China, the earliest evidence shows that the North Pole and the equator were conceptually much more basic than the ecliptic. Several abandoned pole stars retain old names. The movements of the Moon were

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY 457

tracked by the lunar ‘mansions’, unequal sections of the sky marked by asterisms, and roughly paired on opposite sides of the sky. The size of the pairs seems to fit best with the equator of about the twenty-fourth century BCE. Among the changes caused by precession, the complete elimination of the mansion of the Weaving Girl (Vega) is particularly noteworthy – long separated from her lover, the Ox Herd (Altair). Seven mansions together formed one of the four great directional animals, the Dragon (associated with blue, east, wood, Jupiter), the Bird (red, south, fire, Mars), the Tiger (white, west, metal, Venus), and the Turtle (or Black Warrior, north, water, Mercury). Monumental representations of Dragon and Tiger suggest the possibility that the entire system was present in pre-Shang times. In Chinese tradition, an ancient calendar began with a conjunction of Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in the Great Square of Pegasus and Andromeda. There was such a conjunction on 3 March 1953 BC (Julian), indicating a genuine astronomical tradition. Another astronomical tradition says that the fourth Xia (Hsia) emperor beheaded the astronomers Hsi and Ho for failing to prevent a still unidentified eclipse. Their heads now appear as the double cluster in Perseus. During the Shang dynasty, the kings predicted both the lunar and solar eclipses (thirteenth and twelfth century BCE) involved in rituals, sacrifices, and warfare. Later, many eclipse cycles were in use, ranging from 23 eclipse seasons (3984 days) to 31 920 years (which incorporated eclipses, the tropical year, the 60 day cycle, and other phenomena). Planetary cycles were supposed to repeat in 138 240 years. The Chinese were using armillary spheres in the late centuries BC and a continuous tradition of putting star maps on tomb walls began about that time. The walls of the Han capital city, Xian (Chang-An), were a gigantic star map of parts of Ursa Major and Sagittarius, emphasizing the association of the polar region and imperial power. Tremendous observatories and measuring devices were used to improve precision. Marked western influence on Chinese astronomy came with Buddhist missionaries who introduced the western zodiac and Indian conceptions of time and space. Some Indian families joined the Chinese Bureau of Astronomy. In Korea, the seventh-century Star Tower built of 365 stones and 28 rows of stones showed lunar interest. It is accepted as the oldest standing observatory. A Buddhist form of Chinese astronomy was introduced into Japan, also strongly influenced more directly by Chinese ideas from Korea.

The Middle East

The goddess Inanna, the Sumerian equivalent of Ishtar and Astarte, was the planet Venus in two guises – an armed warrior goddess in the morning, a tavern keeper in the evening. She is regularly depicted with Shumash, the Sun God, and with the Pleiades. The extent to which other planetary deities and constellations can be recognized in this material is still strongly disputed. There is also no agreement on the dates of eclipses before the one of 763 BC which played a crucial role in establishing the chronology of the first millennium BCE. However, Utu-hegal, King of Uruk, conquered the Gutian people at the time of a lunar eclipse, possibly 2163 BCE, or 2049 BCE. The Gutians particularly worshipped Inanna and Suen (Sin), the Moon. Astronomical depictions on Kassite boundary stones and some later monuments dating from the thirteenth to the seventh centuries BCE have still received little attention in terms of critical analysis of possible datings. Many of these depictions clearly correspond with later depictions of constellations and are often similar to earlier scenes which could refer to constellations. The Greek and modern zodiacs derive largely from Mesopotamian constellations. Early Mesopotamian texts differentiate the paths of Anu, Enlil, and Ea. The path of Enlil seems to approximate the Tropics, but a precise definition, chronologically, mythically, or astronomically, eludes modern scholars. Mathematical astronomy in the west is first attested in Mesopotamian documents from about 300 to 50 BC, including elaborate lunar tables and less elaborate planetary tables. The average motion of the planets was measured by two different techniques. The planetary tables emphasize horizon phenomena. The nature of the relationship of these documents to Greek astronomy and Euclidean geometry is vigorously disputed. It is generally supposed that the notion of the celestial sphere arose among the Greeks in the sixth century BC and led to ideas of concentric spheres. The idea that the circle was a perfect geometric figure and that heavenly bodies were, of necessity, perfect, was harmful to a proper understanding of astronomy, causing completely unnecessary problems for nearly 2000 years. The works of Hipparchus and Claudius Ptolemy established precession. The Earth was recognized as a sphere, and a reasonable approximation to its size was determined. The size of the Moon was substantially underestimated, and the Sun was grossly underestimated. However, a mechanistic understanding

458 ARCHAEOASTRONOMY

of astronomy was introduced and nonpersonal astrology became largely acceptable. A few scholars argued for a heliocentric system. Descriptive refinement, especially by Islamic scholars, continued to modern times. Buildings were oriented to the cardinal points, and many churches were aligned so that the sun shone onto the high altar on the day of the patron saint. Egypt

Clearly, astronomy is crucial to understanding the story of the constant struggle between Osiris and his twin brother, Seth, the murder and cutting up of Osiris with his wife Isis putting the pieces back together and replacing his lost penis and resurrecting him; the birth of their son, Horus, who eventually killed Seth – and the resurrection of Seth and his reconciliation with Osiris. The actors are identified astronomically, sometimes inconsistently (Isis as Sirius, Osiris as the Moon, Seth as Mercury, Horus as the Sun, and sometimes Mercury), but the identifications do not lead automatically to an understanding of the astronomy. Neither are other myths much more understandable because of these and other identifications. Time measurement was very important in Egypt and water clocks were in use both of ‘inflow’ and ‘outflow’ types. These were used in astronomical contexts, and the night was early divided into 12 h. In the day, shadow clocks (including sundials) measured another 12 h. There was also an 8  13 grid used in observing stars at night. The sky was divided into a set of 36 decans, of ten [degrees] each, including named asterisms, largely unidentified. The Boatman in Orion, the Foreleg of the Bull identified as the Big Dipper, the Archer Goddess as Sirius are among the few accepted. This is surprising since star maps are well attested from the time of Hatshepsut to the Romans. The Sky Goddess, Nut, is prominently associated with death and rebirth, often appearing as a coffin lid. The Egyptian civil year consisted of 12 months of 30 days each plus five added days. No attempt was made to adjust for leap years. A Sothic year of 365 1=4 days based on the heliacal rising of Sirius was recognized and was valid from pre-Dynastic to Roman times. The degree to which it was recognized and formalized is much disputed. For this cycle to return to the same point of the Egyptian civil year took 1460 years. 1508 Egyptian years are equivalent to 1507 tropical years. This means that the sun shone into the Temple of Ra-Hor-Akhty at Abu Simbel on 1 Tybi of the Egyptian civil calendar for 4 years. Coupled with the evidence of the 25-year solar–lunar calendar, this identified the 34th year of Ramses II

as 1257 BC The 25-year lunar–solar cycle is attested in the only known document of mathematical astronomy from ancient Egypt. The winter solstice sun shown into temples of the Sun God, Amun, and stellar alignments are attested in inscriptions from some temples. There have been many preposterous claims in connection with Egyptian stellar alignments, often by people inadequately trained in either astronomy or Egyptology. However, some scholars competent in both disciplines are now working on these problems. India and Related Cultures

From Mongolia to Sumatra, a wide variety of cultures differing in language, economic base, clothing, and, often, religion, share related astronomical myths and rituals. Tibet, India, and Southeast Asia share massive elaborately decorated temples regarded as cosmograms and showing identified astronomical figures (often deities) acting roles known in recorded myths. Simple village sand paintings may depict such temples and gods. Star maps show most of the known sky and are found in temples. Literature describes the role of deities both in myth and in historical events; technical astronomy is described in great detail. This area has been a major originator of cultural ideas and a transmitter of Chinese ideas to the west and of Mediterranean ideas to the Orient. Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and Muslims share stories and representations. Astronomy in Sanskrit shows borrowings from Dravidian, including items related to the 28 sidereal lunar mansions. The world ages, trees, directions, birds, animals, and colors were widespread. Magic squares were sometimes associated. In some cases, the proportion of the ages was 4:3:2:1, and the last or Kaliyuga age began in 3102 BCE – a date probably back-calculated, regarded as a mass conjunction at a spring equinox. For astronomical purposes, a count by days from that base was in use. A Tamil scholar calculated an eclipse of 1825 by memorized tables combined with calculations using shells to mark numbers. The techniques were Babylonian of the second century BCE. The Khmer temple complex at Angkor Wat was built in the early twelfth century CE. It shows alignments to equinoxes, solstices, minor and major standstills of the Moon, iconography of planetary gods, and of the lunar mansions; measurements incorporate numbers of the local ‘cubit’ which are relevant to the World Ages and various astronommical units. Placements of the various scenes make them relevant to light and shadow plays. Our understanding of the

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY 459

integration of iconography, visual alignments, measurements, and light and shadow play is probably greater at Angkor Wat than at any other site, but there is still much which is unknown. Micronesia and Polynesia

In Micronesia, the expert astronomers were navigators and their knowledge was secret. Training was done with 32 rocks either surrounding a model canoe or conceptualized as a canoe with the trainee in the center; these marked the rising and setting points of particular stars. Apparently, similar devices were used in Polynesia, and may be archaeologically recognizable. Micronesians also used maps made of sticks and shells, indicating geographic relationships of islands, reefs, and currents. In Micronesia and Polynesia, month names were derived from stars. In Eastern Polynesia, lunations were measured by the named nights of the Moon and associated with deities. In Polynesia, shared myths, astronomical names, navigational techniques, calendrical structure, and ideas about temples recorded by many different observers in different times and places mean that our understanding of the astronomy should increase substantially. We know that myths are tied to deities, to sacred features of the landscape, to astronomical geography, and to sacred constructions and alignments. Nearly all of the characteristics postulated for Megalithic astronomers in Europe are attested in one part or another of Polynesia with a wealth of accompanying myth. Maui’s canoe was in Orion’s Belt and his fishhook in Scorpio with which he fished up the Earth, identified with Mokoroa, Long Lizard and the Milky Way. The Tongan monument called Haamonga-a-Maui is the weight bearing pole with which Maui lifted the sky. It marks the equinoxes and possibly the solstices. All are attested in alignments at Easter Island; there are less certain lunar and stellar alignments. Stellar alignments can seldom be verified by repetition but are directly in rare cases in Polynesia. The Milky Way as the Talking Tree, identified as frangipani, was cut down by Maui to make his canoe. North America

Medicine wheels is a descriptive generalization for structures of heaped up stones laid out like megaliths, of a variety of shapes and possibly varied functions. Concentrated in Alberta, they were built between 2500 BCE and the eighteenth century CE. The most famous may have been aligned on calendrically important star risings. Some mark true north. The fullest collection of myths about Sun, Moon, planets, stars, and seasons are North American. Some

are widespread. Moieties and clans are related to asterisms and sometimes to astronomically based calendars. Descriptions are seldom astronomically comprehensive and often technically inadequate or wrong. Notable exceptions are our view of Arctic skies known to the Inuit, and the extensive data from the Navaho. Observational practices included widespread use of various types of shadow-casters, fixed observation points, and rarely, sighting tubes. The massive and precise use of geometrical patterns among the Hopewelliams included frequent marking of true north, but many claimed alignments are false. The Kern effigies of the Fort Ancient Culture (c. 1100–1200 CE) show two giant snakes, one aligned on the winter solstice rising sun, and the other on the summer solstice rising sun. The most sophisticated alignments recognized so far are from the Southwestern United States. At Fajada Butte, a single design is used to mark the equinox and both solstices. Massive evidence from Chacoan pueblos shows buildings and sites with reciprocal alignments demonstrating interest in equinoxes, solstices and the major and minor standstills of the moon. Among the Chumash, a Sun-Stick was raised by a priest and his 12 assistants, a pole symbolizing the center of the Earth, at the winter solstice. The poles had condor/eagle feathers above and crow feathers below. Common Californian mythical identities were Condor as Altair, Castor and Pollux as Twins (boy and girl), Orion’s Belt as Mountain Sheep. The Pomo kept bundle records, 13 sticks for a year; bundles marked 8, 64, and 512 years. Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica was the only part of the New World which had a full panoply of all aspects of astronomy as a major factor in human behavior. The deities Sun, Moon, and Venus played major roles in society from birth to death. Human sacrifice in many forms, warfare, and imperial conquest, monuments, sculpture, and paintings all emphasized the constant interrelationship of human and astronomical actors. Above all, literary documents demonstrate technical knowledge of astronomy linked to divination. Crucial to the details of our knowledge is the Mesoamerican calendar. Cycles of 13 numbers and 20 days gave a 260-day sequence which provided birth date names to gods and humans. Eighteen ‘months’ of 20 days each supplemented by five other days provided a year of 365 days. The 260-day cycle and the 365-day cycle ran concurrently requiring 18 980 days (52  365) before a day of the 260-day

460 ARCHAEOASTRONOMY

cycle repeated in the same position of the 365-day cycle. Among the Mayas, the 18 980-day cycle ran concurrently with an era count which years of 360 days counted from a specified base. The correlation of the Maya calendar with our calendar is defined by the number of days needed to be added to a Mayan era date to convert it to a Julian day number. Most Mesoamericanists prefer one of two proposals of Eric Thompson, 584 283 or 584 285. The Dresden Maya codex contains an eclipse table, a Venus table, a more disputed Mars table, and other probable planetary tables. Partly parallel tables are found in other Maya codices and in the Borgia group from central Mexico. Monumental alignments to Venus phenomena are generally accepted and the Temple of Kukulcan gives the illusion on the equinoxes that the giant carved Feathered Snakes are descending the stairs. An inner chamber at Palenque is illuminated at the winter solstice, and other solstitial alignments have been accepted by many scholars. Possible Jupiter alignments are more disputed. At Teotihuacan, an alignment on the rising of the Pleiades is probable. Other stellar alignments are more disputed. Direct identifications of Mesoamerican asterisms include the fire drill in Orion, the scorpion in Scorpio, and the tail of the Rattlesnake in the Pleiades. Finally, at Xochicalco, a tube drilled to a cave below provided sunlight in the cave at the zenith passage, also marked, less clearly, at Monte Alban. South America

A very important discovery for the history of astronomy in the New World is the alignment of the Temple of the Fox at Buena Vista in the Chillon Valley, Peru, excavated by Robert Benfer, dated at about 2200 BC. A painted Fox and Llama are aligned with the December (summer) solstice at dusk. In Quechua communities today, it is said that all foxes are born on Christmas Day and the Fox constellation is setting in the west marking the same alignment and the same mythic associations about 4000 years later. Interest in determining equinoxes, solstices, and zenith passage with high precision at about this date is attested by the lines of large boulders immediately to the south at Cantogrande, stretching for several kilometers. On the other side of the Andes is the temple of Chavin de Huantar of about 800 BCE. Here, a monument called the Lanzon, a monstrous figure with snake belt and mouth ornaments, is lit up by the rising sun at the December solstice. Imagery at Chavin includes conch shell trumpets from Ecuador and Amazonian jaguars, harpy eagles, anacondas, caymans, and monkeys. The Tello obelisk shows a Sky Cayman

(father) associated with agriculture including gourds, achira, peanuts, and manioc carried on the penis. This iconography is matched by a modern myth from Surinam telling of a Fishwoman who got manioc from her alligator father, who carried it on his penis. Another Amazonian tale tells how Star-Woman (sometimes Jupiter) introduced agriculture. The Moche culture of northern coastal Peru (particularly Phase V, c. 550–700 CE) contains specifically astronomical scenes, both from murals and ceramics. These include the Sun litter and Moon Fox. Mythic scenes include the Revolt of the Artifacts, an associated flood scene, the Spider Path to Heaven, and many others. Specific generally accepted interpretations are few. The site of Tiahuanaco (Tiwanaku) on the high plains of Bolivia includes the Akapana monument aligned to the equinoxes, dating from about the sixth century CE. Many other monuments seem to have astronomical connotations, but there are no agreed on interpretations. The famed Nazca lines include several plausible alignments of biomorphs with constellations, but none are definitive. Amazonian star myths and rituals are closely tied to kin groups, often divided into Sun and Moon moities. Venus, Jupier, and Rigel of the Sun Moiety, Mars, and the Pleiades brothers of the Moon moiety appear as actors in ritual and in myth. Fire is stolen from Jaguar. New Fire ceremonies involve climbing a pole, the ‘Road to the Sky’. In another group, the Pleiades are the eight red and black fire sticks. Recently an Amazonian ‘Stonehenge’ has been discovered at Calcoene, Brazil, from about the first century BCE. The diameter of the ‘circle’ is about 1000 and there are 127 stones. One casts no shadow at the December (winter) solstice.

New Perspectives The publication of the San Bartolo murals west wall supplies us with a wealth of new information which may be integrated with the Borgia group codices, Mayan codices and ceramics, Olmec sculpture and murals, and with other areas, especially Egypt (Table 2). The west wall shows a series of trees, birds, and sacrifices indicative of world ages, most closely paralleling the Borgia codex pp. 49–52. The last of the San Bartolo images is accompanied by the date 3 Ik. This is the day before Maya 4 Akbal, corresponding to 4 House, a name day for one of the Borgia World Ages. The associated tree of the Borgia is conceptually identical with that of San Bartolo, and the other trees also show similarities. This makes it

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY 461

certain that the world ages are named for their beginning days and that the year names corresponded with Maya 1 Pop. The sequences of dates of the World Ages are separated by 13 years of 365 days and an unspecified number of Calendar Rounds. The structure is one-fourth of the 29 CR in which the ‘wandering year’ (365 days) returns to the same position of the tropical year (1508 ‘wandering years’ ¼ 1507 tropical years) (Table 3). If 3 Ik/4 Akbal is a World

Age date, one would expect it to be an equinox or a solstice. In continuity correlations, this is true of 3 Ik 5 uayeb/4 Akbal 1 Pop only at 23 June 182 CE, the summer solstice (n  1507 tropical years). It is not archaeologically feasible to place this date later at 7.19.4.12.2 (when early Maya were flourishing), so the 3 Ik date should go back at least one 52 year cycle to 7.16.11.17.2. This would put the end of the Classic Period at 1117 CE, 208 years later than the

Table 2 The San Bartolo 3 IK date and the Maya correlation dates Chiapa de Corzo ST.1 7.16.3.2.13 6 Reed 1784538 19 Oct 173 C.E. Tres Zapotes St. C 7.16.6.16.13 1 Reed 1785898 10 July 177 C.E. San Bartolo 23 June 182 C.E. ¼ 3 Ik [5 Uayeb] In Correlation: 679185 / 679183 Vaillant #1 7.13.19.4.2

660205 Wells 7.16.11.17.2

[16 Xul]

[16 Pop]

641225 7.19.4.12.2

584285 Thompson 8.7.2.15.2 909 C.E. ¼ 10.4.0.0.0

1168 C.E. ¼ 10.4.0.0.0

1065 C.E. ¼ 10.4.0.0.0

1117 C.E. ¼ 10.4.0.0.0

Table 3 The Tropical Year Cycle in the Mediterranean and Mesoamerica L.
2905, 17 July Sun 89 # 754 Tropical Years # M.
2151, 7 Oct Sun 177 # 2  1507 Tropical Years #

A.
2766, 16 July Sun 90 # 1507 Tropical Years # # B.
1259, 4 July Sun 90

D.
1325, 6 July Sun 90 # 1507 Tropical Years #

# G. 182 C.E., 24 June Sun 91 # 753þ Tropical Years # H. 936 C.E., 15 March Sun 360

I.
752, 21 April Sun 22 # 753 Tropical Years # J. 0, 26 December Sun 273 # 1507 Tropical Years #

# N. 863 C.E., 14 Sept Sun 175

# K. 1507, 15 December Sun 273 Continued

462 ARCHAEOASTRONOMY Table 3 Continued A.
2766 (2767 B.C .E.), 16 July (Jul.), 23 June (Greg.) J.D.N. 710973, Sun 90 , Mars 66 , Venus 73 , Jupiter 69 , Saturn 72 Heliacal rising of Sirius at Heliopolis, 1 Thoth. The Horoscope of Eternity. B.
1259 (1260 B.C.E.), 4 July (Jul.) J.D.N. 1261393, Sun 90 , 1 Thoth. C.
1256 (1257 B.C.E.), 31 Oct. (Jul.), 18 Oct. (Greg.) J.D.N. 1262608 Mercury 188 , Saturn 188 . Sun shone into the Abu Simbel Temple, 34th year, Ramesses II. D.
1325 (1326 B.C.E.), 6 July (Jul) J.D.N. 1237288, Sun 90 , 4.0.3.0.3 4 Akbal 1 Pop E.
1321 (1322 B.C.E.), 19 July (Jul) J.D.N. 1238763 Heliacal rising of Sirius. F. 139 C.E. 20 July (Jul) J.D.N. 1772028, The Phoenix Era ff. Censorinus (1460 Julian years after date E), heliacal rising of Sirius. G. 182 C.E. 24 June (Jul) J.D.N. 1787708, Sun 91 , 7.16.11.17.3 4 Akbal, 1 Pop H. 936 C.E. 15 March (Jul) J.D.N. 2063006, Sun 360 , 9.14.16.12.1 1 Imix, 9 Zec (a famous ‘beginning date’ of Mixtec chronology) (cf. 9.14.16.7.13 4 Ben, 1 Pop, beginning of a World Age subdivision, J.D.N. 2062918 18 December, 935, (Jul), Sun 272 ). I.
752 (753 B.C.E.) 21 April (Jul) J.D.N. 1446501, Sun 23 , Traditional date of founding of Rome, alleged planetary phenomena impossible. J. 0 (1 B.C.E.) 26 December (Jul) J.D.N. 1721418, Sun 273 , Mercury 276 , Mars 8 , Jupiter 189 . I had postulated that a mythico-astronomical date for the birth of Quetzalcoatl was at 12.8.10.2.13 with the Sun and Mercury in conjunction; Mars and Jupiter in opposition, with Jupiter also in conjunction with the Sun. This much later date shows the Sun and Mercury in conjunction and Mars and Jupiter in opposition. K. 1507 (C.E.) 15 Dec (Jul.) JDN 2271838. Sun 273 , Mercury 277 , Mars 268 . Aztec year 2 Reed, day 1 Reed (Mixtec year 1 Reed, day 1 Reed) (a traditional date for the birth of Quetzalcoatl.) Aztec 1 Acatl 20 Panquetzaliztli, equivalent to 11.3.16.10.13 1 Ben, 1 Mol was the date of the new Fire ceremony proceeding the first year of Moctezuma as Emperor. L.
2905 (2906 BCE) 17 Jul (Jul.) J.D.N. 660205 Sun 89 , 23 June (Greg.) 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 8 Cumku, Maya era base M.
2151 (2152 BCE) 7 Oct (Jul.) J.D.N. 935685 1.18.5.4.0 1 Ahau 13 Mac Sun 177 , Jupiter 33 , Saturn 39 (Sun and Venus in Conjunction 25 days earlier) Nine Wind descended (birth) 18 days earlier. N. 863 CE 14 Sep (Jul.) J.D.N. 2036525 9.11.3.2.0 1 Ahau, 13 Mac, Sun 175 , Venus 174 Implicit, year 52, of Pakal of Palenque; should be the 1 Ahau, 13 Mac date of the Dresden Venus table.

Thompson correlation. If 182 CE were put 52 years earlier in the Maya long count at 7.13.19.4.2, the end of the Classic Period would be 260 years later than the Thompson correlation which gives a very short Post-Classic period. The 660205 correlation is therefore correct, although it is nearly 400 years later than the Saturno interpretion of the radiocarbon dates. About half of the difference is due to the error of using the Thompson correlation. If one goes back 1507 tropical years from 3 Ik at the summer solstice (90 ), one reaches 1237387 5 July – 1325 (1326 BCE) with the Sun at 89 . The one-day shift is due to the inequality of the seasons. This puts the year beginning date at 4 Akbal 1 Pop at 4.0.3.0.3, July 6,
1325 JDN 1237288 at the summer

solstice and followed 14 days later by the enthronement date, 5 Caban 15 Pop partly equivalent to Egyptian 1 Thoth and the rising of Sirius (see Table 4). The Sothic cycle of 1460 years began with the 4 years, including 1322 BCE (
1321)and 1320 BCE (
1319). It might more appropriately according to Greek writers have begun in the preceding 4 years. They associate the summer solstice, the Nile flooding, and the rising of Sirius, which would have been together about 4000 BCE. They were still together in 2767 BCE (
2766) at JDN 710973, the heliacal rising of Sirius on 1 Thoth at the summer solstice. Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus were within 7 . 1507 tropical years later, in 1260 BCE (
1259), 1 Thoth of the wandering year was again at summer

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY 463 Table 4 Correlation of one Egyptian day with one Mesoamerican day

Local time affected by longitude, latitude and altitude Julian Day Number Civil Day

Time of beginning of day

Egypt

Mesoamerica

Sunset Sunrise

1 Thoth (365) [(12  30)þ5] Thursdaya (7)

15 Pop (365) [(18  20)þ5] 5 Caban (260) (13  20)

Noon Midnight Local civil timeb measured from Greenwich

1237302 Julian Calendar 19 July (often used in back calculations)

Era


1325 1326 BC 1326 BCE

Gregorian Calendar 5 July (often used in back calculations) 4.0.3.0.17

a

Later began at midnight. Local civil time roughly approximates local time measured astronomically by the location of the sun or stars.

b

solstice and had shifted by 1257 BCE to 89 , 120 days before the sun shone into the Abu Simbel temple, dating the 34th year of Ramses II. At about 2000 BCE, the solstice and the flooding of the Nile were about 14 days before Sirius rising. This seems to be reflected in the Mesoamerican situation, with New Year’s Day on the summer solstice and the enthronement date 14 days later. According to the Aztecs, the inventor of the calendar was Cipactonal, or Crocodile-Sun. The consonants of this name, Spktn, correspond with Egyptian Sbktn as closely as is possible in Aztec which had no –b-. s-b-k is Egyptian ‘crocodile’ and t-n is Aten or Aton, the sun disk. Cipactonal is depicted in the Borbonicus associated with animal-headed staves. In Egypt, Crocodile-Sun was written sbkr (Sobek-Ra) and was one of the gods who carried the animal headed power staff. The first day of the Aztec calendar was Cipactli, Crocodile. The equivalent day of the Maya calendar was Imix, earlier *Imox, in some dialects Moxi, which occasionally has the meaning ‘beetle’. In Egypt, Kheperra was Beetle-Sun, associated with sunrise. The date 7.7.7.14.13 1Ben 1Mol (a date 1 Reed of a Mixtec year 1 Reed, an Aztec year 2 Reed) was December 26, 1 BCE (astronomical year 0). The sun was in 274 , 4 days past the winter solstice with Mercury in conjunction in 278 , Mars in 9 in opposition with Jupiter in 189 . I had suggested that an original One Reed Quetzalcoatl should have been born on a winter solstice with Mercury and Jupiter in conjunction with the Sun and Mars in opposition to Jupiter. This much later recurrence is a reasonable astronomical approximation which fits a Toltec tradition that Quetzalcoatl was born on a day 1 Reed of a year 1 Reed. Here Mercury was in conjunction with the Sun and Mars in opposition to Jupiter, but Jupiter was not in conjunction with Mercury and the Sun. One Reed was again nearly at the winter solstice 1507 years later on the 20th of Panquetzaliztli, the great New Fire

ceremony emphasized in the Aztec Borbonicus codex, the year before the accession of the Aztec emperor, Moctezuma. This was December 15, 1507 CE, JDN 2271838 with the Sun in 273 and Mercury in conjunction in 277 (3 days past the winter solstice). The relationship of the date for the birth of Quetzalcoatl in 1. BCE with Egyptian ideas of Horus and with the date for the founding of Rome is iconographically tied to Judaic representations of Iaw in the form of Egyptian deities. These include snake footed gods, the god holding a decapitated head, the snakeheaded feline, heads growing on a tree and a bird with a deity head on its breast. These are segments of a more general correspondence of the Mesoamerican and Egyptian pantheons. Many Mesoamerican gods are astronomically identifiable, and the meanings of associated iconography may be clear. The astronomy is sophisticated. The correspondences with the Egyptian pantheon are so extensive that a sophisticated astronomy must be equally involved in Egypt. The similarities between Mesoamerica and Egypt include more than 30 common deities. These include Crocodile-Sun; Monkey scribes; Frog Goddess of childbirth; Grain God as catfish and as acrobat; Direction Gods who support the sky; Vulture, Queen of Heaven, Mother, Sky-supporter; Human or Skull-headed Birds; The Star-Scorpion Deities; The Double-headed Node Passage Snake; The Infinity Snake; The Feathered Snake; and The Black God of Medicine. Representations of these gods include many shared artistic features. Among these are color bands and indicators that color was being used astronomically to indicate sky locations and temporal changes. Parallels for planetary deities and constellations appear with color coding from India to France. The western lunar goddesses of Mexico are similar in colors and associated symbols to those on the early Nazca textile from Peru. It has become apparent that many more small details united different archaeoastronomical traditions than anyone has suspected.

464 ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW See also: Image and Symbol; Ritual, Religion, and

Ideology.

Further Reading Brotherston G (2005) Feather Crown: The Eighteen Feasts of the Mexica Year. British Museum Publication No. 154. London: British Museum. Chamberlain VD, Carlson JB, and Young MJ (2005) Songs from the Sky: Indigenous Astronomical and Cosmological Traditions of the World. Bognor Regis: Ocarina Books with the Center for Archaeoastronomy. Davies, HA (1969) Those Annus Vague Calendar Mysteries Again. Roanoke, Virginia. Ms in the possession of David H. Kelley.

Archaeobotany

Faulkner RO (2000) The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, 2nd edn. rev. In: Andrews C (ed.) Austin: University of Texas and British Museum. Hart G (2005) The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses, 2nd edn. London: Routledge. Jairazbhoy RA (1974) Ancient Egyptians and Chinese in America. London: George Prior. Kelley DH and Eugene FM (2005) Exploring Ancient Skies: An Encycloepedic Survey of Archaeoastronomy. New York: Springer. Wilkinson RH (2003) The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. London: Thames and Hudson. Wirth DE (2003) Parallels: Mesoamerican and Ancient Middle Eastern Traditions. St. George Utah: Stonecliff.

See: Paleoethnobotany.

ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW Edward B Banning, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary arrangement A procedure that orders data into units, such as classification into categories. B72 An acrylic soluble in acetone that is used as an adhesive and consolidant for archaeological conservation. classification A set of abstract categories defined by rules for assigning membership in classes unambiguously, as well as the process of assigning items to those classes. condition monitoring Regularly scheduled checks on artifacts in a collection to document any changes that may have occurred in their condition, as well as to check on their environmental conditions (temperature, humidity). data:ink ratio A term coined by Edward Tufte to describe the extent to which a graphic emphasizes the data, rather than unnecessary decoration. diameter chart A chart with nested arcs or circles that archaeologists use to measure the diameter of rim sherds and bases of pottery. EVE Estimated vessel equivalent is a term coined by Clive Orton for a measure of pottery abundance based on the accumulated preserved proportions of sherds. Generally its use is restricted to rims, bases, or both, with preservation measured by the preserved circumference (thus ‘rim EVE’ or ‘base EVE’). flat-file database A type of database in which records are stored in a single file, much like a large table or a set of file cards. GHS Globally harmonized system of classification and labeling of chemicals.

graphical information language A set of conventions used in the illustration of items, such as artifacts, that encodes information in a standard way. Typically it includes rules for orientation as well as standard symbols for materials and other attributes. hazard labels Standardized warning labels for materials, such as chemicals, and equipment or activities that entail any risks to health or safety. They include those of ANSI and OSHA (in the United States), WHMIS (in Canada), and ISO and GHS (internationally). interval scale A measurement scale in which values are ordered and arranged at fixed intervals or units, but in which the ‘zero’ value may be arbitrary. The Centigrade and Fahrenheit scales of temperature are examples of interval scales. MNI Minimum number of individuals is a measure of abundance used most often for faunal assemblages that simply accounts for the absolute minimum number of whole entities (usually animals) that must have contributed bones or fragments to a sample. For fauna, it is equal to the number of the most abundant element. NISP Number of identified specimens is a simple count of identifiable items and fragments of a particular type, such as bones and bone fragments or sherds. nominal scale A measurement scale that consists simply of unordered categories, such as artifact types or raw material types. paradigmatic classification A type of classification in which categories or classes are defined by the intersection of ordinal- or nominal-scale dimensions, as in a table or a verb conjugation. ratio scale An interval scale that has a nonarbitrary zero point (i.e., zero indicates an absence of some quality). relational database A more complex type of database in which data of different kinds are stored in separate files but there are links, or pointers, between files to make information in linked files available at the same time.

ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW 465 structure chart A diagram that illustrates a database’s structure by showing files, their attribute’s names and types, and relations (attribute pointers) between files. systematics The methods or tools for defining classes or categories in a system of classification or the rules for creating groups.

Introduction Archaeological data are not ‘given’ or ‘received’. Nor are they simply ‘facts’. They are hard-won products of archaeologists working in the field and in the laboratory. This article briefly discusses the activities that archaeologists carry out and methods they use after fieldwork. Some of the individual activities are discussed elsewhere within the present encyclopedia.

Basic Lab Activities Archaeologists carry out many observations on their finds while still on-site. Once archaeologists have brought artifacts and other materials, such as sediment samples, back to the lab, however, they can usually carry out much more detailed work. The variety of laboratory activities ranges from simple cleaning, sorting, labeling, and counting of artifacts through water-separation of plant remains from sediments and microscopic examination of tool edges to chemical, metallurgical, and isotopic analyses. Many of these activities require specialized training or expensive equipment, leading archaeologists to send some of their materials to the laboratories of non-archaeological colleagues in geology, chemistry, or physics departments, for example. Despite this variety and compartmentalization, all participants in the archaeological enterprise, from lithic analysts to palaeoethnobotanists and archaeometrists, share a common set of analytical problems, methods, and vocabulary. These commonalities are not always obvious, in part because of the way universities train specialists, but they are still important. Archaeometrists specialize in what might seem to be highly technical aspects of dating deposits or analyzing the chemical and isotopic characteristics of artifacts, for example, yet they still rely on basic archaeological units of context and basic archaeological artifact types, and they are still contributing to the solution of basic archaeological problems. Here, the focus is on laboratories for this basic work.

Lab Organization The physical arrangement of space and facilities in an archaeological laboratory is important to the efficient use of staff and resources. Although academic and

private-sector archaeological laboratories differ in some respects, such as the need for teaching space in some of the former, they have many needs in common. General Space and Furnishings

A general archaeological lab, in both academic and CRM settings, needs to be spacious enough and have adequate facilities to accommodate a large variety of archaeological analyses and curatorial needs. In general, the lab needs to be dry, clean, and secure, with moderate and stable temperature and humidity. Storage and work areas should be away from major traffic but easily accessible by lab carts. The layout of the lab should be amenable to the work flow, minimizing the chance that lab carts or personnel will interfere with one another. Work areas should be well lit yet avoid excess direct sunlight, while storage areas should usually be dark or have low-UV lighting. Work and storage areas, and individual cabinets, should be lockable and only authorized lab personnel should have access to keys or combinations. The most critical furnishings for a general archaeological lab are tables or lab benches for working space and shelving, cabinets, or both, for both temporary and long-term storage. Many archaeological labs have benches identical to those used in chemistry or biology labs, with a smooth, washable work surface at a height that is suitable for working while standing (37–38 in), while seated on a stool (38–40 in), or while seated at a computer keyboard (c. 28 in). Cabinets and drawers beneath the work surface provide space for storage of small equipment and supplies, and sometimes also for the temporary storage of artifacts or other samples that are in the processing or analytical queue. To accommodate the legs of seated workers, the cabinetry needs kick spaces at intervals, while the fact that the benches are permanently fixed in place makes them unresponsive to changing spatial requirements. Other labs have tables in lieu of, or in addition to, lab benches. Tables have two principal advantages: they provide more leg room for seated workers, and one can move the tables around as needs change. However, they also have the disadvantage of lacking space to store items out of the way, except to stack boxes on the floor underneath. Consequently, many archaeological labs employ mixtures of benches and tables, of varying heights. Both benches and tables should be deep enough to accommodate the trays or removable drawers used in the laboratory storage cabinets without hanging over the table edge. Otherwise there is risk of bumping into a tray and upsetting the artifacts or other specimens on it. Since bench and table tops are hard, they

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should be equipped with padded sheets, such as thin sheets of polyethylene foam, both to protect their surfaces and especially to guard against breakage of fragile artifacts dropped on surfaces. Where cleaning very dirty artifacts is a substantial laboratory activity, some labs employ specially built tables or racks with heavy mesh in place of the table top. This allows loose dirt to fall through into a basin below during artifact cleaning, or facilitates drying of artifacts after washing. In some cases, compartmentalization of such mesh tables or racks by adding a raised grid of wood or metal both strengthens it and allows easy sorting of artifacts or prevents the mixing of artifacts from different bags or contexts. Since archaeological analysis is often timeconsuming and the quantities of material to analyze are often very large, the laboratory needs to be able to accommodate at least temporary storage of material waiting for, or in the process of, analysis. Storage systems should organize specimens in a way that facilitates their location, retrieval, and return; minimizes physical jostling and friction; discourages theft or unauthorized access; facilitates monitoring of contents and their condition; and maintains a stable, safe environment. One excellent means of accomplishing this is by equipping the lab with secure cabinets with numerous shallow trays. Particularly when the materials needing storage are sensitive to fluctuations in humidity and temperature, and also to minimize dust levels in the lab, the cabinets and drawers should ideally be of metal, with lockable doors that close and seal tightly. The contents of such metal cabinets will thus be somewhat isolated from the laboratory’s airspace. Wooden cabinets or shelving may be acceptable in some circumstances – for example, storage of chert and other very stable artifacts – where conservation issues are forgiving, but the acidic fumes that some wood and glues will slowly exude are particularly damaging to metal artifacts. Putting any wooden shelving in a well-ventilated area, rather than keeping it airtight as in the metal cabinets, will help prevent fumes from accumulating. Other things to consider in planning shelving or cabinetry for storage of artifacts pertain to both conservation and practicality. Repeated sliding of drawers or trays in and out shifts specimens so that friction and rattling can damage fragile artifacts and bone fragments. Lining the drawers or trays with a membrane made of an inert material, such as polyethylene foam, will help reduce this friction effect. Meanwhile, drawers or trays should be sturdy, easily removable, reasonably light (particularly given the weight of the specimens they will carry), and not unduly large. It is helpful if the cabinets allow very flexible spacing of the trays or drawers, to accommodate

both small and large specimens. Each tray or drawer should have drawer pulls, to facilitate withdrawal while also helping to orient the drawer on its return from a bench top. Trays or drawers should also have slots on front to hold labels that indicate their contents. In general, the storage system should make sense archaeologically and conservationally. Often, this means organizing collections in a way that separates specimens that we need to access frequently from ones in long-term (‘dead’) storage, and often it also means separating specimens by their various environmental needs. For example, very unstable materials, such as iron, need close environmental control and monitoring in sealed containers, while less sensitive materials have less restrictive but still real requirements. Each laboratory should have a wheeled table, lab trolley, or cart with which to move trays and boxes of artifacts. In order to minimize the chance of dropping and damaging artifacts, lab staff should always use this cart rather than carrying large or multiple artifacts by hand. For moving heavier boxes, it is also a good idea to have a decent dolly or hand-cart with good tires. Generally, the laboratory will need at least one large bookshelf unit to keep field notes, photo logs, slides, and other hard-copy documentation, as well as laboratory manuals and reference books. Stools and chairs are also essential furnishings. Given the long hours that some staff will spend seated, it is essential to take proper ergonomics into consideration. Make sure that the chairs’ heights are adjustable to make work comfortable at the particular tables or benches in the lab. Good lighting is also an essential aspect of laboratory furnishings, particularly considering the close and detailed work that lab staff must carry out. Typical fluorescent lighting is not very satisfactory, unless supplemented with many table lamps and with natural light from large windows. It is important to position the work spaces for particularly eye-straining work, such as drafting or lithic recording, close to such windows, both to ensure adequate light and to allow those carrying out the work to look out of the window periodically. Changing the focus of ones’ eyes from time to time in this way reduces eyestrain. Small, goose-neck table lamps with halogen bulbs make it easy to direct light onto small objects and to cast shadows that make it easier to observe small details of relief. Most archaeological laboratories also need at least one deep sink and faucet, which is useful for washing artifacts, washing up some of the tools, beakers, and pens used in the lab, and for lab staff to wash their hands. If artifact washing or sediment processing is among the lab activities, it is important for the sink’s drain to be equipped with a silt trap. Most often, the sink will be set into a cabinet to allow storage of

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basins and the like below. It is also good to have some wall shelving above the sink. Many archaeological laboratories also need some kind of refrigeration. Zooarchaeology labs that carry out skeletal preparation, for example, will either need several large deep-freezes or a walk-in freezer to store animal carcasses prior to their preparation. Others will instead need a cool-room or small refrigerator to store film, some kinds of specimens that would degrade faster at room temperature, or even archival photographs. Even though archaeological projects have been moving increasingly toward digital imagery, it is still almost essential for an archaeological lab to have at least one steel map cabinet. This serves to store oversized maps and drawings flat, which is generally preferable to the alternative of keeping rolled-up maps and illustrations in plastic tubes. Archaeological labs also sometimes have a drafting table (often still used at least to prepare preliminary drawings of artifacts for later digitizing) or a light table (useful for sorting slides and transparencies, as well as for object photography and tracing maps and drawings). Since most of today’s archaeological labs are thoroughly computerized, it is necessary to ensure that some of the cabinets or, alternatively, dedicated computer workstations are set up for data entry and analysis. These should be positioned in such a way as to minimize glare on the monitor, have chairs and keyboard surface set at ergonomically appropriate heights, and ideally have high-speed Internet access and their own, surge-protected electrical circuits or uninterruptible power supply. Where there are several computers, it is good to set up a local area network with a shared laser printer and scanner accessible to all users. Some archaeological laboratories, especially those that employ hazardous chemicals, require at least one fume hood and an explosion-proof chemical-storage cabinet. Small Equipment

Specialized archaeological laboratories have their own needs, but most archaeological labs require a number of basic tools and instruments. These include electronic balances with a variety of capabilities in terms of the maximum mass they can measure and the precision of measurement (e.g., up to 6 kg to nearest 2 g or up to 500 g to nearest 0.1 g). The lab should have standard brass weights with which to calibrate the balances. They also include several inexpensive manual calipers and usually at least one electronic caliper, preferably able to interface with a computer for automatic uploading of measurements. The ‘jaws’ of the calipers, if made of steel, could damage the surfaces of fragile artifacts, so plastic ones are

preferable. Putting masking tape on the jaws to cushion the hard metal is unacceptable because of the bias it causes, except in the case of electronic calipers that one can re-zero. Other small tools include dental picks and tweezers for fine work. Most archaeological laboratories also need at least one low-power binocular microscope and a number of hand lenses, such as jewellers’ loops. Table lamps, including swingarm lamps with magnifiers built-in, and a fiber-optic light source for each microscope are essential, even where there is fairly good natural light. A tripod and copy stand with a pair of strong lamps is very useful for object photography. Some labs will have a power drill, Dremel tool, or geological saw for removing samples from artifacts or bones for chemical analysis or thin sections. Munsell soil-color charts, standard mineral sets for determining hardness, and pH meters are also common items of small equipment in archaeological labs. Routinely, the lab will have at least one desktop computer, flatbed scanner, printer, backup (removable hard drive, CDs, flashcards), and fast Internet connection. Laboratory Supplies

The most common archaeological laboratories require a variety of basic supplies for the storage, cleaning, recording, and maintenance of collections, and safety of lab personnel (Table 1). Temporary storage, unpacking, and sorting When artifacts and other archaeological samples arrive at a lab, a first step is to move them into a space where lab workers can unpack them, do preliminary sorting, and carry out a kind of ‘triage’: deciding which items need immediate attention and which can be moved into longer-term storage. These activities require something like a staging area near the lab entrance, tables or lab benches where staff can open boxes, sort artifacts, and arrange them on trays. Either spacious and sturdy shelves or cupboards under the benches are essential for temporary storage and to help sort unopened boxes. Note that it is important, at this stage and throughout the analysis process, to minimize the chance of breaking or damaging artifacts as they are moved, sorted, or handled. Consequently, staff should always use a lab cart, rather than just their hands or arms, to move trays and artifacts from one part of the lab to another. Basic processing Apart from samples that can safely wait in longer-term storage, most materials that arrive at the lab require fairly immediate attention by way of sorting, cleaning, and labeling.

468 ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW Table 1 Basic supplies commonly needed in an archaeological laboratory Health and safety First-aid kit (esp. bandages) Dust masks Goggles or face shields Spill kits OSHA or WHMIS manual, material safety sheets, hazard labels Latex gloves (several boxes) Work gloves Lab coats and/or aprons

Measurement Diameter charts for pottery Measuring charts for lithics Recording forms pH litmus paper Calibrating tablets for pH meter

Collections management Polyethylene bags, various sizes Silica gel Humidity indicator strips Plastic boxes with see-through lids Polyethylene foam sheets Pens with stable ink Artists’ paint brushes Acryloid B72 and Acetone Stick-on labels Printed labels for cabinet drawers Staples Binders Archival photo pages Small brushes for cleaning artifacts Acetic acid for removing CaCO3 Distilled water

Office and Drafting Printer paper Printer toner Writable CDs or DVDs Writing pads Clear tape, masking tape Staples Pens, pencils, technical pencils Erasers Drafting vellum or mylar film File cards Manilla envelopes Rubber stamps and ink pads

Cleaning and labeling are critical in an archaeological lab. Archaeologists are well aware of the importance of archaeological context; consequently, any sorting that might separate an artifact from its original bag or label would be disastrous unless an accurate label accompanied it. In addition, while cleaning and labeling, staff will pay close attention to any adverse preservation issues associated with samples, so that they can send them for conservation before they proceed to analysis. Ideally, the ethics of artifact conservation call for us to alter artifacts only in ways that are reversible. At the same time, the priority on preservation of contextual information calls for us to ensure that any labeling we use is reasonably secure and permanent. We do not want labels that are easily separated from the artifact or likely to wear off. In order to balance these competing demands, a good practice is to apply a strong yet reversible base layer to a clean, dry surface on each artifact, apply a label on top of this surface, and then seal the label with another transparent layer. Traditionally, archaeologists used India ink and a crow-quill pen to apply the labels, but today they tend to favor fine-point commercial pens, whose ink composition is often unknown because of patent protections. A commonly used material for the base and cover layers is 10% acryloid (paraloid) B72

in acetone, which is soluble in acetone and therefore easy to remove. The main drawback to its use, especially for the top coat, is that most of the commercially available inks that archaeologists use to write labels on the base coat are also soluble in acetone, so that the labels tend to smear or get erased when we apply the top coat of B72. If we are unable to use suitable inks that are stable in acetone (India ink is one), possible solutions to this problem are to adhere small, printed paper labels to the bottom layer of B72 and seal them with the top coat, or to use a transparent top-coat that is soluble in mineral spirits instead of acetone. One of the reasons for cleaning at least a portion of the surfaces of artifacts is to ensure strong cohesion of the label. Cleaning is also necessary to allow some kinds of analysis, while, at the same time, there are also many circumstances in which analysis demands uncleaned and uncontaminated surfaces. During the ‘triage’ stage, lab personnel must separate out any items for which cleaning would not be appropriate, including ones that cleaning might damage, and ensure that each gets its own labeled polyethylene bag. A labeled bag is not as secure a labeling medium, since there is always the risk that the artifact and bag could be separated, or different artifacts get mixed up, but careful use of labeled bags is often our only reasonable alternative to direct labeling of artifacts and other samples. Furthermore, it is important to avoid condensation inside the bag. Where this is a possibility, pierce the bag with small pinholes to allow excess moisture to escape. Basic conservation and cleaning As mentioned above, it is not appropriate for all artifacts and samples to undergo cleaning. One of the most common reasons to avoid cleaning is to avoid contamination that would undermine chemical or isotopic analysis, including radiocarbon dating and analysis of chemical residues on lithics or in pottery fabrics. Another is to preserve microscopic traces for use-wear analysis. In addition, cleaning, especially cleaning that involves immersion in water or ultrasound, could damage or even destroy fragile specimens, and some artifacts, such as metal ones, should only be cleaned by trained conservators. Most artifacts, however, can withstand careful, gentle brushing to remove loose dirt, and many artifacts can withstand immersion in water and cleaning by gentle brushing. Lab personnel should avoid vigorous brushing, as it can erode artifact surfaces or even cause breakage. If they use water-washing, they should also take care to ensure that they do not leave some artifacts, especially smaller ones, at the bottom of the water basin. This is especially important if they

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reuse the basin to wash another batch of artifacts from a different context, thus risking contamination of one batch with artifacts from another. Note that there can be special requirements for the disposal of dirt removed from artifacts, notably if the artifacts are imported from another country. Rather than disposing of removed dirt down the drain or in regular garbage, preventing possible import of crop diseases requires its disposal by incineration or after baking in a kiln. Sometimes dripping a mild acid (e.g., 5% acetic acid) on the surfaces of artifacts that have calcareous encrustations will loosen these and make them easier to remove mechanically. Take care, however, not to damage the artifact’s surface below. Also make sure that you neutralize any remaining acid afterward or rinse the artifact thoroughly with distilled water. Some classes of artifacts that casual cleaning could severely damage include most metallic ones, such as coins, wood, textiles, and even bone tools. They almost always require consultation with a trained conservator.

Classification and Sorting As in any science, in the broadest sense of the term, archaeologists need to have meaningful categories for classifying and sorting the entities they study or searching for patterns in their observations (see Classification and Typology). We cannot even count things until we decide how to classify them. However, no particular system, or arrangement, for classifying phenomena or grouping similar phenomena is demonstrably ‘true’ or ‘natural’, and this sometimes leads to considerable debate among archaeologists about such things as whether the traces at a particular site belong to one or another culture or industry, whether a particular artifact is one or another kind of tool, and so on. Such disagreements can arise because archaeologists classify or partition their observations on the basis of some selection of characteristics or attributes among an infinity of attributes that they conceivably could record. They also vary in their strategies and methods for making use of these attributes in the construction of conceptual categories. Consequently, the resulting systems of groups or categories can differ and, in some sense, are arbitrary. They are arbitrary not because all systems are equally useful or justifiable but because different archaeologists, with different goals, different methods, or different sets of entities to organize, will likely come up with quite different groups or categories that nonetheless serve their purposes. It is also quite unlikely that the categories that archaeologists use are very similar to, let alone identical to, the categories that prehistoric

people would have used to describe their surroundings and material culture (their ‘ethnotaxonomy’). However, archaeologists also want to provide reasonable justification for the categories and groups they use to organize observations. They use a variety of procedures to help them devise observation units that are useful, practical, and reproducible. These specific procedures belong to the domain of systematics. As in other aspects of systematics, archaeologists often disagree about terminology or use terms inconsistently. To reduce confusion, the following discussion mainly follows the terminology of Dunnell. This section will leave aside those kinds of systematics based on grouping objects by their attributes in favor of the conceptual approach to systematics called ‘classification’. Because this involves defining mutually exclusive categories (‘classes’) of ideal phenomena by specifying the conditions or rules that dictate which phenomena belong, and which do not, to each class, we can create classification in advance of actually examining the artifacts, layers, sediments, or any other entities we want to classify. Not surprisingly, it is usual to have at least some idea what to expect before creating the specifications for the classification. We might, for example, study a pilot sample of our study group in the hope of identifying the attributes that we think might be useful in the classification. Archaeologists usually employ one of two different arrangements to create classifications. One of these involves defining classes by the intersection of two or more dimensions, while each dimension itself consists of a classification of a single attribute (such as color, shape, or size). This kind of classification, called paradigmatic, will be familiar to readers who have studied languages, as we often classify verb forms by the intersecting dimensions of gender, number, and tense. The other proceeds by the successive subdivision of major classes into subclasses, and is called taxonomic. Taxonomies are familiar to those who have studied biology. By establishing classificatory schemes and the rules for assigning artifacts to each class in advance, archaeologists can set up templates that help lab staff, including relatively inexperienced volunteers in some cases, sort artifacts quickly and accurately. Sorting

Sorting of artifacts is a common laboratory practice in archaeology, with archaeologists often doing at least preliminary sorting almost from the moment they remove artifacts and other materials from their archaeological contexts (e.g., deposit in a site). As this involves assigning items to preconceived categories, it entails use of classification.

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It is easy to set up the lab in ways that help lab staff sort artifacts properly. For example, many labs that need to sort lithic debitage dedicate a table to this process and mark the table surface with a grid of painted or taped lines to create a series of labeled rectangles, one rectangle for each class in a classification. A set of instructions taped to the table makes it clear how lab staff should decide where to assign each artifact by outlining the rules that dictate membership in each class. For example, one class in a paradigmatic classification could be marked on the table by the rules: ‘flake, incomplete, platform present, unretouched’. Alternatively, a similar class in a taxonomic classification can be clearly marked as a subset of ‘unretouched flakes’, which are in turn a subset of ‘unretouched debitage’ in a grid of nested boxes (Figure 1). Lab workers can then quickly place each artifact, as they remove it from a bag or tray, on its appropriate square. After they have placed all the artifacts from a given context, it is then easy to count the number in each category and enter that information on a paper form or in a computer database. Measurement

Sorting and typology involve a kind of measurement at the nominal scale, but archaeologists are often interested in measuring differences in magnitudes: for example, comparing the lengths of projectile points in millimeters, the densities of inclusions in pottery fragments, or the ratios of barium to aluminum in samples of pottery fabric. These involve measurements at the interval and ratio scales, which archaeologists can use to group artifacts, summarize the characteristics of groups, or define the rules for classes, among other purposes. Calipers and balances are among the most common tools they use to make such measurements (e.g., analysis of artifacts: lithic analysis).

Other common, simple tools are paper or acetate lithic recording charts, and diameter charts (see Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear).

Quantification As noted above, archaeologists use classifications whenever they want to count things, a process called enumeration. But what are they counting? Obtaining some reasonable estimate of the relative abundances of different classes of lithics, pottery, animals, or some other entities is one of the most common archaeological laboratory activities. However, it is not always obvious what the best measure of abundance is. The reason for this problem is that the things archaeologists would like to count are typically fragmentary, and counting bone fragments, for example, is not the same thing as counting live animals. Two different bone fragments could come from the animal, or even the same bone. So, if we are interested in comparing the percentages of caribou at two sites, or the proportions of red-slipped pottery, what do we do? Archaeologists have developed quite a variety of options for ‘counting’ things, but selecting the most appropriate one for a particular problem is not always easy. It depends on what indirect measurement is really of interest. For example, is our purpose in counting bone fragments to compare the relative frequencies of some species, among live animals, that the people at two different sites hunted? Or is it to estimate how much that species contributed to site occupants’ diet (in meat or calories)? Or is it to discover something about what they were doing with the carcass, in terms of butchering and selection of meat portions? Or are we just trying to learn something about site-formation processes by studying the degree of fragmentation of our faunal sample? Of course, we might be interested

Unretouched debitage

Incomplete Proximal

Figure 1 Example of a sorting table for a taxonomic classification of unretouched flakes and blades.

Distal

Length >5cm

Complete Length <5 cm

Fragments

Platform present

Random dorsal scars

Incomplete Radiating dorsal scars

Parallel dorsal scars

Complete

Blades

Medial

Flakes

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in more than one of these questions, but each calls for a somewhat different approach to quantification of abundance. How we answer them helps us decide among such measures as ‘number of identified specimens’ (NISP), ‘minimum number of individuals’ (MNI), or ‘estimated vessel equivalent’ (EVE).

Databases and Data Management Archaeologists employ many media to record and analyze their observations, including handwritten field notes, computer spreadsheets, videotapes, and digital images. However, the sometimes massive amounts of data that result from the sorting, grouping, and measuring activities of archaeologists today call for complex systems to organize them. Typically these consist of relational databases. In some cases, archaeologists use spatially referenced databases in geographic information systems (GIS) and, increasingly, they use hypermedia, including web sites, to organize and present their results. A flat-file database is a simple form of database that, like an old-fashioned card-file system, consists of a number of ‘records’, each of which, much like a paper form, is used to document various kinds of information in a set of ‘fields’. For example, in a file for recording information about stone tools, each record would be used to describe a particular tool, and each field would be used to record a different attribute, such as the tool’s length or position of retouch. A relational database similarly employs records and fields, but is more complex and useful because it also has connections, or ‘relations’, between files. By controlling redundancy, relational databases are more efficient than flat-file ones because information of different kinds (and therefore requiring quite different fields) is partitioned into different files, while the relations allow reference to information in two or more files at once. To illustrate with an example, it would be inefficient to document details of contextual information in a file describing stone tools. If, during excavation, we happened to find, say, 50 stone artifacts in a particular context (layer or pit), each of these artifacts would have identical contextual information. It would not make sense to record this information repeatedly on every artifact record. A relational database more sensibly records the contextual information in one file, the information on lithic artifacts in another, and uses a relation to tie the artifact records in the latter to the contextual records in the former. Figure 2 depicts a structure chart that illustrates this example. Both files have key attributes, here Context number and Artifact number, that uniquely identify each record. Each of the context records in the Context file, contains information about a particular context, organized among

Contexts Context no. Site no. Grid coord. Top elev. Bottom elev. Sed. texture Sed. color Context type Strat. below Strat. above

A N N C C C A A

Lithics Artifact no. Context no. C Type Completeness C B Retouch C Platform N Length (mm) N Width (mm) Thickness (mm) N A Material

Figure 2 Example of a structure chart for the files ‘‘Contexts’’ and ‘‘Lithics’’ in a relational database. The codes next to each field label indicate the data type (e.g., ‘A’ for alphanumeric, ‘B’ for boolean, ‘C’ for character, and ‘N’ for numeric fields).

a number of fields, such as ‘sediment texture’ and ‘grid coordinates’. Each record in Lithics similarly records information about a particular artifact in fields such as ‘length’, ‘width’, and ‘platform type’. In addition, the Lithics file has a special field, called an attribute pointer, that connects it to the key attribute, Context number, in the Context file. All of the records describing artifacts from the same context would have the same context number in their key attribute field. This allows the software to refer back to the Context file if we need information about the context of any of the artifacts, or want to search for all specimens with particular contextual characteristics. For example, we might want to find all the bone fragments that were found in pits, or all the lithics found below layer 6 (Figure 2). Today, archaeologists have a number of software options for their relational databases, and most of these have tools to help them design useful and efficient ones. However, a common mistake is to sit down in front of a computer and begin defining files and fields without giving adequate attention to the database’s design. It will save a lot of time and frustration in trying to fix inadequacies of the database if you instead think carefully about your database requirements in advance, and plan it out on paper.

Illustration and Object Photography Documenting artifacts and other archaeological objects is not only a matter of taking measurements and recording observations in a database. Typically some subset, at least, is documented graphically, and even computerized databases can include graphic

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documentation. Consequently, drawing, digitizing, and photography (both film and digital) are common activities in archaeological laboratories. Despite what most people think, archaeological images are not simply artistic or naturalistic representations of objects. Archaeological illustration in fact constitutes a graphical information language, with very standardized, and not necessarily ‘realistic’, conventions for representing the characteristics of artifacts and other archaeological phenomena. Illustrations, including even photographic images, are actually interpretations, not simply neutral representations of objects. The conventions for drawing artifacts allow archaeologists to encode information about objects, for example, their form, cross section, material, or surface texture, all attributes that might be obscured or distorted in a conventional photograph. Such conventions typically involve the orientation of the object illustrated, the number of distinct views, line thicknesses, stippling or hatching, cross sections or cutaways, and marks to signal manufacturing details, surface features, or colors. Furthermore, archaeologists attempt to show undistorted, scaled representations of artifact shapes in specific views, while most photographs, by contrast, distort these shapes unless they are corrected digitally. For pottery, glass, and other vessels, archaeological illustrators often use the evidence from individual sherds to reconstruct as much as possible of a whole vessel, showing its exterior on one side of a center line, and a radial cutaway view (interior of pot and cross section of vessel wall) on the other side (Figure 3). Various conventions signal slips, paints, incised or impressed decoration, and so on. Similarly, lithic illustrations are usually not ‘realistic’ pictures of flakes or cores; they are standardized representations of such things as flake shape, position of flake scars and retouch, position of burination, distribution of polish, and so on. There are conventions for the orientation of each piece, generally with flakes oriented platform-down, and curving lines on the flake scars give an impression of relief while, more importantly, indicating the direction of flake removal. Each flake or blade merits at least dorsal and ventral views, while some also have end-on views of proximal or distal retouch or side views. Aside from pottery, lithics, and other artifacts, the most commonly required archaeological illustrations are maps, plans, and stratigraphic sections. Important characteristics of good ones are clarity, simplicity, and consistency. In fact, all maps and plans are both standardized and highly simplified representations of spatial relationships, designed to emphasize some

Figure 3 A conventional illustration of a ceramic sherd, reconstructed to show the exterior, interior, and radial cross section in a cutaway on one side.

information at the expense of others. Things to keep in mind when drawing maps and similar illustrations are to ensure that there is a scale and orientation (usually a North arrow, sometimes a key map), that the features of greatest interest are clear and obvious (often by placement near the center of the illustration), that the line thicknesses have at least some variety and can withstand reduction of scale, that the labels are clear and large enough, and that the map is not too cluttered or ‘busy’. It is also useful, when preparing the map, to think carefully about how much accuracy and precision is really necessary; at some scales, an error of 10 cm in a site map, for example, will be less than a line thickness in the published version. For graphs and charts, key issues are making sure that you use the correct kind of graph for the pattern you intend to show and scale of measurement on which it is based, avoiding confusing or misleading features, and keeping things simple so as to keep the emphasis on the data. Tufte argues for maximizing the data:ink ratio, or using no more ink than necessary to present relevant results. Some guidelines are relevant to all line art that you will submit for publication. Lines should be bold enough that they will not disappear upon expected reduction, yet not so bold as to be distracting. Testing your line art by photocopier reduction to the expected published size is a good idea. Similarly, you should

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select a clear, simple font and a point size that will appear no smaller than seven points, but no larger than about 12 points, when reduced for publication. You should avoid the temptation to use busy fonts or too many fonts. Typically a simple hierarchy of point size and consistent use of a convention, such as the convention to label bodies of water in italics, is sufficient. Avoid distracting or overly ornate features on the graphic unless they have clear purpose. Although hand-drawing and hand-inking of archaeological illustrations is still common, increasingly archaeologists take advantage of graphical software to prepare artifact illustrations and maps. It is difficult to provide very detailed guidelines about this topic without risk of falling very quickly out-of-date. However, the key is to think carefully about what you want to accomplish with a computer graphic, and to use dedicated software, such as Adobe Illustrator, that is capable of tracing scanned drawings or the poorer graphical output of statistical software with smooth lines and curves, adding clear fills and hatching, and adding proper fonts (not the jagged text that some software outputs). Most archaeological publishers require hard copy, as well as electronic files of graphics in a small range of useful formats, such as PostScript (eps) and press-ready pdf. Ask editors about the file formats publishers support and how much resolution they require. Although most scale archaeological illustrations are accomplished through frequent, careful measurements and the use of some time-saving instruments, such as ‘formaguages’ with fine teeth that can trace the profile of an object, others use photography as an aid in the production of drawings. To eliminate the distortion and parallax that photography introduces, it is necessary to rectify the resulting drawings (now generally with software) by reference to some measured planimetric points. Some archaeologists also advocate a hybrid approach that combines photography with the best features of line drawings. Although technical drawings remain extremely important in archaeology, photographic documentation has long supplemented them. Artifact photography with film or digital camera has the advantage of showing tonal range and texture effectively, but sometimes the disadvantage of shadows or color differences that obscure details of form and outline. In the laboratory, a sturdy, vibration-free copy table with a pair of strong lamps, often tungsten, and preferably positioned near bright but indirect, natural light, helps archaeologists prepare photographs of individual artifacts and other objects. One lamp is the main light source, conventionally placed at top left, while the other and any natural light is diffused

or less intense, for fill-in illumination. The copy stand should be equipped with a variety of non-distracting background cloths, and clear, professional-looking scales. Eliminating harsh shadows is important, and either using a very dark background or photographing over a light box usually accomplishes this for artifacts that contrast with these backgrounds. Some archaeological photographers recommend placing artifacts on a clean sheet of glass suspended over the background, so that shadows do not appear and the background is out-of-focus and less distracting, with the artifact and scale appearing to float over it. The copy table may have a built-in mount for the camera, or be used with a tripod, and the camera should have a cable release (or you should use the timer) to keep the camera still during exposures. As surface mottling and color of artifacts can sometimes obscure the features that archaeologists want to show, it sometimes helps to eliminate this type of variation prior to photography. For example, lithic analysts sometimes dust lithics with powdered aluminum chloride or some other material or ‘smoke’ them with ammonium chloride fumes. This gives them a consistent color and thus makes it easier to see flake scars. Similarly, epigraphers use aluminum chloride on cuneiform tablets, and numismatists sometimes photograph plaster casts of ancient or mediaeval coins, rather than the coins themselves, to avoid reflection or the obscuring effects of patina and corrosion. Making embossing or other fine details on glass visible also requires special techniques. Aluminum chloride appears to be a relatively safe material, but smoking with Ammonium chloride can involve use of hydrochloric acid and ammonia, while aluminum powder is associated with Alzheimer’s disease (see the Health and Safety section ahead). Sometimes archaeologists want close-ups, or even extreme close-ups, of small details, such as use-wear, or need to produce enlarged views of small artifacts, such as beads or coins. To accomplish this, they use photomacrography or photomicrography. The former, which is suitable for magnification up to about 40, uses bellows or extension rings and supplementary lenses to increase the distance between the lens and the film (or digital scanner), at the expense of sharpness and depth of detail. It also requires increased exposure and is much more successful when a largeformat camera is used. Generally small, high-intensity lamps, such as microscope lamps, are preferable for close-up photography. Photomicrography involves use of a microscope to magnify the image, typically for images of thin sections or lithic use-wear. Another use of archaeological photography is the digital enhancement of faint or obscure images,

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such as those on cuneiform tablets or charred papyrus documents. Today, archaeologists are also increasingly experimenting with three-dimensional digital imagery. Because it is even possible to take accurate measurements from such digital representations, these preserve much more information about the form of scanned artifacts than traditional two-dimensional photographs or drawings. It is important to remember, however, that even these precise representations are models – interpretations – of complex entities with an infinity of possible attributes (see Pottery Analysis: Stylistic).

Curation and Condition Monitoring As mentioned above, adequate preservation of archaeological specimens requires storage under conditions that minimize the rate of processes which might cause them to deteriorate. Consequently, it is important to maintain a stable, moderate environment, to minimize mechanical impacts, and to monitor collections regularly to ensure that they are not deteriorating. Two of the environmental factors that need to be controlled and monitored are temperature and humidity. Higher temperatures accelerate chemical reactions, such as oxidation, so artifact storage should be in a climate-controlled space with temperature stabilized around 20 oC or 70 oF. High humidity is particularly damaging to metal artifacts, but frequent fluctuations in humidity are damaging to most kinds of archaeological specimens. Perforating any polyethylene bags that are used to contain artifacts prevents moisture from condensing inside. Specimens that require particularly stringent protection from humidity should be in sealed polyethylene boxes equipped with silica-gel, which absorbs atmospheric moisture until its micropores become saturated. It is necessary to reset the silica-gel every few months by heating it in a lab oven at 105 oC (220 oF) for about ten hours to drive off the accumulated moisture, then returning it to the sealed container after it cools. An indicator strip in the box will signal when the silicagel needs replacement, while putting a hygrometer in the container or sealed cabinet makes it easier to monitor humidity and make sure it stays within a safe range. For iron artifacts, for example, it is necessary to use enough fresh silica-gel to keep their relative humidity between 10% and 20%. However thorough the attempts to provide artifacts with acceptable environments, deterioration of their condition is always a risk. Condition monitoring is our tool for alerting us of such risks. It involves regular checks on archaeological collections,

recording any change in condition that artifacts may have experienced, changing silica-gel when needed, and ensuring that the artifacts’ environments are within acceptable ranges. The record that results is called a condition census. Note that having clear lids on any boxes used for artifact storage facilitates monitoring. It is important to note that archaeological laboratories must not only preserve their collections of artifacts and other specimens; they must also preserve the documentation of excavations and analyses, including the records of conservation itself. In addition to paper hard copies, such as archaeological field notes kept in binders and maps and plans kept in map cabinets or tubes, archaeological laboratories typically have substantial collections of slides, negatives, and digital data and images. Archiving these safely, including making sure that old digital files are transferred to new formats as these change, is very important. One important component of lab documentation is a ‘leave log’ to track any specimens or documents that anyone has removed from the collections for outside analysis, photography, copying, or teaching. Those borrowing specimens should sign them out and sign them back in.

Laboratory Health and Safety It may not be as obvious as in chemistry or biology, but laboratory work in archaeology requires basic precautions to protect lab workers’ health and safety. Most of these precautions concern hygiene, eye protection, respiratory problems, and avoiding cuts. Some kinds of archaeological laboratory work make use of chemicals that require additional precautions. Every archaeological laboratory should be equipped with a first-aid kit that contains the supplies, such as bandages, that are most likely to be needed in an archaeological accident. Everyone working in the lab should know where to find it. Hygiene

It is important to remember that artifacts, bones, and other objects that archaeologists collect and bring back to the lab were once buried in dirt, often in contexts that are far from sanitary. Consequently, they could be infested with bacteria, molds, or fungi that someone could pick up while handling them. While handling archaeological materials, whether in the field or in the lab, lab workers should wear latex gloves or make sure that they wash their hands with soap and hot water before handling food or eating. In addition, one should avoid rubbing one’s eyes or touching one’s mouth while handling artifacts.

ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW 475 Eye Protection

Getting particles and other small objects in the eyes is a potential hazard of some archaeological laboratory activities. Transferring dirt from artifacts and ecofacts to the eyes by one’s hands is a common, but easily prevented, hazard. More serious is the possibility of eye damage from flying flint flakes during experimental flintknapping and similar activities. Meanwhile, the close observation, long microscopic work, and careful drawing that some lab activities involve can cause extreme eyestrain. One should take steps to eliminate or minimize all these risks. Experimental flintkapping presents one of the greatest dangers to the eyes. Inevitably, small, sharp-edged flakes of flint, glass, or other raw materials fly in all directions after the impact of both hard and soft hammers. Consequently, experimental flintknappers should always wear safety glasses when flintknapping. Safety glasses will also provide some protection from dust particles while screening sediment samples. Flintknapping labs should post clear hazard labels for flying debris and the need to wear gloves and eye protection. A less obvious aspect of protecting eyesight is to avoid stress on your eyes through uninterrupted focus on short distances. Whether you are sorting plant macrofossils under a microscope, drawing artifacts at a drafting table, working at a computer, or making many close measurements on lithics, it is a good idea to place your work area in such a way that you can look up periodically and focus your eyes on something in the distance, such as the scene out of a window. Respiratory Protection

Dust particles and airborne fungi or molds that are frequently the by-product of archaeological work can wreak havoc on archaeologists’ lungs unless they protect them by wearing a dust mask. Some laboratory activities, such as flintknapping, recharging silica-gel, or dry-screening sediments, can also create unhealthy dust levels. In addition, some lab activities involve chemicals that exude potentially dangerous fumes. While screening sediments or even handling very dry soils or similar materials with small particle sizes, one should wear an adequate dust mask. At a minimum, the mask should fit the face properly so that particles cannot get around its edges. In order to fit properly, the mask will need to have two, not just one, pairs of straps (top and bottom) that hold it snugly against the face. If using acids or solvents (e.g., to clean artifacts), a dust mask will not give adequate protection

against respiratory damage. Such chemicals should only be used under the conditions specified by occupational safety and health administration (OSHA), in the United States, Canadian workplace hazardous materials information system (WHMIS), or the equivalent, which usually include a fume hood that extracts dangerous fumes from the laboratory environment. In some cases one can wear a respirator mask instead of a simple dust mask for protection against toxic gases. Hazard labels should be posted in lab areas where dust or respirator masks are necessary. Cuts and Burns

Some kinds of archaeological lab work can cause cuts or burns. Flintknapping, especially when obsidian or some other glass is the raw material, produces extremely sharp flakes and frequently calls for bandages. Some other kinds of experimental archaeology, such as firing or refiring pottery, and some kinds of sample preparation, such as boiling faunal specimens, present opportunities for burns. Lab workers should protect themselves from cuts and burns by wearing protective clothing, such as a protective apron during flintknapping, or insulated gloves when handling hot items. They should also make sure that they know the location of the nearest first aid kit (usually mounted on the wall somewhere in the lab), where they will be able to find disinfectant, bandages, and burn ointments. Biological Hazards

Processing dead animals to create comparative collections for faunal osteology can pose biological hazards, and no one should dispose of decaying animal parts in regular garbage. University zooarchaeology labs can check with their counterparts in biology departments or the faculty of medicine to find out the appropriate and legal procedures for disposing of the unpleasant by-products of skeletal preparation. Radiation Hazards

Most archaeological laboratories have no radiation hazards. However, some archaeometric laboratories employ X-ray fluorescence, instrumental neutron activation analysis, or other methods that require radiation protection and monitoring.

Handling Chemicals Most of the chemicals that archaeologists use routinely are relatively innocuous, but all chemicals entail some level of risk, and it is important for those who use them to know the safe labeling, handling, disposal, and cleanup of chemicals. They should consult

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the OSHA, WHMIS, or equivalent manual or material safety data sheets (MSDS) on each of the chemicals used in the laboratory (see below). Lab activities that involve potentially hazardous chemicals range from cleaning and labeling artifacts, changing and recharging silica-gel, through ‘digesting’ sediments for pollen or phytolith analysis. Keep chemicals away from children and hightraffic parts of the lab, and never leave unlabeled flasks or beakers around the lab. This is an extremely dangerous practice as the next person using the lab will have no way to know what they contain or how to clean or dispose of them safely. Use bilingual labels, where appropriate, and standard hazard symbols, such as those of the global harmonized system (GHS) of classification and labeling of chemicals (see ahead). Minimize the amount of acids and solvents in the work area by only taking what you need, and keep them away from the edges of counters or tables, or anywhere where someone might knock them over. In addition, ensure that you know the location of the OSHA, WHMIS, or GHS manual and how to interpret it. Never smoke or eat while using chemicals or allow others to do so. Some chemicals are flammable and others very toxic. Keep solvents away from flames and motors or switches that might cause sparks. Work in well-ventilated areas and avoid inhaling solvents and acids. Always wear protective clothing, such as gloves and apron or lab coat, and do not wear contact lenses when handling or using chemicals. Always wash your hands thoroughly afterward. Always wash out beakers or jars that you have used for chemicals, especially acids, immediately after use. One of the chemicals that archaeologists use frequently is acetone, a solvent. It is one of the key ingredients in some of the adhesives and consolidants used to conserve artifacts, such as B-72, an acrylic dissolved in acetone. At a minimum, acetone should be used only in an extremely well-ventilated space, but it is much better to use it under a fume hood, and you should try to keep your exposure as low as possible. Acetone is a significant fire hazard and a moderate explosion hazard and, if ignited, should be extinguished with a chemical or CO2 fire extinguisher and not with water. Acetone is stable under normal storage conditions. Other chemicals that archaeologists commonly use are acids, such as acetic acid (vinegar), citric acid, and hydrochloric acid (HCl). Generally, archaeologists use these acids only at very low concentrations, such as 5%, to remove calcareous encrustations from artifacts. If a flask of acid has been sitting around for a while, however, evaporation may have caused its

concentration to increase substantially over that stated on the label. Whatever the acid’s concentration, one should get into the habit of handling acids with respect. Always wear protective clothing, including gloves and chemical splash goggles, when pouring acids, and always have a source of running water nearby. When diluting acid, always pour the acid into water; never pour water into an acid, as it may sputter and splash. Some kinds of laboratory work in which archaeologists engage use more dangerous chemicals and procedures. For example, extracting pollen or phytoliths from sediment involves chemically digesting the sediment with rather aggressive acids, such as hydrofluoric (HF) and (HCl) acids and separating the silicates with tetra-bromide ethylene, zinc bromide, cadmium– potassium iodide, or sodium polytungstate, of which only the last is non-toxic. To prepare quartz crystals from pottery for a thermoluminescence date, similarly, may require use of HF acid and the even more dangerous aqua regia, which even eats through glass. One must have the material safety sheets on all the chemicals in use at work, post appropriate hazard labels for them, and consult the literature on their safe use. Chemical Storage

Store chemicals in well-ventilated, cool, locked cabinets away from most people. Never store acids and bases together, or oxidizing agents with solvents, as their respective fumes will chemically react with one another. Some chemicals that are particularly flammable should be in special cabinets that prevent explosions. All chemical-storage cabinets should be labeled on their doors to indicate which is for acids, which for solvents, and which for other materials, including use of standard hazard labels. The chemicals should be in sealed containers, preferably of plastic or plasticcoated glass and in safety carriers that minimize the chance of breakage. The containers themselves should also be labeled with their contents and concentration, along with appropriate hazard symbols. Avoid reusing old containers, but remove all old labels if it is necessary to do so. Chemical Disposal

Never pour laboratory chemicals down the drain. This is not only illegal in most jurisdictions and polluting, but also could lead to nasty chemical reactions in the drain, some of which might corrode through the pipes or even cause an explosion. It is best to have leftover chemicals removed by specialists in chemical waste disposal, as are found at universities and

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hospitals, but small amounts of less dangerous chemicals can sometimes be disposed as follows. When disposing of a small amount of acid, dilute it by adding it to a large volume of water and neutralize it with baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) or soda ash (sodium carbonate). The solution will give off heat and effervesce until the acid is neutralized, so be sure that it is in a large, open container. It is then safe to dispose of it on carbonaceous soil in an isolated area along with large amounts of water. Tissues or towels containing acid should be washed out with lots of water before disposal. Small amounts of solvent, such as acetone, can be left to evaporate in a shallow, labeled bowl under a fume hood, away from any source of flame or sparks. The solvent in resins and acryloid B72 can similarly be allowed to evaporate, leaving a container with a hardened block of resin or B72 inside. It can then simply be disposed of in the garbage. Preferably the container should be one that no one would be tempted to reuse, such as the cut-out base of a plastic water bottle or a damaged beaker. Tissues or towels that might contain traces of solvent should also be left in a glass container under a fume hood for evaporation before disposal. Any glass vessels that contained chemicals should be washed thoroughly before disposal, while plastic containers should be holed to prevent their reuse. Chemical Spills

Any lab that uses chemicals should have a spill kit. A spill kit is a set of labeled boxes containing material that you can use to absorb and neutralize spilled chemicals safely, each box meant for a different category of spill or a particular kind of chemical. If you spill an acid, you should wear rubber gloves and splash goggles, then spread the contents of the appropriate box from the spill kit, or soda ash or sodium bicarbonate over the spill to neutralize the acid. Slowly add enough water and mix it with a shovel or dust-pan. The effervescence will stop once the acid is neutralized. Mop up the spill using lots of water, and use a great deal of running water to rinse out the mop. If you spill acetone, alcohol or other chemicals that dissolve in water, shut off any potential source of flame or sparks and mop up the spill with large volumes of water. Ventilate the area thoroughly afterward to evaporate any remaining traces. If you spill a solvent that does not dissolve in water, such as toluene, again shut off any potential source of flame or spark, and sprinkle the appropriate box from the spill kit, or vermiculite, sand, or ‘kitty litter’ over the spill. Once this has absorbed the spill, shovel the mixture into a metal bucket and put it under a

fume hood or in an isolated, well-ventilated place where the solvent can evaporate. Ventilate the room where the spill occurred until all traces of solvent have evaporated and the smell is gone. Other Chemical Emergencies

Sometimes, in spite of protective clothing, you may splash a hazardous chemical on your skin or in your eyes, or accidentally inhale or ingest something dangerous. For splashes on skin, rinse the exposed skin with large amounts of running water until the chemical is completely removed. For chemicals that do not dissolve in water, use soap and water. Remove any clothing on which the chemical splashed and do not wear it again until it has been thoroughly washed. If the splash has caused burning or corrosion to your skin, you will need medical attention, and should inform healthcare workers what chemical was involved and what first aid was given. Splashes in the eye also require irrigation with large amounts of running water, and many labs have special eye-wash stations for this purpose. Hold eyelids open to wash the entire eye, and then seek immediate medical attention, providing information on the chemical and first aid to the healthcare workers. If someone in the lab inhales a dangerous vapor, you should remove the victim from the affected area, loosen his or her clothing and, if breathing stops, give artificial respiration. Seek medical attention and report the chemical involved and any first aid given. If someone ingests a chemical, rinse out the mouth with large amounts of water, which the victim should not swallow. If any of the chemical was swallowed, the victim should also drink a large amount of water to dilute the contents of the stomach. Do not induce vomiting. Get immediate medical attention and tell the healthcare workers the quantity, concentration, and type of chemical that was ingested.

Hazardous Materials Manuals Each laboratory that has chemicals should be equipped with a manual issued by OSHA (in the United States), WHMIS (in Canada), or the equivalent in other countries. This is a binder that contains descriptions of all the chemicals used in the lab, how they should be handled and stored, what lab workers need to know to avoid any health hazards associated with them, and how to clean them up if they are spilled. It has standard codes that indicate, for example, whether a given chemical is flammable, acidic, explosive, or corrosive, and lab workers should learn to understand these codes.

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Hazard Labels Standardized labels for hazardous materials, activities, and equipment, and for the need for protective clothing, should appear in the lab and on equipment or materials, including the doors of chemical-storage cabinets, that pose any risks to people in the lab. A large variety of standards exist for such labels, some of which are now obsolete. In the United States, current standards are set by American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and OSHA. International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 3864 sets international standards in labeling hazards. Relevant standards are set in Britain by British Standards Institution (BSI), and in Canada by WHMIS. For chemicals and other hazardous materials, the GHS provides standard symbols for international use and EU Directive 67/548/EEC for use in Europe. This no doubt seems confusing, but there is actually fairly widespread agreement over the main symbols that these systems use, such as skull-and-crossbones for toxic substances or a fire for flammable ones. Most of the differences lie in colors, shape of the symbol’s frame (triangle, diamond, circle), and accompanying text. Some icons used in labels, such as a glove to indicate the need to wear gloves, are fairly self-explanatory. Lab directors or administrators should consult the standards relevant to their own country or buy commercially available labels there, and make sure that employees, students, and volunteers working in the lab know how to interpret the labels. In universities, science departments or human resources offices generally offer training in laboratory safety that includes interpretation of these labels.

See also: Archaeozoology; Artifacts, Overview; Cera-

mics and Pottery; Classification and Typology; Conservation and Stabilization of Materials; Ecofacts, Overview; Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear; Manufacture; Phytolith Analysis; Pollen Analysis; Pottery Analysis: Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis; Stylistic.

Further Reading Adkins L and Adkins RA (1989) Archaeological Illustration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Banning EB (2000) The Archaeologist’s Laboratory: The Analysis of Archaeological Data. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Bradley S (ed.) (1990) A Guide to the Storage, Exhibition, and Handling of Antiquities, Ethnographia and Pictorial Art. London: The British Museum. Dunnell RC (1971) Systematics in Prehistory. New York: Macmillan (The Free Press). Foster GV and Barker NJ (1996) Close-up photography of archaeological objects. Journal of Field Archaeology 23: 369–375. Howell C and Blanc W (1995) A Practical Guide to Archaeological Photography, 2nd edn. Los Angeles: Institute of Archaeology, University of California. Kenworthy MA (ed.) (1985) Preserving Field Records. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Sutton MQ and Arkiush BS (1998) Archaeological Laboratory Methods, an Introduction, 2nd edn. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/ Hunt Publishing. Thompson JM (ed.) (1992) Manual of Curatorship, a Guide to Museum Practice, 2nd edn. London: Butterworth–Heineman. Tufte ER (1983) The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire, Connecticut: Graphics Press. US Department of Labor (2006) A Guide to the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS). http://www.osha.gov/dsg/hazcom/ghs.html.

ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY Kris Hirst, Iowa City, IA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary cultural resource management (CRM) The process of decision making that balances the needs of the public against the preservation of cultural resources, including buildings, sacred sites, archaeological sites, and documents, among other things. digital publishing The publishing of edited and reviewed articles and making them available for download, specifically on per-article fee basis. folksonomies An information retrieval system used on the Internet in which the user assigns keywords (called tags) for a given webpage, photograph, or other piece of data.

Geographic Information Systems A combination of computer hardware and software used to tie data to geographic locations. geophysical prospection Also called remote sensing, is any of several methods of seeing what is beneath the surface of the ground, without actually disturbing the ground. Global Positioning System A mechanical method of using combined satellite data to locate oneself on the planet. open source movement The general movement in sciences to freely publish and disseminate research data and results on the World Wide Web. Making Archaeology Teaching Relevant in the XXIst Century (MATRIX) A curriculum development project from the Society of American Archaeology and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), to produce course outlines and information for college-level archaeology classes.

ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY 479 repatriation The return of human remains, grave goods, sacred objects, or objects of cultural patrimony to the individuals, groups, or nations that represent the original owners. stable isotope analysis A method by which researchers measure isotopic ratios to identify the results of ecological processes, and then interpret them to construct a history of the animal, human, or plant.

Status of the Profession Recent past decades have seen vast changes in the study of archaeology, in its goals; in its methods and practices; in its practitioners; in the laws governing it; and in its relationship with the public. The profession has seen many theoretical developments since the mid-1970s, and there have been many new discoveries and much learned about the past. However, the most remarkable alterations in archaeology include the technological advances used in the course of field and laboratory research; the context of the research within the modern world of developing nations; and the gender, age, and ethnicity of those who conduct it. These changes have significantly altered the profession far beyond its content. As in the past, much field and laboratory research throughout the world continues to be conducted through academic field schools and government and university-funded projects. Long-running universityor museum-based projects are well situated to answer specific research questions and develop multidisciplinary international programs that press forward the field while at the same time training the next generation of archaeologists. Recent changes in the field affecting academic research have been by and large technologically driven, by improvements in communication and data collection and analysis. One significant change has been the increase in the frequency of joint international research projects; today it is expected that a university-based program working in a foreign country will partner with academics from that country. However, from a primarily academic and museumoriented profession of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the field of archaeology as a whole has begun to evolve primarily into a heritage management profession. This is not a result of the decrease of the number or complexity of academic projects, but rather the promulgation of non-academic-based research in the form of cultural resource management (CRM). The developed world has seen increases in population, education, and communication over the past 30 years. These increases have led people and governments in the developed countries to recognize both the importance of cultural heritage and the damage caused by continuing construction. As heritage

management tasks preserving archaeological and other cultural resources increase, they take in an ever-growing number of employed archaeologists, conducting an ever-growing number of excavation projects and absorbing an ever-increasing amount of funding. The shifting needs of the profession are increasing the demand for a different set of skills to operate in this new climate. Changes in pedagogy have been slower to develop but show some progress in recent years. In addition, the vast changes wrought in the world by the development of the World Wide Web and the Internet have also altered the profession of archaeology, including everything from how data is recorded to how information is shared with colleagues and with the public at large (see Internet, Archaeology on). These changes permeate the profession, not only making new demands on data storage but also changing how archaeology is perceived and practiced in ways both unforeseen and unforeseeable. Access to information previously kept within the walls of academe has empowered people outside the profession to affect archaeology, whether it is in funding, materials handling, or interpretation. Alternative viewpoints from underserved populations such as minorities and indigenous peoples in the developed world and governments and communities in the developing world have enriched archaeology. At the same time, these changes have posed great challenges to longstanding museum collections and the publication of created information streams.

The Growth of the Cultural Resource Movement The first heritage laws – laws placing the care of ancient monuments within the purview of the federal government – are thought to have been created at the end of the French Revolution, after a debate concerning whether it was best to obliterate or preserve the architectural evidence of l’ancien regime (see Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation). By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, heritage legislation included Britain’s Ancient Monuments Act of 1882 and the American Antiquities Act of 1906 (see Historic Preservation Laws). Current Employment Trends

Since then, the growth of CRM as an employer of archaeologists has been phenomenal. Only approximately 30% of all persons employed as archaeologists are in traditional academic positions. The remainder are either in governmental jobs, protecting government-owned resources, or in private sector

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positions, created by the market to complete investigations as part of state and national environmental impact studies. Private sector archaeologists are typically located in small businesses or as segments of larger environmental or engineering firms. As a percentage of the total archaeological employment, local and national government roles today account for approximately 25% in the United States and Australia. In the United Kingdom, a full 45% of the working archaeologists are currently employed by either local or national government. Another large percentage of employed archaeologists today are in private sector CRM roles. Private sector jobs account for approximately one-quarter of the archaeologists employed in the United States, one-third in the United Kingdom, and nearly one-half in Australia. Interestingly, studies continue to indicate that the majority of archaeologists working today would prefer to be engaged in teaching at the university level, even as the percentage of these roles in employing archaeologists decreases. Table 1 lists the percentages of employment identified by four recent surveys of professional archaeologists in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia. Demographics

From the beginning, most archaeologists have been male. However, recent statistics indicate a steady increase in the percentage of women participating in the field. According to recent surveys, women are still overall a minority part of the archaeological population in the United States (36%) and the United Kingdom (35.5%). However, the younger generation appears to be leveling the field. In the United States, 51% of the students surveyed were female, and in the United Kingdom, survey respondents between the ages of 20 and 29 were 42% female. Contrary to this trend, in Australia gender balance is near equal (48% female and 52% male), and there is no difference between younger and older respondents, a fact Table 1 Results of employment surveys Employer

USA 1994

USA 2004

Academic CRM Government Museum Other Total

35% 18% 23% 8% 16% 100%

33.6% 27.7% 25.3% 4.8% 8.6% 100.0%

UK 1998 13.2% 32.3% 45.0% 9.5% 100.0%

USA 1994: Zeder, 1999. USA 2004: Association Research Inc., 2004. UK 1998: Aitchison and Denison, 1998. Australia 2005: Ulm et al., 2005.

Australia 2005 25.1% 47.9% 22.7% 4.3% 100.0%

researchers attribute to the relative newness of the field in Australia. Statistics indicate that the average age of an archaeologist working in the United States is approximately 50 years old, an average older than any of the other populations surveyed. Also evident in the data from these American surveys is a decrease in the number of archaeologists in each of the age groups younger than 50. By contrast, in the United Kingdom, the average age is 36 years old, and in Australia, 57.2% of the respondents in a recent survey were younger than 45 years of age. In addition, neither the British nor Australian surveys seem to indicate a sharp decrease in sheer numbers of archaeologists among younger cohorts. It is possible that, since the surveys were conducted of the memberships of professional societies, the demographic anomaly seen in the American statistics may be a function of the enrollment (or rather lack of it) in those professional societies. This should be a matter of concern to the SAA/SHA as they attempt to address its disaffected younger membership – if indeed that is what is being reflected, and not a true demographic problem. Certainly, the numbers of graduate degrees conferred increased throughout the 1990s – a point that is addressed later. The participation of indigenous and minority people in the conduct of archaeological studies appears to be growing, but very slowly. Ethnic heritage cited in a recent survey of American archaeologists indicated that 97.9% claimed European–American ancestry, 0.1% African American, 0.3% Asian, 1.0% Hispanic (including about one-third of the total from Latin America), and 0.7% stated they were Native American. Australian archaeology appears to be better at involving indigenous people; results report that 2.3% of working archaeologists designate themselves as indigenous Australians. It is possible to be involved in CRM without being an archaeologist, of course, and one measure of Native American participation in archaeology in the United States is the number of Tribal Historic Preservation Offices (THPOs) which have been established. THPOs are government agencies established by Native American entities to manage archaeological, architectural, and cultural resources within their purviews. Of the 582 tribal entities listed in the Tribal Leaders Directory of January 2006, 59 (or 10.1%) have established THPOs, most of these within the past decade (see Native Peoples and Archaeology).

Archaeology of the Present The biggest change promulgated by the refocus of the profession toward heritage management is situating archaeology in the present. Research conducted in the

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field as part of CRM processes involves an underlying triage. Archaeology has always been a destructive process, and triage – deciding what is important to save during excavations and what is not – has always been part of that process. But today, the triage process must include decisions concerning whether to preserve large pieces or whole sites, based on their importance to the public at large. The value of a given archaeological resource must often be weighed against such things as public safety, improved transportation, private landowner rights, tourism dollars, environmental preservation, and in some cases, human lives. These decisions are not in the hands of the archaeologist alone – nor should they be. But the requirements of making such a decision have created a larger and more pressing need for public archaeology – for the communication of the value of the past. The relationships between indigenous peoples and archaeologists continues to slowly improve, with some sharp setbacks. While an increase in the number of indigenous archaeologists is in evidence over the past decade, these numbers are still comparatively few, as reported above. Although there have been experiments reported in the gray literature with collaborative or parallel indigenous and traditional scientific interpretations of archaeological events or elements, by and large these efforts are rare, and when they do occur are often not visible to the public. When such collaborations do escape the gray literature, they are often cloaked in secrecy, with names and places changed to protect indigenous people’s rights. It may be that the conflict between the archaeological urge to publish and the indigenous right to privacy will prohibit any truly collaborative studies. In Australia, aboriginal input into archaeological studies is more common, particularly since the resolution of the Hindmarsh affair of the 1990s, when the violation of the secrecy of a set of tribal activities led to a political disaster. Recent studies involving the direct input of aboriginal peoples in archaeological research include an ongoing cooperative project between archaeologists and Yarrawarra Aboriginal Corporation. In Africa, the Marothodi Institute for Archaeology has been created to provide scholarships and collaborative studies assisting African students to become involved in archaeological studies.

Education and Training The increase in heritage management roles as places of employment for archaeologists has not gone unnoticed in the profession. Traditional training schemes, which emphasize cultural history and field techniques, do

not include classes in heritage law or preservation management, not to mention budgeting and business skills. A movement toward providing the next generation of archaeologists with the set of skills necessary to succeed in this new form of career has become of interest to some leaders in the field. For the most part, education remains within the control of the university systems in each country, and this probably will continue to be the case. By and large, professional archaeology as a profession is taught at the graduate level (MA or PhD), and, not surprisingly, a professional career for the most part demands a post-graduate degree. Up until the prevalence of heritage management, a typical job in archaeology was a university position; most of these positions require a doctorate. However, today, most of the nonteaching archaeology positions in the world do not require a PhD. This situation may have resulted from the rapid rise of the CRM field, as the demand for these jobs initially took students out of their degree programs early. Two recent surveys conducted in the United States indicate a rise in the number of archaeologists holding master’s degrees vis-a`-vis those with PhDs; this is probably a function of the rise of CRM and the relative flatness in the growth of university positions. Vocational schools such as the Archaeological Technology Program at Cabrillo College has begun to create CRM degrees at the associate’s degree level; such programs may eventually impact educational requirements for future generations (see Careers in Archaeology). PhD Degrees and Degree Earners

In light of long-standing traditions about the purpose of a graduate school department, it is perhaps not surprising that surveys have concentrated on gathering information about PhD earners rather than MA students. A survey conducted for the American Anthropological Association indicated that the number of anthropology PhDs has remained static – at approximately 400 per year since 1974, with the number of archaeological PhDs constituting between 24% and 30% of that total. Graduate enrollments in anthropology departments have increased sharply, however, with enrollments in 1997 up more than 35.5% over 1987. Undergraduate enrollments in 1997 were up 78% over 1987. Minority representations in anthropology PhD programs was cited as 15% in 1997, with most of these in cultural anthropology; only 16% of the total minority PhD students were in archaeology. Gender representation in the 1997 cohort indicated that only 36% of archaeology PhDs were female.

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However, a 1994 survey of archaeologists in the United States indicated a huge growth in the number of PhDs granted over time, with the largest increase beginning in the 1970s with 244, in the 1980s with 321, and by the end of the first quarter of March 1994, 182 PhDs had been already awarded in the 1990s; these statistics also indicated a growing number of women in the programs.

for Professional Archaeologists. Membership currently stands at approximately 1800, primarily in the United States; membership is restricted to professionals meeting a specific level of experience and education. A code of professional conduct was first ratified by the membership in 1998; and a comparatively brief standards and practices guideline has been developed.

Training in CRM and Heritage Management

Curriculum Development Initiatives

While the creation of pedagogical training courses has not kept pace with the rapid rise of the heritage management movement, several master’s level programs in heritage management have been started at universities throughout the world. In the past ten years, Heritage Management MAs have been established at Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Leicester, York, Glasgow, and Lampeter in the UK, and New England and James Cook in Australia. Some directed CRM programs at the master’s level have been created in the United States – notably at Sonoma State University and Texas A&M – but since master’s degrees in North America are almost without exception research degrees, the movement has been very slow to develop. Specialized training, such as short courses in cultural resource laws and specialized field techniques, have been developed for online and classroom-based educational venues. Some of these such as the US National Park Service’s Section 106 training classes, are completely outside the university setting.

‘Making Archaeology Teaching Relevant in the XXIst Century’ (MATRIX) is a project developed by the Society for American Archaeology, funded by the US National Science Foundation, and was, according to the NSF grant, a

Professionalization of the Field: Standards and Practices

As the field of archaeology continues to expand away from the academic realm and into the business realm, many in the profession have sought to professionalize the discipline, through the creation of professional organizations and the development of codes of conduct and a mechanism for the policing of their membership. Based in the United Kingdom, the Institute for Field Archaeology was founded in 1982; it has five grades of membership based on experience and education. The IFA developed a code of conduct and ratified it in 1985; amendments have been made and accepted by the membership, and the current code was signed by the members of the IFA in 2002. An extensive standards and practices handbook developed for the IFA is unparalleled in the field. The current membership consists of approximately 2000 archaeologists, primarily working in the United Kingdom. The Register of Professional Archaeologists is the American equivalent of the IFA; it was established in 1998, as an outgrowth of the now-defunct Society

‘‘three-year pilot project to design, test, and evaluate core aspects of a new curriculum based on these principles at eight academic institutions across the United States and to produce a complete set of flexible course materials suitable to replace or implement extant curricula in any higher educational setting.’’

The result has been a store of lesson plans and course materials suitable for use in most colleges, including introductory courses to archaeology, museum studies, and fieldwork, as well as content courses in North and South American archaeologies. One of these courses was developed explicitly as an introduction to cultural resource management; at the moment, MATRIX resources are only available in English.

Ethical and Legal Issues Cultural Heritage and the Law

Many of the earliest laws in Western countries affecting archaeologists were created to protect monuments; the most recent have been passed to effect the repatriation of human remains, artifacts, and other pieces of cultural heritage to the countries of their origin and/or descendants (see Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation). As more countries continue to gain economic and political footholds in the global economy, many more today are in a position to create their own cultural resource programs, train their own archaeologists, and maintain their own museum collections. Academic research projects are today multi-institutional, with many more countries outside of the West originating projects or at least acting as equal partners with Western universities. Many countries now have legislation that limits foreign excavations or the ability for foreign researchers to remove artifacts from their home countries. One result is an increase in the number of scientific archaeological publications are appearing

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in languages beyond the traditional triumvirate of English, French, and German; some as required by host countries, others as part of public archaeology vehicles. Statistics on these new programs are not readily available today, but their influence is already readily apparent in entries within this encyclopedia today. One effect of the World Wide Web is that information about museum collections is now effectively public. The enormous stores of Western museums collected from around the world by nineteenth century explorers are now recognized on a global scale. In addition, the force of public opinion may be brought to bear on the behaviors and situations involving artifacts and archaeologists that in the past may not have been considered. Museums have been established in home countries, and they, not unnaturally, are lobbying for the return of their cultural heritage. Recent calls for the repatriation of artifacts to Greece, Egypt, Italy, and Peru have made international headlines and involved extended court battles. They are surely only a harbinger of things to come.

Human Skeletal Material

In the United States, the repatriation movement has been most successful with the return of human remains and artifacts associated with burials. Early application of the United States NAGPRA reburial laws has meant that scientifically valued human skeletal material has been reburied prior to complete investigation. Interestingly, the limits on testing in terms of time and the amount of material that may be destroyed in the process have been ameliorated by the use of new less-intrusive tests such as AMS dating and computer imaging, in which digital storage of information on human remains may be preserved long after the materials are reburied. To date in the United Kingdom and Australia, repatriation has been a matter of policy and negotiation, rather than legislation. Both countries are actively seeking input from indigenous communities to proceed (see Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act). Protection of Monuments

Repatriation

After centuries of collecting, whether completed under the rubric of archaeology or not, museums and repositories in the developed world hold much of the cultural heritage of the developing world. While many of these collections were made under contract with the governments of origin, many were not; and developing governments would like these materials back as icons of cultural heritage. However, simply returning cultural materials is not a particularly straightforward process. Many collections were not completely recorded and thus require extensive negotiation and sometimes costly investigation assuring proper ownership rights. In addition, resistance to the return of the objects is strong in some areas, since much time and money has been invested in the repositories, and many museums rely on income related to the ability to exhibit objects which by rights belong elsewhere. Some legislation has been passed, such as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Act of 1982 in Australia, and the United States’ Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990, and other countries are working on policy changes or laws. International conventions such as UNESCO’s Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property and the UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects are also useful tools for assisting with the repatriation of artifacts to their native countries or people (see Illicit Antiquities).

Archaeological sites which have been deemed important to the world in general have been given World Heritage status since 1972, with the establishment of the international treaty called the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. Between 1978 and 2006, the committee named 830 properties World Heritage Sites. Listing a property carries with it the benefit of technical advice and financial assistance to a member country to safeguard, repair, and develop historic and natural monuments. Unfortunately, naming a monument part of world heritage can also make it a target in the cultural wars of a member state. Recently targeted World Heritage Convention (WHC) properties include the Bamiyan Valley monuments of Afghanistan, which were destroyed by the Taliban in 2002 (see World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws). Looting and the illegal antiquities trade The looting of archaeological sites around the world continues, despite the passing of several national and international laws, and the active involvement of Interpol and other national and international police systems. The reasons looting continues unabated largely lie within the economic factors inherent in the system: there is a large demand for authentic antique artifacts, from artifact dealers, collectors, and art museums. International borders are more porous than ever today, and the ready availability of international transportation coupled with political instability make trafficking in stolen artifacts a lucrative business.

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Unfortunately, technological advances which have made so many changes in the study of archaeological science have also assisted in the illegal antiquities trade. Internet auction sites are difficult to police, and the remote sensing techniques such as ground penetrating radar, satellite imagery, and metal detectors assist looters, as well as archaeologists. Thefts from museums and art collections are tracked by Interpol, which maintains a database of stolen objects. Estimates on the amount of money traded in the antiquities market are very difficult to make, since countries do not often track losses, do not pass on that information to Interpol, and are not necessarily aware of thefts until the objects appear on the market. One way countries have begun to fight back against illicit looting is the development of archaeological permitting processes. In some countries, archaeologists must present credentials to be permitted to excavate, negotiate whether they may take artifacts out of the originating country and for how long a period, and what tests may be accomplished. Additionally, many countries such as Egypt, Peru, and Italy have begun to sue museums for the return of artifacts taken illicitly (see Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation).

of computers has become de rigueur, collection of digital data has steeply increased in the field of archaeology, beginning with laboratory analyses, and more recently extending to locational data collected using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) technology, as well as increasing use of desktop research using online bibliographies and databases. Publishing of technical reports, brochures, websites, podcasts, and other vehicles of communication to colleagues and the public are also readily available from desktop applications.

Protection during armed conflict Armed conflict is prevalent in many places in the world today, and looting and the destruction of historic monuments is one of the costs. The United Nations Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict was enacted at the Hague in 1954, in the wake of the massive destruction of cultural monuments seen during World War II. A protocol was set at that time to prevent the export of cultural property from occupied territory. In 1999, a second revised protocol was established to broaden the definition of cultural property and to help member countries take steps to prevent problems during peacetime. While the UN is aware that protecting cultural monuments is not of paramount importance during time of warfare, the convention was constructed because it was felt that ‘‘cultural heritage reflects the life of the community, its history and its identity. Its preservation helps to rebuild broken communities, reestablish their identities, and link their past with their present and future.’’

Computer-aided Research

Computing and Communications Technology Many of the changes in archaeology over the past few years have been driven by technological advances in computing and global communications. As the use

GPS/GIS Data Collection

Standard procedure in many archaeological surveys and excavations involves the collection of locational data using GPS equipment. Hand-held GPS receivers are used in conjunction with GIS networks in the mapping of sites within a landscape and features within a site. These maps may be used to interface directly with topographic maps and satellite imagery. Mapped data can then be used as an interpretive database, to better understand site layouts and resource patterning. The use of GPS/GIS has also greatly facilitated landscape archaeology, allowing multiple views of objects and features within a landscape.

As the Internet matures, computer-aided research continues to increase in its utility. Although the capacity to conduct archaeological background research solely online is not as yet feasible, in many universities in the developed world access to scientific journals and historic data has become far more simplified of late, a direct result of the growth in the use of keywords. Writers and editors embed keywords into the coding of their articles; these keywords are collected by search engines (such as Google and Yahoo). A researcher inputs keywords into a search engine, which then retrieves articles marked by those keywords. Keywords are problematic, as any librarian can tell you, because what a writer comes up with for keywords and what a reader searches for may not match. As a result, some modern search engines mechanically collect text from webpages (using different algorithms) for possible search strings. One very recent and promising development has been the introduction of folksonomies, in which the user may attach new keywords (known as tags) to a document written and produced by someone else. Folksonomies (word formation from taxonomies) are not as yet widespread. Many public and university libraries have their catalogs online for publicly available searches and these may be used to search for books and journals,

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although not generally for articles. Electronic library catalogs in general use traditional Library of Congress classification systems. Journal article access can be gained using keyworded searches; in fact a researcher may have wider access to articles in many more journals today than in the past. Enormous bibliographic catalogs, such as Academic Search Elite, ISI Web of Knowledge, and LexisNexis Academic by and large restrict access to paid subscriptions. Subscription costs are prohibitive to any but large city or university libraries. Primary online catalogs recently developed specifically for archaeology and anthropology include Anthropology Plus, AnthroSource, and the eHRAF Collections of Archaeology and Ethnology. In addition, specialized topical bibliographic databases are blossoming on the Internet, through the collaborative work of interest groups. These include the ABIA South and Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology Index, the British & Irish Archaeological Bibliography, and the Annual Egyptological Bibliography. Data Repositories

The reasons for adoption of electronic data collection are clear: an increase in efficiency in time spent mapping in the field and map accuracy; the ease of generation of summary tables and cross-comparison of analytical results; the ease and lowered costs of research and publication; and the ability to store data in an efficient manner. Although the collection of electronic forms of data has become a fairly common occurrence throughout archaeology, the reposing of that data explicitly for sharing by others is less common. The logical place to archive data generated during archaeological investigations might be with artifact repositories, historic preservation offices, and cultural ministries; however these offices are often government institutions that rarely have the funds to support the technology and personnel required to classify and store the data. Because in most of the world the data collection has been developed by each company or each individual archaeologist, standards have been slow to be developed and implemented at the regional, provincial, or state level. There are exceptions. The Archaeological Data Service (ADS) has collected archaeological data throughout the United Kingdom since the late 1980s. The ADS maintains a user-accessible catalog, and has developed a set of Guides to Good Practices which are invaluable as a model of progress in this area. The Archaeological Data Archive Project at the Center for the Study of Architecture was one of the pioneers of data archiving in the United States, but is no longer active. There are many other smaller project-oriented

data collection entities, too many to discuss here, but an example would include the Perseus Project Database, which maintains images and data on art objects, sites, and buildings from archaic and classical Greek history, from many of the largest museums in the world. Open Source and Digital Publishing

The Open Source movement has had a slow growth in archaeological sciences. The nonprofit Open Source Initiative was a project borne of the computer science industry, originally to allow free collaboration on software engineering projects – including coding methodologies – via the World Wide Web. The results of this collaboration were that no one owns the copyright on the code, and anyone can use it in whatever capacity they choose. The main vehicle for Open Source editing is a Wiki, an electronic database developed in the 1970s that may be added to or edited by any user given access; the Wikipedia is the best known Wiki application, although not the only one. In scientific publication, the Open Source movement promotes free access to the data and results of scientific research by way of the placement of articles and research data online and available for download for no or little cost to the user. While the Open Source movement has made some inroads into the hard sciences such as physics and biology, the cost of publication, the requirements of the review process, and the entrenched bureaucracy of long-standing academic journals have slowed the growth of the movement in archaeology. Most difficult, perhaps, are the struggles over copyright issues; a recent initiative called Creative Commons is attempting to resolve some of these issues. Digital publishing Digital publishing, where edited and reviewed articles are available for download, specifically on a per-article fee basis, has made some progress in archaeology. In addition to the electroniconly journal Internet Archaeology, the content of some long-established traditional journals, such as Antiquity, the Journal of Archaeological Science, and the American Journal of Archaeology, are presently available for download on a per-article basis. Many more physical anthropological journals, which are closer to the hard sciences, are at least a halfdecade ahead of archaeological journals. However, most journals now use electronic forms of prepublication; and this has made interscholar communications far easier, even if this data is not publicly available. Although most archaeological journals do not participate in Open Source publishing of their entire journals (called ‘Gold’ Open Access),

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permission is commonly given to individual authors to share and in some cases post their completed articles online elsewhere (called ‘Green’ Open Access). While limited, this does provide for communication among scholars. It is difficult to say why journals do not provide per-copy access to their contents; and it is quite possible that per-article downloads may proliferate in the coming years, particularly as university libraries continue to feel the pinch of budget cuts. Public Archaeology and the Internet

Until the last decade, mass communication of archaeological information to the public had been limited to the mainstream press or general public magazines such as Archaeology and Current Archaeology. However, in recent years, multiple venues providing public access to archaeological findings and political issues have opened. This stream of data has the potential to influence the public’s perception of archaeology for ill or for good, as a creator of relevant (or irrelevant) information, as a protector (or destroyer) of cultural heritage, and as proponent (or foot-dragger) in terms of repatriation of artifacts and skeletal material. Interaction with the public has become far more widespread than in previous eras, a change resulting directly from the popularity of the Internet. Archaeology-related e-mail discussion lists, newsletters, and usenet groups have been in use for over a decade. Websites for academic departments, professional associations, and cultural resource management firms have become the standard for groups in the developed world. Often these venues post public-oriented articles on current research. Podcasting, webcams, and online excavation diaries have become fairly common in the recent past. Most recently, weblogs and photo exchange sites such as Flickr have begun to provide day-to-day insights into archaeological investigations as they occur; short films, documentaries, and podcasts have gained a much wider audience for archaeology via The Archaeology Channel and similar programs (see Internet, Archaeology on).

Technological Advances Over the past few years, technological advances in laboratory analysis promise new pathways to learning many things about the past. Breakthroughs in DNA studies, in stable isotope analysis, and in remote sensing are but a few of the most recent methodologies readily embraced by the archaeological community. DNA and Molecular Studies

Molecular archaeology is the application of molecular chemistry to archaeological objects or investigations.

An outgrowth of the bioarchaeology of the 1970s, the study of molecules has included the examination of lipids and other organic deposits inside pottery vessels and other objects, blood residue analysis, and opal phytoliths, as well as the study of DNA, the main building block of life. The first attempts to identify intact fragments of truly ancient DNA appeared on the surface to be possible, and these tests became quite well known, including that of the insects trapped in amber used by Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. Unfortunately, these materials proved unworkable, as ancient DNA is easily contaminated and decays within a maximum of 50 000–100 000 years. Although DNA does not survive longer than 100 000 years, the process of evolution can be used to discern more distant events by examining the molecular chains of modern DNA. Human, animal, and plant evolution occurs at extremely variable rates: diseases evolve faster than we can invent medications for them, while certain species of brachiopods have remained essentially unchanged for millennia. But at the molecular level, undetected morphologically, evolution occurs at a fairly fixed rate. An examination of DNA strands of modern-day beings can be used to determine the length of time since the last change. Important studies incorporating DNA include much new information about human evolution, including the recognition of the Mitochondrial Eve, and the relationship of Neanderthal to Homo sapiens. Other studies involving molecular DNA have included the search for location of the originating plants of the world’s first domesticated crops, including einkorn and emmer wheat, maize and rice. These studies also have identified elements of the process of domestication, how closely related strands of the current crops are and how many times and when the plants were domesticated. Animal domestications have also been examined using DNA, including searches for the original domestication processes of dogs, horses, goats, and camelids (see DNA: Ancient). Bone Chemistry and Stable Isotopes

Developed in the late 1970s by South African researcher Nikolaas van der Merwe and colleagues, the use of stable isotope research to investigate ecological processes in once-living tissue has mushroomed in the past decade. Stable isotope analysis measures the ratios of different forms of chemicals to identify the progress of ecological processes and interpret the processes, building a history of the living plant or animal. Chemicals frequently used in isotope analysis include carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, strontium, lead, and sulfur. Stable isotopes have been

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investigated in traces of organic residues found inside pots and on the edges of stone tools, and in animal bone, tooth enamel, and hair. Identified processes include dietary components, including the relative use of marine fauna such as seals, fish, and shellfish, domesticated plants such as maize and millet, cattle dairying, and age of weaning. Other studies have used stable isotopes to identify the geographic origin of plants, animals, and humans. Studies have examined nearly every time period including hominins, from Homo habilis and the Australopithecines to modern days (see Stable Isotope Analysis). Remote Sensing

Geophysical prospection, also called remote sensing, is any of the several methods of seeing what is beneath the surface of the ground, without actually disturbing the ground. Aerial photography of archaeological sites has been used since the first decade of the twentieth century. The first extensive aerial remote sensing project was carried out in the 1920s when French geographer Pierre Paris took aerial photographs of Oc Eo and Angkor Borei in the Mekong Delta of Cambodia and Vietnam, revealing an intricate network of canals in the floodplain. Since that time, in addition to aerial photographs and satellite photos, a huge range of technology-assisted methods have been used to search for crop marks, to identify buried structures, or to map chemical or electrical variances within soils. The use of aerial photographs and topographic maps has become a standard background research step on many if not most archaeological studies; these are today supplemented by satellite photography in most places in the world. Ground-penetrating radar and magnetometer surveys are used in many different venues as part of an excavation strategy to reduce costs, minimize damage, or amplify subsurface testing methodologies. Satellite imagery came of age as a result of the release of images produced by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and LANDSAT in the 1980s. Today, five satellites regularly produce images of the Earth for NASA. The application of GIS and its vast mapping capabilities have come close to revolutionizing the field of archaeology, allowing the projection of accurately scaled maps over large distances. The first extensive projects to use large-scale mapping are now over 30 years old – Rene´ Millon’s Teotihuacan Mapping Project of the mid-1960s and Carole Crumley’s Burgundy landscape project of the early 1970s. Today, fairly high resolution satellite imagery is easily accessible to researchers via such tools as Google Earth, including large land surveys.

Several newer methodologies have become available for use on archaeological sites, many developed in other disciplines and adopted for use in archaeology. Electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) is an outgrowth of medical diagnostic techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which was adopted by geophysicists to collect extensive electric current and electric potential data sets in multiple dimensions. ERT has been used successfully in several projects, including identifying structures and voids beneath the Temple of Apollo in Hierapolis. Geophysical diffraction tomography (GDT) involves burying a set of microphones in a grid across a site and firing 8 caliber shotgun shells at the earth, then using the soundwaves to identify buried masses. Lidar uses laser-driven pulses of light and multispectral cameras to scan and process digital information about a landscape. Used originally to map environments, lidar has been of demonstrable use in archaeological survey and mapping of monuments. Enhanced satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe’s QuickBird satellite contains both multispectral and panchromatic imagery which has enabled archaeologists to map crop marks with more precision (see Remote Sensing Approaches: Aerial; Geophysical). Computer-assisted Imaging

Akin to remote sensing are the advances in imaging. Like remote sensing, these techniques use methods developed from the medical and geographic fields of endeavor; but they are focused on enhancing artifacts rather than landscapes; since these objects are smaller they are more likely to use traditional methods, such as computer tomography (CT) scanning. CT scanning builds a three-dimensional image of an object from a series of two-dimensional X-rays established in a radial pattern. CT has been used to examine mummies and heavily encrusted artifacts prior to, or instead of, invasive procedures. Some initial tests have used geo-referencing of aerial photographs to map artifacts and features at the site and excavation unit level; combining these data with quantitative analysis has allowed some researchers to examine patterning of artifacts. Digital images of such fragile objects as rock art and ancient documents allow researchers to enhance images without endangering the objects themselves, such as the recent work on the Archimedes manuscript. Three-dimensional virtual reconstructions of ancient buildings have been undertaken as object studies, both to preserve fragile remnants, to consider different possible reconstructions, and to educate the public about what structures looked like in the past. Still a fairly expensive project, three-dimensional

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reconstructions have been successful in reconstructing buildings in Egypt and the American Southwest.

Toward a Relevant Archaeology Many problems face the world today: global warming and possible climate change, ongoing regional conflicts, manmade and natural disasters, endemic diseases such as HIV/AIDS and bird flu, crushing poverty and famine. In such a world, the study of archaeology and the preservation of cultural heritage can seem trivial when compared with human losses sustained by other pressing needs. However, many of these issues can be addressed with the assistance of archaeologists, whether by looking to the past for successes and failures of our ancestors or by applying the excavation methodology to modern problems. Global Warming and Climate Change

Adaptation to climatic change is in many respects archaeology’s stock in trade. Where early theoretical studies placed the causation of social changes perhaps too much on climatic fluctuations, more recent studies have emphasized archaeological evidence for climatic instability and cultural adaptations to it. Recent studies of cultural reactions to climate change include the Bronze Age/Iron Age transition in England, the Middle Holocene–Late Holocene climatic change in the Great Basin, the Early/Late Natufian boundary in the Levant, Early Mesolithic settlements in northern Sweden, and the colonization of the island of Rapa Nui. Periglacial studies have examined the patterns of glaciers and ice patches in the Arctic, extended droughts in the Great Basin of the United States, and the impact of the El Nin˜o/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on Australia, Fiji, and South America. Speaking to the worldwide interest in global warming, several popular books by archaeologists and others have addressed this issue, most recently Brian Fagan’s The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization and Steven Mithen’s After the Ice: A Global Human History 20 000–5000 BC. Disease Studies

Continuing studies in ancient epidemics promise to provide useful information about the progress and spread of disease, as discussed in The Archaeology of Disease, by Charlotte Roberts and Keith Manchester. Investigations have included identifying the evidence of disease in human skeletal material, discerning mortality rates, and the regularity of disease outbreaks. Several recent studies have focused on the spread of smallpox resulting from its use as a chemical weapon in the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries of North America. Recently, several papers have investigated leprosy in Medieval Europe; salmonella bacilli have been discovered as the cause of a pandemic in the fifth century BC Athens; and the onset and spread of the Black Death has also been traced archaeologically. The dietary component of diabetes was traced in historic period Omaha peoples of the American Midwest, and the prevalence of parasites has often been used in archaeological data to identify modern-day health situations. Other disease histories investigated by archaeologists in the recent past include syphilis, hantavirus, and tuberculosis. Agricultural Origins and Methods

Investigations into ancient methods of agriculture have the potential to assist in creating sustainable growth progress. Applied archaeology projects are exemplified by the Lake Titicaca project, where researchers worked with indigenous peoples to recreate raised field agriculture in highland Bolivia and Peru. Other studies include the use of differential techniques on fluctuating crop variability in central India beginning in the Chalcolithic period, and research into the origins of agricultural crops including rice, emmer and einkorn wheat, millet, and maize. Desaparecidos and Disasters

In the recent past, archaeologists have been called in to use their special skills in the wake of disasters, and in searching for evidence of genocide. The term desaparecidos is the Spanish term for the ‘disappeared’ and it has been used to refer to the thousands of Argentineans who were murdered under Pinochet’s military junta between 1976 and 1983. Studies of the desaparecidos of Argentina by Clyde Snow were the first of the genocidal events and mass killings studied by archaeologists; others have taken place in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. In addition, archaeologists have assisted at modern-day natural and manmade disasters such as the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in December 2004, the World Trade Center bombings of 2001, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Gulf Coast region of the United States in 2005. Tasks have included excavations, identification of the victims using DNA and other information, processing of massive amounts of data, and preservation techniques on damaged documents. See also: Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation; Careers in Archaeology; Cultural Resource Management; DNA: Ancient; Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Historic Roots of Archaeology; Illicit Antiquities; Internet, Archaeology on; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act; Native Peoples and

ARCHAEOMETRY 489 Archaeology; Remote Sensing Approaches: Aerial; Geophysical; Stable Isotope Analysis; World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

Further Reading Aitchison K (1999) Denison S (ed.) Profiling the Profession: A Survey of Archaeological Jobs in the UK. Council for British Archaeology, English Heritage, Institute of Field Archaeologists. Cornwall, UK: TJ Press. http://www.britarch.ac.uk/training/ profile.html accessed Mar 2007. Archaeological Data Services (1996–2006) Guides to Good Practices. http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/project/policy.html. accessed Mar 2007. Association Research Inc (2005) 2005 Salary Survey Conducted for the Society For American Archaeology in Cooperation with Society For Historical Archaeology. Association Research Inc., Rockville, MD. http://www.saa.org/membership/survey/ accessed Mar 2007. Fagan B (2003) The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization. New York: Basic Books. Fforde C and Parker LO (2001) Repatriation Developments in the UK. 2001. Indigenous Law Bulletin 10. http://www.austlii.edu. au/au/journals/ILB/2001/10.html accessed Mar 2007. Givens DB, Evans P, and Jablonski T (1997) 1997 AAA Survey of Anthropology PhDs. American Anthropological Association, Arlington, VA. http://www.aaanet.org/surveys/97survey.htmaccessed Mar 2007.

Interpol (2006) Property Crime: Works of Art. 2006. Interpol. http://www.inte rpol.int/Public /PropertyC rime/Default.asp accessed Mar 2007. Jones M (2001) The Molecule Hunt: Archaeology and the Search for Ancient DNA. New York: Arcade Publishing. Roberts C and Manchester K (2005) The Archaeology of Disease, 2nd edn. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Ulm S, Stephen N, and Dalley C (2005) Mapping the shape of contemporary Australian archaeology: Implications for archaeology teaching and learning. Australian Archaeology 61: 11–23. United States, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian, Affairs (2006) Tribal Leaders Directory. http://www.doi.gov/leaders.pdf accessed Mar 2007. United States National Park Service (2006) Archaeology Laws: A Guide for Professionals. http://www.cr.nps.gov/archeology/ tools/laws/index.htm accessed Mar 2007. United States National Park Service (2006) Tribal Preservation Program. http://www.cr.nps.gov/hps/tribal/thpo.htm accessed Mar 2007. Zeder MA (1999) The American Archaeologist: A Profile. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.

Relevant Websites http://creativecommons.org/ – Creative Commons. http://www.opensource.org/ – Open Source Initiative. http://whc.unesco.org/ – UNESCO World Heritage.

ARCHAEOMETRY Michael D Glascock, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary archaeomagnetic dating A dating method that relies on measuring the magnetic orientation of an object when heated by fire and comparison to the known movement of the Earth’s magnetic field. Bayesian statistics Bayesian statistics is a statistical method by which observations are used to infer the probability that a hypothesis may be true. correspondence analysis Correspondence analysis is a statistical analysis technique which measures the correspondence between the rows and columns of a table and allows one to explore the structure of the variables in the table. discriminant function analysis Discriminant function analysis involves the prediction of dependent variables by one or more independent variables. Egyptian blue A blue-colored pigment used by the Egyptians for thousands of years. The pigment was produced by grinding sand, copper, natron and heating the mixture in a furnace.

emission spectroscopy A spectroscopic technique which relies on discrete emissions of electromagnetic spectra radiated from each element. factor analysis Factor analysis is a statistical technique used to explain the variability of a set of measured random variables in terms of a smaller number of unobserved random variables called factors. fission track dating A radiometric dating method based on analysis of the damage trails left by fission fragments in certain uranium bearing minerals and glasses. geographic information systems (GIS) A geographic information system is used to collect, store, analyze, and manage data and associated attributes which have been spatially referenced to the earth. A GIS relies on a computer system capable of managing the data, displaying it geographically, and facilitating interactive queries. ground-penetrating radar Ground penetrating radar is a type of geophysical survey relying on radar signals to locate artifacts and structures below the surface of the ground. inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry An analytical technique based on combining an inductively coupled plasma as a method for producing ions (ionization of the sample) with a mass spectrometer as a method of identifying the ions (isotopes) through their masses. Samples for ICP-MS are usually analyzed following digestion into liquid form. A procedure using

490 ARCHAEOMETRY a laser to study solids is known as laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). lead-isotope analysis Analytical methods are used which measure the distribution of stable lead isotopes in a sample matrix and may link an artifact to a specific isotope. magnetic survey A magnetic survey is a type of geophysical survey relying on the contrast in magnetic properties between certain types of artifacts and their surroundings. materials characterization The application of physical and chemical analytical techniques to obtain information about the distribution and amounts of elements and minerals in the archaeological specimens. neutron activation analysis An analytical technique relying on bombardment of the sample by neutrons which causes the sample to become radioactive. Radioactivity is emitted in the form of gamma-rays which can be measured to determine the identity and amounts of elements present in the analytical sample. Each element has its own discrete suite of gamma rays. particle induced X-ray emission An analytical technique based on the emission of characteristic X-rays from a material that has been excited by bombardment with energetic charged particles (usually protons). Each element has it own discrete set of X-rays. petrographic analysis The detailed analysis of minerals by optical mineralogy in thin section. potassium–argon (or K–Ar dating) A radiometric dating method based on the decay of the radioactive isotope 40K which decays into 40Ar with a half-life of 1.26  109 years. Because the argon is a gas, it will escape from a molten rock. However, when the rock solidifies, the decayed 40Ar will be trapped in the crystal lattice. Mass spectrometry is used to measure the accumulated 40 Ar and atomic absorption spectroscopy is used to measure the amount of 40K. The ratio between the 40Ar and the 40K isotopes is related to the time elapsed since the rock was cool enough to trap the argon. principal components analysis Principal components analysis (PCA) is a technique for simplifying a dataset, by reducing multidimensional datasets to lower dimensions for analysis. By making a linear transformation of the original data, PCA leads to a new coordinate system which explains the majority of the variance in a dataset using a small number of variables. prospection The application of a wide range of scientific techniques to study the near-surface environment for the presence of artifacts and structures. provenance (also called sourcing) Determining the origin of an artifact or other archaeological specimen through chemical or physical analysis of its constituents. quantatitive analysis Measurement of the quantities of substances, elements, minerals, etc. in the object subjected to analysis. Quantities are usually expressed in concentrations with units by weight given in percent, parts per million, parts per billion, etc. radiometric methods Dating methods that rely on the knowledge of decay rates of naturally occurring isotopes are radiometric. resistivity survey A resistivity survey is a type of geophysical survey relying on the contrast in electrical properties between certain types of artifacts and their surroundings. Samian ware A kind of bright red Roman pottery also known as terra sigillata generally found in the eastern Mediterranean. stable isotope analysis The analysis of stable isotopes of oxygen and their relative abundances are used to obtain information regarding diet and migration of humans and other organisms.

thermoluminescence dating A dating method that relies on measuring the accumulated radiation dose in a material as a means of determining the time elapsed since the material was last heated. underwater sonar Underwater sonar is a type of geophysical survey relying on the detection of sonar signals to locate artifacts and structures underwater. uranium series dating A radiometric dating method that relies on the decays of isotopes from uranium and its daughter isotopes. X-ray fluorescence An analytical technique based on the emission of characteristic ‘secondary’ (or fluorescent) X-rays from a material that has been excited by bombardment with higher energy X-rays or gamma rays. Each element has it own discrete set of X-rays.

Introduction The term ‘archaeometry’ was invented in the mid1950s, by Martin Aitken and Christopher Hawkes at Oxford University, to assign a name to a publication of the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art. The first issue of Archaeometry was published in 1958, and it is now a well-recognized, international research journal. Today, however, archaeometry represents considerably more than the name of a journal. Archaeometry has become the umbrella term used to describe an interdisciplinary field of archaeological research in which techniques and approaches from the physical, chemical, biological, geological, and statistical sciences are employed to extract more information from the material record of past human activity. The range of research conducted in archaeometry is so broad that any attempt to describe the field in a comprehensive summary is difficult. A number of practitioners have suggested that archaeometry includes the following activities or themes: (1) materials characterization; (2) dating; (3) prospection; (4) conservation; (5) the study of man and his environment; and (6) the handling and modeling of data (Figure 1). Major developments within the field of archaeometry have relied on the development and improvement of new scientific techniques in conjunction with their application to significant archaeological problems. A history of archaeometry in relation to the above-mentioned themes is described.

Materials Characterization The first scientific discipline to engage in a study of artifacts was almost certainly chemistry. A history of chemistry’s early involvement in archaeology would not be complete without mentioning the names of famous chemists such as Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1743–1817), Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829), Michael Faraday (1791–1867), and Carl Christian

ARCHAEOMETRY 491

Chemistry Physics Geology Biology Statistics

Archaeometry

Characterization Dating Prospection Preservation Man and environment Data modeling

Figure 1 Archaeometry – the link between scientific techniques and archaeological applications.

Traugott Friedemann Go¨bel (1794–1851). The primary motivation for their work was curiosity as a consequence of their interest in studying and identifying matter and the changes induced by chemical reactions. The earliest recorded paper to describe a chemical investigation of antiquities was read before the Royal Academy of Science and Belles Letters of Berlin in 1795 by Martin Heinrich Klaproth. Klaproth devised a procedure using gravimetry and used it to measure the compositions of several Greek and Roman coins. During the first half of the nineteenth century, about 25 reports were published on the quantitative analysis of copper-based coins, glass, and pigments. Among these were a paper by Humphry Davy on the examination of ancient pigments from Rome and Pompeii in which he identified a synthetic pigment later called ‘Egyptian blue’, formed by combining copper, silicon, and natron. Faraday was the first to identify lead as an intentional component in the glaze on ancient pottery. However, it was Go¨bel who first explicitly stated that the results obtained from the chemical analysis might be used to answer archaeological questions. Go¨bel’s results were published in 1842 in the form of a pamphlet with the very descriptive title: ‘‘On the power of chemistry in identifying peoples of ancient times, or results of a chemical investigation of metallic antiquities, especially those occurring in the Baltic provinces, for the purpose of identifying the peoples from which they came.’’ Because Gobel’s work involved analysis of statistically significant numbers of samples, he was also the first to establish chemical properties for a group of specimens, as opposed to reporting individual analyses. Another individual who contributed significantly to the characterization of archaeological specimens was the French mineralogist Alexis Damour. Through his studies of jade from different sources around the world, Damour came to recognize the differences between the sources. Damour also published an extensive investigation on the density and chemical composition of stones from known sources with the end view of providing fundamental data useful for

determining the place of origin of such objects. Thus, it can be inferred that Damour was the first to recognize the concept of sourcing – proof of origin through similarity of physical and chemical analyses. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, the character of archaeology began to change from the discovery of buried treasure toward increasing scientific knowledge. This change led to increasing cooperation between archaeologists and chemists. Two individuals who stood out were Marcelin Berthelot and Heinrich Schielmann. Berthelot made it a point to analyze artifacts not only for their chemical identification but also to investigate their significance from the standpoint of the history of early technology. Schielmann, who is recognized for his excavations at Mycenae and Troy, frequently included the results from chemical analysis of materials in his archaeological reports. During the first half of the twentieth century, advances in the ability to characterize archaeological materials were beginning to gain recognition by archaeologists as useful for studying models of trade and exchange and explaining the changing distribution of materials over time and space. One of the pioneers was Anna O. Shepard who was active in the study of ceramics by petrographic analysis during the 1930s through 1950s. Many will agree that her classic book Ceramics for the Archaeologist set the standard and established a vocabulary for discussing the analysis of ceramics. During approximately the same period of time, Earle Caley was using emission spectroscopy to study the compositions of glass and metal artifacts. The discoveries of radioactivity by Becquerel in 1896, the atomic nucleus by Rutherford in 1909, and the neutron by Chadwick in 1932 set the stage for the development of several analytical techniques based on atomic and nuclear properties. In 1936, George Hevesy discovered the technique of neutron activation analysis (NAA). But the NAA technique was not ready for routine application in archaeology until 1956, when Robert Oppenheimer assembled a group of archaeologists and chemists at the Princeton

492 ARCHAEOMETRY

Institute of Advanced Studies to discuss the possibility of applying the method to the study of archaeology. Following the meeting, Edward Sayre and Robert Dodson, chemists from Brookhaven National Laboratory, conducted a study of Samian ware from different locations in Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy using NAA. The results of the NAA investigation showed that trace element impurity patterns for the pottery within a region were correlated and that different regions could be distinguished from another. The project was judged to be such an outstanding success that it laid the foundations for chemical analysis of thousands of archaeological samples including pottery, obsidian, flint, marble, turquoise, and limestone by laboratories established at Brookhaven National Lab, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, the University of Michigan, and elsewhere. Although many of the original NAA labs no longer exist, increases in the use of automation are allowing more samples being analyzed by NAA today than ever. In addition to NAA, other techniques such as X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and proton-induced X-ray emission (PIXE), inductively coupled plasma (ICP), and lead isotope analysis have been employed in artifact characterization studies. Gradual improvements in the analytical techniques over the years have enabled the measurement of greater numbers of elements and isotopes with more sensitivity and better precision. By the 1980s, techniques from the biological sciences were being employed to analyze organic materials such as bone, waxes, resins, food remains, and textiles. And, during the past decade, surface analytical methods such as laser ablation ICP mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) and scanning electron microprobe (SEM) have become popular techniques for examining glazes, paints, mineral inclusions, etc. Materials characterization studies have changed the way that archaeologists interpret how trade and exchange operated in the past. They also help to explain the distribution of archaeological material across the landscape, changes in distribution over time, and changes in the economies and organization of societies. It is not unreasonable to estimate that several tens of thousands of archaeological samples are being chemically characterized every year in laboratories around the world for studies of provenance, technology, and authentication.

Dating Use of dating techniques to determine the age of an artifact or dates of occupation for a site or dates for a sequence of events is one of the most fundamental

archaeometric activities conducted by archaeologists and is essential to organizing archaeological evidence. Prior to the twentieth century, archaeologists were limited to the use of relative dating techniques such as stratigraphy and seriation. However, the twentieth century saw the development of a number of absolute dating techniques, many of which have improved to the point that it is now possible to determine dates from fewer to hundred years back to several million years. The first absolute dating technique was developed in the 1920s by Andrew Ellicot Douglas who discovered that the widths of annual rings in trees from the American Southwest were related to the climatic variation during antiquity. Douglas applied his new technique to pine beams from a twelfth century building at Pueblo Bonito, thus giving rise to dendrochronology. Use of dendrochronology has been extended to other regions of the world, but each region is somewhat different due to climatic differences (see Dendrochronology). The development of radiocarbon dating by Willard Libby in the late 1940s has probably had the greatest impact on archaeological science. The technique is based on the premise that all living organisms have a continuous uptake of radioactive carbon-14 until they die (see Carbon-14 Dating). By measuring the amount of radiocarbon present in their remains, it is possible to estimate the time elapsed since the organism died. For the first time, chronologies for different parts of the world could be compared back to about 50 000 years. The impact of radiocarbon dating on archaeology cannot be overestimated. Libby was awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1960, and radiocarbon labs were established around the world. Throughout the remainder of the twentieth century, a number of other absolute dating methods were developed, including accelerator mass dating of carbon-14 which requires less sample and extends the range to about 100 000 years, thermoluminescence dating and archaeomagnetic dating which can be applied to materials that have been heated in antiquity such as pottery or stone, and radiometric methods such as uranium series, fission-track, and potassiumargon dating which can be used to date much older archaeological materials such as those associated with the formation of corals and stalactites or the occurrence of volcanic events, etc. (see Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Luminescence Dating). The suitability of an individual dating technique for a particular application depends upon the types of archaeological material available for dating, the range of ages, and other factors.

ARCHAEOMETRY 493

Prospection Curiosity about the past has long stimulated our desire to discover the remains of our past and has become a significant part of the archaeological endeavor. Archaeological prospection is the general term used to identify the collection of nondestructive methods used to locate and characterize the surviving evidence of human activity. Prospection began early in the twentieth century with the use of aerial photography to locate archaeological sites in Britain. From the 1950s up to the present time, geophysical prospection techniques employing magnetic and resistivity surveys as well as ground radar and underwater sonar have been popular. The techniques are used to locate hidden features such as kilns, hearths, pits, walls, roads, cemeteries, and shipwrecks. Geochemical methods have also been employed to analyze anthropogenic and geochemical signatures in the soil. The addition of satellite photography in the 1960s has enhanced our ability to study noninvasively almost any place on the face of the earth.

Conservation Conservation science encompasses restoration (activities that seek to return a damaged artifact to its original form) and preservation (activities involved in keeping an object from deteriorating further). Reconstruction of artifacts often uses knowledge from chemistry to understand how artifacts were made and how they undergo deterioration due to usage and exposure to the environment (i.e., corrosion, weathering, pollution, etc.) Preservation also involves knowledge obtained from chemistry to identify the materials most likely to protect artifacts and least likely to cause future damage.

Handling and Modeling of Archaeometric Data The expanded usage of archaeometric techniques and the ever larger amounts of data collected give rise to a greater need for data management and the need for ever more sophisticated mathematical and statistical techniques. Investigation and interpretation of data would be an extremely tedious exercise were it not for more powerful computers and software developed since the mid-1950s. Data sets are being examined to find patterns in bivariate plots, cluster analysis diagram, etc. Other methods such as correspondence analysis, factor analysis, principal components analysis, and discriminant function analysis have made it possible to examine ever larger data sets. Data modeling based on

geographic information systems (GISs) and Bayesian statistics are also being used more frequently.

Man and His Environment Environmental archaeology seeks to reconstruct the past flora, fauna, landscape and climates through the examination of animal, fish, plant, pollen, and insect remains. Other archaeometric research subsumed under this category includes stable isotope analysis to investigate ancient diets and the spread of agriculture and analyses of DNA to study the migration of modern man.

Future of Archaeometry Advances in science and technology over the past half century have given archaeologists access to unique insights into the social and economic development of societies through the identification of trade and exchange, as well as time depth. These advances have been supported by the development of institutional laboratories, the proliferation of journals, societies, and groups covering many different types of archaeometry. In addition to Archaeometry, several other journals and newsletters reporting archaeometric research were started including the Journal of Archaeological Science, Geoarchaeology, SAS Bulletin-Newsletter of the Society for Archaeological Sciences, etc. Although access to methods from the sciences has made it possible for archaeologists to seek answers for questions concerning past human behavior and development, not all applications of these methods over the past half century have produced relevant information. In some instances, archaeometric data may have been published journals, but no corresponding archaeological interpretation was presented, and, at other times, the data may have appeared in the appendix of an archaeological report with little or no comment on the reasons for which the analyses were performed. In most of the archaeometric studies where relevance is lacking, the cause has been due to poor communication between the archaeologists and the scientists. The reasons for performing the analyses were not adequately articulated, and, hence, the product failed to advance the field of archaeological science. In particular, this has been noted by archaeologists such as Robert C. Dunnell who were extremely critical of the proceedings volumes generated from conferences such as the International Archaeometry Symposium, Materials Research Society, and others. Discord and separatism between archaeologists and scientists have also surfaced, on occasion, in the

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literature and at conferences when evaluating one another’s contributions. The first step in repairing this situation is recognizing that the objectives of the specialists from different disciplines differ in more than just methodology. When archaeologists formulate a research question, their research objectives are often stated in the context of their archaeological discipline such that data and techniques are treated secondarily to cultural interpretation. On the other hand, scientists will emphasize the techniques and data but may be unfamiliar with the archaeological context. The second step is to encourage joint formulation of research design in order to give direction to the work to be undertaken. The research design must address the logic used in deciding the type(s) of data to be collected. Finally, the products of the research must give all involved parties recognition for their contributions such that the interdisciplinary research can be considered a success. Archaeometric studies should enhance our understanding of the archaeological record. It is clear that archaeometry depends upon close cooperation between the archaeologists and the scientists, with both learning about each other’s problems and limitations and the exchange of mutual respect. The future of archaeometry depends on the development of people who cross the traditional boundaries of science and archaeology such that they understand the rudiments of the techniques they are using and the purpose for conducting the analyses. Fortunately, some universities have been making progress (e.g., universities in Britain, Turkey, and Peru; the IGERT program at the University of Arizona) by working in this direction. The number of scientists interested in archaeological applications has grown, and the number of archaeologists interested in embracing methods and techniques from other disciplines has also

grown. Undoubtedly, the discipline of archaeometry has a very bright future.

Acknowledgments The author thanks the National Science Foundation for providing continuous support to the Archaeometry Lab at the University of Missouri Research Reactor since 1988. See also: Carbon-14 Dating; Chemical Analysis Tech-

niques; Conservation and Stabilization of Materials; Dating Methods, Overview; Dendrochronology; Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Luminescence Dating; Neutron Activation Analysis; Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Remote Sensing Approaches: Geophysical.

Further Reading De Atley SP and Bishop RL (1991) Toward an integrated interface for archaeology and archaeometry. In: Bishop RL and Lange FW (eds.) The Ceramic Legacy of Anna O. Shepard pp. 358–380. Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press. Dunnell RC (1993) Why archaeologists don’t care about archaeometry. Archeomaterials 7: 161–165. Harbottle G (1982) Chemical characterization in archaeology. In: Ericson JE and Earle TK (eds.) Contexts for Prehistoric Exchange pp. 13–51. New York: Academic Press. Pollard AM (1995) Why teach Heisenberg to archaeologists? Antiquity 69: 242–247. Pollard AM and Heron C (1996) Archaeological Chemistry. Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry. Shepard AO (1956) Ceramics for the Archaeologist. Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington. Tite MS (2004) Archaeometry – an overview. In: Martini M, Milazzo M and Piacenti M (eds.) Physics Methods in Archaeometry, pp. 347–356. Amsterdam: IOS Press. Wagner GA and Schiegl S (1998) Age Determination of Young Rocks and Artifacts: Physical and Chemical Clocks in Quaternary Geology and Archaeology. New York: Springer.

ARCHAEOPARASITOLOGY Karl J Reinhard, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, USA Adauto Arau´jo, Escola Nacional de Sau´de Pu´blica, Fundac¸a˜o Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary acanthocephalan Any of various worms in the phylum Acanthocephala, also called thorny-headed worms, living in

intestines of vertebrates having a retractile proboscis covered with many hooked spines. anthelminthic A compound that affects and causes the expulsion of parasitic intestinal worms. archaeoparasitology The study of parasite evidence from archaeological sites. cestode Any of the parasitic flatworms of the class Cestoidea, including the tapeworms, having a long, segmented, flat body equipped with a specialized organ of attachment at one end. ectoparasite Parasites such as lice and flies that live on the body’s outer surface.

ARCHAEOPARASITOLOGY 495 endoparasite Parasites such as blood flukes and pinworms that infect the internal parts of the body. helminth Worm that is parasitic on vertebrates, especially roundworms and tapeworms, thorny-headed worms, and flukes. host An organism that provides food and shelter to a parasite. microparasites A microscopic organism of medical importance including bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protozoa. infestation Parasites that are present on the outside of the hosts, such as ectoparasites, or the contamination of a habitat with arthropods such as mosquites, bed bugs, and ticks. infection Parasites that are present inside the host organism, including helminths and miocroparasites. nematode Any of phylum Nematoda of elongated cylindrical worms some of which are parasitic in animals and plants, and others of which are free-living in soil or water. parasite An organism that lives at the expense of its host by taking energy from the host and sometimes causing pathology in the host. prevalence Number of hosts in a population infected with a parasite at any one time. protozoa (parasitic) Single-cell organisms, some of which are parasitic and can only reproduce within a host organism. Malaria is caused by a protozoa, Plasmodium. Other protozoan parasites are Giardia and Toxoplasma. trematode Referring to flukes, phylum Trematoda, which are parasitic flatworms having external suckers for attaching to a host. vector An animal, usually a biting insect, that is responsible for the transmission of a parasitic organism.

Introduction Parasites are the major cause of ill health and early death in the world today. Malaria, sleeping sickness, amoebic dysentery, and hookworm infection are examples of commonplace parasitic diseases that are endemic in most parts of the world (see Health, Healing, and Disease). They were significant threats in prehistory, especially in cultures whose social complexity outstripped the development of effective sanitation, hygiene, and germ theory awareness. Parasites are organisms that live in or on other organisms called hosts. Parasites derive sustenance and shelter from their hosts and carry out reproduction in host tissues and structures. There is a wide amount of taxonomic diversity among parasites. They range from single-celled protozoa, such as amoeba, to multicelled arthropods such as fleas. Strictly defined, parasites do not include bacteria and viruses. However, some epidemiologists refer to bacteria and viruses as microparasites. There are two general types of parasites: ectoparasites such as lice and endoparasites such as intestinal worms. All types of parasites can be found in archaeological sites. Protozoa can be identified by traces of antigens and also by certain gross pathology they left in their mummified hosts. Helminths are parasitic worms including nematode roundworms, cestode tapeworms, trematode flukes, and acanthocephalan

thorny-headed worms. Helminth eggs from some species are laid in thousands within their hosts. Helminth eggs from humans and domestic animals contaminated ancient villages. The eggs are very durable and are easily retrieved from archaeological sediments, coprolites, and mummies. Fleas and lice can be found on mummies and also in archaeological sediments. Lice are especially important in mummy studies because the eggs are cemented on hair shafts. Therefore, examination of scalps from mummies provides a method of quantifying infestations between individuals and sites. The discipline that focuses on the relationships between behavior, environment, and parasite infection is archaeoparasitology. This field developed from the need for a fine-tuned analysis of prehistoric ecological and behavioral conditions to assess the factors that affected disease. Archaeoparasitology depends on archaeological information regarding community size, trade patterns, water sources, subsistence practices, social stratification, environment, medicine use, and many other lines of modern archaeological investigation. It also depends on biological understanding of complex parasite life cycles and other dimensions of parasite ecology. When broadly applied, archaeoparasitology defines the rise in parasitic disease associated with the development of complex societies and changes in subsistence strategies. In a more restricted application, archaeoparasitology sheds light on the health impact of urbanization and empire expansion. When tightly applied to a single burial or mummy, archaeoparasitology shows how habits promote disease on an individual basis.

History and Major Themes Aidan Cockburn explored the origins of disease and generated interest in archaeoparasitology. Cockburn theorized that there was a relation between human cultural development and the evolution of infectious diseases. In the first archaeoparasitological study, Reinhard compared Colorado Plateau Archaic parasitism to agricultural Puebloan sites. Reinhard verified Cockburn’s hypothesis that occasional huntergatherer infections became major agricultural health hazards (Figure 1). The reasons for the emergence of parasitic disease were many. Parasitism was limited in hunter-gatherer societies, called bands. Huntergatherer parasitism was limited by small band size, diffuse regional populations, high band mobility, and presence of natural anthelminthics in hunter-gatherer diets. The one factor that could have promoted huntergatherer parasitism was the consumption of uncooked vertebrate meat and insects. Parasitism was promoted in descendent agricultural Puebloan communities by

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Enterobius vermicularis (1%) Taeniid cestodes (2%) Moniliformis clarki (2%)

Hunter-gatherer incidence

Taeniid cestodes (0.6%)

Enterobius vermicularis (15%)

Strongyloides stercoralis (0.6%) Strongylate worm (1.4%)

Ascaris lumbricoides (0.02%)

Moniliformis clarki (0.08%) Agriculture incidence

Hymenolepidid cestode (0.2%)

Figure 1 The relative prevalence and diversity of parasite infections between archaic hunter-gatherers and more recent agricultural ancestral Puebloans on the Colorado Plateau. The archaic people were rare host to just a few parasites. Ancestral Puebloans hosted many more parasites species at higher prevalences (from Reinhard 1996).

contaminated water sources, concentrated populations, more sedentary life, apartment-style living, absence of effective sanitation, activities centered on water (agriculture), and activities that expanded wetlands including irrigation of all types. Reinhard recognized that the parasite variation between agricultural Puebloan villages nearly equaled the variation between agriculturalists and huntergatherers. This means that some settlements managed to control their parasite burden very effectively while others were simply overwhelmed by their pathogens. This topic was explored by a comparison of pinworm

(Enterobius vermicularis) prevalence in coprolites by a group of specialists in pinworm disease. Pinworm was chosen as an indicator of general infectious disease because it is transferred from person to person and by contamination of living quarters and food (Figure 2). Some ancestral Pueblo communities were extremely parasitized. In a clinical setting, only 5% of feces from pinworm-infected people are positive for pinworm eggs. The percentages of coprolites positive for pinworm from several sites exceed this and range up to 29% (Figure 3). The lowest prevalence was found in small cave sites not containing walled

ARCHAEOPARASITOLOGY 497

Eggs are transferred by direct contact between humans and also eggs in air currents are inhaled

Nocturnal egg laying results in retroinfection as some eggs hatch and larvae enter the same host used by the mother worm Eggs on air currents contaminate water, food, and general environment with infective eggs

Figure 2 Pinworm infection in ancestral Pueblo villages involved several basic modes of transmission: air contamination and inhalation of infective eggs, air contamination of the living area with infective eggs, person-to-person transmission of eggs, and retroinfection by larvas that hatch on or in the host and re-enter the same person that hosts the maternal worm.

0.45 0.40 Colorado

Utah 29%

10% 7%

0.30 0.25

0%

Arizona

0.35

19% 25% 8%

0.20

21%

0.15 New Mexico

Figure 3 The prevalence of pinworm infection varied greatly between ancestral Pueblo villages showing that lifestyle variation and population crowding influenced pinworm prevalence.

Small villages, no stone wall

Large, stone-walled villages in caves

0.10 0.05

Large, stone-walled villages

0.00 F2.14 = 5.883 (p = 0.014) Figure 4 This graph shows that village size, construction, and location inside or outside the caves influenced pinworm prevalence (modified from Hugo et al. 1999).

villages. The highest prevalence came from large, walled villages built in rock shelters (Figure 4). Hugot et al. concluded that poor air circulation in large populations living in complex apartment-style communities resulted in truly impressive levels of pinworm parasitism. In fact, some sites have the highest levels of pinworm infection recorded for ancient or modern peoples. The data indicate that pinworm parasitism was unavoidable and that in some villages people had heavy infections. In such populations, pinworm infection prevalence reflects serious health risks, when one

considers that other pathogens are spread by the same means. Reinhard showed that the prevalence of parasitism co-varied with porotic hyperostosis prevalence at ancestral Pueblo sites where both coprolite and skeletons were studied (Figure 5). Porotic hyperostosis is a general skeletal pathology indicator long used to assess maternal-infant health. In Brazil, the cultural transfer of parasites has been a focus for many years. The discovery of hookworm and whipworm in prehistoric South American

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% Pinworm prevalence in coprolites

30

Canyon de Chelly Chaco Canyon

20

Inscription House

10 Salmon Ruin

0 40

50 60 70 80 % Porotic hyperostosis prevalence in crania

90

Figure 5 Although pinworm does not cause significant disease, pinworm prevalence is a good gauge of the general level of infection with other parasites and microparasites. Therefore, it can be compared with skeletal evidence of infectious disease. In this graph, the pinworm prevalence in coprolites has a positive correlation with the skeletal frequency of anemia in ancestral Pueblo sites.

mummies and coprolites was sensational. These are human-specific nematodes that cannot parasitize humans in the Arctic and subarctic because they require warm, moist soils for maturation once the eggs are defecated. Therefore, the discovery of these parasites in prehistoric South America indicated that there was a nonarctic migration of humans from the Old World to the Americas. The most long-standing debate in archaeoparasitology revolved around the discovery of hookworms in prehistoric sites. One species of hookworm, Ancyslostoma duodenale, was diagnosed from examination of adult worms in prehistoric Peruvian mummies, and later larvas were discovered in coprolites and mummies from Brazil, and the United States. Hookworms are host specific, which means that one species of worm only infects one species of host. Ancyslostoma duodenale only infects humans. Hookworms require tropical or subtropical environments for their eggs to hatch and larvas to mature to infective stage. Finally, hookworms have their evolutionary origins in the Old World. Therefore, to reach the New World, they had to migrate with human populations from a tropical or subtropical environment (Figure 6). The conventional wisdom of the twentieth century was that hookworms arrived in the New World in historic times with European colonists and African slaves. This conventional wisdom has been so strong that over a dozen papers have appeared in anthropological and parasitological journals debating the validity and meaning of the hookworm finds.

Figure 6 The presence of hookworm and whipworm in the prehistoric Americas indicates a non-Beringean migration to the New World at some point in time. This could have been a coastal migration or an oceanic migration.

In historic archaeology, archaeoparasitology focuses on sociological and urbanization concerns. Historic archaeologists can define the ethnicity, economic level, and social status of people associated with archaeological features. Therefore, archaeoparasitologists have the opportunity to examine the effect of social differentiation on parasitism. The role of urbanization on the emergence of parasitic disease is a common theme in historic context along with the development of sanitation in controlling parasitism. Ascarid roundworms (Ascaris lumbricoides) and whipworms (Trichuris trichiura) are the main indicators for assessing the parasitic state of historic sites. These two species are most associated with fecal contamination, crowding, and poor sanitation. These parasites are used for comparative evaluation of the threat of parasitism between neighborhoods, villages, and cities. Other parasites, especially tapeworms and flukes associated with different types of meat, are useful indicators of ethnicity. In the twenty-first century, the discipline of archaeoparasitology became global. Researchers published parasitological finds from Japan, Korea, Germany, Peru, Chile, Brazil, and many other countries. The intellectual foci of these studies are diverse. In Japan, parasites were analyzed in context of the development of sanitation and food practices. They were also used to identify areas used by foreign ambassadors who hosted parasite species exotic to Japan but endemic to China. In Korea, archaeoparasitology

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was used to trace the origins of indigenous species, especially trematodes. The impact of the expansion of the Inca Empire was defined in Chile. There, the Inca compelled indigenous people to move from small, scattered communities to large towns, resulting in increased infection with certain parasite species. Also, parasitism of the oldest hunter-gatherers, the Chinchorro, was characterized. Chinchorro consumption of undercooked fish resulted in heavy cestode infection. Archaeoparasitology in Peru examines the diseases of humans and domestic animals, and especially the transfer of deadly protozoa from animals to humans via insect vectors. One theme that crosscuts the global diversity of modern archaeoparasitology is defining the distribution of parasites. In a Brazilian mummy, Sianto et al. discovered eggs of hookworm and of a trematode genus, Echinostoma. Echinostoma has never been found in people from the Americas and shows that an indigenous species has the ability to infect humans. This adds to the medical knowledge of the diversity of parasites infective to humans. On the Texas– Coahuila border, Reinhard et al. discovered the gross pathology of megacolon which is often associated with Chagas’ disease. Infection with Trypanosoma cruzi causes Chagas’ disease. Previously, Chagas’ disease was thought to have originated in the high Andes and then spread to lowland South America in historic times. The discovery of Chagas’ disease in prehistoric border of Mexico and Texas shows that the disease spread further and earlier than generally believed.

Figure 7 Moche ceramics depict facial lesions consistent with the pathology caused by one form of the protozoan Leishmania brasiliensis which is transmitted by a sand fly vector.

Data Sources and Methods Archaeoparasitologists find their data in a variety of archaeological contexts. Historical medical texts provide information about ancient parasitological knowledge and treatment. Artifacts provide rare glimpses of the pathology caused by certain parasites. For example, potters of the Peruvian Moche culture portrayed the facial disfigurement resulting from Leishmania infection (Figure 7). This protozoan parasite can cause destruction of the soft and hard tissue of the face. Skeletal remains can reveal hard tissue pathology caused by parasites. Calcification of soft tissue of the urinary tract often results from Schistosoma hematobium (blood fluke) infection. Cysts of the tapeworm Echinococcus granulosis calcify and are preserved in burials (Figure 8). Destructive bone lesions resulting from Leishmania infection are evident in skeletal remains from Peru (Figure 9). Sediments such as soil within burial pelvic girdles (see Burials: Dietary Sampling Methods) are an important source of

Figure 8 This is a drawing of hydatid cyst disease excavated from Medieval Denmark. Hydatid disease is caused by a parasitic infection by a tapeworm of the genus Echinococcus. The brown nodules are the mineralized cysts cause by the tapeworm larvae.

information about parasites. For example, German researchers were able to recover liver fluke (Fasciola hepatica) from the sediment of human and cattle pelvic girdles. This showed that this debilitating parasite was a threat to humans and their domestic livestock. Mummies preserve the hard tissue and soft tissue pathology caused by parasites as well as the parasites themselves. Ectoparasites such as fleas, head lice, body lice, and crab lice are easily recovered from

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Figure 9 This pathology from a skeleton in Peru could be the result of infection with Leishmania brasiliensis. (Reprinted with permission from Memorias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz.)

to coprolites, mummies, and all types of archaeological sediments. So far, protozoa have been effectively diagnosed. This is very important because protozoa cysts are ephemeral in archaeological remains and are only rarely found with the microscope. Molecular biological characterization of ancient parasite DNA is very useful in making definitive diagnosis of ancient parasites and identifying genetic strains of a single species. The power of modern archaeoparasitology is based on its ability to quantify infections for comparative evaluation of disease. There are a variety of methods for quantification of eggs per milliliter or gram of archaeological sediments and coprolites. These include dilution methods derived from clinical techniques and concentration methods derived from palynological techniques. Quantifying eggs allows comparative evaluation of parasitism between sites and features within sites.

The Future of Archaeoparasitology mummies and the clothing buried with mummies. Parasites of the lungs, intestinal tract, liver, and urinary tract are evident. Molecular biological diagnosis can recover the DNA of ancient parasites from mummified tissue, even when the parasites themselves have decomposed. Therefore, each mummified corpse is extremely important in the analysis of parasitic diseases. Also, mummified animals are a wonderful source about parasites that may have threatened the vitality of domestic animals. In the twentieth century, coprolites provided most of the information about parasitic disease. The eggs and larvas of parasites that disperse their offspring are easily found in coprolites. However, Bain describes the increasing importance of analysis of domestic archaeological sediments in archaeoparasitology. Sediments from latrines, sewers, drains, streets, yards, and living floors contain parasite eggs. Parasites were so abundant in medieval and colonial villages that hundreds of parasite eggs per milliliter of house sediments are commonly found. In latrines, drains, and sewers, the numbers of eggs range into hundreds of thousands per milliliter of sediment. The analysis of sediments from domestic context will be increasingly important in the future. The microscope is the main tool of the archaeoparasitologist. Most diagnoses of helminths and arthropods have been made with compound or binocular microscopes. However, molecular biology and enzyme diagnostic methods have expanded the range of parasites identified from archaeological sites. Enzymelinked immunoassay is a new, proven method for the identification of parasite antigens that can be applied

Several trends in archaeoparasitology are evident by comparing the nature of studies in the last century and the current century. Many studies from 1960 to 1990 focused on the recovery and diagnosis of ancient parasites. With the exception of Brazilian research into migration and Southwestern research into epidemiology, few researchers answered behavioral questions with archaeoparasitological data. This preliminary stage is over. Now archaeoparasitologists place their data in behavioral context to reveal aspects of migration, food preparation, effect of social status on disease, cross-infection between humans and animals, and many other topics of anthropological interest. There is also a new interest in the influence of parasitic disease on the vitality of cultures and site abandonment. Finally, there is now a solid nexus between biological parasitology and archaeoparasitology in exploring questions of parasite biogeography and endemicity that have relevance to modern health. These areas will continue to expand as archaeoparasitology becomes a standard archaeological discipline. See also: Americas, North: American Southwest, Four

Corners Region; Burials: Dietary Sampling Methods; Health, Healing, and Disease; New World, Peopling of.

Further Reading Aidan CT (1971) Infectious diseases in ancient populations. Current Anthropology 12: 45–62. Bain A (2001) Archaeoentomological and archaeoparasitological reconstructions at ıˆlot Hunt (CeEt-110): New perspectives in historical archaeology (1850–1900). In: BAR International, pp. 153. Series 973, Oxford: Archaeopress.

ARCHAEOZOOLOGY 501 Fisher CL, Reinhard KJ, Kirk M, DiVirgilio J, and Miller TS (in press) Archaeoparasitology of Historic Albany, New York. Historic Archaeology. Gonc¸alves MLC, da Silva VL, de Andrade CM, et al. (2004) Amebiasis distribution in the past: First steps using an immunoassay technique. The Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 98: 88–91. Hugot JP, Reinhard KJ, Gardner SL, and Morand S (1999) Human enterobiasis in evolution: Origin, specificity, and transmission. Parasite 6: 201–208. Montenegro A, Araujo A, Hetherington R, Ferreira LF, Weaver A, Eeby M (2006) Parasites, paleoclimate and the peopling of the Americas: Using the hookworm to time the Clovis migration. Current Anthropology 47: 193–198. Reinhard KJ (1988) The cultural ecology of prehistoric parasitism on the Colorado Plateau as evidenced by coprology. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 77: 355–366.

Reinhard KJ (1990) Archaeoparasitology in North America. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 82: 145–162. Reinhard KJ (1992) Parasitology as an interpretive tool in archaeology. American Antiquity 57: 231–245. Reinhard KJ (1996) Parasite ecology of two Anasazi villages. In: Reitz EJ, Newson LA, and Scudder SJ (eds.) Case Studies in Environmental Archaeology. New York: Plenum. Sandison AT (1967) Parasitic diseases. In: Brothwell D and Sandison AT (eds.) Disease in Antiquity: A Survey of the Diseases, Injuries, and Surgery of Early Populations, pp. 178–183. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas. Sianto L, Reinhard KJ, Gonc¸alves MLC, and Arau´jo A (2005) The finding of echinostoma (Trematoda: Digenea) and hookworm eggs in coprolites collected from a Brazilian mummified body dated of 600–1,200 years before present. Journal of Parasitology 91: 972–975.

ARCHAEOZOOLOGY Elizabeth J Reitz, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary commensal animal An animal that lives in a mutualistic relationship with people. dental cementum A hard tissue deposited in layers around the outer surface of some teeth and serves to hold the teeth in place. diversity An information theory measure that combines information about the number of categories present (such as the number of plants and animals) and the abundance of each category (the relative abundance of each plant or animal) to describe heterogeneity of a system. equitability An information theory measure based on the degree to which a category, such as a specific plant or animal within a list of several plants or animals, is equally abundant. medullary bone A calcified storage tissue found in bird bones; the calcium and fat are used during the period when eggs are formed. optimal foraging theory A theory proposing that humans develop subsistence strategies based on energy expenditures such as distance traveled, time spent, and the size of the items acquired. otolith A calcium carbonate structure, in the form of aragonite, located in the inner ears of fishes. These function in hearing and equilibrium. reciprocal exchange An economic exchange of goods or services in the form of a gift given to a person or group by another person or group. Acceptance of the gift bears the obligation to reciprocate at some future date. redistribution An economic exchange in which goods are collected from a group of people by a centralized administrative body. The goods are then reallocated throughout the group. scute A horny, bony, or chitinous scale such as the outer covering on a turtle shell.

utility index An index that ranks animal body parts according to the utility of each body part. Utility generally refers to the amount of fat and meat that can be obtained from various parts of a carcass.

Broadly defined, zooarchaeologists (also known as archaeozoologists) study animal remains from archaeological deposits. The field traces its roots to the nineteenth century when the major scientific questions focused on the antiquity of life. Thus, zooarchaeology shares research traditions with what subsequently developed into anthropology, archaeology, ecology, palaeontology, and zoology. The combination of theories, methods, and data from these and other fields focused on archaeological animal remains is the defining characteristic of zooarchaeology. Common interests include site-formation processes; subsistence strategies and human health; animal domestication and health; technical and social uses of animals; and palaeoenvironments. These topics are examined through time using animal remains from single sites and over space among sites, regions, and even globally. The diverse applications of zooarchaeology reflect shifts in prevailing theories, methods, and research interests in allied disciplines and within zooarchaeology itself. The development of zooarchaeology owes much to an awareness of the importance of environmental relationships on human behavior and of the human impact on the environment. Despite a diverse, global, and interdisciplinary heritage, zooarchaeologists share two related goals: to understand the biology and ecology of animals, especially humans, and to understand the interactions of humans with their

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biotic and abiotic environments through time and space. These topics are briefly reviewed here. To begin a more comprehensive study of zooarchaeology, the reader is referred to the references listed in ‘Further Reading’ section, The Journal of Archaeological Science, Environmental Archaeology: Journal of Human Paleoecology, and other entries in this encyclopaedia.

Methods Although research into the strengths and weaknesses of field and laboratory methods is not usually the primary objective of zooarchaeologists, most zooarchaeological results are quantified in some fashion. The scientific method requires that theories be testable, hypotheses be evaluated, and results be independently verifiable. Consequently, zooarchaeological methods should be scientifically sound, appropriate to the materials, compatible to the research questions, applied so as to avoid introducing further bias, and thoroughly described. For these reasons, critiques of archaeological and zooarchaeological methods are common in the literature. Field Methods

Quantification requires that all of the materials which might be used to address research questions should have an equal and random (in the statistical sense) opportunity to be recovered using a consistent recovery technique and that the samples be adequate in size. Only through adherence to these principles can it be argued, for example, that domestic mammals were more common in one context than in another or that warm-water mollusks were more common than were cold-water ones. Although the

number of biases that can be traced to poor field decisions appears infinite, many are related to the placement of excavation units and the size of the screen or sieve used to recover animal remains. The composition of animal remains from different activity areas (e.g., house floors, trash heaps, temple complexes, etc.) may be quite different. This bias is compounded by field protocols that use inappropriate screening methods. With few exceptions, animal remains should be recovered by passing the excavated soil through a screen with a mesh dimension suitable to sample the full range of animals formerly present at the site. Laboratory Methods

Zooarchaeologists primarily study the bones and teeth of vertebrate animals (other than humans) and the exoskeletons of mollusks, crustaceans (crabs and lobsters), and echinoderms (sea urchins). Other vertebrate tissues and other animals are less frequently studied because they either are uncommon in most archaeological deposits or are more common in samples studied by palaeoethnobotanists and soil scientists. These include skin, feathers, hair, eggshell, horn, fur, insects, foraminifera, and endoparasites. In most cases, zooarchaeologists study the remains of animals which are members of the modern environment. However, it is common to find animals which are extirpated from their former range or which are now extinct. The preliminary laboratory study involves recording primary data such as those in Table 1. Not all of these observations are available for all specimens and additional data may be required by some research designs. Primary data are used to estimate secondary data such as body size and conformation, age classes

Table 1 Primary data and attributes of animal remains which may be recorded during a zooarchaeological study Taxonomic identification of the specimen Element represented by the specimen Side (e.g., left, right, axial, unknown, or some other description) Portion (e.g., proximal, distal, anterior, lateral, medial, shaft, unknown, or some other description) Sex (description of morphological evidence for sex such as dental attributes, presence of sexually diagnostic features such as antlers or the shape of a turtle plastron, or other characteristics) Age (e.g., fused or unfused long bone, degree of wear on teeth, stage of tooth eruption, or other characteristics) Count (number of specimens referred to the taxon, often abbreviated as NISP) Weight (weight of specimens referred to the taxon) Minimum number of individuals (abbreviated as MNI) Modification (description of the modification(s) including: state of preservation; gnawed by a human, rodent, carnivore, or artiodactyl; evidence for passing through a digestive system; butchering marks such as cut, hacked or chopped, sawed; evidence that the specimen was burned, worked, trampled, weathered, or pathological; description of where the mark is located and evidence that the mark was made by a metal or stone implement; other characteristics) Measurements (definition of the dimension measured, or source of the description; actual measurement of the defined dimension) Other data as required by the research design (e.g., incremental growth patterns in dental cementum, or mollusk valves; stable isotopes; trace elements; DNA and molecular evidence, etc.) Explanatory notes

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and sex ratios, relative frequencies of animals, frequencies of skeletal portions, dietary contributions, and the cause and function of modifications. The success of deriving data is dependent upon sampling designs and sample size. The choice of which method to use is related to the research question and the materials being studied. Each method has serious flaws, and interpretations derived from one method should be verified with data obtained using other methods. Methods are inter-related and build upon each other. Thus, a single method is unlikely to serve all analytical needs. Identification is a multi-faceted procedure during which the animal and the element represented by each specimen is identified in terms of the part of the animal’s skeleton or exoskeleton represented and the animal’s taxonomic classification. Identification requires professional training and access to a good reference collection of modern skeletons. Skeletons in a reference collection should be from animals whose identification was confirmed before the skeleton was prepared. During identification, each archaeological specimen should be compared to the appropriate reference materials. Only in extreme cases should illustrations or archaeological specimens be used to identify materials. In the case of rare or extinct animals, it may be necessary to consult two or more reference collections. In addition to the reference collection itself, biological information about current and former ranges and zooarchaeological reports for similar sites occupied recently or in the distant past may be helpful. Some identifications are based on, or confirmed by, DNA and molecular evidence. Estimates of body size and conformation are based on measurements of dimensions defined in published protocols. Often one dimension of a specimen, such as greatest length, is plotted against another dimension, such as greatest width; or a ratio is established among dimensions. Body size or conformation may be estimated from measurements using formulas derived from modern animals or from descriptive biological data for animals whose size or conformation is known. Such estimates support interpretations about animals in the past and variation within populations but they require the consideration of individual, regional, and breed variations. A change in dimensions might suggest that the size or conformation of an animal, or of an entire population, had responded to changes in climate, predation, or food availability. Body size may also influence human choices about which animals to capture or avoid capturing, which habitats to exploit, or how and when to capture the animal. Changes in dimensions, body size, or conformation are the primary signs of early animal domestication.

Estimates of age-at-death and age classes are approached in different ways depending upon whether the animal has determinate growth (grows toward an optimal adult body size as in birds and mammals) or indeterminate growth (grows throughout its life as in mollusks, sharks, rays, bony fishes, amphibians, and reptiles). In animals with determinate growth, sequences in long bone maturation, tooth development and attrition, and growth increments such as those in dental cementum may indicate the age at which an individual animal died. In animals with indeterminate growth, age-at-death is estimated from body size and characteristics of growth increments in otoliths, vertebras, scutes, scales, and other hard tissues. If several members of a species are represented, these observations can be used to create age classes and to derive mortality or survivorship curves. As with body size, estimates of age-at-death and age classes require the consideration of other sources of variation. Shifts in age classes, particularly if they coincide with shifts in body size and sex ratios, may indicate a population-wide response to phenomena such as environmental change, predation rates, capture technologies, or domestication. Estimates of the sex ratios are based on sexually diagnostic features and the size of specimens. Sexually diagnostic characteristics include shape and the presence of features typical of a specific sex. These include horns and antlers in some male mammals, spurs in some male birds, medullary bone in female birds, the shape of horn cores in cattle, sheep, and goats, and the shape of the pelvic girdle in some mammals. In some animals, members of one sex may be much larger than members of the other sex. Body size or conformation may suggest the presence of intact males, castrated males, and females, thereby indicating domestic animals. As with body size and age, estimating sex ratios requires the consideration of multiple sources of variation. Changes in sex ratios may signal changes in environmental variables, predation decisions, or domestication, especially if a change in sex ratios coincides with changes in age classes and body size. Estimates of relative frequencies of animals are usually based on the number of different animals identified in the sample (richness), the number of archaeological specimens referred to a specific animal in the sample (NISP), estimate of the smallest number of individuals necessary to account for all of the specimens referred to a specific animal (MNI), or the weight of the specimens referred to a specific animal. Unlike NISP, which describes the actual number of specimens in the sample studied, MNI is an analytical product and the estimate should not be confused with actual individuals. To estimate MNI, it is necessary to

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consider not only the taxonomic identification and the elements represented for the animal in question, but also measurements, age, sex, and archaeological context. These measures or relative frequency may have little to do with human behavior or the environments in which people lived. Each method assumes that all animal remains are equally influenced by chance events, human behavior, site-formation processes, field techniques, laboratory methods, and analytical decisions, an assumption which is unlikely to be true. Rarely can the interdependence or independence of the specimens be assessed. Furthermore, it is unlikely that any of these variables are uniform among animals, between sites, between temporal components of the same site, or even among excavation units. On the other hand, changes or continuities in relative frequencies are associated with environmental and cultural phenomena which often can be evaluated in no other way. Estimates of relative frequencies can be used to assess diversity, equitability, optimal foraging strategies, social complexity, social identity, belief systems, political alliances, and environmental change. Frequencies of skeletal portions and utility indices are based on the identity of the elements represented in samples and their relationships to anatomical regions, body parts, or butchering units. Most methods quantify specimens in terms of the NISP from various parts of the skeleton, a ratio between the number of specimens observed and the number of specimens expected, rank order of body parts represented, and indices based on the utility of carcass portions. The specimens may also be evaluated in terms of the minimum number of elements (MNE). Such values distinguish between animals used for food and those that were not and between samples created by nonhuman scavengers and those created by humans. Differences in skeletal frequencies may indicate which animals were killed some distance from the excavated deposit and which were killed nearby, an important aspect of subsistence strategies and a way to distinguish between domestic and wild animals. This principle extends to the association of skeletal frequencies with distinctions between sacred and secular animals, site function, culture change (acculturation and assimilation), trade, as well as social hierarchies in complex societies and urban environments. Estimates of dietary contribution are used to assess social and economic systems. These estimates are most frequently based on ratios of skeletal weight to body weight, estimates of weight for whole animals multiplied by the MNI for that animal in the sample, estimates of body size derived from measurements,

or data from reference collections and the literature. Distinctions are made between whole animal weight, edible meat weight, and nutritional contributions measured as vitamins, minerals, protein, and fat. Dietary value guided decisions about which animals and resource areas to use most frequently, how much effort to expend in finding and capturing a particular animal, and which portions of a carcass to transport from where it was acquired to where it was used. Such studies are important when assessing human demographic and health potentials. The causes and functions of fragmentation levels, fracture types, and other modifications provide information on many aspects of human and nonhuman behavior. In combination with skeletal frequencies, fragmentation and other modifications may distinguish between human and nonhuman uses of animal parts or between food and nonfood animals. They also provide evidence for site function, the nutritional status of the human population, skinning, the ethnic identity of the butcher, the social affiliation of the consumer, butchery for household use instead of trade, and the presence of specialist butchers producing standard cuts for a discriminating market compared to a local householder intent on maximizing the amount of food and other products obtained from the carcass. Modifications also provide evidence for tools, ornaments, ritual sacrifices, displays, and other uses.

Interpretation Interpretations are based on the premise that an ecological relationship exists between humans and their environment, especially between humans and other animal populations, and that cultural, biological, and physical aspects of this relationship are reflected in animal remains. To study these relationships, however, one must appreciate that animals, including humans, are never random scavengers. Instead, animal remains in archaeological samples reflect a complex, systemic, selective relationship which balanced many interrelated components. These include the structure and function of the natural environment, resource management preferences, technology, material culture, site functions, settlement patterns, human biology, social institutions, value systems, and cultural history. It is due to this complexity that interdisciplinary collaboration, archives, ethnographic observations, and experimental archaeology are important to zooarchaeologists. Many interpretations rely upon similar observations in modern animal populations, which are likely different from those in the past for both domestic and wild animals.

ARCHAEOZOOLOGY 505 Site-Formation Processes

Much of what originally occurred at a site left no evidence and what is recovered is altered from what was originally deposited as animals are transformed from a living creature into a human resource, garbage, an archaeological deposit, and, finally, an archaeological specimen. Ironically, some of what is recovered may not represent human behavior at the time the site was occupied and some of the material may not represent human behavior at all. These concerns are broadly lumped under the heading ‘site-formation processes’, the processes by which an archaeological sample is formed. The primary outcomes of these processes are inaccurate representation of materials in relationship to their original availability and use compounded by changes in the relationships of the materials relative to each other and noncomparable samples. Such processes are not simply biases, they also provide information on former environments and on variations in the development, organization, and function of the site, and other aspects of human behavior. Many primary data are studied for information about this aspect of human behavior; chief among these are the identity and relative frequencies of specific animals, their age and sex, frequencies of skeletal portions, nutritional potential, and modifications. People make many decisions about where to collect, hunt, trap, or fish and how to manage the resources these actions acquire. After an animal is acquired, the carcass steadily disintegrates into smaller and smaller units due to food processing, manufacturing, and trade until the surviving specimens are discarded, and long afterward. The first decision regards what parts of the resource are worth the effort to transport from where they are acquired to where they will be used. This decision balances the cost in time and effort to transport all or part of the animal against its potential nutritional, economic, and social value. The outcome of these decisions is that some parts of the animal never reach the archaeological site. Food preparation and redistribution practices eliminate animal remains from the archaeological record. Most of this destruction occurs as carcasses are processed by removing invertebrate exoskeletons or fracturing bones to render fat or to make them fit into the available cooking vessel. Processing and cooking creates increasingly smaller, less diagnostic fragments. If small animals such as mice or insects were eaten, their remains may enter the archaeological record only in coprolites, or not at all. Some pieces of large or even small animals probably were distributed throughout the community, a pattern that

may not be observed if the excavation focuses on only one activity area. Additional scattering occurs if skeletal parts were used for tools, rituals, or other purposes. None of these practices was uniform for all animals, between sites, or through time. After use, humans play a role in determining which animal remains survive the ravages of time. People enhance preservation by burying refuse, thereby decreasing the amount of exposure to forces such as weathering, scavenging, and trampling. By discarding vertebrate bones with mollusk valves, the length of time vertebrate remains survive in acidic soils increases. Unfortunately, burial does not ensure that animal remains will be preserved where they were deposited or that they will survive at all. Other activities introduce animal remains into the archaeological record which were not used by people at all. Although some of these nonfood animals are discarded in contexts that indicate their nonfood uses, frequently the remains of nonfood animals are mixed with those of food animals. Scavenging and commensal animals are special types of nonfood animals to which the human-built environment offers ideal habitat. Samples from cave sites, rock shelters, and structures may contain remains of animals simply seeking food and shelter. Such animals are not just inadvertent inclusions in the archaeological record, but may be site-formation agents and important indicators of prevailing environmental conditions from the time the site was active until it was excavated. Subsistence Strategies and Human Health

Subsistence strategies are the products of dynamic interactions between people and their environments. They are the ways by which people obtain nutrients and other resources while ensuring that the costs required to find, catch, transport, process, distribute, and use them do not exceed their biological and social benefits. Subsistence strategies also encompass the manner of food preparation, the style of cooking, the social rules governing when, how, by whom they are prepared and eaten, and the circumstances under which they are eaten. People combine knowledge about the life histories of animals to develop strategies that are energetically efficient, provide a good return for effort, and balance return against risk. Food preferences, site functions, settlement patterns, human nutritional needs, the number of people available to participate in the effort, the means of capture, other benefits the resource might provide, and social obligations are also considered in subsistence strategies. Although some strategies are specialized and focus on one or a few resources, others are generalized or diffuse, using

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many different resources. Most strategies are characterized by flexibility within a range of resources defined as such by cultural standards. People develop strategies on the basis of daily, monthly, seasonal, and annual schedules and may alter the settlement size, location, and density in response to opportunities to acquire or manage resources at a given time and place using a particular technology. These resource choices may be interpreted from the identity of the animals used, the body size of animals with indeterminate growth, age classes and sex ratios, relative frequencies of animals, dietary contributions, and incremental growth structures. Of particular importance is supporting evidence from oxygen isotopes, which may provide information about the prevailing temperature when the animal died and support inferences about season of death. Season of death may, in turn, lead to information about the role of seasons in settlement patterns, exchange systems, and other activities. Methods of disarticulating animals often correlate with distance of the acquisition point from the consumption point, domestication, storage options, exchange systems, social or ethnic affiliation, ritual uses, and site function. Exchange might be through reciprocity, redistribution, or markets, but it influences how much of an animal and what portions were available to and used by a given household. Exchanges over greater distances, especially trade in food stuffs, raw materials, and finished products, may be difficult to determine at the site of origin but obvious at the endpoint in the exchange system. Both trade and storage require processing the meat source for long-term survival and this also may be evident. Such interpretations are derived from the identity and relative frequencies of the animals used, skeletal portions, dietary contribution, and modifications. Site function (e.g., ritual center, military outpost, trading post, hunt camp, farmstead, urban center) and evidence for colonization and migrations can also be interpreted from such evidence. Capture technology may be interpreted from the identity and body size of prey animals combined with knowledge of their preferred habits and habitats. The presence of animals which are active at night, live in deep waters, prefer solitary lives, have different strategies as young animals than they do as adults, raid gardens, or avoid traps all provide information about the techniques, schedules, and locations used by people to acquire them. Although part of the diet can be observed in the zooarchaeological record, ethnographic studies show that plant rather than animal foods are generally more frequently consumed. It is plant foods that provide the water-soluble vitamins that need to be

replenished daily. Therefore, a complete dietary study should include human, plant, and nonhuman animal remains. Human health is more typically studied by human biologists, but the information about human nutritional status, population size, age and sex ratios, trace elements, stable isotopes, and activity patterns is often critical to zooarchaeological interpretations. In turn, the identity and frequencies of the animals used (particularly if they might be ‘famine’ foods), unusual aspects of their size, age, and sex composition, skeletal portions used, dietary contributions, and some aspects of modifications augment interpretations of human health. Animal Domestication and Animal Health

The impact of taming, management, and domestication on animals, human society, and the environment was and continues to be great (see Animal Domestication). The study of animal domestication focuses on defining the multiple origins of domestic animals, identifying their wild progenitors, the processes and stages of domestication, the spread of animal husbandry, and the cultural conditions that promoted these economic changes. In some cases, close affiliation has resulted in an exchange of diseases between domestic animals and people. The characteristics of domestic animals which distinguish them from wild ones are reflected in their size, conformation, variability, social behavior, and the contexts within which they occur. Many of these features do not survive in the archaeological record, especially those associated with attributes of coat and behavior, although exceptions do occur. Instead, domestic animals are usually identified by virtue of being outside the known range of their wild progenitors, from their size and conformation, age and sex profiles, the relative frequencies of animals, the frequencies of skeletal portions, especially in the degree of skeletal completeness, and evidence of congenital abnormalities or diseases associated with domestication. Such evidence is augmented by DNA and molecular studies which provide important insights into their ancestry and affiliations (see DNA: Ancient; Modern, and Archaeology). Indirect evidence of animal domestication, such as corrals, harnesses, and artistic renderings, are also used. Tracing the routes over which early domestic animals spread from centers of domestication to other parts of the world also documents exchange routes, the spread of cultural influences, migration routes, and colonization. Technical and Social Uses of Animals

Animals also provide materials which may be used for clothing, shelter, containers, tools, ornaments, and

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many other purposes. The feathers, wool, hair, fur, hide, horn, and shell used for these purposes usually do not survive archaeologically, but when they do they greatly expand our understanding of the technical and social uses of animals. Some animals, usually domestic ones, also provided dung used for plaster, fertilizer, and fuel. The presence of some animals, even scavengers and commensals, may provide indirect evidence for animal husbandry if they are associated with habitat alteration, grazing lands, or animal fodder. Gender, social identity, social hierarchies, and ideology were undoubtedly major influences in the use of animals. High status in a ranked society may be signified by the use of rare or exotic animals, large animals, a diverse range of animals, or portions of the carcass that were more highly valued than were others. Animals serve as symbols of political authority, special skills, and sacred precincts or events. They also are totems of an age class, ritual society, or kin group. Many animals with symbolic meaning have a higher caloric cost or risk potential to capture, maintain, or process. Social distinctions may be reflected by the identity of the animals involved, their size, age, and sex, relative frequencies of animals, frequencies of skeletal portions, dietary contributions, and modifications associated with unusual butchering or food preparation techniques. Such interpretations are greatly assisted by indirect evidence such as figurines, murals, ancient texts, ethno-historic accounts, and ceramic motifs. Similar evidence supports interpretations of cultural attitudes toward animals and food. Cultural attitudes include definitions of animals as preferred foods, nonfoods, famine foods, funeral foods, feasting foods, and sacrificial foods. Pets are a form of ritual relationship with animals, but many other sacred uses of animals are known. Sometimes animal remains are associated with communal eating or feasting or ritual sacrifices and offerings. Sacred uses of animals are indicated by the presence of animals not found in other contexts, relative frequencies of animals, skeletal completeness, modifications, and archaeological context. Such interpretations are strengthened by burial offerings, association with ceremonial or communal structures, and by textual or graphic evidence. Food taboos are worldwide and may serve functional purposes in the communities where they are found, but they are difficult to verify because food taboos may result in the absence of the taboo animal from the archaeological site. In fact, all symbolic or ideological interpretations are difficult to confirm because they are the product of cultures and belief systems which are different from our own.

Palaeoenvironments and Environmental Change

The study of palaeoenvironments and environmental change is an important aspect of zooarchaeological research (see Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Methods). Humans are, in part, responsible for some environmental changes because their activities destroy, modify, and create habitats. People also overuse preferred resources and may force some animals to be extirpated from their range or to go extinct. In other cases, humans were not responsible for the changes but their responses to alterations in available resources are part of the environmental history of the site and the region. Evidence of palaeoenvironments and environmental change is primarily derived from the presence of indicator animals, relative frequencies of key animals, their size, growth habits, and age classes, incremental growth structures, and body part frequencies, all of which are also markers of changes in seasonal periodicity, site function, settlement patterns, capture technologies, and other cultural behaviors. Because these are archaeological materials, the product of human behavior, alternate cultural interpretations must be eliminated as an explanation before concluding that changes in animal remains are evidence for environmental change. Separating the evidence for cultural changes, especially those related to seasonal periodicity, from evidence for environmental change is particularly challenging. As with all other interpretations, the accumulation of evidence pointing to the same conclusions strengthens characterizations of former conditions, whether the changes occurred during or as a consequence of occupation, and whether changes were brought about by environmental conditions beyond human control or by people as agents of change. It is particularly important that interpretations of environmental change be substantiated by evidence from palaeoethnobotany, geomorphology, and soil science. Geochemistry, particularly oxygen isotopes, add the possibility of palaeothermometer proxies to the tool kit. As evidence for the impact of human behavior on the environment grows, zooarchaeologists are made aware that archaeological sites contain a record of Holocene environmental history that often is not available from any other source. Zooarchaeological data are used in wildlife conservation, heritage management, and policy decisions. These applications require that zooarchaeologists pay particular attention to methodological and interpretive flaws in order to avoid unintended political and economic consequences when their data are used by conservation advocates, resource managers, and other groups to support or refute policy decisions and political

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agenda. Such users are unfamiliar with the nuances of the field and easily may use zooarchaeological data inappropriately.

Ecofacts, Overview; Insect Analysis; Invertebrate Analysis; Organic Residue Analysis; Preservation, Modes of; Stable Isotope Analysis; Taphonomy; Trace Element Analysis; Vertebrate Analysis.

Conclusion This survey only touches the surface of this diverse field. Although the interpretive aspects of zooarchaeological analysis are exciting, the animal remains themselves and the pathways they followed to become part of the archaeological sample obstruct this goal. The choice of method should be guided by the research question. The forces which created the sample being studied and the methods used to study it must be considered when judging the merits of the interpretations. Changes begin to accumulate when the animal enters the cultural setting and increase as the animal becomes part of the archaeological deposit. Recovery, identification, quantification, and interpretation also introduce biases. In order to reach their full potential, zooarchaeological interpretations should be based on multiple lines of evidence and placed in their environmental and cultural contexts. Nonetheless, zooarchaeologists contribute important information to studies of former environments, relationships between humans and those environments, and the impact people have had on the world in which they live. See also: Bone Tool Analysis; Butchery and Kill Sites; Coprolite Analysis; Cultural Ecology; DNA: Ancient;

Art

Further Reading Bar-Yosef D (ed.) (2005) Archaeomalacology. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Claassen C (1998) Shells. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davies J, Fabis M, Mainland I, Richards M, and Thomas R (eds.) (2005) Health and Diet in Past Animal Populations. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Lauwerier RCGM and Plug I (eds.) (2004) The Future from the Past: Archaeozoology in Wildlife Conservation and Heritage Management. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Maltby M (ed.) (2006) Integrating Zooarchaeology. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Miracle P and Milner N (eds.) (2002) Consuming Passions and Patterns of Consumption. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Mondini M, Mun˜oz S, and Wickler S (eds.) (2004) Colonisation, Migration and Marginal Areas: A Zooarchaeological Approach. Oxford: Oxbow Books. O’Day SJ, Van Neer W, and Ervynck A (eds.) (2004) Behaviour behind Bones: The Zooarchaeology of Ritual, Religion, Status and Identity. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Reitz KJ and Wing ES (2008) Zooarchaeology, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ruscillo D (ed.) (2006) Recent Advances in Ageing and Sexing Animal Bones. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Vigne JD, Helmer D, and Peters J (eds.) (2005) The First Steps in Animal Domestication. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

See: Interpretive Art and Archaeology.

ARTIFACTS, OVERVIEW Jane Balme, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary core In stone tool manufacture, the core is the stone nodule or fragment from which flakes are removed. Some of the removed flakes are then used as tools or modified further. The core may also be used as a tool.

flake In stone tool manufacture, a flake is a fragment removed from the core. blade In stone tool manufacture, a blade is a long thin flake usually defined as at least twice as long as it is wide. point In stone tool manufacture, a blade that has been created or modified to form a point at one end. Solutrean A term used to refer to a stone tool making tradition of the European Upper Palaeolithic existing from about 21 000 to 16 000 years BP. australopithecine A member of the genus Australopithecus, the oldest species of which lived about 4.2 million years ago and the most recent became extinct about 1 million years ago.

ARTIFACTS, OVERVIEW 509 knapper An individual who makes stone tools by percussion or pressure. Dong son A Bronze Age culture dating from about 800 to 200 BC. Originally centered on the Red River Valley in Vietnam, it spread to other areas in Southeast Asia and southern China. Lapita pottery A pottery type, some of which are distinctively decorated. Lapita pottery is associated with the eastward colonization of the Pacific from about 3500 years ago.

Introduction Archaeology is commonly defined as the study of the human past through the analysis of the material remains left behind. These include plant and animal remains as well as our ancestors’ bones, all of which can reveal much, for example, about our ancestors’ physical appearance, food choices, and the environment within which they lived. The other main kind of material remains studied by archaeologists are artifacts. The simplest definition of an artifact is anything that has been modified, made or used by humans or their ancestors. Thus an artifact can be string made from fibrous bark, a basket woven from the string, or simply a piece of unmodified bark that has been used, for example, to carry water. In combination with other archaeological evidence, the study of artifacts can provide information about many things including our ancestors’ technology (why things were made in the way that they were), their cognitive abilities, the kinds of activities they undertook, how they organized themselves socially, whether they traded with other groups, how they moved around their landscape, and some aspects of their ideology. The problem for archaeologists is how to get such information from objects that cannot speak for themselves.

Survival of Artifacts When considering the history of artifacts and their development at different times and in different places, it is important to appreciate how few of the artifacts used by our ancestors have survived to be found today. All artifacts are subject to decay, but the speed at which they decay depends on the materials from which they are made and the environment in which they are left. Some of the decay is caused by physical processes such as wind, rain, and sun exposure. Fragile items are particularly susceptible to these processes. Chemical processes also cause decay. For example, iron artifacts rust when exposed to oxygen and moisture and acids contained within surrounding soils dissolve artifacts made from plant and animal products. Biological processes actively decay artifacts made from plant and animal products that attract scavengers, insects, and bacteria.

Survival of artifacts in the archaeological record therefore depends on the extent to which they are protected from all of these elements. Bacteria thrive in moisture, and biological organisms depend on oxygen. Rapid burial or enclosed spaces such as caves, protect artifacts from physical processes (see Caves and Rockshelters; Sites: Mounded and Unmounded). Very dry sites without moisture and places that restrict access to oxygen, such as bogs and frozen sites (see Frozen Sites and Bodies; Sites: Waterlogged), protect organic artifacts. Sometimes artifacts survive because people in the past have taken steps to deliberately protect them from decay. Good examples of these are the ancient Egyptian practice of mummification of important people and the protection of their goods by building elaborate tombs. It is important to recognize, however, that such circumstances are exceptional and, although some of the situations mentioned above will protect artifacts for thousands of years, only those artifacts made of the most durable materials will survive for long periods. All of this means that, although our knowledge of the variety of artifacts made and used in the very recent past is relatively complete, the further we go back in time the less likely we are to recover the full range of artifacts made and used by people. In addition, the kinds of artifacts available to investigate the deep past is biased toward only the most robust materials, in particular those made of stone.

A Short History of Artifacts It is easy to think of technological change as evolving in unidirectional manner from simple stone artifacts to the complex variety present today. There is also the tendency to equate technological change with technological improvement. Neither of these two statements is true. Technological change has not been unidirectional as not all groups of people develop or make use of all technologies available to them and there are many examples where the use of specific technologies has ceased altogether or for long periods. Some of the reasons for people’s choices in the use of technology are discussed under the next section, but it is important to stress the role of ideology in the direction of artifact change. The use of particular artifacts is the result of people’s perceived needs, some of which may not lead to the use of the most efficient artifacts. For example, seeking strictly economic reasons for the cessation of pottery production despite its earlier established presence in some regions of prehistoric Britain and Ireland may not be fruitful. Having said all of that, it is possible to make the generalization that, over time, the variety of artifacts

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in the world has increased. The oldest recognizable artifacts are made from stone and were found at Gona, Ethiopia (Figure 1). They date to about 2.6– 2.5 million years ago. No fossils of human ancestors were found with these artifacts, and there are several possible candidates for their makers. The most likely is the early hominin Australopithecus garhi, the fossils of which have been found in contemporary sites elsewhere in Ethiopia. It is hard to know exactly what the artifacts were used for, because there is little associated archaeological material to provide clues. However, stone artifacts dated to about 2.5 million years ago from another Ethiopian site, Bouri, have been found associated with fossil animal bones that appear to have cut marks, suggesting that these artifacts may have been used to remove meat from bone. The Gona stones are recognizably artifacts because they have fractured in such a way that their deliberate modification is not in doubt (see Lithics: Manufacture). It is possible that stones were used as tools well before this time but that, because they were not modified, they are not recognizable as artifacts. It is also very likely that tools were previously made of

organic materials such as wood and have not survived to be discovered today. These oldest stone artifacts are simply either pieces of stone flaked from a larger piece (core) and the cores from which they derive. The flakes were made by striking a hand-held pebble against another piece to produce flakes that were then used as tools, although the core itself could also be used as a tool. Only a few flakes were removed from each core before it was then discarded. The resulting artifact assemblage is relatively unpatterned. Although it is not exactly clear which hominin species made the very oldest artifacts, it is almost certain that Homo habilis, a species that lived in Africa from about 2.4 million years ago to just after 1.8 million years ago, made stone tools because their fossils have been found in clear association with stone artifacts. These early stone artifacts may appear rudimentary and we cannot be sure what they were used for, apart from the removal of meat at some sites, but their presence nevertheless tells us many things about our ancestors living that that time. First, the artifact makers understood the different flaking properties

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Figure 1 The word’s oldest stone artefacts from Gona, Ethiopia. Reprinted from Journal of Archaeological Science, Vol. 27, Semaw S, The world’s oldest stone artefacts from Gona, Ethiopia: Their implications for understanding stone technology and patterns of human evolution between 2.6–1.5 million years ago, 1197–1214, Copyright (2000), with permission from Elsevier.

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of various stone sources available. The selection of raw materials to make artifacts was not random. Stones for making artifacts were selected because they were especially good for flaking to make sharp edges. Flaking also requires good hand–eye coordination. In addition, studies have shown that most of the artifacts from these old assemblages were made by right-handed knappers. Right-handedness is a uniquely human trait in the modern world, and appears to have been present in this early stage of our evolution. Other aspects of life are demonstrated by the fact that many artifacts have been found several kilometers away from the rock source suggesting that, rather than moving around the landscape randomly, activities were planned. Over time, and possibly associated with increases in brain size, our ancestors learned more about the properties of different types of rocks and developed new ways of modifying them, resulting in a great diversity in the kinds of tools created. For example, rather than concentrating on flakes struck with a single blow from a core, more blows were used to deliberately shape the core so that blades and points could be produced. New techniques, including pressing to remove very small flakes, began to be used to control the shape of artifacts producing tools such as the refined leaf-shaped Solutrean points made in Europe by about 20 000 years ago (Figure 2). Over time, these artifacts became increasingly diverse both between and within regions as new techniques for modifying artifacts were developed and as groups produced their own distinctive styles and techniques. Although there are no surviving artifacts made from plants at any of the early australopithecine and

Figure 2 Pressure-flaked Solutrean point.

H. habilis sites, some of the fossil animal bones present at these sites may have been used as tools in a relatively unmodified form. Perhaps the sharp point made on a broken bone may have been used to pierce skin, or a sharp edge may have been used as a knife. However, it is extremely difficult to identify wear patterns from use on such fragmented materials. Microscopic wear patterns on bone tools from the Swartkrans and Sterkfontein sites in South Africa, occupied between about 1.8 and 1.0 million years ago, resemble experimental bone used to probe termite mounds suggesting that Australopithecus robustus ate termites as part of their diet. The oldest surviving incontrovertible tools made from plant material are four wooden tools from 400 000-year-old sediments at Scho¨ningen in Germany, presumably made by Homo heidelbergensis. Three of these are long (1.81–2.25 m), slender poles and have a sharpened point at one end, suggesting that they may have been used as spears. The fourth wooden tool has both ends sharpened and is 78 cm long. As far as it is possible to tell, all artifacts made before the appearance of our own species, Homo sapiens, appear to be for obtaining food. As well as creating a greater diversity of these extractive tools in a variety of raw materials, H. sapiens began to decorate tools and to create artifacts such as beads, pendants, and carved objects that were not directly associated with food extraction. Some of the earliest have been recovered from Blombos Cave on the southern cape shoreline of South Africa. Artifacts excavated from this site include a group of 41 perforated (presumably so that they can be strung as beads) estuarine tick shells dated to about 76 000 years ago. Beads and pendants seem to be ubiquitous wherever modern humans have been found. They occur in western and eastern Europe from about 40 000 years ago and in Australia from before 30 000 years ago (Figure 3). Other early decorative objects include an incised piece of ochre from Blombos Cave dated to about 70 000 years ago and, from European sites, animal carvings dated to over 30 000 years ago. Particularly abundant in western and eastern Europe between about 25 000 and 23 000 years ago are small human figurines most of which appear to represent females (Figure 4). As people dispersed throughout the world, the artifacts that they made increasingly diversified. People who continued to move around the landscape undoubtedly used containers made from plant material such as bark or woven fiber and animal skin. Although very old examples of these have not survived, impressions of cordage and textile items on burnt clay were found in hearths from Upper Palaeolithic sites in Germany, Russia, and Moravia, some as

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Figure 3 More than 32 000-year-old beads from northwest Australia. Photo courtesy: Kate Morse.

Figure 5 Clay tokens suggested to be the earliest evidence for record keeping.

Figure 4 Figurine about 25 000 years old from Willendorf, Austria (height about 11 cm).

old as 27 000 years ago from Moravian sites. The plasticity of clay also made it a suitable material to fabricate bricks for structures by some societies that, from about 10 000 years ago in some parts of the world, began to stay in one camp for longer periods and, rather than hunting and collecting all their foods, began to produce some of their own food. In food-producing societies, the tasks associated with food production could be undertaken by fewer people, thus allowing greater specialization in craft production. Growing populations in these societies

placed new demands on technology. For example, soil tilling of a large field requires ploughs and growing villages require sanitation technology. The centralized production of food also instigated the production of new kinds of artifacts needed to symbolize the measurement of quantities of food for exchange. It has been suggested that small tokens (Figure 5) that occur from about 9000 years ago in public buildings on many sites in the Middle East may represent counters or symbols for particular quantities of materials such as grain. Writing, another symbolic development, required the fabrications of specific pointed tools (styluses) to make marks. Technology changes as human societies evolve. In societies with little economic change, there is often less pressure for technological change. Instead, technology changes to provide greater efficiency in already-established practices or as a response to social demands (which may or may not result in greater efficieny). Artifacts diversify as new technologies are developed and new materials and new ways of making traditional artifacts are created. Which artifacts are made reflect the histories and needs of the

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society making them. For example, fishing technologies are made and used by groups who live on the coast, and grinding technology by groups who rely on seeds. Once again it is important to recognize that the relationship between environment and technology is not always straightforward. A well-known example is the cessation of fish eating and associated technology by coastal Tasmanians about 3500 years ago. It is also important to recognize that the driving force for technology development is not necessarily directly linked to food collecting. For example, it has been argued that metallurgical technology in west Mexico between AD 600 and 700 was driven by the function of the artifacts as ritual and status items, so that qualities such as color and sound rather than utilitarian properties such as hardness and durability were the drivers of the technological development.

Explaining the Diversity of Artifacts Societies’ needs vary according to their economic bases and these in themselves are inextricably intertwined with their historical and social development. People who live near resource-rich coasts are likely (although not always) to make equipment to extract marine foods but which equipment they use to catch fish, for example, will depend on their other technologies (do they have a fiber technology needed to make nets?) and social decisions such as whether they want to catch large numbers of fish cooperatively with nets and traps or individually using spears or lines. But, clearly there are factors other than economy that influence the diversity of artifacts over time and place. Even artifacts made at the same time and for the same purpose vary – just think about the variety of corkscrew designs. Some of this variety is linked to the fact that different raw materials behave in different ways and so the shape of the artifact is affected by the raw materials from which it is made. Other variations are the result of different design solutions for the same functions and style differences, such as decoration, that are not necessarily associated with the function of the artifact. Artistic tradition may also play a role in the design of objects, and the creative philosophy of the culture affects the variety of designs made. In summary, artifact diversity depends on the functions for which the makers intend the object to be used (which is in turn dependent on historical and social circumstance), the raw material with which the artifacts are made, the technology associated with production, and the styles chosen by the artifact makers. Different raw materials have different physical properties that make them suitable for some designs and not others. An object made to contain water must be steep-sided to hold the water and should be made

of relatively nonporous material. Which nonporous material the artisan selects then depends on what is available (and at what cost), their skill at manipulating different raw materials, and ultimately how they want the artifact to appear. All of these factors are affected by the social context in which the artifact is made. Social context affects raw material use because it dictates fashions and because it influences access to raw materials through internal politics and through political associations with neighbouring communities that might provide access to specific raw materials in their region. Technology associated with production affects the final form of an object. There are some objects that can only be made when a particular technology is available but objects with the same function can be made using different technologies. A bottle can be made with glass, animal hide, or clay. A ceramic bowl can be shaped by hand, with a coil technique or by using a potters’ wheel. A potter’s decision about which technique to use will depend on not only the technology available but also on individual choice that will be influenced by their social situation. Within societies, individuals and groups also affect how objects are made. If they are the makers themselves, how the object is made is influenced by such factors as economic circumstances (what materials they have access to) and how they want to be perceived by others. Do they want to express their status or association within a particular subgroup in a society? Is the artifact being made for themselves or are they making it for someone else? In modern industrial societies, changes in technology, design, and fashion are in the interests of manufacturers. But the essential social influences on artifact design have not changed much since the emergence of H. sapiens. As in all human societies, the makers of objects are influenced by their teachers. Groups of people who interact frequently develop designs and ways of making objects that are characteristic of their own social circles. With the dispersal of people throughout the world, there are a great variety of approaches to the same technological problem but styles and motifs are often instantly recognizable. In addition to how artisans learn to make objects, there are circumstances in which they may choose to emphasize affiliations – for example, to demonstrate their belonging to a particular social group. Sometimes belonging might be expressed by the use of a particular kind of artifact. For example, the decorated bronze cast Dong Son drums of Southeast Asia (Figure 6) were first made probably in north Vietnam sometime before the sixth century BC and quickly spread (through local manufacture and trade) to south and southwest China, Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Indonesia. This dispersal

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in culturally different regions does not necessarily indicate that the drums were used for the same purpose but it does indicate a shared ideology between these disparate groups. Sometimes a shared ideology is expressed in the ways that people make a variety of artifacts. For example, about 3000 years ago, Chavin, a distinctive art style originating at the site of Chavı´n de Hua´ntar, spread across what had previously been highly regionalized valleys in what is now Peru. This style was apparent in many different types of artifacts in the region including pottery, sculpture, and textiles. The common style expressed a unification of disparate groups that made it possible to encourage trade between the various highland valleys. There are also circumstances where people choose to emphasize difference. This may be expressed by groups of people deliberately choosing to produce one artifact rather than another or deliberately spurning artifacts used by other cultures. Consider, for example, the use of Christian crosses and Buddha statues. With the advent of globalization, regional differences in artifacts are no longer as obvious. This is particularly so for industrialized countries where most people have access to the Internet and to material goods from all over the world. There seems to be an emphasis on unification between these countries.

Figure 6 Dong Son drum (height about 26 cm).

Figure 7 Viking comb made from antler.

In developing countries or isolated places, where this outside access is not readily available or where emphasis is placed on maintaining traditional customs, the cultural derivation of the artifacts is much more obvious.

The Challenge for Archaeologists Knowing why artifacts vary gives some idea of the kinds of questions about the past that can be answered from the artifacts. Perhaps the most common question asked is what was an artifact used for? Sometimes the answer is relatively easy because the artifact is similar to something used today. For example, the frequency of occurrence of items such as that in Figure 7 in Viking sites and their similarity to our hair combs means that such items can be convincingly argued to be used for the same purpose. However, the older the artifact, the more difficult it is to make such convincing analogies. Interpretation of the function of, for example, a stone artifact from the deep past depends on analogies made with modern stone tool using groups (see Ethnoarchaeology), experiments (see Experimental Archaeology; Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear), and identification of residues on the artifact (see Blood Residue Analysis; Chemical Analysis Techniques). The context of the artifact, in particular its association with other materials, can also help identify its function. One of the difficulties in asking the ‘function question’ is that not all artifacts are used for a single purpose. A stone artifact may be made initially to remove the bark from a stick but it can be subsequently used in its initial form to do other tasks, or it may be remodeled to suit some other purpose. The more durable the raw material the more often it can be reused, either for its original purpose (such as modern recycling of roofing iron) or for a new use (such as the milk powder tin recreated as a child’s toy) (Figure 8). The display of excavated artifacts in museums today could also be considered another example of recycling (from their original function to an educational function). The recycling example highlights the importance of context in the interpretation of artifacts. An artifact

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Figure 8 Toy roller ‘truck’ made from sugar can, wire, and fabric collected at Balgo community by Peter Bindon and Moya Smith. Photo courtesy: Moya Smith, Western Australian Museum.

sitting on someone’s mantelpiece with no information about the context in which it was found says something about the person on whose mantelpiece it stands (why do they choose to place this artifact in this place?) but very little about the people who made the object. Context is important, then, not only because it helps provide information about artifact function, but because it is possible to say something about the people who made it. In addition, knowing where the artifact was positioned in a site can reveal its age relative to other artifacts (see Sites: Formation Processes). Spatial analysis can tell us what structures and other artifacts it is associated with (see Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites) and perhaps who it was used by. Artifacts found in the same context are referred to as an assemblage. For example, a silver bowl might be used for many purposes, but if the bowl is found with tableware it may be concluded that it was used for serving food or drink. If the bowl was found with objects of ritual, it might be concluded that the bowl was used as part of ritual behavior. Objects made of rare materials, especially when they occur in patterned contexts, and the presence of rare items whose only function is symbolic might suggest status. Knowledge of context in which the artifacts were found and the variables that affect the shape, style, and materials used in the artifacts are guides to the types of questions that can be answered. There are questions of cognitive abilities such as those associated with making the first stone artifacts, of technology available, and, depending on the varieties of technologies evident in an assemblage, whether

all technologies were available to the entire community. There are questions about access to raw materials as evidenced by the rarity or otherwise of high-quality materials and the use of recycling, and there are questions of social networks of which the Chavin art style and Dong Son drums are examples. Differences in status or roles within groups are determined by interpreting patterns in the types of artifacts found in association with each other. For example, societies with hierarchical divisions would be indicated by the presence of rare materials used especially in symbolical artifacts such as jewelry.

Analysis and Interpretation It should be clear that the first step in extracting a story about the past from artifacts is to think about what it is that you want to know from the artifacts – the research question. Examples of questions and approaches to extracting information from different types of artifacts can be found in the sections in this encyclopaedia dealing with different kinds of material remains. (see Bone Tool Analysis; Fiber Artifacts; Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear; Pottery Analysis: Stylistic; Vitreous Materials Analysis). The main general point to be made is that questions are not really worth answering unless they are set in some kind of theoretical context. Different kinds of theoretical approaches account for differences between the questions asked by archaeologists and the way in which they go about answering them. Remember that, whatever your approach, there has to be a reason for asking the question.

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It is also important to remember that, although popular archaeology books often concentrate on spectacular and rare artifacts, it is often mundane and common objects such as stone tools and pottery that enable a more complete story to be told. One example is the suggestion that the apparently mundane change from haphazard to ordered rows in toothbrush bristle placement in the late eighteenth century reflects an increasing importance of discipline and order in Western society at that time. Using artifacts to answer a question almost involves all three steps of data gathering, analysis, and interpretation. Obviously, these are linked in that the data gathered and the analyses conducted have to be able to answer the question. Imagine you have an assemblage of pottery from a site and want to know about trade networks. You might divide the assemblage into pottery made locally and that made in other places. You need to select a series of attributes to distinguish different types in the pottery (see Classification and Typology). The source of pottery may be identifiable by style or raw material (see Pottery Analysis: Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis). The result would be a set of types based on one or both of these selected attributes. The proportions of each type present at the site could then be compared to answer the question. If only locally made pottery is present at your site, the people living there in the past did not trade (or at least not in pottery). The same assemblage could be used to answer a question about status. This time the assemblage would need to be sorted by attributes indicative of status. These might include the quality of clay (whether coarse or bone china), the maker, or possibly the design. Decisions about which attribute best indicates status will, of course, depend on the historical context of the site and your theoretical outlook but the principle is the same. Take note, however, that for most of our past it is very difficult to draw a direct analogy between what we might consider to be a style or object of high status. The analysis approach described above is a very simplified version of what actually happens. In practice, archaeologists use as much evidence as possible to answer their research question. A study of status will not rely on one kind of artifact but several analyses of the various artifacts represented at the site as well as analyses of other kinds of archaeological evidence represented at the site. For example, the timing of the settlement of the central Pacific has been suggested by analyzing the distribution of dates associated with finds of a finely decorated type of pottery known as Lapita.

Conclusion Our record of artifacts used in the past is far from complete, but it is our main source of knowledge about our ancestors. There are many reasons why artifacts have varied over time and place including differences in availability of raw material, technologies, and the choices people have made about what they want to make and how they want to make them. As individuals or groups of individuals ultimately make artifacts, their relationship within the society in which they live clearly affects the way in which they make objects. By themselves and out of context, artifacts can say little about the past. They can only ‘speak’ when they are analyzed and interpreted to answer questions asked in the present. Although we cannot have the same experiences as the artifact makers of the past, studying the variety of artifacts recovered from the past can nevertheless say a lot about how human culture came to be as diverse as it is today. See also: Blood Residue Analysis; Bone Tool Analysis; Caves and Rockshelters; Chemical Analysis Techniques; Classification and Typology; Ethnoarchaeology; Experimental Archaeology; Fiber Artifacts; Frozen Sites and Bodies; Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear; Manufacture; Metals: Chemical Analysis; Primary Production Studies of; Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis; Stylistic; Sites: Mounded and Unmounded; Waterlogged; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites; Vitreous Materials Analysis.

Further Reading Andrefsky W (1998) Lithics: Macroscopic Approaches to Analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press. Balme J and Paterson A (eds.) (2006) Archaeology in Practice: A Student Guide to Archaeological Analyses. Blackwell Publishing. Banning EB (2000) The Archaeologist’s Laboratory. Analysis of Archaeological Data. New York: Kluwer/Plenum. Blackwell LR and d’Errico F (2001) Evidence of termite foraging by Swartkans early hominids. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98: 1358–1363. Henshilwood C, d’Errico F, Vanhaeren M, van Niekerk K, and Jacobs Z (2004) Middle Stone Age shell beads from South Africa. Science 304(5669): 404. Hosler D (1994) The Sounds and Colors of Power: The Sacred Metallurgical Technology of Ancient West Mexico. Chicago: MIT Press. Loney HL (2000) Society and technological control: A critical review of models of technological change in ceramic studies. American Antiquity 65(4): 646–668.

ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS 517 Orton C, Tyers P, and Vince A (1993) Pottery in Archaeology. Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Semaw S (2000) The world’s oldest stone artefacts from Gona, Ethiopia: Their implications for understanding stone technology and patterns of human evolution between 2.6–1.5 million years ago. Journal of Archaeological Science 27: 1197–1214. Shackel P (1993) Personal Discipline and Material Culture: An Archaeology of Annapolis, Maryland, 1695–1870. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press.

Soffer O, Adovasio JM, Illingworth JS, Amirkhanov HA, Praslov ND, and Street M (2000) Palaeolithic perishables made permanent. Antiquity 74(286): 812. Thieme H (1997) Lower Palaeolithic hunting spears from Germany. Nature 385: 807–810. Toth N and Schick K (1993) Making Silent Stones Speak: Human Evolution and the Dawn of Technology. New York: Simon and Schuster.

ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS William Honeychurch, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA Joshua Wright, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary absolute dating Any form of dating material remains that yields a calendar-based date range and as used here, usually refers to radiocarbon dating of organic materials. bit wear analysis Macro and microscopic study of the lower premolars of ancient horses to determine the presence of abrasion marks suggestive of bitting and therefore, use of horses for transport. Eneolithic A technology-based period of time between the terminal Neolithic and early Bronze Age when copper metallurgy was practiced. This period is also sometimes referred to as the Chalcolithic in western Eurasia and more broadly as the Early Metal Age in eastern Eurasia. kurgan Term associated with Eurasian steppe archaeology referring to an artificial mound made of earth or stone, or both, and covering a burial. mobile pastoralism Also known as nomadic pastoralism and defined as a subsistence economy based on the herding of animals by way of periodic residential movement. Scythian A term used to refer to a specific Iron Age group of steppe peoples in western Central Eurasia but also refers to a material culture horizon having artifact types, styles, and cultural and technological practices in common and found across Central Eurasia. steppe Diverse forms of grassland that characterize major vegetational zones across Central Eurasia ranging from forested or alpine steppe to desert or arid steppe.

Eurasia encompasses a majority of what archaeologists refer to as the Old World. Its heartland, known as Central Eurasia, is a broad belt of steppe grasslands fringed by tracts of coniferous forest to the north and to the south by high mountains and deserts punctuated

with inland seas. Beyond these mountains and deserts are the temperate regions of Eurasia that gave rise to pristine civilizations built upon intensive agriculture, urban centers, and aggregated populations. In contrast, Central Eurasia is arid and cold, having extreme shifts in seasonal temperature, low population densities, animal centered subsistence economies and cultures adapted to this harsh setting. With time, the first Central Eurasians adapted and prospered under these conditions, such that their descendants eventually epeopled the New World, forged roads of communication between Old World civilizations, and assembled some of the most impressive empires in human history. The sociocultural strategies that opened the Eurasian steppe lands to human habitation provide an underlying commonality to the prehistory of this diverse macro-region. We focus on the eastern flank of Central Eurasia, an area where pastoral nomads still drive their herd animals among grasslands, forests, and deserts today. The historical geographer, Owen Lattimore, used the term ‘Inner Asia’ for this area which overlaps the borders of several contemporary nations. For our purposes, Inner Asia comprises Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Gansu, and Ningxia provinces of northwestern China, Eastern Kazakhstan, and the South Siberian regions of Altai, Minusinsk basin, Tuva, Baikal, and Buriatiia (Figure 1). When influential developments occur on the periphery of Inner Asia, we expand our discussion to include those regions.

Palaeolithic Adaptations of Inner Asia Major issues in the archaeology of the Palaeolithic in Central Eurasia concern the entrance and adaptation of hominid groups in the region. Foremost is the

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Figure 1 The geography and major archaeological sites of Inner Asia and peripheral regions, as numbered: (1) Ulalinka, (2) TeshikTash, (3) Obi-Rakhmat, (4) Denisova Cave, (5) Okladnikov Cave, (6) Tsagaan Agui, (7) Kara-Bom, (8) Mal’ta, (9) Shuidonggou, (10) Shabarak Us, (11) Tamsagbulag, (12) Ust’-Ida, (13) Budulan, (14) Botai, (15) Suchanicha, (16) Arkaim/Sintashta, (17) Zhukaigou, (18) Zuukh, (19) Atasu, (20) Qizilchoqa, (21) Karasuk cemetery, (22) Nanshangen, (23) Arzhan, (24) Pazyryk, (25) Issyk, (26) Uushigiin Ovor, (27) Xiaobaiyang, (28) Maoqinggou, (29) Khujir, (30) Egiin Gol/Burkhan Tolgoi, (31) Tebsh Uul, (32) Noyon Uul, (33) Tsaram, (34) Daodunzi, (35) Ivolga, (36) Tuzusai.

problem of the initial peopling of the cold grassland environment of Central Eurasia. At what point did human ancestors first appear in the region, from where, and what technologies supported their existence in this novel setting? Having arrived, how did they adapt and interact, particularly as evidenced by the lithic technologies they left behind? These are basic questions that concern early human mobility and its development, a topic critical to the archaeology of Central Eurasia during all periods.

Pleistocene pebble industries at the sites of Kuldara and Karatau represent the early evidence of hominid dispersals along the edges of Inner Asia. Early sites in Siberia at Ulalinka, Mokhovo I, and Diring Yuriakh have flaked stone assemblages thought to date prior to 300 000 years ago, however, whether these assemblages are actually human-made has been disputed. The current evidence for hominid entry into Siberia is younger than 200 000 years and is marked by Middle Palaeolithic technologies (see Siberia, Peopling of).

The Lower Palaeolithic

The Middle Palaeolithic

Discovery of early hominids at the site of Dmanisi (1.8 MYA) in the Caucuses and finds in Northeast Asia approaching 1 MYA has greatly strengthened the understanding and possible explanations of Lower Palaeolithic finds in Central Eurasia. With the exception of the skull fragment discovered at the site of Salkhit (northeastern Mongolia) in 2006 and now under intensive study, no other early homined fossils have yet been found in the steppe lands. However, the artifact sites of the earliest steppe inhabitants have been discovered, demonstrating that the range of early hominids expanded to include most of Eurasia. The artifact record is not without problems. Questions arise as to whether artifact assemblages claimed as evidence for Middle Pleistocene manufacture are not in fact the results of geological processes. In other cases, lithic assemblages may be indisputable, but were found from geological contexts which make their periodization uncertain. In south Tajikistan, Lower and Middle

The Middle Palaeolithic archaeological record of Inner Asia is more detailed. It is part of a Eurasiawide technological and cultural sequence. Three major divisions of stone tool technology have been identified at Middle Palaeolithic sites: Mousterian forms, Levallois type technologies, and incipient large blade industries with connections to Upper Palaeolithic technologies. These technologies form a chronological separation among sites, and also demonstrate the relationship of Inner Asia Middle Palaeolithic technologies with those of Western Eurasia where the same broad sequence has long been known. Further links to Western Eurasia were the discovery in 1939 of a Neanderthal sub-adult skeleton at the cave site of Teshik-Tash and the 2003 excavation of sub-adult teeth and cranial fragments from the Obi-Rakhmat rockshelter, which may also be related to Neanderthal populations. Both sites are located on the western slopes of the Tian Shan Mountains of Uzbekistan.

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Some of the most important Middle Palaeolithic sites of Inner Asia are those of the Anui River valley in the Altai Mountains. The principal Middle Palaeolithic sequence is found at the sites of Denisova Cave and Okladnikov Cave with the former providing the bulk of the record. The Denisova cave habitation dates back possibly as early as 130 000 years ago and covers the extent of the Middle Palaeolithic. Also recovered at Denisova Cave were teeth from a hominid identified as Neanderthal-like. This evidence and the skeletal finds from Teshik-Tash and Obi-Rakhmat, lend credence to the argument that much of this region was inhabited by hominids akin to the Neanderthals of Europe or other archaic human species, though this question is still controversial. Other cave sites such as Ust’ Kan, Kara-Bura, and Obi-Rakhmat, as well as open air scatters and flint quarries such as Kapchigai, located in the Altai and Tian Shan Mountains, testify to the effective adaptations of Middle Palaeolithic groups of the region. Middle Palaeolithic artifacts are found on the eastern flanks of the Altai and Tian Shan Mountains as well, though no sites of the depth and scale of the western Altai sites are known. The recently excavated cave at Tsagaan Agui in central Mongolia and the Tolbaga site near Lake Baikal represent the Middle Palaeolithic technologies of central Inner Asia. The transition to new stone tool technologies of the Upper Palaeolithic occurred by 40 000 years ago. Many major sites, such as Tsagaan Agui, Obi-Rakhmat, and Okladnikov Cave, contain continuous sequences from Middle Palaeolithic to Upper Palaeolithic materials. There are also new transitional sites such as Kara-Bom, the earliest Upper Palaeolithic site yet discovered at 43 000 BP. The Early Upper Palaeolithic

Upper Palaeolithic technology is based upon blade manufacture and prepared cores. Other finds include art objects and habitation structures. Typical Early Upper Palaeolithic sites are on terraces with good visibility overlooking the surrounding landscape. When these sites are large, they have hearths, pit features, and stone rings that supported structures. Smaller sites have unlined hearths and work areas, but few signs of long-term habitation. Cave sites continue to be used in this period, but are not the main focus of habitation. A number of cache sites, places where stone tools and raw materials were stored, have also been discovered. On the west Siberian plain, open-air sites with the remains of tundra and boreal megafauna including bison, reindeer, woolly rhinos, and mammoth are found, such as the mammoth-kill site at Tomsk. In Anui valley of the Altai Mountains, Okladnikov Cave continued to be

used during this time and contains Early Upper Palaeolithic layers dated to 42 000–33 000 BP, while the open air site of Ust’ Karakol nearby dates to 31 000 BP. In south central Siberia, Upper Palaeolithic sites date no earlier than 30 000 BP. The most famous of these sites is Mal’ta of the Angara river basin, which dates to 23 000 BP. A large area of this site has been excavated and tens of thousands of lithic and bone tools, and faunal remains were found along with organized habitation structures. The site is interpreted as a seasonal reindeer hunting camp that was used repeatedly. Other notable sites in the greater Baikal region include the stratified sites of Krasny Yar and the riverside bluff site of Kamenka in the Lower Selenge river valley. Farther afield, the cave site of Tsagaan Agui at the northern edge of the Gobi desert continued to be used. Shuidonggou, south of the Gobi and north of the Yellow River is the southernmost major site of the Inner Asian Upper Palaeolithic type. There are scores of Upper Palaeolithic sites recorded from Inner Asia and based on their chronology and distribution, it is possible to observe how Pleistocene climate fluctuation and glacial cycles created variable biogeographic conditions that affected when and where human groups lived. Expanding glaciers and cold regions pushed people southward while retreating glaciers re-opened formerly inaccessible areas. The final iteration of this long-term process followed the conclusion of the last glacial maximum (18 000 BP) and brought populations back into Siberia by 14 000 BP, and across Beringia to North America. The End of the Upper Palaeolithic

Following the last glacial maximum, the Holocene environment of Inner Asia stabilized close to the conditions we know today, initiating the terminal stage of the Palaeolithic. The final innovation in lithic technology across Inner Asia was the invention of microblade technology. Developing out of local Upper Palaeolithic traditions, this technology centered on interchangeable and easily replaceable lithic components in many types of compound tools. The material remains of microblade technology are distinctive core forms and very small bladelets (Figure 2). Also during the Holocene, site locations shifted to emphasize riverine valleys, river banks, and confluences. Site composition, the animals hunted, and artifact assemblages all suggest that these people were more mobile than their mid Upper Palaeolithic predecessors. Sites were inhabited for short periods and revisited repeatedly, rather than occupied for longer spans of time. Microlithic tool users began to inhabit high elevation regions such as the upper Altai and the Tibetan Plateau, and a notable fluorescence of habitation

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Figure 2 Prismatic cores for the production of microblades, north central Mongolia.

appeared around Lake Baikal in South Siberia and in the desert oases of the Tarim Basin, Xinjiang.

The Domestication of Inner Asia The Neolithic of Mongolia is dated from 8000 to 4500 BP and is best known from sites located in the Gobi desert and the eastern steppe where mixed microlithic assemblages and fragments of low fired, gray and red coarse ware ceramics are found, often with corded and painted decorations. The term Neolithic in the case of Inner Asia is not always defined by the

domestication of plants and animals as in most other regions of Eurasia, but instead by the advent of ceramic technology. The initial indication that hunter-gatherer groups began exploiting local environments in novel ways is the appearance of grinding stones at sites having typical Neolithic artifact assemblages, such as Shabarak Us (Bayanzag Culture), in the South Gobi of Mongolia. Shabarak Us is located in an area of playas and stabilized sand dunes subject to wind erosion that exposed 18 sub-sites having microlithic industries, ceramics, polished adzes, bifacial projectile points, and ostrich eggshell artifacts.

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The site is described in the Russian literature as an early to middle Neolithic temporary camp, probably inhabited by semi-mobile groups from 6000–5000 BP. Based on the evidence for grinding slabs and pestles, Shabarak Us is thought to represent either incipient agriculture or a greater specialization in the use of wild grains. In either case, the appearance of such artifacts at a number of sites in the Gobi region suggests an important investment in a broader range of subsistence activities. During the mid to late Neolithic of eastern Mongolia (5200–4500 BP), there is material evidence suggesting simple agricultural production, sedentism, and exploitation of large herbivores such as wild cattle and horse. The site that best characterizes Neolithic agricultural production is Tamsagbulag located in Dornod province on the eastern Mongolian steppe. Broad horizontal exposures at this site revealed a large number of rectangular pit-houses, the largest of which encompassed an area of 42 m2. Small pit burials with interred individuals positioned in crouching or sitting positions and covered with red ochre powder were discovered below the floor levels of these houses, along with composite tools and shell beads. The combined artifact assemblage of both houses and burials provides a unique perspective on a small-scale steppe group employing simple agricultural techniques to grow millet and specialized hunting to obtain large grazing animals. The artifact inventory from Tamsagbulag consists of wedge-shaped prismatic cores and a wide variety of blade-based implements, an advanced bone industry, and ceramic vessels. Tools related to agriculture are numerous and include grinding stones and pestles, circular quern stones, hoes, and weights for digging sticks. Indications of extensive and specialized use of wild animals are based on the faunal remains recovered from habitation deposits, including evidence for fishing. In addition to human interments beneath pit house floors, excavations also revealed pits containing large numbers of horse and cattle bones, including several conspicuously large bullhorns. Other intentional deposits of cattle bones are known from the eastern Mongolian steppe and have been interpreted as cult practices to ensure agricultural success. Tamsagbulag provides evidence that simple agriculture was practiced on the northeastern steppe, however, many contemporary areas have no such evidence. One example is Serovo period hunter-gatherer groups (6200–5000 BP) known from late Neolithic cemeteries such as Ust’-Ida, along the shores of Lake Baikal and the Angara river of Siberia. These groups included a specialization in seals as well as a number of ungulate species in their local hunting adaptation. Hunting and gathering subsistence practices also characterized the high Altai Mountain and Gobi-Altai regions

of western Inner Asia and seem to have been followed directly by simple herding economies. Southeast of Lake Baikal a pattern more similar to that of the Gobi Neolithic is present. Short-term campsites such as Budulan on the banks of the Onon river were inhabited during the fifth millennium BP by semi-mobile huntergatherers using a microlithic tool kit, thin-walled ceramics with rounded bases, grinding stones, stone pestles, and mortars. As in the case of Shabarak Us, archaeologists argue that the occurrence of grain processing stone assemblages at Budulan and other such sites may represent increasingly specialized gathering practices or experimentation with domesticates. Recent archaeological evidence suggests that Neolithic groups of eastern Inner Mongolia experienced a substantially different subsistence trajectory from those regions described above. The traditional model for the rise of agriculture across China is one of diffusion outward from the Yellow River basin. This explanation for agricultural origins has been challenged by radiocarbon dates from Inner Mongolia and northeastern China where two indigenous agricultural traditions emerged at very early periods, the Xinglongwa (8000–6800 BP) and Zhaobaogou (6800–6000 BP) cultures. These cultures relied upon hunting, simple cultivation, and probably domesticated pigs. By the fifth millennium BP, when initial changes in food production are thought to have occurred on the northern steppe, Inner Mongolian groups of the Hongshan/Xiaoheyan (6500–4200 BP) cultures resided in permanent dispersed villages of one to two hectares having pit and surface dwellings along with numerous storage pits for grain. East Inner Mongolian subsistence at this time consisted of animal husbandry, especially of pigs, simple hoe-based agriculture, and deer hunting. Craft production included microlithic and polished stone industries as well as bone, ceramic, and impressive jade object manufacture.

The Eneolithic and Initial Forest-Steppe Herding By the fifth millennium BP, the Inner Asian steppe was characterized by substantial variation in subsistence and lifeways, from hunting-gathering-fishing groups to sedentary village communities relying primarily on domesticated grains and animals. Across this patchwork of Neolithic economies, more extensive forms of domestic animal use occurred gradually throughout the eastern steppe zone. The Eneolithic period is transitional between the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Botai, an Eneolithic site in northern Kazakhstan, provides an important window on changing relationships between human beings and animals. The

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Botai culture (5600–5100 BP) developed a sedentary, village-based lifeway relying on the intensive exploitation of wild horses as game animals. Long-term use of and familiarity with horses may have resulted in both the domestication and possible riding of horses in order to track and hunt wild equids, though the evidence for this argument is still debated. The earliest credible evidence in Inner Asia for Eneolithic food producing economies involving herd animals is found in the Yenisei region of south central Siberia. Peoples of the Afanas’evo culture were originally thought to have entered the Russian Altai Mountains and middle Yenisei river valley from regions farther west, bringing with them the first herd animals as well as mortuary rituals and ceramic styles similar to those of the western Yamnaya culture (5100–4200 BP). Ceramics and burials of this culture have also been described from western Mongolia, the Russian Altai region, and from northern Xinjiang. A series of early absolute dates from mortuary contexts in Minusinsk has recently redefined the chronology of the Afanas’evo (5500/5100–4500 BP) and now casts doubt on the migration theory, perhaps supporting instead a model for indigenous development, though this is controversial. The economic and organizational character of Afanas’evo culture is quite different from cultures using domestic stock in western Central Eurasia. Afanas’evo peoples had an economy based primarily on hunting and the use of domestic sheep, cattle, and later on, horses, as well as simple copper industries. Only a small number of settlements are known from this period, one example being Tepsei-X. These habitations have cultural remains very similar to those recovered from Afanas’evo burial sites, such as Suchanicha, Afanas’evo Mountain, and Karasuk-III. Afanas’evo groups did not have well-developed techniques for herd exploitation and lacked many of the secondary resources that were to be used at later times, such as dairy production and animal traction. Burial inventories include artifacts with potential agricultural use, such as stone pestles and wooden mortars, though as mentioned above, such finds may also suggest increasingly specialized gathering of local grasses and plants. Afanas’evo subsistence was primarily a huntinggathering adaptation which included the keeping of domesticated animals, and is therefore often described as transitional in character between food acquisition and food production. These patterns were continued and intensified by the subsequent Okunev culture (4600–4000 BP) of the Minusinsk basin which had a different style of ceramics, new burial practices, and more elaborate metallurgy, including the limited production of bronze implements. The Okunev period

is also known for its striking repertoire of artistic iconography which appears on stone slabs used to construct tombs and on stone stelae, initiating a long tradition of standing stone monument construction across the eastern steppe.

The Mature Bronze Age: Inner Asian Mobility, Metallurgy, and Interaction The Middle and Late Bronze Age of eastern Central Eurasia is associated with the Andronovo cultural horizon dated in its entirety to 4200–3000 BP. Several regional variants of this extensive and diverse cultural complex appear initially in the southern Uralic mountain and steppe region and extend over time to the south and east as far as eastern Kazakhstan, Xinjiang, Altai, and the Minusinsk basin. Underlying similarities in material culture based upon ceramic styles, mortuary constructions, and bronze industries tie three major regional phases together: SintashtaPetrovka (4200–3800 BP, southern Urals, northwestern Kazakhstan); Alakul (3700–3300 BP, southern Urals, northwest and north central Kazakhstan, forest-steppe boundary up to the northern bend of the Irtysh river); Fedorovo (3500–3200 BP, northeastern Kazakhstan with later extension into southeastern Kazakhstan, the Russian Altai, and Minusinsk basin). These main phases were followed by a number of localized cultures during the terminal Bronze Age. The technological and organizational changes associated with the Andronovo cultures had impact across Inner Asia and as far as the early dynastic states of the Chinese Central Plain and the ancient Near East. Andronovo Subsistence and Settlement

The peoples of the various Andronovo subcultures are thought to have practiced settled agro-pastoralism during the early periods and gradually transitioned to a greater dependency on herd animals and increased mobility by later phases. Very little direct botanical evidence for agriculture has been discovered, though researchers believe agricultural production was practiced based on the presence of grain-processing toolkits having mortars and pestles and occasional finds of millet and barley, especially at larger habitations. The settlement record for the Mature Bronze Age in eastern Central Eurasia is substantial and lends support to the model of village-oriented lifeways, at least until the Fedorovo period when many settlement sites had intermittent occupations, possibly related to seasonal movements of peoples and herds. Interlaced with settlement sites are Andronovo cemeteries of monumental kurgan burials.

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Although much of the Andronovo period is characterized by small- to moderate-sized settlements located near water sources and having a number of rectangular house structures, large settlements up to 3 ha in size are known from the Sintashta-Petrovka phase. These settlements are clearly defensive sites with oval, circular, or rectangular layouts which were preplanned and comprised walled fortifications and cellular domicile arrangements. Several sites from the eastern slopes of the Ural mountains, called by archaeologists the ‘Country of Towns’, could be considered type sites, including Bersuat, Stepnoe, and the best known of the circular variety, Arkaim. In all, there are approximately 20 known fortified settlements in this region which stretches along the eastern base of the Urals for 400 km. A number of these settlements have extensive remains of smelting ovens, bronze slag, copper ore, crucibles, and molds, providing evidence for highly specialized and intensive bronze artifact and copper ingot production, leading some researchers to describe these settlements as Bronze Age industrial centers. Dispersals of Steppe Bronze Technology

Simple copper or small-scale bronze technologies emerged among peoples of the western Yamnaya culture, the Botai-Tersek cultures, Afanas’evo/Okunev cultures, and around Lake Baikal among Glazkovo hunter-gatherer groups (5300–3300 BP). During the course of the Andronovo cultural period, bronzemanufacturing techniques, arsenic and tin alloy formulas, and artifact types spread across much of Kazakhstan, Western Siberia, and Inner Asia. Regions where metallic ores existed were visited or occupied by diverse groups and heavily exploited, as with the copper mining sites of Kenkazgan, north central Kazakhstan, and Vorovskaya Yama in the upper Ural river basin. Other ancient copper and tin sources are known from the Altai Mountains, the Yenisei river basin, Xinjiang, and Uzbekistan. Due to the geographical dispersion of resources, manufacturing centers, and areas of bronze consumption, the social dynamics of bronze in eastern Central Eurasia necessitated cultural networks of exchange, interaction, competition, and movement. For example, long distance interaction was initiated between steppe groups and the urban oasis centers of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) in the Kara Kum desert region (4200–3800 BC). Though somewhat controversial, current evidence suggests that cultural contact between the steppe and Xinjiang, Gansu, and Ningxia may have contributed to the appearance of initial bronze industries along the periphery of China. Such contacts are thought to have contributed a number of

implement types, alloys, and production techniques to this region by 4200 BP (e.g., Qijia and Siba cultures). These early technological developments from China’s northwest subsequently influenced the appearance of local bronze industries and exchange regimes in the Ordos region (early Zhukaigou) and eastern Inner Mongolia (Lower Xiajiadian) by 4000 BP. Across Mongolia archaeologists have found artifacts related to bronze work, such as two-piece stone molds, ore pounders, and crucibles as well as several copper mining and bronze production sites such as Zuukh (southwestern Mongolia), Oyu Tolgoi (South Gobi), and Erdenet (northern Mongolia). Metallurgical production during the Late Bronze Age became increasingly sophisticated in resource transport, alloying and casting, and in the wide diversity of decorative items, tools, and weapons created in bronze. The Seima-Turbino technological horizon of the Late Bronze Age marks the widespread adoption of a highly developed tin alloy bronze culture across eastern Central Eurasia that includes specific artifact types (curved dagger-knives, socketed axes and spearheads, and associated nephrite jade axes) and stylized depictions of steppe and forest animals. Though this highly refined bronze culture was practiced over a tremendously large region, it drew upon copper, tin, and jade sources located in the Sayan-Altai Mountains based on exchange networks between the Altai and production sites like Atasu in Central Kazakhstan and Rostovka on the Irtysh river. Dispersals of Transport Technology

The movement of material culture, its styles, and production methods across large geographical areas suggest both contact and interaction and the development of similar systems of symbolic meaning across dispersed communities. The mobility made possible by herd-based subsistence and supported with animal transport using wagons and carts probably played an important role in maintaining steppe interaction. Wagons pulled by oxen were initially employed as part of the steppe adaptation during the Yamnaya cultural period of western Central Eurasia. By 4000 BP, Andronovo-Sintashta period kurgan cemeteries have the earliest evidence for lightweight, spoked wheel carts or chariots, as well as the horses which pulled them and their harness equipment. This provides solid evidence for traction using domesticated horses and further suggests that the complex and labor intensive kurgan burials in which these vehicles were found, likely marked the differentiated social status of their owners. Beyond marking high status and having ceremonial or display value, chariots may also have been involved in the proliferation of warfare across the

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steppe. Evidence for a period of heightened conflict includes the heavy fortifications at early Andronovo sites and the widespread manufacture of specialized weapons, such as pick-axes and stone mace-heads, which have no function as tools. Chariots were the first rapid transport land vehicle and chariot technology using horse traction spread quickly from the northern steppe southward, and possibly as far as the ancient Near East. Between the Kazakh steppe and the Central Plain of China there is little direct evidence for chariot use during the Bronze Age, though by 3250 BP fully developed chariot culture appeared in the royal Shang dynasty tombs at Yinxu, Anyang. So far, only a corridor of Bronze Age petroglyph sites document knowledge of chariots in vivid images across the Russian and Mongolian Altai Mountains, the Tian Shan of Xinjiang, and the Inner Mongolian Yinshan range (Figure 3). Solid wooden wheels dated to 3200 BP have been recovered at the cemetery site of Qizilchoqa near Hami, Xinjiang and a spoked wheel is reported from the animal corral site of Nomhong in Qinghai (mid-fourth millennium BP). Neither of these contexts is associated with evidence for horse traction and these particular wheel specimens were probably designed for use with carts.

In addition to the emergence of chariot use, several archaeologists argue for the development of horseback riding during or prior to the Andronovo cultural period. It is notoriously difficult to archaeologically differentiate human groups practicing horse hunting from those who had domesticated horses and to date the most convincing evidence has been provided by bit wear analysis (the identification of beveling on horse teeth from metallic bit use), for example, at the Eneolithic site of Botai. However, there are good arguments questioning the reliability of bit wear evidence for indicating horse husbandry. One problem with this analysis is that soft material bits made from thong or rope do not cause reliably detectable beveling. Bit wear is a good source of indirect evidence for horse control when combined with other lines of supporting evidence. These include the identification of bridle equipment in contexts with horses, reconstruction of horse herd demographics, and high numbers of horses associated with other domestic herd animals. The best direct evidence for horse management is to be found in historical references or clear artistic depictions, the earliest of which date to the very end of the fifth millennium BP. Likewise, burial contexts in which horses are unmistakably associated with traction equipment, as at the Sintashta site, also date to the late fifth and early fourth millennium BP. Since the management of horse herds would be logistically difficult on foot or by vehicle, horse riding must have emerged prior to horse traction sometime before 4100 BP, though there exists no unquestionable evidence for this early practice as of yet.

Rise of the Steppe: Monuments, Art, and Politics

Figure 3 Pecked image of a spoked, two-wheeled cart or chariot from the site of Tebsh Uul, southwest Mongolia.

During the Terminal Bronze and Early Iron Age (3400–2300 BP), Inner Asia began to share in steppe-wide symbolic, ideological, and elite status systems referred to archaeologically as Early Nomad or Scythian culture. Significant features of this period were herd animal dependency, pervasive horse riding and specific styles of harness gear, a bronze weapon set that included short swords, three winged arrow points, and decorative craft goods with ‘animal style’ ornamentation. The Scythian horizon was first thought to have originated in western Central Eurasia spreading eastward through migration into Inner Asia. This model has been revised based on a series of radiocarbon dates from South Siberian kurgan sites suggesting that diagnostic Scythian (or ScythoSiberian) features probably emerged from local innovation, cultural diffusion, and migratory processes initiated in the east and elaborated across multiple

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steppe centers. Throughout the third millennium BP, regional cultural dynamics were driven by greater access to mobility, intra-steppe interaction, and increasing interchange with state societies on the periphery of the Eurasian grasslands. Herd Animal Dependence and Developed Horseback Riding

Subsistence related changes observed at Siberian and Mongolian sites over the Eneolithic, Bronze, and Early Iron Ages involved the initial appearance of stock animals followed by growing presence of cattle in forested regions and smaller stock (sheep/goat) in open grasslands. Both cattle and sheep/goat herding are found with increasing evidence for horse use. Increase in herd size generally correlates with increases in mobility since more animals deplete pasture at a greater rate and must move more frequently in order to feed. Such provisioning might be accomplished by an entire household and its herds moving every season to a new locale or just as well by a few members of a sedentary household moving the family animals to highland pastures for a limited time before returning to their settlement. In both cases, some degree of mobility was required to support larger numbers of cattle and small stock. Both patterns were employed in parts of Inner Eurasia, however, the availability of domesticated horses favored the first strategy on steppe grasslands. Horses are a source of meat and dairy products, but they also facilitate extensive mobile pastoralism through mounted herd management, traction and packing during residential movement, and by instinctive grazing behaviors which help to support other large and small herd animals, especially during winter. Combinations of evidence for horse use, horse riding equipment, cattle or small stock-based herd composition, and temporary habitation are used to support arguments for increased mobile pastoralism. For example, the Minusinsk basin along the middle Yenisei river was the center of the terminal Bronze Age Karasuk culture (3300–2900 BP) which had extensions into the Altai region, eastern Kazakhstan, and northwestern Mongolia. The Karasuk culture shows geographical variation, though it is primarily identified by distinctively styled and well-made bronze artifacts, stone slab and cist burial constructions, and hand-built, rounded pottery, with geometric incised decorations. Local groups of the Minusinsk basin exploited mountain pastures and rich soils of the river valley bottoms by farming and practicing seasonal transhumance to support cattle based livestock holdings. In the beginning of the first millennium B.C., there is a marked increase in the presence

of sheep and goats in Karasuk archaeological contexts as well as the first appearance of horse riding equipment that Russian archaeologists accept as evidence for increased pastoral investment and mobility which continued into the subsequent Tagar culture (2800–2100 BP). Similar faunal patterns showing marked increases in cattle and sheep/goat and horse occur at roughly contemporary habitation sites across South Siberia, from the Kulunda steppe of the western Altaiskii krai (e.g., Gridino and Kaigorodka-III) to the Shev’inskaia site on the Kuenga river of Chita province, eastern Zabaikal’e. Once again, the subsistence activities represented at these sites are diverse, but they do have in common a core subsistence strategy with herd animals as an emerging focus. Some areas have evidence for residential mobility in addition to pastoral investment. The stratified Dvortsy habitation of Chita province as well as several contemporary habitation sites in the region have multiple occupations from the fourth millennium BP. The later habitation strata at these sites show decreasing deposit depth and artifact densities over time, potentially related to increased seasonal mobility. The earliest dates for developed horse riding in most parts of Inner Asia are still relatively late. The best direct evidence is the discovery of preserved saddles in the frozen tombs of the Pazyryk culture (2550–2250 BP), Altai Mountains. Earlier evidence includes sacrificial horses in full harness gear interred in the Arzhan kurgan of the Uyok basin, Tuva, and dated to 2800 BP. On the Mongolian steppe, horse crania appear in ceremonial contexts as early as 3300 BP and a burial context in the Egiin Gol valley contained three horse skulls, antler cheek pieces, and evidence from the interred human skeleton for joint stress potentially related to riding at 2900 BP. The earliest direct material evidence for riding known from Inner Mongolia is bronze work with an artistic depiction of riders mounted on horses from the Nanshangen site, 2800–2700 BP. Horse riding was not adopted by Chinese state societies until 2350 BP when the need arose to compete militarily with the archer-horsemen of Inner Asia (see Asia, East: Chinese Civilization). Steppe Elite, Monuments, and Political Ideologies

The transition to more mobile lifeways was also associated with the emergence of differentiated political and economic relationships. These organizational changes had origins in the Andronovo period along with early chariots, specialized bronze work, and kurgan style burial mounds. Novel political relationships involved both the hereditary right to leadership

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and greater control over group labor, resources, and military activities. How and why these sociopolitical transformations towards institutional inequality and individualized leadership occurred among steppe peoples is still poorly understood, though the material indications for these changes are pervasive. During the Early Iron Age, leadership systems involving individual prestige and steppe-based cultural identities were increasingly expressed through material media such as monumental mortuary constructions and decorative artistic styles. The marking of elite status by mortuary wealth and great expenditures of labor on elaborate burial constructions grew from preceding burial practices that were often monumental in scale but may not have been associated with hereditary status. For example, the khirigsuur stone monuments of Mongolia required substantial labor, though it is still unclear why early communities created these massive sites. Khirigsuurs date from 3350–2800 BP and are large stone mounds with rectangular or circular stone enclosures surrounding them and multiple stone piles beyond these enclosures in the form of satellite features (Figure 4). These smaller stone mounds sometimes contain horse crania and vertebrae and occasional fragments of ceramics or bronze items. Approximately 40% of such monuments contain some evidence for human interment though in many cases they seem to be non-mortuary, ceremonial constructions which may have marked local landscapes, territories, and community gatherings. Khirigsuurs are related to the Central Eurasian tradition of building stone or earthen kurgan mortuary mounds and they have similarities to burial constructions in the Sayan-Altai region, Minusinsk, Tuva and perhaps as far east as Manchuria, though further work is needed on khirigsuur variability and dating. By the initial Early Nomad/Scythian period (2800 BP) a widespread mortuary emphasis on individual status occurs across much of Inner Asia. In Zabaikal’e and central and eastern Mongolia, individual interment in burials made of large standing stone slabs in rectangular arrangements replaces khirigsuur construction. Slab burials show great variation in size of construction, amounts of ceramics, animal bones, bronzes, and exotic items included in each assemblage and in this way suggest different ranks of status for those buried. However, this period of Inner Asian prehistory is best known for the impressive ‘royal’ kurgans, especially the Arzhan site, the Pazyryk kurgans, and the Golden Warrior kurgan of Issyk, southeastern Kazakhstan. Each of these Inner Asian mortuary sites is notable for size, labor expenditure, rich and exotic assemblages and their marked differences from burials of commoners, which are modest in comparison. The

Saka culture Issyk kurgan (2500–2400 BP), an earthen and timber mound of 60 m diameter and 6 m in height, is famous for a 16–18 year-old youth buried with an entire coat of gold discovered in an undisturbed southern side chamber. The Pazyryk cemetery kurgans (2300 BP) are known for their permafrost preservation conditions which have provided a spectacular record of wooden objects, textiles, the coat and skin of interred horses, and preserved human bodies with intricate tattoo designs. A number of recent discoveries and excavations of frozen tombs in the Altai Mountains are adding to our knowledge of the intermediate elite and commoners of the Pazyryk period. These include work at the sites of Ak-Alakha on the Ukok plateau and the 2006 excavation of a similar complex on the Mongolian side of the Altai Mountains at the site of Olon Guuriin Goliin Hondii. The Arzhan kurgan located in the Uyok basin of central Tuva is important evidence for monumental interment of an elite individual whose burial assemblage contained diagnostic material culture of the Scythian cultural horizon at an early period. The radiocarbon dates from Arzhan gave researchers the first indication that one of the earliest centers of the Scythian cultural horizon was in fact, Siberia. The kurgan is a circular stone mound, 120 m across and 4 m high with a complex internal timber construction dividing the feature into 70 chambers. Excavations revealed a central burial chamber with elaborate log coffins associated with the elite occupants, 160 harnessed riding horses, a number of accompanying human interments described as ‘attendants’, bronze weapons and tools, horse tack, early iron implements, items of personal adornment in gold and turquoise, examples of Scytho-Siberian ‘animal style’ bronzes, and fragments of ‘deer stones’. Archaeologists believe that the artistic motifs found at Arzhan are emblematic of a set of symbols associated with the ideology of elite leadership which eventually become part of the symbolic vocabulary of steppe peoples from Inner Mongolia to the Black Sea. Central Eurasian ‘animal style’ is an art form in which predators and ungulates of the forest-steppe are depicted in semi-abstract design emphasizing intertwinement and flows of movement (Figure 5). The designs are rendered in wood, bone, textile, metals, and stone, as well as on human skin in the form of tattoos, such as those known from the Pazyryk cemetery. Early examples of animal style are the ‘deer stone’ stelae known from Mongolia, Altai, Tuva, and Buriatiia which consist of a four-sided standing stone of up to 2.5 m height and carved images of stylized deer, belts with hanging weapons and recurved bows, and at the top, circular designs or very

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Figure 4 Schematic plan of a khirigsuur monument from the Egiin Gol valley, Mongolia and photograph of a khirigsuur complex at Tebsh Uul, Mongolia.

occasionally, a human face. One interpretation is that deer stone monuments are anthropomorphic representations depicting the head, deer tattooed body, and weapons of a high status individual. Current estimates date the beginning of deer stone construction on the eastern steppe at 3000 BP (Figure 6). Animal style was adopted rapidly across Inner Asia and further westward during the first half of the third millennium BP. Its geographical spread shaped the interaction sphere of the nomadic world at a time when distinctions between ‘steppe and sown’ became strongly emphasized. This process was particularly

notable in the regions north and west of the Chinese Central Plain, known as the Northern Zone. As early as 3400–3300 BP, bronzes in a style similar to the Karasuk of Siberia appear at the settlement and cemetery site of Zhukaigou in the Ordos Loop, Inner Mongolia. Zhukaigou is thought to be a copper trade and production center with contacts to both steppe groups in the north and the Middle Shang dynasty centers of the south. By the third millennium BP, these initial steppe contacts were radically restructured by groups of the Northern Zone who affiliated themselves with steppe cultural identity through the adoption of

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Figure 5 Bronze animal style decorative piece of a wild horned sheep from the Middle Gobi site of Baga Gazaryn Chuluu, Mongolia.

animal style decorations. These changes in burial practice are evident at the Upper Xiajiadian (3100–2600 BP) Xiaobaiyang cemetery, Chifeng region, and in western Inner Mongolia at the cemetery of Maoqinggou of the Ordos Bronze culture (2750–2250 BP). Mortuary sites of Gansu and Xinjiang also show the adoption of steppe material cultural assemblages. These transformations along the frontiers of Late Shang and Zhou period China have parallels in South Siberia. On the northwestern shore of Lake Baikal and on Olkhon Island, slab burial mortuary culture appears from the south and with it, the first evidence for domesticated herd animals in what was, until 3000 BP, a region of bronze producing huntergatherers (Glazkovo culture). Excavation of slab burial cemeteries on Olkhon Island at Khujir indicates either that indigenous peoples adopted the material culture and subsistence systems of neighboring pastoralists or that southern steppe groups entered the region. In either case, these interactions on the frontier of the taiga forest of Siberia may have been due to the valuable exchange opportunities that existed for taiga furs and medicinal plants, products with high exchange value to both steppe and Chinese groups. These observations from the Northern Zone and Siberia during the third millennium BP argue for relatively swift transformations in culture and identity among outlying groups choosing to be involved within the exchange, status, and ideological systems of the pastoral nomadic steppe. These long distance inter-connections among diverse groups having a variety of lifeways created the integrative foundations of the first nomadic states and empires in Inner Asia.

The Xiongnu Polity and Steppe Civilization

Figure 6 Deer stone complex at Uushigiin Ovor, Khovsgol province, northwest Mongolia.

material, ideological, and political cultures of the steppe nomads. Evidence consists of changes in burial structures and assemblages reflecting an emphasis on individual prestige through steppe artifact types (knives, daggers, arrowheads, buttons, and belt plaques) and

By 2200 BP, much of Inner Asia became integrated in large-scale nomadic polities having names such as Wusun and Xiongnu which appear in the historical documents of neighboring states. These historical records often portray steppe peoples as uncultured and predatory, an enduring stereotype that masks the intricacies of nomadic cultures across Central Eurasia. To the contrary, the rise of these regional polities, some would argue, initiated a distinctive ‘steppe civilization’ which became fully developed under the imperial Mongols (800 BP). The Xiongnu was a mounted, iron-, bronze-, and ceramics-producing, pastoral nomadic group under whose name the first nomadic state was organized during a period contemporary with the Qin and Han dynasties of China (2221–1800 BP). Chinese historical accounts have been the major source of information on the society, culture, and politics of the Xiongnu, though the

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process by which they founded their extensive polity is still little known. Two bodies of theory explain Xiongnu emergence as occurring either by way of economic and political dependence on Chinese states or through the creation of an indigenous political economy of internal agropastoral production and long-distance sources of trade and tribute. In either case, the Xiongnu polity was constructed from diverse political and economic traditions through the integration of distinctive Inner Asian peoples. Xiongnu archaeological culture has been identified from Manchuria to Kazakhstan, and from Minusinsk to Ningxia. The heartland of the Xiongnu state was most likely in north central Mongolia and Buriatiia, along the drainages of the Selenge, Orkhon, and Tuul rivers. This region holds the major Xiongnu cemetery sites and most of the known settlements. Based on recent absolute dating, the time-span of recognizable Xiongnu occupation in this area (2400–1850 BP) precedes and postdates their appearance in the Chinese historical sources. Xiongnu Mortuary Culture

From its beginning in the late nineteenth century, Xiongnu archaeology has consisted mainly of cemetery excavations. The mortuary perspective has provided evidence for the internal complexity of the Xiongnu state since burials reveal a hierarchy of different scales and mortuary styles. Xiongnu cemeteries range from a few burials to hundreds of graves ranging over various size groups. In Mongolia and South Siberia, these cemeteries appear to follow a four-level size/type hierarchy based on the kind of burials present and their numbers. The two main types, of Xiongnu burials are simple stone ring pit burials and large ‘dromos’ style burials distinguished by a sloping passageway used to furnish the mortuary chamber. Cemeteries can generally be grouped into four types, comprised of 5–30 ring burials, 65–110 ring burials, 200–400 ring burials, and one or more ‘dromos’ style burial having varying numbers of associated ring burials and unmarked interments. Recent DNA analysis of skeletal samples from the Burkhan Tolgoi ring burial cemetery (Mongolia), shows that these cemeteries were internally organized according to local lineage groups. In addition, variability in burial type, size, and assemblage seems to be related to a number of identity markers including gender, age, and individual status, though widespread looting in antiquity makes such analysis difficult. Ring burials are thought to be of local or intermediate level elite, and are identified on the modern surface by a ring of sedimented stones, 5–14 m in diameter, with a slight depression in the center (Figure 7). Below

this ring feature, an oval or rectangular burial pit descends to a depth of up to 2–3 m and houses one of eight varieties of internal construction. Among these, the most common contain a wood plank coffin, or a full wooden chamber and coffin, or a chamber constructed from stone slabs, with or without a coffin. The interred individual is commonly placed in a supine position and oriented to the north. Burials are often single interments, though there are also many examples of paired burials consisting of a female and child or a male and female adult interred within a double wooden chamber. Grave furnishings include three to four main types of slow wheel constructed ceramics, compound bow pieces, bone and iron tools, iron cheek pieces and bits, semiprecious stone beads, animal style decorations, and the remains of sheep/goat, cattle, and horses. Nonlocal artifacts include Chinese lacquer ware, bronze mirror fragments, and coins as well as items from northern Siberia and western Central Eurasia. Prominent ring burial sites include Tebsh Uul and Morin Tolgoi in Mongolia and the Derestui cemetery of Buriatiia. Royal Xiongnu burials are large structures and have long, sloping corridors or passageways known as ‘dromos/dromoi’, so-called because of their similarity to Black Sea Scythian kurgans which are thought to draw upon Greek designs. The sloping entryway is also known from Shang and Zhou tombs in China but was probably independently derived in each area as a functional way of provisioning a deep burial chamber. Several sites known to have these burials are Tsaram in southern Buriatiia, and Noyon Uul, Gol Mod, and Takhiltyn Khotgor cemeteries in central and western Mongolia. On the surface, these burials consist of a rectangular or trapezoidal earth and stone platform mound up to 30 m on a side and 1–2 m in height. The tombs are oriented north–south and on the south side appears the dromos entryway up to 22 m in length and often with internal wooden structures and artifacts included in the passage. The burial pits of these tombs reach 10 m or more in depth and the construction overlying the chamber consists of soil, stone, and wooden layers, as well as partitions built of articulated logs. The burial chamber includes an inner and outer wooden enclosure of hewn timbers and wooden planks. Within the innermost chamber, a wooden coffin holding an interred individual is found, though disruption from pillaging has often destroyed the internal contexts of these sites. The artifact assemblages of the Noyon Uul dromi burials, excavated in the 1920s, are exceptionally well known due to the preservation of organic materials by water seepage into burial chambers. The Noyon Uul tombs were richly furnished with large ceramic vessels, felt carpets, wooden carvings, clothing, silks,

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Figure 7 Plan of an excavated Xiongnu period ring burial with internal stone slabs, wooden coffin planks, and human skeletal fragments in disarray from early pillaging, Egiin Gol valley, Mongolia. Originally published in: T. Torbat, Ch. Amartuvshin, and U. Erderebat (2003) Egiin Goly sav nutag dakh’ arkheologiin dursgaluud. Ulaanbaatar: Mongolian Institute of Archaeology, p. 256.

jade objects, bronze mirrors, lacquer containers, and horse riding equipment. Animal remains included horse, cattle, camel, and deer, and domestic grain was recovered as well. Recent excavations at the Tsaram and Gol Mod cemeteries have both produced the complete remains of two-wheeled horse drawn

carriages of Han dynasty design. Such elite contexts provide important evidence for a high degree of status differentiation among individuals within the Xiongnu polity. The excavations at the site of Tsaram have provided further evidence for status differentiation in the form of eight individual male interments

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arranged according to age around a central dromos burial, suggesting a pattern of intentional human sacrifice. Such monumental burial sites have been discovered throughout central Mongolia and southern Buriatiia. The Inner Mongolian sites of Xigoupan and Budonggou, and Daodunzi of Ningxia are contemporary with, and share some affinities with, the Xiongnu mortuary culture of Mongolia and Siberia, though no sites similar to the royal Xiongnu tombs have been discovered. Xiongnu Settlement Archaeology

The geographic range of Xiongnu archaeological culture encompasses a great diversity of ecological environments including desert, oases, steppe, and the forest steppe regions of Siberia. Locales vary as to the availability of productive soils, water, protected winter pasture, and other critical resources for agricultural and pastoral subsistence alike. Historical texts describe the Xiongnu as specialized mobile pastoralists, however, the extent to which specialized herding, transhumance, and settled cultivation were combined as subsistence strategies within the larger state is still not clear. Nor is it clear how production varied chronologically or whether differences in subsistence were the result of adaptations to local environment or whether the Xiongnu economy was purposefully differentiated to support the needs of the state elite. The Xiongnu settlement record gives strong evidence that the productive economy within the Xiongnu polity was more complex and differentiated than historical accounts would suggest. Excavations of the Ivolga settlement, occupied from 2300–2100 BP, indicate that some portion of the Xiongnu population was settled and engaged in cultivation, craft production, and herding. Ivolga was a fortified settlement located on a terrace above an older course of the Selenge river in the foreststeppe of Buriatiia. A large cemetery of unmarked graves contemporary with settlement was found nearby. The settled area was approximately 7.5 ha in size and included a system of ditches, earthen ramparts, and a palisade. A portion of the settlement was excavated revealing 51 dwellings, a number of storage structures, and possible animal pens. Most of the dwellings were found to be semi-subterranean houses ranging from 9–46 m2 in area and having rectangular pits covered by a pitched roof with a sophisticated fireplace and heating system. A single structure near the center of the settlement was much larger in area (150 m2) and built on the ground surface, suggesting some differences in function or residential status. Ivolga inhabitants engaged in the cultivation and storage of grain and semi-specialized craft manufacture including iron

and bronze metallurgy and ceramic production. A range of Xiongnu material culture was recovered from the site such as metallic items, bronze mirror fragments, split bone arrow points, compound bow pieces, sickles, grinding stones, and digging tools. Archaeologists discovered millet, barley, and wheat grains and a faunal assemblage of sheep/goat, horse, cattle, yak, camel, and several wild species. These patterns of production are similar at the Dureny settlements in Buriatiia, south of Ivolga. Botanical evidence for wheat and millet use at seasonally occupied ‘pastoral’ campsites of the Xiongnu in the Egiin Gol valley appears at an early date and further supports the hypothesis of a more differentiated regional economy. Recent research on the Wusun period in southeastern Kazakhstan (2300–1800 BP) at the habitation site of Tuzusai shows a shift in agropastoral investment towards a greater emphasis on producing millet, wheat, and even rice. Researchers argue that this period of more intensive agriculture may have been linked to political consolidation under the Wusun polity and the need to increase and control critical resource production. In the Xiongnu case, such control may have been accomplished by the construction of walled centers, such as Ivolga. Recent reports of new Xiongnu walled settlements in Mongolia have increased the number of such ‘central places’ to between 15 and 20 sites. These settlements have rectangular earthen walls enclosing areas from 2 to 13 ha, traces of internal structures, and many are spatially integrated within networks of associated cemeteries. Though more work is still needed, the archaeological record shows a preliminary pattern across Inner Asia of large-scale political organization associated with regional economies involving both mobile and sedentary sectors. Steppe Civilization and Empires to Come

As the archaeological record shows, Inner Asian peoples, from a very early time, developed cultural traditions that functioned within an environment of movement and social diversity. The Xiongnu polity was the first experiment in applying these traditions to the creation of an extensive political organization across most of Inner Asia. This experiment was surprisingly successful, lasting almost 400 years before the first state itself dispersed across the steppe. The Xiongnu established a model for politics that would be remembered, emulated, and elaborated over the next two milleniums as numerous steppe empires mobilized their peoples and expanded across Eurasia. In the process of building their distinct empires, the Turks, Uighurs, Khitan, and medieval Mongols who

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followed upon the Xiongnu, integrated tremendous swathes of the Old World and created cultural, economic, and political innovations that would become the legacy of a genuine steppe civilization. See also: Animal Domestication; Asia, Central, Steppes; Asia, East: China, Neolithic Cultures; China, Paleolithic Cultures; Chinese Civilization; Asia, Northeast, Early States and Civilizations; Plant Domestication; Political Complexity, Rise of; Siberia, Peopling of.

Further Reading Boyle K, Renfrew C, and Levine M (eds.) (2002) Ancient Interactions: East and West in Eurasia. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Derevianko AP, Shimkin DR, and Powers W (eds.) (1998) The Paleolithic of Siberia: New Discoveries and Interpretations. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Fairservis W (1993) Archaeology of the Southern Gobi of Mongolia. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.

Honeychurch W and Amartuvshin C (2006) States on horseback: The rise of Inner Asian confederations and empires. In: Stark M (ed.) Asian Archaeology, pp. 255–278. Cambridge: Blackwell. Linduff K (ed.) (2002) Metallurgy in Ancient Eastern Eurasia from the Urals to the Yellow River. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press. Mei J (2000) Copper and Bronze Metallurgy in Late Prehistoric Xinjiang: Its Cultural Context and Relationship with Neighboring Regions. Oxford: Archaeopress. Rudenko SI (1970) Frozen Tombs of Siberia; The Pazyryk Burials of Iron Age Horsemen. Berkeley: University of California Press. Shelach G (2008) Prehistoric Societies on the Northern Frontiers of China: Archaeological Perspectives on Identity Formation and Economic change during the First Millennium BCE. London: Equinox Publishing. Tsybiktarov AD (2002) Eastern Central Asia at the dawn of the Bronze Age: issues in ethno-cultural history of Mongolia and the southern Trans-Baikal region in the late third-early second millennium BC. Archaeology, Ethnology, and Anthropology of Eurasia 3: 107–123. Weber A, Link D, and Katzenberg MA (2002) Hunter-gatherer culture change and continuity in the Middle Holocene of the Cis-Baikal, Siberia. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 21: 230–299.

ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES Jeannine Davis-Kimball, American-Eurasian Research Institute, Ventura, CA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Achaemenid Persians Founded by Cyrus the Great (599–522 BCE) after uniting the Medes and Persian, two nomadic tribes who had originated in the Eurasian States. After his death east of the Oxus, at the hands of Tomyris queen of the Massagetae tribe, Darius the Great usurped the throne (522–486 BCE) and became the greatest Achaemenid ruler. Under Darius, the empire extended from Egypt to India. The last Achaemenid king, Darius III, was defeated by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE. aimag The political and geographic equivalent of a state in Mongolia. aul A small village consisting of 3–5 yurts. Bactria A satrapy or province of the Achaemenid Empire located in present-day northern Afghanistan. balbal Anthropomorphic stelae belonging to the Early Turkic period. Bronze Age The period when people began manufacturing bronze items. The first bronzes were arsenical bronzes, smelted from the natural inclusion of arsenic in copper. True bronze is copper mixed with tin. The Bronze Age (4000–3000 BCE) did not arrive in Eurasian until c. 2000 BCE. Chalcolithic Age Also known as Eneolithic, this is the time of cultural development, c. late seventh millennium BCE, when the Neolithic (Stone) Age ended and people began to incorporate hammered copper objects into daily life.

Djungar Also spelled Jungar and Dzungar; also known as Oirat and Kalmyk. In the early 1600s, Khalka Mongols drove the Oirat Mongols westward into the Ili River region and Djungar Basin in western China. In the fifteenth century the Djungars controlled and plundered a huge territory stretching from the outskirts of Beijing to western Turkistan. Early Nomads The first Eurasian nomadic tribes, specifically the Scythians, Sauromatians, Sarmatians, and Saka, who practiced transhumance. Getae A Thracian tribe who lived in what is present-day Bulgaria. Golden Horde The Russian designation for the Ulus of Jochi, the eldest son of Genghis Khan. The Golden Horde attained its power and prestige under Batu, Jochi’s son. Batu founded his capital Sarai Batu on the lower reaches of the Volga River. Over time the Horde became Turkified, adopting Islam under Khan O¨z Beg. The population was composed of Turkic and Mongol tribes, with the latter being the aristocracy. The decline of the Golden Horde occurred with the outbreak of the Plague (Black Death) in 1346–1347. Hsiung-nu Confederacy of aggressive mounted warriors, possibly of Hunnic ethnicity, who maintained supremacy in Mongolia, north to around Lake Baikal, and southern Kazakstan into the Tien Shan Mountains beginning in the third century BCE, and whose pressure against the Chinese caused them to begin construction of the great wall. Later the Hsiung-nu confederacy split into an Eastern tribe, which submitted to China and a Western tribe, which ultimately was driven into Central Asia. Iron Age The time when iron was smelted into weaponry. This varies from 1200 BCE in Anatolia to c. 500 BCE in the Eurasian steppes. Kalmyks Oriat Mongols driven in the seventeenth century into steppe lands north and east of the Caspian Sea. Many returned to

ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES 533 pastures in the high Tien Shan Mountains in Xinjiang, western China. Khatun Wife of the Khagan, equivalent to a queen. Kazaks Also known as Khazaks, this confederacy was historically the Kirghiz-Kazaks. They were a huge tribe that separated from the Uzbeks c. 1465 and divided into three hordes. Until the advent of Soviet collectivization c. 1935, their homeland ranged over the modern territory of Kazakstan, into the Djungar Basin of western China from where, c. 1850, they migrated into the Altai Mountains of western Mongolia. Pockets of Kazaks also live in autonomous regions of Xinjiang, China. Khagan Highest-ranking Turkic or Genghis Khanite Mongol leader, equivalent to a king. khereksur A cultic monument composed of piled stone with additional stone features. Sometimes found in connection with olenniye kamni. kurgan Nomadic burial mound. Massagetae A Saka tribe living in the vicinity of the Aral Sea who under the leadership of their queen, Tomyris, defeated and killed Cyrus the Great, Achaemenid Persian king, when he tried to invade her lands in 530 BCE. Medes Nomadic tribes in Central Asia in the first millennium BCE. These, along with the Persians, formed the Achaemenid Persian Empire in the eighth century BCE. Neolithic Period New Stone Age. The stage of human development when stone tools shaped by polishing and grinding were used. Animals and plants were domesticated, people lived in permanent villages and developed pottery and weaving. This time period varies in different parts of the world. nomads Descending from Bronze Age sedentary population, small extended family groups who practiced transhumance while herding sheep, goats, horses, camels, and yak in the higher altitudes. olenniye kamni Large elaborated cultic stelae with anthropomorphic, zoomorphic (especially stylized images of deer), or floral motifs found primarily in north-central Mongolia. Paleolithic Period Early Stone Age. The stage of human development when people made and used rudimentary, chipped stone tools. The Stone Age is divided into three periods: Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic. Parthians A nomadic dynasty (c. 141 BCE–AD 224) in Iran and extending into southern Turkmenistan, famous for its combat cavalry and fine archers, and for breeding the Heavenly Horses highly sought after by the Han Dynasty emperors. The Parthians amassed significant wealth by controlling the Silk Route between Rome and China. Pazyryk The name given to the Saka confederacy that inhabited the region of the same name in southern Siberia from c. 450 to 300 BCE. Their frozen tombs, excavated by S.I. Rudenko in the 1950s, revealed an elaborate assortment of normally lost organic material including carpets, felt textiles, and wooden carvings, human remains, and sacrificial horses. Pokrovka An archaeological site in the southern Ural steppes in Russia that had many Kurgan cemeteries that were used over 800 years by Bronze Age people, but primarily by Early Iron Age Sauromatians and Sarmatians. phalerae Large breastplates, part of horse harnesses, carved from bone or cast from metal, including gold and bronze. Saka A loose confederacy of Early Iron Age nomads who practiced pastoral transhumance in the Tien Shan and Altai Mountains, the Ferghana Valley, and the Syr Darya delta region in Kazakstan from the eighth to third century BCE. The Saka were Caucasoids and spoke an Indo-Iranian language. Sarmatians Nomadic pastoralists, who between the fourth and sixth century BCE maintained summer pastures and kurgan cemeteries in the southern Ural steppes and along the Volga and

Don rivers. These Caucasoid people spoke an Indo-Iranian language and varied significantly in physical types. They are subdivided into Early, Middle, and Late Sarmatians. Sauro-Sarmatians An abbreviation for Sauromatians and Sarmatians. Scythians Caucasoid, Indo-Iranian speaking pastoral nomads who lived north of the Black Sea between the seventh and third century BCE. They developed a symbiotic relationship with the Greek colonists who had established cities in the same region. Over time some Scythians became agriculturists, producing grain for export to mainland Greece; other maintained the pastoral status. Shan-yu¨ Highest-ranking Hsiung-nu leader, equivalent of a king. Sogdiana Also known as Sogd and Sogdia. A satrapy or province of the Achaemenid Persian Empire located in the vicinity of Samarkand, Uzbekistan. sum A political subdivision of an aimag in Mongolia. transhumance The practice of following animals from pasture to pasture as required for feed and shelter. Tuvans A Turkic tribe living in the Tuva Autonomous Region in southern Siberia. A few Tuvans live in the Altai Mountain in western Mongolia. Uygurs Known in central Mongolia from the eighth century, they adapted their vertically written alphabet to the Mongol language and became the traditional scribes for the Genghis Khanite court. In the twelfth century, they migrated into the Tarim Basin in western China. The Uygurs are a Caucasian and Mongol admixture and speak a Turkic language. Uzbeks A tribe descended from the Golden Horde who took their name from Khan O¨z Bek (1312–1341). In 1428, Khan Abu’l Khayr led the Uzbeks from southern Siberia to the north bank of the Syr Darya, where many tribes broke away and took the name Kazak. In 1468, Abu’l Khayr was killed and the Uzbek were defeated in a battle with Djungars. By 1495, the Uzbeks had recovered and migrated to the territory known as Uzbekistan where they occupied Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva. During the next century, Uzbek hegemony extended eastward into the Badakhshan region of Afghanistan and into Turkestan and westward to Khorasan, Iran. Since their arrival in the fertile Amu Darya region they have been agriculturists. Yu¨ eh-chih Confederacy of nomads in southern Kazakstan and in the Tien Shan Mountains, who were driven from this region by the Hsiung-nu, and migrated into northern Afghanistan, and about a century later formed the Kushan Empire that was instrumental in spreading Buddhism into Central Asia, India, and China.

Geographic Ecology of Eurasia – The Steppes and Deserts The dominant feature of Eurasia is its steppes, the largest unified area of flat land in the world. The steppes stretch from the plains of Hungary eastward to Manchuria. The northern border extends to the tree line of southern Siberia, and the south is defined by massive mountain ranges including the Tien Shan and the high Pamirs. However, some mountain ranges such as the Tien Shan and Altai have at times been integral to current steppe societies so that these expanses, and those beyond, were culturally or politically allied with the steppe cultures. Thus, oasis villages adjacent to the vast Taklimakan Desert in

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western China came under the sway of mobile tribes while the Altai Mountains in western Mongolia provided rich summer grazing for nomadic herds. The flatness of the steppes, with the paucity of natural barriers had immense cultural and political effects on adjacent regions. From the small sedentary Bronze Age farming villages, beginning around 900 BCE, the earliest nomadic cultures exploded from all directions, developing discrete although economically similar lifestyles throughout the steppes. As these societies developed into confederacies toward the end of the first millennium BCE and in subsequent centuries, their powerful militaries allowed them to control multiple ‘Silk Roads’ that crossed Eurasia. Some centuries later the Genghis Khanite Mongol hordes were able, in a few short decades, to create one of the largest Empires ever that encompassed the vast territory from Manchuria to Hungary (see Asia, Central and North, Steppes, Deserts, and Forests). The steppes, although connected, are divided into three zones intersected by deserts and mountains (Figure 1). The western steppes extend through southwestern Russia, along the northern shores of the Black Sea, and east to the Ural River. In the southwest, the Karakum (Black Sand) Desert encircles the northern Caspian Sea. The central (Kazak) steppes extend through southeastern Russia to encompass northern Kazakstan, moving further southeast through the Djungar Pass that lies between the Tien Shan and Altai Mountains into western China. The eastern steppes begin in the northern Xinjiang province of western China skirting the fringes of the Taklimakan Desert, eastward into the Mongol steppe lands that border the Gobi desert, ending at the Khingan Mountains on the western borders of Manchuria. In southwestern Kazakstan, the steppes are semidesert. The northerly regions around the Aral Sea that once supported seminomadic animal husbandry populations, in recent years, have become wastelands as a result of the intense agricultural diversion of the Amu Darya (historical Oxus River) and the Syr Darya. Eurasian continental climatic conditions have always been extremely harsh. Without seas to moderate the vast expanses the temperatures can range from well above 100
F in summer and below 50
F in winter. Strong winds and sand storms, sudden flooding rainstorms, and burning sun are the norm. Plant life, however, had adapted to the climatic conditions so that the herds found adequate pastures that included the waist-high coarse steppe grass. In addition to the larger rivers, that is, the Don, Danube, Dniester, the Amu Darya, Syr Darya, the Volga, and the Ural, many smaller tributary rivers meander throughout the steppes. These provided ample protein in the form

of fish when small villages were established along their banks and water for herds when the nomadic herders appeared. Southern Siberia, although not included in the Eurasian steppes, has had significant cultural interaction and diffusion with steppe people and cultural evidence points to times of migration from the steppes into the taiga. The time divisions used in the following paragraphs are only approximations; they also differ from the similarly named divisions in Africa and Europe. Moreover, they diverge within the various ecological regions of Eurasia and are used here only as an approximate guide.

Palaeolithic and Mesolithic (750 000–7000 BCE) Although Homo erectus appears to have evolved in Africa about 1.8 million years ago and remains dating to 1.6 million years ago have been found in Georgia, the harsh climatic conditions in the steppes, and lack of significant nutritional sources, for example, the gathering-type foodstuffs, prevented permanent incursions into the Eurasian interior until much later. The earliest evidence for human habitation is found along the southern fringes of Eurasia. Although Oldowantype tools (c. 750 000 BP) were recorded in the Caucasus, and habitation sites dating to c. 250 000 BP were excavated in Tajikistan, during the early and middle Palaeolithic, human habitation in Eurasia was insignificant. About 130 000 BP, Neanderthal populations, with the ability to adapt to cold climate, appeared in Europe but had disappeared by 50 000 BP although they continued to flourish in Asia until 30 000 BP. Between 90 000 and 80 000 BP, in the only relatively benign Eurasian climatic region encompassing Uzbekistan, the North Black Sea territory, and along the Dniester River, Neanderthal habitation sites have been found. Following a colder period after 65 000 BP, a second wave of Neanderthals colonized the less-hostile areas between the great Eurasian rivers and the intermountain valleys. They hunted, gathered, and most probably lived in subsistence groups. Some burials indicate a limited ritual belief system. From c. 40 000 BP climatic conditions continued to deteriorate and the Eurasian steppes no longer entertained habitation until about 20 000 BP when the first evidences of modern humans appear. This society is defined by complex housing and refined utilitarian implements as well, drilled stone, bone- and animal-teeth pendants, and art, for example, Venus figurines, cave paintings, and petroglyphs. Hunting techniques became more complex, which signaled a higher

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Figure 1 Map of the Eurasian steppes.

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societal organization. Early in the Holocene Period, c. 12 000 BP, temperatures were similar to those of today, permitting postglacial communities to thrive in the southern Ural steppes where they hunted horse and elk. Emigrating from the south, sedentary fishing communities in the Volga, Dnieper, and Pontic steppes used huge nets for fishing. Such activity signals the beginnings of an organized society. Hissar Culture hunting camps, dating from the seventh to the fifth millennium BCE, were found along the base of the mountains ranges from the Amu Darya to Issyk Kul (lake). And the earliest signs of the Neolithic with the domestication of goats and sheep, appeared in caves east of the Caspian Sea.

Neolithic (7000–3500 BCE) During the Neolithic Revolution, societies banded together to build small villages supported by primitive agriculture and rudimentary animal husbandry that was based on goats and sheep. These societies developed primarily in oases, along the river deltas, and around the Aral Sea. Hunting–gathering communities lived in tandem with village farmers for hundreds of years, yet cultural centers rose and new ideas were disseminated. Horses, that play a great role in the development of the Early Iron Age cultures, were hunted first during the Paleolithic before they were later domesticated, not for riding but for their unusually high food value. Massive horse bone finds are known from Dereivka, belonging to the Srednyi Stog Culture in the Ukraine and Azov region north of the Black Sea as well as at Botai, in north-central Kazakstan. The earliest Eurasian agricultural communities, known as the Djeitun Culture, began to form in the seventh millennium BCE at the base of the Kopet Dag Mountains just south of the Karakum Desert. Houses contained hearths with niches that probably had a ceremonial function and courtyards were work areas and living spaces. Hand-molded pottery vessels were rudimentary; placing hot stones in the foodstuff rather than roasting over the hearth probably accomplished cooking. Ornaments were made from fired clay, carved from bone, and incorporated semiprecious stones including turquoise. There is evidence of communal participation in an egalitarian society. Grain crops required irrigation in the region but water was easily diverted from small rivers flowing from the Kopet Dag. Onager, gazelle, and wild pig were hunted for food; fox, wildcat, and wolf provided fur. Population geneticists noted a specific haplogroup (R1a1 defined by the M17) that indicated an eastto-west migration between the fifth and third millennium BCE in the western steppes as far east as the

southern Ural steppes. Known as the Yamnaya, Timber Grave, Pit Grave, or Kurgan culture (the latter because of their single burials in kurgans), the people are associated with the Proto-Indo-European language. They lived in settlements that became more advanced over time. In the rubbish heaps near the villages, bones of horse, cattle, sheep, goats, and occasionally pig have been found, indicating they practiced animal husbandry as well as farming. As the culture advanced they constructed hill-forts adjacent to the steep riverbank and used wagons with large wheels. Oxen heads have been found buried with wheels. In the fifth to fourth millennia BCE, metallurgical development, characterized by pure copper objects, spread to southeastern Europe and the most westerly steppe region.

Bronze Age (3500–1000 BCE) Many significant events took place in Eurasia at the beginning of the Bronze Age, which is marked by a general population expansion. By the early second millennium BCE metal objects of similar form and function in pure copper and mold-cast arsenical bronzes were produced in a Circum-Pontic metallurgical province extending from the Balkans around the North Black Sea into the southern Urals. The largest copper ore mine was located at Kargaly in the southern Ural steppes. The mid-second millennium BCE saw innovative metallurgical technologies that most probably originated east of the Ural Mountains and became known as the Seima-Turbino phenomena. Production included thin-walled casting of tin bronze, a technology that spread from the Altai Mountains to the Dnieper River. At the turn of the second to first millennium BCE, metallurgy was advanced and concentrated in the Ural Mountains, throughout most of Kazakstan into western Siberia and the Altai Mountains where production was surprisingly uniform. Iron technology was not introduced into the Eurasian steppes until around the middle of the first millennium BCE. Developing in the early second millennium BC, the Andronovo Culture was a loosely related sedentary population inhabiting the central steppes south to the Kopet Dag, the Pamir and Tien Shan Mountains, and extending north into Minusinsk Basin. Andronovo settlements were situated on the banks of small rivers and in low flood plains. Both small villages, with up to 20 houses, as well as larger ones with up to 100 timber-built houses are known from the earlier period. Settlements grew to accommodate the increasing populations and in the later development phase, houses were roomy, rectangular semi-dugout dwellings ranging from 100 to 135 m2 placed in line along

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a river. A particular feature of the Andronovo is the great mounds of ashes that accumulated as the settlements grew. The Andronovo Culture economy was based on animal husbandry supplemented by some agriculture, hunting, fishing, and gathering. Around the turn of the second to first millennium BCE, the settlement economy transformed from sedentary to nomadic, characterized by annual cyclical animal herding and a shared portable material culture. Dating between 2000 and 1600 BCE, the SintashtaArkaim Culture has been recently recognized in the central steppes and along the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains. The settlements were round or rectangular fortifications covering between 6000 and 30 000 m2 Village were protected by walls constructed from a wooden frame reinforced with unfired clay brick as well as ramparts and moats. Towers guarded the entrances and access to water. Within the fortification rectangular houses 25–130 m2 that contained pitstorage, open fire hearths, and wells faced an internal circular street but were abutted against the exterior fortification. Some buildings also featured furnaces for forging metals. It is assumed that cities such as Arkaim were administrative–ceremonial centers where up to 1000 aristocracy/metallurgists assembled periodically to perform specific rituals. Archaeological evidence has revealed that throughout the central steppes, west to the Don River and beginning around 1000 BCE, a severe drought occurred, at which time the affected populations withdrew – probably to the south – from the traditional

Figure 2 Kazak horseman in the Altai Mountains.

habitation centers. With the reappearance of a lesshostile climate c. 900–800 BCE, the economic lifestyle dramatically shifted from small village farming complemented by animal husbandry to developed pastoral nomadism in which animals form the basis of survival. This also marks the commencement of the Early Iron Age.

Early Iron Age (900–800 BCE to AD 300) As the drought receded in the steppes, villagers living along the rivers (where their burial mounds are found) returned and more or less simultaneously began experimenting with pastoral nomadism. This entailed driving their herds further into the steppes lands, a mode of life also precipitated by horse riding, which provided greater mobility (Figure 2). Thus, herders returned less frequently to the home base. Innovative portable housing culminated in the yurt (ger in Mongolia), a lattice structure covered on the exterior with heavy felt and lined on the interior walls with colorful carpets, which also covered the floor. By adopting this lifestyle, the population was no longer dependent upon hunting, gathering, and minimal agriculture but rather on their animals – goats, sheep, horses, camels, and, in the higher-altitudes, yak (Figure 3) Their diet consisted primarily of meat, generally sheep – but also horsemeat was prepared for ceremonial occasions – and dairy products, particularly sheep and yak milk, the ceremonial koumiss (fermented mare’s milk), and various cheeses that they

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Figure 3 Kazaks at summer pasture in the Altai Mountains with their yurts and herds.

produced. Tanned leather was fashioned into heavier winter clothing as well as horse accouterments. On the steppes, nomads may have migrated more than 1000 km during a single year, leaving their winter home in very early spring, moving to a clean, warm locale to lamb-out the herds. A short time later their migration began, generally northward across the steppes, reaching the fulcrum in late spring, and remaining there until the rains of autumn forced them to retrace their route to the winter home. This pattern is also consistent with nomads who migrate into the mountains for summer pasture although the trek may be much shorter – a few up to several hundred kilometers. It has recently been discovered that nomads buried in the Siberian Pazyryk region were infested with hookworm. The closest endemic zones to this infestation were along the shores of the Caspian and Aral seas or in Iran, indicating they had summer migrated over 1200 km. The shift from a sedentary lifestyle to one of nomadism is noted in the Chowhougou cemeteries located between the Tien Shan foothills and the Taklimakan desert in western China. The earliest rock-lined tombs, located closed to the oasis village, contained a single skeleton whose mortuary items included painted pottery and artifacts relating to a sedentary society. Later dated but similarly constructed tombs in the same cemetery were located closer to the foothills. These, however, held several skeletons. Pottery was coarser and undecorated while offerings now included bronze knives of the type from the Minusinsk Valley in southern Siberia as well as horse accouterments. It would appear that traders on

horseback from the northern reaches had made their way through the Tien Shan Mountains to encounter the oasis villages. There they traded bronzes, sheep, and wool for agricultural products and exquisite textiles woven by the oasis women. Before long the younger villagers realized the stress of herding was far less than that of planting and hoeing and soon emulated the northerner nomadism. Nomads normally buried their dead in the summer pasture; here in reverse, they returned to their winter home for the burial ceremony, now placing their deceased in communal pits and including objects from their nomadic lifestyle. The nomadic winter home and corrals were frequently constructed at the base of a great stone outcropping that provided solar warmth and also protected from the harsh northerly winds that swept the steppes of snow so that some grazing was possible throughout the winter. The home was also in proximity to a small river that provided water and stretches of tall grass along the banks for emergency feed. Nomads traveled in small support groups, known as auls made up of extended families. Clan and tribal auls commingled at summer and other rites of passage were performed. Tribal alliances were formed as needed for administrative requirements and military expediency as well as for apportioning grazing lands that were never personal property. Under charismatic leadership, confederacies composed of many clans and tribes controlled vast territories. Others, employing large-scale military migrations, created empires (e.g., the Genghis Khanite). Because of their mobility, military prowess, and ability to rapidly mobilize, nomads had a major

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impact upon bordering sedentary societies. The major tribal alliances of the first millennium BCE, known from Greek, Achaemenid Persian, and other sources, and further identified by Russian archaeology beginning in the late nineteenth century, are known as (1) the Scythians, occupying southeastern Europe, north of the Black Sea to the lower Don River; (2) the Sauromatians, whose burials are from the Kuban region east of the Black Sea, along the lower Don and Volga rivers, and throughout the Ural River system; the slightly later (3) Sarmatians, who congregated from the lower Dniester River east, particularly along the Volga and Ural interfluvials. Further to the east, (4) the Saka ranged from central Kazakstan through the Tien Shan Mountains and the Ferghana Valley, northeast through eastern Kazakstan into the Altai Mountains in present-day southern Siberia and Mongolia. All the Early Iron Age nomads spoke variations of Indo-Iranian languages and were ethnically Caucasoids until a Mongoloid admixture was introduced as noted in skeletal material in the central steppes dating from the fourth century BCE, and in southern Kazakstan in the third century BCE. The people now known as the mummies of western China, until at least the fourth century BCE, were also Caucasoids. The economy of Early Iron Age nomads varied within regions and was dependent upon several factors including climatic conditions as well as the extent of contact between the nomads and their particular sedentary neighbors. As an example, some Scythian tribes in direct contact with Greek colonies north of the Black Sea became sedentary, raising grain for export to the Greek mainland while the Sauromatians and Sarmatians, inhabiting vast stretches of steppe land, increased their wealth by controlling and/or raiding the northerly Silk Routes. The Pazyryk Saka in the Gorny Altai of southern Siberia lived a nomadic lifestyle with minimal migration yet increased their wealth through long-distance trade with the Achaemenid Persian satrapies.

Scythians (fifth to third century BCE) Most of the written history about the Scythians comes from Herodotus’ Histories, Book IV, written when he visited Olbia in the mid-fifth century BCE. The earliest mention of the Scythians, however, occurs in Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform tablets of the late seventh century BCE. At this time, as the Scythians grew powerful in the Ancient Near East they made alliances with the Medes, Manneans, and later with the Assyrians. A Scythian hegemony resulted in their ruling Asia Minor for 28 years.

According to Herodotus, they devastated everything through violence and overindulgence. Shortly thereafter, the Median King Cyaxares (625–585 BCE) annihilated the Scythian hierarchy in battle and the surviving Scythians were forced to return to their former lands north of the Black Sea. In 514 or 512 BCE, the Persian troops of King Darius I invaded the Scythian lands. Accounts of their battles by Herodotus (Book IV), Ctesias (Fr. 13 20–21), and Strabo (VII, 3, 14) vary but it is thought that the wars contributed to the consolidation and development of the Scythian national identity. The Scythians invaded Thrace (modern Bulgaria), which resulted in conflicts that were frequently resolved by dynastic marriages between Scythian chieftains and Thracian princesses. In the fourth century BCE before perishing at the age of 90, in battle with Philip II of Macedon, King Atheas united the Scyths from the Danube to the Don rivers. Hugely rich burials, such as Chertomlyk and Solokha, dating to the final third of the fourth century BCE indicate no significant weakening in the Scythian society after their defeat by the Macedonians. Moreover, in 331 BCE, they killed Zoppyrion, Alexander the Great’s vice-regent, and defeated his army (Justini, xii, I, 4). By the third century BCE the Scythians faced a continual crisis as massive Sarmatian movements pushed upon them from the Don River region, and Celts and the Getae (a Thracian tribe) assaulted them from the Danube. The Scythians were forced into the Crimean foothills and along the lower Dnieper River where they lived in fortified settlements until the fourth century AD at which time they were assimilated by the Hunnic tribes that came from the east during the era of mass migrations. Scythian Burial Customs

The first nomadic burials to be excavated by the Russians were those of the Scythians located in southeastern Europe and the Crimea. Great chieftains were buried with much ceremony and feasting in massive kurgans, often accompanied by retainers, horses, and a variety of portable art as well as less-portable items secured in trade with the Greek colonies along the north Black Sea. Portable art cast in bronze and precious metals included pole finials, a variety of horse accouterments, including phalerae (breast plaques), and belt plaques indicating status. Men were buried with complete defensive and offensive armament, which by the fourth to third centuries BCE included long swords as well as ceremonial akinakes (short swords) in gold sheaths. Women also held elevated positions in society, as illustrated by gold headdresses and plaques, exquisitely worked gold jewelry

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encrusted with semiprecious stones, and elaborate bronze cultic mirrors. According to the Soviet archaeologist E. P. Bunyatyan, 27–29% of the female burials contained armament. Greek craftsmanship is apparent in the luxury gold items as well as in amphorae, kantaroi, and kylix. Occasionally burials were marked with stone funerary sculpture.

Sauromatians, Sarmatians, Alans The Sauromatians, Sarmatians, and Alans have been differentiated archaeologically by burial artifacts and by the orientation of the deceased (Figure 4). The Soviet archaeologist B. N. Grakov defined four chronological periods for these tribes: . Sixth to fourth century BCE – Sauromatian (type site, Blyumenfeld) . Fourth to second century BCE – Sauro-Sarmatian (type site, Prokhorovskaya) . Late second century BCE to second century AD – Sarmatian (type site, Suslova) . Second to fourth century AD – Alan (type site Shipovskaya). According to Herodotus and Hippocrates (24), the Sauromatians, who were eastern neighbors of the Scythians, spoke an earlier version of the Scythic language. The Sauromatians maintained a nomadic lifestyle independent of sedentary cultures. According to Herodotus, social statuses of Sauromatian and Early Sarmatian women were different from those

Figure 4 Reconstruction of the skull of a Sarmatian woman.

of the Scythian women. Many of the former dressed like men, rode horses, shot bows and arrows, hunted, and took part in military campaigns. Based on archaeological data, Soviet archaeologist K. F. Smirnov, believed that the Sauromatian culture developed from the sedentary Bronze Age TimberGrave Culture (located in the Volga River region) and the Andronovo Culture (in the southern Ural steppes). Tribal units associated with the Sauromatians include the Issedones, Daha, and Massagetae. Although it is not clear where they wintered, their burials and, therefore, their summer pastures, were from the Don River to the southern Ural steppes. Before the turn of the fifth to fourth centuries, the Sauromatians in the Volga interfluvials maintained good relations with the Scythians. The balance of power soon changed in fourth century BCE as the Sauromatians pushed westward into Scythian territory along the lower reaches of the Don River. Sauromatian westward migrations were no doubt the result of impinging eastern migrations by different ethnic but still Indo-Iranian-speaking nomads. Greek authors referred to these tribes as the Sarmatians who probably originated in the forest-steppe trans-Ural region and northwestern Kazakstan. However, recent DNA studies have revealed that certain female Sarmatians in the southern Urals, in the fourth century BCE, introduced a Mongol admixture. The Sarmatians first asserted themselves in the southern Ural steppes, continuing to move westward into the lower Volga River region and the Volga-Don interfluvials. Sarmatian military burials of the third to second century found deep in Scythian territory indicate that their warriors had penetrated the Scythian territory along the lower Don-Dnieper interfluvials. The campaigns of Alexander the Great also undermined the symbiotic relationship that the nomads and sedentary populations had maintained, thus creating further turmoil. Sarmatian tribal unions mentioned in Geography of Strabo include the Rhoxolani, Aorsi, Siraki, and Yazigs. By the middle of the first century BCE, these unions had moved into the plains between the Danube and Tissa rivers as well as into the eastern Azov Sea region, the Kuban River area, and part of central pre-Caucasus. In AD 49, first an alliance and then further struggle over the Bosporus throne weakened the Siraki. Shortly thereafter this tribe as well the Aorsi disappear from written sources. Archaeological material indicates, however, that both the Siraki and the Aorsi lived in the steppes between the Don and Volga rivers until the late first century BCE. Around the middle of the first century AD the Alans, a large nomadic union, emerged from north of the Black Sea and conquered or assimilated the

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remaining Sarmatian tribes. From the mid-first century AD through most of the fourth century AD, the Alans constantly raided the trans-Caucasus and the eastern Roman provinces, keeping the sedentary populations in a constant state of terror. Diversity in burial customs indicates that the Alans of the second to third century AD were ethnically more diverse than those of the third to fourth century AD. In the late fourth century AD when Huns from the east swept into the Alan territory, some Alanic tribes were absorbed into the Hunnic union. Others settled in the North Caucasus while other unions became a component of new ethnic confederacies of the early Middle Ages. After the Hunnic invasion, independent unions of Indo-Iranian-speaking nomads no longer existed. The north Caucasus Alans migrated into the foothills and mountains and in conjunction with indigenous tribes established the land of Alania that existed to the twelfth century AD. Other Alans settled in the Don River region intermingling with the indigenous culture. The known Alan settlements that have been excavated were both fortified and unfortified. Along with their kurgan burials, they were constructed along the Kuban River, north of the Azov Sea delta, and along the Terek River in the north Caucasus.

be either in a pit, often with ledges along the side and dug to a depth of ca. 2 m.; in a deep catacomb; or in a podboi , a pit with niche along the side. The deceased, probably wrapped in a felt blanket, was often further protected from the earth with organic material, such as cane or wooden planks (Figure 5). Ritual artifacts in female burials signaled a rich spiritual life, noted initially in the Sauromatian burials. The role of priestesses became increasingly important on both the clan and the tribal levels as determined by their burial accoutrements. These included zoomorphic amulets in precious metals or carved from boar’s tusks, ritual stone-carved and fired-clay altars, bronze mirrors for divinations, and fossilized seashells serving as containers for painting or tattooing. Bronze arrowheads, swords, daggers, and armor elements were provided for both male and female burials. The latter social group, female warriors, was small but was still a prominent group among Sauromatians and earliest Sarmatians (Figure 6). The earliest use of spears is also attributed to the Sarmatians.

Sauromatian and Sarmatian Burial Rituals

Similarity in burial customs consolidated the Sauromatian and Sarmatian tribes in the Volga region and southern Ural steppes. In addition to some diversity in burial artifacts, Sauromatian burials, oriented east, differ from those of the Sarmatians that are orientated south. Nomads were buried at summer pasture after the ground thawed, permitting them to dig deep pits and catacombs, and to construct the kurgan overmound. In the southern Ural region, where cemeteries and kurgans were closely clustered, a few very large – 100þ m in diameter and known as tsar kurgans – reveal the nomadic societal hierarchy as they interred aristocracy. Because of their prominent profile against the horizon, the tsar kurgans were easily spotted from a great distance and, thus, were robbed, some shortly after the interment but many later during the Russian expansion in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. The vast majority of the kurgans are relatively small, measuring from c. 1 to 30 m in diameter. Artifacts in these burials also provide insight into social rank within the society. Although the kurgan was constructed for the primary burial, it was often reused with the secondary burials being placed laterally around the central burial. Only occasionally were multiple Sarmatian burials encountered in a single tomb. The interment could

Figure 5 Pokrovka male with child in situ.

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Figure 6 Armament and cultic artifacts from an Early Sarmatian female warrior burial (Pokrovka cemetery 2, kurgan 8, burial 5).

Plaques incorporating the ubiquitous Animal Style functioned as amuletic decoration for the bearer while diverse types of psalia (cheekpieces), bridle bits, and belt hooks provided horse accouterments. As the Sarmatian tribes become militarily stronger and acquired greater wealth, a diversity and increased value of burial offerings is noted. A large kurgan at the Filippovka Cemetery in the southern Urals yielded several secret troves containing beads, a large bronze mirror, hundreds of gold plaques, and over 20 threedimensional carved deer covered with gold and silver foil (Figure 7). In the Don River interfluvials the jewelry worn by high-status women was fashioned from gold and semiprecious stones (Figure 8). Alan settlements as well as catacomb and podboi burials have been excavated along the Kuban and the Terek rivers. The entrance chambers to catacombs placed near the right bank of the Terek were orientated latitudinally while their chambers were placed meridionally. Grave offerings included bronze and silver fibulae, occasionally gold plaques, buckles, and arrowheads. Pottery containers are of the same shape as those of the earlier period but were wheelthrown, often burnished, and gray fired.

Figure 7 Plaque from the Filippovka tsar burial in the form of fighting camels.

Figure 8 Diadem from a high-ranking female burial, Khokh, Don River interfluvial.

Russian archaeologists. As the Saka had little direct contact with sedentary societies, there is a paucity of textual information and, therefore, their lifestyle is primarily deduced from burials and artifacts.

The Saka

The Tasmola and other Tribes in Kazakstan

The generic name Saka has been applied to Early Iron Age tribes that had common, yet distinct cultural affinities. They nomadized throughout Kazakstan, into the rich Ferghana Valley (now divided between Uzbekistan, Tadjikstan, and Kyrgyzstan), into the Tien Shan and Altai mountains. Although there were no known direct contacts between the Saka and the Scythians, the Early Iron Age culture in southern Siberia was termed ‘Scytho-Siberian’ by the early

In the steppes of western and central Kazakstan, Saka burials remained unchanged from the seventh to the third century BCE. This would indicate that the ethnic populations generically known today as Tasmola, remained relatively stable. M. K. Kadyrbayev theorized that Saka tribes could be equated with three that were known from historical sources: the Agrippeans in northwestern Kazakstan, the Issedonians in the central steppes, and the Arimaspians in eastern

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Kazakstan. The principal characteristic of Tasmola burials was the presence in the necropolis of a formation denominated ‘kurgan with mustache.’ Each burial consisted of one large and two smaller kurgans connected by a semicircular ridge of stones (Figure 9). The large kurgan contained a human burial, one, smaller, held a horse burial and the other pottery. Male burials contained a horse’s head wrapped in a horsehide, horse trapping, and meat offerings. Females were buried in pits that had niches blocked with stone slabs, an architectural structure lacking in male burials. The types of plaques and poletops indicate contact with Sarmatians in the northern Urals and the Siberian Saka. Mirrors and cultic altars reveal a spiritual belief system that may have paralleled that of the Sauromatians and Sarmatians.

Tuvinian sites extend north into the Sayan Mountains and west into Pazyryk and northwestern Mongolia in the Altai Mountains. The earliest known ‘Scythian’type burial (eighth to seventh century BCE) is the massive ‘tsar’ Arzhan Kurgan measuring 120 m in diameter, 4 m in height, and cylindrical in form (Figure 10). In the periphery, 70 burial chambers with c. 160 harnessed riding horses were found in separate cells. A log house in the center was constructed for two nobles, a man and women, who were placed in the central chamber. In the outer chamber of the log house, six riding horses and seven retainers, richly dressed and of the same elderly age as the nobles, were interred. Armaments including daggers, knives, and arrowheads. Horse tack and bronze phalerae in the form of coiled felines were included as accoutrements for the next world. Stone-carved stelae, known as the olenniye kamni (deer stones), are predominately found in the fareastern and northern Saka regions. In addition to deer, other animals including boar, horses, and felines as well as various plant forms are among the iconographic images on these large stones (Figure 11). Incising images on the surface of earrings, necklaces, and belts that display daggers and whetstones has anthropomorphicized many of the olenniye kamni.

Tuva and Eastern Kazakstan Kurgan burials in the northern regions, from southern Siberia to Kazakstan east of the Ural Mountains, reflected the Bronze Age Karasuk Culture, yet grave offerings are analogous with those in Central Asia. The physical appearance of the Saka was essentially the same as Bronze Age inhabitants although the northern and southern inhabitants were distinct. The northern Saka in the Irtysh River valley of Kazakstan gravitated toward the Altai regions while the southern populations intermingled with those from the Semirechiye region of southern Kazakstan and south into the oases of western China. Primarily Caucasoid, a Mongoloid admixture is noted particularly among the female skeletons beginning around the third century BCE.

Southern Kazakstan and Western China (Ancient Turkestan) In the Semirechiye (Seven Rivers) in southern Kazakstan, large stone-covered kurgans measuring up to 100 m in diameter are represented by those constructed in the Chilikta Valley and at Issyk just

5m

(c)

(d)

(a) 8m

10 cm

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(b) (e) Figure 9 Tasmola burials in western Kazakstan.

1m

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Figure 11 Various styles of olenniye kamni associated with the Arzhan Kurgan.

Figure 10 Schematic and details of the Arzhan Kurgan.

north of Almaty. These yielded prolific Animal Style iconography wrought in gold and frequently decorated with semiprecious stones. Women also played prominent roles in this nomadic society particularly in religious or cultic matters, an influence transmitted into western China (Figure 12). Burial rituals while constructing the large kurgans often included feasting, particularly on horsemeat cooked in large cauldrons. Bronze Age anthropomorphic fertility dancers recorded in stone at Kangjiashimenji in western China give way to sun gods and Early Iron Age Shamanic images of ritual horned horses and the ubiquitous zoomorphisms at sites such as Tamgaly near Almaty, Kazakstan, and Saimaly Tash in the Kyrghyz Tien Shan (Figure 13). Oases cemeteries at Chowhougou at the northern edge of the Taklimakan Desert and the base of the

Tien Shan Mountains reveal that nomadism was introduced into the high Tien Shan c. 900 BCE when multiple burials replaced a single interment. During the Bronze Age the deceased had been placed on the right side in a flexed position but this custom soon changed to the typical Early Iron Age supine position. Horse harnessing, including snaffle bits of a type from southern Siberia, was added to the list of grave goods and crude pottery was substituted for the villagers’ fine painted ware. Bronze-casting techniques were introduced into western China at this time, probably from smithies known to have had workshops east of the Ural Mountains or in the southern Siberian Minusinsk Valley. The sophisticated castbronze artifacts from the Semirechiye and the Tarim Basin included altars and immense cauldrons, mirrors, knives, whetstone handles, and horse accouterments. Around 400 BCE, burials ceased at Chowhougou, possibly signaling that the Saka were being forced from their territories by the Hsiung-nu and Yu¨eh Chih confederacies. Burnished gray pottery from oasis cemeteries near Hami along the eastern Taklimakan Desert reflects

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pottery styles and techniques from northeastern Iran, suggesting population incursion from that region. Caucasoid mummies, dressed in finely woven woolen fabrics, have been excavated from cemeteries south of the Taklimakan Desert. The quality of the textiles suggests that the villagers traded wool from nomads living in higher elevations where the animals produce finer quality wool than they can in the intense desert heat. Artifacts associated with several female mummies also indicate a cultic belief system similar to that practiced by the Saka.

Pazyryk and the ‘Scytho-Siberians’

Figure 12 Contemporary Kazak nomads in their yurt in western China.

S. I. Rudenko’s seminal excavations in 1929 of huge frozen, but robbed, kurgans at Pazyryk in the Gorny Altai, Russia, revealed that these nomads followed a rich nomadic lifestyle. Finely carved wooden horse accouterments, multicolored horse blankets fashioned from felt, elaborated Animal Style motifs, and a wall hanging with a repeat motif depicting a woman of high status, probably a priestess, confronted by an male rider, all speak of a complex ritual life. Sacrificial horses masked and wearing horns imply cultural ties with Tamgaly in southern Kazakstan. From another Pazyryk kurgan a trade piece, a woolen carpet with a design that parallels the carved images of Medes bringing horses as tribute to the Great King at Persepolis (Iran), discloses the Pazyryks’ contact with the Achaemenid Persians. On the Ukok Plateau, Natalie Polosmak excavated a frozen burial containing a

Figure 13 A ceremonially horned horse with shaman, Tamgaly petroglyphs, Kazakstan.

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priestess wearing the nomadic high-pointed hat, caftan, and skirt. From another kurgan at Berel, located in the northeastern Kazakstan Altai Mountains, examination of the frozen remains of a high-ranking man and woman revealed the presence of hookworm infestation that could only have occurred on the shores of the Aral or Caspian Sea or in Iran, some 750 miles (1200 km) from the burial site. This confirms the practice of long-distance nomadizing during the Early Iron Age.

Early Medieval Nomadic Confederacies The Hsiung-nu, Yu¨eh-chih, and Tung-hu

Known to the Chinese in the fifth century BCE, the Hsiung-nu (also known as Xiongnu) were the largest of three Eurasian nomadic confederacies; the other two were the Yu¨eh-chih in the Chinese Gansu province and the Tung-hu in eastern Mongolia. The Hsiung-nu headed a powerful alliance of cattlebreeding tribes in the late third to the early second century BC, dominating eastern Central Asia for two centuries. They laid the foundation for the emergence of the powerful tribal alliances of the Middle Ages. The Hsiung-nu, as for all nomadic confederacies, were made up of various tribes, many with similar languages and traditions. Although some Hsiung-nu were reported to have red hair and big noses, it is unlikely that the ruling elite was Caucasoid or spoke an Indo-Iranian language. The tribes were noted for their deliberately deformed heads. By the middle of the third century BCE, the Hsiung-nu had formed a powerful confederacy and their leader was the great shan-yu¨. Pressure from the Chinese Ch’in emperor Shih-huang-ti in 214 BCE forced the confederacy from their traditional pastures in the Ordos region (northern loop of the Huang He River) and greatly weakened their force. Following the emperor’s death and the collapse of Chinese dynasty four years later, the Hsiung-nu regained the Ordos. At this time the continual Hsiung-nu pressure against the Chinese forced them to begin construction in Gansu of the Great Wall. Shan-yu¨ Tumen, had previously sent his son and heir, Motun, as political hostage to the Yu¨eh-chih. Chinese chronicles written by Ssu-ma Ch’ien reveal that Tumen attacked Yu¨eh-chih hoping that Motun would be killed, as the shan-yu¨ did not want this son to be his successor. Motun escaped during the battle, returned home, thus forcing Tumen to give him his military rank as heir as well as his 10 000 military forces. Motun began training his men to shoot at the exact same target that he shot at; if they failed to obey, they were executed. When his troops were completely loyal to him, Motun took his father on a

hunting expedition. He fired a whistling arrow at his shan-yu¨ as did his troops and Motun was assassinated. In 209 BCE, Motun became the new shan-yu¨ after executing his stepmother and any dissenters. Motun then attacked the Tung-hu, who tested Motun’s authority by demanding gifts. The shan-yu¨ granted their requests until they demanded territory in the Gobi, which overstepped their bounds. The Hsiung-nu attacked the Tung-hu, gained the advantage, killing the men, and taking the women and children prisoner before assuming their herds. The shan-yu¨ then turned westward, attacked the Yu¨eh-chih, taking traditional lands along the western loop of the Huang He River, before pushing into the Chinese Han defensive lines that crossed the Ordos. Moving northward, Motun dominated the Siberian fur trade and metals of the Mongolian Altai. Although he had considerable power, he still needed the vast wealth of the Chinese Han to fund a durable pastoral state. The Hsiung-nu and Han Chinese established a costly exchange of goods in which the Chinese obtained Heavenly Horses from the Ferghana Valley and the Hsiung-nu received foodstuffs, silks, and other luxury items. By the middle of the second century AD, following attacks by several rising tribal groups, the effective authority of the shan-yu¨ had collapsed both in the northern and southern regions and regional tribal chieftains regained power. It is assumed by some scholars that the Huns, located near the Black Sea as noted in Ptolemy’s geography c. AD 160, were remains of the Hsiung-nu who had integrated with local tribes. At Pokrovka in the southern Ural steppes, more than 100 kurgans with a very low profile contained skeletons with deliberately deformed skulls. These are dated post-Sarmatian (after fourth century AD). It is possible that these tribes may have been some of the Hsiung-nu who appear not much later in the Roman world as the Huns. Hsiung-nu archaeology Burials in southern Kazakstan with skeletons containing deformed skulls dating to c. 300 BCE reveal the incursion of Hsiung-nu from the Ordos region before the confederacy moved northward. In Buryatia (autonomous region in southern Siberia) the earliest Hsiung-nu archaeological monuments were discovered in 1896 by J. D. Talko-Grinzevich near the town of Kyachta. In 1924–1925, P. Koslov excavated the rich burials at Noin Ula in northern Mongolia that contained silver plates, nephrite carvings, silk textiles, and carpets. In recent years further excavations were undertaken at Noin Ula. In the same region fortresses at Huret-tov, Terelgiin, Gua-Dov, Bars-Hot, Haralty, and Gargalanty were explored, and cemeteries at Hunuy,

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Tebsh-uul, Edergol, and Darchan were excavated. The French-Mongol Archaeological Mission, commencing in 2000, located a cemetery of 400 burials at Gol Mod, 450 km NW of Ulaanbaatar. In 2001, the Mission excavated a funerary chamber 16 m deep in which they found rich artifacts, including a bronze mirror, rock crystal beads, and gold decoration suggesting that the burial belonged to a Hsiung-nu chieftain who died c. AD 40. In the Trans-Baikal region of southern Siberia, the Hsiung-nu Ivolga complex included a large fortress, smaller fortifications, and a cemetery. Other recent archaeological excavations in this region included the settlements of Dureny-1 and Dureny-2, Enchor, Hariatzk, and Bargay. In addition to the Bayan-Under fortress, the following cemeteries were excavated: Derestui, Ilmovaja, T cheremuchovaja, Enchor, and Zaoziornaja. Many small Hsiung-nu cemeteries are located south of Trans-Baikalia around Kyachta. Hsiung-nu skeletons are generally found supine but the burials vary in type as follows: (1) no inner grave or over-grave structure; (2) in a pit; (3) in a pit with a coffin and no over-grave structure; (4) in a pit with a coffin within a timber frame with no over-grave structure; (5) in a pit with a wooden coffin placed in a stone cist with an over-grave stone structure; (6) in a pit with a coffin placed in a timber frame and with an over-grave structure; (7) in a pit up to 10–15 m deep with a coffin, a timber frame, and a chamber several logs high enclosed in a square stone construction; the pit is partitioned by 4–5 stone walls. In the three latter groups, the coffin or the timber construction may be lined with stone slabs placed vertically. Change in the burial ritual within a given cemetery indicates the chronological development of Hsiung-nu customs and also implies increased wealth. The Derestui cemetery, investigated by Sergei Minyaev, has yielded the most important evidence relevant to Hsiung-nu social history. Each kurgan complex was composed of a central barrow holding a male, with satellite barrows in which were interred women and children, apparently sacrificed. Many funerary artifacts were placed in the burials; most common were belts, bronze plaques in the Ordos (often fantastic) animal style, ceramics, and beads. Decorative plaques, either solid bronze or metal over wood, adorned both women’s and men’s belts. The discovery and excavations of Hsiung-nu fortresses and settlements have given new insight into the Hsiung-nu that was thought to have been nomadic and completely dependent upon animal husbandry. However, because the Hsiung-nu Empire occupied a vast territory with a relatively large population, cattle-breeding alone could not sustain their lifestyle. Thus, in addition to the military strategies of

conquest and assimilation, agriculture, commerce, metallurgy, and other handicrafts were necessary to sustain the empire. The Yu¨eh-chih After being routed by the Hsiung-nu from Gansu, the Yu¨eh-chih confederacy pushed into western China. Chinese archaeologists excavated a Bronze Age stone house near Barkol, along the most northern Silk Route northeast of Urumqi. In addition to skeletal remains – probably those of nomads killed in a skirmish – artifacts abandoned on the floor of the dwelling included a large bronze cauldron of the Yu¨eh-chih type, indicating that they had celebrated feasts and burials while there. Yu. Zadneprovsky noted podboi burials in the Ili Valley and near Lake Issyk Kul in Kyrgyzstan. He tentatively identified these as Yu¨eh-chih on the basis of their similarity to other podboi tombs at the Gansu site of Haladun near Minqin. The Issyk Kul region is rich in nomadic burial sites; by 1960, 370 tombs had been identified. Of these, 80% were in pits attributed to the Saka, and 17% in podbois, tentatively identified as Yu¨eh-chih. As the Yu¨eh-chih moved westward, podboi burial are also noted in the Ferghana Valley where they may have wintered until they could continue their march westward through mountain passes to eventually arrive in northern Bactria (present-day Afghanistan). In the early first century AD, it appears that from the types and iconography of the some 10 000 gold artifacts found in six burials at Tillya Tepe (excavated by Afghan archaeologists and the Soviet archaeologist V. Sarianidi), the Yu¨eh-chih had interred high-status priestesses and a priest. By the turn of the millennium, the Yu¨eh-chih had become increasingly sedentary. One of the chieftains was responsible for establishing the Kushan Empire that ultimately spread Buddhism into India.

Mongolia in the Bronze Age Mongolia is a vast country situated in central Asia with changing geographical zones. Steppe lands are bordered by mountain chains: the high Altai in the west, the Hangai in the north central region that meets the Sayan in the east, and the Hentei that rises in the northeastern region. The northern Gobi, a semidesert/dry steppe land, covers the southern part of the country. In the west below the Altai Mountain, a great depression holds the salty Great Lakes that have no outlets. This area is the most northerly dry desert in the world (Figure 14). In spite of high altitudes and fluctuating continental temperatures, the vast steppes and highland valleys offer extremely favorable conditions for the early and successful development of animal husbandry,

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Figure 14 Stone-carved representation of a female, probably a priestess, wearing a pointed hat and holding a cup, standing adjacent to Uureg Lake in the Great Lakes Depression, Mongolia. Probably first millennium BCE.

which led to pastoral nomadism. The Bronze Age is represented by chance finds of cast bronzes of the Seimo-Turbino type, and bronzes with close affinities to the Karasuk Culture of Southern Siberia as well as the Chou Dynasty in China. The Late Bronze Age is identified with the Early Nomads who made extensive use of the bridled horse to forge contacts with neighboring tribes as well as more distant populations.

Early Turkic Empires The Turks were the first Inner Asian people whose language could be precisely dated. Their language also linked Turkic-speaking peoples throughout Inner Asia and beyond. Turkish-speaking nationalities in the Eurasian steppes and Turkestan today are many and include Kazaks, Kyrghyz, Uzbeks, Bashkorts, Tatars, Altais, Sakas, Tuvans, Uygurs, and Turkmen. The first Turkic Empire, that of the Go¨ktu¨rks, was established in Mongolia and dated from the sixth to eighth centuries AD. No doubt the Turkic state included nonspeaking as well as nonethnic Turks. In addition, not all ethnic Turks belonged to the ruling class and some probably also lived beyond the Turkish State.

Archaeologically it has been established that before AD 550 the Go¨ktu¨rks were nomadizing on the southern edge of the Altai Mountains, having descended from the northern Hsiung-nu. During this era they were vassals of the Mongol Juan-juans. Fomenting for independence, the Go¨ktu¨rks chieftain, Bumin, increased his military force by allying with the To¨les tribe, and gained prestige with the Chinese Emperor of the Western Wei by marrying his daughter. In 552 his forces defeated the Juan-juan and their khagan committed suicide. Bumin became Il Khagan and his wife took the title of Khatun. Bumin gave his brother, Istemi, the western sections of the country from Hami in Xinjiang Province, western China, to the Black Sea, territory that he ruled from 552 to 576 under the title of yabghu. The Go¨ktu¨rks, allied with the Sasanians and together they defeated the rival Turkish Akhuns in 545. The division of territories placed the Go¨ktu¨rks in control of much of Turkestan and Transoxiana as well as the Silk Road and the Sogdians came under the controls of Istemi. Go¨ktu¨rk influence within the Sogdian state is noted in the murals at their capital city, Afrosiab, near Samarkand. Continual wars and inner struggle within the Khaganate resulted in a split between 581 and 603 in which the Eastern Turkic and Western Turkic Khaganates developed. The Eastern Go¨ktu¨rks, under leadership of the charismatic Khagan Ishbara, developed diplomatic relations with the Chinese Chou and later with the Sui dynasties, becoming a vassal of the Chinese emperor in 585. By 593 the Go¨ktu¨rks having gained strength, refused to pay tribute to the Chinese. The Chinese retaliated; the influential Chinese princess Ch’ien-chin (also known as Ta’i), wife of Ishbara, was murdered. To maintain stability the majority of the tribes under the Eastern Go¨ktu¨rks sent thousands of horses, camels, and cattle to the Chinese as tribute. During the ensuing years Go¨ktu¨rk and Chinese relations continued to be stormy with factious intrigues, diplomatic intermarriages, and harsh military battles. In 630, Bagatur Shad, the last Il Khagan, was taken prisoner while on a hunting expedition in the northern Chinese mountains and died in China. Thus ended the Eastern Go¨ktu¨rk Empire. Beginning in 678, a second Turkish state was founded under the leadership of Khagan Kutlug, a descendant of the Eastern Go¨ktu¨rks, and continued under Khagan Qapghan who became the strongest emperor in Central Asia at that time. After Qapghan was ambushed and killed, Bilge Khagan, whose homeland was in Irtish River region, fought many battles with other Turkic tribes before ending this strife in 718. However, as he was an excellent administrator with wise advisors, the Turkic union prospered. After

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his death in 731, turmoil again arose among the various factional tribes. The Uyghurs left the khaganate, elected their own khagan, and founded their state in central Mongolia. Although Go¨ktu¨rks continued to be mentioned in Chinese annals until 941, the records indicate they never again regained their previous power. Turkic Political Structure

Upon formation of the Turk state, the person who embodied the state was the great khagan; his wife was khatun. Throne succession was from elder brother to younger brother or from younger uncle to older nephew. Waiting their turn, the prince’s received their own principalities and appropriate titles. The dispersal of power in nomadic states served two purposes: it provided stability of government and extended defensive powers. As nomads without a continuous habitation spot, their economic lifestyle was based on animal husbandry with each family allotted a specific grazing territory. Turkic Archaeological Monuments

The three earliest known monuments with Turkic inscriptions were erected in the eighth century near the Turkic homeland on the Orkhon River in Central Mongolia. Two were dedicated during the Khaganate of Bilge Khagan to Tonyukuk, his state advisor, Ko¨l Tegin, his beloved brother, and the third to Bilge Khangan after his death. The most ubiquitous Turkic monuments, balbals, are found throughout the steppes (Figure 15). These are stone carving representing a warrior who wears a weapon and frequently holds a bowl to his chest. Occasionally women are also characterized with similar accoutrements. These stelae are thought to be representative of the person whose burial they mark. Many other stone complexes, either cultic or burial, are found throughout the steppes, particularly in western Mongolia. These are only beginning to be archaeologically explored. Small finds from burials are primarily horse trappings, small decorative plaques, and undecorated pottery, typical artifacts of nomadic populations. Khans and khagans were buried with great ceremony and feasting but rarely have their burials been encountered.

The Genghis Khanite Era (Thirteenth Century) The Mongols are believed to have originated in the forest steppes of northeastern Mongolia, but ranged over what is now Mongolia and China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Then, as today, they spoke an Altaic language related to the Turkic

Figure 15 Turkic period balbal in western Mongolia.

language. For most of the twelfth century, a plethora of ethnic and linguistic Mongol and Turkic tribes, including the Tatars in east, the Keraits in the center, the Merkits to the north, the Naimans to the west as well as ¨ nggu¨ts, lesser tribes known as the Qonggirats, the O and Kirghiz tribes controlled the Mongolian steppes. The tribes were divided into the noble ruling clans and subordinates, the latter resulting from military defeat or the need for protection. Within the ruling clan (oboq) kinships were the principal means of organization, yet a provision for free choice also existed. Thus, chieftains were determined by their superb abilities while incompetence meant inevitable disqualification. The Mongol Empire established by Genghis Khan was not an autocracy determined by primogeniture. The Khagan (supreme khan) and successors were chosen or acclaimed at a quriltai, a great assemblage of Mongol notables held in the region south of Ulaanbaatar that Genghis Khan had declared his homeland. By 1206, the Turko-Mongol tribes were largely united and a quriltai was held that acclaimed Temu¨mjin Khagan of all these tribes. He took the title of Genghis Khan (Universal Ruler).

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When just a child, the Tartars had killed Temu¨mjin’s father, who was a minor chieftain. His mother, with her children, fled into the Hentei Mountains where, through great perseverance, they survived. These and other tales, some of bravery and others of treachery, are related in the Secret History of the Mongols commissioned by Genghis’ heirs shortly after his father’s death and written by the Uyghurs. As a charismatic and bold leader, successful in raiding, Temu¨mjin attracted like-minded warriors, many of lower status, who began to swear tribal allegiance to him. This group grew to become the nucleus of his imperial guard, the generals who led the raids across Asia and Europe. Continuing to use his strength and shrewd intelligence, Temu¨mjin’s power increased until he was finally able to marry his long-betrothed wife, Bo¨rte, and form an alliance with the Keraits, their greatest Tatar enemy. One by one, Genghis Khan subdued the remaining tribes and for the most part incorporated them into the Mongol military, ever increasing his strength. Unfortunately, the Merkits kidnapped Bo¨rte; nine months later she gave birth to her first son, Jochi. Although his paternity was never questioned, it remained to trouble the royal house. Many women, beginning with Genghis Khan’s mother, Ho¨’elu¨ U¨jin, and subsequently, Bo¨rte, held relatively high positions within the Mongol society. In the interregnums widows of the khagans ruled the Mongols. Perhaps the finest example was Khatun Sorqaghtani Beki, the strong and forceful wife of Tolui, Genghis Khan’s youngest son. In addition to her husband’s appanages that she managed even before his death, she owned two estates (small cities) in China that provided her with adequate wealth. Moreover, she held a vast orda, a summer encampment in the Altai Mountains, where her great herds of sheep, horses, and yak were maintained under an entourage of over a thousand families. Sorqaghtani Beki also controlled the military prowess of 12 900 soldiers. Other khans frequently lauded the Katun and her three sons as exemplary examples of honesty and loyalty. ¨ go¨dei’s wife, was de facto ruler for To¨rogene, O 12 years due to the fact that her husband, the Khan, was alcoholic. She was a Ma¨krit princess when Gen¨ go¨dei’ ghis Khan captured her and then gave her to O as his sixth wife. Due to her astuteness and extraordinary competence, she rose from this lowly position (outsider and sixth wife) to become regent following her husband’s death in 1241. She so earned the respect of lesser khans that she continued to command the empire for another four years, not permitting a quriltai to convene until she had formed the necessary alliances to have her son, Gu¨yu¨k, elected Khagan.

Karakorum Nomadic Turkic tribes had inhabited the area in the vicinity of Karakorum since the first century AD. In 1220, Genghis Khan established as his residence the large ger city of Karakorum. On a papal mission, Carpini visited the capital c. 1247. In 1267, the city was abandoned and later destroyed after Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis, transferred the Mongol capital to Khanbaliq (modern Beijing). In 1889, the Russian explorer, M. Yadrinstev, discovered the ruins of Karakorum. (Yadrinstev also discovered the Turkic Orkhon inscriptions.) Karakorum is also the name of a nearby site that in the eighth to ninth century AD was the capital of the Uyghurs who later became scribes for the Mongol. In 1586, Erdeni Dzu, the large and currently functioning Lamaist monastery, was built in the vicinity of Karakorum.

The Empires of the Genghis Khan Descendants From Karakorum, Mongol hordes swept eastward into China and westward into Europe. By c. 1260 the Genghis Khan sons and grandsons ruled the farflung Eurasian empire that was divided into four khanates: the Great Khanate that comprised all of China and most of eastern Asia, including Korea and which, under Quibila¨i (Kublai Khan), came to be known as the Yuan Dynasty; the Chagadai Khanate in Turkistan under Genghis Khan’s second son, Chagadai; the Empire of the Golden Horde in southern Russia was founded by Batu Khan, with its capital at Sarai along the Volga River; and the Ilkhanate in Persia founded by Hu¨legu¨. Mo¨nke was elected khagan of all the Mongols and is considered the most astute of all Mongol leaders (see Figure 16).

Religions of the Mongols The Mongols’ religious beliefs began in ancient times as Shamanism and what we know of this comes from the Secret History as well as from observations by early European travelers, especially Giovanni Carpini ¨ go¨and Rubruck. Following Genghis Khan’s death, O dei’ called upon representatives of various religions to present themselves at his great tent at Karakorum. Ultimately, the Mongols embraced Lamaism, based on Tibetan Buddhism but with shamanic elements, in Mongolia and China. The Golden Horde and the Ilkhanates in Persia became Islamic. However, some tribes were Nestorian Christians or Manichaeans. Many Shamanic beliefs, such as the worship of high places noted in the Secret History, have come down

ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES 551 Genealogy of the Genghis Khanite Khans and Katuns Yes¨gei – Hö’elü Ujin Temümjin (Genghis Khan)

Jochi

Chagadai

Ögödei —Törogene Khan Regent 1229−41 1248−51

Tolui—Sorqaghtani Beki Khan Regent 1227−27 1232−1252

Güyük — Oghul Qaimish 1246−48 Regent 1248−51

Batu Golden Horde d. 1255

Mönke Quibiläi Hülgü Khans of Mongolia China Persia

Figure 16 Genealogy of the Genghis Khanite Khans and Khatuns.

through the centuries and are still practiced by contemporary nomadic Mongols.

A General Survey of Archaeology in Mongolia Under the direction of Roy Chapman Andrews, the American Museum of Natural History in New York conducted field expeditions in Mongolia during the 1920s investigating prehistoric remains. The material remains unpublished. In Western Mongolia in the Altai Mountains, burial mounds and other monuments relate to cultures from the Bronze Age through the Turkic period. The eastern border of the Altai Mountains along the Great Lakes Depression marks the western boundary of the seventh to third century BCE Slab Grave Culture, identified by vertical flat stone slabs that mark each grave. Burial rituals for the Slab Grave Culture were uniform with the dead placed supine in ground pits or in stone boxes. Although generally robbed, they occasionally contain tripod vessels, bronze knives, celts, and arrowheads. Personal adornment includes stone beads; bronze bosses were sewn on clothing. A grave in the Gobi yielded massive gold Siberiantype fibulae embellished with mountain goat heads and turquoise insets. In Uvs aimag, near the town of Ulaangom, Mongolian archaeologists excavated a Saka site in the 1970s. Animal-style carvings are noted nearby in the Chandamane Mountain as well as on rock outcropping throughout the Altai Mountains in the steppes. Since Mongolia’s return to autonomy following the breakup of the USSR, the country has attracted a plethora of international archaeologists (in 2002

over 100 international and Mongolian specialists participated). Also in 2002 the Mongolian government officially inaugurated the Institute of Archaeology which consists of the following research organizations: Palaeolithic Period, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and a research section of Ancient States period, a research team of the Mongolian Middle Ages period, an archaeological and anthropological laboratory, and a library and manuscripts fond. About 30 monographs and 600 scientific articles have been published with some having been presented at regional conferences. Currently the Institute of Archaeology houses over 5000 artifacts in its research laboratory, which is open to Mongolian and foreign students and scholars. Artifacts such as Palaeolithic stone tools from ‘Tsagaan agui’ (750 000 BP), funerary furniture from the Noin Ula Hsiung-nu aristocrats’ tomb, and decorative items from the Turkic Empire King Bilge’s burial are included in the holdings. The Institute has noted that gold and other mining is now extensively exploited in Mongolia and such activities are destructive to the ancient heritage. A major role for the Institute is to regulate the archaeological sites, together with international and other domestic institutions, in order that they are conserved.

Recent Joint Mongolian–International Projects Mongolian archaeological and historical research has always been fields of interest for both national and international scholars. One of the earliest, long-term Mongolian–Russian archaeological–ethnographical– historical expeditions was established in 1920. In

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1990, research cooperation broadened with various international scientific institutional participations that included groups from the US, Japan, Russia, Korea, Germany, France, Turkey, Belgium, and Italy. Between 1990 and 1993 the joint Mongolian–Japanese team ‘Gurvan gol’ researched a variety of archaeological sites, burials, and ruins dating from the Palaeolithic to Late Historic periods at Onon, Herlen, Tuul, the Tree River basin. In 1993, UNESCO sponsored the ‘Dialogue of the Silk Road’ in which 50 international and Mongolian scholars participated, traveling by land from Hovd in western Mongolia to Ulaanbaatar. The scholars presented lectures at each stop. The project culminated with an international conference in the capital city. Between 1992 and 1996 the Mongolian Institute and the South Korean Dankuk University conducted the Oriental Mongolia expedition that investigated ancient relations and interaction between these two nations. The research report was published in Mongolian, Korean, and English languages in five volumes. Among other accomplishments, the research indicated that the Mongolians were making paper in thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. Beginning in 1997 the Mongolian Institute of Archaeology and the Korean National Museum archaeologists have organized the annual ‘Mon-Sol’ project with the object of understanding the interactions between culture and genealogy of both nations. Japanese archaeologists also have been consistently concerned about Mongolian history. In 1996, the American–Eurasian Research Project surveyed surface finds, kurgans, and other archaeological monuments in Bayan Ulgii aimag (Altai Mountains) while studying contemporary Kazak nomads in the region. In 1999, Mongol archaeologists and the American–Eurasian Research Project team excavated a khereksur, a large stone-covered cultic site, located at Beiram (Uvs aimag, Altai Mountains), probably dating to the Bronze Age. A cultic offering was found near the center top of the mound that included a wooden box containing a ceramic pot filled with wheat, a Djungar bronze arrowhead, and a thin piece of wood with an inscription that dated this find to shortly after AD 1645. Included in a wide variety of artifacts were carved-wood zoomorphic figures and more than 4000 astragals. After excavation, the mound was restored to its original configuration as local nomads continue to make cultic offerings as they cross the mountain pass. An undated iron smelter was also found in the vicinity of Beiram. Since 1995, the Mongolian, Russian, American/ The University of Arizona/ joint Palaeolithic expedition has unearthed evidence that c. 700 000–750 000

years ago early hominids lived in present-day Mongolia. Before this discovery Mongolian and Russian archaeologist dated the earliest hominids in northern Asia some 200 000 years later. The Altai Project, studying petroglyphs in the Altai Mountains since 1995, has discovered a substantial number of rock art sites, most notably those at Tsagaan Salaa and Baga Oigor. The remote Altai Mountains and valleys are also rich in surface archaeology: burial mounds dating to the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, khereksur, and olenniye kamni deer stones. The olenniye kamni sculptures have been divided into two groups: those with zoomorphic depictions and those without. Both groups display other iconography such as incised necklaces, fighting and festive belts, and the short Scythian akinakes (sword). The Altai Project also noted Turkic period ritual sites; and balbal, the Turkic anthropomorphic stelae. Extensive petroglyphs provide significant cultural and artistic value to contribute to the understanding of these ancient societies, particularly of the Bronze Age in western Mongolia and the Altai region. Beginning in 202, the Deer Stone Project was conducted by the Smithsonian Institution and various Mongolian government entities. Studies, including mapping, cataloging, scanning, and excavations adjacent to a number of the large elaborated olenniye kamni, have revealed varying iconographic styles. The stelae in this study are primarily in north-central Mongolia at the border of the steppe–taiga, although their distribution extends far westward in Eurasia. Preliminary results indicate that the monuments are thought to be the result of a transformation in religious and social changes, which took place after the first animal domestication and the development of new military technology. The iconography on the deer stones is probably the precursor of the ubiquitous animal-style art, a hallmark of the early Eurasian nomads. In association with the deer stone are khereksur, large stone mounds that have additional stone features incorporated into an extensive complex. Horse head burials, feasting ovals, and occasionally human burials are associated with these ritual complexes. Preliminary calibrated dates range from 3330 to 2150 BP, placing the olenniye kamni much earlier than previously believed. The Smithsonian Center for Materials Research and Education (SCMRE) has sponsored the Archaeological Conservation Program that included collaborations with three archaeological projects. In the spring of 2005, they were involved for the third field year with the San Bartolo Archaeological Project (Pete´n region, Guatemala). Primary conservation activities with the Deer Stone Project in Hovsgol aimag were followed by a short stint with the Khanuy

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Valley Project on Early Nomadic pastoralism in Arkhangai aimag. One of the most important joint emergency surveys and excavations, the Egiin Gol Project, was conducted in the Egiin River valley in north-central Mongolia. Work began prior to 1997 and the project has registered and excavated whole archaeological heritages in the zone. Further north in Mongolia, the University of Michigan excavated a Bronze Age funerary complex. In the same valley the Mongolian Institute of Archaeology, in conjunction with the Regional Archaeological Center of the French Ministry of Culture, conducted Palaeolithic surveys, discovering eight new Palaeolithic sites in the area. Since 1999, the Mongolian Institute of Archaeology, the German Archaeological Institute (KAVA), and the University of Bonn have managed the Karakorum Project located near the Orkhon River southwest of Ulaanbaatar. In addition to archaeological excavations, they also conducted Geomagnetic and Geological surveys. Since 1992, under the direction of William Honeychurch, American–Mongolian collaboration has conducted surveys and small-scale excavations in order to test ideas concerning the emergence of nomadic sociopolitical complexity at Baga Gazaryn Chuluu in the desert-steppe zone of the Middle Gobi. Bioarchaeological excavations are planned for this region. The Mongolian Institute of Archaeology and the Muse´e Guimet in France are also studying the Hsiung-nu Period. Since 2000 they have excavated tombs in Arkhangai aimag. The study and conservation of Turkic stone statues in Mongolia is being conducted in conjunction with the Turkish International Cooperating Agency (TICA). Their research has been successful in the Orkhon River valley at the Bilge Khaan and Kultigen sites. The Mongolian Institute of Archaeology and the University of Pittsburgh Anthropology Department conducted multidisciplinary collaborative research

in the Khannui River basin, Undur-Ulaan sum (county), Arkhangai aimag. Recently, the Richard Lug Foundation and Belgium Chinese Study Institute began the Mongolian Iron Age Project. The Italian National Research Institute has also commenced a GeoArchaeological study of the Gobi. From 2001 to present the multiparty project, New Century, have excavated at the Aurag site, dating to the Genghis Khanite era. See also: Asia, Central and North, Steppes, Deserts,

and Forests; Asia, West: Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations.

Further Reading Baratova LS (2002) Turkic Khaganate in middle Asia (VI–VIII Centuries A.D.). In: Gu¨zel HC (ed.) The Turks, Vol. 1, p. 357– 363. Ankara: Yeni Tu¨rkiye. Barber EW (1999) Mummies of Urumch. New York: WW Norton. Christian D (1998) A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, Vol. I: Inner Asia from Prehistory to the Mongol Empire. Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Davis-Kimball J (ed.) (1995) Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in the Early Iron Age. Berkeley, CA: Zinat Press. Davis-Kimball J and Mona Behan (2002) Women Warriors: An Archaeologist’s Search for History’s Hidden Heroines. New York: Warner Books. Fitzhugh W (2005) The Deer Stone Project: Anthropological Studies in Mongolia 2002–2004. Washington, DC: Arctic Studies Center. National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institute and Ulan Bator: National Museum of Mongolian Hisory. Mair VH (1998) The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age People of Eastern Central Asia, Vol. 1. Archaeology, Migration, Nomadism, and Linguistics. Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man. Morgan D (1986) The Mongols. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. Rosenthal JM (1957) The Dynastic Arts of the Kushans. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Rudenko SI (1970) Frozen Tombs of Siberia: The Pazyryk Burials of Iron Age Horsemen. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Sarianidi V (1987) The Golden Hoard of Bactria: From the TillyaTepe Excavations in Northern Afghanistan. New York: Harry N Abrams. Wood F (2002) The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

554 ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures

ASIA, EAST Contents China, Neolithic Cultures China, Paleolithic Cultures Chinese Civilization Early Holocene Foragers Historical Archaeology Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers

China, Neolithic Cultures Anne P Underhill, The Field Museum, Chicago, IL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary flotation Use of water to process soil from features to recover plant remains or tiny artifacts. lacquer A coating made from resin for wooden and other objects, often to create a more polished appearance. phytoliths Particles of silica formed in leaves, roots, and other parts of plants. radiocarbon dating A radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring isotope carbon-14 to determine the age of carbonaceous materials up to about 60 000 years. tapa cloth Pounded bark cloth traditionally made in the Pacific islands. urbanism The study of cities – their economic, political, social, and cultural environment, and the imprint of all these forces on the built environment.

Introduction The Neolithic period of China encompasses several thousand years over a large, diverse area including mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. This area is within the current political boundaries of the People’s Republic of China (PRC; including Hong Kong and Macau) and the Republic of China (Taiwan). Distinct cultural traditions developed in north and south China. Beginning c. 8000 BC, Early Holocene era peoples developed diversified subsistence practices, including initial steps toward domestication of plants and animals (see Animal Domestication; Plant Domestication). Varied subsistence technologies, crafts, and housing styles continue to characterize these regions.

At the same time, similar technological and social changes took place in different regions. Some settlements began to be occupied for longer periods of time, rather than on a seasonal basis. People used different kinds of material items to express both group and individual social roles. Striking ceramic traditions emerged, and ground stone tools began to be used. There is material evidence for early ritual practices and belief systems. During the Middle Neolithic period after c. 5500 BC, numerous farming cultures developed all over China. Permanently occupied villages became common, and craft production became more diversified. Social status was symbolized in burials and in residential remains. There are striking remains of public rituals and artifacts intended to display group ideology. During the Late Neolithic period after c. 3000 BC, marked social changes took place. These include the development of settlement hierarchies, the emergence of regional polities, more labor-intensive craft goods (pottery, fine stone) produced by specialists, and greater emphasis on display of individual social status in burials. During the final Neolithic period, c. 2600–1900 BC, these trends intensified. Regional polities became larger, urbanism began to develop, there was more intercommunity violence, and social differentiation increased. Incipient states may have formed in more than one region. The subsequent Early Bronze Age is known for its powerful states, large-scale bronze metallurgy, the first known writing system, rigid social stratification, and urban centers. Archaeology in China

Archaeology is a well-established field in both the PRC and Taiwan. Active field research is being carried out in diverse areas, including research and rescue excavations. Every year, numerous, well-illustrated reports of excavations and surveys are published as monographs and in archaeological journals. On the

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mainland, professional archaeologists can be found in history departments at universities, the National Institute of Archaeology in Beijing, provincial institutes of archaeology, in museums, or in city government units. In Taiwan, archaeologists work at universities (including anthropology departments) and the key research institution called Academia Sinica (in Taipei). Collaborative fieldwork with foreign archaeologists has taken place in Taiwan for decades, while it was first permitted on the mainland during the mid-1990s. On the mainland, rescue excavations have become particularly important during the past 20 years as economic development has intensified. Hundreds of Neolithic sites are found each year when new roads and buildings are constructed. The largest-scale rescue project has been in the Three Gorges area of the central Yangzi river valley. Archaeological teams from all over the PRC are excavating numerous Neolithic, Bronze Age, and later sites in advance of the rising water levels in association with the massive new dam being built at Sandouping in Hubei province. Several reports on these excavations have already been published. In addition, considerable government funding is devoted to museums at the national, provincial, and local levels in the PRC and Taiwan. Another priority is the protection of archaeological sites. On the mainland, for example, there are Bureaus for the Management of Cultural Relics at the local, provincial, and national levels of government.

Environmental and Cultural Diversity in China An important characteristic of historic and modern China is environmental and cultural diversity. It is likely that this diversity characterizes the prehistoric period as well. As a point of comparison, mainland China is roughly the same size as that of the United States, with similarly diverse environmental and climatic zones. Most scholars refer to the areas north of the Yangzi (Yangtze, or Changjiang) River as northern China. Millet agriculture is more common in the north, while rice is grown more extensively in the south. Archaeologists have focused their research in three areas of north China: the northeast, the central Yellow River (Huang He) valley, and the lower Yellow River valley. Increasingly, more fieldwork is taking place at Neolithic sites in mountainous areas further west. Northeast China, formerly referred to as Manchuria by some, is environmentally diverse. There are deciduous forests, steppes, mixed conifer and hardwood forests, and boreal forests. In comparison to areas further south, the growing season is short, with harsh winters. Northeast China includes

the modern provinces of Liaoning, eastern Inner Mongolia (Nei Menggu), Jilin, and Heilongjiang. The central and lower Yellow River valley areas have deciduous broadleaf forests, fertile loess soil (yellowish silt), and a temperate climate. A distinctive topographic zone where intensive archaeological research has taken place is the North China Plain (including parts of eastern Shaanxi, southern Shanxi, southern Hebei, Henan, and western Shandong provinces). Many archaeologists refer to a distinct cultural area called the Central Plain, focusing on Henan, where the early Bronze Age states developed. They contrast the Central Plain area with the Haidai (eastern seaboard) area (including Shandong, northern Jiangsu, and northern Anhui). In recent years, however, stunning discoveries have been made in several areas of China, showing that diverse cultures contributed to the development of early Chinese civilization. Research has been conducted primarily in three areas of south China: the central Yangzi River valley, the lower Yangzi River valley, and southernmost China (here, including Hong Kong and Taiwan). The Neolithic cultures of mountainous southwest China are not as well known at present. Judging from the major discoveries of Palaeolithic and Bronze Age sites there (see Asia, East: China, Paleolithic Cultures), the area will provide more information on life ways during the Neolithic period. The Yangzi River valley has both mixed deciduous broadleaved evergreen forests and subtropical broadleaved evergreen forests. There is more rainfall than in the north, and the climate is warmer. Other distinctive features include bamboo forests and large, freshwater lakes. The central Yangzi River valley includes the modern provinces of southern Hubei, northern Hunan, and northern Jiangxi. The lower Yangzi River valley includes the modern provinces of southern Anhui, southern Jiangsu, and northern Zhejiang. Southernmost China is characterized by subtropical broadleaved evergreen forests and striking limestone mountains. The climate ranges from subtropical to tropical, and crops can be grown all year. Taro is an important root crop that is not found further north. There is abundant rainfall, and typhoons are common in the summer months. In these areas of south China and the Yangzi River valley, fishing is particularly important. The Republic of Taiwan includes the island of Taiwan, as well as other small islands. The largest ethnic group of mainland and insular China is referred to as the Han. Several ethnic minority groups have been known to reside in all areas since the early historic era. These historically known ethnic minority cultures are similar to those in neighboring countries to the north, west, and south. On the

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mainland, most ethnic minority peoples live in western areas. Many of these peoples have had nomadic lifestyles, moving seasonally with their herds. In several areas, ethnic minority peoples still speak their own languages, while written languages have been recorded for some. It is likely that diverse peoples, languages, and cultural traditions characterized the Neolithic period as well.

The Early Neolithic Period The term ‘Neolithic’ commonly refers to cultures with the following traits: farming as the main method of subsistence, fully sedentary communities (occupied all year round, rather than seasonally), and the production and widespread use of pottery vessels and ground stone tools. As elsewhere, the archaeological record of China shows that these traits did not develop at the same time during the Early Holocene period. Research during the next decade no doubt will reveal more variation in subsistence practices and community organization, partly due to more systematic recovery of plant remains through flotation and the collection of animal bones. Evidence is accumulating to show that the transition from a hunting and gathering subsistence economy to domestication of plants and animals took place in both north and south China. The earliest phases of the Holocene, beginning c. 8000 BC, are not well understood at present. By the end of the Early Neolithic period, defined here as c. 5500 BC, an agricultural economy was firmly established in more than one area. There also is evidence for increase in size of settlements and development of craft production (see Craft Specialization). Northern China

There is more than one area of interest for the incipient Neolithic period in northern China. The earliest site is Nanzhuangtou, located in central Hebei province (Figure 1). Radiocarbon dates place the occupation of this open-air site during both the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene periods, with a span from c. 10 000 to 8000 BC. No plant remains were recovered, but the appearance of grinding stones in this early context probably indicates growing reliance on plant foods in northern China. Another significant finding was low-fired pottery, with a variety of surface decorations (plain, incised, and cord-marked). It is likely, then, that pottery vessels were produced prior to the first cultivation of plants. The excavators also report the presence of the domesticated dog at

this early date, before any evidence for cultivation of plants. The early date for the domestication of dogs may represent a change to a more sedentary lifestyle. Dogs would have been useful for protection of residential areas and for hunting. Reports mention the discovery of another early site in the vicinity called Hutouliang. More research at northern sites dating to the critical Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene period is needed in order to trace the origins of millet agriculture in China. Millet clearly was a mainstay of the diet throughout the later Neolithic and historic eras. There is more evidence for plant cultivation at later sites in northern China dating from c. 6200–5500 BC. There are undisputed domesticated millets (foxtail, broomcorn varieties) at Peiligang culture (c. 6200– 5000 BC) sites in Henan and at sites from related cultures such as Cishan in southern Hebei. Large quantities are reported for this site, indicating considerable reliance on the crop. Early reports for Cishan mention evidence for domesticated chicken, in addition to dog and pig. Clay models of pigs also have been found. The excavations at Cishan yielded evidence for a mixed economy, from bones of wild animals and seeds of wild plants and nuts. There are other relatively early sites further west, such as Dadiwan in Gansu. There were well-established, at least semi-permanent communities in these areas, judging from the presence of numerous houses, pottery kilns, burial areas, and a variety of pottery vessels. Painted pottery is evident at more than one site from this phase. At this point, another key pattern is evident that characterizes later phases of the Neolithic in several areas – elaboration of individual burials. In comparison with the few known Late Pleistocene burials, the changes are substantial and probably represent stronger beliefs about territoriality, kinship ties to land, and the importance of ancestors. Differences in status between families were minimal, judging from the quality and quantity of grave goods at the Peiligang site of Shuiquan. Other material evidence for rituals from this era has been found in northern China. At the Beifudi site in Hebei, archaeologists found pottery masks of humans and animals with numerous pottery vessels and ornaments. These objects may have been used when people made sacrifices to their ancestors. There is mostly indirect evidence for agriculture at early sites in other parts of northern China. At Houli sites in north-central Shandong (c. 6300–5600 BC), plant-processing tools were recovered, possibly for millet, as well as bones of domesticated pig and dog. These too were substantial settlements, judging from the presence of houses, pottery kilns, and burials. At Xinglongwa sites (c. 6200–5400 BC) in Inner

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Figure 1 Early Neolithic sites in China. 1, Nanzhuangtou; 2, Peiligang; 3, Cishan; 4, Dadiwan; 5, Shuiquan; 6, Beifudi; 7, Houli; 8, Xinglongwa; 9, Yuchanyan; 10, Xianrendong; 11, Diaotonghuan; 12, Zengpiyan; 13, Pengtoushan; 14, Jiahu.

Mongolia, chestnuts and bones of domesticated pig were found, as well as possible agricultural tools. There is new, direct evidence for early millet at the site of Xinglonggou, dated to c. 5700 B.C. Remarkable settlement remains were found during excavations at the Xinglongwa site, including a surrounding ditch and several well-preserved houses. The houses were situated in neat rows, indicating planning. The ditch, the earliest known of its kind, could have served to contain domesticated animals or protect residents

from wild animals. Another significant aspect of Xinglongwa sites is the presence of a few large structures (over 100 m2) that may have been communal in function. The jade ornaments from the Xinglongwa site are the earliest known in China, and perhaps in the world. At Xinglongwa, some graves were found in houses, rather than in formal cemeteries. Important ritual remains were found here as well, especially a human skull with a design of a face made by carving, drilling, and incising.

558 ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures Southern China

Cave sites in southern China are providing intriguing clues about the origins of rice agriculture. Given the tremendous importance of rice in historic and modern Asia as a whole, considerable research has been undertaken. One of the most intriguing sites is Yuchanyan in Hunan province. The deposits span the period from the Late Pleistocene to the Early Holocene period, c. 12 000–8000 BC (and possibly later). A number of wild plant and animal species (fruits, mammals, birds, fish, shellfish) have been identified. Notably, remains of cultivated rice are reported, in the form of rice grains and phytoliths. Although the specific date of these remains is not known, the site is likely to produce more key information about the origins of rice farming. The dating of the low-fired, cord-marked pottery there also needs to be clarified. Several kinds of bone tools and ornaments were recovered, too. More research is needed to reveal the variety of subsistence methods during this period and possible causes for the onset of rice cultivation in some areas. Other important cave sites where archaeologists have sought to find evidence for early rice cultivation are Xianrendong and Diaotonghuan (or Wangdong) in northern Jiangxi, and Zengpiyan and Miaoyan in Guangxi. Phytoliths of wild and domesticated rice have been reported for Xianrendong and Diaotonghuan. These sites also span the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene, roughly c. 12 000–8000 BC, and later. The dates of the domesticated rice need to be clarified. Plant-processing tools such as grinding stones have been found. At Zengpiyan, there were early reports of domesticated pig. A recent, comprehensive reanalysis of the site indicates that the prior interpretation about pig domestication was wrong. Fishing and hunting are evident from these four sites, judging from the recovery of bone harpoons and bones of wild animals. Hopefully future researchers will devise methods to recover evidence in southernmost China for the origins of root crop agriculture, given the historic importance of taro in these areas. Low-fired and relatively thick pottery was recovered at these other early sites. Here too the early vessels exhibit a range of surface treatments, including incisions, linear impressions, and smoothing. At Miaoyan, the pottery is said to date to c. 13 000 BC, or older. According to the most recent report, the earliest pottery at Zengpiyan dates c. 9000–10 000 BC. There are other preliminary reports of early pottery in southern China, providing more evidence for the conclusion that hunting and gathering peoples began making and using pottery vessels, prior to the onset of plant cultivation, as in northern China. The use of

pottery also probably indicates longer occupation periods at sites. This shift toward increased sedentism would have fostered more ties to land and rituals for ancestors. At Zengpiyan, mourners placed red ochre on the bodies of the deceased. Later sites provide better evidence for rice cultivation. Rice grains inside pottery sherds were found at the Pengtoushan site from deposits dating to the earlier Pengtoushan culture (c. 6900–6200 BC) in Hunan near Lake Dongting. The grain was identified as wet rice. The people probably planted rice in fields that could be flooded naturally. The Pengtoushan settlement was relatively large, including several houses, burials (mostly secondary), and pits. The houses are pile-dwellings (raised houses on wooden posts), illustrating how people adapted to an aquatic environment. Another site called Jiahu, classified as a Peiligang culture site, is located in southern Henan and dates from c. 7000 to 6000 BC. In addition to domesticated rice, archaeologists found remains of an extensive settlement with numerous houses, pits, burials, and stunning artifacts. The unusual preservation of organic remains in the wet deposits yielded several items of ritual significance. These included bone flutes in burials (Figure 2) and modified turtle shells (some with incised symbols) containing pebbles – possible divination tools. Music may have been an important part of rituals (see Ritual, Religion, and Ideology). The graves contained a variety of goods, revealing evidence for mortuary ritual and multiple social roles of the deceased. The different phases associated with the several styles of burial (primary vs. secondary, multiple vs. single) should be examined further. Pottery production was well established, judging from the discovery of painted vessels and what appears to be the earliest kiln in China.

The Middle Neolithic Period Hundreds of sites from the Middle Neolithic period, defined here as c. 5500–2500 BC, are known from most areas of China, signaling population increase and occupation of a greater range of environmental zones. Excavations have shed light on farming villages illustrating diverse cultural traditions with respect to housing styles, crafts, and rituals in both residential and mortuary contexts. There were dramatic social changes. One change was the development of social inequality, such that a minority of individuals had privileged social position or status (see Social Inequality, Development of). At the same time, there is evidence for the continued importance of group rituals. In some regions, individual social position was not expressed to the same degree as in other

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Figure 2 Bone flute from Jiahu. Adapted from Henan Province Cultural Research Institute (1989) Henan Wuyang Jiahu Xinshiqi shidai yizhi di er zhi liu ci fajue jianbao (Short report of the 2nd to 6th excavations at the Neolithic site of Jiahu in Wuyang, Henan). Kaogu 1: 12, figure 28.

regions. Another change was that regional polities began to develop, indicated by the emergence of regional centers (see Political Complexity, Rise of). Northern China

Three areas in northern China illustrate these changes well: northeast China, the central Yellow River valley, and the lower Yellow River valley. There is direct evidence for millet farming at Xinle culture sites in Liaoning province c. 5500–4800 BC in addition to pig domestication (Figure 3). Other cultures developed after the Xinle culture in northeast China, but the Hongshan culture is the most intriguing. The remains from the Late Hongshan culture, c. 3500– 3000 BC, provide large-scale evidence for public ritual and skilled craft production, most likely involving specialists. At present, few settlement areas have been identified, so little is known about daily life. At the huge ritual complex of Niuheliang (roughly 8  10 km2), there are numerous stone platforms

interpreted as altars and stone foundations of structures interpreted as temples. Apparently some walls were plastered and painted as well. Excavators were amazed to find a large clay head depicting an adult female with inlaid jade eyes. They hypothesize this head was originally mounted on a wall (Figure 4). Parts of large animals in clay also were found. In addition, workers found large quantities of unusual, painted pottery cylinders. At another Hongshan site called Dongshanzui, there were smaller clay figurines of obviously pregnant women. A distinctive feature of both sites is several forms of jade animals, both real and mythical (some dragon-like), and a few depicting humans. The ritual areas include rich graves for individual adults – many of which seem to be male – with finely made jade items. There are many debates about the significance of these sites. Some scholars argue that rituals were centered around females, thus indicating relatively high social standing of women at the time. Others emphasize the special burials containing jades as evidence for hereditary social inequality and for a complex society. Public rituals involving people from more than one community in the region would have been an important means for social integration. Most archaeological research in northern China has focused on the central Yellow River valley. The first Neolithic culture to be investigated was the Yangshao. Now it is realized that the Yangshao culture persisted over 2000 years and encompasses considerable regional variation. Early (c. 5100–3700 BC), Middle (c. 3700–3500 BC), and Late Yangshao (c. 3500–2800 BC) sites are located over an extensive area, especially Shaanxi and Henan Provinces. During the Early Yangshao period, the basic pattern of agricultural villages based on millet and animal husbandry became established. Subsistence practices included hunting and gathering, given the remains of animal bone, fish bone, and wild plants. Early Yangshao villages such as Banpo were quite extensive, with evidence for many circular house foundations, a wide variety of ceramic vessels (fine painted wares and plain wares), and spindle whorls, probably for preparing cloth from hemp. Yangshao sites have provided considerable information about social organization and ideology from both residential areas and burials. At early settlements like Jiangzhai, clusters of houses faced a central plaza area within a circular, protective ditch. Scholars speculate that these clusters represent social groups such as lineages. At these sites, residential areas were separated from burial areas and kilns. During the later Neolithic period, there were increasingly more villages surrounded by ditches. It is likely that protection of resources was an increasing concern.

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Figure 3 Middle Neolithic sites in China. 1, Xinle; 2, Niuheliang; 3, Dongshanzui; 4, Banpo; 5, Jiangzhai; 6, Xipo; 7, Dahecun; 8, Baligang; 9, Yuanjunmiao; 10, Xishuipo; 11, Xishan; 12, Beizhuang; 13, Wangyin; 14, Dawenkou; 15, Lingyanghe; 16, Jianxin; 17, Dazhujia; 18, Yuchisi; 19, Bashidang; 20, Hemudu; 21, Dapenkeng; 22, Chengtoushan; 23, Yaoshan, Mojiaoshan, Fanshan, Fuquanshan; 24, Zhuangqiaofen; 25, Shixia; 26, Fengbitou.

At more than one site such as Jiangzhai, there are a few unusually large structures. Given their central location, they probably were used by the community as a whole. Two have been discovered in middle Yangshao deposits at Xipo. The one excavated structure there is exceptionally large, over 200 m2, with traces of a red pigment on the flooring. The hearth inside is located close to the entranceway. This too may have served as a locus for communal rituals.

Some houses from relatively late contexts at Dahecun in central Henan have more than room. Yet another house form was discovered at two other Yangshao sites. Excavators found row houses, some with more than one room, in Early Yangshao contexts at the Dahecun site in north-central Henan. This same house form was also found in later Yangshao contexts at the Baligang site in southwestern Henan. There, archaeologists discovered row houses of roughly

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Figure 4 Clay head from Niuheliang, hypothesized original mounted appearance. Adapted from Liaoning Provincial Institute of Archaeology and Cultural Relics and Cultural Bureau of Chaoyang City (2004) Niuheliang yizhi. Niuheliang Site, p. 18, figure 15. Beijing: Academy Press.

equal size with separate rooms, each containing tools of stone and bone as well as pottery vessels. This style of structure seems to emphasize group status rather than individual social status. Early Yangshao sites contain more than one form of burial, generating much debate. One debate concerns the meaning of a few individual graves of young girls at Yuanjunmiao. These graves contain relatively large quantities of stone ornaments and pottery vessels. Rather than symbolizing wealth, such graves may symbolize some aspect of gender instead. Multiple burials of adults are more common at early Yangshao sites. These may have been opened up as needed to bury people from the same kin group. More

burials for individuals are found in later Yangshao sites such as Dahecun in central Henan. A desire to mark individual social position is more clearly evident for the later phases, when greater variation in grave goods, especially ceramics (some painted), is evident. A very unusual Middle Yangshao phase burial was found at the site of Xishuipo in northeastern Henan. Situated around the grave of an adult male were skeletons of three youths (both males and females) that have been interpreted as sacrifices. On either side of the adult were life-sized images made from shells that seem to represent a tiger and a dragon (Figure 5). It has been suggested that the animals represent features of constellations. It is likely that the deceased was a ritual specialist whom the ancient people believed could communicate with the heavens. Furthermore, this ritual specialist was highly regarded and was a kind of village leader. Only a few sites in the central Yellow River valley from the middle and Late Yangshao periods have material evidence for increase in social inequality. In comparison with other areas, differences in the quantity and quality of grave goods among graves are not dramatic. Numerous fine, painted pottery vessels are known from residential areas. It appears that a wide range of households had access to these vessels. The site of Xishan in central Henan, however, represents a new form of settlement. This Late Yangshao settlement was surrounded by a wall of rammed earth – a form of settlement that became more common during the final Neolithic period in northern China. Here archaeologists excavated over 200 houses and a central plaza, along with two burial areas. The surrounding wall would have served to protect the inhabitants and their resources from raiding. A number of fine, painted vessels were found. During the later Yangshao period as well, some settlements that were much larger than others nearby, signaling the emergence of settlement hierarchies. Although the functions of the regional centers remain to be investigated, they indicate the emergence of inequality at the community level and the emergence of regional polities. There were similar changes in the lower Yellow River valley. Millet farming and domesticated animals formed the basis of the subsistence economy in Beixin culture communities, c. 5300–4100 BC, in several areas of Shandong Province. There were primarily individual graves, exhibiting little differentiation. During the subsequent Dawenkou period, c. 4100–2600 BC, there were significant changes in both settlements and burials that reveal variation in social organization. A much larger area was occupied, and boat travel was known, given the extensive settlement found at Beizhuang on an island off

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Figure 5 Xishuipo burial. Adapted from Puyang City Cultural Management Bureau, Puyang City Museum, Puyang City Cultural Relics Work Team (1988) Henan Puyang Xishuipo yizhi fajue jianbao (Short report on excavations at the Xishuipo site in Puyang, Henan). Wenwu 3: 4, figure 5, and Yang XN (2004) New Perspectives on China’s Past. Chinese Archaeology in the Twentieth Century, Vols. 1 and 2, p. 23, figure 19. New Haven and Kansas City: Yale University and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

the Shandong coast. Surveys in Shandong reveal evidence for the emergence of settlement hierarchies. The most telling evidence for social differentiation, though, is found in the striking burials. In contrast to burials from the central Yellow River valley, they reveal increasing efforts to display individual social status. There is little differentiation among Early Dawenkou period (c. 4100–3500 BC) burials in Shandong, as seen from the site of Wangyin. There were both multiple and individual burials at this site. The single graves exhibited minor differences in the nature of grave goods on the basis of age and sex, rather than individual status defined by wealth or power. During the Middle Dawenkou period (c. 3500–3000 BC), more differences in mortuary treatment for individuals emerged. At more than one site, a few graves, for

both females and males, contain greater quantities of finely made objects than others. For the Late Dawenkou period (c. 3000–2600 BC), differences among graves are dramatic. The Dawenkou site is the most famous, with a minority of burials containing finely made pottery vessels, symbolic jade tools (no sign of use), ornamental objects of elephant ivory, and pieces of alligator hide that probably were used to fashion drums. The rare materials would have been acquired through exchange networks. Many of these goods probably were made by craft specialists, and some were made just for burial. In addition, some grave pits were more elaborate than others, with special earthen ledges to hold artifacts, and with wooden coffins. A common feature of most cemeteries is a tremendous quantity of pottery as grave offerings. At the Dawenkou site, one grave for an adult female

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contains 90 vessels, and one grave at Lingyanghe in eastern Shandong contains 160 pots. Different functional types are included, for cooking, storage, serving, and drinking. Drinking cups in rich burials are common, although there are interesting differences among contemporary cemeteries. At Jianxin, some rich graves contain large quantities of small jars called ‘ping’ instead. Some scholars argue that particular vessels in Late Dawenkou graves were the result of funeral feasts, while others were intended for use by the deceased in the afterlife. A funeral feast seems particularly likely for one grave at Dazhujia in eastern Shandong. This grave contains a large ‘zun’ jar on the ledge, and several finely made, stemmed cups, carefully laid out on the chest of the deceased. Remains of pigs, notably the skulls, are other common features of Late Dawenkou period graves. For other areas, however, symbolizing social position with material goods may not have been a priority. At the Late Dawenkou site of Yuchisi in northern Anhui, archaeologists found row houses similar to those from Dahecun and Baligang. Some contained over 40 rooms, including many objects used for daily life (pots, tools). As at Baligang, there was excellent preservation of the clay house walls, since they were burnt. It appears that the burning was a deliberate construction technique to harden the walls. Another intriguing finding was the large jars called ‘zun’ with incised symbols (some covered in red pigment). Some of these symbols (including the sun and moon) are very similar to those found at late Dawenkou period sites in Ju county, Shandong, to the northeast. Unlike those found in Shandong, however, a few of these vessels served as burial jars for children. The row houses seem to emphasize group membership, as elsewhere, although differences in wealth may have begun to emerge, judging from the fine ceramics (some with red pigment) and jade ornaments found in a few graves. Protection of the whole community was a concern, since a moat was discovered around the entire settlement. Excavations at Yuchisi, located in the southern extent of the Dawenkou culture area, revealed a diet based on rice as well as millet. As noted for Jiahu, the historic dividing line between rice-growing areas and those for millet does not always characterize the Neolithic period. Initial studies show that the environment during parts of the Neolithic period was warmer and moister than at present. Southern China

There is abundant evidence for fully sedentary communities that relied on rice farming in more than one area of southern China during the middle Neolithic period, c. 5500–2500 BC. Large quantities of rice

grains have been recovered from sites in the central and lower Yangzi River valleys. Late Pengtoushan culture (c. 5500–5100 BC) deposits at the Bashidang site in the central Yangzi river valley also yielded a surrounding ditch interpreted as a moat and traces of a small earthen wall. This tradition of surrounding residential areas with protective walls increases over time in China, especially in the north. At Zaoshi culture sites in Hubei (c. 5500–4500 BC), bones of water buffalo, an animal commonly used for plowing in southern China, were found. Huge amounts of rice were recovered from the Hemudu site (c. 5000– 4500 BC) in the lower Yangzi river valley, thanks to the waterlogged deposits there. Other aquatic domesticated and wild plants as well as wild animals were also found, providing a fuller picture of the diet at the time. The excellent preservation conditions enabled archaeologists to find a variety of craft goods, too. These included wooden artifacts, a boat oar, fragments of reed mats, bone whistles, and the earliest known lacquer container. Other, well-preserved sites from the Hemudu culture have been discovered recently with equally impressive remains. Different subsistence practices developed during the Dapenkeng period in coastal areas of Taiwan, c. 5000–2500 BC. Similarities to the cultures of the Pacific islands are evident, from the discovery of artifacts for fishing and grooved stone beaters for making tapa cloth. These peoples probably grew root crops such as taro, but at present there is no physical evidence. Sites in the central Yangzi River valley provide evidence for important changes in settlement organization and in craft production during the Middle Neolithic period. As in the north, there is evidence for increase in social inequality. The site of Chengtoushan in Hunan demonstrates that a new form of settlement emerged during the Daxi period (c. 4500–3000 B.C.). This site continued to be occupied during part of the subsequent Qujialing (c. 3000–2500 BC) period. Like Xishan in the north, this settlement was surrounded by an earthen wall and moat. The size and remains inside the walled enclosure make it likely the site was a regional center. Some houses were built on rammed earth platforms, a labor-intensive style of housing associated with elites during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age periods in more than one part of China. The settlement exhibits planning, with a pottery production area in the west and cemeteries to the northwest. The excavators identified a ritual area, where they propose sacrifices were made, anticipating practices known from the historic period in more than one area of China. Other Daxi and Qujialing period sites in the central Yangzi River valley demonstrate significant development of ceramic technology.

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A variety of labor-intensive ceramics were produced, such as elegantly shaped, thin-walled, and finely painted vessels. These relatively rare vessels have been found in both residential areas and burials. At present, little is known about residential areas at later sites in the lower Yangzi River valley. Numerous burials have been found near Shanghai from the Majiabang (c. 4500–3700 BC) and Songze (c. 3700– 3300 BC) periods. Songze period ceramics include finely decorated (painted, incised) jars and serving stands. Mourners also displayed the social position of the deceased by placing jade ornaments in a minority of graves. The most elaborate graves discovered in the lower Yangzi River valley, without a doubt, are from the Liangzhu (c. 3300–2200 BC) period. Although these graves contain finely made pottery vessels (elegant shapes, some black and polished), it is the jade objects that have received the most attention. There is an amazing variety of finely made jade ornaments, with respect to size, shape, and color. Many have no known function. The intriguing ‘taotie’ (‘animal mask’) design on some jades (Figure 6) also appears on later, historic period bronze vessels in the Yellow River valley to the north. A few rich graves at sites such as Fanshan contain large jades; large size may be another symbol of high social status. Other jade objects include symbolic weapons (no signs of use) that probably once were hafted with wooden handles. These probably served as symbols of power and authority.

Figure 6 Liangzhu jade from Yaoshan. Adapted from Zhejiang Province Institute of Archaeology (2003) Yaoshan, p. 216, plate 13. Beijing: Wenwu Press.

Jade is an extremely labor-intensive rock to work with, requiring extensive grinding and polishing. In addition, many pieces are very finely incised. The quantity and variety of pieces, in addition to the material itself, point to production by specialists. The sheer quantity in some graves (often over 100 pieces) might have necessitated production before an individual died. Little is known about how individuals used these items during their lifetimes. The difficulty of workmanship, the necessity for exchange networks to acquire the raw jade, and the quantities in graves all point to the high social position of the individuals in these graves. Several of the interred skeletons have been identified as males, but there is not always sufficient preservation to identify the sex of the deceased. Typically, a large quantity of jade items is distributed from the head to the foot of the deceased. The highest concentration of Liangzhu sites is found near the Lake Tai area in Zhejiang. Many cemeteries, such as Yaoshan in Zhejiang, only contain a dozen or so graves, each very rich in terms of interred goods. In addition to large quantities of jade, the burials include fine lacquer items, some inlaid with jade. Items made from elephant ivory have been found in more than one Liangzhu grave as well. Sites such as Yaoshan and Fanshan have been interpreted as elite cemeteries, with the location of graves of commoners unknown. An important exception is the recently excavated site of Zhuangqiaofen in Zhejiang. At present, this is the largest known Liangzhu cemetery, with over 200 burials, representing a wider range of the community. Yaoshan and other elite cemeteries from the Liangzhu period were first constructed as humanmade, earthen platforms several meters high over the floodplain. Many Liangzhu site names end in ‘shan’, meaning ‘mountain’ or ‘hill’. This would have provided a dramatic setting for funeral ceremonies. It is likely that ceremonies continued to take place periodically after burial of the deceased. At Yaoshan and the Fuquanshan site closer to Shanghai, archaeologists found altars made of earth and stone. At Fuquanshan, they also found sediments that they believe resulted from sacrificial offerings with fire. At the Mojiaoshan site in Zhejiang, the large platform construction has an area of over 3 ha, with a height of 10 m. In addition, there were remains of smaller rammed, earthen platforms and a large structure. Some of these platforms were constructed partially by fired adobe bricks, indicating even greater labor expenditure. Large structures also could have been used for public rituals around the graves of individuals who were important ancestors to the whole group. If additional excavation of the site reveals

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more of these structures, the structures may have been elite residences. The entire site covers an area of nearly 40 km2. It is likely to be a regional center for the numerous Liangzhu sites in the Lake Tai area. In southernmost parts of the mainland, Neolithic communities (c. 3500–2500 BC, and later) relying on rice farming and fishing have been identified, particularly in Guangdong and Fujian provinces. The best-known culture is Shixia, located in southern Guangdong. This culture developed c. 3000 BC and is represented primarily by burials. Like Neolithic cultures further north, there was a tradition of producing prestigious goods such as fine ceramics and jade items, in addition to items for daily use. Some of the same forms of pottery and jade items were found in the Shixia burials. Fieldwork at sites in Fujian thus far indicates similarities with cultures to the east in Taiwan. The Dapenkeng culture continued in coastal areas of Taiwan, and other cultures become evident such as Fengbitou in the south. In Hong Kong, a number of rescue projects have taken place during the past decade in advance of construction projects. They also have uncovered rice farming and fishing villages, a cultural pattern that has persisted in southern China for millennia.

The Late Neolithic Period The Late Neolithic period is characterized by marked social changes that paved the way for the subsequent era of powerful Bronze Age states. Major changes in the nature of settlements took place. Clear settlement hierarchies developed in several regions, revealing the presence of regional polities. The kind(s) of regional polities that developed is under debate. There also were changes in the form of individual settlements. A minority of settlements became much larger in size, and increasingly more were surrounded by walls and moats. Emerging urbanism is evident from changes such as increase in the density of sites on a regional basis. Intercommunity violence took place, but the extent of warfare is not known. Burials indicate more rigidly defined positions of social status. High social status is marked by different kinds of laborintensive, prestigious goods including thin-walled pottery vessels and jade items. Traces of metal at Neolithic sites indicate experimentation with metallurgy, but the process is not perfected until the Erlitou state era, after c. 1800 BC. Most archaeological research has taken place in the north, particularly in the Yellow River valley. The final Neolithic period here, c. 2600–1900 BC, is referred to as the Longshan period. Ever year, however, stunning discoveries take place in other areas. It is clear that more

than one area contributed to the rise of early Chinese civilization. Northern China

Regional surveys have been indispensable for identifying the presence of settlement hierarchies in the Yellow River valley. Longshan period sites range in size from a few hectares to c. 300 ha. Large centers supported by networks of smaller settlements have been identified in several regions in the central and lower Yellow River valley. Few traces of elite architecture, such as palaces, that could be identified from surveys survive in the area. In most cases, however, surveys and excavations reveal concentrations of labor-intensive, prestige goods such as thin-walled pottery and jade items in the relatively large sites. Thus far, systematic, regional surveys have taken place primarily in two areas: the Yi-Luo river valley in central Henan, and the Rizhao area in southeastern Shandong. This method of survey, systematically checking for traces of settlements over the entire landscape, provides a more complete picture of settlement patterns than traditional reconnaissance methods. The traditional method, however, has provided valuable clues for the existence of settlement hierarchies in several other areas during the Longshan period. These areas include northern Henan, southeastern Henan, southern Shanxi, western Shandong, and north-central Shandong. Much research has focused on the numerous sites from the Longshan period that have surrounding walls of rammed earth. This method of making a solid wall from the silty soil prevalent in northern China is very time consuming, requiring excessive pounding and compressing with wooden tools. Although it is often assumed that elites supervised construction of such walls, there could have been cooperative work teams managed by kin groups like lineages. Sites with rammed earth walls (Figure 7) have been found in northern Henan (Mengzhuang, Hougang), central Henan (Wangchenggang, Guchengzhai), southern Shanxi (Taosi), eastern Henan (Haojiatai, Pingliangtai), western Shandong (Jingyanggang), north-central Shandong (Dinggong, Chengziyai, Tianwang, Bianxianwang), and southeastern Shandong (Dantu, first built during the Late Dawenkou period), and northern Jiangsu (Tenghualuo). Although it is often assumed that these sites are regional centers, some are relatively small in size. In order to ascertain the role of a site within its region, other methods such as systematic survey and excavation are needed. It is intriguing that no Longshan period sites surrounded by walls of rammed earth were found in the Yi-Luo region where the first undisputed state, Erlitou, developed.

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Figure 7 Late Neolithic sites in China. 1, Wangchenggang; 2, Guchengzhai; 3, Pingliangtai; 4, Haojiatai; 5, Mengzhuang; 6, Hougang; 7, Baiying; 8, Jiangou; 9, Taosi; 10, Xinhua; 11, Chengziyai; 12, Dinggong; 13, Tianwang; 14, Bianxianwang; 15, Zhufeng; 16, Jingyanggang; 17, Yinjiacheng; 18, Liangchengzhen; 19, Dantu; 20, Tenghualuo; 21, Dadianzi; 22, Karuo; 23, Sichuan basin sites; 24, Shijiahe; 25, Beinan; 26, Lajia.

In southeastern Shandong, Dantu is clearly not the largest settlement; Liangchengzhen is much larger. The presence of a surrounding, earthen wall at a Longshan site is often regarded as an indicator of a city. Scholars have argued that cities in more than one historic era of China are large, walled settlements. Abundant archaeological research in other areas of the world has shown, however, that the rise of urbanism cannot be understood simply by the presence of

a single feature such as a wall. For one thing, occupation debris has been found beyond the extent of the walls at some sites. Urbanism is a process involving changes in the distribution of settlements within a region (see Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of). Nucleation of population occurs in certain areas, while other areas may experience a decline in population. Although features such as ceramic drainage pipes and moats (at Pingliangtai, for example) point

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to a new form of settlement, regional survey data are needed to trace the rise of urbanism in China as well. In addition, the possible economic, political, or ideological reasons for population nucleation need to be investigated. This can only be investigated by identifying all the contemporary settlements within a given region, not just the ones with walls. The social, political, and economic relations between the walled sites in each region (Wangchenggang, Guchengzhai, for example) cannot be investigated adequately without more survey or excavation data. The variation in settlements and supporting data from excavations demonstrate that several regional polities developed in the Yellow River valley during the Longshan period. Although more excavations are needed to identify the nature of these polities, some important aspects of these polities can be noted. The presence of more powerful elites than during the Middle Neolithic period is evident from striking variation in housing, craft goods, and burials. There are clues that more than one form of competition between elites took place during the Longshan period. Some valuable information comes from excavated sites with no surrounding walls. More projects focusing on regions, not just individual sites, are needed to understand key social changes from the early phases of the Longshan period to the late. It is important to keep in mind that each walled site was occupied for at least 200 years. Interpretations about social change need to refer to specific phases of the Longshan period. Rammed earth platforms that formed the foundation of structures used by elites have been found at several sites, including Wangchenggang and Jingyanggang. These would have included elite residences and structures for public affairs managed by elites such as rituals. The most convincing elite residence has been found at the site of Guchengzhai. Archaeologists uncovered a unique structure for the Longshan period. It is large in size (c. 380 m2), with traces of a long corridor along the entranceway that would have ensured more privacy for the activities inside. It appears that large, rammed earth platforms at Jingyanggang were used for ritual activities such as feasting. As seen for the Middle Neolithic period, elites had key roles in ritual activities for the welfare of their communities (see Food and Feasting, Social and Political Aspects). Similarly, at Taosi in Shanxi, remains of a structure interpreted as a palace were found. Another major discovery was an earthen feature interpreted as an astronomical observatory and locus for sacrifices to the gods. More labor-intensive goods have been found in burials than in habitation areas. The Longshan

period is famous for its rare, extremely thin-walled, ‘eggshell-thin’ pottery vessels. The thinnest of these vessels are found in Shandong province and represent the epitome of labor-intensive production. Probably these were made for burial, since they were too fragile to use in life. They have been found in burials at sites such as Yinjiacheng and Zhufeng, along with other highly polished, black, thin vessels. Fewer quantities of vessels were buried with the deceased at Longshan sites, although there still was an effort to include more than one functional type of vessel for use in the afterlife. In the Shanxi area, elites valued other kinds of pottery vessels. At the Taosi site, elite burials contain beautiful painted vessels with various designs, including a dragon. In each area, it is likely that elites sponsored the production of fine wares in some way. It appears that some elites attempted to find new methods of displaying status with material goods. Traces of copper or bronze were found at a few sites, indicating efforts to produce bronze items – vessels, tools, or both. Jade also was highly valued during the Longshan period. Jade items are relatively rare and found mostly in burials. Specialist crafts people made a variety of ornaments, but symbolic weapons such as long, thin knives (no traces of use) are predominant. These likely served as symbols of power. Unfortunately, many such jade weapons were recovered without proper excavations. Thus more specific information on dating and use cannot be obtained. A variety of beautiful jades were found in high-ranking burials at Zhufeng, Yinjiacheng, and Taosi. An exceptional array of jade symbolic weapons (knives, scepters, ‘battle-axes’) and ornamental items was found recently at the Xinhua site in Shaanxi. Most of the jades were found in a pit within a cemetery area, probably a ritual offering pit. The variation in the nature of sites, housing, craft goods, and burials provides a picture of increasing social stratification during the Longshan period in comparison to preceding periods. The excavated cemeteries such as Yinjiacheng and Taosi show that the majority of graves were small and contained few, if any, items, in contrast to a minority of graves with wooden coffins and exquisite, prestige goods. At the same time, a few sites, such as Hougang and Baiying, show that a range of households had access to some prestigious ceramics (thin-walled, polished). More research is needed to identify how craft production was organized for prestige goods versus utilitarian goods. It is likely that part-time specialists made both kinds of goods. Little is known about the nature of exchange systems during the Longshan period. Styles of pottery vessels and jades reveal

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interactions between regions. These stylistic similarities might be explained by the movement of peoples, local production imitating foreign styles, or exchange of finished products (see Exchange Systems). Competition over resources (such as land, agricultural labor, food, raw materials for prestige goods, or finished prestige goods) probably was one factor driving social change during the Longshan period. Although the increase in walled sites during the Longshan period prompts many scholars to argue for a high prevalence of warfare, more evidence is needed. At least occasional raiding took place, given the walled enclosures and potential weapons in residential areas (projectile points). One walled enclosure, Pingliangtai, has features interpreted as guardhouses. The specific evidence for warfare in individual regions needs to be assessed, including careful consideration of dating within the long Longshan period. Physical evidence for violent death is rare. One convincing case is the remains at Jiangou in southern Hebei. There excavators found jumbled bodies in a pit, and a few skulls bearing signs of scalping. The next decade promises to be an exciting one, as archaeologists uncover more evidence for the development and nature of regional polities that developed in northern China during the Longshan period. Scholars are divided as to whether these polities represent chiefdoms, or early states. There is no consensus among those who argue for early states, either. Both city-states and larger, territorial states have been proposed as appropriate models. Given the prevalence of warfare during the historic period, many scholars expect that warfare was a key factor in state formation during earlier periods. Prowess in warfare was a characteristic of leaders in Early Bronze Age states and was no doubt valued during the Late Neolithic period. At present, however, there is much more evidence for warfare in northern China after known states developed, rather than before. Other Areas of China

It is clear that complex societies developed during the Late Neolithic period in other areas of China, too. In northeast China, a number of post-Hongshan, walled sites made from stone were built at the time of the Late Dawenkou and Late Yangshao periods, and occupied through the equivalent of the Early Longshan period. Late Neolithic cultures in some regions here persisted after early states had developed in the Yellow River valley. Recent research on sites such as Dadianzi from the Lower Xiajiadian period (c. 2200–1600 B.C.) has identified high-ranking

burials on the basis of intricately painted pottery vessels and jade items. Thus, there were similar values about prestige goods in mortuary ritual from distant, and very different areas of China during the Late Neolithic period. This also is evident from excavations at the Beinan site in southern Taiwan. Here, beautiful jade ornaments were included in the graves of high-ranking individuals. An interesting local feature was the use of stone coffins instead of wooden coffins as seen on the mainland. Excavations of settlement areas in other southerly areas of China point clearly to the development of complex societies. In the central Yangzi River valley, archaeologists have defined a ‘Hubei Longshan’ culture c. 2500–2000 BC that is similar in many respects to the more northern variants of Longshan culture. Excavations at the large, walled settlement (including moats) of Shijiahe have revealed some unusual remains. Within the walled enclosure, excavators found thousands of small, red pottery cups in the Sanfangwan area to the south, probable remains of ritual activities. In the Dengjiawan cemetery to the north, there were over 1000 small clay figurines of people and animals (domesticated and wild) in two pits. These also probably were used in rituals. Some large structures at the site appear to be elite residences. As seen elsewhere, a common theme in more than one area is the association of ritual activities with elites. Management of ritual was an important aspect of leadership, probably providing individuals the authority to rule. The enormous area around Shijiahe actually includes several separate sites, many of which were first occupied during the Late Qujialing period. In the Xiaojiawuji cemetery, numerous jade items were found, including some stunning pendants with finely carved human faces (Figure 8). Most recently, there have been discoveries of late prehistoric, walled sites in the Sichuan basin as well. These are important because they indicate the likelihood of a local complex society before the spectacular Sanxingdui Early Bronze Age culture developed. At the same time, excavations in more westerly areas of China are informing us about different kinds of lifestyles during the Neolithic period. Excavations at the Karuo site in eastern Tibet uncovered a small, farming village with a variety of tools and pottery vessels not seen in other areas. Jade items were found, though, indicating some shared values with more easterly areas. More excavations in westernmost China ought to reveal traces of nomadic peoples, as known from historic times. Lastly, the findings that reveal the lives of ordinary people during the Late Neolithic period of China are

ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures 569 See also: Animal Domestication; Asia, East: China,

Paleolithic Cultures; Chinese Civilization; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Craft Specialization; Exchange Systems; Food and Feasting, Social and Political Aspects; Plant Domestication; Political Complexity, Rise of; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Social Inequality, Development of.

Further Reading

Figure 8 Jade from Xiaojiawuji. Adapted from Shijiahe Team (1999) Xiaojiawuji, Vols. 1 and 2, plate 2.1. Beijing: Wenwu Press.

equally as important as the remains of elites. Recently, one bowl of preserved, millet noodles from a Qijia culture site in Qinghai province called Lajia, dated to c. 2000 BC, captivated the world. Before this discovery, the Qijia culture was better known from burials in the upper Yellow River valley. This famous site demonstrates the value of archaeology for informing us about the full range of lifestyles in prehistory.

Conclusions The rich archaeological record of the Chinese Neolithic period is providing valuable data about the origins of Chinese civilization. A diversity of life ways has been revealed, but there are common threads from area to area. Clearly, early Chinese civilization stems from multiple areas. At the same time, Neolithic sites provide an extraordinary opportunity to investigate key social changes such as the development of an agricultural way of life, social ranking, specialized craft production, urbanism, and regional polities. Comparative studies about early civilizations will continue to require inclusion of the important results from the extensive fieldwork in the PRC and Taiwan.

Acknowledgment The author thanks Jill Seagard, Department of Anthropology at The Field Museum, for preparing Figures 1–8.

Guojia Wenwu Ju (National, Bureau of Cultural Relics) Editorial Group (2005) Zhongguo zhongyao kaogu faxian. Major Archaeological Discoveries in China in 2004. Beijing: Wenwu Press. Henan Province, Cultural Research, Institute (1989) Henan Wuyang Jiahu Xinshiqi shidai yizhi di er zhi liu ci fajue jianbao (Short report of the 2nd to 6th excavations at the Neolithic site of Jiahu in Wuyang, Henan). Kaogu 1: 1–14. Li WX (2000) Zhongguo shi nian bai da kaogu xin faxian. Top 100 New Archaeological Discoveries in China, Vols. 1 and 2. Beijing: Wenwu Press. Liaoning Provincial, Institute of Archaeology, Cultural Relics, Cultural Bureau of Chaoyang, City (2004) Niuheliang yizhi. Niuheliang Site. Beijing: Academy Press. Liu L (2004) The Chinese Neolithic. Trajectories to Early States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lu HY, Yan XY, Ye ML, et al. (2005) Millet noodles in Late Neolithic China. Nature 437. 967–968. Puyang City Cultural Management Bureau, Puyang City Museum, Puyang City Cultural Relics Work Team (1988) Henan Puyang Xishuipo yizhi fajue jianbao (Short report on excavations at the Xishuipo site in Puyang, Henan). Wenwu 3: 1–6. Shijiahe, Team (1999) Xiaojiawuji, Vols. 1 and 2. Beijing: Wenwu Press. Stark M (ed.) (2006) Archaeology of Asia. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Underhill AP (2002) Craft Production and Social Change in Northern China. New York: Kluwer/Plenum. Whitfield R and Wang T (eds.) (1999) Exploring China’s Past. London: Saffron Books. Wu JM (2004) The Late Neolithic cemetery at Dadianzi, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. In: Linduff K and Yan S (eds.) Gender and Chinese Archaeology, pp. 47–91. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira. Yang XN (2004) New Perspectives on China’s Past. Chinese Archaeology in the Twentieth Century, Vols. 1 and 2. New Haven and Kansas City: Yale University and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Zhao ZJ (2005) New data for the study of the origins of agriculture in China. In: Institute of Archaeology CASS (ed.) Chinese Archaeology in the New Century Papers in Honor of Professor Wang Zhongshu’s 80th Birthday (Xin Shiji de Zhongguo Kaoguxue: Wang Zhongshu Xiansheng Bashi Huadan Jinian Lunwen Ji), pp. 86–101. Beijing: Science Press. Zhejiang Province, Institute of Archaeology (2003) Yaoshan. Beijing: Wenwu Press. Zhejiang Province, Institute of Archaeology, Pinghu City Museum (2005) Zhejiang Pinghu shi Zhuangqiaofen Liangzhu wenhua yizhi ji mudi (The site and cemetery from the Liangzhu culture at Zhuangqiaofen in Pinghu City, Zhejiang). Kaogu 7: 10–14.

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China, Paleolithic Cultures Chen Shen, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON, Canada ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary acheulean A term referring to an archaeological industry of stone tools, represented by bifacial handaxes, created by hominids in the Lower Palaeolithic across Africa, much of Europe and Asia, bifacial technology A special flintknapping technique to manufacture stone tools by sequentially flaking two sides of a block or a large flake. A final produce through this core reduction technique shows extensive flake scars on both sides. ESR Standing for Electron Spin Resonance, as a spectroscopic technique, for use of dating application, that enables trapped electrons within bones and shells to be measured without the heating that thermoluminescence requires. flake tools Stone tools that were made on flakes removed from a prepared core, and then by retouching or modifying work edge of the flake. lithic technology In study of human prehistory, lithic technology refers to adaptive behaviors that specifically involve in production and use of stone tools. microblade technology A special flintknapping technique to produce a series of small blades (normally less than 50 cm in length) from specially prepared core such as wedge-shape or boat-shaped core. This lithic technology was invented by modern hunter-gatherers around 30 000 BP, and wildly spread across Northern Asia and Northeast North America. OSL Standing for Optically Stimulated Luminescence, a dating technique by measuring doses from ionizing radiation (commonly known as radioactive radiation), based on the principle that electrons trapped between the valence and electron band in the crystalline structure of matter. palaeomagnetic dating A dating technique based on the principle of Palaeomagnetism that study the record the Earth’s magnetic field preserved in various magnetic minerals through time. palaeolithic Referring to the period of old stone tool cultures created by human beings, also called the ‘Old Stone Age’. It began with the introduction of the first stone tools by hominids such as Homo habilis (around 2 000 000 years ago) and lasted until the introduction of agriculture. pebble-core tools Stone tools that were made on pebble blocks or cores by chopping large flakes off around the edges. Pleistocene Referring to a geologic timescale is the period from 1 800 000 to 11 550 years BP, followed by the Holocene epoch of today. The Pleistocene is a period when hominis created archaeological cultures that is usually referred to Palaeolithic. refitting analysis An application of stone tool analytical method that entails attempting to put stone tools and flakes back together again, and provides invaluable information on core reduction procedures and site formation. use-wear analysis An application of stone tool analytical method that examine, under either lower power or high power microscopes, microfractures and abrasions on the working edges of stone tools for determination of tool functions.

Introduction In the history of Chinese archaeology, the foreign scientists Emile Licent (1876–1952), Pierre Teihard de Charlin (1881–1955), Johanson Andersson (1874– 1960), Davidson Black (1884–1934), and Henri E. Breuil (1877–1961) are indisputably regarded as the pioneers of Chinese Palaeolithic study. Their investigations in the Ordos area of the Upper Yellow River, excavations at the Shuidonggou site, and discovery of the sensational Sinanthoropus pekinensis fossils at the Zhoukoudian (also spelled as Cho-KouTien), all in the 1920s, marked the beginning of Palaeolithic research in China. These early discoveries were published in Le Paleolitque de la China in 1928, the first book on Chinese Palaeolithic cultures. Research prior to 1949 focused solely on the excavations of sites at Zhoukoudian, near Beijing. The international collaboration at Zhoukoudian trained the first generation of Chinese Palaeolithic archaeologists: Dr. Pei Wenzhong (also known as W. C. Pei, 1904–1982) and Jia Lanpo (also Chia Lan-po, 1908– 2001). Today, their students, including Lu Zen’er, Zhang Senshui, Wei Qi, and Huang Weiwen, among others, are leading scholars active in the field. They are responsible for the discovery of hundreds of Palaeolitihc sites between the 1950s and 1980s (Figure 1). The findings from these discoveries are summarized in an edited volume Paleonanthropology and Paleolithic Archaeology in the People’s Republic of China published by Academic Press in 1985. The book became a major reference tool for western scholars and students studying Chinese Palaeolithic in the following decades. By the end of the last century, Chinese Palaeolithic study entered a new era when a new generation of Chinese archaeologists, who received their training in the West, started evaluating old data, applied new techniques in field investigations, and offered alternative interpretations on human evolution in China. International collaborations, after a half-century long hiatus, once again played a vital role in the development of Chinese Palaeolithic framework. This article summarizes our current knowledge of Palaeolithic cultures based on the data sets accumulated over the last two decades.

An Overview: Palaeoenvironment and Chronology The uplift of the Himalayan mountains, along Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and appearance of Eurasian steppe deserts had a unique and significant impact on the palaeoenvironment on East Asia. These environmental changes inhibited the direct interaction of

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Figure 1 Major Palaeolithic sites in China. 1, Shuidonggou; 2, Sjara-osso-gol (Ordos); 3, Zhoukoudian (Locality 1, Locality 15, the Upper Cave, Tianyuandong); 4, Yuanmou; 5, Longgupo; 6, Xihoudu; 7, Lantian; 8, Nihewan (Goudi, Majuangou; Donggutuo, Xiaochangliang, Banshan, Cenjiawan, Maliang, Youfang); 9, Quyuanhekou; 10, Jinliushan; 11, Guanyindong; 12, Dadong; 13, Sanming Lingfengdong; 14, Dali; 15, Luonan (Longyadong); 16, Baise; 17, Maozhushan; 18, Hexian; 19, Tangshan; 20, Dingcun; 21, Ranjialukou; 22, Gaojiazheng; 23, Jingshuiwan; 24, Jigongshan; 25, Maba; 26, Liujiang; 27, Ziyang; 28, Zhijidong; 29, Shiyu; 30, Xianrendong; 31, Xiaonanhai; 32, Xiachuan; 33, Xueguan; 34, Hutouliang; 35, Shizitan; 36, Jiqitan; 37, Qingfengling; 38, Fenghuangling; 39, Wanghailou; 40, Lingjing; 41, Dongfang Plaza.

hominids on both sides of the Old World. Nevertheless, these geological and environmental barriers did not prevent early African hominids from entering East Asia as early as 1.7–1.6 million years ago. The earliest occupations were distributed in the central China between 25 and 40 N latitude. During the Lower Pleistocene (1.8–0.78 million years ago), the palaeoenvironment in central-northern China was much warmer and moister than today, similar to the subtropical climate that comprised early hominids’ living habitats. Most of these earliest hominid settlements were found in open-air sites near water sources in what is today a hilly environmental setting. The lithic technology of these early hominids in the new

land was noticeably different from their counterparts in the West. Geological tectonic movements and temperature fluctuations during the Middle Pleistocene started to create a geological boundary through what are today the Qinling Mountains. Northern China became drier and colder, resulting in temperate–prairie zones, while southern China retained the same subtropical climate as before. By this time, Asian hominids seemed well adapted to different environments, and Early Palaeolithic sites have been found almost everywhere across the vast landscape of China. Their decision to locate in cave sites and open-air sites was probably based on survival strategies. During this

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time, there is evidence for intentional use of fires, and the formation of two different technologies (flaketool industries in the North and pebble-core tool industries in the South) occurred. During the late Middle Pleistocene to early Upper Pleistocene, Mousterian industries (represented by Neanderthal cultural remains) dominated the western side of the Old World, but had little impact on cultural changes in China. Here, the cultural remains of the early Upper Pleistocene show a continuous development from its preceding cultures. Thus, the term ‘Middle Palaeolithic,’ once used to identify Palaeolithic sites dated to this period, now seems irrelevant when discussing lithic industries that have little difference from the early period. For the purpose of comparison, however, our summary of these sites will still be under a separate heading, but designated as late Early Palaeolithic. The most significant environmental event that occurred during the Upper Pleistocene was the climate change from the Last Inter-Glacial to the Last Glacial period. The climatic influence was once again greater in North China than in South China, and as a result, the northern flake-tool industries were pushed southward, replacing the pebble-core tool industries in Middle-Lower Valley of Yangtze (Changjiang) River. This transition, or cultural interaction between the North and the South, was evinced by the Palaeolithic remains recovered in recent investigations in the Three Gorges area. Another environmental change was the quick accumulation of Malan Loess across northern China, which resulted in the northern lithic industries being more adaptive to loess environments. The Malan Loess is the best chronological indicator, and provides Palaeolithic researchers with an opportunity to examine the human behavioral changes of the late Early Palaeolithic in response to environmental changes, although such studies in China are still in its infancy. By 40 000–35 000 BP dramatic cultural changes occurred in China, evinced by the sudden appearances of blade technology, bifacial technology, and especially microblade technology. These new technologies mixed with the indigenous lithic industries, thereby forming unique Late Palaeolithic cultures. These cultural changes were directly related to the migration and subsequent spread of anatomical modern humans in China. Whether or not modern humans also originated independently in East Asia is still open to debate; nevertheless, the spread of modern humans from the West via the vast Eurasian Steppe and Eastern Siberia undoubtedly contributed to the complexity and variability of Late Palaeolithic lithic industries. Clearly, China, especially northeastern China, at the end of Pleistocene was part of a

cultural intersphere that eventually reached the New World during 20 000–11 500 BP.

Early Hominid Occupations of the Lower Pleistocene (1.8–0.78 Million Years Ago) It is claimed that the oldest stone tools in China date to more than 2 million years ago and came from Renzidong site, Fanchang County, Anhui province in southern China. But whether these so-called stone tools were caused by nature or by hominids is highly debated among Chinese archaeologists. The abundance of Pliocene/early Lower Pleistocene faunal remains indicates that this site could have great potential for hominid living habitats. The well-known Yuanmou Shangnabang site in Yunnan province and Longgupo site in Chongqing Municipality, where Homo erectus teeth and questionable Homo habilis (or more likely Fufengpithecus) lower jaw were recovered, respectively, also have controversial dates older than 1.8 million years ago. Identified in 1960, Xihoudu site in southern Shanxi province was reported as one of the oldest sites dated to before 1.8 million years ago, but the nature of stone tools is still in doubt due to the heavy abrasion on the artifacts by hydrodynamic forces at the site, and a recent palaeomagnetic study redated this site to 1.27 million years ago. Other sites of such antiquity include Lantian Gongwangling in Shaanxi province and Yuanxian Quyuanhekou in Hubei province. At both sites hominid fossil remains were recovered in association with a few stone tools. While identifications of Longgupo and Yuanxian fossils are still under debate, the oldest fossil skull of Asian Homo erectus found in China (dated to 1.1 mya by palaeomagnatic dating) is from Lantian Gongwangling. These aforementioned sites have very limited cultural remains like stone tools. However, the Nihewan Basin has yielded a number of Lower Pleistocene sites with abundant cultural materials, and is no doubt a prime focus for study of early hominid behavior in East Asia (see Modern Humans, Emergence of). The Nihewan Basin

The Nihewan Basin, located in Hebei province, about 300 km northwestern Beijing, is a large extinct lacustrine basin with extensive Pliocene and Pleistocene deposit containing hominid activity sites with associated faunal fossils and stone tools. These sites are indicative of the earliest hominid occupations in East Asia researching 40o north latitude landscape. So far more than a dozen sites dated to the Lower Plesitocene, concentrated on the eastern ends of the basin, have been identified within a 5 km radius of the Donggutuo village, Yangyuan County. The number will likely increase as the investigation is ongoing,

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and suggests that the region was the most populated area for the earliest hominids in East Asia. Recently, a series of palaeomagnetic studies took place in the region, establishing the following relative chronology: Goudi (also named as Majuangou III) has magnetostratigraphic age of 1.66 million years, Majuanagou site 1.55 million years, Xiaochangliang and Dachangliang (also reported as Xuantai) 1.36 million years, Banshan 1.32 million years, and Donggutuo and Cengjiawan 1.1 million years (Figure 2). The most recent exciting discovery at Nihewan is the Goudi site, first excavated in 2001 by the Chinese Academy of Science’s Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology (the IVPP). Three additional field sessions were carried out by Hebei archaeologists in 2001, 2002, and 2003. Researchers from the IVPP named the site as Goudi, while latter Hebei scientists refer to this site as Majuangou III based on the fact that the site sediment was directly below the later 1.55 million year old Majuangou site. Goudi is located about 1.5 km from Donggutuo village at an elevation of 821 m above sea level. Faunal remains from the reported earliest excavation include fragmentary bones identifiable as birds (including ostrich), rodents, cainivores, elephantids, Equus sp., rhinocerotids, and cervids. Later excavation sessions revealed a floor of elephantids foot imprints. The cultural remains of hominid activities are evident from lithic artifacts that include cores reconstructed by refitting pieces of flakes discovered in the surrounding area (Figure 3). According to use-wear examination, flakes were used without retouching. This evidence suggests that the Goudi site, dated to close to the onset of the Olduvai subchron, is the earliest archaeologcal site where hominids activity can be unambiguously identified. Identified in 1978, Xiaochangliang was the first known Lower Pleistocene site in the basin. At the time of discovery, the site attracted great attention from international scientists (including archaeologists, geologists, and palaeontologists) because of its great antiquity, but no systematic excavation was carried out until the 1990s. Research based on site survey and surface-collected materials indicated the site to be a hominid activity area. In 1998, a SinoCanada research team excavated the sites exposing 16 m2. The study of the faunal taphonomy suggests that the distribution of artifacts was the result of a jumble of hydraulically processed lithics and fauna. The evidence indicates that the site was located on the shoreline of an Archaic lake. Microscopic examination of lithic artifacts for tool functions reveals that Xiaochangliang hominids employed unmodified flakes as expedient tools, the use-wear of which suggests that they were used in scavenging of

dead animals for food and potentially other uses (see Dendrochronology). Following the discovery of Xiaochangling, the Donggutuo site was identified in 1981 and excavated during 1981–1985 at five testing localities (T1–T5). Donggutuo is the only known Lower Pleistocene site with multiple layers (layers A–E). The cultural deposit at the site is about 3–5 m thick. Between 2000 and 2001, the Sino-Canada term carried out two field sessions, excavating one 2  3 m2 unit at T1 and one 2  2 m2 unit at T4 (Figure 4). A total of 2412 artifacts including faunal remains were recovered from the five layers, although the greatest proportion of material came from Layer C. Distribution of patched artifacts concentrations on site indicates minimal disturbance. Detailed study of these recently recovered materials is still in progress, and includes spatial analysis, taphonamy study, and use-wear examination, among other studies. The preliminary observations on the lithic assemblages suggest that Donggutuo occupants produced flake tools for expedient tasks by employing a bipolar reduction technique, similar to those at Xiaochangliang. Like its precedents (Goudi, Majuangou, Xiaochangliang, Banshan), Donggutuo hominids employed poor-quality quartzite raw materials which are abundant locally. However, many flake tools were modified by secondary retouch, indicating a purposeful manufacturing of tools at this site. The Cenjiawan site, located northeast of the Donggutuo site, was previously considered an early Middle Pleistocene site but a recent palaeomagnetic study redated the site to be contemporary with the Donggutuo site. Cenjiawan was excavated in 1986 and 1992, and a total of 1383 lithic artifacts were recovered. Cenjiawan assemblages yield a number of modified flake tools including end-scrapers, sidescrapers, and notches, although unmodified flakes were still predominant. An international team carried out a refitting analysis of Cenjiawan lithic artifacts, and the results show a clear pattern of skillful flake removals with continuous rotation of cores. Cenjiawan cores were utilized efficiently and effectively to obtain maximal flakes by employment of multiple platform reduction (Figure 5). Another implication of the high refitting rate is that it suggests minimal postdepositional disturbance of the site, particularly in the light of the fact that refit artifacts were plotted in close distance. The data undoubtedly point to on-site core-reduction activities, as well as the primary context of site formation. Archaeological evidence from the Nihewan Basin clearly points to continuous development of Asian hominids in northern China starting 1.7 million years ago. These hominids utilized local recourses of lake water sources and raw materials for tool making.

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B Figure 2 Lithostratigraphy and magnetostratigraphy of the Nihewan Basin. A, Palaeomagnetic diagram of the Donggutuo and Maliang sites ((a) lithostratigraphy; (b) low-field magnetic susceptibility; (c) delination (Dec.); (d) inclination (Inc.); (e) maximun angular deviation (MAD); (f) virtual geomagnetic pole (VGP) latitude; (g) magnetic polarity zonation; and (h) geomagnetic polarity time scale (GPTS)). B, Palaeomagnetic sampling at the Xiaochangliang site.

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Figure 4 Excavations at the Donggutuo Site, the Nihewan Basin, in 2000–2001.

Use-wear of tools suggests that the occupants engaged in various activities for survival. Regional variation of the Lower Pleistocene hominids is also evident through comparisons with other early Early Palaeolithic lithic industries in southern China. Lithic assemblages from the Lantian Gongwangling, Yunxian Quyuanhekou, and Longgupo

sites are represented by large choppers and points (Figure 6), indicating that the inhabitants at these sites clearly adapted different strategies from those at the Nihewan Basin. Overall, the Lower Pleistocene lithic technology in China is different from its counterparts in the West that are represented by the Acheulean industries.

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different environments are reflected by regional variations in the lithic industries. During this period, cave sites were significant settlement locations for hominids, and important cave sites are often found in central-northern, northeastern, and southwestern China. Open-air sites along river valleys and lake shorelines, like those in the Nihewan Basin, were continuously occupied. The most important innovation for the Middle Pleistocene hominids was the intentional use of fires. Cave Sites

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Figure 5 Reconstructed cores through refitting from the Cenjiawan site.

Figure 6 Choppers from the Yunxian Quyuanhekou site.

Early Palaeolithic Settlements of the Middle Pleistocene (780–120 Thousand Years Ago) Cultural remains, along with a few hominid fossils, dating to the Middle Pleistocene are found in most parts of China, although they are concentrated on lowlands and river plains. Hominid adaptations to

Major cave sites during this period include Zhoudoudian Locality 1 in Beijing, Jinliushan and Miaohoushan in Liaoning province, Longyadong in Shaanxi province, and Panxian Dadong in Guizhou province. These cave sites yielded some of the most important evidence of hominid behavior, technology, and settlement pattern. Located southwest of Beijing, Zhoudoudian Locality 1 is famous for the discovery of five Homo erectus skulls in 1929. At one time it was the most celebrated Palaeolithic site in the world and still is a national monument in China. After three-quarters of a century, the cave site is still the Palaeolithic site that yielded the most abundant Homo erectus fossils remains in China (more than 40 individuals). Considered as a home base, the cultural deposition in the cave is over 30 m thick, and is divided into 13 layers (Figure 7). Investigations of its cultural chronology suggest that the cave was at least repeatedly occupied for at least three different phases, the first from 500 to 400 thousand years ago, the second 400 to 300 thousand years ago, and the third from 300 to 200 thousand years ago. Faunal assemblages from occupations in the cave and dating to different times, indicate climatic changes in the region throughout the Middle Pleistocene period. There is rich evidence of fire ash deposits within the cave; however, whether the fire was caused intentionally by hominids or was the result of natural fires is currently under debate. The lithic industry at the Zhoukoudian Locality 1 cave may be characterized in general as having small flake tools (most less than 40 mm in length) produced by the bipolar technique. However, lithic assemblages from the Early, Middle, and Late occupational phases clearly differ: large-sized tools like choppers and points decreased in number over times, while the number of small tools like scrapers, burins, and notches increased through time. Tool-making technique was also changed with bipolar flake removal being replaced with direct percussion at the Middle Phase. Noticeably, good-quality local raw materials like chert were used in increasing quantities at the Late Phase, although

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Figure 7 The Zhoukoudian Locality 1 Cave site with deposit stratigraphy (right).

Figure 8 The No. 9 ash patch in Layer 8, Level 7, at Jinniushan. The scale is in centimeters.

quartz and quartzite were still predominantly selected by Zhoukoudian hominids. During the Late Phase of Zhoukoudian occupations, hominids with different biological features, namely Archaic Homo sapiens, are found to have lived at the Jinniushan cave near Dashiqiao city in southern Liaoling province. Identified in 1978, the Jinnuishan Locality A cave, measuring roughly 13.5 m long east–west and 9 m wide north–south, was excavated completely over the course of a multiyear field project that ran from 1986 to 1994 by the Peking University. The site is exposed with 11 layers of sediments with geological age dated to the Middle Pleistocene. Jinnuishan cultural remains were found in Layer 8, and included more than 200 lithic artifacts, 9789 faunal remains (nearly 200 with burnt marks), and

nine well-preserved fire-use ash features (Figure 8). The most important discovery was more than 50 specimens of hominid fossils, all found within 2 m of the southern wall of the cave. These fossils belong to a single female, approximately 20–22 years old, now known as the ‘Jinnuishan hominid’ (Figure 9). Uranium-series dating suggests a date range of between 300 and 230 thousand years ago, with an average date of 263 thousand years ago. The Jinnuishan hominid cultural remains suggest that two different hominids coexisted in northern China during the Middle to Late Pleistocene. The associate fossil faunal remains of rhinoceros and macaque suggest a warmer and wetter environment. The Jinniushan hominid might have lived in small groups (of probably less than a dozen), inhabited caves seasonally, and used as well as preserved fire.

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Figure 9 Fossil remains of the Jinnuishan Archaic Homo sapiens.

The discovery of Guanyingdong cave in 1964 was a breakthrough in that for the first time Asian hominid cultural remains were well represented in the Southwest where Early Palaeolithic sites were still limited. Rich cultural materials recovered from the cave indicate a southern lithic industry different from the Zhoukoudian industry during late Middle Pleistocene to early Upper Pleistocene. Hominid fossil remains recovered from this area include a few teeth from cave sites of Tongzi Yanhuidong and Panxian Dadong. These teeth show biological features more closely related to Archaic Homo sapiens than to Homo erectus. Dadong is a large karst cave located 50 km southwest of Panxian city, at an altitude of 1630 m above sea level. The cave’s main chamber with an average of 35 m width and extending over 200 m in length covers roughly 8000 m2 in area. Several field excavations were carried out in the 1990s, yielding a large number of lithic artifacts as well as faunal remains that represent the Ailuropoda–Stegodon faunas of Middle Pleistocene southern China. Uranium-series dates and electron spin resonance (ESR) dates of tooth enamel place the majority of the archaeological deposits between 130 and 250 thousand years ago (see Electron Spin Resonance Dating). Studies of lithic assemblages suggest that Dadong hominids utilized poor quality but locally available

limestone for tool-making, while basalt and chert were increasingly used in later times as hominids extended their explorations of the area. It is suggested that an anvil-chipping technique was possibly employed as a mode of core reduction to make flake-tool blanks, evident by large limestone blocks in the cave. Dadong hominids might have modified and used animal teeth of suitable size and shape as working tools as an alternative to the poor-quality local limestone. Taphonomic study of faunal remains from the cave yields a high quantity of large-bodied animal teeth, especially those of rhinoceroses. These must have been intentionally selected and transported to the cave by hominids for functional purposes. Hominid fossils, associated with abundant faunal remains, are also recovered from caves in southern China (especially along the Middle and Lower Reaches of Yangtze River) such as Hexian Longtangdong and Chaoxian Yingshan in Anhui province, and Nanjing Tangshan in Jiangsu province. These archaeological deposits of Homo erectus (Hexian and Nanjing fossils) or Archaic Homo Sapiens (Chaoxian fossils) are roughly dated as contemporaneous to the Zhoukoudian occupational period. The recent discovery of Sanming Lingfengdong in Fujian province has proven to be the largest and richest late Middle Pleistocene cave occupation in southeast China, although no hominid fossil was found.

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In the Nihewan Basin, the Middle Pleistocene sites are represented by Maliang, Qiuergou, and Qingciyao. A study of Maliang lithic artifacts, recovered from the 1984 excavation session, suggests that Maliang hominids have developed more skills in tool-making skills than their predecessors, an example being the increased sophistication of multidirectional core reduction. Flake tools were modified into standard shapes of scrapes and notches, which are not seen in other earlier assemblages (Figure 10). They learned to select finequality chert which is available but rare in the region,

Open-air Site

One of the important open-air sites during this period is Lantian Chenjiawozi site where the famous Homo erectus lower jaw was recovered in 1963. In general this jaw, together with the skull recovered from Gangwangling, have been identified as Lantian hominids. But the Chenjiawozi jaw is dated to 700–600 thousand years ago, later than those fossils from Gangwangling. Another open-air site, Dali in southern Shaanxi province, yielded a well-preserved skull belonging to a 30-year-old Archaic Homo sapiens individual.

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suggestive of developing hominid cognition and their procurement strategies. Use-wear analyses indicate that tool use at Maliang probably emphasized on bone scraping/shaving functions (Figure 11) (see Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear). Most open-air sites are usually found in clusters along river valleys. Some are located on upper lands, at the third to fifth terraces of mountainous regions, such as those in the Luonan Basin in southern Shaanxi province and in the Baise (or Bose) Basin in Guangxi province. In the past two decades, a large number of Early Palaeolithic sites are found at lower elevations on river flood plains in southern China. The important Early Palaeolithic complexes include those from Hanzhong Basin in Hubei/Shaaxi provinces, the Lishui Valley of Middle Yangtze River in Hunan

province, and the Shuiyangjiang Valley of Lower Yangtze River in Anhui province. Within each of these complexes, dozens of open-air sites are found in close proximity, embedded within the same geological deposit, and share similar features of lithic assemblages. These complexes present a unique local industry adapted to river valley settlements over the time of the Middle Pleistocene. Recent investigations in the Shuiyangjiang Valley have identified more than 20 palaeolithic sites, representing the earliest Palaeolithic settlement concentration in the Lower Reach of Yangtze River. These sites have a date range between 817 and 126 thousand years ago based on ESR dating. Within the complex, the discovery of the Maozhushan site in 1996 revealed an important open campsite, with a pebble

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Figure 11 Use-wear of Miliang lithic artifacts. (a) ML085, 14. Heavily rounded edge with used polish along the working edge, scattered scars are moderate to large in size with stepped and hinged termination, unifacially distributed on the dorsal surface. The wear type is indicative of scraping hard bone. (b) ML001, 28. Moderate to large scars bifacially distributed along the edge of 10–15 mm. Scars are directional but most are vertical to the edge, heavy rounding and rare polish. Interpreted as cutting/sawing hard bones use-wear. (c) ML060, dorsal side, 56. small-to-moderate-sized feathered or hinged scars, unifacially distributed along the edge on dorsal side. (d) ML060, Ventral side, 28. Heavy rounding and polish along ventral-sided working edge (opposite to that in previous photo). A few striations parallel or perpendicular to the edge are noted. The combination of wear patterns is suggestive of scraping wood use-wear.

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semicircle structure that could be the earliest structure created by early hominid in China (Figure 12). The Maozhushan site is located 4.5 km northwest of Ningguo City, Anhui province, on riverine terrain about 65 m above the sea level. The settlement lies on the second terrace of the Shuiyangjiang River covering a hilly landscape of nearly 4000 m2, of which an

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Figure 12 Plan view of pebble semicircle at the Maozhushan site.

area of 13  15 m2 was exposed in the 1997–1998 field season. The stone structure is made of more than 1100 pebbles, featuring a semicircular shape with a 10 m long east–west axis and a 6 m north– south axis. What is more interesting about this structure is that 20 small pebble circles, ranging from 20 to 30 cm in diameter, were found on the edge of the pebble semicircle (Figure 13). Although the current evidence is insufficient for identifying the function of this structure, it is suggested that all of the pebbles for the semicircle structure were purposefully collected by hominids elsewhere, and those pebble stones also served as raw materials for tool making. It has been speculated that some small circles together with stone artifacts could be evidence of the use of post molds, thus a possible implication of the earliest wooden shelter known in China. However, lack of faunal remains and the organic components of the sediment are due to acid earth in the study region of southern China. A total of 154 stone artifacts were recovered from the pebble semicircle at the Maozhushan site. They were scattered evenly throughout the structure and no patterned clusters of lithic artifacts could be identified. Typologically, the lithic assemblage primarily consisted of chunks, cores, and flakes. Tool types included scrapers, hammers, choppers, points, picks, spheroids, and drills. Some tools showed traces of possible use. The pebble semicircle might have been a seasonal living structure where tool-making activities were conducted; however, the specific function of this structure needs further investigation. Judging from the evidence at present, the Maozhushan site may have been a central campsite of the Shuiyangjiang River Paleolithic complex. Palaeolithic Settlements at the Luonan Basin

The Luonan Basin is located in the Qinling Mountains which form a geographic boundary between northern and southern China. The basin contains caves

Figure 13 Examples of small pebble circles at the Maozhushan site.

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and open-air sites that date to at least 350 000– 180 000 years ago, distributed over the second to sixth terraces of the river valleys. Archaeological surveys for Palaeolithic sites started in 1995, and by 2004, a Sino-Canada research collaboration identified a total of 268 open-air sites and one cave site of Early Palaeolithic (Figure 14).

Excavated between 1995 and 1997, the Longyadong cave is relatively small, about 20 m2 in area. The cultural deposits are about 3.5 m in depth, and contain three cultural layers. Fired ash remains were clearly identified on these layers. Artifacts from these ‘living floors’ were in substantially high density (the average 1000 pieces (>10 mm) per m3), and over 77 000 lithic

Figure 14 The Luonan Basin landscape (upper) and the Lower Palaeolithic sites.

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artifacts were recovered from the cave. Cores, nodules, anvils, and other breccia rocks were arranged along the circumference of these ‘floors,’ while numerous flakes and fossil remains were concentrated in the center. Refitting study was successful in conjoining thousands of artifacts within the cave to document site formation and hominid spatial use of the cave (Figure 15). The difference between the open-air sites and the cave sites are analyzed in terms of the raw materials and tool-making technology. The study shows that stone tool types from Longyadong cave site are dominated by small modified flake tools like scrapers, points, and burins. Large choppers made on pebble stone are present but in a very low number. In contrast, 13 581 pieces collected from 268 open-air sites consists of large tool types that are not seen from the

cave sites, such as hand axes, picks, cleavers, spheroids, and choppers in relatively high numbers. It is implied that the Longyadong cave may have been one of the central sites of occupation where early hominids visited repeatedly over a long period of time, while the open-air sites were loci of their temporary activities. The differences in tool assemblages show that there might have been different site functions between the cave and open-air sites. Lithic Technology

During the Middle Pleistocene, two main lithic technologies were established as strategic adaptations: flake tools in northern China and pebble-core tools in southern China. Flake tools were produced with directly percussion or bipolar percussion by expedient core reduction. Based on the current data, no

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standard core platform preparation has been detected as yet. Predominant flake blanks were modified into scrapers, notches, and burins. Raw materials mainly consisted of poor-quality quartz and quartzite which were common locally available resources. Goodquality cherts were also selected during the later period at some sites. The majority of pebble-core tools were found at riverside sites in southern China, and were made by either freehand percussion or anvil-chipping methods. The difference between pebble-core tools and flake tools is that the former were bifacially or unifacially made on cores or large flakes. These types of tools often included large cutting implements like choppers with either bifacially or unifacially chipped edges, large bifacial or unifacial points, and other heavy-duty tools like spheroids. However, differences between the two lithic industries were also observed in comparisons of cave sites and open-air settlements, especially in southern China. Some caves, like Dadong and Guanyindong, yielded primarily flake tools that contrasted with the lithic assemblages from contemporaneous sites in adjunct areas. These differences could be direct reflections of site functions, as representations of hominid behavior. In fact, the difference between the lithic assemblages of the Longyadong cave and other open-air sites, as mentioned above, could also be explained as the result of cultural interaction between southern and northern hominids, particularly in light of the fact that the location of the Luonan Basin was on the boundary where the two lithic technologies could have met. Clearly, further study on the Luonan lithic assemblages in terms of dating and chronology, site formation, stone tool functions, will shed new lights on the diversity of hominid behaviors in the Middle Pleistocene China. Handaxes in China

Another important aspect of the Luonan Basin Palaeolithic is the discovery of over 200 handaxes from open-air sites (Figure 16). This is one of the largest clusters of so-called Acheulean-like handaxes in China. The other areas yielding a large number of handaxes are the Baise Basin in Guangxi province and the Danjiangkuo Reservoir area in northern Hubei province. A few handaxes are also reported, in lower numbers, from other open-air sites, in both northern and southern China. At present well-known handaxes assemblages are reported from Baise, where the Palaeolithic complex consisted of nearly 100 sites and localities, distributing mainly on the fourth terraces of the 100 km-long Youjiang River valley. About 25–100 m above the

present river level, the artifact-bearing deposits of the fourth terraces are associated with tektites dispersed across the basin. The age of these large cutting tools were established by 40Ar/39Ar analyses on collected tektite samples, and yielded an average age of 803 thousand years ago. Thus, Baise handaxes are claimed to be the oldest large cutting tools in East Asia. It is suggested that the both Luonan and Baise handaxes exhibits all the traits of the Acheulean technology from western Eurasia/Africa. These handaxes were made of pebble cores, bifacially chipped to straighten the working edge towards the tip, but leaving cortex and rough working surface near proximal (butt) end. It is also evident that handaxes with similar morphological traits to Chinese tools are found in Chongokni, Korea. Compared to the classic Acheulean handaxes in the West, these eastern versions seem to be crudely made prototypes. However, technologically, they share similar attributes of human modification to those in the West. The difference in their appearance may be caused by use of different raw materials, and possibly by different functions as a result of adaptive behaviors to the East Asian environment. The discovery of handaxes has always stirred sensational discussion focusing on the concept of the ‘Movius Line’ that drew developmental differences between elaborate handaxe culture in the West and crude chopper-chopping culture in the East. Since the first identification of handaxes from the Dingcun site in southern Shanxi province in 1954, Chinese scholars were trying to claim that Palaeolithic cultures were not from the cultural backwaters as implied by H. Movius’ syntheses in the 1940s. Today, it is clear that Chinese hominids produced cultures quite different to those of their counterparts in Europe and Africa. Regardless of whether the large cutting tools (including hand axes, cleavers, and picks) are similar or dissimilar to those in the West in terms of measurement or attributes, the reasons why handaxes in such form appeared in China would be of interest to Palaeolithic research for years to come. For example, archaeologists working on the Baise assemblages believe that production of handaxes could be a behavioral adaptation to an episode of woody plants burning and widespread forest destruction due to tektite events that resulted in local cobble outcrops becoming available.

Palaeolithic Cultures of the Early Upper Pleistocene (120–35 Thousand Years Ago) Northern China

Entering the Upper Pleistocene period, northern China continues to be an area of favorable settlements

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Figure 16 Examples of handaxes collected from Luonan open-air sites.

for hominid living. The number and scale of archaeological sites, in forms of both caves and open-air sites, are greater than that in previous periods, indicating expansion of hominid activities. In some regions, materials cultures were developed continuously from early occupations, such as in Zhoukoudian and Nihewan. Located about 70 m southeast of Locality 1, Zhoujoudian Locality 15 is one of the most important Palaeolithic sites during this period. The site was identified in 1932, and completely excavated between 1935 and 1937. More than 10 000 stone artifacts and abundant faunal remains of at least 33 mammalian species were recovered over the course of the excavations, but due to historic reasons, these artifacts were never studied until the 1990s. Recent examination of these lithic assemblages suggests that the lithic technology of the hominids at Zhoukoudian Locality 15

was more developed than that of their predecessors at Locality 1. The Zhoukoudian hominids in the early Upper Pleistocene effectively mastered sophisticated core-reduction modes, represented by multidirectional flaking and alternate flaking. Compared to earlier occupants at the Zhoukoudian Locality 1, these later hominids were able to successfully employ free-hand percussion to craft quartz flakes tools, which previously at Locality 1 could have been done only by bipolar flaking. However, the lithic industry of Locality 15 is suggested to continue the technological traditions of the Locality 1. The majority of tool types are scrapers of various different types (including straight sidescraper, convex sidescraper, concave sidescraper, endscraper, thumbnail scraper, double-edged scraper, and multiedged scraper), which together account for 93% of

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the 1283 total tool assemblage. Although overall the tool kits are similar to those found at the Locality 1, retouched tools were more elaborate at the Locality 15. Some specimens do exhibit well-controlled fine retouch, evidenced by even and parallel modification scars and sharp, regular, smooth, or denticulate cutting edge. Overall, the Zhoukoudian Locality 15 industry clearly is still a part of the flake tool technocomplexes of northern China. Archaeological investigations suggest the Zhoukoudian Locality 15 was once a cave site, but during the period of hominid occupation, the roof of the cave appears to have collapsed and the inhabitants were therefore living in conditions better described as a rock shelter. Faunal and palynological evidence suggest that the local environment was probably characterized by warm-temperate and forest-steppe conditions. Archaeological deposits were associated with geological formation dated to later Middle Pleistocene and early Upper Pleistocene, which were dated by Uranium-series and ESR methods to establish an age range between 140 and 110 thousand years ago. During this transitional period, the Nihewan Basin continued to be an important area for late Early Palaeolithic open-air settlements. Among these sites in the basin, the Xujiayao site has been a focus of study. Located on the northern side of the Nihewan Basin, by the Liuyi Creek, a branch of the Sangan River, the site yielded over 20 000 lithic artifacts and included cores, flakes, and various retouched tools. Within the lithic assemblages, spheroids (numbering in the thousands) are the most characteristic artifacts recovered from Palaeolithic sites in China. The most important materials recovered from the site were 18 pieces of human fossil fragments. The identity of the human remains, or so called ‘Xujiayao Man,’ is still under debate, has been determined as either Archaic Homo sapiens or Homo sapiens sapiens. One skull fragment showed evidence of healed hole, 9.5 mm in diameter. Specialists suggest that this is the earliest evidence of ‘human brain surgery.’ The date of the remains is determined to be roughly 104 000–125 000 years old. The Dingcun complex is the largest open-air site cluster known in northern China that dates to this period. These sites are located at the east side of Fenhe River in southern Shanxi province. Identified in the 1950s, the Dingcun complex is comprised of 14 localities (namely site 54:90–103), 11 of which yielded substantial cultural materials. Later investigations recovered a few more site locations. The common elements of the lithic assemblages of this complex are represented by large-sized core tools including choppers, picks, unifaces, and bifaces in most sites. Unifacial points were made on thick and large-size flake blanks,

and were retouched abruptly on the ventral side along both working edges toward the tip, to form the so-called ‘triangular-sectioned points’ of Dingcun lithic industry. Recent studies also suggest that a few sites within the complex also represent the flake-tool industry of northern China, with its standardized notches and denticulates. The coexistence of large pebble-core tool and flake-tool industries at Dingcun is again seen at the Beiyao site near Luoyang of Henan province. The lithic assemblages from this multiple-component site reveal a general trend in which large pebble tools were gradually replaced by small flake-tools throughout the region. Southern China

In recent years, the most important field investigations of Palaeolithic cultures in southern China was undertaken in the Three Gorges area of the middle Yangtze River. The existence of Palaeolithic settlements remained uncertain until the early 1990s when the Three Gorges Dam project (the world’s largest reservoir) began. Archaeological surveys conducted in 1993–1994 identified 24 palaeolithic sites below 175 m above sea level within the area to be inundated. Most sites are located in the second and third terraces along the 75 km long riverbank stretch in the western part of the gorges. The ongoing salvage excavations revealed rich cultural materials, especially at Gaojiazhen, Jingshuiwan, and Ranjialukou, all in the Fengdu County of the Chongqing Municipality. Ranjialukou is located on the upland fourth terrace, whose geological age is dated to about 125 thousand years ago, thus marking it the oldest Palaeolithic site in the reservoir. The study of Ranjialukou lithic assemblages, especially from the results of the 2005 field session, suggests a ‘throwing technique’ of tool-making at the site. The technique, now claimed as the ‘Yangtze Technique’ by its excavators, is to acquire large tool blanks, which exhibit characteristics of a semirounded and fully cortex dorsal surface and a pointed striking platform, by throwing a flat river cobble at anvil stones. This kind of technique has been recognized as a common practice in making large chopping tools in southwestern China, as well as at the Baxiandong Cave site in Taiwan. If the date claimed for Rojialukou is reliable, then it is the oldest site where this tool-making technique has been recognized. A similar technique was recognized from lithic assemblages from the Shuicheng Xiaohuidong cave site in southwestern China that dated to 50 thousand years ago. The cultural deposits at both Jingshuiwan and Gaojiazhen were at the lower strata of the third terraces, dating to before 40 thousand years ago. Five sessions of field excavations at Jingshuiwan

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uncovered thousands of artifacts dominated by modified flake tools and debris as well as possible hearths, indicating on-site multiple-facet living activities (Figure 17). The Gaojiazhen site, about 17.5 km down the riverbank from Jingshuiwan, yielded a distinctly difference artifact assemblage that was represented by large chopping tools made from cobbles. The function of Gaojiazhen may be that of a tool-making location given a large number of nodule and core occurrences. Difference of lithic technologies between both sites could be related to the different functions of the sites. Recent field investigations have increased the number of open-air sites in southern China to several hundreds; however, only a few of these sites have been excavated. Jigongshan, excavated in the early 1990s, is the most representative site of this period in southern China. The site is located 5 km northeast of the ancient city of Jingzhou, Hubei Province, on a small earthen mound on the second terrace of the north bank of the Yangtze River. The site clearly reveals two cultural strata in which an abundance of lithic artifacts were recovered. Layer 4 in the lower stratum dates to the end of Middle Pleistocene, and its lithic assemblage is similar to those from the older Quyuanhekou site in the same region, which is represented by large pebble-core tools like choppers, picks, and spheroids. Notably, Layer 2 in the upper stratum, dating to the late Upper Pleistocene, reveals a lithic technology different from previous period, one that is characterized by small flake-stone tools such as scrapers and drills. Most importantly, a living floor was identified from the Layer 4. Measuring roughly 30  20 m2, it consisted of five stone rings intentionally constructed

using cobbles and pebbles as well as stone artifacts. Tens of thousands of lithic were found scattered on the living floor, and the area of the densest artifacts concentration was in the center and to the north of the site. The sterile areas associated with the stone circles are also circular with diameters of 1.5–2.5 m surrounded by unmodified stones about 1 m wide (Figure 18). Clearly these stone circles are related to human activities, but more research is needed to determine their functions. However, current evidence suggests that they might have been used as tool-manufacturing areas, given the concentrated distributions of byproducts associated with discarded retouched tools, hammerstone, stone anvils, and other artifacts. The evidence from the Jigongshan lithic assemblages suggests a new, previously unidentified, cultural development in southern China. During the early Upper Pleistocene, southern China, especially in the area around the middle of Yangtze River, underwent changes in lithic technology – the traditional pebblecore tool industry was replaced by small flake-tool industry. Concurrent with this technological shift, some degree of cultural changes also took place. Use of cave settlements during this period increased whereas open-air sites decreased, probably as a result of colder temperatures. Site distributions and use of landscape were greatly expanded, with many more sites being discovered in surrounding mountains, suggesting an enhanced ability in human adaptation during this period. There is no difference between lithic assemblages from caves and that from open-air sites, but cave site deposits are very thick, possibly as a result of longer occupations or repeated use, or perhaps also due to the better preservation of archaeological deposits in cave sites.

Figure 17 Excavations at the Jingshuiwan Site in the Three Gorges area.

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Most cave sites were located in the southwestern plateau as well as in the southern mountainous areas, as in both regions karst formations were well developed. Notably, human remains were recovered from two small caves in southern China (Maba in Guangdong province and Liujiang in Guangxi province), both of which became well known to the world in the years following their recovery in 1958. These fossil remains include well preserved and complete skulls and other measurable fragments. Maba fossils were identified as Archaic Homo sapiens, morphologically closest to Dali fossils in northern China, and dated to around 120 thousand years ago based on Uranium-series dates. A recent study suggests that while most features of Liujiang fossils fall within a range of modern human variations, they retain a few Archaic characters. Before the new century (see below), this male (Liujiang) individual was once regarded as the oldest example of modern human in China, dated to about 50 thousand years ago in age.

Origins of Modern Humans in China From a global perspective, biological, archaeometric, and genetic evidence together appear to support the ‘out-of-Africa’ model for the origin of anatomically modern human. This model suggests Africanevolved modern humans arrived in East Asia and replaced Asian hominids around 40 thousand years ago. However, the last decade of investigations revealed

new data from southern China that continues to encourage some scholars to advocate a model of independent modern human evolution in China, namely the ‘multiregional model.’ Clearly, no matter which origin theory one ascribes to, the Upper Pleistocene fossil remains recovered in China are of critical importance. At present, there are up to nearly 40 archaeological sites in China where fossil remains of anatomically modern humans have been recovered, among which fossils from the Zhoukoudian Upper Cave, Ziyang, and Liujiang are the most important. Conventionally, modern humans from the Upper Cave at Zhoukoudian were once believed to be continuously evolved from the Zhoukoudian Locality 1 Homo erectus. Although this notion has been long discarded, some scholars still insist that Asian modern humans shared some biological features of their precedent Homo erectus, such as mandibular torus, shoveling upper incisors, and nasal breadth, which are usually considered to be part of the physical identity of today’s Asian Mongoloid race. Liujiang fossils present more features that can be related to Homo erectus, while fossils from both the Upper Cave and Ziyang are regarded as the best examples of Homo sapiens sapiens in China. The new discovery of modern human fossils including a lower jaw was made at Tianyuandong cave about 6 km southwest of the Zhoukoudian Locality 1, and the Uranium-series dating gave the age of cave deposit at 25 thousand years ago contemporary with that of the Upper Cave. However, the problem is that so far most of these fossils are incomplete causing difficulties in statistical comparisons. As almost all of these well-known fossils under study are younger than 50 thousand years ago, the lack of fossil samples dated to between 100–50 thousand years ago in China is a critical weakness in the indigenous development theory. In other words, current fossil data point to discontinuity of local human evolution (see Paleoanthropology). However, this situation may change in the near future. Over the past decade, full-scale field investigations and extensive fieldworks have been undertaken in the western Hubei province and in the Three Gorges area as part of cultural heritage management associated with the Three Gorges Dam Reservoir and the subsequent South-to-North Water Transfer Project. As a result, dozens of Pleistocene faunal locations as well as human cultural remains were identified. Today, central-western China, with 16 locations, has become the richest area for recovering hominid and modern human fossils in East Asia, most of which are in western Hubei (Figure 19). These fossils range from possible Lufengpithecus, to Homo erectus, Archaic Homo sapiens, to Homo sapiens sapiens.

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What is more significant is that for the first time modern human fossils dating back to around 100 thousand years ago are being recovered from four newly identified sites. At present, Yunxian Huanglongdong site yielded the earliest examples of modern human fossils. The site is a limestone cave more than 100 m deep and 10 m tall (Figure 20), with Palaeolithic deposits more than 2 m. In 2004, five teeth (left second upper incisor, canine of upper jaw, third molar of upper jaw, right second molar of mandible, and left third molar of mandible) were recovered from Layers 4–6, in association with stone tools and faunal remains. The teeth belong to different individuals, all well preserved with clear features of the crown and root. The excavators believe that the morphological features of these teeth fall in between Archaic Homo sapiens and modern Chinese. The faunal assemblage features the South China giant Panda–Stegodon fauna indicative of the late Middle Pleistocene, in conjunction with a calibrated date of Uranium-series date that suggest the rather antique age as early as 94 thousand years ago or at least within the range of 103–44 thousand years ago in age based on uranium-series and ESR samples. The Xinglongdong cave at the western end of the Three Gorges also yielded four modern human teeth embedded in Stegodon fossil deposits that point to geological dates of late Middle Pleistocene (c. 150– 120 thousand years ago). According to the excavators conducting the 2002–2004 fieldwork session, cultural remains at the site are rich and include rare stone animal figurines. These could be the earliest examples of Palaeolithic art in China. The other two

new sites, Migongdong and Leipingdong, both in Wushan County, retain well-preserved late Middle Pleistocene (or early Upper Pleistocene) deposits in the caves where skull fragments as well as teeth were recovered. All of these fossil remains have yet to be studied as the ongoing research continues, but they will undoubtedly shed new light on the study of early modern human in China. New archaeological findings near Zhengzhou city of Henan also seem to suggest cultural continuity in central China. Identified in the 1980s, Xingyang Zhijidong is a rock-shelter type cave with deposits more than 20 m deep and covering periods from Early Upper Pleistocene to Early Holocene (see Asia, East: Early Holocene Foragers). The site was excavated in the early 1990s, and then again in 2001–2004 by Peking University (Figure 21). A series of AMS 14 C date and OSL dates taken from Layers 2–7 suggests an occupational age ranging from 50 to 35 thousand years ago, when the cold and dry climate during the Last Glacial Period took place. Cultural remains tends to be continuous in terms of technological development, although a trend of small flake tools in the later occupational time, possibly developed from pebble-core tools in early times, is observed from lithic assemblages. The archaeologists working on the materials suggest that such transitions could be adaptive to climate changes. Continuous occupations of the cave retain evidence of modern human behavioral such as hearths, activity floor, and procurement strategies. The raw materials used for stone tools are dominated by quartzes and chert that had to be transported from long-distance sources. Toolkits are represented by side-scrapers and burins, which are clearly the same

Figure 20 Images of the Huanglongdong cave site in western Hubei province and associated modern human teeth and stone tools.

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Figure 21 The Zhijidong Cave near Zhengzhou City, and its deposit (insert).

cultural manifestation as small flake tools of northern China in early periods. Therefore, while there is not yet enough evidence to refute the ‘out-of-Africa’ theory for the origin of modern humans in East Asia, new data accumulated over the last decade, both biological and archaeological, suggest that the possibility of independent evolution cannot be ruled out. New findings from China will continue to stimulate what hopes to be a fruitful debate on the issue of human origin. Chinese archaeologists and anthropologists regard this evidence supportive of a new model, namely the ‘continuity with hybridization,’ originally proposed by palaeoanthropologist Wu Xinzhi in the middle 1990s as a variation of the ‘multi-regional origin’ theory.

Late Palaeolithic Technologies at the End of Upper Pleistocene (35 000–10 000 BP) Until around 35 000 BP, traditional lithic industries continue to be present in areas where cultural manifestations were well developed. After this point in time, a number of new lithic technologies (including blade technique, bifacial technique, microblade technique, as well as wide-employment of bone tools) appeared to blend together to create the Late Palaeolithic cultures. This technological diversity resulted from cultural interactions when waves of human migrations from Western Europe spread out across Eurasian. The impacts this had on Chinese Late Palaeolithic cultures were enormous. Diversified technologies clearly replaced the conventional homogeneity in most parts of China during this period; the results may be regarded as

a southward intrusion of cultural manifestations from the North and Northwest. Similar technological diversity is also observed in the northwestern coast of North America as a result of the peopling of America around 20 000–11 500 BP (see New World, Peopling of; Siberia, Peopling of). Small-flake-tool Technology

During this period, flake tools from northern Late Palaeolithic sites tend to be small in size but delicately made mostly on fine quality cherts. Small flake industries of northern China were well represented by the Shiyu site in Shanxi province, the Xianrendong cave site of Liaoning province, and the Xiaonanhai cave site of Henan province. Compared to previous flake-tool technology, these lithic assemblages produced flake tools that show better designed and standardized forms. Toolkits included scrapers, burins, small projectile points, drills, notches and denticulates, which were made from various raw materials and by different techniques including hard-hammer and soft-hammer percussion. Pressure technique was also developed for making tools that required intensive surface retouching such as bifaces and projectile points. Standardizing toolkits were clearly adapted to northern hunting strategy that mobilized human societies. Shiyu, identified and excavated in 1963, yielded thousands of flake tools predominated by various shapes of scrapers: most of them were between 20 and 30 mm in length. Their working edges were finely retouched, probably by soft-hammers. Most flake blanks were also observed to be of regular size.

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A large quantity of faunal remains was recovered from the site, animal teeth alone counting for roughly 5000 pieces. Faunal analysis suggests most animal species are adapted to a prairie environment – there were at least 200 individuals of wild horses and wild donkeys. It seems that the Shiyu occupants, who lived around 29 000 BP, were wild horse hunters. Flake-tool industries became more frequent in southern China; but typologically and technologically these flake tools were distinctive from these in northern China, suggesting a local technological innovation. The development of this trend is well documented from the Three Gorge assemblages, through the Ziyang Locality B assemblage, to the Tongliang lithic assemblages. The best examples of the southern flaketool industry are from the Hanyuan Fuling site of Sichuan province, as well as two cave sites, Maomaodong and Baiyandong. Flake-tool blanks were made from large pebble/cobble raw materials by anvilchipping or throwing techniques, and then altered along the working edge by retouching in order to make them into suitable tools. However, flake-tool modification was not as extensive as those in northern China, and the toolkits there were not as diverse. Blade Technology

Blades were occasionally reported or cataloged from the lithic assemblages of early sites, but they were likely a by-product of flake production. During this period, blades as primary products of a special

reduction technique appeared in northern China, but archaeological sites with blade production were very limited in numbers so far. The origin of blade technology in China is difficult to trace to local flake-tool technology, thus it is probably derived from western influences. There are nearly two dozen sites where blades have been reported, all of them situated in northwest and north-central China. However, true presentations of blade technology are from only two sites, Shuidonggou and Youfang. Shuidonggou, located at southwestern part of the Ordos area about 18 km east to the Yellow River, was the first Palaeolithic site excavated in China by French palaeontologists E. Licent and P. Teihard de Chardin. They reported five locations at the site and excavated the Locality 1 in 1923. Because of classical blade production, the findings from Shuidonggou made an immediate connection between remote Chinese cultures to the western ones; thus, the site has been a focus of study and most of the collection is now housed in western institutes and museums. Follow-up excavations at the site took place in 1960, 1963, and 1980, and produced a large quantity of lithic artifacts and faunal remains. Unfortunately, like many of other sites investigated prior to 1990, this site was not systematically studied with a multidisciplinary approach until 2002. Recent surveys reported that the site complex consisted of 20 localities. Excavations during 2003–2004 were concentrated at Localities 2, 7, and 8 (Figure 22). Besides lithic artifacts and faunal remains, the site also yielded

Figure 22 The landscape of the Shuidonggou Site and ornaments (insert) recovered from the 2003–2004 excavations.

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fired clay floors and ash deposit indicative of purposeful fire use. Most importantly, dozens of finely polished ostrich shell ornaments (rings) were recovered from Localities 2 and 8. A skull fragment, found at Locality 4, was identified as Homo sapiens sapiens. The Shuidonggou lithic assemblage is dominated by blade cores and blades, made on local cherts and quartzite. Core platforms were well prepared before blade removal indicating standard reduction procedures. Notably, 21.9% of cores recovered from the 1980 excavation session were classified as Levallois cores, which were also found from other excavation sessions. Although Levallois-like products were reported from the Panxian Dadong cave, the true Levallois technique seems to be only from Shuidonggou. Unfortunately, there is no detailed study on these Levallois cores and flakes yet, but their appearance at the Shuidonggou site is a clear indicator of western influences. Most of the retouched tools, represented by side-scrapers, were made on long narrow blade blanks. Samples of Uranium-series dating and conventional 14C dating indicate the age of Shuidonggou fall in between 38 000 and 15 000 BP, but recent AMS 14C dating suggests a narrower range of between 29 000 and 24 000 BP. According to faunal analysis, pollen, and sediment studies, Shuidonggou was a part of cool and dry semi-steppe and prairie environment during this time, thus the site might have served as a base camp for a group of specialized hunters. Shuidonggou blade technology seemed to remain the sole manifestation in China until the middle of the 1980s, when the Youfang site was excavated. The site is located in the east side of the Nihewan Basin, and slightly later in age than Shuidonggou. Youfang blade technology coexisted with microblade technology; however, most of the flake tools were made on classic blade blanks. Single platform cores display parallel long and narrow blade flaking scars, some with evidences of direct percussion. The discovery of the Youfang lithic industry suggests that such blade technology continued to spread eastwards in northern China at the end of Pleistocene. However, the lack of detailed study on Chinese blade technology keeps scholars from understanding statistical data that might be able to assist in a comparative study with western assemblages. Until then, how blade technology was developed and why its distribution was so limited remains unknown. Microblade Technology

The Youfang lithic assemblage is to date the only example in China, where both blade and microblade technology were employed within a given

hunter-gatherer society. Archaeological evidence suggests that early microblade industries were found in the southern Shanxi province, about 500 km south of Shuidonggou, suggesting an independent emergence from the blade technology. Both Dingcun 77:01 and Xiachuan sites were regarded as the earliest examples of microblade technology, dated to around 26 000 BP and 24 000–16 000 BP, respectively. The later microblade industries are represented by the Shizhitan site in Shanxi province and Hutongliang site in Hebei province. At present, there are over 50 sites reported to be associated with microblade technology. They were distributed over three microregions: the north-central plain, the northeast and northern steppe, and the southeastern plateau, but the majority of the microblade sites were located in north-central China. Current knowledge of Chinese microblade technology is derived only from a few well-known sites such as Xiachuan, Xueguan, and Hutouliang. Hutouliang is an archaeological complex consisting of a number of the Upper Palaeolithic sites, located in the east side of the Nihewan Basin, about 35 km west to the Early Pleistocene site Donggutuo (see above). Nine localities were excavated between 1972 and 1974, and yielded a large quantity of lithic artifacts. Based on a series of 14C dates the sites were dated to around 11 000 BP. Analyses of these microblades identified four microblade techniques at the site, which have corresponding Japanese counterparts known as Yangyuan (or Togeshita), Sanggan (or Oshorakko), Hetao (or Yubetsu), and Xiachuan (Saikai). A recent study indicates that two types of wedge-shaped core technology existed as by-products of the modes of production at the Hutouliang site. Studies on microblades from both Xiachuan and Xueguan in southern Shanxi province were based on limited excavated and surveyed materials, and suggested technological differences existed in the manufacture of microblade between Xiachuan and Xueguan. The Xiachuan industry is represented by conical microblade cores while the Xueguan microblade industry is dominated by boat-shaped and wedge-shaped cores. It is proposed that microblade technologies at both Xueguan and Hutouliang were developed directly from the Xiachuan technology, implying that Xiachuan may be responsible for the origin of Chinese microblade technology. Data from other excavated sites like Shizitan, Dingcun 77:01, Youfang, Jiqitan, and especially Qingfengqing and Fenghuangling in Shandong province would have merits that may challenge traditional views on microblade technological development. For instance, microblades from the East Coast like Shandong

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Peninsula display distinct technological characters so that it may be possible to recognize regional microblade variation. Unfortunately, materials from these sites have not been systematically studied yet. Microblade technology in China is still poorly understood in terms of its origins and spread throughout northeastern Asian. Most Chinese scholars tend to favor a ‘north China origin’ model. Data from the region clearly indicate technological similarities between northern China industry to those from Eastern Siberia, Japan, and Korea. A recent study suggests an eastward spread of microblade technology that originated at Xiachuan, through northern and southern routes, but the hypothesis is not yet tested. It is worth noting that some scholars have started to hypothesize that wedge-shaped core microblade technology might have first emerged in Siberia and spread southward into northern China. Bifacial Technology

Bifacial technology appeared in northern China as a result of cultural interactions with northern huntergatherer societies during the peopling of the Americas. Northern China lithic assemblages produced tools that were made through bifacial-thinning techniques; but again, this technological catalog unfortunately has not yet been recognized in Chinese Palaeolithic studies. Bifaces and projectile points, a major component of stone toolkits in the North American assemblage around 11 500–10 000 BP, also appeared in the Xiachuan, Xueguan, and Hutouliang sites, but their significance has not been yet given much attention. A recent study on Upper Palaeolithic sites in Shandong Peninsula shows that biface products have high frequency in lithic assemblages at the Fenghuangling, Qingfengling, and Wanghailou sites, suggesting bifacial techniques existed as a technological innovation at the end of Pleistocene. These three sites (Fenghuangling, Qingfengling, and Wanghailou) are located in southern Shandong province, near the Yi-Shu Rivers valley. Both Fenghuangling and Qingfengling were floodplain sites and were excavated in 1984. The Wanghailou site, located in the hilltop about 68 km south of Fenghuangling, was surveyed in 1984, and excavated in 2001 by a Sino-Canada collaborative team. The three assemblages belong to two Shandong microblade industries. Lithic analyses of the assemblages suggest that bifacial thinning flakes from Fenghuangling, Qingfengling, and Wanghailou may serve as a kind of index-fossil of by-products of bifacial techniques, and account for 30.3%, 20.3%, and 14.7% of all lithic artifacts recovered, respectively. Bifaces and biface performs as types in the toolkits comprise

Figure 23 Bifaces from the Wanghailou site in Shandong Peninsula (scale in mm).

between 5–20% of shaped tools. It is possible that Shandong microblade cores were primarily produced through bifacial techniques – the wedge-shaped cores were made on small bifacial splits that also occurred in the assemblages. Large-sized projectile points, finely made on quartzite were distinct at the Wanghailou site (Figure 23), while bifaces and projectile points were relatively small at the other two sites. During an investigation in 2004, a special point (one where a channelled flake was purposefully removed from the bottom so as to be called as ‘fluted point’) was identified from the Qingfengling site. Fluted points had never been identified previously in China; however, fluted Clovis points are well known as an early industry in North America. The fluted point industry was clearly associated with wedge-shaped microblade core industries in British Columbia, Canada, at the end of the Ice Age. If a true fluted bifacial technology is proven to have existed in northern China, the technological connection between the Old World and the New World can be explored in addition to the microblade technology. Bone Tool-making Technology

Another technological innovation in the Late Palaeolithic cultures is bone tool-making. In fact, bone tools must have appeared during the Middle Pleistocene, or much earlier, as they were seen in Jingliushan, Zhoukoudian Locality 1, and Xujiayao sites. However, only at the end of the Pleistocene did using animal bones (including antlers) as raw materials for

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manuacturing various tool types appeared widely and bone tools became one of the major components of hunting-gathering toolkits. The bone tool industries were well represented by following sites: Shiyu in Shanxi province, Xianrendong Cave in Liaoning province, Lingjing in Henan province, and Dongfang Plaza in Beijing. The Dongfang Plaza site was identified in 1996 when the Plaza complex was under construction in downtown Beijing, and excavated in the following year. The site is approximately 2000 m2, and yielded thousands of artifacts including bone tools. According to the excavators, 411 bone tools were cataloged and classified into various manufacturing stages. Shaped types, indicated by retouched working edges, included scrapers, point, burins, and spades. Most of the tools were made from the long bones of large mammals. The stone and bone tools were associated with floors with evidence of fire-use. Some bone tools and by-products displayed burnt marks, indicating that the site might have served as a homebase camp for late Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers. Carbon-14 dates suggest that the site was occupied for two phases between 25 000 and 24 000 BP. Recent excavation at the Lingjing site near Zhengzhou city yielded significant bone-tool assemblages that previously have been rarely seen. The Lingjing site was first identified in 1965 during local water-storage construction, and the survey collection included an assemblage of wedge-shaped microblade cores. As a result, the site was referred to as the ‘Mesolithic’ period in northern China in many publications, but full-scale investigations were not able to be carried out due to underwater inundation until 2005. The 2005 field session recovered 2452 lithic artifacts and over 3000 faunal remains. However, no microblade products were recovered from excavated layers; most lithic artifacts were typical of the flake tools from northern China, and made from quartzite and quartz. At present, according to the excavator’s observation, this site represents a Late Palaeolithic occupation. Some bones display clear secondary retouch for modification. Samples were taken for use-wear examination, and the preliminary study suggested a number of possible use-wear features that may be differentiated from natural abrasion. Similar to use traces of stone tools, the use-wear on Lingjing bones were likely that of cutting, scraping, and penetrating. The use-wear also shows traces of soft, moderate, and hard-worked materials. Mostly importantly, 3 of 11 samples were determined to have hafting wear, suggesting that these objects had been used as composite tools. However, study of Palaeolithic bone tools in

China is still very poor, and caution needs to be taken in understanding how to distinguish purposeful usewears from fracture/abrasion marks caused by natural agencies at sites. The fact that bone tool-making technology existed in Upper Palaeolithic assemblages has merits to provide new directions of research in the future (see Bone Tool Analysis).

A Summary: Cultural Continuity and Interactions The last two decades of investigations have enriched our understanding of Chinese Palaeolithic cultures, which used to be based solely on the Zhoukoudian and a few other sites well known in the early days. Before 1985, the focus of investigations was to discover the nature of site distributions in order to establish a Chinese Palaeolithic chronological framework. Today, the accumulated data are sufficient for us to begin interpreting issues of Palaeolithic technology and cultural materials. Until recently, studies of Palaeolithic technology in China have been limited to generalizations about the nature of lithic industries in comparison to European or other Old World localities. From the ‘chopper-chopping tools tradition’ to the ‘simple core–flake technology,’ these broad characterizations emphasized the non-Acheulean features of Early to Middle Pleistocene lithic industries in East Asian, and now seem no long valid for characterizing Chinese materials. New data suggests that the Chinese Palaeolithic technology, starting with arrival of the first hominids in East Asian around 1.7 million years ago, formed its own unique characteristics as a result of adaptive strategies to local environment. Continuity of technological development was persistent throughout the Pleistocene age until the emergence of modern humans in East Asia. The Nihewan Basin, given its resourceful landscape, was a homeland for both hominids and modern humans during the entire Pleistocene era. Although nearly 50 Palaeolithic sites were distributed across the basin, all of Early Pleistocene sites were located in clusters at the eastern end of the basin, suggesting that explorations were expanded as adaptive technology was enhanced. The technological development continued slowly but steadily; however technological variations over time can be observed in examples from Xiaochangliang and Dongguotou of the Lower Pleistocene to Shiyu and Hutouliang of the Upper Pleistocene. The similar technological continuity is suggested from lithic assemblages of Locality 1, to Locality 15, then to Upper Cave, at the Zhoukoudian area. Cultural continuity of the Chinese Palaeolithic can also be seen in examples from southern China. Given

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the increasing numbers of archaeological sites with human fossils found in the Three Gorges/western Hubei mountainous region, this area has become a focus of research on the local evolution of anatomically modern human in East Asia. Overall material cultures from southern China remained more homogenous than in any other region. Cultural interactions throughout the time, on the other hand, gave way to regional variations in Palaeolithic technology, as we have seen in the examples from the Luonan Basin and the Three Gorge region. In these regions, the two distinct technocomplexes between northern China (flake tools) and southern (pebble-core tools) were employed at given times but their cultural impacts were surely beyond the areas under investigation. The most significant cultural interactions took places at the end of the Pleistocene, when western cultures penetrated into northern China and resulted in the complexity of technological manifestations. The influence of cultural interactions was expanded to parts of southern and eastern China. Our investigations in the Shandong Peninsula suggest that the Late Palaeolithic industries were more complex than we previously thought (Figure 24). Within this region, two microblade traditions (Fenghuangling and Wanghailou), one flake-tool tradition (Helongtan), and one small-tool tradition, coexisted in the region and there probably appeared a few large pebble-core industries at the southern end. Although we cannot at presently

ascertain whether the Shandong microblade industry was an indigenous development or a foreign invention, the current evidence may be in favor of a migration mode because the Shandong microblade traditions seem to represent cultural manifestations from both the northern and southern regions. Therefore, the formation of the Palaeolithic technology overall appears to reflect two aspects of material cultural development throughout the Pleistocene era: continuity and interaction. However, this explanation may be reinterpreted and enhanced as field investigations are ongoing. Certainly, we have much more to expect from the research results on Chinese Pleistocene archaeology in the years to come. Joint projects conducted between Western and Chinese colleagues will raise more serious questions and hopefully stimulate future investigations that, in turn, will lead to in-depth examination of the data relating to human origins and behavior in East Asia. See also: Asia, East: China, Neolithic Cultures; Early

Holocene Foragers; Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures; Asia, South: India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South; Paleolithic Cultures; Asia, Southeast: Preagricultural Peoples; Asia, West: Paleolithic Cultures; Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures; Bone Tool Analysis; Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Europe: Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies; Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear; New World, Peopling of; Paleoanthropology; Siberia, Peopling of.

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Further Reading Aigner JS (1981) Archaeological Remains in Pleistocene China. Munich: CH Beck. Fang YS, Huang YP, and Shen C (2004) Pebble semicircle structure from a Lower Paleolithic site in Southern China. Eurasian Prehistory 2(2): 3–12. Lu LD (1998) The microblade tradition in China: Regional chronologies and significance in the transition to Neolithic. Asian Perspectives 37(1): 84–112. Olsen JW and Miller-Antonia S (1992) The Palaeolithic in southern China. Asian Perspectives 31(2): 129–160. Shen C and Keates SK (eds.) (2003) Current Research in Chinese Pleistocene Archaeology. BAR International Series 1179. Oxford: Archaeopress. Shen C and Wei Q (2004) Lithic technological variability of the Middle Pleistocene at the eastern end of the Nihewan Basin, northern China. Asia Perspectives 43(2): 281–301. Tang C and Gai P (1986) Upper Palaeolithic cultural traditions in north China. In: Wendorf F and Close AE (eds.) Advances in World Archaeology 5, pp. 339–364. New York: Academic Press. Wu RK and Olsen JW (eds.) (1985) Palaeoanhropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology in the People’s Republic of China. New York: Academic Press. Zhu RX, An ZS, Potts R, and Hofman KA (2003) Magnetostratigraphic dating of early humans in China. Earth Science Reviews 61: 341–359.

Chinese Civilization Yun Kuen Lee, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Erligang culture (1600–1400 BC) The term used by archaeologists to refer to a Bronze Age archaeological culture in China. Erlitou culture (2000–1500 BC) A name given by archaeologists to an Early Bronze Age society that existed in China. The culture was named after the site discovered at Erlitou in Yanshi, Henan Province. Longshan culture A Late Neolithic culture centered on the central and lower Yellow River in China. It is dated from about 3000 to 2000 BC.

Civilization is understood as entailing a high level of social complexity, marked by the division of people into a ruling class and the ruled, and a state-level organization backed by coercive force. All of the six pristine civilizations of the world share these characteristics; however, each of them exhibits particular patterns in the political, social, economic, and cultural fields. This chapter is about the processes leading to the formation of the most distinctive patterns that

structured the Chinese civilization, which include a robust lineage system, an institution of ritual and the vast continuum of a tradition of writing.

Unique Characteristics of Chinese Civilization Kinship is an important feature of all human societies. However, Chinese kinship is exceptionally robust. During the early periods of Chinese civilization, kinship was integrated into the political system. Clearly by the late Shang (c. 1250–1050 BC), and most likely much earlier, access to power and wealth was regulated by a kin-based system. This system continued to structure the Chinese society until the modern times. All civilizations used ritual, especially religious ritual, to legitimate and maintain social order. However, ritual in Chinese civilization is remarkably secular. Although sacrifice to heaven and earth was seen as an obligation of the state to maintain the cosmological order, the most frequently practiced ritual was offerings to the ancestors. In fact, ancestral ritual in Chinese civilization was an apparatus to maintain the kinship system and thus the social order. Writing is a symbol system that enables communication in the absence of face-to-face interaction. Messages and memories can be stored and retrieved across space and through time. Although writing seems to have emerged in the Longshan era of the third millennium BC, examples have been found in small numbers only and are not yet deciphered; indicating that they have no connection to modern Chinese writing. On the contrary, the writing of late Shang by the end of the second millennium BC was immediately deciphered after its discovery, because the writing system of modern Chinese is its direct descendent. The continuity of a writing system, in effect, sustained the development of lineage organization and ritual institutions. Wealthy lineages compiled geneology books to precisely specify their relations through patrilines. In any particular time, people could refer to the ideal forms of ritual advocated by Confucianism, which had been elevated to the stature of state ideology since the second century BC. These gave rise to a unique feature of Chinese civilization: an uninterrupted civilization from the first day of its formation to the modern era (see Writing Systems).

Interface of Written History and Archaeology The simultaneous availability of both written and archaeological information is a luxury in the study of an early civilization, though each has its own

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biases. When these two complementary classes of data are used together, it allows a reconstruction of the past fuller and richer than which can be achieved with either body of information alone. Early written materials from China can be partitioned into three broad classes of information: (1) the original documentation of the time, which includes the divination record on bone and turtle shell and passages cast on bronzes; (2) the oral traditions, legends, and myths recorded in transmitted texts at a later time; and (3) the historical texts started from the first millennium BC. Each of these three classes of information has its own biases; therefore, a critical perspective on the source material is a prerequisite in using the written evidence. The prevalent traditional perspective based on the written texts is that civilization first developed in the Central Plains of the middle Yellow River valley and diffused into the other regions of modern China like ripples in water. The ripple model, albeit oversimplified, is not without merit. Neolithic archaeology indicates that modern-day China could be partitioned into several historic-cultural regions that each had its own unique characteristics and continuities (see Asia, East: China, Neolithic Cultures). Many of these regions sustained the emergence of complex societies; however, many of these declined and even disappeared altogether prior to the beginning of the Bronze Age during the early second millennium BC. The cultural traditions in the Central Plains, on the contrary, became increasingly complex and supplied the clearest evidences of the emergence of state societies. Moreover, the three distinctive Chinese patterns in kinship, ritual and writing also first became highly developed in the Central Plains. The archaeological findings of recent years supply much information to enrich this model and to help us unravel the complexity of the processes.

Prelude to Chinese Civilization The third millennium BC witnessed the emergence of highly complex societies all over the landscape of modern China. For instance, the Taosi tradition was represented by a group of smaller settlements aggregated around a large walled settlement at Taosi in modern Shanxi. The site yielded a large-scale semicircular structure, probably related to astronomical observations, and several graves were richly furnished with lacquer wares, stone charms, crocodile-skin drums, lavishly embellished painted pottery, etc. One of these graves is even designated by archaeologists as that of the ‘king’. However, one after the other, these highly complex societies were extinguished. The large structure of Taosi was sacked and some of the rich

graves were plundered. These early regional centers were replaced by villages and hamlets. The causes of the decline and collapse of these complex societies are not clear. Because the decline occurred within the span of a few hundred years, an increasingly popular hypothesis is that the deterioration of climate – lower temperature, drought, frequent flooding, and aggression of the coast line – brought them down. Yet, this model cannot explain why the first states emerged in the mid-Yellow River valley. In fact, studies in other parts of the world indicate that these pre-state, ritually organized societies were inherently unstable; therefore, their collapses are predictable. State formation involves a series of experiments in the building of an internally specialized government that can effectively rule a large subject and territory, levy tax to sustain the government, and build a coercive force to back the ruling. Not all complex societies were successful in this pursuit. According to the traditional historic scheme, the development of early Chinese civilization was punctuated by the linear succession of three dynastic states – Xia, Shang, and Zhou – in the Central Plains, as the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ changed hands. Guided by this overly simplified scheme, Chinese archaeologists have concentrated on finding the corollaries of the seats of the sage kings of the Xia and the Shang (the Zhou has more reliable written records). The archaeological information of the early Chinese civilization, therefore, is a biased representation in favor of the three dynasties, and lack in information of other polities in the mid-Yellow River valley. The archaeological search for Xia first started in 1959. After much works and debate, it has become increasingly clear that the Erlitou tradition in the YiLuo valley was in the right place at the right time. More importantly, it yielded evidence indicating that it has developed into a state society.

The Core of Early Chinese Civilization The core of early Chinese civilization was located in the mid-Yellow River valley. Its development contributed to the formation of particularities of Chinese civilization. Later Chinese states often claimed to be the legitimate descendents of the mid-Yellow River civilization. First State in the Yi-Luo Valley

The Erlitou site, dated to 1800–1500 BC, is located in the center of Yi-Luo valley (Figure 1). It occupies some 400 ha of rich alluvial field. The focus of the site is a walled precinct of several hectares, which contained some 30 large spatially discrete compounds

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built on rammed earth platforms. Half a dozen of them have been completely or partially excavated (Figure 2). The first excavated compound, referred to as palace I, occupied nearly 1 ha of area (Figure 3). The whole compound was built on a 0.8 m raised rammed earth terrace. The main feature was a large raised rectangular hall facing a large courtyard. The compound was then surrounded by walls with roofed corridors. The main gate was located on the south. The large open courtyard and the raised hall platform suggest observances of public functions. In addition, the walls not only delimited the dimensions of the structures, they also indicate differential access to the activities performed inside. Most likely, only privileged individuals were allowed to enter. The nesting of walls suggests the secrecy of decisionmaking within the walls. Some of the rammed structures had different plans. Palace III was built on an elongated rammed platform

of about 150 m50 m, partitioned into three equalsized courtyards and room blocks compartments. This architectural complex was very likely the residence of elite family households. Two small clusters of the most richly furnished burials at Erlitou were found in rows in the courtyards. The graves showed traces of wooden casket and cinnabar-lined floor. Grave goods included rare handicrafts made of bronze, jade, lacquer, turquoise, shell and white pottery, and scores of cowrie from the ocean. Rare materials of bronze and jade were made into sumptuary ritual objects at Erlitou. In addition to small utilitarian tools and weapons, the bronze technology was also used to cast vessels by using the piece-mold technique for the first time. They included a variety of drinking vessels, which were important ritual paraphernalia in the Shang and Zhou at a later time (Figure 4). In the jade assemblage, there was the zhang, a large blade-like artifact with no apparent utilitarian function (Figure 5).

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Figure 2 Excavation at Erlitou (Institute of Archaeology, CASS, with permission).

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Figure 3 Plan of Palace I, Erlitou (adapted from Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 23: 178, Figure 2, with permission).

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Figure 4 Bronze drinking vessels of Erlitou (Institute of Archaeology, CASS, with permission).

resources to sustain the urban population, craft and administrative specialists, as well as the luxury lifestyles of the elite. The Erlitou site shows traits of an early civilization that were never seen in earlier sites. To build the walled precinct, public resources were levied. However, the nesting of walls suggests that the general populace was being excluded from access to the structures they built. The burials not only show a high degree of social stratification; they also indicate the presence of institutionalized violence. The Erlitou people were clearly divided into the rulers and the ruled, and this order was supported by coercive force. The rows of burials in the walled precinct indicate the elite used the occasions of death to further cement their kinship ties. The differential distribution of sumptuary ritual objects suggests that ritual was organized according to class. Finally, the placement of local centers in the countryside indicates that the Erlitou elite had started to build an administrative system to rule a polity much larger than any polities seen before in China. Polity Competition and Regime Change

Figure 5 Jade zhang, Erlitou (Adapted from Zhongguo kaoguxue Xia Shang juan: Plate 13–2, with permission).

In contrast to the elite graves, about 20% of the other interments bore signs of violent death. Five burials were deposited in the rammed terrace of palace I; they were likely ritual-related human sacrifices. These burials lacked furnishings. The interments were tied up with ropes, and limbs were severed in one case. Other examples of violent death were scattered around the site. They were usually found in trash pits, and sometimes several individuals were interred together. Moreover, isolated human bones were also found in the cultural layers and ash pits. Postures of the skeletons suggest that they were being restrained by ropes and even buried alive. Decapitation and dismembering were common. Violent institutions were evidently pervasive. To sustain the construction and daily operation of the political center at Erlitou, the elite mobilized the population in the countryside by placing local controlling centers on strategic locations. A recent full-coverage regional survey to the east of Erlitou has found a secondary and a tertiary centers (Figure 6). These control nodes were systematically placed on the landscape so to effectively levy the material

By the end of the sixteenth century BC, the once grandiose palatial structures at Erlitou, one after the other, were abandoned. The occupation of Erlitou dramatically shrunk to the size of a large village. At this critical juncture, a large fortification enclosing 200 ha emerged in Shixianggou of Yansi county, just 6 km northeast of Erlitou. This site was later named as Yanshi Shangcheng, literally the Shang walled settlement at Yanshi. It tells a story of the competition between the state of Erlitou, or Xia, according to many Chinese archaeologists, and the state of Shang. The most astonishing characteristic of Yanshi Shangcheng is its nested walls (Figure 7). The whole site was enclosed by an outer circumferential wall, which was in average 20 m thick, and an inner circumferential wall of 6–7 m thick. Inside the inner circumferential wall, there were three rectangular walled complexes. Walled complex I was the largest, occupying about 5 ha of land, was the palatial-temple precinct (Figure 8). It underwent several episodes of expansion and rebuilding. Nonetheless, at least nine large rammed earth structures were contemporary at any particularly time. The plans of the large structures were different, suggesting they had different functions. For example, Palace IV had a large hall and more than a dozen of smaller rooms, was most likely a residential quarter of an elite household (Figures 9). Palace II was a cluster of several features (Figure 10). The

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Figure 10 Plan of Palace II, Yanshi Shangcheng (adapted from Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 23: 183, Figure 7, with permission).

main structure was a 75 m long nonpartitioned rammed terrace. Three other component features had evenly-spaced rows of postholes but no trace of living floor, making some to argue that the stilts were used to shore up above-ground structures like pile-buildings. One of these structures was connected to a rammed earth terrace in the open area in the south. Palace II was more likely a ritual facility. To the north of the rammed structures were two rectangular pits. The silt deposit on

the northern pit indicates that it was once filled with water. The unusual high density of pollen grains found in the pond suggests that it was a landscaping project. The other pit was possibly used for open-air sacrificial activities. Complex I was the political and ritual centers of the polity and the residential area of the high elite. The functions of Complex II were different from that of Complex I. Close to 100 rammed earth terraces were organized in six rows in the 4 ha of

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cultural tradition. For instance, the predominant cooking pot of Erlitou was the ding, three independently made legs were attached to a semi-globular jar (Figure 12). The predominant cooking pots of Yanshi Shangcheng were the li, tripod vessels, but the legs were somewhat hollowed-out. This was a typical Shang-style cooking ware found in the contemporary Shang site at Zhengzhou. In addition, the large structures, including the circumferential walls, the palaces and temples, of Yanshi Shangcheng and other Shang sites faced southsouthwest. On the contrary, those of Erlitou faced south-southeast. The difference in the preference of

occupation. In between the rows was a grid of shallow ditches, probably used for the drainage of runoff. Only 15 of the terraces have been excavated; but these features had almost identical plans. They were rectangular buildings with two partition walls inside (Figure 11). It is not entirely clear about the functions of these homogeneous structures; some argue they were storehouses of critical resources and some argue they were barracks for soldiers. In any event, they show the organizational capacity of state society. Yanshi Shangcheng yielded a ceramic assemblage different to that of Erlitou; it represents a different

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Figure 12 Typical cooking wares of the Erlitou and Shang traditions (adapted from Erlitou Jicui: Figures 264, 293, with permission).

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orientation was attributable to the difference in their religious beliefs. It is increasingly clear that these two regional centers in the Yi-Luo valley pertained to two different polities. The decline of Erlitou and the concurrent rise of Yanshi Shangcheng perhaps are the corollaries of the first regime change depicted in written texts, the overthrow of the Xia by the Shang. They also indicate that more than one polity coexisted and competed during the period of early civilization in the mid-Yellow River valley. Erligang and Zhengzhou Shangcheng

Zhengzhou Shangcheng was a regional center contemporary to Yanshi Shangcheng. Geographically, the site was located at where the rolling hills of the loess formation and the flooded plains of the Yellow River met. The modern city of Zhengzhou is one of the busiest transportation depots in China. Its strategic location allows Zhengzhou to regulate the traffics

between North and South China, and along the Yellow River. Unfortunately, modern urbanization has limited archaeological study. The discovery of the Shang city at Zhengzhou is inseparable from the discovery and excavations of the Erligang locality. Erligang, located on the southeast corner of the site, was the first Shang locality ever excavated at Zhengzhou. The ceramic seriation derived from the Erligang assemblage became the yardstick of the relative chronology of early Shang, which spanned from the sixteenth to the fourteenth centuries BC. Therefore, the early Shang period is often referred to as the Erligang Phase. The Shang site at Zhengzhou was a walled settlement like that of Yanshi (Figure 13). The center of the site was an area of about 300 ha enclosed by a rectangular circumferential wall. A palatial complex was located in the northeastern corner of the enclosure. An outer wall was found about 1000 m south of the enclosure, but the two ends of the outer wall did not

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join. Some archaeologists argue that the marshy and swampy land to the northeast of the site already formed a natural barrier sheltering the Shang settlement.

Figure 14 Excavation of the bronze cache pit H1 at Nanshun Street locality, Zhengzhou (adapted from Zhenzhou Shangdai Tongqi Jiaozang: Color plate 1, with permission).

Industrial localities, including bronze foundries, ceramic and bone tool workshops, were located outside of the inner city. The Nanguanwai foundry locality was situated in between the south inner wall and the outer wall. It occupied slightly less than 1 ha of area. Findings include a mold-baking kiln, a casting locality with storage pits, many copper ore and lead nuggets, fragments of crucibles, bronze slag, charcoal, pottery molds, and tools made of bronze, pottery, stone, bone, and shell. The distribution of these material remains suggests an industry of large-scale operation with a division of labor. The scale of bronze production of the early Shang can be illustrated by the increased volume of bronze artifacts found in archaeological sites. The Erlitou bronze production was limited. To date, dozens of small bronze objects were recovered, and they were exclusively found in the Erlitou site. The early Shang bronze industry adopted the moldcasting technique of Erlitou, but the quantity, quality and variety of the bronze ritual objects increased through time. Bronze artifacts as well as foundries were found in multiple sites. The vessel walls became thicker and had multiple layers of embellishments. More than a dozen types of ritual vessels were available by the end of the Erligang phase. In Zhengzhou, three separate caches of bronze artifacts found in between the inner settlement and the outer wall (Figure 14). Each of the three caches yielded considerable amounts of bronze artifacts, both in number and total weight (Figure 15). The biggest assemblage was the one located in the construction site of the Xiangyang Muslim Food

Figure 15 Bronzes yielded from the upper level of bronze cache pit H1 at Nanshun Street locality, Zhengzhou (adapted from Zhenzhou Shangdai Tongqi Jiaozang: Color plate 2, with permission).

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Yin was the capital of the late Shang. Chinese scholars knew about Yin from the transmitted texts. Bones used for divination by the Shang royalties at Yin were sold as an ingredient of herbal medicine for years. From this link, archaeologists located Yin. The site is called Yinxu, literally the ruins of Yin. Yin was built along the banks of the Huan River. The entire site covers an enormous area of 3000 ha, which consists of a 70 ha palace-temple complex, a royal cemetery, many residential precincts of various ranks of elite and commoners, lineage cemeteries, and industrial workshops (Figure 18). The study of Yinxu is qualitatively different from the study of the other Shang sites because it yielded the written texts of the time. They were the divination records inscribed on animal bones and turtle shells (Figure 19). Modern Chinese writing is the

descendent of the late Shang writing; so deciphering them was never a problem, albeit debate among scholars is common. The more than 160 000 inscribed pieces reveal a late Shang world from the twenty-first king Wu Ding to the twenty-ninth and the last king Di Xin (c. 1250–1045 BC), which could not possibly be monitored with archaeological data alone. One of the many aspects of the Shang civilization revealed by the oracle inscriptions is its religion. The pantheon of the late Shang was comprised of many gods, spirits, and the royal ancestors. Dead kings and their consorts became powerful supernatural figures who had influence on the outcome of every aspects of life. Through offerings the Shang kings monopolized the communication with the royal ancestors (Figure 20). This was a representation of the idealized order of the social world that power distribution was based on kinship proximity to the royal line. The kings gained the jurisdiction over other people, especially their competing kin lines, by claiming they were the direct descendents of past kings. The royal ancestors became increasingly so important in the Shang religion that rituals for them became calendric but divination to the other gods became increasingly rare and finally disappeared altogether.

Figure 16 Bronze lei-vessel recovered found in the construction site of Xiangyang Muslim Food Processing plant, Zhengzhou (adapted from Zhenzhou Shangdai Tongqi Jiaozang: Color plate 15, with permission).

Figure 17 Bronze rectangular-bodied ding-vessel found in the construction site of Xiangyang Muslim Food Processing plant, Zhengzhou (adapted from Zhenzhou Shangdai Tongqi Jiaozang: Color plate 11, with permission).

Processing plant near the outer southeast corner of the inner circumferential wall. Thirteen bronze vessels weighing 210 kg were recovered from the cache (Figure 16). The largest was a rectangular-bodied ding vessel, which measures 81 cm in total height and weighs 75 kg (Figure 17). Yin: The Late Shang Royal Capital

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Figure 18 Plan of Yinxu, the late Shang capital site (adapted from The Formation of Chinese Civilization: Figure 6.19, with permission).

Upon death, proper funeral treatment was required to transform the royal persons into living ancestors. The funeral rite mirrored the idealized secular world of segregation and conspicuous consumption of wealth and resources. The royal cemetery, occupying an area of about 11 ha, was located on the north bank of the Huan River (Figure 21). All the large tombs had been plundered in antiquity (Figure 22); however, the discovery of the tomb of Fu Hao shed some light on the magnitude of wealth consumption. Fu Hao, a consort of King Wu Ding, was previously known in the oracle inscriptions. She was quite important in the politics of late Shang, was involved in several military campaigns and conducted ritual ceremonies. Her tomb was located 200 m to the west of the palace-temple complex and had never been looted. Her identity was positively confirmed on the inscriptions of some of the bronze offerings (Figure 23). The offerings included 1600 kg of bronze and the largest assemblage of jade ever unearthed. The inventory consisted of nearly 2000 artifacts, including 210 bronze vessels, 130 bronze weapons, 590 jade artifacts, and handicrafts made of bone, shell, and ivory. In addition, some 7000 cowry shells were found. Sixteen humans had been sacrificed to the tomb.

Figure 19 A cache of oracle bones at Yinxu (adapted from The Formation of Chinese Civilization: Figure 6.32, with permission).

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The number of human sacrifices in Yixu was shocking. Some of them seem to be loyal entourage who followed their master in death. The majority of human sacrifices, however, were found in the fills of the

Figure 20 Divination records inscribed on an ox scapula (adapted from The Formation of Chinese Civilization: Figure 5.7, with permission).

tombs. No grave offering was associated with them, their hands were often tied on the back, and their bodies dismembered or decapitated. In addition, about 2500 sacrificial pits organized in rows were found in the royal cemetery (Figure 24). These were collective burials of up to dozens of individuals, mostly males between the ages of 15 to 35. These pits confirm the descriptions of sacrificial activities recorded on the oracle inscriptions indicating that they were offerings to the royal ancestors at calendrically prescribed intervals. The human sacrifices were very likely captives taken in raids against the nonShang people, mostly the Qiang. The divinations of late Shang refer to various kin groups. Archaeology at Yinxu yielded bronze ritual artifacts with the emblems of their names distributed in spatially discrete clusters of tombs. Each of these tomb clusters was associated with a residential cluster. The power structure of late Shang was based on the kinship system. On the apex of the pyramid of power was the king, who was not only the head of the state, but was also the head of the royal lineage. The first son of the king succeeded to head the royal line; wherein the other sons became the heads of the collateral lines. The several collateral lines and the affinal lineages of the king were located at the second level of status. Each of these collateral lines had their own estates and they were actively involved in the king’s sacrificial ceremonies, military campaigns, and hunting expeditions. The collateral lines of the collateral lines occupied the third level of status, and so on and so forth. Theoretically, the access to

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Figure 21 Plan of the royal cemetery, Yinxu (adapted from The Formation of Chinese Civilization: Figure 6.21, with permission).

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Figure 22 Excavation of royal tomb 1001 at Yinxu (adapted from Cambridge Illustrated History of China: 23, with permission).

Figure 23 Ink rubbing of inscriptions of the glyphs of Fu Hao (adapted from Kaogu Xuebao 1977(2): 65, Figure 5, with permission).

power was based on the kinship proximity to the king, or the number of generations removed from the royal line. In practice, it would also involved intensive negotiation and charismatic capabilities of individuals. Succession to the throne was governed by two rules: from brother to brother and from father to son. Thus, the paramount power was altered between first collateral lines of the royal line. However, by the 25th king Kang Ding, a succession based in primogeniture seems to have become established. One of the major characteristics of Chinese civilization, that kinship is inseparable from power and

wealth, developed no later than the late Shang, and possibly much earlier.

The Greater Mid-Yellow River Civilization Sphere Early civilizations, more precisely, early state societies, supported by their superior organizational capability, could easily expand into the territories occupied by pre-state polities. In China, the civilization of the Central Plains rapidly spread into neighboring areas, creating a larger sphere controlled by a network of related states. Sites in this broader sphere were comprised of

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Figure 24 Headless interments of human sacrificial victims in tomb 1001 at Yinxu (adapted from Cambridge Illustrated History of China: 24, with permission).

the regional sub-traditions of Erlitou, Erligang, and Yinxu. On the one hand, they were political entities transplanted from the core civilization so that they were unmistakably Erlitou or Shang. On the other hand, interaction with the local indigenous traditions made them increasingly different from the core civilization. This greater sphere of societies with a common organizational pattern should not be viewed as a continuous geographic zone; they were mostly nodes and routes in a landscape otherwise occupied by simpler indigenous groups. The responses of indigenous groups varied from cooperative to hostile. Nonetheless, the expansion created an environment in which cultures of different origins made direct contact. Their interaction forged an increasingly homogeneous cultural entity within the bounds of modern China. The rulers of the states of the core civilization do not seem to have had jurisdiction over the people in the greater civilization sphere. Bone inscriptions indicate that the late Shang king had direct control over a considerable number of people, who he could command to do many tasks. However, political authority of the king was heavily based on the allegiance of leaders of the various lineages. The area directly controlled by the king and the loyal lineages was the area within which the late Shang king could move with safety and was not particularly large. Beyond that limit, the settlements bearing Shang cultural characteristics acted like independent polities and may not have had regular relationships with the

Shang kings. This contention of limited jurisdiction can be further demonstrated by the history and archaeology of the early Zhou. Military Colonization of Early Zhou

The Zhou was an agricultural group distributed in the Wei valley (Figure 1), 600 km west of Yin. By 1050 BC, the Zhou army had won a decisive victory over the Shang. Facing a vast terrain of over 1000 km stretching from the Wei valley to the east coast, the Zhou employed two strategies to rule: military colonization and forced relocation of the Yin people. After the conquest, the Zhou king created 71 new fiefdoms in strategic locations along the Yellow River. As many as 53 of these polities were governed by the heads of the collateral lines of Royal Zhou. These kin fiefdoms were relatively autonomous entities, although they had certain obligations to the Royal Zhou house. To quell the resistance of the Shang people, the Zhou uprooted the Shang lineages residing in Yin and allotted them to the new fiefdoms. The fief-building process in the new land involved the erection of a walled settlement, which was called ‘guo’: the people who lived inside the walls called themselves ‘guoren’, or citizens. The vast territory outside the walls was mostly occupied by the indigenous population; they were called the ‘yeren’, or countrymen. The relationship between the citizens and countrymen was sometimes hostile. For instance, the Qi fiefdom was constantly threatened by the

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Laiyi group, so that during a period of five generations, they had to send the bodies of the deceased dukes back to the Wei valley for burial. The people of the Yan fiefdom seemed to have faced a more friendly reaction from the indigenous people. At least they were not concerned with burying deceased dukes outside the walls. In fact, the archaeology of the walled settlement of the Yan at Liulihe, 40 km southwest of Beijing, indicates that the relationship between the groups of different origins was often collaborative. Material remains of the Zhou and Shang origins were about equally represented and were often found in the same ash pits within the settlement. In addition, excavations also yielded small numbers of artifacts of the indigenous style. The patterns of material remains indicate that early citizens of the Yan comprised the Zhou people from Wei valley and the Shang people from Yin. They were either residing side-by-side within the walls, or engaged in intensive collaboration in the cultural and economic fields. The rare, but nonetheless present, indigenous material remains indicate that they traded material resources with the local population. As predicted by the written texts, the countryside of the Yan was occupied by the indigenous population. However, in their settlements the material remains bearing Shang-Zhou traits increased through time. It is observed that during the early Western Zhou period, artifacts of Shang-Zhou styles were found only within a radius of 30 km from Liulihe. This area expanded through time and could have reached a radius of 70–90 km in the late Western Zhou. For instance, three wood-chambered burials were excavated in Baifu Village, Changping County, about 60 km north of Liulihe. The structures and furnishings of these three graves are comparable to the mid Western Zhou elite graves at Liulihe. They were either burials of elite figures from Liulihe, or of indigenous elite figures highly acculturated by the Liulihe group. Textual and archaeological studies of colonization by early Zhou rulers painted an ambiguous picture of territorial occupation and control of the expansion of early civilization. According to the Zhou texts, all the land to the coast was the land of Royal Zhou. In reality, Royal Zhou and its kin fiefdoms had limited jurisdiction over this vast territory; they shared it with the indigenous groups. Moreover, Royal Zhou’s control over the kin fiefdoms was based on the kinship ties and charisma of the Zhou king. Because of the difficulty in communication and the weakening of kinship ties with time, the kin fiefdoms acted more and more like autonomous states. Eventually the Royal Zhou house lost all but a token title. After

Shihuangdi (the First Emperor) conquered all the other states, he levied immerse labor forces to build a network of roads in a campaign to unify China Proper. Before an effective communication system was established, the decrees of the kings in China could have reached only a very limited core area. Offshoots of the Central Plains Civilization

The evidence of the early Zhou expansion shows that the relationship between the budding polities in the greater civilization zone and the core polity was mainly a loose alliance and became increasingly weakened. However, there is indication from the written texts that Dixin, the last Shang king, was concerned about the eastern territories and raised a military campaign against an indigenous polity called Tufang that lasted for 200 days. Campaigns like that would have renewed the tie between polities in the greater civilization sphere and the core polity. The archaeological record in Shandong complements these written texts. In Shandong, some large sites show strong late Shang characteristics in many aspects, while some sites yielded only small numbers of late Shang bronzes. Subutun was one of the typical Shang cemetery sites. The sites had been looted for decades before archaeological excavation. Only ten tombs of the Yinxu phase were found, but three of them had ramps like those of the Yinxu’s royal cemetery, albeit the ramps at Subutun were shorter. Tomb M1 was a four-ramped tomb (Figure 25). Despite being looted, it still yielded two large ceremonial bronze axes (Figure 26), one inscribed with the emblem of ‘Ya Chou’ (Figure 27). Fragments of other bronze artifacts also bear the same emblem. Of the 48 human sacrifices, nine of them received proper burials in caskets in the floor of the chamber and the ledge. The remaining sacrifices were mostly young males in their teens, many consisting of skulls only, were buried without offering on the floor of south ramp. If the standard of Yinxu burials could be applied at Subutun, M1 was the burial of a ruling family member, who was probably the head of the Ya Chou collateral line. Subutun seems to share similarities with the Yin in ideology, social organization and material culture. Yet, it is located some 400 km east of Yinxu. The expansion of the early Shang civilization reached as far south as the Yangzi basin, over 600 km from Zhengzhou. The southward expansion was very likely motivated by the opportunities of copper trade. The Wucheng tradition was one of these early Shang offshoots. It was distributed in the lower and middle reaches of Gan River and the drainage of Poyang

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Ceremonial ax

N

Looter's hole

South ramp

Figure 25 Partial plan of tomb M1, Subutun (Shandong Provincial Museum, with permission).

Lake. The pottery and bronze assemblages of Wucheng shared startling similarity with those of the Central Plains of the late Erligang and Yinxu phases, indicating that the formation of Wucheng tradition was strongly stimulated by the civilization of the Central Plains. The political entity embodied by the Wucheng tradition very likely had strong political tie to, or was a fiefdom of the Shang. However, the Wucheng tradition became increasingly strong in its local cultural characteristics so that it developed some unique features by the late phase. Nevertheless, the

overall similarities between the material culture of Wucheng and Shang suggests that contact with the Central Plains had not been interrupted. The most spectacular findings of the Wucheng tradition were yielded from the large tomb at Dayangzhou, Xin’gan (Figure 28). The Dayangzhou tomb, yielded more than 1900 artifacts made of bronze, jade and pottery, is the second richest Early Bronze Age burial ever excavated, surpassed only by the Fu Hao tomb. The 50 or so bronze vessels are dated from the Erligang phase to the Yinxu phase, indicating

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Figure 26 One of the two ceremonial bronze axes yielded from tomb M1, Subutun (Shandong Provincial Museum, with permission).

the tomb was used in the late Shang period. The earlier bronzes must have been treasured for generations before being placed in the tomb. The earliest bronzes are almost exact copies of those found in Zhengzhou. Later bronzes show the gradual emergence of local stylistic features. For instance, one of the rectangular-bodied ding is, in most respect, similar to that found in the caches of Zhengzhou, but it differs by the addition of a pair of tigers standing on the tops of the handles (Figures 29 and 30). This is a local feature repeated on at least ten other bronzes from the tomb. The tomb also yielded a unique bronze mask not seen in the mid-Yellow River valley (Figure 31). Among the bronze offerings were more than 100 specimens of bronze utilitarian tools, such as farming and woodworking tools, which were seldom used as grave offerings in the Central Plains. The Wucheng civilization was sustained by a copper mining industry. Some 120 shafts and galleries

Figure 27 Ink robbing of the ‘‘Ya Chou’’ emblems on bronzes believed to be looted from Subutun (adapted from Kaogu Xuebao 1977(2): 24, with permission).

Figure 28 Excavation of the Shang tomb at Dayangzhou (Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, with permission).

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Figure 29 A rectangular-bodied ding-vessel found in the Shang tomb at Dayangzhou (Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, with permission).

Figure 30 Close-up of the tiger motif of Dayangzhou (Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, with permission).

were found in Tongling, a copper mine operated from the Shang to the Warring States period. The site also yielded remains of two smelting furnaces, indicating an industry included mining and smelting on the site, and the shipping of copper ingots at a later time. It is not clear if the copper ore mined from Tongling was one of the sources of the bronze industry of the midYellow valley; but it is almost certain that it was used

Figure 31 Front and side view of the Bronze mask found in the Shang tomb at Dayangzhou (Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, with permission).

locally. Copper slag, molds of utilitarian tools, and bronze weapons were found in the Wucheng site. The Wucheng civilization shared the Poyang basin with an indigenous group represented by the archaeological tradition of Wangnian. The pottery assemblage of Wangnian tradition was rooted in the earlier indigenous Neolithic traditions and was different from that of the Wucheng. For instance, the li was the major pottery kitchenware of Wucheng; but the ding was the typical cooking pot found in the Wangnian sites. Nonetheless, some Wangnian pottery and bronze vessels were decorated with the spiral pattern typical of the Shang. Interaction between the Wucheng civilization and the indigenous Wannian tradition certainly occurred.

Civilizations Independent of the Mid-Yellow Civilization The early Bronze Age civilization that originated in the mid-Yellow gained considerable success in the expansion into the south and the east, but was not as successful into the north and the west. In fact, Bronze Age civilizations that arose in the northwest and southwest matched the level of sophistication

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of the mid-Yellow civilization. These civilizations stemmed from sources different from the mid-Yellow civilization. They maintained low interaction intensity with the mid-Yellow civilization, and contributed little to the formation of the later Chinese civilization. Sanxingdui

The Sichuan Basin, being locked in by towering mountains, was the home of unique cultural entities in prehistoric and historic times. A poet compared the road to Sichuan to the road to heaven. However, the basin was not entirely isolated from the rest of the world. Communication through mountain passes was limited but possible. The discovery of Sanxingdui tradition demonstrates that as early as the second millennium BC, Sichuan had contact with the civilization of the Central Plains or its offshoots. The pre-Sanxingdui Neolithic traditions show evidences of increasing complexity through time. Their people built large walled fontifications and their smaller settlements aggregated around these newly emerged centers. The Sanxingdui tradition developed from these indigenous Neolithic traditions and reached a new level of cultural complexity. The political center of Sanxingdui society was the Sanxingdui site, located on the western edge of the Chengdu Plain. The center of the site was a walled and moated area of about 360 ha, but smaller occupations sprawled to a wider area of about 1200 ha around the center. Three connected 10 m high oval mounds, stretching 400 m from one end to the other, were located in the southern part of the walled area. They were structures built for public observance. The most spectacular findings of Sanxingdui were found in caches. Caches 1 and 2 are two of the richest caches among the ten excavated (Figure 32). Together, they contained more than 1100 artifacts made of bronze,

gold, jade, pottery, and bone. Large numbers of elephant tusks and animal bones were also found. The animal bones, as well as some of the sumptuary artifacts, had been burned before disposal. Reasons for their disposal were perhaps religious. Most of the sumptuary artifacts are unique, having no parallels outside of the Sichuan Basin. For instance, the bronze assemblage included life-size standing statues (Figure 33), masks with protruding eye-balls (Figure 34), human heads with gold foil covering (Figure 35), and models of altars, shrines and trees. The Sanxingdui people used the casting technology to produce artifacts different from those of the midYellow valley, and they seem to have practiced a different religion. Although most of the sumptuary artifacts were developed locally, a handful of them show similarities with artifacts found in the Central Plains. They included bronze vessels in the shapes of zun and lei (Figure 36) similar to those of the late Shang. The site also yielded some five dozens jade zhang (Figure 37) bearing similarities to that of Erlitou. The material culture assemblage of Sanxingdui tradition indicates that communication with the midYellow valley civilization did occur, but on a limited basis. It seems that the elite members of the Sanxingdui society monopolized the contact as an additional means to legitimize their status. On the contrary, the domestic pottery from Sanxingdui maintained its indigenous identity. Most of the ceramic vessels had very small bases or pointed bases, a unique feature of the pre-Bronze Age traditions in Sichuan. The commoners did not seem to have directly involved in the cultural exchange with civilizations outside of Sichuan. Previous archaeology of the Sanxingdui tradition has yielded sumptuary handicrafts of extremely

Figure 32 Excavation of cache pit 2, Sanxingdui (Sanxingdui Museum, with permission).

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Figure 34 Bronze mask with protruding eye-balls, Sanxingdui (Sanxingdui Museum, with permission). Figure 33 Bronze life-sized standing statue, Sanxingdui (Sanxingdui Museum, with permission).

complex technology and skill. Nonetheless, we lack evidence of the organization of the government and the presence of a coercive force. Whether the Sanxingdui society was organized as a state needs to be demonstrated by future archaeological work. The Northern Zone

The land north of the Great Wall has mixed economy of farming and pastoralism in modern China. The northern zone, therefore, is a cultural frontier where farming and nomadic groups interact. The nomadic lifeways of pastoral groups enabled the northern zone to maintain regular contact with cultural groups farther north and west through the steppes. By the second millennium BC, people of the northern zone had established a material culture recognizably distinct from that of the mid-Yellow River civilization. Their bronze industry is often referred to as the ‘Ordos complex’. The Ordos bronze assemblage comprises of a large number of utilitarian artifacts, such as mirrors, ladles, daggers, knives, axes, etc. The Ordos daggers and knives are distinctive in that the blade and hilt were cast in one piece, and had hollowed-out hilts and ringed pommels. Tubular sockets were cast

Figure 35 Bronze head with gold-leaf mask, Sanxingdui (Sanxingdui Museum, with permission).

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Figure 36 Bronze lei-vessel, Sanxingdui (Sanxingdui Museum, with permission).

for the hafting of tools; wherein flat tangs were used in the mid-Yellow bronze technology. Only a few bronze vessels were found in the northern zone, and they bear a striking resemblance to the mid-Yellow River vessel styles, indicating that they were imports from the mid-Yellow River valley. On the other hand, a few Ordos bronzes were found in the mid-Yellow sites, such as the mirrors and knives found in the tomb of Fu Hao (Figure 38), and the daggers found in the Zhou tomb at Baifu (Figure 39). It is uncertain whether the bronze technology of the northern zone and the mid-Yellow River valley had the same origin, but it is unequivocal that they used the technology to fulfill different social goals. One of the well-studied cultural traditions of the northern zone is the Zhukaigou tradition. The core of Zhukaigou tradition was distributed between the Great Wall and the large Ordos bend in the Yellow River in modern south-central Inner Mongolia. The Zhukaigou tradition is said to appear by 2000 BC, developed from the local Longshan tradition. It abruptly ceased about 1200 BC, which is a prehistoric puzzle. South-central Inner Mongolia had been settled by farming groups from farther south, no later than the fourth millennium BC. Sedentary village communities farming millet with Miaodigou and Longshan style

Figure 37 Jade zhang, Sanxingdui (adapted from Zhongguo kaoguxue Xia Shang juan: Plate 31–1, with permission).

Figure 38 Diagnostic Northern style bronze knife and mirrors found in the tomb of Fu Hao, Yinxu (adapted from Studies of Shang Archaeology: Figure 51, with permission).

pottery appeared. Throughout the course of the development of Zhukaigou, it continued to be strongly influenced by the various traditions of the midYellow River basin. The Zhukaigou people maintained the sedentary adaptation living in permanent settlements, practicing farming and burying their dead in cemeteries. However, they had contact with the nomadic groups of the steppes. Ordos style small

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high-collared, deep hollow-legged li tripod cooking ware: many of them have decorative applique´ around the orifices. Two of these li were found in the Erlitou site. Although the Zhukaigou tradition disappeared in south-central Inner Mongolia by the twelfth century BC, its diagnostic artifacts were then widely dispersed in the northern zone, as far north as the Lake Baikal area in Russia. The Forging of Chinese Identity

Figure 39 Diagnostic Northern style bronze daggers found in the Zhou tomb at Baifu (adapted from Studies of Shang Archaeology: Figure 49, with permission).

bronze objects, such as daggers, knives, armlets, finger rings, started to appear in the early phase of Zhukaigou occupations. By the late phase of the Zhukaigou tradition, small numbers of Shang style artifacts, such as the typical Erligang style pottery li, dou and gui vessels decorated with the spiral pattern, and bronze ding, jue, ge and arrowheads, appeared. Most intriguingly, a burial at the Zhukaigou site yielded a unique set of Erligang style ceramics and a bronze ge halberd. It is apparent that south-central Inner Mongolia was a cultural frontier during the 2nd millennium BC where people of different cultural traditions met and interacted. It is interesting to see that the exotic artifacts of Ordos and Erligang origins in small proportions co-occurred at the same site. This suggests the mid-Yellow River civilization gained access to the Ordos nomads through the Zhukaigou communities. Perhaps more extensive trading activities occurred. One of the commodities that the mid-Yellow River civilization badly needed was horses for chariots, which were widely available in the steppes. The Zhukaigou tradition itself was not a one-sided recipient of influence from other civilizations. One of the unique pottery vessel types of Zhukaigou is the

The processes leading to Chinese civilization also led to the formation of a Chinese identity. The later Chinese civilization was characterized by an uninterrupted written tradition, a ritual institution of ancestors and kinship organization. These cultural features were all formed in the early mid-Yellow River civilization. This civilization itself was not a monolith; three ethnic groups took turns as the hegemonic political and cultural powerhouses. The dynamics of interaction between them eventually erased their differences and identities. By the mid-first millennium BC, the distinction between Shang and Zhou was in name only. The expansion of early civilization also incorporated indigenous groups outside of the mid-Yellow River basin into a greater civilization sphere. This sphere was a melting pot of people of different origins and cultural practices. After centuries of interaction with the offshoots of the mid-Yellow River group, and in the face of the military conquest of Qin and Han Empires, they gradually became Han Chinese. See also: Asia, Central and North, Steppes, Deserts,

and Forests; Asia, Central, Steppes; Asia, East: China, Neolithic Cultures; Asia, Northeast, Early States and Civilizations; Cities, Ancient, and Daily Life; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Food and Feasting, Social and Political Aspects; Political Complexity, Rise of; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Social Violence and War; Writing Systems.

Further Reading Allan S (ed.) (2005) The Formation of Chinese Civilization: An Archaeological Perspective. New Haven: Yale University Press. Chang KC (1980) Shang Civilization. New Haven: Yale University Press. Chang KC (1986) The Archaeology of Ancient China. 4th edn. New Haven: Yale University Press. Chang KC (ed.) (1986) Studies of Shang Archaeology. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hsu C and Linduff KM (1988) Western Chou Civilization. New Haven: Yale University Press. Keightley DN (1978) Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China. Berkeley: University of California Press.

620 ASIA, EAST/Early Holocene Foragers Keightley DN (2000) The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space, and Community in Late Shang, China. Institute of East Asian Studies and Center for Chinese Studies, Berkeley: University of California. Liu L and Chen X (2003) State Formation in Early China. London: Duckworth. Loewe M and Shaughnessy EL (eds.) (1999) The Cambridge History of Ancient China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shaughnessy EL (1991) Sources of Western Zhou History. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Early Holocene Foragers Mark J Hudson, University of West Kyushu, Kanzagi, Saga, Japan ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Chulmun A Postglacial hunter-gatherer and agricultural culture of the Korean peninsula. Holocene Period of time between the present and 10 000 years before present. hunter-gatherer A member of a people subsisting on food obtained by hunting and foraging. Jomon Late glacial and postglacial culture of hunting and gathering in Japan (14 500 to 400 BC). microliths Small stone flakes, normally used as part of a larger tool such as a sickle.

Since the end of the Pleistocene, East Asia has been a world with China at its center. Two major developments in China had profound affects on the prehistoric hunter-gatherers of East Asia and surrounding regions. These developments were the emergence of farming societies at the beginning of the Holocene and then the rise of states and Chinese dynastic civilization after 2000 BC. Agriculture began initially along the Yellow and Yangzi Rivers by about 10 000 years ago, but quickly expanded across much of central China. For many scholars of China, the history of Chinese civilization begins with these early agricultural societies and their gradual evolution into the ancient Shang state of the second millennium BC. For this reason, there has been comparatively little research on hunter-gatherer populations in China during the Holocene. Huntergatherers were, however, present in the northern and southern peripheries of China up until recent times. These ‘peripheral’ areas, also comprising modern Korea, Japan, and the Russian Far East, provide the main evidence for East Asian hunter-gatherers during the Early Holocene.

During the Pleistocene, large areas of East and Southeast Asia that are now under the ocean were exposed by lowered sea levels. As well as the huge Sunda shelf that connected mainland and island Southeast Asia, the present Yellow Sea between northeast China and the Korean Peninsula would also have been dry land. The Late Pleistocene archaeology of East Asia is characterized by a widespread microlithic technology that is thought to have been used in hunting large and medium-sized mammals. With the onset of a warmer climate in the Holocene, however, microliths disappeared in most regions and human populations seem to have shifted to a broader spectrum subsistence pattern that included a range of fish, shellfish, and plants. Early Holocene coastal foraging became most developed in the Chulmun and Jomon cultures of the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Islands, respectively (see Asia, East: Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers). Ceramic containers were developed very early in East Asia. Pottery is known from sites of the terminal Pleistocene in Japan, China, and the Russian Far East. At present, it is not clear if this pottery began independently in each of these three areas or spread from one original source. From a world perspective, however, this early East Asian pottery is remarkable not only for its great antiquity but also for its association with hunter-gatherer societies. In Southeast Asia, in contrast to East Asia, pottery arrived much later in the Holocene with the spread of farming. In Russia and Korea, the term ‘Neolithic’ is applied to early Holocene foraging cultures with pottery. The Jomon cultures of Japan could also be classified in this way, though Japanese archaeologists rarely use the term ‘Neolithic’. In China and Southeast Asia, ‘Neolithic’ refers to agricultural societies (see Asia, East: China, Neolithic Cultures).

China and the Russian Far East Although north China had been settled by Homo erectus, the cold, dry interior of Siberia was only occupied much later by modern humans after about 40 000 years ago. Despite its harsh climate, much of northern Siberia comprised a productive tundra– steppe biome that supported large herds of mammoths, reindeer, and other animals. The microlithic technology of the Upper Palaeolithic cultures of this region seems to have been designed for hunting these mammals, but the warmer conditions after the Last Glacial Maximum led to a growing emphasis on marine and plant foods. Pottery has been reported in sites of the Osipovka culture along the Amur River by about 14 000 cal BC. In China, early pottery has been reported from several sites,

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including Miaoyan in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region where pottery has been radiocarbon-dated to before 16 000 cal BC. Although many of the early pottery sites in China are from the south of the country, recent excavations at Donghuling in Beijing and at Nanzhuangtou and Hutouliang in Hebei Province have shown that early ceramics also exist in the north. While debate continues over the precise chronology and cultural context of such early ceramic sites, there seems little doubt that pottery began in Late Pleistocene contexts in several areas of East Asia. In central and especially north China, microblades continued well into the Early Holocene, showing that hunting still remained an important economic activity even for societies that were engaged in farming or livestock herding. Microlithic technology seems to have been associated with a northward spread of settlement in northeast China (Manchuria) in the Early Holocene. In the mountainous coastal areas of the Pacific Russian Far East, Holocene huntergatherers engaged in river and ocean fishing, hunting of marine and terrestrial mammals, and gathering nuts and other plant foods. In later periods, trade in animal furs was also of great importance in this region. Salmon fishing was probably one of the earliest Holocene adaptations, as in Korea and Japan. Evidence for shellfish gathering and seal hunting is known from the Boisman sites near Vladivostok at about 5000 cal BC. Cultivated foxtail millet (Setaria italica) makes its first appearance in the southern Russian Far East after 3000 cal BC. Except for a few sites in Yunnan Province, microliths are rare in southernmost China where Early Holocene stone tools were part of the Hoabinhian pebble tool industry that extended into Southeast Asia. Rice farming spread widely in south China during the Early Holocene, but the hunting and gathering of wild resources also continued to be of great importance in many areas. Fishing groups along the coast of southeast China are known from sites such as Hungguashan in Fujian Province. Upland societies such as the Dulong of Yunnan, who combined hunter-gathering with swidden cultivation, continued in southwest China until the twentieth century.

Korea and Japan Unlike in China, where hunting and gathering was often combined with farming, in Korea and Japan specialist foraging societies with only small-scale cultivation or management of wild plants developed in the Early Holocene. These societies are usually called

‘Chulmun’ in Korea and ‘Jomon’ in Japan. Both terms mean ‘cord-marked’, referring to a widespread type of pottery decoration. Chulmun (c. 6000–1500 BC) and Jomon (c. 14 500–400 BC) cultures share many features, such as villages with semi-subterranean pit houses, maritime adaptations evidenced by numerous shell midden sites, and sophisticated ceramic traditions. The long duration and broad geographical distribution of these cultures, however, also means that they were characterized by considerable internal diversity. On the Korean Peninsula, sites from the Pleistocene–Holocene transition are relatively scarce. This has been interpreted as evidence that hunters followed game north with the climatic warming, the peninsula then being resettled by new Neolithic migrants. While some such population movements may have occurred, many earlier coastal sites were probably inundated by rising sea levels. Neolithic sites become much more common on the peninsula after about 8000 years ago. In Japan, sites of the Incipient Jomon phase (c. 14 500–8000 BC) are sometimes seen as representing an intermediate stage before the establishment of ‘typical’ Jomon culture in the Initial phase (c. 8000–5000 BC). The Odai Yamamoto I site in Aomori has produced the earliest pottery from Japan with dates of around 14 500 cal BC. However, pottery is relatively rare in Jomon sites until the Initial phase. Shell middens only become common in the Initial phase, but evidence of salmon fishing is known from the Incipient phase Maedakochi site in Tokyo. The Jomon tradition tends to be marked by much more elaborate artifacts and sites than those found in the Chulmun cultures. This may reflect greater social complexity in Jomon Japan, though further work on this question is needed. Large Initial Jomon sites are known at Uenohara in Kagoshima and Nakano B in Hokkaido, but most of the evidence for Jomon complexity comes from the Late Holocene (i.e., after 5000 BC). In Korea, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was replaced by farming in the Bronze Age that began on the Peninsula around 1500 BC. In Japan, this transition occurred after about 500 BC in the Metal Age Yayoi period. In the northern island of Hokkaido, however, foraging by the Ainu people continued until Japanese colonization in the late nineteenth century, although from medieval times the Ainu had also been heavily involved in trade and other economic contacts with Japan and China. See also: Asia, East: China, Neolithic Cultures; China,

Paleolithic Cultures; Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers.

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Further Reading Aikens CM and Rhee SN (eds.) (1992) Pacific Northeast Asia in Prehistory: Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers, Farmers, and Sociopolitical Elites. Pullman: Washington State University Press. Barnes GL (1993) China, Korea and Japan: The Rise of Civilization in East Asia. London: Thames and Hudson. Habu J (2004) Ancient Jomon of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kuzmin YV (2002) Radiocarbon chronology of Paleolithic and Neolithic cultural complexes from the Russian Far East. Journal of East Asian Archaeology 3: 227–254. Lu TLD (1999) BAR International Series 774: The Transition from Foraging to Farming and the Origin of Agriculture in China. Oxford: Archaeopress. Nelson SM (1993) The Archaeology of Korea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shnirelman VA (1999) Introduction: North Eurasia. In: Lee RB and Daly R (eds.) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, pp. 119–125. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shnirelman VA (1999) Archaeology of north Eurasian hunters and gatherers. In: Lee RB and Daly R (eds.) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, pp. 127–131. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Historical Archaeology Gwen P Bennett, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary East Asia The eastern end of the Eurasian continent, comprised of territory occupied by the present-day nation-states of China and Korea on the mainland, and the island archipelago of Japan. Koguryo A state that straddled the present-day China–Korea border region during the protohistoric and historic Three Kingdoms period (c. first century BCE to 668) on the Korean Peninsula. Kyongju, Kyongsang province, South Korea Location of pre-Silla (Saro), Silla, and Unified Silla capital cities. Nara A capital city from the time period of the same name (710–794), located in the Kinai region of the island of Honshu, Japan. oracle bones Prepared turtle plastrons and oxen scapulae whose cracks, resulting from subjection to fire, were interpreted as oracles. Use started in northern China by c. 4000 BCE; by late Shang period c. 1200 BCE, they were inscribed with both question and answers. Paekche A state in the southwestern corner of the Korean Peninsula during the protohistoric and historic Three Kingdoms period. protohistory The time period when only secondary or extremely fragmentary primary sources are available. Silla a state in the southeastern corner of the Korean Peninsula during the protohistoric and historic Three Kingdoms period, it defeated Paekche and Koguryo to unite the Peninsula in a state known as Unified Silla (668–935).

the Yinxu site, Anyang, Henan province, China Location of important late Shang Dynasty settlement with royal tombs, palaces, workshops, and ‘oracle bone’ cache. Yamato Protohistoric polity on Japanese archipelago, noted in Chinese historical sources. Location as yet undefined.

Introduction Definitions of historical archaeology range from the archaeology of literate societies, of societies with written records, of historically documented cultures, and the branch of archaeology that supplements written history to create a more complete account of the past. Each definition has nuances that allow slightly different understandings and approaches, and all are applicable to practice in East Asia, where archaeology is, in general, characterized by its historiographical approach. Written records are generally regarded as the key factor dividing the historic period from the prehistoric, yet where this division falls is anything but clear in East Asia. Literacy may have been achieved by c. 2000 BCE in the Yellow River Valley of China, and unquestionably attained by c. 1200 BCE in the same region by a few elite members of society. Slowly, writing spread to other areas of East Asia, to different levels of society, and was used in the service of broader goals. Within the modern nation-state of China, there are areas that were not mentioned until very late in the historical record, as well as regions that, while being mentioned earlier in the records of their neighbors, took considerable time to produce their own. Korea and Japan first appear in Chinese records before they themselves adopted the Chinese writing system sometime between the fourth and sixth centuries CE. Later, both developed sophisticated writing systems of their own while also retaining use of Chinese characters. While it is clear that the regions of East Asia entered the historic period at very different points, many scholars tend to take the beginning of the historic period as the first textual mention of a region, regardless of where or when the document was produced. The concept of protohistory, or the period when a region is known through secondary sources or extremely fragmentary primary sources, is resisted in many instances, partly due to tradition, but also to nationalistic desires to extend a historical presence back in time. Further complicating both the interpretation of the historical record itself and its use in archaeology is the complex interweaving of ancient myth and oral tradition into the historical record. Chinese, Korean, and Japanese historical traditions all incorporate ancient mythological and supernatural origin stories, written by early ruling clans to legitimize their emergence and right to power. Again, traditionalism and nationalism

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contribute to some scholars’ resistance to recognizing both the mythological strains in accepted history and the inability of archaeology to recover evidence of these phenomena. This complex historical background in tandem with many recent or ongoing historical events gives historical archaeology its particular approach in East Asia. Twentieth-century East Asia has seen episodes of militarism, aggression, colonization, humiliation, modernization, and nationalism. These events have greatly affected the region’s historical archaeology, its goals, and the interpretation of results. While the nature of East Asian historical archaeology has changed much over the course of the twentieth century and continues to do so in the twenty-first, Fumiko IkawaSmith’s statement that East Asian archaeology is not a generalizing and comparative discipline such as anthropology, but is ‘‘national history or it is nothing’’ still rings true.

Theoretical Orientations in East Asian Historical Archaeology The search for ancestral roots is common to the historical archaeologies practiced in Korea and Japan where each population views itself as racially homogeneous. Questions of archaeological interest include where the Korean and Japanese ‘peoples’ came from (a question that has led to the sponsoring of archaeological work in Mongolia, Central Asia, and in Northwestern China along the Silk Roads); how their unique cultural practices came into being; and the formation of the states that they consider ancestral to their present-day nations. While they have disagreed on the direction and timing of cultural transmission and influence between the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Archipelago, they share a common striving to better understand their pasts by using archaeology to invalidate the layers of foreign interpretation imposed through their earliest recording in Chinese histories, and in Korea’s case, Japanese colonial-period interpretations. The deep time depth of Paleolithic remains in China precludes concern over where Chinese ancestors came from, but archaeology’s early twentiethcentury discoveries ensured the discipline’s historical approach. Lothar von Falkenhausen has called archaeology in China ‘‘a handmaiden to history’’, and much effort is spent on locating and investigating the remains of historically documented locations, events, and people (see Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline; Methods). The historical archaeology of all three nation-states shares one common characteristic: while its use to investigate the distant historical past is now recognized

and its discoveries of previously unknown texts have revolutionized understandings of these early periods, textual approaches are still the preferred avenue for study of the later historical periods. In the search for earlier deposits, historical remains from more recent periods are commonly stripped from archaeological sites without thorough examination, except where finds are spectacular in nature. Because of their perceived ubiquity, remains of the recent past will be endangered in the future.

Sources of Historical Evidence Sources utilized by East Asian historical archaeology have affected its interpretations and conclusions. Written sources vary from transmitted texts such as the second century BCE Shiji (Sima Qian’s Records of the Historian) that have circulated since first produced, to archaeologically recovered records such as wooden slips dating to the seventh and eighth centuries and discovered in twentieth-century excavations of ancient Japanese capitals (Figure 1). How literary sources have come through time and the material on which they are recorded affects their reliability and completeness, and therefore their uses by historical archaeologists. Before the development of mass

Figure 1 Wooden tablets recovered from excavations at Nara Palace, Nara, Japan.

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printing techniques, hand-copying ensured that circulating texts existed in different editions or were altered through copyist’s error, while cast bronze inscriptions have survived without distortion. In China, the First Emperor of Qin’s destruction in 213 BCE of all philosophical works and histories not sanctioned by the state drastically reduced the availability of pre-Qin records. Without a doubt, scientifically excavated archaeological finds in twentieth and twenty-first century have greatly supplemented the quantity and character of historical data available for consultation throughout East Asia. Chinese written sources are the oldest in East Asia. Marks on Yangshao period pottery (c. 5000 BCE) in north China are not considered true writing, but at several sites in eastern China, including Taosi in Shanxi, Dinggong in Shandong, and Longqiuzhuang in Jiangsu, pottery of c. 2000 BCE bears strings of character-like marks that, while still undeciphered, more closely resemble true writing and may represent the beginnings of literacy. East Asia’s first decipherable writing comes from late Shang period (c. 1200– 1045 BCE) eastern China. ‘Oracle bones’ – prepared turtle plastrons and cattle scapulae – used for divination by the late Shang kings were found at the Yinxu site in Anyang, Henan (Figure 2). These bear characters incised prior to pyromantic divination which cracked the bones. Of the 5000 characters identified to date, 40% can be read, and record the divination and its response. Names and brief inscriptions are also cast onto bronze ritual vessels of the same period. In the Western Zhou period (1145–771 BCE), such inscriptions become longer and more frequent, producing what Jessica Rawson has called ‘‘memorials of political events and social relationships essential to the structure of Zhou government and society’’. Some Shang jades also bear brush-written characters, implying other unpreserved media and tools of writing for the Shang and Western Zhou periods. The first surviving examples of brush-writing on bamboo and wooden slips come from archaeological contexts of the Eastern Zhou period (770–222 BCE), primarily tombs. Inscribing records on stone and brushwriting on silk also began during this time. Written documentation multiplied with the bureaucratically organized government of the Han Empire (202 BCE– CE 220), but texts are still fragmentary. Paper was invented in the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220) and used for writing, painting, and making rubbings of inscribed stone tablets, which was the earliest form of copying before invention of woodblock printing during the Tang Dynasty (618–907) allowed mass production. While the keeping of dynastic histories started in the Han, it was not until the

Figure 2 Turtle plastron ‘oracle bone’ with incised characters from excavations at Yinxu, Henan Province, China.

Song Dynasty (960–1276) that preservation and commercial developments conspired to provide an explosion in the amount of source material for the historical record. The first textual references to either Korea or Japan come from Chinese histories, the Wei Shu (Wei History), a section of the Sanguo Zhi (History of the Three Kingdoms) dated 280, and the Hou Han Shu (History of the Later Han), compiled between 398 and 445. These accounts are limited, but as Gina Barnes writes, they are ‘‘intentional ethnographic reconnaissance by embassies of the Han court’’, and provide much information about cultures and peoples that can complement the archaeological record of development and change. Korea’s earliest extant records consist of archaeologically recovered wooden tablets used for recordkeeping in the Silla period (c. 300–668) and two transmitted texts, the twefth-century Samguk Sagi (History of the Three Kingdoms) and the thirteenthcentury Samguk Yusa (Memorabilia of the Three

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Kingdoms), both compiled from earlier records no longer extant. Traditional historical understandings rest on the Samguk Sagi’s dates for the formation of Koguryo, Silla, and Paekche in the first century BCE, but archaeology is challenging this view. A new text, the purportedly eighth-century Hwarang Segi (Annals of Hwarang), was recently discovered, but scholarly debate continues about its veracity. Japan’s earliest extant records are also archaeologically recovered wooden tablets used for recordkeeping in the early capitals in the Kinai region, and two transmitted texts, the eighth-century court chronicles, the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Things), dating to 712 and the Nihon Shoki (The Chronicles of Japan) of 720. These two books, also complied from earlier nonextant documents, are the sources for the idea of an unbroken historical succession of divine emperors extending back to the mythological past. Excavated and transmitted artifacts, such as images on bronze, pottery and porcelain vessels, tomb walls, pottery figurines and models, sculpture, textiles, and later ink and watercolor paintings with images of the court and daily life; cosmology; clothing; and even leisure activities also supplement written texts with very important evidence for the understanding of past activities and beliefs in China, Korea, and Japan.

Historical Archaeology in China The first scientific excavations in China led by Chinese scholars occurred in 1928 at the late Shang (c. 1200–1045 BCE) site of Yinxu, Anyang, Henan Province. Intellectuals recognized early Chinese

Figure 3 Li Ji at Yinxu excavations, Henan Province, China.

characters on inscribed ‘dragon bones’ sold in late nineteenth-century Beijing pharmacies and traced them to Anyang, spurring excavations by Li Ji, a Harvard-trained anthropologist, considered to be the father of Chinese archaeology (Figure 3). Excavations continued intermittently in the 1930s and 1940s because of war, but uncovered ‘oracle bones’ inscribed with the names of the last nine Shang kings. At a time when many intellectuals blamed blind adherence to tradition for China’s nineteenth- and early twentieth-century humiliations, the correspondence of the kings’ lists in ‘oracle bones’ to the names documented in the transmitted histories was considered a welcome indication of the truthfulness of tradition. This coincidence is largely responsible for archaeology’s historical approach throughout much of the twentieth century and its attempts to find places, people, and events named in the texts. At the end of the 1970s and 1980s, when economic reforms gave the provinces greater independence, more archaeological effort was directed outside the Central Plains, but the royal tombs, palaces, and workshops found at Yinxu still kept archaeological attention and resources focused on the Central Plains region for much of the twentieth century. It remains a major research center producing new and exciting finds. Recently, the 5-year Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project concluded. Funded by the Chinese government, the multidisciplinary project aimed to improve the accuracy of dates related to the first three historical dynasties in the Central Plains (Shang and Zhou are known from their own records; the Xia Dynasty is first recorded in the second century BCE Shiji). Although criticized as politically motivated, the

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project did much research, including archaeological work, and its results are now being published. Dynastic capitals have also been a major focus of archaeological exploration. The Xi’an region of Shaanxi Province is the location of many capitals, including the Western Zhou period Feng and Hao centers (c. eleventh century BCE), mentioned in descriptive poems from the period; the Qin (221–206 BCE) city of Xianyang on the north bank of the Wei River; and the Han (202–220 BCE), Sui (581–618), and Tang (618–907) capitals on the south (Figure 4). Xi’an’s economic development has driven much of this archaeology over the past 30 years, and the general plans for the Han, Sui, and Tang capitals are now known. Walls, building foundations, residential quarters, roads, gates, and markets have been identified and excavated. Xianyang, the First Emperor of Qin’s (Qin Shi Huang’s) capital city, is eroded on its south by the river, but the purported Afang palace foundation has been uncovered along with other building remains. Capital cities for other dynasties have also been excavated including those of the Eastern Zhou period Qi and Lu states in Shandong; the Eastern Zhou and Eastern Han capital of Luoyang; the Northern Song capital at Kaifeng; and the Yuan (Mongol), Ming, and Qing capitals at Beijing. Several northern walled cities of non-Chinese dynasties have

also been excavated including the Liao Dynasty (907– 1125) Middle Capital in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, and the Mongol Yuan Dynasty’s (1272–1368) summer city at Shangdu (Xanadu), in Zhenglan Banner of Inner Mongolia. Mortuary archaeology is dominated by royal and elite tombs. China’s first large-scale tomb excavation was that of Ming Emperor Wanli, in the cluster of royal Ming tombs north of Beijing, undertaken in 1957 at the start of the Communist era and now an important tourist site. In Xi’an, the 1974 discovery of the pit containing the First Emperor of Qin’s ceramic army brought Chinese archaeology to the world stage, with figures and replicas traveling in goodwill exhibitions around the world (Figure 5). Ongoing excavations have uncovered two more pits with smaller armies of figures, and improved conservation and preservation techniques have retained some of the original pigments on their surfaces. The First Emperor’s tomb still awaits investigation, but Han and Tang period royal tombs in the Xi’an region have also been excavated. Legions of smaller ceramic figures also standing in rank were found in the Han Emperor Jing’s tomb of Yang Ling, and one Tang princess’s tomb contained well-preserved wall murals. Many tombs of nobility have also been excavated; including the 433 BCE mausoleum of Marquis Yi of

Figure 4 Plan drawing of the Tang period capital of Chang’an, Shaanxi, China.

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Figure 5 Excavations on figures guarding the tomb of the First Emperor of Qin, Xi’an, China.

Zeng in Hubei Province, who was buried with a full set of bronze bells and other court musical instruments, and the Han period Mawangdui tombs in Changsha, Hunan Province that contained numerous silk maps and documents and painted lacquer ware with cosmological representations.

Historical Archaeology in Korea Archaeology in the Korean Peninsula (and Manchuria) was introduced by Japan after its victory in the Sino-Japanese war of 1894–95, and intensified after victory in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–05. In the course of annexing and finally colonizing the Peninsula in 1910, much anthropological, archaeological, ethnological, and historical work was carried out, aimed at manifesting the Japanese ancestral claim to this territory. Interaction between the polities of Koguryo, Paekche, Silla, and Kaya on the Peninsula during the Proto-Three Kingdoms period (c. firstcentury BCE–CE 300) and then between these states and Yamato/Wa, the dominant kingdom on Japan during the Three Kingdoms period (c. 300–668), led each to develop increasingly complex forms of organization. Japanese imperialist goals supported the idea that Japanese influence on the Peninsula was responsible for the kingdoms developing into complex states. Much archaeological effort was expended by Japanese scholars in the colonial period to prove this theory, and then by Korean scholars in the postcolonial period to disprove it. Nevertheless, Japanese

researchers were responsible for many major excavations and surveys on the Peninsula where fieldwork and documentation set a standard for scholars following them. Japanese investigations include Torii Ryuzo’s 1905 excavation at a Koguryo hill fort in the Tonggou, Ji’an region on the Yalu (Ch)/Amnok (Kr) River (now in Jilin Province, China), and his 1911 survey of the third Koguryo capital at Pyongyang. Other scholars conducted excavations at Wunushan (Ch)/Onyeosan (Kr), the first Koguryo capital (now in Liaoning Province, China), and in 1911 at the Koguryo tombs in the Pyongyang region. There was also meticulous excavation and documentation of the tombs at Lelang (Ch)/Nangnang (Kr), a Pyongyang region commandery established by the Han Dynasty in 108 BCE and lasting until 313. In the south, many other important Silla, Paekche, and Kaya remains were also unearthed, and by the end of colonial rule, over 2000 sites had been recorded and several hundred dug. While colonial-period archaeology aimed to further Japan’s imperialistic goals, it did record and preserve many sites which otherwise would have remained undocumented. After colonization ended in 1945, Korea’s intellectuals largely subscribed to a nationalist historiography and aimed to use historical, archaeological, and anthropological data to demonstrate Korean identity, purity, and state legitimacy since antiquity. With the North–South split imposed on Korea in 1945, archaeology in the DPRK North and ROK South has followed different theoretical orientations, but both were still conducted in line with nationalist historiographical goals. South Korean Three Kingdoms period archaeology has focused on Paekche and Silla simply because most Koguryo ruins are in the DPRK. While both North and South agree that the Three Kingdom period states are ancestral to Korea, their restricted access to predominantly Koguryo remains in the North and Silla remains in the South has resulted in differing interpretations as to which state was more important for the formation of modern Korea. Unified Silla (668– 935) has also been an extremely important focus of research. Important ongoing excavations are being done at the pre-Silla (Saro), Silla, and Unified Silla period capital at Kyongju in southeast Korea. They have included excavations of several royal and noble tombs, which were not looted due to their construction; the burial chambers are covered by large mounds of boulders capped with earth (Figure 6). Several gold crowns and belts have been recovered here, as well as a painting of a flying white horse on a birch bark mudguard (Figure 7). A gridded city based on Chinese models was laid out in the seventh century, just north of the earlier settlement at the

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Figure 6 Silla tomb park, Kyongju, Korea.

Figure 7 Gold crown recovered from excavations of royal Silla tomb, Kyongju, Korea.

asymmetrical, walled Panwolsong. Within the gridded city the foundation stones of several large buildings all conform to the grid layout (Figure 8). To the northeast lies the Anapchi Garden Pond, where excavations have contributed many unexpected objects, including wooden slips with writing, that have rounded out the picture of life at the Silla court. The Kyongju capital region is a World Heritage Park. Paekche period archaeology is more limited than Silla because of the destruction that followed its many battles with Koguryo, Silla, and Tang China. This period’s architecture is best known from Japan, where many Paekche artisans were sent to practice their craft. Paekche horizontal chamber tombs were easily looted, but tomb styles were not unified. Square or keyhole-shaped mounded tombs were common in Kofun period Japan (c. 300–710), but the numerous early examples in the southwestern Korean Peninsula suggest this may be where this style of burial originated. The unlooted royal Paekche tomb of King Muryong and his queen was discovered in 1971, and contained gold floral ornaments that were described in the Chinese text, the Old Tang History (Jiu Tang Shu). Koryo Dynasty (918–1392) prominence in East Asian celadon porcelain production has directed much archaeology towards excavations of several Koryo period porcelain kilns in Cholla Province, especially at Kangjin and Puan and along the southeast coast. Another important project has been the excavation and reconstruction of the Choson period (1392–1910) walled fort at Suwan, an excellent, complete example of this type of construction and now a World Heritage site.

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Figure 8 Foundation stones of Silla period Hwangyongsa Temple, Kyongju, Korea.

North Korean efforts have focused on the numerous Koguryo, Koryo, and Choson dynasty remains in the Pyongyang and Kaesong regions. Excavations include Koguryo tombs and remains of its third walled capital in Pyongyang, along with tombs from the Lelang/ Nangnang Commandery. Tombs from both periods contain numerous wall murals showing a mixture of Chinese and indigenous influence and have provided much information for the relationship between China and people on the Peninsula. Koryo royal tombs near Kaesong have also undergone excavation.

Historical Archaeology in Japan Studies of ancient court traditions and etiquette by Edo period (1603–1868) literati provided the foundation for the introduction of modern archaeology to Japan during the late nineteenth century by E. S. Morse. Even before this the concentration of ancient capital remains in the Kinai region (the Nara–Osaka–Kyoto region) of Honshu led interested Edo scholars to conduct studies there, ranging from the measurement of tombs to the topographic reconstruction of the Heijo Palace site. The subsequent development of protohistoric and historic period archaeology in Japan uses a historiographical approach like that of Korea and China. Post-World War II Japan saw the de-mythologizing of the imperial house, which gave Japanese scholars new freedom to question the textual picture of Japan as having been ruled by a single dynasty from the start of time. However, ideology still influences archaeology, as seen in the current enforcement of the late eighteenth-century ban by the Imperial Household Agency

Figure 9 Tortoise and snake tomb murals from (top) the Great Tomb at Kangso, near Pyongyang, North Korea, early seventh century; (bottom) from the Takamatsu Tomb, Nara Prefecture, Japan, late seventh to eighth century.

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on the excavation of over 100 tombs predating the eighth century because they may contain the remains of emperors or other once-sacred royals. Japan’s rapid postwar economic development in tandem with strong archaeological protection laws ensure that much data pertaining to the historic period has been, and continues to be recovered. William Farris has noted several topics that dominate historical archaeological research in Japan: the question of Yamatai, the relationship between ancient Japan and Korea, the influence on Japan’s urban development of the adoption of the Chinese city model in the Nara period (710–794), and the general influence on indigenous Nara period culture of adopting many Chinese political and economic institutions. Yamatai, a protohistoric polity ruled by Queen Himiko known from the Chinese Wei Shu, has been the focus of scholarly debate for centuries. The Wei Shu gives directions to Yamatai, but different interpretations lead to locations either on Kyushu or in Kinai, each with its own camp of supporters and distinctive political overtones. Before 1945, the Kinai position signified acceptance of the ancient origins for the imperial family with its ties to the Kinai region, while the Kyushu position signified rejection of these origins. Yamatai’s entry into general public discussion

and the various overtones it has taken on there have made many scholars retreat from the debate. Although textual evidence for this debate is exhausted, and no conclusive archaeological evidence has yet come to light, the archaeological work done in the quest to answer this question has significantly contributed to knowledge of late Yayoi period (c. 400 BCE–CE 300) society. Since late prehistoric times Japan, Korea, and China have interacted with varying intensity and directions of influence. Many elements that contributed to Japan’s early development were introduced from China via the Korean Peninsula after first undergoing Korean acculturation. Japan has always admitted its cultural debt to China, but the extent of its debt to Korea did not gain acceptance until the later twentieth century (Figure 9). The traditional view of early Japan based on the Nihon Shoki and fueled by imperialistic goals was that Yamato (c. fourth to seventh century) played a dominant role among the Korean states from its outpost in Mimana, a colony established in the southern Peninsula. Critical postwar re-interpretation included Egami Namio’s ‘Horserider theory’ in which the islands were suddenly invaded by militaristic, horse-riding nomads from North Asia in the fourth century, who crossed

Figure 10 Plan drawing of the Heian period capital of Heian (Kyoto), Japan.

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the Korean Peninsula, entered Japan, and established kingdoms in both. Postcolonial and civil war Korean reaction to these theories was intense and included many archaeological investigations. This work, along with much by Japanese archaeologists, indicates the extent of cultural imports from the Peninsula to the Archipelago, such as iron and improved pottery technology, horses and mounted warfare, new burial methods, use of gold and silver ornaments, writing and mathematics, silk weaving, advanced

bureaucratic methods and organization, Buddhism and Buddhist architecture, and Chinese-style law. It has also shown that Yamato presence on the Peninsula is not indicative of a colony, and that the horse trappings contained in fourth-century tombs forming the foundation for the ‘Horserider theory’ date to the end of the century, later than the phenomena the theory is meant to explain. Excavation of early capital cities and palaces in the Kinai region such as Fujiwara, Nara, Naniwa,

Figure 11 Overview of Nara City and the Nara Palace, Japan.

Figure 12 The Second Great Imperial Hall and Residence at Nara, Japan.

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Nagaoka, Heian, and several smaller ones, as well as of their associated Buddhist temples and other remains has been an important focus of historical archaeology. New textual materials – wooden slips used in bureaucratic record-keeping – were found at many of the sites and have shed much light on the nature of pre-Nara and Nara period society and government (see Figure 1). Research has also shown the Japanese adaptation of the Chinese gridded-city model for their own needs, and clarified chronological sequences of capital-city building and developments in infrastructure (Figure 10). Architectural features, facilities, or wooden slips have even identified several structures by their function, such as the Sake Bureau compound at Nara. Details in the palace layouts indicate the organization of rule, and transportation and field systems have also been identified (Figures 11 and 12). While these investigations are not politically charged like the debates on Yamatai and Korean influences, archaeology has uncovered the dissonance between the grand images of the royal courts found in the texts and the reality of imperial rule and its ability to organize labor and finances for its projects. These circumstances are seen in the re-use of roof tiles and beams from the old palaces and capitals in new buildings, and the phased or even unfinished nature of some construction due to labor shortages. See also: Asia, East: Chinese Civilization; Asia, North-

east, Early States and Civilizations; Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline; Methods; Writing Systems.

Further Reading Barnes, GL (1988) Protohistoric Yamato: Archaeology of the First Japanese State. Michigan Papers in Japanese Studies, No. 17; Anthropological Papers Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan No. 78. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies. Barnes GL (1999) The Rise of Civilization in East Asia: The Archaeology of China, Korea and Japan. London: Thames and Hudson. Farris WW (1998) Sacred Texts and Buried Treasures: Issues in the Historical Archaeology of Ancient Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Kim WY (1986) Art and Archaeology of Ancient Korea. Seoul: Taekwang. Loewe M and Shaughnessy EL (eds.) (1999) The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Murowchick R (ed.) (1994) China: Ancient Culture, Modern Land. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Pai HI (2000) Constructing ‘Korean’ Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean StateFormation Theories. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Portal J (2000) Korea: Art and Archaeology. New York: Thames and Hudson. Tsuboi K and Tanaka M (1991) The Historic City of Nara: An Archaeological Approach. Hughes DW and Barnes GL (trans.). Tokyo: The Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies.

Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures Fumiko Ikawa-Smith, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Aira-Tanzawa One of the most famous Japanese tephra, first identified by Machida and Arai in 1976. Resulting from a massive eruption that occurred sometime between 26 000 and 29 000 years ago at the southern end of the island of Kyushu, the distinctive pumice is found all over the archipelago as well as in the adjacent parts of the continent. Japanese Palaeolithic A series of cultures that end with the first appearance of pottery about 15 000–10 000 uncalibrated radiocarbon years ago in the late glacial period. Tephra Air-fall material produced by a volcanic eruption regardless of composition or fragment size. Tephra is typically rhyolitic in composition as most explosive volcanoes are the product of the more viscous felsic or high silica magmas.

Until the excavation in the fall of 1949 of the Iwajuku site, about 90 km north of Tokyo (see map in Figure 1), the Palaeolithic cultures of the Japanese archipelago was not a subject of serious inquiry by professional archaeologists. Even though reports of discoveries were made from time to time by enthusiasts, the evidence brought forth was not convincing, either in terms of artifactual nature of the specimens, or the stratigraphic contexts from which they were recovered. Since much of the Pleistocene soils of the archipelago were of volcanic origin, it was believed to have been unfit for human and animal existence during the Pleistocene due to constant volcanic eruptions and falling ashes and volcanic debris. The situation changed entirely when a team of archaeologists from Meiji University, prompted by a report by a young amateur archaeologist, recovered some 160 pieces of stone, unmistakably modified by human hands, from two different levels of Pleistocene deposits at Iwajuku (see Figure 2). Once it was established that the Pleistocene formations do contain cultural remains, discoveries

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Figure 1 Map showing the sites mentioned, the extent of Aira-Tanzawa Tephra Fall, and the area exposed during the Last Glacial Maximum.

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Figure 2 Artifacts from the Iwajuku Site. A: Retouched blades and flakes of agate and obsidian from the upper level: B: Ovate axe with polished edge and blades of shale from the lower level. After S. Sugihara, The Stone-age Remains found at Iwajuku, Gumma Prefecture, 1956.

were made at a very rapid rate: nearly 100 sites were identified in the 10 years following the Iwajuku excavation, and now over a half century later, there are over 5000 Palaeolithic sites in the archipelago.

Search for the Earliest Evidence of Human Presence Two of the stone tools recovered from the lower layer of the Iwajuku site were bifacially flaked oval axes (Figure 2b). These were first described as ‘hand axes’, with the implication that they may be

comparable to Lower Palaeolithic specimens elsewhere. As the Palaeolithic research progressed, and quaternary geology of the archipelago was studied in greater detail, it became clear that the Iwajuku hand axes were situated in a layer of buried humus, representing a period of volcanic acquiescence, not older than 30 000 BP. In fact, the overwhelming majority of some 5000 Palaeolithic assemblages known today are from Late Pleistocene formations, dating to what is now known as oxygen isotope stage 2 (OIS2). Nevertheless, the search for the oldest evidence of human occupation of the archipelago continued. After

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all, humans were in northern China (see Asia, East: China, Paleolithic Cultures) by about 1 million years ago, if not earlier, and land bridges connecting the archipelago with the continental Asia existed during the Middle Pleistocene OIS16 (about 0.63 million years ago) and OIS12 (about 0.43 million years ago) allowing the passage of large mammals like Stegodon orientalis and Paleoloxodon namadicus naumanni. Excavations were conducted during the 1960s at such sites as Sozudai in northern Kyushu and Hoshino near Iwajuku (Figure 1), north of Tokyo, but the large number of lithic specimens meticulously recovered from formations dating to 40 000–130 000 years ago at these and other sites failed to meet general acceptance as artifacts. Starting about 1973, a series of sensational finds, purporting to attest to a very early presence of humans in the archipelago, were made, mostly in the area of the City of Sendai in northern Honshu. It was sensational, because, in Japan, as in most other countries in Asia, archaeology contributes to construction of national history, and the evidence for the early human presence in the archipelago translates as the answer to the question, ‘How long have our ancestors been living on these islands?’. In this social context, front-page treatments of Early Palaeolithic discoveries in the mass media reflected the avid public interest in the subject. Unlike the finds made in the 1960s, these artifacts were clearly products of human activity, and they were sometimes unearthed in front of witnesses by an amateur archaeologist, Shin’ichi Fujimura, from layers whose ages can be unambiguously determined in relation to welldated horizon-marker pumice deposits. As Fujimura’s reputation for his uncanny ability to spot Early and Middle Palaeolithic localities increased, so did the antiquity of human occupation of the archipelago, the oldest finds being the bifacial tools recovered from the lowest layer at the Kamitakamori site, dated to be between 0.58 and 0.60 million years old. Archaeologists began talking about the need for a ‘paradigm shift’ in Japanese Palaeolithic studies, when in November 2000 Fujimura was caught on video burying artifacts at Kamitakamori. He has since confessed to having manufactured the evidence by placing genuine, but later, stone tools from his collection in much older geological layers at 42 sites. The actual number could very well be larger. Discounting all the assemblages in whose excavations Fujimura participated, we are back to what we had before 1973, when there was a handful of assemblages which were thought to date to the earlier part of the Upper Pleistocene (OIS 5 and OIS 4), and whose artifactual nature remains controversial. New additions in recent years include the stone tools and bone flakes, associated with fossils of

P. namadicus naumanni and Sinomegaceros ordosianus yabei, from sediments in Lake Nojiri in central Honshu (Figure 1), dated to be 41 516 radiocarbon years old.

Late Palaeolithic Assemblages Almost all of the Palaeolithic remains from the archipelago date to the latter part of OIS3 and OIS2, from about 35 000 BP until the appearance of pottery about 16 000 BP. Morphology, production techniques and spatial distribution of stone tools, and their by-products are the major clues in reconstructing human activities, because the nature of the soil is not favorable for preservation of human fossils and other organic material, such as animal bones and plant remains. It is convenient to divide the Late Palaeolithic of the archipelago into three parts: Late Palaeolithic I, from 35 000 to 28 000 BP; Late Palaeolithic II, from 28 000 to 20 000 BP; and Late Palaeolithic III, after 20 000 BP. The earliest segment is represented by a small number of assemblages. They typically consist of long flakes of ‘blade’ proportions with minimum retouch, amorphous flakes, perforators, heavy duty tools with partial polish on one end (‘edge-ground axes’), and sometimes grinding stones. The assemblage recovered from the lower level of the Iwajuku site in 1949 (Figure 2b) is a good example. The occurrence of the edge-ground axes in Palaeolithic context is an unusual feature of these assemblages. More than 300 of these tools have been recovered from over 30 sites, and they often occur in clusters and circles near lakes and springs. At about 28 000 years ago, there was a massive volcanic eruption at the southern end of Kyushu, which sent forth ashes and pumice that fell all over Japan as well as on the adjacent parts of the continent (see the extent of AT fall in Figure 1). The distinctive pumice, called Aira-Tanzawa Tephra (or A-T for short), is the horizon marker, dividing Late Palaeolithic I and II of the archipelago. The complete disappearance of the artifact clusters with the edge-ground axes probably indicates the shift in subsistence strategy after the environmental disaster. There was also an indication of a temporary thinning of human population, as indicated by a decrease in the number of archaeological sites, followed by a dramatic increase soon thereafter. These growing populations were equipped with new kinds of stone tools. Tool blanks were produced by the ‘blade technique’, by which regularly shaped, parallel-sided pieces of stone were systematically detached from a carefully prepared core. These were then made into a variety of tools to perform specific functions. In addition to functional variability, there was a large range of what appears to

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Figure 3 Late palaeolithic artifacts from Shirataki, Hokkaido, Japan. Wedge-shaped micro-blade cores (Nos. 2 and 4); core preparation tablet (No. 1); burin (No. 3); micro-blades (Nos. 5 and 6); shaft-smoother (No. 7), bifacial foliate (No. 8), end-scraper (No. 9). All made of obsidian. After M. Yoshizaki, in Minzokugaku Kenkyu, 26(1): 17, 1961.

be stylistic variability in the stone tools. Several style zones could be distinguished by the ways tool blanks were retouched into backed blades. As the Late Palaeolithic II was the time of cooling climate, and the depressed sea level made the Japanese archipelago into a long peninsula projecting southward encircling a much reduced Sea of Japan, the increase in the number and the diversity of assemblages may be due in part to the population shift out of the continental Northeast Asia, where some scholars detect indications of depopulation. The new arrivals would have brought their own tool-making habits, and, being pressed into the narrow oceanic margin, human groups would have developed ways to increase productivity and maintain group identity. The predominant artifact types of the Late Palaeolithic III, after the last glacial maximum (LGM) of about 20 000 years ago, were microblades slotted into shafts made of bone or antler, used as spear heads. Recent excavation results, supported by a large suite of radiocarbon determinations, suggest that the complex reduction sequence for producing microblades from wedge-shaped cores such as those found at the Shirataki site in Hokkaido (Figure 3) had been present in this outer margin of the continent before the LGM, to continue through the Late Palaeolithic III.

Several different types of microblade cores and detachment methods have been distinguished. Bifacial leaf-shaped points were also present, sometimes in association with microblades. To this assemblage diversity is added the baked clay vessels. The linear-relief pottery of Fukui Cave in Kyushu, associated with microblades and radiocarbon dates which calibrate to about 15 300 years ago, have been known for several decades. Since then, radiocarbon dates older than 10 000 years have been obtained from over 80 early ceramic sites. The oldest one so far comes from the Odai Yamamoto I site at the northern tip of Honshu. Determinations obtained on carbonized remains adhering to fragments of plan pottery averaged to a calibrated age of about 16 000 BP. Since similar pottery is often found with very different stone tools through the archipelago, the ceramic technology, wherever it was first invented, seems to have been introduced to the archipelago, to be adopted by some of the Palaeolithic groups of the archipelago with different tool-making traditions. The ceramic use for the first few thousand years was sporadic. Although the appearance of pottery about 16 000 years ago heralds the beginning of the end of the Palaeolithic in the archipelago, it was not until about 10 000 years ago that the pottery use became

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widespread and well established, ushering in the fully ceramic Jomon Period of Japan. See also: Asia, East: China, Paleolithic Cultures; Early Holocene Foragers; Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers; Asia, South: Paleolithic Cultures; Asia, Southeast: Pre-agricultural Peoples; Pseudoarchaeology and Frauds.

Further Reading Bleed P (1977) Flakes from Sozudai, Japan: Are they man-made? Science 197: 1357–1359. Bleed P (2002) Cheap, regular, and reliable: Implications of design variation in Late Pleistocene Japanese microblade technology. In: Elason RG and Kuhn SL (eds.) Thinking Small: Global Perspectives on Microlithization, pp. 95–102. Arlington, Virginia: American Anthropological Association. Ikawa-Smith F (1986) Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene technologies. In: Pearson RJ, Brnes GL, and Hutterer KL (eds.) Windows on the Japanese Past: Studies in Archaeology and Prehistory, pp. 199–216. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan. Ikawa-Smith F (2004) Humans along the Pacific margin of Northeast Asia before the last glacial maximum: Evidence for their presence and adaptations. In: Madsen DB (ed.) Entering America: Northeast Asia and Beringia before the Last Glacial Maximum, pp. 285–309. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Kaner S (2002) Trouble in the Japanese Lower and Middle Palaeolithic. Before Farming 2: 1–23. http://www.waspjournals.com. Matsumoto N (2002) Update on the Japanese Early and Middle Palaeolithic problem. Before Farming 2: 24–25. http://www. waspjournals.com. Matsu’ura S (1999) A chronological review of Pleistocene human remains from the Japanese archipelago. In: Omoto K (ed.) Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Origins of the Japanese, pp. 181–197. Kyoto: International Research Center for Japanese Studies.

Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric HunterFisher-Gatherers Gary W Crawford, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, ON, Canada Hiroto Takamiya, Sapporo University, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Epi-Jomon The last manifestation of the Jomon found only in northeastern Japan dating to about 200 BC to AD 500. Fukui Cave One of the sites of the Jomon Culture, located on the southern island of Kyushu, Japan (Yoshii-town, Nagasaki),

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Jomon The time in Japanese pre-history from about c. 14 000 to 1000 BC in most regions of Japan and to AD 500 in the northeast. Okhotsk Culture A continental culture that migrated to Hokkaido about AD 500 with a predominately coastal orientation, and a subsistence based on maritime resources, a few crops and pigs. Satsumon The decedents of the Tohoku Yayoi who eventually spread throughout most of Hokkaido, established dry-field millet, wheat, barley, and other crop production there and who became the Ainu people who still live in Hokkaido. Shellmidden Period In Okinawa, instead of Jomon and/or Yayoi periods commonly used for the mainland Japanese prehistoric chronology, some archaeologists prefer to use this term in order to stress the uniqueness of the prehistoric culture developed on the islands. The Shellmidden periods are the Jomon through the Yayoi-Heian Periods. Tohoku Yayoi The Final Jomon in northeast Japan that had taken on most aspects of Yayoi culture, including agriculture but mainly only dry-field production, and whose populations were not replaced by migrating Yayoi people. Yayoi-Heian Period The period in Okinawa between c. 300 BC to AD 1100 is tentatively called the Yayoi-Heian period. The subsistence economy was gathering, fishing, and hunting. This period seems to be a continuation of the Jomon. Thus some have suggested that this period be called the Epi-Jomon of the Southern Islands.

The Jomon refers to the period of time from c. 14 000 to 1000 BC in southwestern Japan and to about AD 500 in northeastern Japan (the Jomon period) as well as to the Jomon culture in the Japanese archipelago. As a culture the concept refers to a set of material traits rather than a shared belief set; nevertheless, the Jomon is a heterogeneous entity. The generally agreed upon shared trait set consists of low-temperature fired pottery (none is kiln-fired or wheel-thrown) that is often cord-marked (Jomon translates as cord pattern), clay figurines, stone tools, and pit house communities. A minority of sites, probably fewer than 5%, is associated with shell mounds but these mounds are usually garbage heaps associated with hamlets and villages. Monumental architecture such as large earthen circles called kanjodori are part of the Jomon landscape, particularly in south-central Hokkaido.

Definition The Jomon is difficult to define because the traits used to characterize it are not unique to the archipelago, nor are they unique to a particular period in Japan. The range of styles encompassing Jomon pottery designs through time is unique, however. Even so, some attributes such as cord-wrapped stick impressions and rouletting are found on pottery in many settings throughout the world. Furthermore, aspects of technology shared by most Jomon sites include bone fishhooks, net sinkers, tanged stone knives, as well as grinding stones and manos, indicating a

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generally shared set of subsistence practices that included the use of inland and coastal resources. Dogs and a narrow suite of crops were raised in addition to hunting and collecting a wide range of other plants and animals. A number of specialized items such as jadeite, asphalt, salt, and lacquer were extracted or produced in some regions. Sites are found throughout what is now modern Japan from subtropical Okinawa through temperate latitudes including Hokkaido and many offshore islands. The Jomon did not spread beyond Okinawa to the Sakishima region, the southernmost part of modern Japan.

Chronology The chronological subdivisions are generally found throughout Japan (Figure 1). Northeastern Japan and Okinawa have subdivisions that deviate from the general pattern. The earliest pottery appears during Cal. years AD 1000

Hokkaido Northern SW Japan Tohoku Ainu Satsumon Nara-Heian Okhotsk

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the Incipient Jomon, an Upper Palaeolithic assemblage in all other characteristics. Radiocarbon dates associated with the earliest pottery range from 13 800 BP at Odai Yamamoto I in northeastern Japan to 12 700 BP at Fukui Cave in Kyushu (15 000– 13 000 cal. BC). Archaeologists debate whether the pottery was a local invention or whether it diffused from the mainland. The diffusion question may not be resolvable. Nevertheless, pottery was coming into use throughout East Asia by 12 000 BC indicating a rudimentary knowledge of technology. More fruitful questions relate to the impact this new technology had on the final Upper Palaeolithic cultures. The round and pointed-based pottery of the Initial Jomon was superseded by the Lower Ento flat-based pottery of the Early Jomon (Figure 2–4). Pottery in northeastern Japan is normally cylindrical. Similar forms of pottery are found in northeastern China at the same time but the context and decorative styles bare little resemblance to those of the Early Jomon. The similarities are probably coincidental, although some archaeologists view the similarities as evidence of direct contact between the regions. The subsequent Middle Jomon pottery is extremely diverse, the earliest being elaborated Early Jomon pottery. Upper Ento (Middle Jomon) pottery in Hokkaido is substantially identical to Lower Ento (Early Jomon) but has castellated rims and applique´. Other noncylindrical forms mark a period of extreme variation throughout Japan including the fire-flame pottery of central Japan. At least six style zones are recognized throughout the archipelago during the Middle Jomon indicating zones of habitual interaction or communication. The number of significant spheres of interaction is reduced to 2 by Late to Final Jomon times indicating more integrated interaction compared to earlier periods. One is in northeastern Japan and the second is in southwestern Japan where Late and Final Jomon pottery is simplified and quite plain, mirroring developments in the adjacent Korean Peninsula.

9000 10 000 11 000

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Figure 1 Chronology of the Japanese archipelago illustrating the main periods and cultures. Dashed lines indicate unclear boundaries. The Okinawa Jomon and Yayoi are referred to by some as the Shellmidden period.

The Final Jomon in southwestern Japan ended as a result of immigration and diffusion from the mainland marking the beginning of the Yayoi culture. The Yayoi brought intensive wet rice-, wheat-, barley-, millet-, and soybean-based agriculture, metallurgy, and a new sociopolitical organization from the mainland. Studies on human bone indicate clear differences between the migrant Yayoi and native Jomon populations. Still under debate are new radiocarbon dates of residues on Yayoi pottery are pushing back the

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Figure 2 Excavation of an Early Jomon pit house at the Yagi site, Minamikayabe, Hokkaido.

Figure 3 Pit houses at the Early Jomon Hamanasuno site, Minamikayabe, Hokkaido.

earliest Yayoi pottery to about 1000 BC from 500 BC. This means that the Yayoi began only a few centuries after similar changes in the Korean Peninsula had taken place. Recent research disproves that rice was introduced to Japan from the south through Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands. Current evidence is for a route from the mainland through Kyushu. The demise of the Jomon was not synchronous throughout the archipelago. While the Yayoi

developed quickly in the southwest where Jomon populations were not particularly dense, it continued in the northeast. Final Jomon people made adjustments in the face of developments on their margins and experimented with a southwestern style of agriculture that included wet rice production at locales such as the Tareyanagi site in Aomori prefecture. Rice production was not successful but they continued to grow crops such as barley, wheat, millet, and hemp.

640 ASIA, EAST/Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers

Figure 4 An Early Jomon cylindrical pot (Ento Kaso phase) showing prominent cord-marking.

Ultimately, cultures in the northeast that adopted agriculture became the Tohoku Yayoi, a descendent of the Final Jomon rather than a substitution of it by migrants. The Emishi, a people mentioned in early historic documents in Japan as foreigners in the northeast, likely refers to the Tohoku Yayoi, the nascent Satsumon, and perhaps even the Epi-Jomon cultures. Supporting this view are data demonstrating that the Ainu are physically similar to the Jomon people rather than the Yayoi. The Ainu ancestors are known as the archaeological Satsumon culture. At the northern extremes of Honshu and in Hokkaido, the Jomon lasted until at least AD 500 when the ancestral Satsumon people moved into Hokkaido from northern Tohoku, displaced by political events to the south. The post-Final Jomon cultures in Hokkaido contemporary with the Tohoku Yayoi are the Epi- or Zoku-Jomon. Epi-Jomon life appears to have been relatively simple compared to that of earlier Jomon periods. Most known sites such as the Sapporo Eki Kita-Guchi site (Sapporo Station, North Entrance) consist of cemeteries and short-term occupations (Figure 5). The Fugoppe cave site is an important spiritual space with nearly every rock surface covered in art. A few crops have been recovered from Epi-Jomon sites but they were likely obtained through exchange with the Tohoku Yayoi. Similar population movement might have taken place in the Ryukyu archipelago either at during latter part of the Yayoi-Heian or immediately prior to the Gusuku period. Linguistic and osteological data suggest population movements from mainland Japan. Finally, the

Figure 5 Earthen ridge forming part of a circular enclosure (kanjodori) around a cemetery at the Kiusu site, Hokkaido.

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Okhotsk culture occupied the northern coast of Hokkaido, having emigrated from the continent sometime around AD 500. This culture had a maritime adaptation but also grew a few crops as well as raised pigs. They appear to have been absorbed by the Satsumon culture.

Subsistence Jomon resource procurement strategies included hunting, gathering, fishing, and some food production. Food production was not as intensive as it was in cultures contemporary with the Jomon in China but may resemble that of the earliest agricultural peoples in northeastern China. Despite similar Upper Palaeolithic and Epi-Palaeolithic heritages on the mainland and on the Japanese archipelago, cultures in the two regions diverged dramatically by 7000 BC when people in what is now China were making a commitment to agriculture. The Jomon made no similar commitment. However, to call Jomon people strictly hunter-gatherers does not adequately characterize their economic system that lies partway along a continuum of hunting-gathering through agriculture. That is, they had a mixed economy of lowlevel resource production, hunting, gathering, and fishing. Some archaeologists believe that the Jomon were indeed agricultural. Nevertheless, Jomon people were able to call upon a variety of strategies to subsist depending on the habitats in which they were living. Identifying the specifics through time and region in Japan is difficult because most archaeology in Japan is a civil service endeavor meant to rescue ancient material ahead of modern development projects. In regions where techniques such as flotation have been carried out to recover charred plant remains, a rich plant resource procurement regime is evident. In Hokkaido, for example, flotation has been conducted since the mid-1970s. Nuts are prevalent in the Initial Jomon subsistence but Early Jomon people collected fewer nuts. Instead small-grained seeds of grasses and annual plants were utilized, much as in Early Neolithic cultures in China and elsewhere. Several plants such as barnyard millet were planted in gardens. Bottle gourd, buckwheat, and azuki bean may also have been crops. By 1000 BC millets and rice from China were present as far north as northern Honshu at the Kazahari site. Most important plants for the Jomon

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flourished in human impacted and modified habitats by the Early Jomon period. Familiarity with plant management and gardening likely facilitated the adoption of Chinese cultigens and their rapid incorporation into the economy. The Satsumon and their descendents, the Ainu, had a substantially agricultural economy that was derived from the Tohoku Yayoi agricultural system. Similar interdisciplinary research in Okinawa, at the extreme southernmost end of the Japanese archipelago, shows that the island was first successfully colonized by people through the latter part of the Middle and Late Jomon periods. Archaeobotanical data so far indicate that they succeeded there with a strictly hunting-gathering-fishing economy. It is quite rare for people to colonize small islands such as Okinawa without agriculture. They were able to adapt successfully by exploiting coral reef fish and probably nuts. This subsistence economy lasted for at least three thousand years. See also: Asia, East: China, Paleolithic Cultures; Chinese Civilization; Early Holocene Foragers; Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures.

Further Reading Aikens CM and Higuchi T (1982) The Prehistory of Japan. New York: Academic Press. Crawford GW (1983) Paleoethnobotany of the Kameda Peninsula Jomon. Ann Arbor, MI: Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan. Crawford GW (1997) Anthropogenesis in Prehistoric Northeastern Japan. In: Gremillion K (ed.) People, Plants, and Landscapes: Studies in Paleoethnobotany, pp. 86–103. University of Alabama Press. Crawford GW and Takamiya H (1990) The origins and implications of late prehistoric plant husbandry in northern Japan. Antiquity 64: 889–911. Habu J (2004) Ancient Jomon of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hanihara K (1990) Dual structure model for the population history of the Japanese. Japan Review 2: 1–33. Imamura K (1996) Prehistoric Japan: New Perspectives on Insular East Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Kidder JE and Esaka T (1968) Prehistoric Japanese Arts: Jomon Pottery. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Pearson RJ, Barnes GL, and Hutterer KL (eds.) (1986) Windows on the Japanese Past: Studies in Archaeology and Prehistory. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan. Takamiya H (2001) Introductory routes of rice to Japan: An examination of the southern route hypothesis. Asian Perspectives 40: 209–226.

See: Siberia, Peopling of.

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ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS Sarah Milledge Nelson, University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Lower Xiajiadian culture An archaeological culture in Northeast China, found mainly in southeastern Inner Mongolia, northern Hebei and western Liaoning, China. Upper Xiajiadian culture A Bronze Age archaeological culture in Northeast China derived from the Eurasian steppe bronze tradition, and roughly contemporaneous to the Western Zhou Dynasty. Yayoi period An era in the history of Japan from about 300 BC to AD 250.

Northeast Asia includes the Chinese northeast, or Dongbei (formerly known as Manchuria), eastern Inner Mongolia, the Russian Far East south of the Amur river, the Korean peninsula, and the Japanese islands (Figure 1). This region is varied in geology, but connected by long coast lines, and much early contact was probably by boat. Japan was completely cut off by the Holocene period, and its largely volcanic islands were somewhat isolated but never completely out of touch. The Korean peninsula is a block of tilted granite, with a relatively steep eastern side with few bays but many small islands on the south and west (Figure 2). The sea between Korean and Japan was probably a meeting ground of cultures, especially the southern end where islands are visible from the peninsula to Kyushu Island of Japan. The Dongbei and its surroundings are more continental. Chonji, the Heavenly Lake, occupies a large crater in mountains called Changbaishan (Ever White Mountains) in Chinese and Paektusan (Whitehead Mountain) in Korean. Lower mountains separate northeastern China from the Russian Far East, and eastern Inner Mongolia from the Dongbei. None of the mountains made impenetrable barriers. Due to the long tradition within China of recording not only their own history but geographic and cultural information about surrounding polities, the archaeological record sometimes can be enriched by contemporaneous accounts. Distinctive polities and perhaps states formed earlier in Dongbei roughly at the same time as the Xia dynasty in central China (c. 2206–1550 BCE), then contributed bronze metallurgy and domesticated horses to groups to their east,

south, and north. Each state had its own form of organization, and each civilization its unique culture; nevertheless common threads ran through them, making a rich tapestry of related cultures.

Complexity in Inner Mongolia and Liaoning Province Social and political complexity emerged in the northeastern part of the Asian continent first in Inner Mongolia and Liaoning Province. The Hongshan period demonstrates early social stratification, followed by a little-known culture called Xiaoheyan, and the better studied Lower Xiajiandian and Upper Xiajiadian. These are followed by Bronze Age societies in Liaoning and Jilin Provinces, including the Liaod ong peninsula, containing some high status burials but no known central places. Hongshan (4000–2500 BCE) is best known for its ritual building with life-sized statues in an elaborate ceremonial area, another ritual area featuring smaller pregnant figurines, and elite burials containing no burial goods except highly polished jades. The jades take specific shapes, such as pig-dragons, clouds, birds, and tortoises, suggesting that they might mark ranks or craft specialties. The pig appears to have been venerated, suggested not only by pig-dragon jades, but also by a life-sized pig statue in the ritual building, and a hill which, viewed from the Goddess Temple, resembles a pig head, with pointed ears. Several archaeologists describe the leaders of Hongshan to be wu, a Chinese word which describes shaman-like characteristics and duties. Xiaoheyan (2800–2100 BCE) overlaps with Hongshan, but its distinctive pottery assemblage sets it apart. Lower Xiajiadian (LXJD) and Upper Xiajiadian culture (UXJD) were named from a single stratified site where both were first discovered. Since that time, many sites of each period have been located and excavated, and the distinction between them is clear, both in terms of time and cultural characteristics. Lower Xiajiadian is dated 2300–1600 BCE, almost contemporaneous with Erlitou on the Yellow River in China, which is thought by many to be the remains of the Xia, China’s earliest dynasty. Although a gap appears in C-14 dates between the Hongshan period and LXJD, some Hongshan jades have been found in LXJD burials, and some LXJD sites directly overlie Hongshan layers.

Russian Far East

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CHINA Pacific Ocean Figure 1 Northeast Asia, with archaeological cultures located.

Because Xia was described as the first dynasty in China in Chinese histories, the discovery of a contemporaneous complex society far to the northeast was surprising to Chinese archaeologists and historians. Polychrome pottery from LXJD contexts, withpainted designs that appear to be forerunners of the decoration on Shang dynasty bronzes, was another surprising discovery (Figure 3). Baggy-legged tripods are new in LXJD, comprising most of the cooking pots. Small tripod pitchers are also new in the region, but otherwise LXJD continued to produce and use many of the same stone tools and much of the same types of pottery as before, in spite of having some small bronze artifacts. LXJD remains are found mostly in Inner Mongolia, although a few sites have been found to the south and east in Liaoning Province. The most conspicuous sites loom on ridges above major rivers, marked by still extant extensive stonewalls and fallen towers, with stone circular footings for buildings inside the walls on the hilltops. In addition to these high sites, unwalled villages have been unearthed. Sites of three sizes are distributed in a central place type hierarchy, suggesting political centralization. A burial site with about 800 graves was completely excavated at Dadianzi, displaying conspicuous

gradation of ranking by both the depth of the burials (the richest are up to seven meters deep) and the richness of the grave goods, including small bronze objects. Wooden coffins were used for the larger and richer burials. Red and black lacquer layered on bamboo and wooden artifacts, as well as abundant seashells, may well indicate trade with the south. Animal scapuli prepared by boring holes were used to divine the will of the spirits and ancestors according to the way cracks formed in the fire. Such ‘oracle bones’ with inscriptions are well known from the Late Shang, around 1250 BCE. However, uninscribed oracle bones are a Dongbei development dating back some two millennia earlier than LXJD north of the Xilamulun River, and presumably continuously used for about 4000 years (see below). Although the rich graves belong to both men and women, a gender distinction in placement is evident. All the burials are flexed and on their sides with their heads to the northeast, but the males face the village and the females face away from the village. Another gender difference is that women tend to be accompanied by spindle whorls while men are more likely to have stone axes. It has been argued that LXJD is just as complex as Erlitou, in terms of economy, ranking, extent of the

644 ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS

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Figure 2 Korea and Manchuria, with sites located.

polity, craft specialization, and intensive agriculture. Certainly it seems that the two polities were directly or indirectly in contact.

Upper Xiajiadian By 1600 BCE UXJD appears, with apparent connections with the archaeology of the Eurasian steppes, especially in the styles of small bronze artifacts. The locally cast bronzes include knives with upward points and handles cast with rings or animals, and small horse trappings. The large stone constructions of LXJD were no longer built. UXJD depended on herding sheep and goats in addition to agriculture. Ridden horses may have been an aid to herding. Slab

graves near the surface are characteristic of UXJD. The burial style suggests steppe affiliations, as well as shapes and motifs on the bronzes. In Jilin Province, Bronze Age archaeological remains are labeled the Xituanshan culture (1200–400). Although there are no central places, large villages with cemeteries imply more than a simple agrarian society. Each person is buried in a stone slab burial with a few pots, stone tools, and heads or other bones of pigs and dogs. Elite burials are not in cemeteries, but found singly. Typically they contain a bronze dagger with a blade in the shape of a pair of curly brackets ({}), having a T-shaped handle constructed of different materials. Mirrors of geometric design are frequently found in elite burials, along with

ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS 645

stone cists magnified many fold. In the few dolmens that escaped total pillaging, it seems that these giant constructions were used for burials of the high elite. No complete burial has been excavated, but a composite picture would suggest that contents typically include two polished small red jars, a bronze or polished stone dagger, and a necklace consisting of tubular stone beads, sometimes with a single curved bead (called gogok in Korean, magatama in Japanese) in the center. It is reasonable to suppose that the gogok is a symbol of authority at this time, since it was abundantly associated with later elites in Korea and Japan.

Bronze Age Korea Figure 3 Painted pottery from Lower Xiajiadian.

Figure 4 Liaoning dagger and bone with chariot drawing.

necklaces of green tubular beads. An etched bone clearly depicts a chariot with driver being pulled by two horses (Figure 4).

Eastern Dongbei and the Korean Peninsula In southern Jilin and on the Liaodong and Korean peninsulas, dolmen-like constructions are conspicuous on the landscape. They probably date to as early as 1000 BCE. Made of stone slabs weighing several tons, they have been suggested to reflect the concept of

The Bronze Age in Korea has some large population aggregates, which are often interpreted as chiefdoms. Bronze Age pottery styles in the Korean peninsula vary by region, but they are essentially similar – consisting of jars with relatively plain exteriors, flat bases, and wide mouths, called Mumun. They also resemble pottery of the Dongbei and the southern Russian Far East. Rice pollen, phytoliths, and grains impressions, as well as evidence for millets and barley, have all been found in the paste of Mumun pottery, confirming that this was a fully agricultural society. Houses are roomier than those of the Neolithic, and grouped into larger aggregates. Instead of being placed in river valleys, Bronze Age villages were built on hill slopes, presumably to allow for terracing of rice paddies with water diverted from small streams. Agricultural fields have been uncovered in several southern Korean sites, with rice, barley, and millets identified as dominant crops. In the southern part of the Korean peninsula, most dolmens consist of only a large monolith lying on the ground, covering a burial. The burials are most often in stone cists, but sometimes they are in pits with or without wooden coffins, and sometimes large jars contain the bodies, especially in the southwest. Daggers are often made of polished limestone instead of bronze, but Liaoning-style bronze daggers have been found all over the Korean peninsula, especially in the southeast and southwest. The bronze daggers appear in Korea at least by 800 BCE. The nature of the society in Bronze Age Korea has been a subject of much discussion, but no consensus has formed. Most would propose that they were small polities with local leaders who are buried under dolmens, which are often glossed as chiefdoms.

The State of Old Chosun Histories of the Han dynasty in China relate the establishment of a state called Chosun (Chaoxian) in the northern part of the Korean peninsula. Some

646 ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS

Korean historians claim an earlier state in this region which they refer to as Kija Chosun, founded around 1000 BCE by a relative of the last Shang king who was conquered by the Zhou. No archaeological evidence supports the interpretation of such a state in the Korean peninsula. According to later Chinese historical writings, the state of Chosun was founded by Wiman in the location of a walled city, and archaeological evidence suggests complex society in northern Korea by the fourth century BCE. For example, knife-shaped coins from the Warring States period in China (450–221 BCE) are found in clusters and sometimes hoards from the Yalu River to the Taedong River. In addition, some burials near Pyongyang contain artifacts with Chinese inscriptions, including dates in the third century BCE, contemporaneous with the Chinese Qin dynasty. These discoveries confirm the literacy in Chinese of some inhabitants of Chosun. Han dynasty documents describe the battles through which Wiman, who himself was from Liaoning, became the leader of that state of Chosun. Later when both an army and navy from the Chinese Han dynasty conquered his grandson Ugo’s city, Chinese documents provide corroborating detail for the existence of such a state, including the lengthy siege and strong armies that were needed for the conquest. Archaeological evidence includes a walled city across the Taedong River from Pyongyang, which possibly is the remains of the original capital of Wiman Chosun, since it has the irregular walls of a Korean city rather than the rectangular shape of a Chinese city. Shortly after the Han conquest a census recorded the population, with many locations having the name of Tosong, or earthen fortress, suggesting walled towns. Many of these have been located by archaeological survey. The Han leadership was not content with merely conquering Chosun; it set up governing commanderies in the northern part of the peninsula, using both native and Chinese administrators, some of whose tombs have been excavated. The longest lasting of these commanderies was called Lelang (Nangnang in Korean). The Han interest in the peninsula was partly a matter of protecting Chinese borders, but trade was also an important impetus. The Han had declared a state monopoly on both salt and iron, and may well have been seeking these commodities in Korea. The presence of Chinese officials and local nobles during the Lelang period is reflected in the burials, with both local and imported artifacts.

Korean States after Nangnang Some Chinese documents referred to the southern regions of the peninsula contemporaneous with

Nangnang as Samhan, or three Han states (a different character from that of Han China). However, multiple ‘states’ are named as part of each of the three Hans, suggesting that the term meant something like a walled and possibly self-governing city with an agricultural hinterland. To confuse posterity further, one Chinese document refers to the whole south of the peninsula as the Chin State. Archaeological discoveries demonstrate that the south was developing under the stimulus of Nangnang. For example, a burial in the first century CE in the coastal region where one of the Kaya states was founded contained a writing brush, suggesting that literacy was known in the south of the peninsula during the Chinese Han dynasty. Other archaeological discoveries include southern coastal sites containing Chinese Han dynasty coins and oracle bones without inscriptions. Korean histories refer to the time period from 57 BCE to CE 668 as the Three Kingdoms Period. The three kingdoms are Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla. In addition six city-states were called Kaya, and coexisted with these warring kingdoms before being conquered or absorbed by Silla. Archaeological discoveries do not entirely confirm the early beginnings of the southern states of Paekche and Silla, although a large city has been unearthed in the southwest, and early rich burials were found in Silla territory. Whenever each crystallized into a state, polities of some sort were forming in the north, southwest, and southeast of the peninsula respectively. Koguryo was probably the earliest of the Korean kingdoms to become a true state, as we would now employ the term. The kingdom of Koguryo arose first in valleys of northern tributaries to the Yalu (Amnok) River. In Chinese writings Koguryo is described as an offshoot of Puyo, a polity in northern Manchuria and the Russian Far East, described in Qin dynasty records as the result of an expedition to that region. Archaeologically, Koguryo is characterized by large stone tombs. They are mostly in Ji’an, although many contemporaneous burial sites are also found across the river on the North Korean side. As Koguryo expanded by conquest, a large walled city defended by a hill fort was constructed in Ji’an, in presentday China (see Asia, East: China, Neolithic Cultures; China, Paleolithic Cultures) on the north bank of the Yalu River. Within Ji’an, the development of large burials begins with stone-mounded tombs, followed by one unique tomb with monolithic stones shaped like a stepped pyramid, to tombs made of stone slabrooms covered with earthen mounds. These last are the famed painted tombs, providing a wealth of information about the lives of the elite. Several murals depict a couple, presumably the tomb occupants, sitting side by side on a raised and covered platform.

ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS 647

In one such painting, servants prepare a feast, and wrestlers and dancers perform. A scene of hunting tigers and deer from horseback using the ‘Parthian shot’, twisted in the saddle to shoot with a long bow, is well known. An inscribed stele found in the vicinity of Ji’an boasts of the exploits of King Kwanggaeto. The stele details the conquest of many towns in the fourth and fifth centuries. Kwanggaeto extended his realm far into the Dongbei, including sites in the current Liaoning and Jilin provinces. It is thought that the stone pyramid tomb, noted above, was his funerary monument. Buddhism and literacy were well established within the reign of King Kwanggaeto. Later Koguryo kings drove the Han dynastic overlords from the Korean peninsula, and moved the capital to present-day Pyongyang. Painted tombs are found in large cemeteries, with Chinese influence visible in the style of the tombs, as well as in the use of the four seasonal animals (blue dragon, red bird, white tiger, and black tortoise). Both Buddhist and shamanic images are found painted on the walls of tombs (Figure 5). Korean histories relate that Paekche was founded by two brothers who were younger sons of a Koguryo king. The archaeology near Seoul seems to reflect this tale, as stone mounded graves in pyramidal style have

Figure 5 Tomb painting – ox cart, armored horse, and noble ladies.

been excavated along the Han River. Unsuccessful battles with Koguryo forced Paekche farther and farther south, while Koguryo occupied the Han River from the current location of Seoul to its mouth at Inchon. The kingdom of Paekche is known archaeologically from early fortresses at Inchon on the Yellow Sea coast and along the Han River in central Korea, and from later tombs and Buddhist monuments farther south, at Kongju and Puyo. Near the final Paekche capital at present-day Kongju, an enormous Buddhist temple is under excavation, as well as part of a large palace and its extensive grounds. Several pagodas still stand, as well as miruks, which are life-sized human stone figures with a flat hat made from a separate stone. Although the name indicates they represent the matreiya, the Buddha of the future, they are unlike other Buddhist sculpture and probably antedate the adoption of Buddhism in the region. A group of earth-mounded royal tombs occupies an area outside Kyongju. Inside they resemble small late Koguryo tombs, sometimes with faded painting on the stone-slab walls. They were all looted in antiquity, but a brick tomb was concealed underneath, and was entirely intact when it was discovered in 1971. This was the tomb of King Munyong and his wife, complete with inscriptions giving their names and the years of their deaths. Each wore a gold headdress of cut-out floral design, and gilt-bronze burial shoes. It is interesting that although Buddhism was flourishing at the time in Paekche, the burial has little Buddhist iconography. However, the tomb was constructed of bricks impressed with lotus designs, with a barrel vault ceiling and flame-shaped wall niches, reflecting Chinese styles. The Silla kingdom developed around the city of Kumsong (meaning Gold Fortress), which is presently known as Kyongju. The history/mythology of Silla describes six tribes in the valley joining forces for strength against ‘enemies nearby’. The main city arose within a plain surrounded on three sides by rivers, protected by a hillfort on the southern river and fortresses ringing the higher mountains on all sides. The archaeology of Silla can be divided into three periods. Remains of some hilltop fortresses may partly derive from the earliest era, and documents would include the hill fort known as Panwolsong, or Half Moon Fortress. During the early period the polity was known as Saro. It may not have been yet a monarchy, although the king lists, based on a lost history of Silla, contain names of kings and queens as well as their parents, continuously from 57 BCE to CE 9xx. The era of huge mounded tombs (fourth to sixth centuries) is well published, for the mounds were not easy to rob, and when first excavated in the 1930s

648 ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS

Figure 6 Gold crown from Silla.

they were found to contain rich grave goods. Most spectacular were the royal tombs, each of which included a gold crown, gold belt, and other gold jewelry such as necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and in some cases finger and toe rings (Figure 6). On the south mound of Tomb 98 in Kyongju, the gold weighed almost five kilograms. Horse trappings are prominent in these burials, especially bronze saddlebows with cut-out and gilded decoration. The crowns are tall, with uprights in the shape of antlers and stylized trees. Many scholars have related these shapes to shamanism, and indeed one of the early titles applied to the ruler is thought to mean shaman. The crowns are covered with dangling birch-leaf-shaped gold pieces and jade and glass gogok attached with twisted gold wire. Burial goods include artifacts made of birch bark, having painted designs including white horses and the red bird of the south. Exotic goods, such as Mediterranean glass containers, Central Asian silver bowls and an inlaid dagger also came to Silla from afar. Trade must have been conducted both over sea routes from the south and across the silk road through Central Asia. Although Silla is mentioned in Chinese writings of the time, Chinese artifacts are rare, consisting of only one small glazed bottle. As the kingdom farthest removed from China within the Korean peninsula, Silla resisted Chinese influence longest. This is particularly evident in the burial style, for both Koguryo- and Paekche-built Chinese

style tombs with entry passages intended to be reentered for postmortem ceremonies, which made them inviting to loot, while Silla tombs were impossible to re-enter, covered having several meters of boulders topped by more meters of earth. Silla society was divided into endogamous groups called bone ranks, and sumptuary rules applied to each group, with restrictions specified for men and women separately. Only members of the Holy Bone were eligible to rule, but women could be selected as rulers as well as men. The largest and most spectacular of the mounded burials belonged to a queen. The True Bone were high nobles, with three other ranks of lesser nobles below them. Interestingly, the common people, both men and women, were allowed to own and ride horses, but they were restricted in the amount and kind of saddles and horse trappings they could display. Buddhism was accepted in Silla by the fifth century, and burials became less lavish, as cremation became more commonplace. Mounded tombs were often surrounded by the 12 zodiacal year-signs of China, and some even had spirit paths leading up to them, guarded by life-sized stone animals and warriors. As in Paekche, enormous Buddhist temples were endowed, and the hills around Kyongju became filled with Buddhist carvings on stone boulders, which are still objects of pilgrimage. Kaya is the name given to a group of city-states that never coalesced into a larger polity, and they were gradually conquered by Silla. They are often seen as allied with Paekche because of the written history, but in terms of artifacts such as pottery and weaponry they are closer to Silla. Six Kaya polities were distributed along the Naktong River valley and along the southern coast. The Kaya region was extremely rich in iron. Almost all cemeteries contain iron armor and iron weapons, and the richest burials have iron ingots laid out for a floor. It is likely that the large iron ingots were an important export. One Kaya tombs is reminiscent of multiple interment tombs in Liaoning, with a central burial and others radiating around it, separated by stonewalls. One burial hill has overlapping double mounds, in which one person’s head points north and the other northeast, suggesting that the husband and wife came from groups with different burial orientations. The stonewares from Kaya are closely related to those of Silla. Kaya stoneware vessels in the shape of everyday objects allow unusual insights into the material culture. They include houses, carts, sandals, boats, and drinking horns. Three of them depict men on horseback, showing their complete clothing and the rigging of the horses, including stirrups. Of two found together, one is thought to be the noble, and the

ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS 649

other the servant, due to differences in clothing. The third one is a soldier and horse both in armor. After Silla conquered the Kaya states and other unaffiliated towns in the southeast, inscribed boundary stones that are still extant were set up on the mountain ridge dividing Silla from Paekche, in the region of the Han River, and far to the north on the east coast. Silla was able to conquer first Paekche and then Koguryo with the aid of the Tang Dynasty. In CE 668, all but the northernmost part of the peninsula was ruled by United Silla, with its capital still at Kyongju.

Yayoi and Kofun Periods in Japan In the meantime, in the Japanese islands, other complex polities developed, reflecting local changes as well as contact from the peninsula, Lelang, and mainland. After the long period known as the Jomon, which was characterized by cord-marked pottery, new plainer pottery ushered in a period known as Yayoi, although more important in the distinction between Jomon and Yayoi is the intensive growing of rice. A series of AMS dates, as well as tree rings, confirm that Yayoi is much earlier than was once thought. Yayoi appeared first in Kyushu, the major island nearest to the Korean peninsula, as early as 900 BC, and spread eastward and northward. The earliest Yayoi pottery is related in both shapes and manufacturing technology to Mumun in Korea, but it is not identical. Whether this represents migration of peoples from the Korean peninsula or diffusion of ideas, or some combination, is the subject of debate. The consensus among archaeologists who work in Japan is that some migration from the peninsula occurred, but the previous Jomon inhabitants also contributed to the continuing population. The new dating of the elaborate Final Jomon of Kamegoaka in northern Honshu and the Initial Yayoi in Kyushu are contemporaneous. While rice is a hallmark of Yayoi, some rice is found in Jomon sites as early as Early Jomon: it does not appear that Jomon sites practiced agriculture as their subsistence base. On the other hand, large rice paddies, with remains of wooden clogs, hoes, and spades, have been excavated in the Yayoi period. Domesticated pigs were raised, and one site even contains evidence of chickens. Bronze technology and bronze weapons derived from those of the Korean peninsula are characteristic of the Yayoi period. Although both iron and bronze were imported, they were used as prestige goods and for dedication to the gods. Bronze swords, mirrors, and bells were developed from Korean prototypes, although models developed in the islands diverged dramatically from those of the peninsula. Large daggers and swords appear to be ceremonial, since they

are too unwieldy to have been used in battle. Bellshaped objects called dotaku must have had ceremonial functions as well, as they are found in caves and other isolated places, as if they were ritual deposits (Figure 7). Mirrors were also important, both the fine-lined geometric type developed in the peninsula and Chinese-style mirrors. Sword, mirror, and curved jewel became symbols of the emperor. The presence of megalithic burials in Japan suggests another cultural connection with Korea. Southern style dolmens (large capstones lying on the ground) are found in Kyushu, as are jar burials, sometimes under dolmens. Polished stone knives are found in such burials, as well as tubular beads with a single curved bead. The 25 ha site of Yoshinogari on Kyushu is surrounded by a ditch, and the periphery is guarded by watchtowers standing on gigantic posts. A fortified inner area contained a burial mound in the center. A burial in two large jars joined at the mouths was furnished with tubular blue beads and a bronze sword. Han dynasty chronicles describe a queen in Kyushu named Himiko, who lived in a defended compound. The Yoshinogari site is too early to have been the domain of Himiko, but she is described as living in just such a place. However, queens ruling alone and as co-rulers were known in the subsequent Kofun period, the time of mounded tombs.

Figure 7 Dotaku – bronze bell from Yayoi period.

650 ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS

Figure 8 Haniwa of shaman from Kofun period.

The Kofun, or Old Tumulus period, is characterized by large and elaborate tombs. The most spectacular and largest are shaped like old-fashioned keyholes, with a high circular mound and a foursided lower platform. Often the entire construction is surrounded by a moat. The tumuli vary in size, with the largest being 486 m long. Hollow terracotta figures encircled the grave mounds on the outside. These haniwa depict warriors, shamans, farmers and other livelihoods, as well as houses, boats, horses, and even a quiver full of arrows. Some indicate tattooed faces, and many depict ear-spools and bead necklaces. The houses resemble Shinto shrines, which are rebuilt every twenty years but retain the ancient architecture (Figure 8). Groups of kofun are found in several places, and are interpreted as rival centers of power, with evidence of highly stratified societies. They include northern Kyushu, Izumo on the southwestern coast of Honshu, Kibi in the southern part of Honshu, the main island of Japan, on the north side of the Inland Sea, and Yamato east of the Inland Sea. The very large tombs that define the Kofun period demonstrate the existence of leaders who commanded an enormous amount of labor, and documents show that a division of labor by family and village was firmly in place. The appearance of horses, horse-trappings, and armor has led to a theory that ‘horse riders’ suddenly

appeared from ‘the continent’ to form a new warrior culture in the Late Kofun period. Horses were not native to Japan, but they are not the most significant element in the changes in the Late Kofun. However, it is clear from many lines of evidence that a close relationship existed between parts of the peninsula and the islands, and that elite as well as artisans from Korea’s Three Kingdoms were involved in the establishment of the state in Japan. Artifacts from the Kofun period are very similar to those of Korea. In the Fujinoki tomb, the use of gold is lavish. It was used for crowns, sword hilts, burial shoes, and saddlebows, in much the same style as those found in the Silla Kingdom. The tomb of Takamatsuzuka near Nara contained wall murals with women dressed like some of those in Koguryo tombs, suggesting that styles for elite women were widespread. In spite of these correspondences, the strongest impact on the Kofun period came from the Paekche kingdom. The early Buddhist art and architecture of Nara is acknowledged to be made by artisans from Paekche. This relationship between the peninsula and the islands intensified with the introduction of Buddhism from Paekche. Koguryo in the fourth century was the first of the Korean Three Kingdoms to accept Buddhism, but it was followed within the century by Paekche. Although Paekche was destroyed in 668 by the combined forces of Silla and Tang China, much of Paekche art can still be seen in the early Buddhist sites around Nara. Capital cities were laid out in a grid pattern like that of Chang’an, the Tang capital. The growing states of East Asia became more similar to each other as China became the model for government and culture. However, they were never identical. Each polity developed and maintained individual styles of material style and governance, while participating in trade and interaction throughout northeast Asia. See also: Animal Domestication; Asia, East: China,

Neolithic Cultures; Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers; Asia, South: Buddhist Archaeology; Plant Domestication; Political Complexity, Rise of.

Further Reading Aikens CM and Rhee SN (eds.) (1992) Pacific Northeast Asia in Prehsitory; Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers, Farmers, and Sociopolitical Elites. Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press. Barnes GL (1999) The Rise of Civilization in East Asia: Archaeology of China, Korea and Japan. London: Thames and Hudson. Barnes GL (2001) State Formation in Korea: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press. Hudson M (1999) Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands 651 Imamura K (1996) Prehistoric Japan: New Perspectives on Insular East Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Nelson SM (1993) The Archaeology of Korea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nelson SM (1995) The Archaeology of Northeast China: Beyond the Great Wall. London: Routledge. Nelson SM (2003) Korean Social Archaeology. Seoul: Jipmoon Press.

Shelach G (1999) Leadership Strategies, Economic Activity, and Interregional Interaction, Social Complexity in Northeast China. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Takamiya H (2002) Introductory routes of rice to Japan: An examination of the southern route hypothesis. Asian Perspectives 4092: 209–226.

ASIA, SOUTH Contents Baluchistan and the Borderlands Buddhist Archaeology Ganges Valley India, Deccan and Central Plateau India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South Indus Civilization Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier Megaliths Neolithic Cultures Paleolithic Cultures Sri Lanka

Baluchistan and the Borderlands Ute Franke, DAI, Berlin, Germany ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Baluchistan An arid region located in the Iranian Plateau in Southwest Asia and South Asia, between Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Indus Civilization The Indus Valley Civilization (c. 2600–1900) was an ancient riverine civilization that flourished in the Indus and Ghaggar–Hakra river valleys in what is now Pakistan and northwest India. urbanization The increase over time in the population of cities in relation to the region’s rural population.

Introduction Baluchistan is a huge landmass that extends from western Pakistan into southeastern Iran and southern Afghanistan and separates the open alluvial plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Iranian Plateau (Figure 1). It is the largest part of the Indo-Iranian borderlands which also include parts of the NorthWest Frontier Province, Kandahar, and Hilmand Provinces in Afghanistan, and Sistan/Baluchistan in Iran.

These regions formed, at times, a cultural landscape linked through traits such as architecture and artifact styles, interpreted as evidence for exchange, shared technologies, values, and ideas. In Baluchistan, human development from the seventh millennium BC onwards, from mobile food hunters and gatherers to sedentary communities based on farming and animal husbandry, has been uncovered. Increasing levels of complexity in economy and technology, social and political organization, accompanied by a population growth and settlement expansion, fostered the development of villages, towns, and cities and provided the basis for urbanization and state formation. Throughout, this tradition maintained a distinctive character, notwithstanding regional differences and changing patterns of interaction. The purpose of this paper is to outline this development, with a focus on Baluchistan. In order to understand the preconditions and to assess its role, we will first discuss the natural conditions that govern human life and then look at the cultural communities that formed the conceptual landscape.

Natural Environment Baluchistan can be divided into three main landforms plus a small coastal belt: (1) inland basins, (2) deserts, and (3) mountains rising to 3500 m in the north. Dissected by narrow river valleys, the mountains

652 ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands

Bamyan

KABUL Mardan

Herat

Peshawar ISLAMABAD

Birjand

Mundigak

Yazd

Kandahar

Shahdad

Kerman

Multan

Quetta

Shahr-i Sokhta

Nausharo Bam

Zahedan

Mehrgarh Surab

Tepe Yahya

Jiroft Sohr Damb/Nal Mohenjo Daro

Bampur

Khasab Shimal Ras al-Khaimah Lima Umm al-Quwain Ajman Sharjah Masafi Dubai Fujairah Mleiha Sohar Hill

Jodhpur Turbat Shahi T., Miri Q. Hyderabad Gwadar

Pasni

Karachi

Figure 1 Map of the region with sites. Ute Franke. Map: H. David. ã 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

run in parallel north–south folds along the western fringe of the Indus plain and turn west near the sea, making access to the Indus plain and the shore difficult. The northerly movement of the Indo-Pakistani Plate and its collision with the Eurasian Plate shifted the coastline southward for up to 25 km during the Holocene and lifted the whole shore. These geographical barriers direct communications and the hydraulic system. In the east, large perennial rivers, such as the Hab, Porali, and Hingol/Nal, drain the mountain flow-off into the sea, while the western river systems often discharge into deserts and salt pans. The mountains comprise several ecological zones that vary greatly in terms of climate and availability of soil and water. Climate is, in general, arid with a precipitation of c. 100 mm yr
1 in the south and 400 mm in the north. Agriculture depends on irrigation and the availability of soils but less than 4% of Baluchistan is arable. The mountains are barren and valley floors built with gravel. Only in wider valleys did a fertile alluvium composed of silt and sand accumulate. In dealing with diversified ecological conditions, flexible subsistence strategies were developed: while cultivars and domesticated animals remained much the same throughout, their stake and supplementary dietary measures varied. The need for irrigation has prompted channel building at an early stage, but the most remarkable human response to environmental conditions are the sophisticated dam systems (gabarbands) of southeastern Baluchistan. A prehistoric

population density that exceeds present figures attests the success of these adaptations. Baluchistan is rich in mineral resources (copper, lead, zinc, barite), stones (gray chert, lime- and sandstone, alabaster, marble), and semiprecious stones (agate, vesuvianite-grossular, lapislazuli).

History of Research After an intensive post-war period of research in Baluchistan, the North-West Frontier Province, and elsewhere, work in Pakistan focused on the Indus plains (Sindh, Punjab) and its fringes (Gomal, Bannu). Virtually all archaeological information on interior Baluchistan was collected between 1880 and 1965. Surveys conducted by A. Stein, B. de Cardi, W. A. Fairservice, R. Mughal, and others produced regional data sets that to date form the basis for settlement analyses, while soundings at Kile Ghul Mohammad (hereafter: KGM), Quetta, and Anjira provided a typological and comparative framework. R. Mughal’s restudy of this material supported the concept that an Early Harappan horizon existed in the Greater Indus Valley, thereby implying the autochthonous development of the Indus Civilization, notwithstanding interaction. Research carried out in Central Asia, Afghanistan, and southeastern Iran, particularly excavations at Mundigak (J.-M. Casal), Bampur (B. de Cardi),

ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands 653

Tepe Yahya (C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky), Shahr-e Sokhta (M. Tosi), and Shahdad (A. Hakemi), widened cultural horizons and introduced new research perspectives. By 1970, the Indo-Iranian Borderlands had emerged as a region with distinctive cultural patterns and new models on human development and interaction were developed. Foreign fieldwork ended in 1978–79, but Iranian teams continued excavations and both Afghanistan and Iran have reopened their borders recently. In Pakistan, the French Mission working in the Kacchi Plain at the foot of Bolan Pass proved the hypotheses of an indigenous cultural development in Pakistan and particularly in Baluchistan to be truer than anticipated. At Mehrgarh, Nausharo, Sibri, and Pirak, a sequence from the aceramic Neolithic Period through the first millennium BC excavated under the direction of J.-F. Jarrige, produced new sets of information that carried cultural complexes beyond mere pottery styles and facilitated the development of a wider chronological scheme (Figure 2). In southern

Baluchistan, work was more limited and only now is the region gaining its proper place in history, mainly through the French Mission working in Makran since 1985 (R. Besenval, Miri Qalat, Shahi Tump, Dasht plain) and the German Mission to central (Sohr Damb/Nal) and southeastern Baluchistan, established in 1996–97. This research is now gradually facilitating the building of models of past life on a more solid footing, but it also reveals the limits of such an endeavor: too many areas remain unexplored, too much information is inadequately published, and too many questions cannot be answered by the old data. However, no matter how much further information is needed, Baluchistan is crucial for understanding cultural development within the Indo-Iranian Borderlands until the abandonment of settled life in the second millennium BC and for assessing its role in the wider interaction spheres: was it a border, frontier, or an intermediary?

The Cultural Landscape through Time

Figure 2 Mehrgarh: Bolan section with Neolithic levels (with J.-F. Jarrige, M. Tosi and M. Vidale). Photo: Ute Franke 1983. ã 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Considering the geographical barriers described, the question arises as to whether they went along with cultural isolation. At a first glance, the number of archaeological assemblages, mostly pottery, supports this idea. The wide distribution of certain styles, however, points to a different direction. Its implications are difficult to assess since unlike ‘imported’ exotic commodities and materials, such as sea shells, semiprecious stones, and metals which were exchanged, looted, or paid as tribute, and even unlike the copying of new technologies, the adaptation of pottery designs, figurines, or other artifact styles inherits a semantic dimension which is difficult to assess (see Pottery Analysis: Stylistic). With regard to the amount and nature of archaeological data, we have to define descriptive units. The Balochistan Tradition is the overarching geographically and temporally continuous heuristic system composed of multilinear archaeological entities which are linked in space and time. ‘Eras’ are developmental stages, such as food-producing and regionalization. A ‘phase’ combines a number of cultural complexes within a broadly defined region and time trajectory. ‘Cultural complexes’ or ‘horizons’ are recurrent configurations of features within archaeological assemblages, at present mostly pottery styles. Per definitionem they reflect human abilities, requirements, stylistic, and technological choices and preferences, but are not a priori considered to represent particular social or even ethnic groups. Their

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distribution patterns form the cultural landscape and outline ‘mental’, or conceptual, maps. Recent research has shown that these styles and horizons are still badly defined and dated which makes the reconstruction of these processes through time and the assessment of interaction and its impact on development difficult. Accordingly, we refrain from merging styles and horizons into larger units that have little analytical value, but rather discuss the smaller entities, paying tribute to regional stylistic diversity notwithstanding shared features. Early Food Producing Era: First Settlements (Mehrgarh I, II, KGM I, II, Anjira I, II, Miri I?)

After around 7000 BC in northern Baluchistan, mobile hunters and gatherers had gradually settled down. The adaptation of einkorn, emmer, wheat, and barley as staple crops, and a successful animal husbandry (cattle, goat, sheep), facilitated the development and growth of villages (see Animal Domestication; Plant Domestication). Mehrgarh is the type site for understanding the formation of a tradition that was to last for nearly seven millenniums (Figure 2). Sevenmeter high deposits and nine building levels for the Neolithic Periods reveal alternating shifts of the habitation and cemeteries over a long time. Altogether, 77 well-planned houses with two, four, and later six rooms and separate communal storage facilities were excavated (Figures 3 and 4). 320 burial chambers contained ochre-covered bodies of all sexes and age classes (Figure 5). On 11 out of 225 examined bodies, signs of ancient dentistry were found. Elaborate shell, stone, and copper ornaments, lithic objects, sometimes bitumen baskets, human figurines, and goat sacrifices accompanied the dead. While in Period I, heat-treated steatite, turquoise and lapis lazuli beads, and shell bangles probably arrived as finished objects, several workshops and wasters indicate an intensive local production during Period II, marking the beginning of technologies that remained characteristic throughout time. Pottery appears for the first time in Period II, along with stone vessels, but it is in Period III that these technologies were greatly advanced. Incipient farming and animal husbandry, and the first introduction of pottery were also noted at KGM near Quetta and, albeit at a later stage, further south at Anjira. The oldest settlements in southeastern Baluchistan date to the later fifth millennium. While in northern Baluchistan an interaction network developed, the picture in Makran is different. The lowermost aceramic levels at Shahi Tump I and a few other sites are, if at all, related to the Iranian Plateau. The faunal material indicates a change in

subsistence strategies after Period I, and further research will show whether this site belongs to the Early Food Producing Era. Incipient Regionalization: The Expansion of Settlements. The Kile Ghul-Mohammad/Togau Horizon (Mehrgarh III, KGM III, Anjira II, Sohr Damb I?, South Eastern Baluchistan I, Makran: Miri I?, II, Mundigak I–II)

The time of Mehrgarh III (late fifth and early fourth millennium) was marked by a considerable rise in the number of settlements in northern Baluchistan. Many were new foundations, indicating a population growth that reflected the success of subsistence economies. Settlements now also appeared in central and southeastern Baluchistan (Adam Buthi, Niai Buthi). Some sites are small (<1 ha), others, including Sheri Khan Tarakai in the Bannu Basin, are 16–21 ha large. At Mehrgarh, Period III pottery (Figure 6) was scattered over about 100 ha, but the area was probably not inhabited at the same time. This development was accompanied by a marked increase in the manufacture and varieties of goods produced. The raw materials processed in a bead workshop in Mehrgarh III include resources that are not locally available, such as turquoise, lapis lazuli, agates, jasper, marine shells, and copper. Despite an increased production, the number of grave goods decreases further, particularly in male burials, a shift that, along with the absence of ochre treatments and partial or secondary burials, reflects a change in the conception of death and afterlife. The introduction of the potter’s wheel and high temperature updraft kilns predate the first appearance in Central Asia by almost 1000 years. Large quantities of a very well-fired, thin-walled, red-slipped and black-painted pottery were now produced. These KGM, Togau, and related types are truly amazing in terms of technology. Their distribution extends from northern and central to southeastern Baluchistan, the Bannu Basin, Mehrgarh, Mundigak I, and Amri in southern Sindh. One motif of the Togau painting style as defined by B. de Cardi characterizes stylistic development from c. 4000 BC to the mid-third millennium: a row of stylized caprids (Togau A), subsequently reduced to the forepart (Togau B), a hook (Togau C, D) and, in southeastern Baluchistan, to a mere stroke (Togau E). Recent excavations at Sohr Damb/Nal have shown, however, that its use as a chronological marker is problematical. The tombs of Period I at Sohr Damb contain remains of multiple fragmentary burials, accompanied by pottery vessels, carnelian, agate, lapis lazuli,

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Figure 3 Mehrgarh, Plan of MR3 Periods I-IIB. Courtesy, French Mission to Mehrgarh, C. Jarrige. ã 2007 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Figure 4 Mehrgarh, view of houses (MR3, levels 4–9). Courtesy, French Mission to Mehrgarh, C. Jarrige.

Figure 5 Mehrgarh IB: burial , with basket. Courtesy, French Mission to Mehrgarh, C. Jarrige.

Figure 6 Mehrgarh: bowl from Period III. Courtesy, French Mission to Mehrgarh, C. Jarrige.

and steatite beads, shells with red pigment, grinding stones, and stone weights (Figure 7). Togau D bowls are standard inventory, but they are associated with Togau A–C and even Togau E bowls, KGM, and Kechi Beg (hereafter: KB) vessels (Figures 8 and 9), styles previously considered to represent development through time. The use of white pigment provides a link to the Bannu Basin and Punjab, but the chronological frame for this ware is not well established. C14 dates are not yet available, but parallels with Mehrgarh III–IV and Miri II–IIIa point to a date from c. 3800 to 3300 BC. The dancers on the small bowl from Sohr Damb (Figure 10) have a close parallel at Mehrgarh III, but also resemble the Sialk III painting style from the Iranian Plateau (late fifth/early fourth millennium BC).

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Figure 7 Sohr Damb/Nal: tomb 739/740, Period I. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. ã 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 8 Sohr Damb/Nal: pottery from tomb 711, Period I. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. ã 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In Makran, the settlement and cemeteries of Miri Period II date to the first half of the fourth millennium BC (Figure 11). The bodies were treated with ochre, buried on a mat or wrapped in cloths. Grave goods include stone and a remarkable variety of metal objects, for example, axes, spearheads, mirrors, and tools, some of them made of pure copper. The use of almandine garnet for bead making indicates advanced craftsmanship since it is a very hard material to work and elsewhere attested only at Mehrgarh III. Likewise exceptional are objects made from sea shells and fish bones (Figure 12). The graves have

no pottery, but the assemblage from the habitation is still rather isolated from the rest of Baluchistan. Terracotta bulls with and without humps match the faunal record that shows a predominance of cattle and caprines. This occupation is compared to chalcolithic Iran, Susa I, Tall-I Bakun, Sialk II, Tappe Hissar IA-C, and Susa I, while links to Tappe Yahya V are few. The wide distribution of objects, goods, and technologies witnesses the movement of people through a large area. Whether styles traveled with or without their semantic value is open to question.

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Figure 9 Sohr Damb/Nal: KB beakers from tomb 740, Period I. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. ã 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 10 Sohr Damb/Nal: Bowl with ‘dancers’, Tr. IIIb, l. 749, Period I. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. ã 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Notwithstanding expanding interaction, differences in style, economy and, for example, burial customs imply persistent local patterns. Widening Horizons in a Patterned Landscape (Mehrgarh IV–VI, KGM IV/Damb Sadaat I–II, Anjira II–III, Sohr Damb I–II, South Eastern Baluchistan II, Makran Miri IIIa, Shahr-e Sokhta I, Tappe Yahya IVC, Mundigak II–III)

The subsequent period corresponds to Mehrgarh IV–VI, dated to c. 3500 – 2900/2800 BC. At the beginning of this time, the habitation was moved for the last time. A significant change was the abandonment of communal in favor of individual storages

within now larger houses. Irrigation channels facilitated an intensified cultivation of wheat and other plants needed to feed a growing population. The shift from cattle to sheep and goat keeping possibly indicates the integration of larger grazing areas and wider seasonal movements of people. At Sohr Damb/Nal, Period II is marked by many changes. The typical Period I pottery is replaced by the buff Nal ware, although highly fired, blackslipped KB white-on-dark slip bowls, which form c. 15% of the inventory, reveal that firing technology survived a hiatus evident in stratigraphy, architecture, and burial customs. These vessels carry the earliest graphemes known in this region, one or two engraved or painted in white signs. The houses are small, but

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Figure 11 Shahi Tump Tr. IV, period II architecture. Courtesy, French Mission to Makran, R. Besenval.

Figure 12 Shahi Tump, period II, mother-of-pearl fish. Courtesy, French Mission to Makran, R. Besenval.

well equipped with kitchen utensils and installations for food preparation. Among these tools, simple bull clay figurines and personal ornaments are most frequent. The tombs contain just one skeleton in a flexed position, and the grave goods comprise of only a few pottery vessels and personal ornaments. The same

tendency toward lower-status objects in tombs was observed at Mehrgarh III. The only later cemetery found at that site was devoted to infants and had almost no grave goods. In Makran, the Shahi Tump Period IIIa, dated to 3500–3000 BC, yielded a rich funerary culture with pottery, shell containers with ochre, stone vessels, beads, and copper seals, associated here, as elsewhere, predominantly with female bodies, and a 15 kg copper weight inlaid with shell and carnelian, similar in shape to stone weights from Sohr Damb/Nal Period I (Figure 13). The appearance of Togau and Bichrome sherds and the use of white pigment reflects links with the rest of Baluchistan. Still, comparisons with sites in Iran (Susa IIIa, Sialk IV.2, Tall-e Iblis IV–VI) are stronger. Shell bangles with a ridged decoration have almost identical counterparts in a late fourth/early third millennium tomb at Sarazm in Tadjikistan. Forty thousand heat-treated steatite beads made with a technology known in Baluchistan since early Mehrgarh were also found in that tomb, showing that interaction started earlier and was much more extensive than previously thought. At the same time, the discovery of beveled-rim bowls from layers just above manifests the presence of features that hallmark the proto-Elamite horizon in Iran (see below). The expansion of settlements, their further growth in number and size, the emergence of monumental architecture, perimeter walls, platforms, seals, and first graphemes, advanced technical diversity and craft specialization indicates an increasing economic, cultural, and social complexity. A similar development is witnessed in the eastern lowlands, where the spread of certain pottery types and other features – first the Hakra and Ravi wares in Punjab and, from c. 3000 BC onward, of the Kot Diji horizon – indicates an increased mobility between the highlands and the plains. Another hallmark of this time is the appearance of a large variety of pottery styles, such as KB, Togau C/D, Quetta, Nal, and gray wares. They link Baluchistan (Kacchi Plain, Quetta, Zhob, Loralai, Pishin, central and southern Baluchistan) with the Bannu Basin, Sindh, and beyond. Yet, the lack of stratified assemblages that are large enough to account for functional variation, hampers patterning their temporal and spatial distribution, a preposition to the formulation of generic relationships. The ‘Kechi Beg horizon’ comprises a number of pottery styles discovered by Fairservis and de Cardi between Quetta and Kalat, and subsequently at Mehrgarh. Three of the nine wares are considered to be horizon markers. KB black-on-buff slip (MR V) shares many motifs with KB bichrome that has a very

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Figure 13 Shahi Tump, period IIIa: burial with copper weight. Courtesy, French Mission to Makran, R. Besenval.

delicate black design and a red band or infill painted on buff (Figure 9) , while the additional use of white is only attested at Mehrgarh (Figure 14). At Mehrgarh (IV, V) and KGM (IV) it occurs stratigraphically later than KGM and Togau A–C pottery, but these types overlap at Surab (Surab II.i ¼ Anjira III). Despite differences in fabric, the fine brush painting and patterns such as hatched lozenges and ‘ladders’ link this pottery with Amri Period I in Sindh. The typological and chronological range of this type is not defined well enough to understand its genesis and spread, not to speak of regional variants and their development through time. At Sohr Damb, it co-occurs with KGM-pottery in Period I, but is absent in Period II, although KB white-on-dark slip vessels are common, indicating that not all KB types are contemporary. Although, as discussed above, the Togau C/D ‘bowls’ with the stylized hook pattern appear already in Sohr Damb Period I, they are nevertheless a significant marker of the early third millennium sites. They were found at Mehrgarh V–VI, at most sites in central and southeastern Baluchistan (Anjira II–III, Balakot IA/B), in the piedmont area in eastern Sindh, at Amri I, and Miri Qalat IIIa. Most probably, this ware originated in the central highlands and spread from there to, for example, Kirthar Piedmont. There, it co-occurs with Nal and late Quetta pottery, but it was not found at the Quetta sites and Sohr Damb II. The ‘Quetta horizon’ as defined by Piggott and Fairservis is marked by a buff or red ware painted in black with a fine brush with complex geometric patterns based on black–white contrasts and arranged in friezes that cover large parts of the body (Figures 15–17). This ‘geometric’ pottery occurs at Damb Sadaat in Periods II and III, together with

Figure 14 Mehrgarh, period V, polychrome beakers. Courtesy, French Mission to Mehrgarh, C. Jarrige.

figurative and floral motifs, simple linear designs, and unpainted vessels. It is the hallmark of a horizon that extended as far as Gumla II, Namazga III (handmade), Mundigak III, and Shahr-e Sokhta I. The use of red and yellow pigments noted at Namazga and Shahr-e Sokhta is unknown in Quetta, but provides a link to polychrome Nal pottery. Simple lines and the bracket motif are hallmarks of the later stages (late Quetta, late Damb Sadaat III ¼ Sadaat). Although the criteria for a proposed stylistic development from Damb Sadaat I–III are far from clear and the excavations at that site were small, in Mehrgarh typical Quetta ware appears in Period VI and late Quetta pottery in Period VII/Nausharo IA–C,

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Figure 15 Mehrgarh, period VII, Quetta ware. Courtesy French Mission to Mehrgarh, C. Jarrige.

Figure 16 Mehrgarh, period VII, Quetta ware. Courtesy, French Mission to Mehrgarh, C. Jarrige.

a distribution that supports this scheme. At Sohr Damb II, few typical ‘Quetta’ sherds were found, but Sadaat types are common in Period III (Figure 18, lower left). The bracket motif is particularly common in southeastern Baluchistan, where it overlaps with Early Harappan wares. A date into the later third millennium can thus be ruled out. Since its discovery just after 1900, ‘Nal pottery’ has been divided into an earlier polychrome ware, marked by the application of yellow and turquoise after firing in addition to black and red, and a later monochrome series. Both share complex geometric patterns characterized by multiple contour lines, geometric designs with stepped borders, arranged in friezes and metopes, but the designs are more elaborate on the polychrome vessels (Figure 19). Realistic or abstract figurative motifs such as felines, bulls, birds, and hybrid creatures, and floral ornaments are also common (Figure 20). Despite the occurrence of repetitive designs, their composition and execution reveals many individual traits, and hardly two pieces are identical in detail, betraying artistic freedom and craft specialization of the potters, and probably a

highly symbolic meaning. Some of these motifs and structural principles can be seen on Quetta ware, but the polychromatic nature, the particular addition of structural elements into complex patterns, and the figurative motifs underline its originality. Recent excavations at Sohr Damb/Nal, where this pottery occurs exclusively in Period II, have finally placed it into a cultural and chronological context. As a result, the notion of the polychrome ware as older and of its use a funerary ware has to be abandoned: it was found in vast numbers in domestic contexts, along with monochrome pottery. It appears fully fledged in Period II, but stylistic evolution is apparent. The discovery of a late Nal assemblage in 2006, marked by the lack of turquoise, a more careless execution and the use of a wider brush, confirms this impression. The new motifs and design are closely linked to Mehrgarh VII, Balakot, and other sites of the late Early Harappan Period in southeastern Baluchistan. Nal pottery, or similar types, occur at Mehrgarh VI, Miri Qalat IIIa-b (Figure 21), Shahr-e Sokhta I–II (Figure 22), Tappe Yahya IVC1, and in the Kandahar region, where it was probably intrusive. Considering this wide distribution, its lack at the nearby Quetta sites, and vice versa, indicates the persistence of distinctive cultural zones. A similar pattern is reflected by painted gray wares. The Faiz Mohammad and the Emir Gray Ware share the distinctive technology of high temperature firing in a reduced atmosphere, but have distinctive shapes and motifs, and are rather localized with exclusive distribution patterns, notwithstanding overlaps. While the Emir Gray Ware predominates in the southwest, Shahr-e Sokhta I-III, Tappe Yahya VA–IVB5 (few), and Makran (Miri IIIb), the former was mainly found at Mehrgarh VI–VII and from Quetta to Surab, but rarely further south. At Sohr Damb, one vessel was found in a Period II tomb, carrying a pattern identical to that on a buff ware pot from Mehrgarh VII (Figures 16 and 17). The

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Figure 17 Sohr Damb/Nal, period II: gray ware beaker, tomb 768. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. Photo: A. Lange.

Figure 18 Sohr Damb/Nal, period III, pottery from Trench 9. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. ã 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

co-occurrence of both gray ware types at Mundigak III–IV.1 revealed continued links of this site with both regions. These patterns reflect the presence of two larger cultural regions within Baluchistan, a southern one which has connections with northern Baluchistan, but is also still oriented toward Iran, and a northern one that extends from Khuzdar to the Kachi plain and has affinities with southern Afghanistan and the western fringes of the Indus plains. Before we discuss

the final centuries predating the rise of the Indus Civilization, we will have a look at southeastern Iran, where these horizons intermingled and urban centers developed.

Baluchistan and Its Neighbors: Shifting Relations The third millennium BC is a time of strong cultural dynamics, evident in archaeological record from

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Figure 19 Sohr Damb/Nal, period II: polychrome pottery from Trench II. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. ã 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 20 Sohr Damb/Nal, period II: polychrome pottery from Trench II. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. ã 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 21 Makran Miri IIIb: polychrome bowl. Courtesy, French Mission to Makran, R. Besenval.

Sistan, Afghanistan, Tadjikistan, and Turkmenistan. In southeastern Iran, urbanity emerged around 3000 BC. In addition to borderland interactions, the appearance of proto-elamite features, such as inscribed tablets, seals, and sealings, as well as diagnostic pottery types (beveled-rim bowls, nose-lug jars, Djemdat Nasr pottery types) signals that political entities in Khuzestan and Fars extended their economic and political interest to the east, as far as Shahr-e Sokhta (I), Tappe Yahya (IVC2), and even Miri Qalat (late Period IIIa, beveled-rim bowls only). Whether the moving force behind this development was economic and/or political, it marks the beginning of a new, very dynamic era in human interaction at the very beginning of the third millennium BC. Shahr-e Sokhta, located in an inland basin in Iran– Sistan at a seasonal lake, is the central place in a settlement chamber that was occupied for more than 1000 years. It has 11 phases divided into four periods. Starting from a 10–15 ha site around 3000 BC (Period I.10–9, then destruction), it reached c. 115 ha during Periods II (Phases 8–5) and III (Phases 4–2) when it developed into an urban center with monumental architecture, nucleated residential areas, craftsmen’s quarters with alabaster, semiprecious stone and metal workshops, a 20 ha graveyard, and a hinterland with more than 75 sites. At Shahr-e Sokhta Period I, a strong affinity with Central Asia and Baluchistan is present alongside these western elements: 40% of the painted pottery at Shahr-e Sokhta carry geometric patterns that also characterize Namazga III, Mundigak III, and the Damb Sadaat II horizon in the Quetta Valley. Human figurines and compartmented seals confirm these links and indicate that this style was more integrated into the local repertoire than the western features. Nal pottery occurs in Periods I and II and is

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Figure 22 Chronological chart. Ute Franke. ã 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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probably intrusive, but its patterns were copied to local shapes. Following a destruction, new pottery types and simple figurative motifs appear in Period II, especially the pear-shaped beaker that remains a diagnostic type throughout the sequence. Simple geometric patterns continue, but the complex Quetta pottery is not present any more. However, an increasing number of compartmented seals and certain pottery types (e.g., imported Faiz Mohammad Gray pottery (SiS III,5b-4)) reveals that links with Central Asia (Namazga IV) and Baluchistan continued. Many features of the pottery from Period III.5 to 2 and Rud-e Biyaban 2 are also well known from Mundigak IV.1–3, northern (Mehrgarh VIIA-C, Nausharo IA-D, Sohr Damb III) and southern Baluchistan (Miri IIIc), linking these sites just before the formation of the Indus Civilization. In Period IV.1, the site was already small and urbanity had come to an end. Pottery from the Burnt Building shows close links with Bampur V/VI, Miri IIIc, and across the Persian Gulf. The latter region actually owes its pottery tradition to Sistan, and Potts has recently suggested that both formed the ancient kingdom of Marhashi, a land referred to in Mesopotamian cuneiform documents after 2400 BC. Following another destruction and a gap before Phase 0, it was abandoned at c. 1800 BC. Tappe Yahya, a mound in the Soghun Valley close to the Bampur Valley and Makran, is a small, but important site. Period V dates to the fifth millennium BC, Periods IVC–A to c. 3000 – 1900 BC, following a gap of unknown length. In Period IVC2, the protoelamite horizon is present, but it lacks the strong Namazga III/Quetta affiliation of Shahr-e Sokhta I. It has rather become known for its production of intercultural-style chlorite vessels, a commodity in high demand in Early Dynastic II and III Mesopotamia, although – with a peak of production at the very end of Period IVB – the workshops were rather late. Period IVB is, in general, contemporary with the Indus Civilization and Shahr-e Sokhta III-IV. The relative isolation of Tappe Yahya has become even more apparent through the discovery of the Jiroft civilization. Following illegal excavations, recent research brought to light a large city, Konar Sandal, center to more than 200 settlements and cemeteries, which contained hundreds of elaborately carved and inlaid chlorite vessels with a figurative iconography amalgamates local, Central Asian, elamite, and Mesopotamian features. Along with seals and sealings, pottery and alabaster vessels, as well as metal artifacts, they represent a highly symbolic iconography, superb craft specialization, and wealth. Konar Sandal dates back to the earlier third millennium

BC, but the majority of objects belong to the second half of the millennium. Whether Jiroft is the ancient kingdom of Aratta, mentioned in the Sumerian cuneiform texts, or ancient Marhashi, the discovery of this civilization is certainly crucial for understanding political, cultural, and economic relations and developments. Two hundred kilometers further north a similarly profuse culture was discovered at Shahdad. Little is known about the earliest occupation with an extensive copper working area and bead workshops (late fourth and early third millennium BC), but objects from almost 400 tombs mirror a highly advanced complex society with a profuse art and iconography that reflect its integration into the horizon that during the second half of the third millennium BC linked Susa, Sistan (Yahya IVB, Shahr-e Sokhta IV, Jiroft, Bampur V–VI), southern Baluchistan (Miri IIIc–IV, Mehi), the Arabian Peninsula (e.g., Tell Abraq, Hili Tomb A), Central Asia (Namazga IV–V, Mundigak IV.2–3, BMAC), and northern Baluchistan (Quetta hoard, Sibri, Mehrgarh VIII). With the rise of the Indus Civilization after 2600 BC, a centralized state emerged in the Indus Valley that extended its sphere of interest to the resourcerich areas in Afghanistan, Baluchistan, and Oman. The cuneiform documents reflect episodes of contact and conflict between Agade Meluhha, and the lands in between, but archaeological traces are rare, both in southeastern Iran and at the Indus, notwithstanding mutual links with southern Baluchistan (Miri Qalat IIIc–IV, Kulli). Considering the large-scale exposures at Shahr-e Sokhta, in Jiroft, Shahdad, and in the Indus Valley, this negative evidence cannot be adduced to the randomness of the archaeological record. It rather evokes the picture of directed encounters, at least as far as the Indus Civilization is concerned. While the comparative chronology of the horizon that links Shahr-e Sokhta (Phases 5–1), Miri Qalat IIIb–IV, Mundigak IV, Mehrgarh VIIB–C, Nausharo IB–D, and Sohr Damb III is relatively well established, the absolute chronological framework of this particular time, and thus that of the end of urbanization, is controversially discussed, with implications on questions such as which entities participated in these cross-cultural relations, what impact did that have on their development, and how long did these cities exist. If the end of the urban phase at Shahr-e Sokhta dates to the late third millennium BC, as suggested by the Italian mission, it overlapped with the Indus Civilization and the Akkadian empire. If dated to the mid-third millennium, as suggested by the French Missions, this horizon ended at the very beginning of the Indus Civilization, and thus before

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the rise and expansion of the Akkadian empire. The – rather few – radiocarbon dates from Shahr-e Sokhta are not very helpful, despite the recent reassessment. However, new evidence from Baluchistan, particularly Miri Qalat IIIc–IV and Sohr Damb III–IV, throws new light on this question, in favor of the later dating (Figures 23–26).

Figure 23 Miri Qalat IIIC: incised gray ware. Courtesy. French Mission to Makra, R. Besenval. ã 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 25 Miri Qalat IV: black slipped Indus jar. Courtesy, French Mission to Makran, R. Besenval.

Figure 24 Miri Qalata IV: painted black-on-red Indus ware. Courtesy. French Mission to Makran, R. Besenval.

Figure 26 Sohr Damb/Nal, period III, necklace from Trench IX. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. Photo: A. Lange ã 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Figure 27 Sohr Damb/Nal, period III and IV (2nd from right, lower row), pottery from Trenches IV and IX. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. Photo: A. Lange. ã 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Early Harappan Horizon: Prelude to Civilization (Mehrgarh VIIA-C, Nausharo I, Damb Sadaat III, Anjira IV–V, Sohr Damb III, southeastern Baluchistan, Makran Miri IIIb–c, Shahr-e Sokhta II–III, Tappe Yahya IVC-B?, Bampur I–IV, Mundigak IV.1–3)

Although some of the cultural horizons described above continued to exist to c. 2600/2500 BC, these centuries also witnessed the appearance of new styles, technologies, and an increasingly complex economic, social, and political organization, just before the rise of the Indus Civilization around 2600/2500 BC. This development is very clear in the Indus plains, especially in Punjab (see Asia, South: Indus Civilization). The gradual replacement of Balochi features at Harappa 2 (2800–2600) and the appearance of Kot Diji traits, the major Early Harappan lowland cultural complex, in Baluchistan and the borderlands seems to signal the expansion of this horizon. However, as already noted by Mughal, some ‘Kot Dijian’ features are known from Mehrgarh V and Siah Damb II.i, that is, from levels that predate the type site and Harappa 2. Therefore, these discriminatory cultural traits also need to be better defined and dated before the directions of ‘movements’, and their implications, can be assessed. At Mehrgarh VIIA–C and Anjirah IV, Nal and Faiz Muhammad Gray wares are still present, but not Togau D pottery. Sadaat ware, mainly represented by the bracket and simple linear designs, is now widely distributed. Mehrgarh was abandoned after Period VIIC, but occupation continued at the nearby site Nausharo to the Indus Period and beyond (Nausharo

Figure 28 Sohr Damb/Nal, period III, bowl from Trench 1. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. ã 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

I–IV). In Period IC, the gradual replacement of Balochi through Kot Dijian features was also noted, foreshadowing the integration of the site by the Indus Civilization in Period II, after a short transitional period (ID). A similar development was observed at Miri Qalat, where in Period IIIc new technological and stylistic features were introduced (Figure 24). Many of the new and old elements continued into Period IV, marked by the arrival of a Harappan occupation (Figures 25 and 26). Typical for the former horizon are flat basins, painted pipal and fish patterns, dishes with raised cordons and painted wavy lines, as well as incised, burnished, and painted gray wares (Figure 23). This horizon links Mundigak IV, late Quetta, Nausharo IC–D, Miri Qalat IIIb–c, Shahr-e Sokhta III.5–2, and now also Sohr Damb III.

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Figure 29 Sohr Damb/Nal, period III, cylindrical pot with caprides, Trench I. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. Photo: A. Lange. ã 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

There, Period III marks the building of a new settlement at a time when the previous buildings were already in ruins and covered with sand or ashes. Sixmeter high deposits revealed four building phases. The architecture, artifact styles, and technology once more reflect many changes. Tombs have not yet been found, but the houses and rooms grew larger, walls were more solid, with a foundation of gravel and beams. In the largest building, the Burnt Building (AK6), hundreds of vessels and objects, such as grinding stones, pestles, tools for leather working and potting, unbaked and baked clay figurines, mostly of humped bulls, and beads were found (Figure 27). Miniature clay vessels, crucibles, and moulds as well as lead cores indicate metal working, but finished objects are rare. The Nal pottery is replaced by more simple and plain shapes and motifs. Pear-shaped storage jars with linear decoration, similar to Complex A pottery from Quetta, footed beakers, s-shaped vases and shallow bowls reveal a change in pottery technology: bodies are more thick, lower bodies often molded and bases string-cut (Figure 28). Designs include linear and simple geometric patterns, pipal leaves, bulls (Figure 29), and caprines, which have identical counterparts in Mundigak IV.1 (Figure 30). The few surviving Nal motifs, most prominently the omega, are present in a ‘degenerated’ form (Figure 31). Stylistic development is present, but a great deal of variability is related to spatial distribution and function. From Sohr Damb III, 59 radiocarbon dates that are relevant to the chronological problems discussed above are available now from well-stratified deposits. They show a clear cluster from c. 2700 to 2400 BC, leaving no doubt that the terminal phase of Period III falls to the very early rather than the later Indus Period (Figure 22). This date also leaves room for the subsequent Period IV, a very eroded occupation which belongs to the Kulli–Harappan horizon, the

Figure 30 Sohr Damb/Nal, Period III, stand from hoard, ‘degenerated’ Nal motif. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. Photo: A. Lange. ã 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

hallmark of southern Baluchistan during the later third millennium BC. The Kulli Complex developed as a regional style around 2600 BC and was later marked by a strong Harappan ‘touch’, which reflects the westerly expansion of this civilization and its merger with local

ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands 669

Figure 31 Table showing shared artifact styles during the second half of the third millennium BC. Ute Franke. ã 2008 Dr. Ute FrankeVogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

traditions after 2400 BC. This dating is supported by C14 dates which range from 2500 to 2300 BC. This evidence also corresponds well with the sequence and dates from Nausharo, where the transitional horizon ID is followed by an earlier (Period II) and a later Indus settlement (Period III). At Miri Qalat, the early date of the Indus occupation (Period IV), which shares many local features with Period IIIc, is mainly based on stylistic criteria. The assemblage from Miri Qalat IV reveals that local and Kulli features were absorbed and that a style is present during the second half of the third millennium was found not only at Bampur, Shahdad, Jiroft, Susa, northern Baluchistan, Bactria, and on the Arabian Peninsula, but also at Shahr-e Sokhta IV, then already a small site (Figure 22). In short, the review of the evidence indicates that the horizon attested to at Sohr Damb III, Nausharo IC–D, Miri IIIc, and Shahr-e Sokhta III dates to the time that ended just when or shortly after the Indus Civilization began to rise. After 1900 BC, the political constellations changed again. Magan lost its importance as supplier of copper to Mesopotamia, the Indus Civilization disintegrated as a centralized state, and large regions in southeastern Iran, Baluchistan, and Sindh were abandoned for almost 1000 years for reasons as yet unknown.

Conclusion It has become evident that human development is manifested in Baluchistan from the seventh millennium onward. While this development was, in general, continuous, regional differences and changes in the material culture through time were present. The emerging picture does not reflect a ‘monocultural’ region, but a patterned landscape, marked by the appearance and disappearance of particular cultural styles. Looking at the cycles of growth, expansion, and abandonment, it becomes clear that in cultural terms, prehistoric Baluchistan was neither a border nor a frontier, but a dynamic interaction zone. Nevertheless, the communities that made the processes described above happen did not become integrated into a large scale, coherent entity, notwithstanding the fact that smaller regions, such as southeastern Baluchistan and Sindh Kohistan, were closely interrelated during the early third millennium BC. One likely reason why a large-scale merger did not happen probably is the rugged topography. The importance of terrain as determining factor becomes clear when we look at the region’s more recent history. As in Afghanistan, expanding conquerors and empires, be it Dareios or Alexander the Great, nomadic tribes

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from the north, or the British army, had their hold on Baluchistan because it was important as a trespass. But they never ruled it for long – and they left very few archaeological traces. Whenever possible, preference was given to the maritime route and waterways, or the open plains. Only then, it was considered a barrier and it never regained the economic and cultural prosperity of its prehistoric past when it was a center in its own right which participated in and contributed to regional development processes. See also: Animal Domestication; Asia, South: Buddhist Archaeology; India, Deccan and Central Plateau; India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South; Indus Civilization; Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier; Megaliths; Neolithic Cultures; Paleolithic Cultures; Sri Lanka; Asia, Southeast: Pre-agricultural Peoples; Pottery Analysis: Stylistic; Plant Domestication; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites.

Further Reading Besenval R (1997) Entre le Sud-Est iranien et la plaine de I’Indus: le Kech-Makran. Recherches arche´ologiques sur le peuplement ancien d’une marche des confins indo-iraniens. Arts Asiatiques 52: 5–36. Besenval R (2005) Chronology of Kech-Makran. In: Jarrige C (ed.) South Asian Archaeology 2001. Paris: ADPF E´ditions Recherche sur les Civilisations. Fairservis WA (1975) The Roots of Ancient India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Franke-Vogt U (2000) The Archaeology of Southeastern Balochistan. http://www.harappa.com/baluch. Franke-Vogt U (2005) Sohr Damb/Nal, Baluchistan, Pakistan. Ergebnisse der Grabungen 2001, 2002 und 2004. In: Archa¨ologische Mitteilungen aus Iran und Turan Band. 35–36, 2003– 2004, 83–141. Hakemi A (1997) Shahdad – Archaeological Excavation of a Bronze Age Center in Iran. Rome: IsMEO. Jarrige C, Jarrige J-F, Meadow RH, and Quivron G (eds.) (1995) Mehrgarh Field Reports 1975 to 1985 – From the Neolithic to the Indus Civilization. Karachi: Dept. of Culture and Tourism, Govt. of Sindh, and the French Foreign Ministry. Kenoyer JM (1991) The Indus Valley Tradition of Pakistan and western India. Journal of World Prehistory 5/4: 331–385. Mughal MR (1971) The Early Harappan Period in the Greater Indus Valley and Northern Baluchistan (c. 3000–2400 BC). PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. Possehl GL (1999) Indus Age. The Beginnings. New Delhi: Oxford and IBH. Potts DT (2001) Excavations at Tepe Yahya, Iran, 1967–1975: The Third Millennium. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Musuem Press. Potts DT (2005) In the beginning: Marhashi and the origins of Magan’s ceramic industry in the third millennium BC. Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 2005 16: 67–78. Salvatori, S, Vidale, M (1997) Shahr-e Sokhta 1975–1978: Central Quarters Excavation. Rome.

Shaffer JG (1992) The Indus Valley, Baluchistan and Helmand traditions: Neolithic through Bronze Age. In: Ehrich R (ed.) Chronologies in Old World Archaeology 3rd edn., pp. 441–464. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tosi M (ed.) (1983) Prehistoric Sistan. Rome: IsMEO. Wright RP (1984) Technology, Style and Craft Specialization: Spheres of Interaction and Exchange in the Indo-Iranian Borderlands, Third Millennium B.C. Ph.D. Dissertation. Ann Arbor.

Buddhist Archaeology Janice Stargardt, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary aksara A letter in one of the Indian systems of writing, it may combine the values of consonant and vowel. ayaka A platform projecting from the base drum of the stupa at or near the cardinal points, facing the gateways in the stupa railing. Especially common in Southeast India. Also – pillars, inscribed and or decorated pillars installed on the ayaka platforms. bodhisattva Variously, a being destined to be a Buddha in a future existence; an enlightened being [Buddha] who delays his extinction to help other beings progress towards that state. chakravartin Literally lord of the wheel (of the law), that is, world ruler. chattra Umbrella, with multiple tiers a symbol of status : 1–3 for a minister, 7 for a king, 9–11 for a chakravartin, an infinite number for a Buddha. dakshinapatha The southern trade route leading from the Ganges–Yamuna basin into the Deccan. dhamma [also dharma] Literally law, symbolized by a many-spoked wheel, but in Buddhism denotes the whole system of Buddhist thought and rules for righteous living. harmika Quadrangular structure on top of stupa dome and below the umbrella or spire. karma Sum of actions and inactions influencing the states of rebirth of all beings. Nibbana [also Nirvana] State of extinction after death when the chain of rebirth is broken; attainable only by enlightened beings – Buddhas and bodhisattvas. sangha The community of monks in both Buddhism and Jainism. samsara The cycle of existences, of births and rebirths. sikhara A tower of multiple stories and bearing architectural ornaments on each storey in a diminishing scale, developed as the superstructure of Buddhist temples in the second half of the first millennium CE. sima Boundary of the consecrated land of a Buddhist establishment, that is, of an individual monument or a complex of associated structures. triratna Literally three jewels, in Buddhism, the Buddha, dhamma, sangha. uttarapatha The northern trade route leading from the Ganges–Yamuna basin to the Indus Valley and Afghanistan.

ASIA, WEST/Buddhist Archaeology 671 vinaya The rules of conduct for Buddhist monks and nuns, of which several traditions survive. The Pali tradition is thought to be the oldest. yasti The wooden pole implanted on the summit of early stupas and, in the northern tradition penetrating into the solid core of the stupa with its base resting on the relic chamber. The part of the pole emerging from the top of the stupa could be decorated with flags and the tiers of umbrellas – both symbols of high status.

Introduction The geography of early Buddhist archaeological sites is in general associated with rivers, ancient coastlines, and trade routes by land and water. There is also a more nuanced geography, economic, political, and religious aspects of which will be discussed in the following sections. A fundamental feature of its economic geography will, however, be mentioned immediately: Buddhism has always been associated with societies which, through agricultural intensification or through trade, possessed enough surplus food to be able to support the variable, but sometimes considerable numbers of men who formed its monastic communities. Buddhist monks were required by their disciplinary rules (the vinaya) to refrain from providing for their own food and other material needs, and instead to offer the laity the opportunity of making merit by supporting them. Originating in Northeast India, the geography of the spread of early Buddhism was particularly associated with sites belonging to the developed Iron Age, undergoing urbanization and the crystallization of states in the Ganges–Yamuna and Indus Valleys, and along the valleys of the Mahanadi, Godavari, and Krishna Rivers and their tributaries which drained a central area of peninsular India from the northwestern Deccan, all the way to the coast of Southeast India. Thus the geography of Buddhism in the five centuries following the Buddha’s death (his nirvana), encompassed a wide spatial extent but was very uneven in its intensity (Figure 1). The life of the historical Buddha – also known as the Sakyamuni, sage of the Sakya people – provides some of the earliest dates in Indian history. Towards the end of the twentieth century there were controversies and downward revisions of these dates which have major implications for Indian historical archaeology and ancient history as a whole and in particular for the apparent discontinuities in early Buddhist archaeological evidence. A combination of archaeological and cross-textual evidence does indeed suggest that the Buddha’s birth and death took place approximately 100 years later than previously supposed, that is, that he was born in the first half of

the fifth century BCE and died eighty years later between c. 400 and c. 380 BCE. The importance of these revised dates will become evident when we consider below the typology and chronology of early Buddhist monuments in India. This article will not consider Buddhist thought, but will focus on those aspects reflected in the material remains of Buddhist sites. Aspects of Buddhist thought have antecedents in earlier, Upanisadic traditions. They concern concepts of central importance to the three great Indic religions: Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism. Two of these are, karma (which loosely equates to destiny) and samsara (the chain of birth and rebirth). Karma is not conceived as an indifferent, impersonal fate but rather as an individual fabric woven out of the accumulated actions (especially merit-making) of a being over many past existences – samsara – which will determine the level and fortunes of that individual’s future incarnations. The desire of all sincere Buddhists, Jains, and Hindus is to be released from the chain of existences and to become united with the Universal force. The many differences among and sectarian divides within these three Indian religions concern how that release may be achieved, as an individual or as a group, and how both the agents of release and what one is released into are conceptualized: in the form of many gods or god-like beings and multiple heavens, as a void or as a universal force. Of these three great Indian religions, only Buddhism has become a powerful, enduring influence outside India. Hinduism was adopted in parts of Southeast Asia for a limited period in the late first millennium CE, only to be merged with Buddhism (in Bali, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos) or Islam (in most of Indonesia and Malaysia). Buddhism is said to be the fastest growing religion in the West today and is enjoying some resurgence in China. The historical Buddha was contemporary with Mahavira, the founder of Jainism. Thus the revisions of the chronology of the Buddha’s life and death affect Jainism equally. Both lived and taught in the Ganges Valley during the fifth to fourth century BCE, in the area that became the state of Magadha in the fourth century BCE (mainly present-day Bihar), whereas the collection of Indic beliefs and practices known as Hinduism crystallized some centuries later and is still evolving. Buddhism became distinctive for its focus on the three jewels (triratna) of its teaching: the Buddha, dhamma (rules for righteous living), and sangha (the monastic community). All three elements played a central part in the strength of Buddhism in South Asia, c. fourth century BCE to twelfth century CE, and are the foundations of Buddhism’s continued appeal to large populations outside India in the world

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14

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I Magadha II Gandhara III Western Deccan IV Andhra-Kalinga V Pyu Kingdoms of Burma VI Suvannabhumi Mon kingdoms of Burma

A Ganges R. B Yamuna R. C Five Rivers (Indus) D Narmada R. E Godavari R. F Krishna R. G Mahanadi R. H Kaveri R. I Irrawaddy R.

1 Lumbini 2 Kapilavasthu 3 Kusinagara 4 Vesali 5 Pataliputra 6 Rajagrha 7 Nalanda 8 Sanchi 9 Mathura 10 Kalsi

11 Taxila 12 Urasa 13 Puskalavati 14 Bamiyan 15 Sagaram 16 Nasik 17 Jaggayapeta 18 Nagarjunakonda 19 Gummadidurru 20 Amaravati

21 Bhattiprolu 22 Guntupalli 23 Vengi 24 Thotlakonda 25 Sankaram 26 Ramatirtham 27 Salihundam 28 Tamralipti 29 Sri Ksetra 30 Pagan

Figure 1 Early Buddhist sites of India and Burma.

today. It has often been argued that, by the time of Buddhism’s eclipse in India, such long processes of reciprocal assimilation between Hinduism and Buddhism had taken place that it was possible

for Buddhists to become Hindus without abandoning key concepts and practices of their religion. One must also consider however that, in the face of the Muslim invasions of the sub-continent from the twelfth and

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thirteenth centuries onwards, religious identities on both the Islamic and anti-Islamic sides hardened in the process and the pressures on Buddhists to support the Hindu and Sikh kings leading the resistance to Islam probably became irresistible. Throughout its history, Buddhism has been equally dependant on the patronage of rulers and the loyal adherence of the lower classes of every society it has touched.

The Chronology and Geography of Early Buddhist Archaeology There are no specifically Buddhist archaeological remains contemporary with the Buddha’s lifetime. It is possible, however, to sketch some contextual archaeological features. There was an archaeological period of between eight and five hundred years between the Mohenjo Daro-Harappan civilization (c. 2400–1800 BCE), which spread along the Indus River Valley and into a considerable area of Northwest India and the rise of Gangetic sites in Northeast India. At present this period can only be characterized by phases of material culture – for example, the Chalcolithic and Iron Ages – and by specific pottery types. Two of these, in particular, are of great importance to India’s Iron Age and early historic archaeology to which early Buddhist archaeology belongs: the Painted Grey Wares [PGW] of western India c. 800–350 BCE, and the slightly later Northern Black Polished Wares [NBP]. Magadha in Northeast India was probably the core area in which NBP developed as an elaborate and highly distinctive form of early historic pottery. The production techniques and use of this ware gradually spread to all of northern India during the Mauryan period. Although there is at present no universal consensus among scholars about NBP chronology, the majority view assigns it to the period from c. 500–200 BCE. Thus it is a pottery associated with the developed Iron Age and early urbanization of Northeast India. In his lifetime, the Buddha would have used utensils made of both NBP and simpler ceramics, along with those of metal and wood. The processes of cultural contact, transport, and trade whereby NBP spread over the whole of northern India in the fourth and third centuries BCE are probably linked to the spread of Mauryan power at this time and of Buddhism from the third century BCE onwards. If the early history of Buddhism was deeply imbedded in Magadhan territory and the vicissitudes of Mauryan power, it later struck deep roots in other territories and polities inside and outside India. All but one of the urban sites closely associated in the Discourses of the Buddha with his life and death have been identified and at least to some extent excavated: Lumbini (where he was born), Bodh Gaya

(where he attained Enlightenment), Sarnath (where he began to teach the dhamma), Rajagrha, Sravasti, Kausambi, and Vaisali near or in which he sojourned and Kusinagara where he died and was cremated. Only Kapilavasthu (the capital of the Sakya oligarchy to which he belonged) lacks certain identification. All these sites lie within a fairly confined area of Northeast India, in territory that became the Magadha state. There are several reasons for the dearth of direct archaeological evidence from the time of the Buddha’s life: firstly only rammed mud, mud-bricks, timber, and thatch were in use as construction materials at this time (possibly also stone rubble in a mud matrix). These materials do not survive as a welldefined archaeological horizon, although future refinements of archaeological analyses may make it possible to trace them. Meanwhile, the presence (or absence) of NBP is often a valuable indicator of the age of a layer but provides only indirect evidence on Buddhist archaeology itself. The second reason for the rarity of direct evidence on the earliest phases of Buddhist archaeology is that all the sites associated with the Buddha’s lifetime became sites of renewed veneration and monumental construction as a result of the upsurge in Buddhism under the reign of the great Mauryan Emperor Ashoka (273–232 BCE) if not before. Archaeologists have generally been reluctant to disturb remains of the Ashokan era in order to investigate what may lie below them. The third reason is that in the period between the death of the Buddha and Buddhism’s resurgence under the Emperor Ashoka, it (like Jainism) was only one of several traditions of wandering ascetics in Northeast India, all of whom left no trace or only very faint traces in the archaeological record. Before the revisions of the dates of the Buddha’s life and death already mentioned, there seemed to be a very long hiatus of some two centuries between the Buddha’s death and the earliest known archaeological remains of Buddhist sites. The revised dates, however, narrow the gap between the Buddha’s death in Magadha territory, c. 380 BCE and the beginning of the Mauryan power there in c. 328 BCE to some fifty years. Candragupta, the first Mauryan emperor, consolidated the nascent state forms of Magadha. The Mauryans probably learnt from the well-articulated state institutions of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, which included territories on the northwest frontier of South Asia. In 330 BCE, Alexander of Macedon defeated Darius III, the last Achaemenid Emperor and pursued his conquests into these Achaemenid territories. Thus the newly powerful Magadhan state – so significant for Buddhism – took shape under the challenges presented by the momentous events reshaping the history of the Eastern Mediterranean

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and Western Asia. Greek Satrapies established in the wake of Alexander the Great’s conquests renewed and redirected the long traditions of commercial and cultural exchange between South Asia, Western Asia and the Mediterranean that had existed since the Mohenjo Dara-Harappa civilization some two thousand years before. In Gandharan Buddhist art, these several traditions – Persian, Greek, and Indian – merged to produce some remarkable regional art styles.

The Impact of Ashoka on Early Buddhism Ashoka was the grandson of Candragupta Maurya. He violently seized the throne of Magadha in 273 BCE, and eventually extended some kind of Mauryan overlordship to most of India. He also decisively defeated Greek attempts to regain their colonies in the northwestern territories. After a brutal campaign against Kalinga (Orissa and northern Andhra), Ashoka became a Buddhist in 262 BCE and from that time on exercised a decisive influence on Buddhist history by extending his powerful patronage to its teachings, renewing its institutional structures and supporting its spread. The Buddha himself had commanded that his remains be cremated, and a stupa be erected over them. In fact his cremated remains were divided into eight parts and given to eight rival claimants in authority at the following towns and cities on the territory that was to become the Mauryan state of Magadha: to Ajatasattu at Rajagrha, the Licchavis at Vesali, the Sakyas (the Buddha’s own clan) at Kapilavasthu, the Bulis at Allakappa, the Kolis at Ramagama, a Brahman at Vethadipa, the Mallas at Pava, and the Mallas at Kusinagara. The Brahmin, Drona, who divided the corporeal remains kept the urn and the Moriyas at Pipphalivana who arrived late on the cremation site received some ashes from the funeral pyre. All of these objects were treated as sacred relics over which stupa mounds were heaped up. The multiplicity of claimants to the Buddha’s remains in c. 380 BCE throws light on how weak and localized power was on Magadha territory at the time of the Buddha’s death. Only some fifty years later this situation began to change under Candragupta with the creation of the Mauryan state, while just over a century later, Ashoka, as the unchallenged ruler of the most powerful state in India, exercised an undisputed right to open up the stupas containing the Buddha’s cremated remains and make further distributions of his relics. At Kusinagara – the place where the Buddha died – a huge stupa called the Cremation Stupa still exists and, if the attribution is correct, it may be the earliest surviving Buddhist monument. While it is extremely likely that it has been enlarged and rebuilt many times – a common occurrence in Buddhism – it may

indeed contain a mud or mud-brick core with relics dating back to the time just after the Buddha’s death. Ashoka’s purpose in opening the original stupas was to subdivide the relics and distribute them as sacred objects in conversion missions to the regions of his empire, as well as to those outside it. Ashoka’s stone inscriptions record missions to the Middle East, Egypt, and Macedonia, as well as to Sri Lanka and Suvannabhumi (probably the Mon kingdoms of Lower Burma). Ashokan-era conversions to Buddhism at the last two are supported by local chronicles and legends but not as yet by firm archaeological evidence. The monuments of Ashoka’s reign associated with Buddhism fall into the following categories: about twenty magnificent stone pillars and pillar fragments (out of some forty mentioned in texts); his imperial edicts inscribed on these pillars, on caves, rock shelters and rock faces; a flat stone throne base now at Bodh Gaya; the mud core of a stupa at Vesali containing a reliquary; the core of the Dharmarajika stupa at Sarnath, and possibly some small votive stupas at Lumbini. In addition there are fragmentary structural remains – fortifications and other non-religious monumental remains-at Pataliputra (Candragupta’s capital), Rajagrha (Ashoka’s capital), Ganwaria, Sonkh, and Sravasti that are Mauryan (some possibly pre-Ashokan) in origin but not directly related to Buddhism. Many of Ashoka’s stone pillars were provided with lotus and animal capitals which contributed enduring symbols to the iconography of early Buddhism: the lion, bull, elephant, deer, lotus, wheel, and the pillar itself. If, as seems likely, this last represented a link between the realms of the Earth and the sky, it prefigured the yasti pole going from the pinnacle of the stupa in the northern Indian and Nepalese traditions, through its core with its base resting on the relic chamber. A distinguishing characteristic of Mauryan stone artifacts is that the stone has been brought to a fine polish that still survives. The very concept of erecting imperial pillars and inscribing imperial edicts on stone, the format and style employed in these inscriptions, the technique of stone polishing, as well as some of the sculptural styles (especially in the lions) all appear to be practices of the Achaemenid empire adopted and thoroughly assimilated by the Mauryan rulers. From this time onwards, these symbols entered the mainstream of Indian Buddhist art. As a powerful ruler, Ashoka would certainly have patronized the other religions practiced within his empire, but his own statements in the edicts reveal that his commitment to Buddhism was profound. During the some hundred years that elapsed between the Buddha’s death and Ashoka’s conversion, Buddhism was merely one of several loosely structured ascetic movements in the Magadha area. Internal

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dissensions arose quite quickly which the Second Buddhist Council, held in this interval, failed to resolve. Ashoka summoned the Third Buddhist Council (c. 250 BCE) which had a lasting impact on the development of the religion. While it is believed that the vinaya rules governing the structure and life of the monkhood (the sangha) were laid down by the Buddha, it may well be that the clear codification of the vinaya, its systematic adoption and, perhaps most significant, the creation of disciplinary procedures within the sangha to enforce it were the result of the work of the Third Buddhist Council. A codification of generally accepted versions of the Discourses of the Buddha began, which were then rigorously committed to memory. Numbers play a recurring role in this core of early Buddhist texts. Concepts, objectives, rules, attributes, people, spirits, actions, and heavens are listed in this way. Numbers are a mnemonic device which effectively supported the accuracy of the oral tradition. As we shall see below, Pali texts inscribed on gold and deposited in a relic chamber in Burma in c. the fifth century CE do not differ significantly from those transmitted orally and collected in Sri Lanka in the nineteenth century by the English founding members of the Pali Text Society. After the Third Buddhist Council but possibly also before, it became obligatory for monks to be resident in one place at least during the rainy season every year and, in practice, communities of monks who were largely sedentary can be traced in the rock shelters and cave shrines of the Vidisha area from the second century BCE and perhaps from the time of Ashoka himself. Similar claims have been made on the basis of the palaeography of very early Buddhist inscriptions on the drip ledges of monastic cave sites in northern Sri Lanka. Thus the three jewels of Buddhism – Buddha, dhamma, sangha – emerged as profoundly renewed and mutually reinforcing influences in Indian society from the third century BCE as a result of the powerful patronage of the Emperor Ashoka and the activities of the Third Buddhist Council. In particular it seems that the strong, self-regulating structures of the sangha became the central prop to the effective preservation and propagation of the meaning of the Buddha and his dhamma. The further history of Buddhism inside and outside India is ineluctably bound up with the forms and fortunes of the sangha in the various sects of Buddhism that emerged after the first century BCE. In turn, these relied on the patronage of rulers and the devoted support of the people.

The Links between Buddhism and Trade The impact of the Emperor Ashoka on Buddhism may serve as a paradigm of its dependence on the

patronage of rulers and the loyal devotion of ordinary people throughout its history. The geography of Buddhism sketched above shows that its links with traders also deserve attention. The Discourses of the Buddha preserve many instances of his accepting converts, close disciples, and merit-making gifts from all classes and castes of ancient Indian society, many of them traders. Thus itinerant merchants moving along the early Indian trade routes mentioned, and later making much longer journeys by land and sea, had no fear of becoming isolated from the Buddhist sources of religious inspiration as their Hindu counterparts may have done in the early centuries CE. The Emperor Ashoka himself had sent proselytising Buddhist missions to the limits of the then known world. Still other links existed at times between sangha and traders. Merit-making gifts to support Buddhism were not usually spent. They were invested and the proceeds from the investments were used to support the sangha and its activities. Since the vinaya rules precluded monks from handling financial affairs, there were councils of the laity to do this on their behalf. Members of the whole social spectrum supported Buddhism: short donatory inscriptions show that kings, queens and princesses, royal treasurers, bankers and their families, generals, royal scribes, superintendents of water houses, caravan leaders, heads of renovation works, artisans, stoneworkers, village leaders, farmers, leaders of the cowherds, sandalmakers, carters, and traders (including foreign traders) made gifts for the monumental and monastic buildings and the upkeep of the monastic communities. Similar people also served on the lay committees administering the gifts. Traders, in particular, had a specialized knowledge of how and where best to invest donations on behalf of the sangha. Thus the guestrooms of the monasteries dotted along major trade routes provided safe places where traders, their goods and their animals could stop on their journeys, affording them simultaneously with shelter, opportunities to make merit through donations or services to Buddhist foundations and also, on occasion, to receive loans from their committees to support their trading ventures. This draws attention to the particular character of the economic geography of Buddhism, which accounts in many ways for both the pattern of dispersal of ancient Buddhist sites and for many of the variations in their density.

The Geography of Early Buddhist Sites in India As Figure 1 shows, early Buddhist sites occurred in distinct clusters along ancient trade routes following rivers and coasts. The densest cluster of early Buddhist archaeological sites is on the territory that was to

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become the Magadha Kingdom – the Ganges–Yamuna basin. From this starting point and moving northwest along the uttarapatha (the northern trade route) leads one to the Gandhara cluster along the upper reaches of the Indus and Jhelum Rivers with a linked cluster over the Khyber Pass in what was once Achaemenid and Greek Satrapy territory in Afghanistan. These clusters include Taxila (whose name became synonymous with a university in many languages of South and Southeast Asia), Bimaran (where one of the earliest depictions of a Buddha image was found on a golden reliquary of c. first century BCE) and Begram. Returning to the Ganges–Yamuna basin of Magadha and moving southwest along the daksinapatha (the southern trade route) brings one to the early Buddhist stupas, railings and relief sculptures of Bharhut, Sanchi, and the cluster around Vidisha, on the tributaries of the Vetravati River, itself a tributary of the Yamuna. Further still to the southwest, are the cluster of Buddhist rock-cut shrines and monastic cells of the western Deccan at Ajanta, Nasik, Karle, Junnar, and Kanheri among others inland from, but parallel to, the West Coast and its trading kingdoms. Going further south and crossing to the East Coast, one reaches the Andhra clusters of sites that rival Magadha in density and have produced some of the most prolific and beautiful Buddhist art in India as a whole. They are grouped along both the great trading arteries of peninsular India, the Krishna and Godavari Rivers and their many tributaries that rise close to the western Deccan sites and flow down to the East Coast, as well as along the Andhra coast up to the delta of the Mahanadi River in Orissa. The apparently isolated site of Tamluk (Tamralipti) in Bengal is in fact also associated with trade sites on the Ganges Delta. This greater Andhra area includes Kalinga, the kingdom conquered by Ashoka immediately before his conversion to Buddhism. The distribution pattern of early Buddhist sites in Andhra reveals a striking congruence with late prehistoric Megalithic burial structures, suggesting that, in this region at least, there may be a sacred geography with prehistoric origins working together with the economic geography already mentioned (Figure 2). Claims have been made that Buddhism in Southeast India goes back to the Buddha’s lifetime and that it was established there as a result of his visits and teaching. The area is well away from the Magadha territory known to be associated with the Buddha. Evidence generally to support this claim of conversion during the Buddha’s lifetime is not secure. On the other hand, there is good reason to believe that the area received missions during Ashoka’s reign since fragments of his pillar inscriptions with Mauryan polish have

been found at Amaravati, Erragudi, Rajulamandagiri and the palaeography on some of the relic caskets of the Mahachaitya at Bhattiprolu appears to date back to the Ashokan era. Moreover there is also a possibility that Buddhism was established in this area ‘before’ Ashoka’s efforts to spread Buddhism, as suggested by the presence of NBP sherds in the foundations of many early Buddhist structures in Andhra. The names of some of the early rulers of territories (preAshokan and Ashokan era) along Andhra’s coast and rivers have been recovered in the past two decades in Buddhist foundation inscriptions together with silver Mauryan punchmarked coins: Gobhada, Kamvayasiri, Samagopa, Narana, and Raja Kumariyya Sammliya who was probably responsible for the third to second century stupa at Amaravati before the powerful Satavahana dynasty of the Northwest Deccan established itself in Andhra from c. the first century BCE to the late second century CE. Andhra’s numerous and well-endowed Buddhist sites confirm the existence of a political as well as an economic geography of Buddhist archaeology: while the two great river basins, the Krishna and the Godavari provided the highways where the cloths and metal artifacts of the Deccan were assembled and transported to the East Coast, the East Coast ports themselves were pivots where multiple movements took place: for the landing of the spices, incenses, and metal ores native to Southeast Asia as well as the exit of Indian goods and above all, Indian ideas to the ports and kingdoms further south and east. Whoever controlled Andhra had access to immense economic resources. They are reflected in the density and beauty of its Buddhist remains and its key role in the transmission of Buddhism to Burma and Thailand from c. first to sixth century CE, after which other regions of India, notably Bihar and Orissa as well as Sri Lanka, developed deep reciprocal relations with parts of Southeast Asia.

The Origins and Forms of the Stupa As a commemorative earth mound heaped up over the cremated remains of an outstanding individual, king or hero, the stupa may have had pre-Buddhist origins. It may also have sometimes had non-funerary commemorative functions. However, the Mahaparinibbanasutta (26–31) makes it clear that the Buddha ordered his disciple Ananda to arrange for the cremation of his mortal remains and the creation of a stupa mound over them which should be venerated as the point of direct contact with his teaching and example. Significantly, he instructed him to follow the same procedure as for a Universal Monarch (cakravartin). In the extension of this tradition, many stupas seem

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themselves to have been regarded as reliquaries – whether they contained corporeal remains in reliquary containers of various types or not – and to have been offered the same veneration. While the

earliest stupas were simply mounds of mud, perhaps stabilized by compression, they were succeeded by mud brick, fired brick, and stone-faced mounds – and by combinations of all these components.

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The architectural elements of the Buddhist stupa are the following: the circular – later also squared – base (the drum), the dome (the egg); the pole (yasti) protruding from the top which might bear flags or the superimposed rings of the umbrella (both symbolizing high status and perhaps also the dhamma). The pole was surrounded by a small square railing on top of the dome and later by a box (harmika) of similar size. The height and bulk of the original pole on top of a stupa became greatly elaborated in the course of time into huge umbrellas (chattra), towers (sikhara) and other ornaments. It was essential that the sacred territory around the stupa be defined by a railing with entrances. The railing was originally of wood, later of stone, and it enclosed a lower paved devotional pathway running between the railing and the drum of the stupa. The impressive sculptures on the stone gateways and railings of early stupas like Bharhut and Sanchi (second to first centuries BCE) as well as the shapes of the gateways and railings themselves, are all adaptations from still older traditions of railings, gateways and sculptures made of wood (Figure 3). As such, they throw a precious light further back in time onto the high artistic achievements of wooden ceremonial gateways and sculptures for cities, palaces, and stupas that have themselves rotted away. Many stupas (e.g., at Sanchi) also had an upper devotional pathway running on top of the drum around the dome. Regional variations were numerous. In the north and northwest, many stupas contained small hollow chambers. These were spaces carefully reserved in the otherwise solid structures of drum and dome, which often contained reliquaries with relics, but which sometimes contained inhumation burials. In the rock-cut shrines and monasteries of the Northwest Deccan, the principal object of devotion was a small, completely solid rock-cut stupa. Sometimes these rock-cut spaces faithfully reproduce, carved into stone, the appearance of timber rafters, bindings and thatch of still earlier monuments built of organic materials. In the highly developed Buddhist cultures of the southeast, in Orissa, Andhra, and Tamil Nadu, stupas with relic chambers were less common but reliquaries were installed in many locations of the stupa, pathway, and railings. Some southeastern stupas were constructed over wheel-shaped foundations, sometimes with sacred symbols in the hub of the wheel. Stupa drums were built both with and without rectangular projections (ayaka platforms) at approximately the cardinal directions, facing each entrance in the railing. Ayaka platforms became a main focus for Buddhist art and the installation of reliquaries. In the

Figure 3 Eastern gateway of the Great Stupa at Sanchi. By courtesy of the British Museum, second–first century BCE.*

late twentieth century, numerous reliquaries containing relics and offerings were found in early Andhra stupas near these ayaka platforms, where they had remained undetected even in sites like Amaravati that had been worked over many times. Donatory inscriptions were carved on the railings, or on stone pillars set up on top of the ayaka platforms. These pillars, reinscribed over centuries, thus provide a long and precious record of the range of donors supporting the stupas (Figure 4). In all its variations, the stupa is a commemorative structure worthy of veneration because it symbolizes the life and teaching of the Buddha. When it contains relics (or is believed to do so), it possesses still greater sanctity and commands still greater devotion.

Stupas and Relics The objects deemed suitable to be treated as relics included, the cremated remains of the Buddha (especially tooth and hair relics); the objects of his personal use (robe, begging bowl); somewhat later, texts representing his teachings; bodhisattvas (future Buddhas) and the cremated remains of his principal disciples were also treated as relics. Later still c. third century

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Buddhist Art Buddhist art in South and Southeast Asia has produced some of the masterpieces of the region. Here it is only possible to list some of the most important traditions and times before moving on to a more detailed consideration of the Buddhist art of Andhra.

Figure 4 Stone slab carved in high relief showing an Andhrastyle stupa with decorated areas, ayaka platform and pillars (from the drum of the Amaravati stupa. By courtesy of the British Museum, c. third century CE.

CE, the cremated remains of distinguished abbots and monks were deemed suitable. This last remains a living tradition in Thailand today, where most of the cremated remains of particularly venerated abbots or monks are interred as relics in stupas of medium size – c. 4 m high – in conspicuous locations within the sacred sima territory of the monastery (e.g., beside the Ordination Hall). A part of the ash and bone, however, is set aside to be mixed with clay and fired, forming terra cotta votive tablets identified with that monk, which are worn and venerated by the laity as protective relics. The cremated remains of the laity, by contrast, are interred in quite small stupa-shaped urns – c. 50 cm high – arranged along the perimeter of the sima territory. Pairing this information with the evidence from early stupas in Northwest India and Afghanistan and slightly later ones in Andhra, it becomes clear that in Buddhism at certain times and places, there has been a long and permeable boundary between relics and burials, whether in stupas or other sacred places.

. The Sunga second to first century BCE, Sanchi and Bharhut, stupas, carved gateways and railings; Bhaja and Pitalkhora, rock-cut shrines and monastic cells with relief sculptures; . the Satavahanas second to first century BCE, Western Deccan Nasik and other rock-cut shrines, and cells, first century BCE to third century CE, Andhra, enlarged and decorated the Amaravati Great Stupa, numerous stupas, monastic complexes and highly developed art; . the Saka-Kusana age late first century BCE to third century CE, numerous Gandharan sites of Northwest India, major built complexes containing stupas and monasteries, stone reliefs and votive objects in gold, stone, and ivory; North India beginnings of splendid Mathura tradition of stone statues of Buddha; also rock-cut shrines of Karle and other sites of Western Deccan; . the Iksvaku and Vakatakas third to sixth century, Andhra, Nagarjunakonda, Amaravati (cont.), Ajanta painted and rock-cut caves, Vengi – strong influences on Pyu Buddhism in Central Burma; . Imperial Gupta fourth to sixth century CE, centered in North India influenced most areas of India and mainland Southeast Asia. Sanchi (cont.), superb Buddha images of Mathura (cont.), Sarnath (cont.); post-Gupta, numerous local kingdoms under influences of late Gupta style – Aurangabad and Ellora rock-cut shrines, cells and statuary; . Pala-Sena eighth to twelfth century CE, North and Northeast India, peak of late Buddhist culture in India, Nalanda, Paharpur, Sultanganj, Tapandighi – very strong influences on Borobodur, Sumatra, and Pagan, and received endowments from Southeast Asian as well as Indian kings, for example, for monasteries at Nalanda and repairs to the Mahabodhi temple. Pagan became the largest ancient city dominated by Buddhist stupas and temples (Figure 6).

Andhra Buddhist Art A great mastery of the peculiar properties of stone in early Indian art is found in the Buddhist relief sculptures of Amaravati. The stone carvers’ yard at this site must have been an art academy where leading sculptors practiced and taught apprentices during the successive phases of construction, enlargement and

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renewal, c. second to first century BCE – third to fourth century CE. The soft contours of Andhra art style can be seen at numerous Buddhist sites along the East Coast and up the great river valleys, at Nagarjunakonda, Ghantasala, Jaggayapeta, Ramatirtham, Salihundam, Sankaram. Bavikonda. Thotlakonda, and many others. While high aesthetic levels were achieved at a number of Andhran Buddhist sites, especially Nagarjunakonda (third to fourth centuries), at Amaravati in the second to third centuries CE quite exceptional levels of stone carving skills were paired with dynamic visions of iconic incidents from the Buddha’s life. They have been compared with the highest aesthetic levels reached in classical Greek relief sculpture (cf. the Alexander sarcophagus, now in the Archaeological Museum, Istanbul or the side panels of the Pergamon altar, in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin). Typically the main figure or object in an Amaravati sculpture in high relief is depicted on a larger scale but off-center in the scene, while supporting figures move in a clockwise swirl around that focal point (Figure 5). The concentration on the focal point is emphasized by the orientation of each member of the scene and the angles their bodies present to the viewer, by many graceful contrasts among arm and leg positions and by draperies in movement. At their best, the Amaravati sculptors produced elegant solutions to the perennial challenges in relief sculpture. For example, worshipping figures are presented partly, largely and entirely from the back following the rhythms of this sweeping circular vision; persuasive depictions are made of human anatomy and its relative proportions;

Figure 5 Amaravati Buddhist sculpture carved in high relief (from the inner face of the stupa railing). By courtesy of the British Museum, second to third century CE.

there is strikingly effective foreshortening of the feet of humans and animals, linked technically with an extraordinary mastery of the diminishing scale of the bodies of horses, elephants and humans emerging from the stone at a three-quarter angle in high relief; in crowded scenes, bodies and objects are skillfully superimposed in varying depths of relief while individual components are in movement. Figure 4 is one of many surviving drum slabs which, though not identical, nonetheless give a general idea of the appearance of the Great Amaravati Stupa at its peak, c. second to fourth century CE, and of its principal decorative elements. This monument of some 49 m in diameter and perhaps some 16 m in height, together with its railing, was the focus of an immense amount of superb Buddhist sculpture in high relief as well as (from c. the third century onwards) some standing Buddha figures in the round. Relief sculptures were placed on the outer and inner surfaces of the railings; on the drum, especially on the four ayaka platforms projecting from the drum opposite the gateways; and on the lower half of the dome-shaped superstructure. There is an unresolved debate among art historians as to whether there was an aniconic phase in early Buddhist art, succeeded by an iconic one and whether this marked a change in Buddhist thought and the worship addressed to the person of the Buddha as reflected in his images. Meanwhile, it can be noted that depictions of the Buddha go back at least to the first and possibly second century BCE (e.g., the Bimaran reliquary) and that such representations overlap in time with sculpture in which his presence was denoted symbolically through his footprints, an empty throne, the Bodhi tree, and the stupa itself. At Amaravati there are many such sculptures of the second to third century CE showing veneration being offered by monks and laity to these symbols of the Buddha’s presence, while standing Buddha figures carved in the round appear there c. early third century CE. On a reduced scale, the decorative scheme of the Amaravati Mahachaitya was reproduced on the very numerous smaller stupas nearby extending over the plain on the south bank of the Krishna River. The royal city of the Satavahanas, Dhanyakataka lay close by with a wharf on the riverbank testifying to the linkages between royal patronage, Buddhism and trade. The deeper roots of Amaravati and many other Andhra Buddhist sites in prehistoric and protohistoric sacred geography also reveal themselves in the presence of numerous megalithic burials within and close by the stupa area. Evidence at other Andhra sites indicate that megalithic-type burials continued to be practised up to c. third century CE, clearly

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overlapping with and at least in some cases interacting with Buddhism. A total of 214 megalithic burials sites have been identified in Andhra – some of them containing hundreds of individual locations – and c. 118 early Buddhist sites were established there before the third century CE. There appears to be a striking correlation between these sacred geographies (Figure 2). Earlier scholars noted the occurrence of megalithic sites within such iconic Buddhist sites as Amaravati, Nagarjunakonda, Yelleshwaram, and Jaggayapeta and some linear cultural continuity has been proposed from late prehistory into the early historical era. This is well founded and important. But this article argues that is even more significant to recognize the ‘contemporaneity’ of megalithic burial practices and early Buddhism in Andhra over c. a further four centuries and that there are sites where there is evidence of their interaction, as in the megalithic burial chambers and their art at Chagatur (Mahaboobnagar District, Andhra) as well as the burial chambers inside stupas of Northwest India. Such evidence compels one to consider anew the complexities of cultural assimilation and change taking place in early Buddhist societies to which late prehistoric and early historic archaeology, art and inscriptions provide the only doorways.

Pyu Buddhism in Burma The Pyu civilization of Central Burma was one of the earliest in Southeast Asia to adopt Indian alphabets and Buddhist thought. Pyu archaeological evidence shows a complex union and interaction of preBuddhist and Buddhist ritual similar to that of Andhra. The earliest Pyu fragmentary inscriptions show a knowledge of Indian palaeography from c. first century CE mixed with letter (aksara) types that date from the third century. From at least the first century BCE, however, there had been Pyu technical

borrowings from India, revealed especially in brick making of Mauryan and Sunga types, without any sign of the adoption of Buddhism. Instead the earliest ceremonial buildings in the cities of the Pyu were large brick and timber halls devoted to multiple burials, probably of rulers and their consorts, cremated and installed in groups in urns that replicated in terra cotta the shape and often the de´cor of bronze drums. From the third century CE onwards there is abundant evidence of the adoption of Buddhism among the Pyu and the construction of monumental complexes of stupa, shrine, and monastic cells that reveal the influences of Andhra assimilated to a local style. At the same time, the Pyu tradition of urn burials inside and in direct proximity to brick monuments persisted in the context of a flourishing Buddhist civilization up to the ninth century and possibly longer. Indeed Buddhist archaeological finds in the major Pyu urban sites, Beikthano, Halin, and Sri Ksetra, have contributed precious insights to our understanding of the history of Buddhism in general. For instance, a complete replica of a palm leaf manuscript in solid gold (Figure 7) was found in the relic chamber of a ruined stupa mound (the Khin Ba mound) in Sri Ksetra, dating from c. mid-fifth to early sixth century CE. This relic chamber also contained one of the largest reliquaries ever found, made of silver partly gilded, and decorated in high relief with some of the earliest Buddha images of Southeast Asia (Figure 8), and the largest treasure of gold and silver objects ever found in a relic chamber in South or Southeast Asia, The manuscript consisted of 18 gold leaves inscribed with excerpts of varying lengths from eight core texts of the Pali canon, two end covers in gold and the whole was bound together by gold wires. These samples of canonical Pali are considered to be the oldest and certainly the most extensive surviving examples in the world so far known. They have

Figure 6 Panoramic view of Pagan, the largest ancient Buddhist city, tenth to thirteenth century CE.

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Figure 7 The golden Pali manuscript from Sri Ksetra. By courtesy of the Archaeological Department Myanmar, fifth–sixth century CE.

the additional value of a securely identified archaeological and chronological context. For these reasons, they not only provide a privileged glimpse of the extent of Buddhist knowledge outside India in this non-Indic city at this time, but the characteristics of the palaeography indicate that the Andhra coast was the hearth of the Buddhist learning of all but one of the monks who inscribed their chosen excerpts on the gold leaves. The exerpts also provide a unique basis for assessing the integrity with which the same Pali texts were preserved in the largely oral tradition in Sri Lanka and elsewhere and collected in the nineteenth century. Pali texts in Thailand of c. sixth– seventh century age, which reflect the existence of early Buddhist cultures there as well, are short and fragmentary inscriptions. Though valuable evidence, they cannot provide such extensive insights into the state of Buddhist culture in Thailand at that time. It is arresting to note that the wider context of Sri Ksetra reveals the largest burial fields of pre-Islamic Southeast Asia and includes urn burials placed inside major Buddhist shrines inside the city, buried under their paved courtyards, as well as thousands of urn burials encased in small funerary stupas and large stepped burial terraces outside the city walls. Thus in its spread outside the area of its origin in Northeast India, Buddhism appears to have preserved its precious core message while presenting porous boundaries to the pre-existing cultures it encountered. Locally specific styles and practices emerged early to diversify and enrich the appeal of the Buddhist eucumene. See also: Asia, South: Ganges Valley; Indus Civilization;

Megaliths.

Further Reading

Figure 8 The great silver reliquary from Sri Ksetra. By courtesy of the Archaeological Department Myanmar, fifth to sixth century CE.

Bechert H (ed.) (1991) The Dating of the Historical Buddha. Gottingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht. Huntington S (1985) The Art of Ancient India, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain. NY: Weatherhill (with contributions by John C. Huntington). Lamotte E (1988) History of Indian Buddhism: From the Origins to the Saka Era. Trans. from French by Sara Webb-Boin under the supervision of Jean Dantinne Louvain-la-Neuve: Universite catholique de Louvain, Institut orientaliste. Mahaparinibbanasutta. (from the Dighanikaya). Trans. From Pali by SisterVajira Francis Story (1998). The Last Days of the Buddha. (Rev. ed.) Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society. Misra BN (1998) Nalanda. 3 vols. Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corp. Schwartzberg J (ed.) (1992) A Historical Atlas of South Asia. NY: Oxford University Press. Rea A (ed.) (1894 repr. 1969) Archaeological Survey of India, New Imperial Series: South Indian Buddhist Antiquities, Vol. 15. Madras: Superintendant Government Press and Varanasi: Indological Book House.

ASIA, WEST/Ganges Valley 683 Stargardt J (2002–03) City of the Wheel, city of the ancestors: spatial symbolism in a Pyu royal city. Indo-Asiatische Zeitschrift (6/7): 144–67. Stargardt J (2005) Death rituals of the late Iron Age and early Buddhism in Central Burma and Southeast India – whose norms, whose practices? In: Schalk P, Deeg M, Freiberger O, Kleine C, and van Nahl A (eds.) Im Dickicht der Gebote; Studien zur Dialektik von Norm und Praxis in der Buddhismusgeschichte Asiens. [In the thicket of the rules; studies in the dialectics of norm and practice in the history of Asian Buddhism.] Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Historia Religionum 26. Williams J (1982) The Art of Gupta India: Empire and Province. Princeton: University Press.

Ganges Valley Nayanjot Lahiri, University of Delhi, Delhi, India ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary alluvium Sand, clay, silt, etc., gradually deposited by moving water, as along a river bed or the shore of a lake. Sunderbans At the mouth of the Ganga river and spread across areas of Bangladesh and West Bengal, India, the largest mangrove forest in the world. doab A tract of land between two confluent rivers.

Introduction The crescentic alluvium that constitutes the Ganga valley is the dominating topographical feature of north India, in much the same way as the Ganga river is of special significance in the lives and traditions of the inhabitants of India. (Readers should here note that both Ganga and the Ganges refer to the same river, with the former term used traditionally in India.) The lie of the land is deceptively simple: the river flows through and across an immense plain, a stretch of alluvium that covers more than a million square kilometers from the Yamuna river in the west to the Bay of Bengal towards the east. Although its topography appears to be fairly homogeneous, in fact, the valley is marked by physiographic and historical complexity. Some preliminary issues may be clarified at the outset. First, a clarification about terminology needs to be offered. Much of the Ganga valley, so called because it represents the infilling between the Himalayas to the north and the central peninsular revetment to the south, is low and flat. For this reason, it is frequently described as the Ganga plain. The terms ‘valley’ and ‘plain’ will be used interchangeably here. The Ganga valley itself, in terms of geology, structure, relief, and

physiography forms part of a larger macrodivision – the Great Plains of India. This seemingly featureless plain covers some 700 000 km2 with the Ganga and Brahmaputra forming the main drainage axes and a physiography that varies from the semi-arid landscape of the Rajasthan plain to the humid Assam valley in the east (Figure 1). The flat terrain of the Ganga valley, in turn, has generally been subdivided into three segments made up of the upper Ganga plain, the middle Ganga Plain, and the lower Ganga plain. No marked physical breaks which would provide a rational basis for its demarcation into these tracts can be identified in the Ganga valley. Generally, the upper Gangetic plain which includes the Yamuna–Ganga doab (land between two rivers) has a drier climate with a greater concentration of wheat cultivation while rice predominates in the middle Gangetic zone. The humid lower Ganga valley extends from the foot of the Himalayas in the Darjeeling area to the Bay of Bengal, with the bulk of it forming a deltaic plain that extends across eastern India and Bangladesh. There are also differences in the nature of the soil. Although this is alluvium-based throughout the valley, more loam and clay can be observed in the upper Ganga plain. The loams increase and the sands decrease in the central plain, while further east, the soil is marked by finer textural sequences – from loams to very fine silty clays – with some tracts of the old alluvium in the Bengal delta having lateritic clay. These three tracts are further subdivided into smaller units. For instance, in the lower Ganga valley, the Mahananda plain is marked by old alluvial formations and historical links with Tibet and the Brahmaputra valley. This makes it a different subregion from the coastal and related estuarine regions that dominate the lower Ganga tract, through which the whole of the Ganga plain was open to the traffic from the coast. It is perhaps unnecessary to delineate all these subregions in a geographical overview of this nature. What needs to be remembered is that regional divisions and subdivisions within the valley have been based on a variety of factors that include landforms, climate, and location. Second, the cultural gradients that make up the archaeology of the Ganga plain can be as varied as the physical subdivisions. For one, its various segments were colonized at different points of time and by groups occupying diverse subsistence and cultural niches. In the middle Ganga segment that stretches from Allahabad to Banaras, the first settlement clusters were those of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of the Early Holocene, while further north and south, the pioneer colonizers were advanced agricultural communities. In the case of the Yamuna–Ganga doab, a broad-based subsistence pattern coincides with the

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presence of sites related to the Harappan tradition of the late third–early second millennia BC. On the question of the evolution of a productive iron technology as well, the chronological spectrum is fairly wide. In the upper Gangetic plain, iron was present in an early second millennium BC context while in the lower Gangetic valley, iron-bearing horizons become visible from c. 1200 BC and later. Similarly, the evolution of early historic cities was uneven. In the Indian state of Bihar, the antiquity of urban sites along the Ganga in the south, going back to c. sixth century BC if not earlier, seems to be much clearer than for those that are clustered north of the Ganga. This archaeological complexity does not make for a straightforward, unified picture; on the contrary, there are multilineal lines of development. The variety and depth is impressive and amply documented in the relevant archaeological literature. It is also one which cannot be seamlessly integrated into what is known from the earliest stratum of Indian literature. The Ganga valley and its colonization figures prominently in what are described as the texts of the later Vedic tradition. The large corpus is poorly dated (suggested dates range from c. 2000 BC to 600 BC) but it certainly goes back to the time period of many advanced agricultural communities that will be described here. The problem is that Vedic images of early colonization and agriculture cannot be satisfactorily integrated into what is known about the archaeology of this region. So, for example, while there are allusions in the Satapatha Brahmana (c. 700 BC) about agriculture being carried to the banks of the Gandak river in Bihar by the putative Aryans in the first half of the first millennium BC, excavations have revealed that in the third millennium BC itself, there were rice-cultivating agricultural

communities in that area. For understanding the ancient settlement geography of the Ganga valley, it is better to focus on the various features of the archaeological column and its various branches, rather than seek ‘confirmation’ for religious texts.

Geography and Environment The Ganga river, which gives the valley its name, emerges from the icy Gaumukh cave in the central Himalayas and is known at that point as the Bhagirathi. In its early course, it resembles a mountain torrent, which assumes the name Ganga after its confluence with the Alaknanda river at Devaprayag. After crossing Hardwar, the river flows out of the mountains into the plains that it has helped to create. These plains stretch for hundreds of kilometers and become deltaic in the east of the Indian subcontinent, where the Ganga’s waters enter the Bay of Bengal, combined with those of the Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers. Along the way, the meager river which emerges into the plains becomes majestic and swollen as it receives the waters of major and minor rivers across north India: the Yamuna, Ramganga, Tons, Gomati, Ghaghara, Gandak, Sai, Kali Nadi, Sarayu, Kosi, and their numerous tributary systems. More than 60 percent of the water flowing into the Ganga plains comes from Himalayan sources, while 40 percent comes from the peninsula. Unlike the Indus system where the five Punjab rivers combine to form a united stream, the Ganga system is constantly enriched by tributary rivers as it flows towards the direction of increasing rainfall. The deeply entrenched river that today makes its way across the north Indian plains is a Late

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(a) 12−8 ka

(b) 6−4 ka

(c) 2−0 ka Figure 2 Evolution of the Ganga plain (after Singh 2001–02): (a) 12–8 ka; (b) 6–4 ka, marked by the creation of lakes; (c) 2–0 ka, drying out and siltation of lakes and depressions.

Pleistocene–Early Holocene development (Figure 2). This was when the Late Pleistocene pattern of weak summer and strong winter winds witnessed a shift towards a vigorous southwest monsoon bringing summer rain. Consequently, the Ganga river which used to be a low-sinuosity, shallow braided drainage line, developed its present high-sinuosity meandering channel, cutting deep into its present bed. An important hydrographic feature of the middle Ganga plain is the large number of horseshoe lakes or marshy depressions known locally under the name of tal. Apparently, as the Ganga started cutting its bed and receding further south of its present bed, in the course of its withdrawal, many of the meanders of the old courses were converted into oxbow lakes. It is along the edges of such lakes, rich in aquatic fauna and marked by wild grasses including those with edible grains, that the locales of early Stone Age settlements in the valley have been identified (Figure 3). Today, a large number of these lakes have been filled up and converted into farmlands, although their morphology still allows them to be identified as extinct lakes.

There have been major shifts in the configuration of the drainage lines as well. The course of the Ganga itself, for instance, has undergone major alteration, especially marked in the lower section of its valley. Presently, the Ganga meets the sea in two channels: the Bhagirathi–Hoogly in the west and the Padma in the east. The Padma is the major channel of the Ganga, receiving the waters of the Brahmaputra and the Meghna rivers which carry between themselves the entire drainage of the northeast. However, till the twelfth century, the Padma was only a spill channel of the Bhagirathi–Hooghly. Between the 12th and 16th centuries the significance of the two flows was more or less even, but from the sixteenth century onwards, the flow of the Padma became more significant. Along with climatic and hydrographic shifts, the vegetational history of the Ganga valley has also been a shifting one. Today, forests and woodlands have practically disappeared but till the 1840s, a large part of the area was densely forested. Pollen analysis together with archaeozoological evidence for the presence of wild boar, a number of species of deer,

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elephant, rhinoceros, and water buffalo in the middle Ganga valley suggest an environment made up of forests, grasslands, and marshes. The magnitude of the ecological shift can be gauged in relation to the Rhinoceros unicornis, which lives in open country, well adapted to a swampy habitat. This animal was present at archaeological sites in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, underlining the existence of a conducive climate and vegetation cover. Changes in the forest cover extend into the deltaic region. The immense estuarine Sunderbans forest, named after the Sundari (Heritiera formes) plant which is endemic in the region, has a shifting history. Palynological investigations of a series of profiles have shown that a forest resembling the current mangroves of the Sunderbans extended up to Calcutta about 2640 and 7030 years ago. The general picture of the area in and around Calcutta is that of a landscape frequently transgressed by sea water but also getting fresh water from rivers. Finally, a general point about the minerally poor character of the Ganga valley needs to be addressed. Geographers and historians have frequently emphasized this as a permanent disability of this large stretch of alluvium. What has not been sufficiently highlighted is that this lack of resources is compensated by the presence of resource-rich highlands towards the north and the south. The Chhotanagpur

plateau, for instance, provides a kind of backdrop, from the Gaya region till the western section of the Bengal delta. This mineral-rich plateau has always been the most important source of raw materials to the protohistoric and historic Gangetic segments that are adjacent to it. Similarly, a large area of the middle Ganga valley is marked by the presence of the Kaimurs and the Sonabhadra plateau on its south. The interaction of the stone-devoid riverine plain with the southern plateau goes back to the Early Holocene when Mesolithic settlements using microliths and other stone objects become sharply visible. Again, the use of iron in the Lucknow region of the upper Ganga valley in the early second millennium BC has to be understood in relation to the rich iron ore-bearing area at the fringe of Banaras. There seems to have been a distributive network in place which articulated the supply of smelted bloomery iron from the southern hill fringe to a section of the Ganga plains. So, even though the Gangetic alluvium lacks stone and metal ore, it could and did easily access resources from the hilly outliers that fringed it.

Archaeological Geography A great deal of archaeological research has been done on the sites and sequences in the various segments of

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the Ganga plain. This section provides a broad overview of the geographical distribution of the sites, dates, and associated artifacts from the Palaeolithic till the early historic period. Upper Ganga Valley: Palaeolithic Presence

The Gangetic alluvium is fringed by hills and plateaux where Palaeolithic sites and long stratigraphic sequences are fairly common. The Ganga valley, however, has only one documented Palaeolithic site. This is Kalpi which lies on the right bank of the Yamuna river, in the southern segment of the upper Ganga plain. There is nothing specifically noteworthy about the flora or fauna of Kalpi. Its importance is locational; the town of Kalpi guarded a main crossing of the Yamuna and was the starting point for expeditions from the valley section towards the north into central India and the Deccan. The lithological succession recorded in the Kalpi section of the Yamuna river is composed of three units or events which reveal a changing Palaeo-environment. Event I (76 þ 11 ka to 69 þ 13 ka) was marked by a moderate to dry climate. It does not contain any humanly modified material, although the calcrete conglomerate at the contact of Events I and II contains quartzite pebbles with broken faces and worked-bone artifacts. The sediments of Event II (mid-point dated to 45 þ 9 ka) underline humid conditions. They have yielded rich vertebrate fossils – an elephant tusk and its shoulder blade, molars of Equus, Bovids, Bos, elephant, hippopotamus, and skeletal remains of crocodiles and turtles. Several specimens of human femur have been retrieved and humanly modified bone pieces – with flake scars and sickle-shaped edges, and a bone splinter with black patina and three parallel lines – which are Event III sediments (basal section date 43 þ 7 ka) reveal that, towards the upper part, the climate had become increasingly dry. The Event II lithic and bone industry seems to be Middle Palaeolithic; pebble tools comprise 79.4 percent of the total lithic assemblage. Similar fossil-rich horizons have also been recorded at Phaphamau in the Allahabad area, in the cliff section of the Ganga river near Banaras, and in a well section of a bridge near Bhagalpur in Bihar. These horizons, however, did not yield human artifacts. Kalpi, for the first time, has revealed Palaeolithic artifacts in association with such fossils, and has added a new dimension to the distribution of Palaeolithic sites in northern India. Specialized Mesolithic Hunter-Gatherers

Mesolithic clusters in and around the Ganga plains are mainly in the Allahabad–Banaras zone. There are a large number of contemporaneous open air and

rock shelter occurrences on the eastern fringe of the Kaimurs/Vindhyas, but since these are not in the valley itself, they cannot be treated as part of the Ganga sequence. In the Ganga alluvium, there are around 200 open-air sites, generally small and marked by a handful of microliths. There are, however, some larger settlements – Damdama, Mahadaha, and Sarai Nahar Rai – which have provided extensive evidence of a deep-rooted Mesolithic occupation of the central Ganga alluvium. These are not temporary camp sites but settlements that were continuously inhabited. Three separate areas have been demarcated at Mahadaha: a burial-cum-settlement area occupying the central position within the settlement, a butchering area between the settlement and the western margins of the lake where it was situated, and a lake area where excavations have revealed a significant amount of occupational debris in what was once the bottom of the lake. Several circular and oval hearths were found inside the burial-cum-settlement section; the excavated hearth yielded charred bones. The butchering area was used for butchering animals like cattle, hippopotamus, pig, turtle, and most frequently, deer. It was also used for making bone tools and ornaments. That the lake area yielded thousands of bones suggests that the debris was pushed deliberately into the lake. Damdama is located at the confluence of two branches of a drainage line called the Tambura Nala. Like Mahadaha, it has yielded various species of animals, with as many as six varieties of deer. There are plant remains from the site as well, mostly of different wild varieties, with a recent analysis also suggesting the presence of domesticated rice. Hearths, in addition to their use for cooking, were also connected with the manufacture of stone and bone tools. Extensive evidence of burials containing skeletons of males, females, and children has been revealed from within settlements. Those at Sarai Nahar Rai are in the form of shallow, oblong pits with tapering sides, with microliths as grave goods. A microlithic arrowhead was also found inside the rib bones of a skeleton, indicating in this case, the cause of death of the individual. Osteoarthritis was the major pathological feature of these skeletons; stress markers indicate activities like spear-throwing, stone-throwing, and using sling shots. The Mahadaha graves are shallow and elliptical and the grave goods fairly extensive. These comprise arrowheads, animal bones, pieces of hematite, necklaces, ear ornaments, and bone rings. There are two double burials, a male and female together, and a young adult male and an adult male in another. There are many more double burials at Damdama, as many as six, of which five contained a male and female together. The sixth grave provided skeletal remains of two males and a female.

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Incidentally, year-long burial and habitation has been assumed on the basis of the occurrence of bandicoot rats at Mahadaha and Damdama, and on the basis of the study of the orientations of these graves in relation to azimuth. The Ganga Mesolithic, as has been pointed out, is geographically concentrated around meander lakes and streams which were formed around 8000 and 6000 BP. It is likely that large-scale Mesolithic habitations coincided with the formation of these lakes. The C-14 date from Mahadaha and the TL date from Damdama of the sixth and fifth millennium BC support this hypothesis. At the same time, the beginnings of the Mesolithic can go as far back as the beginning of the Holocene. Damdama, for instance, is situated on a rivulet which must have been a flowing channel at the time of occupation. Such channels are known to have ceased by 8000 BP. If this is correct, then Damdama had to be occupied much before this date. The dates from the central Ganga plain have important implications in relation to the early evidence of agriculture from the same geographical zone. This evidence will be discussed in detail below. At this point, it may be underlined that there are indications that it is not a stagewise evolution that is witnessed here with incipient agriculturists replacing hunter-gatherers. On the contrary, Mesolithic huntergatherers and the first agricultural communities were coexisting in this tract, with the former marked by a degree of sedentism and an intensive exploitation of plants that is usually associated with groups practicing agriculture. Early Agriculture

An early transition from food gathering to food production has recently been established in the middle Ganga plains, around the Sarayu valley of Uttar Pradesh. This concerns the early cultivation of rice but before spelling out the nature of the evidence, related issues concerning the beginning of food production in the subcontinent in general and the Vindhyan edge of the Sarayu and its contiguous alluvial plains in particular, need to be clarified. South Asia saw the emergence and evolution of agriculture and animal domestication in multiple zones. The earliest center for the cultivation of wheat and barley (and the independent domestication of the latter) from c. eighth millennium BC onwards, is at Mehrgarh in Baluchistan (see Asia, South: Baluchistan and the Borderlands). The possibility of an early transition from hunting-gathering cultures to agriculture and pastoralism in certain other areas may also be considered, although the evidence is ambiguous. For instance, in the Ladakh region, the Neolithic site of Giak is as early as the sixth millennium BC

(calibrated radiocarbon date), although another site of the same cultural complex has yielded a c. 1000 BC date. Another such case is that of Rajasthan, where several salt lakes have yielded a ‘cerelia’ type of pollen in a c. 7000 BC context, along with comminuted charcoal pieces. This is apparently indicative of forest clearance and the beginning of some sort of agriculture. However, to archaeologically confirm the lake evidence, food-producing cultures of similar antiquity will have to be discovered in Rajasthan. In the case of the Ganga valley, it was the peninsular edge of the central plains, marked by the sites of Koldihwa and Kunjhun which showed earlyNeolithic stratums representing rice-producing communities. There were problems, though, concerning the chronology of cultivation since, of the nine radiocarbon dates of Koldihwa, only three go back to the seventh and sixth millennia BC. However, there is now much clearer evidence from recent excavations at Lahuradeva (Sant Nagar district) in Uttar Pradesh which, importantly, suggests that such early rice cultivation was not confined to the Vindhyan hills but extended into the Gangetic alluvium. The microcharcoal recovered from the 2.8 m thick sediment succession of the lake on the edge of which Lohuradeva’s mound is situated, suggests fire caused by slash-and-burn cultivation in the area from 10 000 BP. The lowest archaeological deposits of the site have yielded domesticated rice a little later; these are dated to 8259 BP (calibrated). This occurs in the lowest level in association with both wild rice (Oryza rupifogon) and foxtail millet (Setaria sp.). Husk marks of rice are also embedded in the core of a number of potsherds in this earliest phase of cultural occupation there – IA-which is marked by coarse red ware and blackand-red ware, with cord impressions on its exterior. The beginning of food production in the Indian subcontinent is a multihued tapestry in which the early presence of rice in the central Ganga plains forms an important strand, underlining that this zone was part of an early nuclear center of agriculture. Advanced Agriculturists

The first stage of sustained village growth in and across the Ganga valley is chronologically later than the beginning of agriculture witnessed in its central segment. Generally speaking, there is widespread growth of agricultural communities in the upper and central Ganga plains from the late third millennium– early second millennium BC, while in the lower Ganga valley, the radiocarbon dates are squarely in the second millennium BC. The term used to describe these cultures is ‘Neolithic– Chalcolithic’. This is not a particularly logical classificatory label but has been extensively used in Indian archaeological literature to

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describe early village cultures in areas that are outside the geographical ambit of the Harappan civilization (see Asia, South: Indus Civilization). The term includes pure Neolithic communities with a predominantly stone technological component and those groups that are ‘Chalcolithic’ , in the sense that they use both stone and copper. Additionally, early iron-using advanced agricultural communities and groups are also discussed here. In many instances, the use of iron entered into the productive system without producing any major changes in those early contexts. In eastern India, for example, the Chalcolithic black-and-red ware culture became iron-using towards the end of the second millennium BC. Bahiri, Mangalkot, and Pandu Rajar Dhibi in Bengal are examples of this and, as we know, the birth of cities in that zone was several centuries later. Moreover, there is remarkable continuity in terms of crop patterns and settlement locales. Therefore, it is logical to discuss Neolithic– Chalcolithic and ironusing agricultural societies as part of the same protohistoric agricultural horizon. The impact of the use of iron on the Gangetic valley was slow and steady; it does not seem to have had consequences that are visible in the archaeological record. On the contrary, there is a gap of more than a thousand years between the appearance of iron in this region and the emergence of urban horizons. Multiple regionally distinctive archaeological cultures dominate the Ganga valley; their presence can only be mentioned in passing here. In Bengal, a primarily rice-cultivating horizon of black-and-red ware sites – roughly 70 Chalcolithic and iron age blackand-red ware sites – spread across valleys west of the Bhagirathi. The river valleys are several, from Dwaraka to the Kasai as one moves north to south, where the rivers flow from the west to the east into the Bhagirathi. Moving along the Ganga into Bihar, in its southern segment which is known to have a long prehistoric segment, no early Neolithic or farming community is known. On the other hand, in the alluvial plains of northern Bihar there are several such sites – Chirand, Chechar-Kutubpur, Senuar, Maner, and Taradih are some of the important ones. These are riverbank sites with Chirand, Maner, and Chechar-Kutubpur on the Ganga itself. Their cultural deposits indicate a secure, long presence. Chirand is an example of this; its Neolithic stratum (Period 1) is 3.5 m thick. It is marked by Neolithic axes, bone and antler implements, along with a rich microlithic industry. The ornaments are equally diverse – in bone, ivory, agate, carnelian, jasper, steatite, and faience. The farming pattern is a broad-based one with the remains of crops like rice, wheat, barley, and lentil while the animal remains include domesticated cattle

as also wild animals like elephant and rhinoceros. Most importantly, this represents pre-metallic agricultural villages that largely thrived in the late third millennium BC, possibly continuing into the first century of the second millennium BC. Subsequently, they were to become metal-using cultures marked by black-and-red pottery. Towards Uttar Pradesh, in its eastern segment, Lohuradeva which marked, as we saw, a very early rice-cultivating site, in this phase (Period 1B, late 3rd and early 2nd millennia BC) saw a profuse occurrence of black-slipped ware, which has been described as the hallmark of the developed farming phase of the central Ganga plains. In the middle of the second millennium BC, the southern segment of this region saw the emergence of a long archaeological sequence at places like Imlidih, Narhan, and Sohgaura marked by preNarhan, Narhan, and black-and-red ware horizons. Basically, what one witnesses is the consolidation of a broad-based plant regime which includes rice, barley, varieties of wheat and millet, and also other cultivars like lentil and gram. Further west, in the upper Ganga valley and the Yamuna–Ganga doab, it is again late third millennium BC cultures which mark the beginning of long archaeological sequences that eventually evolved into a phase marked by urban centers (Figure 4). These cultures are: the late Harappan culture, ochre-colored pottery culture, black-and-red ware culture and the painted gray ware culture (the last two are iron-bearing horizons). The ochrecolored pottery culture is possibly a late manifestation of the same complex in the Rajasthan plain. A clarification about the plethora of cultures that are mentioned here is necessary. These are cultures that have been named in a number of ways: the designation of ‘late Harappan’ suggests successor groups that devolved from the mature urban Harappan tradition; others are designated on the basis of the sites where they were first discovered (Narhan is an example), while a few are named after the pottery that is typical of the said culture (painted gray ware and ochre-colored pottery are some such cultures). In the case of cultures that are named after a pottery type, this does not mean that this was the only type of pottery that was used and manufactured by such a society. For example, painted gray ware that gives its name to first millennium BC Iron Age culture of the upper Gangetic plain, in most cases, constituted less than 15% of the total ceramic assemblage and coexisted with plain gray, black-and-red, black-slipped, fine red-slipped and unslipped and coarse red wares. But the reason why it has been used to designate this cultural phase is because it is its archetypal pottery. On the question of pottery cultures, a clarification about one of them – the black-and-red ware

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culture – is necessary. On the one hand, black-and-red ware gives its name to a specific culture of the upper Gangetic plains, as also to a culture in the middle and lower Gangetic plains. This does not mean that the protohistoric farming cultures that used this pottery were a homogeneous cultural entity. The shapes and designs are different as is the time range. For instance, the black-and-red ware culture of the upper Gangetic plains is an early second millennium BC phenomenon while the black-and-red ware culture of Bengal is a second–first millennia BC phenomenon. The picture is one of great diversity made up of Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and iron-bearing farming cultures. This is a diversity which has important implications for understanding the evolution of the agricultural geography of the Ganga valley. It clearly underlines that that no one culture or one society can claim to be the harbinger or pioneer in the creation of a strong agricultural base there. The situation in the doab is qualitatively different from that in eastern

Uttar Pradesh. Again, the communities in the latter region, in their trajectory of cultural development are qualitatively different from the manner in which village cultures in Bihar evolved. What is common to them is that, in more ways than one, they represent a kind of watershed for the advent of stable agricultural societies in their respective tracts. It is from this period onwards that long columns of archaeological cultures become visible and the fact that there are few gaps in the sequence also means that we are looking at fairly continuous occupations. One aspect that emerges clearly from the archaeology and geography of the Neolithic– Chalcolithic and Iron Age farming communities is the growth in population and the evolution of a complex settlement pattern. In the Kanpur district (Uttar Pradesh), for instance, whereas there were only nine black-and-red ware sites, the number of sites of the succeeding painted gray ware culture is 46. Moreover, there is a clear hierarchy in the settlement sizes. While

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as many as 38 of them can be considered as small villages, four seem to be large villages while four of them would be considered as regional centers. Generally speaking, this kind of multi-tiered settlement hierarchy with settlements that range below one hectare to a few that are around five hectares or so is considered as a reliable index of the evolution of a complex society. From this base, eventually cities and state structures would emerge. Another key variable that one sees emerging in this period is an organized articulation of trade networks which brought various kinds of resources to the Gangetic plain. This can be clearly seen in the painted gray ware phase. The painted gray ware phase, incidentally, provided the base for the emergence of urban centers in the upper Gangetic plains. An important site which reveals the kind of raw materials that were used in this period is Atranjikhera. Here, there are agate, carnelian, quartz, and marble beads; also objects of ordinary stone like pestles and whetstones of red sandstone and limestone; a shell fragment; almost two dozen copper objects; as many as 135 iron objects including iron slag (which shows local metalcrafting/smelting); and chir pine (Pinus Roxburghii) . None of these – stone, metals, pinewood – is locally available. It is likely that there was already a class of traders that was procuring such raw materials so that local manufacture could be sustained. Territorial States and Urban Centers

Till now, this essay has used modern geographical and political designations to describe the different units and subunits that make up the Gangetic valley. What, though, were the ancient names of the geopolitical orbits in this vast tract, and how can they be delineated? This is essential for understanding the political geography of the Ganga valley. Ancient territorial designations are mentioned in Indian literary sources ranging from later Vedic to Buddhist literature. Their presence coincides with the process of early historic growth which can be dated from c. 700 BC onwards. In the archaeological record, the marker of the advent of the historical period in the Gangetic plains is the Northern Black Polished Ware which appears after the painted gray ware in the upper Ganga valley and after the black-and-red ware in the middle Ganga valley. Early historic city sites have been identified across the valley as have been the communication lines and networks that connected them with each other and the valley as a whole. In the first phase of state formation in India (c. sixth century BC), multiple states called ‘janapadas’ can be identified in this valley. As many as 16 early states are mentioned in Buddhist sources, an overwhelming

number of these situated in the Ganga plain. These are: Kasi, Kosala, Anga, Magadha, Vajji/Vrijji, Malla, Vamsa/Vatsa, Kuru, and Panchala. While sacred geography cannot be explored here, it is worth remembering that this is also where religions like Buddhism and Jainism established early roots and in the same time period, under their founders Gautama Buddha and Vardhamana Mahavira respectively. Substantial support for them came from the urban centers of the Ganga valley and the mercantile prosperity that marked them. In all these polities, urban centers have been identified, several of which were also political capitals of their respective states. Kuru and Panchala were firmly entrenched in the upper Ganga plain marked by cities like Indraprastha, Hastinapura, and Ahichchatra. The city of Kasi is identified with the area of modern Varanasi on the left bank of the Ganga and would have been situated between the Varuna and Asi streams. The Kasi region extended from the Ganga towards the east up to the Ghaghra, and on the north up to Jaunpur and (part of) Sultanpur. Kosala’s successive capital cities were Ayodhya/Saketa and Sravasti., while the state covered both banks of the Ghaghra/Saryu river. Malla janapada lay to the west of the Gandak river, with its capital in Kusinara, and included the modern Padrauna and Deoria areas as well. The territory of Vatsa was focused around cities like its capital Kausambi on the right bank of the Yamuna, ancient Prayag or Jhusi on the left bank of the Ganga, and Bhita and Kara on the banks of the Yamuna and Ganga respectively. Magadha radiated in a linear fashion between the Kiul and Karamanasa rivers which separate modern Bihar from Uttar Pradesh as far as the point where the Hazaribagh area begins. Its earlier capital was Rajagriha and later Pataliputra. Anga janapada lay spread between Rajmahal in the south and Kiul/ Lakhisarai in the north with Champa on the northern outskirts of Bhagalpur as its capital. Finally, a conglomeration of republican janapadas, known as the Vajji or Lichchhavi confederacy, dominated the modern plain of north Bihar with its capital at Vaisali. From a geopolitical perspective, the primary focus of early state formation was the middle Gangetic valley. It was a middle Gangetic state, that of Magadha, which eventually become the nucleus of an empire under the Nanda dynasty . Its first king Mahapadmananda (c. 355 BC) ruled virtually all of north India up to the Yamuna–Ganga doab on the one hand, and the Deccan on the other (see Asia, South: India, Deccan and Central Plateau). Again, under the Mauryan dynasty (c. 324–187 BC), with their base in Magadha, a pan-Indian empire extending from south Afghanistan to the Chittagong coast and from Kashmir to peninsular India was established. The

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subcontinental domination of an empire with a Gangetic valley power base did not survive the end of the Mauryan dynasty. Subsequently, the Sunga dynastic orbit shrank back to the earlier orbit, from Magadha to central India. In the early centuries AD, the Gangetic valley was brought within the empire of the Kushanas, as they extended their Oxus–Indus base. By the beginning of the fourth century AD, the focus shifted back to a middle Gangetic power base, with the advent of the Gupta dynasty that was based in Magadha (Figure 5). Political units and urban centers also extended beyond the upper and middle Ganga valley. The ancient geographical units there ranged from Samatata and Pundravarddhana in the trans-Meghna area of Bangladesh and the Barind northern tracts respectively to Vanga and Suhma in the deltaic coastal tracts of Bangladesh and Bengal. In the estuarine and coastal belt, there were around ten urban sites; their general configuration was largely riverine. Chandraketugarh appears to be the largest among them, a fortified settlement measuring one mile square, with occupational remains outside it as well. Going back to the Mauryan period, the most spectacular antiquities from this city are its thousands of terracottas marked by erotic, religious, and narrative themes. Chandraketugarh’s location in relation to a river is not obvious, although the general area itself is crisscrossed by numerous drainage channels. Among the drainage lines, it was along the old channel of the Ganga, known as Adi Ganga or the original Ganga, that settlements dating to the Mauryan period were clustered (Figure 6). The sites are mainly riverine. Boral, near the Adi Ganga in the southern section of the Calcutta area, yielded

antiquities from the late centuries BC till the end of the first millennium AD. It is at Gangasagar that the Ganga pours into the sea, with such force that her muddy waters are distinguishable for six hundred kilometers into the Bay of Bengal. Naturally, this area has an ancient and modern significance. Where the original Ganga joined the sea, is Mandirtala (on the Sagar island) which has yielded antiquities that go back to early centuries AD. Again, there is a modern temple at or near the spot where the Ganga was supposed to have entered the sea where, annually on the day of winter solstice, pilgrims from all over India gather to worship. This temple has had to be shifted from time to time in response to the encroachment by the sea but the sanctity attached to this place of confluence is abiding.

Concluding Observations Three issues emerge from a study of the ancient landscape of the Ganga valley. First, the Ganga plain, from the time when pioneer settlers first occupied it, has been integrally linked with the zones that fringe it, from the Rajasthan plain to the Chhotanagpur plateau. While the cultural ramifications of those links become much sharper during the historical period, this was an expansion of the preexisting connections that were established during the protohistoric phase. Second, in terms of agricultural geography and settlement archaeology, a secure village base across the Ganga plain was created by Neolithic–Chalcolithic farmers. In several instances, the crops that continued to be cultivated in the various areas till recently, were first farmed by third–second millennia BC cultivators.

Figure 5 Gupta period sculptures on the Jahangira rock in the middle of the Ganga river.

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Figure 6 Distribution map of urban sites in the lower Ganga plains, especially around the old channel of the Ganga river.

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The nucleated village form is also a legacy of that phase, with continuous occupation at a large number of settlements which were first occupied by these advanced agriculturists. This does not mean that the successors of the people who first inhabited these spots continued to live there for centuries on end. All that it means is that new groups of people came and settled in the very areas, and frequently at the same sites, where farmers had first established their villages in the third and second millennia BC. Finally, political authority has location. The cartography of the political landscape of ancient India reveals the centrality of the middle Ganga plain in the process of early state formation. Eventually, political unification and the first subcontinental empire of India also came to be based in the Magadha section of that tract. See also: Asia, South: Baluchistan and the Borderlands; Buddhist Archaeology; India, Deccan and Central Plateau; India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South; Indus Civilization; Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier; Megaliths; Neolithic Cultures; Paleolithic Cultures; Sri Lanka.

Further Reading Bose S (2003) Forests and Fields in the Middle Gangetic Plains. MPhil. Thesis Delhi: Department of History, University of Delhi. Chakrabarti DK (2001) Archaeological Geography of the Ganga Plain. Delhi: Permanent Black. Chakrabarti DK (2006) The Oxford Companion to Indian Archaeology. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Saith S and Kesavan M (1989) A Journey Down the Ganga. New Delhi: Lustre Press. Tewari R (2001–2002) Excavation at Lahuradeva, District Sant Nagar, Uttar Pradesh. Puratattva 32: 54–59. Singh IB (2002) Late quaternary evolution of the Ganga Plain and proxy records of climatic change, neotectonics and anthropogenic activity. Pragdhara 12: 1–25.

India, Deccan and Central Plateau Dorian Q Fuller, Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary ashmounds Large mounds of ash resulting from Neolithic cattle dung accumulation and burning, which are characteristic of parts of South India. Buddhism A historical religion of ancient India which remains an important religion in many parts of Asia today.

Deccan A plateau of south-central India between the Eastern Ghats and the Western Ghats. Dravidian languages A large family of languages spoken especially in southern India and northern Sri Lanka that includes Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada. historical linguistics The study of language change over time in a particular language and the relationships between languages and reconstruction of ancient ancestral languages. hominin Evolutionary ancestors and relatives of humans. Jainism A historical religion of ancient India. palaeoenvironmental records The record of the prehistoric environment of an archaeological site, using the methodologies of geology, botany, palynology, and archaeozoology.

The term ‘Deccan’ derives ultimately from the ancient Sanskrit dakshina, which referred to ‘the South’. By the colonial period it came to be used to refer to the Indian Peninsula, south of the river Narmada, as opposed to ‘Hindustan’ for the regions north of the Peninsula. Sometimes it is used to indicate the interior plateau of the peninsula as opposed to Concan or coastal plains. Authors will sometimes include Central India in the Deccan and anything separated from the northern Ganges plains by the Vindhya hills and demarcated from the west by the Aravalli hills of Rajasthan. Central and peninsular India can be distinguished on the grounds of cultural and physical geography. Central India and the Peninsula are often considered together as the Deccan region. The core of the Deccan then is the modern states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, while some consideration will be given to adjacent Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Chattisgarh in the north, and Tamil Nadu in the southeast. This peninsular region, south of the Tapti River, and Central India between Tapti River and the Vindhya hill ranges, that fringe the Ganges basin, is geographically distinct from the wide alluvial plains of the Indus and Ganges. In terms of culture history the peninsular region is dominated by languages in the Dravidian family distinct from the Indo-Aryan (Indo-European) languages of northern and northwestern South Asia (Figure 1). Even in Central India (Madhya Pradesh) and the northern peninsula (Maharashtra), where Indo-Aryan languages are spoken today there is evidence from place names, vocabulary, and marriage traditions to suggest the former presence of Dravidian languages. On the northeastern part of the region is the center of diversity of the distinct Munda language family. Geologically, it differs in being composed of ancient metamorphic rocks together with the large volcanic bedrock of the northern Deccan Traps. This geology forms hills with plateau areas between in the south (Karnataka and Andhra) and the north (Madhya Pradesh), and in middle the Deccan Traps

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Figure 1 A map of South Asia showing the recent distribution of non-Indo-European languages, including the subfamilies of Dravidian languages that dominate the Deccan and the Munda languages found mainly in eastern India. The important geographic boundaries of the Aravalli and Vindhya hills are indicated.

(mainly Maharashtra) have produced a plateau in which rivers have carved out their valleys. Central India and the southern and eastern Deccan are dominated by Archaean (Pre-Cambrian) granites and gneisses, while in between the Maharashtra region is mainly Cretaceous basalt (the Deccan Trap) (Figure 2). In general, the Deccan Trap has decomposed into clay-rich, thick, black soils, while the granitic zones are dominated by red and brown sandy soils. The granitic zones are broken up by other smaller geological regions, such as The Dharwar Schists in the southwest, which contain exploitable deposits of iron, and sporadic siliceous rocks favored for prehistoric flaked lithics. Other schist belts in Karanataka contain deposits of gold. A group of important geological regions are the Purana basins, or Gondwana formations. These geological zones are characterized by sedimentary rocks, especially limestones, sandstones, and shales, with some quartzites and igneous intrusions. The resulting soils are patchy, but with generally more water-retentive clays forming over shales and limestones, and sandier patches

around quartzitic sandstone. They are locations of rich Palaeolithic archaeological records, probably in part due to the favorable local conditions that they engendered, such as springs and raw-material availability. They also are good sources for favored raw materials for lithic tool production, including quartzite and limestone used in the Lower to Middle Palaeolithic and finer siliceous materials such as chert favored from the Late Palaeolithic through the Neolithic. The climate of the Deccan is determined by the Indian Ocean monsoon cycles and regional topography. During the summer months moisture-laden air flows from the Indian Ocean to the southwest, dropping rainfall over most of India (the Southwest Monsoon). Rainfall (Figure 3) is heaviest along the west coast which is characterized by steep hillslopes and cliffs of the Western Ghats, which separate the interior Deccan Plateau from the coastal plain. Along the Western Ghats tropical rainforests occur (Figure 4). Further east the Western Ghats create a rainshadow making the interior of the Deccan

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Deccan traps Gondwanas Vindhya system (including Kurnool supergroup) Cuddapah system Dharwar system Basement complex, including granites

Figure 2 Simplified geological map of peninsular India, showing the distribution of the younger volcanic Deccan Traps, which produce fertile black soils, and the very ancient granites and gneisses of the southern and eastern peninsula, which produced sandy soils. Some of the smaller formations are found in basins which have been foci of Palaeolithic finds.

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Figure 4 Western Ghats rainforests view towards coastal plain near Amboli, Sindhudurg District, Maharashtra.

Plateau semi-arid and characterized by scrub-savanna vegetation in its driest tracks and open deciduous woodlands elsewhere (Figure 5). Trees in these woodlands are deciduous due to the long, hot dry season from February to June. Toward the eastern side of the peninsula, rainfall again increases favoring more woodland than scrub. East of the Western Ghats the interior plateau has gradual eastwards drop in elevation indicated by the drainage of all the major rivers towards the eastern side of the peninsula. The archaeological record of South India goes back to the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic (see Asia, South: India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South) (Figure 6). While this may represent as much as 2 million years, which is argued to be the case for the Lower Palaeolithic in Pakistan, current dating evidence for the Deccan region normally puts back the earlier Palaeolithic about 250 000–350 000 years, although one important site, the Isampur quarry, has been suggested to be 1.2 million years old. The only hominin fossil

yet found in India is a cranium from Hathnora in the Narmada Valley, suggested to represent Homo heidelbergiensis at about 250 000–300 000 years ago. This find could suggest a separate dispersal from Africa, associated with middle Acheulean tools, as opposed to the earlier Acheulean of Isampur that is presumed to have been made by Homo erectus. Recognition of a distinct Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition remains problematic but can be argued to have occurred probably in the past 75 000 years. Some authors have preferred to call these industries the Middle Stone Age and Late Stone Age, as comparisons with African materials are generally closer than those of the European Palaeolithic. A biological transition from early humans to anatomically modern humans is inferred to have occurred between 70 000 and 100 000 years ago as a result of immigrant populations from Africa, although archaeological evidence to document this evidence is still lacking. Throughout these long periods archaeology suggests low human

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Figure 5 Typical Acacia scrub of interior Deccan with pastoralists, Cuddapah District, Andhra Pradesh.

(or hominin) population densities and economies that are likely to have been mainly extractive rather than transformative of the landscape. The Deccan region boasts some of the most important Lower Palaeolithic sites in India. Focused Palaeolithic surveys have found high site densities, such as those in the Hungsi and Kaldagi valleys of Northern Karnataka as well as the Raisen district in Madhya Pradesh. Among important excavations is the 1.2 million years-old Isampur site in northern Karnataka, which represents a quarry and manufacture site for early Acheulean tools, in which all stages of production from bedrock quarrying can be detailed, and from which average transport distances of finished tools can be estimated from regional survey. Transport distances are surprisingly low with most tools apparently being discarded within 3.5 km of the quarry. Another important site is Attirampakam in Northern Tamil Nadu, where excavations in recent years have situated the Acheulean in stratigraphic context and environmental context. Late Pleistocene sites in peninsular India are significant for having Microlithic tool technology. While Microlithic industries found in surface survey have often been called Mesolithic with reference to European tradition, there is perhaps more to suggest comparison with later Pleistocene (Late Middle Stone Age) Africa. Finds from excavation in Sri Lanka, such as Badatomba-lena cave, indicate microliths and beads back to c. 30 000 BP. Recent excavations of a rock shelter at Jwalapuram (Kurnool District, western Andhra Pradesh) similarly indicate Microlithic industries beginning before 25 000 BP. Similar material was previously found further north at Patna. Such

industries are presumed to be associated with anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens), although skeletal finds are few. Studies on genetics of modern groups, including indigenous populations of south India, suggest that some of the most ancient and diversified genetic lineages outside of Africa are to be found in the Deccan region, suggesting that modern humans had dispersed from Africa to southern India 50 000–100 000 years ago. In general, global palaeoenvironmental records suggest that it is in the Late Pleistocene and later Palaeolithic when humans began to use fire to modify the landscape, as suggested by various sedimentary records of microcharcoal. Evidence from the Sandynallah swamp in the Nilgiri Hills of South India suggests anthropogenic burning of vegetation from at least 35 000 BP, but a marked increase at c. 3500 BC, associated with late Mesolithic. Similarly, evidence from lakes in the Thar Desert (Rajasthan) suggests that anthropogenic burning peaks in the Early Holocene period, associated with Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. With the Neolithic the advent of four important changes in technology and land use took place: animal herding, plant cultivation, sedentism, and pyrotechnology (initially ceramics). The earliest archaeologically recognized villages on the Indian Peninsula provide evidence for an economy incorporating domesticated animals and plant cultivation. They have tended to be studied as two distinct traditions, one in the northern Deccan, focused on Maharashtra and adjacent Madhya Pradesh, called the Deccan Chaloclithic, while the other focused on the Southern Deccan, mainly Karnataka and adjacent Andhra Pradesh and northwest Tamil Nadu, which is labeled

ASIA, WEST/India, Deccan and Central Plateau 699 Raisen Bhimbetka Hathnora fossils

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Figure 6 The general distribution of Palaeolithic sites or sites groups, with selected sites labeled.

as the Southern Neolithic (see Asia, South: Neolithic Cultures) (Figure 7). In terms of settlement pattern and aspects of cultural tradition, these are indeed distinct manifestations, with the Deccan Chalcolithic sites focused on the upper courses of rivers and their tributaries, while the core portion of the Southern Neolithic (Figure 8) tends to have sites placed away from the major rivers, and often on hilltops. The Southern Neolithic of India has long attracted attention as an early food-producing village culture in South Asia. Thanks to its distinctive ashmound sites, and the pioneering fieldwork of the geologist R. Bruce Foote, it was the first-documented Neolithic culture in South Asia, from the 1860s. Sites of this culture provide the earliest pastoralism in peninsular India, from c. 3000 BC. This early pastoralism is associated with the distinctive ‘ashmounds’, which are the sites where animal dung accumulated at

ancient penning sites and was episodically burnt, leading over a period of several decades to a few centuries to sometimes massive mounds, which have been discussed by some as Neolithic monuments. Within this tradition there are additional sites of human occupation with archaeobotanical evidence for a recurrent agricultural package based on two small millets (Brachiaria ramosa and Setaria verticillata) and two pulses (Vigna radiata and Macrotyloma uniflorum), all potentially domesticated from wild populations in South India. This Neolithic tradition continued to develop through the second millennium BC, during which time the first evidence for new crafts, including copper and textiles, and increasing evidence for trade occurs. Evidence of historical linguistics suggests that the Southern Neolithic and perhaps adjacent cultures can be connected to the ancestral speakers of South and Central Dravidian languages.

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Figure 7 The distribution of Neolithic/Chalcolithic sites in peninsular India indicating the distinct cultural zones, and foci of research, of the northern Deccan Chalcolithic and the Southern Neolithic. Within the Southern Neolithic the dashed line demarcates the distribution of the Ashmound Tradition, characterized by burnt dung mounds.

Further north in the Deccan Traps zone of Maharashtra and southwest Madhya Pradesh, early village sites show a somewhat different character and a different agricultural basis. Early sites occur on the lower Narmada and Tapti Rivers and date to 2300– 2000 BC. These archaeological cultures, such as the Kayatha, are often linked or thought to derive from earlier developments in Rajasthan connected with the Ahar tradition which can be taken back to before 3000 BC at the site of Balathal. In the second millennium BC sites become much more widespread, over a wider part of western Maharashtra, especially during the Malwa phase (1700–1500 BC)

and subsequent Jorwe period (1500–1200 BC). On sites of these phases, where systematic archaeobotany is available agriculture shows a mixture of summer crops, including those of the Ashmound Tradition to the south and winter crops, such as wheat, barley, and lentils, which had been the staple crops of the Indus Valley to the northwest. On the eastern side of the peninsula, along the northern Andhra Pradesh coast and in Orissa, a distinct Neolithic tradition is known from the second millennium BC, which has a different agricultural combination that included rice. Important social and technological changes occurred across the peninsula between 1400 and 800 BC. This

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Figure 8 South Deccan granitic landscape near Piklihal Neolithic site, Raichur District, Karnataka.

Figure 9 Denuded megalithic cemetery surface near Patupadu, Kurnool District, Andhra Pradesh, 2004.

period is associated with the emergence of the Megalithic tradition, in which impressive stone-built burial monuments were constructed for selected individuals, probably elites (Figure 9). It is also during this period that iron metallurgy became established, with its new demands on extracting mineral resources and charcoal from woodlands. The construction of Megalithic may have emerged first in northern Karnataka and eastern Maharashtra (Vidarbha). In the South there is clear continuity from the Ashmound Neolithic tradition, whereas in Maharashtra Chalcolithic village sites toward the western part of the state appear to be largely abandoned, while new village sites emerge in the east together with Megalithic

burials (Figure 10). The Megalithic transition needs to be seen in the context of the development of political economies with new systems of wealth creation including craft production, and long-distance trade increased. This period provides the first good evidence for ‘cash crops’ such as cotton, flax, and seasonal tree fruits. In addition, the period witnessed the spread and adoption of rice by some groups on the peninsula. It may only be during this period, with the spread of rice agriculture, that settled agricultural communities emerged in the far South, including coastal and southern inland Tamil Nadu. In addition, rice agriculture went to the island of Sri Lanka during this period.

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Figure 10 Remnents of Megalithic cist and outer circle, Kodumanal, Tamil Nadu.

The Megalithic of South India is really a mosaic of local cultural traditions that shared traditions of constructing burial monuments from large stones and the use and production of iron tools and weapons. Earlier megaliths consisted of circles of large boulders (pit circles), while later forms included quarried and worked stone slabs that often lined a central cist. Burials were most often secondary, indicating the collecting together and depositing bones represented the end of a long and elaborate death ritual. Bones were sometime placed in a ceramic sarcophagus or on a bed and were normally accompanied by quantities of ceramics, mostly necked jars and bowls, suggesting association with larger-scale drinking, as well as iron weapons. The weapons, including swords, as well as some parts of bridles indicate associations with a warrior ideology. One important excavated site is Brahmagiri in Karnataka, where Mortimer Wheeler first placed the megaliths in clear chronological context. Megaliths are too few to account for most of the population and thus must represent monuments associated with elites and the emergence of more complex social hierarchies. In social evolutionary terms, many scholars have suggested that the Megalithic period represented ‘chiefdoms’. The Early Historic Period marks the beginnings of historically documented state polities, the emergence of selected urban centers in parts of South India, and the connected process of a more widespread hinterland of agricultural villages. This period can be defined as starting c. 250 BC, since during the reign of the emperor of Ashoka (of the Mauryan empire focused in the Ganges Valley, 273–232 BC), conquered parts of the peninsula, and left behind numerous edicts inscribed in the Brahmi script in parts of the Deccan (Figure 11). These include a pillar at

Amravati in the Godavari basin, and numerous rock inscriptions in northeastern Karnataka and adjacent Andhra Pradesh, such as those at Sannathi, Maski, and Brahmagiri – the latter two near significant Neolithic and Megalithic sites. North Indian sources at this time refer to regions in the south and suggest emergent polities. The first local dynasty documented on the Northern Peninsula with the rise of the Satavahana kings may date to c. 100 BC. In the far South, where later historical sources refer to the states of the Pandyas, Cholas, and Cheras, it might be suggested that these kingdoms emerged also around this time, and began to utilize their own Tamil–Brahmi script to write an early form of the Tamil language. It is during this period that North Indian religious traditions get established in the South, including Buddhism, Jainism, and some elements of Hinduism (which are mingled with local traditions). This period is also characterized by a significant level of longdistance trade across the Indian Ocean toward the West, which included the trade with the Roman Empire. Forest products, including the spices and lac (produced by scale insects feeding on certain tropical deciduous trees), were in demand as well as cotton textiles, pearls, and semiprecious stone beads. Black pepper and cotton in particular were major imports of the Roman world obtained from South Indian or West coast (Satavahana) ports, obtained in turn from interior areas. Finds of Roman coins, including hoards, are common from the first century AD in South India. Mostly, black pepper was probably traded from rainforest hunter-gatherers in the Western Ghats, while cotton was grown in the interior of Deccan. In subsequent centuries the volume of trade and interconnections with Southeast Asia also increased, as indicated by the appearance of Buddhist

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Figure 11 A map of early historical South India, indicating evidence for Ashokan inscriptions (of the Gangetic Mauryan Empire), representative finds of Roman coins or coin hoards, and carved cave shrines. A few important city sites are labeled. Names of some important early polities are indicated. The location of the much later Vijayanagara (fourteenth to sixteenth century) is indicated.

iconography and architectural styles in Southeast Asia. While there have been some important settlement site excavations from the early historic period, archaeology from that period onward focuses more on the study of monuments, their architecture, art history, and inscriptions. A widespread type of small monument is the hero-stone (Figure 12), an engraved slab commemorating the hero of a battle, often involving cattle-raiding. While some of these include inscriptions, many are simply figural. The Satavahana dynasty (focused in Maharashtra with a capital at Paithan on the Godavari River) began the northern Deccan tradition of carving shrines in caves. These may have begun already by the second or first century BC at Karla, while many more temples were created

out of rock in the early centuries AD, as at Nasik. Some of the best-known complexes of cave shrines date from the fifth to eighth century, including the painted caves of Ellora and the carved and heavily sculptured shrines of Ajanta near modern Aurangabad. These early cave shrines were largely Buddhist and sometimes Jain, in religious inspiration, although these religions were to decline and largely disappear from the sixth century. Free-standing temples also began to be built of stone or brick in the Early Historic period, although many of the better-known and preserved temples date from the eighth or ninth century onwards and are dedicated to Hindu gods and goddesses. Major Hindu temple building was also carried out in the South between the fifteenth and eighteenth century, when the Hindu-ruled South was culturally

704 ASIA, WEST/India, Deccan and Central Plateau

Figure 12 Three early hero-stones, Shimoga District, Karnataka, 1998.

opposed to northern India, which was under a series of Islamic rulers (especially, the Delhi sultanate and the Mughals). Of particular note is the evidence from the Vijayanagara kingdom, with its center at Hampi in Karnataka near modern Hospet. Founded in 1336 and lasting until the sack of its capital in 1565, the Vijayanagar kingdom has left a legacy of remarkable architecture and sculpture. Its capital city was described in glowing terms by an early Portuguese traveler, Domingo Paes, who visited in 1522. Architectural and epigraphic research on the monuments of its urban core and immediate hinterland has been, and continues to be, a major focus for research, while in the late 1980s and 1990s this was complemented by a large-scale intensive regional archaeological survey, studies of land use and ceramics. The trends of increased agricultural production, including that for craft, and extraction of wild products from woodlands for trade continued into the subsequent medieval periods and indeed into the colonial era. States throughout this period tended to encourage the creation of new settlements and the conversion of wooded ‘jungles’ into agricultural land, as indicated in land-grants and irrigation works (such as tank building). In the later medieval period, marked by the Delhi Sultante in northern India (from the thirteenth century), and Vijayanagara centered near Hospet in central Karnataka (from the midfourteenth century), urban centers and their craft producers grew as more efficient systems for the extraction of agricultural resources (through taxation) were devised, in addition to use of more intensive agricultural techniques. Such systems paved the way for the taxation and commercial organization of the Mughal empire and later colonial powers including British India. Through the medieval period there is increasing textual evidence for the establishment of

orchards. The process of converting wild woodlands into plantations increased greatly during the colonial period with demands for cinnamon, pepper, and later coffee and tea. Subsequently, especially from the nineteenth century, this plantation approach to wooded areas was extended to the production of key timber species, such as teak, for use in nineteenth-century British ship-building. For most of the last 2000 years, archaeological research in the Deccan has more of an art-historical, epigraphic, and architectural bent, with the notable exception of the work on the Vijayanagara capitol’s hinterland. For earlier prehistoric periods, excavation, survey, and artifact studies are the norm. In some areas important rock art concentrations are associated with the Mesolithic (e.g., in Kurnool District) and the Neolithic (e.g., in the Bellary and Rachiur areas). It should be noted that Neolithic and Iron Age cultures are often called ‘Protohistoric’ although there are no indigenous written sources.

See also: Africa, South: Late Pleistocene and Early

Holocene Foragers; Asia, South: Baluchistan and the Borderlands; Buddhist Archaeology; Ganges Valley; India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South; Indus Civilization; Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier; Megaliths; Neolithic Cultures; Paleolithic Cultures; Sri Lanka.

Further Reading Allchin FR (1963) Neolithic Cattle Keepers of South India. A Case Study of the Deccan Ashmounds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Allchin FR (1995) Early cities and states beyond the Ganges Valley. In: Allchin FR (ed.) The Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia. The Emergence of Cities and States, pp. 123–151. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South 705 Asouti E and Fuller D (2007) Trees and Woodland in South India: An Archaeological Perspective. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Champakalakshmi R (1996) Trade, Ideology and Urbanization. South India 300 BC to AD 1300. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Fuller DQ (2005) Ceramics, seeds and culinary change in Prehistoric India. Antiquity 79: 761–777. James HV and Petraglia MD (2005) Modern human origins and the evolution of behaviour in the Later Pleistocene record of South Asia. Current Anthropology 46(S): S3–S27. Korisettar R, Venkatasubbaiah PC, and Fuller DQ (2001) Brahmagiri and beyond: the archaeology of the Southern Neolithic. In: Settar S and Korisettar R (eds.) Indian Archaeology in Retrospect I. Prehistory, pp. 151–238. Delhi: Manohar. Michell G (1997) The Blue Guide: Southern India. New York: WW Norton. Petraglia MD (2005) Hominin responses to Pleistocene environmental change in Arabia and South Asia. In: Head MJ and Gibbard PL (eds.) Early–Middle Pleistocene Transitions: The Land-Ocean Evidence, pp. 305–319. London: Geological Society of London. Ray HP (2003) The Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South Shanti Pappu, Sharma Centre for Heritage Education, Chennai, India ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Acheulian The name given to an archaeological industry of stone tool manufacture associated with prehistoric hominins during the Lower Palaeolithic era across Africa and much of Asia and Europe. burin A special type of lithic flake with a chisel-like edge which prehistoric humans may have used for engraving or for carving wood or bone. chopper Pebble tools with an irregular cutting edge formed through the removal of flakes from one side of a stone.

Introduction India is rich in Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic sites, situated in diverse environmental contexts, and spanning the Middle to Late Pleistocene. The Indian Lower Palaeolithic is generally thought to consist of two technological traditions; viz. the Acheulian, which has bifacially flaked tools (handaxes and cleavers), along with others; and the Soan tradition comprising predominantly unifacial or bifacial pebble tools; and which is concentrated in northwest India and the adjoining region of Pakistan. The

Acheulian, distributed widely over Peninsular India concerns us here; and is generally bracketed between >350 kyr to around 150 kyr BP. This is succeeded by the Middle Palaeolithic (150–30 kyr BP), marked by an abundance of scrapers, points, and borers, along with the appearance of specialized flaking techniques. The Upper or Late Palaeolithic (30–10 kyr BP) in the Terminal Pleistocene, is marked by a technology dominated by blades and tools on blades and burins. This section focuses on South India, an artificial political division (a distinct geocultural region), comprising the modern states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Kerala (Figure 1). The first stone tool to be identified in the subcontinent (a Lower Palaeolithic artifact) was found at the site of Pallaveram, near Chennai, Tamil Nadu, by the British geologist Robert Bruce Foote in 1863. Foote discovered more than 400 prehistoric sites in southern India, documented their stratigraphic contexts, classified artifacts, and proposed hypotheses on prehistoric behavior. Discoveries by Foote (with his son, H. B. Foote) led to documentation of bone artifacts in the karstic cave complex of Kurnool in the state of Andhra Pradesh, which he believed resembled the ‘Magdalenian’ of France, and which were later classified as belonging to the Upper Palaeolithic phase. The first systematic attempt to place these industries in an environmental and chronological framework was initiated in the 1930s, by L. A. Cammiade and M. Burkitt. Working with artifacts from sites along the southeast coast of India (in the modern state of Andhra Pradesh), they divided the Indian Palaeolithic into four series (series I to IV) or cultural phases; roughly corresponding with the Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic; and associated these with climatic cycles of pluvials and interpluvials. Around the same time, H. De Terra and T. T. Paterson, working in northwest India as part of the Yale–Cambridge Expedition, placed Stone Age cultures within stratigraphic sequences associated with a sequence of river terraces, which in turn were correlated with Alpine glaciations. This scheme was later extended to the Kortallaiyar River basin, Tamil Nadu, among others, and Paterson chose to term Acheulian industries in this region as constituting the ‘Madras Palaeolithic’ after the city of Madras (modern Chennai) located nearby. Around the same time, V. D. Krishnawami’s studies in this region led to a clear distinction between the Lower Palaeolithic ‘Acheulian’ or ‘Madrasian’ industries, found over most of India; as compared to Soan traditions of northwest India. Later workers such as F. E. Zeuner, K. V. Soundara Rajan, and B. Allchin contributed further to understanding these cultures. The systematic study of various river basins was carried forward

706 ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South

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11 6

10

Hyderabad 7 R.Krishna 8 9 Andhra Pradesh 5 4 3 R.Koratallaiyar 12 Chennai R.Palar Tamil Nadu

Key 1. Hunsgi–Baichbal complex 2. Malaprabha–Ghatprabha complex 3. Rallakalava complex 4. Nellore complex 5. Cuddapah complex: Sagileru & Gunjana complexes 6. Kurnool complex: Kurnool complex; Giddalur complex 7. Nalgonda complex 8. Nagarjunakonda complex 9. Paleru complex 10. Vishakhapatnam complex 11. Krishna–Tungabhadra complex 12. Palar complex: Kortallaiyar/Arani/Coom complex 13. Kerala complex

SRI LANKA 75

90

Figure 1 Some important site complexes of southern India.

by H. D. Sankalia and his students trained at the Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute, Pune, and ongoing research is being carried out by the next generation of scholars. Theoretical and methodological studies of the Palaeolithic in South India include at one level the discovery of sites, documentation of culture sequences, and typological studies. At another level, in the

Hunsgi-Baichbal basins of Karnataka, K. Paddayya initiated settlement pattern studies using ecological and processual approaches, while subsequent work along with M. Petraglia focused on studies of siteformation processes, cognition, and behavior. Studies by M. L. K Murty in the Kurnool complex of sites also involved adoption of regional perspectives along with ethnoarchaeological and ecological approaches.

ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South 707

Geomorphological and settlement pattern based approaches were also adopted by R. S. Pappu in parts of Karnataka. S. Pappu’s work in the Kortallaiyar river basin, Tamil Nadu, involved studies of site formation processes, palaeoenvironments and prehistoric behavior. In recent years, large-scale excavations by S. Pappu at Attirampakkam; K. Paddayya and M. Petraglia at Isampur; and trenches taken by R. Korisettar and M. Petraglia at Lakhmapur; are utilizing advances in scientific techniques of excavation, along with multidisciplinary approaches involving new dating methods, palaeoenvironmental investigations, and lithic analysis to understand prehistoric behavior (Table 1).

The Lower Palaeolithic Lower Palaeolithic sites are distributed almost all over South India, with the exception of Kerala and the extreme southern portion of Tamil Nadu. In these regions, environmental constraints and paucity of raw material are considered factors detrimental for occupation. Acheulian industries predominate, with the exception of a few sites in Kerala, Nittur in Karnataka; and Rishikonda in Andhra Pradesh, where predominantly pebble tool assemblages were discovered. A few chronometric dates are available for the Indian Lower Palaeolithic, of which only five come from South India (Table 2). These range from around

Table 1 Principal site complexes of South India Some important site complexes

Cultures and excavated sites

Hunsgi–Baichbal complex, Gulbarga district, Karnataka

Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic Acheulian: Hunsgi Localities V, VI; Isampur

Upper Palaeolithic: Salvadgi, Meralbhavi Ghataprabha–Malaprabha complex, Belgam, Dharwar, and Bijapur districts, Karnataka

Rallakalava complex, Chitoor district, Andhra Pradesh Sagileru complex, Cuddapah district, Andhra Pradesh Kurnool complex, Kurnool district, Andhra Pradesh

Giddalur complex, Kurnool district, Andhra Pradesh Nalgonda complex, Nalgonda district, Andhra Pradesh Nagarjunakonda complex, Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh Nellore complex, Nellore district, Andhra Pradesh Gunjana complex, Cuddappah district, Andhra Pradesh Paleru valley, Prakasam district, Andhra Pradesh Vishakhapatnam complex, coastal Andhra Pradesh Krishna–Tungabhadra complex: Mahbubnagar, Nalgonda, and Kurnool districts, Andhra Pradesh Palar river basin including the Kortallaiyar, Arani, and Coom river basins, Tamil Nadu

Kerala complex

Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic Acheulian: Anagwadi Middle Palaeolithic: Kovalli Acheulian and Middle Palaeolithic: Lakhmapur East and West Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic Lower Palaeolithic: Nandipalle and Vadamanu Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic Upper Palaeolithic: Kurnool caves: Muchchatla Chintamanu Gavi, Billa Surgam, and Kottala Polimera Gavi Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic Lower, Middle Palaeolithic Lower Palaeolithic, possible Middle Palaeolithic Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic Upper Palaeolithic: Vodikallu Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic Non-Acheulian pebble tool complex: Rishikonda Middle Palaeolithic: Ramayogi Agraharam Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic Middle Palaeolithic: Moravakonda Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic: Attirampakkam Lower Palaeolithic: Vadamadurai, Srikrishnapuram Lower and Middle Palaeolithic: Poondi, Neyvelli, Gudiyam along slopes. Middle Palaeolithic: Gudiyam rockshelter Non-Acheulian Lower Palaeolithic

Table 2 Summary of Lower Palaeolithic dates from South India (after Misra 1989; Mishra 1995; Petraglia 1999) Site complex

Material dated 230

234

/U

on travertines

Kaldevanhali in the Hunsgi basin (Acheulian assemblages overly travertine

Th

Sadab in the Hunsgi basin (in association with Acheulian assemblages) Teggihalli in the Hunsgi basin (in association with Acheulian assemblages) Teggihalli in the Hunsgi basin (in association with Acheulian assemblages) Yedurwadi in the Hunsgi basin in association with Acheulian assemblages) Isampur, in the Hunsgi basin (in association with Acheulian artiefacts)

Th230/U234 Elephas sp. molar Th230/U234 Bos sp. molar Th230/U234 Elephas sp. molar 230 234 /U on calcretes ESR heribivore teeth

Age 174
35 166 þ 15/13 290 þ 21/18 287 þ 27/22 >350 >350 1.2
0.17 mya

708 ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South

166 and 174 kyr to >350 kyr. In general, the Indian Acheulian is bracketed between 150 kyr and >350 kyr, with a few dates from Isampur and Bori exceeding this. Relative dating based on stratigraphic sequences along river terraces and laterites has also been used to provide a chronological framework. Fluorine/phosphate ratios (which assign relative ages to fossil faunal remains) revealed that f/p of fossils associated with the Early Acheulian show ratios of 6.8 while Late Acheulian bones revealed a ratio of 5.6 in Karnataka. On grounds of artifact technology and assemblage composition, the Acheulian has been divided into Early and Late phases, while some scholars also used degrees of artifact abrasion/rolling and patination to establish a relative chronology. Thus, Attirampakkam and Vadamadurai in the Kortallaiyar basin, sites in the Rallakalava valley, as well as the Paleru and Gunjana complexes are attributed to the Late Acheulian. However, recent excavations at Attirampakkam indicate a sequence of evolution within the Acheulian (Figure 2). Similarly, excavations at Hunsgi and Isampur place these sites within an Early phase, while Lakhmapur is categorized as very Late Acheulian and transitional to the Middle Palaeolithic. Although palaeoecological data is sparse, geomorphological studies point to regional variability in site location and sedimentary contexts. Taking into consideration settlement patterns it is seen that Acheulian sites are distributed in a wide range of environmental contexts, along the Eastern coastal plains, the Eastern Ghats, and the Deccan Uplands (see Asia, South: India, Deccan and Central Plateau). No Acheulian rock shelter has been documented in South India. Investigations in the Hunsgi–Baichbal valleys in Karnataka resulted in documentation of numerous sites, largely confined to the valley floor. Based on artifact density, sites are divided into small, medium, large, and very large. Of these, the most important localities include the sites of Hunsgi and Isampur which were excavated. In the neighboring Baichbal valley, sites also occur along the sloping sides of interfluves, of which most appear clustered within a stretch of 3–4 km around the Fatehpur Nala (stream), of which Yediapur was excavated. In northern Karnataka, most sites are concentrated in the Kaladgi region in the basins of the rivers Ghataprabha and Malaprabha. These are clustered primarily in the lower reaches of the former river which is rich in quartzites suitable for tool manufacture; rather than in regions geologically comprising Deccan Traps and which are poor in raw material. A recent re-examination of the Malaprabha-Ghataprabha site complex indicates that the artifact-bearing conglomerates in the middle courses of these river systems represent a series of

coalescent alluvial fans. In this region, sites are buried under Late Quaternary alluvial deposits, postdate the formation of alluvial fans, and also occur on pediment surfaces in association with ponds and lacustral clays and fine-grained silts deposited by now extinct water courses. In the Lakhmapur complex, sites are clustered around the fan system north of the Kaladgi escarpment and away from the river. In Karnataka scholars attribute site distribution to relate primarily to raw material availability. A detailed study of the Krishna–Tungabhadra Doab revealed that all sites save Kuduvalli, are located 20–25 m above the present riverbed and 0.5–1.5 km away from the river. Moving to Andhra Pradesh, in the Gunjana complex, Acheulian groups occupied small ephemeral channels, streams, and braided runnels situated 1–2 km away from the main river channel, and in scrub woodland, scrub savanna, and thorny thicket zones near low hill ranges where there was access to food resources and perennial water. In Tamil Nadu, most Acheulian sites in the Kortallaiyar, Arani, and Cooum basins are deeply stratified within laterites and clays, and extend from the foothills of the Allikulli and Satyavedu ranges to the coast, apparently concentrated in regions rich in quartzite cobble and boulder beds. Lower Palaeolithic sites occur in varied sedimentary contexts. Most sites in southern India are surface scatters. Artifacts occur on weathered bedrock, on the surface of laterites and lateritic gravels, on gravels derived from fluvial or colluvial processes, on the eroded surface of high-level gravels, or in the foothill zones. Surface sites range from those in secondary contexts, to those which are regarded as being primary to relatively in situ, being exposed only owing to recent erosion. Thus, in the Kortallaiyar basin, sites designated as type 2a have artifacts which are exposed owing to deflation or sheet wash and are in a relatively undisturbed context. In northern Karantaka, open-air surface sites in association with outcrops of raw material and which are rich in manufacturing waste, are relatively undisturbed. In almost all regions, sites occur within fluvial conglomerates, once again not necessarily transported over long distances. Thus, Anagwadi in Karnataka is designated as a semi-primary open air channel occupation site, where excavations revealed Acheulian artifacts in the upper half of a well-cemented pebbly gravel, with a sandy silty matrix, and ferruginous cementing material. Similar channel occupation sites in a semi-primary context are documented in the Ghataprabha–Malaprabha complex, located 3–7 m above the riverbeds (with relatively unabraded tools). In the Kortallaiyar river basin, Tamil Nadu, sites of type 1a have a high integrity and comprise sites which

Surface

T7A, datum, SW corner, 37.89 m AMSL 0m

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Layer 1: clayey-slit Layer 2: ferricrete gravel Layer 3: clayey-slit Layer 4: clayey-slit

Ferruginous gravel lense

2.5 m Acheulian 3m

Layer 5: ferruginous gravel Layer 6: laminated clay Not excavated Mud balls Calcrete nodules Burrows Brick intrusions

Area excavated (2002)

Acheulian 3.5 m

6m

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4.5 m

4m

3.5 m

3m

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Geomatics Solutions Development Group (GSDG), CDAC-Pune

ATM, Trench T7A, South wall

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Figure 2 Attirampakkam: the stratigraphic sequence. ã Sharma Centre for Heritage Education.

0.25

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ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South 709

2m Transitional to Middle Palaeolithic

710 ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South

were buried within ferricretes/laterites and ferruginous gravels and exposed only recently owing to quarrying, construction, and section scrapings. Excavations at Attirampakkam in this region revealed Acheulian assemblages in fine-grained ferruginous gravels where evidence of on-site lithic manufacture and conjoining pieces point to a high degree of preservation. Sites occurring in colluvial deposits are noted again in most regions, and are relatively undisturbed. In the Hunsgi valley, such sites occur close to the foothill zone of the tableland, where the deposit measures more than 1 m across, and artifacts are unabraded. In the Ghataprabha–Malaprabha complex, sites occur on gently sloping pediment surfaces at the foot of the Kaladgi hills, in deposits formed by a mass-wasting process. These are unstratified, located either close to the river or 1–3 km from the present stream channels, as well as in talus and colluvial deposits where they are relatively undisturbed. Later studies in this region led to the demarcation of sites within and on the surface of alluvial fans, and a reinterpretation of sites such as Anagawadi and Kovalli, as representing a series of coalescent alluvial fans. In the Lakhmapur complex, sites are clustered around the fan complex north of the Kaladgi escarpment and away from the river. Among primary sites, those resting on weathered bedrock and sealed by later deposits are noted in excavations in the Hunsgi complex, where Acheulian occupation on bedrock is sealed by gruss derived from weathering of granites. Recent excavations at Isampur in the Hunsgi valley revealed a primary site located on a siliceous limestone pediment capped by 1–3 m of silts. In the Hunsgi valley, some primary sites occur in soft sediments, on the surface of travertine deposits and covered by black soils. Several sites in the Baichbal valley occur as distinct lenses in a brownish clay deposit in a 3 m section comprising locally derived granite/basalt detritus. A detailed study of the Krishna–Tungabhadra Doab led to the discovery of sites found on limestone beds and covered by 0.30–0.50 m of thick yellowish-brown soil. Sites associated with laterites/ferricretes and elements associated with lateritic landscapes are common all over the southeast coast, in the Kortallaiyar complex of Tamil Nadu, and in the Nellore and Godavari districts of Andhra Pradesh. In the Kortallaiyar basin, Acheulian sites occur within ferricretes and ferruginous gravels as revealed by field studies and excavations at Attirampakkam, where tools occur in layer 5, overlying clays also bearing Acheulian tools (Figure 3). Recent studies in the Malaprabha basin, Karnataka, at Lakhmapur West, revealed Acheulian tools in unit III, a stone line, and in the Malaprabha valley as a whole; the buried and well-developed

nodular laterites are linked with Acheulian occupations. In the case of the nonbiface assemblages, at the site of Rishikonda, 250 m inland along the east coast, pebble tools occur at the junction of a pebblybouldery gravel on a lateritic gravel resting on bedrock, on a wave-cut terrace. A unique context noted at Attirampakkam was the presence of Acheulian tools, within clays, which were previously assigned to the Cretaceous period (Figure 4). Taking into account lithic technology, on typotechnological grounds assemblages consist of the Acheulian biface complex, marked by handaxes, cleavers, scrapers, knives, retouched light and heavy duty flakes, chopper-chopping tools, a few borers and burins, cores and debitage. Pebble tool assemblages lacking the biface element, and comprising chopper-chopping

Figure 3 Attirampakkam: Acheulian artifacts in ferruginous gravels.

Figure 4 Attirampakkam: Acheulian artifacts in clays.

ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South 711

tools, scrapers, borers on pebbles and large flakes are noted at several sites in Kerala, at Rishikonda along the east coast, and at Nittur in Karnataka. It is as yet unclear as to how these industries relate to the Acheulian, either in terms of chronology or technology, although some scholars believe these represent a pre-Acheulian phase. In the Acheulian complex, the predominant raw materials used were a variety of quartzites derived from local geological formations, generally within a radius of 1–4 km of the site. These occur in the form of river gravels, high-level gravels, talus, and colluvial deposits or outcrops from which nodules and chunks were utilized. Recent excavations at Attirampakkam, point to transport of tools from within a radius of around 3 km in the lower levels of layer 6; whilst in the overlying ferruginous gravel horizon (layer 5), on-site manufacture of tools, as well as localized transport of boulder cores is noted (Figure 5). In the Hunsgi complex, studies point to caching of handaxes, evidence of curation, as well as long-distance transport at Mudnur X, and greater transport of bifaces as compared to cores and hammers (although in all cases this is less than 1 km). A small percentage of other raw materials were also used, such as quartzitic sandstones or sandstones (in the Kortallaiyar basin) or chert, quartz, and sandstone (Anagawadi). In the Lakhmapur complex in the Malaprabha basin, mineralogical studies indicate that tools are on quartzites sourced from neighboring quartzite outcrops. An interesting feature seen in the Kurnool complex is that in the eastern and western parts of the Nallamalais of the eastern division, finegrained quartzites from water worn river pebbles were preferred, while in the adjoining Erramalais, of the central division, siliceous raw materials were used, with little effort made to import raw material from adjoining regions. In the Hunsgi–Baichbal basin, the most notable feature is the predominant use of limestone, of the Bhima series which occurs in the

Figure 5 Acheulian tools at Attirampakkam.

form of nodules or blocks eroding out of the conglomerates on the valley floor. The site of Isampur is the first-known Acheulian quarry site in South Asia. This has evidence of choices exercised in raw materials used for hammerstones, and evidence of levering action by hominins to extract slabs. Interestingly, in the adjoining Baichbal basin, tools were principally on granite gneisses and schistose rocks as compared to the use of limestone in the Hunsgi valley. In the pebble tool complex of Kerala, tools are on quartz and gneissic rocks, and at Nittur, on dolerites. In the Krishna–Tungabhadra Doab region, site locations are tied to raw material sources, and variability in these sources determines whether pebbles, cobbles, or chunks were used as blanks. Similarly, in the Middle Krishna basin, the paucity of sites is linked to raw material constraints. As elsewhere in India, the Acheulian has been divided into an Earlier and Later Phase, with early scholars referring to cruder ‘Abbevillian’ industries; and in some cases with both ‘Early’ and ‘Late’ technological trends often occurring in the same region or locality. In these cases, scholars have often divided an assemblage into groups based on artifact rounding, abrasion, patination, and flaking technology into older or younger phases. Acheulian tools were on pebbles and cobbles, chunks, slabs, nodules, and flakes. Evidence of both hard hammer techniques as well as more refined flaking, prepared core techniques, Victoria West and Vaal techniques are documented. Rolled artifacts termed as ‘crude’, with pebble-based tools, deep flake scars, predominance of choppers are seen at Rallakalava A, Sagileru Group 1, (Nandipalle and Vadamanu) and Nalgonda Group 1, some localities in Nagarjunakonda and Giddalur, where evolution of the Acheulian is also noted. Evolved Acheulian traditions are also noted at these sites. The predominant use of pebble tools, or tools on pebble blanks is seen in the Nellore and Bellary regions, and at Kurnool. It is argued that the chopper-chopping element is an intrinsic part of the Acheulian, and regional variability seen here is largely a matter of raw material constraints. Variability in handaxe types is also noted by scholars, both within and between regions, both in the nature of blanks used and in the degree of flaking, standardization, and symmetry. At several excavated sites such as Lakhmapur and Attirampakkam, evidence of industries transitional to the Middle Palaeolithic is noted, and observations of surface scatters also indicate this trend (Figure 6). V. Jayaswal singles out the Nittur complex as resembling other chopperchopping tool complexes of India, which also include the Soan industries. She also situates the site of Vadamanu in the Sagileru complex as part of a group constituting a high percentage of chopper-chopping

712 ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South

finished tools to the site for resource exploitation and did not manufacture bifaces on site. In later levels, on-site manufacture and use of tools is documented.

The Middle Palaeolithic

Figure 6 Middle Palaeolithic artifacts at Attirampakkam. ã Sharma Centre for Heritage Education, India.

tools as contrasted with handaxes and cleavers. The rest of the sites in South India are classified within the handaxe-cleaver group, with the exception being Nagarjundakonda-1, which has a predominance of cleavers, and is compared with the excavated sites of Chirki-Nevasa and Lalitpur, in western and northern India, respectively. Inferences on hominin behavior are drawn from settlement pattern studies in the Hungsi–Baichbal basins, which have led to a classification of sites into occupation sites, scavenging or food-processing localities, tool caches, and sites with single episodes of activities. This pattern is noted in other regions and sites are divided into base camps, workshops, and transient camps, based on site size, artifact density, and assemblage composition. Drawing on ethnographic and ecological models, K. Paddayya suggested seasonal movements of hominin groups in the Hunsgi valley involving dry season aggregation in the valley where water was available in the form of springs and in streams; and wet season dispersion, in accordance with the movement of game and seasonality of plant resources. Excavations at Isampur revealed hominin quarrying of limestone slabs for tool manufacture; raising issues of sociality and cognition. The importance of site-formation studies has also contributed to new approaches toward examining behavior in this region. In the Lakhmapur region, behavior in terms of exploiting raw material resources has been examined. Excavations at Attirampakkam revealed that during the earliest Acheulian occupation, hominins brought

The distribution of Middle Palaeolithic sites in South India roughly parallels that of the Lower Palaeolithic. For the first time, there was an expansion into southern Tamil Nadu, as also the first occupation of rock shelters such as Gudiyam in the Allikulli hills of Tamil Nadu, and the karstic cave of Belum in Kurnool district. In the Hunsgi–Baichbal complex, settlements expanded outside the valley floor into the surrounding plateaux. In the Kaladgi basin, in the Ghataprabha– Malaprabha complex, most Middle Palaeolithic sites occur in the same locales as the Acheulian, in the semi-arid lower reaches of the valley and much less than in the subhumid middle and upper reaches, and proliferate in regions with good development of chert formations. In the Krishna–Tungabhadra Doab, for the first time, hominins entered the savanna woodland zone. There are very few chronometric dates for what is termed the Middle Palaeolithic in India. Nandipalle in the Sagileru basin (1.11–1.26 m in clayey silts; from gastropod shells) dates to 23 670
640, 690; (half-life 5568
30 years) and 24 360
660, 710 (halflife 5730
40) (PRL –293). However, the Indian Middle Palaeolithic is in general bracketed between 150 kyr BP to around 30 kyr BP. Stratigraphically, most such sites in southern India are surface collections, often found in a mixed context with the Acheulian. However, stratified sites show that they overlie Acheulian horizons, and occur in a wide range of sedimentary contexts. In most areas, sites occur in finer fluvial gravels, termed gravel II, and sometimes separated by fine sediments from gravels bearing Acheulian artifacts (e.g., Sagileru complex and Kurnool complex). In the Hunsgi–Baichbal complex, they occur in a brown silt overlying the Acheulian, and often associated with it. In the Ghataprabha–Malaprabha complex, sites occur on the eroded surface of high-level gravels, in alluvial or channel gravel beds, on the surface of pediments, in talus and colluvial deposits, and as surface sites near raw material. In the Lakhmapur complex, Middle Palaeolithic tools were identified in black clays, palaeovertisols (unit II) resting uncomfortably over a nodular laterite (unit III), as also in the top of the unit III, but are reworked. In another complex, tools were noted in laterite (unit III) resting on the top of an indurated portion of the section (unit IV), along the distal margins of a pediment slope. In the Middle Krishna valley, sites were in association with highlevelgravels and the first major occupation of this

ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South 713

region occurred owing to the abundance of raw material in these gravels.The unique occurrence of Middle Palaeolithic artifacts in red beds at a depth of 3.2 m is noted at the site of Ramayogi Agraharam, along the Visakhapatnam coast, Andhra Pradesh. In the Kortallaiyar river basin, Tamil Nadu, artifacts occur eroding out of ferruginous gravel deposits, and on the surface of eroded bedrock. At Attirampakkam, tools are noted in layer 2, a fine ferruginous gravel. Over most of South India, quartzites continued to be used, with a preference for fine-grained rocks. Some regions witnessed a shift toward siliceous raw materials (chert, jasper, quartz) available in the form of nodules eroding from chert veins, outcrops, river, and high-level gravels. This is seen in the Krishna– Tungabhadra basin, the Cuddappah complex, and the Kurnool region, where there is the additional use of indurated shale, slate, quartz, and basalt; as also in the Hunsgi–Baichbal basins, and sites in the Kaladgi basin. Regional variability within complexes is also noted. Thus, in the Sagileru complex, while quartzites continued to be used, a complete switch to siliceous raw materials is seen at the site of Vemula. Similarly, in the Krishna–Tungabhadra Doab, distinct regional variability is seen in the use of quartzite, chert, and jasper at different sites. At Ramayogi Agraharam, khondalites were used. The Middle Palaeolithic is generally characterized by a predominance of flake tools: scrapers, borers, and points, along with a continuation of handaxes (which become diminutive), and chopper-chopping tools. However, tools were also made on chunks and nodules, and many authors note a decline in standardization and refinement of tools as compared to the Acheulian. The prepared core technique and blade techniques predominate along with use of simple flakes and minimal retouch, although along the southeast coast the Levallois element is thought to be negligible. In excavated sites such as Kovalli, evidence of the prepared core technique was noted with predominance of cores and debitage and fewer scrapers, borers, scrapers-cum-borers, and points. At a number of sites, tools were on nodules as well as on flakes struck from nodules. Shouldered tools, tanged points and miniature handaxes, blunting on flakes and flake blades are also noted at several sites. With the exception of the Gunjana complex of sites (with a high percentage of handaxes), scrapers and points predominate in most regions. In the Kortallaiyar river basin, hominins exploited locally available raw material sources (cobbles, pebbles, thermal fracture flakes) in an expedient manner, with minimal retouch and trimming. Prepared core and blade techniques are noted as also a continuation of tool types and techniques associated with the Acheulian.

Inferences on behavior are sporadic. In the Krishna– Tungabhadra Doab, sites are classified into base camps and transient sites, or factory sites. Similarly, Kovalli in the Kaladgi region is designated as a factory site. In the Kortallaiyar basin, technological strategies and assemblage composition along with studies of site-formation processes were used to infer site functions and suggest possible alternate mobility patterns across the landscape.

The Upper Palaeolithic The Upper Palaeolithic cultures of South India are distributed in a wide range of ecozones. Although, the Terminal Pleistocene was a period of greater aridity in South Asia, evidence from the Kurnool caves as well as from other sites in the Krishna and Godavari valleys indicates a grassland ecosystem with forest cover, swamps, and pools. The same pattern of tropical semi-arid monsoon climate is thought to have prevailed in southern India during this phase. Faunal remains from the Kurnool caves with Rhinoceros karnuliensis, Boselephas tragocamelus, Gazella gazella, Antelope cervicapra, Tetraceros quadricornis, Cervus unicolor, Axis axis, and Tragulus cf. memmina, point to scrub-to-tree jungle type of thick vegetation with open expanses of grasses and a source of water in streams. Cave sediments in the Kurnool region were deposited under somewhat humid conditions. Fluvial changes in river regimes have been documented. A number of chronometric dates available from sites in India bracket this phase between 40 kyr and 10 kyr BP with regional variability. In South India dates from Nandipalle on freshwater gastropod shells are 24 260
600, 710 and 17 390
10%. Burnt clay samples from a fireplace in the Upper Palaeolithic levels at the cave site of Muchchatla Chintamanu Gavi II gave a TL date of 17 390
10 BP. A date from Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu, on freshwater shells is around 25 160
850. Sites are distributed all over southern India, with once again a few noted in Tamil Nadu and none in Kerala. In the Gunjana complex, sites occur as surface scatters, but excavations at Vodikallu revealed that artifacts occur in a fine loam possibly deposited by a sluggish stream, which covered cultural material lying exposed on the adjacent land surface. In the Rallakalava complex, artifacts occur on the eroded surface of the first aggradational terrace of the stream, and sites are found in association with sands. At sites in the Shorapur Doab, a black brown silt with lenses of loose pebbly granular gravel yielded blade tools. The best-known complex of sites lie in the Kurnool karstic cave complex, where Muchchatla Chintamanu Gavi (MCG) was excavated as also were Billa Surgam

714 ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South

and Kottala Polimera Gavi. The MCG complex yielded the best evidence of the Upper Palaeolithic, both within caves and in the surroundings. Here, Upper Palaeolithic tools were noted below an upper cave earth in brown and chocolate brown poorly sorted deposits consisting of rockfall in a brown clayey sediment resulting from disintegrated limestone bedrock. Upper Palaeolithic site sizes vary greatly, and extend up to 20 000 m2 as seen in the southeastern fringes of the Eastern Ghats. In the Eastern Ghats, the sites are concentrated around riverine zones, marked by high artifact densities pointing to long-term occupation. Siliceous raw materials as well as quartz were now preferred, although fine-grained quartzites continued to be used. Regional variability is marked. In the Rallakalava complex, fluted cores and tools on blades are noted along with cores, scrapers, and choppers. The distinctive features include large-sized blades and blade tools and robust burins. Along the eastern coastal plain, the blunted backed blade element forms a significant part of the tool kit at some sites. Variability is also seen in the form of a tendency toward microlithization at some sites, indicating a trend toward the Mesolithic. In the Eastern Ghats, the blade tool complex comprises long parallel-sided blades, irregular blades, flake-blades, flakes, burins, borers, blade and flake cores, and debitage. The predominance of unmodified blades, flake blades and flakes, and the presence of an amorphous element are notable, with a low backed blade component. In the southeastern outliers of the Eastern Ghats, irregular and pointed blades, scrapers on blades, and flakes, denticulates, horse hoof scrapers on blade cores, prismatic curved back points, backed knives, macro lunates, macro triangles, and burins predominate. The burins, backed blades, and end scrapers are refined and are almost microlithic in form. Here, the presence of bored stones (possible net sinkers) and grinding slabs is notable. The sites of Salvadgi and Meralbhavi in the Shorapur Doab, Karnataka, are termed as workshops with two distinct stone working traditions: one characterized by manufacture of scraper-point-borer category of tools on flakes and flake-blades and the other by the production of blade tools. In the Gunjana complex, manufacturing sites could be identified with a high percentage of cores and debitage, a predominance of backed blade variants and scrapers, and a few burins, with tools tending toward microliths and representing a possible Late Upper or Epipalaeolithic phase. Excavations at the site of Vodikallu in this region yielded grinding stones and rubbers which testify to processing of plant food. Within the Kurnool cave complex, excavations at MCG yielded a wealth of blades and blade tools, along with a significant component of bone tools including perforators (some with fire-hardened

tips), scrapers, chisels, scoops, shouldered points, spatulae, worked bones, and bone blanks. This complex also has a paucity of retouched tools on blades or flakes, while backed blade variants, several burin types and other forms are absent or rare; and the culture is assigned to an incipient facies of the Upper Palaeolithic. In terms of behavioral implications, it was suggested that the cave was possibly neither a kill site nor a permanent settlement, but a transient camp, used when it received sufficient light. The scatters of sporadic artifacts in the surrounding region suggest a nomadic lifestyle. Ethnographic parallels are drawn on to explain seasonality in movement across this landscape.

Conclusion and Future Trends The South Indian Palaeolithic has yielded evidence of Early Acheulian sites which may date back to as old as 1 myr BP. Evolution within the Acheulian is noted from stratified sites, as well as from surface collections. Regional variability in raw material usage, site location and hominin behavior is also clear. Sites such as Attirampakkam display a stratified sequence of industries in well-preserved contexts, with the potential for informing on long-term adaptations to changing environments. Excavations at Isampur have revealed the first Acheulian quarry site in South Asia (see Asia, South: Paleolithic Cultures). The place of non-biface Acheulian industries requires further study. Industries transitional with the Middle Palaeolithic have been documented from numerous surface sites, as also from excavations at Lakhmapur and Attirampakkam. Regional variability in terms of raw material and tool types is seen in this phase. The origins of the Upper Palaeolithic are relatively less clear, although distinct trends in blade and burin industries are seen, with the best-documented sites located in the karstic cave complexes of Kurnool district. Recent multidisciplinary efforts in the Kortallaiyar basin and in the Hunsgi–Baichbal and Lakhmapur complexes, point to new approaches toward understanding these cultures. Future studies need to focus on generating more chronometric dates and on multidisciplinary studies for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. Questions related to hominin dispersals, evolution of the Acheulian, position of the pebble industries, transitional industries, and origins of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic require to be addressed and placed within a global perspective. See also: Asia, East: China, Paleolithic Cultures; Asia, South: India, Deccan and Central Plateau; Paleolithic Cultures; Asia, Southeast: Pre-agricultural Peoples.

ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 715

Further Reading Allchin B (1997) The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mishra S (1995) Chronology of the Indian stone age: the impact of recent absolute and relative dating attempts. Man and Environment XX(2): 11–16. Misra VN (1989) Stone age India: An ecological perspective. Man and Environment 14: 17–64. Murty MLK (1979) Recent research on the Upper Palaeolithic Phase in India. Journal of Field Archaeology 6(3): 301–320. Murty MLK (1985) Ethnoarchaeology of the Kurnool cave areas. World Prehistory 17(2): 192–205. Paddayya K (1982) The Acheulian Culture of the Hunsgi Valley (Peninsular India): A Settlement System Perspective. Poona: Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute. Paddayya K (1984) India: old stone age. In: Bar-Yosef O (ed.) Neue Forschungen zur Altsteinzeit. Sonderdruck, pp. 345–403. Munich: Verlag C.H Beck. Pappu RS (2001) Acheulian Culture in Peninsular India. New Delhi: D.K. Printworld. Pappu RS and Deo SG (1994) Man-Land Relationships During Palaeolithic Times in the Kaladgi Basin, Karnataka. Pune: Deccan College. Pappu S (1999) A study of natural site formation processes in the Kortallaiyar Basin, Tamil Nadu, South India. Geoarchaeology, An International Journal 14(2): 127–150. Pappu S (2001) BAR-International Series 1003:. A Re-examination of the Palaeolithic Archaeological Record of Northern Tamil Nadu, South India. Oxford: BAR. Pappu S (2001) Middle Palaeolithic stone tool technology in the Kortallaiyar Basin, South India. Antiquity 75: 107–117. Pappu S, Gunnell Y, Taieb M, Brugal J-P, and Touchard Y (2003) Ongoing excavations at the Palaeolithic site of Attirampakkam, South India: Preliminary findings. Current Anthropology 44(4): 591–597. Pappu S, Gunnell Y, Taieb M, and Kumar A (2004) Preliminary report on excavations at the Palaeolithic site of Attirampakkam, Tamil Nadu (1999–2004). Man and Environment XXIX(2): 1–17. Petraglia MD (1998) The Lower Palaeolithic of India and its bearing on the Asian record. In: Petraglia MD and Korisettar R (eds.) Early Human Behaviour in Global Context. The Rise and Diversity of the Lower Palaeolithic Record, pp. 343–390. London: Routledge. Petraglia MD, LaPorta P, and Paddayya K (1999) The first Acheulian quarry in India: Stone tool manufacture, biface morphology and behavior. Journal of Anthropological Research 55: 39–70.

Indus Civilization Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Dholavira One of the largest and most prominent archaeological sites in India, belonging to the Indus civilization. It is located on the Khadir island in the Kutch district of Gujarat. Mehrgarh One of the most important Neolithic (7000–3200 BCE) sites in archaeology, lies on the Kachi plain of Baluchistan,

Pakistan, and is one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming (wheat and barley) and herding (cattle, sheep and goats) in South Asia. Great Bath The earliest public water tank in ancient South Asia is one of the most spectacular features of Mohenjo-daro. Indus script (Harappan script) Refers to the undeciphered writing system consisting of short strings of symbols found on pottery and seals. Used between 2600–1900 BC and associated with the Harappan period settlements of the Indus civilization.

Indus Civilization Introduction

The Indus civilization is a general term that refers to the first urban society that emerged in the greater Indus valley of Pakistan and northwestern India, between 2600 and 1900 BC. This urban society was first discovered in the 1920s and has also been called the Harappa culture after the type site of Harappa, Pakistan where it was first discovered. Other common names that are found in the literature include the Indus valley civilization and the Indus–Saraswati civilization. Another common terminology that will be used in this essay uses the framework of long-term cultural traditions to examine the origin, character, and eventual decline of a civilization. The Indus tradition (also called the Indus valley tradition) refers to the wide range of human adaptations in the greater Indus region over a long span of history, approximately 10 000 to 1000 BC. The Indus tradition encompasses all adaptive strategies that contributed to the emergence and decline of the first phase of urbanism, including hunting-foraging the origins of agriculture and specialized crafts, the emergence of cities and state-level society, and finally the transformation and decline of the Indus cities (Figure 1). In addition to the Indus, three other major cultural traditions relating to the initial emergence of urbanism can be identified for the northwestern subcontinent: the Baluchistan, Helmand, and the Bactro-Margiana Traditions. These cultural traditions are linked in different ways to processes of socioeconomic and political developments in the subcontinent, beginning as early as the Palaeolithic and continuing through the Early Historic period. The Indus tradition can be subdivided into ‘eras’ and ‘phases’ that are roughly correlated to major adaptive strategies and regional material cultural styles (Table 1). A brief summary of each major era is provided below in order to provide a larger context in which to discuss the urban Harappa phase, of the Integration era, which is the main focus of this essay.

716 ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization

Chronological Framework: Origin to Decline Earlier models for the origin of the Indus civilization proposed that it was the result of direct or indirect influence from urban societies in Mesopotamia or Iran to the west. Over the past several decades, new excavations and better radiocarbon dating have resulted in more complex models for interpreting the origins and transformations of this early urban society. The Indus region was clearly not isolated from the events going on in other parts of West Asia; nevertheless, the origin of Indus cities such as Harappa and Mohenjo-daro can be traced to indigenous socioeconomic and political processes. Continued

archaeological excavations in both India and Pakistan have revealed the presence of numerous different types of sites that provide a more complete understanding of the origins and decline of the Indus civilization. While most scholars look to the Early Neolithic as the foundation of later urban centers, it is important to include a discussion of hunting and foraging communities who have continued to coexist and interact with settled communities throughout human history. With the retreat of glaciers in the northern subcontinent around 12 000–10 000 years ago and changes in climate, major changes in the species and distributions of fauna and flora in the South Asian subcontinent resulted in the establishment of new strategies of

Oxus (Amu Darya)

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Baluchistan tradition

s R.

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INDO-GANGETIC TRADITION Malwa tradition

Ancient coastline

Arabian Sea

Ganga-Vindhya tradition

Narmada R.

Godavari R. Deccan tradition Krishna R.

N

Figure 1 Major traditions in South Asia.

ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 717 Table 1 Indus Tradition Foraging era Mesolithic and Microlithic

10 000–2000 BCE

Early Food Producing era Mehrgarh Phase

7000–5500 BCE

Regionalization era Early Harappa phases Ravi, Hakra, Sheri Khan Tarakai, Balakot, Amri, Kot Diji, Sothi

5500–2600 BCE

Integration era Harappan phase Subdivided at the site of Harappa into Period 3A – 2600–2450 BC Period 3B – 2450–2200 BC Period 3C – 2200–1900 BC Localization era Late Harappan phases Punjab, Jhukar, Rangpur

2600–1900 BCE

1900–1300 BCE

foraging and hunting. The ‘Foraging era’ represents a relatively long period of time and broad geographical area where mobile and semisedentary foraging and hunting communities began focusing on intensive exploitation of specific plants and animals. In parts of Afghanistan and the edges of the Indus valley these adaptive strategies eventually contributed to the domestication of humped zebu cattle and possibly other species of animals and plants. During the Neolithic or ‘Early Food Producing era’, which dates to around 7000–5500 BCE at sites such as Mehrgarh, Pakistan, there is evidence for the emergence of wheat and barley agriculture and the herding of domestic cattle, along with sheep and goat. These plants and animals became the primary subsistence base for the development of larger towns and eventually cities in the Indus region. Major trade networks were also established during this period, connecting small agro-pastoral communities with distant resource areas. These networks extended from the Arabian Sea along the Makran coast to the highlands of northern Afghanistan, and from the Baluchistan hills to the deserts of Sindh and Rajasthan. In the subsequent Chalcolithic or ‘Regionalization era’, 5500–2600 BCE, distinctive regional cultures became established in the northern and southern alluvial plain, as well as in surrounding regions. Small villages became established in agriculturally rich areas and larger villages grew up along the major trade routes linking each geographical region and resource area. Some settlements, such as Mehrgarh, which is situated at the base of the Bolan Pass, became important craft production and trade centers. At Mehrgarh a wide suite of specialized crafts were developed for local use as well as for regional trade: pottery making, stone bead making, shell ornament production, copper

working, and eventually bronze working, as well as glazed steatite and faience bead making. Distinctive pottery styles and painted designs, along with regional human and animal figurine styles can be seen in other regions at sites such as Rehman Dheri (Gomal Plain), Sheri Khan Tarakai and Tarakai Qila (Bannu Basin), Sarai Khola (Taxila Valley), Harappa and Jalilpur (central Punjab), Siswal (Haryana), Kot Diji (Sindh), Amri and Ghazi Shah (southern Sindh), Nal/Sohr Damb (southern Baluchistan), and Balakot (Makran coast). Different regional cultures of phases have been named after the regions or sites where they were first discovered, such as Hakra, Ravi, Sothi, Amri, and Kot Diji phases. These cultures are collectively referred to as Early Harappan, because they set the foundation for the development of major urban centers in the core agricultural regions and at important crossroads. In addition to the developments in the core areas of the Indus and Saraswati–Ghaggar–Hakra valleys, recent excavations in Gujarat, India reveal the establishment of Early Harappan cultural traditions in Kutch and Saurashtra. The sites of Dholavira, Loteshwar, and Nagwada appear to have links to Amri and Kot Diji phase cultures in Sindh, but also reflect a local tradition from Gujarat, sometimes referred to as the Anarta culture. Many of the raw materials traded during the Early Harappan period derive from Gujarat, but the degree to which local cultures in Gujarat contributed to the Early Harappan and subsequent Harappan cultural traditions is still under investigation. At the end of the Regionalization era, during the ‘Kot Diji phase’, the first urban centers began to emerge in the Indus and Saraswati–Ghaggar–Hakra plain. At the site of Harappa, which is the bestdocumented settlement, the early urban phase dates from around 2800 to 2600 BCE (Figure 2). This settlement grew to more than 25 ha in area and was divided into two walled sectors. Smaller villages dating to the same time period have been discovered in the hinterland around Harappa and reveal that the site was a central place in an urban network and also had links to distant resource areas. At Harappa there is evidence for the first use of the ‘Early Indus script’, standardized weights, writing, and square stamp seals that were used to stamp clay sealings on bundles of goods or store rooms. Other small and large sites dating to this period reveal local developments in artifact styles, stamp seal styles, graffiti on pottery, and settlement planning. Standardized mud bricks used for building city walls and domestic architecture also appear at this time. The use of cardinal directions for orienting streets and buildings, and the use of bullock carts for transport of heavy commodities into the settlement begins during the Kot Diji phase at Harappa and numerous other sites

718 ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 60

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throughout the greater Indus region. Together these developments confirm the emergence of hierarchical social, economic, and political systems associated with early urbanism. Kot Diji phase sites have been found in the Gomal plain (Rehman Dheri), Kacchi plain (Nausharo), Taxila valley (Sarai Khola), along the bed of the Ghaggar–Hakra river (Jaliwali, Gamanwala, etc.), in the southern Indus region (Mohenjo-daro, Kot Diji, and Ghazi Shah), as well as in Kutch (Dholavira). The precise nature of regional interaction and chronology of local cultural developments is still unclear, but taken as a whole, these sites set the stage for the rise of large urban centers that came to dominate the greater Indus valley region. The Integration era, Harappa phase, dates from around 2600 to 1900 BCE, and it is during this long time span that cities such as Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Rakhigarhi, Dholavira, and Ganweriwala grew to their largest extent (Figure 3). This 700-year period can now be divided into three subphases on the basis

of changes in pottery, use of seals, and architecture as seen at the site of Harappa and other major settlements. Although the precise dates may differ from one site to another, at Harappa, these subphases are referred to as period 3A (2600–2450 BCE), 3B (2450–2200 BCE), and 3C (2200–1900 BCE). Some scholars still refer to this long time span as the ‘mature’ Harappan period (or Mature Harappan), but excavations and radiocarbon dating at the site of Harappa indicate that the artifact types generally associated with the so-called ‘mature’ Harappan period actually only occur during the last half of this 700-year time span. During the Harappa phase, the largest urban centers may have directly controlled their surrounding hinterland, but there is no evidence for hereditary monarchies or the establishment of centralized territorial states that controlled the entire Indus region. Cities, such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, and Dholavira were clearly being ruled by influential elites, probably a combination of merchants, landowners, and religious

ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 719

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leaders. Smaller towns and villages may have been run by corporate groups such as town councils or individual charismatic leaders, but there is a conspicuous absence of central temples, palaces and elaborate elite burials that are characteristic of elites in other early urban societies in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China. Hierarchical social order and stratified society is reflected in architecture and settlement patterns, as well as artifact styles and the organization of technological production. A vast network of internal trade and exchange and a shared ideology united the greater Indus valley. There was widespread use of similar styles of pottery, figurines, ornaments, the distinctive Indus script, seals, and standardized weights. Massive mud-brick walls surrounded most large settlements, and appear to have functioned primarily for control of trade access into the cities. These walls also would have served as formidable defenses, but there is no evidence for major conflict or warfare at any major center. A more detailed discussion of the Harappa phase will be presented below.

During the ‘Localization era’, ‘Late Harappan phases’, from 1900 to 1300 BCE or even as late at 1000 BCE, the major cities and their supporting settlements began to lose power due a number of factors. Shifting river patterns and the eventual drying up of the Saraswati–Ghaggar–Hakra River resulted in the abandonment of many sites and migration into the Indus valley, Gujarat or to the Ganga–Yamuna valley. The disruption of agriculture and the eventual breakdown of trade and political networks led to the decline of urbanism and the disappearance of many distinctive features of the Indus culture. The Indus script and inscribed seals were no longer used, and writing disappeared along with the use of cubical stone weights and many forms of symbolic objects. Other social and religious factors also contributed to the gradual reorganization of trade and technology and the emergence of new cultural, political and religious traditions. Although changes in material culture and socioritual traditions are well documented, there are also

720 ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization

significant continuities. Even though cubical stone weights disappeared, the weight system used during the Early Harappan and Harappan periods continued in use in later periods and is still used in South Asia today. Other continuities are seen in pottery styles and technology, some symbolic objects, overall site layout, the use of standardized bricks, etc. These continuities justify the use of the term Late Harappan to characterize many of these traditions. The Punjab phase, Cemetery H culture spread throughout the Punjab and Ganga–Yamuna region, the Jhukar phase and related cultures were found in Sindh and Baluchistan, and the Rangpur phase includes the Lustrous Red Ware and associated Black-and-Red ware cultures that were present in Gujarat, Rajasthan, and the Malwa Plateau. In the northern Indus valley and parts of Baluchistan some sites show an overlap between Late Harappan and Bactro-Margiana material culture. In the Gangetic region there is overlap with the Copper Hoards culture, the Ochre Colored Pottery, and Painted Gray Ware culture. Some of these cultures may be associated with Indo-Aryan speaking Vedic communities mentioned in the sacred hymns of the Rig Veda and later Brahmanical texts, but there is little consensus among scholars on this point. Considerable research still remains to be done on this transitional period, but some answers should be forthcoming from the many new sites that have been discovered in northern Pakistan and India.

Geographical Setting The greater Indus valley refers to a vast area drained by the various tributaries of the Indus River and a parallel (now dry) river that is variously referred to as the Saraswati–Ghaggar–Hakra–Nara River. The Indus tributaries emerge from the Kirthar and Suleiman mountains of Baluchistan on the west, the Hindu-Kush and Karakorum to the northwest, the Pamir and the Himalaya to the north and east. All of these mountainous regions have played an important role in providing minerals, timber, and trade routes to adjacent cultural centers in Baluchistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. The second major river has different names along its length. In the north are several tributaries, one of which is today called the Saraswati. Some scholars suggest that this was the sacred Saraswati River mentioned in the Rig Veda and other Brahmanical texts, but so far it has not been possible to confirm this identification. In the midsection it is called Ghaggar or Hakra and the depression where it appears to have flowed in the south is called the Nara. This ancient river, which will be referred to as the Ghaggar–Hakra, flowed

to the east and generally parallel to the Indus River. The Sutlej (ancient Satadru), which now flows into the Indus, appears to have been a tributary of the Ghaggar–Hakra system. The Ghaggar–Hakra appears to have reached the Rann of Kutch during the Regionalization era, but began drying up and eventually disappeared in the middle of the Cholistan desert toward the end of the Harappa phase or during the Late Harappan period. To the east, the greater Indus valley is bordered by the Thar Desert and the Aravalli mountains, both of which are rich in mineral resources used by communities of the Indus region. On the southeast lie the islands of Kutch, the peninsula of Saurashtra, and the mainland of Gujarat. The combined deltas of the Indus and the Ghaggar–Hakra Rivers extend from the Greater Rann of Kutch in the east to the rocky coast of Baluchistan near modern Karachi in the west. The coastal settlements in the Makran, Kutch, and Saurashtra appear to have had connections across the Arabian Sea to the coasts of modern Oman and the Persian Gulf. Although no purely Harappan site has been found on the Arabian Peninsula, many Indus artifacts have been found in coastal and some inland settlements.

Climate of the Greater Indus Region The Indus valley and adjacent regions are dominated by two major weather systems, the winter cyclonic system of the western highlands and the summer monsoon system of the peninsular subcontinent. The winter cyclonic system produces snowfall in Baluchistan and rainfall in parts of the Indus valley. The summer monsoon brings scattered rainfall to Sindh and Gujarat and heavy rainfall to the northern Indus plain, with rain and snow in the high mountains in the north. These two systems overlap in the Indus valley and if one system fails the other usually provides sufficient precipitation to support large populations throughout the region. The main crop cycles in the Indus valley region are aligned with the winter rains and the summer monsoon rains. Recent models of global climate indicate that, at 18 000–9000 BP, southern Asia would have been cooler and drier than today, with a weak summer monsoon. From 9000 to 7000 BP, there appears to have been a stronger summer monsoon, warmer summers, and cooler winters. Although these models work at the macrolevel, they cannot be confirmed through detailed analysis of specific sites or regions. Generally speaking, there is no evidence for major changes in climate or rainfall since at least 9000 BP. Specific regional environmental changes that directly impacted human settlement in the greater Indus region can

ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 721

generally be attributed to changing river-flow patterns and humanly induced erosion or soil degradation.

Subsistence Strategies Indus cities and villages were provisioned through a combination of intensive and extensive agriculture, combined with animal husbandry, and supplemented by fishing and hunting. During the Harappa phase, two major crops could have been harvested in some regions provided there was sufficient winter rain and summer flooding or rains. Agricultural fields were watered primarily by annual rainfall and seasonal flooding, but water-diversion channels, and dams for trapping soil and moisture are common along the Baluchistan piedmont and in parts of Kutch. Irrigation canals have been found at the site of Shortughai along the Amu Darya or Oxus River in Afghanistan, but there is no evidence for the construction of large-scale irrigation channels as was common in Mesopotamia at the time. Smaller fields and vegetable plots would have been watered by wells, which are found at most Harappa phase sites, and reservoirs like those found at Lothal and Dholavira. The brick-lined tank at Lothal was filled with river overflow during the monsoons, and at Dholavira a series of interconnected stone-lined reservoirs were filled by a combination of river run-off, and rainfall collected from rooftops and the city wall by an elaborate system of drains within the city itself. The main winter or rabi season crops in the core regions of the Indus were wheat and barley, supplemented by pulses, sesame, peas, and vegetables. Perennial cotton could have been grown during the winter season and harvested in the spring. The kharif crops, including rice, sorghum, and various millets, would have been sown during or at the end of the summer monsoon and harvested in the fall. Rice was not common in the Indus valley itself and is found only in Gujarat during the Harappa phase. Cotton, mustard, sesame, dates, melon, and peas were also cultivated, possibly as kharif crops. The most important domestic animals were cattle (humped Bos indicus and nonhumped Bos taurus) and water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis), followed in importance by sheep and goat. Although domestic pig is found in the cities, it was not a major source of meat. The domestic dog is well attested from animal bones as well as figurines, some of which depict small house pets, while others show mastiffs used in hunting. Many different types of wild animals were hunted and brought to the cities. Large game, such as elephant, rhinoceros, wild water buffalo, and various types of elk, deer, antelope and wild ass were hunted for food or for other products such as horns, antlers,

tusks and possibly their hides. Smaller animal may also have been hunted, and numerous terracotta figurines suggest that some of these small animals, such as Macaque monkeys, squirrels, and a variety of birds, were also captured for use as pets. Fishing and shellfish collection was important along the coasts and at the many settlements located along rivers and oxbow lakes. Marine shells were used for making ornaments and some riverine shells were used as tools. At the site of Harappa, which is more than 800 km from the coast, there is evidence for the trade of dried marine catfish, even though local riverine catfish were also being consumed. This trade in salted fish underscores the importance of preserved foods in the subsistence strategies of large urban centers (see Asia, South: India, Deccan and Central Plateau).

Settlement Patterns Many of the largest Indus cities were continuously occupied from the Early Harappan through the Harappan period. Consequently, the Harappa phase buildings and city walls often rose high above the surrounding plain, being constructed on top of earlier buildings and city walls. In some settlements, new suburbs were constructed out on the plain or on old city dumps, resulting in a higher older town and a lower newly built areas. At sites such as Harappa and Kalibangan, two distinct walled areas or mounds were created, and at other sites such as Mohenjo-daro, several different mounded areas were established. The landscape was dominated by large cities located at strategic positions along trade routes and in the core area of agricultural production. Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Rakhigarhi, and Dholavira are major cities, all of which are over 100 ha in area. Ganweriwala may represent a fifth major city at around 80 ha in area. The actual size of a settlement would have changed considerably over 700 years, but based on surveys of mounded ruins it is possible to identify an hierarchy of five settlement tiers: cities (greater than 80 ha), towns (10–50 ha), villages (5–10 ha), and hamlets (1–5 ha), camps (<1 ha). In addition, many people may have lived in floating villages or along the many rivers and lakes that surrounded the major cities. Over 1500 sites have been identified from this time period located in many different geographical regions, including coastal areas, alluvial plains, and remote mountain valleys. Estimates of the total area of the Indus civilization range from 680 000 to as much as 800 000 km2, but it should be clearly understood that there were large stretches of uninhabited wasteland between many of the sites and

722 ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization

the total area does not represent a territory of centralized political control or one that has distinct boundaries. Population estimates for the Indus period are difficult to determine, because it is not possible to accurately define how much of a city was occupied at any given time or which settlements were inhabited during the 700-year time span of the Harappa phase. The site of Harappa, which covers around 150 ha, could have held between 60 000 and 80 000 people at the height of the urban phase, but the total urban population may have fluctuated seasonally. Nomads and merchants may have come to the city during trading seasons, and many urban dwellers may have left to help in the fields during the agricultural or herding seasons.

major urban centers as well as smaller settlements. Most settlements were laid out on an irregular gridoriented north–south and east–west. The use of cardinal directions for settlement planning began in the Early Harappan period and continued through the Late Harappan period. Massive perimeter walls were constructed of mud brick, sometimes faced with fired brick, or stone. Gateways located near the corners or in the middle of the city walls provided controlled access into the settlements. The city walls and gateways were regularly maintained and modified over time, indicating that they had an important function throughout the life of each settlement. This function may have changed over time, but they would have provided defense from attacks from enemies or bandit raids, they allowed for the control of trade, and they protected the city from flooding. While some smaller sites have evidence for localized fire and conflagration, there is no evidence that any major settlement was attacked or destroyed by warfare (Figures 4–6).

City Planning One of the hallmarks of Harappan or Indus culture is the highly developed city planning that is seen in E1400

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ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 723 Mohenjo-daro, Sindh, Pakistan

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Figure 5 Mohenjo-daro site plan.

Within the settlements, streets and buildings were oriented on a north–south and east–west grid. The layout of streets and the placement of houses were often maintained for hundreds of years, either as the result of city ordinances or simply for functional purposes. Major north–south and east–west streets were between 4.5 and as much as 9 m wide allowing for two-way traffic using ox carts. Smaller streets were around 2–3 m wide, allowing only one-way cart traffic. Gateways were generally only 2.5 m wide that would allow only one-way cart traffic and more control of movement into and out of the city. Wide streets were constructed to allow ox carts carrying goods to access each major neighborhood and also to cross through the entire settlement. In Mesopotamian cities, the main streets went from the city gate to the temple or palace, but did not provide equal access to all parts of the settlement.

Fired brick-lined drains were located along the edges of the street, and some streets had large covered drains down the center of the street. Corbelled arches were used to carry drains under buildings or streets. The streets were not paved, but the accumulation of crushed pottery and nodules compacted by use resulted in hard surfaces similar to modern gravel roads. Large potholes and ox cart ruts were periodically filled with additional debris to level the streets out. Even with periodic maintenance, the accumulation of debris on the streets resulted in clogged drains that were eventually filled in and new streets and drains were built at a higher level to allow proper drainage. Streets in neighborhoods where there was less maintenance rose faster than the main streets, resulting in an uneven topography. Eventually, the highest parts of the cities were 18–20 m above the surrounding plain.

724 ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization Dholavira, Kutch, India

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Manh Figure 6 Dholavira site plan.

Private Architecture Indus cities were made up of both small and large private houses and larger public structures. Many buildings were built on top of earlier ruins or newly constructed mud-brick platforms that raised the level of the house above the street level to protect it from flooded streets. Over time, this construction practice resulted in neighborhoods that were much higher than the streets and as noted above, cities as a whole rose high above the plain. At Mohenjo-daro the highest walled mound is located in the west with a series of lower mounds on the east, and one or two habitation areas to the north and south of the high mound. The site of Harappa has a high mound in the west and much larger mound that is almost as high extending to the east. Lower suburbs are located to the north, northeast, south, and east of these two main mounds. Dholavira has a unique layout with three nested rectangular city walls and a higher citadel located on a hill in the south. Some of the smaller

settlements are also divided into separate mounded areas, or have a single large walled area divided by an internal wall. The segregated habitation areas associated with a single city may indicate competing economic or political groups, and with the exception of Dholavira, no single area appears to have dominated the total settlement. Bricks used for constructing buildings and city walls were of a standardized ratio of 1:2:4 (thickness: width:length). The absolute size of unfired mud bricks for city walls and large platforms was approximately 10 cm  20 cm  40 cm. The size for bricks used in the construction of houses was approximately 7 cm  14 cm  28 cm. Over 700 years, these ratios did not change and there was very little variation in absolute size. Most houses in the large cities were constructed with smaller fired bricks, while unfired small bricks were used for temporary walls and foundation repairs. In regions where stone was plentiful, such as Kutch and Saurasthra, roughly hewn and carefully dressed

ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 725

stone blocks were also used in architecture. While some effort was made to maintain the 1:2:4 ratio, this was not rigorously imposed in stone construction. There is no standardization in the layout of Harappan houses, but private houses were generally laid out with a central space surrounded by living and storage rooms. Many houses had entryways from a side alleyway rather than from the main street, and usually windows were maintained only on the second storey. The roof and second floor were made with wooden beams and covered with reeds and plaster to create a sturdy floor. Doors and windows were made with wood and some windows had wood or stone latticework to allow airflow, and at the same time a degree of privacy. Although there are numerous large building complexes in the larger cities, most appear to be the result of growth and remodeling over time. The core building may have belonged to a wealthy merchant or landowner, with numerous smaller units inhabited by relatives or servants. None of these structures appear to have been used as a central palace or temple. Many smaller private buildings as well as some of the larger structures are associated with manufacturing debris from specialized crafts, and small craft workshops are often found in association with domestic architecture. At sites such as Chanhudaro and Lothal, some buildings and open areas may have served as specialized factories for bead making or copper working, but most crafts associated with kilns were located at the edges of the sites (see the section on ‘specialized crafts’) or in what appear to be abandoned structures.

Monumental or Public Architecture Large buildings that do not appear to be domestic in nature have been identified at Mohenjo-daro as well as at Harappa. The famous Great Bath of Mohenjo-daro may have been used for public rituals and consists of a specially constructed water tank (12 m north–south and 7 m wide, with a maximum depth of 2.4 m), surrounded by a colonnade with entries at both ends. Smaller rooms, one of which contains a well, are located on the eastern side of the tank, and may have been used for visitors or for storage. Just to the north of this tank are eight small rooms with bathing platforms, where people may have cleansed themselves before coming to the main tank for special rituals. To the southwest of the Great-Bath is the so-called Granary, which consists of a monumental brick foundation (50 m east–west and 27 m north–south) with narrow passageways and sockets for holding what

may have been a wooden superstructure. Although it is referred to as a granary, there is no archaeological evidence for the storage of grain in this building. Its precise function may never be known, but it was clearly an impressive monumental building or public hall in a prominent area of the city. At Harappa a monumental building complex, also mistakenly called a ‘granary’, has been the focus of recent excavations in an attempt to determine its precise function. This structure was originally constructed on a massive mud-brick platform with fired brick facing (50 m north–south and 40 m east–west). Two rows of six long rectangular rooms were separated by a central passageway. These rooms had brick foundations and narrow hollow floors, and were thought to have been used for storage of grain. Careful analysis of several unexcavated portions of this structure in 1997 did not reveal any evidence of storage vessels, or grain and the precise function is still unknown. When it was first excavated in the 1930s, it was thought to be associated with equally enigmatic circular working platforms interpreted as grainprocessing areas and located to the north of the ‘granary’ New excavations and radiocarbon dating have shown that the circular working platforms were not used for processing grain and that they date some 200 years after the so-called ‘granary’ was constructed. The precise function of these circular platforms is still being investigated. Recent excavations at the site of Dholavira have found large buildings in the highest citadel area of the site, but once again there is no conclusive evidence for their function during the Harappan period. The excavators suggest that they may have been administrative or ritual structures that were eventually abandoned and reused by later inhabitants.

Wells and Latrines The construction of wells made with specially designed wedge-shaped bricks reflects the high level of technical expertise achieved by Indus architects and the overriding need for reliable sources of water in large urban centers. Wedge-shaped well bricks were the same length as normal rectangular bricks (28 cm) but one edge was constricted to create a tight fitting tubular construction. As wells were sunk into the ground, the surrounding pressure of the soil made the construction even stronger. Wells range in size from around 1 m internal diameter to over 2 m in diameter and were excavated below the water table to provide freshwater in the heart of the cities. Many houses, particularly at sites such as Mohenjo-daro, had private wells, but in other sites a single well was used for a

726 ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization

larger neighborhood. Public wells were located along major streets or in public courtyard areas. Most houses in larger cities had separate bathing areas with paved floors made with bricks set on edge and closely fitted to make them water tight. A separate latrine area was usually located next to the bathing platform. The latrines were in the form of a commode made from an old storage jar, which usually had a hole punched into the base and was buried up to the rim in the floor. These commodes would have been regularly emptied and the waste taken outside of the city. Small drains discharged wastewater from the bathing area and latrine overflow into a sump pot in the street or into a neighborhood drain. When houses were remodeled, a new jar would be placed on top of the old commode and the surrounding floor was raised with rubble or debris. The larger city drains were generally not used for removal of human waste, but rather to take away water from bathing areas and wells, and excess rainwater. Major drains emptied the wastewater onto the plains outside the city. Many streets in the larger cities had garbage bins for the accumulation of nonliquid waste that would have been collected and dumped outside the settlement. Although the Indus cities were equipped with the most sophisticated drainage system of any contemporaneous ancient city, these drains and garbage collection areas and latrines had to be maintained continuously to function effectively. Excavations at Harappa have shown that while some areas of the city were being maintained, streets and drains in other neighborhoods became filled with refuse, and even rotting animal carcasses. Eventually, the city or more likely neighborhood committees refurbished these streets and new drains were constructed above the old ones, indicating a fluctuating and possibly decentralized process of civic order and maintenance.

Specialized Crafts The emergence of urban centers is closely linked to the development of specialized technologies. Due to the fact that the Indus script has not yet been deciphered, the study of specialized crafts provides one of the most important sources of information on the nature of Indus trade, technology, and socioeconomic and political organization. Cities were located at crossroads of interaction and trade that stimulated the development of distinctive technologies. Withthe increase in urban populations, many crafts were developed to create status items to differentiate specific communities and meet the demands of increasingly complex urban needs. While many crafts practiced in

the large urban centers can be traced back to earlier village communities in distant resource areas, others were the result of innovative urban craft specialists. For example, chipped stone tools, shell working, stone bead making and even copper metallurgy began long before the emergence of cities. In contrast, complex metal casting and joining, drilling of hard stone beads with specialized drills, finely carved steatite seals, the production of compact glassy faience, and the manufacture of stoneware bangles, are technologies that were invented or developed in the cities. The technology of writing itself can also be seen as a specialized craft that was refined and standardized during the urban phase. Some of these technologies were exclusively developed for creating status items for elites, in order to communicate and reinforce social, ritual, and probably political hierarchy. Many of the crafts practiced in the cities were not directly controlled by elites, but any craft located within the city walls could have been indirectly controlled through taxation of raw materials coming into the city or finished goods leaving the city. Stone tool making, shell working, the production of grinding stone, and steatite and agate bead making were carried out in many different parts of the city. These crafts involved local as well as nonlocal materials and relatively simple extractive or reductive technologies, that involve processes such as chipping, grinding, carving, spinning and twisting, etc., to process raw materials into finished objects. Transformative technologies were generally more important for the creation of trade and status items and involved pyrotechnological or chemical processes using either local or nonlocal materials. Copper/bronze working, some pottery firing, and the manufacture of faience and steatite seals are transformative crafts and were often practiced in isolated or sometimes highly controlled areas of the city. During the Harappa phase, pottery was generally made on the fast wheel, though molds and handbuilding techniques were used for some vessels. Most of the pottery was either undecorated or simply ornamented with red slip and black bands. Around 10% of the pottery was elaborately decorated with black-painted motifs on red slip or occasionally with polychrome decorations. Stoneware bangles were finely crafted high-fired ceramic ornaments whose production was restricted to the largest cities of Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, and possibly Dholavira (Figure 7). The faience produced in the Indus cities was extremely strong and made from reground frit or melted silica. It was colored with copper or other minerals to create a range of colors and was used

ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 727 4

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Figure 7 Mohenjo-daro pottery types. From Dales GF and Kenoyer JM (1986). Excavations at Mohenjo Daro, Pakistan: The Pottery. Philadelphia, University Museum Press, fig. 102.

to make bangles, beads, pendants, and also seals and inscribed tablets. Fired steatite or soapstone was used to make beads as well as square inscribed seals. While bead making and seal production were usually undertaken in different areas, recent excavations at Harappa found a highly restricted faience and steatite seal workshop where beads were also being manufactured. Indus ornaments were made in similar styles but from different qualities of materials that would have had different relative value. For example, bangles were made in terracotta, faience, shell, ivory, alabaster and a high-fired stoneware, as well as copper/ bronze and gold (Figure 8). Beads and pendants were made out of stone, shell, ivory, terracotta, faience, and precious metals (Figure 9). The similarity in ornament style is thought to reflect shared ideologies, but the hierarchy in material quality may have been used to define different social or economic groups. Similar patterns can be seen in the manufacture of identical shaped containers made of terracotta, copper, or silver. Copper metallurgy was highly developed, and included the use of pure copper, tin bronze, and arsenical bronze to make tools, weapons, mirrors,

ornaments, figurines, and a variety of vessels. The different compositions and alloys resulted in objects with different colors as well as functional capabilities such as hardness or flexibility. Silver was used to make ornaments and vessels, while gold was used primarily for ornaments. Textiles were also an important industry in the Indus cities and though the preservation of fabrics is rare, it is possible to identify the use of cotton and different qualities of wool to make cords and weave both coarse and fine fabrics. These fibers were being spun on hand-turned spinning wheels as well as drop spindle whorls. The most important recent discovery from Harappa is evidence for the earliest use of wild silk at around 2450 BC, to manufacture threads used in beaded ornaments. On the basis of decorated textiles depicted on figurines, such as the famous PriestKing sculpture from Mohenjo-daro (Figure 11d) and one sample of fabric with traces of dye, fabrics were probably dyed or stamped with different colors, such as red (from madder) and blue (from indigo) or bleached to create contrasting white patterns. All of these crafts would have been important for both everyday existence as well as for trade and the creation of status items to differentiate the many

728 ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization Terracotta

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Figure 8 Harappan bangle styles.

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Selected phase beads from Harappa: 2600–1900 BC Figure 9 Harappan bead styles.

ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 729

different communities and social classes. Specialized crafts were also used to create distinctive ritual objects such as figurines, ornaments, and narrative seals.

Trade and Economy The overall economic organization of the Indus cities can be reconstructed through a study of the distribution of resource areas, sites with specialized production of semifinished goods, and the presence of raw materials, workshops, and finished goods in major settlements. These data reveal a highly stratified economic interaction system. Many of the larger towns and cities were directly connected with external regions and to each other by inter-regional networks. The long-term stability of this system would have been essential for merchants to make profits from raw materials and goods after traveling hundreds of kilometers to the major cities. Cities were connected to towns and villages through regional networks of exchange, and more local networks were used to redistribute food items and essential commodities between a city and its immediate hinterland. Although no coinage system has been discovered, a highly standardized system of stone weights was used throughout the entire area of the Indus civilization. The base weight may have been two seeds of barley or moong bean, or possibly the wild licorice seed (Abrus precatorius or ‘gunja’), which is red and black and weighs approximately 0.109 g. Indus weights use a combination of both a binary system (doubling in size from 1:2:4:8:16:32:64) and a decimal system of 160, 200, 320, 640, etc. The smallest weight is equal to 8 ‘gunja’ or 0.871 g, and the largest weight at Mohenjo-daro is 10 865 g. Cubical stone weights were probably not used for everyday exchange, but are found primarily in the gateway areas of large cities and may have been used for taxation. Another possible form of accounting or credit may have been the use of inscribed tablets or molded faience tablets that begins around 2450 BC (period 3B) at Harappa and continues through the end of the Harappa phase. Stamp seals with Indus script and distinctive animal motifs were used to mark bundles of goods with clay sealings, and provide conclusive evidence for elite control of trade within the Indus region as well as in long-distance trade. Indus weights, seals, and sealings have been found in the Arabian Gulf and distant Mesopotamia, as well as in Central Asia. Special trade goods produced in the Indus, such as beads, shell objects and figurines have been recorded from Mesopotamian sites, but so far there is no evidence for Mesopotamian produced items in the Indus sites. Trade goods from Mesopotamia may have been perishable materials such as textiles or consumables, or

raw materials that were reworked into new forms. The only exotic finished goods found in Indus cities originate in Baluchistan or Afghanistan and include copper and stone tools, cylinder seals, carved stone figurines, stone vessels and ornaments, and possibly some pottery vessels.

Indus Script During the Harappa phase, the Indus script appears to have been standardized throughout the Indus region and used in a wide variety of contexts and forms. This script emerged out of earlier forms of writing found during the Kot Diji phase at Harappa and other sites throughout the greater Indus valley region (Figure 10). Beginning around 2600–2450 BC, the most widespread context for writing is seen in cursive graffiti incised onto pottery that was used for storage and trade, as well as for personal or ritual use. Other forms of cursive script are seen on personal ornaments used to indicate ownership or dedication. The most formal type of writing is seen inscribed on square steatite seals that were also carved with animal motifs. The various iconographic motifs include the mythical unicorn, multiple headed animals, as well as the bull, elephant, bison, goat, tiger, and rhinoceros. The inscriptions were made in reverse and stamped into clay sealings to create a positive text indicating ownership or destination. Beginning around 2450– 2200 BC, a complex system of inscribed tablets or tokens was developed for keeping accounts and maintaining trade contacts throughout the Indus valley. Toward the end of the Harappa phase, c. 2200– 1900 BC, distinctive copper tablets with incised script and animal motifs were produced at Mohenjo-daro, and a different style of copper tablet with raised script on both sides was produced at Harappa. These copper tablets were relatively standardized in terms of shape, weight, and inscriptions, and may have been used for special accounting or rituals. During this same time period, rectangular seals with writing, but no animal motif began to be used, and writing came to be used in conjunction with elaborate narrative depictions of myths and religious ceremonies found on seals, tablets, or pendants. The Indus script has not yet been deciphered, due to the absence of bilingual tablets and the lack of long inscriptions. More than one language may have been spoken in the Indus settlements and therefore the Indus script was probably used to write words or short sentences in more than one language. The major language families that may have coexisted in the greater Indus region include Dravidian, AustroAsiatic, Sino-Tibetan, and Indo-Aryan. While some individuals have proposed that the Indus script was

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not a writing system and was not used to encode a language, this opinion is not widely supported. Most inscriptions are made up of only a few signs, with the average being five signs. The contexts of its use allow archaeologists to reconstruct the function and importance of writing in the economy, politics, and ideology of the Indus cities. The script was quite versatile and could be used to encode a range of messages. The general function of the inscriptions would have been to identify ownership of goods or economic transactions, accounting, the recording of sociopolitical or ritual events and less formal graffiti. Approximately 400–450 different signs have been identified, but not all were used at the same time. The number of signs and the sequences in which they occur has led many scholars to suggest that the writing system is logo-syllabic, though some signs appear to have served as pictographs or even as ideographs. Most inscriptions were written from right to left, though some longer inscriptions were written in both directions, alternating from right to left on each succeeding line. As noted above, the use of the Indus script and the types of objects being inscribed can now be divided

into three phases corresponding to the major chronological developments at Harappa. Although there may have been some use of graffiti on pottery during the Late Harappa phase (1900–1300 BC), inscribed Indus seals were no longer made or used after around 1900 BC. The relatively abrupt disappearance of a writing system that had existed for over 700 years suggests that the Indus script itself was closely linked to the ruling elites of the Indus cities and that the writing system had economic, religious, and political significance.

Religion Given the large geographic area of the Indus cities and the hierarchy of settlements, it is surprising that distinctive shared symbols and distinctive ritual objects are found in all major settlements. These symbols are thought to reflect a shared ideology that in conjunction with economic strategies helped to integrate the many different communities living in the major cities and surrounding settlements. Some of the more common artifacts and symbols are similar styles of terracotta figurines of animals that may have been used for

ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 731

symbolic sacrificial purposes. Human figurines of males and females with ornaments and elaborate headdresses may represent fertility or other specific deities (Figure 11) Various geometric symbols such as the stepped cross, swastika, endless knot, and intersecting circle motif are found on pottery as well as pendants and seals. Narrative scenes on seals depict outdoor ceremonies that took place under the sacred pipal or fig tree, worship of deities in trees or seated in yogic position on a throne, processions with sacred animals, the practice of animal sacrifice, and possibly even human sacrifice. Other scenes depict what may be important myths and stories. Local cults may have been practiced in specific regions while a more established state religion appears to have emerged in the major cities. At Mohenjo-daro and Dholavira, stone sculptures of male figures have been found that may represent clan leaders. In the past, these were incorrectly called ‘priest-king’ images. The most direct evidence for ritual practice is found in the cemetery burials at major sites such as Harappa, Dholavira, and Mohenjo-daro, as well as some smaller settlements such as Lothal, Rupar, and Kalibangan. Most burials were made in a north–south-oriented rectangular pit with the head to the north. The body was placed in a wooden coffin or wrapped in a shroud, and laid out on top of or surrounded by burial pottery and other offerings needed for the

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after-life (Figure 12). Although these burials do not contain large amounts of material wealth, they do contain distinctive pottery and ornaments that would not have been available to common people. The health status and mature age profiles of the buried individuals also indicate that they were a privileged class. The delicate shell bangles found buried with many of the women also indicate that over time they became less and less involved in manual labor, clearly an indication of elite status. Although there are no ‘royal burials’, the recent excavation of a burial complex at Dholavira suggests that some individuals were interred with gold ornaments, a tradition that was not practiced in the major cities and towns. Cemeteries that have been discovered represent only a small portion of the population, and the rest of the urban population would have been disposed of by other means that have left no archaeological trace. This burial pattern is one more indication of social differentiation and hierarchy.

Social and Political Organization Without the aid of written texts, the sociopolitical and ritual character of Indus cities is difficult to understand. Nevertheless, the various types of artifacts and the patterns of their use discussed above provide insight into the ways in which these cities and the society as a

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Figure 11 Harappan figurines and sculpture. (a) Terracotta female figurine, Mohenjo-daro; (b) terracotta female Figurine, Harappa; (c) bronze female figurine, Mohenjo-daro; (d) steatite ‘priest-king’ figure, Mohenjo-daro; (e) terracotta male figurine, Harappa.

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whole was organized. Urban populations would have included administrative and service classes such as sweepers and garbage collectors. Wealthy landlords and merchants along with their service groups and craftsmen may have occupied the large multiroomed houses. Numerous specialized craftspeople would have been employed by the merchants or worked as entrepreneurs in the urban market places and craft workshops. The gateways would have been staffed with gatekeepers and tax collectors, while guards would have kept watch at the gateways and on the city walls. Many farmers may have lived inside the city walls in addition to maintaining hamlets close to their fields. Herders, fisher folk, and hunters may have lived in the city periodically in order to participate in urban markets and to provision the large urban population. Rural populations would have been made up of farmers and herders, fisher folk, and hunters. Miners and specialized craftspeople would have lived near

major resource areas, and long-distance traders would have moved between cities and resource areas to market their goods. It is not difficult to reconstruct the many different occupations that are necessary to run a city, but the actual political organization is more difficult to define. The lack of palaces, temples, and extravagant burials of hereditary monarchs has led some scholars to argue that this urban society was not organized as a state, but rather as a complex chiefdom or some other form of nonstate society. Without the aid of written texts, it would be quite difficult to differentiate a complex chiefdom and an early state-level society. Nevertheless, other scholars, including this author, argue that these cities were organized as state-level societies with highly stratified and hierarchical social organization. The support for this model is seen in the hierarchy of settlement patterns, the relatively limited use of

ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier 733

seals, weights and writing by some communities living in the city, and the presence of relatively small and intensively used cemeteries that contain individuals who represent elites. Instead of a single dominant group, the rulers of the various cities would have controlled through a corporate structure, similar to that seen in the republics and confederacies of the subsequent Early Historic period. The major ruling communities would have been made up of landlords, merchants, or ritual specialists who shared a common ideology and economic system as represented by seals, ornaments, ceramics, and other artifacts. The cities were probably more rigidly stratified and segregated than the rural settlements, but the social organization of the society as a whole would have been loosely stratified. While the largest cities may have been relatively independent, they were integrated with other settlements though political and economic interaction based on the trade and exchange of important subsistence goods as well as socioritual status items. See also: Asia, South: Baluchistan and the Borderlands; Ganges Valley; India, Deccan and Central Plateau; Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier; Sri Lanka; Cities, Ancient, and Daily Life; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Craft Specialization; Exchange Systems; Writing Systems.

Further Reading Allchin R and Allchin B (1997) Origins of a Civilization: The Prehistory and Early Archaeology of South Asia. Delhi: Viking. Bisht RS (2005) The water structures and engineering of the Harappans at Dholavira (India). In: Jarrige C and Lefevre V (eds.) South Asian Archaeology 2001, vol. 1, p. 11–26. Paris: CNRS. Dales GF and Kenoyer JM (1986) Excavations at Mohenjo Daro, Pakistan: The Pottery. Philadelphia: University Museum Press. Kenoyer JM (1998) Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization. Karachi: Oxford University Press. Kenoyer JM (2003) Uncovering the keys to the Lost Indus Cities. Scientific American Jul.2003: 67–75. Kenoyer JM (2006) The origin, context and function of the Indus Script: Recent insights from Harappa. In: Osada T and Hase N (eds.) Proceedings of the Pre-symposium and the 7th ESCA Harvard-Kyoto Roundtable, pp. 9–27. Kyoto: Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, RIHN. Lal BB (1997) The Earliest Civilization of South Asia (Rise, Maturity and Decline). New Delhi: Aryan Books International. Law RW (2005) Regional interaction in the Prehistoric Indus Valley: Initial results of Rock and Mineral Sourcing Studies at Harappa. In: Jarrige C and Lefevre V (eds.) South Asian Archaeology 2001, vol. 1, p. 179–190. Paris: CNRS. Meadow RH and Patel AK (2003) Prehistoric pastoralism in Northwestern South Asia from the Neolithic through the Harappan Period. In: Weber S and Belcher WR (eds.) Ethnobiology and the Indus Civilization, pp. 65–94. Lanham, ML: Lexington Books.

Mughal MR (1997) Ancient Cholistan: Archaeology and Architecture. Lahore: Ferozsons. Parpola A (1994) Deciphering the Indus Script. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Possehl GL (1999) Indus Age: The Beginnings. New Delhi: Oxford and IBH Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd. Possehl GL (2002) The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press. Weber SA (2003) Archaeobotany at Harappa: Indications for change. In: Weber S and Belcher WR (eds.) Ethnobiology and the Indus Civilization, pp. 175–198. Lanham, ML: Lexington Books. Wright RP, Schuldenrein J, Khan A, and Mughal MR (2005) The emergence of satellite communities along the Beas Drainage: Preliminary Results from Lahoma Lal Tibba and Chak Purbane Syal. In: Jarrige C and Lefevre V (eds.) South Asian Archaeology 2001, vol. 1, p. 327–336. Paris: CNRS.

Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier Robin Coningham and Mark Manuel, Durham University, Durham, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Early Historic Refers to the second emergence of urbanization in South Asia, dating to the early part of the first millenium BCE through to the mid-first millenium AD. Its historic references are derived from Vedic texts such as the Rig Veda and Mahabharata, texts. The period ends with the establishment of the Gupta Empire, which witnesses massive changes in both political and administrative structures. Gandhara The name of one of the early Historic Mahajanapadas, situated in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan. Gandhara was located primarily within the Kabul River valley, the Vale of Peshawar, Potwar Plateau, but had strong links to the Swat Valley. The main cities are Charsadda and Taxila. The name has been utilized throughout history to refer to this region and its inhabitants. Janapada (and Mahajanapada) Janapada or ‘territory’ refers to the emergence of a number of settlements and their hinterlands during the first millenium BCE. Competition and internecine fighting between these settlements, resulted in individual centers expanding their control over neighboring janapada – resulting in the establishment of the classic sixteen Mahajanapadas or ‘Great Territories’. philhellene Someone who was an admirer of Greek culture, but not necessarily of Greek origin. In this sense, refers to a series of communities within Central and Southern Asia who adopted Greek architecture, coinage, religion, and script or language, but were not of Greek descent. satrapy A territory or province that was governed by a governor or client-king. Originating in the Persian Empire, conquered lands were run as politically and economically semi-autonomous states, whilst military aspects were centrally controlled and annual tributes/taxes were paid to the Empire. Satrapies were used by later philhellene empires in Central, Southern, and Western Asia.

734 ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier transhumance A method of subsistence in which livestock (sheep, goat, cattle) and humans move between different geographical and/or topographical regions on a seasonal basis. Generally, summers are spent in upland areas, whilst winters are spent in lower-lying regions.

southern plains, whilst in the northern valleys snow can remain on the ground for 9 months of the year. Part of the catchment of the Indus, the Valleys of Swat, Chitral, Dir, Hunza, Gilgit, and Leh join the Indus system high in the mountains whilst foothills to the east feed the Jhelum, Chenab Ravi, Sutlej. Before opening onto the plains of the Punjab, a series of large vales are encountered, including Kashmir and Peshawar, the former with its well-known lakes. The southernmost areas of this study are the Bannu Basin, within the watershed of the Kurram River, and the western plains of the Indus until it meets Dera Ismail Khan and two regions with very different characters – Sindh and Baluchistan (see Asia, South: Baluchistan and the Borderlands) (Figures 2 and 3). Bitterly contested by states with nuclear capability, this region has a patchwork of languages and religions, but its archaeological and historical context has been shaped by its stark physical features. However, this is not a marginal area but one of innovation, and although impassable for many months of the year, its valleys have facilitated the movement and exchange of goods, peoples, and ideas between southern Asia and the lands to its north, east, and west for millennia.

Introduction Although partitioned for the last 60 years, the geography, archaeology, and history of the Northwest Frontier and Kashmir present a distinct regional unit within South Asia. This is most clearly demonstrated by its geography, which is part of the great barrier defining the northern limits of the subcontinent. Formed by the Hindu Kush and Karakoram mountains, its foothills are dissected by a series of meandering valleys, whose deep-cutting rivers conjoin in vales before disgorging onto the fertile plains of the Punjab to the south (Figure 1). Despite this unity, the region’s topography is diverse and ranges from eight peaks over 7500 m down to the alluvial plains of the Indus River less than 200 m above sea level. Corresponding diversity is found in its temperatures, where it can reach over 45  C in the

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Figure 2 The Hunza Valley with Karakoram mountains beyond.

Figure 3 General view of the Kashmir Valley.

Early Prehistory

Despite the discovery of the early primates, Sivapithicus and Ramapithicus, in the strata of the northern mountains in the late nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, no remains of early hominids have been found in this region (Figure 4). These early discoveries led to the mission of De Terra and Paterson, a geologist and an archaeologist, who surveyed possible occupation sites in the 1930s. Although tasked with providing

evidence of an Asian origin for humans, they concluded that early humans migrated from Africa. However, their findings have provided the foundations of our understanding of the earliest phases of South Asian prehistory. New exploration and excavation in recent decades, particularly an analysis of the Soan Valley where De Terra and Paterson worked, have pushed back the established date for early human occupation in the

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Figure 4 Timeline.

region to 1.9 million years ago, and have necessitated the reformulation of many of the concepts regarding the character of the Asian Palaeolithic. Our evidence comes from two key areas, the Potwar Plateau, and the Valleys of Swat and Kashmir. Rather than representing the distribution of Palaeolithic occupation in the region, they reflect the most intensively examined areas (see Asia, South: Paleolithic Cultures). The Soan Palaeolithic

The Palaeolithic occupation of the region is best known from the Potwar Plateau where the Soan River has cut a deep gorge into early strata and includes the earliest known human artifact in South Asia. The latter, a flaked quartzite pebble, was recovered from a gully close to the site of Riwat, where it was embedded in a conglomerate dating to 1.9 million years old. While there has been some debate over the authenticity of the find as well as questions regarding the lack of chronometric dates, this artifact is yet to be successfully refuted. Somewhat younger, hand-axes have been recovered from sites in the Jhelum river basin within securely dated geological deposits of 700–500 ka. The most extensive corpus of Palaeolithic occupation comes from Riwat itself. Dated to 45 ka, excavations have revealed remains of a small stone-lined pit associated with a low wall-footing and lithic blades. A high proportion of the stones found at the site appear to be flakes, flaked cores, and blades; however, despite extensive excavation no evidence of animal bones, charcoal, burnt stones, or burnt clay was identified, leaving the excavators to suggest that the site was not an habitation site but a manufacturing site, possibly for skin working (Figure 5).

Figure 5 Flaked quartzite pebble from Riwat.

Elsewhere on the Potwar Plateau, manufacturing sites predominate in areas where water and raw materials are abundant. Scrapers, trimmed points, small cleavers, and axes dominate the assemblages, most of which are manufactured from quartzite. The dating of loess deposits immediately above these finds from the Soan River provides a terminus ante quem of between 20 and 60 ka. Northern Valleys

Sanghao Cave, situated on a tributary of the Swat River in the Vale of Peshawar, has yielded 3 m of cultural deposits with a degree of continuity in occupation.

ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier 737

Excavated in the 1960s and poorly published, its scrapers, blade-flakes, tanged and triangular points, burins and small-hand ax have been loosely attributed to the Middle Palaeolithic. Again, quartzite predominates the assemblage, unsurprisingly as there is a source less than 100 m from the cave entrance. Occupation at the site is thought to have continued, although not continuously, until the Early Historic period. Further Palaeolithic tools have been identified in the Alakananda Valley near Garhwal in Kashmir. Quartzite is the most commonly utilized raw material, but there are also some isolated uses of jasper. Although difficult to date, it is likely that many of the hunters and prey depicted on boulders and rock shelters in Chilas and Hunza in the upper Indus and Dungri in the Vale of Kashmir relate to this period (Figure 6).

First Food-producing Communities While it is extremely difficult to identify a distinct Mesolithic phase across the Northwest Frontier and Kashmir region, pollen analysis from peat deposits in the central Himalayas suggests that the period between c. 4000 and 2500 BC was one of increased temperature and rainfall – a result of enhanced monsoon strength. Associated with the frequent growth and decline of pine forests, these changes coincided with the emergence and spread of Neolithic communities within the valleys and vales of the region. Notably later than the sites of Mehrgarh and Kili Ghul Muhammed to the west (see Asia, South: Baluchistan and the Borderlands), the Neolithic of the Swat Valley, and Vale of Kashmir possesses its own distinct regional character.

Kashmir Valley

One of the most extensively excavated sites is Burzahom, ‘the place of Birch’, in the Vale of Kashmir. Situated 16 km southwest of Srinagar on a saddle above the lakes, it was identified in the 1930s but not extensively excavated until the 1960s. Burzahom’s first phase, IA, is aceramic and dates to between 3000 and 2850 BC. Phase 1B, dating to between 2850 and 2250 BC, is associated with the introduction of coarse, thick-walled, and over-fired ceramics with mat impressions. This phase also witnesses a steady increase in the number of domesticated animal bones and a corresponding decrease in the presence of wild species. The type site of a corpus of over 40 similar settlements, Burzahom’s Neolithic levels are associated with an assemblage of bone, antler, and polished stone tools, the latter including ring stones, axes, and rectangular sickles. However, the most characteristic feature of the site is the 37 bell-shaped pits dug into the loess. The largest of these was 2.74 m wide at the top and 4.57 m wide at the bottom, with a depth of 3.95 m. Some deeper pits have steps, while others had their floors painted with red ochre and their walls plastered (Figure 7). Evidence from Gufkral, 25 km southwest of Burzahom, has provided rather fuller evidence for subsistence and suggests that farming, herding, and hunting supported its inhabitants. Certainly, this is likely from the assemblage of wild ibex, bear, sheep, goat, cattle, wolf, and deer alongside with domesticated sheep, goat, wheat, barley, and lentils. The discovery of jade beads from these sites also indicates the movement of materials over long distances.

Figure 6 Petroglyphs of Markhor and hunters on the Sacred Rock of Hunza.

738 ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier

Figure 7 General view of the site of Buzahom.

Swat Valley

Despite the presence of occupation dating to the third millenium BC in the cave of Ghaligai, evidence of food-producing communities in Swat is somewhat later with the majority of sites occupied from c. 1700 BC onward. Remarkably similar to the evidence from Kashmir, the Pakistani-Italian team have provided a greater corpus of knowledge, ranging from the chronology of sites to their location within the landscape and the seasonal mobility of their occupants. Additionally, there are many more radiocarbon dates from Swat than from Kashmir. Aceramic in its earlier phase, ceramics are introduced in Period II of Ghaligai’s sequence in c. 1810 BC alongside limestone mortars whose presence in these levels is suggestive of food-processing strategies, but most evidence has been recovered from the sites associated with pits, many of which are also bell-shaped and located on saddles above the river Swat. Loebanr III, for example, has nine large pits and numerous smaller pits containing ceramic vessels, bone objects, terracotta figurines and its faunal record includes wild cat, tiger, deer, Himalayan goral, markhor, hare, and porcupine as well as domesticated dog, pig, zebu, goat, and sheep. Taxila Valley

Not all Neolithic occupation was restricted to the northern valleys and it is possible that alluvial deposition has masked the presence of earlier sites down on the plains. One known site is Sarai Khola, some 3 km southwest of the Early Historic city of Taxila. Its

earliest period with ground-stone axes, stone-blade industry, bone points, and burnished pottery with mat-impressions has been characterized as Neolithic and dated to c. 3000 BC. The presence also of a number of pits suggests a link with the early foodproducing communities to its north (see Asia, South: Neolithic Cultures). Dwelling Pits or Granaries?

The pits at Buzahom, Gufkral, Kalako-deray, Loebanr III, Aligrama, and Ghaligai have traditionally been interpreted as underground dwellings occupied during the cold winter months. However, experiments demonstrate that fires would have created a reduced atmosphere, making living conditions untenable. It now seems likely that the pits were used to store grain over the winter when the transhumant inhabitants of the region relocated to the lower valleys or plains. When sealed, the pits’ reduced atmosphere created ideal conditions for storage, protecting grain against microorganisms, humans, mammals, and rodents (Figure 8).

Indus Valley Tradition Originally considered to be a distinct and abrupt phenomenon, the intensive urbanization of the Indus Valley, often referred to as the Indus or Harappan Civilization, is now considered to be the culmination of a number of indigenous regional traditions and cultural developments (see Asia, South: Indus Civilization). This developmental period, referred to as ‘the

ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier 739

Figure 8 General view of the Swat Valley during the winter months.

Regionalization Era’ by Shaffer, stretched as far north as the valleys of our study region. One of these regional traditions, the Hakra, is dated to between 3300 and 2700 BCE and is located primarily in the Ghaggar–Hakra river basin. However, the discovery of Hakra-ware ceramics in the cave of Ghaligai in Swat suggests that there was a high degree of inter-regional trade and exchange present at this period. Furthermore, the presence of later Kot Dijian ceramics at Burzahom and sites within the northern valleys suggests an integral role in the growing social and economic complexity witnessed in the floodplains of the Indus to the south. Although demonstrating continuity with the region’s early food-producing settlements, a number of significant cultural changes occur such as the cessation of use of storage pits. These features are abandoned in Kashmir from 2250 BC and replaced with rectangular mudbrick structures, a sequence also encountered in the Swat Valley. The presence of Kot Dijian ceramics within Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier is also accompanied by the presence of metal objects and beads of agate and carnelian, suggesting access to long-distance trade and sufficient agricultural surplus to allow the accumulation of luxury goods. Rehman Dheri

While most sites, such as Burzahom in Kashmir, Sarai Khola in the Taxila Valley, and Sheri Khan Tarakai and Lewan in the Bannu Basin may have participated in the exchange of goods and ideas, it is only in the very south of the study region that urbanization occurs and complexity is fully demonstrated. Located on the western bank of the Indus River close to Dera Ismail

Khan, Rehman Dheri was established c. 3300 BC. Enclosed by a massive mudbrick wall, the town measures 550  400 m and is subdivided by cardinal streets to form a rigid grid-plan layout, making it one of the earliest planned settlements in South Asia (Figure 9). Despite its role in the development of the regional cultures, which converged to form the urbanized Integration Era (c. 2500–1900 BC), the Northwest Frontier and Kashmir remained detached from this later development. For example, unlike the sites of Kalibangan and Harappa to the east, Rehman Dheri does not appear to have been incorporated into the wider networks of the Harappa Phase – only a very small terracotta bangle-making site (Hisan Dheri) was established next to the old abandoned town. The northern valley sites also appear to have remained ‘unintegrated’, but this is not to suggest that there was no cultural and economic interaction between the two communities.

The End of the Indus Valley Tradition The causes of the decline of the Indus Valley cities at the beginning of the second millennium BCE are still debated. Despite this debate, and that over the correct term for its demise, it is widely agreed that this period was one of de-urbanization associated with the loss of long-distance trade, written scripts, weights, measures, and monumental architecture. Traditionally attributed to incursions of Indo-European speakers from Central Asia, it is now recognized that there were many more complex and multifaceted factors involved – not all of which are fully understood, and that concepts of an ‘Aryan invasion’ were more

740 ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier

Figure 9 Exposed house foundation on the surface of Rehman Dheri.

driven by British imperial motivations than archaeological fact. These points notwithstanding, as the Northwest Frontier and Kashmir were never fully integrated into the Indus urbanized system, they did not suffer from the symptoms of ‘systems collapse’ witnessed in the Indus floodplains; yet the vacuum precipitated the re-emergence of a distinct tradition in the region associated with the adoption of new influences from Western and Central Asia. It is important to note, however, that the region still remained connected with the Punjab, as illustrated by the discovery of ‘Cemetery H’ motifs on sherds from Bir-Kot-ghundai in the Swat Valley. Gandharan Grave Culture

One of the newly emergent traditions is termed the Gandharan Grave Culture within the Northwest Frontier and the Megalithic within Kashmir, but the sequences of the two are yet to be fully integrated. It was first identified in Swat by Italian archaeologists and has continued to be studied by the University of Peshawar. A homogenous tradition of burial practices with associated ceramic and artifact assemblages, it appears to have emerged in the upper Indus Valley c. 1700 BCE and then spread across the Valleys of Swat, Dir and Chitral, and into the Vale of Peshawar and survived until the middle of the first millennium BC (Figure 10). Its most distinctive feature is the stone-sided cists, some of which are surrounded by stone circles. Usually contain one or two inhumations, the body commonly on its side with the legs drawn up and the arms raised and bent. A small number of graves contain cremated remains deposited in an anthropomorphic

Figure 10 Anthropomorphic urn from the Gandharan Grave Culture.

vessel but almost all are associated with burnished gray- or red-ware vessels and human terracotta figurines, although later examples have more numerous and elaborate grave goods. A number of horse burials have also been recovered from the burials of this tradition as well as items of horse furniture. Kashmir Valley

Contemporary with this tradition, similar cist burials with associated ‘Megalithic’ architecture have been identified within Kashmir at the sites of Devidhoora and Gwaldam in the Alakananda Valley as well as at

ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier 741

Burzahom and Gufkral. This similarity is also present at Malari where human and horse burials were exposed, the former buried prostrate with their knees flexed, and at Baseri with its cist burials. These common elements, combined with the presence of spouted goblets in both Swat and Kashmir, have led some scholars to advocate an expansion of Gandharan Grave Culture right across the region but others have questioned the contemporaneity of the two. While cemetery sites are numerous on account of their visible stone remains, there are few contemporary habitation sites. However, evidence from one of the most recently identified, the Bala Hisar of Charsadda, suggests that communities from the northern valleys had moved southwards to colonize the Vale of Peshawar by c. 1300 BC and were already associated with the manufacture of iron objects. Whether these communities were seasonal, following a transhumant way of life between valleys and plains is unclear with the present data set (Figure 11). Equally significant is the appearance of related ceramic vessels at Hathial in the Valley of Taxila to the south. When compared with the burnished wares from Charsadda, it becomes clear that a process of convergence was unifying the northern valleys and

leading to the establishment of larger settlements on the plains by the beginning of the first millennium BC. This southward movement was soon to be augmented by the introduction of open form vessels from the Ganga Valley to the east, a northward pattern shared with appearance of Painted Gray Ware at Thapli in the Alakananda Valley and Purola in the upper Yamuna Valley (see Asia, South: Ganges Valley). Frequently characterized as a ‘dark age’ between urbanizations, this was clearly a period of steady growth, innovation, and interaction between the Northwest Frontier and Kashmir.

Age of Empires This phase of increased complexity resulted in the emergence of nascent polities in the Northwest, centered on Taxila and Charsadda but augmented by the dramatic growth of the settlement of Akra in Bannu to the south. However, their success was not unnoticed and led to its dramatic annexation by Darius the Great in 520 BC. Renamed the satrapy of Gandhara, the newly partitioned region saw the imposition of Achaemenid garrisons, coinage, and script. Now part of a political and economic identity stretching from the Aegean to the Indus, annual tribute and levies of conscripts were drained, as illustrated on the bas-reliefs of Persepolis. In contrast with the textual evidence, archaeological evidence of Achaemenid occupation is limited even in the regional capitals of Charsadda and Taxila, although Achaemenid levels have been postulated at Balambat in the Dir Valley. Suggesting that the new satrapy enjoyed a high degree of autonomy, the ceramic and artifactual corpus of Taxila and Charsadda indicate that strong links with the Gangetic states were retained throughout this period. The same is true of the region’s later incorporation into the empire of Alexander the Great. The fact that, despite a century of searching, none of his newly founded cities has been identified suggests that Alexander was no more than a temporary interruption and it was left to his successors to spread Hellenistic art and architectural styles 200 years later. The Mauryan Empire

Figure 11 View of excavations at the Bala Hisar of Charsadda.

As Alexander’s generals were fusing personal empires after his death, the Selucids readily ceded the Northwest Frontier to a relatively unknown raja from the Ganges in exchange for 500 war elephants. The raja, Chandragupta Maurya, used the exchange to confirm the ascendancy of his kingdom of Magadha and began the elimination of his competitors (see Asia, South: Ganges Valley).

742 ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier

Whilst Greek and Achaemenid evidence is sparse, Mauryan occupation is readily available at the Bhir Mound in the Valley of Taxila. Capital of Gandhara, Taxila’s location at the bifurcation of the routes to Central and Western Asia was so important that its Viceroy was one of Chandragupta’s grandsons – Asoka. The Bhir Mound was an unfortified stonebuilt settlement of narrow streets covering an area of 1100 by 670 m. While there is evidence of limited civic control, it is only at the Dharmarajika stupa beyond the town that monumental investment is found in the construction of a 15 m wide Buddhist stupa (Figure 12). Ashoka’s Edicts

Figure 12 Curving drain and residential structures at the Bhir Mound, Taxila.

The presence of a similar monument in the Swat Valley at Butkara indicates the impact of Mauryan influence into the valleys, as does the scatter of sites with access to Northern Black Polished Ware, such as Bir-kot-ghundai in the Swat Valley, the Bhir Mound, and Charsadda in the Vale of Peshawar. Finally, it is indicated by the presence of three Asokan rock edicts in the Northwest Frontier. The first at Sirkap in the Taxila Valley, the second at Manshera on the way to Kashmir and Central Asia, and the third at Shahbazghari on the route to Afghanistan and Western Asia. All are written in Aramaic, indicating the Mauryan Empire’s Achaemenid inheritance and its desire to unify its own disparate communities (Figure 13).

Figure 13 The Asokan rock edict at Shahbazghari in the Vale of Peshawar.

ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier 743

Although there are no edicts in Kashmir, it is recorded that the monk Majjhantika was tasked by Asoka and the third Buddhist Council to introduce Buddhism to both Gandhara and Kashmir, confirming the linked nature of the two. Although of less magnitude than the Northwest, evidence of a Mauryan horizon in Kashmir is becoming clearer with contemporary brick-built structures at Ranihat on the eastern bank of the Alakananda River and at Semthan. Similarly, the presence of North Black Polished Ware, elite Mauryan tableware, at Ranihat and Moradhwaj indicates the close links between the imperial center in the Ganges and its northern periphery.

Hellenes and Philhellenes This brief integration of South Asia ended in 189 BC with the dissolution of the Mauryan Empire and the absorption of the Northwest Frontier and Kashmir into the sphere of expansionist Central Asian polities. Best known from their coinage, the first of these – the Indo-Greeks – were descendants of Alexander’s colonists in Bactria. Copying the architectural modes of their homeland, they established new colonies in the Northwest Frontier such as at Sirkap in the Taxila Valley and Shaikhan Dheri in the Vale of Peshawar. They introduced a rigid plan to urban centers, with straight streets lined with shops, temples, and monasteries subdivided by smaller lanes into residential blocks. The most fully excavated of these, Sirkap, has clear evidence of civic authority with over 100 ha of unencroached streets and 5 km of stone walling

Figure 14 The main street of Sirkap, Taxila.

surround the acropolis and its lower town. Founded in the second century BC, it was also selected by successive philhellenic dynasties of Parthians and Sakas as their capital. Their presence in the mountain valleys to the north is also recorded on rock inscriptions in Chilas in the upper Indus (Figure 14).

The Kushan Empire This patchwork of city-states and petty dynasties was to be reintegrated by a Central Asian nomadic people known as the Yuezhi or Kushans. Partly responsible for pressuring the Greek communities of Bactria southwards into the Northwest Frontier, they expanded rapidly from this base into Kashmir and by the second century AD had established control from the Oxus to the Ganges – acting as a buffer between the Roman and the Han empires. Highly dependent on the movement of trade between east and west, they developed a series of major fortified strong points along the trade routes from Mathura on the Jamuna to Sirsukh in the Taxila Valley and on to Begram in Afghanistan and Dalverzintepe in Uzbekistan as well as within the Kashmir Valley. While Begram was strengthened by the building of a 12 m wide wall with bastions holding catapults and ballista, Sirkap was abandoned in favor of a site within the valley – Sirsukh. Sirsukh was a massive rectangle measuring 1375  1000 m with 5.5 m thick stonewalls strengthened by a rounded berm to prevent undermining. Its walls were regularly punctuated by stirrup bastions with arrow-slits providing a wide range of

744 ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier

fire but the absence of occupation deposits suggests that a mobile force occupied the site (Figure 15). The discovery of ivory objects from the Ganges, Roman glass and metalwork, and Chinese lacquer work in a storeroom at Begram illustrates the success of Kushan trade routes – a success that also facilitated the spread of Buddhism along the Silk route. Although Kushan rulers patronized many religious traditions, there was a dramatic rise in the number of Buddhist

monasteries established in the Northwest Frontier and Kashmir. These ranged from the emperor Kanishka’s stupa complex at Shah-ji-ki-dheri in Peshawar to the hundreds of individual religious complexes in the Taxila Valley, such as at Pippala, and within the Vale of Kashmir, such as at Moradhwaj (Figure 16). Associated with some of the earliest depictions of the Buddha in human form, Kushan rule saw the blending of local and exotic cults, styles, and traditions,

Figure 15 One of the stirrup-bastions at the city of Sirsukh, Taxila.

Figure 16 The Kushan period quadrangular monastery at Morha Moradu in the Valley of Taxila.

ASIA, WEST/Megaliths 745

culminating in the emergence of the Mahayana movement. Depictions of the Kushans and the presence of their inscriptions at Chilas and Hunza in the upper Indus Valley and near Leh in Kashmir indicate that their influence was not just urban but was felt high in the mountain passes as well (see Asia, South: Buddhist Archaeology).

The End of the Early Historic World Partitioned again, the Sasanian kings Ardashir I and Shahpur I drew the Northwest Frontier back into their Western Asian empire in the third century AD and, with the loss of their access to Silk Route traffic, Kushan rule contracted. Losing Kushan-dominated territories in the Ganges to Chandragupta in the fourth century AD, their independence in Kashmir was only to last another hundred years. The conquests of Chandragupta and his son, Samudragupta, ended once more the cycle of regional fission and fusion and, with the creation of new Gupta Era in 320 AD, ushered in a new era of social and political organization based on a core polity run by royal officials surrounded by a periphery of client rulers – a model which was to serve Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier, as well as South Asia more widely, until the Mughal period. See also: Asia, Central, Steppes; Asia, South: Baluchistan and the Borderlands; Buddhist Archaeology; Ganges Valley; Indus Civilization; Neolithic Cultures; Paleolithic Cultures; Asia, West: Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of.

Further Reading Allchin FR (ed.) (1995) The Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia: The Emergence of Cities and States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coningham RAE (2006) South Asia: From early villages to Buddhism. In: Scarre C (ed.) The Human Past, pp. 518–551. London: Thames and Hudson. Dani AH and Masson VM (eds.) (1992) History of Civilisations of Central Asia, Vol. I. The Dawn of Civilisation: Earliest Times to 700 BC. Paris: UNESCO. Harmatta J, Puri BN, and Etemadi GF (eds.) (1994) History of Civilisations of Central Asia, Vol. II. The Development of Sedentary and Nomadic Civilisations: 700 BC to 250 AD. Paris: UNESCO. Jettmar K, Konig D, and Thewalt V (eds.) (1989) Antiquities of Northern Pakistan, Reports and Studies, Vol. 1. Mainz. Marshall JH (1951) Taxila. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nautiyal KP and Khanduri BM (1991) Emergence of Early Culture in Garhwal Central Himalaya: A Study Based on Excavations at Thapli and Ranihat. Srinagar: University Museum of Himalayan Archaeology and Ethnography.

Rendell HM, Dennell RW, and Halim MA (1989) Pleistocene and Palaeolithic Investigations in the Soan Valley, Northern Pakistan. BAR International Series 544. Oxford: BAR. Stacul G (1987) Prehistoric and Protohistoric Swat, Pakistan (c. 3000–1400 BC). Rome: IsMEO. Wheeler REM (1962) Charsadda: A Metropolis of the North-West Frontier: Being a Report on the Excavations of 1958. London: Oxford University Press. Young RL (2003) Agriculture and Pastoralism in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, North West Frontier Province, Pakistan. BAR International Series 1124. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Megaliths U S Moorti, American Institute of Indian Studies, Gurgaon, Haryana ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary alignment A series of menhirs arranged in lines on some definite system. avenue Two or more alignments approximately parallel with one another. chamber burials A box-grave (normally rectangular on plan) built of stone-slabs/boulders containing skeletal remains and burial goods of the interned person(s). It may be with/without a passage and porthole, and is normally enclosed on surface by cairn/boulder circle(s). dolmen A single slab of stone supported by several orthostatic boulders/slabs built on the surface of the ground in such a way as to enclose a space or chamber beneath the capstone. It may or may not be wholly or partially covered by a barrow or cairn. A dolmen may be with or without a porthole. hat stone (Topi-kal) Urn burial capped by a slab and marked on the surface by a topi-kal. The topi-kal rests upon four quandrantal clinostatic stones joining up together at the base into a square, and dressed so as to give the shape of a truncated paraboloid to the entire monument. The topi-kal or the hat stone rests on the truncated surface. legged and unlegged urn burials Baked earthenware/ terracotta urn/sarcophagus (placed within a pit with/without a ramp) containing skeletal remains and burial goods of the interned person(s). It may be enclosed on the surface by an earthen mound/cairn/boulder circle(s). menhir Simplest of all the megalithic monuments, consisting of a single monolith set up, as a rule, at or near a burial/memorial/ commemorative spot. The monolith may be small or gigantic in height with its base fixed into the earth. It may be either sepulchral, memorial, or commemorative. pit burials A pit (circular/oblong/oval/rectangular on plan) containing skeletal remains and burial goods of the interned person(s). It may be with/without a ramp/capstone(s), and is normally enclosed on surface by an earthen mound/cairn/boulder circle(s). rock-cut chamber burials Chamber (single or multiple) cut out of the lateritic rock containing skeletal remains and burial goods of the interned person(s).

746 ASIA, WEST/Megaliths sarcophagus A cist, often with legs or feet, made of baked earthenware or terracotta containing skeletal remains and burial goods of the interned person(s). umbrella stone (kudai-kal) Passage urn burial capped by a slab and marked on the surface by a Kudai-kal (Umbrella stone). The Umbrella stone is a dome-shaped dressed lateritic stone resting with its flat face directly on the ground.

The Megalithic culture of South Asia is mainly represented by burials of many varieties. Although some of these burial monuments are not strictly ‘megalithic’ (i.e., ‘built of large stones’) in their nature, the usage of the term Megalithic can be justified because of its antiquity and continued popular use. However, the term denotes in the present context a socio-religious expression of burying the deceased in a grave (which may or may not have lithic appendage) accompanied by certain specific cultural traits of the period under reference. The use of iron coincides with the cultural period and forms an adjunct of Megalithic culture.

Terminology and Typology While studying the sepulchral and nonsepulchral monuments of this period, at a first glance one comes across variety of monuments that is quite bewildering. Attempts to evolve a suitable classificatory system for incorporating all the known burial types lead the earlier researchers to recognize five basic types, namely pit burials, urn and sarcophagi burials, rock-cut burial chambers, cist burials, and stone alignments. To this list were added some more types such as dolmen, menhir, topi-kal, and kudai-kal. However, ignoring some of the minor variations in the construction methods and by taking into account instead the basic concepts of the nature of the tomb itself, the list can be contracted still further, and can be grouped under the following two broad categories: (1) sepulchral monuments, and (2) nonsepulchral monuments. The first category is essentially a burial proper, whereas the second can be considered as commemorative or memorial in nature. Within the ambit of these two main categories, the following classification may help understand the basic types along with their numerous subvarieties (Table 1 and Figures 1–13); and, if new varieties are brought to light, these can also be accommodated within this main classificatory system. The mutual influence of those basic types on each other in certain architectural features such as passage, capstone, porthole, and even in the use of a nonsepulchral monument such as a menhir is certainly evident. While it has to be conceded that there are difficulties in explaining the specific socio-religious concepts governing these four basic types, it may be noted that variations do occur in these basic types because of

spatiotemporal factors: this was but natural since it depended on the modulations in socio-religious expressions.

Distribution and Spread of Megalithic Custom in the Old World Probably the most astonishing fact about the ‘megaliths’ is their occurrence almost throughout the Old World. Their occurrence from the shores of England to that of Japan unquestionably catches one’s imagination and may be seen as a ‘world phenomenon’. It may be somewhat safer to outline the distribution of ‘megalithic’ sepulchral/nonsepulchral monuments but forming opinions on their ‘spread’ is nothing less than walking on a hotbed of controversies. The European ‘megaliths’ are considered as the earliest in the chronological sequence. The basic tomb types noticed there are ‘megalithic’ temples (found in the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo), burial chambers (subdivided into dolmen, passage graves, court tombs, and gallery graves), single upright stone or menhir, and lastly grouped standing stones, placed either in rows or in elliptical range. (The last three tomb types are noticed in Spain, Portugal, France, Britain, southern Sweden, and northern Germany). Traditional views derived the whole ‘megalithic’ complex of Europe from the East Mediterranean which trace the spread of this custom by a seafaring people moving northward, through Spain, up the coast of Western Europe and into Scandinavia. Considering the long span of the prevalence of this custom from Neolithic to Bronze Age (from c. 5000 to 2000 BC) and its continuation even in Iron Age, majority of the European archaeologists believe that the development was indigenous, probably having different independent centers. However, many of them tend to agree with Mackie’s version of ‘modified diffusionism’ in the diffusion of ideas and think that it occurred along the seaboard from Atlantic coast toward the interior. Coming down to the South Asian theater of ‘megaliths’, parallels have been drawn from south Russian/Caucasian (the main tomb type being a long barrow), portholed cists of Tepe Sialk IV (in Iran), sarcophagus tombs of Philistan (located along the southern coast of Palestine), the rock-cut caves of Kunama in north Ethiopia, cists and stone circles of Makran coast which have been taken either as the areas of inspiration or wherefrom migration of people took place having this ‘megalithic’ trait. The main burial types occurring in the aforementioned areas are chamber tombs and pit circles. The principal ‘megalithic’ sepulchral and nonsepulchral monuments noticed in South Asia are pit circles,

ASIA, WEST/Megaliths 747 Table 1 Types of sepulchral and nonsepulchral Megalithic monuments in South Asia Sepulchral 1. Pit burials 1a

Pit burial enclosed by an earthen mound

1b

Pit burial enclosed by cairn packing

1c

Pit burial enclosed by boulder circle(s)

1d

Pit burial enclosed by cairn packing and bound by boulder circle(s)

1e

Pit burial capped by a slab and enclosed by boulder circle(s)

1f

Pit burial enclosed by boulder circle(s), having flat slabs at the center

1g

Pit burial with a ramp and enclosed by cairn stone circle(s) (Figure 1)

1h

Pit burial with a passage and enclosed by cairn stone circle(s)

2. Chamber burials Chamber burial with/without cairn packing and boulder circle(s) 2a 2b

Passage chamber burial with/without cairn packing and boulder circle(s) (Figure 2)

2c

Portholed chamber burial with/without cairn packing and boulder circle(s) (Figures 3 and 4)

2d

Passage, portholed chamber burial with/without cairn packing and boulder circle(s)

2e

Chamber with a sarcophagus burial and with/without a passage/porthole and with/without cairn packing and boulder circle(s)

2f

Rock-cut chamber burial (Figures 5 and 6)

3. Legged and unlegged Urn burials Urn burial with/without cairn packing and boulder circle(s) (Figure 7) 3a 3b

Urn burial capped by a slab and with/without cairn packing and boulder circle(s)

3c

Passage urn burial capped by a slab and covered by a Kudai-kal (umbrella stone)

3d

Urn burial capped by a slab and covered by a Topi-kal (hat stone) (Figure 8)

3e

Urn burial capped by a slab and marked by a menhir

3f

Unlegged sarcophagus burial with/without cairn packing and boulder circle(s)

3g

Legged sarcophagus burial with/without cairn packing and boulder circle(s) (Figure 9)

Nonsepulchral (either commemorative or memorial (?) monuments) Dolmen (Chamber open on one side) (Figure 10) 1 2

Portholed dolmen (A closed chamber) (Figure 11)

3

Menhir (A monolithic slab) (Figure 12)

4

Stone alignment

5

Avenue (Figure 13)

chamber tombs, urn burials, and monolithic upright slabs (either single or in rows). However, notwithstanding the chronological difficulties, some of the regions mentioned in the preceding paragraph have been pointed out as the probable areas wherefrom the ‘megalithic’ custom spread. Lasting for over 1000 years (from c. 1500 BC to early centuries of Christian era) the majority of ‘megalithic’ burials is certainly associated with the Iron Age communities of South Asia. As noted earlier, either land-borne or sea-borne ‘cultural impulses’ have been considered in academic circles as probable routes for the spread of this custom. Here may also be noted the various tomb types of the rest of Asia which are spread out in Japan, Korea, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and other parts of Indo-Pacific region. The main types of ‘megaliths’

are menhirs (erect stones), dolmens (flat stones resting on two stone pillars), stone seats, stepped stone pyramids, various types of stone tombs, and sarcophagi. The prevalence of the ‘megalithic’ custom has been noted here from Late Neolithic to Iron Age. In any case, they are chronologically much later than European and South Asian ‘megaliths’, since they belong to the middle centuries of the first millennium BC.

Chronology and Related Problems One of the most crucial aspects in building up a coherent picture of any archaeological culture period is a substantial dating base. Although after the advent of C14 dating method, the picture for the period with which we are concerned has given a broad understanding of the time sequence involved in it;

748 ASIA, WEST/Megaliths

Figure 1 Pit burial with a ramp and enclosed by cairn stone circles. Brahmagiri (Chitradurga district, Karnataka, India). Courtesy: Archaeological Survey of India.

Figure 2 Passage chamber burial with cairn packing and boulder circle. Bhagimohari (Nagpur district, Maharashtra, India). Courtesy: Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute.

nevertheless, it is far from satisfactory. The observation becomes comprehensible when one looks at the absolute dates available for these sites. For a total of more than 2000 known sites of Megalithic culture of South Asia, absolute dates are available only for about 30 sites. In very few cases, dates have been obtained both for the Megalithic habitational layers and the adjacent cemetery area. On the basis of available C14 dates, the dates/chronological range for the following geographical regions are as follows: Gufkral, Kashmir valley (c. 1888–1671 BC), Gagrigol, Kumaun area (c. 2666–2562 BC), Vindhyan region, Mirzapur area (c. 1300 BC), Rayalaseema plateau, Kalyandurg area (c. 1880–1595 BC), Upper Tungabhadra valley, Davanagere area (c. 1440–930 BC), Cuddapah basin, Tadpatri area (c. 1375–1230 BC), Upper Tungabhadra

valley, Hirekerur area (c. 1385–825 BC), Tambraparani plain, Palayankottai area (c. 905–780 BC), Nagpur plain, Nagpur area (c. 800–405 BC), Javadi Hills, Vellore area (c. 425–155 BC), Baramahal, Tirupputtur area (c. 805–25 BC), Upper Cauvery valley (c. 225 BC), Krishna–Tungabhadra doab, Kurnool area (c. 1670 BC–AD 35), Warangal plateau (c. 185 BC–AD 35), Upper Krishna valley (c. 160 BC–AD 70), Kongunad upland, Tiruppur area (c. 300 BC–AD 100). Considering the limited information on absolute chronology for such a vast area, the difficulties in building up a coherent regional chronological sequence are innumerable. Although it is hazardous to make precise generalizations about the time sequence of this period at regional levels, it is obvious from the available data that the total span of this culture extends for more

ASIA, WEST/Megaliths 749

Figure 3 Portholed chamber burial with cairn packing and boulder circle. Brahmagiri (Chitradurga district, Karnataka, India). Courtesy: Archaeological Survey of India.

Figure 4 Portholed chamber burial with cairn packing and boulder circle. Sankarapuram (Chengalpattu district, Tamilnadu, India). Courtesy: Archaeological Survey of India.

than 1200 years. Its beginning can now be securely pushed back to around c. 1500 BC. The terminating phase of this culture seems to be around c. 300 BC, as the evidence of script, coinage, and growth of urban centers is seen (although not uniform throughout South Asia) from this time onwards. Obviously, the ‘megalithic’ tradition continues in later centuries also and it forms a part of early historical cultures in the beginning.

Settlement Sites of the Megalithic Communities: Myth and Reality Of the many ‘myths’ prevalent in certain quarters of archaeologists is the notion of absence of ‘identifiable habitational remains’ of Megalithic communities of

South Asia. Attached with this notion is another ‘myth’ of ‘flimsy deposits’ in habitational layers of Megalithic people, wherever there is evidence of dwelling sites. A comprehensive and critical analysis of the excavated material of the Megalithic communities from several zones shows that there are undeniable similarities between the material of habitation and burial sites, and wherever the cultural deposit of Megalithic communities is noticed, the average thicknes of the deposit ranges between 1.5 and 2.5 m. However, wherever there is real evidence for the ‘thinness’ of occupational deposit and ‘sporadicity’ of dwelling sites, those need to be understood in terms of local site formation and postdepositional processes as also the locational advantages or stresses operative in the particular eco-zones.

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Figure 5 Rock-cut chamber burial. Umichipoyil (Kasaragod district, Kerala, India). Courtesy: Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute.

Figure 6 Rock-cut chamber burial. Kattakampal (Thrissur district, Kerala, India). Courtesy: Archaeological Survey of India.

Revisiting Iron Age Megalithic Arena: Recent Researches on the Megalithic Material Culture In spite of a vast body of literature on the Megalithic material culture, hitherto no comprehensive effort had been made to collate the data against an ecologic and systemic framework. The priorities and perspectives of the earlier researchers different as they were,

devoted much of their efforts to the reconstruction of culture histories. The complex questions related to the Megalithic modes of production, relations of production, aspects of social differentiation, and societal organization remained largely unfocused. However, the recent quantitative evaluation of the material data of the Megalithic period, as also its collation against an ecologic and systemic framework, has indicated that a combination of specialized strategies, that is, agriculture and cattle pastoralism, was adopted at the societal scale of production. The Megalithic sites located in the physiographic zones of Wardha–Penganga plain, Wainganga basin, Middle Krishna valley, Rayalaseema plateau, Andhra Ghats south, Dharwad plateau, Bangalore region, Mysore region, South Malnad, Mettur–Vellore region, Coimbatore uplands, the Palar–Ponnaiyar basin, the Vaigai–Tambraparani basin, and South Malabar unambiguously indicate these subsistence strategies. It is important to note here that a majority of their settlement sites are located either on the banks of major rivers or on their major tributaries and most of the burial sites are situated within a distance of 10–20 km from the major water resources. The following facts may also be suggestive of this substistence strategy: (1) the maximum concentration of their sites in river valleys and basins and preference shown toward occupying black soil, and red sandy-loamy soil zones; (2) the distributional pattern of these sites in rainfall zones where the average annual precipitation ranges from 600 to 1500 mm; as also (3) the occurrence of maximum number of their sites mainly in tropical dry deciduous, tropical thorn, and tropical moist deciduous forest zones avoiding as they did other dense forest zones.

ASIA, WEST/Megaliths 751

Figure 7 Urn burial with cairn packing and boulder circle. Madavilagam (Chengalpattu district, Tamilnadu, India). Courtesy: Archaeological Survey of India.

Figure 8 Urn burial capped by a slab and covered by a Topi-kal (hat stone). Cheramanangad (Thrissur district, Kerala, India). Courtesy: Archaeological Survey of India.

Figure 9 Legged sarcophagus burial with cairn packing. Pallavaram (Chengalpattu district, Tamilnadu, India). Courtesy: Archaeological Survey of India.

752 ASIA, WEST/Megaliths

Figure 10 Dolmen (Chamber open on one side). Padavigampala (Kegalle district, Sri Lanka). Courtesy: Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute.

Figure 11 Portholed dolmen (A closed chamber). Rajanakoluru (Gulbarga district, Karnataka, India). Courtesy: Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute.

However, the predominance of pastoral traditions which is seen in the present distribution of Kuruvas (who are mainly sheep/goat pastoralists), and Gollas (who are mainly cattle pastoralists but also keep small number of sheep/goats) in southwestern Andhra Pradesh, northwestern Karnataka, and northwestern Andhra Pradesh comprising Telangana, Rayalaseema peneplain, Andhra Ghats south, and North Maidan regions may indicate greater inclination toward pastoral subsistence strategy. This may be due to ecological stresses and greater economic advantages provided by this subsistence strategy. Although there is a very strong evidence of cattle pastoralism in these regions, currently archaeological evidence lacks concerning sheep/goat pastoralism. This lacuna seems to

be mainly due to the lack of efforts for finding out evidence. However, this can be taken as a working hypothesis and future investigations must seek them. Nonetheless, these aforementioned divergent economic patterns, which seem to have then prevailed, as is the case even now, were not isolated but had a symbiotic relationship with each other. Their subsistence base was a specialized agropastoral economy dominated by cereal, millet, and pulse production: there seem minor variations in the agroeconomy of the area. There is evidence for the occurrence of wheat, rice, barley, kodo millet, and pulse crops in Vidarbha (Wardha–Penganga plain, Wainganga basin); barley, rice, kodo millet, and pulses in the Middle Krishna valley and Andhra

ASIA, WEST/Megaliths 753

Ghats south area; and, the remaining parts of South India have mostly produced the evidence of rice, ragi, kodo millet, and pulses. The cattle (including buffalo) predominates over other domesticated species and

Figure 12 Menhir (A monolithic slab). Anapara (Thrissur district, Kerala, India). Courtesy: Archaeological Survey of India.

invariably, in all these sites it accounts for more than 60% of the total faunal assemblage; whereas sheep/goat accounts for only 10–15% and was next only to cattle in importance. This suggests that first the earlier Neolithic tradition of cattle keeping was continued and second it clearly brings home that cattle pastoralism and not sheep/goat pastoralism formed a major preoccupation of the Megalithic society. Thus, irrespective of the variations in agriculture, cattle herding seems to have formed a major preoccupation of the Megalithic society in all these areas. There is enough evidence that many of the known 400 settlement sites of this period testify that industrial activities such as smithery, carpentry, bead making, and pottery manufacturing were carried out, displaying as they do a highly developed tradition in these crafts. The items of exchange seem to have consisted mainly of iron tools and weapons, copper and gold ornaments, semiprecious beads, and pottery. Although it is not possible at this juncture to give a clearer picture of exchange network of various items in this area, the following areas seem to be major zones of industrial activities. Kumaun area for iron working; Wainganga basin (or Nagpur plain) and Wardha–Penganga plain for iron, copper, silver, and semiprecious bead working; Telangana peneplain, Rayalaseema peneplain, Gulbarga plain, Bijapur region, Dharwad plateau, and Raichur plain for iron, copper, and gold working; Bangalore region, Mettur–Vellore region, and Coimbatore uplands for iron, gold, and semiprecious bead working. The location of several large Megalithic sites on the known early historical trade routes leaves a strong

Figure 13 Avenue: Vibhutihalli (Gulbarga district, Karnataka, India). Courtesy: Archaeological Survey of India.

754 ASIA, WEST/Megaliths

possibility of these acting as places/centers for exchange. Although the gravity of exchange mechanism and patterns of consumption still need to be understood, the hierarchical nature of sites and occurence of nonlocal prestige goods such as gold, marine shell, lapis lazuli in Megalithic burials leave little doubt about the inter-regional circulation of these goods. Besides indicating long-distance trade, it also shows growing acquaintance with new areas of the resourcerich zones of South Asia. The above synthesis of the material conditions of Megalithic society may help us to comprehend its ideological manifestations also. Although no comprehensive attempt has so far been made to understand the Megalithic religion and ritualism, the basic objective here is to know the role of religion and ritualism as part of ideological system of the Megalithic society. The main source of information invariably are the burials as they form a prominent feature and are crucial in understanding some of the ideological facets of the Megalithic society. A casual survey of the cemetery sites shows that megaliths typically cluster in groups, showing continued use of the same burial area for several centuries. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that the megalithic burial monuments were meant to hold only a very restricted number of persons, and the burial took place in them rather rarely, once or twice in a generation. It is also likely that these burials reflect only a certain (upper?) segment of the society. It may be contextually useful to recapitulate here the nature of burial practices of the preceding periods, that is of the Neolithic and the Chalcolithic phases. Excavations at many Neolithic, and Chalcolithic sites of South Asia have clearly shown the practice of pit, and urn (kept horizontally, mouth-to-mouth) burial methods for disposing of the dead in primary condition. The dead were buried invariably within the settlement and mostly inside the living premises. In contrast to this practice, during the Megalithic period in general, the dead were buried outside and away from the settlement area. Both primary and secondary burials occur in this period. The three main sepulchral categories which were in vogue during this period, namely the pit burials, chamber burials, and legged/unlegged urn burials have already been emphasized earlier. Certain structural features such as passage, capstone, porthole, and even menhir (a nonsepulchral monument type) served as interchangeables within the aforementioned tomb types and evolved numerous subvarieties in the course of time. However, what deserves attention here is the continuation of earlier Neolithic/Chalcolithic burial traditions (but now with a stone appendage over the burial). Leaving aside the sharp differences noticed

in the actual treatment of the dead, and also the placement of the remains of the dead in an urn placed verticaly, these two burial methods, namely pit burials and urn burials, strongly indicate continuality of an earlier tradition. That this change was gradual and was definitely an indigenous development can be discerned from some of the earliest Megalithic sites such as Ramapuram, Gandlur, and Piklihal. However, same cannot be said about the chamber burial type. In the event of this being a borrowed mortuary practice, it is not clear whether the advent of this new mortuary element signifies the arrival of new people or was it just a borrowed ritual custom. This important aspect needs further investigation. It is also not clear whether the aforementioned sepulchral types, namely the pit burial, chamber burial, and legged/ unlegged urn burial methods, indicate different ritualistic concepts connected with the burying of the dead or different ethnic groups. A brief note regarding the occurence of anthropomorphic figures found in association with Megalithic burials may not be out of context here. The occurrence of these anthropomorphic figures in Megalithic sites right from Central Godavari valley to Tamil Nadu Hills is interesting. So far, from at least 15 Megalithic sites these have been reported. The shape and symbolic sculptural features greatly vary in these anthropomorphic figures. However, one striking feature is that they are invariably associated with chamber tombs and dolmens at most of these sites. Although their significance in the cult of the dead is yet to be comprehended, their close association with burial monuments indicates a connection with ancestor worship. More importantly, a significant shift in the societal attitude toward certain age categories is discernible during the Megalithic period. In the preceding Neolithic/Chalcolithic period, a large number of infant/child burials and comparatively less adult burials are reported. But, as against this fact, in the Megalithic period very few child burials have been noticed and a majority of the burials are of the youngto-mature adults. Infant burials have not at all been found. Even within the adult category, the percentage of adult males is very high which in all probability strongly indicates the patriarchical nature of Megalithic society as also the dominant status of its male members. It has been suggested that ritual activities form an active part of the social construction of reality within social formations and may be conceived as a particular form of the ideological legitimation of the social order, serving sectional interests of particular groups. That the construction of these monumental structures, both sepulchral and nonsepulchral, ultimately

ASIA, WEST/Megaliths 755

depended on the social mobilization of resources and societal cooperation is clearly implied. Detailed ethnographic studies available for some of the ethnic communities such as Savaras, Gadabas, and Bondos, and Kodis practicing megalithism clearly show that these are closely connected with production– feast–alliance cycle. The occurrence of nonlocal prestige goods in limited number of megalithic burials of superordinate social dimension may suggest the control of long-distance trade by local elite groups, the procurement of which eventually depended on alliance and gift exchange. Thus, burials of superordinate category provide a clue as to how surplus production entered the local cycle of prestige building, embedded as it was in alliances and exchange. It is also widely noticed that the ritualized chiefly organization of land and lineage through ancestor worship in megalithic tombs is a recurrent phenomenon in different parts of the world and occurs both in small-scale and more developed societies. There is a lack of conceptual studies of this genre for the study area, but these analogs do offer insights into the functional and organizational framework of the Megalithic monuments. If we can understand their functional role, it is quite clear that they do not represent burials as we understand them but may have served as ‘living entities’. The dead were not separated from the living, but lived as ancestors in their houses among the living and could be approached when opening the chamber or contacted through rites and offerings. In this way the megaliths symbolized the collective efforts of the community as also the heroic leadership of ancestor chiefs, legitimizing and sustaining the power of their successors. Thus, ritual and religion clearly served material functions in the social organization of production and the tombs formed part and parcel of the reproduction of power relations. Significantly, the use of iron in these communities seems to have been limited in its initial phase. It is rightly observed that, in the beginning, the use of iron was mostly confined to the production of weaponry and did not contribute much to handicrafts and agriculture and that the weapons were probably in the sole possession of elites. Iron seems to have started playing a significant and effective role in these areas only after c. 500 BC as there is clear evidence in the increase of agricultural and craftsman’s tools during this phase. The rise and growth of occupational divisions in these areas seems to have contributed to the beginnings of social differentiation. The aspect of social differentiation and ranking in the Megalithic society is clearly

brought out in the analysis of their burial monuments. However, more importantly, the Megalithic society shows a chiefdom-level organization and there are no indications either of a regular taxation system or a regular standing army, which are characteristics of the succeeding state societies. An augmentation in the intensive field agriculture and greater utilization of mineral resources — as evidenced in the increase of agricultural and craftsman’s tools — seems to be characteristic of the later phase (after c. 500 BC) of the Megalithic society. Probably, rice cultivation acquired new dimension because of improvement in technology, that is, an advance in the production techniques, and this seems to have led to demographic expansion. An increase in the number of sites and colonization of new areas was certainly an outcome of much consequence to the succeeding phases of historical developments. See also: Asia, South: Baluchistan and the Borderlands; Buddhist Archaeology; Ganges Valley; India, Deccan and Central Plateau; Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier; Neolithic Cultures; Sri Lanka; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Image and Symbol; Political Complexity, Rise of; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Social Inequality, Development of.

Further Reading Banerjee NR (1965) The Iron Age in India. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Chakrabarti DK (1999) India: An Archaeological History (Palaeolithic Beginnings to Early History Foundations). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Childe VG (1948) Megaliths. Ancient India (Bulletin of the Archaeological Survey of India) 4: 4–13. Kim B-m (ed.) (1982) Megalithic Cultures in Asia. Seoul: Hanyang University. Krishnaswami VD (1949) Megalithic types of South India. Ancient India (Bulletin of the Archaeological Survey of India) 5: 35–45. Leshnik LS (1974) South Indian ‘Megalithic’ Burials – The Pandukal Complex. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner. Moorti US (1994) Megalithic Culture of South India: SocioEconomic Perspectives. Varanasi: Ganga Kaveri Publishing House. Mohanty RK and Selvakumar V (2002) The archaeology of the megaliths in India: 1947–1997. In: Settar S and Korisettar R (eds.) Indian Archaeology in Retrospect, Vol.: Prehistory, Archaeology of South Asia, pp. 313–351. New Delhi: Indian Council of Historical Research and Manohar Publishers. Ramachandran KS (1971) A Bibliography on Indian Megaliths. Madras: State Department of Archaeology, Government of Tamil Nadu. Thapar R (2002) Early India (From the Origins to AD 1300). London: Allen Lane.

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Neolithic Cultures Dorian Q Fuller, Institute of Archaeology, University College London, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Anarta A kingdom of ancient India, roughly forming the northern Gujarat state of India. It was ruled by Yadavas after they fled from Mathura of Surasena Kingdom, due to the attacks of Jarasandha, the king of Magadha. The site of Anarta also has prehistoric remains which have given their name to a local Neolithic tradition. Neolithic (New Stone Age) A period in the development of human technology that is traditionally the last part of the Stone Age. sedentism A term applied to the cultural transition from nomadic to permanent, year-round settlement.

The Neolithic period marks a major watershed in economy, social organization and technology. Although the Neolithic was initially recognized on the basis of a change in lithic technology, the production of ground stone axes, it soon came to be seen to relate to major changes in subsistence (food production), settlement pattern (sedentism), in cooking and food container technology (ceramics), and in the production of textiles. In India, as in other parts of the world, various traits of the Neolithic did not evolve simultaneously and thus research has begun to clarify the ordering and interrelationships of these changes. Through most of South Asia there is not a clear cultural or economic change associated with the beginnings of copper-working and an understanding of early food production invariably must consider sites from periods when copper is in use. Thus, scholars often talk of the Neolithic-Chalcolithic cultures and distinguish these from the earlier Mesolithic and the later Iron Age. In general terms, seven distinct Neolithic traditions can be defined in South Asia (Figure 1), and the development of settled village farming societies can be understood as developing from these regional traditions or interactions between them. In general, the emergence of Neolithic societies is recognizable by groundstone axes, food production, and/or ceramic manufacture during the Middle Holocene, as early as the late seventh millennium BC in the northwest and as late as c. 2000 BC in other parts of India (Figure 2). Despite the different dates at which the Neolithic began in various parts of India and Pakistan, many of these developments must be seen in terms of local processes of social evolution and environmental change.

An important context for considering these changes in provided by the environmental variability across south Asia and how this has been affected by climatic changes in the past (Figure 3). Much higher monsoon rainfall occurred in the Early Holocene, and to a lesser extent mid-Holocene, as is recorded in pollen and sedimentary evidence from the Thar Desert, Rajasthan, and from sea core records in the Arabian Sea. The mid-Holocene wet period is also characterized by higher winter rainfall in the northwest, which would have affected areas like Punjab, Rajasthan, and perhaps parts of central India. This is suggested, for example, by the strong shift toward C-3 vegetation indicated in carbon-13 isotope measurements from Lunkaransar lake. A drying trend toward modern rainfall conditions had started before the end of the fourth millennium BC and reached levels of near-modern aridity by 2000 BC. Marked events of sudden aridity are numerous but those at c. 6200 BC, 3400–3200 BC, and 2200 BC might be pointed out as potentially significant for understanding transitions to the Neolithic.

Crops, Livestock, and Centers of Domestication The basis of food production is a direct involvement of humans in the management of the lives and life cycles of certain plant and animal species, termed domesticated. The management of these species has led to changes in their form, genetics and behavior which define the process of domestication. Several important domesticated species came to South Asia from early origins in the Near East, including staple crops such as wheat, barley peas, and lentils, as well as livestock such as sheep and goats (Table 1). Nevertheless, numerous species were also domesticated within South Asia (Table 2). This includes plants as well as livestock, including humped zebu cattle, water buffalos and chickens. While zebu cattle underwent domestication in the northwest, it remains unclear whether there was another domestication elsewhere in India. Water buffalos appear to have been domesticated somewhere in the lower Indus Valley region by the time of Harappan civilization, while chickens may have been domesticated in the middle Ganges or the eastern Indus regions. The domestication of local plants was also important for the beginnings of agriculture in parts of monsoonal India. With summer rains, many regions of India are not well-suited to the winter-grown crops of Southwest Asia, which were established early in Baluchistan, unless winter irrigation is provided by

ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures 757

Glg Bzm Glk

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Bgr Btl

2 Snr

Mhg Kjn

4 Rjd

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Pdr

Gbsn

5 Bdl Wtg Hlr

Utr Ngr

Sgk

Figure 1 The major independent Neolithic zones of South Asia, with selected archaeological sites. For each zone the solid outline indicates best guess region(s) for indigenous domestication processes and/or earliest adoption of agriculture. The dashed lines indicates the expanded region of related/derivative traditions of agriculture; selected sites plotted. 1. The northwestern zone, with the disjunct area of the Northern Neolithic shown: Mgr. Mehrgarh, Glg. Ghaleghay, Bzm. Burzahom, Gfk. Gufkral. 2. The middle Ganges zone with two possible rice domestication areas: Dmd. Damadama, Lhd. Lahuradewa, Mhg. Mahagara, Kjn. Kunjhun, Snr. Senuwar. 3. Eastern India/ Orissan zone: Bnb. Banabasa, Kch. Kuchai, Gpr, Gopalpur, Gbsn. Golabai Sassan. 4. Gujarat and southern Aravalli zone: Ltw. Loteshwar, Rjd. Rojdi, Pdr. Padri, Btl. Balathal, Bgr. Bagor. 5. Southern Indian zone: Bdl. Budihal, Wtg. Watgal, Utr. Utnur, Sgk. Sanganakallu and Hiregudda, Hlr. Hallur, Ngr. Nagarajupalle.

perennial rivers or artificial sources. Instead native species, including numerous minor millets and pulses such as mungbean, urd, horsegram, and pigeonpea, offered local populations with suitable local crops. While horsegram is native to the savanna zone of western and Southern India, pigeonpea derives for a limited region of moist deciduous forests in eastern India. The wild forms of mung and urd are rather more widespread with patchy distributions in the wetter deciduous zones along either side of the peninsula, in the highest hills of Rajasthan, as well as part

of the Western Himalayan foothills. Six significant millet crop species were also domesticated in India, either as local savanna grasses or as wetland species, although some of them may represent secondary domestications of early rice field weeds. Although further archaeological research is needed to clarify what happened, it appears that, in the Southern Deccan, cultivation began perhaps c. 3000 BC based native millets and pulses. Similarly, native small millets may have provided the initial agriculture in Saurashtra during the same general period. In the

758 ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures Figure 2 Chronological chart of selected Neolithic/Chalcolithic archaeological regions of South Asia, indicating the likely horizons of the earliest crops, livestock, ceramics, and possible regions/periods of important domestications.

ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures 759 750 700 650 600 550 500 −2.5

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Figure 3 Correlation between various palaeoclimatic proxies from northwestern south Asia, and selected archaeological phases. From top to bottom: global atmospheric methane as measured in the Greenland GISP core, O-18 isotopic variation from Pakistan continental margin; 5000 years of Indus discharge inferred from Karachi delta varve thickness, lake level data from Lunkaransar, lake levels from the Didwana lake, selected archaeological phases.

Vindhyan hills and tributaries of the middle Ganges, Neolithic village communities appear to have developed around cultivation of ‘indica’ rice (a separate strain from ‘japonica’ rice of Neolithic China), millets and native pulses certainly by the third millennium BC, although the process may have begun as much as two to four millennia earlier. Parallel processes may have happened independently in Orissa. Another important source of crops for South Asia was sub-Saharan Africa. Throughout much of the drier tracts of India today, sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), and finger millet (Eleusine coracana) are staple grains, while cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) and hyacinth bean (Lablab purpureus) are

important pulses. These five species were domesticated in various parts of sub-Saharan Africa and had dispersed to South Asia via Indian Ocean contact by sometime in the early second millennium BC. The earliest direct dates come from South India, c. 1500 BC, although these species may have first come into South Asian subsistence on the Harappan periphery in Gujarat, perhaps even by 2000 BC. The Northwest: Aceramic Introductions, Local Addition and Intensification

An important Neolithic tradition that started out without pottery is found in Pakistan west of the Indus Valley. In general, this Neolithic tradition is found in

760 ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures Table 1 Important domesticates in South Asia originating in the Near East Species

Region and period of origin

Earliest occurrence in South Asia

Comments

Wheat(s) Triticum spp.

Near Eastern fertile crescent, 9700–8000 BC

Mehrgarh, ca. 7000 BC

Barley Hordeum vulgare

Near Eastern fertile crescent, 9700–8000 BC. Additional domestication further east is possible. Near Eastern fertile crescent (Southern Levant), 9700–8000 BC. Near Eastern fertile crescent, 9700–8000 BC.

Mehrgarh, ca. 7000 BC

Mehrgarh finds include primitive glume wheats (Triticum monococcum, T. diococcum) as well as derived freethreshing breadwheats (T. aestivum) Wild barley also reported at Mehrgarh, probably as a field weed

Pea Pisum sativum Lentil Lens culinaris Chickpea Cicer arietinum Grasspea Lathyrus sativus Flax Linum usitatissimum Safflower Carthamus tinctorius Goat Capra hircus Sheep Ovis aries Cattle Bos taurus

Near Eastern fertile crescent, (Northern Levant) 9700–8000 BC. Greece(?), Anatolia(?), 8000–7000 BC(?) Near Eastern fertile crescent (Northern Levant), 9700–8000 BC. Near East Near East, 8500–8000 BC Near East, 8500–8000 BC; and Baluchistan? Near East, 8500–8000 BC

Indus valley sites, Kashmir, 3rd M. BC

Earlier sites lack adequate sampling

Indus valley sites, Kashmir, 3rd M. BC; 4th M. BC Makran Indus valley sites, 3rd M. BC

Earlier sites lack adequate sampling

Earlier sites lack adequate sampling

Indus valley sites, 3rd M. BC

Earlier sites lack adequate sampling

Indus valley sites, 3rd M. BC

Earlier sites lack adequate sampling

Balathal, Rajasthan, c. 3000 BC Mehrgarh, c. 7000 BC Mehrgarh: domestication process, 7000–5000 BC (?) Indus valley sites, 3rd M. BC

the hilly regions west of the Indus Valley as far north as the Bannu Basin. This tradition is best known through the site of Mehrgarh, which has been extensively excavated. The chronology of Mehrgarh has been problematic. The second ceramic phase at Mehrgarh seems well-dated, beginning c. 6000 BC, and the site is estimated to have begun by c. 7000 BC, or even earlier, although radiocarbon dates are inconsistent. There is no good evidence for crop domestication here, and most evidence suggests the spread of crops from the Near East, although barley might have grown here wild. Possible connections with Neolithic cave sites in Afghanistan, which might have earlier occupations, require clarification through further archaeology. As evidenced at Mehrgarh, these Neolithic settlers built substantial square and rectangular mud-brick buildings. It is from their use of cereal processing by-products (chaff) that identifications of their crop repertoire have been made, indicating a focus on the cultivation of winter crops that had their ultimate origins in Southwest Asia, that is, barley, emmer wheat, possible einkorn, and

May have more than one domestication in Near East More than one origin in West/Central Asia

Separate origins of zebu (Bos indicus), which has domestication process at Mehrgarh, 7000–5000 BC

free-threshing (bread) wheat. In terms of animal exploitation, hunting of gazelles dominated the economy, but at least some domesticated goats were also present, indicated by their size and by the sacrificial burial of their kids together with human burials. Goats, like the cereals, had arrived before the site was founded, plausibly from the west. Other species of both plants and animals appear to have been brought under human management locally. The evidence from animal bones indicates both a dramatic shift in dependence away from hunted game animals (such as gazelles) toward goats, sheep and especially cattle over the course of the first two phases of Mehrgarh, that is, from c. 7000 to 4500 BC. In addition to this change in the faunal spectrum, clear morphological change is documented in the cattle, which suggests the local domestication of humped Indian zebu cattle (Bos indicus). Similar evidence for sheep raises the likelihood of local domestication processes as well. By the end of period I, early in the fifth millennium BC, finds of cotton seeds and cotton thread suggests that this fiber crop had been brought under

ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures 761 Table 2 Selected domesticates of South Asian Neolithic origin Species

Region and period of origin

Comments

Zebu cattle Bos indicus Water buffalo Bubalus bubalis Chicken Gallus gallus Tree Cotton Gossypium arboreum Sesame Sesamum indicum Long-grained rice Oryza sativa ssp. indica Little millet Panicum sumatrense

Baluchistan, e.g. Mehrgarh donmestication process, 7000–5000 BC Lower Indus region (Sindh, Kutch), by Harappan period 2500 BC Northern India and/or Kashmir: present on Indus valley and Gujarat sites by Harappan period. Pakistan: present at Mehrgarh by 5000 BC; cultivated by Harappans in Indus valley (3rd M. BC) Indus valley(?); cultivated by Harappans in Indus valley, by 2500 BC Ganges valley. In use by 7000 BC (Lahuradewa), domesticated by 3rd M. BC Saurasthra Peninsula, Gujarat; staple grain by 3rd Millennium BC; also upper Punjab(?) present at Harappa by 3000 BC South India; staple grain of South Indian Neolithic by 3rd Millennium BC

A second domestication in India is possible. A second domestication in India is possible. Probably a separate origin from Chinese Chickens Wild ancestor extinct(?)

Browntop millet Brachiaria ramosa Urd bean, black gram Vigna mungo Mungbean, green gram Vigan radiata Horsegram Macotyloma uniflorum Pigeonpea Cajanus cajan Ivy gourd Coccinia grandis

Gujarat or northwest Peninsula; present in Saurashtra by 2500 BC South India; important pulse by 3rd M. BC; Also upper Punjab, present by 3rd M. BC on Harappan sites South India; important pulse by 3rd M. BC

Domestication process poorly understood Domestication process poorly understood. Two domestications (?). May also be present as a crop in Gujarat and Ganges during the Neolithic.

Additional domestication in Western India possible

Eastern India: Orissa Neolithic sites by 1500 BC; spread to South India by 1500 BC North India, Himalayan foothills; on Late Neolithic sites in Ganges by 1800 BC

cultivation from local, but now extinct, ancestors. Sesame and a local variety of the date palm may also have been brought under cultivation during this period, although undisputed finds only come from several milleniums later. Early archaeobotanical evidence for the pulses domesticated in southwest Asia (peas, lentils, chickpea, and grasspea) is similarly missing from the Neolithic, but is likely a product of limited sampling. It is clear that these species were important cultivars in the Indus region by the third millennium BC during the Harappan civilization. It was the food production established at Mehrgarh by the seventh to sixth milleniums BC, based on wheat, barley, wintergrown pulses, and cotton, as well as livestock that formed the basis on which settlement of the Indus Valley and the Later Harappan civilization developed. Over the course of the fourth and third milleniums BC, which represent the Early Bronze Age, agricultural settlement proliferated in the greater Indus Valley region. Agricultural intensification through simple forms of irrigation and cattle-drawn ard tillage are likely, and such intensification is likely to have been important in increasing agricultural output in the face of declining rainfall and for providing the food surpluses on which the emergence of Harappan urbanism in the mid-third millennium BC depended. By the time

of the Harappan civilization long-lived perennial crops were grown, notably fruits such as dates and grapes. One the eastern margins of the Harappan zone, the cultivation of the Near Eastern winter crops, was constrained by climatic conditions, in particular the predominance of summer rainfall. The perennial rivers of the Ganges system, however, offered a means to grow winter crops as well as monsoon crops. Such mixed season agriculture is evident from the foundational levels of the site of Harappa (c. 3200 BC) and from the earliest known agricultural settlements in the Upper Ganges plain, such as Kunal, starting from c. 3000 BC. The presence of rice, millets, and native Indian pulses on this site implies that the monsoon crops were already available as cultivars, perhaps from this region, in an as yet undocumented presedentary agricultural period, or else from areas to the east, such as the middle Ganges.

A Late Extension of Agriculture to the Far North A rather different Neolithic tradition is documented from Kashmir and the far north of Pakistan (the Swat Valley), although it appears to have derived its crops from the same suite of winter crops of Near Eastern

762 ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures

origins. Generally known as the Northern Neolithic, this tradition is best represented by sites in the Kashmir Valley, although related sites can be identified in Swat (Northwest Pakistan). Here sites occupy the milder valley bottoms and began to be occupied between 3000 and 2500 BC, represented by the sites of Burzahom, Gufkral, and Ghaleghay, but with more evidence and sites dating closer to 2000 BC. The earliest phases are characterized by broad deep pits, with bell-shaped profiles, and lack pottery. While these have conventionally been interpreted as pit houses, recent debates have raised the likelihood that they were large storage features. Whatever the case, it is clear from these sites that the dominant crops were winter wheat, barley, peas, and lentils. It is possible that these crops had diffused to local hunter-gatherers from the Indus region to the south or from Central Asia, together with domesticated animals. Impressions in pottery from Ghalegay suggest some localized rice cultivation as well which must have diffused from the Gangetic region to the southeast. The West: Hunter-Herders to Millet Farmers and Traders

The areas to the south and east of the Thar Desert, the Indian states of Gujarat and Rajasthan, are likely to have been regions both of the extension of the wintercrop agriculture and livestock from Baluchistan as well as local traditions of cultivation based on indigenous domestication. Gujarat is likely to have been a center for the domestication of local, monsoonadapted crops, perhaps after livestock was adopted into this area from the Indus region to the west in the fourth millennium BC. Archaeobotanical evidence for the beginnings of cultivation in this region is not yet available from the earliest ceramic-bearing sites, of the Padri and Anarta traditions (c. 3500–2600 BC), but the extensive sampling on Harappan period sites in the region after 2600 BC indicates the predominance of small millets, in particular, little millet (Panicum sumatrense) but probably also Setaria spp. and Brachiaria ramosa. Nevertheless, these sites and contemporary sites further north on the Thar Desert fringes of northern Gujarat and Rajasthan have produced evidence for some domestic fauna in the earliest ceramic levels, including cattle bones from the mid-fourth millennium BC at Loteshwar and probable domestic fauna from Padri. Other sites, such as Bagor, are often cited as evidence for the adoption of livestock by mid-Holocene hunter-gatherers, although current knowledge highlights the need for more systematic archaeobotanical and archaeozoological investigations. East of the Thar Desert there is clear evidence for establishment of agricultural villages before the end of the fourth millennium BC. Demonstrated by

excavations at the site of Balathal, more or less sedentary ceramic-producing farmers became established in this region alongside hunter-gatherers such as those of Bagor. Limited archaeobotanical data suggest that Balathal agriculture was based on the winter crops from further west, together with livestock, rather than indigenous crops. These crops were then taken up further east in central India and on the northern Peninsula in the second half of the third millennium BC. On the northern peninsula the winter cereals and pulses were markedly important but they seem to have been part of a mixed cultivation strategy which included significant frequencies of the native species, such as the pulses and millets that featured prominently in the Southern Neolithic. The North and East: Potting Foragers to Rice-Growing Villagers

The Ganges Basin, the adjacent Himilayan foothills to the north, and the hill zones of Bihar and Orissa taken together delimit an important zone of probable plant domestications. Evidence has long been clear that a number of cucurbit crops originate in this general area, including cucumbers, luffas and various ‘gourds’, although only the ivy gourd has an archaeological record. Of special interest is, of course, the predominant staple today, rice, which is also native domesticate of this region. Rice is consistently present at all these sites from the earliest documented phases together with various small millets (B. ramosa, Setaria vertcillata, and Setaria pumila). Native Indian pulses are also present but only from later phases, which could indicate dispersal of native pulses from elsewhere prior to 2000 BC. Still to be clarified is whether there was one main trajectory toward agriculture or dispersed parallel trajectories in different local traditions, and what role interactions between early farmers and hunter-gatherers played. At present three distinct cultural traditions can be defined, each of which passed through two or three economic stages. First there is a tradition located in the eastern part of this region, represented by Lahuradewa and Senuwar. Its earliest stage, represented by occupation of the lake margin area at Lahuradewa, shows ceramic production by sometime in the fifth millennium (and perhaps as early as 7000 BC), and rice was part of the diet from 7000 BC, although clarification is needed on its cultivation status and the earliest rice material is plausibly wild. Later levels at Lahuradewa and at Senuwar indicate more sedentary settlement and clear rice cultivation after 2500 BC. Some winter crops, especially wheat and barley, were added to the agricultural system by 2200 BC, and pulses from elsewhere in India were

ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures 763

added shortly thereafter. Livestock were also adopted, beginning perhaps as early as 2500 BC and certainly by c. 2000 BC. A second tradition that shows parallel economic developments was in the northern Vindhyan hills and the Son and Belan river valleys, represented by sites such as Mahagara, Koldihwa, and Tokwa, although here the founding of sedentary villages with mixed agro-pastoralism occurred mainly after c. 2000 BC (Figure 7). Once again the initial agriculture was rice and millets, with winter crops and pulses adopted shortly thereafter. Earlier evidence in the region suggests seasonal settlement, rice use, and probably some production of ceramics among huntergatherers. A third distinct cultural tradition to take up agriculture was the Mesolithic of the central Ganges plains, represented by the site of Damdama. Here there has been a long tradition of semisedentary hunting and fishing focused on the oxbow ponds and former meanders of the Ganges plain. Despite the absence of pottery, crops, including rice and barley, were adopted after 2500 BC, but this distinct aceramic tradition ceased to be recognizable by the early second millennium BC. After 2000 BC agricultural villages became more widespread in the Gangetic region. They seem to have consisted of small villages of round huts and possible communal animal pens (Figure 5). While it is not yet clear that these sites were truly year-round sedentism, it is clear that they were much more permanent and longlasting than anything that had been before. It is also clear that cultivation was established before this phase of sedentarization. Indeed, finds of probable Gangetic domestics in the Eastern Harappan zone suggest that the beginnings of cultivation date to before 3000 BC. The recent discovery of Lahuradewa dating back to before 4000 BC suggests that future work may indeed be able to elucidate the plant economies of less settled

societies that saw through the transition from foraging to food production. During the course of the second millennium BC, agriculture diversified as did other aspects of the society. It is during this period that the first evidence for aboriculture of native tropical trees occurs. This includes evidence from wood charcoal suggesting the planting of trees in the Gangetic Plains such as jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus), mango (Mangifera indica), bael fruit (Aegle marmelos), the citron (Citrus medica), and tamarind (Tamarindus indicus). Fruittree cultivation may have begun early in the second millennium BC but was widespread by the second half of the millennium. It is also during this period that the first finds of possible fiber crops, including flax and hemp, occur, together with probable spindle whorls, suggesting the beginnings of textile production. The Lesser Known East and Northeast: Orissa, Assam, Bangladesh and Burma

Areas in Eastern India and the far northeast, including Bangladesh and Myanmar (Burma), are still poorly explored in terms of Neolithic archaeology. In the past few years a few Neolithic sites in lowland Orissa have been studied. In the lowlands of Orissa, along the coastal plain and the Mahanadi River substantial archaeological settlement mounds exist. This provides evidence for Neolithic settlement based on the cultivation of rice and Indian pulses as well as herding of domesticated livestock, including introduced sheep and goat. Rice, some of the pulses, and water buffalos are all candidates for domestication in this region, although there is not yet clear archaeological evidence documenting this. While some of these sites, such as Golabai Sassan, may have been founded before

Figure 4 View north across the Belan river from Koldhiwa Neolithic site to Mahagara (on left), Uttar Pradesh, 2001.

764 ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures

Post-hole Hut floor Cattle hoof-prints

N 0

5m

10 m

Belan River Figure 5 Plan of the Gangetic Neolithic settlement of Mahagara, c. 1700 BC, indicating the distribution of huts in relation to a small animal pen.

2000 BC, most of the substantial occupation seems to start later closer to 1500 BC and continue perhaps a thousand years into the Iron Age (Figures 6). In the upland regions of Orissa the Neolithic is known mainly from surface collections of ground stone axes, although ceramics from the site Kuchai, which are tempered with rice husk, suggest some rice cultivation. Possible precursors to the Neolithic settlements may be sought in the many rock shelters of northwest Orissa, which are rich in rock art, and sometimes include ceramics in their surface collections. Similarly, in the northeastern states of India, such as Assam, and neighbording Myanmar, the Neolithic is known only from surface collections of groundstone axes and ceramics. The Neolithic remains unidentified in Bangladesh. There is not yet any clear evidence for dating the Neolithic in these areas, nor for inferring the economic basis. Scholars have long noted that in this zone shouldered axes are typical, and that this tool type suggests possible links with Orissa and parts of Southern China. While this typological linkage has featured in several models of Neolithic population dispersal, it remains undocumented through excavated archaeological contexts. The South: Millet and Pulse Farming Cattle Keepers

The Southern Neolithic, of northern Karnataka and southwest Andhra Pradesh, provides the earliest

evidence for pastoralism and agriculture in Peninsular India, starting by 2800 BC. A well-known site category of the Southern Neolithic is the ashmound (Figures 7, 8, and 9). These sites form a prominent part of the archaelogical landscape of Southern India and consist of large accumulations of burnt cattle-dung reduced to ash and in some cases to a slag-like consistency. Excavations, especially at Utnur and Budihal, have revealed these to be ancient penning sites that have been episodically burnt, probably as part of seasonal communal rituals. The centrality of cattle in this symbolic aspect of life is also suggestsed by a rich rock art corpus associated with some Neolithic sites in the region, which are dominated by pecked images of cattle. While these sites were seasonal encampments, in many cases they developed over time into village settlements. This is indicated by ashmound deposits buried under village occupation at sites such as Sanganakallu (Figure 10), and by the development of a village adjacent to the ashmound at Budihal (Figure 11). These transitions are part of a protracted regional process of increasing sedentism between 2200 and 1800 BC. After 1800 BC the distribution of ashmound sites had reached their maximal extent in northwestern Karnataka, and other traditions of village settlement began to be established in adjacent regions, of West and South Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and northwest Tamil Nadu. Agriculture further South, throughout

ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures 765

Figure 6 The Neolithic/Chalcolithic settlement mound at Golabai Sassan, Orissa. The site is cut through by the road, 2003.

Figure 7 Kudatini, the largest Neolithic ashmound, west of Bellary, Karnataka, 1998.

Tamil Nadu for example, appears to have only become established during the Iron Age and in some regions of Southwest Tamil Nadu as late at the end of the first millennium BC. Here agriculture included rice, which had diffused from northern India, perhaps along the eastern coast early in the first millennium BC. Similarly, rice-based agriculture came to Sri Lanka, perhaps by c. 900 BC. This long regional transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agriculturalists is also characteristic of the hill tracts of peninsular India, where in some areas hunter-gatherers became specialized forager-traders tied to agricultural societies in the plains, and some of these forager-trader

communities persisted into the ethnographic present. The subsistence of the Southern Neolithic combined indigenous crops with introduced livestock. Animal bones indicate the dominance of cattle in the animal economy with a smaller presence of sheep and goat. While the latter species must have been adopted from the north, this also seems likely for the cattle. Recent archaeobotanical research has provided a picture of recurrent staples and occasional secondary crops of the Southern Neolithic. The staples include two native species of millets (B. ramosa and Setaria verticillata) and two pulses, mungbean and horsegram (Vigna radiata and Macrotyloma uniflorum). The existing

766 ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures

Figure 8 The Southern Neolithic ashmound site of Palavoy, showing exposed stratigraphy of durg ash layering, Anatapur District, Andhra Pradesh, 1998.

Figure 9 Two ashmounds at Palavoy seen from above, looking West, the ashmound at right is shown close-up in Figure 8.

evidence indicates dependence on a group of species that are native to the peninsula, with non-native species being rare (on a minority of sites) or occurring only in the latest Neolithic period, including crops of African origin by c. 1500 BC. In addition, evidence from this later phase of the Neolithic suggests the adoption of fiber crops, cotton and flax, as well as some fruit trees such as mango and citrus. In all, this indicates increasing diversity and links between agriculture, craft production, and trade. Concluding Remarks: Directions in South Asian Neolithic Research

Throughout most of India, the agricultural foundations of early Historic cities and states drew upon the rich

mixture of native species and adopted species that had been assembled by regional Neolithic and Chalcolithic societies. While some important species are known to have diffused from the Near East, several important species are native to India. Unfortunately, archaeological evidence is listed for documenting the use of these native species in a wild form by hunter-gatherers, followed by their transformation under cultivation into domesticated crops. In most cases our earliest finds come from communities where cultivation was already established. It would appear that most of the known Neolithic sites in South Asia come from periods of settling down for the long term and becoming more sedentary. The fact that these sites already show clear agriculture suggests that the origins lie earlier in more mobile societies, and less archaeologically visible sites.

ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures 767

Figure 10 The granite inselberg of Sannarachamma near modern Sanganakallu, a typical hilltop location for a South Indian Neolithic village site, view to Southwest, 1998.

Ashmound

Pen edge (stone fence)

Butchery floor

Huts

N 0

25 m

Figure 11 Plan of the Southern Neolithic site of Budihal, indicating the substantial ashmound developed atop a large penning area, c. 2200 BC, and a small area of huts, 2200–1700 BC.

Also, further research on the biogeography of the wild progenitors of most native species is needed and more efforts at producing quantitative data through longer regional sequences of both botanical and zoological remains are also needed. Other emerging directions of research are the study of later hunter-gatherers and their interactions with established agricultural neighbors, and the study of the role of later Neolithic

communities in the development of craft specialization, specialized crop production (such as fruits and fiber crops) and the regional trajectories toward social complexity. While there remains much research to be done, it is now clear that South Asia has several Neolithic traditions which participated in the recurrent social processes of domesticating plants and animals and creating economies of food production.

768 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures See also: Agriculture: Social Consequences; Animal Domestication; Asia, South: Baluchistan and the Borderlands; Ganges Valley; Paleolithic Cultures; Asia, West: Mesolithic Cultures; Ceramics and Pottery; Plant Domestication.

Soan culture A Palaeolithic culture found along the Soan river valley in the Potwar region of the Punjab and dated to the Middle Pleistocene.

Further Reading

South Asia as an ancient culture area is inconceivable without consideration of the firm foundations provided by the prehistoric phase spanning more than a million years of hunting and foraging way of life. The terminal stage of this preliterate life, called the Mesolithic, is dated to the early part of the Holocene and merges into the succeeding agro-pastoral stage comprising various Neolithic–Chalcolithic cultures and the Indus civilization. The present essay seeks to provide a review of the existing evidence pertaining to the preceding Palaeolithic stage, which comprises three phases (Lower, Middle, and Upper) and is dated to the Pleistocene.

Ajithaprasad P (2004) Holocene adaptations of the Mesolithic and Chalcolithic settlements in North Gujarat. In: Yasuda Y and Shinde V (eds.) Monsoon and Civilization, pp. 115–132. New Delhi: Lustre Press/ Roli Books. Chattopadyaya UC (2002) Researches in archaeozoology of the Holocene period (including the Harappan tradition in India and Pakistan). In: Settar S and Korisettar R (eds.) Researches in Archaeozoology of the Holocene Period (Including the Harappan Tradition in India and Pakistan). New Delhi: Manohar. Fuller DQ (2002) Fifty years of archaeobotanical studies in India: Laying a solid foundation. In: Settar S and Korisettar R (eds.) Indian Archaeology in Retrospect III. Archaeology and Interactive Disciplines, pp. 247–363. Delhi: Manohar. Fuller DQ (2003) Indus and non-Indus agricultural traditions: Local developments and crop adoptions on the Indian Peninsula. In: Weber SA and Belcher WR (eds.) Indus and Non-Indus Agricultural Traditions: Local Developments and Crop Adoptions on the Indian Peninsula. Lanham: Lexington Books. Fuller DQ (2003) An agricultural perspective on Dravidian historical linguistics: Archaeological crop packages, livestock and dravidian crop vocabulary. In: Bellwood P and Renfrew C (eds.) An Agricultural Perspective on Dravidian Historical Linguistics: Archaeological Crop Packages, Livestock and Dravidian Crop Vocabulary. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Fuller DQ (2006) Agricultural origins and frontiers in South Asia: A working synthesis. Journal of World Prehistory 20(1): 1–86. Meadow R and Patel AK (2003) Prehistoric pastoralism in Northwestern South Asia from the Neolithic through the Harappan Period. In: Weber SA and Belcher WR (eds.) Prehistoric Pastoralism in Northwestern South Asia from the Neolithic through the Harappan Period. Lanham: Lexington Books. Singh BP (ed.) (2004) Early Farming Communities of the Kaimur. Jaipur: Publication Scheme. Singh Purushottam (2001) The Neolithic cultures of Northern and Eastern India. In: Settar S and Korisettar R (eds.) Indian Archaeology in Retrospect I. Prehistory, pp. 127–150. Delhi: Manohar.

Paleolithic Cultures K Paddayya, Deccan College, Pune, India ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary palaeomagnetism The study of the record of the Earth’s magnetic field preserved in various magnetic minerals through time. thermoluminescence (TL) The determination by means of measuring the accumulated radiation dose of the time elapsed since material containing crystalline minerals was either heated (lava, ceramics) or exposed to sunlight (sediments).

Introduction

Geographical Features

South Asia occupies a middle position among the three peninsular projections marking the southern margin of the Asiatic landmass. It comprises the Himalayan kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan, the island nation of Sri Lanka, and the sovereign states of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. In the north, South Asia is separated from the main Asiatic landmass by the high Hindukush and Karakoram ranges, and the Himalayan massif proper. On the western, southern, and eastern sides, the Indian peninsula is neatly marked off by the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, respectively. Notwithstanding its status as a distinct geographical unit, outside influences did reach the South Asian region by both land and sea from the very beginnings of human life, such that its cultural make-up is a combined product of both outside stimuli and internal development. Within this larger geographical entity, there is tremendous regional diversity. The major topographic subdivisions include the arid zone of Rajasthan in the west; the high snow-clad Himalayas in the north; the hill-tract of northeastern India supporting a rich tropical rainforest ecosystem; the vast Indus and Gangetic alluvial plains which served as the springboards of First and Second Urbanizations, respectively; and the triangular-shaped plateau of peninsular India. The peninsular block is flanked on the western and eastern sides by narrow hill-chains running close to the seaboard and is drained by eastor west-flowing rivers. Sri Lanka is situated some 20 km off the tip of the peninsula; central highlands, northern lowlands, and southern rolling plains are its chief geographical units.

ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures 769

South Asia is an area of monsoonal climate which originated due to the upthrust of the Himalayas and Tibetan plateau, the final phase of which is dated to about 14 Ma. Much of the peninsular block receives its precipitation from the southwest monsoon. The northern mountainous tract lies in the winter rainfall belt of Northern Hemisphere; moisture comes in the form of winter storms or snow melt. The extreme southern part of the peninsula as well as Sri Lanka benefit from the rainfall caused by the northeast monsoon. History of Research

Prehistoric research started in South Asia immediately after the epoch-making discoveries of stone stools by Boucher de Perthes in the Somme river gravels of northern France in the mid-nineteenth century. The ratification of these findings by the Royal Society in London in 1859 was a great source of inspiration to Robert Bruce Foote who came to Madras (now Chennai) in 1858 as a young officer to work in the Geological Survey of India. Foote found a few bifacial stone implements in a lateritic gravel pit near Madras in May 1863. In the course of his three-decade-long geological surveys in various parts of southern India and Gujarat, he located a large number of prehistoric sites which he classified under three periods – Palaeolithic, Neolithic, and Iron Age. His publication entitled The Foote Collection of Indian Prehistoric and Protohistoric Antiquities: Notes on Their Ages and Distribution, published in 1916, is the first major synthesis of South Asian prehistoric research and still offers many useful insights into the environmental settings and lifeways of prehistoric populations. Foote is therefore rightly called the ‘Father of Indian Prehistory’. The next phase, spanning from the 1930s to the 1970s, witnessed the rise of what may be called the stratigraphical-cum-cultural-cum-climatic sequence paradigm. During this period efforts were made to divide the Stone Age into various phases based on stratigraphical evidence, as supplied by river sediments and other deposits. Based upon the character of these deposits (gravels, silts, etc.), inferences were also made about past climates consisting of a succession of wet and dry climatic episodes. Four major studies were involved in the development of this paradigm: (1) the work of L. A. Cammiade and M. C. Burkitt on the southeast coast of India postulating the existence of four successive cultural stages (series I–IV); (2) joint investigations of the Yale and Cambridge Universities in the Potwar plateau and Kashmir Valley, and the formulation of Soan culture-sequence with reference to alternation

of glacial and interglacial episodes; (3) the work of F. E. Zeuner of the Institute of Archaeology, London, in Gujarat and the Deccan seeking to identify the stratigraphical contexts of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic assemblages with reference to alluvial and sand dune deposits; and (4) H. D. Sankalia’s reconstruction of fourfold cultural sequence (series I–IV) based upon his study of cliff-sections of the river Pravara at Nevasa in the Deccan. From the mid-1950s to mid-1970s, this paradigm was extended to many other parts of India. Simultaneously, some important Stone Age sites were reported from other parts of South Asia, such as the Sanghao cave from Pakistan and the Ratnapura industry from Sri Lanka. Indeed, the emergence of Stone Age archaeology on the academic scene in South Asia was epitomized by the publication of the second edition of H. D. Sankalia’s book Prehistory and Protohistory of India and Pakistan in 1974. The third phase, which was initiated in the late 1970s, reflected the advent of New Archaeology into the region. It began to be realized that stone artifacts recovered from secondary deposits such as alluvial gravels and silts could not serve as secure data for making behavioral interpretations. Also it was felt that interpretations about past climate based on alluvial deposits were not sound. Against this background a fresh approach was initiated in the South Asian Stone Age research. Its chief components were: (1) region-based intensive field-surveys; (2) emphasis on the identification of in situ sites and their careful investigation, employing the perspective of formation processes; (3) use of both biological and Earth sciences in palaeoenvironmental reconstructions; and (4) use of experimental and ethnoarchaeological analogies. In an accompanying paradigm shift, culture was redefined as a systemic whole and as a means of human adaptation, rather than being treated as a mere vehicle for arriving at classificatory and descriptive definitions. During the last quarter-century, several projects employing some or all of these strategies were carried out in the Siwalik hills of India and Pakistan, central India covering the Belan, Narmada and Son Valleys, arid tract of Rajasthan, Saurashtra, the Deccan uplands, Chotanagpur plateau, and South India. In more recent years, some important studies were undertaken in the Deccan, the Bhima and Kaladgi Basins of north Karnataka, and the Kortallayar Basin of south India. Sri Lanka and Nepal also yielded evidence of Stone Age occupation. Discovery of fossil hominid remains at Hathnora in central India and Odai in south India, and the use of various radiometric methods for dating Stone Age sites are two other major developments of this phase.

770 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures

Some of these more recent projects benefited from collaboration with research teams from Cambridge, Oxford, Sheffield, and Sussex universities in England, University of California and the Smithsonian Institution in the US, and Australian National University and Marquarie University in Australia. Scientific institutions in India like the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, Central Arid Zone Research Institute, Jodhpur, Geological Survey of India, and Anthropological Survey of India also participated actively in some of the regional investigations. These joint studies were particularly helpful in attempting palaeogeographic and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions. Palaeoenvironments

In the Pleistocene, which has a duration of 2.5 Myr, South Asia was a part of the global climatic set-up. Oxygen-isotope studies of ocean-bed sediment cores established a repeated alternation of cold and warm periods. During the last 1 Myr, 9 or 10 glacial/interglacial cycles occurred. During glacial periods in northern latitudes, the monsoon was weak in South Asia and dry climate prevailed. When the northern latitudes were experiencing interglacial climate, the monsoon was strong in South Asia resulting in a wet climatic episode with a high level of precipitation. Although for want of clear data it is not possible to correlate the Palaeolithic cultural stages in South Asia with any specific climatic episodes, sedimentary data from fluvial and other contexts in the Kashmir valley, western and central India, and the Deccan region revealed a succession of wet and dry or arid and humid phases. Some of these studies deserve mention here. Employing the technique of pollen analysis, D. P. Agrawal and his team reconstructed a long and detailed palaeoclimatic sequence for the Kashmir Valley. The area experienced a warm temperate climate up to 3.8 Myr. From 3.7 to 2.6 Myr the climate changed from subtropical to cool temperate type. Cool climate persisted in the area for 2 Myr. The last 200 kyr saw the building up of a thick deposit of loess due to wind activity. Separating the periods of wind activity were periods of climatic stability as revealed by the formation of palaeosols. H. D. Sankalia found a few stone artifacts in the alluvial conglomerate at Pahlgam and dated them to the first interglacial period. Subsequent work in the area confirmed that at least from the Late Pleistocene the area was occupied by Stone Age groups in a regular way. The prolonged research of the British Archaeological Mission led by Robin Dennell from 1980 to 1990 in the Potwar plateau of Pakistan resulted in a wholesale re-evaluation of the Quaternary glacial/interglacial terrace stratigraphy and Soan culture-sequence put

forward earlier by H. de Terra and T. T. Paterson. The terraces proved to be only erosional features and nonglacigenic. Similarly, the Stone Age cultural material was found on surface in secondary contexts and hence it was found unsuitable for fixing culture sequences. However, this recent work produced new discoveries – two Acheulian sites at Dina and Jalalpur dated between 700 and 400 kyr and a possible Lower Pleistocene Early Man site at Riwat near Peshawar dated to 1.9 Myr by means of palaeomagnetism. The western part of Rajasthan, now mostly occupied by the Thar Desert and its characteristic sand dunes, provided sound evidence for reconstructing palaeoenvironmental history and human adaptations. In the Pleistocence the area was a favorable habitat for Stone Age communities. The work of Bridget Allchin and others in the 1970s showed that the area witnessed two major dry periods separated by wet climatic episodes. Palaeolithic and Mesolithic groups occupied sand dunes overlooking shallow water pools and other favorable micro-niches. In the 1980s the team led by V. N. Misra carried out further work in the area and identified three major Quaternary sedimentary units called the Jayal, Amarpura, and Didwana formations. This multidisciplinary research involved excavations at Singi Talav and Didwana (16 R locality) and made it possible to reconstruct a detailed history of climate and landscape development. The 20 m deep trench at 16 R locality exposed a series of five major paleosols, sixteen calcrete bands, and well-dated cultural material belonging to the Lower, Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, and Mesolithic stages (Figure 1). During the Early Pleistocene the present-day waterless sandy plains of the region supported large streams originating from the Himalayas, which laid down extensive and thick gravel beds in Nagor and Jodhpur districts. Man was absent. Subsequently, these beds were tectonically uplifted and new streams with wide flood plains marked with pools and lakes were formed. The Palaeolithic groups camped around these pools and ponds and also on the exposed gravel beds. The climate during this period was basically semi-arid, but it alternated several times between cool dry and warm wet periods. Sand sheets and dunes were formed in cool dry periods and their surfaces were stabilized during the subsequent wet phases. Palaeolithic groups occupied the stabilized sand surfaces. In central India the middle stretch of the Narmada preserved thick deposits of gravels, silts, and clays broadly classified under a Lower Group and an Upper Group. This sedimentary record, basically alluvial in nature, yielded rich evidence of mammalian fauna and Stone Age cultural record. The recent hominid findings at Hathnora brought this area into focus

ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures 771 0 6,140 B.P. (T.L.)

Mesolithic

14,610 B.P. (T.L.) 1 16,190 B.P. (T.L.)

Brown (10 yr 4/4) loamy fine sand weak pedogenesis

2 Unit I Yellow brown (10 yr 6/4) fine sand with soft carbonates

3

4

5 26,210 +2200B.P. (16c) −1700 6

Upper Palaeolithic

Unit II

Colluvial slate and schist coarse sand Calcrete I Pale yellow brown (10 yr 5/4) loamy fine sand Calcrete II Pale yellow brown (10 yr 5/4) loamy fine sand Calcrete III Calcrete IV Yellow brown (10 yr 6/4) fine sandy loam with tubular carbonates moderate pedogenesis

7 Calcrete V 8

Yellow brown (10 yr 6/4) loany fine sand

9

Calcrete VI Calcrete VII Calcrete VIII Reddish brown (5 yr 4/8) fine sandy loam strong pedogenesis

10 Unit III Brown (7.5 yr 4/6) fine sand

11

Middle Palaeolithic

163000 ± 21000 B.P. (T.L.)

Calcrete IX Brown (7.5 yr 5/6) loamy fine sand strong pedobenesis

12 1,44,000 ± 12,000 B.P. (U/Th) 13

Brown (7.5 yr 5/6) medium sand Calcrete X 14 1,50,000 ± 10,000 B.P. (U/Th)

Calcrete XI Brown (7.5 yr 5/6 to 6/6) loamy fine sand

15

Calcrete XII Brown (7.5 yr 5/6) loamy medium sand 16 Calcrete XIII 17

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Brown (7.5 yr 5/6) loamy medium sand Calcrete XIV Calcrete XV

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Brown (7.5 yr 5/6) loamy medium sand Calcrete XVI

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Figure 1 16 R sand dune section at Didwana, Rajasthan, showing sedimentary stratigraphy and Stone Age culture sequence. Courtesy: V. N. Misra, Stone Age India: an ecological perspective, Man and Environment, Vol. XIV, No. 1, 1989, Fig. 10.

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once again. The University of Allahabad team, in collaboration with the universities of California and Melbourne, worked in the Belan and Son Valleys of north central India and identified gravel and silt deposits grouped under Baghor, Sihawal, Patpara, and Khetauni formations. Various phases of the Stone Age were correlated with these sedimentary bodies. In the Deccan region the basins of the rivers Godavari and Krishna and their various tributaries were the scene of Quaternary studies for the last half a century. These preserved rich and continuous record of Stone Age occupation including animal fossils. In the northern Deccan geoarchaeological work during the last two decades led to the recognition of four major Quaternary formations – Bori, Godavari, Upper Bhima, and Chandanpuri formations – containing valuable data for reconstructing Stone Age culture sequence against the background of Quaternary climatic history. Following upon the pioneering work of R. V. Joshi, important fresh field studies were carried out in the Bhima and Kaladgi Basins of north Karnataka and also in the Kortallayar Valley of Tamil Nadu. These yielded important fresh data bearing upon reconstruction of palaeogeography and settlement patterns of the Palaeolithic times. Faunal collections obtained from different parts of South Asia prove that the Quaternary landscape supported rich animal world. The Karewa beds of Kashmir and the Siwalik hills of the Punjab and Himachal Pradesh produced Lower Pleistocene fauna. Similarly, the sediments of the Godavari, Narmada, Krishna, Belan, Son, and other Peninsular Indian rivers yielded fossil fauna comprising various species dated to the Middle and Late Pleistocene. The Kurnool caves in the southern part of the country and the Ratnapura beds of Sri Lanka also yielded rich faunal assemblages. As regards the plant world, it is inferred that as is the case today the South Asian landscape supported a cross-section of vegetation types comprising the Alpine type geared to glacial landscape, evergreen forest system, deciduous vegetation, savanna grasslands, and scrub vegetation. From the wide spatial distribution of Palaeolithic sites, it is clear that man was adapting himself to various environmental settings during the Pleistocene.

Archaeological Record Nature of Palaeolithic Record

The South Asian Palaeolithic record is extremely rich in terms of empirical contents. Its major components are as follows:

1. The bulk of the record consists of lithic artifacts fashioned out of a variety of basic rocks and siliceous materials. 2. Wood may have been used for artifact preparation from the earliest stages, but unfortunately nothing has survived the ravages of time. 3. Bone tools and objects are known from the Upper Palaeolithic stage. 4. Remains of simple dwelling structures were exposed from Acheulian levels at Bhimbetka, Hunsgi, and Paisra, and there is evidence of a shrine-like feature from Baghor I in north central India and a hearth from one of the caves in Kurnool area. 5. Rock art may date to the terminal phase of the Palaeolithic. 6. Hominid remains are known from Hathnora in the Narmada Valley and Odai in Tamil Nadu. 7. Fossil fauna is reported from a number of places in alluvial context and from a few sites in association with in situ cultural record. Chronology

In South Asia until the 1970s understanding of the chronology of the Palaeolithic was entirely based on criteria like the association of cultural record with laterite and alluvial deposits, faunal succession, stratigraphical record exposed in archaeological excavations, measurement of fluorine/phosphate ratios of ancient animal bones, and weathering of rocks. Starting with the radiocarbon method, during the last quarter-century South Asian Palaeolithic research benefited from the application of several absolute dating methods on various organic and inorganic materials comprising animal bones, charcoal, freshwater shells, burnt soils, calcretes and travertines, and, more recently, volcanic ash. These methods include thermoluminesence (TL), uranium–thorium, potassium–argon, argon–argon, palaeomagnetism, and electron-spin resonance. East Africa is still regarded as the cradle of mankind. The earliest known stone tools, belonging to the Oldowan or mode I assemblages and attributed to the Australopithecines or Homo habilis, are dated to 2.6 Myr. The Acheulian tradition appears around 1.6 Ma. Further east, the sites of Ubeidiya in Israel and Dmanisi in Georgia are dated to 1.4 and 1.8 Myr, respectively. In China, the Longguppo hominid and associated stone artifacts have been dated to 1.9– 1.7 Myr. In Indonesia there are claims that the Modjokerto fossil infant calvaria may date to 1.9–1.8 Myr. Seen against the background of these early artifact and hominid findings from West Asia and East Asia,

ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures 773

it is not surprising that stone artifacts dated between 1.2 and >2 Myr have been reported from certain parts of South Asia – Riwat (Pakistan), Uttarbaini (India) and some other sites found in the upper Siwalik formations of the Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu. Unfortunately, the artifacts from all these places are of a nondescript type and also doubts have been expressed about their sedimentary contexts. Whatever be the uncertainty about the earliest stage of hominid occupation, the absolute dating methods have now placed at our disposal a good number of dates for fixing the chronological limits of the three regular phases within the South Asian Palaeolithic (Table 1). The Acheulian, representing the principal component of the Lower Palaeolithic, is dated to the Middle Pleistocene. The available dates range from 670 kyr to 190/66 kyr. At Bori in the Deccan, the lithic assemblage found in association with a tephra layer is dated

to 670 and 538 kyr. At Dina and Jalapur in the Jhelum Basin of Pakistan, the gravels yielding stone artifacts have been dated by palaeomagnetic stratigraphy between 600 and 400 kyr. Among the many thorium– uranium dates for sites in Rajasthan, Saurashtra, and the Deccan, there are some which indicate an age of >350 kyr for the Acheulian. More recently, Isampur in north Karnataka has given a date of 1.2 myr, thereby stretching the antiquity of the Acheulian to the Early Pleistocene. The available radiocarbon, uranium–thorium, and TL dates stretch the antiquity of the Middle Palaeolithic up to 40 kyr or the early part of last glacial stage. The evidence from 16 R sand dune at Didwana in Rajasthan suggests a still higher age. The cultural level here has been dated to 125 kyr by means of thermoluminescence. The succeeding Upper Palaeolithic has a larger number of radiocarbon dates which cluster between 19 and 25 kyr. The dates from sites like

Table 1 Absolute dates for Palaeolithic sites in South Asia Site

Material used

Method used

Possible early sites Riwat, Pakistan Uttarbaini, Siwalik hills, Jammu, India

Sediment stratigraphy Volcanic ash

Palaeomagnetism Fission–track

Sediment stratigraphy Miliolite Calcrete Calcrete Volcanic ash Volcanic ash Calcrete Elephas molar Bos molar Elephas molar Tooth-enamel, Bos sp.

Palaeomagnetism Thorium–uranium Thorium–uranium Thorium–uranium Potassium–argon Argon–argon Thorium–uranium Thorium–uranium Thorium–uranium Thorium–uranium Electron-spin resonance

Important Acheulian sites Dina and Jalapur, Pakistan Umrethi, India Didwana, India Nevasa, India Bori, India Yedurwadi, India Sadab, India Teggihalli, India Isampur, India Important Middle Palaeolithic sites in India Badalpur Dhom dam Mula dam Nandipalle Rati Karar Didwana (16 R) Important Upper Palaeolithic sites in India Bhedaghat Deoghat, Belan valley (3 dates) Chandrasal (2 dates) Inamgaon (3 dates) Mehtakeri Nagda Patne Dharangaon Muchchatlachintamanugavi (Kurnool) Dharmapuri

Age in years B.P. >1.9 Myr 1.6 (revised to 2.8) Myr 400 to 600 kyr 190 kyr >390 kyr >350 kyr 537 kyr 670 kyr >350 kyr 290 kyr 287 kyr > 350 kyr 1.2 Myr

Calcrete

C-14 C-14 C-14 C-14 C-14 TL

24 kyr 37 kyr 31 kyr 23 kyr 32 kyr 125 kyr

Freshwater shells Freshwater shells Ostrich eggshell Freshwater shells Ostrich eggshell Freshwater shells Ostrich eggshell Ostrich eggshell Freshwater shells Burnt clay Freshwater shells

C-14 C-14 C-14 C-14 C-14 C-14 C-14 C-14 C-14 TL C-14

25 kyr 18 to 25 kyr 36/39 kyr 12 to 21 kyr >41 kyr 30 kyr >31 kyr 25 kyr 25 kyr 16 kyr 29 kyr

Wood Wood Freshwater shells

774 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures

Bhedaghat, Dharangaon, Mehtakheri, Nagda, and Dharmapuri are in the range of 25–40 kyr. The upper limit for sites like Baghor I ranges from 8000 to 9000 BC. The Mesolithic representing the terminal stage of the Stone Age has been dated to 18–28 kyr at the Batadomba-leva and Beli-leva caves in Sri Lanka. The Mesolithic sites in India date to 8000–10 000 years ago. Culture Sequence

While it is true that at no single site in South Asia one could see the Palaeolithic as a single evolving cultural entity, we have now several excavated primary sites (caves/rock shelters and open air sites) showing evidence of all three stages within the Palaeolithic. These include the Sanghao cave in Pakistan, the rock shelters at Adamgarh and Bhimbetka in central India, 16 R dune site at Didwana in Rajasthan, and Patne in the Deccan. Lower Palaeolithic The South Asian Lower Palaeolithic consists of two distinct tool traditions, viz. the Soan or pebble-tool assemblages (treated as part of the general Southeast Asian tradition) and the biface or handax-cleaver tradition (Figure 2). The former tradition is best known from the Himalayan foothill zone. In the 1930s de Terra and Paterson postulated the existence of a regular sequence within this tradition, made up of pre-Soan, Early, Evolved, and Late Soan stages. Later T. T. Paterson and H. J. H. Drummond treated the lithic assemblages as the handiwork of a war-loving people, as against the peaceful folk of the bifacial tradition. As mentioned earlier, the British Archaeological Mission to Pakistan later raised serious doubts about the sedimentary contexts of lithic assemblages collected by de Terra and Paterson and their evolutionary sequence. On the Indian side of the border, pebbletool assemblages were found in the Sirsa Valley of Haryana and the Beas–Banganga Valleys of Himachal Pradesh. On the basis of stratigraphic data and palaeomagnetic dates these sites were assigned an age of 300–400 kyr. These studies on the Indian side of the Siwalik frontal range also produced bifacial assemblages of Acheulian character from the Hoshiarpur– Chandigarh sector, thereby raising the possibility that the two traditions coexisted in the area – the Soan confined to the dun valleys of the frontal range and the biface tradition occupying the flat or plateau surfaces. Pebble-tool assemblages have occasionally also been reported from Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, lower Deccan and Kerala, but their stratigraphical contexts need to be placed on a stronger basis. The lithic assemblages from all these sites are characterized by the use of stone hammer technique and the artifact types

comprise uni- and bifacially worked choppers with thick butts and convex, straight or pointed edges, cores, and flakes (Figure 3). Rich clusters of sites belonging to the second and more widely spread Acheulian tradition are known from northern part of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Orissa, Bihar, and Jharkhand, hilly tracts of West Bengal, lower hilly tracts of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, mainland Gujarat, Rajasthan, and the Himalayan foothill area of Punjab. Some lithic assemblages have also been reported from the Saurasthra and Konkan coasts of western India. Good Acheulian assemblages are also known from Sind and the Jhelum Basin in Pakistan, and the dun valleys of Dang-Deokhuri in Nepal. Barring a few cave/rockshelter sites like Bhimbetka and Adamgarh, all known Acheulian sites are of the open air type and are mostly associated with alluvial deposits. Quartzite was the most commonly used rock for tool-making, but in areas lacking in it other suitable and locally available rocks such as dolerite and basalt, granite, schist, fossilwood and even limestone were employed. In addition to stone hammer technique, soft hammer and prepared core techniques were also employed commonly. In pursuance of the behavioral approach to the Stone Age past that began to be adopted by the workers since the 1970s, intensive surveys were undertaken in some regions for identifying in situ occurrences of lithic assemblages. Large site complexes were found in the Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, the Singhbhum area of Bihar, the Belan and Son Valleys of north central India, Orissa, the Hunsgi and Baichbal Valleys of the Bhima Basin, the Kaladgi Basin, the Chittoor, Kurnool and Cuddapah areas of the Eastern Ghats, and the Kortallayar Basin of Tamil Nadu. Further, excavations were undertaken at some well-preserved (in situ) sites for understanding the Acheulian occupation activities and techno-typological aspects. These included Singi Talav and 16 R dune site at Didwana in Rajasthan, Bhimbetka, and Adamgarh caves and the open air site of Durkadi in the Narmada Valley, Samadhiala in Gujarat, Lalitpur in Uttar Pradesh, Sihawal, Patpara, and Nakhjar Khurd in the Son Valley, Paisra in Bihar, Chirki-Nevasa and Bori in Maharashtra, and Hunsgi and Yediyapur in Hunsgi and Baichbal Valleys. More recently, excavations were done at Isampur and Lakhmapur in north Karnataka, Morgaon in Maharashtra, and Attirampakkam in the Kortallayar Basin of Tamil Nadu. At Chriki-Nevasa the Acheulian cultural material was found in association with colluvial gravel of basalt rocks resting on a sloping rock platform exposed

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Figure 2 Important Lower Palaeolithic sites in South Asia: 1, Riwat; 2, Pahlgam; 3, Jalalpur; 4, Dina; 5, Beas-Banganga complex; 6, Sirsa-Ghaggar complex;7, Dang-Deokhuri complex; 8, Didwana; 9, Jayal; 10, Jaisalmer-Pokaran Road; 11, Ziarat Pir Shaban; 12, Berach complex; 13, Chambal complex; 14, Bhimbetka; 15, Raisen complex; 16, Lalitpur; 17, Damoh complex; 18, Son complex; 19, Sihawal; 20, Belan complex; 21, Sisunia; 22, Singhbhum complex; 23, Paisra; 24, Brahmani complex; 25, Waingana complex; 26, Mahadeo Piparia; 27, Adamgarh; 28, Durkadi; 29, Samadhiala; 30, Umrethi; 31, Gangapur; 32, Chirki-Nevasa; 33, Bori; 34, Nalgonda complex; 35, Hunsgi and Baichbal basins complex; 36, Mahad; 37, Anagwadi; 38, Malwan; 39, Lakhmapur; 40, Nittur; 41, Kurnool complex; 42 Nagarjunakonda complex; 43, Cuddapah complex; 44, Rallakalava complex; 45, Kortallayar complex.

on the right bank of the river Pravara. One of the trenches (VII) exposed a cultural level spread over an area of 74 m2 and rich in stone artifacts and fossilized bones of Bos sp. The large stone blocks found in the

level may have formed part of the foundation of a dwelling structure. Localities V and VI at Hunsgi and Yediyapur VI locality also preserved 20–35 cm thick Acheulian levels under half-a-meter thick silt

776 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures

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Figure 3 Pebble tools from South Asian Lower Palaeolithic sites – (a) Nittur, Karnataka; (b) Jaisalmer-Pokaran Road, Rajasthan; (c) Sirsa valley, Haryana; (d) Mahadeo Piparia, Madhya Pradesh.

deposits. These levels yielded limestone cores, finished tools and debitage. All these spots were associated with rocky eminences/ridges standing 3–6 m above the beds of local streams. The Acheulian groups appear to have preferred small open spaces enclosed by rock boulders which facilitated the erection of temporary shelters with leaves and branches. Paisra in the Munger district of Bihar exposed Acheulian levels under 1–1.5 m thick colluvial gravel deposits in an inland valley enclosed by hills. These levels also preserved evidence of dwelling structures in the form of alignment of post-holes and circular arrangement of stone blocks. At Attirampakkam the Acheulian level was found in a thick deposit of laminated clay. In III F-23 rockshelter at Bhimbetka, the Acheulian deposit was 2.5 m thick and consisted of occupation

floors paved with stone slabs and pieces. A small area of 16 m2 produced 4700 lithic artifacts. Detailed geoarchaeological studies and excavations conducted by K. Paddayya at Isampur in the Hunsgi Valley exposed a quarry-cum-occupation spot covering an area of 0.75 ha. It is associated with a weathered rock outcrop consisting of silicified limestone blocks of suitable sizes and shapes. It preserved a 20–30 cm thick in situ Acheulian level below 50 cm thick brown silt deposit. Trench 1 exposed seven chipping clusters (each 6–8 m2 in extent) made up of cores, flake blanks, finished tools, hammerstones, and debitage, all found in mint-fresh condition (Figures 4 and 5). The total assemblage from this trench comprised over 15 000 artifacts, illustrating the manufacturing trajectories adopted by the hominids to produce various categories

ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures 777

Figure 4 (a) Acheulian level exposed at 50 cm depth below surface in trench 1 at Isampur, Karnataka; (b) close-up of a chipping cluster.

of implements. Small amounts of fossilized dental and bone remains of bovids and cervids, and turtleshell pieces were also found along with cultural material. Three electron-spin resonance dates obtained on fossil tooth-enamel of animals belonging to Bos sp. found in the excavation gave an average value of 1.2 Myr, thereby making Isampur the earliest known well-documented Palaeolithic site in South Asia. Despite its long duration and wide geographical spread, the developmental history of the Acheulian is still unclear because none of the sites has preserved any clear stratigraphical record. At the moment it is possible to recognize two broad stages, i.e., Lower Acheulian and Upper Acheulian. The Lower Acheulian is characterized by crude workmanship. Consequent upon the use of stone hammer technique, the artifacts (handaxes, cleavers, pebble tools, etc.) are generally thick with irregular cross-sections; the surfaces are uneven with large patches of cortex; and

the edges are sinuous. Among the hand axes pointed forms (pear-shaped, lanceolate, pyriform, etc.) show a majority. In some of the Lower Acheulian assemblages picks, knives and polyhedrons occur regularly. As examples of this stage one may cite the assemblages from Ziarat Pir Shaban in Sind, Dina, and Jalalpur in the Punjab (all in Pakistan), and assemblages from the excavated Indian sites of Singi Talav in Rajasthan, Durkadi in Madhya Pradesh, Lalitpur in Uttar Pradesh, Chirki-Nevasa and Bori in Maharashtra, Hunsgi, Yediyapur, Isampur, and Anagwadi in Karnataka, Singhbhum complex and Paisra in Bihar. The bottom 10 cm portion of the Acheulian level exposed in trench 1 at Isampur yielded 13 043 artifacts. Among these 169 are shaped implements comprising hand axes (48), cleavers (15), knives (18), scrapers (45), chopping tools (14), discoids (3), perforators (5), and an indeterminate example (Figure 6).

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Figure 5 Chipping clusters in the Acheulian level exposed at 50 cm depth in trench 1 at Isampur. Courtesy: K. Paddayya et al., Recent findings on the Acheulian of the Hunsgi and Baichbal valleys, Karnataka, with special reference to the Isampur excavation and its dating, Current Science, Vol. 83, No. 5, 2002, Fig. 6.

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The Upper Acheulian assemblages show the employment of cylinder or soft hammer technique, as a result of which the artifacts become thinner with smooth surfaces; the edges run more or less in a straight line. There is a general increase in the proportion of cleavers. Hand axes now include oval and triangular forms. Flake tools become more common. Bhimbetka, Raisen complex and Sihawal II in central India, Gangapur in Maharashtra, Mudnur and Lakhmapur in Karnataka, and Rallakalava complex in

Andhra Pradesh are good examples of this stage. Bhimbetka has the following types among finished artifacts: hand axes (55), cleavers (150), side-scrapers (368), end-scrapers (108), backed knives (163), truncated flakes and blades (87), notches (111), and denticulates (78) (Figure 7). The Middle Palaeolithic H. D. Sankalia’s findings in the 1950s at Nevasa in the Deccan led to formal recognition of the existence of a distinct Middle

780 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures

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Palaeolithic tradition in South Asia. Since then literally hundreds of sites were found in different parts of the Indian subcontinent (Figure 8). In addition to the areas yielding Lower Palaeolithic sites, lithic assemblages of Middle Palaeolithic affiliation have been reported from hilly and forested tracts like Tripura and Garo hills of northeast India and the Karnataka sector of Western Ghats. The Ratnapura chert assemblages from southern alluvial tracts of Sri Lanka and the Mainmati–Lalmai group of assemblages on fossilwood from Bangladesh also belong to this tradition. In addition to this tendency to occupy even hilly, forested zones, there is a distinct increase in the number of sites and this suggests a more intensified use of the landscape. Sojat in Rajasthan, Choli Dongargaon in central India, and Kovalli and Devapur in Karnataka are good examples of extensive workshops that came up on raw material outcrops. The Middle Palaeolithic tradition is marked by two major changes. First, while quartizite and other rocks continued to be used in some areas, there was now an overall preference for cryptocrystalline silica forms such as chert, chalcedony, jasper, and agate. The

nodules/cobbles of these materials were procured from river-beds or hillsides lying several kilometers away. The second important change concerns the manufacture of shaped tools on flake blanks. These blanks were obtained by means of the plain flaking (soft/hard hammer), prepared core and discoidal core techniques. Margin or edge-retouch was the most common form of secondary working employed for shaping the flakes into regular implements. The chief tool-types are as follows: (1) side-scrapers of various types (straight, concave, covex, transverse, and alround edges); (2) points (simple, tanged or shouldered and bifacially worked); (3) borers; (4) combination tools like scraper-cum-borers and borer-cum-points; and (5) knives, denticulates, burins, and end-scrapers. Hand axes, cleavers, and pebble tools also occur at a limited number of sites. Sanghao cave provided a five-period culture sequence, of which period I belongs to the Middle Palaeolithic. The lithic assemblage is based on the working of quartz by means of plain flaking, discoidal, tortoise core, and fluted core or blade techniques. The major tool types include scrapers of varioustypes, points, discoids, and borers. The rock shelter at

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Figure 8 Important Middle Palaeolithic sites in South Asia: 1, Sanghao; 2, Ror; 3, Mangalpura; 4, Didwana; 5, Dang-Deokhuri complex; 6, Luni complex; 7, Hokra; 8, Berach complex; 9, Sihora; 10, Belan complex; 11, Meghalaya complex; 12, Mainmati-Lalmai complex; 13, Tripura complex; 14, Bhimbetka; 15, Patpara; 16, Samnapur; 17, Wainganga complex; 18, Patne; 19, Singhbhum complex; 20, Brahmani complex; 21, Rojdi; 22, Nevasa; 23, Shorapur doab complex; 24, Kovalli; 25, Nagarjunakonda complex; 26, Sanganakallu; 27, Nandipalle; 28, Rallakalava complex; 29, Kortallayar complex; 30, Ratnapura complex.

Bhimbetka also preserved a rich Middle Palaeolithic level yielding a variety of quartzite scrapers, Levallois flakes, and blades. A number of scrapers are made on thin slabs. The occurrence of cleavers and hand axes indicates the transitional nature of this assemblage.

Samnapur on the Narmada, Patpara on the Son, and Sanganakallu in South India are three excavated sites of the open air type. At Samnapur the cultural level was found in a semiprimary context in association with a rubble deposit of colluvial origin,

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forming part of a thick deposit of brown silt. The total site measured 100  60 m. Over 3000 cherty quartzite artifacts were excavated from an area of 44 m2 along with some fossil animal bones. This was an occupation-cum-workshop site. The shaped tools include side-scrapers, end-scrapers, denticulates, notches, points, borers, and knives. The assemblage is totally lacking in hand axes and cleavers. The granite hill-top site of Sanganakallu produced an assemblage of dolerite artifacts. Without meaning any chronological implications, two broad groups could be recognized among the Middle Palaeolithic assemblages – those still showing some proportion of bifacial implements (e.g., Luni Valley in Rajasthan, Bhimbetka in central India, and Rallakalava complex) and the ones consisting of flake-tools of various types (e.g., Samnapur in central India and Shorapur Doab complex of sites in north Karnataka) (Figures 9 and 10). The Upper Palaeolithic M. L. K Murty’s discovery of blade-burin assemblages in the 1960s from half

a dozen workshops occurring on the surface of Rallakalava gravel and silt deposits in the Chittoor district of south India enabled the formal acceptance of this phase in the South Asian Palaeolithic. In the following quarter-century blade tool assemblages were reported from a number of sites in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Gujarat (Figure 11). Quartzite and siliceous materials such as chert and chalcedony continued to be the chief raw materials for tool making. A notable development concerns the use of animal bone at some sites like the Kurnool caves in South India and of ostrich eggshell in western and central India. The shaped tools were now fashioned on long slender blanks called blades struck from longish, well-prepared fluted cores. This blade technique involved the use of a soft hammer (wood or bone) and an intermediate punch or chisel. The blades so detached were subjected to secondary working comprising edge-retouch/chipping and blunting. The shaped tools include scrapers, points, −

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Figure 10 Middle Palaeolithic artifacts from Samnapur, Madhya Pradesh: 1–4, 10, scrapers; 5, core; 6, blade core; 7, round scraper; 8, knife; 9, steep scraper. Courtesy: V. N. Misra et al., Geoarchaeology of the Palaeolithic site at Samnapur in the central Narmada valley, Man and the Environment, Vol. XV, No. 1, 1990, Fig. 8.

knives, borers, etc. In a few cases (e.g., the Rallakalava assemblages) various burin forms also occur commonly. Toward the terminal part of this stage microlithic forms appear, heralding the tradition of composite tools which characterize the succeeding Mesolithic stage. The majority of Upper Palaeolithic sites belong to the open air type and consist of extensive lithic scatters which developed on outcrops or veins of raw material. Rallakalava assemblages from the Chittoor area, Vodikalu in the Gunjana Valley of Cuddapah region, Yadwad in the Kaladgi Basin, Maralbhavi in the Bhima Basin, Bhokar in Maharashtra, and Baghor on the Son are well-known examples. The excavated sites include the caves of Bhimbetka and Kurnool, and the open air sites of Patne and Baghor I. In rock-shelter III F-23 at Bhimbetka the Upper Palaeolithic level (layer 4) was found sandwiched between the Middle Palaeolithic and Mesolithic levels, and yielded blade artifacts of quartzite. The Kurnool limestone caves were first investigated by R. B. Foote in the nineteenth century. Foote

even claimed recovery of bone implements of the Magdalenian type. Muchchtlachintamanugavi was excavated in the 1970s and exposed 40–85 cm thick deposit made up of stone blocks and rubble as well as cultural material and animal fossils. It yielded over 223 artifacts of shale and limestone, and 2003 bone implements comprising scrapers, spatulae, and points. The faunal material was typically Upper Pleistocene in character comprising dental and osteological remains of various animal species. A fireplace was also noticed in the cultural level and a burnt clay sample from it has a TL date of 17, 390 years B.P. Patne is located in the Ajanta range of hills of the Deccan, and preserved a three-tier (Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, and Mesolithic) sequence in gravel and silt deposits measuring 10–20 m in thickness (Figure 12). Levels 5–12 (from top) represented the Upper Palaeolithic. Among these layers 5 and 7 were especially rich in stone artifacts and yielded 11 788 and 12 301 specimens, respectively. Five developmental phases (A–E) were recognized within the Upper Palaeolithic. Phases A and B form an early variant with jasper as the main raw material, while phases C–E represent a late variant characterized by the use of chalcedony and appearance of lunates, trapezes, and triangles. Phase D has a C-14 date of 25 kyr. Patne also yielded many ostrich eggshell pieces including a few incised specimens and beads. Excavations at Baghor I on the river Son exposed a terminal Palaeolithic occupation floor covering an area of 286 m2. It yielded a developed lithic assemblage. An interesting feature exposed at this site was the discovery of a rubble platform which was interpreted as a shrine for mother goddess worship. Two broad variants could be recognized among the lithic assemblages – an incipient blade-tool tradition and a developed blade-tool tradition. In the former the blades are rather thick and ill-formed. Simple or retouched blades, flake scrapers, points and borers, and sometimes even chopping tools occur. Backed tools and burins are uncommon. Sites in the Kurnool area, Shorapur Doab in the Bhima Basin, Bhokar in Maharashtra, Bhimbetka in central India, Singhbhum region in Bihar, Buddha Pushkar in Rajasthan, and Visadi in Gujarat represent this archaic stage (Figure 13). In the evolved tradition the blade technique undergoes a large degree of refinement so that the blade blanks are slender with perfect parallel sides. Implements like scrapers, points, and knives obtained by edge-blunting become more common. Vodikalu in Cuddapah area, Rallakalava assemblages from Chittoor, and Baghor I assemblage from the Son Valley are some examples of this tradition (Figure 14).

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Figure 11 Important Upper Palaeolithic sites in South Asia: 1, Sanghao; 2 Jenana; 3, Didwana; 4, Budha Pushkar; 5, Belan complex; 6, Michimgiri; 7, Singhbhum complex; 8, Baghor I; 9, Bhimbetka; 10, Visadi; 11, Bhadne; 12, Patne; 13, Bhokar; 14, Papamiya Tekdi; 15, Dhavalpuri; 16, Nevasa; 17, Inamgaon; 18, Asla; 19, Shorapur Doab complex; 20, Yadwad; 21, Kurnool complex: 22, Nagarjunakonda complex; 23, Yerragondapalam; 24, Vodikalu; 25, Nandipalle; 26, Peddarajupalli; 27, Renigunta; 28, Vemula.

General Features

Settlement Patterns

Having reviewed the substantive and chronological aspects of the South Asian Palaeolithic record, it now remains to consider briefly some general features of Stone Age adaptations.

Excluding some specific tracts such as the Indus and Gangetic plains, central and northern parts of Sri Lanka, and the deltaic region of Bangladesh, Palaeolithic sites occur practically all over the South Asian

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zone. The Stone Age groups occupied diverse geographical regions comprising high altitude and cold tracts like the Kashmir Valley, the Potwar plateau filled with thick sedimentary deposits, the dun valleys of Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, and Nepal, the Aravalli hills stretching from Gujarat to Delhi, the desert zone of Rajasthan, plateau tracts of central and eastern India, the Deccan and south India, and some coastal tracts. Geological basins of the Purana age seem to have served as preferred habitats on account of the valley-like topographic forms, availability of various rocks for flaking, and presence of perennial water springs. Prehistorians in South Asia are yet to fully explore the topic of hominid

adaptations in terms of sub-regional topographic and ecological settings. The intensive site surveys carried out in some regions permit inferences about settlement patterns. A large cluster of about 90 open air Acheulian sites is known from the Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh. These are found in a valley enclosed by sandstone hills and were occupied in winter. In the rainy season Palaeolithic groups moved to the rock shelters of the adjacent Bhimbetka hills. In the Kaladgi Basin, covering the Malaprabha and Ghataprabha Valleys, sites were mapped in relation to landform types. The Stone Age groups generally avoided the forested and high rainfall tracts close to the Western Ghats and concentrated their occupation on river banks and in foothill zone of the middle reaches of rivers. The more recent work in the Malaprabha Basin, including a small excavation at Lakhmapur, exposed Acheulian occurrences on a lateritic surface and these were later covered by sediments laid by low-energy processes. Raw material from quartzite outcrops and water sources in the form of springs and shallow streams were exploited by the hominid groups. The two-decade-long surveys and excavations in the Hunsgi and Baichbal valleys of the neighbouring Bhima Basin brought to light over 200 Acheulian sites in an area of about 500 km2 (Figure 15). Four major site categories emerged from this study: (1) secondary fluvial sites; (2) secondary colluvial sites; (3) secondary sites modified by surface runoff; and (4) in situ or primary occurrences. Most of the sites were found to belong to the last category, which were again classified into manufacturing sites, occupation sites, food-processing sites yielding faunal material, single-event activity or off-sites, and stone tool caches. Two major site concentrations (each made up of 15–20 occurrences and spread over a stretch of 1 or 2 km) were recognized in the area – one near Hunsgi in the Hunsgi Valley and the other near Yediyapur in the Baichbal Valley. The remaining sites were found in a dispersed way all over the basin floors. In East Africa a similar differential distribution of Palaeolithic sites was called ‘scatter between the patches’. Considering this differential site distribution together with seasonal availability of water sources and wild plant and animal foods, as inferred from ethnographic data, it was proposed that the Acheulian settlement system of the Hunsgi and Baichbal Basins hinged upon two main annual resource management strategies: (1) dry season aggregation of the Acheulian groups near the perennial waterpools (fed by seepsprings) in the Hunsgi and Fathepur streams and concentration on large game hunting; and (2) wet season random dispersal across the basin floors, resulting in

786 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures

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Figure 13 Upper Palaeolithic artifacts from the Shorapur Doab, Karnataka: 1–3, retouched blades; 4–5, strangulated blades; 6–7, backed blades; 8, nosed scraper; 9, end-scraper; 10–15, burins; 17–18 simple points; 19–20, tanged points; 21–22, borers; 23–24, blade cores.

the widely scattered small sites and nonsites, and exploitation of a variety of season-specific plant foods, small fauna and water pools of the basin floors. The more recent work at Isampur revealed that this place was a localized hub for manufacturing and occupation activities. Three or four additional hubs constituted the Acheulian settlement system of the Hunsgi and Baichbal Valleys. Economic Organization

The South Asian Palaeolithic sites could be grouped under the forager model, where the hunter-gatherer groups map on to resources of a given region, as according to their seasonal and spatial distribution. The fossil fauna obtained from alluvial contexts at a number of places definitely shows that in the Pleistocene various ecosystems were supporting rich wildlife and vegetation. Direct evidence of faunal exploitation is however confined to open-air sites like

Isampur, Chirki-Nevasa, Samnapur, and the caves of Bhimbetka and Kurnool. In recent years ethnoarchaeological research provided many analogies drawn from the study of hunting-gathering communities like the Chenchus, Boyas, Yerukalas, and Yanadis in South India, and Pardhis and Van Vagris in central and western India. The faunal remains from excavated sites prove that wild cattle, wild horse, wild elephant, and various deer, and antlelope species were being exploited for food purposes. Isampur excavation yielded shell remains of land turtle, thereby indicating that small fauna too was being exploited by the Palaeolithic groups. From the ethnographic record one could infer that this small fauna comprised the hare, birds, reptiles, amphibians, rodents, insects, and fishes. It is particularly abundant in wet season and its exploitation requires only collecting strategies. Muchchatlachintamanugavi exposed a fireplace consisting of regular arrangement of limestone blocks. This is the

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Figure 14 Upper Palaeolithic artifacts from Rallakalava Basin, Andhra Pradesh: 1–2, blades; 3, backed knife; 4–12, backed blades and bladelets; 13, borer; 14, tanged point; 15, blade core; 16, end-scraper; 17–21, burins of various forms.

earliest known human use of fire in South Asia; it was used for both cooking and heating of rocks required for tool making. Unfortunately, direct evidence of exploitation of plant foods is lacking. But ethnobotanical studies clearly show that the scrub jungle and deciduous ecosystems which occupy much of the peninsular Indian landmass offer a wide variety of wild plant foods which are still being exploited by many tribal groups like the Gonds, Boyas, Yerukalas, Yanadis, and Chenchus, and also by the economically background classes of village communities. These foods comprise a variety of tuber and root crops, leafy vegetables, edible seeds, gums and mushrooms, and many species of fruits, berries/pods. Honey is another commonly used item. Like small fauna, many of these plant foods are particularly abundant in the rainy season. We may infer that the Palaeolithic groups of South Asia exploited all these wild plant foods by adopting simple collecting strategies. The recovery of archaeobotanical remains of three wild edible plant species, i.e., Artocarpus nobilis (wild bread fruit), Canarium zeylanicum (a wild nut), and two

species of wild banana from the Mesolithic levels (dated between 8000 and 10 000 years BP) in the Batadomba-lena and Beli-lena caves of Sri Lanka is a clear pointer in this regard. Art, Ornamentation, and Religious Aspects

Certain strands of evidence inform us about the esthetic/artistic activities too. In some of the Acheulian assemblages, hand axes, particularly the pointed, ovate, and cordate forms, assume symmetric and esthetically pleasing shapes. So it is possible that these specimens, in addition to serving utilitarian purposes, were also treated as objects of art. Judging by the criteria formulated by Jean Piaget’s genetic epistemology, these specimens also betray higher cognitive abilities acquired by the Acheulian groups. Second, several hundred painted rockshelters are known from the Vindhyan and Kaimur hills of central India. The earliest of these pictures depicting hunting, gathering, fishing, and trapping activities may go back to the terminal Palaeolithic. A third piece of art evidence comes from one of the Upper Palaeolithic sites of

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the Belan valley. It consists of a female figurine of bone (8 cm high) with featureless face and pendant breasts. But some scholars have called it a mere harpoon-head. The Acheulian level at Hunsgi V yielded a few pieces of red ocher, which were probably procured by the site occupants from the neighborhood and used for body decoration. Patne, Mehtakheri, Rajota, and many other Upper Palaeolithic sites in western and central India yielded ostrich eggshell pieces. At Patne a few pieces were obtained from the preceding Middle Palaeolithic level. These pieces included a few specimens showing criss-cross design engraved between horizontal lines (Figure 16). Patne also yielded three disk-beads of ostrich eggshell (Figure 17) and a fourth specimen made of marine shell. These specimens represent the earliest and undoubted evidence of ornamentation in South Asia.

Finally, some clues are available about the religious beliefs of the South Asian Stone Age groups. Baghor I exposed an extensive occupation floor yielding an advanced blade-tool assemblage dated to 8000–9000 BC. What is more interesting, a stone rubble platform-like structural feature, circular in shape and measuring 85 cm in diameter, was exposed in the central part of this site (Figure 18). A triangularshaped block of sandstone (15 cm height, 6.5 cm broad and 6.5 cm thick) bearing an eye-striking pattern of concentric and bright-colored laminations (light yellowish red to dark reddish brown) was found amidst the rubble of this platform (Figure 19). Using the practices still prevalent among communities like the Kol and the Baiga living in the area as an analogy, the rubble platform has been interpreted as a shrine where the Late Palaeolithic inhabitants placed this natural piece of stone with bright-colored laminations

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Figure 16 Ostrich eggshell piece from Patne, Maharashtra, showing an engraved design. Courtesy: S. A. Sali, The Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Cultures of Maharashtra (Pune, Deccan College), 1989, Fig. XVIIa.

Figure 17 Disc beads of ostrich eggshell from Patne, Maharashtra. After Sali, 1989. Courtesy: S. A. Sali, The Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Cultures of Maharashtra (Pune, Deccan College), 1989, Fig. XVIIb.

and worshipped it as a manifestation of Mai or mother goddess. Hominid Remains and Origins

The issues of whens and hows of hominid colonization of South Asia are extremely difficult ones to

settle at the moment, partly because of the paucity of hominid skeletal remains and partly due to the uncertain sedimentary contexts and antiquity of cultural material. However, one or two brief comments may be made to conclude this essay. Up to the present time only two instances of the occurrence of hominid fossils are known from South

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Figure 18 Stone rubble platform exposed at Baghor I, Madhya Pradesh. Courtesy: J. M. Kenoyer et al., An Upper Palaeolithic shrine in India? Antiquity, Vol. LVII, 1983, Plate X(a).

Figure 20 Fossil skull cap of archaic Homo sapiens from Hathnora on the Narmada, Madhya Pradesh. Courtesy: A. Sonakia, Skull cap of early man from the Narmada valley (Pleistocene) of central India, American Anthropologist, Vol. 87, 1985, Fig. 2. Figure 19 Obverse and reverse positions of a triangular shaped sandstone block (height: 15 cm) from Baghor I, Madhya Pradesh, bearing colored laminations and probably worshipped as a manifestation of mother goddess. Courtesy: J. M. Kenoyer et al., An Upper Palaeolithic shrine in India? Antiquity, Vol. LVII, 1983, Plate X(b).

Asia. At Hathnora on the river Narmada a fossil hominid cranial vault (calvarium) was found in 1982 in 3 m thick gravel conglomerate dated to middle to upper Pleistocene (Figure 20). Hand axes and mammalian fossils were found in association with this hominid piece, which is treated as an archaic form of Homo sapiens. Subsequently, a fossil hominid clavicle was also reported from this site. In 2001 a third hominid fossil specimen of archaic H. sapiens was found at Odai on the Tamil Nadu coast. Here a

fossilized baby skull was found in 2 m-thick ferricrete deposit dated to 166 kyr by TL method (see Luminescence Dating). As to the problem of origins, the hominid fossil and cultural findings of recent years from Georgia, China, and Indonesia may imply that the Soan pebble-tool tradition was a part of the spread of Oldowan tradition of East Africa across Asia by a northern route somewhere between 1.8 and 2 Ma. It has been argued further that the initial dispersal of the Acheulian into West Asia took place already by 1.4 Myr and more widespread dispersal covering even the South Asian zone took place by 780 kyr along a southern route cutting across the Arabian peninsula. Contrary to the

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opinions expressed by earlier scholars deriving the succeeding Middle and Upper Palaeolithic traditions from West Asia or western Europe, the culture sequences exposed in various caves/rockshelters and open-air sites in India and Pakistan clearly imply that the Palaeolithic culture of South Asia evolved locally from the Acheulian base and in this process developed tremendous intra-regional adaptational diversity. See also: Asia, East: China, Paleolithic Cultures; Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures; Paleolithic Cultures; Asia, South: India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South; Asia, Southeast: Pre-agricultural Peoples; Asia, West: Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient; Modern Humans, Emergence of; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology.

Further Reading Agrawal DP and Kharakwal JS (2002) South Asian Prehistory, ch. 2–4. New Delhi: Aryan Books International. Badam GL (1979) Pleistocene Fauna of India with Special Reference to the Siwaliks. Pune: Deccan College. Chakrabarti DK (1999) Indian – An Archaeological History: Palaeolithic Beginnings to Early Historic Foundations, ch. 2 New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Dennell RW (1995) ‘The Early Stone Age of Pakistan: A methodological review’ Man and Environment 20(1): 21–28. Deraniyagala SU (1992) The Prehistory of Sri Lanka (2 pts). Colombo: Department of Archaeological Survey. Mishra S (1994) The South Asian Lower Palaeolithic. Man and Environment 19(1–2): 57–71. Mishra S (1995) Chronology of the Indian Stone Age: The impact of recent absolute and relative dating attempts. Man and Environment 20(2): 11–16. Misra VN (1989) Stone Age India: An ecological perspective. Man and Environment 14(1): 17–64. Murty MLK (1979) Recent research on the Upper Palaeolithic phase in India. Journal of Field Archaeology 6(3): 301–320. Paddayya K (1978) New research designs and field techniques in the Palaeolithic archaeology of India. World Archaeology 10: 94–110. Paddayya K (1984) India: Stone Age. In: Mueller-Karpe (ed.) Neue Forschungen zur Altsteinziet, pp. 345–403. Munich: C.H. Beck Verlag. Paddayya K (2001) The Acheulian culture project of the Hunsgi and Baichbal Valleys, peninsular India. In: Barham L and Robson-Brown K (eds.) Human Roots: Africa and Asia in the Middle Pleistocene, pp. 235–258. Bristol: Western Academic and Specialist Press. Pappu RS (2001) Acheulian Culture in Peninsular India: An Ecological Perspective. New Delhi: D.K. Printworld. Petraglia MD and Korisettar R (eds.) (1998) Early Human Behaviour in Global Context: The Rise and Diversity of the Lower Palaeolithic Record. London and New York: Routledge. Sankalia HD (1964) Middle Stone Age culture in India and Pakistan. Science 146: 365–376. Settar S and Korisettar R (eds.) (2002) Prehistory: Archaeology of South Asia Indian Archaeology in Retrospect Vol. I. New Delhi: Indian Council of Historical Research and Manohar.

Sri Lanka Robin Coningham and Keir Strickland, Durham University, Durham, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Culavamsa The final Pa¯li record of the Sri Lankan kings written in Pa¯li – the little or lesser chronicle. It effectively follows on from the Mahavamsa and covers the period from the fourth century AD to the start of British rule in the nineteenth century. Dipavamsa The oldest Early Historic record of Sri Lanka. Like the Mahavamsa, it is believed to have been compiled by monks around the fourth century AD. Its title translates as Island Chronicle in Pa¯li. Early Historic Refers to the second emergence of urbanization in South Asia, dating to the early part of the first millennium BC through to the mid-first millennium AD. Its historic references are derived from texts such as the Mahavamsa and Dipavamsa. Mahavamsa The greatest of the island’s Pa¯li chronicles (literally, its name translates as Great Chronicle), it covers the period from the introduction of Buddhism to Sri Lanka with the coming of Prince Vijaya from north India in the middle of the first millennium BC to the reign of King Mahasena in the fourth century AD. stupa Solid-brick hemispherical mound constructed over Buddhist relics. vihara Pa¯li term for Buddhist monastery.

Introduction The island of Sri Lanka (Ceylon until 1973) lies 48 km off the coast of southern India and is effectively an extension of the Indian peninsula. However, while it shares many environmental and social characteristics with southern India the island is nevertheless both a distinct regional unit within South Asian archaeology and an independent nation state. Despite its relatively small size, the island can be divided into two distinct zones: a dry zone and a wet zone. The wet zone encompasses the southwest of the island and follows the lowland plains of the coast lifting sharply into the upland, rising to over 2400 m above sea level at Adams Peak near the center of the island. The dry zone covers nearly two-thirds of the island and is characterized by low level plains that stretch from the far north of the island, down the east coast and to the far south. The environment of the dry zone plains is similar to that of inland southern India, and dense human inhabitation is only made possible through extensive irrigation and water management, with artificial reservoirs covering the landscape. Sadly this climatic north–south divide can now also be seen reflected in the long running, bloody conflict between Tamil separatists and the Sri Lanka government (Figure 1).

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Figure 1 Map of Sri Lanka.

Early–Later Prehistory Sri Lankan prehistory is notable because, to date, it lacks both a Palaeolithic and a Neolithic and the earliest human activity can only be securely pushed back to the first appearance of microlithic-using hunter-gatherers. Despite this relatively late start, it is no exaggeration to state that Sri Lanka has one of the largest bodies of prehistoric archaeological research in South Asia for its size. This body of work was pioneered by the Sarasin brothers in the first decade of

the twentieth century. In many respects they were ahead of their time in their treatment of stratigraphic sequences, artifact recording, faunal recording, site sampling, and critically their usage of ethnographic comparisons. By studying the extant Vadda huntergatherers, they were able to develop comparative interpretations for the archaeological record. This approach has continued to be used in recent years with Kennedy suggesting a phenotypic link between the so-called Balangoda Man (Homo sapiens balangodensis) and modern Vadda communities.

ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Sri Lanka 793

The Sarasin’s work laid firm foundations, and over the next decade a number of archaeologists, such as Hartley (1911) and Wayland (1915 and 1919) studied Sri Lanka’s later prehistory, creating a vibrant field. In particular, since the 1930s, P. E. P. Deraniyagala, and later his son S. U. Deraniyagala, have developed a rigorous investigation of the island’s prehistory through the use of extensive surveys and excavations in the Ratnapura region of southwest Sri Lanka, an area with deep Pleistocene alluvial deposits and a number of open air and cave sites with faunal remains, human remains and lithic artifacts. The Ratnapura and later geometric microlithic industry are characterized by the use of quartzite stone tools, and the latter bear close comparison to the lithics of the Teri (sanddune) sites of littoral southern India. Microlithic-toolusing sites are found throughout Sri Lanka, ranging from dunes to caves demonstrating the versatility and mobility of the island’s hunter-gatherers. Radiometric dates from these sites demonstrate that microlithictool-using communities spread across the island from 30 000 years BP onwards and in some places demonstrate a continuity that lasts until the first millennium BC.

ware ceramics and the use of iron, spread across the island at the beginning of the first millennium BC. Paralleling a similar technological and cultural development in peninsula India, the lack of a Neolithic or Chalcolithic phase in Sri Lanka has tempted some to suggest a demic diffusion from the south of India to the island. However, to date there is no physical evidence of such a movement and it remains supposition. The focus of Iron Age research has been primarily on locating its cist burials and megalithic cemeteries, which are found throughout the dry zone. Settlement and subsistence data is limited to Coningham’s excavations at Anuradhapura, which show continuity from the beginning of the first millennium BC (c. 840–460 BC) through to the Medieval period. Reflected in the substitution of small temporary shelters by larger, more substantial, circular poststructures, the population of Anuradhapura increases through the Iron Age as the settlement reaches a size of 28 ha and island-wide trade networks are augmented by links across South Asia as a whole. Unfortunately, few of the island’s Iron Age cemeteries have been published with only preliminary reports from Ibbankatuva and Pomparipu, restricting our knowledge of social differentiation and ranking (Figure 2).

The Iron Age and Megalithic Although we are unable to identify an overlap between these hunter-gatherers and the first iron-using populations, a new cultural complex characterized by the use of megalithic cist burials, black and red

Figure 2 Megalithic cist cemetery at Ibbankatuva.

The Early Historic and Anuradhapura The Early Historic period begins in Sri Lanka around 450 BC and is distinct but still shows clear cultural continuity with the preceding Iron Age. The Early

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Historic is characterized by the emergence of urbanization, literacy, long-distance trade and the arrival of Buddhism. Equally significant, its archaeological record is augmented by the appearance of the island’s earliest ‘historical’ records – the Mahavamsa and Dipavamsa. Recording accounts of the history of Sri Lanka from its initial colonization by the north Indian prince, Vijaya, and his companions in the middle of the first millennium BC, these chronicles were consolidated a thousand years later by Buddhist monks and provide a valuable, if limited, context for the interpretation of Early Historic archaeology. Recorded in the Mahavamsa and Dipavamsa as one of the first settlements to be established by Vijaya’s followers, the city of Anuradhapura in the northern central plains of Sri Lanka is undoubtedly at the center of the Early Historic period in Sri Lanka. Its position is reinforced by the fact that it has been both excavated and published to a high standard, first by Deraniyagala, and more recently by Coningham. Their fieldwork suggests that Anuradhapura expanded dramatically within a newly fortified circuit enclosing almost 70 ha dwarfing other excavated Early Historic sites such as the port site of Mantai on the northwest coast and Kantarodai in the Jaffna Peninsula. Although Tissamaharama in the south of the island has long been identified as the capital of the sub-kingdom of Ruhuna and contains a similar pattern of monasteries and reservoirs, its exact size is still unknown. Despite this focus on larger settlements, the failure of recent surveys to

Figure 3 Jetavana stupa at Anuradhapura.

identify towns within Anuradhapura’s hinterland has led to the suggestion that monasteries may have performed many of the administrative tasks associated with this category of settlement. Capital from the fifth century BC until 1017 AD, Anuradhapura’s pre-eminence is reinforced by its position as the birthplace of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, as it was here that the missionary Mahinda, son of the Mauryan emperor Asoka (see Asia, South: Buddhist Archaeology), arrived in the middle of the third century BC. Converting king Devanampiya Tissa and his court to Buddhism, the establishment of Anuradhapura’s Mahavihara or great monastery was augmented by relics of the Buddha and a cutting from the Bodhi tree at Bodhi Gaya and led to a growth in pilgrimage from across the Buddhist world. The first of the city’s great brick stupas, the 106.5 m high Ruyanvelisaya and 58.5 m high Mirisavati were built on the orthodox Mahavihara in the second century BC but they were challenged by the establishment of Abhayagiri in the first century BC and Jetavanarama monastery in the third century AD, the former centered on a stupa of 71.5 m and the latter on one of 160 m (Figure 3). Indicating the availability of surplus labor and resources to the kings of Anuradhapura, their fortified capital was surrounded by 25 km2 of monastic establishments with a recorded community of over 10 000 monks and nuns. Anuradhapura’s survival within the dry zone of the island is testimony to the

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Figure 4 Kalawewa reservoir.

creation of a vast hydraulic system. Begun with the construction of simple gravity reservoirs, such as the Basawak Kulam (91 ha) and Tissa Wewa (160 ha), to store excess water from the wet season for use in the dry season, the Malwattu Oya was unable to satisfy the increasing demands of the city (Figure 4). Although the construction of the Nuwara Wewa (1288 ha) reservoir in the first century AD eased the situation, water had to be diverted to Anuradhapura from other river catchments through a system of feeder channels and vast storage reservoirs in the fifth century AD. Guaranteeing two rice harvests a year, Anuradhapura’s surplus facilitated its participation in Indian Ocean trade as evidenced by Roman glass, intaglio, coins and metalwork, and early Islamic and Chinese glazed vessels. The dynastic capital for one and a half millennia, the Culavamsa records that Anuradhapura was sacked by military expeditions from south India in the eleventh century AD and, despite restoration attempts by later kings, the collapse of its integrated system of irrigation, agriculture and ritual eventually led to the depopulation of the dry zone. Laying the foundations for much of the island’s urban, mercantile, economic, religious and secular character, many Sri Lankans

still regard the island’s Early Historic period, indelibly associated as it is with Anuradhapura, as a halcyon age. See also: Asia, South: Buddhist Archaeology; India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South; Megaliths; Paleolithic Cultures.

Further Reading Bandaranyake SD (1974) Sinhalese Monastic Architecture: The Viharas of Anuradhapura. Leiden: EJ Brill. Brohier RL (1924) Ancient Irrigation Works in Ceylon. Colombo: Ceylon Government Press. Coningham RAE (1999) Anuradhapura (vol. 1). Oxford: Archaeopress. Coningham RAE (2006) Anuradhapura (vol. 2). Oxford: Archaeopress. Coningham RAE and Allchin FR (1995) The rise of cities in Sri Lanka. In: Allchin FR (ed.) The Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia, pp. 152–183. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cooray PG (1984) An Introduction to the Geology of Sri Lanka (Ceylon). Colombo: National Museums of Sri Lanka. Deraniyagala SU (1992) The Prehistory of Sri Lanka (2 vols.). Colombo: Department of Archaeological Survey. Geiger W (1934) The Mahavamsa. (translated). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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ASIA, SOUTHEAST Contents Early States and Civilizations Pre-Agricultural Peoples

Early States and Civilizations Charles Higham, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Angkor Site of a series of capital cities of the Khmer empire for much of the period from the ninth century to the fifteenth century CE. Buddhism A non-theistic religion, a philosophy, and a system of psychology pronounced by Buddha. Cham civilization An ancient civilization of the Quang-nam (where Dong-duong is located), Amaravati, Vijaya (the presentday Bihn-dinh), and Pandurang regions. Dvaravati Kingdom of the Mon people that existed from the sixth to the eleventh centuries. It was centered on the Chao Phraya River valley in modern-day Thailand, with Nakhon Pathom as the capital. Hindu religion A diverse body of religion, philosophy, and cultural practice native to and predominant in India. inscriptions Words or letters written, engraved, painted, or otherwise traced on a surface and can appear in contexts both small and monumental (coin texts and monumental carvings on buildings are both included by historians as types of inscriptions). Pyu (also written Pyuu, or Pyus) An ancient series of city-states (and their languages) found in the central and northern regions of what is now Myanmar (Burma), between the first century BC and the ninth century AD, approximately 100 BC through 840 AD. Sanskrit An ancient Indic language that is the language of Hinduism and the Vedas and is the classical literary language of India.

During the course of the second and first millennia BC, communities living in much of lowland Southeast Asia progressively became more socially complex. Until recently, it was widely noted that the Bronze Age, dating between about 1300 and 500 BC, failed to reveal the rise of social elites. This is most unusual, since the control and ownership of metal is commonly accompanied by such social change. However, major excavations at the site of Ban Non Wat in northeast Thailand have uncovered a small number

of exceptionally rich burials, in which the dead were accompanied by bronze artifacts, up to 80 or 90 large pottery vessels and an astonishing amount of exotic personal jewelry (Figures 1 and 2). Such social divisions, between rich leaders and the majority of the population, continued into the Iron Age. At Shizhaishan in Yunnan Province of China, for example, there is a royal necropolis. One large grave actually contains a gold seal inscribed ‘the seal of the King of Dian’, a seal probably given to the king by the Han Emperor himself. Further south, burials at the Iron Age site of Noen U-Loke near Ban Non Wat were found with gold, silver, glass, agate, and carnelian jewellery, set in clay-lined graves filled with rice. Sites like Noen U-Loke were ringed by multiple moats and banks that would have required a very large and organized labor force. Documentation of these prehistoric communities and their cultural sophistication is an important step in understanding the rise of civilizations. Concentration by generations of French scholars on the physical remains of sacred historic sites and the associated inscriptions, largely written in the Sanskrit language of India, led to the idea that civilizations resulted from the process of Indianization. This involved the adoption of Indian religions (Hinduism and Buddhism), Indian architectural styles, and the Sanskrit or Pali languages by the undeveloped local peoples. We can now appreciate how complex Southeast Asian leaders might have selectively adopted Indian ways to elevate their status and, in doing so, founded their own states. There is a sharp boundary between the situation in Southeast Asia west of the Truong Son Cordillera and south of the Red River Delta, and the regions to the north (Figure 3). This reflects the imperialist policies of the Qin Emperor and his Western Han successors. They sent armies south, carved off new provinces (known as commanderies), and extinguished the power and status of local leaders. The rest of mainland Southeast Asia, beyond the reach of imperial China, witnessed a series of distinct civilizations each with their own language, traditions, religion, and pattern of rise and decline. These were mainly riverine. Rice was their economic prop, and all engaged

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Figure 1 This rich Bronze Age burial from the site of Ban Non Wat reveals the presence there of social elites, already, by about 1000 BC.

Figure 2 This row of very rich Bronze Age burials from Ban Non Wat in Northeast Thailand clearly illustrates the wealth of prehistoric communities prior to the emergence of early states.

in widespread trade in goods and ideas. Warfare was endemic. In the lower reaches of the Mekong River, we encounter a succession of states often named as Funan, Chenla, and Angkor (Figure 4). The state of Dvaravati occupied the Chao Phraya River, while the river valleys flowing east from the Truong Son Range sustained the Chams. To the east, we encounter the Pyu in Central Myanmar (Burma), while a civilization developed on the Arakan coast. These states should not be perceived as monolithic civilizations. The reality was more subtle: authority

and power were probably flexible and dependent on the charisma of individual leaders. Like a concertina, states could expand and contract rapidly. Even during the life of the great civilization of Angkor, establishing or maintaining control over peripheral princes was not easy, and was rarely, if ever, achieved. Hence, when talking of Dvaravati, we are probably in touch with a kaleidoscopic situation of many rival rulers, and with Champa, each river valley had its own polity with little evidence of central hegemony.

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22⬚ Red River

20⬚

18⬚

Chams

Mekong River Pyu Khorat Plateau

Truong Son Cordillera

Hai Van Pass

Petchabun Range Chao Phraya R.

1

16⬚

17 Chams 16 Amaravati

2

7 12

6 Dvaravati 9 8 10 11

19

14⬚

18 Kulen 3

Vijaya

13 5 Great Lake

Chams Chenla

Panduranga 14

GULF OF SIAM

15 12⬚ Cape Dinh

Cape Nay

10⬚

4 108⬚

Funan

N

110⬚

Land above 500 m 98⬚

102⬚

104⬚

106⬚

8⬚

0

200km km

1. Ban Non Wat, 2. Noen U-Loke, 3. Angkor, 4. Oc Eo, 5. Ishanapura, 6. Ban Don Ta Phet, 7. Ban Tha Kae, 8. Pong Tuk, 9. U-Thong, 10. Nakhon Pathom, 11. Ku Bua, 12. Sambhupura (approximate location), 13. Wat En Khna, 14. Banteay Prei Nokor, 15. Po Nagar, 16. My Son, 17. Dong Duong, 18. Koh Ker, 19. Banteay Chmar Figure 3 Southeast Asia showing the sites mentioned in the text, followed by the list of sites.

Funan Funan was one of the earliest states in Southeast Asia. Dating from about AD 100–550, its centers were located on the delta of the Mekong and Bassac rivers. The name is shrouded in mystery, and might have a Chinese rendition of the Khmer name phnom or hill. The History of the Liang Dynasty records that two

Chinese emissaries of the Wu Emperor, known as Kang Dai and Zhu Ying, visited Funan and encountered walled settlements and a king who lived in a palace. A system of taxation involved dues on gold, silver, perfumes, and pearls, and there was a form of legal system that involved trial by ordeal. There were specialists in engraving and metalworking, and the

ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Early States and Civilizations 799 Lower Mekong 1500 Angkor

Chao Phraya Valley Thai expansion south Angkor domination

1000

Myanmar (Burma)

Burmese expansion south

Chenla Dvaravati civilization

500 Funan

0

500

Iron Age

Bronze Age

Neolithic, first rice farmers

Neolithic

Expansion of Vietnamese to the south Later Cham states

The Pyu states of the Early dry zone Cham states

Iron Age

Bronze Age

Coastal Vietnam

Iron Age

Iron Age Sa Huynh culture

Bronze Age

Bronze Age

1000

1500

Neolithic, first rice farmers

2000

Figure 4 The cultural sequence in Southeast Asia.

ordinary people, who were black, with curly hair and tattooed bodies, lived in houses raised on piles against the regular threat of flooding. They also recorded the names of successive rulers and their predatory wars against their neighbors. One early ruler named Hun Panhuang conquered chiefs on the edge of his kingdom and installed his sons and grandsons to rule them under his command. His son was called Pan Pan, and he was followed by a ruler known as Fan Shiman, who launched wars against his neighbors. Air photographs taken during 1930s identified ancient canals crisscrossing the delta landscape, and the outline of a large rectangular city now known as Oc Eo. On the northern margins of the delta, another walled city known as Angkor Borei lay at the northern terminus of one such canal. The Chinese visitors noted that the capital of Funan had an inland location, and the size of Angkor Borei would qualify it, at the very least, as a major center. Subsequent archaeological research has confirmed much of what Kang Dai and Zhu Ying described. Oc Eo incorporated substantial brick temple foundations,

workshops for the production of jewelery, evidence for casting metals, and the wooden piles that would have supported houses. There are also seals bearing brief texts in the Indian Brahmi script, and an abundance of evidence for trade involving Rome, India, and China. A series of sites has also been uncovered by Vietnamese scholars, again involving brick temples as well as brick vaults containing cremated human remains and rich artifacts. These include gold leaves bearing inscriptions and images of women, gold discs, gold rings, a gold flower, and jewelry fashioned from precious stones and glass. Few inscriptions survive, but their Sanskrit texts provide important information. One refers to a ruler named Jayavarman, who had been victorious in the battle against a rival king. He founded many sanctuaries dedicated to Vishnu, and placed his son Gunavarman in charge of one. A second text cites King Jayavarman and his son Rudravarman, and describes how the former named the son of a Brahman as his inspector of property. A third text mentions this king’s military victories. It also recorded the foundation of a hermitage, reservoir, and a residence by his queen. Between AD 480 and 520, there was conflict, the establishment of religious foundations in favor of exotic Indic gods, the presence of educated officiants, and a royal succession from father to son. There are two inscriptions from the vicinity of Angkor Borei which imply that this was the capital of Rudravarman, the last recorded king in this region. That from Phnom Da mentions his name on several occasions. Funan prospered with the control of international maritime trade, and the stranglehold it could place over the flow of goods up and down the vital Mekong Valley. It was, however, equally vulnerable to any changes in the pattern of trade beyond its control. During the sixth century AD, such a change occurred when the Chinese increasingly bypassed the delta. Funan then fell into a rapid decline and the political center of gravity moved inland, to emerging agrarian states known to us under the name of Chenla.

Chenla Chenla enters history through Chinese records describing the receipt of an embassy in AD 616 or 617. Subsequent assessments of this polity, which evidently flourished from about AD 550 to 800, have been heavily influenced by the The History of the Sui Dynasty, which noted that Chenla was originally a vassal of Funan, but under its ruler Citrasena, conquered Funan and achieved independence. The impression that Chenla was a unified state under a king has been largely set aside by more recent research.

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Michael Vickery has stressed that the proper analysis of Chenla can only be undertaken on the basis of the original inscriptions. Most of these texts, written in Sanskrit often with a subsidiary text in old Khmer, recorded the affairs of the temples that clearly dominated the ancient landscape. Some surviving inscriptions refer to kings, place names, the titles and status of temple patrons, the extent of temple property, and the names and duties of those assigned to maintain the foundation. One of these from the temple of Kdei Ang, dating to AD 667, names members of an elite family that straddled the transition from Funan to Chenla. Other inscriptions describe a dynasty of rulers with fine Sanskrit names. The first ruler, Mahendravarman, claimed victories in the Mun Valley to the north. A successor, Ishanavarman, was widely recognized for his authority, and his capital has been identified at the large site of Ishanapura. An inscription from this site describes the valor and military prowess of Ishanavarman, a king ‘‘who extended the territory of his parents.’’ He was succeeded by his son Bhavavarman II, about whom little is known, save that he continued from the region of Ishanapura to maintain control over most, if not all, his father’s fiefs. Jayavarman I (about AD 635–680) was the great grandson of Ishanavarman. His inscriptions indicate the tightening of central power and control over a considerable area, the creation of new titles and administrators, and the availability of an army, the means of defense and destruction. A text described how King Jayavarman’s commands were obeyed by ‘‘innumerable vassal kings.’’ Jayavarman also strengthened the legal code: ‘‘those who levy an annual tax, those who seize carts, boats, slaves, cattle, buffaloes, those who contest the kings orders, will be punished.’’ New titles were accorded to highly ranked retainers who fulfilled important posts in government. One lineage held the priestly position of hotar. Another functionary was a samantagajapadi, chief of the royal elephants, a military leader, while the dhanyakarapati would have controlled the grain stores. The king also appointed mratan and pon to a sabha, or council of state. Another inscription prescribes the quantities of salt to be distributed by barge to various foundations, and prohibits any tax on the vessels going up or down river. Thus, Jayavarman I intensified royal control over dependent fiefs begun by his great grandfather, Ishanavarman. Thereafter, this dynasty loses visibility, although the king’s daughter Jayadevi ruled from a center in the vicinity of Angkor. There were, however, other dynasties of rulers in their own, independent centers. A succession of three queens ruled at Sambhupura, and controlled traffic up and down the Mekong River, and there was a line

of kings with names ending in aditya, or rising sun, who ruled during the eighth century. There was also a local dynasty ruling the state of Canasapura in the upper Mun Valley under a King Bhagadatta. Archaeologically, the kingdoms that fall under the umbrella of the Chinese term Chenla are recognized from their brick temples, encircling walls, and associated reservoirs. Ishanapura is dominated by three-walled precincts containing single-chambered temples. The doorways incorporate sandstone lintels and columns decorated with a range of motifs which drew upon India for their inspiration. One lintel from Wat En Khna shows a king in his throne chamber, surrounded by members of his court. The facades of the temples are also decorated in shaped bricks which include representations of palaces. These reveal aspects of richly ornamented wooden structures which have not survived. The Chenla states were essentially agrarian, and their economy revolved round the temple. Temples were more than centers for devotion and worship, for they played a vital economic role in the management and deployment of agricultural surpluses. Most inscriptions from this period are concerned with their temples, and the provision of resources to maintain the personnel. Men of high status with the title pon are often mentioned for their role in temple management. Inscriptions indicate that they could donate communal land to the temple and organize their kin to produces surpluses. This system involved the accumulation of wealth in the form of rice, cloth, and land. Donations to the temple, which housed ancestral spirits, resulted in the accumulation of the merit necessary for a harmonious reincarnation. Stored assets were also a form of tradable wealth. Surviving texts suggest that rice, cloth, or ironware could be traded, thus allowing pon to indulge in trade not only for basic food and cloth, but also bankable assets, such as gold and silver. Land could be mortgaged to a temple in return for silver or cloth, and the product of the land was assigned as a form of interest payment. A donor might gift products to the temple, but receive other goods in return, or deposit goods against which to make a later claim. The temple, then, performed a key role in the appropriation of a community asset into a medium for the creation and exchange of wealth items among the elite. The more successful could accumulate sufficient capital in this way to buy further land, or they could combine assets through marriage alliances and gain sufficient wealth to increase their power and status to such an extent as to control considerable areas. The established kings, therefore, were concerned with such wealth creation for it might encourage rivals, and their permission was often described as being

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necessary in the amalgamation of temples, and the rights to land ownership. Many observers have cited Indianization as the key to understanding the rise of Chenla states, wherein the inspiration to increasing social hierarchies was due to Indian visitors introducing new ideas. This view has been criticized by underestimating the strong and continuing contribution of indigenous Khmer culture. Thus, Vickery has summarized the many references in the inscriptions to local gods worshipped in Chenla temples. The local matrilineal descent system continued, and the Khmer language took its place alongside Sanskrit in the inscriptions. He prefers the notion of an Indic veneer, wherein the elites in society selectively adopted those Indian traits that suited their objectives. These included the Sanskrit language for personal and place names, the Indian script, and architectural styles. They contributed to the increasingly strong divisions in society which signal the formation of states, but the essential characteristics of the Chenla kingdoms were Khmer. During the eighth century, the number of inscriptions fell markedly, and the historic record became thin. This does not necessarily imply cultural decline. On the contrary, it was during this period that such large sites as Banteay Prei Nokor were occupied. The latter was probably the base of a ruler known as Jayavarman II, and it was he who founded the kingdom of Angkor.

Angkor Angkor, meaning holy city in Sanskrit, comprises a complex of cities, temples, and reservoirs located north of the Great Lake (Tonle Sap) in northwest Cambodia. It was first encountered by Europeans in the sixteenth century, when Portuguese missionaries visited and described an abandoned stone city, encroached by the jungle. Their accounts were recorded by Diogo da Couto and archived in Lisbon. The Great Lake is one of the world’s most productive sources of freshwater fish. During the wet season, the Tonle Sap River, which connects the lake with the Mekong River, reverses its flow and backs up to expand greatly the lake’s area. With the dry season, the river drains the lake, and rice can be grown in the wetlands left as the lake level falls. The lake margins are a particularly favorable place for settlement by rice farmers and fishers, and the region of Angkor is further attractive because of the perennial rivers that cross the flat floodplain from their source in the Kulen uplands to the north. There is a long history of settlement in this area, which began at least as early as the Bronze Age, for prehistoric occupation of this period has been found

in the Western Baray or reservoir. An Iron Age site has also been found in the vicinity of the temple of Baksei Chamkrong. Hariharalaya, the earliest major complex, lies to the southeast of Angkor. It comprises a series of temples to the south of the Indratataka, a reservoir of unprecedented size (3800  800 m2). Most of the buildings were constructed during the reign of King Indravarman (AD 877–889). His capital incorporated two major temples, known as Preah Ko and the Bakong. The water of the Roluos River was diverted to fill the Indratataka, and was then reticulated to service the extensive moats which surrounded the temples as well as, presumably, the royal palace. Preah Ko is surrounded by a 50-m-wide moat west of the Srah Andaung Preng, a basin 100 m2. The central area is dominated by six shrines dedicated to Indravarman’s ancestors. The adjacent Bakong stands out for the sheer scale of the conception: the central pyramid rises in five stages within a double-moated enclosure 800 m2. Eight small sanctuaries were placed round the base of the pyramid, probably acknowledging the male and female ancestors of Indravarman. Still awesome, it would have been a potent symbol of royal power and sacred ancestry. With the death of Indravarman in AD 889, his son Yashovarman (protege of glory) completed the northern dyke of the Indratataka and had the Lolei temple constructed on an island in the middle of the reservoir. However, he founded a new capital centered on a low sandstone hill known as the Bakheng. This center, known as Yashodarapura, the city of Yashovarman, lies at the heart of Angkor itself. Access to the summit temple is by steep stairs, but the top of the hill has been partially leveled, so that the six terraces of the sanctuary rise from the plateau like a crown. There are numerous brick chapels at the base of the pyramid and on the terraces. The topmost tier incorporates five temples, the largest in the center and the others at each corner. Yashovarman was responsible for the creation of the Eastern Baray, the dykes of which are 7.5  1.8 m2 in extent. Inscriptions erected at each corner record the construction of this reservoir fed by the Siem Reap River, which, when full, would have contained over 50 million m3 of water. He also had at least four monasteries constructed south of his new reservoir, and temples on hills surrounding the capital. After a brief interlude, when King Jayavarman IV established his capital at Koh Ker (Figure 5), to the northeast of Angkor, his successor and older brother, King Rajendravarman, returned to the old center and had two major state temples constructed. One is now known as Pre Rup, while the Eastern Mebon was

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Figure 5 Jayavarman IV of Angkor (reigned AD 928–942) moved his capital to Koh Ker, then known as Lingapura. This massive temple mausoleum dominates the plain for miles in every direction.

built on an island in the center of the Yashodharatataka. The former honored the king and his ancestors within the context of the god Shiva. Rajendravarman was succeeded by his ten-year-old son Jayavarman V. He continued to reign at Angkor, and his state temple, then known as Hemasringagiri or the mountain with the golden summits, was built to represent Mount Meru, the home of the Hindu gods. Jayavarman V’s reign was followed by a period of civil war which left the state in serious disarray. The victorious king, Suryavarman I, established his court at Angkor, the focal point of his capital being the temple known as the Phimeanakas. It comprises a single shrine, surrounded by narrow roofed galleries on top of three tiers of laterite each of descending size. The royal palace would have been built of perishable materials, and will only be traced through the excavation of its foundations. These buildings were located within a high laterite wall with five entrance pavilions ascribed to this reign, enclosing a precinct 600  250 m2 in extent. Today, a great plaza lies to the east of this walled precinct. On its eastern side lie the southern and northern khleangs, long sandstone buildings of unknown function. The former belong to the reign of Suryavarman I. Suryavarman also underlined his authority by beginning the construction of the West Baray, the largest reservoir at Angkor, and one still retaining a considerable body of water. This reservoir was unusual, in that the area within the dykes was excavated, whereas the customary method of construction entailed

simply the raising of earth dykes above the land surface. The Western Mebon temple in the center of the baray was built in the style of Suryavarman’s successor, Udayadityavarman. It was under the succeeding dynasty of Mahidharapura, from about AD 1080, that central Angkor reached the present form. Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument known, was constructed by Suryavarman II (AD 1113–1150). A devotee of Vishnu, the temple still houses a large stone statue to this god, which was probably originally housed in the central lotus tower. Angkor Wat incorporates one of the finest and longest bas-reliefs in the world, and the scenes do much to illuminate the religious and court life of Angkor during the twelfth century (see Figures 6 and 7). One scene, for example, shows the king in council, another reveals the Angkorian army on the march, while a third shows graphic scenes of heaven and hell. Very high status princesses are seen being borne on palanquins (Figure 8). Within the walls of reliefs, the temple rises to incorporate five towers, representing the five peaks of Mount Meru, home of the Hindu gods. Despite its size and fame, Angkor Wat remains controversial. Sixteenth-century Portuguese visitors described an inscription that may well have been the temple’s founding document, but this has not been seen or recorded since. We do not know if the entire complex was sacred with restricted access, or whether people resided within the area demarcated by an outer wall and moat. The function of the temple is not known with certainty, but George

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Figure 6 The five towers of Angkor Wat rise up above the jungle in this view from the Bakheng temple.

Figure 7 The central five towers of Angkor Wat represent the peaks of Mount Meru, home of the gods.

C
de`s has argued that it was a temple and a mausoleum for the king, whose ashes would have been interred under the central shrine. A second king of the Mahidharapura dynasty, Jayavarman VII (AD 1181–1219), was responsible for the construction of Angkor Thom, the rectangular walled city which today dominates Angkor. This moated and walled city centers on the Bayon, an extraordinary edifice embellished with gigantic stone heads thought to represent the king as Buddha. He also ordered the construction of the Northern Baray or reservoir and the central island temple of Neak Pean, formerly

known as Rajasri. According to contemporary inscriptions, visitors to this temple would wash away their sins in the water that gushed from four fountains in the form of a human and animal heads. Foundation inscriptions also describe how Jayavarman VII founded and endowed two vast temple complexes, Ta Prohm to his mother and Preah Khan to his father. Each temple also incorporated shrines dedicated to ancestors of the aristocracy (Figure 9). Following the death of Jayavarman VII, building activity slowed. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Angkor state was under stress from the

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Figure 8 An Angkorian princess, seen on a relief on the walls of Angkor Wat, is carried through a forest on a palanquin.

Figure 9 Banteay Chmar is a huge temple mausoleum, built by Jayavarman VII of Angkor (AD reigned 1181–1219). Located in a remote part of northwest Cambodia, it was, until recently, virtually inaccessible and covered in jungle.

encroaching Thais, and was abandoned in the middle years of the latter century. While much of the site was then overgrown by the jungle, Angkor Wat was never completely abandoned. It, and indeed all other temples, retain their sanctity to this day. The physical remains of the civilization of Angkor, and the corpus of inscriptions (Figure 10), make it clear that there must have been many specialists engaged in regular activities. The construction of a temple even of relatively humble proportions would have called on architects and a wide range of laborers,

from those who manufactured bricks, to those who cut and shaped stone, as well as carpenters, plasterers to create the frescoes, painters, and gilders. Surviving bronzes, for example, palanquin fittings and statues, indicate the presence of metal workshops, and the ornate jewelry seen on the elite in the bas-reliefs reflect not only lapidaries but workers of gold, silver, and precious stones. Recent archaeological research by Roland Fletcher and Christophe Pottier has greatly expanded our conception of Angkor. They have identified numerous

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Figure 10 The temple of Banteay Chmar contains bas reliefs showing a naval battle between the Kingdom of Angkor and the Chams.

temple foundations and evidence for occupation beyond the ceremonial central temples and reservoirs, suggesting that this was one of the largest preindustrial cities known. Moreover, they have traced Angkorian canals that issued from the reservoirs, providing firm evidence for intensive irrigation of the rice fields between the city and the Great Lake to the south. North of Angkor, it is clear that major water control measures were put in place to divert water via the newly created Siem Reap River, and bring the precious water to the central city to feed the reservoirs and canals. Precisely when this expansion and the provision of the irrigation canals took place within the Angkorian period remains under investigation, but the hydraulic expertise was clearly of a very high order indeed.

The Cham Civilization The Cham civilization occupied the coastal plains of Vietnam from Saigon to the Hai Van Pass. Its people spoke an Austronesian language most akin to the languages of Borneo, and their ancestors probably settled this coastal strip during the first millennium BC. The territory of the Chams is divided into a series of restricted coastal enclaves, backed to the west by the Truong Son Cordillera. Cham centers are located at the estuaries of the major rivers that cross these coastal plains. The most southerly region of Champa lies from the eastern margins of the Mekong Delta to Cape Dinh, an inhospitable stretch of coastline with thin, sandy soils. Between Cape Dinh and Cape

Nay, there are three well-watered valleys separated by low passes, an area known to the Chams as Panduranga. North of Cape Dinh, the coastal strip broadens into a plain about 70  70 km2 in extent. There are many sites here in a region known to the Chams as Vijaya. The region of Amaravati lies between the Hai Van Pass and Quy Nhon, and was the dominant area of Cham political centrality. It has a reasonable area of land available for agriculture, and several well-sheltered harbors. The last area lies north of the Hai Van Pass, with most archaeological sites being concentrated in the vicinity of Quang Tri. The relative importance and political reach of these polities named in the inscriptions almost certainly changed markedly over time. It is most unlikely that Champa was ever a unified state. Early records provide the names of the component parts of this civilization. We find reference to Amaravati and Vijaya. Kauthara was first mentioned in an inscription from Pa Nagar set up by King Satyavarman in AD 784. A kingdom known as Panduranga was recorded in an inscription from Po Nagar, dated to 817 AD, which describes its ruler. My Son was the great ceremonial center of Amaravati. It comprises a series of brick shrines set out in seven walled groups with many outliers. It was founded at least as early as the fifth century AD under a ruler known as Bhadravarman. King Vikrantavarman initiated a major building program at My Son in the seventh century AD. The temples were built of brick, and the exterior surfaces bore strip pilasters, false doors, and window niches. Further temples were

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erected at least until the reign of Jaya Indravarman toward the end of the eleventh century. Temple E1 is particularly notable for the presence of fine Cham sculptures that belong to the early seventh century. The inspiration of Indian art and religion is seen in a carved sandstone pediment over 2 m wide, illustrating Vishnu recumbent on the ocean of eternity, represented by a seven-headed serpent. A bearded ascetic watches the god from his side, and two figures grasp snakes in bird’s talons beyond his head and feet. The temple within was dominated by a large linga, a phallic symbol, representing Shiva, which stood on a richly ornamented pedestal. Access to the top of this platform, which represented Mount Kailasa (the home of Shiva), was by three steps. The outer walls of the pedestal incorporate a series of carved reliefs. One of these is regarded by Guillon as a masterpiece of Cham art, showing three dancers wearing rich ornaments and holding scarves. Their jewelry includes multiple necklaces, belts, armlets, and heavy ear disks. Free-standing sculptures were also recovered from My Son, the earliest coming from temple E5, and dating to the late seventh century. It portrays Ganesha, the elephant god of wisdom. Again, Indian inspiration is apparent in this fine statue, which stands almost a meter high. Ganesha is portrayed with four arms, and he holds a rosary, an axe, a bowl of sweets, and the root of a plant which elephants are known to appreciate. He wears a

complex decorated belt and a tiger skin. A second statue of Ganesha from temple B3 stresses again the local attachment to this god. In this case, the elephant is portrayed as seated. Dong Duong is a second major center of Amaravati. It is a very large complex, measuring 1.5 km from east to west, and was probably built by King Bhadravarman in honor of his predecessor, King Jaya Indravarman, in the late ninth century AD. The was a temple designed for the worship of the Buddha. It contains a huge statue of the seated Buddha, standing over 1.5 m high, which was discovered in 1935 in the hall of the Dong Duong monastery. Another large statue depicts a monk holding a lotus in front of him with both hands, and also came from the monastic hall. A third fine statue from this site shows a guardian of the law. A dvarapala is a door guardian, and there were eight of these at Dong Duong. They are massive and forbidding, standing over 2 m in height. Each one tramples on an animal or person, and flourishes a sword. Po Nagar is the major center of Kauthara, the most southerly polity of the Cham civilization (Figure 11). Six brick sanctuaries are built on an eminence that commands a major estuary. There is a lengthy history of construction, commencing at least in the seventh century AD with a wooden temple that was destroyed by fire in AD 774. The northwestern tower was built in AD 813, and further sanctuaries were added until

Figure 11 The Cham temple of Po Nagar commands a strategic estuary on the coast of Southern Vietnam.

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AD 1256. King Jaya Harivarmadeva set up an inscription in AD 1160, claiming victory over the Khmer and Vietnamese, as well as the Cham kingdoms of Vijaya, Amaravati, and Panduranga. The site is located so that it could control sea traffic from China south to the states of mainland and island Southeast Asia. Chinese records contain many references to the Chams, who appear as a constant irritant to the maintenance of peace on their southern frontier. However, it was the expulsion of the Chinese from the Red River delta area by the Vietnamese that brought doom to the Chams. Progressively, the Vietnamese pushed south along the coastal corridor, destroying the Cham civilization. Today, Cham speakers survive in small communities within the state of Vietnam.

Dvaravati The civilization of Dvaravati flourished in the valley of the Chao Phraya River from about AD 400 to 900. It then came increasingly under the influence, and at times control, of the Kingdom of Angkor. The people spoke the Mon language, which is closely related to Khmer. There are many Iron Age settlements in this area that reveal increasing cultural complexity between 400 BC and AD 300. These include Ban Don Ta Phet, where rich burials contain a number of Indian imports. At Ban Tha Kae, the late prehistoric phase incorporates ceramics, gold beads, querns, and stamp seals similar to those from Oc Eo, the Funan city on the Mekong Delta. There is a continuous record for the transition from prehistory to the historic period of Dvaravati at the site of Chansen, where the second period of occupation included a notable ivory comb decorated with a goose, two horses, and Buddhist symbols dating probably to the first or second centuries AD (see Asia, South: Buddhist Archaeology). Although the documentary sources for Dvaravati are few, it is known that the scribes employed Sanskrit in their inscriptions, and that Buddhism was particularly favored but not to the exclusion of major Hindu deities. The archaeology of Dvaravati is dominated by a series of large, moated cities of oval or subrectangular outline. The favored location involved a stream that fed the moats, just as in the later prehistoric Iron Age of the region. Excavations have often revealed the foundations of religious buildings in laterite and brick. These were coated in decorated stucco with Buddhist figures or symbols. The buildings were constructed to house relics or images of the Buddha. There are three geographic groups of centers, known as the Eastern, Central, and Western. It is not known

whether there was an overall integration into a single kingdom, or a series of small, regional polities. The major sites in the western group are strategically located on the flood plains of the Maeklong and Chao Phraya rivers. At that juncture, the sea level would have been slightly higher than at present, and there would have been less sedimentation. Large centers would then have been closer to the shore and able to participate in maritime trade. The principal sites in this group are Pong Tuk, U-Thong, Nakhon Pathom, and Ku Bua. The central region is dominated by the site of Lopburi, Ban Khu Muang, and Sri Thep, while the western group incorporates Muang Phra Rot, Dong Si Mahosod, and Dong Lakhon. The few inscriptions of the Dvaravati civilization are important sources of information. Unlike the situation in Cambodia, where the actual names of the Funan and Chenla kingdoms have not survived, we know that the name of the Chao Phraya polity centered at Nakhon Pathom was Dvaravati, because two coins inscribed with the Sanskrit text ‘‘meritorious deeds of the King of Dvaravati’’ were found there. Six surface finds of coins from Muang Dongkorn also refer to the King of Dvaravati. Dvaravati means ‘‘which has gates,’’ perhaps referring to the gates giving access through the city walls. A mid-seventhcentury inscription from the site of U-Thong reads ‘‘Sri Harshavarman, grandson of Ishanavarman, having expanded his sphere of glory, obtained the lion throne through regular succession.’’ The king had given meritorious gifts to a linga, and described his exalted ancestry and military achievements. A further text from Lopburi names Arshva, son of the King of Sambuka. Finally, a seventh-century inscription from Sri Thep records ‘‘In the year . . . a king who is nephew of the great King, who is the son of Pruthiveenadravarman, and who is as great as Bhavavarman, who has renowned moral principles, who is powerful and the terror of his enemies, erects this inscription on ascending the throne.’’

The Pyu The Pyu or Tircul people of Burma were first mentioned in a mid-fourth-century AD Chinese text in a list of the tribes on the frontier of Southwestern China. The author described them as the Piao. Other early Chinese records that survived in later editions describe the Piao as civilized, ‘‘where prince and minister, father and son, elder and younger, have each their order of precedence.’’ The Chinese called them the Pyu, but the Mon people knew of them as the Tircul. The Pyu civilization was developed in the dry zone of central Burma between about 200 BC and

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AD 900. It is best known on the basis of three large walled cities, Beikthano, Sri Ksetra, and Halin. All were located in tributary valleys of the Irrawaddy River, where it was possible to harness the local rivers or streams for irrigation purposes. There is compelling evidence at Beikthano for a pre-Buddhist mortuary tradition involving large brick and timber halls containing the cremated remains of high-status individuals. By the fourth or fifth centuries AD, however, Buddhism had taken root and many large public buildings, including stupas and monasteries, were constructed. Meanwhile, the cremated dead were interred in large ceramic mortuary jars set in brick structures outside the city walls. The Pyu spoke a Sino-Tibetan language, and employed Indian scripts in their inscriptions. They were proficient bronze casters, one set of figurines from Sri Ksetra showing dancers and musicians richly appareled and ornamented. Skilled artisans also made silver Buddha images of great beauty. They also took part in a widespread trading network that incorporated India. The civilization was ultimately to be succeeded by the state of Pagan. There is a major destruction layer at Halin. However, many of the Pyu arts, crafts, and ideas were incorporated into the Pagan civilization. It is recorded that King Anawratha of Pagan removed votive tablets and offerings from Sri Ksetra and placed them in his Shwesandaw temple at Pagan.

The Arakan Coast The Arakan coast of western Burma occupies a key geographic position in the maritime exchange route that developed during the early centuries AD. It faces India across the Bay of Bengal, and was thus a natural stepping stone when, for example, the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka sent Buddhist missions to Southeast Asia. Tradition has it that the Buddha manifested himself in Arakan, when an image of him was cast. This is known as the Mahamuni (great sage). Although the history of Arakan has hardly been tested archaeologically, it is known that two major cities span the fifth to the eighth centuries AD. The first, Dhanyawadi, incorporated a walled royal precinct and the hill on which the Mahamuni was housed and revered until the early eighteenth century, when it was removed to Mandalay. The second city of Vesali, located like Dhanyawadi in a rich agricultural valley suited to rice cultivation but with access to the sea, was also ringed with a substantial brick wall and moat. The Shit-thaung inscription text listed 22 kings of the Ananda Dynasty who ruled this area. Buddhism was the dominant religion, but not to the exclusion of Hinduism. Coins were minted, and there is

evidence for extensive maritime trade and wealthy urban communities.

Summary The early civilizations of mainland Southeast Asia dominated the major river valleys, and developed from prehistoric societies in which there were strong indigenous trends toward social complexity. Although leavened by the adoption of Indian religions, languages, and architectural styles, the civilizations of Southeast Asia followed their own course to statehood. Through Sanskrit or Pali inscriptions, associated with texts in indigenous languages such as Khmer or Mon, we can identify dynasties and the names of kings who established themselves in palatial buildings associated with impressive stone temples. However, warfare was endemic both within and between the rival polities. These states relied upon rice cultivation and water control for their survival, and the production of rice surpluses in villages little different from those in the area today were deployed to maintain the elite. In the case of Angkor, there was a strong thread of continuity into modern Cambodia. The Mon state of Dvaravati, however, was overtaken with the intrusion of the Thais, while the Cham states succumbed to the expansionary movement south of the Vietnamese. Many early traditions survive, however, as seen in court rituals of Thailand, and many place names of Sanskrit origin. See also: Asia, East: Chinese Civilization; Asia, South:

Buddhist Archaeology; Indus Civilization; Asia, Southeast: Pre-agricultural Peoples; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Political Complexity, Rise of; Social Inequality, Development of; State-Level Societies, Collapse of.

Further Reading Coe MD (2003) Angkor and the Khmer Civilization. London: Thames and Hudson. Guillon E (2001) Cham Art. London: Thames and Hudson. Gutman P (2001) Burma’s Lost Kingdoms: Splendours of Arakan. Bangkok: Orchid Press. Higham CFW (2001) The Civilization of Angkor. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. Higham CFW (2002) Early Cultures of Mainland Southeast Asia. Bangkok: River Books. Indrawooth P (1999) Dvaravati. A Critical Study Based on Archaeological Evidence. Bangkok: Aksornsmai. Jacques C (1997) Angkor, Cities and Temples. Bangkok: River Books. Moore E and Siribhadra S (1992) Palaces of the Gods. Khmer Art and Architecture in Thailand. Bangkok: River Books. Vickery M (1998) Society, Economics and Politics in Pre-Angkor Cambodia. Tokyo: The Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies for UNESCO.

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Pre-Agricultural Peoples Sandra Bowdler, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Hoabinhian First used by French archaeologists working in northern Vietnam to describe late Pleistocene and Holocene period archaeological assemblages excavated from rock shelters. Sahul Shelf Part of the continental shelf of Sahul (the Australia– New Guinea continent) which lies off the north-western coast of Australia. sumatralith An oval- to rectangular-shaped stone artefact made by unifacially flaking around the circumference of a cobble. Sunda Shelf An extension of the continental shelf of Southeast Asia, covered during interglacials by the South China Sea, which isolates as islands Borneo, Sumatra, Java, and smaller islands.

Introduction Southeast Asia is an arbitrary region whose definition is based on partly physical geographical factors, partly on cultural similarities, and partly according to politically defined areas. It comprises the modern nation states of Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao (Laos), Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam – the ASEAN nations (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), and East Timor (Figure 1). Some would include the island of Taiwan. Physically, Southeast Asia is separated from India and much of China by high mountains, but if we were to ignore political boundaries, southeast China, including Hong Kong, would probably be seen as part as Southeast Asia. Another conflict between physical and political parameters arises in the case of eastern Indonesia. Much of Southeast Asia lies on the Sunda shelf which is separated from the Sahul shelf by deep water barriers. The Sahul shelf includes continental Australia and the surrounding islands of New Guinea and Tasmania. Irian Jaya, the western half of the island of New Guinea, is clearly part of Sahulland physically, but is part of Indonesia politically and is thus often included in Southeast Asia, rather than within the Australasian grouping. This article discusses the archaeological evidence for the human occupation of Southeast Asia during the Pleistocene period, or Ice Age, which extended from c.2 million years ago to c. 10 000 years ago, when it was succeeded by the Holocene, or Recent, geological period. Since literacy did not reach Southeast Asia until well after the end of the Pleistocene, we are reliant on archaeological evidence to tell

us the human history of that period. That evidence is variable in its distribution and quality, partly due to the fact that until the later twentieth century, archaeological research was a colonial activity, carried out in a somewhat disorganized fashion by people who were often not trained archaeologists. In the postcolonial era, research has increased in both quantity and quality, and new discoveries are frequently made. Thus, many questions do not have clear-cut or generally agreed answers but are subject to ongoing discussion and debate.

Early Hominins The first human-like inhabitants of Southeast Asia were the early hominins – members of the wider human family – known as Homo erectus. The first fossil remains of this species were discovered in central Java by Dutch Colonial medical officer Eugene Dubois in 1890, who named it Pithecanthropus erectus, the ape man who walks upright. Further remains of H. erectus have since been found at several sites in central Java. The dating of the fossils is problematic, but recent evidence supports dates of at least 1 million years ago, if not more. It is generally accepted that these fossils represent one of the earliest forays of hominins out of Africa, but whether they were the direct ancestors of modern humans is more controversial. A continuing debate was initiated by DNA research in the 1980s which suggested that modern humans emerged from Africa at a much later date, supplanting earlier hominins in places like Southeast Asia. The older view, which seems to be losing ground, was that H. erectus types migrated from Africa to many parts of the world including the Middle East, Europe, and China as well as Southeast Asia and there evolved into subtypes of modern humans (see Modern Humans, Emergence of). One of the problems with the H. erectus fossils in Java is their lack of clear association with any cultural material. The earliest humans in Africa are defined as human ancestors at least in part by their ability to make and use patterned stone artifacts, objects which can be considered cultural by virtue of their being passed on within the social group by processes of learning. Stone artifact assemblages made by H. erectus have been claimed from various parts of Java, but none is unequivocal in terms of stratigraphic location, absolute dating, and artifactual status. A badly defined industry called the Pacitanian has been recognized from a series of surface sites and attributed to H. erectus, but has not been shown to be in association with any fossils, nor has it been dated. Recent accounts suggest artifactual evidence has been found in excavated stratified situations in central Java, but detailed reports are needed to

India

Bhutan

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Nepal

China

Taiwan

Bangladesh Hong Kong

Myanmar Lao

Thailand Vietnam Cambodia

Philippines

Sri Lanka Brunei Malaysia Malaysia Singapore Island of Borneo

Sulawesi

Sumatra

Indonesia

Iriyan Jaya Papua New Guinea

New Guinea

Java Flores East Timor

Australia Figure 1 Map of Southeast Asia, with places mentioned in text.

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confirm this. The lack of universally accepted, clearly associated artifactual evidence in Java might be taken as suggesting that Javanese H. erectus was not a likely ancestor for modern humans. While the ‘classic’ H. erectus remains from Java are generally accepted as being at least 1 million to 750 000 years old, another group of remains, mainly from Ngandong on the Solo River in central Java, are considered to be more phylogenetically evolved and therefore more recent. Again, their dating is problematic, with some claims that they might be as recent as c. 30 000 years old, but a more generally accepted dating would be of the order of 300 000 years. Like the others however they are not, to the agreement of all, associated with any cultural remains. Research in Flores, one of the islands in the eastern Indonesian archipelago, has revealed new evidence. During the Pleistocene, there were periods of lowered temperatures worldwide which froze up much of the world’s water into glaciers and thus lowered sea levels. Java, being part of the Sunda shelf, was connected to mainland Southeast Asia by a landbridge during such periods. Flores lies in one of the deep troughs between Sunda and Sahul and was thus only ever accessible by water. While it is easy to imagine H. erectus arriving dry-shod in Java, it seems less likely that this early hominin would have crossed such a barrier to Flores. Finds in the Soa Basin of central Flores seem to suggest that this might have been the case. While no actual hominin remains have been found here, stone artifacts dated to c. 800 000 years ago suggest that H. erectus was here at this time. There is however continuing debate about the nature of the artifacts and their stratigraphic associations. It can be observed that in Java we have fossil hominins with few if any indisputable cultural associations, whereas in Flores we have putative hominin cultural remains but no hominins. More recent and equally challenging evidence from Flores has been recovered recently, and will be discussed further below. Evidence of H. erectus is lacking from the Southeast Asian mainland, despite its presence in southern China by at least 750 000 years ago and possibly earlier. There is also no convincing cultural evidence of an early occupation of the mainland. Furthermore, there appears to be a wide chronological gap between these early residents of island Southeast Asia and later hominin occupations in the form of modern humans, H. sapiens sapiens. Anatomically modern humans (AMHs) are now generally accepted as having evolved in Africa some time between 200 000 and 100 000 years ago, and to have spread out to the rest of the world between c. 100 000 and 40 000 years ago, or during the early part of the Upper Pleistocene geological epoch.

AMH fossils are found in the Middle East dated to c. 100 000 years ago, and in Europe by c. 40 000 years. The oldest modern humans in China are dated no older than 67 000 years ago (Liujiang). The Southeast Asian evidence for modern humans conforms to this pattern. Where it differs is in the nature of the associated cultural evidence, especially with respect to stone artifact assemblages.

Eurocentric Models Southeast Asian Pleistocene archaeology has been plagued by the imposition of models based on the archaeological sequences of Europe, and especially Northwest Europe. The term Palaeolithic, meaning literally Old Stone Age, was coined by English aristocrat John Lubbock in 1865, and subdivided by French priest L’Abbe´ Breuil in 1912 into Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic. These subdivisions were, based on types of stone artifacts on the one hand and hominin fossil types on the other, fitted into a uniform time frame. To summarize briefly, the Lower Palaeolithic represents the earliest Homo species including H. erectus (now called H. ergaster in Africa and H. heidelbergensis, and other things, in Europe). The first human ancestors (variously named, but including H. habilis) were associated with stone artifacts considered to be technically primitive, often made on pebbles (technically cobbles) and referred to as ‘chopper’ and ‘chopping tools’. The chronologically later and more phylogenetically advanced H. erectus types were associated with a particular stone artifact form, the ‘hand ax’, a bifacial implement made on a large core, which occurred in huge numbers at many sites across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India within the vast time span of the Lower and Middle Pleistocene, c. 1.5 million to 100 000 years ago. In Europe, the succeeding Middle Palaeolithic phase, dated between 100 and 40 000 years, is the time of the Neanderthals (H. sapiens neanderthalensis), whose evolutionary status has long been problematic, but who is now considered not to have been ancestral to modern humans. Their stone tools were flake tools rather than core tools, and come in a range of recurring forms generally referred to as points and scrapers. The Upper Palaeolithic (c. 40 000–c. 10 000 years) sees the arrival of fully modern humans using a more refined range of points and scrapers, often made on long slender flakes called blades, and also featuring a range of artifacts made of bone and antler. This is also the period of the renowned naturalistic cave art of France and Spain. Many problems have arisen with the interpretation of the archaeological record outside Europe by

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attempts to fit it into this Lower–Middle–Upper Palaeolithic model, and Southeast Asia is no exception. In 1948, American archaeologist Hallam Movius Jr., who had worked on European Palaeolithic sites, surveyed what was then known of the Asian archaeological record, and concluded that there were significant differences between Europe and the east. His most celebrated observation was that there were no hand axes in Asia, east of the Himalayas, and what was found in the Far East was a more primitive stone tool repertoire, consisting of ‘choppers and chopping tools’, and that this continued for thousands of years. The implication was that the latter was a hangover from a more primitive past, which had somehow not attained the advanced stage of manufacturing hand axes, let alone the far more progressive level of the Middle Palaeolithic. This was explicitly stated in his observation that ‘‘throughout the early portion of the Old Stone Age the tools consist for the most part of relatively monotonous and unimaginative assemblages of choppers, chopping tools and hand-adzes..... the archaeological...material very definitely indicates that as early as Lower Palaeolithic times Southern and Eastern Asia as a whole was a region of cultural retardation’’ (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 38 (1948): 329–420). This is indeed a restatement of an earlier comment by the Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin (Early Man in China (1941): 60): ‘‘In contrast with the already ‘steaming’ West, Early Pleistocene Eastern Asia seems to have represented (on account of its marginal geographic position) a quiet and conservative corner amidst the fast advancing human world’’. The racist implications of these statements are obvious, and have been dealt with previously in many places. It is however interesting that the overall concept of the Movius Line is perpetuated in textbooks and syntheses with little modification from the 1940s, if without the racist overtones. It is in general true that bifacial hand ax forms do not occur in the east, although there are some exceptions, such as the Chinese site of Dingcun. It is not however the case that what fills that void are ‘primitive’ chopper-chopping types. It needs to be observed that Movius (and Teilhard) were working primarily with collections of artifacts from undated surface collections, apart from the excavated material from the celebrated site of Zhoukoudian (Choukoutien) in China, ‘home of Peking Man’ (H. erectus). Even here however the dominant artifacts are not chopper/chopping tools; rather, the assemblage of artifacts which are clearly associated with H. erectus is dominated by small quartz flakes, many manufactured by the bipolar flaking technique. The hominin occupation at Zhoukoudian is rather younger than most of the

Javanese fossils, ranging from about 400 000 to perhaps 250 000 years ago. There is however in Southeast Asia a range of tools which can be characterized as chopper/chopping tools, but they are not in fact the primitive artifacts that Teilhard and Movius, and some more recent scholars, have taken them to be.

Upper Pleistocene Hunter-Gatherers After H. erectus, the oldest evidence for human occupation in Southeast Asia is restricted to the Upper Pleistocene geological period, that is, within the last 100 000 years. In fact, firmly dated evidence is restricted to the last 40 000 or so years, with one exception. Within that timeframe however there is abundant archaeological evidence from all parts of Southeast Asia, although research has been more intensive in some places than others. In general, again with one exception, the cultural evidence is associated with anatomically modern humans. The archaeological record itself however is rather confusing, at least in the way it has been interpreted, particularly with respect to the kinds of Eurocentric models imposed on it, as discussed above. One of the enduring apparent mysteries of Southeast Asian research has been the Hoabinhian.

The Hoabinhian French archaeologist Madeleine Colani, who had been resident in Vietnam since 1884, excavated some 52 cave and rockshelter sites between 1924 and 1926 in Bac Son and Hoa Binh provinces in northern Vietnam. While the fearsome speed of these excavations must raise some doubts in modern archaeological minds as to their refinement and accuracy, it can hardly be denied that she had a substantial sample of material to deal with. In Hanoi in 1932, she reported to the first Congress of prehistorians of the Far East the discovery of a new Palaeolithic culture. The Hoabinhian is a culture composed of implements that are in general flaked with somewhat varied types of primitive workmanship. It is characterized by tools often worked only on one face, by hammerstones, by implements of subtriangular section, by discs, short axes, and almond shaped artifacts, with an appreciable number of bone tools (Praehistorica Asiae Orientalis, 1932).

It can be seen that Conlani’s definition is somewhat vague, and the Hoabinhian has bedeviled archaeologists ever since, with its status as ‘culture’ or ‘industry’ or indeed anything in particular under continual

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attack. Colani’s definition fails to include the salient fact that the ‘disks, short axes, and almonds’ she mentions are unifacially flaked core tools made on waterworn cobbles (generally called, less correctly, ‘pebbles’). The disks are, as the name suggests, round and flattish, the almond-shaped artifacts are often flaked over one entire surface with the other side consisting of waterworn cortex (these are also known as ‘sumatraliths’, Figure 2), and the short axes are basically the latter split or broken in half (Figure 3). Other forms consist of a cobble broken across a shorter access and similarly flaked; these types are usually called ‘choppers’, although the term

Figure 2 Sumatralith.

Figure 3 Short ax.

Figure 4 Discoid.

is often applied to all these varieties (Figures 4 and 5). What they all have in common is a worked/working edge formed by the intersection of a flaked edge with unworked cortex. One of the common and continuing misapprehensions is that these objects resemble, or are indeed the same as, the much less patterned chopper/chopping tools of the African preAcheulian and European non-Acheulian sites of the Lower Palaeolithic. Sites containing artifacts effectively identical to these pebble tools of the Hoabinhian have subsequently been described from most parts of mainland Southeast Asia, extending to Nepal and southeast China, but not, it

814 ASIA, WEST/Pre-Agricultural Peoples

Figure 5 Chopper.

Figure 6 Biface.

has generally been believed, island Southeast Asia, with the exception of northeast Sumatra (hence the ‘sumatralith’). In peninsular Malaysia, sites containing bifacially worked pebbles, which are quite different from the original unifacial types, have been characterized as Hoabinhian (Figure 6). As indicated, the status of the Hoabinhian has been controversial. On the one hand, there has been a reluctance to admit that the typical Hoabinhian artifacts are in any way distinctive, and it is often asserted that they are only due to raw material availability: if waterworn cobbles are available, pebble tools will result. This overlooks the distinctive nature of these types, which are not found in numbers in assemblages anywhere else in the world except Southeast Australia and in New Guinea. They do not resemble the earliest artifacts from East Africa, nor the non-Acheulian assemblages of Europe (such as the Clactonian, and those from sites such as Vertesszo¨llo¨s). Occasionally single unifacially flaked pebbles do occur in other assemblages, but given the ultimate limitations of stone artifact production, it is not surprising that similar forms can occur in different places; they do

not however occur in consistent patterned numbers in multiple assemblages outside Southeast Asia, New Guinea, and Southeast Australia (Figure 7). One of the continuing issues is whether there is a Hoabinhian culture. Using the original definition (of Childe and others) of culture as a ‘recurring assemblage of types’, it might be argued that there is such a thing. On the other hand, the idea that this somehow corresponds to some kind of shared ethnic identity is hard to sustain in many archaeological cases, but especially so with respect to the Hoabinhian. American archaeologist Chet Gorman, who had worked on Late Pleistocene sites in Thailand, notably Spirit Cave, suggested that the Hoabinhian should be described as a ‘‘technocomplex’’: ‘‘a group of cultures characterised by assemblages sharing a polythetic range but differing specific types of the same general families of artefact-types, shared as a widely diffused and interlinked response to common factors in environment, economy and technology’’ (term coined by David Clarke in 1968). In other words, Gorman was suggesting that there was a broad range of variable characteristics characterizing the

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Figure 7 Map of Hoabhinian distribution.

Hoabinhian, but none were essential as individual elements to qualify for membership of it. At the ‘Hoabinhian 60 Years after Madeleine Colani: Anniversary Conference’ in Hanoi in 1994, it was agreed that the term Hoabinhian should be retained, but that it should be referred to not as the Hoabinhian culture, but rather as the Hoabinhian industry; the term ‘technocomplex’ did not find favor. The presence of ‘sumatraliths’ was taken to be an essential, perhaps defining, characteristic of the Hoabinhian. Another question is whether is there is a unique dimension to the manifestation of the Hoabinhian in Vietnam, or is it just the case that this is where it was first described. As indicated, Colani’s original definition was vague in the extreme. Apart from the unifacially flaked tools described above, there are other shared characteristics of the sites within which they occur, which extend beyond Vietnam. Hoabinhian industries are generally found in occupation sites in limestone rockshelters, or in open shell midden sites. Usually the rockshelter sites contain deposits of shell midden. Food remains, as well as mollusks, generally include small mammals, and a range of plant foods

has been preserved in some sites. In some sites, Hoabinhian artifacts have been found in association with ground stone axes and/or grindstones. This seems to be a chronological distinction, with such sites being more recent than those without such objects. The term Palaeolithic seems to have been used by Colani to suggest that Hoabinhian sites were of Pleistocene Age. Subsequent research suggested that they were more recent than that, and should thus, in European nomenclature, be considered Mesolithic, the term applied to hunter-gatherer societies of the Holocene in Western Europe. Colani however had in fact described two cultures; as well as the Hoabinhian, there was a later phenomenon, the Bacsonian. Many of the tools of the Hoabinhian were also present in the Bacsonian, but the latter contained tools more often associated in Europe with the Neolithic, or early farmers: edge-ground axes and pottery. Bacsonian sites included shell middens, located on the modern shore line, and thus clearly of post-Pleistocene age. A further complication arises with the concept of a pre-Hoabinhian industry in Vietnam called the Son Vian (after the site Son Vi) developed by Vietnamese scholars. This is not clearly defined:

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it contains what are obviously Hoabinhian type artifacts – unifacially flaked cobbles of sumatralith and short axe form – but what actually distinguishes it from its successor is not at all clear, certainly not in the English-language literature. In line with the conclusions of the Colani anniversary conference, it seems most useful to consider the Hoabinhian as an industry, or industries, characterized by a particular range of unifacially worked pebble/cobble tools. The limited, if odd, distribution does suggest some form of cultural connection between the communities which utilized these objects, but at this stage of our knowledge it cannot be precisely specified. There has been sufficient archaeological research carried out in Vietnam to suggest that it is found in the north but not in the south. It is known from sites in Cambodia but not Lao, but research in these countries has not been carried out to the extent where we can be sure what its distribution is in them. A number of sites are known from Thailand, both north and south. In Malaysia complications ensue, because, as previously mentioned, sites in peninsular Malaysia which contain bifacially flaked artifacts, often not made on cobbles, are characterized as Hoabinhian, which seems misleading. Examples are known from Myanmar, but archaeological research there has been as restricted as in Cambodia and Lao. Very good examples are known from Nepal, mostly from surface sites; this would seem to be the northwestern limit of Hoabinhian distribution. Hoabinhian artifacts occur in sites in southeast China. It is not clear whether they occur in Japan; single specimens of artifacts resembling Hoabinhian types have been reported, but it is not possible to be sure that they are more than an incidentally produced form within the context of quite different kinds of industries. It has been a long-standing belief that Hoabinhian type tools do not occur in island Southeast Asia, apart from some well-documented, if not well-excavated midden sites in northeast Sumatra. In fact, such artifacts have been found in some island sites; nothing like as many, it is true, as in sites in Vietnam and Thailand, but it is also the case that fewer sites have been excavated in the islands. A careful inspection of artifacts from the Niah Cave in Sarawak on the island of Borneo shows that, in the lower levels, tools of Hoabinhian type are present; they are almost unrecognizable due to their having been reworked, possibly after breakage. Specimens are also known from sites on Morotai Island, northern Maluku. They have been reported from northern Luzon in the Philippines. As previously mentioned, Hoabinhian

tools are also known from sites in the interior highlands of Papua New Guinea, as well as Southeast Australia. The chronology of the Hoabinhian is, not surprisingly, now better understood than in Colani’s time, but there are still complications. In northern Vietnam, tools of Hoabinhian type as here defined occur in sites referred to the Sonvian and dating up to 33 000 years ago. Some of these dates are however radiocarbon assays based on freshwater shellfish, which are not regarded as completely reliable. At the Ma´i Da´ Dieu rockshelter, which was re-excavated in 1988, Hoabinhian tools appear bracketed between dates of c. 24 000 and 20 500 years BP. At Ma´i Da´ Nguo´m rockshelter, pebble tools attributed to Sonvian are dated to c. 23 000 years. In Thailand, Hoabinhian artifacts occur in sites dated to 28 000–30 000 years ago. In general however the dating of Hoabinhian artifacts in archaeological sites shows a strong Late to terminal Pleistocene to Early Holocene range, from c. 16 000 to 7000 years BP. In Australia, Hoabinhian artifacts are no older than 15 000 years, but continued up to 200 years ago. An exception is the site of Kota Tampan in Perak in peninsular Malaysia. This site was originally thought to be of Middle Pleistocene age, but modern research has shown it to be Upper Pleistocene. It is an open site which consists of a stone tool workshop which was apparently sealed by volcanic ash from an explosion of Mount Toba (Sumatra). Initially, this was dated to c. 34 000 years ago, but more recent work has revised that date to 74 000 BP. Artifacts of Hoabinhian type were definitely included in the range of material underneath the ash layer. The younger date fitted quite well with the evidence from Thailand and Vietnam, but the new older date is quite anomalous. Otherwise, the time range for Hoabinhian artifacts is reasonably well defined, from Late Upper Pleistocene to Early Holocene. It is also clear that it is an industry initially associated with huntergatherers, some of whom continued making these artifacts after they had adopted agricultural practices, or at least artifacts associated with such practices.

The Non-Hoabinhian There are sites in Southeast Asia, both mainland and island, and layers within sites, within the time range of the Hoabinhian that do not include Hoabinhian artifacts. It is necessary to consider this evidence, not only in its own right, but to shed further light on the Hoabinhian itself. If there was indeed a Hoabinhian

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culture, does that mean that sites/layers which lack Hoabinhian tools represent some other culture? This evidence has generally been perceived as representing a mass of problematic data, nondescript at best, incoherent and unclassifiable at worst, and completely unrelated to the Hoabinhian. While it may be undistinguished compared with the neat types of the European Palaeolithic, these stone industries are not quite the morass of indistinguishable characteristics as has been represented. Not only in island Southeast Asia, but also at some sites on the mainland, there is a technological similarity among Upper Pleistocene industries. At many sites, assemblages consist of small, apparently casual flakes, in a range of lithologies, often including reef quartz and fine-grained chert and silcrete types. Flakes tend towards the square rather than the elongated. While simple percussion is the main flaking technique found, the bipolar technique is often in evidence, and flakes with secondary working are rare, but do occasionally appear. These assemblages are similar to those found in Chinese sites, some of which are up to 1 million years old (such as sites in the Nihewan basin), and include Zhoukoudian, and are thus associated with H. erectus. They are also found at Chinese sites within the age range of H. sapiens. This range of small-undistinguished artifacts appears at first glance to be quite different from the Hoabinhian industry. It is not however a completely different technology. The kind of percussion flaking which produces a Hoabinhian core artifact also produces flakes which share metrical and qualitative characteristics with the other industry or industries. In Australia, within the delimited space of Kangaroo Island, off the coast near Adelaide, it has been shown that Hoabinhian artifacts are in fact part of a wider industry including just such small artifacts as described here, even though the Hoabinhian types tend not to be found at the same sites as the smaller artifacts. This also seems to be the case in Southeast Asia, although there are some sites in Thailand and Vietnam where the smaller artifacts are found with the Hoabinhian types; generally the former have been overlooked and not remarked on when the sites were described. Sites yielding only the small ‘amorphous’ assemblages are known from island Southeast Asia, for example Leang Burung 2 in Sulawesi and Liang Lembudu in the Aru Islands, dating to 31 000 and 27 000 years ago, respectively. There are some sites which do not fit the pattern so far described. Tingkayu, an open site, or rather series of sites, in Sabah on the island of Borneo, has a range of rather elegant ‘bifacial lanceolates’, which are quite outside the range of most assemblages from

Late Pleistocene sites in Southeast Asia. The chronology of this site complex is far from secure however, consisting as it does of open sites dated by geomorphological circumstances, and the age of these objects must be considered unproven. There have been attempts to demonstrate a sequence of artifact change over the course of the Late Pleistocene. The site of Lang Rongrien in peninsular Thailand has been recently excavated using modern techniques, and has produced a noncontinuous sequence from c. 37 000 years ago to Holocene agricultural times. It has been interpreted as evidence of change from a small nondescript industry dated to between c. 37 000 and 27 000 years ago to a Hoabinhian industry appearing in terminal Early Holocene times, dating to between c. 9500 and 7500 years ago. This is not a classic Hoabinhian assemblage however, but consists of the bifacially flaked types also characterized as Hoabinhian in peninsular Malaysia. In Malaysia, these types are generally dated to a similar time range; types with more typical unifacial Hoabinhian types are in fact rather older in both Malaysia and Thailand. It seems however that obvious cultural change, consisting of new stone artifact types, did not occur until the Holocene. A range of small tools including backed blades and small projectile points are found in sites dated to after 7000 years ago in island Southeast Asia, notably Sulawesi and the Philippines. The Toalian assemblages of asymmetric and geometric microliths from southwestern Sulawesi have been known since the early twentieth century, and their appearance has been subsequently dated to about 6000 years ago. In the Philippines, serrated hollowbased points called Maros points have been within the same time frame. It seems that in both cases, the new tools were associated with hunter-gatherers who kept on using them when they took up agriculture.

Human Remains It would be expected that human remains of the Late Upper Pleistocene in Southeast Asia would be of modern humans, H. sapiens sapiens. Generally speaking, this is the case. The oldest such evidence is the ‘deep skull’ from the Niah Cave, Sarawak, usually considered to be c. 40 000 years old, although there is quite a lot of evidence of disturbance at that site, including burials of more recent age which may have cut into earlier layers. Recent research does however appear to confirm the dating of the deep skull as being somewhat older than 40 000 BP. Other modern human remains have been found at late Upper Pleistocene sites in Vietnam and Thailand,

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associated with Hoabinhian assemblages, and the Philippines (Tabon Cave on Palawan). The recent discovery of hominids of small stature on the island of Flores is still subject to considerable discussion. Found in a cave site called Liang Bua, several individuals are associated with what seems to be a typical small artifact assemblage as previously described, with an Upper Pleistocene date range of 94 000 to 18 000 years. Such a recent date is associated everywhere else on the globe with modern humans, H. sapiens sapiens. The Flores remains however have been assigned to a new species, H. floriensis, and, according to the scholars who have examined them, retain many characteristics of H. erectus. This evidence prompts several questions: were there modern humans on Flores at this time, contemporary with H. floriensis? If so, who produced the artifacts? Is it feasible to suppose that H. erectus evolved into a diminutive species on Flores only, particularly given the gap between dates of 700 000 and 94 000 within which no artifactual or fossil evidence falls? Only further research on the available evidence, or more evidence from Flores and elsewhere, can address these issues.

foods, and many sites demonstrate a reliance on freshwater and marine shellfish, together with small to medium size mammals. In the Early Holocene, indirect evidence for agricultural practices appears. Particularly in shell middens on the coast of northern Vietnam and also northeast Sumatra, Hoabinhian type tools are associated with cord-marked pottery and small slate knives, believed to be used for agricultural purposes. Pottery has a long tradition in Japan where it was associated with the Jomon hunter-gatherers of the terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene, but this is almost unique; elsewhere, it is generally believed that ceramic pots are associated with the more settled lifestyle of agriculturalists. It is this late manifestation of the Hoabinhian that was originally designated the Bacsonian. There is a further question as to whether edge-ground stone axes were associated only with the Bacsonian. This technology, which in Europe was considered to be associated with farmers only and of Holocene age, has been found in both Australia and Japan to be dated to over 30 000 years ago and attributed to hunter-gatherers. There do not seem to be any well-dated examples of this age in Southeast Asia.

Economy

See also: Asia, East: China, Paleolithic Cultures; Japanese

It is generally accepted that before 10 000 years ago, all humans were hunter-gatherers, who did not domesticate plants or animals for food. There is no evidence to suggest that Southeast Asia was any different, with evidence for agriculture appearing perhaps 7000 years ago. The people of Southeast Asia during the Pleistocene seem to have subsisted on a wide range of resources. Unlike their contemporaries in Western Europe, they do not appear to have been big game hunters, but then there were no populations of large herd mammals to support such a regime. Evidence from sites such as Spirit Cave in Thailand shows the exploitation of a number of wild plant

Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient; Modern Humans, Emergence of; Oceania: Australia.

Further Reading Anderson DD (1990) Lang Rongrien Rockshelter: A Pleistocene– Early Holocene Site from Krabi, Southwestern Thailand. Philadelphia: The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania. Bellwood P (1997) Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. O’Connor S, Spriggs M and Veth P (eds.) (2005) The Archaeology of the Aru Islands, Eastern Indonesia. Terra Australia 22. Canberra: Pandanus Books.

ASIA, WEST/Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations 819

ASIA, WEST Contents Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations Arabian Peninsula Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant Mesolithic Cultures Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad Palaeolithic Cultures Phoenicia Roman Eastern Colonies Southern Levant, Bronze Age Metal Production and Utilization Southern Levant, Chalcolithic Cultures Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures

Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations Edward J Keall, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON, Canada ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Macedonia Ancient kingdom in southeast Europe: now a region divided among Greece, the country of Macedonia, and Bulgaria. Magi Members of a priestly caste of ancient Media and Persia. Mesopotamia Ancient country in southwest Asia, between the upper Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a part of modern Iraq. Zoroastrianism The religion and philosophy based on the teachings ascribed to the prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra, Zartosht). Zoroastrianism was once the dominant religion of much of Greater Iran.

Persian Territory This contribution covers roughly 12 centuries, from around 550 BC to AD 640. During this time, three Persian dynasties controlled vastly different extents of territory – the largest territory under the first dynasty (Achaemenian), the smallest during the middle phase (Parthian dynasty), and with subsequent sizeable expansion under the Sasanians (though nowhere nearly as extensive as under the Achaemenians). It is through Westerners’ eyes that we know the land as ‘Persia’. Pars, an ancient province in today’s southwestern Iran, was the homeland of the Achaemenians. Today, through the alliteration of its pronunciation in Arabic, the area is known as Fars province. In this

region of Iran lay Parsua, the first substantial Achaemenian settlement. In the fourth century BC, when the Macedonian Greeks of Alexander the Great encountered the Achaemenians, they recognized them as based in Pars, which they expressed as Persis. Hence, the rulers in Persis were identified as ‘Persians’. Through an extension of the term, the entire region ruled by these Persians became known as ‘Persian Empire’. The ancient name was ‘Iran’, a term closely related to the concept of ‘Aryan’. Linguists define the people as Indo-Iranians. They were connected with the great migration into the area of Indo-European language speakers that had occurred around the middle of the second millennium BC. Those communities, with whom they could communicate, because of the similarities of the spoken language, were judged to be part of a great Iran. Those who spoke completely different languages were considered outsiders. Notwithstanding this simplistic definition of Iran’s demographics, one should acknowledge that there were definite exceptions to this rule. For there were significant minorities present in the various Iranian (‘Persian’) states under scrutiny here, not least the Semitic-language speaking groups of Mesopotamia (particularly Aramaeans and Jews) who had been residents since the first millennium BC, and Arabs who increasingly migrated into the region in the early centuries of the first millennium AD. None of the three Iranian states described here was confined to the Iranian plateau. For the Achaemenians, their purview at its height (besides Iran proper, and Mesopotamia) included all of Anatolia (modern Turkey), lower (northern) Egypt, northern Arabia and Palestine, and the Punjab (modern Pakistan). Admittedly, revolts toward the end of the fifth century considerably reduced these territorial holdings (especially in Egypt). Certainly, both the

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Parthians and the Sasanians in times of strength controlled territory far beyond today’s northeastern border of Iran, to include parts of modern Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan. But official administration of Afghanistan was often ephemeral, and local dynasties assumed virtual control. They rarely ever held sway beyond the River Oxus (Amu Darya), and never beyond the Jaxartes (Syr Darya). To the west, the Parthians and Sasanians controlled large parts of Mesopotamia, but only briefly did they control any part of the Levant. The dynastic capital was invariably in the area of today’s modern Baghdad. For the Parthians and Sasanians, the rough zone of confrontation with their western enemies (first the pagan Romans, then the Christian Byzantines) lay along the River Euphrates. The archaeological record for all three Persian dynasties under scrutiny here is at best spotty. Certainly, formal excavations have been conducted in the past at various national capitals – Achaemenian Pasargadae and Persepolis; Parthian Nisa, Hekatompylos, and Seleucia-on-Tigris; and Sasanian Firuzabad and Ctesiphon. But there has not been sufficient systematic scrutiny of the entire area under consideration to allow us to draw an effective picture of how each of the regions operated over time period. It is evident that when sites are excavated, the most prevalent tangible item recovered – broken utilitarian pottery – is characterized by a local production tradition. Excavators, for example, of the site of Tepe Agrab in northwestern Iran, may muse about ‘Achaemenianlooking’ shapes of the pottery, but without the certainty of attribution that is possible, by contrast, in the discipline of Roman archaeology where thousands of sites have been excavated and their pottery classified. Standards are also difficult to assess. Artifact norms prevalent in the Zagros reaches of western Iran may not be directly applicable to the northeastern reaches of Khorrasan. Sites singled out for mention here are mostly based on the reality of excavation or site study, and a published report. Historical phenomena are also presented when documented by written texts, even though they have not necessarily been excavated.

The First Iranian State The first Iranians to have a definable entity through tangible archaeological evidence (as opposed to legend) are peoples who moved into the valleys of the Zagros Mountains of today’s western Iran, by way of the Caucasus, around 1300 BC. They are identifiable through the archaeological record by their distinctive gray-ware pottery. This is classified as ‘Iron Age I’. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the Iranian kingdom of the Medes was founded in the late eighth century BC, with its capital at Ecbatana (modern

Hamadan). No formal excavations have been conducted in Hamadan, but innumerable high-quality objects from Hamadan placed on the illegal antiquities market attest to its significant status during this time and later. During the early seventh century, the Medes confronted the more famous and infamous Assyrians. Mid-century invasions of the area by Scythians from the Black Sea area caused considerable disruption. The state was strengthened however through both diplomacy and strategic reorganization of the military into separate fighting units of spearmen, bowmen, and cavalry. In 609 BC, an alliance with the Babylonians ended the previously formidable Assyrian power. Consequently, Media fell heir to the former Assyrian holdings in Anatolia, bringing them into confrontation with the Lydians in western Anatolia. At this time, the big power players in the Middle East were the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Lydians, and the Medes. An important aspect of Median identity is the phenomenon of the Magi, priests of Aryan traditions. Achaemenian Persians

Media’s mid-seventh century problems permitted the coalescence of an Iranian group tracing their ancestry in southwest Iran to a legendary Achaemenes. The nascent Achaemenian state is first to be discerned at the site of Tepe Malyan in the Marvdasht plain, where inscribed documents attest to its association with the legendary ‘Parsua’. Around 550 BC, Persian Cyrus II staged a successful revolt, having first married into the Median royal line. Cyrus ‘the Great’ established his dynastic seat at the site of Pasargadae, north of the Marvdasht plain. The site comprises two palaces, with an irrigated garden in between. A platform terrace was probably intended to be the location of a third, private palace in the style of the later, more grandiose Persepolis. Other features of the site include an open-air sacred precinct with two altars, and a tower building, likely an archive house. Cyrus’ tomb employed a form and gabled roof derived from Lydian traditions of tomb architecture. Achaemenian holdings were considerably expanded when Cyrus captured the city of Babylon in 539 BC. He proceeded to attack Lydia, defeating King Croesus in 546 BC, capturing also Greek cities along the Aegean. But, turning to Iran’s eastern frontier, Cyrus lost his life in 529 BC fighting to control reaches of the Oxus. The capital Pasargadae was never finished as planned. Cyrus’ successor, Cambyses II (529–522 BC), continued the expansionist policies of his predecessor. In 525 BC, he entered Egypt after a surprise crossing of the Sinai (normally considered formidable protection

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invasion), ending in capitulation of the city of Memphis. The Pharaoh was carried off into captivity to Iran, and Cambyses was recognized as the founder of the Twenty-Seventh Dynasty. Cambyses’ premature death on the way home precipitated a widespread national revolt. But Darius I (522–486 BC) used suppression of the revolt to trumpet the new power of the Achaemenian state. The site of Bisitun, in western Iran, is enormously significant for the definition of Achaemenian Empire. On a towering cliff-face above a prolific spring, Darius depicts images of the vanquished in very explicit terms – they are shown with chains around their necks. Their dress defines their ethnicity. Names inscribed above the figures determine their identity. It was this trilingual inscription – in Babylonian, Elamite, and Old Persian – that formed the basis for Rawlinson’s cracking of the code of cuneiform in 1847. The site of Susa, in today’s southwestern Iran, but geographically a natural part of Mesopotamia, functioned as an administrative centre in Achaemenian times. Few intact Achaemenian remains have been unearthed due to the centuries of later site use. The stray find of a statue of Darius is especially interesting because of its strong Egyptianizing style. Achaemenian Dominion

Following suppression of the famous revolt, Darius moved to expand Iranian authority into India and the Oxus reaches, which he did successfully between 522 and 486 BC. At the same time, he attacked the Scythians in the area of the Black Sea, in the so-called Hellespont, disrupting grain supplies to the Greek city-states along the Aegean coast. His successes on the world stage are well reflected in the creation of a new capital in Pars province, at Persepolis. His palace complexes were set upon an artificial terrace (called in later folklore Takht-i-Jamshid, or throne of mythical King Jamshid), accessed by a ceremonial staircase rising from the Marvdasht plain. Here Darius built his huge audience chamber (Apadana) palace, as well as a smaller private palace. Walls were adorned with scenes of grand accomplishments. There was a treasury building as well. Flanking the staircase of Darius’ audience palace were scenes of processions of loyal subjects and the king’s retainers (Medes and Persians), reflecting the ceremonial activities envisaged for the building. When King Xerxes (486–465 BC) inherited the throne after Darius’ death, a serious revolt broke out in Egypt. Its harsh suppression signals the hard line that Xerxes took in all his foreign policy. At home, too, he was authoritarian. His so-called

Daeva edict, carved in stone in Old Persian, reflects the close association between Persian state and Zoroastrianism. The edict outlawed what were considered to be inappropriate acts of worship. Struggles with the Magi priests of the Median tradition are not out of the question. The royal tomb site of Naqsh-i-Rustam along an escarpment in the vicinity of Persepolis also attests to this. Here, the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda is depicted above the figure of the king venerating a fire altar. Continuing the strong Egyptian connection in Achaemenian art, Ahura Mazda is shown as a human carried as on the outstreched eagle wings of the god Horus. Disillusioned at the failure of his invasion of Greece in 480, Xerxes devoted his energies to palace construction at Persepolis. He also built a ceremonial gatehouse to the terrace that was flanked by winged bulls as guardian spirits in the style of Assyrian palace architecture. Following the assassination of Xerxes, Iran was ruled by a series of weak kings between 465 and 404 BC. Symptomatic of state weakness was another revolt in Egypt, in 405 BC, resulting in the end of the status of the Achaemenians as rulers of the TwentySeventh Dynasty. A notorious event in this period was the attempted coup by Cyrus the Younger, to take the Achaemenian throne, in 401 BC, employing the services of 10 000 Greek mercenaries. We owe it to the Greek writer Xenophon for the account of Cyrus’ demise. In spite of Cyrus’ battlefield defeat, the unchallenged retreat of the Greeks through hundreds of miles of hostile terrain from Mesopotamia to the shores of the Black Sea speaks loudly of the ineffectiveness of Achaemenian state authority at this time. Macedonian Conquest

Other uprisings occurred in the Levant, though the revolts were not successful. These events were largely overshadowed by Macedon’s dramatic rise to power. To their eventual disadvantage, the Achaemenians declined to contribute aid to the Athenians in their quest to restrict Philip II’s ambitious expansion of Macedonian authority. At the battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, Philip brought the entire Greek mainland under his aegis. The stage was now set for the campaigns of Alexander, Philip’s son, who would eventually topple the great empire of Iran. The first loss to Alexander was in 334 BC at the river Granicus, not far from Troy in northwestern Anatolia. Four years later, the Macedonian wonder boy surmounted the steps as a victor of the great palace terrace at Persepolis. The palaces went up in flames. The worst damage was in the palaces of Xerxes, causing archaeologists to interpret the conflagration as an act of revenge. The last Achaemenian king, Darius III, whose unfinished

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tomb at Persepolis bears testimony to the unexpected speed of the Macedonian advance, fled the scene but was murdered by his own men while trying to escape. Seleucid Interlude

Returning from his extended march into Asia, Alexander the Great took up residence in Babylon, in southern Mesopotamia, expecting to operate very much as the kind of eastern potentate he had just defeated. Yet he died prematurely in 323 BC, leaving no heir or designate. His generals fought for control of the conquered lands, and Seleucus emerged as victor of the eastern territories in 312 BC. He established a new capital just slightly upstream from Babylon, at Seleucia-on-the-Tigris, close to today’s Baghdad. In spite of the fact that veterans of the Macedonian campaign had been settled along the way in newly created cities – which meant that Greek cultural attitudes and principles of science and technology began to supplant the ancient traditions in these settlements – it became difficult for the Macedonian authorities to control the vast territory they had conquered. Testimony to this is presented when local figures issued coins in the own names, not that of the Seleucid king. An example of the precarious Seleucid position is documented at Pasargadae. A military fort had been built on Cyrus’ unfinished palace terrace, as part of the post-Alexandrian occupation of the region. A coin hoard recovered through excavation from the destroyed, burnt layers of the Pasargadae fort attests to a local uprising against the Macedonian presence around 280 BC. Already by 300 BC either provincial governors or native chiefs were claiming degrees of independence from the Seleucid authorities. Eventually, as the eastern losses increased, the Seleucids abandoned Mesopotamia and positioned themselves on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, at Antioch. A few forays were made to recover lost territory on the Iranian plateau, but the new stakeholders – the Parthians – resisted these attempts. We have here the beginnings of a new empire of Iran.

Persian Resurgence The new Iran was far different from the old one. The term ‘Parthian’ is derived from Parthava – the name of an Achaemenian province situated just southeast of the Caspian Sea. Its inhabitants were Iranians, by virtue of the language they spoke. To the north, and vaguely related as Indo-European speakers, were the Dahae, one of many Scythian tribes. One of these tribal figures, a certain Arsaces, immigrated into Parthava and adopted the local Parthian culture and dialect.

He schemed successfully to become the local ruler. The dynasty he founded is rightly called ‘Arsacid’ after his name. Western writers invariably call it ‘Parthian.’ The first Arsacid (Parthian) kingdom emerged around the middle of the third century BC. For this early moment in the state’s life, we have the archaeological record of Nisa, in today’s Turkmenistan. Here we see the perpetuation of the now long-established principle of the king residing in an exclusive imperial city where entry by outsiders was restricted. As such, the site of Old Nisa housed two monumental halls, ceremonial shrines. A hoard of ostraca written in Aramaic script but representing the local dialect is the earliest testimony to the Parthian language. The hoard of 60 elaborately carved rhytons, made of ivory tusks, is also vital evidence of strong Hellenistic artistic trends prevalent in Parthia at this time. Some modest territorial gains were made initially at the expense of neighboring states, but for threequarters of a century Parthia was largely confined to the area south and east of the Caspian. Archaeologists have identified the site of Shahr-i-Qumis in northeastern Iran as the location of the second Parthian capital, Hekatompylos. This site features as one of the places designated by the travel itinerary compiler Isidore of Charax as one of the so-called ‘Parthian Stations’ along the great Asian highway. Isidore’s catalog is an indication that transcontinental trade between the Mediterranean and Indian and China was becoming increasingly important to the economies of the states lying in between. Interestingly, archaeological investigations at another hypothetical Parthian station – Kangavar, in western Iran – have proven that the monumental remains actually date from later Sasanian times. The Parthian State

A most dramatic expansion of Parthian territory occurred under King Mithridates I beginning after 170 BC. Land was seized right across the plateau of Iran, including the westernmost highland province of Media. The sudden increase in Parthian territory culminated in the 141 BC capture of the Seleucid capital city of Seleucia-on-Tigris, in Mesopotamia. Extension of Parthian authority is well attested in Mithridates’ overstriking of the coin issues of the previously independent state of Characene at the head of the Persian Gulf. The city of Charax, founded like many others in the fourth century in the aftermath of the Macedonian conquest of Asia, served as an entrepot for trade goods arriving from the east. From 73 AD, termination of the independent coin issues of Characene reflects how the state was subsumed into the

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Parthian one. From excavations at Seleucia-on-Tigris, in central Iraq, one can document the initial impact of Macedonian conquest and promulgation of Greek standards. Parthian coins were struck using the Greek model of silver tetradrachm and drachm, reflecting a deliberate government policy to accommodate Macedonian settlers in the new Persian state. However, one can also document how Greek norms gradually morphed into more local versions. Nineteenth century scholarship was wont to call this a ‘‘debased, orientalizing’’ trend. One should see it rather as resurgence of native traits. In art, a person’s status, expressed in the clothes they wore, was more important than a perfect body. At Seleucia, in house construction, builders abandoned the Greek way of constructing a post-and-beam roof, replacing it with an arched vault – a logical solution to the scarcity of quality wooden beams. Vaulted halls became a cultural identity marker for centuries of subsequent architectural construction in this region. At the site of Ashur, also in central Iraq, archaeologists have documented continuity of traditions going back to Assyrian times, albeit expressed in the medium of the now current now Parthian architectural mode. In southern Iraq, at the ancient site of Uruk, as well as at Nippur, monumental structures were sometimes built complying with Greek standards, but increasingly reflecting the vitality of indigenous traditions. Seleucid rallies were made to regain lost territory, but mostly to no avail. Like his namesake, Mithridates II continued to consolidate and expand Parthian holdings after 123 BC. His claiming of the honorific title ‘king of kings’ suitably illustrates Parthian aspirations at this time. However, westerly expansion brought the Parthians inexorably into conflict with the Romans. The zone of confrontation lay generally along the course of the Euphrates. The former Seleucid frontier city of Dura Europos fell into Parthian hands around 113 BC, only to be taken in turn by the Romans in AD 115. The overall basis of the struggle stemmed from Rome’s perceived need for defense of foreign interests by eliminating hostile elements along her frontiers. This meant that a successful combat along a frontier inevitably implied annexation of that territory and thereby the potential for new confrontation further abroad. Gradually the Romans were drawn further and further east through Anatolia until they confronted Parthia. In addition to expansion through frontier defense, Roman confrontations with Parthia were also instigated through ambitious campaigns mounted by ex officio government agents seeking personal fortunes. The explosive potential of such a mission is well illustrated by ex-consul Crassus’ Syrian campaign of 53 BC. It was an ill-advised attempt to corner the

market in luxury shipments from the East. Lightarmed Parthian cavalry easily outmaneuvered Roman foot soldiers marching across the open Syrian plains. Crassus ultimately lost his life. Parthian cavalry tactics involved discharging the notorious ‘Parthian shot’. Arrows were discharged at full gallop toward the enemy. But before close contact was made, the rider wheeled around and turned in the saddle to fire arrows backward at the enemy line. Defeat, and the capture of legionary standards, haunted the Romans for a generation until Emperor Augustus negotiated terms for their return, in 20 BC. Parthian Decline

Notwithstanding Parthian cavalry brilliance, the state was poorly prepared to take advantage of military success. Suren, commander of the forces that annihilated Crassus, was murdered out of perception that he was a danger to the king. Other potential contenders were also eliminated. Parthia’s territorial gains in Syria were gradually diminished through inept government. The Parthians lacked the bureaucratic machinery that ran the Achaemenian state. One may suggest that this kind of imperial organization did not appeal to the Parthians, and that a battle was to be won for its spoils and the challenge of fighting, nothing more. More so than the Achaemenians, the Parthian state was forced to confront tribal incursions on the northeastern frontier. We may assume that the root cause of the attempted incursions reflects the same impetus that had caused Arsaces himself and his family to infiltrate into Iran two centuries earlier. Simply said, a worsening ecological situation brought about by population growth and environmental degradation may have prompted tribes to look for new pastureland. In addition, the developed conditions of the Iranian countryside, following centuries of investment in infrastructure, may have presented an enticing prospect for plunder. As evidence of a lack of strong centralized state bureaucracy, we have the archaeological record of several sites. In tangible archaeological remains, we can see that the Parthian state did not have a rigid obsession with standardization. Rather, there are strong regional characteristics. Exemplifying this principle is the region of Elymais in southwestern Iran. The area is known for its distinctive rock reliefs, a coinage that speaks of autonomy within the Parthian state. From our own perspective and attitudes toward successful government, we may judge this as weakness. One may also judge it as a maturity whereby Parthian governors were not obsessed with imposing rigid rules on diverse peoples. Whatever the judgment,

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one has to acknowledge that the Parthian state did survive for over 400 years, a not inconsiderable achievement. Independent States

Two sites exemplify lack of strong bureaucratic control over the central reaches of traditional Iranian territory at this time. The first is the independent Arab state of Hatra in northern Mesopotamia, where its defensive walls resisted several attempts to breach them, most notably by the Roman Emperor Trajan in AD 117. In the heart of the roughly circular city lay a complex of shrines where some of the architectural features are strictly Hellenistic in style, though the predominant element in both structural form and votive statuary is decidedly Parthian. Notwithstanding its Arab society and independent status, Hatra is often used extensively to define first century AD Parthian. The archaeological site of Qal‘eh-i-Yazdigird also epitomizes independence within the Parthian realm. The site is a formidable fortress of the second century AD overlooking the so-called Zagros Gates pass between the Iranian plateau and the Mesopotamian plains. Containing a lavishly decorated palace, the fortress is best explained as a warlord’s stronghold. Wealth came from the extraction of tolls from caravan traffic plying the great Asian highway (later dubbed the Silk Road). Persian legends relating how the Sasanian dynasty that replaced the Parthians faced a major challenge in subduing this part of Iran attest well to the idea of warlords like this in the Zagros. We get some measure of the weaknesses and rivalries surrounding the Parthian throne from coins. Around 78 AD, two kings (both claiming the title ‘king of kings’) issued identically struck silver tetradrachms in the capital, but each with their own distinctive portrait and name on the coins. With no other indications of expressed victory, rather than representing civil war, the arrangement seems to reflect a degree of power sharing. Other issues of coins, such as Pacorus’ victory tetradrachm of AD 82, definitively underlines contest for the throne of Parthian Iran. The municipal bronze coins also provide priceless insight into how the state was managed. Initially, when the Parthian authorities began to take over affairs of government from the Seleucids, cities were awarded autonomy, largely due to the presence of large numbers of Macedonian settlers. Toward the end of the Parthian era, the municipal issues of coins disappear, to be replaced by bronzes stamped with the royal moniker. In addition to insight that coins give us about Parthian political structure, evidence of their circulation helps define both state organization and the

dynamics of trade. The tetradrachm circulated only in Mesopotamia, whereas the drachm (smaller in size, but higher in silver content) was the Iranian highland’s currency. The phenomenon underlines again lack of strong central authority. Although it lasted almost 400 years, collapse of the Parthian state through fragmentation was inevitable.

Persian Revival The coup started in southwestern Iran, in the original Achaemenian homeland, in the early third century AD, under the banner of Ardashir. An ancestor of the new regime’s first king was a certain Sasan, hence the identification of the dynasty as ‘Sasanian.’ The region of Firuzabad in Fars province witnessed the first of the giant rock-cut propaganda tableaus that became a trademark of the Sasanians. Here, Ardashir is depicted defeating the last Parthian king, Artabanus, in AD 226. A palace with grand fac¸ade is an impressive feature inside the circular city of Firuzabad itself. The circular layout is matched by that of neighbouring Darabjird, as well as by Ctesiphon, the eventual capital in Mesopotamia. The private palace of Qal’ehi-Dukhtar is perched on a mountain promontory outside of Firuzabad. The Sasanians’ ancestors were Zoroastrian priests, helping explain how Zoroastrianism was promoted as a state religion in the new Iran. Unlike their Parthian predecessors, who seemingly tolerated most religious expressions, the Sasanians declared what were judged to be deviant beliefs were heretical, and persecutions were imposed. In the third century, Mani’s ecumenical teachings were outlawed. Zoroastrian orthodoxy outlawing Manichaeism is documented in High Priest Kartir’s palimpsest inscription on a triumphal rock tableau of Shapur I at Naqsh-i-Rustam near Persepolis. Manichaeans fled to Central Asia where they established monasteries that were as intimately linked with spiritual pilgrimage as they were with trade along the great Asian highway. Sasanian Triumphs

After Ardashir’s decisive victory over the last Parthian king in AD 226, he campaigned to consolidate his new realm. Seizing control of international trade routes was a major part of his objective. From around the mid-first century, immigrant Kushans had sponsored trade along the River Oxus, and through the Hindu Kush and Indus valley. Kushan trade networks circumvented Iran, meaning that the Parthians were excluded from profits to be had from transshipping oriental luxuries. Ardashir’s campaigns were motivated by ambition to redress that imbalance. Initially,

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he and his immediate successors had notable successes against their neighbors in this regard. The Arab stronghold of Hatra in northern Mesopotamia, a previously impregnable stronghold, was besieged and eliminated as an independent agent in the transcontinental trade in AD 238. Similarly, the new Roman station of Dura Europos along the Euphrates was seized through tunneling by Sasanian sappers under the massive defensive walls. Like Hatra, Dura no longer had a role to play in the expanded Sasanian state, and it became a ghost city until early twentieth century archaeologists documented its remains. One must be cautious about awarding excessive merit to the Sasanians for victories against the Romans and their agents at this time. The truth is that Rome was in a crisis during the third century, its leadership manipulated to a large extent by soldiers. Nevertheless, the armies were professional. As a result, one should not downplay Shapur’s decisive victory over Philip the Arab in AD 244. Roughly a decade later, 60 000 Roman prisoners were taken at the battle of Antioch; and 70 000 were captured 4 years later at the battle of Edessa. Such victories were the subject of propagandistic tableaus carved on mountain faces near to the Sasanian ancestral home of Persepolis. Yet, as with their Parthian predecessors, the Sasanians failed to establish lasting control over these northern Mesopotamian territories. One should not discount the fact that the native languages of the area belonged to the Semitic family, and communication may have been difficult. In that sense, the territory would have been defined as ‘non-Iran’. Nevertheless, the related dialect of Aramaic had been a language of international commerce for considerable time, and language difficulties do not explain why the Sasanians failed to establish hegemony in the region. Similarly, it is wrong to imply that the steppe landscape was foreign by Iranian standards. The Sasanians successfully settled similar riverine and desert-fringe terrain in the eastern part of their empire, though this did not happen without a high price being paid for defense of the region. Roman Confrontation

A significant factor in the failure of the Sasanians to maintain mastery over northern Mesopotamia in the third century was the rising power of Palmyra (see Asia, West: Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad). An oasis in the Syrian Desert, halfway between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean, Palmyra became a proverbial ‘caravan city’, where Eastern goods were transshipped to markets of the West. State support for the trade, including the assignment of armed escorts for protection, allowed the Palmyrenes to keep

considerable amounts of international trade out of Iranian hands. The accumulated wealth helped sponsor a variety of lavish building programs in the city, as well as earning it special status in the Roman Empire. In the end, Palmyra’s flamboyance, especially the aggressive behavior of its notorious Queen Zenobia, aroused Roman resentment and the city was put under direct Roman rule under the emperor Diocletian. Rome had re-entered the Syrian scene just as the Sasanian state was becoming enfeebled through feuding over the throne. In the face of Diocletian’s revitalized Roman administrative system in the late third century, Sasanian weakness resulted in territory being ceded to the west. A status quo of sorts did emerge in the fourth century with the return of stability in Iran and the 70-year-long reign of Shapur II (309–379). Although they battled extensively, neither side made long-lasting gains. It has been argued that the long drawn out wars, which drained the economies and energies of both sides, partly account for the ease with which Islam was eventually to conquer these regions in the seventh century, due to the exhausted frame of mind of the resident populations. Through defeat of the Kushans and territorial annexation, the Sasanians were brought into confrontation with the tribes across the River Oxus. Shapur was obliged to spend considerable time and effort defending the northeastern frontier of Iran against the Chionite Huns (Chinese: Xiongnu). These efforts had to be maintained under Shapur’s successors, including by one of Sasanian Iran’s most charismatic of kings, Bahram V (AD 420–438). For his hunting exploits, he earned the epithet of ‘Gur’, meaning wild ass. His image was a favourite of Islamic times to depict, along with his constant female companion Azadeh. Less well known is the fact that he battled in the northeast against a new wave of Hunnish invaders identified as the Hephthalites (White Huns). At the site of Bandian near the Iranian border with Turkmenistan, archaeologists unearthed a palace decorated with carved plaster scenes that likely depict a victory against Huns around this time. The compositional arrangement is reminiscent of third century Firuzabad, but the style reflects much more what appears in the Soghdian art of sixth century Samarkand (Uzbekistan). Carved plaster ornament was a universal cliche´ of Sasanian palace decoration. The sites of Tepe Hissar (northern Iran), Tepe Mill, and Chal TarkhanEshqabad (south of Tehran), and Ctesiphon have all produced similar examples of geometric ornament, stylized vegetation, heraldic devices, and figural art. King Peroz (AD 457–484) was obliged to continue the attempt to halt the Hephthalites. Following a defeat, the Sasanian king was obliged to give his son Kavadh as hostage for the armistice. Ironically,

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this was to serve Kavadh in good stead. When, after his father’s death, challenges were made concerning his coronation, he was installed with Hephthalite help. Furthermore, when Kavadh’s revolutionary doctrine of egalitarian Mazdakism proved to be unpopular with the privileged aristocracy, Kavadh temporarily (AD 496–498) found refuge with the Huns. For the most part, however, he was a strong ruler and confronted Byzantium (Rome’s Christian successor in the east) effectively in northern Mesopotamia. Sasanian Golden Age

A golden age for Iran set in with Khusrau I’s accession to the throne (Khusrau I, AD 531–579). The era is well reflected in scenes chosen to illustrate the sides of a grotto (Taq-i-Bustan) in the northern Zagros. The back wall shows an investiture scene and the solitary figure of a heavy-armed cavalryman. The walls on the sides depict a royal hunt. This is not an expedition. Rather, the hunt takes place in an enclosed compound where seemingly the king is guaranteed success. Game is driven into the enclosure for easy target. Musicians accompany the event. Everything is geared to ensuring the king’s prowess as a successful hunter. As for Khusrau’s political successes, he resolved the Mazdakite crisis through persecutions and executions, turning back to orthodox Zoroastrianism, earning the title Anushirvan (‘the Just’). The Mazdakite movement had caused serious disruption to established legal and fiscal practices. However, recognizing Kavadh’s concern over serious inadequacies in property and product assessments, Khusrau initiated fiscal reform. This included the concept of levying tax on a crop on the basis of an average yield. It was a much more effective way of assessing state income. The measures stayed in place long after the Sasanian regime disappeared. Creation of a professional army, replacing the former drafting of recruits from private armies of nobles, also had immediate success, both against Byzantines and Huns. Khusrau’s most dramatic victory in northern Mesopotamia included the sack of Antioch in AD 540, and the deployment of prisoners in construction projects in Iran, just as his predecessor Shapur I had done. Equally significant for the adoption of foreign ideas was the welcome afforded to academics expelled from Byzantium when the Emperor Justinian closed the prestigious academy of Athens in AD 529 on the grounds that the study of ancient Greek philosophy was heretical. These scholars helped to form the foundation of the famous medical school of Jundishapur in southwestern Iran. An undignified interregnum followed, with a successful military general challenging the heir apparent.

The legitimate crown prince was forced to seek Byzantine help in order to achieve his ascendancy to the throne. Concessions were made as a result toward Byzantine claims to territory in the Caucasus. So the epithet Parvez (‘Victorious’) hardly yet befits the individual (Khusrau II, AD 591–628) who became the new Sasanian monarch. However, Khusrau II went on to mount the most impressive of all campaigns that the Sasanians had waged since the third century. The city of Edessa, in the lee of the Taurus Mountains and at the head of northern Mesopotamia, had been an impregnable bastion for Byzantium for decades. When it fell to Khusrau, the door to the rest of Syro-Palestine was open. Antioch was sacked once again (in AD 611); Jerusalem fell in AD 614, with the Holy Cross carried off as a spoil of war. Sasanian armies entered Lower Egypt, capturing Alexandria in AD 619. A Sasanian army even threatened Byzantium itself. However the tables were turned through the brilliant tactics of Byzantine general-turned-emperor Heraclius, who led his forces on a series of incisive marches into the Iranian heartland between AD 622 and AD 628. In revenge for the sack of Jerusalem, the campaign included sack of the great fire sanctuary of Adhur Gushnasp, at the site of Takht-i Suleiman in the northern Zagros. Khusrau’s successor, King Kavadh II, negotiated for peace and conceded most of the recently won territory. The Sasanians, however, now had to face what turned out to be their ultimate demise. Islamic Conquest

Shortly after Prophet Muhammad’s death in AD 632, and apostasy rebellions, Khalid b. al-Walid marched into the desert fringes of Mesopotamia to reimpose acceptance of Islam on the apostates. This initial entry of Muslim forces into Mesopotamia was only directed toward dissident Arabs. No confrontation was made with Sasanian authorities. Subsequent raids into Mesopotamia, however, later culminated in a severe Arab defeat at the hands of the Sasanian army, in AD 634. The defeat convinced Caliph Umar of the need to dispatch major forces to the area. Unexpectedly, the Sasanians suffered a severe defeat in the battle of al-Qadasiyya (AD 636, near al-Hira, in southern Iraq). From there they fell back to a position near the capital, Ctesiphon, but which the Sasanians also failed to hold. The Arabs were awestruck by the opulence of the recently abandoned palaces, performing their simple prayers in one of the palaces. The Sasanians made another attempt to make a stand at the Iranian plateau’s edge (battle of Jalula), but unsuccessfully. The final defeat of the Sasanian king of kings occurred at the battle of Nehavand, in AD 642, in the central lands of the plateau.

ASIA, WEST/Arabian Peninsula 827 See also: Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad; Phoenicia; Roman Eastern Colonies; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Europe, South: Greece; Greek Colonies; Rome.

Further Reading Allen L (2005) The Persian Empire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Culican W (1965) The Medes and Persians. London: Thames and Hudson. Curtis VS, Hillenbrand R, and Rogers JM (eds.) (1998) The Art and Archaeology of Ancient Persia. New Light on the Parthian and Sasanian Empires. London: Tauris. Curtis VS and Stewart S (2006) The Idea of Iran, Vol. 2: The Age of the Parthians. London: Tauris. Daryaee T (in press) International Library of Iranian Studies, Vol. 8: Sasanian Persia. The Rise and Fall of an Empire. London: Tauris. Frye RN (1962) The Heritage of Persia. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Gershevitch I (ed.) (1985) Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 2: The Median and Achaemenian Periods. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harper PO (1978) The Royal Hunter. Art of the Sasanian Empire. New York: Asia Society. Herrmann G (1977) The Making of the Past: The Iranian Revival. Oxford: Elsevier-Phaidon. Yarshater E (ed.) (1983) Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 3. The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods, 2 parts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Introduction The Arabian Peninsula occupies an area of c. 2 590 000 km2 and is bounded on the east by the Persian Gulf; on the west by the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba; on the south by the western Indian Ocean (Arabian Sea); and on the north by a desert-steppe zone that blends seamlessly into the southern portions of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. Politically, it is comprised of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Sultanate of Oman, and Yemen. Most of Arabia enjoys a subtropical climate with low rainfall, but much of northeastern Arabia and parts of southeastern Arabia are underlain by substantial reserves of artesian water. The mountainous areas of Yemen, the Jabal Akhdar in the interior of Oman, and inland Dhofar receive higher rainfall capable of supporting more intensive forms of irrigation agriculture (Yemen), horticulture (Oman), and arboriculture (Dhofar). Two major deserts, the Nafud in the north and the Rub al-Khali in the south, dominate the interior of the peninsula. Microclimatic zones show considerable vegetational diversity, as in the Asir region of southwestern Saudi Arabia, and the relict mangrove forests around Kalba, Ras al-Khaimah, and Umm al-Qaiwain in the UAE. Studies have documented climatic variation in the past and major sea-level changes in both the Red Sea and Persian Gulf that affected settlement in these regions.

Pleistocene Remains

Arabian Peninsula Daniel T Potts, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary anthropomorphism The attributing of human shape or characteristics to a god, animal, or inanimate thing. artesian aquifer A confined aquifer containing groundwater that will flow upward out of a well without the need for pumping. blade A type of stone tool created by striking a long narrow flake from a stone core. ghee The liquid butter remaining when butter from milk is melted, boiled, and strained. microclimate The climate of a small, specific place within an area as contrasted with the climate of the entire area. subtropical climate Refers to zones in a range of latitudes between 30/40 and 45 . The hot season duration is longer, while the cold season is milder and rainy. transhumance Seasonal and alternating movement of livestock, together with the persons who tend the herds, between two regions, as lowlands and highlands.

Whether via the Levantine corridor (from Africa to Western Asia through Sinai), the Arabian corridor (across the Bab al-Mandeb strait from the Horn of Africa to Yemen), or both, stone tool-using hominins reached the Arabian Peninsula, perhaps as early as 1–1.2 million years ago. The earliest dated remains at ‘Ubeidiya in Israel, just north of Arabia, have been placed at around 1.4–1 million years ago. There, Homo ergaster used stone tools of Acheulean type, including large hand axes and large flakes. Comparable Acheulean (Lower Palaeolithic) material has been found on open-air sites in northern Saudi Arabia and in caves in Yemen. Potentially older pebble tools, resembling Oldowan material in East Africa, have been found on surface sites in the Wadi Shahar and at Al-Guza cave (Yemen), but their attribution remains unconfirmed. Many more Middle Palaeolithic sites, showing Levallois-style flaking technology and a Mousterian industry, characterized by flakes and blades, are known in both northwestern and southwestern Arabia, although most of these are surface sites and none has been excavated to date. Whether these sites

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were inhabited by Homo neanderthalensis can only be determined when skeletal remains are excavated at an Arabian site. Upper Palaeolithic open-air sites with sidescrapers and bifacial foliates have been documented throughout western Arabia and, more recently, south of Bir Khasfa in the Wadi Arah of Oman. Typologically this material shows clear links to East African, rather than Zagros Mousterian industries.

Early Holocene The terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene are poorly documented in Arabia, and it is really not until the mid-Holocene ‘climatic optimum’ in the seventh/sixth millennium BC (8850–7850 BP) that the record of human settlement resumes. A variety of data (sediments, isotopes, and pollen) from fossil lake beds located in the southern Rub al-Khali (Saudi Arabia and Yemen) and the UAE confirm that this ‘wet’ phase coincided with a temporary, northward displacement of the summer monsoon. At the same time, in the more northerly latitudes, the so-called 8.2 ka (ka ¼ thousand years ago) ‘event’, described as the most abrupt and significant cold event to occur in the past 10 000 years, caused a pronounced aridification in Anatolia and the Levant, which disturbed the pattern of human settlement there, effectively ending the pre-pottery Neolithic phase. The combination of aridification in the Levant and favorable climatic conditions further south in the Arabian peninsula may explain the relatively sudden expansion of settlement throughout Arabia. The earliest stone tool tradition in eastern Arabia during the sixth millennium, a blade-arrowhead industry first identified in Qatar, shows clear links to the late PPNB Levantine lithic tradition, while the slightly later sites of the Arabian ‘Neolithic’ or ‘Late Stone Age’ in eastern Saudi Arabia and the UAE contain faunal evidence of domesticated sheep and goat, both of which must have been introduced. It can therefore be suggested that the expansion of sites in eastern Arabia at this time may have been due to migrating groups from the southern Levant who, with their flocks and distinctive lithic technology, sought to leave behind a deteriorating environment, settling in Arabia during a favorable period when monsoon activity was at its peak and both game and grazing were plentiful (see Animal Domestication). In northeastern Arabia, the bifacially retouched, barbed and tanged arrowhead is the type fossil of this phase, while in southeastern and southwestern Arabia, apart from the so-called ‘Fasad points’, which are unifacial, foliates and tangless points are more common.

Most of the sites in the northeast and southeast are surface scatters, although stratified sites with multiple hearths, midden-like depositional accretion, burials, and ceramics are known as well. Most of the ceramics were of imported, black-on-greenish buff material of ‘Ubaid-type from Mesopotamia, although a coarse, chaff-tempered redware found on sites like Abu Khamis and Dosariyah in eastern Saudi Arabia may represent local attempts at ceramic manufacture. The mechanisms whereby Mesopotamian pottery was distributed from southern Iraq to sites in Kuwait, eastern Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE are unknown, but scholars have speculated that Mesopotamian seamen may have ventured south in search of pearls and other resources, for which they exchanged pottery and perhaps other, perishable items. As the excavated sites of this period in southeastern Arabia always yield the remains of domesticated sheep, goat, and cattle, it seems appropriate to class the groups inhabiting them as herders who did some hunting on the side, rather than hunters and gatherers who kept livestock. In addition, as can be seen clearly in the UAE, a seasonal pattern of transhumance was practiced. This involved spending winters on the coast, where fish, shellfish, and other marine fauna provided ample protein; spring on the gravel plains of the interior; and summers in the dry desert interior or mountains. Along with fish, shellfish, and domestic livestock, wild animals like gazelle and oryx were hunted, migratory birds including the Socotran cormorant (Phalacrocorax nigrogularis) were caught, and the date palm was exploited, setting a pattern of use which is a hallmark of Arabian horticulture to this day. It is very likely that the animal domesticates were kept primarily for their secondary products – milk, fleece, and hair – while hunted animals (and marine resources) provided the bulk of the protein needs of the population. Importantly, the domestic animals kept in eastern Arabia were capable of turning brackish water, otherwise unfit for human consumption, into potable milk. Given the impossibility of keeping milk very long in an arid environment, it is clear that it was probably turned into some form of cheese or ghee (clarified butter) that could be consumed over a longer period of time. Excavations at Ras al-Hamra (Oman) and Jabal Buhais 18 (Sharjah, UAE) have revealed large cemeteries dating to this period. These are usually single inhumations in shallow pit graves, although in several cases more than one individual seems to have been interred simultaneously, perhaps as the result of death in a single event. The deceased were buried with a variety of personal belongings including necklaces, headbands, belts, bracelets, and anklets made out of marine shells, coral, mother-of-pearl and stones such

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as agate, anhydrite, carnelian, chert, jet, limestone, and serpentinite. Few sites of this period have been excavated in the interior of Arabia or in Yemen, but it is likely that some of the many surface sites on which Arabian bifacials and foliates have been found date to this era. Many fossil lake beds in the southern interior of Arabia, for example, are ringed by remains probably left by hunting parties, though no sites as substantial as those in eastern Arabia, with burials and stratified deposits, have yet been identified.

Early Bronze Age By the end of the fourth or the beginning of the third millennium BC, the cultural manifestations around the Arabian Peninsula begin to show more and more divergence in all forms of material culture. In southeastern Arabia, monumental tombs built of unworked stone, of so-called ‘Hafit’ type (after Jabal Hafit), appear on ridge tops near oases such as Baat and Buraimi. Although they contained few individuals, they were probably collective. Imported ceramics point to links with the Jamdat Nasr period (c. 3000 BC) in southern Mesopotamia. Towards the middle of the third millennium, the better-attested ‘Umm an-Nar’ culture, with its large circular fortifications (c. 16–40 m in diameter, built of stone, mud brick, or a combination of both) and far more numerous collective tombs, built of unworked stone faced with finely masoned limestone ashlars, emerges. In rare cases, the limestone ashlars of these tombs have scenes in low relief, including humans and animals

Figure 1 Temple of cut limestone ashlars at Barbar, Bahrain.

(camel, oryx, donkey, bull). Mesopotamian and Bahraini pottery, Iranian, black-on-gray ceramics and carved softstone vessels, ivory combs from Bactria and/or the Indus Valley, and Harappan weights and etched carnelian beads, all reflect peak close ties with a wide array of regions extending from the Indus Valley in the east to Syria in the west. At RJ2 in eastern Oman (Ras al-Jinz), a sprawling settlement with third millennium occupation has revealed fragments of bitumen bearing cord and reed mat impressions that come from boats. Harappan material, including ceramics and seals, found at the site suggests that Ras al-Jinz, the nearest landfall to Pakistan and India if one crosses the Arabian Sea by boat, was probably an important stage in the maritime routes linking the Indus Valley and the west. Importantly, RJ2 has also yielded a rectangular, footed incense burner with traces of aromatic resin still adhering to its upper surface. This find suggests that the trade in aromatics linking south Arabia, or the frankincense and myrrh-producing regions of Dhofar (technically in Oman, but culturally south Arabian), was already underway in the Bronze Age, a probability made highly plausible by references to a large variety of aromatics in Mesopotamian cuneiform sources of third millennium date. Late in the third millennium, several large settlements were founded on Bahrain (Qalat al-Bahrain and Saar), while nearby temples (Barbar and Diraz) displayed the first public religious architecture known in the region (Figure 1). In contrast to southeastern Arabia where collective burial (sometimes involving hundreds of individuals) was the norm, burial mounds

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on Bahrain, over 150 000 of which have been counted on aerial photographs of the main island, were predominantly individual inhumations. Cuneiform sources in Mesopotamia allow us to identify southeastern Arabia with the region known as Magan (Sumerian) or Makkan (Akkadian) at this time. The mainland of eastern Saudi Arabia, with the important island of Tarut, and Bahrain, on the other hand, formed the land known as Dilmun (Sumerian) or Tilmun (Akkadian). Settlements and tombs on the mainland at Rufayah, Abqayq, and Dhahran, and on Tarut, show evidence of strong connections with southern Mesopotamia (ceramics) and southeastern Iran (softstone vessels). Elsewhere in the peninsula, however, third millennium occupation is more elusive. Recent C-14 dates from the deepest levels at Tayma, in the Hejaz, suggest that Bronze Age occupation underlies the predominantly Iron Age strata at the site. In Yemen, the ‘Bronze Age’ was only discovered less than 25 years ago when Italian archaeologists revealed stone structures near Sirwah at Khawlan at-Tiyal and Hada’; in the Wadi Hirab, north of the Jawf; and on the high plateau near Sana’a around Hadur Hamdan and Rayda. These seem to be small villages of agriculturalists who cultivated wheat, barley, sorghum, and oats, and kept domesticated sheep, goat, and possibly donkey. A limited range of brick-red, sand-tempered ceramic forms, some of which are decorated with burnishing and incision on the exterior, as well as ground and flaked stone tools, copper tools (pins/ awls) and weaponry (short swords with raised midrib and two rivets at the base for attachment to the hilt, c. 16–25 cm long, all from Bayt al-Mujali), and jewelry made of shell and semiprecious stones, constitute the bulk of the material found on these sites, with one important exception. A small number of monolithic, anthropomorphic statues, made of granite and varying between c. 17.5 and 33 cm in height, appears to date to the third millennium (and possibly the second as well). All have small, triangular, flattened heads with eyes indicated by slight depressions and a clear nose, atop broad, square shoulders. The upper arms are held vertically against the body, and the forearms are horizontal, a pose that is reminiscent of Mesopotamian statuary of the mid-third millennium in the Diyala region (Early Dynastic II). Males are often distinguished by a raised ridge running from the shoulder downward, between the hands and around the upper waist (a rope? braid? edge of a toga-like garment that left the neck and one shoulder uncovered?); a belt closer to the hips; and a penis. In one case, a female is identifiable by a large pubic triangle, while in another small breasts and the labial area are

clearly delineated. The function of such statuary is unknown. On analogy with contemporary Mesopotamia, these anthropomorphic images may represent dead individuals who wished to be commemorated by a statue in an attitude of perpetual prayer. If so, then it is likely that they were originally displayed in a temple or shrine of some sort. The third millennium inhabitants of south Arabia were buried in ‘turret’ graves, collective inhumations built of unworked stone whch often occur in clusters or alignments. Most have been robbed, however, and the paucity of archaeological finds contained in them have made their dating problematic. Another tomb type dating to the mid-third millennium, attested at al-Qibali 9 in the Wadi Arf and at graves in the Wadi al-Muhammadiyin, consists of a circle of vertical, unworked boulders, some of which may have incised, anthropomorphic forms on the outer face. These resemble the freestanding granite statuary described above, with the addition of a particular dagger type, with crescentic pommel or handle (perhaps the handle type that would have been riveted to the copper blades found at Bayt al-Mujali). Close parallels for precisely this type of weapon are known from the so-called grave of Meskalamdug (PG 755) in the Royal Cemetery at Ur (c. 2500 BC) and later in a XIIth Dynasty grave at Dahshur in Egypt (early second millennium BC). Archaeological explorations at shell middens on the Farasan islands in the lower Red Sea have been directed at documenting links between southwestern Arabia and pharaonic Egypt but to date there is no compelling evidence of such ties before the Late Bronze Age (see the relevant section below). As for the Early Bronze Age of central and northern Arabia, as well as most of the Red Sea littoral north of Yemen, we have no information at the present time. By the mid-third millennium, eastern Arabia began to figure increasingly in Mesopotamian cuneiform sources. Late Early Dynastic documents show us Dilmun (Bahrain/eastern Saudi Arabia) as an exporter of woods ‘from foreign lands’ and copper to the southern Mesopotamian city of Lagash. By the twentyfourth century BC, Magan (UAE/Oman) had become an object of aggression as at least two Old Akkadian kings, Naram-Sin and Manishtushu, conducted campaigns there. Further aggression may have taken place during the Ur III period, but the trade of Mesopotamian textiles and oil (sesame) for copper from Magan (extracted from the copper-rich ophiolite formation of the Hajar mountains in Oman) is also attested (Figure 2). A decentralized political system is suggested by the size and nature of sites from this period in the UAE and Oman, most which are dominated by one or more fortified towers and were probably the

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Figure 2 The copper-rich Hajar mountains run from the northern UAE to the southeastern part of Oman.

Figure 3 Gold objects from the late 3rd millennium BC tomb at Tell Abraq.

strongholds of local rulers, but there is at least one text from Ur in Iraq which records the receipt of gold dust from a ‘king of Magan’ (Figure 3) (see Political Complexity, Rise of).

Middle Bronze Age In the early second millennium, the major settlement at Qalat al-Bahrain grew within the confines of an enormous city wall, built at the very end of the third millennium, encompassing some 15 ha. A large, palatial residence built of cut limestone ashlars, that continued to be used right through the Iron Age, was erected in this period. Cuneiform documents from Ur confirm that an important trade in copper ingots (originating in Oman) on their way to the cities of

southern Mesopotamia passed through the hands of Dilmunite traders. A planned settlement at Saar, with streets, a temple, and a consistent set of multiroomed houses, was also inhabited. Furthermore, a colony of Dilmunites was established on Failaka, an island in the bay of Kuwait, at the head of the Gulf. Distinctive stamp seals with iconography showing humans and animals were used by Dilmunite traders, as a sealimpressed tablet recording trade in metals found at Susa, in southwestern Iran, attests. Relations with Oman, Dilmun’s copper source, are reflected in the presence of typical red-ridged, Dilmunite (so-called ‘Barbar’) pottery, at sites like Tell Abraq and Kalba in the UAE, the composition of some of which (from Tell Abraq) shows that it originated at Saar. In Oman and the UAE, a change in diet is suggested by isotopic analyses of skeletal remains from collective tombs. Fewer terrestrial fauna (cattle, sheep, goat) were being consumed, while marine resources contributed a greater proportion of the protein intake than previously. Whether environmental conditions deterioriated at this time is unclear, though this has been invoked as a possible cause of settlement regression. Whereas tombs are abundant enough in the first 700 years of the second millennium, settlements became exceedingly scarce. A reversion to nomadism is unlikely, particularly as there is no evidence of camel domestication yet (see below). It is certain, however, that socioeconomic change occurred, visible in changes in ceramics, settlement pattern, and burial form. Graves were now either long, single-chambered structures (both semi-subterranean and above ground); ovoid, sometimes with an internal wall running the length of the chamber; or multichambered aggregates

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of roughly circular or oval spaces (perhaps built successively to house members of an extended group?). The evidence of contact with the outside world, so abundant in the late third millennium, is considerably less, though post-Harappan and Kaftari (Elamite) ceramics, at Tell Abraq and Shimal, as well as pottery and seals of Dilmunite type, reflect ongoing contact with foreign areas. The Middle Bronze Age remains very poorly attested outside of eastern Arabia, and it is not until the Late Bronze Age that the archaeological sequences in northwestern and southwestern Arabia offer us much evidence.

Late Bronze Age The late second millennium BC is now seen by many as the formative period in both northwestern and southern Arabia, leading directly to the emergence of state-level societies in Yemen during the Iron Age and major tribal confederations (e.g., the Midianites) in the Hejaz that interacted on a variety of levels with the peoples of Syro-Palestine and Egypt. On the Tihama coast (Red Sea) and around the southwestern tip of Arabia toward Abyan, to the east of Aden, a unified, Late Bronze culture known as the ‘Sabr’ culture (after the type site of the same name, c. 20 km north of Aden) shows clear links in ceramic shapes and punctate or combed decoration with African material, particularly at pre-Aksumite sites in Ethiopia and Eritrea, from which the Yemeni coast is separated only by the narrow Bab al-Mandab, and on sites of the Pan Grave culture in Nubia. Less oriented toward the highlands of Yemen than toward the Red Sea, the Sabr culture represents an important phase of development prior to the rise of Saba in the early first millennium BC. The trajectory that led in the direction of the ‘classical’ south Arabian states (Awsan, Saba, Ma’in, Qataban, and Himyar) is, however, apparent in the highlands at Yala and Hajar Bin Humeid, where calibrated C-14 dates push the beginnings of settlements utilizing irrigation agriculture and making ceramics which prefigure later south Arabian material, back to the twelfth century BC. Some scholars have pointed to early occuation at Raybun and Shabwa in the Wadi Hadramawt which appears not merely pre-Sabaean but noon-Sabaean, evincing links, to judge by the ceramics, with the southern Levant. Such links are long suspected by linguists who point to a probable common ancestry for the Phoenician and the south Arabian alphabet and similarities between alphabetic Ugaritic and the south Semitic alphabet and letter order. These clues, along with ceramic parallels, have convinced researchers that an important

stimulus leading to the appearance of classical south Arabian civilization derived from overland contacts along what would become the western ‘incense’ route leading from Gaza in Palestine to Marib in Saba. Certainly at the time proposed for such links, northwestern Arabia was inhabited, but there has been no excavation at key sites such as Qurayyah, east of the Gulf of Aqaba in northwesternmost Saudi Arabia, where the visible remains of fortifications, a citadel, agricultural fields, ceramic production area, and an associated settlement are known only from brief surface investigations. Both Late Bronze Age Aegean and Egyptian parallels, and with ‘Midianite’ wares from the copper-smelting site of Timna near Aqaba, suggest nevertheless that a date in the thirteenth–twelfth centuries BC is highly probable. Relations with Egypt and Israel, attested to in written sources, will unfortunately remain invisible from an archaeological perspective until excavations are undertaken at Qurayyah and other sites in the region. Turning to the east, by the Late Bronze Age, Bahrain had come under the control of the Kassite dynasty in southern Mesopotamia. Archaeologically, this is manifested by a fundamental change in the ceramic repertoire, as classic Kassite shapes replace those of the Barbar–Dilmunite tradition. Several dozen cuneiform texts found in the reused palatial building on Qalat al-Bahrain, surely the seat of provincial administration at this time, attest to the use of writing for local recording purposes by Kassite officials, but, apart from this, writing seems not to have become more widespread in the local community. Failaka, too, was well within the Kassite sphere of influence, and the settlement there, consisting of densely packed, multiroomed houses built of locally available beach rock (Arabic farush), shows the same predominance of Kassite ceramic forms as Bahrain. Southeastern Arabia, on the other hand, remained beyond Kassite control. At the end of the Late Bronze Age, local ceramic forms and fabrics find few parallels outside the region and with the exception of a small number of sherds resembling Elamite material from southwestern Iran, as well as one manifestly Elamite cylinder seal of faience from Tell Abraq, evidence of ties to other regions is lacking.

Iron Age During the early first millennium BC, several factors combined to launch a number of regions in the Arabian peninsula toward complex statehood. Agricultural intensification due to improved irrigation, the production of surpluses under the control of local elites, the domestication of the camel enabling long-distance caravan trade in aromatics, and pressure from outside

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aggressors (principally Assyria) all contributed to state formation processes in southwestern and northwestern Arabia, while in the Persian Gulf and southeastern Arabia, tributary relations with Assyria on the part of local rulers were documented. By far the best known of these states arose in south Arabia where thousands of inscriptions, many of them historical or annalistic, shed light on the intense competition between rulers and regions that resulted in the consolidation of successive Sabaean, Minaean, Qatabanian, Hadramawt, and Himyarite states. Although we know little of the earliest supraregional state in the region, Awsan, there is an unbroken record of state-level, highly organized, militaristic societies with standing armies and important external trade and diplomatic relations from the eighth century BC, when two Sabaean kings are mentioned in Assyrian royal inscriptions, to the coming of Islam in the seventh century AD. Broadly speaking, this millennium can be divided into four main periods: (1) the period of the mukarribs (‘unifiers’ or ‘federators’) of Saba, eighth to sixth century BC; (2) the period of the kings of Saba, fifth to first century BC; (3) the period of the kings of Saba and dhu-Raydan, first to third century AD; and (4) the Himyarite period, fourth to sixth century AD. South Arabian society was supported by an intensive agricultural regime dependent on irrigation. Major dams, like the one at the Sabaean capital Marib, stored water and enabled the production of massive agricultural surpluses. Large, walled cities (Marib, Sirwah, Baraqish, Shabwa, Najran, etc.) dot the south Arabian landscape, along with smaller towns, villages, and farmsteads in a complex hierarchy of settlement. High standards of stone masonry and an arid climate have resulted in an extraordinary level of preservation at many sites. Monumental tombs, replete with alabaster statuary, bronze weaponry, and ceramics; silver and base metal coinage, inspired originally by Athenian coinage; a rich repertoire of iconographic elements in architectural decoration and metalwork; and a passion for highly visible, elegantly carved public inscriptions, characterize south Arabia’s civilizations. In northwestern Arabia, the site of Tayma grew into a major urban center during the sixth century BC when the neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus moved his residence there from 553 to 543 BC. A large city wall enclosing an important settlement with temples and industrial areas makes this the largest archaeological site in the region. At about the same time, an important settlement on the northeastern outskirts of the al-’Ula oasis, known as Khuraybah, began to grow. The site, where Saudi excavations have recently begun, is attested in the Bible as Dedan (e.g., Genesis 10.7, etc.) and was home to a trading emporium

founded by Minaean merchants from south Arabia who thereby established an important commercial center near the northern end of the incense route. Other important Iron Age remains have been identified in the Jawf oasis of north-central Arabia, ancient Adummatu of the Assyrian sources, but these have not yet been investigated intensively. Assyrian accounts of campaigns in the region make it clear, however, that tribal confederations of camelbreeding nomads occupied much of the north Arabian desert in the early and mid-first millennium BC. The archaeology of this population is virtually unknown, although some of the abundant rock art to be seen in the region probably dates to this period. Assyrian sources also record the receipt of tribute from several kings of Dilmun but these predate the occupational evidence from the major palatial building on Qalat al-Bahrain which was used during the mid-first millennium. Ceramics and a rock crystal stamp seal in Achaemenid court style suggest that a provincial administrator in the service of the Achaemenid Persian Empire may have used the building. Otherwise, there is little archaeological evidence of Persian control at this time. The Iron Age in the Oman peninsula witnessed an explosion of settlement. Thanks to the introduction of qanat or falaj irrigation technology, many new oasis settlements were established, some of which were walled. Date palm cultivation probably expanded at this time and the use of the domesticated dromedary camel is attested. Sites like Muweilah, Rumeilah, al-Thuqaibah, and Hili 17 reflect the existence of large communities living in multiroomed, mud brick houses. Bronze weaponry has been recovered in large quantities in cemeteries such as al-Qusais, on the outskirts of Dubai. Iron Age graves have been found all over southeastern Arabia, and Izki, according to Assyrian sources, was the base of a king named Pade who sent tribute to the Assyrian ruler Assurbanipal in the seventh century BC.

The Age of World Empires Between Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Achaemenid Empire in the late fourth century BC and the coming of Islam, the different sub-areas of the Arabian peninsula experienced highly variable interaction with the empires of later antiquity. In eastern Arabia, there are visible signs of contact with the postAlexander Seleucid Empire, based in central Mesopotamia, and with the later Parthian and Sasanian Empires that originated in Iran. A small Seleucid garrison that has yielded Greek inscriptions and coins, imported Hellenistic pottery and figurines of Greek

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deities, was established on Failaka island. Similar sorts of finds are attested on Bahrain, particularly at Qalat al-Bahrain and in hundreds of burial mounds, while in the UAE and Oman the degree of Hellenistic influence is considerably less, amounting to a small quantity of imported pottery (e.g., the stamped handles from Rhodian wine amphorae) and a small number of coins. A local dynast named Abiel minted his own coins at the site of Mleiha, in the interior of Sharjah, where a sprawling settlement with private houses and monumental, mud brick graves, generally reminiscent of Palmyrene funerary towers in Syria, has been excavated. Large quantities of imported Parthian pottery, along with Characene coins from southern Iraq, Namord ware from southeastern Iran, Indian Red Polished Ware from the Indian subcontinent, and quantities of Roman glass, have been found in excavations at the large (c. 4  1 km2) site of edDur, on the Persian Gulf coast north of Umm alQaiwain. Later occupational evidence in southeastern Arabia is scarce. Although a large settlement mound at Kush, in Ras al-Khaimah, has been excavated, as well as numerous graves around Samad in Oman, the last few centuries before the coming of Islam are poorly documented, perhaps because climatic conditions deteriorated and population declined. Given the distance from Yemen to the rest of the Near East, south Arabia was rarely threatened by her neighbors and its later history is marked more by internal military strife than external threats. Although diplomatic relations are attested in the Assyrian period, and an alliance between the Hamdanid dynasty and the Axumites in Ethiopia is attested in the second century AD, the Roman expedition against Marib of 26/5 BC was the first foreign incursion into south Arabia. Increasingly, however, south Arabia was drawn into a web of international political competition between the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires, in which Christianity, Judaism, and international trade all played a role. Archaeologically, the last few centuries before Islam are poorly known. The major site of Zafar, capital of Himyar, has never been excavated, and only cursory investigations have been undertaken at Najran, scene of an infamous massacre of Christians by Dhu Nawas, a Jewish ruler in south Arabia who came to power through a coup in 521–522 AD. The conquest of south Arabia by the Sasanians in 575 is archaeologically ‘invisible’. The last great ‘civilization’ in pre-Islamic northwestern Arabia was that of the Nabataeans. Although normally associated with their capital Petra in southern Jordan, the Nabataeans exercised control much further south. Madain Salih, in northwestern Saudi Arabia, about 110 km southwest of Tayma, is a major site with rock-cut tombs and a large settlement

mound. Smaller Nabataean sites are also known in the region. See also: Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Mesolithic Cultures; Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad; Paleolithic Cultures; Africa, North: Egypt, PrePharaonic; Animal Domestication; Asia, South: Indus Civilization; Political Complexity, Rise of.

Further Reading Edens C and Wilkinson TJ (1998) Southwest Arabia during the Holocene: Recent archaeological developments. Journal of World Prehistory 12: 55–119. Hoyland R (2001) Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam. London: Taylor and Francis. Potts DT (1990) The Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, Vols. 1–2. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Simpson St J (ed.) (2002) Queen of Sheba: Treasures from Ancient Yemen. London: British Museum.

Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant Suzanne Richard, Gannon University, Erie, PA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary aniconic Traditional view that bans idols from the decorative arts, for example, Jewish tradition disallows images in accordance with Mosaic law. Asherah The Canaanite mother goddess, term used to describe Iron Age pillar figurines. bit-hilani A Syrian-style palace/temple consisting of a portico with columns, often with animals carved into the column bases. hippodamian A town plan on a gridiron pattern, usually divided into blocks according to various functions. hypogeum An underground stone-built tomb. Merneptah stele Victory stele of Pharaoh Merneptah (1207 BCE) mentioning numerous conquests, including, the people, Israel. miqvaot Pl. of miqveh, a Hebrew term for a ritual bath. tetrapylon Architectural gate-like structure consisting of four arches usually located at a major intersection in a Roman city. Via Nova Trajiana The new road of Trajan, built after CE 135 from Petra to Bostra.

Introduction Defining the Near Eastern Area: The Levant

The area encompasses the modern countries of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, as well as, Palestine and the

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Sinai Peninsula (Egypt), although in antiquity, the region’s borders often blurred with those of Anatolia (Turkey) and Mesopotamia (Iraq). Often called Syria– Palestine or the Levant, the region divides naturally along geopolitical borders today. Scholars specialize in either Syria/Lebanon (north) or Jordan/Israel (south), the latter increasingly referred to as the southern Levant. In the past, work in the south focused on illuminating the biblical text (‘biblical archaeology’); however, in the 1960s, the methods and theory of the ‘new archaeology’ revolutionized work in the Levant. Today, those scholars undertaking the daunting task of relating biblical texts to archaeological data often use the term, ‘biblical archaeology’, specifically to refer to the Iron Age. Physical Environment/Geopolitical Landscape

Western Syria/Lebanon and the southern Levant form a geomorphologic unit. They share ca. a 400-mile Mediterranean coastline, and parallel mountain chains on either side of the Rift Valley (Ghab, Orontes and Beka‘a valleys, southward to the Galilee Lake, Jordan River, Dead Sea, and Araba to the Red Sea). Much of the region is desert or semi-arid steppe: the Negev/ Sinai, the Saudi Arabian Desert in eastern Jordan, and the Syrian Desert in southeastern Syria. Northeastern Syria (Jezirah) was part of North Mesopotamia, while the Euphrates area, generally, was often part of greater Mesopotamia. The Levantine corridor favored north–south trade routes: the Via Maris on the coast, and the ‘King’s Highway’ in Transjordan (ancient Jordan), both stretching northward to Syrian hubs from which trade routes radiated to the coast, to Anatolia, and to Mesopotamia. As this broad survey encompasses the prehistoric through classical periods, the intent is to highlight the current scholarly assessment and/or compelling issue in each period, and to illustrate it with select data sets. When cultural trajectories diverge, the north and south will be treated separately, in that order. Chronological ranges generally encompass the two regions, but do not imply exactly similar horizons. The start dates reflect the earliest cultural occurrence; time lags will be noted.

Prehistory: Paleolithic – Neolithic Paleolithic (Old Stone Age): Hunter-Gatherers to Foragers

Lower At ‘Ubeidiya, near Lake Galilee, chopping stones and micromammal remains, related to the Oldowan Acheulean industry and dating to 1.4 million years ago, now provide clear evidence for the early movement ‘out of Africa’ of Homo erectus. Although fossil remains are few, and mostly in Late Acheulian

Israel (‘Ubeidiya, Gesher Benot Ya‘akov, and Zuttiyeh’s Galilee Man), hand axes, wooden artifacts, and plant remains at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, and the earliest known piece of art – a steatopygous female figurine – at Berekhat Ram in the Golan Heights, evidence a developing hunter-gatherer society some 600 000 years ago. Sites in the north (Yabrud, Adlun, Hummal, el-Kowm) reflect regional variations near the end (Acheulean–Yabrudian), underscoring developing diversity in the Levant. Middle New radiometric dating methods have raised the start of this period considerably (250 000– 45 000 year ago), resulting in a greater overlap with the previous. An agreed demarcation, however, is the absence of bifacial (handax) tools, while the Levallois reduction technique (flake/blades) becomes characteristic. The best-known caves and rock shelters are situated in the Mediterranean core area, for example, Mount Carmel. The new dating has put those caves at the center of controversy (human origins), since archaic (Amud, Kebara, and Tabun caves) and modern humans (Qafzeh and Skhul caves) appear to be competitors using similar tools. Scholars remain divided on whether the Mount Carmel remains indicate that modern humans coexisted with or evolved from archaic humans. Upper Archaeologists exploring beyond the core area have found open-air sites in semi-arid lands, revealing that by 47 000–18 000 BCE modern humans showed astonishing adaptation, for example, Boker Tachtit (Negev), the Sinai, eastern Jordan’s Azraq Basin, Ksar Akil 25 (Lebanon), and Palmyra, and el-Koum (Syria). Accompanied with a toolkit of blades, there is a concomitant trend toward more mobile subsistence strategies and processing of plants, that is, foraging, whose clearest data are seen in the uppermost or Epipalaeolithic period. Epipaleolithic: Foragers to Sedentists

One can best comprehend the Kebaran (c. 18 000– 12 000 BCE) and Natufian (c. 12 000–9500 BCE) as evincing a ‘broad spectrum revolution;’ that is, a hunting strategy (foraging) that exploits a wide variety of game, cereals, and legumes in a localized area. This strategy inevitably led to sedentism, namely, the multiphased, round hut villages of Eynan (Galilee), Mureybit and Abu Hureyra (Euphrates). Astonishingly, Abu Hureyra may have domesticated grain (rye); Mureybit yielded over a 100 species of seeds and plants. The archaeological correlates to grain processing are: sickles with silica, mortars and pestles

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(Hayonim Cave, Wadi Hammeh 27, Saaide II, and desert sites in Jordan); to long-distance trade: obsidian, Red Sea shells, and basalt; to symbolism: the sickle hafts and figurines – the first true art. More exciting is the recent discovery of Natufian-like behavior in the early Kebaran. The open-air sites of Neve David (Mount Carmel) and Ohalo II (Galilee) already display the characteristics of sedentism, including thousands of seeds at the latter site! Neolithic: New Stone Age – Farmers, Herders, and Potters

Aceramic Neolithic PPNA Coincidently or not, at the onset of the Holocene era (c. 9600 BCE), the revolutionary first unequivocal domestication of plants (einkorn wheat, barley, and pulses) occurred (subsequent to sedentism, not the reverse). Concurrent with domestication, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) peoples crossed the threshold to permanent village settlements: Mureybit, Jerf el-Ahmar, Tell Aswad; in the south, Netiv Hagdud, ‘Iraq ed-Dubb, and Jericho, whose stone wall and ‘tower’ earned it the title, ‘earliest city in the world’. Wall paintings (Mureybit), auroch skulls on benches (Jerf al-Ahmar), along with decapitated burials and burning, suggest ritual communal buildings. Though foraging still dominates, as the first true arrowhead (notched el-Khiam point) indicates, developing social organization is implicit in these experimental farming villages. PPNB As researchers now know, it was somewhat later (8300–6800 BCE) that plant domestication became widespread, followed by the domestication of goats and sheep. Surely implying population growth, mega-sites (25–35 acres), comprising large, multiroomed, rectangular houses (‘Ain Ghazal, Wadi Shueib, Basta in Jordan, Abu Hureyra, and others in the north) now appeared. Their most recognizable attribute is the ever-present lime plaster, whether on floors and walls, in ‘white ware’, or, more spectacularly, on plastered skulls and figurines, even unique busts and statues, some almost 30 tall at ‘Ain Ghazal (Figure 1). The latter tradition, apparently an ancestor cult, is widespread (Bouqras, Tell Halula, Beisamoun, Wadi Shu’eib, Tell Sabi Abyard). Other evidence of ritual includes: decapitated burials below floors, and sanctuaries (Beidha ‘Ain Ghazal, Tell Sabi Abyad II, Halulu). It is possible that the remarkable PPNB (Figure 2) period ended due to over-cultivation and environmental degradation by the population. Throughout the entire region, shifting settlement patterns, the abandonment of numerous sites, but occupational continuity at others, all suggest a dynamic

Figure 1 Female plaster statue and bust from the 1983 MPPNB statuary cache at ‘Ain Ghazal. Photo by Peter Dorrell and Stuart Laidlaw. Permission of the ‘Ain Ghazal Archaeological Project.

period of transition to the pottery cultures of the Pottery Neolithic (PN). PPNC This phase in the south equals the Final PPNB/ early PN in Syria. Discerned originally at ‘Ain Ghazal and now recognized at a handful of sites in the south, the PPNC links the PPN to the PN period, thus closing the hiatus palestinien proposed by Kathleen Kenyon on the basis of an abandonment at Jericho. In lithics (mostly flakes) and mortuary practices (skull intact), but especially in architectural remains (small singleroom houses and corridor structures for storage) and in faunal remains, a new mode of subsistence is perceptible: nomadic pastoralism. The seasonal herding of sheep and goats as a subsistence strategy distinct from sedentism may have arisen at this time due to the ecoenvironmental conditions, as noted previously. Ceramic/Pottery Neolithic (PN) The transition (c. 6900 BCE in Syria) to widespread agricultural villages is cloudy, although continuity at a few sites (Abu Hureyra, Bouqras, Tell Ramad, Tell Sabi Abyad) alludes to a primarily indigenous process (also ‘Ain Ghazal in the south, early–mid sixth millennium). Typically, sites are small, dispersed, and short spanned, often in new locations (Amuq, Hama; in the south Munhatta, Sha‘ar ha-Golan). It is thought that the

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Figure 2 The PPNB Lower Temple, dated to 7016  132 cal BC. Photo by Bilal Deghedeh and Yousef Zu’bi. Permission of the ‘Ain Ghazal Archaeologicao Project.

new pattern reflects the adaptation and consolidation of a ‘mixed farming’ regime, with its offshoot, pastoralism. Notably, in the north, there are a few larger regional sites; in the south, Sha‘ar ha-Golan has public buildings and a vast collection of female figurines. Pottery making, a correlative process to PPNB lime-plaster technology, appeared c. 6900 BCE at Tell Damishlyiia and Tell Sabi Abyad, in the Jezirah (protoHassuna ware), and in the ‘Amuq (‘dark-faced burnished ware’), and later at ‘Ain Ghazal, in the south (Yarmoukian). Around 6000, exquisite red-painted Halaf ware appeared in the Jezireh, then spread to the coast along with an assemblage of tholoi, red-painted figurines, stamp seals, and clay sealings. Implying large-scale pottery production, specialized craftsmanship, and trade (seals), this growing complexity (in the north) accelerated in the following period.

Chalcolithic (Copper-Stone) Age: Cultural Complexity and Cities North

Syria experienced two cultural waves from southern Mesopotamia, where complex irrigation agricultural societies developed: Ubaid, in the late sixth and fifth milleniums, and Uruk (first city/first writing) in the mid-fourth millennium. The issue is to isolate diffusion from local processes in the rise of cities. The pervasive Ubaid culture’s mass-produced pottery coincided with a noticeable developing complexity at sites, suggesting diffusion. Some sites, Tell Hamam et Turkman, Tell Brak, Tell Zyadeh in the Jezireh and Tell Kurdu, Ras

Shamra, and Afis in the west have 10–14 Ubaid levels, including granaries (grill buildings). By 3600 BCE, diffusion from Sumer (the Uruk Expansion/World System) was unequivocal. Habuba Kabira is the quintessential Mesopotamian urban colony: fortifications, tripartite-niched cultic buildings, cone mosaics, beveled-rim bowls, and clay tablets of pre-pictographic style. Other colonies on the Euphrates include Jebel Aruda, Hadidi, Sheik Hasan, Tell el-Haj, Habuba Kabira; in the Syrian Desert, el-Koum. On the other hand, a mixed local and Uruk assemblage characterizes the established sites like Hama, the ‘Amuq, and Tell Brak (the ‘‘Eye Temple’’). The most significant new development is the view that Tell Brak (a 240-acre site with monumental buildings and a hierarchy of hinterland sites) and, possibly, Tell Hamoukar were urban sites before the Uruk expansion. What this signifies is that a local urban trajectory in the dry-farming north (Jezireh) may have paralleled that of the irrigation societies of the south (Sumer). The period ended with the Uruk Collapse c. 3100. Southern Levant

A different picture emerged locally (c. 4500), as probable ‘chiefdoms’ arose in several of numerous regions, the northern Negev (Shiqmim, Gilat), and the Jordan Valley (Teleilat el-Ghassul). The evidence for developing hierarchies consists of a two-tier settlement pattern, expansive settlements, public sanctuaries, and elaborate ritual; formal cemeteries, trade networks, and craft specialization (ivory, basalt stone

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carving, metals, pottery) centering on religious iconography (Figures 3 and 4). The rich corpus of prestige items must indicate a ruling elite. The spectacular Cave of the Treasure (Nahal Mishmar) hoard contained 429 mostly ritualistic copper items (crowns, scepters, maces), generally considered the temple equipment from nearby Ein Gedi, a sacred precinct overlooking the Dead Sea. The Teleilat el-Ghassul temples displayed extraordinary frescoes illustrating mythical figures and an apparent ceremony; at Gilat, a wealth of cultic paraphernalia was recovered in the temple. Nahal Qana’s eight gold ring ingots affirm trade in prestige items with Egypt. As scholars consider the interplay of prestige items, the cult, and metallurgy, they must

factor in the recent stunning discovery of the largest copper mine in the Near East (Wadi Feinan in southern Jordan). Still enigmatic are the reasons for this preurban society’s total collapse, c. 3500 BCE, although a destruction layer with Egyptian mace heads (Gilat) is instructive.

Early Bronze Age (EBA): Widespread Urbanism and the Rise of the State North

The rise of ‘state’ institutions, temple economies, historical writing, in short, civilization, is a hallmark

Figure 3 Overview of excavations in the Shiqmim Chalcolithic village, Northern Negev desert, Israel. Photo: T. E. Levy, UCSD Levantine Archaeology Laboratory.

Figure 4 Cache of Chalcolithic ceramic vessels found in a ritual deposit, Shiqmim village, northern Negev desert, Israel. Photo: T. E. Levy, UCSD Levantine Archaeology Laboratory.

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Figure 5 Umm el-Marra, Syria. General view of Early Bronze Age Tomb 1, an elite tomb with multiple burials. Pictured here are two men buried in the middle layer. Courtesy Glenn M. Schwartz.

of Sumer and Egypt, c. 3000 BCE. Lately, scholars seeking the mechanisms for ‘secondary’ state formation have focused on local trajectories distinct from the Mesopotamian model, a case in point being the dry-farming region of the Jezireh. Following the ‘Uruk Collapse’, an apparent indigenous development (the pivotal ‘Ninevite V’ period) climaxed in widespread urbanism (by 2600 BCE), for example, the 216-acre city-state of Tell Leilan. Elsewhere urbanism emerged in the west at Byblos, Ras Shamra, Hama. Even rural sites (Figure 8) show surprising complexity, for example, monumental architecture (Kashkashu III, Halawa, Raqa‘i), hydraulic systems (Umbashi, like nearby Jawa in Jordan). Ebla Several phenomenal expressions of late third millennium urban city-states (Ebla, Mari, Urkesh) enlighten us on Syria and its ethnic composition. The revolutionary discoveries at Ebla (Tell Mardikh) unveiled a hitherto unknown palatial state equal to Sumer, and an unknown Semitic language, called Eblaite, found on cuneiform tablets in the Palace G archive. Both the workshops, filled with quantities of tin, obsidian, lapis lazuli, etc., and the texts document Ebla’s control of major trade routes. Related Semitic language and texts at Mari elaborate the rival’s control of the middle Euphrates and contiguous steppe. There, Mesopotamian culture is more pervasive than at Ebla, where native traditions in art and in religion are apparent. At Urkesh (Tell Mozan), the Hurrian capital, stunning monumental remains, including a vast monumental temple plaza and terrace are coming to light.

Figure 6 Umm el-Marra, Syria. Lapis Lazuli wild goat ornament found with female skeletons in upper layer of Early Bronze Age Tomb 1. Courtesy Glenn M. Schwartz.

Stone-built tombs at Mishrife (Qatna), and Umm el-Marra (Figures 5–7) the corbelled Hypogeum at Tell Ahmar (Til Barsip), and the unique ‘white mountain’ tomb at Banat underscore the wealth and prestige of urban elites. The ‘caliciform’ culture, mass-produced corrugated cups and bowls, links sites across the region, including the southern Levant (EB IV). Destruction, abandonment, and decentralization marked the end of the third millennium. Southern Levant

On the periphery of the ‘Uruk World System’ but probably feeling ripples from Syria, a local type of urbanism developed, its rise and collapse being a major issue of research. By EB II (3100 BCE), a fairly

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uniform pattern of fortified sites of a size ranging from 10 to 60 acres was typical (Megiddo, ‘Ai, Jericho, Tell el-Farah N.). A wealth of new data suggests that Egypt quickened or stimulated urbanization. Egyptians involved in royal trade resided in EB I/II southern coastal sites (‘Ein Besor, ‘Erani, Taur Ikhbeineh), as adduced by Egyptian material culture, but especially royal serekhs of Narmer (Dynasty 0). Levantine jars (‘the Abydos jug’) in Egyptian tombs verify an interregional trade, which also included copper from a complex network involving Arad, Feinan, and Negev/Sinai sites. EB III Between 2750 and 2300 BCE, urbanism peaked in mega, highly fortified sites (Yarmuth’s 40 m wide defenses (Figure 9): Jericho’s underwent 16 rebuilds in EB II–III), following the collapse of Negev sites and concurrent Egyptian territorial expansion. Although some question EBA urbanism, in relation to Syrian models, the 216-acre site of Yarmuth appears to be a city-state with palace economy and complex organizational hierarchies (1.5-acre palace, temple, and storage facilities). Such complexity is glimpsed elsewhere: the public granary at Beth Yerah, cultic precincts at ‘Ai, Megiddo, Khirbet Zeraqoun, Arad, and palaces at Megiddo and Arad. Wealth differential is,

Figure 7 Umm el-Marra, Syria. Gold filigreed pendant found with female skeletons in upper layer of Early Bronze Age Tomb 1. Courtesy Glenn M. Schwartz.

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Figure 8 Raqa‘i. Level 3, Syria. View of a small Early Bronze Age settlement showing domestic and industrial areas and rounded (silo) building. Courtesy Glenn M. Schwartz.

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Figure 9 EB III walled palatial complex (B1) looking NE: main courtyard in foreground, smaller courtyard in the NW, Tell Yarmuth, Israel. ã Tell Yarmuth Expedition, courtesy P. Miroschedji.

however, not observed in burials, usually multiple interments of extended families in caves or, uniquely, in charnel houses (Bab edh-Dhra‘). Urban collapse 2300 BCE Once explained by invasion, the collapse and subsequent EB IV is now generally considered a local episode of urban/rural oscillation. The EB IV, something of a ‘dark age’ until recently, is now known to include agricultural settlements, as well as pastoral sites. Although the urban sector is missing, there is a level of rural complexity, evidenced by multiphase sites, even regional centers (especially in Transjordan), displaying remnant EB III urban traditions, for example, Khirbet Iskander has reused fortifications, a bench-lined gateway, and public storeroom (Figure 10). Bab edh-Dhra’, ‘Aro’er, Abu-en-Ni‘aj, Iktanu, Sha‘ar ha Golan, Nahal Rephaim complement this picture. A large corpus of metals, and ingots connecting Negev/Sinai sites with Feinan (Khirbet Hamra Ifdan), also points to trade (Egypt), as does ‘caliciform’ pottery (Syria). The period ended c. 2000 BCE.

Middle Bronze Age (MBA): Regional Kingdoms and Common Culture Scholars have the task of explaining a transition from collapse to a revitalized urbanism, an urbanism

reflecting a similar cultural complex spanning the region (and even into the Egyptian Delta). By the end of MB I, the reoccupied tells uniformly reflected the power and institutional control of elites, and texts verify the new regional kingdoms or territorial states of Mari, Yamkhad, Qatna, Hazor (and Tell el-Daba‘ in Egypt). The highly integrated nature of the culture has much to do with interregional exchange, but also ethnic ties. Texts indicate that new peoples across the Levant were in power positions, particularly Amorites and Hurrians, and Asiatics in Egypt (the Hyksos). The urban transformation in the south is difficult to explain without positing new peoples and urban stimuli from Syria. Metals, Pottery, Defenses

Various attributes demonstrably support a highly integrated Levantine culture. Now that bronze superseded copper, distinctive forms like the notched chisel, the ‘duckbill’ axe, and socketed spearheads appeared. Metallurgical advances promoted a mastery of firing and kilns, resulting in a ceramic assemblage of well-fired, carinated, metal-like vessels with delicate ring bases, highly slipped and burnished and made on a fast wheel. Massive fortifications (Figure 11) of multiple walls, triple-entryway gates, moats, glacis, and enclosures, from Leilan to Mari

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Figure 10 Khirbet Iskander, Jordan, EB IV gate and plan, to the N. Pemission of the Khirbet Iskander Expedition, courtesy S. Richard.

to Ebla (440 thick ramparts) and Qatna to Hazor to el-Daba‘ are characteristic. Unique to the region are Tell Dan’s mudbrick arched gate, and the temple at Leilan (Shamsi Adad’s capital) with swirling designs on engaged columns.

miniature calf shrine at Ashkelon; and child burials in foundation deposit jars. The wealth of elites illustrates a growing internationalism, notable in tombs and hoards, like the heavily Egyptian-influenced Montet Jar metal hoard, from Byblos.

Wealth and Elites

Mari

Ebla offers perhaps the prototypical ‘bit-hilani’ exemplar in Temple D, a fortified (‘migdol’) tripartite temple. Royal hypogeum tombs, found filled with exquisite artifacts and sculptures beneath the palace, foreshadow the LBA tradition at Ugarit. In the south, Syrian style ‘courtyard’ palaces are known (Kabri, Megiddo, Aphek, Tell Sera), although on a different scale than the monumental palace complexes in the north (Ebla, Mari, Alalakh). Widespread contacts may explain the variety of cult structures and ritual practices, for example, the Byblos Obelisk Temple (Egyptian influence); Gezer High Place, Nahariya outdoor sanctuary; even a

The splendid 300-room palace of Zimri-Lim at Mari – renowned in its time – symbolizes the burgeoning power of kings. A gold mine of information, its 20 000 tablets mention trading partners (e.g., Dan and Hazor in the south), political alliances, warfare, religion, and, of special import, relations with the pastoral nomadic tribes who throughout history played a critical role in the region. Most notable among Mari’s countless treasures are the Mari Standard, the ‘goddess with the flowing vase’, and the Investiture fresco, whose Minoan like style has also been noted in frescoes at Tell Kabri, Alalakh, and Tell el-Daba‘.

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known, scholars investigating socioeconomic factors cite evidences of great wealth differential (elite residences, tombs, luxury items, personal seals), as a potential harbinger of societal breakdown and general urban collapse, a view supported by texts documenting a growing society of disaffected peoples (the Habiru). The sociopolitical and economic impact of empire on vassal states should likewise not be underestimated. Suzerains and Vassals

Conquest, tribute, trade, control of resources, and ultimately political and territorial hegemony drove the constant warfare of competing empires: Mitanni, Egypt, Hatti (the Hittites). Prospering urban centers on the Euphrates, such as Munbaqa, Tell Brak, and Emar, were in the heartland of Mitanni, while Hittites and Egyptians battled over western Syria. In the south, Egyptian garrison cities (Tell es-Sa‘idiyeh, Tell Beth Shean, Gaza), Egyptian style temples (Beth Shean, Lachish), anthropoid coffins (Beth Shean, Deir el-Balah), and the Amarna texts all converged to substantiate a vassal–suzerain relationship. Cosmopolitanism

Figure 11 Overview of the Middle Bronze Age southern gate complex at Tell Gezer, c. 1700–1500 BC. Credit: Hebrew Union College Gezer Excavations Phase II. Courtesy Joe D. Seger.

Writings

In the south, for the first time, there was documented literacy (Akkadian cuneiform tablets). But, it was the MB/LB invention of the (pictographic) alphabet, ancestor to the Phoenician linear alphabet, that was truly revolutionary: inscriptions of this were found at Megiddo and carved on stelae by Canaanites working in Sinai at Serabit el-Khadem. Destruction and upheaval ended the period (c. 1550/1500); Hittites campaigned in the north and Egyptians expelled the hated Hyksos. Both, in the process, carved out LBA empires.

Late Bronze Age (LBA): Internationalism, Empires, and Vassal States Despite constant warfare, there was remarkable cultural continuity with the MBA, although there was a generalized aura of decline across the region, if fewer sites, a dearth of new fortifications, and degenerate (MBA) ceramics are any indication. Incongruently, this was a time of great wealth and cosmopolitanism. Although the Sea Peoples invasion c. 1200 BCE is well

The late fourteenth c. Uluburun and Cape Gelodoniya shipwrecks off the coast of Turkey epitomize the internationalism of the period: 350 Cypriot copper ingots, Egyptian ebony, Aegean and Levantine pottery, gold, wine amphora, etc. In microcosm, the picture is the same from a family tomb at Gezer (Cave I.10A), among whose contents were an Egyptian glass vase, a Syrian jug, Mycenaean and Cypriot vessels, and a Minoan-style larnax (clay sarcophagus). Imported pottery from Cyprus and Mycenae floods the market. Extravagant palaces (Megiddo, Alalakh, Ras ibn Hani), sacred precincts (Hazor, Ugarit), monumental sculptures (Megiddo, Hazor, Ugarit), patrician residences (Tell Batash, Megiddo, Ras ibn Hani), bronze Astarte and Baal statues (Hazor, Ugarit), the Megiddo ivories (a 300-piece hoard), lavish underground stone built (corbelled) graves (Tell el-‘Ajjul, Dan, and Megiddo, Ugarit) all attest to glaring wealth differential in the Levant. Ugarit

Also glaring are palatial economies, for which Ugarit’s (Ras Shamra) fabled palace of 100 rooms is a prime example. This port city is a virtual treasure trove of gold (elite art) and other precious items and sculpture (Baal stela), but, as at Ebla, its enduring legacy was a new language, Ugaritic (Canaanite), the first fullfledged alphabetic (cuneiform) script, and close relative of Hebrew. Textual study has revealed common

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religious and social traditions with the later Israelites. Upheaval, destruction, the end of empires, and general collapse swept the Mediterranean at the end of the LBA. The culprits? Probably the Sea Peoples, their battles with Ramses III immortalized on his mortuary temple at Medinet Habu.

Iron Age: New Peoples, Nation-States, and World Empires 1200–333 BCE Once the dust settled, it was evident that a new sociopolitical order existed: into the political vacuum had come new peoples (Neo-Hittites, Phoenicians, Arameans, Israelites, Philistines Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites). New nation kingdoms were shortly to arise in this new age of Iron, only to succumb to a sequence of world empires: Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, Persian, and, ultimately, Alexander the Great. The LBA/IA transition remains enigmatic, as does the reconstitution of new political entities by numerous ethnic groups. What was the cultural and political impact of empire on Levantine peoples? North (Iron I)

Three regional nation-states are recognizable: NeoHittites (north), Phoenicians (coast), and Arameans (previous nomads of the steppe), who controlled most of Syria, even south to Lake Galilee. Affirmed by continuity at numerous sites (Tell Afis, Carchemish, Hama), these LBA descendants reconfigured into a number of competing polities (1200–900 BCE). Archaeologically, it is hard to sort out the multiethnic cities described in the texts, since the sometimesoverlapping Aramaean and Neo-Hittite kingdoms embrace similar elite markers. Good examples are the Aramean sites of ‘Ain Dara, whose Syrian ‘bithilani’ temple is adorned with Neo-Hittite carved reliefs of mythological creatures and sculpted sphinxes and lions; and Tell Halaf whose colossal caryatid statues are extraordinary. A new city plan, smaller, oval, double-walled, with citadel (Tayinat, Zincirli) is a hallmark of the period (also found at Megiddo in the south). Phoenicians (Canaanites) These colonizers (Carthage) and traders who opened the Levant to western (Greek) culture were extremely important – quantities of Greek pottery in coastal sites like Tell Sukkas, Al Mina, Tabbat al-Hammam may equate with colonies. Their major ports are mostly modern cities today: Byblos, Sidon, Tyre, Beirut, and Arwad (Akko in the south), which limits excavation, although there are sarcophagi (Ahiram), Sidon’s temple to Eshmun, 200 inscribed funerary stelae outside Tyre, numerous

inscriptions, and important pre-eighth century materials from Sarepta. They were renowned for crafts (purple cloth, masonry, glass), but especially ivories, which adorned Samaria (castigated by the prophets) and comprised the famous Nimrud (Assyria) Ivories, thought to be tribute or booty. Undoubtedly, their most lasting contribution was the linear alphabet, ancestor to the Hebrew and Greek alphabets. Empires (Iron II)

Just before 900, the already entrenched Assyrians campaigned from the Jezireh to the coast, absorbing their enemy, the Aramaeans, in the process and their alphabetic language, Aramaic (the new lingua franca). Evidence of imperial domination is clearest in the Jezireh. There, besides ‘palace ware’, provincial centers with Assyrian wall paintings were found. Dur-Katlimmu, a huge (288 acre) walled site included a garden mural, while a famous mural of a king hunting adorned the walls at Til Barsip, a site with citadel and vast ‘bit-hilani’ palace. Colonies were also established as supply centers and/or settlements for deportees (well-known Assyrian policy). The subsequent Neo-Babylonian Empire, following the destruction of Nineveh in 609, left few imperial markers, except for their reuse of the provincial site of Dur–Katlimmu, where tablets recovered from the impressive Red House, date to Nebuchadnezzar. The Persian Empire (539–332) left few remains inland – a rectangular fort has been found at Ebla. The coast, however, thrived, since the Persians required fleets to transport their armies. There the site of Amrit – a stunning colonnaded open-air water temple – exhibits a blend of both Persian and Greek influences. Southern Levant (Iron I)

With the first mention of a people, Israel (Merneptah Stele 1207), the archaeology of the area relates to the Bible, and questions of ‘settlement’ and ethnicity arise. There is no incontrovertible evidence for an invasion (e.g., Jericho). Conversely, continuity of LBA Canaanite tradition in hundreds of newly founded rural villages (Shiloh, ‘Ay, Raddana, Giloh) is evident in pottery, cult (Bull Site), language (Raddana, el Khadr, Izbet Sartah), along with an emergent Iron Age repertoire of four-room pillar buildings and collar-rim jars. The data suggest that in the wake of widespread LBA upheaval, probably multiethnic peoples, for example, Habiru, Shashu (Amarna), Israel (Merneptah Stele), Hittites, Amorites, etc. (Bible), settled in the highlands, eventually coalescing to form a national kingdom (Israel). A similar development is posited (LBA/IA site of Umayri with its

ASIA, WEST/Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant 845

Figure 12 The ‘Four-room’ Iron Age I House at Tall al-‘Umayri, Jordan–Artist’s rendition by Rhonda Root. By Permission of Rhonda Root and the Madaba Plains Project–Umayri.

four-room house (Figure 12) and collar rim jars) for the national kingdoms of Ammon, Moab, Edom. Not in question is the ethnicity of settlers on the coast: they were the Philistines, part of the Sea Peoples whose highly urbanized cities, Aegean-derived material culture, and iron technology, have been brilliantly brought to light (Ekron, Gath, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Qasile). The United Monarchy, Tenth Century (Iron IIA)

The issue of secondary state formation (David and Solomon) is in flux, as one school reassigns wellknown strata to the ninth century. Some scholars suggest that state-level societies arose only in the eighth century. Briefly, the questionable materials include: (1) four-entryway gates (Hazor, Gezer, Megiddo), (2) palaces 6000 and 7320 at Megiddo, (3) royal planned forts in the Negev (Arad, Beersheba), and (4) Jerusalem Temple parallels (‘Ain Dara). While tenth century strata are becoming better known (Tell Rehov, Tel Zayit abecedary), Jerusalem’s occupation remains controversial. There are, however, extra-biblical tenth century correlations, such as Ahiram’s sarcophagus and Pharaoh Shishak’s raid. The picture is clearer from the beginning of the ninth century with the Divided Kingdom. The Northern Kingdom (Iron IIB)

The well-fortified ninth and eighth century cities of Israel suggest a powerful, but embattled nation state.

Stelae record victories of Aramaeans (Dan Stele, which also mentions the house of David), Moabites (Mesha Stele), and Assyrians (Black Obelisk showing King Jehu bowing and giving tribute). Tell Dan’s exceptional cultic precinct confirms the breakaway kingdom of Jeroboam in the Bible. Royal building activities depict a powerful state, for example, Ahab’s monumental pillared buildings (‘chariot cities’) or storerooms (Hazor, Beersheva), water systems (Hazor, Gezer, Megiddo), but especially the lavish Phoenician style palace at Samaria. Destruction of the latter by the Assyrians in 722/721 brought the northern kingdom to an end, its people deported. The Transjordanian kingdoms, more cordial client states, survived the depredations of the Assyrians. Iron II sites are well-fortified (Tell es-Sa‘idiyeh, Tell Deir ‘Alla, Tell Mazar, Dibon, Lehun, Mudayna, ‘Umayri, Jalul, Tawila, Buseirah, Umm el-Biyara, Tell el-Kheleifeh), but the term ‘tribal kingdoms’ is increasingly used to describe these polities. A fascinating local tradition is seen in a group of statues of Ammonite kings. The Southern Kingdom (Iron IIC)

In the ninth to eighth centuries, nation-states in both north and south are demonstrable by a four-tier hierarchical settlement: royal capitals (Jerusalem, Samaria), administrative centers (Lachish), smaller centers (Beersheba), and provincial towns (Tell Beit

846 ASIA, WEST/Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant

Figure 13 Tel Miqne, Israel, reconstruction of an olive oil manufacturing facility, seventh c. BCE. ã Tell Miqne-Ekron Excavation Project, courtesy S. Gitin; drawing: E. Cohen.

Mirsim). Jerusalem’s expansion and strengthening (Hezekiah’s ‘broad’ wall and tunnel) is confirmed. The remains of the 701 Assyrian siege of Lachish, including the siege ramp, is a stark reminder of life under empire, and is commemorated in Sennacherib’s relief at Nineveh. Elsewhere, the Philistine site of Ekron (Tell Miqne) functioned as an Assyrian supply center and became the largest olive oil production center in the Near East (Figure 13). A major area of current Iron II research centers on ‘popular religion’. A vast corpus of cult sites (Arad, Tell el-Far‘ah (N), Taanach, Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, the Edomite sites Hurvat Qitmit and Hurvat ‘Uza), and female figurines (‘Asherah’), provide tantalizing clues about the range of Israelite practices, set in a context of the wider world of Near Eastern religion. The Neo-Babylonian destruction (587/6 BCE) of Jerusalem has vividly come to light (Ahilu’s house). Ultimately (539 BCE), Cyrus the Great of Persia allowed the deported Jews in Babylon to return home. Persian Period (Iron III)

New research demonstrates site continuity, despite devastation and exile. The archaeology of Jerusalem confirms a much-reduced city, as exiles returned from Babylon and rebuilt, and minted coins refer to the province as Yehud. Provincial garrison towns at Hesi, Jemmeh, Khirbet Abu Tuwein, Tell es-Sa‘idiyeh, and material culture, affirm imperial control. The interior of the country, generally, contrasts with the Phoenician coast, where sites (Dor, Akko, Ashdod, Askhelon) thrived due to Persian trade. Luxury

items and Attic ware underscore prosperity under empire and intensifying Greek cultural influence.

Greco-Roman Period: The Westernization of the Levant In terms of intercivilizational impact, there is no match to the ‘hellenization’ of the Levant. With Alexander the Great’s conquest in 332 BCE, dominant elite Greek (and later Roman) western civilization transformed what would become the Province of Syria-Palaestina. Past encounters of local peoples with empires had not led to acculturation, although recent research suggests that the process was underway before Alexander. Are local traditions still discernible? Is there noticeable variability in cultural adaptation? The following select archaeological materials highlight these issues and western acculturation. Hellenistic Period

Phoenician/Hellenistic continuities in coastal cities (Tyre/Dor) document a Greek acculuturation underway before Alexander. Just as clear is the gradual superseding of oriental by Greek coins, architecture, hippodamian plan, figurines, and cult (Tel Dor). In Syria, the colonizing Macedonians (Hippodamian plan in Damascus and Dura Europas in the desert) and strong Seleucid influence hastened the acculturation process. In the south, near the coast, Maresha’s tombs displayed Greek art (the Panathenaic of Athens), and, gradually, even the inward looking religious communities in the central hills (Samaria /Jerusalem) showed imported Aegean wares and wine amphoras

ASIA, WEST/Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant 847

in the local assemblages. The Decapolis cities in Transjordan were founded. Variability in cultural adaptation is manifest in a comparison of the Hellenized Jewish Hasmoneans (Jericho palace; ‘Iraq el-‘Amir estate) and the Jewish Community of Qumran, which exhibits no evidence for acculturation. A recent study of the site and cave pottery gives credence to the correlation between the site of Qumran and the cave scrolls (Dead Sea Scrolls) and, probably, the Essenes. Recently released to the public domain, the scrolls remain essential for both Judaism and Christianity. Roman Period

The cultural impact accelerated from 63 BCE – CE 332 as Rome tied the Levant to the rest of the Empire, politically, economically, and militarily, effecting a further transformation (Romanization). In CE 135, with subjugation (first and second Jewish Revolts) and annexation (Nabataea) accomplished, the Romans constructed the Via Nova Trajiana between ‘Aqaba and Bostra (with links to Palmyra and Dura Europas). This secured the Arabian spice trade and brought great prosperity to the Decapolis cities. The Via Maris linked Alexandria to Antioch. Roman milestones are visible reminders of imperial might aimed at controlling trade and facilitating troop movement. Military might is confirmed by excavation of sites like Aila, Udruh, Lejun, Umm el-Jimal, Bostra, Palmyra, Dura Europas, which guarded the frontier (the Limes Arabicus). Military camps and siege ramp at Masada (destroyed in CE 73) are a somber witness to the consequences of revolt under empire. Urbanization Cities, built to the specification of classical convention, vividly epitomized Romanization. An early square military plan of intersecting cardo and decumanus (Beirut, Jerusalem-Aelia Capitolina, Baalbek, Bostra) evolved into an elaborate plan of colonnaded streets, triumphal arches, and central tetrapylon (Palmyra, Jerash, Petra, Apamaea, Beth-Shan Scythopolis, etc). It began early with King Herod’s (43–46 BCE) construction of a harbor city (Caesarea) and lavish building activity (Herodium, Masada, Machareus, Jericho, Jerusalem). Local Traditions Within Greco-Roman style, an oriental (Syrian/Parthian) tradition is perceptible in Palmyra’s architecture (Temple of Bel), sculpture (frontal), and inscriptions (Aramaic, not Greek). A Nabataean style (e.g., distinctive capitals, eggshell thin pottery in floral designs) is discernible as early as 25 BCE. New excavations in the Civic Center at Petra have now uncovered ‘elephant’ capitals in the Great Temple and a contiguous pool and garden, indicative

of a sophisticated hydraulic system. Exceptional isolated sanctuaries at Seela (Syria) and Tannur (the Hauran), but few evidences of residences are a continuing enigma. A Jewish aniconic tradition is likewise distinctive, evident in the CE 70 destruction of Jerusalem, where villas of Hellenized Jews were lavish, but included no idols in mosaics and frescoes. There also were numerous miqvaot for ritual purity. Byzantine Period

Another cultural wave (Christianization) washed over the Levant with the Byzantine Period (elsewhere Late Roman or Late Antiquity), c. 324–638. Some 500 churches attest to the dramatic religious transformation of the region evident from Sinai (St. Catherine’s) to Jerusalem (Church of the Holy Sepulchre) to northwest Syria (Qal‘at Simon) to the Euphrates (Dura Europas). Of particular note, a cache of Greek papyri was recently recovered in the Petra Church, and possibly the earliest church (fourth century) was found at Aila. An excellent example of the intercivilizational dynamic at work is visible in the adaptability of Hellenized Jews to allow figural art in synagogues, such as the zodiac with the god Helios (Beth-Alpha), frescoes of biblical figures (Dura Europas) and pagan elements in funerary sculpture (Beth-Shearim). Such decorative arts, permissible at the time due to a liberal interpretation of the second commandment against idols, represent an accommodation to Hellenism. An early example (third century) from the Jewish, but very Hellenized city of Sepphoris may be seen in the Dionysus Villa, named for its frescoes and figural mosaics. In 638 the era of Muslim dominance began yet a further new chapter in the Levant that would once again utterly transform the region. See also: Africa, North: Egypt, Pharaonic; Animal Domestication; Asia, West: Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad; Phoenicia; Roman Eastern Colonies; Southern Levant, Bronze Age Metal Production and Utilization; Southern Levant, Chalcolithic Cultures; Biblical Archaeology; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Europe, South: Greece; Greek Colonies; Plant Domestication; Political Complexity, Rise of.

Further Reading Akkerman SR, Peter MMG, and Schwartz GM (2003) The Archaeology of Syria: From Complex Hunter-Gatherers to Early Urban Societies. (c. 16,000–300 BC) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chancey M and Porter A (2001) The archaeology of Roman Palestine. Near Eastern Archaeology 64(4): 164–203.

848 ASIA, WEST/Mesolithic Cultures microburin The residual product of the creation of a microlith during flint tool manufacture in many different cultures, for instance, the European Mesolithic. wadi A valley, ravine, or watercourse that is often dry except during the rainy season. microlith A small stone tool, typically knapped of flint or chert, usually about 3 cm long or less. vegetation zone An extensive, even transcontinental, band of physiognomically similar vegetation on the earth’s surface. Plant communities assembled into regional patterns by the area’s physiography, geological parent material, and history.

Dever WG (2003) Who were the Eearly Israelites and Where Did They Come From? Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company. Finkelstein I (1996) The archaeology of the United Monarchy: An alternative view. Levant 28: 177–187. Levy TE (ed.) (1995) The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land. Facts on File: An Infobase Holdings Company. Levy TE, Adams RB, Hauptmann A, Prange M, Schmitt-Strecker S, and Nahar M (2002) Early Bronze Age metallurgy: A newly discovered copper manufactory in southern Jordan. Antiquity 76: 425–437. MacDonald B, Adams R, and Bienkowski P (eds.) (2001) The Archaeology of Jordan. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Richard S (ed.) (2003) Near Eastern Archaeology: A Reader. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.

West Asia during the Late Pleistocene witnessed a wealth of hunter-gatherer adaptations immediately prior to agriculture. This geographic area – Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, the Egyptian Sinai, Iraq, the Arabian Peninsula, and western Iran – contains an environmentally diverse landscape (Figure 1). Mountainous regions include the Zagros, Taurus, and Lebanon ranges, while the Mediterranean Sea provides coastal niches, and inland areas are steppe or desert. Epipalaeolithic hunter-gatherers lived between c. 22 600 and 10 100 uncal BP (Table 1). Significant environmental oscillations were the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), c. 18 000–17 000 uncal BP, when worldwide conditions were considerably cooler and drier, and the subsequent climatic amelioration, when conditions favored expansion of vegetation zones such as the Mediterranean forest and its many plant food resources.

Mesolithic Cultures Deborah I Olszewski, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, PA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary hunter-gatherer society A society whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, using foraging and hunting, without significant recource to the domestication of either.

Black Sea 0

Georgia

400 km Turkey Taurus Taurus Mount

ins Mounta

ains

Caspian Sea

M'lefaat Cyprus Mediterranean Sea Ohalo ll

Lebanon Mountains

Za

gr

os

Palegawra

'Ain Mallaha

Iran nt

ai

ns

Ein Gev lll Tig

Wadi Hammeh 27

hrat

Sinai Re dS ea

Arabian Peninsula

es R iver

r

Eup

e Riv ris

Wadi Jilat 6 Tor Sageer

Egypt

M

ou

Warwasi

Persian Gulf

Figure 1 Map showing West Asian region and selected sites. Courtesy of Deborah I. Olszewski.

ASIA, WEST/Mesolithic Cultures 849 Table 1 Chronology of the Epipalaeolithic in West Asia Period

Levantine Complex a

Uncalibrated BP

Calibrated BP

Zagros Complex b

Early Epipalaeolithic Middle Epipalaeolithic Late Epipalaeolithic

Kebaran Geometric Kebaran Natufian

22 600–15 000 15 000–12 500 12 800–10 100

24 000c–18 000 18 000–14 600 14 600–11 700

Early Zarzian Late Zarzian 3000 year gap followed by M’lefaatian

a

Data from Byrd (2005: 238); Olszewski (2003: 232). Few dates are available for the Zagros Complexes; temporal placement of these are estimations. c The uncalibrated date of 22 600 BP lies outside the range of dates that can be calibrated. Based on uncalibrated dates that are slightly younger, the beginning of the Early Epipalaeolithic may be about 24 000 cal BP. b

Table 2 Major wild food resources during the Epipalaeolithic Common name

Latin name

Acorn (oak) Aurochs Barley Boar Chickpea Einkorn wheat Emmer wheat European half-ass Gazelle Goat Hawthorn fruit Lentil Onager Pea Persian fallow deer Pistachio Red deer Roe deer Sheep

Quercus sp. Bos primigenius Hordeum spontaneum Sus scrofa Cicer arietinum Triticum boeoticum Triticum dicoccoides Equus hydruntinus Gazella subgutturosa, G. gazella Capra aegagrus Crataegus sp. Lens sp. Equus hemionus Pisum sp. Dama mesopotamica Pistachia atlantica Cervus elaphus Capreolus capreolus Ovis orientalis

For most of the Epipalaeolithic, hunter-gatherers were mobile, frequently moving their campsites to take advantage of seasonal resources or to hunt game animals. These resources included acorns, wild cereals such as einkorn and emmer wheat and barley, pistachios, hawthorn fruits, pulses such as peas and lentils, gazelle, onager, European wild ass, aurochs, wild sheep and goat, and, more rarely, wild boar and various deer (Table 2). A short interlude during the Late Epipalaeolithic saw the establishment of small villages in some areas. A hallmark feature of most Epipalaeolithic groups was the use of microliths– small backed stone tools – as arrow components or as sickle elements.

The Levantine Epipalaeolithic The Levant comprises the western portion of West Asia and intensive archaeological research here for more than 70 years has resulted in a detailed understanding of the Epipalaeolithic period. Three major complexes are the Kebaran, Geometric Kebaran, and

Figure 2 Kebaran Complex. Top: microburins; Bottom: nongeometric microliths. Courtesy of Deborah I. Olszewski.

Natufian. These are often identified by their chipped stone (lithic) assemblages, and, for the most part, are temporally sequential. Kebaran Complex

Lithic industries of the Kebaran Complex first appear about 22 600 years ago (see Table 1). They are characterized by narrow nongeometric microliths (Figure 2). One important distinction between Kebaran Complex industries west and east of the Jordan Rift Valley is the presence of microburin technique (a specialized way to snap bladelets so that the resulting segments can be abruptly retouched into backed microliths) in the interior Levant east of the Jordan Rift Valley.

850 ASIA, WEST/Mesolithic Cultures

Kebaran Complex sites are small, suggesting highly mobile adaptations, perhaps influenced by the onset and height of the LGM when living conditions were more harsh. In some cases, however, these hunter-gatherers repeatedly returned to the same locales, such as Ohalo II along the Sea of Galilee where they built brush structures, or to favored rockshelters such

as Tor Sageer in the Wadi al-Hasa (Figure 3). Evidence for the use of wild plant foods is amply demonstrated at Ohalo II (charred wild barley, hawthorn stones, and pistachio nutshell fragments, among other edible plant foods). People hunted land tortoise, gazelle, deer, onager, and birds. More rarely, they exploited fish (see Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient). Geometric Kebaran Complex

About 15 000 years ago, lithic industries featuring backed geometric microliths (triangles and trapezes) appear and microburin technique becomes typical in both the western and eastern Levant. The groups that made these tools lived during the early part of the climatic amelioration following the LGM. Like their predecessors, people of the Geometric Kebaran Complex were highly mobile and exploited the same range of wild plant and animal food resources. Sites are found in both the Mediterranean forest and steppic areas. Some, such as Ein Gev III, contain evidence for somewhat substantial hut structures, while others, such as Wadi Jilat 6 (Phase A) (Figure 4), may represent aggregation sites or places where people repeatedly returned. Most sites, however, are small, temporary occupations. Natufian Complex

Figure 3 View of the Kebaran Complex rockshelter at Tor Sageer, Jordan. Courtesy of Deborah I. Olszewski.

The advent of the Natufian Complex, typified by lunate (half-moon) geometric microliths (Figure 5), some 12 800 years ago, signals a radical departure

Figure 4 Overview of the Geometric Kebaran Complex site of Wadi Jilat 6, Jordan. Note that the site forms a small mound due to repeated reoccupations over time. Courtesy of Deborah I. Olszewski.

ASIA, WEST/Mesolithic Cultures 851

Figure 5 Natufian Complex. Three geometric lunate microliths on left; two microburins on right. Courtesy of Deborah I. Olszewski.

Figure 6 Late Natufian Complex small structures at the Black Desert site of Huwaynit, Jordan. Courtesy of Deborah I. Olszewski.

from earlier hunter-gatherer adaptations. Natufian Complex groups, particularly in the favorable Mediterranean forest zone from about 12 800 to 11 000 uncal BP, yield the first evidence of small village communities, such as ’Ain Mallaha, and investment in human burials within settlements. This early Natufian also contains art – carved figurines of animals and more rarely humans, as well as carvings on bone tools. Numerous ground stone tools, such as mortars and pestles, at sites like Wadi Hammeh 27 suggest a reliance on stone-ground plant foods (acorns and wild cereals). A focus on gazelle hunting is also typical. Not surprisingly, many archaeologists interpret

these features as part of the behavioral groundwork leading to the development of agriculture societies a few milleniums later. Curiously, in the period from 11 000 to 10 000 uncal BP, later Natufian Complex groups became highly mobile, even within the Mediterranean forest. Small villages all but disappear, as does art. This restructuring of adaptations may be a response to a global cooling event known as the Younger Dryas, which resulted in shrinkage of favorable vegetation zones like the Mediterranean forest, which affected the abundance of plant foods available both to humans and the animals they hunted (Figure 6).

852 ASIA, WEST/Mesolithic Cultures

The Zagros Epipalaeolithic Although archaeological research here also began more than 70 years ago, the Epipalaeolithic in eastern West Asia is poorly known due to historical events that have precluded extended periods of research. The main archaeological culture is the Zarzian, while the M’lefaatian is likely proto-Neolithic or Early Neolithic. Zarzian Complex

Hunter-gatherer groups manufacturing backed microliths in the Zagros region are classified as Zarzian (Figure 7). As in the Levant, the Zarzian Complex has a temporal trend from nongeometric to geometric microliths (mainly scalene triangles). It also parallels the western Levant in that microburin technique appears when geometric microliths are manufactured. Due to the paucity of radiocarbon dates (see Carbon-14 Dating), currently it is not possible to delineate precisely when this change occured (see Table 1). Most test excavated sites are rockshelters or caves in the mountainous foothills (Figure 8), such as Warwasi Rockshelter. All appear to represent highly mobile groups of hunter-gatherers pursing game animals such as onager, goat, red deer, aurochs, gazelle, and wild boar. Aside from repeated visits to these sites, there is no evidence for hut structures, burials, or investment in plant-processing tools such as ground stone. The duration of the Zarzian Complex is

Figure 7 Zarzian Complex. Top: lunate and small scalene triangles; bottom: elongated scalene triangles on left and microburin on right. Courtesy of Deborah I. Olszewski.

thought to be from the onset of the LGM through the early part of the subsequent climatic amelioration. An end date of about 12 000 uncal BP is suggested by radiocarbon dates from Palegawra. M’lefaatian Complex

The M’lefaatian Complex may derive from the Zarzian, and several researchers classify the M’lefaatian as proto-Neolithic or Early Neolithic rather than Epipalaeolithic. Hindering understanding is a 3000 year gap between the end of the Zarzian and the beginning of the M’lefaatian, during which there is little archaeological evidence. The M’lefaatian lithic industry contains nongeometric microliths and a well-developed technology that results in relatively standardized bladelet cores. Compared to the Zarzian Complex, M’lefaatian sites tend to be open-air contexts, such as M’lefaat, rather than caves and rockshelters. Reliance on wild food resources was the norm, with hunting of cattle, sheep, gazelle, wild boar, birds, and the collection of freshwater clams, freshwater crabs, land snails, and fish. It is assumed that wild cereals formed part of the diet.

Summary The Levant and the Zagros respectively represent the western and eastern Fertile Crescent, and yield evidence for several Epipalaeolithic complexes. Areas to the north, such as Turkey, and to the south, in the Arabian Peninsula, are not yet well known. For historical reasons, the most complete information is from the Levant, and thus the following discussion is based on this region. For c. 20 000 years, hunter-gatherers of the Epipalaeolithic exploited a wide array of wild plant and animal foods. Their subsistence economies entailed frequent movement of campsites and their archaeological signature therefore is somewhat ephemeral. Especially favorable locales, however, often yield evidence of the construction of more substantial hut structures, isolated human burials, or longer periods of residence. It is this background of Epipalaeolithic behaviors set within the context of global climate changes associated with the LGM and later climatic amelioration that underlie the establishment of foodproducing (agricultural) economies in the subsequent Neolithic. Why this transition from hunting and gathering to food production occurred remains a major research question in archaeology. Many scholars have pointed to the sociocultural complexity that may be evident in the early part of the Natufian Complex, such as

ASIA, WEST/Mesolithic Cultures 853

Figure 8 Overview of the Zarzian Complex site of Baba Yawan Rockshelter, Iran. Courtesy of Fereidoun Biglari.

investment in art and personal ornamentation (shell beads and bone pendants). Some hunter-gatherers of this period lived in small, semipermanent villages where interactions with one’s neighbors may have required increased levels of cooperation. A stronger sense of territoriality also may have developed, resulting in numerous human burials within the small villages. It is probable that the Early Natufian Complex adaptations focused heavily on plant foods such as wild cereals and acorns. Strategies for collecting these may have led to the development of behaviors conducive to long-term investments in plant foods, especially the cereals. Although this adaptation appears to have vanished during the Late Natufian Complex with the onset of cooler and drier conditions, these behavioral signatures are once again seen in subsequent Early Neolithic societies. See also: Animal Domestication; Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Paleolithic Cultures; Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures; Carbon-14 Dating; Europe, Northern and Western: Mesolithic Cultures; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading Bar-Yosef O (1998) The Natufian culture in the Levant: Threshold to the origins of agriculture. Evolutionary Anthropology 6(5): 159–177.

Byrd BF (2005) Reassessing the emergence of village life in the Near East. Journal of Archaeological Research 13(3): 231–290. Delage C (ed.) (2004) British Arehaeological Reports International Series 1320: The Last Hunter-Gatherers in the Near East. Oxford: Archaeopress. Garrard AN and Byrd BF (1992) New dimensions to the Epipaleolithic of the Wadi el-Jilat in central Jordan. Pale´orient 18(1): 47–62. Goring-Morris AN and Belfer-Cohen A (1997) The articulation of cultural processes and Late Quaternary environmental changes in Cisjordan. Pale´orient 23(2): 71–93. Henry DO (1995) Prehistoric Cultural Ecology and Evolution: Insights from Southern Jordan. New York: Plenum. Kislev ME, Nadel D, and Carmi I (1992) Epipalaeolithic (19 000 BP) cereal and fruit diet at Ohalo II, Sea of Galilee, Israel. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 73: 161–166. Olszewski DI (1996) The lithic transition to the Early Neolithic in the Zagros region: Zarzian and M’lefaatian industries. In: Kozlowski SK and Gebel HGK (eds.) Studies in Early Near Eastern Production, Subsistence and Environment, Vol. 3: Neolithic Chipped Stone Industries of the Fertile Crescent, and Their Contemporaries in Adjacent Regions, pp. 183–192. Berlin: ex oriente. Olszewski DI (2003) The conundrum of the Levantine Late Upper Paleolithic and Early Epipaleolithic: Perspectives from the Wadi al-Hasa, Jordan. In: Goring Morris AN and BelferCohen A (eds.) More than Meets the Eye: Studies on Upper Paleolithic Diversity in the Near East, pp. 230–241. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Turnbull PF and Reed CA (1983) The faunal remains from M’lefaat. In: Braidwood L, Braidwood R, Howe B, Reed C, and Watson PJ (eds.) Oriental Institute Publications 105: Prehistoric Archaeology along the Zagros Flanks, pp. 613–695. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

854 ASIA, WEST/Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad

Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad Augusta McMahon, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary cuneiform Cuneiform is the distinctive script style developed in Mesopotamia, comprising groups of wedge-shaped signs impressed with a feed stylus upon clay tablets. empire A political unit having an extensive territory or comprising a number of territories or nations and ruled by a single supreme authority. pottery Ceramic ware made from clay and baked in a kiln. social complexity Social complexity is an approach to social phenomena which acknowledges heterarchy or difference, as well as hierarchical conditions of inequality. state The group of people comprising the government of a sovereign state. urbanism The culture or way of life of city dwellers.

Research Contexts and Questions The acquisition of collections of monumental art for museums in Europe and the US was the dominant impetus behind the earliest archaeological work in Mesopotamia from the 1860s through the early 1900s (collections in the British Museum, Louvre, and Metropolitan Museum of Art are testament to this approach). From c. 1920, archaeological work in the region shifted in focus, and the goal became a complete chronological categorization and material culture sequencing; pottery and architectural stratigraphy joined art as worthy of attention. In many ways, this goal persists in the present, but in the 1960s, wider questions of structure and process began to drive research. Archaeologists working in the prehistory of Mesopotamia are often at the forefront of theoretical debates (i.e., origins of agriculture, origins of states, and nature of chiefdoms). However, within Mesopotamian historical archaeology, our reconstruction of human actions and society is still compressed into and constrained by chronological phases, and the abundant textual material means that history often dictates to archaeology. Event-driven political narratives and institution-based explanations dominate archaeological approaches, and urban centers have most often been the focus of research programs. However, in survey and settlement archaeology, scholars working in Mesopotamia have been among the first to utilize satellite imagery and intensive survey approaches incorporating landscape and off-site features. Mesopotamia is

fertile ground for exploration of ideas of empire, mechanisms of craft production, and urban–rural interaction.

Environment and Resources Mesopotamia is defined by its two rivers, the Tigris on the east/northeast and Euphrates on the west/ southwest. Within these boundaries is a wide range of terrain, resources, and environmental conditions. The most important factor affecting human occupation is rainfall. In northern Mesopotamia (SE Turkey, NE Syria, N Iraq), rainfall is generally above 250 mmyr 1 and rainfall agriculture is possible. However, yearly fluctuations mean that reliance on rainfall alone is risky, especially at the southern edge of this zone, and irrigation projects were developed there, particularly in association with artificially large cities of the Neo–Assyrian Period. Irrigation is vital for agriculture in the central and southern portions of the region (central and south Iraq), and it is likely that sophisticated canal systems were in place from at least 6000 BC. Topographically, subregional divisions follow the rainfall variation. Northern Mesopotamia has foothills, rolling plains, river tributaries, and occasional rock outcrops, while southern Mesopotamia is relentlessly flat and without natural features other than the rivers. Archaeological maps of Mesopotamia often show the land between the rivers as entirely devoid of resources, with metals, stones, and timber located in the arc of the Taurus and Zagros Mountains and foothills beyond Mesopotamia’s northern and eastern borders. However, in northern Iraq, stone and metals are available, and from the earliest permanent settlements there existed sophisticated commerce connections across the region and beyond that meant the river plains were never without any of these materials. Empty resource maps also ignore the many materials Mesopotamia does offer. Clay is an overlooked but extraordinarily important resource, utilized for bricks, plaster, pottery, figurines, and tablets. The Mesopotamian writing system is arguably the world’s earliest, and its particular form and trajectory was both enabled and directed by the ubiquitous medium of clay. The alluvial soil is capable of generating substantial agricultural surpluses. Fish abound in rivers and canals, and dates were and remain an important element of the diet and are easily exportable. Bitumen, used for waterproofing anything from baskets through boats to buildings, is found in only a few specific locations in the Middle East, including the midEuphrates. Textiles, generated by the agro-pastoralist system’s large carrying capacity for herds of sheep and

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goats, were produced on an industrialized scale in Mesopotamia and exported, even to other textile-producing areas. Finally, the southern marshes are an often overlooked but vitally important element in the resource base. Reed mats, containers, and furniture were produced there by an otherwise hunter–fisher–gatherer population and sold to urban dwellers. Most of these materials are not archaeologically visible and thus are not viewed as traditional ‘resources’ – yet they were vital to the survival and strength of the Mesopotamian economic and political system.

Materials and Landscape The most important tool for Mesopotamian archaeologists is pottery. The density of pottery per cubic meter of archaeological soil here is probably the highest of any region. The basic sequence of diagnostic pottery forms and decoration is well established, and this is instrumental in the identification and characterization of chronological phases (see Pottery Analysis: Stylistic). Regrettably, this does mean that Mesopotamian ceramic studies tend to foreground morphology, decoration, and seriation, while study of assemblages and their meanings often comes second. We are also limited by the preponderance of urban excavations, which affects reconstruction not only of pottery assemblages but also of all other aspects of material culture (see Urban Archaeology). Mounded tell sites are typical of the region and are the clearest signs of past occupation in the generally flat landscapes. Clustering of resources, the need to avoid good agricultural land, and the attachment to ‘place’ mean that once sites were chosen for settlement they tended to remain occupied, or at least to be frequently reoccupied, for centuries or millennia. The buildup of occupational debris and the rebuilding of mud brick houses on previous foundations result in the distinctive shape of these sites and their relatively rapid vertical growth. But low single-period sites, multiple-mounded sites, off-site sherd scatters and ancient roads also make up important foci of archaeological research in Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia can be characterized as a ‘landscape of destruction’ in archaeological terms. Alluvial accumulation and dune abrasion in the south and wind and water erosion in the north have covered or removed parts of large sites and entire small sites. Millennia of intensive agriculture and modern industrialized cash crop farming have taken a heavy toll on both sites and landscape features. Looting and illegal excavation has increased astronomically in the last two decades. Mesopotamia’s archaeological record is perennially under threat (see Illicit Antiquities).

Chronological and Archaeological Overview Late Prehistoric City-States

Mesopotamia has long been recognized as one of the primary complex societies, developing a state structure without external influence. The Uruk period (c. 4000–3000 BC) sees social complexity: urbanism, elaborate temple complexes, mass production, the earliest writing, and the earliest representations – although standardized and anonymous – of kings (Table 1). The site of Uruk with its 320  150 m temple complex and separate temple tower provides the most emphatic evidence for public institutions in this period. Temples are identifiable by their ‘tripartite’ plan, a large central space flanked by rows of smaller rooms, and an external fac¸ade decorated with narrow niches and buttresses. The Uruk temple complex sits near the center of a city that had reached 250 ha by c. 3200 BC. This rapid urban growth was matched by depopulation of the immediate countryside, but settlement patterns around other contemporary sites (i.e., Nippur) indicate that the normal arrangement was a scatter of linked towns and villages surrounding each city. The Uruk Period ceramic assemblage is extraordinarily standardized, almost entirely undecorated (in contrast to the preceding Ubaid Period) and mass produced. The mud bricks from which both temples and houses were constructed are similarly standardized in shape and size. It was in the Uruk Period that one of the most distinctive objects of Mesopotamia, the cylinder seal, first appeared. These objects acted much like a signature, expressing authority and ownership when rolled across a clay tablet or door sealing. Usually made of imported stone, seals were intended to be worn and seen, as badges of office or of wealth and as good luck amulets. Scenes on Uruk Period seals include representations of kings involved in religious or (more rarely) military events, as well as animal combats or more prosaic rows of human figures weaving or manufacturing pottery. The glyptic scenes of kings in front of temples or feeding temple flocks are supplemented by votive statuary and reliefs showing the king as a solitary pious figure or involved in symbolic lion combat. He is instantly recognizable, no matter which context, by his distinctive skirt and hat, plus the fact that he is the center of attention or focus of each scene. These characteristics of royal art will have a long tradition, lasting through the first millennium BC. Writing is invented to serve the economy, particularly temple-centered economic administration. The earliest texts are overwhelmingly simple receipts and

Southern Mesopotamia 6000–4000 4000–3000 Ubaid Uruk

3000–2334 Early Dynastic

Northern Mesopotamia Northern Northern Ninevite 5 Ubaid Uruk (Early Jezirah I-IIIa) 5000– 4000– 3100–2550 4000 3000

2334–2154 Akkadian

Late ED (Early Jezirah IIIb) 2550–2300

2154–2004 Ur III

Northern Akkadian (EJ IV) 2300–2200

2017–1763 Isin-Larsa

1763–1595 Old Babylonian

Post-Akkadian (EJ IVb-V) 2200–2000

1570–1157 Kassite

? Old Ass Kingdom yrian of upper Mesop. 1920– 1813–1728 1740

1157–905 Isin II, Sealand II, Bazi, Elam ? Mitanni

1500– 1340

1157–625 Post-Kassite/ NeoAssyrian Middle Assyr.

1365–1031

625–539 Neo-Babylonian

539–330 Persian

? NeoNeoPersian Assyrian Bab. 934–612

612– 539

539– 330

856 ASIA, WEST/Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad

Table 1 Mesopotamian Chronological Periods (all dates uncalib. BC)

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inventories, supplemented by long strange vocabulary lists, ultimately quite revealing of the classes into which the Mesopotamian mind categorized the natural and human world. The script is initially pictographic but rapidly becomes syllabic as the signs develop from inscribed drawings to impressed cuneiform. Trade colonies and pervasive southern Uruk cultural material in northern Syria, southeast Turkey, and western Iran provide further evidence for the economic power of urban institutions. Much of the archaeological debate about the Uruk Period in the last two decades has focused on the southern expansion into northern and northwestern areas and on the particular relationship between local and southern populations. The consensus is that the southern influence was just that, strong cultural influence backed up by genuine presence of southerners at some sites. But there was in fact substantial social and economic complexity in the north prior to the southern influence, and there was no attempt by the south to impose either economic or political control.

Uruk Period developments of urbanism, economic complexity, and king-led, staple resource-based wealth with strong religious flavor matured and were formalized. The city-states were potentially selfsufficient, yet they share a material culture assemblage (pottery, domestic and religious architectural styles, ways of burial, etc.), and have a common religious system and literary tradition. Each city-state had a patron deity as well as hereditary kings, and complementary institutions in the temple and the palace. This cultural network covers all of the southern alluvial plains and even incorporates Mari, on the Syrian Euphrates (see map, Figure 1). The city-states are perhaps best typified by Lagash, an urban center with a network of linked towns and villages and associated agricultural land and irrigation canals. Lagash was just one of approximately 15 major contemporary independent city-states, in a delicate balance which involved complementary economic behavior and occasional armed conflict. We know the list of some of Lagash’s kings and have their images on stone reliefs, variously at war with neighbors such as Umma, building temples and presenting offerings to the gods. Kish has the best-preserved palace (Palace A), with formal and symmetrical public and private wings, surrounded by thick, buttressed walls (see Figure 2). Unfortunately, palaces tended to be kept clean during use and to be emptied at the end of their lives,

Third Millennium BC City-States to Nation-States

The Early Dynastic (ED) Period (c. 3000–2334 BC) follows the Uruk in southern Mesopotamia and can be summarized as an era of city-states (Table 1). The

TELL MOZAN TELL LEILAN ALALAKH

KHORSABAD NINEVEH

TELL BRAK NIMRUD abu

r

EBLA

Kh

NUZI ASHUR

Tig ris

MARI Eu

ph

ra

tes

TELL ASMAR

DAMASCUS

KHAFAJAH AQAR QUF

BABYLON

BAGHDAD

KISH NIPPUR

SUSA UMMA GIRSU

URUK

LAGASH

N 100 200 KM

Figure 1 Map of Mesopotamia with sites mentioned in the text.

UR

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N

20 M Figure 2 Early Dynastic Palace A at Kish. After Moorey (1978).

N

20 M Figure 3 Late Early Dynastic Temple at Khafajah, Level X. After Delougaz and Lloyd (1942).

leaving only an architectural plan and an impression of sterile, impersonal power. The religious institutions of the ED are most clearly illustrated at several sites along the Diyala River, northeast of modern Baghdad. Tell Asmar and Khafajah present us with a range of small to medium-sized shrines and temples (see Figure 3), while the Temple Oval at Khafajah offers a vision of how large and impressive these institutions could be. In each temple, the central shrine room is easily identified by a combination of plan (right-angled access), features (built-in altars), and contents (stone votive statues of men and women with hands clasped, elaborate bronze or ceramic offering stands). The Mesopotamian pantheon mirrors

human relations; gods have families, and family members are frequently worshipped in the same temple in lesser shrine rooms. The temples also have large courtyards and storage spaces, for outdoor rituals and economic activities. Archives of texts, such as that from the Ba’u temple at Girsu, reveal that temples were major landowners and employers as well as houses of the gods. The Ur Cemetery, established in the Late ED period, is justifiably famous for its rich assemblage of exquisitely worked vessels, seals, jewelry, weapons, and musical instruments, the raw materials for which were imported from as far away as the Indus Valley (carnelian), Afghanistan (lapis lazuli), Iran (chlorite), Anatolia (silver), and Egypt (gold). The cemetery is unfortunately also famous for a brief and limited episode of human sacrifices (e.g., Royal Tomb 1237, with its 74 skeletons), an unusual aspect of burial unique to a few years at the city of Ur and not at all representative of Mesopotamian burial practices. But the human sacrifices can be seen as an extreme version of a commonplace feature of Mesopotamian burial, grave goods. There was a clear societal image of the afterlife, and the necessity of taking food, drink, and ornaments to wear, or with which to bribe underworld deities, was strong at all levels of society. Besides cemetery burial, a popular option was interment below house floors, which appears from the ED through the first millennium BC. Placement below house floors retained the deceased as a member of the family, while cemetery burial may have been more common for those whose identity reached beyond the household and lineage, such as priests, kings, and officials. Pottery continues to be mass produced and standardized, with some variation and decoration among jars but very little among bowls. The large numbers of plain-rimmed single-serving bowls at all sites may reveal Mesopotamian dining habits as individualcentered, but more work remains to be done on this issue. Cylinder seals diverge from the scenes of the Uruk Period and have patterns of animals and humans in hand-to-hand combat, with smaller numbers of scenes showing symbolic banquets or geometric designs. Contemporary with the southern ED, Ninevite 5 is the chronological label for Northern Mesopotamia. Contemporary textual documentation and modern archaeological excavation in the north have both lagged behind that of the south, with the result that the north is seen as something of a backwater, but recent and ongoing excavations in Syria are filling the gaps and revealing a densely occupied world of great economic variety. Ninevite 5 pottery includes both painted and incised wares, which it is tempting to

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view as implying a less-institutionalized economy and society. The settlement pattern is less hierarchical than in the south, and although cities and religious institutions exist, the north may be characterized by mature chiefdoms rather than city-states. It was during the Akkadian Period (c. 2334–2154 BC) that the region’s first nation-state was created in southern Mesopotamia (Table 1). It was headed by a dynasty of charismatic kings, some of the earliest visible ‘agents’ responsible for political change and linked cultural changes. The first step was military conquest, followed by social, economic, and administrative transformations designed to create a nation out of a disparate group of city-states. These included the replacement of Sumerian by Akkadian as the ‘official’ written language, establishment of a new capital city, imposition of regional governors loyal to the king, placement of royal images in key locations and a new system of weights, measures, and legal oaths. The Akkadian kings and the ideal of unity they represented had great resonance through the rest of Mesopotamian history: copies of Akkadian royal inscriptions and the myth of the birth and rise to power of the dynasty’s first king, Sargon, appear long after the nation had vanished. Archaeologically, we are obstructed by the problem that the capital city, Agade, has never been discovered, although it is known to lie in the northern alluvial plains, near Babylon, Kish, and modern Baghdad. However, many major artworks of this period survived and reveal a new freedom of movement and delicacy of detail, while maintaining many of the ED/Sumerian traditions of royal representation. The Akkadian stele of Naram-Sin can be contrasted to the ED stele of Vultures; both represent a king leading his army in battle. The Vulture stele shows Eannatum of Lagash ahead of a blocky cluster of his army in strict horizontal registers with no representation of background setting; the Naram-Sin stele shows a backdrop of mountains and trees, and the horizontal registers have been replaced by undulating sloped ground-lines with individual figures. Akkadian Period cylinder seals retain the animal–human combat as an important motif, refining the crowded ED patterns into elegant heraldic pairs. The combat motif is supplemented by that of ‘introduction’, a procession of deities leading the human seal-owner towards a seated deity. Where domestic occupational material of the Akkadian Period has been uncovered (Nippur, Uruk), the ED cultural traditions of architecture and format of burial persist. Ceramic types change, but gradually. The great debate about this period is whether the Akkadian system was a state, nation, or empire. The wider question of archaeologically visible

determinatives of nations and empires is also part of this discussion. In some ways, the system is best represented by evidence from its edge in northeast Syria: the armory/arsenal (Naram-Sin’s palace) and massive administrative complexes at Tell Brak or the Akkadian buildings at Tell Leilan. These Akkadian structures intrude into a world characterized by city-states and small kingdoms ruled by local Hurrian kings. The northern pottery style and assemblage contrasts strongly with that of the south, but the official southern Akkadian seal style is widespread. Artworks of the Akkadian kings glorify their military conquests rather than showing religious building projects. The most striking of these is again the stele of Naram-Sin, grandson of the dynasty founder. Naram-Sin is, unusually, depicted with the pair of bull’s horns that identify a deity. All these aspects look imperial. Yet the ‘empire’ was patchy and acted more like a commercial enterprise aimed at access to raw materials rather than accumulation of land and subjects. Discussion of Sumer and Akkad would be incomplete without reference to the ethnic distinctions implied. Sumerian and Akkadian languages are distinct, Sumerian being an ergative isolate while Akkadian is the oldest known Semitic language. But identification of Sumerian versus Akkadian peoples, sites, or material culture is virtually impossible. By the time we can identify two potential populations from their written languages, in the later third millennium BC, centuries of contact have created an ‘ethnically entangled’ bilingual population. Geographically, Sumer is traditionally located in the southern half of Babylonia, from Nippur to the Arabian Gulf, while Akkad is northern Babylonia. An alternative view holds that Sumer is the region dependent on the Euphrates and Akkad the world of the Tigris. But neither of these two mental divisions map onto distinct cultural regions. In fact, Sumer and Akkad are customarily used together in royal inscriptions from the Ur III Period onward; rarely do inscriptions speak of just Sumer or just Akkad. During most of the Akkadian Period, the kings simply refer to themselves as kings of Agade or ‘king of the four quarters.’ The ED situation of interlinked but self-sufficient city-states is the ‘default state’ for southern Mesopotamia. The Akkadian Period then presents the often reached-for ideal of a unified nation (to recur in Ur III, Old Babylonian, etc.), but this nation just as frequently collapses. The Akkadian nation broke down rapidly and ignominiously, according to textual records. The later kings lost power and land; the capital Agade dwindled to a village. However, excavations in late Akkadian levels at Nippur, Uruk, and other sites indicate continuity of settlement and material culture despite Agade’s problems. By

860 ASIA, WEST/Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad

contrast, the end of the Akkadian adventure in northern Mesopotamia was marked by withdrawal of personnel and the ritual in-filling of public buildings (i.e., Area SS at Tell Brak). There is an ongoing debate over the post-Akkadian Period in northern Mesopotamia and the reason for the retraction of the Akkadian presence, plus the nature of the reaction of the indigenous population. A climatic downturn, aridity, agricultural collapse, and the emigration of large parts of the northern population have been suggested; but while some sites are abandoned, others show continued occupation. We are hampered in reconstructing this period by few relevant excavations and an imprecise characterization of the ceramic assemblage. The Ur III dynasty (2112–2004 BC) attempted to recreate the nation of the Akkadian kings, but by literally inverting it: Sumerian returned as the official written language, monumental art returned to the archaic forms of the ED, and the nation was ruled from the far south of the alluvial plain, from Ur, rather than the north. These are substantial differences from the Akkadian situation, yet the concept of the southern plains as a unified whole with the surrounding areas tied to it to varying degrees is a replica of the Akkadian ideal. Economic documents proliferate; it appears that few transactions were too trivial to record, and unprecedented numbers of people were employed at least part time by the palace, necessitating documentation of rations and movement of raw materials and worked goods. In northern Mesopotamia, the Tell Brak arsenal was rebuilt, but other sites (for instance Tell Mozan) remained independent. The greatest archaeological contribution of the Ur III kings was the elaboration of the existing temple platform into the stepped ziggurat, possibly the most enduring symbol of Mesopotamian-ness (see Figure 4). Like megalithic structures in Neolithic Europe, ziggurats, with their strongly unnatural shape, massive size and weight, would have been striking markers of human impact on the landscape.

Figure 4 Ur III Ziggurat at Ur (reconstruction). After Woolley (1939).

Particularly in the flat unbroken southern Mesopotamian plain, these structures are visible from substantial distances and would have emerged as peaks above a mass of urban buildings. They are icons simultaneously of the kings who commissioned them and the gods to whom they were dedicated; they express the glory of the city and that of the larger city-state to which they belonged. They are also monuments to collective labor of the city-state’s citizens, but unfortunately access seems to have been restricted, once completed, to religious functionaries and perhaps political elites. Ur III monumental artworks emphasize the religious side of being a king, rather than the military aspects, and reliefs such as the Ur-Nammu stele are a throw-back to the ED style of presenting images serially, in horizontal registers. Overall, Ur III art is far more conventional than that of the Akkadian Period. In cylinder seals, the elegant animal combats vanish and introduction scenes are reduced in complexity and detail. Indeed, many introduction seals are so similar as to be indistinguishable except through their inscriptions. But one original element in this period is the return of baked clay figurines. These had been a regular feature of prehistory but essentially vanish with the advent of the state in the Uruk Period. This disappearance may have been due to a shift in access to means of production, particularly if ceramic and figurine production were closely linked and ceramic production became increasingly industrialized. These figurines now return in force, overwhelmingly female and naked; they are handmade with applied details and a schematic, yet attractive, form. Incantation texts indicate that their probable function was love or fertility charms. Second Millennium BC Collapse, Expansion and Collapse

An episode of political collapse (2004–1763 BC) followed the decline of the Ur III state and the capture of its last king by an Elamite army. These centuries are known in southern Mesopotamia as the Isin–Larsa Period because the leaders of the two city-states of Isin and Larsa were the primary actors in a political struggle for control of the southern plains. Additional minor actors were the kings of Uruk, Marad, and Babylon, most of Amorite descent. These Amorites are the earliest of a series of ‘foreign’ nomadic groups who filtered into and assimilated with local Mesopotamian peoples and society. Their ease at cultural assimilation has traditionally been ascribed to their lack of written language and artistic expression. However, the strength of Mesopotamian culture and its surprisingly comprehensive and embracing nature

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were also certainly factors. The political success of the Amorites is less easily explained and is genuinely ‘revolutionary’. Archaeologically, the Isin–Larsa Period is difficult to distinguish from the preceding Ur III and subsequent Old Babylonian. Some specific ceramic markers of these centuries exist (white-inlaid gray ware), but the overall assemblages vary very little; cylinder seals continue the introduction theme. Perhaps the downscaling from nations to city-states did reduce the number of monumental artworks, for we have no representations of kings from this period. But it does provide the best image of Mesopotamian urban domestic architecture in two neighborhoods at Ur. There the ideal of a courtyard surrounded by rooms including bathroom and kitchen has been organically adapted to match available space, with irregular houses, shops, and shrines reached via winding streets. Texts allow the unfolding of the biography of some houses as they passed between owners and were internally modified. Ultimately, neither Isin nor Larsa but Babylon was victorious in the regional power struggle. The subsequent political situation in the Old Babylonian Period (1763–1595 BC) mirrors the Akkadian and Ur III states, re-focused at the northern end of the alluvial plains (Table 1). This earliest Babylonian dynasty is best known for king Hammurapi, whose Law Code offers a vision of Mesopotamian society with strictly divided classes: slave, poor, free, or female. The top of the basalt stele on which the law code is inscribed presents the enduring and iconic image of the king receiving the ‘rod and ring’ (two enigmatic and muchdiscussed symbols) from the sun god, who also oversees justice. At the other end of the artistic spectrum, mass production subsumes the naked female figurines, which are now formed in molds in large numbers. These are supplemented by baked clay plaques with images of deities and scenes of ‘family life’ or myth. As already mentioned, the transition from the third to early second millennium BC in northern Mesopotamia remains one of the largest holes in our archaeological reconstruction. During the first quarter of the second millennium BC in northern Mesopotamia, the city of Ashur was engaged in lucrative long-distance trade in textiles and metals with Kanesh and other cities in Anatolia (central Turkey). This trade is unfortunately mostly documented in texts from Kanesh; relevant levels at Ashur are covered by later occupation and the way stations on the route across the Khabur basin (NE Syria) are largely unexcavated or unidentified. We are only on firmer ground with the establishment of the Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia in what would become Assyria,

northern Iraq, and northeast Syria (1813–1741 BC). This was created by a Sargon-like figure, ShamshiAdad, and reached from Ashur and Ekallate on the Tigris across to Tell Leilan in the northeast Khabur basin and southwest to Mari on the Euphrates. This was the first unified regional state in the north. Much of the political situation is reconstructed from the massive text archive preserved in the palace at Mari, at the juncture of northern and southern Mesopotamia and the Levant. This building is one of the most impressive structures in Mesopotamia, a vast sprawl of over 250 rooms, organized into clusters by function and surrounding two large courtyards partly decorated with wall paintings depicting royal investiture and symbolic scenes. A distinctive ceramic assemblage, Khabur Ware (often decorated with red or black horizontal stripes), traditionally has been associated with the Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia. But excavations at Tell Leilan, Tell Brak, and elsewhere indicate that this pottery continues to be manufactured, unsurprisingly, after this dynasty and into the subsequent period of political devolution into citystates and small kingdoms. The Old Babylonian dynasty suffered the same fate as the Akkadian and Ur III dynasties – gradual loss of territory and power and sudden military defeat, this time by an Anatolian army. However, the backdrop to the territory loss and the military defeat was ultimately environmental catastrophe. Water flow in the eastern course of the Euphrates appears to have diminished, with consequences for the survival of key urban systems and the agricultural surplus on which the region relied. What follows is a ‘dark age’ with few texts and unclear archaeological remains. Once the situation is clear again, the later second and all of the first millennium BC is the time of empires. From 1595–1200 BC, the Kassites controlled southern Mesopotamia, Mitanni and then Assyrian leaders ruled northern Mesopotamia, the Elamites expanded on the Iranian plateau, the Hittites created a nation in Anatolia, and New Kingdom rulers changed the atmosphere in Egypt. The kings in all these regions were involved in luxury goods exchange and diplomatic correspondence with each other, exemplified by the Amarna Letters from Egypt. Gold flowed from Egypt and lapis lazuli from the east by way of Babylonia, iron was the gift of the Hittites and horses that of the Mitanni. At the crux of these ‘Great Powers’ lay the Late Bronze Age city-states of northwest Syria: Ugarit, Qatna, Alalakh, and others. Rather than being crushed by the surrounding landhungry regimes, these land-poor city-states wielded enormous economic power because of their contacts and near monopoly on Mediterranean maritime trade.

862 ASIA, WEST/Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad

Both the Kassites in the south and Mitanni in the north are known to have been foreign to Mesopotamia from texts, yet the search for markers of nationality or ethnicity in the archaeological record has proved fruitless. The earliest kings of the Kassites are textually and archaeologically obscure, but by c. 1400 BC they had established a new capital, Aqar Quf, near modern Baghdad. This new foundation would have offered the potential for a new style and structure to reflect their origins, yet the palace and ziggurat are indistinguishable from Mesopotamian prototypes. In northern Mesopotamia, the extent of the Mitanni empire is matched by the spread of a distinctive painted pottery style (Nuzi Ware), yet this spread and its limits have more to do with economic connections than with ethnic identification. This pottery offers an example of an important aspect of the later second millennium across the region, the increased ‘internationalization’ and hybridization of artistic production. The western examples of this pottery (from Alalakh, for example) show floral motifs that owe inspiration to the Mediterranean and Egypt, while western examples more often bear geometric designs. Faience and glass were also now produced, for the moment restricted to decorative luxury items. From c. 1200 BC, the entire region, from Anatolia to Iran, suffered a second political collapse, with settlement pattern disruptions, urban destructions, environmental stress, and the disappearance of texts. This is matched by political collapses and archaeologically visible destructions across the Mediterranean, sometimes unfairly blamed on the Sea Peoples. First Millennium BC Empires

The Neo-Assyrian kings were relatively successful at weathering the regional Dark Age at the end of the second millennium BC and are the first to re-emerge as a territorial power. Babylonia devolved once again into rivalry among city-states and was first dominated by Assyria and eventually incorporated into its empire. The Neo-Assyrian is the best-known period of Mesopotamian history but perhaps the most misjudged. Traditionally, Assyria has been viewed as a cruel, military-obsessed regime, but this is belied by minor arts such as ivories, foundation deposits, and the stunning gold work of the royal tombs of Nimrud. Ashurbanipal commissioned a library as well as the destruction of the Elamites. Kings appear in symbolic or religious contexts as often as in military action in palace reliefs. Neo-Assyrian political ideology was firmly focused on the concept and image of the king, and part of the expression of this ideology was the construction of palaces or entire new cities to house the king, his

family, and the imperial administration. Ashur, Nimrud, Khorsabad, and Nineveh mirror the increasing size and complexity of the empire. Each has a citadel densely covered with palaces, temples and administrative structures, and each citadel has been incorporated into an artificially large, regular, and mostly empty city with a vast ring of high walls. The palaces are famous for the miles of stone reliefs that decorated the public rooms. These develop longstanding themes of Mesopotamian art: ritual banquets, religious ceremonies, and military battles (all known from the ED) and lion and bull hunts (from the Uruk Period). The idea of stone reliefs lining the walls may have been appropriated from the Hittites, but the style is distinctively Assyrian, muscular, symmetrical, teeming with elaborate yet formalized detail. The scale is also unprecedented, with figures reaching over 4 m high at Khorsabad. The king is central and vital to most scenes, immediately recognizable by distinctive dress and hat, slightly larger scale, and as the focus of attention in any scene. The reliefs tend to overwhelm the other art produced under the Neo-Assyrians, but this is no less spectacular. Ivory and gold objects and inlay show strikingly beautiful fusions of Assyrian, Syrian, and Egyptian– Phoenician styles. Cylinder seals, already finely detailed under Middle Assyrian rule in the later second millennium BC, developed further. Many of the later Middle Assyrian scenes had echoed the heraldic groups of the Akkadian period but show new exotic animals, such as ostriches or winged horses. In the Neo-Assyrian Period, seals still show combats and introductions to deities, but the attention to detail begun in the Middle Assyrian period reaches a peak, with individual feathers of winged figures and garment textures clearly articulated. Yet despite military might and impressive art, this Assyrian empire also crumbled, destroyed by a Mede and Babylonian coalition after 2 years of siege and battles. The Neo Babylonian Period saw the final, again short-lived, Mesopotamian empire. The expansion of the city of Babylon mirrored that of Nineveh, with the enlargement of the core mounded area plus the incorporation of a large and mostly empty area around it. Temples were rebuilt, while the palace was restructured and elaborated to an extreme and functionally useless extent. The blue-glazed brick Ishtar gate, a well-known and often-reproduced icon of this age, was one of several ceremonial access points into the city. Its animal/deity symbolism (Ishtar’s lion, Adad’s bull, Marduk’s dragon) echoes the winged bull gatekeepers of Neo-Assyrian palaces but is uniquely Babylonian in format and sensibility. This was the last independent episode for Mesopotamia, which became part of the Persian empire in 539 BC.

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Key Themes

The Built Environment

Archaeology and Texts

Besides cities and ziggurats, the other human impact on the landscape, particularly in southern Mesopotamia, would have been irrigation canals. As irrigation was essential to agricultural life, canals would have had great resonance and meaning for fertility and continuity. Larger canals were vital transport and communication routes from cities to supporting towns and villages, as well as between cities. With fish and reed-beds they present an exploitable ecosystem distinct from adjacent agricultural lands. From the third millennium BC, kings claimed credit for construction and extension of canals, as well as construction of city walls or temples; control of water conveys extraordinary power and became a cornerstone of political ideology. Ziggurats and canals offer an opposing pair of images: mountain-like peaks and extended semisubterranean linear devices. Human building activity has impacted both the sky and the earth. It is therefore somewhat surprising that Mesopotamians considered cities and canals to be gifts from the gods.

The archaeology of Mesopotamia is inseparable from its contemporary texts, comprising economic, administrative, legal, historical, and literary documents. This rich textual corpus adds nuance and detail to archaeological materials; while the archaeological record offers a valuable check to the often institutionally biased or selective texts. The political histories are strictly narrative, describing events and royal actions, which may or may not have affected people’s daily lives. But economic and administrative texts, although restricted to transactions and situations deemed worthy of recording for the future, are more relevant for them. Literature and myth offer insights into the reasons behind modes of burial, for instance, while instruction texts illuminate both agricultural techniques and religious ritual. Even vocabulary lists open a window into the Mesopotamian mind, indicating important categories and value assignments; even the absence of some terms (notably including ‘artist’) is revealing. The texts themselves, clay tablets, are archaeological objects, and information on their associations and context are as vital for their full comprehension as this information is for an understanding of art or ceramic assemblages. Both palaces and temples held libraries including both current and ancient texts. Although the majority of the population would have been technically illiterate, oral traditions were strong, and knowledge of past history and cultural traditions was part of being Mesopotamian. Early Complexities and Urbanism

Mesopotamia presents the world’s first state and empire. It was also essentially an urbanized society. Excavations in northern Mesopotamia (Syria) are pushing back the earliest known urban settlements into the fifth millennium BC, earlier than those currently known for southern Mesopotamia. For example, monumental architecture, industrial pottery production, and organized obsidian import were present at Tell Brak in the fifth millennium BC. But the absence of recent excavations in southern Mesopotamia may introduce a bias. The date and location of the earliest city may eventually be as debated as are the date and location of the earliest domesticated grain. But there is a more serious issue awaiting resolution, whether these cities were primarily economic, religious, or political in origin. Urbanization also means ruralization. The urban–rural dynamic demands further exploration if it is not to be viewed as a onesided exploitation of hinterland by urban center.

Archaeology of Religion

Temples physically dominated many cities and crowd the excavated archaeological record in Mesopotamia. The model of a temple-state, a world owned by temples and controlled by priests, was cast off long ago, but temples were undeniably material in the success of Mesopotamian urban life. Yet visits to neighborhood shrines and performance of small-scale rituals probably constituted the primary religious experience for many. The line between religion and magic was blurred, with incantation figurines and foundation deposits occupying the frontier. Mesopotamian religious belief invoked a pantheon of deities, primarily agricultural, astral, or pastoral and also, unusually, linked with man-made objects or concepts such as tools, irrigation, or the weaving loom. Deities were conceived of as anthropomorphic and were often portrayed in third–early second millennia artworks in human form, marked as divine only by horned crowns. Later, deities were reduced to symbols as the relationships among gods, kings, and the rest of the population developed. Power hierarchies among the gods mirror political hierarchies among humans. Mesopotamian religion changed over time, some deities rising in power while others faded. Political power was usually implicated: Marduk, an obscure agricultural deity, replaced Enlil of Nippur in the Creation Epic and in the highest position of authority as his city, Babylon, rose to prominence in southern Mesopotamia in the later second millennium BC.

864 ASIA, WEST/Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad Mass Production and Trade

Some early cylinder seals (Late Uruk) show schematic scenes of lines of women involved in weaving. This is supplemented by texts from temple and palace contexts across the millennia that refer to weaving institutions and the trade of large volumes of graded and specified textiles. The extreme standardization of shape and volume of many ceramic vessels across the late prehistoric and historic periods – along with the absence of kilns in domestic contexts – points to mass production of pottery. But the question of whether mass production meant attached or independent specialists has not yet been satisfactorily answered. The same question arises with regard to other modes of craft production, such as metallurgy. With mass production comes trade, and Mesopotamian trade involved both locally produced basic necessities (bricks, pottery, textiles, agricultural products) and imported luxuries. Urban institutions undeniably played a large role in the exchange of both types of goods and were the major siphons for and consumers of the latter. Sargon of Agade boasts of ships from Magan and Meluhha (probably Oman and the Indus Valley) coming to his capital, and urban public buildings are the main contexts in which exotic materials and objects are found. But the extent of private trade and barter is surely under-represented. The Ashur–Anatolia trade documentation presents an image of sophisticated profit-driven and speculative economic behavior entirely run on a private basis, and it is unlikely that this was an isolated episode. Shifts in popularity of imported raw materials can be difficult to explain. Carnelian all but disappears after the Akkadian Period, but the reason may lie with events in the Indus Valley, in Mesopotamia or the Gulf. The royal and religious monumental artworks of the Old Babylonian Period are overwhelmingly of dark stones, black limestone, or steatite, a contrast to the more variable and frequently lightcolored stones of the third millennium. This shift may have been intended to give a somber serious impression, but it may suggest closure of access routes for white limestone. Pastoralism and Urbanism

Pastoral groups appear in textual material, particularly in the late third and early second millennia BC, but remain archaeologically invisible in the continuously recycled Mesopotamian landscape. Texts reveal that urban dwellers sometimes viewed their pastoralist neighbors as barbarians who lacked knowledge of cooking or burial. But they were conversely happy to welcome them as members of the army or even as political leaders. Amorites, Kassites, Chaldaeans,

and Aramaeans – all with substantial mobile components – serially infiltrated southern Mesopotamia and ended up in political control. Mobile tribes in northern Mesopotamia seem to have been more fragmented and did not usually end up in power, yet the Mari texts indicate their importance to the economy in the second millennium, and Aramaeans eventually appeared in key official positions within the Neo-Assyrian imperial administration. The economic complementarity between agriculture and herding is better known from ethnographic examples; in the modern Middle East herds graze on harvested fields and contribute fertilizer in return. Temples in the past owned both farms and flocks, and reconstruction of a comparable seasonal movement is plausible. Continuity and Change

A graph of Mesopotamian political history would describe a ragged and broken line. States shifted and collapsed; empires tended to be hard-won and surprisingly rapidly broken. The capital cities of nations or empires leapt across the landscape, and the focus of these political units shifted with them. These changes would have affected government officials and political elites, yet the archaeological record indicates that often these major political developments had minimal impact on private citizens. Settlement patterns remained the same; architecture and intrasite spatial use was stable; pottery style persisted. Art had a mixed reaction to political change. Official styles can be identified with specific political regimes. Given the illiteracy of the majority of the Mesopotamian population, imagery was the most effective way to impart political ideology. But sometimes the most eloquent statements were made not by introducing new motifs or styles but by returning to previous ones. An image of king carrying a hod of bricks or mud plaster for construction of a temple appears in the ED and Ur III Periods in reliefs and foundation deposits; this easily read icon reappeared in the Neo-Assyrian Period with Ashurbanipal presented as the rebuilder of Babylon. Similarly, the figure of a defeated enemy prostrate below the feet of the victorious army persists as a piece of visual vocabulary from the mid-third through the late first millennium. Continuities of style and function also appear in private portable art. Old Babylonian figurines of naked women are virtually indistinguishable from those of the Neo-Babylonian Period despite a millennium of separation. Their function (love or fertility charms) also remained unchanged over this time, testament to the immutability of less-formal systems of

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belief. There are also continuities in literary traditions; the Epic of Gilgamesh, a musing on the pleasures of friendship and inevitability of death, had a life of at least 1000 years.

Palaeolithic Cultures Ofer Bar-Yosef, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Mesopotamia in the Early Twenty-First Century AD The momentum of archaeological research in Iraq slowed dramatically in 1990 and has effectively ceased since 2003, while work in Syria and Turkey has intensified during these years. The Iraq Museum, repository of an irreplaceable collection of Mesopotamian artifacts, was partially looted in April 2003, and sites across the country have been comprehensively pillaged since that time, in one of the largest cultural resource disasters of recent years. Satellite images have, however, become more widely available during this period, as aerial coverage of the region has intensified; for the foreseeable future, remote sensing techniques will be the only ones available to anyone who wishes to work in Iraq and they have become increasingly relied upon by those working in Syria. Themes and theory are supplementing chronological reconstruction and culture historical approaches. See also: Asia, West: Achaemenian, Parthian, and

Sasanian Persian Civilizations; Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Cities, Ancient, and Daily Life; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Craft Specialization; Political Complexity, Rise of; Writing Systems.

Glossary Acheulian A cultural complex identified in Africa and Eurasia by the production of handaxes – bifacially flaked tools, as well as cleavers, bifacially U-shaped handaxes on a nodule or a large flake. It lasted from 1.7 to c. 0.1 million years. alluvial fan A fan shaped distribution of sediments carried by rivers or wadis where the water flow decreases and stops, and the deposits carried by spread side-ways. Epi-Paleolithic A term that designates the period that marks the latest part of the Palaeolithic period. It is mainly used by archaeologists in North Africa and the Levant. This period lasted from c. 20 000 to 11 500 cal BP in the Levant, when the Neolithic period began. geomorphology The study of landforms, including their origin and evolution, and the processes that shape them. hunter-gatherer society A society whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, using foraging and hunting, without significant recourse to the domestication of either. The Levant Geographic term that refers to the area from the foothills of the Taurus mountains to the tip of the Sinai peninsula in the Eastern Mediteranean. Its eastern border are the Balick river valley in northern Mesopotamia, and the Syro-Arabian desert from the Euphrates River Valley, southward through the Black Desert, El-Jaffer basin and the plateau along the eastern shoreline of the Gulf of Aqaba. wadi A valley, ravine, or watercourse that is dry except during the rainy season.

Further Reading Akkermans P and Schwartz G (2003) The Archaeology of Syria, From Complex Hunter-Gatherers to Early Urban Societies (c. 16 000–300 BC). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crawford H (2004) Sumer and the Sumerians, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moorey PRS (1978) Kish Excavations 1923–1933. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Matthews R (2003) The Archaeology of Mesopotamia, Theories and Approaches. London: Routledge. Delougaz P and Lloyd S (1942) Pre-Sargonid Temples in the Diyala Region. Chicago: Oriental Institute Publication 58. Oates J (1986) [2003]. Babylon. London: Thames & Hudson. Oates J and Oates D (2001) Nimrud, An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed. London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq. Postgate JN (1994) Early Mesopotamia, Society and Economy at the Dawn of History. London: Routledge. Schuster A and Polk M (eds.) (2005) The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia. Harry Abrams: New York. Van de Mieroop M (2004) A History of the Ancient Near East, c. 3000–323 BC. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Wilkinson TJ (2003) Archaeological Landscapes of the Near East. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Woolley L (1939) Ur Excavations V: The Ziggurat and Its Surroundings. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Introduction The dominant geographical features of Western Asia consist of a topographic combination of mountains (mostly of the Alpine uplift), plateaus, alluvial plains, and desert landscapes including oases. The coastal plains are often very narrow in comparison to those of other continents. The Anatolian plateau is bounded by the Pontain mountains on the north and the Taurus mountains on the south, each range about 1500 km long. Both join the northwestern end of the 1800 km long Zagros chain, which, together with the Caucasus Mountains, create a deeply dissected land mass. The Iranian plateau is bounded by the Zagros Mountains in the west and south, the Elburz and Kopet Dagh Mountains in the north, and the Khurasan and Baluchistan mountains in the east. The Mesopotamia plain stretches and descends from the foothills of the Zagros and Taurus into the Persian Gulf. The Syro-Arabian desert that stretches bound it on the west into the Arabian Peninsula. The Mediterranean Levant is a special zone within Western

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Asia and covers an area about 1100 km long and 250– 350 km wide. Topographically, it includes the coastal mountain range (overall lower than the Taurus), the Dead Sea system or the rift of the Orontes-Jordan Valleys, inland mountain ranges, and the eastward sloping plateau, which is dissected by many wadis flowing eastward into the Syro-Arabian desert. Today the climate of Western Asia is dominated by two seasons: cool, rainy winters and hot, dry summers. Winter temperatures are milder in the coastal ranges and more severe inland or at higher elevations. Precipitation is affected by distance from the sea and by altitude, with the central Anatolian and Iranian plateaus, the Syro-Arabian desert, and Mesopotamia being the driest zones. In the Mediterranean Levant, rainfall decreases in a north–south direction from the Taurus Mountains to the Sinai Peninsula. That zone is characterized by Eu-Mediterranean vegetation consisting of woodlands or open parklands on and along the coastal ranges. In contrast, western Anatolia is covered with broad-leafed and needle-leafed trees and shrubs resistant to cold, while cold-adapted deciduous broadleafed woodland characterizes the eastern mountains and large areas of the Zagros. Dwarf shrubland and steppic vegetation (Irano-Turanian) dominate the eastern Anatolian plateau and form a wide arching belt south of the northern Levantine, Taurus, and northern Zagros hilly ranges. Farther south, open xenomorphic dwarf shrubland and desert plant associations (Saharo-Arabian) cover areas with an annual precipitation of less than 300– 400 mm. The current complex climatic system of Western Asia makes it difficult to reconstruct the patterns of the past. Presently, large annual fluctuations in rainfall characterize the precipitation of the region with storm tracks following various paths. Those that carry humidity along the Mediterranean Sea move in a more arid, southerly direction. The second series of cyclones descends through Europe and, in turning east, leaves most of the southern Levant dry. Isotope studies of speleothems in Israel, as well as chemical analyses and dating of the palaeolake Lisan in the Jordan Valley, have demonstrated that Upper Pleistocene rainfall distributions were similar to those of today, although at certain times higher than the known averages. Rather than temperature changes, decadal and centennial fluctuations in the amount of precipitation were responsible for the expansion and contraction of vegetation belts recorded in the palynological sequences and lake levels. While the climate of Western Asia today is characterized by cold and rainy winters and hot and dry summers, the exceptions are the margins of the Arabian Peninsula that are affected by the Indian monsoon. The interplay between the western winds that bring

the moisture from the Atlantic or Northern Europe and the Asia barometric high in wintertime as well as the monsoon system, is the reason why it was difficult for many years to decipher the meaning of the climatic changes in the Levant. Knowledge was improved as the number of marine cores from the Arabian Sea became available in recent years with the increase of similar cores from the eastern Mediterranean. However, detailed correlations between climatic changes and cultural expressions are still tenuous in most cases. The Mediterranean coastal areas are more humid, whereas the inland plateaus are drier and colder in wintertime. In Anatolia and Iran, it snows. At the higher altitudes in the Taurus, Zagros, Caucasus, and other mountain chains, it snows in the winter and the summers are cool and often dry. The topographic alignments and the effects of the storm tracks that arrive in the Near East from the west created a phytogeographic pattern in which the vegetation belts are also arranged in a parallel north–south direction. They are known as the Mediterranean woodland and parkland, the steppic Irano-Turanian, and the desertic Saharo-Arabian. The latter characterize the areas where annual precipitation is often less than 250 mm a year. In Iran, they stretch along the Zagros and in Anatolia in part parallel to the Taurus. The climate of the Caucasus area is temperate in the west and becomes dried semi-arid in the east toward the Caspian. Pleistocene and Holocene climates were somewhat different than today’s climate and rain patterns were not necessarily the same. The study of past palaeoclimatic conditions demonstrates the shifts in plant and faunal associations, accompanied by geomorphic landscape modifications. The emerging images of Pleistocene environmental conditions are still fragmentary when the Lower Pleistocene is considered. Diastrophic movements along with climatic changes cause both geomorphologic alterations such as major erosion due to lowering base level, deposition in closed basins, coverage by lava flows, and the appearance and disappearance of lakes in the rift valley and the semi-arid belt. The main elements in Western Asian fauna were always Eurasiatic and the earlier Miocene–Pliocene stamp of an African component steadily decreased through the Pleistocene. Plant associations were also affected by the climatic fluctuations. Under conditions of increasing winter precipitation, the woodland belt expanded eastward and even southward. Steppic plants covered large portions of the previously arid zone, and the SaharoArabian vegetation retreated to certain enclaves. Ponds and small lakes emerged in lowlands and enclosed basins in the semi-arid areas of the SyroArabian desert. Improved environmental conditions

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enabled hunter-gatherers to expand their territories and increase their populations. The conditions changed when precipitation decreased and worsened when accompanied by a drop in the annual average of temperatures. Foragers living between the Mediterranean shoreline and the deserts or on the inland plateau such as Anatolia and central Iran, or in high altitudes, had to accommodate their mobility patterns, exploitation strategies, and population size in order to survive under the new climatic regime. Knowledge of Western Asia prehistory is pertinent for understanding the global evolutionary cultural processes due to its crucial geographic location at the crossroads between Africa and the rest of Asia. It is the Levantine corridor within this vast region that produced a wealth of archaeological records for several migrations ‘out of Africa’ of Homo ergaster/ erectus as well as the archaic types of modern humans. The Levant and adjacent areas have also seen the first sedentary hamlets of complex huntergatherers among whom were the founders of the agricultural or Neolithic revolution.

History of Research Investigations of the prehistory of Western Asia began during the late nineteenth century in two subregions: the Caucasus by Germans and Russians, and the Holy Land and adjacent countries by a wave of scholars and educated travelers who searched for its antiquities and who noticed the presence of prehistoric stone tools. This was already at the time when the antiquity of humankind had become an accepted notion in Europe. Hence, the first excavations were carried out at the turn of the century, in Lebanon, by Abbe´ P. G. Zumoffen. But it was not until the excavations in 1925 in Wadi Amud caves by F. TurvillePetre, who discovered a fragmentary skull at Zuttiyeh cave, that the search gained momentum. Other scholars who followed and published a considerable amount of new data were D. Garrod, R. Neuville, M. Stekelis, Father J. F. Ewing, and A. Rust. Thus the period between the two World Wars became a Golden Age for prehistoric research that expanded to western Iran, and research by others in the Caucasus Mountains. Among the most notable discoveries were the human relics uncovered in the caves of Mount Carmel (el-Wad, Skhul, and Tabun caves), Qafzeh Cave, and Ksar Akil. These continue to attract scholars from different countries to Western Asia. Further discoveries of human remains were made in the Iraqi cave site of Shanidar, and the investigations of the cultural expressions of the Palaeolithic period were, and are, being published in local languages as well as English, French, German, and Russian. Even today, this is the

only region in the entire world that is being searched by archaeologists from numerous different schools and countries, from Japan in the east through the USA in the west. In addition to systematic excavations, often carried out by variable digging methods and degrees of precision, numerous survey projects have facilitated the recognition of the prehistory of this region. Due to an ease of conducting archaeological research, most of the surveys addressing the distribution of Palaeolithic sites were done in the Levantine countries and include the various vegetation belts from the Mediterranean forests through the arid zone. Hence, our knowledge of past geomorphologic changes and the possible impact on human societies of hunter-gatherers is reasonably fair. In spite of the paucity of lakes in this area, pollen cores that reflect environmental fluctuations provide some information mainly in relation to the Upper Pleistocene although hints concerning the past 1.8 million years are also available.

Lower Palaeolithic The geographic position of the Levant at the crossroads between Africa and Eurasia made it a natural path for the dispersal of H. ergaster or erectus. The earliest site is Dmanisi in Georgia. The site was originally located at the shores of a small lake. Accumulations of bones and artifacts were the results of redeposition from the occupation levels in a series of ‘pipes’. The most striking discoveries are five skulls and a suite of postcranial bones. The stratified assemblages overlie a lava flow dated to 1.8 million years and the rapid rate of deposition indicates a terminal age for the site c. 1.7 million years. The lithic industry primarily consists of core-choppers, and numerous flakes, several of which are retouched. Based on African terminology, it was suggested to call the industry ‘pre-Oldowan’. However, this term only indicates that the main artifacts are cores and flakes and other Asian sites, mostly those beyond the so-called Movius line, exhibit similar composition. Pollen from coprolites indicates that the area was forested with tree species such as Abies, Pinus, Fagus, Alnus, Castanea, Tilia, Betula, Carpinus, and rare Ulmus and Salix, and bushes such as rhododendron, corylus, and myrtle, as well as herbaceous vegetation dominated by Cyperaceae, Graminae, and Polygonaceae. This association reflects an environment of high mountains with wellwatered woodland of an inland basin. The fauna included essentially palaeoarctic species such as Struthio dmanisensis, Ursus etruscus, Canis etruscus, Pachycrocuta sp., Homotherium sp., Megantereon cf. megantereon, Archidiscodon meridionalis, Equus cf. stenonis, Equus cf. altidens, Dicerorhinus etruscus, Sus sp.,

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Dama cf. nestii, Cervus sp., Dmanisibos georgicus, Caprini gen., Ovis sp., Leporinae gen., Cricetulus sp., and Marmota sp. Most of the fauna accumulated at the edge of a shallow lake but some bones demonstrate human involvement whether related to scavenging and/or hunting. Second in antiquity is ’Ubeidiya that lies 3 km south of the Sea of Galilee on the flanks of the western escarpment of the Jordan Rift. With the aid of heavy machinery, several geological trenches (numberedI–V, K, and Ka) were excavated to a total length of about 1100 m. The geological structure, as observed in these artificial exposures, is an anticline with several undulations accompanied by several faults. The numerous layers in the trenches were numbered from the observed earliest to the latest over a total thickness of about 154 m. The observed sequence was subdivided into four cycles, two limnic (Li and Lu) and two terrestrial (Fi and Fu), as follows: 1. The Li cycle, characterized by clays, silts, and limestone, terminates with laminated silts, rich with freshwater mollusks and fish remains. One layer (III-12) contained mammalian bones and some artifacts, and provided the only pollen spectrum indicating the forest cover of the flanks of the Jordan Valley. 2. The Fi cycle is built of clays and conglomerates, mainly beach deposits. Most of the archaeological finds and faunal remains were obtained from this member beginning with layer II-21 through III-64. 3. The Lu cycle is the upper limnic member, and consists of two parts: the lower part is essentially clays and chalks, while the upper part is a whitishgrayish-yellow silty series. Only a few artifacts were encountered in this unit. 4. The Fu cycle consists mainly of conglomerates, some of which are large basalt boulders. No artifacts or mollusks were found in this member. Presumably, it represents the regression or even total disappearance of Lake ’Ubeidiya due to the onset of a tectonic movement. This member is overlain by a Pliocene overthrusted block within which the basaltic flow was K/Ar-dated to 3.6 million years. The palaeoenvironments of ’Ubeidiya were reconstructed on the basis of the different nature of the layers while taking into account the malacological and faunal assemblages. The results indicate that the site was located within a sequence of complex alluvial and deltaic situations in which lakeshores fluctuated constantly. The major lake expansions are recorded in the Li and Lu members while the retreat is reflected in the Fi member. It is at that time that hominins

camped on the lakeshores, at the edges of the alluvial fan, and on the mud flats or temporarily dried marshes. From the hilly area, several lithic assemblages were washed and redeposited within the gravels that filled a wadi channel (layers K-29, K-30, and III-34, 35). The lake transgressed again (Lu), and then regressed (Fu), this time probably as a result of the beginning of the tectonic movement that caused the folding of the formation and the slumping of the Pliocene block on top of its younger member. The archaeological excavations at ’Ubeidiya uncovered many layers with numerous artifacts. Field observations indicate that the same layers can be traced on both sides of the main anticline. However, in order to avoid unfounded correlations, layers were numbered separately in relation to each geological trench. Of the 65 artifact-bearing layers, 15 can be considered as the major archaeological horizons and most were excavated on sufficiently large exposures to provide a fairly large sample of artifacts and animal bones. The depositional environment indicates on what kind of natural environment hominins preferred to stay. These types of localities are on top of a drying marshy layer, on the gravelly lake beaches, and somewhere upslope, perhaps on the plateau above the Jordan Valley. The latter contexts were washed into the lake and accumulated within a fluvial conglomerate. It should be noted that occasional isolated artifacts were encountered in different geological layers reminiscent of spare finds in East African Lower Palaeolithic sites. The raw materials used for making artifacts were lava (basalt), flint, and limestone. The basalt occurs as pebbles, cobbles, boulders, and scree components; the limestone as cobbles within the beach and wadi deposits; and the flint in the same environments as small pebbles and cobbles. The shapes of the stone objects modified by hominins include the corechoppers and the detached pieces such as flakes mostly made of flint, limestone spheroids, hand axes, trihedrals, and picks made mainly of basalt, with a few of flint and limestone. There is a direct correlation between the size of the object category and the type of common raw material. The dating of ’Ubeidiya is based on faunal correlations with Dmanisi and European sites and is thus suggested as 1.4–1.5 million years, and current electron spin resonance (ESR) dates suggest 1.2 million years. Among the faunal assemblages that include more than 100 species of mammals, birds, and reptiles, the following species are chronologically noteworthy: Lagurodon arankae, Mammuthus meridionalis cf. Tamanensis, Praemegaceros verticornis, Canis arnensis, Pelorovis oldowayensis, Apodemus

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(Sylvaticus) sylvaticus, Apodemus flavicollis, Dicerorhinus etruscus, Panthera gombaszoegensis, Kolpochoerus oldowayensis, Hippopotamus gorgops, Hippopotamus behemoth, Hypolagus brachygmathus, Allocricetus bursae, Cricetus cricetus, Gazellospira torticornis, Sus strozzii, Ursus etruscus, Pannonictis ardea, Megantereon cultridens, Crocuta crocuta, Herpestes sp. In sum, the ’Ubeidiya faunal is essentially Late Villafranchian with a few Galerian elements, and is mostly Euroasiatic with rare African elements. Faunal connections with Africa were cut off during the Late Pliocene and the early part of the Lower Pleistocene. Most of the fauna accumulated on the lakeshores and in the deltaic deposits. Only a small portion indicates the involvement of humans, probably due to hunting although scavenging as meat-obtaining strategy was not excluded. Dmanisi and ’Ubeidiya mark stations in human dispersals from Africa into Eurasia through the Levantine corridor. The existence of the Saharan desertic belt since the end of the Miocene excludes the interior of the Arabian Peninsula from the Levantine corridor except for the coast of the Red Sea. Under interglacial conditions, the northern penetration of the monsoonal system drastically changed the potential for increasing amounts of resources in eastern Sahara and could have enabled an alternative route for H. erectus or archaic H. sapiens groups. The Lower Palaeolithic assemblages at el-Abassieh in Cairo may indicate that the Nile Valley should not be excluded as a potential migration route. The Acheulian sequence is generally divided into three major categories: Lower, Middle, and Upper Acheulian. Assemblages are incorporated in each phase based on the morphological and metrical attributes of the bifaces. In general, the bifaces demonstrate additional refinement in their shapes and the degree of symmetry, when compared to the most simple forms at ’Ubeidiya, that represent the Lower Acheulian. Over 200 Acheulian occurrences were recorded in the Levant, eastern Turkey, and Iran. However, the number of excavated sites is small and includes Evron-Quarry, Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Holon, Revadim, Tabun cave, and Umm Qatafa in Israel, Latamne and Gharmachi in Syria, Ain Soda and Lion’s Spring in the Azraq Basin in Jordan, and Sehrmuz and Kaltepe in Turkey. The site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, where most of the industry was manufactured from basalt with fewer artifacts made of flint and limestone, stands out with the amount of available information concerning faunal, plant remains, palaeoecological observations, and detailed lithic studies. The dominance of cleavers made of basalt flakes, provides an

African aspect to this industry and is seen as cultural evidence for another movement of hominids from Africa into the Levant. Several layers of the depositional sequence of the site, which amounts to over 30 m thick and is tilted westward, were recently extensively excavated. The Bruhnes/Matuyama palaeomagnetic chronological borderline (0.78 million years ago) was found within the site’s sequence characterized by the accumulation of fluvial, lacustrine, overbank sediments at the shoreline of an old Hula lake. Among the most important discoveries was the residue for the use of fire by the site’s occupants. Many thousands of small flakes that bear potlid fractures, which mark the effects of fire, were identified in particular concentrations. Among the faunal remains the species identified were Stegodon mediterraneus, Mamuthus (Elephas) trogontherii, Dicerorhinus merckii, Hippopotamus amphibius, Dama mesopotamica, Bison cf. priscus; Capra sp., Gazella gazella. This assemblage falls within the general definition of the Galerian fauna that replaced the Late Villafranchian association around 0.9–0.7 million years ago. Most of the sites from this period demonstrate the involvement of humans in the formation of the accumulations. Hunting and opportunistic scavenging were the main procurement strategies. The site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov produced also a wealth of plant remains, some of which were collected as food items by the camping foragers. One should mention the Middle Acheulian that in the past seemed to be a recognized phase within the Acheulian of the Near East. It was best known from the systematically collected samples in river gravels along the Nahr el Kebir and Orontes Rivers in Syria. Rare finds were retrieved in the Euphrates Valley, and some in the Beqa’a Valley. Chronologically, they were assigned to the Late Lower and Early Middle Pleistocene. In the southern Levant, the definition of Middle Acheulian was rarely used. Assemblages that seem to fall within this category, on the basis of the dominant biface forms, can be also attributed by to the Upper Acheulian. Such, for example, are the assemblages from the excavations at Holon and Umm Qatafa cave layer E. The bifaces are generally elongated, pointed, and roughly made when compared to the fully symmetrical Upper Acheulian types. However, the dates for the Holon site (c. 300–220 thousand years ago), and the Acheulian contexts from Revadim Quarry, are within the range of dates for the Acheulo-Yabrudian entity that stretches from north of the Yakon River, though Mount Carmel into northern Syria. The two Upper Acheulian sites, and many more surface assemblages collected in the Negev

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desert, are distributed south of the presumed cultural boundary between the Acheulo-Yabrudian and the Upper Acheulian, which cuts across the Levantine ecologies from west to east. The Upper or Late Acheulian demonstrates a technological tendency to have more use of soft hammer percussion, high degree of artifact symmetry, and the presumed appearance of the Levallois technique. However, the products of this knapping technique are only available in a few assemblages and their frequencies are generally very low. Typologically, the disappearance of core-choppers is noticeable. Bifaces of cordiform and amygdaloid shapes often outnumber the ovates. It seems that in part the variability in metrical attributes between sites reflects differences in the size of raw material that is available in the vicinity of these localities. The Acheulian sequence in the northern province ends with an entity that is known as either the Acheulo-Yabrudian or the Mugharan Tradition. Three ‘facies’ or combinations of different frequencies of the same tool types are included in this entity: one is dominated by small bifaces (Acheulian); the second contains numerous side scrapers, canted, and transverse scrapers often shaped on thick flakes (Yabrudian); and the last has backed blades as well as rare bifaces (Amudian). Stratigraphically, this entity precedes the Mousterian industries in the central and northern Levant. Its age is derived from thermoluminescence dating (TL) and ESR readings of c. 400/380–250/230 thousand years available for the Acheulo-Yabrudian layers at Tabun cave and the Amudian industry in Qesem cave. Recent work in the Taurus Mountains suggests that this entity originated in the north and spread southward. Unfortunately, hominid remains from this long period are very rare and include one tooth from ’Ubeidiya, a skull fragment that was found in Acheulian context in Nadaouiyeh in the el-Kowm Basin, and two femurs from Gesher Benot Ya’aqov collected from deposits removed when the Jordan Valley channel was deepened. The best preserved is the fragmentary skull from Zuttiyeh Cave, in Wadi Amud in an Acheulo-Yabrudian context, which is considered as either late H. erectus, or a generalized human type that is known from a larger area within the Old World.

Middle Palaeolithic The study of the Levantine Mousterian benefited from the long stratigraphy of Tabun cave and from a host of other excavated sites. The Middle Palaeolithic in the Taurus–Zagros ranges differs in part from

that of the Levant, but resembles the industries from the Caucasus region. The basis for the general subdivision of the Levantine industries is the sequence of Tabun Cave. The increase in the number of well-published lithic assemblages including the data pertaining to the variability within each of the Mousterian industries was the result of the advent of technological studies centered on recognizing the reduction strategies, expressed in both, the basic modes within the Levallois concept, as well as other lithic production concepts. Although the morphological variability of the lithic artifacts from various sites is not fully portrayed through the simplified model based on the Tabun Cave sequence, it seems that the overall chronological trend is clear, and that the general entities are valid archaeological ‘cultures’ in time and space, as follows: 1. ‘Tabun D type’ assemblages are stratigraphically located at the base of the Mousterian sequence in multilayered sites such as Tabun Cave, unit IX, Yabrud I Rockshelter, Hayonim Cave layers F and lower E, and in Douara Cave layer IV, Abu Sif, and the open-air site of Rosh Ein Mor in the Negev highlands. This entity is characterized by the production of elongated blanks sometimes defined as blades, pointed, and when retouched are known as Abu Sif points. The blanks were removed from cores with basal preparation and correction of the core convexity conveys the impression that the reduction had been bidirectional. In Hayonim Cave and Rosh Ein Mor, both the laminar and Levallois methods core reduction strategies were practiced. Other tool types are the burins that occur in this industry. Most Early Mousterian assemblages in the southern Levant were produced by this particular Levallois method and could be called Abu Sifian. In the northern Levant, the Early Mousterian Hummalian industry from sites in the el-Kowm Basin (northeast Syria) is essentially a bladey industry, mostly nonLevallois. Further north, in the Caucasus Mountains, a similar bladey Mousterian is known from Djrujula Cave, and a few other sites such as Koudaro Cave, and is sometimes named Djrujulan. Currently, the dating for all these industries ranges from about 250 000 to c. 150 000 years, and are therefore of similar ages to the ‘Tabun D type’. 2. The ‘Tabun C-type’ assemblages are found in multilayered sites above the ‘Tabun D-type’ ones (Tabun I 18-26 or layer C in Garrod’s excavations), Hayonim Cave upper layer E, and below the ‘Tabun B type’ in Tabun Cave. Most of the assemblages are characterized by the dominance of oval–rectangular blanks, best described from

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Qafzeh cave. The common products of this method are suboval and subquadrangular flakes, sometimes of large dimensions, struck from Levallois cores through centripetal and/or bidirectional exploitation. Triangular points appear in small numbers in definite horizons, such as layer XV in Qafzeh. Other generally similar assemblages were reported from Skhul layer B, Naame´, Ras el Kelb, Ksar ’Akil XXVI, and Quneitra where the lithic assemblage is also considered as having particular traits. 3. ‘Tabun B type’ comprises assemblages dominated by the production of mainly flakes and triangular Levallois points, frequently with a broad-base – the typical ‘chapeau de gendarme’ – striking platform. They are removed from unidirectional convergent Levallois cores. There is a striking similarity between Kebara units IX and X, Tabun layer B both in Mount Carmel and Tor Faraj in southern Jordan. In Amud and Tor Sabiha Caves, unidirectional convergent cores yielded narrower and more elongated triangular flakes, sometimes called ‘leaf-shaped’ flakes. It is worth noting that blades do occur in all of these assemblages sometimes comprising up to 25% of the blanks such as in Kebara units XI and XII, and Amud B1. Similar ‘Tabun B-type’ assemblages occur in Bezez Cave layer B, Ksar Akil layer XXVIII (Lebanon), Dederiyeh (northern Syria), and Um el Tlel in el-Kowm Basin. For historical reasons, it should be noted that the production of long and narrow flakes by unidirectional convergent mode of flaking, and the variable frequencies of blades in ‘Tabun B-type’ assemblages, were interpreted as suggesting that this industry could have been the technological progenitor of the bladey Initial Upper Palaeolithic (IUP). While this suggestion means that the technical change, or the first step of the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution, took place in the Levant, it also has biological implications. For scholars who classify the human fossils associated with the ‘Tabun B-type’ industries (Kebara, the woman from Tabun, Amud, Dederiyeh) as Western Asian Neanderthals, it means that the descendants of this population were those who initiated the new technological revolution of the Upper Palaeolithic. This stands in contradiction to the genetic evidence that finds correlation between modern humans and Upper Palaeolithic industries. Hence, the emergence of the new lithic reduction sequences and tool types should be sought in a different region such as the Nile Valley or East Africa. The Middle Palaeolithic assemblages uncovered in the caves of the Zagros and Taurus resemble those of the southern Caucasus. The common knapping methods are discoiadal and Levallois and the frequencies of retouched pieces are very high. The dates from

Karain Cave (Turkey), Shanidar (Iraq), and Ortvale Klde (Georgia) indicate that these assemblages, rich in well-retouched and resharpened points and sidescrapers, characterize mostly the Last Glacial Mousterian. Surface collections in Anatolia, north of the Taurus ranges, demonstrate the presence of Levallois-dominated industries. One of the cultural characteristics of the Middle Palaeolithic of the region are the burials. The best known are from Skhul and Qafzeh cave, embedded in ‘Tabun C-type’ assemblages, and considered as archaic modern humans, possibly related to the finds in Omo-Kibish and Herto in Ethiopia. Late burials are those of the Neanderthals in Kebara, Tabun, Amud, Dederiyeh, and Shanidar caves (see Burials: Excavation and Recording Techniques). Faunal analysis indicated that humans hunt what was available in the vicinity of their seasonal camps. In the Levant, the main game animals were the gazelle and the fallow deer, while in the Lebanese mountains the fallow deer and the wild goat were very common. In Shanidar the wild goat was the common hunt and in the Caucasus the thur (Capra Caucasica). Both the identified hunting seasons and differences in the number of retouched pieces versus cores and debitage products indicate that Middle Palaeolithic humans were mobile, employing various habitats, either along altitudinal transects (Zagros and Caucasus) or more along topographic lows (the Levantine landscapes). Meager evidence concerning the vegetal diet was provided by carbonized plants from Kebara Cave. In spite of the poor preservation, it seems that in all the Mediterranean areas plants were more important as a stable source of food than animal tissues.

Upper Palaeolithic The cultural transition from the Middle to the Upper Palaeolithic, also referred to as the Upper Palaeolithic revolution, is demonstrated first by the technotypological shift of manufacturing stone tools and a little later by the appearance of marine shells as body decorations. The technical and typological transition is best documented in Boker Tachtit in the Negev and Ksar Akil in the Lebanese mountains. Level 1 at Boker Tachtit contains an assemblage that demonstrates mixed characteristics with dominance of tool types such as end scrapers, burins, and new point types. On the one hand, core reduction is dominated by blade production, and on the other hand some of the products bear the forms of Levallois points. These differ from the typical Mousterian Levallois points as they are shaped by bidirectional removals and not by convergent removals like the earlier forms. Similar

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observations concerning the transitional nature of the core reduction technique were made at Ksar ’Akil. There is little doubt that the earliest layers should be dated to around 47/45 000–43 000 radiocarbon years ago. The particular industries from this phase were grouped under the term ‘transitional industries’ or Emiran, although the preferred term today is Initial Upper Palaeolithic (IUP). Among the retouched pieces, the Emireh point, known for its basal bifacial shaping, is common only in the central and southern Levant. From the central and northern Levant, blades and flakes with transverse removal at the tip, known as ‘chamfered pieces’ or chanfriens in French, occur in Ksar ’Akil, Abri Antelias, Abu Halka, and Uc¸agizli Caves. In all cases, they mark the IUP that is also recorded in the el-Kowm Basin (northeast Syria). The next cultural phase in the Levant is characterized by the blade-dominated assemblages of the Early Ahmarian industry that dates from 43/42 000–34/ 30 000 years BP. In the early assemblages, the striking platforms of the blades bear the same facets similar to Late Mousterian core preparation, while the lipped and punctiform platforms became dominant later. End scrapers and burins are among the common tool types. Numerous open-air sites in the semi-arid areas of Sinai, the Negev, and southern Jordan were excavated and radiocarbon-dated. It seems that from c. 38 000 to 24 000 years BP the steppic zone received a higher amount of annual precipitation than it does today, and became the ‘homeland’ of many groups of Ahmarian foragers. Most sites were located next to water sources. The people gathered seeds, leaves, and fruits, and hunted ibex, gazelle, and aurochs as shown by the uncovered bones. The Early Ahmarian is poorly known from the northern and central parts of the Levant due to insufficient research and the mobility pattern of those foragers, which did not always incorporate cave-sites or rockshelters. The most impressive archaeological sequence was uncovered in Ksar ’Akil rockshelter. The stratified assemblages and faunal collections make this site unique. It could have served as a location for meetings during many generations. From this site and a few others, we know that the Upper Palaeolithic people hunted the available game in their respective areas: ibex, fallow deer, and roe deer in the Lebanese mountains; gazelle and fallow deer in Mount Carmel; and gazelle, ibex, and aurochs in the Jordan valley. Small game included hare, and trapping for birds is evidenced. The Upper Palaeolithic sequence in these parts of the Levant was interrupted by the appearance of the Aurignacian that was originally labeled as Levantine Aurignacian although the published assemblages

are very similar to the European ones. One of the tool types, an essential Aurignacian component in every assemblage, is the el-Wad point that clearly resembles the Krems point of Central Europe and the Font Yves point in France. Other striking similarities between the European Aurignacian and the Levantine contexts include the body decorations such as beads from deer teeth, as well as the proliferation of bone and antler tools, among which there are samples of split base points. These cultural elements support the identification of the Levantine assemblages with the Aurignacian cultural complex. A limestone slab with an incised ‘horse’ from Hayonim cave adds to the artistic aspects of this culture. The Levantine Aurignacian, dated to c. 34 000– 29 000 years BP, is geographically limited to the coastal and inland ranges of the central and northern Levant and was not found in the arid zone (although certain assemblages were previously misidentified as Aurignacian). Further dating may reduce this time range. Similar assemblages were reported from the Zagros Mountains but not further east or north (such as in the Caucasus). The Aurignacian penetration probably originated in the Balkans and reached selected parts of the Near East through Anatolia. The Late Ahmarian (from 30 000 to 20 000 years ago), and the ensuing Epipalaeolithic industries, are characterized by the production of blades and numerous bladelets. The emergence of microlithic forms or small and narrow bladelets precedes what is often called the Epipalaeolithic period in the Levant. One of the best examples for a camp of huntergatherers was exposed in Ohalo I, a waterlogged site discovered when Lake Kinneret regressed. Excavations uncovered a series of brush huts, a wealth of carbonized plant remains including cereals, a large slab stone, on the surface of which starches were found, evidence for grinding seeds. Among the huts, a burial was discovered. The tool assemblage includes microliths, bone and wooden tools, fishing weights, and a wealth of debitage products. Animal bones testify to hunting and ephemeral fishing. The vegetal diet, as suspected for earlier periods, provided most of the calories of those bands of foragers (see Asia, West: Paleolithic Cultures).

Epipalaeolithic The Epipalaeolithic period in the Levant, dated to c.20/19 000 through 11 500 cal year BP, is characterized by the increasing complexity of settlement systems, technology, subsistence proclivities, social organization, and artistic representations. The latter part of this period witness the emergence of settled life by sedentary foragers, known as the Natufian

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culture, who were the forerunners of the agricultural communities. The palaeoclimate of this period is generally better documented due to availability of sources such as pollen cores, deep-sea cores, and speleothems. The milleniums of the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM) caused the expansion of the arid belt and therefore the more limited spatial distribution of Kebaran foragers. The climatic amelioration of the Terminal Pleistocene improved the local environmental conditions, but ended with the Younger Dryas, which was a globally cold and dry period. During the time from c. 18 000 through 13 000 cal year BP, numerous lakes and ponds were established in the formerly desertic and steppic areas; woodlands and parklands expanded permitting foragers to relax their population control and to allow for the acquisition of reliable, accessible, and predictable food resources in the same zone where subsistence was earlier a matter of hazard. The Levantine core area demonstrates both continuity and shifts in lithic industries from the previous Upper Palaeolithic entities. The European terminology placed these milleniums within the Upper Palaeolithic, but the research in the Near East since the 1960s demonstrated that the cultural trajectory was different. The European term of ‘Mesolithic’ designated the appearance of microlithic assemblages produced by hunter-gatherers who lived during the postglacial times, that is, the Early Holocene. Hence the attribution of Levantine microlithic industries to the Mesolithic, as proposed by the pioneering prehistorians, seemed inadequate. The term Epipalaeolithic was adopted from the prehistory of North Africa, where researchers faced similar terminological ambiguities (see Asia, West: Mesolithic Cultures). The variability displayed in Epipalaeolithic lithic industries with the constantly accumulating radiocarbon dates is interpreted as reflecting the existence of various contemporaneous cultures. This situation led to the introduction of various new names with definitions based on differences among tool morphologies. Often the core reduction techniques are the same through most of the region and through milleniums, but the shaped microliths differ considerably both in form and type of retouch. The Natufian culture, the latest in the sequence, demonstrates differences in core reduction methods from their previous cultures, and a few new ways for secondary shaping of the blanks into tool types. A good example is the process for snapping bladelets on an anvil, known as the ‘microburin technique’, practiced more often then by others before. Helwan retouch is a bifacial shaping used for forming lunates, some retouched bladelets, and sickle blades that were inserted in wooden hafts.

In the core area of the Levant, several Epipalaeolithic entities were the Kebaran and Geometric Kebaran complexes. Their geographic distribution covers most of the Levant. In the Negev, Sinai, and eastern and southern Jordan, the typological variability seems to have been larger. The names of industries such as Nebekian, Nizzanan, Qalkhan, Hamran, etc., are sometimes grouped under the general terms of ‘complexes’. The presence of numerous cultural entities may indicate population growth on a regional scale due to the expansion of foragers from the Mediterranean core area into the previously arid zone, as well as migration into the region by foragers from Northeast Africa. The enhanced occupation of the steppic zone was encouraged by the climatic improvement that ended around 13 000 years ago although it did not eliminate human presence in the deserts that lasted into the Holocene. The early complex of the Epipalaeolithic period (from the last milleniums of the LGM) is the Kebaran which includes some local varieties (like the Nebekian) and is still in great need for many additional radiocarbon dates. The most typical stone tools were the backed and finely retouched bladelets. End scrapers are common and so are the burins. Bone and horn-core tools are rare. The ground stone tools include mortars, pestles, and hand-stones that were employed in food processing, and crashing ochre for making colors. The bearers of these microlithic industries inhabited the areas that continued to have sufficient winter precipitation and within the Mediterranean woodland belt, especially during the LGM. Other groups occupied several desertic oases (known from Jordan and Syria). Lake Lisan, a large salty lake, continued to cover most of the Jordan Valley from today’s Sea of Galilee to 30 km south of the Dead Sea. It began shrinking around 15 000 years ago and had its final drying stages during the Younger Dryas. The makers of the Geometric Kebaran complex expanded their territories into the desertic areas at the time of the climatic amelioration. Hence we find the sites located in southern Sinai and the el-Kowm basin in the north. In Sinai and the Negev, the Early Mushabian and later the Late Mushabian (also known as Ramonian) possibly reflect expansion of Northeast African forages into the Levant. In southern Jordan, the Qalkhan and the Hamran are of the same time. Remains of several entities were recognized in the oasis of the Azraq Basin and its surroundings, and the radiocarbon dates indicate that this increase in human presence and lithic variability occurred from 15 500 through 13 500 cal year BP. The Natufian culture emerged around 14 500 cal BP following a short cold and dry spell. The conditions of the Bo¨lling–Allerd in this region, with

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increased amounts of rain, facilitated this semisedentary hunter-gatherers culture to establish itself. Several clustered pit houses formed hamlets, where the Natufians also buried their dead, thus symbolically stating their ownership of the land. The Natufian lithic industry contained not only a specific secondary shaping technique, known as the Helwan retouch, but had hafted blades that bear the luster caused by harvesting cereals or cereals’ straw. Numerous mortars and pestles, some brought from distances of up to 100 km, were found in the base camps along with large quantities of marine shells often retrieved along the Mediterranean shores. A smaller amount of shells were obtained through exchange from the Red Sea and the Nile Valley, and a few obsidian pieces from Anatolia were found in a Late Natufian occupation at Eynan (Mallaha). Natufian art objects are of different types, many represent incised decorations of bone tools, and others are small figurines, mostly of animals and rarely of humans. Incised slabs are known from most sites. In the Negev, ostrich eggshells were employed for such decorative expressions. The meaty diet of the Natufian groups is reflected in the bone assemblages including many gazelles. Deer is more prevalent in the forested or parkland areas, where hunting and gathering hare, tortoise, and birds reflect the depletion of the local environments. During the Younger Dryas, Late Natufian groups adapted to the new conditions. Some became mobile, others more sedentary within the parkland areas. Annual partial mobility continued to be the rule. In the Negev and northern Sinai, the Harifian culture represent an adaptation to worsening conditions through seasonal movements across the land. Winters were spent in the lowlands of the coastal plain including northern Sinai, and summers in the highlands of the Negev. However, at the onset of the Holocene climatic conditions, the Harifian groups disappeared, possibly by joining the newly established cultivating communities known as Pre-Pottery Neolithic A. The Epipalaeolithic sequence in other parts of Western Asia is much less known than in the Levant. In the Taurus–Zagros area, a few sites were excavated. This paucity is partly due to widely scattered field research, high rate of alluviation in the valleys, which caused the burial of many pre-Neolithic sites, and geopolitical restrictions. The excavated caves such as Oku¨zini (Turkey), Palegawra, Shanidar, Zarzi (Iraq), and Gar-i-Khar (Iran) caves, as well as open-air sites such as Hallan C ¸ emi (Turkey), Zawi Chemi Shanidar (Iraq), and Asiab (Iran) indicate that between 13 000 and 11 500 cal year BP a shift from mobile hunting and gathering to sedentary or semi-sedentary communities took place in the eastern Taurus and the northern Zagros foothills. In village

sites such as Hallan C¸emi, rounded dwellings resemble those of the Natufian, although mud was employed more extensively as a building material. The lithic assemblages are dominated by the production of microliths. High frequencies of triangles in Hallan C ¸ emi seem to indicate connections with the southern Caucasus region. The archaeological records of foragers’ occupations in Oku¨zini Cave are demonstrated an overall similarity with other backed bladelet industries both in the Levant and in the Balkans. Lithic production reflects continuity from the Upper Palaeolithic traditions. For example, in the case of the Zarzian, it is the high frequency of microliths and the important geometric component that connects it to other caves in the Zagros. In addition, there is a definite increase in the use of pounding stone tools such as mortars, bowls, and cup-holes, and pestles, common food-processing objects that employed by hunter-gatherers in this region. The shift in settlement pattern seems to have happened slightly later in the southern Zagros, Khuzistan, and the western Taurus than it did in neighboring areas. The faunal remains indicate the hunting of goat, sheep, gazelle, red deer, cattle, boar, and a wide range of other forms with the emphasis being different depending upon site location. See also: Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Mesolithic Cultures; Southern Levant, Bronze Age Metal Production and Utilization; Southern Levant, Chalcolithic Cultures; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient; Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear; Modern Humans, Emergence of.

Further Reading Akazawa T, Aoki K, and Bar-Yosef O (eds.) (1998) Neandertals and Modern Humans in Western Asia. New York: Plenum. Bar-Oz G (2004) Epipaleolithic Subsistence Strategies in the Levant: A Zooarchaeological Perspective. Boston: Brill Academic Publishers. Bar-Yosef O (2002) Natufian: A complex society of foragers. In: Fitzhugh B and Habu J (eds.) Beyond Foraging and Collecting: Evolutionary Change in Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Systems, pp. 91–149. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Bar-Yosef O and Pilbeam D (eds.) (2000) The Geography of Neandertals and Modern Humans in Europe and the Greater Mediterranean. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum, Harvard University Press. Bar-Yosef O and Valla FR (eds.) (1991) International Monographs in Prehistory: The Natufian Culture in the Levant, pp. 1–10. Ann Arbor, MI: Oxbow Books. Bergman CA (1987) BAR International Series 329: Ksar Akil, Lebanon: A Technological and Typological Analysis of the Later Palaeolithic Levels of Ksar Akil. Oxford: BAR. Catto N (ed.) (2005) Quaternary of the Mediterranean Basin and Western Asia: Marine and Terrestrial Processes and Palaeoenvironments. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Dibble H and Bar-Yosef O (eds.) (1995) The Definition and Interpretation of Levallois Technology. Madison: Prehistory Press.

ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia 875 Firouz E (2005) The Complete Fauna of Iran. London, New York: IB Tauris. Garrod DAE and Bate DM (1937) The Stone Age of Mount Carmel. Oxford: Clarendon. Goren-Inbar N (1990) Quneitra: A Mousterian Site on the Golan Heights. Jerusalem: Hebrew University. Goren-Inbar N, Sharon G, Melamed Y, and Kislev M (2002) Nuts, nut cracking, and pitted stones at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 99(4): 2455–2460. Goring-Morris AN (1987) BAR International Series 361: At the Edge: Terminal Pleistocene Hunter-Gatherers in the Negev and Sinai. Oxford: BAR. Goring-Morris AN and Belfer-Cohen A (eds.) (2003) More than Meets the Eye: Studies on Upper Palaeolithic Diversity in the Near East. Oxford: Oxbow. Harrison DL and Bates PJJ (1991) The Mammals of Arabia. Sevenoaks: Harrison Zoological Museum. Henry DO (1989) From Foraging to Agriculture: The Levant at the End of the Ice Age. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Henry DO (ed.) (1995) Prehistoric Cultural Ecology and Evolution: Insights from Southern Jordan, pp. 49–84. New York: Plenum Press. Henry DO (ed.) (1998) BAR S705: The Prehistoric Archaeology of Jordan. Oxford: Archaeopress. Hole F and Flannery K (1967) The prehistory of southwestern Iran: A preliminary report. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 33: 151–206. Kuhn SL (2002) Paleolithic archeology in Turkey. Evolutionary Anthropology 11: 198–210. Marks AE (ed.) (1983) The Avdat/Aqev Area (Part 3): Prehistory and Paleoenvironments in the Central Negev, Israel. Dallas: Southern Methodist University. Medelssohn H and Yom-Tov Y (1999) Mammalia of Israel. Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Olszewski DI and Dibble HL (eds.) (1993) The Paleolithic Prehistory of the Zagros-Taurus. Philadelphia: The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania. Ohnuma K (1988) BAR International Series 426: Ksar Akil, Lebanon: A Technological Study of the Earlier Upper Palaeolithic Levels at Ksar Akil: Vol. III: Levels XXV–XIV. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. Shea JJ (1998) Neandertal and early modern human behavioral variability: A regional-scale approach to lithic evidence for hunting in the Levantine Mousterian. Current Anthropology 39(supplement, Jun. 1998): S45–S78. Smith PEL (1988) Palaeolithic Archaeology in Iran. Philadelphia: The American Institute of Iranian Studies, The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania. Stiner MC (2005) The Faunas of Hayonim Cave, Israel: A 200 000 Year Record of Paleolithic Diet, Demography and Society, pp. 39–58. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. Tchernov E (1986) Les Mammife`res du Ple´istocene Infe´rieur de la Valle´e du Jordain a Oubeidiyeh. Paris: Association Pale´orient. Tchernov E (1992) Eurasian–African biotic exchanges through the Levantine corridor during the Neogene and Quaternary. In: von Koenigswald W and Werdelin L (eds.) Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg 153: Mammalian Migration and Dispersal Events in the European Quaternary, pp. 103–125. Frankfurt: Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg. Tchernov E (1998) The faunal sequences of the Southwest Asian Middle Paleolithic in relation to hominid dispersal events. In: Akazawa T, Aoki T, and Bar-Yosef O (eds.) Neandertals and Modern Humans in Western Asia, pp. 77–90. New York: Plenum.

Yac¸inkaya I, Otte M, Kozlowski J, and Bar-Yosef O (eds.) (2002) ERAUL: La Grotte d’oˆku¨zini : Evolution du Pale´olithique finale du Sud-Oust de l’Anatolie. Lie`ge: Universite´ de Lie`ge. Zohary M (1973) Geobotanical Foundations of the Middle East. Stuttgart: Springer Verlag.

Phoenicia Glenn Markoe, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary acropolis Upper fortified part of an ancient city. amphora Large earthenware vessel with a narrow cylindrical neck and tapering bottom used for storing wine, oil, or grain. ashlar Hewn or squared stone used in wall construction. cremation Burial process of incineration for a corpse. emporion Important trade center or marketplace. faience Glazed composition consisting of a sand quartz core with a glassy surface glaze. kothon Artificially constructed dry dock used for the building or repairing of ships. mole Artificial causeway built of earth and stone rubble. murex shell Marine gastropod of the genus Murex; one species, Murex trunculus, was the source of the Phoenician purple dye. necropolis Cemetery of an ancient city. nuraghic Prehistoric civilization of Sardinia that flourished in the second millennium BC and was distinguished by the use of bronze metallurgy and the construction of large stone structures (called nuraghe) in the shape of truncated cone towers. orientalizing Native artistic design or motif that imitates or is influenced by Near Eastern pictorial models. pier-and-rubble construction Technique of Phoenician wall construction employing upright ashlar piers in alternation with zones of fieldstone rubble infill. pithos Large earthenware storage jar with a wide, round mouth. repousse´ Technique of hammering a relief design up from the back of a piece of sheet metal. stele Freestanding upright stone slab used as a votive dedication or a gravestone. tophet Precinct of Punic ritual child sacrifice involving the cremation and subsequent offering of the victim’s charred remains in terracotta urns deposited in the ground; the term derives from a reference in the Hebrew Bible to a roasting area in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom where Israelite children were sacrificed by fire.

Introduction Geographically, the Phoenicians present a challenge to define. According to the ancient classical authors, they occupied the entire Levantine coast between the Suez and the Gulf of Alexandretta. In actuality, however, their heartland was considerably smaller, consisting of a narrow coastal strip between the Lebanon

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mountains and the Mediterranean sea stretching from northern Palestine to southern Syria – a slightly extended version of modern-day Lebanon. This dichotomy suggests that the term ‘Phoenician’ in antiquity was broadly applied to any Semitic sea trader, regardless of origins. Such ambiguity may indeed reflect historical reality. Unlike their Syrian, Palestinian, or Mesopotamian neighbors, the Phoenicians were a confederation of traders rather than a country defined by territorial boundaries. Their empire was less a stretch of land than a patchwork of widely scattered merchant communities. Maritime trade, not territory, defined their sphere. Indisputably, Phoenician maritime commerce was driven by the pursuit of a single category of natural resource – raw metals (gold, silver, tin, copper, iron, and lead). In such trade, the entrepreneurial Phoenicians skillfully positioned themselves as middlemen, procuring and conveying metals in ingot form; as importantly, they transformed them into exquisitely wrought, finished goods of bronze, iron, silver, and gold. The Phoenicians’ search for precious metals was nothing new. As archaeological research has shown, many of their trade routes had already been established by their Mycenaean and Cypriot forebears. The Phoenician contribution lay in expanding the scale and geographic scope of such exploitation, which took them not only throughout the Mediterranean, but beyond, past the Strait of Gibraltar into the coastal Atlantic regions of Europe and West Africa. It is this expansive Phoenician commercial empire that serves as the focus of this survey article.

Geographic Survey Phoenician Homeland

The following is a summary of the major Phoenician coastal ports (see Figure 1). Tyre The peninsular setting of modern Tyre (Pun. Sor (‘rock’)) today differs greatly from that of the ancient city. The headland upon which it stands is the result of successive sediments deposited on a mole built in 332 BC by Alexander the Great. In antiquity, Tyre was an island emporion, situated originally on two adjacent offshore reefs. Traces of bedrock on Tyre’s western edge and in the adjacent sea bed reveal that the principal island upon which Tyre was founded was a long narrow reef some 500 m in extent. Owing to the dense overlay of later construction, excavations in the heart of Tyre have not been possible. Stratigraphic information to date has been

ascertained only by a deep sounding undertaken in 1974, which revealed that Tyre was originally occupied in the Early Bronze Age, corroborating an ancient Tyrian tradition, reported by the Greek historian Herodotus, that the city was founded 2300 years before his day (around 2750 BC: Hdt. 2.44). Following a long hiatus in occupation encompassing the Middle Bronze Age, the city was resettled at the start of the Late Bronze Age. Judging from the archaeological record, permanent habitation on the island does not seem to have taken root until the late fifteenth century BC, with comprehensive urban development following in the mid-fourteenth century. The archaeological and written record are in unanimity about the urban character of Iron Age Tyre: the city was densely populated, perhaps far more so than any of its Phoenician mainland counterparts with the possible exception of Arwad. The 1974 sounding, in fact, yielded nine distinct Iron Age building levels that bear witness to continuous efforts at remodeling and terracing. From this time forward, the pier-and-rubble technique, a Phoenician trademark, was widely utilized; large-scale buildings were marked by handsomely dressed walls of marginally drafted ashlar masonry (see Table 1 for the definitions of time phases referred to in this article). Tyre’s two harbors, situated to the north and south of the emporion, were noted by a variety of classical authors, including Pliny (N.H. 5.76), who observes that they were connected by a canal which traversed the city. Its northern port (known in antiquity as the ‘Sidonian’) was a natural bay, sheltered from prevailing winds by the island itself and by a strip of offshore reefs that protected its entrance; it functioned as a closed harbor situated within the city walls. Tyre’s southern port, the ‘Egyptian’, was a built harbor protected by two great offshore breakwaters. Excavations undertaken at Tyre from 1997 to 1999 have uncovered a small portion of the city’s main adult cemetery, a cremation necropolis at Al-Bass on the opposing mainland. Consisting of burials in urns set within shallow, excavated pit graves along a sandy shoreline, the cemetery’s vast extent (estimated at 40 000 m2) and its prolonged use (spanning some 400 years, from c. 1000 to 600 BC) underscore the spread and longevity of the cremation practice within the funerary life of the city. Sarepta The coastal town of ancient Sarepta (modern Sarafand) occupies a low mound situated on the promontory of Ras el-Qantara, overlooking a broad bay with sheltered anchorage. Explored by the University of Pennsylvania from 1969 to 1974, Sarepta represents the first in-depth excavation of an Iron Age

Massalia

Emporion

Elba

CORSICA

D Iberian Peninsula

BALEARIC

Tharros

ISLANDS

Adriatic Sea Pyrgi/Caere Rome CAMPANIA Cumae Pithekoussai Tarentum SARDINIA Tyrrhenian Sea

Adalusian Coast

Tipasa Gunugu

Nora Ibiza Hippo Acra (Bizerte) (Algiers) Hippo Regius Icosium Chullu R. ±da lgilgili Medje lol Carthage

Gadir (Cadiz) Pillars of Tingis (Tangiers) Herakles Oran Les Andalouses (Strait of Lixus Gibraltar) Rachgoun Rusaddir Sala A

Strymon R.

Alalia

Sulcis

Alcacer do Sol

Black Sea

ETRURIA Populonia Vetulonia

Hadrumetum Achotla

Utica Cape Bon

Euboea

B

Kythera

Ionian Sea

MALTA

Cape Gelidonya

Mediterranean Sea

Ugarit

Ulu Burun Rhodes

Knossos Kommos

Gabes

Sardis Sarnos Miletus

Paros

Leptis Magna Sabratha Oea TRIPOLITANIA Mogador

CYCLADES

Syracuse

Pantelleria Gozzo Kerkouane

Daskyleion Lemnos LYDIA

Athens

Corinth

SICILY

Thapsos

Aegean Sea

Croton Greater Syrtis

Lipari Morya Panormus

Pangaeum Samothrace

Thasos

C

Amathus

Kition CYPRUS

Arwad

Byblos Sidon Tyre

Cyrene Greater Syrtis

CYRENAICA Memphis LIBYA

ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia 877

Figure 1 Map of Mediterranean with Phoenician sites. Based on Markoe G (2002) Peoples of the Past. Phoenicians. London: British Museum Press.

878 ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia Table 1 Chronological chart Chalcolithic 4500(?)–3100 BC Early Bronze Age 3100–2000 BC Middle Bronze Age 2000–1550 BC Late Bronze Age I 1550–1400 BC Late Bronze Age II 1400–1200/1150 BC Iron Age I 1200/1150–1000 BC Iron Age II 1000–586 BC Iron Age III (Neo-Babylonian) 586–538 BC Persian period 538–332 BC Hellenistic period 332–64/63 BC

mainland Phoenician settlement. Soundings made in two areas on the tell (X and Y) have revealed a continuous sequence of habitation extending from the beginning of the Late Bronze Age – the date of the city’s foundation – through the Hellenistic period. Sounding Y, made on the highest part of the mound, yielded an uninterrupted sequence of 11 occupation strata marked by complexes of courtyard houses equipped with potters’ kilns and bread ovens. Sounding X revealed an extensive industrial quarter located near the harbor at the northern periphery of the settlement. Much of this district was devoted to pottery production; findings included the remains of 22 stone-built firing kilns in addition to slip basins and tanks for washing and storing clay. This sounding also produced an eighth century stone ashlar shrine to the goddess Tanit-Ashtarte equipped with benches, an offering table, and a central cultic pillar. The ancient settlement was flanked to the north and south by two small harbors; excavation of the southwestern port at Ras esh-Shiq uncovered a stonebuilt quay erected in the first century AD. No evidence has yet been found for the usage of either harbor facility prior to the Roman period. Sidon The port city of Sidon (Pun. Sdn) is situated on a rocky promontory bordered by a line of coastal reefs. The settlement, marked by an oval mound of roughly 145 ac, lies adjacent to two natural harbors: a southern circular cove and an enclosed northern port. As at Tyre, the density of modern settlement at Sidon has inhibited archaeological exploration. Concerted excavations, however, have been undertaken in recent years by the British Museum under the auspices of the Lebanese Department of Antiquities. Centered in the area immediately north and east of the medieval St. Louis Castle, this work, begun in 1998, has succeeded in documenting a continuous stratigraphic sequence extending from the beginning of the Early Bronze Age through the Iron Age. To the south of the city acropolis, along the shore of the southern circular cove, stands a 40-m-high

accumulation of discarded murex shells marking the ancient emplacement of a large purple dye installation. As Poidebard’s early investigations have shown, Sidon’s chief port facility was situated immediately north of the city. This natural harbor, which was sheltered from the prevailing winds by a rocky offshore island and a northeasterly chain of reefs, constituted the city’s ‘closed port’ – first mentioned by Pseudo-Skylax in the mid-fourth century BC. Archaeological research over the last century has provided substantial data on the distribution of Sidon’s suburban cemeteries. Special attention may be drawn to the necropolis of Dakerman, a vast coastal cemetery located immediately south of the city. Excavations undertaken there by the Lebanese Department of Antiquities have yielded several hundred tombs of various types ranging from the fourteenth century BC through the early Roman period. Sidon’s royal necropolises of the Persian and Hellenistic periods (Mogheret Ablun and Aya) have been located along a line of hills extending east and southeast of the city. The most important of Sidon’s suburban sanctuaries was the precinct of Eshmun, located to the north of the city on the southern slopes of the Nahr el-Awali valley. Erected over a series of split-level terraces, this temple complex, founded in the sixth century BC, was the focus of excavations undertaken by the French from 1963 to 1978. Beirut The ancient port of Beirut (Pun. B’rt) is situated on a rocky promontory with a sheltered harbor. Known previously from scattered textual references, the ancient city has now been revealed, thanks to archaeological research undertaken in connection with the redevelopment of war-devastated downtown Beirut. Such excavations, begun in 1993 under the auspices of the Lebanese Department of Antiquities, have unearthed numerous sectors of the pre-Roman city, including Beirut’s settlement mound and an adjacent residential precinct dating to the Persian period. The original settlement occupied an elliptical tell, situated on a small limestone-eroded outcrop, roughly 5 ac in extent. Its core, site of the ancient acropolis, was completely demolished during construction of the medieval Crusader castle, whose foundations reached bedrock. Recent excavations around the Crusader structure have uncovered evidence for an occupational sequence dating back beyond the Middle Bronze Age, when the site was first fortified and equipped with a monumental gate. The mound itself underwent six defensive phases lasting until the Persian period, when settlement spread well beyond the confines of the tell. To the west, in the area of the modern souk, or market place, excavations have uncovered the remains of a residential district with well-preserved dwellings

ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia 879

of pier-and-rubble construction laid out in an orthogonal plan. In the area immediately adjacent to the northwest, a large quantity of murex shells and a basin complex were uncovered, attesting to local purple dye production. As excavations have revealed, Beirut underwent extensive urban development beginning in the Hellenistic period, when the ancient city achieved its historic form. Byblos The seaport of Byblos (Pun. Gbl) is situated on a promontory with two small adjacent harbors, its principal settlement situated on an elevated, circular tract of land approximately 7 ac in size. A planned city with a massive stone rampart and two gates, the Early Bronze Age city was an important coastal emporion. As recent studies have shown, its urban development was centered on a rock-cut well or spring situated in a central depression on the promontory. Beginning in the third millennium BC, the northern sector of the mound was converted into a sacred precinct by the erection of two monumental sanctuaries: a temple to Baalat Gubal (Lady of Byblos) and an L-shaped temple dedicated to an unidentified male deity. The latter structure was subsequently dismantled and its foundations re-employed in the construction of a sanctuary (known as the Obelisk Temple) dedicated to the god Reseph. The Baalat Gubal and Obelisk sanctuaries were maintained with modifications down through the Hellenistic period. Earlier excavations undertaken by the French in the southern sector of the promontory have uncovered the remains of a residential district dating to the Middle Bronze Age. Composed of roughly 100 two- to four-room house units densely arranged in four blocks, this area may have housed personnel attached to the sanctuary. The urban extent of Iron Age Byblos remains a complete unknown, although scattered clues point to the city’s development in the plains east of the acropolis. Building activity probably reached a peak in the Persian period, when the city prospered economically as a regional administrative and defensive center under the Achaemenids. It was at this time that a monumental platform and stone-pillared building (marking a Persian governor’s reception hall) was erected in the northeast sector of the city walls. As for the city’s harbor facilities, the twin bays located north of the acropolis are both extremely small and thus unsuitable for large ships. As has been recently proposed, the city’s primary needs may have been served by the larger bay and riverine estuary that stood south of the acropolis. If this reconstruction is correct, Byblos’ topography would conform with that of a typical Phoenician port, situated on a headland flanked to the north and south by separate harbors.

Arwad Ancient Arwad (Pun. ’rwd (‘refuge’)) occupies a roughly oval-shaped island of approximately 100 ac situated roughly 2.5 km off the Syrian coast opposite mainland Antaradus (modern Tortose). The urban history of this Phoenician island emporion, which remains completely unexcavated, is virtually unknown. Although Arwad was occupied continuously from at least the third millennium BC, its earliest surviving architectural vestiges (i.e., the monumental city ramparts) date only from the Roman period. Ideally situated for trade, Arwad possessed a twin harbor facing east toward the mainland; its northern and southern bays were separated by a natural jetty some 60 m in length, which was augmented in antiquity by ashlar stone construction. As its massive Roman fortifications suggest, the Phoenician Iron Age city must have been protected by a fortified defensive wall that ringed the island. As the classical sources reveal, Arwad was densely populated; its city center, like that of Tyre, marked by multistoried houses (Strabo XVI.2.13). The high ground presently occupied by the medieval fortifications undoubtedly marks the ancient city’s acropolis and the site of its main sanctuaries. As at Tyre, the city’s main necropolises were probably located on the mainland opposite – in the region of Tortose, in whose vicinity a Persian-period cemetery of royal character has recently been discovered. As chance finds from the modern city suggest, a small cremation cemetery may also have been located in the island’s southern periphery. Like Tyre, Arwad was heavily dependent upon the mainland for its raw materials and agricultural staples. In addition to Tortose, Arwad’s mainland dependencies included coastal Marathus (Amrit), Arwad’s chief continental port.

Phoenician Commercial Expansion Abroad Egypt

As the textual and archaeological record affirms, Egypt’s longstanding commercial relationship with Phoenicia was motivated by one dominant factor: the desire for Levantine timber. As history records, one of her primary targets was the forest reserves located behind Byblos in the valley of the Nahr Ibrahim and the adjacent slopes of Mount Lebanon. Extensive tracts of cedar, fir, pine, oak, and juniper were, in fact, broadly available along the entire length of the Lebanon range from Sidon north to Tripoli and, beyond, along the slopes of the Jebel Ansariye. Of the various Lebanese hardwoods harvested in antiquity, cedar was the most highly sought after for its girth, durability, and fragrance. Financial gain for the Phoenicians lay not only in the marketing of the wood

880 ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia

itself but in the varied employment it provided Phoenician artisans, traders, and seamen. Tyrian commercial activity in the Nile delta is well attested, historically. As the southernmost of mainland Phoenician ports, Tyre enjoyed a close commercial and political relationship with Egypt, beginning in the Late Bronze Age, as the Amarna Egyptian royal correspondence with the Phoenician city-states reveals. Such commercial orientation is further evidenced by the city’s construction of a southern, artificial harbor, entitled the Egyptian, in the ninth century BC. Phoenician commercial presence in Egypt is later attested, in the period of the Achaemenid dynasty (538–332 BC), by the presence of a Tyrian commercial establishment, known as the Camp of the Tyrians [Hdt 2.112], at the Egyptian capital Memphis. Cyprus

As discoveries of Phoenician pottery along the island’s southern and western coasts clearly reveal, from the eleventh century onward Cyprus served a strategic role as an entrepoˆt for Phoenician westward trade within the Mediterranean. The archaeological and epigraphical record from Kition confirms a date around the midninth century BC for the earliest Phoenician settlement on the island. Evidence so far produced for earlier Iron Age occupation remains inconclusive. As the historical record confirms, Kition (Pun. Kt(y)) formed the urban nucleus and epicenter for Phoenician settlement on Cyprus, which was confined elsewhere to small commercial communities or trading posts within existing towns. A Tyrian foundation, Kition ultimately became a self-governing entity, perhaps as early as the late eighth century BC. The city’s early coinage bears witness to the existence of an independent Phoenician city dynastic line by the early fifth century BC. An important Cypriot settlement in the Late Bronze Age, Kition (situated at present-day Larnaka) was occupied by the Phoenicians (after a period of abandonment lasting some 150 years) in the ninth century. The ancient Phoenician walled city remains largely unexcavated, with the exception of the Kathari sanctuary complex situated in its northern periphery; the latter was erected upon an earlier, Late Bronze Age temenos precinct. Recent excavations on the Bamboula hill, Kition’s southerly harbor district, have yielded remains of the city’s port facilities built during the classical period. One of the largest and most active of Phoenician communities on Cyprus outside of Kition was situated at the southerly coastal port of Amathus, a native Cypriot foundation. Phoenician commercial presence there is evident from the quantity of early imported

Phoenician ware found in the city’s numerous chamber tombs. The recent discovery of what appears to be a local Phoenician cremation cemetery along the city’s southern shore reveals that a substantial and prosperous resident community of Phoenician traders was established there by the sixth and fifth centuries BC. The growing number of Phoenician inscriptions found throughout Cyprus affords an accurate indication of the extent of Phoenician settlement on the island, much of it tied directly to transit trade (Amathus, Paphos, Lapithos) and the copper industry. Phoenician involvement in the copper trade is affirmed by the number of Phoenician-influenced sites (Tamassos, Golgoi, Idalion, Meniko, Alassa) located inland on the spurs of the copper-rich Troodos range. As the archaeological evidence suggests, the Phoenicians at Kition were involved in their own commercial initiatives, particularly in the Tyrrhenian basin (Sardinia, Etruria), where Cyprus had traded earlier in the Late Bronze Age. Rhodes

Like Cyprus, Rhodes’ strategic position along the coasting route from the Levant to the Aegean rendered it an ideal transit station and secondary point of departure for Phoenician commerce. Finds of Phoenician luxury items (ivories, Tridacna shells, gold and silver jewelry) dating to the late eighth and seventh centuries attest to such trade. Besides its role as a transit station, Rhodes apparently served as a regional production center for Phoenician goods, among them trinkets and luxury items in faience (including scarabs, incised vessels with low-relief decoration, and anthropomorphic unguent vases). Beginning in the late eighth century BC, Rhodian Phoenician factories also exported ceramic unguent flasks in a local fabric imitating Cypriot and mainland pottery types. Material evidence for Phoenician settlement on the island prior to the Hellenistic period remains ephemeral. The presence of infant burials in amphorai at the archaic necropolises of Kameiros and Ialysos points to the existence of resident Phoenician communities in these localities. Crete

Phoenician presence on Crete was first intimated by the discovery, in 1884, of a cache of Orientalizing bronzes in the Zeus Cave on Mt. Ida. Subsequent finds have corroborated this fact. The discovery of a Phoenician inscribed bronze bowl at Teke near Knossos, datable on archaeological grounds to c. 900 BC, provides the earliest and most dramatic evidence thus far. Recent excavations at Eleutherna and in the region of Knossos have yielded luxury goods of Oriental and

ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia 881

Orientalizing workmanship equal in quality to the Idaean finds. Phoenician presence along Crete’s southern coast has been documented by recent excavations at Kommos, which have uncovered a Phoenician-style three-pillared shrine as well as quantities of imported Phoenician pottery. Such evidence underscores the primacy of Crete as a transit point for Phoenician maritime trade. Metal prospecting served as a catalyst for Phoenician involvement on Crete. The island is rich in phosphorous-bearing iron ore, deposits of which were undoubtedly worked in antiquity; recent excavations at Kommos have revealed the presence of one such iron-working center. As the literary and archaeological record reveals, the island of Crete stood on a southern Aegean Phoenician commercial route (skirting the Greek mainland) that was aimed at the central and western Mediterranean. Focal to such transit trade was Phalasarna, Crete’s westernmost harbor, the direct departure point for ships traveling north to the island of Kythera and the southeastern Peloponessus. Recent excavations have shown that the Cretan port facility contained a rock-cut holding basin, or kothon, of Phoenician variety. Kythera itself was associated in antiquity with the Phoenicians; according to Herodotus (1.105), the island’s chief sanctuary of Aphrodite Ourania was founded by them. The Aegean

As on Cyprus and Crete, Phoenician trade with the northern Aegean was propelled largely by mining interests and the metals trade. Herodotus (6.47) informs us that the Phoenicians had settled on the island of Thasos with this objective; the Greek historian claims to have seen their extensive mining operations along the southeastern side of the island, the site of a Phoenician temple to Herakles; excavations conducted by the French have exposed the location of these mines. From Thasos, the Phoenicians, in all likelihood, prospected on the opposing Thracian mainland, in the area of Mount Pangaeum and the Strymon River, where rich gold and silver deposits were later tapped by the Thasians themselves and by foreign Greek entrepeneurs. Judging from ancient classical sources, the Phoenicians enjoyed commercial relations with the neighboring north Aegean islands of Samothrace and Lemnos; according to Homer, the latter received the gift of a decorated ‘Sidonian’ silver krater (Il. 23.741–45). The distribution of various ceramic, stone, and faience imports from the eastern Mediterranean (Rhodes, Cyprus, and the Syro-Phoenician mainland) allows us to trace the existence of a Phoenician

commercial channel to the Greek mainland through the central Aegean. As the archaeological evidence reveals, this route passed in a northwesterly trajectory from Rhodes via Kos and the central Cyclades (Naxos, Delos, Syros) to the island of Aegina in the Saronic Gulf. Delos’ centrality to such trade is evident not only from the quantity of its early Oriental imports, but also from the island’s later commercial importance to the Phoenicians in the Hellenistic period. Aegina’s role as an entrepoˆt for eastern trade should come as no surprise. Its central location in the Saronic Gulf, with direct access to both Attica and the northeastern Peloponnesus, rendered it an ideal depot for Oriental goods entering Greece. As imported finds indicate, Greek coastal centers such as Corinth, Eleusis, and Argos formed major recipients of such Aegean trade in the late eighth and seventh centuries, either directly or through the intermediary of an island center such as Aegina. Another, more northerly, terminus for Oriental trade was the island of Euboea off the central Greek mainland, as recent excavations have shown. Sicily

As for early Phoenician contact with Sicily, Thucydides (6.2.6) provides a brief but informative account: in his words, the Phoenicians had originally established themselves all around the island on promontories and offshore islets, which were used as posts for trade with the native Sicels. With the arrival of Greek colonists, the Phoenicians abandoned most of these settlements, focusing their attentions on Motya, Solunto, and Panormus in the northwest. The historical veracity of Thucydides’ account has been confirmed by excavations at Motya, which have revealed early evidence of Phoenician occupation around 720 BC, shortly after the foundation of the earliest Greek colonies of Naxos (734 BC) and Syracuse (733 BC). As Thucydides implies, the Phoenician withdrawal to the northwestern corner of Sicily was a calculated move, aimed at consolidating control of its most strategic commercial interests on the island; the region was the closest access point to Carthage and the North African mainland. Northwestern Sicily also represented the closest point of departure for mineral-rich, southern Sardinia and for trade north with Campania and Etruria, offering an alternative to passage through the Greek-controlled Straits of Messana. The archaeological remains at Motya afford a unique opportunity to trace the urban evolution of a Phoenician city – from its beginnings as an early, unwalled settlement to its commercial height in the fifth century. Excavations by the Italian authorities have targeted specific areas of the island settlement, including portions of its harbor and commercial and

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residential quarters. Material evidence for Phoenician colonial presence in Sicily outside of Motya remains scant. Unfortunately, little is known archaeologically of the Phoenicians’ main settlement at Palermo (Grk. Panormos), a fair-weather harbor situated alongside a natural inlet within a large bay (known today as the Conca d’Oro). The ancient walled city, which now lies buried beneath Palermo’s historic inner district, stood on a small hill (Paleapoli) originally flanked by two small waterways: the Kemonia and Papireto. Its western portion was marked by an acropolis (now occupied by the Palace of the Normans), beyond which stood an extensive extramural cemetery in use from the late seventh through the third centuries BC. Sardinia

Owing to its mineral wealth (in copper, iron, and silverbearing lead ores), Sardinia served early on as a magnet for Levantine trade. The early appearance of iron technology suggests that the exploitation of this metal may have served as a catalyst (along with copper) for early Phoenician contact, leading to close interaction with the native nuraghic population, whose active cast bronze industry and emergent urban character may be tied to Oriental presence on the island. The earliest direct archaeological evidence for Phoenician colonization of Sardinia is furnished by a monumental inscribed stele from the southern coastal site of Nora, dated epigraphically to the end of the ninth or early eighth century BC. The stele’s discovery at Nora is not fortuitous; the site’s peninsular location along the western shore of the Bay of Cagliari rendered it both an ideal landing stage for Phoenician trade and a convenient coastal access point to the neighboring Iglesiente plateau with its abundant deposits of iron and silver-bearing ores. Phoenician commercial activity within the Gulf of Cagliari appears to have been well established by the seventh century BC. Focal to control of the region was the port of Cagliari (Pun. Krly) on the Tuvixeddu promontory. The Phoenician establishment of Cuccureddus near Cape Carbonara at the gulf’s eastern extremity may have played a similar role as a regional trade center. As archaeology has revealed, by the seventh century BC, the entire southwestern coast of Sardinia (from the Bay of Cagliari west to the Gulf of Oristano) was literally dotted with Phoenician emporiums, largely founded on abandoned early nuraghic settlements. Aside from Nora, the earliest traces of Phoenician occupation, dating back to the mid-eighth century, may be found at modern-day Sulcis (Pun. Slky) on the islet of Sant’Antioco in the Gulf of Palmas, which

served as the primary loading port for the mineral wealth of the Iglesiente region. Connected to the mainland by a partially man-made isthmus (attributable to Phoenician engineering), Sulcis’ early commercial growth is attested by the eighth century date of its tophet precinct and by the recent discovery of an early Phoenician necropolis in the region of Portoscuso on the adjacent mainland. Another early major Phoenician coastal foundation was the port of Tharros on the isthmus of Cape San Marco in the Gulf of Oristano. Situated, like Nora, on a narrow promontory with multiple harbors, the city controlled access, through the Campidano plain and Tirso river valley, to an agriculturally rich hinterland. As archaeology has revealed, the city functioned not only as an international port, but as a regional distribution center for a variety of products, including stone funerary sculpture, terracottas, and metal and faience jewelry. The seventh and succeeding sixth centuries marked a period of territorial consolidation within Phoenician Sardinia, as existing settlements developed and new foundations were established at river arteries on the coast (Bithya, Bosa, Villaputzu) as well as inland (Othoca, Pani Loriga, Monte Sirai) for defensive and commercial purposes. Of the strategic defensive centers, archaeology has fully exposed the site of Monte Sirai, a fortified hilltop settlement established by Sulcis to control and monitor access to the Iglesiente region and Campidano plain. Central Italy

Like Sardinia, Phoenician interest in central Italy was motivated primarily by the metals trade; the wealth of the Etruscan cities also rendered them profitable commercial markets for Phoenician goods. The earliest and clearest evidence of Phoenician presence in Italy may be found on the island of Pithekoussai (modern Ischia) off the coast of southern Campania. An early Euboean foundation, the island housed an active community of Phoenician traders by the late eighth century BC, as finds of Phoenician pottery (some with graffiti) attest. In all likelihood, the islet, situated strategically en route to coastal Etruria, served as a ‘free port’ at which native Greeks and Near Easterners mingled freely. The primary objective of Phoenician trade in Italy was, however, the northern Etrurian heartland with its ore-rich deposits of copper, lead, iron, and silver. Geological surveys have, in fact, shown that the present-day region of northwestern Tuscany, comprising the island of Elba and the opposing mainland between the Ombrone and Cecina Rivers, was extremely rich in silver-bearing ores. From an early date,

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this mountainous district, the Colline Metallifere, attracted Phoenician prospectors, commerciants, and artisans, who left in their wake a variety of luxury goods, including ornate vessels in repousse´ silver, produced locally by resident Phoenician craftsmen. Imported pottery finds suggest that the flourishing northern Etruscan coastal cities of Populonia and Vetulonia may have formed primary bases of operation for the Phoenicians, whose knowledge of Etruria’s mineral resources may have been gained from earlier Cypriot entrepreneurs. Malta

In contrast to Sicily and Sardinia, the Maltese archipelago, consisting of the principal islands of Malta (Pun. ’nn) and Gozo (Pun. Gwl), occupied a very different functional niche for the Phoenicians. Unlike its larger neighbors to the north, Malta possessed little in the way of natural resources. Agricultural potential, confined to two small alluvial plains in the north and south, was extremely limited, while mineral wealth was lacking. Malta’s attraction for the Phoenicians lay in its geographic situation midway between two primary Phoenician commercial routes – to the north, along the southern coast of Sicily, and to the south, along the North African littoral; from an early date, the island probably served as a refueling point and servicing station for Phoenician merchant ships sailing west through the Mediterranean. As burial finds and inscriptions have documented, Phoenician presence on the Maltese archipelago was fairly widespread by the late eighth century BC. While Phoenician necropolises have been found throughout both of the main islands, modern construction has severely limited archaeological exploration of habitation levels. As in Gozo, with its interior highland settlement (at Victoria) and southern coastal port (in the bay of Mgarr), Phoenician occupation on the main island of Malta was centered in two zones – to the north, on a central highland plateau, and in the southeast, around the large bay of Marsaxlokk and its neighboring inlets. From the size and extent of its surrounding necropolises, the northern hill town located inland at Rabat-Mdina apparently formed the main urban nucleus. With its natural harbors, the region around Marsaxlokk functioned as the center of commercial trade, a fact evident both from the density of surrounding indigenous settlements and from the presence of two major Phoenician sanctuaries to Melqart and Astarte. The latter temple, implanted on the site of an earlier Chalcolithic complex at Tas Silg, has yielded a wealth of evidence for Phoenician cult, including several hundred ceramic plates bearing dedications to Tanit and Astarte.

North Africa

The story of the Phoenicians in North Africa, or ancient Libya, is clearly centered on the northern Tunisian headland around the Bay of Tunis and its environs. It is here, at the southern apex of the Tyrrhenian triangle, that the two earliest and most important Phoenician cities, Carthage and Utica, were founded along a temperate and protected coastal stretch of North Africa, situated on the transit route to the central Mediterranean and the far west. According to ancient historical accounts, Utica, located at the mouth of the fertile Bagradas (Medjerdeh) river valley, was founded first – some 287 years before Carthage. The classical sources are in agreement about the city’s early foundation, which followed shortly after the establishment of Cadiz in 1104/3 BC, a date assigned to a period 80 years after the Trojan War (Velleius Paterculus, Hist. Rom. 1:2, 1-3). Skepticism, however, has persisted over the validity of such an early date for Phoenician presence in North Africa, which is yet to be substantiated by the archaeological record. At Utica itself, no trace of the Phoenician settlement has yet been found, while the city necropolis has yielded tombs datable no earlier than the seventh century BC. Modern topographical analysis has, in fact, revealed that the city, today located some 12 km inland, was originally situated on a coastal promontory with an adjoining islet. By contrast, ongoing archaeological research conducted over the past half decade has yielded much new information about Carthage (Pun. Qarthadasht, ‘new city’) and its urban, industrial, and defensive character. In fact, recent excavations carried out on the Byrsa, the city acropolis, have yielded architectural vestiges dating back to the mid-eighth century – slightly more than 50 years shy of the city’s traditional foundation date (813 BC). Based upon the results of stratigraphic soundings within Carthage’s settlement area and the topographical evidence of its surrounding extramural burials, an accurate sense of the physical extent of the city and its environs can now be had, revealing an occupied settlement of more than 24 ha (60 ac). As for Phoenician commercial presence further east along the North African coast, the archaeological record is scant. Practical navigational considerations may have figured largely into the equation. The strong west–east current that runs along the North African littoral from the Strait of Gibraltar to Port Said made a westerly coastal advance toward Carthage from Egypt extremely problematic. So, too, did the buffeting winds, hazardous shoals, and poor visibility encountered along the barren 300 mi coastal stretch of central

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Libya known as the Syrtis. In the face of such difficulties, Phoenician sailors from the eastern mainland heading for Carthage and points beyond may have opted for a more direct westerly route via the open seas. Such circumstances help to explain why, despite ancient historical claims, the eastern Tunisian and Libyan coasts have yielded little archaeological evidence for Phoenician occupation. Indeed, with the exception of Hadrumetum and Leptis Magna, both reputed Phoenician foundations, the great cities of the Sahelian littoral, the Gulf of Gabes, and Tripolitania are marked by later settlement strata originating in the Punic period. Leptis Magna (Pun. Lpqy) alone has yielded evidence of permanent construction associated with its seventh century origins. Yet, even here, doubt persists as to the nature of the incipient settlement; according to a recent interpretation, the early stone construction found on virgin soil near Cape Hermaion served as a warehouse for a seasonal entrepoˆt; permanent settlement did not begin until the late sixth century under Carthaginian initiative. The record of early Phoenician settlement west of the Tunisian headland is equally scant. In fact, the entire coast of western Tunisia and eastern Algeria (from Bizerte (Cap Blanc) to Oran) has produced little evidence for occupation prior to the fifth century BC. Culturally and chronologically, the many emporiums dotting the Algerian coastline from Hippo Regius (Annaba) westward to Gunugu (Gouraya) reflect the growing regional influence of Carthage. The sites themselves and their Punic toponyms, which are often prefixed by ’y (Pun. for ‘island’) or Rus (meaning ‘cape’), underscore their functional significance as emporiums for Punic coastal trade. It is only in the extreme west of Algeria, along the Oranian coast, that material evidence of earlier (seventh to sixth centuries) Phoenician occupation may be found – at Les Andalouses, west of Oran, and at Rachgoun, a coastal islet situated near the mouth of the Siga (Tafna) River, where an inland necropolis and coastal settlement have yielded evidence for Phoenician occupation extending back to the seventh century BC. Ibiza

Situated off the eastern coast of Spain, the island of Ibiza (Pun. ’ybsm, ‘isle of the balsam tree’) in the Balearic archipelago formed a natural port-of-call for Phoenician craft plying the Mediterranean to and from the Strait of Gibraltar. Excavation in recent years has confirmed that the island was settled by Phoenician colonists from the Atlantic straits. By the mid-seventh century, an early foothold was established on the peninsula of Sa Caleta along Ibiza’s

southwestern coast for trade with Sardinia and the Iberian coast. In addition to shipping, mining interests (silver and iron) appear to have promoted the settlement, a modest entrepoˆt of limestone-and-mudbrick residences and warehouses. After a brief occupation of some 50 years, the settlement of Sa Caleta was abandoned, its population transferred to the hill of Puig de Vila overlooking the larger bay of Ibiza a short distance to the east, with its ancient port facility, the emplacement of which is marked by abundant finds of late seventh century Phoenician pottery. Salvage excavations undertaken in the early 1980s on the lower slopes of the adjacent hill of Puig des Molins (later site of Ibiza’s vast Punic necropolis) have uncovered the remains of the settlement’s archaic cemetery, marked by several dozen cremation pithoi burials. Ibiza’s strategic placement for early Phoenician trade has been elucidated by scattered finds of Phoenician pottery along the northeastern coast of Spain – in Alicante province (Pen˜a Negra de Crevillente, Los Saladares) and Castellon (Vinarragell) and, further north, in the delta of the Ebro River in southern Catalonia. Such finds, dating from the later seventh and early sixth century BC, suggest that Ibiza had served as a conduit for western Phoenician trade with the northern Spanish interior and with southern France, valued outlets for tin arriving overland from the north Atlantic regions of Cornwall and Brittany. Spain

Archaeological investigation in recent decades has revealed a great deal about Phoenician settlement in the Iberian peninsula, the westernmost stage of Phoenician Mediterranean expansion. Memory of early Phoenician involvement in southern Spain has been preserved in the accounts of classical authors, whose writings clearly reveal that Phoenician colonial activity in the region was driven by one overriding motive – the acquisition of ores and precious metals. The Spanish peninsula, in fact, forms one of the richest sources of raw minerals (gold, silver, copper, iron, and tin) in the entire Mediterranean. The Tyrian settlement of Cadiz – in close proximity to the mineral-rich Huelva district and Guadalquivir valley – underscores the Phoenicians’ abiding interest in gaining access to such resources. Ancient Cadiz (from Pun. Gdr, ‘wall’ or ‘fortified citadel’) was founded on a series of offshore islands in the sheltered Bay of Cadiz beyond the Strait of Gibraltar. As recent geologic and archaeological investigation has shown, the early Phoenician settlement was centered on the small northern islet of Erytheia, the present heart of nineteenth century Cadiz. In

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antiquity, this islet was separated from the larger, southern island of Kotinoussa by a deep, narrow channel, the Bahia-Caleta, which served as Cadiz’ original harbor. Like its mother city Tyre, the early Phoenician settlement at Cadiz, which lies unexcavated, appears to have been an extremely compact one, covering no more than 25 ac, encompassing the city’s three primary sanctuaries to Astarte, Baal Hammon, and Melqart. The latter, renowned in antiquity for its oracle, may be localized on the present-day islet of Sancti Petri, where a group of ancient bronze statuettes depicting male deities was discovered in 1984. The city necropolis of Cadiz was situated apart from the settlement on the opposite bank of the Bahia-Caleta channel – in the area of Puertas de Tierra, where numerous burials, the earliest dating to the fifth century BC, have been uncovered. Tyrian involvement in the Tartessian silver trade has been elucidated in recent years by archaeological research. As demonstrated, Phoenician activity focused in two regions: the western area of the province of Seville and the mountainous region of Huelva beyond. In the former, the trade in metals followed a route ending directly at Cadiz via the mouth of the Guadalquivir. Early on, Cadiz established an enclave on the northern shore of the Guadalete estuary at the indigenous Tartessian settlement of Castillo de Don˜a Blanca, which served as the island city’s continental port and transit station for mainland trade; excavations conducted there over the past two decades have revealed extensive traces of Phoenician presence. As archaeological research has demonstrated, silverbearing lead ores (perhaps from the silver mines at Aznalcollar in the Sierra Moreno) were processed and subsequently smelted at the native Tartessian sites of Tejada la Vieja and San Bartolome´ de Almonte, respectively. Phoenician activity at Tejada is evinced by the urban character of the native walled settlement, which housed stone-built warehouses and facilities for the grinding and washing of the ores. The richest deposits of gold- and silver-bearing pyrite ores were, however, to be found in the mountains of Huelva, in the inland region of Rio Tinto, the site of the most extensive mining operations in antiquity. Modern survey of the surviving traces of silver slag, estimated at roughly 6 000 000 tons, reveals the monumental scale of mining activity conducted in the Iron Age. The presence of two indigenous neighboring hill settlements (Quebranthuesos and Cerro Salomon) confirms that the process of mining and extraction fell in native hands. Phoenician involvement in such mining operations is now well documented by excavations at Cerro Salomon, where a small settlement, marked by imported Phoenician

pottery, revealed obvious traces of metalworking. Transported in ingot form down the Rio Tinto, the silver was processed at the native coastal port of Huelva, where excavations have revealed the emplacement of actual smelting furnaces dating to the eighth to seventh centuries BC. It is along the Andalusian coast east of Gibraltar, however, that the Phoenicians appear to have concentrated their settlement efforts, beginning in the eighth century BC. Archaeological investigation over the past three decades has, in fact, documented the existence of a series of compact, closely spaced settlements with adjacent necropolises along the coasts of Granada, Malaga, and Almeria, all strategically situated on low coastal headlands within sheltered bays or inlets. Their positions – on riverine estuaries such as the Guadalhorce, Guadalmedina, Velez, and Algarrobo – ensured access to the surrounding agriculturally rich interior, which represents some of the most fertile farmland in all of the Iberian peninsula. It was with an eye toward local exploitation of such natural resources (including timber) that the majority of such settlements, including Cerro del Villar, Toscanos, Moro de Mezquitilla, and Chorerras, were founded on a coast that was largely undeveloped and sparsely inhabited at the time of the Phoenicians’ arrival. Unlike their Levantine mainland equivalents, the Phoenician settlements of the eastern Andalusian coastal plain appear small and unpretentious, totalling only a few acres (2–3 ha) with correspondingly small populations: what the archaeological record reveals, in fact, is a series of centrally administered commercial enclaves rather than full-fledged towns. With its threeaisled warehouse facility, Toscanos, the best documented of such archaeological sites, well illustrates this point. In addition to farming and cattle breeding, Toscanos’ economic activities consisted of purple-dye manufacture and metallurgy (both copper and iron). As for Phoenician settlement west along the Strait of Gibraltar, attention may be drawn to Gorham’s Cave, a grotto extending some 30 m into the Gibraltar Rock along its southeast side. As recent excavation of its upper stratum reveals, the cave apparently served as a Phoenician shrine. Over the years, ongoing archaeological research has yielded a large quantity of Phoenician and Punic finds deposited between the eighth and third centuries BC, including copious faience amulets and scarabs of Egyptian and Egyptianizing variety, glass core-formed vessels, and Phoenician red slip pottery. The importance of the Gorham’s Cave grotto may also be explained by the natural defensive position provided by the Gibraltar Rock and by the safe anchorage it afforded in the Bay of Algeciras on its western side.

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Phoenician Atlantic Trade The North Atlantic

With their foundation of Cadiz, the Phoenicians established a trade foothold in Atlantic coastal Spain. North of Huelva, however, archaeological substantiation of Phoenician occupation has proved elusive. Recent excavations, nevertheless, have revealed evidence of a substantial Phoenician settlement of seventh century date at Alca´cer do Sal near the mouth of the Sado River. The presence of this site, located some 400 km north of the Guadalquivir basin, lends credence to the supposition that the Phoenicians had established a series of coastal emporia up to and beyond the Algarve coast of Portugal. While the Portuguese Algarve coast presently represents the northernmost limit archaeologically of Phoenician Atlantic commerce, ancient textual evidence suggests a far broader scope to Phoenician North Atlantic trade. According to the Ora Maritima of Avienus, written in the fourth century AD, the Carthaginian navigator Himilco, in the late fifth century BC, undertook a four-month expedition in pursuit of tin that brought him to the coast of northern Britanny and perhaps beyond – across the Channel to southern Britain and coastal Cornwall. As modern investigation has revealed, the latter region served in antiquity as a primary mining source of tin oxide ore, present in a number of alluvial gravel deposits. As excavation has shown, such stream tin had been recovered and smelted locally as early as the Bronze Age. The scope of Himilco’s North Atlantic expedition, in fact, hinges on the identification of the notorious Cassiterides (‘tin islands’), mentioned by a number of Greek and Roman authors, including Herodotus, Strabo, and Diodorus. There has been much debate on their exact location, a subject about which the ancient authors remain vague. Strabo (III.5.11) is the most explicit in situating them in the open seas beyond ancient Artabria, that is, the northwest region of the Spanish peninsula. Although the Cassiterides have long been associated with the Scilly Islands off the southwestern tip of England, they are more plausibly identified with European mainland locations closer to home, including the islets of the Bay of Corcubio´n beneath Cape Finisterra in Galicia and the islands along the southern coast of Brittany (ancient Armorica) between the estuary of the Loire and the town of Quiberon. Both regions housed rich deposits of alluvial tin ore that were accessible in antiquity. Atlantic Africa: Morocco

As history records, the city of Lixus (Pun. Lks) was central to early Phoenician trade in Atlantic Morocco.

The classical literary tradition underscores the importance of this key emporion, whose foundation (in 1180 BC) was believed to antedate that of Cadiz (Pliny, N.H., 19.63). Lixus’ location – 4 km inland on the north bank of the Loukkos River – has been known since the early nineteenth century. Yet excavations on the upper plateau of the Tchemmich hill, the presumed site of the early city, have failed to produce architectural evidence of early Phoenician occupation. In all likelihood, the port and its harbor were originally situated below, on the hill’s sheltered eastern foot; the date of this settlement may be surmised from scattered finds of Phoenician red slip ware of late seventh century date found on the plateau above. Like Cadiz, Lixus monitored riverine access into a mineral-rich hinterland; along the spurs of the Atlas mountains lay rich deposits of gold, copper, iron, and lead. Beyond Lixus, along a coast largely devoid of natural harbors, archaeological traces of Phoenician coastal trade are sparse. The first clear evidence of occupation may be found at Sala, an emporion situated inland from the Bou Regreg estuary near the heart of modern Rabat. Here, excavations have uncovered the remains of a large ashlar stone building associated with Phoenician red slip pottery datable to the seventh to sixth centuries BC. More than 400 km beyond Sala lies the southernmost of Phoenician Moroccan coastal establishments (on the island of Mogador in the bay of Essauoira), where excavations have uncovered a seasonal coastal encampment, roughly 50 m in diameter, marked by hearths and small huts. Mogador’s commercial nature is apparent from its ceramic finds, which include a large quantity of red slip ware sherds (around 20 bearing Phoenician inscriptions). A settlement in operation from at least 650–500 BC, Mogador, like Sala to the north, functioned as a secondary center for trade with the indigenous peoples of the Moroccan interior. As its pottery types suggest, the settlement may have been founded by colonists from Cadiz; the ceramic repertoire from Mogador is particularly close to that found in Phoenician settlements from Andalusia. How much further along the western coast of Africa beyond Mogador the Phoenicians explored remains an open question. While clearly exaggerated, Strabo’s claim (17.3.3) that the Tyrians founded 300 colonies along the West African coast may contain a reminiscence of such exploration, which set the stage for the later expedition of the Carthaginian navigator Hanno in the latter half of the fifth century BC. Debate has raged over the identification of ancient place names mentioned in this remarkable account, which, according to its text, was originally set up in the temple of Saturn (Baal Hammon) at Carthage.

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The more adventurous would take Hanno as far as Sierra Leone or even the Cameroons or Gabon in the Gulf of Guinea; according to a more conservative view, the explorer terminated his voyage at Cape Juby along Morocco’s southern boundary. See also: Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Southern Levant, Bronze Age Metal Production and Utilization; Southern Levant, Chalcolithic Cultures; Europe, South: Greece; Greek Colonies; Medieval and Post-Medieval; Rome; Exchange Systems; Metals: Chemical Analysis; Primary Production Studies of; Ships and Seafaring.

Further Reading Aubet ME (2001) The Phoenicians and the West. Politics, Colonies and Trade, 3rd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Briquel-Chatonnet F and Gubel E (1998) Les Phe´niciens aux origines du Liban. Paris: Gallimard. Harden DB (1971) The Phoenicians. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Krings V (ed.) (1995) La civilisation phe´nicienne et punique. Manuel de recherche. Leiden: Brill. Lipinski E (ed.) (1992) Dictionnaire de la civilisation phe´nicienne et punique. Brussels: Brepols. Markoe G (2002) Peoples of the Past. Phoenicians. London: British Museum Press. Markoe G (2005) The Phoenicians. London: The Folio Society. Moscati S (ed.) (1988) The Phoenicians. New York: Abbeville Press. Pritchard J (1978) Recovering Sarepta, A Phoenician City. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Roman Eastern Colonies Rebecca Sweetman, University of St Andrews, St. Andrews, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary colony colonia Status given to a city in the Empire which had especially high privileges. client kingdoms States who had yielded to, or allied themselves with, Rome and were under her control mainly through military presence but retain the local political and administrative establishment. duoviri Roman officials appointed to act as magistrates in a judicial role in Rome and in the cities of the provinces. globalization ‘‘A social process in which the constraints of geography on social and cultural arrangements recede and in which people become increasingly aware that they are receding’’ as stated by Waters 1995, 3. province The name given to the largest unit of a an area of foreign land under Roman possession.

Introduction Roman imperial expansion in the eastern Mediterranean was a consequence of the inheritance of land, the subduing of enemies and the quest for economic resources leading to a significant growth of the Empire from the late third century BCE. The Macedonian Wars (215–148 BCE), followed by the Mithridatic Wars (88–63 BCE) in addition to the series of Roman Civil wars (88–30 BCE) meant that by the death of Pompey in 48 BCE areas such as Epirus, Macedonia, Achaea, and Asia (see Figure 1) were officially under Roman control. Pompey had secured many of the Eastern provinces and subsequently, Caesar and Augustus were responsible for much of the organization and consolidation of the Eastern Empire. The institution of Roman rule in the provinces was manifested diversely; the joining of provinces, the consolidation of the geographical mass, inclusion of client kingdoms and the installation of armies, and comprehensive new administration. Provinces were established as administrative and political units and were controlled by governors, who were formally either Propraetors or Proconsuls and appointed by the Senate or the Emperor, thus creating ‘senatorial’ and ‘imperial’ class provinces. Imperial provinces were officially governed by the Emperor with a legate as his representative, were often established in areas of instability, buffer zones, or potential flashpoints and thus had a high military presence (hosting one or more legions), for example, Moesia. Although Egypt had a legion posted there, it was an Imperial province of a special kind with an Equestrian governor, as was Judea (at times). Once a province was firmly established with a governor appointed from Rome, unless there were mitigating circumstances or particularly vehement opposition to Roman rule, the local population (more often its elite elements) was commonly incorporated into regional government positions. The Letters of the Younger Pliny are especially enlightening for an understanding of the relationship between a Roman governor, his entourage, and the local population in the Eastern provinces. The roles of the governors were varied and they were expected to oversee administration, to ensure peace (at a range of levels), to warrant maintenance of the communication routes and upkeep of the cities, preservation of religious and entertainment facilities, and essentially, to guarantee the collection of taxes for Rome. The geographical boundaries of provinces were not static. Although the limes identified in the physical remains of the frontier forts and watchtowers, indicate the boundaries of the Empire at different times, it is arguable that they were as much about monitoring the unconquered tribes as defining the extent of the

888 ASIA, WEST/Roman Eastern Colonies

Figure 1 The Provinces (Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no FrontCover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ‘‘GNU Free Documentation License’’).

Empire (e.g., as fieldwork undertaken on the Limes Arabicus is showing). An awareness of the traditional political borders between provinces was maintained and while broad generalizations regarding the cultures of the Eastern Roman Empire are futile, the Roman army functioned directly and indirectly as a unifying element. Their tours of the Empire further stimulated communication between provinces, particularly through provision of food supplies and created an element of commonality through their presence and their maintenace of the built landscape. Just as the Emperor had to be constantly on guard against potential uprisings in Rome, the provinces, particularly those with a significant military presence, could be a breeding ground for future challenges to the Emperor. As such, the size and nature of a province could change to combat growing power bases, for example, Moesia was subdivided and by 211 CE Syria had been divided into three provinces. Provinces could also be merged and in some cases the reasoning behind this is not always clear, for example Crete and Cyrene were joined together to become a single administrative unit. Pisidia was originally given to Cappadocia in the second century BCE to govern, but when this failed it was joined with Galatia in the

late first century BCE. Lycaonia was divided between Galatia, Cappadocia, and Cicilia and following a series of border changes she finally became a separate province in CE 371. A historical framework for the foundation and organization of the Eastern provinces is achievable through a collation of sources such as Dio, Livy, Pliny, Suetonius, and Tacitus. The density of written culture in the East allows a view of the significant events and key characters of the provinces is viable. Archaeological material such as pottery and other small finds, epigraphic and numismatic evidence, mortuary evidence, and architecture provide a much more coherent picture of the broader aspects of society and culture of the Eastern Roman provinces. In the past, much of the archaeological work has been focused in urban centers, although with the rise and refinement of archaeological survey methods, increasing attention is paid to the consideration of the rural landscape in the Roman period (e.g., work such as the Libyan Valleys project and the Pylos Regional Archaeological Project in the Peloponnese). Scholars have explained the development and outcome of expansion and cultural change within the provinces through the application of processes

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such as Romanization, creolization, and globalization. A brief synopsis of these processes will allow for a more comprehensive understanding. Detailed discussion is available in the further reading section. Suffice is to say here that the nature of Roman provinces can be best understood through an examination of the archaeology in combination with the historical data to allow consideration of the perspective of the local population in addition to that of the Roman. As such this approach allows for a more inclusive understanding of the cultural change in the eastern Mediterranean with the growth of the Roman Empire. The initial establishment of the provinces in the East was quite a different process from that of the West. In many respects urbanization was fundamental to the success of Roman occupation and the presence of the long established cities of the East meant that it was relatively straightforward for Roman administration to fit in. The populations of the East were already habituated to centralized administration. In addition, they had advanced technologies and stunning architecture. There were well-developed trade and communication networks and there was intense exploitation of agricultural and natural resources. In addition to the manifestations of conspicuous consumption, the populations of the East had a keen awareness of hierarchy and the machinations of politics. Rome had respect for the territories of the East and her policy seems to have been to undertake as little interference as possible, as long as peace was maintained to facilitate crucial tax collection. Just as there are differences between the provinces and cities of the Eastern and Western Roman Empire, the archaeology of the East reveals that the provinces are as culturally diverse as they are geographically. There are few ‘model’ Roman cities; provinces become part of the Empire at different periods and for varied reasons. Their subsequent development as part of the Empire follow a multitude of progressions dependent on location, nature of the local population, economy, investment, etc. and a single scenario for provincial development is not appropriate. The provinces were subsumed and cities were given different status at different times for numerous motives. There was no concurrent rate at which they grew and transformations within the cities, if any took place, occurred for a staggering multiplicity of reasons. The different levels of support for Rome were sometimes, although not always logically reflected in the level of privileges or punishment conferred. For example, Aphrodisias wholeheartedly supported Rome and experienced the economic benefits, in contrast Corinth was sacked. Some cities retained certain autonomous rights, such as Palmyra and Damascus,

largely because of the benefits they provided for the Roman economy. These rights however were only valid as long as the cities behaved well. The foundation and subsequent growth of the Roman provinces was in some cases a planned strategic process, but more often there is little evidence throughout for a clearly defined unified policy. A study of the archaeology of the Eastern Roman Empire allows a broad range of perspectives and for such diversities to become apparent.

Brief History and Topography As noted in the introduction, much of the expansion and provincial organization in the East was carried out under Pompey, Caesar, and Augustus. A brief presentation of the chronology will allow further insight in the nature of the foundation of the different provinces and cities within. The widely accepted chronologies are followed here; however, it is important to note that current work is beginning to challenge the more traditionally accepted chronologies for province-creation. Following on from his success in the Mithridatic wars (after the Third Mithridatic war Bithynia ceded to Rome and Pompey was victorious over King Mithridates of Pontus in CE 65B), Pompey set about solidifying some of this control with the organization of some of the provinces, such as Cicilia (conquered in 102 BCE and reorganized 66 BCE). Pompey annexed Syria in 64 BCE and in this way she functioned as a peace monitor, having to ensure that the Cilician tribes behaved. In the same region, Pompey also organized for Judea to become a client kingdom under local monarchs. Octavian Augustus consolidated this arrangement and Judea came under the authority of the governor of Syria (as Cilica already was). The provinces were somewhat pillaged by both Pompey and Caesar to support their bids for control of Rome and the instability the civil wars gave Mithridates VI the opportunity to reclaim some of the lost land in the East in the middle of the first century BCE. Following his victories over Pompey and his success in Egypt, Caesar began a process of ensuring the loyalty of the elite, secured and founded client kingdoms in the East and also finally put an end to the Pontus uprisings in 47 BCE, thereby obtaining the province. The work of Pompey and Caesar gave Augustus a good foundation for the expansion and consolidation of the Empire. At this point, various provinces had been inherited (e.g., Cyprus), victories in Egypt had provided a good economic base and obstreperous regions such as Judea and Pontus were

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annexed along with Moesia (44 BCE). These actions of strengthening borders and policing uncontrolled regions served to unify the Eastern Empire geographically. After Augustus, the Julio-Claudians continued on a small scale to expand the Eastern Empire with the inclusion of Cappadocia (CE 17), Lycia (CE 43), and Thrace (CE 46). The next concentrated expansion did not occur until Trajan. Trajan extended the holdings with the inclusion of new provinces and previous client kingdoms such as Arabia Petraea (CE 105) and Armenia (CE 114). At this point, the Empire was expanded to include Dacia (CE 106) which functioned as a buffer zone to the unconquered peoples of the East. Hadrian’s view of the Empire was quite different from that of his predecessor Trajan. Much against the views of factions within the Senatorial elite, Hadrian envisioned that a smaller Empire would be both more manageable and more profitable and thus he began a process of contracting the borders. Although Severus motivated further consolidation and re-organization of the Empire with the inclusion of Osroene and the expansion into northern Mesopotamia, by the third century the nature of the Roman Empire had changed. At this point a clear eastern koine was identifiable throughout the Eastern provinces but at the same time the external threats of the Goths and Vandals created a need for defense rather than expansion.

The Nature of the Provinces The diversity within and between Roman provinces is understandable when full consideration is given to the following: (see Table 1): . How and why provinces were acquired (force or inheritance; strategic or economic)? . The intended or consequential role within the Empire (frontier zones or Roman colonies). . How the nature of pre-conquest societies created such diversity in the Early Empire through the extent of: . multiculturalism . pre-conquest peace within the province . pre-conquest Roman involvement. . Existing economy. . Existing religions. . Location (Mediterranean or continental; remote or accessible). . Natural resources. . Topography. Different reasons for foundation (see Table 1):

. Inherited: for example, Asia, Cyrene. . Development from client kingdoms to provinces (e.g., Judea). . Conquered because of economic potential (e.g., Egypt). . Conquered because of strategic location for trade (e.g., Crete). . Taken to shore up gaps in the area of the Empire (e.g., Cappodacia). . Taken to act as buffer zones against threatening tribes (e.g., Dacia). . Taken to maintain peace (e.g., Cilicia & Judea). . Conquered as a result of attempts to rebel against Roman rule (Pontus, Achaea). . Conquered as part of strategic expansion of Empire (e.g., Armenia & Mesopotamia taken in Trajanic expansion). As noted in the introduction, a range of different types of provincial establishments were founded in the East (see Table 1): . Senatorial Province (former consuls): Asia. . Senatorial Province (former praetors): Macedonia, Crete & Cyrene, Achaea, Cyprus, Pontus & Bithynia, Lycia & Pamphylia. . Imperial Provinces (former consuls): Moesia, Syria, Cappadocia. . Imperial Provinces (former praetors): Galatia, Cilicia, Arabia. . Imperial Procurators: Thracia, Epirus. . Prefect: Egypt and Mesopotamia by early third century. . Some were provinces but behaved more like client kingdoms (e.g., Syria). Within these different provincial establishments there was a range of cities with different status and functions: . Colonies (Butrint (Illyrium), Savaria (Pannonia), Corinth (Achaea), Knossos (Crete and Cyrene), Nicomedia (one of the last at 284–305), Beirut, Edessa, Antioch). . Military presence (Palestine & Syria and along the Danube). . Provincial principal city (Ephesus, Gortyna, Alexandria). . Economic foundations (Damascus, Palmyra). . Creations to balance internal power (Patras). . Cultural centers (Sparta).

Archaeology of the Eastern Provinces With these variations and diversities in mind a ‘model province’ is not a viable means of understanding either Roman cities or the provinces themselves in

Table 1 The Eastern Roman provinces

1

Province

Type of admin (by CE 211)

Date a

Some key cities (incl b capitals and colonies)

Reason for inclusion and economic resources

Macedonia

Senatorial former praetor

168 BCE/ 146 BCE

Dion, Pella, Thessaloniki (capital) Phillippi, Cassandra

Rebelled against Romans. Early Empire used as a launch for several conquests into east and north.

Epirus

Imperial procurator

167 BCE

Nicopolis (capital) Butrint

3

Lycia

Senatorial former praetor

Letoum, Xanthus, Patara (capital), Phaselis

4

Lycaonia

Imperial

5

Achaea

Senatorial former praetor

167 BCE independent state. Joint province with Pamphylia in CE 43 160–64 BCE divided between Galatia, Cappadocia, Cilicia. 146 BCE and then formally in 22 BCE

6

Asia

Senatorial former consul

133 BCE (inherited). 129 BCE became a province

8

Crete and Cyrene

Senatorial former praetor

69 BCE

Ephesus (capital), Aphrodisias (free city), Miletus (free city) Gortyna (capital), Cyrene Knossos

9

Bithynia & Pontus

Imperial former praetor

64 BCE

10

Cicilia

Imperial former praetor

78–4 BCE, 67 BCE, 51–59 BCE (Vatia, Pompey, Cicero)

Iconium

Athens (capital) Sparta (free city) Corinth Patras

Nicomedia (capital) Nicea (capital) Byzantium, Prusa Apamea Olba, Seleucia-adCalyca, Dnum Tarsus (capital)

64 BCE Roman reorganization. Administration and borders often changing. Passed to Eumenes II of Pergamon then divided after Mithraditic wars. 146 BC attached to Rome after defeat in fourth Macedonian war. Corinth and later Athens sacked. Achaea subdued and peaceful. Trade, marble, cultural credibility Inherited from kingdom of Pergamum. first BCE mutinies, sacking of Ephesus and finally from Augustus onwards, strong economy and trade centers. Crete has initial resistance. Likely to have been taken with view of strategic stopover point for trade. Piracy is used in the sources as excuse. Timber exported from Crete. Siphnum (?) from Cyrene. Bithynia ceded to Rome in 75 BCE but joint province with Pontus after victories over Mithridates in 64 BCE

Issues with pirates and ‘uncivilized’ populations. A potential threat to the peace and stability of Empire. Various stages of subduing the province. Octavian finally succeeded in formalizing control.

Wealthy and prosperous

Mixture of cultures, Lycaonian and Greek

Cyrene was inherited by the Romans in 96 BCE. Originally a province on its own in 74 BCE then joined with Crete in 69 BCE.

As appendix to Syria, Syria was meant to deal with minor uprisings, etc.

Continued

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2

Economy: overland trade (via Egnatia constructed). Agricultural land, gold, iron, and timber exports Sided with Macedonia. Defeated by Romans in third Macedonia war (Aemilius Paullus). Central areas still had tribes. Coastal regions did well. Declared independent after Rhodes had attempted colonization. Annexed by Claudius formally.

Other

Province

Type of admin (by CE 211)

Date a

11

Syria

64 BCE

12

Cyprus

Imperial former consul Senatorial former praetor

13

Moesia

Imperial former consul

14

Aegyptus

Equestrian

30 BCE

15

Galatia

25 BCE

16

Pisidia

Imperial former praetor Imperial

17

Cappadocia

Imperial former consul

58 BCE 22 BCE became senatorial province under Augustan consolidation of East. 44 BCE split into two by Domitian

102 original Roman interest. 25 BCE

CE 17

Some key cities (incl b capitals and colonies)

Reason for inclusion and economic resources

Palmyra, Damascus, Beirut Antioch (capital) Paphos (capital), Salamis, Soli. No colonies established

Annexed by Pompey

Tomis. Nicopolis ad Istrum. Naissus (capital) Odessus, Viminacium Oescus Alexandria (capital), Cairo, Thebes, Memphis Ancyra (capital) Germa

Natural resources (gold, minerals and farmland). Military importance. Defence of Thrace. Danube: communication hub. Was important for shoring up the frontiers of the Empire.

Sagalassos, Selge, Antiocheia (and also capital), Olbasa, Cremna Caesarea (capital), Comana, Tyana

Annexed by Rome while taking advantage of the ambiguous nature of the inheritance of Egypt. Piracy provided another excuse.

Other

Certain cities (eg., Palmyra) given autonomous rights (economic benefits to the Romans). For a time it was part of the province of Cilicia.

Less noticeable change in population with inclusion in Empire. Problems with Scythians and Sarmartins

Annexed by Augustus

Augustus formalized Roman control. Originally given to Cappodacia to govern but this failed. Pisidia was then joined with Cilicia. Very slow to adopt Eastern Roman koine. Annexed by Tiberius. Changeable relationship with Rome. With Anticochus but against Philip V and Mithradiates. Managed to support the winning sides after this, Pompey, Caesar, Augustus.

Quite but steady and economically secure.

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Table 1 Continued

18

Thrace

Imperial former praetor

c. CE 46

19

Pamphylia

Joint province with Lycia in CE 43

20

Commagene

Senatorial former praetor Imperial

21

Judea

Equestrian

22

Arabia Petraea

Imperial former praetor

23

Dacia

Imperial former consul

c. CE 106

24

Armenia Inferior

Imperial

66 BCE initial Roman control. CE 114

Trapezus

Part of the Trajanic expansion to shore up gaps in the provinces.

25

Osroene

Imperial

CE 114 and CE 195

Edessa

26

Assyria

Imperial

CE 230

Nisbis

Originally part of the Trajanic expansion, became semi-autonomus and then annexed formally by Severus. Briefly controlled by Rome in 161 and CE 194. Difficult area due to heavy Parthian involvement.

CE 72 c. CE 100 finally brought fully under Roman control having been a client kingdom CE 105. Annexed by Trajan

Plovdiv (capital), Sardica, Philippopolis, Deultum. Adrianople Aspendus (neocorus), Perge (capital), Antalya, Side Samosata (capital) Jerusalem, Caesarea (capital), Sebaste

Petra (capital), Jerash, Philadelphia Philippopolis Bosra (capital) Sarmizegetusa (capital), Napoca, Apulum, Drobeta

Agriculture. Gold. Many areas functioned using Latin rather than Greek. Difficult provinces as always suffered from invasions and as battle ground.

Supported Pompey and then became client state under Augustus. Annexed by Vespasian. Originally annexed by Augustus in CE 6. Significant problem for the Romans. Originally under the governorship of Syria, several Jewish revolts.

Last independent kingdom in Asia Minor

Annexed from Kingdom of Nabetae.

Buffer zone, Danube, agriculture. Submitted to Trajan and then Hadrian divided the province.

Significant change with inclusion in Empire. Mixed population. Used Latin. Both free and occupied territories Always a difficult area due to incursions by neighboring tribes such as the Parthians (first–third CE)

ASIA, WEST/Roman Eastern Colonies 893

a The dates given are those which are commonly accepted for the creation of the Roman province. There are variations on the dates and work is underway to produce a coherent reassessment of the foundation dates. b Seat of the Roman Governor.

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the East. Notwithstanding, there are many shared common elements. In addition to the local existing architecture many provinces benefited from investment in new buildings, such as basilicas, amphitheaters, and heated baths. A range of housing from the urban domus, such as those multistoried buildings at Ephesus, to the rural villa, such as Herodes Atticus’ Villa at Loukou in the Peloponnese, to farmsteads, such as those identified in the Megalopolis survey was found throughout the Eastern Empire. Many of these buildings became showcases for the latest trends in art such as mosaics, wall painting, and sculpture. The somewhat laissez-faire attitude to religious expression in the provinces meant that in addition to the family and personal shrines a myriad of temples to different gods are found. In addition to temples to local gods (from Apollo to Baal) the temples of Imperial cult and the Capitoline triad were founded and, with the increased security of communication routes, came the spread of popular Egyptian religions such as Isis, Serapis, and other mystery cults such as Mithras. Although some cities continued to mint their own coins, provinces more often produced series of provincial coinage with the symbols and images of the ever-present Imperial ruler. Epigraphic evidence in the East provides insights into the nature of administration and economy (such as the tax code of Palmyra) and relations between Roman and local populations. It is clear that with a few exceptions and unlike the Western provinces, after an initial attempt to run the provinces using Latin as the official language, by the end of the first century CE, Greek had become the predominant language again, as seen in Corinth. A number of ceramic studies show similar patterns in densities of ceramic imports. As sites on Crete have shown, Italian forms were prevalent in the first half of the century but this gave way to a clear preference for Eastern Sigilliata B by the end of the century. Local wares and imitations remained a constant. A mixture of grave types is found depending on topography and population; lavish sarcophagi, rock cut tombs, and tile graves are just a few of the variety of types of mortuary evidence. New roads and aqueducts were constructed to facilitate communications and provide utilities. Current ceramic studies of the eastern Mediterranean (particularly in Corinth) are re-dating and presenting more refined chronologies. Additionally, more nuanced application of the ceramic evidence is leading to new theories concerning trade and economic, skills and technology in the East. To provide more detail about the archaeology of provinces, this section will examine four areas of the Eastern provinces in detail which will allow scope for a broad understanding. In presenting a brief survey of the Eastern Empire, allowance for the

nature of archaeological research should be factored in. The comparative dearth of rural evidence is slowly being addressed (as explained in the introduction). In the urban landscape, many of the Roman cities continued in use and are present-day occupied cities and thus much of their excavation has necessarily been patchy. In the following account, a range of areas has been chosen to reflect not only the different Roman establishments but also the diversity in archaeological material available for interpretation. Thus the areas are: . Corinth. Considered a new Roman foundation in a Senatorial province. . Knossos. A Roman colony created from a strongly anti-Rome city. . Palmyra. A key economic foundation in Syria, an Imperial province. . Paphlagonia and Achaea. The Rural Roman East.

Corinth in Achaea

With a few notable exceptions such as Sparta, the Achaean league was strongly opposed to Roman interference in the Peloponnese. Following powerful resistance Mummius sacked Corinth in 146 BCE during the Achaean war. Although the extent of depopulation of the city is likely to have been inflated somewhat in the sources, even so, the Roman investors had a reasonably clean slate from which to start in terms of constructing the new Roman city. Walbank notes clear evidence for the distribution of land, and settlers from Rome is evident with the establishment of the colony, Colonia Laus Julia Corinthiensis by Caesar in 44 BCE. Moreover, there was immediate investment in civic and domestic parts of the city. The forum with its stoas and shops, the Julian Basilica, Roman Temples C, D, E, F, G, and the Odeion were all established by the early first century CE. New houses, villas and baths were constructed and a fine collection of mosaics survives from the city. The success and wealth of the city is visible in the manifestation of conspicuous consumption seem in lavish buildings such as the Pierene fountain and the continuous investment in the Forum area. As a result of her position on the Isthmus and with some initial investment, during the Roman period, Corinth once again became a strong economic and strategic city. Her growing strength and position may have played a part in the reasoning behind Octavian’s foundation of the Colonia Aroe Augusta Patrensis at Patras on the western end of the Gulf of Corinth, intended to temper the potential power of Corinth. Extensive excavations have been undertaken at Corinth and contemporary urban development has

ASIA, WEST/Roman Eastern Colonies 895

been limited, allowing for detailed research. The archaeology of Corinth in the Early Empire clearly points to close ties with Rome and the West. Until the time of Hadrian, Latin was the language of choice, outnumbering Greek inscriptions by 101 to 3. As Alcock has discussed the ceramic assemblages and the overtly Roman coins which were minted in Corinth suggest clear westernized traits. The situation of the Roman temples with their frontal emphasis along the east side of the forum, one of which is likely to be the Capitolium and the epigraphic details for the Imperial cult support this connection with Rome. Simultaneously however, the Greek temple of Apollo continues in use. As the epigraphic evidence supports, with the initial foundation of the colony a clearly westernized city is constructed, however as with other cities in Greece, by the second century CE the original Greek roots appear to be the stronger force in the cultural koine of the city. Knossos in Crete and Cyrene

Under the veil of cleansing the Mediterranean of pirates, Crete became a focus of Roman attention. With the exception of cities such as Gortyn, the island was strongly opposed to Roman rule and during the early part of the first century BCE there were valiant attempts to dispel the Romans from the island. Crete’s resistance finally collapsed and the island was taken by Metellus. In 69 BCE Crete and Cyrene become joint province with the provincial ‘capital’ at Gortyn. By 25 BCE Knossos had become the praetorian provinces’ only colony, Colonia Julia Nobilis Cnossus and while there is limited evidence to suggest a significant ‘westernization’ of the city, she certainly appears to have flourished. Knossos has not been affected by contemporary urban growth, but the bias of archaeological investigation has clearly been on Minoan material. Even with detailed archaeological survey, research into the Roman remains has often been curtailed by the desires to focus on the Bronze Age material. Coupled with this is a dearth of historical sources for the province of Crete and Cyrene. In recent years, the increasing academic attention that is being paid to Roman Knossos with more research (rather than rescue) excavation and synthetic studies of the material culture, a more in-depth understanding of the nature of change from Greek city to Roman colony is viable. There is limited evidence for Roman occupation of the city in the first century BCE/CE, however it is clear that by the late first century CE Knossos has developed into a prosperous peaceful city with evidence for many of the architectural manifestations of an Eastern Roman city.

In the first half of the first century BCE, the epigraphic and numismatic data from Knossos clearly points to early attempts to run colony on formal lines: for example, with coins, Italian duoviri, and official administration documents in Latin. In the ceramic assemblage there is an initial favoring of Italian wares which by the mid first century CE are replaced by the Asia Minor-originating Eastern Sigallata B but all the time, domestic production continues. In contrast to the Latin public and official inscriptions in the first century BCE, all evidence thus far suggests that private inscriptions continued in Greek. Greek burial customs (such as rock-cut tombs and tile graves) persisted with no significant evidence for Roman burial customs. By the late first century CE a perceptible change in the material culture with the construction of the so-called Civil Basilica and the theater is visible. This is enhanced with evidence from a range of buildings representing a good cross section of society such as the Villa Dionysos and the small bathhouse close by and the town house complex at the Unexplored mansion with its associated industrial area. In terms of the sacred landscape, material culture is limited, but excavations at the Demeter Sanctuary have shown it to continue in use until the Late Antique period. The inclusion of Roman buildings, particularly administrative buildings in the late first century CE suggests a change in the Knossian landscape. It seems that finally, a century after the foundation of the colony, the city began to fit into the developing koine of the Eastern Empire, but this was taken on, a process decided on by both the local and Roman population, rather than forced. Palmyra in Syria

Syria played a number of roles in the Eastern Empire. She was a significant economic resource for Rome, at times she acted as a buffer zone to the more problematic tribes to the East and for certain periods she played the role of policing her more obstreperous neighbors such as Judea. In spite of her wealth and in many respects compliance to Rome, Syria is often perceived to be a province on-edge and this is partly due to the fear of attack from the unconquered tribes that edged in across her borders (Persian incursions were always problematic). This was the case throughout Roman rule. When the first Roman incursions occurred and Pompey began to annex the province, the Arab Nabateans begin to move in from the south and they were even able to hold Damascus for a period (around 85 BCE). Due to the constant threats three legions were originally posted in Syria (they were later moved to Judea (during the second half of the first century CE)).

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Given the potential wealth of Syria, some cities were given the right to retain a certain degree of autonomy (as long as they behaved) and Damascus and Palmyra are two examples. This arrangement was largely because of the benefits they provided for the Roman economy (trade in the case of Palmyra and production of luxury items in the case of Damascus). Hadrian granted free status to Palmyra. It was probably because of its unusual status that Palmyra did not become a colony until CE 217. The archaeology reveals a stunning diversity of culture and a flourishing city. Located in the Syrian Desert, in an oasis 150 km from the Orontes River and 200 km from the Euphrates, the full extent of her isolation was perceived as an advantage to the Romans. There is remarkable preservation of the Roman town and many of the surviving buildings are a result of a renewed investment in the town after Hadrian’s status change for the city. Like most cities of the Eastern provinces, Palmyra had a multitude of buildings; the forum represented the heart of the city with its lavish architectural colonnades. Rich residential houses have been excavated in addition to the theater, banqueting hall, baths, market place and temples. The range of temples at Palmyra, from the temple of Baal-Shamin to the temple of Bel, to the temple of Lat reflects the myriad of gods, local and foreign that were freely worshipped in the city. The tax code of Palmyra provides a wealth of evidence about local trade and the cost of living. From this inscription it is also clear what kind of material was being traded in and out of the city; basic items such as purple-dyed wool, scented oil in alabaster jars, and salt to more luxurious material such as spices, perfume, ivory, and silk from the East in addition to glass and other fine objects from Phoenicia. The tax code highlights the nature of primarily local trade. In addition to the tax code, a range of inscriptions from across the Empire reveal the extent to which Roman governors could extract tax; from property tax to income tax to inheritance tax to export and import tax. Provinces were taxed directly from Empire, controlled by the local governors. It was organized on the basis of a census and the increase in tax revenue was normally routed into the maintenance of the provinces. This worked as an incentive and ultimately economy growth in the Empire. During the third century Palmyra’s power increased while Rome’s stability waned. Palmyra grabbed the opportunity and she began to seek independence from both Rome and Persia. These attempts culminated in Queen Zenobia attempting to defy the Romans which resulted in the sacking of the city in CE 273. The city never recovered and became a

simple frontier stronghold. In all, the archaeology of Palmyra allows a good insight into daily life of a Roman provincial trade center; from public display to private life. The Rural Landscape

There are a number of issues concerning an understanding of the rural landscape in the Roman provincial East. The bias in the historical sources is firmly on the urban setting and when reference to the rural landscape is made more often as an aside. Survey evidence has saved the rural landscape from disappearing from the academic radar, however significant problems still remain. Not all areas of the Eastern Empire have been surveyed, so the full extent of regional variation and topographic diversity is not fully understood, often leading to unsupported assumptions. Not all field surveys have the opportunity to test their results with stratigraphic excavation. As such, pottery sequences and identification of context might not be completely accurate, so there is a reliance on potentially misleading data. Geophyiscal data, for example, evidence which has been brought to light in the Dichin field surveys in Moesia, undertaken by Poulter and Boyd, has the potential to provide vast quantities of evidence on the architecture of the rural landscape. Moreover, unless excavation is undertaken on the identified sites, gaps in the chronology and function will be rife. Survey data from some regions have allowed some generalizations to become popular assumptions which are recently being challenged. For example, as Alcock has shown, survey data suggests that there was a decrease in rural activity after the initial conquest of Achaea which has been interpreted as increased urbanization. An increase in the occupation and exploitation of the countryside was visible in the third century and there was a perceived increase in construction of villas, farmsteads, and rural villages. This pattern is often taken as being common to many, if not all of the Eastern provinces. Given the diversity as discussed above, and given the acceptance that towns and provinces could be vastly different, there is no reason to assume a coherent pattern in the rural landscape. The variety of topography, natural resources, fertility, and trade and communication potential leads to vastly different inhabitation and exploitation of the rural setting. In the Eastern provinces few generalizations can be made, but what is clear is that agriculture was exploited, routes were carved through the landscape and industries were founded where ores and minerals provided incentive. In addition, occupation ranged from simple one-room dwellings to farmsteads including home industries such as

ASIA, WEST/Roman Eastern Colonies 897

olive production to farmstead/industry/villa combinations to luxury villas. Although many towns such as Palmyra or Corinth gained their wealth through trade, the local population was still dependent on agricultural productions to sustain them.

Processes of Inclusion: Globalization Current research is expanding the application of globalization theories to the understanding of the development of the Roman Empire. In light of postprocessual, and particularly cognitive approaches to archaeology, globalization is an attractive concept and one which ultimately might solve many of the problems of terminology (with terms such as ‘Romanization’ now recognized as being problematic) and further understanding of the development of the East under Roman control. For Roman studies, such an approach allows further exploration of issues of cognitive elements (particularly aspects of intentional and non-intentional processes in addition to allowing an explanation of a progressive change in material culture (as seen in most of the East) rather than a swift cultural impact. The subject of globalization as a modern concept is not without its controversies and these debates largely center on different applications of globalization. A basic and commonly accepted definition could be read as: ‘‘A social process in which the constraints of geography on social and cultural arrangements recede and in which people become increasingly aware that they are receding’’ as stated by Waters. Waters’ definition does not rely on economic processes (notwithstanding they are a factor) nor does it preclude the concept of culturally independent states within a globalized world. Instead it allows social practices, unpredictable by geographical location and concerns, the development of a region relative to the globalizing power (rather than simply becoming a version of that state). In this way localization can prosper in parallel. Importantly for the Roman period, the latter element permits a situation where relative positive and negative preferences can be expressed for the potential of the globalizing power. To put it in terms of the Roman Empire, albeit simplified, Rome gradually became a ‘superpower’ in the Mediterranean, provinces were bequeathed, submitted and lost to her and eventually all displayed Roman cultural elements to varying intensities and as a consequence of different processes on the part of the Romans and on the part of the indigenous population. In this sense, this is one of the most attractive elements of explanations of globalization of the

Roman Empire, that it allows for the intentional and nonintentional influence and adoption of cultural elements for both sides.

Conclusion and Outlook As theoretical approaches are developed, so too are the practical aspects; ceramic studies encourage more refined chronologies, underwater archaeology is providing new evidence in areas such as the Black Sea and landscape surveys are correcting the urban-focus bias. For many years the foundation of colonies in the East has been viewed through a lens of the Romans imposing their designs for model establishments on local provinces. A comprehensive examination of the colonies of the eastern Mediterranean together highlights the range of diversity within the provinces. Not only is an imposed model of ‘Roman-ness’ no longer sustainable but future studies which approach the material from the viewpoint of the Romans and of the individual cities will continue to reveal the multiplicity of societies that existed in the eastern Mediterranean for the first two centuries of Roman Imperial expansion. See also: Europe, South: Rome.

Further Reading Alcock S (1997) The Early Roman Empire in the East. Oxford: Oxbow Monographs No. 95. Alcock S (1993) Graecia Capta: The Landscapes of Roman Greece. Cambridge: CUP. Bowersock GW (1998) Roman Arabia. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Bowman AK (1986) Egypt After the Pharaohs. London: British Museum Press. Bowman AK and Rathbone D (1992) Cities and administration in Roman Egypt. The Journal of Roman Studies 82: 107–127. Butcher K (2003) Roman Syria and the Near East. London: British Museum Press. Christie N (ed.) Landscapes of Change. Rural Evolutions in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 2004. ISBN 1-84014-617-6. Hingley R (2005) Globalizing Roman Culture. Unity, Diversity and Empire. London: Routledge. Millar F (1993) The Roman Near East, 31BC–AD 337. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Raddice B (1963) The Letters of the Younger Pliny. Penguin Classics. Walbank MEH (1997) The foundation and planning of Roman Corinth. Journal of Roman Archaeology 10: 95–130. Waters M (1995) Globalization. London: Routledge. Wells C (1984) The Roman Empire. London: Fontana. Whittaker C. R (1994) Frontiers of the Roman Empire. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Wiseman J (1979) Corinth and Rome 1: 228 B.C. – A.D. 267. Aufstieg und Niedergang der ro¨mischen Welt II.7: 438–538.

898 ASIA, WEST/Southern Levant, Bronze Age Metal Production and Utilization

Southern Levant, Bronze Age Metal Production and Utilization

The first known use of metals in the Southern Levant is during the Chalcolithic period (end of fifth to most of the fourth millennium BC). Dating from that time more than 500 metal objects have been found mainly in hoards, burials, and habitation remains, most of the metals come from sites in the southern part of Israel and Jordan and very rarely from beyond the center of Israel and north of Nahal Qanah. Most of the metals belong to two major categories and there is also a third, minor category:

Currently, no production remains or production sites of these prestige/cult objects have been found. 2. Unalloyed copper tools comprising mainly of relatively thick and short bladed objects (axes, adzes, and chisels) and points (awls and/or drills) made from a smelted copper ore cast into an open mold and then hammered and annealed into their final shape and their blade’s or point’s hardness properties. The copper tools were produced in the Chalcolithic villages on the banks of the Beer-Sheva valley where slag fragments, clay crucibles, some possible furnace lining pieces, copper prills and amorphous lumps were found beside high-grade carbonated copper ore (cuprit). The ore was collected and selected in the area of Feinan in Trans-Jordan and transported to the Northern Negev villages some 150 km to the north to be smelted there for the local production of these copper objects. 3. A group of eight gold (Au) and electrum (Au þ up to 30% Ag) solid rings was found in Nahal Qanah cave. This unique find, with no dated parallels, is attributed by the excavators to the Chalcolithic period based upon local stratigraphic and geological reasons and 14C dating of ground samples from the vicinity of the find in the cave. Surface analyses of these objects revealed a surface gold enrichment caused by the depletion of silver and the copper traces. This effect could be caused naturally by deposition, but could as well result artificially at the time of production in order to achieve a yellow color for the electrum rings rich in silver. During the Chalcolithic (copper þ stone) era at least two, if not three different metal industries of different metals beside copper were operating and left their products in the Southern Levant.

1. Prestige/cult elaborated and complex-shaped objects made of copper (Cu) alloyed (either by a deliberate choice of complex minerals or by adding several minerals together) with distinct amount of antimony (Sb) or nickel(Ni) and arsenic(As). They were cast in a ‘lost wax’ technique into single closed clay molds and then polished into their final shining gray or gold like colors depending on the amount of antimony or nickel and arsenic in the copper. The biggest hoard (416 metal objects) comprising mainly of these highly artistically complex-shaped objects was found hidden in a remote cave (the cave of the treasure) in Nahal Mishmar, Judean desert, Israel, wrapped in a straw mat. The origin of the complex source material for the production of these objects is currently unknown. The nearest suitable ore is in Trans Caucasus and Azerbaijan – more then 1500 km from the finding sites of the objects. Several clay and stone cores and clay mold’s remains were petrographically analyzed and the results point to a possible local production within the metals distribution zone in Israel.

During the next thousand years of the Early Bronze (end of fourth to end of third millennium BC), the same unalloyed copper production of the Chalcolith (1) continued to produce short blades and points as before. The same metal technique was now used for the novel production of long-blade weapons (riveted daggers and knives, heavy tanged swords, and epsilonshaped axes). The same copper production technique of casting into an open mold and then hammering and annealing was now used to produce all other metals as well, including jewelry of thin plates, sometimes decorated, and elongated thin wires (mainly for rings and bracelets) made of unalloyed copper as well as from silver (first appearance) and gold. Archaeological remains of Early Bronze copper mining and copper smelting in the vicinity of the mines have been found in Trans-Jordan (Feinan), the Arava valley (Timnah), and Southern Sinai. The only remains of metal production are those of copper and include copper slag, prills, and amorphous copper lumps as well as small shallow ball-shaped clay crucibles with

Sariel Shalev, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Chalcolithic (Copper Age period) A phase in the development of human culture in which the use of early metal tools appeared alongside the use of stone tools. Levant A geographical term that refers to a large area in Southwest Asia, south of the Taurus Mountains, bounded by the Mediterranean Sea in the west, the Arabian Desert in the south, and Mesopotamia to the east. Tel Dan Also known as Tel el-Qadi , an archaeological site in Israel in the Upper Galilee next to the Golan Heights.

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a socket for inserting wooden handle. In the Early Bronze I site of the Ashkelon Marina in the southern part of the Israeli coast, small shallow open pits, probably for the melting of copper in a crucible, were found beside copper industrial remains. Most of the metal products are found in burials mainly from the Early Bronze I. The same types of metals continue to be found in sites and tombs throughout the whole Early Bronze and all over the local distribution map of Early Bronze sites. A single hoard of copper objects probably from the Early Bronze I was found with no related archaeological context in the fields of Kfar Monash. During the Early Bronze period the Southern Levant metal industry became more industrialized and homogenous in its production modes and the products typology. For the first time in the South Levantine metal history, significant typological and technological affiliations to the growing metal industries in the two major imperial centers (Egypt and Mesopotamia) on both sides of the Fertile Crescent are visible. During the whole Early Bronze age there is no archaeometallurgical evidence for bronze production and no bronze objects were used during this period in the Southern Levant (see Asia, West: Southern Levant, Chalcolithic Cultures). More than 500 metal objects have been found that date to the Middle Bronze age (end of third to middle of second millennium BC). The development of more complex weapons (longer daggers, swords, complex battle axes, etc.) was possible by alloying the copper with arsenic at the beginning and tin (Sn) later to produce arsenical copper and tin bronze. These changes in the metal properties of weapons are reflected in a kind of a ‘mirror image’ in the composition of small objects like toggle pins that were probably made mainly from scrap re-melting. Lead (Pb) is starting to play a greater role as a major alloy for thick and relatively big casts of copper-based objects, mainly of battle axes at this period. During the Late Bronze age (second half of second millennium BC) more than 400 metal artifacts were found (c. 200 blade weapons, 140 metal vessels, some working tools and small arrow heads and decorative objects). All the blades analyzed were found to be made of tin–bronze and most of all other copperbase objects are either tin–bronze alloy or have tin in their metal as impurity. At this stage in history, large quantities of copper and tin ingots are found all over the coasts of the Mediterranean and in several shipwrecks under the sea, mainly in the southern coast of Turkey. Copper and copper-base metals continued to be the major metal in use during the first part of the Iron age (end of second to beginning of first millennium BC).

Bronze scrap re-melting remains (mainly v-shaped clay crucibles, slags, clay tuyers) and structures of open camp fires full of metal production remains were found in several sites in Israel associated mainly with the Philistines and the Sea People settlements on the coast (i.e., Tel Qasile, Tel Gerisa, Tel Dor) and Tel Dan in the north of Israel. Only later in the Iron Age metallic did iron start to play a major role as a base metal for tools and weapons. See also: Asia, West: Southern Levant, Chalcolithic

Cultures.

Further Reading Budd P, Pollard AM, Scaife B, and Thomas RG (1995) Oxide ingots, recycling and the Mediterranean metal trade. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 8(1): 1–3. Gershuny L (1985) Bronze Vessels from Israel and Jordan. Pra¨historische Bronzefunde II, 6 (Mu¨nchen). Hauptmann A (2000) Zur fruhen metallurgie des kupfers in Fenan/ Jordanien. Der Anschnitt Beiheft 11: 1–236. Levy TE and Shalev S (1989) Prehistoric metalworking in the Southern Levant: Archaeometallurgical and social perspectives. World Archaeology 20(3): 352–372. Miron E (1992) Axes and Adzes from Canaan. PBF IX, 19. Philip G (1989) Metal Weapons of the Early and Middle Bronze Age in Syria–Palestine. BAR Int. Series 526. Philip G (1991) Tin, arsenic, lead: Alloying practices in SyriaPalestine around 2000 BC. Levant XXIII: 93–104. Shalev S (1988) Redating the Philistine Sword at the British Museum: A case study in typology and technology. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 7(3): 303–311. Shalev S (1993) Metal production and society at Tel Dan, In: Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990, Proceedings of the Second International Congress on Biblical Archaeology. pp. 57–65. Shalev S (1994) The change in metal production from the Chalcolithic period to the Early Bronze age in Israel and Jordan. Antiquity 68: 630–637. Shalev S (1996) Archaeometallurgy in Israel: The impact of the material on the choice of shape, size and colour of ancient products. In: Archaeometry 94, The Proceedings of the Twentyninth International Symposium on Archaeometry, pp. 11–15. Ankara: Tubitak. Shalev S (2002) Metal Artifacts. In: Kempinski A. Tel Kabri – The 1986–1993 Excavation Seasons. pp. 307–318. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, Institute of Archaeology, Monograph Series 20. Shalev S (2003) Early Bronze Age I copper production on the coast of Israel: Archaeometallurgical analysis of finds from AshkelonAfridar. In: Potts T, Roaf M, and Stein D (eds.) Culture through Objects: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honour of P.R.S. Moorey, pp. 313–324. Oxford: Griffith Institute. Shalev S (2004) Swords and Daggers in Late Bronze Age Canaan. PBF IV, 13). Shalev S and Northover JP (1993) The metallurgy of the Nahal Mishmar Hoard reconsidered. Archaeometry 35(1): 35–47. Tadmor M, Kedem D, Begemann F, Hauptmann A, Pernicka E, and Schmitt-Strecker S (1995) The Nahal Mishmar Hoard from the Judean Desert: Technology, composition, and provenance. Atiqot XXVII: 95–148.

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of all the cave sites is Nahal Mishmar, also known as the Cave of the Treasure because of the hoard of over 400 metal artifacts discovered there.

Jonathan M Golden, Drew University, Madison, NJ, USA

Diagnostic Features

ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Chalcolithic Culture-historical-chronological period, literally, Copper–Stone Age, denoting a period of incipient metal use, while stone remained a primary technological medium. ossuary Also known as ‘bone box’, or ‘charnel house’, a receptacle made of ceramic or stone used to hold secondary human remains (e.g., long bones). Ossuaries are often rectilinear in form with a ‘string cut’ lid, and are often decorated with painted and applied designs (e.g., human faces).

Overview The Chalcolithic (c. 4700–3500 BC) was a period of major change throughout societies of the southern Levant. Basic food production systems of the Neolithic gave way to new subsistence strategies and technologies, and broad changes in overall economic organization (e.g., the rise of craft specialization) are evident. Changes in social organization as well have been observed with early signs of social inequality and the emergence of elite groups. Key Sites/Settlement Patterns

The Chalcolithic culture spread across most of the southern Levant, from the south, near Eilat, up to the Golan in the north, and from the Mediterranean coast east past the Rift Valley (Figure 1). One of the most important settlement sites, Teleilat Ghassul (Jordan), has been treated as a ‘type site’, though it may have been abandoned before the end of the period. The Beer Sheva sites of the northern Negev (e.g., Abu Matar and Bir es-Safadi) have also been treated as ‘type sites’, though they were not occupied during the earliest part of the Chalcolithic. Other key sites include the cluster of settlements that comprise the Golan subregional culture and Grar, Gilat, and Shiqmim, in the northern Negev. There was a sizeable mobile (e.g., pastoral-nomadic) population in the region as well in addition to the settled peoples. Shiqmim has the only extramural cemetery that is directly related to a Chalcolithic settlement, though in recent years a number of very important cave tomb sites have been discovered. These tombs include Peqi’in, Nahal Qanah, and Givat Ha-oranim. The most spectacular

Chalcolithic material culture is usually easily distinguished from that of other periods, though internal subchronologies are still lacking. Key diagnostic features include ceramic forms such as V-shape bowls, churns, and hole-mouth jars with lug handles; red painted bands are a common form of decoration. Several distinct classes of sculpted figurines have been observed, including the schematic ‘violin-shape’ figurines (Figure 2), the more naturalistic ivory figurines, ‘pillar’ figurines, especially in the Golan, and human heads made of basalt. Basalt was also used to make a range of vessels, most notably bowls and fenestrated stands. The lithic assemblage is noted for axes and awls, along with a variety of blade tools, including microblades made from a fine flint, and ‘fan-shape’ scrapers made from the so-called tabular flint. A novel material at the time was metal, mainly copper and copper with arsenic and antimony, along with one rare instance of gold and gold ‘alloys’.

Economic Organization Subsistence

Subsistence strategies of the Chalcolithic relied on a combination of farming and herding/animal husbandry. Two-rowed barley was the most common crop followed by wheat and lentil. Based on studies of archaeobotanical remains, specifically, phytoliths, it appears that simple irrigation techniques were used to assist in the cultivation of wheat and barley. Another breakthrough in farming technology was the use of cattle for traction in plowing, a development reflected in the faunal assemblage. Of course, animals also served as a primary source of food, with sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs being consumed at most sites (see Animal Domestication), though the latter are rare at sites where there is less rainfall. There was also a growing dependence on products such as wool and dairy, known as the ‘secondary products revolution’, evidenced by the presence of churns and an older population of female animals in the faunal assemblage. The low frequency of pulses at some sites (e.g., Shiqmim) suggests that the people were raising crops for fodder (see Plant Domestication). Craft Specialization

The success of these subsistence strategies no doubt freed up some time for dabbling in specialized

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Peqi'in Kabri N

Sea of Galilee

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MAKTESH RAMON

Figure 1 Map of Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites in the southern Levant (courtesy of Y. Rowan).

production activities, and, in time, several craft industries, including ceramic production, textiles, basalt and ivory carving, and metallurgy, would emerge. Chalcolithic ceramic production reached a new level with a wide variety of forms and technological innovations such as the earliest use of the slow wheel. Basalt bowls and the elegant ‘fenestrated’ and high-footed incense stands reflect a high level of craftsmanship in the area of groundstone production. Though little is known about their manufacture, the quality of finished ivory goods, including human figurines and perforated

‘tusks’, also attests to the work of highly skilled craftspeople. Evidence for textile production comes in the form of loom weights and spindle whorls, floral remains such as preserved linseed (flax), tabular scrapers used as sheers, and cloth impressions preserved on the bases of ceramic vessels; in rare cases such as the Cave of the Treasure (Nahal Mishmar) and the Cave of the Warrior, the textiles have been preserved. The most outstanding technological development of the Chalcolithic was the local inception of copper. Though the initial technology may have been

902 ASIA, WEST/Southern Levant, Chalcolithic Cultures

Figure 2 Chalcolithic figurines: (a) ivory female from Bir es-Safadi (by J. Golden, adapted from Perrot 1968: Pl. 5); (b) male ivory from Bir es-Safadi (by J. Golden, adapted from Perrot 1959: Pl.II); (c) stone ‘violin-shaped’ figurine from Gilat (by J. Golden, adapted from Alon and Levy 1989); (d) bone anthropomorphic figurine with violin shaped elements (by J. Golden, adapted from Levy and Golden 1996) (not drawn to scale).

introduced from elsewhere, by midway through the period, local smiths were producing metal at an advanced level. Two distinct industries have been identified: one based on the open-casting and hammering of relatively ‘pure’ copper to manufacture tool-shaped goods; and another involving the casting (lost-wax) of complex metals (i.e., copper with arsenic and antimony) to manufacture a range of goods, some quite elaborate in design (see Figure 3). Evidence for the ‘pure’ copper industry is known from village workshops such as that of Abu Matar and Shiqmim, while evidence for the complex metals industry is extremely rare. There are now, however, some indications that the two industries may have overlapped more than previously thought, and new clues pointing to the local production of complex metals have begun to surface (see Metals: Primary Production Studies of). A staple surplus would have been required to support the activities of craft specialists that were engaged in nonfood production, and evidence for communal storage facilities has been found at large central sites such as Gilat and Ghassul, suggesting a surplus of agricultural products, probably wheat or barley. The people of the Chalcolithic also engaged in longdistance trade, as material used to manufacture many of the fancy metal goods probably came from distant sources. Obsidian found at Gilat can be traced to sources in Turkey, and it is possible that some goods, such as ivory or the gold from Nahal Qanah, came from Egypt.

Social and Political Organization Inferences concerning social organization can be made based on the discovery of status symbols and

Figure 3 Cast metal objects: (a) ‘Ibex Standard’ from Nahal Mishmar; (b) vessel from Nahal Mishmar hoard (a and b by J. Golden adapted from Bar-Adon 1980: 44, No. 17; and 107, No. 158); (c) standard from Givat Ha-Oranim (by J. Golden, adapted from Namdar et al. 2004: 5.2:1).

luxury goods, and the hoard and burial contexts in which they are usually found. The complex metals serve as a good example, where great effort and expenditure went into the production of goods, which in the end, were buried, either in small caches or deep in some burial cave. The cave tombs themselves seem to reflect some form of social hierarchy (see Social Inequality, Development of); a tomb built of mud bricks was recently discovered at the site of Kissufim Road. The wealthier burials often contained a burial ‘kit’ consisting of fancy items made of basalt, ivory, and metal, along with fine ceramics (e.g., Cream Ware) and ceramic ossuaries, or ‘bone boxes’ that are usually decorated (see Figure 4). Nahal

ASIA, WEST/Southern Levant, Chalcolithic Cultures 903

Figure 4 Ceramic ossuary from the Chalcolithic cave tomb at Peqi’in (drawing by J. Golden, after Gal et al. 1999).

Qanah contains the earliest gold in the region along with several copper and copper ‘alloy’ goods, and objects. In most cases, the tombs contained the remains of multiple individuals, suggesting that they were not dedicated to any one individual, but perhaps to certain lineages. Peqi’in, which had at least 250 ceramic ossuaries, and the remains of at least 450 individuals, was probably used over the course of several generations. While the rare exotic goods and rich tombs indicate that not all people had equal access to wealth and status, differences in house size have not been observed at the settlement sites, which might be expected were there marked variation in social status (see Settlement System Analysis; Household Archaeology; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites). It is difficult to say much about political organization in Chalcolithic societies. There has been considerable debate regarding this, with some scholars arguing that there was little evidence for sociopolitical complexity, while others disagree. It is possible that the aforementioned cave tombs contained the burials of political leaders, but it is difficult to distinguish archaeologically between evidence for wealth and power. Nahal Mishmar, where there was a concentration of over 200 metal maceheads, may provide evidence for organized conflict.

Ritual and Religious Practice There is a wealth of material representing ritual and religious practice during the Chalcolithic, though much of it remains enigmatic (see Ritual, Religion, and Ideology). The well-known ceramic statues from Gilat (‘Gilat Lady’ and ‘Ram with Cornets’) likely represent ritual icons or paraphernalia. There are also smaller figurines that may have been used in

ritual practice. ‘Violin-shape’ figurines have been found at sites such as Peqi’in, Ghassul, and Gilat where there are over 50 examples made from a variety of materials, many directly associated with the sanctuary. The ivory figurines appear mainly in the Beer Sheva area, and a unique bone figurine blending elements of the two traditions has been found at Shiqmim. Other evidence for cultic practice includes massebot, or standing stones found at a number of sites, and fenestrated incense burners, named as such because traces of charring as well as their form suggest they were used for the burning of organic material. Sites with cultic architecture include Ein Gedi, Gilat, and Teleilat Ghassul, where archaeologists have excavated clusters of building and open courts identified as temple complexes. At Ghassul, portions of murals depicting what appear to be mythical figures have been preserved. See also: Animal Domestication; Asia, West: Archaeol-

ogy of the Near East: The Levant; Household Archaeology; Metals: Primary Production Studies of; Plant Domestication; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Settlement System Analysis; Social Inequality, Development of; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites.

Further Reading Bar Adon P (1980) The Cave of the Treasure. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Journal. Epstein C (1998) The Chalcolithic Culture of the Golan. (with a contribution by Tamar Noy). Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority. Gilead I (1988) The Chalcolithic period in the Levant. Journal of World Prehistory 2: 397–443. Golden J (1998) Dawn of the Metal Age: The Origins of Social Complexity in the Southern Levant. London: Equinox Publishing. Gopher A and Tsuk T (1996) Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology: The Nahal Qanah Cave: Earliest Gold in the Southern Levant. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University. Levy TE (1986) The Chalcolithic period. Biblical Archaeologist 49: 83–106. Levy TE (ed.) (2006) Anthropology, Archaeology and Cult – The Chalcolithic Sanctuary at Gilat, Negev Desert, Israel. London: Equinox Publishing. Lovell JL (2001) BAR International Series 974: The Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic Periods in the Southern Levant: New Data from Teleilat Ghassul, Jordan. Oxford: Archaeopress. Perrot J (1993) Beersheba: The Chalcolithic settlements. In: AviYonah M and Stern E (eds.) NEAEHL, vol. 1, p. 161–163. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Carta. Scheftelowitz B and Oren E (1997) Givat ha’oranim (Nahal Barequet). New Antiquities: Recent Discoveries from Archaeological Excavations in Israel, p. 20. Jerusalem: The Israel Museum. Rowan Y and Golden J (in prep.) The Chalcolithic of the southern Levant. Journal of World Prehistory.

904 ASIA, WEST/Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures

Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures Marcel Otte, Universite´ de Lie`ge, Lie`ge, Belgium ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Acheulean An archaeological industry of stone tool manufacture associated with prehistoric hominins during the Lower Palaeolithic era across Africa and much of Asia and Europe. Middle Palaeolithic Second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. Upper Palaeolithic Third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age.

The modern territory of Turkey extends in latitude more than 2000 km. In the east, it penetrates the Asian continent to the Iranian border. Its western extremity belongs to Balkan Europe, beyond the Marmara Sea. Geographically, politically, and archaeologically, this immense country thus establishes the link between the three continents of the Old World, Africa included. In effect, the varied relief

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of the western plateaus were characterized to the east by the extension of the Rift delineating the Levantine coast. Further still, southeast Anatolia belongs primarily to Mesopotamia, opening toward Iraq and Iran. The north, bordered by the Black Sea and the Caucasus, seems to have limited cultural currents. In contrast, the southern coast on the Mediterranean favored different forms of exchange from the Levant to Europe (see Europe: Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies). Despite its size and important geographic position, Palaeolithic Turkey has been the subject of only a few foreign research projects. However, different Turkish institutions have undertaken numerous surveys, evidencing the potential abundance of sites to be excavated. Having participated in several field campaigns with our Turkish friends and various foreign colleagues, we present here a summary of essential knowledge (Figure 1). The earliest traces of human occupations were apparently discovered at Dursunlu, in central Anatolia at the bottom of a brown coal quarry. A small series of artifacts were found in association with Lower Pleistocene faunal remains, dated to around a million years ago. Artifacts include irregular flakes on rough rocks and small worked cobbles. The

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Lower Palaeolithic layer, dated to around 400 000 years ago, seems to be attached to the same tradition: unprepared flakes, worked cobbles. This extends the European traditions present in Bulgaria to the edge of the Marmara Sea (Figure 2). The situation is completely different in eastern Anatolia: the high basins of the Euphrates and its tributaries are encased in deep limestone deposits with abundant flint sources. This vast geographic area

technology has no relationship to the Acheulean, already present in Israel and Iran. This part of Anatolia seems to belong to Eurasian traditions of this period, such as have been found at Dmanisi in Georgia, Korolevo in the Ukraine, and Riwat in Pakistan. In European Turkey, the cave of Yarımburgaz was excavated by a team from the University of Istanbul and the University of California at Berkeley. In addition to interesting Neolithic phases represented, a

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contains, for the most part, Acheulean traditions of African origin, as in the southern Levant and the northern Caucasus. However, the lack of precise stratigraphic context (apart from the depth of the geological stage) prevents dating of the sequence, apparently of long duration, if one uses the technotypology of bifaces. A single site, Sehremuz, has yielded a well-preserved industry which has been subjected to functional analysis. In central Anatolia, at Kalatepe, the excavation of a Neolithic tell also yielded a perfectly preserved Acheulean industry on obsidian. Still being studied, it appears to correspond to the workshops present in this region where obsidian is abundant. Acheulean diffusion continues in this way toward the western part of the Anatolian plateau, but apparently becomes more limited as bifaces become rarer. After pioneering research by Professor I. Ko¨kten from Ankara, followed by the excavations by I. Yalc¸inkaya and H. J. Mu¨ller-Beck, we have continued the study of a

long stratigraphic sequence in the Karain caves near Antalya. Chamber E has yielded the longest sequence, some 10 m thick and still being excavated. Available dates show that the middle assemblages are situated around 300 000–400 000 years ago, but the base remains undated. Briefly, we can state that the base has assemblages containing rough, unprepared, flakes, similar to those found at Dursunlu¨. The middle phase corresponds to the ‘European Charentian’, with irregular debitage, massive platforms, thick bulbs, and tools with scalar retouch. The upper part of the sequence, representing the last 100 000 years, contains increasingly elaborate ‘Levallois’ industries. A few isolated Neanderthal teeth were found associated with the Upper Mousterian. The sequence ends with dispersed Epipalaeolithic traces (Figure 3). A dichotomy is observed regarding lithic raw material use: the ‘Charentian’ is made of green or red radiolarite of local origin while Levallois methods were applied to flint of homogeneous texture. Thus,

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Figure 3 Karain E, Middle Palaeolithic. Artifacts from the ‘Charentian’ (lower) and the ‘Levallois’ (upper) industries. After Otte et al. (1996) Pale´olithique ancien de Karaı¨n (Turquie). Anthropologie et Pre´histoire 107: 149–156.

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near natural outcrops (e.g., in a radius of 100 km around Karain), numerous workshops evidencing Levallois reduction are present, from which certain elements were transported over long distances, where they appear at sites as intrusive. As during the Acheulean, the basins of the eastern rivers were also abundantly used as Middle Palaeolithic ‘quarries’. Surface survey has shown the presence of numerous workshops characterized by utilization of methods similar to those of the Levant. The Anatolian Middle Palaeolithic thus ends with a dichotomy, perhaps partially linked to accessibility of lithic raw materials. In the mountainous arc joining the Taurus and the Zagros, the ‘Charentian’ industries, typically involving radiolarite, also contain numerous heavily retouched tools. In the central basins, assemblages of Levallois character, made on flint, evoke the Levant all the more as they sometimes include bifacial pieces, calling to mind the Yabrudian. At the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic, all of these assemblages apparently disappeared (as well as the populations making them?), being replaced by two entirely different traditions. At the site of Karain B, the Charentian is replaced by the abrupt appearance of a ‘classic’ Aurignacian, with carinated tools and finely retouched Dufour bladelets. If not for the absence of a bone industry, this Aurignacian would be identical to that found in Georgia and Iran. It could thus correspond to a movement coming out of Central Asia, related to modern humans (see Modern Humans, Emergence of) (Figure 4). By contrast, in the Hatay region, in the Turkish Levant, the cave of Uc¸agizli, formerly excavated by Ko¨kten, and subsequently by S. Kuhn and a Turkish team, has yielded a completely different industry. This industry is attributed to the Early Upper Palaeolithic, dated to 32 000 BP, and contains long, regular blades, sometimes retouched into curved backed points. Technological and typological criteria clearly associated these assemblages to the Ahmarian of the Near East, for which it would represent a recent phase and the northernmost expansion from its origin in the Negev, defined recently by A. E. Marks. The assemblages themselves seem to follow Nilotic traditions. At the Turkish site, pendants have also been discovered, which are the earliest examples, clearly original to the Anatolian Palaeolithic (Figure 5). A new ‘hiatus’ apparently seems to have taken place following the Early Upper Palaeolithic. To our knowledge, the late Aurignacian is not present in Turkey and the Ahmarian disappears. The sequence resumes around 18 000 BP, present in the upper part of Karain B, more particularly at

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o¨ku¨zini, and finally at some plateau sites, at Tel Ilipinar or Pinarbasi. Traces of a Late Mesolithic were discovered at Beldibi and Belbasi, near Antalya. ¨ ku¨zini are The two sequences of Karain B and O complementary and additionally geographically close

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Neolithic (Go¨bekli Tepe, Nevali Cori). Through such evidence, one thus recognizes the extreme cultural diversity represented by Anatolia, to which the prehistory of the Near East is indebted. See also: Asia, West: Paleolithic Cultures; Europe: Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies; Europe, Eastern, Peopling of; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient; Modern Humans, Emergence of. 0

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¨ ku¨zini Late Upper Palaeolithic. Artifacts from the Figure 6 O three lithic phases. After Otte M, Yalc¸inkaya I, Le´otard J-M, et al. ¨ ku¨zini cave (SW Anatolia) and its (1995) The Epi-Palaeolithic of O mobiliary art. Antiquity 69: 931–944.

(only a few kilometers between the two sites). From 18 000 to 16 000 BP, the assemblages contain short, retouched blades with curved back, producing points similar to ‘Azilian’ or ‘Kebaran’ points. The toolkits increasingly tend toward bladelets segmented to make microlithic armatures, with a true developmental break in technology (Figure 6). Evidence of sedentism appear (gathering of terrestrial mollusks, grinding), although the economy remains hunting-based (wild sheep and goats) until the Holocene. If one takes into account other evidence of ‘Holocene hunters’, located in coastal regions, it is possible to imagine that the hunter-gatherer way of life persisted in these areas while the Neolithic became well established on the central plateaus (e.g., at C¸atal Hu¨yu¨k). If, moreover, we consider the eastern part of this vast country (Urfa, Diabakyr), we note the presence of a very early and prestigious pre-pottery

Further Reading Bar-Yosef O (1994) The Lower Palaeolithic in the Levant. Journal of World Prehistory 8(3): 211–265. Celiberti V, Barsky D, Cauche D, et al. (2004) Les industries lithiques archaı¨ques du site de Dmanisi, Ge´orgie. In: BAR International Series 1272 : Section 4 : Human origins and the Lower Palaeolithic. General sessions and posters. Proceedings of the XIVth international Congress of the UISPP, 2–8 September 2001, Lie`ge, pp. 29–36. Oxford: BAR. Dennell RW, Rendell H, and Hailwood E (1998) Early tool-making in Asia: Two-million-year-old artefacts in Pakistan. Antiquity 62: 98–106. Gu¨lec¸ E, Clark Howell F, and White TD (1999) Dursunlu – A new Lower Pleistocene faunal and artefacts-bearing locality in Southern Anatolia. In: Ullrich H (ed.) Hominid Evolution. Lifestyles and Survival Strategies, pp. 349–364. Gelsenkirchen: Archae. Kuhn SL, Arsebu¨k G, and Clark Howell F (1996) The Middle Pleistocene lithic assemblage from Yarimburgaz cave, Turkey. Pale´orient 22(1): 31–49. Kuhn SL, Stiner MC, and Gu¨lec¸ E (1999) Initial Upper Palaeolithic in south-central Turkey and its regional context: A preliminary report. Antiquity 73: 505–517. Lioubine VP (2002) ERAUL 93: L’Acheule´en du Caucase. Lie`ge: ERAUL. Otte M (2004) The Aurignacian in Altai. In: Brantingham PJ, Kuhn SL, and Kerry KW (eds.) The Early Upper Paleolithic beyond Western Europe, pp. 144–150. Berkeley: University of California Press. Otte M, Biglari F, Alipour S, Naderi R, and Hosseini J (2004) Earliest human occupations in Central Asia: an Iranian look. In: Derevianko AP and Nokrina TN (dir.) Archaeology and Palaeolithic in Eurasia, pp. 279–282. Novosibirsk. Otte M, Yalc¸inkaya I, KozLowski JK, Bar-Yosef O, Lo´pez Bayo´n I, and Taskiran H (1998) Long-term technical evolution and human remains in the Anatolian Palaeolithic. Journal of Human Evolution 34: 413–431. Otte M, Yalc¸inkaya I, Le´otard J-M, et al. (1995) The Epi-Palaeolithic of o¨ku¨zini cave (SW Anatolia) and its mobiliary art. Antiquity 69: 931–944. Slimak L, Roche H, Mouralis D, et al. (2004) Kaletepe Deresi 3 (Turquie), aspects arche´ologiques, chronologiques et pale´ontologiques d’une se´quence ple´istoce`ne en Anatolie centrale. C.R. Palevol 3: 411–420. Tas¸kiran H (1998) The distribution of bifaces in Anatolia. In: Otte M (ed.) ERAUL 85 Pre´histoire d’Anatolie. Gene`se de deux mondes, pp. 569–577. Proceedings of the international symposium in Lie`ge, 28 April–3 May 1997. Lie`ge: ERAUL. Yalc¸inkaya I and Otte M (2000) De´but du Pale´olithique supe´rieur a` Karain (Turquie). L’Anthropologie 104: 51–62. Yalc¸inkaya I, Otte M, Kozlowski JK, and Bar-Yosef O (2002) ¨ ku¨zini: Final Paleolithic evolution in Southwest ERAUL 96: O Anatolia. Lie`ge: ERAUL.

B BEHAVIORAL ARCHAEOLOGY Michael B Schiffer, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary behavioral archaeology A theoretical program for studying the interactions of people and artifacts in all times and all places, formulated by J. Jefferson Reid, Michael B. Schiffer, and William Rathje at the University of Arizona during the early 1970s. processual archaeology A program for an explicitly scientific archaeology dedicated to studying culture process that arose during the early 1960s at the University of Chicago under the leadership of Lewis R. Binford. Pueblos Apartment-like dwellings of modern Puebloan people of the northern American Southwest and their ancestors, usually built of stone, occasionally of adobe.

Historical Foundations An outgrowth of the ‘new’ archaeology or ‘processualism,’ behavioral archaeology emerged at the University of Arizona in the early 1970s (see Processual Archaeology). During these years, processual archaeology was approaching its peak popularity, practiced by a coterie of recruits exposed to its tenets in graduate school. However, seeking to carve out niches in the discipline, many young processualists eschewed establishment of a theoretical orthodoxy and went their separate ways. Some employed anthropological theories; others introduced theories from systems engineering, economics, and ecology; and a few drew inspiration from the philosophy of science. As a consequence, various schools of processualism arose and began to feud with each other, initiating a period of great intellectual ferment. The prospect of an archaeology riven by factions stimulated one of behavioral archaeology’s first contributions. While still a graduate student at Arizona, J. Jefferson Reid delineated a common ground on which all archaeologists could stand. His proposal consisted of several fundamental tenets. First, archaeology was defined as the discipline that studies ‘‘relationships between human behavior and material

culture in all times and all places’’. Second, depending on their training and interests, archaeologists could ask historical (particular, idiographic) or scientific (general, nomothetic) research questions. Thus, archaeology has both historical and scientific components, and the flow of questions and findings among them contributes to the discipline’s integration. Third, four strategies of a behavioral archaeology can be delineated on the basis of the kind of questions being asked (historical or scientific) and the temporal referents of the behavior and material culture being studied (past or present). These four strategies encompassed archaeologies of every variety, new and old, and also hinted at future developments. In collaboration with Michael B. Schiffer, a fellow graduate student, and William L. Rathje, a young faculty member at Arizona, J. Jefferson Reid fleshed out these ideas and developed their implications for archaeological practice. The Four Strategies

Strategy 1 is the study of past material culture in order to answer historical questions – descriptive and explanatory – about past human behavior and societies, and encompasses most of prehistoric, historical, classical, and industrial archaeologies. This strategy was expected to remain the core of archaeology, and it has. In strategy 2, which includes experimental archaeology and ethnoarchaeology (see Experimental Archaeology), one asks scientific questions of present-day material culture in order to craft principles useful for studying past behavior. Since the discipline’s inception, archaeologists have conducted experiments and made observations in living societies, but these activities were sporadic, unsystematic, and did not lead to the cumulative growth of principles. Behavioralists anticipated that as the need for principles became more widely appreciated, strategy 2 would undergo a dramatic expansion. These forecasts have been realized, for archaeologists now perform experiments on a bewildering array of subjects and carry out ethnoarchaeological research in both traditional and industrial societies. As predicted, both experimental archaeology and ethnoarchaeology, now often undertaken with

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rigorous research designs that build on previous studies, have generated numerous principles; these mounting scientific products have profoundly affected the understanding of past lifeways, especially those of hunter-gatherer and mid-level societies. Strategy 3 embodies the long-standing belief that archaeology alone has access to records of long-term behavioral change. Thus, argued processualists such as Fred Plog, the study of past material culture could enable archaeologists to formulate principles for explaining change in past (and present) human behavior and societies. Although Reid and his collaborators expected that strategy 3 would expand rapidly, this has not happened. For the most part, archaeologists continue to borrow artifact-free theory (now called ‘social theory’) from other disciplines rather than create explanatory principles more suitable for engaging the material record of the past. Finally, the advent of William L. Rathje’s ‘Le Projet du Garbage’ led to the designation of a fourth strategy: the study of modern material culture to address historical questions about modern behavior, especially in industrial societies. Arguing that archaeology uniquely possessed the conceptual tools for handling the artifacts of ongoing societies, behavioralists believed that this strategy would enjoy a rapid florescence. Such research continues to increase and diversify, but slowly. Ironically, several archaeologists who immediately appreciated the possibilities of strategy 4, including Richard Wilk and Daniel Miller, became cultural anthropologists. Rathje’s garbage project remains the paradigmatic example of strategy 4 research. When published in 1975, the four strategies served a useful purpose, calling attention to decades-long trends in the discipline’s development, discerning emerging research frontiers, and giving impetus to the expansion of experimental and ethnoarchaeological research. However, the scheme was far less successful in achieving its aim of reintegrating the discipline. Indeed, beginning in the mid-1980s, under the impacts of postprocessualism and evolutionism, the discipline continued to fission into warring camps. Archaeological Inference

Prior to the publication of the four strategies, behavioralists had taken issue with the epistemological foundations of processualism, that is, its fundamental assumptions about how archaeologists fashion inferences about past human behavior. Processualists expounded a model of inference that went approximately as follows. Because human behavior is patterned, the archaeological record (a product of human behavior) also must be patterned. Therefore,

by applying pattern-discovery statistics to archaeological materials, one can extract statistical patterns that directly reflect past behavioral patterns. The principles enabling processual inference were called ‘correlates’, which codified patterns of human behavior in relation to material culture. Thus, in his classic inference of marital residence patterns at Broken K Pueblo, in east-central Arizona, James N. Hill employed a correlate linking matrilocal residence to the spatial distribution of female-associated stylistic attributes of pottery. Schiffer and Reid argued that the processual model of inference, though appealing in its simplicity, nonetheless failed to account for processes that intervened between past behaviors of interest and present-day properties of the archaeological record, the latter manifest as formal, quantitative, spatial, and relational (associational) variability. These intervening processes were termed ‘formation processes of the archaeological record’, and encompass cultural phenomena such as trash disposal, burial of the dead, and the loss and abandonment of artifacts, as well as environmental phenomena including animal disturbances, chemical weathering, and fluvial deposition and erosion. Principles of cultural formation processes are called ‘c-transforms’, those of environmental processes ‘n-transforms’. Formation processes themselves were said to be highly patterned, in causes and in consequences, and so could create or modify archaeological patterns. Clearly, argued Schiffer and Reid, an appreciation for the operation and effects of formation processes demonstrated that the syllogism supporting the processual model of inference was defective: archaeological patterns do not directly mirror past behavioral patterns. (Early applications of the formation-process perspective to prehistory can be found in special issues of The Kiva – in 1974 on Grasshopper Ruin (J. Jefferson Reid, editor), and in 1975 on Antelope House (J. T. Rock and D. P. Morris, editors) – and in Schiffer’s 1975 consideration of Dalton settlement patterns in Plains Anthropologist.) To address the inadequacies of the processual model of inference, behavioralists crafted their own models. A foundation was laid in Schiffer’s 1972 American Antiquity paper, ‘Archaeological context and systemic context’, which stressed the importance of keeping conceptually and analytically distinct the systemic and archaeological contexts of artifacts. In systemic context, an artifact or place is participating in a behavioral system; in archaeological context, the artifact or place is no longer taking part in a behavioral system, having been output to the archaeological record. Conflating these two contexts, as did the processual model, precluded rigorous

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inferences. This paper emphasized that artifacts have ‘life histories’, which can be coarsely modeled as a series of processes, including procurement, manufacture, maintenance, use, and discard. Three types of refuse were also defined: ‘primary refuse’, discarded in its location of use; ‘secondary refuse’, discarded in nonuse locations; and ‘de facto refuse’, artifacts not discarded, per se, but abandoned along with an activity area. Upon a life-history foundation, Schiffer presented in Behavioral Archeology (1976) the synthetic model of archaeological inference. The core idea is that of a symmetry between inference and explanation: an inference is a statement about past behavior whose justification also explains particular properties of the archaeological record. In justifying an inference, then, one constructs an argument employing correlates, c-transforms, n-transforms, and stipulations (relevant assumptions) that accounts for the successive transformations that took place during the life histories of the artifacts (and places and ecofacts) serving as evidence. For making fine-grained behavioral inferences, Schiffer also presented a detailed lifehistory model, the ‘behavioral chain’, which focuses on specific activities instead of general processes. In 1978 Alan Porter Sullivan III published in Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory a model of inference that divided life histories into ‘trace-production contexts’, those intervals during which traces of particular processes and activities are ‘mapped onto’ artifacts and surfaces. Inferences are constructed by partitioning traces into their respective trace-production contexts. Thus, in inferring the use of a chipped-stone tool on the basis of microflakes, one has to partition out microflakes created by nonuse processes such as abrasion during manufacture, trampling, soil movement, shovel or bag wear, and museumdrawer retouch. The result of this partitioning process is isolation of the set of microflakes that can serve as strong evidence for inferring tool use. The partitioning process of Sullivan’s model is enabled by the synthetic model’s correlates, c-transforms, and n-transforms. Together, the synthetic model and the traceproduction model established the gold standard of archaeological inference. One could no longer ignore formation processes when constructing inferences and accounting for properties of the archaeological record. To assist the building of well-justified inferences, Schiffer published, in 1987, Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record, a compendium of c-transforms and n-transforms that drew on recent findings in experimental archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and geoarchaeology. This book also presented detailed case studies of Hohokam chronology and

Broken K ceramics, showing precisely the importance of taking into account formation processes, whether one is dealing with the social inferences of processualists or the chronological inferences of culture-historians. Behavioral archaeology’s contributions to archaeological inference and to the understanding of formation processes have been widely appreciated. Indeed, many archaeologists working in strategy 1 – operating with behavioral models of inference, incorporating findings from strategy 2, and controlling for formation processes – have greatly expanded our knowledge of past human behavior throughout the world. These innumerable achievements cannot be cataloged in this brief article; rather, the focus is on more recent developments of behavioral method and theory.

Behavioral Archaeology Today Surprisingly, one unanticipated effect of the program’s success has been the overshadowing of other behavioral research agendas. Perhaps many archaeologists believe, erroneously, that the practice of behavioral archaeology is confined to conducting experiments, doing ethnoarchaeology, and studying formation processes. From the very beginnings of the behavioral program in the 1970s, however, practitioners began to refine, and develop further implications of Reid’s new definition of the discipline and to extend the applicability of the life-history framework to topics beyond inference and formation processes. Moreover, behavioralists delineated new research areas in the course of responding to the advent, in the 1980s, of evolutionary and postprocessual archaeologies. These latter programs called attention to a host of research questions that processualists had underemphasized, including social power and inequality, ideology, religion and ritual, meaning and symbols, and evolution defined as the differential persistence of discrete variants. Beginning in the 1980s a ‘new’ behavioral archaeology arose, also among students and faculty at the University of Arizona, which sought to show that the program could address contemporary issues including those prioritized by postprocessualists and evolutionists. Back to Basics

Before engaging these issues, behavioralists had to revisit some fundamentals. The first move was to modify slightly the behavioral definition of archaeology. William H. Walker and others pointed out, in the introduction to Expanding Archaeology, that early behavioral formulations had included the commonsense idea that behavior is an organism’s muscular

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movements. Thus, defining archaeology as the study of relationships between human behavior and material culture placed artifacts outside human behavior, as mere constituents of the environment beyond the body. The revised definition rests on the tenet that behavior, as ‘activities’, involves both people and artifacts interacting; artifacts and behavior are inseparable. Moreover, artifacts consequentially take part in every activity, such as harvesting grain, a Passover seder, and playing poker. Archaeology is redefined as the study of people–artifact interactions in all times and places. As Rathje and Schiffer pointed out in Archaeology (1982), specific interactions can be aggregated into ever-larger units of analysis, ranging from the nearly instantaneous act of striking a flake from a chert core to the centuries-long life history of a complex society. Interactions and Performance Characteristics

In The Material Life of Human Beings (1999), Schiffer and Miller specified varieties of interactions. The principal ‘interaction modes’ are mechanical, chemical, thermal, electrical, and electromagnetic. One can also define interactions in relation to human senses. For example, olfactory interactions are essentially chemical, whereas taste involves both chemical and mechanical interactions. Similarly, tactile and acoustic interactions are mechanical, and visual ones are electromagnetic. Even the simplest activity can involve interactions in many modes. Thus, ‘writing a letter with a pen and paper’ includes mechanical interactions between person and pen, between pen and paper, between paper and a support such as a table; and visual interactions between person and paper. Similarly, a soldier saluting an officer involves, minimally, the mechanical interactions between an officer and his or her uniform, and the mutual visual interactions between soldier and officer. In order for an interaction to take place, thereby enabling an activity to proceed, each participating interactor – whether person, artifact, or extern (any phenomenon of the noncultural environment) – must carry out one or more performances. Each interactor’s performance is made possible by a ‘performance characteristic’, which is the capability, competence, or skill that comes into play during a specific interaction. In the letter-writing example, a pen is capable of delivering ink when pressed against the paper; the paper is able to receive and absorb the ink; the ink dries quickly and remains visible; the paper’s support is firm; and the writer possesses the competence to compose text in a particular language and the ability to manipulate a pen. In saluting an officer, the soldier is able to recognize an officer’s uniform and can raise his or her arm appropriately. Human behavior at all

scales consists of aggregates of specific interactions enabled by relevant performance characteristics. Artifact functions The concepts of performance characteristic and interaction mode help one to place traditional discussions of artifact function – the role(s) an artifact plays in an activity – on a firm behavioral foundation. Drawing inspiration from an earlier effort by Lewis R. Binford, Rathje and Schiffer, in Archaeology, designated three basic functions: ‘technofunction’, ‘socio-function’, and ‘ideo-function’. A techno-function is a utilitarian function, which can involve the transport, storage, or alteration of materials. Most activities involve artifacts that perform techno-functions: ceramic crucibles for pouring molten steel, chairs to support people while taking notes, and a cabinet to hold sacred scrolls. Artifacts performing socio-functions communicate information about social phenomena among an activity’s participants and/or between that social unit and others. Artifacts with socio-functions, silently communicating social facts, are ubiquitous and affect interpersonal interaction in many activities. Ideofunctions are served by artifacts that encode or symbolize ideas, values, knowledge, and information. Clearly, artifacts can perform more than one kind of function, even in the same activity. Thus, in cruising around town, a Hummer 2 automobile moves people and cargo from place to place (techno-function), denotes membership in the group of wealthy drivers favoring a military-derived vehicle (socio-function), and (in the view of some observers) proclaims contempt for environmental values (ideo-function). All functions reduce to one or more specific interactions, each enabled by particular performance characteristics. Thus, in pounding a nail into a piece of wood (techno-function), a hammer is capable of interacting appropriately with the person wielding it and with the nail. In order for a doctor’s uniform to properly affect social interaction in a hospital (sociofunction), it has to perform in a visually distinctive manner relative to the uniforms of people playing other social roles. Similarly, a bumper sticker promoting peace (ideo-function) performs visually, either through words or a peace symbol. Although technofunctions tend to involve mechanical, chemical, and thermal interactions, and thus depend on corresponding performance characteristics, and socio- and ideofunctions require visual and acoustic interactions, these correspondences are far from perfect. Thus, partitions that delineate cubicles in an office complex affect social interaction by separating individual spaces both mechanically and visually. That functions can be defined with reference to specific interactions sharpens discussions of the roles that artifacts play in activities.

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Properties, performance characteristics, and technical choices It is useful to distinguish between an interactor’s properties and performance characteristics. A property, such as the tensile strength of a steel alloy or a person’s height, is defined in terms of the interactor itself with reference to a measuring instrument and standard scale in a laboratory-type setting. In contrast, performance characteristics are defined relationally, for they refer to the capabilities of one interactor in its engagement with another in a specific real-world, not laboratory, interaction. Properties of course affect performance characteristics. Thus, whether a cloth object can perform visually as, for example, a US flag at a football game, depends upon its size, shape, and color patterns. However, lighting conditions and the sensory performance characteristics of observers also affect this visual performance. Similarly, the heating effectiveness of a low-fired ceramic cooking pot – a performance characteristic – is dependent upon properties such as thermal conductivity and the permeabilities of the interior and exterior surfaces. Yet, heating effectiveness is also influenced by (1) the heat source, (2) the pot’s contents, (3) the placement of the pot in relation to the heat source, and (4) the temperature of the ambient environment. Thus, properties can strongly affect, but do not uniquely determine, performance characteristics. Insofar as artifacts are concerned, their properties result from the technical choices made by artisans, instantiated as specific interactions during procurement and manufacturing activities. For example, the interior permeability of a low-fired ceramic cooking pot is affected by technical choices such as smudging, polishing, and organic coatings. Schiffer and James M. Skibo in several papers explored the reticulate relationships between technical choices and performance characteristics. They argued that a technical choice can affect many properties and more than one performance characteristic. Thus, the addition of copious quantities of sand temper raises a pot’s resistance to thermal shock and improves heating effectiveness while simultaneously lowering resistance to impacts. By the same token, a given performance characteristic can be influenced by more than one technical choice. A pot’s thermal shock resistance is affected, for example, by firing temperature, kinds and quantities of temper, as well as vessel shape, size, and wall thickness (in addition to the performance of the heat source). An appreciation for these sorts of relationships, acquired in the process of conducting a long-term program of ceramic experiments, enabled Schiffer and Skibo to construct a behavioral theory of artifact design. A reader-friendly version of the design theory appeared in Anthropological Perspectives on Technology (2001).

Studying Technological Change

Given that the archaeological record is, above all, a record of changing artifact designs, behavioralists are interested in understanding processes of technological change. Artifacts are, of course, a technology’s ‘hard’ parts, distinguishable from the interacting people and their performance characteristics (based on knowledge, skill, values, etc.), which are also essential components of a technology. Regrettably, in culture-historical and processual studies of technological change, diverse processes were conflated. Thus, diffusionists traced ‘inventions’ from place to place with little regard to the processes affecting a new technology’s adoption and nonadoption; likewise, processualists assumed that external stresses on a cultural system, such as population growth or environmental deterioration, stimulated effective problem-solving inventions, which were adopted with zeal. Behavioralists break down technological change into major life-history processes, such as invention, design, replication (or commercialization), and adoption (also known as acquisition or consumption), each of which can in turn be subdivided. In the behavioral framework, there can be no single ‘theory of technological change’ because of the potentially diverse people and social groups (e.g., inventors, manufacturers, consumers) whose decisions create a technology’s life history. Thus, one segments a technology’s life history, and builds process- and variety-specific laws, theories, and models to explain the decisions that create specific behavioral patterns. The behavioral approach to studying technological change is illustrated by the following examples of invention and adoption. Invention Invention can be defined as the creative act of envisioning a new technology, that is, forming a vision or idea of an artifact or technological system having certain performance characteristics that sets it apart from other technologies. Obviously, only ideas recorded in texts or materialized in prototypes come within the purview of archaeologists. There are many kinds of invention processes, but all have one material consequence of interest to archaeologists: they lead to new variants, which sometimes occur in clusters or invention spurts. Inventions that cluster in time and/ or in space should be especially amenable to archaeological study. The model of ‘stimulated invention’, presented by Schiffer in American Antiquity in 1996, helps to account for some invention spurts and, in addition, contributes to reconciling evolutionary and processual views on invention. Evolutionists insist that invention, like genetic mutation, is a random process, whereas processualists regard invention as a problem-solving

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activity that sets the stage for new adaptations. The process of stimulated invention acknowledges that inventors usually work without knowledge of which experimental paths will lead to technically successful inventions (i.e., those achieving desired performance characteristics), nor can inventors foresee whether a technically successful invention will be replicated and adopted. Nonetheless, the activities of inventors are often responses to perceived performance shortcomings of extant technologies. When performance shortcomings are widely appreciated, they can stimulate a spurt of inventive activities that results in many new variants, some of which may achieve technical success. These variants, in turn, undergo selection during subsequent processes, and some may be replicated and adopted. Because variants selected against may have but limited archaeological visibility and because of the time-telescoping effects of most chronologies, the processual tendency to view invention as an efficient mechanical response to adaptive needs is understandable, that is, it appears as though people were able to quickly foresee, and implement, an acceptable solution to the problem. In fact, however, many variants may have been tried out and found wanting before any was adopted; and sometimes none is adopted, leaving the performance problem to be solved in another way. That stimulated variation may or may not lead to a technology that reaches consumers is in accord with the evolutionary tenet that researchers must distinguish rigorously between, and model separately, variety-generation and variety-selection processes. The cascade model of invention, published by Schiffer in American Antiquity (2005), is closely related to the stimulated-variation model, but applies only to the development of a ‘complex technological system’ (CTS). The latter is defined as any technology that consists of a set of interacting artifacts; interactions among these artifacts (and people and externs) enable that system to function. Examples include irrigation systems as well as particular hunting and cooking technologies. Because the cascade model is flexibly defined, examples of CTSs abound, even in small-scale societies. The cascade model posits that, during a CTS’s development, emergent performance problems – recognized by people as shortcomings in that technology’s constituent interactions – stimulate sequential spurts of invention. As adopted inventions solve one performance problem, people encounter new and often unanticipated problems, which stimulate more inventive spurts, and so on. The result is a series of ‘invention cascades’. A distinctive feature of the model, which promotes its generality, is the premise that processes in a CTS’s life history are the immediate contexts in

which performance problems emerge and stimulate invention cascades. Thus, life-history processes are suitable analytical units for investigating invention processes in CTSs. The minimal set of processes is: fashioning a prototype, replication (or commercialization), use, and maintenance. In an analysis of invention cascades that occurred during the development of the nineteenth-century electromagnetic telegraph, it was necessary to elaborate the basic processes. The latter came to include creating the prototype, technological display, demonstrating ‘practicality’, replication, marketing and sales, installation, use/operation, maintenance, and functional differentiation. Performance problems encountered during each of these processes generated many invention cascades, such as insulators, receiverprinters, and submarine cables. Other behavioral models of invention include, for example, Brian Hayden’s aggrandizer model in Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory (1998), and Schiffer’s cultural imperative model in Technology and Culture (1993). Adoption Evolutionists have taught archaeologists to regard many instances of technological change as competitions between variants during the adoption process. Thus, a new technology that becomes available to consumers often must compete with an established technology. For example, in its first decades as a commercial product, the automobile competed with other forms of transportation, including bicycles, horse-drawn wagons and carriages, and trains and trolleys. Also, alternate variants of a new technology, such as gasoline- and electric-powered automobiles, can compete with each other. As members of a consumerist society, we are aware that many new technologies are adopted in limited numbers or not at all. So it was in the past. Prehistoric societies in southern California and the Great Basin were familiar with pottery making, for their neighbors practiced it; yet, this technology was adopted by only some groups. This suggests that consumer behavior, whether at the scale of the individual, household, corporate group, or even community, can be regarded as a process of ‘differential adoption’. The explanatory task is to account for the decisions of both adopters and nonadopters. To facilitate this task, one can employ both a life-history framework and the heuristic tool known as the ‘performance matrix’. It is assumed that adoption decisions are based on peoples’ comparisons of two or more technologies’ anticipated performance characteristics in relation to relevant activities. After identifying the information about performance characteristics that likely was available to past decision makers, the archaeologist

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juxtaposes the competing technologies in a table known as a performance matrix. Major and minor patterns in the matrix indicate which performance characteristics were apparently weighted in adoption decisions. Performance matrices can be structured in several ways. For example, in Schiffer’s study of the competition between American gasoline and electric automobiles in the early twentieth century – both technologies were new at the time – performance characteristics were organized by male- and female-associated activities. The resultant patterns were quite clear: gasoline automobiles excelled in the touring activities favored by men, whereas electrics were superior performers in the urban activities associated with women. America’s elite tended to adopt both gasoline and electric cars, embodying a certain gender equality, whereas middleclass families almost exclusively purchased gasoline cars, thereby privileging mens’ activities. Factors of wealth and the patriarchal structure of American families at that time were invoked to explain this pattern of differential adoption. Performance characteristics can also be aggregated on the basis of several life-history activities, as in the competition between electric and oil illuminants for lighthouses in the nineteenth century. (Schiffer published this study in Technology and Culture, 2005). Decisions about lighthouse illuminants were made in each maritime nation by lighthouse boards, which were governmental or quasi-governmental organizations. Because these decisions affected a great many

activities, it was necessary to include performance characteristics of lighthouse illuminants pertaining to acquisition and installation, utilitarian and symbolic functions during use, and regular operation and maintenance. The performance matrix (Table 1) employs plus and minus signs to indicate which technology does (þ) or does not (–) perform at a minimally adequate level. The entries in Table 1 suggest that performance characteristics run the gamut of behavioral capabilities, including those for mechanical, chemical, and electrical interactions as well as costs (as enablers) for acquiring, using, and maintaining a technology. Moreover, the incorporation of sensory performance characteristics accommodates esthetic and symbolic capabilities, such as conveying a general or specific meaning. This expansive conception of performance characteristics allows one to build into an analysis seemingly incommensurable factors, qualitative and quantitative, from labor costs to political meanings. Thus, the researcher can explicitly deal with the multiple contextual factors that affect adoption decisions. The performance matrix itself is a ‘causally neutral’ tool involving no a priori assumptions about weightings, so long as the investigator includes all potentially relevant performance characteristics. On the basis of any major and minor patterns, one can identify which performance characteristics were weighted by past people and postulate which contextual factors (e.g., political, religious, economic, social) might have

Table 1 A performance matrix for lighthouse illumination, c. 1860–99 Acquisition of the components, and installation of the system Ability to acquire system components commercially System can be installed in lighthouses in any location System can be easily installed in existing lighthouse structures Affordability of a system’s ‘first costs’ Existing expertise adequate for designing and installing the system

Electric þ





Oil þ þ þ þ þ

Functions during use Yields the whitest, brightest, most penetrating light Can produce sufficiently steady light Long outages are avoidable Does not cast confusing shadows Can avoid blinding mariners Ability to symbolize special concern for the safety of ships and sailors Can symbolize a nation’s wealth and political power Can symbolize modernity Able to symbolize scientific/technological prowess

Electric þ þ þ

þ þ þ þ

Oil
þ þ þ þ





Operation, regular maintenance, and repairs Operable with traditional staff of keepers Operable without complete backup systems Ease of repairing breakdowns Affordability of operating expenses Ease of administration

Electric






Oil þ þ þ þ þ

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affected their decisions. In the lighthouse case, the performance matrix disclosed a major pattern: the electric light competed poorly in acquisition, installation, operation, and maintenance activities. However, a minor pattern indicates that the electric light was an adequate illuminant, especially in haze and light fog, and excelled in symbolic capabilities during use. On the basis of these patterns one can explain why the vast majority of maritime nations decided against adopting electric lights: they apparently assigned heavy weight to maintenance and financial factors (of acquisition and use). But a few nations, England and France, together acquired around 20 electric lights, and several others, including the United States, installed just one or two. These adoptions are explicable in terms of the minor pattern. Thus, France and England, long-time rivals and empire builders, were competing to have the most up-to-date illuminating technology that could advertise their political power, technological expertise, and concern for mariners of all nations. In other cases of adoption, the electric light’s ability to symbolize modernity, indicating that a nation was on the cutting edge of electrical technology, was highly valued and outweighed the technology’s performance deficiencies in the increasingly competitive international arena of the late nineteenth century. The performance matrix reveals which performance characteristics were weighted, thereby implicating potentially relevant contextual factors. By drawing upon contextual information such as family structure or international competitions in high technology, the investigator can explain why some people or social units adopted a given technology while others did not. Communication

In the latter decades of the twentieth century, the study of material culture was incorporated into the margins of many social and behavioral sciences. The usual move was to transform the materiality of artifacts into the immateriality of ideas, norms, rules, values, and similar constructs so that they could be accommodated by conventional social theories. This move, however, embodies a biased view of human life that decisively privileges the mental over the material. As one of many steps needed for remedying this pervasive problem, behavioralists crafted an artifact-based theory of human communication that assigns causal efficacy to both material and cognitive phenomena. In conventional communication theories, researchers accommodate artifacts by relegating them to a ‘nonverbal mode’ or to technologies of information transfer such as clay tablets, newspapers, and

telephones. Safely marginalized in this manner, artifacts merely modify and convey verbal information. On the other hand, the behavioral theory (presented in The Material Life of Human Beings) asserts that artifacts play consequential roles in ‘every’ communication mode. Three major sets of artifacts are recognized: ‘personal artifacts’, those compounded with a person such as tattoos, clothing, and ornaments; ‘situational artifacts’, which turn up at a place for the conduct of an activity; and ‘platial artifacts’, those residing in a place, including portable items and architectural features. ‘Activity artifacts’, those taking part in a specific activity, are drawn from person, situational, and platial artifacts. Communication modes are defined with reference to human sensory modes: visual, acoustic, tactile, and chemical. Taking persons as an example, artifacts perform consequentially in every mode. Thus, clothing and makeup affect visual performance; tooth modification, foods being chewed, and musical instruments influence acoustic performance; clothing and scarification affect tactile performance; and perfume and soaps influence chemical performances. The behavioral theory requires that the investigator privilege the vantage point of the ‘receiver’, the person who, in the course of an activity-situated communication process, obtains information from the performances of other interactors and responds. The response depends also on the receiver’s inferences, which are formed on the basis of ‘correlons’, relational knowledge acquired mainly through experience. Correlons operate not only on the performances of people, but also on those of artifacts. Indeed, the performances of activity and platial artifacts, which define the context of a communication process, key in the receiver’s activity- and interactionspecific correlons, which contribute to producing the response. To appreciate the importance of artifacts in communication, one must abandon the ‘two-body’ model – that is, two people conversing – as the paradigm of communication. The behavioral model posits instead three interactor roles: ‘sender’, ‘emitter’, and ‘receiver’. Emitters are the interactors whose performances furnish the receiver with the information needed to construct the inferences that contribute to a response. The sender is the interactor that the receiver infers affected the performance of the most salient emitter. Thus, in observing a woman who had just exited a hair salon, her husband – playing the receiver role – might infer from her coiffure’s visual performance (the salient emitter) that the sender was a skilled stylist. The response might be a compliment.

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Applying this communication theory to prehistory is obviously challenging, but it does provide a framework for asking questions. For illustrative purposes, let us place the cave paintings of the upper Palaeolithic into a communication framework. The first task is to designate the various receiver(s); in this case, the people who viewed the paintings in each activity of the paintings’ life histories. Next, we may assume that the paintings, performing visually, were platial artifacts that helped define the context of each activity. We can ask, for example, What were those activities? Did situational artifacts participate in them? If so, what were these artifacts? Were the paintings or other interactors the salient emitters in particular activities? What were the activity-specific social and demographic characteristics of the receivers? What inferences did receivers in specific activities make about the source and meanings of the paintings? What were the likely receiver responses? Can we model the correlons that contributed to specific responses? Postprocessual archaeologists advocated the study of meaning and symbols, but supplied scant guidance on doing this in the absence of historical or ethnographic evidence. On the other hand, the behavioral model of communication furnishes a framework for asking questions that can foster well-founded inferences about meaningful phenomena. Ritual and Religion

Few archaeologists today would subscribe to the venerable view that it is far more difficult to construct inferences about ritual and religion than about technology or economic activities. Indeed, behavioralists have assembled the rudiments of an approach for studying ritual and religion. A major premise is that religious rituals, like the performance of all other activities, require artifacts – both highly symbolic sacra as well as those having mainly utilitarian functions. William Walker, in Anthropological Perspectives on Technology, has suggested that, in many religious rituals, people employ artifacts as technologies for manipulating supernatural forces and entities. Another important premise is that artifacts employed in religious rituals tend to be disposed of differently than artifacts taking part in more secular activities. In a paper in Expanding Archaeology (1995) Walker labeled such artifacts ‘ceremonial trash’. Although mortuary rituals give rise to the most conspicuous kind of ceremonial trash – grave goods – such activities sometimes generate other, less obvious deposits of ceremonial trash. For example, beginning in the mid-1980s, archaeologists working in the American Southwest began to re-evaluate the contents of

structure floors. Detailed analyses of the artifact inventories furnished strong evidence that domestic structures, particularly pit-houses, had been ceremonially abandoned. One recurrent pattern was the deposition on floors of relatively large numbers of pots and other artifacts, followed by burning of the structure. In a study of pit-houses at Snaketown, a large pre-Classic Hohokam site in southern Arizona, Deni J. Seymour inferred that structures abandoned in this manner had taken part in a mortuary ritual, during which the belongings of the deceased were deposited and the house was destroyed. These findings accorded with the mortuary practices of ethnographic pit-housedwellers in the American Southwest. As Vincent M. LaMotta has argued, no longer can archaeologists assume that a structure’s floor-associated artifacts merely represent de facto refuse; sometimes the floor assemblage – even the structure itself – was also ceremonial trash. Sometimes an entire village was abandoned in a ritual flourish. In studies of Chodistaas, a thirteenthcentury pueblo of 18 rooms in east-central Arizona, Barbara Montgomery faced a challenging puzzle. According to J. Jefferson Reid’s measure of relative room abandonment, based on a generalized lifehistory of pueblo rooms, early-abandoned rooms should contain few floor artifacts as de facto refuse, whereas their fills might be dense with secondary refuse. For late-abandoned rooms, the expectations are reversed: much de facto refuse on floors, little secondary refuse in fills. Surprisingly, Montgomery found that Chodistaas departed from this pattern, as most rooms had an abundance of restorable pots on floors – presumably de facto refuse closely approximating systemic ceramic inventories – and a high density of secondary refuse in fills; also, the rooms had burned. These facts suggested that the site had been abandoned in haste, perhaps in response to warfare or a forest fire. But these hypotheses left unexplained the anomalous secondary refuse. Detailed analyses of the fill materials enabled Montgomery to discount these hypotheses as well as various post-occupational scenarios, such as fluvial deposition. In the end, she furnished strong evidence for a sequence of behaviors that implicated a ritual abandonment. After vacating vessel-rich rooms, the inhabitants set the pueblo on fire. On the pueblo’s smoldering ruins they deposited tons of refuse, including more than 100 000 sherds scavenged from extramural deposits. Apparently, prior to joining other immigrants at nearby Grasshopper Pueblo, the inhabitants of Chodistaas performed a ritual cremation and burial of the pueblo in acknowledgment of its ‘death’. By closely attending to the formation

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processes of Chodistaas deposits, Montgomery was able to infer a ritual abandonment and rule out other, seemingly more plausible, causes. One of the most contentious debates in the prehistory of the Southwest surrounds the explanation of maltreated human remains. In case after case, archaeologists have found bodies bearing traces of violent acts leading to death as well as post-mortem dismemberment and sometimes even dispersal of the bones. Warfare is the obvious explanation for finds of burned and mutilated bodies, especially those left uninterred in structures. The warfare hypothesis has lately been augmented by claims of cannibalism, supported by taphonomic and other specialized analyses. Apparently, the Puebloan Southwest was not the Apollonian paradise that Ruth Benedict made famous in Patterns of Culture. In considering alternatives to the warfare and cannibalism hypotheses, William Walker asked a deceptively simple question: ‘‘Where are the witches of prehistory?’’ The ethnographic and historic records from around the world make clear that witchcraft accusations, often followed by the killing of the witch and harsh treatment of its remains, are rather common. If so, why do archaeologists rarely invoke witchcraft beliefs and the highly ritualized punishment of witches to explain maltreated human remains? Walker argued that some instances of purported warfare and cannibalism make more sense if viewed as the outcome of witchcraft beliefs that led to activities of identifying and punishing witches. No doubt warfare and consumption of human flesh occurred in the prehistoric Southwest, but so too did the killing of witches. Using behavioral methods for analyzing the deposits in the structures that yielded human remains, Walker showed that sometimes one can distinguish among the competing hypotheses. In the final analysis, inferences about ritual and religion are no more or less difficult to construct than inferences about any human activity. In all cases, one first infers the formation processes of the deposited materials. Once these are identified, the archaeologist can construct inferences about ritual activities as well as offer hypotheses – in the form of correlons – about religious beliefs. Applications of behavioral method and theory to the study of ritual and religion demonstrate that Binford’s early optimism about the vast inferential potential of the archaeological record was not unfounded. Landscapes and Territories

Behavioral approaches to landscapes and territories draw upon empirical research and principles from diverse theoretical programs. To these eclectic

formulations, M. Nieves Zeden˜o and Stephanie M. Whittlesey have added important frameworks and other constructs. From an archaeological vantage point, one can study human–environment interactions over many spatial and temporal scales as well as frames of reference. Thus, one can focus on a given piece of land or terrain (or even a resource) and inquire about its history of use by different societies; one can also investigate how a given society’s activities over time created territories and a changing landscape. What is essential, Whittlesey emphasizes, is that archaeologists appreciate that the relationships between societies and environments are interactive and dynamic. People conduct activities and thereby modify their environment, and in turn the environment – modified and unmodified – influences subsequent human activities. In landscape and territory studies, one inevitably confronts the problem of defining units. Zeden˜o suggests, for example, that many kinds of behaviorally significant spatial units – behavioral spaces – can be constructed in relation to a given society’s activities. These include ‘habitation space’ (the spatial extent of dwellings and supporting activities), ‘food production space’ (fields, pastures, water- and soil-control features), ‘resource procurement space’ (quarries, hunting and gathering locales, water sources), and ‘ritual space’ (shrines, ceremonial buildings, sacred mountains). To this list Whittlesey adds ‘communication space’, which includes trails, roads, and other features that link activities. Needless to say, such behavioral spaces are not isomorphic and can vary independently over time. Zeden˜o has provided a life-history model for studying territories as the changing aggregate of a society’s behavioral spaces and associated ‘landmarks’ – that is, artifacts and features. A territory’s life history is divided into three major stages, each consisting of several processes: ‘establishment’ (exploration, colonization, and settlement), ‘maintenance’ (expansion, consolidation, and fission), and ‘transformation’ (use change and abandonment, which leave behind persistent places, and reclamation). For each process, she has enumerated associated activities and their material correlates and likely landmarks. For example, exploration activities such as reconnaissance, temporary uses, and limited resource exploitation can generate ephemeral shelters, caches, and markings/ cairns. Employing the case of the Hopi in northeastern Arizona, Zeden˜o has shown the usefulness of her model for organizing the study of territories. As Whittlesey emphasizes, landscapes and territories also have cognitive dimensions. On the basis

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of the landmarks representing political, religious, subsistence, and other activities, the archaeologist can proffer inferences about corresponding cognitive structures. For example, analysis of a society’s shrines – locations, orientations, features, and associated ceremonial trash – can implicate cosmological correlons. The rapidly growing behavioral literature on territories and landscapes, which dovetails with postprocessual concerns, is furnishing constructs and heuristic tools useful for studying human–environment interactions over space and time. For example, Michael Heilen has recently distinguished between systemic and archaeological landscapes and developed the implications of this distinction for empirical projects.

posed by other theoretical programs, using principles and heuristics acquired during more than three decades of theory building, experimental archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and investigations in diverse societies ranging from foragers to industrial nationstates. In his contribution to Expanding Archaeology, J. Jefferson Reid elegantly emphasized the program’s continuing vitality ‘‘as a coherent framework for thinking about and doing archaeological research’’, and remarked, moreover, that it ‘‘has withstood rigorous testing, substantial battering, even ridicule, but has not been proved to possess fatal flaws’’. Although behavioral archaeology is a mature and highly productive program, its practitioners appreciate that not all research questions can yet be answered rigorously and that much hard work lies ahead.

Conclusion Among the present-day programs competing for attention, behavioral archaeology offers a coherent framework of models, principles, and heuristics founded upon an unapologetic appreciation for the materiality of human life. Because artifacts participate in all human activities, behavioralists insist on grounding research questions in people–artifact interactions at every temporal and spatial scale of activity. This requires researchers to acknowledge that artifacts and technologies are both causes and effects of behavioral change. Yet, while placing stress on the materiality of human life, behavioralists also seek to model cognitive phenomena – for example, correlons, which contribute to the activity-situated responses of human participants. Unlike many theoretical programs, behavioralists do not insist that only one kind of cause or prime mover (e.g., environmental change, altered beliefs, conflict among social classes and polities, or new technologies) is responsible for every behavioral change. Rather, behavioralists maintain a stance of causal agnosticism, recognizing that innumerable factors, acting singly and in varying combinations, can promote change in human behavior. Thus, a major function of the growing repertoire of behavioral formulations is to help researchers tease out the causal factors in specific cases. In the mid-1970s Reid and colleagues asserted that archaeologists could ask historical and scientific questions of any human society, past or present, by privileging the study of artifacts in human behavior. More than youthful exuberance, this claim expressed something quite fundamental about archaeology’s unique potential to fashion new understandings of the human condition. Indeed, behavioralists now address many significant questions, including those

See also: Evolutionary Archaeology; Experimental Archaeology; Philosophy of Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology.

Further Reading LaMotta VM and Schiffer MB (2001) Behavioral archaeology: Towards a new synthesis. In: Hodder I (ed.) Archaeological Theory Today, pp. 14–64. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Montgomery BK (1993) Ceramic analysis as a tool for discovering processes of Pueblo abandonment. In: Cameron CM and Tomka SA (eds.) Abandonment of Settlements and Regions: Ethnoarchaeological and Archaeological Approaches, pp. 157–164. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Reid JJ (1995) Four strategies after twenty years: A return to basics. In: Skibo JM, Walker WH, and Nielsen A (eds.) Expanding Archaeology, pp. 15–21. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press. Reid JJ, Schiffer MB, and Rathje WL (1975) Behavioral archaeology: Four strategies. American Anthropologist 77: 864–869. Schiffer MB (1995) Behavioral Archaeology: First Principles. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press. Schiffer MB (ed.) (2001) Anthropological Perspectives on Technology. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Seymour DJ and Schiffer MB (1987) A preliminary analysis of pithouse assemblages from Snaketown, Arizona. In: Kent S (ed.) Method and Theory for Activity Area Research: An Ethnoarchaeological Approach, pp. 549–603. New York: Columbia University Press. Skibo JM, Walker WH, and Nielsen A (eds.) (1995) Expanding Archaeology. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press. Walker WH (1998) Where are the witches of prehistory? Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 5: 245–308. Whittlesey SM (1998) Archaeological landscapes: A methodological and theoretical discussion. In: Whittlesey SM, CiolekTorrello R, and Altschul JH (eds.) Vanishing River: Landscapes and Lives of the Lower Verde Valley, pp. 17–28. Tucson, AZ: SRI Press. Zeden˜o MN (1997) Landscapes, land use, and the history of territory formation. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 4: 67–103.

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BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY Ilan Sharon, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Definition and Introduction The term ‘biblical archaeology’ is used in at least four different – though intersecting – meanings. From widest to narrowest, these are: (1) the archaeology of the entire ‘fertile crescent’ from the Neolithic through late antiquity (this definition encompasses the archaeological setting of the biblical literature and related genres in its widest possible extent); (2) the archaeology of the Levant (or only its southern part) from the (Middle) Bronze Age to the early Roman period (this is the setting to the biblical narrative sensu stricto); (3) as above, restricted to the Bronze and Iron Ages (this definition confines the field to the background of the Old Testament); and (4) a particular intellectual current within Near Eastern archaeology. This article will mainly deal with ‘biblical archaeology’ as a school of thought (definition 4) using definition 3 as background – as the wider definitions largely overlap with Near Eastern archaeology as a whole (see Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant) and/or intersect with the purview of classical archaeology (see Classical Archaeology). Whether it is explicitly called ‘biblical’ or by any other name (see below), the archaeology of the Levant in the periods relevant to the Bible finds itself – for better and worse – in the shadow of the founding text of the Judeo/Christian/Moslem civilizations. This is manifested in the intense interest – scholarly and lay – in discoveries pertaining to the Bible. Considering its tiny area, Israel may well be the most excavated territory in the world, and the Biblical Archaeology Review has claimed to be the most widely read of all archaeological journals. It also means that the field is rife with ‘alternate’ or ‘pseudo’ archaeologists – earnestly searching for Noah’s ark, the ark of the covenant, the ashes of the red heifer, or the holy grail – as well as simple con men. Thousands waited patiently in line to peek at the ‘brother of Jesus’ ossuary at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto or the ‘‘. . . house of YHWH’’ inscription at the Israel museum in Jerusalem – both of which are probably fakes. Serious scholars – whether believers or agnostics – can ill afford to ignore their own prejudices, much less those of their audience, when dealing with artifacts possibly pertaining to the roots of monotheism

and western civilization in an emotionally pregnant and politically volatile part of the world.

Nineteenth Century – The Birth of the Discipline The earliest archaeological investigations in the Levant were conducted by European travelers in the second half of the nineteenth century. Learned societies dedicated to the investigation of the Holy Land were founded in short order in most Western powers. These included the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) in Great Britain (1865), the Deutschen Pala¨stinaVereins (DPV) in Germany (1878), the E´cole Biblique et Arche´ologique Franc¸aise (1890), and the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) in 1900. The motives for this interest were sundry. Scientific curiosity was primary, but it was mixed with religious conceptions, romantic allure, and sometimes pure mysticism. Political and military interests of the big powers were very much in the background. Most of the early explorers were either missionaries or army officers. Breakthroughs of the late nineteenth century were the accurate mapping of the region – culminating in the ‘Survey of Western Palestine’ conducted by the PEF in 1871–78, the first stratigraphic excavation of a Near Eastern tell – by W. M. F. Petrie at Tell el-Hesi in 1890, and the invention of typological seriation by the same. Outside the Levant itself, the decipherment of cuneiform and hieroglyphic scripts enabled for the first time to evaluate biblical literature in its original milieu. This, plus the general move toward secularization of knowledge, had led to the deconstruction or decanonization of the Bible. The ‘documentary hypothesis’ of Graf and Wellhausen posits that the Hebrew Bible is not a single composition, but a patchwork of several different sources – far removed from each other in time, place of composition, theology, and moral outlook – cut and restitched in a pseudochronological order by (late) redactors.

The First Half of the Twentieth Century The next revolution in archaeological fieldwork in the Levant was the introduction of the Reisner–Fisher ‘locus to stratum’ excavation method just before World War I. Finds were labeled by their ‘locus’ (as defined by this system – the space circumscribed by a single set of walls) and ‘loci’ were grouped into buildings and ‘strata’ on architectural grounds. Despite its

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limitations, this system was a great improvement over Petrie’s arbitrary horizontal slices, and still fit the logistical structure of most ‘expeditions’ at the time – a horde of ‘native workmen’ directed by a minimal crew whose main expertise was in linguistics, theology, or art. With the resumption of fieldwork after the halt imposed by World War I and the establishment of British mandate over Palestine (and French over Syria), most of the large-scale excavation projects switched over to the ‘locus to stratum’ method. For all their crudeness, these projects – often involving clearance of large tracts by hundreds of workers – exposed city plans and large assemblages of artifacts, which served as the basis for working out detailed artifact typologies and relative chronological sequences. By 1922, the directors of the foreign schools in Jerusalem accepted the chronological framework and terminology proposed by W. F. Albright (director of the American School), which serves as the basis of nomenclature in Levantine archaeology to this day. While the terminology they chose followed the technological scheme, the criteria for defining the periods were strictly historical. For example, the ‘Early Iron Age I’ was defined as being between the entry of Israelites to Canaan and the division of the kingdom after Solomon’s death. This reflects the confidence of Albright and his contemporaries not only that such events indeed happened – but that they can be unequivocally ‘read’ in the archaeological record. The figure of Albright dominates this period. A multifaceted genius – linguist, Bible scholar, archaeologist, theologian – he was one of the leaders of intellectual fundamentalism within American evangelical protestantism. This movement was a reaction to continental pietism, which stressed the human, devotional aspect of religion and was skeptical about miracles and divine revelation. Fundamentalists advocated the unity, inerrancy, and literality of the Bible; predicating their religious belief on the literal historicity of the covenants between God and mankind. Academically, Albright waged a lifelong battle against German Old Testament source criticism. Archaeology became the linchpin of his campaign to disprove the deconstruction of the Old Testament to an anthology of competing theologies. The very name of his principle synthesis, From Stone Age to Christianity – Monotheism and the Historical Process, defines the scope of the ‘biblical archaeology’ he envisaged – maximalistic in temporal and geographic extent, if somewhat myopic in thematic scope. It should be stressed that Albright was not a bigot – he proposed a straightforward positivistic research program into the ‘historical reality’ behind the biblical narrative. Nor was he a narrow-minded

creationist or geocentrist insisting that the ‘word of God’ supersedes any evidence to the contrary. However, the ‘rules of engagement’ of his biblical archaeology were such that one may not discount the prima facie historicity of a written source unless it has irreparable inner contradictions or irremediably contradicts the ‘facts in the ground’. It was also prone to reflexive confirmation – assuming the reliability of a historical text as above, that text is utilized as a guide to the interpretation of the archaeological record – and the (thus constructed) ‘convergence’ is then used as archaeological corroboration of the historicity of the text. Albright maintained, as some of his students’ students still do, that an unbiased examination confirms the unity, antiquity, uniqueness, and almost metahistorical nature of the evolution of monotheism. Thus was created the popular image of the archaeologist ‘holding the shovel in one hand and the Bible in the other’. Curiously enough, this ‘Albrightian program’ was embraced not only by religious Protestants, but also by secular Jewish (and to a lesser extent Arab) nationalists (both orthodox Judaism and Islam remained deeply suspicious of archaeology in any guise). The argument about ‘roots’ was central to the legitimacy debate between Jewish and Arab inhabitants of Palestine – and though the claims being made were opposing, the terms of discourse were those of ‘biblical archaeology’. A ‘Jewish Palestine Exploration Society’ (now called the ‘Israel Exploration Society’) was founded as early as 1914, and fielded its first dig in 1924. The first department of archaeology in a local academic institution was founded in the Hebrew University in 1934.

The Second Half of the Twentieth Century The next methodological breakthrough in field work started after the ten-year hiatus in archaeological activity imposed by World War II and the ensuing Arab–Israeli wars. In her excavations in Jericho (1952–58) and Jerusalem (1961–67), Kathleen Kenyon implemented what came to be called the ‘Wheeler– Kenyon’ or ‘balk and debris layer’ method of excavation. Kenyon’s work on pottery – especially the seriation of tomb deposits from her own excavation at Jericho and those of the Chicago excavation at Megiddo – is also exemplary. However, her conception of historical process, as seen from the textbooks she wrote, is narrow diffusionism. She equated the succession of archaeological ‘cultures’ she defined with successive ‘waves’ of migration and conquest by wild ‘tribes’ from the sea, the desert, or the steppes – Amorites, Hyksos, Israelites, and Philistines being cases in point.

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Albright’s American students began a project in Shechem (Tell Balata) in 1952, and the Israelis, under Yadin, the last of the ‘digging soldiers’, began excavating in Hazor in 1958. These projects were hugely influential in as much as almost all the next generation of field archaeologists were trained in them and the techniques used in them became known as the ‘American’ versus ‘Israeli’ excavation ‘schools’. Both were attempts at compromise between the horizontally oriented ‘locus to stratum’ method and the vertically oriented ‘balk and debris layer’. The ‘Israelis’ inclined toward larger exposures and faster excavation and tended to keep and publish mainly primary assemblages and complete forms, while the ‘Americans’ stressed meticulously separating and recording all types of deposits and assemblages – which made for smaller exposures and slower excavation. Interpretation-wise, however, both ‘schools’ correctly saw themselves as faithful followers of Albright. Indeed, G. E. Wright – director of the Shechem excavations and a leader in the neoorthodox movement in biblical theology – was arguably even more extreme than Albright in his notion of ‘‘God who acts in history’’. Even though ‘biblical archaeology’s’ rules of engagement of biblical text and archaeological record seemed to be accepted – at least initially – by everyone, a series of debates through the latter half of the twentieth century progressively eroded the Albrightian paradigm. Within biblical studies, Albright and his students did not stem the tide of deconstruction, and his intellectual fundamentalism remained a minority position. Indeed, by the 1970s and 1980s, extreme doubt in the historicity of the entire ‘Deuteronomistic narrative’ (the books of Deuteronomy through Kings – thought to represent a single ‘source’), gave rise to the so-called ‘minimalist’ or ‘nihilist’ school, which essentially replaced the concept of (late) redaction of the texts with (even later) ‘invention’, that is, the biblical stories are seen by proponents of this school as ‘pious fraud’ of postexilic Jews. While this other extreme also remains a minority position in biblical studies, it cannot be ignored by archaeologists in as much as it argues that any attempt to draw on some biblical ‘reality’ to aid the location of sites and interpretation of the archaeological record is tantamount to mounting an expedition to excavate Treasure Island. Attempts by Albright and others to situate the patriarchal narratives in the reality of the Middle Bronze Age or portray Joseph as a Hyksos prince lost favor as early as the 1950s, as most biblical scholars and archaeologists came to deny any but the haziest recollection of the Bronze Age in the stories of Genesis.

The failure to find any ‘wandering Israelites’ in the Late Bronze Age foiled attempts to trace the route of the Exodus – especially as Sinai, the Negev, and the trans-Jordanian deserts became well explored in the 1970s and 1980s and thousands of nomadic sites of other periods, from Palaeolithic to modern Bedouin, were located. One of the most notable ‘defections’ from Albright’s camp was when Y. Aharoni, Yadin’s principal aidede-camp, accepted a source critique by A. Alt, who claimed that the books of Joshua and Judges represent rival traditions of how the Israelites came to occupy the Land of Israel, rather than a single narrative sequence of ‘conquest’ and then ‘settlement’. Aharoni claimed that the archaeological record favored – if not conclusively proved – the ‘peaceful penetration’ tradition over ‘conquest’. The rift between Yadin and Aharoni caused the latter to leave the institute in Jerusalem and establish a department in the new Tel Aviv University, which would become increasingly critical of the Albrightian paradigm. By the 1980s, following the work of several of Aharoni’s students in Tel Aviv (most notably I. Finkelstein) and several ‘younger generation’ Americans (e.g., D. Esse and A. Joffe), the appearance of ‘Israelite’ highland villages at the beginning of the Iron Age came to be seen by most archaeologists as some combination of sedentization of locally mobile agropastoralists and ruralization of indigenous urban populations following the collapse of the Bronze Age world system. ‘Migration’ and ‘conquest’ had all but disappeared from the lexicon. In ‘biblical archaeology’ terminology, these views would fall somewhere between Alt’s ‘peaceful penetration’ model and Mendenhall’s ‘peasant revolution’ – but they really have more to do with the impact of ‘processual archaeology’ than any particular interpretation of the biblical stories of the origins of Israel (see Processual Archaeology). Another one of the debates in the 1980s raged over the very name of the discipline. W. Dever, one of the ablest spokesmen for the profession, argued that a community no longer made up of linguists, missionaries, kibbutzniks, or spies, and a discipline no longer focused on the Bible, should not be named after a text. The name he proposed, however – ‘Syro-Palestinian Archaeology’ – was rejected by some Americans for religious reasons and by some Israelis for political ones. The alternative – ‘Archaeology of the Land of Israel’ – was unacceptable to Arabs. (So as to stay on the straight and narrow politically correct path, this author hereby declares that this article uses the terms ‘Palestine’, ‘Israel’, and ‘Southern Levant’ interchangeably; that the term ‘Israel’ – except when utilized in a modern political context – is used in the

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biblical sense; and that the use of ‘Palestine’ and ‘Israel’ in no way implies a judgment about the rights of any modern political entity to any territory and/or the borders of any such entity – past, present, or future.) The only result of this unresolved argument was the changing of the name of the semipopular ASOR journal from Biblical Archaeologist to Near Eastern Archaeology – which promptly caused a drop in circulation. The last decade of the twentieth century brought another argument to the fore. Finkelstein’s ‘low Iron Age chronology’ – dating the Iron Age I to c. 1125– 925 BCE instead of c. 1200–1000 as traditionally maintained – is not a large correction in absolute terms. However, it divorces the appearance of decorated ‘Philistine’ pottery in the lowlands and of the ‘Israelite’settlements in the highlands from the Egyptian references to ‘i
s
r/l
r/l’ and ‘p
r/l
s
t’ at the time of Marneptah and Ramesses III. Moreover, it supports the ‘minimalist’ claim that the ‘United Kingdom’ of David and Solomon is more a ‘golden period’ fantasy than historical reality in as much as it claims that state formation in the highlands postdates the reigns allotted to Saul, David, and Solomon in the biblical king lists. From the fundamentalists’ point of view, the critical fracture between religion and archaeology had already been passed. Once the covenants of Abraham and Moses come – in archaeologists’ eyes – to be classified as legend or allegory, it is of little import whether or not the biblical king lists are historiographic. From the point of view of archaeological method, however, it may well be that the chronological debates mark the final demise of the Albrightian paradigm. Proponents of both sides have now shifted the criteria for the absolute dating of archaeological horizons from historical/textual ‘conjunctions’ to chronometric dating (mainly radiocarbon). Albright’s basic stance of ‘guarded credulity’ had irrevocably changed to ‘qualified skepticism’: no biblical mention can be relied on unless corroborated by independent evidence. Three developments in the way archaeology is practiced in the Near East led to the increasing estrangement between Bible and archaeology after World War II. These are (in more or less chronological order) the increasing involvement of locals in the local archaeology, the rise of professionalism within archaeology, and the rise of environmental conservationism. The founding of independent states in place of Western mandates or protectorates in the Near East was followed in short order by the establishment of antiquities services manned by locals, who increasingly are graduates of indigenous departments of archaeology. The placement of Near Eastern archaeologists in general

institutes of archaeology has also served to make them more responsive to trends in archaeological theory and practice and less attuned to the biblical studies community. This has arguably been less the case in the North American and German systems, where Near Eastern archaeologists often operate from departments of Near Eastern studies or religion. Finally, the motivation of the bulk of archaeological fieldwork nowadays is salvage operations and resource management. As such, practitioners see themselves as operating within an environmental paradigm, and often have little background or interest in humanities or the Bible.

Biblical Archaeology in the Third Millenium? Is biblical archaeology dead in the water? Not by a long shot. First, while the Albrightian paradigm has been somewhat marginalized, there certainly are enough who still proudly profess it. This includes practicing American archaeologists like R. Younkers and R. Tappey, and Israelis like Eilat Mazar, as well as several universally acclaimed older scholars like F. M. Cross and K. Kitchen. With the bulk of lay support squarely behind it and the re-emergence of intellectual conservatism in academia, it is certainly too early to pronounce its demise. Second, whereas archaeology has by and large divorced itself from biblical studies, it is questionable whether the opposite is warranted, or indeed possible. For scholars whose field of interest is the emergence of monotheism, the archaeology of the Levant offers the only possibility of testing hypotheses against empirical evidence. The very supposition that the biblical text is complexly constructed and multifocal means that to get to its historical kernel (and nearly all biblical scholars believe that there is some historicity behind some of the texts) one need constantly re-examine the facts (or ‘factoids’ as some postprocessualists would have it) provided by archaeology in light of competing textually based hypotheses. Needless to say, such endeavor would not be possible if the veracity of the text is the departure point for the building of the archaeological scenario. Third, while there is no doubt that biblical (and classical) archaeology have not fared well in the era of processualism, they have every chance of flourishing in a postprocessual climate (see Postprocessual Archaeology). If the purpose of archaeology is defined as searching for some universal laws of human behavior, and the preferred method of doing so is ‘reading’ the ‘archaeological record’ with the aid of some simple ‘transforms’ or ‘middle range theory’

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which would make redundant the engagement with actual texts, then the archaeology of the Levant in the Bronze and Iron Ages becomes one test case among many in the anthropologist’s cache, and a pretty problematic one at that. If, however, one defines archaeology as the engagement between text and context, or the study of how people construct their past, then the intensive study of a tiny patch of ground from which different and competing ideologies hail becomes a fascinating theme. For this, we need to stop looking at the Bible as a collection of historical ‘benchmarks’ and to consider it as an expression of ideology – to be compared with material expressions that we find in the ground. Both types of artifacts should then be regarded as gaming pieces which we the players continually rearrange in order to construct our own differing views of how the world of the present came to be. This is exactly what some younger scholars, for example, S. Bunimovitz, A. Faust, or B. Routledge, are doing.

Big Game Extinctions

See also: Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Classical Archaeology; Middle Range Approaches; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology.

Further Reading Davis TW (2004) Shifting Sands: The Rise and Fall of Biblical Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Drinkard JF, Mattingly GL, and Miller JM (eds.) (1988) Benchmarks in Time and Culture. Atlanta: Scholar’s Press. King PJ (1983) American Archaeology in the Near East: A History of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Philadelphia: The American Schools of Oriental Research. Millard AR and Hoffmeier JT (eds.) (2004) The Future of Biblical Archaeology; Reassessing Methodologies and Assumptions: The Proceedings of a Symposium, August 12–14 2001 at Trinity International University. Grand Rapids: Eardmans.

See: Extinctions of Big Game.

BIOARCHAEOLOGY John Krigbaum, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary bioarchaeology Recovery and scientific analysis of human remains from archaeological context. palaeopathology In bioarchaeology, the study of health and disease in human remains for both the individual and population being studied.

Bioarchaeology (osteoarchaeology) is the study of human remains in archaeological context. It may also be used in a general sense as the study of any biological remains (fauna and flora) recovered from an archaeology site. Increasingly, however, the term is used with regard to the identification and recovery of human skeletal remains in the field to analysis in the lab (osteoarchaeology). The aim of bioarchaeology is to contribute to archaeological interpretation and

offer fresh perspectives about cultural pattern and process in the past. Skeletal biology, its cornerstone discipline in physical (biological) anthropology, provides the basic groundwork for studying recovered human remains. However, first and foremost, bioarchaeology is an archaeology discipline. It requires a firm understanding of the contextual aspects of site formation from individual burial features or commingled ossuaries to mortuary analysis of burial patterning across time and space. Bioarchaeology should be a holistic process, whereby interdisciplinary efforts inform and improve upon the findings in the archaeological record. In practice, coordination of disparate data sets has been the exception rather than the rule in the analysis of human remains from archaeological sites (see Osteological Methods).

Historical Background In the early stages of the twentieth century, bioarchaeology was an as yet undefined field of study

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focusing on descriptive aspects of skeletal analysis. Copious data were collected from skeletal remains, particularly skulls, and included as appendices to reports. Physical anthropologists involved in this research rarely contributed substantively to problemoriented archaeological research and were enlisted as specialists post-excavation to analyze the skeletons recovered. Typological approaches to racial classification were the topic of the day, and most efforts were made to establish and document patterns of human variation. Most noted for these efforts was Alesˇ Hrdlicˇka who, in the early twentieth century, founded the Division of Physical Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution (National Museum of Natural History). In contrast, Ernst Hooton of Harvard University’s Peabody Museum had the goal of integrating data from human remains with archaeological findings and to collectively look at remains and the patterns of pathologies, etc. Although still ensconced in the racial anthropology of his day, his work at Pecos Pueblo, NM (in conjunction with Alfred Kidder), was noteworthy in providing a population-based approach to the interpretation of the human remains. This hallmark effort, however, did not change how physical anthropologists approached archaeological skeletal collections. By the mid-twentieth century, human remains continued to be analyzed and data collected and appended to archaeological monographs and reports. Greater care and detail was placed in describing/diagnosing pathological lesions but more as curiosities rather than to establish overall patterns. Bioarchaeology changed in the 1960s and 1970s, with the advent of the ‘new’ archaeology and ecological anthropology. Research programs at the Smithsonian Institution with J. Lawrence Angel, at University of Massachusetts with George Armelagos, and at Northwestern University with Jane Buikstra truly began to clarify the role skeletal data should serve in archaeological research. Interdisciplinary efforts were made to guide problem-oriented research in what was just getting referred to as ‘bioarchaeology’. At a conference organized by the late Robert Blakely in 1977, Buikstra clarified what bioarchaeology was and should be in American archaeology, in contrast to its more generalized use as a term in European archaeology meaning analysis of all biological materials from a site (e.g., seeds, charcoal, and faunal remains). Bioarchaeology in the 1980s and 1990s made substantial inroads in critical analysis and interpretation of skeletal material. Lab-based advances, in particular, are noteworthy such as the application of bone

chemistry methods to infer past diet (palaeodiet), place of origin, and biological relatedness.

Methodological Approaches Reconstruction of an individual’s ‘life history’, where possible, offers information about an individual’s ancestry, demographics, well-being, and habit. This requires good preservation of the skeleton. Commingled and fragmentary remains prove to be more complex, from establishing minimum number of individuals (MNI) to identifying markers and/or diagnosing pathological lesions. All remains, no matter how fragmentary, have a story to tell and can contribute to understanding biological and cultural processes in past populations. All human remains must be treated with respect, particularly when remains are subject to scientific analysis which may require destructive sampling of bone and tooth tissues. Methodological advances have minimized the impact such approaches have on human remains and this is particularly true with molecular advances in ancient DNA (aDNA) and stable isotopes and trace element studies (see Stable Isotope Analysis; DNA: Ancient). Palaeodemography

Apart from associated grave markers with name and date of birth/death, estimation of age-at-death and sex is established through observation of osteological markers on the skeleton. Subadult individuals are easier to age due to developmental patterns of growth in their skeleton and teeth. The presence/fusion of long bone epiphyses and eruption sequence in the deciduous and permanent dentition provide age estimates with excellent precision. Although there is greater error in correctly aging adult skeletons, age-related changes to the skull and postcranial skeleton, particularly the pelvis, have good precision. With respect to sex, the subadult skeleton typically lacks diagnostic traits prior to puberty, while adult males tend to be more robust and lack modifications of the pelvis as a function of childbirth. Much research has been dedicated to establishing and verifying methods to age and sex the skeleton, particularly with respect to forensic applications. A conceptual advance in bioarchaeology was made in 1992 with the publication of Wood and colleagues ‘Osteological paradox’ in Current Anthropology. Although the bias inherent in skeletal samples and their interpretation is clear enough (that a mortuary space or cemetery represents a collective body that may not reflect the population as a whole), the implications and significance of palaeopathological studies changed in a constructive fashion. The importance of

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frailty and relative health and well-being are certainly vital concerns that can contribute to biocultural understanding of past populations. Palaeopathology

Perhaps the greatest advances over the past several decades have been in palaeopathological diagnosis and interpretation – critical review of skeletal remains and differential diagnosis to ascertain the best explanation for the lesions observed. The osteological paradox also has heightened the efforts to consider implications of health, frailty, and concomitant morbidity and mortality as inferred from prehistoric populations. Growth disruption studies have been the most significant ‘insult’ that may be present in the subadult (or adult) skeleton. Subadults may show evidence of delayed appearance/fusion of ephiphyses, and in deciduous and permanent dentition, lines of arrested enamel development are often interpreted as signs of nonspecific stress. Other nonspecific stress indicators include signs of nutritional deficiency such as cribra orbitalia and porotic hyperostosis. Additional nonspecific pathologies include Harris Lines, which seem to reflect signs of growth commencement in long bone shafts. Specific pathologies play an important albeit complex role and are critically evaluated in studies of human remains. The role of infectious disease, in particular, has helped to transform bioarchaeology from a descriptive discipline in to a holistic one. Changes toward sedentism and agriculture are thought to correspond to improved lives. However, findings in the late 1960s and 1970s by Armelagos and colleagues, and by Buikstra, Clark Spencer Larsen and others showed that this was clearly not the case. Increased evidence of nonspecific pathologies was present that indicated poor dietary quality in staple foods, notably maize. Most importantly, these studies underscore the fact that different populations experiencing similar biocultural stressors respond in similar fashion. As part of the new bioarchaeology, increased emphasis has been placed on examining aspects of the skeleton that may not be pathological but rather express ‘use’ for the individual/population under study. Significant observations and analyses are made on patterns of osteoarthritis have been observed and biomechanical aspects of bone formation assessed to infer past use and accommodation of the skeleton to forcing stressors and loads. Palaeodiet

Two important analytical techniques in bone chemistry include trace element analysis and stable isotope ratio analysis (see Trace Element Analysis; Stable Isotope Analysis). Advances have proved to be

exceptionally useful in contextualizing human remains and reconstructing past human subsistence. Coupled with other archaeological data, stable isotopes provide an independent measure of individual diet. Such data can distinguish between numerous dietary regimes and thereby provide important distinctions of diet that may relate to status, gender, and place. Ancestry

Analysis of biological distance (biodistance) has advanced significantly since the early descriptive stages of skeletal biology. Metric and nonmetric data continue to be collected on teeth, skulls and postcranial remains and new methods of analysis and more powerful computer programs, statistical software, and data acquisition tools (e.g., microscribes and CT scans) make these data relevant and complementary in both local and regional context. New advances in bone chemistry, particularly with heavy stable isotopes of strontium and lead, also provide novel approaches to assessing place of origin. Simply put, individual’s tissues reflect the terra firma of their childhood. Other approaches to determining ancestry are more direct, perhaps best reflected by advances in ancient DNA studies using well-preserved bone. Coupled with genetic surveys of living populations and with studies of historical linguistics, aDNA data provide a powerful means to assess past relationships of the individual and/or population in question.

Ethics One important change in bioarchaeology in North America has been the adoption of legislation affecting the status of excavation and curation of human remains. The Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), signed as law in 1990, forced bioarchaeologists from field schools to museums to reassess their actions in the field and in their analysis of archived collections. Importantly, bioarchaeologists were made to justify the use of such collections in present and future research. Active research programs across the North American continent have improved efforts to integrate biological data with the archaeological record. Further, NAGPRA provides a means for bioarchaeologists to connect with Native American/First Nation groups and find common ground or compromise. Further benefits from NAGPRA were to make the public and anthropologists aware of other disenfranchised groups and to reconsider issues of cultural property and ownership or stewards of the past. These repatriation concerns have been addressed outside of North America with mixed results and often for political rather than ideological purpose. No matter, that lines of

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communication have been open and public awareness and debate is ongoing is healthy for the future of constructive bioarchaeology in the future to assist in promoting a better understanding of the past. There is huge potential for bioarchaeology to provide and promote a biocultural framework with which students of prehistory and the public can benefit. From individual life history to population-based studies, bioarchaeology has made significant contributions to archaeology. Bioarchaeology is a field that has matured considerably over the past century. Early ‘classificatory’ stages focused on typological and descriptive reviews whereas at present, increased focus draws upon multiple lines of evidence to assess past human experience and condition. Increased specialization has led to numerous points of reference in the natural and physical sciences which help to expand the scope of bioarchaeology and underscore its relevance in any archaeological pursuit associated with human remains. See also: Burials: Dietary Sampling Methods; Excavation

and Recording Techniques; DNA: Ancient; Forensic Archaeology; Health, Healing, and Disease; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act; Osteological Methods; Paleodemography; Paleopathology; Stable Isotope Analysis; Trace Element Analysis.

Further Reading Armelagos GJ (2003) Bioarchaeology as anthropology. In Gillespie SD and Nichols DL (eds.) Archaeology Is Anthropology, Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association No. 13. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association, pp. 27–40. Blakey ML (2001) Bioarchaeology of the African diaspora in the Americas. Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 387–422. Buikstra JE and Ubelaker DH (eds.) (1994) Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains. Arkansas Archeological Survey Research Series, No. 44. Fayetteville, AK: Arkansas Archeological Survey. Buikstra JE and Beck LA (eds.) (2006) Bioarchaeology: The Contextual Analysis of Human Remains. San Diego: Elsevier. Cohen MN and Crane-Kramer GMM (eds.) (in press). Ancient Health: Skeletal Indicators of Agricultural and Economic Intensification. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. Katzenberg MA and Saunders SR (eds.) (2000) Biological Anthropology of the Human Skeleton. New York: Wiley-Liss. Larsen CS (1997) Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Behavior from the Human Skeleton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Parker Pearson M (2001) The Archaeology of Death and Burial. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press. Steckel RH and Rose JC (eds.) (2002) The Backbone of History: Health and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ubelaker D (1999) Human Skeletal Remains: Excavation, Analysis, Interpretation. Washington, DC: Taraxacum.

BLOOD RESIDUE ANALYSIS Judith Field and Karen Privat, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary blood residue One or a number of blood components (e.g., red blood cells, hemoglobin, heme, plasma proteins, etc.) present on some surface. Bugas-Holding A late Prehistoric Shoshone occupation of the Sunlight Basin in the Absaroka Mountains of northwest Wyoming. Cuddie Springs A notable archaeological and paleontological site in the semi-arid zone of central northern New South Wales, Australia. Cuddie Springs is an open site, with the fossil deposits preserved in a claypan on the floor of an ancient ephemeral lake. Monte Verde An archaeological site in south-central Chile, which is suspected to date 12,500 years before present, making it one of the earliest inhabited sites in the Americas. Monte Verde pre-dates the earliest known Clovis culture site of Clovis, New Mexico by 1000 years.

Introduction Stone tools used in the butchering of animals or the processing of animal meat, skin, or bone may accumulate blood and other associated residues on their surface. Blood is most likely to derive from prey species, though it is possible for human blood to be deposited on a tool accidentally during the knapping process. When an animal is being butchered, blood may also build up in associated sediments or on other nearby materials such as hearthstones. The recovery and species-level identification of blood residues has the potential to contribute important and detailed information about the hunting practices, dietary habits, and economies of ancient peoples. Sustained interest in the analysis of archaeological blood residues was initiated by Tom Loy’s 1983 report of the species-level identification of haemoglobin recovered from 1–6-kyr-old stone artifacts. Since then, there has been a concerted effort to identify

928 BLOOD RESIDUE ANALYSIS

apparent blood residues to genus/species using a variety of techniques borrowed from the clinical sciences.

Blood as Residue Mammalian blood is primarily composed of plasma and red blood cells (
55% and
45% in humans, respectively). The remaining minor constituents of blood (<1%) include white blood cells, platelets, and proteins. ‘Blood residue’ may indicate one or a number of blood components present on a tool surface that are visually or biochemically detectable. In addition to red blood cells, reported residues derived from blood include hemoglobin, Heme, and plasma proteins. Red blood cells are comprised of 90% hemoglobin, a metalloprotein responsible for oxygen transport throughout the body. Heme is a main constituent of hemoglobin, and consists of a porphyrin ring surrounding an atom of iron. Immunoglobulins are globular proteins that function as antibodies, which are present in plasma as well as other body fluids. During butchering, the surface of the tool(s) used may accumulate blood as well as other tissues such as collagen, hair, and muscle tissue. The archaeological manifestation of these residues may only be a fraction of the original accumulation, as residues are lost through taphonomic processes such as abrasion, microbial degradation, or dissolution. The key questions at the core of blood residue research are (1) whether the molecular components of blood persist in detectable form on the surface of stone tools in the burial environment, and (2) whether these components survive over archaeological timescales.

Survival in the Fossil Record Opinion is divided over the likelihood of blood to survive for any period on the surface of stone or other artifactual material in a physically or biochemically identifiable way. Although the apparent presence of blood residues has been demonstrated in a limited range of modern experimental and archaeological contexts, the preservation of any detectable residue must be considered an exception rather than the rule. In the case of residues on tool surfaces, it is possible that the close association with mineral (i.e., stone or associated clay matrix) in the burial environment may have a stabilizing effect on organic material such as blood proteins, and may also protect organics from microbial attack. Experimental studies to determine the factors controlling the survival of blood residues have been largely inconclusive, possibly due to the wide range of sediments and environments represented in the fossil record that require consideration. In order to better

understand the conditions that promote the survival of blood on stone, sites from which blood residues have been successfully recovered must be thoroughly documented. Of particular interest are the sedimentary context, the environmental setting at the time of artifact deposition, the post-depositional history, and the techniques of artifact recovery. The survival of blood residues on stone tools dated to >30 ka has been reported at the Pleistocene archaeological site of Cuddie Springs in southeastern Australia. The artifacts were deposited on the bed of an ephemeral lake (cf. waterhole), and the sediments from which the artifacts were recovered are primarily silts and clays, anaerobic, alkaline, and constantly damp. There has been little movement within the sediment since deposition and the sediments have been protected from disturbance by the formation of an old land surface capping the deposits of interest. While now in the semi-arid zone, Cuddie Springs was located within the arid zone during the period of artifact deposition. Residue survival seems optimized in the sediments formed during extended dry lake conditions when it is likely that blood would have dried relatively quickly before burial. Rapid burial post-discard may have reduced the exposure to damaging UV radiation. The residues on the Cuddie Springs artifacts were generally identified in or near unconformities such as step fractures on the stone surface, where they would have accumulated from cutting or scraping and would have been less susceptible to subsequent removal (Figure 1c). Such blood and tissue accumulation has been observed in modern experimental studies, indicating that higher residue concentration and long-term survival is more likely at disconformities such as microcracks and step fractures than on smooth areas on the tool surface.

Methodology No single analytical protocol has yet been agreed upon as consistently effective in detecting and identifying blood residues. Researchers therefore employ various techniques during excavation, post-excavation, screening, and biochemical analysis of artifacts, according to personal preference and experience. Some investigations of potential blood residues omit certain elements of the investigation process, such as special handling of artifacts with potential blood residues during and after excavation, or the documentation of visible residues prior to extraction. Examination and Documentation

The first step in residue analysis should involve the examination of the artifact under low-power magnification to locate any possible blood residues. If any

BLOOD RESIDUE ANALYSIS 929

Figure 1 (a), Blood residue on a silcrete stone artifact used to butcher kangaroo (M. fuliginosus, scale bar ¼ 100 mm). (b) Extraction from the same tool in A, visualized in a scanning electron microscope showing individual red blood cells (scale bar ¼ 10 mm). (c) Putative blood residue (dark films) associated with step fractures adjacent to the used edge of a flaked stone artifact from Cuddie Springs, in sediments dated to 30 ka. (d) High-power view of residues on flaked stone artifact shown in (c) (scale bar ¼ 100 mm). (e) Surface of experimental tool with blood residue from butchering kangaroo prior to extraction using water as a solvent (scale bar ¼ 1 mm). (f) Surface of same experimental tool shown in (e), showing the incomplete removal of residues (scale bar ¼ 1 mm). The surface of the tool was lightly scraped with a nylon disposable pipette tip before the solvent plus sample was withdrawn.

residues are detected, they should be described and photographed. Blood has often been reported as having a distinctive morphology. Dried blood accumulated on experimental tools used to butcher animals produces distinctive residues, straw yellow to dark red in color, exhibiting extensive hexagonal cracking in places (Figure 1a). Scanning electron microscopy of these residues shows intact red blood cells within the yellow–red matrix (Figure 1b). Red blood cells, if preserved intact, are large enough to be visually identified by light microscopy on lithic tool surfaces. Because the anucleate, concave shape of mammalian red blood cells differs from those of other vertebrates, some researchers have postulated that broad taxonomic distinctions may be made from the observed three-dimensional form of preserved residues. The diameter of red blood cells also varies between species, providing another, more precise prospective

diagnostic tool. However, changes in red blood cell size and morphology have been observed during drying of experimental residues, calling into question the potential efficacy of these taxonomic indicators. Prior to extraction, the artifact may be further tested for the possible presence of blood using a clinical haemoglobin detector, such as Ames Hemastix. Such tests cannot unequivocally identify haemoglobin on artifacts since they have been found to cross-react with non-blood-derived fluids and to produce falsepositive results when exposed to certain elements commonly present in sediment. Blocking cross-reactions may be attempted (e.g., treatment with 0.5 M EDTA to prevent manganese cross-reaction), but cannot be guaranteed. Nevertheless, they can be included as one useful step in the screening process for blood residues, with a positive result indicating that further investigation is necessary.

930 BLOOD RESIDUE ANALYSIS Extraction and Analysis

Protocols for the recovery of residues from an artifact surface involve either the targeted isolation of visually identified residues (Figure 1e, f) or bulk, whole-tool extractions. There is great variability in extraction methods for putative blood residues and the solvent used is critical to success. The use of 4 M guanidine hydrochloride and 4% ammonium hydroxide rather than water or buffer solutions has been reported to greatly improve recovery and detection rates. Once extracted from the artifact surface, the residue may be subjected to one or a number of immunological, electrophoretic, and microscopic analyses to determine the presence of blood-derived compounds. Immunological assays, including enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and Western blot techniques, seek to detect and identify particular proteins derived from blood. In theory, immunological methods can identify specific proteins derived from a particular species, allowing for species-specific identification of blood residues. However, cross-reactivity between species still occurs in practice, reducing the reliable application of immunological techniques to the general detection of (mammalian) blood. Blood proteins can also be isolated and identified using gel electrophoresis, which uses an electric current to separate molecules by their size. Isoelectric focusing (IEF) involves the separation of the individual proteins in a residue into discrete components by their ionic charge through a pH gradient. Blood residue studies have also attempted to use simple protein assays such as dot-blot and bicinchoninic acid assays. Often a laboratory will preferentially use one extraction and analysis protocol while another will routinely employ a different method. Differing protocols between laboratories may account for the greatly varying reports for the survival and recovery of blood from stone artifacts and for divergent perspectives on blood survival and/or the form in which blood may be detected. Laboratories do not typically engage in inter-laboratory comparison of results or consultation regarding the relative effectiveness of analytical strategies. Blind tests of the recovery and identification of blood residues that have been undertaken between laboratories have generally produced equivocal results.

Archaeological Applications Cross-over electrophoresis is an immunological method, principally used by Margaret Newman, University of Calgary, to identify blood proteins in residues on stone tools. Orin Shanks and colleagues applied this method to the analysis of artifacts from the Late Holocene Bugas-Holding (open) site in

Wyoming, USA. The large area excavation of the site investigated site-patterning of specific domestic activities. Site-specific information was pooled to provide an interpretative framework for the study of possible protein residues and included site formation processes, palaeoenvironmental data, and excavation strategies involved in the recovery of artifacts. Furthermore, considerable testing of reagents, experimental controls, and systematic re-testing of samples were undertaken to reduce the probability of falsepositive results. The results confirmed the processing of faunal species (bovine and sheep) that had been identified in the faunal assemblages. Interestingly, the analyses raised further questions about animal exploitation, with bear proteins also found on three of the seven artifacts returning positive reactions. Bear was represented at the site by only a single skeletal element. Furthermore, the nature of the subsistence tasks identified by the integrated functional approach has provided insights into tool use and re-use. Importantly for blood residue studies, these results support a relatively long-term survival of blood residues on stone artifacts and the potential of identifying species-specific proteins by methods other than DNA analyses, while reinforcing the need for a systematic and rigorous approach to the analysis of purported blood residues in archaeological contexts. Noreen Tuross and Tom Dillehay undertook an analysis of residues from the site of Monte Verde in Southern Chile. Monte Verde is an open site, with occupation traces contained within a wetland environment on the margin of an ancient tributary of the Maullin River. Two cultural layers were identified at the site: the youngest dated to 13.2–12.5 kyr BP and a second less well-defined unit located some distance from the other site and dated to c. 33 kyr BP. The investigations included a combination of immunological and geochemical approaches to the identification of residues on flaked stone artifacts recovered from both horizons. Consideration of the archaeological and stratigraphic contexts as well as the geochemical characterization of the sedimentary matrix was an essential part of the investigative approach to this study. An analysis of the sediments and site formation processes indicated that the younger cultural layer represented a single occupation event, following which material was rapidly buried and maintained in a consistently anoxic, reducing environment, promoting organic preservation. The geochemical analyses demonstrated the absence of organic matter and the presence of desiccant silica gel in the deposits immediately below the younger occupational layer, and identified a lack of humic acids in the overlying strata suggestive of low microbial activity. Further macroscopic, microscopic, and molecular evidence

BONE TOOL ANALYSIS 931

of the high degree of preservation of organic remains within the cultural strata, in addition to the consistently low temperature of the sediments, indicated that the burial conditions were likely to promote long-term preservation of molecular residues. Seven artifacts from the two horizons were tested for the presence of residues: three from the 13.2– 12.5-kyr-BP habitation level and four from the older (possible) cultural layer. The authors noted that no correlation existed between observed ‘stains’ on the surface of the artifacts and the results of immunological tests for blood residue. One artifact (from the c. 33 0-kyr-BP layer) yielded positive results for the presence of blood protein. For the immunological assay experimental controls, including soil samples and blanks were included. These controls enabled a greater degree of confidence in the interpretation of the results from testing the extracted residues. The ELISA method was used to detect the presence of haemoglobin. A Western blot assay was subsequently used to determine the preservation and source (i.e., species) of the purported haemoglobin-containing residue. The results of this study suggest that it is possible for degraded but detectable components of blood to survive over archaeological timescales, and in sufficient quantities and preservation to be detected using existing biochemical techniques. The case studies presented above demonstrate how important a rigorous, multidisciplinary approach is for investigating questions of artifact function and use. Not every analysis will necessarily require taxonomic identification. The detection of blood proteins alone may be a useful result, depending on the research question at hand. When approaching the biochemical testing stage, a hierarchical approach

should be observed, with the assessment of the nature of the residues as the first step. Identification of residues to species level remains contentious and problematic, and may not be possible. The most fruitful studies will include a survey of all tool-use indicators, including usewear and technological studies, and will incorporate the expertise of both archaeological and biochemical researchers to ensure the effective execution of the analyses and the interpretation of the experimental results.

Further Reading Cattaneo C, Gelsthorpe K, Phillips P, and Sokol RJ (1993) Blood residues on stone tools: Indoor and outdoor experiments. World Archaeology 25: 29–43. Craig OE and Collins MJ (2002) The removal of protein from mineral surfaces: Implications for residue analysis of archaeological materials. Journal of Archaeological Science 29: 1077–1082. Fullagar R, Furby J, and Hardy B (1996) Residues on stone artefacts: State of a scientific art. Antiquity 70: 740–745. Loy TH (1983) Prehistoric blood residues: Detection on tool surfaces and identification of species of origin. Science 220: 1269– 1271. Loy TH (1993) The artefact as site: An example of the biomolecular analysis of organic residues on prehistoric tools. World Archaeology 25: 44–63. Odell GH (2001) Stone tool research at the end of the millennium. Journal of Archaeological Research 9: 45–100. Shanks OC, Kornfeld M, and Ream W (2004) DNA and protein recovery from washed experimental stone tools. Archaeometry 46: 663–672. Tuross N and Dillehay T (1995) The mechanism of organic preservation at Monte Verde, Chile, and one use of biomolecules in archaeological investigation. Journal of Field Archaeology 22: 97–110. Yohe RM, II, Newman ME, and Schneider JS (1991) Immunological identification of small-mammal proteins on Aboriginal milling equipment. American Antiquity 45: 659–666.

BONE TOOL ANALYSIS Ryan J Rabett, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

osseous materials Bone, antler, ivory teeth, and horn. secondary manufacture Production investment following the initial creation of a tool blank.

Glossary

Introduction

anthropic The intentional or unintentional result of human action. curated tools Implements of variable investment with a use life usually beyond a single episode; repair is likely. expedient tools Low-investment implements, employed chiefly because of the utility of an existing feature (e.g., sharp edge) and the convenience of the moment. They are generally not retained or repaired.

This article examines the osseous technologies that can be created from animal skeletons. ‘Tool’ status is accorded to a skeletal element or fragment that has been modified subsequent to its isolation from the carcass. Such anthropic adaptation may be deliberate (e.g., through manufacture) and/or appear as a result of utilization, and is granted in instances where these

932 BONE TOOL ANALYSIS

details cannot otherwise be ascribed to alternative nonanthropic causes. Implements can display a combination of traces from both human and natural sources and as such the study of them involves both zooarchaeological (i.e., via animal ecology, hunting, and butchery) and technological analysis (see Archaeozoology). As an exemplar of this, the following discussion will present some of the similarities and differences that exist between osseous and lithic raw materials and tool-blank production, and will situate both in an operational sequence of animal procurement and processing. It will then give an account of principal manufacturing techniques, methods for establishing tool function, and the phenomenon of ‘pseudo tools’.

Raw Materials and Tool-Blank Production Close similarities exist between certain aspects of acquisition and processing osseous and lithic raw materials. Both may be collected in an opportunistic manner during the course of other activities such as foraging, hunting, or herding, and cached ahead of actual use. This kind of scheduling has been inferred from the concentrations of red deer antler found at the Early Mesolithic site of Star Carr in northern England. Preproduction exposure to fire can affect the mechanical character of stone and help with its working into a tool. Incidental heat treatment of bone as part of the cooking process also alters its responsive qualities through the loss of moisture and organic (collagen) constituents. The extent to which these changes influence the selection of skeletal fragments for tool manufacture is an area that requires further research; however, preproduction work, including the soaking of antler to make it more plastic and workable for tool making, is well known from ethnographic sources and experimentation. As with lithics, acquiring a tool blank is often an extractive process. Osseous implements may begin life as fortuitously fractured pieces of bone broken during processing of the carcass before or through consumption, for example, as a consequence of marrow extraction. Alternatively, this initial stage may be more targeted and deliberate: from the ‘quarrying’ of simple cortical flakes from the dense sections of cortical bone in a manner reminiscent to flake removals for stone tool production, to more elaborate preparatory steps. One of the most well known of these involves using a special lithic tool (a burin) to remove long parallel sections of cortical bone or more commonly antler or ivory, such as is seen at the Upper Paleolithic sites in Europe and the Central Russian Plain, through what is called the ‘groove and splinter’ technique.

A second method, used chiefly on bone or antler, involves cutting around the circumference of the element. This usually takes place close to one or both ends of the element so that the diaphysis can be used as a source of material or as a tool in itself. While it is possible to cut cleanly through a piece using this method, frequently just enough is done simply to control fracturing and the bone or antler is broken by force. As a result, this is called the ‘groove and snap’ technique. There are, however, divergent as well as convergent characteristics between lithic and osseous technologies. Whereas access to usable or favored resources may be affected by variables such as distance, transportation, and even weather conditions in both instances, stone is by and large a stationary resource; osseous raw materials by contrast will, in all cases where living animals are the starting point, have their own patterns of mobility. The behavior of groups (e.g., migration) and individual animals introduces an element of unpredictability and reliance on the skills of the hunter to successfully locate, stalk or trap, and ultimately kill the animal. Whereas the procurement of lithics (be it opportunistic or targeted) must be incorporated into other daily activities, the reward for meeting this unpredictability is that potential raw materials are guaranteed at the end of every successful hunt. Allowing for interspecies differences, osseous raw materials will also always occur in identically shaped packages. Where predictability is lost in the initial phase of acquisition, it is gained through redundancy in the form of what is acquired. However, skeletal elements are functional parts of a body structure that facilitate locomotion, provide protection to internal soft tissues or form part of a feeding apparatus. This places certain limits on how osseous materials can be worked and on what can be made from them; restrictions that are less pronounced in lithic raw materials. Bone is also a much more dynamic material than stone. It is being constantly reformed and replaced during the life of the animal and is subject to the effects of habitual action, trauma, and disease. Age affects an element’s size, but also its inherent strength – bones from aged animals are more highly mineralized than those of younger animals or those in their prime. Changes in composition continue postmortem: the organic collagen decomposes (the rate of this process will be moderated by the environmental conditions of deposition and, as mentioned, may be accelerated by cooking), bone becomes still more mineralized, structurally weakened and prone to the effects of weathering. Finally, animals may also be treated in different ways according to variability in the way people view

BONE TOOL ANALYSIS 933

them. Ethnographic studies show how some animals may be perceived as being an integral part of a group’s ‘community’ while others may be treated as hostile outsiders; the act of hunting carries overtones of social interaction as much as it is the necessary pursuit of sustenance. There is considerable challenge in retrieving these subtle, often habitual, relationships archaeologically, though it is not impossible for us to draw inferences about them in our interpretations of animal procurement and reduction sequences, including where this leads to the production, maintenance, and discard of osseous technology (Figure 1).

Curated, Expedient, and Pseudo Tools Turning a blank into a tool may require a multistage or an abbreviated sequence of additional work. Various secondary manufacturing techniques may be employed in the creation of more complex curated tools, including cutting, perforating, or incising the blank. A process like hafting will bring together a range of different materials to bed, bind, and mount

the working point or edge of a tool into a handle or shaft. In order to exploit the mechanical strength of most animal bones, the long axis of the tool must be aligned with that of the element. As the archaeological record attests, the resilient nature of the material means that it is well suited to the production of projectile points (Figure 2) and it is here that many experimental studies have concentrated. Perhaps the most widely applied techniques involve the scraping and paring or the grinding of a tool blank, either to augment its existing form or to turn it into a prescribed shape. Scraping creates bands of thin striations of varying widths (Figure 3) – reminiscent of a bar code – that are caused by minute irregularities in the working edge of the stone or metal being used. Scraping leaves two other characteristic (though not ubiquitous) traces. The first of these are called ‘chatter marks’: short, closely associated, parallel signals that appear during the course of the stroke and lie at right angles to the main striations (Figure 3). The second trace is characterized by an abrupt line also

Available prey

Prey selection Perceived social relations between hunter and hunted

Primary butchery

Practical dictates of animal physiology

Removal of blank from bone Manufacturing process Discard bone debitage

Cooking Mechanical properties of bone

Choice of skeletal element Available lithic or other implements

Hunting technology

Cultural/ traditional observances of production

Learned skills

Intention to make bone artefact Choice of technique Actual use and maintenance of bone artefact Discard bone artefact

Figure 1 Schematic diagram of interrelated factors in the sequence of bone tool production, use, and discard. Striped arrows indicate the entry and exit points to other adjoining systems.

934 BONE TOOL ANALYSIS

Figure 2 Experimental projectile points and hafting mechanism. Scale in 5 mm increments. Photographs: Ryan Rabett.

at right angles to the direction of the striations. This marks the point at which the edge of the fabricating tool first cuts into the bone at the beginning of a stroke – the ‘inception’ point (Figure 3) – and is an indication of the direction in which the bone was worked. Paring essentially involves a more invasive form of the same process, where shavings are actually carved out of the bone surface. Working osseous materials with an abrasive agent such as sand produces a different form of striation exhibiting a ‘spindle’ or ‘comet-like’ appearance (Figure 4). This distinct profile develops as a result of changes in applied pressure along the abrading path that individual grains take across the surface. In some cases, the shape of a blank and that of the tool itself may spring directly from the natural form or affordances of the original element. Archaeological examples fitting this description include antler and bone pieces used as ‘soft hammers’ or ‘punches’ in lithic reduction (or alternatively, where elements are used as hide processing or fabrication tools). For example, in the Third Millennium Neolithic site of Chalain 4 in the Jura region of France, wild boar tusks and beaver

incisors provided preformed cutting edges that were well suited to tasks such as working the wooden parts of composite tools like arrows or bow staves. There are certain occasions when the only anthropic modification to an osseous blank comes from a brief period of utilization, for example, using fragments of an animal’s own carcass as improvised tools to assist in its butchery. Such pieces are often characterized as ‘expedient’ and are generally discarded at the end of a single period of activity. The lack of investment and abbreviated use life means that it is often only by identifying highly localized damage, such as microflake scars, or rounding of a fracture edge, that such tools can be singled out from other nonanthropically modified fragments in a faunal assemblage. The ability to distinguish between surface traces left by human action and those caused by other agencies (such as trampling, which can cause traces that are superficially similar to cut-marks), either before or during burial, is a major concern in the study of animal butchery, but also has significance in the study of osseous technology. This is particularly the case when archaeologists find potential implements that

BONE TOOL ANALYSIS 935

are made on antlers, horns, and teeth. As part of the external anatomy of an animal, there is a greater chance that these parts will have been subject to surface damage and wear during its life in ways that the internal bones will not have been. Work on deer

Figure 3 Striations, chatter marks, and inception lines on scraped bone (20 magnification: upper image; 30 magnification: lower image) from Niah Cave, Borneo. Photographs: Ryan Rabett. Reproduced courtesy of the Sarawak Museum, Malaysia.

antler from nonarchaeological contexts by Sandra Olsen, for example, has shown that rounding, polish, fracturing, and fine abrasion may all occur at the points of antler tines, and are caused when the deer rubs its antlers against the ground or against trees. This may proceed even to the extent of producing a discrete wear facet to the tip. These ‘pseudo tools’ are completely natural features, but can sometimes be mistaken for use wear and hence for genuine archaeological tools. Familiarization not only with the context of an archaeological assemblage but also with the ecology and behavior of species represented is an important guard against making this mistake. Tool function is normally deduced through two complementary avenues of investigation. The first of these employs comparable lines of evidence through ethnographic or experimental analogues as a reference or to replicate the conditions and consequences of usage. Alternatively, archaeological tools may be examined at a microscale for use wear traces attributable to particular activities (see Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear). Analysis at high magnification, such as that possible through a scanning electron microscope (SEM), can reveal the finest intricacies of detail, isolating minute blood or vegetal residues, or can provide highly resolved images of different kinds of surface polish. Although care must be taken to isolate contaminants that could have become lodged in the microstructure of the surface during recovery or subsequent conservation, this approach can help establish the kinds of materials a tool came into contact with during the period of its use (see Organic Residue Analysis).

Figure 4 The form of ground striations (20 magnification) left on the surface of a bone tool from Niah Cave, Borneo. Scale in 5 mm increments. Photographs: Ryan Rabett. Reproduced from Asian Perspectives.

936 BONE TOOL ANALYSIS

Figure 5 Use-wear striations (accumulated after 300 strokes) along the leading edge of an experimental unhafted tool used to scrape tubers (sweet potatoes); 20 magnification. Photograph: Ryan Rabett.

Lower magnification (usually light-microscope work) is more coarse-grained and has limited facility to characterize residue traces, but where portability or a comparatively large sample size (or cost) are controlling factors, this method is still able to examine details of gross surface change, for example, fractures, manufacturing, and use striations (Figure 5), and give the global character of use polishes: how and where they are distributed across a tool. For example, hafting may preserve a clear wear differential between exposed and bound sections of the tool, while movement in the haft during use can cause discrete patches of polishing and may result in the creation of fine striations from particulate abrasion. This kind of analysis is, therefore, suited for establishing patterns in the context of use – how implements were being utilized.

Conclusion Ethnographic studies and archaeological sites with outstanding organic preservation reveal the wide range of applications to which organic technologies have been used. In most cases, few of these items survive to be recovered by excavation. Of these technologies, osseous tools are among the most enduring and provide valuable insights into the procurement and processing strategies of early peoples. While many of the processes of stone tool utilization may have been transferable to osseous materials, recourse to these alternate raw materials was probably not always or ‘perhaps even usually’ as a direct replacement for stone. There is growing appreciation that osseous materials were often chosen with quite deliberate intent and a view to the affordances that their form or mechanical properties gave to successfully negotiating a particular task. As such, they also

offer a rare glimpse of the interface between human technical adaptation, tradition, and ingenuity, and the living resources upon which we relied. See also: Archaeozoology; Cognitive Archaeology;

Ethnoarchaeology; Experimental Archaeology; Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear; Organic Residue Analysis; Taphonomy; Vertebrate Analysis.

Further Reading Clark JGD (1954) Excavations at Star Carr: An Early Mesolithic Site at Seamer near Scarborough, Yorkshire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. D’Errico F, Giacobini G, and Puech P-F (1984) Varnish replicas: A new method for the study of worked bone surfaces. OSSA 9–11: 29–51. Dobres M-A and Hoffman CR (1999) The Social Dynamics of Technology: Practice, Politics and Worldviews. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. Johnson E (1985) Current developments in bone technology. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 8: 157–235. Knecht H (ed.) (1997) Projectile Technology. New York: Plenum Press. Luik H, Choyke AM, Batey CE, and Lo˜ugas L (eds.) (2005) From hooves to horns, from mollusc to mammoth: Manufacture and use of bone artefacts from prehistoric times to the present. Muinasaja teadus 15: Proceedings of the 4th Meeting of the ICAZ Worked Bone Research Group at Tallinn, 26th–31st of August, 2003. Tallinn: Tartu University. Olsen S (1989) On distinguishing natural from cultural damage on archaeological antler. Journal of Archaeological Science 16: 125–135. Scheinsohn V and Ferretti JL (1995) The mechanical properties of bone materials in relation to the design and function of prehistoric tools from Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina. Journal of Archaeological Science 22: 711–717. Semenov SA (1957) Prehistoric Technology: An Experimental Study of the Oldest Tools and Artefacts from Traces of Manufacturing and Wear. Thompson MW (trans., 1964). London: Cory, Adams & Mackay Ltd.

BURIALS/Dietary Sampling Methods 937

BURIALS Contents Dietary Sampling Methods Excavation and Recording Techniques

Dietary Sampling Methods Karl J Reinhard and Vaughn M Bryant, Jr., University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, USA Published by Elsevier Inc.

Glossary control sample A sample collected from an area that is not likely to be influenced by the phenomenon under study which is used to compare analytical results with those from areas that are likely to have been impacted by the phenomenon under study. dental calculus Hardened plaque on the teeth which is formed by saliva, food debris, and minerals. dental plaque An adherent substance made of mucus, food particles, and bacteria. edaphic Resulting from, or influenced by, the soil. pelvic girdle The bony ring supporting the lower limbs in humans composed of the two hip bones laterally and in front, and the sacrum and coccyx behind. pollen aggregates Clumps of pollen composed of many grains of the same type. These signal economic use of buds, flowers, anthers, or sometimes seeds or fruits. pollen concentration A method for calculating the number of pollen grains present per milliliter or gram of sediment based on adding known numbers of exotic pollen grains or spores to a sediment sample. sacrum A triangular bone made up of five fused vertebrae and forming the posterior section of the pelvic girdle. stratigraphic column In burial analysis, a stratigraphic column refers to the layers within the pelvic girdle that range from burial fill to intestinal remains. As a corpse decomposes, sediment from the burial fill enters the pelvic girdle from above and compresses the intestinal contents to the lowest part of the pelvic girdle, the sacrum. The uppermost sample from the highest part of the pelvic girdle is composed of burial fill. The middle of the pelvic girdle might contain some food remains. The lowest level is very likely to contain dietary residue from food.

Burials and Preservation Microenvironments A burial contains numerous, individual microenvironments, each of which has a different preservation potential, which in turn can provide evidence of human diets. Animal and plant food residues can be recovered from the lower intestinal tract, oral cavity, associated vessels, other forms of burial offerings,

and fragments or whole plants or animals deposited in the burial. Individual microenvironments at a burial site result from many aspects including, but not limited to: (1) preparation of the burial feature, (2) addition of burial offerings, (3) depth and orientation of the corpse, (4) edaphic conditions such as moisture and pH, (5) microbial activity, and (6) exposure of the burial when it is excavated. When burials are discovered at sites, the subsequent excavation and removal process should be done with caution and should take into consideration the subsequent types of laboratory analyses (see Burials: Excavation and Recording Techniques). Failures during the recovery phase, or the use of improper sampling strategies, will compromise the ability to provide valid interpretations. In addition, burial sampling must include control samples from the burial fill and surrounding contexts. When found, a skeleton or mummified burial normally has two areas where dietary residues can be easily recovered. In life, dietary residues (i.e., pollen grains, phytoliths, starch granules, plant fibers, animal hairs, etc.) are produced or released during mastication and some of these can become trapped in dental plaque (see Pollen Analysis). If not removed, within a few days, plaque is mineralized and adheres to the teeth in the form of dental calculus. Large deposits of calculus are often found on teeth (Figure 1). Dietary microfossils and residues that were trapped in the calculus are easily recovered during laboratory analysis (Figure 2). Sometimes artifacts or vegetal materials are placed in the mouth of the deceased, especially in the Andean region of South America. Such types of vegetal materials can often be recovered and identified as microfossils or macrofossils present in the area of the oral cavity of a burial. The second burial area of dietary interest is the abdominal area, specifically the sacrum and the soil inside the pelvic girdle. In some well-preserved burials, distinct fecal pellets (coprolites) can be found in the abdominal area because the colon is located in that area. However, for most burials, distinct coprolites are not visible, but controlled sampling of sediments in the pelvic girdle area may reveal seeds, starch grains, phytoliths, pollen, and other types of residues of dietary and medicinal importance.

938 BURIALS/Dietary Sampling Methods

Figure 1 Photograph of dental calculus. Microfossils from dental calculus reflect diet for a few days prior to death.

sterile containers that are then sealed, and then sent to a laboratory where the contents can be removed in a controlled environment. A control sample of burial sediment around the exterior of each vessel should be collected, examined, and then used as a basis for comparison with the contents recovered inside the vessel. In burials where recovered ceramic vessels are cracked, it is often appropriate to remove the sediments in the vessel in the field. In cases where burial vessels are fragmented, analysis of the shard will sometimes provide useful palaeoethnobotanical data. The importance of collecting control samples of the burial fill and from areas above and below the burial cannot be overemphasized. Any interpretations of paleoethnobotanical data recovered from burials (i.e., mummy or skeleton, vessels, artifacts, burial floor surface) are dependent upon comparisons to data recovered from site and burial control samples. Extensive analysis of the contents of control samples will allow analysts to distinguish which items are probable evidence of diet or medicinal use and which items might instead reflect site contaminants.

Pollen Studies and Burial Sediments

Figure 2 Microfossils, for example the starch grains illustrated here, are quite common in dental calculus.

In some types of burials, a variety of grave offerings are included with the body. If present, each bowl or other type of vessel in a burial becomes its own microenvironment, which can offer evidence of its original contents (i.e., pollen, starch, phytoliths, and macrofossils). Some types of grave offerings present better microenvironments of preservation. For example, basketry vessels are less durable than ceramic vessels, and therefore have less preservation potential. Objects made of copper or copper alloy promote preservation because the copper oxide produced by the object is toxic to most types of microbial decomposer organisms. When containers are found in burials, there are various techniques that should be used to sample for dietary residues. For ceramic vessels, a rinsing of the inside, bottom portion is appropriate. Ideally, burial artifacts should be collected in the field, placed in

As a general rule, the wind-pollinated plants produce and disperse millions of pollen grains in the hope that a few of them will be carried to their intended destination by the winds. As a result, in any given location there may be thousands or even millions of pollen grains falling to the earth’s surface in what is called a region’s ‘pollen rain’. This is why the most frequent pollen types recovered in sediment and soil samples are from wind-dispersed plants. The insect-pollinated plants, which are sometimes pollinated by bats, humming birds, small mammals, or a host of insect species, usually produce flowers containing nectar and relatively few pollen grains. Normally, these plants need to produce only a few hundred or a few thousand pollen grains per flower because of the highly efficient method of direct pollination achieved by the various pollen carriers that visit the flowers. The pollen grain surface of most insect-pollinated types is usually covered with lipids so they will stick easily to insects that visit the flowers. In addition, these insect-pollinated plants usually produce highly ornamented pollen grains with thick, sturdy pollen walls designed to protect the pollen’s cytoplasm from the often bumpy ride provided by the pollinators. In general, insect-pollinated pollen types are also heavy and overall are not designed aerodynamically for travel on wind currents. For all of these reasons, few of these types become part of the normal pollen rain of a region. One exception would be instances where

BURIALS/Dietary Sampling Methods 939

flowers still containing a few pollen grains might fall to the surface underneath the parent plant, thus allowing the pollen to become released as the flowers decay. Another exception would be situations where insect-pollinated flowers are carried to a specific location by some animal or human. Using several lines of logic and planned sampling strategies, pollen in burial soils that results from cultural activities, called ‘economic pollen’, can be separated successfully from pollen that may have come from the normal pollen rain, referred to as ‘background pollen’. First, if one of the pollen types in the soils of a burial matches an ethnographic or archaeological food plant species endemic to the region, or comes from a plant that may have been obtained in trade, then that pollen should be considered as potentially reflecting the use of that plant as a food source. However, roots, tubers, corms, and other underground plant organs will not carry attached pollen with them from the source plant, so there is reduced potential for the pollen from these types to be represented in the site. Seeds and fruits from some plant species that are brought to a site often do carry pollen on their outer surfaces and thus such pollen types can reflect plant usage. Nevertheless, even with such types of potential pollen sources, one must be careful to distinguish pollen evidence suggesting actual plant usage and pollen that may be from background sources. For example, a number of types of economic chenopods, including Chenopodium quinoa, and amaranths (Amaranthus) produce pollen that is nearly identical to the pollen of many noneconomic genera and species in these same plant groups. Trying to distinguish which pollen types are from economic plants rather than from noneconomic background types is often nearly impossible to determine without extensive studies using the resolution capability of a scanning electron microscope. Pollen concentration values add another dimension to pollen data from burials and coprolites. For example, 10 maize pollen grains out of each 100

pollen grains recovered from a soil sample would be recorded as a 10% average. Similarly, 10 000 maize pollen grains out of 100 000 would also be recorded as a 10% average. However, there is a significant difference in terms of the potential importance and source of maize pollen in each of those two samples. That difference can only be realized by conducting pollen concentration values of both samples. Low concentrations of some pollen taxa in coprolites or soil deposits may result from sources of ambient pollen in the normal pollen rain (pollen distribution in a region). However, high concentration values of the same pollen taxa would suggest some type of disturbance or cultural activity rather than resulting solely from normal pollen rain distributions. Knowing the types of percentages of pollen found in burial sediments and coprolites in burials is important because the relative pollen percentages may be roughly the same in both types of samples; however, there may be dramatically differences in the pollen concentration values. This is illustrated in the Mimbres burial (Table 1) examined by Shafer et al. For example, maize pollen percentages are not statistically different between the control sample and samples from the sacral coprolites. However, the maize pollen concentration values reveal an average concentration of only 266 pollen grains per gram for the control sample but 59 280 pollen grains per gram for the sacral coprolite sample. The above discussion briefly describes some of the factors that should be considered during the analysis and interpretation of pollen materials collected from burials at archaeological sites. In addition to these, there are other, even more important considerations that must be applied to pollen studies of burial deposits. These include (1) the assurance that the person conducting the pollen analysis has not accidentally contaminated the field samples with other pollen types in the laboratory that come from the use of unclean laboratory equipment or facilities; (2) the knowledge that the researcher has not accidentally

Table 1 Pollen concentration values of selected pollen types from Burial 109, NAN Ranch, New Mexico Taxon

Mustard Squash Cheno-am Willow Maize Cattail Grass

Sacrum

Grave fill

Above pelvis

Below pelvis

Conc.

%

Conc.

%

Conc.

%

Conc.

%

303 240 6840 43 320 149 340 59 280 7410 3420

53 1 7.5 26 10 1 <1

0 0 2087 15 266 0 326

0 0 67 1 9 0 11

0 0 1083 0 418 0 342

0 0 54 0 21 0 17

0 0 645 0 194 0 133

0 0 59 0 18 0 12

940 BURIALS/Dietary Sampling Methods

lost or destroyed potential pollen in a sample by using incorrect or harsh extraction procedures; (3) that the person has a working knowledge of the pollen flora of the region where he or she is conducting the analysis; and (4) that all identifications of pollen types are accurate and are based on comparisons with modern reference materials of known pollen taxa.

Case Studies – Dietary Residues from Burials As noted above, Shafer et al. presented the first modern paleoethnobotanical analysis of fecal residues (coprolites) discovered within a burial. Shafer et al. presented multidisciplinary methods for the recovery of microscopic and macroscopic remains that related

to diet and medicine. Control sediment samples were taken above the pelvic girdle, grave floor, and from the burial fill. Macroscopic evidence of finely ground maize cupules was found in the coprolites. The coprolites contained high concentrations of maize pollen. Pollen from a medicinal plant, willow, was also found in high concentrations in the coprolites (Table 1 and Figure 3). Pollen concentration adds another dimension to pollen data. In addition to knowing the types of percentages of pollen in sediments, pollen concentration provides an estimate of the number of pollen grains present per gram or milliliter of sediment. This is illustrated by the fact that maize percentages are not statistically different between the samples from the Mimbres burial. However, the pollen concentration shows that compared to the average

Sacrum sample

Control sample from above pelvic girdle

3420 7410 59 280

342

149 340

303 240

43 320

Mustard Squash Cheno-am Willow Corn Cattail Grass

6840 44

1 083

418

326

133

266 15 194

645

2087 Control sample from grave fill Figure 3 The pollen spectra from a coprolite and control samples from a Mimbres burial.

Control sample from grave floor

BURIALS/Dietary Sampling Methods 941

concentration of 292 pollen grains per gram for the control samples, the sacral coprolites contained 59 280 grains per gram. Later, Reinhard et al. presented field and laboratory methods for recovering dietary residues from pelvic girdle sediments from a single burial. They

Figure 4 The pelvic girdle sampling strategy proposed by Reinhard et al. in their analysis of an ancestral Anasazi burial. Samples 1 and 2 are control samples taken from a stratigraphic column within the pelvic girdle. Sample 3 is a sediment sample that should be collected from the anterior surface of the sacrum, where dietary remains from the large intestine are trapped during decomposition.

recommended paleoethnobotanical study of burials as a nondestructive method to identify diet and season of death. In this case study, they emphasized the need to analyze multiple control samples to identify contamination. In this case, multiple samples were taken from a stratigraphic column within the pelvic girdle (Figure 4). The burial was excavated into a prehistoric house floor and there were a variety of contexts to sample for comparative evaluation. These included the burial fill, the house floor, a storage pit, the area of the lower legs, and the area of the skull. Seeds were found only in the sacrum (Figure 5) and 345 seeds were found in 4.3 g of sediment from the sacrum. No seeds were recovered in the 50-g control samples. Pollen aggregates (clumps of pollen of the same type) were found only in the sacrum. The seeds and pollen aggregates indicated that pigweed seeds, goosefoot seeds, sunflower seeds of two species, panic grass, and two other species were eaten. Pollen aggregates of grass, pigweed and/ or goosefoot type, sunflower type, and ragweed type were found. Therefore, the pollen and seed evidence show that the deceased ate a variety of wild plants before he died. The pollen spectra comparison shows an elevated percentage of grass pollen in the sacrum compared to the other samples (Table 2 and Figure 6).

Figure 5 Seeds from the ancestral Anasazi burial. The upper left shows goosefoot and pigweed seeds. The upper right shows wild sunflower seeds. The lower images are of unknown seeds. This shows that well-preserved plant foods can be recovered from burial sediments.

942 BURIALS/Dietary Sampling Methods Table 2 Macrobotanical data from selected Arizona burials (Berg 2002) Taxon

Burial A

Maize fragments Agave fragments Cactus seed Cotton seed Plant epidermis

Burial B

Burial C

Control

Sacral

Control

Sacral

Control

Sacral

30 5 0 2 0

254 424 0 0 0

11 17 1 8 13

189 491 75 302 264

13 3 0 0 6

0 35 0 105 0

Sacrum

Pithouse floor 7

2.5

4

3

2

8

17

4 1.5 18.5 26

42.5 Pine Juniper 15.5 6.5

Grave floor

33

Wild grass Sunflower type Ragweed type Sage brush

2 0.5

4.5

Cheno-am

10.5

Bee plant

3

1 3

Storage pit

10.5

Bean family Globemallow

8

17 4.5 47.5 5.5 10 3 0.5

4.5

13.5

36.5 7

Figure 6 The pollen spectra from sacrum sediments and control samples from the ancestral Anasazi burial.

Berg expanded these methods to cemeteries in Arizona (Table 3) and Denmark and successfully demonstrated that the multidisciplinary approach presented in the first three case studies is extremely powerful

when applied to detecting patterns of medicine and diet in groups of interments. He also formalized a consistent sampling strategy that can be applied to most burial excavations (Figures 7 and 8).

BURIALS/Dietary Sampling Methods 943 Table 3 Pollen data from the burial analyzed by Reinhard et al. (1992)

Figure 7 Berg (2001) formalized a sampling strategy for macroscopic flotation and pollen sampling for burials. He proposed that macrofossil sampling be focused on flotation samples from the pelvic area and from the grave fill near the head (red areas). He recommended that pollen control samples be recovered from long bone areas and a single control sample in the pelvic girdle. The dietary pollen sample should be recovered from the anterior surface of the sacrum (blue areas).

Taxon

Sacrum

Burial floor

Pithouse floor

Storage pit

Pine Juniper Wild grass Sunflower type Ragweed type Sage brush Cheno-am Rocky Mountain bee plant Squash Mormon tea Euphorbia type Bean family Globemallow Prickly pear Gilia Oak Willow Greasewood Solanaceae Maize Spruce

4 2 42.5 6.5 15.5

10.5 17 10 3 4.5 0.5 47.5 2

3 8 4 1.5 33 4.5 26 17

10.5 8 4.5 5.5 13.5 7 36.5 3

1 0.5 0.5

1

0.5 2.5

18.5

7 2.5

1 3 0.5

1 0.5 0.5 0.5

0.5

1.5

0.5 1 1

500

400

Parts per liter

Taxon Maize fragments Agave fragments

300

Cactus seed Cotton seed Plant epidermis

200

100

0 Control

Sacral

Burial A

Control

Sacral

Burial B

Control

Sacral

Burial C

Figure 8 Macroscopic remains from Berg’s analysis of three Arizona burials. Burial A shows an elevated frequency of maize and agave fragments in the sacrum sample compared with the control sample. In burial B, increased numbers of maize, agave, cactus, cotton, and plant epidermis macrofossils were found in the sacral sample relative to the control sample. Agave and cotton seed were evident in the burial C sacral sample.

944 BURIALS/Excavation and Recording Techniques

Conclusion The analysis of burials for botanical and zoological remains evidence of diet is a proven method of nondestructive analysis in the mortuary setting (see Archaeozoology; Pollen Analysis). The value of such analyses is directly dependent on sampling strategies that must include a number of control samples. See also: Archaeozoology; Burials: Excavation and Recording Techniques; Pollen Analysis.

Further Reading Bayman J, Hevly RH, and Reinhard KJ (1996) Analytical perspectives on a protohistoric cache of ceramic jars from the Lower Colorado Desert. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 18: 131–154. Berg GE (2002) Last meals: Recovering abdominal contents from skeletonized remains. Journal of Archaeological Science 29: 1349–1365. Bohrer VL and Adams KR (1977) New Mexico Contributions in Anthropology Vol. 8, no. 1: Ethnobotanical Techniques and Approaches at Salmon Ruin. Portales: Eastern New Mexico University. Bryant VM, Jr. and Morris DP (1986) Uses of ceramic vessels and grinding implements: The pollen evidence. In: Morris DP (ed.) National Park Service Publications in Archaeology, No. 19: Archeological Investigations at Antelope House, pp. 489–500. Washington, DC: National Printing Office. Reinhard KJ and Bryant VM, Jr. (2006) Reinterpreting the pollen pata from Dos Cabezas. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology (in press). Reinhard KJ, Geib PR, Callahan MM, and Hevly RH (1992) Discovery of colon contents in a skeletonized burial: Soil sampling for dietary remains. Journal of Archaeological Science 19: 697–705. Reinhard KJ, Souza SMF, Rodrigues CD, Kimmerle E, and Dorsey-Vinton S (2001) Microfossils in dental calculus: A new perspective on diet and dental disease. In: Williams E (ed.) Human Remains: Conservation, Retrieval, and Analysis, pp. 113–118. London: British Archaeology Research Council. Shafer HJ, Marek M, and Reinhard KJ (1989) Mimbres burial with associated colon remains from the NAN Ranch Ruin, New Mexico. Journal of Field Archaeology 16: 17–30.

Excavation and Recording Techniques Tracy L Prowse, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, IL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary axial skeleton The central portion of the skeleton made up of the cranium, vertebral column, ribs, and sternum. consolidant A chemical substance that is applied to the surface of an object and acts to stabilize fragile material.

datum A predetermined, fixed reference point against which all vertical and horizontal measurements are made on a site. It is usually a permanent feature on the site. flotation An archaeological technique used to recover trace remnants of materials like plants, shells, and charcoal by adding water to soil samples and allowing the lighter materials to float to the surface for collection. geomagnetometry A geophysical method that detects distortions in the Earth’s magnetic field caused by subsurface features like pits, ditches, hearths, and other structures. ground penetrating radar (GPR) A geophysical method of subsurface detection that sends electromagnetic pulses through the soil that reflect back any significant changes in soil caused by the presence of pits or structures, etc. ossuary A container or large structure (e.g., a vault) used to house human skeletal remains. resistivity survey A geophysical method that measures the degree of resistance in the soil to the passage of an electric current between two electrodes. Features that retain more moisture, such as pits, will have lower resistivity than more permanent features such as walls or roads. total station A mapping instrument that electronically records data collected in the field (distance, elevation, and angle), which can then be downloaded directly to a computer. transit An instrument used to plot the location of trenches or mapping features in an excavation. It records the horizontal distance and vertical angle between a predetermined reference point and the feature being mapped.

Introduction Concern for the dead is a pervasive characteristic of all human societies and burials provide a wealth of information about past human societies. We can infer mortuary ritual, social status, as well as attitudes toward the dead (and the living) from burials and their material contents. In addition, the human skeletal remains recovered from these burials can provide invaluable information on palaeodemography, diet, health, and disease in past populations. However, archaeologists must also be aware of the legal and ethical considerations when excavating human remains. The ways that human societies bury their dead vary dramatically over space and time, so there is no universally applicable method for excavating a burial. Excavation methods need to be adaptable to different types of burials encountered.

Locating Burials/Cemeteries Systematic surface survey can be used to look for evidence of burials, such as surface scatters of bones or artifacts associated with burials, but this applies only if the burials have been disturbed. In many archaeological contexts, there is no longer any evidence of a burial visible above the soil, so various geophysical methods can be employed to detect the presence of burials. Noninvasive technologies like

Excavation and Recording Techniques 945

ground-penetrating radar (GPR), geomagnetometry, and resistivity surveys can be used to detect features under the soil, although the success of each method depends on a number of variables, including soil conditions and the characteristics of the burials (e.g., simple pits vs. chamber tombs).

Burial Types There are a number of terms used to describe the general categories of burials encountered in an archaeological context. In a ‘primary burial’, all the bones are in their normal anatomical position, indicating that the individual has not been disturbed since the original interment. A ‘secondary burial’ refers to a collection of bones that were buried or had decomposed in one location, and then were disinterred/ collected for reburial in another location. This type of burial can usually be distinguished from a primary burial, because the bones are typically disarticulated and some elements may be missing. A ‘multiple burial’ consists of two or more individuals in the same grave. These individuals may have been buried at the same time (e.g., a mass grave), or there may have been a series of depositions over time (e.g., an ossuary). An ‘inhumation’ refers to the intentional placement of an individual in the ground. A ‘cremation’ is a burial that shows evidence of burning; this may have occurred prior to burial or an individual may have been cremated in situ. A cremation can be distinguished by signs of burning in the burial, as well as the fragmentary and discolored appearance of the bones, depending on the intensity and duration of the fire (Figure 1).

Burial Excavation Proper excavation of a burial requires time; it must be done carefully and methodically. The objective is to completely expose the skeleton and all associated

artifacts, while minimizing damage to the skeleton by extended exposure to the elements. It is essential to have an osteologist as a member of a burial excavation project from the early planning stages, particularly when dealing with complex multiple burials or infant and subadult skeletons. At the very least, excavators should have thorough osteological training so they can quickly and accurately identify bones as they are being uncovered. Whether excavating a single burial or multiple burials in a cemetery, the main priority is to maximize the amount of information obtained, because once the burial is excavated its original context is lost. Proper recording of all stages of excavation is crucial for accurate interpretation of the results. The entire site should initially be surveyed using a ‘total station’ or ‘transit’, which maps the location of the site and each individual feature on the site in relation to a chosen reference point, or ‘datum’. When excavating a single burial, the first step is to determine the limits of the burial. Clearing soil from above the burial can be done with picks and shovels. Heavy machinery can be used under certain conditions, particularly when excavating cemeteries that require large surface areas to be exposed. Excavation using heavy machinery must proceed slowly in order to watch for the first traces of burials in the ground. Opening up a relatively large area in a cemetery excavation may help to delineate spatial relationships between the burials (Figure 2). There may be an obvious burial structure to expose, but if there is none then the archaeologist should look for evidence of a burial outline through localized changes in soil color or consistency. All aspects of the burial should be recorded before the skeleton is exposed, including dimensions, orientation, depth from surface, and distance from the datum (measured at both ends of the burial). The burial should be mapped on a scale drawing and photographed using both digital and

Figure 1 Cremation burial showing evidence of burning (black) and cremated bone.

946 Excavation and Recording Techniques

Figure 2 Cemetery excavation with all of the burials exposed in a trench, so that the orientation of the burials and their spatial relationships can be documented.

SLR (single-lens reflex) cameras (see Burials: Dietary Sampling Methods; Osteological Methods). If excavating a cemetery, the number of burials opened up at any given time should be determined by the number of excavators available. Partially or fully excavated skeletons should not be left exposed for extended periods of time, so each burial should be fully excavated and removed by one team before another burial is started. Exposure of the skeleton should proceed by carefully removing soil in horizontal layers across the entire surface of the burial. As the bones are encountered, they should not be completely exposed until the location of all the bones has been determined, so that the excavator has an idea of the orientation and position of the skeleton. The characteristics of the soil inside the burial should be recorded and any material found in the burial fill should be recorded separately from material found outside the burial. Excavation tools should include smaller tools such as trowels, brushes of various sizes, bamboo skewers, wood sculpting tools, small spoons, and dental picks. Dental picks are useful tools because they are strong and can be used for fine work, but they can easily damage the skeleton so it is best to use less destructive tools like wood carving tools, skewers, and brushes when clearing soil adhering to the bones. If the skeleton is going to be sampled for biochemical or ancient DNA analysis, the bones should be handled as little as possible and ideally surgical gloves should be worn when touching the bones. It is best to work from the center of the skeleton outward, so that exposed bones are not covered with dirt from the middle of the burial. Hands and feet should be excavated last, because they are easily

disturbed once exposed. All the soil inside the burial should be screened for small artifacts, teeth, and other small finds. The entire skeleton and any associated grave goods should be exposed, so that the position of the artifacts in relation to the skeleton can be recorded. As excavation proceeds, the skeleton should be protected as much as possible from extended exposure to the elements, as this can damage the bones. All of the dirt around the bones should be cleared, so that the bones are clearly visible for photography and drawing. Soil samples should also be taken from inside any vessels for ‘flotation’ analysis. Once the skeleton and associated artifacts are completely exposed, they should be drawn and photographed in situ. All photographs should include a label, a scale, and a North arrow in the image (Figure 3). The area surrounding the skeleton should be cleared of any tools, equipment, and loose soil before the photograph is taken. A series of photographs from a variety of angles and distances should be taken; never rely on only one photograph. Detailed information about the position and orientation of the skeleton should be recorded. Standard terms used to describe the position of the skeletal elements include: ‘extended’, indicating that the legs are at 180 in relation to the ‘axial skeleton’; ‘semi-flexed’, indicating that the angle of the legs is between 90 and 180 to the axial skeleton; and ‘flexed’, indicating an angle of less than 90 . In addition, the position of the arms should also be recorded (e.g., at the sides, crossed at the chest or pelvis, etc.). The position of the skeleton (on its back, front, or laying to one side), the orientation of the main axis, maximum length and width, as well as depth from surface (at the cranium and feet) should also be recorded (Figure 4). Dimensions of the

Excavation and Recording Techniques 947

Figure 3 Primary burial.

Figure 4 Measuring the location of skeletal elements in a burial using a plumb bob and measuring tape. Note the use of an umbrella to protect the burial from the sun.

excavated burial pit and distance from the datum should be measured. The exact position of each object in the relation to the skeleton should be described, measured, photographed, and recorded. Standard forms can be used to collectively record all of this information, but written observations should still be recorded. Once the burial has been extensively recorded, removal of the skeleton and associated artifacts can take place. If the bones are extremely fragile, it may be necessary to consolidate the bones in situ before attempting removal. Any type of ‘consolidant’ used should be soluble, so it can be removed at a later date if required. Further soil may have to be excavated from underneath the bones in order to remove them; they should never be forcibly extracted from the ground. Label each bone as it is removed

(e.g., right femur, left femur), and keep paired bones in separate containers. Right and left sides of the ribs, hands, and feet should be stored separately. The soil in the pelvic region should be carefully examined and screened for the presence of fetal skeletal remains, kidney stones, or possible traces of intestinal parasites. The cranium should be removed with care and the surrounding soil should be examined for loose teeth or other small bones, like the bones of the inner ear. Once all material has been removed, screen the remaining soil in the burial to recover any small bones or bone fragments. There are a variety of materials recommended to transport and store skeletal material, including aluminum foil, acid-free paper, and paper, cloth, or plastic bags. Regardless of the material used to transport the material back to the field house or laboratory,

948 BUTCHERY AND KILL SITES

label each bone or bone assemblage with the site name, burial number, skeletal element(s) and date. All the bones should be laid out in a protected, shaded area for cleaning and should be allowed to dry completely. Long-term storage of skeletal material and artifacts should be in labeled containers that are suitable for fragile material and that will not deteriorate over time. Proper excavation, documentation, and conservation of burials and their contents will ensure that we obtain the most evidence from these invaluable sources of information about our past. See also: Burials: Dietary Sampling Methods; Osteological Methods; Remote Sensing Approaches: Aerial; Remote Sensing Approaches: Geophysical.

Burials/Interpretation

Further Reading Brothwell D (1981) Digging Up Bones. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Buikstra JE and Ubelaker DH (1994) Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains. Fayetteville, AR: Arkansas Archaeological Survey. Dupras TL, Schultz JJ, Wheeler SM, and Williams LJ (2006) Forensic Recovery of Human Remains: Archaeological Approaches. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Mays S (1999) The Archaeology of Human Bones. New York: Routledge. Pearson MP (1999) The Archaeology of Death and Burial. Texas: Texas A&M University Press. Roberts CA, Lee F, and Bintliff J (1989) Burial Archaeology: Current Research, Methods and Developments. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ubelaker DH (1989) Human Skeletal Remains: Excavation, Analysis, Interpretation. Washington, DC: Taraxcum Press.

See: Engendered Archaeology; Social Inequality, Development of.

BUTCHERY AND KILL SITES Manuel Domı´nguez-Rodrigo, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Butchery Butchery is one of the oldest human activities that can be archaeologically traced. Traditionally, butchery was inferred from the spatial association of stone tools and bones in archaeological sites. However, Binford questioned this assumption, and the recent application of modern taphonomic techniques to the early East African Olduvai Bed I sites has proved that the assumption is unwarranted. Experiments and ethnographic observation show that butchery leaves physical traces on bones in the form of cut marks and percussion marks. Cut marks show a diversity of forms: filleting marks created through defleshing and eviscerating, scraping marks generated when removing tissues (meat scraps, periostium) strongly adhered to the bone, and chopping marks produced when disarticulating long limb bones or cutting through tendons and ligaments. Location of cut marks on bones is informative of each of these butchering activities. Evisceration of

carcasses produces cut marks on the ventral side of ribs and vertebral bodies. Tongue removal leaves cut marks on the lower end of the lingual mandibular ramus. Defleshing of the axial skeleton produces cut marks on ribs and vertebral arcs, bodies, and apophyses. Removal of flesh from pelvises leaves abundant marks on the ischium and ilium. Removal of flesh from scapulae produces long cut marks on the scapular blade parallel to the axis of the bone. Dismembering of the scapula from the humerus produces cut marks on the neck of this element. Marks on epiphyses from long limb bones and on carpal and tarsal bones are the result of disarticulation. Marks on the near-epiphyseal sections of long limb bones can be produced both during defleshing and dismembering. Only the exact location of marks on these sections (craniocaudal and lateral–mesial) can provide more information to reconstruct which behavior was responsible for their occurrence. Filleting of large muscle packages produces cut marks on the shafts (namely, mid-shafts) of long limb bones. Frequencies of cut marks, as well as their anatomical location (element and section), are also crucial to reconstruct strategies of carcass acquisition. Experiments reproducing early access to fully fleshed carcasses and late access to abandoned felid kills, reproducing hominid hunting and passive scavenging behaviors, have

BUTCHERY AND KILL SITES 949

shown a very distinctive pattern of cut mark frequency and anatomical location in both scenarios. Scavenging is reflected in most cut marks occurring in higher frequencies in distal limb bones and on long bone ends as a result of removing the marginal scraps of flesh that survived carnivore initial consumption of carcasses. Carnivores pull flesh off from carcasses leaving most mid-shafts scrap-free, which explains why the surviving scraps are found on the ends (epiphyses and nearepiphyses), reflected in the location of cut marks. In this situation, humeri and femora rarely bear cut marks, and never bear them on their mid-shafts. Having access to fully fleshed carcasses, in contrast, is reflected by humeri and femora showing the highest frequency of cut marks, very closely followed by tibiae and radii. In this case, mid-shaft fragments are the most cut-marked bone sections, as a result of cutting through the meat that overlies them. This is a clear reflection of hominid butchering behavior, not just random scarring of bones with stone tools. The number of cut marks on the bones does not necessarily reflect the number of strokes made by the butcher; rather, cut marks occur most frequently on specific bone sections because these sections are the most exposed to the stone tool or because the flesh on these sections is more difficult to remove. Cut marks appear more frequently on certain loci of bones because flesh is more strongly attached to their surfaces (e.g., linea aspera of femora). This shows that cut mark occurrence on bones is the combined result of three elements: the butcher’s skill, bone surface exposure to the stone tool during butchery, and distribution of flesh on bone. These three characteristics, especially the last two, are substantially different in scenarios of butchery of fleshed carcasses (obtained through primary access) and defleshed carcasses (obtained through passive scavenging from felid kills in Africa). Therefore, the contrasting results in cut mark distributions in each scenario should come as no surprise. Bone breakage for marrow extraction is one of the final butchery processes. It leaves traces in the form of percussion marks, very wide percussion notches, and oblique breakage planes with acute angles. Assuming an assemblage in which humans broke open all bones, percussion marks will be found on between 10% and 30% of all long limb bone fragments, and there will be one notch every 6–7 specimens. Notches created by humans are varied. Complete notches are the most abundant. Double overlapping and double opposing notches are represented in much lower frequencies than in carnivore-broken assemblages. Any assemblage created as a result of hominid butchery should exhibit a combination of the above physical attributes resulting from the modification of bones during the butchery process.

Modern Butchery Sites Ethnographic observations of large animal kill sites of modern Hadza hunter-gatherers in Africa have shown that such sites can sometimes extend to distances of some hundred square meters, with dense concentrations of bone refuse near water sources. For carcasses smaller than 400 kg, bones selected for transport to home bases and those discarded at kill sites vary according to the number of carriers, distance to home base, time of day, and other variables. In animals larger than 400 kg, carcasses are defleshed and marrow is consumed at the site, whereas flesh is transported to home bases without the extra weight of bones. These kill sites thus preserve most of the animal skeletal parts. About 80–90% of all skeletal elements are left at the kill. Axial and cranial remains from these animals remain clustered together, whereas long limb bones may be scattered over a broader area. In contrast, animals smaller than 400 kg undergo a more variable scattering process. No more than 30% of bones from animals between 50 and 400 kg are abandoned at kills. Transport decisions are not related to prey body size but are cultural decisions. Animals of the same size may be transported differently. For instance, when an eland is hunted, Hadza abandon limb bones preferentially over axial bones. When Hadza obtain buffalo, limb bones are transported while axial bones are discarded at the kill site. Given the set of physical and cultural variables conditioning carcass part transport and discard, skeletal part profiles are of limited application to distinguish transported (home base) versus discarded (kill site) carcasses of this size range. Taphonomic indicators of a butchering site can also be documented in modern forager kill sites. Given that carcass remains are not widely shared in these loci, bones from the same individual tend to form a spatially discrete cluster. When several individuals are obtained simultaneously or at different intervals, bone clusters from different animals are independent or minimally overlapping. Importantly, anatomical sections frequently are abandoned articulated. Bones discarded at home bases rarely appear articulated, whereas they are common in kill sites.

Archaeological Butchery and Kill Sites The evidence of carcass butchery by humans is old. Cut-marked bones found both in Gona and in Middle Awash (Ethiopia) show that systematic butchery might have begun around 2.5 million years ago. The small sample of cut-marked bone does not allow complete interpretation of the butchery practices of hominids at that time, but it clearly shows that they were defleshing (abundant number of cut marks on

950 BUTCHERY AND KILL SITES

mid-shafts of upper and intermediate limb bones), dismembering, removing tongue, and even (at least, occasionally) eviscerating (Figure 1). Archaeologists still do not know if the sites where these cut-marked bones were found are kill-butchering sites or other type of sites where the remains were transported from the loci of carcass obtainment. By 1.8 million years ago, a few sites in Kenya and Tanzania have evidence that hominids were processing carcasses in different types of sites. Sites where animals were initially obtained and butchered are not documented as well as those where those animals were repeatedly transported from loci of obtainment. The whole range of butchering practices is documented: defleshing, dismembering, eviscerating, tongue removal, and marrow processing. Traditionally, assemblages consisting of stone tools and bones from a single animal or several animals of the same species have been interpreted as ‘butchering sites’. The oldest butchering sites thus documented were FLK North 6 at Olduvai (Tanzania) and FxJj3 (HAS) in Koobi Fora (Kenya), about 1.7–1.8 million years ago, where the remains of an elephant and hippopotamus, respectively, appeared spatially associated with stone tools. ‘Butchering sites’ are abundant during the Early and Middle Pleistocene (Table 1). Associations of stone tools and megafaunal remains have been widely documented in Olorgesailie and Koobi Fora (Kenya), Fejej, Gadeb and Middle Awash (Ethiopia), and Dandero (Eritrea). However, natural processes may also account for the spatial associations of lithic and bone remains. Most of these sites appear in alluvial contexts where natural clusters of bones from hippo and elephant carcasses are frequent, given the preferential use of these habitats by those animals. The taphonomic analyses of archaeological ‘butchering sites’ from this time period have revealed remains

Figure 1 Electronic microscope (SEM) photo of several cut marks found in a 2.5-million-year-old bone from Gona (Ethiopia).

from different taxa found together in a single site (see Taphonomy). In addition, in most of these sites, not a single bone showed any modification created by human butchering activities. In several sites, such as FLK North 6, Mwanganda, or Karonga, it has been observed that artifacts underlie the elephant bones. This suggests a deposition of artifacts previous to (and independent of) the deposition of the elephants. A recent revision of FLK North 6 has shown that the lithics and bones in the assemblage are not functionally related and the spatial association is inadvertent. The author has also revised the Gadeb butchering sites and the depositional histories of bones and stone tools are different and independent. From a taphonomic point of view, none of these assemblages can be interpreted as solid evidence of butchering sites. The only sustainable claims of butchering sites in Africa from this time period are from the elephant site at Olorgesailie (Kenya) (an exclusive accumulation of an elephant and lithic artifacts whose functional link is pending taphonomic confirmation) and Peninj (Tanzania). This is also evidenced later in the Herto sites (end of Middle Pleistocene) in Ethiopia, where hippo remains associated with stone tools bear cut marks. However, this reductionist view, focused on cut marks alone, prevents us from considering some archaeological sites where butchery of large fauna might have occurred. Modern observations of elephant and hippo carcass butchery show that a complete carcass may be butchered without leaving a single trace. The problem that archaeologists face is: how to differentiate these sites from others where the spatial association of lithic and bones is accidental? No answer to this question can be currently provided. This problem is exacerbated, for example, in European Middle Pleistocene open-air sites, where elephant remains are frequently mixed with bones from other animals. In most of these sites, the elephant bones have been interpreted as naturally deposited, given their fragmentary state. Following this assumption, the fact that large fauna remains may naturally appear within bone assemblages of other animals reinforces the idea that this could also be the case in sites where only megafaunal remains and artifacts exist. Both megafauna and hominids were very active in the same alluvial environments and spatial associations of lithic and bones may be completely accidental, as several sites have shown. In this case, the only evidence of butchery that is scientifically reliable is the presence of cut and percussion marks, and any physical signatures of hammerstone bone breakage, meaning that several potential butchering sites are likely archaeologically invisible. Peninj preserves some 1.3-million-year-old butchering sites. One of them (ST4) is characterized by the

BUTCHERY AND KILL SITES 951 Table 1 Some of the most important ‘butchering’ sites documented from Early Pleistocene to Holocene Site

Animal

Age

Taphonomic evidence

FLK North 6 (Olduvai, Tanzania) Deinotherium site (Olduvai, Tanzania) Fejej Fj1 (Ethiopia) Buia (Eritrea) Dandero (Eritrea) Barogali (Djibouti) FxJj3 (HAS) Gadeb (Ethiopia) ST4 (Peninj, Tanzania) Mwanganda (Malawi) Olorgesailie (N15) Olorgesailie (Hippo Banda site) Olorgesailie (DE/89) Middle Awash (Herto) Gesher Benot Ya’ aqov (II-6) (Israel) Clacton-on-Sea (England) La Cotte de Saint Brelade (Jersey) Karlich Seefer Boxgrove (Horse site) Boxgrove (Rhino site)

Elephas recki Elephas recki Elephas recki Elephas recki Elephas recki Elephas recki Hexaprotodon karumensis Hexaprotodon karumensis Giraffa sp. Elephas recki Elephas recki Hippopotamus gorgops Theropitecus oswaldi Hexaprotodon Palaeoxodon antiquus Palaeoxodon antiquus Mammuthus primigenius Palaeoxodon antiquus Equus ferus Stephanorhinus hundsheimensis Palaeoxodon antiquus Palaeoxodon antiquus Equus Palaeoxodon antiquus Palaeoxodon antiquus Palaeoxodon antiquus Palaeoxodon antiquus Palaeoxodon antiquus Palaeoxodon antiquus Palaeoxodon antiquus Palaeoxodon antiquus Mammuthus primigenius Mammuthus primigenius Mammuthus primigenius Mammuthus primigenius Mammuthus americanum Mammuthus columbi Gomphothere Mammut americanum Mammut americanum Mammut americanum Mammut americanum Mammut americanum Mammut americanum Bison bison Bison bison Bison bison Bison bison Bison bison Bison bison Bison bison Bison bison Bison bison Bison bison Bison bison Bison bison Bison bison Bison bison

Early Pleistocene Early Pleistocene Early Pleistocene Early Pleistocene Early Pleistocene Early Pleistocene Early Pleistocene Early Pleistocene Early Pleistocene Early Pleistocene Early Pleistocene Early Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene

Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent Confirmed Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent Confirmed Absent Confirmed Confirmed

Middle Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene Middle Pleistocene Upper Pleistocene Upper Pleistocene Upper Pleistocene Upper Pleistocene Upper Pleistocene Upper Pleistocene Upper Pleistocene Upper Pleistocene Upper Pleistocene Upper Pleistocene Upper Pleistocene Upper Pleistocene Upper Pleistocene Holocene Holocene Holocene Holocene Holocene Holocene Holocene Holocene Holocene Holocene Holocene Holocene Holocene Holocene

Confirmed Absent Confirmed Absent Absent Absent Absent Confirmed Confirmed Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent Confirmed Confirmed Confirmed Confirmed Confirmed Confirmed Confirmed Confirmed Absent Confirmed

Bilzingsleben (Germany) Lehringen (Germany) Scho¨ningen (Germany) Venosa Notarchirico (B) (Italy) La Polledrara di Cecanibbio (Italy) Isernia la Pineta (Italy) Casel di Guido (Italy) Torralba (Spain) Ambrona (Spain) Arriaga II (Spain) Aridos (Spain) Tomsk (Russia) Krakow-Nowa Huta (Poland) Skarati (Poland) Saskaton (Canada) Grundel (USA) Cooperton (USA) Taima taima (Venezuela) Kimmswick (Missouri) Russell Farm (USA) New Hudson (USA) Van sicke (USA) Heisler (USA) Cole (USA) Garnsey (USA) Horner (USA) Casper (USA) Agate Basin (USA) Hudson-Meng (USA) Jones-Miller (USA) Olsen-Chubuck (USA) Folsom (USA) Vore (USA) Powder River site (USA) Hawken (USA) Kobold (USA) Glenrock Buffalo Jump (USA) Ruby (USA)

Confirmed taphonomic evidence refers to presence of cut or percussion marks.

Absent Confirmed Confirmed Confirmed

952 BUTCHERY AND KILL SITES

partial semi-articulated distribution of different anatomical units of an extinct giraffe, with spatially differentiated distribution of taxa, which resembles the distribution of bones in Hadza kill sites and might be indicative of the place having acted as a butchering spot (Figure 2). The spatial association of bones and stone tools would support this (given the presence of cut marks and percussion marks), as well as the low density of artifacts and the presence of clusters of articulated bones. Elements in the home bases of modern foragers tend to be more widely mixed and dispersed. Pseudoarticulation of elements in home bases is also marginal or nonexistent. Several anatomical units of at least three different animals have been accumulated and manipulated by hominids in a spatially restricted area of the base of the ST4 site. The evidence from the ST4 site supports that Lower Pleistocene hominids were processing carcasses and not just dismembering bones. The virtual lack of any physical evidence of butchery of megafauna during the early Pleistocene contrasts with the presence of cut-marked bone at European Middle Pleistocene butchery sites. In Table 1, more than one out of every three sites from this period is assumed to represent megafaunal butchery episodes, have butchery traces in the form of cut marks. This supports the presence of butchering sites during this time, although none of them could be called ‘kill sites’, since the only documented hominid activity is butchery (in some cases, marginal butchery). The scarcity of artifacts at some of these sites, such as Torralba

and Ambrona, is more suggestive of marginal butchery than complete butchery of elephant skeletons. The abundant presence of artifacts at other localities, such as the Boxgrove sites, is suggestive of more intensive butchery of large fauna (rhinoceros) and smaller animals (horse). Either way, access to these animals through scavenging cannot be differentiated from hunting. Therefore, the term ‘kill site’ applied to megafauna is only appropriate for Holocene sites, especially those occurring in historical times, where we have a more accurate record of how these animals were obtained. The Torralba and Ambrona sites, formerly interpreted as mass kills of proboscideans, have been reanalyzed from a taphonomic point of view. Most of the elephant bone breakage is diagenetic; when there was green breakage, it was caused by carnivores. Very few remains bear traces of hominid butchery, and weathering stages of bones together with detailed microstratigraphic analysis of both sites show that carcass accumulation was due to long processes involving the deposition of single carcasses during long time intervals. Hominids seem to have played a very marginal role in the accumulations of bones at both sites, which are due to natural causes. The only Middle Pleistocene site that could represent a mass kill site is La Cotte de Saint Brelade, in the island of Jersey close to Normandy, where a pile of bones of woolly mammoth and rhino, some of them bearing cut marks, were located at the bottom of a cliff. It has been interpreted as the result of Middle

40759000 N

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Freshly broken bones 40755000 19732000

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Figure 2 Portion of the excavation of the ST4 butchery site at Peninj (Tanzania). Most bones belong to a pigmy giraffe that was butchered by hominids. Bones appeared on a dry river bed. Most freshly broken bones occurred around a lava boulder that seems to have acted as the anvil where those bones were broken. The giraffe bones bear cut marks and percussion marks as a result of butchery (redrawn from Dominguez-Rodrigo et al., 2007).

BUTCHERY AND KILL SITES 953

Pleistocene hominids having driven herds of these animals to the cliff from which they fell and died. Two distinctive bone piles found in layers 3 and 6 (isotopic stage 6) of 20 mammoths and 5 rhinos comprise virtually all the fauna of these levels. A smaller frequency of stone tools than the other levels where such bone piles do not exist suggests more episodic or brief occupation as expected at butchery sites. The rhino sample is mostly composed of infantile and juvenile individuals. Mammoths are represented by all age groups. Some of the mammoths show partial skeletons. Cut marks have been found on several bones of these animals. Cut marks have been observed on proximal ends of tusks (removal), on scapulas, and long bone shafts (defleshing). Given the presence of this mass of animals inside the ravine at the foot of a 70 m cliff, the previous characteristics support a mass death event (or more than one) better than isolated death events for each individual. Animals grazing upland plateau would have been driven along a headland to the edge of the cliff where they would have fallen. Something similar has been suggested for Le Solutre (France) toward the end of the Upper Pleistocene, where a bone pile of horses was excavated. Bone piles containing individuals of the same species have also been documented in prehistoric North America (Table 1). Holocene kill sites in this geographic region are very abundant. Most of them are mass buffalo kill sites. In this case, carcasses of dozens of buffaloes have been unearthed at a single spot. Archaeologists working on these sites have differentiated between a ‘kill’ site and a ‘butchering’ site. Kill sites are identified in proximity of a natural or contrived trap; the bone bed consists of bones from a single species, showing a high degree of articulated bones, with a corresponding proportion of butchering tools; and bones accumulated are frequently unbroken. Butchering sites are spots with smaller density of remains, absence of those elements usually discarded at kill sites (e.g., skulls), a lower frequency of articulated elements, and lack of complete skeletons. However, some of these assertions are ambiguous, since they also occur in natural palaeontological associations. These mass kill sites have been interpreted as the result of humans driving herds of bison to natural traps where they are collectively hunted. Corral structures have been discovered at some of these sites (e.g., Ruby). Most frequently, these sites occur in natural traps like streams or arroyos (e.g., Hawken), narrow valleys or sand dunes (e.g., Casper), bottom of cliffs (e.g., Glenrock Buffalo Jump), karsts (e.g., Vore), etc. Some sites, like the latter, show a thick bone level representing a single season kill of hundreds of animals.

The most widespread type of zooarchaeological analysis at these sites is skeletal part representation. Other data such as cut mark frequency and distribution, bone breakage, and intervention of other nonhuman agents in bone modification are only marginally considered. By taking anatomical data into consideration, it can be observed that there is a large variation in element representation. This suggests that either the functionality of these sites was different among one another, taphonomic processes affecting site formation were also diverse, or that hunting techniques were more varied than historically documented. Butchering sites of larger animals, such as mammoth, have also been documented in North America during the end of the Pleistocene (see Table 1). In most cases, remains belong to single individuals, which suggest that hunting techniques for mammoths and bison were different. In general, compared to other types of sites (workshops, central places), butchering sites are not abundant in the archaeological record. Table 1 summed up the most representative ‘kill’ or ‘butchering’ sites for 2.5 million years of archaeological record. It can be argued that butchering sites during the Middle Pleistocene can be taphonomically confirmed. In contrast, very few sites of this type can be documented for earlier periods. During the Upper Pleistocene and Holocene, butchering and kill sites are more abundant and can be more easily confirmed from a taphonomic point of view. See also: Extinctions of Big Game; Taphonomy;

Vertebrate Analysis.

Further Reading Binford L (1981) Bones: Ancient Men, Modern Myths. New York: Academic Press. Callow P and Cornford JM (1986) La Cotte de St Brelade. Norwich: Geo Books. Dominguez-Rodrigo M (2002) Hunting and scavenging by early humans: The state of the debate. Journal of World Prehistory 16: 1–54. Dominguez-Rodrigo M, Alcala L, and Luque L (eds) (2007) Peninj: A Research Project on the Archaeology of Human Origins (1995–2005). Massachussetts: Brill. Nitecki MH and Nitecki DV (1987) The Evolution of Human Hunting. New York: Plenum. Pickering TR and Egeland CP (2006) Experimental pattern of hammerstone percussion damage on bones: Implications for inferences of carcass processing by humans. Journal of Archaeological Science 33: 459–469. Pitts M and Roberts M (1998) Fairweather Eden. London: Arrow Books. Speth JD (1983) Bison Kills and Bone Counts. Decision Making by Ancient Hunters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

C CARBON-14 DATING Tom Higham, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Radiocarbon dating (14C dating or carbon dating) is the method of choice for the reliable chronometric analysis of archaeological material spanning 55 000 years to the modern era. The technique was developed in the late 1940s by Willard F. Libby and two graduate students (Arnold and Anderson), at the University of Chicago. There are three principal isotopes of carbon (the others being the stable isotopes 13C and 12 C constituting 1.11% and 98.89% of global carbon, respectively). The radioactive isotope of carbon (14C) is formed in the upper atmosphere (c. 10 km alt.) through the secondary effects of cosmic ray bombardment upon the isotope 14N. The replacement of a proton with a neutron in the nucleus of 14N results in an atom of 14C. Following production, 14C is rapidly oxidized and enters the biosphere principally through plant photosynthesis as 14C-labeled 14CO2 and thence to animal lifeways and all living organisms. The 14C content of living organisms was assumed from the beginning of the development of the technique to be in equilibrium with the level of atmospheric 14C, although it became apparent later that this was not quite true (see below). As the level of 14C in living organisms decays, so it is replenished through the uptake of food and nutrients. When death of an organism occurs, however, no further replenishment of 14C takes place and only decay continues. Radiocarbon dating is based initially on the measurement of residual radiocarbon content. This task is often challenging because the proportion of radiocarbon compared 13C and 12C is very low indeed (14C is 10–12 to 10–15 of the level of 12C). A conventional radiocarbon age is calculated on the basis of the ‘Libby’ half-life of 5568  30 years, expressed in years BP (‘before present’, with 0 BP equivalent to 1950 AD). Dates are expressed as an age and a standard deviation (or  value), which represents plus or minus one standard deviation (68% probability) from

the mean. Radiocarbon dates are measured with reference to modern reference standards, usually the oxalic acid II standard, the ratio of whose 14C activity is tied to the primary radiocarbon standard which is 1890 wood. In the 1970s the actual half-life was shown to be closer to 5730  40 years, but for reasons of historical continuity the Libby half-life was retained: to change it would have made comparisons with previous dates problematic. The calibration of radiocarbon dates makes this issue redundant, since the tree rings that make up the calibration curve and the radiocarbon dates on unknown materials are both calculated using Libby’s half-life. Three methods of measuring radiocarbon are currently used. Intercomparison exercises undertaken by the international radiocarbon community show no demonstrable differences between any of the three methods when dating test samples. Two of the methods are ‘classical’ or ‘conventional’ methods, which measure the decay of 14C via the emission of beta particles (electrons). This is mostly by liquid scintillation counting (LSC), using benzene, or gas proportional counting (GPC), using purified CO2 gas, both produced from the radiocarbon sample. The third is a direct ion counting technique, which uses the kind of particle accelerator originally used in nuclear physics research. This method, accelerator mass spectrometry (or AMS), has revolutionized this field of dating since the first measurements were achieved in 1977 (Figure 1). Because AMS enables the direct measurement of individual 14 C atoms, the weight of material required is substantially reduced. In addition, the measurement time is much less. AMS can routinely date samples of 1mg carbon and, in some circumstances, down to 100–200 mg of carbon. For archaeology, this has meant that sample types previously undateable, such as single hairs from mummies or individual grains of domesticated wheat or barley, can now be dated. Typical starting weights required for AMS are 10–20 mgs of seed/charcoal/wood, 500 mgs of bone, and 10–20 mgs of shell carbonate. These weights are

956 CARBON-14 DATING

Detector CO2 ion source

Graphite ion source

High voltage accelerator

Figure 1 The accelerator mass spectrometer at the University of Oxford.

Radiocarbon determination (BP)

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5500 OxA-15943 (5445⫾37 BP)

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Calibrated date (cal BC) Figure 2 Section of the INTCAL04 calibration curve showing fluctuations in the levels of radiocarbon. The calibration of a typical radiocarbon date is shown. The calibration of a typical radiocarbon date is shown. In this instance the ‘wiggle’ in the curve yields a biomodal calibrated distribution of 4342–4317 BC (28% probability) and 4298–4262 BC (40% probability).

c. 1000 times less than the weights required by conventional counting systems. The requirement for calibration of the radiocarbon timescale was evident by the 1960s when variations in the 14C content of the atmosphere were demonstrated in tree rings of known age (Figure 2). These variations cause the level of 14C to differ from the calendrical timescale and are due to the long-term influences of geomagnetic variation in the Earth’s

dipole and the short-term influences of the geomagnetic intensity of the Sun, which ameliorates the amount of cosmic radiation reaching Earth. Conversion of radiocarbon into calendar years is therefore required, and may be achieved using a ‘calibration curve’. A calibration curve is a plot of the atmospheric 14C content as a function of calendar time, with the calendar time known precisely and usually derived from a single-year proxy such as dendrochronologically dated tree rings or uranium–thorium dated pristine corals. The latest internationally agreed calibration curve (INTCAL04) spans 0–26 000 cal BP (Figure 2). The 0–12.4 cal BP part of the calibration curve comes principally from the US bristlecone pine, the German pine/oak, and the Irish oak dendrochronological sequences. Between 12 400 and 26 000 years ago BP, marine corals and foraminifera are used. Beyond this, a series of marine and terrestrial records show some significant variation between them, which means that there is currently no internationally agreed curve that can be used for calibration beyond this time. It is anticipated that within 5 years it may be possible to calibrate over the entire 55 000 years of the radiocarbon timescale. A wide range of material from archaeological contexts is dateable, since carbon is so common in the Earth’s biosphere and readily forms compounds with many other elements. While some dating methods utilize single materials or two types of material at best, radiocarbon is applicable to a vast array of different, commonly found archaeological materials. In recent years this range has been extended by developments enabling the reliable dating of cremated

CARBON-14 DATING 957

bone, pollen, carbon in iron artifacts, and insect chitin. Routinely dated samples include bone, wood and wood charcoal, marine and freshwater shell, sediment carbon, textiles, tissues, resins, hair, and soil carbon. Reservoir effects are increasingly important in understanding the potential variation in radiocarbon ages from archaeological sites. A so-called ‘apparent age’ is obtained when a radiocarbon sample obtains carbon from a different source (or reservoir) than atmospheric carbon. A shellfish alive today in a lake within a limestone catchment, for instance, will yield a radiocarbon date that may be excessively old. The reason for this anomaly is that the limestone, which is weathered and dissolved into bicarbonate, has no radioactive carbon in it, so it acts to dilute the 14 C activity of the lake in comparison with the level of 14C activity elsewhere. The most common reservoir effect is the marine effect. The apparent age of oceanic water is caused both by the delay in exchange rates between atmospheric CO2 and ocean bicarbonate, and the dilution effect caused by the mixing of surface waters with upwelled deep waters which are very old. A reservoir correction must therefore be made to radiocarbon dates of shell of fish to account for this difference. These corrections are based on marine organisms of known age that are radiocarbon dated and then the results compared with their expected age. Human bone may sometimes be a problematic medium for dating in some instances due to the human consumption of fish, the 14C content of which will reflect the ocean reservoir and render the human dates too old. Accurate radiocarbon dating begins with the archaeological investigation and the identification of the relationship between sample and event. Taphonomy (the science of ‘embedding’ of materials in archaeological sites) becomes critically important. Essentially every archaeological object must be assumed to be residual

unless clearly shown otherwise (e.g., by being articulated bone). Sample selection is fundamentally important. With the exception of what are termed ‘single entities’ (samples which can be tied to a subannual period of growth, such as seeds and grains), all charcoal samples will naturally be influenced to varying degrees by nonsystematic offsets from their true age. Where possible, ‘single entities’ alone ought to be selected for dating. Using AMS this is now routinely achievable. Radiocarbon has given us a more integrated view of world archaeology, by allowing the uniform application of scientifically derived chronologies. In addition, it has ushered in the beginnings of the scientific archaeology we know today. The method is underpinned by over 50 years of scientific investigation into its application but new research into aspects of its use are ongoing, particularly in the race to complete the calibration of the complete 55 000-year timescale, the development of new means of chemically precleaning samples before dating and improved instrumentation (mainly in the field of small accelerator systems). See also: Dating Methods, Overview; Dendrochronology; Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Obsidian Hydration Dating; Taphonomy.

Further Reading Aitken MJ (1990) Science-Based Dating in Archaeology. London: Longman. Bowman SGE (1990) Radiocarbon Dating. Interpreting the Past. London: British Museum Publications. Taylor RE (1987) Radiocarbon Dating. An Archaeological Perspective. Orlando, USA: Academic Press. Taylor RE (1997) Radiocarbon dating. In: Taylor RE and Aitken MJ (eds.) Chronometric Dating in Archaeology, pp. 65–96. New York: Plenum Press. Tuniz C, Bird JR, Fink D, and Herzog GF (1998) Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Ultrasensitive Analysis for Global Science. CRC Press.

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CAREERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY John Collis, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary culture resource management The theory and practice of managing, preserving, and interpreting cultural resources within a social and legal context. hunter-gatherer society A society whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, using foraging and hunting, without significant recourse to the domestication of either.

For a relatively small profession, the range of jobs archaeologists carry out is very large and so the skills one archaeologist may need to acquire are very different from those of another. It also means that people enter the profession by many routes, but there is also flexibility for students to change direction while still studying, or for professionals to change direction as their careers progress. In addition to the obvious academic careers within universities, or full-time posts carrying out excavations and surveys, there is a plethora of jobs providing specialist back-up in the laboratory, for instance dealing with human and animal remains, ceramics, soils and plant remains; there are archaeologists in local and national/federal government overseeing the preservation and development of our heritage, what is generally referred to as ‘cultural resource management’ (see Cultural Resource Management). Archaeology also needs to be presented to a wider public, not only through museums, but also through specialist books, magazines, and television programs (see Popular Culture and Archaeology). It is a subject with a worldwide appeal, with relevance wherever humans have set foot, from the great civilizations of the past in, say, Egypt or Central America, to the ephemeral remains of the first hunter-gatherers who colonized much of the planet. Thus, even before training starts, you need to have some sort of idea about what sort of archaeologist you would like to become.

Pre-University Experience Some students arrive at university with a fair amount of knowledge both practical and academic. My own career in archaeology started with an article in a local newspaper appealing for volunteers to help on an excavation. I was soon not only helping to dig, but also assisting the museum with the washing and

marking of finds, and from the contacts I made in this voluntary work I was able to work on a number of major excavations in southern England and even Germany before my formal training at university started. Nowadays, because of more stringent rules with insurance and professionalization, such a route may be impossible, but there are many community projects in which schoolchildren can participate; large rescue projects may have ‘open days’ for schools, and some, like Mont Beuvray in France, run summer schools especially for schoolchildren. Few schools teach archaeology formally; in Britain there is an A-level course (examinations taken at 18) in archaeology which is taught in some schools (in 2005, there were 1868 students completing the course), but this is due usually to the motivation of a particular teacher and is, therefore, not available to the vast majority. Some archaeology may be taught within history or, for the origins of humanity, within biology, and some schools may even have archaeology clubs (I have encountered these in Britain and Poland), but most students will have to rely on their own initiative and enthusiasm. The most obvious sources of information are television, and increasingly, the Internet (see Internet, Archaeology on), but the quality of archaeology presented can vary considerably, with a tendency towards the spectacular or the bizarre, and some programs purporting to be scientific are simply nonsense. But others, such as Time Team or Meet the Ancestors in Britain, give a good idea of scientific approaches such as geophysics or isotope analysis while demonstrating the limitations of archaeological inference as interpretations change from day to day if not hour by hour. However, they fail to show the painstaking, methodical, often boring, work which takes up the majority of an archaeologist’s time, in digging and recording, in processing and analyzing the finds, and in publication. There are also both local and national societies which cater for young people; in Britain the Council for British Archaeology runs a Young Archaeologists’ Club, with many local groups linked to it (65 at the time of writing), and these may arrange visits, lectures, and where possible, field experience. But for many young people there will be no local organization, so traditional approaches like reading books are the only route. Where entry into university includes an interview at your chosen university, you may well be asked which books you have been reading, and here too the Council for British Archaeology provides

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useful reading lists. But in Britain, students enter university with a great variety of scholastic backgrounds from the sciences and the humanities, and there is no single recommended route, though this is not true in all countries where, for instance, a background in history or the classics may be required.

Undergraduate Training Increasingly a university degree is essential for an archaeological career; in Britain 95% of professionals have some form of degree (and this rises to 98% for those in their 20s). But there are exceptions; in Germany and the Netherlands, excavation is usually carried out by technicians who will have had a technical rather than an academic training in skills such as cartography, photography, and draftsmanship, while the actual digging is often done by unskilled workmen, mainly people registered as unemployed. In developing countries the organization of excavations tends to be more hierarchical, with a clear distinction between academics who run the project and the workmen who do the digging, usually with no specific training in archaeology, but supervised by a foreman who will have picked up archaeological skills in the field. In developed Western countries, there are also differences in the importance assigned to the degree. In Britain, the traditional entry point for professional careers has been the Bachelors degree, completed after three years of study at university, whereas in the USA and Australia it is an Honors degree which takes four years, though entry tends to be at the Masters level. In countries where until recently the Humboldt system dominated (especially in central and northern Europe), students would study for a minimum of seven years or more before emerging with a Masters degree. In some of the La¨nder in Germany the doctorate is still a formal requirement to direct an archaeological excavation, in others it may be a Masters (in Germany, to excavate a formal permit is required by law), so archaeologists with degrees at Bachelors and Masters level may hit a ceiling in their careers, as in Germany these are considered as technical qualifications. We still do not know how the new group of students graduating with only a Bachelors will be considered, but in Germany at present the reaction of employers generally is very negative, so German archaeology students have set up a national committee to make sure their voice is heard. Other countries such as Italy also treat academic qualifications in a formal legalistic way, and similar rules regulate, for instance, excavation on Federal lands in the USA which are under the

control of the Secretary of Interiors. Many countries have signed up to the Valetta Treaty which states that only properly qualified people should be allowed to undertake archaeological excavation, but there are still variations about quite what ‘qualified’ means. At the time of writing, the structure of university training in Europe is undergoing fundamental change which will eventually have an impact worldwide. In an attempt to equate university qualifications throughout the European Union, and so allow a greater movement of people across national boundaries, an agreement was signed in Bologna in 1999 under which all university courses will share a common structure by 2010, outlined as follows: 1. A system of easily readable and comparable degrees shall be introduced, supported by the implementation of the Diploma Supplement. 2. Higher education course systems shall be based on two consecutive cycles: the undergraduate cycle, lasting three years, shall qualify students for employment, whereas the graduate cycle shall lead to a Masters and/or Doctorate degree. 3. In order to ensure student mobility through the transferability of their achievements, a credit system similar to ECTS shall be launched; credits shall also be obtainable in non-HE contexts such as lifelong learning. 4. Student mobility and free movement shall be promoted. 5. European cooperation in quality assurance shall be established. 6. The European dimension shall be promoted in higher education through curricula, interinstitutional cooperation, and mobility schemes for both students and teachers/researchers. In some countries this is translated into: three years for the Bachelors, two years for the Masters, and three years for the Doctorate, but in other countries the emphasis may be placed on ‘outcomes’, whereby what one knows is measured by the ‘credits’ in one’s particular discipline as the Bologna Agreement demands. The Agreement has been interpreted differently from one country to another, and even from one part of a country or one university to another. So, in the Walloon area of Belgium, the universities have followed the French system with a first degree in history or art history with some specialist courses in archaeology followed by a two-year Masters in archaeology, whereas the Flemish-speaking area has followed the Dutch system with a three-year Bachelors in archaeology, followed by a one-year Masters in archaeology which qualifies one to work as an archaeologist; in the Netherlands, for those wishing

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to follow an academic course leading on to the Doctorate, there is a two-year Masters course, but one-year Masters courses exist to provide specialist training. The situation is thus highly confusing, so one can only recommend students check carefully what can be done with a degree, especially if planning to change countries (e.g., will a particular European university accept a one-year Masters degree from an English university when registering for a Doctorate?). Several countries (Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic) have already made the change to the Bologna structure, others are in the process of changing (France, Sweden, Croatia, and Ukraine), some still have no clear program for conforming (Spain and Britain), and universities in other countries such as Australia are adapting their courses to the European structure. The British system already largely conforms except that Masters degrees, tend to be oneyear degrees, and this raises problems about whether British qualifications will be accepted everywhere in Europe. This outward appearance of uniformity, however, masks a great variety, especially for a subject such as archaeology. In some countries, notably Britain and Germany, it is accepted as a discipline in its own right, and from the start of a course students take specialist courses (if not entirely concentrating on archaeology) and graduate with a Bachelors in archaeology; this can be either a science or an arts/humanities degree (BSc or BA). Often there may be a subsidiary subject, the Nebenfach in Germany, while under the modular systems found in many British and American universities one can take modules in another subject, or even do a joint degree with, say, history, classics, or geography. In the USA, though one may major in archaeology, it is part of a wider degree in anthropology, so the courses are likely to include some physical anthropology and linguistics as well as social anthropology. In some Mediterranean countries (France, Spain), it is generally not possible to do a first degree in archaeology, but only a few subsidiary courses, as archaeology is considered a specialist subject only studied at the Masters level; so, in Spain, an archaeology Bachelors degree does not qualify one to practice in archaeology because it does not exist, whereas a history degree does! The usual entry is thus through a degree in history, art history, or, if one is studying the Paleolithic in France, through geology. This betrays fundamentally different cultural attitudes towards archaeology. Traditionally, it was seen as an adjunct to classics, to history (‘‘the handmaid of History’’), or to art history (mainly dealing with architecture and sculpture), and so simply providing physical remains to illustrate what we already know from written sources, or just filling in the

gaps. However, I would argue that now the reverse is true as archaeology deals with the whole of the history of the human species in all parts of the world, whereas history is largely biased towards parts of Asia, Europe, and North Africa and is limited in time, while dealing with only a limited range of material culture, that is, written documents. The theoretical and methodological basis of archaeology is therefore fundamentally different from history and art history, though it can encompass these subjects as well. A better case can be made in arguing that it represents the historical dimension of anthropology. This difference of attitude, especially of the sorts of questions we ask of the past, leads in turn to different ways of studying the past, and therefore of the methodologies – the reconstruction of ancient environments, of production of artifacts, of trade, discussed elsewhere in this volume, and also of scientific approaches such as the analysis of the physical or chemical characteristics of pottery, of ancient pollen, or animal bones. Here, then, we meet the fundamental divide in the way in which archaeology is taught, for instance, in the more arts-based approach found in southern Europe, the environmental and scientific approaches of northwestern Europe, and the anthropology-based approach of North America. There is also a fundamental divide among archaeologists about who should be undertaking the specialist scientific work: people from other disciplines who have had a specialist training but who are perhaps not familiar with archaeological methodologies and theory; or by archaeologists themselves who must therefore acquire the specialist skills. In the last 50 years this split has become most marked between Britain, which has embraced the wider role of archaeologists and so of the training they need, on the one side, and Germany on the other, where most archaeologists have a narrower training in areas such as the identification and dating of artifacts, and where specialists from other disciplines do much of the laboratory work. These differences are also reflected in the sort of facilities that universities offer students and also what sort of funding is available to universities to develop those facilities. In a highly commercialized system such as that in the USA, competition between departments can push up the quality of what is on offer, but commercial pressures can equally lead to degrees being offered on the cheap without high quality staff and facilities, and may depend on what income the department can generate from fees and sponsorship. In contrast, countries where there is substantial government funding, either in terms of paying student fees or funding buildings and other developments, ultimate control may be in the hands of state or university bureaucrats who may have an old-fashioned

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view of what should constitute an archaeology degree. In a mixed system, such as Britain, where there is still substantial state funding, but where the universities are, nominally at least, autonomous organizations, the level of funding for a particular department will be decided locally, and this will be heavily influenced by four main factors: the ability of archaeological staff to convince their universities to invest, the amount of independent funding which can be attracted through research grants and commercial activities, the number of students who register with the department, and the level of fees university students pay. The University Funding Councils for Wales and England (the Governmentsupported organizations that distribute public funding to the universities) give a larger level of funding for each archaeology student than, say, history or English as the subject is considered ‘part science’ like geography or earth sciences; in Scotland, however, archaeology is classed an arts subject, and so does not attract the extra funding, and this is true of many other countries; in the USA, anthropology is usually taught within a College of Arts and Sciences. The other major difference is in the size of departments. Again, Germany and Britain provide one of the greatest contrasts; in Germany there are rarely more than two or three academic staff per department, whereas in Britain between 10 and 20 is quite normal, with University College London having over 60. There are also 40 departments in Britain which offer undergraduate archaeology degrees and another 10 which offer them at Masters level, and many others which have some archaeology modules available for students of other subjects such as history, or specialist Masters courses. Most other advanced countries, like Japan, Spain, or the Scandinavian countries, are somewhere in between. Each system has its advantages. Small and highly specialized departments such as those in Germany offer a close relationship between student and staff, and students were, under the Humboldt system, able to move away from their home university for a period of time to gain experience in other universities. This is less easy at the undergraduate level within the Bologna system due to the shortness of courses and their more-defined curriculum (though movement is easier at the Masters level); a recent trend is for German universities to link together to share the teaching of degrees. In contrast, the large departments can usually offer a much greater range of teaching, and better facilities and equipment. However, where there may be a hundred or more students registered for a particular module, library facilities may be strained, though electronic resources are developing rapidly to supplement the traditional book, though perhaps not to replace it.

The size of department is closely linked with political and cultural perceptions of university training. In countries where the degree is seen primarily as a qualification for entry into an academic and professional elite, the percentage of the population attending university will remain relatively small – 15–20%. In Spain the recent conservative government actually planned to reduce the numbers entering university and also the range of degree subjects available; in contrast, in Britain all governments since the 1950s have aimed at increasing numbers, and the present Labour government has a target of 50% (at present it is just over 40%, but the target has already been reached in Scotland). In countries with this higher participation rate, the undergraduate degree in archaeology is seen more as a general training in life skills which may or may not, lead the student into the specialist training needed to practice as a professional. So in Britain and the USA a degree in archaeology is seen in more general terms, as one which provides ‘transferable skills’, for example, an ability to read and write critically, to understand scientific and theoretical debate, the possession of practical skills working in the field or the laboratory, or as a member of a team or research group. So a lot, if not the vast majority, of archaeology graduates will end up as teachers or administrators rather than as archaeologists, though this has become more difficult of late in Britain with the narrowing of the national curriculum for History in schools. In the USA, the majority of those who go on to take a higher degree in archaeology end up in the private and government sectors, though there is still a dynamic university sector. In countries where there has been a massive increase in student numbers, there has inevitably been a major strain on public finances, and increasingly the trend has been to shift the burden on to the student. When I went to university in Britain in the 1960s not only were all fees paid, but all students were eligible for a living allowance, the level of which depended on one’s parents’ income (who were expected to contribute). Now in most of Britain (though not Scotland) all British and EU students except those from deprived backgrounds have to pay up to £3000 ‘top-up fees’ and there is certainly no money for living expenses, but repayment does not start until after graduation and until the graduate’s salary is over £15 000 a year, and so quite a high percentage qualifies for some sort of rebate on their fees. There are pressures to follow the American system whereby the top universities (the Ivy League in the USA, Oxbridge and the Russell Group in Britain) will be able to charge higher fees, and so compete at an international level with the top universities across the world in the quality of teaching and facilities.

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In other countries such as France and Germany where tuition is still free, the situation is likely to change radically in the next few years with the introduction of the Bologna system; in Germany it is predicted that undergraduate courses may remain free, but fees may be charged for postgraduate courses, and this is already happening in some of the La¨nder. However, in the USA and Britain, universities make grants available to try to attract the best students; in the USA there is also a well-developed system for students to obtain assistantships in their departments, fee waivers, money for work study, and scholarships. The increasing financial pressure on students may also affect student practices. In France, where the entry into university is a right for all those with the necessary qualifications, students tend to stay at home and go to the nearest university for their first degree, thereby cutting living costs. In Britain and the USA, where entry is competitive, students have traditionally moved away from home, and compete for places in the universities which offer the best courses in the subject that interests them, but increasingly they are looking for situations where part-time or vacation work may be available. But worldwide, students still tend to very reliant on parental or family support. Thus, with the university world in such a state of flux, and especially in a subject such as archaeology where there is a vast variation in the types of department and the courses on offer, the only advice one can give to prospective students is to think carefully about what sort of archaeological career they want; to investigate fully on the web what a particular department may offer, the likely costs in fees and living expenses; and wherever possible, to visit the universities beforehand to see if the reality lives up to the prospectus, for instance, a large list of teachers does not necessarily tell you how many of them are actually there full-time. Many universities and departments have ‘open days’ when students can visit for tours; feedback from existing students on campus can be really useful, as can advice from archaeologists about how departments are rated. The market is becoming increasingly international, and more and more students are moving to other countries to get some of their professional training.

Postgraduate Training What I have written about Bachelors degrees is even more true about Masters degrees. Until the 1980s the Masters degree was relatively unimportant in Britain. It usually consisted of a dissertation, either for students who wanted to do a research project but

without committing themselves to several years of research (though nominally three years, the Doctorate often took six to seven years to complete), or for students who were changing direction in their studies. These options are still available, but nowadays, even though the dissertation is still an important part of the degree, up to two-thirds of the degree will consist of taught courses similar to, but more advanced than, those offered at an undergraduate level, and a higher degree of knowledge is expected. A ‘Taught Masters’ can perform a number of roles: as a simple continuation and intensification of what is done at the Bachelors level; as an entry point for those who have a first degree in another subject (especially in countries such as Spain and France where there has been no Bachelors level, but ‘conversion courses’ are also important in countries like Britain where students commonly change the direction of their studies after completing the first degree); as a shift to a more specialized area within archaeology (e.g., geophysics, heritage / cultural resource management; environmental or forensic archaeology, etc.); as a route towards the Doctorate, with an emphasis on acquiring research skills; or as a highly specialized degree as part of one’s professional development (e.g., in deciphering inscriptions in an ancient language). In contrast, most Masters degrees in the States are more generalized, but with a thesis in the area of specialization. We can expect the provision of Masters courses to develop rapidly over the next decade. In the countries which are changing from the Humboldt structure, the Masters course is generally seen as a simple continuation from the Bachelors, leading directly on to the Doctorate, and so it is not a specialist degree. At the time of writing the first cohorts of students in some of these countries are reaching the Masters level. In some countries, notably Scotland, students will study for four years, and graduate with a Masters degree rather than a Bachelors, and in Oxford and Cambridge, students are offered an automatic Masters degree two years after graduating (which is how I acquired my Masters!). In countries where the Masters has been long established, there may be a great variety of courses on offer; in the 2006 listing of postgraduate courses in Britain, no fewer than 170 different Masters courses are listed under archaeology, taught at 30 different institutions, and even this is not complete as courses with a strong archaeological component may be listed under other headings such as Celtic Studies. Also, it is quite common for students who plan an archaeological career to deliberately take a Masters in a different subject, such as in natural sciences, to gain expertise in the area in which they plan to specialize.

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In countries where a degree qualification is a legal requirement to practice, taking the Masters (and perhaps the Doctorate) is a necessity for entering the profession, and there is less flexibility in the sort of Masters course one takes. In Germany, failing to complete the sequence of degrees in the subject in which one originally started is considered tantamount to failure; in the British and American system, changes of direction are encouraged. In countries where the Bachelors has traditionally been the point of entry in one’s career, many students have not considered it worthwhile to continue with further levels of qualification. But we are now in an increasingly competitive world, and the range of skills we require to carry out our jobs has expanded vastly as well (acquisition of IT skills is one of the most obvious developments of the last 20 years), and this has led the bar for entry to be raised. In the 1960s I was told that, with a Bachelors degree, I was over-qualified for a post as City Archaeologist, and when I obtained my first permanent university lecturing post, I had still not completed my Doctorate. Nowadays a City Archaeologist would be expected to have a minimum of a Bachelors level archaeology degree backed with many years of experience, and new lecturers usually have a Doctorate, and several published papers, if not a book, behind them. Thus, in the 1980s and 1990s there was a huge expansion in the provision of Taught Masters courses in Britain and in the USA, driven by three factors: first the need for more specialist expertise as the archaeology profession expanded and diversified; second, student demand, as students felt they had a better possibility of a post with a Masters rather than just a Bachelors degree; and third, competition between universities, as in Britain the level of funding from the Government depends on the rating of the department in the ‘Research Assessment Exercise’, and one of the factors taken into account is the number of postgraduate students in the department. In the past it was normal for students in Britain to move straight from the Bachelors to work on the Doctorate, but nowadays the Masters is seen as an almost essential step in research training for the Doctorate, and this will become more true as the Bologna system is adopted. However, with only limited funding and scholarships available, the student is faced with the difficult task of deciding what sort of Masters course to take and when to take it, and whether it is worth the financial outlay (fees and living expenses for one or two more years). Many students register immediately on completion of the Bachelors, but others take a year or two off to gain field and work experience, something which I would recommend, as one will get a much greater feel for what openings there are and

what expertise is needed (no point in taking a Masters in a field which is already over-supplied): it may also give the opportunity to pay off debts and save money for further qualifications. In the States, however, one needs a Masters degree to work on sites on the National Register of Historic Places. Whether to go for the Doctorate represents another dilemma, as in most countries this is largely, if not purely, a research degree, and so can lead one into over-specialized areas of expertise. This is less true in the USA where the doctorate contains a major taught component, indeed many students enter the commercial world ‘ABD’ (all but dissertation), that is, they have completed the taught element of the degree, but plan to submit the final part, the dissertation, later in their career. In countries such as Germany where the Doctorate is essential, students will have little choice but to continue to the higher level of qualification, and elsewhere it is essential for students who wish to pursue an academic career, for example, as a university teacher or in a research institute. In most of the former communist countries there are archaeological institutes which carry out major research, and, increasingly, rescue projects. These are based on the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and in France, entry into this elite group of researchers is highly competitive, and considered of higher status than a university post, though the situation is becoming blurred as members of the CNRS and their research groups often have close links with universities and provide some of the teaching. In some countries such as France and Germany those pursuing a university career may also have to complete a higher level of doctorate, the Habilitation, usually prepared while the researcher holds a junior temporary post in the university.

Entering the Profession The old adage ‘it is not what you know but who you know’ still has some weight in a relatively small profession such as archaeology, though it is only in a few developing countries that appointments may be decided more on family or political connections than expertise or qualifications. Until recently, even in an advanced system such as Germany, graduates were highly dependent on their professors to provide them with the contacts with which to get on the first rung of the professional ladder, and in Spain, despite efforts by the Government to make appointments more on merit, it is claimed that some posts are still sorted out quietly behind closed doors by professors eager to place their prote´ge´s. Despite Britain being a highly competitive and open system, the references,

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written or verbal, from one’s teachers and previous employers still have considerable weight. It is good to ‘spread yourself around’ when acquiring work experience, by not only working on projects run by staff from your university, but also on those run by other sorts of organizations, and making personal connections (and so ‘be in the right place at the right time’) as well as extending your expertise and experience. Also, attending conferences, especially those that attract professional archaeologists, giving a paper as soon as there is something new to be said, will be useful in the long run. Personal connections are especially important at the beginning of your career if you are working in a commercial environment – contracts tend to be shortterm and at this level opportunities on new projects may not be advertised as information is spread more easily by word of mouth. You should also write to major employers to get on their mailing lists. Longerterm or permanent posts will generally be advertised in some way, and information will commonly be sent to major university departments and employers, so keep an eye on notice boards. In Britain, by law, senior posts may have to be publicly advertised, especially in the major national ‘broadsheet’ newspapers, usually on a specific day of the week, but increasingly archaeological organizations are providing specialist services for job-seekers, like those of the Institute of Field Archaeologists in Britain. There are special problems faced by those seeking jobs in fieldwork where contracts may be of short duration and may not be advertised until just before the work starts; however, there is now an independent publication for British workers, BAJR (pronounced ‘badger’) which is the main source of information about posts in the field. In the USA the Society for American Archaeology provides a similar sort of service, and its annual conference is used by many organizations to interview and hire new staff, and the same is true for the Society for Historical Archaeology and the American Anthropological Association.

Career Development Be aware that there may be a huge gap between your university training and what you are expected to do in your job; it is a continuous complaint of employers that new university graduates are inadequately trained and prepared for the world of work. Good employers are aware of this and will organize training for new recruits, some of which may be legally required, such as in health and safety. In Britain we are in the early stages of developing ‘graduate apprenticeships’ to provide specialist training for new entrants, including

a range of work experience, not only fieldwork but also the administrative organization of archaeology; at the time of writing (2006) the first pilot schemes are underway. Major institutions such as universities, national and local government, museums or state field units like Institut national de recherches arche´ologiques pre´ventives (INRAP) in France will have clearly defined career structures, but this is less true for commercial organizations. Field archaeologists typically tend to be poorly paid (though there are exceptions, such as Australia), due in part to the oversupply of people looking for jobs, but also because digging has in the past been considered unskilled work which can be carried out by laborers or volunteers. In fact I would argue that digging requires considerable skill, to make academic judgments about what is or is not important, and how to retrieve the maximum amount of information. But there are similar problems further up the hierarchy where more generic skills like IT expertise, personnel management, project budgeting and project organization are increasingly important. In an attempt to overcome problems of career development and the perceived low status of archaeologists in Britain, the Archaeology Training Forum (ATF) has been formed, a committee which consists of representatives of the major organizations involved in national and local government, commercial employers, professional bodies like the IFA, training providers such as universities, trades unions, etc., and from this a number of initiatives have emerged that will develop ideas which can be applied worldwide. One of ATF’s earliest projects, recently repeated, was to find out how many archaeologists there are in Britain, who they are, what they do, and what they are paid. This has helped identify areas where there are shortages in expertise; ATF has also sponsored an attempt to define what skills are needed for a large range of archaeological roles. The next stage, at present underway in 2006, is to link National Occupational Standards (NOS) with the jobs that archaeologists actually do within their organization, and also to link training, especially university degrees, with these skills. We can thus start to define what skills are not at present being provided for both those entering the profession, and also for people moving up the career ladder, and ways in which this training can be provided and funded. A similar survey of archaeologists is taking place in other European countries (‘Finding the Archaeologists of Europe’) as well. In the USA the Society for American Archaeology Curriculum Committee has taken on a similar role, defining the skills needed by archaeologists. At the same time individuals need to be empowered to make the most of these opportunities to

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enhance their own skills and career prospects. In the universities this takes the form of ‘student centered learning’, but this continues into the profession as ‘lifelong learning’ via ‘continuing professional development’ (CPD). This requires each individual to make informed decisions about what both their short-term and long-term aims are and how these can be achieved, though it needs continual revision, preferably every year; NOS are important in helping to define the long-term aims. Out of this process, there has emerged a number of documents which are of use to both the individual and the employer: 1. The curriculum vitae (CV) lists personal details, formal qualifications, positions of responsibility, publications, grants received, lectures given, etc. 2. The personal development plan (PDP) in which you decide over the short term (usually twelve months) what skills and training you need to acquire and how to acquire them (from formal courses, reading, attending conferences, and especially the more informal expertise we pick up from colleagues in the workplace). 3. A skills log: this lists the skills and knowledge that you have already acquired with an honest estimate of your level of expertise, from beginner to world expert! 4. A portfolio: examples of your work, which may include essays, reports, publications, drawings, etc. to show potential employers what you can do (for senior academic posts in Scandinavia you are expected to produce a complete set of your publications for an external adjudicator to peruse). Good employers will help you in the preparation of the documents and provide opportunities for training and career development, though remember that these are your personal documents, and the PDP may include plans to get a better job with another employer! In some countries the provision of training for staff is a legal requirement with several days put aside each year, but bad employers cut their costs by cutting training (and usually employees’ salaries too!). In some countries, in an attempt to improve standards, archaeologists have formed professional institutes, though archaeology is a long way behind professions such as law, medicine, engineering, architecture, etc. In Europe the most developed is the Institute of Field Archaeologists (IFA) whose members are mainly, though not exclusively, based in Britain, and similar organizations have recently been founded in Ireland and the Netherlands; in the USA the Register of Professional Archaeologists (ROPA) provides some of the functions of a professional institute. Membership is becoming increasingly important in Britain for many archaeological posts, though it is

not legally enforceable, and students and young professionals are encouraged to join at an early stage of their careers. Professional institutes are not to be confused with trade unions; the institutes are mainly concerned with professional standards and so providing guarantees to organizations that employ archaeologists of standards of both individuals and organizations, and some sort of redress if those standards are not met. Trade unions, in contrast, are mainly concerned with protecting the individual, from exploitation or wrongful dismissal, while negotiating general terms and conditions of employment; as in the rest of the workforce, British archaeologists tend to be more unionized than in many other countries (though still a minority), from university staff to the lowest-paid diggers. However, the most successful strikes by archaeologists have been in France, once over the reorganization of rescue archaeology and the establishment of INRAP (generally the archaeologists were in favor of a centralized state organization as opposed to a commercialization of archaeology such as has occurred in Britain and the USA), and a second time against the open flouting of the planning laws by politicians involving the destruction of part of the Roman and medieval defenses of the city of Rodez (the archaeologists won!).

The Future Clearly the teaching of archaeology and the profession is in a great state of flux, and this is not likely to settle down in the near future. To keep up to date the prospective archaeologist should keep an eye on the websites of national and international organizations such as the Society for American Archaeology, the European Association of Archaeologists, the Institute of Field Archaeologists, the Council for British Archaeology, etc. Be aware of what you are doing; for example, under the Bologna agreement you may find that qualifications you obtain in one country may not be valid in another (e.g., will the rest of Europe accept British one-year Masters qualifications?). I have not dealt much with developing countries; university structures are often modeled on those of the more developed countries (especially USA, Britain, and Germany), and students are still highly reliant on obtaining higher degrees in developed countries, though this is likely to change rapidly in the next decade or two. Further reading on matters of education and training can be found in The (Field) Archaeologist (published by the IFA), in an online journal just about to be launched by the Higher Education Academy in Britain, and in the following books and articles:

966 CAVES AND ROCKSHELTERS See also: Cultural Resource Management; Internet, Archaeology on; Popular Culture and Archaeology.

Further Reading Aitchison K (1999) Profiling the Profession: A Survey of Archaeological Jobs and Jobs Profiles in the UK. London: Institute of Field Archaeologists/Council for British Archaeology/English Heritage. Aitchison, K (2000) A Survey of Archaeological Specialists. Institute of Field Archaeologists/Museum of London Specialist Services/English Heritage. Aitchison K and Edwards R (2003) Archaeology Labour Market Intelligence: Profiling the Profession 2002/03. Reading/Bradford: Institute of Field Archaeologists and Cultural Heritage National Training Organisation. Bender SJ and Smith GS (eds.) (2000) Teaching Archaeology in the Twenty-First Century. Washington: Society for American Archaeology. Carter S and Robertson A (2002) Project to Define Professional Functions and Standards in Archaeology. Reading: Institute of

Cave Art

Field Archaeologists and Cultural Heritage National Training Organisation. Chitty G (2000) A Rapid Survey of Training Needs. London: Archaeological Training Forum/Institute of Field Archaeologists/Council for British Archaeology/English Heritage. Colley S, Ulm S, and Pate DF (eds.) (2005) Teaching, Learning and Australian Archaeology. Australian Archaeology (61). (December 2005). Canberra: Australian Archaeological Association Inc. Collis JR (2000) Towards a national training scheme. Antiquity 74: 208–214. Fagan B (2006) So you want to be an archaeologist? It may not be as glamorous as you think. Archaeology, May/June 2006: 59–64. QAA (2000) Benchmarking Archaeology. Gloucester, Quality Assurance Agency. Rainbird P and Hamilakis Y (eds.) (2001) BAR International Series 948: Interrogating Pedagogies: Archaeology in Higher Education. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. Shepherd N (2005) Who is doing courses in South African universities? And what are they studying? South African Archaeology Bulletin 60(182): 121–123. Zeder MA (ed.) (1997) The American Archaeologist: A Profile. Walnut Creek, California: Altamira Press in co-operation with the Society for American Archaeology.

See: Rock Art.

CAVES AND ROCKSHELTERS Paul Goldberg, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA Rolfe D Mandel, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary flowstone Flowstones are composed of sheetlike deposits of calcite carbonate formed where water flows along the walls or floors of a cave. karst An area of limestone in which the bedrock has produced fissures, sinkholes, underground streams, and caverns. rockshelter An overhanging projection of rock that could provide shelter from the elements; often a rich source of archaeological evidence, because they were occupied by different cultures over many centuries.

Introduction Caves and rockshelters have long been the focus of prehistoric and archaeological research, and many of the most archaeologically significant finds have

been uncovered from them. Finds encompass remains of fossil hominins, which span a major part of the human record, including Australopithecus in South African cave sites (e.g., Swartkrans), various species of Homo and Neandertals from both Europe (e.g., Atapuerca, Spain; Tautavel, France; Neanderthal Cave, Germany) as well as the Middle East (Shanidar, Kurdistan; Qafzeh and Kebara, Israel). Furthermore, many cave and rockshelter sites contain abundant lithic, faunal, and floral remains within thick accumulations of deposits that permit archaeologists to detect long-term changes in technology, plant and animal exploitation, and site use through time. Striking examples of all of the above are Tabun Cave, Israel, with over 18 m of deposits that contain Lower and Middle Palaeolithic remains spanning over 200 000–300 000 years of human history (Figure 1). At Danger Cave in the Great Basin of North America, there is an extraordinary stack of well-preserved primarily culturally derived sediments spanning more than 10 000 years. Also, extensive and intensive occupation lasting from Late Palaeo-Indian through Late

CAVES AND ROCKSHELTERS 967

Figure 1 Tabun Cave, Israel showing a thick sequence of sandy, silty, and anthropogenic deposits; Lower Palaeolithic deposits occur at the base and Middle Palaeolithic deposits are seen above the third step. The vertical nature of the deposits in the lower left is associated with subsidence of the deposits into a subterranean depression or swallow hole during the Lower Palaeolithic.

Archaic times is illustrated at Dust Cave, Alabama (Figure 2). The deep interiors of caves are in total darkness and isolated from the outside environment. In contrast, cave mouths and areas under projecting rock ledges (rockshelters) have broad connections with the outside environment and are illuminated to some extent by sunlight. The degree of protection from the outside climate or weather depends on the size, configuration, and orientation of the rockshelter or cave mouth. For example, the deep, massive rockshelters at Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado provide considerable protection from the external environment (Figure 3). In contrast, the small Movie Draw Rockshelter in the Black Hills of South Dakota affords little protection (Figure 4). At high altitudes in the Peruvian Andes, nearly all of the recorded archaeological sites are in caves because they offered shelter from the rain, wind, and cold nights. Pachamachay Cave at 4300 m (nearly 14 000 ft) above sea level has 33 superimposed layers of cultural deposits dating between 12 000 and 8000 years BP. Guitarrero, another high-altitude cave in Peru, contains evidence of human occupation between 10 500 and 2000 years ago, and a possible occupation layer was dated to c. 13 000 14C years BP. Caves and rockshelters have been the focus of archaeological research concerned with the peopling of the New World, especially South America. Cave sites in the Peruvian Andes – including Telarmachay, Uchumachay, Lauricocha, Huargo, Guitarrero, Pachamachay, Pikimachay, and Panaulauca – have yielded finds suggesting, but not proving, that people were in the

Figure 2 Dust Cave, Alabama. Dust Cave presents a striking example of anthropogenic ashes and charcoal, interfingered with detrital clays, which have been remarkably well preserved because of the dry conditions.

968 CAVES AND ROCKSHELTERS

Figure 3 Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde, Colorado. This 200-room Anasazi cliff dwelling is in a large rockshelter formed along a shale–sandstone contact.

Figure 4 Movie Draw Rockshelter, Custer State Park, Black Hills of South Dakota. This small rockshelter formed in sandstone has yielded a rich cultural record dating from c. 2000 to 700 BP.

region as early as 20 000–15 000 BP. In eastern Brazil, the rockshelter at Pedra Furada has produced disputed evidence for human occupation over 30 000 years ago. Although pre-12 000 BP ‘archaeological’ findings at many of the cave and rockshelter sites mentioned here are problematic, they have yielded unequivocal

evidence for people in South America between c. 12 000 and 10 000 BP (see Americas, South: Early Cultures of the Central Andes). Unlike most open-air sites, caves and rockshelters constitute distinctive archaeological environments in that they tend to be essentially closed systems.

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Materials that are brought into the enclosed space tend to stay there, and thus they present detailed records of geological and human activities, although they can be subject to physical and chemical modifications. They provide a contrast to the situation of openair sites, which are more prone to erosion or burial by processes associated with gravity, wind, or water. The cultural deposits of dry cave and rockshelter sites generally yield well-preserved floral and faunal remains. For example, the earliest solid evidence for domesticated maize comes from the dry rockshelter site of Guila´ Naquitz in Oaxaca, Mexico, where two maize cobs produced AMS radiocarbon dates of c. 6300 BP. The dry San Marcos and Coxcatlan rockshelter sites in the Tehuaca´n Valley of Puebla, Mexico, have yielded well-preserved maize that is nearly as old as the maize from Guila´ Naquitz. In southern Peru, the dry rockshelter site of Asana has well-preserved faunal remains (mostly deer, camelids, and small mammals) dating back to c. 11 500 BP, plus a variety of floral materials, including tubers, mesquite pods, cactus fruits, and chenopod grains. The recovery of well-preserved floral and faunal remains is not limited to dry caves and rockshelters in Mexico and South America. The earliest farmers in the mid-south of North America lived seasonally in rockshelters and also used them for dry storage of cultivated plants. Evidence for early (Late Archaic), domesticated, small-seeded plants has come from the Cold Oak, Cloudsplitter, and Newt Kash rockshelters in eastern Kentucky and the Marble Bluff rockshelter in northwestern Arkansas. At Salts and Mammoth caves in Kentucky, Early Woodland people unknowingly left a detailed record of their diet in the dry cave passages. Thousands of human coprolites are well preserved throughout the nearly 35 km of cave passages explored and mined for minerals (mostly gypsum and medicinal sulfates) between c. 2800 and 2300 BP. The coprolites, plus stratified archaeobotanical remains from the mouth of Salt Cave, provide the most detailed record of an ancient agricultural complex known anywhere in the Americas. The aridity of rockshelters also has resulted in remarkable preservation of perishable organic materials at sites in the Great Basin of North America. For example, several dozen sandals made from sagebrush bark fiber were found in Fort Rock Cave in southern Oregon. A fragment from one of the sandals yielded a radiocarbon age of c. 9000 BP. Two other Great Basin rockshelters, Lovelock and Humboldt in west-central Nevada, contained well-preserved nets, mats, cordage, twined and coiled baskets, cloth, and hides, with some of the materials dating as far back as 4500 BP. At Hogup Cave on the western edge of the Great Salt Desert of Nevada, cultural deposits dating

to the Early Holocene and later times included the seeds of pickleweed, a plant native to the salt flats, and fragile remains of waterfowl and shore birds hunted at nearby salt marshes and small lakes. Although cave and rockshelter sites are less numerous than open-air sites, they have played a very significant role in furnishing data on prehistoric human palaeoecology and evolution. They also have shed light on the timing of human arrival in the New World. Hence, cave and rockshelter sites merit attention from the archaeological community. It is important to understand how these geologic features form in the landscape and receive sediment from internal and external sediment sources. It is also important to recognize postdepositional processes that may affect the archaeological record at cave and rockshelter sites. Despite being relatively protected, caves, and especially rockshelters, are not always isolated from geomorphic and biologic processes that may reshape cultural deposits in these settings.

Formation of Caves and Rockshelters Caves and rockshelters form by a variety of means. Caves – cavities that commonly extend well into the bedrock – are normally associated with karstic processes and linked to dissolution of limestone. Caves in sandstone, however, are well known in Australia, and from Middle and Late Stone Age sites in South Africa. Rockshelters, in contrast, tend to be more wide than deep. Whereas they can also result from karstic processes, differential weathering of less resistant layers in the bedrock is a common mechanism in their formation. Rockshelters also form by fluvial undercutting of bedrock valley walls. For example, Bonfire Shelter in southwest Texas is a product of fluvial undercutting of a cliff face in Mile Canyon when the elevation of the canyon floor was 18 m higher than today. In the Great Basin of North America and elsewhere, rockshelters were formed and/or enlarged by wave action along ancient shorelines of pluvial lakes. For example, the Bonneville Estates Rockshelter in Nevada is one of many rockshelters in the region with prominent wave-cut features that correlate with Lake Bonneville’s various Late Pleistocene shorelines.

Depositional and Postdepositional Processes in Caves and Rockshelters Caves and rockshelters are subject to a number of depositional and postdepositional processes that not only preserve the archaeological record, but can also significantly modify it and how we interpret it.

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Depositional processes involve the accumulation of coarse deposits (pebble-size and larger) and finegrained materials (sand, silt, and clay) from both within and outside the cave or rockshelter. Coarse material (e´boulis, in French) is normally a product of roof fall or wall collapse, and results from the dissolution of the bedrock along joints, the breakdown of the bedrock by freeze–thaw processes, or tectonic activity. The e´boulis can vary from centimeter-sized clasts to blocks over a meter in diameter. The finer fraction in cave and rockshelter deposits can come from a variety of sources. These include the following: 1. Infiltration of reworked soil material through joints or solution cavities in the bedrock. This material accumulates along the walls and on the floor of the cave or rockshelter as small mounds, which can be re-mobilized by flowing water or human activity, such as trampling. 2. Fluvial deposition is also one of the ways in which caves and rockshelters in stream valleys may receive alluvium. When streams are adjacent to or very near valley walls, coarse-grained sediment, including sand and gravel, may be delivered to rockshelters and cave mouths through lateral accretion of point bars. In contrast, fine-grained alluvium (mostly silt and clay) held in suspension may be deposited during floods, a process known as vertical accretion. Rodgers Shelter in the western Ozark Highland of Missouri is a good example of a rockshelter containing a sequence of lateral and vertical-accretion deposits. This archaeologically rich shelter remained at or only a few meters above the elevation of the floodplain of the Pomme de Terre River throughout the Holocene. Alluvium also occurs in karstic caves. For example, at Sheriden Cave, a Clovis habitation site in Ohio, finegrained sediments display evidence of alluvial transport. In general, coarser sediments, including sand and fine gravel, were deposited near the cave entrance, and silt and clay were deposited in laminar layers in the lowest passages. This depositional sequence is similar to the one described for Ohio Caverns. 3. Eolian accumulation, which takes the form of sand deposition associated with coastal dunes and eolianites (fossil dunes) is another way. Many important caves and rockshelters have eolian sand accumulations that are tied to worldwide fluctuations in sea level (e.g., Tabun Cave, Israel; Gorham’s and Vanguard Caves, Gibraltar; Blombos and Die Kelders Caves, South Africa; Akrotiri Aetokremnos Rockshelter, Cyprus). Build-up of finer, silt-sized material in caves and rockshelters is volumetrically less important but is clearly visible; it is generally linked to

eolian dust deposition or reworking of eolian silts (e.g., Dust Cave, Alabama). 4. In addition to coastal eolian deposits, finegrained marine littoral deposits occur as sandy beach sediments in caves and rockshelters (e.g., Yarimburgaz Cave, Turkey). Coarse boulders representing former high-energy shorelines also occur (e.g., Southeast Alaska sea caves). 5. Slope deposits are another source. There are two general types of slope deposits: colluvium and slope wash. Colluvium is poorly sorted deposits of sediment transported chiefly by gravity. Slope wash is laminated, well-sorted deposits of soil and sediment that has been moved down a slope predominantly by the action of gravity assisted by water in the form of sheet flow or concentrated flow in rills. Slope deposits may form a berm or talus cone in front of a rockshelter or cave entrance. From there, they can be washed back into the shelter or cave by runoff or high-density mudflows (Figure 5). 6. Attrition is also one of the sources. Solution weathering, including hydration and carbonation, often causes grain-by-grain disintegration of sandstone and bioclastic limestone, which produces a steady rain of sediment to the floor of a cave or rockshelter. This process is a major source of sediment in several important rockshelters, including Akrotiri Aetokremnos in Cyprus and Meadowcroft in Pennsylvania. 7. A major aspect of the sediments, and one that has received surprisingly little attention, is their anthropogenic nature. These human-derived materials are obvious and widespread in Holocene sites around the Mediterranean. However, significant human inputs are also noteworthy from Palaeolithic and Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites in the Old World and Africa (Figures 5 and 6a). Most typical are midden-like accumulations of bone and lithic debris, but remains of combustion features – both in situ and reworked (e.g., hearth rake-out and dumping of ashes and charcoal) – are increasingly being recognized and understood. In certain instances, such as Kebara and Hayonim Caves, anthropogenic accumulations constitute the majority of the depositional fill and substantially exceed geogenic contributions. 8. Finally, biogenic additions are also very common and subtle. Bat and bird guano are common in caves and rockshelters today, but in Pleistocene deposits it is difficult to detect them directly in the field. However, guano can be documented by microscopic and other analytical evidence (e.g., X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometry (FTIR)), in the form of phosphate or other minerals which generally are a product of a series of mineralogical transformations induced by the original guano.

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Figure 5 Kebara Cave looking toward the southeast corner. Note the exposed south wall on the right, in which the mostly Upper Palaeolithic deposits are dipping from the entrance of the cave (right) to the back (left). This bedded silt- and sand-sized material is in large part composed of Middle Palaeolithic combustion features that have been reworked by sheetwash from the entrance and transported toward the back. This dip initially resulted from a large-scale subsidence event into a subsurface swallow hole that took place near the rear of the cave during late Middle Palaeolithic times.

Figure 6 (a) A sequence of combustion features and anthropogenic deposits from the Middle Palaeolithic layers at Kebara Cave, Israel. The whitish zones were originally calcareous ash accumulations, which have been subsequently altered by diagenesis to apatite (calcium phosphate) or other phosphate minerals. At the right, the stepped-like and offset nature of the ashes is a product of subsidence of the underlying deposits into subsurface depressions. The ruler is 50 cm long. (b) Macrophotograph of sequence of thin combustion zones from the Middle Palaeolithic layers of Kebara Cave (cf. part (a)). Note the sequence of a dark charcoal-rich layer overlaid by lighter ashes. Scale: length of photograph is 75 mm.

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Postdepositional processes can affect the archaeological record in caves and rockshelters in a number of ways, and generally fall under the term, ‘diagenesis’. Physical modifications include displacements of bones, lithics, and anthropogenic debris by many of the depositional processes cited above (e.g., mudflow, sheetwash) (Figure 5). Erosion by wind (‘deflation’) and water (e.g., streams, storm-generated waves along coasts) can totally remove previous accumulations. Similarly, colluviation can transport deposits near the site entrance to further back in the cave or rockshelter, removing both artifacts/ecofacts, and dismantling previously formed features. In addition, reorganization of cave deposits through subsurface slumping is a typical process in karstic settings, and can take place even when the surface deposits are dry and somewhat consolidated. The effects of chemical modifications can be more subtle but no less important. The most striking and visible is the precipitation of calcium carbonate that takes the form of crusts and layers (‘flowstone’, ‘travertine’) (Figure 7), stalagmites, and cemented detritus colloquially known as ‘breccia’. Flowstones and travertines, when pure, are very valuable for two reasons. Firstly, they can be dated by uraniumseries dating techniques, thus enabling the construction of temporal frameworks up to 350 000 years,

well beyond the limits of radiocarbon. Secondly, they furnish detailed climatic records as expressed by oxygen isotope contents of individual calcite layers. On the other hand, the presence of guano, organic acids, and acidic dripping waters can result in the partial or even total dissolution of carbonate and the formation of other minerals, such as gypsum. In some instances, a marked reduction of volume of the original deposits can occur (up to 50%), such as Die Kelders Cave (South Africa) Furthermore, in cases of extreme diagenesis, major mineralogical transformations can take place involving the formation of various phosphate minerals (Figure 6a), the breakdown of clays, and the precipitation (neoformation) of silica. The ramifications of such transformations involve the complete destruction of bone from all or parts of the cave or rockshelter, as well as the close monitoring of dosimetry measurements since radioactive isotopes can be concentrated during diagenesis. These ‘hot spots’ must be taken into account when dating techniques such as thermoluminescence (TL), electron spin resonance (ESR), or optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) are used. Awareness of such diagenetic changes, therefore, allows for more accurate dating of deposits, and also controls on the spatial distribution of bone across a site, which may not

Figure 7 Secondary calcium carbonate draping over wall and MSA deposits at Cave 13b from Pinnacle Point, South Africa. The 20 cm ruler rests upon a thin whitish crust (flowstone), which overlies sandy deposits that were blown into the cave. In turn, these sands cap a series of darker sediments containing combustion features that are rich in burned shellfish. These deposits are currently being studied, and uranium-series dating of the flowstone combined with OSL dating of the underlying sand should provide independent dating checks and tight chronometric control of the infilling of the cave and associated occupations.

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relate solely to human activities but postdepositional, bio-geo-chemical ones. Sedimentological studies of cave and rockshelter deposits have advanced markedly in recent years. Up to the end of the 1970s, researchers tended to use a somewhat standardized set of analytical techniques. These consisted of grain-size analysis, morphology of clasts and grains, analysis of heavy minerals (those with high specific gravities), and other mineralogical analysis using X-ray diffraction. A number of chemical analyses were also employed, measuring amounts of organic matter, calcium carbonate, and phosphate. These analyses were carried out on bulk samples collected from main stratigraphic units. More recent research has made use of soil micromorphology, the study of intact blocks of sediments under the petrographic microscope. With this technique, undisturbed material (Figure 8) is embedded in polyester or epoxy resin, sliced and mounted on a glass slide, and finally ground to a thickness of 30 mm (Figure 6b). The use of these thin sections enables the researcher to observe mineralogical composition, size and shape of the particles, and the finer matrix. More importantly, because the original geometry of the components is preserved, it is possible to isolate depositional effects from postdepositional ones. Thus, original calcite from limestone e´boulis can be distinguished from secondarily precipitated carbonate. Micromorphology has been effectively applied to many cave and rockshelter sediments that focus on important archaeological issues. These topics range from site formation processes in Palaeo-Indian sites and the early appearance of humans in the New World, to the use of fire in Zhoukoudian, China and in the Middle Palaeolithic. Optical microscopy has its limits, however, and more sophisticated analytical techniques are now more commonly employed, particularly in the study of diagenesis. FTIR and electron microprobe analysis have been invaluable tools to evaluate the type and extent of diagenesis. Such studies have raised our awareness of these processes, which are crucial to a proper understanding of the archaeological record and how it has changed through time.

Figure 8 Middle Palaeolithic cave site of Pech de l’Aze´ IV, Dordogne, France. Shown here is an in tact block of sediment being removed for micromorphological analysis from organic-rich sands with remains of combustion features shown by the dark bands. Length of column is c. 30 cm.

and postdepositional processes, coupled with more sophisticated analytical techniques than existed even a decade or so ago, provide clearer windows into the activities, subsistence strategies, and behaviors of former inhabitants of cave and rockshelter sites. See also: Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Luminescence Dating; Rock Art; Seasonality of Site Occupation; Soils and Archaeology.

Conclusion

Further Reading

Caves and rockshelters constitute one of the richest venues for attracting past human inhabitants and preserving their remains. Because they provide shelter and protection, they tend to preserve – although sometimes in an altered state – aspects of the archaeological record that are often missing in open-air sites. Current awareness of depositional

Ahler SA (1976) Sedimentary processes at Rodgers Shelter. In: Wood WR and McMillan RB (eds.) Prehistoric Man and His Environments: A Case Study in the Ozark Highland, pp. 123–139. Academic Press: New York. Aldenderfer MS (2002) Late Andean hunting-collecting. In: Peregrine PN and Ember M (eds.) Encyclopedia of Prehistory, Vol. 7: South America, pp. 200–216. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.

974 CAVES AND ROCKSHELTERS Ayalon A, Bar-Matthews M, and Kaufman A (2002) Climatic conditions during marine oxygen isotope stage in the eastern Mediterranean region from the isotopic composition of speleothems of Soreq Cave, Israel. Geology 30: 303–306. Browman DL, Fritz GJ, and Watson PJ (2005) Origins of foodproducing economies in the Americas. In: Scarre C (ed.) The Human Past: World Prehistory & the Development of Human Societies, pp. 306–349. London: Thames & Hudson. Courty MA, Goldberg P, and Macphail RI (1989) Soils and Micromorphology in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crothers G, Faulkner C, Simek J, Watson PJ, and Willey P (2002) Woodland cave archaeology in eastern North America. In: Anderson D and Mainfort R (eds.) The Woodland Southeast, pp. 502–524. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Dibble DS and Lorrain D (1968) Miscellaneous Paper No. 1: Bonfire Shelter: A Stratified Bison Kill Site, Val Verde County, Texas. Austin: Texas Memorial Museum, University of Texas. Dillehay TD (2000) The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory. New York: Basic Books. Donahue J and Adovasio JM (1990) Evolution of sandstone rockshelters in eastern North America: A geoarchaeological perspective. In: Laska NP and Donahue J (eds.) Centennial Special Vol. 4: Archaeological Geology of North America, pp. 231–251. Boulder, CO: The Geological Society of America. Farrand WR (2001) Archaeological sediments in rockshelters and caves. In: Stein JK and Farrand WR (eds.) Sediments in Archaeological Context, pp. 29–66. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press. Fritz GJ (1990) Multiple pathways to farming in precontact eastern North America. Journal of World Prehistory 4: 387–435. Goldberg P (2000) Micromorphology and site formation at Die Kelders Cave 1, South Africa. Journal of Human Evolution 38: 43–90. Goldberg P and Arpin T (2000) Micromorphological analysis of sediments from Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania: Implications for radiocarbon dating. Journal of Field Archaeology 26: 325–342. Goldberg P and Bar-Yosef O (1998) Site formation processes in Kebara and Hayonim Caves and their significance in Levantine prehistoric caves. In: Akazawa T, Aoki K, and Bar-Yosef O (eds.) Neandertals and Modern Humans in Western Asia, pp. 107– 125. New York: Plenum. Goldberg P, Weiner S, Bar-Yosef O, Xu Q, and Liu J (2001) Site formation processes at Zhoukoudian, China. Journal of Human Evolution 41: 483–530. Gremillion KJ (2002) The development and dispersal of agricultural systems in the Woodland Period southeast. In: Anderson D and Mainfort R (eds.) The Woodland Southeast, pp. 483–501. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Hoy RG, Harbor JM, and Carlson EH (1995) The origin of finegrained sediment in the Ohio caverns. Northeastern Geology and Environmental Sciences 17: 83–88. Jennings JD (1957) University of Utah Anthropological Papers 98: Danger Cave. Salt Lake City: University of Utah.

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Karkanas P, Bar-Yosef O, Goldberg P, and Weiner S (2000) Diagenesis in prehistoric caves: The use of minerals that form in situ to assess the completeness of the archaeological record. Journal of Archaeological Science 27: 915–929. Laville H, Rigaud J-P, and Sackett J (1980) Rock Shelters of the Perigord. New York: Academic Press. Long A, Benz BF, Donahue DJ, Jull AJT, and Toolin LJ (1989) First direct AMS dates on early maize from Tehuaca´n, Mexico. Radiocarbon 31: 1035–1040. Lynch TF (1980) Guitarrero Cave: Early Man in the Andes. New York: Academic Press. Mandel RD and Simmons AH (1997) Geoarchaeology of the Akrotiri Aetokremnos Rockshelter, southern Cyprus. Geoarchaeology: An International Journal 12: 567–605. Marean CW, Goldberg P, Avery G, Grine FE, and Klein RG (2000) Middle Stone Age stratigraphy and excavations at Die Kelders Cave 1 (Western Cape Province, South Africa): the 1992, 1993, and 1995 field seasons. Journal of Human Evolution 38: 7–42. Marean CW, Nillsen PJ, Brown K, Jerardino A, and Stynder D (2004) Paleoanthropological investigations of Middle Stone Age sites at Pinnacle Point, Mossel Bay (South Africa): Archaeology and hominid remains from the 2000 field season. PaleoAnthropology 2004.05.02: 14–83. Meignen L, Bar-Yosef O, Goldberg P, and Weiner S (2001) Le feu au Pale´olithique moyen: Recherches sur les structures de combustion et le statut des foyers L’exemple du Proche-Orient. Pale´orient 26: 9–22. Piperno DR and Flannery KV (2001) The earliest archaeological maize from highland Mexico: New accelerator mass spectrometry dates and their implications. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 98: 2101–2103. Rhode D, Goebel T, Graf KE, et al. (2005) Latest Pleistocene– Early Holocene human occupation and palaeoenvironmental change in the Bonneville Basin, Utah–Nevada. In: Pederson J and Dehler CM (eds.) Interior Western United States, pp. 211–230. Geological Society of America Field Guide 6. Boulder, CO: The Geological Society of America. Rick JW (1980) Prehistoric Hunters of the High Andes. New York: Academic Press. Rink WJ (2001) Beyond 14C dating. In: Goldberg P, Holliday VT, and Ferring CR (eds.) Earth Sciences and Archaeology, pp. 385–417. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Sherwood SC, Driskell BN, Randall AR, and Meeks SC (2004) Chronology and stratigraphy at Dust Cave, Alabama. American Antiquity 69: 533–554. Tankersley KB (1997) Sheriden: A Clovis cave site in eastern North America. Geoarchaeology: An International Journal 12: 713–724. Weiner S, Goldberg P, and Bar-Yosef O (2002) Three-dimensional distribution of minerals in the sediments of Hayonim Cave, Israel: Diagenetic processes and archaeological implications. Journal of Archaeological Science 29: 1289–1308. Woodward JC and Goldberg P (2001) The sedimentary records in Mediterranean rockshelters and caves: Archives of environmental change. Geoarchaeology 16: 327–354.

See: Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis; Stylistic.

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CERAMICS AND POTTERY Barbara J Mills, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary clay–water system Varying ratios of clay to water to produce a mixture with properties from leather-hard to plastic to slurry. ethnoarchaeology Study of contemporary peoples to answer questions of archaeological relevance. paste or fabric The mixture of clay and aplastics that produces distinctive wares. potsherd A broken portion of a pottery vessel. provenance The location where an object was made. residue analysis Analysis of organic substances on the surface of the vessel or absorbed into the paste. slip A liquid coating containing clay and/or pigments added to the surface of a vessel. style Choices that are made in the production of an object, including but not limited to decoration. temper Aplastic materials added to the clay to improve its workability and the performance of the vessel during firing and use. use life The longevity of a vessel in its context of use. use-wear Surface alteration resulting from the ways in which a pottery vessel was used. ware A distinctive paste and/or surface treatment.

Introduction Ceramic artifacts are ubiquitous at many archaeological sites, especially those of the last few millennia. They preserve well and in some cases were used and discarded in such large quantities that archaeologists are often faced with the issue of sampling ceramics to be analyzed. Ceramic artifacts occur in a wide range of forms, including those used as containers. Thus, although ‘ceramics’ as a term is often used interchangeably with ‘pottery’, the former is more encompassing and includes fired clay figurines, tiles, spindle whorls, pipes, sickle blades, and many other artifact types that were used around the world. Ceramics can be used to address many different archaeological questions. Their primary use has been for dating associated archaeological deposits. As early as the late nineteenth century, archaeologists observed that the kinds and distributions of ceramics could help date archaeological deposits. In fact, the first question that a ceramic analyst usually is asked to address is the relative age of different ceramic-bearing deposits. Despite its widespread use in dating, ceramics are also important for addressing many other problem domains. These include interpretations about subsistence, identity, migration, economic organization,

status, gender, and ritual and ideology. There are few research topics that cannot be addressed with ceramics, but some have been used more than others.

Ceramic Technology and Terminology Ceramics are produced by firing objects made out of clay. Because clays are ubiquitous in the earth’s crust, ceramics are found in many areas of the world. The only areas of the world where clays are absent or inaccessible is on newly formed islands (especially, coral and recent volcanic islands) and in areas where they are buried under ice and snow such as the Arctic. Clays are defined by their distinct chemical, mineralogical, and particle-size attributes. Clays are the product of weathering and are hydrous alumina silicates with the basic chemical formula of AlSiO2. There are several different kinds of clay minerals, which are defined by their crystalline structures, including kaolinite (the clay mineral used for porcelain), illite, and montmorillonite (also called smectite). Particles of clay are platy in form and are defined by particle sizes smaller than silt, or less than 0.00005 mm. Clays can also be defined by their refractory properties, or how well they withstand high temperatures without fusing. Kaolinitic clays have the highest refractory properties of the commonly occurring clay minerals. When water is mixed with clay, the platy structure of the particles allows them to slide against each other producing a plastic substance that can be manipulated by hand. The right mix of water and clay within what has been termed the ‘clay–water system’ produces substances with different workability. Too little water will produce a mixture that is sticky and cannot be manipulated. Too much water will produce a liquid slurry or ‘slip’ that is useful as a coating, but is not able to be formed by hand. Each clay type has a different absorption rate and therefore will require different ratios of water to solids. Kaolinites, because of their two-layer crystalline structure, absorb less water than do montmorillonites, which have a threelayer structure. Kaolinites are therefore less susceptible to shrinkage as the water evaporates and do not crack as easily during drying and firing. Clays can be prepared in a number of different ways prior to the forming of the vessel. Depending on their origin, they may need to be cleaned, winnowed, or levigated to remove impurities and nonclay particles. Levigation basins allow larger particles to settle and have been archaeologically documented in many areas of the world. Sedimentary clays, often found interbedded with sandstones, may need to be

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ground up to disaggregate the clay minerals and allow even mixing with water. This was accomplished by grinding the clay on ground stone slabs. Potters around the world discovered that adding some material to the clay after it has been mixed with water enhances the performance characteristics of the object. These materials can be other clays, but more often they are aplastic materials whose properties do not change with the addition of water. Aplastics added to clays are referred to as ‘temper’ by archaeologists. Temper and clay together form the ‘paste’ or ‘fabric’ of ceramic objects. Tempering materials used around the world include sand, and crushed rock, shell, or ‘potsherds’. The latter are pieces of broken pottery, also referred to as sherds or shards (the latter is the British term). Organic tempers were also used in many areas of the world and include materials such as grasses, dung, fur, and rice chaff. Organic tempers largely burn out during the firing of the object and are identified by the shape of their distinctive voids in the paste. Specific performance characteristics that are enhanced through the addition of tempering materials include increased workability during the forming process, reduced shrinkage during drying, increased strength through the chemical or mechanical bonding of temper and clay particles, and increased toughness by reducing crack propagation. Different clays may require the use of a range of temper types. Even within the same assemblage, there may be differences in the tempers because of differences in the intended use of vessels. These different paste combinations are often the basis for distinguishing what are called ‘wares’ in archaeological assemblages. Ceramics may be formed in a number of different ways and archaeologists may use forming methods as an indicator of the intensity of production practiced by a particular potter or potting group. For example, the use of a potter’s wheel is often seen as an indicator of higher production output. The simplest way to form an object out of clay is by forming a ball and then pinching the clay out with the thumb and forefinger. Pinch pots may be made in this way, or they can be the bases of vessels, which are then added on to other building methods. The walls of a vessel may be built up successively with coils or slabs of clay. These building methods are especially common for hand-building without a wheel, but may be used with a turning plate or slow wheel. Wheel-made ceramics rely on centrifugal force and may begin with a large lump or cylinder of clay that is then shaped during the turning process. Smoothing or finishing of the walls of vessels after coiling is often accomplished with scrapers, hence the term coiled-and-scraped. In other cases the walls may be thinned and smoothed

using a paddle on the exterior surface and a hard object called an anvil held against the interior surface. Another technique found in some archaeological assemblages is the use of a two-piece mold. Slabs of clay are pressed into the two sides of the mold, removed from the mold, and then pieced together before the sides have completely dried. Many of the above building methods may be combined on a single vessel, creating objects with complex building methods. The different techniques sometimes can be distinguished based on surface characteristics, such as scrape marks from making coiled-and-scraped vessels, the dimpling that results from the use of paddle-and-anvil construction, or the concentric rings evident on wheel-made pottery. However, in cases where multiple building techniques were used and/or when the surfaces have been smoothed, slipped, and painted over, the methods used to form pottery vessels may only be determined through techniques such as X-radiography. Nonetheless, these different techniques are important to reconstruct because they can provide information on the intensity of production practiced by potters as well as on modes of transmission in learning styles that can be associated with different potting groups in the past. After the vessel has been formed, the exterior can be altered using a variety of tools and materials. Some of these change the color of the surface and/or enhance the ability of a vessel to retain liquids or conduct heat. After the vessel has been formed, but still plastic, the surface may be decorated by tools used for texturing, including incising and stamping. It may be covered with a clay slurry or slip, an organic coating such as pitch, and/or polished. Depending on the firing temperature and the contents of the slip, some slips may turn vitreous and produce a glaze. Glazes were more commonly found in the Near East and Asia, as well as in historical period assemblages. All-over glazes, covering the exterior of the vessel, are absent from archaeological assemblages in the Americas until Spanish explorers brought the tin-glaze technique widely known as majolica. Painted decoration may involve a variety of materials, but are generally divided into organic (usually plant) and mineral categories. In practice, many pigments used in preindustrial contexts were mixtures of organic and mineral materials because organic materials help to bind mineral particles together and minerals within an organic matrix add depth and density to the color. Commonly used mineral paints include hematite and manganese. Glaze paints are made by adding a flux to a paint mixture that also includes silica. Common fluxes are lead, copper, and tin. The fluxes lower the melting point of silica allowing the paint to

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vitrify at temperatures closer to what was possible using traditional firing techniques. Firing of clay objects chemically and physically transforms the clay minerals to produce a hard object from what was plastic material. Up until the object was fired, objects made from clay will rehydrate when subjected to moisture and lose their form. Some low-fired objects, or what has been referred to as ‘soft ware’, may be highly susceptible to weathering and therefore not well preserved in the archaeological record. Earthenwares were fired at between 600 and 1000  C. Some low refractory clays cannot be fired at higher temperatures than this. Open firing was used throughout the world and can be highly efficient forfiring ceramics in this range. Formal kilns became prominent parts of ceramic technology in many parts of the world. Kilns are necessary for high-fired ceramics, such as porcelains, which were made from kaolinitic clays fired at temperatures of between 1200 and 1400  C.

The Earliest Ceramics and Pottery The discovery that clay will fire into a hard material was independently invented many times and in many areas of the world. It is clear that the knowledge that clay can be transformed through fire into hard, durable objects preceded the manufacture of pottery vessels. Figurines are the earliest form of ceramics in many areas, sometimes preceding the production of pottery by thousands of years. At the site of Dolnı´ Veˇstonice in Czechoslovakia, figurines of fired clay have been recovered that date to the Upper Palaeolithic, or about 30 000 years ago. Figurines are also among the earliest ceramic forms in many parts of the Americas, such as Formative Period Mesoamerica and the American Southwest. As these early figurines show, although many people equate agriculture with pottery, the earliest ceramics predate agriculture. Around the world, there are many examples of hunter–gatherers who made ceramics, including pottery vessels, demonstrating that ceramics are not necessarily or exclusively a technology of sedentary people or agriculturalists. Some of the earliest pottery in the Old World comes from Jomon period sites in Japan, where potters made some ceramic vessels dated to c. 13 000 BP. These were probably used by complex foragers who prepared shellfish and other collected foods. Radiocarbon dating of associated materials and fiber temper suggests that early pottery was made in two other areas about the same time or perhaps even earlier, in southern China (such as the Nanling area) and eastern Russia (including the Amur River basin).

These are associated with the Palaeolithic to Neolithic transition, including a broader spectrum of resource extraction. In the New World, the earliest ceramics are found in lowland South America, such as Brazil, where they are dated to c. 8000 BP. Societies in several other areas of the New World independently invented and/or adopted pottery technology over the next several thousand years, responding to changing environmental conditions and a broadening of the subsistence base to include more seed crops. There are several reasons why pottery containers became part of the technological repertoire of past societies throughout the world. Worldwide, archaeologists have noticed that besides their occurrence as figurines, many of the earliest ceramics were made by hunter-gatherers in resource-abundant areas of the world. Some archaeologists have suggested that these ceramics are closely associated with prestige building events, such as ritual feasts. These theories complement the idea that ceramics were invented because they provide more efficient containers for serving, storage, and cooking. The ability of ceramics to withstand repeated temperature cycling, or thermal shock resistance, may have been a major reason for the change from baskets to ceramic containers for food preparation. Similarly, changes in the shape of pottery vessels, such as from flat-bottomed to round-bottomed forms, may be related to the prolonged use of vessels for transforming seed-based foods into palatable and more nutritious meals. This is one of the major reasons why agriculturalists relied heavily on ceramic containers. But, not all ceramics were used for cooking in early agricultural societies. Storage of seeds was another important use of ceramics as was the use of ceramics in serving, including serving in communal consumption events or feasts.

Ceramics and Chronology Building One of the most important uses of ceramics for archaeological analysis is in establishing archaeological chronologies. The sequence of occupation at a ceramicbearing site can be determined through a number of complementary methods including ceramic ‘seriation’, stratigraphic association, direct dating of vessel contents and absorbed or surface residues, and dating of associated materials. Ceramic seriation is based on the principle that ‘styles’ – defined as choices made about technology, decoration, form, etc. – go in and out of favor. Consider, for example, the hula hoop, bell bottoms, and car tail lights. When viewed through time, the frequency of styles starts out small, increases dramatically, and

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then drops out of favor. Occurrence seriation is based on the presence/absence of a particular ceramic style. This method of chronological ordering was first applied by Sir Flinders Petrie in the late nineteenth century to the contents of predynastic cemeteries in Egypt. Frequency seriation is based on counts or frequencies, which are then converted to percentages of stylistic categories or types. Frequency seriation was developed by James Ford in the 1930s to arrange ceramic assemblages from the Southeastern US. His method of hand-sorting strips of paper to produce the expected popularity of curves of different types in an assemblage can now be replicated using computer programs. In addition, there are multivariate quantitative methods that produce other ways of arranging ceramic assemblages. These usually start with a matrix or spread sheet with types as columns and proveniences or find contexts as rows (such as strata, house floor, or burial assemblages). Correspondence analysis has been the most successful of these quantitative techniques. Direct dating of archaeological ceramics can be accomplished through a number of methods. Radiocarbon or AMS dating of organic temper, vessel contents, and residues is becoming more widespread. Fiber tempers provide one possible source of dating, but is dependent on low-firing conditions in which the temper is not wholly burned out of the paste. If during excavation the vessel is found to have its contents still preserved, such as stored seeds, direct dating may be a highly accurate indicator of the time that the pot was filled and deposited. Residues on the exterior of the vessel are highly subject to post-depositional processes, such as water-borne carbon. In addition, the carbon may be from firewood that is much older than the use of the pot itself. Absorbed residues, including lipids, can also be directly dated. Nonetheless, dating of residues is still in its infancy because of potential contamination by other materials and the porous nature of ceramic pastes that allows later material to be absorbed. A second method of directly dating ceramics is luminescence dating. Luminesence dating is based on the principle that the crystalline structures in ceramics emit light in a measurable way as a result of the absorption of light during the firing event. Luminescence dating has been applied to ceramics from around the world and found to closely track other independent dating methods. The major impediment to more widespread use is the cost. In addition, treering and AMS dating of materials associated with ceramics still provide more precise estimates of the age of pottery. Nonetheless, when ceramics are made over long time spans and other methods are not available, luminescence dating may be a good solution.

Ceramics may be indirectly dated through other independent techniques, such as radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology. Tree-ring dating of architectural wood has been a mainstay of chronometric control in areas such as the American Southwest, where there are now hundreds of thousands of pieces of dated wood. Although the dated events may be different – the date that the tree was felled in the case of the wood, and the date that the pottery was discarded in the case of the ceramics – dendrochronology still offers a level of precision not found with most other techniques. Even AMS dating, however, can be useful for establishing absolute dates for ceramic style changes that are otherwise in a floating series or sequence. Ultimately, the best way to use ceramics for chronology building is to combine a multitude of techniques, including direct and indirect dating and stylistic seriation.

Ceramic Function Differences in theories about the origins of ceramics along with archaeologists’ interest in reconstructing the ways in which ceramics were used in social life have led to a vast literature on ceramic function. Archaeologists who study vessel function rely on pottery form (shape and size), use alteration, composition, archaeological context, and observations of ceramics used in contemporary societies. The latter includes the field of ceramic ‘ethnoarchaeology’, where archaeological questions (like vessel use) are addressed by observing how vessels are made, used, and discarded in ethnographic contexts. Most ceramics recovered archaeologically were used as containers. These containers can be viewed as tools that even out spatial and temporal heterogeneity. They are used to transport contents, including water. They store materials for use at a later time, including seeds for planting or consumption. They also help to process foods to make them more palatable or more nutritious, such as the cooking of dried seeds. These container uses are supplemented by their social uses, such as expressions of social identity – including gender, social group affiliation, and status. When archaeologists refer to vessel function, they are primarily referring to their use as containers, but pottery also had important social and ideological components in many societies. Variation in ceramic shape can be an important predictor of how vessels were used in the past. Vessels used to store liquids will generally have small apertures to promote containment security. Vessels used to transport goods often have appendages that make them more portable and, especially if carrying liquids, will have small necks. Serving vessels are usually wider than they are tall, with large apertures, which

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make them more accessible. It has been noted that extended cooking favors a rounded bottom over one that is flat. In addition, cooking of stews and gruels often requires an opening that is large enough to stir and serve from, but closed enough to keep the contents in. Despite these generalities, cooking vessels show tremendous intra- and intergroup variation making shape only one way to determine vessel function. In addition, some vessels were multifunctional and their shapes reflect compromises among a number of considerations of use. Besides shape, archaeologists use size as a way of getting at differences in vessel form and use. Measurements of different parts of the vessel, such as the rim diameter, aperture (if different from the rim), maximum diameter, and height provide quantitative data for comparing vessel sizes. The use of ratios of these size measurements, such as maximum diameter to height, is a quantitative way of distinguishing different shapes present in a vessel assemblage. Volume is the best overall measure of vessel size but it is difficult to estimate on broken vessels. When analyzing broken vessels, rim diameter is used more exclusively. The curvature fitting method is still the most widely applied and can also provide a means of estimating the percentage of the vessel represented. Nonetheless, rim diameter and volume may not be strongly correlated. Ceramic analysts frequently work back and forth between whole vessels and sherds to come up with both shape and size classes that can be broadly applied in a particular archaeological area. Many archaeologists have pointed out that form focuses on the intended use of a vessel. In order to look at the actual use, archaeologists instead have focused on use alteration, including both ‘residue analysis’ and ‘use-wear’. Absorbed residue analyses have become increasingly important in recent years. The remains of foods cooked, served, or stored in a vessel become trapped in the pores of the vessel and are extracted in the laboratory. This is usually accomplished through GC-MS, a technique that uses gas chromatography to extract residues such as lipids and proteins, combined with mass spectrometry to identify their specific chemical signatures. GC-MS has been used to identify cacao in storage vessels from the Maya area, milk in vessels from Europe and Eurasia, beer and wine vessels in the Mediterranean, and changes in diet in a number of other areas of the world. Another type of use alteration is use-wear. In this case, archaeologists study the abrasion, scratching, spalling, and pitting of the surface of sherds to understand differences in vessel use. Pitting has been used to suggest fermentation vessels – especially when absorbed residue analyses have not yet been applied. In other

cases, use-wear has demonstrated that vessels found in one context, such as burials, were used in other contexts before their placement with the deceased. The composition and surface treatment of ceramics is also a clue to the ways in which different vessels were used. Cooking vessels are rarely decorated and usually have a coarse temper, which helps to counteract the thermal shock of heating and cooking. Ceramics used for serving are usually made of finer pastes and are more often decorated. Again, these generalizations may vary from society to society and through time, but variation in the ways in which vessels were tempered may be important clues to the function of vessels in a particular archaeological assemblage as well as to changes in the way that vessels were used. For example, the shift from sand- to shell-tempered pottery in the Southeastern US has been found to be correlated with changes in diet and longer-duration boiling. Differences in vessel use are important for what is called accumulations research and are based on the concept of ceramic ‘use life’. Use life is the life span of a ceramic vessel and can be affected by a number of factors, but most importantly on frequency of use. The shorter the use life, the more often a vessel class breaks and is discarded. The accumulation of different vessel classes can be helpful for reconstructing the duration of settlement occupation.

Pottery Economics Ceramics are widely used by archaeologists to look at the economic organization of past societies. Domains of the economy can be divided into production, distribution, and consumption. In terms of ceramics, production addresses who produced the ceramics, how much they produced, where they made them, in what groups, and for whom. Distribution addresses how ceramic objects moved from producers to consumers, including the structure of their social interactions, the distances moved, and the intensity or amount of goods that were moved. Consumption looks at how ceramics were used and in what social contexts, including ways in which consumer choices or demand influenced what ceramics were being made and distributed. Each of these domains includes the analysis of slightly different questions and different methods of analysis. Nonetheless, it is recognized that all three need to be integrated to understand pottery economics. Ceramic Production and Specialization

Ceramic production is closely tied to the concept of specialization. Specialization is defined on a continuum of producers to consumers in which the fewer the

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number of producers that is present, the more specialized is the production. In the past, archaeologists generalized about specialization and dichotomized it as full versus part-time. Based on multiple ethnographic, archaeological, and ethnoarchaeological studies, we now know that ceramic production can be organized in multiple ways and that specialization should be viewed as a continuum that can be measured using multiple dimensions. Another historical misconception in the way that archaeologists approached specialization in production was the association of high degrees of specialization with complex societies and especially with states. Although it is true that many complexly organized societies, including states, had a high degree of craft specialization, not all crafts and especially not all ceramics were made by specialists. Conversely, many nonstate societies may have had some ceramic forms that were made within a highly specialized organization of production. Finally, it is clear that every society had multiple degrees of specialization in the crafting of ceramics, which may have been dependent on their uses. Archaeologists now look at different ceramic vessel classes to determine how production was organized. Following a division proposed by Cathy Costin, they also divide production into a number of variables including (1) the location and spatial concentration of production, (2) the social scale of production, (3) the extent to which production is controlled by elites, and (4) the intensity of production. Location of ceramic production One of the first steps in determining how production was organized is to determine where the ceramics were made or their ‘provenance’. The provenance of pottery can be assessed through a number of methods and contributes to understanding how concentrated production was on the landscape; that is, whether production was limited to a number of sites within a region or to a specific area of an individual site. If production of pottery was concentrated in a few locations, then specialization was more likely to have taken place. Direct means of identifying pottery production locations include the excavation of kilns, mixing or levigation basins, piles of wasters (vessels broken and/ or misfired during firing), prepared clays, and tools specifically used for pottery production. The latter may include scrapers, anvils, and polishing stones. One of the difficulties with these kinds of direct means of determining pottery production locations is that only some of them clearly differentiate the exact wares and vessel types that were made at a particular site. Wasters are the best example of the specific vessels that were made, as is illustrated

by fused vessels from a firing area at Tell Leilan, Syria. Other evidence may indicate that production occurred at a particular location, but not which ceramics were actually produced. Provenance analysis of ceramics now largely focuses on ways of assessing their composition. Compositional analyses include mineralogical and chemical identifications of pastes, tempers, slips, and paints. Mineralogical analyses can be conducted using a binocular microscope to identify different kinds of temper particles. This technique is usually supplemented by the analysis of 30 mm thin-sections that are analyzed with a petrographic microscope (see Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis; Stylistic). The petrographic microscope allows identification of specific minerals based on their crystalline structures as well as a means of counting the number of fragments in the paste when used with a point-counting stage. Recent improvements in digital image-analysis software now provide ways of capturing images with camera mounts on the microscope and conducting more detailed analyses. Petrographic analysis also allows textural analyses to be conducted, including the size, shape, and density of different particles. Several archaeologists have adopted the Gazi point-counting technique, which plots clay, silt, and sand on a ternary graph. Chemical compositional analyses are diverse, but may be divided into point and bulk techniques. Point techniques focus on a small area of the paste, temper, slip, or paint, while bulk analyses generally involve grinding of a sample. For the analysis of ceramic pastes, bulk techniques can homogenize clay and temper signatures, obscuring the actual signature of each. Nonetheless, bulk chemical analyses have been used widely in archaeological analyses. The two most commonly used bulk techniques used on ceramics are Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA or sometimes just NAA) and Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). The latter includes new laser instrumentation that allows surface analysis and is also being used on slips and paints (LA-ICPMS). INAA is considered to have the highest accuracy, precision, and sensitivity of all the other chemical-characterization techniques and can measure the presence of major, minor, and trace elements. Another bulk technique is X-ray Fluoresence (XRF), which is faster than the other two techniques but only measures major elements. A more point-based technique includes electron probe microanalysis (EPMA). INAA is now being replaced by ICP-MS in the analysis of archaeological ceramics because many of the nuclear reactors used

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for research are going off-line and will not be replaced. Thus, although ICP-MS measures fewer elements than INAA, it is becoming more popular. In addition to measuring the elemental content of paste, temper, slip, or paint recipes, some of this instrumentation can assess the geological age of the material. This is done through the characterization of specific isotopes of different elements, especially lead. When lead is used in paints, as it was in glazes in the Southwestern US, the age of the source material can be identified. Because different geological sources were formed at different times, isotopes help to identify the location of the procurement of raw materials, if not the production location itself. Despite the use of scientific instrumentation, a successful application of compositional analysis to ceramics requires geological heterogeneity in the distribution of raw materials and within-source homogeneity of the raw material. This is known as the ‘provenience postulate’ (perhaps better called the provenance postulate). Some clay sources occur over too large an area to accurately locate the location of production. In addition, some clays are highly heterogeneous within sources, further complicating analyses. In order to compare the results of one analysis to the results derived from another analysis using a different instrument or between different runs on the same instrument it is also necessary to calibrate the instrument to a known standard. All of the above techniques, whether chemical or mineralogical, do not necessarily tie ceramics to exact locations, but rather to zones. Only in limited cases do they pinpoint exact locations of production. Nonetheless, they can help to determine the number of potential settlements where ceramics were made. In addition, they can be applied to geological samples of clays and tempers to further narrow-down potential production areas. The social scale of ceramic production In addition to the spatial location of ceramic production, a major part of the organization of ceramic production is determining who made ceramics. Although many ceramics worldwide are made by individuals within a household, other well-documented examples include production by multiple members of the household as well as supra-household production in workshops. It is difficult for archaeologists to firmly attribute the production to an individual within the household. Nonetheless, based on cross-cultural analyses women tend to make ceramics used in non-market economies. This inference can be corroborated by looking at the distribution of the tools of production in burials, such as polishing stones and scrapers. When

multiple members of the household are involved in production there may be permanent facilities associated with the production of pottery, such as the presence of large mixing basins or firing areas. Similarly, if these facilities are in facilities separate from domestic rooms, then workshops may be present. As the intensity of production increases (see below), it is more likely that production has moved beyond an individual and is being made by multiple hands within the household or even in a workshop. Recent archaeological research has found that ceramic workshops are rarer in prehistoric situations than originally thought. Particularly in the Americas, it is clear that ceramics were more often made within the household even though production output was high. These studies demonstrate the flexibility of the household to increase production as needed, but still at the same social scale. The control of production by elites The degree to which elite members of a society were involved in ceramic production is another dimension of the organization of production. When elites control production it is sometimes referred to as attached specialization as opposed to the more independent specialization of non-elites. Although elite control over production has been hypothesized for many crafts, there are fewer examples of their control over ceramic production. This is largely because most ceramics are not high-status items. Nonetheless, there were situations in which elite households themselves were involved in the production and specialization of special forms of vessels. Maya cylinder jars are again an example because the knowledge of how to make them, or at least the knowledge of how to decorate them, was limited to those who knew how to write. This has been termed embedded production – the production of items within elite households that promotes the status of that household. In other situations there may not be a clear stratification of society into elite and non-elites, or there may be many categories of social status. Ceramic production may still benefit or promote the status of individual families in these latter cases. For example, archaeologists working in the US Southwest have suggested that production of feasting vessels promoted the status of particular individuals and/or their households. Intensity of ceramic production Another dimension of variation in ceramic production is how much pottery was made, or the intensity of production. Although this has been interpreted by some as how often production is scheduled, the most archaeologically salient attribute is how much is produced by

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potters. Production in excess of household needs affects the way that pottery is distributed (see below). Measuring intensity of ceramic production can be done by looking at the amount of production debris. Often this has to be scaled to another variable, such as the total number of sherds in the discard assemblage. Done in this way, differences among households can be measured, demonstrating the uneven production by some households over others at an intra- or intersite basis. Ceramic Distribution

Like production, ceramic distribution is dependent on a number of different variables. One of the most important things that must be established is where the ceramics were produced, or their provenance. The other most frequently used variable is the intensity of production. Using these variables, the distances and quantities of ceramics that were distributed can be mapped. Although it is assumed that most ceramics are distributed from their locations of production through trade and exchange, in many societies, people also move with their pots. Migration from one area to another will result in similar patterns of ceramic distribution, with an important exception. Migrants cannot carry a large number of ceramic vessels and when they move they often replicate what they made in their former homes in the new area. If the ceramic raw materials are heterogeneously distributed, this migration may be discerned by looking at the transfer of the practices of making ceramics using locally available materials. Other than through migration, ceramics may be distributed by a number of interactions that fall into the categories of small-scale exchange, larger-scale redistribution, and even markets. Small-scale exchanges of ceramics were common in many societies, from the simplest to the most complex, as part of gifting. These are often described as reciprocal exchanges because a similar gift is expected, if not given. Redistribution of ceramics in which the products are pooled and then given out is a more intensive means of distribution and is called redistribution. The distinction between reciprocity and redistribution is less applicable to ceramics than it is for other items, such as subsistence goods. Few archaeologists have identified the pooling of ceramic goods and their redistribution, although there are examples in statesupported production and distribution – such as among the Inca. There have been many more examples of the distribution of ceramics through intensive interactions that took place in situations of barter or the exchange of

goods for other goods. When production is at a level of intensity that cannot be accommodated through gifting, barter of ceramics is often present. In ceramic marketplaces documented ethnoarchaeologically, ceramic vessels often are exchanged for a set amount of a subsistence good that might be measured by the contents of the vessel itself – such as how much rice it might hold. Although barter is a kind of market economy, it need not have an established marketplace. Nonetheless, there needs to be some place where people congregate to exchange goods. In the southern US Southwest, it has been suggested that ballcourt communities were where barter exchanges took place. Preclassic Period Hohokam communities specialized in the production of different vessel forms and wares and then were distributed throughout the entire region. The intensity and concentration of production in these communities was so high that their distribution could not have been through gift exchanges. The absence of centralized redistribution of these vessels leaves barter as the logical means of distribution. Ceramic Consumption

Archaeologists have spent more time looking at models and methods for investigating ceramic production and distribution than they have in looking at ceramic consumption. Yet, how ceramics were used or consumed is important for understanding the complete economic system. Consumption refers to the social contexts in which ceramics were used, including who used them and for what purposes. As befits the topic of consumption, much of the recent research on ceramics focuses on their use as vessels for the preparation, storage, and serving of food. Functional analyses are handmaidens to these analyses, which tend to distinguish between diet and cuisine. Diet refers to the items that are cooked, but cuisine is more encompassing and refers to the practices that surround food preparation, serving, and consumption. A recent topic of ceramics and cuisines is the use of pottery in feasts. Feasting vessels include serving vessels for food and drink and have been suggested to date to the earliest periods of ceramic production. Beer fermentation and drinking vessels have been identified in many contexts and include some of the earliest use of ceramics in many areas, such as Western Europe. Consumption also covers the ways in which ceramics were deposited. Some ceramics were clearly deposited outside the usual discard pathways of domestic refuse. For example, vessels placed in caves containing cotton, painted and carved wood, and other objects are found in many areas of the US

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Southwest. Ceramics are also found in caves in Mesoamerica. Finally and perhaps more ubiquitously, ceramics were deposited with the deceased. Each of these archaeological contexts is an important way of looking at ceramics and their different values within each society. Modeling Change in Production, Distribution, and Consumption

There are three basic models for explaining organizational change in the production, distribution, and consumption of ceramics: (1) economic imperative, (2) political economy, and (3) ideological motives. Although these often are presented as mutually exclusive, there are situations in which multiple models may apply in the same archaeological situation and these different models may overlap. The economic imperative model is more often applied to utilitarian goods and one hypothesis is that it is tied to the need for extra income. Those who cannot grow enough food, for example, turn to ceramic manufacture to make up for shortfalls. This may be because they are disenfranchised from agricultural land – also called the disenfranchised peasant model – or because of personal situations such as loss of the major agricultural producers in the family. This hypothesis has been difficult to test archaeologically and where it has, no clear relationship between agriculturally marginal lands and specialization has been demonstrated. Another variant of the economic imperative model is that excess production was a means of buffering risk. Those people living in more marginal areas produced more ceramics for exchange and that provided them with the networks to call on when they experienced shortfalls. A final variant of the economically-based approach is that with increasing population sizes, it is more efficient to have fewer producers. The second major model for considering how pottery economics change is based on the political economy, or the ways in which power is enhanced through the production, distribution, and consumption of certain goods. In the case of ceramics, production of certain kinds of pottery may be seen as a way of building prestige. This may only apply to a limited number and types of ceramics, such as the Maya cylinder jars. In many cases, ceramics are not prestige items. A more widespread way in which ceramics may be used in the political economic is through the monopolization of production and/or distribution of pottery as a means of creating debt dependency. The third major model is based on ideological motives. According to this model, ceramics used in ritual or with ideological meaning may enhance the

prestige of the producer and/or the consumer. Examples include bowls that held special offerings, vessels used to serve food and drink at feasts, and/or other vessels with depictions of supernatural beings. These ideological motives may be strongly tied to social identities as they reinforce participation in certain groups. These need not be items used exclusively by elite members of the society, but could have been used by all members, or at least by many members. As the above models indicate, there are many ways in which archaeologists now approach the production, distribution, and consumption of ceramics. New work on ceramics parallels other work on the circulation of goods that emphasizes their multiscalar and multicentric properties. Different materials, including different forms of vessels, may have highly variable production and circulation patterns – even within the same society.

Social Interpretations of Ceramics Archaeological ceramics are multifaceted objects that can be used in a number of ways. Chronology, function, and the economic organization of past societies have been the major ways of interpreting these artifacts in the past. In addition to these topics, there has been a resurgence of interest in other questions such as identity and migration, and ideology. These topics have been touched upon above, but because of their increased attention in recent years they require elaboration. Identity and Migration

An oft-cited phrase is that pottery equals people. Archaeological ‘cultures’ in many areas of the world were defined on the basis of differences in ceramics. This equivalence has been strongly questioned in recent years because differences in identity are not always expressed through ceramics. Moreover, it is now recognized that identity is multidimensional and expressed in many ways – including gender, household affiliation, language group, village, and suprahousehold group membership –not just social group identity or ethnicity. Previous interpretations of identity from ceramics largely have focused on the ‘active’ uses of style, especially decorative styles. Today, technological styles, or the many ways of making a pot, are used instead. These include attributes such as the way that vessels are built, the finishing or angle of the rim, and paint recipes. Some of these technological styles are the result of unconscious choices that potters make while they are engaged in the production process. Others are intentional choices, but it has been argued that unconscious choices may be a better way at getting

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at learning traditions or what has been called communities of practice. The significance of these studies of technological styles for identity research is that they are not dependent upon the analysis of painted decoration. Even more importantly, these provide ways of linking people across the landscape and in addressing migration through ceramics. Migration has received a resurgence of interest and ceramics are a key way of interpreting the movement of people across the landscape. Ritual and Ideology

Ceramic artifacts were used in ritual contexts and to convey aspects of ideology. A distinction between the two emphasizes how ceramic objects were used in ceremonial practices versus what they meant to those who used and viewed them. Ceramics were used in a variety of ritual contexts including containers to serve special food and drink, vessels to hold offerings, pipes for ceremonial smoking, censers for burning fragrances, and figurines as representations of the human body during curing and other ritual practices. Form and context are two of the most important criteria for determining the ritual use of ceramics, especially when these can be combined. Another way in which ritual and ideology can be interpreted is through iconography. For example, many pots were decorated with images that show ceremonial scenes, represent supernatural beings, and/or depict animals, birds, and humans from oral histories. In many areas of the world ceramics were an important medium for expressing ideology, including such well-known producing areas as the Mimbres of the Southwest and the Moche in Andean South America. See also: Archaeology Laboratory, Overview; Artifacts, Overview; Carbon-14 Dating; Chemical Analysis

Techniques; Classification and Typology; Conservation and Stabilization of Materials; Craft Specialization; Culture, Concept and Definitions; Dating Methods, Overview; Economic Archaeology; Ethnicity; Ethnoarchaeology; Exchange Systems; Experimental Archaeology; Food and Feasting, Social and Political Aspects; Geoarchaeology; Household Archaeology; Identity and Power; Image and Symbol; Individual, Archaeology of in Prehistory; Interdisciplinary Research; Interpretive Art and Archaeology; Luminescence Dating; Neutron Activation Analysis; Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis; Stylistic; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Seriation; Vitreous Materials Analysis.

Further Reading Barnett WK and Hoopes JW (eds.) (1995) The Emergence of Pottery. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Costin C (1991) Craft specialization: Issues in defining, documenting, and explaining the organization of production. In: Schiffer MB (ed.) Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 3, pp. 1–56. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. David N and Kramer C (2001) Ethnoarchaeology in Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Orton C, Tyers P, and Vince A (1993) Pottery in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rice PM (1987) Pottery Analysis: A Sourcebook. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rice PM (1999) On the origins of pottery. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 6(1): 1–54. Rye OS (1981) Pottery Technology: Principles and Reconstruction. Washington, DC: Taraxacum. Shepard AO (1957) Ceramics for the Archaeologist. Publication 609, Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington. Sinopoli CM (1991) Approaches to Archaeological Ceramics. New York: Plenum Press. Skibo JM (1992) Pottery Function: A Use-Alteration Perspective. New York: Plenum Press. Skibo JM and Feinman GM (eds.) (1999) Pottery and People: A Dynamic Interaction. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

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CHEMICAL ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES Julian Henderson, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) A method used for determining the elemental composition of materials, based on the X-rays emitted by different elements. mass spectrometry An analytical technique used to measure the mass-to-charge ratio of ions. It is most generally used to find the composition of a physical sample by generating a mass spectrum representing the masses of sample components. neutron activation analysis A nuclear testing method that determines elemental content regardless of oxidation state, chemical composition, or physical location. particle accelerator A device that uses electric fields to propel electrically charged particles to high speeds and to contain them. scanning electron microscopy A method for high-resolution imaging of surfaces. synchrotron-induced radiation A form of very high radiation produced using an accelerator. High intensity is accompanied by fine beam dimensions and this allows it to be used for a range of applications using a range of analytical techniques.

Introduction The investigation of archaeological materials using scientific techniques has a long history, dating back as far as Renaissance Italy. Following on from George III’s assay master, Mr. Alchorn, who analyzed Irish Bronze Age swords, in 1798 Klaproth published the analytical results of Roman glass and bronze mirrors. Later, the eminent scientists Michael Faraday (1791– 1867) and Humphrey Davy (1778–1829) analyzed archaeological materials, Davy analyzing ‘Egyptian blue’ and a material labeled ‘red enamel’. These early investigations were enquiries into the technological capabilities of the ancients. Since then, the analysis of archaeological materials and the interpretation of the results obtained have developed in various ways. The application of a range of scientific techniques for the first time and the initial assemblage of data showing chronological contrasts in the developments of technologies occurred. This continued in the 1960s and by this time scientific techniques were being used to investigate provenance in order to contribute to models of production and exchange. The chemical analysis of obsidian in particular produced results that were especially useful for provenance. At this time it was therefore demonstrated that scientific analysis could contribute in important ways to ‘mainstream archaeology’.

It represented an important step change in archaeological science. Confidence had developed in the accuracy and precision of specific applications of the techniques used. Given the possible range of organic and inorganic materials used and made in past societies, there has always been a degree of unpredictability about the results obtained, which created an added incentive for those involved. Whereas ‘the analyst’ and ‘the archaeologist’ have tended to collaborate as independent specialists, and they still do, the two aspects are increasingly understood and the results combined by the same person. Since the 1970s, research using scientific analysis has continued to contribute to mainstream archaeology in a range of important ways and has started to show how it can shed light on the study of embedded technologies, thereby contributing to social, economic, and ritual aspects of materials in society. Scientific analysis can be destructive, microdestructive, or nondestructive. The use of a particular technique will be determined by the research questions to be answered, the availability of techniques, the expertise of those involved, the availability of funding, and the extent to which one or more artifacts can be sampled or surfaces prepared for analysis (see Artifacts, Overview). The scientific investigation of weathering clearly has a role to play in archaeological and museum environments. Scientific analysis can contribute to an understanding of what is depleted, what has replaced it, the rate at which weathering has occurred, and under what conditions it occurred. Microdestructive techniques have become increasingly more acceptable. Although there may be a question over how much sample is representative of the whole artifact, microsampling of a homogeneous (single phase) material such as glass or obsidian is often adequate (see Sampling Methods, Theory and Praxis). Moreover, by analyzing a sufficient number of artifacts of a specific type and date, it can provide evidence of the raw materials used, their compositional variations (including impurities), ‘workshop’ compositions, regional compositions, the decorative techniques employed provenance and trade. If microsamples are unweathered, it is possible to produce quantitative results that are directly comparable with other unweathered samples. Standard materials of known chemical composition, which have been subject to scrupulous scientific analysis using a range of analytical techniques, are used to highlight instrumental errors, as a means of calibrating analytical systems and for monitoring any analytical drift. Repeated

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analysis of the same standard material produces results for accuracy. The use of standard materials is equally applicable to the use of destructive techniques, where all of the samples are dissolved in a solution. Microdestructive techniques may also involve the solution of the (small) sample, but moreover the samples may be mounted for analysis and stored so that they can be reanalyzed using the same or a different technique.

Destructive Techniques Arc emission spectrometry (AES), introduced in the 1920s, involved the removal and dissolution of a powdered sample and was a time-consuming technique. A graphite electrode was positioned so that an arc occurred between electrode and sample causing the sample to be volatilized and light to be emitted. Each element emitted a specific wavelength that was recorded on a photographic plate. The relative intensities of each line were measured and converted into relative concentrations in the sample. This was semi-quantitative and it was used for early work on obsidian sourcing. Around 1970, a more accurate and less destructive wet chemical technique started to replace AES: atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS). It involves similar principles to those involved in AES although analysis involves the use of a flame to atomize the sample at temperatures c. 2000  C. A sample of c. 10 g is dissolved and injected into flames; the kind of gas being burnt depends on the element being analyzed. When a particular chemical element is vaporized in the flame, specific wavelengths of light characteristic of the element are absorbed, and others emitted. These absorptions of light are measured. As with AES, AAS records the elements present, each with its own characteristic wavelength, usually one at a time. AAS is a quantitative technique. When a sample with an unknown level of that element is analyzed, its concentration can be plotted on a calibration curve. Detection levels are between 1 and 100 ppm, though this depends on the element sought, the element absorption line concerned, and the conditions of analysis. With the introduction of the graphite furnace, the flame no longer plays a part in AAS, with the sample solution being injected into a chamber that is heated in a controlled way. Computer automation of this process has provided a much faster analysis time. Interference between two or more elements can occur in the sample. In this case, solutions are made up in order to assess the extent to which the quantitative results are affected. The technique has been one of the principal techniques used for the bulk analysis

of ancient inorganic materials, especially pottery and metal, and has contributed in a significant way. Inductively coupled plasma emission spectroscopy (ICPS) is also destructive. It was introduced later than AAS and involves the dissolution of the sample. The sample is dispersed at temperatures above 8000  C in a plasma torch in which argon is combusted. The sample is injected into the flame and breaks up into its constituent parts. Since the temperatures involved are much higher than those used in AAS, theoretically this should make the technique more sensitive and reduce the amount of interference between elements. It is also much faster. After calibrating the system, the technique allows the operator to analyze 20 elements simultaneously. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) can provide both chemical and isotopic analysis (for laser ablation ICP (LA-ICP), see microdestructive analysis). Thin-section petrology is used to analyze pottery, crucibles, bricks, stone (e.g., stone axes and flint), slags, and minerals (see Pottery Analysis: Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis). Thin sections of pot of c. 30 mm in thickness are prepared, examined with a petrographic microscope, and polarized light interacts with minerals in the pottery producing characteristic colors characteristic of the minerals and their orientations. The light patterns produced, often of different colors, are called interference figures. The use of polarized light allows the analyst to identify the anisotropic minerals present. These minerals have physical properties which vary in different directions, as opposed to isotropic minerals which have the same optical properties in all directions. The colors observed for mineral crystals are basically due to the differences between the largest and the smallest refractive indexes. It is one of the cheaper techniques, but to be successful it needs experience. There are many examples of very successful studies of archaeological ceramics using thin-section petrology. By combining thinsection petrology and X-ray diffraction spectrometry (XRD; see below), it is possible to identify crystals and measure the distribution of each crystal leading to quantitative or semi-quantitative results. When the materials being examined do not contain diagnostic minerals, it may be possible to characterize the ceramic by counting the relative size and occurrence of grains. Neutron Activation Analysis

When samples are powdered, this technique is destructive with sample sizes of between 50 and 200 mg. However small artifacts, such as beads, can be analyzed, although their geometry may make it difficult to produce quantitative results. It is a sensitive

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technique (see Neutron Activation Analysis), but others such as LA-ICP do not require access to an atomic pile or create radioactive materials so they are starting to take the place of neutron activation analysis (NAA). The samples are irradiated in an atomic pile for a defined period of time. The radioactive samples then decay according to the half-lives of each element in the sample, those with shortest half-lives decaying fastest. The number of counts detected is directly relatable to the concentration of the element in the material being analyzed. The gamma radiation produced is directly relatable to the activity of the atomic flux at the time of the radiation. The inclusion of standard materials is vital so that a measure of the reaction of standard and sample to the flux can be made. Normally, the standard will be made of a similar material to that being analyzed. The peak wavelengths are characteristic of the elements present; it may be necessary to strip out interference peaks. NAA can be a sensitive technique with potential detection limits down to parts per million for 30–35 elements simultaneously, though it is relatively insensitive for the detection of major components. The technique has been used especially for the analysis of ceramics for a full range of trace elements, the structure of the data being further analyzed using multivariate statistics. Much of the pottery work has been focused on the relationships between chemical characterization, distribution patterns, the clays used, other raw materials used, and the location of kiln sites. Mass Spectrometry

The technique is becoming increasingly important in the study of ancient materials. In the investigation of organic materials, it can be used as a means of reconstructing ancient diets and charting the movements of populations through the analysis of bones and teeth. Alternatively, it can be used to investigate the provenance of inorganic materials such as pottery, metals, and glasses. The main technique that has sufficient accuracy in the determination of isotopes in ancient materials has been thermal ion mass spectrometry (TIMS) incorporating spectrometers of the magnetic sector type. A variety of isotopes can be analyzed in this way, including lead, strontium, rubidium, neodymium, oxygen, samarium, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen. More recently, multiple collector plasma mass spectrometry (MC-ICPMS) systems have also been used to produce data of acceptable levels of accuracy. Quadrupole mass spectrometers can scan the mass spectrum very rapidly, though a sacrifice may be the mass resolution.

Mass spectrometry relies on the principle that it is possible to separate electrically charged atoms of an element according to their atomic masses (e.g., 87Sr and 86Sr). This separation is achieved by using magnetic or electrical fields. Simple mass spectrometers have magnetic or electrostatic deflector systems. Since the determination of lead isotopes has one of the longest histories in archaeological research, it is worth describing what factors may (or may not) lead to its successful application. Lead is a mixture of primordial lead and radiogenic lead. Radiogenic lead was produced as a result of the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. Primordial lead consists of four isotopes (labeled according to their different atomic masses): lead-204, lead-206, lead-207, and lead-208 with abundances of 1.3%, 26.3%, 20.8%, and 51.5%, respectively. Lead-204 is the only type which has not been formed as a result of radioactive decay, so there is a constant amount in the earth’s crust. Lead isotopes are continuously accumulating by the radioactive decay of uranium-238, uranium-235, and thorium-232. To characterize lead-containing deposits, a comparison of the relative amounts of stable and radiogenic isotopes is made. Thus, clearly the lead ores themselves need to be characterized sufficiently and the degree of mixing that may have occurred needs to be established. Lead can occur as part of an ore body such as galena or in association with other minerals. An important assumption involved in lead isotope analysis is that, even if the lead is present at varying concentrations in an ore body, as long as it has been formed under the same conditions and that it has undergone the same geological processes, the ratios between the lead isotopes present will be the same. Another important characteristic of lead is that the isotopes do not fractionate (i.e., a ‘systematic’ change in the abundance ratios of two isotopes). A result is that if an ore contains both lead and copper, the lead isotope ratios in one metal will be the same in the other. However, remobilization of a lead-containing ore as a result of a postdepositional geochemical process can produce heterogeneity leading to a large range of lead isotope ratios, even within a single mineral type. This would therefore generate a severe problem in attempting to characterize the ore and the metal objects made from the ore in provenance studies. Another possible complicating factor is that different lead ores with correspondingly different formation times (and therefore isotopic ratios) can be laid down very close together. If used as a source of metal in the same production center, objects having the same or similar chemical compositions may have very different isotopic compositions. Moreover, some ore bodies, such as copper-bearing ones, can contain

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low lead concentrations with a spread of lead isotope compositions due to the uranium present continuing to decay after the copper ore has been formed. A detailed understanding of the geological history of lead ore deposits is therefore essential. With these considerations in mind, it is generally agreed that 20 samples of ore from a deposit ‘should’ be sufficient to characterize it. The fractionation of lead isotope ratios occurs during smelting and corrosion, but there is a general consensus that this is not a problem. Mixing of metals produced using materials containing lead with different lead isotope signatures can pose a problem when it comes to characterization and provenance. However, even here if the end members can be defined, the mixing lines can be used advantageously. This assessment of mixing can also be applied to glasses and ceramics. The use of mass spectrometry to determine the age and type of raw materials used to make glasses is a relatively recent development. Here, strontium isotope ratios are chemically linked to the source calcium and neodymium to the source of silica. Lime can be introduced in the plant ash or in the seashell fragments in sand used to make glass. Calcium carbonate often occurs in pottery. With glass and ceramics, as with other provenance studies using mass spectrometry, it is important to define the variations of these isotopes in ‘potential’ raw material sources across the landscape and then to compare such variations with both material from primary production sites and with other artifacts. Clearly, as for the application of mass spectrometry to the determination of lead isotopes, the technique depends on there being sufficient geological contrast in the source of the raw materials used to be successful. The same principles apply to the use mass spectrometry to the study of population movements. Carbon-13 and nitrogen-15 are stable isotopes which are absorbed into the human body as a result of being metabolised. Their presence is a reflection of ancient diets. During the process of photosynthesis, plants take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The uptake of carbon in this process makes it possible to distinguish between two different plant types which are important in human diets: C3 and C4. These plant types have distinct ranges of carbon-13 values depending on whether C3 or C4 plants have been consumed. C3 plants such as rye, oats, wheat, and barley typically grow in temperate climates, whereas C4 plants such as maize, sorghum, tropical grasses, millet, and sugar grow in dryer, warmer climates. A relative enrichment of carbon-13 can also be a mean of distinguishing between the intake of different sources of dietary protein. Bicarbonates in seawater

is the principle source of carbon dioxide for marine plants. In the seawater, it is enriched in 13C by 7% relative to the atmospheric carbon dioxide that is photosynthesized by land plants. Marine plant (and protein) resources are therefore enriched in this way compared to terrestrial sources and are comparable to C4 plants. In the assumed absence of subtropical plants the determination of 13C in human bone collagen can be used to estimate the relative proportions of terrestrial and marine foods in human diets. d15N values of marine plants are enriched by 4% relative to terrestrial plants and this can be seen not only in the difference between maritime and terrestrial food chains but also in the particular trophic level considered. A gaseous sample is used for the determination of these stable isotopes for mass spectrometry. Standards are used as an essential comparison. When mass spectrometry is used to analyze organic materials, complex mixtures of biochemical components are identified. These may be overcooked food residues, organic binders, and the organic fractions of pigments. Hydrolysis, oxidation, and polymerization can further degrade organic materials such as oils and fats. Mass spectrometry can provide detailed information about the structures and compound distributions of complex mixtures. The reason that it can be used in such a way is that chromatographic techniques such as gas chromatography (GC) and highperformance liquid chromatography (HPLC) can be coupled to mass spectrometers, leading to the separation of individual molecular species and the quantification of trace levels. The kinds of materials that can be investigated using these techniques are leaf waxes, beeswax, fats, oils, resins, tar, human remains, and plant remains.

Microdestructive Techniques Nondestructive and (Other) Microdestructive Techniques

The principles of X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) form the basis for microanalysis in the context of electron probe microanalysis and spectrometers attached to scanning electron microscopes. The principles of XRF therefore will described first. XRF analysis can be a totally nondestructive technique. It is a surface technique of spectroscopic analysis which relies on the interaction of primary X-rays with the sample generating, among other particles, a range of secondary X-rays which have energies characteristic of each of the elements in the sample. It produces a spectrum of energies in the same way that AES does. The primary energy source can either be a

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radioactive material which will generate g-rays; when fired at the sample in a solid geometry, the interaction of the g-rays with the sample will generate secondary X-rays. A much more common source of X-rays is an X-ray tube which, when configured within a commercially produced system, will be located in a stable position, allowing the same analytical geometry to be repeated each time (the same analytical geometry is important if quantitative analysis is attempted). The primary X-rays interact with each of the elements in the sample surface. During this process, secondary X-rays are emitted at the takeoff angle, escaping from the sample at the same angle at which the primary X-rays were fired at the sample. A variety of energy transitions occur between inner atomic electron shells in each atom, and these lead to the generation of the secondary X-rays. The secondary X-rays hit a detector (typically silicon drifted with lithium) with an analog-to-digital converter attached to it. Conversion of discrete pulses of secondary X-ray energies into electrical pulses occurs depending on the atomic weight of the element concerned. The electron pulses are then fed into a multi-channel analyzer which displays the maxima in the spectrum of X-ray energies as a series of peaks above the background (see Figure 1 for an X-ray spectrum). The peaks are a Gaussian shape because the process by which the peaks are formed is one dependent on counting probability, whereby the maximum number of events which fall at the exact center of the peak

produce the maximum peak height. The ‘tails’ of the peak are due to a smaller number of events at energies above and below the peak centroid. The depth to which the primary X-rays penetrate the sample is mainly dependent on the energy of the primary X-rays, the angle at which the X-rays are fired at the sample, and the matrix composition of the sample. With a material which contains a relatively high proportion of a heavy element, like lead, with an atomic number of 82, secondary X-rays for a relatively light element, like potassium, also in the material, will be derived from a shallower maximum depth than a material which on average has a lighter matrix. The greatest depth from which elemental X-rays are derived is therefore an important consideration because it partly determines the sensitivity of each element to X-rays and therefore the number of X-ray photons that are detected per unit time. If the count rate is low, the length of the count time in order to produce acceptable statistics needs to be increased. There are two principal types of XRF: energydispersive and wavelength-dispersive spectrometry. Energy-dispersive spectrometry operates by collecting data from the detector, distinguishing it according to its energy and displaying it in spectral form. Wavelength-dispersive spectrometry, on the other hand, relies on a different means of operation. In this case, the spectrometer relies on the presence of crystals causing the secondary X-rays to be diffracted at a particular angle, according to its atomic number.

Figure 1 An X-ray spectrum of an opaque yellow lead-silica glass which is opacified with lead-tin oxide. The X-axis displays the relative number of counts for each element detected above the background. The Y-axis displays the X-ray emission energies for each of the elements. Note that some elements are more sensitive to X-rays than others so the relative peak heights are not a reflection of the relative quantities of each. Tin (Sn) and iron (Fe) have a number of X-ray peaks. These result from the interaction of electrons (in this case) with different orbitals in the atoms. (Source: author.)

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The secondary X-rays are detected electronically. The dispersion of the secondary X-ray is greater than with energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry which makes it possible to separate the X-rays peaks more completely and, in general, also makes it possible to detect elements at lower levels. Wavelength-dispersive spectrometry is normally slower simply because the spectrometer angle needs to be changed, and from time to time also the crystals in the spectrometer, depending on what elements are sought. Typically wavelength-dispersive X-ray spectrometry is used to analyze material that has been powdered and made into a silicon borate glass bead. The bead is cast so that it lower surface is flat and of the appropriate diameter for the beam of primary X-rays used for its analysis. Energy-dispersive spectrometry, on the other hand, can more readily be used as a totally nondestructive technique and is therefore more appropriate to a museum environment. However, if the sample has an irregular surface and/or is weathered/or depleted in any way, it is difficult to produce a quantitative result. The obvious use for energy dispersive (ED) analysis in a museum is to provide an initial identification of a material, though it must never be forgotten that the technique only provides an analysis of the surface. The depth to which the exciting energy (X-ray or g-ray) penetrates the sample is dependent on, in the case of an X-ray tube, the voltage used and also the matrix composition of the material: for a ‘light’ matrix the depth from which the heaviest secondary X-ray may escape to be detected is c. 40 mm, whereas for the analysis of materials with ‘heavy’ matrices the maximum depth is more typically 15 mm. The successful quantification of the results from XRF depends on a number of factors. An ideal sample is one which is polished flat and compositionally homogeneous. The factors which affect the analysis include X-ray tube voltage, the composition of the anode which is used in the X-ray tube, the geometry of the analytical system, the use of a collimator, the roughness of the sample surface, the extent of interference between elements in the X-ray spectrum, whether the X-ray emission peaks are successfully deconvoluted, and the composition of the sample being analyzed (a greater ‘absorption’ of light elements, such as sodium or magnesium occurs in a matrix which consists of a heavier average Z (atomic number). In addition, the use of a reliable set of standards of known composition is absolutely essential, as it is for almost any analytical technique. Obtaining a ‘reliable’ set of standards can be difficult and is one way of checking the quality of the analyses. Finally, the kind of quantification program employed

can affect the results. In the case of XRF, the use of fundamental parameters or the influence coefficients can be used. Electron Probe Microanalysis

A microdestructive technique which produces highquality results is electron microprobe analysis. This followed on from the milliprobe and its early use in analysis, becoming commonly used, especially for research in mineral sciences, in the 1970s. As the technique suggests, microsamples as small as 0.5 mm can be mounted and analyzed. The technique involves the use of a microbeam of electrons which are focused on the sample surface using a series of magnetic lenses. The electrons themselves are generated using an electron gun (in Figure 2). The interaction of the electrons with the sample generates secondary X-rays which are characteristic to the chemical elements in the material.

Figure 2 A Jeol JSM 8200 electron microprobe in the Department of Archaeology, University of Nottingham. An energydispersive spectrometer is located on the left-hand side of the machine, the electron gun in the center (mounted vertically) and one of four wavelength-dispersive spectrometers is on the righthand side of the machine with a cathodoluminescence facility mounted behind it. In this case the samples can be imaged in both secondary- and backscattered electron modes. The screen shows a secondary-electron image. Samples are located beneath the electron gun. (Source: courtesy of Edward Faber.)

CHEMICAL ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES 991 London raw London others

Amsterdam raw Amsterdam others

Venice cristallo Venice vitrum blancum

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Weight % potassim oxide (K2O)

This technique provides an analysis of a shallower layer of material than with XRF (–3–5 mm compared to c. 30–50 mm), and by sampling and preparing the sample carefully the quality of the results when compared to open geometry ED X-ray analysis is far higher. The samples are normally embedded in epoxy resin and polished flat so that the geometry of the analysis is repeated exactly each time. In the process of doing this, any weathered material can be removed. The electron beam can be focused or defocused depending on the intended area of analysis; it may also be essential to defocus the beam in order to minimize or eradicate the possibility of volatalizing the sample surface, causing elements like sodium to be boiled off. In practice, the minimum diameter of a focused electron beam during the analysis of a metal or even a ceramic is 1 mm on the sample surface, which spreads out in the metal itself to c. 2 mm; for glass, the beam needs to be deliberately defocused to c. 50–80 mm. The electron probe was introduced in c. 1975 primarily as a tool used by geologists. As a result, some of the early models used were ideal for the analysis of silicates, part of which to analyze chemically individual crystals in ceramic materials. Apart from being microdestructive, one of the other advantages of the technique is that it is possible to locate the electron beam precisely on the area of the sample to be analyzed with the use of a microscope attached to the system; if compositional heterogeneity is suspected, an energy-dispersive detector attached to the system can be used to carry out qualitative point analyses before the quantitative analyses are performed. A scanner attached to the machine can also provide an image of the sample. It would be possible to quantify the ED results from the system but the levels of precision and detection achieved with the wavelength dispersive probe are of a far higher quality. This same comparison is also true when the results from an ED spectrometer attached to a scanning electron microscope and those from a wavelength-dispersive system in an electron microprobe are compared. The technique is a quantitative one, and given the small beam size it is normal to analyze three to five spots of a homogeneous material like glass, and average the results. The system must be calibrated before chemical analysis is attempted with the use of standards, preferably of the material being analyzed for the major elements, so as to reproduce the matrix conditions of differential absorption of secondary X-rays. Geological standards may be used for pure elements occurring at minor or trace levels in the unknown. As with any analytical technique, the cross-analysis of a multielement standard not used in calibrating the system and of proven reliability at the start and end

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Figure 3 The relative levels of sodium and potassium oxides in late sixteenth and seventeenth century raw and vessel glasses from factory and other sites in London, Amsterdam and Venice showing distinctions in the chemical compositions of glasses from each zone. Note that three samples of raw glass from Amsterdam fit with the compositions of vitrum blancum glass from Venice and were therefore imported from Venice.

of the analysis will provide two things: the determination of relative analytical accuracy and a means of monitoring any drift in the system. EPMA can be used to distinguish between different production zones (see Figure 3). Scanning Electron Microscopy

As mentioned above, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) can be used for microanalysis, and it is possible to attach both energy-dispersive and wavelengthdispersive spectrometers to the instrument, but the quality of the analyses will not be as high as for a dedicated electron microprobe because in the context of an SEM it is not possible to reproduce the same analytical geometry as for a microprobe. Indeed, the systems should not be confused – they are different and should be referred to as an electron microprobe and an analytical SEM, respectively. The SEM is primarily used for imaging structurally or compositionally heterogeneous organic and inorganic materials. The systems are often fitted with an energy-dispersive spectrometer, a secondary electron detector, and a backscattered electron detector (see Figure 4). The secondary electron detector provides images of the surface texture of materials, whereas the use if a back-scattered detector mainly provides images of variations in composition. Such detectors can also be attached to the EPMA.

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Acc.V Spot Magn 20.0 kV 4.3 551x

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Figure 4 A backscattered electron micrograph of a thick section of Ottoman ceramics. The image is formed from contrasting grey levels which are dependant on the variations of average Z (atomic number) in each component. The grey angular grains are silica, the white material in the middle is calcium phosphate (bone ash) and the pale grey matrix materials that surrounds many of the silica crystals is a soda-rich glass. (Source: courtesy of Martin Roe.)

The source of energy for an SEM is an electron gun. Instead of the electrons being focused as a point as in the electron microprobe they are focused in a particular plane, but also scanned across the material using scanning coils so as to build up an image of their interaction with the material. Because backscattered electrons travel in almost straight lines and the detector is located to one side of a specimen, a shadowing effect is produced. A secondary-electron image is dependent on the angle between the beam and the specimen surface (see Figure 1). Differences in gray level are, as a result, a reflection of the angle of the surface to the detector: the roughness of the surface and the shape of the sample can be seen clearly in this image of the surface of glass, including characteristic conchoidal fractures. Backscattered electron images, on the other hand, provide pictures of compositional heterogeneity by recording the number of backscattered electrons from the sample, a measure of the relative average atomic number in the area being analyzed. The secondary electron images therefore provide highly magnified images of the surface textures of materials, whereas backscattered electron images are built up from variations in composition. The two techniques can of course be also used in conjunction with each other: if a small area of decoration has been applied to a metal surface which is of a different composition from the body of the artefact, the SEM may provide evidence for both the way in which the decoration has been attached and also how the materials used are different.

Whereas with an electron microprobe an initial examination of a thin section of a pottery sample can provide an unambiguous identification of the crystal, which can then be pinpointed and analyzed chemically by using a photograph, the SEM can provide clear images of how a particular compositional family of crystals (e.g., alkaline feldspars) might vary in composition and texture within the same sample or between samples from different sources. In addition, of course, the SEM can be used to show great compositional contrasts between crystals and the matrix material they are sitting in, between layered materials and between depleted/ corroded surfaces and the parent material. By examining cross-sections through materials, it is possible to relate structural corrosion to changes in chemical composition which can, in turn, be recorded photographically. For successful imaging using a backscattered detector, it is appropriate to use a sample that has been mounted and polished flat in the same way as the sample was prepared using the electron microprobe. This procedure is of course inappropriate if the sample is being examined for its surface texture, in which case it should be carefully attached to a stub within the SEM and can be rotated to examine different areas of interest. In order to examine materials like metals which conduct electrons, the sample can be attached to the stub within the system. If the material is glass, glaze, or obsidian, for example, and does not conduct electrons, then it needs to be coated so as to prevent

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distortion and deflection of the electron beam; this is also true for electron microprobe analysis. The sample size that can be examined under the SEM is determined by the size of the sample chamber. Since samples are examined under vacuum, open geometry is not possible, as it can be with XRF spectrometry. A range of SEM systems are manufactured and relatively large objects can be accommodated, of up to c. 5 cm  3 cm in dimensions. Particle-Induced X-Ray Emission

The feature that characterizes particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) is the cost and size of the instrument! The analytical technique requires a tandem van der Graaf accelerator in order to generate particles which are accelerated at high speeds toward the sample where they collide and penetrate the sample at great speeds. A particle accelerator can cost up to £500 000. The same size of sample prepared in the same way as for the SEM and electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) can be used and is presented to the beam in a fixed geometry. The system can be operated in both an open geometry and in a sample chamber, so the sample size can, theoretically, be infinite. With an open geometry system, it is also possible to analyze materials containing light elements by bathing the sample in helium so as to prevent the light secondary X-rays produced from being absorbed in the air before being detected. Analytically, the most significant difference from EPMA is that the backgrounds produced by PIXE are a factor of 10 lower (see Figure 5). The reason for this is that the particles bombarding the sample enter the sample at such a great speed that less scattering of the particles occurs than when electrons or X-rays are used as the primary exciting energy. The

net result is that the background of the X-ray spectrum is significantly lower, allowing far lower concentration of components to be detected. Some PIXE systems are fitted with scanning coils so that the distribution of elements through the surface of the material can be mapped, including at very low concentrations. The same detector system and multichannel analyzer is often used as for EPMA and SEM systems, a lithium-drifted silicon detector. The depth of analysis for PIXE is in the same magnitude of order as for stand-alone ED-XRF analysis, but also, as with XRF, is dependent on the voltage that the system is operated at, which in the case of PIXE is typically 1.5 or 2 MeV. The depth of penetration by the analyzing beam can be up to 50 mm in a material with a light matrix and only c. 15 mm in a heavy matrix. If the substance being analyzed contains crystals which are 10 mm below the surface there is no way, at present, of separating the contribution made by the crystal to the analysis from that made by the matrix of the material. SEM and EPMA systems are more appropriate analytical techniques in the analysis of crystalline materials. In addition to being able to detect elements at very low concentrations, by using PIXE it is also possible to map elemental distributions through the thickness of a sample by analyzing its surface This technique is known as Rutherford backscattering and relies on backscattering of the protons from crystallites or other particles within the sample being analyzed. X-ray Diffraction Spectrometry

This technique can be used to identify unambiguously the type of crystals present in minerals, stone, metals, pottery, opaque glasses, opaque enamels, and opaque glazes, or it can be used to assess the degree of

Field of view: 78 ⫻ 78 µm2

Li isotopes (3)

Na (284)

K (250)

Fe/CaO (40)

Mg (26)

Al (126)

Sb isotopes (?) Pb isotopes (167)

Si (77)

PbSbO2 (77)

Figure 5 A series of compositional maps produced from time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry. Each image is for different ions in the same sample of opaque turquoise glass. This is similar to those produced using a scanning-electron microscope. However the levels of detection can be an order to 100–1000 lower. The opacity is due to the presence of calcium antimonate crystals. By using this technique, however, it can be seen that iron and lithium impurities are co-located in the crystals. No other technique has such a shallow depth of penetration combined with great analytical sensitivity (especially for light elements) combined with high special resolution.

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crystalinity in a material. It is destructive in that an object must be sampled, but the sample can be small and it is not destroyed in the same way that it is with truly destructive techniques. The technique involves firing radiation of a particular wavelength (monochromatic) at the crystalline material which is mounted at a specific angle to the incoming energy. The interaction of the radiation with the crystal(s) produces an X-ray pattern which is characteristic of the structure of the crystal. Crystals are composed of lattices built up in a regular pattern; their size and spacing is characteristic of the crystal species. The technique produces spectra which sometimes include several peaks for a single crystal providing the crystal identity. Thus, while it is possible to determine the chemical composition of calcium antimonate, for example, it is only with XRD that it is possible to distinguish between Ca2Sb2O7 and Ca2Sb2O6. In some cases, different species of crystals are formed at different temperatures, so XRD can help to determine what temperature regimes were involved in the production process. For example, a-quartz is the normal form of silica which occurs in nature. When it is heated to 573  5  C it is converted to b-quartz. At 867  C, b-quartz is converted into another form of silica, tridymite; at 1250  C, cristobalite is formed. These reactions can be slow, a feature which may be of interest to the archaeological scientist, because it shows that the material was held at the temperature before the transformations occurred. In any case, since all three crystal types have the same chemical composition (silica), only by using XRD is it possible to identify the species involved. The original XRD camera was used to take photographs of patterns produced by d-spacings in one or more crystal samples in the material analysed. More recent developments incorporating fully automated equipment has involved a thin slurry of the material deposited on a slide. The resulting radiation is measured and the spectra fed electronically into a computer which has a library of d-spacings making it possible to match the unknown pattern to those stored in the computer. Quantitative assessments of the relative proportions of different crystal species in the sample are possible by examining the relative intensities of the peak heights. This needs to be carried out on several subsamples of the material being analyzed to produce a representative picture. Thin-section petrology is a more effective means of carrying out such quantitative work.

Other Techniques A number of techniques which are used less commonly or have only recently been used to investigate archaeological materials need to be discussed. These

include synchrotron-induced (SR) radiation, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), auger-electron spectroscopy (AES), particle-induced gamma emission (PIGE), time of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Synchrotron radiation is produced by an instrument known as a synchrotron. The system consists of an accelerator, which produces high energy electrons, a booster accelerator and a storage ring. The technique produces intense radiation of all frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. The high intensity is accompanied by fine beam dimensions and this allows it to be used for a range of applications using a range of analytical techniques. For example SR can be used for SR-induced X-ray micro-diffraction, SR-induced X-ray fluorescence and SR-induced neutron diffraction. SR has been used to chemically characterize a range of materials including pigments, glass, luster glazes, the crystals in bones, ink, iron and phase transformations in pottery. Most recently a synchrotron source at Cornell has been used in conjunction with confocal X-ray fluorescence to analyze non-invasively separate layers of pigments in pictures. It has been possible to create a detailed depth profile through the layers of pigments. Studies have also been carried out using SR in order to investigate deterioration and in conservation science of both inorganic and organic materials. With the achievement of a one micron beam diameter at the new Diamond facility at Didcot in the UK, the time is ripe for a wide range of archaeological and conservation science applications using SR. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and auger electron spectroscopy (AES) both have roles to play in the investigation of archaeological materials. XPS essentially provides information about the chemical environment of the elemental species induced by a suitable radiation such as Al Ka or a monochromatized synchotron radiation (see above). The resulting information is useful because it can detect the presence of different bonding states for the same element. Photoelectrons have low kinetic energies and are absorbed if they are produced below a depth of 20–50 A˚, so the technique provides information about surfaces. An X-ray photoelectron spectrum is a plot of binding energies versus the number of electrons detected. The different binding energies correspond to peaks in the spectrum. The technique has been used to investigate glass, pottery, stone, metals, dyes, pigments, paintings, paper, ink and stone. The degradation of materials can obviously benefit from being investigated by using XPS. Auger electrons are a kind of particle that is produced when a material is bombarded with electrons (such as from an electron

CHEMICAL ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES 995

gun). They also have very low kinetic energies and derive from the surface two or three atomic layers. Like XPS, Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) can be used for examining the chemical state of the atom from which they derive. The reason why this is possible is because Auger electrons are emitted from the outer orbitals of atoms. The outer orbitals are often involved in chemical bonding so the Auger electrons characterize the state of the atom. With particle-induced gamma ray emission (PIGE) instead of the more commonly measured X-rays emissions being measured, gamma rays are measured instead. Typically this type of analysis is carried out at the same time at PIXE (see above) by bombarding the sample with protons. Although not commonly used (partly because accelerators are expensive) the technique, which is especially sensitive to the detection of light elements such as lithium and fluorine, can be used quantitatively. Time-of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) is a technique which has only very recently been used to examine archaeological materials. SIMS involves sputtering a material with a beam of positively charged ions in an ultra high vacuum chamber. The fragments of the surface that are ejected (sputtered) range from atomic species to large ensembles of atoms (clusters). These secondary ions are extracted into a mass spectrometer for mass analysis. In the case of ToF-SIMS a short pulse (about 1 ns) of primary ions hits the surface and the resulting secondary ions are accelerated to a constant energy before entering a field-free drift tube. Ions of different mass must have different velocities so they are separated by flight-time in the drift tube (heavy ions travel more slowly). Their arrival time at a detector is registered and this produces an intensity versus time spectrum. The spectrum is built up from the addition of many such pulses. Both positively and negatively charged fragments are sputtered yielding both positive and negative ion mass spectra. The sputtered fragments, typically, can only escape from a shallow depth (about 95% of the signal comes from the top two monolayers of atoms). The technique is especially useful for detecting light elements such as boron and lithium and in principle it can be used in a quantitative mode. It is the only technique which

Chiefdoms, Rise of

can be used for both mapping crystallites and analyzing their impurities, down to ppb. Isotopic information is also produced. So far it has apparently only been used for the analysis of ancient opaque glass. Another sensitive technique which is used infrequently for examining archaeological materials is transmission electron microscopy (TEM). In this case a thin section of the sample is prepared and the electrons travel through the sample. It is especially useful for the detection of small crystallites in archaeological materials, identifying pigments and for the investigation of bone and tooth diagenesis. See also: Archaeometry; Artifacts, Overview; Neutron Activation Analysis; Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis; Sampling Methods, Theory and Praxis; Stable Isotope Analysis; Vitreous Materials Analysis.

Further Reading Blackman MJ and Bishop RL (2007) The Smithsonian–NIST partnership: the application of instrumental neutron activation analysis to archaeology. Archaeometry 49: 321–341. Ciliberto E and Spoto G (eds.) (2000) Modern Analytical Methods in Art and Archaeology. New York: Wiley. Hatcher H, Tite MS, and Walsh JN (1995) A comparison of inductively-coupled plasma emission spectrometry and atomic absorption spectrometry analysis on standard reference silicate materials and ceramics. Archaeometry 37: 83–94. Henderson J (2000) The Science and Archaeology of Materials: an Investigation of Inorganic Materials. London and New York: Routeledge. Li B-P, Zhao J-X, Greig A, Collerson KD, Feng Y-X, Sun X-M, Guo M-S, and Zhuo Z-X (2006) Characterisation of Chinese Tang Sancai from Gongxian and Yaozhou kilns using ICP-MS trace element and TIMS Sr-Nd isotope analysis. Journal of Archaeological Science 33: 56–62. Pollard AM and Heron C (1996) Archaeological Chemistry. Cambridge: The Royal Society of Chemistry. Pollard AM, Batt C, Stern B, and Young S (2007) Analytical Chemistry in Archaeology. Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rutten FJM, Roe MJ, Henderson J, and Briggs D (2006) Surface analysis of ancient glass artefacts with ToF-SIMS: A novel tool for provenancing. Applied Surface Science 252: 7124–7127. Whitbread IK (1995) Greek Transport Amphorae A Petrological and Archaeological Study. Fitch Laboratory Occasional Paper 4. Athens: The British School at Athens.

See: Political Complexity, Rise of.

996 CITIES, ANCIENT, AND DAILY LIFE

CITIES, ANCIENT, AND DAILY LIFE Charles Gates, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary atrium In a Roman house, an unroofed room with a basin below. ostrakon A fragment of pottery or stone on which something has been written or drawn. peristyle court In Greek and Roman architecture, a courtyard surrounded by a colonnaded portico. stele (pl. stelai, stelae) A stone slab, usually thin in section, placed vertically; often decorated with inscriptions, relief sculptures, and/or paintings. tell An artificial mound consisting of the remains of settlements, especially the air-dried mud brick favored as a building material. Arabic tell ¼ Persian tepe, Turkish ho¨yu¨k.

Ancient Cities Defined Cities arose fairly recently in the long history of humankind. Changes in climate c. 12 000 years ago led to the end of the Ice Ages, to a warmer, moister climate that in certain parts of the world favored the development of controlled agriculture and animal husbandry. No longer were people dependent on the collecting or hunting of wild food sources. Thanks to agriculture, in particular, permanent, year-round settlements developed. As farmers settled together in small villages, as food surpluses were registered, certain people were freed for other tasks – crafts, religious activities, etc. Increase in population eventually resulted in cities, with such features as monumental public architecture, figural art, writing, and social stratification. These changes, and the rise of cities, occurred at different times in different parts of the world, with many regions never having cities at all. The earliest cities appeared in the Near East. Here, the changes described above began to take place in the eleventh to tenth millennia BC. By the fourth millennium BC, developed cities had appeared. This article focuses on cities in this region – the Near East, Egypt, and the Mediterranean basin – with a concluding section on Teotihuacan (Mexico), as a New World comparison.

Daily Life Defined ‘Daily life’ in ancient cities comprises many elements. The polarity between private and public is one basic way to structure any study. Private life centers on the house. The architecture and objects (furniture, decorations, utensils, and tools) suggest family relationships

and activities happening in the house. Gender and age relationships are important: male and female, and children, mature adults, and the elderly. The life cycle with its rites of passage can serve as a focus: birth, marriage, old age, death. Household functions include food preparation and eating (or dining), hygiene, sleeping, socializing, etc. The public arena centers on social relationships, political organization, and the maintenance of order, economic matters (making a living, commerce and trade), and religion. Within a social hierarchy, different ranks in society, from rulers to slaves, have their various occupations. Other functions of city life were also public: religious practices, for one, and certain entertainments, such as the Roman bath. But like private life, public life takes place in a physical setting: buildings, monuments, streets, open spaces, perhaps in connection with certain natural features (rivers, hills, mountains, the sea, harbors). What these elements look like, individually and in relation with others, is an essential part of recreating daily life in ancient cities.

The Archaeology of Daily Life in Cities Archaeology as a Source of Information

The possibility of stepping into vanished worlds has a great appeal. Archaeology, by exposing ruined cities, their buildings and their artifacts, is an important vehicle for making this possible. For many, a visit to an archaeological site is more exciting if one gets the sense of what living there in a past time period was like. But for historic periods, ancient texts have also been a prime source of information about ancient life. The Hebrew Bible and Greek and Latin literature contain infinite details, combined with the names of people and places. Ancient Near Eastern, Egyptian, and Mayan texts, now readable thanks to decipherments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, also offer much. For some, the written word is supreme; the reality of place and object, the discipline of archaeology, are supplementary to the texts. These preferences can be reflected in the structures of academic study in universities, museums, and research centers. We who wish to enter ancient worlds should not feel forced to choose, for each source of information makes a valuable contribution. We might well ask, though, what do archaeological excavations contribute that literary sources cannot? Archaeology, the study of material culture, makes clear the visual and the tactile. Ancient sounds (music), ancient smells

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(perfumes, cooked foods, fuels), ancient tastes (foods, wines, other drinks) are lost to us. Actions of all sorts and communications between people are recorded in texts, and we can perhaps visualize them taking place. But archaeology gives us the physical environment in which we can place the people and events we read about: the natural setting, the built environment (the city, its plan, its architecture), and the objects that ancient peoples created. The Preservations of Material Remains

The material remains from ancient times are never preserved in their entirety. Climatic, geological, and cultural conditions all play a part in preserving and destroying. A dry climate, such as that of Egypt, preserves organic materials well. In contrast, in a wet, damp climate, the human body and products from animals’ bodies (leather, hair), wood and other plant products, and even metal objects rot, rust, corrode, disintegrate. The state of preservation affects our understanding of particular cultures. Textiles, for example, were an important product of daily life and commercial exchange, but they never survive with the completeness of a stone sculpture. Geological factors also have impact. Earthquakes, fires, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, erosion, and the repeated flooding of silt-bearing rivers (such as the Nile) all have the potential to change the urban landscape. Human agency also has contributed to the alterations in the material record. In cities occupied for centuries, the building materials of structures collapsed or destroyed might be recycled into new constructions. At the very least, foundations of buildings typically remain. Another standard remnant of ancient city life is broken pottery, for ceramics, products of a technology first developed in the mid-Neolithic period (eighth millennium BC), do not disintegrate. Other cultural habits that have preserved artifacts include the placing of objects in tombs and the depositing of offerings in religious centers. Variations of Research Design: Effects on Understanding Ancient Daily Life

The questions that archaeologists seek to answer are hugely varied. They can be shaped by the state of research in a particular region or time period, its pasttraditions and current problems, and by the academic training of the individual researcher. In the Mediterranean, Egypt, and the Near East, approaches have included antiquarianism, the historical-descriptive, and the anthropological. These should not be seen as mutually exclusive, but overlap and complement each other, depending on the interests of the particular researcher.

Antiquarianism refers to an interest in an object by itself, a thing of beauty or curiosity. Compiling collections was often its goal. Today this term is negative, for it suggests that the interest in the object is shallow, divorced from any scientific study of the object’s value in understanding the past. A historical-descriptive approach has dominated the archaeology of our region in the past two centuries. Archaeologists seek to understand the material record by creating a framework for its study: by describing buildings and artifacts carefully, then by arranging them in chronological (or historical) order, and by seeing developments through time (diachronical): ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’. With such classifications in hand, scholars can then compare and contrast developments between sites, between regions, between time periods. In our region, such comparisons are generally made within a particular civilization (Egyptian, Greek, Roman). For the study of the material evidence of daily life, this approach has been essential. Anthropological approaches, applied especially to prehistoric cities, seek to understand the material record as a reflection of human behavior. While historical-descriptive analyses are not ignored but valued as helpful tools, the archaeologist focuses on larger questions, such as ‘how’ and ‘why’. In addition, the anthropologist is interested in comparing situations between different civilizations, to extract larger lessons about the nature of human societies.

Case Studies In order to explore further the issues raised above, let us examine five archaeological sites that are particularly well known for evidence concerning daily life, both from the Old World and the New. With our Old World examples, we shall proceed in reverse chronological order, from later to earlier. Pompeii

Pompeii, near Naples (Italy), is justly famous for its rich evidence for daily life. This provincial Roman city, founded in the late sixth century BC, was destroyed in AD 79 by the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius, buried under volcanic pumice and ash (see Volcanism and Archaeology). Despite some salvage, looting, and sporadic occupation, the city was never dug out and reinhabited. Thanks to the building materials of stone, brick, and concrete, the architectural fabric of the city did not disintegrate, but remained remarkably well preserved, offering us an unparalleled glimpse into Roman city life in the late Republic and early Empire. Excavations began here in 1748, among the earliest of organized archaeological expeditions anywhere, and have continued to the present.

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The walled city housed a population of c. 10 000– 20 000. For the most part, the city was laid out on a grid plan, with the earliest sector, the ‘forum’ (city center) in the southwest. The forum and its environs contained the most important public buildings of the city. A long, narrow rectangular space, the open-air forum was lined by colonnaded porticoes. At the north, short end, stood the Temple of Jupiter, the major shrine of the city. Behind the porticoes lay civic, commercial, and additional religious buildings. Civic buildings at the south end of the forum offered meeting space for the town council, chief magistrates, and the police. Commercial buildings, on the east, included a guild hall for wool processors (Eumachia’s building) and a meat and fish market. Religious buildings consisted of a Temple to Apollo and a shrine to the deified emperor Vespasian. Emperors were routinely worshipped as divinities; the cult of the deified emperor served to link towns throughout the vast empire. Archaeology at Greek and Roman sites has often concentrated on grand public buildings, so the view of ordinary street life that Pompeii gives is exceptional. Streets here had sidewalks and large stepping stones at intersections so one could step over any mud or sewage. Shops were frequent. They included a mill and a bakery, with stone mills for grinding flour and an oven for baking bread, and wine shops or snack bars with huge clay jars embedded in the counters for easy serving of beverages. Street walls were covered with advertisements and graffiti on all sorts of topics, such as politics, sex, and love, with many people named. Pompeii had its own theaters, like all Roman cities. Types included a large, open-air half circle, a design taken from Greek tradition; the odeum, a smaller covered theater; and the amphitheater (lit. ‘double theater’), here a large oval, used for the gladiatorial combats, the violent spectacles enjoyed by the Romans. A barracks for gladiators was identified in a portico behind the large theater, thanks to finds of helmets, armor, weapons, and graffiti referring to teams of gladiators. Nearby, skeletons of at least 52 people, including children, were found, together with much jewelry; they were gathered here intending to escape through the nearby city gate to the harbor, but never made it. The private houses, numerous and well preserved, range in size and decoration from large and rich to modest. They typically have a lararium, a shrine to the lares, the deities who protected house and family. Traditional Italic houses feature the ‘atrium’, a room with a square or rectangular opening in the ceiling, letting in light, air, and rain. The rain would fall into a basin below, then into a connected

underground water tank. Arranged around the atrium were smaller rooms. Since furniture was portable, the functions of these rooms could easily vary. In winter, they could be closed off, heated with portable braziers. At the rear, the important rooms were located, the main reception room (tablinum), where the owner of the house and his family formally greeted guests, and the dining room (triclinium). Houses of the wealthy might also have a ‘peristyle’ court, an open space surrounded by a colonnaded portico. A feature borrowed from Greek architecture, the peristyle in Roman Pompeii typically enclosed a garden. Explorations of the cavities left by plant roots, by pouring plaster down them to recover their shapes, have allowed researchers to reconstruct the kinds of plants cultivated, and to replant some gardens in the ancient manner. House decorations typically included walls plastered and painted with a variety of images in a realistic style, and floor mosaics. A spectacular example of the latter is the Alexander Mosaic, a large (5.1
2.7 m2) scene of Alexander the Great confronting the Persian king Darius III at the Battle of Issos. The Athenian Agora

Our second example is the agora, or city center, of Athens (Greek agora ¼ Latin forum). Unlike Pompeii, Athens has been continuously inhabited since antiquity – a situation that presents numerous practical problems to the archaeologist. The agora, located on low ground to the northwest of the acropolis, or high city, was covered with modern houses when excavations began in 1931. Over the years to the present, land has been bought, houses demolished, inhabitants and businesses relocated in order that this important sector of the ancient city be brought to light. Although the excavations have revealed remains from hundreds of years, from the Bronze Age well into the Middle Ages, the Athenian agora is distinctive for the quantity of written records that have helped in understanding the findings. Frequent mentions in ancient literary texts, notably a detailed description by Pausanias, a second century AD traveller, have been complemented by over 7500 inscriptions, on stone and on potsherds, discovered here. Ruins and texts together give a detailed view of the public life of ancient Athens. What did this city center look like and what went on here? Let us concentrate on the fifth century BC, the golden age of ancient Athens. The Persians had sacked the city in 480 BC. Rebuilding soon began in the agora. Boundary stones marked the entrances; two found in situ were inscribed, ‘‘I am the boundary of the Agora.’’ In mid century, a Temple to Hephaistos was built on the western hill that overlooks the Agora. Along the base of this hill, major civic buildings were

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erected: two bouleuterions, old and new, for meetings of the 500-member city council; a tholos, or round building, for the monthly delegation of 50 council members that ran the daily affairs of the city; and ‘stoas’, or free-standing porticoes, offering shelter from sun and rain for a variety of commercial and legal activities. The south side of the agora was framed by an additional stoa, an enclosure for law courts, a fountain house (where the public could obtain fresh water), and a mint (coinage, invented in Lydia, in western Asia Minor, in the late seventh century BC, had quickly become a standard feature in Greek cities). The north side was marked by a stream, and, in the northwest, by the painted stoa, in which panel paintings (now lost) depicted the Greek victory over the Persians at the Battle of Marathon. Private houses and shops, randomly placed, formed the east side. Cutting diagonally across the central space was the Panathenaic Way, the processional route to the Acropolis used during the annual festival for Athena, the patron goddess of the city. To the southwest of the agora lay a prison, houses, and workshops representing a wide range of industries: pottery, terracotta figurines, metalworking, sculpture and marble-working, shoemaking, and wine shops. Of the many objects found in the Agora, those dealing with voting are particularly striking. They include ostraka, potsherds inscribed with the names of men whom people felt should be voted into exile because they were suspected of plotting to seize the government. This practice of ostracism was used from c. 487 to 415 BC, in Athens. Another fascinating item is a fragment of an allotment machine used for the selection of jurors and magistrates, a stone slab containing rows of slots for the tags of potential jury members. A crank system released a ball from a tube full of black and white marble balls. If white, the first row of jurors would serve that day. If black, that row would not serve. And on it went, ball after ball, until the required number of jurors had been filled. Amarna: An Egyptian City

Amarna (ancient Akhetaten) offers an unusually full view of an ancient Egyptian city. Planned as the new capital by the pharaoh Akhenaten (ruled c. 1353– 1337 BC), the city, rapidly built on previously undeveloped land, was inhabited for a short time only. Not long after Akhenaten’s death, the city was abandoned in favor of Thebes and Memphis, the previously established royal centers of New Kingdom Egypt. Two factors have helped preserve this site. First, much of the city lies just inland from the flood zone of the Nile, and thus was neither covered with silt nor destroyed by farmers’ ploughs. Second, the site was never rebuilt. For its short life and good preservation,

Amarna is unusual among ancient Egyptian cities. Air-dried mud brick, with stone or wood for columns and certain details, was the standard building material. Walls have melted or eroded away, with much cut building stone carried off even in New Kingdom times, but nonetheless many ground plans have been recovered. Excavations conducted from the late nineteenth century until 1936, and again since 1977, have revealed much about this city, especially about its overall layout, its city center with palaces and temples, and its suburban houses. Additional evidence for the appearance of the city comes from pictures that decorated tombs. The city proper lay on the east bank of the Nile, its various sectors linked by a north–south road (the Royal Road) c. 8 km long. The territory of the city was much larger, however (an area measuring 16
13 km2, marked by 14 inscribed boundary ‘stelai’), that extended across the river to the western desert and included farmlands and small villages. The city was not walled. Desert cliffs to the east were used for rock-cut tombs, including, in a remote valley, that of Akhenaten himself. The population of Akhetaten has been estimated at 20 000–50 000. The architecture documents social distinctions. First, the great social difference between ruler and ruled is clearly expressed in the contrast between the grandiose royal palaces and the houses used by everyone else. The king resided in a fortified palace in the extreme north end of the city, but the city center contained two additional palaces. The first, the Great Palace, is a huge complex used for receptions and ceremonies. Its plan consists of flat-roofed buildings, courts – notably a large court lined with colossal statues of Akhenaten – and gardens, and larger columned reception halls. Decorations included wall paintings with images of the royal family. A covered bridge across the Royal Road connected the Great Palace with the King’s House, a smaller palace in which the king met with officials and dealt with day-to-day affairs. This building contained the Window of Appearances, from which the king, accompanied by his family, could address the people. Near the palace was the Great Temple, for worship of Akhenaten’s preferred deity, the Aten (life force depicted as a sun disk). Much of this large (730
229 m2) compound was open to the sun – a contrast with the usual temple residence of Egyptian gods, a small, dark room. The open area contained several hundred offering tables. A butcher’s yard and a large bakery complex located nearby contributed to the supply of offerings. The city center also contained, in fairly symmetrical arrangement, storehouses, police barracks, and administrative buildings, including the Records

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Office in which the important Amarna Letters were found, clay tablets recording correspondence with foreign states in western Asia. In outlying districts to the north and south of the city center, excavations of private houses have given a good idea of the lives of Amarnans of all social levels. Here overall planning was much looser than in the city center; Kemp has compared these districts to collections of villages or neighborhoods, with walled house compounds randomly arranged, interspersed with streets and garbage dumps. Houses of both rich and poor resembled each other in design, differing mainly in size. The typical house was built on a low platform inside its walled compound. The focus of the ground plan was a main hall with an adjacent twostory loggia, both with a higher roofline, held up by columns, with windows. The main room might contain a low brick platform where the owner and his wife would sit, a plastered stone washing place for water jars, and a shrine. Off this main room lay smaller rooms, bedrooms, toilets and bathrooms (from which liquid wastes drained into the ground outside), storage rooms, and stairs up to the flat roof. Outside the house, the compound would contain a garden, a well for water, servants’ quarters, kitchens (with circular clay ovens for baking bread, open fires for the rest), storage areas, a shelter for animals, and a shrine to the Aten. These compounds served as economic centers, collecting food products from lands leased or owned, either near (in Amarna) or further away in the owner’s home region, and for crafts or manufacturing. An example of this last is the house of the sculptor Thutmose; in his workshop was found the well-known painted bust of Queen Nefertiti. Although Egyptian cities are otherwise poorly preserved, because of the silt covering brought by the Nile flood or subsequent rebuilding, our knowledge of the daily life of the ancient Egyptians is highly detailed. This we owe to Egyptian burial practices – in which tomb decorations and grave offerings reproduce the elements of the deceased person’s material world as faithfully as possible – and to the preserving qualities of the dry climate (and burials were placed in the desert areas, beyond the fertile farm lands nourished by the annual rising of the Nile). In addition, the long life of this civilization ensured that these burial concepts continued to be practiced for over 3000 years, leaving us a wealth of examples to study. Ur: A Sumerian City

Ur, in southern Iraq, is the best known of the Sumerian cities, thanks especially to the well published excavations of Leonard Woolley (1922–1934). Ur is a ‘tell’, an artificial mound consisting of the accumulated remains

of habitation. In the case of Ur, habitation here lasted c. 4000 years, from the fifth to the mid-first millennium BC. Since mud brick was the main building material, the mound rose higher when brick buildings went out of use and new buildings were erected on top. The city of Ur was thus constantly renewed over a long period of time. It was large, too, occupying an area of c. 60 ha. How, then, does an archaeologist investigate a city with such a long history? Even in the nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, when excavating was faster than it is now, the archaeologist could still only sample such a site. Removing each habitation layer from such a vast area would be impossible, even if the layers were neatly deposited – which in reality they never are. One can only excavate where convenient, such as along the sides, or in selected areas from the top, to descend and find representative sections of the city at different periods in its long history. Thus Ur is quite different from Amarna (a single-period site), Pompeii, and the Athenian agora (where stone and baked bricks could be reused, and thus a high mound was not formed), but very typical of the ancient cities of the Near East. The buildings excavated at Near Eastern tell sites do not survive well. If exposed to rain, the mud brick dissolves; a modern roofed structure is needed for protection, rarely provided because of high costs and practical problems. Further, the need to remove higher levels of habitation in order to sample earlier periods necessitates destruction of architecture. As a result, the modern tourist cannot expect to visit the site and step into an environment that might evoke the ancient reality – a striking contrast with, say, Pompeii. The ancient Near Eastern city typically lives on after excavation not in its built environment, which has quickly disintegrated, but in books, articles, photographs, plans, and any objects that might have been recovered (clay tablets, seals, pottery, figurines, metal objects, etc.). Woolley’s excavations yielded much information about Ur, especially about its city walls, religious center, tombs, and houses. Ur was located on a promontory between an arm of the Euphrates River and a navigable canal. Although approachable by land only from the south, the city was encircled by a mud brick wall, 27 m thick. These walls were built late in Ur’s history, in neo-Babylonian times (sixth century BC), but surely followed the placement and appearance of earlier walls. The religious center was dominated by a ziggurat, built by king Ur-Nammu during the prosperous Ur III period, c. 2100–2000 BC. A distinctively Mesopotamian construction, a ziggurat is a stepped pyramid made of mud brick, a series of platforms one on top of the other, each smaller than the one below, with a

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temple on top. In the flat landscape of southern Mesopotamia, it resembled a mountain, and allowed people to reach up to the gods. Unlike Egyptian pyramids, ziggurats were never tomb buildings. Residential districts consisted of narrow, winding streets, the sign of a city developing organically over a long period of time, not planned at a single moment (see Settlement Pattern Analysis; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites). Houses were plain from the outside. Inside, there was a central court, with rooms around it. Woolley believed they had two stories, but this has been doubted. Most rooms opened onto the courtyard. The function of rooms is rarely certain. As at Pompeii, portable furniture must have meant that functions were constantly changing. Burials were made below the floors of the houses, in tombs of various types, with grave goods. The most famous tombs are the 16 Royal Tombs of the Early Dynastic period, c. 2600–2350 BC, part of a large cemetery containing some 2000 graves. These graves consisted of built chambers of brick and/or stone used for multiple burials. In these tombs found intact, the deceased were accompanied by wonderful objects. Striking here was the discovery, on the ramp leading down to the chamber, of draft animals, the wheeled vehicles they pulled, and skeletons of soldiers and female attendants. The greatest number of bodies was 74. It is assumed these people were killed at the time of the burial. This practice is unique to Ur in this period, and not explained in any texts. Teotihuacan: A Mesoamerican City

Do cities from a completely different tradition differ radically from the above? The aims of archaeologists in illuminating ancient daily life in the New World are certainly the same as in the Old World, and varying natures of sites and conditions of preservation mean that certain features are clearer than others. Mesoamerica differs from the Old World presented above in that sixteenth century Spaniards were able to step into a truly different world, into the equivalent of complex societies of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. The huge significance of this was not immediately apparent. Some descriptions were written – Bernal Dı´az’s eyewitness account of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, is classic – but few felt the need to record in any systematic way the built environment and behavior throughout the region. Certain ancient Mesoamerican peoples did have writing. Recent advances in understanding Mayan texts (by far the most copious) have revealed much about local dynastic histories, but other aspects of commoner Maya daily life that we might wish to learn about were not recorded. Archaeology, then, remains our best source of information about

Mesoamerican daily life (see Americas, Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya; Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica). Cities appeared in the mid-first millennium BC, in the highland areas of the valleys of Mexico and Oaxaca. But like the long development of southwest Asian settlements during the Neolithic period, Mesoamerican cities emerged from earlier traditions, from villages, ceremonial centers, and towns found in many regions. In the Maya lowlands, urbanism began slightly later, in the late first millennium BC. As an illustration of an ancient Mesoamerican city, let us examine Teotihuacan, in the Valley of Mexico. Teotihuacan flourished especially c. AD 150–600, thanks to its religious importance, its commercial exploitation of obsidian, its favorable position on trade routes, and agricultural prosperity in the region it dominated. The city displays a grand public built environment. It was laid out on a vast scale, as the intensive Teotihuacan Mapping Project has shown. Interestingly, the city was not walled; it is thought that its huge population and lack of nearby rivals assured its security. Two long avenues, crossing at right angles in the center, divide the city into four quadrants – a basic planning frame, off which other structures were placed in a loose grid system. The major north–south avenue, the Avenue of the Dead, is 5 km long; the major east–west street measures 2 km to the west of the crossing point, 6 km to the east. Considering that wheeled vehicles and pack animals were not used in ancient Mesoamerica, these are considerable distances to cover on foot. The city’s area has been measured as 20 km2, its population at its height (by AD 600) estimated at over 100 000. With only one exception, it was by far the largest of all pre-Columbian New World cities; only Aztec Tenochtitlan would be more populous. The Avenue of the Dead served as a sacred way, with three large structures on it. The Moon Pyramid marks the north end. The large Ciudadela (citadel), perhaps the administrative center of the city, with, inside it, a Temple of Quetzalcoatl in stepped pyramid form, is located at the crossing of the two major avenues; across the street to the west lies the Great Compound, possibly the central market area. The immense Sun Pyramid stands halfway between these two. Echoes of the natural world show how the inhabitants connected their built environment with natural forms. The Moon Pyramid reflects the mountain behind it. The Sun Pyramid shelters in its depths a cave (caves, like mountains, had symbolic importance in ancient Mesoamerica), used as a shrine. The pyramid temple of Quetzalcoatl is decorated with sculpted feathered serpent heads and goggled heads (fire serpents?), accompanied by sea shells, perhaps

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images of the first creation, when serpents battled in the great ocean. Below this pyramid, remains of more than 200 individuals have been found, men and women, carefully positioned sacrificial offerings unique in Mesoamerica. These features of city plan, architecture, decoration, and sacrifice indicate the cosmological importance of this city for ancient Mesoamericans – a significance that would continue to be honored into Aztec times, long after the city’s collapse. Connections between the built environment and the cosmos are seen in the Old World, too – the Sumerian ziggurat, the Egyptian pyramid – but rarely with such coordinated grandeur. The Teotihuacan Mapping Project has discovered that the city was filled with over 2000 walled residential compounds. These housing units illuminate several aspects of social life in this city. The compounds varied in size, but an average example might be 3500 m2, housing 60–100 people, living in apartments grouped around courtyards furnished with shrines. Access into the compound was controlled, thanks to a small number of entrances. Residents of a compound must have had some connection with each other – either family, or the same occupation (obsidian working was much practiced), or even, in this cosmopolitan city, place of origin (a compound for Oaxacans has been identified in the west part of the city, another for Gulf coast/ Maya lowlanders in the east). Typically, each compound had one or two rich burials in it, under the floor, with grave offerings that might include pottery, obsidian objects, and textiles. The compounds show social differences. The larger, richer compounds centrally located close to the Avenue of the Dead may have housed the ruling class. Elsewhere, ordinary people lived in compounds of similar ground plan, but made of cheaper materials, and without decoration (such as wall paintings). Writing was little used here – a surprise, since contacts between Teotihuacan and cities that routinely used writing (such as Monte Alban and Tikal) are clear (see Writing Systems). Because of the scarcity of writing, we might hope that pictorial art might give some clues about the society, about daily life. Wall paintings, a frequent decoration in the compounds, show supernatural beings, especially the goggled storm god and a ‘goddess’. Images stress harmony and agricultural plenty. Humans, when they occur,

are anonymous, shown in profile, in procession. Rulers are never shown, neither in the murals nor in other arts. This absence of ruler portraits and images of power contrasts with art in Mayan cities, in which rulers are presented on carved stelai, or at Monte Alban, with its Danzantes (Dancers) reliefs, images not of dancers but of enemy dead. In sum, pictorial art does give information about ideologies in favor at Teotihuacan, but presents nothing that chronicles specific people and their accomplishments. Teotihuacan is not typical of Mesoamerican cities, but then neither is Monte Alban or Tikal. In any case, the same themes of daily life that we list for Old World cities can be applied to the New World as well – with, as always, each site providing certain types of information, but not others. See also: Americas, Central: Classic Period of Meso-

america, the Maya; Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica; Anthropological Archaeology; Asia, West: Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Europe, South: Greece; Historic Roots of Archaeology; Household Archaeology; Settlement Pattern Analysis; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites; Urban Archaeology; Volcanism and Archaeology; Writing Systems.

Further Reading Camp JM (1986) The Athenian Agora. Excavations in the Heart of Classical Athens. London and New York: Thames & Hudson. Camp JM (2001) The Archaeology of Athens. New Haven: Yale University Press. Gates C (2003) Ancient Cities. London: Routledge. Grant M (1971) Cities of Vesuvius: Pompeii and Herculaneum. New York: Macmillan. Kemp BJ (1989) Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization, pp. 261–317. New York: Routledge. Marcus J (1983) On the nature of the Mesoamerican city. In: Vogt EZ and Leventhal RM (eds.) Prehistoric Settlement Patterns. Essays in Honor of Gordon R. Willey, pp. 195–242. Albuquerque, NM, and Cambridge, MA: University of New Mexico Press and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. Sabloff JA (1989) The Cities of Ancient Mexico. Reconstructing a Lost World. New York: Thames & Hudson. Woolley CL (1982) Ur of the Chaldees, revised by Moorey PRS. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Zanker P (1998) Pompeii. Public and Private Life, Schneider DL (trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF 1003

CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF Deborah L Nichols, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA R Alan Covey, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA Kamyar Abdi, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary urbanism The study of cities – their economic, political, social and cultural environment, and the imprint of all these forces on the built environment. city A center of population, commerce, and culture; a town of significant size and importance. state A regional polity characterized by social stratification and centralized and specialized administration.

When the archaeologist V. Gordon Childe coined the term ‘urban revolution’, he posed a central question for archaeology: what is the relationship between the development of the earliest cities and states? The emergence of the first cities entailed an historical and evolutionary transformation in human social relations and the landscapes where these developments first took place: Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, China, Mesoamerica, and South America (Figure 1). The first cities did not necessarily develop gradually; some early centers grew explosively as regional populations relocated to them. Most early cities formed in a network of interacting peer polities and

Figure 1 Schematic world map showing regions with early cities.

nowhere was this transformation entirely peaceful (or entirely coercive). Differences in the size, form, and organization of early urban centers have prompted discussion regarding whether there were early civilizations without cities or whether cities developed in the absence of states, what the appropriate definition of a city is, and why some early civilizations were more urban than others. There is a developmental trajectory in ancient urbanism, with some state institutions evolving over time that were not present in the first cities. Archaeologists have moved away from definitions based strictly on absolute size and density criteria to typological approaches that relate variations in form to the development of social institutions and/or functional approaches that emphasize the role of cities relative to their hinterlands. It has not proved to be especially useful to focus on notions of cities as sharply demarcated, autonomous, corporate communities. Cities were embedded in larger societies and cannot be understood apart from that wider frame. People in early civilizations did not always draw as sharp a distinction between city and countryside – often the important social entity was the political territory controlled by a ruler. Early cities were centers of population and contrasted with less densely occupied hinterlands. Elites concentrated in early cities that were centers for the production and distribution of wealth and political and ritual activities. All early states had such centers

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where the social transformations of state formation – innovations in forms of governance, social institutions, and ideological programs – were materialized. The form of early cities ranged from the dispersed centers of the Classic Maya to the compact, walled cities of Mesopotamia. Early cities of the Old World usually were walled, a characteristic often attributed to military tactics, although land values might have been an influencing factor. Some archaeologists feel that distinguishing between networks of small states, each comprised of a capital town/city and hinterland, and large regional/ territorial states explains much variation in early cities and urbanism. Generally, territorial states were less urbanized than city-state systems, although not all small polities were very urbanized. Large states did not always have very urbanized capitals. Many archaeologists emphasize economic factors and the role of markets and merchants in the growth of large cities and urbanism. Contrary to early views of preindustrial cities, certain early cities exhibited considerable economic differentiation and commercial development. Other researchers focus on the role of technology, especially transportation technology, and ecology in accounting for urban size differences. Politics and rural–urban relations also shaped the form and size of early cities. Rulers of large territorial states frequently moved between multiple capitals and sometimes shifted locations of capitals. Their capitals were often dispersed, which archaeologist Bruce Trigger attributes to the absence of threats of external attack. The cities of Classic Lowland Maya kingdoms, however, were dispersed also, despite regular conflicts between them. The absence of a single urban nucleus might reflect weak central political authority or multiple hierarchies. Rulers of large states had to delegate authority to people outside the capital, thus creating a hierarchy of administrative centers; in the case of imperial colonies, urbanism sometimes was imposed. Colonial centers were not always well integrated with the countryside and their persistence or collapse was closely linked with the fortunes of the imperial state. Some city-states and their urban centers also expanded through conquest to form empires or hegemonic states, although they often were short-lived. As political capitals, the earliest cities often symbolized the state or kingdom and stood at its cosmological center. Monumental architecture was a prominent feature of most early cities because conspicuous consumption was an important strategy of early rulers and elites. Palaces served as both residences and administrative headquarters. Temples and shrines to deities and the cosmic forces of the universe towered over the

urban landscape. Where cults of kings developed, funerary monuments were built in cities to honor ancestral rulers. Where states emphasized corporate strategies, depictions of rulers were rare. Because of the presence of impressive monumental architecture, often sites of state religious rituals, the symbolic dimension of early cities has long attracted attention. Although the notion that the earliest cities were primarily religious centers is mistaken, how ideology was incorporated into the urban landscape as a built environment remains a current topic. Were cities by-products of technological and sociopolitical changes or were they created? Rather than viewing cities as a passive backdrop for expressions of power, some scholars advocate the view that cities were built and maintained to legitimize and constitute authority. In some world regions, cities or sacred precincts in them were deliberately designed to represent aspects of cosmology. Another recent research direction examines the social composition of cities and household and neighborhood organization. Many early city dwellers were commoners, and in certain regions, such as Mesoamerica, substantial numbers of farmers lived in the earliest cities for political and defensive reasons. People of the highest status tended to live in the central part of cities; however, neighborhoods often included a mix of high- and low-status households. Such residential divisions, the physical separation of administrative, religious, and market centers, and dispersion of manufacturing areas, seen especially in city-state centers, reflect the internal divisions of early states. A regional perspective directs attention to hinterlands and urban–rural relations. In addition to supplying food, raw materials, and goods, cities depended on rural villages for labor and immigrants. Immigration fueled the rapid growth of the earliest cities and helped sustain them thereafter. The possibility that crowding, poor sanitation, and inadequate diets caused mortality rates to exceed fertility rates has been raised by a few studies but this important issue warrants more systematic study. The archaeology of the earliest cities faces particular challenges because later settlement often overlies the early ruins or they have been destroyed by human activities or environmental changes. As described below, there is considerable diversity in the earliest urban forms that reflects diversity in the organization of the earliest states themselves.

Sumer The land of Sumer – southern Mesopotamia from south of Baghdad to the marshlands at the head of

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Figure 2 The southern tip of the Mesopotamian plains with the approximate shore of the Persian Gulf and the location of important sites mentioned in the text. After Susan Pollock, 1999. Ancient Mesopotamia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, figure 2.1, with some modifications.

the Persian Gulf – has been called the ‘heartland of cities’ (Figure 2). Here we find ample evidence for two major developments in human history: the beginnings of urban life and the formation of the first states. Many theories on these landmark developments rely on archaeological data from this region. Although these theories may debate the causes, mechanisms, and relationships between urbanism and state formation, they agree that cities and states developed in the context of a rich agricultural regime dependent on the fertile alluvial plains created by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The earliest phases of settled life in Mesopotamia began farther north and it was not until the early sixth millennium BC, with the emergence of the ‘Ubaid culture, that villages and small towns appeared in Sumer. Archaeological evidence from ‘Ubaid settlements suggests a gradual change toward increasing socioeconomic complexity. However, as town dwelling in Sumer was undergoing its organic development,

some evidence suggests that the shift to urbanism involved the introduction of a new form of settlement, the ‘city-state’, that came to characterize Sumer later in the Early Dynastic period (c. 2900–2334 BC). Each city-state consisted of an urban center exercising control over a hinterland of a 15–20 km radius, dotted with smaller settlements engaged in the production and collection of foodstuffs. An underlying feature of each urban center was the Sumerian concept that each was the dwelling of a particular god or goddess, the patron deity of the city (and the state) whose temple formed the city’s focal point. Cities and states emerged from these temple-based settlements, the first example of which can perhaps be witnessed at Eridu. Eridu

According to Sumerian literature, Eridu was the first city to receive kingship from the gods in antediluvial times. Eridu was the site of e´-bazu, the temple of Enki, the supreme deity of the Sumerian pantheon

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and god of subterranean freshwater. Construction of a modest mudbrick building at Eridu at the southernmost edge of the alluvial plain during the early ‘Ubaid period marks an important landmark in human history. This building – interpreted as a shrine – is superimposed by foundations of 15 increasingly larger structures, and finally by a ziggurat for Enki built by kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur some 3500 years later. The superimposition of the buildings, from the modest examples of earlier levels to the elaborate examples of upper levels to the Ziggurat of Enki, stressed the sanctity of this location. Little is known about the settlement surrounding these early shrines, but the largest recorded ‘Ubaid cemetery was discovered here, with an estimated 800–1000 graves showing evidence for social differentiation. Uruk

The pattern observed at Eridu may have been repeated at other sites. For example, the city of Uruk was also founded during the ‘Ubaid period. Beneath the temple precinct of the goddess Inanna (called Eanna, ‘house of heaven’), deep soundings have reached buildings that may have been cultic structures similar to those at Eridu. At this time, the head of the Persian Gulf was about 80 km northwest of its present location with the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers each forming its own delta. This turned the area around Uruk into a wellwatered, alluvial, and marshy land that allowed a rich agricultural regime to flourish. By the end of the ‘Ubaid period, Uruk was a town of modest size, but it grew gradually throughout the following Uruk period (traditionally associated by archaeologists with state formation), experiencing a surge from the Middle Uruk to Jemdet Nasr periods (3600–2900 BC), and reaching 400 ha by the Early Dynastic II period (c. 2700 BC). Surveys of the Uruk countryside suggest that there was a continuous migration of people into the city, leading to the abandonment of many smaller settlements. Middle Uruk period settlement patterns indicate a four-level administrative hierarchy for the region, interpreted by archaeologists as a marker of a state system. Excavated evidence from the city also suggests state institutions. In the Eanna precinct, a series of monumental buildings were discovered, but most date to later phases of the Uruk period. The so-called Limestone Temple, Stone Building, and Stone Cone Temple, all with foundations made from limestone slabs quarried from the Arabian Shelf some 80 km east of the city, date to the Uruk V period (c. 3600 BC) when, presumably, a state was already in place.

In the next phase (Uruk IV), several other monumental buildings were constructed around the Great Court, including Buildings A–E, Hall of Pillars, Hall of Round Pillars, and the Subterranean Building made from ‘riemchen’ (a kind of small brick with a square cross section). In the Uruk IV period, the appearance of the earliest protocuneiform numerical tablets, apparently used to record economic transactions, is also observed. In the Late Uruk period, a mudbrick wall was constructed around the city that was rebuilt on a larger scale in the Early Dynastic I period (c. 2900 BC). Sumerian texts attribute this undertaking to Gilgamesh, the semi-mythical ruler of Uruk. To archaeologists, the construction of a wall signals the rise of other competing polities. By the Early Dynastic II period (c. 2750–2600 BC), the land of Sumer was divided among as many as 35 city-states. Some, including Lagash, Umma, Ur, Isin, Shuruppak, and Adab, played a more important political or military role. Two lines of evidence indicate the consolidation of states in this time: royal titles indicating established kingship, and buildings interpreted as palaces. The most solid evidence for both comes from the quintessential Sumerian city, Kish. Kish

The city of Kish in the northernmost part of Sumer was also founded during the ‘Ubaid period. Kish expanded and attained prominence in the Early Dynastic period, when it was considered to be where the kingship descended from heaven after the Great Flood. The prestigious title ‘King of Kish’ signified, at least nominally, political hegemony over the land of Sumer. The authority of the king of Kish derived from military might as well as a coalition among several city-states, evidence for which comes from seal impressions from Ur and Jemdet Nasr. Excavations at Kish are more limited than at Eridu or Uruk, but the first example of a Mesopotamian palace was discovered here in Area A. To the northwest of this palace (in Area P), a large building with extensive storage facilities and thick buttressed walls may have been another palace or a heavily fortified administrative building. Also in the Early Dynastic period, at least two structures were built at Kish that have been interpreted as ziggurats, perhaps dedicated to Zababa, the important god of Kish. With the rise of Sargon of Agade, Sumerian citystates lost their autonomy and were absorbed into the Akkadian Empire. Some attempts were later made to revive the city-state form of government, for example, during the Isin–Larsa period (2017–1763 BC), but the

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nature of Mesopotamian government had already shifted from city-states to polities oriented toward inter-regional hegemony.

Egypt

Buto

Merimda

Egypt has been called ‘the civilization without cities’. While the lack of evidence for major urban centers with domestic residential quarters dating to the earlier part of Egyptian history may partially be due to heavy sedimentation or later human activities, one should not ignore the fact that large cities would hardly have had enough room to flourish in the tight Nile Valley (Figure 3). From the beginning of sedentism in the Nile Valley up to the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt and the foundation of the Egyptian state (c. 4500–3100 BC), one can distinguish three broad patterns of settlement development: Phase 1 – Tasian–Badarian period (c. 4500–3900 BC). Small, more or less self-sufficient farming communities were located on the margins of the floodplain, levees, and the low desert to avoid annual flooding, but to have easy access to rich alluvium left behind by the Nile. Phase 2 – Amratian or Naqada I period (c. 3900– 3500 BC). Small towns, perhaps centers for craft activities, involved in regional exchange, were located along the edge of the floodplain and on the levees. These towns were usually associated with cemeteries that began to exhibit signs of social differentiation. Phase 3 – Gerzean or Nagada II period (c. 3500– 3200 BC). Small cities that housed protokingdoms exercised control over a stretch of the floodplain and towns and villages within it. The Egyptian state seems to have emerged in Naqada III or protodynastic period (c. 3200–3000 BC) within the context of competition and coalition among three major protokingdoms in the Upper Egypt: This, Naqada, and Hierakonpolis. This

This or Thinis (ancient Abedjo) is actually famous for its funerary satellite site Abydos. Abydos may have started out as a burial ground on the outskirts of the city of This, but a large number of protodynastic burials, not to mention the main burial ground for the kings of the first and second dynasty, turned Abydos into the most prominent necropolis in Egypt, already signifying its later importance as the main cult center of the god Osiris, the primary god of the land of the dead.

Memphis Fayum

Protokingdom of Upper Egypt

Maadi/ Helwan

THIS Abydos NAGADA

HIERAKONPOLIS Stage 1 Elephantine

Stage 2 Stage 3

Nubia Qustul Figure 3 The protokingdoms of Upper Egypt in protodynastic period, with the location of sites mentioned in the text. After Barry J. Kemp (1989). Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. London: Routledge, figure 13.

Naqada

In the protodynastic period, the South Town at Naqada (ancient Nubt) housed a large mudbrick enclosure, perhaps a royal compound, some 50 m long and 34 m wide with walls 2 m thick. At the Naqada cemetery, one can also see increasing evidence for social differentiation in larger, better constructed, and more lavishly furnished tombs. One particular example is Tomb T5, where an individual was found accompanied with remains of human sacrifice. Hierakonpolis

The city of Hierakonpolis (ancient Nekhen), perhaps the most important protodynastic center in Upper

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Egypt, consists of two zones: the low mound located in the floodplain where the remains of the town and the Temple Mound are found, and a group of interrelated sites stretching westward for 2 km into the Western Desert. Excavations at the Temple Mound have exposed traces of an early shrine – perhaps dedicated to Horus, the god of Hierakonpolis – in which the famous Main Deposit was discovered, including some of the most important artifacts pertaining to the era of state formation, such as the King Scorpion macehead and the Narmer Palette. To the north of the Temple Mound, remains of a monumental building have been excavated, featuring a 20 m wide gate built with mudbrick in the distinct niche-and-buttress style reminiscent of Uruk period Mesopotamian masonry. Excavations at the Hierakonpolis cemetery indicate an accelerated process of social differentiation from late predynastic to protodynastic period, as one can see a marked difference in the size and contents of the burials. One remarkable burial is Tomb 100, where the walls are decorated with colorful painting combining Egyptian and Near Eastern motifs. As urbanism and political developments were underway in Upper Egypt, a number of cities flourished in Lower Egypt, most importantly Buto. Buto

Founded in the mid-fourth millennium BC on a sand dune about 30 km south of the Mediterranean coast in marshlands of northwestern delta, Buto soon became an important town engaged in exchange networks of the eastern Mediterranean, evident in pottery finds from the Levant and Syria and the so-called ‘clay-cones’ reminiscent of Uruk Mesopotamia. By the Naqada II period, people from Upper Egypt began expanding northward into Lower Egypt. While this movement may have initially been a peaceful process to allow people of Upper Egypt more direct access to the eastern Mediterranean and its resources, archaeological and iconographic evidence suggests that the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt was achieved through military campaigns waged by several generations of Upper Egyptian rulers culminating in a Thinite ruler called Narmer. According to Manetho, the third century BC high priest at Heliopolis who composed a history of Egypt, the legendary first pharaoh of Egypt, Menes (who may or may not be the same person as Narmer), founded a city at the juncture of Upper and Lower Egypt to serve as the capital of the unified kingdom. This city came to be called inbu-hedj (‘white walls’) in Egyptian and Memphis in Greek.

Memphis

The ruins of Memphis, about 20 km south of Cairo, occupy an area of c. 4 km from north to south and 1.5 km from east to west. Despite sustained archaeological fieldwork since the nineteenth century, no settlement remains earlier than the First Intermediate period have been discovered, mostly due to heavy overburden of later periods. The city of Memphis is important for a number of monuments, including the Temple of Ptah that may have begun in Early Dynastic period, although nothing earlier than Nineteenth Dynasty has been discovered so far. The area around Memphis is, however, dotted with remains of Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom times: to the south is Saqqara where mastabas of the Early Dynastic officials and the Step Pyramid of Djoser are located, and to the north Giza where the pyramid complexes of the Fourth Dynasty pharaohs Khufu, Khafra, and Menkaura are to be found. As the capital of Egypt during Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom times (c. 3000–2165 BC), Memphis was the most important political and cultural center in the land. The temple of the sun god Ra’ at Heliopolis to the northeast of Memphis was an important religious center with strong influence on Old Kingdom royal ideology, gradually replacing Horus with Ra’ as the primary deity associated with the pharaoh. Memphis also produced one of the more important Egyptian myths of creation revolving around Ptah. Ateliers working out of Memphis under the patronage of the royal court were responsible for creating splendid works of art and architecture that characterize the distinct Old Kingdom style, highly regarded and emulated in later phases of Egyptian history. However, despite its political and cultural importance, Memphis was basically a royal city where the court and high officials resided, while the population continued to live in small towns and villages along the Nile. With the decline of the Old Kingdom and disintegration of the central government, Memphis ceased to be the capital and two other cities laid claim to power: Herakleopolis in Middle Egypt where the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties ruled and Thebes in Upper Egypt where Eleventh and subsequently Twelfth Dynasty pharaohs embarked on another series of campaigns to reunify Egypt and establish the Middle Kingdom.

Indus The early Indus civilization covered a vast area of 500 000 km2 and extended well beyond the Indus River basin to parts of Afghanistan in the north and to Gujarat in the south to the Indo-Gangetic divide in

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Figure 4 Schematic map showing locations of early cities in the Indus Valley and China.

the east and the Makran coast in the west (Figure 4). The early cities of the Harappan phase of the Indus Valley Tradition of Pakistan and western India developed by 2600 BC and lasted as late as 1300 BC in some areas. The region was not politically unified and the degree of integration of Harappan centers is debated. At least five centers were large enough to be considered cities: Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Dholavira, Ganweriwala, and Rakhigarhi, each with a hinterland of 100 000–150 000 km2. All Indus cities shared some common features: walled settlements, urban planning of streets and buildings, sophisticated drainage systems, a common writing system and system of weights, and similar styles of pottery and other goods (see Asia, South: Indus Civilization). The nature of urban–rural integration is not well understood. Some archaeologists have even questioned whether early Indus polities were states because of an absence of monumental religious architecture, palaces, and depictions of rulers and limited evidence of warfare. The Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro indicates that ritual bathing has a long religious tradition in the region. The lack of glorification of rulers is not unique among early civilizations and suggests a corporate form of rulership. The absence of recognized archaeological evidence of warfare does not

necessarily indicate an absence of warfare, as the history of research on Classic Maya civilization demonstrates. The size, complexity, and urban planning of Indus cities are consistent with the state form of organization. The Indus script is yet to be deciphered. Recent archaeological investigations, however, have provided new details of Indus cities and also corrected misconceptions from their initial discovery in the 1920s. Harappa

The city of Harappa was first settled around 3300 BC and expanded to cover at least 150 ha. The urban population ranged from 40 000 to 80 000 persons, depending on the time of year. Four mounded areas were clustered around a central depression that might have held water. The mounded areas were walled, as was the entire city, and entered by gateways. Because of poor preservation, it is difficult to determine the layout of houses and the function of buildings. Workshops occur along with residences in each of the mounded areas. Various functions for the walls have been suggested: defense, flood control, and the demarcation of sociopolitical boundaries. Workshops

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and multistory residences built of kiln-fired bricks occur in all the mounded areas, suggesting that the walls may represent political and/or social divisions, along with defensive aspects. The city was laid out to separate public and private areas. Indus cities had sophisticated water- and wastemanagement systems. Wells for drinking water occurred in and around Harappa. Houses had bathing areas, latrines, and sewers that connected to larger drains that emptied beyond the city walls. The fertile waste water was deposited on agricultural fields surrounding the city. Mohenjo-daro

Mohenjo-daro, located on the lower Indus, is the best-preserved Indus city. It covers 200 ha. The walled citadel mound includes several large buildings that might include elite residences, along with the famous Great Bath. A lower town covering 8 ha is divided by four major east–west and north–south streets that divide into blocks that are further subdivided by smaller streets and alleyways. Houses are grouped around courtyards and included bathrooms and elaborate drainage systems. Workshops where various types of commodities were produced are distributed throughout the city. Dholavira

Dholavira is the most recently discovered Harappan city. It is located on Kadir Island in the Gulf of Kutch and was founded as an outpost or colony. The mix of artifact styles suggests that along with the local population, Indus Valley elites and artisans lived in the city. Dholavira had a very different layout than the better-known cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. The outer city wall enclosed a series of walled rectangular and square compounds. Residential and craft areas occurred in the lower or outer town that is divided by streets running in cardinal directions. Large structures were present on the acropolis. Little excavation has been undertaken at either Rakhigarhi or Ganweriwala, two cities identified through survey. Much work remains to be done to understand early Indus cities more thoroughly. The cities were connected through trade networks. They imported raw materials and finished goods form Central Asia and Afghanistan, and carnelian beads and shell bangles made in Indus cities have been found in Mesopotamia and Central Asia. Around 1900 BC, the cities began to lose population, and other defining characteristics of early Indus civilization such as its system of weights were no longer practiced. Foreign invasions, natural disasters,

and disruption of trade networks with southwest Asia used to be the conventional explanations, but archaeologists now favor an interaction of factors that might have disrupted trade networks and undermined the power of elites, but the details remain unclear.

China Chinese urbanism developed out of Neolithic and Chalcolithic patterns of site layout (Figure 4). Over several millennia, village sites began to exhibit specialized architecture, distinguishable residential clusters, and the construction of defensive ditches. By Longshan times (c. 2600–2000 BC), square or rectangular precincts with nucleated populations were enclosed by walls of rammed earth (hangtu), which are thought to have housed and protected an emerging elite. Walled sites from the Longshan period include Wangchenggang, Dantu, Bianxianwang, Pingliangtai, Shijiahe-Tucheng, and Laohushan. The walls of these sites enclose a modest area (generally less than 10 ha), and although residential areas are known outside of the walls, it is probably inaccurate to consider such sites to be the urban capitals of early states. (In comparison, the average city size for Eastern Zhou capitals (770–221 BC) has been estimated to be about 16 km2.) Recent archaeological surveys indicate the establishment of multitier settlement hierarchies during Longshan times, with some very large sites developing. Despite large settlement sizes, clear archaeological indications of centralized states do not appear to be present during the third millennium BC. Longshan period developments culminated in the emergence of a suite of new artifactual and architectural forms known as the Erlitou culture (that many researchers using texts link to the Xia Dynasty). Erlitou is a sizeable settlement that has foundations of what is interpreted as a palace, as well as several craft workshops. Although no wall has been found at this site, rammed-earth foundations have been identified, the largest of which were surrounded by an enclosure wall and held large halls in which rituals were conducted. In its later phases, the Erlitou site is thought to have developed into the urban capital of a centralized state. Zhengzhou

Clear archaeological and textual evidence for urban settlements with populations numbering at least in the thousands is more readily available from the midsecond millennium BC. Shang period sites of the Central Plain (Zhongyuan region) in North China. The Middle Shang (c. 1600 BC) city of Zhengzhou consists of a walled area surrounded by areas of craft

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production, and is thought to have been the capital of a Shang state. The walled sector of the city enclosed an area of nearly 3 km2, within which are a number of rammed-earth platforms that may have held elite residences. While the walled part of the city is considered to have housed an elite population, craft production areas have been identified outside the walls, including bronze smelting, bone ornament and tool production, and pottery production. Cemeteries are also found outside the walled city. A number of smaller cities appear to have developed around the same time as Zhengzhou, including Panlongcheng and Shixianggou. The latter site has a walled precinct laid out with wide avenues and has a large palace enclosure that occupies about 4 ha. Anyang

The later Shang capitals at Anyang and Shangqiu are better known archaeologically. Anyang is thought to have been the sixth and final capital of the Shang dynasty. By around 1200 BC, the city comprised a metropolitan area of some 15 km2, consisting of multiple occupation clusters spread along a 6 km stretch of the Yellow River. Anyang was not merely a conglomeration of villages – large-scale residential foundations thought to be palaces have been found at Xiaotun, and tombs of a scale indicative of royal burial are present at Xibeigang, where a large number of inscribed oracle bones attest to a qualitative change in social organization. Three clusters of hangtu foundations have been identified at Xiaotun, a total of 53 individual foundations of which the largest is 2800 m2. Storage pits containing the remains of grain, bronze weapons, oracle bones, and fine pottery have been identified around the palatial foundations. Craft workshops and commoner residences are also present, indicating that bronze casting and jade, shell, bone, and stone working were conducted in the area around the palaces. The Xiaotun sector is thought to be the administrative-ceremonial core of Anyang, administering a web of surrounding settlement clusters. One of the outlying sites that constitute the Anyang urban web is Xibeigang, where 13 monumental tombs have been excavated. All of these consist of a primary pit accessed by ramps that share the same orientation and have evidence of extensive sacrificial burials (including humans, dogs, horses, and other animals) associated with the burials of prominent individuals. Although these have been extensively looted, the Fu Hao tomb excavated at Xiaotun offers us a sense of the wealth of grave goods placed with prominent individuals. This tomb belonged to a wife of the ruler Wu Ting and contained 16 human sacrificial victims,

six dogs, 7000 cowrie shells, and more than 1600 other items (bronzes, jades, oracle bones, stone objects, ivory carvings, pottery, and shell objects). More research is needed to clarify patterns of urban development in China, but it is clear that cities with populations exceeding 100 000 had developed by Eastern Zhou times (771–221 BC), when urban settlements exhibit a more nucleated character and a more consistent layout. By this time, the urban form included a walled inner city (wangcheng) that contained a palace, an outer city (guo), and a surrounding hinterland of suburbs (jiao) and farming hamlets (yie). Zhou cities were commercial centers with thriving craft industries and well-developed administrative hierarchies. It is undeniable that these cities developed out of millennia-long traditions of settlement organization. Longshan social development saw the appearance of walled compounds of a few hectares, possibly areas of elite residence and craft production that were surrounded by commoner settlement. By the mid-second millennium BC, China’s largest sites covered several square kilometers and had sizeable precincts (sometimes walled) in which monumental architecture, palatial residences, ritual spaces, and storage facilities were located. Craft production appears to have become more specialized and was carried out on a larger scale in workshops outside of the inner city. Farmers lived in rural communities outside of the cities. It appears that the inner parts of these early cities were planned to a degree not seen at the urban periphery, which grew more organically in a number of linked settlement clusters.

Mesoamerica By the early sixteenth century, when the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was among the largest cities in the world, Mesoamerica’s urban tradition was over 2000 years old (Figure 5). Prehispanic cities took different forms and varied significantly in size. Most archaeologists place the beginnings of urban life and development of state organization during the Late or Terminal Formative/ Preclassic with the formation of civilizations in both the highlands and lowlands. Teotihuacan

By the end of the Late Formative at 300 BC or slightly thereafter during the Early Terminal Formative (300–100 BC), two urban regional centers dominated the Basin of Mexico in the central highlands – Cuicuilco in the southwest and Teotihuacan in the northeast – each head of a state system. About 100 BC, Teotihuacan grew explosively as most of the

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Figure 5 Schematic map of Mesoamerica showing locations of early cities.

basin’s population relocated to the city. Volcanic eruptions destroyed Cuicuilco and its immediate hinterlands leaving Teotihuacan as the sole power in the basin until CE 650/750. It became the most influential city in Classic period Mesoamerica. The city expanded to 100 000–125 000 people and covered 20 km2 by CE 300. In prehispanic Mesoamerica, only Tenochtitlan in the early fifteenth century was larger. Following the aggregation of the basin’s population at Teotihuacan, its rulers undertook a massive reorganization of the city structured around a cruciform plan. Monumental buildings were constructed along a main north–south artery (Figure 6). A one-story apartment compound became the standard residential unit that housed related families, each with their own apartment. Although many farmers lived at Teotihuacan, craft specialization expanded as the city became a major commercial center. Teotihuacan was a primate city whose size, military, politicoeconomic, and ideological importance inhibited the development of rival centers. By the mid-500s, however, the city had increasing economic and political difficulties in its hinterlands, and around CE 650 or 750 major temples and other public buildings at Teotihuacan were burned and figures smashed. The collapse of Teotihuacan marked the start of the Postclassic citystate systems, and, although greatly reduced in size and influence, Teotihuacan became an Epiclassic (CE 650–950) city-state center. Monte Alba´n

In the Valley of Oaxaca in the southern highlands of Mexico, the city of Monte Alba´n became the political and cultural center of the early Zapotec state. Toward

Figure 6 Teotihuacan looking down the Street of the Dead.

the end of the Middle Formative (about 500 BC), Monte Alba´n was founded for defensive and ideological reasons atop a cluster of hills in the center of the valley. To some archaeologists, the establishment of Monte Alba´n signals the political unification of the valley and beginnings of state organization. An alternative interpretation posits that a chief from the northwest Etla branch of the valley moved his capital to Monte Alba´n and subsequently unified the valley in the Terminal Formative (200 BC–CE 300). Located on the main plaza are the famous Danzantes that date to 350–200 BC. This gallery of 300 life-size carved stone monuments depicts slain individuals, probably war captives attesting to the importance of warfare in regional politics and in the founding and growth of the city. At the end of the Late Formative or during the Terminal Formative, a 2 km long defensive wall was built on the northern and western slopes of the city as Monte Alba´n forcibly extended its control into surrounding regions. Monte Alba´n reached its maximum size of 17 000– 30 000 people during the Classic period (CE 200–700). Monumental temples and a palace were added to the main plaza, along with stelae depicting Monte Alba´n’s rulers. In contrast to the broad main avenue of Teotihuacan, the main plaza at Monte Alba´n was designed to restrict access. As the urban population grew, people created terraces on the hillslopes where they built their houses. Many commoners who lived at Monte Alba´n were farmers who traveled down the hill to farm their fields. Some craft specialists might have resided together in barrios. Most construction in the main plaza stopped by c. CE 700, and the city’s population shrank. With Monte Alba´n’s decline as a regional political capital, other centers expanded. Small kingdoms, citystates, or cacicazgos, each with a central town or

CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF 1013

city, became the dominant political form in the Postclassic (see Americas, Central: Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica). Lowland Maya

Rainforests provided the setting for the development of Maya civilization in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras and El Salvador. During the Middle Preclassic (900–300 BC), large chiefdom centers developed in parts of both the Maya lowlands and highlands. The Late Preclassic saw the emergence of the earliest cities in the central lowlands at El Mirador, Nakbe, Cerros, and Tikal, and the establishment of the essential elements of Maya kingship and Great Tradition. El Mirador is the largest-known early city in the lowlands, with two acropoli of temples, palaces, and plazas connected by a causeway and hundreds of residential platforms scattered over 16 km2. Toward the end of the Late Preclassic (300 BC–CE 250), El Mirador, Nakbe, and Cerros were mostly or completely abandoned, perhaps due to local overpopulation, conflict, and/or eruption of the Ilopango volcano c. CE 250. Lowland Maya civilization of the Classic period (CE 250–800) consisted of a network of kingdoms cross-cut by a broadly shared elite culture. Some kingdoms grew larger than others through alliances and conquests but none formed a stable regional/ territorial state. Maya centers varied from a few thousand to populations in the tens of thousands, reaching c. 60 000 people at Tikal. Maya cities were ritual-regal or courtly centers of royalty and elites. Masonry temples, palaces, ball courts, and the funerary monuments of ancestral rulers were arranged around large open plazas (Figure 7). Stone stelae with depictions of rulers, hieroglyphic writing, and dates proclaimed important events in the lives of divine kings. Major plaza groups were separated from each other within a city and connected by causeways. Cities grew by accretion with little indication of overall planning. Scattered between the plaza complexes were household groups of farmers and craft specialists and lesser nobles. Maya cities were not tightly bounded. Settlement became increasingly dispersed away from the urban core with gardens and fields between house clusters. Beginning in the ninth century, major cities in the southern lowlands were abandoned, their hinterlands experienced marked population reductions, and kingship collapsed. Cities in the northern lowlands, however, experienced their apogee during the Terminal Classic (CE 800–1000). One view sees the ninthcentury abandonment as a pan-lowland collapse.

Figure 7 Tikal Temple 1.

Others disagree and point to some centers whose occupation continued into the Postclassic. Agricultural degradation from over-intensification, intensified warfare, and elite competition, and a rejection of the institution and ideology of Maya kingship contributed to the collapse of most southern cities.

Andes The capitals of late prehispanic Andean empires were sizeable cities, with populations in the tens of thousands (Figure 8). Researchers have not reached a consensus regarding the antiquity of the first Andean cities and the development of the first centralized state governments. Despite ongoing debate, the Mochica, Wari, and Tiwanaku can be considered to have been early states in their respective regions and provide case studies for exploring urbanism and the rise of civilization. The capitals of these polities bear witness to the transformations concomitant with the establishment of centralized state governments. Huacas of Moche

The capital of the Mochica state was located at the mouth of the Moche Valley, at a site comprising the Huaca del Sol, Huaca de la Luna, and the intervening valley bottom. This site, which spanned more than

1014 CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF

Figure 9 Urban compounds at Huacas of Moche site.

Figure 8 Schematic map of the Andes showing locations of early cities.

72 ha and had a population estimated in the thousands, is known today as Huacas of Moche. The principal monuments were laid out so as to capitalize on natural topography while also bounding the area of urban residential population. A major avenue sets the Huaca de la Luna and adjoining elite residences apart from the urban residential area (Figure 9). The two huacas appear to have been used by elites as part of the religious and political activities of the state – other ceremonial activities are known to have been conducted in nearby elite households. Recent excavations have revealed that the area between the major civic-ceremonial complexes was densely occupied in the Moche IV period (CE 400– 700). Researchers have identified multiple domestic compounds that are thought to have been the residences of extended family units. Compounds were enclosed groups of rectangular structures of varying size and construction quality, which contained modest open spaces and storage facilities. These units were separated from each other by narrow streets (generally less than 2 m wide). Excavations have revealed that the occupants of these compounds were generally not a farming population, but were mostly craft specialists – evidence of weaving, ceramic production, shell working, smelting, and the working of lapidary ornaments has been identified, while farming and fishing tools are virtually absent. The rise of Mochica civilization included the extension of administrative control or hegemony over a

number of coastal valleys to the north and south of the Moche Valley. In some areas, local settlement patterns were disrupted as secondary administrative sites were established and irrigation systems were extended. The Mochica capital itself seems to have grown and been laid out to meet the new needs of state administration. Monumental building projects increased dramatically at the capital, with elites directing the construction of not only the major huacas, but also palatial residences and elaborate tombs. Specialized craft production also increased at this time, and major agricultural intensification projects were completed as well. Wari and Tiwanaku

The Wari and Tiwanaku polities were the first states to develop in the central Andean highlands and the Titicaca Basin, respectively. Both polities are known to have had urban capitals that developed around the time of the first territorial expansion outside of their core regions. Wari and Tiwanaku secondary centers and provincial outposts were constructed with certain aspects of an urban template in mind, but the populations of secondary sites appear to have been too modest to consider them as cities. Tiwanaku At its maximal extent, Tiwanaku was a city of 6 km2, with a population estimated in the tens of thousands. At the center of the city lay a ceremonial precinct that was surrounded by a large artificial moat. Certain of the city’s most important monuments are located within the enclosed area (viz., the Kalasasaya and Sunken Temple), as are residential compounds identified as elite and royal palaces. The inner city at Tiwanaku was renovated after CE 800, replacing previous residential areas with a smaller number of compounds occupied by elites with close ties to state ceremonial activity.

CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF 1015

Outside of the urban core, archaeologists have excavated domestic compounds interpreted as the residences of minor state officials. These exhibit a degree of central planning and take the form of walled compounds that contained the residences of extended families. Streets and drains separate these compounds and provide access through the site. Some workshops have been identified in the outer part of the city, but the residences of craft specialists have been difficult to identify unambiguously. Agricultural laborers lived mainly in the city’s hinterland, near to the system of raised fields that provided sustenance for the population of the Tiwanaku heartland. Huari The Wari state developed in the Ayacucho region of highland Peru. Its capital (Huari) was established on the site of several previously autonomous settlements, growing from c. CE 400–900 and exhibiting the characteristics of an urban center by the seventh century. The urban core of Huari was 4 km2 at its maximum extent and contained several monumental religious complexes, areas for public feasts, storage facilities, and residential compounds. Walled temple compounds such as the Semisubterranean Temple and the Vegachayoq Moqo complex were laid out and separated by narrow streets, and domestic architecture in later phases takes the form of walled compounds as well. As domestic residential blocks filled in the open areas between religious complexes, the city grew more crowded, and second-story architecture was built. Residential compounds were laid out as walled enclosures in which a series of halls and smaller rectangular structures were built around a central patio area. The excavated assemblage in these compounds has been interpreted as belonging to mid-level state officials. The first cities in the Andes grew rapidly, outpacingsimilar growth processes at secondary centers (e.g., Lukurmata, Conchopata). As capitals of early states, these cities grew around precincts of monumental religious architecture in which elite residences have been identified. Open spaces for large-scale gatherings and feasts were built as part of the major religious complexes, and more modest plazas are often found in elite residences. The occupants of these early cities included the ruling elite, minor state

officials, and artisans whose workshops tended to be located outside the main religious-administrative areas. Housing tends to take the form of walled compounds in which extended family groups resided. Residential blocks were separated by streets that appear to have been narrow and opportunistically built, although there is evidence that the state did lay out major avenues and invested in programs of urban renovation resulting in better access and urban infrastructure. See also: Africa, North: Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic; Americas, Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya; Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica; Americas, South: Inca Archaeology; Asia, East: Chinese Civilization; Asia, South: Indus Civilization; Asia, West: Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations; Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad; Cities, Ancient, and Daily Life; Classification and Typology.

Further Reading Cowgill GL (2004) Origins and development of urbanism: Archaeological perspectives. Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 525–549. Feinman G and Marcus J (eds.) (1998) Archaic States. Santa Fe, New Mexico: SAR Press. Hansen MH (ed.) (2000) A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures. Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. Hansen MH (ed.) (2002) A Comparative Study of Six City-State Cultures. Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. Kenoyer JM (1989) Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nichols DL and Charlton TH (eds.) (1997) The Archaeology of City-States: Cross-Cultural Approaches. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Sanders WT, Mastache AG, and Cobean RH (2003) El urbanismo en Mesoame´rica. Urbanism in Mesoamerica. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologı´a e Historia and University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University. Smith ML (2003) The Social Construction of Ancient Cities. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Storey G (ed.) (2006) Population and Preindustrial Cities. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Trigger B (2003) Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yoffee N (2005) Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY Linda Ellis, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary classical archaeology A field specializing in the study of Greek and Roman civilizations, their prehistoric antecedents, and areas of influence. Mediterranean region The region around and surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea. Roman Empire An empire established by Augustus in 27 BC and divided in AD 395 into the western Roman Empire and the eastern or Byzantine Empire; at its peak, lands in Europe and Africa and Asia were ruled by ancient Rome.

Introduction Classical archaeology encompasses the study of ancient societies of the circum-Mediterranean together with areas (e.g., Europe, Middle East, North Africa) colonized by the Roman Empire and the region’s earlier thalassocracies (e.g., Etruscans, Phoenicians, Greeks). The time span covered by classical archaeology has been predominantly the ‘classical’ Greek and Roman civilizations (approximately eighth century BC to the fifth century AD). However, during the twentieth century, research has extended both to the prehistoric periods, especially the Bronze Age (c. second millennium BC), and to the late/postRoman period of Late Antiquity (c. fourth to seventh centuries AD). The density, diversity, and quantity of material remains of ancient Mediterranean societies are such that a number of specialized fields emerged early in the history of the discipline: art historical analysis of Greek and Roman art and architecture, philological and epigraphic analysis of Greek and Latin inscriptions, numismatics and the broader study of the imperial economic system, military history and the process of colonization, underwater archaeology of Bronze Age and classical period shipwrecks, and applications of archaeometry for physicochemical analyses of materials (e.g., coins, amphorae, and marble). The 125 years of archaeological research at the Roman memorial monument and ancient city of Tropaeum Traiani in SE Romania (see Figure 1) is an excellent example of the evolution of, and changes within, the profession of classical archaeology and illustrates the multidisciplinary nature of the field. Uncovered in the nineteenth century, and with no

ancient records, the first task was to excavate and identify the disheveled construction and collect the dispersed inscriptions and associated artworks. Through epigraphic research on inscriptions, the location was identified as a major battlefield of Emperor Trajan’s first war with the local Dacians (101–2 AD) and was associated with the nearby fortified city settled by Roman veterans. Once 49 of the original 54 metopes (rectangular sculptural scenes) had been recovered, art historians debated for a century the order of the metopes, their enigmatic significance, and the identity of the sculptor(s). Meanwhile, military historians not only had a location for a major battle identified, but also corroborating illustrative data on Roman armor and weapons. Simultaneously, archaeologists, architects, and engineers labored to reconstruct the monument, which was rebuilt in the 1970s, over the Roman concrete core. For most of the twentieth century, meticulous excavations have revealed the complicated 500-year architectural history of the city (second to sixth centuries AD). Since 2002, a regional surveying and hydroarchaeology program was undertaken to identify rural satellite settlements and the extensive aqueduct system needed to support the city.

History of Classical Archaeology Cyriac of Ancona (1391–1452) was an Italian merchant who travelled on business throughout the eastern Mediterranean and, justifiably, he may be considered the first archaeologist. Over the course of 25 years, he meticulously documented and published Greco-Roman inscriptions, monuments, artwork, and coins. However, the Renaissance passion of antiquarianism – the undisciplined collecting of Greco-Roman art and antiquities – began a plague that persists today. Beginning in the fifteenth century and continuing for 400 years, Greco-Roman sites and monuments were seriously plundered: Most architectural and sculptural remains were found at ground surface and therefore became easy provender for avaricious popes and secular elites alike, as well as the ever-growing trade in antiquities. Many large private collections eventually made their way to museums worldwide. Problems with legal ownership of classical antiquities and repatriation issues regarding objects collected during this era still persevere – the Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum (originally detached by Lord Elgin when Greece was under Ottoman control) is a cause ce´le`bre.

CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 1017

Figure 1 Tropaeum Traiani (‘Trajan’s Trophy’), c. AD 109, near Adamclisi, SE Romania. Photograph: Gil Zilberstein.

It was not until the eighteenth century that more systematic study of classical antiquity began with the work of two pioneering German scholars. Johann Winckelmann (1717–68) established art history as a distinct subdiscipline of classical archaeology. In 1764, Winckelmann’s History of Ancient Art included the first chronology of Greek and Roman sculpture, a discussion of aesthetics and technique, and the social background of artistic production. In the nineteenth century, Eduard Gerhard developed the rules for classical archaeology and systematized its practices as a foundation for a profession, severing it from the tradition of antiquarianism. In 1850, he published Archaeological Theses, which provided rules for archaeological description, tools, and techniques. Gerhard also first established archaeological pedagogy in higher education at the University of Berlin. The study of material remains in classical archaeology has also required knowledge of classical literature, especially since archaeologists have at their disposal one of the most extensive written records from ancient Greek and Roman authors against which to test hypotheses or verify identification of locations, events, and finds. A ‘classical’ example is Heinrich Schliemann’s (1822–90) obsession with Homer’s Iliad and his excavations of ‘Troy’ at

Hissarlik in NW Turkey. However, framing archaeological practice within an ancient literary tradition has limited classical archaeology to mostly placeand event-oriented and descriptive research, rather than providing explanation for sociocultural processes. Furthermore, the written record is notoriously exclusionary – produced by and for elites – and thus serves as one research tool among many (and not as a foundation) for archaeological research. The mid- and late nineteenth century witnessed a surge of ‘great excavations’ of ancient cities and religious sites, with classical archaeologists adopting more professional and systematic approaches to excavation, documentation, and publication. In 1837, the Greek Archaeological Society was founded, followed by the establishment (in Athens) of the French, German, American, and British schools and institutes for archaeological research in Greece. From the 1870s to the 1970s, 18 countries established similar national institutes in Rome to coordinate foreign archaeological research throughout Italy. However, in the post-World War II (WWII) era, government and university funding for large-scale excavations at Greco-Roman sites has become increasingly difficult to obtain, and beginning in the 1960s multidisciplinary regional surveys (e.g., University of Minnesota

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Expedition in Messenia, Greece) became both economical and productive for settlement system, land use, and environmental studies. During the twentieth century, the Bronze Age of the Aegean region (e.g., Knossos on Crete, Akrotiri on Thera) attracted significant archaeological research interest. Island archaeology in general has flourished throughout the Mediterranean region with major excavation and surveying programs on Sardinia, Cyprus, Malta, and others. The boundaries of classical archaeology have been pushed even further with technological developments that allowed underwater surveying and excavation of shipwrecks and submerged ancient harbors. With the development of radiocarbon dating, classical archaeology could establish an absolute chronology and allow accurate dating of any site without reliance on ancient king-lists, texts, inscriptions, or coinage. Since the 1960s, the applications of analytical methods from the fields of materials science, physics, chemistry, biology, and geology to the understanding of cultural, biological, and geological remains (i.e., archaeometry and archaeological science) have contributed to studies of mining and manufacturing operations, local and transcontinental trade and commerce, cultural adaptation to and alteration of the environment, and human health and pathology, as well as to the determination of authenticity and provenance of museum collections. In 1993, the first in a series of conferences on the applications of archaeological and social science theory to classical archaeology was published. In 1- to 3-year intervals ever since, the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference (TRAC) has been held in the United Kingdom and has brought together a new generation of scholars working in all geographical areas of the Roman Empire. While a coherent body of theory in classical archaeology is yet to be clearly expressed, these multifarious collections of studies on the Roman period represent the beginning of a new direction for the profession. Of major concern to classical archaeologists today is the continuing spoliation of Greco-Roman and prehistoric sites (e.g., the robbery of Etruscan tombs in rural northern Italy). Salvage archaeology has increased since 1990s, as a result of modern urbanization and major construction projects like the Athens subway system, all of which continue to put archaeological resources at serious risk.

Conclusion Unfortunately, the profession of classical archaeology has a reputation for intellectual ossification, due in part to the architectural focus of many excavations, reliance on ancient literary texts, and event-oriented research agendas. Classical archaeology never experienced the ‘revolution’ (cf. ‘new archaeology’) and reevaluation (cf. ‘postprocessual archaeology’) that the rest of the archaeological profession underwent over the past 40 years (see Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology). However, this situation should be seen not as a hindrance, but rather an opportunity. The application of cultural theory and the social sciences to the understanding of classical antiquity is wide open for a new generation of archaeologists to exploit! The Mediterranean region from 500 BC to 500 AD witnessed one of the most profound cultural, political, economic, military, and urban explosions – and subsequent implosion – humankind has ever experienced. This phenomenon still has not been adequately analyzed from a culturaltheoretical point of view and thus provides an enormous database for future anthropological and archaeological research. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, does this world of classical antiquity not only mirror but also forecast the outcome of our own military-industrial complex? See also: Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Roman Eastern Colonies; Phoenicia; Europe, South: Greece; Greek Colonies; Rome.

Further Reading Bruhn J, Croxford B, and Grigoropoulos D (eds.) (2005) TRAC 2004: Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Dyson SL (1998) Ancient Marbles to American Shores: Classical Archaeology in the United States. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Medwid LM (2000) The Makers of Classical Archaeology: A Reference Work. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books. Rapp G and Gifford JA (eds.) (1982) Troy, The Archaeological Geology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press and the University of Cincinnati. Shanks M (1996) Classical Archaeology of Greece: Experiences of the Discipline. London: Routledge. Weiss R (1969) The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

CLASSIFICATION AND TYPOLOGY 1019

CLASSIFICATION AND TYPOLOGY William Y Adams, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary artifact Any object made or modified by a human culture and often later recovered by some archaeological endeavor. classification Grouping of ideas and objects into categories with specific purpose. periodization Attempt to categorize or divide time into discrete named blocks. systematics Science of systematic classification of objects and the evolutionary relationships among them. seriation A method in relative dating in which artifacts of numerous sites, in the same culture, are placed in chronological order. typology Classification of things according to their characteristics.

Introduction Classification is the most fundamental of interpretive activities in all the natural sciences, including archaeology. The sheer accumulation of data in time requires its subdivision into groups, before any other analytical or interpretive procedures can be undertaken. In archaeology, this has been true in the case of both artifacts and cultures. As a result, archaeological classification has a long history; in the broadest sense it probably dates back to the beginnings of archaeology itself. In the archaeological literature, the terms ‘classification’ and ‘typology’ are often used interchangeably. Properly speaking, however, a typology is just one particular kind of classification: an ordering of physical or tangible entities into discrete and mutually exclusive groups. The entities most commonly included in a typology are artifacts – above all pottery and lithic remains – but there are also typologies of houses, graves, and other cultural manifestations. Classification is a more inclusive term that includes typologies, but also includes the chronological or spatial ordering of cultural data: the recognition and naming of different culture complexes in different area, and also the division of culture sequences into successive phases. The article deals separately with the issues of cultural classification and of artifact typology, for they have had quite different histories and involve different methodologies.

Historical Beginnings The archaeology of today is an outgrowth of what was earlier called antiquarianism. It is usually said to have had its beginnings in the Renaissance, when royal and noble patrons paid for field excavations in Italy and Greece which they hoped would yield objets d’art for their private collections (see Europe, South: Greece; Rome). Every collector developed his or her own system for displaying the collected antiquities, and most of these probably involved some kind of primitive, ad hoc classification, perhaps according to the materials employed, or artistic similarities, or based on places of finding. While the Renaissance was pre-eminently an era of discovery and collecting, the Enlightenment that followed was above all an era of systematization. The dominant concern was to bring order and system to the mass of materials and facts that had been collected, not only in the natural world but in the social and political spheres as well. There was a proliferation of botanical, zoological, and geological classifications, best exemplified by the famous System of Nature of Linnaeus. At the same time the moral philosophers, especially in France and in Scotland, developed logically coherent social and political schemata, including what came to be known as the three-stage schema of prehistory involving successive hunting-gathering, pastoral, and agricultural stages in human development. In the broadest sense, the classificatory methods of Linnaeus and other naturalists provided a methodological foundation for the later development of artifact classifications, while the three-stage schema of the moral philosophers was equally basic, at least conceptually, to the subsequent development of culture classifications. However, the real development of classification as an essential rather than merely an incidental feature of archaeology had to wait upon the beginnings of scientific archaeology, in the middle of the nineteenth century.

The Beginnings of Culture Classification European scientific archaeology, including classification, had its beginnings in Scandinavia, a region that had lain outside the realm both of classical antiquity and of the prehistoric megalith-builders. Scandinavians at the outset of the nineteenth century were gripped by

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the same spirit of nationalism that affected nearly all European peoples, and like many others they had begun to regard prehistory as an essential part of their national heritage. Without major architectural monuments or conspicuous objets d’art, however, they had a much more difficult job to recover that heritage than had their neighbors in more southerly countries. It was in that context that scientific archaeology had its beginnings. As far back as 1776, Scandinavian scholars had recognized that in their countries there were some archaeological sites which yielded only stone cutting tools, others having both stone and copper, and still others with stone, copper, and iron. In the early nineteenth century, Vedel Simonsen wrote specifically of a Stone Age, a Copper Age, and an Iron Age as stages in the prehistory of Scandinavia. It was however Christian Thomsen who first gave wide publicity to what has come to be called the three-age system, when in 1819 he arranged all of the prehistoric collections in the newly opened Danish National Museum into separate Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age assemblages. The three-age system was from the beginning both a culture classification and a kind of artifact classification. By the 1850s, discoveries in England, Ireland, and Switzerland had convinced at least some scholars that the scheme had continent-wide validity (see Historic Roots of Archaeology). A little later it was found to accord perfectly with the worldwide schemata of cultural evolution proposed by Herbert Spencer, John Lubbock, Lewis Henry Morgan, and other pioneer evolutionists, and its acceptance became universal. Indeed, it remains at the foundation of nearly all cultural classification systems in Europe and the Near East, down to the present day. French prehistorians, working in the middle of the nineteenth century, made an important addition to the three-age system when they recognized the existence of two stone ages: an earlier period characterized by the exclusive use of chipped stone tools, and a later period having also ground and polished tools. In his Pre-Historic Times, first published in 1865, the English prehistorian John Lubbock gave to these phases the formal names by which they are still known: the Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age and the Neolithic or New Stone Age. It was also the French prehistorians of the later nineteenth century who first revealed the great variety of stone age cultures, and the very long time span that they had occupied. The de Mortillet system, originally proposed in 1869, recognized four stages – Mousterian, Solutrean, Aurignacian, and Magdalenian – each named after a

‘type-site’ in central France where the remains had first been identified. The de Mortillet scheme underwent continual modification, as new cultural assemblages were identified, and a few old ones dropped. Nevertheless, the system became an accepted canon of prehistory for decades, and in many respects it remains so today. Part of its appeal lay in the fact that the entire system was strictly chronological and unilineal, each stage succeeding the preceding, with no allowance for concurrent, spatial variation in culture in different parts of Europe. As such, it was wholly consistent with the unilinear theories of social evolution that gained general acceptance in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In the broadest sense it may be said that evolutionism, biological and social, provided the ideological framework within which archaeological classification developed for more than half a century. It was recognized from the beginning that the European Neolithic had been a stage of far shorter duration than the Palaeolithic, enduring perhaps not more than a few thousand years. Yet European scholars at the end of the nineteenth century were so wedded to a unilinear vision of cultural evolution that they at first tried to fit all of the known varieties of Neolithic culture into a single developmental succession, as they had done in the case of the Palaeolithic. However, the Neolithic archaeological record was far richer and more diverse one than was that of the Palaeolithic, encompassing not only tool types but also pottery, houses, and burials. As the full diversity of these remains came to be recognized, the effort to fit them all into a strictly evolutionary and unilinear sequence became insupportable. As a result, the classification of Neolithic cultures in Europe and the Near East came to be based as much on the recognition of spatial as on temporal differences. The great systematizer for the European Neolithic, as well as for the Bronze and Iron Ages, was yet another Scandinavian, Oscar Montelius. Through the detailed study of artifact collections from all over Europe he worked out a series of regional chronologies, and then went on to suggest an overall periodization into which they could all be fitted. It encompassed four stages, designated as I–IV, for the Neolithic, and five stages (I–V) for the Bronze Age. Other scholars, working at about the same time, subdivided the prehistoric Iron Age into two phases. The new schemes substituted diagnostic assemblages for individual diagnostic tool types as the basis for definition of cultures and culture periods. This approach to culture classification was called by Montelius the ‘typological method’.

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The Montelius chronology of roman-numbered Neolithic and Bronze Age stages is still occasionally employed by European prehistorians, insofar as it provides a handy set of typological–chronological pigeonholes into which particular cultures can be placed. However, modified versions of the scheme have a much more basic role in the classification of Aegean and Near East cultures, where scholars still routinely assign sites and cultures to the Early, Middle, or Late Bronze Age, and to numbered subdivisions thereof. A new and highly formal methodology for the development of culture classifications was proposed in 1968 by David Clarke. In the broadest sense it represented a refinement of the typological method, in which artifacts were to be clustered into types, types into assemblages, and assemblages into cultures, using highly rigorous criteria of inclusion at each level. However, this discussion was purely programmatic; the author did not go on to propose an actual classification based on his system, nor did the Soviet prehistorians who discussed and debated the methods of culture classification in rather similar terms during the same period. The time/space grid of European prehistory that remains in actual, everyday use among prehistorians is still very largely an extension of the ones created initially by Thomsen, de Mortillet, and Montelius, and is based on their typological methodology.

Culture Classification in the New World While the classification of prehistoric cultures in Europe and the Near East was always overshadowed by a concern for chronology and a belief in evolutionary progress, these factors were almost wholly lacking in early North American archaeology. There was for a long time a general belief that the native inhabitants had arrived in the Western Hemisphere only within the last two or three millennia, and that their cultures had undergone little or no significant advance during the subsequent interval. At the same time, however, ethnographers could recognize the enormous diversity of culture exhibited by presentday Indians in different parts of the hemisphere, and it was expected, correctly, that the same diversity would be encountered in the archaeological record. As a result, culture classifications in the Americas from the beginning came to emphasize geographical rather than chronological variation. If the informing framework for Old World cultural classification was the theory of social evolution, the informing framework for New World classification was the culture-area concept. In simplest terms, this

involves the recognition that cultures in different regions show a high degree of similarity to one another, but differ from those in neighboring regions, as a result partly of historical diffusion but mostly of adaptation to differing environmental resources. Culture-area theory, unlike early evolutionary theory, places a heavy emphasis on specialized adaptation. It is an approach developed initially not from archaeology but from the ethnographic study of living Indian peoples. Archaeologists, assuming that the remains they dug were immediately ancestral to living Indian cultures, tended for a time to take culture-area theory as a given. Moreover, their excavations for a long time failed to uncover any conspicuously stratified sites or any evidence of genuinely primitive, Palaeolithictype cultures, thus seemingly confirming the general belief in a recent migration of the Indians from the Old World. As investigations progressed, however, two things became apparent: first, that there was considerable diversity among the prehistoric cultures even within certain culture areas, and second that there had indeed been substantial developmental change in many of the prehistoric cultures. This led, in the 1920s, to a widespread recognition of the need for a classification of the prehistoric American cultures that should be independent of existing ethnographic classifications. The first Pecos Conference, held in New Mexico in 1927, marks the beginning of formal classification in American prehistory. The conferees agreed to divide the prehistoric Pueblo culture (nowadays called Anasazi) into seven developmental stages, each marked by distinctive pottery types, house types, and settlement patterns, as well as certain other cultural criteria. While this was, strictly speaking, a periodization rather than a classification, it set a pattern of systematization which was soon widely copied in other parts of North America. Within a very few years, several other cultures had been defined and periodized not only in the Southwest but also in the Midwest, Northeast, and other areas. The proliferation of named cultures led, at least in some quarters, to a perceived need for more formal systematics. In 1934, Winifred and Harold Gladwin published a short monograph entitled A Method for the Designation of Cultures and Their Variation. Their approach was strictly chronological and culture-historical, and was based on an analogy with biological classification. The metaphor they used, however, was that of describing a tree. In the beginning, according to the Gladwin scheme, there were a few widespread and generalized regional roots. These in the course of time had given rise to stems, stems

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had subdivided into branches, and branches into phases. At nearly the same time, archaeologists in the Middle West were developing a fundamentally different classificatory system that ignored history altogether, and was based purely on typological resemblances between artifacts and artifact groups. Formally designated as the Midwestern taxonomic method, it came to be known popularly as the McKern system because it was first described in print by W.C. McKern in 1939, although it had actually been formulated at a series of archaeological conferences several years before. While the Gladwins’ system was essentially a splitting system, the Midwestern system was conceived by its authors as a lumping system. It began at the lowest level by recognizing foci, which were made up of groups of sites in a localized area, sharing a very large number of traits in common. Foci were grouped into aspects, which shared some but not as many traits in common; aspects were in turn lumped into phases, and finally phases were grouped into patterns, representing the highest and most generalized level in the system. The original scheme comprehended only two patterns for the whole eastern United States: the Woodland and the Mississippian. The Midwestern system was devised to a considerable extent for the study and classification of museum and private collections, most of which were poorly dated, and for that reason it did not have a specifically chronological dimension. Phases, aspects, and foci might be either temporal or geographical variants of the parent pattern. The McKern system has been widely, though not very systematically, employed in many parts of North America besides the Midwest; however, it has never been accepted as providing a fully satisfactory overall schema for the classification of North American prehistory. Like nearly all classificatory devices, it has been found to work better in some places and at some periods than at others. Meanwhile, the discovery of so-called Early Man (now usually called Palaeo-Indian) remains in the 1930s added a new and unexpected chronological dimension to American prehistory. Palaeolithic-type remains were found which must date back at least several thousand years, and which could not be definitely related to the later Indian cultures. In classifying these early remains, American prehistorians followed much more closely the model of de Mortillet, rather than the methodology they employed in dealing with the later cultures. That is, the various Palaeo-Indian cultures, like Clovis and Folsom, were treated strictly as chronological subdivisions in

a single linear progression. This approach seems to be supported both by distributional evidence and by subsequent radiocarbon dating, but it probably owes something to the influence of the Old World Palaeolithic canon as well. In 1958, G.R. Willey and Philip Phillips proposed a comprehensive chronological schema for all of the native cultures of the New World. The prehistoric cultures were assigned to five developmental stages: lithic, archaic, formative, classic, and postclassic. This involved no formal systematics; it was a simple evolutionary chronology somewhat akin to the European three-age system, though with more attention to ecological factors. It has proved to be useful for the evolutionary pigeonholing of specific prehistoric cultures, but it makes no effort to express historical relationships among them, as the Gladwin and McKern systems were intended to do. The Gladwin and McKern systems remain almost the only efforts to introduce anything like formal or rigorous systematics into the classification of New World cultures, and neither has come into general use. Insofar as formal methods have been employed, they have been devoted much more to the differentiation of sequential phases within the same culture (e.g., Pueblo I–II–III–IV–V) than to the differentiation of spatially distinct cultures. Overall, archaeological culture classification in the Americas remains mostly an ad hoc process, guided by no rigorous rules, as it does also in Europe and Africa.

The Development of Artifact Classification Scientific artifact classification developed initially as an adjunct to culture classification. The early prehistorians, like Thomsen and de Mortillet, were not really interested in tools and pots as evidence of activities or of technologies or of thought-patterns, but only as identifiers of chronological horizons. The objective in artifact classification was to identify those types that could be associated specifically with the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, or the Iron Age, and could help in the allocation of sites to one or another of those periods. Individual types were of course defined on the basis of formal characteristics, but they were then grouped together on the basis of chronological contexts rather than on the internal evidence of form or function. So long as they were undertaken for purposes of culture definition and of site attribution, artifact classifications were dominated by the concept of the ‘index fossil’. That is, primary attention was given to those artifact types that were found to be diagnostic

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of specific periods. On the other hand, artifact types that were considered non-diagnostic were often ignored. Thus, for example, Mediterranean archaeologists gave names and definition to a few pottery types, like Minyan ware, that had a high degree of historical significance, while a great many other and more ubiquitous pottery wares went unnamed. In the same way, North American prehistorians developed comprehensive and highly detailed classifications of projectile points, while nothing comparable was done for more generalized stone tools like scrapers and choppers. A long step forward was taken when Montelius introduced the ‘typological method’, in which cultures and chronological horizons were defined on the basis of total assemblages rather than of a few diagnostic types. As a result, artifact classifications became more comprehensive. There was not, however, any attempt to introduce formal systematics in the classifications. However, not all nineteenth-century artifact classifications were instrumentalist. A great many museum collections had been donated by amateurs, with little or no accompanying provenience information. As a result, museums often developed purely formalistic artifact classifications, based on criteria of size, shape, and color alone. Under this procedure, groups of similar-appearing artifacts were displayed together, without any consideration for their times or places of origin. This tradition persisted in the display of many kinds of museum materials until well into the twentieth century. General A.H. Pitt Rivers, often regarded as the father of scientific archaeology in Britain, went beyond other museum curators in combining classificatory formalism with evolutionism. So committed was he to a unilinear evolutionary perspective that he arranged all of the objects in his vast collection – both ethnographic and archaeological – into what he believed to be developmental sequences, without any reference to their place of origin. Pitt Rivers may thus have been the first prehistorian to employ purely logical seriation, though the technique had certainly been used earlier by art historians. Combined with more formal typology, it would later be used by scholars such as Petrie and Kroeber to develop culture sequences in areas where direct chronological evidence was lacking. That is, types were initially defined on formal grounds, and then were arranged into what appeared logically to be developmental sequences. The single most important revolution in artifact classification came about as a result of the introduction of frequency seriation, in the early decades of the twentieth century. This procedure grew out of a

recognition that cultures generally change gradually rather than cladistically. At any given time, some types of artifacts are always coming into use while others are going out. After the passage of a generation or two, all of the same artifact types may still be in use as at the beginning, but some will have increased in frequency while others will have decreased. Accordingly, cultures and their various developmental phases need not always be recognized by diagnostic artifact types or assemblages; they can also be recognized by diagnostic frequencies of artifacts, even when there are no individually diagnostic types. Frequency seriation introduced for the first time the procedure of quantification in artifact classification, and this involved two important methodological correlates. First of all, if types were to be treated quantitatively, classifications had to be fully comprehensive; there had to be a type category for every sherd or point. Moreover, the categories had to be mutually exclusive. In other words, the classification had to be a true typology. Second, the frequency seriation approach had the effect of partially decoupling artifact classification from culture classification. That is, types might not necessarily be diagnostic of any one period or even of any one culture, yet their relative frequency could help in the definition of periods and cultures. The frequency seriation method was originally developed in the study of pottery distributions, and it is still much more often applied to pottery than to other materials. In the 1940s and 1950s, however, Franc¸ois Bordes introduced a similar approach in the study of lithic materials from French Palaeolithic sites. The method requires a far more precise and comprehensive typology of stone tool types than had previously been attempted. The Bordes method has proved to be generally effective on its home ground, and attempts have been made to employ it also in many other parts of Europe, the Near East, and Africa. Field workers tried originally to employ the same actual tool types that had been designated by Bordes in France, assuming them to be universal in distribution, but this has not proved to be successful. The general conclusion now is that the frequency seriation method itself works well with Palaeolithic stone tools, but the actual types must be separately classified for each area. The partial decoupling of artifact classification from culture classification had a kind of liberating effect on the study of artifacts. No longer treated simply as culture-markers, they could be studied more nearly as autonomous data, giving evidence of technologies, of activity patterns, and even of thought patterns that were not necessarily culture-specific.

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Moreover, many North American prehistorians by 1940 had come to feel that the older, instrumental artifact classifications had now done their job, insofar as a series of cultures and culture sequences had now been devised for nearly the whole continent. It was time therefore to develop new classifications for new purposes. The result was a series of self-proclaimed ‘revolutions’ in American archaeology, each of which had an impact, at least theoretically, on the processes of artifact classification. Beginning around 1940, it was argued that archaeologists had been splitting hairs over minute differences of pottery temper or of length–width ratio in arrowheads, because these differences proved to be useful for the chronological ordering of sites, when they might have been accidental or meaningless to the actual makers of the artifacts. There was, as a result, a certain turning away from the strict formalism that had characterized the previous generation of classifiers. The basic idea now was that artifact types should be essentialist rather than instrumentalist; they should represent ‘mental templates’ in the minds of the makers, and should ignore variations and variables that seemed to be unintentional. However, there was never complete agreement as to how this was to be determined. One school, championed by Alex Krieger and Irving Rouse, argued that the most sharply demarcated types could be safely assumed to represent the intent of the makers. Another school, best represented by Walter Taylor, apparently believed that prehistoric peoples thought more in functional than in formal terms, and therefore recommended an approach to classification based more on the function than on the form of objects. The supposed functionalist revolution had not proceeded very far when it was overtaken, in the 1960s, by the self-proclaimed ‘scientific revolution’ ushered in by new archaeology. The new archaeologists shared with their predecessors the belief that artifact types should in some sense be ‘real’, rather than mere heuristic constructs of the archaeologist, and there was, at least for a time, a continued assumption that ‘reality’ must reflect the intent of the makers. However, ‘reality’ was now to be determined by strictly scientific and empirical procedures, without recourse to interpretation or context. The touchstone of reality was replicability. Any type proposed by one archaeologist should be capable of confirmation by others, using properly scientific measures. Types, like other scientific propositions, should be regarded as propositions to be tested. As a result, there was, necessarily, a renewed emphasis on formal systematics, exemplified especially in the work of David Clarke, Robert Dunnell (1971), and Dwight Read.

The renewed emphasis on formality and rigor led to an important methodological innovation: the use of statistics, and the definition of types by attribute clustering rather than by object clustering. The archaeologist’s traditional procedure of partitioning a body of collected material into types through visual inspection and the observation of similarities was now thought to be too intuitive. Instead, a list was to be made of all the attributes of size, shape, color, and so on that were exhibited by all the objects in a collection individually. Types were then to be defined by clusters of attributes that occurred together with a frequency greater than chance, as revealed through the use of accepted statistical measures. In the beginning, the major difficulty in statistically based classification lay in the enormous number of separate calculations that had to be made in order to determine the randomness or non-randomness of a nearly infinite number of attribute combinations. That difficulty was overcome in the 1970s, however, with the introduction of computers. There followed a decade of experimentation with computerized systems of classification, which, it was hoped, would finally achieve the elusive goal of automatic classification. The search for automatic and absolutely ‘natural’ classification before long became an end in itself, rather than a means to an end, and as such it considerably outlived the new archaeology paradigm that had given it birth. It was eventually realized, however, that the goal of automatic classification was not practically attainable. The coding of more and more variables simply resulted in the generation of more and more types, far more than were useful for any practical purpose. Indeed, the ultimate logical outcome of computerized classification was a series of classifications in which every object constituted a separate type. In the end there was a general, though not universal, acknowledgement that types that were not produced for any specific purpose were also not useful for any specific purpose. The successive changes of direction and of interest that have taken place since 1940 have given rise far more to theoretical and programmatic literature than to actual, in-use classifications. The concern of most authors has been to propose new methods of classification, rather than to develop actual classifications based on those methods. Insofar as the new methods have been put to practical use, it has been almost entirely at the level of individual assemblages. There has been, as a result, a proliferation of ad hoc classifications, each archaeologist developing his or her own system as a way of dealing with, and publishing, his or her own finds. For the most part, these

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have not proved to be capable of generative use, and have not passed into what might be called the public domain. The archaeological type concepts and typological systems that remain in general, region-wide use are still very largely those that were developed, chiefly for the instrumentalist purpose of culture classification, more than half a century ago.

Other Archaeological Classifications Although the vast majority of archaeological classifications are concerned either with cultures or with artifacts, there are classifications also of house and building types, of burial types, of petroglyph and pictograph types, and of artistic styles. Some of these, like some of the artifact classifications, predate the beginnings of scientific archaeology. As far back as the 1750s, William Stukeley devised a classification of British earth mounds and megalithic monuments. A generation later, Colt and Cunnington proposed a fivefold classification of English barrow types. In North America, Caleb Atwater in 1820 and Squier and Davis in 1848 proposed classifications of earth mound types. The classification of houses and of burials has always gone hand-in-hand with culture classification, much as did the classification of artifacts before the 1930s. Indeed the various monument types designated by Stukeley, by Colt and Cunnington, and by Atwater were initially regarded as the primary diagnostics for the recognition of different cultural periods. Later, house types took their place along with pottery and projectile points as defining characteristics of the various Neolithic cultures of the Old World, as well as of prehistoric American cultures. Burial types on the other hand have played an especially important role in defining the early cultures of the Nile Valley, where evidence of housing is generally lacking. In Nubia, at the beginning of the twentieth century, George A. Reisner recognized and differentiated a whole succession of previously unfamiliar ancient cultures on the basis of burial types alone.

Theory versus Practice: The ‘Typological Debate’ So long as the basic aim in artifact classification was to define cultures and sequences, the actual procedures involved in classification were generally regarded as non-problematical. Artifact types were accepted or rejected on the grounds of their recognizability and their utility or non-utility for the reconstruction of culture history, and the question of their

objective reality or meaningfulness to their makers did not arise. Debate often raged over the legitimacy or the utility of individual types, but it did not touch upon the general methods or the purposes of classification itself. However, the major shifts of interest that occurred after 1940 gave rise not only to new approaches to classification, but also to an extensive and often heated dialogue about the nature and the meaning of classification itself. In one form or another, this discussion persists down to the present day, particularly in North America, where it has been termed collectively the ‘typological debate’. The accumulated body of theoretical and programmatic literature is enormous, yet it bears surprisingly little relationship to what goes on in the practical domain, where typologies developed more than half a century ago remain in general use. The most fundamental issue that has been debated concerns the ‘naturalness’ or ‘artificiality’ of types. There is general agreement that ‘artificial’ (i.e., instrumentalist) types can be created which are useful for some archaeological purposes; the question is whether or not there can also be ‘natural’ (i.e., essentialist) types that have objective existence independent of any purpose of the typologist. The question in simplest terms is: can types be said to exist independently of purposes? Both the erstwhile functionalists of the mid-century era and the new archaeologists of the next generation attempted to answer this question in the affirmative. It is evident, however, that the conception of what constitutes ‘naturalness’ was quite different for the two groups. There were, moreover, critics of both approaches, who continued to insist that types cannot be wholly separated from the archaeologist’s cognition, which in turn is shaped by his or her purposes. It remains true in any case that nearly all of the artifact types that are in general use today were developed for avowed culture-historical purposes. The typological debate, so designated, has been conducted mainly among North American prehistorians, particularly as regards the use of computers in classification. Since the 1960s there has also been a somewhat different typological debate among European prehistorians, emphasizing methods rather than objectives. In the Old World, the influence of de Mortillet and Montelius remains strong, and it is still generally taken for granted that the proper purpose of artifact classifications is to aid in the development of culture classifications, and particularly chronologies. Debate therefore has been largely concerned with the best way of achieving that purpose.

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Adams and Adams (1991: 278–304) have undertaken a review and critique of the typological debate. They argue that much of it has been misplaced, partly because it has ignored the question of purpose and partly because it has failed to grasp the full complexity of type concepts. Types necessarily have material, cognitive, and representational dimensions: the actual objects, the archaeologist’s mental perception of the objects, and the words and pictures that are used to convey those understandings. The three dimensions are not wholly interdependent, in that any one of them can be changed without necessarily affecting the other two. The two authors have gone on to assert that just about everything that has been written about archaeological types is partly true and partly not true, because the types that are actually in regular use are partly natural and partly artificial, partly essentialist and partly instrumentalist, partly formal and partly functional. An infinity of types may be actually present in the material, but the archaeologist inevitably selects from among them those that are useful for some purpose, by choosing to emphasize some attributes and ignore others. The authors conclude that the two ultimate touchstones of artifact types are that they must be consistently recognizable, and they must be demonstrably useful for some purpose.

See also: Archaeology Laboratory, Overview; Culture, Concept and Definitions; Pottery Analysis: Stylistic.

Further Reading Adams WY and Adams EW (1991) Archaeological Typology and Practical Reality: A Dialectical Approach to Artifact Classification and Sorting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bordes F (1961) Typologie du Pale´olithique Ancien et Moyen. Bordeaux: Imprimeries Delmas. Dunnell R (1971) Systematics in Prehistory. New York: Free Press. Klejn LS (1982) Archaeological Typology. BAR International Series, vol. 152. Oxford: BAR. Lubbock J (1865) Pre-Historic Times, as Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages. London: Williams and Norgate. Montelius O (1903) Die Typologische Methode: Die a¨lterend Kulturperioden im Orient und in Europa. Stockholm: Slebstverlag. Pitt Rivers AHLF (1874) On the principles of classification adopted in the arrangement of his anthropological collection, now exhibited in the Bethnal Green Museum. Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 6: 293–308. Rouse ID (1960) The classification of artifacts in archaeology. American Antiquity 25(3): 313–323. Whallon R and Brown JA (eds.) (1982) Essays on Archaeological Typology. Evanston: Center for American Archaeology Press.

COGNITIVE ARCHAEOLOGY Colin Renfrew, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

speciation The evolutionary formation of new biological species, usually by the division of a single species into two or more genetically. symbol A representational token for a concept or quantity (artifacts that are allegorical to (but do not directly codify) a symbolic meaning).

Glossary brain That part of the central nervous system that is located within the cranium (skull). cognition The mental process of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment. iconography The art of representing or illustrating by means of pictures, images, or figures. interpretation A stage in archaeological research design at which the results of analyses are synthesized and attempts made to explain their meaning, allowing a reconstruction of the past. neuroscience The scientific disciplines concerned with the development, structure, function, chemistry, pharmacology, clinical assessments and pathology of the nervous system. religion A framework of beliefs relating to supernatural or superhuman beings or forces that transcend the everyday material world.

Introduction Cognitive archaeology – the study of past ways of thought as inferred from the material remains – has only recently been investigated in a sustained and systematic way. Until the explicit investigation of the basis for knowledge in archaeology – the epistemology – associated with the ‘new’ or processual archaeology of the 1960s and its aftermath, there were opposing views. Some archaeologists working upon literate culture with a rich iconography often regarded the approach to interpretation as relatively unproblematic (see Interpretive Art and Archaeology; Image and Symbol). On the other hand, prehistorians lacking

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any rich graphic imagery often regarded the task as prohibitively difficult: in the words of Professor Christopher Hawkes ‘‘To infer to the religious institutions and spiritual life . . . is the hardest inference of all.’’ The theoretical outlook of processual archaeology brought with it a new optimism (see Processual Archaeology). In 1968, Lewis Binford quoted with approval the words of W. H. Sears: ‘‘With the proper approach it should be possible to discover and document a great deal about social systems and the political and religious organizations for most prehistoric cultures. There must be limits, kinds of information we cannot reconstruct, but until we have tried we shall not know what these limits are.’’ But in practice during the first two decades of processual archaeology, it was the ecological and the social factors which were emphasized. There were few investigations into early symbolism, iconography or religion. Such initiatives were sometimes dismissed, for instance, by Binford, as mere ‘palaeopsychology’. This was an era when processual archaeology was still rather functionalist in nature. It was rather the interests of the ‘postprocessual’ or interpretive archaeologists which emphasized the symbolic, as in Ian Hodder’s Symbols in Action, published in 1982. Others, working in the processual tradition, were already considering the cognitive dimension: Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus, in their work on the evolution of urban society in early Oaxaca, Mexico, have consistently argued for what they term a ‘holistic approach’, where functional and symbolic aspects are integrated. The aspirations of the interpretive archaeologists sometimes exceeded the outcome, however. The criticism that some of their approaches lacked any coherent method was not definitively answered. Indeed the argument of some early ‘postprocessual’ archaeologists that general criteria could not be applied, and that one person’s view was as good as another’s, led to charges of relativism (see Postprocessual Archaeology). The allegation was made that in the interpretationist (or ‘hermeneutic’) mode of reasoning ‘anything goes’. In recent years the two approaches have converged somewhat, with attempts to develop a more systematic and explicit methodology toward the thought processes underlying human actions. Cognitive-processual archaeologists working in the tradition of processual archaeology have learnt from the explorations of interpretive archaeologists in such fields as gender archaeology, the archaeology of identity, and the use

of symbols. New developments in landscape archaeology, laying emphasis upon how the landscape is perceived and understood, have also favored convergent approaches.

The Speciation Phase Most archaeologists now agree that the species, Homo sapiens sapiens, emerged some 200 000 years ago from earlier hominid ancestors, almost certainly in Africa. The date of the out-of-Africa dispersal of the species is set around 60 000 years ago. These dates establish an inevitable division in the field of cognitive archaeology. After the dispersal phase, about 60 000 years ago, we speak about a human animal very much like ourselves. The genetic differences are quite small, so that a baby born then would be very like a baby born today. We talk about very comparable innate abilities and capacities. But before this time we consider the very emergence of humankind as a species, from the earlier apes. It is clear that there must have been very significant cognitive developments over the preceding millions of years following the appearance in Africa of the more remote ancestor Australopithecus. There are many intriguing questions in the cognitive archaeology of the speciation phase, that is to say of the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic, associated with Neanderthal humans, with Homo erectus and with their predecessors. One of the most interesting and most hotly debated is the question of the emergence of language. When did complex language, implying the ability to distinguish between past, present, and future, with reasonably sophisticated syntax, in fact emerge? Some earlier scholars sought to associate this with tool use, and emphasized the elegant symmetry in some of the flint implements termed ‘handaxes’. It was suggested that the use of language would be helpful in the transmission of the relevant skills between generations. But others, such as Merlin Donald, stressed the importance in these earlier hominids of mimesis, of skilled imitation, which would not necessarily be dependent upon linguistic capacity. Some archaeologists have sought to associate the emergence of new tool kits at the outset of the Upper Palaeolithic of Western Europe with the appearance there of Homo sapiens. Bone as well as stone tools are widely found from this time, and human burial, rarely seen earlier, is more common. Some scientists have spoken of a ‘creative explosion’ at this time, seeking to equate the new behaviors with the emergence of complex language, of self-consciousness, and indeed with the appearance of ‘cave art’. New research into the later Stone Age of Africa, at sites such as the Blombos Cave, has however shown that new behaviors, such as the production of beads and adornments

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and the incision of pattern upon lumps or red ochre, were developing there as early as 70 000 years ago. Context is clearly crucial for the cognitive archaeology of the speciation phase of human development. So the detailed study of living floors has been productive in the beginning of the study of social life, often around the hearth. The sequence in the production, the chaıˆne ope´ratoire, of stone tools has also been profitably studied. So we too have questions of procurement: the distance over which humans were willing and able to travel to collect the necessary raw materials. Some of these, such as obsidian or shell, were carried over considerable distances. Gradually such questions as these are being subjected to much more systematic study, and the cognitive archaeology of the palaeolithic period is now being constructed upon sound foundations.

After the Dispersal Trajectories of development, following the outof-Africa dispersal, are different in different parts of the world. Speciation is complete: this is now a ‘tectonic’ phase, where communities construct the social worlds in which they live. In many areas the establishment of settled life marks a turning point, with the development of many new forms of symbolic behavior which are represented in the archaeological record. Symbolic behavior, like the use of language itself, is essentially a social activity, and the field of cognitive archaeology can sometimes be seen as the study of symbolic interactions. Man, or humankind, was defined by Leslie White as a ‘symboling animal’. It is possible to think here in terms of a series of categories of symbolic human behavior. Symbols are used to cope with several aspects of existence, all of them finding a place in the archaeological record: 1. design, in the sense of coherently structured, purposive, behavior; 2. planning, involving time scheduling and sometimes the production of a schema prior to carrying out the planned work; 3. measurement, involving devices for measuring, and units of measure; 4. social relations, with the use of symbols to structure and regulate inter-personal behavior; 5. the supernatural, with the use of symbols to communicate with the other world, and to mediate between the human and the world beyond; and 6. representation, with the production and use of depiction or other iconic embodiments of reality. Each of these represents a different subfield of cognitive archaeology. Of these, the archaeology of religion has been the most intensively studied. Yet for

periods and places with a restricted iconography, the task can prove to be a difficult one.

Broadening the Mind Recently, however, archaeologists have become critical of the very notion of ‘symbol’, frequently conceived along the lines of the usual definition, where ‘X (the signifier) represents Y (the thing signified), in context C’. For, while that is a perfectly reasonable definition of ‘symbol’ in some ways, it can promote the old mind–body dualism associated with Cartesian thinking, with the material symbol seen as the materialization of an abstract, mental concept. But the notion of the mind as something apart, enclosed within the human brain, is now being called into question. As Lambros Malafouris has emphasized, following philosophers such as Andy Clark, the mind is embodied: it cannot work without the body. Indeed, many skills are exercised through the fingers as much as among the brain cells. Moreover, ‘mind’ is in large measure a social phenomenon. Knowledge is shared between individuals, and it makes sense to speak here of the extended mind or even the dispersed mind. We are now beginning to understand some of the relevant questions. Developments in neuroscience, including studies of the brain in action through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), hint that there is so much yet to learn. The vast differences in human culture that have emerged along the different trajectories of development over the past 60 000 years, all predicated upon much the same infant brain, show that the study of material engagement between humans and their world is only just beginning. That engagement is a knowledgeable one – in that sense it is ‘cognitive’. But it is also material: it leaves traces in the archaeological record. That is why cognitive archaeology has a great future. See also: Engendered Archaeology; Identity and Power; Image and Symbol; Interpretive Art and Archaeology; Interpretive Models, Development of; Landscape Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology.

Further Reading Clark A (1997) Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DeMarrais E, Gosden C, and Renfrew C (eds.) (2004) Rethinking Materiality the Engagement of Mind with the Material World. Cambridge: McDonald Institute. Donald M (1991) Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

COLONIAL PRAXIS 1029 Hodder I (1982) Symbols in Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Malafouris L (2004) The cognitive basis of material engagement: where brain, body and culture conflate. In: DeMarrais E, Gosden C, and Renfrew C (eds.) Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World, pp. 53–62. Cambridge: McDonald Institute. Marcus J and Flannery KV (1996) Zapotec Civilisation: How Urban Society Evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. London: Thames and Hudson. Mithen S (1996) The Prehistory of the Mind. London: Thames and Hudson. Renfrew C (1994) Towards a cognitive archaeology. In: Renfrew C and Zubro EBW (eds.) The Ancient Mind: Elements of Cognitive Archaeology, pp. 3–12. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Renfrew C (2001) Symbol before concept. In: Hodder I (ed.) Archaeological Theory Today, pp. 122–140. Cambridge: Polity Press. Renfrew C and Scarre C (eds.) (1998) Cognition and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Symbolic Storage. Cambridge: McDonald Institute. Renfrew C and Zubrow EBW (eds.) (1994) The Ancient Mind: Elements of Cognitive Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Renfrew C (2006) Becoming human: the archaeological challenge. Proceedings of the British Academy 139: 217–238. Searle JR (1995) The Construction of Social Reality. Harmondsworth: Penguin Press. Thomas J (1996) Time, Culture and Landscape. London: Routledge. Tilley C (1994) A Phenomenology of Landscape. Oxford: Berg.

COLONIAL PRAXIS Ross Jamieson, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary colonialism The extension of a nation’s sovereignty over territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled or displaced. gender archaeology A method of studying ancient societies by closely examining the roles played by men and women in the past as exhibited through the archaeological record. material culture The psychological role that all physical objects in the environment have to people in a particular culture and the range of manufactured objects (technocomplex) that are typical within a socioculture and form an essential part of cultural identity. patriarchy The cultural expectation that fathers have primary responsibility for the welfare of families (in ancient cultures, this included management of household slaves).

regain the purity of the time before colonization. It has been the goal of much anthropological and archaeological rumination over the last 40 years to disentangle us from this trap. Rather than seeking purity and essentialism in the study of culture(s), there has been a realization that our fear of the hybrid is founded more on the colonial origins of our disciplines than on any valid concept of unchanging cultural entities. What happens to people during a period of colonial rule? What happens to their cultures? One way of exploring this is through the actions of people involved in the colonial enterprise, whether as colonizer, as colonized, or somewhere in between. A key concept in this anthropological analysis is that in colonial situations, practices can be taken from the homeland or from local cultures, and from these collisions a uniquely colonial praxis develops.

Praxis: The History of a Concept Introduction The forging of anthropology and archaeology in the colonial crucible has left these disciplines with a certain stain. Anthropologists and archaeologists can be accused of being trapped in a dichotomy in looking at colonized peoples. In the first instance these peoples are seen to represent the tattered remnants of an idyllic precolonial time, when cultures and ethnicities were pure and unsullied by colonizing powers. There is then a corollary that once colonizing powers have released their hold, newly formed independent peoples remain in a form of postcolonial loss, rejecting the culture of the colonizers, yet never able to

Praxis (from Greek noun: action) as an analytical category has very deep roots in western philosophy. Aristotle saw three basic forms of human activity: theoria (the act of ‘seeking to understand’), poiesis (action to produce things), and praxis (action with an end in itself, e.g., politics or ethics). These distinctions were important to Georg Hegel’s early nineteenthcentury formulations of dialectical reasoning, and from there became a key influence on Karl Marx. Marx rejected Hegel’s effort to unify practical and theoretical knowledge. Instead, Marx emphasized the transformative nature of action, and the privileging of action over theory. The Marxist definition

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of praxis emphasizes the creative actions of human beings, once they are freed from the everyday labor needed for survival, and became a key concept for twentieth-century Marxist theoreticians such as Antonio Gramsci. The commitment of mid-twentiethcentury Marxist scholars to viewing praxis as a key element of revolutionary action is very different, however, from the average late twentieth-century anthropologist’s view of praxis as a term for something as politically neutral as ‘social action’ (see Marxist Archaeology). It was in the early 1980s that such concerns entered anthropological discourse. Anthropologists began to turn away from the dominant schools of cultural ecology, structural Marxism, and symbolic anthropology. Instead, and perhaps in tandem with the postcolonial movement in literary fields, anthropologists began to question many of their own analytical assumptions. This has led to strong interest in ideas of how individuals in a society use strategy to manipulate, and live within social boundaries. These types of concerns can variously be seen as related to practice and agency, areas where the work of sociologists like Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens, as well as the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, have provided very useful models. Practice theorists envision human actors, as individuals, playing a significant role in their own lives. This is not to deny the role of social systems, which affect, and even oppress individual actions. Practice theorists are interested in this interplay between systems and individuals. There is an assumption on the part of such theorists that people neither blindly follow rules and norms, nor do they have complete freedom to choose their actions. Instead, rules and norms are created and reinforced through peoples’ actions in an endless re-evaluation. This always involves power relations between different groups in society.

Colonialism Colonialism, broadly defined, is the presence of foreigners in a region at some distance from their place of origin, involved in asymmetrical relationships of domination and exploitation of local populations. In any situation where one society conquers another, there is a comprehensive change in relations between peoples. The conquerors impose a set of norms that impact almost all areas of the conquered society’s culture, whether it is in economic relations, religion, gender roles, administration, or class relations. Yet this imposition is never complete. Attempts to stamp out precolonial practices and replace them with foreign ideas have a strong tendency to engender new, and often unintended practices. Individuals in the

system are a key component in creating what can be termed a ‘colonial praxis’.

Pierre Bourdieu One of the founding theorists of the practice movement had his ideas formed in an anticolonial struggle. Pierre Bourdieu was the son of a rural French postmaster. Bourdieu’s academic ability allowed him to enter the elite Ecole Normal Superior in Paris in the 1950s, where he was a fellow student of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. He eventually became Chair of Sociology at the Colle`ge de France, one of the most prestigious academic appointments in a country fascinated by intellectuals. Bourdieu’s early discomfort with the ‘scholasticism’ of his intellectual equals in Paris led him to a form of personal rebellion. Bourdieu avoided doing his army service as part of the officer corps, as befit his education, and instead enlisted in the regular army. He was assigned to clerical work with the French Army in Algiers at a time when the independence movement in Algeria was a growing force. His experiences in Algeria led him toward ethnology. He was passionate about Algeria, a feeling mixed with guilt about the suffering of its people under French colonial rule. When he finished his military service he took up an academic post at the University of Algiers. From that point forward he began ethnographic fieldwork with the Kabyle, Berber peoples of coastal Algeria. The initial years of his Kabyle fieldwork took place in the midst of the guerilla war between the French army and the independence forces of the ALN (National Liberation Army). Many Kabyle were in French relocation camps at the time that Bourdieu studied them. His contradictory writings on the Kabyle reflected their colonial displacement from their villages, which revealed to Bourdieu the fundamental structures of Kabyle society. His ethnography was, thus, a direct product of colonialism, and at times emphasized an idealized and traditional Kabyle culture, while at other times foregrounding the role of French colonial rule in their lives. He returned to academic life in France, and settled on the role of ‘rural sociologist’ as giving him the greatest comfort. Intellectual life in postwar Paris was dominated by Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist philosophy. Prominent intellectuals like Sartre and Frantz Fanon were fascinated by The Algerian Question, and particularly by the role of rural peasants as a revolutionary vanguard in independence movements. Bourdieu, who had spent considerable time in Algeria, was hurt by this discussion. Far from seeing the Kabyle as a revolutionary vanguard, he emphasized the destruction of their way of life by the

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military situation. For Bourdieu human beings were indeed constrained by a social order, and could not simply choose the form of their own existence as the existentialists claimed. In Paris in the early 1960s Claude Le´vi-Strauss had brought anthropology great prestige in intellectual circles. Bourdieu took up structuralism, but his sociological training led him toward looking at the historical context of the ethnographic present, and at issues of inequality. He was a lifelong colleague, and admirer, of Le´vi-Strauss, but Bourdieu felt that Le´vi-Strauss had removed the ‘subject’, or the ‘agent’, from anthropological enquiry. For Bourdieu the structuralists overemphasized rules and social stasis, ignoring strategic practices by individuals and groups, which he saw as the key to understanding social life. As a result he rejected both structuralism’s emphasis on formal patterns, and existentialism’s emphasis on autonomous action. Instead he used his concept of habitus to describe both the old Kabyle system, based on honor, kinship, and community solidarity, and the new colonial system of individualism, markets, and profit. For Bourdieu, French colonialism had created a set of destabilizing, jumbled expectations for the Kabyle, which allowed colonial rule to flourish. Bourdieu used the term doxa to refer to the unquestioned reality that is perceived by an individual. It is ‘‘the way things are’’. The social scientist understands that doxa is socially constituted, and not a representation of objective reality, but for social actors doxa remains as the unquestioned background to their actions. He coined the term habitus to refer to the ‘habitual dispositions’ of people. These give shape to social conventions. The habitus is built over a lifetime of experiences, learned unconsciously from the outcome of an individual’s previous actions in a particular field. It does not preclude, but in fact enables, improvization based on past experience. Peoples’ daily routines encourage complicity with current social norms, while at the same time new identities can be built through changes to daily practices. For the ethnographer, it is important to recognize that conscious answers to questions, and communication with informants, tends to emphasize explicit cognitive rules that informants can vocalize. The practical activities of informants are another field entirely, often outside the realm of explicit rules, but holding important information on the habitus of an individual, and on the implicit doxa of a society. Bourdieu then turns toward daily practice, and sees it as strategic. People are able to improvise, and change their practices, and in doing so they reproduce society. Radical social and economic change tends to expose the arbitrariness of a society’s doxa, allowing active resistance to what had, previously, been

unquestioned reality. Colonial situations, such as that of the Kabyle, produce particular challenges. In situations of colonization, it is very common that people become aware of challenges to their doxa, an awareness which destroys the idea of an unquestioned reality, and imposes new forms of reality. A lifetime of habitus is destroyed when people lose their way of life, and habitus is changed forever through colonial practices. Archaeologists in the English-speaking world who have taken up Bourdieu’s ideas have generally done so through reading his Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977), which leans toward the more idealized, or essentialist, side of his ethnography. Many of the works in which Bourdieu more directly addressed the history of French colonial interaction with Kabyle society have not been translated into English, and have had little exposure in archaeological circles.

The Archaeology of Colonialism In the Americas the purview of historical archaeology is the material record dating after the AD 1492 beginnings of the colonial period, and continuing to the present, through the period of independence of the New World colonies. From its beginnings in the first half of the twentieth-century historical archaeologists in North America have made frequent claims that they speak for the ‘wretched of the earth;’ the colonized rather than the colonizers. These claims are easily justified. Whether they claim explicitly Marxist theoretical ties or not, historical archaeologists can often agree that their study of material culture gives voice to a silent majority of people who are not wellrepresented in the written historical record, and who can be understood through the material remains they have left us in the ground (see Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline). This led historical archaeologists into the anthropological literature on ethnicity and acculturation, and more recently into more explicitly Marxist ideas such as James Scott’s work on subtle forms of resistance. The issue of individual agency has come to the forefront in such discussions. The foregrounding of the concept of human agency in archaeology in the last 10 years is partly a reaction to the New Archaeology of the 1960s, and its emphasis on systems. Archaeologists working from an agency approach have now taken this in the opposite direction, emphasizing the role of individual choice in the archaeological record. Several archaeological examples can be used to illustrate recent attempts to explore the relationship of people as agents to wider social structures through the daily activities of people in colonial situations.

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Roman Sardinia Rome seized the Mediterranean Island of Sardinia from the Carthaginians in 238 BC, 3 years after the end of the First Punic War. It took 11 years for the Roman garrisons to gain formal control over the main parts of the island, and uprisings of local people in the interior mountains continued for another 250 years. Most famously, wealthy landowners from the island sided with Carthage during the Second Punic War in 215 BC. Roman historians emphasized the strategic role of Sardinia as a naval base and supplier of grain, but the local population is never really addressed in historic sources. Peter Van Dommelen’s archaeological work on the west central part of the island has revealed interesting archaeological evidence of the daily practices of the Sardinians during the Roman period. It has long been noted by archaeologists that there are many Carthaginian, or Punic, elements to the material remains of the early Roman period on the island. This has been variously framed as the survival of a debased Punic culture, or evidence of a failed Romanization of the local culture. Van Dommelen, however, demonstrates the relevance of an approach to colonial practice in an archaeological survey of rural farmsteads. The vast majority of these farms used ceramics produced locally, in shapes that reflected the Punic heritage of the inhabitants. Some also demonstrate neo-Punic forms that show ongoing contact with the Carthaginians of the North African coast. One exception is a larger farm, where local ceramics are mixed with Roman imported wares. In local burial patterns Punic grave styles and grave goods continue until 100 BC, when a shift occurs to Roman-style graves and imported Roman grave goods. This coincides with a shift in rural utilitarian ceramics toward more Roman styles. Van Dommelen is convincing in his belief that this is not merely the persistence of pre-Roman Punic cultural practices. The Romans demanded taxes and rents, but cultural assimilation does not seem to have been a priority. It would seem, rather, that the landowners of the region remained in contact with the Carthaginians, and demonstrated through their daily practices their ongoing sense of being Punic, despite being part of the Roman system. This was a conservative strategy of maintaining ‘the old ways’, and yet at the same time contributed to a silent resistance to Roman rule through daily activities on these farms.

Aztec Women We understand much about Aztec history and life in the Valley of Mexico from the surviving native

histories, largely oral narratives written down in the Spanish colonial period, but also illustrated annals and cartographic histories with considerable native input. These written sources, however, are exclusively male in authorship, and usually focus on the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). Archaeological excavations in Mexico City have also revealed the remains of the Aztec Great Temple, with many sculptural representations of gendered gods. Elizabeth Brumfiel has studied the Aztec interpretation of gender roles, but instead of through such documents and core architecture, Brumfiel has studied rural households in the colonized hinterland, through archaeological excavation. Throughout Central Mexico prior to Spanish contact weaving, spinning, and textile production were seen as gendered female tasks. This was reinforced through girls being given spindles by the age of four to begin learning to spin. Cloth was used throughout Central Mexico for basic protection against the elements, and as an indicator of status, gender, class, and ethnicity. Within the Aztec imperial system, cloth was demanded as tribute by administrators of subordinate groups. Brumfiel has examined the presence of small spindle whorls, used to spin cotton, in rural households, as an indicator of female production of cotton cloth. She demonstrates that in areas near the major cities the production of cotton cloth did not increase under Aztec control, presumably because food production for sale in urban markets allowed households to acquire the cloth they needed to give in tribute. In more peripheral areas, however, spindle whorls do increase in number in the archaeological record, demonstrating the increase in cotton tribute cloth by women in these households. The spindle whorls, however, are less decorated than they were in previous eras, perhaps thus showing us a decreasing pride, or identification, of women with the activity of spinning. This is combined with a related change in household ceramics. Households near urban areas began to rely more heavily on griddles to make dry, portable foods, probably to till distant fields and participate in urban markets. In more peripheral areas, however, an emphasis on jars to produce stews remained constant, even after Aztec conquest, suggesting a continuing reliance on eating meals at home. The changes that Brumfiel notes in households colonized by the Aztec can be placed in the terms of Bourdieu’s practice theory. The doxa of gender roles in the region remained unquestioned, in assigning the task of spinning to women. Yet Aztec colonization did appear to change the habitus of these women, with tribute production of cloth somehow devaluing the previous focus on production for local consumption, and thus perhaps the daily practice of rural

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non-elite women, whose former pride in household cloth production was compromised by the demands of a state eager to extract tribute from this preexisting domestic labor arrangement.

Dutch Cape Gable Houses In the eighteenth century Dutch colonists in the Cape of Good Hope built houses with a particular style of gabled architecture, known as Cape Gable. Martin Hall has shown that these were associated with wealthy landowners, who focused on large wine and wheat-growing operations using the labor of enslaved Africans. Smaller landowners, and those who did not own slaves, did not build houses with ornate gables. The documented owners of these gabled houses were predominantly male, but the Roman Dutch legal system of partible inheritance meant that females inherited equal portions of these agricultural properties. Marriage between cousins, transfer of title from father to son-in-law, and other methods were used to keep the estates within a set of elite families concerned about maintaining economic and racial boundaries. His research showed that although a wide number of sales of these houses took place throughout the eighteenth century, they were in fact held by seven or eight leading family networks. The networks were often tied to female inheritance patterns, and descent through female lines. Hall theorizes that the gable architecture, with its outmoded baroque decoration of riotous growth and foliage, symbolized female fertility, the female role in the domestic space, and their role in maintaining family lines. Hall has looked toward Pierre Bourdieu’s formulation of symbolic capital to characterize the use of Cape Gable architecture by this elite. Although the inheritance patterns and social systems of this group were never overtly stated, the houses were a euphemism for a set of class and gender relations which formed a habitus shared by all elite slave-owning families. This is important in underscoring that those on every rung of the social and economic ladder in a colonial situation build new identities through the process of daily practices in the colony, including their definitions of appropriate domestic architecture.

Native Alaskans at Fort Ross When Tsarist Russia launched the Second Kamchatka Expedition in 1741, the result was an increased understanding of the maritime geography of Siberia and Alaska, and an understanding of the wealth of sea otter and fur seal pelts that could be available for exploitation in the North Pacific. The resulting ‘fur boom’ led, in 1799, to the creation of the

Russian-American Company, a mercantile corporation which controlled this trade until the purchase of Alaska by the United States in 1867. Sea otter pelts were sold to the Chinese, in exchange for a wide variety of goods, and the great wealth to be made led to over-exploitation of the resource, and the need to reach further and further south along the Pacific Coast of North America. In 1812 the Company established Fort Ross in what is now Northern California, and maintained it as a fur trade post until it was sold to an Anglo-Californian in 1841. Kent Lightfoot has undertaken long-term research at this location, focusing on the Native laborers who lived and worked at the fort. Fort Ross was a complex mix of cultural influences. Those in charge of the operation, and those representing the Russian Orthodox Church, came from Russia. The expert sea mammal hunters were largely Alutiiq men, brought by the Company from Kodiak Island in Alaska. Many of the laborers, particularly in providing food to the population, were local Native Californians, including Kashaya Pomo, Coast Miwok, and Southern Pomo. These, along with a variety of creole, or mixed race people, interacted on a daily basis in the operation of the enterprise, but lived in spatially segregated areas around the facility. Lightfoot became fascinated by the Native Alaskan Neighborhood, where census data show that Alutiiq Alaskan men were living with Kashaya Pomo women. This combination of a gendered and ethnic dichotomy provides an interesting case study. A number of the houses were semi-subterranean, a form familiar to both Alutiiq and Kashaya. The Alutiiq, however, disposed of trash in the bottom of the central room of their houses, covering the floor with grass, and slowly accumulating trash under their feet. The Kashaya, on the other hand, carefully swept clean all interior space, and cleaned exteriors around their houses, disposing of trash in middens well away from the houses. This is the pattern found in the Neighborhood, with clean floors indicating that Kashaya women maintained Kashaya ideals of cleanliness and order. In their cooking practices the foods were baked in tiers of rocks from a hot fire, in underground ovens, a method typical of the Kashaya and unknown to the Alutiiq. The foods included many of the terrestrial animals commonly eaten by the Kashaya, as well as the sea mammals, sea urchins, and sea birds common in the Alutiiq diet, including seal flippers, an Alutiiq delicacy. Added to this was beef and mutton introduced by the Russians. The artifact assemblage shows no indication of Alutiiq domestic objects, but heavy representation of debris from Alutiiq bone sea mammal hunting tools, and repair of birdskin parkas and skin boats that were Alutiiq technology. Chipped and

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groundstone lithics were all from local sources, reflecting traditional Kashaya lithic use. Fragments of European ceramic and glass tablewares appear to have been scavenged from broken vessels, in order to reuse them as bead blanks and chipped-glass tools. The spatial arrangement of the houses, in a long line overlooking the bay, is typically Alutiiq, yet its location on a terrace near the fort, and not directly on the waterfront, probably reflects overall control by the Russian administration of the spatial layout of the settlement. Lightfoot’s overall impression of the village is one in which the Kashaya women and Alutiiq men have accommodated to each other’s needs in various ways, with little change toward European ways of life. The Kashaya women depended heavily on their kinship ties to inland Kashaya villages, whereas the Russian colonists provided little to these families. The Native Alaskan Village at Fort Ross is thus an excellent example of how colonial situations bring together unique, and varying, cultural interactions, and how daily practices can create entirely new identities.

Conclusions Colonial praxis can be summarized as a concept which straddles structural considerations of societies, and the ability of individuals and groups to formulate and carry out new strategies within the existing structure. This is in some sense a concept with a Marxist pedigree, and yet it has been adopted much more broadly by archaeologists, whether they are explicitly Marxist in their research orientation or not. It is important to emphasize that although historical archaeologists have strongly emphasized the aspect of resistance by colonized peoples, a focus on colonial praxis tends instead to emphasize the inextricably intertwined nature of colonizers and colonized, and the unique historical trajectory that each person, and

each group, contributes in a colonial situation. Pierre Bourdieu’s research career, in studying the Algerian colonial system through ethnography of the Kabyle, and through the academic lens of his personal relationships to both Claude Le´vi-Strauss and Jean-Paul Sartre, can be seen as a key moment in the development of the concept. See also: Agency; Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline; Marxist Archaeology; Philosophy of Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology.

Further Reading Blackburn S (1994) The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brumfiel EM (2000) Asking about Aztec Gender: The historical and archaeological evidence. In: Klein CF (ed.) Gender in Pre-Hispanic America, pp. 57–85. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks. Bourdieu P (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu P (2004) Esquisse pour une auto-analyse. Paris: Raisons d’agir. Gosden C (2004) Archaeology and Colonialism: Cultural Contact from 5000 BC to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall M (1995) The architecture of patriarchy: Houses, women and slaves in the eighteenth-century South African countryside. Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers 79: 61–73. Lightfoot KG, Martinez A, and Schiff AM (1998) Daily practice and material culture in pluralistic social settings: An archaeological study of culture change and persistence from Fort Ross, California. American Antiquity 63: 199–222. Lobkowicz N (1967) Theory and Practice: History of a Concept from Aristotle to Marx. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Silliman SW (2001) Agency, practical politics and the archaeology of culture contact. Journal of Social Archaeology 1: 184–204. Van Dommelen P (1998) Punic persistence: Colonialism and cultural identities in Roman Sardinia. In: Laurence R and Berry J (eds.) Cultural Identity in the Roman Empire, pp. 25–48. London: Routledge.

COMPUTER SIMULATION MODELING Mark Lake, University College London, London, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary algorithmic model A model specified as a sequence of procedures that follow one another, where the exact sequence depends on the outcome of each procedure. Algorithmic models

are often described using flowcharts or language constructs such as ‘if X then do Y else do Z’, where X is some condition and Y and Z are procedures. agent-based model A computer simulation model which implements a set of autonomous agents situated in an artificial environment. Each agent pursues its own goal(s), typically adjusting its behavior according to its current state and the environment in which it finds itself. In archaeological applications agents usually represent individuals or households, but they can theoretically represent any

COMPUTER SIMULATION MODELING 1035 relevant unit ranging from individual atoms or molecules to entire nation states. artificial intelligence (AI) The field concerned with the construction of machines (i.e., artificial devices) that can reason and solve problems. Proponents of ‘strong’ AI seek to reproduce human intelligence, while those operating under the banner of ‘weak’ AI do not believe that this is possible and/or are content to focus on more narrowly defined problem domains. artificial life (AL) The field that studies the systems responsible for the maintenance and evolution of life by attempting to replicate them, usually, but not exclusively, in a computer simulation. Proponents of ‘strong’ AL hold that life is substrate neutral, from which it follows that the life in an AL simulation could potentially be as real as biological life, while proponents of the ‘weak’ position hold that true life is confined to ‘wet’ chemistry. cellular automata In practice, a computer simulation which iteratively (and synchronously) updates the state of each of a set of identical cells arranged on a regular grid. Each cell may be in one of a finite number of states and has an update-rule which specifies how it should change its state depending on the states of other cells in its neighborhood. cognitive architecture In the context of agent-based modeling, a formal representation of the process by which an agent reasons. In practice this often amounts to a representation of how the agent decides what to do in order to achieve its goal(s). The best-known example is based on Michael Bratman’s ‘belief–desire–intention’ theory of human practical reasoning. dynamical systems model A model specified in terms of one or more mathematical equations which deterministically predict how one or more quantities (state variables) change through time, given their initial values. Many such models are capable of producing very different behaviors, ranging from monotonic progression to an equilibrium value (e.g., smooth growth to a stable population size) to chaotic oscillations (e.g., a population size that undergoes a never exactly repeated sequence of growth and decline). expert system A reasoning system in which a computer program (the inference engine) attempts to solve a problem by applying rules stored in a domain specific knowledge base to data also stored in that knowledge base. object-oriented programming language A computer programming language, such as Cþþ or Java, that allows data and operations to be kept together in objects. This approach has many advantages from a software engineering perspective, but the principal interest here is that objectoriented programming lends itself particularly well to the implementation of agent-based models, since agents are readily created as objects. sensitivity analysis The process of re-running a computer simulation model with many different combinations of parameter values in order to investigate: (1) the range of results that are possible and (2) which parameters have a significant effect on the results. stochastic A stochastic model incorporates one or more random processes. A stochastic computer simulation model should be run many times, each with a different seed for the random number generator, in order to determine the extent to which the results vary by chance alone. This procedure should be followed for each combination of parameter values studied. toolkit A collection of computer program codes, typically organized as libraries, that provides much of the functionality required to implement a particular type of computer program. For example, the Repast simulation toolkit provides most of the generic features necessary for an agent-based model, thus

allowing the programmer to concentrate on implementing features specific to the problem at hand. validation The process of ensuring that a computer simulation model reflects the salient aspects of the real-world phenomenon that is being studied. Ideally this is achieved by demonstrating that the model can reproduce observed outcomes from known initial conditions, but this is often difficult or impossible in archaeological applications of simulation. Consequently, archaeological models are often validated using sensitivity analysis to demonstrate that model outcomes are theoretically reasonable for a wide range of parameter values. It is vital that any archaeological data that one wishes to explain using the model is not also used for validation. verification The process of ensuring that the computer simulation model correctly implements the conceptual model, in other words, that there are no errors in the program code.

Introduction Computer simulation involves the use of a computer to study the behavior of a model over time. Models are used to link theoretical ideas with observations, usually by invoking the operation of one or more processes. For example, archaeologists recently built a spatially explicit ‘agent-based model’ to study a quantitative model of the relationship between annual climatic conditions, maize yield, and population growth among the Puebloans of Long House Valley, Arizona. Comparison of the simulated population growth with the estimated actual population growth revealed interesting deficiencies in the first version of the model; a revised version mimics the estimated population growth very well (Figures 1 and 2).

Purpose Computer simulation has been used in three main ways: tactically, for hypothesis building, and heuristically. Tactical models

Tactical uses of simulation are intended to develop archaeological method and are not normally simulations of any specific past process. A recent example used simulation to examine the efficacy of cladistic (tree-building) methods for discriminating between reticulated and nonreticulated patterns of evolution. The researchers simulated the spread of cultural traits through populations of individuals engaged in different types of cultural transmission in order to create test data sets for the cladistic methods they were examining. Hypothesis testing models

Simulation has been used to test hypotheses about what actually happened in the past. This often

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Long House Valley Unfarmable

Settlements of 5 or fewer households

High water table

Settlements of 6−20 households

Low water table

Settlements of 21 or more households

Land under cultivation in simulation AD 1170 Real

Simulated

AD 1270

Figure 1 Comparison of real and simulated settlement distribution from an agent-based computer simulation of Puebloan settlement in Long House Valley, Arizona. Adapted from Kohler TA, Gummerman GJ, and Reynolds RG (2005) Simulating ancient societies. Scientific American 293: 79.

proceeds by comparing output from the model with observed patterns in the archaeological evidence. An example from the late 1980s simulated the creation of faunal assemblages by artificial hunter-gatherers given specific hunting strategies grounded in optimal foraging theory. By comparing the simulated assemblages with real archaeological assemblages it was possible to draw some conclusions about variability

in Mesolithic hunter-gatherer strategies in different areas of northern Europe. Heuristic models

Heuristic uses of simulation are intended to study the operation of some process, usually for the purpose of theory-building. Typically the purpose is not to test

COMPUTER SIMULATION MODELING 1037 Diversification of Purpose (Mid- to Late 1970s)

Number of households

240 Real Simulated 160

80

0 800

900

1000

1100

1200

1300

Year [AD] Figure 2 Comparison of real and simulated population sizes from an agent-based computer simulation of Puebloan settlement in Long House Valley, Arizona. Adapted from Kohler TA, Gummerman GJ, and Reynolds RG (2005) Simulating ancient societies. Scientific American 293: 79.

what actually ‘did’ happen in the past, but rather to establish plausibility – what ‘could’ (or could not) have happened. For example, a simulation model linking the demand and production of prestige goods has been built to examine the proposition that elites in European Bronze Age society could control the value of goods by removing excess items from circulation (see Social Inequality, Development of). The simulation demonstrated that nonlinearities resulting from the time lag between production and consumption would have made it very difficult, if not impossible, for elites to maintain the proposed level of control (Figure 3).

History and Types of Model The history of computer simulation in archaeology can be divided into four main periods, in which different types of model have been constructed, sometimes for different purposes. The Pioneer Phase (Late 1960s to Early 1970s)

Early simulation models more or less explicitly treated culture as an adaptive system and their subject matter ranged from Palaeolithic social systems through huntergatherer subsistence strategies to the colonization of Polynesia. These models combined the increasing availability of general-purpose computer programming languages with the systemic perspective favored by the New Archaeology to construct ‘algorithmic’ or mathematical models of processes involving the flow of information, energy, or materials (e.g., subsistence items) through whole societies, possibly in response to environmental change and often incorporating simple feedback representing, for example, the effect of population growth (see Processual Archaeology).

During this period, most North American studies continued to take a systems approach to social organization and culture change, usually in the context of settlement pattern. Like the pioneer simulations, these were conducted with the aim of theory-building or testing specific hypotheses. Elsewhere – notably in Britain – archaeologists deployed more narrowly focused simulation models for tactical purposes, for example, to assess the reliability of inferring trade mechanisms from patterns of artifact dispersal. Pessimism and Inactivity (1980s)

This period of relative inactivity had at least two causes. One was continuing concern about a lack of input data, which undermined confidence, particularly in the use of simulation for hypothesis testing. The other cause was a growing theoretical dislike of systemic approaches to cultural change, which effectively rendered simulation (as it was then practiced) less useful for theory-building. Ironically, tactical simulations that demonstrated the very real problem of equifinality in attempting to identify quantitative ‘signatures’ of past behavior themselves contributed to the change in theoretical direction – the postprocessual interest in the role of individuals and the meanings of things – that appeared to curtail the utility of simulation. Renewed Optimism (Late 1980s to Present Day)

In the very late 1980s the use of simulation in archeology entered its current period of renewed optimism. This can be attributed to two main factors. The most important is the availability of both conceptual and methodological tools from the new science of complexity, which has, to some extent, permitted a realignment of quantitative methods with the changing theoretical climate in archeology. In particular, the development of the agent perspective in ‘artificial intelligence’ and especially ‘artificial life’ has lead to the development of a series of ‘agent-based models’ in which population-level phenomena (things which might be observable archaeologically, such as settlement patterns or artifact distributions) arise from the interaction and/or decision-making of individual actors. In similar vein, ‘cellular automata’ provide the ideal tool for exploring how adherence to simple local rules can produce often quite complex larger-scale spatial phenomena. On a slightly different tack, the mathematics of ‘dynamical systems’ has lead to the development of a new generation of systemic models which, despite being deterministic, can produce unexpected results and even structural changes in long-term behavior depending on initial conditions and parameter values (Figures 4 and 5). The second most important

1038 COMPUTER SIMULATION MODELING 1 Access

2 Accumulation

1 2

3.02 9.98

1 2

2.96 9.38

1 2

2.90 8.78

1 2

2.84 8.18

1 2

2.78 7.58 0.0

2 2 1

2

2 1

12

1 1 2 2

1 1

7.50

(a)

15.00 Time

22.50

30.0

Accumulation vs Access 9.98

Accumulation

9.38

8.78

8.18

7.58 2.78

2.84

(b)

2.90

2.96

3.02

Access

Figure 3 Output from a dynamical systems model of Bronze Age exchange, showing complex periodicities in the relationship between the accumulated and circulating wealth. Reproduced from Fig. 12.12 in McGlade J (1997) The limits of social control: coherence and chaos in a prestige-goods economy. In: van der Leeuw SE & McGlade J (eds.) Time, Process and Structured Transformation in Archaeology, pp. 298–330. London: Routledge.

reason for the renewed optimism about the utility of simulation is probably the increasing availability of high-resolution input data, particularly that relating to past climate change.

Procedure and Implementation Simulation typically involves eight steps, which operate in feedback as shown in Figure 6: 1. It begins with a set of real-world observations (e.g., a settlement distribution) and a body of theory. 2. A specific problem is defined (e.g., to what extent was the mode of tenure a principal determinant of that pattern?). 3. The next step is the construction of a conceptual model of the process thought to have been at work. Almost all archaeological interpretation proceeds through the construction of conceptual models, but very often they are not explicitly stated. If simulation is envisaged the conceptual model must be made

explicit. It might initially be specified in natural language or possibly using flowcharts or other graphical means of depiction, but ultimately, in order to study a model with a computer, it must be expressed mathematically, logically, or algorithmically. It may be that future developments in artificial intelligence will permit specification in natural language, but that is not yet possible. 4. The conceptual model must be implemented as a computer model. It may be possible to implement a relatively simple model in a spreadsheet. More complex models expressed as systems of equations can be implemented within general-purpose mathematical modeling applications, such as MATLAB or Mathematica, or alternatively using a specialist mathematical simulation application such as STELLA. Cellular automata can also be implemented in MATLAB and Mathematica, but they are just as likely to be implemented as new applications written using an appropriate computer programming language. Agent-based models are almost always implemented as new

COMPUTER SIMULATION MODELING 1039

Figure 4 The trail of an individual forager in an agent-based simulation designed to explore the effect of increased memory on foraging strategies. Bar height indicates magnitude of resource extraction; darker colors indicate more recent extraction events. Reproduced from Costopoulos A (2001) Evaluating the impact of increasing memory on agent behaviour: Adaptive patterns in an agent-based simulation of subsistence. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 4(4)7.

Figure 5 Output from a cellular automaton showing the effect of a local ‘majority rule’ in which cells adopt the same strategy as the majority of their neighbors.

applications written in an ‘object-oriented programming language’. Exactly how much new program code is required will depend on the complexity of the model and, in particular, whether the entire model is written from scratch or alternatively builds on simulation modeling ‘toolkits’ such as those provided by SWARM, Repast, or NetLogo. Either way, few archaeologists have the requisite programming skills and most will need expert assistance. 5. The process of ‘verification’ ensures that the computer model is a faithful implementation of the conceptual model, that is, that there are no programming errors. 6. The next step is to establish the validity of the conceptual model. The validity of most simulation

models will be judged on whether the modeled process is realistic, not on the realism of the output alone, since several models might produce output matching the archaeological evidence. Consequently, ‘validation’ of archaeological simulations can be difficult; one option is to perform a ‘sensitivity analysis’ to investigate whether the model produces theoretically reasonable output for a wide range of input values (e.g., very low to very high rainfall). 7. The final, but by no means least important, step is to run a series of experiments with the simulation model in order to learn more about the problem at hand. The exact experimental strategy will depend on the purpose of the simulation. Hypothesis-testing may require that either the input or the process is

1040 COMPUTER SIMULATION MODELING

Real world

Theory and observations

Independent theory/data

Problem definition

Conceptual model

Computer model

Verification

Validation

Experimentation

decreasing price of computing power (see Paleoanthropology, Computer-Assisted). Recent moves to couple spatially explicit agent-based models and cellular automata with ‘geographical information systems’ look especially promising for archaeological purposes and are generating considerable excitement. In addition, it is only a matter of time before archaeological agentbased models incorporate explicit ‘cognitive architectures’ such as those implemented in recently developed toolkits like Jason and JessAgent. Given the range of technologies now available (from simple spreadsheets through to geographically situated agents who reason using an ‘expert system’) it is likely that simulation will continue to be used tactically, for hypothesis building and heuristically. It is equally likely that there will continue to be healthy debate about the relative merits of simplification versus realism in archaeological simulation. See also: Paleoanthropology, Computer-Assisted; Processual Archaeology; Social Inequality, Development of.

Output Figure 6 The process of computer simulation.

varied until the output matches an observed state. Heuristic use for theory-building is generally less concerned with obtaining a match with an observed state and more with understanding the variability in the model output. Either way, it is important to make multiple runs of a simulation that includes ‘stochastic’ elements in order to explore the variability produced by chance events.

Outlook The archaeological application of computer simulation is undoubtedly undergoing something of a reconnaissance, fueled in large part by the development of new technologies which facilitate the use of simulation to address current theoretical concerns, but also by the increasing use of simulation in related disciplines such as sociology and, of course, the ever

Further Reading Costopoulos A (2001) Evaluating the impact of increasing memory on agent behaviour: Adaptive patterns in an agent-based simulation of subsistence. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 4: 4. Gilbert N and Troitzsch KG (1999) Simulation for the Social Scientist. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Gimblett HR (ed.) (2002) Integrating Geographic Information Systems and Agent-Based Modeling Techniques for Simulating Social and Ecological Processes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kohler TA and Gumerman GJ (eds.) (2000) Dynamics in Human and Primate Societies: Agent Based Modeling of Social and Spatial Processes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kohler TA, Gummerman GJ, and Reynolds RG (2005) Simulating ancient societies. Scientific American 293: 76–84. Lake MW (2001) Numerical modelling in archaeology. In: Brothwell DR and Pollard AM (eds.) Handbook of Archaeological Sciences, pp. 723–732. Chichester: John Wiley. Mithen S and Reed M (2002) Stepping out: A computer simulation of hominid dispersal from Africa. Journal of Human Evolution 43: 433–462. van der Leeuw SE and McGlade J (eds.) (1997) Time, Process and Structured Transformation in Archaeology. London: Routledge.

CONSERVATION AND STABILIZATION OF MATERIALS 1041

CONSERVATION AND STABILIZATION OF MATERIALS Nancy Odegaard, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary acid-free paper Paper-based products that have been made neutral or basic pH (7 or greater) during production that are used in archival and museum settings to protect cultural property that is otherwise sensitive to acids. accretion An unintended deposit or mass on an object surface that has accumulated during burial from sources such as insoluble salts, corrosion products, or decomposition build-up. agents of deterioration The environmentally related causes of damage to cultural property including light, temperature, relative humidity, pollutants, and pests. block lift An excavation technique by which fragile or unstable archaeological finds are removed within their soil matrix in order to provide greater structural support and surface protection. conservation The careful preservation and protection of cultural property through research and education while retaining its integrity including historical significance, context, and esthetic or visual aspects. consolidant A low concentration of adhesive polymer in liquid that is sometimes applied to materials that have lost their own cohesive qualities. inert packaging materials Supportive supplies that are lacking in active properties that would contribute to the deterioration of cultural property during storage, display, and transport. silica gel Amorphous silica, resembling coarse white sand, which is used as a desiccant to dry and dehumidify storage environments for finds. It can be reactivated by heat.

Just as archaeology is much more than the study of objects dug up from the ground, conservation is much more than the cleaning and mending of objects. Archaeological interest in conservation has been longstanding, yet the role conservation plays to help archaeologists unearth new clues about artifacts is relatively new. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the processes of conservation within the various stages of archaeology. The processes of conservation include: examination and analysis, stabilization design and proposal, treatment application and interpretation, and data and documentation.

Pre-excavation Prior to excavation it is important to consider the conservation needs of a particular site and ensure that adequate funds, facilities, and expertise are available. Planning for conservation in the field involves asking about:

1. the kinds of material finds that are anticipated; 2. the types of stabilization or treatment methods that may be needed; 3. the types of supplies, tools, equipment, storage/ packaging materials required to prepare and transport finds from the excavation to the lab; and 4. the storage conditions that will facilitate the longterm preservation of the collections. Without careful thought to these considerations, disasters may occur when excavators are faced with unpredictable conditions and materials. The preservation of delicate finds, particularly metals and organics, is dependent on their physical environment during burial. The type of soil, the drainage of water, and the climatic conditions at the excavation site will strongly influence the structural integrity and surface appearance of archaeological materials. Understanding the soil also allows for some prediction of the type of cleaning that would be necessary and will facilitate further studies. Favorable preservation environments for organic materials include the dry conditions of arid deserts where alkaline soils (pH above 7.0) are more common, the oxygen-free conditions of waterlogged sites, the refrigerated and frozen conditions of arctic landscapes, and situations where generally exclusive and abundant amounts of salt or metallic minerals surround the artifacts. Under these otherwise hostile conditions, organic objects or details from them are often preserved. Poorer preservation environments include saline soils where seawater is present or in dry environments where flooding or irrigation has been a common occurrence. Acidic soils (with a pH below 7.0) that are associated with areas of high rainfall and the incomplete breakdown of organic matter also contribute to the deterioration of many types of materials (Table 1).

On-site Conservation refers to the careful preservation and protection of something. For a conservator that something is cultural heritage, for a conservationist it is a natural resource. Archaeological excavations are destructive. As finds are permanently removed from their context, they are subjected to violent changes from various agents of deterioration. It is the sudden exposure to light, the rapid adjustment to a new temperature and humidity, the loss of support from soil encapsulation, the introduction of vibration from a trowel, brush, or pick, the action of poor human

1042 CONSERVATION AND STABILIZATION OF MATERIALS Table 1 Artifact materials and preservation in various soil conditions Artifact materials and preservation in various soil conditions Materials

Acidic

Alkaline

Desert

Waterlogged

Saline

Artic

Gold, silver Copper, lead, tin, zinc Iron Ceramics Glass Shell Bone Leather, wool Wood, basketry




 




þ  þ

þ þ



þ þ þ þ þ þ þ þ þ

þ þ
 

þ þ











þ þ þ þ þ þ þ þ þ

Table key: þ, preservation is likely;
, preservation is unlikely; , preservation may or may not be likely (depending on specific nature of materials).

handling, and inadequate packing that are the most destructive aspects of archaeology. Many artifact materials will shrink as they dry out, crumble as soil is brushed away, or fade with exposure to light. On-site, conservation methods can be used to stabilize the soil around a fragile object, maintain artifact dampness, or provide artifact support during the excavation process. The expertise of an archaeological conservator is particularly useful when cultural objects are undergoing the transformations or reactions which occur during an excavation. The use of a block lift may be necessary for materials that are decomposing or disintegrating due to processes such as corrosion, soluble salt efflorescence, desiccation, or erosion. The most straightforward technique of lifting involves using a rigid support inserted underneath the artifact. A thin metal sheet, board, or dustpan may be used as the support. Objects such as whole ceramics may be bandaged as they are excavated though care must be taken to prevent imprinting by the bands. In the case of vessels, it is important not to remove soil from the interior. Another technique involves the use of a rigid framework that is built around a block of soil containing the fragile artifact. After the object is isolated on a pedestal, a framework of wood or cardboard is constructed to create a collar that can contain a fill material such as dirt, polyurethane foam, or plaster. After the fill material has set or been secured, it forms a supportive material so that the block may be undercut and lifted. Sometimes it is necessary to consolidate the surrounding soil that is protecting and supporting a delicate object. Synthetic consolidants can be used to create an outer crust on the block and facilitate lifting. Selection of an appropriate consolidant during excavation is important because the use of an

inappropriate consolidant may cause the surface of an object to change or for soils to become fixed to it. The direct application of consolidants to in situ objects is rarely necessary. Selection of a suitable consolidant is based on the artifact material, its condition, the ambient environment, and when further conservation treatment will occur. Consolidants that fail to penetrate sufficiently may result in object collapse. Consolidants such as cyclododecane (a waxlike volatile cyclic alkane) that provide temporary stability for insecure surfaces, but may be easily reversed, offer a better option for certain finds. Specialized packaging techniques are employed to minimize the deleterious effects caused by the agents of deterioration, which include, but are not limited to, water, temperature, humidity, sunlight, and wind. In underwater archaeology, mesh baskets are used in ways that prevent collapse of delicate items during movement from sea bed to lab. The choice of packaging materials at terrestrial excavations is dependent on what purpose is intended. Wrapping, padding, sealing, supporting, and transporting finds may necessitate the use of many types of supplies required by the artifact material, its condition, the ambient environment, and when further conservation treatment must also be considered. Conservators prefer the use of inert packaging materials, such as polyethylene foam, sheet, or bags, so that contamination is avoided. Materials such as newspaper may transfer staining ink residue and organic acids over time, colored papers may bleed dyes and cause discolorations, and recycled food containers may encourage biological deterioration. Some archaeological conservators are also well suited to assist with the preservation and management of exposed structures after an excavation. Their understanding of environmental interactions with natural materials combined with knowledge of

CONSERVATION AND STABILIZATION OF MATERIALS 1043

the properties of many synthetic preservatives can provide clarification or guidance. Issues of material strength, porosity, durability, and expansion coefficient should be researched and studied thoroughly prior to actual application.

Laboratory Conservation From the archaeological processing laboratory where sorting, labeling, classifying, and ordering is performed, some artifacts may be identified for further study by specialists. As unstable finds are identified, many may be sent to the conservation laboratory for conservation treatment. Conservation is a highly technical and time-consuming process that includes examination and analysis; treatment design and proposal; application and interpretation; data and documentation. In the conservation laboratory, conservators may continue to excavate a block lift or they may perform analyses that will identify materials of construction, techniques of manufacture, and products of deterioration (Figure 1). At other times the recovered finds are so fragmentary or exotic that classification is only possible after the conservator has read or deciphered it. Like a detective, the conservator prepares the fragmentary clues from an excavation so that the attributes or identifiable features of an artifact can be interpreted by other specialists (such as numismatists, archaeo-botanists, faunal experts or specialists in ceramic, textile, metal or lithic technologies) depending on the nature of the site (habitation, quarry, religious, art, etc.). Sometimes the process of conservation can help discover more about intangible aspects of human behavior and the relationships between activities and objects from a particular time and place. Informed examination of cultural objects forms the basis for all future conservation action. Commonly referred to as a condition assessment, this process may involve procedures that have a small physical effect on the object such as solvent or pH testing of surfaces or the removal of small samples for microscopic inspection, microchemical testing, or instrumental analysis. In addition to a description of

Pedestal for object

Figure 1 Block lift.

Barrier layer around object

all procedures used, a justification should be made and permission attained for sampling, destructive testing, or otherwise unusual procedures. All documentation generated from these efforts should become part of the written record. For the conservator, the treatment design is a flexible plan that may be modified as the process continues. Only treatments that are judged to be suitable to the preservation of the esthetic, conceptual, and physical characteristics of the cultural property should be recommended and approved. Understanding what constitutes a responsible treatment comes after thoughtful and informed judgment of how the materials of construction, the techniques of manufacture, and the products of deterioration have presented the current condition. A treatment proposal is developed after thoroughly considering the physical characteristics, condition, and specific needs of the cultural property within the context of its discovery, interpretation, and intended use. The proposal also takes into account the physical environment where the finds will be located and the likelihood of continuing care, the potential risks of treatment to the objects, the available resources of equipment and supplies, the limits of personal competence, and the safety of the treatment for personnel, the environment, and the public. A treatment proposal or plan should be approved in writing by the responsible custodian of the cultural property. The choice of materials and methods for a treatment application should not be formulaic. The potential to cause further deterioration or contamination of analytical testing must be contemplated. Current ideas about conservation treatment stress maintenance of the natural unaltered state of excavated finds. This attitude is replacing an older assumption that excavated finds merely illustrate typological-centered research which justifies esthetic restoration. Therefore, while use of and access to collections is encouraged, it is important that treatment for one purpose does not preclude research for other purposes. Cleaning is one of the most common invasive applications of treatment at an archaeological excavation.

Supportive frame or consolidation layer with infill (dirt, foam, plaster)

Rigid platform and cover

1044 CONSERVATION AND STABILIZATION OF MATERIALS

Cleaning involves freeing dirt and impurities from something. The goals for cleaning should relate to the techniques even if it is only a step in the conservation process. In the decision to clean or not to clean, there is always a balance that must be identified and evaluated. How much cleaning is acceptable and how much loss or change is acceptable? Has cleaning been undertaken as part of preparations for accessioning, or as a step in a series involving preservation, study, or analysis? The use of cleaning treatments should be a conscious, conscientious, and well thought-out process and should always be documented with information on any materials and techniques used. Mechanical cleaning involves the use of an implement or tool. The degree of vibration from the implement that the artifact is subjected to is relative to the amount of control one has over what is being removed and the degree of structural damage that may be incurred. Any of the techniques listed below have the potential to damage, scratch, or alter the overall physical integrity of the materials to be cleaned. Any scratches or additional distortions that are left behind may be misinterpreted in future studies. Proceed with caution and be observant, remembering that ‘less is more’ in the case of mechanical cleaning. Mechanical cleaning tools (presented from least potential for damage):

unwanted particles from surfaces. These techniques tend to redistribute dust and soil rather than remove it. . Electric drills, Foredom® flex shafts, Dremel® rotary tools, and vibro-tools are often mentioned for use in the removal of excess rock around fossil samples and are sometimes mentioned for use in soil removal on specimens. The use of these tools requires extreme ability and patience in order to avoid damage. Due to their aggressive nature, they can cause microfractures and pull away surfaces adjacent to the soil. . Air abrasive tools (miniature sand blasters) abrade and clean using a high velocity air stream and abrasive particles. These tools can easily remove artifact surface and introduce abrasive particles that lodge into porous materials. . Ultrasonic cleaners and scalers use sound waves (typically at frequencies between 20 and 50 kHZ) to dislodge unwanted soil and residue particles from surfaces. Ultrasonic baths often use heat and are known to generate stress fractures in softer materials such as bone and ivory. Ultrasonic scalers are mentioned in the cleaning of fossils and sturdy archaeological objects. They channel the vibratory nature of the cleaning to a blade and without immersion in liquid.

. Fine artist brushes can gently dislodge dirt particles. . Bamboo skewers are thin rods, are pointed at the end, that offer finer and more rigid mechanical ability for cleaning in small areas. . Utility brushes, including toothbrushes, kitchen brushes, and small whiskbrooms, can scratch surfaces, dislodge soils with parts of object surfaces attached, and push dirt and dust into porous surfaces. The type, length, and pattern of bristle layout can affect softer surfaces. Also, when soils or accretions are harder than the artifact on which they are deposited, the brush may actually cause damage. . Metal probes, dental picks, needles, and pins are commonly used in archaeology to delicately work through soils next to artifacts. For most archaeological finds, especially examples that are degraded, the use of metal tools requires extreme caution. . Specialized vacuum cleaners have been used to gently clean delicate surfaces. Removal of molds and dust is most often best accomplished by brushing toward the opening of a small vacuum attachment (the opening must be much smaller than the object being cleaned). However, vacuum cleaning is nondiscriminating in what it picks up. . Bulb syringes, canned air dusters, and air-brushes, all use compressed air as a force to dislodge

Washing with water removes dirt because it is an excellent solvent. However, when porous, degraded, and weakened structures are cleaned, other reactions may also take place. Water affects porous materials in the burial environment through an exchange of minerals and salts from the adjacent soil. If these excavated materials are then subjected to water cleaning (rinsing, washing, or soaking), it is common to activate the soluble salts which often collect just below the surface. As the artifact dries, these salts tend to crystallize and expand, causing pressures that are enough to pop the surface, effloresce, or powder. The rate of the reaction and type of damage will depend on the porosity and surface condition of the artifact material. Water is rarely pure. Waters that contain significant proportions of calcium and magnesium are difficult to wash with and are considered ‘hard’. They may actually add dissolved minerals to porous materials. Softened waters and commercial-scale remover additives alter the mineral content by adding acids and sequestering agents. Washing with additives adds new material to the artifact. Reversed osmosis, distilled, and de-ionized water are often mentioned with artifact cleaning because they influence the cleaning process. Careful consideration is always required for any aqueous cleaning, but, if used, it is critical that

CONSERVATION AND STABILIZATION OF MATERIALS 1045

artifacts and fragments be supported completely throughout the process. An alternative to immersion or soaking an object in a bath is spot cleaning. Spot cleaning may involve application of water or solvent to a small area using a fine watercolor brush or swab. In the treatment documentation, a sketch or marked digital image of the spot should be included so the cleaned or affected area is identifiable in the future. Chemical solvents are used for cleaning because they can remove contaminants. When deciding which solvent might be best to remove a particular contaminant, it is necessary to consider factors such as chemical type, evaporation rate, solubility parameter, toxicity, and flammability. Because most chemical solvents contain more than one component, purity is also a concern. Solvents used on objects should not include colored or nonvolatile impurities. Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) should be checked for solvent composition information and storage recommendations. Chemists usually classify solvents by the most reactive portion of their molecule. From an application standpoint, solvents that are miscible with water are considered polar, while those that are not, are nonpolar. Water or H–O–H is reactive at the O–H bond. Water generally dissolves soils effectively, while greases and oils are better dissolved by less polar solvents such as the hydrocarbons. When using soaps, detergents, bleaches, or chemical reagents, it is important to prepare for adequate rinsing or flushing. These additives are not meant to stay in materials to be cleaned and even careful flushing after the application of a detergent, for instance, does not guarantee that all of it has been removed. The remaining contaminates could affect obtaining a date, DNA analyses, or a promise to descendants. Though their use is found in the literature, bleaches are truly problematic as they are very difficult to flush and continue to have on-going effects long after application, including possible recrystallization problems. Likewise, acid treatments once commonly used in archaeological field schools to remove unwanted carbonate-based accretions are now discouraged because they are difficult to control and they continue to cause degradation years after application. Coatings, consolidants, and adhesives have a long history of use in the conservation of excavated finds. The use of film-forming polymers enables the same product to serve as a coating, consolidant, or adhesive depending on how it is mixed with a liquid and how it is applied. Polymers are large molecules that are made from the chain-like formation of smaller identical molecules involving a chemical reaction. Both natural and synthetic film-forming polymers have been used to

impart structural stability to fragile materials. Synthetic polymers are generally considered more versatile to use and do not deteriorate as quickly. Making recommendations in favor of particular film-forming polymers is difficult without the consideration of many factors. Typically, there are multiple grades for a product; manufacturers often change the composition, and some have synonymous names that are used in different markets. Consideration of a polymer’s working properties and its effects on later analysis is critical before it is used on cultural property. Guidelines for the selection of accepted materials used in conservation treatments include chemical and physical compatibility with the cultural property; ability to distinguish the treatment from the composition materials of the cultural property; chemical and physical stability; and removable with the least amount of damage to the cultural property, should it become necessary. Coatings have been recommended in the past as a covering for objects. Coatings may enhance an object’s appearance by unifying the surface with gloss and texture. While a coating does provide some measure of mechanical protection for a delicate surface, it will decay. Many coating films become yellow, lose transparency, or become brittle with age. Others may become sticky and attract dust, and some may enhance the destruction of soluble salts that can build up and break apart the structure below the intact film layer. Protective coatings are not recommended and should never be standard practice. Consolidants are low concentrations of adhesive polymer in liquid form which are sometimes applied to materials that are unstable and have lost their own cohesive qualities. The low concentration ideally allows for deep and thorough penetration. The use of consolidants in the field has been mentioned, but in that context, it is usually best to use them to consolidate a soil collar for the object rather than the object itself. While a consolidation treatment applied directly to inherently fragile material may be the only way to stabilize the structural form or surface quality, it is a decision that cannot be taken lightly because it comes with potentially permanent repercussions. Adhesives are substances that are used to hold two surfaces together by means of a join. The adhesives used for conservation are generally applied as a liquid, but they may also be activated by heat or pressure. Making recommendations in favor of particular adhesive products is difficult because there are many factors to consider. Manufacturers of adhesive products often change the composition of their products; there may be multiple grades for a product, and some have synonymous names that are used for them in different markets.

1046 CONSERVATION AND STABILIZATION OF MATERIALS

Synthetic polymer products have been used to adhere, consolidate, and stabilize archaeological finds. They are generally grouped based on their chemical structure. There have been numerous studies devoted to the advantages and disadvantages of particular adhesives, so an informed choice based on suitable chemical properties is possible. A basic list of synthetic polymers that have been used on archaeological finds includes the following. . Acrylic polymers: acrylic or methacrylate polymers; acrylic monomers including cyanoacrylates; acrylic emulsions and dispersions. . Cellulosic polymers: ethers; esters including cellulose acetate and cellulose nitrate. . Cross-linking polymers: silcone rubber; polyester; polyurethanes; epoxy resin; formaldehyde resins. . Hydrocarbons: polyethylene/vinyl acetate; paraffin wax; synthetic rubber. . Synthetic thermoplastics: poly(vinyl chloride); poly (vinylidene chloride); polystyrene; poly(ethylene glycol); soluble nylon. . Vinyl acetate derived polymers: poly(vinyl acetate) emulsions; poly(vinyl acetal); poly(vinyl butryal). After an adhesive is selected, re-assembly of fragmentary finds may begin. This process is sometimes referred to as reconstruction (to construct again), restoration (to bring back to original condition), mending (to make repairs), or bonding (to fasten together). In contrast, the word ‘conservation’ may include a range of activities that prevent damage, engage a technical study of materials or the study of deterioration processes, treat damaged items by stabilizing them with minimal intervention, or restore damaged items through the addition of new materials the compensate for the losses due to damage. Reassembly is generally considered a part of the conservation treatment process that joins together multiple parts that have become separated through breakage. The best results for accurate reassembly involve the use of trained skill, a sand-box, sand-bags, clothes pins, and padded clamps together with gravity-based positioning. When fragmentary objects such as vessels are ‘built up sherd by sherd’, there is better keying or alignment. By placing the join line of two pieces in a horizontal position within the sandbox, gravity and balance will indicate the correct alignment (hand holding or tapes can be avoided). After a join is set, the pieces may be repositioned so that the next join is horizontal. Unsatisfactory reassemblies usually occur if groups of pieces are first joined together into groups and then as a few large pieces because the alignment between the larger pieces is poor. The issue of whether the join itself will be reversible and stable cannot be overlooked. While it may be

possible to re-dissolve a spot of ‘set’ adhesive with solvents, it is rarely possible to do this when the adhesive has entered porous structures or has ‘fixed’ the keys of a break that make up a join. This penetration is often impossible to remove even with aggressive treatments. In addition, all film-forming polymers are sticky when liquid and take up space when dry. The alignment of an adhesive join should be considered the result of a permanent subjective process. Thus, alternatives to a reassembly should always be considered before any adhesives are selected and used. Restorative methods of stabilization often include the compensation of losses; however, it is important that any compensation technique should be reversible and should not modify, remove, or obscure original artifact material. Restorations are useful when the goal is to help scholars and the public to more readily understand an otherwise fragmentary object or structure. The use of plasters, waxes, and synthetic fillers, as well as armatures and hardware attachments, is common. The techniques used to restore artifacts to esthetic wholeness, the types of materials, their techniques of application, and their stability over time are well known, but they can be problematic. Materials used may penetrate porous objects and become functionally permanent, they may initiate additional chemical reactions causing degradation, and can contaminate or inhibit future analyses. A restoration that includes loss compensation will also conceal the information provided by broken edges. The following points should be considered prior to any treatment involving adhesives, consolidants, coatings, or restorative fills be undertaken: . Has information for planned sampling for analysis been identified and considered? . Is the individual doing the proposed restoration able to properly key the fragments together accurately in their original positions? . Has there been warping or natural expansion during or since the breakage? . Will the adhesive be used in the joins measurably add to the overall dimensions of the whole? . Is the adhesive re-soluble in an appropriate solvent? . Although the join may be reversible, will removal of adhesive residues affect the texture, appearance, and inhibit further analysis? Methods of treatment become recognized as acceptable after appropriate testing and publication in peer-reviewed literature. Appropriate methods are selected based on the competence of the conservator after experimental evaluation using mockups or samples. Documentation enables an understanding of what was removed, and perhaps more importantly,

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what may have been added. While modern conservation presumes to include documentation for all treatments, this has not always been common practice with archaeological processing. Items found with undocumented repairs or preservatives are common in collections. They are inadvertently compromised for further scientific analysis and typically require further conservation treatments to be suitable for display or illustration. Treatment documentation should include reference to the object treated, the date of treatment completion, any deviations from the proposal, and a description of any material removed, obscured, or added (cleaning agents, solvents, bleaching agents, chemical reagents, surfactants, and consolidants). The sources of added materials including manufacturer, proprietary name, and chemical composition should also be included where known. All documentation generated during the execution of a treatment or stabilization effort should become part of the written record. Graphic documentation (drawings or photographs) should be labeled before treatment, during treatment, and after treatment. Alternatives to invasive treatments are commonly referred to under the term, ‘preventive conservation’.

Long-term Preservation Because it is not possible to completely adapt archaeological materials, which have undergone some level of decay, to postexcavation environments, the conservation of archaeological finds continues past treatment. Preventive conservation is the mitigation of deterioration and damage to cultural property through the formulation and implementation of policies and procedures that insure ongoing care and maintenance. Long-term preservation guidelines for the continuing use and care of archaeological finds involve

RH indicator card

RH

collaborations with curation and collections management professionals. Various guidelines recommend environmental conditions during storage, transport and exhibition, the selection of appropriate materials for storage, packing, display and transport, and encourage proper procedures for handling during processing and use. For example, details for the design and construction of a support or housing of a fragile artifact and the suggested environmental levels for temperature, humidity, and air filtration that will inhibit material deterioration are part of the conservation for an archaeological object. Cultural property that will be stored in an archaeological repository should be prepared in a manner that is consistent with the conservation standards of that facility. Good storage for archaeological finds eliminates excess movement between fragmentary pieces, minimizes handling during searches for particular items, and may preserve a reassembled order, or ‘dry-fit’ for the next analyst. Suggested principles for packaging and storage include the following (Figure 2): 1. Recommended environments for archaeological finds suggest desiccating conditions for metals, temperate conditions for dry organic materials such as basketry and textile, and cool conditions for damp or wet objects such as leather or bone. Sealable containers can be kept damp with pads made from wet foam with a biocide or they can be desiccated with silica gel. 2. Zip-locking polyethylene bags may be used for small finds that have stable structures and surfaces. 3. Plastic boxes (including polycarbonate, polystyrene, polyethylene, or polypropylene) or acid-free trays and tissue padding may be used to hold more fragile artifacts and fragments. Materials of different types should be placed in separate containers. 4. Acid-free paper, washed cotton muslin, and acidfree boxes may be used if non-synthetic packaging is required.

SILICA GEL

Silica gel dessicant bags

Sealed plastic bin

Bubble wrap Perforated zip locking bag

Polyethylene foam padding Figure 2 Storage box.

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Acknowledgments The author wishes to thank Sonya Issaeva for assistance in rendering the illustrations. See also: Archaeology Laboratory, Overview; Conservation, Archaeological; Preservation, Modes of; Sites: Conservation and Stabilization.

Further Reading

Horie CV (1990) Materials for Conservation: Organic Consolidants, Adhesives and Coatings. London: Butterworths. Odegaard N and Cassman V (2006) Treatment and invasive actions. In: Cassman V, Odegaard N, and Powell J (eds.) Human Remains: Guide for Museums and Academic Institutions, pp. 77–95. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press. Pye E (2001) Caring for the Past: Issues in Conservation for Archaeology and Museums. London: James and James. Sease C (1994) A Conservation Manual for the Field Archaeologist, Archaeological Research Tools, Vol. 4, 2nd edn. Los Angeles: UCLA Institute of Archaeology. Stanley Price NP (1995) Conservation on Archeological Excavations. Rome: ICCROM.

American Institute for Conservation of Historic & Artistic Works (2006) Core documents. Electronic format, http://aic.stanford. edu/about/coredocs/index.html. Cronyn JM (1990) The Elements of Archaeological Conservation. London: Routledge.

CONSERVATION, ARCHAEOLOGICAL Elizabeth Barham, Museum of London Archaeology Service, London, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary mineralized organic Partial or full replacement or coating of organic materials with inorganic minerals from the burial environment or artifact. residue Trace remains adhering to the fabric of an object. treatment Physical or chemical intervention to slow down deterioration. waterlogged Archaeological state in which the structure of an artifact is immersed in and supported by water. X-radiography The application of X-rays to generate an image through which the structure and condition of an object may be examined non-destructively.

Introduction The aim of archaeological conservation is a greater understanding of the past through scientific investigation of excavated artifacts and by preventing them from further deterioration. Conservation is a fully integrated part of the archaeological process, but requires specialist knowledge of how materials decay so that important features are recognized, despite the physical and chemical changes that objects or structures may have undergone while buried. Conservators are trained to know what analytical techniques might be used to interpret the evidence inherent in archaeological finds. They also understand which options to choose among the potential

treatments and environmental conditions that could be applied to an artifact after excavation to prevent it from deteriorating further. Therefore, they work as part of a project team with archaeologists, curators and finds specialists at all stages of the archaeological process from excavation through to archiving, publication of finds and display. Conservation is often considered to be a means to an end within archaeological projects but conservation science is also a branch of research in its own right, examining decay processes, treatment effects, and preventive care of artifacts.

Practical Conservation Work Archaeological conservators can work commercially or in the public sector for museums, universities, archaeological units, or conservation companies. Many are trained in the conservation of a wide variety of archaeological materials and support excavations by lifting the most vulnerable finds and giving advice on short-term care of freshly excavated material. Conservators examine the constituent materials and structure of artifacts and assess their condition through X-radiography, instrumental or chemical analysis, and investigative cleaning under the microscope, to help archaeologists and finds specialists answer research questions about a site. They may also reconstruct selected finds to assist with interpretation and enable objects to be displayed or illustrated. They use chemical treatments to slow down deterioration of artifacts post excavation. They keep

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a record of any treatments and analyses carried out and refer to past records if retreating objects. Archaeological conservators are also responsible for ensuring that finds are stable prior to long-term storage or when arranging a loan to external institutions and for advising on protective conditions during transport, if handled or while on display. These may include care of the environmental material from a site, such as bone and seed samples and, given the importance of the site archive as a whole, the preventive care of the digital or paper records. They monitor and assess environmental factors in deterioration such as temperature, relative humidity, light, pests, dirt, pollution, packaging, case materials, and handling regimes. In some cases this may include advice on preservation of artifacts in situ on an archaeological site. Many are involved in outreach activities, explaining and demonstrating conservation and collections care to archaeological professionals, volunteers, and the public.

A Brief History Records suggest that artifacts have been investigated and prepared systematically by institutions for public display for several hundred years, for example, from the mid-nineteenth century it is known that ‘specialist restorers’ were employed by the Trustees of the British Museum. However, these would have been museum technicians or archaeologists without formal training in what is now termed conservation work. Much of the earliest work was done without a thorough knowledge of the nature of historic materials or archaeological decay. A more limited range of chemicals and adhesives were available for use as treatments than today and little was known about the long-term effects of particular chemical treatments on an object’s condition. Non-interventive investigative techniques were basic. Individual scientists began to research the cause and effects of deterioration though lacking the advantages in technology now available to analyze objects on a microscale. The fact that archaeological practices were not always well defined or standardized, also sometimes led to poor recording practices during the conservation process. As a result, evidence associated with a surviving artifact, such as food residues from pots or mineralized organic remains on ironwork, will have inevitably been lost through cleaning or not recognized during investigation of finds assemblages. Insufficient recording made it hard to identify the original features of the artifact as excavated and to distinguish and reverse poor or aging restoration work without further damage.

In the 1920s and 1930s, museums began to actively support scientific investigation into causes of deterioration and remedies, to assist archaeological expeditions of the time. International cooperation in the conservation of artifacts and monuments developed in earnest, and the first specialized journals began publication, notably Technical Studies in the Field of Fine Arts, published by Harvard University. Effort was made to understand and define the field of conservation, and a conference held in Rome in 1930 was an important early step in this process. In the 1950s and 1960s conventions developed on professional conservation practice, the International Institute for the Conservation of Artistic and Historic Works (IIC) began its work and specialist training courses were introduced, such as the Diploma in Conservation at the Institute of Archaeology, London. The UK’s Museums Association agreed that those qualifying in this diploma could become accredited members, improving the status of conservators within museums and archaeology. National conservation institutes representing conservators in individual countries followed, setting up standards of practice and codes of ethics. These bodies also help to support the sharing of knowledge and experience and communication of the benefits of good conservation practice. In recent decades graduate and postgraduate training has become the standard entry requirement for archaeological conservation and schemes have been established for the professional certification or accreditation of conservators.

Conservation Ethics Alongside the development of professional technical standards, observation and recognition of the risks and changes artifacts can undergo during conservation treatment has also led to the development of ethics that conservators of all specialisms, including archaeological remains, are encouraged to follow by their professional institutes. Some of the most fundamental of these principles include: . minimum intervention during examination or treatment; . reversibility of treatment, to prevent damage should retreatment become necessary; . recording of every step of treatment and investigative results to inform future conservators or analysts; . respect for inherent evidence to avoid removing residues or features that form part of an object’s historical context during treatment;

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. respect for wishes of stakeholders in artifacts such as those who legitimately claim ownership, or an ethnic link with the makers or users of the artifact; and . favoring conservation of original material over esthetic restoration considerations, for example, ensuring that the treatment makes clear any parts that have been added during conservation, and not adding new details that were not known to be present in the original.

Conservation Research Many conservation challenges have been addressed over the last century by investigating burial conditions, their interaction with artifacts in the ground, and the mechanisms and products of corrosion and decay. The aging and capabilities of conservation materials have also been studied in depth. Some of the greatest breakthroughs have been in the conservation of archaeological iron and of waterlogged archaeological organic artifacts. These materials can weaken dramatically while in the ground and on excavation are particularly liable to deterioration without rapid appropriate attention. Preservation of archaeological remains in situ, or their reburial, has become an increasingly important area of research as this approach is now frequently advocated for large archaeological finds such as timbers and structural remains, to reduce costs. Research examining preventive conservation measures has also increased, recognizing a need to refine our understanding of appropriate environmental conditions for artifacts.

Changing Approaches to Conservation Work Many noninterventive investigative methods are now possible as new materials and analytical techniques, such as digital imaging, lasers, and advanced radiographic equipment have become more commonplace and accessible to archaeological projects and museums. This has made it easier to follow the ethical principles aspired to by the conservation profession as these methods can enable conservators to be more selective with treatments.

Consulting Archaeology

The requirements of improved health and safety practice have also restricted use of some chemicals in conservation. Tighter funding has brought a need for holistic approaches, prioritizing good conservation practice for finds assemblages as a whole, to gain the greatest benefit from available resources. In some institutions these factors have led to a shift of emphasis toward preventive conservation of finds wherever possible over treatment. As with other archaeological roles within a project, conservation input must usually be defined and justified according to the stated research requirements of an excavation and its publication, the archive requirements of a receiving museum or the interpretation requirements for a forthcoming exhibition. See also: Archaeology Today; Artifacts, Overview; Conservation and Stabilization of Materials; Sites: Conservation and Stabilization.

Further Reading Cronyn JM (1999) The Elements of Archaeological Conservation, 5th edn. London and New York: Routledge. Evans J (1987) The Institute of Archaeology: The first fifty years and after. In: Black J (ed.) Recent Advances in the Conservation and Analysis of Artifacts, pp. 10–15. London: University of London Institute of Archaeology Summer Schools Press. Gedye I (1987) Forty years of conservation at the institute. In: Black J (ed.) Recent Advances in the Conservation and Analysis of Artifacts, pp. 16–19. London: Summer Schools Press. Hoffmann P, Straetvern K, and Spriggs JA (eds.) (2004) Proceedings of the ICOM Group of Wet Organic Archaeological Materials. Bremerhaven: ICOM Committee for Conservation Working Group on Wet Organic Archaeological Materials. Scott D, Saunders D, and de la Rie R (eds.) (2006) Studies in Conservation. London: International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. Watkinson DE and Neal V (1998) First Aid for Finds, 3rd edn. London: RESCUE and Archaeology Section of the United Kingdom Institute for Conservation with the Museum of London.

Relevant Websites www.aic.stanford.edu – The American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. www.icon.org.uk – ICON, The Institute of Conservation. www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk – The British Museum.

See: Cultural Resource Management.

COPROLITE ANALYSIS 1051

COPROLITE ANALYSIS Timothy G Holden, Headland Archaeology Ltd., Edinburgh, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary coprolite Fossilized or desiccated human or animal faeces. desiccation State of extreme dryness, or the process of extreme drying. faeces Waste product from an animal’s digestive system tract expelled through the anus during defecation. rehydration Treatment of desiccated samples with an aqueous solution of tri-sodium phosphate to restore the original texture and pliability to both animal and vegetable tissues.

Introduction Direct evidence for what people ate in the past is extremely rare but under certain circumstances human fecal material survives in archaeological contexts and can be analyzed. Within the broad definition of ‘fecal remains’, three distinct classes can be recognized. Sewage (often referred to as cess) is recovered from cesspits, latrines, sewers, and drains, and provides large, mixed assemblages of human feces together with waste from the kitchen and elsewhere. Where preservation is good, particularly under waterlogged conditions, microscopic analysis of such assemblages has provided valuable information on diet and living conditions. The mixed nature of the samples makes it difficult to comment on individual meals, but the inclusion of other household waste products and evidence for sanitary practices in many ways compensates for this. By contrast, coprolites (preserved human stools) or the contents of the intestines of well-preserved humans are of more value for a study of individual people and the meals that they ate. They are essentially uncontaminated and each sample potentially provides information on not more than one or two meals. Coprolites are occasionally preserved by charring or mineralization but most commonly survive as desiccated samples in caves or extremely arid areas. In some instances, specified latrine areas are set aside by a settlement and large numbers of broadly contemporary samples can be recovered. Each sample provides evidence for foods eaten by an individual but, as a group, such assemblages also enable the identification of patterns of consumption within populations. The aridity required for the preservation of desiccated samples often means that human encampments within these areas are transient and seasonal. The evidence from coprolites is therefore important for

deducing not only the resources exploited but also the season of occupation. There are numerous published analyses of coprolites from the deserts of Southwestern North America, Mexico, Peru, and Chile, or dry cave environments in more humid zones. When preservation permits, and where no elaborate mummification procedures have been performed, in situ food residues can survive in the intestinal tracts of human cadavers. In areas such as Egypt and the Pacific coast of South America or in dry cave environments, preservation of whole humans by desiccation can occur (see Osteological Methods). Less frequently, bodies are preserved by freezing or freeze-drying, most notably the Greenland mummies or the Tyrolean iceman, or by waterlogging as in the case of European bog bodies. Because these finds are so rare they cannot be considered as being typical of the population at large and are often of limited value when discussing wider dietary issues. However, the presence of the associated corpse and the information that this provides enables a different level of discussion. The person may have died naturally or been killed by force or accident. Fecal analyses can therefore provide information regarding such things as the nature of their last meals, whether they had been involved in predeath rituals or subjected to treatments for illness. They may have been given food that was only fit for the poor or prisoners. In the absence of written accounts this type of information is very difficult to unearth by any other means. As archaeological assemblages, coprolites and gut contents contain a very diverse range of biological and mineral components. This makes it difficult for any one specialist to undertake all elements of analysis. Desiccated samples usually require rehydration using an aqueous solution of tri-sodium phosphate. This solution restores much of the original texture and pliability to both animal and vegetable tissues, enables samples to be teased apart and individual items extracted for identification. Much of the initial work requires detailed light and electron microscope analysis to identify the more obvious components but chemical analyses of the finer residues may, in the future, offer the potential for the identification of part digested foods or their waste products. Other more specialized techniques such as electron spin resonance can be used to determine how particular food items have been cooked. The most productive area for research is in the analysis of food elements that are totally or partially resistant to digestion or have escaped digestion by

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identified. Muscle fibers have been recovered on occasion, but traces of commonly eaten foods such as milk or blood products, eggs or softer body parts do not survive in a readily identifiable form (Figure 1). The remains of foods are often accompanied by evidence for pathological conditions such as intestinal parasites or their eggs, and other inadvertent inclusions can add significantly to our understanding of how people lived. Insects or other invertebrates such as mites can inform us about storage conditions, and the pollen breathed in or ingested with food and drink can provide evidence for the season in which the food was consumed. Traces of grit and the fragmentation of remains can throw light onto the grinding/pounding implements used to process food and the presence of burnt food and charcoal about cooking techniques. The foods and the preparation techniques used can also say a lot about the wealth or status of an individual and the nature of trade. In some instances they enable a discussion of such things as ritual meals or famine foods. See also: Archaeoparasitology; Archaeozoology; Frozen Sites and Bodies; Paleoethnobotany; Seasonality of Site Occupation.

Further Reading Figure 1 Light micrographs. a, Cells from the seed coat of a legume species from a mummy from Azapa, North Chile. Magnification  290. b, Seed coat of an Opuntia cactus seed from a coprolite from Tula´n, N. Chile. Magnification  45. c, The bran of rye (Secale cereale) from the gut of the Huldremose bog body, Denmark. Magnification  290. d, Meat fibers taken from a coprolite from Tula´n, N Chile. Magnification  290.

being protected from the digestive enzymes in some way. Fibrous or resistant parts of plants such as cereal bran, epidermal fragments, and certain seeds are commonplace and with the correct reference material to hand can be identified (Figure 1). Even starch grains can survive and be identified under certain circumstances. Traces of animal foods are also restricted to the more robust body parts, so hair, bone, insect, and crustacean parts are commonly

Bryant VM (1974) Diet in Southwest Texas: The coprolite evidence. American Antiquity 39: 407–420. Bryant VM and Williams-Dean G (1975) Thecoprolites of man. Scientific American 232(1): 100–109. Callen EO (1963) Diet as revealed by coprolites. In: Brothwell DR and Higgs E (eds.) Science in Archaeology pp. 186–194. London: Thames and Hudson. Fry GF (1985) Analysis of faecal material. In: Gilbert I and Mielke JI (eds.) The Analysis of Prehistoric Diets pp. 127–154. New York: Academic Press. Greig J (1984) Garderobes, sewers, cesspits and latrines. Current Archaeology 85: 49–52. Greig J (1981) The investigation of a Medieval barrel-latrine from Worcester. Journal of Archaeological Science 8: 265–282. Holden TG (2001) Dietary evidence from the coprolites and the intestinal contents of ancient humans. In: Brothwell DR and Pollard AM (eds.) Handbook of Archaeological Sciences pp. 403–413. New York: Wiley. Stead IM, Bourke JB, and Brothwell D (1986) Lindow Man: The Body in the Bog. London: British Museum Publications.

CRAFT SPECIALIZATION 1053

CRAFT SPECIALIZATION Julia A Hendon, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Chavin An early civilization that existed in present-day Peru. Chiefdom Any community led by an individual known as a chief. craft production Set of processes involved in making specific kinds of objects, processes that often require training and the development of skills in the manipulation of specific kinds of materials. craft specialization Production for exchange beyond the household, that is to say beyond one’s co-resident domestic group. Vijayanagara empire Dominated south India during the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries AD.

Craft specialization is one of the central issues in archaeological research because its study provides insight into economic organization, social relations, and political power. Explanations of social change, especially those that focus on how societies become more complex (see Social Theory), have argued that the rise and expansion of craft specialization contributed to these developments although the role of specialized economic production has been subject to debate. The main difference characterizing these explanations centers on whether craft specialization was a causal factor that helped make increasing social differentiation, political centralization, and economic interdependence possible or whether it was a consequence of these changes. The processes, technologies, and relationships that make up craft specialization have been studied by archaeologists working in all parts of the world and in many different time periods of human history and prehistory. It has been an especial focus of interest among those archaeologists working on questions of the origin of the state, the development of chiefdoms, or the rise of cities in such areas as Mesoamerica, Andean South America, Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, South and East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. While archaeologists recognize craft production as universal among human societies across time and space, and that craft production frequently leads to specialization of some sort, they no longer assume that a single developmental sequence applies to all civilizations. The pattern of technological change identified in Europe, for example, in which cutting tools

were first made of stone, then of bronze, then of iron, is now understood as the result of the convergence of specific environmental, social, economic, and political factors in which the availability of raw materials, the effects of interaction among multiple societies, and cultural beliefs favored the application of human knowledge and energy to the manipulation of certain kinds of materials and the production of certain kinds of objects. Study of metalworking in South America prior to European contact, especially among the Inca, Chavin, Moche, and related civilizations of Andean and coastal Peru as well in contemporaneous societies in Colombia and Ecuador, has demonstrated that these groups had a highly sophisticated understanding of the properties of the main metals worked that allowed them to create alloys of gold, silver, and copper such as bronze or tumbaga. These alloys were processed using techniques including smelting and casting to produce objects of sophisticated design and workmanship that primarily served social or religious purposes (see Ritual, Religion, and Ideology). Items of personal use or for personal adornment enhanced the prestige and reflected the status of certain people in society. Objects made of metal were imbued with religious meaning, serving as offerings. Metals were also incorporated into the decoration of religious buildings. Very little effort was expended on the development or manufacture of practical or utilitarian metal items, such as agricultural implements or weapons, which were made from stone, wood, and fibers. This makes the history of metalworking and the application of metallurgical knowledge in pre-Columbian South America very different from that of Europe or Mesopotamia but in no way inferior or aberrant. V. Gordon Childe (1892–1957) may be credited with one of the earliest attempts to integrate the phenomenon of specialized production into an explanation for the development of early cities and states as part of his ‘urban revolution’ (see Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of). For Childe, specialized production was a consequence of a convergence of factors resulting ultimately from the development of agriculture. Farming allowed groups to build up food surpluses and to congregate in larger and more permanent settlements, leading to the development of new economic and social relations, or modes of production. Childe considered cities and centralized institutions of government as necessary conditions for the development of full-time occupational specialization, a process that produced increasing degrees

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of interdependence within society even as it led to greater differentiation among members of that society. Childe’s particular scenario of causes and consequences was influential but has not held up in light of more recent archaeological research both in Mesopotamia and other geographic, historical, and cultural contexts. Nevertheless, his realization, inspired in part by the writings of Karl Marx, that economic processes are integral to social relations, political systems, and patterns of social change (see Marxist Archaeology), continues to be fundamental to how archaeologists think about craft specialization and why they believe it is an important research topic.

Defining Craft Specialization Studies of craft specialization must first come to grips with what it is. The archaeological literature abounds with references to ‘craft production’ and ‘craft specialization’. These terms are often used interchangeably and in fact they refer to a large degree to the same phenomenon or closely related ones. The term craft production sums up a set of processes involved in making specific kinds of objects, processes that often require training and the development of skills in the manipulation of specific kinds of materials. Ethnographic and archaeological investigations have demonstrated that even the smallest-scale and least socially differentiated of societies engage in craft production of some sort. Nor is it limited to societies that depend on agriculture or which have become sedentary, let alone living in cities. Its presence may be traced back to the earliest moments of human (and perhaps even prehuman) history, thus calling into question assumptions common to many models that posit the existence of some primary or original state of self-sufficiency among individuals or households in early foraging or farming societies in which every household produces what it needs and nothing more. Whether such a degree of economic isolation was ever possible must remain an open question since the majority of archaeological evidence, the preponderance of comparative material from more fully documented historical or contemporary societies, and even to a certain extent the behavioral information gathered from nonhuman primates strongly suggest that the fundamental sociality of our species led us from the beginnings of our development to find ways to foster connections with those near and far. Thus, the existence of craft production coincides with an interest in exchange, or the movement of goods between groups, often over long distances. Although such goods or materials may be rare or

difficult to obtain, they are equally likely to be items that could be produced locally or acquired through one’s own efforts. What the close connection between craft production and exchange demonstrates is the social benefits of being able to enter into peaceful and ongoing relations with neighbors and those further away (even when what one exchanges is pretty much the same as what other people produce). Recognizing that craft production is present in forager and farming societies and in more and less egalitarian ones has made it harder to differentiate it from specialization. Craft specialization has been defined as production for exchange beyond the household, that is to say beyond one’s co-resident domestic group. This definition, however, runs into problems given the widespread human emphasis on production and exchange just mentioned, that mitigates against the idea of some self-sufficient group at the core of human society. An alternative approach has been to argue that production is specialized when the producers are limited in number and regularly produce more goods than they need, allowing them to acquire the goods and services necessary for their own support, in part or completely. Specialists thus rely on their crafting abilities for all or some of their maintenance in ways that create greater degrees of interdependency within and between societies.

Kinds of Specialization Specialization and the increased interdependence it helps create may come in several varieties. In other words, the occupational specialization characteristic of modern postindustrial capitalism is not found in all cases as not all societies developed the same sorts of economic institutions or relations. To help systematize the variation, archaeologists have recognized different types of craft specialization. While the terminology and precise definitions vary, the following features emerge as useful in distinguishing among kinds of production: intensity, scale, location (also sometimes referred to as context), and social relations between producer and consumer. Intensity and Scale

Intensity is often summarized as full- or part-time specialization. Does a person spend all or most of his or her productive energy and time on a particular craft, such as potting, weaving, or blacksmithing? Are they dependent on their labor in this kind of work for the acquisition of all or most of the things needed to sustain life and to fulfill their responsibilities as members of society? If yes, then we can characterize this

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person as a full-time craft specialist. Part-time specialization would thus be when people engage in productive activities, producing more than they need and satisfying their personal, familial, and larger social obligations in part through the fruits of their labor, but who also regularly apply their labor to other forms of production. Most typically, such would be the case when an individual or a household continues to engage in farming, herding, or foraging to some degree rather than relying entirely on their craft to support themselves. Closely tied to intensity is the concept of scale, of how much is produced and how often. The scale of production relates directly to the socially defined needs that create a demand for certain objects over others. While it is certainly the case the full-time specialization is likely to be capable of a greater scale of production, it is also the case that continual growth in production capacity or in the amount produced is not characteristic of all economies, even those at the state level. Limits on production may serve political ends. The difference between full-time and part-time specialization is obviously one of degree. It is also somewhat misleading to talk about the craft specialist as the sole producer of some item for exchange and thus provider for his or her family who have no connection to the process. In fact, family or household members are frequently integral to the success of both full- and part-time specialization. This is the case in the sense that the domestic group may take care of other sorts of activities necessary to daily life. But this sort of division of labor between the occupational specialist and the rest of the domestic group, which is usually uncompensated for its efforts, is by no means the norm in nonindustrial or precapitalist economies. Relatives and co-residents often provide crucial assistance in the production process in ways that are patterned and integral to the passing on of the knowledge and abilities central to the productive process. Ethnographic studies of South Asian potters, for example, demonstrate that the male head of household, who is the one identified as the craft specialist, routinely relies on his wife, children, and other people living with him to take care of certain aspects of the process of turning clay into finished pots for sale. A similar interdependency emerges from sixteenth century Spanish descriptions of Aztec feather workers in what is now Mexico. Before the Spanish conquest, they lived in Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Aztec empire, and made the elaborate capes and other apparel worn by the nobility, priests, and warriors. Although Fray Bernardino de Sahagu´n, in his work known as the Florentine Codex, emphasizes the

efforts of men in the creation of this high-prestige clothing, identifying them as ‘the feather workers’, his discussion allows us to grasp the important and regular involvement of women in the process. These women, members of the same kin group as the men, were responsible for dyeing the feathers, choosing colors, and manipulating the dyes to produce the appropriate designs. Location or Context

Also considered to be important is the location of production. Location is often summed up as either household or workshop, that is to say as being the same as where people live and engage in the activities of daily life or in some separate place. These spatial locations imply a number of things about the organization and relations of production. They also connect to the issue of how much time is devoted to the craft. A household-based production system is often also a part-time one and, even if full time, may more easily involve other members of the household, as in the case of the South Asian potter or the Aztec feather worker. The establishment of workshops may indicate a greater intensity of production and the interaction of people not necessarily closely related or bound by the same social ties as those that characterize households or families. Distinct spatial locations may also indicate differences in the scale of production, in terms of the amount produced or the number of people involved. Unlike Aztec weavers who mostly worked at home on a part-time basis, Mesopotamian city-states during the Ur III period established weaving workshops staffed by female slaves or semi-free women who were closely supervised by agents appointed by the government. These women received little compensation for their efforts beyond subsistence and had lost most or all ability to control their labor or its products. The relationships outlined here are by no means invariant but thinking about where production takes place has proved to be fruitful in attempting to understand how the production of the same sort of final product may be organized in quite different ways. Social Relations between Producer and Consumer

Another way that archaeologists have approached the question of specialization is by considering the nature of the social relations between producer and consumer and between who makes and who controls the objects produced. Two types have been defined: ‘attached’ and ‘independent’ specialists. These categories have proved useful in considering how craft production contributes to social change and the accumulation or reinforcement of political power. Attached

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specialists work for a patron, usually an individual or social group of high social status and sufficient wealth to provide the support. In many cases, the patron is the governing authority itself. The patron in effect exercises some degree of monopoly over the labor of the specialists and assumes control over the disposition of what the specialists produce. In return, the patron provides the support, which may include the raw materials or even the tools as well as food, housing, or other benefits, allowing the specialists to devote themselves to their productive activity. Independent specialists operate on their own account, as it were, relying on other mechanisms of exchange such as markets to trade what they have produced for other goods and services. Archaeologists working in the Late Intermediate period city of Chan Chan in Peru, seat of the Chavin Empire, have argued for the presence of both kinds of specialists, identifiable in part through differences in spatial location as well as kinds of materials being produced. Attached specialists lived and worked next to large elite residential compounds, whereas independent ones carried out their production in work areas integrated into their houses which were located in parts of the city away from elite compounds.

Methods for Identifying Specialized Production Ways of identifying the occurrence and scale of specialized production in past societies fall into four main categories: archaeological context, object studies, observation or experimentation, and the use of documents or art. Archaeological Context

This refers to the examination of those areas of an archaeological site where production took place. Determining the location of production is complicated by differential preservation, especially of organic materials, and is directly affected by the methods chosen to excavate the site, but when successful, this approach is one of the most productive. The association of tools, production facilities such as kilns, raw materials, waste from the manufacturing processes, and objects in the process of being manufactured are some of the things that the excavator looks for and are among the best kinds of evidence with which to address issues of intensity, scale, and location. The example of Chan Chan discussed above provides an excellent illustration of the value of excavation strategies designed to recover information from multiple locations within a site. Excavation of both the large elite compounds and the smaller household areas

made it possible to identify the occurrence of two different contexts of production. Studying Objects

Studying the objects themselves is probably the most widely employed approach because it may be applied to items in museum collections or otherwise not excavated by the analyst directly. Studies of objects may consider their formal or decorative properties, such as design elements or their execution, to try to identify stylistic clusters that may indicate production by the same group of producers. Such inferences must be confirmed by archaeological data from sites in the proposed region, however, since alternative explanations are possible. Techniques of manufacture, such as the use of molds, are also of interest for the light they shed on the technological aspects of production and the organization of production. Object studies may also employ scientific techniques such as petrography, neutron activation analysis, or X-ray fluorescence to determine the chemical composition of raw materials. Analysis of the trace elements present in clay or obsidian, for example, allows the archaeologist to group together objects on the basis of shared features of their raw materials (see Chemical Analysis Techniques). Although these techniques do not by themselves tell one where the sources are located, they may show that certain styles or types of pottery were made from the same or different kinds of clay. This in turn has been used to make inferences about where objects were produced. Such information may be combined with other kinds of evidence to develop models of the scale or organization of production. Research on metalworking traditions has discerned the composition of different alloys and the kinds of manufacturing techniques employed. Observation and Experimentation

Observation or experimentation provide a different means to consider the issue. Archaeologists have observed contemporary specialists or engaged in experiments to replicate ancient technologies. These studies have been extremely productive in working out both the technological and social aspects of craft specialization because of the information they generate regarding how much time is required, how many people needed, what kinds of skills are involved, and how new craft specialists are trained. Thus a great deal of social information may be acquired that would not otherwise be recoverable from the object itself. When taking an experimental approach, it is crucial to recreate the conditions of production, including the kinds of tools and facilities used, the

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raw materials and how they are processed, and the end product as closely as possible based on evidence from archaeological contexts or other sources of information. Observation of craft production or experimental reconstruction under controlled conditions often yield unexpected insight into the complexity of preindustrial or nonmechanized technologies as well as the degree to which craft specialists understand the properties of the materials with which they worked. Written and Visual Sources of Information

Finally, when available, written documents or art may provide information about craft specialization in a specific historical and cultural context. These kinds of sources have been particularly helpful in overcoming the limitations of the archaeological record in many parts of the world. Specialized production is not limited to such durable materials as clay, stone, or metal but manufacture of those materials is often what leaves the most extensive traces. Visual representations of society and written texts expand the range of kinds of crafts practiced while providing information about the social relations of production and the cultural beliefs that develop around the productive process.

Research Questions Research on craft specialization has shifted from trying to determine if it is present or absent in a particular society at some point in its history to understanding its nature and role in a given context. The two research areas that have received the most attention are political economy and social identity. Political Economy

Archaeologists interested in the study of political economy are trying to understand how economic processes, including those of production and exchange, provide support for the differential distribution of power and authority that characterize chiefdoms or middle-range societies and states. Given their focus on prehistoric societies and early civilization, archaeologists interested in these issues are often working within the context of preindustrial or noncapitalist social formations. This requires them to develop models that do not assume the same sorts of economic relations, systems of value, or modes of production as found in the modern world. The preindustrial, noncapitalist state societies that developed in both the Old and New Worlds often continued to rely on modes of production that did not develop into the sort of full-time

paid occupational specialization envisioned by Childe. In particular, production in the spatial location and social context of the household remains a primary way of organizing production. Even many attached craft specialists continue to structure the creation of goods and the training of new producers through a familial or household context even when supported by the state or elite patrons. Much of the terminology discussed earlier was developed by archaeologists interested in questions of political economy. Emerging complex societies benefited from already existing systems of craft production and specialization which helped underwrite the changes they experienced. Attached and independent specialists, when they coexist in society, are devoted to the production of different kinds of objects or materials. Attached specialists are assumed to be responsible for prestige goods that are restricted in their distribution to members of the elite and function as symbolic markers of status and political power. Independent specialists, in contrast, produce more everyday sorts of items needed by people at all levels of society. This difference requires more than one way of exchanging goods and services. Prestige goods are controlled by social and political elites who use them to create alliances, bind subordinates to them, and to make visible their claims to distinction and status. They are not available to just anyone and their use is restricted by social and possibly legal sanctions. The existence of attached specialization is seen as crucial although there is less interest in the specialists themselves and more in how their patrons deploy the prestige goods produced. The relationship between specialist and patron provides the patrons with material goods that serve as economic and symbolic capital in the ongoing negotiation of social position and political control with other members of the elite. The ability to control such goods has in fact been seen as one explanation for the emergence of social hierarchy and complexity. Thus, Childe’s original idea that specialization develops after the establishment of cities and state-level government has been reversed. Craft specialization becomes a cause, not a consequence. Goods produced by independent producers, defined as utilitarian, are distributed through less restrictive systems of exchange such as marketplaces. Anyone may obtain such items if they have the necessary means. The association between independent producers and utilitarian goods has emerged as less satisfactory than the equation of attached specialists and prestige goods (see Economic Archaeology). This is because material goods of all sorts may be used as markers of social difference, identity, and affiliation, even ones that seem to be merely tools or utensils for

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daily life. Nonelite households at the small third millennium BC site of Kurban Ho¨yu¨k (Turkey) acquired large flint blades and wheel-made pottery from specialists while continuing to produce other kinds of stone tools and make some pottery vessels by hand. The types of goods produced by specialists that were found in Kurban domestic contexts suggest that people living in this small town were not only part of a diversified regional economy but also used these goods as items of social display. Wheel-made ceramics were used for serving food which would increase their social visibility and thus their use as conveyers of social and symbolic information. The ability to manipulate such social symbols was as important to the nonelite households operating at the small scale of the domestic setting as it was to the elite. Social Identity

Although research on political economy has dominated discussions of craft specialization, another focus is the study of social identity. This research is more concerned with the specialists themselves, not as the means by which others become prominent and important but as people with social positions and roles. It seeks to determine how being involved in some sort of specialized craft production becomes one source of individual or group identity. Since not all people will produce the same things, one avenue to explore is how productive activities are allocated and how new craftspeople are recruited, trained, and supported. Certain forms of knowledge and productive activities may be widespread, other kinds of production may be the province of adult men or women, particular ethnic groups or social classes, guilds, slaves, or other subgroups within society. The consequences of being part of an system of independent or attached production for the producers themselves have also been studied. Producers of similar items may have quite different social status depending on the particular circumstances. In contrast to the Ur III example, weavers in the Vijayanagara empire (that dominated south India during the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries AD) experienced an increase in status over time. Weavers were independent specialists organized by households or communities, not slaves or semi-free individuals as in the case of Mesopotamia. The assumption that producers are inherently of lower social status or belong to a lower social class than the patrons to whom they are attached and would thus be excluded from use of the very things they make has been challenged by consideration of social identity. Even when independent specialists are believed to exist, they are generally taken to be different from those who rule or make up the social elite. Some archaeologists have demonstrated that in fact

members of the elite or the ruling class may indeed also be craft producers. Although their support may not derive primarily from their productive activities, they are generally producing more than they need for their own purposes. This makes it possible to think of them as a kind of craft specialist whose social position becomes part of how their work is valued by society. Their existence has been demonstrated among the pre-Columbian Maya of Mesoamerica and the Native American groups of the northwest coast of the United States, including Alaska, and Canada. Research on craft production in other Native American societies demonstrates that often the producer and user of symbolically significant objects are the same person. Ritual specialists make their own paraphernalia as part of their religious role in society, a role that onfers social status on those who fill it. These investigations indicate that the production of material symbols of prestige may take different forms. Acquiring control over the labor of others and over what they produce is one form but by no means the only one. Social identity shifts the focus from attached or independent specialists as hard and fast categories to demonstrate how the same producers may fill multiple roles. Ironworkers in the Toro kingdom of Uganda might be both part-time independent producers in the context of their village and also specialists supported by the Toro ruler at the royal court, moving between these roles and locations as needed. By directing attention to questions of identity, archaeologists do not limit themselves to the study of a select few in society. They are able to bring in issues of gender and ethnicity as well as taking a more inclusive approach to the study of social status or class. In the process, the interconnections between cultural values and economic relations have come into sharper focus. At the same time, the complexity of these interconnections in any given social context become easier to see as well as how those connections changed over time. The topic of identity has also proved useful in studying specialization in less stratified or centralized societies but has also augmented political economic studies of chiefdoms and states.

Summation Craft specialization intersects with a range of crucial questions in the quest to understand what past societies were like and to explain social change. Although ostensibly economic, it pertains to a number of social domains, including those involving the construction of social difference, the maintenance of social hierarchy, and the consolidation of political power in the hands of the few. At the same time, it provides a way to consider issues of identity and role across society.

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Archaeologists have expended much thought and debate on the best ways to study craft specialization. Intensity, scale, location, and social relations have been recognized as important aspects of the process. Like all analytical concepts, full- and part-time specialization, household versus workshop production locations, or attached versus independent specialists are useful heuristics that allow archaeologists to construct explanatory models. As heuristics, they are subject to ongoing refinement and questioning as a result of both new evidence and new thinking about the underlying framework of the models to which they contribute. See also: Chemical Analysis Techniques; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Economic Archaeology; Exchange Systems; Experimental Archaeology; Identity and Power; Marxist Archaeology; Political Complexity, Rise of; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Social Inequality, Development of; Social Theory; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites; Textiles.

Further Reading Brumfiel EM and Earle TK (eds.) (1987) Specialization, Exchange, and Complex Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Childe VG (1951) Man Makes Himself. New York: The New American Library. Clark JE (1995) Craft specialization as an archaeological category. Research in Economic Anthropology 16: 267–294. Costin CL (2001) Craft production systems. In: Feinman GF and Price TD (eds.) Archaeology at the Millennium: A Sourcebook, pp. 273–327. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Costin CL and Wright RP (eds.) (1998) Craft and Social Identity. Arlington, VA: American Anthropological Association. Cross JR (1993) Craft specialization and cultural complexity. Research in Economic Anthropology 14: 61–84. Graham-Campbell J (ed.) (1991) Craft production and specialization World Archaeology 23(1): 1–130. Lechtman H (1993) Technologies of power: The Andean case. In: Henderson JS and Netherly P (eds.) Configurations of Power: Holistic Anthropology in Theory and Practice, pp. 244–280. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Patterson TC (2005) Craft specialization, the reorganization of production relations and state formation. Journal of Social Archaeology 5: 307–337. Schortman EM and Urban PA (2004) Modeling the roles of craft production in ancient political economies. Journal of Archaeological Research 12: 185–226. Stein GJ and Blackman MJ (1993) The organizational context of specialized craft production in early Mesopotamian states. Research in Economic Anthropology 14: 29–59. Wailes B (ed.) (1996) Craft Specialization and Social Evolution: In Memory of V. Gordon Childe. Philadelphia: The University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.

CULTURAL ECOLOGY Marion Blute, University of Toronto at Mississauga, Mississauga, ON, Canada ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary archaeobotany The study of plant remains from archaeological sites. cultural ecology The study of the interaction between cultures and their environments. ecology The study of the interaction between organisms and their environments. environmental and ecological archaeology The study of the relationship between past human populations and their environments. geoarchaeology The study of the geology of archaeological settlements and sites. horticulture A mode of subsistence in which people farm using hand tools. hunting and gathering A mode of subsistence in which people gather wild plants and hunt wild animals. intensive agriculture A mode of subsistence in which people farm more intensively than do horticulturalists employing draft animals for labor.

pastoralism A mode of subsistence in which people live primarily off herds of mammalian herbivores which they herd or follow. zooarchaeology The study of animal remains from archaeological sites.

The material remains that archaeologists normally study (the remnants of artifacts such as the tools, pottery, buildings, and settlements of past human societies) is logically part of culture more broadly. First, culture also includes languages as well as socially learned customs, beliefs, and values; these merged into social roles, statuses, or identities and these aggregated in turn into organizations and institutions. Hence, material culture needs to be placed in the context of culture more generally. Second, since human (including cultural) ecology is logically part of ecology more broadly, it needs to be placed in that context. Although the actual historical story of the evolution of these fields of study is considerably more complex than these simple logical distinctions, they are used here as organizing principles and hence the

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discussion will proceed from ecology to human (specifically cultural) ecology, and thence to environmental and ecological archaeology including a discussion of the impact of people on their environments. Finally, we will turn to some general theoretical issues which cut across these related fields of study and some conclusions.

Ecology The term ‘ecology’ was coined by the biologist Ernest Haeckel in 1869. It has come to mean the study of all aspects of the interaction between organisms and their environments. The latter include the physical (abiotic) environment and other species (the biotic environment). In the broadest sense, ecology includes interactions with the environment involving all biological processes, including physiology, development, demography, social interaction, and evolution. It includes these at all levels, including individuals, populations of a single species, pairs of interacting species, and communities/ecosystems of multiple species. Historically, the most emphasis was placed on ecology as a pure science, on the effect of the ecological environment on organisms rather than vice versa, and on particular processes at particular levels. These latter included demographic processes (births, deaths, dispersal, and population growth rates and sizes) both at the level of single populations and pairs of populations interacting competitively (

), mutualistically (þ þ), or antagonistically (þ
), as well as the flow of energy and materials through, and the degree of species richness in ecosystems. In recent decades these have been supplemented with more emphasis on applied problems of environmental management, on the effects of organisms on the ecological environment (niche construction), and on other processes such as the physiology of individuals (physiological ecology) and the evolution of populations (evolutionary ecology). Because people are animals too, the relationship with their ecological environment can and has been studied from a biological perspective, much like that of any other species. On the other hand, people are not just another kind of animal. Admittedly, this human ‘exceptionalism’ we now know is quantitative rather than qualitative. The members of many species of birds and mammals particularly are known to communicate, fashion and use simple tools, learn socially by observation from each other, and more rarely to be capable of communicating employing simple rules – in short, to have culture. The extensiveness of social learning, of the use of language to instruct and be instructed, particularly in their application to technology is so great, however, in the human species, that the quantitative has become qualitative. Any

human ecology which did not take significantly into account, not simply our great flexibility in learning individually by trial and error for example, but the extensiveness of our second (cultural) inheritance and evolutionary system which has transformed the face of the planet would be seriously deficient.

Cultural Ecology The phrase ‘cultural ecology’ was first used by the anthropologists Julian Steward and Leslie White in the 1950s. It was defined by Steward as ‘‘the adaptive processes by which the nature of society and an unpredictable number of features of culture are affected by the basic adjustment through which man utilizes a given environment.’’ It has come to mean the study of all aspects of the interaction between human cultures and their ecological environments. Like other sciences, much of cultural ecology is classificatory and descriptive. In particular, cultural ecologists commonly distinguish among societies with different subsistence patterns (ways of making a living from nature), distinguishing in particular among hunting and gathering, horticultural, pastoral, and intensive agricultural societies. Hunting and Gathering

In hunting and gathering societies, people eat wild food (see Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient). They do little to actively control the reproduction of exploited species. They do utilize a great array of plant and animal species of which they possess detailed knowledge, but commonly concentrate on the tubers, seeds, nuts, and fruits of plants as well as small animals and birds. A few have specialized in hunting large animals. Hunter-gatherers may be sedentary if a rich store of resources is available locally as was the case with salmon for the Nuu-chah-nulth of the British Columbia coast and with sea mammals for the Chumash of the California coast. In such cases, population sizes can become large and social organization complex. In most cases, however, hunter-gatherers live in small bands of an average of 25 or so and rarely more than 40 people. They are mobile in some or all of three ways. First, they may travel frequently, foraging through a familiar landscape on a route timed to when resources are expected to become available. Second, they may instead, or in addition, make trips, often in smaller groups, out from a short or longer-term home base, collecting resources which are brought back to the home base. Finally, they may migrate into a wholly new area. The social organization of hunter-gatherers tends to be fairly simple, with a low level of division of labor based on age and gender. Birth rates are lower

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than in horticultural societies with the spacing of children achieved in part by lengthy nursing. Women tend to specialize in gathering plant material, men in hunting animals. The more mobile they are, the fewer are their material possessions. Social inequality is low. Animal food, particularly large animals, is shared among families, a practice which works like insurance. It reduces the risk for all concerned when the results of hunts are variable and surpluses cannot be stored. Membership in bands tends to be fluid with families and individuals sometimes moving between bands, such shifts having the effect of equalizing band sizes more and permitting new family formations. Once all humans were hunter-gatherers and it was by means of this mode of subsistence that they spread out to populate the Earth. As all parts of the world became inhabited, however, and some groups turned to agriculture to make a living, hunter-gatherers came to be limited to more marginal habitats. Relationships between hunter-gatherers and farmers tend to be uneasy for obvious reasons, but in some cases, mutualistic relationships have been established with trade between them, based on an exchange of wild for cultivated foods. Despite the limitations that most people having turned to agriculture has placed on hunter-gathers, many anthropological studies have shown that this way of life remains successful for some – even providing greater leisure, for example, than other modes of subsistence. Some huntergatherers that have been studied by anthropologists are Australian Aborigines, the Inuit of the Canadian arctic, the San of the Kalahari desert in southern Africa and the Batak of the Philippines.

within societies. Small intensively cultivated gardens, sometimes terraced, may be maintained near home, while plots for different species which are less intensively cultivated are located further afield. The degree of control over the reproduction of domesticated species can also vary from simply controlling what species grows where to practicing some selective breeding, choosing the best individuals in a domesticated species for material to plant and breed. Horticulturalists are sedentary. Their population sizes, birth rates, and density (numbers per unit land area) are typically larger and social organization more complex than that of hunter-gatherers. Horticulturalists live in families which may or may not be extended, with family households commonly grouped in villages. Groups which are actually or mythically related by common descent (lineages, clans) are commonly recognized, with the whole constituting a tribe or ethnic group which shares a common culture, language, and way of life. Disputes within and between lineages/clans tend to be settled by informal discussion among the senior males of the groups involved although some develop chiefdoms (see below). The less intensive the cultivation, the more likely it is that rights to cultivate plots can be redistributed among families by clan elders as family sizes wax and wane but the more intensive the cultivation, the more these rights come to approach being treated as family property. Some examples of horticultural societies which have been studied by anthropologists are the Dani of highland New Guinea, the Nuer and Dinka of East Africa, the Kofyar of the Jos Plateau of Northern Nigeria, and the Yanomamo of northwestern Brazil.

Horticulture

Pastoralism

Horticultural societies practice small-scale agriculture with human labor using hand tools and without draft animals, although they may keep small domesticated animals such as chickens and pigs. The extent to which horticulturalists alter the landscape and control the reproduction of domesticated species in order to make a living from nature can vary greatly. Slash and burn or shifting cultivation is sometimes practiced in tropical forests where fields are cleared, planted, and abandoned after a few years when the soil becomes exhausted. Swidden agriculture is a more sustainable system in which fields are reused regularly after a fallow period. Because the diversity of biological species increases towards the equator and decreases towards the poles, tropical horticulture can be a very complex phenomenon with many different species whose requirements complement each other interplanted, which mature at different times, and are used for different purposes. Elsewhere, the intensity of cultivation can vary greatly between and

Pastoralists derive all or the majority of their food and other resources from domesticated animals which they herd – goats, sheep, llamas, camels, cattle etc., or less commonly simply follow, for example, reindeer. Pastoralism is really a form of gathering except that instead of gathering directly, pastoralists herd herbivores that gather, that is, which graze on grasses or browse on bushes that humans cannot digest, and then the people live on the animals – on their milk, blood, meat, wool, hides, dung (useful for fuel), etc. The animals may provide transportation as well. Like hunter-gatherers, all pastoralists are mobile to varying degrees. They may be almost continuously nomadic, herding their animals on a route timed to when resources are expected to be available, for example, among waterholes, between lowland and upland pastures, etc. Alternatively, or in addition, they may make trips (often in smaller groups, usually composed of younger males, but which can extend to all males) out from, and back to, a shorter or a

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longer-term home base. The most common intentional landscape alteration they engage in is burning to control the ratio of grass to brush but they often practice quite sophisticated selective breeding of their animals. Pastoralists live at higher population densities than hunter-gatherers but lower than horticulturists. Because they often have animals available for transporting goods, they usually have more material possessions than hunter-gatherers. Social organization among pastoralists can vary from small band-like groups of families all the way through tribes and in some cases chiefdoms (see below). More commonly however, like horticulturalists, pastoral societies are segmentary with a number of lineages to varying degrees of depth recognized. At the most inclusive level, a group of clans constitute the tribe. Some examples of pastoral societies which have been studied by anthropologists are the Saami of northern Scandinavia, the Nuer and Maasai of east Africa, and the Najavo of the American southwest. Intensive Agriculture

Intensive agriculturalists farm with energy from animals yoked to plows. They alter the landscape much more than do horticulturalists, plowing larger fields and employing a great variety of methods of intensification (acquiring more resources per unit land area) by irrigating (controlling floods, diverting streams, building dams and canals, digging wells, and terracing) as well as by fertilizing, rotating crops, and selectively breeding crops and livestock. Agricultural production typically is concentrated on a single root or grain crop. Their population sizes, birth rates, and population densities are all higher than those of horticultural societies. Intensive agriculturalists are sedentary. Their farming yields a surplus beyond that needed to feed those who actually do the work of farming and caring for animals. This permits at least some craft specialization and, in the case of the most productive, a whole strata or series of strata of craft specialists and religious, political, military, and bureaucratic leaders in archaic states. Despite its productivity, the narrowing of diet which tends to occur under intensive agriculture and the social inequality which increases may result in deficiency diseases and poorer health, at least for some. Those who do the actual agricultural work may live, or live part of the time, near their fields. However, intensive agricultural societies all include villages or towns with ceremonial centers, and in the case of states, a series of such, which form satellites around an even larger urban center. Social organization under intensive agriculture is based on chiefdoms or states. Chiefdoms can arise by coercion, but are commonly believed to arise most

often in horticultural and pastoral societies beginning with ‘big men’. These are senior clan males whose personal qualities – spiritual power, deep ecological knowledge, wisdom in settling disputes, oratorical or fighting ability, and so on – set them apart as charismatic and they acquire power and prestige. As mentioned previously, they may become responsible for settling disputes and redistributing land and other resources among families within clans as family sizes wax and wane. The same thing can occur on a higher level as one clan, having acquired a reputation for producing such men, is elevated and serves the same functions among clans. Chiefdoms have emerged when these chiefly statuses on one or more levels become hereditary. Chiefdoms tend to be politically unstable for three sociological reasons. One is greed. Their material demands (gifts, tribute, etc.) originally seen as just compensation for the time and effort put into managing the community’s affairs, may become excessive. Religious manipulation and coercion may come to replace service more and more, and as a consequence, they may be overthrown by revolt from below. The second is the succession problem. Sons may not possess the abilities of their fathers, or there may be conflict among them over succession. The third is that the ecological conditions supporting more intensive agriculture and pastoralism and which, by their surplus production, lead to the nucleation of chiefdoms, can lead to similar nucleation in adjacent territories. This can lead to disputes and wars over territory and subjects, particularly if resources become scarce for ecological reasons. Some examples of intensive agriculturalists that have been studied by anthropologists are the Tamang of Nepal, the Mexican village of Cacurpe, and the Kofyar of central Nigeria. Ecological factors (other than access to plentiful water for productive agriculture) such as locations that are a crossroad for trade, play a role in the rise of states. With state level social organization (sometimes called ancient or archaic civilizations), kinship as the basis of large-scale social organization is broken down and replaced by endogamous strata. The bond of kinship that binds leaders to followers, even in chiefdoms, is broken. Instead, a state religion typically holds that kings of states have a different, supernatural origin from commoners, giving them a divine right to rule. Strata replace kinship as the most important organizing principle in society. One is born into a distinct strata of which at least two, commoner and nobility, are present. The leaders of states have more power than do those of chiefdoms, with a greater capacity to raise taxes, make laws, regulate and engage in long distance trade, draft soldiers, and allocate land and labor. The largest settlement is a city

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and large architectural projects like palaces, tombs, and ceremonial centers are undertaken. States have larger and more different kinds of nonagricultural specialists including a variety of full-time craft specialists as well as full-time priests, administrators, soldiers, architects, and builders of public buildings, and not uncommonly artists, scientists, and historians. The latter primarily record dynastic history. All human groups are known to have mechanisms to control and reduce aggression and violence within the group and to engage in it between groups, whether these be bands of hunter-gatherers, the tribes of horticulturalists and pastoralists, or the chiefdoms and states of intensive agriculturalists. Obviously, however, the consequences of group aggression and violence (war) are greater the larger the units involved. For obvious reasons states have primarily been studied by archaeologists and they include states that emerged independently on all continents except for Antarctica and Oceania, for example in the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, Northern China, Mesoamerica, and in the Andean region of South America.

Environmental and Ecological Archaeology Environmental and ecological archaeology is the study of the relationship between past human populations and their environments. Rather than study human artifacts themselves, the tools, pottery, buildings etc. that other archaeologists concern themselves with, environmental and ecological archaeologists study the geological and biotic environment and components of archaeological settlements and sites. There are three main subfields – geoarchaeology, archaeobotany (sometimes called paleobotany or even paleoethnobotany), and zooarchaeology (sometimes called archaezoology). Geoarchaeology is the study of the geology of archaeological settlements and sites. Archaeobotany is the study of plant remains and zooarchaeology of animal remains from archaeological sites. Geoarchaeology

The geoarchaeology of a settlement or site includes the nature of the underlying bedrock; ‘drift’ deposits from ice sheets, rivers, and ancient lakes; and ‘landforms’ of sediments shaped by subsequent deposition or erosion. (The term ‘geomorphology’, literally the shape of the landscape, is sometimes used to apply to all three and, sometimes, only to the latter.) Geology in general, and landforms in particular, are important because they affect things such as water supplies, potential communication routes, defensibility, and

agricultural potential. They are particularly important in the study of paleolithic sites because landforms may well have been changed by natural processes since they were inhabited, affecting interpretations of other data. In addition, human activity itself, particularly intensive agriculture, alters the landscape. Hence, understanding landscapes and the changes they have undergone through time are critically important in understanding archaeological sites. Mapping, including remote sensing techniques, are important in geoarchaeology. The study of sediments and surface soils is also as important. Many physical and chemical properties of sediments and soils have been studied, normally away from the field in laboratories, or in experiments replicating ancient conditions and practices, both of which have resulted in significant information about the origin, preservation, and destruction of archaeological sites. Archaeobotany and Zooarchaeology

Plant and animal remains from archaeological sites and settlements are particularly informative. They can be used to distinguish the type of biome present – tropical forest, temperate deciduous forest, temperate coniferous forest, grasslands, desert, tundra, and mountains – some of which may have changed over the time of human occupation. Plant remains including nut shells, fruit stones, grains, and seeds can be informative about mode of subsistence, land use, diet, and changes in these. Particularly well developed is the study of pollen and spores. These are often well preserved because they were naturally selected to disperse and be resistant to various kinds of stress. They are usually separated from soil samples by flotation and studied under microscopes and even their DNA is sometimes analyzed. This permits identification down to the species level and, in some cases, can show changes in species through time, reflecting climate change or selective breeding. Similarly, animal remains can be informative about the biome as well as about fishing and the hunting and domestication of animals. Again, certain parts are more likely than others to be preserved, for instance, shells, insect exoskeletons, and the bones of fish and small and large mammals. One ‘micro’ example of the success of environmental and ecological archaeology involves a ‘farm mound’ on Papa Westray, an island in the Orkney archipelago off the northern tip of Scotland. The mound, once thought to result from either a dung heap or a decayed and replaced turf building, was shown by a combination of geoarchaeological, archaeobotanical, and zooarchaeological methods to be the remains of a twelfth-century fish-processing site. One ‘macro’ example is the light they have shed on

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the mass extinctions of mega-fauna (large animals) around the world which followed shortly after the arrival of prehistoric humans (see discussion below). Impact on the Environment

Both cultural anthropologists and archaeologists have normally described the relationship of cultures and past human populations with the environment as an ‘interactive’ one. Practically, however, historically both tended to place more emphasis on the effects of the environment on people rather than the effects of people on the environment. In recent years, though, that has changed. Archaeological research has made it clear that there never was an ‘Eden’ in which people lived in a stable, harmonious balance with their environment. It is also the case that as the scale of human societies increased, as both population sizes and the amount of resources acquired from nature per capita increased from hunting and gathering through horticulture and pastoralism through intensive agriculture, the ‘footprint’ left on the Earth has increased. This has, of course, reached its apogee in industrial societies in which human and animal labor has largely been replaced by machines using fossil fuels, the type of society not commonly studied by archaeologists. Resource depletion and environmental degradation have been ubiquitous, but generally increasing in human history. Archaeological evidence for the impact of humans on the environment comes from a great many parts of the world, time periods, modes of subsistence, and social organization. They include the massive extinction of birds by Polynesian colonizers; deforestation of the Maya lowlands; the salinization of lands in southern Mesopotamia; social erosion in ancient Greece; the deforestation and elimination of virtually all bird fauna on Easter Island; and the extinction of mega-fauna at the end of the last ice age after upper Paleolithic hunters of Siberia crossed the Bering Straits to the Americas. In the latter case, climate change may have played a role, but so did humans in the extinction of mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, horses, and camels. There are now available archaeological landscape histories of all of the major civilizations, including Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus valley, China, Mesoamerica, and the Andean region of South America. Most reveal resource depletion and environmental degradation resulting from interactions between climate change and landscape changes resulting from human activities, particularly deforestation, overgrazing, and salinity from irrigation. In more recent history, the devastation has spread from terrestrial to freshwater and marine ecosystems.

Some Theoretical Issues Discrete or Continuous?

We described different modes of subsistence and associated forms of social organization almost as if wholly discrete. While they do not form a smooth continuum, the distinctions are more like multimodel clusters than discrete kinds. For example, some primarily hunter-gatherers may cultivate a small patch of a basic food plant in a cleared patch, abandoning it to look after itself until they harvest it on their next return. All pastoralists utilize some plant foods which they may acquire by trade or cultivating small gardens. Members of horticultural, intensive agricultural, and even industrial societies eat some wild foods, and the latter may keep small gardens around their homes. This variability is also true of social organization. While no hunting and gathering society has been organized as a state and no state has subsisted exclusively on wild food, in between there is a fair amount of overlap. For example, horticultural and pastoral societies can be socially organized along kin-based tribal lines or as chiefdoms, and intensive agricultural societies can be socially organized based on chiefdoms or states. Evolution

In the social as in the life sciences, ecological and evolutionary theories are closely linked. It is often forgotten, for example, that Julian Steward first discussed cultural ecology in a book titled Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution. Some degree of variability within a particular mode of subsistence and social organization as described above is inevitable, given that the different modes are related by common cultural descent from hunting and gathering which was the primordial mode of human subsistence. However, biologically, just as prokaryotic cells evolved from eukaryotic ones does not mean that prokaryotic cells did not persist, and that multicellular organisms evolved from unicellular ones does not mean that unicellular organisms did not persist; culturally, the fact that horticulture evolved (branched from) hunting and gathering, and that pastoralism evolved (branched from) horticulture, as they are believed to have done, does not mean that hunting and gathering and horticulture did not persist. Culture, like life itself, evolves by descent with modification in a ‘multilineal’ fashion, like a branching tree, rather than developing like a single organism does in a linear sequence of stages. The Role of Ecology and History

Although there are others like drift (sampling error) and the laws of physics and chemistry, biological

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evolutionists emphasize that two forces largely explain the existing array of organisms – the forces of selection and the weight of history. Darwin called these ‘the conditions of existence’ and ‘the unity of type’. While the different modes of subsistence described are historically related, that is so only in a very general sense. In other words, culturally different modes of subsistence and forms of social organization are more like biological ‘guilds’ (organisms which occupy a similar niche and follow a similar way of life) than they are like biological ‘clades’ (all the descendants of a common ancestor). For example, we know with confidence that agriculture evolved independently in a number of different places in the world. Only archaeological research can reveal actual historical affinities. What is the Mechanism of Cultural Adaptation?

The concept of adaptation is ubiquitous in cultural ecology and ecological and environmental archaeology. Different modes of subsistence are different modes of adaptation to the ecological environment. In biology, there is a mechanism explaining adaptation. At its most basic, the mechanism is Darwin’s natural selection, natural selection acting among alternative alleles or versions of a gene. But what is the mechanism of cultural adaptation? Many theorists across a wide variety of social sciences today think that cultural evolution is an analogous process (or an instance of the same general class of selection processes). The basic elements of an evolutionary process – transmission, variation, and selection – are the same except that cultural evolution is based on social learning or meme-based transmission rather than the gene-based. This theoretical perspective is very well-developed in archaeology where methods of classification originating in biology are increasingly used to understand the historical relationships among artifacts, for example. Of course, there remain a variety of other theoretical perspectives. For example, just as developmental biologists prefer to begin the story of life with individual organisms growing and developing rather than with members of populations of adults differentially reproducing, many social scientists prefer to begin the story of culture with individuals learning and/or making rational choices, rather than with members of cultural populations being differentially transmitted by social learning. Similarly, just as some biologists prefer to emphasize the way that organisms construct their environments (niche construction) rather than how populations of them are structured by it, some social scientists prefer to emphasize how culture constructs nature rather than how it is structured by it. While these development versus

evolution and construction versus structure ‘chicken-and-egg’ problems have not been entirely resolved in either realm, it is likely that the alternative perspectives in either case will eventually be understood as being compatible. That, at least, is the assumption generally made by biologists. Still other theorists are impressed with the overwhelming importance of rituals in human society. The ecologically oriented, however, have shown that even some very exotic rituals can be shown to be ecologically adaptive and some ritual-like behavior is known to occur among animals. There it generally serves the same kind of function as it does in humans, either inducing an emotional state which promotes conformity or testing the propensity of individuals to conform, prior to some group activity important for ecological reasons. More to the point here than these various theoretical debates, the evolutionary– ecological perspective implies that many principles of evolutionary ecology that are biological in origin can be applied to cultural ecology. The Evolutionary Ecology of Culture

It is a general principle of foraging that low densities relative to resources favor eating (acquiring more resources), while high densities favor digesting (deriving more breakdown products from each such resource unit acquired). Cultures behave similarly. Even hunter-gatherers process food in various ways – use tools to cut off the most tender cuts of meat; chop, pound, and winnow plant foods; and cook many different kinds of foods. These are all methods of pre-digestion, suggesting that even hunter-gatherers experience resource pressures. Indeed, all techniques of cultivation used in horticulture and intensive agriculture, techniques such as irrigating and fertilizing, are methods of intensification, of deriving more resources from each land unit. On a larger scale, low densities favor growth while high densities favor motility in a colonizable environment, maintenance in a renewable one, and mutability (innovation) in one with environmental carrying capacity unutilized for historical reasons. While all cultures use all of these strategies to some degree, huntergatherers tend to emphasize motility, moving on when resources become depleted. Agricultural societies tend to emphasize maintenance, methods of storing and preserving food until at least the next harvest. Industrial societies tend to be very technologically innovative. Density dependence is only one kind of example; there are other evolutionary–ecological principles of potential relevance to cultural ecology and archaeology, principles such as scale, frequency, and heterogeneity-dependent selection.

1066 CULTURAL ECOLOGY Co-evolution

If culture and not genes only evolve in the human species, then the relationship between them is a coevolutinary one according to many theorists, that is, our genes and culture evolve in interaction with each other. Surprisingly, whether adaptation in any particular case is achieved genetically or culturally may not have made much difference for most of the history of our species because as long as transmission is from parents to offspring or at least among closely related kin, the results of the two are generally predicted to be similar. It is only with the coming of non-kin based social organization and ultimately dense populations, cities, schools, mass communications, etc. that genetic and cultural transmission and hence adaptation begin to diverge (think of modern difficulties in achieving ‘life-work balance’). More to the point here, however, it is believed that the relationship between human culture and the biology of other species has been a co-evolutionary one. There are three basic modes of co-evolution – competition (

), cooperation or mutualism (þ þ), and antagonism (þ
). The relationship between domesticated species and the cultural practices of domestication are generally thought to be mutualistic, that is, a relationship from which both parties benefit. There are characteristic changes which tend to take place in species under domestication. These include more docile personalities, a reduction in the size of weapons like horns, and a general loss or at least a reduction in the ability to defend themselves from predators and parasites, functions which we tend to assume. Once some of these have been achieved, sizes tend to increase again. While our relationship with domesticated species may largely be mutualistic, there is no doubt that our relationship with most species has been antagonistic, in particular one in which we benefit and they lose. The evidence is strong that we are in a period of mass extinction of species rivaled only by the half dozen or so mass extinctions of planetary history, but this time brought about by us, largely through habitat destruction. To be fair, we also remain the victims of a number of viral, bacterial, and protozoan parasites.

Conclusion The story that cultural ecology and environmental and ecological archaeology have to tell about our history is, at one and the same time, inspiring and discouraging. On the one hand, the story is one of human ingenuity, of anatomically modern humans’ ability to persist and even thrive for roughly 100 000 years, facing the challenges of every climactic zone and ecological

environment on the face of the Earth – a story of success matched by no other single species. At the same time, it is also the story of how we have achieved this at the expense of the physical environment including its climate, as well as at the expense of a myriad of other species in all ecosystems – terrestrial, freshwater, and marine – to the extent that we ourselves may now be threatened. So what of the future? Jared Diamond, in his comparative study of the successes and failures of past societies, concluded that there are five contributing factors to societal success and failure. Environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, and friendly trading partners may be significant in any particular case, but a society’s response to its problems, particularly to environmental ones, is always significant. He concluded that some societies have proved sustainable over much longer periods of time than others and that archaeological knowledge, in particular, can allow us to learn from others’ mistakes. It is also possible, however, that the science fiction writer Douglas Adams and the physicist Stephen Hawking are also right. It may be in the very nature of life itself to grow and reproduce beyond the carrying capacity of its environment. Our species may be only unusual in the ecological dominance we have achieved. If so, then while Diamond may be right in the short and intermediate run, the only answer in the very long run may be, as Adams and Hawking have suggested, to eventually continue our long history of expansion, but next off this planet. See also: Agriculture: Biological Impact on Populations; Social Consequences; Animal Domestication; Archaeozoology; Geoarchaeology; Human–Landscape Interactions; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient; Paleoethnobotany; Plant Domestication; Political Complexity, Rise of.

Further Reading Bates DG (2005) Human Adaptive Strategies: Ecology, Culture and Politics, 3rd edn. Boston: Pearson Education. Begon M, Townsend CR, and Harper JL (2005) Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems, 4th edn. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Branch N, Canti M, Clark P, and Turney C (2005) Environmental Archaeology: Theoretical and Practical Approaches. London: Hodder Education. Diamond J (2005) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. London: Viking Penguin. Moran EF (2006) People and Nature: An Introduction to Human Ecological Relations. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Netting RM (1986) Cultural Ecology, 2nd edn. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, Inc. O’Connor T and Evans JG (2005) Environmental Archaeology: Principles and Methods, 2nd edn. Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing Limited.

CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT 1067 Odling-Smee FJ, Laland KN, and Feldman MW (2003) Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Redman CL (1999) Human Impact on Ancient Environments. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Sutton MQ and Anderson EN (2004) Introduction to Cultural Ecology. Walnut Creek, CA: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Cultural Heritage Legislation and Antiquities

Legislation.

Cultural Heritage Sites

See: Antiquities and Cultural Heritage

See: World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Donald L Hardesty, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary ARPA (The Archaeological Resources Protection Act 1979) An act to regulate finds on federal and Indian lands and to prevent looting and destruction of archaeological resources. cultural resources A broad category that describes a wide variety of resources including archaeological sites, isolated artifacts, features, records, manuscripts, historical sites, traditional cultural properties, historical resources, and historic properties, regardless of significance. excavation The principal method of data acquisition in archaeology, involving the systematic uncovering of archaeological remains through the removal of the deposits of soil and the other material covering them and accompanying them. salvage archaeology A term applied to the emergency salvage of sites in immediate danger of destruction by major land modification projects such as reservoir construction. historic preservation A movement to protect buildings with historic value from destruction or extensive renovation.

Introduction Cultural resource management (CRM) is the theory and practice of managing, preserving, and interpreting cultural resources within a social and legal context. ‘Cultural resources’ refers to a wide variety of material and nonmaterial expressions of human social groups and cultures in the environment. The category includes archaeological remains, buildings and structures, landscapes and places, towns and neighborhoods, objects, historical documents, folk traditions, and other things associated with and valued by people. Compliance or rescue archaeology is

the most common practice of CRM but it also includes architectural and engineering documentation, public history, and landscape history.

History of CRM The history of CRM has roots in ancient civilizations. Han dynasty emperors in China collected ancient artifacts, for example, and the Roman Emperor Hadrian preserved some ancient monuments. In the modern world, Renaissance Rome established a program to document and preserve ancient houses and monuments in the Vatican as early as 1462, following a decree by Pope Pius II. In 1666, Sweden passed the first law in Europe prohibiting the destruction of antiquities and applied the law to all of its citizens except the aristocracy. The English state showed a concern for civic monuments as early as the reign of Henry VIII and protected old royal strongholds and religious buildings. England passed antiquities legislation prohibiting the destruction of prehistoric remains in 1882. The Ancient Monuments Act, amended several times over the following decades, allowed the state to purchase and maintain guardianship over ancient monuments (see Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation). In the United States, the city of Philadelphia purchased and preserved Independence Hall (the Old State House) in 1816 to prevent its demolition for a subdivision. Congress mandated the Smithsonian Institution to explore the archaeological remains of the ‘mound builders’ as early as the 1840s. The Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union, founded in 1853, appears to be the first civic preservation organization in the United States and raised money to purchase and preserve President George Washington’s

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estate. Congress established Yellowstone National Park in 1872 and purchased Civil War battlefield sites for preservation over the next few years. In 1889, federal legislation was passed to designate the prehistoric Pueblo site of Casa Grande in Arizona as the nation’s first national monument and to fund its preservation. Court decisions prevented the construction of a railroad through the Gettysburg Battlefield in 1896. Not until the Antiquities Act of 1906, however, which prohibited the excavation of antiquities on public land without a federal permit and authorized the President to designate national monuments, did federal legislation establish a general foundation for CRM in the United States. Congress subsequently created the National Park Service in 1916 as the first governmental manager of natural and cultural resources and gave it authority in 1935 under the Historic Sites Act to document, acquire, and protect nationally important historical sites, objects, and buildings. The act also created the National Historic Landmarks program. Early CRM programs emerged during the Great Depression in the 1930s and 1940s in the context of federal relief programs such as the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The Legal Framework of CRM Most CRM laws and policies, however, emerged after World War II and established the foundation for current compliance or rescue archaeology and other CRM practices (see Historic Preservation Laws). Legislation and funding for these practices vary widely throughout the world. Thus, Germany instituted a variety of laws between 1953 and 1993 that both required the state to fund CRM projects and required developers proposing projects with impacts on cultural resources to pay according to the ‘polluter pays principle’. In England, several modifications to the Ancient Monuments Act culminated in the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act of 1979, followed by the creation of English Heritage in 1983 as an institution to fund CRM projects. The establishment of the polluter pays principle in 1990 shifted the primary mission of English Heritage away from funding to serving as an advisor on CRM projects. At the same time, competitive tendering, which involves bidding by several competing archaeological contractors for each project, emerged as the principal management system for the current practice of CRM. In the United States, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 and the Reservoir Salvage Act of 1960

authorized ‘salvage’ archaeology of antiquities threatened by the construction of highways, dams, and reservoirs. The passage of National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in 1966 (and later amendments), however, established the foundation for the modern practice of CRM. The act mandated that all federal agencies take into account the impact of their activities upon significant historical properties and established the existing regulatory framework and institutions for the management of cultural resources in the United States. NHPA created the National Register of Historic Places, the Advisory Council for Historic Preservation, and a system of state officers (now known as State Historic Preservation Officers or SHPOs) to administer federal historic preservation grants to the states. Later amendments to NHPA further stipulated that federal agencies must inventory and evaluate for national register eligibility all cultural resources under their jurisdiction, allow the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation to review and comment upon the potential impacts of proposed agency projects upon cultural resources, and mitigate any adverse impacts to significant cultural resources. In 1969, Congress passed the National Environmental Protection Act of 1969 (NEPA). NEPA established a national policy for preserving the environment and mandated that the impact of federally funded projects upon both natural and cultural resources be evaluated through the preparation of environmental assessments and environmental impact statements, a process that involves the public. Executive Order 11593, issued by President Richard Nixon in 1973, ordered federal agencies to treat cultural resources potentially eligible for the national register as if they were listed. The Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act of 1974 (the Moss–Bennett Bill) amended the 1960 Reservoir Salvage Act and provided funding for federally mandated CRM projects. Congress passed the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 (ARPA), which required federal agencies to issue uniform procedures (e.g., permits, ownership, penalties) for the treatment of archaeological resources on federal and Indian lands. In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA); NAGPRA requires federal agencies or repositories that receive federal funds to repatriate human remains and cultural objects to Indian tribes who can show historical or cultural connections. Compliance with NEPA and Section 106 of NHPA is the cornerstone of the practice of CRM in the United States but also includes practices associated with NAGPRA, ARPA, historic buildings and structures, landscapes and places, and other cultural resources.

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CRM Practice The practice of CRM takes place within the legal framework discussed above. In the United States, for example, the practice of CRM is focused on compliance with Section 106 of NHPA, which requires that federal agencies consider the impact of their actions upon significant historic properties and that the ACHP be given an opportunity to comment on their actions. Compliance with Section 106 is a process with several steps. Before initiating the compliance process, the proposed action must have federal involvement (an ‘undertaking’) and must have the potential to have an impact upon cultural resources. If so, a review is required. The next step is consultation among concerned parties or stakeholders, which may include the SHPO (or Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO) in the case of Indian tribes), Indian tribes, local governments, applicants for federal funds or permits, and the public. Identifying historic properties then takes place (sometimes called phase I) and involves defining the ‘area of potential effects’ of the proposed action and reviewing existing information from documents (e.g., site records), oral histories, consultations, reconnaissance surveys, ground-surface examination, shovel testing, and limited test excavations. The next step is evaluation (or phase II) to determine whether or not the identified properties are eligible for listing on the national register. Phase II gathers more detailed data about the property from intensive pedestrian surveys, remote sensing, controlled surface collection, and patterned test excavations. The evaluation process involves the application of the national register criteria of historical significance, assessment of whether the historic property retains enough integrity to convey its significance, and determination of whether or not the property should be exempted if it is in a category excluded from listing on the national register (e.g., cemeteries). Determining whether or not the proposed action will have ‘adverse effects’ upon historic properties found to be eligible for the national register is the next step in the evaluation process and often involves the preparation of a memorandum of agreement between the federal agency and an SHPO/THPO. Phase III or mitigation of adverse effects is the next step. Mitigation may involve architectural documentation of buildings and structures, archaeological data recovery such as

large-scale excavation, the preparation of oral histories, public outreach or educational activities such as museum displays or brochures, or moving the proposed project to another location to avoid adverse effects. The organizational structure of CRM practice also varies. In some countries, CRM mostly takes place within a centralized organization (e.g., the Archaeological Survey of India or Mexico’s INAH). Other countries have a much more decentralized system in which the practice of CRM takes place at the level of states (e.g., the independent states in the erstwhile Federal Republic of Germany), regions, or localities. The private sector practices most CRM in some countries, for example, the United Kingdom and the United States, but not in others (e.g., Sweden, where most CRM is done by the National Heritage Board or county museums). CRM practice also varies widely as a function of whether cultural resource laws apply to private (e.g., Sweden, Argentina) or to public property (e.g., the United States). See also: Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation; Careers in Archaeology; Environmental Impact Assessment and the Law; Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Historic Preservation Laws; Who Owns the Past?; World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

Further Reading Cleere H (ed.) (1996) Archaeological Heritage Management in the Modern World. London: Routledge. Cleere H (2003) Preserving archaeological sites and monuments. In: Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS): Archaeology (Ed. Donald L. Hardesty). Developed under auspices of the UNESCO. Oxford: Eolss Publishers. http://www.eolss.net. Green W and Doershuk JF (1998) Cultural resource management and American archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Research 6(2): 121–167. King T (2004) Cultural Resources Laws and Practice: An Introductory Guide, 2nd edn. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press. Johannson N and Johannson LG (2003) Rescue archaeology. In: Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS): Archaeology, Developed under auspices of the UNESCO. Oxford: Eolss Publishers. http://www.eolss.net. McManamon FP and Hatton A (eds.) (2000) Cultural Resource Management in Contemporary Society. London: Routledge. Neumann TW and Sanford RM (2001) Cultural Resources Archaeology. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.

1070 CULTURE, CONCEPT AND DEFINITIONS

CULTURE, CONCEPT AND DEFINITIONS R Lee Lyman, University of Missouri – Columbia, Columbia, MO, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary transmogrify

Transform in kind, essence, or nature.

The concept of culture has evolved over the past 130 years, and continues to transmogrify as the needs and interests of anthropologists develop. Culture is an analytical concept that is defined and operationalized in manners that facilitate analytical work and broaden and deepen our understanding of human behavior – the subject in which anthropologists and archaeologists are interested. Archaeologists study what is sometimes referred to as ‘material culture’. This term implies that culture is a material manifestation, though this is disputed in the anthropological literature. In the following, the history of the culture concept within anthropology is summarized first. Then, the manners in which culture has been conceived and perceived by archaeologists in the Old World and in the New World are described.

Anthropological Perspectives Edward Burnett Tylor published his seminal definition in 1881: ‘‘Culture, or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.’’ Culture was the central focus of inquiry within the discipline Franz Boas nurtured, though he himself did not formally define culture until his career was nearly over. Tylor considered culture to be a thing and used the term in the singular form – culture in the wholistic sense. Boas highlighted the fact that there were many different cultures, each comprising its own more or less unique, historically contingent set of cultural traits – culture in the partitive sense. In 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled more than 160 definitions of culture from the literature, and sorted them into seven categories (descriptive, historical, normative, psychological, structural, genetic, incomplete). Kroeber and Kluckhohn defined culture as a ‘‘set of attributes and products of human societies, and therewith of mankind, which are extrasomatic and transmissible by mechanisms

other than biological heredity.’’ This definition has analytical utility, because it comprises a theory of culture in the sense that it explains how individuals in a group acquire their behavioral repertory – they learn those behaviors rather than inherit them genetically. What individuals learn concerns not only acceptable behaviors but values, beliefs, attitudes, and otherwise arbitrary meanings of phenomena, such as the fact that holy water is more than merely wet. Leslie White argued throughout his career that man alone had the ability to assign symbolic meaning to otherwise natural phenomena and to anthropogenic phenomena. Conceptions of culture as ideological and transmitted nonbiologically served the historical ethnology or historical particularism school of thought. This school was interested in writing the history of cultural phenomena. Cultural transmission was accomplished by enculturation and socialization between members of a group, and diffusion between groups comprising different cultures. Culture has also been conceived of as an adaptive system. Perhaps the most famous, or at least well known among archaeologists, definition of culture as an adaptive system was provided by Leslie White in 1959: ‘‘Culture [is] an extrasomatic mechanism employed by [humans] in order to make [their] life secure and continuous.’’ The notion that culture is adaptive was reinforced by Julian Steward’s cultural ecology. In Steward’s view, different technologies mediate the influence of different environments on culture. In White’s view, a culture is a ‘system’. It comprises various elements that are functionally (one might say mechanically) interrelated with other elements, all in a particular organizational configuration. White identified three basic subsystems of a culture: technology, social structure or relations, and ideology. White’s characterization of a culture as a system of elements in a particular structural–functional arrangement paralleled Bronislaw Malinowski’s conception of a culture. If culture is ideological, it can develop or evolve and accumulate over time; what my grandparents learned is transmitted to my parents, who learn more; all of that accumulated knowledge is transmitted to me, and I can learn more and teach everything to my offspring. Cultural evolution occurs in part as a result of imperfect fidelity of transmission (e.g., learning error), and in part as a result of (necessary) adaptive change. Some argue that the cumulative property of culture allows it to be much more (adaptively) plastic than a biological gene pool, and that

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it also distinguishes human culture from what otherwise seems to be cultural behavior in nonhuman animals. ‘Culture’ in the wholistic sense can be conceived as accumulated, transmitted, and shared ideas, as an adaptive system, and as only ideological or ideological plus the empirical results of an ideology manifest in behaviors and by-products of behaviors (artifacts). A ‘culture’, in the partitive sense, comprises the particular set of ideas (and behaviors and behavioral byproducts) held more or less in common by a group of individuals that tend to also have a common language, occupy the same general area, and experience some degree of face-to-face contact. In the 1970s and 1980s, the culture concept was criticized, it was said to be no longer central to anthropology, and it was argued to be an ideological position rather than a scientific concept. This assault continues today, prompting many anthropologists to retool what they take to be the fundamental concept of their discipline. Some still find definitions like Kroeber and Kluckhohn’s useful; others disagree. Nevertheless, the concept is useful when it is defined with an analytical purpose in mind. Part of the present difficulty is that until recently, individual cultures were conceived as units that were more or less bounded and autonomous. But cultures often are not bounded or autonomous. Social groups fission and fuse to varying degrees. The permeability of cultural boundaries, the discreteness of cultures, is historically unique and contingent, and may comprise the research question. The reification of discrete, ethnographically documented cultures influenced archaeology (see Anthropological Archaeology).

Archaeological Perspectives Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe adopted German archaeologist Gustaf Kossina’s definition of an archaeological culture, but not its racist connotations. In 1929, Childe stated that a culture was manifest archaeologically as a set of artifacts that occurred more or less completely at multiple sites. According to Childe, archaeologists assume that a complex of regularly associated artifact types is the material expression of a people. Discipline-wide use of this definition of an archaeological culture is sometimes said to mark the birth of cultural archaeology – the study of prehistoric cultures – and a shift from an antiquarian or natural historian kind of archaeology focusing on artifacts merely as curious anthropogenic phenomena. Childe’s definition was, however, not unique; a similar one existed in North America. In the Old World, archaeologists were studying the (pre) history of their genetic ancestors, whereas in the New

World archaeologists were studying the (pre)history of a group with which they shared neither history nor genes. These differences resulted in slightly different bases from which the notion of a prehistoric culture grew. Old World Archaeological Cultures

In Childe’s view, language facilitated a culture’s transmission and accumulation. Childe believed that humans cling to old traditions and display intense reluctance to modify customary modes of behavior; innovators and nonconformists have found this out time and again through history. In Childe’s view, an anthropologist conceives of a culture as a pattern of behavior common to a group of persons or to all members of a society. The uniformity of types of artifacts in an archaeological culture reflects this conception and discloses the uniformity and rigidity of the traditions of the artifact makers. Peculiarities of the component types of an archaeological culture are determined by convention or tradition rather than function; thus an archaeological culture corresponds to a social group that carries a particular social tradition. Childe thought it would be rash to try to define precisely what sort of social group corresponds to an archaeological culture, though he believed that different sets of artifact types represented different social traditions or cultures. Further, social traditions were created by societies or groups of people and transmitted, but they were not fixed or immutable. Culture changed constantly as a society dealt with new circumstances. Finally, Childe held that a culture was an organic whole and the elements of a culture would more or less influence each other – a conception of a culture as a system. Grahame Clark thought that the definitive criteria of prehistoric cultures would vary from case to case, but the most reliable criteria would be those capable of expressing human choice or style, rather than those controlled by ecological or economic factors. He also believed that the more numerous the definitive elements or traits, the more valid the cultural entity defined. When he said the definitive criteria vary from case to case, he meant that sometimes pottery might be sufficient, other times chipped stone or perhaps floor plans of houses. All of these might, or might not, vary stylistically. Although the term had been used without formal definition since the beginning of the twentieth century, by the middle of that century the term ‘style’ had come to denote a kind or category that corresponded to a particular geographic locality, a particular time period, or both, and mostly the last. From an archaeological perspective, in both the Old and the New Worlds, styles were transmitted culturally, more or less free of functional constraints or limits,

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and so could be used to map in time and space the distribution of prehistoric cultures. In 1968, British archaeologist David Clarke remarked that culture ‘‘consists of learned modes of behavior and its material manifestations, socially transmitted from one generation to the next and from one society or individual to another.’’ Contrary to many anthropologists of the first half of the twentieth century, Clarke argued that there was no difference between the material manifestation of concepts of form and function preserved in artifacts and the social manifestations of similar concepts manifest as social activities and behaviors. Agreeing with many of those same anthropologists, Clarke thought that culture comprises a communication system of acquired beliefs that increasingly supplements the genetic aspects of humans. Culture is adaptive, is transmitted extrasomatically, and is cumulative. A culture is a system, an integrated, intercommunicating network of entities that form a complex whole. Subsystems include material culture, economic structure, religous dogma, and social organization. In Clarke’s view, the environment in which a culture exists is part of the cultural system. The belief that archaeological cultures might not be equivalent to an ethnographer’s cultural units gained strength in the 1970s. Several individuals observed that different kinds of material culture did not all display identical or even similar geographic distributions. Groups of artifact types were, according to Childe and Clark, supposed to be distinctive of social groups comprising cultures. Yet they and Clarke recognized that groups of types were often polythetic; sometimes no amount of analysis could discern geographic clusters of particular groups of types. Childe, Clark, and Clarke suggested that the adaptive nature of culture was influencing the combinations of types rather than culture itself, implying that culture was ideational and though adaptive, culture was more stylistic choice than functional necessity. British archaeologist Ian Hodder did ethnoarchaeological research to test the notion that the shared ideas comprising a culture were reflected by artifacts. He found that the symbolic meaning of an artifact was contingent on variables such as the social context, economic context, functional context, and purpose of the symbol. Artifacts as cultural symbols were, in Hodder’s view, always in action, being renegotiated and re-evaluated, rather than passive, rigid, or immutable reflections of culture. In Hodder’s view, archaeologists must realize that each artifact is produced in relation to a set of symbolic schemes, and in relation to general principles of symbolic meaning that are built up into particular arrangements as part of particular social strategies. This means that efforts to identify archaeological cultures equivalent to an

ethnographer’s cultures are misguided. There is no simple relationship between the flow of cultural information and material culture patterning. An archaeologist cannot predict the past based on general propositions about how cultures work; rather, an archaeologist must interpret the past by using contemporary knowledge of symbolism and ideologies. The historical context in which the artifacts (and the portion of the archaeological record) under study were created is, in Hodder’s view, critically important to learning about past cultures. This conception of culture as dynamic and under constant formation based on human actions and the contexts of those actions had a great deal of influence on subsequent archaeological research. New World Archaeological Cultures

North American archaeology is and has historically been one of the four parts of anthropology (sociocultural, linguistic, biological, archaeological) that all focus around the culture concept. Therefore, by and large, as anthropology goes, so goes archaeology. Most anthropologists and archaeologists writing prior to 1950 used the term ‘material culture’, without definition, as a synonym for ‘artifact’ – a material item owing one or more of its attributes to human activity, usually a tool. Whether or not an artifact actually was culture was debated, many saying that artifacts were but empirical, long-lasting manifestations of cultural (extrasomatically learned) behaviors but were not culture themselves. During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries, an archaeological culture in North America was conceived of as a particular set of cultural traits, where a ‘cultural trait’ could vary tremendously in inclusiveness and was both an emic-like and an etic-like unit. Cultural traits were units of cultural transmission whatever the mode or pathway of transmission (diffusion, enculturation, etc.). They were useful for rapidly recording vanishing indigenous lifeways, and for tracking the movements of cultures or parts thereof over geographic space. Cultural traits were the operational units of the direct historical approach. Perceptions of distinct culture areas manifest as trait clusters reinforced the notion that cultures were discrete units. Archaeologists used artifact types as if they were equivalent to cultural traits; an archaeological culture comprised a particular set of artifact types; thus an archaeological culture was a more or less distinct set of cultural traits, just like an ethnographer’s cultural units were more or less distinct sets of cultural traits. Also just like with ethnography, the greater the number of artifact types shared between two archaeological assemblages of artifacts, the greater their cultural ‘affinities’.

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The gist of the preceding paragraph was implicit in the literature, so in the 1940s Walter Taylor constructed an explicit discussion of the culture concept. Taylor’s advisor was Clyde Kluckhohn, who himself had strong opinions about anthropological epistemology and the culture concept. Taylor made several points. First, culture is the product of human activity; there are no nonhuman cultures. Second, culture can be considered wholistically (all human groups have it) or partitively (each human group has a more or less unique culture). Third, culture is mental or conceptual; Taylor found the concept of material culture to be ‘‘fallacious.’’ That culture comprises ideas (attitudes, beliefs, meanings, sentiments, values, interests, knowledge, etc.) means that it can be transmitted and cumulative. A culture is a set of ideas shared by a group of people; the behaviors of those people are objectifications of the shared ideas; an artifact is a possible result of the behavior and so is also an objectification of culture but is not culture itself. Finally, for Taylor (following Kluckhohn), a cultural trait is an inferred mental construct. For an anthropologist (who observes behavior) or for an archaeologist (who observes artifacts), culture is, in Taylor’s view, completely inferential because culture itself is solely mental. Thus, arguing from slightly different bases, both Old World and New World archaeologists developed a definition of an archaeological culture as a distinctive aggregate of artifacts that (may) recur in multiple sites or strata. What, then, is an artifact aggregate and how does an archaeologist know when one has been found? Several kinds of artifact aggregates are recognized. In the Old World, an ‘industry’ may be defined as an assemblage of artifacts all made of the same material, such as stone, or bone; or, industry may be used as a synonym for assemblage. In both the Old and New Worlds, an ‘assemblage’ comprises all artifacts within a stratigraphically bounded unit. In the New World, a ‘component’ is an archaeological manifestation of a culture; it may consist of one or more assemblages. A component usually is a stratigraphically bounded set of artifacts (it may include one or more strata); components that share a majority of artifact types are thought to represent the same or closely related social groups such as one or more particular bands of an ethnic group. A component is sometimes thought to be more or less equivalent to a community, or a group of persons who normally reside together in face-to-face association. An archaeological ‘phase’ is often thought to be more or less equivalent to a society, which in turn comprised multiple communities, each of which was manifest archaeologically as a component. Until the 1960s, archaeologists plotted the spatiotemporal distributions of artifact types. They had commonsensical notions of how cultures worked

and how culture traits moved through time and space, thanks to their ethnologist teachers. But they had little in the way of theory to guide their explanations of the distributions of traits (artifact types), and they were concerned with making time visible. The form of artifacts was directly visible, as was the geographic distribution of each type of artifact; what could only be made visible analytically was the age of an artifact type. The primary goal of culture historians was, then, to determine the spatiotemporal distribution of artifact types, distinctive sets of which were referred to as cultures. Once prehistoric cultures were mapped in time and space, archaeologists intended to explain those distributions in cultural terms, particularly in terms of processes of cultural transmission such as diffusion, enculturation, migration, and the like. Culture was conceived as ideational, with material manifestations in the form of artifacts. The conception of culture as ideological is sometimes referred to as ‘normative theory’; this conception was, in some ways, typical of archaeologists who wrote culture history. In 1962, the normative definition was discarded by Lewis Binford who noted that while the generic process of diffusion had come to be the explanation of choice, it actually explained nothing because why diffusion had occurred (whether the transmission of ideas, the movement of people, or any other mode) was not addressed. Binford advocated Leslie White’s definition of culture as humankind’s extrasomatic means of adaptation. Binford echoed White again when he (Binford) explicitly characterized a culture as a system of articulated variables that covaried. The processual change of a culture involved not a change in cultural norms but rather change in one cultural variable that relates, in Binford’s and White’s view, in a predictable and quantifiable way to changes in other variables, the latter changing in turn relative to change in the structure of the cultural system as a whole. The key variable was change in adaptation – culture changed because it was an adaptational system. The analytical challenge was to identify the catalyst for any particular adaptive change. Toward that end, Binford postulated that artifacts could be categorized as belonging to one of three basic groups (technomic, sociotechnic, and ideotechnic) that would reflect White’s three cultural subsystems (technology, social structure, and ideology, respectively). This line of reasoning was not, however, pursued by practitioners of the processual archaeology that Binford spawned; instead, they adopted the narrow definition of culture as an adaptive system and, in a sense, focused on the technomic category. Binford’s alteration of the concept of culture – with no attendant change in the conception of how a culture is manifest archaeologically – prompted

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Discussion

much innovative research. Some focused on how change in one social variable resulted in change in other social variables (as manifest in design elements on ceramics); to do this, analysts adopted the normative definition of culture. Other researchers focused on a culture as an adaptive system. The latter became the approach preferred by processual archaeologists of the 1970s and 1980s, though ‘adaptation’ became something of a universal explanation much like diffusion had earlier been. These archaeologists adopted the White/Binford definition of culture as an adaptive system. Seldom in the literature of the 1960s through the 1980s were the two conceptions used by the same researcher. Some American archaeologists did not adopt Binford’s definition, but instead focused on culture as ideational. An early member of this group was James Deetz, who did not offer a definition of culture but who advocated a more sophisticated version of normative theory. Deetz explicitly stated that adopting the view that an artifact was a concrete expression of a ‘mental template’ held in the mind of the artisan would allow archaeologists to reconstruct the culture of the makers of the object in question. The implication that culture is ideological – a mental template was equivalent to a conceptual norm – was reinforced when Deetz noted that the attributes displayed by artifacts were equivalent to a linguist’s allophones, and that the combination of these attributes into culturally meaningful units manifest as artifacts was very similar to the isolation of morphemes and their constituent allomorphs. While not adopting Deetz’s linguist metaphor, other American archaeologists tended to agree that culture was mental but nevertheless could be accessed through the archaeological record. This sort of thinking eventually developed into postprocessual archaeology (see Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology).

In simplistic terms, three basic anthropological conceptions of culture can be identified. Culture is ideational (normative theory); culture is an adaptive system; and culture is historically contingent and relative. Perusal of the glossaries in 15 introductory archaeology textbooks published over the past 30 years (all most recent editions, no repetition of authors) reveals the following. Six books give a normative definition of culture; four books give a ‘culture is an adaptation’ definition; only one gives forms of both the normative and the adaptation definitions and underscores that the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The remaining four books define culture as something uniquely human. Only six of the 15 books mention material culture, and they simply define the term as artifacts. Early editions of introductory archaeology textbooks tend to state that archaeology is prehistoric ethnography or the study of prehistoric cultures. More recent, advanced discussions of archaeological method and theory tend to refer to ‘social theory’ rather than ‘culture theory’. This change in terminology reflects a concern for a humanistic archaeology rather than the (allegedly) dehumanizing ‘scientific’ archaeology of the 1960s through 1980s. The change is more than simplistic, however. It involves many changes in cultural theory that can perhaps be reduced to one general kind of change. Previously, culture was something that was learned and passively participated in by humans. Now, humans are conceived of as the active creators of culture, and culture is created and recreated in different social settings in slightly different forms. Thus, ‘social theory’ is today seen by some as in many ways a much more appropriate term for explanatory models and concepts used by both anthropologists and archaeologists than is ‘culture theory.’

Summary

Conclusion

In Europe, archaeology concerns history projected back into the past. Ethnic variants correspond with linguistic, social, cultural, and biological variants. A culture is an integrated, cohesive whole; cultural change (temporal variation) is therefore abrupt or saltational. In (North) America, archaeology is a part of anthropology. Cultures are continuous geographically until there is major environmental change. A culture lacks cohesion (except geographically) and comprises a hodgepodge of cultural traits. Culture is independent of ethnicity, language, society, and biology. Cultures blend temporally, so change can be autochthonous (internal) and gradual or, if immigration occurs, saltational. How to distinguish the two archaeologically is an analytical challenge.

Over the years, numerous ethnologists and archaeologists pondered the likelihood that an archaeological culture as defined by Childe was equivalent to a social unit that an anthropologist would categorize as a culture. Most archaeologists agree that an archaeological culture manifest as a set of artifacts represents a social group; it is the nature of that group and its relationship to an ethnologist’s culture that is the point of contention. In practice, most archaeologists still speak of this or that ‘archaeological culture’ and use (typically implicitly) Childe’s definition. This is likely because Childe’s is a pragmatic definition that has analytical value. What archaeology consistently needs more of are explicit theories that describe the myriad relations between artifacts and culture.

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Theories are the tinted glass through which we view, interpret, explain, and come to understand how the world works. An ethnographer’s cultures are not bounded, autonomous entities, to various degrees and at various rates they exchange traits, information, members, materials, and so on not only across geographic space but through time. Yet even recognizing this, archaeologists still make reference to standard archaeological cultures such as Woodland, Chumash, Mousterian, and the like. The key to avoiding the reification of individual cultures is to keep in mind that a culture is an analytical unit and to realize that cultural units are differentially discrete, bounded, autonomous. For some analytical purposes, they might be treated as perfectly discrete; for others, the frequency or magnitude of intercultural contact or interaction may be a central consideration. Units of culture (partitive) can be explained with the assistance of a relevant definition of culture (wholistic), where relevance derives from an analytical problem, hypothesis, or theory. The culture concept will continue to be discussed, dismantled, debated, and resurrected in new forms by anthropologists. Archaeologists will continue to borrow those resurrections and to discuss prehistoric cultures manifest as distinctive sets of artifacts. Whatever conception culture takes, it should facilitate analytical work.

See also: Anthropological Archaeology; Historic Roots of Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Social Theory.

Further Reading Binford LR (1962) Archaeology as anthropology. American Antiquity 28: 217–225. Childe VG (1929) The Danube in Prehistory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clark G (1957) Archaeology and Society, 3rd edn. London: Methuen. Clarke DL (1968) Analytical Archaeology. London: Methuen. Deetz J (1968) Cultural patterning of behavior as reflected by archaeological materials. In: Chang KC (ed.) Settlement Archaeology, pp. 31–42. Palo Alto, CA: National Press. Hodder I (1982) Symbols in Action: Ethnoarchaeological Studies of Material Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kroeber AL and Kluckhohn C (1952) Culture: A critical review of concepts and definitions. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology 47: 1–223. Lyman RL and O’Brien MJ (2004) A history of normative theory in Americanist archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 11: 369–396. Steward JH (1955) Theory of Culture Change. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Taylor WW (1948) A study of archaeology. American Anthropological Association Memoir 69: 1–263. Tylor EB (1881) Primitive Culture. London: John Murray. White LA (1959) The Evolution of Culture. New York: McGrawHill.

D Data Management

See: Archaeology Laboratory, Overview.

DATING METHODS, OVERVIEW James Truncer, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary absolute dating A form of archaeological dating that provides interval or ratio scale measurements, with the latter capable of being linked to a calendrical system. accuracy The degree of closeness of the sample measurement to the actual phenomenon of interest, an event in archaeological dating. measurement error The error formed by limitations in sample size, instrument precision, and calculation parsimony. precision The magnitude of measurement error. relative dating A form of archaeological dating that provides ordinal scale measurements, supplying older than/younger than age assessments. sample event The event for which a date has been obtained. stratigraphic superposition A geological law of sedimentary deposition stating that older layers are formed below younger layers. stratigraphy The documentation of a sequence of depositional layers, sometimes used as a shorthand term for stratigraphic superposition. systematic error An error that forms a bias of constant magnitude and direction in a particular methodology or research design. target event The event of archaeological interest for which an age is sought.

Determining when events of archaeological interest occurred remains a central and fundamental task for archaeologists around the world. Using dating methods to assess the age and duration of historically unique events is crucial in archaeology, as it is in other history-dependent sciences (e.g., geology), since chronology is essential for description, comparison, and analysis. Frequently, the larger goal in archaeology is to develop chronological sequences, where investigators aim to establish the temporal

order of events to document (and through the use of theory, ultimately explain) change in the archaeological record. Thus, many archaeologists are continuously engaged in developing and applying new dating methods, as well as refining existing ones, as part of an ongoing effort to produce improved chronologies. Establishing chronology in archaeology, however, is not as straightforward as it might first appear. First, what is actually dated is not an artifact, site, or culture per se, but an event of potential archaeological interest. It is important to distinguish between the ‘sample event’ (the event actually dated) and the ‘target event’ (the event of interest for which an age is being sought). Unfortunately, sample events are only rarely synonymous with archaeological target events because most dating methods employed by archaeologists have been developed outside the discipline in pursuit of other objectives. Some dating methods are able to produce age estimates for events that largely coincide with, or are identical to archaeological interests, such as establishing the time of last exposure to fire, the time of manufacture, or the time of artifact deposition. More often, however, bridging arguments are required to link the sample event to the archaeological target event. Such bridging arguments are often missing or not well developed in archaeology, negatively affecting the precision and accuracy of archaeological chronologies. Second, all dates inherently contain some error, and these errors vary by kind, magnitude, and probability across the range of archaeological dating methods available. Some kinds of error, such as ‘measurement error’, result from the limitations of sample size, the complexity of calculations, and the precision of the instruments used to estimate a date. Other kinds of error, such as ‘systematic error’, constitute an inherent bias of constant magnitude and direction in a particular dating methodology or research design, consistently overestimating or underestimating the age of an archaeological event.

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Lastly, the various dating methods used in archaeology have different methodological strengths and weaknesses; some methods offer high ‘precision’ (small instrument or measurement error) while other methods confer a high degree of ‘accuracy’ (the degree closeness of a measured date to the actual age). Although a few dating methods, such as radiocarbon dating, now possess both high intrinsic accuracy and precision methodologically, these advantages do not necessarily confer accurate and precise archaeological chronologies because the event dated is often not closely linked to the archaeological event of interest. For instance, the age of a manufactured wooden house beam and its use in construction may be of archaeological interest, but a radiocarbon date obtained from analyzing a sample of the beam may not necessarily record the time of these events. The radiocarbon method dates the time living entities stopped exchanging carbon with the biosphere (death). Except for the tree’s outermost ring which contained living cells just before death, all radiocarbon samples of the beam will record an age older than the death of the tree (systematic error) because the cells of the inner rings ceased exchanging carbon up to hundreds of years before. The use of old wood in construction and artifact manufacture complicates matters even further – it cannot simply be assumed that the time of the tree’s death corresponds to the events of archaeological interest. It is important to consider the factors discussed above in evaluating the application of various dating methods to archaeological problems and contexts. A brief review of the history of archaeological dating is followed by a discussion of the various dating techniques used in archaeology.

Development of Archaeological Dating Establishing chronology was not always an overriding concern among archaeologists. In North America at the turn of the twentieth century, for example, resolution of the ‘moundbuilder’ and ‘American Paleolithic’ controversies actually dampened interest in chronological issues because it appeared that human occupation in the New World was relatively shallow, perhaps representing only a few thousand years. Throughout much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, establishing age tended to be a coarsegrained affair, and usually involved identifying a particularly well-known historical period (e.g., Roman) or documenting the presence or absence of materials such as ceramics or iron which were thought to be generally indicative of time (e.g., the stone–bronze– iron age distinctions of Christian Thomsen and Jens Worsaae). Material types became chronological indicators if the materials consistently produced a generalized pattern stratigraphically (e.g., bronze artifacts

in deeper layers were presumed to be older than iron artifacts in more shallow layers if the strata were undisturbed) (see Artifacts, Overview; Fiber Artifacts). Although detailed stratigraphic studies were making vast improvements to geological chronology at this time, comparable advances in archaeology were slow to be realized. Another early and unsophisticated archaeological technique involved estimating the minimal age of earthen mounds in the American Midwest by assessing the age of trees growing on them, although it was impossible to know just how much older the mounds might actually be. The slow development of archaeological chronology began to change in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when it was realized that measuring change in the frequency of artifact types from different contexts and/or different depths could produce a temporal sequence. In the late nineteenth century, Sir Matthew Flinders Petrie, working with predynastic Egyptian ceramics from grave contexts, appears to have been the first to realize that the various combinations of artifact types found in different contexts could be ordered in a way so that all the artifact-type distributions formed overlapping monotonic curves, with some forms gradually replacing others through time. Petrie appreciated that this arrangement represented chronological order and was able to deduce the relative age of the graves, although identifying which end of the order was younger still needed independent evidence such as stratigraphic superposition. Petrie’s innovation came to be known as ‘seriation’, a method independently elaborated upon in the 1910s by American scholars such as Alfred L. Kroeber, Nels C. Nelson, Leslie Spier, and Alfred V. Kidder working in the Southwest. The development of the seriation method in archaeology had an enormous impact on the discipline. One of the chief advantages of the seriation method is that initial chronological frameworks are able to be tested empirically against other artifact assemblages and can be subsequently refined, giving the method a science-like quality that was recognized early on, even by those outside the discipline. Seriation was soon applied to archaeological assemblages throughout the world, and constructing chronological frameworks became the primary interest of most archaeologists working from the 1920s through the 1950s. Another archaeological dating method, ‘dendrochronology’, was also being developed in the American Southwest around the same time that the seriation method was being refined. Unlike simply counting annular tree rings, dendrochronology uses the unique patterns of varying ring widths in some tree species that are sensitive to climate and precipitation fluctuation. By linking multiple tree samples of different ages, master sequences of this patterning have been built that extend back thousands of years.

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Samples of unknown age can then be fitted against this master sequence to derive an age estimate. One of the principal advantages of dendrochronology is its high precision, with the potential to identify the exact year in which an event took place. The development of seriation and dendrochronology were remarkable achievements that occurred well before the advent of radiometric dating techniques such as radiocarbon dating, and both methods continue to be used today. More recently, a veritable explosion of radiometric and chemical archaeological dating methods has occurred in the last few decades, concordant with advances in the ability to detect and measure various physical and chemical changes in materials. Many of these methods are referred to as ‘absolute dating’ methods, in which measurements are made at an interval or ratio scale that includes the possibility of connecting the age of an event to a calendrical system. By comparison, seriation is a form of ‘relative dating’ in which measurements are made at an ordinal level based on order, and when tied to outside information such as stratigraphic superposition, yield older than/ younger than distinctions in age. While there are many advantages to absolute-dating methods, all were developed outside the discipline of archaeology and thus require rigorous bridging arguments that link the dated event obtained to the archaeological event of interest. Furthermore, the technical sophistication of many absolute-dating methods is costly in terms of specialized expertise and equipment. Even so, these methods offer archaeologists the possibility to assess the age of archaeological events with greater precision and accuracy than ever before.

Kinds of Archaeological Dating Methods Within the class of absolute-dating methods, there are five major kinds: (1) counting methods, (2) radioactive isotope decay methods, (3) radioactivity dosimetry methods, (4) magnetic methods, and (5) chemical methods. Not all absolute-dating methods entail the use of high-technology techniques, as evidenced by the development of dendrochronology in the 1910s and 1920s, as discussed above. The extensive use of dendrochronology is limited, however, to contexts in which tree remains are well preserved over appreciable periods of time. These contexts include architectural structures that have sheltered wood elements from decomposition, extremely dry desert or arid environments, or oxygen-deprived wet environments such as swamps or bogs. A similar counting method that makes use of historically unique climate patterns is ‘varve analysis’ – a method devised in the late nineteenth century that measures seasonal variation in sedimentation rates in lakes that receive glacial runoff. These sedimentation rates can vary substantially

from year to year based on the duration of the season (higher rates of sedimentation occur during summer months) and temperature. An obvious drawback to this method is the limited number of environmental settings in which it can be applied. Perhaps the best-known absolute dating method is ‘radiocarbon dating’ or 14C, a method that relies on measuring the degree of 14C decay in a sample and comparing this to the known decay rate of the isotope. The 14C isotope is unstable and eventually decays to 14N, and the decay rate is measured using a convention known as the half-life (the amount of time a sample loses one half of its radioactivity). The half-life of 14C is relatively short at 5730 years. Through feeding and photosynthesis, a living organism constantly exchanges 14C with the atmosphere, but this process ceases upon death. The amount of 14 C remaining in an organic sample, then, is dependent on the time of death of the organism’s cells and constitutes the event that is dated. There are several ways to measure the amount of 14 C in a sample. The most common technique is to measure the emission of beta-rays when the 14C isotope decays into 14N. However, since the decay transition is a rare occurrence during the actual analysis of the sample, relatively large samples are needed to obtain sufficient counting statistics, and limits analysis to samples less than 30 000 years old. Another technique uses atomic mass spectrometry (AMS) to separate out 14C atoms by weight and counts their occurrence. This more recent technique has reduced the sample size of charcoal to 5 mg, and extended the age limit of radiocarbon dating back to about 55 000 years. A major refinement in the precision of radiocarbon dating has been the development of calibration curves that take into account the fact that production of radiocarbon in the atmosphere has not been constant over time. For the last several thousand years, calibration curves are obtained by 14C dating samples from the annular rings of trees, the true age of which is known through dendrochronology. The radiocarbon age estimates in different years are then calibrated to fit the dendrochronological age, and the resulting calibration curves can then be used to improve the precision of radiocarbon age estimates for samples of unknown age. Beyond the limits of dendrochronology, radiocarbon calibration curves have been produced through U/Th and TL dating. Another frequently used decay method is known as ‘potassium–argon’ or K/Ar dating, and is similar to radiocarbon dating in that it dates the separation of the sample pool of the unstable 40K isotope from the atmospheric reservoir. Since 40K decays into 40Ar at a known rate (half-life of 1.28  109 years), the deficiency of 40K and the buildup of the decay product (40Ar) in the sample can be used to estimate the age of the

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separation event. Since the half-life of 40K is significantly longer than 14C, and has undergone much less change over the last few tens of thousands of years, its detection limits are especially well suited to estimating ages beyond where detection of 14C begins to be problematic, at around 50 000 years ago. Uranium series, most commonly ‘U/Th dating’, provides another decay method based on the differential solubility of uranium and thorium compounds. The most common technique measures the deficiency of 230Th compared to 234U, but other uranium decay products, as well as the parent isotopes of 238U, 235U, and 232Th, can also be measured to obtain chronological information. ‘Dosemetric methods’ analyze materials that contain information on the amount of radiation to which they have been exposed. The total amount of radiation received by a sample can be used to estimate its age if the sensitivity of the sample to radiation is understood and is combined with an estimate of the annual dose rate. ‘Thermoluminescence dating’ (TL), ‘optically stimulated luminescence’ (OSL), ‘infrared stimulated luminescence’ (IRSL), and ‘electron spin resonance’ (ESR) are all examples of dosimetric, or ‘trapped charge dating’ methods. All electrons in a mineral are in a ground state when it is originally formed or reset due to subsequent light or heat energy. In dosimetrically sensitive minerals (e.g., feldspars, quartz, and calcite), exposure to naturally occurring radiation will reposition some electrons away from atoms in the ground state to a higher energy state known as a conduction band. Over time, most electrons will return to their ground states, but some will become trapped at defect sites in the lattice structures of the mineral. Electrons have the potential to accumulate in these lattice defects with the passage of time until all defects are filled and saturation is reached. In the laboratory, energy in the form of light (OSL, IRSL) or heat (TL) can be imparted on the sample to activate the trapped electrons, which then either return to the ground state or recombine with luminescence centers and emit light or luminescence. Luminescence is then measured fairly precisely using a photomultiplier resulting in accurate estimates of total dose. ESR measures the number of trapped electrons differently by bombarding the sample with microwaves in a magnetic field. An ESR spectrometer then records the amount of microwave absorption which is proportional to the number of trapped electrons and holes, which in turn produces the age estimate. The precision of ESR is far less than luminescence methods, but an advantage lies in its nondestructive measurement process that allows multiple measurements to be taken on the same sample. Estimating the annual dose in using luminescence methods is complex and can be prone to substantial error factors. Annual dose is received both from

concentrations of radioactive elements in the sample itself, as well as external environmental sources. Only the ionizing effects of gamma and cosmic rays need to be considered in calculating the external dose rate since short range beta and alpha ray contributions can be eliminated with the removal of the outer 2 mm of the sample. Internal dose rate, however, is primarily due to alpha and beta rays emitted from radioactive elements in the sample and need to be measured. Dose rate is dependent on radioactivity originating from the U, Th, and 40K decay chains with minor sediment contributions from 87Rb. One factor that can negatively affect the precision of trapped charge dating is disequilibrium in the U-series decay chains, which complicates dose rate calculations and may increase the uncertainty of age estimates. Other attenuating factors on radiation such as moisture content and latitude also need to be accounted for. The overall precision of trapped charge dating methods, however, can be as low as 6–7%, a rate that compares favorably with other radiometric dating methods. A central advantage of trapped charge dating methods is one of accuracy. The events dated are the growth of a crystalline structure such as bone or tooth enamel (ESR), exposure to temperatures in excess of 500  C during manufacture or subsequent firing events, typically ceramics or heated lithics (TL), or the last exposure of archaeologically relevant sediments to sunlight (OSL, IRSL). These events are often of direct interest to archaeologists, and thus trapped charge dating methods possess the potential to yield ‘archaeological chronologies’ of overall higher precision than other dating methods with intrinsically high methodological precision such as radiocarbon dating. This advantage has gone largely unappreciated by North American archaeologists, although trapped charge dating is used extensively in Europe and other regions to supplement other dating methods. Regardless, the use of trapped charge dating methods will continue to play an increasing role in the development of archaeological chronologies, and OSL dating in particular is poised to make major breakthroughs in constructing reliable archaeological chronologies. ‘Fission-track dating’ is a dosimetric method that works differently than trapped charge dating methods. Fission tracks are created in crystalline minerals when atoms of 238U fission and break apart. Since 238 U fissions at a known rate, the number of fission tracks across a quantified crystalline area in a material in which the concentration of uranium is known can be used to estimate age. Fission-track dating is limited, however, in its application to archaeological contexts older than 100 000 because the low frequency at which 238 U fissions creates substantial error terms that makes its applicability to younger samples impractical.

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Archaeomagnetism, or ‘archaeomagnetic dating’, is a method that pursues correlating an event of archaeological interest with the position of Earth’s magnetic north (which is continually changing). These magnetic positions can provide absolute dates during the time interval of the last few thousand years once they are correlated with dates derived from other methods, such as radiocarbon. Magnetic materials such as iron will tend to align themselves according to the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field at any particular time and place. If these magnetic materials are in fired contexts, such as in archaeological hearth or kiln features, the direction of magnetic north can be preserved to a degree that dating the firing event is possible. Like dendrochronology, archaeomagnetic dating requires constructing reference curves, or a master sequence of direction change in magnetic north, using the orientation of samples of known age based on historical records or, more commonly, radiocarbon dating. These master sequences need to be constructed for each region of study because secular variation in magnetic north is regionally specific. Archaeomagnetic dating is often used in concert with other available dating methods, although it is extensively used in some areas, such as the American Southwest. Another form of magnetic dating documents reversal events of the Earth’s north and south magnetic poles by analyzing the magnetic properties of minerals in preserved sediments. Documenting reversed polarity events has proved to be a robust relative-dating method, but can only provide general age estimates and is restricted to relatively old archaeological contexts. For example, the most recent reversal, the Blake subchron, has been dated to 104 000–117 000 BP. A final set of absolute-dating methods can be referred to as chemical dating methods that rely on isolating and documenting the temporal dimension of a reaction or set of reactions. Amino acid racemization, obsidian hydration, fluorine dating, and in situ cosmogenic isotope dating fall into this category. Chemical dating methods are complicated by the fact that reaction rates are not just product of time, but are influenced by a number of other environmental variables as well (e.g., moisture content, temperature, pressure, etc.). Due to the relatively large number of variables that need to be independently measured, serious problems with amino acid racemization remain to be resolved and applications of cosmogenic isotope dating in archaeology are in an early state of development. Indeed, all three methods are more powerful when used to assess the relative age of archaeological events rather than absolute age. ‘Amino acid racemization’ relies on the rate of decomposition of protein in bone and shell in order to assess age. A major drawback to the method is

that temperature, and thus the rate of protein decomposition, or racemization, must be assumed to have remained constant over time. These assumptions then allow age to be assessed using linear projections, but both assumptions are highly problematic for time periods that clearly demonstrate significant climatic change. Some attempts have been made to control for this shortcoming by creating calibration curves using radiocarbon dating, producing racemization rates to estimate ages beyond the limits of radiocarbon range. However, this calibration still carries the assumption that variation in temperature during earlier periods was similar to that of the later radiocarbon calibrated time span. A more robust application of amino acid racemization is known as aminostratigraphy, a relative-dating method that differentiates stratigraphic units based on protein ratios, and has led to the construction of broad regional chronologies. The parameters of ‘obsidian hydration’ are better known; however, a number of attributes need to be documented for its successful application. Obsidian hydration measures the hydration layer of an exposed surface of glass or silica-enriched rock such as obsidian. Hydration of a new surface begins the moment it is exposed, so the event dated using this method is one consistent with archaeological interests (e.g., the manufacture or recycling of obsidian artifacts). The thickness of the hydration layer is dependent on the hydration rate, which if known, can yield an age of exposure of the surface. Calculating the hydration rate can be difficult, however, since the rate is dependent on composition, moisture, temperature, and pressure. Even so, obtaining sufficient estimates for these attributes is far from impossible, and many successful applications of obsidian hydration have been made. In a relative-dating role, obsidian hydration offers the possibility of identifying and ordering assemblages of mixed age. In addition, because the chemical composition of obsidian differs significantly from outcrop to outcrop, provenance studies have been very successful in accurately characterizing different sources and allocating artifacts to them. Such provenance information, when combined with the chronological information of obsidian hydration, provides a powerful set of tools to document change in the archaeological record. Fluorine, or ‘fluorine–uranium–nitrogen dating’ of bone can be achieved by measuring the amount of fluorine in the sample through an irreversible reaction that results in fluoroapatite replacing hydroxyapatite. Because the amount of fluorine in the environment and the reaction rate is extremely variable, fluorine dating is best suited to a relative-dating role. Fluorine dating was used to uncover the Piltdown hoax, in which a skull was fabricated from bones of different species and age and purported to represent a human ancestor.

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‘In situ cosmogenic isotope dating’ is a relatively new radiometric method that, like obsidian hydration, measures how long a surface has been exposed to the atmosphere. Rather than using hydration rates, cosmogenic isotope dating measures the abundance of in situ cosmogenic isotopes in surface or near-surface materials that have been exposed to the bombardment of high-energy neutrons contained in cosmic rays. In situ cosmogenic isotopes are created when these high-energy neutrons interact with atoms in minerals located in the topmost 1 m or so of deposits. Below 1.5 m, cosmogenic isotope production completely ceases, representing a serious application limit for many archaeological deposits. Partial burial or intermittent burial of artifacts and structures can slow the isotope clock significantly, requiring an accurate understanding of depositional history. Conversely, an artifact or structure buried within the top 1.5 m can accumulate a significant amount of inherited cosmogenic isotopes before surface exposure. In addition, the low production rates of commonly measured cosmogenic isotopes result in timescales that are often more compatible with geological investigations than archaeological ones. However, continuing improvements in the technical ability to measure ever smaller atomic quantities has led to some optimism that common archaeological timescales will soon be encompassed. Cosmogenic isotope dating primarily makes use of six isotopes, two of which are stable (3He and 21Ne) and four of which are radioactive (10Be, 14C, 26Al, 36 Cl). The relatively short timescales of archaeology restrict exposure dating studies to isotopes that accumulate relatively quickly in minerals, namely 3He, 14 C, and 36Cl. Cosmogenic isotope production is dependent on elevation (higher rates at higher elevations), magnetic field strength (higher rates with distance from the equatorial magnetic field), and solar activity (high solar activity decreases cosmic ray flux). At present, all of these factors will require additional future research to better assess in situ cosmogenic isotope production rates. Best case scenarios for nearterm future archaeological applications of cosmogenic isotope dating will probably include stone structures, monuments, or petroglyphs whose surfaces have been continually exposed to cosmic rays and have experienced minimal erosion. Two relative-dating methods that have been briefly mentioned, seriation and stratigraphic superposition, deserve further comment because they still constitute the most common forms of dating used in archaeology today. The principle of stratigraphic superposition was developed in early geological inquiries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The central proposition is that older deposits lie below younger

ones. It is important to stress that the geological law of superposition refers to the age of the deposition event, not necessarily the age of the artifacts within the deposit. However, barring the subsequent disturbance or reworking of the deposits (e.g., reversed stratigraphy), the age of artifact manufacture frequently does roughly coincide with the age of the deposition event, making superposition useful to archaeologists in building chronology. Unlike other dating methods, seriation was developed by archaeologists. Consequently, the dated attributes are archaeological and in accord with archaeological target events. Seriation uses a distinctive patterning in the distribution of historical classes (often classes of pottery style) through time to generate the chronological order of archaeological events. The distinctive pattern is one of a continuous, nonrepetitive distribution if one documents the presence or absence of attributes (occurrence seriation), or monotonic (unimodal) if the frequencies of historical classes are recorded (frequency seriation). Stratigraphic superposition initially supplied information on which end of the order was oldest (and which was youngest), but it was soon realized that even undated surface assemblages, if described as stylistic classes, could be ordered chronologically if they were arranged in such a way that all classes exhibited unimodal frequencies. Only recently has it come to be understood why stylistic classes behave in this manner. Seriation is successful because it provides the ability to empirically assess initial chronological constructs against outside data. Initial chronologies and historical class descriptions could be revised or discarded. For almost 70 years, archaeologists knew seriation worked, but were unable to explain why, merely stating that styles wax and wane in popularity. This response did not address ‘why’ styles act this way. We now know that stylistic traits are akin to neutral traits in biology which also display unimodal distributions due to the lack of selection pressure. This theoretical realization has led to new research on the underlying principles of seriation, and has generated new interest in documenting and explaining temporal and spatial variation in the archaeological record.

Concluding Remarks While archaeologists now have at their disposal a greater range of dating methods than ever before, the strengths and limitations of these methods for developing archaeological chronologies often go unrecognized. This situation appears to be slowly changing, but will only improve markedly with the recognition that creating robust archaeological

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chronologies requires robust archaeological theory. Refinements in archaeological chronology are dependent not only on technical improvements in the methods themselves, but also on a developed theoretical framework that determines which archaeological events are relevant to a chronological inquiry, and how these events need to be dated and analyzed. Secure chronological information continues to be a key requirement for studies that undertake the widely held goal of explaining change in the archaeological record. See also: Amino Acid Racemization Dating; Artifacts,

Overview; Carbon-14 Dating; Dendrochronology; Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Fiber Artifacts; Luminescence Dating; Obsidian Hydration Dating; Seriation; Stratigraphic Analysis; Time and History, Divisions.

Further Reading Aitken MJ (1990) Science-Based Dating in Archaeology. London: Longman.

Deep Ocean Archaeology

Baillie MGL (1995) A Slice through Time: Dendrochronology and Precision Dating. London: Batsford Press. Dean JS (1978) Independent dating in archaeological analysis. In: Schiffer MB (ed.) Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 1, p. 223–255. New York: Academic Press. Dunnell RC (2000) Dating, method, and theory. In: Ellis L (ed.) Archaeological Method and Theory: An Encyclopedia, pp. 143–150. New York: Garland. Feathers JK (1997) The application of luminescence dating in American archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 4: 1–66. Nash SE (ed.) (2000) It’s About Time: A History of Archaeological Dating in North America. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Stuart FM (2001) In situ cosmogenic isotopes: Principles and potential for archaeology. In: Brothwell DR and Pollard AM (eds.) Handbook of Archaeological Sciences pp. 93–100. New York: Wiley. Taylor RE (2001) Radiocarbon dating. In: Brothwell DR and Pollard AM (eds.) Handbook of Archaeological Sciences pp. 23–34. New York: Wiley. Taylor RE and Aitken MJ (eds.) (1997) Chronometric Dating in Archaeology. New York: Plenum Press. Truncer J (ed.) (2003) Picking the Lock of Time: Developing Chronology in American Archaeology. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

See: Robotic Archaeology on the Deep Ocean Floor.

DENDROCHRONOLOGY Stephen E Nash, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Denver, CO, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary climate signal Patterning evident in tree-ring growth sequences that is due to the influence of (preferably) one environmental parameter that limits tree growth in a given locality. At lower elevations in the arid American Southwest, the climate signal recorded in tree-rings is a reflection of variability in precipitation levels from year to year. crossdating The procedure of matching patterned ring-width variation between trees of the same species growing in close proximity, or between an archaeological sample and a master chronology, such that one may identify all growth anomalies and determine the exact year on the common era calendar in which each ring was grown. cutting date The term for a common-era calendar date assigned to the last growth ring on a specimen when there is definitive empirical evidence that it was the last ring grown before tree death.

double ring The term used to describe a situation in which tree growth began in one year, stopped because of some environmental or other stress, and then began again during the same growing season. If not properly identified through crossdating, double rings, which are also termed ‘false rings’, can cause the dendrochronologist to apply calendar dates that are too young to the outer rings on a tree-ring specimen. locally absent rings Similar to missing rings, locally absent rings are caused when environmental conditions are stressful enough that, although tree growth may occur in a given year, a complete growth ring is not formed along the entire stem of the tree. A tree-ring core taken along a radius in which growth has not occurred (see Figure 2) will yield a locally absent ring, even though the ring for that year is not truly missing. missing ring The term used to describe a situation in which tree growth never occurred during a particular year because of environmentally stressful conditions. If not properly identified through crossdating, missing rings can cause the dendrochronologist to apply calendar dates that are too young to the outer rings on a tree-ring specimen (see also ‘locally absent rings’). non-cutting date The term for a common-era calendar date assigned to the last growth ring on a specimen when there is no empirical evidence that it was the last ring grown before tree death.

1084 DENDROCHRONOLOGY skeleton plot An analog method for recording variability in tree-ring sequences. Comparatively narrow rings are recorded with long lines on a piece of graph paper; comparatively wider rings are recorded with shorter lines.

Dendochronology Dendrochronology, the study of tree time, is a multidisciplinary science that provides chronometric, environmental, and behavioral data to archaeologists and other scientists. The fundamental principle of dendrochronology is ‘crossdating’. Crossdating is the procedure of matching patterned ring-width variations between trees of the same species growing in close proximity, such that one may ultimately determine the exact year in which each ring was formed. The process of crossdating begins with the analysis of cores or cross sections from living and recently living trees for which the calendar-year date for the outside growth ring is known and for which calendar-year dates for interior rings may be inferred. Crossdating ends with the construction of a tree-ring chronology in which all anomalous rings are identified and accounted for and common-era calendar dates have been applied to all rings in the tree-ring sequence. In order to be useful for archaeological dating, properly crossdated tree-ring chronologies must be built back through time, from living-tree specimens through the analysis of successively older and older wood or charcoal specimens (Figure 1).

Prerequisites for Successful Tree-Ring Dating Four conditions must be fulfilled before dendrochronology may be developed and applied in archaeological research. The first condition is that the tree

species under analysis produce only one growth ring per calendar year. Unfortunately, nature is not always so neat. During particularly stressful years, trees that usually produce one growth ring per year may actually fail to produce a growth ring, in which case dendrochronologists will note a ‘missing ring’ (or ‘locally absent ring’) in its tree-ring sequence (Figure 2). Some species, such as pinyon (Pinus edulis), may present many missing rings in any given sequence and therefore must be crossdated with extreme care. If missing rings are not properly identified through crossdating, the dendrochronologist may assign a tree-ring date to the last growth ring on the specimen that is ‘too old’ on the common-era calendar. Under other stressful conditions, trees that typically produce one growth ring per year may in fact produce two or more rings in a given year (Figure 3). ‘Double rings’ are created when climatic conditions (e.g., drought or cold snap) prompt a tree to stop growing prematurely, then to resume growth when favorable conditions return later that growing season. If not properly identified and crossdated, double rings will cause the dendrochronologist to assign a commonera calendar date that is too young. The potential for missing, locally absent, and double rings varies by tree species and location, and are the reasons that the basic principle of dendrochronology, crossdating, requires so much more than simple ring counting. It is essential to all archaeological treering dating that the dendrochronologists use crossdating to identify all problem rings before assigning dates to a tree-ring chronology. Once a sound treering chronology has been properly crossdated, the act of deriving a tree-ring date for an archaeological wood or charcoal specimen requires controlled comparison of the ring sequence for that specimen against the master chronology derived for that region.

Figure 1 Crossdating, the procedure of matching patterns in annual variations in ring width (or other ring parameters, including density) from specimen to specimen, working back through time. Note that crossdating is not ring counting. (Figure courtesy of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, The University of Arizona, Tucson).

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Figure 3 Double rings are caused by some environmental stress, like a cold or dry period, which causes a tree to prematurely begin growth cessation and the creation of darker latewood cells. With the return of normal growing conditions, growth, and the production of earlywood resumes, until the end of the growing season and the creation of a normal ring boundary (Figure courtesy of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, The University of Arizona, Tucson).

Figure 2 Missing (or locally absent) rings. If a tree-ring core were taken at the radius marked by line a, the growth ring for AD 1447 would not be present on that core, and would be identified through crossdating with other specimens in which the growth ring for that year is present. In the strictest terms, the growth ring for AD 1447 is locally absent, as it is present on certain portions of the tree stem. (Figure courtesy of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, The University of Arizona, Tucson).

The second prerequisite condition for successful crossdating is that growth of the tree species under consideration be limited primarily by one environmental factor. In the American Southwest and at lower elevation tree lines, that environmental factor is usually precipitation. In Europe, at upper tree lines, and in high latitudes, that environmental factor is usually temperature. Research (and common sense) has of course demonstrated that many parameters, including environmental, genetic, and idiosyncratic variables, affect individual tree growth. For tree ring dating to work, however, a climatic variable must be most responsible for tree-growth variation in the species being examined in any given area. If this is the case, it can be stated that the trees in that area are responding to the same ‘climate signal’. The third prerequisite condition for successful crossdating requires that the growth-limiting factor (be it temperature or precipitation) be characterized by extreme annual variability and that the variability

is then recorded in growth rings of trees in the area. That is, the trees must be ‘sensitive’ to the local climate signal. To belabor the point: Because crossdating requires ring-width pattern matching, there has to be environmentally produced and variable ring-width patterns available to crossdate! Trees that are not stressed and indeed enjoy growing conditions favorable to growth (look at cross sections in your local lumber yard) produce annual rings that are comparatively uniform in width and therefore have a uniform pattern. Such ring series are termed ‘complacent’ and are not ideal for dendrochronological analysis. The fourth prerequisite condition for successful crossdating requires that the variability in the climatic parameter to which the trees are responding be geographically extensive and influential enough that trees across a large region respond to that variability in similar fashion. On the Colorado Plateau, in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest, for instance, coniferous tree species generally respond to a plateau-wide climate (e.g., precipitation) signal even though much more localized variability is also recorded by the trees. For archaeological dating to be possible at all, two additional conditions must be met. The first is a function of prehistoric wood use behavior. Though it may seem obvious, it is worth stating: If prehistoric populations did not make use of crossdatable tree species

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for firewood, as construction timbers, or as raw material for artifacts, then it will be impossible to treering date their sites, features, and objects because the wood and charcoal recovered by archaeologists is not, by definition, datable. For example, cottonwood and ironwood are two tree species available to prehistoric inhabitants of the American Southwest but for which tree growth violates one or more of the aforementioned prerequisite conditions. Cottonwood and ironwood simply do not produce annualized rings that are sensitive to individual climate signals. If the prehistoric inhabitants of the American Southwest built their houses with cottonwood logs and cooked their food over ironwood campfires, dendrochronologists would simply not be able to date prehistoric sites using tree-ring analysis. Fortunately for archaeologists, the prehistoric inhabitants of the Four Corners region made extensive use of crossdatable species like ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, pinyon, and juniper. A second additional condition, corollary to the first, is that, even if prehistoric populations made use of crossdatable tree species, tree-ring dating is possible only if samples remain preserved in the archaeological record, in the form of wood or charcoal, and are recovered, saved, and submitted for analysis by archaeologists. Thirteenth-century cliff dwellings in the American Southwest, such as those at Mesa Verde, are well-dated dendrochronologically because wood beams have been preserved in the dry rockshelter environments and remain to be sampled by archaeologists today. On the other hand, tenth-century openair sites and pit structures in the Southwest are not well-dated because wood samples decay in open-air environments, though charcoal can remain in good condition for comparatively long periods of time in such environments. The principle of crossdating and the prerequisite conditions for archaeological tree-ring dating are

invariable. Accurately crossdated tree-ring chronologies cannot be developed if any of the first four above conditions are not met, and archaeological artifacts, features, and sites cannot be tree-ring dated if appropriate tree species were not used prehistorically and are not preserved for recovery today.

Archaeological Tree-Ring Date Interpretation To derive a tree-ring date from an archeological wood or charcoal specimen, an analog representation of its tree-ring sequence is recorded on a ‘skeleton plot’ (Figure 4). The width of the growth rings on a given tree-ring specimen are plotted in inverse – narrow growth rings are indicated on the skeleton plot by very tall lines; comparatively wider growth rings are indicated by relatively shorter lines, and wide growth rings indicated by no line at all. Once a skeleton plot has been created for an individual specimen, it can then be compared against those of other specimens to create a master chronology or it is compared against that region’s existing, precisely dated master chronology until the ring-width patterns match up, all missing and double rings have been identified and accounted for, and calendar dates can be identified for each ring on the specimen. Today, sophisticated computerized quantitative techniques can be used to crossdate specimens, build tree-ring chronologies, and date archaeological specimens, but the classic skeleton plot technique is still in use. Even when quantitatively crossdated, good dendrochronologists always go ‘back to the wood’ to confirm the dating suggested by the computer. Once calendar dates have been identified for all rings on a specimen, the dendrochronologist examines physical characteristics on the outside end of a tree-ring specimen to determine whether the date

Figure 4 The skeleton plot. A schematic summary of growth rings on a tree-ring specimen. Narrow rings are indicated by tall lines, relative wide rings are indicated by short lines or are not noted at all. (Figure courtesy of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, The University of Arizona, Tucson).

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assigned to the outermost ring is a ‘cutting’ or a ‘noncutting’ date. A ‘cutting date’ is assigned when the specimen provides some evidence, in the form of bark, beetle galleries, or other conditions, that the outermost ring on that specimen was the last one grown by the tree before it died. A ‘noncutting date’ is assigned when there is no evidence that the outermost ring present on the specimen was the last one grown before the tree died. For reasons having mostly to do with preservation issues, noncutting dates are, unfortunately, far more common in archaeological tree-ring dating, even though cutting dates are of much greater analytic utility to the archaeologist. Cutting dates may not necessarily indicate the year of a site’s construction, the year in which a campfire was burned, or the year that an artifact was made, but they do indicate the year in which the tree was harvested or otherwise died, and are therefore much closer approximations of the dates and behaviors of interest to the archaeologist. Noncutting dates are further removed, often by an indeterminate number of years, from the behavior of interest. Because noncutting dates are so common in archaeological analysis, and prove to be so problematic to archaeological interpretation, archaeologists often rely on ‘date clustering’ to guide their analyses. If a number of noncutting dates from any given feature or site tend to cluster in 1, 2, or 3 years, the archaeologists can infer that tree-ring analysis has identified a prehistoric event, simply because there is little a priori reason to expect noncutting dates to cluster.

Applications of Tree-Ring Dating in Archaeology The chronometric, or time measurement, application of dendrochronology has the longest history and is the most commonly known to nonspecialists. Tree-ring dating is routinely used to date artifacts, features, sites, and, by extension, abstract archaeological entities including periods, stages, phases, and styles. Tree-ring dates have also been used to confirm and provide absolute dates for chronological sequences provided by relative dating techniques including seriation and stratigraphic analysis. Tree rings are used to calibrate radiocarbon dates and to confirm the veracity of dates provided by other chronometric techniques, including archaeomagnetic, obsidian hydration, luminescence, and historic dates (see Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Obsidian Hydration Dating). As but one example of many, when treering dates were first used to calibrate the radiocarbon curve in Europe in the 1960s, archaeologists’ understanding of European prehistory was turned on its

head. Although megalithic sites in western Europe were once assumed to postdate the pyramids of classical Egypt, and monumental architecture was assumed to have diffused from Egypt to the West, tree-ring calibration of the radiocarbon date curve demonstrated that western European megaliths actually predated the pyramids, and the supposed diffusion of technology could not possibly have happened. The environmental application of modern dendrochronology enjoys the most worldwide application, as tree-ring chronologies can be used to mathematically reconstruct many environmental variables, including precipitation, temperature, stream flow, drought severity, fire frequency and intensity, insect infestation, atmospheric circulation patterns, and other parameters. These kinds of analyses have proved useful for archaeologists when compared to excavation data to determine potential cause-and-effect relationships between paleoenvironmental conditions and the human occupation of a given area. The behavioral application of dendrochronology has a shorter and more restricted pedigree, but the analysis of tree-ring dates within their archaeological contexts allows archaeologists to make inferences regarding wood-use practices, trade, and other economic variables and relationships. As but one example, dendrochronological study of wood use at Walpi Pueblo, on the Hopi Mesas in Arizona, yields precise chronometric data on three different wood-use regimes at the site: (1) prehistoric use of stone axes by Native Americans to cut down living trees; (2) early historic use of metal axes by Hispanic populations to cut down and use both living and dead trees; and (3) the use of milled lumber by Anglos and others with the arrival of the railroad in the 1880s.

Conclusion Dendrochronology provides the most accurate, precise, and reliable chronometric information available to archaeologists. In areas like the American Southwest and western Europe, where tree-ring dating has enjoyed widespread archaeological application for nearly eight decades, archaeologists are blessed with the availability of astonishingly precise temporal, environmental, and behavioral data spanning the last 2000 years, and in some cases for longer. Though some success has been achieved in tree-ring dating archaeological sites and structures in Alaska, the American Midwest, and the Mediterranean and Middle East, the stringent prerequisite conditions for crossdating and archaeological application of tree-ring dating practically guarantee that its application will not expand much beyond the times and places to which it is currently restricted. Nevertheless, in situations where

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tree-ring dates can be obtained, archaeologists can derive interpretations about the prehistoric past that are resolved to the year. See also: Amino Acid Racemization Dating; Carbon-14 Dating; Dating Methods, Overview; Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Luminescence Dating; Obsidian Hydration Dating; Time and History, Divisions.

Further Reading Baillie MGL (1982) Tree-Ring Dating and Archaeology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Baillie MGL (1995) A Slice through Time: Dendrochronology and Precision Dating. London: BT Batsford Ltd. London. Dean JS (1978) Tree-Ring Dating in Archaeology. University of Utah Miscellaneous Anthropological Papers 24. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Dean JS (1997) Dendrochronology. In: Taylor RE and Aitken MJ (eds.) Chronometric Dating in Archaeology: Advances in Archaeological and Museum Science, vol. 2, pp. 31–64. New York: Plenum. Dean JS, Meko DM and Swetnam TW (eds.)(1996) Tree-Rings, Environment, and Humanity: Proceedings of the International Conference, Tucson, 1994. Tucson: Radiocarbon. Hillam J (1998) Dendrochronology: Guidelines on Producing and Interpreting Dendrochronological Dates. London: Ancient Monuments Laboratory. Nash SE (1999) Time, Trees, and Prehistory: Tree-Ring Dating and the Development of North American Archaeology 1914–1950. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Nash SE (2000) Seven decades of archaeological tree-ring dating. In: Nash SE (ed.) It’s About Time: A History of Archaeological Dating in North America, pp. 60–82. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Nash SE (2002) Archaeological tree-ring dating at the millennium. Journal of Archaeological Research 10: 243–272. Stokes MA and Smiley TL (1968) An Introduction to Tree-Ring Dating. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

DEVELOPMENT AND ARCHAEOLOGY O Hugo Benavides, Fordham University, Bronx, NY, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Pompeii A ruined Roman city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the comune of Pompei. It was destroyed, and completely buried, during a catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius on 24 August 79 AD. Stonehenge A Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic monument located near Amesbury in the English county of Wiltshire, about 8 miles (13 km) north of Salisbury. World Archaeological Congress A nongovernmental, not-for-profit organization, it is the only archaeological organization with elected global representation.

Archaeology has been an essential part of the development discourse since its very inception at the end of World War II. However, even before this official launching of a Western development project archaeology had been implicated in the production of identity, territorial rights, and national legitimization. Because of its very aura of historical objectivity and scientific rigor, archaeology has traditionally commanded an enormous amount of power in terms of defining the nature and ownership over cultural property and territorial rights. In this manner, archaeology has also been able to muster an enormous amount of influence on allocating and producing complex forms of identity and social alliances with the recent and ancient past.

It is this particular disciplinary heritage that made archaeology an implicit ally in the West’s drive for a global development project that looked to eradicate the most pernicious forms of poverty and illness around the world. In its most implicit forms archaeology consistently provided the historical legitimization for differing groups, including powerful nation-states to rally around the idea of ancestral claims to land and resources that had been bitterly disputed in the region. As Foster has argued, in many ways archaeologists provided for national communities what poppy seed growers have for heroin addicts. This metaphor captures to some degree the volatile nature of archaeological heritage and the complex place that it holds in the national configurations of identity and resources since the end of the twentieth century. The development project makes use of this archaeology in slightly similar ways, enabling many national groups, including states and oppressed minorities, to use the past to claim access to resources that either had been traditionally denied or monopolized by contesting groups. To this degree the development project exacerbated an already hierarchical difference between first and third world nations (or preferably, global north and south) under the auspices of a paternal (and patronizing) desire to remedy some of capitalism’s most pernicious global impacts. As a result of this development enterprise, the central role of historical identity in the production of political rights became a viable social enterprise. It is in this fashion that many ancestral Indian (or so

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called native) communities throughout the Americas, Africa, and Asia began to not only fight for their access to resources but also to reorganize their own political claims and identities in accordance with the new global demands of the nation-state. Archaeology has played an essential role in supporting this new wave of Indigenous/Native human rights agendas, which awakened by the development discourse, present new postmodern forms of identification throughout the world. In this new age of post-industrial capitalism the native is no longer a mere sign of Western oppression but one of cosmopolitan identification. This complicity between development and archaeology has also found fertile ground in the resurgence of transnational NGOs, progressive social movements, and new forms of eco-tourism that more than ever look to provide a more dynamic understanding of a democratic present (and past). The complex manner of these political reconfigurations both in the global north and south is highlighted below in the following three cases of different regions of the world.

World Archaeological Inter-Congresses: the Political Reconfiguration of Native Identities He kainga no te ururoa, te moana (The ocean is the home of the shark, and) He Kainga no te kereru, te ngahere (the forest is the home of the wood pigeon). This Ma¯ori proverb has many meanings one of which is that respect should be accorded to those whose domain you enter. (World Archaeology Congress website)

Since its original inception in 1986, the World Archaeology Congress (WAC) has held several different inter-congresses in between their larger global meetings held every four years. Two of these intercongresses have taken place in New Zealand, in 2001 and 2005, both dealing with issues of indigenous rights and archaeology. To an enormous degree the foundation of WAC itself, and these recent inter-congresses, express the central role of native identity and indigenous rights in the modern-day configuration of archaeological research. As such, Indian/native identities throughout the globe are central political elements in the development enterprises carried out in the far reaching corners of the world. As more development projects are carried out in remote places and ancestral homelands, many of these same impoverished communities find themselves empowered and re-vitalized to re-define their historical identities in new modern ways. To this degree the WAC’s two inter-congresses express the intersection of development, archaeology, native rights, and re-territorialization. It is this new

revitalization of native rights and ancestral claims to land and government bodies that may be seen as one of the most politically progressive contributions of the development enterprise. Even though one could argue that this cultural revalidation was not the initial motivation of the development paradigm, more and more projects of sustainable development, cultural heritage and minority valorization are central parts of the new development agenda of the twenty-first century. At the same time, not surprisingly, archaeology has been called into this enterprise by encouraging both bureaucrats and native populations who see ancient history, particularly when written records are not available, as essential in their claims of national identity and political representation. A critical element in this new reconstitution of the native within the global landscape is the important place of cultural diversity within the political and economic narrative of the West, including in transnational institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the meetings of the Super 7. It is no longer acceptable to simply ostracize minority and native populations but rather one of the very signatures of the new enlightened modernity of the West is to attempt to support, democratically integrate, and respect traditional ways. This has meant the powerful reworking of a native discourse that has logically enough both shaken and legitimized contemporary nation-states. Natives have expressed themselves in terms of authentic cultural traditions and through the reigning developmental discourse successfully obtained international assistance, aid, and political validation. In a sense they have had no choice but to express themselves in culturally authentic terms, and yet in another sense they have been empowered to become natives by a developmental paradigm that necessarily needs natives to develop, and a nation-state that also needs them to secure international funds. In this postcolonial framework homogenous nation-states are out of the picture, not primarily because they have never existed, but more specifically because this reality would translate into an economic debacle and their political demise. However, to mistake native movements as representative of some pristine cultural authenticity, as the movement espouses for obvious reasons of economic and cultural survival, is to disregard the dangerous underpinnings of capitalist transformations. In this sense, natives do not represent a greater form of cultural authenticity than other contesting groups including those representing the state project, but a hybridity of previous social symbols and meaning in modern terms. This mixing process is strongly indebted to Western values, which provide the symbols and meaning that give the movement its reason of

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being, both historically and politically. This transformation occurs even in the light that the different native movement, as the state itself, must adamantly express itself as representing an authentic (i.e., natural and pristine) independent of historical struggle and free of ‘polluting’ modern characteristics, bringing in dangerous genocidal shadows. History enables natives to use an ethnic identity that was the cause of their historic domination. Therefore, Indians/natives are able to use their ethnic oppression as cultural capital to obtain funds, political recognition, and other resources from first world nations many of which were once (and still are) at the head of their own cultural destruction. Because of this, far from being a simple tale of utopic liberation; native struggles, development schemes, and democratization plans are re-transformations of old, uneven political alliances between first and third world forces. Only in this transnational reconfiguration of the market have natives been able to articulate their historical agency. The resistance and contestation against the West by native communities is not new, only the fact that they are being heard and celebrated by the West’s most powerful representatives. It is at this juncture that archaeology enters into the reclaiming of land and identities of ancestral and native communities around the world. As Gero (N.d. in WAC website) states in the introductory remarks of WAC’s website, ‘‘In fact this is the archaeology of the future. The discipline of archaeology is no longer the exclusive province of white European upper-class men, and there is no going back to a pre-WAC era of exclusionary, hierarchical and scientized knowledge that marginalizes the multivocal archaeology from the peripheries. The question of ‘who controls the past?’ is no longer a conundrum because it must be generally conceded that there are many pasts and they will be known differently from many views?’’ As a result of this complex relationship between development and archaeology there is now a reinvestment of centuries-old struggles for economic, political, and cultural resources all over the world. From the most powerful Indian movement in the Americas, to the resurgence of Ma¯ori culture and life-ways in New Zealand, to the complex foundation of national parks in a post-apartheid South Africa, these groups are consistently vying to reinsert their contemporary lives and culture in a much more humane and democratic apparatus that has been the case until now.

Cochasquı´: an Idealized Development Failure The monumental site of Cochasquı´ (AD 500–1500) in the north Andean Ecuadorian highlands illustrates

the manner in which development archaeological projects are productive in a myriad of ways. Far from achieving the initial success that the development agenda proposes, most projects achieve mixed results that tend to be most productive in ways that differ, even contradictorily so, to the aims initially expounded. In this manner, Cochasquı´ was far from able to successfully maintain its initial ideal of sustainable development yet has become one of the most visited archaeological sites in the country, and ultimately serves to sustain the historical ideal of the Ecuadorian nation-state far beyond its mere two centuries of existence. The site is located 56 km north of Quito, Ecuador’s capital, only an hour-and-a-half’s drive north of the city. Since its initial opening to tourists in the late 1970s, under the auspices of the Programa Cochasquı´, the site averages around 20 000 visitors a year – both nationals and foreigners. The Programa Cochasquı´ was initially defined as an organic structure that is concerned with scientific research; the conservation, restoration, the economic development of the region; the diffusion, promotion and carrying out of different agendas, scientific and ecological tourism; with the perspective of defining, motivating and defending our national identity. Since 1986, the program has been officially an administrative unit of the Consejo Provincial, but until then the program had been an independent department of this state entity. The program’s funding is automatically included in the annual Consejo Provincial’s budget, although extra funds for special events are presented separately to the Consejo and directly approved by the Prefecto Provincial. The Cochasquı´ Program staff is typically composed of 15 members: a director, five tour guides (two of them from the local population), a site resident, an archaeologist, a sociologist, a secretary, two drivers, four local workers, and three local guards. By 1981 the 83.9 ha that currently make up the site had been completely expropriated from their last private owner, the Hacienda Pirela, and the site of Cochasquı´ opened its door to the public. The program’s initial plan put forward four main objectives for the maintenance of the archaeological site of Cochasquı´: (1) historical/anthropological; (2) conservation-restoration; (3) socioeconomic (community development); and (4) public awareness. These four initial objectives have been maintained during the program’s existence. The most interesting objective of the program in its central concern for the historical reconstruction of the site has been its interest in including the comuna (local community) in the site’s preservation. From the outset it proposed a dynamic concept of culture as the essential element

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for any possible model of autonomous development of the region. The initial structure of the program was of an interdisciplinary nature because it looked to the development of Cochasquı´ not only as an archaeological site but also as an autochthonous community with many other needs, such as agricultural, socioeconomic, and medical. It also proposed a future structure wherein the local communities (comuna) would become responsible and capable of managing the archaeological site directly. This initial cultural objective was still prevalent among the tour guides at the site in the late 1990s. In the program’s restructuring in the early 1990s, there was an explicit understanding of three major moments of activity at the site: the first was the initial period of cleaning and preparing the site for public display; the second was marked by the presence of foreign and national experts who served as consultants to the program and carried out studies of different aspects at the site; and the third was the program’s recognition of the difficulty in implementing many of the initial objectives, mainly due to the instability of the program’s personnel. As a result of this, the program personnel has been completely overhauled many times over the last two decades, with only the local staff, the archaeologist and site resident remaining from the previous administrations. This instability of the staff’s personnel was signaled by Salcedo in his ethnography about cultural identity at Cochasquı´ as a central characteristic of the program. For him, the labor instability is provoked by a whole array of different reasons and situations: The instability of the staff, who are constantly removed; the confusion of personal conflicts with the general and transpersonal objectives of the Program; the problems of communication between different social and cultural backgrounds; the intangible phenomena resulting from power conflicts; the labor tensions from the working conditions of the Provincial Council and of the Program itself; the different ideological tendencies of its members; and the different degrees of interest in the Program itself has made it a heterogeneous composition of varied interests and personal motivations, which is why a uniform collective action can not be implemented (Salcedo 1985: 103).

More importantly, this instability is a response to actual structural constraints defined by the country’s different ideological currents. The program’s position within the Consejo Provincial, a state institution, makes it prey to economic hardships reflected in low wages, contract problems, transportation deficiency (cars always breaking down), and social instability as a result of the constant powerplay of consejeros and electoral politics.

In this manner, Cochasquı´ has failed at almost all of its development aims (not surprising to any degree for the multiple development projects around the world) but has been successful in other equally powerful enterprises. Perhaps its biggest succes is to have been able to muster an enormous sense of national pride and historical legitimization for the troubled Ecuadorian nation-state. Suffering from a profound loss of territory to its neighbors, particularly Peru, Ecuador has traditionally suffered from an identity void in terms of historical validation. The productive identification of these thousand–year-old monumental pyramids within the recent Ecuadorian nation-state has provided a sense of pride in an Indian past that had never coalesced in such successful fashion. It is not unrelated to this enterprise that the contemporary Indian communities in Ecuador (i.e, CONAIEConfederation of Indian Nationalities of Ecuador) have been able to mobilize with unprecedented power in the last two decades. Although they yet have to make direct claims to archaeological remains and artifacts, there is no doubt that the global conditions of transnational ecological movements and local forms of claims to an ancestral past have powerfully served to revitalize an ancestral Indian identity in Ecuador.

Pompeii: the Historical Limitations of the Global North One of the most pervasive (and perhaps pernicious) implications of the development agenda is that somehow it implicates in a much more powerful fashion the third world than it does the first. This assumption in itself is an inherent result of the hierarchical manner in which the development enterprise situates itself in the global order. By over-emphasizing the changes occurring in the third world, among ancestral communities and re-formulated minority and native identities, the actual shifts and changes occurring in the first world actually get erased or covered up. This particular form of discursive denial is essential for several reasons that are inherent to the development paradigm. Prime among these reasons is the belief that somehow the third world is at the receiving end of the resource exchange, eliding the manner in which those same native communities have been decimated by centuries of capitalist exploitation that have secured the uneven access and exchange of development resources today. Another crucial element in the development enterprise is that of racial identification. In the sense, that the development scheme once again retells a global narrative of compassionate white stakeholders helping out black and brown skinned others to achieve a higher level of development outside

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of their own internal grasp. Of course, this denies the fact that a significant number of development workers (even from first world countries) are not white, that the overall state of poverty is more widespread in the world today (even after five decades of development work), and the ethnocentric base of evolutionary schemes of development, civilization, and modernity. Based on the above, archaeological sites in the first world present interesting analytical cases in which to assess the uneven exchange of cultural resource contained within the development enterprise, and also the manner in which cultural identification itself gets reproduced in highly uneven fashion. In this manner, the site of Pompeii, in southern Italy, (perhaps along with Stonehenge) allows for an initial understanding of the complex ways in which first world archaeological enterprises also get marked and redefined within the new transnational order of things. It is perhaps equally telling how the site of Stonehenge is completely off-limits to all but a few archaeologists, precisely because the state has become rapidly aware of the volatile nature of the site’s historical identification possibilities. The Roman site of Pompeii presents itself as an interesting site of multiple and ambivalent identification. Above all, the splendor, mystery, and sheer monumentality of the site puts it on a scale of its own within the European landscape. As a result of having worked there on several different projects, the author was immediately struck by the tens of thousands of Italians and foreigners who flock to visit and walk its streets each summer, visiting a city that was almost instantly stopped in its track by the Vesuvius explosion two thousand years ago. As a result of that natural accident, the site would seem to present a window into a similar, yet different, way of life that took place in today’s modern Mediterranean landscape. Not surprisingly, it is the awesome historical seduction of the site that justifies the thousands of euros that visitors pay to visit Pompeii and that support the rest of Italy’s archaeological sites and enterprises. However, one of the most profoundly explicit elements at Pompeii is how much the site, and visiting it, is not about the past but rather about the present. In a way the site proudly expounds a moment in time when the Roman (i.e., Italian) empire was at its global height, not only in terms of monumental achievement but more importantly of territorial and global domination. This particular manner of understanding Pompeii, and the Roman past, is essentially related to the rather secondary place that Italy now plays within the new European Union, and the almost third world identification it has inherited since World War II to the present day. In this fashion, Pompeii serves to

ambivalently state, to Italians and foreigners alike, a narrative about national superiority that is impregnated with imperialist nostalgia about the past and burgeoning feelings about a misplaced fascist history of the present. At the same time, the site elaborates a more global narrative of archaeological grandeur in a manner not unrelated to its European geography. In this way Pompeii is also ambivalently situated within an emerging postnational identification of a modern Europe at the same time that it presents an empirical backdrop from the imagined past that modern history came from which and has evolved. This particular ambiguous identification is an essential marker of a development scheme that is pervasively present throughout the world in its modern reconfiguration. On the one hand, Europe (and the United States) must maintain a superior distinctiveness that both expresses and reflects their greater resource possibilities, while on the other hand they must also express an element of democratic identification that makes development not the uneven exchange that it always has been, but rather a more humanitarian enterprise of democratic self-fulfillment. In such a complicated landscape of discursive possibilities, archaeology and centrally produced sites such as Pompeii play an essential role in both justifying and enabling such narratives of unequal cultural exchange. That is why it is so easy for visitors at Pompeii to be awed by the grandeur of the site which tells of a luxurious past in tune with a prosperous territorial present. Yet this present historical narrative is not completely true, and that particular reality is made more visible in the landscape of Pompeii, where the northern sensibilities of the continent are far from being espoused, and are often openly ridiculed. It is also in this manner that the archaeological landscape of Pompeii opens a series of questions about what is the nature of the site’s archaeological representation, and ultimately what does this representation actually accomplish. In such a fashion, first world archaeological sites and not only third world ones are imbued with significant discourses about national and global identification. In this sense, Pompeii, as with Cochasquı´ and other third world archaeological projects, is burdened with a historical narrative that not only transcends its borders but that perhaps even more importantly did not even begin within them. To this degree the development enterprise is so pervasive in its restructuring of the current global order of nations that archaeological sites carry this historical object of validation within the very possibilities of their discursive explanations. In this manner the story told by guides and imagined by visitors at Pompeii is as much about the site as it is about a troubled first world incapable of

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transcending its own historical limitations, an Italy traversed by unequal identification between its northern and southern regions, and about an ancient Roman empire that is as alive today in people’s imagination as we want it to be.

Archaeology and Development: a Relationship of Affinity As the above discussions show, both development and archaeology are invested in providing support, empowering and enabling forgotten communities, either within the current political structure or in the historical record. In this manner, the intersection of both disciplinary interests belies a much broader structural apparatus that secures the reproduction of old neocolonial interests but in slightly different ways. It is, of course, contained within these slightly differing manner of political identification and distribution of resources that hope for a more democratic future is embedded, one in which all native communities, not only oppressed ones will be more able to espouse and live their cultural values without genocidal fears and exclusion. In this same way, the three discussions above exemplify the different manner in which the development–archaeology interaction has varied effects on populations throughout the world. Even though most look to exclusively highlight the progressive empowerment of native communities, this process is far from simple or politically neutral. At the same time, most development projects intertwined with archaeology fail miserably, albeit productively. As the Cochasquı´ case exemplifies, these projects end up having other powerful results that are equally complex, ethically and politically speaking. Finally, although unequal emphasis has also been placed upon the shifts impacting in the archaeological realms of the third world, the first

Diet Study of

See also: Europe: Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies; Identity and Power; Native Peoples and Archaeology; Who Owns the Past?.

Further Reading Appiah AK (2006) Cosmopolitanism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bender B (1998) Stonehenge: Making Space. New York: Berg. Escobar A (1995) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ferguson J (1997) The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Foster R (1990) Making cultures in the global ecumene. Annual Review of Anthropology 20: 235–260. Garcı´a-Canclini N (1992) Cultural reconversion. In: Yudice G, Flores J, and Franco J (eds.) On Edge: The Crisis of Contemporary Latin American Culture. Minneaopolis: University of Minnesota Press. Malkki L (1995) Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology Among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Programa Cochasquı´ (1991) Replanteamiento programa´tico, Quito: H. Consejo Provincial de Pichincha. 1981 Program Cochasquı´, Consejo Provincial de Pichinicha, Quito. Salcedo, Jose´ (1985) Al rescate de la identidad cultural en Cochasquı´, Ms., Programa Cochasquı´, Cochasquı´, Ecuador.

Relevant Website www.worldarchaeologycongress.org – WAC website.

See: Stable Isotope Analysis; Trace Element Analysis.

Direct Historical Approach

Disease

world is equally affected and perhaps more so in a nuanced and silent fashion which needs to be made explicit before it further serves to reinsert the uneven exchange of ideas and resources prevalent in the world today. Because as the Ma¯ori might say (paraphrasing the proverb quoted above), the world is the home of all (and not only some) humans.

See: Anthropological Archaeology.

See: Health, Healing, and Disease.

1094 DNA/Ancient

DNA Contents Ancient Modern, and Archaeology

Ancient Mim A Bower and Martin K Jones, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary allele One member of a pair or series of genes that occupy a specific position on a specific chromosome. autosomal DNA The ‘non-sex’ chromosomes. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, the first 22 pairs are the autosomal DNA chromosomes and the 23rd pair is the sex chromosomes, known as the female X-chromosome (or mtDNA chromosome) and the male Y-chromosome. biogeography A synthetic discipline that describes the distributions of living and fossil species of plants and animals across the Earth’s surface as consequences of ecological and evolutionary processes. chloroplast A plastid containing chlorophyll, developed only in cells exposed to the light and almost entirely limited to plant cells. Chloroplasts are minute flattened granules, usually occurring in great numbers in the cytoplasm near the cell wall. genetic markers Alleles of genes, or DNA polymorphisms, used as experimental probes to identify an individual or group of individuals. These can be a single altered nucleotide (SNiP), or sequence motif (microsatellite), pattern of altered nucleotides or DNA fingerprint. genome The entire complement of genetic material in a chromosome set. The complete set of genetic information of an organism including DNA and RNA. genotype The genetic makeup, as distinguished from the physical appearance, of an organism or a group of organisms. The combination of alleles located on homologous chromosomes that determines a specific characteristic or trait. haplotype A set of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNiPs) that are statistically associated. Haplotype and genotype are sometimes used interchangeably to mean genetic type, though their strict biological definitions are different. isozyme Variants of the same enzyme. metagenomics The study of genomes recovered from environmental samples. The technique is to clone DNA in large fragments directly from the microorganism’s environment (such as soil) into a culturable host and conduct a sequence-based analysis on it. The hope of this new strategy is to isolate new chemical signals, new secondary metabolites, and the reconstruction of an entire genome of an uncultured organism. mitochondria A mitochondrion is an organelle or specialized part of a cell found in the cells of most eukaryotes. Mitochondria are sometimes described as ‘cellular power plants’ because their primary purpose is to manufacture adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is used as a source of energy. The number of

mitochondria found in different types of cells varies widely. At one end of the spectrum, the trypanosome protozoan has one large mitochondrion; by contrast, human liver cells normally have between 1000 and 2000 each. molecular clock A theoretical clock based on the assumption that the rate at which nucleotide substitutions become fixed in evolutionary lineages is approximately constant for a given DNA sequence and reflects the time since the data diverged. nucleotide The building blocks of nucleic acids, that is, DNA and RNA. Nucleotides are composed of phosphate groups, a five-sided sugar molecule, and nitrogen-containing bases. These fall into two classes, pyrimidines and purines, and are usually denoted as a four-letter code – G, guanine; A, adenine; T, thymine; and C, cytosine. PCR Polymerase Chain Reaction. A molecular biological method for amplifying (creating multiple copies of) DNA without using a living organism, such as Escherichia coli or yeast. PCR is commonly used in medical and biological research labs for a variety of tasks, such as the detection of hereditary diseases, the identification of genetic fingerprints, the diagnosis of infectious diseases, the cloning of genes, and paternity testing. phenotype The physical appearance and constitution of an individual, or a specific manifestation of a trait, such as size or eye color, that varies between individuals. Phenotype is determined to some extent by genotype, or by the identity of the alleles that an individual carries at one or more positions on the chromosomes. Many phenotypes are determined by multiple genes and influenced by environmental factors. phylogenetics The determination of the rates and patterns of change occurring in DNA in order to reconstruct the evolutionary history of genes and organisms. The aim is to infer process from pattern: the processes of organismal evolution deduced from patterns of DNA variation and processes of molecular evolution inferred from the patterns of variations in the DNA itself. population A group of individuals of the same species living in the same area at the same time; a stable group of randomly interbreeding individuals. Y chromosome A chromosome is a large macromolecule into which DNA is normally packaged in a cell. It is a very long, continuous piece of DNA (a single DNA molecule), which contains many genes, regulatory elements, and other intervening nucleotide sequences. The Y chromosome is one of the two sex-determining chromosomes in humans and most other mammals (the other is the X chromosome) and determines maleness.

Introduction The term ancient DNA (aDNA) refers to DNA that is no longer in a living organism (e.g., plant, animal, human), is no longer being continually repaired by

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the cell, and therefore is exposed to a range of decay mechanisms. aDNA is usually preserved within some form of matrix (e.g., bone, charred seed, mummified skin) and can survive in analyzable amounts for remarkably long periods of time. For example, it has been shown repeatedly that organisms in cold situations (e.g., permafrost animals or the Ice Man) have better-preserved DNA than those in temperate areas, and that organisms found below a certain latitude tend not to have amplifiable DNA.

past relationships based on such data. This framework of living populations can then be explored for time depth using aDNA to see if the patterns observed are identifiable in the past. aDNA data are then returned to inform the theoretical models of the molecular clock and therefore improve the quality of the data and patterns we can get from modern data. The most recent aDNA studies have shown that the genetic present may not match so straightforwardly onto the genetic past as we might previously have hoped.

aDNA and Archaeogenetics

A Brief History of aDNA

Initially, the analysis of aDNA was a curio, used to analyze unusual specimens of limited relevance to the general archaeologist (e.g., Egyptian mummies). However, since the mid- to late 1990s, it has become a fully fledged part of a larger discipline called archaeogenetics which tackles central questions in archaeology, such as the origin of modern humans and the domestication and spread of plants and animals. Archaeogenetics is the application of population genetics to the study of the past. It includes:

In the 1960s, preliminary explorations of ancient biomolecules were made. For example, using simple protein comparisons, isozyme variations Teosinte was shown to be the progenitor of domesticated maize. In the 1970s, DNA sequencing was developed. This allowed accurate phylogenetic comparisons, although from limited sequence information only, for example, the comparison of chloroplast DNA from wild and cultivated barley. However, the field progressed slowly because of methodological difficulties presented by aDNA. The methodological revolution, provided by the invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), through which we can amplify tiny amounts of DNA, allowed aDNA research to blossom. Early efforts (1980s) concentrated on samples that appeared to have excellent morphological preservation, for example, mummies and frozen specimens and museum skins including the quagga and marsupial wolf. However, this methodological revolution and the indiscriminate use of the technology also led to problems. There was a rush to get the oldest and most unusual sample; it seemed like anything was possible, so there were many studies on what later became called ‘antediluvian DNA’ – from dinosaurs, insects encased in amber, and fossil plant remains, the findings of which were subsequently called into question. However, these high-profile results and the resulting controversy allowed significant advances in our understanding of how aDNA can be used to the greatest effect, including the way we now use a series of lines of evidence to advance the argument for the authenticity of the aDNA from the samples we study (see the section entitled ‘How can we argue for the authenticity of our aDNA’). Since the 1990s, enormous advances have been made. We can now analyze aDNA from a wide range of preserved materials (e.g., mummified skin and other body parts, bone, feces, charred seeds, teeth, wood, hair). Furthermore, the survival of aDNA in specimens up to several thousand years old is now well established and even retrieval of DNA from

. the analysis of DNA from living populations (including humans and domestic plant and animal species) in order to study the human past and the genetic legacy of human interaction with the biosphere; . the application of statistical methods (see Statistics in Archaeology) developed by evolutionary geneticists to genetic, archaeological, or linguistic data, including sophisticated computer modeling of population dynamics (see Paleoanthropology, Computer-Assisted); . the analysis of DNA recovered from archaeological remains, that is, aDNA. Although much archaeogenetics research draws on data from living populations alone, the roles of living population genetics and aDNA are inextricably intertwined. Living population genetics can rapidly analyze many genetic markers in the large numbers of samples from global populations required to make statistically robust biogeographical patterns. aDNA cannot do this, for two reasons, partly due to the time and expense needed to produce and validate aDNA research (which means that only small numbers of samples can be analyzed at a given time). But, more importantly, except in the most unusual cases, it is not possible to analyze a ‘real’ ancient population as defined in biological terms. The most effective use of aDNA is based within a thorough examination of genetic features of living plants and animals from living populations. From this, we construct a biogeographic framework of relatedness between living populations, and model

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remains of the Late Quaternary (up to 100 000 years ago) is possible. These scrupulous studies have provided the basis for regained confidence in the field of archaeogenetics.

Cracking the Jargon Cells contain many organelles including the nucleus and mitochondria (Figure 1(a)). The nucleus contains the genome – an entire set of genes in chromosomes, with linking sections of intergenic DNA. In addition to a single nucleus, there are many mitochondria. They are the energy-generating organelle of the cell and have a circular molecule of DNA. mtDNA is well suited for aDNA studies because it is characterized in many organisms, available in high copy number (meaning that it is more likely to have sufficient copies, well enough preserved for PCR), and has highly polymorphic regions which allow for between-species comparisons (e.g., cytochrome b), and for within-species comparisons (e.g., hypervariable region of the D-loop). Additionally, it is maternally inherited, and therefore of interest in lineage studies. DNA is made up of nucleotide bases – adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G), and cytosine (C) (Figure 1(b)). Every A and T pairs together while every G and C pairs together, to make two complementary strands. The DNA molecule is shaped like a twisted ladder. DNA is packaged in a chromosome, which is a long continuous strand of DNA. Structural proteins, for example, histones, provide a scaffold on which DNA is wrapped and may be instrumental in the preservation of ancient DNA.

Post-mortem Breakdown of DNA The DNA molecule is relatively unstable compared with other cellular components and will degrade with time if not repaired. As soon as an organism dies, its cells rupture releasing enzymes which rapidly digest strands of DNA; nutrient-rich fluids, which encourage the growth of environmental microorganisms, contribute to further degradation. However, under certain conditions, such as rapid desiccation or burial in anaerobic conditions, freezing, low soil pH, or high salt concentrations, decay enzymes and microorganisms are inactivated before DNA is completely disassembled. In these cases, DNA can remain preserved in short fragments of 100–500 base pairs for remarkably long periods. These short fragments of DNA are also subject to chemical damage by radiation, oxidation, condensation, and hydrolysis (Figure 2). Hydrolysis breaks the backbone of DNA strands while oxidation blocks polymerase action, and condensation cross-links proteins and DNA. These forms of damage can stall or confuse the enzymes used in PCR to give erroneous results; for example, the most common form of damage (the deamination of cytosine residues) causes a characteristic nucleotide change during sequencing (a C-to-Tor G-to-A change). The upshot of these processes is that aDNA specimens frequently contain very little of original DNA, which is why most aDNA studies focus on mitochondrial rather than nuclear DNA: there are simply more copies of mitochondria, so the chances of getting an aDNA sequence are that much higher.

(a) C

G

A

T

T

A

G

C

A

T

C

G

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(b) Figure 1 Cracking the jargon. (a) A cell has one nucleus and many mitochondria. (b) DNA is made up of four bases: adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine which bind together to make a double stranded helix.

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Depurination Double-strand break Depyrimidination Pyrimidine dimer Base alteration Single-strand break

DNA protein crosslink

Figure 2 The postmortem breakdown of DNA.

aDNA Methods There are a great number of methods for the analysis of aDNA, and new methods are being developed continuously. Therefore, this is a snapshot of commonly used methods available at the time of publication. In the Extraction Lab: Clean samples. Using bleach, buffered solutions, and UV light, particulate matter (e.g., soil) and extraneous DNA from living organisms are removed. Mobilize DNA. DNA is brought into solution to be separated from other components of the cell and organism. It usually involves grinding the sample into a fine powder, which is mixed for several hours in an extraction buffer, containing a digestive enzyme (Figure 3(a)). Purify DNA. This removes all but the DNA from the buffer including the remaining particles of the sample (e.g., bone powder, crushed seed, etc.) and any other remaining proteins, sugars, soil particles, etc. that have also come into solution with the DNA. There are many available methods for this step. Precipitate/concentrate DNA. This ensures that you have a high enough concentration of DNA to be able to make the amplification step work. Sometimes, other steps may be added to enhance results; for example, the use of DNA repair enzymes or glycosyl bond-cleaving agents. In the PCR set-up room (where even the air is filtered and UV irradiated): Prepare for DNA amplification. A mixture of template aDNA, a buffer, magnesium salt, and a pair of

primers designed to target a specific section of DNA is made up. This is then taken to the postextraction lab where PCR and downstream processing is carried out. In the PostExtraction Lab: PCR PCR works like a photocopier and makes multiple copies of the DNA you ask it to target. PCR can be difficult from ancient material for a number of reasons (inhibition by co-extracted compounds, very low copy number of DNA, DNA swamped by contaminants, DNA too badly fragmented or damaged), but there are a number of methods to help improve success rates. Visualize amplified DNA. Different lengths of DNA are separated out on an electrophoresis gel. DNA is stained with ethidium bromide and fluoresces under UV light and can easily be scanned by eye for a DNA fragment of the expected size (Figure 3(b)). Read DNA sequence. DNA can now be sent for sequencing (Figure 3(c)). This ‘direct sequence’ is a consensus of the pool of amplified DNA, which may include errors from damaged DNA and possibly even contaminant sequences. However, to understand how damaged and mixed your sample is you must use bacterial cloning. Bacterial cloning. A single fragment of DNA resulting from PCR (i.e., a single photocopy) is inserted in a bacterial host, which then copies it many thousands of times. Then the DNA from multiple bacterial colonies are sequenced separately and the sequences are compared to look for error and contamination. Finally, a consensus sequence is constructed from these multiple sequences and checked for statistical robustness.

How Can Archaeological Inference be Made from DNA Sequence Data The same section of DNA sequence is collected from many living individuals. These are compared to each other, and their relatedness is scored using various statistical analysis methods. These methods search for sequence similarities that allow organisms to be grouped together into subsets of the data. These patterns are usually explored using phylogenetic trees or median joining networks but the basis of the analysis is the same sequence data. Trees and networks are methods for the visual representation of the mathematically determined pattern of relatedness within the data set (Figure 4). These methods are based on theoretical models of evolution and they differ in the complexity of the models they express. The basis of all of them is that relatedness can be measured by the accumulation of mutations in sequence data. Mutations are changes in genetic information. They can accumulate in nonessential regions of DNA and are thought to record an overall history of the evolutionary life of a

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(a)

(b)

(c) Figure 3 How to get ancient DNA: (a) bones and teeth are sub-sampled and ground to a fine powder in liquid nitrogen; (b) as agarose gel showing faint bands of aDNA from the above sample; (c) a chromatogram of the aDNA sequence obtained from the sample.

genome. We believe that they occur at a predictable speed (though this is recently being challenged) and accumulate unidirectionally over time (in mtDNA at least). Different parts of the genome mutate at different speeds; this is why some parts of the genome are better for studying the evolution of species and others the evolution of populations. Approximate ages for the patterns of relatedness can be estimated based on models of the molecular clock. The molecular clock is an estimation of the rate that spontaneous errors in DNA replication (mutations) occur over time. Initially it was thought that this was constant across species and genetic loci; however, molecular clock users now are developing statistical approaches including maximum likelihood techniques and Bayesian modeling to formulate a

‘relaxed molecular clock’ which is proving to be more accurate. The same section of DNA from ancient individuals is then added to the analysis and this gives patterns in the living data real-time depth as these can give a terminus post quem to the groupings within which they fall. The dating of divergence events based on the molecular clock and more importantly ancient DNA allow the molecular data to be compared with archaeological data (patterns in material culture, settlement and migration, the occurrence of archaeobotanical remains of cereals during the spread of agriculture into Europe from the Fertile Crescent, etc.) and other data (e.g., palaeoenvironmental data) that can then begin to build up a picture which can be used to construct an archaeological narrative.

DNA/Ancient 1099 Descendant 3

Descendant 2 Descendant 1

Common ancestor

Resulting tree

GAACCTTGTCCG GAACCTTATCCG GAAG-TTATCCG GAAC-TTATCCG

plant architecture, storage protein synthesis, and starch production) were analyzed. aDNA showed the selection of traits during early domestication, and allowed estimation of when these desirable traits appeared (see Plant Domestication). Analysis suggested that the alleles typical of contemporary maize were already present in Mexican maize 4400 years ago, just a few thousand years after initial domestication from the wild grass teosinte.

Mutation in descendant 3

Lost Genotypes

Insertion in descendant 2

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been analyzed from Late Pleistocene remains of brown bears and bison preserved in permafrost. Today, these species are found in distinct geographical regions, but aDNA showed them to have coexisted in a large diverse population throughout Beringia over 30 000 years ago, when the population’s genetic diversity began to decline. The implication for living population genetics is that much of the current distribution of mtDNA types might be due to relatively recent phenomena, such as the random loss of mtDNA lineages in small populations during the Last Glacial Maximum.

Mutation in descendant 1 Common ancestor

Aligned sequences

GAACCTTGTCCG

GAACCTTATCCG

Descendant 3

Descendant 2

GAAGTTATCCG Descendant 1

GAACTTATCCG

Common ancestor

Figure 4 Phylogenetic trees are a visual representation of the relatedness of individuals through time.

Applications Origins and Spread of Domesticated Animals and Plants

aDNA can uncover biogeography that has become blurred in modern genetics by subsequent events (e.g., specialist breeding, population movements). The available modern genetic and archaeological evidence for the domestication of cattle has pointed to at least two major sites of domestication in India and in the Near East (see Animal Domestication). Under this hypothesis, all present-day European breeds would be descendants of cattle domesticated in the Near East; however, aDNA from Italian aurochsen dated between 7000 and 17 000 years BP suggest that there might have been local domestication events in Europe with introgression from European aurochs species. A maize cob from the Ocampo Caves in Mexico dated to 3890 years BP was the first study of aDNA that looked at phenotype. Three genes (which control

Evolution

aDNA has shown that evolution is more complex and dynamic than originally thought. aDNA allows direct estimation of the rate of nucleotide evolution of a population (mutation rate), by comparing individuals from different times. Lambert and co-workers measured the rate of mtDNA evolution by analyzing a large number of Ade´lie penguins from Antarctica. The data they produced allowed estimation of the molecular clock, which they found to be significantly faster than that previously used in theoretical models. Ancient Communities

Cemetery studies have focused on genetic continuity between past and present human populations. mtDNA was analyzed from individuals from rural communities in Paucarcancha, Patallacta, and Huata near the famed site of Machu Picchu. The haplotype frequency data showed clear similarity to those of modern Quechua and Aymara people in the Peruvian and Bolivian highlands, and unlike those of pre-Hispanic individuals of the north coast of Peru, suggesting a strong genetic affinity between sampled late pre-Hispanic individuals and modern Andean highlanders. Nuclear DNA sequences (autosomal and Y-chromosome short tandem repeats) have also been obtained in cemetery studies. For example, DNA from a 2300-year-old Xiongnu population near Lake Baikal in northern Mongolia was compared with data from

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two contemporary Mongolian populations. Genetic similarities between the ancient and modern populations suggested that the succession of different Turkic and Mongolian tribes in what is now Mongolia was based on cultural rather than genetic exchanges. Ancient Ecosystems

aDNA has been analyzed from Siberian permafrost sediments and from the soil of temperate caves in New Zealand, ranging in age from 10 000 to 400 000 years. Fragments of different plant taxa could be identified from chloroplast DNA (angiosperms, gymnosperms, and mosses) and various animals including mammoth, bison and horse. Dramatic changes in the diversity and composition of Beringian vegetation during the Quaternary were apparent from the Siberian data. The temperate cave sediments from New Zealand also gave sequences of extinct species, including two species of ratite moa and 29 plant taxa characteristic of the prehuman environment. Extinct Species

Perhaps the best known example is the woolly mammoth, which was the first Pleistocene animal to be sequenced. This is particularly notable because, recently, three independent groups have used cutting-edge technology to sequence the entire mitochondrial genome: one group sequenced 28 million base pairs of DNA in a metagenomics approach. However, around 50 extinct animal species have been analyzed in order to relate them to living animals via molecular phylogenies, for example, Australian marsupial wolves, New Zealand moas, American ground sloths, and Hawaiian geese. The Australian marsupial wolf has been shown to be related to other Australian marsupials rather than to carnivorous marsupials in South America, suggesting that morphological features shared by marsupial wolves and South American marsupial carnivores may have evolved independently. Much of this has been based on mtDNA; however, nuclear DNA sequences have been determined from several Pleistocene animals and from plants preserved in dry environments. Recently, sex determination of moa samples using nuclear DNA sequences has revealed that several moa forms previously regarded as different species based on their morphology were, in fact, male and female birds of the same species.

Human aDNA Sequences – Still a Controversy The study of human DNA from archaeological material is still fraught with difficulties. Humans

constantly shed DNA, so it is hardly surprising that aDNA researchers have shown repeatedly that human DNA is ubiquitous in all environments where humans exist. This unfortunately includes labs and even aDNA labs where the greatest care is taken to eliminate modern DNA. For example, it has repeatedly been shown that human DNA can be amplified from excavated animal bones of all different species. This means that where a DNA sequence is similar or identical to modern humans there will always be a measure of doubt as to its authenticity even if all authentication criteria are followed rigorously, especially in cases where, for example, European aDNA researchers work on ancient European material (see next section). Unfortunately, as our methods become more sensitive the greater this problem will be, as even the tiniest amount of modern human DNA could mask the authentic ancient DNA in a human bone. Therefore, the challenge of the coming years is to develop an approach that will allow us to separate authentic DNA from contaminant DNA and identify which one is the DNA of the individual we are studying.

How Can We Argue for the Authenticity of Our aDNA? It is almost impossible, especially where human aDNA is concerned, to be 100% sure that your aDNA is authentic; however, we can build an argument for authenticity by following these criteria: . Multiple extraction and PCR controls. Each set of extractions should include at least three extraction controls that contain no sample material but are otherwise treated identically. For each set of PCRs, multiple negative PCR controls should be added to identify and source contamination that may occur during the extraction or preparation of the PCR. . Repeated amplifications from the same or several extracts. This allows detection of sporadic contaminants and consistent sequence changes due to damage or PCR error. . Inverse correlation between amplification efficiency and length of amplification product. aDNA is fragmented, therefore the longer the fragment of aDNA you are trying to amplify, the more difficult it is to achieve amplification. Most aDNA sequences are between 100 and 500 nucleotides long unless preservation is unusually good. . Bacterial cloning of PCR products and sequencing of multiple clones. This allows quantification of sequence mixture in the amplification products. Sequence mixture results from damage, PCR error, or contamination with living DNA.

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. Quantitation of the number of amplifiable DNA molecules. This shows how many template molecules any given PCR begins from and gives a probability of whether consistent base changes are likely to occur or not. . Biochemical assays of macromolecular preservation. Good biochemical preservation can support the authenticity of an ancient DNA sequence. Poor biochemical preservation indicates that a sample is unlikely to contain DNA. . Reproduction of results by an independent laboratory. This can detect if there is contamination of chemicals or samples during handling in the laboratory. However, contaminants that are already on a sample before it arrives in the laboratory will be faithfully reproduced in a second laboratory.

Conclusions and Outlook The future of aDNA promises to be exciting. DNA analytical technology is rapidly advancing; we are able to analyze more parts of the genome from more difficult material and more unusual samples. We are beginning to understand more about the links between genotype and phenotype, that is, what the DNA says and what an organism looks like, for example, wooliness in sheep or brittle rachis in wheat. This will open the way for many questions of key importance in archaeology, such as the deliberate selection of particular qualitative traits in plants and animals in the past, that is, the development of ‘breeds’ and ‘varieties’. In addition, aDNA is set to become significant to plant and animal breeding and ecological conservation because of its ability to track the loss of genetic types through time. Ancient DNA, within the discipline of archaeogenetics, is a powerful tool. When used in a collaborative multidisciplinary framework it can contribute significantly to central questions in archaeology in a way that was not possible before. See also: Animal Domestication; DNA: Modern, and Archaeology; Modern Humans, Emergence of; Paleoanthropology, Computer-Assisted; Plant Domestication; Statistics in Archaeology.

Further Reading Jones M (2002) The Molecule Hunt. London: Penguin Books. Pa¨a¨bo S, Poinar H, Serre D, et al. (2004) Genetic analyses from ancient DNA. Annual Review of Genetics 38: 645–697. Zeder MA, Emshwiller E, Smith BD, and Bradley DG (2006) Documenting domestication: The intersection of genetics and archaeology. Trends in Genetics 22: 139–155.

Modern, and Archaeology Keri Brown, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary bottleneck A temporary, dramatic reduction in population size that results in reduced genetic diversity. coalescence/divergence The separation of DNA sequences that share a common ancestor by the accumulation of nucleotide (base) substitutions. The time of divergence of DNA sequences or the time when sequences coalesce to a common ancestor can be estimated when the rate of nucleotide substitution is known. effective population size The actual number of individuals in a population that are reproducing. genetic diversity A measure of the genetic variability in a population. haplotype An individual mtDNA sequence. haplogroup A major class of mtDNA sequences in the human population. molecular clock The concept that mutations accumulate at an approximately constant rate in a given DNA sequence and in all its descendants so that times of divergence can be estimated from the ancestral form. population No definitive definition for humans. Usually taken to mean a group of individuals that share certain characteristics such as language, geography, ethnicity, phenotype – either one of these or all of them. phylogenetic tree A representation of the evolutionary history of a group of taxa, genes or other inherited markers.

The fact that ancient deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) extracted from archaeological material can give information about past peoples, animals, and plants has been readily grasped by archaeologists. What seems to be more difficult to accept is that DNA sampled from present-day populations can also give information about that population’s history. DNA is inherited from our parents, and in turn they inherited their DNA from their parents, and so forth back into time. But with each generation the DNA packaged into the chromosomes gets ‘shuffled’ – this is known as recombination. We do not as yet have the mathematical and computing tools to ‘unravel’ the shuffling, so geneticists who are interested in population history and human evolution tend to concentrate on those areas of DNA that do not undergo recombination. Two particular regions of DNA are particularly suitable, firstly mitochondrial DNA and secondly the nonrecombining region of the Y chromosome. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is found in the mitochondria, which are small organelles located in the cytoplasm of cells. Each cell may have thousands of

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mitochondria. These are thought to have originated as independent organisms that entered into a symbiotic relationship with more complex cells 1.5 billion years ago. They have lost most of their genes to the nuclear DNA, but the 37 genes left are involved in the production of energy. MtDNA is inherited maternally – it is not transmitted by males to the next generation (although there have been some controversial papers published about the possible paternal transmission of mtDNA – if it happens, it must be an extremely rare occurrence and has little or no impact on population studies). MtDNA does not undergo recombination, so any mutations acquired in the past in its DNA sequence are maintained. Two noncoding (i.e., they do not contain genes) regions of mtDNA are studied which seem to accumulate single base mutations at a high rate – hypervariable regions I and II (HVR I and HVR II). These mutations are inherited together and form a set of DNA markers that have been classified into haplotypes by comparison to a reference mtDNA sequence (the Cambridge Reference Sequence). A number of similar haplotypes forms a haplogroup. By assuming that mutations are acquired at a regular rate, the concept of a ‘molecular clock’ can be applied and the date of the appearance of new mtDNA haplogroups can be estimated (also known as divergence or coalescence times) albeit with wide confidence limits. mtDNA from human, animal, and plant populations around the globe has been classified in this way. The relationships between the different haplogroups have been studied by means of phylogenetic analysis, most notably by network analysis. MtDNA has been used to study the evolution of modern humans in Africa, and the movements of these people into the Old World (Out of Africa). mtDNA has also been used to re-examine the Wave of Advance hypothesis developed to explain the spread of agriculture from its origins in the Near East into Europe. In both research questions there were opposing hypotheses that predicted differing genetic outcomes for human populations. In both research areas, there was controversy between the accepted archaeological interpretation and the genetically based interpretation. In this article, the nature of the controversies will be explored and the importance of the genetic contribution to the debate will be stressed. In both cases, the contribution of genetics has led to a better understanding of the complex issues involved in these two most important events of human prehistory. Our knowledge of these events would be the poorer without mtDNA analysis (see DNA: Ancient). The nonrecombining region of the Y chromosome is also making its contribution to our understanding of human population history. Only mammalian males possess the Y chromosome (at least, the vast majority

do – there are always rare exceptions to every rule in biology) and it is inherited paternally. The nonrecombining region of the Y chromosome contains the SRY gene which determines maleness, but it also contains a number of DNA markers which can be inherited as a block, that is, a haplotype. Analysis and classification of Y chromosome haplogroups started somewhat later than the mtDNA work. The nature of the Y DNA markers is more complex than the single base mutations found in mtDNA, so the phylogenetic analysis is also more complicated and the molecular clock concept more difficult to apply. However, the male side of human population history tells a broadly similar story for Out of Africa, although the story is not so clear-cut for the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition in Europe; hence, the details of this research will not be dealt with in this article.

Multiregionalism versus Out of Africa The origin of modern humans is a research topic that has long fascinated scientists and the public alike. The finding of new hominid fossils is treated as a major event by the media, but in the last two decades a new form of evidence has come into play – genetics. Based purely on the fossil evidence, two opposing theories had been put forward to explain the evolution of modern humans (Homo sapiens). These were Out of Africa and Multiregionalism (Figure 1). The first theory proposed (by Chris Stringer) that H. sapiens evolved in Africa, and then migrated to colonize the Old World, replacing the Homo erectus populations (including Neanderthals) that were found in Europe and Asia, as well as Africa itself. Multiregionalism as a theory has undergone a certain amount of evolution itself, but in its original formulation by Milford Wolpoff it proposed that the regional populations of H. erectus in Africa, Asia, and Europe all evolved into modern humans, with extensive gene flow between the different populations. Out of Africa implies a recent common ancestor for modern humans, at about 200 000 years ago; multiregionalism implies a more ancient one, going back to the first migrations out of Africa by H. erectus, maybe more than 1.8 million years ago. It also implies that the various physical differences between human populations, such as skin color, eye and nose shapes, etc., which are environmental adaptations, also have an ancient origin. These are obviously over-simplified statements of a complex situation in human prehistory. But they make predictions about modern human populations that can be tested empirically with genetic evidence. Indeed, archaeologists have criticized geneticists for adopting such simplistic explanations of the past, especially with regard to the

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The ‘Out of Africa’ hypothesis

Multiregional evolution

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Figure 1 The two opposing hypotheses on the origins and spread of Homo sapiens. (a) Out of Africa proposes that the evolution of H. sapiens took place in Africa, which then migrated and replaced H. erectus-derived populations in Africa, Asia and Europe. (b) Multiregionalism proposes that H. erectus-derived populations evolved into H. sapiens, with extensive gene flow between these populations.

Mesolithic/Neolithic transition and the introduction of agriculture into Europe (see below). Yet this is to misunderstand how science works. ‘‘The more precise the hypothesis, the more specific the prediction it makes, and hence the more powerful the test we can perform simply because it is then harder for empirical results to appear to confirm the prediction if the hypothesis is not in fact true.’’ (Dunbar, 1995, 102).

Scientists are well aware of the fact that their initial theories may be simplistic and sweeping, even inaccurate, but the data have to confirm this so that they can go on to refine their theories or make new ones!

Genetic Outcomes of the Two Theories of Human Evolution What sort of genetic outcome would be seen for each of the two theories when mtDNA is analyzed in present-day human populations? For multiregionalism, we would expect to see a very ancient origin or coalescence date for all extant mtDNA haplogroups, correlating more or less with the first migration from Africa by H. erectus. We would also expect to see deep-rooted genetic differences between populations which would reflect their antiquity and evolution from African, Asian, and European H. erectus populations. With the Out of Africa or replacement model, the coalescence of mtDNA haplotypes would be much more recent, corresponding to the more recent origin of H. sapiens. We would expect to see less genetic diversity between populations of modern humans. We would also expect that the population which has the most intra-population genetic diversity would be the oldest, and hence the original population from which modern humans originated and migrated into

the rest of the Old World. These two sets of predictions are eminently testable with genetic data. mtDNA Evidence Supports Recent Evolution of H. sapiens

The first study to use mtDNA to investigate human evolution was published in 1987 by Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking, and the late Allan Wilson. They analyzed mtDNA from 147 individuals from a number of populations and constructed a phylogenetic tree. The root of the tree was placed in Africa – in other words, the ancestral mtDNA to all others was located in Africa, and by applying the molecular clock concept the ancestral mtDNA was dated to c. 200 000 ya (within confidence limits of 140 000–290 000 ya). This ancestral mtDNA was dubbed Mitochondrial Eve by the media and some misunderstood this to mean that just one woman lived in Africa. This is certainly not the case – it means that other ancestral mtDNAs of other women did not leave female descendants to contribute their mtDNA to present-day humans. This initial study was criticized on a number of grounds – the phylogenetic methods used to analyze the data (several different trees could be constructed from the same data, with the root not always in Africa), the origin of the African mtDNA samples (many of these actually were obtained from Afro-Americans, so may not have been truly representative of African mtDNA haplotypes), and even the choice of mtDNA as the genetic locus of investigation. Since this ground-breaking publication, many more genetic studies on human evolution have been carried out, using mtDNA, Y chromosome DNA and a wide variety of nuclear genes. Many of these studies show that the highest intrapopulation genetic diversity is found in Africa. High genetic diversity is found in both older populations (the older the population,

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the more DNA mutations become fixed) and expanding populations (the larger the population, the more DNA mutations become fixed). Some knowledge of Late Pleistocene human populations in the Old World is necessary in order to determine the correct interpretation. Estimates have been made of the size of populations required for each of the two theories. For example, using numbers based on hunter-gatherer groups, it has been estimated that the world population at around 150 000 ya was between 125 000 and 1 000 000. However, the effective population size consists of the actual number of individuals in a population that are reproducing, and is usually estimated to be one-third of the census population, that is, 42 000– 333 000 individuals throughout the Old World. The question is whether this would have been enough for the sort of gene flow between populations in Africa, Asia, and Europe envisaged by multiregionalists. If we consider the Out of Africa scenario, this would entail a smaller number of individuals drawn from a larger population, forming what is called a bottleneck (or founder event). Analysis of the overall low genetic diversity of modern humans has enabled an estimate to be made of the effective population size in this bottleneck – just 10 000. This is almost a mystical number in human evolutionary genetics – it crops up time and again with different statistical analyses of genetic data – and it means that H. sapiens lived on a knife-edge of extinction for much of its early existence in Africa. Therefore, we can say that the high genetic diversity seen within African populations points to Africa as the place where modern humans evolved, and indicates the age, not the size, of the population. Other Genetic Studies Support the Out of Africa Hypothesis

Whole mitochondrial DNA sequences have been analyzed (not just HVRI and HVRII) from 53 humans with mtDNA from another primate species, chimpanzee, as an outgroup. This analysis showed important features which corresponded well with other studies on mtDNA and nuclear genes. The most recent common ancestor for human mtDNA was dated to 172 000  50 000 ya. There was separation between African and non-African mtDNA lineages and the most recent common ancestor for the non-African lineages was dated to c. 80 000 ya. The latter relatively recent date for the origin of non-African mtDNA lineages shows that H. sapiens migrated from Africa as much as 100 000 years after evolving there. Recently discovered hominid fossil evidence from Herto, Middle Awash, Ethiopia, has been interpreted as the immediate ancestors of anatomically modern humans and a new species name, H. sapiens idaltu, has been given to these fossils. H. sapiens idaltu has been dated

to 160 000–154 000 ya and thus the gap between the genetic dating and the fossil evidence is being filled in. With the combination of the genetic and the new fossil evidence, there can be little doubt that modern humans evolved in Africa and multiregionalism is seen by many as a discredited hypothesis. The debate has moved on to other interesting questions concerning the direction and timing of the Out of Africa migration. Although the archaeological evidence for human migration is patchy or nonexistent in many regions of the Old World, the DNA evidence from present-day populations is again producing new insights into past events. All mtDNA haplogroups found in present-day populations are shown in a network analysis in Figure 2, with the geographical origin of each haplogroup shown in color. The Neanderthal mtDNA sequence is also included to show its relationship to modern human mtDNA, and the position of Mitochondrial Eve is also shown as belonging with the African mtDNA haplogroups. The L3* haplogroup can be seen as giving rise to all non-African haplogroups (see below). Which Way and When?

Extensive mtDNA research has been carried out in populations around the world to trace the route taken by H. sapiens out of Africa into the Old World (and indeed into colonization events in the New World and Oceania). Archaeological evidence has shown that modern humans were present in the Levant at c. 100–90 000 ya at the cave sites of Qafzeh and Skhul, but these are now seen as either an extension of African populations or a failed migration event. This northern route into Europe and Asia was not the one used by modern humans, and modern humans do not seem to have colonized Europe until much later, c. 45 000 ya. In fact, Australia seems to have been colonized before Europe (OSL and TL dates of 50 000–60 000 ya have been obtained)! All non-African mtDNA haplogroups coalesce to c. 80 000 ya – another way of saying this is that all non-African mtDNA haplogroups (those found in Asia, Europe, and Australia) are descended from an African ancestral mtDNA haplogroup. All African mtDNA haplotypes fall into three haplogroups. Using the mtDNA nomenclature, these are L1, L2, and L3, and these are further subdivided (e.g., L1a, L1b, etc). All non-African mtDNA haplogroups are derived from L3 – the origin of L3 itself is dated to 84 000 ya. Haplotypes derived from L3 in Asia are not found in the African L3 haplotypes (Figures 2 and 3). L3 in turn gave rise to two haplogroups called M and N approximately identical in age at c. 63 000 ya: each of these haplogroups is further subdivided into branches. The branches derived from M are called C, D, E, and

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Neanderthal

L0k

L0f

L0d L0a C1 L1b

D1 D2

L1c

Mitochondrial Eve M7b M7c D5

C* Z

D4* G

M7a

L5

L4a

L4g CZ*

L2a

E M7*

M31

D M8a

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Q L2c

M6

M42 L6

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M27

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M1 L3* M11 M21 M22

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M28 L3f

L3h

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Key

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M2 l

N5

N21

V N1a

A*

S

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X2* X1

H1b

O

Africa

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W

N9a N9*

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R11

R2

U1

U2

HV*

R31

B4*

B2

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R30

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Western Eurasia

R8

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Y

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A2

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P F4

America

K U4

H1

F*

U5

R9b U6

J

F3

T

U3

Australasia

U7

U9

F2 F1

Figure 2 The complete human mtDNA haplogroup network, showing geographical regions in which each haplogroup is most frequent.

L3

M

N R

L1 L2 L3*+ C D M* E G

A I W X N* B F H V R* T J U K

mtDNA haplogroup Figure 3 Simplified mtDNA phylogenetic tree. Shaded areas represent non-African (i.e., European and Asian) haplogroups descended from African L3. Most African mtDNA haplogroups belong to L1, L2, and L3.

G, and these are found mainly in South and East Asia and America. The branches from N are A, B, F, H, I, J, K, R, T, U, and V and these haplogroups are found mainly in European and West Asian populations

(although A and B are also found in America, for example). Haplogroup R seems to have emerged rapidly within N at c. 60 000 ya. Eastern Africa has now been identified as the source population for the initial migration out of Africa, as Ethiopian populations have a high frequency of M haplotypes (variants of the M haplogroup) not found in sub-Saharan African populations. The genetic evidence also supports the theory of a single dispersal event out of Africa, rather than multiple ones. How did humans manage to get to Australia before Europe? There is now archaeological evidence to support the mtDNA evidence that indicates a southern, ‘beachcombing’ route around the coast of Asia (Figure 4). The earliest evidence for the use of marine resources dates to 125 000 ya and is found at Abdur on the Eritrean coast of the Red Sea, so early modern humans were already able to exploit this subsistence strategy. In fact, a rough estimate has been made of the dispersal rate of humans using the southern route of 0.7–4 km yr–1, so that the time taken to reach SE Asia and Australia could have been quite rapid after the initial departure, perhaps only a couple of thousand years in all. Even the number of women

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Figure 4 Map showing the southern beachcombing route Out of Africa, following the coastline to Australia (solid line), and the much later migration into Western Asia, Europe, and North Africa (dotted line).

involved in the initial migration out of Africa has been estimated as about 600, but perhaps as low as 500 and as high as 2000. Although the true number may eventually be found to be higher or lower, this estimate gives us a feel for the size of the modern human population involved in this critical event in human prehistory. Various coastal populations considered by anthropologists to be ‘relicts’ of the Out of Africa migration have been sampled for mtDNA analysis, such as the Andaman Islanders, the Orang Asli, the Semang, the Senoi and Aboriginal Malays (all from Malaysia), the Papuans and Aboriginal Australians. If these populations are indeed descended from the initial Out of Africa dispersal that followed a coastal southern route, then their mtDNA haplogroups should coalesce to the same founder mtDNAs at 60 000 ya or earlier. If a northern route through the Levant was taken, then the coalescence time for their mtDNA haplogroups should be much more recent at 45 000–40 000 ya. The relict populations should also contain mtDNA haplotypes that are geographically distinct due to their isolation from later population movements. Although a small sample number was used in this study, the results show that the Orang Asli and the Andamanese populations both contained M mtDNA haplotypes that branched off c. 60 000 ya, soon after the M haplogroup itself appeared in human populations. The Orang Asli also contained a number of M haplotypes that are virtually restricted to this population. Along with the analysis of the complete mtDNA genome from Papuans and Aboriginal

Australians, we now have strong genetic evidence for an early southern route of dispersal from Africa into the Old World. One genetic estimate for the time of arrival in Australia is 70 000 ya. Again it is a case where the archaeological evidence needs to catch up with the genetics. A recent review by Mellars sets out the archaeological evidence known so far and suggests that this also supports the case for the southern route and a single dispersal event. The detailed archaeology of the coastal southern route and the identification of the earliest sites in Australia await discovery, although changes in sea level may mean that many sites may lie below the sea. Into Europe – Eventually

The presence of modern humans in the Levant at 90 000–100 000 ya has been interpreted by palaeoanthropologists as either a failed attempt to colonize this region or as merely an extension of the African population. The earliest archaeological evidence for modern humans in Europe dates to c. 45 000 ya. The archaeology includes evidence of cognitive behavior that is associated with being ‘modern’, that is, the use of symbols, personal ornaments, art, formal burial and so forth. It has been claimed that the European evidence is the first to show a change in human behavior sometimes dubbed ‘the human revolution’. However, why should a species that had been around for perhaps 140 000 years wait until it had got to a very small continental cul de sac (for such is Europe) to suddenly show its modernity?

DNA/Modern, and Archaeology 1107

Archaeological evidence from Africa shows that certain behaviors (personal ornaments and symbolism) were already existing at least 100 000–80 000 ya (the former date for perforated shells found at Skhul), while formal burial and cave paintings are attested in Australia 60 000–32 000 ya. The major constraint on European colonization by modern humans was climate, not cognitive abilities. As seen above, European mtDNA haplogroups are derived from the N haplogroup, which gave rise rapidly to the R haplogroup. Both of these haplogroups emerged soon after the Out of Africa dispersal, probably in South Asia, 63–60 000 ya. But all European mtDNA haplogroups are descended from N and R. These haplogroups are dated to c. 50 000 ya. From R the haplogroups B, F, H, V, T, J, U, and K are derived: haplogroups A, I, W, and X originate from N. Some of these haplogroups are not found in European populations and so can be omitted from this account (A, B, F, and R itself). All of the remaining haplogroups can be found in the Near East, with coalescence dates that are much earlier than for the same haplogroups in Europe. This shows that the sources for European colonization by modern humans were to be found in Western Asia (Figure 4), and ultimately these in turn derived from haplogroups that originate in South Asia. Some of the haplogroups in the Near East, such as J, T, U5, and I, date to 50 000–45 000 ya. Colonists from the Near East entered Europe, bringing what were to become European haplogroups with them. The earliest seems to be haplogroup U5, dating to c. 50 000 ya according to the molecular clock. Other haplogroups arrived in Europe much later, as much as 15 000 years afterwards. The Upper Palaeolithic colonization of Europe by modern humans (also known as Cro-Magnons, after the French site where skeletal remains were first identified) has been linked by some geneticists with the appearance of the Aurignacian stone tool industry, and also a second, later wave of migration has been suggested as responsible for the introduction of the Gravettian stone tool industry. The link between stone tool industries and colonizations was first made in a study of Y chromosome haplogroups, which are difficult to date compared with mtDNA haplogroups, and must therefore be viewed with caution. However, mtDNA data would seem to support the Y chromosome evidence, as the next mtDNA haplogroup to enter Europe, haplogroup HV, gives a coalescence date of c. 33 000 ya, which coincides with the earliest appearance of the Gravettian in north east Europe. Although archaeologists are understandably wary of equating material culture with specific human groupings, either by population or ethnicity, in this case we have to consider the possibility that

new stone tool industries and associated new cultural activities were indeed introduced by new peoples into Europe.

Genetics and the Mesolithic–Neolithic Transition in Europe The question of whether changes in material culture seen in the archaeological record were the result of internal development by indigenous communities or the introduction of new practices by incoming people is one that lies at the heart of the debate over the spread of agriculture in Europe from its origins in the Near East. Again archaeological opinion was polarized into two opposing schools of thought, which could be formulated into two opposing, and testable hypotheses. The Neolithic period in Europe is identified with the adoption of agriculture as the major subsistence base. There is no dispute that the domesticated plants and animals that form the foundation of farming originated in the Near East. But how did these domesticates reach Europe? Traditional explanations for the introduction of agriculture involved the concept of diffusionism whereby the spread of the new subsistence was facilitated by an accompanying spread of populations from the Near East. The incomers replaced the indigenous Mesolithic populations of Europe and radiocarbon dates for early farming sites seemed to confirm a gradual spread across Europe from the Near East. Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza calculated that the spread of agriculture occurred at a uniform rate of 1 km per year (or 25 km per generation time of 25 years) and represented the colonization of Europe by demic diffusion from the Near East. This uniform rate of spread was called the ‘wave of advance’ hypothesis. Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza’s ‘wave of advance’ model for the spread of the Neolithic was first put forward in the 1970s. It was not until 1994 that Cavalli-Sforza et al. published gene frequency distribution maps that seemed to confirm the wave of advance hypothesis. The genetic data used were obtained from the examination of 95 protein and DNA polymorphisms in populations across Europe. This massive amount of data was summarized in the now famous Principal Components (PC) maps, the most important of which (in a statistical sense) showed a genetic gradient (or cline) from southeast to northwest Europe which was dated to the Mesolithic– Neolithic transition even though there is actually no method of assigning dates to the genetic distribution patterns revealed by PC Analysis. This first PC map (Figure 5) accounted for 27% of the variation in the genetic data; the second Principal Components map

1108 DNA/Modern, and Archaeology

Figure 5 The first PC map showing a genetic gradient from the SE to the NW (darker shading to lighter) across Europe, interpreted as the spread of the Neolithic and agriculture by Cavalli-Sforza et al.

accounted for 22% of the data and showed a genetic gradient from southwest to northeast for which there was no obvious archaeological explanation. The third PC map accounted for 11% of the data and was interpreted as resulting from the invasion of Bronze Age Kurgans, the fourth map was supposed to show Greek colonization in the Mediterranean. Each PC map was thought to represent a separate migration/ colonization event, and the larger the amount of data in each map, the older the event. By the 1990s, diffusionism and population replacement had been rejected as the mechanisms for the spread of agriculture into Europe – instead the adoption of agriculture was seen as a result of gradual acculturation by the indigenous Mesolithic populations of Europe, hence known as indigenism. Although the domesticated plants were imported from the Near East, some suggested that animals such as cattle, pigs, and sheep were domesticated in Europe. The ‘pause’ in the spread of agriculture across Europe seen on the Carpathian plain and the ‘late’ adoption of agriculture by Mesolithic populations in Scandinavia and Britain was interpreted by Ian Hodder as due to the reluctance of these groups to change to this new subsistence base until they had themselves become ‘domesticated’ – the adoption of agriculture entailed different modes of thought

about plants, animals, settlement, and landscape use. The social context for the adoption of agriculture was seen as having to change first. The genetics directly challenged the orthodox interpretation derived from archaeological research and the new theoretical stances used to reach these interpretations. The work of Cavalli-Sforza and colleagues was heavily criticized by archaeologists who felt that this account of the introduction of agriculture into Europe was not corroborated by the archaeological evidence – even that it harked back to the ‘old-fashioned’ explanations of culture change being due to ‘ex orientae lux’. In 1996 Martin Richards and colleagues published an analysis of mtDNA haplogroups in European populations, which showed that the majority of mtDNA lineages were present in Europe from the end of the last Ice Age, and some even prior to that in the Upper Palaeolithic period (Figure 6). However 20–25% of present-day European mtDNA lineages originate in the Near East, such as haplogroups J and T1, so some demic diffusion must have occurred in the past, but how much could not be quantified. The mtDNA evidence was severely criticized by Cavalli-Sforza and colleagues on several grounds, for example sample size, and the fact the mtDNA is in effect a single genetic locus and thus cannot be as informative as the analysis of 95 loci. However, the overall difference between the

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Origin of agriculture U (5.7%) HV (5.4%) I (1.7%) U4 (3.0%) H (37.7%) H-16304 (3.9%) T (2.2%) K (4.6%) T2 (2.9%) J (6.1%) T1 (2.2%) 0

10 000

20 000

30 000

40 000

50 000

Years before present time Figure 6 The 11 major European mtDNA haplogroups and their estimated time of origin. Only haplogroups J and T1 are associated with the Neolithic.

two studies is not irreconcilable – the first PC map has been re-analyzed and now represents 23% of the data, while the Near Eastern mtDNA lineages in modern Europeans is about 10% of the total. So the female Neolithic contribution to modern Europeans ranges from 10% to 23%; as already seen above, most mtDNA haplogroups entered Europe in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods. Several archaeologists have grappled with the challenge presented by the new genetic evidence, for example, Renfrew, Zvelebil, and Pluciennik. The result of the genetics challenge to the orthodoxy of the Neolithization of Europe is that we have a much more nuanced understanding of the different processes that went on in different parts of Europe. Colonization is now seen as having played a part in some areas, such as Greece, the Balkans, and Iberia, and possibly Southeast Italy is another candidate. Robert Foley’s group have suggested that ‘empty spaces’, that is, regions with little or no Mesolithic occupancy may have been preferred by early farmers. So some population incursions may indeed account for the spread of agriculture in some regions. In other regions more complex interactions between indigenous Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and incoming farmers can be recognized – Marek Zvelebil has written about the various types of interactions that can occur. In a detailed case study on the social context of agricultural adoption by gatherer-hunters, he suggested that hypergyny, the movement of women from one social group to another would be likely to take place from gatherer-hunter groups to farming groups. Recent strontium isotope studies by Alex Bentley on human remains from LBK settlements have shown that this was in fact happening. This is a good example of an archaeological hypothesis being supported by scientific data. The movement of women from gatherer-hunter groups into farming

groups might help to partly explain the dominance of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic mtDNA haplogroups seen in European populations today, but the numbers of incoming Neolithic colonizers was probably not very high to begin with. In the long run their genetic contribution to the population of Europe may not have been as important as the technological and social changes they brought about.

Conclusions mtDNA analysis has made extremely important contributions to our understanding of human evolution and the subsequent colonization of the Old and New Worlds by our species. This is because the hypotheses were framed as leading to certain genetic outcomes that could be seen in present-day populations, so that DNA sampling of populations would then provide the evidence that would support or refute each hypothesis. The situation with the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in Europe was more complex, since the hypotheses were not sufficiently distinct in their genetic outcomes. In addition, the genes sampled and the statistical methods of analysis of the genetic data were so different, so like was not being compared with like. In effect the overall picture for the introduction of agriculture seems not to fit into any overarching explanation such as diffusionism or indigenism, but instead is the result of a complex series of events that varied in different regions. However the formulation of opposing, testable hypotheses have proved to be of value, and it is often the case that archaeological interpretations can progress when hypothesis testing can be carried out. New techniques in archaeological science, like those of biomolecular archaeology, mean that old questions can be reexamined, and new ones formulated that perhaps were not possible 20 years ago.

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Acknowledgements Thanks to Dr. Martin Richards for permission to reproduce the complete mtDNA network in Figure 2 and thanks to Garland Science for permission to reproduce Figures 1, 3, 5, and 6. Figure 4 was drawn by Terry Brown. See also: Asia, West: Paleolithic Cultures; DNA: Ancient;

Modern Humans, Emergence of; Oceania: Australia; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading Brown KA and Pluciennik M (2001) Archaeology and human genetics: Lessons for both. Antiquity 75: 101–106. Cavalli-Sforza L, Menozzi P, and Piazza A (1994) The History and Geography of Human Genes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dunbar R (1996) The Trouble with Science. London: Faber and Faber.

Domestication of Animals

Domestication of Plants

Ingman M, Kaessman H, Paabo S, and Gyllensten U (2000) Mitochondrial genome variation and the origin of modern humans. Nature 408: 708–713. Jobling MA, Hurles ME, and Tyler-Smith C (2004) Human Evolutionary Genetics. New York and Oxford: Garland Science; Taylor and Francis Group. Macaulay V, Hill C, Achilli A, et al. (2005) Single, rapid coastal settlement of Asia revealed by analysis of complete mitochondrial genomes. Science 308: 1034–1036. Mellars P (2006) Going east: New genetic and archaeological perspectives on the modern human colonization of Eurasia. Science 313: 796–800. Oppenheimer S (2003) Out of Eden: The Peopling of the World. London: Constable. Richards M, Macaulay V, Hickey E, et al. (2000) Tracing European founder lineages in the Near Eastern mtDNA pool. American Journal of Human Genetics 67: 1251–1276. Richards M, et al. (2003) The neolithic invasion of Europe. Annual Review of Anthropology 32: 135–162. Zvelebil M (2000) The social context of the agricultural transition in Europe. In: Renfrew C and Boyle K (eds.) Archaeogenetics: DNA and the Population Prehistory of Europe. Cambridge, UK: McDonald Institute.

See: Animal Domestication.

See: Plant Domestication.

E ECOFACTS, OVERVIEW Kitty F Emery, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary ecofacts Archaeological finds that are of cultural significance, but were not manufactured by humans. environmental archaeology Study of the long-term relationship between humans and their environments. geoarchaeology Archaeological research using the methods and concepts of the earth sciences. landscape archaeology A body of method and theory for the study of the material traces of past peoples within the context of their interactions in the wider social and natural environment they inhabited.

bioarchaeology, and is dependent on the methods of human osteology analysis (see Osteological Methods). Today, neither environmental archaeology nor the study of any ecofact is a simple investigation of ‘what was there’ or ‘what was used’. Among other questions, researchers studying ecofacts use both modern comparative and archaeological collections to reconstruct: (1) the environment associated with archaeological sites; (2) the use of plants, animals, and landscapes by past inhabitants of these sites; (3) the impact people had on the world around them; and (4) the way ancient peoples perceived and were affected by their surroundings and the plants and animals on which they relied.

Categories of Ecofacts Introduction Ecofacts are traditionally defined as the nonartifactual organic and environmental remains found on archaeological sites, including remains produced as a result of human activity, affected by human activity, or that reveal aspects of human activity. However, while some ecofactual remains, such as agricultural soils, are clearly not artifacts in the traditional sense, they are definitely affected and changed by human activity. Other ecofacts, such as bone tools, provide important environmental information regardless of the extent of their modification into artifacts. Some archaeologists therefore include all environmental remains under the general heading of ecofacts, or do not distinguish between ecofacts and artifacts. The study of ecofacts or environmental remains is most often included within the science of ‘environmental archaeology’. Environmental archaeology is the interdisciplinary study of past human interactions with the natural world and combines three fields: zooarchaeology (the study of archaeological nonhuman animal remains), archaeobotany (the study of archaeological plant remains), and geoarchaeology (the study of the archaeological abiotic landscape). Human remains are sometimes also included under the heading of ‘ecofacts’, but their study is more typically within the field of physical anthropology or

Ecofacts are commonly divided into plant remains (archaeobotanical remains), nonhuman animal remains (zooarchaeological or faunal remains), and landscape remains (geoarchaeological remains). Archaeological plant remains include microbotanical remains (small plant parts such as pollen and spores which are the regenerative cells of the plants, phytoliths and cell fragments including the cells themselves and the silica deposits that fill and take the shape of plant cells, and several types of small plants including algae, molds, etc.), and macrobotanical remains (whole plants or plant parts such as wood, seeds, nuts, fruit pits, etc.). The most commonly recognized zooarchaeological remains are the hard parts of both vertebrates and invertebrates, including bone, teeth, antler/horn, and shell. Zooarchaeologists also study less-recognized remains including eggshell, insect and crustacean exoskeletons, and microscopic remains including those of ostracods (microscopic calcareousshelled crustaceans), foraminifera (marine protist tests), and parasites (eggs and cysts found in feces). Geoarchaeology is defined as archaeological research using the methods and concepts of the earth sciences. Geoarchaeological ecofacts are therefore the most diverse and include those abiotic elements that can be used to identify the environmental context of a site (global conditions including climate and

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tectonics, landforms including hydrology and topography, and lithology including mineral, rocks, and other resources), and its matrix (sediments and soils and their processes of formation, transformation, and transportation). A final category of ecofactual data overlaps all three of these main data sets and includes residues, biomolecules, and chemical signatures found in any of the plant, animal, or geologic material studied as ecofacts.

Methods in Ecofact Analysis Although it is beyond the scope of this short definition to discuss the specific analytical methods for these diverse ecofacts, some methodological considerations affect all ecofact studies regardless of the particular material type. These include appropriate methods of material recovery and analysis, a detailed understanding of potential bias caused by differential deposition and preservation, and careful attention to identification and to interpretation through quantification. 1. Recovery and sampling. Ecofactual remains are an intrinsic part of any archaeological site (and of intersite spaces). While these remains are often found dispersed through archaeological deposits, they are sometimes found as dense accumulations (such as shell middens) that hold a wealth of combined palaeoenvironmental and cultural information. Appropriate recovery methods and sampling are essential regardless of the distribution of ecofactual remains in the archaeological context. Appropriate methods determine not only whether remains are found at all, but also whether those remains accurately represent the full range of materials originally deposited. In the science of zooarchaeology, for example, the question of appropriate recovery techniques is vital. The smaller the remains, the more fine-grained the technique of recovery that must be used. Consider, for example, a zooarchaeological study of subsistence that relies on excavation ‘by eye’ (with no screening of the archaeological matrix) compared to one that relies on fine-gauge screening (the most common gauges are 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16 inch) or even microscopic matrix analysis. While the first sample may well provide information on the use of large mammals and birds, the second will provide a more robust sample of all animal remains including fish, small amphibians, and birds, and the smallest of body parts, and the third could provide additional insect casings, parasite ova, and other microzoological remains. However, finer-grained recovery techniques are more labor intensive and

costly, so careful consideration must be given to the questions being asked, the likelihood of recovery of some materials, and the type of sampling strategy that would best balance accurate recovery with cost and time effectiveness. 2. Deposition, preservation, and transportation. Ecofactual materials, often organic, are highly susceptible to degradation under poor preservational conditions and the rate at which they are preserved is variable. Plant remains, for example, are our most fragile ecofacts and the least likely to preserve. However, some plant remains preserve better than others (hard shells, burnt wood, and, one of the most durable organic materials, pollen (see Pollen Analysis), one of the most durable organic materials), and certain conditions are more conducive to the preservation of certain plant remain types (carbonization preserves many macroremains while destroying pollen). Similarly, because ecofactual materials can be deposited naturally or as a result of human subsistence, construction, ritual, and so on, they are differentially deposited into the archaeological record and transported within it. An animal killed or scavenged in the forest, for example, may well have its parts deposited at the kill site, at the butchering site, where the meal is eaten, where the garbage is tossed, or even (as parasitic inclusions) where the animal originally defecated. An understanding of all these variables is essential before an analyst can ensure the distribution of ecofacts reveals clues about ancient environments or behavior, or whether it is simply a result of differential sizes, material types, or preservational conditions. 3. Identification. Most ecofacts are identified through a process of comparison with known modern counterparts, or comparative collections. Accurate identification depends on the skill of the analyst, good knowledge of the factors controlling variability (genetics, age, moisture regimes, etc.), and the availability of comparative specimens of all known possible species or groups in all possible preservational conditions (consider how different a kernel of corn looks from one that has ‘popped’, and the need for different specimens preserved under different conditions is clear). Here the specialist is necessary. A geoarchaeologist with a speciality in archaeopedology, for example, is trained to recognize the microparticulate variations within soil structure, the morphology and relationship between soil particles, and the chemical signatures that would indicate various land-use practices, and to tie those together to present a clear picture of the life history of the soil sample itself.

ECOFACTS, OVERVIEW 1113

Ecofact-Based Research Questions The questions that archaeologists have asked using ecofactual or environmental remains are as diverse as the materials themselves. These questions may seem to have changed over time as more knowledge has been gathered and methods for analysis have been refined and diversified. However, the reality is that the basic questions have remained the same, while the perspectives used to approach them have changed. Our questions include (1) methods in the study of ecofacts, (2) environmental reconstruction, (3) ecofact use, and (4) environmental impact. 1. Methods. Archaeologists studying either artifacts or ecofacts have always been interested in devising ways to improve our methods of sampling, analyzing, and interpreting our data. As the above discussion of methods has highlighted, some questions of methodology in environmental archaeology are particularly important and therefore remain paramount. However, fascinating new methods in microdata analysis (biomolecules, chemicals, etc.), computer modeling, and other intriguing techniques have encouraged a growing emphasis on interdisciplinary research and the increasing use of methods from multiple science fields, often in simultaneous combination. 2. Environmental reconstruction. For as long as archaeologists have studied the ancient past, they have also asked questions about the environmental conditions surrounding the peoples and cultures they have studied. Environmental reconstruction, or defining the changing ancient environments inhabited by ancient peoples (reconstructing climate, landscapes, and resources), is still one of our most valuable research directions. However, these questions are now reformulated to reconstruct more than simply ‘what was there?’ and ‘how did it change?’. We are now able to ask questions about human perception and explore how landscapes, climates, or resources were perceived by archaeological peoples, and how this perception affected the way people used their resources. How people react to their environs is based as much on what is there as what they expect to be there, what history has told them was there previously, or what parts of their surroundings they consider ‘valuable’ or ‘useless’. So, human landscapes are defined not just by environmental inventories, but also by an understanding of how those environs have changed over time and how rapidly or periodically those changes have taken place. In addition, a landscape is defined by the value of its elements – a value that is specified by the culture itself, not the intrinsic value of any one environmental resource.

So, in a flat terrain, a hill is the center of attention, and in a dry land any source of water is noted. 3. Ecofact use. Over the years of research on ecofacts, our questions about their ancient use have shifted from simple inventories of ‘what was used and how’ to broader questions of why certain environmental elements were used or modified or otherwise incorporated into the culture. This group of questions includes the most common investigations of economics, subsistence (including domestication of plants and animals), and land use. However, other directions taken also include questions about resource management that ask how environments and resources were managed both to ameliorate risk and to correlate with changing cultural structures (including population sizes, increasing hierarchies, etc.). Here all aspects of ancient culture can be explored through the window of environments and landscapes because most ecofacts (as with most artifacts) are incorporated into the cultural milieu as symbolic elements to be described through cultural mores and norms, religion or politics. 4. Environmental impact. Questions about environmental impact have a surprisingly long history. Long before politicians began to stand on ‘green’ platforms, archaeologists studying ecofacts were well aware of the impact that people have had on their environments through overhunting, deforestation, and so on. This continues to be one of the most important ecofactually based questions, but it is now often reinterpreted in terms of the synergy and dynamics of the interrelated environment/human relationship. How did people and their activities change and create new environmental conditions – and how did they then respond to those changes? This research is often incorporated into conservation initiatives that are built on the archaeological data describing original plant and animal communities.

Summary Ecofacts, generally defined as unmodified or nonartifactual components of archaeological sites, in fact are the most diverse and comprehensive archaeological remains. Ecofacts are both environmental and cultural indicators, sometimes unmodified, but often intentionally or unintentionally modified by human activities. These remains include both organic (plant and animal) and inorganic (geological) materials and their study requires both specific technical training and interdisciplinary approaches to methods and theory. Ecofacts provide the most important clues to ancient peoples and their relationships with the environments in which they lived, and their study is the science of environmental archaeology.

1114 ECONOMIC ARCHAEOLOGY See also: Archaeozoology; Geoarchaeology; Human–

Landscape Interactions; Organic Residue Analysis; Osteological Methods; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Methods; Paleoethnobotany; Preservation, Modes of.

Further Reading Albarella U (ed.) (2001) Environmental Archaeology: Meaning and Purpose. Boston: Kluwer. Dincauze D (2000) Environmental Archaeology: Principles and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ecological Archaeology

English Heritage (2002) Environmental Archaeology: Center for Archaeology Guidelines. London: English Heritage. Evans JG (2003) Environmental Archaeology and the Social Order. London: Routledge. Evans JG and O’Connor TP (1999) Environmental Archaeology: Principles and Methods. Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing. Pearsall DM (2000) Paleoethnobotany: A Handbook of Procedures, 2nd edn. New York: Academic Press. Rapp G, Jr. and Hill CL (1998) Geoarchaeology. New Haven: Yale University Press. Reitz EJ and Wing ES (1999) Zooarchaeology. Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology. New York: Cambridge University. Wilkinson K and Stevens C (2003) Environmental Archaeology: Approaches, Techniques, and Application. Gloucestershire: Tempus.

See: Cultural Ecology; Geoarchaeology.

ECONOMIC ARCHAEOLOGY Gary M Feinman, The Field Musuem, Chicago, IL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary accelerator mass spectrometric techniques Mass spectrometry techniques in which ions are accelerated to extraordinarily high kinetic energies before mass analysis. domestication Changes in the physical properties of plant and animal populations through human selection. economic archaeology Study of the relationships between past populations and their natural and cultural resources, encompassing production, distribution, consumption, and stratification. flotation Processing soil or feature fill using water to recover tiny artifacts, including plant remains and fish bones. obsidian Translucent, gray to black or green hard volcanic glass that produces extremely sharp edges when fractured. reciprocity Exchange of goods between known participants by means of barter and face-to-face exchanges. settlement pattern studies Archaeological studies involving examination of regions rather than individual sites. socioeconomic stratification Form of organization in which social groups vary markedly in terms of access to wealth and resources. Star Carr One of the best known early mesolithic archaeological sites in England. subsistence The means of making a living, particularly the procurement of food.

Introduction Defined largely by its material record, archaeology has had broad-brush economic concerns since its infancy. As early as the nineteenth century, ancient artifacts recovered through field studies served as an empirical basis from which the Danish scholars J. C. Thomsen and J. J. A. Worsaae described and generalized long-term changes in human tool technologies (such as the shift from stone to bronze to iron) over time. Archaeologically recovered tools also provided researchers with a basis to reconstruct certain aspects of past subsistence practices including hunting and the grinding of grains. For the most part, these early interpretations described basic production practices, including subsistence pursuits, for specific peoples at particular times in the past, yielding basic knowledge on how food procurement shifted over long reaches of time in many global regions. Such empirically based observations laid a foundation for the definition of terms like the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) and the Neolithic (New Stone Age) that are still widely employed in the discipline of archaeology. Nevertheless, it was not until the last half century that an economic archaeology truly emerged with important conceptual and methodological breakthroughs. Broadly defined, economic archaeology

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is the study of the relationships between ancient populations and their natural and cultural resources, thereby encompassing production, distribution, consumption, and stratification. The mid-twentiethcentury writings of neo-evolutionary anthropologists such as Leslie A. White, Julian H. Steward, and Marvin Harris spurred a much greater concern with questions concerning the nature and relative importance of the economic underpinnings of societal variation. Issues such as ‘was band organization a necessary correlate of a hunting and gathering economy?’ and ‘was redistribution a hallmark of chiefdoms?’ led to a renewed focus on past systems of exchange and production. At the same time, prompted by the works of V. Gordon Childe, archaeologists endeavored to understand the causes, consequences, and shared/distinct characteristics in different global regions of the ‘agricultural’ and ‘urban revolutions’, fostering a growing interest in the diachronic relationships between human populations and their available resources, changing farming strategies (including the scale and management of irrigation systems), and the kinds and degrees of control that political institutions had over the economies in different regions. By mid-century, the forging of a cross-cultural, comparative approach to neo-evolutionary questions in archaeology, such as the factors underpinning the origins of farming and sedentary life and the rise of the first states, generated new research and major advances in the economic realm of production (especially in subsistence). It was only more recently that comparable attention was focused on the economy’s other principal facets, including distribution/ exchange, consumption and access, as well as different modes of socioeconomic inequality or stratification. The remainder of this essay is organized in sections that highlight key research topics, approaches, findings, and advances in each of these realms that compose the major facets of economic life. Since the economy encompasses the behaviors associated with production, distribution, consumption, and stratification, and each of these activities is intricately intertwined, the specific organization and flow of this discussion is, of course, somewhat arbitrary.

Production The initial developments in economic archaeology focused on food procurement/production (subsistence activities), although the theoretical frames for these early studies (and so the questions being asked) tended to be more ecological than explicitly economic.

Subsistence

During the mid-twentieth century, increasing attention was given to the collection of faunal and floral evidence relevant to the reconstruction of past diets and how people utilized available resources. In the excavations at Star Carr, the 9000–10 000-yearold Mesolithic site in northeastern Great Britain, Grahame Clark incorporated scientists from a number of disciplines into his research team. Some of these specialists analyzed pollen and faunal remains to document how the settlement served as a camp site at the margins of a lake where the occupants largely hunted red deer and gathered a range of plant foods in a shifting landscape following the end of the Pleistocene. The Star Carr studies illustrated how much could be learned by supplementing traditional artifact analysis with other classes of archaeological data. By the 1960s and 1970s, it became standard practice for archaeologists to recover macrobotanical remains from their excavations through dry-screening (or sieving) and flotation (the sorting and recovery of light plant remains from heavier sediment matrices through the use of fluid suspension). The collection of plant materials (and more recently the direct radiocarbon dating of these remains using accelerator mass spectrometric techniques) has laid the empirical foundation for the great progress that has been made in the study of plant domestication over the past four to five decades. For example, early multi-disciplinary projects led by Robert Braidwood in the Near East and Richard MacNeish and Kent Flannery in highland Mexico were able to distinguish precisely when phenotypically wild grains were supplemented (and ultimately largely replaced) by domesticated varieties. These breakthroughs (and others that have followed from these pioneering efforts) have documented that different suites of plant foods were domesticated in Southwest Asia, eastern Asia, Europe, the Pacific, Africa, and South, Middle, and North America. At the same time, they have shown that the nature of the relationships and timing between plant agriculture and sedentary village life, animal domestication, and major technological innovations, such as the production of ceramic vessels, were far from uniform from one global region to another (see Agriculture: Social Consequences). Economically, these findings are significant since they not only document that the material underpinnings of each global region were in certain key respects different, but they have helped rule out the long-held rather romantic notion that the ‘literal and figurative seeds of civilization’ diffused out in some simple, beaconlike manner from a small number of central locations or hearths. Instead, scholars have learned that local

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factors and indigenous resources played key roles in each region. Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, systematic archaeological settlement pattern studies in several regions of the world also were adding a new largerscale perspective to the investigation of subsistence as well as the relationship between populations and available food resources through catchment analyses. These studies examined the distribution of communities on landscapes in relation to the surrounding plant and animal resources or agrarian potentials (based on crops, soils, and water). Such survey research has made it more feasible for archaeologists to evaluate and assess theoretical claims that serious stress on local subsistence resources prompted other key cultural transitions (including the beginnings of farming and the rise of state governments). Such assessments were really not possible before we had empirically derived regional distributions of past settlements for specific areas over time. Careful comparisons of settlement and resources at the regional scale allowed archaeologists the opportunity to disentangle the phenomenon of population growth (based on the size and number of settlements) from population pressure on potential food supplies (how population indicators and estimations compared to potentially available resources). Although no consensus has been reached and the causal links likely were not uniform in diverse times and places, neither starvation nor resource stress have stood up convincingly as prime motivating forces for either the advent of farming or the emergence of new political institutions. In recent years, the examination of subsistence production has been enhanced by biophysical studies of human bone and teeth, which have provided more direct insights into what actually was consumed. The chemical analysis of human bone has proved to be valuable both to quantify relative meat intake within and between populations as well as to determine the comparative significance of local plants versus imported domesticates in the diets of specific past peoples. For example, the latter studies have been fruitful in documenting the consumption of exotic maize (from Mesoamerica) as a staple in eastern North America and when maize beer became a key component of Andean diet during the late prehispanic era. On a theoretical level, archaeologists have not only elaborated their investigatory repertoire for deciphering what foods people collected, produced, and consumed, but the new data generated by these numerous methodological innovations have enabled them to probe and answer questions about variation and change in subsistence production that largely were not even contemplated five to six decades ago. Current investigations are able to evaluate how food

procurement strategies compare at particular points in time to the estimated availabilities of different resources (allowing for the quantitative assessment of optimization models), while other multi-disciplinary researches, involving foot surveys with botanical studies and other techniques, have shown how with major labor inputs some past agrarian landscapes (such as in parts of the Amazon and the lowland Maya Pete´n of Guatemala) were able to yield greater food bounties in the past than often are produced in these same areas today. Nonagricultural Production

The systematic investigation of nonagricultural production did not receive serious archaeological attention until the 1970s. The first studies began with efforts to identify locations where pottery and chipped stone tool manufacture occurred in the past. Sets of archaeological correlates were devised from ethnographic and other sources to recognize these economic/craft activities at excavated sites (and with less confidence at a regional scale using surface findings). These correlates generally have been shown to have high degrees of cross-cultural utility and validity. Importantly, these archaeological signatures rely not only on specific classes of artifacts (such as ceramic wasters or defects to identify pottery production) but also on relational data or the spatial coincidence of several kinds of evidence including the wasters, the remnants of ceramic firing features, the implements of manufacture, and high densities of pottery. Of late, archaeologists also have developed similar expectations and indicators to document empirically (with excavated data) the production of a range of other, less prevalent craft (and other manufactured) goods including bone tools, shell ornaments, metal objects, ground-stone implements, fiber/cloth, and alcohol (see Craft Specialization). The formulation of broadly accepted criteria for the recognition of craft manufacturing contexts has generated an empirical record from which archaeologists are able to examine long-held, but little tested, notions regarding how the nature and degree of suprahousehold labor specialization shifted as human polities became larger and more hierarchically organized. Although it is not surprising that labor divisions by age and sex have been found in most human societies, it perhaps has been less expected to find that household or domestic group self-sufficiency is not as common among hunting/gathering and village farming peoples as may have once been believed. Domestic craft manufacture, likely often on a part-time basis, appears to have been a common occurrence even in relatively small-scale societies. Also unexpected has

ECONOMIC ARCHAEOLOGY 1117

been the frequent finding that craft production was generally situated in domestic contexts even in large complex societies. This pattern is particularly evident in the prehispanic Americas where nondomestic workshops or factory-scale manufacture appears to have been relatively rare. Larger-scale nondomestic production contexts have been found with greater frequency in Eurasia, where the land-transport technologies (wheeled vehicles and a greater array of beasts of burden) were more efficient, but the preconceived notion that nonresidential workshops generally supplanted domestic craft manufacture in all or even most archaic states needs to be reconsidered. As has long been proposed, the nature and degrees of specialized labor do seem to increase with political complexity, but the increments are not necessarily stepwise or uniform.

Exchange and Distribution

Reciprocal exchange

Food

Shell ornaments

od Fo

Be

od

Figure 1 Modes of exchange.

th

Reciprocal exchange

Redistribution

Clo

Redistribution

Fo

ad

s

In archaeology, systematic and concerted efforts to theorize and reconstruct past patterns of exchange and distribution began during the second half of the twentieth century. Research on this central aspect of past and present economies was prompted by the seminal writings of Karl Polanyi and Marshall Sahlins, who described basic modes of circulation (reciprocity, redistribution, and marketing), which then were closely linked to different organizational formations by Service, Fried, and others (Figure 1). At the same time, concern with defining the principal

factors that prompted key societal evolutionary transitions led archaeologists to pose research questions that endeavored to assess the relative importance of local versus long-distance exchange (as well as other postulated ‘prime movers’ such as warfare, demographic growth/pressure, and irrigation) in specific historical contexts. With the advent of these theoretical queries, archaeologists no longer found it sufficient or even adequate merely to categorize the external contacts between social groupings as either migration or diffusion, thereby focusing greater attention on the broad range of behaviors, many with economic implications, that could transmit various goods and information across space and between societies. In his highly influential works that structured decades of later conceptualization and research in archaeology, Polanyi outlined an association between the economic predominance of reciprocal exchanges (face-to-face transactions between known or symmetrically situated individuals) with small, egalitarian sociopolitical formations. At the same time, redistribution, a circulatory mode in which goods flowed into a central settlement or nodal power broker and then back out, was seen as almost a definitional aspect of chiefdoms and their economic underpinnings. Market exchange was thought to be important only in a select subset of later states and largely was associated with capitalism. Although these early views still have some validity and support, past modes of circulation and economic interaction have been shown by decades of

Market

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archaeological investigation and analysis to be far more complex and variable than Polanyi’s scheme envisioned. In particular, the importance and broad relevance of redistribution has been called into question in many global contexts, and, generally, archaeologists have found far less evidence of direct political controls over production and exchange than may have been thought 25 years ago. To begin with, if much craft production was situated in houses, such manufacture would be difficult for political authorities to monitor or control directly. Nevertheless, there are other ways for governing officials to tap the sources of production through mechanisms like tribute. More specifically, archaeological research has shown that bulk commodities, like grain, often are moved through different networks and mechanisms than were employed for rare, highly valued goods, such as metals, jade and gemstones, and marine shell. In certain regions of the world, a third class of items of intermediate worth has been defined, including obsidian (volcanic glass) and woven cloth. Items in this class exchanged through channels that neither conform to the prestige good exchanges of high valuables nor to the paths traveled by basic staples. These complexities now make it difficult to characterize the breadth of ancient economies into a small number of discrete modes or to distinguish them from modern economic systems in some kind of categorical or rigid manner. For example, market exchange has been shown to have had a greater role in the circulation of goods in precapitalist contexts (including Mesoamerica, China, Greece, and Rome) than would have been supposed in Polanyi’s era. Archaeologists have devised and adopted a series of analytical means to assess the movement of goods, and hence the channels and mechanisms through which exchange took place in specific settings. Traditionally, the form and stylistic aspects of specific artifacts have been used as visual clues to trace patterns of interaction. Yet artifact forms can be copied, or even appear similar by chance. So it is not always safe to use resemblance alone to distinguish an imported piece in a given archaeological context from something locally made. Much more secure inferences regarding exchange can be drawn if it can be demonstrated that an artifact was made in a locale other than where it was found. Characterization refers to a bevy of techniques of examination by which key properties of the constituent materials are identified, thereby allowing the source of that material to be determined. If characterization is to be effective, there must be certain attributes that distinguish the products of one source of certain materials from others. Generally, this cannot be achieved by visual means alone, and it is necessary to employ chemical, petrological, or

physical means to distinguish the materials from different sources. Some of the first characterization research was carried out with obsidian, which was valued in many past societies, since it can be knapped to create sharp chipped stone cutting edges. The main elements (including silica, oxygen, and calcium) of which obsidian is composed are largely the same the world over, but the rare additional elements are markedly different from one source to another. Since distinct obsidian quarries can be distinguished by the specific composition or signature of these rare trace elements, a number of different chemical techniques (including neutron activation and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry) have been employed over the years to identify the sources of this material. Given the widespread use of obsidian, such characterization studies have yielded important findings on exchange patterns for the Mediterranean, the Pacific, and across much of the Western Hemisphere. Since the possible sources of clay and most kinds of stone other than obsidian are numerous and diverse, there is much less chance that similar chemical analyses (reliant on a small number of distinct elemental signatures) can be employed to source them with a degree of resolution comparable to that reached for obsidian. Alternatively, petrological methods that examine stone or ceramic materials by taking a thin section of the target material and placing it under a light microscope can yield information on the rock and mineral structure of such materials. For certain stone materials (particularly building stone), such findings have successfully matched artifacts to their quarry or source. Ceramic artifacts, which frequently are composed of clay and mineral, sand, or rock inclusions, also have been profitably studied through these petrological methods. Yet because the fabric or composition of ceramics often is made from materials derived from more than one source (the clay mine and the sand or mineral source), the challenge of characterization is generally greater than it is for stone. Nevertheless, petrological techniques (especially when employed quantitatively) can provide a mineral signature for sets of pottery objects made with a specific recipe, and therefore such procedures help define the paths by which these vessels were moved. If the petrological characterization of the mineral composition is supplemented by chemical analyses of the clays, then often even greater resolution can be gained. Physical techniques, such as X-ray diffraction, that define the crystalline structure of minerals based on the angle at which X-rays are deflected also have been employed for the characterization of pottery as well as certain stone materials. Characterization studies (and other means of documenting the movement of goods from their source)

ECONOMIC ARCHAEOLOGY 1119

permit archaeologists to define distributional patterns and hence some of the ways that communities and valuables circulated. When regional and even larger-scale perspectives on the archaeological record are available, quantitative spatial techniques have been employed to define these distributional patterns. One of the key questions that still needs to be adequately tackled by archaeologists concerns the scale of many past economies and economic relations and how these interactions shifted over time. Prior to the advent of systematic settlement pattern studies in many regions of the world, archaeologists tended to focus on small physiographic regions when examining exchange and economic interactions, presuming that important relations were almost entirely local in character perhaps due to the limits on transportation technologies. Yet in parts of the ancient world, high volumes of certain commodities and precious goods were indeed transferred over long distances in significant enough quantities to have clear systemically important economic effects on the polities involved.

Consumption, Access, and Systems of Stratification Consumption is the third segment of an economic network that begins with production and is mediated by distribution or circulation. In general, consumption practices have been less intensively investigated than the other aspects of economic behavior. To evaluate consumption, archaeologists require some sampling of houses or other kinds of comparable and meaningful archaeological units. More than 25 years ago, scholars such as Paul S. Martin in the American Southwest and Kent V. Flannery in Oaxaca, Mexico, conducted excavations of large numbers of contemporaneous houses in single regions. Yet such sets of data ideal for the examination of consumption remain relatively rare in the discipline today. In addition, like many aspects of economic archaeology, the study of consumption practices depends on and requires an examination of relational patterns in the archaeological record, or how certain kinds of artifacts were distributed across specific features. Again, such a relational approach to the record is only beginning to become ‘normal science’, a conceptual transition that became possible, thanks to the rapidly expanding capabilities of computerized recording, data storage, and analysis over recent decades. Consumption practices are valuable for economically oriented archaeologists to examine and understand, as they provide a window into access patterns, or which items (within the range of goods available) do specific peoples or groups have the ability to procure and in what quantities. The outcome

of such relational patterns for certain goods provides a key underpinning for the determination of socioeconomic stratification in the archaeological record (and so in the past). In other words, if a series of household units at a particular site are compared, it is important to assess whether all households had access to the same goods or whether select domestic units had more exclusive abilities to procure certain items, in particular those of high value, but also staple goods may be at the heart of basic subsistence. Marked disparities in access to portable wealth (usually objects that are highly crafted, exotic, or rare) as well as other goods provide an indicator for assessing the degree of socioeconomic stratification or inequality at a particular site or across a specific social grouping. Such empirical assessments are significant, as it is clear that stratification systems are highly variable over space and time. Recognized variation in the manner of socioeconomic stratification also has been found not simply to be a simple consequence of (although related to) the level of sociopolitical complexity. In some societal settings, where people lived (the elaboration of their residences) and how they were buried at death served as the main means by which some people or groups distinguished themselves from others, while in other places relative access to certain movable goods was a prime manifestation of socioeconomic stratification. The nature and degree of coincidence between these aspects of stratification also vary to different degrees from one time and place to others.

Looking Forward Economic relations are one fundamental key for understanding the workings and transitions of past societies and for grappling with how and why those societies varied. Although archaeology has many goals, addressing such big complicated issues about long-term societal variation and change is certainly at the forefront of much archaeological thought, and the broad range of field and analytic research that is synthesized here under the rubric of economic archaeology is essential for moving forward on these issues. Over the last 50 years or so, buoyed by a new corpus of techniques and ways to conceptualize the archaeological record, scholars have forged a more dynamic economic archaeology that has endeavored to determine not only what people ate and how they financed their central institutions but also how and why shifts in these basic relations affected the course of local and regional histories. Through the comparative examination of production, distribution, consumption, and stratification in different global regions, the discipline has made great

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progress in defining the many diverse ways that past societies worked and also sometimes why they did not. Such data are important for enlightening aspects of the past that rarely find their ways into written histories. They also enable us to understand the histories and consequences of past economic strategies that have been employed, and in what ways do contemporary economic relations truly vary from the practices employed at different points in the human past. This is not trivial, as it is now allowing us to correct and modify the notions and theories of economists and social theorists about premodern economics that often were born in the context of little or inadequate empirical information. Despite the advances that have been made, economic archaeology remains at a young stage. The menu of questions waiting to be tackled remains robust and multi-disciplinary in implication and approaches. Yet in many, if not most, regions of the world, we still lack the systematic regional (and even macroregional) settlement surveys, the intensive site-based studies with rigorous collection strategies, and the domestic excavation results that provide the starting point for many kinds of economic investigation. At the same time, many faunal and floral as well as compositional analyses remain at a largely descriptive level, estranged from the economic archaeological questions that they are so necessary to elucidate. Conceptually, we need to find broadly acceptable means to define marketing behavior and better ways to capture labor relations in the past. Finally, we must find a way to work systematically on the different scales of economic behavior from the macro- or world scale down to the

transactions that took place between the co-residents of a house. As our archaeological efforts are practiced at these multiple scales, archaeology’s chances to develop consensus answers to the big comparative issues regarding societal diversity, how it came to be, and how it changes over historical time will increase. See also: Agriculture: Social Consequences; Chemical Analysis Techniques; Craft Specialization; Exchange Systems; Social Inequality, Development of.

Further Reading Blanton RE, Feinman GM, Kowalewski SA, and Peregrine PN (1996) A dual-processual theory for the evolution of Mesoamerican civilization. Current Anthropology 37: 1–14. Childe VG (1950) The urban revolution. Town Planning Review 21: 3–17. Feinman GM and Nicholas LM (eds.) (2004) Archaeological Perspectives on Political Economies. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Polanyi K, Arensberg CM, and Pearson HW (eds.) (1957) Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory. Glencoe: Free Press and Falcon’s Wing Press. Renfrew C and Cherry J (eds.) (1986) Peer Polity Interaction and Socio-Political Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sabloff JA and Lamberg-Karlovsky CC (eds.) (1975) Ancient Civilization and Trade. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Sahlins M (1972) Stone Age Economics. New York: Aldine. Smith BD (1998) The Emergence of Agriculture. New York: Scientific American Library. Smith ME (2004) The archaeology of ancient state economies. Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 73–102. Worsaae JJA (1849) The Primeval Antiquities of Denmark. (trans. by WJ Thoms). London: Parker.

ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE DATING Rainer Gru¨n, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary alpha efficiency Alpha rays are significantly less effective in producing ESR intensity than beta or gamma rays. The alpha efficiency is the ratio of ESR intensities generated by a given alpha dose over an equivalent beta or gamma dose. cosmic rays Ionizing radiation received from space (mainly originating from the sun). disequilibrium The activity ratio of two isotopes is different from unity. dose Amount of radiation received.

dose response curve Plot of ESR intensity versus laboratory dose. dosimeter An instrument or substance for measuring the dose generated by ionizing radiation (e.g., X-, alpha, beta, gamma and cosmic rays). electron spin resonance dating A dating method based on the time dependent, radiation induced accumulation of electrons and holes in the crystal lattice of certain minerals. The age estimate usually refers to the formation of the minerals (e.g., tooth enamel, shells, corals, etc.). The trapped electrons and holes are measured with an electron spin resonance spectrometer. speleothems Carbonate precipitations in caves, consisting of stalactites (growing from the cave ceiling), stalagmites (from the cave floor), and flowstones (sheets). thermoluminescence dating A dating method based on the time dependent, radiation induced accumulation of electrons in the crystal lattice of certain minerals. The age estimate usually

ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE DATING 1121

−

− Conduction band

Ea −

Trap

g b, a, n io at di ra

refers to resetting by light (quartz grains) or heating (pottery, flint). The trapped electrons are measured with a thermoluminescence reader. travertines Carbonate deposits around springs. U-decay chains There are two naturally occurring U-decay chains. 238U decays via eight alpha emissions to the stable end product 206Pb and 235U via seven alpha emissions to 207Pb. In nature, the atomic 238U/235U ratio is about 138/1. U-series dating Dating methods based on the time dependent change of the 230Th/234U and 231Pa/235U ratios. When minerals are precipitated from aqueous solutions, they are free of water-insoluble isotopes such as 230Th and 231Pa. With time, 230 Th and 231Pa are produced through the radioactive decay of 234 U and 235U, respectively. At the time of mineral formation, the 230 Th/234U and 231Pa/235U activity ratios are zero, after about 500 000 and 150 000 years, respectively, they approximate equilibrium (i.e., 230Th/234U ¼ 1; 231Pa/235U ¼ 1). This presents the upper dating limits of the methods. 231Pa/235U is only rarely applied because of the shorter dating range and difficulties of precisely measuring 231Pa.

+

+

Electron spin resonance (ESR) dating is based on the time-dependent accumulation of electrons and holes in the crystal lattice of certain minerals. The process is the result of the exposure of the mineral to radiation, which is emitted from radioactive isotopes in the sample and its surroundings. In such a way, the mineral acts as a natural dosimeter. A numerical age can be derived from the estimation of the dose a sample has received in the past and the dose rate generated by the already-mentioned radioactive elements. Analysis of tooth enamel is the most common ESR dating application in archaeology. In ideal circumstances, dating of tooth enamel to about one million years seems possible.

Basic Principles The energy levels of insulating minerals, such as quartz, apatite, calcite, etc., can be schematically shown in an energy band model (Figure 1). Insulators have two energy levels, at which electrons may occur: the ground state (valence band) and a higher energy state (conduction band). The two energy bands are separated by a so-called forbidden energy zone. Naturally occurring radioactive isotopes emit a variety of rays, which ionize atoms. Negatively charged electrons are knocked off atoms in the valence band and transferred to the conduction band, positively charged holes remain near the valence band. After a short time of diffusion, most electrons recombine with holes, returning the mineral back to its original, electrically neutral state. However, all natural minerals contain defect sites (e.g., lattice defects and interstitial atoms), at which electrons and holes can be trapped. The trapped electrons and holes form socalled paramagnetic centers, which can be detected

Valence band Figure 1 Trapping of electrons and holes: the basis for ESR dating. An insulating mineral has two energy levels, at which electrons may occur. The lower energy level (valence band) is separated from the higher energy level (conduction band) by a so-called forbidden zone. When a mineral is formed or reset, all electrons are in the ground state. Ionizing radiation emitted from radioactive elements (U, Th, and K) knocks off negatively charged electrons from atoms. The electrons are transferred to the conduction band and positively charged holes are left behind near the valence band. After a short time of diffusion most of the electrons recombine with the holes. Some electrons can be trapped by impurities (electron traps) in the crystal lattice. These electrons can be directly measured by electron spin resonance spectroscopy. Ea ¼ activation energy or trap depth.

with an ESR spectrometer, giving rise to a characteristic ESR signal (Figure 2). When a sample is formed, it contains no trapped electrons; consequently, the ESR signal intensity is zero. After its formation, the mineral is exposed to natural radiation leading to the trapping of electrons and holes. This process will continue until the sample is measured in the laboratory. The measured ESR signal is called natural intensity and is dependent on the number of traps, the strength of the radioactivity . (dose rate, D), and the radiation time, T (¼ age of the sample). The product of dose rate and time is the dose, DE, that the sample was exposed to in the past. An age is derived from the simple relationship: DE T¼ : D The determination of the DE value is the actual ESR part of the dating procedure. The dose rate is calculated from the analysis of the radioactive elements (mainly Th, U, and K) in the sample and its surroundings. The concentrations of the radioactive elements

1122 ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE DATING 400 Natural radiation

Signal intensity (a.u.)

350

Laboratory irradiation

300 250 200 150

Additive dose response curve

100

DE

50 0 −100

−50

Natural intensity 0

50

100

150

200

250

300

Irradiation dose (Gy) Figure 2 Dose (DE) determination using the additive dose method: after measurement of the natural intensity, the sample is irradiated in the laboratory. This leads to the production of more trapped electrons and holes (Figure 1). Consequently, the signal intensity increases. The plot of ESR intensity vs. laboratory dose is called the ‘dose response curve’. The DE value results from fitting the data points of the dose response with an exponential function and extrapolation to zero ESR intensity.

Table 1 Dose rates for the U and Th decay chains and K (ppm ¼ part per million) . . . Da Db Dg 1 ppm 238U þ 235U 1 ppm 232Th 1% K

2780 732 782

146 27 243

113 mGy y
1 48 mGy y
1 mGy y
1

are converted into dose rates by published tables (Table 1). The determination of the natural radiation field that the sample is exposed to is complex and has to be carefully evaluated (Figure 4).

For the measurement of the DE value, the sample is irradiated in the laboratory with increasing dose steps from a calibrated gamma source (these are, e.g., used in hospitals where they are used for cancer treatment or sterilization). The irradiation process generates more trapped electrons; consequently, the measured ESR signals increase. A dose response curve can be established by plotting the signal intensity against the applied dose (Figure 3). This data set allows extrapolation to zero ESR intensity and the DE value results from the intersection of the best fit of the data with the dose axis. The dose response curve of tooth enamel is not linear, but is most often described by a single saturating function.

Measurement of the Dose Value DE stands for ‘equivalent dose’ and stems from the fact that the laboratory procedures utilize gamma sources, whereas the dose the sample has received in the past is the sum of multi-energetic alpha, beta, gamma, and cosmic rays (see below). Thus, the experimentally determined dose value is the gamma equivalent of the naturally received dose, which is frequently called ‘paleodose’, P. The SI unit for absorbed dose is Gray (Gy). The measured ESR signal must have the following properties to provide reliable results: . The signal intensity grows in proportion to the dose received. . The signals have a stability, which is at least one order of magnitude higher than the age of the sample. . The number of traps is constant or changes in a predictable manner, provided recrystallization, crystal growth, or phase transitions have not occurred. . The signals should not show anomalous fading. . The signal is not influenced by sample preparation (grinding, exposure to laboratory light, etc.).

ESR Measurement ESR intensities are measured with off-the-shelf ESR spectrometers (manufactured, e.g., by Bruker and JEOL). Note that the ESR measurements for dating do not require the determination of the absolute number of trapped electrons; only relative concentrations (¼ ESR signal intensities) are required to establish the dose response curve. Most modern ESR spectrometers are stable enough so that internal or external standards are not required. .

Determination of the Dose Rate, D The dose rate is calculated from the concentrations of radioactive elements in the sample and its surroundings (only the U and Th decay chains and the 40 K-decay are of relevance; a minor contribution comes from 87Rb in the sediment) plus a component of cosmic rays. There are three different ionizing rays, which are emitted from radioactive elements (Figure 4):

ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE DATING 1123

ESR intensity (a.u.)

150

M1

Natural Irradiated

100 50 0 −50 −100 3360

3380

(a)

3400

Magnetic field

(10−4

3420

3440

T)

400 1126C ESR intensity (a.u.)

300

*

200 +

100 0

*

*

* #

−100 −200 3280 (b)

*

3300

3320

3340

3360

3380

Magnetic field (10−4 T)

Figure 3 ESR spectra of tooth enamel. The spectrum is dominated by a CO
2 radical (a). Some spectra show interferences by methyl (* in b), SO2 (þ), and a rotating CO
2 (#).

. gamma rays (photons) have a range of about 30 cm; . beta rays (electrons) have a range of about 2 mm; and . alpha rays (helium nuclei) have only a very short range of about 20–40 mm because of the large size of the particles. Alpha particles are less efficient in producing ESR intensity than beta and gamma rays. Therefore, an alpha efficiency, which is usually in the range of 0.13  0.02, has to be determined. The concentrations of radioactive elements within a sample are usually very different from their surroundings. Thus, ‘internal dose rates’ and ‘external dose rates’ have to be assessed independently. Furthermore, it is necessary to estimate the cosmic dose rate, which is about 300 mGy yr
1 at sea level and decreases with depth below ground, and is also dependent on altitude as well as on geographic latitude. The conversion of the elemental analysis into dose rates is shown in Table 1. Dose rate calculations become more complicated when disequilibrium in the U-decay chains or attenuation factors has to be considered.

External Dose Rate The calculation of the external dose rate is dependent on the size of the samples (Figure 4). The removal of the outer 50 mm of the sample eliminates all the externally alpha irradiated volume. If the outer 2 mm can be removed, the external beta dose is eliminated. In this case the external dose rate consists of gamma and cosmic rays only. If the samples are smaller, it receives external beta radiation, which decreases with depth; therefore, attenuation factors have to be considered. The external beta dose rate has to be calculated separately from the external gamma dose rate because the beta dose rate is generated from the sediment immediately attached to the sample, whereas the gamma dose rate originates from all sediment within a radius of about 30 cm around the sample (see Figure 4). The external sediment beta dose rate is derived from the chemical analysis of U, Th, and K. The gamma dose rate cannot normally be deduced from laboratory analyses but has to be measured in situ with a portable, calibrated gamma spectrometer or thermoluminescence dosimeters. In situ measurements have the advantage of including the

1124 ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE DATING

Cosmic rays

g g

1m

g

g g

g

a

b

b

Qz

b

b

b

400 mm

4 cm

a

a

a a

b

a

a Fsp a

Qz

b

a a

Figure 4 Schematic representation of the different components of natural radiation relevant for dose rate calculations (based on S. Stokes as shown in Aitken MJ (1998) Optical Dating. Oxford: Oxford University Press: Fig. 2.2.). Cosmic rays are high-energy particles and are attenuated once they penetrate the sedimentary layers. For practical purposes, the cosmic dose rate becomes negligible at a depth of about 20 m. Gamma rays have an average range of 30 cm. Thus, in homogeneous sediments, the gamma dose rate can be calculated from the chemical analysis of the bulk sediment. However, if the sediment contains boulders or intercalation of layers with different radioactivity, the gamma dose rate should be measured in situ. Beta rays have average ranges of a few mm. In smaller samples, such as teeth or shells, the volume that has received external beta dosage cannot be removed. For dose rate calculations, the sediment in the immediate surroundings of the sample is analyzed for radioactive elements. Alpha rays have average ranges of a few tens of micrometers. Sediment grains used, for example, in luminescence dating receive a substantial external alpha dose. This volume is usually removed by etching, except when fine grains (4–11 mm) are being measured, usually in luminescence dating studies.

present-day water contents. Water absorbs some beta and gamma rays; therefore, its presence in the surrounding sediment has to be considered in the calculation of the beta and gamma dose rates.

Internal Dose Rate This parameter is mainly generated by alpha and beta rays emitted from elements within the sample. In

enamel and dentine of teeth, the U-decay chains are in disequilibrium. This affects the average dose rates and has to be taken into account mathematically. The alpha efficiency of tooth enamel is difficult to determine because of size requirements for ESR measurements. The best value is about 0.13  0.02. The dose rate calculations in tooth enamel are further complicated by the fact that bones and teeth tend to accumulate uranium over time. Modern bones are

ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE DATING 1125

virtually uranium free (with concentrations around 1–10 parts per billion, ppb), whereas archaeological samples may contain many orders of magnitude higher concentrations (up to several hundreds ppm). The explicit history of the uranium uptake may have significant implications for the calculation of the average dose rate. Conventionally, two uranium uptake models have been calculated: early U-uptake (EU) and linear U-uptake (LU). For the EU model it is assumed that all the uranium that is measured today was accumulated by the teeth within a short time after its burial, whereas the LU model predicts that the uranium has been accumulated continuously over time in a linear fashion. The differences in EU and LU age calculations are small as long as the U-concentrations in the teeth are moderate (less than about 2 ppm in dentine). However, with increasing U-concentrations in the teeth, the EU/LU age difference increases until the LU age is about twice the EU age. In the interpretation of the ESR dating results, it is generally assumed that the correct age of the sample lies somewhere between the bracketing EU and LU age calculations. It has been recognized, however, that teeth from a considerable number of sampling sites (perhaps 10–20%) may have U-uptake histories that lie outside the age range defined by the EU and LU models. This may be due to U-leaching or strongly delayed U-uptake. The reason may lie in changes in the hydrological environment of the samples. If ESR is used as an independent dating technique and unless U-series analyses are carried out on the teeth (see below), there is no first-principles argument that could be used to prefer one model over another. To overcome the problem of the unknown U-uptake history in teeth, Gru¨n et al. suggested analyzing the enamel and dentine samples for U-series isotopes. Uranium series dating results on bones and teeth are similarly influenced by U-uptake, but to a different extent than ESR (the LU U-series age is always nearly twice the EU age). Combining ESR and U-series allows the establishment of an equation system that can be solved for a one-parameter diffusion equation and age.

Measurement of Radioactive Elements and Isotopes A plethora of analytical techniques can be used for the analysis of radioactive elements. In the field, the external gamma dose rate can be measured with thermoluminescence dosimeters or a gamma spectrometer. Elemental concentrations can be measured with X-ray fluorescence, induced coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), neutron activation analysis,

etc. In teeth, uranium and thorium concentrations, as well as U-series isotopes can be measured in situ by laser ablation ICP-MS.

Errors Although error calculation should be straightforward, and has been outlined in detail by Aitken, most publications mix the random and systematic errors and treat them equally. Note that nearly all ESR age estimations are given with 1-s errors. The error in the DE estimation is usually within 1–5%. Depending on the number of dose rate parameters and the intrinsic errors of the analytical techniques involved in the dose rate determination, the typical precision of dose rate assessments is in the range of 5–7%. Some systematic errors are introduced by assumptions. These occur because not all parameters are measured or can be measured. For example, the water contents of the sediments might have changed over time, some sediments might have had some radioactive disequilibrium in the U-decay chain, the alpha efficiency in ESR is difficult to measure and is based on the analysis of a few samples, radioactive disequilibrium within the samples and surrounding sediments are rarely measured, etc. Many archaeological and palaeoanthropological sites have been completely excavated in the past and it is not possible to measure any external dose rates. In some cases, it has been attempted to reconstruct the external gamma dose rate from museum sediment samples. This process is usually associated with very large errors (>20%) because (1) the samples show a large spread in the concentrations of the radioactive isotopes and (2) any effects of a lumpy environment are neglected (i.e., the original sediments might have contained larger boulders and pebbles, etc., which, of course, were not collected). If teeth contain significant amounts of uranium, the errors introduced by the unknown U-uptake history may be as high as 50%, if the assumption is made that the EU and LU models bracket the true ages of the samples. If all dose rate parameters are measured, including U-series isotopes, the 1-s error (precision) of an ESR analysis is in the range of 7%. Because it is very difficult to analyze teeth of precisely known age, the evaluation of the systematic errors (accuracy) in ESR dating is open to conjecture.

Application of ESR Dating Dating of teeth is the main application of ESR in palaeoanthropological studies. There have been some other applications in archaeological/palaeoanthropological contexts: for example, ESR dating of

1126 ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE DATING 0

50

100

1 BS

ESR

645a 645b

250

200

14

C

530a 530b 530c 17304

EU-age (ka)

LR1

33 ± 1 ka

up

39 ± 3 ka

2

36 ± 1 ka

up

41 ± 2 ka

LRC

48 ± 1 ka

Early LSA

531a 531b 531c 644a 644b 646a 646b

150

1 WA

2 BS (

41 ka

)

529a 529b 541a 541b 19011+

MSA 3

540a 540b 17302+ 532a 532b 532c 533a 533b 537a 537b 537c 17505+

63 ± 2 ka

2 WA

60 ka

535A 535B 535C 535D 3 BS

607A 607B 536A 536B 536C 609A 609B 609C BC5

(

)

BC5: 74 ± 5 ka

58 ± 2 ka

2

66 ± 3 ka

3

74 ± 4 ka

3 WA

66 ± 2 ka

601A 601B 601C

1 RGBS

76 ± 4 ka

534a 534b 647A 647B 538a 538b 538c

4 BS

Howieson's Poort

608A 608B 608C

1

79 ka

602a 602b 602c 4 WA

604A 604B 604C 605a 605b 605c

1

118 ± 4 ka

6

116 ± 5 ka

7

174 ± 5 ka

2

166 ± 6 ka

5

147 ± 6 ka

1

174 ± 9 ka

2

227 ± 11 ka

250

EU-age (ka)

MSA 1

603A 603B 603C

82 ± 2 ka

5 BS

539a 539b 539c 754a 754b 754c

5 WA

753 0

50

100

150

200

Figure 5 The age of BC5 in context with the ESR and 14C chronology for Border Cave. Lowercase letters following the sample number denote sub-samples of a single tooth, capital letters separate enamel fragments. The two bracketed results were not used for the calculation of the average ages of the units. Gru¨n R, Beaumont P, Tobias PV, and Eggins S (2003) On the age of Border Cave 5 human mandible. Journal of Human Evolution 45: 155–167; Bird MI, Fifield LK, Santos GM, et al. (2003) Radiocarbon dating from 40–60 ka BP at Border Cave, South Africa. Quaternary Science Reviews 22: 943–947.

ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE DATING 1127

speleothems, which has created some confusion with respect to the age of the Petralona hominid (Greece); ESR dating of mollusk shells (e.g., from Batadomba Cave, Sri Lanka); of spring deposited travertine (e.g., Weimar Ehringsdorf and Bilzingsleben, Germany), and of burnt flint (e.g., Kebara, Israel). These applications have recently been summarized by Gru¨n and Rink. Perhaps, apart from ESR dating of mollusk shells, other dating techniques are significantly better suited to provide precise age information on these materials, for example, U-series dating on speleothems and travertines or thermoluminescence on burnt flint. ESR dating of tooth enamel is applicable between a few thousand years and, in exceptional circumstances, up to a few million years. Although it would be highly desirable to be able to date bones with ESR, any attempt to obtain independent ESR age estimates has so far been unsuccessful. This is due to the following observations: (1) bones usually absorb more uranium than teeth and (2) the mineral phase (hydroxyapatite) in bones is only somewhere in the region of 40–60% (enamel: about 96%). During fossilization the mineralogical compounds of the bones change, leading to the formation of new minerals, disintegration of some mineral phase, conversion of an amorphous phase into hydroxyapatite, as well as growth of the crystal size. Formation of the new mineral phase (with new defects ¼ traps) with time will generally lead to an age underestimation regardless of the U-uptake model applied. ESR dating of tooth enamel has been applied to a variety of archaeological and palaeoanthropological sites. ESR dating has been used for the dating of the early modern human sites of Border Cave, and Klasies River Mouth Cave in southern Africa, as well as Qafzeh and Skhul in the Levant. The ESR dating results demonstrated the occurrence of anatomically modern humans at around 100 000 years ago. ESR was also used for the dating of Neanderthal sites including Tabun, Kebara, Amud, Krapina, Le Moustier, and La-Chapelle-aux-Saints. The particular strength of ESR dating lies in the direct analysis of tooth enamel fragments from human fossils. The archaeological and palaeoanthropological site of Border Cave contains one of the most detailed ESR dating sequences (Figure 5). The dating results in the younger layers agree well with radiocarbon results on charcoal collected from the same layers. Of particular interest is the age of Border Cave 5, one of the few early anatomically modern hominid fossils that were found in situ at the site. A study based on the analysis of nitrogen contents and infrared splitting factors indicated that BC5 may be as young as Iron Age, that is, about 1000 years old.

ESR analysis of a tooth fragment and determination of its uranium concentration with laser ablation ICPMS demonstrated that BC5 agrees with the age of the other samples that were found in the surrounding sediments (Figure 5). The best age estimate of 74 000  5000 years shows that fully modern humans lived in southern Africa significantly earlier than in Europe.

Summary The advantages of ESR dating of tooth enamel, particularly when applied to human fossils, lie in providing valuable information to our understanding of modern human evolution. The dating range of ESR goes well beyond the radiocarbon barrier and covers about the last 500 000 years. The inability to accurately date tooth enamel by other means is also a downfall of ESR dating, because it is difficult to assess the reliability of the age estimations. The precision of ESR dating is significantly less than that of isotopic methods. Results of museum specimens are often associated with large errors, because ESR dating is crucially dependent on the reconstruction of the external dose rate environments. See also: Amino Acid Racemization Dating; Carbon-14 Dating; Dating Methods, Overview; Dendrochronology; Luminescence Dating; Modern Humans, Emergence of; Obsidian Hydration Dating.

Further Reading Aitken MJ (1985) Thermoluminescence Dating. New York: Academic Press. Aitken MJ (1998) Optical Dating. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bird MI, Fifield LK, Santos GM, et al. (2003) Radiocarbon dating from 40–60 ka BP at Border Cave, South Africa. Quaternary Science Reviews 22: 943–947. Eggins S, Gru¨n R, Pike A, Shelley A, and Taylor L (2003) 238U, 232 Th profiling and U-series isotope analysis of fossil teeth by laser ablation-ICPMS. Quaternary Science Reviews 22: 1373–1382. Eggins SM, Gru¨n R, McCulloch M, Pike A, Chappell J, Kinsley L, Shelley M, Murray-Wallace C, Spo¨tl C, and Taylor L (2005) In Situ U-series dating by laser-ablation multi-collector ICPMS: new prospects for Quaternary geochronology. Quaternary Science Reviews 24: 2523–2538. Gru¨n R (1989) Electron spin resonance (ESR) dating. Quaternary International 1: 65–109. Gru¨n R (2000) Electron spin resonance dating. In: Ciliberto E and Spoto G (eds.) Modern Analytical Methods in Art and Archaeology Chemical Analyses Series, vol. 155, p. 641–679. New York: Wiley. Gru¨n R (2006) Direct dating of human remains. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 49: 2–48.

1128 ENGENDERED ARCHAEOLOGY Gru¨n R, Beaumont P, Tobias PV, and Eggins S (2003) On the age of Border Cave 5 human mandible. Journal of Human Evolution 45: 155–167. Gru¨n R and Stringer CB (1991) ESR dating and the evolution of modern humans. Archaeometry 33: 153–199. Prescott JR and Hutton JT (1988) Cosmic ray and gamma ray dosimetry for TL and ESR. Nuclear Tracks and Radiation Measurement 14: 223–227.

Elites

Rink WJ (1997) Electron spin resonance (ESR) dating and ESR applications in quaternary science and archaeometry. Radiation Measurements 27: 975–1025. Sillen A and Morris AG (1996) Diagenesis of bone from Border Cave: Implications for the age of the Border Cave hominids. Journal of Human Evolution 31: 499–506.

See: Social Inequality, Development of.

Empires

See: Political Complexity, Rise of.

ENGENDERED ARCHAEOLOGY Rosemary A Joyce, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary androcentrism An unreflective assumption of a unified male perspective that does not allow for differences in perspectives of women and men. dichotomy Division into two parts, groups, or classes, especially when these are sharply distinguished or opposed. division of labor The anthropological concept that in every society there is a normal distribution of tasks among people of different age, sex, or other identity statuses. ethnographic analogy The procedure of using observations of living societies made by anthropologists as a basis for interpretation of archaeological patterning, based either on specific historical continuities or on similar characteristics that allow one case to be generalized and identified with another. feminist archaeology An explicitly political approach to archaeology that critically examines androcentrism and gender inequity in the present practice of archaeology, encourages analyses of inequality in past societies, especially inequalities on lines of sex, and advocates awareness of the implications of models of past gender relations for contemporary society. gender Often used to distinguish the cultural interpretation of sex differences, including the assignment of different roles on the basis of biological sex, and understood as a culturally created and therefore historically changing aspect of human identity. processual archaeology The idea that archaeology should identify the processes through which past societies developed in their historical forms, with an emphasis on the generalizable aspects of what happened in the past.

sex/gender system The concept that sex and gender are not separable as given biology (sex) and cultural interpretation (gender) but instead are inseparable parts of cultural orders through which biological variation is naturalized as the basis for cultural differences.

Introduction One of the most active areas of archaeological innovation in the last half of the twentieth century was the exploration of gender. Never a single, unified project, this topical area of attention was able to bring together archaeologists representing every theoretical perspective – from culture historical through processual, postprocessual, and even evolutionary archaeology (see Processual Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Evolutionary Archaeology). After more than 20 years of development of this topic, most contributions still take the form of individual papers, usually included in edited volumes. This is one indication of the breadth of participation by a very large number of people in developing archaeologies of gender. Early in the history of the development of archaeologies of gender, Cheryl Claassen, who did much to sustain this level of energy by organizing the three conferences on gender in archaeology starting in 1991, noted another important characteristic of participation in this emerging topical area: many, perhaps most, of the participants were graduate students or recent recipients of doctorates.

ENGENDERED ARCHAEOLOGY 1129

The lack of theoretical unity among the many people contributing to archaeologies of gender has at times been seen as a weakness, particularly from the point of view of explicitly feminist scholars. Their most urgent concern was with the possibility that archaeologists pursuing questions of gender would simply create an appearance of long-term stability for present-day gender relations, ‘naturalizing’ present inequalities. Remarkably, other archaeologists saw quite the opposite danger: that use of explicitly feminist theoretical perspectives would impede the progress of ‘objective’ research on gender in the past, or that such research would be marginalized because mainstream archaeologists would find it unacceptably political. Despite the large numbers of contributors to the development of archaeologies of gender over the past 20 years, and the very visible venues where work of this kind has appeared, it is probably true that today, some archaeologists view this as a specialty with which they do not need to engage. This is unfortunate, because while archaeologists of gender have not developed special methods to ‘see’ men and women in the past, they have developed sophisticated perspectives on the social implications of material remains whose potentials go far beyond such simple goals. Archaeologies of gender fundamentally transform understandings of classic archaeological questions such as the development of agriculture, the emergence of institutionalized social distinctions in early sedentary societies, and the ways that wealth and power could be increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people in the most stratified states. In this article, some of the big moments in the history of archaeologies of gender are briefly reviewed first, and then some of the key interpretive and methodological approaches taken by archaeologists working around the world on questions of gender are outlined. Finally, future directions for this line of archaeological inquiry are suggested. It is clear that there is no reversing the impact of the extraordinary florescence of archaeological research on gender of the past decades.

Genealogies of Research on Gender in Archaeology Constructing histories while events continue to unfold is a perilous task, one that also has highly political dimensions. This article does not claim to be a complete history of archaeologies of gender. Instead, it identifies a series of key conferences and publications that pushed the field of gender archaeology forward in the 1980s and 1990s. The outline of events mainly concerns the English-language literature, above all, the literature from North America and Great Britain. Within the

English-language literature, important contributions were also made by archaeologists in Australia. In parallel, archaeologies of gender were developed by Scandinavian archaeologists, such as Erika Engelstadt and Mary Louise Stig S
rensen, often publishing in English as well as Scandinavian languages. In Germany, Femarc, the Women’s Network in Archaeology, began in 1991 and continues to operate a website to this day, again in both English and German. Archaeologies of gender are less developed in other regional traditions in archaeology, but the international extension of interest in related questions that developed over the same period of time is still noteworthy. Many histories of archaeology of gender credit an article by Margaret Conkey and Janet Spector in Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, published in 1984, as a particularly influential starting point. In this article, Conkey and Spector outlined a ‘task-differentiation’ approach to identifying women in archaeological sites, using ethnographic analogies to establish the tasks that would have occupied men and women in different societies. Concern has been expressed about singling out this article as a kind of origin point for archaeology of gender, based on the indisputable fact that there were preexisting works by archaeologists concerned with understanding gender relations using archaeological data. For example, at least as early as 1960, Tatiana Proskouriakoff published a pathbreaking study of women in Classic Maya art. This beginning was followed up in 1976 by Joyce Marcus’ consideration of evidence for women’s roles in Classic Maya politics. In 1982, archaeologist Mary Pohl published a pathbreaking study of the roles of Classic Maya women in relation to the raising of animals. About the same time, archaeologists working on the ancient societies of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and neighboring regions were actively developing accounts of the roles of women in these ancient societies, in books like the 1983 Images of Women in Antiquity. It is thus worth asking why the 1984 paper by Conkey and Spector has been cited by many people as a turning point in their ability to write about gender as a legitimate topic. Two things stand out: first, the article is methodological; it proposed a framework for identifying evidence of gender. Second, the method is rooted in the concept of gendered divisions of labor, an anthropological base that many archaeologists found helpful in initially making a transition to gender analysis. These perspectives also underwrote the Wedge Conference, organized by Conkey and Joan Gero, which brought together archaeologists working on a variety of technologies to follow through on analysis of gender in 1988. The published volume from this conference, 1991’s

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Engendering Archaeology, is perhaps the secondmost widely cited point of reference for archaeologists of gender, and was a landmark that, among other things, launched the newly coined term ‘engendered archaeology’. It might be fair to say that archaeologies of gender have been struggling with the legacy of this initial orientation ever since. By linking gender to production, archaeologists opened the door to examining gender in what processual archaeologists saw as the most determinative aspect of social life, subsistence, and the economy. Contributions to Engendering Archaeology argued for the significance of factoring in differences in the economic roles of men and women in models of past societies, and demonstrated an ability to address these questions with materials of many different kinds. The method advocated in the original article, however, was inherently dependent on cross-cultural analogies subject to critical re-examination. Since these analogies were derived from ethnography conducted in the contemporary world, in societies that already had experienced colonial engagements of unknown transformative effect, they ran the risk of incorporating presentist perspectives and validating modern gender arrangements as universal. Moreover, most authors took for granted an equation of dichotomous biological sex with a primary division of all human populations into a relatively homogeneous group of males, and an equally homogeneous group of females. Later researchers in archaeology have worked hard to develop alternative approaches that do not assume a dichotomy of genders grounded in the two-sex model. But they contended with their own histories of advances based on making precisely this assumption. The philosopher Alison Wylie, writing an introductory paper in Engendering Archaeology, called attention to the trajectory for future research that could be predicted given the beginning of archaeology of gender as a search for women in the past. Comparing archaeology to other disciplines, such as history, she predicted that archaeologists would find it necessary eventually to question the very concepts of analysis with which they were working. While most subsequent authors cited Wylie, we nonetheless took the short cut provided by associating gender with two preexisting sexes, between whom there was assumed to be a separation of tasks, something we could potentially see archaeologically in dichotomous distributions of features, artifacts, and floral and faunal remains. The Wedge Conference was influential precisely because of its shared programmatic direction. A second conference, held at almost the same time,

is equally important in the history of development of archaeologies of gender even though participants shared no common project or assumptions. This was the 1989 Chacmool conference on gender in archaeology. Organized by students of archaeology at Calgary University, this open-attendance conference provided a forum for an international group of archaeologists who proposed an astonishing array of approaches to understanding gender in the past. Many of the international participants already had taken part in conferences or publication projects in which gender was one dimension of human variation being considered, some of which were grounded in a more openly feminist critique of archaeology than generally characterized North American gender studies of the time. The sheer diversity of the papers included in the Chacmool conference volume is testimony to the already existing activity of archaeologists who had arrived, more or less simultaneously, at the conclusion that it was time to talk about men and women in archaeological analyses. Notable contributions to this conference went further, and began to trouble simple assumptions of a male/female dichotomy. Many of the papers argued that the projection of genders in representational media, such as figurines or stone sculpture, was a source of understanding gender ideologies, something that had been a secondary theme of many participants at the Wedge Conference as well. Several papers at the Chacmool conference attempted to explicitly theorize how genders might have been formed in the past through people’s use of materials that would leave archaeological traces, taking gender formation, not the work and lives of women and men, as their explicit focus. Even more notable, at a time when most work on gender conflated gender with women, some of the participants at the Chacmool conference were concerned with identifying masculine images, roles, and ideologies. Cheryl Claassen, a participant in the Wedge Conference, organized a third pathbreaking conference in 1991 that nurtured archaeologies of gender in North America. Claassen was inspired to promote wider engagement in discussions of archaeology of gender, bringing together individuals who she knew had presented papers on related themes at national and regional meetings. The three conferences that Claassen organized served as incubators for cross-regional connections that sustained a large number of researchers interested in pursuing questions that were not central in their individual regions. Notably, the first conference included discussion of teaching courses on gender, or with content about gender. Roundtable discussions explored the question of how archaeologists were

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actually operationalizing their terms, defining gender and using it. After its first few iterations, successor conferences moved to different regions of the US, providing a unique context for archaeologists, including large numbers of students, to meet with others of like mind and develop their analyses in collaborative settings. These conferences promoted a form of feminist practice through which new generations of scholars were able to gain a foothold, exploring every possible material and all the ways that they could imagine accessing gender in the past. Subsequent regional conferences dealing with the US Southwest, the pre-Columbian Americas, and archaeology worldwide included many scholars who first tried out their ideas about gender in the context of one of the ‘gender in archaeology’ conferences. The importance of such conferences as settings that allowed practitioners to gain support for their ideas was not limited to North America. In 1991, the first of a series of Australian conferences on Women in Archaeology was held. In addition to papers on aspects of the place of women in past societies, this conference included discussions of equity in careers of women in archaeology. The Australian conferences appear also to have had a more explicit commitment to feminist analysis than was typical of the open North American conferences. Several participants in the Wedge Conference participated in the first Australian conference. In Great Britain, questions of gender were incorporated in a number of conferences around the same time, although typically in Britain, these conferences were not limited to discussions of gender. An exception was the 1994 Gender and Material Culture Conference at the University of Exeter, which explicitly brought to the foreground methodological concerns, asking how archaeologists could use the material record to talk about gender in the past. Like the other conferences taking place in the early and mid-1990s, some of the participants in the Exeter conference, which resulted in three edited volumes, had previously participated in other conferences dedicated to exploring gender in archaeology. It is arguable that without the extremely lively conference scene of the time, gender would never have taken off as a strong topic of research in archaeology, since at the same time as these conferences, considerable resistance to work in this area was expressed by mainstream archaeologists. Some archaeologists were concerned that the diversity of participation would lead to an incoherent field of study. In a 1997 review article in Annual Reviews in Archaeology, Margaret Conkey and Joan Gero expressed concerns about what they characterized as a ‘cottage industry’ of gender archaeology. For archaeologists

like this, the price of the openness of participation in gender conferences was bracketing the fundamental definitional questions Claassen raised at the first conference she organized. The gain was a vast number of studies that proposed ways to assess the roles of women, and less often men, in past societies around the world, often relying on distributions of specific artifacts used as signatures of men and women. Critical participants in archaeologies of gender worried that premature attempts to create simple methods to ‘see’ men and women would reinforce modern ideas of clearly divided separate spheres that actually are products of relatively recent histories in the industrial world. Some archaeologists, drawing on theoretical work in contemporary gender studies, were concerned that archaeologists too quickly adopted definitions of sex (as precultural, biological given) and gender (as the cultural interpretation of sex) that were already critiqued by scholars in other fields. A very few archaeologists of gender, informed by these external theoretical sources, were trying to grapple with how one would recognize a sex/gender system in which biology was conceived as something other than a simple dichotomy. Other participants in the early development of archaeologies of gender noted that treating sex/gender systems as separable from other aspects of identity, such as age, class, ethnicity, or race, was artificial, and that it was especially problematic to assume that gender was the most fundamental division in all societies. These concerns still exist, and not all work on archaeology of gender meets contemporary standards of analysis in feminist and gender scholarship more widely. Nonetheless, the advances fostered by the wide participation in archaeologies of gender are clear. It has now become common to find sessions dedicated to gender at annual meetings of archaeological professional societies, and to find papers on gender included in sessions on other topics. Archaeologies of gender have made important contributions to how archaeologists think about the past and to what we think we know about it.

What We Know Today as a Result of Archaeologies of Gender Because archaeologies of gender began with the question ‘‘where are the women?’’ much of the literature in this topical area has consisted of empirical contributions to knowledge of particular times and places. Thus there are edited books and special issues of journals on gender in Africa, Asia, and various regions of the US, among others. Such edited volumes usually adopt culture-historical or culture-evolutionary models, but explicitly include consideration of women’s

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contributions in the past, often highlighting those instances in which women were active agents of change. Culture-evolutionary or culture-historical approaches are also common in the still-rare monographs in the field. For example, in their 1999 study of women in the ancient Americas, Karen Olson Bruhns and Karen Stothert provided a culture-evolutionary overview of women’s place in economy and society in the ancient Americas, as evident in the numerous case studies they reviewed and synthesized. Sarah Nelson’s influential 1997 book Gender in Archaeology: Analyzing Power and Prestige, while organized around a critique of androcentrism in archaeology itself, demonstrates the proposed alternative approach through a global cultural evolutionary narrative that asks what women’s contributions were at various points in human history around the world. Studies such as these draw needed attention to the absence or assumed passivity of women as social actors in other archaeological accounts of cultural evolution. Other works take the study of gender as a means to propose new methodological perspectives. One long-term debate, both within and outside archaeologies of gender, was whether there should be methods specific to the study of gender, and if so, what these methods were. Reduced to its basic, this is the question of how archaeologists can see women (and by implication, men) in the past. Archaeologists of gender in fact have exploited the entire existing archaeological toolkit in pursuit of evidence of differential treatment of people in the past along lines of sex, and of differences in the experiences and activities of people of different socially recognized genders. The entire suite of distributional analyses used in household archaeology, for example, has been marshaled to support identification of gendered spaces and divisions of labor along the lines of gender in places as widely separated as Europe and Mesoamerica. Studies of gender have not been limited to the smallscale settings where normative models of gender relations derived from late twentieth-century ideologies associating women with a private, domestic sphere lead archaeologists to expect to see women. Significant studies of political economy of states and of prestate societies asked the question, ‘‘what were the political and economic roles of women in these societies?’’ The answers proposed showed that women were significant political actors even in complex societies where official political roles were reserved for men, particularly when women’s roles in production for the state are included. In Elizabeth Brumfiel’s articles on Aztec society, she demonstrates that household labor was reorganized with the development of the state in ways that relate to intensification of demand for cloth produced by women in domestic contexts.

As she and others have noted, the importance of cloth in the Aztec economy created opportunities for women to assert special status in both the household and state. Brumfiel’s writing has been extremely influential, making her 1992 article in American Anthropologist the secondmost cited journal article on gender in archaeology, after the 1984 paper by Conkey and Spector. Archaeologists have amply demonstrated that a public/domestic dichotomy cannot be projected into the past without losing much of the picture of ancient political economy. As Julia Hendon argued in a 1996 article in Annual Reviews in Anthropology, which is among the top ten cited articles on gender and archaeology, political and economic action begins in the household. Archaeologists of the more recent past have posed direct challenges to the assumption of a timeless feminine domestic sphere by tracing how ideologies of female domesticity were built up over the course of the nineteenth century. This ‘cult of domesticity’ was promulgated through the use of material culture recovered in archaeological research such as serving wares and decorative objects. Historical archaeologists have documented the continued engagements of women as laborers outside this emerging domestic sphere in a wide range of historic settings, from plantations where enslaved African women reproduced social and cultural relations even under the most oppressive conditions, to the brothels of urban centers where sex trade was practiced, and the prisons, mining settlements, and camps of striking laborers typical of modern industrial societies. Two analytical approaches come closest to being core methods of gender archaeology, mortuary analysis and analysis of art. Burials have repeatedly figured as possible sites were the relations between biological sex and cultural statuses could potentially be clarified. Mortuary and bioarchaeological studies of human remains have documented telling distinctions in treatment of the dead along lines of sex or inferred social gender identities, including differences in nutrition, in burial orientation, and in materials buried with the dead (see Bioarchaeology; Individual, Archaeology of in Prehistory). Drawing on ethnographic documentation, Sandra Hollimon has pursued a particularly careful set of explorations of the possibility to identify third genders in Chumash cemeteries, given the known presence and frequency of such statuses in historic Chumash communities. Drawing on sophisticated biocultural understandings of sex itself as encompassing variations beyond normative male and female, Rebecca Storey has proposed that an individual burial at Classic Maya Copan may have been intersexed, and recognized socially as a different gender.

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Scholars have examined how men, women, and additional genders were represented in ancient societies using approaches common to study of symbolism and ideology in visual media (see Interpretive Art and Archaeology). Some of the most abundant, and earliest, work of this kind was accomplished in Classical, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian archaeology by art historians. Typically, studies began by identifying signifiers of male and female genders, sometimes explicitly considering the possible existence of alternative genders. Bodily features, such as breasts, genitalia, facial hair, waist-to-hip ratios, and musculature are often used to identify males and females. Depictions of anthropomorphic forms in rock art, in areas as distant as Norway and South Africa, have been the focus of such studies, identifying different forms of bodily masculinity as well as differences between males and females (see Rock Art). Ann Cyphers proposed that figurines from Chalcatzingo, Mexico, recorded different stages in the female life course, including specific developments related to stages of pregnancy, providing a parallel expansion of feminities. Costume and modifications of the body, including sex-specific hair treatments and body ornaments, are common secondary attributes identified in such studies of gender in visual imagery. In some studies, the distributions in burials of ornaments of the kinds depicted in sex-specific imagery are considered as a second line of evidence to assess the inferred gender differences. Among the most explicitly theoretical discussions of gendered visual representations are the many contributions to debates concerning the meanings of Paleolithic and Neolithic figurines of Europe and the Near East (see Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Europe, Northern and Western: Early Neolithic Cultures; Europe: Neolithic). Exaggerated physical features on some of these figurines have been identified as evidence of fertility cults in which women’s bodies were valued as symbols of broader fecundity, as sexualized toys intended for men, as self-portraiture of pregnant women, and as ambiguous images that sometimes clearly conflate suggestions of male genitalia with apparent female bodies. A broadly debated question in figurine studies worldwide is whether the apparent predominance of female representations indicates that the makers of these small-scale human images were normally women. Joyce Marcus has developed a particularly strong argument in which she links the dominance of female images in early figurines in Oaxaca, and their distribution in household contexts, to female veneration of female ancestors. None of these innovative studies employed methods uniquely developed for finding gender in the past. Together, they demonstrate that no method available

to archaeologists cannot be pressed into service in an archaeology of gender. As with other archaeological topics, a common strategy is to draw on multiple lines of evidence to strengthen arguments. The fact that gender archaeology has no specific unique methods does not imply that archaeologies of gender have not been sources of archaeological innovation. The archaeology of gender has involved critical reassessment of a core archaeological methodology, ethnographic analogy. As the social anthropologist Henrietta Moore has noted, most of the studies produced by early ethnographers assumed a correspondence between sex and gender, a universal dominance of males in the public, political sphere, and a more limited and passive position of women. Reliance on informants who were usually male means that most ethnographies do not represent any contestation of gender ideologies. Specialists in gender have addressed this weakness in the main source of interpretive models for all archaeology, including conducting new ethnographic research attentive to the complexity of gender among hunter-gatherers and small-scale societies where economic, political, and social relations could be reexamined with gender and archaeology in mind. Archaeological reevaluations of ethnographic sources have resulted in analyses of the exercise of authority and control by women obscured by androcentric analyses of state-level societies, like those of the Classic Maya or Aztecs. Ethnographically informed studies of native North American hunter-gatherers, like those of Hetty Brumbach and Robert Jarvenpa, show how parties that ranged out from home bases to pursue, process, and bring back game were constituted of men and women recruited along lines of age rather than by parties segregated by sex. Margaret Conkey, writing about the hunter-gatherers of the European Paleolithic, suggested that when separate bands came together at seasonal gathering places, multiple dimensions of identity including but not limited to sex would have been brought to the foreground as band members navigated complex social relationships. These studies suggest strongly that other dimensions of difference within society, such as age or skill, may often have been more significant bases for distinctions within society than sex/gender. These studies have shifted focus from gender identity (assumed to be congruent with sexual identity) to sex/gender difference, which can be much more fluid and multidimensional. Archaeologists working on questions of gender have also developed broader critiques of androcentric assumptions taken for granted by archaeologists. The fact that archaeologies of gender assumed prominence at a time when women were moving into the field in unprecedented numbers is undoubtedly significant. Androcentrism may have been more obvious

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to women archaeologists because it did not ring true with their own experiences. For example, male viewing perspective and modern sexual orientations projected into the past led generations of archaeologists to interpret female figures as sexual imagery. Women, also among those who viewed and possibly used such objects in the past, would not necessarily have shared the same sexualization of the female body. Arguments like those of Ann Cyphers that figurines showing women in different stages of pregnancy were made and used in rites of passage during a female life course are based on a notably different experiential perspective from the one that saw these same objects as intended for male viewing. A second example of the critical interrogation of androcentric assumptions are innovative discussions of the possible roles of women in early plant cultivation and pottery production. Both arguments propose that women would have been agents of change due to their detailed and intimate knowledge of the materials being manipulated, as the assumed principal participants in food preparation. In both cases, archaeologists propose that human beings in general, and women in particular, may have been more active in fostering change than in traditional models. This shift to a more active view of human intervention, based on critically examining the assumed passivity of women that was an accepted part of earlier archaeological models, has broader significance. The methodological innovations of archaeologies of gender are not limited to critiques of previous approaches. While there is no specific method for detecting women (or men) in the past, participants in archaeology of gender have pursued the core question of when and how one can talk about gender difference in sophisticated ways. An increasing number of archaeologists have asked specifically how we might study gender in the past if we did not begin by projecting a modern two-sex/two-gender model that encourages the interpretation of dichotomous distributions as evidence of gender segregation. Bioarchaeologists have been particularly important participants in this process. Early on, archaeologies of gender often began with sexed burials to try to arrive at diagnostic patterns associated with male or female identity. The assumed simple correspondence model, though, ignores both the actual continuity of distribution of biological characteristics such as body size, and the presence in biological populations, even if at a low frequency, of persons whose chromosomal sexual identity is neither normative male nor normative female. Bioarchaeologists, with their greater understanding of both the procedures of sex assignment in analysis and of real biological variation, have been

open to identifying possible intersexed individuals. Working with ethnographic models, bioarchaeologists have been the first to ask how people whose gender identity was neither normative male nor normative female, so-called third or fourth genders, would appear in mortuary populations where they were known to have existed, such as in native North American societies. Other archaeologists inspired by contemporary studies of gender as a product of specific social practices have turned to the archaeological record to examine how different societies in the past went about producing the experiences of embodied personhood that are gender. If gender is not simply a cultural recognition of innate dichotomous sexual differences, then sex/gender systems were outcomes of experiences beginning in childhood and continuing throughout life, reinforced by everyday habits of work, by rituals of the life cycle, and by the representation of normative sex/gender in discourses, some of them recorded in permanent visual and textual forms. These analyses have led far beyond questions of sex/gender alone, to explicit consideration of sexuality and the nature of personal experience of embodiment in the past. These archaeological discussions lead far from the initial roots of archaeologies of gender in a quest to find the women missing from most accounts of the past.

Future Directions Archaeology is immeasurably enriched by work that replaces unexamined generalized people with populations of diverse, changing persons. It is thus important that research on gender does not become a form of separate analysis that is seen as easy to ignore because it is assumed to have no consequences for broader analyses. The solution does not lie in banishing explicit critical theoretical perspectives from archaeology of gender. Gender needs to be mainstream, but not at the cost of abandoning critical lessons that archaeologies of gender have shown about archaeological naı¨vete´ about models that presume all people are interchangeable, or that genetically female persons in the past ‘naturally’ did housework and were tethered to homesites by childbirth and childrearing. We need to follow the examples of pioneers who use their analyses of gender to critique commonly accepted models. For example, Elizabeth Brumfiel insists on the consequences of taking gender into account for the study of the Aztec state. The consequences are not solely the recognition of political status of some women, the identification of the

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exceptional queens of antiquity, now amply documented for a wide range of societies. They go to the heart of the way domestic economies and political economies are interconnected. They should transform our notions of what counts as socially significant craftwork. The broader scope of sex/gender positions archaeologists of gender have examined, including celibate men and women, third sexes, hypermasculine men and their less aggressive counterparts, and males and females pursuing same-sex desire must become part of mainstream models of ancient societies or we risk perpetuating unreal, unidimensional views of other times and places. Archaeologists studying gender also need to bring their work to the attention of specialists in other fields, historians, ethnographers, and researchers on cultural studies, who still rarely use the more sophisticated work of contemporary archaeologists in their studies, referring instead to the speculative history of an earlier generation. The human past is a source of far more varied examples of ways people lived their lives as differently sexed persons than any society recorded in ethnography or documentary history. Some of the past human experiences did not survive into the historical period, notably the ways of life of hunter-gatherers of the deep past. Other human experiences may be more evident in the material traces of everyday life than in the selective record of politically motivated textual records. For all periods, even the well-documented recent past of the capitalist world, archaeology provides alternative lines of evidence that often demonstrate practices at odds with ideologies, whether those of populations underrepresented in texts or those of people whose actions departed from the expressed norms. It is incumbent on archaeologists to make our understandings of the complex ways that spatial features and portable objects helped shape human sex/gender systems more accessible to other scholars, and to the wider public. To accomplish all of these goals, archaeologists interested in gender can no longer assume a simple dichotomous model of sex, nor a correspondence of sex with gender. In each individual social setting, we need to consider how physical variability, including sex, was subject to shaping, evaluation, and representation. We need to consider the political dimensions of differential experiences of people in the past grounded in sex and simultaneously in other aspects of personhood. We need to take seriously the idea that sexual being was always related to experiences of desire and pleasure that were not inconsequential parts of human experience. At the same time, we

need to treat the multiple actors in our past settings as agents of economic and social action that might have shaped the understandings of sex and gender as much as they were shaped by them. We need to do all this in the clear realization that archaeologies of personhood are always politically charged in the present, in the expectation of conservative backlash and resistance, and with the clear understanding that what we say will matter in the lives of people in the present, if only because the past is so often used to justify contemporary social relations. This may seem daunting, but it should seem exciting: asking questions that matter with data that no other field can provide is what will continue to infuse archaeologies of gender with energy. See also: Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Bioarchaeology; Craft Specialization; Enslavement, Archaeology of; Ethnicity; Europe: Neolithic; Europe, Northern and Western: Early Neolithic Cultures; Evolutionary Archaeology; Food and Feasting, Social and Political Aspects; Household Archaeology; Identity and Power; Individual, Archaeology of in Prehistory; Interpretive Art and Archaeology; Philosophy of Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Politics of Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Rock Art.

Further Reading Balme J and Beck W (eds.) (1995) Research Papers in Archaeology and Natural History, No. 26: Gendered Archaeology: The Second Australian Women in Archaeology Conference. Canberra: ANH Publications. Claassen C (ed.) (1992) Monographs in World Archaeology, No. 11: Exploring Gender through Archaeology: Selected Papers from the 1991 Boone Conference. Madison, WI: Prehistory Press. Conkey MW and Gero J (eds.) (1991) Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. Donald M and Hurcombe L (eds.) (2000) Gender and Material Culture in Archaeological Perspective. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Gilchrist R (1994) Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women. London: Routledge. Nelson S (1997) Gender in Archaeology: Analyzing Power and Prestige. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Nelson S (ed.) (2006) Handbook of Gender in Archaeology. Lanham, MD: AltaMira. Pyburn KA (ed.) (2004) Ungendering Civilization. New York: Routledge. Schmidt RA and Barbara LV (2000) Archaeologies of Sexuality. New York: Routledge. Walde D and Willows ND (1991) The Archaeology of Gender: Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Conference of the Archaeological Association of the University of Calgary. Calgary: University of Calgary Archaeological Association.

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ENSLAVEMENT, ARCHAEOLOGY OF Kofi Agorsah, Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary African Diaspora African people and culture away from the continent of Africa, for example, African Diaspora in the Caribbean. Kormantse The name of a fishing village on the coast of Ghana from which the first consignment of slaves was shipped by the British; a term for describing slaves imported from the Gold Coast (Ghana) who either passed through that port or from the West African region, usually identifying Akan (Asante) cultural practices. Maroons The enslaved, who escaped from bondage, freed themselves and founded their own communities in inaccessible parts of their respective territories; runaway slaves. Maroon society Group(s) of runaway communities that grew out of runaways in colonial times. marronage The act of running away and harassment of the plantation. plantocracy Plantation class or proprietors.

In many parts of Africa, use of the terms ‘slave’, ‘slavery’, ‘slave trade’, and ‘enslavement’ could lead to complete distortion of history, culture, and varied perceptions unless the specific term is qualified and explained in relation to the specific circumstance, time, and place. While in the African sense, being a ‘slave’ merely connotes a person of low social status among ‘‘communalistic and even feudalistic systems with tendencies toward patronage’’ and a source of prestige, sexual gratification, and rewarded domestic labor, the western paradigm has been purely capitalistic, depicting downright human degradation and ‘racism’ with financial gain as the main objective. This non-African connotation is crystallized in what could be described as ‘powerless animal-status unpaid jobbing gang’ and facilitated by the ‘trans-Atlantic slave trade’. Fuller discussions of the differences in these terms and the conditions in Africa by many writers reveal their implications for our approaches in archaeological interpretations of the evidence of the cultural formation and transformations created by the encounter of African and other cultures in the Americas. Edward Long, an eighteenth-century planter and lawyer, clearly described enslaved Africans as ‘‘commodity. . .Negroes . . . fit objects of purchase and sale, transferable like any other goods or chattels’’. The temple and domestic serfs of Ancient Egypt and the ancient world, including the Near East, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome, particularly

during the Egyptian Middle Kingdom until about 500 BC were considered the semifree labor forces, suggesting the African concept of ‘slavery system’, of course, with certain minor differences. In those areas, as in Africa, the enslaved were not stripped of their social identity, nor denied opportunity to forge new bonds of kinship through marriage and alliance, or considered as mere property. Understanding of the role and place of the slavery system depended on the cultural attitude toward it and each attitude impacts approaches used in explaining cultural values in history. However, the historical interpretation and cultural attitude of the transAtlantic slave trade that led to the creation of the concept of the African Diaspora appears to have overwhelmed consideration of slavery systems in times, places, and periods preceding it. In fact, the earliest formation of the African Diaspora could date back to the first time when our human ancestors left Africa about a million years ago although one cannot make any connection with the Atlantic slavery system. This adds a major challenge to archaeological reconstruction and interpretation of the history of enslavement as it relates to Africa and African culture abroad. Much of the lack of consensus and diversity of approaches in archaeological analysis and interpretations that crystallized in the 1970s in the Americas can also be identified in uncertainties and Eurocentrism in archaeological inquiry and interpretations of the African past. Additionally, longstanding issues regarding chronology, methodology, African identity, and cultural continuities remain unresolved. These problems are duplicated in the African continent itself, where archaeological research has failed to address the ancient and traditional slavery system on which the Atlantic slave trade capitalized. Directed mainly toward reconstructing the lifestyles of the ‘plantocracy’, archaeology of slavery has often been limited to identification of architectural and plantation layout, associated export/import items such as arms and ammunition, pharmaceutical, and other cash commodities, seriously ignoring the lifestyle and conditions of enslaved groups. In 1985, Theresa Singleton of Syracuse University, writing on Archaeology of the African Diaspora, made a statement which confirms that archaeological endeavors were biased toward the interpretation of planter lifestyles. Evidence is geographically, thematically, and unevenly distributed, leaving gaps, lacking objectivity in interpretation, and seriously plagued by loose patterns in the use of cryptic, vague, or unclear archaeological jargon.

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Toward the end of the last century, many archaeological endeavors directed toward life of the enslaved in Jamaica began to change the situation. The Maroon site of Nanny Town and Port Royal referred to as the ‘wickedest colonial city’ in the Caribbean and many more sites in Antigua, Barbados, Curacao, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, and the Bahamas were explored. Bio-anthropological analysis of skeletal remains of enslaved African in colonial Suriname by a Mohammed Khudabux broke new grounds in the study of colonial slavery systems. The Suriname data addresses, ethnic identity, patterns of physical changes, diet, health, and other conditions of forced slave adaptation on plantations. The African Burial Ground project of New York directed by Michael Blakey, a bio-anthropologist of College of William and Mary, though more recent, continues to be a major impact on the archaeology of slavery in the Americas. In a comprehensive review, William Keegan of University of Florida clearly and rightly confirmed that archaeology of the African Diaspora, including archeology of slavery, was ‘‘riding the wave of exponential curve’’; this was illustrated by a two-volume Bibliography of Caribbean Archaeology he and others edited and also demonstrated by the Society for Historical Archaeology in one of its Columbian Quincentenary series edited by Theresa Singleton and Mark Bograd. However, research efforts concerning slavery in the African Diaspora continued to be restricted to plantation studies and dealing with the planter class activities referring only generally to the enslaved. Many more scholars, including archaeologists and historians were increasingly engaged with issues of material culture of the enslaved, building upon and correcting, where necessary, biased studies and interpretations. The establishment of a teaching and research archaeology program at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica in 1987 increased hope and enthusiasm for joint collaborative field schools, which generated greater awareness. For the first time, a major archaeological project on the heritage of Maroon societies was initiated. The resulting discoveries of Amerindian figurines (Figure 1) and Spanish coins (Figure 2) at the site of Nanny Town in Jamaica, for example, suggested that the natives, who ran away into the hills of Jamaica, may have been the first Maroons to be later followed by the African runaways. The evidence further suggests early coexistence of both groups and formation of defense alliances against the colonial power. These early finds overturned the claim by many historians that the natives on the island had all been exterminated prior to the arrival of the English. Developments of the last decade may be attributed to the cultural awareness that followed far-reaching constitutional

Figure 1 Terracotta figurines, Nanny Town, Jamaica.

Figure 2 Spanish coin (pieces-of-eight), Nanny Town, Jamaica.

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Govinden, and Chowdhury began to receive much attention, following the pattern developed in the Caribbean and South America. Merrick Posnansky, professor emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles, provides summary discussions of the implications of these endeavors in both Africa and the African Diaspora, emphasizing the need for more attention to the multidisciplinary approaches and closer examination of transformations created by the encounter of cultures in the African Diaspora. But the question remains about how much more we now know than before, how much more we need to know about the African experience in the Diaspora, and which direction should archaeology go in the coming millennium?

and educational changes, emergence and successes of resistance movements, and transformations of the previous decades, compounded by associated nationalistic activities and the achievement of independence by many nations in Africa and the African Diaspora. Archaeology of resistance culture became recognized as a central factor in understanding slavery in the New World. The awareness propelled many countries in the Caribbean and the Americas into accepting the historical links more seriously than before. However, lack of qualified archaeologists, restrictive funding sources, and the dearth of Africanist and local scholars with archaeological interest posed serious challenges (see Africa, Historical Archaeology). In Africa itself, the main archaeological studies linking the African Diaspora related to the colonial trade forts and castles built along the West and East African coasts and the wealthy coastal gold-rich kingdoms such as Efutu in the Gold Coast (Ghana). Archaeological research spread into the general West African region, including the colonial Senegambian area, the Bassar area of Togo and the coastal Benin, Cameroon and adjoining areas, the East African coast, including what has been referred to as the Swahili coast, and the Indian Ocean and Polynesian region. Studies of Maroons and resistance culture in Mauritius and South Africa by Peerthum, Carter,

Slavery Factor in Africa West and Central Africa contributed large numbers of enslaved Africans to the trans-Atlantic trade. Even before Columbus’ visit to the New World and European migrations that followed in search of greener pastures, African slaves had been taken to Spain and Portugal from northern Africa, consequently becoming a major factor in the trade that drove Europe and the Americas to prosperity. The development of plantations in the mid-fifteenth century on the West African coast was

AKANNY States (or ethnic groups) known to Dutch GHANA

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ENSLAVEMENT, ARCHAEOLOGY OF 1139

eventually switched to the Caribbean and the Americas in a confusing trade that makes tracing of the origin of the enslaved Africans increasingly difficult and elusive. Identifying cultural transfers, the nature of the pre-existing cultural traits among groups that served as the carriers of the original substantive aspects of the cultures, and the reconstruction of their formation and transformation processes became more difficult. Meanwhile, the early approaches designed to recover artifacts and architectural data only for the interpretation of planter lifestyles had also become obsolete. For example, the uncritical use of such terms as ‘Kormantse’, also written in various forms (Cormantyne, Kramanti, etc.) to describe groups of enslaved people passing through the then Gold Coast port of that name in West Africa (Figure 3) continued to plague the archeological literature and discourse. But other gains have been made. Explaining burial and mortuary practices among different African societies as a means of deriving models that would help reconstruct life experiences of the enslaved in the African Diaspora was beginning to be appreciated. The bio-anthropology laboratory at Howard University embarked on an ambitious examination of skeletal remains of the African Burial Ground in Manhattan, New York bringing hope of reconstruction of the identities and past experiences of the enslaved. Similarly, studies relating to settlements of Maroons and free slaves, houses, yards or compounds, diet, diseases, physical effects of slave labor in Jamaica, Bahamas, and other Caribbean areas as targets of archaeological research which followed the 1990s, continued to yield lots of good results. Regardless of all these developments and advances in approaches toward explaining slavery in Africa and its relations to the Atlantic slave trade, much remains to be done. Kwaku Senah, an African historian in Trinidad and Tobago, who has researched ‘Slavery’ from the African perspective, in a 2005 article notes that the main problem might be that the term ‘slavery’ has acquired an expanded meaning to serve a vast number of purposes and blames it partly on the languages in which the term is discussed. Or is it to be concluded that ‘‘slavery cannot be identified through archaeological efforts alone’’?

See also: Africa, Historical Archaeology; Africa, West:

Villages, Cities, and States; Americas, Central: Historical Archaeology in Mexico; Americas, North: Historical Archaeology in the United States; Americas, South: Historical Archaeology.

Further Reading Agorsah EK (1994) Maroon Heritage: Archaeological, Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives. Kingston, Jamaica: Canoe Press. Agorsah EK and Child GT (2005) Africa and the African Diaspora: Cultural Adaptation and Resistance. New York: Authorhouse. Armstrong DG (1990) The Old Village and the Great House: An Archaeological and Historical Examination of Drax Hall Plantation. St. Ann’s Bay Jamaica, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Blakey ML (1989) American nationality and ethnicity in the depicted politics of the Past. In: Gathercole P and Lowenthal D (eds.) One World Archaeology, 12, pp. 46–50. London: Routledge. Farnsworth P and Wilkie L (1996) The influence of trade on Bahamian slave culture. Historical Archaeology 30(4): 1–23. Goucher CL (1993) African metallurgy the Atlantic world. African Archaeology Review 11: 197–215. Higman BW (1988) The archaeology of slavery. Slavery and abolition. Journal of Comparative Studies 9(1): 85–92. Horton J and Horton EL (2005) Slavery and the Making of America. New York: Oxford University Press. Keegan WF (1994) West Indian archaeology. 1. Overview and foragers. Journal of Archaeological Research 2(3): 255–284. Keegan W, Stokes AV, and Newson LA (1990) Bibliography of Caribbean Archaeology, 2 Vols. Bullen Research Library. Gainesville: University of Florida. Long E (1772) Candid Reflections upon the Judgment lately Awarded by the Court of the King’s Bench in Westminster-Hall on What is Commonly Called The Negroe-Cause . . . By a Planter. London: T. Lowndes. Mintz S (1974) Caribbean Transformations. Chicago: Aldine Publications. Patterson HO (1969) The Sociology of Slavery: An Analysis of the Origins, Development and Structure of Negro Slave in Jamaica. New Jersey, Rutherford: Africa World Press. Posnansky M (1982) African archaeology comes of age. World Archaeology 13: 345–358. Posnansky M (1984) Towards an archaeology of Black Diaspora. Journal Black Studies 15(2): 195–205. Senah EK (2005) Explicating the primary nexus: Slavery in Africa and the African Diaspora. In: Agorsah EK and Childs T (eds.) Africa and the African Diaspora, pp. 204–222. New York: Authorhouse. Singleton T (1985) The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.

1140 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND THE LAW

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND THE LAW Thomas F King, SWCA Environmental Consultants Silver Spring, MD, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary agency A unit of government, whether local, provincial/state/ regional, national, or international – for example, the Agency for International Development; the Environmental Protection Agency. Synonyms include bureau, ministry, department, division, office. data recovery Archaeological excavations or other research performed to recover or rescue information from destruction. Often performed as a form of impact mitigation. environment Variously defined, but generally refers to everything around us, notably the natural environment (trees, rocks, streams, animals, plants, mountains, landscapes) and the built environment (houses, cities, neighborhoods, villages, parks), including the social, cultural, and esthetic values attached to them by human society. Also include less tangible surroundings such as social institutions, beliefs, and expressive arts, at least to the extent these are somehow related to the tangible environment. environmental impact analysis Study of a project’s or program’s potential impacts on the environment. mitigation Eliminating, reducing, ameliorating, or compensating for damage to or destruction of something – for example, redesigning a project to avoid destroying an archaeological site, or to destroy less of it than might otherwise be the case; excavating a site in advance of its destruction; funding the preservation of one site to mitigate the effect of destroying another. program (programme) A complex of activities and/or planned actions designed to accomplish some purpose – for example, a city’s housing program, or a regional irrigation program. Sometimes referred to as a scheme. project A specific action someone proposes to undertake – for example, a motorway, a reservoir, a military exercise, an agricultural scheme, a housing development, a sewerage system.

What is Environmental Impact Assessment and What Does It Have to Do with Archaeology? Most archaeological research in the early twenty-first century is not done in the interests of learning about the past for its own sake. Nor is it done in order to obtain information and materials for public interpretation in museums, parks, and educational institutions. Most archaeological research today is done, and most archaeologists are employed, in connection with some kind of environmental impact assessment. As the words suggest, environmental impact assessment (EIA) is done to assess what impacts some

action, activity, or program will have on the environment. It is done as a result of laws enacted in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s by virtually all developed nations and many developing ones, and because of policies adopted by international funding bodies like the World Bank and the US Agency for International Development (see Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation). The basic idea behind EIA is ‘look before you leap’ – determine what damage a project or program will do to the environment before deciding whether and how to carry it forward. National EIA laws and international instruments cause studies to be done of a proposed project’s environmental impacts, so that these impacts can be weighed and balanced together with the project’s perceived benefits in reaching a decision about funding or permitting it. Words like ‘environment’ and ‘impact’ can have different meanings for different people, and the ways such terms are expressed and understood can vary between cultures. Generally, however, the ‘environment’ is understood by EIA practitioners to include both the natural world and the built environment of cities and towns. Sometimes the word is used rather exclusively to embrace only the tangible aspects of the environment – plants, animals, soil, water, buildings, sites. In other cases things that are not so tangible are also recognized as parts of the environment – such as the social and cultural institutions involved in human use of plants, animals, or water, and the feelings that people have for places – of awe, of reverence, of revulsion, and so on. ‘Impacts’, in most EIA systems, include both direct and indirect impacts: impacts that result immediately from an action at or near the place the action happens, and impacts that occur at a distance in space or time. Archaeological sites are usually understood to be parts of the environment, and their disturbance is taken to be an environmental impact. It should be noted that environmental engineers – that is, engineers who work on control and correction of environmental pollution – tend to think of the environment as limited that which can be polluted – basically air, water, and soil, and regard impacts as primarily involving the pollution of such media. A well-done EIA examines all aspects of the environment that may be altered by a project, be it a highway, a railroad or pipeline, a dam and reservoir, a new urban development, an agricultural scheme, or a port facility. The analysis is performed by an interdisciplinary team of scientists, social scientists, and other specialists, often organized by a consulting

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firm engaged either by a project proponent or by a government agency or ministry responsible for funding, permitting, or overseeing the proposed project. Among the aspects of the environment that are often examined are the affected area’s archaeological sites, along with its historic buildings, cultural landscapes and urban areas, the traditional lifeways of its people, and other cultural characteristics. In the United States, where the practice of EIA is well developed although not always very well done, it has been reliably estimated by a major US firm, SWCA Environmental Consultants, that about US$300–400 million is spent every year on EIA-based archaeology. This is an enormous amount of money relative to what comes from traditional research funding sources like foundations and academic institutions. A similar level of EIA-based archaeology is carried on in the European Union, Japan, and other nations, although in some countries most of the work is conducted by cultural ministries and other governmental organizations rather than by the private consulting firms that dominate the field in the US. Most archaeologists completing graduate degrees today can expect to spend at least part of their careers in EIA-related work. The industry has also generated many jobs for people without advanced degrees. Many archaeologists support themselves in graduate school in such jobs, and some make their careers in EIA-related work without having to complete a graduate education.

In many countries, and in the implementation of some international standards and agreements, EIA archaeology is regarded as part of an interdisciplinary professional practice called ‘cultural heritage’, ‘heritage resource management’, ‘historic preservation’, or ‘cultural resource management’ (Figure 1; see Goals of Archaeology, Overview). This field of practice brings together specialists in such fields as archaeology, cultural and social anthropology, history, and architectural history to work toward ensuring the preservation and wise use of the cultural environment, as variously defined. Precisely which aspects of that environment are emphasized varies from nation to nation; some national traditions give priority to protection of the built environment of architecture and landscape architecture; others give more stress to traditional ways of life, uses of the natural environment, or intellectual property. Archaeology plays a large role in some such interdisciplinary management programs, a minor role in others, but to the extent a cultural heritage program emphasizes EIA work, archaeologists are deeply involved in the assessment process.

Conducting EIA Archaeology Ideally, EIA is initiated very early in the process of planning a project, when it is possible to explore multiple alternative ways of fulfilling a given need (e.g., the need for safe transportation between city A

Figure 1 EIA archaeology assesses and deals with the impacts of modern developments like railroads, highways, reservoirs and housing on archaeological sites. Photo by the author.

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and city B, or the need for irrigation water in Agricultural Zone X). Unfortunately, EIA is sometimes delayed until later in planning – sometimes so late that it becomes effectively meaningless, because key decisions have been made and alternatives have been foreclosed. When the system is working properly, however, the EIA begins when the project and its alternatives have been only roughly sketched out. At this early stage, the government agencies or other parties responsible for the EIA undertake scoping to determine what types of analysis to perform. Scoping involves establishing the geographic areas within which studies of the environment will be undertaken – the lands through which a highway or railroad is planned, for example, or the valley that may be flooded by a reservoir or turned over by mining. It also includes doing background research to determine what is already known about such areas and about the impacts of the kind of project under study, and consultation with government agencies, experts, and stakeholders. The result is a plan and schedule for the EIA research, and the selection of study team members. Often scoping reveals that archaeological sites may be affected by the proposed action – perhaps flooded, bulldozed, blown up, or more subtly damaged through changes in land use, increased public access to sensitive areas, and similar factors. Sometimes background research indicates that important archaeological sites are known or suspected in the

area; in other cases there may be no data on archaeology at all, or such data as do exist may be unreliable, making further study necessary. There may also be the potential for impacts on places and other resources that are not strictly archaeological but are culturally or historically important – perhaps living communities, important subsistence resources, or areas regarded by local people as having spiritual significance. Determining how these places may be affected often requires research by historians, architects, landscape specialists, or anthropologists, as well as careful discussions with local people. Other research commonly done as part of EIA includes studies of the area’s geography, ecology, water and air quality, water resources, sociology, and economy. Where the possibility exists that archaeological resources will be damaged or destroyed, archaeological surveys are typically conducted in coordination with the other environmental studies, although the coordination, unfortunately, is not always perfect. Such a survey is similar to what an archaeologist might do for pure research purposes (Figure 2), but its location is dictated by where project effects may occur, and the archaeologist in charge of the work is not free to focus only on the kinds of sites and data in which he or she is interested. Instead, an effort must be made to understand the full nature of the archaeological record that may be destroyed or altered by the project. This requirement to address areas and sites that archaeologists might not choose to examine if

Figure 2 EIA archaeology involves a great deal of field survey and documentation Photo by the author.

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left to their own devices has resulted in some interesting expansions of archaeology’s scope. We have found ourselves examining the archaeological leavings of World War II, for example, the fields and farmsteads of the early twentieth century, and many a nineteenthor early twentieth-century urban neighborhood. We have also paid more attention to small, relatively unimpressive sites than we might have otherwise, since they may be all we find and they are subject to destruction (Figure 3). Survey is typically supervised by professional archaeologists, but may be carried out by students, local people, or itinerant archaeological survey specialists. It usually includes further background research, consultation with local residents, and controlled fieldwork – walking, driving, or otherwise going over the land surface looking at it carefully, and sometimes conducting test excavations. It may also require aerial or satellite imaging, underwater remote sensing using side-scan sonar and other exploratory techniques, and studies of the area’s geomorphology – how the landscape has developed and been transformed through time. In urban areas it may require deep excavations in and around standing or recently demolished buildings. The fieldwork is followed by analysis of results, leading to the preparation of descriptive and analytical reports (Figure 4). The archaeological reports are summarized as part of the EIA’s overall description of the potentially affected environment, along with information on the area’s biology, hydrology, air quality, wetlands, floodplains, sociopolitical systems, and economic

structure. The analysts conducting the EIA – sometimes archaeologists, sometimes other specialists, most often groups representing multiple disciplines – then examine how the proposed project is likely to affect whatever has been found. Depending on the requirements of the laws under which the assessment is done, they may examine multiple options for achieving the project’s purposes, seeking an alternative that will achieve those purposes with minimum damage to the environment. They may consult with local residents, specialists, and government bodies that have special expertise or legal jurisdiction, such as cultural ministries or historic preservation agencies. They may commission additional studies to fill gaps in the assessment, or to address topics that come up as the analysis goes forward. Special attention often is given to impacts on the environments of indigenous groups, and of low-income and minority populations. In most cases the money to support EIA work comes from the project proponent, based on the premise that he who wants to build something, and who presumably will benefit from it, should be responsible for assessing and revealing its impacts. EIA-related work is typically done by nonprofit- or profit-making corporations – sometimes corporations that specialize in the study of particular resources such as archaeological sites, sometimes corporations that conduct a range of planning, environmental study, and even architectural and engineering work. In some countries EIA studies, or their archaeological elements, are carried out by academic institutions or

Figure 3 Nineteenth-century copper processing site in New Mexico, USA. Photo by the author.

1144 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND THE LAW

Figure 4 EIA archaeologists must also consider buildings and structures associated with relatively recent history, such as this World War II Japanese building, blasted by American bombs and strafing, on Jaluit Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Photo by the author and The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery.

government agencies, such as cultural ministries in the case of archaeology. Sometimes such agencies are expected to conduct their EIA work using their own budgets, rather than deriving support from project proponents. This arguably increases the independence of their judgments, reducing the influence of the project proponent on the study results, but it can also cause stress on an agency’s budget, and distort its priorities.

the projected level of impacts on archaeological sites alone to convince decision makers to abandon a project, but sometimes such impacts in combination with others – for instance, impacts on threatened and endangered animal and plant species, on water quality, on health and safety, on human communities or on places of contemporary religious or cultural importance – result in a decision that a project cannot go forward.

The Results of Environmental Impact Assessment

Archaeology as Impact Mitigation

Generally, the EIA results in a document or documents that accompany the project plans through whatever review and approval process is required by the responsible government or funding body. The people and groups responsible for deciding whether and how to proceed with the project consider its projected environmental impacts along with its costs, its benefits, and its technical and economic specifications. They eventually make a decision as to whether the project or some alternative to the project will be implemented, and if so, under what conditions. If the EIA reveals that the project will cause disastrous effects on the environment, the project may be abandoned, but this is rare. In most cases the result of EIA is some modification in the project design to control impacts on the environment. It is rare for

In most cases, the decision is to go ahead with the project in some form. Typically, then, measures are adopted to mitigate (i.e., reduce or compensate for) the project’s environmental impacts, including its impacts on archaeological sites. Sometimes archaeological sites can be buried and left for future study, or incorporated into planned parks or other kinds of open space. However, excavations or other studies to rescue archaeological data that would otherwise be lost are commonly included among impact mitigation measures. Sometimes these studies are hurried affairs that produce rather marginal data, but in countries with strong EIA systems that create orderly planning processes, there is usually enough time and money to conduct good archaeological research, carried through to include analysis and publication of results and the permanent care of recovered materials. As in

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the case of the studies done during EIA preparation, the funding for mitigation usually comes from the project proponent or the project’s financial backers, based on the principle that those who benefit from a project should pay to mitigate its impacts. In some countries, however, cultural ministries and other archaeological bodies are themselves expected to fund the work, which can create serious disconnects between the magnitude of a project’s impacts and the level of effort devoted to their mitigation. Excavations conducted to recover archaeological data as impact mitigation are similar to excavations done for research purposes, with some important exceptions. In most cases the sites one is excavating will be destroyed when one is finished with them (or sometimes earlier), so there is pressure to be as complete as possible in the recovery of important information. Information may not be the only important thing to recover; it may be, for instance, that the site contains graves, and it is important to recover and relocate the bodies regardless of their archaeological research significance. Time may be of the essence, so expedited means of excavation may be employed – very large excavation teams, bulldozers and backhoes, other heavy equipment. Sometimes, though it is not desirable, archaeologists find themselves literally working around the construction equipment as a site is destroyed. Although archaeologists usually formulate research designs to guide their data recovery excavations, the fact that the sites are going to be destroyed creates an obligation to be attentive to other research interests as well. The archaeologist in charge may be especially interested in, say, the archaeology of the period 3000–2000 BCE, but if the site to be destroyed contains deposits from 1000 to 0 BCE, these deposits cannot be ignored; they must be responsibly investigated. This argues for a team approach in which different specialists focus on different areas of interest, and some data recovery projects are organized in this manner. In other cases, the archaeologist in charge must try to do justice to whatever research interests are relevant to a site. Sometimes excavations must be carried out under hazardous circumstances that a wise archaeologist would otherwise avoid – in areas polluted by toxic wastes, amid unexploded ordnance, even in the path of lava flows from an erupting volcano. On the other hand, excavations are often carried out in very public settings – at construction sites in the middle of a city, or along a busy highway, so archaeologists have to learn to relate positively to the public. Many archaeological data recovery projects include public involvement elements, featuring site tours, publication of nontechnical reports of results, and programs for volunteers.

How EIA Archaeology Differs from Other Kinds of Archaeology In some countries the archaeological aspects of EIA are performed by governmental cultural ministries or by nongovernmental cultural heritage organizations. In others they are conducted by the same academic institutions and museums that may carry out other kinds of archaeological research. Very often, however, archaeologists are employed by private companies or governmental bodies that specialize in environmental impact work, either for profit or on a nonprofit basis. Archaeologists working in such an organization do little or no teaching or pure research, and they must learn to do things that they would not always need to do if employed in academia or a research institution. They must learn to work in teams with other scientists, and often must take on nonarchaeological responsibilities themselves. It is not uncommon for archaeologists to be involved in assessing not only impacts on archaeological sites, but also impacts on historic buildings, culturally valued landscapes, and places of traditional cultural importance to living indigenous and other communities. They may find themselves conducting ethnographic studies and consulting with such communities to learn their concerns about the project and to explore ways of addressing them. They may have to become expert in doing historical research, examinations of historic architecture, or studies of traditional ways of life. EIA archaeologists also need to become at least somewhat familiar with the laws, regulations, and government policies under which their work is funded and conducted, and to understand something of the political, economic, and business realities surrounding the projects whose impacts they study (Figure 5). They need to learn enough about relevant aspects of engineering and planning to be able to communicate with those designing the project and get their help in finding alternatives that lessen impacts. As an archaeologist assumes higher and higher levels of responsibility in an EIA organization, he or she needs to learn about how to prepare and manage budgets and payrolls, how to hire, dismiss, and supervise staff, how to write and review planning documents, and sometimes how to oversee quite large, diverse groups of people using expensive and sometimes dangerous equipment. Some archaeologists have come to specialize in work dealing with hazardous environments, wearing protective clothing and working with experts to minimize exposure to toxic wastes or injury from unexploded ordnance. Archaeologists doing EIA work must also learn to refrain from electing to excavate sites when there are viable and perhaps less costly alternative ways to

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Figure 5 EIA archaeologists must be sensitive to the cultural importance of natural places. Rivers like this one (the Klamath in Northern California, USA) are significant to indigenous groups not only because of the role their fish play in the economy, but because of their centrality in traditional culture. Photo by the author and Klamath River Intertribal Fish and Water Commission.

manage them – for example, through redesign of a project to protect a site in place, sometimes burying it so deeply that it is unlikely to be seen again for thousands of years. They need to learn to deal with real-world conflicts between archaeological and other interests – not only the interests of project proponents and governments, but such interests as those of local people in their own cultural heritage.

Problems in EIA Archaeology Of course, EIA work is not always as orderly and positive as described above. One common problem is insufficient money to do the job right. Sometimes fieldwork is rushed, or analysis and reporting are delayed or not carried out at all. In the context of surveys and other assessment studies, this can lead to faulty data upon which to make decisions about the significance of impacts or the appropriateness of mitigation measures. In the context of mitigation, it can defeat the whole purpose of archaeological data recovery, since the data are not made available for future research. Another common problem is that some project proponents, government agencies, and whole governments treat the EIA process as merely an administrative hurdle that must be surmounted on the way to getting a project funded, approved, or constructed. They may schedule the work too late to really influence decisionmaking about whether and how to proceed with a project; they may shortchange the research, and they

may ignore the results. Their minds may be made up before the analysis even begins. Some regulatory agencies, EIA companies, and even archaeologists themselves apply arbitrary and inflexible standards to EIA work – rigidly prescribing how surveys are to be done, for example, and how things are to be recorded. This can lead to significant inefficiencies, and to rote, pointless studies that merely masquerade as scholarly research. The ways in which EIA regulations interface with national and other archaeological and historic landmarks laws can also present problems. In some countries, ‘heritage’ laws protect only sites or buildings that have been recorded on some kind of schedule or register – which means, of course, that they have to have been found and studied to some extent before they are considered in planning. When a project is planned in an area that has never been fully surveyed for archaeological sites – or even one that has been surveyed, but where new discoveries are likely – there may be no sites that have been scheduled or registered, but sites may actually be there, and they may be very important. The logic of EIA demands that such sites be identified and considered, but the country’s heritage laws do not provide for it. The people organizing a piece of EIA research may know no better than to identify only those places already on the schedule. The result, of course, is that very significant sites can be destroyed without consideration for preservation or data recovery.

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Sometimes people working on an EIA are treated as nuisances by project planners and construction workers, finding themselves ignored, expelled from project sites, and castigated as obstructionists. This can be traumatic for the individuals involved, but more importantly it can impede their work and result in a failure to consider and address significant archaeological sites and other aspects of the environment. Regarding EIA as a mere nuisance is one reason assessments are sometimes done too late to have any influence on planning. Perhaps worst of all, some private companies and government ministries that do or contract for EIA work encourage those working for them to ignore or play down a project’s adverse effects, including effects on archaeological sites, even threatening noncompliant employees with loss of their jobs. It may be made very clear that if one wants to keep one’s position, or be part of the next contract, one had better not regard that newly discovered site as significant, request that obviously necessary bit of laboratory analysis, or pay attention to that group of descendants who want to save their ancestors’ bones. If one bends to these pressures, one not only damages one’s own reputation, but can be a party to unnecessary archaeological destruction and other environmental impacts. Archaeologists and others working on EIA also often find themselves caught between project proponents and opponents, each intent on having its way at the expense of the other and demanding that the EIA analysts take sides. This can bring about high levels of frustration, depression, and burnout. Working in EIA can also be depressing because one is constantly confronted with the destruction of archaeological sites, traditional communities, beautiful buildings, and pristine natural landscapes. However much one is able to arrange for these impacts to be mitigated, the experience of loss can take a toll on one’s mental health. Some academic and research archaeologists look down on EIA archaeology as intellectually undemanding second-class research. This, too, can be unpleasant for archaeologists specializing in EIA, but most take it philosophically, holding that their critics have little knowledge of the matter and are merely expressing elitist bias. In fact, there is EIA-related archaeology that is excellent and EIA-related archaeology that is very badly done, but the same can be said for any other kind of archaeological research. Most experienced EIA archaeologists also find that archaeological research is overrated as an end in itself. In EIA practice an archaeologist can contribute to making the world a better place, to preservation of the planet’s natural and cultural heritage, and to

the continued existence of indigenous and other cultures. One of the best parts of working in EIA is that an archaeologist can become more than just an archaeologist.

The Advantages of Being an EIA Archaeologist It is that sense of contribution that makes EIA work peculiarly worthwhile, whether one comes into the field as an archaeologist, a biologist, a sociologist, or a soil scientist. One’s research connects with the real world, with real people, and real needs. The EIA specialist is involved in solving practical problems, and engaging with communities in identifying and protecting the places they hold dear. Many archaeologists find this the most rewarding part of their work – that it involves them with communities trying to save things that they care about. EIA work also is – or should be – highly interdisciplinary, so an EIA archaeologist has the opportunity to enjoy the intellectual stimulation that comes from being part of a team with members of other disciplines. Unfortunately, much EIA work tends to be multidisciplinary rather than interdisciplinary – each discipline working by itself, with the results pulled together into an overall report by an editor. But when the work truly is an interdisciplinary team effort, it can be particularly rewarding. EIA work takes archaeologists to interesting places where they might not otherwise travel. Because human development takes place all over the world, there is a need for EIA work almost everywhere. EIA archaeology is done in great cities and remote deserts and jungles, even on the bottom of the sea. Parts of the world that had seen little or no archaeological research in the past have become part of the archaeological universe because scholars have gone there to prepare EIAs. There is even talk of the need for EIA archaeology on the moon.

The Future of EIA Archaeology One of the greatest dangers that EIA archaeology, and EIA in general, face is that they will become so standardized, so routine, that they neither attract talented people to their practice nor accomplish very much for the environment. This tendency is apparent in the United States, where EIA archaeologists in particular seem to be falling into rote ways of finding and describing sites, of describing and analyzing impacts, of reporting results, and even of conducting data recovery excavations. Standardization can be useful, but it can also stultify creativity. It also creates a process of impact analysis that is opaque to the

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Figure 6 Even animals can be important cultural heritage resources, requiring careful attention by EIA archaeologists. The Okinawa dugong is important in the traditional culture of Japan, and has been the subject of recent litigation over the effects proposed U.S. Department of Defense projects may have on it. Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, permission given.

public, laden with jargon and unexamined assumptions. We do things in particular ways because it is the way we always do them, and we describe what we do in terms that can be understood only by others who do the same things. This is not only a formula for bad research and useless results, for lost and destroyed archaeological sites; it is also something that will in the end erode public support for the whole EIA enterprise. To conclude on a personal note, the author’s belief is that in order to survive and thrive, EIA archaeology must become truly more than archaeology; archaeologists must not only work with members of other disciplines in an interdisciplinary manner, we must become interdisciplinary ourselves. We need to go beyond archaeology to address the impacts of change and development on the whole cultural environment – the ways people relate to natural resources, their belief systems, the spiritual values they attach to places, plants, animals, vistas (Figure 6). We need to relate in a positive, open, consultative manner to the public in all its multifaceted richness, bringing people into our analyses and making sure that our results make sense to them. The reason for doing EIA is to maintain the viability of the environment while getting on with needed change. This should be, and can be, a creative, challenging enterprise in which archaeologists can play important roles. Many archaeologists now make their careers doing or supervising EIA work for private companies and governmental bodies, and most twenty-first century archaeologists will take part in EIA for at least portions of their working lives. Some research archaeologists

think of this as being like a jail sentence, and for some it doubtless is. For others, however, it is an opportunity to do some of the most exciting, rewarding, and socially significant work to which an archaeologist’s talents can be bent. See also: Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation; Careers in Archaeology; Cultural Resource Management; Goals of Archaeology, Overview.

Further Reading ArchDev (1999) Archaeologists and development: environmental campaigners guide to archaeology. http://www.geocities. com/rainforest/canopy/2065/encamp.html, accessed 23 August 2006. British Archaeological Job Resource (2004) Short guide to archaeology and the planning process. http://www.bajr.org/ Documents/Guide for Archaeology in Planning.pdf#search¼% 22%22EIA%22%20%22Archaeology%22%22, accessed 23 August 2006. Canadian International Development Agency (2001) Environmental impact assessment: preliminary index of useful internet web sites. http://www.iaia.org/eialist.html CIDA, Hull, Quebec. Canter L (1995) Environmental Impact Assessment. New York: McGraw-Hill. Council for British, Archaeology (2003) Planning for archaeology and the historic environment: having your say. On-line factsheet series at http://www.britarch.ac.uk/conserve/planning/, accessed 23 August 2006. King TF (2004) Cultural Resource Laws and Practice: An Introductory Guide. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. King TF (2005) Doing Archaeology: A Cultural Resource Management Perspective. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Lawrence DP (2003) Environmental Impact Assessment: Practical Solutions to Recurrent Problems. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Interscience.

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ETHICAL ISSUES AND RESPONSIBILITIES Thomas F King, SWCA Environmental Consultants, Silver Spring, MD, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary descendant A person or group of people defined by their established or assumed genetic or cultural relationship to an ancestor or group of ancestors. ethics Moral principles and values that guide the behavior of a group of people, in this case archaeologists. ethics, code of A formal articulation of ethical standards adopted by an organization – for example, the code of ethics of the Association for Interplanetary Archaeology. indigenous Native to an area – for example, aboriginal Australians are indigenous to Australia. looting Strictly speaking, taking something of value by force or violence. As used broadly by archaeologists, digging up archaeological sites or otherwise taking things from them for personal interest or gain, or for wanton pleasure, or even out of ignorance, and defacing or destroying archaeological sites without good reason, even if no taking of ‘loot’ is involved. trafficking Buying, selling, or assisting in the buying and selling of things in commerce; used by archaeologists with specific reference to artifacts and other archaeological material.

Introduction Working as we do with finite and fragile resources, which often are of interest and value to both the general public and specific, sometimes competing, groups of people, archaeologists often wrestle with ethical questions. These questions are seldom simple or unambiguous – however much we might like them to be, or in some cases think that they are. The purpose of this article is to summarize major ethical issues that archaeologists confront, outline some of the ways archaeologists deal with them, and discuss some positive, negative, and ambiguous aspects of the answers given to ethical questions. Elsewhere in this encyclopedia, Don D. Fowler outlines the history of institutional approaches to archaeological ethics, including some of the laws, international agreements, and organizational codes developed to canonize ethical precepts.

The Core Ethic: Protecting, Obtaining, and Using Data A basic assumption underlying archaeological practice is that it is a good thing to do, that it is right and proper to perform archaeological research. But for what purpose? If pressed, most, if not all, archaeologists would say that we work to preserve information

about the human past that would otherwise be lost, that we seek to bring that information back into the intellectual mainstream from which time has displaced it – that is, to interpret the past accurately – and that we try to use the information we recover, and our interpretation of it, to address questions and issues that are important to humankind. If this is our tripartite purpose, then our central ethical obligation must be to pursue it well, to achieve it to the best of our abilities. This core ethic – which in fact we are rarely called upon to articulate, but which remains an assumption underlying all our work – is the justification for doing archaeology and for the support it receives from the public and governments worldwide. One way or another, it informs and influences how we attend to all other ethical responsibilities. Some of our commonly recognized ethical prescriptions follow directly from the core principle. For instance, forging artifacts and assisting in the perpetuation of hoaxes are taken by archaeologists to be unethical. Why? Because such activities mislead, and can cause the past to be misinterpreted, violating our ethical responsibility to interpret the past accurately. For a similar reason – because our core ethics require that we make what we recover available for use in accurately understanding the past – the failure to write up and publish the results of a field project is almost universally regarded by archaeologists as an ethical failure. To a somewhat lesser degree it is regarded as at least questionable for an archaeologist not to share data with another researcher, particularly if one has delayed publication of one’s results for a long time. Similarly, it is regarded as ethically reprehensible not to see to it, to the extent one can, that the materials one takes out of the ground, and the documentary records that one creates in the process, are cared for properly, theoretically in perpetuity, usually by an appropriate museum or other curatorial facility. Of course, it is regarded as highly unethical to excavate an archaeological site without fully recording what one does, what one finds, and the spatial relationships among things found and observed. However, it is generally understood that an archaeologist may not be able to follow all these prescriptions in every case to the extent that all archaeologists might wish. No one faults an archaeologist who suffers a debilitating illness and cannot finish writing up an excavation. Nor is one faulted if one turns over artifacts and records to a curatorial facility that is subsequently bombed or looted, that burns

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down, or whose new management decides to throw out its archaeological collections to make room for Edwardian furniture or post-Impressionist art – though in the latter case, if the archaeologist is aware of the institutional change, there is some ethical responsibility to try to get the archaeological collections moved to another facility. Finally, how much one can record during an excavation depends on whether one has plenty of time or is being rushed by forces of destruction; it also depends on what the forces of destruction are, the character of the site, the local sociopolitical situation, and so on. Although giving up one’s life to protect a site from vandals with AK-47s may be regarded as admirable, it is not generally held to be an ethical requirement.

The Ethics of Destroying Archaeological Sites It follows from the core principle that we favor the preservation of archaeological sites, and hence deplore their destruction. However, in point of fact we destroy sites ourselves, by excavating them, and here’s the quandary: we cannot adhere to our core ethic of retrieving and making good use of data without destroying them. This might not be the problem it is, if we could document everything we uncover in an excavation, but complete documentation is impossible. We cannot record every particle of soil and its relationships with every other particle, its chemical composition, and its physical structure. Every year, it seems, new analytic techniques are developed or new research questions posed that make us wish we had recorded something that went unrecorded in last year’s excavations. So most archaeologists acknowledge that the very conduct of archaeological research destroys sites and the data they contain. To contend with this uncomfortable truth, many of us try to conduct our research only in sites that are likely to be destroyed by other forces anyway – sites in the path of development, for example, or that are being eroded off sea cliffs. We sometimes are critical of colleagues who conduct excavations in sites that can be preserved, or who excavate in unnecessarily destructive ways. If an archaeologist strips away a 2000-year-old cultural stratum to get at one that is 4000 years old, and fails to make a reasonable effort to record the more recent stratum and its contents, his or her ethics are likely to be questioned. The vehemence with which we criticize such practices, however – particularly the practice of excavating sites that can be preserved, such as those in protected areas like parks – waxes and wanes through time. Back in 1974, William Lipe called eloquently on

archaeologists in the United States to adopt a ‘conservation model’ and emphasize site preservation. For a time many – perhaps most – American archaeologists followed Lipe’s advice; we tried to focus our attention only on threatened sites, and criticized those who dug sites that could be preserved. In recent years this ethic has eroded, in part because it can be hard to uphold the core ethic of learning and transmitting information about the past without excavating protected sites. Another reason the ‘conservation ethic’ has eroded is disillusionment with our ability truly to protect any site over the long run. This decade’s open space all too readily becomes the next decade’s parking lot or housing tract. Illicit excavators can gain access to even the most remote sites, in the most protected locations. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and the massive erosion resulting from rising sea levels are mostly beyond human control, and warfare seems to be as well; the organized military forces of most countries theoretically adhere to the 1954 UNESCO Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, but compliance with the letter of this convention is sporadic at best, and compliance with its spirit is even less systematic. All these characteristics of the real world can wreak massive destruction, and do not respect the integrity of ostensibly protected archaeological sites. In the face of these complexities, few archaeological eyebrows are currently raised over the excavation of a site that theoretically can be protected, provided the excavation is well and carefully done. However, the pendulum may swing back at any time toward something like Lipe’s ‘conservation model’. Ethics are not immutable.

The Ethics of Treating with ‘Looters’ and ‘Traffickers’ Archaeologists use the term ‘looter’ rather loosely, to mean not only people who dig into archaeological sites to acquire ‘loot’ with which to enrich themselves, but also people who collect artifacts for their own enjoyment, people who wantonly vandalize archaeological sites, and people who pick or dig something up out of simple curiosity. Some archaeologists recognize that ‘looters’ of such varied character have many reasons for digging, some of them not too different from those that motivate archaeologists themselves. Others, however, would condemn to purgatory or worse all nonprofessional excavators, and sometimes even collectors of artifacts from the ground surface. Archaeologists are similarly critical of people who sell or assist in the sale of artifacts – who are seldom referred to simply as ‘buyers’, ‘sellers’, or ‘dealers’

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but by the pejorative term ‘traffickers’. The reason for such visceral reactions on the part of archaeologists is that ‘looting’ is understood to be destructive of archaeological data present in sites, in artifacts, and particularly in the relationships among artifacts, sites, and site features like architecture and soil strata. A pot ripped out of its archaeological context may be beautiful on the shelf, but it has lost much of its ability to inform us about the past. ‘Trafficking’ makes ‘looting’ attractive to some people by creating a private market for excavated antiquities. An archaeologist who assists or otherwise deals positively with ‘looters’ and ‘traffickers’, is regarded by most of his or her colleagues as unethical. Degrees of ethical violation are generally recognized. If an archaeologist helps an artifact dealer establish that a ‘looted’ pot is genuine, in most archaeological communities that is regarded as bad, but not as bad as helping the dealer establish a monetary price for the pot, which in turn is not as bad as buying the pot from the dealer, which is less bad than selling the pot to the dealer. Worst of all is digging the pot up and selling it to the dealer. But if the pot or its contents are very, very important in terms of the information they represent, the core principle of recovering and using information may take precedence. If the pot contains papyri bearing some previously unknown ancient text, many archaeologists on balance will swallow hard and buy it. Selling it, however, is another matter – unless the buyer is a research or curatorial institution, in which case it may be acceptable for the archaeologist to recoup whatever he or she paid for the pot and its contents. There are, in other words, extenuating circumstances, but the extenuation extends to different lengths depending on the action taken. Some ‘looters’ and ‘traffickers’ are economically distressed residents of areas rich in ancient sites, driven by their poverty to dig up and sell artifacts. Some have the additional justification of viewing the artifacts as having been left to them by their ancestors. Although most archaeologists regard what such people do as reprehensible, most also have to acknowledge that the situation is a difficult one, in which ethical codes by themselves provide little guidance. Should we try to stop such ‘looting’? If so, are we not obligated to look for alternative ways for the erstwhile diggers to earn a living? Is this not at least a practical necessity, if we expect people to stop digging for profit? Is purchasing something from an impoverished community whose members dig up things left by their ancestors somehow less bad than buying something from a different kind of ‘looter’? What about trying to teach people to ‘loot’ using archaeological methods? Where and how does one draw ethical lines?

There are others classified by many archaeologists as ‘looters’ and ‘traffickers’ who seek archaeological cooperation – for example, people who seek treasure buried or lost on land and under the sea. If a treasure hunter offers to fund an excavation, done using all relevant controls to assure the recovery and documentation of important data, in return for the right to keep or sell what is found, is it ethical for an archaeologist to accept the offer? Mainstream archaeological organizations, and most archaeologists, answer with a resounding ‘No.’ When pressed for a rationale (something that is seldom done in polite archaeological company), many fall back on a simple statement of morality – excavating things for sale is simply ‘wrong’. If asked for a rationale less redolent with religiosity, the answer may be that in the final analysis no treasure hunter ever has, ever will, ever can excavate according to archaeological principles; in the end the fever to loot will win out. Or that even if an excavation is done properly, if the artifacts are dispersed through sale, they become unavailable for future study. Some treasure-seeking interests counter with proposals to turn over everything found to a museum, or even to create museums for everything found, except for items like coins and gold bars, which arguably have little research significance. While this sort of proposal softens the logical ground under archaeological opposition to cooperative endeavors, the hardcore moralism tends to remain. The codes of ethics of most archaeological organizations flatly forbid cooperation with those who would excavate archaeological material for sale. Finally, there are many people, nonarchaeologists in terms of professional training and academic degrees, who collect artifacts for reasons that they say are essentially the same as those that motivate archaeologists. We are fascinated by the past, they say; we want to learn about the past, and we do not want to see archaeological sites destroyed by development or agriculture or erosion, so we want to excavate them. The only difference between what we do and what you do, they go on, is that we keep what we find, or occasionally sell or exchange it – rather than putting it in a museum where we all know it has a good chance of being lost or tossed out in some change of institutional policy. Some say they would be happy to work to archaeological standards, if archaeologists would only help them and not insist that they give up their collections. There are some archaeologists (this author among them) who wonder if it is possible to achieve cooperation between archaeologists and at least some classes of ‘looter’ and ‘trafficker’ – creating a relationship under which sites are excavated using archaeological methods, but selected recovered objects can remain in

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private hands or enter the stream of commerce rather than going to museums and research institutions. On the whole, such an idea is regarded as anathema by the mainstream of archaeology. There are certainly programs in which archaeologists work with people who collect artifacts, but almost invariably an agreement not to ‘traffick’ is a precondition to participation in such a program. Often a participant is required to give up his or her private collection or at least refrain from digging to expand it. Very few archaeologists have gone to work for or with treasure recovery organizations, based on agreements under which the treasure seekers record and properly conserve archaeological data while recovering coins or bullion for sale. These archaeologists, however, are widely regarded by the mainstream as having sold their souls. It is not apparent that they, or a responsible private collector, actually violate archaeology’s core principle of protecting, recovering, and using data, but many archaeologists and archaeological organizations shun and discriminate against them. This is an unresolved issue that will probably gain more exposure as time goes by, particularly as treasure recovery companies gain expanded access to the deep oceans and other extreme environments using expensive high technology unavailable to ordinary archaeological researchers.

The Ethics of Relations with Indigenous, Descendant, and Protective Communities If I decide that I want to excavate your late grandmother to study her grave offerings, you will probably want to have something to say about it. If it is your great-great-great-great grandmother’s body I want to exhume, you may be less concerned, but this is not certain; you may feel just as strongly about your distant ancestors as you do about your proximate ones. Descendant communities typically want to exercise a considerable amount of control over their ancestors’ bones, artifacts, and places of residence, worship, and burial, and their interests may differ considerably from the information-driven interests of archaeologists. Descendant communities are not the only ones who may wish to protect the bones and relics of past societies from the attentions of archaeologists. Some communities are strongly protective of the dead on religious or other spiritual grounds, regardless of the putative ancestral relationships between the dead and any person living today. Such groups simply hold that the dead should not be disturbed, and to varying extents this belief may extend to the artifacts produced and used by the dead as well. Such protective interests may be just as deeply felt as those of

people who trace their own lines of descent back to the people in the ground. There was a time when archaeologists could largely ignore the concerns of such communities – at least they could as long as those communities were indigenous groups, people of color, and other relatively powerless parties. Ignoring such concerns did not seem unethical because the core ethic of archaeology – obtaining data to satisfy human curiosity and bring the past back to life – was taken to be unequivocally good. Most archaeologists still feel that our motives in conducting research are essentially pure; we are hurt when descendant and protective communities call us ghouls and grave robbers, but that is what we are to them, and explaining the importance of our research has little impact on their perceptions. As colonial power structures have given way to postcolonial ones, hitherto powerless communities – both those who have actually been colonies and those who simply feel colonized by virtue of being parts of a social and economic underclass – have become increasingly critical of archaeology and archaeologists. Since such communities often arguably occupy the moral high ground, and because their causes can generate strong public and political support, archaeologists have had to find ways to accommodate and respect their interests. Some archaeologists and archaeological organizations try to distinguish between ‘real’ descendants – that is, people who can demonstrate descent using sciences like genetics and anthropology – and people who merely think themselves descended from longago cultures, or feel that they are responsible for the well-being of the dead. The former, it is argued, are entitled to respect; the latter are not. This sort of science-based distinction is embedded in some legislation, like the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in the United States, which mandates the repatriation of bones and artifacts to descendants or otherwise ‘affiliated’ groups, but only upon a showing of ethnic or cultural affiliation. This sort of distinction infuriates communities that regard science itself as a colonialist, imperialist activity; once again the dominant society is imposing its values on them. From the perspective of many indigenous communities, a distinction based on affiliation also misses the point. Many such groups feel strong responsibility for the dead, regardless of their relationships to anyone living today. It is, they feel, their responsibility to the dead themselves, or to spiritual powers, to ensure that the dead can continue their journey to the afterlife. Demanding that affiliation be demonstrated is doubly offensive to such groups. Not only does it impose the dominant society’s scientism on a community whose beliefs lie elsewhere, it also implies

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that one human being can ‘own’ another – a notion that carries widely troubling connotations. Archaeologists – particularly those trained in anthropology – can empathize with such perceptions, but often have trouble embracing ethical codes based on such empathy. The core ethic of a descendant or spiritually protective community is usually entirely different from that of archaeology; the past is something to be protected, to be left alone, to be respected, not to be exhumed, scrutinized, and studied. Returning ancestral remains and artifacts to a nonscientific group usually makes them unavailable for research, and may even result in their destruction (from the archaeologist’s perspective). Collaborating with such a community when excavating an ancestral site usually places restrictions on what can be excavated, or on the kinds of analysis that can be performed. Nevertheless, whether out of empathetic desire or political and legal necessity, archaeologists the world over have developed ethical codes supporting collaboration with, and often acceding to the wishes of, descendant and protective communities – particularly those indigenous to the area where an archaeologist works, such as American-Indians and AboriginalAustralians, and those with access to local, national, or international political power. Many of us square these new ethics with our central research ethic by believing (rightly, I think) that we gain more in terms of understanding and preservation of the past through partnerships with such communities than we would from running roughshod over their interests – even if doing the latter were still legally and politically possible.

The Ethics of the Workplace and Society In recent years, whether out of choice or necessity, archaeologists have paid increasing attention to certain ethics that they share with other professionals – scientists, engineers, teachers, cooks – and with society as a whole. It is unethical to plagiarize, of course, or to steal a colleague’s or student’s work. We have ethical responsibilities toward those who work with and for us. We should not exploit or abuse them; we should provide a living wage, decent living conditions, and reasonably safe workplaces. Less obviously, most of us recognize an obligation to help those we supervise learn from what they do, regardless of whether they are formally regarded as students. Particularly, those who work without or with little pay generally do so because they are interested in archaeology, and we are obligated to help them satisfy that interest. We have ethical duties to those who pay the bills, be they institutional employers, sponsor foundations or

individuals, government agencies, or contractual clients. At the very least, we owe our employers and sponsors an honest day’s work and a product as close as possible to whatever it is they expect us to deliver. Beyond this, most of us recognize an obligation to be sensitive to the interests that have brought them to finance our work – for example, the interest of a property developer required to fund an archaeological study before his or her development destroys a site, whose great desire is probably that we complete our work promptly and get out of the way. We have ethical responsibilities toward the world around us, and to its nonarchaeological resources. Those of us who work in environmental assessment and similar fields often find ourselves assigned responsibility for describing and evaluating aspects of the environment that are not archaeological – historic buildings, cultural landscapes, the traditional lifeways of local people. We have a duty to recognize that these places and things have value even though they may not be of archaeological interest. If we cannot ourselves represent that value adequately, we have a duty to make sure it is addressed by people better qualified to do so than we. All of us are responsible for taking care of the natural and human environments within which we work – for not polluting a stream with dirt from our excavations, not digging up the habitat of an endangered species, and not undermining the historic building that stands on our excavation site. Among these external ethical precepts, one of the most interesting and problematical is the notion of responsibility to those who pay the bills. Recognizing and carrying out this responsibility is seldom a problem when the one doing the paying is one’s own museum or university, or a foundation that supplies research grants. We may be late with a report; we may not find what we and our supporters had hoped we would find, we may misspend our grant and flee the country, but these tend to be either minor problems or such obvious ethical failures that they raise few problems of interpretation. The ethic of ‘responsibility to financial supporters’ becomes complicated when the financial supporter’s only interest is in getting the archaeology out of the way so he can proceed with his housing project or highway. Archaeologists today are routinely employed as members of teams doing environmental impact assessments in advance of construction and land use projects. In this context one’s financial support often comes from the party whose potential environmental impacts one is assessing. What are one’s responsibilities toward the financial supporter – the client – in such a case? It is easy to say that our responsibility is simply to do proper, honest archaeology – to ascertain what

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impacts the proposed project will have on archaeological sites and seek ways to preserve them. But the matter is not that simple. For one thing, there are many different ways to consider impacts. Will we seek only those sites that will be bulldozed to oblivion if the project is built, or will we also look for those that may be indirectly affected, by future erosion downstream, through looting by residents of the new housing project, through secondary development induced by the presence of the new motorway? When we find a site, we can evaluate its significance in a variety of different ways – some narrow and more or less dismissive, others much broader and more inclusive. Which sort of evaluation scheme should we employ? As individuals and teams we may or may not individually be particularly well qualified to find or evaluate particular kinds of sites, in particular areas, but obtaining specialist advice may be costly to our client. Then there are the nonarchaeological interests – the descendant community that thinks a place is terribly important even though we, as archaeologists, find nothing interesting about it; the religious group that ascribes spiritual significance to a place, the architectural historians who want to save old buildings and the community members who want to save their town. Doing proper archaeology may technically not include paying any attention whatever to such interests, and whether we do pay attention or not can have financial implications for our employer. It is safe to assume in most cases that the client would like us to do as little and find as little as possible – to look only at areas where direct destructive project impacts will occur, to evaluate sites as narrowly as possible, and to assign value solely on the basis of archaeological criteria, let other interests fend for themselves. Is it our ethical obligation to do our work in accordance with our client’s program and preference, or is this directly contrary to our other ethical responsibilities? Here again it is easy to say we should be broad, inclusive, and thorough in our study of a project’s impacts, and provide the client with objective, unbiased information whether he wants it or not. But just how broad an area or range of impacts should we consider? What range of interests should we include in our consideration? What is our definition of ‘thorough’ in the case at hand – or for that matter, our definition of ‘objective’ and ‘unbiased’? And what do we do when our team leader says, or implies, that we are being unreasonable, costing the client unnecessary money, not giving him the results he wants, and that we may lose our jobs or our next contract as a result? On the other hand, at what point does the ‘thoroughness’ of our research become exploitative of our client? These can be difficult questions, and archaeologists

increasingly must grapple with them as we play our roles in the activities of government agencies, land developers, project proponents, and public-interest groups.

Conclusion One sees much articulation of ethical standards in the archaeological literature but little serious debate about such standards and their implications. It is generally accepted that such things as destroying archaeological sites and cooperating with ‘looters’ and ‘traffickers’ are wrong, and one must not do them – even when doing so appears to be justified by archaeology’s core principle of preserving, recovering, and using information. We insist that we simultaneously give clients good value for the money they spend on our impact assessment work, and give maximum protection to both archaeological sites and other aspects of the human environment, but we seldom debate the complications that such balanced service creates. Ethical discussions both in print and at such events as the ‘ethics bowl’ held annually by the Society for American Archaeology tend to assume the correctness of the standards promulgated by the various archaeological and cultural organizations, focusing on their application in particular situations. We tend to believe quite strongly that some things are ethical and that others are not, often without deeply exploring the logical underpinnings or practical results of our beliefs. While logic and practicality do underlie most of archaeology’s ethical positions, it is doubtful whether rigid and unquestioning adherence to them is always wise. For a discipline regarded by many of its practitioners as a science, however, archaeology can be remarkably unwilling to explore the theory upon which its canonical principles are based. It can be quite unforgiving of those who deviate from those principles, expunging them from membership in professional organizations, refusing to allow them to present or publish the results of their work, threatening their employment. Anyone contemplating such a deviation, even with what may seem to be a pure heart and excellent justification, needs to tread with extreme caution, at risk of being branded ethically deficient. See also: Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation; Environmental Impact Assessment and the Law; Historic Preservation Laws; Illicit Antiquities; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act; Native Peoples and Archaeology; Philosophy of Archaeology; Who Owns the Past?; World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

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Further Reading Green EL (ed.) (1984) Ethics and Values in Archaeology. New York: Free Press. King TF. A 1937 winged liberty head dime from Silver Spring, Maryland. In: Thinking about Cultural Resource Management: Eessays from the Edge, pp. 164–169. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Layton R (ed.) (1994) Conflict in the Archaeology of Living Traditions. London: Routledge. Lipe WD (1974) A conservation model for American archaeology. The Kiva 39(1–2): 213–243. Lowenthal D (2005) Why sanctions seldom work: Reflections on cultural property internationalism. International Journal of Cultural Property 12(3): 393–424.

Lynott M and Wylie A (eds.) (1995) Ethics in American Archaeology: Challenges for the 1990s. Washington DC: Society for American Archaeology. Scarre C and Scarre G (eds.) (2006) The Ethics of Archaeology: Philosophical Perspectives on Archaeological Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shanks H (1999) How to stop looting: a modest proposal. Archaeological Odyssey. 2:04, September/October 1999. Washington DC: Biblical Archaeology Society. Vitelli KD (ed.) (1996) Archaeological Ethics. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.

ETHNICITY Bonnie J Clark, University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary culture history A history of the cultures that inhabited a particular location or region. descent Hereditary derivation or lineage. ethnicity A form of communal identity that emphasizes common ancestry and an association with a territory. hybridity A description of the inevitably mixed, interpenetrated condition of cultures, languages, etc. material culture Human modifications to natural resources and the environment. race A population distinguished as different from others based primarily on physiology. Genetic studies suggest there are no legitimate ways to divide the human population based on such characteristics, rather the existence of races is a social rather than a true physical phenomenon.

Ethnicity, as a topic of concern for archaeologists, has its roots deep within the history of thought about human difference. Although the term itself is relatively new (arriving in English language dictionaries in the 1950s), the idea is old, derived as it is from the ancient Greek term ethnos, which roughly meant ‘various different groups of peoples’. The journal Ethnos, which began publication in 1936, is a testament to the anthropology’s long engagement with such difference. As it is currently theorized, ethnicity is a form of group identity separable from other communal identities, such as class or religion, by emphasis on common ancestry and an association with a territory, both of which may be based in some deep, perhaps mythic past. Other characteristics that ethnic groups often

exhibit are a collective name, a shared history, elements of common culture, and a sense of communal solidarity. The concept overlaps a great deal with ideas of race based as it is on at least supposed shared ancestry. Nineteenth-century discussions of differences based on ethnicity as defined above, often used the terminology of race, something currently associated primarily with physiological differences. Thus, archaeological investigations of race and racism share a great deal with those primarily focused on ethnicity. A general consensus exists among anthropologists that, for ethnic identity to have salience, group members must have an awareness of peoples outside of the group. Some anthropologists suggest that ethnicity is a relatively modern social construction, one that exists only in relation to state-level societies. Others claim that, because cultures have always been in contact with other groups through relations such as trade or marriage, the conditions which foster ethnic identity are essentially universal. Every archaeologist who has studied ethnicity has relied on the existence of a significant relationship between material culture and ethnicity. As so deftly laid out by Siaˆn Jones in The Archaeology of Ethnicity, how archaeologists have conceptualized that relationship has a great deal to do with their ideas about culture. When they believe that cultures are bounded, homogeneous entities, archaeologists easily equate different suites of material culture with different groups in the past. The building of culture histories around the world relied upon this unproblematized relationship, one expressed in many terms we still use for prehistoric peoples, such as the Basketmakers of the Southwestern United States, or the Beaker people of Europe. However, other archaeologists

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conceptualize cultures as having porous boundaries, comprised of multifaceted individuals with potentially conflicting goals. Increasingly those who study ethnicity conceptualize it as intimately tied to age, gender, status, and other elements of identity. Such researchers expect that people with different social positions within an ethnic group may engage with material culture in very different ways. This view of culture leads archaeologists to pay attention to a range of material culture that those with a normative view might dismiss as random variation. Early approaches to past peoples relied on what has been termed ‘primordialism’, or a belief that similarities in the cultural expressions of members of various ethnic groups lie in the sameness of shared experience. In the wake of various ethnic political movements that often relied on the mobilization of cultural symbols, came Ethnic Groups and Boundaries in 1969. The editor of the book, Fredrik Barth, posited that ethnic identities are tools created during crisis and often mobilized to political or economic ends. This position, which has since been coined ‘instrumentalist’, suggests that ethnicity is a form of invented tradition rather than an expression of shared practices of significant time depth. The decades that followed the publication saw anthropologists of all stripes expending a good deal of energy investigating these two models of ethnicity. Historical archaeologists often embraced the study of ethnicity, especially those who were in the position to research the material remains of documented locales such as plantations, where identity was forged from the crucibles of cultural struggle. Ethnoarchaeological research investigated how much variation in the style of artifacts could be accounted for by different social groupings. Various investigations suggested that some artifacts reflect passive style or cultural norms of the proper way to produce an item, an idea that fits with primordialism. Other items, however, have active style intended specifically to mark social differences, something expected by an instrumentalist view of ethnicity. It is clear, however, that there is no absolute boundary between passive and active style, as an artifact that in one generation is shaped by taken-for-granted norms can become actively manipulated in the next. A middle-ground position, that ethnicity has both primordial and instrumental characteristics, is held by many twenty-first-century practitioners. How researchers operationalize the concept of ethnicity highlights some of the critical themes in a twenty-first-century archaeology of ethnicity. Given that the term ethnos derives originally from ancient Greek, it seems appropriate to turn to research on the poleis (city-states) of ancient Greece and their

colonies. Many ancient Greek poleis were comprised of a number of cultural groups. Texts of Greek origin myths help to establish that these collective identities were in fact ethnic, and were mobilized in continuing proclamations of group distinctiveness. As investigated by Jonathan Hall, a number of groups coupled these discursive strategies of ethnic identification with material ones. Both Greeks in Cyprus and the Akhaians of southern Italy expressed their identity materially, particularly through distinctive architecture. Other groups used the built environment to reinforce their link to mythic ancestors and the territories with which they were associated. For example, the Dryopes legitimized their claim to Asine by participating in the cult of Hera, the earlier, Bronze Age goddess of the Argive plain in which Asine was located. They also reused local Bronze Age tombs for their own inhumations. These are acts Hall classifies as ‘ancestralizing,’ strategies he suggests to be common among ethnic groups, because descent is often a critical element of this form of collective identity. It is illustrative to couple these studies of identity within the Greek poleis with those conducted in far-flung colonies. For example, in Berezan, a Greek colony in the northern Black Sea, the earliest traders lived in housing very similar to that of the majority Scythian population. Interestingly, the distinguishing architectural elements of the colonists’ houses were interior heating systems, something that reflects their struggles to adjust to a colder climate. This is an embodied element of their ethnic identity linked to the environmental differences between their homeland and their new territory and very unlikely to be an instrumental expression of personhood. These early traders were later joined by a wave of Greek immigrants, who as documentary and ceramic evidence suggests were largely Ionian. They lived in above-ground houses that reference a pan-Hellenic rather than Ionian form. One imagines that in Berezan, the most pertinent axis of ethnic identification was Greek/Scythian; thus, colonists did not mobilize around their internal Greek identity as Ionians. This case study highlights a critical element in the archaeology of ethnicity, namely that ethnic identity is both contingent and fluid, and thus our investigations must pay careful attention to the context in which material remains were a part. Like many archaeological investigations of identity, both of these are examples where researchers have access to some form of written documentation. However, aided by technological breakthroughs such as the sourcing of materials and DNA analysis, researchers are interpreting ethnicity among prehistoric populations with growing confidence. For example, the traditional culture areas of the prehistoric southwestern United States have recently come under scrutiny,

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revealing numerous examples of migration, intermarriage, and ethnogenesis. These studies indicate that the region has long been host to various forms of ethnic hybridity, a condition which post-Colonial theorists suggest is the norm for humanity. See also: Engendered Archaeology; Identity and Power.

Further Reading Barth F (ed.) (1969) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Boston: Little Brown. Conkey M (1990) Experimenting with Style in Archaeology: Some historical and theoretical issues. In: Conkey M and Hastorf C (eds.) The Uses of Style in Archaeology, pp. 5–17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Duff AI (2002) Western Pueblo Identities: Regional Interaction, Migration, and Transformation. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. Hall JM (1997) Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jones S (1997) The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and Present. London: Routledge. Lucy S (2005) Ethnic and Cultural Identities. In: Dı´az-Andreu M, Lucy S, Babic SA, and Edwards DN (eds.) The Archaeology of Identity, pp. 86–109. London: Routledge. Orser CE, Jr. (ed.) (2001) Race and the Archaeology of Identity. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Romanucci-Ross L and DeVos G (eds.) (1995) Ethnic Identity: Creation, Conflict, and Accommodation. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira. Solovyov SL (1999) Ancient Berezan: The Architecture, History and Culture of the First Greek Colony in the Northern Black Sea. Leiden: Brill. Stark MT (ed.) (1998) The Archaeology of Social Boundaries. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.

ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY Margaret E Beck, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary ethnoarchaeology The study of cultural material (such as pots, weapons, and tools), the understanding of how and why these materials were used, and interpretations of what they were used for. ethnography The branch of anthropology that deals with the scientific description of specific human cultures. material culture The counterpart of verbal culture and learned behavior that refers to physical objects from the past – together they constitute human activity. middle-range research Study of how people use objects and structures and the human behaviors associated with this use. uniformitarianism The theory that all geologic phenomena may be explained as the result of existing forces having operated uniformly from the origin of the earth to the present time.

Ethnoarchaeology is ethnographic field work designed to contribute to archaeological interpretation. It has also been called action archaeology, living archaeology, or archaeological ethnography. Archaeologists study the material traces of past human behavior; ethnoarchaeologists study the material traces of ongoing human behavior, so that archaeologists can better infer past human behavior from material patterns. Ethnoarchaeological studies may address questions

at one or more levels, including the artifact (e.g., manufacture and use), the site (e.g., spatial distribution of features), and the process (e.g., exchange, seasonal mobility). Direct behavioral observations, informant accounts and explanations, previous anthropological or sociological studies, and historical documents may all be available to the ethnoarchaeologist, allowing a more detailed and nuanced look at the relationships between human activities and artifacts. Archaeologists often use data collected from living people to formulate hypotheses and interpret archaeological patterns. Ethnographic accounts and ethnographic museum collections are often incorporated into archaeological studies, but relevant information may come from many fields, including sociocultural anthropology, history, linguistics, sociology, geography, and economics. This other work used by archaeologists is distinguished from ethnoarchaeology by its research design. Data originally collected for nonarchaeological applications is usually too vague about the material culture or spatial distribution of activities. For example, ethnographers may provide some information on diet and food preparation but fail to describe the vessels and utensils used and the resulting material evidence of food preparation, such as wear on tools and the refuse produced. Archaeologists are then forced to guess what the material patterns should be from these activities. The term ‘ethnoarchaeology’ is restricted here to fieldwork conducted explicitly for

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archaeologists, because only then will archaeological issues be adequately addressed and data collected in a way that relates to archaeological data. Ethnoarchaeology is one of several areas of study that improve archaeological inference, grouped by Lewis Binford into ‘middle-range research’. Middlerange research is essentially the study of cause and effect; archaeologists observe end products, such as artifacts, features, and spatial patterns, and infer the events or behaviors that created them. Links or correlates (as defined by Michael Schiffer) between dynamic events and activities and their static material traces can be formulated either by observing the ongoing behavior of others, as in ethnoarchaeology, or by mimicking the behavior in experiments under controlled conditions, as in experimental archaeology. Using these correlates requires the uniformitarian assumption that our observations can apply to other time periods because the processes we see in the present operated in a similar way in the past. The notion of uniformitarianism became widely accepted in geology in the first half of the nineteenth century and is now common in archaeology, although, the extent to which human behavior is consistent across time and space is still hotly debated. To complicate matters, the end product or archaeological record is created by multiple processes, and archaeologists often find remains that only indirectly reflect the particular human behavior they have chosen to study. Middle-range research, therefore, also includes the study of formation processes of the archaeological record, perhaps best known from the work of Michael Schiffer. Formation processes include both cultural processes, such as those studied by ethnoarchaeologists, and natural processes, such as sediment deposition and erosion. These processes can alter and rearrange material remains at any point during archaeological site formation. Some ethnoarchaeologists focus on particular behaviors of interest, such as house construction, stone tool manufacture, or food sharing, that occur early in the site formation process. Other ethnoarchaeologists address how materials enter the archaeological record through activities such as discard and house abandonment and how they are transformed by cultural processes such as trampling and construction, later in the site formation process. Research on formation processes is similar in some ways to taphonomy, the subdiscipline of palaeontology that addresses how organisms become part of the fossil record.

Development and Research Themes Jesse Walter Fewkes first used the term ‘ethnoarchaeologist’ in 1900, referring to an archaeologist

who applies his knowledge of a group’s current or recent culture to the study of its prehistory. This is similar to the ‘direct-historical approach’ formally defined by Waldo Wedel in 1938 and depends on cultural continuity over time. This approach was used by a number of archaeologists in the United States during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, including Arthur Parker in the Northeast, Wedel and William Duncan Strong in the Great Plains, Julian Steward in the Great Basin, and Fewkes and Frank Hamilton Cushing in the Southwest, and it still plays an important role in archaeological interpretation. It is not considered to be ethnoarchaeology by current scholars, who argue that ethnoarchaeology concerns more general links between human behavior and material patterning that are not dependent upon cultural continuity. The summary of ethnoarchaeology’s history largely follows that of Nicholas David and Carol Kramer, who in their 2001 book Ethnoarchaeology in Action divide the history of ethnoarchaeology into three periods: Initial, New Ethnoarchaeology, and Recent. They date the beginning of modern ethnoarchaeology to a 1956 paper by Maxine Kleindienst and Patty Jo Watson, titled ‘Action archaeology: the archaeological inventory of a living community’. Kleindienst and Watson argued that the archaeologist, ‘with his own theoretical orientation’, needed to conduct fieldwork to collect appropriate data for archaeological applications. The Initial period of ethnoarchaeology is mostly exploratory, descriptive, and focused on particular material culture classes. Modern Yucatecan Maya Pottery Making by Raymond Thompson, published in 1958, is a landmark study in this period because Thompson addresses how his descriptive work may be used by archaeologists. George Foster’s 1960 article ‘Life expectancy of utilitarian pottery in Tzintzuntzan, Michoacan, Mexico’ is an early attempt in ethnoarchaeology to consider how artifacts are actually discarded and enter the archaeological record. The New Ethnoarchaeology developed from the New Archaeology or processual archaeology, an important theoretical shift in American archaeology following Lewis Binford’s article ‘Archaeology as anthropology’ in 1962. The New Archaeology regarded culture as the external, nonbiological means of human adaptation to the environment. It also advocated an explicitly scientific approach to archaeological inquiry. This theoretical shift directed ethnoarchaeology toward studies of landscape and resource use, particularly by foragers, and toward work that considered how cultural remains entered the archaeological record. Important studies of hunting and gathering groups include work with the Ngatatjara Aborigines

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in Australia (Richard Gould), the !Kung San in southern Africa (John Yellen and others), the Nunamiut in Alaska (Lewis Binford), the Alyawara of central Australia (James O’Connell), and the Hadza in Tanzania (James O’Connell, Kristen Hawkes, and others). Studies of agricultural villagers include research by Patty Jo Watson and Carol Kramer in Iran and William Longacre in the Philippines. Publications appeared on the use of space, both within individual settlements and broader landscapes, and on-site formation processes. The Recent period is characterized by the growing influence of postprocessualism within archaeology and ethnoarchaeology. This perspective downplays function and adaptation and emphasizes the role of human choice and agency in culture. David and Kramer start this period in 1982 with the publication of Ian Hodder’s book Symbols in Action, which uses ethnoarchaeology to present a different view of material culture. Material patterns and objects are not just the end result of human behavior, Hodder argued; they also influence and shape that behavior. Artifacts are not passive evidence of culture but symbols in action. Hodder was inspired by scholars, such as the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, whose practice theory has become increasingly important in archaeology. Postprocessualism does not replace processualism and related theoretical perspectives, however; this period also displays continuity in theory and in actual projects from the New Ethnoarchaeology period. Frenchspeaking ethnoarchaeologists such as Valentine Roux also continued to work in the positivist tradition, adopting a theoretical position known as ‘logicism’ that is based on archaeological writings by JeanClaude Gardin and outlined by Alain Gallay. The fruits of long-term efforts in ethnoarchaeology became apparent in this period, through comparison and synthesis and the publication of findings from several large multiyear projects. Edited volumes such as Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology and From Bones to Behavior bring together studies from multiple authors and regions and evaluate the overall contributions of ethnoarchaeology to behavioral inferences from a particular artifact class. The Coxoh Ethnoarchaeology Project, led by Brian Hayden, conducted fieldwork in three communities in the Maya highlands between 1977 and 1979 and led to important publications on the production and use of flaked stone, ground stone, and ceramic artifacts as well as refuse disposal. The Mandara Archaeological Project directed by Nicholas David and Judy Sterner began in 1984, conducting research in Cameroon and Nigeria on ceramic manufacture, metallurgy, household compounds, and other topics. Longacre’s Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project has continued over 30 years and is discussed further below.

To date, ethnoarchaeological projects have been conducted all over the world, in settings ranging from hunting–gathering camps to state-level societies. Topics include a wide variety of material remains and artifact classes, such as architecture, faunal bone, botanical remains, basketry, flaked stone, ceramics, glass, and metals. Activities and cultural processes have also been studied, such as the use of space within buildings, sites and settlements, and broader landscapes, site abandonment, and the development and transition of decoration and style. All of these studies are too varied and numerous to adequately summarize here. For more information, readers are referred to the ‘Further reading’ section, especially the excellent overview by David and Kramer.

Applying Ethnoarchaeology As archaeology has evolved, so have ideas about the nature of archaeological inference and the appropriate use of ethnoarchaeology. Ethnoarchaeological data may be used as analogy, in which the archaeologist concludes that one thing (the prehistoric culture) is like another thing (the recent or modern culture) based on some observed similarities in material culture. The archaeologist may then associate the material culture with less tangible aspects of culture in the recent or modern group, and project those aspects onto the prehistoric group. In ethnoarchaeology as first defined by Fewkes and in the direct-historical approach, ethnographic analogies were often used uncritically; because of presumed cultural continuity, analogies between ancestral and descendent cultures were assumed to be valid without testing. Robert Ascher expanded use of these analogies in 1961 by arguing that analogies can be drawn between cultures that adapted to similar environments in similar ways. The New Archaeology emphasized testing hypotheses with archaeological data, and uncritical analogies were subsequently challenged. Ethnoarchaeology was often used instead as a source of testable hypotheses, as advocated by Patty Jo Watson. Robert Kelly’s The Foraging Spectrum illustrates this perspective. It combines ethnoarchaeological research with other hunter–gatherer studies and may not be ethnoarchaeology itself, but it was written primarily for archaeologists who need relevant anthropological theory to create testable archaeological models. (Kelly’s recent work studying mobility and site layout among the Mikea of Madagascar is more clearly ethnoarchaeology as it is defined here.) Hypotheses should not be generated solely from data from living people, however, as pointed out by ethnoarchaeologists such as Martin Wobst and Michael Stanislawski. The universe of possible explanations should not be restricted

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to what has been observed in recent human behavior; if it is, we will never see how the past may differ from the present. Ethnoarchaeology has also served to point out problems in interpretation, either with overlooked variables or unexplored alternatives. John Yellen has called this the ‘spoiler approach’ and notes that although it emphasizes what archaeologists get wrong, it is an important part of developing and improving middle-range theory. Both Binford and Schiffer emphasize that in order to make inferences from the archaeological record, archaeologists need scientific law-like generalizations about the relationships between human behavior and material culture. Ethnoarchaeology is one major arena in which these generalizations or correlates are developed. Richard Gould and John Yellen have used ‘contrastive ethnoarchaeology’ in this way, comparing household spacing between hunting–gathering groups in similar desert environments. In this case, the differences proved to be more informative than the similarities, and they concluded that the closer spacing in the Kalahari Desert was related to danger from large carnivores, which are absent in Australia’s Western Desert. Comparative studies also use data from multiple groups to find broader patterns, as in Dean Arnold’s Ceramic Theory and Cultural Process, Kelly’s The Foraging Spectrum, and Richard Blanton’s Houses and Households: A Comparative Study. Binford argues strongly for ‘‘the use of cross-cultural comparisons as a uniformitarian strategy for learning in anthropology’’ throughout his career and in his 2001 book Constructing Frames of Reference, written to address ‘‘productively using ethnographic data in the service of archaeological goals’’. French-speaking archaeologists and ethnoarchaeologists in the logicist tradition agree that ethnoarchaeologists look for generalizations about behavior and material culture, although, as Alain Gallay points out, these are not useful if they become overly broad ‘‘platitudes on human behavior’’ or overly narrow ‘‘local cultural particularisms’’. Gallay also argues that they cannot be applied appropriately if the mechanisms behind them are not understood. The scientific approach taken by the logicists includes use of evidence from other scientific fields, including some less often considered by North American ethnoarchaeologists such as experimental psychology. Valentine Roux and Danie`la Corbetta’s research on craft specialization near New Delhi, India is one example of a logicist ethnoarchaeological study. Roux and Corbetta relate changes in ceramic shape to increasing productive specialization, explaining the relationship through the development of motor skills by potters as well as attributes of the raw materials.

Not all archaeologists believe such generalizations have been or can be developed through ethnoarchaeology, or that they can be applied broadly enough to be meaningful or useful. Archaeologists such as Michelle Hegmon and Donald Grayson, referring to ceramic and faunal studies respectively, have suggested that cautionary tales or the spoiler approach dominate the field. Postprocessualists might deny that patterns of any real significance or interest could apply across cultures. Even committed ethnoarchaeologists find difficulties, often practical if not theoretical. For example, David and Kramer note that Roux and Corbetta’s results have not been applied to the interpretation of archaeological material, in part because Roux’s system for classifying vessels by level of specialization is very complex and can only be used for complete or reconstructible vessels. Other archaeologists and anthropologists argue that direct applications to archaeology are not the only useful contributions of ethnoarchaeology, if ethnoarchaeology is defined more broadly as ethnographic study with an archaeologist’s attention to material culture. Daniel Miller conducted ceramic ethnoarchaeology in India early in his career, and has since made enormous contributions to the field of modern material culture studies. He is a founding editor of the Journal of Material Culture, and his books include A Theory of Shopping and the edited four-volume set Consumption: Critical Concepts. Jeanne Arnold and Anthony Graesch are two of the archaeologists working with data from modern middle-class households in Los Angeles, collected at the UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families (CELF), a Sloan Center on Working Families supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Program on DualCareer Working Middle Class Families. They focus on domestic material culture, including architecture, home furnishings, and family possessions, and document the use of objects and space through systematic timed observations, photographs, and interviews. Currently, Arnold is investigating activity scheduling, object management, and identity formation, and Graesch’s focus is on how the constructed domestic environment reflects and relates to household activities. In spite of debates about its utility and appropriate role, ethnoarchaeology has had a significant impact on archaeological research, affecting the way questions are formulated, hypotheses are evaluated, and material patterns and interpretations are placed in a broader cultural context. The most visible impact may be on hunter-gatherer archaeology. James Skibo, in his review of American Antiquity articles from 1975–2004, found that ethnoarchaeological studies were cited 19 times per year on average and that most

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of these citations were for work with hunter-gatherers. Indeed, hunter-gatherer ethnoarchaeology has been frequently used to interpret archaeological data sets, such as regional survey data from the United States Great Lakes area in a 2005 issue of American Antiquity. Ethnoarchaeology often contributes to archaeology in the same way that other anthropological and social studies do, by enriching our understanding of culture and adaptation and human variation. Archaeologists who undertake ethnoarchaeology witness connections between artifacts and people and a whole lot more, and often return with a fundamentally different perspective on the study of human behavior, through archaeology or otherwise. These contributions are hard to quantify. There are other more tangible, if more prosaic, applications of ethnoarchaeological data. One area of influence is artifact analysis and interpretation. As pointed out by Donald Grayson and Laurence Bartram, Binford’s analysis of ethnoarchaeological fauna influenced many analyses of archaeological faunal collections. In spite of the apparent dominance of huntergatherer archaeology, ceramic ethnoarchaeology has also affected archaeological ceramic research. For example, the ethnoarchaeologist Dean Arnold once collaborated with two leading researchers in the chemical characterization of artifacts, Hector Neff and Ronald Bishop, to examine what ceramic sourcing really means in a social and behavioral context. Mark Varien and Barbara Mills used cross-cultural ethnoarchaeological data on ceramic use life to evaluate archaeological ceramic discard rates at one site in the United States Southwest. Miram Stark, who received her PhD from the University of Arizona, influenced many of her archaeological colleagues with her depiction of village-level ceramic specialization from the Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project (which is one reason why Kalinga and other ethnoarchaeological data are frequently considered in the reconstruction of ceramic exchange networks in central and southern Arizona). Spatial patterning has also received a lot of attention. Papers in the edited volume The Interpretation of Archaeological Spatial Patterning include both ethnoarchaeological studies and applications of ethnoarchaeological findings to particular archaeological sites. Susan Kent’s Analyzing Activity Areas is an important work that illustrates the utility of moving back and forth between ethnoarchaeological and archaeological perspectives. Kent planned to directly apply her ethnoarchaeological research presented in the first half to archaeological sites in the second half, but this application proved difficult given differences in the types of data collected. The attempt nonetheless generated many useful insights,

including a ground-breaking discussion of crosscultural differences in the use of space. Her later article ‘The archaeological visibility of storage: delineating storage from trash areas’ is a strong application of her ethnoarchaeological work in Botswana to archaeological sites in the United States Southwest.

Ethnoarchaeological Collections So far there has been a discussion on the collection and use of data rather than objects. The physical objects, as examples of the material culture, are another important line of evidence. Ethnographic collections have been used by archaeologists to better understand nonindustrial material culture, and some have been directly compared to archaeological collections or analyzed using similar methods. Despite their utility, these are not the collections the archaeologists themselves would have made given the opportunity. This is, at least in part, because museums and wealthy individuals do not choose items that represent the bulk of the archaeological record. For example, collectors and the viewing public generally prefer painted vessels in good condition. Plain cooking vessels are underrepresented and heavily used vessels are rarely included, although fragments of such vessels dominate many archaeological collections. Ethnoarchaeologists may collect objects as well as data with the needs of archaeologists in mind. Such collections may allow for more detailed artifact analysis similar to that undertaken for archaeological objects, and permit reanalysis and use as training material by other researchers who could not visit the field site. Collections both enhance the original study and help other archaeologists to learn and benefit from ethnoarchaeological work. For example, Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project researchers collected both painted water jars and plain cooking vessels, now curated at the Arizona State Museum. These collections were an integral part of research by Skibo and Kobayashi on cooking vessel use. During his Nunamiut research, Binford collected faunal bone from both recently butchered animals and older Nunamiut sites. These materials are stored at the Museum of New Mexico and also at the University of Arizona, where Mary Stiner is directing additional analyses.

Example: The Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project Some of the issues raised above are revisited through one example from the Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project (KEP). This project is directed by William Longacre at the University of Arizona, who began

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studying contemporary potters in 1973. His choice of potters in Kalinga Province, the Philippines, was influenced heavily by a colleague, Edward Dozier, whose ethnographic fieldwork in the region indicated that ceramic vessels were still made and used within Kalinga households. Over the past 30 years, Longacre’s initial research focus on pottery decoration has expanded into broader investigations of household ceramic manufacture, use, and exchange. Longacre continued to collect data himself for decades and directed one large field season during the 1987–88 academic year. Many of his former students, including Michael Graves, James Skibo, and Miriam Stark, have also published their work with this project. The KEP is based in the Pasil Municipality along the Pasil River Valley in northern Luzon, the Philippines. The study area has two things in common with many other ethnoarchaeological field locations. First, most people in Pasil are farmers who grow almost all of their food and have limited access to cash. Second, the area is relatively inaccessible due to the local topography. The Pasil villages are located on mountain slopes (Figure 1), and unpaved roads reach some but not all of them. Electricity is only

available from gasoline-powered generators; it is used primarily for powering lights at night, and even then not consistently. Fewer commercial goods reach these communities because they are difficult to transport and also difficult to afford. Ceramic cooking vessels stay in use longer in these settings, perhaps in part because they are locally available and cheaper than the metal vessels that have replaced them in most of the world (Figure 2). The example used here is drawn from the 2001 field season in Dalupa (Figure 3), a community of 380 people in 71 households. As a prehistoric ceramic analyst, the author was especially interested in ceramics from middens, or trash dumps, because archaeologists recover large samples of ceramics from these contexts. Many more vessels are broken and discarded into middens than are left in other contexts, such as within houses during abandonment. During our fieldwork, we tracked the movement of discarded vessels into middens to link refuse deposits with their source areas, such as households or groups of households, and to see how well midden assemblages represented what was thrown away. Households are the focus of much anthropological and archaeological inquiry. Relying on observed ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological patterns, archaeologists have tried to associate attributes of household ceramic assemblages or social groups with household size and composition, wealth or status, social obligations, and diet, cuisine, and food preparation techniques. To draw these connections, however, they need to isolate the ceramics from different households or groups of households. Our goal was to see whether, using the right approaches, they could include midden ceramics in such studies. Methods

Figure 1 View from Dalupa across the Pasil River Valley towards two nearby communities.

The choice of methods is crucial in an ethnoarchaeological study, particularly if the authors claim to find a broader pattern that applies to other situations. Archaeologists need to have confidence in the results before using them in archaeological interpretation, and should ask some pointed questions. How exactly did the ethnoarchaeologists document their patterns? How much variation might be expected from these patterns? Could any of the data sources be biased, and how and why? The best way to show the crosscultural applicability of a pattern is often to look at as many cases as possible, but authors can at least increase confidence in their particular case through careful data collection. David and Kramer provide an excellent overview of fieldwork methods and concerns unique to ethnoarchaeology. KEP fieldwork here is offered as one concrete example of ethnoarchaeological methods.

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Figure 2 Local potters in Dalupa apply resin to ceramic pots after firing to waterproof them.

Figure 3 View down the central thoroughfare (cement sidewalk) of Dalupa. Because of Dalupa’s location on the side of a mountain, houses sit on residential terraces with stone walls like the one visible in the foreground.

Matthew Hill and Margaret E. Beck spent five months living in Dalupa and conducting fieldwork. They relied partially on interviews with Dalupa residents and partially on their independent observations of behavior and physical deposits, collecting data from household ceramic inventories, weekly questionnaires, and physical investigations of middens and artifacts. The interviews were conducted in English with the help of four local assistants, who translated as necessary. While use of English is widespread in the region, the dominant language is Kalinga. Interviews are a relatively quick way to get information on a variety of topics, and may be the only way to get some kinds of data. Some responses may be inaccurate or misleading, however, as informants may not

remember events in sufficient detail or may adjust answers in attempts to please interviewers or avoid embarrassment. We attempted to reduce informant error by interviewing households once a week and collecting data over the entire field season, asking informants only to remember very recent events. We also reviewed questionnaire data for internal consistency and field-checked data whenever possible. Rosemary Firth describes and illustrates well the value of crosschecking interview data in Housekeeping Among Malay Peasants. We visited each house at the beginning of fieldwork to record all of the ceramic vessels owned by each family. Toward the end of the field season, we visited everyone again and re-inventoried their ceramic

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vessels. We compared the totals and then asked the family about any discrepancies, including vessels they may have broken or discarded. One of our local assistants visited every family once a week to ask about cooking vessel use, general household discard, and ceramic breakage and discard. First, people were asked what their family had cooked the previous day and which pots they used to cook in. They were also asked what they threw away the previous day, and where they put it. Finally, they were asked if they had broken or otherwise damaged any ceramic vessels during the week, and what they did with the vessels afterward. Their reports of damage from weekly interviews should have been consistent with the final ceramic inventories, and families were asked about any discrepancies during the final vessel inventories. We mapped the entire village, including any visible accumulations of trash. Each accumulation got an arbitrary number. Every week we reviewed the questionnaire data and matched the reported discard locations to our mapped trash piles, checking for new trash piles as needed. In this way we estimated how many households, and which households, threw trash into a particular midden. Once the middens were defined, we documented them in more detail. We mapped them in plan view (Figure 4), cored them along a center line to determine depth, and recorded the items present on the surface in sample units. We also excavated test units in two active middens. We collected 3001 midden sherds, including surface sherds from 17 active middens and excavated sherds from two middens.

Results: Trash and Trash Accumulation

Most trash within the Dalupa residential area is produced by household activities. Household trash generally consists of household items and waste from routine activities, such as meal preparation and personal hygiene. It is usually temporarily collected in a container within the house, such as a large metal can, that is periodically carried outside and emptied. Ceramic vessels are thrown away close to where they were broken, in most (79%) cases within 10 m. Ceramic vessels broken within houses were treated like other household trash, although as relatively large objects, they might be thrown away immediately rather than placed in the trash can. One major difference in household trash between Dalupa and communities in the United States is that leftover food is almost never thrown away. It is instead shared with other people or given to domestic animals, and does not find its way into middens. Some inedible (to humans) by-products of food processing, such as pea pods, are thrown away. Discarded items do not accumulate randomly all over the village. The piles of trash often smell, attract insects and scavenging animals, and occupy space that could be used for other activities. Residents therefore come to some informal agreement about where trash may accumulate, and it becomes concentrated in certain locations as middens, known as aggil in the Kalinga language. In Dalupa and in other ethnoarchaeological settings, middens tend to appear in or along streams or washes, around the edges of house lots, and off the sides of hills or terraces.

Figure 4 This midden below a terrace wall was photographed just before mapping. (The line through the midden center is a measuring tape.) Note the spectators along the wall. Especially in the beginning of the field season, most of our activities gathered a crowd.

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There were 32 active middens in Dalupa during our fieldwork, covering about 10% of the residential area. Dalupa households use between one and three middens for disposal of their daily household waste, although they tend to concentrate their refuse in one midden closest to their house. Some middens are used by a particular house and others are shared by multiple households. We grouped middens into three categories based on household contributions: household (used by only one household), local (used by two to five households), and communal (used by six or more households). Household and local midden users transported their refuse relatively short distances, averaging 6 and 11 m, respectively, because these middens were either within or adjacent to their house lots. The communal middens shared by many more families tended to be farther away from their houses, and communal midden users transported their trash nearly 35 m from their households on average. People apparently prefer to put a household midden close by, within their own house lot, when they have the space to do so. Household middens are found among the Maya households in the Coxoh Project area and in Philip Arnold’s sample of Mexican households in the Sierra de los Tuxtlas, Veracruz. The average house lot size in the Veracruz sample is 282 m2. In Dalupa, where house lots average only 156 m2, residents are often forced to share middens with their neighbors. Middens in Dalupa are constantly disturbed even while they are forming. Younger children have not yet been fully socialized to avoid the trash, and often play in middens and collect materials from them.

Figure 5 Animals rummage through a Dalupa midden for food.

Domestic animals such as pigs, dogs, and chickens scavenge for food and also enter the middens to consume rice chaff, banana peels, and other discarded organic materials (Figure 5). Because middens are often very close to living and working areas, they received significant foot traffic in some areas and might be shifted or disturbed by outside cleaning activities. For example, neighbors occasionally moved small middens away from their house if the smell or waste bothered them; larger middens near public spaces, such as the basketball court or elementary school, were pushed back or burned, or both, to clean up the area before intra- or intercommunity events (Figure 6). The movement, cleaning, and trampling of middens reduces many items to plastic, metal, glass, fabric, and ceramic scraps. Faunal bone fragments only appear occasionally; in Dalupa as elsewhere, dogs destroy most of the bone produced by butchery and meat consumption. We argue that the basic rules of trash disposal and midden placement might apply in other settings, allowing archaeologists to link middens to the living and working areas where trash was produced. It would be easier to connect household and local middens with their sources, because they receive trash from fewer households. Those households are immediately adjacent to the midden and can be identified. Household and local middens are visibly different from communal middens, at least in Dalupa, in their smaller size and placement around or between houses rather than around public activity areas. To apply our patterns, archaeologists would need to determine which structures in their site are habitation structures and which structures are contemporaneous.

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Figure 6 The midden adjacent to the elementary school (the building to the right) is burned before the start of fall classes.

We also conclude that middens are good contexts for sampling household ceramic assemblages. Most (73%) discarded vessels went to middens, according to the weekly interviews, although some vessels were left outside the residential area or as isolated artifacts within the village. Both the weekly interviews and analysis of the midden ceramics suggest that the distribution of vessel types in middens is similar to the overall distribution of discarded vessel types. Discussion In the absence of ethnoarchaeology, data on this topic may never have been collected. Other anthropologists do not seem to want such detailed information about trash and trash dumps, and the limited comparative data available were collected by other ethnoarchaeologists. We also reaped the benefits of a long-term ethnoarchaeological project, as our work was greatly improved by the availability of previous KEP vessel collections and data. For example, we were able to compare the frequency of vessel breakage and rates of ceramic use between the 1987–88 and the 2001 field seasons. Unfortunately, from the perspective of ceramic ethnoarchaeology, we found that ceramic use and ownership significantly declined over this 13-year period. Ethnoarchaeological fieldwork is similar to other ethnographic research in some ways, but methods reflect (or should reflect) the emphasis on material culture and the need for data comparable to archaeological data. Even so, there are often fundamental differences in the units of observation between ethnoarchaeology and archaeology, as noted by researchers who have worked in both settings, such as James Skibo and Philip Arnold. Moving back and forth between ethnoarchaeological and archaeological

perspectives should enhance both kinds of research. We attempted to collect data as comparable to archaeological data as possible, having previously worked as archaeologists and attempted to apply ethnoarchaeological findings to our archaeological data. Only our archaeological audience can judge whether we were successful in our own data collection strategies. Our goal was to generalize about waste disposal in a village setting, and we suggest the observed patterns should apply in other villages (prehistoric or otherwise) similar to our ethnoarchaeological case. If they do, then midden deposits can be used to compare the material culture between households or groups of households. Archaeologists interested in household archaeology currently rely on material from house floors, which produce much smaller samples. We believe, as do other archaeologists influenced by the New Archaeology, that our generalizations would be refined and strengthened by additional cross-cultural comparisons.

Conclusion Archaeologists often want data from living groups that they can apply, more or less directly, toward their interpretations of the archaeological record. These are not easy to come by for several reasons. First, everyone really wants ethnoarchaeological data collected by archaeologists with similar theoretical perspectives and research interests to his or her own. This is obviously impossible; despite a considerable increase in ethnoarchaeological studies, they still make up a small portion of archaeological research, and opportunities to study nonindustrial technologies and lifeways are rapidly vanishing. Although ethnoarchaeologists attempt to serve the needs of archaeology, diversity

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within the discipline ensures that not all archaeologists will get what they want. Second, as noted earlier, both cultural and natural formation processes affect material patterning, and not all of these are documented in ethnoarchaeological studies. Archaeological inference depends upon numerous correlates or principles from multiple avenues of research, and ethnoarchaeology alone is unlikely to provide a scene that one could also observe in the archaeological record. As John Yellen observed, ethnoarchaeologists often describe the results of single events but archaeological assemblages result from multiple events. The archaeologists hoping for, in James Skibo’s words, ‘‘some tidy, tight, little correlate that can be applied to their massive pile of sherds now spilling onto the lab floor’’ will be disappointed by ethnoarchaeology, because ethnoarchaeological findings ‘‘must first be put into models that then can be applied to the archaeological record’’. See also: Behavioral Archaeology; Experimental Ar-

chaeology; Interpretive Models, Development of;

Ethnographic Analogy

Middle Range Approaches; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Sites: Formation Processes.

Further Reading Beck ME (2006) Midden ceramic assemblage formation: An ethnoarchaeological case study from Kalinga, the Philippines. American Antiquity 71: 27–51. Binford LR (1978) Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology. New York: Academic Press. David N and Kramer C (2001) Ethnoarchaeology in Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hayden B and Cannon A (1984) The Structure of Material Systems: Ethnoarchaeology in the Maya Highlands. SAA Papers 3. Washington, DC: Society for American Archaeology. Kramer C (1979) Ethnoarchaeology: Implications of Ethnography for Archaeology. New York: Columbia University Press. Longacre WA (ed.) (1991) Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Longacre WA and Skibo JM (eds.) (1994) Kalinga Ethnoarchaeology: Expanding Archaeological Method and Theory. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Yellen JE (1977) Archaeological Approaches to the Present: Models for Reconstructing the Past. New York: Academic Press.

See: Middle Range Approaches.

ETHNOHISTORY Joel W Palka, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary analogy This concept relates to the inferences archaeologists make regarding the reconstruction of past behavior based on information from ethnography, ethnohistory, ethnoarchaeology, or comparative studies. annales An influential movement in historical research that seeks to reconstruct the complete history of a wide range of human activities and social life that vary over short to long periods through a multivariate data set, such as documents, oral history, material culture, geographical information, economics, archaeology, and social theory. archive Collection of documents in government offices, churches, libraries, museums, town halls, and private holdings studied by ethnohistorians.

contact studies This specialty involves historical and archaeological research on the interaction between colonial peoples and indigenous societies, and examines how culture contact resulted in transformations in native cultures. direct historical approach Relies on ethnographic and historical evidence to correlate archaeological sites and artifacts with known cultures and combines the data to reconstruct past societies and specific human behavior. emic A term that describes a view from within a society or an insider’s perspective on a culture that is obtained through native voice, symbolism, material creations, or actions. ethnography The description of contemporary human societies and culture that combine social analysis, comparative theory, and occasionally historical and archaeological contexts (also cultural and social anthropology or ethnology). ethnohistory This field of inquiry, methodology, or discipline examines past human behavior and elements of a society, such as demography, social change, and material culture, and how they were maintained or transformed through time by using written records and oral accounts.

1168 ETHNOHISTORY longue dure´e This term refers to periods of little or slow change in a society, or predictable cycles or repetitions of cultural elements over an extended period, that are integrated with large-scale environmental or material factors. In archaeology circles, this concept often signifies the long duration of cultural continuities. middle-range theory This concept covers the different methods and ways that archaeologists reconstruct past human behavior from interpretations of material remains in the archaeological record. upstreaming Refers to the use of ethnographic or ethnohistoric data from modern cultures to critique reconstructions of or directly interpret past behaviors and cultures in the archaeological and/or historical records (the reverse is referred to as ‘downstreaming’).

This article covers the usage and importance of ethnohistory in archaeology. Ethnohistory is a multidisciplinary field of study. The discipline typically focuses on past indigenous societies and how they changed following contact with expanding Western states in the Colonial and Post-Colonial Periods (usually around 1500–1900). Ethnohistory frequently involves the study of documents and/or oral histories related to indigenous lifeways, language, religious beliefs, economic organization, material culture, and how they were transformed following encounters with Europeans. Ethnohistory has been described in the past as the study of identities, locations, contacts, movements, numbers, and cultural activities of indigenous peoples from written records. Essentially, this field can be portrayed as the ethnography of past cultures through historic sources, either written by colonists (usually European) or indigenous peoples following colonization, and it involves the interpretation of social behaviors and cultural transformations. Many archaeologists do ethnohistorical research, yet in most cases they rely on published information on primary sources or studies carried out on them by ethnohistorians or historians. In turn, ethnohistorians undertake or participate in archaeological projects as archival researchers and usually not as excavators. However, that is changing today since some archaeologists also retrieve data from archives, explorers’ accounts, and oral histories, and ethnohistorians are more interested in first-hand archaeological findings. While archaeology and history can be used separately for studies of the past or culture change, this essay concentrates on the use of ethnohistory and archaeology together in research projects to learn more about ancient societies. Therefore, as it can be imagined, the direct utilization of both fields of inquiry and data sets is a worthwhile but difficult task. It is easy for an anthropologist to incorporate historical information in a discussion of culture change, yet it requires more

effort to gather original archaeological and historical data as well. Although ethnohistory was influential with historians and social anthropologists during its genesis, the relationship between and interconnectedness of ethnohistory and archaeology continues to expand. This relationship fits well within the Annales school of historical scholarship, for instance, where different but interrelated data sets and perspectives help achieve a more complete analysis of the past. The Annales approach is also concerned with the differing pace of historical events over the short and long terms. In other words, specific political events can occur in short periods in a society whereas ethnic interaction and change can take place over centuries. Interestingly, the importance of ethnohistory in archaeology is not usually explained in archaeology textbooks, yet many archaeologists incorporate ethnohistoric research findings or original historic data in their studies. However, textbook authors who work in Middle America usually discuss the utility of ethnohistory and this is perhaps due to the extensive archives and historical research in this culture area. Ethnoarchaeology and historical archaeology, which are related disciplines, generally receive more treatises than ethnohistory in textbooks and discussions of archaeological inquiry. They differ from ethnohistory, however, in that ethnoarchaeology is concerned with ethnographic studies of human societies and their material culture and how they help archaeologists create behavioral analogies with the past. Sometimes there is an ethnohistorical component in ethnoarchaeology, but it mainly deals with the ethnographic present. At the same time historical archaeology is traditionally viewed as the study of Europeans and their settlements and society from the Colonial Period to the twentieth century with a particular emphasis on the nineteenth century (as seen in the article content in the flagship journals in this discipline; besides the serial Ethnohistory, the Annual Review of Anthropology , American Antiquity, and the Journal of Field Archaeology are good places to begin researching case studies and theoretical approaches to ethnohistory in archaeology). However, there is actually much overlap between historical archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and ethnohistory, and their uses in archaeology with regard to methodologies, aims and goals, creation of analogies, contributions, and their connections to history.

Ethnohistory This type of research is typically conducted by historians, ethnologists, linguists, and archaeologists.

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Ethnohistory can be claimed as a subdiscipline or methodology in either anthropology or history, and the debate continues regarding which field it should be placed in. Despite the fact that it is a common scholarly pursuit and has its own widely-read journal, very rarely does ethnohistory have its own academic department or program within a university. Additionally, ethnohistorians can be found in different university departments, such as anthropology, linguistics, and history, or organizations (libraries, museums, cultural centers, etc.). Ethnohistory as a research tool and subdiscipline largely grew out of studies of colonialism and culture contact which focused on indigenous culture change starting around the mid-twentieth century. With this in mind, the discipline has its roots and subsequent developments in research in the New World: the clash of cultures and the generation of archives in North, Central, and South America from the Colonial Period onward provided the impetus for the creation of ethnohistory as a discipline or research methodology. One area of usefulness of ethnohistory in archaeology is its ability to help bridge time gaps. It is advantageous for substantiating evidence from the ethnographic present, which archaeologists rely upon for their analogies and interpretations of past human behaviors, in order to reconstruct the archaeological past. In fact, there is actually an inherent danger in applying analogies from the ethnographic present to reconstruct human lifeways in the deep past due to considerable culture change over time. However, if the behaviors are represented in the historic record which is closer to archaeological periods, then errors relating to the misapplication of ethnographic data to ancient times are minimalized. For our purposes here, the positive uses (and not abuses in the field, such as taking all documents at face value for truthful past cultural reconstructions) of ethnohistory in archaeology are stressed. Much of the discussion and bibliographic sources here revolve around New World archaeology, especially Mesoamerica and the Caribbean, where the author has research expertise and where impressive amounts of ethnohistory in archaeology have taken place. Certainly, ethnohistory is used in archaeology in other parts of the world where European or indigenous documents and oral histories are available, such as Africa, China, and the Pacific, but this combination is popular in the Americas because of the abundance of historic sources and investigators. In Africa and the Pacific, for example, Portuguese and English writings along with native oral histories are accessed by archaeologists. Indigenous histories are important for excavators in China and India on the other hand.

In the archaeology of Europe, pre-colonial (Rome and Norway, for instance) and colonial-era (United Kingdom and Spain) sources are utilized in archaeology. In true ethnohistorical form, I will devote space here for an extensive list of sources that can be easily accessed by the reader to peruse ethnohistorical and archaeological research. In these cultural and geographical regions, ethnohistorical information is often used to singularly help archaeologists reconstruct specific aspects of the past societies that they are interested in. On the other hand, some ethnohistory is more comprehensive in nature or is focused on many social and historic issues regarding a past society. Political structure and ethnic borders in an ancient civilization, such as Maya and Aztec, for instance, are examined in light of what Europeans described for similar social conditions in these societies during the contact period or time of colonization. Stone tool manufacture and how lithics were used in the distant past are also similarly reconstructed with ethnohistoric accounts of a particular culture, including the historic Maya, Aztecs, and Inuit. Importantly, archaeology fills in gaps in the historical record (see Time and History, Divisions). At times we know of certain behaviors and material possessions present in a past society through ethnohistory, but we may lack a more complete understanding of the native culture and social change. For example, through ethnohistory the settlement patterns of a certain ethnic group may be clearly described. But we may not have historic records of their subsistence practices and how they were transformed after interaction with foreigners. For example, we may comprehend nineteenth-century Yucatec Maya subsistence from accounts of explorers, but more information from archaeology may be desired regarding their burial practices and household economies if they are not historically evident. Conversely, only through ethnohistorical data and analysis are archaeologists able to examine research topics such as ethnogenesis, native resistance to colonial rule, social organization, religion, cultural survivals, and late pre-contact societies. Ethnohistory also lends significant insights on issues that currently are, and will continue to be, scrutinized, including human agency, gender, ritual, microeconomics, and cultural diversity. It also provides the time depth that is the backbone in archaeological research so that we may witness culture change or continuity and how and why they occurred over a long period. The documentary record varies depending on the region, authorship, preservation, period in which they were created, and intended audience. Some documents cover population figures, household sizes and compositions, and

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tribute or tax lists. Other archival sources contain long discussions of native religion, social organization, and intellectual life. Additional written sources contribute maps, descriptions or drawings of material culture, and native language dictionaries, to name a few types of ethnohistorical information. It is easy to see why ethnohistory is of great interest to archaeologists. Written records provide information on human behavior, culture change and continuity, and material culture that can be examined in the archaeological record. Often the time depth of the documents is helpful for viewing diachronic culture change which is a hallmark advantage of archaeological research.

Ethnohistory and Archaeology Among the earliest mentioning of ‘ethnohistory’ is in the archaeology literature at the beginning of the twentieth century. Here the term refers to a method to reconstruct past cultures by extracting information from historical documents. Surely many archaeologists in different settings did, and still do, consult historical sources to better interpret archaeological data and generate more convincing analyses of archaeological cultures. It is important to note here that studies of Colonial Period sources and the histories of indigenous people were an integral part of the development of archaeology in many Latin American countries, such as Mexico where research on the Pre-Columbian past was bolstered by written descriptions of the Aztecs and Maya. In Mexico and Guatemala, for instance, ethnohistory, archaeology, and ethnography come together for the study of national history, heritage, and contemporary society. While it may be tempting to suggest that the origins of ethnohistory as a field of study was within archaeology in the Americas, it in fact was pursued simultaneously by historians, archaeologists, linguists, and anthropologists, who put their research into further historic light. A perusal of the journal Ethnohistory demonstrates the multidisciplinary origins of this field. The volumes from the first few years of this journal contained articles by historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists who covered their field of study and its importance for ethnohistory, and vice versa. Toward the end of the twentieth century, however, more historians and fewer anthropologists and archaeologists wrote for the journal. Comparatively little archaeology is found there today and when archaeologists publish in the journal they treat the historic record and its implications for archaeology, but they often do not include archaeological data. The plural disciplinary nature of ethnohistoric research continues to the present, although some researchers point out that many ethnographies would

benefit from ethnohistory. Similar suggestions or criticisms have not been leveled at archaeologists as a whole, except for colleagues who are seen as ‘ahistorical’ or who lack historical analogies or comparative data in their work. Their research is often shallow in time depth and frequently needs historical information for stronger behavioral reconstructions. These archaeologists have also ignored historic processes of culture change since they concentrate on single periods and advocate for cross-cultural behavioral ‘laws’. Or they have merely not included an ethnohistoric component to their research even if written sources are available. From the origins of archaeology to recent intellectual shifts in archaeological thought, ethnohistory has played a key role in the reconstruction of past societies. Although the genesis and growth of ethnohistory itself are rooted in culture contact and culture change studies in American archaeology, history is also strongly wedded to classical archaeology in Europe, as with the study of Greece and Rome, and European and US historical archaeology, such as excavations at Monticello in the eastern US and in nineteenth century Irish farmsteads. It was also instrumental in the development of the global cultural-historical approach in archaeology during the first half of the twentieth century. Historical knowledge was central to culture-historical archaeology at this time since the study of material culture, ethnicity, and their historical connections to particular societies were the main goals of archaeological research. Thus, archaeologists sought to identify the archaeological remains of known societies, like the Hopi and Navajo people of the Southwest US. Nationalism and progress in expanding nation states around the world were also frequent topics touched upon in the cultural–historical approach, as in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, and the study of documents was necessary to learn more about past ethnic groups and their archaeological sites within the boundaries of these states. Hence, the understanding of the political extension of and material culture of the Aztecs of Mexico depended on the joint employment of ethnohistory and archaeology (see Political Complexity, Rise of). Ethnohistory was not viewed as a vital enterprise within the Processual approach or the New Archaeology which was generally concerned with comparative cross-cultural studies in understanding the past. Although culture change over time and ethnographic analogies are part of the processual archaeology (see Processual Archaeology), the use of history was minimized, however, since it was seen as culturespecific, non-recurring, and noncomparative in nature. Ethnohistory nonetheless is deemed useful in postprocessual or contextual archaeology (see Postprocessual Archaeology). In this archaeological paradigm it is

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recognized that long-term cultural continuities may exist and can be manifested in archaeological, historical, and ethnographic contexts. It is also recognized here that meanings and functions of ancient material culture can be discerned by analyzing the historic past through documents of different periods. Furthermore, human actions and agency are often the focus of historical research and this perspective can help explain archaeological patterns and the artifactual evidence. For instance, the complex symbolism and women’s labor in ancient Maya civilization can be viewed in historical accounts of Maya textile weaving. This information has been applied to the interpretation of classic Maya elites and textile production as seen on stone monuments and archaeological ceramics. Historic meanings and cultural transformations are targeted for understanding individual symbolic systems and art, particular social groups or economic classes, and specific human behavior and beliefs in postprocessual research. Again, what is termed ‘historical archaeology’ traditionally is thought of as the archaeology of Europeans during the Colonial and post-Independence Periods. Yet the concentration of ethnohistoric research, or the investigation of indigenous societies and culture change following colonization, can be placed within the rubric of historical archaeology. This is due to the fact that there are many documents related to indigenous cultures and not just Europeans or Africans. Conversely, ethnohistorians do cover Old World peoples in their research and not just indigenous cultures. Moreover, ethnohistory and historical archaeology both use documents and material culture for the examination of past cultures and lifeways. Thus, historical archaeology encompasses the historical and material analysis of the ‘modern world,’ whether it is European or not. The subdiscipline of historical archaeology (see Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline) is also attracting attention around the world and its practitioners incorporate historical information directly in their research more so than other archaeologists. Ethnohistory is gaining greater importance in archaeology at the present as a research tool or guide for conducting research on the ancient past. Archaeologists are continuously relying on ethnohistory to create analogies for reconstructing past behaviors from the material record (namely, using the so-called see middle-range theory), especially if there is a historical connection between the archaeological and documented cultures or if there are no ethnographic societies from which to draw analogies. In many academic departments or research programs around the world, especially in Europe, archaeology is closely aligned with history and researchers are

using both to investigate specific cultures or local ethnic groups and how they changed or remained the same over time. Even ethnohistorians are now employing archaeological studies and data in their research and publications. Ethnohistory is a uniting force in the study of culture: it brings prehistory, history, and ethnography together in complex and necessary ways. As one scholar put it: the wall between history and archaeology and its practitioners is tumbling down.

The Direct Ethnohistorical Approach The anthropologist Julian Steward coined the concept of the ‘direct historical approach’ and called for its practice to unite archaeology and anthropology over 50 years ago (although some researchers in North America, Mexico, and Europe were linking past societies with present ones much earlier). Basically, this approach implies that the reconstruction of past societies represented in the archaeological record can be facilitated through ethnographically observed behavior in modern cultures. The scholar must work from the known to the unknown, taking cultural elements back in time to their archaeological beginnings to examine prehistoric human behavior. This is done preferably with identifiable peoples and cultures in the past to make these links with their historic and ethnographic descendants. The approach of ‘upstreaming’, or starting with the ethnographic and reaching to ancient times is more common than the opposing ‘downstreaming’, but the latter is appearing more and more in the literature. Importantly, in this view, more secure connections are made between a historical-ethnographic group and its archaeological antecedents for convincing reconstructions of the past. Importantly, solid chronologies and identifications of past and present cultures are necessary for the direct historical approach to work. A historical connection has to be demonstrated for the application of present conditions to the past to be believable. This connection is frequently impossible to make, however. Subsequently, simple or only a few analogies can be attempted between cultures that occupied the same geographic, had a similar economy, or were organized under like political structures. The continuity of behaviors between the past and present also has to be assumed, or, better yet, demonstrated. In the end, archaeologists are just creating analogies and comparisons from the present to the past, and some are more convincing than others with regard to the quality of the data and interpretations. The majority of archaeological research that utilizes ethnohistory involves such a direct historical approach between related past and present people:

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cultural information, reconstructions of past behaviors, and interpretations of historic societies taken from the written record are applied to their archaeological counterparts. The importance of ethnohistory in creating analogies or directly reconstructing archaeological cultures is obvious in Mesoamerica (see Americas, Central: Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica). In this region, archaeologists have access to a vast number of colonizer accounts, documents written by indigenous people, church and government records, early ethnographies, and oral histories to inform them about archaeological cultures. For instance, ancient Aztec settlement patterns can be studied in conjunction with conquistador descriptions. Aztec religious rituals and material culture are better understood through priests’ records. Their past economic life, such as craft production and trade, can be illuminated by Aztec or Spanish tribute lists. Some major historical sources of Mesoamerica, extensively mined by a large number of archaeologists for their rich indigenous cultural information, include the Florentine Codex, an extensive treatise of Mexican–Aztec culture of central Mexico compiled by the Friar Bernadino de Sahagun with the aid of indigenous informants, the Relation of the Things of Yucatan, a description of Yucatec Maya culture and history mostly attributed to Friar Diego de Landa and his informants, and the Relation of Michoacan, which is a detailed recounting of the rise and fall of Purepecha or Tarascan society in west Mexico as told by natives. Aztec ritual artifact deposits in central Mexico have been correlated with historically described New Fire ceremonies in Sahagun’s manuscript, Classic Maya hieroglyphs and calendar chronologies from stone monuments are now well comprehended through Landa’s writings, and Tarascan burial practices and beliefs have been reconstructed by using the Relation of Michoacan. Texts created by the Maya themselves include the Popol Vuh, the Annals of the Cachiquels, and the Chilam Balam manuscripts.

Ethnohistorical Archaeology In most instances, archaeologists turn to the historical record to apply cultural data to prehistoric conditions as described above generally after the excavations and lab work have begun. Nonetheless, some archaeological research has been driven by initial or coeval groundwork in ethnohistory, and this approach is becoming more common. Either archaeologists conduct preliminary searches in archives related to the problems and geographical area at hand, or he/she carries out archaeological research on historic indigenous cultures that supplements what is known from

the written record. This type of interdisciplinary ‘ethnohistorical archaeology’ is valuable since the written and material records complement one another aptly. Furthermore, the archaeological evidence provides additional windows or unique views regarding past cultures that are not available from written texts. In this category of investigations, archaeological research focusing on the historic period, or to the time of European colonizers across the globe, is dominant. Furthermore, investigators study both indigenous and Old World societies and how they interacted in the contact period. The information and interpretations from the documentary sources and archaeology are interwoven into a seamless whole since the two data sets provide information that one or the other disciplines may not have alone. Also, there are often fewer temporal and cultural gaps between the historical and archaeological peoples and periods (vs ethnographic and ancient cultures), and one body of data directly informs the other. For instance, studies of early Colonial Period Taino settlements, demography, and political organization in the Caribbean are balanced with Spanish descriptions of native villages, populations, and sociopolitical structure on the one hand and archaeological data on settlement patterns, numbers and sizes of houses, and distribution of status goods within Taino sites on the other. Likewise, the functions of Taino architecture and artifacts have been inferred from information in historic descriptions. To summarize, the combination of ethnohistory and archaeology in academic research generally follows a few main goals, although they can be combined into a larger one as well: (1) the two subdisciplines and associated data sets are utilized to acquire additional insights on a past society during a specific period, (2) ethnohistory is used in conjunction with archaeology to reconstruct past societies over a long period of time stretching from recent times to the distant past or vice versa, or (3) the historical and archaeological data are combined to provide insights and reconstructions of past societies that normally would not be possible with one of the disciplines alone. This approach allows archaeologists to work with diachronic culture change over an extensive period in a geographical or culture area and allows for a focus on particular social issues; these ends are normally not possible with archaeological or historical data by itself. For example, at the turn of the twentieth century, Jesse Walter Fewkes obtained archaeological, historical, and ethnographic data to reconstruct Taino society, the function of indigenous material culture, and outline social changes from precontact to modern times in the Caribbean. He was able to reconstruct

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the functions of artifacts, such as stone implements and pottery, and discuss them with regard to Taino religion and economics with the diverse data set. Additionally, researchers in Amazonia and Mesoamerica have explored culture continuities and change over thousands of years with ethnohistory and archaeology. In these cases involving the longue dure´e, topics such as symbolism in art, specific subsistence strategies, human agency, and reasons for particular transformations in social organization are only visible through a compound historical and archaeological lens. A useful outgrowth of ethnohistorical archaeology is material culture studies in the contact era. Scholars simultaneously conduct archaeological and ethnohistorical research to catalog, interpret functions of, scrutinize changes in, and dissect the social relevance of artifacts for past peoples and cultures. Popular avenues of research in this vein include the production and distribution of stone tools and ceramics, which were widely used by indigenous groups from the Colonial Period up to the present, because of their cultural importance, availability, and durability. These two classes of artifacts are also resilient in the ground and are studied by most archaeologists. Publications of Colonial Period and post-Colonial artifacts and their importance for examining time frames, ethnicity, economic interaction, religious symbolism, social relations, and identity are clear products of the archaeology–ethnohistory interface. In this manner, the production and consumption of stone tools and their relationship to social rank in post-contact Hawaii, California missions, and Australia are well known.

Ethnohistory in Archaeology at Present This final discussion visits recent uses and considerations of ethnohistory in archaeology. The general trends in ethnohistory and archaeology over the last few decades will be outlined along with some predictions for the future based on current thoughts and practices in the field. At the present we are witnessing a surge in the number of research projects and publications in archaeology that have a substantial ethnohistorical component. Archaeologists continue to turn to ethnohistory for direct historical analogies to reconstruct past cultures. To give one example, the religious symbolism and supernatural worlds of Native Americans in the midwest and southeast regions of the US have been resurrected by comparisons of archaeological, historical, and ethnographic information from these culture areas. This ‘Archaeology of the Soul’ by Robert Hall is achieved through the interpretations of the historic, material, and ethnographic data sets from the select cultures.

Additionally, more archaeologists are utilizing ethnohistory and ethnographic information in their study areas to do historical anthropology. With these developments we now have diachronic perspectives on specific anthropological issues such as agrarian reform, ethnogenesis, long-term adaptations to colonialism, symbolism and religion, material culture and identity, and the role of trade in culture change. The results of these studies create a wide, long-term perspective with links between history, ethnography, and archaeology; no longer are historical, cultural, or archaeological treatments given at the beginning or the end of a book, for instance, they appear handin-hand throughout the narrative. In recreating the lives of farmers and communities during the nineteenth-century Caste War of Yucatan, for example, the complexities of the political and economic causes and effects of the conflict and what they mean for today’s inhabitants have come to light. Importantly, scholars are increasingly becoming more sophisticated in the practice of ethnohistory. For one, they are more critical of the historic sources since other documents and archaeology often provide missing or conflicting information. Oftentimes documents provide a narrow window on past indigenous societies, especially if they were produced by European elites in their lifetimes. Investigators then have persisted in seeking additional historical information to confirm their analyses and cultural reconstructions. Conversely, they do not take the historical information at face value and continue to seek additional corroborating documentary or archaeological information. For example, Spanish reconstructions of Mesoamerican religious practices, especially bloodletting and human sacrifice, can be ambiguous or exaggerated depending on the authors. Therefore, a careful checking and comparison with other historical and material evidence is warranted for a more accurate view of past behaviors. When available, ethnohistorians today have more frequently turned to native writings or documents directly concerning indigenous people, such as wills and court proceedings, to widen their perspectives and obtain an emic or native view of past societies. This approach is difficult since both native languages and Colonial Period writing have to be mastered. With these sources new data on specific topics in native records and lifeways including marriage practices, language, land tenure, community identity, and ritual become available. Research on indigenous Yucatec Mayan language testaments in Colonial Yucatan, for instance, revolutionized Maya ethnohistory and provided additional analogies for ancient Maya culture for archaeologists.

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Moreover, the growing number of indigenous scholars in ethnohistory, archaeology, and anthropology is producing fresh ideas and new perspectives on the past through ethnohistory and archaeology. An indigenous renaissance with regard to native views on history and nuanced interpretations of archaeological data is producing an emic view of culture and how it changes or remains the same over time. It can be argued that a closer, insider/emic view of native archaeological culture can be realized in general with information from historic accounts interpreted by their descendants. This insider’s view will be obscured if documentary evidence is lacking or if no indigenous people study available sources. Scholarly attention to oral history also continues to grow. Spoken and remembered information about the past is more commonly accepted alongside written and archaeological data at the present. The combination of the historical data sets and archaeology has led to the construction of ‘alternate histories’ which follow indigenous perspectives for indigenous ends. In this case, insights from native informants and local colleagues help generate new models on the social and political structures of past societies and how they should be presented to readers, for example. The study of new ethnicities following culture contact between Europeans, Africans, and indigenous peoples in Latin American history and archaeology and the use of the past to counter colonialist political positions are just two examples of this non-Western perspective. Finally, as indigenous people around the world continue to organize politically, they have stressed their desire to obtain a more complete picture of their past and of the social and economic conditions of their ancestors. This movement will cause a growth in historical anthropology where ethnography, cultural studies, archaeology, and history meet. Through the urging of native or first peoples, a new awakening of hybrid research in ethnohistory, archaeology, and ethnography carried out by people of different backgrounds and disciplines is upon us. This approach counters many studies in anthropology and archaeology today that are overly synchronic, ahistorical, and colonial. Thus, ethnohistory in archaeology and ethnography is here to stay because of its utility in

providing useful information and analogies with regards to the past and since it is important to indigenous societies who are preserving their culture and identity for the future. See also: Americas, Central: Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica; Ethnoarchaeology; Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline; Political Complexity, Rise of; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology.

Further Reading Alexander RT (2004) Yaxcaba´ and the Caste War of Yucata´n: An Archaeological Perspective. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Baerreis DA (1961) The ethnohistorical approach and archaeology. Ethnohistory 8(1): 49–77. Bauer BS (2004) Ancient Cuzco: Heartland of the Inca. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Deagan KA and Jose´ Marı´a C (2002) Columbus’s Outpost among the Tainos: Spain and America at La Isabella, pp. 1493–1498. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Galloway PK (2006) Practicing Ethnohistory: Mining Archives, Hearing Testimony, Constructing Narrative. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Gasco J, Smith GC, and Garcı´a PF (eds.) (1997) Approaches to the Historical Archaeology of Mexico, Central and South America. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at University of California, Los Angeles. Heckenberger M (2005) The Ecology of Power: Culture, Place, and Personhood in the Southern Amazon, A.D. 1000–2000. New York: Routledge Press. Kepecs S and Rani TA (eds.) (2005) Postclassic to Spanish-Era Transition in Mesoamerica: Archaeological Perspectives. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Knapp BA (1992) Archaeology, Annales, and Ethnohistory. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. Lightfoot KG (2005) Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants: The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the California Frontiers. Berkeley: University of California Press. Moreland J (2006) Archaeology and texts: Subservience or enlightenment. Annual Review of Anthropology 35(1): 135–151. Rogers JD and Samuel MW (eds.) (1993) Ethnohistory and Archaeology: Approaches to Postcontact Change in the Americas. New York: Plenum Press. Siegel PE (ed.) (2005) Ancient Borinquen: Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Native Puerto Rico. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. Smith ME (1996) The Aztecs. Oxford: Blackwell. Spores R (1984) The Mixtecs in Ancient and Colonial Times. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

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EUROPE Contents Neolithic Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

Neolithic Peter Bogucki, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary animal traction The use of animals for pulling vehicles such as wagons. beaker A decorated, handleless drinking vessel, characteristic of the Late Neolithic in northern, central, and western Europe. causewayed camp A Neolithic enclosure in northern or western Europe with one or more circuits of ditch interrupted by unexcavated zones that enable level passage across the ditch. cenotaph A monument or empty tomb honoring a dead person whose body is elsewhere. Copper Age/Eneolithic A term used to refer to the societies of southeastern and central Europe who had adopted copper metallurgy but which were otherwise Neolithic in character. Synonymous with Chalcolithic as used in the Near East. loess Fine-grained wind-deposited soil sought by early farmers due to its high fertility. long barrow An elongated mound of earth covering one of more burials; the term is specifically applied to non-megalithic long mounds built during the late fifth and early fourth milleniums BC in northern and western Europe. longhouse An elongated wooden post structure with a primarily residential function. magoula (pl. magoules) A Greek name for an artificial mound formed by successive layers of settlement debris. rondel A symmetrical round ditched enclosure in central Europe with one of more circuits of ditch and palisade. settlement cell A regional cluster of settlements separated by some distance from similar clusters; derived from the German term Siedlungskammer used to characterize the regional distribution of Neolithic settlements in central Europe. smelting The separation of metal from its ore by heating in a hearth or furnace. wristguard A rectangular plaque of stone with several small holes at either end for tying to the wrist as a protection from the snap of the bowstring, often found in graves associated with Bell Beakers.

Archaeologists refer to the final part of the Stone Age in Europe and many parts of Asia and Africa as the Neolithic period. The basic defining attributes of the Neolithic period in Europe are the emergence of sedentary farmsteads or villages whose inhabitants

cultivated crops, kept livestock, and made pottery (Figure 1). It began with the initial appearance of farming communities in Greece around 7500 BC, spread across Europe to reach Scandinavia and the British Isles just after 4000 BC, and ended with the development of bronze metallurgy just before 2000 BC. Neolithic societies exhibit considerable variation across Europe and over time.

The Concept of the Neolithic The notion that there was a period of antiquity that predated the use of metals, a Stone Age, was formally articulated by Christian Thomsen when he organized the exhibits of the Danish National Museum in the early nineteenth century. By the time Sir John Lubbock (1834–1913) published Prehistoric Times in 1865, the Stone Age in Europe was considered to have two phases: pe´riode de la pierre taille´e (the period of chipped stone tools) and pe´riode de la pierre polie (the period of polished stone tools). Lubbock termed the former Palaeolithic, or Old Stone Age, and the latter Neolithic, or New Stone Age, from the Greek words for ‘new’ and ‘stone’. Subsequently, archaeologists realized that the definition of this period based on a single artifact type was spurious, since Neolithic peoples also continued to use chipped stone tools even as polished stone axes were introduced. A broader view emerged that saw the Neolithic as characterized by pottery manufacture, agriculture, livestock, and settled villages, but still without the use of metals. In this conception, the Neolithic formed the final Stone Age precursor to the Bronze Age and the Iron Age in the classic northern European prehistoric sequence, which was soon adopted throughout most of Eurasia. Over time, the association between the Neolithic period and the establishment of agricultural communities became its most salient characteristic. During the first half of the twentieth century, the eminent archaeologist V. Gordon Childe (1892–1957) characterized the Neolithic Revolution as a major transformation of human society on the pathway to civilization. In Childe’s view, this change was very rapid and unavoidable, the most important human event between the discovery of fire and the building of cities. Such an

1176 EUROPE/Neolithic Skara Brae Balbridie, Crathes Claish Farm

Sarup

Magheraboy

Grødbygård, Limensgård

Ceide Fields Schipluiden, Hardinxveld, Hazendonk

Ascott-underWychwood Hambledon Hill

Goseck

Sweet Track

Henauhof NW

Balloy

Hornstaad Hornle

Egolzwil

Otzi’s findspot

Arene Candide

Varna

Leucate Correge Rudna Glava

Aibunar

Caldeirao Cave Franchthi Cave

Passo di Corvo

Figure 1 Principal sites mentioned in text.

emphasis established the study of the Neolithic period and the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture as a major research focus in archaeology during the second half of the twentieth century. We now know that Childe’s characterization of the Neolithic transition to agriculture as ‘revolutionary’ might be somewhat misleading. It was certainly an important change but one that had its roots thousands of years earlier in changes in human diet and social organization at the end of the Ice Age. The eventual adoption of domesticated plants and animals required a long-term process of change and did not take place overnight. Archaeologists today use the word ‘Neolithic’ to designate a period characterized by agricultural societies using cultivated plants and domesticated animals, yet still relying on stone tools. It is not a sharply demarcated span of time or a set of cultural features. At the beginning, it is blurred due to many instances of local continuity with foraging societies whose economy was transformed by the addition of domesticated plants and animals. At its end, the Neolithic merges relatively seamlessly into the Bronze Age, as the copper that came into use late in the Neolithic was alloyed with tin to make a much harder metal suitable for tools and weapons. When accompanied by the use of livestock for products

other than meat, the demand for bronze permitted the accumulation of status, power, and wealth that characterizes the last two milleniums BC in Europe. Thus, the word ‘Neolithic’ provides a convenient shorthand for archaeologists to refer to this complex set of developments that was initiated by the transition from foraging to farming and subsequently saw the emergence of a mature agricultural economy. Concurrently there was an elaboration of mortuary ritual, exchange, conflict, and social differentiation that provided the foundation for later European prehistory and indeed many of the specific characteristics of European society that survive into modern times.

Founder Crops and Animals The crops and livestock that fed the Neolithic communities of Europe (see Europe, Northern and Western: Early Neolithic Cultures) originated in the Near East. Recent research points towards a region known as the Levantine Corridor, an inland zone about 40 km long between the Damascus Basin and the lower Jordan Valley, as potentially the location of the earliest cultivation in the Near East. Einkorn wheat, emmer wheat, and barley are the three principal ‘founder crops’ of Near Eastern agriculture. They differ from their wild counterparts primarily by the

EUROPE/Neolithic 1177

nature of the rachis, the stem which holds the grain to the ear. Wild wheats and barley have a brittle rachis, which shatters at ripening to disperse the grain and thus propagate the plant. In domestic forms, the rachis is tougher and thicker, which permits the harvesting of the whole ear by cutting with sickles. Such a method would have selected for plants with tougher rachises which were dependent on humans for their propagation. At sites like Netiv Hagdud in the lower Jordan valley, early farmers lived in circular and oval structures built of mud bricks upon stone foundations and stored grain in underground storage pits. Just as wheat and barley were the ‘founder crops’ of Near Eastern agriculture, sheep and goat can be considered the ‘founder animals’ of ungulate domestication, around 10 000 years ago. Goats appear to have been domesticated first in the Zagros Mountains, while sheep in the upper Tigris and Euphrates valleys underwent domestication a few centuries later. Cattle and pigs appear to have been domesticated in Anatolia around 9000 years ago. Recent DNA analyses show that the domestic cattle used in Neolithic Europe originated from this Anatolian source, with minimal ingression of native wild cattle genetic material. The earliest domestic pig in Europe also originated in Anatolia. The major elements of the suite of Near Eastern domestic plants and animals spread from the core area of early agriculture in the Levant to Europe. Their dispersal to Europe is particularly interesting because plants and animals which had originated in semi-arid regions quickly adapted to temperate conditions. The mechanisms of this dispersal varied. In some areas, agricultural peoples themselves dispersed, bringing a sedentary lifestyle, crops, and livestock. Elsewhere, indigenous populations which had previously lived by foraging gradually adopted agriculture. The spread of farming in prehistoric Europe between 7000 and 3000 BC is a classic example of the interplay between these two processes.

Arrival and Dispersals The first farming settlements in Europe were established in Greece around 7000 BC. Although the earliest farming settlements of western Turkey are not yet well known, it is clear that the domesticated plants and animals, and possibly the farmers themselves, came from Anatolia. Rather than taking a short jump across the Bosphorus, it appears that the earliest farmers came to Greece by hopping along the islands of the Aegean Sea. Although there is still little evidence for settlement on the Aegean islands during the Mesolithic, the inhabitants of mainland sites like

Franchthi Cave could certainly catch deepwater fish, implying the possession of watercraft suitable for open-water travel. Once domestic plants and animals reached the Anatolian coast, knowledge of them probably traveled quickly throughout the Aegean basin. Farming appears to have arrived more or less simultaneously on Crete, the Argolid Peninsula, and Thessaly, suggesting two main routes, via Rhodes and Karpathos to Crete and through the Cyclades to the Greek mainland. By about 6800 BC, farming was certainly present in Europe, probably even a century or two earlier. At Franchthi Cave in the Argolid, the subsistence pattern changed dramatically. Although the domesticated emmer wheat, barley, lentils, sheep, and goats must have arrived from Anatolia, the Franchthi finds indicate continuity from the local foragers. The floodplains of Thessaly are crossed by many abandoned watercourses and a few active meandering streams. These abandoned watercourses with their silted-up channels and adjacent levees made ideal locations for early farming settlements. They are dotted by hundreds of mounds, known locally as magoules, that were the locations of Neolithic settlements. About a hundred of them in the Larisa basin date to the period between c. 6800 and 6000 BC. The water-retentive properties of the light silty soils, the flooding of streams, and the seasonal pooling ofwater in basins provided a favorable environment for cultivation. Livestock could be grazed in the areas with heavier soils. The Early Neolithic magoules contain layers of small settlements composed of clustered rectangular houses that were built using either mud bricks without wooden reinforcement or with a frame of upright posts with the spaces between them filled with wattle and daub. The floors are made from packed clay and were frequently recovered with a fresh layer. The construction techniques, especially the use of mud bricks, reflect strong Near Eastern connections. The Early Neolithic sites of Greece had a predominantly agricultural economy, with few wild plants and animals found. Emmer wheat, six-row barley, lentils, peas, and vetch are the most common crops, while sheep and goat are the most common livestock. Cattle and pig are scarcer. Along the Mediterranean coast, domestic plants and animals spread outward from Greece quickly after about 6500 BC. Watercraft enabled long-distance interaction among foraging communities of the coasts of Italy and southern France as well as with the large Mediterranean islands. Domestic plants and animals were transported from one hunter-gatherer community to another, and a distinctive form of pottery

1178 EUROPE/Neolithic

impressed with small seashells known as Cardium was widely adopted. Many early Neolithic settlement sites are found in rockshelters such as Arene Candide in Liguria. Open air settlements with Cardium-impressed pottery are also known, including the walled settlement at Passo di Corvo in Italy and Leucate-Corre`ge in southern France. By 5500 BC, farming had reached the Atlantic along the coasts of Spain and Portugal, as demonstrated by finds of domestic sheep from the cave site of Caldeira˜o. In contrast to the situation along the central Mediterranean where hunter-gatherers appear to have adopted agriculture, the Portuguese archaeologist Joa˜o Zilha˜o has argued that colonizing farmers settled fertile areas in Spain and Portugal, forming enclaves of agricultural settlement throughout the Iberian Peninsula. First Farmers of Central Europe

V. Gordon Childe (1892–1957) recognized the significance of the Danube valley as a corridor for the movement of people and ideas from southeastern Europe into the heartland of the continent during the Neolithic. Proceeding up the Danube from southeastern Europe, the early farmers entered the lowlands of Hungary, an area that includes sand dunes,

low levees, oxbow lakes, and flat plains. West of the Danube bend, the river is fed by tributaries like the Nitra, the Va´h, and the Morava that drain south from the Carpathians and east from the Alps. Further northwest, fairly narrow divides separate the Danube and its tributaries from other major river systems of central Europe (see Europe, Central and Eastern), including the Oder, Elbe, and Rhine. From these, early farmers could reach rivers such as the Vistula, the Meuse, and the Aisne. All these river systems drain basins formed within the hills and mountains of central Europe. Beginning on the Hungarian Plain and spreading through Slovakia, the Czech lands, Austria, Germany, and Poland into the Low Countries and eastern France, farming communities became established in the river valleys of central Europe between 5500 and 5000 BC. Named for the distinctive incised lines on their ceramic vessels, the earliest farmers of central Europe are known as the Linear Pottery Culture (Figures 2 and 3). The rapid dispersal of Linear Pottery settlements throughout this area, over a period of only a few centuries, accompanied by the extreme uniformity in artifacts and architecture over this vast area, is one of the most remarkable phenomena in prehistoric Europe. Its large settlements have traces of

er

Fun ne lB Cul ea tur k e

e

Linear Pottery C ult ur

Thessaly Figure 2 Principal archaeological cultures mentioned in text.

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Figure 3 Linear pottery vessel with cattle motif from Hienheim, southern Germany, ca. 5300 BC. (after Modderman PJR (1977) Die neolithische Besiedlung bei Hienheim, Ldkr. Kelheim I. Die Ausgrabungen am Weinberg 1965–1970. Leiden: Institute of Prehistory.)

the largest buildings in the world at this time, timber longhouses up to 45 m long. Linear Pottery settlements are concentrated in what archaeologists would call ‘settlement cells’, loose clusters of settlements along streams among the hills. These islands of early farming settlement are found from Slovakia to eastern France and are associated with patches of a fertile wind-blown soil called ‘loess’. Loess was deposited by winds during the Ice Age that picked up loose soil and blew it forward until it settled as a thick blanket. In the loess patches, small brooks cut shallow valleys as they merged into larger streams, which flowed into smaller rivers which in turn drained into the major rivers. Such valleys of smaller streams were especially preferred by the Linear Pottery settlers. The Linear Pottery Culture takes its name from the incised lines on its ceramic vessels, but pottery is not the only defining characteristic of these early farming societies. Flint tools include blades that are markedly different from the tiny microliths that characterize Late Mesolithic finds. Triangular flint arrowheads are occasionally found in some areas, interpreted variously as signs of increased hunting, conflict, or influence by indigenous hunter-gatherers. Toolmakers sometimes traveled great distances to get high-quality flint. Coarser stones like amphibolite were shaped through hammering and pecking, then grinding, into axes. A special form of Linear Pottery ground stone axe is the so-called ‘shoe-last celt’, which is relatively narrow with a square cross section resembling a cobbler’s tool. Hundreds of Neolithic settlements with longhouses are now known across central Europe. Linear Pottery longhouses were rectangular multipurpose structures, ranging between 7 and 45 m in length and generally 5–7 m wide. The posts occur in five rows, two forming the exterior walls and three providing the interior

support for the roof. In the exterior walls, the spaces between the posts were filled with wattle and daub. The longhouses provided shelter for humans and livestock as well as storage and working space. Longhouse settlements occur primarily in the valleys of the smaller rivers, in small clusters of sites at which several houses were standing at any one moment, usually at the point where the floodplain begins to slope up towards the adjacent hills. Sometimes they are located on the terraces of the major rivers like the Danube and Vistula. These localities were occupied for up to several centuries, with longhouses being rebuilt on the same locations many times. The rapid spread of farming across central Europe came to a sudden halt after a few centuries, resulting in a major Neolithic farming frontier that encircled the area of Linear Pottery settlement. Most Linear Pottery settlements did not generally extend beyond the loess, and the isolated pockets along the lower Vistula and Oder and in the Paris Basin remained the farthest extent of agricultural settlement for several centuries. The Central European Farming Frontier was not a simple boundary line that could be drawn on a map. On its northern edge, it lay between 52 and 54 north latitude, the southern part of the North European Plain where there were the pockets of settlement by the Linear Pottery culture and its descendants. On the west, it lay on a belt around the Paris Basin and down to the Yonne valley, while in the south it was marked by the foothills of the Alps. Life on this frontier must have been complicated. The indigenous hunter-gatherers of the North European Plain, the Alpine lake basins, and the Atlantic coastal areas were not very far away. We can only imagine the sorts of interactions that occurred. It is clear is that the foragers did not immediately see any benefit in adopting the full agricultural system of the Linear Pottery farmers. Nonetheless, the frontier was porous. In addition to a trade in stone axes, it must have been a struggle for Linear Pottery farmers to account for each of their cattle and sheep. Cattle in particular, when grazing in forests, have a penchant for wandering off. Feral domestic livestock must have found their way beyond the farming frontier and would have found congenial habitats in the clearings and meadows created by tree falls, beavers, and the foragers themselves. After about 5000 BC the Linear Pottery culture fragmented into a variety of local groups that flourished during the fifth millennium BC. Prominent among these are the Brzes´c´ Kujawski Group of northcentral Poland, and Ro¨ssen Culture of central and western Germany, and the Villeneuve-St. Germain (VSG) Group of northern France. These groups clearly

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Figure 4 Neolithic longhouses at Miechowice, central Poland, ca. 4500 BC (from Grygiel R (2004) The Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in the Brzes´c´ Kujawski and Osłonki Region. Ło´dz´: Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, used with permission).

follow in the Linear Pottery tradition. The most visible evidence for continuity comes in the form of longhouses, although the later houses have a trapezoidal, rather than rectangular, shape to their groundplans (Figure 4). The subsistence economy of these groups also followed generally in the Linear Pottery tradition, although in many areas domestic pigs assumed greater importance. This development moved the economy closer to the pattern of mixed farming that was widespread throughout later European prehistory and persists into the present day. Changes also appear in burial rites in some areas. For example, Linear Pottery communities buried most of their dead in cemeteries set apart from the settlements, while the graves of the Brzes´c´ Kujawski Group are found just outside their longhouses, often in small clusters that suggest family groups. Long Barrow Cemeteries

One of the most striking developments of the late fifth and early fourth millennia BC is the development of large mortuary sites characterized by the construction of long earthen mounds, called ‘long barrows’. They are found on the periphery of the world inhabited by the Linear Pottery culture and its successors, most prominently in Poland, Germany, and Denmark, and in France along the Yonne, Seine, and Marne. These would have been areas of cultural contacts between the early farmers of central Europe and the foragers of northern and western Europe, and the construction

of long barrows presages the mortuary ceremonialism of the later Neolithic period that will be discussed further below. The long barrows were built from timber and earth, sometimes reaching lengths of well over 100 m, although rarely more than 10 m wide. In northern Poland they are outlined with large boulders, while similar structures outlined with a wooden palisade have recently come to light in southern Poland. In France, they are delineated by ditches. Beneath the mound are one or more burial chambers aligned on the main axis of the barrow. Long barrows often have a trapezoidal plan, reminiscent of the Brses´c´ Kujawski, Ro¨ssen, and VSG longhouses, and at Balloy at the junction of the Seine and Yonne rivers, they were built upon the site of an abandoned VSG settlement. They often occur in groups of a dozen or more. Archaeologists beginning with V. Gordon Childe have noted the similarity between the long barrows and the earlier longhouses, and Magdalena Midgley has recently proposed that the traces of abandoned longhouse settlements would have provided powerful images of ancestral places that were transferred by subsequent generations to the mortuary monuments. Foragers Meet Farmers: the Rhine–Maas Delta and Alpine Lake Basins

On the periphery of the Linear Pottery area, two other regions provide additional evidence for an

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indigenous response to the proximity of farmers. The lake basins of the Alpine Foreland in southern Germany, Switzerland, and eastern France supported populations of Mesolithic foragers, while in the combined delta of the Rhine and Maas (Meuse) rivers in the Netherlands, hunter-gathers gradually became aware of the farming populations to their south. In both areas, domesticated plants and animals worked their way into the forager diet during the centuries just before 4000 BC (see Europe, Northern and Western: Mesolithic Cultures). The excellent preservation conditions in the Rhine– Maas delta have provided a remarkable record of the reaction of hunter-gatherers to the proximity of farmers, in this case the Linear Pottery and Ro¨ssen communities about 100–150 km to the south, during the fifth and fourth milleniums BC. At Hardinxveld near Rotterdam, several dunes were the sites of winter base camps of hunter-gatherers between 5500 and 4450 BC. In the upper levels, dating after 4700 BC, bones of domestic animals were found, although cereals were absent. After about 4300 BC, there is clearer evidence for contact between foragers and farmers, for pottery found at sites like Hazendonk has stylistic affinities to late Ro¨ssen wares. Bones of domestic animals and charred chaff and grains of domestic cereals reflect what Leendert P. Louwe Kooijmans has called a ‘semi-agrarian’ economy, which combined the use of domestic plants and animals with a broad exploitation of wild species. This type of subsistence pattern appears to have lasted for several centuries. The ‘missing link’ between the semi-agrarian economy of the late hunter-gatherers and the full farming economy of the later part of the Neolithic has been provided by the site of Schipluiden, excavated in 2003. Located on coastal dunes, Schipluiden provides traces of an economy with a continued mix of wild and domesticated species but with a greater role played by domesticated plants and animals. The settlement remains are more substantial than at Hazendonk and contain locally made pottery, dense concentrations of posts, a fence around the settlement, long-term use of discard areas, and both summer and winter birds, suggesting year-round occupation by about four or five households during some time between 3700 and 3400 BC. Contracted burials suggest adoption of the burial rite used by Neolithic communities to the south. The Alpine Foreland of southern Germany and northern and western Switzerland saw a similar confrontation between foraging and farming. The lake basins of this area were populated by communities of hunter-gatherers, as reflected by the site of HenauhofNord on the Federsee in southern Germany, during

the second half of the sixth millennium BC. During the succeeding millennium, lakeside farming communities using domestic plants and animals but also continuing to hunt and gather were established along the lakeshores. One such settlement is found at Egolzwil, one of the classic sites of the so-called Swiss Lake Dwellings, which contrary to popular reconstructions of houses built on piles over the water were really post structures built on the muddy lake shores. By 3900 BC, settlements like Hornstaad Ho¨rnle on Lake Constance provide evidence of a full agricultural economy based on sustained cultivation of wheat and barley. The Great Transformation around 4000 BC in Northern and Western Europe

Just after 4000 BC, the indigenous foraging peoples of northern and western Europe adopted agriculture. The relative contemporaneity of this transformation from southern Scandinavia to the British Isles is remarkable, leading some to suggest that a climate change was involved. Although this is far from clear, most of the radiocarbon dates for the earliest agriculture from Sweden to Ireland all seem to fall at the beginning of the fourth millennium BC, between about 4000 and 3700 BC. Around 4100 BC, agricultural communities were established in Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany after a marked increase in contact between the indigenous foragers of the southern Baltic basin and the farmers to the south that began several centuries earlier. Around the southern Baltic in Denmark, southern Sweden, and northern Germany and Poland, the foragers of the Erteblle culture lived in relatively sedentary year-round settlements, such as the one at Smakkerup Huse on the Danish island of Zealand. These final hunters of northern continental Europe and southern Scandinavia became the first farmers in this region, beginning around 3900 BC. Once adopted by the foragers, agriculture spread rapidly up to the Dala River north of Stockholm, which formed the northern limit of Neolithic cultivation. The Erteblle culture developed into the Funnel Beaker culture, the first Neolithic society of northern Europe, named for the flaring upper edges of its ceramic vessels. Funnel Beaker settlements increased in size during the fourth millennium BC. On the island of Bornholm, long rectangular houses have been found at the sites of Limensga˚rd and Grdbyga˚rd. During Funnel Beaker times, we see the first use of wetlands for rituals being used for ritual deposits, often of pots containing food offerings, and occasionally animals and even people who were sacrificed.

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The British Isles have yielded surprisingly little evidence of their earliest farming settlement, leading to the popularity of the hypothesis that agriculture was introduced very gradually over the 2000-year span of the Neolithic. Peter Rowley-Conwy has argued against this idea, pointing out that the adoption of agriculture has a dramatic transformative effect on society and that the transformation must have been rapid. Indeed, evidence is accumulating of Neolithic cultivation and animal use during the fourth millennium BC. Occupation and rubbish deposits under a long barrow at Ascott-under-Wychwood provide evidence for Neolithic timber structures and the use of domestic animals just after 4000 BC. In eastern Scotland, remarkable timber post structures have been found at Balbridie, Claish Farm, and Crathes. In and around these structures, samples of carbonized grain have been radiocarbon-dated to the period between 3900–3500 BC. Ireland presents a very interesting case of how archaeology can change rapidly. Until very recently, virtually nothing was known about the earliest farming settlements except for some scattered traces of houses. In the last decade, there has been a remarkable boom in the discovery of Neolithic houses throughout Ireland, due largely to road construction and other development connected with the Irish Economic Miracle. Most of these new houses, which are small rectangular structures with posts set in a bedding trench that runs around its outer wall, date between 3800 and 3600 BC. Even earlier is a

palisaded Neolithic enclosure at Magheraboy in County Sligo that dates to 4000–3900 BC. The extent and organization of early agriculture in Ireland can be seen at the preserved Neolithic landscape found at the Ce´ide Fields in northern County Mayo. Early farmers removed the forest cover during the centuries after 4000 BC and cleared the stones from their fields to make house foundations and walled compounds in which animals were kept. The removal of the forests by early farmers caused soil nutrients to be washed away, making the soils more acidic, which in turn inhibited the decomposition of dead vegetation, which formed peat beginning around 3500 BC. Layer upon layer of peat accumulated over the next several milleniums, burying the entire landscape including the stone walls and house foundations, with blanket bog. Archaeologists can now trace the outlines of the walls and houses to discover how the early farmers organized their landscape. By 3000 BC agriculture was established throughout most of Europe, from Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands (Figure 5) to the southern tips of Italy and Spain, and from the Atlantic to the Urals. In archaeological time, the dispersal of farming and the transformation of society that accompanied it occurred remarkably quickly. While it may not have been the revolution that V. Gordon Childe thought it was, it was certainly a process that once begun was not possible to stop once a community made a commitment to the use of domesticated plants and animals.

Figure 5 Plan of the Neolithic settlement at Skara Brae, Orkney Islands, ca. 3100 BC (after Childe VG (1931) Skara Brae, a Pictish Village in Orkney. London: Kegen Paul, Trench, Trubner).

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Consolidation: The Late Neolithic and Copper Age Following the successful establishment of agriculture throughout Europe, farming communities from the Balkans to Ireland and from Sweden to Spain developed into mature and stable societies. They had accumulated a store of knowledge about cultivation and livestock that enabled them to handle the risk and uncertainty inherent in an agricultural economy. Herds ceased to be simply a source of meat and hide and became living resources for milk, wool, and animal power. Metals, particularly copper, came to be used in many areas, first for ornaments and then for tools. Mortuary ceremonialism became more elaborate and widespread. Archaeologists refer to the final millennia of the Neolithic with a variety of terms. Late Neolithic is the most common label, while in southeastern Europe the use of copper has led many scholars to refer to this time as the Copper Age. Older publications use the term Eneolithic, although this label is rarely applied today. Chronologically, the Late Neolithic can be said to be framed roughly by the span of time between 5000 and 2800 BC in southern and southeastern Europe, 4000–2200 BC in central and eastern Europe, and 3500–2000 BC in northern and western Europe. Copper Metallurgy

The use of copper to make ornaments and tools appeared first in the Balkans just before 5000 BC, when the ability of potters to achieve high temperatures for the firing of pottery also enabled them to smelt copper from its ores. During the millennium that followed, the knowledge and skill of the early metalworkers developed further, and copper use expanded throughout southern Europe and into central Europe. The earliest copper artifacts were beads, pendants, and bracelets, although subsequently, it became possible to make complex forms like axes and chisels using molds. Copper was smelted from ores such as malachite and azurite which are found in mountainous areas. Many Late Neolithic copper mines have been found in central and southeastern Europe, including Rudna Glava in Serbia and Aibunar in Bulgaria. The presence of copper slag at settlement sites suggests that metalworking was a part of routine life for Late Neolithic peoples in southeastern Europe. Copper artifacts are found in both mortuary and domestic ¨ tzi the Iceman was carrying a copper ax contexts. O when he died around 3300 BC. Artifacts made from copper, particularly daggers, are especially prominent features of the Late Neolithic societies of northern and western Europe. In these

areas, copper artifacts clearly are prestige items, found almost exclusively in burials, presaging the role of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, in the years after 2000 BC. The Late Neolithic Built Environment

Settlements, burials, and ceremonial sites became visible and permanent features of the landscape and were invested with attachment and with meaning. In different parts of Europe, these locations took various forms: nucleated settlements; groups of dispersed farmsteads, compact, densely settled mounds; strongholds with earthworks; cemeteries of all sorts; tombs: megaliths, long barrows; rondels and causewayed camps, even bogs and ponds as locations for rituals. The significance of these locations lasted on a time scale ranging from decades to centuries. The locations of habitation, burial, and ritual were the spatial anchors of Late Neolithic society to a far greater degree than had been seen previously. Moreover, these sites were connected by well-worn communication routes: paths, tracks, rivers, passes, and portages. They were destinations as well as starting points. This inter-site ¨ tzi the movement is dramatized by the find of the O Iceman, about whom more will be said below, who died while negotiating a high Alpine pass around 3300 BC. Circular ditched enclosures known as ‘rondels’ are found in upland loess zones south of the Carpathians in Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, Austria, and eastern Germany. Unexcavated gaps in the ditch at four opposing points on the perimeter provide a way across. Usually, there are few traces of settlement, so these appear to have served some form of nonhabitation purpose, presumably ceremonial. At Goseck in eastern Germany, a series of four concentric ditches and two palisades about 75 m at their maximum diameter have been recently discovered. The palisades had three gates facing southeast, southwest, and north. The excavators have suggested an astronomical purpose for the site, while alternatively the gates in the palisades controlled access to the central ceremonial space. Similar to the rondels of central Europe are the socalled ‘causewayed camps’ of the British Isles that date between 3700 and 3000 BC. About 40 such enclosures are known, largely on the chalk downs and river terraces of southern England. Often, they are associated with earthen long barrows, about which more will be said below. These sites have one or more concentric ditches, roughly circular in plan, interrupted at several points by unexcavated portions, which form ‘causeways’ into the interior. The existence of the causeways and the locations of the

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sites suggest that the earthworks did not fulfill a defensive function. Instead, they are most commonly interpreted as ceremonial or ritual sites. At a number of them, such as Hambledon Hill in Dorset, human remains have been found in the ditches and interiors. At Hambledon Hill, these remains had been exposed to the elements and largely defleshed prior to their deposition in the ditch. Another such important place was Sarup in Denmark. Between 3400 and 3200 BC, an enclosure with several causeways was built to enclose an area of about 8.5 ha on a sandy promontory. The enclosure was not a complete encirclement of the site, since it was bounded on two sides by water. Instead, it closed off the landward side of the promontory from the surrounding terrain. The Sarup enclosure grew from a simple palisade to a complex system of parallel ditches and palisades, placed conspicuously in a landscape that contained dozens of megalithic tombs. It appears that the Sarup enclosure was also a place of ritual, for a number of the pits and ditches contained burnt human bones. In northern and western Europe, Neolithic people and their livestock often needed to cross wetlands. They began to lay down wooden trackways made from stakes and logs across the wet areas. One of the best known is Sweet Track in Somerset, England, where the earliest trackway has been dated by treerings to the winter or early spring of 3807 or 3806 BC. Later, wider roads made from logs were laid down, many of which were often rebuilt and used for centuries. Neolithic roads may also have existed on dry terrain. These are very difficult to document, but some have proposed that the arrangement of burial monuments across the landscape reflects ancient road systems. It seems logical that Neolithic tracks and even roads would have run through mountain passes and converged on major stream crossings. The widespread distribution of raw materials and finished artifacts clearly reflects a population on the move. Intimacy with the Dead

One of the defining characteristics of the Late Neolithic and Copper Age is what could be called ‘mortuary ceremonialism’. Such ceremonialism takes a variety of forms, from the megalithic tombs of the Atlantic fringe to the elaborate cemeteries of southeastern Europe. A distinctive feature of these societies was a particular intimacy with the dead, who were a persistent presence in society and continued to be encountered on a regular basis in excarnation places, collective tombs, settlement burials, and family plots and cenotaphs in cemeteries. These encounters

occurred in a context of ceremonial veneration for ancestors and a sense of continuity of place and affiliation. It legitimized the existence and perpetuation of the household or hamlet to whom the dead belonged. A cemetery at Varna, in northeastern Bulgaria, provides the richest collection of Late Neolithic/ Copper Age burials in eastern Europe. Although its dating is inexact, correlation with dates finds from other sites suggests that the Varna cemetery was in use between 4900 and 4400 BC. The nearly 300 graves contain gold, copper, and other luxury items, although 20% were ‘symbolic graves’ or cenotaphs without actual human remains. Gold artifacts, the most distinctive aspect of the Varna cemetery, occur in 61 graves, including most of the cenotaphs. Curiously, most of the gold is found in the cenotaphs, while only a few of the graves with skeletons were similarly furnished. Three cenotaphs contained goldornamented clay masks with male features. The richest burial at Varna contained the skeleton of a man about 40–50 years old and about 1.75 m tall. Accompanying the skeleton were nearly a thousand gold objects along with other items made of copper, stone, clay, and Spondylus shell. One of the gold objects is termed a ‘scepter’, in which a wooden handle had been sheathed with gold and topped with a stone macehead. ¨ tzi the Iceman O

Not all Late Neolithic human remains are found in graves. In 1991, two hikers in the Alps came across the frozen corpse of a man who subsequent investigation showed to have died about 3300 BC. Nicknamed ¨ tzi and ‘the Iceman’ by the press, this find produced O one of the most remarkable glimpses of the life of a Late Neolithic inhabitant of central Europe. He was in his middle- to late-40s, rather old for his time, and had lived a hard life. ¨ tzi was carrying a lot of equipment, including O a bow and a quiver of arrows, bone points, a needle, a copper axe in a handle, several flint tools, a marble pendant, and several pieces of fungus believed to have medicinal properties. He was wearing a bearskin hat, shoes with bearskin soles and deerskin uppers, goatskin leggings and loincloth, a calfskin pouch and belt, and a cape of woven grass. His stomach contents indicated that he had recently consumed venison and cereals before his death in late spring or early summer, as indicated by tree pollen. ¨ tzi’s death remain a matter The circumstances of O of controversy. A CT scan has revealed an arrowhead embedded in his shoulder, and wounds have been found on his hand and wrist. Was he fleeing from

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attackers with whom he had previously fought, or was he an individual who had lived a physically taxing and sometimes violent life who had the misfortune to be caught in a late-spring blizzard as sometimes occurs high in the Alps? The answer is ¨ tzi’s corpse and the simply not yet known. Today, O associated finds can be seen at the Archaeological Museum in Bolzano, Italy. The Secondary Products Revolution

In a 1981 essay, Andrew Sherratt (1946–2006) coined the term ‘Secondary Products Revolution’ to describe a major shift in the use of domestic animals from providers of meat and hides, which required the death of the animal to ‘Secondary products’, renewable resources taken from living animals such as milk, wool, and animal power, or traction. During the fourth millennium BC, Neolithic farmers in eastcentral Europe began to make much greater use of these secondary products. A variety of social changes are reflected this change in animal management. Although some activities, such as dairying, began in earlier prehistoric periods, approaches to animal use became progressively more complex during the Late Neolithic. The key data for the Secondary Products Revolution include ceramic sieves and vessels probably used in milk handling; animal figurines; remains of wagons, wagon parts, and plows in burials and waterlogged deposits; wagon models and representations on pottery; rock-carvings of wagons; ritual burials of cattle and other livestock; and plow-marks on fossil soils under barrows. Two of the principal secondary products, milk and wool, may have been in use much earlier, but after 4000 BC their use was especially widespread. Dairy production would have enabled Neolithic farmers to collect milk from their animals and to convert it into storable food such as cheese and yogurt. The availability of such storable animal products would have enabled Neolithic households to maintain a steady food supply during the growing season and to obtain dietary protein and fat during the summer before the crops were harvested. Wool from sheep would have provided warm clothing that permitted more winter activities as well as blankets and wall hangings that would have kept Neolithic houses warm and reduced the amount of wood burned for fuel. Animal power was perhaps the most significant aspect of the Secondary Products Revolution. Traction from oxen would have been useful for two major Late Neolithic innovations, plowing and cartage. It also would have had significant implications for the household labor supply and the ability of individual households to manage their resources by

multiplying their productive capacity well beyond that which its own human labor force can provide. Two of the most labor-intensive activities of a Neolithic household would have been the preparation of fields for cultivation and the transport of bulk materials from remote locations to the settlement. Households using animal-pulled plows are able to cultivate an area significantly greater than that of households not using animal traction, especially for crops grown on heavier clay-based soils. Oxen pulling wagons would also reduce household labor costs substantially by hauling harvested crops and especially wood for construction and firewood. The transformation of livestock, particularly cattle, from a ‘walking pantry’ to productive assets provided an opportunity for individual households to accumulate wealth. The household that owns draft animals can manage its labor much more flexibly than one without such assets, and it also enables lessproductive members of the household, such as children and the elderly, to contribute to the household labor pool. When durable and valuable goods such as copper tools and ornaments are added to the equation, we see that this combination provided the conditions for households to accumulate wealth and to transfer it from one generation to the next. Mechanisms probably developed for the loaning and borrowing of draft animals between households, as exist in many agrarian societies today. Yet livestock can become sick, die, or be stolen, so draft animals were not ‘money in the bank’ but investments that carried a risk of failure. As households became differentiated by wealth, the potential also existed for differentiation by status, which begins to appear in variation in grave goods found in Late Neolithic burials. At this point, however, there does not appear to have been any formal structure in public life that suggests political power beyond the level of the household. Formally instituted social and political hierarchies, such as are seen in the Bronze Age chiefdoms after about 2000 BC, may be a logical consequence of differentiation by wealth and status, but it is not possible to recognize them yet during the Late Neolithic over most of Europe.

Corded Ware and Bell Beakers The third millennium BC saw the emergence of two large-scale cultural developments that are marked by distinctive artifact styles distributed over vast areas. One is the widespread use of cord-marked pottery associated with single burials under low mounds, while the other involves the appearance of a very specific type of handleless thin-walled drinking vessel

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known as a beaker that is consistently found in male burials with other distinctive artifacts Archaeologists have puzzled over the meaning of these phenomena, known as Corded Ware and Bell Beakers, for over a century, and yet their significance remains elusive. Corded Ware is distributed through eastern, central, and northern Europe as far west as the Netherlands, whereas Bell Beakers are found from Spain to Denmark and throughout the British Isles. The earliest dates for Corded Ware come from central and southern Poland around 2800 BC, and it spread outwards from this core area. It generally disappeared from most regions between 2300 and 2100 BC. A number of variants of Corded Ware are known. It is found in Alpine pile dwellings and along the Baltic coast. In Sweden and southern Norway, Corded Ware communities made axes with upturned edges that resemble the prow and stern of a boat, hence the name Boat-Axe Culture. One of the latest Corded Ware groups is the Fatianovo Culture along the upper Volga in Russia, which persisted until around 2000 BC. Corded Ware communities continued the Neolithic pattern of mixed farming, with cattle, sheep, and goat playing a prominent role. With the exception of the communities along the southern Baltic coast, known as the Rzuczewo Culture, and the Alpine lake dwellings, Corded Ware settlements are rare. This has given rise to the hypothesis that the makers of Corded Ware were mobile pastoralists, although it is just as likely that they were sedentary peoples who simply built their houses in a way that did not leave substantial subsurface traces. The practice of burying individuals under single small mounds which characterized the Corded Ware world was a break with the earlier practice of collective burial found over much of this area during the previous millennium. It appears from the burials that a key societal role was assigned to a group of men whose status is reflected in their possession of flint knives, battle-axes, bows and arrows, and drinking vessels. Such emergence of individual identity and status is an important development that continues into the Bronze Age. Bell Beakers are even more enigmatic than Corded Ware. First recognized at the end of the nineteenth century, they were first presumed to be the characteristic artifacts of a single mobile people who spread rapidly across western and central Europe. Archaeologists spoke of a Beaker Folk and ascribed various attributes to them, such as being warriors, traders, and metalsmiths. Throughout the twentieth century, various theories were proposed for the origins of Bell Beakers under the assumption that they represented

a people whose identity was reflected in the use of a very specific vessel form. The vessel that gives Bell Beakers its name is a finely made thin-walled cup usually deep orange in color. It is tall and narrow, without handles. Its incised decoration occurs in horizontal bands, or ‘zones’, separated by smooth bands without ornament. The decoration is usually in the form of chevrons or hatching. A number of types of beaker decoration have been identified that appear to have regional or chronological significance. The late Andrew Sherratt suggested that the beakers were used to consume alcoholic beverages during feasting and conviviality. Alongside the beakers archaeologists often find a distinctive set of artifacts. Many of these are associated with archery, including flint arrowheads, slate wristguards that protected the archer’s hand from the bowstring, and ‘shaft straighteners’ which were pairs of grooved stones to polish arrow shafts. Copper daggers were the principal metal artifact associated with Bell Beakers in central and western Europe, while in northern Europe, flint copies of metal daggers were made. Finally, a characteristic Bell Beaker artifact is the V-perforated button in which two holes were drilled into a piece of material to converge in its interior. Bone, antler, jet (a semiprecious black stone), and amber were the most common materials used. The V-perforated buttons were used as ornaments. The significance of Bell Beakers has been debated heatedly by archaeologists. No longer do they speak of a Beaker Folk, since the geographical distribution and chronology of Bell Beakers makes it clear that there was no obvious origin or dispersal, but rather of the widespread Beaker Phenomenon in which a set of artifacts connected with drinking, war, and hunting appears in male burials in which the body was placed in a contracted position. The Bell Beaker set of artifacts may have been the status symbols of an emerging elite that came into sharper focus during the subsequent Bronze Age.

Conclusion: the Roots of Europe During the Neolithic period, the prehistoric societies of Europe start to appear familiar to the modern observer. People ceased to be hunters and gatherers pursuing a way of life completely alien to us. While the earliest European farmers lived under what we would consider primitive conditions, nonetheless their settled existence is more like ours than their precursors. It is indeed possible to trace the roots of European society known from recent milleniums back to the Neolithic in several key aspects:

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1. A mixed farming economy based on wheat, barley, pulses, cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs formed the subsistence base for European communities until the introduction of American plants like the potato about 500 years ago; 2. The basic technology and infrastructure of European rural life, including metallurgy, timber architecture, weaving and ceramics, salt and food preservation, roads, and watercraft, either made their initial appearance during the Neolithic or developed into tools of everyday life; 3. The ritual use of important landscape features, such as mountains, springs, and bogs, and the maintenance of ritual structures on the landscape carried through into later prehistoric and historic times; and 4. Patterns of social and economic asymmetry and the acceptance and formalization of these social conditions that were elaborated in the Bronze Age and afterward can be seen to have their roots in the Late Neolithic. It has now been only four millennia since the end of the Neolithic, not a very long time at all in archaeological terms. Four millennia earlier, most inhabitants of Europe were still hunters and gatherers in a relatively unmodified landscape. Placing the Neolithic period in this perspective dramatically illustrates the extent of the transformation in human society and also in the natural environment that occurred during this time and the need to understand how it happened.

See also: Animal Domestication; DNA: Ancient; Modern,

and Archaeology; Europe, Central and Eastern; Europe, Northern and Western: Bronze Age; Early Neolithic Cultures; Mesolithic Cultures; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading Bogucki PI (1988) Forest Farmers and Stockherders: Early Agriculture and Its Consequences in North-Central Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bogucki PI (1999) The Origins of Human Society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Bogucki PI and Crabtree PJ (eds.) (2004) Ancient Europe 8000 BC–AD 1000: An Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Childe VG (1925) The Dawn of European Civilization. New York: A. A. Knopf. Childe VG (1931) Skara Brae, a Pictish Village in Orkney. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner. Cunliffe BW (ed.) (1994) The Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Fowler B (2000) Iceman: Uncovering the Life and Times of a Prehistoric Man Found in an Alpine Glacier. New York: Random House. Grygiel R (2004) The Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in the Brzes´c´ Kujawski and Osłonki Region. Ło´dz´: Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography. Hodder I (1990) The Domestication of Europe: Structure and Contingency in Neolithic Societies. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Midgley M (2005) The Monumental Cemeteries of Prehistoric Europe. Stroud: Tempus. Milisauskas S (ed.) (2002) European Prehistory: a Survey. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Modderman PJR (1977) Die neolithische Besiedlung bei Hienheim, Ldkr. Kelheim. I. Die Ausgrabungen am Weinberg 1965–1970. Leiden: Institute of Prehistory. Price TD (ed.) (2000) Europe’s First Farmers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thorpe IJ (1996) The Origins of Agriculture in Europe. London: Routlege. Whittle AWR (1996) Europe in the Neolithic: the Creation of New Worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whittle AWR (2003) The Archaeology of People: Dimensions of Neolithic Life. London: Routledge.

Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies Jehanne Fe´blot-Augustins, CNRS, Nanterre, France ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary biface Refers to a tool shaped by the removal of flakes from two surfaces of a piece of raw material (a cobble or a large flake). The characteristic retouch flakes generally cover most of the two opposing surfaces. blade Refers to an elongated flake, with a length equal to at least twice its width, and more or less parallel edges. A bladelet is a small blade. Tools made from blades or bladelets are termed blade or bladelet tools. blank Refers to products (e.g., flakes, blades or bladelets) or pieces of raw material (e.g., cobble) that can potentially be transformed by retouch into a formal tool, hence the terms flake blank, blade blank, bladelet blank. chaıˆne ope´ratoire Refers to the successive stages involved in the production of lithic artifacts, beginning with the procurement of the block of raw material and ending with the discard of the used artifacts. A concept somewhat broader than that of reduction sequence (see ‘lithic reduction’), with which it is often equated. core Any piece of raw material from which flakes, blades, or bladelets have been detached, in order to produce blanks for tools, hence the terms flake core, blade core, and bladelet core. down-the-line trade Refers to a process in which goods (here lithic items) move through reciprocal exchange from group to

1188 Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies group, thus involving a series of successive exchanges of material from a point source. flake Refers to any fragment of stone that is removed from either a core or a tool during manufacture. No particular size or shape is implied by this term. A tool made from a flake blank is termed a flake tool. Levallois Refers to an elaborate Middle Palaeolithic core preparation and reduction process, by which are predetermined the shape and character of the products (also termed Levallois) sought by the knapper. Sometimes, the aim is to manufacture a single large flake rather than a series of smaller flakes: in that case, the product is called a Levallois preferential flake. The flakes detached in order to prepare the core for production are also quite specific and are called Levallois preparation flakes. lithic reduction Refers to the subtractive process by which a block of raw material is transformed, through successive stages, into a tool. This involves the detachment of ‘flakes’, ‘blades’, or bladelets using a hard (stone) or soft (wood, antler) hammer. The block or nodule may have to be rid of its outer part (roughing-out stage), before being prepared in order to give it an adequate shape for the subsequent operations. Once prepared, the block has become a preformed ‘core’, from which the desired products (flakes, blades, or bladelets) are obtained according to a variety of methods and techniques. These products can subsequently be transformed into tools. Middle Palaeolithic (Europe) Refers to the time period beginning about 250 000 years ago and ending about 40 000–35 000 years ago, during which a particular culture developed, the Mousterian, characterized by the use of flake tools. This culture is associated with Neandertal man. Five stable types of Mousterian industries have been recognized. Among these, the Quina Mousterian is characterized by high amounts of large, thick side-scrapers, the Mousterian of Acheulean Tradition by high amounts of bifaces. retouch Refers to removals carried out for the purpose of obtaining a tool. technology Refers to the methods and techniques implemented by prehistoric stone-knappers to produce artifacts corresponding to varied mental templates. The technological analysis of a lithic assemblage aims to reconstruct the ordered series of sequences that have to be carried out to obtain from a block of raw material the particular types of products sought by the knapper. These desired products are called end products, and can be either ‘blanks’ or ‘tools’. tool As opposed to blanks, refers to retouched products, that is, products that are modified by the removal of flakes (termed ‘retouch’ flakes) along one, both, or part of their edges. Many formal tool types have been recognized for the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, for example, scrapers, limaces, burins, ‘bifaces’. When the edges of the tools have become blunt through use, they are renovated by means of resharpening flakes. Upper Palaeolithic (Europe) Refers to the time period beginning about 40 000–35 000 years ago and ending about 10 000 years ago, during which successive cultures rose and developed: the major ones are the Aurignacian, the Gravettian, the Solutrean, the Magdalenian. Among other traits, these cultures are characterized by industries based on the systematic production of blade and bladelet tools in addition to flake tools. The associated human remains belong to anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens). The transition with Middle Palaeolithic industries is represented in eastern central Europe by the Szeletian. Because no human remains were recovered, it is still unclear whether Szeletian industries were made by Neandertals or by modern humans.

Introduction Provenance studies are based on the identification of spatial relationships between stone archaeological artifacts and geographical locations, the raw material sources. Prerequisites are the characterization of the archaeological samples by a variety of methods and techniques – the most common being petrographic techniques and chemical analyses – and the existence of comparative regional geological databases, generally resulting from systematic geological sampling on a regional basis. In the context of prehistoric mobile hunter-gatherer societies, stone raw material provenance studies prove useful for investigating the way man interacts on a macroregional scale with his environment and other human communities. Tracking the human transport of raw materials and stone tools across the landscape can give us insights into both individual and group mobility, and interaction networks. This is because stone raw materials are, with shells, among the rare documents that can be traced to a geographical origin. Ceramics (when present) or other objects made of clay, such as figurines, can also be sourced.

Historical Developments Provenance studies have been the object of a longstanding interest in western and central Europe, where the potential of such studies was recognized as early as the 1960s–70s. Research on raw material procurement was not initially developed along the same lines everywhere. In France, Belgium, and Germany, for instance, attention focused primarily on the site and the raw materials introduced into it. As a result, long-distance transfers were rarely recognized because geological surveys were conducted within the confines of a region, generally construed as the catchment area of a major watercourse or as a major sedimentary basin. More recently, a greater awareness of the need to exchange information and flint samples has led to closer interaction between researchers working in different areas, and consequently to the acknowledgment of transfers exceeding the confines of a region. On the other hand, in Poland, Hungary, and former Czechoslovakia, attention centered during the earlier phases on the deposits themselves and on the distribution from the sources of distinctive types of raw materials, resulting in an initial emphasis on longdistance and medium-distance movements of raw materials. Since the 1980s, when systematic regional geological surveys were undertaken, more prominence has been given to the characterization and

Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

identification to source of raw materials recovered at individual archaeological sites.

An Integrated Approach Distances traveled, usually measured as the crow flies, and the plotting on maps of raw material transfers are by themselves highly informative elements, notably in terms of the varying magnitude of these transfers through time. They also help to appreciate the geographic limits of exploited or known territories, and reveal the recurrent character of certain transfers, indicative therefore of favored itineraries. These aspects can be directly appreciated from maps and the frequency distributions of transfers in relation to distances. However, behavioral perspectives cannot meaningfully be developed without reference to technology (see Lithics: Manufacture), an approach closely linked since the 1980s to lithic provenance studies. Based on the notion of chaıˆne ope´ratoire (reduction sequence), the technological analysis of a lithic assemblage, broken down into different categories of raw material, enables one to recognize the stage of manufacture in which each sourced and quantified raw material is introduced onto a site (nodules or roughed-out blocks, preformed cores, blanks or tools). Thus, raw materials can be characterized not only by distances and quantities, but also by technological stages of introduction. The relation between these three parameters – distance, quantity, and character of transported technology – defines a technoeconomic transport pattern characteristic of a period and/or of a region. Because raw material procurement should be considered as an integral part of a large set of subsistence strategies, aimed at meeting both economic and social requirements, distributions in combination with transport patterns need to be interpreted in terms of prehistoric mobility (i.e., ‘land-use’) and in terms of long-distance social interaction.

Interpretive Framework Group Mobility versus Interaction Networks

In Middle and Upper Palaeolithic contexts, analyzing the causes underlying raw material distributions is a major difficulty. Do observed distances correspond to the customary movements of groups across the landscape, or to displacements of items exceeding the range of such movements? A related matter is the distinction between direct acquisition and indirect acquisition through trade and exchange of raw materials, the two major types of mechanisms responsible

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for the presence of intrusive items in archaeological assemblages. When distributions are interpreted in terms of group mobility, the underlying assumption is that of a procurement embedded in other subsistence-activities, and distances traveled are construed as a measure of the size of the area exploited for subsistence-related purposes. In particular, the maximum transport distance (MTD) recorded for individual lithic assemblages is used as a proxy for the maximum size of territories. Economic necessities arguably give rise to specific mobility strategies, which may vary through time and/or space, and translate into different scales and rates of movement. When distributions are interpreted in terms of intergroup relationships, thereby implying exchange, MTDs are seen as the material correlates of the maximum extent of interaction networks expected as part of the survival and social process. Distances involved can be very great insofar as items can travel a long way through successive transfers. The existence of alliance networks is rarely contemplated for the Middle Palaeolithic. They are supposed to have developed only in the Upper Palaeolithic, along with the essential social structures making interaction possible. Criteria for Exchange

Establishing the magnitude of Palaeolithic group mobility from the extent of interaction networks is fraught with difficulties, since direct and indirect procurement may produce similar patterns. However, in some cases, the possibility of a ‘down-the-line’ mode of distribution resulting from successive reciprocal exchanges can be considered in view of the results of a cross-cultural comparison of ethnographic records of exchange. These show that highly valued items are conveyed over extreme distances (600–3000 km) by such a mode. Archaeologically, the prerequisites for an interpretation in terms of ‘down-the-line’ trade are (1) the presence of at least one site where the item may have been passed on, located between the source and the furthest known occurrence of that item and (2) the presence in the ‘relay’ site of another item made from the same raw material or from a raw material of close geographical provenance (see Exchange Systems). The Cultural Ecological Paradigm

Whether plotted transfers are interpreted as correlates of group mobility or as proxies for the extent of interaction networks, the issues are generally addressed in relation to the cultural ecological paradigm

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(see Cultural Ecology). Behavioral models devised to assess the size of exploited territories and the extent of spatial networks of connection among groups are mostly based on ethnographic accounts of present day hunter-gatherers and rely heavily on ecological approaches (Figure 1). Hunter-gatherer subsistence strategies are supposed to be directly influenced by the nature, abundance, and accessibility of resources. In turn, these strategies may result in different patterns, rates, and scales of movement across a landscape, as well as in variably dense and extensive interaction networks. In particular, the scale of group mobility appears indicative of adaptation to different environmental contexts, moves being longer or more frequently recorded over long distances in the most exacting environments, Similarly, risk-minimizing strategies in high-risk environments, where resources are liable to important fluctuations, promote the creation of wide-ranging social networks through which information about vital resources is dispensed, the exchange of goods forming an integral part of these strategies. When interpreting distributions of transfers, it is suggested that in both cases the frequency with which particular distances are covered is possibly more significant than the magnitude of transfers (see Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient).

which past hunter-gatherers’ dealings with space were environmentally constrained. Drawing on bibliographical information about stone raw material transfers in 500 lithic assemblages, evidence for change and variability is presented below, and particular points are illustrated and discussed in relation to these major issues. The methodologies used to characterize and identify sources of the lithic materials discussed in this article have changed over the years. Earlier attempts (in the 1980s) were mainly based on the sole macroscopic characterization of rocks by color, texture, and visible inclusions. This method nevertheless allows materials to be sourced with a measure of reliability when it is grounded in a thorough knowledge of the range of regionally available raw materials. In later publications (from the early 1990s to the present), the most widely used approach involves a combination of macroscopic observations and petrographic microfacies analyses, complemented by micropalaeontological analyses of thin sections. On the whole, chemical methods, more complex, costly, and time-consuming, have been less used, and either on specific materials such as obsidian and radiolarite, or to narrow the range of potential sources when other approaches were powerless to do so (see Chemical Analysis Techniques).

A Palaeolithic Perspective: Diachronic Change and Macro-Regional Variability

Diachronic Change: Scale of Transfers

Provenance studies have since the 1980s been conducted in a techno-economic perspective, and a large documentation is available on lithic transfers for the entire Palaeolithic of western Europe (WE), western central Europe (WCE), and eastern central Europe (ECE). Monitoring change versus continuity and macroregional variability for the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic allows major issues to be addressed, namely the question of behavioral/cognitive differences across the Middle/Upper Palaeolithic divide, and the degree to

Middle Palaeolithic transfers In the European Middle Palaeolithic, MTDs greater than 100 km (65 miles) are recorded for only 11 sites (8%), all late Middle Palaeolithic, out of 145 (Figure 2), with a maximum of 300 km in three instances. On the assumption that Middle Palaeolithic transfers are correlates of group mobility, and MTDs are proxies for the maximum size of territories, the very high proportion of MTDs smaller than 100 km (n ¼ 134, 92%) suggests that in most cases subsistence requirements were met within those bounds.

Patterns, rates and scales of movement

Scale and density

Resources

Group mobiity

Nature Abundance Accessibility

Continentality latitude

Interaction networks

Hunter-gatherer subsistence strategies

Environment

Figure 1 The role of ecological conditions in the development of long-term adaptive strategies.

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60 MP (n = 145) Frequency (%) of MTDs

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Distances (km) Figure 2 Frequency distributions of MTDs recorded for European Middle Palaeolithic (MP) and Upper Palaeolithic (UP) lithic assemblages, respectively. There is a single MTD per assemblage. Data for the so-called transitional industries such as the Chatelperronian, the Bohunician, and the Szeletian, are included in the Upper Palaeolithic distribution. Data come from France and Belgium for WE, from Germany and Switzerland for WCE, from Poland, Hungary, eastern Austria, the Czeck, and Slovak Republics for ECE.

Upper Palaeolithic transfers A dramatic increase (n ¼ 173, 49%) in the number of sites with MTDs greater than 100 km is observed for the European Upper Palaeolithic (Figure 2). The absolute threshold of the (Late) Middle Palaeolithic (300 km) is overshot, since transfers (n ¼ 27 occurrences) between 300 and 450 km (200–300 miles) are recorded. There are also two exceptional instances of 600 and 700 km long transfers. As a result, the proportion of sites with MTDs smaller than 100 km has fallen to 51%. The increase in the magnitude of transfers suggests differences of a socioeconomic nature. These can refer to the inner organization of groups and the patterning of their mobility, when for instance anticipated long-distance seasonal moves are considered. They can also refer to complex processes involving long-distance social interaction, the latter in particular, but not exclusively, for transfers >300 km. Diachronic Change: Techno-economic Transport Patterns

Normative Middle Palaeolithic patterns For the entire Middle Palaeolithic of western and central Europe, in areas where there is little correspondence in lithic resource availability, terrain, and topography, transport patterns show strikingly similar characteristics. As a rule, quantities decrease in relation to distance from source, and lithics are introduced onto the sites in a more and more elaborate form. In particular, transfers exceeding 20 km are tied to small quantities of end products (blanks, tools) sometimes complemented by a few reduced cores, interpreted as portable personal gear intended for use as people go along. Interestingly, exceptions where larger quantities are brought onto sites as preformed

cores from further than 20 km relate to areas yielding only poor to medium quality stone, thus arguing for the existence of a selective attitude toward raw materials in the Middle Palaeolithic. However, even in such cases, the quantities involved are smaller than in the Upper Palaeolithic and the distances much shorter: recently documented examples range from 14% to 20% transported over 30–40 km. Consequently, these exceptions should not be overrated in terms of anticipated needs in large quantities of higher-grade raw materials. Variable Upper Palaeolithic patterns Throughout western and central Europe, Upper Palaeolithic techno-economic patterns are characterized by their extreme variability, as opposed to the Middle Palaeolithic norm. Alongside the former Middle Palaeolithic pattern, which occurs unsurprisingly where high-grade local raw material is available, another pattern is observed, consisting in the transport over long distances (140–160 km to 300 km) of substantial quantities (>50% in the Gravettian) of unworked nodules or preformed cores (with or without a complement of blanks or tools). This ‘new’ pattern points explicitly to the building up of supplies, and can be identified in most cases where the poor to medium quality local raw material is not suitable for Upper Palaeolithic blade production, although admittedly the selective attitude toward raw materials fluctuates through time and seems dependant – among other factors – on the particular demands of a given culture’s lithic technology. Macro-regional Variability

While techno-economic patterns of transport do not vary macro-regionally and exhibit similar

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other data, a different patterning of group mobility has been suggested for ECE, functioning on a seasonal basis and involving medium (100 km) to long-distance (230–300 km) moves following natural transit routes. Interestingly, the rare west European long-distance transfers, also following natural transit routes, occur in a region of France, the Auvergne, where environmental conditions were probably as exacting as in more continental (ECE) zones.

characteristics in the whole of Europe for the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, respectively, MTD distributions for the Middle Palaeolithic and the Upper Palaeolithic suggest an enduring clinal relationship between greater frequency of long-distance transfers and increasing continentality across the Middle/ Upper Palaeolithic divide, in keeping with the cultural ecological paradigm. Evidence for the Middle Palaeolithic Compared with west European MTDs, those for WCE and ECE show a forward shift of frequencies toward greater distances, in particular for the first three distance classes (Figure 3). In addition, transfers greater than 200 km are better represented in ECE. Building on this and

Evidence for the Upper Palaeolithic While in the Upper Palaeolithic MTDs exceeding 300 km are recorded for WE and WCE, they are exceptionally rare (n ¼ 2, n ¼ 1) in comparison with ECE (n ¼ 24) (Figure 4). Their range is also smaller since they do

60 MP (n = 145) Frequency (%) of MTDs

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Distances (km) Figure 3 Frequency distributions of Middle Palaeolithic MTDs for WE, WCE, and ECE. There is a single MTD per lithic assemblage.

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Distances (km) Figure 4 Frequency distributions of Upper Palaeolithic MTDs for WE, WCE, and ECE, respectively. There is a single MTD per lithic assemblage. Data for the so-called transitional industries such as the Chatelperronian, the Bohunician, and the Szeletian, are included in this distribution. Note that the WE distribution is biased in favor of the ]200–250] and ]250–300] distance classes by the weight of the Auvergne transfers (see Figure 5).

Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

not exceed 380 km in WE and 400 km in WCE, whereas in ECE distances well over 400 km are recorded (four occurrences at 420–450 km, one at 600 km, and one at 700 km). The overall magnitude of lithic transfers is therefore greater in the latter macro-region. More interestingly, MTDs shorter than 100 km are by far the most frequent in WE, suggesting that in most cases either territories or networks were smaller than in ECE. By contrast, the ECE distribution is quite balanced, and displays relatively important percentages associated with distances greater than 100 km. The frequency distribution of MTDs for WCE is partly consistent with a location halfway along a continentality gradient, insofar as percentages for the ]100–150 km] and ]150–200 km] distance classes are highest, implying that most territories/networks fall within this range. This suggests that although magnitudes could be similar, longer transfers were more frequent in WCE than in WE, arguably as a result of greater continentality. WE percentages for the ]200– 250 km] and ]250–300 km] distance classes seem to contradict this assumption. It should however be noted that they are mainly due to transfers in the environmentally exacting Auvergne region, which account for 58% of the occurrences (17 out of 29) for these classes. They also account for 18% of the ]150–200 km] distance class. When the Auvergne transfers are disregarded (Figure 5), the ]200–250 km] distance class percentages for WE and WCE are inverted (5.9% and 6.4%, respectively); they are, in addition, both lower than the percentages for ECE (17.6%). This, as well as the very low percentages associated with the longest distances (>300 km), draws WCE closer to WE rather than to ECE.

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Case-Studies Seasonal Mobility in the Auvergne

The magnitude of raw material transfers between the Auvergne sites and sources 250–300 km further north illustrates a case of continuity in mobility patterns across the Middle/Upper Palaeolithic divide, which is consistent with the cultural ecological paradigm. Considered in a techno-economic perspective, these transfers also reinforce previously stated diachronic differences. A hilly relief and a globally rough climate characterize the Auvergne, in the central part of France. During colder periods, local glaciers covered the higher altitude zones that border the Loire and Allier valleys, along which there are clusters of sites, both Middle Palaeolithic and Upper Palaeolithic (Gravettian, Protomagdalenian, mostly Badegoulian and Magdalenian). All of the Upper and some of the Middle Palaeolithic sites contain northern flint from the Touraine and the Paris Basin, the former sites in large quantities. In this respect, it is significant that flint is scarce and generally of poor quality in the Auvergne. The Auvergne is considered to have been a region of severe seasonal contrasts throughout the Upper Palaeolithic, particularly inhospitable during the winter months. The absence of any winter hunting in the sites further suggests that human occupation was seasonal in the area. Working on this assumption, it is contemplated that in the Upper Palaeolithic the procurement of higher-quality northern flint was embedded in subsistence strategies and occurred in the context of planned seasonal moves. These followed natural routes connecting flint yielding regions

50 WE (n = 158) Frequency (%) of MTDs

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Distances (km) Figure 5 Frequency distributions of Upper Palaeolithic MTDs minus the Auvergne transfers for WE. Compared with Figure 4, MTDs for WE, WCE, and ECE are more consistent with an overall distribution along a continentality gradient when the Auvergne transfers are disregarded.

1194 Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

and others known to be lacking suitable raw materials (Figure 6). Long-distance seasonal mobility (ranging between 160 and at least 250 km in the Upper Palaeolithic) is a pattern argued to obtain in ECE. Explaining the Auvergne long-distance seasonal moves in terms of adaptive responses to environmental constraints is supported by the enduring northern origin of raw materials across the Middle/Upper Palaeolithic divide. However, the quantities recorded for the Middle Palaeolithic are very small. A similar case of continuity in transport and mobility strategies is documented only in ECE, in Moravia, where northern trans-Carpathian flint systematically occurs in Middle and Upper Palaeolithic sites, conveyed along natural routes (the Moravian Gate). As in the Auvergne only poor quality flint is available in Moravia, and it is also only during the Upper Palaeolithic that trans-Carpathian transfers are associated with large quantities of raw materials, rather than with a few end-products.

Indirect Procurement

Drawing on ethnographic parallels concerning the exchange of highly valued items by down-the-line trade over extreme distances, special attention has been paid to the longest transfers (>300 km) acknowledged in WE, WCE, and ECE. These always involve very small quantities (generally a single item) of end-products, often in remarkable materials, such as obsidian or white-spotted S´wieciecho´w flint in ECE, which account for half these transfers and may have been invested with more than utilitarian properties. Eastern Central Europe In ECE, such very long transfers are recorded throughout the Upper Palaeolithic, beginning with the Szeletian and the Aurignacian, which partly overlap in time. It is argued that three of the four >300 km Szeletian transfers may result from a down-the-line mode of exchange (Figure 7). Items made of eastern materials from the

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Figure 6 Northward long-distance winter moves from the Auvergne (France), following natural routes leading to areas yielding highquality flints. Both Middle and Upper Palaeolithic sites contain Touraine and Paris Basin flints, but the procurement of large quantities of such flints is only documented for the Upper Palaeolithic. Figure composed by G. Monthel (UMR 7055 du CNRS).

Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

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Chocolate flint

Holy Cross Mts

Swíeciechów flint Kraków Jurassic flint Radiolarite

la

tu Vis

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Figure 7 Indirect procurement by down-the-line trade through social exchange in the Szeletian and the Aurignacian of ECE (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic). Figure composed by G. Monthel (UMR 7055 du CNRS).

Tokay and Bu¨kk regions (obsidian and felsitic quartz porphyry, 360 and 340 km) are recorded west in Moravia, at Neslovice. Obsidian and felsitic quartz porphyry are abundant in all the Bu¨kk area sites. Felsitic quartz porphyry is also documented at a halfway point in some Va´h valley sites, construed as ‘relay’ sites. In addition, the presence of the characteristic raw material of this valley, radiolarite, is recorded in both eastern (Bu¨kk) and western (Moravia) sites. In a similar way, the S´wieciecho´w flint item from northeastern Poland found in Moravia, at Misˇkovice (360 km), alongside with Krako´w Jurassic flint, is argued to have been conveyed through the Krako´w region sites, where S´wieciecho´w flint items are recorded, as well as items in ‘chocolate’ flint, of similar northern origin. In the Aurignacian, indirect procurement can be contemplated for two of the four >300 km transfers. One is associated with the presence of S´wieciecho´w flint in Moravia, at Urcˇice-Golsˇty´n (380 km), where Krako´w Jurassic flint is also recorded. There again, the Krako´w sites, which yield some S´wieciecho´w flint (three items at Krako´w-Sowiniec), can be interpreted as ‘relay’ sites. Another transfer is associated with the presence

of 10 obsidian items at Nova´ Ddina I in Moravia (320 km), alongside with radiolarite, and these were possibly conveyed through the Va´h valley sites. Western Central Europe In WCE, only one >300 km transfer is recorded, in connection with HohlensteinStadel, an Aurignacian site of the Swabian Jura. It is associated with a few end products in Baltic flint from northern Rhineland (400 km). While in the Swabian Jura, all other long-distance transfers are throughout the Upper Palaeolithic oriented eastwards (240 km) and westwards (220 km) along the Danube River, suggesting direct procurement of materials during (seasonal?) group movement, this transfer is oriented north-south. Small quantities of Baltic flint have been found at the Aurignacian site of Wildscheuer in the Rhineland, some 140 km distant from the closest source, and the assumption is that down-the-line trade to southwestern Germany conveyed the items recovered at Hohlenstein-Stadel. Western Europe In WE, basically as a reflection of the state of current research, >300 km transfers are

1196 Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

so far only acknowledged for the French Aurignacian (n ¼ 2 occurrences). These transfers relate to one item each of grain de mil flint conveyed from western Charente to the Arie`ge (at Tuto de Camalhot) and the He´rault (Re´gismont-le-Haut) (Figure 8). Grain de mil flint also occurs at several of the Ve´ze`re valley sites in the Pe´rigord, and two types of northern Aquitaine flints (Bergeracois and Fumel) have been identified at the Tuto de Camalhot and Re´gismontle-Haut. Indirect procurement by down-the-line trade via Pe´rigord ‘relay’ sites is therefore suggested for the >300 km grain de mil transfers. In this respect, it is of additional interest that shells of Atlantic coastal species occur both at Pe´rigord sites and at the Tuto de Camalhot. It does not necessarily ensue from the above examples that direct procurement is the only underlying mechanism for transfers <300 km, and possible successive transfers each involving relatively short distances (c. 100 km) can be reconstructed in both WE and ECE, arguing for exchange also on a smaller scale, overlapping that of group mobility. In all likelihood, the observed increase in Upper Palaeolithic magnitudes of transfers can be accounted for by a combination of socio-economic factors – more systematic long-distance moves, exchange within interaction networks – whose respective importance is difficult to assess.

The Nature of Personal Gear

It is acknowledged that the items transported as part of hunter-gatherers’ personal gear are more diversified than previously thought. Parallels drawn between examples from the French Middle and Upper Palaeolithic have implications in terms of Middle Palaeolithic people’s conceptual capacities (Figure 9). Personal gear in the Upper Palaeolithic Upper Palaeolithic transfers <300 km can be associated with high or low quantities of materials. Low quantities (<1%) relate to either end-products alone (mainly retouched blade tools) or end-products (blade blanks exceeding tools) complemented by small bladelet cores in the same raw materials. These can be very reduced plain prismatic cores. They can also be made from various types of products, such as flakes, or formal tools that have been identified as potential cores, for example, carinated scrapers in the Aurignacian and thick Raysse burins in the Gravettian. While indirect procurement cannot be ruled out, it is generally assumed that these various items correspond to the portable personal gear of mobile hunter-gatherers. In particular for the Aurignacian, the main arguments put forth pertain to the similar way that local/regional and more distant raw materials are managed. In both cases, the anticipated manufacture of blade blanks

CHARENTE Atlantic Ocean

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Lithics, indirect procurement (down-the-line) Lithics, possible combination of direct and indirect procurement

Figure 8 Indirect procurement by down-the-line trade through social exchange in the Aurignacian of WE (southern France). Figure composed by G. Monthel (UMR 7055 du CNRS).

Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies Upper Palaeolithic

Middle Palaeolithic

Blade blanks Used as such or retouched

Levallois flakes Used as such or retouched

Reduced prismatic bladelet cores Supply of raw material

Various reduced cores Supply of raw material

Formal tools Carinated scrapers Raysse burins

Tool

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Formal tools Quina side-scrapers Limaces

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1197

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Supply of raw material

Future tool

Supply of raw material

Figure 9 The nature of hunter-gatherers’ transported personal gear. Middle and Upper Palaeolithic analogies.

for delayed use coexists with the on-site ad hoc production of bladelets made from prismatic or carinated cores, introduced in more or less advanced stages of processing as a function of the distance from raw material sources. Personal gear in the Middle Palaeolithic Recent studies on Middle Palaeolithic transfers highlight the potentially flexible nature and long life span of some of the items conveyed over distances >20 km. For example, in the Quina Mousterian, large sidescrapers and limaces are shown to be both tools and potential supplies of raw material in the form of long thin retouch or resharpening flakes, which can in turn be retouched into tools, sometimes testifying to several cycles of exploitation. The same seems to hold for bifaces in the Mousterian of Acheulean Tradition (MTA). In addition, it is demonstrated that in some assemblages cores were frequently worked from flakes. This suggests that large flake blanks were transported both as potential tools (to be retouched) and as raw material supplies (to produce flakes). Considering that predetermined products such as Levallois preferential and preparation flakes and reduced cores are also part of the mobile tool-kit, the overall technological pattern of transport is somewhat analogous to the one associated with low quantities in the Upper Palaeolithic (Figure 9), and points to a higher degree of technological planning than previously thought. Interestingly, in some sites, this pattern is documented for both exotic and local raw materials, giving new insights into site function and duration of occupations.

Conclusions Environmental Constraints

Some of the points developed above raise the question of the relevance of the cultural ecological paradigm for addressing land-use and interaction related issues. Admittedly, in WE, evidence from the Auvergne region underscores the role of ecological conditions in the development of long-term adaptive strategies across the Middle/Upper Palaeolithic divide. However, the Auvergne transfers account for only 58% of the occurrences recorded for the ]200–300 km] distance class. The other occurrences are not associated with particularly exacting environmental contexts. Moreover, these source-site connections do not follow natural routes, but are mostly perpendicular to the valleys and entail crossing the hydrographical network. Whatever their interpretation, in terms of group mobility or interaction networks, the existence of these long-distance transfers, as well as the transfers >300 km arguably ascribed to a down-the-line mode of exchange, considerably weakens the supposed relationship between increasing continentality and greater magnitude of transfers. Clearly, huntergatherer subsistence strategies are more independent of environmental constraints than the cultural ecological interpretive framework suggests. But they are not wholly independent either, in particular when the frequencies with which certain distances are covered are considered rather than the magnitude of transfers. For instance, when the Auvergne transfers are omitted (Figure 5), the three series of MTDs are more consistent with an overall distribution across a

1198 Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

continentality gradient. In addition, when distances of 300 km and beyond are considered, both frequency and magnitude of transfers set apart ECE from both WE and WCE. Interpreted as proxies for the maximum extent of interaction networks, these transfers are far more frequent in ECE, and their range is also greater.

induced higher constraints on the quality of raw materials, therefore justifying the higher cost of transport in the absence of suitable locally available resources. This could be seen as reflecting quantitative rather than qualitative differences across the Middle/Upper Palaeolithic divide.

Middle and Upper Palaeolithic Behavioral/ Cognitive Capacities

See also: Chemical Analysis Techniques; Cultural

Other points address the question of whether observed differences between the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic should be considered as the expression of fundamentally different behavioral/cognitive capacities (see Modern Humans, Emergence of). Possible arguments in favor of such an assumption are the overall dramatic increase in magnitude of Upper Palaeolithic transfers and the decrease in frequencies of <100 km MTDs (51% against 92%). These point to the development of interaction networks and to a different patterning of group mobility, involving anticipated long-distance seasonal moves. However, planned seasonal mobility has also been suggested for the Middle Palaeolithic, albeit as an adaptive response to environmental constraints (ECE and Auvergne). In the Upper Palaeolithic, such mobility strategies cannot therefore be considered novel. Rather, they appear only as more systematic, possibly because they were less situationally driven. Another major difference between the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic pertains to the anticipated building up of supplies for a use that was much deferred, considering the distances over which large quantities of raw materials were transported to areas lacking suitable stone. The pattern is observed for the Upper Palaeolithic even when continuity in mobility patterns across the Middle/ Upper Palaeolithic divide can be argued for the same region (Auvergne, Moravia). Even though the acquisition cost need not have been higher if embedded procurement is considered, the cost of transport undoubtedly was. However, this is not necessarily indicative of cognitive differences between Middle and Upper Palaeolithic groups, particularly in view of the analogies between Middle and Upper Palaeolithic technological patterns of transport associated to small quantities. The possibility should be considered that the demands of Upper Palaeolithic lithic technology

Ecology; Exchange Systems; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient; Lithics: Manufacture; Modern Humans, Emergence of; Neutron Activation Analysis.

Further Reading Blades BS (1999) Aurignacian lithic economy and early modern mobility: New perspectives from classic sites in the Ve´ze`re valley of France. Journal of Human Evolution 37: 91–120. Bordes J-G, Bon F, and Le Brun-Ricalens F (2005) Le transport des matie`res premie`res lithiques a` l0 Aurignacien entre le nord et le sud de l’Aquitaine: faits attendus, faits nouveaux. In: Jaubert J and Barbaza M (eds.) Territoires, de´placements, mobilite´, e´changes. Actes du 126e Congre`s CTHS, Toulouse, 2001. Paris: CTHS. pp. 185–198. Bourguignon L, Delagnes A, and Meignen L (2006) Syste`mes de production lithique, gestion des outillages et territoires au Pale´olithique moyen: ou` se trouve la complexite´? In: Astruc L, et al. (eds.) Normes techniques et pratiques sociales: de la simplicite´ des outillages pre´- et protohistoriques. Actes des XXVIe rencontres internationales d’arche´ologie et d’histoire d’Antibes. pp. 75–86. Antibes: APDCA. Fe´blot-Augustins J (1993) Mobility strategies in the Late Middle Palaeolithic of central Europe and western Europe: Elements of stability and variability. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 12: 211–265. Fe´blot-Augustins J (1997) La circulation des matie`res premie`res au Pale´olithique (2 vols.). Lie`ge: ERAUL. Fe´blot-Augustins J and Perle`s C (1992) Perspectives ethnoarche´ologiques sur les e´changes a` longue distance. In: Ethnoarche´ologie. Justification, proble`mes, limites. Actes des XIIe rencontres internationales d’arche´ologie et d’histoire d’Antibes, pp. 195–209. Juan-les-Pins: APDCA. Fontana L (2005) Territoires, mobilite´ et e´changes au Magdale´nien dans l’Aude et le Massif Central (France): approche comparative, mode´lisation et perspectives. In: Jaubert J and Barbaza M (eds.) Territoires, de´placements, mobilite´, e´changes. Actes du 126e Congre`s CTHS, Toulouse, 2001. Paris: CTHS. pp. 355–370. Jaubert J and Barbaza M (eds.) (2005) Territoires, de´placements, mobilite´, e´changes. Actes du 126e Congre`s CTHS, Toulouse, 2001. Paris: CTHS. Keeley LH (1988) Hunter-gatherer economic complexity and ‘population pressure’: A cross-cultural analysis. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 7: 373–411.

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EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN Arkadiusz Marciniak, University of Poznan´, Poznan´, Poland ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary amber A yellowish translucent or opaque fossilized resin from an extinct variety of pine tree found in alluvial soils or on the seashore. It has been a highly valued material since the Neolithic and has been traded throughout Europe ever since. bronze An alloy of copper and tin in various proportions. It is harder than copper, more readily melted, and easier to cast. It was first made before 3000 BC but it was only in the 2nd millennium BC that it became widely used. Introduction of bronze turned out to have a far reaching consequence for the European communities. chiefdom A form of sociopolitical organization with a chief having the central authority over a social ranking or hierarchy. Status of individuals is inherited and determined by closeness of relationship to the chief. A chiefdom is resposible for emergence of large monuments, usually of ceremonial character, and is characterized by well organized distribution of goods and services and specialization in crafts. copper A ductile and malleable metal. Smelting ore that produced pure copper was discovered in Anatolia after 6000 BC. Knowledge of the use of copper was then wider spread than the metal itself. Copper metallurgy was dominated by casting tools and weapons and triggered development in many domains of the European communities. Homo erectus A species of early human that appeared around 1.8 million years ago. It was upright man efficient in walking on two legs. The average brain size was c. 800 cubic cm. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis A species of the Homo genus that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia from c. 130 000 to 25 000 years ago. It was robust and muscular and the average brain size was similar to that of anatomically modern humans. Homo sapiens sapiens A species characterized by the lighter posture compared to earlier humans. A high vaulted cranium with a flat and vertical forehead houses the brain of average size of c. 1300 cubic cm. iron A silvery, lustrous and malleable metal occurring abundantly in combined forms such as hematite, limonite, magnetite, and taconite. The beginning of its use varied geographically and it became the major metal exploited by the European groups in the 1st millennium BC. The large-scale production of iron implements, in particular tools and weapons, facilitated a dynamic economic development and large-scale movements. kurgan The Russian word for tumulus. It is a kind of earthen burial mound or barrow constructed over a burial chamber, often of wood. limes A protection system marking the boundaries of the Roman Empire. It was usually fortified with forts and watchtowers. The continuous system of fortifications and barriers was constructed along the Rhine and the Danube rivers. Hadrian’s Wall was also one of its significant elements. nomadism A way of life of a community that has no permanent settlement and moves cyclically or periodically within a defined territory. It usually depends on domestic livestock and migrates to find pasture for their animals.

oppidum A large Celtic settlement of significant administrative function. It is the first town-like structure north of the Mediterranean, often surrounded by earthworks. After the Roman conquest, oppida were set to administer the Empire provinces and some of them became later genuine Roman towns.

The Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic The Palaeolithic Age of central and eastern Europe is marked by a cycle of glacial and interglacial periods continuing until the beginning of the Holocene period around 10 000 BC. Cyclical changes in ice sheets defined living conditions of local hunter-gatherers and forced subsequent depopulation and recolonization of vast territories (see Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient). The Lower and the Middle Palaeolithic are marked by the scarcity of evidence. The Lower Palaeolithic from central and eastern Europe begins with the first appearance of hominids belonging to the group Homo erectus marking their first shift out of Africa. The date of the earliest colonization is a matter of debate. The earliest fossil hominids in the region comprise a H. erectus mandible from Mauer, Germany, c. 500 000 years ago. The other fossils come from Ve´rtesszo¨llo¨s, Hungary, Bilzingsleben and Steinheim in Germany, and are dated between 400 000 and 200 000 years ago (see Figure 1). These fossils show a mixture of features, including archaic Homo sapiens, and hence their attribution to H. erectus is now questionable. The early hominids of the Lower Palaeolithic possessed skills to manufacture hand axes and simple flake-based stone tools. The hand axes were manufactured in the so-called Acheulean tradition, named after the site of Saint-Acheul in France. They were accompanied by a range of flake tools from the inconspicuous flakes to chopping tools, found, for example, at the sites of Isernia, Taubach, and Bilzingsleben (eastern Germany), Prezletice and Stra´nska´ ska´la (Czech Republic), and Ve´rtesszo¨llo¨s (Hungary) (Figure 1). These groups also possessed the ability to light a fire. All these developments provided protection against predators, means of preparing and cooking meat, and keeping warm in cold climate. The early hominid groups lived in caves and tent-like structures in the open areas and consumed both plants and animals. They hunted large animals such as rhinoceros, cervids, bovids, equids, elephants, and bears. One of the bestknown sites from the period is Bilzingsleben in eastern Germany. It is an open-air site with tremendous abundance of archaeological and palaeontological finds. It comprised oval dwelling structures, each c. 3  4 m,

1200 EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN

Volga North Sea Baltic Sea

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Figure 1 Major prehistoric sites of central and eastern Europe.

hearths, workshops, and several activity zones for the working of stone, bone, and wood as well as a paved area of small pebbles and bone debris measuring 9 m in diameter. The period that followed is known as the Middle Palaeolithic and occurred about 130 000 years ago. Homo erectus was replaced by Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. They were the first hominids who buried their dead deliberately and furnished the burials with grave goods. This indicates some sort of belief system that included notions of an afterlife. The earliest remains of H. sapiens neanderthalensis in central and eastern Europe come from Ehingsdorf near Weimar in eastern Germany. Remains of these hominids have also been found in other sites such as Neandertal, Wildscheuer, Salzgitter-Lebenstet, and Hohlenstein-Stadel in Germany as well as in Krapina

and Vindija (Croatia), Sˇipka and Ochoz (Moravia), Sˇubalyuk (Hungary), and Kiik-Koba (Ukraine) (Figure 1). These hominid groups also produced a range of stone industries from which the Mousterian tradition, named after the site of Le Moustier in southern France, remains the most important. During this period, hand axes disappeared and were replaced by the use of prepared cores for the production of finely made flake tools featuring well-designed scrapers and projectile points. Further technological advances in the Middle Palaeolithic were manifested in the emergence of a developed flake stone tools production in the Levallois technique. It reflects apparent mental abilities such as discursive anticipation and planning as the technique required deliberate and specific sequences of actions aimed to produce

EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN 1201

distinctively shaped tools such as side scrapers or notches. The Neanderthals hunted, gathered, and scavenged similar species as their predecessors. The Middle Palaeolithic ended when H. sapiens neanderthalensis was rapidly replaced by Homo sapiens sapiens, the first modern humans. Their rise marks the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic. They emerged in Europe around 40 000 years ago and soon spread throughout the continent. This process occurred in conditions of the last cold period of the Quaternary known as the Wu¨rm glaciation, itself characterized by climatic oscillations. The northern part of central and eastern Europe was under a gigantic ice cap. The environmental zones south of its line were spread longitudinally with a humid tundra in the west of Europe and a cold steppe in the east. The grassy steppes of central and eastern Europe (especially Ukraine) with an abundance of wild animals facilitated dynamic developments of human groups, while steady disappearance of the ice sheet resulted in a move of the local communities into previously uninhabited areas such as the Northern European Plain. The Upper Palaeolithic communities made considerable advances in a stone blade technology enabling manufacture of highly developed tools such as end scrapes, projectile points, borers, gravers, and spearthrowers. Most of them were hafted. They also made composite tools by putting wooden or bone shafts together. They used spears and, later, bows and arrows as well. Distinct flint assemblages provided criteria for distinguishing separate archaeological cultures such as leaf-shaped point cultures, Aurignacian, Gravettian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian, and groups with shouldered points, which appeared in subsequent periods of the Upper Palaeolithic in various regions in central and eastern Europe as well as in the western part of the continent. It is believed that these groups represent distinct societies of huntergatherers. The Upper Palaeolithic H. sapiens sapiens also manufactured bone tools such as weapon tips, harpoons, and needles. These improvements of hunting techniques and materials facilitated specialized hunting on animal species that were particularly numerous and highyielding such as mammoths and woolly rhinoceros. For the first time, they could be killed from a distance by specialized hunting groups. Mammoths were hunted on a wide scale. It is speculated that this was accompanied by considerable social changes where a part of the community remained in base camps while the other was responsible for supplying raw material and game (see Europe: Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies). A number of large sites of these hunters were discovered, for example, in Pavlov

and Dolni Veˆstonice (Czech Republic), Kostienki, Mezhirich, and Pushkari (Ukraine), or Krako´wSpadzista (Poland) (Figure 1). The elaborate dwellings were often made of mammoth bones. One of the largest complexes was discovered in Kostienki in the Don River basin, which comprised a complex of 25 surface and stratified open sites. The largest were composed of substantive mammoth-bone dwellings, resulting probably from multiple occupations, as well as small sunken-floored huts, believed to be evidence of single occupations. Mammoth long bones were used to stabilize the bases of dwellings in contact with the earth, while tusks were used in the construction of roofs. More than 50 000 mammoth bones have been discovered at this site. Like their predecessors, Upper Palaeolithic communities also lived in caves. Homo sapiens sapiens were the first groups to create representational and abstract art produced in astonishing quantity and impressive quality. They comprised both mobiliary and rock art. The former involved works of art made of stone, antler, bone, ivory, and teeth as well as decorated tools and weapons. The latter marks the development of artistic activity in the form of cave paintings. The center of Upper Palaeolithic art lay in western Europe. However, numerous sites in central and eastern Europe contained exemplary pieces of mobiliary art. These include especially elaborate carved female figurines, the so-called Venus, which are depicted with exaggerated breasts, stomachs, buttocks, and thighs, as represented by well-known objects from Willendorf and Kostienki. The first representations of the human figure appeared in the Gravettian assemblages of France and related eastern variants of that technocomplex, especially the Pavlovian in the Czech Republic and the Kostenkian in Ukraine (31 000–25 000 BC). These female images were most often small-scale statuettes, carved in stone, bone, ivory, and fired loess. They were sometimes discovered along with animal figurines depicting rhinoceros, mammoth, and feline creatures. The melting of the ice sheet at the end of the Upper Palaeolithic, which marked the beginning of the Holocene period, resulted in a warmer climate, the spread of forest cover, and the disappearance of steppe regions. This transformed immensely the geography of Europe and forced local hunter-gatherers to change their mode of life. This new period known as the Mesolithic is set to designate a phase of human history following the last glaciation and prior to the emergence of predominantly farming-based subsistence (see Europe, Northern and Western: Mesolithic Cultures). It is marked by an ability to adapt to and exploit diverse environmental zones. Its chronology varies according to region, but it dates from about 10 000 to 5000 BC. It is the last time central and

1202 EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN

eastern Europe was inhabited exclusively by huntergatherers. As the ice sheet disappeared, hunter-gatherers in central and eastern Europe began to inhabit mostly forest areas. They lived in smaller social groups in sites that became more widely spread. They buried their dead in individual burials with funerary items such as pendants, bone and stone tools, and often dusted with red ochre. Available resources (hunting, fishing, gathering) were more diverse than previously. The rapid warming also stimulated great changes in flora and fauna. Mammoths became extinct, and reindeer moved north and were replaced by forest-dwelling mammals such as red deer, roe deer, and wild boar. Profound technological innovations in this period involved the marked reduction in the range of stone tools and the transition from blade technology to manufacture of microliths. They were produced in a variety of forms and have been interpreted as projectile points and were also used as blanks. Organic materials such as wood, antler, and bone were used on a large scale for production of harpoons and arrows. This new hunting weaponry based upon bow and arrow proved to be more efficient in the newly established forest environment than previously used spears. In a few special regions, a complex settlement and economic pattern emerged which involved a base camp associated with a number of small, specialized activity camps. In some cases, as in ErteblleEllerbeck in northern Germany and Scandinavia, coastal resources were exploited, which resulted in the accumulation of massive shell middens. Large groups at the Iron Gate on the banks of the Danube Gorge abundant in aquatic and terrestrial resources, as known from Lepenski Vir, were clearly sedentary living in trapezoidal houses with stone foundations and hearths. They manufactured rounded stone sculptures with engraved facial features accompanied by geometric motifs (Figure 2). In some areas, such as in the eastern part of the Baltic Sea and the forest zone of Russia, a hunting and gathering economy continued long after farming was introduced in other parts of central and eastern Europe.

The Neolithic and the Copper Age The Neolithic is commonly identified by the appearance of farming, initiating a shift from an almost total dependence on wild resources to a diet based primarily on cereals and domesticated animals. It was accompanied by a sedentary mode of life in complex settlements, the erection of elaborate monuments, and the use of pottery and polished stone tools. Farming and sedentism revolutionized ways of life of the local communities

Figure 2 Lepenski Vir, Serbia. The anthropomorphic statue.

and their view of the world. They also had demographic consequences manifested in the population increase. Society became more complex and stratified. The mechanism of neolithization of Europe is one of the most fiercely debated issues in archaeology (see Europe: Neolithic). This new mode of life emerged probably both as a result of immigration of farmers from the south and its adoption by local indigenous foragers. This process was supposedly highly idiosyncratic. Impact of these components onto the overall cultural transformation varied across time and space and the complete ‘Neolithic package’ did not appear fully fledged from the beginning. Early Neolithic communities came to Europe from the Near East and Anatolia around 7000 BC, and first settled in the southeastern part of the continent in Greece and the Balkans. The early farmers in this region subsisted on barley, wheat, lentils, legumes, sheep, and goats. Farmers inhabited open settlements and lived in free-standing, rectangular houses. As in Anatolia, some large settlements were inhabited for long periods and the continuous construction of buildings at the same place led to the emergence of large settlement mounds (tells). The most densely occupied areas were Thessaly as represented by the settlements of Achilleion, Argissa, Otzaki, or Sesklo, and the Maritsa valley in central-southern Bulgaria with the large tell of Karanovo (Figure 1).

EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN 1203

Further north, farmers settled in all central and large parts of lower Danubian region. This stage comprised Starcˇevo-Cris¸ culture dated to seventh millenium BC. The economic basis of these communities did not differ considerably from their predecessors. People also came to occupy regions little or less settled in the Early Neolithic in this part of Europe such as northern Greece, the lower Danube valley, Bosnia, the Hungarian plain, and the forest-steppe zone of western Ukraine. By about 6000 BC, Neolithic communities moved to the southern part of the Hungarian plain and the east part of the Carpathians. This northward spread of the Balkan style of the Neolithic resulted in the emergence of the Ko¨ro¨s culture in Hungary. Farming groups then spread rapidly from the central Danube region, north along the Elbe, Oder, and Vistula until the southern part of the North European Plain. In this temperate zone, they underwent considerable transformations. This route of colonization was associated with Linear Pottery groups. They occupied mostly river valleys and lived in massive timber longhouses (see Europe, Northern and Western: Early Neolithic Cultures). The move of farmers to this ecological zone was accompanied by the increased significance of cattle, which was probably primarily associated with rituals. They manufactured incised decorated pottery and shoe-last adzes for clearing forests. By 5300 BC, the neolithization of central Europe was complete, albeit the bulk of the landscape remained unoccupied. A homogenous period of Early Neolithic was followed by more regionalized developments in various ecological zones resulting from disintegration of the Linear Pottery groups and incorporation of elements of local foragers. This process dates back to around 4500 BC. These local phenomena are identified by distinctive pottery styles including the Michelsberg culture between the Rhine delta and the Alps, and the Funnel Beaker Culture in northern and eastern Europe. In this period, people lived in small dwellings that were less substantial than those of the Early Neolithic. They also built circular ditched enclosures with causeways on the perimeter (especially in eastern Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, and Austria), along with earth and stone mortuary structures. During this time, important economic changes such as the introduction of the wheel and plow, wool production, and an increased use of animals for specialized tasks emerged. New economic strategies also manifested in the extensive exploitation of flint mines and the production of large flint tools exported over vast distances as, for example, in Krzemionki Opatowskie (Figure 1). During the fifth millennium BC, copper metallurgy, specifically smelting of copper from ores, developed independently at several places in southeastern

Europe, especially in the Balkans and the Carpathian Basin. It soon became widely used in human ornamentation and in mortuary items. This period, which in this region lasted between 4500 and 2500 BC, is known as the Copper Age. Copper mines in Rudna Glava in Serbia or in Aibunar in Thrace (Figure 1), along with many others in the region, were discovered and exploited. The demand for copper existed at a considerable distance from its sources, probably reaching c. 1000 km. The fifth and fourth millenniums BC were marked by the development of cemeteries rather than erection of domestic structures. They comprised a range of different forms, from the earthen barrows and megalithic tombs in northern part of the region to the elaborated cemeteries in its southern part. The appearance of large burial grounds such as Tiszapolga´r-Basatanya in Hungary (Figure 1) succeeded burials grouped within the occupation mound and were accompanied by disperse settlement patterns. A spectacular example in which individual graves featured sophisticated gold and copper work was found in Varna on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria (Figure 1). Cemeteries were a means of establishing group identity and instilling a sense of belonging as well as providing a social arena in which these communities could display their wealth and prestige. Megalithic tombs are known only from the northern part of central Europe and comprised the very eastern margin of this phenomenon associated with the Atlantic coast that stretched from Portugal in the south through the Orkney Isles and Scandinavia in the north and Poland in the east. They consisted of tombs that ranged from simple stone burial chambers beneath small mounds to complex passages and chambers that run beneath large mounds. The earliest of these megaliths date to the early part of the fourth millennium BC. Their meaning is debatable, but it is likely that they functioned as social markers and/or as a resting place for ancestors. On the Pontic steppes, indigenous hunting and fishing groups started to acquire pottery and domestic cattle from their Neolithic neighbors in the sixth millenium BC. A large Cucuteni-Tripolye complex emerged in the Bug and Dnieper regions in the beginning of the fifth millenium BC. The size of the settlements in the developed phase increased up to 100 ha and the houses up to 200 m2. The platform dwellings (the so-called plosˇcˇadki) were very elaborate and had a regular plan. The Cucuteni-Tripolye groups acquired and used copper extensively. Further developments in eastern part of the region involved the taming and domestication of horses. This process is under the scrutiny of many archaeologists and a number of issues remain unanswered. The site of Dereivka

1204 EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN

is at the center of this debate as it contained a large number of horse bone remains. Other innovations, such as the use of paired draught technology for wheeled vehicles and light plows along with new breeds of sheep, probably of Caucasian or Near Eastern origin, had a considerable effect on these dry areas north of the Black Sea. Horses and ox-drawn wagons permitted mobility over vast distances. They facilitated the development of pastoralism and the emergence of a large complex known as the Pit Grave culture. It was characterized by chambered burials covered with wooden beams under round barrows or kurgan. Some of these monuments – found from the Urals to the lower Danube – were topped by a stone anthropomorphic stela and occasionally contained wooden wheels or whole wagons. Groups of these people penetrated the Danube region of northern Bulgaria and eastern Hungary. By 3000 BC, previously dominant and omnipresent ritual structures and monuments such megaliths and ceremonial centers lost their value. The wealth became portable, which marked a rapid change across the region. The focus shifted from places to people and from collective to personal possessions. A manifestation of this change is the Corded Ware culture, with distinctive pottery decorated with impressed cords, that dominated central and eastern Europe. This pottery appeared first on the Pontic steppes and in the eastern part of the North European Plain. These new communities buried their dead in singular, rather than collective graves, which is seen as a sign of differentiation or individualization within a stratified society. Mostly male graves were accompanied by decorated drinking vessels known as beakers and stone axes with a shaft hole and a single, drooping blade, called a ‘battle-axe’. These graves were placed in the center of a circular mound. Central Europe also formed the eastern fringe of the Bell Beakers phenomenon in the late third millennium BC, known from vast areas of Europe. It is named after decorated drinking cups without handles. Graves were also individual round mounds and contained beakers, daggers, and archery equipment such as triangular barbed-flint arrowheads and wrist-guards of fine stone. The early daggers were made of flint, the later ones of copper, and eventually bronze. The vast distribution of the Bell Beakers across temperate Europe as well as the Mediterranean region was a sign of an increasingly mobile way of life and signaled disintegration of traditional social structures.

The Bronze Age In central and eastern Europe, copper came to be alloyed with tin to make bronze in the end of the

third millennium BC. From a small-scale production at the early stage, bronze metallurgy developed enormously throughout this period producing high quantities of metal in a high variety of forms from tools and weapons to sophisticated ornaments. Copper and tin typically do not occur together and must have been transported from their sources in a sustained and directional manner to the rising centers of metalwork (see Metals: Primary Production Studies of). Functioning of these centers depended on regular supplies of both ores, which in turn triggered communication and interaction over much of Europe. In the early phase, bronze became the universal medium of prestige. It further became popular in the manufacture of weapons, ornaments, and tools. The Bronze Age brought about not only an advent of bronze but first and foremost considerable social and economic changes (see Europe, Northern and Western: Bronze Age). Many archaeologists believe that the Bronze Age marked emergence of some form of institutionalized and probably hereditary differentiation, characterized by social ranking or hierarchy and often defined as chiefdom. Craft specialization associated with bronze manufacture is thought to have played a significant role in emergence of social complexity. The Early Bronze Age is marked by differentiated developments of particular regions of central and eastern Europe. A zone north of the Carpathians was occupied by the U´neˇtice culture. Pit graves were commonly found in flat cemeteries and were furnished quite simply. However, clusters of richer elite barrows also occurred in eastern Germany (Helmsdorf, Leubingen) and Poland (Łe˛ki Małe) furnished with multiple bronze and gold objects (Figure 1). In Łe˛ki Małe, the skeletons were laid in wooden-roofed burial chambers within a cairn of boulders. Here, the dagger remained the chief weapon, while flat axes and shaft-hole axes were used as prestige tools and weapons. Metal ornaments, particularly rings, were also deposited. Characteristic metal objects included ingot torcs. The lakeside dwellings in southern Germany and Switzerland flourished, continuing a tradition dated back to the Neolithic. The sites of Forschner or Wasserburg Buchau consisted of numerous post structures, single- and multiroomed buildings, assorted outbuildings and palisades (Figure 1). This tradition continued well into the Late Bronze Age in sites like Greifensee-Bo¨schen. The communities in the Carpathian Basin created the most advanced culture of this time north of the Alps, probably due to the control of major trade routes. In the east-central part of the region, these elite lived in large fortified settlements such as

EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN 1205

Nitriansky Hra´dok and Spisˇsky Sˇtvrtok in Slovakia or Bo¨heimkirchen in Austria (Figure 1), all situated along rivers and crucial trade routes. In other parts of central Europe, people continued to live in dispersed small settlements. Further south was an area of fortified settlements and flat-grave cemeteries with a large number of graves. Large settlements on mounds with box ramparts with numerous superimposed houses in wattle-and-daub or plank-built walls were found in Otomani in Romania or Fu¨zesabony and Hatvan in Hungary (Figure 1). In these zones, but especially in the Carpathian Basin, magnificent and numerous gold and bronze objects were deposited not only in burial mounds but also in the form of hoards of metal objects. Bronze was accumulated in masses and then removed from circulation, often left as votive offerings. The metallurgical community in the whole region grew substantially. The proximity of urban cultures in the eastern Mediterranean inspired this dynamic development by providing alternative centers of trade and exposure to novel eating and drinking habits, clothing, furniture, means of transport, prestige ornaments, and weaponry. The neighboring steppe populations demanded a large supply of bronze and trade and communication networks were established for the first time across the steppes and into the area north of the Caspian Sea. The steppe communities flourished. They settled in large villages and exhibited new grave architecture that included timber-built underground chambers from which the name to Timber Grave culture was derived. Eastward, as far as the Altai mountains, the closely related Andronovo culture brought Bronze Age innovations to the borders of Mongolia, where there were rich deposits of copper and tin. The new metallurgical centers in the Carpathian Basin and the Caucasus maintained their connections across the steppes. Throughout the steppe zone, horses and a newly invented horse-driven chariot complete with a bridle-bit with spiked cheek pieces made of antler facilitated mobility. The subsequent Middle Bronze Age in central Europe brought about emergence of a large number of burials under barrows, which is associated with broadening of the local elite. This phenomenon is called the Tumulus period. Elaborated burials were furnished with newly invented bronze swords while settlements remained small and simple. During this period, trade contacts with the southeast remained intact and were probably expanded. When the developed civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean collapsed after 1300 BC, dramatic changes affected Europe. This began the period known as the Late Bronze Age, characterized by

hill-forts, field systems, flat cemeteries, scrap hoards, and votive finds from rivers. In central Europe, the most striking sign of the changes was the almost universal shift from inhumation to cremation and the placing of human ashes in pits in the ground or in funerary urns. It implies profound changes in religious beliefs. The new period, which lasted until 600 BC, brought about a unification of large areas of Europe and was named the Urnfield period. It formed a fairly coherent cultural complex with rapid exchange of ideas over large distances, characterized by a high degree of economic, social, and ritual correspondence. This regional system spread from the Atlantic to the Carpathians and from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia. It was marked by profound changes in many spheres of life, population expansion, technological innovation, and economic diversification. Extensive networks keeping the system in operation were formed through wealth consumption and elite exchange. The abundance of swords, daggers, spearheads, arrowheads, and armor found indicate the importance of warfare and the extensive offensive and defensive weapons available to the local warriors. Graves and large numbers of metal artifacts with no archaeological context make up much of the material culture. Remains from settlements of this time are sparse. They contained numerous post-hole houses of different sizes, mostly rectangular in plan. Hilltop forts and fortified settlements on lower ground became popular after 1100 BC. At Biskupin in central Poland (Figure 1), a fortified settlement was constructed according to a plan of 13 parallel rows of houses with a regular network of timber roads in between and an arterial road leading around its circumference (Figure 3). The entire complex was encircled by a rampart of timber compartments filled with earth and stones and defended by timber breakwaters. The layout of this remarkable settlement demonstrates communal order and, although no signs of social stratification were found, indicates the presence of a strong coercive power. In the steppe region of eastern Europe, nomadic pastoralism emerged at the beginning of the first millennium BC. The inhabitants of the Pontic steppe are identified with the Cimmerians. From ninth century BC, elements of a nomadic style of life, in the form of new types of horse-gear and wagons as well as iron technology, were introduced in the eastern Urnfield region. Throughout the Late Bronze Age, well-established exchange networks allowed goods to travel over vast distances. Baltic amber as well as swords, spearheads, armor, safety pins, and certain ornaments from central and northern Europe first appeared in the

1206 EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN

Figure 3 Biskupin, Poland. Modern reconstruction of a fortified settlement. Photo by W. Raczkowski. (

Mediterranean, marking intensive contacts between central Europe and these developed civilizations. For the first time, salt from the Austrian Alps and other places was mined and emerged as a valuable trade commodity and Hallstatt became a major salt-mining center around 800 BC (Figure 1). Iron also emerged as a new commodity in this period. It became rapidly popular, especially in eastern and southern part of Europe. Iron sources were more numerous and more evenly distributed across Europe than those of copper and gold. Communities, which until this point had no indigenous supply of metals, suddenly found themselves with easy access to large-scale sources of this newly discovered metal. However, the process of transition to a full iron-using technology was a gradual one, and it was introduced at a different pace in particular regions.

The Iron Age In the seventh century BC, iron became the standard material for tools and weapons, which marked the beginning of the Iron Age (see Europe, Northern and Western: Iron Age). Bronze remained the metal of choice for high-quality decoration products. In this period, Europe became divided into the civilized or classical south and barbaric north. Central and eastern Europe became a core of the latter region. The explosion of trading ports of urban societies around

the Mediterranean, Aegean, Adriatic, and the Black Sea provided a strong incentive for the development of this part of Europe. The exotic prestige goods from the south were acquired by the wealthy and then used as proof of their status. Inspired by these luxury wares, craftsmen began to make copies of imported items and people started to adopt alien behavior and practices. It is not clear what local products were exchanged, but salt, gold, furs, foodstuffs, and slaves were likely. Dynamic development of these newly emerged centers was further stimulated by an internal network for the commercial exchange of material and products in temperate Europe. Wheel-thrown pottery and the rotary querns comprised major technological achievements of the Iron Age society. The valleys of the Rhoˆne and Saoˆne provided easy access to the region stretching from Burgundy to southern Germany. The elite from this region controlled the flow of goods from the south and distributed them further in temperate Europe. This led to the formation of the west Hallstatt zone that spanned the upper courses of the Seine, Saoˆne, Rhine, and Danube rivers and facilitated direct access to much of the continent north of the Alps. The local elite displayed their wealth by building hilltop residences and burying their dead with exotic goods including costly sets of wine-drinking equipment. The practice of building hill-forts peaked in the sixth and early fifth centuries BC. These structures were usually

EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN 1207

Figure 4 Hochdorf, Germany. The chief burial. Photo by O. Braasch.

between 1 and 6 ha in extent and required organized communal effort to erect. A unique and particularly elaborate fortified settlement of this kind is known from Hueneburg in southwestern Germany (Figure 1) – a major center of production, exchange, and trade. Its walls were built of sun-dried mud bricks on a stone foundation in a technique completely alien and unsuitable for wet climate of temperate Europe but widespread in the Mediterranean. The wealth and status of local chieftains was also reflected in spectacular burials as, for example, in grave of the famous chief of Hochdorf (Figure 1). He was buried in a sophisticated burial chamber under a mound 6 m high and 60 m in diameter and accompanied by a lavish set of gold, bronze, and iron objects – symbols of his exalted status. A fourwheeled wagon with harnesses for two horses accompanied the grave (Figure 4). The significance of iron and salt in this period triggered dynamic development of some regions. The east Alpine zone, known as east Hallstatt zone, flourished because of extraction and processing of these commodities. Salt continued to be exploited in the Hallstatt region in the Austrian Alps while Sticˇna in Slovenia (Figure 1) emerged as a large center based on the smelting and forging of iron. The large fortified settlements in this region, such as Magdalenska Gora and Vacˇe, which were accompanied by large cemeteries, indicated its stability from the eighth to the fifth centuries BC (Figure 1). This

dynamic development was additionally facilitated by the key positioning of Slovenia between the Adriatic and the mountain ranges of the Balkans that served as a significant point of connection of the Mediterranean world with temperate Europe. It seems likely that amber from the Baltic coasts was traded here as well. These local commodities were traded for luxury goods from Italy. The extreme wealth evident in the west was not found here, but some presumably aristocratic graves were furnished with exotic objects. In other parts of central Europe, beyond the hillfort zone to the north, stretching from the mouth of the Rhine to the Vistula across the North European Plain, life continued in a largely unchanged manner similar to the preceding period. Local groups inhabited small villages and the area remained largely untouched by the technological innovations of the age or the trade routes. The arrival of the Romans and their trading networks in the first and second centuries AD changed this situation. Horse-riding nomadic pastoralists continued their uninterrupted development in the Pontic steppes. They formed a coherent society with social ranks known as the Scythians. Their everyday life remains largely unknown in contrast to their burial customs with lavish gold burial goods. They erected elaborate burial mounds up to 20 m high under deep centrally placed shaft. The impressive Scythian goldwork was often decorated with representations of wild animals

1208 EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN

and, to a less extent, humans. Despite a dominant nomadic way of life, the Scythians erected large settlements such as Elizavetovka or Kamenskoe, the scale and elaboration of which was reminiscent of the oppida. The Scythian–Greek relationships were intense after establishment of trading colonies such as Chersonesos on the Crimea or Panticapaion at the Sea of Azov. As their western counterparts, the local elite used prestigious goods from the Greek world to mark their wealth and social position. The rise of a new warrior elite in the early fifth century destabilized the west Hallstatt system and by the middle of the fifth century caused its demise. This marked the emergence of the La Te`ne period that comprises the second phase of the Iron Age (450– 50 BC) in western and central Europe. It is named after the lake site on the edge of Lake Neuchaˆtel, Switzerland (Figure 1). It comprised a range of artifact types, especially weapons and ornaments, a distinctive art style characterized by abstract geometric designs and stylized bird and animal forms, as well as warrior burials. The La Te`ne culture and its style is often identified with Celtic. Tracing its spread is difficult, as it is hard to differentiate between culture that was spread by migrating populations and that which evolved through acculturation. Additionally, the art style and artifacts were, in many instances, absorbed and imitated by local craftsmen. Items of La Te`ne metalwork spread northward across the North European Plain, but the true northern limit of La Te`ne culture lay roughly on a line from the mouth of the Rhine, across southern Germany to the Carpathians. The Celts were the major groups of the age and they settled in large regions of Europe. The first reference to these people comes from the Greek authors in the fifth century BC. This term probably referred more to their northern and western neighbors rather than to any kind of coherent ethnic or cultural entity. They arose from and relied on native craftsmen to produce luxury goods. This culture passed through several phases and regional variations during the next four centuries as the Celts expanded through most of northern and southern Europe and the British Isles. It came to an end in the middle of the first century BC, when most of the Celts lost their independence to Rome. The organization of Celtic society is well known. It was divided into various segments such as nobles, Druids (the religious elite), and commoners. The elite warriors were buried with swords, spears, shields, helmets, and sometimes even two-wheeled chariots. The Celts also reached some regions of central and eastern Europe. This process can be traced through the distribution of objects belonging to the La Te`ne culture. In the late fifth and early fourth century BC,

they reached the Great Hungarian Plain and then settled in Transylvania. After being pushed out of Macedonia, a substantial part of the population moved north to the Danube, causing the Celtic population that was already there to swell. This mixed Celtic population became known as the Scordisci, and had their major oppidum at Singindunum (Belgrade, Figure 1). In the third century, the Celts pushed into southern Thrace and Greece and established the kingdom of Tylis. In the northeast, Celtic groups crossed the Prut and Dnestr, exploiting the vacuum left by the decline of Scythian power. When faced with probable overthrow by the Celts, Thracians seem to have buried as many of their valuables as they could. Hoards of decorated fourth century BC silver have been found throughout northwest and northcentral Bulgaria. Remnants of Celtic tribes defeated by the Romans in the fourth century set off to the north, eventually settling in Bohemia. In the second and first century BC a new settlement system appeared in central Europe characterized by large defended settlements known as oppida. They were located in Bavaria (e.g., Manching, Kelheim) and Bohemia (e.g., Stradonice, Za´vist) (Figure 1). They were large residential, commercial, industrial, and administrative centers and thus varied considerably from earlier princely residences such as Heuneburg. Interestingly, there is no clear evidence of public or elite architecture there. They were massive and being typically over 30 ha in area, some of them reaching more than 100 ha. The walls of the Manching oppidum enclosed 380 ha. The interior was densely built up with regularly laid out timber buildings aligned along straight, ordered streets. A wide range of craft skills were practiced and commodities such as wheel-turned pottery, glass beads, bracelets, and ironwork of every kind was done on an industrial scale. Oppida were also centers where coins were minted. The size and production levels of oppida makes them the first urban centers of barbarian Europe.

The Roman Times By the formation of the Roman Empire in 27 BC, the Romans had already conquered large areas of Europe, including that of its central part. Macedonia became part of their state in the second century BC. Thrace, which had long been a dependent kingdom, was annexed to Rome in 46 BC. In early first century AD, new provinces of Raetia, Noircum, Pannonia, Moesia, and Dalmatia in southern part of Central Europe and in the Balkans were added to a rapidly growing empire. The Danube frontier was formalized during the reign of Augustus.

EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN 1209

Along the Danube limes, the biggest threat to the Romans came from the Dacians, who formed a state in second century BC out of a broad confederacy of people occupying the uplands of Transylvania. In about 60–50 BC, King Burebista unified the kingdom and defeated the Transylvanian Celts, the Boii, and Helvetii forcing them westward. The Dacians had a state religion, monumental architecture, central storage facilities, currency, and control of a vast and diverse territory. The society was divided into aristocrats and commoners. Its major settlement at Sarmizegethusa (Figure 1) was a large complex containing various types of dwellings and surrounded by a series of stone-built fortresses. They buried their warriors with rich grave goods; however, these graves were rare. Barrel-shaped pits known as ustrina and interpreted often as cremation places were also found in these settlements. Such evidence may mark the start of a new religious ritual. Dacia was conquered and became Rome’s first and only trans-Danubian province in early second century AD. Large areas of Central Europe in the first century AD were inhabited by Germanic tribes. A rich source of information about them comes from Germania written by Tacitus in AD 98. The major Germanic tribes at that time comprised the Chatti from the territory of today’s Hesse; the Frisii living on the coast between the Rhine and the Ems; the Suebi inhabiting Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia; the Hermunduri in the territory stretching from Franconia to Thuringia; the Marcomanni, previously living in the Main valley and then migrated during the last decade BC to Bohemia; the Bastarnae from the lower Danube; and the Goths, Gepidae, and Vandals inhabiting the southern Baltic coast. According to Tacitus, these groups had neither mediatory nor central authority. Status could, however, be acquired by acts of bravery and leadership in raids. Power lay with the elite, who had a right to form the tribal council. However, only in times of exceptional warfare would members of the aristocracy be elected to lead the confederate army. By the end of the third century AD important changes took place, as three great tribal confederacies were formed along the limes. The lower Rhine was inhabited by the Franks, the Main valley by the Burgundians, and the Black Forest region by the Alemanni. Their respective social and political system also changed. Arable land was distributed according to social status and leadership. Councils of the elite were held regularly as were general assemblies of warriors who met to debate current issues. The Germans, who had no central locus, were more challenging opponents than Celtic tribes living in

oppida. Their first great clash with Romans came at the end of the second century BC, when the Cimbri and Teutoni of Jutland and the North Sea coast moved south. They first moved through Moravia and Hungary to the middle Danube where they attacked the Celtic Scordisci and pushed them south into Macedonia and west along the Sava. They further attacked Noricum and invaded Gaul and northern Italy and were finally beaten by Gaius Marius. Long-lasting military conflicts between the Roman Empire and the German tribes at the turn of the first century BC culminated in a battle at Teutenburg Forest where the German people headed by Arminius forced the Romans back westward, resulting in the establishment of the Roman frontier on the Rhine River. The Roman limes was then systematically protected by a system of defenses and guarded by Roman soldiers based in military bases (see Figure 5). The Roman Empire needed a continuous supply of raw materials and manpower. Many commodities such as amber and furs were available only in barbarian lands and could only be acquired through trade. Rome’s greatest dependence on the barbarian periphery derived from its need for slaves to provide the labor force required to keep the Roman system working. The scale of the slave trade was enormous. A wide range of Roman commodities, such as glass

Figure 5 Vechten, The Netherlands. Modern reconstruction of a Roman watchtower limes.

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and metal vessels, red tableware, coins, weapons, brooches, statuettes, and ornaments of various kinds, was used to trade with the Germans. A number of rich burial sites that contain sets of luxury goods have been found in this zone. Equally strong trade relations were established with Pannonia and Noricum through the principal route leading from Aquileia on the northeastern coast of the Adriatic (Figure 1). They acted as a catalyst for local dynamic development of these areas. The merchants introduced not only various products that brought the native owners much prestige but also Roman manners and customs that were imitated by local aristocracy. To the northeast of this elite burial zone, stretching from northern Poland to the Gulf of Finland, a different type of social system emerged. In Poland it consisted of two groups: the Oksywie culture of the lower Vistula region and the Bay of Danzig, and the Przeworsk culture of the Vistula–Oder region. These groups were identified largely through their warriortype burials. Most men were buried with swords, shields, and spurs, and a few, of higher status, were accompanied by silver or gold fibulas. On the steppe, the Scythians were replaced as the dominant elite by the Sarmatians by 200 BC, to whom they were closely related. Like their predecessors, they were accomplished horsemen and highly developed in warfare. They were pastoral nomads who also practiced hunting. Sarmatian metalwork continued Scythians tradition and featured gold jewelry and cups along with bronze bracelets, spears, swords, and knives. Jewelry such as diadems, bracelets, rings, or brooches was a major craft. The art was dominated by geometric and floral motives. Intense transregional exchange networks, far more intense than in the preceding period, existed between farming societies of temperate Europe and these horse-riding pastoralists of the Pontic steppes. It had a commercial character characterized by a flow of raw materials and manufactured goods over long distances. The Sarmatians posed a threat to the Roman provinces in the Balkans. They attacked Lower Moesia in first century AD. Forming an alliance with the Germanic people soon after, they became a major challenge to the Romans in this part of its empire. They later invaded Dacia and the lower Danube region and were only defeated by the Goths during

the third century AD. The Sarmatian dominance was destroyed by the Huns who migrated into the Pontic steppe region after AD 370. The system of socioeconomic zones outlined above remained in force throughout the first and until the middle of the second century AD. It began to disintegrate in the second half of the second century as folk movements in Germany began to build up. They pressurized the tribes of the frontier region who, in turn, threatened the Empire. The first recorded indications of the growing problem came in AD 162 when a frontier tribe, the Chatti, attempted to migrate south into Roman territory. A few years later, the Longobardi and Marcomanni crossed the Danube into trans-Danubian Hungary. In AD 167, the massive movement of Marcomanni, Quadi, and Iazyges reached the head of the Adriatic and besieged Aquileia. This marked the beginning of a wave of migrations across Europe. Military and economic turbulence of the Roman empire in third century AD allowed the Germanic tribes to cross the limes along the Rhine and Danube and raid Roman territory. After a short period of regaining of the Roman rule, barbarian raids intensified from the end of the fourth century AD and continued through the next century. The Empire was eventually destroyed. See also: Europe: Neolithic; Paleolithic Raw Material

Provenance Studies; Europe, Northern and Western: Bronze Age; Early Neolithic Cultures; Iron Age; Mesolithic Cultures; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient; Metals: Primary Production Studies of; Modern Humans, Emergence of.

Further Reading Bogucki P (1999) The Origins of Human Society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Cunliffe B (ed.) (2001) The Oxford Illustrated History of Prehistoric Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gamble C (1999) The Paleolithic Societies of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harding A (2000) European Societies in the Bronze Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Henke W and Rothe H (1994) Pala¨oanthropologie. Berlin: Springer. Kristiansen K (1998) Europe before History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whittle A (1996) Europe in the Neolithic. The Creation of New Worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

EUROPE, EASTERN, PEOPLING OF 1211

EUROPE, EASTERN, PEOPLING OF Janusz K Kozlowski, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The recent discovery of remains of Homo ergaster/ erectus and pebble industries at Dmanisi (Georgia), dated between 1.6 and 1.8 Ma, encouraged suggestions that the first peopling of eastern Europe took place from trans-Caucasian regions, either via the Caucasus and southern Russia or via Anatolia and the Balkans. In eastern Europe – so far – no sites have been dated to as early as in southwestern Europe, that is, between 1.2 and 0.9 MA. There is no evidence to confirm eastern routes of the first peopling of Europe, directly from western Asia. In the present state of investigations it seems more likely that the first migrations to Europe took place directly from Africa, via Gibraltar to southwest Europe (Figure 1). It is only from southwestern Europe that the higher geographical latitudes of central and east-central Europe were settled. Sites with pebble industries dated to about 0.8–0.6 MA are recorded in Germany (Karlich in the Rhein basin), in the Czech Republic (Prezletice near Prague dated to 0.89–0.59 MA, Stranska skala I

near Brno dated to 0.76 MA), and in the territory of trans-Carpathian Ukraina (Korolevo layer VIII – about 0.85 MA). The first populations that settled central-eastern Europe have not been identified in terms of biological taxonomy, but they could represent the species known form southwestern Europe as H. antecessor and H. cepranensis. These populations built a base for subsequent cultural evolution namely: microflake industries that made their first appearance in southern Europe in the Apennines (Isernia in Italy), possibly also in the Balkans (Kozarnika Cave in Bulgaria, layer 11b) beginning about 0.75 MA. In central-eastern Europe (see Europe, Central and Eastern) microflake industries (Figure 2) that made their appearance in the Lower Palaeolithic, that is, between 0.6 and 0.3 MA, were produced by H. heidelbergensis, which is confirmed by the direct association of a human mandible with microflake artifacts at Mauer (Germany). Among the most important sites in central-eastern Europe from this period belong to Bilzingleben in Thuringen (Germany) – 350–300 kyr BP, Schoningen (Germany) – 400 kyr BP, Trzebnica 2g, Rusko 33, and 42 in Silesia (Poland) – 400–350 kyr BP,

>1.20−0.74 MA Kärlich Brno

Korolevo

Atapuerca TD-6

Vallonet

Monte Poggiolo

Šandalja l

Dmanisi Ceprano Orce Ain Haneh

?

Ubeidiya Pebble industries 1.6 –1.2 >1.2 MA

0.9–0.74 MA

1.2–0.9 MA

0.9–0.74 MA

1.2–0.9 MA

Human bones

Figure 1 Map of the oldest settlements in Europe and >1.–0.74 MA.

0

500

1000 km

1212 EUROPE, EASTERN, PEOPLING OF

Figure 2 Microlake industries fom the period 0.6–0.3 MA in Central Eastern Europe: side-scrapers, points and denticulated tools (15 – Trzebnica, Site 2, Lower Silesia, Poland; 6–10 – Rusko, site 42, Lower Silesia, Poland; 11, 12 – Dubossary, Republic of Moldova, 13 – Pogrebi, Republic of Moldova).

Vertesszollos (Hungary) – 550–350 kyr BP, Dubossary I and Pogrebi I (Republic of Moldova) 300 kyr BP, and Mikhaylovskoye in the Lower Don Basin (southern Russia) – about 300 kyr BP. Moreover, the oldest industries in the northern Caucasus, for example, from layers 5a–7 of the Treugolnaya Cave (Russia) also show microflake character. Microflake industries did not appear as one cultural tradition, but are the effect of adaptation of the oldest European groups producing pebble industries

to climatic conditions of the first interglacials (isotope stages 15–11), notably to the Mediterranean and Boreal environments. For this we have the evidence of the wide use of organic materials, most importantly wood, which was used to make projectiles (at Schoningen spears of more than 2 m long were discovered) and hafts for small flake tools (known from Schoningen and Bilzingsleben). The manufacture of microflake tools (average length from 17 to 35 mm) could be explained by the more difficult access to

EUROPE, EASTERN, PEOPLING OF 1213

lithic raw materials at the time when the forest cover was thick. The sites with microflake industries often occur within travertines, sedimented in the vicinity of thermal springs. Among faunal remains, bones of forest elephant (Bilzingsleben) and horse (Equus mosbachensis – Vertesszollos I, Schoningen) dominate. Although there were suggestions that faunal remains come from scavenging, there is evidence to show that they come from hunting. For example, at Schoningen wooden spears occurred and bones of young, selectively hunted, horses dominated. It should be emphasized that the Acheulian does not occur in central and eastern Europe. On the one hand, this culture is known in western and southwestern Europe (beginning from 600 to 500 kyr BP) and on the other, on the southern slopes of the Caucasus (probably not earlier than 350 kyr BP) east of the line of the Rhine and the Alps, and north of the main ridge of the Caucasus; therefore, the Acheulian did not occur (Figure 3). Hand ax cultures could have appeared as the effect of the second ‘Out-of Africa’ migration that took place along two routes: via the Near East and via Gibraltar. The Middle Palaeolithic of central eastern Europe (beginning from about 300 kyr BP) saw the continuation of microflake adaptations and the emergence of two new cultural traditions: the Micoquian and the Mousterian. These cultures were created by the preNeanderthals, and later by the classical Neanderthals.

At that time Europe was isolated from outside migrations, forming a kind of cul-de-sac. At the same time the expansion of the Neanderthals from Europe to Western Asia, during the isotope stages 6 and 4, took place via the Balkans and Anatolia. This expansion was brought about by deteriorating climatic conditions during the ice-sheet transgressions in isotope stages 6 and 4. At that time the routes joining Europe with Western Asia north of the Caucasus were blocked by the Caspian Sea transgressions and by the Manych Inlet that joined the Lower Don with the range of the Caspian transgressions. Middle Palaeolithic central eastern Europe was divided into two culturally distinctive zones: the southern zone, where from about 250 to 200 kyr BP the Mousterian with characteristic Levallois technology and tools on flakes developed, and the northern zone with the dominance of the Micoquian with the manufacture of bifacial tools, notably asymmetrical ‘Keilmesser’ and bifaces. The two cultural units overlap in the Carpathian Basin and in the Crimea (Figure 4). The peopling of central and eastern Europe by anatomically modern humans (AMHs) took place as late as between 45 and 35 kyr BP, parallel with the gradual vanishing of the Neanderthals who – nonetheless – survived until about 28 kyr BP. The first AMH expansion to Europe is generally believed to be related to the first diffusion of the Aurignacian into Europe, corresponding to the AMH migration from the Near East into Europe via Anatolia, the

+ ⊕

Before zone 6

+ ⊕

1 2 3 4 5

Figure 3 Eastern Europe before Oxigen Isotope Stage 6 (>186 kyr BP): Early Middle Palaeolithic: 1 – Acheulian, 2 – Bilzingsleben microflake group, 3 – Clactonian-Tayacian, 4 – Levalloisian, 5 – Levalloisian with leaf points.

1214 EUROPE, EASTERN, PEOPLING OF

1 2 3 4 5 6 0

1000 km

7

Figure 4 Mousterian (1–6 – points) and Micoquian (7–10 – side-scraper-knives Keilmesser) implements from the Late Middle Palaeolithic of Crimea: 1–6 – Kabazi II, 7,8 – Ak-kaya, 9,10 – Kiik Koba upper level.

Balkans, and the middle Danube Basin. Although it is still thought that AMHs were makers of the Aurignacian (despite the fact that some human remains ascribed to the Aurignacian proved to be younger, e.g., at Cro-Magnon and Vogelherd), it is highly likely that prior to the emergence of the Aurignacian, earlier AMH migrations had brought some Early Upper Palaeolithic cultural elements from the Near East. These earlier migrations brought to Europe blade technologies deriving from Levallois technological tradition (e.g., assemblages from the Temnata Cave, Bulgaria, the Bohunician in the Carpathian Basin), and could form the base for the origin of the Aurignacian, not necessarily in only one center (Figure 5). The Middle/Upper Palaeolithic transition appears to be an increasingly complex process. Besides the Aurignacian, functioning between 37 and 28 kyr BP, more local units emerged between 45 and 30 kyr BP assigned to ‘transitional units’. Their distinctive feature was the production of leaf points (the Szeletian in the Carpathian Basin, the Streletskian in the Don Basin,

and the Crimea, the Jerzmanowician (-RanisianLincombian) in the border zone between the uplands and the Great European Plain) or the manufacture of backed points (the Uluzzian which occurs not only in Italy but also in southeast Europe – Klisoura Cave I in the Argolid, Greece). The anthropological type of makers of ‘transitional cultures’ is still unknown, but these cultures played a vital role in the formation of culture units of the middle phase of the Upper Palaeolithic (30–20 kyr BP) in Europe (e.g., the Pavlovian in the middle Danube Basin; the Sungirian in the Russian Lowland). Populations of the middle phase of the Upper Palaeolithic belonged, undoubtedly, to AMH, but preserved a gene pool inherited from the Neanderthals (i.e., one of the individuals from the grave in Sungir near Vladimir in Central Russian Plain) and some cultural traits inherited from the ‘transitional cultures’ (Figure 5). The first pan-European culture horizon which corresponds to cultural and probably ethnical uniformity, was the Gravettian spreading from the Atlantic to the

EUROPE, EASTERN, PEOPLING OF 1215

Figure 5 Early Upper Palaeolithic of Central Eastern Europe (Oxigen Isotope Stage 3 – 50–30 kyr BP): 1 – Levallois-derived Initial Upper Palaeolithic (probably first anatomically modern humans); transitional leaf point industries, 2 – Szeletian (Neanderthals), 3 – Jerzmanowician (Neanderthals or AMH), 4 – Streletskian/Sungirian (Neanderthals/AMH), 5 – Bryndzenian; transitional industries with backed blades, 6 – Uluzzian (Nenaderthals and/or AMH), 7 – Aurignacian (AMH).

Don, during the period between 30 and 20 kyr BP. The maximum of the last great ice-sheet transgression (20–18 kyr BP) caused the disintegration of this cultural uniformity when the northern part of central Europe became depopulated and different cultural units emerged in the Western (the Solutrean and the Magdalenian) and Eastern (the Epigravettian) Europe. See also: Asia, West: Paleolithic Cultures; Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures; Europe, Central and Eastern; Modern Humans, Emergence of.

Further Reading Bar-Yosef O and Philbeam D (eds.) (2000) The geography of Neandertals and modern humans in Europe and the Greater Mediterranean. Peabody Museum Bulletin 8.

Burdukiewicz JM (2003) Technokompleks mikrolityczny w paleolicie dolnym S´rodkowej Europy. Wroclaw: Uniwersytet Wroclawski. Burdukiewicz JM and Ronen A (eds.) (2003) Lower Palaeolithic Small Tools in Europe and the Levant. BAR International Series. Oxford: BAR. Gamble C (1999) Palaeolithic Societies of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gladilin VN and Sitlivy VI (1999) Achel Tsentralnoy Evropy. Kiev: Naukova Dumka. Lordkipanidze D, Bar-Yosef O, and Otte M (eds.) (2000) ERAUL: Early Humans at the Gate of Europe. Vol. 92. Liege: ERAUL. Mellars P (ed.) (1990) The emergence of Modern Humans. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Petraglia MD and Korisettar R (eds.) (1998) Early Human Behaviour in Global Context: Rise and Diversity of the Lower Palaeolithic Record. London: Routledge. Roebroeks W and van Kolfschcoten T (eds.) (1995) The Earliest Occupation of Europe. Leiden: Leiden University.

1216 EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN/Bronze Age

EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN Contents Bronze Age Early Neolithic Cultures Iron Age Medieval Mesolithic Cultures

Bronze Age Peter Bogucki, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary alloy A mixture of two or more elemental metals to form a new metal with specific qualities. barrow A burial mound that covers a grave, usually of earth in contrast to a cairn; also known as a tumulus or kurgan. cairn A mound of stones, either over a burial chamber or grave or from the clearance of fields. chiefdom A form of social organization characterized by differences in access to status, power, and wealth that are passed down from one generation to the next. heterarchy A structure of social organization in which the ability to make decisions is not concentrated at the top but rather spread among many cooperating individuals. hillfort A fortified hilltop, usually by means of ramparts, ditches, and embankments. hoard A buried deposit of artifacts, usually ones of fine quality or value, not associated with a settlement or burial. longhouse An elongated wooden post structure, primarily for dwelling but often including stables and workspaces. lur (pl. lurer) A Bronze Age bronze horn from southern Scandinavia consisting of a long curving tube cast in sections and ending in a circular plate. palisade A fence or stockade constructed of closely set wooden posts, set either in individual postholes or in a continuous trench. palstave A Bronze Axe tupe in which the blade is divided from the heel by a ridge, with flanges on the heel forming grooves to enable connection to a handle. sarsen A type of sandstone from the Marlborough Downs in southern England that was used in a number of prehistoric monuments including Avebury and Stonehenge. wattle and daub A method of wall construction in which mud is plastered over a lattice of sticks and branches.

Between about 2500 and 800 BC, the prehistoric societies of northern and western Europe were characterized by increasing technological sophistication and the emergence of social and economic systems that were more complex than those of the Neolithic period. Archaeologists refer to this period in Europe

as the ‘Bronze Age’, a term which has been in use for nearly two centuries and is based on the widespread use of bronze for weapons and ornaments. In fact, the concept of an intervening period between the preceding milleniums when people used only stone and the subsequent appearance of iron metallurgy has its roots in northern and western Europe, although it is now common to speak of a Bronze Age in many other parts of the Old World as well.

Concept of a Bronze Age Credit for the introduction of a systematic division of antiquities into stone, bronze, and iron is generally given to Christian Thomsen (1788–1865), who was the curator of the Danish National Museum of Antiquities in the early nineteenth century. Thomsen recognized that there were certain collections that contained no metals, others that had only bronze, and others that included iron. His successor, J. A. A. Worsaae (1821–85), transformed this system of organizing collections into an archaeological tool by demonstrating that the collections with just stone artifacts were earlier than those that included bronze, and that these in turn were earlier than those that included iron. Thus, the ‘three-age system’ of Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages was established and was eventually adopted throughout Europe. Although modern archaeologists realize that this tripartite division of prehistoric society is far too simple to reflect the complexity of change and continuity, terms like ‘Bronze Age’ are still used as a very general way of focusing attention on particular times and places and thus facilitating archaeological discussion. In the case of the Bronze Age of northern and western Europe, the topic of discussion is the second millennium BC, plus several centuries beforehand and afterward. Neolithic society did not turn into the Bronze Age overnight, nor did Bronze Age society suddenly decide that it was time for the Iron Age to begin. As with many archaeological categories, the Bronze Age is not only a time but also a set of

EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN/Bronze Age 1217

technological, social, and economic practices that had earlier roots and later consequences.

Bronze: New Technology Late Neolithic peoples in central and southern Europe had used copper smelted from ores such as malachite and azurite since the fifth millennium BC. The Iceman who died in the Alps around 3300 BC had a solid copper axehead among his possessions. Pure copper is very soft and difficult to cast, so the only objects that could be made from it were ornaments and simple tools. Around 2500 BC, prehistoric metallurgists discovered that the addition of a small amount of tin, about 10%, to copper made it much stronger and easier to cast. Copper alloyed with tin (sometimes also arsenic or lead) is known as bronze. This discovery was one of the earliest examples of ‘materials science’, in which a new metal with a distinctive chemical composition that does not exist in nature was created by experimentation and observation of the results. The advantage of alloying copper with tin is that the resulting bronze can be made more or less hard depending on the application. A very hard bronze with 10% tin would be used for weapons, while a milder 6% bronze could be used to make sheets that could be shaped into body armor. The range of products that could be made from metal multiplied exponentially, as did the variety of forms, decoration, and sizes of different artifact types. Different regions were able to make their own distinctive forms of weapons and ornaments, and these changed gradually over time in response to stylistic and technological advances. As these artifacts accumulated across Europe during the nineteenth century, the Swedish archaeologist Oscar Montelius (1843–1921) was able to work out a detailed mapping in time and space of the bronze forms of northern Europe. His relative chronology of the Bronze Age, although superseded by other dating forms such as radiocarbon, is still useful as a general reference framework to modern archaeologists. Although copper deposits are widespread in Europe, the amount of copper ore that is visible on the surface is limited. Copper mining was practiced from Late Neolithic times onward, but during the Bronze Age, mining had to take place on an industrial scale to meet the demand. A number of Bronze Age copper mines have been discovered and the mining techniques studied. One of the largest Bronze Age copper mines is at Great Orme in northern Wales, where shafts and galleries were dug deep into the orebearing rocks. Fires were lit at the mining face, and then cold water was dashed on the hot rock to cause it

to crack. The cracked rock was then pried loose with levers or smashed with stone hammers and brought to the surface. Other important Bronze Age copper mines are found in the Austrian Alps and in southwestern Ireland (Figure 1). The problem is that tin does not usually occur in the same general locality as the copper, and in fact is usually found some distance away. During the Bronze Age, tin deposits were located in Cornwall, Brittany, Spain, and Anatolia, but these are very localized. Prospecting missions must have been undertaken by Bronze Age metallurgists to find tin sources, and once these were located, trade connections must have been established to bring the copper and tin together to smiths in other parts of Europe. In the Carpathian Basin, there are abundant copper deposits in the surrounding mountains, but no tin, yet a tremendous number of bronze artifacts are found there. Even more remarkable is the fact that Denmark lacks local deposits of both copper and tin, but there are robably more Bronze Age metal finds per unit of area in Denmark than in any other European country. Along with the development of metallurgy came advances in metal working, particularly in the development of moulds. The earliest moulds were carved into soft stones, but these quickly advanced to twopiece moulds made from stone or clay that permitted the manufacture of three-dimensional objects. Channels in the moulds provided inlets to pour in the molten bronze and vents for some of it to escape, thus preventing the occurrence of air bubbles in the finished product. The excess was melted down and reused. Clay and wax cores enabled the casting of hollow or socketed objects. Stone moulds could be reused many times to produce dozens of identical artifacts, thus permitting the mass production of standardized objects, while multiple clay moulds could be formed around a prototype object to make identical copies. Weapons were a high priority for Bronze Age metalsmiths. These include daggers, swords, spearpoints, and a wide variety of axeheads. Bronze axe forms underwent a considerable development over time. The earliest were flat forms that continued the copper shapes used during the Late Neolithic. These progressed to a form known as a palstave, in which a ridge in the center of the axe halfway between the butt and the blade improved the attachment of the axehead to the haft, or the handle. The palstave, in turn, was superseded by socketed axes in which the haft fits into a socket moulded into the base of the axehead. Alongside these forms, another common bronze weapon was the halberd, a pointed weapon like a dagger attached perpendicular to a

1218 EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN/Bronze Age Borum Eshøj Egtved Højgard Holme-next-the-Sea (Seahenge) North Ferriby

Egenhøj Tanum

Flag Fen Runnymede Avebury

Ekornavallen

Great Orme

Uggarde rojr

Clonfinlough

Kivik Trundholm Elp Windy Dido Telgte Itford

Stonehenge, Amesbury, Bush Barrow Gwithian Shaugh Moor/Grimspound Fort Harrouard Marmesse Auvernier Monte Bego

Lugnaro

Leubingen Dover Black Patch Haguenau Forest Zurich-Mozartstrasse Mauritius Spring Val Camonica

Figure 1 Location of principal sites mentioned in the text.

shaft. Utilitarian objects like sickles and razors were also made by bronze metalsmiths. Ornaments and other decorative and ritual objects were also made from bronze. Bronze bracelets, neckrings, and decorative pins were popular forms. Some of the most unusual Bronze Age artifacts are the pairs of wind instruments, known as lurer in Denmark but also found in Ireland, in which long bronze tubes consisting of several moulded pieces fitted together which produce a low sound when blown from one end. Another remarkable object is the so-called ‘sun chariot’ from Trundholm in Denmark, in which a moulded bronze horse on a platform with six wheels is pulling a large bronze disk that had been plated with gold leaf. The lurer and the sun chariot are on display at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. Although many of these bronze objects have been found in graves, and some in settlements, a large number are known from deposits called ‘hoards’ in which collections of bronze objects were deliberately buried, for reasons that are difficult to fathom. Earlier generations of archaeologists thought that hoards were the caches of itinerant metalsmiths, who buried their

wares either for safekeeping or to avoid having to carry them over long distances, and then never returned to dig them up. This seems very improbable, and it seems more likely that hoards were the result of some ritual activity, perhaps votive offerings to deities. Bronze was not the only desirable metal in use during the Bronze Age. Gold was also greatly in demand, and in some parts of Europe such as the British Isles, Bronze Age goldwork is stunningly beautiful. Gold was probably acquired by picking it out from placer deposits in streams. Once accumulated, it was hammered and shaped cold rather than cast. Beaten gold sheets were formed into crescent-shaped necklaces called lunulae, bracelets, and cups like the one found at Rillaton in England, now on display in the British Museum. Later, massive neckrings with elaborate twists and clasps, some weighing over 2 kg, were manufactured, especially in Ireland where they can be seen in the National Museum in Dublin.

Continuity from Late Neolithic Despite the changes caused by new metal technology, the everyday life of most people in northern and

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western Europe during the Bronze Age was very similar to that of Late Neolithic times (see Europe: Neolithic). Small-scale societies flourished in every location that had fertile soil and ample pastures. The principal difference was the increased interconnectedness among these societies due to trade, watercraft, and vehicles. Architecture, Settlement, Economy

The mature agropastoral economy that emerged during the Late Neolithic throughout Europe continued into the Bronze Age. Rural farmsteads dotted the landscape. In some areas, they were clustered into villages, but for the most part they were dispersed. The pristine forested landscape encountered by the Neolithic farmers had long been transformed into fields and pastures, although woodlands still remained in abundance (see Europe: Neolithic). Evidence from some areas indicates the large-scale organization of the landscape with field boundaries. Across Dartmoor in southwestern England, low walls of stone enclosed large rectangular fields over many square kilometers. The basis for such partitioning of the landscape is unclear, but for some reason it ceased abruptly around 1200 BC. Bronze Age landscape organization is also known from other parts of the British Isles. At Windy Dido near Quarley in Hampshire, fields were organized into blocks that shared long parallel boundaries, ditches dug into the Wessex chalklands that ran for several kilometers in some cases. Bronze Age houses and settlements in northern and western Europe take a variety of forms, although the main settlement type is a small farmstead with one or more houses, presumably the residence of one or several families. The farmsteads were dispersed across the landscape, separated by fields, pastures, and woodland. Larger agglomerations of population are relatively rare, generally associated with particularly favorable habitats like the lakes of the Alpine Foreland or craft production centers. Some of the best-studied Bronze Age houses in northern Europe are in Denmark. Early Bronze Age settlements saw a continuation of the use of longhouses with a single row of interior posts, known as ‘two-aisled’ longhouses. At Egehj in Jutland, three houses were excavated. Each was 6 m wide and between 18 and 21 m long. The walls were built from posts between which the spaces were filled with a mixture of twigs and mud plaster known as ‘wattle and daub’, while four large posts ran down the center of each house to support the roof. Later in the Bronze Age, the width of the houses was expanded to three aisles through the addition of a second row of interior posts. At Hjga˚rd, three-aisled houses were 8–9 m

wide and 20–22 m long, dimensions that are generally consistent with other such Late Bronze Age houses from northern Europe. There is some evidence for a part of the interior space of these houses being divided into stalls for livestock. In the Netherlands, three-aisled longhouses were also built, often over 20 m long and clearly divided into stables for livestock and living and working space for people. At Elp, there is evidence that the same farmstead site was used again and again over a period of several hundred years, sometimes after having been abandoned for decades. All this rebuilding occurred within a very small area, adjacent to a burial mound, suggesting that people returned repeatedly to a location inhabited by their ancestors. In Switzerland and eastern France, the pattern of lakeside settlement in the Alpine foothills that began in the Neolithic continued into the Bronze Age, and in fact flourished during the second millennium BC. Houses were built either using a log-cabin method, as exemplified by those found at Zu¨rich-Mozartstrasse, or with wattle and daub between posts, as at Auvernier on Lake Neuchaˆtel. Many of the Alpine lakeside Bronze Age settlements were abandoned just before 1000 BC. In Britain and Ireland, round houses were the norm, grouped together into small farmsteads of between two and ten buildings. Each house had approximately 100 m2 of floorspace. At Gwithian in Cornwall, the house walls were built from a double circle of stakes with two large posts defining the entrance. Around 1700–1600 BC, the farmstead at Shaugh Moor in Dartmoor was enclosed by a stone wall, within which several round stone structures were situated around its interior edge. High phosphate levels in one of the structures suggest that animals were kept in it, whereas the largest building was probably the house. Nearby, the Grimspound settlement also has round stone houses surrounded by a stone enclosure. Two well-studied settlements that date to the end of the second millennium BC are Blackpatch and Itford Hill in Sussex. At these sites, small clusters of round huts built from stakes were enclosed by fences to form household compounds. At Clonfinlough, in County Offaly in Ireland, an oval palisade with ash posts enclosed an area about 50 by 40 m in a raised bog. Within this enclosure, four wooden platforms built of oak planks, ash posts, brush, sand, and gravel and connected with wooden trackways provided dry living surfaces above the wet bog. Several of the platforms supported round houses built with posts and wattle and with internal hearths. The platforms ranged from 4 to almost 10 m in diameter. Tree ring dating of timbers ranged between 917 and 886 BC. Interesting finds at Clonfinlough

1220 EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN/Bronze Age

include two amber beads, possibly originating in the Baltic area, and two wooden paddles. The nearby river Shannon was a major communication route between the interior of Ireland and the west coast. The agricultural economy of Bronze Age northern and western Europe saw a continuation of the mixed farming economy with field crops and livestock that emerged during the Neolithic period. Various types of wheat and barley were the most commonly cultivated plants, but millet and rye became economically important for the first time. The grains were made into bread, porridge, beer, and probably other fermented beverages. Legumes such as broad (also known as ‘Celtic’) beans were an important complement to grains, and they also fix nitrogen in the soil, thus enabling crops to be rotated for sustained yields. Oil plants such as flax and poppyseed were widely used. Cattle, pigs, sheep, and goat were kept in proportions that varied from region to region. Not only were livestock kept for meat and hides, but in the case of sheep, goat, and cattle for their valuable ‘secondary products’ that could be provided by living animals such as milk and wool. Cattle also provided yet another important resource: traction, or pulling power. They could thus draw plows or wagons, both of which had crucial importance for the economy. Plows permitted the cultivation of more land and also of poorer soils, thus expanding the potential areas of settlement. Wagons enabled farmers to move large objects such as animal carcasses, timber, firewood, harvested crops, metals, and other bulky objects back to the farmstead and between settlements. Cattle, sheep, and goat thus became capital investments by a farming household and could be exchanged for other commodities like metals or loaned, thus generating wealth. Eventually, horses entered the Bronze Age economy, facilitating long-distance travel over land. A network of roads emerged, along with wooden trackways made from logs across marshy areas in northern Europe. Horse-drawn wheeled vehicles, such as chariots and wagons, appeared in some areas of northern and western Europe. Wheels were made from planks joined together with cleats or dowels, although spoked wheels are found on Late Bronze Age wagon models and depicted in rock art. Bronze Age Watercraft and Trade

The capacity for maritime mobility that emerged during the Mesolithic and Neolithic of northern and western Europe developed further during the Bronze Age. Transport of people and goods across straits and protected seas such as the English Channel, Baltic Sea,

and the Irish Sea became routine. Indeed, such transportation was necessary to link the copper and tin sources and to distribute the finished bronze products. The inhabitants of the British Isles and Scandinavia were closely linked to the Bronze Age societies of continental Europe. The maritime boatbuilding abilities of Bronze Age peoples are reflected in several watercraft that have been found preserved in waterlogged coastal deposits. A boat discovered in 1992 near Dover was probably about 15 m long (9.5 m was recovered) and 2.4 m wide. It was made from six large oak timbers joined by strips of yew, with all the joints caulked with moss and covered by oak strips, clearly the work of sophisticated shipwrights. It is estimated that the Dover boat was propelled by at least 18 paddlers to ferry people, livestock, and goods across the English Channel. In 1974, just off Dover in Langdon Bay, a large number of bronze axes made in France were found, apparently the load of another cargo boat that sank just off the English coast. Other Bronze Age boats have been found at North Ferriby in Yorkshire, although not as well preserved as the one at Dover. Meanwhile, a timber structure at Runnymede Bridge on the Thames river in England has been interpreted as a Late Bronze Age wharf, indicating that river commerce led to the construction of facilities for loading and unloading boats. The extent of Bronze Age trade is most clearly reflected in the distribution of metal finds in northern and western Europe. Nowhere is this more vivid than in Denmark. An extraordinary number of Bronze Age metal artifacts have been found in Denmark, yet the Danish peninsula and islands lack any natural sources of copper or tin. Some of the finds reached Denmark as finished products, whereas evidence for local metalworking suggests that copper and tin ingots also were transported there. What was provided in exchange for these items? Agricultural products, wool, hides, dried fish, and amber were the likely commodities, although slaves cannot be excluded from the range of possibilities. Long-distance trade and the local economy converged at some of the large fortified sites that emerged late in the Bronze Age. One such site is FortHarrouard in France just west of Paris. An area of about 7 ha on a plateau overlooking the Eure river was surrounded by earthen ramparts and a ditch. Inside the ramparts were houses arranged around an open space. Fort-Harrouard was a regional center for weapon manufacture. Excavations yielded about a hundred moulds, primarily for weapons like spears, swords, arrowheads, and daggers. Hill forts were also constructed throughout the British Isles during the Late

EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN/Bronze Age 1221

Bronze Age. The Breiddin hillfort in Wales was fortified with a rampart reinforced with timber boxes, and evidence for bronzeworking was also found at this site.

Death and Burial Death was an important part of life in the Bronze Age of northern and western Europe. Two of the most notable burial rites were the practice of burying individuals under mounds in the early Bronze Age and the widespread change to cremation during the Late Bronze Age. Grave goods were often lavish, and archaeologists debate whether these reflect directly the deceased individual’s status in life or were symbolic and ritual displays by the survivors. The removal of expensive bronze and other exotic materials from the world of the living is a powerful statement of the importance attached to mortuary ritual, as is the investment of time and effort in the construction of tombs and the arrangement of the body and its associated objects (see Burials: Excavation and Recording Techniques). The tradition of burial of single individuals under small mounds (also known as barrows or tumuli) that began during the Late Neolithic continued into the Bronze Age in northern and western Europe. The deceased individual was usually buried in a small central pit along with grave offerings. Often, a circular trench would be dug around the pit to define the burial site, and then a low barrow built over the grave and its surroundings. As time went on, whole mortuary landscapes of barrows accumulated, sometimes dozens or even hundreds, as are found in the Haguenau Forest in eastern France. In Ireland, the tradition of megalithic burial continued for a while with the construction of

Figure 2 Wedge tombs, like this one at Srahwee in County Mayo, continued the tradition of building megalithic burial monuments into the Early Bronze Age (photo ã 2004 by Peter Bogucki).

the small ‘wedge tombs’ (Figure 2). The descendants living among these tombs were continually reminded of their membership in a genealogical lineage and the degree of status and power that this accorded them. In 2002, about 3 miles from Stonehenge at Amesbury, rich burial was found that dated to the very beginning of the Bronze Age in southern England, around 2300 BC. The ‘Amesbury Archer’ was between 35 and 45 years old. He was buried on his side in a flexed position in a large rectangular pit, possibly lined with wood. On his forearm was a slate wristguard that protected the arm from the string of the bow. The grave contained several pottery vessels, flint tools, two copper knives, and two gold earrings. The most interesting aspect of the Amesbury Archer was that chemical analysis of his teeth and bones showed that he originally came from central Europe in the region of the Alps. Some of the most remarkable burials from the early part of the Bronze Age are those of the ‘Wessex culture’ in southern England, which contain many finely crafted artifacts made from gold and imported materials that reflect long-standing and sustained connections to continental Europe. The Bush Barrow, situated about a kilometer from Stonehenge and excavated in the nineteenth century, contained the body of a tall male lying on his back. On his chest was a gold plate, and his right hand held a small bronze dagger. Two larger daggers lay parallel to his right arm, along with an enigmatic gold plate with a hook, while a bronze axe lay by his shoulder. The gold artifacts bear similarities to those found in France, particularly in Brittany. The nature of the probable relationship between this individual and the activities that took place at Stonehenge is unclear. The Wessex burials of southern England reflect a society that had long-distance connections and whose elite members were part of an international community made possible by the trading connections mentioned earlier. Similar elite burials are found in continental Europe from this period. At Leubingen in central Germany, a timber mortuary structure was covered by a mound about 34 m in diameter. Within the structure was the body of an old man and a younger individual, accompanied by bronze weapons and gold ornaments. Timber was employed somewhat differently in a number of Bronze Age mound burials in Denmark. Huge oak trunks were hollowed out into massive coffins whose lids formed an airtight seal. A thin iron pan that formed around the cores of the mounds also contributed to extraordinary preservation of cloth, leather, and hair. At Borum Eshj near Aarhus in Jutland, a mound 38 m across and 9 m high

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contained three oak coffins. The first contained a woman in her fifties who wore a woolen tunic and long skirt, along with bronze ornaments and a dagger. She was covered with a heavy wool rug and a cowhide. The second coffin held a man in his fifties or sixties on top of a cowhide. He wore a woolen hat, kilt, and cape. The third coffin had been placed into the mound after the first two and contained a younger man. At Egtved in southern Jutland, an oak coffin lined with cowhide contained a young woman about 18–20 years old, wearing a short-sleeved woolen tunic and a short skirt made from cords rather than cloth. A bronze belt disk, decorated with spirals and a raised spike at its center, lay on her abdomen. The blossom of a yarrow flower, found between the hide and the blanket covering the body, indicated that the burial had taken place during the summer, while a birch-bark container held the residue of a fermented beverage made from honey, fruit, and wheat. Bronze Age barrows in southern Scandinavia were meant to be seen from a distance and are usually at high points in the landscape. In Sweden, their presence was also emphasized by covering them with cairns of stones gathered from the surrounding countryside. A typical Bronze Age cairn is found at Ekornavallen in central Sweden, about 20 m in diameter and 2 m high. It is at the highest point on a ridge sloping toward a nearby river in an area dotted with prehistoric graves built over a period of several millennia. In southeastern Sweden, the Kivik cairn was larger, about 75 m across. Although robbed in 1748 and used as a quarry, it contained two stone cists and several carved slabs that have images that are similar to those on rock carvings and which may depict the funeral ceremony. The largest of the 400 Bronze Age cairns on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea is Uggarde rojr (note lowercase ‘r’), where a central cairn 45 m in diameter and 8 m high was surrounded by a number of smaller cairns. Later in the Bronze Age, around 1700 BC in the British Isles and by 1300 BC in continental Europe and Scandinavia, the principal burial rite shifted dramatically from the burial of whole bodies to the reduction of the body to ashes through cremation. Across much of continental western Europe, the ashes were placed in urns and buried in cemeteries known as ‘urnfields’, which contain dozens or even hundreds of burials. Grave goods were also modest and consisted largely of the bronze ornaments that might have been on the corpse when it was burned, such as pins and earrings, rather than weapons. At Telgte, in northwestern Germany, urn burials were found throughout a 2 ha area, although this was probably only part of the whole cemetery. In many of the graves, the pit containing the urn was

surrounded by a small ditched enclosure. Some of these were circular, others elongated, and still others had a ‘keyhole’ plan in which the round end encircled the burial pit but the enclosure was extended into a rectangular form on one end. Some of the keyhole graves had traces of mortuary houses constructed from wooden posts over the burial. Many of the elongated enclosures have a common orientation, roughly NW–SE. In Scandinavia, the Late Bronze Age cremation burials were sometimes placed within settings of stone that suggest the outline of a ship. At Lugnaro in western Sweden, a mound covered a stone ship that was about 8 m long. The cremated remains of four individuals were found in the mound. In one instance, the urn contained burnt human and sheep bones, a piece of wool cloth that survived the funeral pyre, and three bronze objects: a dagger, tweezers, and an awl. The tradition of arranging stones in the form of a ship around a grave continued for many centuries after the end of the Bronze Age in Scandinavia. The variation in the quantity and quality of grave goods and mortuary architecture has led most archaeologists to conclude that the Bronze Age was characterized by increasing differences in the access by individuals to status, power, and wealth. The amount of physical labor and ceremonial effort that went into some Bronze Age burials and the high value ascribed to the goods buried with the bodies – and thus taken out of use by the living – is consistent with their expectations for such a stratified society. Thus the evidence from burials reflects a society differentiated into elites and commoners, which is not especially apparent from the small and unassuming settlements.

Rock Art The Bronze Age saw the flourishing of a rich tradition of rock art in which exposed surfaces of rock were engraved with depictions of objects, people, and symbols (see Rock Art). The two major provinces of Bronze Age rock art in western and northern Europe are found in Scandinavia and in the southern Alps. Each has its own characteristic repertoire of motifs. There is hardly a rock outcrop with a smooth face in Sweden that escaped being used as the canvas for rock carvings. Most are concentrated along the west coast facing the North Sea, a region called Bohusla¨n, but they are also found in southern and central Sweden and adjacent parts of Norway and Denmark. The Tanum area in Bohusla¨n is the capital of Bronze Age rock carvings in Sweden. Several hundred separate carved outcrops are known in Tanum, and many more are known from adjacent districts. Hundreds more await discovery. When they were carved, the

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Bohusla¨n engravings were along the shoreline, whereas today they are 25–30 m above sea level due to the postglacial rebound of the Swedish peninsula, which continues to rise even today. The most common engraving is a very simple hemispherical pit 5–10 cm in diameter and a few centimeters deep, known as a ‘cup mark’. Cup marks are ubiquitous on Scandinavian rock outcrops. The significance of cup marks is completely unknown, for they do not represent any recognizable object, but the fact that so many of them were made means that they surely held some sort of symbolic meaning. More interesting to archaeologists are the rock carvings that depict objects, animals, and humans, because they are trying to tell us something about the social and spiritual lives of Bronze Age people. Ships are by far the most abundant image, and thousands of carved watercraft with raised prows and sterns and often carrying people have been recorded (Figure 3). Sleighs, trees, and weapons are also common motifs. When people are shown, they are often brandishing spears and swords, playing bronze trumpets, pushing plows, or riding chariots drawn by oxen. Many of the human images are unequivocally male. Animals include deer, bear, fish, birds, and whale. Abstract images are often of suns and spirals. Sometimes the artists traced their feet and hands. Some of the Swedish carvings give the impression of planned compositions, while others seem more haphazard. Scenes of rituals, processions, plowing, and hunting depict at one level familiar elements of Bronze Age life, but we do not know the extent to which these carvings themselves were locations or backdrops for social activity or whether the capturing

of these images had a deeper significance for the relationship between the world of the living and the world of myths and deities. The other major province of Bronze Age rock art is found in the southwestern Alps of northern Italy and southeastern France. It is exemplified by two classic sites, Val Camonica in Lombardy, Italy, and Mount Bego in the French Alps-Maritimes. At both these sites, the tradition of carving on rock faces began during the Neolithic and continued into the Iron Age, but the Bronze Age carvings are classics of their genre. At Mount Bego, some 100 000 individual images were carved into the schist and sandstone outcrops by hammering with a pointed metal or stone tool. The most common images are a schematic depiction of horned oxen, sometimes in pairs or fours pulling a plough. Bronze weapons and tools account for about 15% of the images. Matching them to dated finds of actual tools and weapons from archaeological deposits has proven to be a reliable way of dating the Mount Bego carvings. Enigmatic geometrical figures may be depictions of animal pens and fields. Human figures are rare, but they are often complex. One famous example has a circular head and zigzag arms, while others seem to be dancing or praying. The human figures also seem to be placed at special locations such as where travelers would have to pass. Val Camonica has yielded over 200 000 carvings, and neighboring valleys contain still more. Traces of color suggest that many of the engravings were once highlighted with color. Some of the carvings appear to depict houses and workshops with pitched roofs, while others may be pictorial maps of fields and dwellings. People are engaged in activities like hunting, weaving, plowing, and metalworking. Weapons and tools are common motifs at Val Camonica as at Mount Bego, clearly reflecting the functional and symbolic importance of these objects for Bronze Age society.

Monuments

Figure 3 Rock carvings, like this one from Scania in southern Sweden, cover boulders throughout Scandinavia and depict important aspects of Bronze Age life in northern Europe, such as seafaring using long boats with multiple rowers. Note the cup marks directly below the ship (photo ã 2000 by Peter Bogucki).

In addition to their mortuary monuments, the Bronze Age inhabitants of western Europe continued the tradition of marking the landscape with settings of upright stones. As with the burial chambers constructed during the Neolithic, these monuments are part of the megalithic tradition of using large stones as architectural elements. Yet they also continue an earlier tradition of building similar monuments in timber. Collectively, these round monuments are known as ‘henges’, the most celebrated of which is Stonehenge.

1224 EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN/Bronze Age Stonehenge

It is impossible to describe the Bronze Age without mentioning Stonehenge, although the monument that is visible today was the product of many centuries of construction and renovation and is only an elaborate example of the circular stone monuments found throughout the British Isles. Stonehenge is located in southern England not far from Salisbury in Wiltshire. After its relatively simple Late Neolithic origins around 2700 BC, Stonehenge developed into a complex arrangement of concentric circles and semicircles of enormous upright stones by the beginning of the Bronze Age around 2000 BC. It continued to be in use for several centuries after that and remained visible on the landscape in the form we see it today, known as phase 3. Although some have hypothesized that it served as an astronomical observatory, a more likely explanation is that Stonehenge was the regional focal point for the rituals and ceremonies that were integral parts of Bronze Age life. An intriguing aspect of Stonehenge is the source of the stones used for its construction. The distinctive ‘trilithons’, the immense upright stones with equally immense lintels placed across them, are blocks of sarsen stone, a very hard sandstone found near Avebury, about 30 km to the north. Sarsen stone was also used for the surrounding circle of upright stones with lintels that give Stonehenge its circular form. Even transporting these blocks 30 km was a tremendous engineering feat, for they weigh up to 60 tons, but it pales in comparison with the effort needed to move the smaller bluestones that also form a horseshoe setting within the sarsen circle. These volcanic rocks, each weighing several tons, were brought from the Preseli Mountains of Wales, about 200 km away. Archaeologists have estimated that the final building phase of Stonehenge required nearly 2 million hours of labor, the equivalent of a thousand people working for a year. Most people do not realize that Stonehenge lies amid an immense Late Neolithic and Bronze Age ceremonial landscape with hundreds of prehistoric sites from the third and second milleniums BC. Most of these are barrows, while others were smaller ritual features that mimic or presage Stonehenge, only built from wood long since decayed. Many of the barrows are sited along ridges to the north, south, and east of Stonehenge. Stonehenge itself is approached by an ‘avenue’ formed by two parallel ditches cut into the chalk and banks about 12 m apart that stretch in a curve down to the River Avon. During earlier phases of Stonehenge construction, other ditched features, known as the Cursus and Lesser Cursus were situated north of the site. Whatever its

Figure 4 Stonehenge, in southern England, is perhaps the most famous Bronze Age ceremonial monument that has survived to the present. The sarsen trilithons with their upright orthostats and horizontal lintels can be seen in this picture (photo ã 1984 by Peter Bogucki).

function, Stonehenge did not exist in isolation but rather was one prominent element in a landscape devoted to ceremony and burial (Figure 4). Seahenge

At Holme-next-the-Sea in Norfolk, England, an oval arrangement of 55 oak posts found in the intertidal zone in 1998 appears to have been an early Bronze Age ritual structure, popularly named ‘Seahenge’ soon after its discovery. The arrangement of posts was 6.8 m across at its maximum diameter. In the center of the ring was an upturned stump of a large oak tree. All of the timber posts were shown by tree ring dating to have been cut in a single year, 2049 BC – in fact, during the spring or early summer – while the central inverted stump was cut or died the previous year. Comparison of the marks left by bronze axes showed that between 50 and 60 different tools were used. As is the case with Stonehenge, the function of Seahenge is shrouded in mystery. The many different toolmarks suggest that it was a community project. The location at the edge of the sea is probably significant, and the inversion of the stump clearly held a complex symbolic meaning, but we can only speculate on what it might be. Flag Fen

Much later than Seahenge, toward the end of the Bronze Age around 1350 BC, an immense timber barrier and platform was built at Flag Fen near Peterborough, England. Immense numbers of trees were felled and brought to the site. Many, perhaps up to 80 000, were used to build a long wooden alignment of pilings through the swamp, extending over a kilometer, by driving them into the bottom

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mud. Closer to the shore, timbers were laid horizontally on the wet ground to make a trackway. The structure was maintained for several centuries, until about 950 BC. At the deepest part of the swamp, an immense platform about a hectare in area was built with more piles across which timbers were placed. There is no evidence that it was used for dwelling, for it was probably simply too wet a spot. From the platform, wooden, ceramic, and metal objects were cast into the swamp as offerings, many after having been deliberately broken. Human and animal bones were also found. In 1994, the earliest prehistoric wheel known in England, made from three alder planks, was found at Flag Fen. Flag Fen is a conspicuous example of the role of bodies of water in prehistoric rituals in northern and western Europe that began during the Neolithic and reached its zenith during the Iron Age in the first millennium BC. Springs, ponds, and bogs all seem to have held some sacred significance, judging from the quantities of bronze, wooden, and ceramic objects that were cast into them. At the Mauritius Spring at St. Moritz, Switzerland, renovations in 1907 led to the discovery of two complete bronze swords and a part of a third, a broken dagger, and a fibula that dated to the period between 1400 and 1250 BC. The swords are types that are found primarily in southern Germany and Bohemia, indicating that they were brought some distance to the site. These artifacts lay at the bottom of a wooden well chamber that had been determined by tree ring dating to have been built in 1466 BC to capture the effervescent water of the spring.

Bronze Age Society Society did not undergo a radical transformation at the onset of the Bronze Age. Many of the social, economic, and symbolic developments that mark this period have their roots in the Late Neolithic. Similarly, many of the characteristics of the Bronze Age persist far longer than its arbitrary end in the first millennium BC with the development of ironworking. The Bronze Age in Europe is of tremendous importance, however, as a period of important changes that continued to shape the European past into the recognizable precursor of the societies that we eventually meet in historical records. Stuart Piggott (1910–96), in his 1965 book Ancient Europe, called it ‘‘a phase full of interest’’ in which the Neolithic ‘‘curious amalgam of traditions and techniques’’ was transformed into the world ‘‘we encounter at the dawn of European history.’’ If we accept the view that the Bronze Age mortuary and ceremonial sites of northern and western Europe

reflect societies whose members differed in their access to status, power, and wealth, the question then becomes what form these differentiated societies took. Some archaeologists have hypothesized that they were organized into ‘chiefdoms’, a form of social organization known from many prehistoric societies around the world. In chiefdoms, positions of status and leadership are passed from one generation to the next rather than earned by accomplishment. This elite population depends on the control of the production of farmers, herders, and craft specialists, whose products they accumulate, display, and distribute to maintain their social pre-eminence. As an alternative to such a straightforward hierarchical social structure, other archaeologists have advanced the notion that Bronze Age society had more complicated and fluid patterns of differences in authority and status, depending on the situation and the relationships among individuals and groups, a condition known as ‘heterarchy’. Whatever position one accepts, it is clear that the Bronze Age social organization became progressively more complex between 2500 and 800 BC. Along with the evidence for social differentiation comes increased evidence for warfare. Defended sites such as hill forts, skeletons with traces of violent injuries, and especially the innumerable finds of weapons reflect societies in which conflict was endemic. The ongoing race to improve the effectiveness of weapons, culminating in well-crafted swords (many of which are found with damaged edges, showing that they were used and not just for display), shows that Bronze Age armorers were always thinking of better ways to injure people. Helmets and shields afforded some protection, but body armor made from thin bronze sheet, such as the Marmesse cuirass from France, would have been ineffective against weapons and was probably worn as a symbol of status. Boats probably provided transport for raiding parties, as well as for goods and travelers. The paradox of the Bronze Age of northern and western Europe is that the social differentiation seen in graves is not reflected in the farmsteads and small hamlets in which people lived. Aside from hill forts, which appear to have been defended refugia rather than locations of working settlements, there is little evidence for sites in northern and western Europe having served as the ‘seats’ of chiefs. Unlike the Mycenaean palaces of the Aegean or the elaborate stone-walled citadels of southern Spain and Portugal, the dispersed and relatively uniform Bronze Age settlements of northern and western Europe do not match the variation or richness seen in the burials.

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Life in northern and western Europe was very different at the beginning of the first millennium BC from how it was at the end of the Neolithic. While the Bronze Age in this area did not see the emergence of urban states as it did in the Aegean and in the Near East, the changes in society were nonetheless significant and long-lasting. During the Bronze Age, local chiefs came to control trade networks for the acquisition of resources and to oversee their conversion into symbols of power and wealth. The status of these chiefs was embedded in hereditary claims to authority and in alliances with their peers. Although there is virtually no evidence that any one of these polities was yet able to dominate others or to control territory beyond its local sphere, herein lie the foundations of the European societies that we know from later prehistory and early historical accounts. See also: Asia, West: Southern Levant, Bronze Age Metal Production and Utilization; Burials: Excavation and Recording Techniques; Europe: Neolithic; Europe, Northern and Western: Early Neolithic Cultures; Iron Age; Rock Art; Ships and Seafaring; Weapons and Warfare.

Further Reading Bogucki PI and Crabtree PJ (eds.) (2004) Ancient Europe 8000 B.C.–A.D. 1000: An Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Childe VG (1930) The Bronze Age. New York: The Macmillan Company. Clarke DV, Cowie TG, Foxon A, Barrett JC and National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (1985) Symbols of Power at the Time of Stonehenge. Edinburgh: National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland. Cunliffe BW (ed.) (1994) The Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kristiansen K (1998) Europe before History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kristiansen K and Larsson TB (2006) The Rise of Bronze Age Society: Travels, Transmissions and Transformations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Milisauskas S (ed.) (2002) European Prehistory: A Survey. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Mohen J-P and Elue´re C (2000) The Bronze Age in Europe. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Osgood R, Monks S, and Toms J (2000) Bronze Age Warfare. Stroud: Sutton. Parker Pearson M (1993) The English Heritage Book of Bronze Age Britain. London: B.T. Batsford. Piggott S (1965) Ancient Europe; from the Beginnings of Agriculture to Classical Antiquity: A Survey. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pitts MW (2000) Hengeworld. London: Century. Renfrew C (1973) Before Civilization; the Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe. London: Cape. Waddell J (1998) The Prehistoric Archaeology of Ireland. Galway: Galway University Press.

Early Neolithic Cultures Michael Ilett, Universite´ Paris 1/CNRS, Nanterre, France ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary adze A tool with a polished stone blade used for cutting and shaping wood, similar to an axe. The wooden haft is not preserved in most archaeological contexts. Unlike an axe, the cutting edge of an adze blade is at right angles to the haft. caprine Sheep and/or goat. As the skeletons are very similar, it is often impossible to distinguish between sheep and goat bones from archaeological sites. comb decoration Impressed decoration made by pressing a tool with a short, serrated edge into the soft clay surface. daub A building material for walls made by mixing soil, water, and chopped straw or other plant fibers. Daub is plastered onto a wooden framework and survives in archaeological contexts when it has been hardened by fire. dendrochronology A dating technique based on the comparison of annual growth rings from trees. A complete dendrochronological calendar has been established for oak in Europe, including the whole Neolithic period. Oak from archaeological contexts with a sufficient quantity of growth rings preserved can thus be dated very precisely. fine-ware pottery Thin-walled vessels, often in the smaller size range, with well-finished surfaces. flexed burial The body is placed in the grave on its side, with the legs slightly bent at the hips and knees. impressed techniques Decoration of pottery before firing by pressing a fingertip, natural objects such as shells, or specially made tools in wood or bone, into the soft clay surface, leaving a negative. incised decoration Decoration of pottery before firing by drawing a sharp instrument across the soft clay surface to create shallow lines.

The Early Neolithic is defined here as the initial period of the spread of farming into western Europe between 6000 and 5000 cal BC. Archaeological data currently available from most regions suggest that this process involved the westward migration of farming communities, rather than the adoption of agriculture by indigenous hunter-gatherers. Steady demographic growth was the most likely cause of population movement. Originating from southeast Europe, farmers moved west along two principal routes, the Mediterranean coast and the Danube valley, each producing characteristic archaeological remains and cultural sequences. Thus a distinction can be drawn between the Mediterranean Early Neolithic of Italy, southern France and Spain, and the Early Neolithic of western Germany, Benelux, and northern France, closely linked to central Europe. Contrasts in the scale of fieldwork should also be underlined. In many Mediterranean regions, excavation has often been limited to caves rather than

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open-air sites, whereas the more northerly regions have a much longer history of large-scale settlement excavation.

Italy, Southern France, and Spain The Neolithic sequence in the central and west Mediterranean begins with the Impressed Ware culture, which appears in southeastern Italy shortly after 6000 cal BC and remains largely confined to this region, although there are a few outliers in northwest Italy and southern France. Pottery is characteristically decorated with a variety of impressed techniques, and some red-painted motifs occur in the later stages (see Pottery Analysis: Stylistic). As throughout the Early Neolithic sequence, lithic industries include flint blades, polished stone axes, and grinding equipment in abrasive rock. Flint was mined through long galleries dug into the hillside at Defensola, on the Adriatic coast. Obsidian from the island of Lipari was an additional raw material for blade production. Bone tools are also present. Italian Impressed Ware settlement sites range up to 3 ha in size, but none have been extensively excavated. Post-holes, foundation trenches, and daub fragments provide evidence for houses, although there are few distinct ground plans. Other features are pits containing burnt stones, and occasional burials. Some sites are enclosed by ditches. The faunal remains are almost entirely of domestic animals, with a majority of caprines. Analyses of charred plant remains show that both emmer and einkorn wheat were grown, as well as naked wheat and barley. Lentil and pea were also cultivated. The period 5600–5000 cal BC sees major expansion of farming communities in the west Mediterranean, with a new series of cultures emerging from Late Impressed Ware. These include Stentinello in southwest Italy, Catignano in east-central Italy, and the Cardial complex which extends from west-central Italy through southern France to the Iberian Peninsula. Stentinello pottery has a combination of impressed and incised decoration arranged in broad horizontal and vertical bands. Survey in the Calabria region has documented a dense pattern of settlement with an average distance of 1 km between sites. The Catignano culture is characterized by its fine-ware pottery with red-painted motifs on both external and internal vessel surfaces. Excavation of the type-site has provided good evidence for settlement organization. The area investigated, under 10% of the 3 ha site, contains the ground plans of five buildings with deep foundation trenches and post-holes. All are orientated north– south. The plans are either rectangular or trapezoidal, with slightly rounded north ends (Figure 1). Length

ranges from 12 to 16 m and width from 7 to 9 m. Close by lies a cluster of deep, irregularly shaped pits with refuse layers producing large quantities of finds. There are also smaller cylindrical pits and shallow rectangular features filled with burnt stones. The widespread Cardial culture, with its distinctive shell-impressed pottery decoration (Figure 2), can be broken down into a number of chronological and

Figure 1 House plans and associated features from the Neolithic settlement of Catignano, Italy. Adapted with permission from Tozzi C and Zamagni B (eds.) (2003) Gli scavi nel villaggio neolitico di Catignano (1971–1980). Florence: Instituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protohistoria.

Figure 2 Pottery decorated with shell impressions, Cardial culture, Courthe´zon, southern France. Photo: M. Olive/MCC.

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regional groups. From an early stage, the islands of Sardinia and Corsica were settled, and by 5000 cal BC farming communities had spread along the coastlines as far west as southern Portugal. Expansion also took place inland, notably following the Rhoˆne and Ebro valleys. There are both open settlements and cave sites, the latter being used mainly for caprine herding or as hunting camps, according to data from southern France. On current evidence, the settlements are relatively small, covering at the most 1ha. In the Rhoˆne valley, sites like Courthe´zon and Lamottedu-Rhoˆne contain shallow features filled with burnt stones, as well as post-hole alignments and deeper pits. Of particular interest is the quite recent discovery of two lakeside settlements, La Marmotta in westcentral Italy and La Draga in northeastern Spain. On both sites, waterlogged conditions have preserved large quantities of upright wooden posts from buildings, as well as other organic remains. A complete 11m dugout canoe was found on the Italian site. At La Draga, dendrochronological analysis of oak posts indicates the presence of rectangular houses. The small areas excavated here have produced the highest numbers of cereal remains and animal bones in the west Mediterranean Early Neolithic. The most comon cereal is free-threshing wheat, followed by hulled and naked barley. Faba bean and pea are present in much smaller quantities. Over 90% of bones are from domestic animals, with caprines slightly outnumbering cattle and pig.

Figure 3 Pottery decorated with comb impressions, Late LBK culture, Maizy-sur-Aisne, northern France. Photo: UMR 7041, CNRS.

Western Germany, Benelux, and Northern France The first farming populations here belong to the central European Linearbandkeramik (LBK) culture, dating to 5500–5000 cal BC. Due to large-scale excavations of settlements and cemeteries, data are abundant. LBK chronology is based on changes in pottery decoration techniques. Typical motifs are incised curvilinear bands. The earliest LBK sites are only found in regions of Germany east of the Rhine. The next stage takes the LBK across the Rhine and further west into parts of Benelux and northeastern France. The valleys of the Seine basin, which form the last western frontier of LBK expansion, were mostly settled in the latest stage, when comb-impressed decoration had become common (Figure 3). Lithic industries include tools made from flint blades, as well as polished stone adzes and abrasive grinding equipment. Both flint and stone raw materials circulated over considerable distances, as finished or semi-finished products. Sea-shell ornaments provide further evidence for exchange networks. There is also a range of bone artifacts.

Figure 4 House plans and associated features from the Neolithic (LBK) settlement of Langweiler 8, Germany. Adapted with permission from Boelicke U, von Brandt D, Lu¨ning J, Stehli P, and Zimmermann A (1988) Der bandkeramische Siedlungsplatz Langweiler 8. Bonn: Habelt.

Settlement patterns are well documented and thus offer possibilities for reconstructing land use and population density. In most regions, LBK sites are located on fertile loess soils in the major river basins and at a more local scale form clusters consisting of up to 12 sites. The largest, longest-lived sites can cover up to 10 ha and are sometimes associated with ditched enclosures. Characteristic features are post-holes and foundation trenches of rectangular buildings 5–7 m wide and 10–45 m long (Figures 4 and 5). Oriented

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Figure 5 LBK house under excavation at Cuiry-le`s-Chaudardes, northern France. Photo: UMR 7041, CNRS.

Figure 6 LBK burial, Berry-au-Bac, northern France. Grave goods include pottery and stone bracelets. Photo: UMR 7041, CNRS.

northwest/southeast, houses are flanked on either side by long pits. Originally dug to provide material for daub, these pits were ultimately used for discarding refuse. Extensive rescue excavations in advance of open-cast mining near Cologne in Germany have shown that large sites such as Langweiler 8 can contain up to 100 ground plans. Detailed phasing of this long-lived site shows that the actual size of the settlement fluctuated between 3 and 17 houses. A similar site at Ku¨ckhoven, in the same region, has produced a 15-m-deep well, with an elaborately constructed oak plank lining and other organic finds preserved below the water table. Cemeteries occur a short distance from the settlements (Figure 6). One of the largest excavated so far

is Aiterhofen, in southern Germany, containing over 200 inhumation and cremation burials. The former are single flexed burials in shallow pits. Men are often buried with flint arrowheads and stone adzes. LBK settlement excavations in western Germany and Benelux have provided abundant charred plant remains, although animal bones are often poorly preserved in loess soils. The most recent studies indicate that five species of plant were cultivated: emmer and especially einkorn wheat, as well as pea, lentil, and flax. Associated weed species are an additional source of information on agricultural practices. The most complete data on animal bones come from the late LBK settlement of Cuiry-le`s-Chaudardes in northern France. Here domestic species make up 80% of the

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remains, with cattle clearly outnumbering caprines and pig, as is generally the case in other LBK regions. The highest frequencies of wild animal bones are associated with the smallest houses on this site. On the shifting western frontier of LBK expansion, shared flint arrowhead types are possible signs of interaction between farmers and hunter-gatherer groups. It has been suggested too that the exotic La Hoguette and Limburg pottery styles mainly found on LBK sites in these frontier regions were made by hunter-gatherers, but there are very few data to support this idea. In short, the Early Neolithic cultures of western Europe reflect the gradual migration of small farming communities into new areas over a period of several centuries. Knowledge of the LBK is particulary detailed and offers the clearest picture of settlement growth and territorial expansion. Movement into northern Europe was probably hindered by environmental conditions that were less favorable for LBK agriculture. It should also be stressed that there is still no firm evidence in western Europe for huntergatherer populations actually adopting agriculture at this time. Nor is there evidence for the widespread diffusion of pottery making among these populations, in contrast to the situation on the northeastern margins of Europe at an equivalent period. Nevertheless, the degree of contact and admixture between Early Neolithic farmers and indigenous hunter-gatherers inwestern Europe still remains a subject of considerable debate. Progress on this question will depend largely on more intensive fieldwork in regions where hunter-gatherer sites occur close to Neolithic farming settlements. New insights can also be expected the further development of biomolecular archaeology, especially the analysis of ancient DNA from burials. See also: Animal Domestication; DNA: Ancient; Europe:

Neolithic; Europe, Central and Eastern; Plant Domestication; Pottery Analysis: Stylistic.

Further Reading Ammerman AJ and Biagi P (eds.) (2003) The Widening Harvest: The Neolithic Transition in Europe. Boston: Archaeological Institute of America. Arias P (1999) The origins of the Neolithic along the Atlantic coast of continental Europe: A survey. Journal of World Prehistory 13: 403–464. Binder D and Se´ne´part I (2004) Derniers chasseurs et premiers paysans de Vaucluse. In: Buisson-Catil J, Guilcher A, Hussy C, Olive M, and Pagni M (eds) Vaucluse Pre´historique, pp. 131– 162. Le Pontet: Barthe´lemy. Boelicke U, Von Brandt D, Lu¨ning J, Stehli P, and Zimmermann A (1988) Der bandkeramische Siedlungsplatz Langweiler 8. Bonn: Habelt.

Bogaard A (2004) Neolithic Farming in Central Europe. London: Routledge. Bosch A, Chinchilla J, and Tarrus J (eds.) (2000) El poblat lacustre neolitic de La Draga: Excavacions de 1990 a 1998. Girona: Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya. Guilaine J and Cremonesi G (eds.) (2003) Torre Sabea: Un e´tablissement du ne´olithique ancien en Salento. Rome: Ecole franc¸aise de Rome. Lu¨ning J (1988) Fru¨he Bauern in Mitteleuropa im 6. und 5. Jahrtausend v. Chr. Jahrbuch des Ro¨misch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz 35: 27–93. Price TD (ed.) (2000) Europe’s First Farmers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tozzi C and Zamagni B (eds.) (2003) Gli scavi nel villaggio neolitico di Catignano (1971–1980). Florence: Instituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protohistoria. Vaquer J (ed.) (1999) Le ne´olithique du nord-Ouest Me´diterrane´en. Paris: Socie´te´ Pre´historique Franc¸aise.

Iron Age Peter S Wells, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Celtic art Celtic art is art associated with various peoples known as Celts speaking the Celtic languages in Europe from prehistory through to the medieval period and beyond, as well as art of ancient peoples whose language is unknown, but where cultural and stylistic similarities lead to believe they are related to Celts. La Te`ne culture The part of the Iron Age in central and northwestern Europe, from c. 450 BC to c. 58 BC. This period of culture received its name of ‘La Te`ne’ from an archaeological site in Switzerland, where an amazing discovery was made of iron weapons, implements, and jewelry, most of them decorated with a particular style of artwork. oppidum Latin name used by Julius Caesar to designate the Late Iron Age centers he encoutered in Gaul during his military campaigns (58–51 BC), and now used by European archaeologists to designate all of the large walled settlements dating to the final two centuries BC in temperate Europe. bog bodies Bog bodies, also known as bog people, are preserved human bodies found in sphagnum bogs in Northern Europe. Unlike most ancient human remains, bog bodies have retained skin and internal organs due to the unusual conditions of preservation.

Introduction: The Concept and General Patterns The Iron Age – Concept and Chronology

‘Iron Age’ is a modern concept that archaeologists created in the nineteenth century as a means for organizing their study of prehistoric materials. They

Iron Age 1231

define the Iron Age in Europe as the period between the time that communities first began to adopt iron as their principal material for making tools and the Roman conquests of the last century BC and the first century AD. Peoples in different regions adopted iron metallurgy at different times. In central parts of the continent, such as eastern France, southern Germany, and the Czech Republic, a generally accepted date for the beginning of the Iron Age is 800 BC. In Britain and Scandinavia, it is around 600 BC. In common practice, the Roman Period begins (and the Iron Age ends) in France and neighboring countries west of the Rhine in the 50s BC, when Julius Caesar led his Roman legions in the conquest of Gaul. In Germany south of the Danube, the Roman conquest happened in 15 BC. The conquest of Britain took place in the years following the invasion in AD 43. For regions east and north of the Roman frontiers on the Rhine and Danube, investigators use ‘Roman Iron Age’ to designate the period until about AD 400 (see Figure 1 for key sites). Everyday Life: Subsistence, Settlement, and Provisioning

By the start of the Iron Age, virtually all peoples of northern and western Europe belonged to communities that practiced agriculture and animal husbandry. Only in some regions of northern Scandinavia and northern Britain did hunting and gathering still play a major role in the diet. Wheat and barley were the staple cereals in most regions, with rye and oats important in some places. Lentils, peas, and beans were significant garden crops. Cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs were the main domestic animals, with great variation regionally in which animals were most important. Excavation results show that many agricultural communities supplemented their diets with local wild resources, such as fish, deer, and boar, and a wide variety of fruits, berries, and nuts. Throughout the Iron Age, the great majority of people lived in small communities, with fewer than 100 inhabitants. In most regions, houses were built of timber, usually with posts sunk into the ground along the perimeter and wattle-and-daub walls constructed between them. Only in some regions did larger communities develop, with populations in the hundreds. In the final two centuries BC, town-like settlements emerged in central regions of the continent and in southeastern Britain. During this time the development of new implements made food production more efficient. These include iron plowshares and coulters for preparing fields for planting, scythes for harvesting hay to feed livestock during the winter, and rotary querns for grinding grain.

Communities manufactured a variety of goods that they needed or desired. Pottery was made of local clays and served a range of domestic purposes. Iron was smelted from surface ores, which were abundant in many regions, and it was used to make a variety of tools, weapons, and ornaments. Bronze remained the principal material for jewelry, such as bracelets, necklaces, and clothing pins (see Metals: Primary Production Studies of). Wood, bone, antler, textiles, stone, leather, and other materials were also processed into needed objects. Most communities were in more or less regular contact with other communities, both regionally and inter-regionally. The clearest evidence for interaction is in traded objects. Most communities had regular access to bronze for making ornaments, yet neither copper nor tin (of which bronze is an alloy) occur in most parts of northern and western Europe. Every bronze object is the product of a complex process of mining, smelting, transporting, alloying, and crafting. Other materials that were regularly traded between communities include amber, fine ceramics, glass (beads and bracelets), and grindstones. Major Changes During the Iron Age

Several major interrelated changes took place during the Iron Age in much of northern and western Europe. These happened at different times and in different ways in the various regions. Population increased. In most regions more settlements and cemeteries are known than from earlier periods, and their sizes suggest larger communities. In some areas, centers of population and more complex economic and political functions developed during the Iron Age. Interactions between communities intensified, and they included significant links over great distances, such as across the Alps to the Mediterranean world. Manufacturing increased in scale, especially during the final two centuries BC. Marked differentiation in burials points to the emergence of more powerful individuals and groups in some regions who gained control over the political and economic systems. Warfare is a major theme of Iron Age Europe. Weapons are common in burials in some times and places, and hilltop settlements defended by major banks and ditches are prominent features of many landscapes (see Social Inequality, Development of; Weapons and Warfare). In ritual activity, we can observe a shift from practice on the scale of individual households and small communities, to much larger intercommunity behavior, including the construction of large sites in the landscape at which substantial quantities of valuable objects were deposited in the course of rituals. Significant changes in world view, including ideas about identity on individual,

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Figure 1 Map showing key sites. 1. Alesia; 2. Aylesford; 3. Berching-Pollanten; 4. Bibracte; 5. Biskupin; 6. Bragny-sur-Saoˆne; 7. Bra˚; 8. Colchester; 9. Danebury; 10. Deal; 11. Do¨ttenbichl; 12. Empel; 13. Feddersen Wierde; 14. Fellbach-Schmiden; 15. Flo¨geln; 16. Glauberg; 17. Gournay-sur-Aronde; 18. Grafenbu¨hl; 19. Grauballe; 20. Grossromstedt; 21. Gundestrup; 22. Gussage All Saints; 23. Hannogne; 24. Harsefeld; 25. Hayling Island; 26. Hedega˚rd; 27. Heuneburg; 28. Hjortspring; 29. Hochdorf; 30. Hodde; 31. Hohenasperg; 32. Iwanowice; 33. Jakuszowice; 34. Kalkriese; 35. Kelheim; 36. Kessel; 37. Knockaulin; 38. Lindow; 39. Llyn Cerrig Bach; 40. Maiden Castle; 41. Manching; 42. Mont Lassois; 43. Navan Fort; 44. Neuwied; 45. Putensen; 46. Ribemont; 47. Ro¨ekillorna; 48. St. Albans; 49. Snettisham; 50. Stare´ Hradisko; 51. Stradonice; 52. Tara; 53. Tolland; 54. Vix; 55. Welwyn Garden City; 56. Winchester; 57. Zarten; 58. Za´vist.

community, and larger social group levels, are apparent in the development and spread of new styles and techniques of representation.

Themes In Iron Age Research Centers: Emergence of Larger and Specialized Communities

The most apparent difference between the Iron Age and earlier periods of European prehistory is the emergence of centers in some regions. During the sixth century BC, settlements were established on hilltops in the upland regions of western and central Europe, and outfitted with substantial bank-and-ditch defense systems. Many of these hilltop settlements developed

into substantial centers of population and of manufacturing and trade activity. The most fully investigated of these is the Heuneburg on the upper Danube River in southwest Germany. Other sites that show similar patterns include Mont Lassois and Bragnysur-Saoˆne in eastern France, the Hohenasperg in southwest Germany, and Za´vist in Bohemia. At the Heuneburg, building foundations reveal a much denser settlement structure than on typical farming settlements, with rectangular timber-framed buildings constructed close together within the fortress. Recent research has revealed extensive suburbs on the lower ground surrounding the fortified center, with clear differentiation between people who lived in the hilltop fortress and the larger population that lived below. The Heuneburg and the other centers

Iron Age 1233

were parts of complex structured cultural landscapes that included cemeteries of burial mounds. Within the cemeteries around the Heuneburg are 11 monumental mounds that contained exceptionally rich graves as well as more modestly outfitted burials. Workshop debris shows that manufacturing at the centers included iron production, bronze working, pottery making, bone and antler carving, and the processing of a variety of luxury materials, such as amber, coral, gold, jet, and lignite, for the crafting of personal ornaments. The centers produced goods that were exchanged with smaller communities in the countryside. Especially striking at the centers is abundant evidence for interactions with peoples of the Mediterranean basin. Numerous vessels of Attic painted pottery have been recovered at the Heuneburg, showing that this fine ware produced at Athens (1600 km away) was imported to the Heuneburg and used, and broken, there. The types of vessels, including cups (kylikes) and mixing vessels (kratere), were part of the Greek wine-drinking ritual. Fragments of Greek transport amphorae indicate how wine was brought from Mediterranean lands, most likely up the Rhoˆne River valley, then overland to the Danube valley and to the Heuneburg. Coral, another import from the Mediterranean, was brought north for carving into ornaments for inlay on metal jewelry. While these imports may have arrived through indirect trade, an important piece of evidence at the Heuneburg demonstrates interaction on a personal basis. In one of the phases of construction of the defensive system around the fortress, the wall was built of clay bricks, a technique foreign to temperate Europe but common in the Mediterranean world. The shape and size of the bricks match those at Greek fortifications on the Mediterranean coasts. An architect from the Greek world must have been brought to design the wall, or a native of west-central Europe learned the technique during a sojourn on the shores of the Mediterranean, and upon returning directed the building of the wall. A center that differed in significant ways from those of west-central Europe was excavated at Biskupin in west-central Poland. Archaeologists uncovered a settlement of 120 timber-build houses, densely arranged within a walled enclosure, preserved in the wet environment. Tree-ring dates show that the timbers for the first phase of construction were felled near the end of the eighth century BC. If all of the houses were inhabited at the same time by families, some 500–1000 people may have lived at Biskupin. A variety of craft activities are evident, and amber, bronze, and glass beads are among the imports. Biskupin and other settlements in this part of Europe do not show the

intense connections to the Mediterranean world apparent at the Heuneburg and other sites in westcentral Europe. The centers of west-central Europe flourished between the mid-sixth and early fifth century BC, then declined, for reasons that are not well understood. In Britain at this time, many fortified hilltop settlements were thriving. The community at Danebury played many of the same roles in its landscape that the Heuneburg did in its, and Danebury remained a center of regional importance for several centuries. Excavations revealed intensive habitation, subsistence, and economic activity on the settlement. The investigators recognized that many of the grain-storage pits on the site were subsequently used for depositing materials, including humans and animals, in the course of ritual practice. In most of temperate Europe, during the fourth and third centuries BC, centers were less common than before, though in Britain Danebury and other sites remained active into the final century BC. The cultural landscape in most regions shows a more dispersed, non-centralized pattern of settlement. Cemeteries of often well-outfitted inhumation burials are the most abundant source of information about this period. Women’s graves often contain sets of personal ornaments, including bronze neckrings, bracelets, fibulae, and link belts, as well as glass beads and bracelets. Some men’s graves contain sets of weapons, including iron swords, spears, and shields. In the second century BC, a new series of centers emerged, known as oppida, after Julius Caesar’s use of that term in reference to the tribal capitals of Gaul against which he fought in his campaigns of 58–51 BC. The word oppidum at that time meant ‘town’, indicating that in Caesar’s view, the Gallic centers were of urban character. In his commentary, Caesar described a number of the oppida in Gaul, and archaeological evidence shows that similar urban centers developed east of the Rhine in southern Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. About 150 such sites have been identified, though they differ greatly in area and in the density of occupation remains. All oppida were enclosed by massive walls of earth, timber, and stone. Most are on hilltops, but others are situated in other naturally defensible locations. Oppida were considerably larger than the earlier centers, with many including hundreds of acres of land. Many that have been excavated reveal dense occupation remains, with evidence of highly active industries in iron, bronze, ceramics, and other materials, as well as intensive trade relations with other parts of Europe, including the Mediterranean world. At the time that the oppida were thriving, great

1234 Iron Age

quantities of iron implements were being manufactured, many of high-quality steel, and a three-metal coinage system in bronze, silver, and gold had developed. The major oppida at which dense occupation and manufacturing remains have been recovered, such as Bibracte in France, Manching in Germany, Stradonice in Bohemia, and Stare´ Hradisko in Moravia, probably had populations between 5000 and 10 000. Some oppida, such as Zarten in southern Germany, have yielded little evidence of habitation and are believed to have served as places of refuge only in times of danger. The oppida occur in the hilly upland regions of temperate Europe and not on the North European Plain. There communities remained much smaller. In southern Scandinavia, a few larger farming villages developed, such as Hodde in Denmark, with 27 households joined together within a fenced settlement enclosure. One complex of house and barn at Hodde was set off from the rest by a substantial fence, it was built more sturdily than others, and its occupants used finer pottery, suggesting social differentiation within this settlement. In Britain, new, larger communities were forming, as they were in the upland regions on the continent, but their settlements differed from the fortified oppida. Large hillforts such as Maiden Castle, with its massive defensive works, had relatively small populations and do not display the highly centralized economic functions of the continental oppida. Major tribal centers of southeast Britain, such as those at St Albans and Colchester, often include significant earthworks and widespread settlement remains. But they seem to have more the character of several small settlements agglomerated into one area than of large fortified central places. Interaction: Regional and Inter-Regional

Interaction between communities is more apparent during the Iron Age than earlier. It is evidenced in the archaeological material both through imports – objects made of materials that do not occur locally or displaying techniques and styles of manufacture that indicate foreign origins – and through the adopting of practices and techniques that point to distant sources. Foreign materials that commonly indicate interaction over distances include amber, bronze, coral, glass, and gold. Finished objects that often point to nonlocal origins include items of personal ornamentation, such as fibulae and belthooks, fine pottery, bronze vessels, and weapons. A variety of different mechanisms of interaction is likely to have been involved in the transmission of such goods from one place to another, including trade, migration, raiding, pilgrimage, and interfamily visits. Such interactions are

especially evident at the centers, but they are apparent throughout the Iron Age landscape, as new discoveries are making increasingly clear. Especially for more densely inhabited regions, such as continental Europe, southern Britain, and southern parts of Scandinavia, a useful way of thinking about inter-community interactions is in terms of networks. Throughout the Iron Age, most communities belonged to complex networks through which goods and information flowed. Changes in one part of the network, such as the sudden availability of new desired products such as glass beads, spread throughout the network, such that the new goods became available to all communities that were part of it. At the Early Iron Age centers, interaction is particularly visible in the presence of quantities of Mediterranean luxury imports. Yet recent discoveries are changing our understanding of the systems of interaction by showing that Mediterranean imports were much more widely distributed in the cultural landscape. Fine painted pottery from Athens, bronze vessels and figurines from Etruscan Italy and eastern Mediterranean lands, and ornate objects made of glass, are among the foreign objects recently reported at many sites in Iron Age Europe. But the centers are still distinguished by the density of ‘high-value’ Mediterranean imports – larger quantities of fine Greek pottery, and unusually large and complex objects such as the Hochdorf cauldron and the Vix krater (see below). Objects crafted from silk and ivory in some of the rich burials attest to very long distance circulation of exotic luxury goods. The Greek and Etruscan imports recovered at the Early Iron Age centers are associated with evidence suggesting that elements of feasting rituals practiced in Mediterranean societies were adopted by elites at the centers north of the Alps. The Greek pottery consists of vessels used in wine-drinking rituals, and the sets of ceramic and bronze vessels arranged in the rich burials at Grafenbu¨hl, Hochdorf, and Vix attest to practices that probably played important social and political roles among the elites. The mechanisms of transmission of the unusual and costly Mediterranean imports, such as the Grafenbu¨hl tripod and furniture, the Hochdorf cauldron, and the Vix krater and gold neckring, have been much discussed. When systematic study of such imports began, most researchers viewed the interactions in economic terms and understood them as trade goods. More recently, investigators have focused on social roles that such imports are likely to have played, including ways that the elites manipulated them at politically significant feasts and funerary rituals. Mercenary service by young men in armies in the Mediterranean region probably played a much larger

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role in cultural change than we understand at present. Greek textual sources mention Celtic mercenaries in different parts of the Mediterranean basin during the fourth and third centuries BC. The earliest local coinage in temperate Europe, dating to the third century BC, is modeled on Greek gold coins, the prototypes of which were probably brought into temperate Europe by such soldiers returning home. They surely brought with them information about their experiences in the Mediterranean world, and this knowledge is likely to have played a significant part in the changes that occurred during the final centuries of the Iron Age. The oppida of the last two centuries BC were major centers of interaction, demonstrated by large quantities of foreign materials recovered on these settlements. Imports from the Mediterranean world include fine pottery, ceramic wine amphorae, bronze vessels, medical instruments, mirrors, personal ornaments, writing equipment, and coins. Other goods at the oppida indicate interactions with other regions, such as with communities on the North European Plain. Objects from Italy and from the central regions of the continent become increasingly common in Scandinavia, especially Denmark and Sweden, during the final century BC, attesting to intensification of long-distance interactions across Europe. The island of Gotland off the coast of central Sweden played a special role in interactions in the north of Europe. Exceptional quantities of goods, especially metalwork, from regions to the south have been recovered there. In Britain too, ever larger quantities of materials from the continent are evident in the final century BC. Coins from across the English Channel were imported, and new coinages developed in southern Britain. Metalwork, including fibulae, from the continent is also well represented on British sites, and stylistic development of local metalwork indicates familiarity with fashions on the continent. Roman amphorae were arriving at ports such as Hengistbury Head on the south coast. Other Roman imports include fibulae, glass ornaments, and garum, the popular fish sauce. Interactions between British communities and groups on the continent led to the widespread adoption of wheelmade pottery and wine-drinking paraphernalia among elite groups of the southeast, evident in well-outfitted burials such as those at Aylesford and Welwyn Garden City. Manufacturing: Production of Needed and Desired Goods

Most Iron Age communities produced their own basic ceramics for food preparation and storage, textiles for clothing, and everyday implements of wood, bone, and antler. Many smelted local ore to make iron. In some regions where high-quality ore was

abundant, larger-scale, specialized production developed early, as in parts of Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany. Since the constituents of bronze, copper and tin, are available in only very limited locations, for communities to have access to bronze to make personal ornaments, the metal had to be brought in from outside. Bronze objects are abundant in graves throughout the continent, showing that most communities had means for acquiring the metal, through the network of connected settlements. Molds for casting ornaments are relatively common on settlement sites, and their presence indicates that in many communities, someone knew the techniques of casting the metal. The molds were most often made of sandstone, and they may have been crafted by specialists and acquired by many communities for their own use. The scale of iron production grew substantially during the Iron Age. By around 500 or 400 BC (it varied by region), iron had replaced bronze for tools, and by the time of the oppida in the final two centuries BC, very large quantities were being produced. Sizable numbers of iron implements are found at sites such as Manching and Stradonice, and extensive slag heaps attest to major production at many sites, including Kelheim on the Danube River in Bavaria. Metallographic analyses show that from the beginning of the Iron Age, some blacksmiths had learned how to make steel blades by alloying carbon with iron. By the final two centuries BC, a large proportion of the cutting tools were being produced of high-quality steel. Until the time of the oppida, almost all pottery in western and northern Europe was handmade. Limited use of the wheel is evident at some Early Iron Age centers, but the technology was not further developed at that time. Only during the last two centuries BC do we find substantial proportions of pottery made on the fast-turning wheel, both on the continent and in southern Britain. This change indicates that pottery production shifted from a domestic craft to a highly specialized one, probably practiced by full-time potters. The fine, wheel-turned ceramics supplied not only the inhabitants of the centers, but also people in the smaller settlements in the countryside. Recent excavations at many small settlements have produced important evidence that economic processes that had been believed to be largely restricted to the oppida, such as making pottery on the wheel and minting coins, were in fact carried out by numerous small communities. At Berching-Pollanten in southern Bavaria, a village community produced wheel-made pottery, fibulae, coins, and substantial quantities of iron, rather than depending for those goods upon the industries at the nearby oppida of Manching or

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Kelheim. In southern England, residents of a small farming community at Gussage All Saints cast ornate bronze ornaments for chariots and horse harness fittings. Such discoveries necessitate fundamental rethinking of ideas about how the Late Iron Age economy operated. Elites: Expressions of Status through Funerary Practice

Richly outfitted burials are more common and more lavishly equipped than those of earlier periods. The richest of these graves attracted attention early in the development of the field of European archaeology, and they remain the most familiar aspect of the period, abundantly represented in books and magazine articles about Celts. They are important in any discussion of social and political organization in Iron Age Europe, as well as of ritual and identity. The most striking of the burials are those of the period 550–480 BC in west-central Europe, associated with the Early Iron Age centers such as the Heuneburg, the Hohenasperg, and Mont Lassois. These graves were situated inside elaborate chambers of hewn timbers and covered with substantial mounds of earth. Typical grave goods include gold neckrings, gold bracelets, other gold jewelry, four-wheeled wagons, sets of drinking vessels, many of them imported from the Mediterranean world, and, in the men’s graves, ornate daggers. While no two graves are identical, the similarity of the goods in rich graves from central France in the west to Bohemia in the east indicates a common set of rules and practices regarding the signs and symbols of elite status that were used in funerary ritual. The graves at Hochdorf in southwest Germany, dated about 540 BC, and Vix in eastern France, about 480 BC, are of special significance. Unlike the majority of rich graves in the region, the Hochdorf tomb was undisturbed, and the excavations in 1979 were of unusually high quality. In the grave were the remains of a man about 30 years of age adorned with a gold neckring, gold bracelet, two gold fibulae (pins that worked like modern safety-pins), a gold belt plate, a dagger with sheath and hilt covered with gold, and gold ornaments on his shoes. He was arranged on a couch made of sheet bronze. At his feet was a bronze cauldron made in a Greek workshop, containing residue of a beverage that was probably mead, with a gold bowl for a ladle. Other objects in the grave included a wagon and, hanging on the north wall of the chamber, nine drinking horns, one large horn of iron with gold bands ornamenting it and eight smaller ones crafted from bull’s horns. The Vix burial contained the remains of a woman approximately 30 years old. She also wore a gold

neckring and a variety of other jewelry, and she was buried with a wagon and with vessels. This grave contained a much richer assemblage of vessels made in the Mediterranean world. They included two fine ceramic drinking cups from Athens, a bronze jug and two bronze basins from central Italy, and an enormous bronze krater, 1.64 m high and weighing 208 kg, made in a Greek workshop, a unique object believed to have been a diplomatic gift of some kind from the Greek world to this potentate in eastern France. Much discussion has revolved around the nature of the social and political system of which these burials were part. Some scholars interpret the graves in terms of a feudal model derived from medieval Europe, whereby the buried individuals are understood as princes and princesses ruling regional cultural landscapes from their fortified hilltop settlements. Others adopt a model from comparative anthropology, viewing the buried individuals as chiefs. The former interpretation leads toward ideas about significant political power, the latter to discussion about redistributive economies. Debate also circulates about why the practice of outfitting these rich burials (of which about 50 are known) began around the middle of the sixth century BC, then ceased by the middle of the fifth century BC. A central issue in this debate has been the role of the ‘southern imports’ – the Greek and Etruscan luxury objects in the rich burials and on the settlements associated with them that distinguish these from the majority of sites. Did the elites rise to power by exploiting interactions with southern societies to enhance their prestige and increase their wealth? Or did the elites emerge through processes operating within their societies, and are the imported luxury goods expressions of the wealth they consumed and displayed? Beginning around the middle of the fifth century BC, another series of richly outfitted burials appeared to the north, again extending across the central regions of temperate Europe from eastern France to the Czech Republic. The individuals buried in these graves were also marked by gold ring jewelry, wheeled vehicles, and southern imports, but their ornaments were decorated in a new style called La Te`ne, also known as Early Celtic art. In these burials, dating between about 450 and 400 BC, the imported vessels are mostly Etruscan bronze jugs, and only a few Greek ceramic vessels are represented. The same questions apply about the nature of the society to which these individuals belonged, and the reasons behind their apparent rise to power and wealth. From the fourth century BC on, richly outfitted burials in chambers under mounds are much less frequent. Characteristic instead are large cemeteries of flat graves, with many men’s graves containing weapons (swords, spears, shields) and women’s graves including

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personal ornaments, especially bronze fibulae, bracelets, and chain-link belts. Gold is unusual in burials after 400 BC, as are vessels imported from the Mediterranean world. Only in the final century BC, when interactions between the oppida and the Roman world were intensifying, do we find substantial numbers of unusually richly outfitted burials again. In Britain, where the burial evidence from the Iron Age is considerably less abundant than on the continent, a series of cemeteries in east Yorkshire known as the Arras Culture includes graves characterized by two-wheeled chariots, bronze ornaments, ditched enclosures, and covering mounds, all of which indicate some special distinction for the individuals so buried. In the final centuries of the Iron Age on the Continent and in Britain, graves that contain the remains of men with weapons and often other special items such as bronze vessels have been interpreted in terms of the emergence of a ‘warrior aristocracy’. The phenomenon has been understood in terms of interregionally linked groups of men whose identity was closely tied to their roles as warriors in their communities. Such graves have been documented at Deal in Kent in Britain, Hannogne in eastern France, Neuwied in the Rhineland, and Harsefeld on the North European Plain. Much recent discussion has revolved around the question, what do the rich burials actually represent? Are they indicative of the rise of elites with new power and wealth, or are they instead indications of periods of unusual instability and competition for power? One school of thought argues that all periods in which unusually rich graves occur were times of unusual stress and political disorder, and that lavish funerary rituals served in competitive displays during such tumultuous periods. According to this perspective, times and places that were not distinguished by rich burials did not necessarily have more egalitarian social and political structures, only greater stability. Ritual: Deposition of Objects and Construction of Enclosures

Many traditional ritual practices, such as depositing objects in bodies of water or burying them in pits in the ground, continued into the Iron Age from earlier times. But during the course of the Iron Age, the scale of deposition increased, and more effort was devoted to constructing special places for the performance of rituals (see Ritual, Religion, and Ideology). Recent excavations at a spring at Ro¨ekillorna in southern Sweden show that the site was used as a place of ritual deposition over long periods, including the Iron Age. In a pond at Hjortspring in Denmark, about 350 BC people deposited a boat capable of

carrying 20 warriors, together with weapons to outfit a force of 80 fighters, including swords, shields, spears, and chain mail. Several large and ornate metal cauldrons have been recovered from wet sites elsewhere in Denmark. Most are bronze, such as the enormous vessel found at Bra˚. But the Gundestrup cauldron is made of silver, and it is decorated with unique scenes of ritual, warfare, and deities interacting with humans. This extraordinary object was deposited in a bog near the northern tip of Jutland, apparently as an offering. In northwest Wales at Llyn Cerrig Bach was found a deposit of about 150 objects that included iron weapons, bronze vessels, and metal ornaments from a wheeled vehicle and from horse harness equipment. Much elaborate bronze metalwork was deposited in rivers in Britain during the Iron Age. Ornate shields, helmets, and swords have been recovered from the River Thames at London, for example, along with large numbers of human skulls. Similar deposits of metal objects and human skulls have been found in the River Meuse at Kessel in the Netherlands. The bog bodies of northern Europe constitute a special set of ritual sites, though there continues debate about the nature of the rituals that resulted in the many hundreds of human beings deposited in watery places. Bog bodies date from different periods, but a clear concentration is apparent during the prehistoric Iron Age and early Roman Iron Age. In contrast to typical burials, in which only skeletal remains survive under favorable conditions, the bodies found in bogs are often extraordinarily well preserved by the anaerobic and acidic conditions, with skin and internal organs intact. Among the best known and most thoroughly studied of the bog bodies are those from Grauballe and Tollund in Denmark and Lindow Moss in Britain. Scholarly opinion generally agrees that they were deposited in the course of ritual sacrifice. Both men and women are represented among the bodies, and all age groups from adolescence to old age. Some bog bodies have articles of clothing, others do not. Few objects have been recovered with the bodies. Many of the individuals were killed through some method that involved the neck – strangling, cutting the throat, or breaking the neck. In Britain, recent research has shown that throughout most of the Iron Age, settlements were the settings for ritual activities such as feasting and the making of special deposits. Favored locations for such deposits were pits within the settlements or boundary ditches surrounding them. On the continent, enclosures defined by banks and ditches were constructed as places for ritual activity. Sometimes they were circular, but more often rectangular. At Gournay-sur-Aronde in northern France, from about 300 BC, remains of thousands of animals were placed into pits, and

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thousands of weapons, including swords, spears, and shields, were deposited in the enclosing ditches. At the nearby site of Ribemont, quantities of human bones indicate sacrifice of large numbers of persons, or ritual manipulation of skeletal remains in connection with funerary practices. Many hundreds of rectangular ditched enclosures known as Viereckschanzen have been identified throughout the central regions of temperate Europe, and many include special deposits of iron weapons and tools in the ditches. At the bottom of a deep shaft at the Viereckschanze at Fellbach-Schmiden in southwest Germany, large wooden sculptures of stags and goats were recovered, with indications of an anthropomorphic deity linked to the animals. Iron tools buried in pits have been interpreted as offerings in rituals dedicated to deities connected with fertility and with the harvest, while deposits of coins, most often gold but sometimes silver, are thought to represent offerings of wealth. At Snettisham in eastern England, 11 pits have been found that contained jewelry, coins, and scrap metal of gold, silver, and bronze, all apparently buried for ritual purposes. Two sets of gold jewelry, including neckrings, bracelets, and fibulae, have been found recently on a hilltop near Winchester in southern Britain, apparently part of a ritual deposit made around the middle of the final century BC. On the continent deposits of gold coins, sometimes together with gold rings, indicate similar practices. Funerary rituals changed throughout much of Europe during the second century BC. While hundreds of inhumation cemeteries are known from the fourth and third centuries BC, for most parts of temperate Europe, cemeteries are rare from the second and first centuries BC, and it is not clear how communities disposed of bodies. At some settlements, quantities of human bone recovered in pits have been interpreted in terms of practices involving exhumation and ritual manipulation of human bone, perhaps in place of the earlier practice of inhumation. Among the best-studied assemblages is that from the oppidum at Manching, where at least 420 individuals are represented by skeletal remains on the settlement. Many places that were sites of ritual activity during the Iron Age continued to play special roles during the Roman Period. Such sites provide critical evidence for understanding continuities and changes in religious practice from the prehistoric Iron Age into Roman times. The ritual complex at Ribemont in northern France became an important temple center after the Roman conquest, and a large stone and cement structure was erected on top of the Iron Age site. At Empel in the Netherlands, a ritual site at which ornaments and coins were deposited during the Late Iron Age became – in the Roman Period – the site of a

stone-built temple dedicated to the god HerculesMagusanas – a deity with characteristically both an indigenous and a Roman name. In southern England, Hayling Island was the site of an enclosure at which quantities of metalwork, including weapons, jewelry, and coins, were deposited during the prehistoric Iron Age. During Roman times, a stone temple was constructed directly on top of the earlier structure. In Ireland, a number of large hilltops were sites of communal ritual activity from the third century BC onward. Excavated complexes at Knockaulin in the south and Navan Fort in the north yield remains of enormous timber circles that were apparently constructed for ritual performance. Around both sites are outer banks and inner ditches, a combination commonly associated with ritual rather than defensive purposes. Both sites show complex phases of building, using often very large timbers, with burning, and rebuilding, suggesting complex series of rituals practiced on these hilltops. Many of the visible structures at the great ritual complex of Tara near Dublin are believed to be of Iron Age date. Identity: Textual Sources and Uses of Style

In earlier traditions of research, the peoples of western and central Europe were considered ‘Celts’, those of northern and northeastern Europe, ‘Germans’. Now much research in both archaeology and history has challenged that model. The idea that Iron Age Europeans were Celts comes from sixth and fifth century BC Greek texts, which indicate that people called Keltoi inhabited lands in western Europe. Texts from later centuries refer to Keltoi migrating across the Alps into Italy and serving as mercenaries in armies in the eastern Mediterranean region. Roman writers used the term Galli (Gauls) to refer to peoples north of the Alps, and several writers tell us that the peoples whom the Greeks called Keltoi and those the Roman called Galli were the same. The name Germani (Germans) appears later; the earliest description of people called Germans that survives is that of Julius Caesar in his commentaries on his campaigns in Gaul. The main problem with these names Celts and Germans is that they come to us through the writings of other people (Greek and Roman authors) – we have no record of what the native Iron Age peoples called themselves. To judge by the regional variation in style of material culture, it is highly unlikely that all of the peoples whom the Greeks considered Keltoi would have thought of themselves as members of a group. The same applies to Germans, as described by Caesar and by later writers such as Tacitus. The new style of ornament known as La Te`ne, characterized by stylized floral patterns and human

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and animal heads, first appeared in the middle Rhineland region early in the fifth century BC. It contrasted markedly with the geometric patterns of squares, rectangules, circles, and triangles of the Early Iron Age. The first examples of this style are on objects in rich burials, such as gold neckrings, bracelets, and pendants, and on bronze fibulae, vessels, and scabbards. The appearance of this new style at about the same time that Greek writers mention Celts in western Europe led archaeologists to associate the style with the Celts, and it is often called Early Celtic art. Many investigators have linked the spread of the style, from the start of the fourth century BC on, with migrations of Celts southward into Italy, southeastward into Greece and Turkey, northeastward to Poland, and westward into Iberia. But as the archaeological database has increased in size, and as archaeologists have begun much more critical appraisals of traditional models of migration, new understandings of these processes are emerging. Ideas for the new style came ultimately from the Mediterranean world, but its expression north of the Alps does not represent any attempt to copy Greek and Etruscan patterns. Rather, it was a transformation of themes from Mediterranean objects into new decorative media in temperate Europe. The reasons behind the creation of this style are related to identity, but not the simple ‘Celtic’ identity of traditional interpretations. The earliest examples on the metalwork in the rich burials can be understood as signs created for newly emerged elites to distinguish themselves from the elites at the Early Iron Age centers to the south (see above). After a couple of generations, the new style was adopted by peoples in other parts of Europe, as, for example, represented in the cemetery at Iwanowice in Poland, but there is no need to connect this adoption with large-scale migration. The application of the La Te`ne style shows marked regional variations, not adherence to a common pattern that might indicate migration of a population. Nor is there archaeological evidence for substantial movements of populations, either out of some areas or into new ones. The spread of the La Te`ne style is best interpreted as the adoption of a fashion, taken up by peoples throughout much of Europe as an attractive novelty associated with special status. Initially in every region, the new style appeared on objects possessed by elites – fine jewelry, ornate weapons, and luxury vessels of bronze. It served as an identifying mark of elite status and thus was so eagerly adopted, first by groups competing for that status, later by others seeking to emulate them. The ancient writers never mentioned Celts in connection with Britain or Ireland. But the La Te`ne style appeared in Britain around the middle of the fifth

century BC, and a distinctive ‘insular’ La Te`ne style continued to develop throughout the rest of the Iron Age. La Te`ne ornament is first recognizable in Ireland on metal objects dating to the third century BC, many of which display a flamboyant local version of the style. Relations with Rome: Intensification of Interactions

From around the middle of the second century BC, and especially during the final century BC, numerous indications show that connections with the Roman world intensified. Ceramic amphoras attest to an expanding wine trade over much of the continent and in southern Britain. Roman bronze vessels associated with the consumption of wine appear in many graves, including ones at Welwyn Garden City in Britain, Hannogne in France, and Kelheim in Germany. Following Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in 51 BC, Roman bronzes, pottery, weapons, and other objects became ever more abundant in graves east of the Rhine, especially in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Poland. A new series of men’s graves containing weapons indicates a new value placed on military activity, as in cemeteries at Grossromstedt in Thuringia, Putensen in Lower Saxony, and Hedega˚rd in Denmark. Also east of the Rhine, new settlements were established around the middle of the final century BC, as at Feddersen Wierde and Flo¨geln in Lower Saxony, which became intensively involved in production of goods for trade to Roman military bases along the Rhine frontier. At Jakuszowice in southern Poland, substantial quantities of Roman coins, ornaments, and pottery reflect long-distance connections, perhaps based on trade in iron, between Late Iron Age communities and the Roman provinces. Recent excavations at battle sites from the time of the Roman conquests are producing new information about those confrontations between the Roman legions and the indigenous forces. At Alesia in France, excavation results are changing understanding of that critical battle in Caesar’s victory over the peoples of Gaul. Excavations at Do¨ttenbichl in southern Germany have revealed the first identified battle site associated with the conquest of southern Bavaria in 15 BC. At Kalkriese in northern Germany, the site of the defeat of three Roman legions under the leadership of the general Varus is yielding important evidence about a Roman catastrophe that played a major role in disuading Roman leaders from attempting further conquests eastward. Current Trends in Research

Past research tended to focus on imposing and highly visible sites, such as major hillforts in Britain, oppida on the continent, and large burial mounds all over

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Europe. Recently, research has taken new directions. Surface survey and excavation are examining typical Iron Age settlements, not just the major centers. As a result, we are coming to understand much more about how economic and social systems operated in the landscape and to situate the hillforts and the rich graves into broader contexts of social and political development. Studies of landscapes rather than individual sites are showing that a wider view is needed to understand the specific archaeological deposits. At Vix, for example, new investigations uncovered a rectangular enclosure 200 m from the rich grave that apparently served as a place for part of the funerary ritual associated with the burial. At the Glauberg near Frankfurt in Germany, aerial reconnaissance and excavation in the landscape around a mound revealed a complex series of landscape alterations associated with the burial, including a long ‘processional way’ and four life-size statues set up near the tumulus. New studies of DNA extracted from bones in Iron Age graves are contributing to understanding of family relationships among individuals buried in cemeteries. The results are likely to greatly enhance our ability to reconstruct social systems in this period. As this research progresses, we may be able to develop much better understanding both of community compositions and of patterns of migration in Iron Age Europe. See also: Europe: Neolithic; Europe, Northern and Western: Bronze Age; Medieval; Mesolithic Cultures; Europe, West: Historical Archaeology in Britain; Historical Archaeology in Ireland; Exchange Systems; Household Archaeology; Metals: Primary Production Studies of; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Social Inequality, Development of; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites; Weapons and Warfare.

Further Reading Bogucki PI and Crabtree PJ (eds.) (2004) Ancient Europe 8000 BC–AD 1000: Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World 2 vols. New York: Thompson/Gale. Green MJ (ed.) (1995) The Celtic World. London: Routledge. Hill JD (1995) The Iron Age in Britain and Ireland (c. 800 BC–AD 100). Journal of World Prehistory 9: 47–98. Jrgensen L, Storgaard B, and Thomsen LG (eds.) (2003) The Spoils of Victory: The North in the Shadow of the Roman Empire. Copenhagen: National Museum. Megaw R and Megaw V (1989) Celtic Art. London: Thames and Hudson. Moscati S, Frey O-H, Kruta V, et al. (eds.) (1991) The Celts. New York: Rizzoli. Todd M (1992) The Early Germans. Oxford: Blackwell. Wells PS (1999) The Barbarians Speak: How the Conquered Peoples Shaped Roman Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wells PS (2001) Beyond Celts, Germans, and Scythians: Archaeology and Identity in Iron Age Europe. London: Duckworth.

Medieval Tadhg O’Keeffe, UCD Dublin, Dublin, Republic of Ireland 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary assarting Reclaiming; taking into cultivation land that was previously unavailable. bastides Regularly planned fortified towns, such as the late thirteenth-century English towns in Gascony, southwest France. Gothic Style of architecture in Europe between c.AD 1150 and 1500; it is characterized by the pointed arch. gru¨benhauser Small, semi-subterranean, usually single-roomed huts, typical of Germanic culture in the fifth and sixth centuries. manors Large agricultural estates with various ranks of tenant, all under the control of a local lord. motte-and-bailey The mound (motte) and enclosure (bailey) components of a castle which formerly had timber buildings. Romanesque Style of architecture in Europe between c. AD 1050 and 1150; it is characterized by the Roman-style round arch. wics Early medieval coastal trade depots, often with some manufacturing; they date between the late seventh and ninth centuries.

Introduction Europe is generally regarded as having five welldefined major historic regions: the north, the west, the east, the south (the Mediterranean), and the center or middle. Northern Europe is comprised of the Low Countries, Germany, Poland, Finland, the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia), and Scandinavia. It is, in a sense, the northern equivalent of the Mediterranean, in that these lands encircle the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Even though the region was never a single political entity, the histories of these lands, individually and collectively, revolve around that very large and continuous body of water. Western Europe is comprised mainly of Iberia, France, and the major off-shore islands of Britain and Ireland. Here too a sea – in this case the Atlantic Ocean – provided a natural geographic unity. Like northern Europe, this region was never politically unified either; on the contrary, its medieval and early modern history is marked by regional conflicts in which England usually stood alone. Where Europe’s northern seas imparted some degree of cultural unity to their adjoining landmasses, there has been much less cultural unity along the Atlantic seaboard. In this overview we will look at two general issues – chronology and historiography/methodology – before recounting the development of medieval northern and western Europe as revealed by archaeological evidence.

Medieval 1241 Chronology

The phrases ‘medieval’ and ‘middle ages’ are relatively modern inventions. A ‘middle age’ was first identified by the Italian scholar Flavio Biondo in the early fifteenth century, and was used with reference to the period of European history that had ended just before the Italian Renaissance. The associated adjective ‘medieval’ is of more recent vintage, having been coined in the eighteenth century. When did the medieval period begin and end? More precisely, given that the terminology is a post facto invention, what are the dates that historians and archaeologists regard as marking the start and end of the period? The answer varies from one part of Europe to another, as each European country has its own historical trajectory, but there is general consensus that the period lasted for about 1000 years across most of the continent and was framed by the early fifth century AD at one end and by the early sixteenth century AD at the other. The Birth of the Middle Ages

Most scholars maintain that the collapse of the western Roman empire at the start of the fifth century was the event that began the period; a cross-disciplinary European Science Foundation project in the 1990s entitled The Transformation of the Roman World and the Emergence of Early Medieval Europe reflected this view. That collapse was a complex process that began in the third century, but its most dramatic moments came in the early 400s as Germanic peoples – ‘barbarians’, as the Romans described them unflatteringly – spilled over the empire’s boundaries, sometimes taking land by force. As recently as 30 years ago it was fashionable in academic circles to describe that immediate post-Roman period in the western half of Europe as ‘the Dark Age(s)’. This terminology reflected the view that the Germanic peoples, who were non-Christian and illiterate, extinguished the bright light of the empire, casting Europe into darkness. Today, of course, the cultural sophistication of the Germanic populations is universally appreciated on its own terms, and they are celebrated as medieval Europe’s founding population. The abandonment of the term Dark Age reflects our understanding of their critical role in the shaping of Europe over the following millennium (see Europe, Northern and Western: Iron Age; Europe, South: Rome). It should be noted that the fifth century is less appropriate as the starting date for the medieval period in those areas around the edges of northwestern Europe that had not been under Roman control. Scandinavia, for example, was prehistoric in the fifth century. Indeed, judging by an authoritative

encyclopedia of Scandinavia’s medieval history and archaeology, scholars in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden regard the medieval period as beginning in, respectively, the late 800s, the late 900s, and the mid-1000s. Judging by this authority, Scandinavian scholars do not describe the period in which the region’s Viking inhabitants expanded overseas – the late eighth and ninth centuries – as part of the ‘middle ages’, even though the Viking raids and settlements overseas are described as part of medieval history elsewhere. The End of the Middle Ages

Turning to the other end of the chronological scale, the period between 1500 and 1550 is favored by historians as the end phase of the ‘middle ages’ in both the northern and western regions of Europe. This chronology is also generally accepted by archaeologists, even though many medieval cultural practices are known to have continued on. There are, briefly, four reasons why the early sixteenth century has such significance: Italian Renaissance thinking spread northwards and westwards (a phenomenon of particular interest in France), Protestantism gripped Northern Europe, the New World was discovered, and finally, feudalism, which was the dominant mode of social organization in the ‘middle ages’, gave way to capitalism. Although each of these is, strictly speaking, an historical phenomenon, each impacted on the material conditions of life and so each is manifest in the archaeological record.

Historiography and Methodology As a period for which there is a good documentary record, most of our knowledge of the European ‘middle ages’ comes from the discipline of history. Both the idea of history (historia) and the privileging of the discipline of history within the western intellectual tradition are reflected in the fact that we speak of the ancient past as pre-history. It is hardly surprising, then, that the discipline of medieval archaeology – the specifically archaeological study of the historical period of the ‘middle ages’ – was, with historical archaeology, among the last major branches of archaeology to develop in Europe. Yes, archaeologists had been studying medieval, especially earlier medieval, remains since at least the early 1900s, but the work was sporadic and was conducted with little sense of the intrinsic or self-referential value of archaeological investigation. It was the foundation of the London-based Society for Medieval Archaeology in 1957, and the launch of its journal, Medieval Archaeology, that really marked the beginning of the discipline’s maturation. That journal remains the

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best-known and most widely read international journal in the field; although British-based, it has always accepted papers from other parts of Europe, reflecting the importance of pan-European thinking in the understanding of the medieval archaeological record. Other periodicals dealing with the same post-Roman, pre-Reformation period, such as Arche´ologie Me´die´vale from France (first issued in 1970), Archeologia Medievale from Italy (first issued in 1974), and Boletı´n de Arqueologı´a Medieval from Spain (first issued in 1987), have significantly smaller circulations, in part for reasons of language, and are generally less influential as a result. For much of its short history, the discipline of medieval archaeology has been strongly empiricist in approach. Although practitioners do not slavishly follow the interpretations suggested to them by historical sources, there has long been a tendency among them to present normative explanations of the material as historical narratives, thereby reinforcing the argument that the purpose of medieval archaeological research is to buttress our historical knowledge of the ‘middle ages’. Indeed, the reviews presented ahead of the archaeologies of the earlier and later medieval periods follow this pattern. It must be said that a measure of archaeology’s success in making the material evidence ‘talk’ has been the increasing tendency among medieval historians to make use of archaeological findings in their own work. Medieval archaeology was very much in its infancy when new archaeology emerged in the late 1960s. Its response to that theoretical–methodological shift was implicitly positive, though not immediately so. However uncomfortable medieval archaeologists were with new archaeology’s concern with anthropological thinking, its qualitative and model-building aspects had a clear use and were embraced accordingly, albeit with one eye still trained on the historical record. The more recent theoretically informed interests and approaches in archaeology – often described under the umbrella term of postprocessualism since the mid-1980s – have been accepted less enthusiastically. In 1994, a decade after postprocessualism first emerged in prehistoric archaeology, an exciting agenda for a postprocessual medieval archaeology was set out by David Austin, but its success has been somewhat limited. In Britain, where archaeological theory is especially popular, many new studies adopt explicitly theoretical perspectives, but it is noteworthy that most of the published papers in the journal Medieval Archaeology testify to the continued strength of empiricism. No general medieval archaeological survey of Europe, or indeed of any large-scale region of Europe, has ever been published: studies of the medieval

archaeology of many of the constituent countries (as defined in modern rather than medieval times) are available, but no inter-regional or international synthesis has ever been fashioned from them. The one book that does attempt a survey of all of medieval Europe – The Encyclopedia of Medieval Archaeology (Crabtree (ed.) 2001) – certainly succeeds in giving a snapshot of the medieval continent, and indeed the regions of interest to us here feature very prominently, but it is in a format that, almost by its nature, fails to communicate the dynamics or outcomes of crosscontinental connections and so is of relatively limited synthetic value. The problems of producing a synthesis are great. A number stand out. There is differential knowledge of different places and regions, as well as differential access to whatever data is available. For example, the significantly heavier concentration on England over other countries (notably Spain, with its medieval Islamic culture) in the Encyclopedia of Medieval Archaeology reflects the extent to which medieval England is better understood archaeologically than almost anywhere else of comparable scale in Europe; it also reflects the accessibility, thanks to language, of scholarly research material from there. The danger, of course, is that a pan-European synthesis will be skewed toward places like England, and that the complexity of cultural dynamics in medieval Europe as manifest in the archaeological record will be misrepresented as a result. There is also differential development of both interpretative strategy and interpretation. Again, thinking of England (and of Britain more widely), normative explanations that were acceptable a generation ago have come under increased scrutiny, thanks to the theoretical turn. For example, English scholars once had no difficulty believing that the AngloSaxons did indeed migrate to England in huge numbers at the dawn of the ‘middle ages’, causing an almost immediate cultural transformation, but alternative mechanisms of change involving much smaller numbers of migrants are now being explored. Comparable mechanisms are not being explored in every other part of Europe to explain comparable, migration-related, changes at the dawn of the ‘middle ages’, even though there may be scope for them. Inevitably, then, there is a lack of synchronicity in this case between interpretations of the same phenomenon in different parts of Europe. This illuminates the difficulty of creating a balanced pan-European overview. Finally, there are problems of terminology, both of the ‘middle ages’ and of modern scholarship. Medieval terms had different meanings at different periods, and different terms were used to describe the same basic phenomena in different places: this point is

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wonderfully illustrated by a trilingual document from twelfth-century Zealand in which the concept of ‘castle’ is conveyed by the term motte in French, munitio in Latin, and werf in the local or vernacular language. Also, modern terms coined in one part of Europe might not have clear equivalents in other parts, thereby making cross-cultural connections a little more difficult to establish: for example, the letter-system used by British scholars to describe the ceramics imported in post-Roman times from the Mediterranean and Gaul (B-ware, E-ware) is not used in the lands in which those ceramics were actually produced.

The Earlier Medieval Period: AD 500–1000 The medieval period is generally divided into three phases – Early, Central, or High, and Late – but there is little consensus on their date ranges. For the purpose of this review of northern and western Europe, we will simply divide the period into two: an earlier phase to AD 1000 and a later phase to AD 1500. The Age of Migrations

The archaeology of that earlier period can really only be understood by reference to the Roman period that preceded it. The fifth century was unquestionably a century of rupture, of broken continuity. The archaeological evidence for this is plentiful and diverse: excavations in old Roman towns, for example, often reveal actual gaps in occupation around the fifth century, while gold coinage, previously the staple of the empire, was no longer produced or circulated in the fifth century (and when it was minted again in the sixth century, it owed more stylistically to contemporary Byzantine coinage than to older Roman coinage, thereby underscoring the discontinuity). But there was also considerable continuity. Continuity is entirely to be expected given that many Germanic people lived with the imperial boundaries prior to AD 400, while Romanized populations continued to live within those former boundaries after the collapse. The archaeological evidence for continuity is, again, very diverse and plentiful. At a local level, for example, Roman-type wheel-turned pottery continued to be made in the Rhine–Meuse valley, even though this was under the control of Germanic people whose pottery vessels were handmade. Continuities are also manifest at a more international level. Although it has often been assumed that one consequence of the collapse of the empire was the loss to northern and western Europeans of the far-flung trade partners they had acquired in Roman times, archaeologists have been able to show how Roman-origin long-distance trade routes remained

open and in operation. We know, for example, that raw glass from the former Roman provinces of Egypt and Palestine was still being exported to the western Mediterranean and northwestern Europe during the post-Roman (i.e., early medieval) period, and that it was not until the late eighth century that western Europeans used glass that was manufactured in western Europe. One hugely important commodity that was moved along these long-distance routes is known historically but is almost invisible in the archaeological: the slave. It is reasonable to imagine that the vessels that carried wine, fur, olives, hides, and other commodities along the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and North Sea shipping lanes were also transporting slaves. The shift from Roman rule to Germanic rule in the fifth century had social and economic implications everywhere, not least in northern and western Europe. In terms of archaeology, towns and villas had been central to territorial organization and to patterns of production and consumption under the Romans. Under Germanic rulers, by contrast, unenclosed, irregular, agglomerations of houses seem to have been the dominant settlements, and in many areas they were associated with a greater amount of pastoral farming than had been the case under the Romans. These agglomerations, generally comprised of timber-built houses and sunken-floor buildings (gru¨benhauser), had neither the spatial regularity nor the permanency of towns or villages. Indeed, most of them were abandoned within a few centuries of their creation, to be replaced toward the end of the millennium by the towns and villages that are still occupied in the landscapes of modern northwestern Europe. These early settlements do testify, however, to societies that were well above subsistence level, if also perhaps below the average comfort levels of their Roman predecessors. Wics and Christianity

Archaeological evidence of a rebound towards full productive exploitation of economic resources on a par with that of the Romans is available from the later seventh century. The archaeological evidence from the newly established wics (specialized coastal settlements for trade and even some manufacturing, the largest examples of which were Ipswich, Southampton, London, Quentovic, Dorstad, and Birka) testifies to intense, localized, economic and commercial activity in seventh- and eighth-century northwestern Europe; indeed, when the Vikings took to the region’s seas a little later (in the late 700s and early 800s), they would have been very familiar with the traffic in

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valuable goods over the previous century and a half, and probably also with its destinations. The trade activity around the wics was not only local, however: Michael McCormick, in a groundbreaking study that combines history and archaeology, has demonstrated how, contra earlier views, northern and western Europe also continued to be linked to the Mediterranean through the relic-trade, and the movements of both coinage and slaves. To illustrate the importance of the wics in the international network of relations, one need only scrutinize the contents of the grave at Sutton Hoo of the East Anglian king Raedwald (died 624–5): the assorted overseas material testifies to contacts between eastern England and the Celtic West, Francia, Scandinavia, and the east Mediterranean, and the nearby wic of Ipswich was probably the point of entry. The wics are also important because they were to some degree planned settlements; in other words, they did not evolve but were brand new settlements laid out according to some predetermined spatial plan, complete with boundary markers and designated use-zones. We must imagine that people hitherto living in the countryside relocated by choice, or more likely were relocated with no choice, to these new settlements, under the watchful eyes of local kings. Given that the wics were places of specialized, nonagricultural activity, we must imagine also that the same local kings ensured that contemporary rural farmland kept them supplied with food. It is significant in this context that there is increasing archaeological evidence from different parts of northwestern Europe, particularly England, for nucleated rural settlements of the seventh century being laid out anew with some degree of spatial regularity. The archaeological evidence suggests, then, a controlled reorganization of the landscape with a view to increased productivity. The seventh century was also a period of sustained conversion (or, more accurately, reconversion) of the northern half of Europe to Christianity. The Germanic migrants of the fifth century had been pagan. Under their polity Christianity disappears from our record across much of northern and western Europe, only to reappear two centuries later as the dominant religion once again. The most famous exception to the fifth-century shift from Christian to pagan is Ireland, where the shift was the other way around. The hitherto pagan Irish were first subjected to Christian missionary activity in the fifth century; ironically, that activity came mainly from Christian Roman Britain, just as the Romans were ceding control to the new pagan Anglo-Saxon immigrants. An extraordinarily rich insular Christian tradition of art,

literature, and learning developed in Ireland thereafter, sustained by the patronage of local kings and by the wealth generated by its proto-urban monasteries. Although their influence has probably been exaggerated, Irish missionaries played an important role in the reintroduction of Christianity to parts of Europe in the late sixth and seventh centuries. An enduring paradox of early medieval Christianity in Ireland is that its great works of art – free-standing, sculpture-covered, monumental stone crosses (High Crosses), illuminated gospel books (such as the Book of Kells), and rich altar plate (such as the Ardagh Chalice) – were produced to serve a Church which invested very little in built fabric: contemporary Irish churches were small, ill-lit buildings, capable at best of holding no more than several dozen people at a time. Viking raids in the late eighth and early ninth centuries certainly disrupted the pattern of production at church sites in Ireland, but their impact was not fatal. In fact, the Viking contribution to medieval Irish civilization was ultimately very positive: communities of Vikings settled permanently in coastal Ireland in the early tenth century, establishing new towns (such as Dublin), and later converting to Christianity and assimilating thoroughly with the native population. Carolingian and Later Europe

The first sustained period of economic prosperity in post-Roman northwestern continental Europe came a little later in the 800s, when much of the region was under the rule of Charlemagne and his successor Carolingian emperors. Although he was a Frank, and therefore a descendent of one of the fifth-century Germanic migrant groups, Charlemagne fashioned himself as a Roman emperor and had himself crowned as one on Christmas Day AD 800. Thus, the connection with the Roman world was still alive four centuries after the fall of Rome itself. Although the Carolingians only held power over part of the larger geographical area of northwestern Europe, in many respects they represent the continent’s principal bridge between antiquity and the peak centuries of the ‘middle ages’. Their landlords, farmers, industrialists, and builders shaped the future. On their great agricultural estates or manors, for example, they used heavy plows, crop rotation, and watermill-aided grain processing, thus setting in train the system of farming that would later feed the continent when population figures soared in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They replaced gold with silver as the material for coinage, and silver remained the currency standard until the twelfth century (when its debasement by copper provoked a return to gold). Carolingian builders also took

Medieval 1245

the old Roman basilical form of church and remodeled it in a way that formed the basis of later, post1000 AD Romanesque architecture, as we will see below. By the close of the first millennium AD, and thanks in no small measure to the innovations of the Carolingian era, the form of sociopolitical organization that we describe as feudalism had developed. Feudalism has long been a very contentious concept among historians of medieval Europe, with some arguing that it is a misleading concept and others defending its general value but arguing that its nature differed from one part of Europe to another. In its most basic form a feudal society is hierarchical, obligationbased, and militarized, with different grades of peasants obliged to provide labor services to those above them on the social pyramid, and the lords obliged to provide land and military protection to those below them in status. Among archaeologists, medieval feudalism is generally regarded as represented by private castles on the one hand and large agricultural estates with communal farming and planned market villages on the other. Castle building by local lords had certainly begun by the tenth century, especially in the former Carolingian territories in France: at Doue´-la-Fontaine in Anjou, for example, a castle-hall dating from the tenth century was discovered in excavation beneath an eleventh-century castle mound. The first fully planned villages are more difficult to date, and it is difficult to generalize from one part of northwestern Europe to another, but there is firm evidence now that the process began in the ninth and tenth centuries, if not as far back as the seventh (as we noted above). The role of the Church in village formation from the tenth century is certainly critical, since churchyard burial became the norm for local communities in the north and west in that very century.

The Later Medieval Period: AD 1000–1500 The millennium year – AD 1000 – was a significant one in European cultural history. There was a real fear in many circles that the anniversary of Christ’s death would be marked by the fulfillment of the prophecies in the Book of Revelations. The year passed without incident, and medieval churchmen across Europe marked the deliverance of the world from apocalyptic destruction by building churches at an astonishing rate. The great church building, Romanesque and Gothic, represents only one highprofile element in the archaeological canvas of later medieval Europe, as we will see, but its prominence in our thinking about the period – a period for which George Duby coined the phrase ‘The Age of the

Cathedrals’ (1981) – reflects the penetration by Christianity of all aspects of later medieval life in northern and western Europe. Having said that, there is a need, as yet generally unfulfilled at the level of synthesis, to factor into the medieval archaeology of Europe the impact of Islam: a kiln of Islamic tradition among the thirteenth-century workshops of Sainte-Barbe in Marseille, for example, is but one indicator among many of the movements of craftsmen and craft-knowledge from the Arab world to the Christian, while Kufic inscriptions on the walls of twelfth-century southern French churches, such as the cathedral in Le Puy, suggest more subtle interactions. Farm, Industry, Market

In many cultural pursuits the patterns established before AD 1000 simply continued thereafter. But steady population increase prior to the fourteenth century had a growing impact on all of them. That impact is perhaps most evident archaeologically in the landscapes of rural farming communities on the one hand, and of urban mercantile communities on the other. The output requirements of rural communal agriculture in this period of enlarging population led to a massive intensification of arable farming in environments suited to cereal growing. Technology made that intensification possible within the manorial economy. The heavy plow, mounted on wheels and pulled by a team of (usually eight) draft animals, either horses or oxen, had been known in Roman and earlier medieval times, and was universal by the thirteenth century. The large rural workforce had a sufficient supply of iron-made tools (plows, harrows, and so on) to open up to cultivation land that had hitherto been under forest. The taking in of new land – ‘assarting’ in English – is most dramatically represented by the forest villages of Germany with their long, sinuous, fields snaking across land that had been newly cleared. Turning to urbanism, the later medieval physical expansion of old towns of Roman origin was exceeded by the foundation of brand new towns, complete with planned marketplaces, regularly arranged streets with properties of equal width along them, and town walls. New town foundation was an economic necessity everywhere in Europe, and was made possible by the agricultural endeavors in the countryside. As defensible places, new towns had roles in regional defense, as, for example, the bastides established by the English in southwestern France in the thirteenth century. Finally, new town foundation was also an agent of colonization in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries: because town occupancy was

1246 Medieval

attractive to medieval rural dwellers, the English founded new towns in Ireland in order to entice settlers to their new colony there, and the Germans did exactly the same in the Slavic lands on the other side of Europe. One definition of ‘town’ is that it is a place where the majority of inhabitants are not engaged primarily in agricultural production but are involved in the so-called ‘secondary’ and ‘tertiary’ industries of manufacturing, commerce, and so on. Many medieval industries, both before and after AD 1000, were rural rather than urban, however. Availability of raw material was one factor in their location. Extractive industries were rural by their nature. Unless raw material, once obtained, could be easily transported to urban places, manufacturing industries tended to stay in the countryside, often with settlements of specialized workers developing around them, as in the pottery-producing Saintonge area of western France, for example. In any case, most industries required copious amounts of firewood, and industrial operations intended to serve regional markets required it in vast amounts. Not only was the wood scarce in already built-up areas, but kilns and furnaces were fire hazards. The availability of water for power and transport was also influential in determining industry location. Urban places generally had water, but industry often polluted it, so it is no coincidence that we find certain urban (or, more correctly sub-urban) industries like tanning at places where water flows away from settlements. Pottery Of all the medieval industries, the ceramic industry is probably the best known. It is certainly the industry that leaves the strongest imprint in the archaeological record. Northern and western Europe were pottery-making and pottery-using right through the ‘middle ages’ (although there were aceramic pockets, such as early medieval Ireland), and each region had its own pottery-making traditions that evolved through time. Some sites or places of production had histories of activity over a millennium: Mayen in the German Eifel, for example, was one of many places where there was continuous pottery production from Roman to later medieval times. Because pottery has almost no recycling value, broken sherds enter the archaeological record as unmodified cultural indicators. By-sight analysis often allows identifications of places of origin: for example, thirteenth-century pots from Saintonge, mentioned above, can be easily identified in archaeological levels in Britain and Ireland by their distinctive shapes and by their white or buff color (the result of being made with the local,

low-iron, fine clay). Scientific analysis of ceramic material – particularly Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis, or INAA – allows actual production places to be identified. Most medieval pottery is simple earthenware: it is clay pottery, made by hand or wheel. Wheel-turned earthenware was present in the Roman world but its manufacture and use was discontinuous in large parts of Europe. By the start of the later medieval period (as defined here) it was common again, and from the twelfth century it was everywhere. The clay for earthenware was literally dug out of the ground, made pliable, had materials (temper) added to it for stabilization in the kiln, and was then fired slowly. The heat of the firing determined hardness and imperviousness. Although generalization is dangerous given the sheer quantity and diversity of ceramic material found in northwestern Europe, later medieval ceramics were invariably glazed. Glaze is a lead-based transparent vitreous film on the surface of pottery, and its purpose is both decorative and functional: the colors are attractive and it largely prevents porosity. Glaze was applied in different ways before firing: sometimes vessels were completely immersed in it, and at other times it was applied by brush or was dripped over the inverted vessels as they were stacked in readiness for firing. Just as the color of the ceramic was determined by the type of clay used, the color of the glaze was determined by added oxides: iron oxides made them yellow or red, copper made them green, cobalt blue, and antimony yellow. Prestige vessels – tableware – were glazed externally, but cooking wares were sometimes only glazed on the inside to increase their imperviousness. On the whole, the use of ceramic cooking vessels actually declined around the fourteenth century as more efficient and larger capacity metal vessels (such as cauldrons) came into use. By contrast, the range of serving/ consuming vessels increased, so that by the end of the ‘middle ages’, there were many ceramic ‘factories’ producing high-quality plates and dishes. It was only after the end of the ‘middle ages’ – the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – that ‘slipware’ and porcelain (or ‘china’) was made in northwestern Europe. The Hanseatic League The archaeology and socioeconomic history of late medieval northern Europe is dominated by the Hanseatic League, a group of towns around the North Sea and the Baltic Sea which formed a regional commercial and manufacturing cooperative from the middle of the thirteenth century to the end of the fifteenth. Hanse means fellowship, and it was applied in this context to allude to mercantile guilds. The League towns were distributed between the

Medieval 1247

Netherlands in the west and Estonia in the northeast, and were mainly port towns, even if their access to the sea was by navigable river. There were also communities of Hansa merchants in port cities outside this area (such as London). The development of the League and its control over regional commerce was greatly aided by the development of a new type of large capacity seafaring vessel, the cog. Lu¨beck was the main Hansa town. A new town founded in 1158, it achieved regional prominence in the 1220s and 1230s when its laws – its town constitution, in other words – were adopted by other towns within the region, notably Hamburg. The center of Lu¨beck quickly became a mercantile enclave, with a market area, specialized shops and craft areas, a town hall, merchant houses, warehouses, and a Kaufmannskirche or merchants’ church, designed as much for mercantile business as for worship. In its layout and architecture, Lu¨beck can be regarded as a typical Hansa town. No artifact is more associated with the Hansa confederation than the stoneware vessel. Stoneware is earthenware that is fired at such great heat (1200
C and upward) that it is impervious to water. Not all clays lend themselves to this: the most suitable clays were in Saxony and the Rhineland, which is where the type originated. Stoneware was distributed widely across Europe, even to the Mediterranean, thanks to the influence of the Hanseatic League. Glaze, usually made of salt, was applied towards the end of the firing process so that the ceramic body and the glaze fused as one. Stoneware is the Hansa ceramic par excellence. Castles

Castle-building began before AD 1000, as we have noted, but survivals of that period are quite rare. The great phase of castle-construction begins in the second half of the eleventh century and it continues uninterrupted to at least the end of the ‘middle ages’. Indeed, newly built high-status private buildings were still being described as castles in the 1700s across much of northern Europe. The history of the castle as a monument-type has long been discussed in terms of a tension between defensibility and domesticity. Castles are traditionally understood by scholars to have been primarily military structures, but they are also understood to have been residences, equipped for comfortable living by lords and their inner households. Castle-scholars – castellologists – across both northern and western Europe have generally argued that prior to the fourteenth century or thereabouts, castles were more military than domestic, reflecting the fact that power was maintained within feudal society by military force or

persuasion. They have also argued that, notwithstanding the widespread use of gunpowder, changes in the social and political environments in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries shifted the emphasis in castle design toward greater domestic comfort and a higher level of status display. In this way of thinking, the late thirteenth century is identified as the period when castle building was at its peak. Thus, the castles of Edward I in north Wales – Caernarvon, Harlech, Conway, and the unfinished Beaumaris – are regarded in many circles as the greatest of all European medieval castles because they offered high levels of comfort (for their royal patron and his court) within near-impregnable architectural designs. Recent years have seen shifts in this thinking among some archaeologists. The overtly military interpretation of pre-1300 and later castles has been questioned, and other aspects – their symbolism, the rituals of domestic life within them – have come into focus instead. Much of the groundbreaking work in this regard has come from Britain, where, for example, archaeologists now regard the watery landscapes that surround castles not as defensive barriers but as early attempts at aesthetic landscape planning of a type that is more frequently associated with the Renaissance. Archaeological studies of stone castles have concentrated on fabric; excavation can yield lost walls but the upstanding walls tell us the most. The one type of medieval castle for which excavation is singularly well suited is the timber-and-earth castle, a type that is pan-European in distribution and usually dates from the eleventh or twelfth century. There are different types of timber-and-earth castles, or ‘timber castle’ as some describe it. The best-known type is the motte or motte-castle; the motte-and-bailey castle is a subcategory of this. The motte-castle’s main feature is a tall earthen mound, steep-sided and flattopped in profile. The timber building or buildings stood on this mound, but needless to say these do not survive and their plans are retrievable only by excavation. The word motte itself, sometimes rendered as mota or motta, originally signified a small block of land, as in the ninth century in north Italy, but by the middle of the twelfth century it was mainly being used to describe the mounded component of a castle, whether that mound was a natural feature or was manmade. The term bailey, which refers to the courtyard area beside a motte or outside a central citadel within a castle complex, is regarded as the modern recension of ballium in Latin, and baile in the English language of the Norman period. The consistency with which mottes were built by medieval societies of the eleventh and twelfth

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centuries – from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, and from west of the Shannon in Ireland to east of the Elbe in central Europe – is quite extraordinary. The motte is almost as ubiquitous as Romanesque architecture in the Europe of the later 1000s and 1100s. The tried-and-trusted practical value of the castle mound as a high and well-drained vantage point may have been behind its great popularity, and it might also have acquired some sort of iconic status as part of the visual apparatus of feudal lordship. Moreover, the act of building a motte – of stripping land, moving soil, imitating a natural hill – may have been imbued with as much symbolic significance as the finished product, since it was the actual practical demonstration of a lord’s control over natural and human resources. Motte origins across this great geographic sweep are frustratingly fugitive. The documentary record is not explicit enough to help us discover when, where, or why the motte first appeared, and too few sites have been excavated. It has been argued that mottes first appeared in the tenth century but we only really know them from the eleventh. It is possible that the motte was the end result of a process of morphological development from a simpler form of timber-andearth monument, driven perhaps by a need for greater defense in increasingly restless times. To support this we could cite the evidence from the German site known as Der Husterknupp where there was a gradual heightening of an earthwork between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries until it eventually looked like a motte. On the other hand, it could be equally argued that the motte had actually been ‘invented’ as a fully-fledged type by at least the start of the eleventh century. Monasteries and Cathedrals

Among the many achievements of the late eighth- and ninth-century Carolingians, the one which stands out most boldly in the archaeological record may be the architectural. The first great architectural style of the later medieval period, the Romanesque (c.1050–1150), developed in part out of Carolingian architecture; at very least, the Carolingians showed how ancient Roman architectural forms could be reshaped, and in doing so they provided a blueprint for post-AD 1000 builders. The place of origin of the round-arched style that we know as Romanesque is disputed, as indeed is the very idea that Romanesque is a single style to begin with. What is clear, though, is that by AD 1100 hundreds of new ecclesiastical buildings had been erected in Spain, northern Italy, France, Germany, and England, all of them revealing an obvious ancestral debt to Roman buildings of eight centuries earlier.

Included in these were cathedrals, parish churches and, especially, monasteries. The greatest of all monasteries of the period was Cluny in Burgundy. This was founded in 910 as a Benedictine monastery. During the tenth century its brethren adapted their Benedictine regulations to their own needs and the monastery suddenly became the center of a new monastic movement: the Cluniac. Their monastery was simply vast. Twice they had to replace their church with a bigger structure, and eventually (in 1130) they ended up with the largest church ever built in northwestern Europe. French revolutionaries demolished almost all of the church and monastery between 1800 and 1810, but the American scholar Kenneth Conant excavated large parts of the site in the mid-twentieth century and revealed its history. Conant’s work at Romanesque Cluny is among the most famous excavations of a medieval European site. Each of the countries of medieval northern and western Europe had its own particular national tradition of Romanesque architecture, and there were also regional traditions within those countries. The funding for this explosion of new architecture came from different sources. Local royal patronage and international pilgrim traffic account for some of it. These building projects would not have been possible if contemporary economies had not also been operating so successfully. In the second quarter of the twelfth century, church builders in the region around Paris developed a new architecture: the pointed-arch style known as Gothic. St Denis, the royal abbey church of France, was the first building in which it was used. Over the course of the following century the Paris Basin, with Chartres, Notre-Dame-de-Paris, Bourges, Beauvais, and others, became a great canvas for the display of Gothic architecture. That this same region was exceptionally rich agriculturally is no coincidence. Gothic spread outwards from northeastern France and by the mid-thirteenth century it was the established style almost everywhere for new ecclesiastical buildings. As with Romanesque before it, there were national regional traditions of Gothic. In fact, ethnic and political identities – English, French, German – were articulated more clearly through Gothic architecture in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries than had been the case with Romanesque. Gothic’s debt to the Roman past was much less obvious than Romanesque’s. It was a new creation of the ‘middle ages’. Were one looking for a symbol of the end of the ‘middle ages’ around the start of the sixteenth century, one could choose the replacement of Gothic, the quintessential medieval style, with the neo-Classical style of the Renaissance.

Mesolithic Cultures 1249 See also: Europe, Northern and Western: Iron Age; Europe, South: Medieval and Post-Medieval; Europe, South: Rome; Europe, West: Historical Archaeology in Britain; Historical Archaeology in Ireland; Exchange Systems.

Further Reading Austin D (1990) The ‘proper study’ of medieval archaeology. In: Austin D and Alcock L (eds.) From the Baltic to the Black Sea: Studies in Medieval Archaeology, pp. 9–42. New York: Routledge. Crabtree P (ed.) (2001) Medieval Archaeology: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland. Duby G (1981) The Age of the Cathedrals: Art and Society 980– 1420. London: Croom Helm. Fehring GP (1991) The Archaeology of Medieval Germany. An Introduction. New York: Routledge. Gaimster D (2005) A parallel history: The archaeology of Hanseatic urban culture in the Baltic c.1200–1600. World Archaeology 37: 408–423. Gerrard C (2004) Medieval Archaeology: Understanding Traditions and Contemporary Approaches. London: Routledge. Higham R and Barker P (1992) Timber Castles. London: Batsford. McCormick M (2001) Origins of the European Economy. Communications and Commerce AD300–900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pulsiano P (ed.) (1993) Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland.

Mesolithic maritime cultures, such as the Erteblle culture of southern Scandinavia. composite tool A tool formed by the incorporation of disparate elements, such as microliths set into a bone or antler shaft to form a projectile point or knife. forager A subsistence strategy based on the daily gathering of wild food resources (hunting, gathering, fishing) by small subsistence groups; foragers are highly mobile and move seasonally to take advantage of natural resources. microliths Small stone tools made on small blades or bladelets, often geometric in shape; they were set into grooved shafts of bone, antler, or wood to form a projectile point or knife and often served as the barbs or tips of an arrow. midden An accumulation of poorly stratified refuse (ash, charcoal, food debris, broken tools, and pottery) associated with human occupation. resource intensification The increased production and productivity of natural resources, involving the manipulation and regulation of wild plant and animal species and improved methods for harvesting or capturing them. seasonal round An annual pattern followed by hunter-gatherers, with regular seasonal stops at specific locations for the procurement and/or production of plant or animal foods. tranchet A lithic tool with a chisel-like edge produced by removing a single large flake perpendicular to the axis of the tool; the technique was used to manufacture axes and adzes in the Mesolithic. transverse point A trapezoidal lithic projectile point that lacks an acutely pointed tip; instead, a sharp, unretouched straight edge cut a wide wound channel in the prey, facilitating blood loss.

Introduction

Mesolithic Cultures Gail Larsen Peterkin, Houston, TX, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary adze A flat, heavy lithic artifact similar to an ax, but with the blade perpendicular to the haft and an asymmetrical cross-section; it was used to fell trees, trim boards, and hollow out dugout canoes. ax A flat, heavy lithic artifact with a working edge parallel to the haft; axes were used for woodworking and, later in prehistory, for warfare. blade A long, parallel-sided lithic flake, at least twice as long as it is wide, removed from a specially prepared blade core. bladelet Small blade; blades are at least twice as long as they are wide, but blade/bladelet metric dimensions vary culturally. collector A subsistence strategy based on the logistical collection of wild food resources in an area with seasonal and environmental variability; collectors send out specialized subgroups to procure natural resources for a larger sedentary group, often producing a surplus and encouraging storage. complex hunter-gatherer Sedentary hunter-gatherers (or logistical collectors) with intensive economies and an internal differentiation of labor, characterized by storage, trade, and ceremonial elaboration. The Native Americans of the Northwest Coast are a classic example of complex hunter-gatherers, although the term has also been used for sedentary Late

The term Mesolithic (Greek mesos ‘middle’ þ lithos ‘stone’) was first used in the late nineteenth century to fill the gap between Lubbock’s Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) and Neolithic (New Stone Age) stages, although it was only in the early twentieth century that it began to acquire a consistent meaning. As a European concept, the Mesolithic has been most relevant for the prehistory of Europe, especially northern and western Europe. The Mesolithic is a transitional chronological stage interposed between the Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers of the Pleistocene glacial epoch and the development of agricultural economies in the Neolithic. The Mesolithic begins with the end of the Pleistocene at 11 550 years ago (9600 BC) and represents the continuation of a foraging way of life into the postglacial Holocene geological epoch. This period was characterized by the retreat of glacial ice from northern Europe, an accompanying rise in sea level, the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna, a more stable and temperate climate, the growth of forested ecosystems, and the redistribution of plant and animals species. The cultures of the Mesolithic were thus able to expand into new frontiers, including the deglaciated regions of northern and western Europe.

1250 EUROPE, SOUTH/Mesolithic Cultures

The Mesolithic ends with the local adoption of agriculture, so the terminal date for the Mesolithic varies regionally. In northern and western Europe, agricultural economies were adopted several millennia after the beginnings of food production in southwest Asia. Hence, the Mesolithic is best known from northern and western Europe, where there was a considerable length of time for its development between the end of the Pleistocene and the adoption of agriculture.

Characteristics of the Mesolithic Because of its geographical breadth and chronological depth, the Mesolithic is noted for cultural diversity and the emergence of regional territories (Table 1). Nevertheless, the Mesolithic cultures of northern and western Europe shared a number of basic cultural attributes. Subsistence

The new and rapidly changing environments of postglacial Europe required an adaptive shift to take advantage of the expanding resource base. Mesolithic hunter-gatherers exploited a wide range of medium-sized ungulate species that flourished in the forests, including red deer, roe deer, elk, aurochs, boar, sheep, goat, and ibex. Small animals provided food and fur; birds, fish, shellfish, and marine mammals were heavily utilized at some sites. Coastal sites were often accompanied by large shell middens. For the first time, plant resources became an important part of the diet, including species such as hazelnuts, acorns, European water chestnuts, and nettles. Mesolithic hunter-gatherers managed the landscape. Chipped and ground stone axes were used to

cut down trees, and the controlled burning of swamps and wetlands provided open land where animals could congregate for easier hunting. In northern and western Europe, the dog was domesticated during the Mesolithic, perhaps to assist with hunting by tracking wounded prey or flushing birds and small game (see Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient). By the Late Mesolithic, a well-developed ‘collector’ economy based on resource intensification was in place throughout northern and western Europe. Plant and animal resources were extensively exploited based on their reliable and recurrent seasonal availability, producing a surplus that could be stored for later use. For this reason, several anthropologists and archaeologists have argued that some Late Mesolithic foragers should be considered complex hunter-gatherers. Technology

Mesolithic stone-tool technology was based on microliths – small stone tools, usually geometric in shape, that were manufactured on small blades or bladelets. They were set into special slots in bone or antler shafts, forming a composite tool (Figure 1). Composite tools were used both for hunting and procuring and processing plant materials. Organic tools were manufactured of bone, antler, or wood, and included a variety of harpoons, bird points, and fishing equipment such as fish hooks and leisters (Figure 2). Nets and seines were used to ensnare large numbers of smaller fish. Axes of chipped and ground stone were also used for woodworking (Figure 3). Wood was an important

Table 1 Well-known Mesolithic cultures of northern and western Europe (in italics), along with the Mesolithic sites mentioned in the article Region

Early Mesolithic

Middle Mesolithic

Late Mesolithic

British Isles France

Star Carr Azilian

Sauveterrian

Iberia

Azilian

Tardenoisian, Campignian Asturian, Mirian

Low Countries Germany Scandinavia

Pesse Ofnet Kongemose

Ellerbeck Ertebølle Bjørnsholm Ringkloster Skateholm Smakkerup Huse Strøby Egede

Beuronian Maglemose

2 cm (a)

(b)

Figure 1 (a) Reconstructed Mesolithic composite point with microlithic inserts; some composite points had as many as 11 microliths inserted into a prepared groove, (b) a triangular geometric microlith or triangle.

EUROPE, SOUTH/Mesolithic Cultures 1251

(a) 2 cm

2 cm

Figure 4 Mesolithic transverse arrow point.

(b)

(c)

Figure 2 Mesolithic organic tools: (a) bone fish hook, (b) Azilian antler harpoon, and (c) Mesolithic barbed antler point.

points were added to the tool kit later in the Mesolithic; they relied on a straight cutting edge to produce a wide wound channel (Figure 4). The discovery of a number of Mesolithic composite and transverse points lodged in the bones of game animals confirms their effectiveness as hunting weapons. Pottery and ground stone tools, considered hallmarks of the succeeding Neolithic stage, made their first appearance in the Late Mesolithic. Ground stone was used to make axes and adzes, as well as beads and figurines. Although never abundant, pottery was present in several Late Mesolithic cultures, including the Campignian of northern France and the Erteblle of southern Scandinavia. Mesolithic pottery was utilitarian and was used for cooking and food storage. Erteblle vessels had thick walls and little or no decoration, and the most common form had a pointed base. Small oval ceramic bowls may have been used as lamps. Settlement

2 cm Figure 3 Mesolithic flaked stone ax.

resource in the Mesolithic, and it was used to construct dwellings and to manufacture boats, canoes, and paddles. The earliest evidence of substantial carpentry dates from the Early Mesolithic of Star Carr, where a wooden platform or track was constructed over the boggy terrain between the site and the nearby lake; the earliest known dugout canoe comes from Pesse in the Netherlands. The first definitive evidence of the bow and arrow in Europe dates from the Mesolithic, and wood was used for Mesolithic self bows and arrow shafts. The bow and arrow was an important advancement in hunting technology. It was useful in a wide range of environmental settings, including postglacial forests, and it allowed hunters to kill from a greater distance and with more accurate targeting. Transverse arrow

The Mesolithic pattern of resource diversification and resource intensification encouraged population mobility, and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers moved regularly in an annual cycle called a seasonal round, taking advantage of plants and animals during their peak abundance. For this reason, it is necessary to examine regional settlement systems rather than individual sites. In southern Scandinavia, for example, large sites, such as Bjrnsholm and Smakkerup Huse, were located along the coast, with smaller satellite settlements, such as Ringkloster, located further inland for specialized activities such as hunting, trapping, or freshwater fishing. Larger coastal sites often had a longer duration of habitation. Many of these larger settlements were semisedentary or sedentary, and some, such as Erteblle and other Scandinavian sites, were probably occupied year round. Domestic structures were variable in form: round, semicircular, oval, or rectangular. Houses had sunken floors, wooden post construction, and a single central hearth, suggesting that they were occupied by a single family or small group.

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2 cm

that the health status of Mesolithic populations was good, with little evidence for disease or malnutrition. Numerous traumatic injuries, however, indicate that violence was a common cause of death, and mass graves, like the one at Strby Egede in Denmark, suggest intergroup conflict.

Figure 5 A typical Azilian painted pebble.

Mesolithic to Neolithic Transition

Figure 6 Artist’s rendering of the red deer antler headdress from Star Carr.

Art and Ritual

The Mesolithic was characterized by a decrease in artistic quality and quantity, especially in comparison to the preceding Upper Palaeolithic. Largely schematic rather than naturalistic, Mesolithic art was produced in a restricted range of colors – the reddish hues of ochre, complemented by black and white. Enigmatic objects such as Azilian painted pebbles may have been a form of artistic expression, although they could have been lunar notations or even game markers (Figure 5). Jewelry and items of personal adornment were present in the Mesolithic, including ground stone beads, pierced shells and teeth, and amber, and the presence of exotic items indicated regional exchange and interaction. At Star Carr, 21 red deer antler headdresses were probably worn for ceremonial rituals or used as hunting disguises (Figure 6). The existence of numerous Mesolithic cemeteries confirms the existence of burial rituals. Although most Mesolithic cemeteries were small, they provide a great deal of information about the culture and biology of Mesolithic populations. Burial techniques were not yet standardized. At the large cemeteries of Skateholm I and II in Sweden, both inhumation and cremation were practiced, and the unusual ‘skull nests’ of Ofnet, Bavaria, suggest either ritual veneration or large-scale violence. Many graves, including those of children, were colored with ochre and accompanied by grave goods, including tools, jewelry, shells, and animal and human figures, suggesting the emergence of a social status based on age and gender differences. Physical anthropologists have determined

The Neolithic arrived relatively late in northern and western Europe, beginning around 4000 BC. Neolithization, the processes that culminated in the customary production of food from domesticated sources, began prior to the actual arrival of Neolithic cultures, as Late Mesolithic foragers accommodated to the presence of neighboring agriculturalists along an expanding ‘Neolithic frontier’. During the transition, lithic artifacts such as axes, adzes, picks, and tranchets increased in number, and pottery came into wider use. The bones of domesticated animals and cereal pollen began to appear sporadically within Late Mesolithic sites. Neolithic attributes, including polished axes, domesticated animals, beaker ceramics, and burial mounds and barrows, appeared gradually over a period of several hundred years. See also: Asia, West: Mesolithic Cultures; Europe:

Neolithic.

Further Reading Bonsall C (ed.) (1989) The Mesolithic in Europe: Papers Presented at the Third International Symposium, Edinburgh, 1985. Edinburgh: John Donald. Larsson L, Kindgren H, Knutsson K, et al. (eds.) (2003) Mesolithic on the Move: Papers Presented at the Sixth International Conference on the Mesolithic in Europe, Stockholm, 2000. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Mellars PA and Dark P (eds.) (1998) Star Carr in Context. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Milner N and Woodman P (eds.) (2005) Mesolithic Studies at the Beginning of the 21st Century. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Mithen SJ (1990) Thoughtful Foragers: A Study of Prehistoric Decision Making. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peterkin GL, Bricker HM, and Mellars P (eds.) (1993) Hunting and Animal Exploitation in the Later Palaeolithic and Mesolithic of Eurasia. Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 4. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association. Price TD and Gebauer AB (eds.) (2005) Smakkerup Huse: A Late Mesolithic Coastal Site in Northwest Zealand, Denmark. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Rowley-Conwy P, Zvelebil M, and Blankholm HP (eds.) (1987) Mesolithic Northwest Europe: Recent Trends. Sheffield: Department of Archaeology and Prehistory, University of Sheffield. Vermeersch P and VanPeer P (eds.) (1990) Contributions to the Mesolithic in Europe: Papers Presented at the Fourth International Symposium on the Mesolithic in Europe, Leuven, 1990. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

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EUROPE, SOUTH Contents Greece Greek Colonies Medieval and Post-Medieval Rome

Greece Airton Pollini and Sophie Montel, University of Paris 10 – Nanterre, Nanterre, France ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary abaton In Greek, portico for incubation. In this kind of dormitory, the sick waited for the god to appear in their sleep and to give them the way of recovery. agora In Greek, public place. They were multifunctional. andron (pl. andrones) In Greek, reception room for men. archaeometry Combining of scientific techniques and traditional methods of history and archaeology. bouleuterion Greek term to design the Council Chamber. cella Latin term for the main room of the Greek temple, the naos. It is generally preceded by the pronaos. Doric and Ionic order In classical architecture, a column (without base in Doric order, with a base in Ionic order) with shaft, capital, and entablature. The number of flutes, the form of the capital, and the decoration of the entablature vary between the two orders. The Doric order has been employed mainly in central Greece, south Italy, and Sicily, while the Ionic order originated in Asia Minor. dynast Sovereign, ruler of a little country or ruling under the protection of a great power. heroon Funerary enclosure or monumental tomb of various forms, designed for a hero and, by extension, for a prominent figure. hestiatoreion In Greek, public room for banqueting. hysplex Greek term for the system of departure of the race in the stadium. kouros (pl. kouroi) Greek term for the young male. It designs the male statue of Archaic Period. The female statue is the kore (pl. korai). naiskos (pl. naiskoi) In Greek, diminutive of naos. The term refers to a kind of little chapel with pillars or columns in front and a pediment. Naiskoi were used as funerary monuments, expanded grave reliefs, especially in Athens Kerameikos cemetery in the fourth century BCE. palaestra Place of training for the athletes. Pausanias Greek author and traveler of the second century CE. He wrote a Periegesis, a travel around Greece in ten books, very useful for archaeologists. peribolos tomb Tomb with a wall of enclosure. This kind of monumental tomb was developed in Attica in the fourth century. peribolos wall Wall of enclosure of a sanctuary. peristyle A range of columns surrounding a building or an open court.

philology Study of written documents. Pliny the Elder Latin author of the first century CE. He wrote the Historia Naturalis, encyclopedia in 37 books. In books XXXIII–XXXVII (ores, metals, stones), he deals with history of art. Plutarch Greek author of the first and second century CE. pronaos In Greek, before the temple (naos). The pronaos is the first room when entering the temple. stele Rectangular and vertical stone used as a surface of engraving and/or painting and sculpture. In funerary context, it designs the relief monument above the tomb. stoa (pl. stoas) Portico in Greek. tholos Round building. The term is also used to design the Mycenaean chamber tombs. Vitruvius Latin author and architect of the first century BCE. He wrote De Architectura, a treatise of architecture in ten books.

When it comes to Greek archaeology, one must have in mind that the very word ‘archaeology’ comes from ancient Greek and meant at that time ‘‘a history or a legend of the past’’ (as put by Plato: ‘‘They are very fond of hearing about the genealogies of heroes and men, Socrates, and the foundations of cities in ancient times and, in short, about antiquity [archaeologia] in general.’’, Hippias Major, 285d), or in the terms of Thucydides, ‘‘to talk about ancient things’’ (VII, 69, 2). Archaeology in present-day Greece is a well-known discipline and its origins should be found first in the Renaissance and most precisely in the philological tradition. Nevertheless, some knowledge of ancient texts has always been transmitted over generations, including during the Middle Ages, when manuscripts were kept and recopied within monasteries and libraries. The Renaissance marked an important moment for this transmission, either by descriptions of the antiquities seen by travelers, such as Cyriacus of Ancona (1391–1455), or by an increasing interest in, and an intellectual reappraisal of, the ancient literature. The editing of ancient texts by intellectuals all over Europe resulted in another discipline, philology, a word that appeared only in the eighteenth century. The discovery of archaeological remains in Herculaneum and then in Pompeii started a stronger regain of interest in antiquity: noble and wealthy families became interested in acquiring and collecting works of art

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coming from ancient sites. In the second half of the eighteenth century, intellectuals, artists, and cultivated people also started traveling to those ancient remains, especially in Italy and Sicily, the so-called Grand Tour. Even though we have the testimony of various Western travelers from previous periods, visits to Greece were eased only after its independence in 1831, after 10 years of war against Ottoman rule. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when nationstates were being established in Europe, Greek and Roman cultures were perceived as the cradle of Western civilization and started to be studied as such (see Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of). The example of Lord Byron, who went to Greece to fight for its independence, is symptomatic of the intellectual link between Western European countries and their claim for a common culture with ancient Greece. For a long period, Greek archaeology was actually the simple collection of works of art, what we can call antiquarianism, and almost no attention was given to the contexts of discovery. Archaeology was not yet a discipline, but only a private activity sponsored by the nobility. A turning point was represented by the establishment of the international schools in Athens, the first of which was the Ecole Franc¸aise in 1846 (Figure 1) (followed by the British, German, American, and

Italian, among others), responsible for the study of the antiques and not only their collection by private nobles. It coincides with the development of archaeology as a discipline and with the beginning of the great excavations in Greek ancient sites, in particular some of the most important sanctuaries of the Greek world (Olympia, Delphi and Delos). Another important achievement of the incipient discipline of Greek archaeology was the discovery and excavation of the site of Troy, by H. Schliemann and W. Do¨rpfeld in 1871. Greek archaeology has some problems of definition, geographical and chronological. The ancient Greek world does not coincide with present-day Greece, which somehow is an insolvable problem. Most of the ancient Greek cities established in the Anatolian coast (actual Turkey) are included in what is called Greek archaeology, but ancient Greek colonies on the Black Sea and in Italy, Sicily, France, and Spain are most commonly treated separately (see Europe, South: Greek Colonies). The other definition problem is chronological. In a broad sense, Greek archaeology would comprehend prehistoric and historical periods together, going through several centuries, from the Minoan civilization (second millennium BCE) until at least the Roman conquest in the second century BCE. On the other hand, due to the increasing specialization of the discipline, Minoan and Mycenaean periods, that is, the period before the advent of Greek city-states at the beginning of the first millennium BCE, are usually considered as independent branches of Greek archaeology.

Minoans and Mycenaeans

Figure 1 Athens, French School of Archaeology (EFA): main building, library (nineteenth century).

Succinctly, linguistic studies of the Mycenaean language, the Linear B decrypted in 1952 by M. Ventris, proved it to be a sort of ancient Greek dialect, written by ideograms and syllabic symbols. It was the proof of a certain continuity between these civilizations and classical Greece, already suggested by the memory of a thalassocracy (Minoans) in the writings by Herodotus and Thucydides, as well as implied by the descriptions of the Iliad, by Homer (Mycenaeans) (see Classical Archaeology). The chronology of Minoan civilization, whose name is obviously inspired by the legend of the Cretan king Minos and the Minotaurus, is comprised between 2100 and 1450 BCE and several archaeological remains can be found especially in Crete, since the discovery of Knossos by Sir A. Evans at the beginning of twentieth century. Some important palaces in the best-known cities such as Knossos, Phaistos, Malia, and Zakros characterized this civilization, whose language, the Linear A, is still to be deciphered.

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Archaeological research has interpreted these buildings, constructed in the form of a courtyard with several rooms around it, as a palace having various functions such as habitation, administration and official ceremonies, and also religious functions. Some cases include stocking facilities, which indicate a commercial function as well (Figure 2). All these elements, together with the analysis of the evolution of architectural remains, allow the statement of a civilization with a growing degree of centralization, attaining an impressive measure in the apogee of Minoan times between 1700 and 1450 BCE. During this time, we can hardly distinguish the main palace and the urban quarters, becoming a large and intricate net of constructions. Recent research has indicated important commercial routes in the basis of ceramic material found in surveys and excavations, with a growing precision of its typology, chronology, and origin of production. Mycenaean civilization developed from 1700 and, during the period from 1450 to 1300 BCE, archaeological research has discovered remains of a series of important damages suffered by the great Minoan palace at Knossos. Recent developments have supported the hypothesis of linking the development of Mycenaeans (with an increasing number of remains found in Crete, as well as a large quantity of ceramic

and the presence of written tablets in Linear B), and the series of destructions suffered by Knossos. Mycenaean is the name given by H. Schliemann to those he thought to be the people described by Homer in the Iliad. At the edge between antiquarianism and scientific archaeological research, the discovery of the so-called Agamemnon mask, a golden mask H. Schliemann attributed to the Mycenaean king and chief of the Greek expedition to Troy, was used as the proof of the existence of that civilization. If there is still much discussion about the association of the literary tradition in the Homeric epic poems and the Mycenaean culture, ulterior research has proved at least the existence of a kind of common culture, in the forms of funerary rituals and the geographical spread of ceramics. The other great discovery by H. Schliemann was the location of the city of Troy (Figure 3), which has been excavated by a join American–German team (since 1988) and became a Turkish national historical park in 1996. The geographical spread of this civilization was impressive, reaching most of mainland Greece, several islands of the Cyclades, Crete, and Asia Minor, which can be verified by the similarities of funerary customs as well as by the spread of a common type of ceramics. Despite this large territory, we only know four palaces of that period: Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, and Thebes. Most of what we know of Mycenaean civilization comes either from archaeological research in these palaces, which seem to concentrate all the administration of the city, or, on the other hand, by the interpretation of epigraphic evidence, mostly in the form of clay tablets in Linear B. Several elements described in Homer’s epics, notably in the Iliad, found a correspondent in some archaeological findings (like a cup similar to the Nestor’s cup, weapons whose techniques of production coincide with the descriptions by Homer, etc.), posing a problem of chronology. Recent research has proved that Homer’s descriptions are not perfectly Mycenaean, but a mixture of elements of a long past memory and his contemporary society, of the eighth century BCE: one example is that weapons in the Iliad are described as iron ones although those of the Mycenaeans were in bronze.

Dark Ages

Figure 2 Knossos, Crete: the warehouse with pithoi on the ground (Minoan period).

This chronological problem takes us to the discussion of what is called the Dark Ages: the period between the thirteenth and the eighth centuries BCE. All Mycenaean remains show that an important destruction occurred in the thirteenth century, for which there are few plausible explanations: the traditional view of a series of invasions of other people, based upon some

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Figure 3 Troy (Troia/Wilusa), Turkey: fortification wall of Troia II (c. 2550–2250 BCE), with the paved ramp leading to the southwest gate.

literary evidence, was questioned by later archaeological discoveries that, instead of showing a sudden change in practices and material culture, are more likely to present a picture of continuity between Mycenaean and later periods. Even the designation of the Dark Ages is now put into question, as archaeologists are finding more and more evidence of intense activities during this period, but still not enough to give us a broader picture of the society of those times. Zagora of Andros

One of the best-known examples of archaeological remains of the period called the Dark Ages is Zagora of Andros (Cyclades): due to their importance, recent excavations advocate a different appellation for this period. Zagora is one of the first organized settlements dating in the Proto-Geometric Period (the ‘dark’ transitory period) to be discovered. Greek excavators (in the second half of the twentieth century) brought to light schist wall houses covered by mud or flat stones which remind us that localized and perishable building materials are of common use for the construction of houses in the whole Mediterranean area, from prehistory up to the present (the schist is the local stone of Andros and is used in all settlements of the island). This settlement was protected on the one side by a strong wall, and by the cliff on the other; the houses are dated to the tenth and eighth century, whereas the sanctuary continued to be in activity until the classical period. The usual composition of the houses was of an oblong room with a central fireplace, a separate storage area, and a stable with a courtyard. The advantage of the orthogonal plan that was used in later settlements is illustrated by this example of the Geometric Period.

City-state The eighth century represents a great rupture of Greek history in the development of the city-state, a rupture that was sometimes called the ‘Greek renaissance’. It is the system created in and for the city-state that characterizes the so-called ‘classical Greece’, a social system that lasted until at least the adventure of Macedonian conquest and the formation of the Hellenistic kingdoms, at the end of fourth century. These four centuries of Greek culture could be better described by means of themes instead of a simple chronological method. We discuss then the major elements of this culture we try to depict: the political sphere (with its civic buildings), the habitat, the economic organization, the religion and Greek main sanctuaries, the funerary customs, and the artistic achievements. The traditional definition of city, as developed by M. Weber, E. Durkheim, and G. Childe, is: a concentration of population in a particular place, with a specialization of working activities, a public and monumental architecture, a complex social stratification, the use of writing, and the development of internal and external commerce. Most of Greek history and culture were organized in the context of the citystate, that is, independent states composed of an urban center and territory of variable size, which gave the most distinguished elements of what is Greek. The first characteristic that should be clarified is the ‘Greek’ culture: even though we can recognize some elements to be distinguished as ‘Greek’, with the literary evidence to support this statement, a ‘Greek’ culture is an intellectually created affirmation, probably resulting from the wars several allied cities made against the common enemy, Persia. Even the

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dichotomy between Greek and barbarians only made real sense after those wars, at the beginning of fifth century BCE. Actually, Greece was composed of several independent cities, with different social and political systems of organization, and constantly at war against each other. All these traits continued to be true even after the Median Wars and the Peloponnesian War (opposing Athens to Sparta and their allies); the latter war is the clearest proof of very different organizations of those cities. Nevertheless, before enumerating the different characteristics, one could follow Herodotus’ classical description of what makes Greeks different from the others and similar among themselves: ‘‘the kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech, and the shrines of gods and the sacrifices that we have in common, and the likeness of our way of life’’ (Histories, 8, 144, 2). These are exactly the themes we follow to describe the ‘common Greek’ society. The Political Sphere

The urban center of a Greek city was composed basically of three parts: the public area of political and economic exchanges, the sacred space, and the residences. The area reserved for the public life was called agora in Greek and it used to house several buildings with specific purposes. One of the best known examples is the agora of Athens (Figure 4), which is also taken as a model by modern archaeologists trying to describe other cities’ monuments. However, recent research has made it clear that Athens is only a well-known example among various possibilities of organizing the public area of a Greek city. The American School of Classical Studies has excavated the agora of Athens since 1931, after some

preliminary, nonsystematic excavations. As most of the Greek literature preserved comes from Athens, the work in its agora can benefit from the combination of those two types of data (literary and archaeological); no other city in Greece has as much information and the same quality of data as Athens. For political purposes, the most important building is the bouleuterion, where the council of the elected representatives would gather to vote the decisions of the city. Several other examples of this civic building can be found in Greece or Asia Minor (Aphrodisias, Assos, Herakleia at Latmos, Iasos, Miletos, Nyssa, Priene): they show a variety of size and form but most of those buildings found in mainland Greece are in a bad state of preservation (Argos, Athens, Corinth, Dodona, Megalopolis, and Olympia). One of the most characteristic buildings of an agora is the portico (stoa in Greek): some agoras seem not to have a bouleuterion, but a portico is present in practically every Greek city. The stoai were places for public gatherings and walking (Figure 5): they offered shelter on rainy or too sunny days; they could also provide shelter for public, religious, commercial, or political activities; they constituted multipurpose buildings. The typical architecture of these buildings is of a long covered space, recognizable mainly by the presence of colonnades, forming a protected place. In the case of Athens, several porticoes were identified, on all four sides of the agora; they are not contemporaneous but they progressively framed the public space. Some of them may also have had some administrative functions, as well as a propitious place to house Solon’s laws (Royal Portico, in the west), where the tribunal could give some of the city’s judgments, such as the famous one against the philosopher Socrates

Figure 4 Athens, agora: the public place (circular tholos in the foreground) and temple of Hephaistos on the left.

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Figure 5 Assos, Troad, Turkey, agora: north stoa; on the back wall, we can see the holes for the wooden beams for an upper story (late Hellenistic age).

in 399 BCE. Public display in the form of inscriptions on steles could also provide information on laws or on next events. When talking about the stoai of Athens, one of the most impressive is the Stoa of Attalos, constructed by Attalos II of Pergamon in the middle of the second century BCE, and rebuilt by the American school to lodge the Museum of the Agora in 1953–56. At the rear of this building, a row of shops links the building with the commercial function of the agora. Other agorai have been excavated in Greek cities. All of them assume the role of the economic center of the city, with permanent (stoai, shops often with a room for the sales and another room, at the back, for the stock or the workshops) and not permanent structures (such as stalls): on the Competaliast’s agora in Delos, holes in the pavement made of granite plates were brought to light and interpreted as holes for stalls and tents installed on the market day. Other common types of building present in an agora are the sacred ones (temples or altars), as well as places for social gatherings, such as theaters. In some smaller cities, the same building could perform the functions of theater and bouleuterion, depending on the circumstance. That was not the case in Athens, where one can find, besides the bouleuterion, an odeon (small covered theater) in the middle of the agora, constructed under Roman rule in the first century BCE. Habitat

Greek habitat may be perceived by various means and should take account of the structural differences between, on the one hand, cities of spontaneous growth, such as Athens and Delos (Figure 6), and planned ones, such as Piraeus, Olynthos, Miletos,

or Priene. On the other hand, the habitat comprises either the urban center of a city (called asty in Greek), or residences, farms, and small villages spread in the countryside. Most of our knowledge of Greek habitat comes from the study of urban centers, and good examples are Delos and Olynthos, or the colonial cities in the west (Megara Hyblaea, Selinunte, Poseidonia, Metapontos) and in the east (Chersonesos, Istria, etc.). Olynthos Olynthos (Chalcidic peninsula) is a famous example of a Greek urban habitat: D. M. Robinson (Johns Hopkins University) excavated it between 1928 and 1939, and J. Vokotoulou is undertaking recent excavations and restorations. The city occupies two flat-topped hills rising to about 30–40 m (the north and south hills) and a section in the plain, east of the hills; founded in the fifth century and unoccupied since its destruction by Philippe II in 348 BCE, Olynthos is of great interest for archaeologists. The ruins preserved the state of the houses where ancient Greeks lived in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. The main feature of Olynthos is the regular orthogonal plan of the city and the organization of the habitat in blocks: for example, on the north hill, houses were mostly grouped in blocks of ten, comprised of two rows of five houses separated by a narrow alley. Like most Greek houses, they are organized around a central courtyard, often paved, and a portico on one side (generally north). Within this regular plan, however, there is considerable variation, and the uniformity of the house plans is only on the surface. Some houses devote much space to andrones (richly decorated with floor mosaic), kitchens, and other specialized rooms, whereas others have more general-purpose spaces or many shops. The study of the artifacts found in the houses allows working

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Figure 6 Delos, theater area: example of spontaneous habitat (Hellenistic and Roman in date).

hypothesis on the purpose of the rooms and the gender distribution inside the house: this new approach has renewed our knowledge and interpretations of the organization of Greek household. Other sites inform us on the daily Greek lifestyle: Abdera (Thrace), Kassope (Epirus), and Priene (Asia Minor) are examples of modular Hellenistic houses like the ones in Olynthos. The joint Greek and Swiss excavation of Eretria (Euboia) has revealed oval-shaped houses or houses of apsidal plan, dating to the Geometric Period, as well as houses decorated with mosaic dating to Hellenistic and Roman periods. The mosaic floors also concern the rich Hellenistic houses of Pella (Macedonia), second capital of the Macedonian kingdom, where the archaeologists have discovered a palace. Two other palaces were discovered, completing our knowledge on this kind of residence: the palace of the first capital of the Macedonian kingdom, VerginaAigai, dated to the second half of the fourth century BCE, and another in Demetrias-Volos (Thessaly). These impressive (Pella: 60 000 m2) but badly preserved sites comprise complexes which surrounded, like the Greek houses, large, open, peristyle and central courtyards. The apartments, the reception rooms, and the functional ones were distributed round these central courtyards. Territory

One of the major developments of Greek archaeology in the last two decades is the introduction of a different method of research, the survey. This technique consists of the collection of data on the surface and of the identification of constructed structures, covering a large area and broad chronological periods. One of the main intentions of these researches is

the identification of settlements spread in the countryside (chora in Greek). The study of the territory of a Greek city is a relatively recent subject for archaeologists and it allows a new approach on ancient Greek lifestyle. A great part of the society was organized on an agricultural basis, from the calendar (e.g., for festivals and wars) to the economic, political, and social life, since only citizens could own the land and cultivate it. Recent discoveries all over Greece permitted the drawing of a better picture on several aspects, but especially on the organization of the habitat in the form of farms or small villages, as well as new hypothesis of demography estimations, of the economic production of the land, etc. Another evolution is the cooperation of several scientists in the archaeological research: geographers, botanists, zooarchaeologists, among others, are integrated in the archaeological team and search for a broader knowledge of ancient lifestyle. The first and the best-known example of survey in Greece is the Boiotian Project, started in 1979 and intended to draw a complete picture on this region’s occupation. Since then, several other projects have been proposed almost everywhere in Greece and they have given a much better idea of the ancient rural life. One of the reasons surveys are so wellvalued is that their results are held in the form of quantifiable data, allowing the development of models for the interpretation of the territory’s occupation and the comparison between several regions. Our knowledge of the organization of Greek countryside has improved considerably thanks to this new method; nevertheless, much has been said to reinforce the limits of surveys and the importance of completing them with traditional stratigraphic excavations.

1260 EUROPE, SOUTH/Greece Economic Organization

Religion and Main Sanctuaries

As in every society, ancient Greece had a specific form of organization of economic life; however, compared with other themes, which are the subject of a clear conceptualization by ancient authors, the economic life was not an aspect of major interest. The word economics (oikonomikos) comes from Greek, but it held a very different sense at that time – it was related to the management of the household (oikos in Greek). The treatises by Xenophon and Aristotle, both named Oikonomikos, were entirely devoted to the administration of the household, in its broad sense, which also included how to deal with the citizen’s family and slaves. Nothing was ever written on how to administer the economy at the city level, or how economic exchanges were organized. Our knowledge has to draw either on the archaeological remains alone or on some short texts (mainly inscriptions) dealing with very specific subjects. The rarity and the variety of sources (inscriptions, numismatics, and several types of material culture) result in several different interpretations for the economic history of ancient Greece. The reference book by M. I. Finley (The Ancient Economy, 1973) stressed the importance of agriculture as the main source of richness; more recently, the study of some aspects of the long-distance commerce, especially the study of amphorae, has drawn attention to the possibilities of the high economic income merchants could have. There are basically two issues that favor this reappraisal of the importance of commerce: on the one hand, the developments on the typology of ceramics (whose locality and date of production can be identified much more precisely), and on the other hand, submarine archaeology and the discovery of important shipwrecks with their load (the best-known examples are those of Marseille and Alexandria). These improvements lead to a much broader view of economic exchanges and contribute to their reevaluation. The first and most important conclusion is that, despite some texts (mainly the works of philosophers as Plato’s Laws, The Republic, and Aristotle’s Politics) advocating for an entirely autonomous city as the perfect model, all and every Greek city counted on external commerce. On the local scale, after a long tradition in Greek archaeology of being interested only in the most impressive monuments (temples, civic buildings, etc.), some aspects of ancient common life have recently attracted attention. In this sense, excavations of workshops and farms as well as surveys made in the countryside contributed to reinforce and improve our knowledge of the economic production.

Our knowledge of Greek religious practices has continued to increase since the end of the nineteenth century and the first large excavations conducted by the French School of Archaeology (Delphi, Delos), by the German school (which excavated mainly in Olympia, Samos, and in Turkish sites like Miletos and Didyma), by the Austrian (Ephesos), by the American school (Isthmia, Nemea), and by the Greek Archaeological Service (the Acropolis of Athens, Dodona, Eleusis, Epidauros). Those sites are very important for us to approach the Greek way of honoring the gods. One possible approach to the study of Greek sanctuaries and religion is by the festivals organized in those places. We can start with the Olympic games, as this field shows a recent improvement, due mostly to the Olympic games of Athens in 2004. Olympia The Germans have excavated the place that gave its name to the Olympic games since the end of the nineteenth century. Whereas a Mycenaean cult center is attested, Olympia (NW Peloponnesus) became important only in the Geometric and Archaic Periods (776 BCE is the date traditionally given for the beginning of the games). The buildings belong to two main categories: worship (temples of Hera, altar and temple of Zeus with the chryselephantine statue – made of gold and ivory – by Phidias), and places linked to the activities of the Olympics (stadium, palaestra, gymnasium, and accommodation). More specific and problematic is the so-called Phidias workshop, a place where the technician certainly sculpted the statue. Olympic games were organized in four different places, during what is called an olympiad: they started in Olympia, continued in Isthmia and Nemea, then in Delphi, and finished in Isthmia and in Nemea again. Nemea In Nemea, S. G. Miller (University of Berkeley, California) reconstructed the system of departure of the stadium (in Greek hysplex, which guaranteed a simultaneous start) and allowed a better comprehension of the athletics. The excavations (of the locker room, the passageway to the stadium, the drinking fountains, and the platform for the judges) and the restoration of Nemea, as well as the restoration in Isthmia (University of Chicago), complete our knowledge of the buildings used for Olympic Games. The following examples complete the panorama of Greek places of worship. Athens The sanctuary of Athena Polias on the Acropolis of Athens is one of the most famous and well-known religious places of classical antiquity

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Figure 7 Athens, Acropolis: the sacred rock from Philopappos Hill.

(Figure 7). Ancient sources are prolific (Pausanias, Plutarch), several researchers studied this place, and a large academic production is available. The excavations were first conducted in the nineteenth century under the authority of the archaeological society (P. Cavvadias) with German contribution (1862–95 mainly); in 1975 began a great campaign of restoration work that is still in progress. The Propylaea, the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, and the temple of Athena Nike are the major buildings of the sacred rock, but our knowledge of this place also concerns the inscriptions (IG I3) and the offerings: statues, specially the archaic maiden of the Perserschutt (the word, owed to German archaeologist W. Do¨rpfeld, refers to all the fragments resulted from the Persian vandalization of the Acropolis in 480–479 BCE), bronze statuettes, vases, weapons, little objects. Eleusis Eleusis, where the Greek Archaeological Society has been working since 1882, is another place of interest in Attica (22 km west of Athens). It was a sanctuary of Demeter, where mysteries were celebrated. Eleusis became a pan-Hellenic sanctuary in the Archaic period under Solon. The main architectural features and the specific archaeological remains of this sanctuary are the sacred well (Kallichoron), the Cave of Pluto, and the Telesterion of Demeter where the secret initiation rites were accomplished. The telesterion is a square building with banks of seats on its four sides; here, initiated people watched the mysteries. This kind of building is very specific and belongs to the category of meeting places. Other examples have been excavated: for religious purposes in Samothrace (Sanctuary of the Great Gods), Thebes (Cabirion), and for civic purposes, in several agorai.

Some of the main Greek sanctuaries house oracles: Delphi, Delos, Dodona, Didyma, Epidauros. In Delphi (Phocidia), Apollo spoke to the believer through the Pythia, a priestess; in Delos, in Didyma, and in other places in Asia Minor (i.e., Claros), Apollo also gave oracles. In Dodona (Epirus), it was Zeus’ oracle that spoke by the rustle of the wind in the sacred tree (oak). Asklepios, whose main sanctuary is in Epidauros (but also Kos and Pergamon in Hellenistic and Roman periods), cured the ill, sending them visions. All these practices, documented by ancient texts and archaeological remains, have revealed specific installations, which give us a better idea of the way Greeks consulted the oracles. Delphi Delphi is a sanctuary of Apollo located in Central Greece, north of the Corinthian Golf, in Phocidia. It was founded probably in the geometric period, c. 800 BCE (but there are some traces of Mycenaean occupation in the surrounding area). The excavations conducted by the French school since the end of the nineteenth century have revealed numerous phases for the altar and temple of Apollo, and several remains of offerings made to the divinity (Figure 8). It is important to notice that, before exploring the sanctuary, the French school and the French government had to move the modern village of Kastro (which developed since the Middle Ages in the location of the ancient ruins). This operation permitted the preservation of one of the most significant religious place of the ancient world. In other places, like Olympia or Delos, which were not occupied since late antiquity, archaeologists did not encounter such problems. Our knowledge of Delphi’s topography owes much to the testimony of the Greek

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Figure 8 Delphi, sanctuary of Apollon: theater (classical and Hellenistic periods), Apollo temple (fourth century) under it, and the treasury of the Athenians at the bottom.

author Pausanias (Description of Greece, Book X) who described the sanctuary in the second century BCE. Historians and archaeologists compared the remains excavated and the text; it results in a possible recreation of the numerous architectural buildings (temples, porticoes, about 30 treasuries) and sculptural offerings along the sacred way (the statue bases are preserved and we can analyze the evolution of the settings of such offerings). The archaeological finds and the ancient sources combined allow us to understand Delphi as a real showcase for the cities which represented at the sanctuary either major events (victories on the barbarians, Persians, or Gauls) or personal acts and commemorations. Delphi was, in the symbolic spirit of Greek mythology, the navel of the world. Neither archaeological nor geophysical studies brought to light explanations about the functioning of the oracle (neither hole in the ground nor divine spirit), famous in antiquity and used by Greeks before every important enterprise (i.e., colonization). Moreover, on the other side of the valley, the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia completes the panorama of this important religious place (temple, treasuries, and a tholos, built in the beginning of the fourth century BCE, the function of which remains hypothetical). Delos The sanctuary of Apollo in Delos (Cyclades) is one of the main interests of this island deserted at the end of antiquity. The French School of Archaeology started working there in 1873 and the activities (excavations, studies, restorations) still carry on. The oracle of Apollo was the second one after Delphi,

and, here again, Delian Festival and games were held every four years. Didyma The sanctuary of Apollo at Didyma (Asia Minor, 10 km south of the city of Miletos) was a famous cult place with a sacred spring and a grove before the arrival of the Greeks. The Germans all through the twentieth century up to the present have conducted the excavations. Here, the study of the Hellenistic period of the temple gives some information on the oracle: the temple was unroofed; a naiskos in the middle of the court contains the statue of Apollo, whereas an unusual room between the pronaos and the cella may have served as the Chresmographeion (office of the oracle). A sacred way linked the Didyma sanctuary to the city of Miletos (also excavated by a German team), and much has been learnt on the procession held between these two points from inscriptions and archaeological finds. Dodona This sanctuary of Epirus (north of central Greece, 20 km south of Ioannina) was famous for the oracle of Zeus, traditionally the earliest oracle in Greece. The earliest archaeological evidence for cult activity dates to the eighth century BCE. Greek excavations (from 1873 up to the present) brought to light the temple of Zeus and a peribolos wall that surrounded the sacred oak (early fourth century), three other temples (Aphrodite, Dione, Themis), and a bouleuterion. Dodona developed a more monumental character with the rule of King Pyrrhos (297–272 BCE). A theater, a temple of Herakles, stoai, and

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finally a stadium were added. The theater and the stadium belong to the festival buildings used in Dodona for the Naia Festival (athletic and drama contests) held every four years in honor of Zeus. Epidauros In Epidauros (on the east coast of the Argolid, Peloponnesus), the sanctuary honored first Apollo (sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas) and then Asklepios, God of Medicine. The excavations began in 1881 (Greek Archaeological Society) and continued in the twentieth century, while the restoration works are still in progress (Committee for the Preservation of the Epidaurus Monuments). In the fourth and third centuries BCE, an ambitious building program resulted in the construction of monumental buildings for the worship (the temple and the altar of Asklepios, the tholos, the abaton, etc.), and later, of convenient buildings (the theater, the hestiatoreion, the baths, the palaestra, gymnasium, stadium, etc.). The theater, the tholos, and the abaton (portico where the sick waited for the god to appear in their sleep) are the most specific buildings of this sanctuary. Porticoes for incubation (abaton) are known in other sanctuaries of Asklepios (Athens, on the south side of the Acropolis, Corinth) or Amphiaraos, hero healer (Oropos, Attica). Like other religious festivals, the Asklepieia (pan-Hellenic athletic and dramatic festival) were held every four years. Samos, Ephesos Two other sanctuaries give some precious data on the religious practices. The Heraion of Samos (excavated mainly by the Germans between 1910 and 1914, 1925 and 1939, and since 1952) and the Artemision of Ephesos (excavated by the Austrians since 1896) show us examples of an Archaic Ionic temple. In these two places, we can follow the development of the sanctuary from the Geometric Period to Roman time. Ionic order began there, on the west coast of Asia Minor: the archaic temple of Artemis in Ephesos was the largest building in the Archaic Greek world and the first large structure to be built entirely in marble. The temple, reconstructed after a fire in 356 BCE, was considered as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The special features of the soil in the Heraion of Samos ensured the preservation of ivory and wood artifacts, which is very rare; in the Ephesos’ so-called Artemision, many little offerings were discovered and inform us on the cults celebrated there in the Geometric Period, before the construction of the archaic temple (so-called Cresus’ temple). Necropolis – Mausoleum: Funerary Customs

The archaeology of death is one of the most productive fields of our discipline. The funerary custom is

an important element in the definition of a society: its regularity and diffusion in space may shed light on the extent of a given community. The type of tombs (sarcophagus, funeral urn, tumulus, for an individual or for a family, etc.), the funerary ritual, the treatment of the corpse (incineration or inhumation), and the artifacts buried together with the deceased inform us of the physical characteristics and the social status of the deceased, as well as the religious beliefs of the community. We choose to comment on four sites, ranging from the Proto-Geometric to the fourth century BCE, that illustrate archaeological concerns of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: the heroon of Lefkandi (Euboia), the cemetery of the Kerameikos in Athens, the mausoleum of Halikarnassos (Asia Minor), and the royal necropolis of Vergina (Macedonia). The British School of Archaeology in Athens excavated the heroon of Lefkandi during the 1980s. The excavation of the Toumba cemetery has brought to light a long and narrow, apsidal building dated to the first half of the tenth century BCE. It measures c. 50  13.5 m2, and a row of holes for wooden posts surrounds the building. Other holes, in the center of the building, are the remains of the inner colonnade: the heroon, like the first Archaic temple in stone, had an axial colonnade. Two burial shafts were uncovered inside, one containing the skeletons of four horses, the other both the inhumation of a woman and the cremation of a warrior. They were rich in offerings, some of which were imported, and show the exchanges between Greece and Near East at that time. The structure has been interpreted as a local ruler’s house, which, after his death, was covered with a mound and converted to a heroon. The cemetery of the Kerameikos in Athens was explored first by the Greek Archaeological Society (1863–1913) and since 1913 by the German Archaeological Institute. These excavations allow us to understand on a wide scale the funerary practices of the rich Athenians from the sub-Mycenaean and ProtoGeometric periods to the late imperial Roman time. This cemetery includes private graves, tumuli with several burials, public burial monument (the demosion sema), and peribolos tomb. All these funerary structures have revealed rich material that gives an idea of the citizens buried there. The monuments discovered over the tomb, statues (kouroi and korai), steles, or naiskoi, give several examples for the history of art of both Archaic and classical times (Figure 9). Among the important discoveries of the nineteenth century, we have to consider the mausoleum of Halikarnassos. This is an eponymous monument: we name this kind of funerary structure after the Mausolos

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Figure 9 Athens, Kerameikos cemetery: the Street of the Tombs, with classical funerary monuments (mostly fourth century BCE).

dynasty of Karia who died in 353–352 BCE. Charles Newton, who removed many of the sculptures to the British Museum, excavated the site in 1857. Excavations resumed under Danish direction in 1966. It is a huge construction (total height of monument c. 57.6 m) made up of a tall podium (with two or three steps), a cella surrounded by a peristyle, and a pyramidal roof crowned by a sculpture. The mausoleum associates Greek features and local, indigenous ones. Greek sculptors came to Halikarnassos (following ancient authors Pliny and Vitruvius) – we can see it in the relief friezes which decorate the monument – but the entire structure owes much to local traditions, for example, the Lycian pillar tombs and the Nereid Monument of Xanthos. Nowadays, researchers place emphasis on all these influences and on the relations between the funerary structures of Greek cemeteries (like the Kerameikos) and those ones. In 1977, Greek archaeologist Manolis Andronikos discovered the royal necropolis of Vergina (Macedonia). Vergina-Aigai was the first capital of Macedonia: archaeologists brought to light the palace and a large number of tombs (from the tenth to the second century BCE). A huge tumulus, 110 m in diameter containing three vaulted tomb chambers and one cist grave, lies on the western edge of the necropolis. These royal burials of the last third of the fourth century, with their well-preserved painted decoration and rich contents (gold and ivory artifacts, weapons, crimson-purple fabrics, ruins of funerary furniture) are among the most spectacular recent discoveries of Greek archaeology. Tomb II, with a royal hunt painting on the front, has been identified as the tomb of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great. Vergina and other Macedonian tombs (Lefkadia, Aghios

Athanasios) are now being published by their Greek finders or curators. Artistic Achievements

Ancient painting When we talk about ancient painting, we have only a few works of art to look at: Minoan and Mycenaean wall paintings are often fragmentary; almost nothing is preserved from the Classical period. The Greek author Pausanias gives some rich descriptions of mural paintings in Delphi’s Cnidian Lesche (by Polygnotos), of the panels in the Stoa Poikile (painted stoa) of the Athenian agora (by famous Athenian artists), or in the left room of the Acropolis Propylaea, but nothing has survived. The only possible example of a classical Greek painting is to be found in the colonial context of the Tomb of the Diver in Paestum (Figure 10). The tomb formed by four slabs and one lid, all of them painted, was dated to 480 BCE. The very characteristic of painting the inside of a tomb and certain aspects of the iconography put some doubts on the identification of the tomb as Greek. On the other hand, the tomb belongs to a Greek city, and the style of the paintings is comparable to the contemporaneous Greek ceramics. For the Archaic and classical periods, in terms of Greek painting, the black or red painted vases (produced in Greece mainly between c. seventh and third century BCE) remain the most reliable source. However, recent archaeological discoveries in the north of Greece (Macedonia; see also the discussion on cemeteries) invite us to a new approach to the ancient authors whose writings on painting and color have been feeding the collective imagination of artists, philosophers and historians since the

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Figure 10 Paestum National Museum, south Italy: Tomb of the Diver, detail of the lid with the diving scene (c. 480 BCE).

Renaissance. Recent books bring a new way of looking at the links between Roman and Greek paintings: the first are sometimes inspired by the second, when they are not copies of Greek famous creations, as the Roman author Pliny the Elder, for example, reported (Natural History, XXXV). Archaeometry and new techniques of photographic analysis (infrared, ultraviolet, etc.) complete iconographic and stylistic studies: analyses and characterization of the pigments and the painting techniques used on Macedonian, Thracian, or Alexandrian monumental tombs, on the Hellenistic paintings collection of Louvre Museum in Paris, on the funerary stele of Demetrias-Volos, revealed the characteristics of this kind of painting (monumental and funerary) and allow some more precise considerations. On the other hand, the discipline has seen a renewal of the studies on the Roman wall painting (like for the Greeks’, Roman portable panels disappeared) of the Pompeii, Herculaneum (Campania), or Farnesina (Rome) villae. Current research starts from the four styles defined by A. Mau in 1899 (Style I, incrustations simulating marble of various colors and types on painted plaster; Style II, architectonic or architectural, artists imitated architectural forms by pictorial means; Style III, ornamental, under Augustus’ reign; Style IV, heterogeneous) to define and specify features that depend on the geographical, historical, political, sociological, and of course architectural contexts. Our knowledge of ancient painting has recently improved not only with these late classical and Hellenistic discoveries, but also with the renewal of the study on protohistoric painting. Cycladic wall paintings were brought to light in the south Aegean islands of Santorini (frescoes of the ancient habitations in Akrotiri-Thera, excavated by S. Marinatos, then by Ch. Doumas (Archaeological Society at Athens, since 1967), Melos (Phylakopi), and Keos (Ayia Irini, University of Cincinnati since

1960); Minoan paintings were discovered in Crete (palace of Knossos, Ayia Triada, villae of Amnisos and Tylissos in the surroundings). All the figurative paintings are neopalatial in date (1700–1450 BCE). The frescoes of Akrotiri-Thera are now exhibited in the Museum of Prehistoric Thera and in the National Museum in Athens, while restoration works are now being conducted on the site. The frescoes of Knossos, discovered by Sir Arthur Evans, are exhibited in the Herakleion Archaeological Museum; copies are on display for tourist purposes on the site. The Minoan frescoes have different sizes: some of them covered the wall in its whole height (e.g., the ‘saffron gatherer’), others were under life size (taureador fresco) or miniature (in this case, the paintings emphasized architectural parts like the doors or windows). Distinction can also be made between the subjects: among the frescoes with human and animal representations, we find bull-leaping and bullcatching compositions, boxing and wrestling scenes, processional scenes; there are also formal patterns or heraldic animals on a large scale (frieze of ‘figureof-eight shields’ or ‘griffins flanking throne’) and, finally, decorated floors (the dolphin fresco, restored by Evans like a mural, probably collapsed from the second story). Mycenaean paintings were discovered in the palaces of Mycenae (H. Schliemann, Greek and English excavators), Tiryns (H. Schliemann and W. Do¨rpfeld), and Pylos (palace of Nestor, paintings first published by M. Lang, 1969), and also in Orchomenos and Thebes; some of the Knossos murals are Mycenaean because they were painted when the Mycenaeans came to Crete c. 1450 BCE. Mycenae and Tiryns are well known by archaeologists and historians. In Pylos, where the frescoes that stood on the walls at the time of their destruction have survived in great number, the present purpose is to restore the paintings trying to reconstruct the

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decorative program from the huge quantities of fragments. The Pylos Regional Archaeological Project (‘‘multi-disciplinary, diachronic archaeological expedition formally organized in 1990 to investigate the history of prehistoric and historic settlement and land use in western Messenia in Greece, in an area centered on the Bronze Age administrative center known as the Palace of Nestor,’’ University of Cincinnati and other contributions) is one of the programs which illustrates the association of researchers in order to improve our knowledge on a place or an area. In this context, chemists, physicists, archaeologists, and art historians work together and produce new results that give another idea of the ancient artifacts, way of life, etc. Ancient recreations of the Mycenaeans paintings of Pylos have been checked, completed, or changed, while new ones have been suggested; some fragments have revealed clearly traces of painting or patterns. Sculpture In this article, we cannot take into consideration all the recent discoveries and improvements in the study of ancient pieces of art. We can only mention the direction taken by art historians who are dealing with Greek sculpture. Marble originals, rare bronze originals (often discovered under the sea), or Romans copies of both continue to impress visitors of antique museums. The reception, the visual perception, and the setting of the statues are nowadays subjects of study, as well as the use of color or gilding on marble sculpture. It is neither the career of one sculptor, nor the stylistic or iconographic studies, which mainly interests the art historians and archaeologists of the twenty-first century: they want to understand Greek sculpture from the quarrying of the block

in the quarry to the workshop of the sculptor, and from there to the place of exhibition (Figure 11). Ceramics The same shift of interest has also happened in the study of Greek ceramics. In the beginning, archaeologists cared only for the beautiful pieces of art of painted vases; more recently, scholars are more preoccupied in defining typologies and in making them more accurate. In a broader sense, the modern approach aims at constituting precise corpora either of forms with accurate dating or in a reappraisal of those painted vases, trying to show evolutions of style and of subjects represented. The study of everyday vases, and particularly amphorae, permitted assessment of some aspects of the organization of ancient daily life. Analyzing the paintings, researchers are trying to account for the messages those images could convey, contributing thus to a better comprehension of the values of those societies and their symbolic meanings. A new approach that sees material culture as an indication of the people’s identities (mainly grouped under the term ethnicity) is perceptible in the study of Greek ceramics, either in the constitution of typologies or in the analysis of representations and symbolic meanings of images. Recent improvements in Greek archaeology are now allowing the reduction of the differences of approach between a more traditional one, based essentially on classics, and a more conceptual one, influenced by an anthropological method developed initially for prehistoric archaeology. Those two approaches have much to gain from each other and Greek archaeology is the perfect field for that encounter, as it is a privileged area, containing extensive

Figure 11 Samos, Greece: the cast of the sculptural group offered by Geneleos (beginning of the sixth century) is set up on the site, while the original pieces are in Samos and Berlin museums.

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written documents as well as very broad material culture that can touch all aspects of past life, from poor people’s daily life to high-level artistic and economic achievements of the elite. See also: Asia, West: Roman Eastern Colonies; Ceramics and Pottery; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Classical Archaeology; Ethnicity; Europe, South: Greek Colonies; Rome; Historical Archaeology: Methods; Landscape Archaeology; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology.

Further Reading de Carbonnie`res P (1995) Olympie: La victoire pour les dieux. Paris: CNRS. Empereur J-Y and Garlan Y (eds.) (1986) Recherches sur les amphores grecques. Athens: Ecole Franc¸aise d’Athe`nes; Paris: De Boccard. Etienne R, Mu¨ller Ch, and Prost Fr (2000) Arche´ologie historique de la Gre`ce antique. Paris: Ellipses. Holtzmann B (2003) L’Acropole d’Athe`nes: Monuments. Cultes et histoire du sanctuaire d’Athe`na Polias. Paris: Picard. Immerwahr S (1990) Aegean Painting in the Bronze Age. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Knigge U (1991) The Athenian Kerameikos. History – Monuments – Excavations. Athens: The German Archaeological Institute in Athens (Krene Editions). Miller SG (2004) Ancient Greek Athletics. New Haven: Yale University Press. Morris I (1992) Death-Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rouveret A (2004) Peintures grecques antiques – La collection helle´nistique du muse´e du Louvre. Paris: Fayard-Muse´e du Louvre. Whitley J (2001) The Archaeology of Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Greek Colonies Gocha R Tsetskhladze, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Archaic period Traditionally dated c. 700–479 BC. Some scholars prefer different dates: starting from c. 800 BC with the appearance of the Greek alphabet; or from c. 750 BC, to coincide with the onset of the Greek renaissance; or identify c. 700–600 BC as the Orientalizing period, when many ideas and features came from the Near East. 479 BC marks the end of the Persian Wars, a significant turning-point in Greek history. A period of significant Greek achievement in pottery, sculpture, architecture, lyric poetry, philosophy, and new forms of political organization (from tyranny to democracy).

Classical period c. 479–323 BC. From the end of the Graeco-Persian Wars to the conquest of the Near East by Alexander the Great and his death. The fifth century marks the development by Athens of her empire, the conflict between Athens and Sparta, resulting in the Second Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), the defeat of Athens and the loss of its empire; culturally a golden age thanks to Pericles; further refinement of democratic government. The fourth century is marked by the fight for dominance between Sparta, Athens, and Thebes. Athens remained the dominant intellectual center (Plato, Aristotle, philosophy, rhetoric, etc.). colonization A form of migration, deliberate in intent. For the Archaic period of ancient Greek history, it dates from c. 750 down to c. 490 BC and describes Greek expansion throughout the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, which took place for a variety of reasons. Colonization continued in the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods. Ancient colonization was different from its ‘modern’ counterpart. Hellenistic period 323–31 BC – from Alexander’s conquest of the Persian empire to the defeat of Cleopatra VII of Egypt by Rome (and her suicide in 30 BC). Under Alexander’s successors, numbers of small kingdoms emerged throughout the Near East from the defeated Achaemenid empire. Greek culture spread beyond the Mediterranean, resulting in the Hellenization of local cultures and the absorption of features of local cultures by the Greeks; Alexandria became the true center of Greek culture. From the late third century BC, Rome gradually conquered the whole Mediterranean world; from c. 200 BC it began to develop a culture of its own, heavily influenced by Greek models. migration Movement of a group of people as a body, usually in large numbers and over large distances. Migrations happen in every period of human history, for many and various reasons, for example, displacement by war, collapse of empires, natural disaster, shortage of food or raw materials, etc. post-and-pise´ construction Vertical wooden framework with rammed earth/clay infilling to make walls.

Major Greek expansion around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, called in academic literature ‘Greek colonization’, dates from the Archaic period (eighth century BC to beginning of the fifth century BC). Migration and colonization feature in every period of Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern history, but Archaic Greek colonization is distinguished from most others by its scale and extent (the only comparisons to be made are with Alexander the Great’s campaign in the Near East and the Hellenistic period, but the nature and character of these are different). Greece itself had witnessed migration even before the Archaic period: the Ionians migrated from mainland Greece (followed by Dorians and Aeolians) in the late eleventh to tenth century BC and settled the islands of the Aegean and on the west coast of Asia Minor, founding 12 cities; earlier still, the Mycenaeans had established their settlements around the Mediterranean. The reasons why Archaic Greek colonization was such an important phenomenon are simple and straightforward. Greeks set up colonies in new environments, establishing themselves in the lands

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stretching from the Iberian Peninsula in the West to North Africa in the South and the Black Sea in the North East (Figure 1). In this colonial world, Greek and local cultures met, influenced, and enriched each other, and together with the spread of the Roman empire and Christianity formed the foundations of modern European culture.

Introduction: General Observations Although the study of Greek colonization, colonies, and overseas settlements has a long history, there are some methodological issues to be addressed, not least the term ‘colonization’. There has been some discussion of the appropriateness of the term to the Ancient Greek context. Was what happened really colonization or just a form of migration? Nowadays, colonization is generally recognized as a modern Anglophone concept, based on imperial activity in the recent past, transported back and forced onto Ancient Greece; the usefulness of applying such terminology to the ancient world is debatable. In reality we are talking about words, and since ‘colonization’ has been in common

currency, it is hard to abandon its use. The fact is that there were Greek settlements outside the Greek mainland. We have few, if any, ancient written sources contemporary with Greek colonization. Our information comes from a whole range of Greek and Latin authors. Herodotus (c. 485–425 BC), Thucydides (c. 460/455– 395 BC), Strabo (c. 64/3 BC–AD 23), Pseudo-Scymnus (c. 138–74 BC), and Eusebius (c. AD 260–339) are our main sources on the establishment and description of colonies. Although in the Odyssey Homer provides us not just with information on geography, trade, and life in the Greek city but with an account of an ideal colonial site, we do not know when Homer lived (the latest suggestion is the mid-seventh century BC). Ancient authors give foundation dates for colonies, for instance Thucydides those for Sicily. But how accurate are these dates when he was writing a few centuries later? The dates given in ancient written sources need to be compared with those obtained from archaeological evidence, especially the earliest Greek pottery found in colonial sites (see Table 1). Even this approach has drawbacks: how extensively

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ET

RU

Gades Maenaca

M

Mesembria Apollonia Rome

Heraclea Chalcedon

Byzantium

Epidamnus

Kyme Pithekoussai

Metapontion Cyzicus

E

Chalcis Eretriaj

Corinth

Phycaea LYDIA Miletus

ACHAEA

A

NI

Megara

lO

Corcyra Himera Naxos Utica I Selinous L Katane Akragas T Carthage Syracuse Gela Kamarina E Hadrumetum D

Amisus

Trapezus

PHRYGIA

Aspendus CIA LI CI

PAM PHY LIA

Al Mina

Rhodes

R

CYPRUS CRETE N

E

A

Tyre

PHO

R A

Phasis

SEA Sinope

IA

Tartessus Hemeroscopium

AN S

Alalia

RIC IS . LEA BA

BLACK

ENIC

Massalia Emporium

SC

N

Barca Cyrene L IBYA

Naucratis Memphis EGYPT

Figure 1 Major Greek colonies in the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Source of illustration: Tsetskhladze GR and De Angelis F (eds.) (1994) The Archaeology of Greek Colonisation. Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology, endpapers.

Greek Colonies 1269 Table 1 Main Greek colonies and settlements in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea (all dates are BC) Settlement

Mother-city/cities

Literary dates for foundation

Earliest archaeological material

Earlier local population

Abdera

1. Clazomenae 2. Teos Miletus Andros Syracuse Gela Aegina Aeolia

1. 654 (Eusebius) 2. c. 545 c. 680–652 (Strabo) 655 (Eusebius) 663 (Thucydides) 580 late 6th c. (Strabo) second half of 7th c.–first half of 6th c. (Herodotus, Ephorus, Ps.-Scymnus, Strabo) shortly after 600 c. 545 before 561 (Ephorus, Strabo) c. 655–625 late 7th c.

second half of 7th c.

No

c. 600–575

?Yes

c. 655–625 c. 600

c. 625–600 c. 600

Yes

c. 600

Yes Yes

Abydus Acanthus Acrae Acragas Adria Aenus

Agathe Alalia Alopeconnesus Ambracia Amisus Anactorium Apollonia in Illyria Apollonia in Libya Apollonia Pontica Argilus Assera Assus Astacus Barca Berezan Bisanthe Black Corcyra Byzantium Callatis Camarina Cardia Casmenae Catane Caulonia Celenderis Cepoi Cerasus Chalcedon Chersonesus Taurica Chersonesus (Thracian) Cius Cleonae Colonae Corcyra

Phocaea Phocaea/Massalia Aeolians Corinth Miletus and ? Phocaea Corinth and Corcyra Corinth and Corcyra Thera

?6th c. second quarter of 7th c. c. 600–575 c. 525–500

Yes Yes

third quarter of 7th c. c. 575–550 Yes

Miletus

c. 610 (Ps.-Scymnus)

late 7th c.

Andros Chalcis Methymna Megara and Athens Cyrene Miletus Samos Cnidus Megara Heraclea Pontica Syracuse

?655 (Eusebius)

mid-7th c.

?7th c. ?711 (Eusebius) c. 560–550 647

6th c.

c. 630

Yes

6th c. 659 (Eusebius) or 668 late 6th c. 601 (Eusebius); shortly before c. 597 (Thucydides) late 7th c.

600–575 650–625 4th c. late 7th c.

No

shortly before c. 642 (Thucydides) 737/6 (Eusebius); c. 728 (Thucydides)

c. 600 second half of 8th c. c. 700

Yes No

mid-6th c.

580–560

?Yes Yes

685 and 679 (Eusebius) 421

525–500

Yes

1. Plutarch 2. 707/6 (Eusebius); same as Syracuse (Strabo)

second half of 8th c.

Yes

7th c. some pre-750 in pre-Hellenic context; first colonial pottery after 725

Miletus and Clazomenae Syracuse Chalcis Croton Samos Miletus Sinope Megara Heraclea Pontica Athens

561–556

Miletus Chalcis Miletus 1. Eretria 2. Corinth

627

Cotyora Croton Cumae (Italy)

Sinope Achaea Chalcis and Eretria

709 (Eusebius) 1050 (Eusebius)

Cydonia

Samos (then Aegina)

c. 520 (Herodotus)

Yes No Yes

Continued

1270 Greek Colonies Table 1 Continued Settlement

Mother-city/cities

Literary dates for foundation

Earliest archaeological material

Earlier local population

Cyrene

Thera

late 7th c.

Yes

Cyzicus

Miletus

Dicaearchia Dioscourias

Samos Miletus

1. 762/1 2. 632/1 (Eusebius) 1. 756/5 2. 676/5 (Eusebius) 531 (Eusebius) c. 550

Yes

Elea Emporion Epidamnus Euhesperides Gale Galepsus Gela

Phocaea Massalia/Phocaea Corcyra Cyrene Chalcis Thasos Rhodes and Crete

early/first third of 6th c. (local inland settlement) first half of 6th c. c. 600–575

Gryneion Helorus Heraclea Minoa Heraclea Pontica Hermonassa Himera

Aeolia Syracuse Selinus

Hipponium Histria Hyria Lampsacus Laus Leontini Leros Leucas Limnae Lipara Locri Epizephyrii Madytus Maronea Massalia Mecyberna Medma Megara Hyblaea Mende Mesembria Metapontum Metaurus Methone Miletopolis Mylae Myrmecium Nagidus Naucratis Naxus (Sicily) Neapolis (Kavalla) Nymphaeum Oasis Polis

Megara and Boeotians Miletus and Mytilene Zancle/Mylae Locri Epizephyrii Miletus Crete Miletus Sybaris Chalcis Miletus Corinth Miletus Cnidus Locris Lesbos Chios Phocaea Chalcis Locri Epizephyrii Megara Eretria Megara, Byzantium, Chalcedon Achaea 1. Zancle 2. Locri Epizephyrii Eretria Miletus Zancle Miletus or Panticapaeum Samos Several Ionian cities Chalcis

c. 540 c. 600 627 (Eusebius) before c. 515

692/1 (Eusebius); shortly before 688 (Thucydides)

before 510

657 (Eusebius) ?7th c. 654 (Eusebius) shortly before 728 (Thucydides)

c. 625 c. 700

Yes

by 500 c. 700 mid-6th c.

No Yes

575–550 c. 625 c. 620 630 6th c.

750–725 7th c.

?Yes

Yes

Yes

mid-7th c. 630 (Eusebius) 679 (Eusebius); temp Messenian war (Aristotle) before c. 650 598 (Eusebius)

728 (Thucydides); before Syracuse (Ephorus) 493 775/4 (Eusebius)

575–550 c. 700

Yes

c. 600 c. 600 third quarter of 8th c.

No

?11th c. c. 500 last quarter of 8th c. 1. 700–650 2. c. 550

Yes

716 (Eusebius)

last quarter of 8th c. 575–550

No

c. 655 (Strabo) 737 (Eusebius); shortly before 733 (Thucydides)

last quarter of 7th c. third quarter of 8th c.

Yes Yes

c. 733 or c. 706

c. 650–625

Thasos Miletus Samos

610–575

554 (Ps.-Scymnus) (Strabo)

650/49 (Eusebius); 648 (Ptolemy, Diodorus)

Yes

580–570 before c. 525

Yes

Greek Colonies 1271 Table 1 Continued Settlement

Mother-city/cities

Literary dates for foundation

Earliest archaeological material

Earlier local population

Odessus Oesyme Olbia Paesus Pandosia Panticapaeum Parium

585–539

c. 560 650–625 575–550

Yes

c. 725–700 590–570

Yes

Parthenope Patraeus Perinthus Phanagoria Phaselis Phasis Pilorus Pithecusa Posidonia Potidaea Priapus Proconnesus Prusias Pyxus Rhegium Rhode Samothrace Sane Sarte Scepsis Scione Selinus

Miletus Thasos Miletus Miletus Achaeans/Elis Miletus Paros, Miletus, Erythrae Cumae/Rhodes Miletus Samos Teos Rhodes Miletus Chalcis Chalcis and Eretria Sybaris Corinth Miletus Miletus ?Miletus Sybaris Chalcis (and Zancle) Rhodes Samos Andros Chalcis Miletus Achaea Megara Hyblaea

675–650 mid 6th c.

?Yes

c. 540

?Yes

c. 550–530

Yes

c. 750–725 c. 600 c. 600

Up to a point No

Selymbria Sermyle Sestus Side Sigeum Singus Sinope

Megara Chalcis Lesbos Cyme Athens Chalcis Miletus

Siris Spina Stagirus Stryme Sybaris Syracuse Tanais Taras Tauchira Temesa Terina Thasos

Colophon Chalcidians Thasos Achaea Corinth ?Miletus Sparta Cyrene ?Croton Croton Paros

Theodosia Tieum Tomis Torone Trapezus Tyras Tyritace Zancle

Miletus Miletus Miletus Chalcis Sinope Miletus Miletus Cumae/Chalcis

647 775/4 (Eusebius) 709 12th c. (Strabo) 550–500 602 (Eusebius) c. 545 ?688

625–585 before c. 690 627 (Eusebius) 8th c. 9th-8th cc. 600–500 655

720s late 7th c. c. 700

Yes

651 (Diodorus Siculus); 650 (Eusebius); 628 (Thucydides) before Byzantium

mid-7th c.

Nearby

7th-6th cc. 620–610 1. pre-757 (Scymnus) 2. 631/0 (Eusebius) c. 680–652 656 (Eusebius) c. 650 720s (Ps.-Scymnus); 710/9 (Eusebius) 735 706 (Eusebius)

1425 (Eusebius); mid-17th c. (Archilocus) 550–500

before c. 650 757/6 (Eusebius) mid-6th c. 8th c.

last third of 7th c. c. 700

720s c. 750–725 c. 625–600 c. 700 c. 630 c. 500 c. 500 c. 650

No Yes

580–570

Yes

early 6th c. late 12th c. second half of 6th c. 575–550 third quarter of 8th c.

Yes

Yes

Yes Yes ?Yes ?Yes No

Adapted from Graham (1982), 160–162, Osborne (1996) 121–125, with additions from Tsetskhladze and De Angelis (1994) passim, and Hansen and Nielson (2004) passim.

1272 Greek Colonies

date and describes a city-state enjoying independent political and social institutions (not least its own constitution), and furnished with an agricultural territory (chora). The term apoikia is generally used for colonies; its literal translation is ‘a settlement far from home, a colony’. Although the term carries no particular political or social meaning, it can include a proto-polis with independent political and social arrangements and a chora. To distinguish another kind of colonial settlement, emporion is used. It is a kind of trading-post or settlement, lacking a chora or any independent social and political structure, established in a foreign land, either as a self-contained site or as part of an existing native urban settlement, sometimes with the permission of local rulers and under their control. The first use of the term emporion was by Herodotus in the fifth century to describe Ionian Naucratis in Egypt (see below). But this term too is artificial: a polis was also a trading center, sometimes with a designated area called, in ancient writings, an emporion. Excavation of so-called emporia demonstrates that these were not just trading stations but also centers of manufacture. In recent times the formulation port-of-trade (introduced for the first time for the ancient world by K. Polanyi in the 1950s–60s) has gained increased favor with

has the site been studied and have the earliest habitation levels been reached? In several cases we know the name of a colony from written sources but have been unable to locate it archaeologically, or unable to investigate it since it lies under a modern city. The first Greek colonies and overseas settlements were small, situated mainly on peninsulas for easier defence. Since the Archaic period the landscape has changed – sea levels have risen, peninsulas have become islands, suffered erosion, been submerged, etc. (Figures 2 and 3). We face pitfalls with the terminology used by ancient authors to describe Greek cities and colonies. It all comes from (and applies to) the Classical period and later. Its application by many modern scholars to the Archaic period complicates more than it clarifies. According to the ideal Classical concept of a polis (city-state), each city should have a grid-plan, fortification walls, a designated area for temples and cult activity (temenos), market-place (agora), gymnasium, theater, etc. Indeed, we can identify these features more or less easily when excavating Classical and Hellenistic sites, but they were not the norm in earlier periods. Even to use the term polis for the Archaic period, either in mainland Greece or in the colonial world, causes problems: the concept belongs to a later

City wall

about 600 B.C. about 560 B.C. about 500 B.C. Supposed coastline in 6th century B.C. Main streets Marshes Craftsmen's district City gate

Carmes Major

?

Pistoles

?

Moulins Bourse Agora ?

Saintlaurent

R OU RB A H

NE ZO

Old Harbor

Figure 2 Plan of Archaic Massalia (now Marseilles, southern France). Initially, colonies were small, as the city walls of about 600 BC clearly demonstrate in this case; with the increase of population, a greater area was enclosed. The coastline has changed since ancient times: the ancient harbor is now dry land. Source: Tsetskhladze GR (ed.) (2006) Greek Colonisation. An Account of Greek Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 363, fig. 3.

Greek Colonies 1273

Figure 3 Topography of Emporion (Spain). The initial settlement was established on a small off-shore island called Palaiapolis (right of plan; now linked to the mainland). Later, the colony was moved to the mainland, called Neapolis (left of plan). Source: Tsetskhladze GR (ed.) (2006) Greek Colonisation. An Account of Greek Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 475, fig. 26.

historians of the ancient economy; for example, Archaic Naucratis is so labeled, although it was more than a trading place – it manufactured pottery and scarabs. Thus, once again, modern conceptions are applied to ancient reality. The reasons for colonization are the most difficult to identify and disentangle. There were particular reasons for the establishment of each colony and it is practically impossible to make watertight generalizations. Many writers adopt a perspective influenced by modern experiences: overpopulation, food shortages, the hunt for raw materials, etc. Ancient written sources seldom mention reasons; where they do, the emphasis is always on forced emigration. The eighth century BC is not the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries AD. In the Archaic period there was little knowledge of distant lands; no trade routes plied regularly by shipping. According to one modern scholar, it was ‘murder’ to establish a colony. The people had no idea where they were going, how many of them would get there, and what they would find when they did. Another practice known from ancient times is of tyrants disposing of (to them) undesirable people by forcing them to migrate. The population of the earliest colonies was small; we have few definite figures, one is of 1000 people at Leucas, 200 at Apollonia in Illyria and the same number at Cyrene. The most obvious of example of forced migration in response to a clear set of circumstances is Ionia in East Greece, a very wealthy region in modern-day western Turkey with Miletus as its main city. From the second half of the seventh century, neighboring Lydia began to expand, gradually absorbing Ionian territory; this was the time that Ionia sent out its first colonies. Greater misfortune

befell it from the middle of the sixth century when the Achaemenid empire began to conquer Ionian territory and then, in the wake of the Ionian revolt in 499–494 BC, laid it to waste. Ancient written sources indicate directly that the Ionian population fled from the Persians – their choice was flight or to remain and be enslaved or killed. Thus, they established between 75 and 90 colonies around the Black Sea and several in the western Mediterranean. Of course, there was a shortage of land and a shortage of food, but this was not from overpopulation, it arose from loss of resources to a conquering foe; and external difficulties provoked internal tension between different political groups, especially in Miletus. One Ionian city, Teos, after sending out colonies to Abdera in Aegean Thrace and Phanagoria in the Black Sea, became so depopulated that Abdera was asked to send people back to refound the mother-city. We have a few inscriptions, such as foundation decrees of the Late Archaic period, which describe the process and formalities of founding a colony; the vast majority of the information comes, however, from Classical and later authors. Some colonies were established by a mother-city (metropolis) as an act of state, others as a private venture organized by an individual or group, in each case choosing an oikistes (leader/founder of the colony), from no particular group or class but in many cases a nobleman. The oikistes then consulted the Delphic Oracle in order to obtain the approval of the gods for his venture: the colony would be a new home for the Greek gods as well as for the settlers. The colonists and those who stayed behind bound themselves by a solemn oath not to harm each other (initially, colonies reproduced the same cults, calendars, dialects, scripts, state

1274 Greek Colonies

offices, and social and political divisions as in their mother-cities). The oikistes was a very important man. According to sources of the Classical period, it was he who named the new city, as well as selecting its precise site when the party arrived at its destination; he supervised the building of the city walls, dwellings and temples, and the division of land. The death of the oikistes may be seen as the end of the foundation process: he became a hero and his tomb was worshipped with rituals and offerings. It was a widely held opinion, based mainly on the information of Classical authors, that only males set off to colonize; and that Greek men took local women. Of course, intermarriage was practiced and many ventures may have been entirely male, but we know that women (priestesses) accompanied men in the foundation of Thasos and Massalia. It is also possible that women followed their men to a colony once it had been established. In any case, we have no evidence from the Archaic sources to be certain one way or another. The relationship between the colonists and the native inhabitants was very important. Again, there is no single model. Unfortunately, in modern scholarship, ‘political correctness’ has cast a shadow. The word ‘barbarian’ has fallen from favor because of its modern connotations; we forget how the Archaic Greeks used it – onomatopeically for the sound of local languages to their ears. Thus, ‘barbarian’ had no cultural connotations; it meant simply someone who did not speak Greek. Modern academics have even set up an artificial dichotomy of ‘Greeks’ and ‘Others’. Scholars are increasingly applying modern definitions and standards of ethnicity and race to the Archaic colonial world (even the concept of ‘Greekness’ itself belongs to the Classical period, not earlier). Step by step the attitude is fading (and rightly so) that Greeks ‘civilized’ the local peoples with whom they came into contact. All relationships are a twoway process: so, just as locals were influenced by Greeks, Greek colonies adopted and adapted local practices. Now we know that native people played an important role in the foundation and laying out of Megara Hyblaea. In Metapontum some of the first colonists used the simple construction methods of the local population – dwelling-houses were dug partly into the ground; while in the building of the temple in the chora of Sybaris, posts and pise´ were used, a technique alien to mainland Greece. These are just a few of many examples. In many cases, Greeks and locals lived alongside each other in a Greek settlement, whether in the western Mediterranean or the eastern Black Sea. Nowadays, there is increased archaeological evidence of Greeks living alongside

locals in native settlements far inland: one case in the Scythian lands some 300 miles/500 km from the shore, but also in the deep hinterland of Massalia in the south of France. Many colonies were established in territory either occupied by a local population or close by (see Table 1). Frequently, land for settlement by colonists was given by local rulers. The relationship between the newcomers and the locals was often pacific, to their mutual benefit. Greek craftsmen were employed by local rulers; for example, in the Iberian Peninsula and the Black Sea to produce prestige objects, and even, as is the case in Etruria, to paint tombs, or build fortifications, as in Gaul, or public buildings, as in Iberia (near the colony of Emporion). This was characteristic mainly of Ionian colonization. Elsewhere, things could be less peaceful. In Syracuse, for instance, the local Cyllyrii were serfs, and at Heraclea Pontica on the southern Black Sea, half the local Maryandini were killed and the rest enslaved. This was typical of Dorian colonization. Recent scholarship has started to re-examine the nature and mechanisms of trade relations between locals and colonists – less a matter of commerce, as we understand it now, more of formalized gift-giving and exchange. What we know about the locals and their culture is mainly the way of life of their elites; and the tastes and behavior of nobles were practically the same in every area, whether of the Mediterranean or the Black Sea (see Europe, South: Greece; Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant).

Greek Colonies and Settlements in the Mediterranean and Black Sea Greek colonization, which started in c. 750 BC, produced about 230 colonies and settlements. Several were the result of secondary colonization – colonies established by other colonies; fewer than half have been studied archaeologically. The main colonizers in the Archaic period were Chalcis, Corinth, Eretria, Megara, Miletus, and Phocaea. In one short survey, it is impossible to paint a comprehensive picture. This article concentrates on major areas of activity and their principal colonies (for more information see Table 1). A frequently asked question is who were the first colonizers – the Greeks or the Phoenicians? It is very difficult to answer with any certainty. The Phoenicians were forced to flee their homeland in the Levant by the expansion of the Assyrian empire. But it seems that the main aim of Phoenician migration was commercial. In the eighth century BC Greeks were moving into the relatively close territories of central

Greek Colonies 1275

and southern Italy, while the Phoenicians established small settlements in Sardinia and further to the west and south. The Greek settlements were designed for permanence; those of the Phoenicians disappeared over time, probably absorbed by the locals. Currently, we are re-evaluating our knowledge of the Phoenicians and their expansion on account of a new absolute chronology for the Mediterranean Iron Age based on radiocarbon and other scientific dating. It seems that Phoenician expansion started nearly a hundred years earlier than had been thought. Down to the fifth century BC, Greek culture was heavily influenced by ideas from the Near East. There are Near Eastern objects in Greece; we also know of migrant (especially Syrian) craftsmen settling in mainland Greece. Lefkandi in Euboea received a large quantity of Eastern and Egyptian objects. This is of particular significance – the earliest colonizers were Euboean, and it is unsurprising that they should look to the Near East as their first destination. Which brings us to Al Mina, in northern Syria at the mouth of the Orontes River, the ‘Greeks’ gateway to the Near East’. The site was excavated by Sir Leonard Woolley before World War II, since when its interpretation has provoked heated debate which still continues. The architectural remains, where they exist, are poorly preserved – construction was of mud-brick – but the site’s importance lies in the large quantity of Greek pottery it has yielded: from first occupation down to about 700 BC the vast majority of it Euboean, some probably from Samos, very little Corinthian, and some made by Greeks in Cyprus or Syria. From about 700 BC onward, the remains of Greek pottery and non-Greek local wares (Syrian and Cypriotshape) are roughly equal. It is very difficult, based on pottery alone, to say whether the settlement was the first Greek emporion/port-of-trade, a distribution center for Greek pottery to the Near East, or a Euboean quarter within a local settlement, and who was transporting these pots. But since the Euboeans and the Levantines already knew each other, it is most probable that some Euboeans were living in a local settlement controlled by a local ruler. Euboean pottery has been found at various Near Eastern sites. It surely came via Al Mina. We know of Greek mercenary sites at Mezaz Hashavyahu and Tell Kabri. The Euboeans were also pioneers in the western Mediterranean where, in the mid-eighth century BC, they established the emporion Pithecusa on an island in the Bay of Naples (modern Ischia). Excavation has produced abundant evidence of early metallurgical production. A Levantine (Syrian) presence is also

recorded, as is that of mainly Euboean but some Corinthian potters. The site is famous for the discovery of a North Ionian cup with an inscription of the Nestor poem (Figure 4). Pithecusa declined in importance from the end of the eighth century following the foundation of Euboean Cumae on the nearby Campanian mainland. South Italy and Sicily were well-stocked with colonies. In the former, Sybaris was established by Achaeans in c. 720 BC. It had good farmland for producing grain and wine. Another Achaean foundation was Croton (in about 710 BC), also with good farmland; the temple of Hera Lacinia stands in the Archaic city. Metapontum, also Achaean, had an excellent harbor and agricultural territory (the pattern of land division has survived very well); there were many temples in the city, including one to Apollo. Poseidonia (Paestrum), again Achaean, has yielded fortification walls, temples dedicated to Hera, Ceres, and Athena, and had close links with the Etruscans (Figure 5). Tarentum, Siris, and Locri were Spartan foundations. The colonies soon became large and wealthy, and then began to establish their own colonies: Locri, for example, founded Medma, Hipponium, and Metaurus. In Sicily, Syracuse, established by the Corinthians in 734 BC, was the richest Greek colony. It possessed a fine harbor and temples to Athena, Zeus, and Apollo; one Ionic temple was unfinished. Naxus, a Chalcidian foundation of 734 BC, was built on a local settlement from which the native inhabitants had been displaced. Leontini (established 728 BC), also Chalcidian, was also established on a local site from which the native Sicels were expelled; it had fortification walls. Soon afterwards, the Chalcidians founded Catane. Rhegium was a joint foundation of Chalcidians from Zancle and Messenians from the Peloponnese, while Zancle itself (later Messina) had been founded soon after Naxus by Cumae in southern Italy. Megara Hyblaea was a Megarian colony; it exhibits regular planning, excavation has unearthed the earliest houses, temples, the agora, etc. Gela, a Dorian foundation of 688 BC in which Rhodians and Cretans participated, displaced a local settlement; we know of temples to Athena and Demeter. In the seventh century BC these colonies expanded by establishing their own: Syracuse founded Helorus, Acrae, Casmenae and Camarina; Megara Hyblaea, Selinus; Zancle, Himera; and Gela, Acragas. Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily soon outgrew their mother-cities in wealth and display. For this reason Sicily became known as Magna Graecia. Syracuse by repute was the largest and most beautiful of all Greek cities. In the fifth century, Acragas had a population of 80 000; Sybaris between 100 000

1276 Greek Colonies

Figure 4 Nestor’s Cup, Pithecusa. Late eighth century BC. One of the earliest examples of Greek writing. This cup is inscribed with lines known from Homer. The inscription translates as: ‘Nestor had a most drink-worthy cup, but whoever drinks of mine will straight away be smitten with desire of fair-crowned Aphrodite.’ Source: Tsetskhladze GR (ed.) (2006) Greek Colonisation. An Account of Greek Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 228, fig. 13.

A PAESTUM PIANTA GENERALE

Porta NORD cd. "AUREA"

Ex S

50 0 N 100 m

8 S. 1 Museo

R

A

Santuarlo dl ATHENA

A

G

O

Area sacra

FORD

D

B Porta EST cd. "della SIRENA"

Porta OVEST cd. "MARINA"

Santuarlo dl HERA

C Porta SUD cd. "della GIUSTIZIA"

Figure 5 Plan of Poseidonia (Paestrum) (Italy). Step by step, Greek colonies developed regular planning, a designated area for trade (agora), a sacred place where the main temples were erected (temenos), etc. Source: Tsetskhladze GR (ed.) (2006) Greek Colonisation. An Account of Greek Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 186, fig. 7.

Greek Colonies 1277

and 300 000, and filled a circuit of about 10 km (6 miles); the area of Tarentum exceeded 7000 km2 (2750 square miles). Even the earliest inscription in the Greek alphabet, scratched on a local vase, was discovered in Italy (near Gabii); it dates to c. 770 BC. In North Africa the fertile land of the Cyrenaican seaboard and plateau was probably what attracted the Greeks. In c. 632 BC Dorian colonists from the island of Thera established Cyrene. Initially, they settled on

0

5 cm

0

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Figure 6 Architectural ornaments from temple, Emporion (Spain). Left: antefixes (carved ornaments hiding joints between tiles in roof eaves); right: acroterion (pinnacle). Both made of terracotta (baked clay). Source: Tsetskhladze GR (ed.) (2006) Greek Colonisation. An Account of Greek Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 478, fig. 27.

the small offshore island of Platea. After a few years, the native Libyans persuaded them to move to a better site, Cyrene. The colonists took local wives. Cyrene prospered and in the sixth century invited new settlers from the Peloponnese and the Dorian islands; as a result, the new colony of Barca was established. This expansion alarmed the natives who, in 570 BC, sought Egyptian help against the Greeks. From c. 515 BC Cyrene formed part of the Persian empire, but it continued to prosper. The city had grand public buildings, temples to Apollo, Zeus, and Demeter. There were other Greek cities in Libya – Apollonia (established by Thera), and Euhesperides and Tauchira (both colonies of Cyrene itself). In Egypt the pharaohs employed Ionians and Carians as mercenaries from the early seventh century BC. In c. 650 BC Chios, Teos, Phocaea, Clazomenae, Rhodes, Cnidus, Halicarnassus, Phaselis, Mytilene, Aegina, Samos, and Miletus established an emporion Naucratis on the Nile Delta. The settlement was under strict Egyptian control which forbade intermarriage between Greeks and locals. Many of the states established a joint sanctuary (Hellenion), with separate temples for Aegina, Samos, and Miletus. This was not just a trading station but a production center for pottery, votives, and faience scarab seals. Greek colonists opened up the Adriatic coast, the lands of local Illyrians, in the last quarter of the eighth century BC. The chief attraction of the area was probably its silver mines. Corcyra (Corfu), settled first by Eretrians and then, in 733 BC, by Corinthians, had two temples of Artemis and one of Dionysus. Relations between the colony and its mother-city of Corinth were tense and in the seventh century there was a battle between them. In about 627 BC, Corcyra and Corinth established Epidamnus, of which little is known archaeologically; shortly afterwards Corinth founded Apollonia, a wealthy colony.

Figure 7 Reconstruction of local Iberian funerary sculpture (Spain). Greek influence becomes increasingly visible in the material culture of the local population. Source: Tsetskhladze GR (ed.) (2006) Greek Colonisation. An Account of Greek Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 460, fig. 18.

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Figure 8 Iberian sculptures (Spain), early fifth century BC. Some Greek features appeared in local sculpture. Source: Tsetskhladze GR (ed.) (2006) Greek Colonisation. An Account of Greek Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 461, fig. 19.

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Figure 9 Archaic subterranean dwellings from Olbia (Black Sea). Plans and reconstructions. The earliest colonists lived in simple dwellings. Source: Tsetskhladze GR (2003) Greeks beyond the Bosporus. In: Karageorghis V (ed.) The Greeks beyond the Aegean: From Marseilles to Bactria. New York: Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA), 138, fig. 3.

For the colonies of the northern shore of the Aegean, the main sources are literary; there is little archaeological evidence, especially for the Archaic period. The chief colonizers were the Chalcidians, whose main colony here was Torone, and the Eretrians, who founded Mende, Scione, and Methone. Corinth founded Potidaea in c. 600 BC. The Parians, who occupied the island of Thasos in the 680s, established several cities on the mainland opposite, including Neapolis (Kavalla) and Oesyme in

Thracian lands whose foundation occasioned conflict with the native Thracians. The Chians established Maronea and the Aeolians Aenus. Abdera, a wealthy colony situated in Aegean Thrace, was founded twice: the first time by Clazomenians in the second half of the seventh century BC; the second time by Teans in c. 545. Both were Ionian. Another Ionian colony, Massalia in the south of France, was established by Phocaea in c. 600 BC (Figure 2). Ancient tradition, not contemporary with

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the event, speaks of the welcome the colonists received from the native ruler and their commitment to intermarry with native women. The earliest dwellings were one-room constructions of mud-brick on stone foundations. For a long time Massalia lacked a chora, thanks to the proximity of local settlements to the city walls and the unsuitability of the local terrain for grain cultivation. Thus, for economic survival, Massalia needed to establish very close links with the Gauls and other local peoples – as it did with the Etruscans. Gradually, it established subcolonies or settlements in the near hinterland. Another Phocaean foundation, established at the same time as Massalia, was Emporion in Spain, home to a local Tartessian kingdom and several Phoenician settlements. Initially, it was a small settlement on an island; in c. 575 BC it moved to the adjacent mainland, an area populated by locals who came to form part of the Greek city (Figures 3 and 6). Because of the marshy surroundings, Emporion had very little chora, at least until the fifth to fourth centuries. Thus, like Massalia, it developed close relations with local peoples (Iberians) from the outset in order to ensure its prosperity (Figures 7 and 8). We know nothing archaeologically about Rhode, the other Greek colony in Spain. Ionian colonies in Italy were few. In Etruria Ionians established their quarter in Gravisca (the harbour of Tarquinia) in about 600 BC. This was not just a center for trade between Greeks and Etruscans; it was a production center as well, including a gem workshop established in the late sixth century. Elea was entirely Greek and we have no evidence to suggest that locals formed any part of it. Initially, it enjoyed friendly relations with local chiefs; however, in about 520 BC it had to erect fortification walls. Alalia, established by Phocaea in about 565 BC, was surrounded by local people too, but we know little about relations with them. The main area of Ionian colonization was the Black Sea, known to Greeks initially as ‘inhospitable’. The Hellespont and Propontis, where such colonies as Thracian Chersonesus (by Athens in 561–556 BC), Cyzicus (by Miletus in 756 and then again in 676 BC), Perinthus (by Samos in 602 BC), Chalcedon (by Megara in 685 or 679 BC), and Byzantium (in 668 or 659 BC) were established, provided the gateway to the Black Sea. Miletus was the principal colonizer of the Black Sea, founding its first colonies here in the last third/end of the seventh century – Histria, the settlement on Berezan (ancient Borysthenites), Sinope, Apollonia Pontica, and Amisus. The sixth century BC saw a major wave of colonization. Several dozen cities and settlements were established – Panticapaeum, Olbia (Figures 9 and 10), Cepoi, Patraeus, Odessus, Phanagoria, Gorgippia, Phasis, Gyenos, Dioscurias, and many others. Heraclea Pontica was

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Figure 10 Olbia (Black Sea). Plan and reconstruction of the agora and temenos. The physical appearance of colonies changed gradually, especially from the Classical period (cf. Figure 9). Source: Tsetskhladze GR (2003) Greeks beyond the Bosporus. In: Karageorghis V (ed.) The Greeks beyond the Aegean: From Marseilles to Bactria. New York: Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA), 143, fig. 7.

founded in 554 BC by Megarians and Boeotians; Hermonassa was a joint colony of Miletus and Mytilene. The Black Sea littoral was heavily populated by locals, chief among them the Thracians, Getae, Scythians, Colchians, Mariandynoi, Chalybes, and Macrones. Several of these were hostile to the Greeks from the outset: for example, in the large area between Heraclea Pontica and Byzantium, there were no Greek colonies or settlements despite the fertile land and excellent harbors, apparently ideal for the establishment of colonies, because, as ancient Greek written sources tell us, this was a region inhabited by hostile locals.

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Conclusion The establishment of Greek colonies around the Mediterranean and Black Seas in the Archaic period took place at a time and in a context of exploration, the acquisition of new geographical and technical knowledge, and the mutual entriching of each other’s cultures (Figures 7 and 8). It was not just expansion and colonization as we understand it from a modern point of view. It was dictated by internal and external considerations. Thanks to colonization boundaries, both physical and intellectual were pushed, so that, as Plato remarked, the world extended from the Pillars of Hercules to the River Phasis (modern-day Rioni in Georgia), that is from the western tip of the Mediterranean to the eastern edge of the Black Sea. Thus, even at a cursory glance, it can be seen that Greek colonization owned no single reason, followed no particular model and responded in a variety of ways to the varied local circumstances it confronted. See also: Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Classical Archaeology; Europe, South: Greece.

Further Reading Boardman J (1999) The Greeks Overseas. Their Early Colonies and Trade, 4th edn. London: Thames and Hudson. Descoeudres J-P (ed.) (1990) Greek Colonies and Native Populations Proceedings of the First Australian Congress of Classical Archaeology, Held In Honour of Emeritus Professor A. D. Trendall, Sydney 9–14 July 1985. Canberra and Oxford: Humanities Research Centre and Clarendon Press. Graham AJ (1982) The colonial expansion of Greece. In: Boardman J and Hammond NGL (eds.) The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. III, pt 3, 2nd edn., pp. 83–162. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Graham AJ (1983) Colony and Mother City in Ancient Greece, 2nd edn. Chicago: Ares. Hansen MH and Nielsen TH (eds.) (2004) An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis. An Investigation Conducted by The Copenhagen Polis Centre for the Danish National Research Foundation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Malkin I (1987) Religion and Colonisation in Ancient Greece. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Malkin I (ed.) (2001) Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Osborne R (1996) Greece in the Making, 1200–479 BC. London: Routledge. Tsetskhladze GR (2003) Greeks beyond the Bosporus. In: Karageorghis V (ed.) The Greeks beyond the Aegean: From Marseilles to Bactria. New York: Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA). Tsetskhladze GR (ed.) (2006) Greek Colonisation. An Account of Greek Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill. Tsetskhladze GR and De Angelis F (eds.) (1994) The Archaeology of Greek Colonisation. Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology.

Medieval and Post-Medieval John Bintliff, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Al-Andalus From the eighth to tenth centuries AD, almost all of Spain and Portugal fell to Islamic armies and became known as Al-Andalus. The origin of this term is disputed but could be a corruption of the Gothic term for division of conquered land into allotments. Today the modern province of Andalucia covers only the southernmost part of Spain, but includes the last kingdom to fall to the Christian armies in the 15th century AD, that of Granada. Byzantine Roman is a cultural and chronological term which is used for the Roman Republic and later Empire up till the fourth century AD, when Rome is replaced by Constantinople as imperial capital. The subsequent period is often called Late Roman in the East (fifth to seventh centuries AD) after which Byzantine civilization begins in full. Confusingly, some scholars term these Late Roman centuries Early Byzantine. Byzantine civilization lasts till the fall of Constantiople in 1453 AD. Byzantium–Constantinople–Istanbul A Greek colony, Byzantium, was renamed after the Emperor Constantine the Great, when he relocated the capital of the Roman Empire Rome to this city in AD 330. After the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453, it was again renamed, to Istanbul (a corruption of the Greek expression ‘to the City’). capitalism Developing in late medieval Italy, this new form of financial and commercial activity concentrates on monitoring and manipulating capital, including credit notes, to create new forms of economic stimulus and wealth creation. Global spread of this form of economics has been one of the key historical processes between the fourteenth and twenty-first century AD. feudal Technically, in the medieval period in Western Europe, a lesser and major elite of warriors was maintained by being granted rights over the products of peasant villages and lands, on the basis that they would fight for their superior lords (the highest in the feudal pyramid being kings, dukes, and the Pope). In the Byzantine and also Early Ottoman Empires a similar system of support operated, and a strictly feudal system was spread through Greece and the Crusader states of the Near East through Crusader colonies in the eleventh to fifteenth centuries AD. incastellamento A term employed in Italian medieval archaeology to describe the fortification of villages, with or without an elite fortress or tower associated, from the Dark Ages into the early high medieval era (c. AD 600–1000). Both protection from marauding barbarians and also control by the lord of the village can be the reason for this widespread phenomenon in the countryside. Little Ice Age Between the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries AD, there is scientific and archive evidence to suggest a global climatic cooling phase, which in Europe may have been associated with unstable, wet weather and crop failures. maiolica When this kind of glazed ware was imported from Islamic and Christian Spain into Italy and Islamic North Africa, one route took it through the Balearic Islands such as Majorca and Menorca, hence the name. The key feature is the coating of the clay of the pot with an opaque tin glaze, which creates a

1298 EUROPE, WEST/Rome Guichard P (2000) De la Conqueˆte Arabe a‘ la Reconqueˆte: Grandeur et Fragilite´ D’al-Andalus. Granada: Fundacio´n El Legado Andalusi Granada. Jardine L (1996) Worldly Goods. A New History of the Renaissance. London: Macmillan. Papanikola-Bakirtizi D (ed.) (2002) Everyday Life in Byzantium. Athens: Ministry of Culture. Pollak MD (1991) Turin 1564–1680. Urban Design, Military Culture, and the Creation of the Absolutist Capital. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sabelberg E (1983) The persistence of palazzi and intra-urban structures in Tuscany and Sicily. Journal of Historical Geography 9: 247–264. Sigalos E (2004) Housing in Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece. Oxford: Tempus Reparatum.

plebeians were Roman citizens who were not patricians: rich and poor, progressively organized as a political force seeking to obtain almost the same rights as the patricians. pom(o)erium Area defining the spatial, religious, and legal limits of the city, inside the pomerial line, drawn by a founding furrow. Tombs and army were normally not accepted in it. templum Inaugurated space, usually squared, from where each public decision must be taken. The temple building was a templum consecrated to a god: it was normally divided into a cella (where the cult statue was stored), a vestibule and a colonnade, above a high podium with stairs; the sacrifices were fulfilled on an altar in front of the temple.

Introduction: A Question of Urban Archaeology Some Specificities of Rome

Rome Emmanuelle Rosso, Colle`ge de France, Paris, France Ste´phanie Wyler, Ecole franc¸aise de Rome, Rome, Italy ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary apotheosis Divinization of a Roman emperor. auspicium (‘‘look at the birds’’) Religious procedure consisting in examining the signs given by birds, in order to question the divine agreement before each public decision. First step of the augural science, which approves the inauguration of a templum. euocatio Religious procedure consisting of an invitation to the main god of the enemy to join the Roman side before a decisive battle; in return for the victory, a temple to the new Roman divinity is vowed (e.g., Consus from Tarent on the Aventine (272), Vertumnus from Volsinii (264), Minerva from Falerii (241), etc). evergetism Social practice consisting, for a rich private citizen, in paying, theoretically voluntarily, for the development, the maintenance and the improvement of his city. In return for his expenses, he received honor, public gratitude, and the popularity necessary for being elected to the highest public offices. forum Central place for public and private business. Originally a market place (moved to the forum boarium, holitorium, and piscarium, for the trade of livestock, vegetable and fish), the forum Romanum was the first forum of Rome, symbol of the Republic, but in use throughout the history of Rome. The five imperial forums were new places built directly to the north of the forum Romanum for propaganda of the Emperors (Cesar, Augustus, Vespasian, Nerva, Trajan). horreum Monumental and usually multistoried structure designed for the storage of goods (especially grain). The port on the Tiber River in Rome comprised huge horrea like the horrea Galbana. imperial ustrina On the Campus Martius, the place where the funerary pyres of Roman emperors were erected. patricians/plebeians The patricians were hereditary aristocrats coming from the first consuls of the Republic, holding the exclusive power until the middle of the fifth century BC. The

The archaeology of Rome is a paradigm for urban archaeology, with all the specificities that this peculiar situation involves. As a matter of fact, the city has continuously been settled from the proto-historic period and cyclically prominent on the Italian and Mediterranean scales. The evolution of the urbs, ‘the City’, as the ancient Romans used to call themselves, has been complicated by its status of capital of the Empire, to which Rome has given its own name, and by its history: the knowledge of ancient Rome has become a major issue at stake in the legitimacy of power, enhanced by the rule of the Christian Church and by the final choice to turn the city into the capital of united Italy at the end of the nineteenth century. Thus, ancient Rome has constantly been considered as a pattern for other periods, should it be the Renaissance or Mussolini’s time, highlighting in turn the glorious remains of the lost power or, on the contrary, re-using the antique wealth, in order to compete with it. As a matter of fact, the surface intra muros (century 40 000 m2.) and the population of Rome at the first century BC (c. 1 million inhabitants) have never been reached again before the twentieth century. Each and every period would deserve to be taken into consideration. Further, study of any one of them (e.g., Rome throughout pagan Antiquity – the subject of the present article), necessarily needs an intellectual reconstruction: the remaining untouched evidences are intricately linked to their reused corollaries, on occasion re-employed or functionalized for other purposes (e.g., a pagan temple turned into a Christian church, a sarcophagus into a fountain etc) (Figure 1). Besides, the increase of the city’s level, of c. 20 m at the most from the sixth century BC to nowadays, gives an idea of the stratigraphic complexity in the different areas: some of the hugest public buildings have been used as foundations for medieval and Renaissance constructions, and partly remain in the

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Figure 1 An example of reuse: the mausoleum of Hadrian turned into the fortified Castel Sant’Angelo.

cellars of houses (such as the theatre of Pompey or of the stadium of Domitian, under the Piazza Navona). Moreover, the different areas of the city have not evolved the same way, some monuments having been completely destroyed, others reused, removed, preserved, or even rebuilt – for practical as much as ideological reasons. Rome throughout History

Urban archaeology applied to the case of Rome raises different methodological issues: besides the scattering of material evidences, for the above-mentioned urban purposes, but also with the growing taste for collections of ‘antiquities’ as early as the Renaissance, it is often tricky to categorize most of the monuments, considering their use even during Antiquity. As a matter of fact, ancient Romans themselves liked to gather works of art in public or private collections, and, on occasion of restorations due to obsolescence or fire, to transform, adapt, modernize, or personalize all kinds of monument, always used as ideological symbols – in a culture in which the limits between public and private spheres were definitely different from ours. In that context, one specific monument should be studied in consideration of its foundation, but also its different phases of monumentalization, throughout Antiquity and beyond. It ensues from this that a chronological overview is as problematic as a topographical one. Here we have been chosen to organize the presentation of the main archaeological remains of Rome, unlike most of the archaeological guides, in four chronological phases: the time of the ‘foundation’, the Republic, the Augustan period, and the Empire, subdivided into thematic focuses. This intends to underline the specificity for

each period of a long history, from the eighth-century BC to the fourth-century AD, and to emphasize the situation of archaeology in the historical research. Multidisciplinary Evidences: Imaging the City

It implies that each chronological panorama is an intellectual reconstruction, based not only on the archaeological remains ideally replaced in their contexts of uses, but also, on a variety of literary, epigraphic and iconographic evidences. This feature is another specificity of Rome: on the one hand, there is a rather important number of preserved monuments, and on the other hand, we know through written documents the name, the function, the history, and the approximate localization of most of the ancient buildings – so that the research field is immense, and the temptation to associate the one to the other great. This is also methodologically dangerous, when the coincidence cannot be rigorously demonstrated. Most of the time, archaeological reality is much more ‘normal’ than the textual one, which is inclined to highlight the exceptions, for artistic, ideological, or sociologic reasons. Consequently, present scholars intend to connect the lacunary elements in time and space, thanks to a multidiciplinary approach in order to base building identifications upon more precise archaeological information. Systems of computer modeling and virtual reconstructions have recently permitted to provide impressive three-dimensional graphical, digital, and interactive restitutions of the buildings. In the end, ongoing studies tend to focus on private constructions, while a new field of research looks at ‘non-noble’ or ‘non-e´lite’ constructions like suburban habitations, shops, or basic infrastructures of the city, such as water supply, which clearly demonstrate that Ancient

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Rome was not exclusively a ‘city of temples and squares, emperors, horses and houses’. Main Steps of Roman excavations

The heterogeneity of evidences to be connected to archaeological findings is one part of the puzzle of Rome; another concerns the modern attitude toward the antique remains. As a matter of fact, for the reasons mentioned above, a search for the past has always existed – unlike most of ancient cities, such as Athens: the quest whether it should be linked to the cult of the first Christian saints and the trade of martyr’s relics, or to the fascination for the politic and artistic antiquity at the Renaissance, has destroyed and isolated from their context a number of monuments. Paradoxically, the most important damages have been done when the interest for antiquity was at the highest point: in the sixteenth century, the area of the forum and the Palatine Hill, rather well preserved because of its abandonment into pasture and aristocratic gardens, was systematically excavated and properly looted from the sculptures and precious materials, essentially marbles, that were found; this can be partially reconstructed, thanks to drawings of contemporaneous artists and architects, such as Pirro Ligorio, but no scientific documentation was carried out at the time. The same process of discovering (led by philological interests above all), imitation and, in the end, spoilation, can be observed at the Neronian domus aurea, at the origin of the taste for the grotesques, and the villa Hadriana at Tivoli, in the Roman suburb. The destruction of archaeological levels and the removal of antiquities was stemmed when archaeology was to become a scientific discipline, thanks to Winckelmann’s conceptions on Art History, in the nineteenth century at the same time, archaeological remains became the stake of a competition between the Vatican, the aristocratic Roman families, the foreign states (particularly Germany and France) and the new Italian state. After 1870, most of the archaeological areas, defined as such, were bought by the state, scientifically excavated by archaeologists such as Ranucio Lanciani or Giacomo Boni, highlighted and exhibited to the public. But this does not imply that they were absolutely preserved, faced with the big works of the new capital, or, in the 1930s, of the Mussolinian State, whose leaders intended to inscribe themselves in the continuation of their famous predecessors, with the construction of the monument to Vittorio Emmanuele II between the Capitol and the forum, or the via dei fori imperiali (‘street of the imperial forums’), leading across the different forums – and destroying part of them.

From the revival of the excavations after World War II up to nowadays, with the digging of the third line of the metropolitan underground line, started in 2006, the scientific scopes of archaeology are better defined, controlled, and distributed by the Soprintendenza to the different partners – Italian and foreign, public and academic. But this still implies necessary choices, depending on the patrimonial strategies, in excavating, preserving, presenting, and emphasizing the archaeological findings. Since excavations are a destructive method, to reach one peculiar historical level means to destroy the levels above, even if they are more impressive. Even if modern methods intend to document them with the best accuracy, objectivity, and exhaustiveness, the ongoing attitude tends to preserve most of the construction, and to work on very limited surveys, or to benefit from public works that drill the underground of Rome. So that we know definitely better the archaeology of the latest antique periods than the earliest; but the quest for the entire Roman past is still in constant progress, thanks to the evolution of modern archaeology.

The Beginnings of Rome: The Formation of the City The Question of the ‘Origins’

The question of the ‘origins’ of Rome is a methodological textbook case of the status still nowadays conferred to archaeology in the historical research. As a matter of fact, the ideological background at stake is a major issue. Roughly, the question is to understand how Rome became the ruler of its huge Empire, including Greece: was its destiny written as soon as it was founded? Why Rome, and not another Latial or Etruscan city? This question has been asked by the ancient historians themselves, including the Greek Polybius (e.g., 1.1.5) in the mid-second century BC and the Roman Livy, who wrote, at the time of Augustan ‘restoration’, a year-by-year history of Rome ab urbe condita, ‘since the foundation of the city’. This ideological justification of the power of the city has been regularly updated, from the pontifical states, at the head of the Kingdom of Rome up to the fascist state, which pretended to restore the ancient Empire. This weighty historiography is even complicated by the relative scarcity, and above all the disparity, of the evidence concerning the beginnings of Rome. In that matter, archaeology is, with epigraphy, the only ‘primary’ discipline, whereas the others – ancient literature, historical annals, myths, and religious practices – offer a very rich tradition, much more emphasized than any other foundation story of the

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Mediterranean area: one of the most relevant features is that the birth of Rome has not been attributed to a divine, but to a human willingness, and then immediately conceived as a politic phenomenon, confusing ancient history and earthly mythology. Yet, do the archaeological discoveries confirm or infirm the literary tradition, mostly conveyed by authors writing at the end of the first century BC (mainly the antiquarian Varro, the historian Livy, and the politician Cicero)? As such, the question seems easy to answer; in fact, the debate between hypercriticism – the quasicomplete rejection of the traditional sources, considering them as late reconstructions which cannot afford a piece of evidence – and fideism – which sees every new discovery as a proof of the reliability of ancient tradition – is far from being closed, even with the most recent and spectacular excavations of the slopes of the Palatine Hill. Tradition Confronted to Archaeology

According to the literary tradition, Rome was founded by Romulus in 754/3 BC. He and his twin-brother Remus had been rescued and fed by a she-wolf, and then by a shepherd, who found them on the river Tiber’s bank, on the future site of Rome. Once grown up, Romulus founded the Roma quadrata, ‘the squared Rome’ on the Palatine Hill, surrounded by a wall, correlated with the first pomerium, the ritual boundary of the city; he was proclaimed king after having killed Remus, who pretended to share the power. It was the beginning of the royal period, which lasted through the reigns of (mythically) seven kings, up to 509: the last three of them, the Etruscans Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius, and Tarquinius Superbus, testimonies of the Etruscan rule of Rome from the end of the seventh century, are to be connected with a phase of (re)organization of the people and of the city. Disgusted by the excess of the monarchy, Romans were induced to revolt against the last Tarquinius and set up the Republic. Archaeologically, the settlement of Rome is known as early as the beginning of the ninth century, thanks to the discovery of a habitat on the Palatine hill (mainly huts), and of tombs (inhumation and cremation) on the future forum, on the Capitol and the Esquiline, indicating the development of communities from small villages to larger nucleated settlements. Yet, the Italian excavations, led by A. Carandini since the 1980s on the northern lower slope of the Palatine, have brought to light a monumental wall dating from the middle of the eighth century: the coincidence with the Romulean tradition is definitely proved for the one, whereas for the others, the political definition of Rome as a city-state cannot be demonstrated by this

discovery, even less included in the evolution of a protourban structure than in a revolution of the political and urban organization; however, this process appears to have been completed at the latest at the end of the seventh century. The royal Etruscan period (end of the seventh to sixth century) indeed coincides with the material tracks of a proper systematization of the city (which does not imply that it did not exist before), with a clear delimitation of the different spaces (public– religious/private habitat, civic/military, living/dead), and a specific orientation of the urban axes, determined by the augural science; this feature clearly differentiates Rome from the Greek cities of Italy founded at the same time. Among the most important archaeological remains of this period, best known thanks to the comprehensive work of F. Coarelli, belongs a coherent urban system, at the term of which the pomerium was extended in order to include the septimontium (the ‘enclosed seven hills’), when Servius Tullius traditionally reorganized the people in 30 ‘tribes’ and the city in four parts; it was marked by a new wall, still in use up to the first century AD (the remaining wall in cappellaccio-tuff dates back to the fourth century. BC, but coincides with the archaic track of the wall). The most important discoveries, from the excavations of G. Boni at the very beginning of the twentieth century up to those of the Palatine and the Capitoline Hills, one century later, concern the complex formed by the forum, the Arx (the ‘citadel’ upon the north of the forum, where the auspicia were taken), and the Capitolium (Figure 2). The marshy site of the forum was paved after important drainage works, and particularly the construction of the cloaca maxima (the ‘main sewer’), one end of which is still visible on the Tiber’s bank. On the forum, the first public place, were built the comitium, the political space where the people used to assemble, tabernae (‘shops’), settling the commercial activities, and religious shrines, such as the Volcanal, a sanctuary consecrated to Vulcan (also known as the lapis niger, named after the first century BC pavement of ‘black stone’ that covered it), in which was buried an altar and a sacred law mentioning a ‘king’ (rex) – so far the oldest public inscription of Rome. On the western part of the forum (Figure 3) was maintained, throughout the Republic, the Regia, the ‘royal palace’ of the last kings of Rome (traditionally the house of Numa), linked to the house of Vestal Virgins and the temple of Vesta, in which they kept the public household fire. In the Regia were found bucchero (Etruscan pottery) with the name rex inscribed, and decorative terracotta probably alluding to the foundation of Athens (with a representation

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Figure 2 Topographical map of Rome.

of the Minotaur), which informs on the level of familiarity towards Greek culture as early as this period. The forum was crossed by the via sacra (the ‘sacred way’), whose orientation, even if its the original layout is still debated, follows a religious axis linking the arx to the Latin shrine of Jupiter Latiaris in the Alban Hills, at the south of Rome. But the bestpreserved religious archaic structure is the sanctuary of Mater Matuta and Fortuna, under the church of Sant’Omobono, between the Capitol and the forum Boarium: with the temple of the Capitol triad dedicated to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, achieved at the very end of the sixth century and become the symbol of the city (the foundation and part of the podium are exhibited in a new part of the Capitol’s museum (Figure 4)), they throw some light on the development of religious architecture of the time, known as ‘Tuscan (Etruscan) order’: as for the public development of the forum, the new grandeur of the religious building informs on the inner and foreign expansion of the city. Remains of the royal period, from the eighth to the end of the sixth century, inducing a re-reading of the tradition, enlighten, in addition to the proper foundation of Rome, the process of elaboration of a

city-state whose final state is rather well known at the sixth century. However, the archaeology of archaic Rome is still increasing, thanks to permanent excavations and a superior knowledge of the surrounding archaic cities of Latium and Etruria (for which we have far fewer texts and almost no tradition), that should allow to define more and more precisely the very specificity of the city, and an always more subtle chronology of its beginnings.

Republican Rome Literary tradition has it that the Romans expelled the last Etruscan king, Tarquinius the Proud, and established the Republic in 509 BC. If the temple of the Capitol triad seems to have been inaugurated at that period indeed, and the first lists of consuls appear contemporaneously, the archaeological remains suggest that a much more violent crisis happened in the middle of the fifth century, with important fire tracks on several public buildings, such as the Regia and the comitium, followed by the reconstruction of a part of the forum. Once again, more than a proper ‘revolution’, it seems that the political organization of the city has progressively changed all

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through the first half of the fifth century, which might reflect the different steps of the conflict between patricians and plebeians, and the fear of the return of kings in Rome, probably more and more stigmatized throughout ages. The forum Romanum

From that time dates back a reorganization of the city, and above all of the forum, that was used as the politic, economic, and symbolic center of Rome (Figure 3). Initially (probably as soon as the late sixth century),

the area of the forum was roughly divided into two parts, distinguishing a northern zone around the comitium for public activities, and the forum as such, the market place in the southern part. Progressively, the part devoted to politics, in a broad sense, tended to monopolize the entire area: besides the political spaces as such, this normally included the religious sphere, which was absolutely inseparable from the civic activities. As for the economic activities, most of the cumbersome markets were moved to the Tiber’s bank, on the forum boarium, holitorium, and piscarium,

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Figure 4 Archaic podium of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.

respectively, for the trade of livestock, vegetables, and fish, whereas prestigious business (banking, jewellery, perfume) were maintained around the macellum, divided into shops (tabernae), from the balconies of which people could look at the gladiators’ fights, still taking place on the forum place up to the end of the Republic, and sponsored by the politics. As a matter of fact, one relevant feature of the Republican time was the competition between the members of the new aristocracy (the nobilitas, composed of both patricians and plebeians), physically expressed by the construction of different monuments glorifying the rulers and their families, as they paid, with the profits of looting, to build, restore, extend, and embellish the public buildings. This implies that most of those buildings were called after a leader – except the temples named after the divinity to which they were devoted – and that the forum was subjected to an increasing competition of that sort of evergetism, up to an actual saturation. At the end of the Republic, the only way to carry on this escalation was to extend the forum, which meant building new ones: the first initiative in that sense was used by Cesar, imitated on a larger scale by Augustus, Vespasian, and Trajan. The original Republican forum went on to be called the ‘Roman forum’, whereas the new ones got the name of each Emperor, known at once as the ‘imperial forums’ (Figure 5). Archaeologically, the forum Romanum is better known from the fourth century (as Rome was restored after the Gallic siege of 390), and mainly from the second century BC: after the victory over Carthage, the rule of Rome on the Mediterranean led to a rapid accumulation of wealth, and an important embellishment of the city – starting with the forum, as the most

obvious politic symbol of the power of Rome. Combined with the competition between the rulers, Republican Rome displayed above all the image of its triumph on the Greek and barbarian worlds, in terms of military victories (triumphal arches, euocatio of the enemies main divinities) and looting (mainly sculptures and paintings), whereas the influence of Greek art and technology was to change definitely the shape of the city. However, throughout the Republic, the overall organization of the forum did not fundamentally change: the key buildings remained roughly the same, so as to be reproduced in other cities under Roman power, specifically most of the colonies (see Asia, West: Roman Eastern Colonies; Europe, South: Greece). The comitium area Among these buildings should be first counted the complex of the comitium, made up of the comitium itself, the curia, the Rostra platform, and the Graecostasis (‘platform for the Greeks’). The whole represents the architectural image of the working Republic, politically and judiciary: the people used to assemble on the place at the center of the comitium, the Senate usually in the curia, and the magistrates to speak from the Rostra (whereas the foreign representatives could contribute to the Senate meetings from the Graecostasis). The comitium existed since the royal period, but its Republican shape was adopted either at the end of the fourth or in the middle of the third century BC: probably under the influence of the Greek public ekklesiasteria, it was designed as a circle inscribed inside a square, with internal terraces, while, as an inaugurated templum, it was oriented following the cardinal points. As a matter of fact, the first

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Roman colonies designed in the first third century – Alba Fucens (301), Cosa and Paestum (273) – adopted such a circular structure as the center of their own political lives. South of the Roman comitium had been set up, at the very beginning of the Republic, the raised platform for the orators, magistrates, and lawyers, named Rostra (‘ship-rams’ driven into a column on the platform) after the naval victory of Rome over the Latin people, off Antium, in 338. Cesar moved it westwards when he extended the forum, purely and simply destroyed the Graecostasis and turned the curia Hostilia into a temple to Felicitas, as he was to build a new curia named after his family, the curia Iulia (Figure 3): a high rectangular building (corresponding to the proportions prescribed by the Caesarean architect Vitruvius) subdivided inside into three longitudinal sectors to welcome the senators. These modifications, directly linked to the topographical move of the center, were obviously highly symbolic: notably, that was the way to turn the Rostra from the curia to the forum, that is to say the magistrates, from the Senate to the people, in accordance with Cesar’s popular politics. Shaping the forum The last generic building of the Roman forum was the basilica (‘royal building’, named after the Hellenistic kingdoms’ architecture adopted in Rome at the end of the third century BC). It was a large covered space designed as a substitute for the open space of the forum when the weather did not allow its normal activities – economic, politic, and judiciary. The structure of the basilica, usually subdivided into three parallel aisles by two central colonnades, has been adopted by Christian architecture when building churches which maintained the terminology. During the Roman Republic, texts mention at least four basilicas: Porcia, Aemilia, Sempronia, Opimia, before the edification of the Caesarean basilica Iulia. The latter is an extension of the basilica Sempronia, south of the comitium area and the forum place, and appears much richer than the Republican ones in terms of architecture and decoration, even just the podium remains nowadays: 101  49 m (including the previous basilica and the adjacent ‘old shops’), five aisles bordered by porticos on two levels of arches, and internal temporary subdivisions that allowed judgement in several trials contemporaneously. One of the urban functions of those large and regular buildings was to unify and close the forum, that is to say to create a coherent complex where the gradual set-up of the place tended to appear anarchic. It is no accident that Cesar proceeded to the restoration of the basilica Aemilia, north of the forum,

contemporaneously with the construction of the basilica Iulia, and of its own forum, with all the modifications in the comitium area above mentioned. When he finally opened the northwestern corner of the forum Romanum in 46 to set up the forum Iulium, he bordered it directly with a portico on three sides, and at the center of it a temple to his patron Venus Genitrix, and a bronze equestrian statue of himself (Figure 5). The Republican place had already been closed west, against the Capitol, with the monumental Tabularium (where were kept the State archives, the tabulae), by Quintus Lutatius Catulus in 78: a long gallery on three levels, inspired by the architectural development of Latial sanctuaries which would become a model for other Roman buildings (such as the theater of Pompey, the Coliseum, or the Trajan’s markets), served to link the aerarium (‘bronze treasure’) and the temple of Saturn to the coins workshop, close to the temple of Juno Moneta on the Capitoline Hill. The Republican shape of the forum Romanum was, lastly, definitely determined by a number of temples and shrines, and of honorific monuments to the glory of the rulers. Once again, each and every aspect was symbolically inextricable: a temple dedicated to a divinity who helped the Romans to win a victory (often a deified human quality) celebrated at the same time the god, the power of Rome and the action of the general and his family. Little remains of the numerous Republican sanctuaries of the forum which were so many testimonies to Roman history, as they have been continuously restored and reused during the Empire. Among them might notably be named, in addition to the royal shrines still in use throughout the Republic (sanctuary of Venus Cloacina, altar of Saturn, temple of Vesta, mundus – the navel of the City), the temples of Saturn and of the Dioscuri Castor and Pollux (early fifth century BC, restored both several times), the temple of the Concord (fourth or third century). But the Republican temples are best known, thanks to the temples on the forum boarium (to Portunus and Hercules Victor) and on the area sacra of the Campus Martius. The Campus Martius (‘Field of Mars’)

Topographically, the campus Martius is the plain included between the Capitol, the Tiber, the Quirinal, and the Pincio, but the name usually refers to the western part of it, delimited by the via Flaminia (Figure 2): outside the pomerium, it is a public area (since, according to the tradition, it was the property of Tarquinius before being seized by the Republican State), devoted to military exercises, sportive games (such as horses races), and some political assemblies (notably the elections of magistrates in the saepta, the

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‘vote enclosure’), that is to say to activities that required a large space in which to gather the Roman people, armed and voting (theoretically synonymous at that time). Unlike the center of the city, the campus Martius was for a long time an open space rather free of constructions: this explains that, from the second century BC, it became a proper ‘laboratory of urbanism’ (P. Gros), progressively extended northwards. Roughly, four archaeological phases are well identified: the sanctuaries of the mid-Republic (fourth to third century BC), the Hellenistic constructions in the area of the circus Flaminius (second to first century BC), the Augustan extension northwards, and the Imperial modifications (essentially during Domitian, Hadrian, and the Antonin Emperors’ reigns, from the end of the first century to the end of the second century AD). The area sacra of the Largo Argentina The four temples of the sacred area, emphasized, thanks to the preserved zone in the middle of the Largo Argentina (Figure 6), give the best idea of the evolution of Republican religious architecture (even if all of them have been several times restored, particularly after the fire of AD 80). Built between early third century and late second century BC, it had not been monumentalized as a coherent complex before the mid-second century, unified by a paving between the temples. Now the architecture and decoration of their first phases (sometimes found reused in the Late Republican or Early Imperial restorations) progressively go from Latial traditions (shared with south Etruria) to Hellenistic ones, typically with the circular neoclassic temple B (Figure 7). At the same time, this religious area reveals itself to be very coherent with the entire zone: the involved divinities (convincingly identified by F. Coarelli as Feronia, Juturna, the Lares Permarini, and Fortuna Huiusce Diei, ‘the Fortune of today’) were linked to the provision of supplies, thanks to marine and fluvial transport, related to the plebeian connotation of this part of the Campus Martius, particularly since the construction of the circus Flaminius in 221, competing with the traditional circus Maximus. Yet, from the second century BC, the Field of Mars was to become, even more than the forum, the scene of intense rivalry between the leading families who found enough room, and fewer restrictions than inside the pomerium, to conceive huge constructions, such as porticos and theaters. The most relevant example is the complex of Pompey, directly west of the area sacra, dedicated after his triumph of 61: at the top of the theater stood the temple of his patron Venus Victrix (the terraces of the first serving as a scale for the second, allowing to get round the interdiction to construct a permanent show building),

whereas a squared portico, adjacent to the theater, adorned by a rich collection of artworks and finally devoted to Pompey, was closed by a new curia (in which Cesar was murdered 10 years later). Despite the scarcity of material evidence (the shape of the theater is readable in the layout of modern streets), this complex is a proper summary of the changing conception of the state, physically and symbolically reflected in the city, to the glory of a man. Cesar was to magnify the same movement when he prematurely died: August pursued his projects and extended them to definitively change the face of Rome.

Augustan Rome Roman studies for over a century had explored numerous aspects of the ‘Augustan revolution’: society, institutions of the new regime, religion and religious architecture, topography of Rome, Augustan portraiture, the widespread dissemination of the urban model in the colonies of the Empire; but a very specific issue of recent studies since the mid1980s focuses on ideology and its visual expressions after the pioneer study by P. Zanker entitled The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, and especially his study on the symbols involved in numismatics, sculpture, painting and also ceramics, etc. Moreover, new attention was given to a global approach to the Augustan building policy and city planning as paradigm for reading urban creations of autocratic rulers. Finally, the perception of Rome by Ancient viewers became a new important theme. Although the documentation from the Augustan Age is more abundant and our knowledge much more precise than for any other period of the Empire, many monuments are known through no direct testimonies, but only through numismatic or written sources, for example, the extraordinarily rich collections of artworks displayed in major ensembles that have completely disappeared. Augustus transformed the aspect of the city more durably, more deeply, and more radically than any other Roman statesman before and after him. The concentration of all the power in the hands of a single man permitted for the first time the development of a coherent, uniform, and global urbanistic program which could be conceived as an ideal reflect of the political achievements of the Emperor. The anarchical expansion of not only the Urbs during the Late Republic but also the transformations and destructions due to the civil wars of the first century BC necessitated an important enterprise of restoration and reconstruction and a more accurate control of the urban space: for that reason the huge urbanistic program of Augustus is based upon an important administrative reform. The ancient division of the

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Figure 5 Map of the imperial Forums including recent discoveries.

Figure 6 Temple C to Fortuna Huiusce Diei (end of the second century BC), on the area sacra of the Largo Argentina.

urban space into four districts inherited from the fourth century BC system was transformed by Augustus who created 14 new circumscriptions, the regiones; moreover, each of the 265 urban vici or quarters received a magister in charge of the cult of the Lares and of the genius Augusti: the numerous crossroads marmorean altars preserved in the Roman collections reflect the new imperial ideology and bear a rich iconography derived from the official monuments such as the Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace); they symbolize the strict

correlation between administrative, urbanistic, religious, and political reforms of the Augustan era. The principal aim of the Augustan program was the reconstruction of Rome and the restoration of its traditional cults neglected during civil wars. The archaeological evidence is fortunately completed by a major source of the period, the Res Gestae divi Augusti (History of the Divine Augustus), political testament of the princeps which gives a list of the monuments dedicated or restored by the Emperor:

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he said to have 82 temples restored during the year of his sixth consulship in 28 BC! In fact, there are three main categories of temples concerned by Augustan restoration of the pax deorum (‘peace of the gods’): first of all, cults linked to the origins of Rome or traditional Republican cults like those of Quirinus, Iuno Regina, Jupiter Feretrius, Vesta, Jupiter Capitolinus; then temples of ‘personal’ divinities protecting the emperor and his family (Apollo, Diana, Mars, Neptune or divus Iulius, ‘deified Cesar’); finally, temples or altars dedicated to personified abstractions such as Pax, Concordia or Fortuna. As major symbol of the old Republic that Augustus pretended to restore, the aspect of the forum Romanum could not be transformed as radically as other areas of the Urbs. Moreover, religious restrictions did not allow to modify the location of the traditional temples. So the strategy of the princeps (‘first citizen, prince’) consisted of a planned process of annexation of preexistent buildings and of addition of basic symbols of

the new imperial order, mainly linked to the victory of Actium (over his rival Marcus Antonius in 31 BC) and the arrival of the Golden Age. Instead of erecting new monuments, Augustus consequently chose to mark the main circuits with symbolic elements like statues, arches, and honorary columns decorated with the spoils of the main battles: for instance, a Hellenistic statue of Victory was placed in the curia Iulia. By this way he could change the signification of this area and transform it into a space dedicated to the selfpromotion of the Gens Iulia; in fact, the only new foundation is that of the Temple of Caesar soon surrounded by two Augustan triumphal arches, the first one commemorating Actium, the second one the diplomatic victory over the Parthians with the recuperation of Roman standards in 19 BC. This triple-bay arch was articulated with the portico of Caius and Lucius Caesar (the adoptive sons of the princeps) which formed a monumental fac¸ade for the basilica Aemilia (Figure 7).

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The new foundations were fewer but of a high significance: Augustus created a third forum of monumental proportions significantly located between the forum Iulium and the forum Romanum; it was dominated by a huge temple of Mars Ultor (‘the Advenger’) and flanked by a double absidated portico decorated with the portrait statues of the summi uiri (‘the Great’) and triumphators of Rome from Aeneas to Caesar (Figure 8). Recent excavations brought new elements about a sumptuously decorated aula (‘aristocratic courtyard’) adjacent to the portico, whose exact destination remains uncertain but that was probably dedicated to the Imperial Cult. As founder of a new Rome, Augustus gave new importance to the Palatine, the hill of Romulus; this sector was fully reorganized under his reign and became another strategic place for the expression of the new imperial ideology: as early as 40 BC Octavian had begun to transform it into his principal residence and in 28 BC he dedicated there a temple to the cardinal divinity of the new Golden Age, Apollo Actius after an omen that this place had to become a sanctuary; so Apollo became the new custodian of the Sibylline Books. Augustus also declared public a part of the residence and built two libraries as well as a monumental portico whose decoration figured Apollinian myths: a complete sculptural evocation of the Danaids myth was displayed in the forecourt of the temple. Excavations began as soon as the eighteenth century on the site at that time occupied by the Farnese gardens and residences; the rich collection of

marble sculptures, terracotta, and various artifacts from the Imperial Palace are nowadays dispersed in various private palaces, in Roman Museums but also in the Archaeological Museum of Naples; recent research focuses on the residence of the first emperor and its paintings. Moreover, the Palatine Hill, which preserved a continuous stratigraphy from the archaic period until late-antique times, is concentrating most intensive archaeological activity; in addition to important researches on archaic walls and habitations which recently provided much-discussed results (see supra), archaeologists and researchers are at present collaborating to a large-scale international research project studying the successive phases of the Imperial Palace and including three-dimensional modeling of each phase. Moreover, excavations in the northeast part of the Hill by French archaeologists on the area of Vigna Barberini, the ancient site of a monumental terrace of the imperial residence, brought new evidence about the Domitianic and Severan phases of the Palace as well as new data concerning archaeology of landscape and gardens, a field that has recently acquired new importance. On the Campus Martius, Augustus realized a largescale building program including his most innovative architectural projects: he gave to Rome and dedicated to Marcellus in 13 BC one of its first stone theaters; moreover, Augustus dedicated a monumental complex comprising a huge dynastic Mausoleum inspired by archaic royal tombs (tumuli), the marble Ara Pacis commemorating the victorious return of the princeps

Figure 8 Reconstruction of the Colosseum, the Palatine hill and the imperial forums.

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after campaigns in Gaul and Spain in 13 BC and a monumental sundial engraved in bronze letters on a large square dominated by an Egyptian obelisk whose shadow indicated the direction of the Ara Pacis at Augustus’ birthday. Remains of the sundial were found under Piazza Montecitorio and the obelisk is to be seen there. But the most spectacular reorganization of the area was due to Agrippa who commissioned a series of new prestigious buildings: he built the Pantheon, one of the best-preserved temples of Rome, a monumental thermal ensemble that became the prototype of the series of all ‘imperial baths’ up to Caracalla, a campus, gardens including an artificial lake (stagnum), a sanctuary to Neptune and the Porticus Vipsania, where a monumental map of the world was exhibited; he also rebuilt the Villa Publica and the Saepta Iulia, both of which were designed at the same time for political activities, spectacles, and agreement of the Roman people. Although the originality of Augustus’ building program is undeniable, it is important to underscore that the architectural choices of the princeps were highly traditional and often conservative; typologically, they almost all used a Republican visual language, which formed the formal counterpart of the restoration by Augustus of the traditional piety and politics. Stylistically, the evolution of Augustan buildings enlightens the elaboration of specific visual semantics that formed the Roman Corinthian order, which became a major symbol of the new imperial order. So had Augustus profoundly modified the Roman cityscape without introducing any spectacular novelty in urban components? Augustan Rome was a new Rome due to a change of scale and to the unifying aspect of the project.

Rome of the Emperors Flavian Rome (AD 69–96)

The original and very ambitious building program of the Flavian emperors in Rome has only recently received the attention that it merits, although we know very well-preserved monuments from this period, notably the Colosseum or the arch of Titus on the forum. First of all, numerous reconstructions were imposed by the great fires of AD 69, which heavily damaged the Capitol and the forum Romanum, and of AD 80, destroying much of the central Campus Martius; both of them authorized the second dynasty to reconstruct in a strong programmatic way the Augustan Urbs. The new Rome of the Flavians, including very innovative constructions, concerned all parts of the Urbs and all types of monuments. Another destruction was of benefit to the Flavian urban reshaping: the full reorganization of the huge area once covered by the domus Aurea, the sumptuous private palace of the emperor Nero, which was almost completely destroyed: the entire space was ‘restored’ to public use (and thus to the Roman People) and included the completion of the unfinished temple of divus Claudius (Figure 9), a gigantic stone amphitheater known as the Colosseum, part of Vespasian’s forum (see below), a monumental thermal complex built under Titus, a ludus for gladiators, a new version of the Meta Sudans (a monumental circular fountain) and finally, important Domitianic extensions of the Palatine imperial residence recently excavated; among these discoveries, there is to mention a monumental terrace-garden built on huge substructions on the northeast side of the hill including an absidated portico, and a new access ramp with an entrance arch to the Palace.

Figure 9 A temple for the imperial cult: the temple of Divus Claudius on the Forma Urbis.

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In the traditional political center of the city the Flavian emperors, like Augustus before them, realized minor transformations; there is to mention a systematic scansion of the Via Sacra from the Field of Mars to the Capitol, with arches or commemorative monuments evoking the Flavian victory and the Jewish triumph of AD 70: for instance the arch of Titus in the Circus Maximus, known essentially from epigraphic evidence, and that of the Velia, fully preserved today. The Flavian dynasty built or rebuilt no fewer than 50 major public monuments in Rome representing a complete monumental panoply and including two new dynastic temples (see below), a mausoleum temple, two new imperial forums, a stone amphitheatre, and many sanctuaries and honorific monuments. Moreover, recent research has revealed that important cutting and leveling works had already begun under Domitian on the site of the future Trajan’s Forum, which suggests that Domitian had planned the construction of a second imperial complex. The scale of the works begun under Domitian as well as the stylistic characteristics of Domitianic architectural decoration clearly demonstrated for the first time a centralized organization of the urban building ‘industry’ and of the ateliers at an unprecedented level. The Imperial Forums

The area of the imperial forums is the one that has recently offered most innovative historical perspectives due to the extensive excavations in the city centre realized on occasion of the Roman Jubilee (2000) (Figure 10): the traditional image of these forums formed in the early nineteenth century has been for the first time modified in a radical way, in particular concerning the planimetry of Trajan’s and Augustus’ forums; recent research has also brought new evidence about the successive phases of these monumental programs (some of them only projectual) and about the early mediaeval occupation of the area of forum Transitorium (Figure 11) and Temple of Peace, which results are at present exhibited with axonometric reconstructions in the recent Crypta Balbi Museum. Moreover, a large-scale research project is aiming at studying all the architectural fragments from the forums and the provenience of their material while a new Museum specifically dedicated to the history of the forums is to be opened in Trajan’s markets. The most important recent findings concern Augustus’ Forum, which included a third semicircular exedra on its south part, Trajan’s Forum, where no monumental temple to divus Traianus has been found, and the central area of the Templum Pacis. The three first ensembles are those of dynasty founders, Caesar, Augustus and Vespasian; the

multifunctional forum Iulium dedicated to Venus Genetrix, divine ancestor of Gens Iulia, associating an axial temple consecrated to a dynastic divinity, a closed colonnaded portico, a rich artworks display as well as administrative, political, or cultural annexes is rightly considered as the prototype of the imperial forums. Caesar’s Forum was symbolically and topographically linked to the Curia Iulia opening on the forum Romanum, the Atrium Libertatis which included the first public library of the capital and the aedes divi Iulii, creating a continuous monumental sequence placed under Caesar’s patronage. Epigraphic evidence from recent excavations regarding Praefecti Urbi attests the continuity of use of this complex until the fourth century AD. The Temple of Peace was an imperial forum which has provided very scarce archaeological evidence, although ancient sources mention it as one of the most beautiful monuments of the capital in that period. In particular, Pliny the Elder tells about its famous pictures and sculptures from Classic and Hellenistic periods, about sumptuous marbles and fountains. Nevertheless, the complex also housed offices of the Roman administration, libraries, and a hall where a huge marble Map of Rome was to be seen, probably as early as the Flavian era. Although the fragments of this map, dating from a Severan restoration of the site, were first discovered in the sixteenth century, the Forma Urbis nowadays remains the essential primary source for Roman topography studies which focus on the precise localization of the ancient buildings mentioned by textual sources (Figure 9). Thanks to the excavations of the ‘millennium year’ our knowledge of the Templum Pacis is more precise (Figure 10): the surrounding portico was elevated on a podium and a central area without stone pavement included a series of parallel longitudinal basins forming canals decorated with rose plantings. Although a series of statue bases inscribed with the names of famous sculptors from the Classical and Hellenistic periods was found during ancient and recent excavations, the original location of the statues in the monument remains uncertain. The second Flavian Forum, that of Domitian, was, like its predecessor, a victory monument dedicated to Minerva, the patron goddess of the emperor, whose temple dominated the complex. Ancient sources mention it as forum Transitorium because of its position between forum Augustum and forum Pacis, that conditioned its particular architectural aspect, including a ‘false’ and deluding portico along the side walls (Figure 11). The continuous frieze of the portico included a representation of the myth of Arachne linked to Minerva and the attic was adorned with a series of standing female figures in relief which are very

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Figure 10 Map of the imperial forums including recent discoveries.

Figure 11 The imperial forums: the forum of Nerva and the so-called ‘Colonacce’.

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likely personifications of the Provinces of Empire announcing the figurative program of the Hadrianeum. The triumphal vocation of this Forum remained since Alexander Severus erected the bronze statues of Roman triumphatores. Trajan’s Forum was the latest and most impressive of the imperial forums. The intervention of the damasian architect Apollodorus could explain innovative aspects of the complex; like other forums, Trajan’s Forum was a multifunctional ensemble commemorating the princeps’ triumph over the Dacians (present Romania). The most famous feature of this Forum is obviously the Trajan’s Column, high 40 m., providing a continuous sequence of historical reliefs narrating the imperial campaigns and victory. Moreover, this column showed the height of the excavations occasioned by the construction of the complex; finally, it became the tomb of the emperor Trajan. The monument was surrounded by two libraries which recent research has proved to be two-storeyed buildings. But the complex was dominated by a huge apsidal basilica whose attica received colossal statues of Dacian barbarians carved in Egyptian green marble and porphyry and giant Medusa medallions. The basilica opened on a large square decorated with great reliefs presenting the same subject matter as those of the column in a more synthetic visual language: some of the panels of this ‘Great Trajanic frieze’ have been reused as spolia (‘loots’) in the arch of Constantine. Finally, a colossal equestrian statue of the Emperor stood in the square: recent excavations gave its precise location, not in the center but in the southwest part of it. A key problem of the topography of the Forum is the location of the temple of Divus Traianus mentioned by textual sources: although the absence of a temple under the Palazzo della Provincia, already noticed during excavations made at the end of the nineteenth century, has been proved definitively, no element of a monumental structure has been discovered elsewhere; nonetheless, recent works have brought to light decisive evidence concerning the entrances to the forum: its south delimitation wall was not rectilinear, but segmented, while the north access included a monumental pronaos (‘vestibule’). It is important to outline the extraordinary durability of these ensembles still in use in early medieval times: late antique restorations or reconstructions are attested for the major part of them. Glory and Cult of the New Gods: The Monuments of the Imperial Cult

The constitution of the aedes divi Iulii, the altar dedicated to the deified Caesar and consecrated by Augustus

in the place of Caesar’s funerary pyre, whose remains are still visible on the forum, initiated the long series of monuments designed for the cult of the new gods of the Roman State; its prominent location, in the vicinity of Caesar’s Forum and in front of the Capitoline Hill, reveals the importance immediately conferred to this cult and marks the beginning of the annexation of the political centre by monuments erected to the glory of the imperial family. Over a range of two centuries, from Augustus to the end of the Antonine dynasty (98–192), the literary and archaeological sources attest no fewer than 11 new temple foundations. The two nodal and attractive monuments which conditioned ulterior constructions are Augustus’ Mausoleum on Campus Martius on the one hand and the aedes divi Iuli on the forum on the other hand. The Field of Mars, traditionally dedicated to the expression of the posthumous glory of prominent Romans, was a natural place for imperial funerals led in monumental ustrina which soon became permanent installations. The first imperial temple erected in this area was the so-called porticus divorum dedicated to the deified Vespasian and Titus; but the major development of imperial cult was due to the Antonine dynasty with the construction of an impressive series of honorific and cultic monuments that radically transformed the cityscape: a new dynastic Mausoleum by Hadrian (present-day Castel Sant’ Angelo (Figure 1)), a temple to divus Hadrianus, still preserved on actual Piazza di Pietra, a basilica to Faustina and Plotina nowadays completely destroyed, a commemorative column to Marcus Aurelius replicating Trajan’s column today visible in Piazza Colonna, another complex including an ustrinum, an ara and a column to Antoninus Pius, which pediment depicts the ‘apotheosis’ of Antoninus and Faustina, and finally, a temple to Marcus Aurelius and Faustina. Nonetheless, the Ancient Forum preserved its attractive force since each important dynasty erected there at least one temple: we can mention that of the deified Vespasian, facing the aedes divi Iuli, and that of Antoninus and Faustina along the Sacra Via. Finally, several of these monuments have an eccentric location because they were erected on birthplace or familial residences of the emperors: the Templum Gentis Flaviae has replaced a Flavian domus identified, thanks to a fistula inscribed with the name of T. Flavius Sabinus, a sacrarium was dedicated to divus Augustus on the Palatine Hill, and the location of the Templum divi Claudi on the Caelian hill (Figure 9) is probably related to the mythical history of the Claudii. Besides the monumental temple foundations, a large panoply of minor monuments were directly related to imperial religion and ideology; so the altars dedicated to the genius of the emperor, the Lares

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Augusti or the imperial virtues (Providentia, Pax), and also the numerous historical scenes which decorated honorific monuments. These monuments were recently objects of a renewed attention although they are mostly without topographical context. These dynastic temples have particular importance for the story of the sanctuaries of Rome because they represent the only new religious foundations of the imperial period after the Flavians; Republican and Augustan temples were continuously restored and rebuilt by the emperors, sometimes with consequent transformations of the original form of the monument (so Hadrian’s Pantheon, whose main architectural feature was the entirely conserved cupola, although reproducing on the fac¸ade the original dedication by Agrippa, was a real re-creation by the new emperor and included the addition of a monumental portico, the basilica Neptuni). On the one hand, a form of saturation of the urban space limited the opportunities for new constructions. On the other hand, for religious, cultural, and ideological reasons, the cityscape of Imperial Rome was characterized by a strong conservatism: besides the impossibility to modify the location of the sanctuaries, the pietas manifested by the successive emperors toward the monuments built by prestigious predecessors was another important factor in the stagnation of the large-scale building projects in the second century AD. From Trajan onward, most of the imperial dedications were dynastic monuments or restorations. The Spectacle Monuments

First of all, the ludi (public games) represented an essential part of the celebration of Roman cults and especially of the major festivals held in honor of the gods; since they were strictly related with a specific deity and, consequently, with a sanctuary, they generally took place in the vicinity of it, in the forecourt of a temple or in an adjacent square. This situation contributes to explain the fact that the Urbs remained for centuries a city with no permanent spectacle monuments in stone: the games generally took place in wooden temporary constructions (which left no archaeological remains) or in monuments originally designed for other functions. So a multiplicity of places and buildings could be used for gladiatorial or scenic performances: before the construction of the first permanent amphitheater of the capital in the second half of the first century BC, the munera were given on the forum Romanum, where subterranean service galleries have been discovered under the paving of the place, in the Saepta on the Campus Martius, or in the ancient Tarentum that comprised an area for chariot racing.

The nonspecificity or the pluri-functionality of public buildings is a major feature of Roman architecture. In this context, the Circus Maximus, located between the Aventine and Palatine hills, represents a notable exception both for its chronology (it is the most ancient spectacle monument of Rome, since its construction is traditionally linked with the Etruscan kings) and for its monumentality: in the second century AD, it could accommodate 150 000 spectators. Although various works are attested for the Republican period, major transformations were due to Agrippa and Augustus: the Circus received new marble installations and decorations on the central platform, and an imperial tribune was built, while not until the beginning of the second century AD the process of monumentalization was fully completed. The end of the first century BC marks an essential turning point in the story of the spectacle monuments of Rome: in a space of less than 50 years, three stone theaters were built, all of them concentrated on Campus Martius: the theaters of Pompey (see above), of Marcellus, and of Balbus. The second one, which is better preserved today than the first one because of its transformation into a fortress and a palace in medieval and modern times, was designed for the ludi Saeculares of 17 BC and dedicated by Augustus to his deceased nephew Marcellus. Finally, the theater of Balbus, associated to a monumental portico and a Crypta, was built in the same years to commemorate the victory over the Garamantes: only the subterranean part of the portico is well preserved. These monuments, functional to a new typology of games and spectacles, were also victory monuments perpetuating the tradition of the great porticated places and temples dedicated by the Republican triumphators in the Hellenistic style but at the same time they offered a new monumental frame as well as new opportunities for the expression of personal – and soon for imperial – propaganda. Moreover, new regulations concerning the distribution of spectators in the semicircular cavea mirrored the hierarchy of the Augustan society. The construction by Vespasian of the Amphitheatrum Flavium, best known as the Colosseum, as a manubial monument after the Jewish triumph of AD 71 marks a new step in the history of spectacles in Rome: the ideological signification of this huge monument of a new type – the restitution to the populus Romanus of a place unjustly privatized by Nero’s domus aurea (Golden House) – was reinforced by a prominent location in the heart of Rome, in the immediate vicinity of the forum Romanum (foro proximum), unlike the first stone amphitheatre of the capital, built in 29 BC by T. Statilius Taurus on Campus Martius and destroyed in the great fire of AD 64;

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the capacity without precedence of the amphitheater reflects a new conception of relations between emperor and Roman people, as well as a substantial change of taste of the public, since gladiatorial spectacles had to replace scenic and musical performances. Moreover, a monumental stone ludus for gladiatorial training was part of the building program. The first permanent stone amphitheater of the capital soon became the highest symbol of Rome’s power, grandeur, and eternity. During Mussolinian excavations was discovered the huge pedestal of the colossal statue of Nero-Sun God, which gave its name to the monument, as well as the remains of the Meta Sudans, a monumental fountain built by Augustus; all of these structures were demolished for the realization of the actual Via dei Fori imperiali. Most recently, new investigations have completed our knowledge of the history of the Colosseum valley prior to the construction of the amphitheatre, revealing the existence of monumental Neronian porticoes in connection with the Velia and a religious complex including a temple restored by Claudius and a shrine for the imperial cult adorned with statue bases of members of the Julio-Claudian family. These radical transformations in urban landscape in the heart of the city in a space of one century reveal the rapidity of social, ideological, and political changes related to imperial politics and constitute a good example of the extreme complexity of the stratigraphy in a city like Rome. The fire of AD 80 which damaged a large part of Campus Martius gave to the new emperor Domitian the opportunity for an important transformation of the area; not only did he restore Pompey’s theatre, the Iseum Campense or the Porticus Minucia in the area of Largo Argentina, but he also introduced new monumental spectacle buildings, two of them being without precedent in Rome: an odeum and a stadium designed for the celebration of Domitianic music, poetry and game festivals dedicated to Jupiter, which is the only example of this type of building actually known for the western part of the empire. The actual Piazza Navona still preserves the shape of the ancient stadium that exemplifies the introduction by Domitian in Rome of games and spectacle monuments typical for Greek culture. A restoration of the monument by Severus Alexander in the late third century AD shows the long-lasting imprint of this monument in the city. Nonetheless, because of the nature of the archaeological remains, we possess more documentation about the architecture of spectacle buildings – and thus about permanent structures than about the spectacles themselves and the temporary installations related to them.

Capital of the Western Empire The Buildings of the Imperial Administration

The study of the city of Rome as administrative center of a worldwide and centralized empire raises specific epistemological, historical, as much as methodological problems: first of all, this type of installation received for a long time scarce attention from specialists. A reason for that is the state of the available documentation: on the one hand, we know from textual sources that each important service received a specific setting and proper archives; on the other, we are most of the time unable to identify in the preserved buildings the concrete services because of the total destruction of the archives themselves and also because of the pluri-functionality of the buildings designed to house these activities: the administrative centers were often located in the exedras of the major basilicae. Moreover, these services have regularly been removed during imperial times. Finally, in archaeological terms, it is difficult to differentiate them from the numerous libraries of Imperial Rome. Naturally, the most important activities were concentrated in the area of the forum. The most famous structure is the Tabularium, whose monumental substructions on the Capitolium still dominate the present-day Forum’s valley (Figure 12): this central archive building was part of a complex which comprised also the officinae of Roman coinage until Domitian related to the temple of Moneta and the state treasury near to the temple of Saturn. The imperial fora soon became essential for administrative as well as judiciary activities: the Templum Pacis was probably one of the headquarters of the Praefectura Urbis, and the forum Augustum could house processes. The large porticoes located on Campus Martius also housed numerous vital complexes: for instance, the Crypta Balbi was not only a portico related to the stone theater, it probably was the place for the praefectura vigilum, and the temples today visible on the area of Largo Argentina were part of the porticus Minucia that housed the list of the citizens who could benefit from free grain distributions. Recently, excavations made on the slopes of the Palatine Hills have suggested that the monumental substructions of the imperial residence could have been used as offices of the imperial bureaucracy. Structures for the Food Supply System

Aelius Aristides claimed that it was impossible to find outside Rome something that could not be found in Rome. The role of the city as final destination and ‘cellar’ of all types of goods available over the

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Figure 12 Reconstruction of the Tabularium and the temples of forum Romanum in imperial times, design by C. Moyaux.

Mediterranean sea is not only a literary commonplace of Panegyrics of Rome: the complexity and the sophistication of the structures related to the trade and the food supply of the ancient city, both in administration and in building, reveals that it was obviously a central and perpetual concern of the Roman State to be able to provide food to a million people (the estimated population for the imperial period). The major problem was that Rome had no good natural harbor; Ostia became the river port of the capital and merchandises were transhipped to Rome. As for the offices of the Roman bureaucracy, the archaeological remains of those vital activities raise important methodological problems. One of the most impressive testimonies of the commercial activity of the city, considered as a major symbol of ‘the consumer city’ that was Rome, is the present-day Monte Testaccio, an artificial hill, 35 m high, built exclusively with empties of Roman amphoras from the port. The hill is massively composed from olive-oil amphoras from Spain whose production ranges from AD 150 to 250. This concentration raises the question of the conservation of other goods from other periods but gives an idea of the scale of the imports in Rome’s emporium. The commercial harbor, which included huge warehouses like those of the Porticus Aemilia or the horrea Galbana, was built to the southwest of the Aventine Hill: some structures are still visible on the banks of the Tiber as well as stone quays. In the city center were developed general and specialized markets: most of the imperial fora also housed commercial activities, but the best-preserved structures are the so-called Trajan’s markets, a multistoried semicircular building.

centuries. The water requirements of the rapidly expanding city, but also the cultural and ideological importance of water as symbol of Rome’s domination over nature, necessitated the creation of an always more sophisticated supply system that included an extraordinary variety of installations: sewers, aqueducts, fountains, and various basins. The baths built by Agrippa and those of Nero on Campus Martius probably constitute the paradigm for the ulterior imperial baths, although on a minor scale. These huge and luxuriously decorated monuments without compare constitute a building type unto themselves, designed from a very similar pattern, whose major characteristic is an interior division into two symmetrical parts: besides a central buildingblock including the most monumental structures, notably giant halls and piscinae of cold and hot water, the imperial baths included a double series of secondary rooms set into a garden precinct. Among the imperial baths mentioned by written sources, only a few examples are well preserved: those of Caracalla and those of Diocletian (Figure 13), a part of which has been transformed into churches in Renaissance times: S. Maria degli Angeli was designed by Michelangelo who transformed one of the main halls of the complex, which houses nowadays part of the Museo Nazionale Romano. Moreover, others have recently provided new evidence: the baths of Titus built on the Oppian Hill and those of Trajan which partially replaced them. The constantly increasing capacity of these complexes shows that this type of infrastructure was considered an absolute priority by the emperors of the third century AD.

The Water Supply System : Baths and Aqueducts

The first drainage works on the Forum’s valley date back to the Etruscan period with the construction of the cloaca maxima which remained in use for

Conclusion Roman Archaeology raises specific problems inherent to the nature of the city itself and that of the

EUROPE, WEST/Rome 1317 CAPITOLIU M TABULARIU M AEDES CONCORD IAE

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Figure 13 The baths of Diocletian: reconstruction.

discipline – the ubiquitous presence of both visible and nonvisible remains in a living modern capital, the complexity of a stratification covering a period of over 1300 years, the quantity of modern demolitions, as well as the mass of objects, artworks, and structures which survived without context. The extensive excavations on the occasion of the 2000 Jubilee in the heart of the city provided revolutionary elements for the ancient topography of Rome, while huge works for the construction of an underground-line are now to begin. These particular events and challenges led to the development of new research fields and documentation methods (particularly remarkable are the attempts to integrate all the types of data available and to provide threedimensional reconstructions of Ancient Rome) but they also impose radical choices in terms of conservation, preservation, and presentation of the recently

excavated structures. They invite a new reflection on the opportunities and the limitations of interpreting archaeological evidence: although new categories of objects have recently reached the status of historical sources, producing an increasing mass of potentially informative material, the discontinuity of these sources and the distortion between ancient testimonies and concrete findings from different periods spread out in various sectors of the city remains intact, as well as the problem of interpretation of these testimonies. The preserved structures say almost nothing of their effective use. On the other hand, the always more accurate and sophisticated collecting of data from recent excavations as well as their re-contextualisation will certainly permit a reduction in the degree of fragmentation available information and allow future scholars to re-question this material in the light of new elements and new research issues.

1318 EUROPE, WEST/Historical Archaeology in Britain See also: Asia, West: Roman Eastern Colonies; Cities,

Ancient, and Daily Life; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Classical Archaeology; Europe, South: Greek Colonies; Medieval and Post-Medieval; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Urban Archaeology.

Further Reading Carandini A (2006) Remo e Romolo. Torino: Giulio Einaudi. Claridge A (1998) Rome. An Oxford Archaeological Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coarelli F (1974) Guida Archeologica di Roma. Milano: Mondadori.

Cornell TJ (1995) The Beginnings of Rome. London: Routledge. Cornell TJ (1995) Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 6: Imaging Ancient Rome. Documentation-Visualization – Imaginatio. Portsmouth: Journal of Roman Archaeology. La Rocca E (2001) ‘La nuova immagine dei fori imperiali. Appunti in margine agli scavi’. Ro¨mische Mitteilungen 108: 171–214. La Rocca E (1999) Riscoperti di Roma Antica. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. Steinby EM (ed.) (1993–2000) Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, 6 vols. Rome: Quasar. Wallace-Hadrill A (1993) Augustan Rome. London: Bristol Classical Press. Zanker P (1988) The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

EUROPE, WEST Contents Historical Archaeology in Britain Historical Archaeology in Ireland

Historical Archaeology in Britain Dan Hicks, Institute of Archaeology, Oxford, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary historical archaeology The archaeology of the period after c. AD 1450 in the Old World, and of the period after European contact in the New World, up to and including the present. industrial archaeology The study of post-medieval industrial sites, landscapes, and buildings. In an older usage, the archaeology of the modern period (c. AD 1750–1950). post-medieval archaeology The historical archaeology of Europe after the Middle Ages (c. AD 1450–present). In an older usage, the archaeology of Europe between the end of the Middle Ages and the mid-eighteenth century (c. AD 1450–1750).

Introduction The post-medieval period (c. AD 1450–present) received little attention from British archaeologists before the middle of the twentieth century. Accordingly, despite some occasional early engagements with early modern material, today British historical archaeology is a field with few ‘ancestors’; beginning during the 1950s, its short history still lies entirely within

living memory, and some of its most significant developments have taken place since the mid-1990s. While the field has traditionally been dominated by English research and research agendas, the potential of Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish historical archaeology, and the complexities of ‘British’ historical archaeology, are increasingly recognized. This review begins by considering the emergence of the field, through ‘conservation and consolidation’, during its first three decades (1950s–1970s). A second section considers the ‘high period’ of conventional British post-medieval and industrial archaeology during the 1970s and 1980s, and a third section considers the ‘fragmentation and critique’ that characterized the 1990s. A further section explores the emerging ‘diversity’ of historical archaeology since 2000, with particular emphasis upon current debates over heritage management, archaeologies of the recent and contemporary past, and the global and postcolonial contexts of British historical archaeology. Brief conclusions are provided.

Conservation and Consolidation The emergence and development of British historical archaeology during its first three decades (1950s–1970s) occurred outside of the dominant museum and university institutions of prewar British archaeology.

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The process was driven by three successive, but overlapping impulses: the emergence of ‘local studies’, the rise of ‘rescue archaeology’, and increasing efforts toward the ‘consolidation’ of post-medieval and industrial archaeology as more established and respected fields of enquiry. Local Studies

The first impulse, toward ‘local studies’, developed during the years of rapid social and material change that followed World War II, when public interest in the remains of local, industrial, and urban history grew markedly. Primarily an English (rather than British) phenomenon, it was driven by the efforts of avocational archaeologists, special interest groups, museum-based archaeologists, and Workers’ Educational Association and university extramural tutors who ran classes in places such as Bristol, Birmingham, and Leicester. A number of distinctive approaches to studying the material remains of the recent past developed, grounded not in excavation but in field trips and ‘parish surveys’ which emphasized topographical survey and historic map analysis. No firm distinctions between medieval, post-medieval, or industrial material generally existed in such work. Rather, the field was closely bound up with emerging concerns around conservation and the apparent destruction of the contemporary historic landscape. Local studies formed part of a new postwar rediscovery of the English countryside associated with the rise in private car ownership and changes in industrial manufacture. Particularly influential was the work of landscape historians Maurice Beresford (especially his 1957 book History on the Ground) and W. G. Hoskins (especially his 1967 book Fieldwork in Local History). Meanwhile, a distinctive tradition of Scottish rural settlement studies, exemplified by the work of Horace Fairhurst, also began to develop – pointing out how little understood Scottish rural settlement was between the Iron Age and the eighteenth century. Such work laid the foundations for the historical landscape archaeology of the 1970s and 1980s (also discussed below). Rescue Archaeology

While rural landscapes were the primary focus of local studies, the archaeological mitigation of the large motorway projects of the 1960s and 1970s virtually never engaged with post-medieval material, focusing instead upon prehistoric, medieval, and especially Romano-British material. A small number of influential rural excavation projects did nevertheless take place, usually focusing on the medieval– post-medieval transition. Most notable were the

excavations at the deserted medieval village of Wharram Percy in Yorkshire (abandoned during the early sixteenth century) which ran for successive summer seasons between 1950 and 1990 under the direction of John Hurst and Maurice Beresford; Michael Jarrett and Stuart Wrathmell’s excavations at the village of West Whelpington in Northumberland (abandoned c. AD 1720); and Barry Cunliffe’s combination of excavation and standing buildings recording at Manor Farm, Chalton, Hampshire between 1966 and 1972, which traced the development of the farm buildings from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries. The situation in the countryside was in stark contrast with that in English cities. In the face of the urban rebuilding programs that took place after the war, urban archaeological excavations were undertaken on an entirely new scale. While the work of the Guildhall Museum in London (from 1949) was particularly prominent, between the 1950s and 1970s urban excavation programs in Exeter, Southampton, Norwich, Leicester, Coventry, Bristol, Oxford and York, and Martin Biddle’s excavations at Winchester, formed a crucial part of the development of postmedieval urban archaeology. While recent remains were still often removed in order to expose more valued medieval or Romano-British archaeological remains, the sheer quantities of post-medieval material culture that were recovered meant that museumbased archaeologists began to engage with it in postexcavation work for the first time. This laid the foundations for the development of the post-medieval material culture studies of the 1970s and 1980s (discussed below). Consolidation

A third impulse, involving efforts toward disciplinary ‘consolidation’, developed from the early 1960s through new newsletters, conferences, societies, and publications. The prime movers in this process were museum-based archaeologists, who were gradually joined by archaeologists based in higher education institutions (usually in continuing education departments). The National Record of Industrial Monuments was established in the early 1960s, and involved a program of recording undertaken by local societies coordinated by the Council for British Archaeology. Through the efforts of archaeologists such as Phil Mayes and Ken Barton, the Society for PostMedieval Archaeology was founded in 1966, developing out of the Post-Medieval Ceramic Research Group which had been established at a meeting in Bristol in 1963. The Association for Industrial Archaeology was founded in 1973. Society journals were established – Post-Medieval Archaeology (from

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1967) and Industrial Archaeology Review (from 1976), and for the first time, book-length studies were produced, especially popular regional studies of industrial archaeology and vernacular building traditions.

Post-Medieval and Industrial Archaeology The 1970s and 1980s were dramatic times for British archaeology, with the rise of modern rescue archaeology, and the emergence of both processual and postprocessual theoretical approaches in Britain. But in many ways this was a slower, inward-looking period for British post-Roman archaeology, which came to be split between three period divisions – ‘medieval archaeology’ (c. AD 450–1450), ‘post-medieval archaeology’ (c. AD 1450–1750), and ‘industrial archaeology’ (c. AD 1750–1950). Despite such period distinctions, post-medieval and industrial archaeology saw a significant degree of consensus in relation to subject-matter, research agendas and disciplinary identity. However, this consensus saw the earlier efforts toward consolidation now giving way to a disciplinary nervousness. The innovation of Hoskins, Beresford, and Hurst was replaced by purely descriptive studies that sought to provide material to contribute to interpretations drawn from a previous generation of economic and social historians. Thus, David Crossley’s Post-Medieval Archaeology in Britain (1990) and the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology (SPMA)’s Research Priorities for Post-Medieval Archaeology (1988) focused upon the field’s potential, through synthesis of the field’s diverse range of data, to add to our understanding of early modern industrial and agricultural production, and demography. Meanwhile the third edition of Neil Cossons’ BP Book of Industrial Archaeology (1987) and the Association for Industrial Archaeology’s Industrial Archaeology: Working for the Future (1991) were not complemented by other studies that sought to expand the archaeology of more recent periods beyond the study of the remains of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century industrialization. The pages of Post-Medieval Archaeology and Industrial Archaeology Review were filled with highly detailed and descriptive archaeological reports, and apart from occasional contributions to county archaeological journals the results of British historical archaeology were virtually never published outside these two publications. Despite these limitations, the 1970s and 1980s represented a crucial period in some respects. Through the work of many dedicated researchers, the earlier efforts toward consolidation were realized. These are summarized in the following.

Post-Medieval Material Culture Studies

During the 1970s and 1980s, the majority of postmedieval archaeology was focused upon material culture studies developed by museum-based archaeologists. In the place of previous ‘connoisseur’ studies of elite material culture, especially glassware, precious metalware, and ceramics, usually written for the antiques trade, much-needed typological sequences for post-medieval British and imported ceramics, clay pipes, glass, and to a lesser extent building materials and metalwares, were developed. These studies were complemented by the excavation of the sites of industrial production: ironworks, the production sites of nonferrous metals such as lead, tin, copper, copper alloys, ceramics, and glassworks (Figure 1). Publications such as Adrian Oswald’s Clay Pipes for the Archaeologist (1975), Peter Davey’s monograph series The Archaeology of the Clay Tobacco Pipe (1979– present), Richard Coleman Smith and Terry Pearson’s Excavations in the Donyatt Potteries (1988), and Jacqueline Pearce’s Border Wares (1993) provided crucial tools with which British historical archaeology could engage with material culture in a more sophisticated manner. Historical Landscape Archaeology

While the simultaneous interest in medieval and early modern material became less common in most subfields of British historical archaeology in the 1970s and 1980s, it was retained in historical landscape archaeology. Here, the landscape was seen as a ‘palimpsest’ – akin to a document partially effaced and written over again many times. Thus, the contemporary nature of landscape archaeology was underlined, rather than the isolated study of particular chronological periods. In Scotland the term ‘Medieval or later Rural Settlement Studies’ was generally used, but in practice was characterized by an emphasis upon the medieval rather than the post-medieval. In England, the work of Christopher Dyer and Joan Thirsk at the Centre for English Local History at Leicester University, Mick Aston in the Department of Continuing Education at Bristol University, and later Tom Williamson at the University of East Anglia, was all influential. The perspectives of landscape historian Oliver Rackham, especially his History of the Countryside (1986) which emphasized the importance of fieldwork in the study of landscape, also influenced historical landscape archaeology. Such work led to an increasingly wide range of nonintrusive field methodologies, incorporating air photograph interpretation, geophysical survey, and more controversial techniques such as M. D. Hooper’s approach to dating medieval and post-medieval hedgerows by

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Figure 1 The remains of a crucible furnace from the former Brunswick Steel Works in Sheffield. A row of melting holes and blocked-up flues are visible. After recording the furnace was reburied and protected in situ. Courtesy of Archaeological Research Consultancy at the University of Sheffield.

assessing the number of shrub species present within them. The journals Landscape History (from 1979) and Rural History (from 1989) provided important venues for the development of this field. Historical landscape archaeology was mainly focused upon agrarian landscapes – the study of ‘river and wold’ – and especially upon the evidence of agricultural ‘improvement’ and the long-term history of landscape enclosure. However, it also increasingly encompassed the studies of urban topography and the archaeology of parks and gardens. Mick Aston and James Bond’s The Landscape of Towns (1976), for example, ranged from prehistoric and RomanoBritish contexts to Victorian and twentieth-century towns, and even to ‘the future of towns’. Other researchers began to use the techniques of landscape archaeology to study British battlefields, leading to work such as Glenn Foard’s 1995 study of the site of the Battle of Naseby (1651) in Northamptonshire. Meanwhile, gardens archaeology emerged as a new field of enquiry during the 1980s, especially in the context of historical restoration. Particularly influential were Chris Currie and Martin Locock’s excavations at Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens in Birmingham in the late 1980s (Figure 2), and Brian Dix’s excavations in the early 1990s in advance of the restoration of the Privy Garden at Hampton Court (built 1701–2).

Industrial Archaeology

From the mid-1950s, Industrial Archaeology had developed in parallel with Local Studies: also through the Workers’ Educational Association and university extra-mural departments, but through a largely separate community of enthusiasts from a different range of backgrounds – craftsmen, industrial managers, and particularly engineers interested in the history of their own industries. The 1970s and 1980s saw an increasingly wide range of work in industrial archaeology, particularly in the publication of regional surveys of industrial remains, and field studies of the production sites for items of material culture regularly excavated by archaeologists (ceramics, glass, metalwork, etc.). Industrial archaeologists also increasingly examined other industrial sites such as coal and tin mines, textile mills, and transportation networks such as roads, canals, and railways (see Industrial Archaeology). Landscape approaches were also extended into the archaeology of industrial landscapes through Jeremy Lowe and Martin Lawlor’s 1982 study ‘Landscapes of the iron industry’ at Blaenavon in Gwent, Wales, Judith Alfrey and Kate Clark’s ‘Nuffield Survey’ of the Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire during the late 1980s, and by Marilyn Palmer and Peter Neaverson’s Industrial Landscapes of the East Midlands (1992). This work has been increasingly

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Figure 2 Gardens archaeology at Castle Bromwich, Birmingham. Photograph: Chris Currie.

influential. For example, in the 1990s in Wales, Stephen Hughes’ work with the Welsh Royal Commission demonstrated the potential of the landscape archaeology of industrial landscapes through his work in the lower Swansea Valley in South Wales – this ‘Copperopolis’ developed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and ranged from industrial copper works which included a massive smelting hall known as the ‘Great Workhouse’, to other industrial processes, including porcelain manufacture, and roadways, wooden railways, and a commercial wharf. Buildings Archaeology

The archaeological study of post-1500 buildings also developed during this period. Vernacular architectural studies were catalyzed by Ronald William Brunskill’s Illustrated Handbook of Vernacular Architecture (1970) and Eric Mercer’s Vernacular Houses (1975). Scholars such as J. T. Smith examined the transition from medieval open halls to new post-medieval forms, inspired especially by W. G. Hoskins’ (1953) notion of a ‘Great Rebuilding’: a theme developed upon by Matthew Johnson’s study of Housing Culture: Traditional Architecture in an English Landscape (1993). Elsewhere in the UK, the archaeological study of many other kinds of buildings – from polite houses to institutions such as workhouses, schools, hospitals, and military structures – developed. The study of military architecture also developed, especially after the formation of the Fortress Study Group in 1975. The potential of studying workers’

housing was also increasingly recognized, especially in Royal Commission volumes such as Roger Leech’s Early Industrial Housing: The Trinity Area of Frome, Somerset (1981) and Lucy Caffyn’s landmark 1986 study of Workers’ Housing in West Yorkshire. Temporary housing was also examined, as with Michael Morris’ study of the ephemeral traces of the navvy huts used by road, railway, and canal construction workers (Figure 3). Church Archaeology

While the archaeology of churches and churchyards grew in importance during the 1970s, especially through the efforts of Warwick Rodwell and Richard Morris, a focus upon medieval, rather than postmedieval, remains continued to characterize the field. A notable exception was the studies of gravestones across Britain developed by Harold Mytum. The archaeology of post-medieval death and burial was also generally neglected, with cemeteries usually cleared without appropriate archaeological mitigation. This began to change during the 1980s, an important watershed being the Museum of London excavation directed by Jez Reeve of 968 eighteenthand nineteenth-century burials from the crypt of Christ Church, Spitalfields in London between 1984 and 1986. As Margaret Cox has suggested, the project raised crucial ethical, bureaucratic and intellectual issues around the treatment of the dead in the recent past: issues which have informed the subsequent development of forensic archaeology (discussed below).

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Figure 3 Collapsed door frame from a temporary navvy structure from construction of the Woodhead Tunnel (part of the Sheffield to Manchester railway) between 1839 and 1845. Figure 3 in Morris M (1994) Towards an archaeology of navvy huts and settlements of the industrial revolution. Antiquity 68: 573–584. Courtesy of Antiquity Publications Ltd.

Historical Maritime Archaeology

Fragmentation and Critique

In the rapid development of maritime archaeology in Britain from the 1970s, the study of material dating from after AD 1500 has played an important role. In Scotland, two underwater archaeology projects played a central role in the development of scientific approaches to wreck site formation processes: Keith Muckelroy’s excavations of the Kennemerland, a Dutch East Indiaman wrecked off the Shetland Islands (conducted between 1973 and 1977), and Colin Martin’s excavations of the Dartmouth, a British frigate wrecked off the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides. The most high-profile and intensive underwater archaeology project ever undertaken in Britain was also a historical maritime archaeology project: the raising in 1982 of Henry VIII’s warship the Mary Rose (which was built in 1509–1510, and sank in the Solent on the south coast of England in 1545). The Mary Rose project not only yielded crucial information about sixteenth-century ship construction but also many wellpreserved personal and domestic items of material culture. Meanwhile, scholars such as Sea´n McGrail and Basil Greenhill used British and Irish historical ethnographic and documentary material to examine the ethnoarchaeology of shipbuilding traditions. The study of terrestrial maritime landscapes also developed, especially through Gustav Milne’s seminal excavations of the waterfront of medieval and post-medieval London for the Museum of London in the mid-1970s and late-1980s.

By the late 1980s the subfields outlined above were growing in confidence, coherence, and critical mass. However, virtually no new researchers and practitioners or researchers had joined British historical archaeology: the generation of archaeologists that emerged during the 1970s and 1980s (trained in the new undergraduate degrees in archaeology) overwhelmingly turned instead to prehistoric or world archaeology. From the outside, British historical archaeology appeared to be an intellectually isolated and stagnant field in which a dry consensus had developed around purely descriptive modes of research. In this context, from around 1990 a number of factors combined to bring ‘fragmentation and critique’. Fragmentation

Fragmentation resulted in part from the new commercial archaeological environment that developed after the changes to the Department of Environment’s Planning Policy Guidance (PPG 16) in 1990. During the 1990s, competitive tendering and the emergence of a new kind of commercial archaeological contractor radically changed the positions of museum-based city archaeological units in which post-medieval material culture studies and urban excavation had developed during the 1970s and 1980s. In the new commercial environment, a new generation of larger, national-based archaeological units emerged. This

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made the previous development of integrated overviews of urban post-medieval archaeology produced by museum-based archaeologists much more difficult, especially outside London. Meanwhile as the decade progressed, the conventional internal disciplinary boundaries of British historical archaeology were increasingly questioned from within. This was most visible in the conference activities of the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology, driven in particular through the work of professional and museum-based archaeologists, laid many of the foundations for this process. Through the efforts of David Gaimster, Geoff Egan, and David Cranstone, the society held joint conferences with the Society for Medieval Archaeology in London in 1996 on the theme of The Age of Transition: The Archaeology of English Culture 1400–1600, with the US-based Society for Historical Archaeology in London and Williamsburg, Virginia in 1997 on the theme of Old and New Worlds, and a joint conference with the Association for Industrial Archaeology at Bristol University in 1999 on the theme of Archaeology and Industrialization. These meetings served to problematize conventional boundaries that had developed during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and focused the attention of historical archaeologists upon significant processes that fell across conventional chronological divisions, such as the archaeology of the ‘reformation’, the reuse of monastic lands and buildings after the ‘dissolution’ (1536–1540), or the social history of industrialization. From 1995 the conventional neglect of the twentieth-century British archaeology was challenged by the 7-year Council for British Archaeology’s Defence of Britain Project through which around 600 volunteers recorded almost 20 000 twentieth-century military sites across Britain. Critique

Meanwhile ‘critique’ developed from researchers based in higher education institutions, particularly archaeologists who studied as doctoral students at the University of Cambridge during the late 1980s and early 1990s such as Matthew Johnson, Sarah Tarlow, John Carman, Gavin Lucas, and Victor Buchli. The extension of the principles of ‘ethnoarchaeology’ into an examination of very recent and contemporary British material culture – mortuary practices in Victorian England and modern Cambridge, modernism and suburbia, pet food factories or beer can designs – had been an important point of departure for the postprocessual turn of 1980s Cambridge (see Postprocessual Archaeology). Such work used modern or contemporary material rhetorically – to make broader theoretical arguments about material culture rather than to

contribute to the historical study of recent periods. Indeed, from the early 1990s Chris Tilley, Daniel Miller, and others rejected archaeological approaches, seeking instead to develop anthropological ‘material culture studies’ as a separate field. At the same time, however, others began to use interpretive approaches to critique the descriptive consensus of British historical archaeology. An early statement was Kate Clark’s diagnosis of ‘Trouble at t’Mill’ for 1980s industrial archaeology, published in Antiquity in 1987. But it was not until the second half of the 1990s that a genuine watershed in British historical archaeology came about with Matthew Johnson’s An Archaeology of Capitalism (1996), Sarah Tarlow’s Bereavement and Commemoration (1999), and Sarah Tarlow and Susie West’s edited collection The Familiar Past? Archaeologies of Later Historical Britain (1999). These volumes questioned interdisciplinary boundaries, and sought to develop a ‘social archaeology’ of early modern material: variously applying the sociological perspectives of Bourdieu and Giddens, literary theory and Foucault, structuralist analyses of social space, and anthropological theories of consumption in conventional post-medieval contexts. The literary bent of such studies sometimes weakened their engagement with materiality, critiquing previous uses of archaeology to illustrate processes defined by social and economic history but replacing such studies with similar illustrations of social theory. Nevertheless, the importance of these studies lay in their emphasis of interpretive as well as purely descriptive approaches, and their inspiration of a new generation of archaeologists to start work on British historical archaeology.

Diversity (1999–Present) Today, the picture presented in David Crossley’s PostMedieval Archaeology (1990) is unrecognizable. Since the turn of the millennium, the field has responded to fragmentation and critique by developing diversity, a renewed self-confidence in the distinctive perspectives of archaeology in all its forms, and its abilities to combine alternative approaches. While the complex processes that have contributed to the present situation are still in the process of becoming clear, they are sketched in this section. The year 2000 saw the publication of a landmark document by English Heritage, Power of Place: The Future of the Historic Environment, which included the results of a major MORI survey of public attitudes to heritage in England. The document highlighted two interrelated phenomena: how many people, especially among the Black and Asian communities, felt excluded from heritage, and how for

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many people the remains of the recent past – which often formed part of the everyday built environment in which they lived – represented valued aspects of the heritage. Since then, the potential for historical archaeology to engage with issues of public value and social inclusion has been an important inspiration for historical archaeologists. One emerging theme in such studies is the archaeology of British identity. The past 500 years have witnessed the historical emergence and changing limits of ‘Britain’. Through the Acts of Union of 1707 which brought together England and Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the Act of Union of 1800 which brought Northern Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the British nation was, in historian Linda Colley’s double-edged term, ‘forged’ during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Behind these legislative processes lay complex medieval and early modern developments: the personal union between the Irish Parliament and Henry VIII (1541), the Laws in Wales Acts (1535–1542) which brought together England and Wales, the establishment of English plantations in Ulster plantation after the Nine Years War (1594–1603). Such processes also continued into the twentieth century, with the division of Belfast and Derry/Londonderry from the rest of Ireland, forming Northern Ireland, in 1920–1921, and the establishment of the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998 – bringing the repeal of the Government of Ireland Act of 1920 and the end of direct rule from Westminster. Cutting across these processes, British culture has continually benefited from the arrival of immigrant populations during the post-medieval period – especially from continental Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and southern and eastern Asia. A number of British historical archaeologists have begun to develop studies that combine an archaeological examination of these historical processes with an awareness of contemporary politics. Jim Gardner’s 2004 study of heritage among the Bangladeshi community in east London and Siaˆn Jones’ studies of the complex relationships between Scottish heritage and memorialization have been especially influential here. The plantation archaeology of Ulster, and of the Munster plantation in contemporary southern Ireland (established during the 1580s), holds great potential to explore similar themes, but remains underdeveloped despite recent engagements by American archaeologists Audrey Horning and James Delle. Others, such as Matthew Johnson, have pointed to the potential of a postcolonial archaeology of Britain. In this vein, Dan Hicks has sought to trace the influence of colonial history upon British landscapes and material culture through his fieldwork at the garden of mid-eighteenth-century Atlantic merchant Thomas

Goldney III in Clifton, Bristol. In her 2003 edited collection Archaeologies of the British, Australian archaeologist Susan Lawrence placed studies of British identity and regionality undertaken by archaeologists such as Alasdair Brooks, Pamela Graves, Adrian Green, Matthew Johnson, and James Symonds in the United Kingdom in global comparative perspective. The 2000s have also seen a number of challenges to the conventional neglect of twentieth-century (and even more recent) archaeology. Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas’ edited collection Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past (2001) was highly influential here, especially the editors’ own study of an abandoned council house in Cambridgeshire. In a radical departure from the rhetorical use of archaeologies of the recent past in postprocessual archaeology, Buchli and Lucas eloquently demonstrated the potential for archaeological methods to be used to contribute to the social scientific study of homelessness, drug use and the effectiveness of housing policy. The social usefulness of archaeologies of the recent and contemporary past have also been clearly demonstrated in the rapid development of forensic archaeology in Britain, especially through the work of Margaret Cox. The annual meetings of the Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory (CHAT) group, convened in 2003, have provided a venue for the development of such ‘contemporary archaeology’ alongside more conventional historical archaeology. The archaeology of the sixteenth–nineteenth centuries has also seen renewed attention, especially in the work of museum-based archaeologists such as Geoff Egan in London and David Barker in Stoke-on-Trent who have continued to develop sophisticated studies of post-medieval material culture studies; in studies of the reception of medieval buildings in the early postmedieval period such as the work of Kate Giles; and in Chris Dalglish’s studies of the landscape archaeology of improvement in eighteenth-century Argyll. Meanwhile, especially through the work of John Schofield, twentieth-century archaeology has been developed further in military archaeology – a field in which archaeologists have studied Cold War military sites, the remains of antinuclear peace camps and wall art as well as more conventional World War I and World War II remains (Figure 4) – and in other aspects of twentieth-century archaeology. Here, archaeological survey methods have been increasingly combined with oral historical and documentary research – most vividly in Laura McAtackney’s study of the archaeology of the Long Kesh/Maze prison site in Northern Ireland, which is now decommissioned. Twentieth-century archaeology has also proved a fertile area for public archaeology projects, which involve members of local communities in field

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Figure 4 Mid-twentieth century wall art on the walls of a prisoner of war camp in Lincolnshire, showing Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Courtesy of Roger J. C. Thomas.

projects, such as Eleanor Conlin Casella’s excavation of two cottages at Alderley Edge, Cheshire and Gabriel Moshenska’s oral historical research around the Museum of London community excavation of the remains of bombed-out Victorian terraced houses at Shoreditch Park in east London.

Conclusions Since the mid-1990s, historical archaeology in Britain has witnessed a radical phase of debate and growth. While the literary, interpretive critique of the 1990s was a useful and overdue catalyst, today it is the emergence of field projects that combine empirical and interpretive perspectives, and often political and community engagement, that makes the prospects for the field so strong. The most successful of these involve new kinds of partnership between archaeologists based in the commercial, museums, and higher education sectors, as with the Alderley Edge project discussed above. James Symonds and Anna Badcock at the Archaeological Research Consultancy at the University of Sheffield have recently developed a number of innovative new studies in historical archaeology from development-funded excavations, including Symonds’ 2002 edited volume The Historical Archaeology of the Sheffield Cutlery and Tableware Industry 1750–1900. Similarly, the Museum of London’s excavation in 1989 of the site of the Rose

Theatre in Southwark, London (constructed 1587) has produced important new interdisciplinary perspectives upon theatre history. While further projects and publications of this kind develop, many challenges remain. British historical archaeology has not yet developed field projects that engage with the untold histories of ethnic minorities, working class communities or household situations that have been addressed in North American, South African, or Australasian historical archaeology. The historical archaeology of gender and sexuality in Britain, explored so successfully by medieval archaeologists such as Roberta Gilchrist, remains underdeveloped. Few book-length studies in the new British contemporary and historical archaeology have been written. The field’s center of gravity in London and southeast England remains insufficiently counterbalanced by the development of historical archaeologies in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, in northern and western England, and in cities such as Liverpool, Newcastle, Birmingham, and Glasgow. The potential of building partnerships between different archaeological communities (commercial, higher educational, governmental, museum-based, avocational) remains underexplored. Nevertheless, as the field continues to build upon the solid foundations laid in the second half of the twentieth century, British historical archaeology has emerged as one of the most dynamic and exciting fields in contemporary European archaeology.

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Acknowledgments The chapter was completed during a period of research leave funded by the University of Bristol and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to whom thanks are due. Thanks are also due to David Cranstone, David Gaimster, Roberta Gilchrist, Matthew Johnson, Marilyn Palmer, and James Symonds who commented on a draft of this chapter. See also: Europe, Northern and Western: Medieval; Europe, West: Historical Archaeology in Ireland; Historic Preservation Laws; Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline; Industrial Archaeology; Landscape Archaeology; Maritime Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Urban Archaeology.

Further Reading Buchli V and Lucas G (eds.) (2001) Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past. London: Routledge. Casella EC and Symonds J (eds.) (2005) Industrial Archaeology: Future Directions. New York: Springer. Crossley D (1990) Post-Medieval Archaeology in Britain. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Currie C (2005) Garden Archaeology: A Handbook. (Practical Handbooks in Archaeology). York: Council for British Archaeology. Egan G and Michael RL (eds.) (1999) Old and New Worlds. Oxford: Oxbow. Gaimster DRM and Gilchrist R (eds.) (2004) The Archaeology of the Reformation. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Gaimster DRM and Stamper P (eds.) (1997) The Age of Transition. The Archaeology of English Culture 1400–1600. Oxford: Oxbow Books. (Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 15; Oxbow Monograph 98). Hicks D and Beaudry MC (eds.) (2006) The Cambridge Companion to Historical Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Johnson MH (1996) An Archaeology of Capitalism. Oxford: Blackwell. Lawrence S (ed.) (2003) Archaeologies of the British: Explorations of Identity in Great Britain and its colonies, 1600–1945. London: Routledge. (One World Archaeology 46). McAtackney L (2007) The contemporary politics of landscape at the Long Kesh/Maze Prison site, Northern Ireland. In: Hicks D, McAtackney L, and Fairclough G (eds.) Envisioning Landscape: Situations and Standpoints in Archaeology and Heritage. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press (One World Archaeology). Morris M (1994) Towards an archaeology of navvy huts and settlements of the industrial revolution. Antiquity 68: 573–584. Palmer M and Neaverson P (1999) Industrial Archaeology: Principles and Practice. London: Routledge. Penrose S (2007) Images of Change: A Field Guide to the English Landscape, 1950–2005. Swindon: English Heritage/Atkins Heritage (with contributions from Bradley A, Buchli GV, Fairclough V Hicks D, Miller J, and Schofield J). Schofield J (2005) Combat Archaeology: Material Culture and Modern Conflict. London: Duckworth (Duckworth Debates in Archaeology). Tarlow S and West S (eds.) (1999) The Familiar Past? Archaeologies of Later Historical Britain. London: Routledge.

Historical Archaeology in Ireland Charles E Orser, Jr., Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA Colm J Donnelly, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary folklife Traditions passed down informally over time within a group. industrial archaeology Archaeology that concerns itself with the physical remains of the Industrial Revolution. maritime archaeology Study of human interaction with the sea, lakes, and rivers. modernity The condition of belonging to the ‘modern’ era since the post-medieval period. post-medieval archaeology The archaeology of the period approximately between 1450 and 1750.

The definition of what constitutes historical archaeology has been a matter of prolonged discussion. The term has its origins among archaeologists working on post-Columbian European and European-impacted sites within the United States and other regions colonized or visited by people from Europe after about AD 1500. A broader definition views historical archaeology as the investigation of any archaeological materials related to any literate society anywhere in the world. This last definition incorporates the idea that historical archaeology is essentially a methodology that combines archaeological and historical information. Viewed in an Irish context, the first definition shares an affinity with the British use of the term ‘post-Medieval archaeology’, a term that is widely used in Ireland. Conversely, the employment of the second term proposes that the introduction of the written word to Ireland at the start of the Early Christian period in the fifth century AD heralds the advent of historical archaeology. Under this broader definition, historical archaeology in Ireland would embrace all literate history. For present purposes, however, we define historical archaeology in the first sense, as the study of the modern world, while also acknowledging the methodological appeal of the broad definition. Usage of the more restrictive term, though preferred, raises several important issues when used in an Irish context. The central problem with using the term ‘historical archaeology’ in Ireland relates to the island’s history. Ireland was part of Europe at the commencement of

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the sixteenth century, the time frame referenced in the more restricted definition. In contrast to those places that would be most closely associated with global European colonization – and where historical archaeology was also first practiced – Ireland’s indigenous culture was already drastically affected by the government-sponsored actions of a neighboring European superpower, England. The effect of English involvement in Ireland has had positive and negative repercussions for both nations over the past 300 years. Bearing this circumstance in mind, any attempt to identify a precise date for the advent of the modern world in Ireland – and thus the purview of the most rigorous definition of historical archaeology – necessitates a sensitivity to certain political, religious, cultural, and economic elements of the island’s history as a result of increasing levels of English governmental and cultural intervention. The commencement of the Nine Years War in 1594, instigated by powerful native Gaelic lordships in Ulster, under the leadership of Hugh O’Neill, ended with the Treaty of Mellifont in 1603. The main Irish protagonists were allowed to keep their lands, but political intrigue left O’Neill and his followers in a precarious situation. In 1607, a cohort of the chief Gaelic lords left Ireland for the continent in an event known as The Flight of the Earls. This action provided the administration of James I, the new monarch of England and Scotland, with the opportunity to put into practice a major scheme of plantation on the confiscated estates. The plantation schemes that were enacted from the 1550s to 1620 – including the Plantation of Ulster in 1609 – did not, however, produce the results anticipated. The newcomers brought with them new governing structures and laws, and sought to alter radically the Irish landscape by introducing agricultural and economic practices they construed as an improvement over the traditional Gaelic methods. They also changed the built environment by constructing new buildings in nonindigenous styles. Even with the advent of such broad cultural transformations, the planters failed to attract sufficient numbers of settlers. To remain economically viable, the new landowners were thus forced to retain members of the pre-existing native Irish population on their new estates. The successful introduction of Protestantism into Ulster, which was integral to the improvement process, was stunted since the native Irish remained Catholic, despite some notable conversions. The English planter population were outnumbered, even though they controlled the new landscape they had created as a consequence of their power. Because of their insecurity – a common by-product of colonization – they were ever watchful of a possible insurrection by the native Irish populace.

When that revolt finally materialized in 1641, it heralded a 10-year period of hostilities that only ended with the total conquest of Ireland by Cromwell’s New Model Army in 1653. Following the Interregnum and the uneasy peace between monarch and parliament under Charles II, the ascent to the throne in 1685 of the Catholic James II led to further traumatic events in Ireland. Ousted by the Protestant English parliament in 1688, James viewed Ireland as the theater wherein he could regain his crown. The defeat of James’ forces by his Protestant son-in-law, William of Orange, led to the Treaty of Limerick in 1691, a truce that ensured the final political subjugation of Ireland by Britain. Ireland had become a Protestant-dominated country by the end of the seventeenth century, with political power firmly in the hands of the island’s landowning Protestant Ascendancy, a class that experienced its great affluence and influence during the eighteenth century. Given this politico-religious history, can historical archaeologists use early modern events to designate the purview of Irish historical archaeology? Scholars have long recognized that the English planters constructed their homes in a style that betrayed their own places of origin. What has not been emphasized is that English manor houses and Scottish tower houses might have been new to the Irish landscape, but – leaving aside the use of new materials such as brick and Renaissance features such as bay windows – these structures were still fundamentally medieval. The building stock of the landowners of Ireland only really improved with the peace and stability of the eighteenth century. The Protestant Ascendancy controlled 95% of the land by the end of the century. Outside the upper echelons of plantation society, new settlers typically adopted the cabins of the native Irish, presumably constructed for them by native builders. Thomas Raven’s contemporary pictorial maps of the villages of the London Companies offer insights into a world where medieval building traditions – timberframed, English-style houses and mud-walled Irish cabins – sat juxtaposed on the landscape. The excavation of native Irish material culture on plantation settlements at Salterstown, County Londonderry, can be viewed as evidence of economic interaction between members of both groups. This discovery may even indicate that native Irish men and women lived among the planters. As is true of vernacular architecture, the material culture also indicates the new settlers’ need to rely on the native Irish to help them survive in their new environment. The slow pace of cultural change, however, is indicated by the discovery of everted rim-ware – a native pottery type that has its origins in the thirteenth century – alongside imported pottery at plantation village sites in County Londonderry. Excavations reveal

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that people continued to use the native ware until the end of the seventeenth century. The principal form of lordly residence in Ireland during the Late Medieval period was the tower house, a tall self-contained, stone building with rooms stacked one over the other. Access between floors was gained by means of a stone staircase. The tower houses had genuine defensive strength, but they were not grim citadels; rather, they were defended homes. By the second half of the sixteenth century, a change occurred in tower house architecture, and Renaissance architectural ideas began to manifest themselves in this well-established building tradition. The changes in architecture, however, reflect Irish knowledge and appreciation of what was occurring throughout Renaissance Europe. Just as Irish builders had adapted English-decorated architecture three centuries earlier to produce their own successful regional variations, the Irish Gothic, they began to adopt Renaissance ideas in their building designs. Efforts to identify cultural parallels and sources of inspiration for these modifications have not yet been entirely fruitful, however. If Hugh O’Neill and his Gaelic army had been successful at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601, Ulster may not have become subject to British colonization during the first two decades of the new century. The demand to colonize would probably have led to British involvement later in the seventeenth century, however, since Ireland would still have been a Catholic country, and thus perceived as a potential threat to the security of Protestant Britain. Burgeoning capitalist practice would certainly have added further impetus to the process of colonization, because Ireland was resource rich, with numerous opportunities for entrepreneurial advancement. What becomes apparent, therefore, is that the seventeenth century as a whole must be viewed as the period when Ireland was transformed from medieval to modern. Of more importance, however, is the realization that this process occurred as a direct consequence of British colonialism. It constituted a complex process of making Ireland British. On political, religious, economic, and social fronts, the transformation of Ireland during the seventeenth century did not occur as a result of any single event. It was a protracted and nonteleological process. But the modern world that was created for Ireland was not of its own choosing; it was a world that had been shaped by British intentions. Twentieth-century politics have also exerted a significant influence on the development of historical archaeology in Ireland. With partition in 1920, the island was refashioned as two governmental jurisdictions. Further negotiations created Northern Ireland, composed of six northeastern counties, as part of the

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the Irish Free State, later the Republic of Ireland, consisting of the remaining 26 counties. The presence of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom meant that archaeologists in the north benefited from the methodological and theoretical developments in British archaeology. The formalization of British post-Medieval archaeology beginning in the early 1960s – through the Post-Medieval Ceramic Research Group, which became the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology later in the decade – meant that historical archaeologists in the north did not necessarily have to justify their interest in post-prehistoric sites. The situation, however, was far different in the Republic of Ireland. Here, archaeologists were encouraged to focus their attention on the far distant past, in periods of history that existed before the creation of the British Empire. Even medieval archaeology was frowned upon in the south, and the only archaeology that could be methodologically linked to historical archaeology (under the broad definition) focused on what is often termed the Early Christian Period. This epoch is usually defined as extending from the introduction of Christianity to the arrival of the Anglo-Normans, or from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. When archaeologists in the Republic did show interest in modern culture history, they often classified their work under the rubric of folklife studies. Many of these scholars, such as AT Lucas, director of the National Museum of Ireland in the Republic, were dedicated to multidisciplinary investigations of topics that would later fall well within the confines of historical archaeology. Others such as Joseph Raftery –also a former director of the National Museum of Ireland – argued for an explicit linkage between archaeology and folklife studies. Such calls were not immediately heeded, and the formalization of historical archaeology in Ireland did not occur until 1999, with the formation of the Irish Post-Medieval Archaeology Group. This developmental history contrasts with that of the United States where, in the 1930s, a nascent historical archaeology was largely a governmental creation designed to conduct research at sites associated with people and places notable in early American history. Research at sites like Jamestown, that extolled European colonization, and Williamsburg, that celebrated the nation’s revolutionary past, could not be duplicated in Ireland because most of the 1916 rebels and the veterans of the Irish Civil War were still alive. Modern history was thus too immediate, fresh, and remembered to be a subject for archaeological investigation. Concerned individuals had discussed the creation of a folk museum in Northern Ireland for at least two

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decades before the 1958 Ulster Folk Museum Act was passed by the Northern Ireland government. In 1961 the government purchased Cultra Manor, on the southern shore of Belfast Lough eight miles from Belfast, as the museum’s home. Concerned with the preservation of the built environment, museum personnel pursued a policy of identifying abandoned and threatened buildings of architectural merit. The buildings were then ‘collected’ from their original locations – disassembled stone by stone, transported to Cultra, and re-erected at a suitable location within the museum, depending upon their original rural or urban context. The museum’s conservators might be questioned today for not including excavation in their program, but the buildings, now saved and protected, provide a unique and important catalog of the north’s vernacular architecture. In the Republic, the National Museum of Ireland opened a branch designated as the Museum of Country Life in Castlebar, County Mayo, in 2001. This facility is dedicated to reflecting all aspects of traditional life in Ireland during the 1850–1950 period. Historical archaeology is not currently situated within the museum’s stated purview, but the over 50 000 artifacts in its collection are entirely consistent with historical archaeology’s subject matter. Despite the relatively late blooming of historical archaeology in Ireland, archaeologists working on modern-period subjects have nonetheless made impressive contributions to knowledge. Much remains to be accomplished, but archaeologists have explored aspects of the full range of Ireland’s modern history, from the earliest plantation sites to early twentiethcentury industrial works. Various academic scholars have examined the architectural legacy of the Ulster Plantation, with studies of individual buildings and their histories published in the first and second editions of the Ulster Journal of Archaeology, beginning in the late nineteenth century. Fortified houses and tower houses continued to receive attention throughout the twentieth century, and in the north specifically, the establishment of the government-supported Archaeological Survey enabled further research to be undertaken at a range of individual sites. Major synthetic articles by Jope and by Waterman, which continue to be referenced today, were published as a result of this research. One of the first excavations at a castle associated with the plantation period – late sixteenth or early seventeenth century – was undertaken in County Fermanagh in 1964–65 at Agheeghter, where the stair projection for a larger, and previously demolished, main block was recorded in advance of its destruction for a road improvement scheme. Several archaeologists, supplemented by studies of historical

geographers, continued this research throughout those areas that experienced English and Scottish plantation efforts. In keeping with the early trends in historical archaeology in general, the buildings these scholars surveyed tended to be the homes of principal landowners. At the same time, however, some researchers also recognized that a complete picture of daily life during the plantation period could only be obtained with a concomitant study of the housing and material conditions of the colonized. This research on Ireland’s plantation era illustrated one important facet of historical archaeology: the value of historic maps. Pictorial maps produced during the early decades of the seventeenth century show two distinct medieval building traditions – one Irish, one English – existing side by side on the landscape. Archaeologists have yet to find evidence for Englishdesigned, timber-framed architecture in the Ulster Plantation. Excavation at Movanagher in County Londonderry has shown the ephemeral nature of the physical evidence for both native and imported house types. The maps thus document cultural features that archaeologists have yet to examine. In another example, historical documents indicate that a British village existed somewhere in the vicinity of Sir John Hume’s Tully Castle in County Fermanagh. In 2002, an extensive program of reconnaissance excavation in the immediate area failed to locate any evidence of the village, and the excavators were forced to look to the nearby hamlet of Churchill as the possible village site. The archaeological investigation of rural settlements began in the 1950s when archaeologists excavated a clachan (a cluster of farm dwellings and associated outbuildings) at Murphystown, County Down. One goal of the project’s directors was to investigate the origins and development of the clachan as a settlement type. The clachan at Murphystown had been abandoned possibly as late as the early twentieth century. Other protracted excavations at rural settlements have occurred at the deserted village of Slievemore on Achill Island in County Mayo, and at the evicted townlands of Ballykilcline, Muliviltrin, and Gorttoose in County Roscommon. These projects all have the goal of documenting daily life in the Irish countryside, a topic that promises to provide new information about material culture, consumerism, subsistence, economics, and relationships maintained with the outside world. These researches into the nineteenth century also have a multinational dimension because they illuminate the material and social aspects of the Irish Diaspora, a series of related events that affected the entire world. As a result, some of the archaeological findings being generated in Ireland can be compared with those from sites elsewhere in the world, such as in the United States and

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Australia, whose history was significantly impacted by Irish emigration (see Oceania: Historical Archaeology in Australia; Americas, North: Historical Archaeology in the United States). At the same time, several projects have been conducted in urban settings. Most of the major cities in Ireland, north and south, have been subject to archaeological excavation, particularly with the recent increase in construction activities throughout the island. Some projects, such as several conducted in Belfast, have been specifically dedicated to the examination of modern-period remains, whereas other projects, notably in Dublin and Galway, have recovered modern artifacts during the excavation of earlier periods. Inevitably, much of the modern-era archaeology conducted in urban settings will have an industrial component. Given that Belfast was developed into a major industrial center in the late nineteenth century, it is perhaps not surprising that the first study of the industrial archaeology of Ireland came from the north. Professor Rodney Green, whose family had been involved in the linen industry for many years, published in 1949 a seminal text on the impact of that industry on the Lagan Valley. Government archaeologists were employed on the compilation of an archaeological survey of County Down in the 1950s at a time when Green was a member of the Ancient Monuments Advisory Council of Northern Ireland. He used his position on the council to argue for a study to be made also of the sites associated with the linen industry in the county, and he was subsequently invited to undertake a survey of these sites. The initial scope of the survey was later broadened to include monuments associated with other industries, and the resultant text, published in 1963, proved to be the first regional industrial survey in Britain and Ireland. The success of this initial venture persuaded the council to undertake a more encompassing survey of the industrial archaeology of Northern Ireland. During the 1960s, then, surveyors amassed a wealth of information now housed in the McCutcheon Archive within the Environment and Heritage Service of the Department of the Environment in Northern Ireland. The pioneering work undertaken by the industrial survey encouraged other academics to produce publications on other industrial subjects, including engineering industries, and water power, railroads, breweries, distilleries, and glassworks. Excavation at the largely forgotten Downshire Pottery in Belfast has provided important insight on the nature of the Irish creamware industry. This late eighteenth century ceramic work was created to compete with Josiah Wedgwood’s industrial complex in Staffordshire, England, but its operation was short-lived.

Outside Belfast and Derry, most industrial activity was small scale, and designed to supply local needs. Farmers operated flax-scutching watermills during the winter months as a means of generating additional funds, just as flax itself was viewed as a cash crop of the rural community. These cottage industries, though vastly significant within the local economies, are still largely understudied by archaeologists. The volume of existing research regrettably does not mean that industrial archaeology is necessarily a major topic of academic study in Ireland. Belfast was one of the world’s most industrialized urban centers, but the archaeological study of the city’s industrial origins has been virtually nonexistent when compared with what archaeologists have accomplished in other industrial cities in Britain. The only major industrial archaeological investigations that have occurred in the city have been conducted within the sponsoredresearch sector, for example, when archaeologists excavated and recorded the Annadale Brickworks in advance of a new housing development. Oddly, industrial archaeology does not formally constitute part of the curriculum at university level in Northern Ireland. The paucity of formal instruction, however, does not mean that interest does not exist, and the addition of an industrial archaeologist to the staff of University College Cork suggests, perhaps, that attitudes toward the subject are changing. Industrial archaeology continues to be championed by independent volunteer organizations, such as the Industrial Heritage Association of Ireland, and by local community groups who have restored industrial sites to working order as tourist attractions to aid their local economies. Maritime archaeology has also been slow to develop in Ireland, but a major research center was created in 1999 at the University of Ulster in Coleraine. One of their projects relevant to historical archaeology was their investigation of the La Surveillante, a French frigate scuttled in 1797 in Bantry Bay, County Cork. This effort documented the ship’s construction and the equipment on board, and also proved a strong rationale for the further development of maritime archaeology in Ireland. The historical archaeology of Ireland is, in recent times, beginning to be pursued as a recognized field of study in Ireland. Archaeologists working in Northern Ireland have conducted much more modern-era archaeology than have archaeologists in the Republic. The cause of historical archaeology in all of Ireland will surely grow, however, as a result of the further expansion of archaeology as a discipline in the island’s universities, and as the explosion of contract archaeology forces both legislators and practitioners to recognize the importance of modern-era archaeological sites to national heritage.

1332 EVOLUTIONARY ARCHAEOLOGY See also: Americas, South: Historical Archaeology; Europe, Northern and Western: Medieval; Europe, West: Historical Archaeology in Britain; Maritime Archaeology; Oceania: Historical Archaeology in Australia.

Further Reading Donnelly C and Brannon N (1998) Trowelling through history: Historical archaeology and the study of early modern Ireland. History Ireland 6(3): 22–25. Donnelly C and Horning A (2002) Post-Medieval and industrial archaeology in Ireland: An overview. Antiquity 76: 557–561. Francis P (2001) A Pottery by the Lagan: Irish Creamware from The Downshire China Manufactory, Belfast, 1787-c. 1806. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University.

Jope EM (1960) Moyry, Charlemont, Castleraw, and Richhill: Fortification to architecture in the north of Ireland 1570–1700. Ulster Journal of Archaeology 23: 97–123. McCutcheon WA (1980) The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland. Belfast, UK: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Orser CE (1996) Can there be an archaeology of the great famine? In: Morash C and Hayes R (eds.) Fearful Realities: New Perspectives on the Famine, pp. 77–89. Irish Academic Press: Dublin. Orser CE (2002) Ireland. In: Orser CE (ed.) Encyclopedia of Historical Archaeology, pp. 296–299. London: Routledge. Orser CE (2004) Historical Archaeology, 2nd edn. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Rynne C (1999) The Industrial Archaeology of Cork City and Its Environs. Dublin: The Stationery Office. Waterman D (1961) Some Irish seventeenth-century houses and their architectural ancestry. In: Jope EM (ed.) Studies in Building History, pp. 251–274. London: Odhams Press.

EVOLUTIONARY ARCHAEOLOGY Timothy A Kohler, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Darwinian fitness The relative or absolute number of offspring produced by an individual or a population, either measured by counting direct descendants or by including offspring of relatives, discounted by their degree of relatedness (inclusive fitness). Galton’s problem A problem that arises in cross-cultural comparisons if cultures that share traits because of shared histories, including diffusion, are mistakenly considered to have independently developed those traits. Named after a famous objection by Francis Galton to a paper delivered by Edward B. Tylor at a meeting of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in 1888. group selection A mechanism for selection in which social groups are the objects of selection, as might be possible if cooperative interactions among its members enhance the fitness of a group. kin selection Selective advantage due to helping behaviors directed toward genetically related individuals (term coined by John Maynard Smith). phenotype All the characteristics of an individual that arise from the interaction, over a lifetime, of its genotype with its environment. phylogenetic tree A representation of an inferred line of descent for a group of related organisms (or societies), identifying a reconstructed common ancestor and the distances among its descendants. selection The retention of favorable variants and the rejection of injurious variants, to paraphrase Darwin’s original definition of natural selection. symbol system An organized communication system that is governed by rules and is therefore generative, containing signs that are self-referential (e.g., words defined by other words) and is therefore symbolic.

All archaeologists are concerned with documenting change through time in human cultures and societies. In addition, evolutionary archaeologists seek to explain these changes using evolutionary logic. Like all living things, humans are subject to biological evolution; like many animals, we can transmit behaviors via social learning and imitation. Our evolution has been more complicated still, however, because we also employ a symbol system – which is itself subject to and instrumental in evolution. Variability in how archaeologists currently apply evolutionary theory to explain sociocultural change suggests that our grand synthesis has yet to be developed. But ironically, for a field which denies that change needs to be progressive, much progress has been made over the last two decades in particular and the rate of progress seems to be accelerating.

Pre-Twentieth Century Use of Evolutionary Theory in Anthropology Until the mid-nineteenth century, the worldwide archaeological sequence remained extremely unclear, and until the advent of radiometric dating in the midtwentieth century the length of the sequence was consistently underestimated. This did not prevent Europeans of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, in contact with less politically complex societies in the Americas and Africa, from using these societies as models for ancient societies around the world. Evolutionary concepts were much ‘in the air’ by the early 1800s, and in the 1850s, Herbert Spencer applied evolutionary ideas to what he believed to be the

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sequence of development of human societies around the world. For Spencer, evolution was a universal concept applicable to the development of complexity in the physical, biological, and social realms; as he used it in regard to society, it seems to have been synonymous with progress. Such study of ‘cultural evolution’ was the first systematic manifestation of evolutionary interests in anthropology and archaeology. Workers in this tradition focused on identifying and describing what were thought to be successive and, usually, universal stages of increasingly complex technologies, economies, and sociopolitical structures. At the same time they devoted comparatively less attention to the processes that might have caused societies to move from one of these stages to the next. The American lawyer Lewis Henry Morgan, for example, identified three major stages (savagery, barbarism, and civilization), with additional substages, through which he believed societies passed in sequential fashion. Technological innovations were important in differentiating these stages, although Morgan considered societies to be functionally integrated, so changes in technology could influence other aspects of society, and vice versa. In formulating his taxonomy, Morgan took into account the findings of contemporary ethnology and archaeology (a field just then beginning to find its feet). Morgan’s work in turn influenced Marx and Engels (see Marxist Archaeology).

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There were isolated attempts to apply the principles of evolution directly to the study of artifacts. In the 1860s and 1870s, Lieutenant General A. LaneFox Pitt-Rivers gave a series of lectures, collected in 1906, in which he endeavored to place in order of sequential development many different kinds of artifacts, including boomerangs and stone tools (Figure 1). The principles used to obtain his sequences are still worth reading, and included the idea that artifacts change from the simple to complex by means of the accumulation of many very small changes – not all of which are accepted – and also the concept that parts could be dissociated from complex artifacts to form new artifacts. Diagrams such as that in Figure 1 foreshadow seriations by cultural-historical archaeologists in the first half of the twentieth century, and cladistic (or phylogenetic) approaches that began in the late twentieth century.

Twentieth-Century Cultural Evolutionism With few exceptions, early twentieth-century anthropologists retreated from the sweeping cross-cultural evolutionary schemes of the mid-to-late nineteenth century in favor of a research strategy – in America often called historical particularism – that sought to understand the unique sequence of development for individual cultures, focusing on diffusion of ideas and technology as the engine of change. This refocus was

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Early Palæolithic Late Palæolithic Early Neolithic Late Neolithic Early Bronze Late Bronze Iron Period Modern Australian Modern American Denotes common occurrence

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Figure 1 Plate I from Pitt-Rivers (1906) illustrates how, in his view, various pointed stone tools developed from the primitive ‘side tool’ together with the approximate time spans of their use. (Originally presented, 1875. Reproduced by Courtesy of the Royal Institution of Great Britain.)

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partly a reaction against the high ratio of speculation to empirical evidence in the trajectories proposed by the nineteenth-century cultural evolutionists. There was as well a growing recognition of the difficulties in using living cultures as examples of evolutionary stages in the distant past. In American anthropology, it was not until the midtwentieth century work of Leslie White and Julian Steward that cultural evolutionary approaches again became prominent (for more detail from varying perspectives see the Further Reading section). These taxonomies were more sophisticated than their nineteenth-century predecessors in their use of an ever-expanding archaeological database, and more explicit about the processes that could move a society from one level of sociopolitical integration to another. Indeed, these approaches were very focused on describing and attempting to explain the long-term trajectory in human societies toward ever-greater technological and political complexity. The resultant typologies found much favor among archaeologists for their ability to briefly characterize levels of sociopolitical complexity, using, for example, the concepts of band, tribe, chiefdom, and state. They also championed a largely unexamined form of group selection that was being discarded in biology over this same period, and in general they paid little attention to the nature of the analogies they were seeking to make to processes of biological evolution. If, as the famous twentieth-century biologist Ernst Mayr claimed, ‘population thinking’ was one of Darwin’s most important contributions to science, and was directly opposed to ‘typological thinking’, it can be argued that the cultural evolutionists generally failed to think about societies as composed of populations, and their taxonomic schemes instead encouraged typological thinking. The enormous intellectual ferment and discovery in biology, genetics, and ecology during the last half of the twentieth century finally began to penetrate archaeology in the 1980s, and when it did, it caused a great rupture that began to spell the end of traditional cultural evolutionism by around 1990.

Evolutionary Principles in Biology and Their Initial Translation to Culture Change When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life in 1859, he eloquently summarized his theory, in the last paragraph of that work, as follows: These laws [whose actions have resulted in the biotic world we see today], taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost

implied by reproduction; variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and Extinction of less-improved forms (Darwin 1859: 489–490).

Darwin’s theory was incomplete in that he was unable to specify a mechanism for inheritance. This was supplied by Mendel in 1865, a contribution ignored until his work was replicated, then rediscovered, in 1900. The resulting hybrid was later joined with population genetics and reconciled with findings from paleontology to create the ‘modern synthesis’, the standard version of evolutionary biology in the mid-1900s. Bioanthropologists, of course, used the concepts in the synthesis to explain hominoid biological evolution, but cultural anthropologists – from whom most archaeologists took their lead – were for the most part content to consider that ‘cultural evolution’ as characterized above represented the valid extent to which biologically inspired thinking could be brought to bear on their subject. This began to change only in the 1980s. Although ‘new archaeologists’ paid lip service to evolutionary theory in the 1960s, Robert Dunnell was a key figure in insisting that archaeologists had serious work to do in realizing the potential of evolutionary theory in archaeology, for example, in carefully considering how an analogy could be built up between culture change and genetic change, what the units of selection ought to be in the study of culture change, and which units were under selection and which might be neutral with respect to selection. He developed an approach, usually called selectionism, which considered human technology to be part of the human phenotype. (This approach is sometimes called ‘evolutionary archaeology’, but the author considers this somewhat imperious, since there are other ways to apply evolutionary logic in archaeology; therefore, the narrower term is used here.) Selectionists characterize the replicative success of variant technologies through time, for example, by graphing the relative frequency of variants in an archaeological sequence. They propose various guidelines to determine from the shapes of these graphs whether variants were under selection – or closely correlated with something that was under selection – or whether the observed changes through time were only what would be expected under drift. Drift is a population-level process that is random, meaning that variants increase or decrease by chance alone. Variants whose behaviors appeared to be random were defined as stylistic (neutral). If variants

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appeared to be under selection, then an effort was made to identify the selection pressures causing that change.

Contemporary Approaches to Evolutionary Archaeology Selectionists deal directly with the artifacts in the archaeological record and consider the human behaviors producing them, or the decisions, values, and norms standing behind those behaviors, as unavailable to a scientific approach. This gives selectionism a certain appealing simplicity and clarity, though much current evolutionary inquiry in archaeology, by contrast, seeks to investigate precisely those sectors of the human experience declared out of reach by selectionists. One emerging tradition of analysis emphasizes processes of cultural transmission, including the roles of learning and decision making. Another focuses on investigating the population-level consequences of environmental variability on variability in human behavior. Both typically require forming and evaluating mathematical models, often in forms suggested by population genetics, in the first case, or by evolutionary ecology, in the second. Cultural Transmission/Dual-Inheritance Theory

This first of two families of current approaches – related to selectionism by its interest in cultural transmission and therefore in history – is based on an analogy between cultural transmission and genetic transmission. Using formalisms modified from population genetics, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Marcus Feldman gave mathematical interpretations to processes in cultural evolution that are analogous to the forces of mutation, selection, migration, and drift in evolutionary biology. This entailed a change in focus from the cultural evolutionist’s interest in long-term trajectories of cultural systems to consideration of the fates of single traits, where a trait is ‘‘the result of any cultural action (by transmission from other individuals) that can be clearly observed or measured on a discontinuous or continuous scale.’’ To apply these forces to culture change, some have to be redefined. Selection, for example, can occur on two levels: cultural selection, entailing adoption of a trait by individuals, and natural selection, which refers to the consequences of that decision on Darwinian fitness. Likewise, cultural transmission is much more varied than genetic transmission since it can be vertical (parents to offspring, as in genetic transmission), oblique (parental generation to offspring generation), or horizontal (within generation). Another important difference between cultural and biological

transmission modulates the rate of culture change: cultural transmission may be ‘one to many’ (which can result in rapid change), ‘many to one’ (ordinarily quite conservative), or anywhere in between. These differences make it possible for cultural transmission and selection to result in fixation of behaviors that are detrimental to Darwinian fitness – for example, smoking cigarettes in many portions of the world, or female genital mutilation in North Africa. Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson, their students and colleagues have broadened and modified this strategy of analysis. They recognized that selection among alternative behaviors is often biased by factors such as the frequency of that behavior in the population, or the prestige of individuals using alternative behaviors; such biases can have significant effects on the course of culture change. A number of archaeologists (e.g., Bettinger and Shennan) have adopted portions of this approach, for example, to model how population size affects rate of culture change, or to infer processes of cultural transmission from the pattern of changing numbers of variant ceramic or projectile point designs through time. Cultural transmissionists, selectionists, and historical linguists are also beginning to adapt phylogenetic tree- and network-building methods from evolutionary biology and from the study of the history of manuscripts (see Figure 2). These methods provide rigorous tools for investigating the history and pattern of branching and blending within various cultural domains, and also make it possible to control for common origin in assessing cross-cultural hypotheses of functional relationships (thus, overcoming ‘Galton’s problem’). Phylogenetic approaches also make it possible to ask questions about the stability of co-occurrence and co-evolution of traits over long time spans. Do cultures have a stable ‘core’ of relatively unchanging characteristics or are all characters equally subject to change? By their macro-scale and their ability to consider many characters simultaneously, these approaches begin to return us to some of the same interests that motivated the earlier cultural evolutionists. Behavioral Ecology

Human behavioral ecology (HBE) is the second of the principal contemporary approaches to applying evolutionary theory in archaeology. Archaeologists working in this tradition assume that people (and other animals) have evolved to strive for success in, and make reasonably intelligent decisions about, matters such as maximizing rate of food intake, defense of resources, and so forth, to the extent that these are connected with Darwinian fitness. They use tools

1336 EVOLUTIONARY ARCHAEOLOGY Ejagham 800 TN 802 Mpongwe B11a Kota B25 1 Duata A24 2 Fang A75 1

Bantu root

Likile C57 Mbesa C51 Lingala C36 Teke B73 5 Yombe N12b 1 Sikongo H16h Sundi H161 4 Yaka Kasongo H31 2 Suku H32 Yaka H31 4 Ngombe C41 Bira D32 2 Kumu D37 2 Lele C84 1 Sakata C34

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Kela C75 Nkundo C61 1 Gangela K19 Clokwe K11 Lwana K14 1 Ndonga R22 Herero R31 Umbundu R11 1 BInja D24 1 Lega D25 3 Tonga M64 1 Bemba M42 Lala M52 Lamba M54 Kaonde L42 Luba L33 Songe D10S Rundi J62 Rwanda J61 1

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Gikuyu E51 Giryama E72a 1 Nyamwezi F22 Sumbwa F23 Nyakyusa M31 2 Yao P21 2 Mambwe M15 Tumbuka N21 2 Sena N44 Kunda N42 Cewa N31b Nyanja N31a Shona S10 Venda S21 Lozi S34 Sotho S33 Tswana S31 Tsonga S53 Ndebele S44 Swati S43 Xhosa S41 Ngoni S45 Zulu S42

Figure 2 This phylogenetic tree was built using data on linguistic cognates among 68 Bantu-speaking cultures in Africa. Then the presence of cattle was mapped onto this tree, along with an inference concerning the ancestral states of cattle-keeping among the hypothetical ancestral populations determined during the construction of the language-based tree. Ancestral states for matriliny and patriliny were also mapped onto this tree (not shown) and then a computer program compared these two phylogenies. The results supported the conclusion that populations adopting cattle-keeping lose matriliny, while controlling for the influence of shared history among the populations in the sample. Reprinted from [Holden CJ and Mace R (2005) ‘The Cow is the enemy of Matriliny’: Using phylogenetic methods to investigate cultural evolution in Africa. In: Mace R, Holden CJ, and Shennan S (eds.) The Evolution of Cultural Diversity: A Phylogenetic Approach, p. 223, Figure 12.3. London: UCL Press] with permission from [Thomson Learning].

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transitions in human history – for example, the transition from foraging to agriculture and animal domestication. Recent HBE models, moreover, increasingly grapple with more social and even symbolic phenomena. One such development is the use of signaling theory, which suggests that self-interested individuals can be expected to engage in individually costly but frequently group-beneficial signaling behaviors, with such behaviors becoming more socially conspicuous in proportion to an individual’s ability to produce them. Rebecca Bliege Bird and Eric Alden Smith suggest that costly (honest) signaling explains puzzles including unconditional generosity (for example, in feasting), pursuit of risky big game for public consumption, ostentatious commitment to religion, artistic skill, monumental architecture, and so on.

derived in zoology and evolutionary ecology, which were in turn strongly influenced by approaches in economics, to examine the extent to which predictions based on these assumptions are borne out in the archaeological record. Decision making is usually assumed to be based on rational choice among alternative models, in conjunction with individual learning and innovation, and in the context of limited and costly information and various constraints in possible courses of action. HBE is related to sociobiology, though that field takes a more direct interest in reproductive success through its use of kin selection and other models that measure Darwinian fitness directly, rather than analyzing nonreproductive behaviors presumed to be related to fitness. Behavioral ecologists explain behavioral variability through time, or within a population at a given point in time, by reference to relevant aspects of environmental variability (broadly defined to include the social environment). Traditional problems include explaining change in group size, sharing/exchange, land tenure/resource defense, prey choice/diet breadth, and settlement pattern. Although these problem domains may on first glance seem narrow, they are certainly broad enough to allow researchers in this tradition to study some of the most important

Conclusions Current applications of evolutionary theory in archaeology are more diverse than can be summarized here. The main strands – selectionism, cultural transmission theory, and behavioral ecology – are also more complementary than what some of their chief proponents admit. Figure 3 summarizes the important evolutionary forces (e.g., natural selection) and

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Cultural transmission, learning, and decisionmaking through time: Guided variation (transmission modified by individual learning) Direct bias (choose among models) Indirect bias (e.g., copy most prestigious model) Frequencydependent bias (e.g., copy most common model)

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Ho tra rizo ns nta mi l ss ion Figure 3 Significant forces and flow structures that must be accommodated in any complete theory of human evolution that incorporates both biological and sociocultural change.

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structures (e.g., vertical transmission) in culture change. Of these, most selectionists concentrate on natural selection within the artifact-producing population as the explanation for change; as this is a slow process, the timescales are, of necessity, long. Behavioral ecologists focus on how populations respond to environmental variability to achieve phenotypic adaptation using decision-making processes that include guided variation and direct bias. These processes can take place on relatively short timescales. As it is unlikely that either phenotypic adaptation or natural selection alone can explain change on relatively long timescales, we need theory that includes both. Dual inheritance theory in principle addresses all the processes and structures in Figure 3, but in practice emphasizes the forces of cultural transmission on the left side of that figure. If we wish to eventually return with scientific rigor to the large-scale vision of the nineteenth-century cultural evolutionists, validated against and enriched by a well-understood archaeological record, we will need theory and method that accord an appropriate role to all these forces, structures, and timescales. See also: Marxist Archaeology.

Further Reading Bettinger RL (1991) Hunter-Gatherers: Archaeological and Evolutionary Theory. New York: Plenum. Boyd R and Richerson PJ (1985) Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bliege Bird R and Smith EA (2005) Signaling theory, strategic interaction, and symbolic capital. Current Anthropology 46: 221–238. Carneiro RL (2003) Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropology: A Critical History. Boulder: Westview. Cavalli-Sforza LL and Feldman MW (1981) Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Excavation

Darwin C (1859) On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: John Murray. (Facsimile reprint with an introduction by E. Mayr (1964). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.) Dunnell RC (1980) Evolutionary theory and archaeology. In: Schiffer MB (ed.) Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, 3, pp. 35–99. New York: Academic Press. Holden CJ and Mace R (2005) ‘The Cow is the enemy of Matriliny’: Using phylogenetic methods to investigate cultural evolution in Africa. In: Mace R, Holden CJ, and Shennan S (eds.) The Evolution of Cultural Diversity: A Phylogenetic Approach, pp. 217–234. London: UCL Press. Jablonka E and Lamb MJ (2005) Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. Cambridge: MIT Press. Johnson AW and Earle T (1987) The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Kelly R (2000) Elements of a behavioral ecological paradigm for the study of prehistoric hunter-gatherers. In: Schiffer MB (ed.) Social Theory in Archaeology, pp. 63–78. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Kennett DJ and Winterhalder B (2006) Behavioral Ecology and the Transition to Agriculture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lipo CP, O’Brien MJ, Collard M, and Shennan S (2006) Mapping our Ancestors: Phylogenetic Approaches in Anthropology and Prehistory. New Brunswick: Aldine Transaction. Mace R, Holden CJ, and Shennan S (eds.) (2005) The Evolution of Cultural Diversity: A Phylogenetic Approach. London: UCL Press. Mayr E (1959) Darwin and the evolutionary theory in biology. In: Evolution and Anthropology: A Centennial Appraisal. Washington, DC: Anthropological Society of Washington. Morgan LH (1877) In Meggers BJ (ed.) Ancient Society; or, Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, Through Barbarism to Civilization, pp. 1–10. New York: H. Holt. O’Brien MJ and Lyman RL (2000) Applying Evolutionary Archaeology: A Systematic Approach. New York: Kluwer/Plenum. Pitt-Rivers AL-F (1906) In: Myres JL (ed.) The Evolution of Culture and Other Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Shennan S (2002) Genes, Memes, and Human History: Darwinian Archaeology and Cultural Evolution. London: Thames and Hudson. Trigger BG (1998) Sociocultural Evolution: Calculation and Contingency. Oxford: Blackwell.

See: Burials: Dietary Sampling Methods; Excavation and Recording Techniques; Historical Archaeology: Methods; Sites: Conservation and Stabilization; Mapping Methods; Mounded and Unmounded; Stratigraphic Analysis.

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EXCHANGE SYSTEMS Glenn R Summerhayes, Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary exchange systems Any system for exchanging goods and services between individuals and/or societies. obsidian A jet-black to gray, naturally occurring volcanic glass, formed by rapid cooling of viscous lava. volcanic glass Natural glass produced by the cooling of molten lava too quickly to permit crystallization. Lapita people Lapita peoples are those that colonized Remote Oceania for the first time. The name Lapita comes from a village in New Caledonia where the characteristic pottery was found in the 1950s.

Introduction Regional studies of exchange systems are important in archaeology. They involve the identification of the movement of materials across the landscape and the modeling of the nature of interactions that took place. It is the latter that excites archaeologists, allows an insight into the socioeconomic dimensions of past societies, and provides mechanisms for change in those societies.

The Rise of Exchange Studies Regional exchange studies are not new and have preoccupied archaeologists since the nineteenth century. Chemical techniques have been used since the midnineteenth century on identifying the distribution of archaeological metal artifacts from Central Europe. Perhaps the most famous early study was by Anna Shepard who, in the 1930s and 1940s, postulated the exchange of pottery over wide areas of southwest United States by analyzing mineral inclusions in thin section to pinpoint the origins of such minerals. Yet, the importance of exchange in archaeology today arose out of a reorientation in the way archaeologists had perceived trade/exchange operating in the past. The realization that migrationist/invasion models could not adequately explain the distribution of material across the landscape, nor change in societies over time, led archaeologists to look at other mechanisms. Inspired by the works of economic anthropologists such as K. Polanyi, who defined three types of trade and exchange (reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange), and anthropologists such as B. Malinowski who studied trade and exchange in a Melanesian

society, archaeologists realized that trade and exchange were embedded within the social and economic structures of society. By studying trade and exchange, the intention was to reconstruct the economies and organizations of past societies and their changes over time. The access to and control over prestige goods through trade and exchange was seen as a prime mover for change, leading to ranked societies. A major proponent for the study of regional exchange systems was Colin Renfrew. In a classic paper on trade and culture process in European Prehistory published in 1969, Renfrew argued that trade was a causal factor for cultural change leading to the beginning of urbanization in the Aegean. An increase in trade with new wealth, craft specialization, and communication led to change from a ‘village subsistence economy into an urban society’. This was a marked shift away from inferring invasions or diffusion from a ‘higher culture’ to account for the Aegean Early Bronze Age. From these earlier studies a number of influential edited volumes on the archaeology of regional exchange systems appeared in the 1970s and 1980s which covered an eclectic array of topics from the Old and New World and provided the benchmark for trade and exchange studies. These studies were important not only in identifying the movement of materials in the past but also in cementing links with the chemists, geologists, or physicists who undertook the physicochemical analysis that demonstrated that trade and exchange took place. The collaboration of the latter group, in association with theoretical changes in archaeology, fuelled the development of regional exchange studies.

Technological Developments Coinciding with changes in the way archaeologists looked at change in the past, there were major developments in the scientific techniques that allowed the identification of the movement of materials, and just as important, became more accessible to archaeologists. It was only in the mid-1950s that ‘characterization’ analyses took off after a meeting between archaeologists and chemists at Princeton to discuss the possibility of using nuclear research in the study of archaeology. This led to characterization analyses being undertaken at two laboratories – the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the United States, and the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art at Oxford in England. Techniques deployed included Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) and

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Spectrographic methods. These studies were reasonably successful, being able to separate pottery ware from Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, or different factories of Samian ware (see Chemical Analysis Techniques; Pottery Analysis: Chemical). These studies laid the foundations for chemical analyses for the next four decades, in which tens of thousands of analyses using varying techniques were carried out on many types of objects including pottery, stone (obsidian, marble, chert, volcanic rocks), amber, and metals including coins. Apart from NAA, XRF, XRD, and spectrographic methods, techniques currently in use include Proton Induced X-ray Emission and Proton Induced Gamma Ray Emission (PIXE-PIGME), inductively-coupled plasma emission spectrometry (ICP), lead isotope analysis, and electron microscopy to mention a few. Major changes in the instrumentation of these techniques over the last thirty years have meant that more elements can be analyzed with a higher precision. The choice of technique depends on availability to the archaeologist and cost (Figure 1).

Demonstration of Exchange Ancient regional exchange systems are often associated with rare and exotic valuable materials known to have restricted distributions, such as lapis lazuli, ostrich egg shell (Africa), amber, spondylus shell, jade, obsidian, copper, and other precious

Figure 1 Electron microprobe – analyzing pottery.

material items. Yet most past exchange would have involved materials or goods used for daily existence, such as food. These, however, would be rarely seen in the archaeological record, being perishable. Thus, the archaeology of exchange deals mostly in those resilient artifacts hardy enough to be left in the archaeological record, such as obsidian, stone, pottery, or jade, for instance. These techniques became successful because of the premise that exchange must be demonstrated, rather than assumed. Pottery is difficult to characterize or fingerprint. Often archaeologists use what is called a ‘criterion of relative abundance’ which infers that most pottery from a production center is to be found locally. Yet if pottery was produced for exchange only, then little would be found locally thus limiting the application of this concept. The ‘criterion of relative abundance’ is useful, however, when used with a physicochemical analysis for provenance studies. That is, relate the pottery under study back to its raw materials: nonplastic inclusions (minerals, sands, etc.) and clay. Mineral inclusions found within pottery can be related to local geology, and both river and beach sands. Clays, on the other hand, vary greatly with respect to the underlying geology, and a study of the elemental composition of pottery may give a clue to their origin. The chemical analysis of clay is complex and dependant on the parent material, climatic changes, geomorphology, and weathering. The importance in undertaking a physicochemical analysis of pottery can be seen with the example of

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Lapita pottery presented below. In the past, archaeologists often viewed stylistic similarities over large distances as a consequence of exchange. Stylistic similarities in pottery, for instance, have been equated with regional exchange systems where trade or exchange of pots from one or a restricted number of centers took place. Yet, in many instances, this is not the case. The pottery tradition of Lapita, for instance, is spread from Papua New Guinea to Tonga, a distance of over 4000 km. It is stylistically homogeneous having a suite of shared decorated motifs made by a dentate stamping technique. Over 30 years ago, it was thought that this pottery was made in one or a handful of manufacturing centers and then exchanged with other communities, thus accounting for its spread within Melanesia. Yet, after extensive petrographic and chemical analyses, it was established that with the exception of a couple of assemblages, most Lapita pottery was locally made (see Figure 2). It was people

and ideas that were exchanged, not the pots. Thus, if local production of an object is demonstrated, then models other than the trade/exchange of the object must be developed to account for stylistic similarity. Identifying the source of an object and studying the context of production is not easy. The use of a ‘resource zone concept of source’ is useful here in defining a geographical region from which the object was produced. For instance, the exact spot where the firing of a pot took place or obsidian was extracted is not crucial here; only whether the pottery is of local origin or not, or if the obsidian originated from a defined area. Attributing an object to a general regional zone (or procurement zone) is often more important than trying to identify a precise spot for manufacture. In any provenance study of archaeological objects, a few words of caution from Garman Harbottle, a nuclear physicist, are best heeded:

Figure 2 Lapita pottery from the site of Kamgot, Papua New Guinea.

1342 EXCHANGE SYSTEMS archaeologists love the term sourcing, with its upbeat, positive thrust – that you analyze or examine an artifact and, by comparison with the material of known origin, ‘source’ it. In point of fact, with very few exceptions, you cannot unequivocally source anything. What you can do is characterize the object, or better, groups of similar objects found in a site or archaeological zone by mineralogical, thermoluminescent, density, hardness, chemical and other tests, and also characterize the equivalent source materials, if they are available, and look for the similarities to generate attributions. A careful job of chemical characterization, plus a little numerical taxonomy and some auxiliary archaeological and/or stylistic information, will often do something as useful: it will produce groupings of artifacts that make archaeological sense. This, rather than absolute proof of origin, will often necessarily be the goal.

Other materials with restricted natural sources are prone to be exchanged, if not because of their utility, then because of their value. Obsidian is a good example as it is chemically homogeneous, and its sources, which have restricted natural distributions, can be chemically fingerprinted. Earlier work by Colin Renfrew had demonstrated its importance in modeling exchange patterns. Yet, its application requires extensive research. Identifying the potential source areas of a material requires an intensive search within a known region. For instance, in a recent study on obsidian exchange within the western Pacific over a 20 000 year timespan, archaeologists have concentrated on the source areas within West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Over a number of years, obsidian flows were mapped

by both Jim Specht and Robin Torrence of the Australian Museum and samples taken for characterization using PIXE-PIGME with the result that a finer discrimination of sources was possible with five source localities chemically defined (see Figure 3). By analyzing obsidian found in archaeological sites (some artifacts more than 3700 km distant from their source) it was possible to not only trace it to its source localities, but also to define changes in the selection of different sources over time. Obsidian from source localities in New Britain, Papua New Guinea were distributed over 6500 km from Fiji in the east and Borneo in the west, 3000 years ago (Figure 4).

Distribution Patterns A distinction has often been made between two schools of thought, formalists and substantivists, about the way trade and exchange should be modeled. The former approach works within the paradigm of market economics. Here, all exchange transactions can be viewed by economic rationalism, based on cost efficiency. Falloff models presented in the section below are based on cost efficiencies. The substantivist school, on the other hand, views exchange as embedded in social and economic processes. This approach allows an investigation into social groups and social change. In reality, archaeologists draw from both approaches to model ancient interregional exchange.

Willaumez Peninsula New Britain Mopir Papua New Guinea

Gulu 0

200

400 km

Approximate area in which obsidian sources have been found Volcanoes with obsidian flows 0

2

GARALA IS.

4 km

N

Bao Kutau

Hamilton

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Figure 3 Obsidian sources in West New Britain.

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PHILIPPINES

Samoa Solomon Islands

Santa Cruz Fiji

Bukit Tengkorak

NEW GUINEA

Tonga

Vanuatu

BORNEO

Bukit Tengkorak

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800

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Figure 4 Distribution of obsidian from West New Britain to Fiji and Borneo.

Archaeologists analyze the distribution of an object from its source or production area to its consumption site in order to model the type of exchange that took place. In some instances, the nature of the society participating in the exchange system is inferred, such as egalitarian versus chiefdom, or nonhierarchical versus hierarchical. Popular among archaeologists is the use of falloff curves and modes of exchange. By plotting the frequency of an item against distance from its source (falloff curve), Colin Renfrew observed different distribution patterns which he attempted to relate modes of exchange or access. Some of these modes included reciprocity, down-the-line, and central place exchange. How were falloff curves and modes of exchange related? Down-the-line exchange and reciprocity led to an exponential falloff in abundance, away from the source or production center. The term ‘Law of monotonic decrement’ was coined to account for this falloff in the frequency of an item away from the source. Attempts were also made to define an object’s value by the slope of the curve. Small slope equates with high value goods, such as spondylus shells in Europe, Maya jade, and Oaxaca iron ore mirrors. These modes were equated with an egalitarian society (semi-sedentary agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers; nonranked; nonhierarchical). Central place exchange, on the other hand, was seen as directional (no exponential linear falloff) and should lead to multinodal falloff curves, and is indicative of redistribution. Central place relates to the movement of goods towards one place or center, from which they are then distributed. Redistribution has been related to complex chiefly societies (hierarchical, ranked, and/or stratified societies). Examples of such societies given

by archaeologists include early states such as the Maya, Egypt, Near East, or chiefdoms such as Hawaii. Although problems occur with equifinality, that is, different modes of exchange produce similar distributions, this approach is important as it relates the measurement of archaeological material away from the source, to trade and exchange modes, and the structures of societies. A good example of changes in inter-regional exchange systems can be seen in the distribution of obsidian in the western Pacific over 20 000 years. Here distribution patterns changed over time indicating changes in the socioeconomic configurations of these regional exchange systems. Patterns in the distribution of obsidian can be best modeled using either ‘down-the-line exchange’ models, or social connectivity. For instance, the distribution of obsidian during the late Pleistocene and early to mid-Holocene is best explained by down-the-line exchange as there is an exponential falloff in abundance away from the source. The first evidence for the extraction and distribution of obsidian is found in the late Pleistocene site of Matenbek, New Ireland. In the bottom units dated to between 20 000 and 18 000 years ago, nearly 80% of obsidian came from the Mopir source and the rest from Willaumez Peninsula sources (see Figure 3). Matenbek lies over 350 km from the nearest Mopir obsidian source, and just over 400 km from the Willaumez Peninsula sources. The distribution of obsidian is best explained by the extraction of obsidian from the closest available source, and subsequent down-the-line exchange between semi-sedentary populations. This would account for the small appearance of Talasea obsidian and the dominance of Mopir in this assemblage.

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However, taking an exponential falloff pattern alone could lead to erroneous models being developed. For instance, at 3300 years ago obsidian was distributed beyond the Bismarck Archipelago to Fiji in the east as part of the colonization of this region by Austronesian speaking peoples. Obsidian was brought out into the Pacific as part of that colonization process, yet it continued to be exchanged among Lapita communities. If the volume of obsidian is measured, then there is an exponential distribution from its source. Yet, by analyzing the assemblage in detail, differences are seen. The earlier Lapita assemblages show an expedient technology not seen in the earlier pre-Lapita or later assemblages away from the source regions. These assemblages had the largest pieces of obsidian and lacked bipolar flaking. Such an expedient technology is not expected from a down-the-line exchange network. The distribution of this West New Britain obsidian could have been a result of either direct procurement or the movement of obsidian through a smaller number of hands. The movement of this obsidian was argued to be an indicator of a formal exchange network that was an adaptive mechanism in the colonization process forming a ‘lifeline’ back to a homeland. In this context, exchange is an adaptive strategy for colonists moving east and a means of maintaining social ties. When this lifeline is no longer needed, then exchange with homeland areas would cease.

Future Directions Approaches to regional exchange studies will continue to change on three fronts. First, change will occur in tune with developments in archaeological theory. As archaeologists will be asking different questions about the role of exchange and society, changes in approaches and methodologies will take place. Second, at the same time, it is reasonable to expect advances in characterizing techniques, making them yet more accessible and cheaper to use. Lastly, archaeologists will consolidate knowledge on the sources and distribution of a variety of goods, giving a more complete perspective on the role of exchange within a society. As an example, attention is drawn to the Pacific where the production and distribution of a number of materials, from pottery, obsidian, chert, volcanic adzes, and shell artifacts are used to

show that each class of material has different production and distribution patterns. If any class of artifact were taken by itself, a ‘myopic’ view would be seen of the role of trade and exchange within societies. Only by comparing the production and distribution patterns of the complete range of material available can a proper picture of trade and exchange take place. See also: Chemical Analysis Techniques; Neutron Activation Analysis; Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis.

Further Reading Bird JR, Duerden P, and Wilson DJ (1983) Ion beam techniques in archaeology and the arts. Nuclear Science Applications 1: 357–516. Bishop R, Rands R, and Holley G (1982) Ceramic compositional analyses in archaeological perspective. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 5: 275–320. Earle TK and Ericson JT (1977) Exchange Systems in Prehistory. New York: Academic Press. Ericson JE and Earle TK (1982) Contexts for Prehistoric Exchange. New York: Academic Press. Harbottle G (1982) Chemical characterization in archaeology. In: Ericson J and Earle T (eds.) Contexts for Prehistoric Exchange, pp. 13–51. New York: Academic Press. Kirch PV (1997) The Lapita Peoples: Ancestors of the Oceanic World. Oxford: Blackwell. Malinowski B (1922) Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: George Routledge and Kegan Paul. Neff H (1992) Chemical Characterization of Ceramic Pastes in Archaeology. Monographs in World Archaeology 7. Madison, WI: Prehistory Press. Polanyi K (1957) The economy as instituted process. In: Polanyi K, Arensberg C, and Pearson H (eds.) Trade and Market in the Early Empires, pp. 243–270. New York: Free Press. Renfrew C (1969) Trade and cultural process in European prehistory. Current Anthropology 10: 151–169. Renfrew C, Dixon JE, and Cann JR (1966) Obsidian and early cultural contact in the Near East. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 32: 30. Sabloff JA and Lamberg-Karlovsky CG (1975) Ancient Civilization and Trade. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Shackley S (1998) Advances in Archaeological Volcanic Glass Studies. New York: Plenum Press. Summerhayes GR (2000) Lapita Interaction. Canberra: ANH Publications, Terra Australis, Australian National University. Summerhayes GR, Bird R, Fullagar R, Gosden C, Specht J, and Torrence R (1998) Application of PIXE-PIGME to archaeological analysis of changing patterns of obsidian use in West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. In: Shackley S (ed.) Advances in Archaeological Volcanic Glass Studies, pp. 129–158. New York: Plenum Press.

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EXPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY Roeland Paardekooper, University of Exeter, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Brief History, Including the History of the Definition

ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Experimental archaeology is as old as archaeology itself. The first archaeological experiments probably date back to the sixteenth century, when Renaissance scientists like Agricola and Mercati laid the foundations of elementary scientific archaeology. The oldest described experiment we know of originates in Germany when clergyman and archaeologist A. A. Rhode produced a flint axe by himself to support the theory that these objects were man-made. From then onward, both scientists and laymen contributed to the development of a corpus of experiments which archaeologists could use to falsify or verify their hypotheses. Falsification is feasible; nowadays, the opinion is such that verifying hypotheses is impossible, hence only validating them is undertaken. ‘Old’ experiments across Europe and beyond in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries are documented. These were called experiments in the sense of ‘‘any honest effort to understand ancient artifacts by actually working with them’’ (Coles, 1979, 11–12). In these early days, questions were raised about the provenance (nature or human) of objects, whereas later experiments were more into how things exactly could have been made and how they could have been used. Were they in any way useful to modern standards? Some years before 1860, for example, a number of horns were found in Ireland. These were not normal end-blown instruments, but were blown from the side (Figure 1). They could be tested in order to see what sounds could be extracted from them. This was a nondestructive method in which the artifact itself remained complete. Partly depending on the skills of the users, different musical notes could be derived. The report describing attempts to blow these horns sadly describes: ‘‘And it is a melancholy fact, that the loss of this gentleman’s life (Dr Robert Ball, rp) was occasioned by a subsequent experiment of this kind. In the act of attempting to produce a distinct sound on a large trumpet . . . he burst a blood vessel, and died a few days later’’ (quoted in Coles, 1979, 14). In 1893, at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the last of the large World’s Fairs of the nineteenth century took place. It was themed around the 400 years commemoration of Columbus’ travel to America. Some Norwegians – nonarchaeologists – thought it to be a good idea to send over a Viking ship replica, just to make clear, there were other Europeans who had gone before Columbus. This would draw

Glossary analogy Analogy is the cognitive process of transferring information from a particular subject (the analogue or source), the more familiar area of experience, to what is typically the more problematic area of experience (the target). Experimental archaeology is a kind of scripted analogy. archaeological open-air center An archaeological open air center is an outdoor themed facility with (re)constructed buildings (artifacts, animals, environments), based on (in most cases prehistoric or medieval) archaeological and historical sources. ethnoarchaeology There are resemblances possible between archaeological information and the information derived from observations of present-day preindustrial societies. This has been suggested and practiced since Sir John Lubbock in 1865. The value of ethnoarchaeology lies in the fact that the people observed master their techniques quite well, this in contrast to most archaeologists. Ethnoarchaeological observations are hardly ever comparable with archaeological observations at a 1:1 scale. This – and the fact that there are hardly any societies to be studied, undisturbed by industrial societies – makes the use of scripted analogies (experimental archaeology) taking a larger role. experimental archaeology ‘‘A sub-field of archaeological research which employs a number of different methods, techniques, analyses, and approaches within the context of a controllable imitative experiment to replicate past phenomena (from objects to systems) in order to generate and test hypotheses to provide or enhance analogies for archaeological interpretation.’’ Source: Mathieu (2002, 1). living history Historical authentic activities in an appropriate context, often an archaeological open-air museum. Interpreters engaged in living history may be in role (first-person interpretation) or simply in costume (third-person interpretation). Source: (http://www.imtal-europe.org) primitive technology Working with materials and techniques, inspired by past or present preindustrial cultures. It involves gathering experiences which are not necessarily translated into a feedback to the (archaeological) source. It can be regarded as a step toward experimental archaeology. reconstruction/model/construct As the use of the word ‘reconstruction’ implies a high level of certainty, the word ‘construct’ was introduced. Some people speak of a model at scale 1:1. A simple construct would look like how the original might have looked like at the moment of production, but made in a modern way and maybe with modern materials. A more evolved construct would be made in the possible ‘original’ way. The final level of constructs would be made the way we think it might have been like and also used as we suppose it was. This final category is setting the construct into an experimental framework as it is such action and such use that creates data which we can compare again to the archaeological data.

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Figure 1 Bronze horns from Drumbest (Co. Antrim, Ireland), c. 700 BC (Ulster Museum, Belfast). Drawings from Coles, 1963, quoted in Coles 1979, p. 14).

attention to Norway at the fair, promoting their own country. Captain Magnus Andersen had a copy built of the excavated Viking ship from Gokstad, but archaeologists were at first heavily against the idea of actually sailing the ship across the Atlantic, not being sure if the original ship was just ceremonial or actually seaworthy. In less then a month, Andersen and his crew of 11 people crossed to Newfoundland. When they got familiar with the ship, they ‘‘were able to look at the ship’s movements and its capacities of enduring storms a bit more calm and with less preconceptions’’. The ship was very elastic but remained watertight. The proven seaworthiness was an important result of this excursion. The experiment resulted in information which could be compared to the archaeological remains of the Gokstad ship and other, later Viking Age ship finds. The clear gap between archaeological scientists and craftsmen has unfortunately played a role in experimental archaeology ever since. An important problem is the loss of everyday knowledge – abilities which many people mastered three generations ago need now to be reinvented, through trials or experiments. Experience, therefore, plays an important role in experimental archaeology – not the obtaining of it, but the use. Andersen’ expedition marked the start of a tradition of building ships, based on archaeological examples and sailing with them (Figure 2). Noteworthy are the dozens of travels by Thor Heyerdahl and Timothy Severin. At present, there are literally hundreds of such ships. Patriotic elements, besides military themes, were often an important motive for experiments. That archaeology alone makes costly experiments like the

construction of ships feasible is a pity. However, relevance of both archaeology as a science and experiments to other areas of society is necessary for both to justify their existence. This, however, can also mean use and misuse of archaeology or experimental archaeology. Good examples can be noted from Germany, from the beginning of the twentieth century up to the fall of the Nazi Reich. Already from 1897 onward, there were reconstruction works executed at the Saalburg in southern Germany. This used to be a Roman castellum at the Upper Germanic–Raetian border in the first to third century AD. In 1913 (just before World War I (WWI)), experiments were carried out here to build Roman defensive works out of wicker with replicas of Roman tools. The works were carried out by the Mainzer Pioneer Battalion and paid for by the emperor himself. The Saalburg is nowadays still the only fully reconstructed Roman castellum in the world. By rebuilding this, Emperor Wilhelm II followed a trend amongst nobility and the court and their interest for archaeology. As with the nineteenth century treasure rooms, nobility wanted to show the link of the monarchs with history, and thus legitimize their position. The activities back in those days at Saalburg were not about the classic museum tasks – collecting, preserving, and presenting. During the Nazi regime in Germany, archaeology and experimental archaeology were put to use in professional popularization and massive ideological exploitation in attempts to justify the Third Reich’s view of the world. The 1936 Berlin ‘hands-on’ exhibition Lebendige Vorzeit was a powerful tool in spreading the Nazi ideology, just like the open-air centers which were established across the Reich. The goal was not to serve science, but that the people start believing in the cultural level of their forefathers. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, archaeologists looked for ‘living’ analogies to their excavated material culture. This practice is summarized under ethnoarchaeology (see Ethnoarchaeology). Archaeologists saw more resemblances between their forefathers and non-European, preindustrial societies than with themselves. The active colonization of areas outside Europe – or the more intensive use of these – in the nineteenth century enabled making anthropological observations easy. Sir John Lubbock was one of the first to suggest such anthropological observations in his book Pre-Historic Times as Illustrated by Ancient Remains and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages (1865). In California, at the end of the nineteenth century, a small group of native Americans, the Yahi, were trying to continue their way of life without modern influence. In 1865, most of them were slaughtered,

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Figure 2 Preparations for putting the Viking ship replica to sea in Bergen, 1893. In Rasmussen, viking fra Norge til Amerika, Bergen (1894).

and around the turn of the century their last camp was destroyed by White settlers. In 1911, the last surviving Yahi was ‘adopted’ by two anthropologists and was named Ishi, which in his own language simply meant ‘man’. In the following 5 years, he taught the anthropologists a wealth of things about his society, like hunting or fire making, things one would not be able to learn from simple excavations. Ishi made clear that it was not just about knowing how a technique needs to be applied, but an ample experience in using it is also required. With his death in 1916, a wealth of knowledge about the life of the indigenous people in North America disappeared. By the end of the 1960s, ethnoarchaeology proved to still be useful as an eye opener for archaeologists. Yellen looked into what kind of faunal remains reach the archaeological record from known butchery sites of the African !Kung bushmen (see Butchery and Kill Sites). The anthropologist excavated some sites, together with the people actually forming those sites a few months earlier. It became clear how difficult it was to discern between natural and cultural factors for the appearance or disappearance of certain bone fragments. However, by making a difference between these two groups, one would better be able to describe the cultural factors. Simple culture-determined facts like how to cut meat and bones and which bones

to take away from the site cannot be known to archaeologists, thus leaving a lot unexplainable. The !Kung for example remove the right ribs – not for cooking but to hang them from a tree. We cannot explain the archaeological record fully without knowing the cultural determinants. Ethnoarchaeological observations are hardly ever comparable with archaeological observations at a 1:1 scale. This – and the fact that there are hardly any societies to be studied, undisturbed by industrial societies – elevates the role of the use of scripted analogies (experimental archaeology). The value of ethnoarchaeology lies in the fact that the people observed master their techniques quite well, this in contrast to most experimental archaeologists. The experience might as well hinder the one executing the experiment in not being able to adjust to the needs of the archaeologist, who wants to create an action which is as much as possible comparable to his or her archaeological theory and data and fits in the imagined cultural framework.

Examples of the Importance of Experimental Archaeology A well-published experiment, in such a way that many people could share in the knowledge and

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insights learnt from this activity, was the building of a Stone Age house in Denmark in 1958 by Hans-Ole Hansen. He describes the successes and setbacks in an accessible, lively manner. Such activities, based on trial and error, cannot follow a planned script, because many details are unknown from the drawing table. They are more about gaining experiences and counting how much material and how much time goes where (the way ‘we’ build it). The fact is, 50 years later, we still meet surprises each time we build a ‘prehistoric’ house somewhere; surprises that mean we need to improvise and solve problems on the spot. For example, one needs to have tried cutting trees with both a stone axe and a steel axe before you can compare them in usability. It takes some experience in using both kinds, as they need to be handled differently (Figure 3). Building an Iron Age house in the present day might say little about how it was to build such a house over 2000 years ago, but it is up to experimental archaeologists to find out what we actually can learn from it. By dismissing the human element and measuring the time it costs for someone to reach a goal does not mean that registering time is useless. Some processes have always led to the same results, both in the past and in the present. That is why it is good to measure how much time it takes, for example, for ceramics to be baked at a certain temperature, within the context of the variables, such as the kind of clay and the kind of kiln. In the 1950s, knowledge of how to smelt iron without using a modern blast furnace had almost vanished in Europe, although hundreds of archaeological sites were already identified as iron-smelting sites. Without exact knowledge, the evidence of the different stages would be impossible to compare and to discern. In the past 60 years, ethnoarchaeological reports from Africa and Asia have found their way to many people

interested and, combined with the archaeological data sets, literally thousands of experiments with shaft furnaces and other prehistoric and early historic types were executed across the world. Especially in the United States, groups of archaeologists/craftspeople are very active in iron smelting (e.g., at the Rockbridge Bloomery (http://iron.w/u.edu)). One of the advantages of iron smelting is that it was executed in many regions across the world which makes it easier for people to become familiar with it in their local environment. More clearly, these experiments and the vast amount of reports of them have made it possible for archaeologists to discern the different steps, methods, and their by-products. In 1967, a construction built in Lejre (Denmark) resembling an Iron Age house was deliberately set on fire and excavated later. Such experiments take time, courage, and a stable physical environment. The scene for the fire was planned in detail, with inventory and stock put in place where needed. Small porcelain cones were mounted across the house as part of the registration of temperature. Surprisingly for the experimenters, the house burnt down in as little as 30 min. A few days after the fire, small test pits were excavated. In this excavation, different layers of ash were discernible as well as different sources of clay and loam (walls, floor, etc.). These different features were much more difficult to recognize in the 1992 excavations. The people excavating in the second phase were unaware of the documentation of the fire in 1967, just like archaeologists nowadays excavate houses without knowledge of what exactly they will find until they do make finds. To everybody’s surprise, they made only very little finds, even if the house was only burnt down 25 years before. After the 1992 excavations, the undisturbed parts are left for the future.

Figure 3 Overview over the Iron Age village at Lejre Experimental Centre, Denmark. Picture: Roeland Paardekooper.

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The pity of this famous experiment is that there has been no money available to date to process the complete documentation of the constructing phase, the phase of use of the house, the burning down, and subsequently the excavation. Even if this could be done, the work comparing the data with original archaeological information on burnt-down houses has to be started first of all. In the 1980s and 1990s, different wooden ships were built in Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands, resembling a medieval cog-like vessel. This kind of ship was used in the late Middle Ages in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea as trading vessel. As is often the case, money was acquired through European unemployment funds. The building of such new ships of old design has an important added value, namely promoting interest in the past, and therefore strengthening the position of archaeology. The different cog-like vessels built in the 1980s and 1990s served different levels of authenticity and different goals. Most important, the ships were meant to be used as seafaring vessels in modern ages. A major advantage of having these new ships built is that the original archaeological data receives renewed attention, not just from archaeologists, but from a range of other specialists as well, who all ‘see’ things in the original data, which archaeologists did not identify before. Archaeologists do learn to see beyond what they know, but these insights might be limited. In some cases, archaeological details were copied into a ship, and people first found out about their use after sailing with the ship. This is the case, for example, for a triangular piece of wood, which decenniums after the excavations had to be planned in the correct location, which could be recognized in medieval depictions as well. It turned out to be a so-called beam-end fender (Figures 4 and 5). Experiments in using such a ship are often restricted to short-term monitoring experiments (‘‘does it work well?’’). Longer-term monitoring, using log books and comparing these over the years, would be a cost-effective way of learning more. The different ship projects are in touch with each other and exchange experiences. If the results and experiences with such ships were to be combined, an interesting image would emerge.

Archaeological Open-Air Centers Looking at the scattered publications of experiments executed around the world, some of them are done in laboratory circumstances at universities. Most of them are done under field circumstances at archaeological open-air centers. These centers have a position

Figure 4 The location of the beam-end fender in front of a through-beam on the outer side of the hull. Drawing by Morten G
thche, Maritime Newsletter from Roskilde, Denmark, no. 7, December 1996, p. 15.

Figure 5 The beam-end fenders can be seen clearly on this town seal from Elbing c. 1350. From Maritime Newsletter from Roskilde, Denmark, no. 7, December 1996, p. 15.

between science on the one hand (as most important source of information) and the public on the other hand (as most important ‘target group’). They are a prime mediator between science and the public. There are about 400 archaeological open-air centers across the world, with 6 million visitors per year. The key words for these centers are education, presentation (with living history), and experiment.

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These three aspects come together in their basic objective of interpretation of archaeological data. Such centers are not museums in the traditional definition. One of their most important characteristics is that they do not own any original artifacts, everything is ‘fake’ so to speak. That does not mean they do not have a collection, but in most cases the information that goes with these artifacts is more important than the artifact itself. Their houses, decoration, and tools are there to be used, and if they break, they can be constructed anew – according to the latest insights in archaeology (Figures 6 and 7). The staff working in such a center either present their museum in a way similar to a modern museum, or they act like living history actors, dressed up and playing a role which fits the timeframe the center depicts. Not being a museum does not imply that those centers are very commercial. They have a message to get across and gaining more insight in the past through experiments is part of their mission. The main task of the archaeological open-air centers is to present an image of the past as the interpreters see it, to their visitors. An important part of these visitors are school groups, which receive the information in programs where they themselves need to be active. This ‘hands-on’ approach is a type of formal education. A type of more informal education is applied to day tourists. They partly visit these centers for a popular day out, but seeing how ‘their’ ancestors lived and being informed plays a role as well. For them, it is a kind of ‘edutainment’ (see Tourism and Archaeology). Archaeological open-air centers need people who are both experienced in crafts as in archaeological knowledge. Scientific involvement in the archaeological centers prevents them from telling nonsense to the public. Moreover, continuous involvement ensures that centers give an up-to-date image of the past, according to the latest scientific insights. The centers on their part broaden the support for archaeology as a science drastically. The final advantage which archaeologists can find in open-air centers is the use of them as field laboratories, occasionally or for long-term experiments. This applies both for academic research and for training students. Historic Overview

The oldest archaeological open-air centers were constructed at the end of the nineteenth century and portrayed a romantic image of the past. Around Lake Constance, in the period 1888–1940, much attention was paid to lake dwellings. This was

Figure 6 Neolithic house in the outdoor archaeological garden at Asparn/Zaya, Austria. Picture: Roeland Paardekooper.

Figure 7 Bronze Age houses at the archaeological park at Montale, Italy. Picture: Roeland Paardekooper.

still the period when excavations were especially carried out by the nobility. Excavations of these lake dwellings in the northern Alpine region made a wealth of information available about the people living on the coasts of these lakes in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. A still existing example of such a lake dwelling reconstruction is situated in Unteruhldingen, on the German side of Lake Constance (http://www.pfahl bauten.de). The first ‘prehistoric’ houses were built here in 1922. In the years immediately preceding WWII, these lake dwelling museums had role in promoting the fatherland. At present, Unteruhldingen is one of the

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most popular open-air centers across the world and has the capabilities of being innovative and showing a constantly updated presentation about the past (Figure 8). Other elements are self-criticism of its role in the past and teaching the public how we know what we know. In 1925, work started in Virginia on reconstructing ‘Colonial Williamsburg’ (http://www.history.org). The place is a living history museum themed on the eighteenth century, a period many Americans take pride in. It contains 88 original houses and 50 reconstructions and receives at present a million visitors per year. Here, they interpret the origins of the idea of America, conceived decades before the American Revolution.

In Poland, following wetland excavations at Biskupin (http://www.biskupin.pl), first reconstructions of an Iron Age settlement were made in 1936 (Figure 9). The project raised a lot of attention and acquired the character of a national monument, playing a role in defining Polish nationality up to the present day. Biskupin has a major educational value and is one of the most frequently visited open-air centers across Europe. With their long history, they have been able to maintain knowledge on building wooden constructions. Since the 1980s, Biskupin is the venue of the largest archaeological festival in the world. Yearly, about 80 000 visitors come and see a themed festival on, for example, ‘Romans and

Figure 8 Two of the groups of lake dwellings at the Unteruhldingen Museum, Germany. Picture: Roeland Paardekooper.

Figure 9 Constructing an iron smelting oven during the Biskupin Archaeological Festival in Poland. Picture: Roeland Paardekooper.

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their barbarian neighbors’ or ‘In the shadow of the pyramids’. In the first decades after WWII, not many new open-air centers were conceived. Groundbreaking work was done under the guidance of the Dane HansOle Hansen, when the Lejre Experimental Centre (http://www.lejre-center.dk) was conceived. From the very beginning, the centre was an interdisciplinary field station. It combines characteristics of a theme park (its low threshold) with a museum’s scientific background and one keeps aware of the relevance to present-day society. The center represents a dynamic, informal, and nonrecognized learning, both for school children and adults alike. The well-balanced constellation between presentation, education, and research as practiced in Lejre has been an inspiration to dozens of other centers. Lejre does its own research, tries to involve university students by giving introductory courses in experimental archaeology, publishes both scientific and popular books, and offers means and opportunities to experimental archaeologists across the world to do experiments in Denmark. In 1972, Peter Reynolds set up an archaeological field laboratory with aid from the Council of British Archaeology (CBA) entitled ‘the Butser Ancient Farm Research Project’ (http://www.butser.org.uk). Among the existing archaeological open-air centers, it is the one with the most scientific aspirations. Butser has been developed as working Iron Age farm with, since 2003, a Roman villa, filmed and described by the Discovery Channel (Figure 10). The foremost goal is to be used by archaeologists and their students, but education plays an important role as well. The experiments carried out follow a strict regime, thus having a high scientific value. In the late 1970s, with much discussion between archaeologists, an Iron Age fortress (Figure 11) was

partly reconstructed in Sweden at Eketorp (http:// ¨ land. www.eketorp.se) on O Some of the questions which played an important role in the discussion in Sweden were: . Does a (re)construction have any use at all? . What is the goal of (re)constructing? Is it research, education, tourism, or adventure? . Does it generate new knowledge or does it reproduce established knowledge? Eketorp has been successful in addressing problems about reconstructing environments, based on archaeological data. Old archaeological hypotheses were tested and new ones were formulated, showing

Figure 10 View of the interior of the Romano-British villa at Butser Ancient Farm, UK. Picture: Roeland Paardekooper.

¨ land, Sweden. Picture: Roeland Paardekooper. Figure 11 The large round fortress, based on Iron Age finds, at Eketorp on O

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both the reach of experimental archaeology and its limits. Eketorp was at the beginning of a boom of ‘living history villages’ across Sweden. Many centers need to generate a large part of their income themselves. Since the 1980s, some centers could start up with a big sum of money from a particular fund. One of these places, still with a noncommercial goal, is the Middelaldercentret in Denmark (http://www.middelaldercentret.dk). Their theme is about medieval techniques and machines of war. The center started off with some catapults and archaeologists still do research in areas like medieval ways of making gunpowder. An important characteristic for the 75 000 visitors is the many volunteers in their living history role. Future developments might be seen in centers like Bachritterburg Kanzach in southern Germany (http:// www.bachritterburg.de). It is not their motto (‘‘be surprised – understand – experience’’) which is new, nor their approach to using living history groups. Much of the information which is used in creating the center and its reconstructions is based upon detailed experimental research at universities in different countries. What makes this project being mentioned here innovative is that it is financed with European funds. More and more often, European structural funds are used to create tourist attractions like archaeological open-air centers in rural areas. A major weakness is that the money can only be used to construct a center, not in running it. There are just a few open-air centers which have theme park characteristics, for example, the Irish National Heritage Park. But a commercial theme park is different from an archaeological open-air center. Theme parks are ‘‘extreme examples of capital intensive, highly developed, user-oriented, man-modified, recreational environments’’ (Pearce, 1988, 60). Archeon (http://www.archeon.nl) in the Netherlands, with almost 200 000 visitors per year, is presenting itself as living history theme park. It is organized as a company, that is, the commercial role is evident, but the managers know that they have to retain quality and keep contact with universities to ensure this. More people learn here about national Dutch history then in the National Dutch Museum of Antiquities just 30 mi away.

Different Kinds of Experimental Archaeology The phrase ‘experimental archaeology’ (sometimes called ‘archaeology by experiment’) is used in various ways and people mean different things by it. It is not necessarily only laboratory experiments according to scientific laws (Figure 12).

Figure 12 Experiment with medieval fulling of wool at the Historisch OpenluchtMuseum Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Picture: H. van Doormalen.

Building Reconstructions in Archaeological Open-Air Centers

Reconstructed or constructed houses are seen as the most tangible results of scientific experimentation. In books and brochures, one can read statements like: ‘‘the building of our museum was an act of experimental archaeology’’. These are, however, rather acts of personal experience. A construction alone might be at best a by-product of experimental research, and nothing more. The real product of an experiment is data. The construct, or model, serves other goals. Changes are made in the possible reconstruction before it has even left the drawing room, as it is made fit for future use, ready to be a part of the ‘prehistoric’ or ‘medieval’ scenery. An archaeological open-air center however, keeps the pretension high up; there is talk about a scientific experimental (meaning ‘true’) image of the past. Archaeologists do not like that and stay away, even if they once were enthusiastically involved. A point is made about what kind of knowledge is mediated, what is based on science and what on other sources. But this coin has two sides: ‘mistakes’ are also made in the field because of lack of interest of archaeologists to get involved, maybe because they are afraid to get beyond what they think is possible in archaeology. Educational Programs for Children

Experimental archaeology is as often used to describe what is actually museum education. An employee

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helps children to make a pouch, cut a spoon, or sail a canoe. Obviously, these are not experiments, but by using this phrase, open-air centers want to point to the fact or assumption that they are offering serious activities, and we are not dealing here with entertainment only. Generally seen, the activity (the fun) is not the focal point; rather, it is more a means to transfer the message which should be told in an open-air center. Needless to say, the lesson learnt about the past needs to reflect on the present as well. Demonstrations for Public, or Living History

Demonstrations of any kind provide the connection between textbooks and reality, between knowledge learned by heart and knowledge gained by experience. Besides education programs for children, at special open days or events, actors are hired who either give a demonstrations in crafts, fighting, cooking, or whatever more is interesting, or they try to sell certain products which carry the atmosphere of prehistory or the Middle Ages. The public has a great influence on what is successful, it is not the most authentic items which sell best or the most authentic crafts or activities which are rewarded most. These activities and products are not rewarded for their authenticity, but for the way they succeed in connecting with the modern public. It all happens in the present and is inspired by the past. The past is not a touchstone, merely the major source of inspiration. Using living history actors, sometimes employed by the center, but most often hobbyists active on weekends and holidays, is a successful approach. But the people are ‘actors’. Some of them are very well informed about ‘their’ past, others are not. As an uninformed outsider, which the public generally speaking is, it is impossible to detect the difference. Both the actors as well as the open-air centers carry a responsibility. One of the major problems of living history is that it is hard to make clear that at this point a past is presented, not the past. Trying Out a Technique, Occasionally

Most archaeologists have, once or more often in their lives, tried out or gotten acquainted with a technique. This is a good way to learn more about the qualities of one’s artifacts or one can imagine, for example, how much time it would have taken for an experienced group of people to build a house in the Iron Age. With this background experience, one might then be able again to imagine more about the people living in such a Iron Age world. However, measuring the quantity of time for cutting out a tree canoe might actually tell us nothing of how much time it took

in the past. Answering this question tells one in the first instance more about one’s own capabilities and handicaps than it gets us acquainted with our predecessors. It takes another step further, repeating the experiment. First then, it is possible to make more valuable judgments. That one (if one is archaeologist or craftsman or both does not matter) has to follow a more structured approach is almost inevitable. The larger part of the experiments being presented in books and articles are onetime experiments, with no thought of, or approach to, repeatability. In the respect of trying out a technique, the misunderstanding between experiment and primitive technology should be enlightened. The use of a mere technical approach differs from experimental archaeology in that trying to approach the past culture is not necessarily a means; it is the materials and techniques themselves that are the focal point. Primitive technology is a processual approach to experimental archaeology and it depends on the archaeologist to make a step further or not, to feed his experience back to the original data or not. Primitive technology has been developed and fostered both in America and in Europe. One of the people in the United States who stood at the beginning of this approach is Errett Callahan. He started teaching himself flint knapping as early as in 1956 and has made it a point to share his knowledge learnt through experience with many others. His important projects are the Pamunkey Project, the Cahokia Pit House Project, and his Danish daggers project, most of them awaiting final publication. At the end of the 1980s, the Society of Primitive Technology (http:// www.primitive.org) was established by Callahan and others, being a low-profile but highly effective society in bringing together craftspeople who are serious about ancient crafts. In Europe, an important impetus to the study and promotion of primitive technology was given by Tomas Johansson from Sweden, who established the Society for Prehistoric Technology in 1980, publishing a popular magazine on the subject until 1995. He established courses for wouldbe experimental archaeologists in a national academy and was, in 2001, one of the founders of a European network of archaeological open-air centers, EXARC (http://www.exarc.eu). Scientific Experiments

Feynman et al. (1963) stated: ‘‘The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific ‘truth’.’’ The natural scientific method is by far not the only way to learn more about the past. It is only that using this method will not bring us far enough. But it is the

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best way to go beyond assumptions, ideas, possibilities, and hypotheses. Exeter University, UK, is the only university in the world so far which offers an MA in experimental archaeology (http://www.ex.ac.uk). It is designed to give practical experience of many ancient technologies and to embed these experiences within current scientific and academic theories, methodologies, and presentations to the profession and public. In the nineteenth century, it was mere technical curiosity about individual objects which drove people to do experiments. From the 1960s onward, theoretical foundations were laid under experimental archaeology. Ascher discerns different kinds of experiments, from imaginative experiments, which never leave the drawing room, to the comparative experiment (‘‘is my excavation technique better then yours?’’), up to imitative experiments, where archaeologists try to set up an imitation of a situation as it could have been in the past, in order to test their beliefs about past cultural behavior. It has been a discussion over the years as to which categories of activities would fall under ‘experimental archaeology’ and which would not. Is it an archaeological experiment if one experiments methodologically with different excavation techniques? This depends on the background of the archaeologist answering such questions. Experimental archaeology follows the trends in mainstream archaeology. The kind of hypotheses archaeologists postulate dictates a certain approach to experiments, but the theory behind experimental archaeology as a whole also follows the tendencies in general archaeology. The description of what experimental archaeology is and what it should be limited to followed under the ‘processual archaeology’ the rules of being interdisciplinary and searching for laws on which human behavior was supposed to be based (see Processual Archaeology). This meant the rise of experimental research in postdepositional processes, technology, and function of artifacts. Ascher reasoned that all human behavior would follow a pattern (a dynamic concept with different steps following each other). A division in groups of experiments would be best following the way of production and use of the artifact. The artifacts and the cultural behavior of which they were produced were focused upon, the human factor was described as following laws, not culturally determined. Reynolds’ division of different kinds of experiments (1999) was meant to divide and control experimental archaeology better. Before he starts, he makes a clear difference between experiment, experience, and education. These three, however, touch upon each other frequently. He introduced experimental

archaeology as a means to learn much more, partly by experience, partly by inference about the past. Many experiments produce new data, but they are seldom fed back to the original data, the archaeological record. An experiment must fit into the dogma of the discipline. A hypothesis like ‘‘people in the Iron Age had a relaxed life’’ would not fit into the dogma of archaeology as it cannot be tested by using archaeological data. It has not and cannot be a subject of archaeological research – therefore it cannot be the subject of an archaeological experiment. Experiments require to be replicable and need to be replicated. And, to prevent too much subjectivity, the experiment should be designed as such, that the outcome can be statistically assessed. Archaeological data can lead to a testable hypothesis. An experiment can be used to falsify this hypothesis and simultaneously lead to new hypotheses. In some cases, an experiment is run, solely to generate hypotheses, which in later experiments need to be tested. Experiments can validate a hypothesis, but cannot prove anything. There might be another hypothesis which could lead to the same results. Reynolds makes five categories of experiments, of which the construct experiment is the first. This is the kind of experiment which is often labeled as ‘reconstruction’. As the use of the word ‘reconstruction’ implies a high level of certainty, the word ‘construct’ was introduced. A construct in itself is a low-grade experiment. The real results of an experiment are data, derived from the actions of the experimental archaeologist. Obviously, these experiments have more materialistic results as side effects, but that is because archaeology – the prime but not the only source of the data on which an experiment is based – is involved in material culture. Constructs can be classified into a hierarchical system, devised by Coles: . A simple construct would only look like how the original artifact might have been – it would give an impression, like for a Hollywood movie (‘‘If a Stone Age man could have come alive again and seen the models I made, I expect he would have flung himself and laughed until he cried (. . .) No one was going to catch me saying that I intended to build a Stone Age house as it really had been, but only as it might have been’’ (Hansen, 1964, 18)). . A second level is about making something that looks the same, but is also produced with the same materials, tools, and techniques as presumed in the original. This artifact stands on itself. . The final level of reconstructions would not only involve the artifact made in the original way but also having it used in the presumably original

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fashion. This way, the artifact can tell us more about the past cultural context – as far as we can pursue this. This final category is setting the reconstruction into an experimental framework as it is such action, such use which creates data (e.g., through wear of the authentically used reconstruction) which we can compare again to the archaeological data. The second level of Reynolds’ experimental division refers to process and function. It seeks to examine how things were achieved and involves a passage of time. At Butser Farm, for example, storage pits were made, like the ones used in the Iron Age, and these were used for a period of over 10 years. The third category of Reynolds is called simulation when archaeological material is projected back into the state of what it might have looked like when still used in the past. A construct of an artifact or a set of artifacts is made and the deterioration through time is monitored. This is a way to see how the archaeological record came to be. Reynolds built a few roundhouses, basing his work as much as possible on archaeological data, and carefully monitored the decay, that is, the weaknesses of such a structure. With this experience, over the years he could argue as to exactly what the construction of such houses could have been like: for example, a difference in roof construction immediately has effects on the floor plan and the strength of the house (see Figure 13). Another good example is the experimental earthworks at Overton Down and Wareham in the UK. In the early 1960s, different mounds and earthworks were constructed in these locations in order to determine the effectiveness of prehistoric tools in constructing them. However, the second purpose is the most important. With a binomial progression of

years, a part is excavated and the degradation is compared to the earlier obtained data and to archaeological sites. In the earthworks, pseudo-artifacts are planted, whose deterioration and movements are also charted. This is a long-lasting simulation experiment. The fourth series of experiments under Reynolds’ system is called ‘eventuality trial’ and incorporates all the three earlier categories. It seeks to explore the potential product, for example, the agricultural potential of the past. The greatest problem here is to establish the limits against which the variables can be examined. One can monitor harvest yields of prehistoric crops on similar soils as used in those days, but one can imagine the multitude of uncontrollable variables. Repeating the experiment over a number of years at different locations gives a better statistical value but the results remain the product of a specific combination of variables. How else could you infer how much land a family would need for agriculture? The last category Reynolds describes is called ‘technological innovation’ and is about the testing of new scientific equipment in archaeology to improve archaeological data acquisition. An important element in present-day descriptions of experimental archaeology is whether or not there is a feedback possible to the original archaeological data. A recent definition as stated by Mathieu (2002, 1) states experimental archaeology to be: ‘‘a sub-field of archaeological research which employs a number of different methods, techniques, analyses, and approaches within the context of a controllable imitative experiment to replicate past phenomena (from objects to systems) in order to generate and test hypotheses to provide or enhance analogies for archaeological interpretation.’’

Figure 13 Typical roundhouses at Butser Ancient Farm, UK. Picture: Roeland Paardekooper.

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Experiments in this sense are attempts to imitate a situation as it might have been in the past. It is no longer about ‘reproducing’ an item. The experiment should be controllable, meaning it should be performed in a laboratory environment, albeit an open-air site. The possibility to control the necessary variables is more important then having the activity done in a seemingly authentic way. If authenticity is more important, the experiment turns into a demonstration or living history. An experiment in the modern archaeological sense is about replicating objects (in its simplest form), replicating behaviors (as far as we can approach these) up to replicating systems, although this latter is hard to achieve. It is no longer about ‘making’ an object, but about ‘using’ it, or using a set of objects in a system. These actions result again in data which are comparable to the source data. Experimental research either generates hypotheses or tests them. If an experiment is just about generating hypotheses, it is more an activity to gather experiences, to make an inventory of the variables playing a role in a certain activity. In this case, it follows a more general approach instead of being a well-thought-out plan. If one has already made an inventory of all variables and is able to measure and control all of them, one can continue to either try to falsify the hypothesis or accept the hypothesis for the moment. A successful experiment cannot lead to a one-to-one explanation or even evidence. A hypothesis is only valid as long as there is no proof that supports an alternative. An experiment is about creating a data set which forms an analogy with the original archaeological data set which needs to be explained. Using an analogy implies one can supplement characteristics of one situation (the modern experiment in this case) to the other (the archaeological situation under investigation). Both situations need to be as similar as possible. We have in both situations statics: artifacts and structures. The action which resulted in these statics in the past is what we want to learn more about. If we then use similar artifacts and structures in a presumably similar way, we might be able to tell something of the actions (and consequently the people) leading to these statics. A difficult point is whether the same action always leads to the same result and only that result. In other words, is it possible to explain the same data set with different actions? A good answer to this question will strengthen the analogy and therefore the value of the experiment. An experiment would gain much value, if a few key issues are properly addressed. This can make the experiment much more worth its money and effort. An experiment needs to be measurable and

repeatable, executed with the correct manual skill – not too high, but certainly not too low. One should base oneself on experience of those already having executed similar activities before, either as experiment, theory, or in ethnoarchaeological reports. In other words, a database should be kept about the subject in question. One should understand the technology and archaeology of the period and culture under investigation well – it is not just about trying out a technique and seeing if it works. During any stage in the experiment, one will find the need to improvise – and document these improvisations. Hardly ever does an experiment go exactly as planned. A great problem with experimental archaeology, and at the same time its strength, is the versatility of the idea. The scope for enquiry is unlimited, but it attracts all manner of students (Coles, in Malina (1983)). Theory without practice is empty; practice without theory is blind (Immanuel Kant, in Coles (1979, 243)). See also: Butchery and Kill Sites; Ethnoarchaeology; Interpretation of Archaeology for the Public; Interpretive Art and Archaeology; Middle Range Approaches; Politics of Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Tourism and Archaeology.

Further Reading Andraschko F and Schmidt M (1991) Experimentelle Archa¨ologie: Masche oder Methode? In: Fansa M (ed.) Experimentelle Archa¨ologie, Bilanz 1991, pp. 69–82. Oldenburg: Isensee. Coles JM (1979) Experimental Archaeology. London: Academic Press. Coles JM (1963) Archaeology by experiment: ‘Bronze age’ shields made at Cambridge which establish that leather was for use, bronze for ritual and show. The Illustrated London News, 2-3-1963, pp. 299–301. Feynman R, Leighton R, and Sands M (1963) The Feynman lectures on physics. Reading I: 1–1. Hansen H-O (1964) I Built a Stone Age House. New York: The John Day Company. Ingersoll D, Yellen J, and Macdonald W (eds.) (1977) Experimental Archaeology. New York: Columbia University Press. Kelterborn P (2005) Principles of archaeological research in archaeology. EuroREA, (Re)construction and Experiment in Archaeology 2/2005, pp. 120–124. Lammers-Keijsers YMJ (2005) Scientific experiments: A possibility? Presenting a general cyclical script for experiments in archaeology. EuroREA, (Re)construction and Experiment in Archaeology 2/2005, pp. 18–24. Malina J (1980) Metody experimentu v archeologii, pp. 44–45. Brno: Academia Praha. Malina J (1983) Archaeology and experiment. Norwegian Archaeological Review 16(2): 69–85. Mathieu J (2002) Introduction – Experimental Archaeology: Replicating past objects, behaviors and processes. In: BAR 1035: Experimental Archaeology: Replicating Past Objects, Behaviors and Processes, pp. 1–11.

1358 EXPLANATION IN ARCHAEOLOGY, OVERVIEW Meldgaard M and Rasmussen M (1996) Arkæologiske eksperimenter i Lejre. Lejre: HAF Lejre. Pearce PL (1988) The Ulysses Factor: Evaluating Visitors in Tourist Settings. New York: Springer Verlag. Reynolds PJ (1999) The Nature of Experiment in Archaeology. In: Harding AF (ed.) Experiment and Design, Archaeological Studies in Honour of John Coles, pp. 156–162. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Relevant Websites http://www.archeon.nl – Archaeological themepark Archeon. http://www.biskupin.pl – Biskupin – Muzeum Archeologiczne w Biskupinie. http://www.butser.org.uk – Butser Ancient Farm. http://www.history.org – Colonial Williamsburg Living History Museum.

http://www.ex.ac.uk/archaeology – Department of Archaeology at the University of Exeter. http://www.eketorp.se – Eketorp – History Brought to Life on ¨ land. Southern O http://www.exarc.eu – EXARC, a European Network of Open Air Museums and Other Facilities Involved in Experimental Archaeology. http://www.imtal-europe.org – IMTAL Europe – International Museum of Theatre Alliance. http://www.pfahlbauten.de – Lake Dwellings of Unteruhldingen. http://www.lejre-center.dk – Lejre Forsgscenter: Lejre Experimental Center. http://www.middelaldercentret.dk – Medieval Centre. http://iron.wlu.edu – The Rockbridge Bloomery. http://www.primitive.org – The Society of Primitive Technology. http://www.bachritterburg.de – Bachritterburg Kanzach.

EXPLANATION IN ARCHAEOLOGY, OVERVIEW Charles Stanish, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary critical theory A philosophical position in the humanities and social sciences that seeks human liberation and social transformation through knowledge and action. empiricism A theory of knowledge emphasizing the role of experience in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas. epistemology The study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge. hermeneutics An epistemological theory with roots in the study of biblical texts that understanding is based on the dialectical (back-and-forth) relationship between the whole and its parts. New Archaeology A movement that began in America in the 1960s, aimed at making archaeology more scientific by employing empiricist and neo-positivist principles. positivism A philosophy that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific method. postprocessualism A school of archaeological thought that uses critical theory and interpretative methods while cautioning against the shortcomings of scientific archaeology. processualism A school of archaeological thought that uses empiricist theories of knowledge and scientific methods to derive testable models of human behavior.

Throughout its 200 years as a recognizable intellectual activity, archaeology has focused on both the recovery of ancient objects and explaining what precisely those objects mean about the societies that

produced them. In this sense, ‘explanation’ in archaeology is historically and culturally contingent, and the aims and techniques of archaeological explanation shift as the epistemological and ontological foundations of the discipline shift. The purpose of this entry is to define precisely what explanation in archaeology is in contemporary terms. Explanation is defined by most dictionaries as ‘the act of giving the reason for, the justification of, or the cause of phenomena.’ Historically and linguistically, the terms explanation and cause are associated with scientific approaches in the social, behavioral, and natural sciences. Within contemporary archaeology, however, there are both scientific and nonscientific approaches to studying the past. A proper examination of ‘explanation’ in archaeology therefore requires a broadening of the definition of explanation to include any epistemology that gives meaning to the past as derived from the material record. This entry will therefore be an expansive treatment of the topic to cover both nonscientific and scientific approaches.

Archaeological Approaches in the Twenty-First Century At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we can profitably define four broad kinds of archaeological research based upon their philosophical foundations and the implicit and explicit goals stated by their practitioners. These kinds of archaeology, ranging from the least to the most scientific: are (1) critical theory,

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(2) hermeneutic or interpretative archaeology, (3) historicist archaeology, and (4) scientific archaeology. In short, contemporary critical theorists seek to create narratives of the past consistent with broad moral and political principles and to examine the discipline of archaeology itself as a constructed social practice. Hermeneutic or interpretative archaeology seeks to read multiple meanings into the archaeological record. Historicist archaeology seeks to explain the archaeological record of objects and archaeological contexts in space and time. Scientific archaeology seeks to subsume the empirical archaeological record into broader principles of human behavior. Each of these kinds of archaeology begins with different logical principles and assumptions. For each kind of archaeology, ‘explanation’ has different meanings, if any meaning at all. Even more complex, many archaeologists adopt the principles of two or more of these intellectual traditions simultaneously as they do their work. Idealist Philosophical Traditions

Critical archaeology Critical theory practitioners stand at the end of one continuum in the philosophy of social science. Generally antagonistic to modern philosophies of science (logical positivism and empiricism), the core goal of critical theory is not to define what is in the archaeological record, but rather define: (1) what the archaeological record ought to teach us about the past and (2) to deconstruct archaeology as a power-infused social activity and rectify what they see as past errors in the way archaeology has been practiced. Critical theorists begin with the assumption that all knowledge is socially constructed, a tradition drawn largely from philosophical idealism. Furthermore, in this tradition, no socially constructed knowledge base is better or worse than any other by any a priori criteria. As such, critical theorists in archaeology seek explanation of the past in terms of their implications for social action in the present. Explanation, or more appropriately stated, providing meaning to the archaeological record and to the act of explanation itself, is subsumed under broad social, political, cultural precepts, and/or moral mandates. As Hodder and Hutson note, such approaches interpret ‘‘. . . past cultural meanings in relation to such issues as power and domination, history and gender’’. Critical archaeology is essentially a morally based social and political activity in the sense described by Scheper-Hughes (1995) for anthropology in general. In this tradition, any pretext of logical realism (whether in the positivist sense used by Salmon (1982:162) or in the postpositivist sense of Gibbon (1989:142–172); see Wylie (2003)) or its related philosophical positions of materialism, instrumentalism,

empiricism, and so forth, is considered inappropriate for archaeological interpretation. Any scientific epistemology assumes that a real and knowable world exists apart from the human observers – that is, what scientists study is independent of the analytical process and has an independent ontological status with its own a priori properties. Scientific epistemologies assume that data and history are real, and that the process of interpretation, in theory (if not necessarily in practice), can be morally neutral. Scientific philosophies eschew the metaphysical. Extreme logical positivism even denied the existence of abstract truths not verifiable by the human senses, although most archaeological scientists today hold much more moderate views as described below. Archaeologists working in this critical theory tradition would ideally expect the interpretation of those power relationships to contribute to some kind of broader social activity that weakens asymmetrical relationships of power in contemporary society. Ironically, while maintaining a hyper-relativistic stance as an ideal, interpretations of the past that conform to morally sound principles of social justice are usually considered superior to those that are perceived to reinforce asymmetrical power relationships in contemporary society. Insofar as explanation exists in this tradition, it is intimately linked to the degree to which an interpretation can inspire or effect social and political action. Given that all interpretations are valid, one is not only free to choose the most socially correct one, one is in a sense obligated to choose the most moral interpretation. An archaeologist working in the critical theory tradition who discusses, say, an early Greek theatre, a Southwestern US kiva, or Peruvian sunken court would seek to define the power relationships represented by that architecture in the material record. These public constructions are interpreted as reinforcing ideologies of power, or, conversely, may be seen as means by which the majority of people resist such social power. As a critique of existing archaeological practice, critical theorists have provided useful insights into how archaeologists conduct research. It has been far less successful as a positive research framework, given its general rejection of explanation as a feasible or desirable goal. Hermeneutic or interpretative archaeology Hermeneutic or interpretative archaeology draws off many of the principles of critical theory, most crucially the assumption that all knowledge is socially constructed. They likewise share a general rejection of scientific determinism or any variant of logical positivism or empiricism. Hermeneutics is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as ‘‘the art or science of

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interpretation. . . .’’ Beginning at least with the philosopher Collingwood (with strong ties to Hegel and Kant), hermeneutic approaches to history and culture generally reject scientific epistemologies. As culturally constituted and irreducible, human behavior cannot be explained with reference to external factors such as the environment, technology, and so forth in hermeneutic archaeology. As with critical archaeology, hermeneutic archaeology also rejects any simple or direct relationship between material culture and human behavior. As hermeneutic practitioners would put it, ‘‘culture creates objects and objects create culture’’ in a recursive and complex relationship not reducible to simple linear propositions. Avidly antipositivistic, knowledge is not cumulative, but constantly reformulated. Knowledge that reinforces asymmetrical power relations is consciously resisted (or decentered) as an explicit goal. In this tradition, culture and the archaeological record are ambiguous cultural texts to be ‘read’ – interpreted and reinterpreted – not explained in any scientific sense. The ‘texts’ are highly affected by the readers’ social, political, and cultural biases; for many hermeneutic archaeologists, the context in which the archaeological record is read is as important as data themselves. Therefore, an archaeologist working in this tradition who encounters an early Greek theatre, a Southwestern US kiva, or Peruvian sunken court would seek to create a narrative of meaning that is represented in the material record. That meaning can be different for different interpreters, and there is no hierarchy of these interpretations. What is meaningful from one perspective is as equally valid as any other perspective. Ambiguity and imprecision, considered anathema by historicist and scientific archaeologists, are essential components of hermeneutic archaeology. It is essential precisely because such language evokes different meanings from different people, a process that enriches the narrative. While usually denying it, most practitioners of hermeneutic and critical archaeology implicitly rely heavily upon some form of philosophical idealism. A prominent example is Hodder and Hutson (2003:4), who, in describing the epistemological foundations of interpretative archaeology, note that cultural behavior is not reducible to broader generalizations because ‘‘culture is meaningfully constituted’’ (i.e., not an independent phenomenon apart from the observer) and ‘‘cultural relationships are not caused by anything else outside themselves. They just are’’. This statement, of course, betrays a classic idealist stance visa`-vis culture and history. It must be pointed out that some readings of this tradition suggest that external and noncultural factors constrain the production of cultural meaning and therefore may result in some

broad cross-cultural similarities, a process that scientific archaeologists would call convergent evolution. However, as the above quote demonstrates, hermeneutic archaeology is firmly rooted in idealist epistemologies of philosophy not amenable to any kind of reductionist statement or empirical verification/ falsification procedure. Combined, critical and hermeneutic archaeology constitute a large part of what is known as ‘postprocessual’ archaeology in Anglo-American traditions (see Postprocessual Archaeology). Most objective observers now agree that postprocessualism provided a useful critique of the excesses of the new archaeology and the naı¨ve adoption of logical positivism (see Processual Archaeology). That critique gave rise to a richer approach to explaining the past with variables beyond technology, demography, and subsistence. In other influential intellectual traditions, particularly those in Spain and Latin America, the term ‘social archaeology’ is usually associated with these and/or some variant of Marxist or structural Marxist approaches (see Social Theory; Marxist Archaeology). Postprocessual archaeology constitutes a rich and diverse set of approaches that is not readily definable. Some selfdescribed postprocessualists actually work within empiricist epistemologies as described below, but reject the traditional ‘processual’ archaeological focus on the strictly material. In this sense, they are ‘post’-processual only insofar that they test models of cultural process that privilege ideology, gender, power, and other variables traditionally considered epiphenomenal by the New Archaeology. However, all critical and hermeneutic archaeologies are postprocessual, and all are based upon the general rejection of scientific philosophies and the implicit adoption of philosophical idealism in one guise or the other. Explanation and causation in such traditions is not an attainable goal. Creating multiple meaning of the past while critiquing the practice of archaeology is the central goal. Empiricist Philosophical Positions

Historicist archaeology Historicist archaeology seeks to precisely define objects and events in the archaeological record in space and time. The term ‘historicist’ is used to differentiate this school from ‘historical’ archaeology. The latter is a subdiscipline of archaeology focusing on time periods that have contemporary textual information (see Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline). Historical archaeology can be conducted in any one of the four traditions described here (see Historical Archaeology: Methods). The former, described in this article, refers to a particular approach in archaeology that has its own epistemological principles.

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Scholars working within this historicist tradition generally accept key principles of scientific ontology and epistemology, particularly the assumption of a real, independent, and knowable universe. They combine these philosophical assumptions with inductive methodologies to reconstruct the archaeological record. Inductive methodologies begin with the existing database and confine explanation to within what can be known about the empirical record. Historicist archaeology shares many of the philosophical principles of scientific archaeology, but eschews the subsuming of particular historical events into broader theoretical principles. Explanation in this tradition centers on the ability to locate the remains in or on the ground in either a known historical sequence as derived from independent data sets such as texts, or within existing archaeological data sets. Successful explanation is based upon the degree to which the interpretation generally conforms and adds to previously established knowledge. Unlike scientific approaches, historicist archaeology sees the past as contingent, developing out of earlier historical moments in a particular cultural sequence. It is not, in their view, subsumable to larger processes. Given this assumption, historicists seek to explain particular historical phenomena through a rigid methodology of empirical testing and verification. For instance, the discovery in 1974 of the tomb of the Chinese Emperor Qin Shihuangdi represents a classic instance of explanation in this tradition. The tomb had been described in texts, the dates were known to the precise year, and the archaeological data confirmed and expanded the empirical knowledge of this important culture. Prior to archaeological research, the tomb was not explained but was merely part of a large mound that was assumed to be archaeological. After the discovery of terra cotta figures and after problem-oriented research was conducted at the site, the archaeologists were able to define who built the tomb, when it was built, when it was abandoned, and even in some cases which individuals were represented by the terra cotta figures. From an historicist perspective, explanation was very successful because the tomb, the buildings, and the associated objects were precisely located in space and time; empirical knowledge was increased, the canon of historical knowledge about this dynasty was expanded, and a richer history was created. Explanation in this tradition only begins at this level; eventually more data (either empirical data derived from additional field work or data derived from new analysis of existing data sets) should ideally provide the archaeologist with a richer understanding of the history of the object or social phenomena.

Historicist archaeology deals with questions such as: why did Cahokia collapse, what was the origin of divine kingship among the Maya, what motivated Akkadian expansion, did humans or climate kill off the late Pleistocene megafauna in the Americas, who was buried in this tomb, and so on? In this sense, the historical tradition again breaks with critical and hermeneutic approaches in seeing knowledge as cumulative. While interpretations may be refined, revised, and/or discarded, the collection of new empirical knowledge adds to the ever-increasing canon of historical data in any particular cultural area. It is in this fundamentally empiricist activity that explanation is located in historicist archaeology. To continue with our example, an archaeologist working in the historicist tradition who discovers an early Greek theater, a kiva, or Peruvian sunken court would seek to assess the time and culture within which that architecture was constructed. The degree to which these objects can be associated with known historical events and even individuals, as with the Qin Shihuangdi tomb, is the major criterion of explanatory success. The same applies to any and all sorts of objects and the contexts within which those objects are found. As empirical knowledge accumulates, an increasingly richer historical narrative of past societies can be constructed. Explanation is not precisely linear, since new data will alter interpretations. However, there is general sense borrowed from ‘soft’ neopositivist assumptions that the addition of new data from any particular area will enhance the ability of the archaeologist to explain the cultural historical record in any particular place and time. Scientific archaeology Scientific archaeology accepts many of the principles of historicist archaeology but goes further in that the primary goal is to subsume the archaeological record into broader patterns of human behavior in space and time. Scientific archaeology is viewed by its practitioners as a branch of comparative behavioral and social science. As such, it is most closely associated with ‘explanation’ and ‘causality’, as generally understood in the philosophy of science. Contemporary scientific archaeology is an outgrowth of the New Archaeology popular in the 1960s and 1970s. The philosophical standards of this perspective can be found in the book Explanation in Archaeology by P. Watson, S. Le Blanc, and C. Redman (1971). The New Archaeology explicitly borrowed from the logical positivism and extreme empiricism of the Vienna School and its later practitioners. When the critique of logical positivism among philosophers of science in the 1950s and 1960s gained ground later in archaeology, the New

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Archaeology modified its epistemological underpinnings. In particular, modifications by the work of the philosopher Hempel (in particular, the recognition of ‘statistical’ laws) and, to a lesser extent, the influence of Popper, contributed to a reformulation that served as the philosophical basis of the next generation of scientific archaeology that developed out of the New Archaeology. Eliminating some of the excesses of the extreme empiricism of logical positivism and adopting more ‘elastic’ criteria of verification, scientific archaeology has shifted its focus since the 1980s. It is a safe generalization to say that the New Archaeology was largely associated with Hempelian deductive-nomological explanation, while contemporary scientific archaeology is more associated with Popperian falsification epistemologies and instrumentalist philosophies of science. Instrumentalist assumptions reject the notion that absolute truth can be known and instead rely on ‘best fit’ models, as described below. Likewise, unlike much of the New Archaeology, contemporary scientific archaeology assumes that there is usually no direct relationship between material culture and behavior; both natural and cultural processes work to alter the archaeological record in space and time. Most contemporary scientific archaeologists also accept the fact that cultural biases affect both the interpretation and the analytical categories used to study the archaeological record. However, since science is viewed as a replicable, rule-bound social activity and not a reflective and subjective activity as in idealist traditions, scientific archaeology assumes that these biases can be made explicit and therefore controlled. Like the New Archaeology, contemporary scientific archaeology relies heavily on empiricist and realist assumptions about the structure of the natural and social world as independent and knowable, while adopting a much stronger reliance on propositions derived from existing theoretical knowledge. Again, the influence of the post-Vienna School empiricists is evident here. Contemporary scientific archaeology also accepts the methodological precept of parsimony, best defined by the OED as ‘‘the logical principle that no more causes or forces should be assumed than are necessary to account for the facts’’. Processual archaeology used to be synonymous with the New Archaeology. Now it is simply another term for scientific archaeology. While this school is not formally named, it is a type of archaeology that encompasses a number of frameworks that evolved from the New Archaeology. The key goal of the discipline today is to understand the general processes or underlying logic of human cultural evolution in

the same way that evolutionary biologists construct generalizing principles to understand the origin and evolution of the world’s plants and animals. Within evolutionary biology, there is a wide range of theoretical approaches. Within contemporary scientific archaeology, there is an equally broad range of approaches. Some approaches privilege economics, some privilege technology, some ideology, ecology, polity, or demography, and most combine these factors into complex, multivariate explanations. All scientific approaches share, by logical necessity, reductionist assumptions and seek empirical confirmation or rejection in one form or another. They are therefore diametrically opposite to hermeneutic and critical archaeologies. Virtually all contemporary scientific neoevolutionary theory rejects the universalizing and totalizing features of early unilineal or, to a lesser extent, multilineal cultural evolutionary theory. Universalizing is understood to mean that a particular theory covers all cultural phenomena in all places and all times. Totalizing refers to the assumptions of nineteenth century evolutionary theory that saw all aspects of cultures as evolving. Instead, contemporary neoevolutionary cultural theory recognizes distinct evolutionary pathways in different environmental and social circumstances, and, except for doctrinaire (and now largely marginal) Darwinian archaeology, it isolates only certain aspects of culture that are subject to selection. In this light, concepts such as typologies, chiefdoms, states, and so forth are not assumed to be inherent stages through which societies must evolve. Such a position, in fact, represents a discredited preDarwinian (read Spencerian or Lamarkian type of philosophical idealism) kind of evolutionary process that has little theoretical or empirical foundation in contemporary scientific archaeology. Rather, neoevolutionary theory in contemporary scientific archaeology is more faithful to Darwinian evolutionary principles of descent with modification with some kind of selective mechanism providing the means by which societies develop. Terms such as ‘chiefdom’ and ‘state’, as Flannery has consistently pointed out for two decades, are merely heuristic categories that help sort out a very complex empirical reality. A chiefdom has an ontological status similar to the category of ‘reptile’ or ‘mammal’ in evolutionary biology. In the same way that there is no inherent process by which a reptile must evolve into a mammal, there is no inherent process by which a chiefdom must necessarily evolve into a state. However, being able to distinguish mammals from reptiles allows palaeontologists to reconstruct evolutionary sequences and develop general principles of evolution better than if no

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such categories existed; the analogy holds for scientific archaeology as well. In this sense, explanation in contemporary scientific archaeology differs from the New Archaeology in several critical ways. At the epistemological level, the most important is the recognition that social scientific ‘laws’ do not exist as immutable phenomena, even if a real world exists apart from our observations of it – this is a clear effect of the influence of Popperian philosophies of science in the discipline. The limitations of our sensory capacities necessarily (in a logical sense) make it impossible to discover immutable laws. Rather, scientific theories are the best descriptions of the observed archaeological record, as deduced by patterns of behavior seen in ethnographic or historical peoples. Likewise, a criterion of utility (or ‘philosophical instrumentalism’ in some discussions) is the basis by which theories are judged; more simply put, whatever theory explains the most phenomena in the most parsimonious way at a particular moment is considered better than other theories. Again, this is a position unequivocally derived from the philosophies of Popper as he modified logical positivism. As mentioned above, the heuristic categories used by processual archaeologists, such as ‘chiefdom’, provide a means of comparing societies across space and time. This analytical technique is the cornerstone of scientific archaeology. Put another way, comparative analysis is the fundamental logic by which general principles can be derived from the archaeological record. In a number of cases around the world, chiefdoms indeed evolved into states. But the reality is that the vast majority of chiefdoms did not evolve into states, and in some cases of secondary state formation, states developed out of socio-political organizations that were not chiefdoms at all. The same can be said for virtually any analytical category utilized by scientific archaeologists. However, in those rare instances where a clear pattern emerges where structurally similar societies in independent geographical areas followed similar patterns of development, explanation in a classic scientific sense is demanded. In fact, the cornerstone of contemporary scientific archaeology rests on the numerous observations that patterns in the historical and archaeological record occur across space and time. Given this empirical reality, some kind of reductionism is logically inescapable and necessary for scientific archaeology.

Explaining the Past In light of the above discussion, it is clear that only scientific and historicist archaeology ‘explain’ past human behavior as traditionally understood in the

philosophy of social science. Historicist archaeology explains the empirical record by placing objects, monuments, and texts in their historical context. Scientific archaeology views explanation as a logical reductive process. Historicist archaeology, in turn, focuses on what was once known as space–time systematics; this is the locating and explanation of objects in an ordered sequence around the world in different places and times. There are a number of logical means by which archaeologists seek to explain the past. Perhaps the most common is the ethnographic analogy. Ethnographic analogy is based upon the principle that people in similar cultural and environmental circumstances faced with similar goals, resources, and constraints will behave in similar ways. Ethnographic analogy works best where the consequences of failure to obtain the desired goals can result in death or extinction of the individual or group. In these instances, it is assumed that optimal solutions will independently develop among peoples in space and time, irrespective of any kind of cultural meaning associated with those solutions. Suboptimal choices will be selected out in any competitive environment. Examples here include defensive constructions, irrigation agriculture, hunting techniques, and the like. While there are many ways to protect a group of people against another group in a premodern context, there is a very limited set of optimal choices given the iron logic of war and extreme consequences of failure (see Arkush and Stanish (2005) for examples of this logic with premodern military architecture). Therefore, around the world in space and time and effectively independent of cultural factors, premodern fortresses are strikingly similar in architectural style and function. Likewise, given the invariant laws of the physics of water movement, there are very few successful ways to construct irrigation systems. As with defensive architecture, irrigation works around the world in similar environments tend to be very similar in design and use. Given this, and given the precept of parsimony, archaeologists can make high-probability interpretations of the function and use of irrigation systems, defensive architecture, and other such features in the archaeological record, even without any textual information. Ethnographic analogy works with other kinds of human behavior to varying degrees. It is successful to the degree that selective pressures operate on the choices made by people. Where cultural choices, such as language syntax or dress styles, do not alter the fitness of individuals or groups in a selective environment (both social and ecological), then ethnographic analogy is of little or no use.

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Ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology are logically similar to ethnographic analogy (see Ethnoarchaeology; Experimental Archaeology). Ethnoarchaeology studies modern peoples to provide more precise ethnographic analogs to aid in the explanation of past behaviors. Experimental archaeology seeks to replicate the behaviors by which archaeological data are created. Both rely on empiricist epistemological assumptions and the precept of parsimony. These two fields are simply formal procedures of ethnographic analogy used to derive analogs from the known record of human behavior. The direct historical approach can be used with great success in a number of archaeological contexts around the world. The basis of the direct historical approach is that objects used by ethnographically documented peoples that are similar in key ways to objects found in archaeological contexts of those same peoples’ ancestors, carry a high probability of having the same function. Likewise, the adoption of the principle of parsimony is necessary. For this approach to work, there must also be a direct cultural relationship between an archaeological data set and a living group of people. Therefore, if one excavates a round structure with similar features to a historic hogan in Arizona, and if there is no evidence of cultural disruption, then one can make a high-probability statement that the excavated structure functioned in the same way as the historic hogan. The utility of the direct historical approach is proportional to the closeness in age and space of the archaeological and ethnographically known analog. The comparative approach is often confused with ethnographic analogy and the direct historical approach. The comparative approach is epistemologically different, though it is often used in conjunction with ethnographic analogy by scientific archaeologists. What distinguishes it logically from ethnographic analogy is that the comparative approach is feasible only if one adopts some kind of broadly processual and evolutionary theory. A theory is only evolutionary in the modern sense of the term if it contains some kind of selective mechanism. Given this assumption, plus the assumption of parsimony, organizationally similar societies in similar environmental circumstances can be used as analogs to archaeological complexes.

Conclusion Archaeology is a rich and diverse discipline with theoretical approaches that range from the most humanistic to the most scientific. Archaeology can be practiced as an interpretative narrative, as a historical discipline, or as a comparative social or behavioral science. All forms of archaeological practice that are executed well can enrich our understanding of the past. Explanation in archaeology takes many forms and depends upon the kind of archaeology that is practiced. The most explicit use of explanation in archaeology is found in the historicist and scientific traditions. As such, contemporary archaeology has moved well beyond a focus on the object to permit us to define meaning and explain past behaviors around the world in space and time. See also: Ethnoarchaeology; Experimental Archaeology; Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline; Methods; Interpretive Models, Development of; Marxist Archaeology; Philosophy of Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Social Theory.

Further Reading Arkush E and Stanish C (2005) Interpreting conflict in the ancient Andes: Implications for the archaeology of warfare. Current Anthropology 46(1): 3–28. Flannery K (1995) Prehistoric Social Evolution. In: Ember C and Ember M (eds.) Research Frontiers in Anthropology, pp. 1–26. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Flannery K (1999) Process and agency in early state formation. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9(1): 3–21. Gibbon G (1989) Explanation in Archaeology. London: Basil Blackwood. Hodder I and Hutson S (2003) Reading the Past. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Salmon M (1982) Philosophy and Archaeology. New York: Academic Press. Scheper-Hughes N (1995) The primacy of the ethical. Propositions for a militant anthropology. Current Anthropology 36(3): 409–440. Shanks M and Tilley C (1987) Social Theory and Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spencer CS (1997) Evolutionary approaches in archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Research 5(3): 209–264. Watson PJ, LeBlanc S, and Redman C (1971) Explanation in Archaeology, An Explicitly Scientific Approach. New York: Columbia University Press. Wylie A (2003) Thinking from Things: Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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EXTINCTIONS OF BIG GAME Todd A Surovell, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Blitzkrieg A specific form of the overkill hypothesis formulated by Paul Martin with respect to Pleistocene extinctions in the Americas. In blitzkrieg overkill, humans encounter faunas naı¨ve to human predation making them extremely susceptible to extinction by hunting. Rapid human population growth and geographic spread are fueled primarily by hunting of large game, and human colonization and faunal extinctions are complete within a millennium. Hyperdisease A hypothesis developed by Ross MacPhee and Preston Marx to explain the extinction of Quaternary faunas. The hyperdisease hypothesis argues that many prehistoric ‘‘first-contact’’ animal extinctions are explained by the introduction of hyper-virulent and hyper-lethal diseases first introduced to animal populations by colonizing humans and/or their domesticates (e.g., domestic dogs). Megafauna A term generally used to refer to the largest animals present within an ecosystem, most often used with respect to the array of large-bodied species which suffered extinction during the Quaternary. A strict definition refers to animal species weighing more than 44 kg (approx. 100 lbs). Overkill hypothesis The hypothesis that most animal extinctions of the Quaternary can be directly or indirectly attributed to predation by humans. Sitzkrieg A hypothesis developed by Jared Diamond to explain the extinction of Quaternary faunas. The sitzkrieg hypothesis refers to slow, drawn-out extinction events caused by secondary human effects, such as deforestation, anthropogenic burning, and general habitat modification.

humans and hominids lived side by side with the woolly mammoth, rhinoceros, cave bear, giant deer, and straight-tusked elephant for thousands of years. They even left painted depictions of some of these animals on cave walls (Figure 1). When humans first arrived in Australia some 50 000 years ago, the island continent was inhabited by a menagerie of marsupial mammalian, avian, and reptilian megafauna. Yet by comparison, the world’s large fauna of the modern era are much reduced in diversity and geographic extent. Surprisingly, though the extinctions of the Quaternary are the most recent ‘mass extinction’ of the fossil record, the issue of cause remains largely unresolved. The idea that humans caused Late Pleistocene extinctions through over-hunting is known as the ‘overkill hypothesis’, but other explanations have been proposed. For example, some argue that Quaternary extinctions may have been caused by climate and ecological changes that have occurred during the last two million years. Others suggest that extinctions may have resulted from the introduction of novel and highly lethal pathogens by humans to populations of animals. Still other researchers have proposed multi-causal explanations that point to both human and natural causes. Of course, extinctions of all taxa in all places and times in the Quaternary need not have the same cause. Different factors may account for animal extinctions over time and space, and dauntingly any or all of these explanations could be correct when viewed at a global scale.

Introduction Over the last two million years, humans and our hominid relatives have witnessed a broad wave of animal extinctions deemed by some as the sixth mass extinction to have affected the biological communities of the Earth. Mass extinctions are characterized by dramatic increases in extinction rates in fossil assemblages – large numbers of species disappear from the fossil record over brief windows of geologic time. Although the causes of recent extinctions remain unresolved, some researchers argue that humans were not mere witnesses to but were instead directly responsible for the extinction of most taxa that disappeared from the fossil record within the last two million years. There is little question that prehistoric peoples of the New World coexisted with mammoths, mastodons, camels, horses, and a myriad of other nowextinct animals. In Europe and Asia, Palaeolithic

What Happened to the Megafauna? The Overkill Hypothesis

The overkill hypothesis states: ‘‘the majority of animal extinctions that have taken place over the Quaternary have resulted directly or indirectly from human hunting.’’ Proponents of overkill do not claim that humans caused all animal extinctions of the Quaternary; nor do they claim that all humancaused extinctions resulted from over-hunting of extinct prey. For example, extinctions of large carnivores might have resulted from competition with humans rather than direct human predation of carnivores. The argument is simply that prehistoric human hunting dramatically modified animal communities, and had humans not colonized the planet, most of the species that suffered extinction during the Pleistocene and Holocene would still exist today. Although

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the origins of overkill can be traced to the nineteenth century, overkill was championed in the latter half of the twentieth century by Paul Martin, a palaeoecologist at the University of Arizona.

Figure 1 Line drawing reproductions of Upper Palaeolithic cave paintings of extinct Pleistocene fauna. Irish elk, Lascaux cave a, woolly mammoth, Rouffignac cave b, cave bear c, and two-horned rhinoceros d, Chauvet cave.

The keystone to Martin’s argument was the apparent widespread occurrence of ‘first contact’ extinctions across the globe. With the important exceptions of the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia, waves of animal extinctions immediately followed initial human colonization of many regions of the world (Figure 2). In the 1970s, when considering extinctions in the Americas, Martin developed his most explicit formulation of the overkill hypothesis, a model he called ‘blitzkrieg’. With mathematician James Mosimann, Martin constructed a computer simulation which showed how humans could have colonized the entirety of the unglaciated New World from southern Canada to Patagonia within 1000 years (Figure 3). Rapid population growth and migration would have been fueled by hunting of nowextinct Pleistocene mammals. These animals which had never experienced human hunters would have been naı¨ve and easily killed. Although the overkill hypothesis (or variations thereof) applied to oceanic islands extinctions is generally accepted today, whether overkill explains extinctions on continents remains highly controversial. The most serious obstacle to overkill is that in most regions archaeological evidence for human exploitation of extinct taxa is scarce. In North America, for

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example, although 33 genera of large-bodied mammals suffered extinction during the Late Pleistocene, fewer than five can be shown to have been utilized by humans. If humans caused the extinction of North American species by over-hunting, then they must have killed thousands if not millions of animals, which begs the question, ‘Where is the archaeological evidence?’ Martin has argued that if blitzkrieg-type overkill happened very quickly, little archaeological evidence would be expected. For others, however, this lack of direct evidence has meant that perhaps we should be seeking explanations for extinctions elsewhere, such as in the dramatic swings in global climate that have occurred during the Quaternary.

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Figure 3 The Martin/Mosimann ‘blitzkrieg’ model of Pleistocene extinctions. Humans enter North America via the ‘Ice-free corridor’ at approximately 13 400 BP, and rapidly colonize the New World within 1000 years. Human range expansion takes the form of a traveling wave. Along the wave front, naı¨ve Pleistocene fauna are hunted to extinction. Redrafted from Figure 2 from Martin PS (1973) The discovery of America. Science 179, 969–974.

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Variations in the Earth’s orbit over the last two million years have caused climate to oscillate between glacial and interglacial conditions. There were more than 20 instances when continental glaciers expanded and contracted over the Northern Hemisphere (Figure 4). As continental glaciers waxed and waned, oceanic and atmospheric temperatures cooled and warmed, sea levels fell and rose, precipitation regimes were greatly modified, and plant and animal species migrated and reorganized ecological communities. Because swings in climate had major impacts on biological organisms, there is no doubt that animal extinctions could have resulted, but there is considerable argument about how climate change might cause mass extinctions, and whether climate change explains the observed extinctions of the Quaternary. Interglacial

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A handful of models have been proposed which attempt to link Quaternary climate change to extinctions. Unlike overkill models, climate change hypotheses are typically constructed with reference to specific geographic regions because extinctions occurred at different times in different parts of the world. The most explicit climatic/ecological extinction models have considered North America. For example, Dale Guthrie, a vertebrate palaeontologist at the University of Alaska, has argued that the transition from glacial to interglacial climate in North America (20 000– 10 000 years ago), resulted in vegetational communities that would have been detrimental to many species of Pleistocene megafauna. Lower levels of seasonality and longer growing seasons in Pleistocene ecosystems produced high-diversity mosaics of vegetation that would have permitted large herbivores to easily meet their nutritional requirements. With the transition to the Holocene, North American biomes were transformed into large-scale low-diversity patches wherein generalist feeders with simple digestive tracts, such as mammoths, mastodons, sloths, and horses would essentially starve, or due to anti-herbivory toxins, be poisoned to death by being forced to eat large quantities of toxic foods, to which these animals had little physiological resistance. According to Guthrie, only large mammals with specialized diets or physiologies, such as bison, pronghorn, and moose, thrived in Holocene ecosystems. Climate-based hypotheses, like overkill, suffer from many problems. Most commonly, it is questioned why it was a particular climate change that caused the extinctions. For example, in the Americas, extinction correlates with the most recent transition from glacial to interglacial climate, but this was just one of many such transitions that occurred during the Pleistocene. Proponents of overkill would argue that this episode of climate change just happens to correlate with the first arrival of human migrants; proponents of climate hypotheses would argue that this period of climate change was uniquely severe. Also, proponents of climate hypotheses must explain why extinctions seemingly always correlate with human colonization. If humans had no causal role in Pleistocene extinctions whatsoever, then the timing of extinction should be independent of human global colonization, and yet human migration and animal extinction seem to be highly correlated (Figure 2). Hyperdisease

Due in part to problems with overkill and ecologicalclimatic hypotheses, a third major contending explanation for Pleistocene extinctions has come to the

fore – hyperdisease. This idea, proposed by palaeontologist Ross MacPhee and virologist Preston Marx, can explain two aspects of Quaternary extinctions with which overkill and climate change struggle. Climatic models fail to explain the global pattern of ‘first contact’ extinctions, and overkill struggles to explain the paucity of archaeological evidence demonstrating human hunting of extinct fauna. MacPhee and Marx propose that extinctions were caused by the introduction of ‘hypervirulent, hyperlethal diseases’, which they call ‘hyperdiseases’, by humans or domestic dogs to naı¨ve populations of animals, naı¨ve in the sense of having no immunity to such pathogens because they had no prior experience with them. The hyperdisease hypothesis predicts that extinction should follow a first contact pattern and should produce little archaeological evidence of human exploitation of extinct animals. However, the disease model has yet to successfully overcome a range of potential theoretical setbacks: (1) Foremost, it is unclear whether a disease is capable of driving any species to extinction under natural conditions. (2) It is also unknown if a single disease could infect such a broad range of species as those lost during the Quaternary. (3) Finally, this hypothesis is very difficult to test. Efforts are in progress to attempt to recover pathogens directly from remains of extinct animals or from their fecal matter, but even if pathogens are discovered, it will be difficult to determine if in fact the identified pathogen is the sought-after hyperdisease. The Keystone Herbivore Hypothesis

South African ecologist Norman Owen-Smith, an expert in ‘mega-herbivores’ (>1000 kg), recognized that the extinction of the largest of the Pleistocene fauna must have had dramatic effects on past vegetation. Extant terrestrial mega-herbivores, the African and Asian elephants and rhinoceroses, through foraging and trampling can dramatically impact ecosystems, turning forests and woodlands into scrubland, savannah, or grassland. The removal of mega-herbivores by hunting or climate change, therefore, could have dramatic effects on the structure of vegetational communities. If mega-herbivores served as keystone species in Pleistocene environments, their removal could have cascading effects causing the extinction of numerous other animal taxa. Owen-Smith calls this idea the ‘keystone herbivore hypothesis’. The Achilles’ heel of the keystone herbivore hypothesis is the prediction that mega-herbivore extinction should have preceded the extinction of other taxa, and to date there is very little evidence to indicate that this actually happened.

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fauna? When viewed from a global perspective, Quaternary extinctions show a number of patterns that provide clues to cause(s): (1) Extinctions were asynchronous across the globe, but globally appear to correlate to some degree with first human arrival to regions (Figure 2). (2) Quaternary extinctions on continents and large islands disproportionately and severely impacted large-bodied taxa. (Figure 5). (3) Fauna in some regions were more severely impacted than others (Figures 5 and 6). (4) In most regions, archaeological evidence for the interaction of humans and extinct animals is limited. The extinction records in various regions of the world are discussed in the following sections.

Sitzkrieg

Jared Diamond argues that most Pleistocene extinctions can be attributed to humans, but diverges from traditional overkill models with respect to cause. Using observations of historically recorded extinctions, Diamond notes that many human-induced animal extinctions are not caused by hunting, but have instead resulted from secondary effects. Diamond contrasts the traditional ‘blitzkrieg’ model to what he calls ‘sitzkrieg’. Diamond suggests that extinctions may not have been a lightning-quick predatory assault on Pleistocene fauna by humans, but instead a slow ‘war of attrition’ where extinctions were by-products of secondary impacts, such as felling of forests, anthropogenic burning, and the introduction of non-native competitors. Like the disease model, the ‘sitzkrieg’ model predicts that extinctions should correlate with or postdate human colonization, and that there should be relatively little archaeological evidence for human hunting of extinct fauna. As such, it remains a very difficult model to distinguish from hyperdisease, but some researchers find this idea very compelling for explaining extinctions on oceanic islands.

Africa

Africa holds a unique position in the Quaternary extinctions because it is the homeland of hominid and modern human evolution (see Modern Humans, Emergence of). In addition, a greater proportion of large-bodied mammalian taxa survived here than in any other region of the world (Figure 6). Proponents of overkill do not see these two facts as independent. Large mammal survival in Africa, they would argue results from the co-evolution of African large mammals with bipedal hominids whose hunting prowess gradually increased over time. Although many genera of large-bodied mammals did suffer extinction in Africa, extinctions do not show clear clustering in time, and many extinct genera were replaced by similar taxa, indicating that many African extinctions likely were caused by interspecific competition rather than anthropogenic factors. The first members of the genus Homo evolved in Africa roughly 2.5 million years ago. However, it

The Global Record of Quaternary Extinctions Attempts to test extinction hypotheses typically focus on a handful of key variables. Which species suffered extinction, which survived, and was there a detectable and dramatic increase in extinction rate in the Quaternary? What is the relative timing of initial human colonization, climatic/ecological change, and the major wave of extinctions? Also, what is the archaeological evidence for hunting of extinct

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log body mass (g) Figure 5 Body size distributions for extinct and extant Quaternary species in North America, South America, Australia, and Africa. In all regions, extinctions were highly selective, disproportionately affecting large-bodied animals. Redrafted from Figure 1 of Lyons SK, Smith FA, and Brown JH (2004) Of mice, mastodons and men: Human mediated extinctions on four continents. Evolutionary Ecology Research 6: 339–358.

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Continent Figure 6 The percentage of extinct and extant megafaunal (>44 kg) mammalian genera by continent. Data from Barnosky AD, Koch PL, Feranec RS, Wing SL, and Shabel AB (2004) Assessing the causes of Late Pleistocene extinctions on continents. Science 306: 70–75.

is not until the evolution of Homo erectus roughly 1.8 million years ago or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of years later that hominids had likely developed the ability to effectively hunt large animals. Over this period, there is an absence of clear temporal clustering in animal extinction in Africa, although there are many cases of likely climactically driven local extinctions (species survived in other parts of the continent). The inability to detect waves of extinction in Africa may be attributed either to a true lack of clustering of extinctions in time, or to poor chronological control on extinction events. Among the extinct Quaternary fauna of the African continent are many species of hominids including the entire genus Australopithecus, three genera of proboscideans, and more than 24 genera of ungulates and carnivores. Notably, many extinct genera have been recovered from archaeological contexts, particularly in Early and Middle Pleistocene contexts, but establishing predation of extinction species by pre-modern hominids has proved to be exceptionally difficult. Eurasia

Like Africa, Eurasia suffered relatively few losses of large mammals, and hominids and extinct fauna coexisted for an extended period of time. The Eurasian landmass lost two genera of proboscideans including mammoths, at least three species of rhinoceros, hyenas, cave bears, hippopotamus, giant deer, and others. Europe lost proportionately more large mammals than Asia where mega-herbivores, like Asian elephants and rhinoceroses, survived to the present in tropical Southeast Asia. Unlike Africa,

which sustained a hominid presence across most of the continent throughout the Pleistocene, large portions of high-latitude Eurasia remained uncolonized by Homo until the Late Pleistocene, providing refuge for many now-extinct taxa until the end of the last Ice Age. During the Pleistocene, continental glaciers expanded and contracted over most of northern Europe many times causing dramatic ecological shifts (see Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Methods). Hominids and animals underwent repeated range shifts in response to glacial oscillations. The genus Homo first migrated out of Africa and into the southerly latitudes of Eurasia approximately 1.8 million years ago, or slightly earlier. It is unclear whether hominids maintained a consistent presence in Eurasia during the Early Pleistocene (1.8–0.78 million years ago), but by the start of the Middle Pleistocene c. 0.78 million years ago, Homo was likely to stay in Eurasia. By 50 000–45 000 years ago, modern Homo sapiens had spread through most of Eurasia. Precise extinction dates for many Eurasian species are poorly known, especially for Asian species and those species which suffered extinction prior to 50 000 years ago, but numerous now-extinct animals coexisted with hominids for hundreds of thousands of years before suffering extinction. Although numerous mammalian extinctions occurred throughout the Quaternary in Europe, extinction rates among large mammals increased substantially in the Late Pleistocene between c. 50 000 and 10 000 years ago with extinctions possibly occurring in two pulses. Straight-tusked elephant and hippopotamus, species common in temperate fossil assemblages, were the first to suffer extinction, around 50 000–40 000 years ago. At this time, not only were continental glaciers

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expanding pushing these species southward, but modern humans made their first incursions into Europe. Arctic species like woolly rhinoceros and mammoth, well adapted to cold glacial conditions survived through the Last Glacial Maximum (c. 20 000 years ago) only to suffer extinction as the climate warmed c. 10 000 years ago. It is also after the Last Glacial Maximum that major human influxes into arctic regions occurred. A case can be made of overkill and/or climate change as the extinction causes for Europe since extinctions seem to occur at times when both humans and climate are on the move. Nowextinct mammal species did survive into the Holocene in isolated geographic pockets. For example, dwarfed mammoths survived until 4000 years ago on Wrangell Island in high arctic northeast Asia, and the giant deer, Megaloceros survived into the Early Holocene in western Siberia and the Ural mountains. Although human associations with extinct fauna, like rhinoceros, elephant, and mammoth, are fairly common in Lower and Middle Palaeolithic assemblages, direct associations are considerably less common in the Upper Palaeolithic when the majority of extinctions occurred. There are more than a dozen archaeological sites showing subsistence use of proboscideans (Elephas and Mammuthus) throughout Eurasia spanning more than 600 000 years of prehistory. These sites gradually increase in latitude with age, possibly reflecting slow human northward range expansion with concomitant proboscidean range contraction. Nonetheless, the causes of Eurasian mammalian extinctions remain as unresolved as on any continent. Australia

During glacial phases of climate, sea levels dropped, and the map of Australia was dramatically altered because the island continent became connected to the adjacent islands of Papua New Guinea and Tasmania, forming the Ice Age continent of Sahul (see Oceania: Australia). Prior to human colonization, Australia was home to 28 genera and 55 species of vertebrate fauna that are now extinct (Figure 7). Australian extinctions were among the most severe of any continent, having lost 88% of its megafaunal mammalian genera (Figure 6). The largest known marsupials, the diprotodonts, large browers weighing perhaps up to 2000 kg, suffered extinction during the Late Pleistocene, as did 24 species of macropods (a family of marsupials which includes the kangaroos, tree kangaroos, wallabies, and padmelons). Also lost were a handful of carnivores including Megalania prisca, a huge meat-eating lizard. The flightless Genyornis newtoni was the largest of the five or six birds to have suffered extinction. Genyornis left

Figure 7 Silhouettes of the extinct Pleistocene fauna of Australia drawn to scale. Reproduced from Murray in P. Martin and R. G. Klein (1984) (eds.) Quaternary Extinction: A Prehistoric Revolution Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

abundant eggshells in Australia’s fossil record that can be readily dated and analyzed to determine the animal’s diet. Studies of Genyornis eggshells have produced critical data about timing of extinction and ecological change in Australia. Gifford Miller and colleagues dated more than 700 Genyornis eggshell fragments by the radiocarbon and amino acid racemization methods and found that the giant flightless bird went extinct between 55 000 and 45 000 years ago. The extinction date for Genyornis is unique because it is one of only very few extinct taxa whose extinction date is well established. Determining the precise timing of Australian extinctions has proved problematic. In some critical localities, it appears that extinct fauna were geologically redeposited into younger contexts creating the appearance of survival into time periods long after which the animals suffered extinction. Also, it is increasingly apparent that most Australian extinctions occurred near the temporal limit of radiocarbon dating (c. 50 000 years ago). One rigorous study of extinction dates in Australia by Richard Roberts and colleagues found that at least six genera of megafauna, in addition to Genyornis, suffered extinction at approximately 46 000 years ago. Therefore, the time period between 55 000 and 45 000 years ago appears to be the key to solving the riddle of Australian extinctions. Although the precise date of human colonization of Australia remains controversial, well-dated contexts at Lake Mungo and Devil’s Lair both suggest a colonization date between 50 000 and 45 000 years ago. At other more controversial sites, colonization

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dates have been proposed in excess of 60 000 and even 100 000 years ago. Bearing in mind the possibility for older sites, as Australian researchers have done more work and improved dating of critical localities, dates for extinctions and human arrival seem to be converging at a 10 000 year period between 55 000 and 45 000 years ago. To many researchers, this is strong albeit circumstantial evidence for human involvement in animal extinctions. Of course, temporal correlation is not necessarily causation, and it remains possible that climate change could have played a major or minor role in Australian extinctions. However, the climate change argument does not fare well in Australia because this critical time period, 55 000 to 45 000 years ago, was not a period of dramatic climatic shift in Australia. However, a recent study of the prehistoric diets of Genyornis, emus, and wombats found that when Genyornis went extinct, the diets of surviving emus and wombats shifted suddenly and permanently in multiple regions of Australia. To Gifford Miller and colleagues, this dietary shift indicates a major reorganization of Australian ecosystems right at the time of extinction, and they argue that this ecological change cannot be explained by climatic forcing. Instead, they hypothesize that burning of Australian environments by humans caused this environmental change, thus driving Genyornis and other species to extinction. Others have suggested that maybe it was not the ecological change that caused the extinction, but it was the extinction that caused the ecological change. Australia lost many species of large browsing marsupials, and their removal could have had dramatic ecological consequences as Owen-Smith has proposed for the keystone herbivore hypothesis. Though the precise cause remains unclear, many researchers are convinced of a human involvement in Australian Pleistocene extinctions. Not helping the overkill case in Australia, there are no kill sites of extinct Pleistocene fauna, and direct evidence of human use of megafauna is extremely rare. The Americas

Extinctions in North and South America were similar to those in Australia, except they occurred 30 000 years later. In North America, 33 genera of megafauna were lost including, mammoths, mastodons, horses, camels, ground sloths, lions, cheetahs, dire wolves, giant shortfaced bears, and others. In South America, extinctions were more severe, where 50 genera of large mammals disappeared in the Late Pleistocene. These include four genera of proboscideans, three genera of horses, the great majority of large ungulates, and many genera of ground sloths and giant armadillos. Extinctions

in North and South America disproportionately impacted the largest mammals, and a clear spike in extinction rates occurred in the latest Pleistocene. Though New World Pleistocene extinctions are better dated than those in Australia, the precise timing of extinctions continues to be a matter of contention. Chronological control on North American extinctions is better than that for South America, but extinctions on both continents appear to have been more or less simultaneous occurring in a narrow time interval between c. 13 300 and 12 500 years ago. Extinctions in North and South America correlate in time with both initial human colonization and a period of dramatic climate change, the most recent transition from glacial to interglacial climate. The best-dated New World extinctions correlate well with the start of Younger Dryas stadial (c. 12 900–11 500 years ago), a 1300–1400 year long abrupt reversal to glacial conditions where global temperatures cooled and glaciers readvanced (Figure 8). Humans entered the New World from northeast Asia across the Bering land bridge in the millennia preceding the Younger Dryas. For more than six decades, it was believed that the initial colonization of the New World was represented by the Clovis complex characterized by the production of lanceolate basally intended, fluted projectile points. Correlating very well New World extinctions, the Clovis complex dates to a very narrow time interval from c. 13 400 to 12 800 years ago. Recently, however, a handful of sites that appear to predate Clovis have been excavated, most notably Monte Verde, Childe, dating to 14 800 years ago, more than 1000 years before Clovis. The significance of pre-Clovis sites for the extinctions debate is twofold. First, if these sites truly predate Clovis, Martin’s blitzkrieg simulation, which assumes colonization by Clovis, cannot be correct. Second, humans and Pleistocene fauna coexisted in the New World for a slightly longer period than previously believed. Whether the existence of preClovis sites is problematic or beneficial to the general overkill hypothesis, however, is not clear because it has important implications for the archaeology of overkill. The thorn in the side of the New World overkill hypothesis has been the paucity of archaeological evidence demonstrating the exploitation of extinct fauna. In North America, there is relatively abundant evidence for hunting of mammoth during Clovis times, and there is minimal evidence for hunting of mastodon, horse, and camel. But considering that 33 genera of large mammals suffered extinction in the Late Pleistocene of North America, the overkill hypothesis is weakened by this scarcity of evidence. However, if humans were in the New World 1000–2000 years prior to Clovis and hunted Pleistocene fauna to extinction, the Clovis period

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Years before present Figure 8 The Younger Dryas stadial (highlighted in blue) recorded in stable oxygen isotopes of glacial ice in the GISP2 core from Greenland. Oxygen isotopes of glacial ice record the isotopic composition of precipitation which is strongly related to air temperature. High values of d18O indicate warm temperatures. Low values of d18O indicate cold temperatures. The Younger Dryas was a 1400 year reversal to glacial-like conditions that punctuated the warming trend that occurred between 20 000 and 10 000 years ago. New World extinctions appear to correlate with the onset of the Younger Dryas. Data from Grootes PM and Stuiver M (1997) Oxygen 18/16 variability in Greenland snow and ice with 103 and 105 year time resolution. Journal of Geophysical Research 102: 26455–26470.

correlates only with the tail end of the extinction event where many populations of extinct fauna would have been highly depressed, and the majority of hunting of extinct fauna might have occurred prior to Clovis, a portion of the archaeological record of which we have a tiny sample. Therefore, the archaeological evidence for overkill might be in the millennium just prior to Clovis, a portion of the record which has remained virtually invisible. Despite claims that the overkill hypothesis for North America has itself perished, it lives on because it remains as likely an explanation for Quaternary extinctions as any other model. Island Extinctions

Vertebrate extinctions on oceanic islands have figured prominently in discussions of Quaternary extinctions, and unlike continental extinctions virtually all researchers agree that human impacts were responsible for the great majority of island extinctions, although precise mechanisms remain unresolved. Blitzkrieg-type overkill is advocated by some researchers, while others argue island extinctions were likely much more akin to Diamond’s sitzkrieg scenario. For overkill advocates, islands serve as important controls in the extinction debate. Many oceanic islands were not discovered or colonized by humans until well into the Holocene, and they show the survival of many genera after the extinction of their continental counterparts with extinction occurring only after human arrival. For researchers

who advocate climatic/ecological hypotheses, island fauna survived because islands are insolated from climatic change, or island extinctions are irrelevant to continental extinctions because island faunas are much more vulnerable to human effects. Island animals live in small populations, within confined geographic ranges, without access to a pool of conspecifics from which to recruit new individuals. A repeated pattern is seen on oceanic islands; with human colonization, a large range of species suffer extinction (Figure 2). Island regions that have figured prominently in extinction discussions are the West Indies, multiple Pacific archipelagos, the Galapagos, the islands of the Mediterranean, Madagascar, and New Zealand. Unlike continents, island extinctions typically impacted a broad array of vertebrate taxa including small-bodied birds, reptiles, and mammals. Among the first island extinctions were those of the Mediterranean. Early Holocene human colonization resulted in the decimation of the mammalian fauna of Mediterranean islands where only two relict Pleistocene mammalian species remain. Prior to human arrival, Mediterranean islands were home to dwarf varieties of elephants, hippos, and red deer which survived long after their nearby continental relatives; also lost were other species of ungulates, rodents, insectivores, birds, and reptiles. In the Caribbean, ground dwelling sloths, large rodents, and a wide array of small mammals, lizards, and birds suffered extinction with human colonization in the Middle Holocene. Like Mediterranean hippos

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and elephants, Caribbean sloths survived thousands of years after the extinction of large North and South American sloths. The islands of New Zealand and Madagascar also show waves of extinction at the time of human colonization. Beginning around 2000 years ago, Madagascar lost many species including seven genera of giant lemurs, at least six genera of large flightless birds, a pygmy hippo, an aardvark, a large viverrine carnivore, and giant tortoises. Limited but clear archaeological evidence of human butchery of extinct giant lemurs has been recovered from Madagascar, as have a few specimens of human-modified bones of other extinct fauna, such as a tibiotarsus from the 3 m tall, 500 kg elephant bird. The islands of New Zealand were first colonized by humans only about 900–1000 years ago, but within a matter of centuries, the large flightless moas and other species were decimated. New Zealand is particularly important in the extinctions debate because clear and abundant archaeological evidence for human predation of moa species has been recovered there. More than 100 archaeological sites show evidence of human subsistence use of moas. That humans hunted and caused moa extinction is not disputed, but the relative importance of hunting, anthropogenic burning, and the introduction of non-native rats and domestic dogs in moa extinction is a matter of debate.

Where Are We Now? In recent decades, the amount of information available to researchers studying Pleistocene extinctions has grown substantially. With the exception of the development of a general consensus that human impacts, whether hunting or otherwise, regularly caused island extinctions, this dramatic increase in data has not led to a dramatic increase in conclusions about the cause (s) of Quaternary extinctions. The fundamental problem is that extinction hypotheses are very difficult to test directly, and they tend to be incredibly flexible, capable of accommodating virtually any evidence brought forth. For example, does a scarcity of archaeological evidence support or refute the overkill hypothesis? Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to that question. What has become increasingly clear is that a strong circumstantial case can be made for a significant human role in Quaternary extinctions, not only on islands but also on continents. With the exception of Europe, Asia, and Africa, one could determine the timing of human colonization of virtually the entire world by studying only the palaeontological record. A wave of extinctions occurring

within the last 50 000 years would indicate that humans had arrived. To many researchers, this evidence alone indicates clear human agency in Quaternary extinctions. If, however, islands are eliminated from this scenario, this temporal correlation only occurs on three large landmasses, North America, South America, and Australia, and perhaps it becomes more feasible to argue that these correlations are just coincidence. But extinctions on continents show consistent trends with respect to body size, disproportionately affecting the largest species, the preferred prey of hunter-gatherers. Yet if humans caused the continental extinctions of dozens of genera of Pleistocene fauna, must it have been the perfect crime? To kill these many animals and leave so little evidence, to some researchers seems like an impossible feat. To others, little evidence is expected. Such disagreements highlight why it has been so difficult to determine the causes of big game extinctions in the Quaternary. See also: Archaeozoology; Butchery and Kill Sites;

Migrations: Australia; Pacific; Modern Humans, Emergence of; New World, Peopling of; Oceania: Australia; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Methods; Siberia, Peopling of.

Further Reading Barnosky AD, Koch PL, Feranec RS, Wing SL, and Shabel AB (2004) Assessing the causes of Late Pleistocene extinctions on continents. Science 306: 70–75. Diamond JM (1989) Quaternary megafaunal extinctions: Variations on a theme by Paganini. Journal of Archaeological Science 16: 167–185. Grayson DK (2001) The archaeological record of human impacts on animal populations. Journal of World Prehistory 15: 1–67. MacPhee RDE (1999) Extinctions in Near Time: Causes, Contexts, and Consequences. New York: Kluver /Plenum. MacPhee RDE and Marx PA (1997) The 40 000-year plague: Humans, hyperdisease, and first-contact extinctions. In: Goodman SM and Patterson BD (eds.) Natural Change and Human Impact in Madagascar, pp. 169–216. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Martin PS and Klein RG (eds.) (1984) Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Miller GH, Fogel ML, Magee JW, Gagan MK, Clarke SJ, and Johnson BJ (2005) Ecosystem collapse in Pleistocene Australia and a human role in megafaunal extinction. Science 309: 287–290. Owen-Smith N (1987) Pleistocene extinctions: The pivotal role of megaherbivores. Paleobiology 13: 351–362. Stuart AJ, Kosintsev PA, Higham TFG, and Lister AM (2004) Pleistocene to Holocene extinction dynamics in giant deer and woolly mammoths. Nature 43: 684–689. Surovell TA, Waguespack NM, and Brantingham PJ (2005) Global archaeological evidence for proboscidean overkill. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102: 6231–6236.

F Fakes

See: Pseudoarchaeology and Frauds.

Feasting

See: Food and Feasting, Social and Political Aspects.

FIBER ARTIFACTS James M Adovasio, Mercyhurst College, Erie, PA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary basketry A class of fiber artifact which includes several distinct kinds of items, including rigid and semirigid containers or baskets proper, matting, and bags. Matting is essentially ‘two-dimensional’ or flat, whereas bags are ‘three-dimensional’. coiled basketry A subclass of basket weaves made by sewing stationary horizontal elements (the foundation) with moving vertical elements (stitches). cordage A class of elongate fiber artifacts which are generally subsumed under the English terms string and rope. fiber perishable impressions Traces left by organic fibrous materials (either vegetal or animal in origin) in the decoration of ceramic artifacts or on other potentially preservable media (e.g., clay-lined features such as floors, hearths, pits, etc.). netting An open-work fiber construction in which the fabric is built up by the interworking of symetrically spaced knotted or looped elements. plaited basketry A subclass of basket weaves in which all of the weaving elements pass over and under each other without engagement. relative humidity A term used to describe the quantity of water vapor that exists in a gaseous mixture of air and water. textiles Fiber artifacts which are infinitely flexible cloth fabrics produced with a frame or loom. twined basketry A subclass of basket weaves made by sewing stationary (passive) vertical elements, or warps, with moving (active) horizontal elements called wefts.

Introduction In the present context, the term ‘fiber artifacts’ subsumes several diverse classes of perishable artifacts which are represented in the world archaeological record only under relatively rare conditions of preservation. Specifically included are cordage and cordage by-products such as netting, basketry, textiles, sandals, cradles, and a host of other less-standardized constructions. The principal attribute which all of these products have in common is the fact that they are made from plant-derived (i.e., vegetal) fiber or some other plant-based constituent whole leaves, twigs, stems, roots, etc. Such items are normally recovered in archaeological contexts only when the agents of biodegradation are effectively nullified or at least slowed down appreciably. These situations are relatively rare on the Earth’s surface and include dry caves and rockshelters, permafrozen soils, and, almost paradoxically, waterlogged contexts where specimens are completely immersed for extended periods. Other and far rarer preservation contexts include juxtaposition or exposure to metal or metal salts, envelopment in volcanic ash, or incorporation within coprolites. Fiber artifacts may also be preserved when they are totally carbonized even in open or ‘wet’-site conditions (see Frozen Sites and Bodies). When actual ‘positive’ specimens are not available, detailed data on one or another class of fiber artifacts may be present in the form of negative

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impressions in fired or unfired soils, on ceramics, and occasionally on other media such as wood or bone. In very rare circumstances, a fiber artifact may be encased in a fine-grained sediment-like silt, then totally disintegrate, and ultimately be infilled with another even finer sediment like clay. In such cases, the equivalent of a lost wax casting is formed and the resultant ghost artifact is actually a positive rather than a negative. Despite the relative rarity of fiber artifacts in the archaeological record, at least when compared with far more durable items like lithics or ceramics, vegetal artifacts actually form the vast bulk of the technology of most ethnographic hunting and gathering societies regardless of latitude. Similarly, in archaeological contexts such as dry caves where preservation is excellent, fiber artifacts often outnumber lithic artifacts by more than 20 to 1. In addition to their numerical preponderances in ethnographic assemblages and archaeological contexts where preservation permits truly representative recovery, plant-fiber-based constructions are a peculiarly useful and sensitive artifact class or series of classes on a variety of analytical levels. Indeed, the unique diagnostic attributes of basketry, textiles, cordage, and related materials have been recognized by a relatively large number of specialists for a rather long time. The ability of all types of plant fiber artifacts to elucidate the lives of their makers is based on a fundamental series of attributes common not simply to basketry or textiles but to all items in this broad grouping. First, as noted long ago by Weltfish, basketry and by extension other fiber artifacts can be comparatively studied and accessed from many perspectives because ‘‘. . .the fundamental factors involved in the technical process objectify themselves in the product and are not lost in the process of making’’. A parallel view was echoed by another specialist King who noted that the ‘intimacy’ of the maker’s association with fiber artifacts is far greater than that which obtains with lithics, ceramics, or virtually any other kind of construction in any medium. This ‘intimacy’ is predicated upon and conditioned by the fact that all of the craftsperson’s ‘manufacturing choices’ are ‘physically represented’ in the finished product whether it is a basket, a textile, a sandal, net or cradle. Moreover, as stressed by Baumhoff, the manufacturing choices which are manifested in the finished specimen . . .may be regarded as discrete elements rather than as arbitrary points in a continuum. The basket weaver may twine with a right hand twist or a left hand twist but he cannot be halfway in between. Furthermore, his method of work is perfectly apparent in the finished product so

that the craftsman himself need not be observed at all. Thus, for most situations in basket making there is only a finite number of logical alternatives. . .(Baumhoff, 1957: 2).

Of the greatest importance in the study of any class or type of fiber artifact is the fact that the ‘finite number of logical alternatives’ referred to by Baumhoff is culturally determined to a very high degree. In point of fact, no class of artifacts normally available to the archaeologist for analysis possesses a greater number of ‘culturally bound’ or ‘culturally determined’ yet still visible attributes than do plant fiber constructions. The terms ‘culturally bound’ or ‘culturally determined’ mean simply and explicitly that the range of techno-manipulative alternatives witnessed in the extant attributes of a finished basket, textile, or other fiber artifact is to a very great degree fixed or delimited by the customs or standards of the ‘immediate’ social entity to which the maker belongs or within which the maker functions. While these standards are subject to idiosyncratic modification and even occasional borrowing of designs or construction attributes, their collective existence is eminently verifiable. This is scarcely a novel observation nor is its corollary – that no two individuals, bands, tribes, societies, or other social groups ‘ever’ produced fiber artifacts of any kind in exactly the same fashion. Not only has this fact been demonstrated ethnographically for over a century, but it is also archaeologically valid as well.

Recovery and Conservation Protocols Although plant fiber artifacts often formed a very substantial portion of the total ‘industrial’ output of both ethnographic and prehistoric populations, the archaeological recovery of these items, as noted above, is directly conditioned by circumstances of preservation. Space precludes a detailed discussion of recovery or conservation protocols, but some commentary on these topics is warranted. Dry Sites

In dry caves and rockshelters, fiber artifacts may be notably abundant and their condition is generally excellent. Only minor modifications in the basic excavation and screening procedures are usually necessary to ensure consistent recovery. If employed at all, large, heavy excavating tools (e.g., shovels, pick-mattocks) should be abandoned in zones containing fiber artifacts because they can seriously damage or even destroy specimens. For the same reason, sharp-edged

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trowels should not be employed in sorting screened materials (see Caves and Rockshelters). Specimens encountered during the excavation and screening operations usually require only careful packaging in rigid plastic or fiberboard containers with suitable packing material (e.g., styrofoam, shredded paper, etc.) to ensure their arrival intact in the laboratory. Naturally, detailed provenience data must be recorded for all fiber specimens as well as all associated artifactual and nonartifactual materials. If possible, specimens should be photographed in situ and mapped in plan along with any associated items before removal to ensure that details of construction are preserved if the specimens should be lost or destroyed during excavation or transportation. All fiber specimens, however minute, should be saved for analysis. Even in a more or less dry site, basketry, textiles, cordage, and other perishables may have suffered from periodic exposure to moisture (notably in the deeper levels) or may be badly worn, charred, or gnawed by rodents. Any of these conditions can render the specimens too friable for transport until they have been treated. Occasionally, deterioration is so great that field stabilization must be performed before removal from the soil matrix. Wet Sites

Included here are all sites, sheltered or exposed, that are subject to periodic rain, flooding, or the movement of ground water. This category also subsumes sites that are permanently waterlogged or submerged, or that are permafrozen. The survival of fiber artifacts in any form from such sites is considerably less probable than from dry sites and its condition is usually far worse. In most open sites, fiber artifacts are generally preserved only in a charred or incinerated state or in the form of negative impressions, which may not be recognized by the excavators as perishable artifacts. Thousands of pieces of wholly or partially incinerated basketry, textiles, cordage, and other perishables, as well as many more thousands of impressions, have doubtless been lost simply because they were unexpected, unrecognized, or both. As a general guideline, it is always best to presume that charred or incinerated fiber artifacts may be encountered in any site and therefore to use excavation procedures that maximize chances of discovery/ recovery. Charcoal or charcoal/ash concentrations and ‘stained areas’ should be excavated cautiously and scrutinized frequently and closely. Any phenomena should be presumed to be potential fiber artifacts until proven otherwise and appropriate measures

taken to ensure their recovery. Occupation ‘floors’ or surfaces, pits, and hearths should also be investigated carefully for basketry impressions which are often even more difficult to recognize than charred remains. It cannot be overemphasized that success in recovering fiber artifacts from most open sites depends almost entirely on recognizing evidence. The excavator must remember that distorted, carbonized, sediment-encrusted remnants bear little or no resemblance to complete, well-preserved specimens. In fact, there is no substitute for experience in this type of identification. When a specimen suspected of being an incinerated or carbonized fiber artifact is encountered, extreme care should be exercised in exposing it. If it retains any structural integrity, it may simply be tediously uncovered with delicate instruments (e.g., dental probes, biological probes, needles, bamboo slivers), augmented where appropriate by soft camel’s hair brushes or judicious use of compressed-air delivered via canister. If incinerated specimens are too fragile to be separated from the soil matrix without severe damage, surface and/or internal consolidation may be required. In extreme cases, the surrounding soil matrix must be consolidated and the specimen removed en bloc. Other wet-site conditions present different problems. The successful extraction of basketry or other fiber artifacts preserved through contact with metal does not usually require any special procedures. Normal caution in excavating and packing the metal fragments for transport should permit recovery of any adhering perishables. Permanently or intermittently waterlogged or permafrozen sites require highly specialized recovery techniques. The removal of specimens from very muddy contexts is best accomplished with hydraulics or a combination of hydraulics and more conventional techniques. High-velocity water sprays or jets must be carefully monitored to prevent the pressure of the water from exceeding the surface strength of the specimens and thereby causing irreparable damage. If properly controlled, the careful use of hydraulics will effectively and safely separate fiber artifacts from a muddy matrix (see Sites: Waterlogged). Plant fiber artifacts from permanently waterlogged, submerged, and permafrozen contexts must be approached with extreme care. While such specimens may be removed intact with little difficulty, others may necessitate complex extraction procedures. All such specimens require special handling after excavation. Although they often give the illusion of being structurally strong, waterlogged specimens cannot

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bear excessive handling and will lose structural integrity through rapid drying. After excavation, every effort must be made to ensure that waterlogged or permafrozen specimens are kept in their recovery state until transport to the laboratory. Impressions

In contrast to the variety of procedures applicable to the recovery of actual fiber artifacts, the treatment of impressions is more or less uniform. Impressions may be preserved on living floors, in graves or fire features or, more rarely, in trash or midden areas. They are also common on certain types of pottery, as well as on the asphalt or plant-resin linings of baskets. These linings, which rendered the containers watertight, frequently outlive the vessels and preserve a strikingly detailed negative imprint. Plaited or twined fiber artifacts used in the construction ofhouse walls or roofs may leave clear marks on the mud, clay, or daub packing. Although virtually all the varieties of impressions noted above involve no more than careful excavation, handling, and packaging for successful recovery, the yield of impressions from archaeological sites is pitifully small. The principal problem lies in recognition, since most impressions appear even less artifact-like than incinerated or carbonized remains. Surprisingly, even imprints on pottery and basket-linings are frequently ignored or, at best, misidentified. The recovery of impressions requires prompt perception of traces and slow, careful excavation with delicate instruments. Virtually any pattern, no matter how symmetrical or asymmetrical, which appears on an excavation floor, firepit lining, chunk of burned daub, potsherd, or other surface should be treated as a potential imprint. Specimens from dry caves and rockshelters may be so encrusted with sediment or animal excrement as to be unrecognizable. Consequently, items of this kind should be taken to the laboratory for careful examination. Before their removal is attempted, impressions should be exposed in much the same manner as charred or incinerated specimens, and then drawn and photographed in situ. If the impressions are on objects, such as ceramic sherds, daub, or pitch linings, and if these objects are firm, they should be removed and wrapped as carefully as their condition requires. If the impressions are on floors or objects too frail to withstand disturbance, extensive stabilization procedures may be necessary. Before any stabilization or removal is attempted, however, the impressions should be photographed and also analyzed as completely as possible in case the measures to preserve them are unsuccessful. The disintegration of fiber artifacts on a fine clay or silt floor may leave a negative pattern with a large

number of construction attributes preserved under the overlying matrix. The delicate task of separating the matrix from the negative impression is facilitated by applying water to the structural parts of the pattern. Ideally, the fill can then be peeled out with needles or probes, exposing the pattern. The success of the separation depends on the texture and composition of the floor or the object bearing the impression, as well as on the makeup and condition of the overlying matrix. Sandy fill is relatively easy to separate from a fired clay floor, whereas other combinations of earth are virtually inseparable. Compressed air or water picks can sometimes be substituted for the needle/probe method described above. The choice of technique must be dictated by local conditions. After exposure, the impression should be analyzed in precisely the same manner as a preserved specimen of that class of fiber artifact. All pertinent measurements should be taken and the cleared impression should be re-photographed if necessary. The object or matrix containing the impression should then be cleaned manually or with an airbrush as much as possible and the surface consolidated with a suitable agent. At this juncture, a cast or positive impression should be taken. Ordinary modeling clay, liquid latex or its equivalent, or even plaster of Paris can yield satisfactory results. The selection of a casting medium is usually dictated by local circumstance and preference or experience. Consolidating the surface of the impression before casting minimizes the adsorption of extraneous materials by the casting medium and facilitates separation of the cast from the impression. Naturally, all the caveats normally associated with casting apply to contexts involving fiber artifacts, and patience coupled with a willingness to modify techniques is required to achieve success. Upon completion of the casting, the negative impression can be removed en bloc and suitably packaged for transport to the laboratory. Should the impression disintegrate during removal or transportation, the field procedures will ensure a documentary record.

Laboratory Methods Once in the laboratory, prehistoric plant fiber artifacts and impressions may require further processing before the initiation of analysis. Generally, this involves cleaning and/or stabilization as well as providing adequate storage conditions. Cleaning and Stabilizing

The procedures described below do not constitute a complete collection of cleansing and preservation techniques, nor are they surefire ‘recipes’ that can be

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mechanically followed with instant and satisfactory results. The laboratory treatment of specimens or impressions is never uniform and requires a certain amount of adaptation and adjustment of methods. The procedures should be based on a thorough knowledge of the constitution of the specimen prior to treatment and an understanding of how it got to be that way. Some general admonitions can be stated, though these certainly are not rules. The analyst should treat each fiber specimen or impression as if its condition were unique despite the fact that its state of corrosion or deterioration may roughly be ascribed to a particular type (e.g., waterlogged, carbonized). The specific reaction of different specimens to the same treatment may be distinct. Common sense is a major ingredient in the treatment of specimens or impressions. There is nothing wrong with altering procedures in midstream. Caution is the watchword and the specific procedures described are simply indications of the range of treatments that might be employed. Before detailing specific cleaning and stabilizing techniques, the following points are offered as guidelines. As little as possible should be done. If a fiber artifact is still flexible and stable, ‘no’ agents should be applied unless it is clear that further deterioration is likely to occur. This also applies to impressions whose matrix is adequately consolidated. The long-term effects of additives must be considered. This is one of the major problems in the stabilization of plant fiber constructions. Certain agents, such as shellac and its allies, must be avoided. Once employed as a virtual panacea, this preservative is now known to transform into a black, brittle, insoluble mass that obscures the specimen and cannot be removed without causing damage. Oil-based pesticides or fungicides break down with time and release harmful residues that ultimately destroy the specimen. As noted by Adovasio, many additives render material unsuitable for radiocarbon assay, and this fact must be seriously considered in the laboratory as well as on the site. All commercial preparations are to be chosen with extreme care, as their composition is subject to change with little or no advance notice. Alterations in proportions or strengths and substitutions in ingredients may produce entirely different results than previous versions of the compound. A preparation that does not list all the ingredients and their relative proportions should never be used until it has been tested on expendable samples. Similarly, no preparation that differs even slightly from an earlier formula in concentration of ingredients should be employed without prior testing.

While it is widely agreed that any conservation method employed to stabilize fiber artifacts should be reversible, there are sometimes conditions which mandate the use of nonreversible techniques. An excellent case in point is the remarkable collection of burial fabrics and assorted wooden artifacts recovered from the Windover Bog in Florida. Due to the advanced decomposition of the interior of many of these superficially stable items and the unsuitability of any other preservation techniques, all but a small ‘control’ sample of the Windover fabrics and wood were conserved via parylene conformal coating, a non-reversible technique which is described and discussed in Adovasio et al. Without proper environmental control after treatment, all preservative techniques may be of little use. For fiber specimens, this means maintenance of stable temperature and relative humidity (RH). Ideally, temperature should not exceed 70  F (or mold growth may begin) and RH should not be less than 62% (or the object will be desiccated). Fluctuating temperature and humidity are the most destructive agents. Protection from excessive light is also necessary. Ordinary incandescent lights can cause fading; most fluorescent lights are potentially worse, and prolonged exposure to direct sunlight is the most damaging of all. Specimens should be stored in polyethylene bags sealed with masking tape, or, preferably, one of the commercial transparent tapes. When humidity or temperature cannot be controlled, the careful sealing of bags is imperative. Space precludes any further discussion of specific cleaning and stabilizing procedures to be employed with dry or wet site perishables. Final Preparation

After the cleaning and stabilizing procedures have been completed, the specimens and impressions are nearly ready for analysis. Actual examples of prehistoric fiber artifacts generally require no further processing, but impressions and positive casts taken from impressions may need an additional preparatory step. Frequently, the detail on impressions or positive casts is difficult to perceive even under the best lighting conditions. In order to maximize the data potentially available from such specimens, it is often advantageous to coat the surface with talc applied via a soft brush or with sublimated ammonium chloride. These procedures bring the technical details into sharp relief and greatly facilitate their analysis as well as photography. The results are often spectacular and well worth the minimal effort involved. Logistic preparation for the analysis of actual fiber artifacts and impressions are minimal. A clean, well-lighted area with plenty of layout space is

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desirable, along with a variety of instruments. While unaided visual inspection is occasionally sufficient, the analyst must often resort to a 5–10 hand lens or a variable-power stereoscopic microscope; hence, these instruments should always be available. An ideal analytical milieu includes a variable power stereoscope with an integral high-resolution digital camera connected to a HD large format screen with image capture capabilities. Considerable prodding and poking is frequently necessary to expose details of manufacture and a variety of metal probes should be on hand for this purpose. Measurements should be taken in the metric system with a precision sliding or digital caliper. Proper lighting is crucial to the analysis of fiber artifacts and the analyst should experiment with a variety of combinations to achieve the best results.

Analytical Methods As with other compositional classes of artifactual materials, no universally accepted methodological protocols exist for the analysis of plant fiber artifacts. However, there are widely accepted guidelines for the analysis of most types of fiber artifacts. The suggested procedures outlined below derive from a series of what have become for most fiber analysts ‘the standard references’, though it should be stressed that other analytical strategies have been and are still in use. As defined here, the analysis of any kind of fiber artifact is essentially a progressive and reductive taxonomic or classificatory exercise, the ultimate results of which are analytical types or, in some cases, idiosyncratic categories. In this context, a type consists of a constellation of manufacturing attributes or features the collective total of which is the specimen under scrutiny. Because, as noted in the Introduction, many of these construction attributes are culturally standardized, the resultant ‘types’ are perforce considerably more than simply the convenient creation of the analyst. Basketry and Textiles

Basketry is a class of fiber artifact which includes several distinct kinds of items, including rigid and semirigid containers or baskets proper, matting, and bags. Matting is essentially ‘two-dimensional’ or flat, whereas bags are ‘three-dimensional’. Bags can be viewed as intermediate forms because they are two-dimensional when empty but three-dimensional when filled. As Driver (1961) points out, these artifacts can be treated as a unit because the overall technique of manufacture is the same in all instances. All forms of basketry are manually woven without frame or loom. As all basketry is woven, it is technically a variety of textile.

For most analysts, the term ‘textiles’ is reserved for fiber artifacts which are infinitely flexible cloth fabrics produced with a frame or loom. While there is obviously some overlap between basketry and textiles (e.g., twined cloth), the presence or absence of a frame or loom is a reasonably consistent classificatory diagnostic. The analytical protocols presented here for basketry and textiles follow Adovasio and Emery, respectively. According to Adovasio, the classification of basketry may be likened to the taxonomy of living or extinct plants and animals. The operation consists of two basic steps. The basketry assemblage from any given site is first divided into major groups or subclasses of weaves; then each subclass is divided into technological types. The entire procedure reduces the assemblage to progressively smaller units of increasingly greater taxonomic resolution or precision. It is generally agreed that basketry may be divided into three subclasses of weaves that are mutually exclusive and taxonomically distinct: twining, coiling, and plaiting. The potential number of technological types within each subclass is relatively great. Twining is a subclass of basket weaves made by sewing stationary (passive) vertical elements, or warps, with moving (active) horizontal elements called wefts. Twining is used to produce containers, mats, and bags, as well as fish traps, hats, clothing, and other less typical basketry forms (Figure 1). Coiling is a subclass of basket weaves made by sewing stationary horizontal elements (the foundation) with moving vertical elements (stitches). Coiling techniques are used almost exclusively in making containers and hats but are very rarely used for bags. Mats and other forms are seldom, if ever, produced by coiling (Figure 2). Plaiting is a subclass of basket weaves in which all elements pass over and under each other without engagement. For this reason, some analysts described plaited basketry as woven not sewed. Plaiting can be used to make containers, bags, mats, and a wide range of other less-standardized forms. Assignment of specimens to subclasses or types depends on the identification and quantifications of shared attributes or clusters of attributes. As noted above, attributes may be defined as features of manufacture, the sum total of which is the individual specimen. A variety of attributes can and have been employed to classify basketry or textiles. Such diverse criteria as the object’s shape, rigidity or flexibility of the weave, and elements of decoration (to note but a few) have been used with widely varying degrees of success. It is my position that subclasses or types should be defined exclusively by attribute of wall construction.

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Figure 1 Schematic showing some common types of twining. As labeled, (a) is Close Simple Twining, S-twist Wefts; (b) is Open Simple Twining, S-twist Wefts; (c) is Close Simple Twining, Z-twist Wefts; (d) is Open Simple Twining, Z-twist Wefts; (e) is Close Diagonal Twining, S-twist Wefts; (f) is Open Diagonal Twining, S-twist Wefts; (g) is Close Diagonal Twining, Z-twist Wefts; (h) is Open Diagonal Twining, Z-twist Wefts.

For purposes of this discussion, any basket (or textile) is assumed to have several distinct parts, the most significant of which is the ‘wall’ or main body of the specimen. In most forms of basketry or textile, the main body is readily distinguishable from the edge (selvage or rim) as well as in the case of containers, the center. The wall or main body of a basket, mat, or bag can be constructed by only three basic manipulative procedures or weaves which correspond directly to the three major subclasses of basketry: twining, coiling, and plaiting. The procedures are so distinctive that even when all three are employed in the same specimen (a very rare occurrence), it is easy to detect where one ends and the other begins. After sorting into subclasses, each specimen of basketry is assigned to a technological type. The protocols for assignment to types are detailed in Adovasio (1977) and briefly summarized below. Twined baskets are allocated to types based upon the spacing of the weft rows (open or close) and in the number and sequence of warps engaged at each weft crossing (simple or diagonal). Coiled specimens are allocated to types based on the kind of basket wall or foundation technique and the type of stitch employed. Plaited specimens are assigned to types based on the

number of plaiting elements and the interval of element engagement. Any specimens which cannot be assigned to technological types are placed in arbitrary categories based on their predominant technological, structural, and formal attributes (Figure 3). In addition to typing, all examples of each subclass of basketry are examined for additional attributes. Where feasible, twined specimens are analyzed for selvage (edge treatment), method of starting, method of insertion of new warp and weft elements, method of preparation of warps and wefts, form, wear patterns, adherent residues, function, decorative techniques, and the type and mechanics of mending. Coiled specimens are also assessed for type of rim finish, method of starting, work direction, decorative patterns and mechanics, type and mechanics of mending, form, wear patterns, adherent residues, function, method and preparation of foundation and sewing elements, and type of splice. Plaiting specimens are examined for selvage treatment; method of starting; number, orientation, composition, and preparation of plaiting elements; wear patterns; adherent residues; form; decorative mechanics; mechanics of mending; and function. Because there is considerably greater potential variety to a textile assemblage, the number of possible

1382 FIBER ARTIFACTS Direction of work

False braid at termination of rim

Self rim Simple stitch

Bundle Rods Stitch Split stitch Moving end

Wrapping stitch Work surface: sewing awl is thrust through bundle from this side Stitch slant = l Splice Moving end Fag end

Fag end Non-interlocking stitch Wrapping stitch

Interlocking stitch Double stitch

Normal center Cross section of coil Bundle Rods Stitch

Figure 2 Schematic example of close coiled basketry.

types which may occur can exceed the diversity of types in a basketry assemblage. The protocols for analyzing and classifying textiles are detailed in Emery (1966). Essentially, the process of classification involves initial division of the assemblage into broad groups of specimens based on the number of elements employed in the weaving process. The basic categories are single-element and multiple-element fabrics within which there are a great number of specific structural types and even subtypes. Space precludes any further discussion of assignment to type but, as with basketry, after the typing process is complete, all textile specimens are also analyzed, where feasible, for a wide variety of other attributes including selvage, the use of wrapping elements, accessory structures (e.g., added stitches), elements of decoration, wear patterns, adherent residues, form, and possible function.

and ‘rope’. Netting is a cordage-based fiber construction which Emery defines as a fabric ‘‘built up by the repeated inter-working of a single continuous element with itself’’. Where preservation permits, cordage and cordage-based constructions such as netting may be the most common categories of fiber artifacts recovered. The analysis of cordage is fairly straightforward and the most commonly employed protocols follow Hurley. Cordage and cordage-based fiber artifacts have a relatively limited number of structural attributes when compared with basketry, textiles, or sandals. For cordage, assignment to types is established on the basis of only three structural attributes:

Cordage and Netting

1. Number and composition of plies (1, 2, or more; simple or compound). 2. Direction of initial ‘spin’ (S or Z). 3. Direction of final twist (S or Z).

Cordage is a class of elongate fiber artifacts which are generally subsumed under the English terms ‘string’

The term ‘ply’ as used here means a strand or bunch of fibrous material that is almost always twisted.

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Figure 4 Schematic showing cordage construction.

Figure 3 Schematic showing some common types of plaiting. From top to bottom, they are Simple Plaiting 1/1 Interval, Simple Plaiting 1/1 Interval with Paired Elements, and 2/2 Twill Plaiting.

These strands can be used alone to form single-ply cordage or in groups to form multiple-ply cordage. Multiple-ply cordage is produced by twisting two or more ‘single’ plies together. An individual ply is simple if it consists of a single strand or bunch of material with the same twist, or it may be compound. Compound plies are constructed with multiple strands or bunches of material individually twisted and then twisted with each other in the opposite direction (Figure 4). Compound plies are therefore separate pieces of cordage which when twisted with other plies form a technically distinct cordage type. In addition to assignment to types, cordage is also analyzed for splices (the introduction of new plies), angle of initial and final twist, and, where germane, ancillary cordage manipulations like rat-tailing, crepe twisting, or ply-wrapping. Cordage may also be evaluated for wear, adherent residue, and possible function. Any knots encountered are analyzed and described following a standard knot reference. Netting in various forms is one of the most commonly encountered cordage-based by-products. Unlike basketry, textiles, or cordage, there is no standard or

generally accepted set of analytical protocols for this subclass of fiber artifacts. Following Emery, there are basically only two ways to produce the structure of a single element fabric in any form. These categories are usually called knotless (Figure 5) and knotted netting (Figure 6). Knotless netting may, in turn, be divided into a series of technological types based on the manipulation of the cordage employed in the construction. Such netting structures are either linked or looped and within these categories several variations exist. The analysis of knotless netting therefore involves two separate trajectories: the identification of the cordage type or types used in the construction and then the determination of the variety of knotless netting represented in the piece. In knotted netting, the fabric of the fiber artifact is built up in rows secured by knots. The assignation of knotted netting to types is usually based on the type of knot employed in the construction and the process of building up the individual rows of fabric. Like knotless netting, the cordage employed in the construction of knotted nets must also be analyzed. In addition to the foregoing, all netting constructions are scrutinized for kind and degree of preparation of raw materials employed in the construction, splices, mends, wear patterns, adherent residues, and where possible, form and function. Sandals, Cradles, and Other Fiber Artifacts

Sandals are essentially baskets (or textiles) worn on the feet (Figure 7). Cradles are basically baskets

1384 FIBER ARTIFACTS

Figure 5 Knotless netting. From Tanner 1976: 57 figure 3.8g.

Figure 6 Knotted netting.

designed to contain and/or transport infants Figure 8. The analytical protocols for these fiber artifacts essentially follow those employed for basketry or textiles and, as most sandals or cradles are usually twined or plaited, follow the protocols associated with these subclasses of fiber artifacts. Of course, with both of these formal types of artifacts, certain analytical procedures are unique to these items. For example, sandals require – in addition to identification of the techniques involved in the basic construction of the sole – determination of the methods used to produce such sandal-specific features as toe flaps, heel pockets, ties, sole pads, socks, treads, and insulation. There are also similar cradle-specific attributes which must also be analyzed. After the analysis of the basketry, textiles, cordage, cordage by-products, sandals, and other more or less standardized fiber artifacts from any given assemblage, there will always be finished and partially finished artifacts ‘left over’. These items, which do not comfortably fit standard classificatory or taxonomic schema, are usually called miscellaneous fiber constructions and are allocated to categories based on predominant formal and/or structural attributes. Such categories may include exotic or aberrant types of basketry or textiles whose construction does not correspond to known macro-patterns; as well as such diverse items as fiberwrapped sticks, fiber ‘rings’, or ‘doodles’. A collection also usually contains construction materials or individual plant fiber or wood components employed in the manufacture or decoration of one or another kind of fiber artifact. Space again precludes any delineation of the protocols to be Binding loop Splice

Weft Warp

Figure 7 Schematic example of a twined sandal.

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Figure 8 Example of an open twined cradle.

employed for such items but details are available in Adovasio (1977). Additionally, sandals, cradles, and other lessstandardized fiber artifacts are also examined for wear patterns, adherent residues, mends, decorative mechanics, and, of course, raw materials and their method(s) of preparation.

Raw Materials Concurrent with the typological and attribute-oriented analysis of fiber artifacts is the determination of the source or sources of plant-derived and other raw materials used in their construction. The techniques for the identification of macro-plant remains are detailed in Macroremains Analysis and will not be reiterated here. It should be stressed, however, that the identification of raw material sources is a critical part of the analysis of fiber artifacts and often is more time-consuming than the structural analysis of the specimens themselves.

Photography In the processing of prehistoric fiber assemblages, the crucial step of specimen photography generally intervenes between the analysis and the description and

interpretation of the data. After analysis, representatives of each technological type and miscellaneous category should be photographed. If feasible (and this is my practice), virtually all specimens should be photographed even though this may be timeconsuming and costly. Minimally, the analyst should photograph both sides of at least one representative of each type or miscellaneous category and each complete or nearly complete specimen. Where warranted, close-ups of construction details such as centers, rims, splices, and other attributes of basketry should be taken, as well as multiple views of three-dimensional items. The latter should include plan views and profiles. Photography of fiber artifacts, like photography of any other class of artifact, requires a considerable degree of skill and patience. As in the analysis process, the photographer must frequently experiment with lighting angles and intensities to bring out the significant features. All specimens should be photographed in their ‘normal’ orientation. For instance, with basketry specimens, twining fragments should be positioned with the warps vertical and the wefts horizontal; coiling fragments should have the foundation horizontal and the stitches vertical. Fragments of simple plaiting should be oriented with one set of elements parallel to the long axis of the viewer, while twill plaited fragments should be arranged so that the crossing points of opposing sets of elements form a series of versus parallel to the long axis of the viewer. Complete or nearly complete specimens of any subclass of fiber artifact should be oriented as their specific characteristics dictate. An easily read metric scale should be included in all photographs.

Description, Compilation, and Interpretation Upon completion of the analysis and classification of any assemblage of fiber artifacts, the specimens must be described, the resultant date compiled and, ultimately the collection must be interpreted. Adovasio (1977) and Emery (1966) provide appropriate standardized descriptive protocols for basketry and textiles respectively, while Hurley (1979) affords the same for cordage. Andrews, Adovasio, and Carlisle (1986) offer a model for sandal descriptions, and Andrews and Adovasio (1980) include descriptive schema for netting and a variety of miscellaneous fiber constructions. If properly analyzed and described, and if the specimens so treated were recovered from tightly controlled archaeological contexts, the potential information recoverable from even the smallest ‘scrap’ of fiber artifact is potentially illuminating on a wide range of

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issues. Even when specimens are recovered from contexts with limited or no stratigraphic chronological control, they may often inform about their makers in a way that no other artifact class can. As noted above, this information is encoded into each fiber artifact specimen and only requires the proper methodological protocols for decipherment. The decoding process, while superficially formidable at times, is relatively simple and certainly well within the capabilities of most discerning and patient professionals and laymen. Excellent case studies of prehistoric fiber artifact assemblages are numerous and several have been cited above. Any or all of them as well as countless others attest most eloquently to the probative power of fiber artifacts in a wide variety of arenas. While among the most fragile products fabricated by prehistoric artisans, fiber artifacts often serve as the most enduring legacy of the life and times of the individual craftsperson and social milieu which produced them. See also: Caves and Rockshelters; Conservation and Stabilization of Materials; Frozen Sites and Bodies; Macroremains Analysis; Preservation, Modes of; Sites: Waterlogged.

Further Reading Adovasio JM (1977) Basketry Technology: A Guide to Identification and Analysis. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. Adovasio JM, Hyland DC, Andrews RL, et al. (2002) Wooden artifacts. In: Doran GH (ed.) (2002) Windover: Multidisciplinary Investigations of an Early Archaic Florida Cemetery, pp. 166–190. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Adovasio JM, Laub RS, Illingworth JS, McAndrews JH, and Hyland DC (2003) Perishable technology from the Hiscock

site. In: Laub RS (ed.) Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences Volume 37: The Hiscock Site: Late Pleistocene and Holocene Paleoecology and Archaeology of Western New York State, pp. 272–280. Buffalo, New York: Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences. Andrews RL and Adovasio JM (1980) Perishable Industries from Hinds Cave, Val Verde County, Texas. Ethnology Monographs 5. Pittsburgh: Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh. Andrews RL, Adovasio JM, and Carlisle RC (1986) University of Oregon Anthropological Papers No. 34, issued jointly as Ethnology Monographs No. 9: Perishable Industries from Dirty Shame Rockshelter, Malheur County, Oregon. Pittsburgh: Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh. Andrews RL, Adovasio JM, Humphrey B, et al. (2002) Conservation and analysis of textile and related perishable artifacts. In: Doran GH (ed.) (2002) Windover: Multidisciplinary Investigations of an Early Archaic Florida Cemetery, pp. 121–165. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Baumhoff MA (1957) Introduction to basketry: A proposed classification by He´le`ne Balfet. University of California Archaeological Survey Reports 38 47: 1–21. Budworth G (2003) The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Knots and Ropework. London: Hermes House. Croes DR (ed.) (1992) Occasional Paper 6: The Wetland Revolution in Prehistory. Exeter: Prehistoric Society, Wetland Archaeology Research Project, University of Exeter. Driver HE (1961) Indians of North America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Emery I (1966) The Primary Structure of Fabrics: An Illustrated Classification. Washington, DC: The Textile Museum. Hurley WM (1979) Prehsitoric Cordage: Identification of Impressions on Pottery. Washington, DC: Taraxacum. King ME (1975) Archaeological textiles. In: Fiske PL (ed.) Irene Emery Roundtable on Museum Textiles 1974 Proceedings, pp. 9–16. Washington, DC: The Textile Museum. Weide DL and Webster GD (1967) Ammonium chloride powder used in the photography of artifacts. American Antiquity 31(1): 104. Weltfish G (1932) Problems in the study of ancient and modern basket makers. American Anthropologist 34: 108–117.

FOOD AND FEASTING, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ASPECTS Christine A Hastorf, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary commensality Fellowship at table; the act or practice of eating at the same table. cuisine Style of cooking (sometimes the prepared food). diet A prescribed selection of foods. dish A particular item of prepared food.

feasting Eating an elaborate meal (often accompanied by entertainment). food Any substance that can be metabolized by an organism to give energy and build tissue food. foodways The eating habits and culinary practices of a people, region, or historical period. gastro-politics The everyday domestic politics of the allocation of food. household archaeology A branch of archaeology concerned with the study of the material culture and activities associated with ancient households. meal The food served and eaten at one time. subsistence Minimal resources for subsisting.

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Food is the meeting place of nature and culture. One cannot unravel one side from the other, making food and all its components engagingly cultural while being driven by the biological. In many communities, food is the principal medium for social interaction, both for prestige gain as well as for comfort and communality. Food is the driving force of vast productive fields as well as small, intimate family meals sitting around a hearth. Both of these are goals in archaeological inquiry. Eating stimulates the memories of every past meal while being driven by the politics and economies of the day. The histories of people’s experiences can be read through the histories of their food use. Food in fact is so basic to life that we often overlook its centrality in our studies, assuming it is insignificant despite it being so obviously present on a daily basis. Eating food is both banal and fraught with consequences, giving it the power to alter and influence. Although we require food, we impose categories upon our food ingredients, making some potential food items unacceptable for consumption and others acceptable, based on a range of emotional, historical, social, economic, and political decisions. But these rules also help people choose edible foods in new settings and lessen the daily issue of what to eat. As Andrew Sherratt aptly stated, we do not eat species, we eat meals. The study of food is a perspective, an approach, a constellation of questions about the past, and thus a way of doing archaeology. It is not that food does not inspire intellectual thought; it does. Food makes researchers think broadly and deeply about social life. Food production, preparation, storage, serving, and consumption play a part in the creation and recreation of cultures, nations, groups, families, individuals, genders, and personal identities. Food is also material, allowing us access to many aspects of past human society. Giving food creates relationships and therefore encourages sociality. Food sharing is probably the most common social act and gift in human history. Gift exchange occurs virtually in every human interaction, if not as food or things, then at least as information, texts, or attention. Things that are given hold a different meaning than owned or purchased items. A gift is a thing and an act. The gift, with its obligation, holds the possibility of continuing interactions as well as material return. Food gifting develops social relationships of alliances between individuals and therefore larger social units. Even nonmarket societies differentiate between exchange value (the worth of an object when it is exchanged) and use value (the worth of an object based on its use). Meals and dishes have fluid meanings, well beyond what is physically eaten. The socially sensitive within a specific culture can ‘read’ the occasion, based on the

type, quantities, and presentation of the meal. Even if one is studying a new social event, there are cultural rules and proscriptions surrounding the meal that, when applied, identify the type of event and the social relationships of the actors. This is helpful for the archaeologists to bear in mind in their interpretations, as some settings have spatial data that can identify where food was presented and consumed. The study of meals, foodways, food, and cuisines can help archaeology recover the humanity of the past. Food garners meaning with every bite. It participates symbolically in defining boundaries between the self and the other from regional cuisines, regional production, to religious taboos. Food selection is based on a combination of cultural factors, psychological factors, and ecological availability. Selection is, in part, built upon the memory of past experiences, accentuating certain senses, thoughts, and feelings at each new event. The sensory factors include taste, odor, texture, levels of satiation as well as the settings in which food is consumed, the flavor of the food and its perception; all these contribute in forming a strong corporeal memory. Food scholars agree that human desires are learned and are not wholly dependant upon the nature of foods themselves. Even those few predispositions that humans do have, like a desire for sweetness, salt, and fat, can be unlearned and channeled. As a child grows up in a particular culture, surrounded by traditional culinary preferences, s/he learns what items are desirable as well as the appropriate combinations and quantities of these foods. Most often, food choices are dictated by age, gender, context, and relational experiences. Choices are made daily and seasonally. Large events are planned for, resources are hoarded, utensils are borrowed, and labor is called up. Events like weddings can take years of preparation and planning.

Food Preferences Edmund Leach pointed out three food categories: edible, edible but not eaten/tabooed food, and edible but not recognized as food. These categories are culturally constructed and in some ways are physiologically arbitrary. There are a range of poisonous things that are considered delicacies. In addition, there are many edible substances in environment that people do not consume. Further, people can transgress their own rules of edibility if situations change. During low levels of food production situations, less desirable foods grown and collected are consumed. An extreme example is seen in emergency settings with the threat of starvation in the acts of cannibalism. Food preferences have a genetic bias. Sweet is the earliest and most innate taste desire that humans

1388 FOOD AND FEASTING, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ASPECTS

share with other primates. This has been linked to a desire for ripened fruit and mother’s milk. While all people might begin their lives desiring sweet tastes. This desire for sweetness can and has been modulated culturally, as seen in the overpowering need for sugar products in the English and American diets while in France and the Middle East, sugar is less desired. Over the past 500 years sugar has become a powerful force in the creation of modern European economic (and moral) decisions. Desire for sweetness has escalated in the capitalistic commodity trade. During the development of international trade, first with sea traders and the spice trade, sugar, like pungent spices, evolved from a rare exotic into an essential commodity through the manipulation of an ‘objective’ taste, reorienting not only dietary esthetics but also state economies and political positions. Such a broad potential in food preferences invites us to think critically about the ways food reflects past societies, both in stasis and in change. Chemistry is part of the interest in sweetness. People gravitate to some distinctive flavors to enhance their eating pleasure. In foraging societies, the most preferred tastes are fatty and sweet. These flavors are associated with well-being and confer superiority to the consumer. Strong tastes or flavors are often linked to life stages and initiation rites, where youth consume especially strong-flavored foods (chili peppers, meat, alcohol, tobacco), and either don’t have food or have too much food to imprint the initiate during the ritual. Piquant foods should be identifiable in the archaeological record, if we add characteristics like taste to our food descriptions. Like food preferences, most taste aversions are learned. Eating something that swiftly creates nausea can strongly encode distaste for the substance that instills a food aversion throughout a lifetime. Visceral reflexes direct these aversions to specific foods, even if the foods are edible, clean, and do not generate an allergic reaction. Powerful emotive events can also participate in converting an aversion to a liking, as they reform the person into a new social position within society. Food prohibitions are the mirror image of food selection. Most taboos (food prohibitions) are group specific. Although there are rules for what is to be eaten, by whom and when, these are less common than prohibitions of consumption by social position. Certain foods are deemed appropriate for some people but not for others, based on political, religious, moral, or social constructs. This is the basis for food taboos. Most taboos tend to be linked to conditions (like pregnancy) or activity (like planting a field) or they are dictated by religious dicta, active for the whole community. There are also food selection models that

are similar to taboos, but these are oriented toward the food item themselves. These types of taboos are based on the physical qualities of the plants and animals. It is believed that, if consumed, the plant’s or animal’s physical characteristics will be transferred to the consumer and will enhance or harm the individuals. Another important food preference and selection model revolves around scarcity, value, restricted access, and hierarchy (social or political ranking). Strong food preferences are usually applied to expensive, scarce, or highly valued foods. Rare or expensive foods are often associated with festive occasions, consumed at special occasions, like meat in the Andes or champagne in Europe. These types of foods play a part in creating varied forms of social, political, and economic differences. Food preferences are built upon historical traditions. They are based not only on taste and texture but also on processing and cooking methods. The speed of adopting new foods is based upon accessible food processing technologies. If a new plant or animal fits into an ongoing culinary tradition, storage, cooking, or processing practices, acceptance will be rapid. When there is no precedent for processing or cooking a new foodstuff, the ingredient is less often or more slowly adopted. Historically, we have this displayed in staple crop adoption. Adding maize to a grain cuisine is an easy adoption, because the same storing, cooking, and meal activities are applied. Adding a tuber crop into a grain diet requires new storing, processing, and cooking strategies that will need to be imported or developed. This slows acceptance, as these additions are hurdles to the psyche and the daily practice of the consumer. This model is testable archaeologically, useful in the study of agricultural and cooking techniques, as well as in contact and cuisine. Social difference is perhaps one of the most common active principles of cuisine. Foods can be desirable in one group yet abhorred in others, thus setting up a central feature in defining group boundaries. Identity differences based on differing cuisines operate between every group. Self-identity situates the individual with respect to their place in the world, creating values, beliefs, and ways to act that are acceptable and comfortable. Identity contributes to how individuals and groups perceive and construct society. Being a person within that society is reaffirmed through shared core foods, dishes, and flavors. People have strong feelings about their own cuisine and often aversions to foods of other cuisines. Cuisine boundaries have been identified in several archaeological examples where neighboring groups regularly have different plant and animal frequencies. Different flavors and dishes were probably identified with these different groups, maintaining their different identities through their foodways.

FOOD AND FEASTING, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ASPECTS 1389

Figure 1 The gastro-politics of the feast.

There are a series of terms that are used within the sub-discipline of food archaeology: food, foodways, commensal, and gastro-politics. Food is, of course, the things that are procured and consumed, but the term can also be used in lieu of cuisines, referring to styles of cooking and eating (Figure 1). Foodways is the system of food procurement, distribution, preservation, preparation, presentation, and consumption. Many have begun to use the word commensal to mean communal eating, especially at feasts, after Dietler’s use of it in his 1996 commensal politics article. In these situations, commensality infers group eating, that is not eating alone. Originally, the word ‘commensal’ means ‘sharing a meal’ in Middle English, from Medieval Latin commnslis (com meaning ‘with’ and mnsa ‘table’). But since there are also ecological uses of this word, it causes confusion for some readers. Appadurai introduced a different term for the more political side of communal meals. He uses the term ‘gastro-politics’, a useful concept as it stresses the charged innuendoes and ulterior motives that underlie supra-family meals. This dynamic can occur at family meals as well. These political dimensions of meals indicate and construct social relations of equality, intimacy, and solidarity. They also sustain relations characterized by rank, distance, or difference.

Archaeological Evidence of Food Archaeology is a material endeavor and fortunately, many artifacts are correlates of past food use. Plant and animal remains dominate, but hearths, ceramics, chipped and ground stone, storage bins, organic residues, architecture, baskets, human bone, chemical residues, human bone isotopes, phosphates, storage pits, middens, and the environment can all be relevant. A surprising range of historical accounts, like shipping orders, shop lists, and diaries, contain information about past food patterns, adding strength and dimensionality to excavated material. Therefore all

domains of archaeological studies demonstrate the potential for studying the past through the lens of food. Diet and subsistence questions have been core topics in processual archaeological approaches. These subjects are addressed through studying the temporal trends of data gathered in most archaeological projects. Dietary studies have also had particular success with the newer microanalytical work on organic substances, phytoliths, isotopes, and starch. A social foodways approach to studying the past has also received attention with a focus on multiple data sets and historical context. How much information is sufficient to study foodways, especially their social dimensions? How do the different parts of a meal or a dish link people to things and things to ingredients? In what different contexts are the food remains found and can we separate out the different stages in the foodways sequence archaeologically? We can see the traces of many food activities through the stages in food procurement and their material correlates, filling in the small, repetitive activities of the larger event. Food preparation is a sequence of activities, a chaıˆne ope´ratoire. The taskscapes of meal preparation contextualize food patterns. By looking at the activities in turn: procurement-production, processing for curation, storage, processing for consumption, display, serving, eating, and rubbish disposal through artifactual distributions, depositional histories, and covariance, past foodways and their cultural contexts become visible. We can identify some of these steps in the archaeological record, with the data and analysis available. Questions asked about production, difference, cultural boundaries, colonialcontact situations, class, community, livelihood, gender, family size, politics, seasonality, and personhood, all can be lined up to these tasks of food creation and cuisine. Recent publications addressing the archaeology of food are helping open up these issues of cultural identity, cultural change, and the vast symbolic

1390 FOOD AND FEASTING, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ASPECTS

universes that are uncovered in food studies. Food studies have developed in a range of sociological, historical, and anthropological approaches that include ecological anthropology, cultural materialism, economic archaeology, Marxist anthropology, exchange, political foodways, structuralism, symbolic anthropology, cognitive food studies, cultural reason, practice theory, religious rituals, psychological approaches, memory, and food traditions. Archaeologists studying economic archaeology, subsistence change, political archaeology, social archaeology, historical archaeology, zooarchaeology, and paleoethnobotany along with other subdisciplines have successfully applied a foodways approach to a range of political and social questions, initiating the food archaeology trajectory (see Paleoethnobotany; Archaeozoology). There are a series of operational principles within food archaeology that all studies build upon. The first assumption is that the material culture of food can reflect as well as create social relations and groups. A second working assumption is that caloric efficiency and ‘practicality’ do not guide all actions with regard to food consumption but traditions and cultural constitution also participate in determining what is desired and disliked. A third premise is that food is a transformative agent. Relationships are forged between people through the food they eat together. Food transforms people, not only by sustaining them, and even transforming their mood and corporeal situation, but also through the sociality of the food event and the connections gained in eating together. Part of this assumption is that eating is a sensual act, including the touching with hands, lips, mouth, and skin, as well as activating smell, and vision. These senses all participate in the act of consumption, not only creating the action but also its associated memories not only creating the action but also aiding memory of the meal. This transformative quality is part of the action of food. Transformation is therefore in both, the body where the euphoria and chemical changes occur, and also in a social transformation by eating and talking together at the meal. Another principle is that meals and dishes are not just symbols and metaphors of society, they also are agents in social process. Actions link into the power of memory. Like heirlooms, certain consuming experiences can evoke strong emotions and even sustain people when there is little else. As food and drink truly keep people alive, they become the metaphor of life and society. Food is what most people in the past spent most of their time thinking about and planning their actions around. Examples of food/commensal studies in the archaeological literature are becoming increasingly common. Many scholars have realized how robust and

informative such an approach is, leading them to use food as their entrance into the past. The most productive studies have been comparative, either through time or by comparing different social or economic subgroups within one society. These archaeological examples include agricultural production, hunting and collecting patterns and exchange, household storage and processing, forms of cooking, relations with the dead through meals, meal styles, cuisines, shifts in serving styles (especially as these relate to the size of the consuming group and its social implications) different classes within one society (such as servants or slaves), the place of women within the family, depositional patterns, and a sense of pollution and corporeal world view, and evidence of food taboos.

Feasts In the comparative vein, archaeologists have been able to seek and identify different meal types, most commonly in the form of feasts as opposed to daily meals. Feasts are often considered political, in part because of the impact of public food-gifting and performance on interpersonal and interfamilial relations. Food and drink are the media that embody hospitality and largesse, leading to obligation. The definition of a feast is a meal for a group larger than a household or family, honoring someone or something while gaining prestige for the organizers. Once there is more than one person at a meal, there is political intrigue, giving all feasts a political edge. Feasts reaffirm and realign social positions, often more overtly than the daily fare. They operate at many levels. They condense sociality and escalate the potential for realignment. Individuals create, maintain, and contest their positions of power and authority as conflicting interests can transform the structures of the systems themselves. There are a series of political issues linking to feasts that can be addressed such as internal social relations, factions, and the political impact of gifting. Working at the scale of the feast, its structure, and size, allows archaeologists to investigate the past on the scale of the individual society rather than the broad sweep that is usually addressed in political economic studies. Additionally, feasts often leave material evidence, in rubbish dumps, ditches, or burnt houses. It is at this analytical scale that we can track the negotiation of influence and authority. This is most clear in the famous potlatch (a feast gathering of multiple families occurring in groups along the Pacific Northwest coast), where there is aggressive gifting and even shaming, to maintain and realign the familial positions within the greater society. These feasts bring enemies together to exchange

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within a ritualized space and time. While fights can break out, these spaces allow for communication in nonhierarchical societies (societies without a higher political authority). These large potlatch feasts often leave material evidence. Feasts are performances, with much discussion during their preparation, comment on the presentation, amount and quality, and corporeal reaction of satisfaction and pleasure or indigestion during the event as well as deconstruction and interpretation afterwards. Feasts often include explicit performances as well, processional arrivals, music, entertainers, dancing, in addition to the often codified sequence of courses and drink display and presentation. All of this requires a great deal of preparation or a cadre of specialists. The foodstuffs must be gathered, storing more than any one family could eat. The ingredients must be processed and cooked by knowledgeable people, often bringing many together at one time. Archaeologists often claim to identify feasting locations based on the unusual concentrations of food preparation evidence. Feasts may have many goals, including increasing group solidarity, paying debts, maintaining social relations, tribute collection, using food and labor surplus, promoting prestige, demonstrating power, displaying opulence, gaining allies, frightening enemies, making peace, instigating war, exchanging valuables, seeking marriage partners, celebrating initiation rites, arbitrating of disputes, maintaining social control through sanctions, communicating with the deities, or honoring the dead. Detailing the types of meal events allows us to list the agendas that could have been operating and therefore some of the social ramifications of these events. Essential in a feast, however, is inequality and indebtedness. No matter how congenial a feast is, invited guests who willingly consume become indebted to the host, who gains status and prestige with every successful event. These events also illuminate the actions in a political system. Most feasts are orchestrated by leaders with some power and authority. These leaders and their families are expected to orchestrate a successful event, rallying the people to gather and cook the food, as well as to convince the invited guests to come. There is tension and cajoling in all of this. When we find these events archaeologically, it is worthwhile to remember these political aspects. Ethnographies from Papua New Guinea have illustrated to us how feasts are the central cog in the political world of alliance-building and warfare of the highland farmers and herders. There, it can take up to 20 years to prepare for one feast. Pigs are the most important food item that is shared and

consumed, and are usually eaten only at feasts. In preparation, much energy and discussion occurs around the pig herd. Females raise the animals into items of wealth through affinal exchanges, to equilibrate marriage exchanges or be presented as food at feasts. Presentation of butchered pork tracks a thin line between amicable sharing of food with one’s friends and family in a gesture of largesse and social one-upmanship and aggressive shaming (killing) of one’s enemies through overfeeding. With the banning of internecine warfare, feasting has become the main avenue for community prestige. The harvested yams are displayed and the neighbors invited over. In a feast of excess, they shame their neighbors by proffering food that exceeds what they received at their neighbor’s previous feast. These are escalatory, competitive feasts for community and lineage aggrandizement. The feast is full of symbolic expressions of ambivalence surrounding affinal relationships while simultaneously attempting to control competing desires to fight. Symbolic statements made in the food presentations are strictly coded like a grammar. Each feasting event says something about the politics of the performers. Who is invited to a feast, who comes, who gives food to whom, who eats with gusto, and so on, providing much to talk about, and much to disapprove of. Thus, the feast opens as well as realigns the political settings of the community. Dietler and Hayden, in an important book on archaeological feasts, define a feast as communal consumption of food and/or drink in an unusual event, a bombardment of the senses. Dietler makes the case that there is always a ritual component to a feast, in that there is a protocol with signified meanings and symbols that differ from everyday activities. These attributes include the setting, the accompanying social interactions, the performance, with singing, story-telling, toasting, oration, as well as the food and its special presentation. But there is more; feasts also include sensual, physical, and memory changes. Weismantel notes how one does not just gain a sense of euphoria at a feast, an excess of things pleasurable, heightened serotinin and glucose, but also synesthesia (an overloading of the senses of sound, taste, sight) that breaks down and merges the actions and presence of all attending. In these altered states, things and people form a memorable experience. Feasts have become a popular topic in archaeological discourse, as seen by the recent plenary sessions at the Society for American Archaeology meetings of 2002 and 2003 with regular symposia at the Theoretical Archaeological Groups in England, Germany, and Italy. Previous archaeological studies have investigated feasting without realizing it. For example, most

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functional pottery and lithic tool analyses address food processing, serving, or consuming, but foodways is usually left out of most discussions about these artifact classes! Brian Hayden and Michael Dietler have promoted feasting in archaeological interpretation, centering the investigation of these meals prominently within political, economic, and ritual research. Feasts are, they claim, the material manifestation of political action, especially in small-scale societies, although they work at all levels of every society. They place food at the center of the debt relationship created by the gift of feeling full. In the introduction to their book, Dietler and Hayden ask if there can be a theory of feasting. Studying the political economy of a society requires the study of feasts. Besides the grand feasts that are large, identifiable events, we must also be aware that special meals can occur at all levels of society. Even the poorest, simplest cultural group has special meals. These might be harder to tease out in the archaeological record, but they did exist. The ‘festive landscape’ in any given society, therefore, will always be a palimpsest of several different forms of commensal politics. Many of these feasting activities will have material correlates, making the identification of a feast in the archaeological record more possible. Rather than debate whether every feast is a ritual, it is more important to seek the political component that is magnified in these meals, allowing these events to contain heightened social value at the same time as being a nexus for the realignment of social and political outcomes. Issues that have been highlighted in the study of feasts are the political structure of communities, the scale and economic place of foreign trade, social stratification, ancestral worship, and its cosmological implications. These questions have been addressed in regions of the world like the American Mississippian culture, China, Neolithic England, Roman Italy, the Middle East, Medieval England, the Philippines, the American Southwest, Polynesia, the Andes, and Mexico to name a few. While there is no universal labeling system, categories are making their way into the feasting literature. These discussions can be organized into feast types, each with associated increasingly overt political agendas. Because these terms are being increasingly applied in the literature, sometimes without full discussion of the social and political ramifications, we will go through them here. As with all categorizations, they are broad and stereotypic. There is always a worry when a single label is placed on a large cluster of acts, because different social actions and understandings are often united when they should not be. It is important to historicize and contextualize the particular setting to understand the meals and the

people that are being studied. Questions to keep in mind while doing so are if these feast ‘types’ are materially distinct and, if so, how can they be identified in the archaeological record. However, they should be used as guidelines only. Three general categories are emerging from the archaeological feast literature. The first meal type is the empowering, entrepreneurial, celebratory alliance or cooperation feast. These feasts are ostensibly a party without political repercussions. These meals can be accompanied by significant political actions but that is not the overt reason for the feast. In societies where there are no hereditary rules for status distinctions, hosting feasts is the main way to gain and maintain any position, and they begin with this type of ‘family feast’. The celebratory feast is defined as a reunion among equals. Wedding feasts, work feasts, and harvest festivals fit in this category. Another feast within this category is the potluck meal, so famous across North America. This broad category could also include the barbeque, increasingly popular in Western societies. While these meals can be large or small, they tend to punctuate certain seasonal or lifestage events. Community solidarity feasts are often highly ritualized. These can occur on a regular basis, as with harvest festivals, or the opening of a new school building. In Chiripa, Bolivia where the author has worked for some years, the community has a feast once a year to honor the schoolteachers. Both the cooks and the teachers change every year but the food ingredients, the mode of preparation, and the rituals surrounding the honoring remain the same. There are the reciprocal aid feasts, which are work-party feasts among people of approximately equal social standing, as when two families exchange harvest help, feasting after the work is completed. These meals are only vaguely politically charged. By definition, the potluck feast is a humble affair. There is no lasting largesse, as each participant brings something for all to sample. Of course the dishes can be special, but they often seem to be simple, even comfort foods, rather than more elegant, harder to prepare, or exotic dishes that we often associate with feasts. Their existence in the past is probably common and archaeologists are beginning to find evidence for them in surprising situations. This large class of meals can be a major forum for labor mobilization in prestate as well as in neighborhoods within state societies. They can be associated with social cohesion. The participants can have the same political standing, expecting some general form of reciprocation. These meals can promote kin relations, solidarity, and social maintenance. This category as it stands is very broad and encompasses most of

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the world’s feasts. It is hoped that this classification can be elucidated and expanded with more subtle linking interpretations in future research. Potluck feasts have been identified when the food was basically a lot more of the same. The second major feast category has been labeled the patron–client, the patron-role, or the commensal feast, each term having a slightly different emphasis. Such events highlight formal hospitality with unequal social positions in attendance. The title patron–client suggests inequalities, with the giver and receiver clearly identified. There is a stronger, more overt, political and/or economic leitmotiv to these events. Equal reciprocation is not expected, creating subordination, and political or economic debt. Largesse and gracious hospitality are important at these feasts, much like the feasts described in the Odyssey of Homer. In some settings the preparation and cooking are part of the performance, as with Polynesian pig roasts or the Medieval spitted animals. These more elaborate and centralized food preparations can be roughly contrasted to potluck meals with their random disbursed preparation, dishes coming together in one location for the consumption of a group meal. At these patron–client feasts the menu is planned, amounts are calculated, sequences are designed, and skill presentation is as crucial as the quality, quantity, and cooking expertise. The food and other objects that are gifted in abundance allow for the elaborate political repositioning of families and kin groups. These events ripple through the society for many years. These meals display not only of food but also of certain special recipes, special dishware, cutlery, drinking vessels, and the usual dancing and music that are always present and highly valued. Patron–client feasts are common political devices to legitimize status differences. While not hiding from these differences, feasts soften and naturalize the extant status differences, allowing the indebted participants to feel less trapped in their situation, thus muting the cognitive dissonance that exists in these unequal political situations. The variation within this broad category allows for more overt inequalities to be operating, but these feasts have more at stake than the patron–client feasts. While this feast can be dissected into different subtypes (economic, redistributive, diacritical and competitive), only some characteristics that are not covered above are mentioned here. These feasts do not occur on a regular basis but are instigated by specific families, lineages, or institutions when the need arises. Special food gifts within commensal feasts often are thinly disguised loans, as with redistributive feasts, which ultimately must be repaid, probably with interest, through labor or in kind.

Figure 2 A feast before a dance, La Paz, Bolivia.

One outcome is indebtedness. The Austro–Hungarian government harnessed this form of feasting, with dancing and drinking feasts to gain recruits. After the prospective recruits were plied with liquor and were well-drunk, the music would begin. When a young man joined in the dance he joined the cavalry (Figure 2). A concise archaeological example allows us to see both of these feast types at work in the archaeological record. Kristina Kelertas identified patron–client feasts operating in the formation of Bronze Age elites in the Northwestern Danish Jutland region. With a detailed study of macrobotanical remains from a series of sites in the Thy region, she was able to reconstruct changing land use patterns of cereal production and animal herding. She found that agricultural practices intensified after the Late Neolithic into the Early Bronze Age; there was more cattle-grazing and crops specifically producing fodder and wheat were grown. The botanical data showed that the elite residences held the bulk of the bread wheat remains, a new and prized crop in Bronze Age Jutland. This intensification expressed an escalatory cycle of greater numbers of animals for traction and manure to augment the desired crop yields, requiring more fodder to be grown for the greater number of cattle. From a series of excavated domestic houses that spanned several time periods, she surmised that the local leaders initiated feasts in these buildings to recruit labor for their more intensive farming requirements, needed for the surplus they wanted to produce. The feast evidence reflects a form of patron–client feasting where different statuses are present at a special meal of bread and drink. She thinks that the feasts that earlier consolidated allegiances and stabilized

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friendship, spiraled chiefly into power legitimation and inequality in the Later Bronze Age, with more at stake. For Kelertas, the feast was a critical component in societal change that successfully allowed the ideology of concentrated power to emerge, accompanying production intensification through largesse. These first two feasting categories are not easy to separate out materially in the archaeological record, hence the problem of their labels and the benefit of comparison. Status differences that flag the more aggressive patron feasts may be seen in special, elite serving equipment or special food ingredients, yet these, like the language accompanying them are fluid and contextual, making blanket statements difficult as to the active power differences activated in a feast. In addition, the dynamics of these two categories can be operating at the same event as opposing goals of different participants. In fact, as Kelertas’ example demonstrates, the first type, the empowering feast, easily allows for the possibility of the feast to morph into the second type, the patron–client feast, in many settings. There are several of these examples in the archaeological literature. Not only can feasts shift from one category to the other during consumption, but different feasting agendas can operate simultaneously. Participants often arrive with opposing goals and because feasts are long, fluid, and often chaotic affairs, held together by talk and spontaneous exchange, different outcomes can be claimed for the same event. Many feasts that begin in congenial friendly manner can become aggressive drunken brawls. In fact, we will do well to remember the many ethnographic and historical examples of death and attack that have occurred at cooperation or even wedding feasts. These aspects of the feast remind us that feasts were focal points for political tensions, brought to the surface once the alcohol and food had flowed for hours. How these fights concluded determined the future political relations in the region. The ‘festive revolution’ aspect to feasts demonstrates how feasts can be a microcosm of the larger political situation. These categories may not always lead to clear definitions with specific interpretations in the archaeological record; they initiate an array of ramifications of feasts that can be sought and discussed within the data, helping us to see the multiple discourses that were occurring in the past. The third feast category is the diacritical, status, or display feast. This is more overt and definable. These meals actively promote status differences through differential access to ingredients and cuisines, and highlight a sense of selectivity for the clientele. Exclusivity, taste, luxury, and manicured style are applied in these events, being essential to the development of

specialized food manners and cuisines. Stylistic competition is at the heart of this feast type, as emulation and mimicry tactics operate. This feast requires rare, exotic, and new food ingredients or recipes, extra courses, or larger quantities. Luxury foods are presented; if not rare or expensive, then they are presented in an elaborate manner on expensive dishes, or accompanied by unusual events. Gourmands and specialists are often involved in the preparation and the serving, taking longer than most meals in the preparation. In these settings, very expensive or tabooed foods become edible for the participating elite. Special taste and table manners must be learned and applied at these feasts, as these meals are usually highly choreographed, stylistic activities. The concept of civilizing people and society has been linked to such select activities, as these more elaborate performances suggest learned knowledge as well as increased control of the body and its sense of taste and refinement. The ingredients, dishes, and styles reify political differences as they create an elite class with special codes of behavior and taste operating within a larger society. While all feasts create a difference, these diacritical feasts are meant to overtly display it. Many archaeological feasting studies discuss diacritical feasts, given that they are the most obvious, with silver cauldrons and exotic foods. Dietler compares the Hallstatt Iron Age diacritical feast with the Rhone Valley Iron Age patron–client feast to highlight their differing political trajectories, as played out in their feasting behavior. He claims that the Hallstatt leaders held diacritical feasts using foreign Hellenistic vessels to consume the imported and expensive foreign wine. He surmises that the feastgivers were trying to maintain their elevated political standing through the emulation. They imported the whole packet, with foreign and expensive elite objects, food, presented in new, foreign styles. To the south, on the other hand, the Rhoˆne Alpen dwellers feasted without incorporating any foreign artifacts, only the imported wine, which they seemed to consume with gusto. These people retained their own cultural styles of feasting using cauldrons to hold the imported wine. These feasts tended to be primarily drink consuming ones, rather than eating food. The Greeks thought these feasting habits were barbaric. These feast categories and their definitions provide a solid base for archaeologists to conceive of the place of feasts within the political sphere. Their material correlates must be worked out in every situation. The test implications and correlations must be designed with care. Making a comparison between the daily meal and the special, unusual meal is the easiest way of

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identifying a feast archaeologically. If these differences are materialized we should be able to find them. The semiotic world of eating is opened up through a feast, which can tell us about many aspects of the society. One misguided assumption is that feasts are only for the elite of a society. This is due to an emphasis on diacritical feasts being the most securely identified form. While elite feasts are perhaps more easy to identify than other feast types, all groups have feasts at some point, making it imperative for every food study to consider the existence of and the type of feast, through smaller-scale, detailed analyses. Bringing in the more communal potluck and the focused potlatch feast concepts can help us to identify the smaller-scale events. All food studies, whether large-scale feasts or family meals, require attention to artifactual and attribution detail. Those specific topics are covered in other sections of this volume, but it is important here to remind the reader about some of the more successful ways to identify meals or feasts. First, analyzing multiple data sets is essential. Ceramics are useful but linking them to what was served in them and where, allows us to get closer to them. Grinding stones outside of a house are helpful in understanding the socialization of the food preparers; what was being ground and how often ground food was consumed, learned from a detailed toothware analysis would also help understand the gender and familial settings of these preparations. There are some very exciting examples of these types of multiple data set use, in contextual studies in the literature and several of these are listed in the bibliography here. Approaching the past through food usually begins with something relatively small, even insignificant: the contents of a midden or the placement of pots in a house compound. These mundane facts, however, take us somewhere big, towards fresh perspectives on old questions. These questions bring the lived experience closer. Food and its necessity direct much human life, the pattern of daily life, and who was involved. Food practices in the past were undoubtedly as complex and multi-faceted through all spheres of life as they are today. The many trajectories that food allows us to follow into the past will enrich all of archaeological inquiry and place food archaeology firmly in the center of the discipline over the coming years. See also: Agriculture: Social Consequences; Archaeozoology; Household Archaeology; Invertebrate Analysis; Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear; Manufacture; Macroremains Analysis; Organic Residue Analysis; Paleoethnobotany; Phytolith Analysis; Pollen Analysis; Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Stylistic; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites; Stable Isotope

Analysis; Starch Grain Analysis; Trace Element Analysis; Vertebrate Analysis.

Further Reading Appadurai A (1981) Gastro-politics in Hindu South Asia. American Ethnologist 8: 494–511. Counihan C and VanEsterik P (eds.) (1997) Food and Culture. London: Routledge. Dietler M (1990) Driven by drink: The role of drinking in the political economy and the cast of Early Iron Age France. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 9: 352–406. Dietler M and Hayden B (eds.) (2001) Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics and Power. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Farb P and Armelagos G (1980) Consuming Passions: The Anthropology of Eating. New York: Washington Square Press. Goody J (1982) Cooking, Cuisine, and Class. A Study in Comparative Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gumerman G, IV (1994) Feeding specialists: The effect of specialization on subsistence variation. In: Kristin D (ed.) Paleonutrition: The Diet and Health of Prehistoric Americans, Occasional Paper 22, pp. 80–97. Sobolik: Center for Archaeological Investigations. Hard R, Mauldin R, and Raymond G (1996) Mano size, stable carbon isotope ratios and macrobotanical remains as multiple lines of evidence of maize dependence in the American Southwest. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 3(4): 253–318. Hastorf CA and Johannessen S (1993) Pre-Hispanic political change and the role of maize in the central Andes of Peru. American Anthropologist 95(1): 115–138. Johannessen S (1993) Food, dishes, and society. In: Scarry CM (ed.) Foraging and Farming in the Eastern Woodlands, pp. 182–205. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. Jones A (1999) The world on a plate: Ceramics, food technology and cosmology in Neolithic Orkney. World Archaeology 31(1): 55–77. Kelertas KA (1997) Agricultural Food Systems and Social Inequality: The Archaeobotany of Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Thy, Denmark. PhD Dissertation, Archaeology Program, University of California, Los Angeles. Le´vi-Strauss C (1970) The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology. (translated from the French by John and Doreen Weightman). London: Jonathan Cape Ltd. Mills BJ (ed.) (2004) Identity, Feasting and the Archaeology of the Greater Southwest. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Mintz S (1985) Sweetness and Power, the Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Penguin Books. Miracle PT and Milner N (2002) Consuming Passions and Patterns of Consumption, pp. 65–88. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Parker Pearson M (ed.) (2003) BAR International Series 1117: Food Culture and Identity in the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. Oxford: Archaeopress. van der Veen M (ed.) (2003) World Archaeology: Luxury Foods. vol. 34(3). London: Routledge. Weismantel M (1988) Food, Gender and Poverty. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Welch PD and Scarry CM (1995) Status-related variation in foodways in the Moundville Chiefdom. American Antiquity 60(3): 397–419. Wiessner P and Schiefenho¨vel W (eds.) (1996) Food and the Status Quest: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Wright K (2000) The social origins of cooking and dining in early villages of Western Asia. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 66: 89–121.

1396 FORENSIC ARCHAEOLOGY

Food Production, Social Consequences

Foragers

See: Agriculture: Social Consequences.

See: Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient.

FORENSIC ARCHAEOLOGY John Hunter, Univeristy of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary aerial photography A technique of photographic observation and survey of the ground from an aircraft, spacecraft, or satellite which provides detailed information about sites and features without excavation. geophysics The study of the physical properties of the Earth – structure, composition, and development – such as magnetic, electrical, and electromagnetic methods. homicide Homicide is the killing of another human being by one or more others. physical anthropology A subdiscipline of anthropology that views humans as biological organisms, studying human biological or physical characteristics and their evolution. taphonomy The study of the transformation of organic remains after death to form fossil and archaeological remains.

Background Forensic archaeology is about using archaeological principles in contexts which may result in archaeological evidence being presented in a court of law. This is likely to be a criminal rather than a civil scenario, although archaeological evidence can be used in either. However, the work is most likely to relate to finding or recovering the buried remains of murder victims. There is often a misconception that ‘forensic’ archaeology has a more popular basis in determining, for example, the last meal of sacrificed bog bodies, or the nature of fatal illness identified in Egyptian mummies. But these are essentially the application of science to archaeological remains even if some of the techniques used are derived from techniques used in forensic practice. ‘Forensic’ archaeology

has a greater ‘gravitas’ and usually involves working with police forces in the resolution of serious crime, normally murder. The context is invariably modern, the victim is normally a specific named individual with living relatives, and the enquiry is inevitably geared toward identifying and convicting the offender responsible for the murder. The great majority of these offences involve the disposal and concealment of human remains, in whole or in part, as a result of drug abuse, prostitution, or paedophile activities and as such mark an unusual and unpleasant context in which archaeologists may find themselves operating. In addition, a minority of cases involve the search for other types of buried remains, for example, drugs, firearms, or stolen money. Forensic archaeology also has a high profile within the context of mass graves, usually resulting from genocide and human rights abuse, and is discussed separately below. The subject is relatively new in both the US and the UK. Despite some popularly held views, archaeology is less concerned with finding valuable objects in the ground and more concerned with understanding the nature of events in past times. Archaeology is not only concerned with identifying the location of buried remains, but also in developing techniques by which these remains can be recovered, and any associated evidence maximized in order that a reconstruction of events can take place. This chimes well with the nature of criminal investigation and can be denoted under several main headings which provide an overlap between the two disciplines: . Search. Mapping, aerial photography, landscape analysis, geology, land use, and shallow sub-surface geophysics in order to identify clandestine graves. . Recovery. Stratigraphy, recording and planning; physical anthropology; conservation in order to

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excavate and recover victims and associated evidence. . Skeletal analysis. Physical anthropology for distinguishing between human and animal materials, and for the determination of age, stature, sex, trauma, etc. . Environmental science. The value of seeds, pollens, entomology, flora and fauna, etc. for identifying habitats where incidents occurred. . Analytical science. Methods for dating buried materials and for provenancing a range of organic materials and metals in order to associate samples with controls. Sadly, this is not a simple awareness exercise. Even though the archaeological application might be straightforward, the context of personnel hierarchies, protocols, procedures, and legal constraints is very different. It entails a two-way process by which the evidential requirements of the archaeologist need to be understood by other law enforcement professionals, and vice versa. Archaeologists need to be trained in crime scene skills as much as other professionals need to be aware of archaeological interests. A major incident (e.g., homicide) will require specialist input from a range of professional groups, typically the senior investigating officer (SIO), the scientific support manager, the crime scene manager and scene-of-crime officers, forensic scientists, the Crown Prosecution Service, and the forensic pathologist. The success of the operation depends entirely on the interaction and mutual evidential understanding of all the individuals concerned. Many archaeologists are trained in physical anthropology and are generally familiar with human hard tissue for purposes of determining age, sex, stature, trauma, etc. This familiarity also usually extends to being able to distinguish between human and animal bone and is a skill which is particularly useful in assessing the importance of bone material discovered during building operations, gardening, or house renovation. Furthermore, in forensic search scenarios where human remains may have become disarticulated or scavenged, the ability to determine this distinction in situ is both cost-effective and time saving. Archaeology and crime scene investigation have much in common, to the extent that more than a few archaeological graduates have found satisfying career opportunities in scene-of-crime work. Both groups are essentially concerned with identifying, recording, and sampling in an effort to reconstruct past events. In archaeological terms these events might be thousands of years old, in forensic terms maybe just days or even hours old, but the same types of evidence apply, and the same rigors are

necessary. The extent of the timeframe is largely an irrelevance. Archaeology has a history of feeding off other subjects in order to satisfy its holistic needs, but now there is some evidence to suggest that the reverse process is occurring: for example, a recent case study in which a boy’s torso was found in the river Thames received much benefit from the application of techniques originally developed and used in archaeology, namely palynology and stable isotope analysis. This enabled the investigation to be able to interpret the deceased’s likely country of origin and location of last moments. Many police investigations could be described as archaeological scenarios, notably, in the UK the search of the garden of 10 Rillington Place, London in 1953 in the search for victims of John Christie, the saturated 1964 (and subsequently 1988) media coverage of the search of Saddleworth Moor for the victims of Ian Brady, and the Valentine’s Day photographs in the daily press in 1984 when Denis Nilsen’s garden in north London was excavated in the quest for disarticulated remains. More recently the search for bodies at 25, Cromwell Street, Gloucester provided an equal opportunity for archaeological intervention.

Stratigraphy The archaeologist’s understanding of stratigraphy is the key to any involvement in criminal investigation. Archaeology is about identifying different layers of soil by virtue of their color, physical properties, or characteristics, and then interpreting what each individual layer means, thus developing a picture of what occurred in a given place over a period of time. Hence, if a hole has been dug in the ground the layers evident in section, suitably interpreted, can be used to provide a statement of what went on in that particular place over time. Furthermore, given that the individual layers are superimposed, there is a relative chronology present in that it is possible to determine which layer is the earliest in the sequence, which is the latest, and what the chronological order is for the layers in between. The same rules apply whether there are hundreds of layers, for example, as found in deep urban deposits, or just a few. In other words, the section also provides a ‘snapshot’ of events at the time the hole was dug. If a criminal then takes the opportunity to bury a victim in that location, then the ‘statement’ of what occurred and the ‘snapshot’ of the event in time are both altered. These are the features to which the forensic archaeology will need to be alert. A victim buried in a grave is therefore contained within a stratigraphic environment (Figure 1). The grave is effectively a sealed deposit in which the

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0

1 metre

Figure 1 Stylized drawing of grave in profile. ã 2008 Professor John Hunter. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

individual and any evidence pertaining to that individual is sealed. Retaining the integrity of that environment is of great forensic importance since it contains evidence for the identity of the individual, the likely manner and cause of death, and the possible chronology of burial (according to the relative chronology of layers which are both earlier and later). In many scenarios human remains (usually bones) are discovered during building operations, drainage works, or garden cultivation. The remains are removed from the ground, taken away in order to be assessed as being either animal or human, and consequently both the ‘statement’ and the ‘snapshot’ are lost. The bones are effectively ‘stray’ and without context. If, alternatively, they are retained in position then the integrity of the grave can be preserved and important forensic issues of identification, cause and manner of death, and chronology can be given greater credibility. The first two of these are certainly unusual issues for the archaeologist to consider, but they are the key to the nature of forensic excavation and mark a significant point at which ‘traditional’ and forensic archaeology diverge. Retaining the integrity of a burial can resolve in a very simple and effective way a range of likely situations. For example, this can involve the discovery of articulated remains during building or quarrying operations and an assessment of their stratigraphic position in relation to both the structure and other features, or the occurrence of disarticulated material either on the surface or in introduced deposits. In all instances it is a matter of preserving the integrity of any burial and of defining the context of any

deposition. This can often enable a decision to be made as to whether the material is modern (and therefore of potential forensic interest) or ancient and therefore of only archaeological or historic interest. The search and recovery of human materials without awareness of contextual integrity may have the effect of dislocating any remains from their context or, more significantly from a forensic angle, of contaminating evidence with material which derives from earlier and/or later contexts. Any hint of contamination will almost certainly cast doubt in court over (1) the value of the evidence presented and (2) the professional expertise of the archaeologist concerned. Retaining this integrity is the key to understanding what happened. In some instances where human remains have been found partly buried, the archaeologist will be needed to determine whether the remains were originally buried (i.e., as the result of actions by a third party) and have since been partly exposed or scavenged, or have become buried (i.e., by a process of natural soil accumulation, hillwash, etc.). In the former the matter will require criminal investigation, in the latter it may not. The distinction between the two will be negated if the primary investigation and recovery is not carried out archaeologically.

Search The search for missing persons assumes that the individuals concerned are alive in the first instance and may be missing due to medical or psychological conditions as much as to disorientation, abduction, or murder. The shift of search from a living to a deceased target is a gradual one and also necessitates a shift in the techniques deployed. This paper is only concerned with searching for clandestine burials which can involve the deployment of a range of specific techniques and an equally wide range of expert personnel. Most of these searches are highly planned and coordinated, usually by a Police Search Adviser (POLSA). Searches initially commence with noninvasive methods in order to target specific areas, to eliminate others, and to define search boundaries. The information (intelligence) which underpins this process may include a range of factors: offender and geographical profiling, witness accounts, last sightings, database statistics derived from similar scenarios (including disposal patterning), and the suspect’s movements. Ordnance Survey, geological, and land use maps can be used to define access and feasibility of burial; aerial photographs may be commissioned, and appropriate areas defined. As in archaeology, aerial photography may be able to identify areas of disturbance from soil change, shadow, or crop mark although on a scale much smaller than most

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archaeological features observed from the air, and in concealed rather than open locations. All searches require some starting point or location of interest. Without these any search is impracticable. Search is also about eliminating areas from the search, either because they are not considered feasible (e.g., open rocky ground), or because they have been searched without result. It is clear, therefore, that a search team is only likely to eliminate an area with a high degree of confidence. This level of confidence is only achieved by using a sequence of search techniques, including complementary techniques. No one ever wants to find out that a burial was subsequently discovered on an area that had been eliminated. Once these ‘desk-top’ techniques have been concluded, target areas will be identified for more detailed attention. These areas may consist of straightforward tracts of land, individual gardens, or specific small points of interest identified from the air. Graves dug into the ground will invariably leave a trace, even years later. Ground disturbance is likely to have an effect on the surface vegetation, perhaps supporting stronger growth, different species, or presenting different flowering times, compared to the undisturbed surrounding ground. These are longer-term effects. In the shorter term, trampled vegetation and soil may be apparent, as will the local disposal of excess soil which is unable to fit back into the grave. There may also be a topographical effect in that eventual consolidation of the grave fill will cause a depression in the ground surface; this may later become exacerbated when the buried body collapses through the decay process. Both vegetational and topographical change may require skilled observation, usually by POLSAs, archaeologists, or dog handlers who are familiar in such skills. The ranked masses of members of the public, so often photographed ‘helping’ in many early enquiries, may unwittingly eliminate vulnerable evidence of this type. The same effect of disturbance which can create vegetational and topographic change may also lead to the creation of a geophysical signature which differs from the surrounding, undisturbed ground. In effect, the search techniques used so far have been focused on identifying the disturbance caused by the grave, rather than the body lying within the grave. Archaeological geophysics (as opposed to geological or engineering geophysics) is particularly suited to work of this kind as it shares the same requirements and sensitivity for identifying small shallow subsurface targets. It does, however, require there to be a reasonable ‘background’ of nondisturbed ground or of consistent geology in order for the grave to be picked up as being anomalous within that background. Even in wide open areas geophysical techniques are

pushed to their limits to detect grave-size targets, and this may become virtually impossible in many typical search environments, notably rear gardens which display various types of surface, and are overgrown and cluttered with material, both surface and buried, which may interfere with the methodology. Of the three main methods used in archaeology, resistivity and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) are probably the most effective in forensic environments. Magnetometry, which is highly sensitive to local magnetic and ferrous effects, has been found to be less useful, if only in view of the background ‘noise’ present in many of the locations targeted (above). Resistivity is particularly useful in open landscapes such as lawns or areas of turned soil but is likely to require data processing in order to enhance any anomalies detected. GPR, on the other hand, is better in confined spaces and has the ability to detect through dense surfaces. Thus, in contexts where patios, driveways, or swimming pools become targets of search, GPR is a helpful technique in being able to minimize heavy reinstatement costs. It also has the advantage of showing anomalies in ‘real time’ and allows targeting of specific features as the survey progresses. However, there are now several software packages that allow all geophysics techniques to be processed and filtered as well as being converted into 3-D images which allow the operator to maximize the data available. It is important to stress that all geophysical survey methods have advantages and limitations. Electrical, magnetic, and electromagnetic techniques all respond to, or are affected by, different phenomena and the various systems are best used to complement each other rather than being used as individual options. For example, a grave in a particular soil environment might not be detected using resistivity, but may be picked up using magnetometry. Experimentation has emphasized the difficulty in detecting graves using geophysics, particularly soon after burial has taken place. Equally, it can take a skilled and experienced operator to recognize the display effects of a burial evident in a radar scan depending on time since disposal. A key element here is the decay dynamic of the buried victim and its effect on detection methods. Archaeological features tend to be inert, whereas a recently buried victim will undergo a process of decay which ultimately (under normal circumstances) will culminate in skeletonization. The speed and extent of this decay process and resulting effects (taphonomics) depends on numerous factors such as depth of burial, wrapping, wetness, temperature, soil environment, oxygen, bacteria, etc., and these, in their turn, may alter the efficacy of the various detection techniques available. Geophysical survey normally operates using 20 m  20 m grids, allowing up to 10 grids to be

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covered in a working day; resistance and magnetometer readings are usually taken at 0.5 m intervals in order to ensure that a grave is adequately sampled. The detection of likely targets either by geophysics, from the air, by field-craft, evidence of scavenging, or by observation of disturbed ground can then be tested by ‘ground truthing’. This can entail trial trenching or, less invasively, the use of a cadaver dog. These dogs are trained to detect the scent of decaying human flesh but ideally require the ground to be ‘vented’ first. This involves the handler piercing the ground in the suspect area often to a depth of around 0.6 m with a narrow metal probe in order to allow any scent to rise to the surface. Often the ground is vented with a series of holes, or in a line which enables the handler to lead the dog into, and across, the suspect area downwind. If the dog responds in a particular place, further action can be taken; if it does not, then the Police Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) will have to decide the next step. One option available to the SIO is to become more invasive in order to be confident that no remains have been buried. For example, in a garden where a number of targets have been found by geophysics but have not been responded to by the dog, a machine might be employed to strip away the topsoil. Used skilfully, machines have a valuable role to play in work of this kind. The use of a wide (toothless) ditching bucket can clear a garden down to undisturbed substrates in a matter of a few hours, allowing any disturbance to be investigated, usually by half-section. Given their destructive nature, machines are best used as a secondary rather than as a primary approach. Used primarily, they may destroy much evidence if any burial is present; used secondarily, they can achieve elimination of an area. Their role in search depends significantly on the intelligence that an SIO may have regarding a given location. Probing can also be used, although this can have damaging effects on a buried victim. Used systematically, it may be possible to identify softer (disturbed) substrates from harder (undisturbed) substrates. This method can also be extended to the use of a corer, which will allow a column of earth to be removed in order to assess the nature of buried deposits. Both methods have destructive implications. Any features discovered, by dog or other methods, can be excavated by hand, usually by half-section. This allows the excavator to identify the size, depth, and nature of the feature as rapidly as possible (there may be many features requiring investigation), as well as showing in section how the feature was infilled. If the feature turns out to be a grave the nature of the infilling may be significant. During the half-section,

spoil will be recovered either by contexts or (more likely) in arbitrary spits and retained, in case the feature is found to contain human remains. In such an eventuality the ‘search’ process will have already interfaced with the recovery exercise: the likely extent and depth of the grave will be known, the nature of the infill identified, and the taphonomics established. Taphonomy is a relatively new area of study which can affect both search and recovery, and has been the subject of extensive focus. These factors will provide valuable information and guidance for the remainder of the recovery process. More significantly, both loss of evidence and the opportunity for contamination to have occurred will have been minimized. Most modern search exercises will be logged by the senior POLSA and produced in report form. This log should include times, dates, areas, methods, decisions made, and locations eliminated. In the event that no victim has been recovered, it provides an invaluable record for future ‘cold case’ reviews in which new technologies and methods might be applied. Many older cases which now come under review have no such log, or even accurate record of where any ‘digging’ took place, and may need to be started from scratch (see Remote Sensing Approaches: Aerial; Geophysical).

Recovery On discovery of buried human remains the area becomes a scene of crime. It will be cordoned off, a common approach path will be identified, and a scene-of-crime team deployed under the auspices of a Crime Scene Manager in order to recover the evidence. Unlike an archaeological site, the crime scene can include both the immediate surface environment of the grave as well as the grave itself. No attempt to investigate the grave will be undertaken until the adjacent ground surface and associated features have been fully recorded by video and photography, and the ground surface subjected to fingertip search. The manner in which the grave may have been concealed, the presence of footprints or tire-marks, and local vegetation may all need to be taken into account before any archaeological activity can take place. Only critical personnel will be permitted into the cordoned area, each will be logged in and out by a uniformed officer, and all will be required to wear special disposable clothing, sometimes known as ‘whites’. These are to prevent the scene being contaminated or confused by material from the clothes of the investigating personnel and include disposable overshoes, hoods and rubber gloves. Masks are intended to minimize the spread of DNA. New tools are invariably

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used for each scene (including spades and trowels, etc.) in order to prevent cross-contamination from other scenes. At most the key team is likely to consist of the forensic pathologist, one or two scene-of-crime officers (one of whom may act as photographer), an exhibits officer, and an archaeologist (if invited). In some instances where hard tissue is concerned, a physical anthropologist may also be included. Physical anthropologists are now becoming increasingly involved in medicolegal matters, especially at postmortems. There may be a briefing first so that all concerned are agreed on a common strategy, and the pathologist is likely to be the lead figure as he/she will be required to give evidence in court on the cause and manner of death. Subject to agreement with the pathologist, excavation is normally geared in the first instance to identifying the grave outline, determining stratigraphic relationships between the grave fill and the surrounding ground, and setting up a recording regime. Fixed points need to be identified and plans produced, although these can now usually be carried out (if requested) by traffic officers using an electron distance measure (EDM). In most circumstances, however, in confined areas plans are more easily and rapidly produced by hand. In most, but not all, cases it may preferable to half-section the grave in order to identify any particular pattern of infill in the exposed section. The section might, for example, show that a grave had been carefully backfilled with specific materials in order to minimize discovery. This might be used to demonstrate in court that the perpetrator was in a sound state of mind in disposing of the body, with resultant implications for motive and outcome. Most grave fills, however, are simple mixes of backfilled substrates and require excavating in numbered ‘spits’ with spoil usually retained in sealed containers such as large plastic dustbins for later sieving. Any exhibits recovered are ‘seized’ by the exhibits officer who will log, number, and bag them and thus commence a chain of custody that will retain the legal integrity of each exhibit until such time that it is required in court. Graves often contain items deliberately concealed by the perpetrator, for example, soiled clothes or a weapon, as well as items conveniently discarded such as cigarette butts or datable newspaper. Forensic recovery is no different from any other type of archaeology in being destructive and therefore requiring the practitioner to excavate according to a research design in order to answer specific questions. Unlike ‘traditional’ archaeology, however, these types of questions tend to pertain to an individual event. The interrogation might consider how the grave was

dug, what tools were used, whether it was excavated in a hurry or had been carefully prepared or even left open, whether it contained an unusual fill or any foreign material, or whether it contained material transferred from the offender into the fill. These and similar questions culminate in the overarching question ‘who killed this individual?’ This type of evidence needs to be looked for and recovered as a matter of priority even if it entails excavating in unusual or unorthodox ways. Equally, the victim needs to be uncovered and removed in a manner that will retain any forensic evidence on the body itself, avoid contamination from nongrave contexts, and prevent additional trauma to the body itself. This often has to be undertaken in confined, screened, or tented areas, sometimes in cellars or narrow gardens, and this can present practical difficulties which have to be surmounted ‘on the hoof’. Space permitting, access to the body may need to be facilitated by digging out a platform from the side of the grave in order that work on the body can take place at the same level. No matter how the job is done, at the end of the day the archaeologist needs to be able to recover essential data according to the highest possible standards in order for it to be presented in court and defended under cross-examination. Often this will need ingenuity and inventiveness, especially if a suspect is being held in custody with specific time constraints under the terms of the UK Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. Irrespective of physical constraints, it is essential to produce basic archaeological records in written and graphic terms (Figure 2). Throughout this process, the archaeologist will still need to be aware of other forms of evidence, including any necessary sampling for entomological or environmental purpose, and will be mindful of the limitations of his or her own expertise, and acknowledge when further specialist support is necessary. Records will need to be made in the normal way but, unlike normal archaeological records, they will be subject to disclosure, that is, they will need to be made available to the court, including defense counsel. This includes all written and photographic records, all plans, notes, context sheets, and any dictaphone tapes and is necessary under the terms of the UK Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996. This is a useful reminder that the forensic archaeologist is a witness of the court, not of the commissioning party, and has an obligation to present objective evidence irrespective as to whether he or she is representing the prosecution (the Crown Prosecution Service) or the defense. In this, and other respects, much of the work of the forensic archaeologist differs from that of the more traditional

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C

Defined edge of disturbance 0

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B Rubble

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Polythene 006 Figure 2 Standard record of grave, including profile and showing recovery of grave fill in numbered ‘spits’. ã 2008 Professor John Hunter. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

archaeologist and may require different skills and experience. Levels of competency in this area have been defined by the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners (CRFP).

Mass Graves Opinions vary as to what constitutes a mass grave, but essentially it is one that contains numerous individuals, often measured in hundreds, and is usually the result of genocide or civil war, although they can result from military conflict or the hurried consequence of natural disasters. Their excavation tends to fall into two types: the recovery of evidence in order to obtain convictions for war crimes, or the need to recover individuals in order to obtain personal identification and facilitate repatriation to families. Mass graves resulting from genocide or

civil war are discussed here. They have occurred in several parts of the world, but most notably in Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East. They can pose problems other than simply of scale, often through political interference, cultural differences, lack of appropriate facilities and equipment, and unfamiliarity with archaeological processes by those nominally responsible for excavation. Archaeologists and anthropologists may be part of a team but may not necessarily be in a position to exercise control over the way bodies are recovered and treated. They may need to devise minimum standards with which they are comfortable and which can be presented and defended in court. Mass graves tend to be identified from the air or located on the basis of witness accounts. Concealment is not necessarily a high priority in regions where the government itself has carried out atrocities, although some are very deliberately shielded from

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international gaze, for example, by re-deposition of rubble. Witness accounts are probably the most important methods since the same witness(es) may also provide evidence of the people responsible. Trial trenching, usually by machine, can be used to narrow down the specific location. Geophysics remains a useful technique, but requires a large background area against which the anomaly caused by the grave is visible. Given that many areas around mass graves are known to be mined, this is not always feasible. However, once the grave has been found geophysics may be able to provide information regarding density or nature of deposition within the grave itself. Mass graves tend to be dug and infilled by machine. As such they tend to be of characteristic width (typically around 3 m which is the width of a large machine bucket) and have a ramp at one end. Tyre tracks may still be evident on the surface and, if the grave was also an execution site, there may be cartridge cases and other material to be recorded at the grave edge. Many such graves may be over 2 m deep and will necessitate consideration of collapse and flooding. Other hazards may include live ordnance, or devices planted in the grave by perpetrators, not to mention local hostility. Only in some cases are the victims laid out individually or bagged. In some instances of genocide the bodies are carried to the grave in wagons and tipped in by machine causing a series of discrete depositions of contorted and intermingled remains. Some graves are secondary, that is, the bodies have been removed from a primary grave, and therefore may contain evidence of the primary grave itself, or even of an original execution site. The process of moving human remains by machine inevitably causes some body parts to become detached; it may also entail differential states of decay between individual machine depositions within the grave. The net effect is that the archaeologist can be required to separate out tightly compressed individuals from each other, while at the same time identify soil change, record artifacts and belongings, identify evidence for abuse, and maintain a comprehensive system of recording. Given the varied states of decay and disassociation of remains, recording a mass grave can require a high degree of anthropological knowledge. It will almost certainly require a system that can record threedimensionally and log data simultaneously (typically a total station EDM). One system, for example, allows for the taking of points on the main joints of each individual, thus creating ‘stick-people’ who can be viewed and rotated as appropriate on the computer screen. This method can sometimes assist

the relocation of body parts to individuals. The nature of a mass grave is such that the individual victims are the key ‘artifacts’ and therefore bespoke recording pro formas are likely to be required. Individuals are numbered uniquely and this number should remain with each individual from excavation to mortuary, via autopsy and any sampling for DNA, through to eventual reburial. The same number will be used for clothing and any other associated material (e.g., jewelry) or objects which may support presumptive identification. Recording will also need to be made in situ of blindfolds, cable ties, and other evidence of abuse in case these become detached in the recovery process. Record will also need to be made of other materials within the grave, for example, artifacts such as projectiles or cartridge cases, botanical remains that may have been transferred with the victims, and soils or geological traces which may also provide links between graves and point of execution. Tire marks and machine teeth marks within the grave itself may provide evidence of type of vehicle, or even the specific vehicle used. See also: Burials: Dietary Sampling Methods; Excavation

and Recording Techniques; Osteological Methods; Remote Sensing Approaches: Aerial; Geophysical.

Further Reading Brown AG, Smith A, and Elmhirst O (2002) The combined use of pollen and soil analyses in a search and subsequent murder investigation. Journal of Forensic Sciences 47: 614–618. Cheetham P Forensic geophysics. In: Hunter JR and Cox M, Chapter 3, pp. 62–95. Connor M and Scott DD (eds.) (2001) Archaeologists as Forensic Investigators: Defining the Role, Journal of Historical Archaeology (dedicated volume), vol. 35. Pennsylvania: The Society for Historical Archaeology. CPIA (1996) Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act. London: HMSO. Erzinclioglu Z (2000) Maggots, Murder and Men. Colchester: Harley Books. Haglund WD and Sorg MH (eds.) (1996) Forensic Taphonomy. Boca Raton: CRC Press. Haglund WD and Sorg MH (eds.) (2002) Advances in Forensic Taphonomy. Boca Raton: CRC Press. Hunter JR, Roberts CA, and Martin A (1996) Studies in Crime: An Introduction to Forensic Archaeology. London: Routledge. Hunter JR and Cox M (2005) Advances in Forensic Archaeology. London: Routledge. Killam EW (1990) The Detection of Human Remains. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas. PACE (1984) Police and Criminal Evidence Act. London: HMSO. Pye K and Croft DJ (eds.) (2004) Forensic Geoscience, Geological Society, Special Publication 232. London: Geological Society. Tremlett G (2003) Tracing Adam The Guardian (G2) 7th August 2003.

1404 FROZEN SITES AND BODIES

FROZEN SITES AND BODIES Robert Park, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary desiccation The process of drying to such an extent that minimal or no moisture remains. Dessication is one means by which fragile organic items can be preserved in the archaeological record. mummy An ancient human body which has had the soft organic portions preserved. Mummification can occur, intentionally or unintentionally, through a variety of processes. permafrost Ground that stays frozen throughout the year, usually beneath an ‘active layer’ that thaws each summer. Burial within permafrost can result in fragile organic items being preserved through freezing.

Introduction Some of our most vivid glimpses into past lives are provided by archaeological sites and bodies that have been preserved through freezing. It is difficult to imagine coming closer to actually meeting people from the past than looking into remarkably wellpreserved faces – the face of a man who lived in the Alps 5000 years ago, or the face of a teenaged girl who was a human sacrifice in the Andes 500 years ago, or the faces of sailors who perished 150 years ago during a doomed expedition seeking Canada’s Northwest Passage. In addition to bodies, freezing can also preserve a wide range of other materials that would not survive under most other archaeological conditions, especially organic materials. For these reasons, frozen sites and bodies are of immense archaeological interest. In many environments outside the tropics, it is common for items to become frozen during the cold months of the winter. However, except under very special circumstances these items will invariably thaw again in the spring. Far from preserving something, repeated cycles of freezing and thawing will hasten the destruction of fragile organic materials. Thus, for something to be preserved by freezing for more than just a few months it must enter an archaeological context characterized by persistent cold temperatures. For that reason Arctic and alpine environments have yielded the greatest numbers of frozen sites and bodies. The high alpine environment is cold and supports year-round snow and ice cover in some topographic contexts. The Arctic environment is cold and is also characterized by ‘permafrost’, or

permanently frozen ground. During the Arctic summer the surface layer of the earth thaws – this is referred to as the ‘active layer’. Depending on the latitude and on local conditions, the thickness of the active layer may vary from just a few centimeters to more than a meter. However, below the active layer is permafrost – a layer that remains frozen year round. Archaeological materials buried deep enough to lie within the permafrost layer will remain frozen indefinitely, although excavating in permafrost is an extremely laborious process. The nature and degree of preservation resulting from freezing can vary. Organic items that become frozen for extended periods of time but which are exposed to the atmosphere can become freeze-dried – the water content of the items is lost through sublimation, leaving behind the dried soft tissues. Organic items retaining a greater portion of their original water content are the outcome of two different scenarios: burial within permafrost or burial within an ice field or glacier. Under these conditions, which involve stable temperature and humidity without the desiccating effects of exposure to the atmosphere, organic items may retain their water content and undergo fewer decompositional changes depending on how much time elapses between death and freezing. Dealing specifically with mummies (the generic term for preserved bodies), freeze-drying produces desiccated mummies whereas freezing without desiccation produces true frozen mummies. A much wider variety of analyses can be performed on frozen mummies but there are immense difficulties studying them both due to the problems of working with them in the frozen state, and due to the conservation concerns caused by temporarily thawing them (see Conservation and Stabilization of Materials).

Frozen Sites Many Arctic cultures created ‘semi-subterranean’ houses – pit houses with low raised walls and rafter roofs which were then thickly insulated with skins, rocks, and turf. When these houses were abandoned, the roof and walls would collapse into the house interior burying anything left on the floor deeply enough to be within the permafrost layer. The excavation of such houses from the Thule culture, which occupied the region from Siberia through the North American Arctic to Greenland approximately 1000 years ago, has produced a very wide variety of extremely fragile organic artifacts preserved through

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freezing (Figures 1 and 2). A different kind of frozen ‘site’ is becoming more important archaeologically due to recent climatic warming: retreating glaciers and ice patches. The melting back of permanent ice patches in Canada’s Yukon has exposed numerous ancient wooden hunting implements. Radiocarbon dating shows that the hunters who lost these implements used the area throughout the last eight millennia. Comparable, although younger, finds have recently been discovered melting out of an ice field in Switzerland.

Frozen Bodies The most famous frozen body was discovered high in Europe’s o¨tzal Alps, melting out of glacial ice. The body, commonly referred to as ‘o¨tzi’ or ‘the Iceman’, is that of a male who was at least 40 years old at the time of his death approximately 5300 years ago. Analyses suggest that the body was quickly covered with snow and eventually became desiccated. Ultimately, as the snow built up over a period of years, the body became entombed in glacial ice and was only

Figure 1 Thule culture winter house, before excavation, at a site on Devon Island in the Canadian High Arctic. The walls of the approximately 700-year-old house were constructed of boulders and the roof was supported by the bones of bowhead whales. The collapsed roof and slumped walls have filled up the center of the house, burying everything its occupants left behind deeply within the permafrost.

Figure 2 Artifacts melting out of the permafrost in a Thule culture winter house. In this photo a sealskin boot sole is visible left of center; just below the lens cap there is a perforated strip of sealskin which would have been removed after the skin was pegged out to be scraped. Beneath that there is a small bow made of baleen, the material from a bowhead whale’s mouth. Below the bow there is a bundle of wooden arrows. Various scraps of cut sealskin, fur, feathers, and wood shavings are also visible.

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released at the end of a period of unusually low snowfall and rapid melting that culminated in September 1991. Artifacts found with the body included his clothing (a cap, a woven grass cloak, and a leather vest and shoes), a backpack, a hafted stone knife, a hafted copper axe, an unfinished bow with arrows, and a firestarting kit. The body itself and the items found with it hint at a very dramatic story. Copper and arsenic in his hair suggests that he was closely involved in copper working during his life. Analysis of his stomach contents, including pollen, revealed information about his last meals which must have taken place at a lower altitude. At the time of his death he had been very recently wounded by an arrow, the arrowhead from which remained in his shoulder. He also had a serious cut wound on one hand. Various speculative scenarios have been advanced to account for his presence in this alpine pass, generally involving him fleeing pursuers and succumbing to the cold. A similar but much younger frozen body of someone who perished while traveling in an Alpine region was made in 1999 in a melting glacier in the northwest corner of British Columbia, Canada. Named Kwa¨day Da¨n Ts’ı´nchi (Long Ago Person Found), the remains are those of a male who was approximately 20 years old at the time of his death five centuries ago. Although found 80 km from the coast, analyses of the contents of the digestive tract revealed marine species and stable isotope analyses revealed that most of his dietary protein came from marine sources. The Andes mountains of South America have also produced equally old frozen mummies from the Inca civilization. These, however, were deliberate burials of human sacrifices. Because many were not deeply buried they became desiccated mummies, but a few are true frozen mummies including one that was found in 1995 in southern Peru. Known as ‘Juanita’ or ‘the Ice Maiden’, this is the body of a 14-year-old girl who had been killed by a blow to the head. In 1999, the bodies of a 15-year-old girl, a sixyear-old boy, and a six-year-old girl were found on Mount Llullaillaco in Northwest Argentina. They appear to have died from deliberate exposure, perhaps following ritual inebriation, but studies of the bodies revealed that they had been overfed in the weeks prior to their death, which is consistent with historical accounts of the preparation of Inca human sacrifices to ensure that they would be happy and satisfied when they arrived in the world of the gods. The Arctic regions have produced numerous desiccated mummies from burials in caves and in aboveground rock graves. The Aleut practiced deliberate mummification but under the right circumstances the Arctic environment also produced natural mummies,

as in the case of a remarkable collection of fully clothed desiccated mummies from Greenland. True frozen bodies are also known from the Arctic – the best examples come from within permafrost at the site of Utqiagvik in North Alaska. In 1980, five bodies were found in the eroding remains of a precontact semi-subterranean house. The house, which was located very close to the shoreline, appears to have been suddenly collapsed by thick sea ice that had been pushed onshore by strong winds in the middle of the night. The occupants of the house apparently had no warning and were crushed to death. Two of the bodies, both adult women, were well enough preserved to be autopsied. The lungs of both women were found to be black with anthracosis from the smoke of the oil lamps that were used to heat the winter houses. In 1994, the 800-year-old body of a female child, 5–8 years of age and known as ‘Agnaiyaaq’ (Little Girl), was recovered from an eroding grave. Autopsy revealed that she had been tended for an extended period through chronic illness stemming from a rare congenital disorder. Three of the best-preserved frozen bodies ever studied derive from Sir John Franklin’s 1845 expedition to discover and sail through Canada’s Northwest Passage. The expedition spent its first winter at Beechey Island where three sailors died and were buried. The next summer the ships sailed to near King William Island where they became frozen in. The still-frozen ships were abandoned 2 years later and the remainder of the crew perished in a desperate attempt to walk south to safety. Research on their skeletal remains suggested to anthropologist Owen Beattie that the effects of lead poisoning from the lead-sealed food cans utilized by the expedition might have contributed to the disaster. To investigate that possibility he undertook the exhumation of the three sailors who had died during the first winter of the expedition: John Torrington, William Braine, and John Hartnell. In 1984 and 1986 they were temporarily exhumed, thawed, and autopsied. Significantly, all three were found to have extremely high lead levels in their tissues and hair; the measurements from the hair confirmed that high quantities of lead had been ingested during the voyage, not beforehand, consistent with the theory that lead poisoning may have been a major factor in the expedition’s disastrous failure. Frozen bodies are also contributing to current medical science. A great deal of what we know about the virus that caused the catastrophic Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918 comes from tissue samples excavated from victims who had been buried within permafrost, in Alaska and Svalbard.

FROZEN SITES AND BODIES 1407 See also: Conservation and Stabilization of Materials; Paleopathology; Preservation, Modes of; Sites: Conservation and Stabilization.

Further Reading Beattie OB, Apland B, Blake EW, et al. (2000) The Kwa¨day Da¨n Ts’ı´nchi discovery from a glacier in British Columbia. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 24: 129–147. Beattie OB and Geiger J (1987) Frozen in Time. Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books. Ceruti MC (2002) Archaeological find of three frozen mummies and offerings at the Inca ceremonial complex on Mount Llullaillaco (Northwest Argentina). In: Lynnerup N, Andreasen C, and Berglund J (eds.) Mummies in a New Millennium, pp. 178–182. Copenhagen: Danish Polar Center. Dixon EJ, Manley WF, and Lee CM (2005) The emerging archaeology of glaciers and ice patches: Examples from Alaska’s Wrangell-St. Elias national park and preserve. American Antiquity 70(1): 129–143.

Hare PG, Greer S, Gotthardt RM, et al. (2004) Ethnographic and archaeological investigations of alpine ice patches in southwest Yukon, Canada. Arctic 57(3): 260–272. Hart Hansen JP, Meldgaard J, and Nordqvist J (eds.) (1991) The Greenland mummies. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Notman D and Beattie OB (1996) The palaeoimaging and forensic anthropology of frozen sailors from the Franklin arctic expedition mass disaster (1845–1848): A detailed presentation of two radiological surveys. In: Spindler K, Wilfing H, RastbichlerZissernig E, et al. (eds.) Human Mummies: A Global Survey of Their Status and The Techniques of Conservation, pp. 93–106. Wien: Springer-Verlag. Spindler K (1996) Iceman’s last weeks. In: Spindler K, Wilfing H, Rastbichler-Zissernig E, et al. (eds.) Human Mummies: A Global Survey of Their Status and The Techniques of Conservation, pp. 249–263. Wien: Springer-Verlag. Zimmerman MR and Aufderheide AC (1984) The frozen family of Utqiagvik: The autopsy findings. Arctic Anthropology 21(1): 53–64. Zimmerman MR, Jensen AM, and Sheehan GW (2000) Agnaiyaaq: The autopsy of a frozen Thule mummy. Arctic Anthropology 37(2): 52–59.

G Garbology

See: Ethnoarchaeology.

Gatherers

See: Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient.

Gender

See: Engendered Archaeology.

GEOARCHAEOLOGY Heidi Luchsinger, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary bioturbation Disturbance of an archaeological site by organisms. eluviation The leaching of a soil horizon. erosion Removal of sediments by erosional agents such as wind, water, glaciers, etc. geoarchaeology Archaeological analysis which uses tools and methods from the geosciences. iluviation The accumulation within a soil horizon. micromorphology Geoarchaeological analysis of sediments in thin section using microscopy. palaeoenvironment Past environments. pedogenic Formed through soil formation processes. postdepositional processes Processes which affect an archaeological site once it is abandoned. sedimentation Deposition of natural sediments. site formation processes Natural processes which may preserve or destroy the context of an archaeological site, that is, the processes involved in the formation of an archaeological site.

Introduction Geoarchaeology explores the natural context of archaeological sites in order to investigate research problems related to archaeology. All sites have

context. Whether sites deeply buried, lying on the surface, or underwater, each lies within a natural landscape and environmental context. Since many sites are buried or partially buried, the physical context of sites includes the landscape surface surrounding the site and the three-dimensional regional stratigraphy which lies below the landscape surface. Each archaeological site occupies a specific location within this complex context or matrix of sediments, soils, and landforms. Sediments, soils, and landforms are dynamic and can change dramatically during and after a landscape is occupied by humans. Therefore, each of these landscape components may have an impact on the preservation of archaeological sites lying within this context and/or human activities of the past. As its name implies, geoarchaeology involves interdisciplinary investigation between archaeology and the geosciences. In other words, geoarchaeology is geoscience for the purpose of archaeology. For example, geoarchaeological investigations may include studying the stratigraphy of an archaeological site, site formation processes, landscape position of a site, the local geology, and palaeoenvironmental history of a region. Sometimes geoarchaeology is used to establish which features at an archaeological site are natural and which are cultural. An archaeologist may wonder if a particular feature in profile is the

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remains of a fire hearth or an odd-looking root burrow. As with mainstream archaeology, the ultimate goal of geoarchaeology is to reconstruct past human behavior. Methodology

Although geoarchaeology is considered a subdiscipline of archaeology, it maintains its own methodology and theoretical orientation. The methodology of geoarchaeology is most commonly defined as the application of methods from the earth sciences for solving archaeological research problems. Such methods include those from geology, geography, sedimentology, pedology, stratigraphy, and geomorphology. In this sense, geoarchaeology has been conducted nearly since the origin of archaeological investigation in the eighteenth century and its development is closely tied to the development of the field as a whole. During the earliest periods, archaeologists and geoscientists investigated archaeological sites together and this evolved into close collaboration in later years. However, the theoretical orientation of modern geoarchaeology was not formalized until the 1976 publication of Geoarchaeology: Earth Science and the Past by Davidson and Shackley and with Colin Renfrew’s famous quote in the Preface which states that: ‘‘. . . every problem in archaeology starts as a problem in geoarchaeology’’. Research Questions

As Renfrew pointed out 30 years ago, geoarchaeology has its own theoretical orientation and own research problems. Geoarchaeology is much more than simply describing the stratigraphy of an archaeological site, conducting sedimentological analyses, or drilling sediment cores. For example, geoarchaeology can help evaluate research questions such as: what was the landscape like when this site was settled? Did the inhabitants have easy access to water? Has this site been disturbed by plants, animals, insects, groundwater, or artifact hunters? Was there one occupation at a site or multiple occupation phases? Is this piece of charcoal that the author would like to radiocarbon date associated with these artifacts? Why is there no charcoal at this site? Geoarchaeology is not a mere descriptive tool or singular type of methodology. Modern geoarchaeology is as scientific and holistic as its roots which were established in processual archaeology. Geoarchaeology has its own set of research questions which bridge the geosciences and archaeology (see Archaeometry; Bioarchaeology). So, what does this mean? By investigating the natural context of the archaeological record, geoarchaeology can help determine the chronological context of

the archaeological record through analysis of stratigraphy and dating, evaluate the preservation of the archaeological record (i.e., by studying formation processes of a site or a landscape), and interpret whether this natural context may or may not have had any impact on past human behavior. Geoarchaeology can suggest how complete or disturbed an archaeological record of a region or single site is. It can also analyze whether or not a landscape had an impact on a human population or whether humans had an impact on the landscape. The more a landscape or site is altered, the less potential information can be gathered to interpret past human behavior.

Historical Development of Geoarchaeology Geology has played a role in European archaeology since the eighteenth century and was promoted by the ongoing search for human antiquity. In the early 1700s, a geologist analyzed the geology of the stones which are part of the structure at Stonehenge, England. In the late 1700s, John Frere described the geological context of several Acheulian handaxes which he had discovered. Interdisciplinary work between archaeologists and geologists continued in the eighteenth century in Europe with various projects. The famous geologist Sir Charles Lyell participated in a number of these projects. In the second half of the eighteenth century, more attention to stratigraphy was apparent at archaeological excavations throughout Europe and around the Mediterranean (e.g., England, Greece, Rome, and Egypt). Such close collaboration between the geosciences and archaeology converged into the modern subdiscipline of geoarchaeology which continues and has a strong presence in European archaeology today. In North America, the development of geoarchaeology is closely tied to the development of archaeology. From the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, archaeologists were mainly interested in describing and classifying artifacts and monuments. However, the analysis of geological stratigraphy and use of dating techniques were also incorporated into archaeological investigation. This period has been described as the phase in archaeology most concerned with the search for human antiquity. During this phase, it was common for archaeologists and geologists to collaborate in their research. One of the main reasons for this collaboration is that both disciplines incorporate stratigraphic analysis and geochronology. During the early to mid-twentieth century, as archaeological techniques became more systematic

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and standardized, increasingly detailed studies of archaeological stratigraphy and reconstructions of the paleoenvironment began to appear. In North America, Late Pleistocene human occupation was finally confirmed with the discovery of the Folsom site in 1927. In the 1930s, human antiquity in the Americas was further reinforced by the discovery of Clovis artifacts found in a stratified unit older than overlying Folsom artifacts. In addition, it was determined that both of these sites were found in primary and undisturbed context. Kirk Bryan was one of the forerunners of modern geoarchaeology in North America. Bryan was a geologist for the United States Geological Service who studied palaeoenvironmental change at Chaco Canyon and the impact on human behavior. In the 1930s, Ernst Antevs also studied paleoenvironmental change and conducted work at a number of Clovis sites. During the 1960s, processual archaeology became more prominent and this shift had a crucial impact on the development of geoarchaeology. As there was a shift toward use of more ecological approaches in archaeology, there was also interest in the impact of the paleoenvironment on human behavior and impact of formation processes on the archaeological record. Geological and archaeological studies became more integrated at this time as archaeology placed emphasis on using a more scientific and holistic approach to studying past human behavior. Studies on settlement patterns, the paleoenvironment, and context increased significantly. During the 1960s, C. Vance Haynes, Jr. was already conducting what most would consider to be modern geoarchaeology at various sites in North America. The term ‘geoarchaeology’ was first coined in 1973 by Karl Butzer. In 1976, D. A. Davidson and M. L. Shackley published Geoarchaeology: Earth Science and the Past. In the preface of this book, C. Renfrew put forth that ‘‘...every problem in archaeology starts as a problem in geoarchaeology’’. As geoarchaeology began to come together as a true discipline, the Geological Society of America established the Division of Archaeological Geology in 1977. Over the next two decades, there was a series of important works published which has defined modern geoarchaeology and brought the field further into the forefront of archaeology. These works include: Archaeology as Human Ecology (1982) by K. Butzer; Site Formation Processes (1983) by M. Schiffer; Archaeological Geology (1985) by G. Rapp and J. A. Gifford; Archaeological Sediments in Context (1985) by J. Stein and W. Farrand; Geoarchaeology: An International Journal was first published in 1986; Geoarchaeology: A North

American Perspective by M. R. Waters; Geoarchaeology: The Earth-Science Approach to Archaeological Interpretation (1998) by G. Rapp and C. Hill; Earth Sciences and Archaeology (2001) by P. Goldberg, V. T. Holliday, and C. R. Ferring; and Practical and Theoretical Geoarchaeology (2006) by P. Goldberg and R. I. Macphail. Particularly, over the past 10 years, geoarchaeologists have made solid progress on clarifying the research objectives of geoarchaeology and refining methods used for both large-scale and sitespecific geoarchaeological studies.

The Natural Context of the Archaeological Record: Landscapes, Sediments, and Soils Modern landscapes consist of a surface which is shaped by many different types of landforms. Landscapes overlie the Earth’s bedrock. Between the landscape surface and bedrock, is a complex sequence of sediments which were deposited and eroded by various processes. Typically, soils form on these sediments when exposed at the surface and before they are buried. The nature and characteristics of sediments and soils are rarely static. Sediments are affected by various physical and chemical processes and other types of disturbance whether caused by humans, animals, plants, or soil formation. Sediments and soils preserve buried or partially buried archaeological sites contained within these units. If sediments have undergone transformations, it is likely that the archaeological material buried within has been affected to some extent as well. Stratigraphy studies these layers and determines the chronological sequence of sediments and soils over time. Through field observation, stratigraphic studies place these layers in a relative chronological sequence (i.e., the deepest layers are generally older than overlying layers which are sequentially younger towards the surface). If datable material is found in these layers, then this material can be dated to provide a more absolute chronology for the sequence of layers. Each layer is considered a stratigraphic unit of sediment which was deposited at or over a period of time depending on the rate of deposition. Stratigraphic units are characterized by features such as texture (i.e., percentage of sand, silt, and clay), structure (i.e., which may indicate how the unit was deposited), and mineralogy (i.e., types of minerals present in the sediment). If a stratigraphic unit indicates that it has undergone soil formation, then the unit is further subdivided into soil horizons which are classified by their pedogenic features. Soils are very important to archaeology because soil formation indicates that the surface of a particular stratigraphic unit was once a

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stable surface. Therefore, the surface was potentially occupied by humans. In addition, soils can be widespread and sometimes they can be correlated with soils in other regions.

Factors in Archaeological Site Preservation Archaeological sites may be occupied on surfaces with active deposition, erosional surfaces, or stable surfaces undergoing soil formation. If a site is located in an environment of active deposition, it is likely that the site will be buried and incorporated into the stratigraphic unit. If the sedimentation rate is rapid, there will be a clear distinction between this occupation level and overlying units or subsequent occupations. If the sedimentation rate is slow, archaeological materials from successive occupations could become mixed together since they would not be separated by depositional units.

Site Preservation

There are many different formation processes which play a role in the preservation of the archaeological record. Some preserve cultural material better than others. In an ideal situation, a site would be rapidly buried by sediments with little disturbance and be minimally affected by postdepositional processes. In essence, such an environment would seal an archaeological deposit into the stratigraphy, for example, many cave sites have this level of preservation. However, well-preserved archaeological sites can be later threatened by postdepositional processes and landscape destruction. In reality, a majority of archaeological sites are affected by some type of postdepositional process and geoarchaeological studies are necessary to evaluate the impact of these processes on interpretations of past human behavior.

Soils

Large-scale and Site-specific Research in Geoarchaeology

Soils in stratigraphy are important to archaeology because they indicate a significant period of stability when a landscape surface was stable and not undergoing significant deposition or erosion. Soils may take many years to form and therefore these surfaces would be exposed to potential human occupation during these periods of stability as with modern landscapes. In addition, buried soils (i.e., buried paleosols) provide geoarchaeologists with valuable information about surface topography and past landscape conditions. In addition, their physical and chemical characteristics aid in reconstructing past climates. However, soils can cause problems for the preservation of an archaeological site. Soil formation processes can have a direct influence on the preservation of archaeological material. Such processes include the shrinking–swelling of clay, mineral oxidation– reduction, the accumulation and decay of organic matter, translocation or removal of salt, eluviation, iluviation, as well as bioturbation. Organic material such as plant, shell, and bone can deteriorate from leaching, oxidation, and biogenic degradation in soils. Downward translocation of carbonates promotes bone deterioration in leached horizons. Eluvial horizons become more prone to erosion and the stratigraphic context can be destroyed for a site located in that soil horizon. Bioturbation is often more common in soils and can translocate artifacts to the surface. Soils do provide some benefits for preserving the archaeological record. For example, the translocation of salts in calcic horizons can promote the preservation of shell and bone.

Geoarchaeology is conducted on large and small scales. Regional or large-scale geoarchaeology reconstructs landscape and paleoenvironmental history. Smaller-scale projects in geoarchaeology are more site specific and focus on the stratigraphy and features of an archaeological site. Large-scale geoarchaeological projects might focus on the segment of a river valley. Such a project may reconstruct the landscape history of the river valley by establishing the sequence of deposition, erosion, and soil formation from the period just prior to human occupation. The archaeological record of this portion of the valley could then be placed within this landscape history for relative dating. In addition, within this landscape reconstruction, it would then be possible to interpret the natural formation processes acting at each archaeological site. Finally, the preservation of the archaeological record could be evaluated and the impact of landscape history could be analyzed for its potential influence on settlement patterns. As a result of this type of project, a geoarchaeologist can formulate predictive models for locating archaeological sites and contribute inputs into the effect of landscape on settlement patterns. For example, recent geoarchaeological work has been conducted in Argentina by the author on a large river valley on the border between Patagonia and the Pampas. Extensive fieldwork included survey, detailed stratigraphic recording, analysis of the geomorphology, recording of archaeological sites, and collection of samples for geological analysis, radiocarbon dating, and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating.

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As a result, it was possible to reconstruct the landscape of a 150 km segment of this valley from its initial formation and place the stratigraphy and each landform into a chronological framework from the Late Pleistocene through the Holocene. As a result, it was then possible to place the known archaeological record into this chronological framework and landscape context. It was also possible to evaluate the preservation and natural formation processes of each known archaeological site. In addition, a predictive model was constructed for the location of archaeological sites for each time period based on this landscape reconstruction. In short, archaeological sites from the Middle Holocene will be found buried in Middle Holocene landforms on Middle Holocene land surfaces, etc. Now it is also possible to interpret how the landscape history of this valley could have had an influence on past human settlement patterns and there are very good indications that abrupt changes in the river course also contributed to shifts in settlement. Site-specific geoarchaeology has now become very common. A geoarchaeologist is called in to help interpret the stratigraphy and answer specific research questions. For example, micromorphological analysis could be used to investigate postdepositional processes which occurred at a site. Micromorphology is a geoarchaeological method of analyzing thin sections of sediments using microscopy. Micromorphology can be used to decipher the microstratigraphy and reveal discrete traces of human behavior that would otherwise be destroyed through physical and chemical analysis or not identified macroscopically from field observation (i.e., through stratigraphic recording). Such discrete archaeological features found in thin section can be potentially important to largescale archaeological interpretations at archaeological sites. In addition, it is possible to locate geological and pedological features that can be important for understanding the geoarchaeology of a site, which in turn forms the basis for archaeological interpretations. Geoarchaeological micromorphology became more prominent in the late 1980s and early 1990s after the publication of Soils and Micromophology in Archaeology by M. Courty, P. Goldberg, and R. Macphail in 1989. This handbook formalized micromorphological analysis at archaeological sites and illustrated the value of this technique through specific case studies. For example, a micromorphological analysis was recently conducted at a North American Clovis site by the author. Samples were collected from the site in order to analyze the degree of groundwater impact on archaeological evidence, the extent that soil formation processes have affected a site, the presence and

extent of any bioturbation even on the microscale, and to search for any evidence of discrete occupational surfaces. As a result of this analysis, although minor postdepositional processes did occur at this site, the site is fully intact and has not been altered significantly by these processes to affect archaeological interpretations. Both scales of research in geoarchaeology are crucial for evaluating the archaeological record.

Geoarchaeology Over the Past 10 Years Geoarchaeology: An International Journal is probably the most prominent forum for publishing geoarchaeological studies worldwide. This journal was first published in January 1986. For more than 20 years, this journal has allowed the geoarchaeology community to present a wide variety of studies from many different regions. Over the past 10 years, Geoarchaeology has published over 400 articles. A vast majority of these articles report on research conducted at prehistoric sites (c. 80–85%) although there are a number of articles on historical, Biblical, and Classical sites as well. The geographic distribution of modern geoarchaeological studies over the past 10 years is vast. Geoarchaeology has published articles on studies from every continent including: Africa (e.g., Egypt, Kenya, Ethiopia, Libya, and Zaire); throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, Asia (e.g., Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, and Cambodia); Australia, New Zealand; and the Americas (e.g., Canada, United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, and Argentina). This basic overview illustrates how at the beginning of the twenty-first century, geoarchaeology is now practiced worldwide and the abundance of publications indicates how the field of geoarchaeology has grown since the 1970s.

Conclusions All archaeological sites have natural context. Context constantly changes and these changes can have a major impact on the preservation of the archaeological record and our interpretations of past human behavior. As an interdisciplinary field, geoarchaeology explores the context of the archaeological record using methods from the geosciences. Geoarchaeology has its own theoretical orientation. However, as with archaeology, its primary goal is to reconstruct past human behavior. See also: Archaeoastronomy; Archaeometry; Bioarchaeology; Economic Archaeology.

1414 GOALS OF ARCHAEOLOGY, OVERVIEW

Further Reading Butzer KW (1982) Archaeology as Human Ecology: Method and Theory for a Contextual Approach. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ferring CR (1992) Alluvial pedology and geoarchaeological research. In: Holiday VT (ed.) Soils in Archaeology: Landscape and Human Occupation. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Gladfelter BG (1981) Developments and directions in geoarchaeology. In: Schiffer MB (ed.) Advances in Archaeological Methods and Theory, pp. 343–364. New York: Academic Press. Goldberg P, Holliday VT, and Ferring CR (2001) Earth Sciences and Archaeology. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Goldberg P and Macphail R (2006) Practical and Theoretical Geoarchaeology. Malden: Blackwell.

Glass

Huckleberry G (2000) Interdisciplinary and specialized geoarchaeology: A post-Cold War perspective. Geoarchaeology 15: 523–536. Rapp GR and Hill CL (1998) Geoarchaeology: The Earth-Science Approach to Archaeological Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press. Stein JK and Farrand WR (1985) Archaeological Sediments in Context. Peopling of the Americas. Edited volume series, vol. 1. Orono: Center for the Study of Early Man Institute for Quaternary Studies University of Maine at Orono. Waters MR (1992) Principles of Geoarchaeology: A North American Perspective. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Waters MR (1999) Geoarchaeology: the Earth-science approach to archaeological interpretation; geological methods for archaeology (Book Review). Geoarchaeology 14: 365–369.

See: Vitreous Materials Analysis.

GOALS OF ARCHAEOLOGY, OVERVIEW Donald L Hardesty, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary archaeological record The physical remains produced by past human activities, which are recovered, studied, and interpreted by archaeologists to construct knowledge of the past. culture history A history of the cultures that inhabited a particular location or region. processual archaeology A branch of archaeology which seeks to understand the nature of cultural change by a study of the variables which cause it, usually in a manner characteristic of ‘new archaeology’. post-processual archaeology A relatively new school of archaeological thinking that uses the ideational strategy and cautions against the shortcomings of scientific methods and the new (or processual) archaeology. hermeneutics The theory and methodology of interpretation, especially of scriptural text.

Introduction Several goals underlie the practice of archaeology. They include documentation of the archaeological record of the human past, establishing chronologies

and culture histories, the reconstruction of past lifestyles and cultures, the explanation of variability and change in past human behavior and the human condition, stewardship of the archaeological record, and understanding contemporary environmental problems and planning for sustainable futures.

Documenting the Archaeological Record The material remains that make up the archaeological record create a repository of information about the human past that is both independent of and complementary to written records, memories, and oral traditions. Documentation of the archaeological record is, therefore, the most fundamental goal underlying the practice of archaeology. It involves the activities of discovery, recovery, and recording. The activities of discovery include searching for and identifying material remains of the human past with the assistance of pedestrian surveys, remote-sensing technologies such as satellite images and ground penetrating radar, test excavations, and chemical surveys. Recovery includes the methods of mapping and excavation. Recording the archaeological record involves the use of photographs, drawings, maps, and narrative description.

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Establishing Chronologies and Culture Histories Another goal is culture history, placing the archaeological record within a chronological framework and identifying geographical, environmental, and cultural linkages that help answer the questions of when, where, and who. Culture histories involve the use of chronological (e.g., periods), geographical (e.g., culture areas), and cultural classifications (e.g., phases, components) to organize the archaeological record. It uses geographical distributions to answer questions about migrations of human populations (e.g., earliest peopling of the Americas or the Hawaiian Islands) and the spread of technologies and technological innovations such as bronze metallurgy, irrigation agriculture, and monumental architecture. Using the archaeological record to answer the question of ‘who’ often involves the use of artifact markers associated with the cultural traditions of specific human groups such as the Vikings or the Scythians. Culture histories drove most archaeological research until the second half of the twentieth century, and archaeological research in poorly documented places is typically driven by this goal today. Culture history explains social and cultural change with historically specific internal or external mechanisms. Internal mechanisms include population growth and individual variation in behavior such as innovation, drift, and selection. External mechanisms include environmental change, population movement, and the diffusion of ideas.

Reconstructing Lifestyles and Cultures Reconstructing the lifestyles of people who lived in the past is another goal of archaeology. Toward this end, the archaeological record is used as a source of information about the material conditions of life in the human past including environments, subsistence activities, and economic systems such as trading networks, demography and populations, and technologies. Another objective is to reconstruct social relations. Included are archaeological studies of social groups and networks such as households, settlements and settlement systems, and political economies such as states and world-systems. Archaeological studies of culturally constructed social groups defined by gender, social hierarchies such as class and rank, ethnicity and ethnic groups, and occupation are also included. Yet another objective is to construct cultures, ideologies, and belief systems through the material expression of past behaviors such as mortuary complexes, rock and cave art, and landscapes.

Explanation Another goal of archaeology is to understand variability and change in past human behavior and the human condition, to answer the questions of ‘why’ and ‘how’ in addition to the ‘where’, ‘when’, and ‘who’ inquiries driving the goal of culture history. Toward this end, archaeologists may use ‘processual’ or ‘post-processual’ approaches. Processualism involves the use of theories and models of general social, cultural, and natural processes to explain variation and change and is based upon the epistemologies of positivist philosophers such as Carl Hempel that assume objectivity and focus upon observeroriented interpretations. Searching for general laws of human behavior by using research strategies that follow the rules of deduction, beginning with theories from which hypotheses could be derived and tested with observations of the archaeological record, is one strategy. Another is to use systems models that focus upon the ecological, social, or cultural functions of past human behavior. Processual approaches to explanation used in archaeology include cultural evolution, evolutionary ecology, world-systems, and structuralism. In contrast, post-processualism uses ‘hermeneutic’ structures to interpret the past. The hermeneutic approach considers the interplay between meaning and the social actions of individuals and social groups. Rather than general processes, it focuses upon the role of social agents acting to achieve goals within a complex social field made up of gender, class, political faction, ethnicity, race, and ecological setting as the key player. Hermeneutic structures assume that all material things carry meanings that reflect constantly changing individual experiences, goals, and social relations. The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, which denies the assumption of objectivity and accumulated knowledge that underlies scientific explanation, is the philosophy that underlies this approach; it stresses social responsibility and critically evaluates how the social and cultural context within which archaeologists do research influences their interpretations of the past.

Stewardship Stewardship is another goal of archaeology. The preservation and management of the material remains of the past and the archaeological record drives much of the practice of archaeology today. Early efforts to preserve ancient buildings and monuments include the Roman emperor Hadrian, a 1462 decree by Pope Pius II to document and preserve ancient houses and monuments in the Vatican, a 1666 law in Sweden

1416 GOALS OF ARCHAEOLOGY, OVERVIEW

prohibiting the destruction of antiquities, and the 1882 Ancient Monuments Act in England. The 1960s and 1970s brought a plethora of national, state, and local preservation laws and policies (e.g., the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 in the United States and the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act of 1979 in England) and established the practice of what is known as rescue archaeology or cultural resource management (see Cultural Resource Management). International conventions such as the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (World Heritage Convention), the ICOMOS International Charter for Archaeological Heritage Management, and the European Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage of the Council of Europe also play a significant role in archaeological stewardship. Toward this end, professional archaeological societies (e.g., Society for American Archaeology, European Association of Archaeologists) have created programs for sustainable heritage preservation. Site preservation is one component. The newly established site preservation program of the Archaeological Institute of America, for example, focuses on the Greco-Roman city of Cyrene in Libya and includes signage, interpretative publications, cataloging and digitizing records, and training programs in cultural heritage management and tourism. Stewardship also involves the preservation of archaeological collections and records. Heritage education (e.g., The Heritage Education Network) and heritage tourism (e.g., the Heritage Tourism Program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Los Caminos del Rio Heritage Corridor in Texas) are other components of archaeological stewardship. Future preservation is a significant problem. Henry Cleere, former ICOMOS coordinator, identifies the major current threats to the global archaeological heritage as atmospheric pollution, warfare, natural disasters, looting, unsympathetic urban and infrastructure planning, inadequate site management, and over-excavation.

Planning for Sustainable Futures Finally, another goal of archaeology is to document and apply historical knowledge of past

Greek Colonies

human–environmental interactions to the understanding of contemporary environmental problems and planning for future sustainability (see Historic Roots of Archaeology). Toward this end, archaeologists seek to develop long-term historical models of natural and social dynamics that consider time depth, responses to infrequent natural processes and hazards, and legacies of past land use patterns and human decision making in the context of cultural attitudes and perceptions to order to understand contemporary environmental problems and to forecast future changes. Multidisciplinary projects such as the archaeomedes and Emporda´ programs in Europe’s southern Mediterranean Basin and the Central Arizona-Phoenix project in the United States illustrate the approach. See also: Anthropological Archaeology; Archaeology Laboratory, Overview; Cognitive Archaeology; Cultural Resource Management; Evolutionary Archaeology; Historic Preservation Laws; Historic Roots of Archaeology; Historical Materialist Approaches; Illicit Antiquities; Marxist Archaeology; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act; Pedestrian Survey Techniques; Processual Archaeology; World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

Further Reading Fagan B and DeCorse CR (2004) In the Beginning: An Introduction to Archaeology, 11th edn. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Hester TR, Shafer HJ, and Feder KL (1997) Field Methods in Archaeology, 7th edn. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hodder I and Hutson S (2003) Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology, 3rd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. King TF (2004) Doing Archaeology: A Cultural Resource Management Perspective. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. McGlade J (1995) Archaeology and the ecodynamics of humanmodified landscapes. Antiquity 69: 113–132. Renfrew C and Bahn P (2005) Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice, 4th edn. London: Thames and Hudson. Spector J (1993) What this Awl Means. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press. Tilley C (1994) A Phenomenology of Landscape. Oxford, Providence: Berg. Van der Leeuw S and Redman CL (2000) Placing archaeology at the center of socio-natural studies. American Antiquity 67(4): 597–605. Voss B and Schmidt R (eds.) (1999) Archaeologies of Sexuality. New York: Routledge.

See: Europe, South: Greek Colonies.

H Hazardous Environments

See: Toxic and Hazardous Environments.

HEALTH, HEALING, AND DISEASE Charlotte Roberts, Durham University, Durham, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary anemia Reduction of red blood cells/hemoglobin below normal in blood. biomolecular A molecule produced by living cells, for example, a protein. brucellosis An infection of humans contracted from goats, pigs, sheep, cows, and horses. caries Decay of teeth. cleft palate Nonfusion of the two halves of the bony palate of the mouth. congenital A condition that somebody is born with. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) A protein in cells. endocrine Relating to the endocrine system; a series of glands that secrete hormones. epilepsy A transient disturbance of brain function. hemoglobin Oxygen-carrying pigment of red blood cells. histological Minute structure and composition of body tissues. infection Invasion and multiplication of microorganisms in the body (bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses). isotope A chemical element. leprosy Transmitted by inhaling droplets from the lungs of infected humans. migraine Periodic headaches, often with nausea, caused by constriction of cranial arteries. neoplastic Any new and abnormal growth; cell multiplication is uncontrolled and progressive. osteoporosis Abnormal loss of bone mass. plague An infection transmitted to humans by fleas from infected rats. sinusitis Inflammation of the air-filled sinuses of the face. tuberculosis An infection transmitted to humans from other humans (droplet infection from the lungs) or by ingesting infected products of animals. venereal syphilis An infection transmitted venereally.

Introduction Health can be defined as freedom from disease, and in a state of physical, mental, and social well-being,

while disease represents an impairment of normal function of the human body and includes conditions such as infections, tumors, and dental problems. A basic component of life itself, all populations from past to present have experienced the effect disease can have on their social, economic, and political well-being. While archaeology is the study of people, the success or failure of people and the societies in which they lived can only directly be measured by exploring evidence of their health and their efforts to control it. We only have to appreciate how debilitating the effects of influenza can be to understand the effects diseases had on our ancestors who had no access to effective health care, including drug therapy.

Evidence for Disease Types of Evidence from the Archaeological and Historical Records

In the field of archaeology it is possible to study health and disease through a number of avenues. These include palaeopathology, or the consideration of disease in skeletons and mummified bodies from archaeological sites (see Frozen Sites and Bodies); the study of artwork, such as sculpture, and illustrations on pottery or in paintings, which show people suffering from disease or being treated; descriptions of disease in historical written manuscripts; and the study of artifacts (e.g., medical and surgical instruments), ecofacts (e.g., medicinal plant pollen), and structural evidence (e.g., the remains of hospitals). Some of these avenues are plentiful and unambiguous while others can be very difficult to analyze and interpret. For example, written accounts of disease may be influenced by the author’s preferences and interpretation of events, which may bear no resemblance to the facts of the time. Furthermore, signs and symptoms of a number of diseases may be similar and

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therefore difficult to differentiate when described. For example, tuberculosis, chronic bronchitis, lung cancer, and pneumonia may all induce breathlessness and coughing up blood. Artistic representation can also be ambiguous, for example, when a rash is depicted, a sign that can equally apply to many diseases such as leprosy and smallpox. Likewise, the study of human skeletal remains may provide only a basic understanding of what diseases were prevalent at a certain point in time because not all diseases affect the skeleton, and few bodies with preserved soft tissue are found in archaeological contexts. Thus, some evidence is more useful for some diseases than others. In addition, the different types of evidence for disease may be more commonly found in different temporal and geographic contexts. For example, it is only when urban centers develop that we see more organized attempts to control and treat disease, with the founding of hospitals and the manufacture of surgical instruments. Methods of Study of Human Remains

The study of cremated and inhumed human remains from archaeological sites provides the primary evidence for disease, and the funerary contexts from which they derive vary both spatially and temporally. For example, in the Neolithic of Europe chambered cairns predominate, often with mixed burials, while later in the Medieval period discrete burials in large cemeteries are the norm; this makes analysis of disease from different contexts challenging (see Burials: Dietary Sampling Methods). Methods of identification of human remains include visual/ macroscopic, histological, radiographic, and biomolecular techniques, with the majority of evidence coming from macroscopic analysis in the last 10 years, the use of biomolecular methods such as the extraction and amplification of DNA from specific diseasecausing organisms has enabled the identification of soft tissue disease in skeletal remains, such as plague and malaria, and the presence of disease in people who have died before bone changes occurred. For example, plague DNA has been found in the teeth of skeletons from post-Medieval plague pits in southern France. Most research on palaeopathology is focused on the most commonly found human remains on archaeological sites, skeletons and, generally speaking, for many parts of the world, smaller numbers of prehistoric burials have been found than for later periods. This might reflect differences in disposal of the dead (e.g., cremation vs. inhumation), and the ability of archaeologists to find the evidence. However, the survival of buried bodies depends very much on the burial environment, and this also determines whether whole bodies survive to be excavated.

For example, hot and cold (dry) environments preserve bodies well, including soft tissue, but there are relatively few mummified bodies available for analysis compared with skeletal remains. Categories of Disease Identifiable

The evidence for disease in skeletal remains can be categorized into congenital, dental, joint, infectious, circulatory, metabolic, endocrine, neoplastic, and trauma, with the dental, joint, infectious, and trauma categories providing more abundant evidence. Thus, it is therefore clear that many diseases are absent when compared with the suite of health problems affecting human populations today. Stature, however, is also a good indicator of health because it is in the growing years when an adequate wellbalanced diet and freedom from disease are essential for populations to attain their optimal height for their age, sex, population, geographic location, and time period. In adults, unless a medical complaint is affecting height, reduced height usually indicates a chronic dietary deficiency or disease. A number of studies of children’s skeletons have also indicated that reduced growth of bones is usually seen in skeletons with a number of indicators of stress such as dental enamel defects, and children with shorter bones are seen to die younger in the past. Congenital disease may be genetic or nongenetically initiated and includes conditions such as spina bifida and cleft palate, and dental disease tells us something about diet, childhood stress, occupation, dental care, and dentistry. For example, recent research on skeletons from Bahrain shows few caries, which may reflect the naturally high fluoride levels in drinking water protecting the teeth. Identification of how people may use their teeth for particular activities has also shown us, through particular wear patterns, that people from post-Medieval England smoked pipes and held nails in their teeth for carpentry, and that nineteenth-century Inuit Eskimo women held animal skins in their front teeth to stretch and soften them to make into clothes. Trauma gives us an indication of domestic and interpersonal violence, along with efforts made to treat injuries, and joint disease can show the process of aging and the effects of work on the joints. For example, research on skeletons from the fifteenth-century English battlefield site of Towton found many with unhealed injuries to their skulls (around four per skull), supporting historical documentation for the site of the battle. Infections may be nonspecific (we do not know what specific organism caused the infection) or specific (where we do, e.g., Mycobacterium leprae is the organism causing leprosy) and may inform us about levels of hygiene, living conditions, population density, trade, and the

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keeping of animals and the consumption of their products. Brucellosis and tuberculosis are both infections that can be contracted by humans from their infected animals by ingesting or working with their infected products. The first evidence for tuberculosis comes from Italy, dated to the Neolithic, and probably relates to domestication of animals. Many examples of tuberculosis have been identified in the archaeological record (Figure 1) but, in contrast, few records of brucellosis have been reported: some examples derive from Herculaneum, Italy and date to AD 79 when Mount Vesuvius erupted and preserved the site under volcanic ash. Sixteen of the 151 individuals had evidence of brucellosis in their skeletons and it was also identified in preserved dairy products. Circulatory disease tells us about problems of the normal circulation of the blood around the body which may impact on the skeleton, and disorders of the metabolism and endocrine system (metabolic and endocrine disease) such as scurvy and thyroid problems, respectively, may help us understand dietary and other deficiencies. For example, osteoporosis has been identified in individual skeletons (e.g., sixth-century Negev Desert in Israel) but also in larger groups of burials (see Osteological Methods; Figure 2). A recent study found a higher rate of bone loss in a Medieval population in England than today which was surprising considering the (assumed) more active lifestyle of the past. While neoplastic and congenital disease is uncommon in the archaeological record, evidence may suggest that increasingly complex societies develop more of these conditions. For example, in Britain there is very scarce evidence in prehistory but this increases from the Roman period onwards; pollutants in the atmosphere and a more complex diet

may be predisposing people to tumors and congenital disease (Figure 3). While many diseases can be recognized, the reader should be aware that poor sample representivity (making results ambiguous), the inability to age adult skeletons accurately and sex nonadult skeletons (making demographic profiles incomplete), pseudopathological lesion differentiation, the problem of identifying specific diseases beyond the disease category, and the lack of ability to identify soft tissue diseases without the use of ancient DNA analysis (also fraught with problems) make the study of health and disease in skeletal remains very challenging. Added to this are the limited ways in which the skeleton can react to disease (bone formation and destruction, in particular skeletal pattern, based on clinical data).

Figure 2 Compression fractures of vertebrae: Early Medieval England.

Figure 1 Tuberculosis of the spine: Early Modern period, North America.

Figure 3 Tumor on fibula from Early Medieval England.

1420 HEALTH, HEALING, AND DISEASE Disease within Its Cultural Context

Bound up with the evidence of disease is the necessary consideration of that evidence in context. A population’s general living environment (inside and outside the home), the climate and weather patterns, levels of hygiene, cleanliness of food and water supply, what work they do, and who and what they come into contact with, plus their biological sex, age, social status, and ethnicity, all affect what diseases they might contract. Studying disease for its own sake and in isolation from the context from which the evidence comes makes its analysis and interpretation incomplete. The quality and quantity of food and a balanced diet is particularly important in developing a strong immune system to withstand disease. Until relatively recently, it has only been possible to detect dietary deficiencies in skeletal remains, but stable isotope analysis of carbon, strontium, and nitrogen in teeth and bones can now allow us to assess the types of plants eaten and the contribution of marine and terrestrial animals to the diet (see Stable Isotope Analysis). For example, in Portugal more plant and animal domesticates were being eaten in the Neolithic compared to the Mesolithic, and in the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic Ukraine hunting, fishing, and gathering provided the protein component of the diet, but there was an increase in fish consumption in the later Neolithic. By looking at the details of dietary intake, it becomes possible to assess whether diet was a contributory factor to health or disease for our ancestors. It is also necessary to understand that concepts of health, disease, and how disease should be treated, vary today around the world and between developed and developing countries. For example, Graeco-Roman medicine considered divine displeasure as a major cause of disease and, while Roman medicine advocated a preventive approach to health by regulating food and drink, taking regular exercise, massages, baths, and relaxation, it also utilized herbal remedies alongside the influence of gods, goddesses, and magical remedies for treating disease. It is therefore important to understand that how populations deal with disease can vary considerably both temporally and geographically.

times were the transition to agriculture from hunting and gathering, the development of urban centers, and the rise of industrialization. As people started to domesticate plants and animals, for example, in Neolithic Europe, population numbers began to rise and settled communities developed with permanent housing. In effect, to support an increased population, agriculture had to develop, and today it remains the mainstay of feeding the world. The risks to the health of these human populations practicing agriculture lay in increased population density, allowing infectious disease to be transmitted more readily, diseases of their animals being passed to them via contaminated meat and milk (e.g., tuberculosis), the accumulation of refuse and waste in their settlements attracting vermin and disease, the challenges of maintaining a clean water supply, and a decline in the variety of food available, with a reliance on cereal crops. Many studies of skeletons from this period of time around the world reveal an increase from the preceding period of hunting and gathering of iron-deficiency anemia, infectious diseases, stress markers in bones and teeth, trauma, and dental and joint disease. For example, in North America, there appears to be a consistent trend for an increase in caries of the teeth with the transition to maize agriculture (Figure 4). Maize is a highly cariogenic food containing high levels of sugar (sucrose) which are very readily metabolized by bacteria in the mouth. In addition to this sugar contribution to the diet, there was also a decline in wear on the teeth, which allowed food to accumulate between the cusps of the molars and premolars. In contrast, in Britain caries does not increase until the Roman period (first to fourth centuries AD) – 7.5% of total teeth – and the Late and post-Medieval periods – 5.6% and 11.2% of teeth – when imports of exotic sugary foodstuffs, and sugar, respectively led to

Health at Major Transitions Domestication of Plants and Animals

There are a handful of times during human prehistory and history when major changes/transitions in the environment and socio-economic situation have led to problems with health, and it is therefore logical to concentrate on what happened to health at these transitions (a question-driven approach). These major

Figure 4 Dental caries in a premolar and molar tooth from a hunter-gatherer individual from North America.

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these increases; in this case sugar in cereals was not the main cause. Furthermore, not all cereal crops have a high sugar content; in Thailand, where rice was (and is) the staple crop, there was a relatively low rate of caries found. Skeletal changes of anemia are also seen in higher frequencies in settled communities in the past. Again, North America provides abundant evidence and two main factors are probably at work. Maize is deficient in iron and contains substances that make iron hard to absorb from the gut; a diet reliant on maize may have predisposed people to anemia. The other factor may be related to increases in infection in agricultural communities due to a rise in population density and poor sanitation leading to parasitic infection of the gut, hemorrhage, and malabsorption of foodstuffs into the body, including iron. However, there are instances where high rates of caries and anemia are found in hunter-gatherers (Figure 5). In Australian prehistoric aboriginal populations, for example, the evidence for anemia is high in tropical/subtropical environments but low in desert

communities, suggesting that the former environment may be predisposing people to parasitic infection and anemia. Multiple indicators of stress including dental enamel defects (poor nutrition) and infection also appear to commonly occur in agricultural communities in the past, for example, at Dickson Mounds, Illinois (AD 950–1300) in North America, which suggests that, in general terms, practicing agriculture was detrimental to health. The hunter-gatherer group at this site had 0.9 defects per individual; 1.18 defects were found in the mixed hunter-gatherer/agriculture group, and the fully agricultural group had 1.61 defects. Furthermore, reduced age at death has been noted in individuals whose skeletons reveal dental enamel defects (Figure 6). Another study, which examined health at the agricultural transition compared a hunter-gatherer (50 BC–AD 200) and agricultural (AD 1050–1250) group of skeletons from West-central Illinois. It was found, through analyzing the cross-sectional shape of the femur and humerus, that females had stronger bones in the agricultural group; it was suggested that they were instrumental in growing and processing of cereal crops. Development of Urban Centers

Figure 5 Cribra orbitalia (anemia) in an orbit of the skull: Late Medieval France.

Figure 6 Dental enamel hypoplasia from Late Medieval England (grooves of the teeth).

As time went by social organization became more complex, more sophisticated artifacts and buildings appeared, and trade links became established. Urban centers developed, for example, in Late Medieval Europe, with their accompanying advantages and disadvantages. Large population increases led to people living in high densities, often crowded into inadequate housing with poor sanitation and drinking polluted water. Urban centers brought trade and new resources, and immigrants, attracted to the towns and cities for work and resources, but people also brought disease with them. Studies of human remains from urban contexts generally have revealed poor health compared to populations living in rural environments. For example, a study of sinusitis in rural and urban Late Medieval English populations found a generally higher rate in urban inhabitants and the most severe sinusitis in the males of one particular urban site (Figure 7). There were 72% of individuals affected at one urban site (St. Helen-on-the-Walls, York), with 76% of males and 69% of females involved, while at one of the rural sites (Wharram Percy, Yorkshire) 51% were affected (44% of the males and 60% of the females). Although sinusitis can be caused by many factors, such as allergies, house dust, and smoke caused by burning fuels such as dung, wood and peat, by analyzing whether dental disease (a contributory factor for sinusitis) had led to sinusitis, it was found that it contributed very little to urban sinusitis compared with rural sites; this suggested

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Figure 7 Pitting of bone on sinus floor (sinusitis) from Early Medieval England.

Figure 9 Nonspecific infection in a lower leg bone from North America (right bone in figure).

Figure 8 Healed fracture to the tibia and fibula (lower leg bones) from Late Medieval England.

Figure 10 Damage to a foot due to leprosy from a Late medieval individual from Denmark (normal foot at bottom).

that environmental pollution was the main factor causing this health problem in urban sites. Furthermore, it was known from documentary data that the males of the population at York were likely working in the many industries operating adjacent to the parish in which they lived. Lead poisoning may also occur as a result of pollution from certain industries, and in the Roman Empire the use of lead in water pipes, and lead vessels and utensils, predisposed to lead poisoning. Lead solders on tins of food also led to poisoning in victims of the nineteenth-century John Franklin expedition to the Canadian Arctic. Another example of urban versus rural differences in health can be seen in England where stature in Early Medieval (rural) populations tends to be higher than in later and post-Medieval (urban) populations. As stature is a measure of health during the growing years, a poor deficient diet and a young life exposed to pathogens will predispose to shorter long bones and

a reduced height compared to what would be expected. However, not all urban environments were necessarily more detrimental to health. A study of trauma (Figure 8) in rural and urban skeletal populations from Nubia found higher rates in the rural group, suggesting that cultivation and herding animals, and negotiating rough terrain, probably contributed to these high rates. Generally speaking, however, infectious diseases (Figure 9) such as tuberculosis (spread by droplet infection and through infected meat and milk), leprosy (Figure 10) (transmitted through droplet infection), and venereal syphilis (spread by sexual intercourse) were more prevalent in urban populations in the past purely because the conditions were right for their transmission. Venereal syphilis in Europe, for example, was very uncommon until the Late Medieval period, which reflects a time when urban living was more common, trade increased, and sexual promiscuity increased (Figure 11).

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Figure 11 Destruction of the skull due to venereal syphilis from Late Medieval Scotland.

Low levels of hygiene and contaminated foodstuffs and water also contribute to a depressed immune system, making people more susceptible to contracting infectious disease. Industrialization

In Europe the advent of industrialization in the early nineteenth century, where manufacturing industries became predominant, further increases in population density occurred, with a large part of the population eventually living in an urban environment. Housing could be very poor indeed with many families living in one room with inadequate ventilation, and diet could be deficient in certain constituents. Alongside industry came pollution of work places and the environment in general, and the population succumbed to diseases associated with their work. Analysis of human remains from this period has also shown poor health. A recent study of the skeletons of children from the eighteenth/nineteenth-century Christchurch, Spitalfields site in London, England found that industrialization had a major impact on health although some indicators were not as common as expected, due to other factors. Infant and child mortality was higher than in a comparative Late Medieval urban site, growth was more retarded, and there was a high rate of vitamin C and D deficiencies (scurvy and rickets). However, rates of respiratory infection were low compared with the Late Medieval urban site, which was also borne out by a study of the adults from the same population. This may be because the population, being of a high social status, was protected from ‘polluted’ air outside their homes, but also lived in lower population densities, thus preventing respiratory infections from spreading. Clearly, though, industrialized societies would generally be more exposed to a poor living environment, especially their place of work. Rickets, for example, became much more common

Figure 12 Rickets in leg bones from Early Medieval England.

with industrialization because people worked long hours in factories, lived in poverty, and were exposed to smog in their environment. This prevented ultraviolet light reaching their skins, something necessary for the production of vitamin D in the skin and the subsequent absorption of calcium and phosphorus to make strong bones. While the earliest case of rickets so far reported is from South Africa and dated to 4820  90 BC, and occasionally there are examples from the record of people living in rural environments with rickets, there are very few examples until the urban post-Medieval industrialized period (Figure 12).

Coping with Disease and Injury There were a number of ways in which past communities variously, both geographically and temporally, managed to deal with health problems. These can be divided into several categories, and include herbal remedies, blood letting using leeches or cupping, cautery (using heated irons on various points of the body), bathing, minor surgery such as applying herbal dressings to (or stitching) wounds, and more major surgery such as amputation, trepanation, or dental surgery. Of course, many of these procedures are invisible when trying to observe them in skeletal remains from archaeological sites, although indirect evidence such as surgical instruments may be present. It is here when other sources of evidence are particularly helpful. Documentary and Iconographic Evidence

Study of historical periods of time are particularly useful when it comes to evidence of medicine or surgery to treat disease in the form of documentary

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evidence describing treatments, and illustrations of therapy. Hippocrates, the Graeco-Roman author writing in the fifth-century BC, was particularly knowledgeable about the treatment of fractures where reduction (pulling apart the bone fragments and setting them in the right position) and splinting were recommended. This treatment of course is the mainstay of fracture therapy today. There are also many illustrations of treatment ranging from Greek vases dated to 400 BC depicting the bandaging of wounds, to the stitching of a wound in a thirteenth-century European manuscript, and major and minor surgery in Medieval illustrations. Documentary evidence also describes the extensive use of herbal remedies for specific ailments and diseases throughout history. It is likely that in prehistoric periods herbal remedies would also have been utilized for illnesses. For example, Culpeper, writing his herbal book in the post-Medieval period in England, prescribed camphor, liquorice, lungwort, mallow, poppy, polypodium, violet, and red roses for the treatment of tuberculosis. However, many remedies for illnesses prescribed by various authors were much more unconventional. For example, eating dead infant’s flesh was one remedy recommended for leprosy in Late Medieval Europe which particularly reflects the stigma attached to leprosy at this time and relates to the lack of understanding of what leprosy was and how it was contracted. Evidence from Human Remains

There is very little direct evidence for the treatment of disease and trauma from human remains from archaeological sites. One could argue that this is because many treatments are invisible in the archaeological record because most human remains are skeletons. The only direct evidence comes in the form of trepanation, or the removal of part of the skull for various reasons, and the amputation of limbs. Most fractures identified in skeletal remains are healed and therefore we would be unlikely to see evidence for splints, even though these are described in written descriptions and illustrated in artwork for specific periods. However, there are some interesting cases of treatment other than trepanation and amputation. A unique female mummy from Naples, Italy and dated to the sixteenth century, appeared to be that of a person who had suffered syphilis; her right arm had a lesion consistent with the infection which had an ivy leaf dressing applied (antiseptic) kept in place with linen bandages. Earlier examples of treatment of wounds come from England, Belgium, and Sweden where Medieval skeletons had copper plates applied to their upper arms where evidence for infection was

found (and that from England was lined with ivy leaves); in York, England a Medieval male skeleton had copper plates applied to an infected knee joint. Copper, of course, has antiseptic properties. Evidence of trepanation has been found throughout the world stretching back into prehistory. Why populations practiced this surgical procedure from such a long time ago is often a mystery. Suggestions for the reason for this operation include trauma, migraine, epilepsy, and to let the spirits out. Indeed, some skulls from archaeological sites have evidence of healed head wounds and trepanation holes, indicating an obvious reason for the surgery. In Peru, research showed a frequent association of skull fracture and trepanation in skulls dated to between 400 BC and AD 1500; in Peruvian Central Highland sites, from 212 skulls with trepanation, 55.7% of males, 31.6% of females, and 26.9% of subadults had associated skull fractures (Figure 13). However, many skulls have no direct evidence to indicate why the person underwent the procedure, although intracranial infection and scurvy have been suggested for an example in Israel dated to 3500 and 2200 BC, and a meningioma for one individual from the Czech Republic dated to AD 1298–1550, respectively. A number of types of trepanation holes have been identified, including scraped (common in Britain), gouged, and sawed (common in South America), and many have evidence of healing, suggesting that the operation had been a success. In a recent study of trepanations in Britain, almost twothirds of the 62 identified from the Neolithic to postMedieval periods had evidence of healing. What is not known is the possible associated brain damage that may have occurred during the procedure. Amputations (Figure 14) are also evident from skeletal and mummified remains but are very rare; they may be the result of surgical treatment but could equally be due to an accident, punishment, or ritual practice. Evidence of amputation has been found in a number of places and includes a 3600-year-old hand

Figure 13 Trepanation of the skull from South America.

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Figure 14 Amputation of a lower leg bone (tibia) from Late Medieval England.

amputation in a man from Israel, the amputation of a big toe discovered in a mummy from Thebes-West, Egypt and dated to 1550–1300 BC (with replacement prosthesis), and the amputation of a lower leg and forearm in a seventh-century male from the Isles of Sicily off the southwest coast of mainland England. It is highly likely that hemorrhage, shock and death would have quickly ensued should amputation have been practiced in the past, even though there is evidence that anesthesia and control of bleeding was practiced during operations in some cultures. There is, likewise, little evidence for dental disease treatment in the past from skeletal remains although written and illustrated sources, mainly from historic periods, attest to dentistry. The few examples of clear treatment that do exist include a drilled carious tooth from the Middle Neolithic period of Denmark (3200–1800 BC), gold fillings from Illinois, United States (AD 600), a bone rosary bead used as a filling in fifteenth-century Denmark, people with gold foil fillings and porcelain, ivory and bone dentures from eighteenth/nineteenth-century Christchurch, Spitalfields, London, gold bridgework and false teeth dated to 600 BC in Italy, and a drilled tooth with an abscess from Alaska dated to AD 1300–1700. Institutional, and Other Care and Treatment

The development of hospitals to take in the sick was particularly late in time. While the Romans built military hospitals within their Empire and had physicians, it was not until the Late Medieval period in Europe that hospitals developed on a larger scale. General hospitals opened to treat the sick and give charity to the poor, usually as a result of a rich benefactor feeling that it was necessary to provide such charity for their

own well-being after death. There were also more specialist hospitals to segregate and/or care/treat the leprous (leprosaria) and tuberculous (sanatoria). For example, the first sanatorium was founded in France in 1643 but it was not until the nineteenth century that the real concept was established for isolating tuberculosis sufferers in specifically designed institutions. A healthy diet with lots of protein, fresh air, sun, and a balance between exercise and rest were the main therapeutic remedies advocated. All around the world sanatoria opened, usually at high altitudes, with those in North America, becoming very big business. Before that time, specific dietary components such as milk to increase strength and resistance to tuberculosis (ancient Greeks), the ingestion of the meat of animals with ulcerated lungs (fourth/fifth-century AD Babylonia), and hyssop and fleawort boiled in sour wine (Galen, second-century AD) were advocated. Leprosy also invoked a reaction by communities, which suggests that like tuberculosis it was a disease which was associated with stigma. One of the reactions was to found leprosy hospitals to segregate the leprous and, although documentary sources from Medieval Europe attest to herbal and other treatments for leprosy, hospitals per se were not for treatment purposes. In Britain, over 300 leprosy hospitals were founded in the Late Medieval period, mainly between the eleventh- and sixteenth-century AD. However, by the fourteenth century foundations were declining and new hospitals tended to be established only in Scotland after that time. The diagnosis of leprosy was inaccurate, however, and generally relied on village elders, clerics, or physicians observing the facial characteristics of a suspect or the properties of their blood; this means that many people with leprosy were probably not diagnosed, while others were misdiagnosed. Likewise, treatment was also unconventional and involved the use of herbal remedies such as scabious and nettle, blood-letting, bathing at specific sites, and eating particular foods. Neither diagnosis nor treatment showed much logic or judgment but were more a reaction to a disease that was ill understood and feared. Clearly, evidence for our ancestors developing coping mechanisms for dealing with disease is abundant and comes from a variety of sources. While some of the treatments advocated are somewhat strange, it at least shows that societies were attempting to deal with health problems.

Conclusions Health, healing, and disease comprise very relevant areas of archaeological study because, if people in the past were unhealthy (and did not have access to health care), this impacted on how society functioned.

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For example, during the fourteenth-century plague in England a very large proportion of the population died, having a significant effect on the social, economic, and political structure of Late Medieval England. Multiple sources of evidence are available in order to explore how healthy our ancestors were, some being more useful than others. Human remains from archaeological sites, however, have provided us with extensive information about health and disease, and data have enabled us to focus on the impact on health of major changes in socio-economic situations. Future work in parts of the world where health data for the past are lacking, and developments in methods of analysis such as biomolecular analysis, will enable us to piece together more of the complex jigsaw puzzle that is the origin, evolution, and history of disease. While disease may be interesting for its own sake, it should not be forgotten that it is only when other archaeological data are utilized for its analysis and interpretation, that useful and informative patterns of health will emerge. See also: Burials: Dietary Sampling Methods; Frozen

Further Reading Arnott R, Finger S, and Smith CUM (eds.) (2003) Trepanation: History, Discovery, Theory. Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger. Aufderheide AC and Martı´n RC (1998) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Paleopathology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kiple K (ed.) (1993) The Cambridge World History of Human Disease. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Larsen CS (1997) Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Behaviour from the Human Skeleton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ortner DJ (2003) Identification of Pathological Conditions in Human Skeletal Remains, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Porter R (ed.) (1997) The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present. London: Harper Collins. Roberts CA and Cox M (2003) Health and Disease in Britain: From Prehistory to the Present Day. Gloucester: Sutton Publishing. Roberts CA and Manchester K (2005) The Archaeology of Disease, 3rd edn. Gloucester: Sutton Publishing. Rosen G (1993) A History of Public Health. London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Stone AC (2000) Ancient DNA from skeletal remains. In: Katzenberg MA and Saunders SA (eds.) Biological Anthropology of the Human Skeleton, pp. 351–371. New York: Wiley-Liss.

Sites and Bodies; Osteological Methods; Stable Isotope Analysis.

Heritage Sites

Hieroglyphs

See: World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

See: Writing Systems.

HISTORIC PRESERVATION LAWS Don D Fowler, Reno, NV, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary antiquities Relics, monuments, etc., of the distant past. heritage Something handed down from one’s ancestors or the past, as a characteristic, a culture, tradition, etc. law The set of rules or norms of conduct which forbid, permit or mandate specified actions and relationships among people and organizations.

Archaeology is best seen in relation to historic preservation law within the framework of the concept of cultural heritage as defined by David Lowenthal in 1996. History (including archaeology) is an ongoing scholarly endeavor which ‘‘explores and explains pasts grown ever more opaque with time; heritage clarifies pasts so as to infuse them with present purposes ... heritage aims to convert historical residues into witnesses that attest to our own ancestral virtues’’ (p. xi). Heritage consists of places – sites, buildings, structures, and landscapes, as well as objects and

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ideas – from the past that are used by those in the present as validating symbols of national, ethnic, tribal, religious, or social class identity or authority. While archaeology as history seeks to illuminate ‘opaque’ pasts by thorough scholarly research, the results of that research are often used for heritage purposes. Heritage laws are designed to preserve and provide means of interpreting the validating symbols that collectively form the cultural patrimony of a nation state, a significant subpopulation thereof, a consortium of states, such as the European Union, or all of humankind (see World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws). Herein, the terms ‘heritage laws’ and ‘heritage legislation’ are used as synonyms for ‘historic preservation law’.

Cultural Heritage and International Law Archaeology in the twenty-first century is increasingly conducted – and scrutinized – on the global scale. Hence, archaeological practice is, and will be, directly or indirectly structured by both national and public international heritage laws. Archaeology may be understood in relation to heritage legislation through the underlying concepts of the commons, stewardship, and knowledge-making as a public good. In the legal realm these concepts must be balanced against the rights of individuals, of indigenous/selfdefined groups, of nation states, of transnational entities such as the European Union, and of humanity on a global scale. Archaeology as a scholarly discipline shares long-held values in Western ideology about knowledge-making as a noble purpose carried out for the common public good. A basic assumption of Western culture is that the pursuit of more – and more complete – knowledge about the world, how it operates, and the human situation within it – past and present – is a noble purpose. Archaeology generates knowledge about the totality of the human past on a global scale, and thus contributes to an understanding of the human situation and therefore to the common good. New knowledge becomes part of the human commons, in theory available to and shared by everyone. This requires the preservation of, and access to, that knowledge in publications, documents, and records held in libraries and archives. Archaeology necessarily deals also with objects and places – sites, buildings, structures, artifacts, ecofacts, and geofacts – and the documentation associated with them, collectively comprising the ‘‘material memory’’ of the human past (see Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation). These too are considered part of the knowledge base, to be held in trust by public institutions for exhibit and restudy at a later time. The International Council

on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) states that ‘‘The [world’s] natural and cultural heritage belongs to all people. We each have a right and a responsibility to understand, appreciate, and conserve its universal values.’’ Experts in international law distinguish between private international law, which is concerned with the differences between the internal laws of different nations, and public international law. The latter applies to all humanity, or all nation states and other entities that subscribe to specific legal instruments. Protection of cultural heritage involves both forms of international law. Public international law is comprised of an ever-developing body of charters, covenants, conventions, declarations, and treaties, herein collectively called instruments. Some instruments are promulgated by global multipurpose institutions, particularly the United Nations (UN). UN heritage instruments are developed primarily by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), or other related organizations. Other international heritage instruments are formulated by various nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), such as ICOMOS, and transnational entities, such as the European Union. Still others are treaties between two or more nation states, often focused on illegal trafficking in antiquities. Treaties often involve elements of both private and public international law. Collectively, cultural heritage instruments form a superstructure of international law that functions on a consensual and confederate basis. The instruments focus on the protection, conservation, and study of ‘cultural heritage’, assumed to be part of the commons of all humanity and/or the ‘cultural patrimony’ of individual nation states, or subentities thereof. They provide organizational, procedural, and ethical guidance for developing heritage laws, policies, and procedures at the international, transnational, and national levels. Public international heritage law and practice build on a series of sequential charters, declarations, and covenants promulgated at first by international congresses made up of representatives of national cultural institutions, and after 1949, by UNESCO, its subdivisions and allied organizations. The keystone instrument, The Athens Charter for the Restoration of Historic Monuments, was adopted in 1931 by the First International Congress of Architects and Technicians of Historic Monuments, meeting in Athens, Greece. Several major resolutions were adopted which laid the basis for most of the national and international heritage legislation and the conservation practices that were developed in subsequent decades:

1428 HISTORIC PRESERVATION LAWS International organizations for Restoration on operational and advisory levels are to be established ... Problems of preservation of historic sites are to be solved by legislation at national levels for all countries ... Excavated sites which are not subject to immediate restoration should be reburied for protection ... Historical sites are to be given strict custodial protection ... Attention should be given to the protection of areas surrounding historic sites. ...

The Athens charter was amplified by the 1964 Venice Charter, the International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites. The preamble to the Venice Charter places cultural heritage preservation in an international context: Imbued with a message from the past, the historic monuments of generations of people remain to the present day as living witnesses of their age-old traditions. People are becoming more and more conscious of the unity of human values and regard ancient monuments as a common heritage. The common responsibility to safeguard them for future generations is recognized. It is our duty to hand them on in the full richness of their authenticity. It is essential that the principles guiding the preservation and restoration of ancient buildings should be agreed and be laid down on an international basis, with each country being responsible for applying the plan within the framework of its own culture and traditions. (International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites, Preamble, 1964).

Article 27 of the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts the right of the individual to participate in the cultural life of her or his community. The 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights sets forth more specific rights relating to cultural issues, as does the 1970 Cultural Rights as Human Rights. The 1998 declaration of ICOMOS marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that: The right to cultural heritage is an integral part of human rights ... The right to have the authentic testimony of cultural heritage, respected as an expression of one’s cultural identity within the human family; ... the right to wise and appropriate use of heritage; the right to participate in decisions affecting heritage and the cultural values it embodies; the right to form associations for the protection and promotion of cultural heritage. (Declaration of ICOMOS Marking the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1998).

Other UNESCO instruments focus on stewardship, protection, and conservation of cultural heritage; for example, the 1972 Convention for the Protection of

World Cultural and Natural Heritage, and the 1997 Declaration on the Responsibilities of Present Generations to Future Generations. Articles 7 and 8 of the latter state: Cultural Diversity and Cultural Heritage. With due respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, the present generations should take care to preserve the cultural diversity of humankind. The present generations have the responsibility to identify, protect and safeguard the tangible and intangible cultural heritage and to transmit this common heritage to future generations. ... The present generations may use the common heritage of humankind, as defined in international law, provided that this does not entail compromising it irreversibly. (Declaration on the Responsibilities of Present Generations to Future Generations, 1997).

The 1990 ICOMOS (1990) Charter for the Protection and Management of the Archaeological Heritage provides a general framework for archaeological site conservation applicable in most world regions. Transnational conventions follow from the international instruments, for example, the 1992 European Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage. Other international charters and covenants are concerned with specific heritage conservation issues vis-a`-vis indigenous/self-defined peoples, trafficking in antiquities, or specific areas of concern such as the underwater heritage (see below).

Linkage of National and International Heritage Laws Laws or edicts governing protection of specific places or objects of cultural heritage were occasionally promulgated by rulers or polities over many centuries in various countries. But it was not until cultural heritage became directly linked to histories of nation states that comprehensive legislation began to be developed. England and Sweden created heritage legislation in CE 1600s, declaring that all objects from ancient times were the property of the Crown, thus part of the national cultural patrimony. Modern national-level legislation began in the 1800s in Europe, some European colonies, and the United States. Additional legislation was passed by a few countries between 1900 and 1940. During the 1800s large-scale European and (after 1880) US archaeological expeditions went to the Mediterranean and the Middle East to excavate the monuments and cities of the ‘‘ancient Old World civilizations’’. After 1885 similar expeditions went to Mexico, and Central and South America. Literally tons of artifacts and artworks were carried out of Egypt, Greece, Turkey, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Latin America to fill the great

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art and natural history museums being built then in Europe and the US. The attendant publicity led to archaeological artifacts and art works having value as curios and art objects, expanding the longstanding markets for Egyptian and Classical objects. Looting increased exponentially, prompting national and colonial legislation designed to define and control legitimate archaeological research through permitting systems, to combat illegal looting, and to retain artifacts and objects of art within, or seek their return to, the countries of origin. The end of World War II marked a turning point for material heritage legislation and practices in many countries. Massive post-war rebuilding, redevelopment and expansion of cities and transportation infrastructures, and the processes of globalization worldwide, were destroying the historical built environment and archaeological sites at an alarming rate. To counter these threats, in 1972, UNESCO encouraged nations to formulate and implement cultural heritage policies. The focus was on developing nations, many of which had significant ethnically or culturally diverse populations, each often claiming its own heritage-validating symbols. Individual nations responded variously with charters or statements of cultural policy that defined national heritage and preservation objectives. This provided the basis for new, revised, or additional heritage protection legislation to empower the nation states to realize their objectives. A major concern for developing nations was preserving heritage for purposes of cultural tourism as a means for economic development. Some seventy statements of national cultural policies were published by UNESCO during the 1970s. By the year 2005, over 110 nation states had created significant heritage laws and related policies and regulations. Some have overarching laws and regulations, and others covering politically significant subdivisions, for example, the United Kingdom, and the subdivisions of Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Most nation states have one or more governmental agency or ministry charged to oversee and administer regulations governing their cultural heritage. After the mid-1970s, there was a broadening of ‘heritage’ to include ‘traditional places’ – sites and cultural landscapes that have mythological, religious, or traditional foodways meanings to specific cultural groups. Well known examples are Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park and Ayer’s Rock in Australia. The worldwide large-scale exploitation and destruction of natural resources, coupled with the development of global-scale environmental movements, led many nation states to pass legislation defining and

protecting natural heritage. Some countries created combined natural and cultural legislation and related administrative entities, for example, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The UNESCO World Heritage List, created in 1972, includes both cultural and natural places, as well as cultural routes, or itineraries, such as the Silk Road across Inner Asia and the pilgrimage road from France across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela.

National Heritage Legislation Space precludes a worldwide country by country survey of national heritage legislation, but a broad regional survey will indicate commonalities. Heritage legislation in Europe must be seen in relation to individual nations and two transnational organizations, the European Union (EU) and the Council of Europe (COE). ‘The Consolidated Treaty Establishing the European Community’ states that the EU shall ‘‘respect national and regional cultural [including religious and linguistic] diversity’’ and act to conserve and safeguard the ‘‘cultural heritage of European significance.’’ The COE is not an EU institution, but a cooperative intergovernmental agency of 46 member states focused on human rights, promotion of cultural diversity, and protection of heritage. The COE issues hortatory conventions – those relating to heritage include a general 1954 Cultural Convention; a 1969 Archaeological Heritage Protection, revised in 1992; and a 1985 Architectural Heritage Convention. There is also a 1992 European Plan for Archaeology, a cooperative charter for archaeological research and enhancing heritage legislation. All European nations not in membership of the EU have heritage legislation and implementing agencies, many of them well organized and effective. Heritage legislation and agencies vary widely in Asian countries. China has some national heritage legislation, but more is required given the enormous development projects underway in the early years of the twenty-first century and their impacts on heritage resources. Japan, by contrast, has a long history of heritage legislation extending back to 1919, focused on both tangible and intangible heritage, the latter including music, drama, and folk culture. Tangible heritage includes places of scenic beauty, both cultural and natural landscapes such as gardens and bridges, gorges, seashores, and mountains. Other South Asian and Southeast Asian nations have varying levels of heritage legislation and implementing agencies. They range from legislative declarations calling for the protection of national heritage, for example, Cambodia, to Thailand, which has a highly organized heritage

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preservation system of agencies and museums that have been in existence for decades. Malaysia has no effective heritage legislation, but created a Ministry of Culture, Arts, and Heritage in 2004. There is an Asia–Pacific consortium of heritage-oriented NGOs sharing information about developing effective national heritage legislation and organizations. Since colonial times, India has had a suite of heritage laws and related administrative agencies. In Africa the levels of heritage legislation and implementing agencies vary widely. Egypt was among the first nations, beginning in the nineteenth century, to attempt to control, through legislation and permitting systems, the outflow of its cultural heritage to the museums and art markets of the world. The effectiveness of the efforts varied widely over time, but became more systematic and effective after World War II and the establishment of Egypt as a fully independent nation in 1954. Heritage legislation in other African nations was often based on whatever colonial legislation had been implemented by the European nation controlling each colonial state. After African nations achieved independence, many followed the 1970s UNESCO guidelines for formulating heritage policies and legislation and created agencies to implement the policies. Islamic countries, or countries with large Muslim populations, have heritage legislation that is often coordinated, at least in part, with traditional Islamic law. All Caribbean nations, except Antigua, have heritage legislation, as do all the nations of Latin America. Some nations, such as Mexico, have specific treaties with the United States relating specifically to problems of trafficking in antiquities. All nation states have definitions of what constitutes national patrimony. Some focus only on places, built heritage – sites, monuments, structures, historic districts. Others include natural and/or culturally modified landscapes, and objects – artifacts, traditional crafts and works of art, books, and archives. Still others include nontangible heritage folklore and folkways, traditional ceremonies and practices, music, and indigenous knowledge, including languages.

Looting and Trafficking in Antiquities A major focus of public international heritage law and concern is the looting of archaeological sites to satisfy the intense, worldwide demand for ‘antiquities’ for the illicit ‘antiquities market’. Looting destroys context and information, both critical to the conduct of scholarly archaeology and thus the

preservation of heritage knowledge. Looting of archaeological sites has gone on for centuries, indeed millennia. Prior to 1940, few nations outside Europe had national legislation aimed at protecting movable cultural property (Egypt and Turkey were major exceptions). Thereafter the pace quickened as new nation states emerged from colonial situations, although the effectiveness varied by country, time, circumstance, and the demands of the illicit antiquities market and major museums. After c. 1970, looting and trafficking in antiquities reached ‘crisis’ proportions as demand accelerated among wealthy individuals and unscrupulous museums, including several major art museums in Europe, the United States, and Asia. A major focus of national laws, international conventions through UNESCO and its related agencies, and various treaties between nation states has tried to slow or stop the trafficking, but with little success. Prior to 1970, major museums were (and some still are) major end-purchasers of illegally obtained antiquities. After 1970, museum and museum association codes of ethics relating to looting began to be developed in Europe and the United States. Most codes focus on the refusal to purchase art objects or antiquities without appropriate provenance. The ‘International Council on Museums (ICOM) Code of Professional Ethics’ states that: The illicit trade in objects destined for public and private collections encourages destruction of historic sites, local ethnic cultures, theft at both national and international levels ... contravenes the spirit of national and international patrimony ... So far as excavated material is concerned, ... [a] museum should not acquire by purchase objects in any case where the governing body or responsible officer has reasonable cause to believe that their recovery involved the recent unscientific or intentional destruction or damage of ancient monuments or archaeological sites, or involved a failure to disclose the finds to ... the proper or legal government authorities. (International Council on Museums (ICOM) Code of Professional Ethics).

The McDonald Institute of Archaeology at Cambridge University in 1997 established an Illicit Antiquities Research Centre to coordinate actions and promote information dissemination on problems and potential solutions to looting and trafficking in antiquities. The problem, however, remains a serious one. The reader is referred to the various UNESCO instruments and those of related organizations for details on the linked attempts to stop or impede the trafficking across international boundaries. Overall, the instruments are minimally effective in the face of huge profits made by those involved in the trafficking.

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Public International Heritage Law and ‘Self-Defined’ Peoples A central, and highly complex, set of national and international legal and ethical concerns for archaeology that has developed since the 1950s derives from the linkage of some archaeological sites, artifacts, and the knowledge related to them, to self-defined peoples from whose pasts and/or traditional cultures they are said to derive. These asserted linkages have come to legally structure how archaeology is, or is not, conducted in numerous countries. ‘Self-defined’ peoples is used here as an inclusive category, since it refers to peoples, nations, or communities that may, or may not, have national or international legal recognition within nation states or international bodies, but whose members regard themselves as a sociopolitical or culturally distinct group. ‘Indigenous peoples’, ‘indigenous nations’, ‘descendant communities’, and ‘Fourth World’ are also terms variously used by, or applied to, such groups. All such groups may assert rights to archaeological resources and knowledge which they conceive to be part of their cultural heritage. Self-defined peoples’ claims to archaeological knowledge and artifacts are best understood within the larger framework of the general indigenous peoples’ rights movement that culminated in the formulation of the International Covenant on the Rights of Indigenous Nations in 1994 by the United Nations and numerous NGOs. The covenant and related instruments distinguish between ‘‘nations’’ and (nation-) ‘‘states’’ of the First, Second, and Third Worlds. For present purposes, the major points are: Indigenous nations are peoples which have the right to full and effective enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms recognized in the Charter of the United Nations and in international human rights law. ... Indigenous nations have the right of self-determination, in accordance with international law, and by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development without external interference. Indigenous nations have the right to practice their cultural traditions and evolve culture in relation to lands and territories without interference. This includes the right to maintain, protect, and develop the past, present, and future manifestations of their culture, such as archaeological and historical sites and structures, artifacts, designs, ceremonies, technologies, and visual and performing arts and literature, as well as the right to the restitution of cultural, religious, and spiritual property taken without their free and informed consent or in violation of their laws. Indigenous peoples have the right to manifest, practice, and teach spiritual and religious traditions,

customs, and ceremonies; the right to maintain, protect, and have access in privacy to religious and cultural sites; the right to the use and control of ceremonial objects; and the right to the repatriation of human remains. Nations and States shall be encouraged to take effective measures to preserve respect and protect the sacred places of each indigenous nation.

Self-defined indigenous nations assert that the public international laws, and derivative regulations of the ‘State system’, that is the nation-states which comprise the United Nations, have been undermined by the private international law and rule-making of multinational corporations, thus weakening the state system. The indigenous nations argue that covenants and other instruments developed by them have equal standing in international law with the instruments of the multinational corporations and must be taken seriously by the ‘‘states’’. Increasingly, since the 1960s, both national and public international heritage laws have been written in support of the claims of self-defined groups to the cultural heritage of the nation-states in which they reside, or from which they derive.

Law of the Sea and Underwater Cultural Heritage A particularly complex area of public international heritage law is the ‘‘law of the sea’’. Various international agreements and disagreements have existed for millennia over travel on and (since airplanes) over the oceans, access to sea (fisheries) and seabed resources, such as oil, as well as shipwrecks and other cultural materials on the floor of the sea. The ‘‘law of the sea’’ includes maritime or admiralty law, pertaining primarily to private shipping and various rights to salvage abandoned shipwrecks or cargo. It also includes public international law, which defines differential access to and use of the sea in relation to distances from coastlines, as well as travel thereon and resources within and under it. The 1982 UN agreement, the Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), signed by 119 nations focuses on territorial waters, sea lanes, and underwater resources. The fact that several major nation-states (the US, the United Kingdom, West Germany, Israel, and Italy, and several others) are not parties to the treaty creates various complications for the protection and study of underwater cultural heritage. The Convention defines a nation’s territorial waters as extending 12 nautical miles beyond its coastline. Beyond that limit, commercial or military ships or aircraft may move freely. A contiguous zone may extend out to 24 miles. Coastal nations have

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exclusive rights to fisheries resources out to 200 nautical miles, called the ‘‘exclusive economic zone’’; coastal nations with continental shelves have exclusive rights to oil, gas, and other natural, but not cultural, resources up to 200 nautical miles. Beyond the 200 mile limits are the high seas, traditionally not subject to national control – the ‘‘freedom of the seas’’. Over the centuries, laws, treaties, and practices relating to salvage of shipwrecks and/or sunken cargoes, fluctuated widely, whether under the ‘‘high seas’’, or in or adjacent to territorial waters, however defined. The advent of systematic study of and attempts to protect underwater cultural resources after World War II highlighted problems of freedom to salvage versus scholarly study and protection and conservation of the resources. One complicating factor in the protection of underwater heritage is the issue of sovereignty. Government-owned vessels do not fall under the general laws of the sea. Warships are similar to embassies: they cannot be entered by local law-enforcement officials when anchored in foreign waters. If they sink they cannot be salvaged without the permission of the navy that owns them – whether they are in territorial, coastal, or international waters. The principle of sovereignty holds as long as the owning nation, or a recognized descendant nation, continues to exist. A second factor is that ships in international waters can only be salvaged if they are abandoned. If an owner or insurer exists and has not given up its interest in a vessel, a salvor must come to an agreement with that entity before proceeding with any salvage operation. The 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage provides a framework for participating nation-states to deal with the issues. The convention recognizes the UNCLOS definitions of territorial, contiguous, and international waters, referring to the latter as the ‘‘Area’’. The convention aims to ‘‘preserve underwater cultural heritage for the benefit of humanity’’. It states that the commercial exploitation of underwater culture heritage for trade or speculation or its irretrievable dispersal is fundamentally incompatible with the protection and proper management of the underwater cultural heritage. Underwater cultural heritage shall not be traded, sold, bought or bartered as commercial goods.

Ships flying the flags of signatory nations are obliged to report discoveries of shipwrecks and any illicit activities they observe in their own waters or the Area. Once reports are received by signatory governments, they ‘‘shall take measures to prevent the entry into their territory, the dealing in, or possession of,

underwater cultural heritage illicitly exported and/or recovered’’. In summary, national and international heritage laws, conventions, and other instruments have developed over many centuries. Since 1970, the ongoing emergence of a ‘global society’ has led to linkages of the heritage instruments of multinational organizations, nation-states and those of self-defined peoples in concerted attempts to protect and control places, objects, and ideas regarded as being part of the shared heritage of humanity or some significant portion thereof. Looting and trafficking in antiquities contravenes the basic idea of protecting, conserving, and sharing the human cultural heritage. The heritage is seen as existing both on land and beneath the seas. See also: Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation; Cultural Resource Management; Illicit Antiquities; World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

Further Reading Anaya SJ (1996) Indigenous People in International Law. New York: Oxford University Press. Babits L and Van Tilburg H (eds.) (1998) Maritime Archaeology. New York: Springer. Baslar K (1998) The Concept of the Common Heritage of Mankind in International Law. The Hague: Mijhoff Publishers. Brodie N and Tubb KW (2002) Illicit Antiquities: The Theft of Culture and the Extinction of Archaeology. London: Routledge. Brownlie I (2003) Principles of Public International Law. New York: Oxford University Press. Joyner CC (ed.) (1997) The United Nations and International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Keune RV (2003) Historic Preservation in a Global Context: An International Perspective. In: Robert ES (ed.) A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty First Century, pp. 353–384. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Lee R, Mango A, and Osmaczyk EJ (eds.) (2003) Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements, 3rd edn. New York: Routledge. Lowenthal D (1996) The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. New York: Free Press. O’Connell DP (1992) The International Law of the Sea, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Weiss EB (1989) In Fairness to Future Generations: International Law, Common Patrimony, and Intergenerational Equity. Tokyo: United Nations University.

Relevant Websites http://www.cwis.org – The Center for World Indigenous Studies. http://www.icom.org – International Council of Museums. http://www.international.icomos.org – International Council on Monuments and Sites. http://www.unesco.org – UNESCO (includes UN instruments and links to other international government and NGO heritage organizations. http://journals.cambridge.org – International Journal of Cultural Property, Cambridge Journals Online.

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HISTORIC ROOTS OF ARCHAEOLOGY Teresa S Moyer, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary antiquities Objects and material culture from the ancient past. antiquity A time in the distant past, understood as preceding the Middle Ages. anthropology The study of humankind, its culture and evolution, both extant and extinct. contact period Era of European colonialism beginning in the fifteenth century, when first contact was made with indigenous groups across the globe. ethnology The use of ethnographic data to study contemporary cultures; one of the four sub-disciplines of cultural anthropology. linguistics The study of human language and its applications for cultural behavior. physical anthropology The scientific study of the physical characteristics, variability, and evolution of the human organism. scribe A public clerk or secretary, especially in ancient times. social history An area of study that considers historical evidence from the point of view of developing social trends.

Introduction The historical roots of archaeology lie in the curiosity of ancient cultures about the people who came before them. One finding of contemporary archaeology is that almost universally humankind has been curious about the past and has collected material evidence of it to suit various needs. Archaeologists do not agree on the major paradigms that characterize the development of archaeology. Histories of archaeology tend to slant away from the influence of women, indigenous groups, or local informants. Safe to say, what we today call archaeology comes from a conglomeration of slowly changing ways of thinking in response to the testing of theories and new finds across the globe. The following discussion looks at the coalescence of archaeological thought from ancient times to the mid-nineteenth century.

The Ancient World Archaeology in recent times shows that ancient peoples recovered material remains of even earlier peoples and visited their monuments. Archaeologists speculate that ancient peoples interpreted the materials to support their cultural conceptions of time as known through tradition and mythology. Other cultures are known to have perceived antiquities as tangible links to, or proof of, sacred eras closer to the point of creation. No evidence exists that ancient

people used systematic methods to excavate and record their finds, or that they sought to answer questions of time depth and cultural sequence. Yet the evidence of ancient artifacts in archaeological contexts outside their own indicates that the prehistory of archaeology reaches thousands of years into the past. The recognition of objects as culturally unfamiliar and time-distant was an important conceptual development in the earliest history of archaeology. For example, in eastern North America, the Iroquois of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries AD collected projectile points, stone pipes, and native copper tools made thousands of years earlier. The artifacts may have been found in the course of daily activities. A number of cultures integrated ancient artifacts and monuments into their own religious practices. The Aztecs of South America performed religious observances in the sixteenth century at Teotitihuacan, a city inhabited in the first millennium AD. They buried ritual deposits, including Olmec figurines and valuable goods, in the walls of the Great Temple. Scribes in Egypt during the Eighteenth Dynasty left graffiti that documents their visits to ancient and abandoned monuments. The first known collection of antiquities was amassed in Babylonia in the sixth century BC. It references a growing interest among the literate classes in the monuments and the written records of the past in relationship to religious concerns about gods or heroes and their perceived representation of civilization in more perfect form at the time of creation. Many groups attributed artifacts to mythological sources. European peasants in the medieval period collected stone celts and stone projectile points. Some thought that the artifacts, also called ‘fairy arrows’ or ‘thunderbolts’, were shot from the sky to injure humans. Europeans were also aware of prehistoric tumuli and megalithic monuments in their local areas. These places were plundered by people of all classes for treasures, holy relics, and for building materials. Historical records by way of the Bible, surviving histories of Greece and Rome, and traditions going back to the Dark Ages were the primary historical authority. These accounts were the driving influence leading to the belief that the world was only a few thousand years old. The collection and preservation of holy relics during the Middle Ages was connected to such religious beliefs. Historians’ work with antiquities served political purposes. In China, historian Si-ma Qien, who wrote

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in the second century BC, visited ancient ruins and consulted relics and texts when writing his history of ancient China, the Shi Ji. His influential account helped to unify the political and cultural trends of the time. A preponderant emphasis lay on written records and oral traditions to create narratives of the past. Greek and Roman scholars used written and oral sources, but were also influenced by religious practices, local customs, and civil institutions. The Greek historian Thucydides, however, concluded that graves dug on the island Delos in the fifth century BC belonged to the Carians because they contained armor and weapons akin to contemporary Carians. The Greek traveler Pausanias described the public buildings, art works, rites, and customs of different regions and the historical traditions associated with them. The Greeks and Romans kept relics of the past as votive offerings in their temples and graves, sometimes also opening graves to recover relics of past heroes. The collection and use of very ancient artifacts by past cultures demonstrates the ways that material culture became an active component in shaping societal life. Ancient cultures integrated mythology, history, and artifacts into their own practices.

Directions from the European Renaissance Beginning in the late fourteenth century, the cultural, social, and economic changes related to the end of feudalism in northern Italy led scholars to seek precedents in earlier times for political innovations. During the ensuing Renaissance, scholars looked to literature of the Classical era to provide a glorious past for the emerging Italian city-states and to justify the increasing secularization of Italian culture. Popes, cardinals, and Italian nobility collected and displayed ancient works by the late fifteenth century. They also sponsored expeditions to search out and recover materials of commercial and esthetic value. Excavations at the Roman sites of Herculaneum and Pompeii were examples of such treasure hunts (see Classical Archaeology). Scholars of the Renaissance era became critically familiar with the texts of ancient Greece and Rome. They saw that the past was different and separate from the present, but also that past periods should be studied on a relative basis. Renaissance ideas inspired by the Classical world spread geographically throughout Europe and in the artistic and scholarly disciplines. These ideas inspired a surge in the arts and scholarly thought. A trend in the plastic arts – particularly sculpture, and also painting – demonstrated

interest in humanism through artistic expression of nudity and human traits, such as dignity. Humanism as a philosophy developed as European societies began to choose between secular and religious views of the world. After the Renaissance, some antiquarians studied the local mounds and monuments of their own countries. Others traveled to Mediterranean and Near Eastern areas to investigate the origins of contemporary civilization. They returned to Europe with treasures for their wealthy patrons. Art history and Classical studies are two fields that grew from the pursuits of the Renaissance era, as members of the nobility became collectors of Greek and Roman objects and valued them as art. Collectors looked on land and under water for treasures, as seen in Italy. One of the earliest episodes of underwater treasure hunting was in the midfifteenth century, when an avid collector named Cardinal Colonna commissioned the recovery of two sunken ships from the bottom of Lake Nemi. The ropes, however, were not strong enough to raise the ships, although some planks and a torso of a large Roman sculpture were recovered. The recovery of artifacts from ancient Italian sites in the early eighteenth century piqued interest in what else might lie beneath the surface. Engineer Rocco Gioacchino de Alcubierre, under orders from the king, opened haphazardly placed tunnels into the ancient town of Herculaneum, beneath the lava left by Mount Vesuvius. He found paintings, mosaics, and other preserved features. He continued at Torre Annuziata in the 1740s, gaining substantial support when it was discovered to be the ancient city of Pompeii. Excavations continued in a treasure-hunting capacity at both sites for decades. The discipline of art history developed as a frame of analysis for ancient materials. Art history depended upon written records for the chronology and context of the changing styles of ancient works, but the field also brought the study of material culture into investigations of the past. Johann Winckelmann, a German scholar writing in the mid-eighteenth century, established art history as a distinct branch of classical studies. Winckelmann outlined periods of Greek and Roman sculptural styles and described the factors influencing the development of Classical art. Art history provided an analytical framework for using material culture to study the ancient past. Classical studies became the mode of analysis stemming from the expeditions to ancient Aegean sites beginning in the mid-eighteenth century. Winckelmann had noted that most extant examples of Greek sculpture were actually Roman copies, which inspired the collection of authentic Greek works. British ambassador Thomas Bruce, also known as Lord Elgin, was

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granted permission by the sultan of Turkey to remove stones from Athens. His men removed many elements from the Parthenon and they were displayed in London in 1814. They became part of one of the first major controversies in the exhibition of archaeological materials. Some viewers protested the vandalism of the objects from their original sites, while others dismissed the sculptures as inferior to the Hellenistic–Roman style to which they were accustomed. Other excavations soon followed at the island of Peloponnesus, the Acropolis at Athens, and the island of Aegina. Classical studies became the model for Egyptology and Assyriology. These fields drew on information recorded in the Bible about the ancient civilizations of Egypt and the Near East as seen by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Travelers from across Europe documented their travels up the Nile River and around Cairo, but contributed little else to the knowledge of Egypt. Discoveries by the French in the late nineteenth century made significant inroads into Egyptian archaeology. Scholars associated with Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt collected Egyptian antiquities, which generated interest about the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Soon after, French engineers discovered the Rosetta Stone, a slab of basalt inscribed with translations of ancient languages. Jean Francois Champollion and others interested in linguistics took to the task of deciphering the hieroglyphics associated with the finds. Interestingly, visitors to sites in Ethiopia and Sudan preferred to link the monuments with Egyptian culture, rather than appreciate them on their own merit or as historically associated with African peoples to the south. The exposure of Egyptian antiquities excited the public’s curiosity and spurred further expeditions from other European nations to learn more. As a result, many sites were pillaged to build collections outside of the Near East before dedicated study could begin. The cultural regions of Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Asia Minor, or Persia did not at first glance seem to have grand monuments like those of Egypt. Travelers in the mid-sixteenth century, however, reported seeing great mounds of earth covering the traditional sites of cities such as Nineveh or Babylon. Napoleon’s invasions also brought attention to the region as they did to Egypt also. Researchers such as Edward Daniel Clarke and Jean Louis Burckhardt searched for evidence of Biblical sites in the Holy Land (see Biblical Archaeology). Clarke brought a healthy skepticism of traditional lore and tested sites to determine the physical locations of ancient cities. Others, like Edward Robinson, used investigations of the Near East to support a literal interpretation of the Bible. Linguists untangled the meaning of ancient

sites with their deciphering of Mesopotamian cuneiform in the early nineteenth century. Their translations illuminated ancient political structures and genealogies. Slowly, a picture began to grow from the accumulated linguistic and material evidence. Scholars of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries referred to a staged system of technological progress suggested by Greek and Roman historians and philosophers of Classical times. This approach was embraced for archaeology beyond the Mediterranean. Information was organized for professionals and the public using a tiered system. For instance, J. C. Thomsen’s arrangement of the national museum of Denmark in 1819 according to the Three-Age system with the idea that the ancient inhabitants of Europe passed through technological stages of development characterized by their use of stone, bronze, and iron. This system dovetailed with current social paradigms that associated class and race with human development as a staged process. Methodologies for observing the natural world were also underway in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but would not directly impact archaeology for another century or two. Few scientists saw a conflict between their work and the Bible, and fewer still challenged religious doctrine or the historical reliability of the Bible rather than fight the rest of the scientific community for credibility. Scholars throughout Europe worked to fit ancient finds into the paradigm that the world was only about 6000 years old. On the other hand, geologists made headway in chronological thinking and methodology in their attempts to understand fossils. Large fossils were at first interpreted within mythological confines to be unicorns, giants, dragons, or even the remains of creatures killed during the Biblical flood. Robert Hooke, a geologist working in the mid-seventeenth century, saw that fossils differed from strata to strata and suggested that they could inform a chronology of the Earth that stretched before the book of Genesis. Nicholas Steno also noted that successive strata contained different flora and fauna, but demonstrated that these types of materials existed together in the same environment at the same time. Scientific methodology in the natural sciences would bring coherence to archaeology and inspire theoretical conceptions of the past, as well.

Exploration and Observation The exploration of Africa, the Americas, and the Far East expanded Europeans’ anthropological knowledge. Little anthropological data had been collected from these areas. Changes in archaeology were influenced by a literary approach to anthropological

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writing, but hindered by the deep acceptance of theological explanations for natural and cultural phenomena. These factors, coupled with the exoticism of regions that were new to European explorers, led to the ‘armchair speculation’ of the origins of the new peoples being met and the shape of their lives. Europeans began to explore the coast of Africa below Morocco in the fifteenth century. Portuguese merchants returned with stories of fabulous kingdoms and cities in the interior of Africa. By the sixteenth century, African civilization had entered a troubled period as a result of economic decline, the overseas slave trade, and invasions from other nations. Despite earlier accounts to the contrary, Europeans convinced themselves that African culture had never become civilized and thus were able to justify their imperialism. Europeans accepted Herodotus’ and others’ accounts of Ethiopia because its pyramids, temples, and reliefs were akin to those visited in Egypt. Europeans refused to accept the idea of a complex Sudanese culture or that southern Africans could create substantial monuments, despite reports in the mid-sixteenth century of gold mines in the midst of masonry fortresses. Medieval Arab writers commented on rich trade in gold, ivory, animal skins, and iron from large cities along the eastern coast of Africa, which led some scholars to connect the region with the Biblical city of Ophir and to King Solomon’s mines. Explorers from Europe were also seeing ruined cities in the Far East as they began to settle ports for trade. Robert Knox, a Dutch seaman, published an account of Anuradhapura on the island of Ceylon. His report made readers aware that the jungles held ancient evidence of civilization from times before the Europeans arrived. In 1790, a peasant plowing a field near Nellore in India stumbled upon the remains of a small Hindu temple that contained a pot filled with second-century AD Roman coins and medals. This was an unusual event, as much of the archaeological work consisted of exploration and documentation of visible temples and monuments. European explorers in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries offer some of the first accounts from a historical perspective on the New World, its people, and the landscape. Exploration of the Americas resulted in important academic findings and philosophical quandaries for Europeans. Willey and Sabloff characterize the era of exploration and recovery of information from foreign places as ‘the speculative mode of thought’. The explorers encountered new peoples and cultures, as well as unusual landscape features. They recorded ethnographic information and began rudimentary investigations. Theological interpretations dominated the discussions. Collections of archaeological data

took place incidentally to these pursuits. The expeditions also collected documentation of Native Americans’ interests in history, such as chronicles, genealogies, or historical statements. These accounts have been preserved in the original or in postConquest copies. Most of the projects collected data that related to larger, exploratory trends in the ‘natural scientific’ spirit. Such work fed speculation about the natural and cultural makeup of the American continents and interest in exploitable natural resources. Explorers to South America from Spain described the lives of the Aztecs and the Maya at the time of the Conquest. A few writers, such as Bernardino de Sahagan and Diego de Landa, also demonstrated approaches and questions that today could be considered archaeological. They were the forerunners of men and women in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who asked when events took place and what had happened, in conjunction with their descriptions of indigenous groups and ancient ruins. Governmental directives ordered a number of expeditions from Europe to the Americas, such as the sixteenth-century trek of Diego Garcia de Palacio to the Maya site of Copan, Honduras and of Antonio del Rio to Palenque, Mexico in the nineteenth century. Missionaries also collected information. Bishop Diego de Landa and Fray Bartoleme´ de las Casas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries wrote about archaeological ruins and the history and way of life of the Mayan culture of Chichen Itza and other sites. As Europeans investigated the Americas, they included in their reports of natural discoveries the indigenous peoples, natural resources, flora, and fauna. Although archaeology per se was not practiced, in these early centuries of the ‘contact period’, many explorers did collect anthropological information that would inform future archaeological investigations. Priests and administrators who accompanied the Spanish Conquistadores to Latin America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries took accounts of American Indians. Today, these accounts offer archaeologists important information about the civilizations. Records of explorers such as Giovanni de Verrazzano and Jacques Cartier recorded information of ethnographic value, as well. The expeditions returned to Europe with information for speculators, ideas for settlements, natural specimens, and cultural souvenirs. The scholars of North America, operating within a theology-centered worldview, began to speculate on the indigenous peoples’ origins. Theories postulated that the so-called ‘Indians’ might descend from Iberians, Carthaginians, the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, Canaanites, and Tartars, or even came from the vanished island of Atlantis. Most hypotheses reflected

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the cultural values, biases, or predilections of different groups of settlers. Some early Spanish settlers, for example, did not believe that the Indians had souls and thus could not be human beings. This justified their program of exploitation. The Spanish Crown, however, insisted that the Roman Catholic Church proclaim Indians as human so that the government could assert its right to govern them. This also meant that Christians were forced to grapple with the ‘savages’ as people who also descended from Adam and Eve. Theological interpretations, however, were challenged by the increasingly influential scientific inquiries. Nonscientific conjecture, or armchair speculation, weighed in on topics such as the mounds of North America, or the developmental sequence for ‘primitive’ cultures. Such early speculations expressed the cultural views of the European explorers and immigrants and began to fan curiosity about the past of the New World. Through the nineteenth century, the Enlightenment concepts of reason and progress philosophies sustained a belief that progress was inherent in the human condition. The settlement of North America by Europeans forced the issue as the intelligentsia conjectured about topics such as theological explanations of natural and cultural phenomena, the exotic realm of the unexplored New World, and an immediate need to create a heroic history for the new land. In the late eighteenth century in North America, ethnocentrism pervaded colonists’ cultural values toward indigenous peoples, whom they perceived to be savage and separate in origin from the builders of the mounds. Reports by the Spaniards of Tenochtilan, the capital of the Aztecs, the public works of the Incas, or the other great achievements of the Indians of Middle and South America, lent further doubt that the mounds of North America were capable of revealing such civilized places. Observations by De Soto’s party, for example, described the American-Indians building and using mounds in the southeastern United States, but this information was conveniently forgotten. In North America, the ‘myth of Mound builders’ posited that a ‘lost’ civilized race built the mounds and ruins, but disappeared long before Europeans came on the scene. Europeans in the New World did not believe that the Indians were capable of building the mounds, particularly in comparison to what they judged as the grand public works of the Indians of Middle and South America. Racial myths eclipsed religious ones as justification for action against the Indians, who were widely seen to be brutal and warlike in nature and incapable of significant cultural development. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, two basic positions had emerged regarding the

origins of the mounds: either the Mound builders and the Indians (or their direct ancestors) were one and the same people, or the Mound builders, whose hypothesized origins were as varied as those first proposed for the peopling of the New World, were an ancient race who had died off or moved away, to be replaced by the later Indians. While others speculated about the origins of the earthworks, who built them, and why, Thomas Jefferson, a member of the American Philosophical Society, acted on the problem by investigating a small burial mound near the Rivanna River on his Monticello property in Virginia. The result was one of the first controlled, stratigraphic excavations in the world. This project has led to some call Jefferson the ‘father of American archeology’. Such endeavors shaped national politics by informing policy with information about Native American peoples.

Stirrings of Archaeology Archaeology is known in contemporary times as a series of methods carried out in a scientific manner to test and explore theories about the past. During the first third of the nineteenth century, the interdisciplinary elements of archaeology began to come together. Discoveries by geologists decades earlier were revisited by their professional counterparts in the 1830s, who began to appreciate the significance of flint artifacts observed in geological strata. Lyell revolutionized geology with his depositional theories. Boucher de Perthes announced the discovery of artifacts in deep geological strata and concluded that they had great antiquity. The findings of geologists stirred great controversy because the idea that such antiquity of humans flew against Biblical theology and prevailing belief. The concept, however, was the nucleus for Paleolithic archaeology. Their observations of strata superimposed over each other and contained archaeological materials led to the important discovery of stratification, which enabled archaeologists to look at questions of time depth. Questions about time began to change armchair speculation and antiquarianism into a scientific discipline. Of course, as we have seen, interest in the meaning of time, albeit in a broader sense, is the root of archaeology centuries ago. By the 1830, the major questions put to archaeological materials had to do with ordering the contemporary world. Class, race, and politics were still influenced and inspired by monuments and materials of past ‘great’ civilizations. Scientific inquiries into race by S. G. Morton influenced the attitudes of anthropologists toward Native Americans. Morton compared skulls from North American Indians with similar relics derived both from ancient and modern

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tribes, to understand their origins. The writings of Englishman Henry Lubbock significantly influenced American evolutionary archaeology, known also as prehistoric archaeology. He, too, took an evolutionary approach that attributed American Indians with biological inferiority over European-descended Americans. Scientific analysis of antiquities and osteological specimens thus addressed theories about the history and peoples of America. The findings were interpreted to construct a national identity favoring the circumstance of European-Americans. The rise of science (which began in eighteenthcentury rationalism), industrialism of Europe and America, and the expansion of power to unexplored or exotic regions, all contributed to the development of archaeology. Some early specialists largely dismissed speculation and began considering methodological questions, such as how to pose problems, to excavate, to present data, and to answer questions in a rigorous manner. J. J. A. Worsaae (1821–85) articulated that burial goods were associated by their usage at the same time and that they were placed in the burial at the same time. Worsaae also recognized the importance of careful excavation and record keeping and, significantly, that the primary purpose of excavation was to gather information on humankind’s history and development rather than to gather specimens for museums and private collections.

The beginnings of archaeology as it is recognized today as a series of methods and logical sequences began centuries ago. The recognition of a need for a conceptual shift from speculation to adequate recording and mapping of archaeological sites began in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. By the 1840s, the fields of anthropology included archeology, ethnology, physical anthropology, and linguistics; these were seen as separate disciplines, but all were concerned with cultural evolution and the study of indigenous peoples. The historical roots of archaeology run deep through centuries of human curiosity about the past and in each other. See also: Biblical Archaeology; Classical Archaeology.

Further Reading Daniel G (1976) A Hundred and Fifty Years of Archaeology, 2nd edn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Eydoux HP (1971) In Search of Lost Worlds: The Story of Archaeology. New York: World Publishing Company. Patterson TC (1995) Towards a Social History of the United States. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers. Stiebing WH (1994) Uncovering the Past: A History of Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Trigger BG (2006) A History of Archaeological Thought, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Willey GR and Jeremy AS (1980) A History of American Archaeology, 2nd edn. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY Contents As a Discipline Future Methods

As a Discipline William B Lees, University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary aqua-lung The original name for open-circuit diving equipment now known as SCUBA, developed in 1943. direct historical approach A methodological approach to correlating prehistoric archaeological sites and cultures with historically documented Native American cultures using a comparison of traits between late prehistoric archaeological sites

with the early historic period archaeological sites known to have been occupied by specific Native American peoples. Native American A term used to describe some of the indigenous peoples of North America. new archaeology A school of archaeological thought that came into favor during the 1960s and that has as its hallmark the use of the scientific method of inquiry. Georgian order A set of rules pertaining to architecture, material culture, behavior, and other components of culture dating from the eighteenth century, and characterized by an increase in the importance of symmetry and order.

The emergence of historical archaeology as a discipline can be attributed largely to developments in North America during the second half of the

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twentieth century. There, historical archaeology evolved from a base that was focused on archaeological research supporting restoration of pivotal nationalistic historic sites. Following World War II, emergence of the discipline was fueled by rapidly expanding national archaeology programs in the United States and Canada. By the end of the third quarter of the century, the discipline emerged, seeking to proclaim scholarly legitimacy and, within the United States and to a lesser degree in Canada, a place within anthropology. The maturation of the discipline in the decades that followed has increasingly been influenced by scholars residing in, and scholarship focused on, regions beyond North America. Historical archaeology today is increasingly informed by a global or world perspective (see Americas, North: Historical Archaeology in the United States). In North America, prior to World War II, excavation of historic sites was not uncommonly conducted within a traditional archaeological or anthropological setting. Here the focus was on Native American sites of the early historic period, and the goal was to match these historically documented sites with those from prehistory based on similarities of archaeological traits – the presence and absence of house patterns, ceramics, and stone tool types. Significant discussions of this approach are found in William Duncan Strong’s Introduction to Nebraska Archaeology in 1935 and Waldo R. Wedel’s Introduction to Pawnee Archaeology in 1936; it was in a 1938 article by Wedel that the term ‘direct historical approach’ was first used. The type of inquiry represented by the ‘direct historical approach’, in part because it was concerned with Native American sites and was conducted by those interested first and foremost in questions of prehistory, was not perceived as intellectually comparable to other historic site excavations being conducted at the same time. The ‘direct historical approach’, thought not generally perceived by most as being within the trajectory to a modern historical archaeology, recognized that archaeology in North America was a continuum that did not stop with the arrival of people with a literate tradition. Ironically, although the direct historical approach and the bridging of history and prehistory was a standard practice in archaeological research of the 1930s and 1940s, by the 1990s Kent Lightfoot was arguing that historical and prehistoric archaeology had become so rigidly separate that we needed to return to a focus on questions that bridged this incredibly significant point in the history of life in North America, and to collaborate with scholars on both sides of the line between prehistory and history. Not surprisingly, scholars working outside North America have confronted vastly different historical

traditions and the dichotomy between prehistory and history takes on different meaning or becomes altogether irrelevant. Also prior to World War II, major North American excavation projects at places such as Jamestown and Williamsburg, Virginia, brought focus to archaeology as a major player in an incipient heritage tourism industry focused on a nationalistic revival in the United States. The goal of these excavations was the recovery of architectural footprints and construction detail, recovery of museum specimens, and general verification or illustration of historical place and activity (see Tourism and Archaeology). During this era, and in some cases well into the third quarter of the twentieth century, it was historians and other nonarchaeologists who were making many decisions of what historic sites to excavate, and why. The perception developed during this era that excavation at historic sites was not clearly archaeological – whether it was anthropological or not was a concern that was still well beyond the horizon. This view of the incipient discipline of historical archaeology persisted well into the second half of the twentieth century and spread to areas such as Canada where a similarly ambitious program of revival of nationalistic historic sites developed, supported by excavation. Archaeology as ‘handmaiden to history’ was the intellectual status quo for practitioners – pioneers in the creation historical archaeology as a discipline – who began to clamor in the 1950s and 1960s that excavation of historic sites should serve broader intellectual purposes than had come to be the norm. At this same time, due to the development of the aqua-lung, underwater archaeology was an emerging field of archaeological study that was fighting for recognition because of its potential contributions to historical scholarship rather than as the source of museum artifacts or treasure. The aqua-lung (now known as SCUBA) allowed, of course, easy access to underwater sites. Its development was followed by creation of a suite of excavation and recording methods that allowed the serious systematic archaeological study of shipwrecks, submerged towns, and other underwater resources. In many important ways, the perception of historical archaeology as ‘handmaiden to history’ outlasted the genesis of the discipline of historical archaeology, and caused practitioners to continue to argue for the validity of historical archaeology, and to continue to claim its place at the intellectual table, well into the final quarter of the century if not to this very day. By the end of the century, however, historical archaeology in North America and beyond existed as a vibrant and dynamic discipline marked by healthy professional societies; a large number of practitioners who

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had been trained as historical archaeologists and who identified themselves as such; a broad and successful publication programs of journals, books, newsletters, and websites; the acceptance of historical archaeology as a legitimate responsibility of historic preservation; and a large number of academic programs that offered courses or formal programs in historical archaeology at the graduate level. One of the biggest challenges to the emergence of historical archaeology as a discipline was one of selfdefinition. While the importance of the historical record (written and oral) to historical archaeology had been widely accepted early on, it also served to fuel much debate on whether historical archaeology was most appropriately considered a part of the discipline of history or a part of anthropology, or that it belonged somewhere else entirely. Those arguing that it belonged to history were reacting partly to their own disciplinary alignments, and also to the uses to which historical archaeology was, in their perspective, best suited, or to examples of how it had so far been applied. Very simply put, those on one side of this equation believed that historical archaeology could best serve history by helping to provide physical illustrations of historical events, by answering very particular historical questions, and the like. On the other side, there were an increasing number of practitioners who believed that historical archaeology was more than a ‘handmaiden to history’ and that it had scholarly contributions to make that were different than those appropriate in any other established fields of inquiry (see Historical Archaeology: Methods). How to define the subject of study was another matter of concern. Early on, it was common to reference history itself, defining historical archaeology as the study of cultures after the introduction of written history. This was fraught with many conceptual problems, as even in North America the point when written history ‘commenced’ varies geographically as well as between cultural groups – even within a region. As interest among North American scholars grew in globalizing the study of historical archaeology, this relationship was soon enough seen to be even less relevant in places such as Asia and Europe. At this point, this simplistic approach to definition was revealed to be a testament to the ‘New World’ focus held by the pioneers of historical archaeology. The propulsion of historical archaeology away from an alignment with history and toward anthropology, and the start of a trajectory toward a definition of historical archaeology that works on a global level, began to accelerate during the period of intellectual excitement and innovation surrounding the onset of the ‘new archaeology’ during the 1960s. Although the new archaeology was received with

varying degrees of acceptance around the world, it nevertheless was important in galvanizing a body of young scholars with the idea that the archaeology of the recent past was both viable and important. People such as Lewis Binford, James Deetz, Edwin Dethlefsen, and Stanley South stepped forward and championed historical archaeology as a grand anthropological laboratory that had value well beyond the validation of history or the elucidation of historical detail or illustration. Though their approaches to archaeological interpretation were ultimately different – some favored interpretation derived from archaeological science while others preferred what was to be later labeled a postprocessual approach – these scholars and others were successful in arguing that historical archaeology was indeed a discipline unto itself. The lasting interest of scholarly contributions from this era, exemplified by seminal works such as James Deetz’s In Small Things Forgotten, first published in 1977 and Stanley South’s 1977 volume Method and Theory in Historical Archaeology, identifies this period as a watershed in the development of the discipline. It is thus inarguable that the modern discipline of historical archaeology is heavily indebted to North American scholars and that the debates and discourse leading to its emergence happened more often than not at North American gatherings. This focus on the New World, and almost by default on the colonial influence of Europe in the New World, led to a somewhat Eurocentric conceptualization of the discipline’s subject. As recently as 1991, for example, the late James Deetz defined historical archaeology as ‘‘. . . the archaeology of the spread of European societies worldwide, beginning in the fifteenth century, and their subsequent development and the impact on native peoples in all parts of the world.’’ Attempting to broaden this definition somewhat to account for research experiences in North America, Europe, and South America, Charles Orser offered a compelling, and beautifully simple, definition of historical archaeology as concerning itself with the archaeological study of the modern world. Many scholars, including many from outside North America, see Orser’s model as patently Eurocentric and simplistically capitalistic in nature, and offer alternative approaches to understanding the history of the world’s cultures through historical archaeology. Thus, spurred on by the increasing globalization of our world, and of all scholarly inquiry, the maturation of historical archaeology at the close of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twentyfirst has been characterized by bringing voices from all parts of the world to the table for the discussion of what historical archaeology should become.

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Parallel with developments in North America during the last half of the last century, scholars in other parts of the world have been busy conducting historical archaeology in different historical, political, and social (both past and present) contexts. The result has been a rising discussion on redefining historical archaeology to be less focused on European expansionism and to be more concerned with the stories of all people and cultures of the world living during the time when their history or the history of their neighbors was being preserved through writing or memory. In a mid-1980s review of historical archaeology in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, Merrick Posnansky and Christopher DeCourse rejected standing definitions of historical archaeology developed by North American scholars, not because of the ‘‘contact implication that it represents but the emphasis in some of the literature on the one sided impact of that contact.’’ Independence in Africa caused a new nationalism expressly counter to the old colonial structure. The result was a deliberate reaction against archaeology that was focused on these colonial powers in favor of one seeking to establish national identities based on the archaeology of indigenous populations. The goal was to view the component populations through the shroud of colonialism. Recently, Peter Schmidt and Jonathan Walz have continued this discussion by arguing that African cultures represent modern cultures regardless of the effect of European expansionism. The focus becomes not European contact or colonialism, but rather ‘‘local African historiographies’’ (Schmidt and Walz 2007:54). An important role of historical archaeology lies in validating these African historiographies, many based on oral tradition, by testing and correcting Western interpretations of African traditions, providing bridging information where gaps exist in tradition, by reassessing models of material change, and by challenging foreign interpretations of African history. In essence, the focus shifts from a concern on the effect of European expansion on Africa and African cultures to a focus on developing carefully validated contextualized interpretations of local African cultures. Of importance, these new contextualized interpretations allow African cultures to preside as modern cultures alongside European cultures regardless of the influence of one upon the other. Matthew Johnson argues that such a focus on local materially based contextual studies is exactly how we should conceive of global historical archaeology, and as a way to move away from global models of the modern world based on capitalism in favor of the recognition of the power and importance of the local expressions of culture.

These views on the importance of contextual studies emerged to some degree from Johnson’s examination of the archaeology of capitalism. As Johnson notes, the component parts of capitalism have local genealogies that must be understood before capitalism itself can be understood: ‘‘... an archaeology of such elements as [capitalist] agrarian practices, architecture, and material culture must place them back into those contexts and genealogies for a richer, more contextual understanding of how the archaeology of the Georgian Order is related to social practices related to capitalism’’ (Johnson 1996:204). The implication of this line of thought is that in order to understand the global spread of capitalism, it is essential to develop contextual studies of local cultures including those that may seem to be unaffected by the emergence of capitalism within a particular region. Recognizing the North American origins of the discipline, Brazilian scholar Pedro Paulo A. Funari is another who argues against the utility of a monolithic global definition for historical archaeology. He cites the disparate scholarly traditions of differing parts of the world as one significant barrier to such an approach. Also making a world approach difficult is the differing time depths and the nature of relationships and developmental trajectories of the historical period in various regions of the world. The colonial history of Africa, for example, is clearly vastly different from than that of North America which, among other things, results in vastly different interests in terms of research. But Funari also stands on the shoulders of the long lineage of historical archaeology scholars from North America and around the world in expounding the importance of material, written, and oral sources of information about the past, and of the importance of the discipline of historical archaeology in using a patently comparative approach to look at many important questions about the past, to write the histories of those who are otherwise unknown, and to correct the histories of those whose past has been distorted or withheld by the forces of history. What makes historical archaeology a useful and dynamic discipline is, to Funari, its comparative approach and willingness to accept various methods for understanding the past. It is the discussion resulting from the differences between regions and approaches taken by scholars that leads to significant advances in disciplinary knowledge, and knowledge about the world, ‘‘because an understanding of the complexity of society, its features and changes, can only be gained from a pluralistic and interdisciplinary world perspective’’ (Funari 1999:58). A hallmark of the maturing of historical archaeology into a discipline independent of theoretical or methodological advances has been the development

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of specialized venues for scholarly discourse. Their emergence was the result of at least two forces: resistance to the inclusion of historical archaeology into existing conference venues and publications, and a concurrent growing number of historical archaeologists with something to say. In reaction to these forces, Stanley South conceived of and held the first Conference on Historic Sites Archaeology (CHSA) in 1960 and provided a venue for many very important statements and debates in the formative years of the discipline. Proceedings of these meetings were published in the Conference on Historic Sites Archaeology Papers. Though held in the Southeast and occasionally in conjunction with the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, the CHSA was not a regional conference but was rather one focused on methodological and theoretical issues, and it had a major impact on thought in historical archaeology. A few years later, in 1966, the International Conference on Historical Archaeology was held in Dallas, Texas, on the campus of Southern Methodist University. On the agenda was consideration of creating a new society dedicated to historical archaeology. Present in Dallas were many seminal figures in the history of American archaeology – figures representing an honor roll of the founders of modern historical archaeology and including, among others, Arnold L. Pilling, Carl Chapman, Charles Cleland, John L. Cotter, Edwin S. Dethlefsen, Charles Fairbanks, Bernard L. Fontana, J. C. Harrington, Edward Jelks, Ivor Noe¨l Hume, G. Hubert Smith, Stanley South, and Roderick Sprague. In Dallas, it was debated what to call the discipline, which Ivor Noe¨l Hume recommended should be ‘historical archaeology’, and what to call this society, which Stanley South moved should be the ‘Society for Historical Archaeology’. The formal creation of the Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA) followed in 1967, and it has since become an international voice for the discipline and its annual conference a major venue for scholarly discourse. At this same time, a number of parallel developments occurred that have influenced the subsequent maturation of the discipline. In 1959, to combat the same lack of a venue for communication, the Council for Underwater Archaeology (CUA) was formed. At this time, technology was making underwater exploration practical on a large scale, and interest was growing on conducting true archaeological research underwater. Formed in North America, the CUA represented a worldwide network of communication for underwater archaeologists. In 1963, the first Conference on Underwater Archaeology was held in St. Paul, Minnesota. In the late 1960s, the CUA and the Conference on Underwater Archaeology became inactive but

almost immediately, in the early 1970s, an underwater component of the new SHA conference was established. In 1973, the heir to CUA, the Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology (ACUA), was established at that year’s SHA conference. Today the ACUA is an integral force within the SHA, and the annual conference has become the International Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology. Also, in 1959, the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology (SPMA) was formed in Great Britain. The SPMA promotes the ‘‘archaeology of late medieval to industrial society in Britain, Europe and those countries influenced by European colonialism’’ through publications such as Post-Medieval Archaeology and an annual conference. Recognizing shared and overlapping interests, the SPMA and SHA have held joint meetings on several occasions. In 1970, the Australian Society for Historical Archaeology (ASHA) was formed in Australia to provide a venue for discourse and publication. In 1991, the name was changed to the Australasia Society for Historical Archaeology to recognize expansion of the mission to include New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region in general. The multiple parallel developments related to historical archaeology in North America and virtually simultaneous parallel developments in Great Britain and Australia clearly illustrate the level of interest in different variations of historical archaeology as a worldwide horizon of scholarship during the very late 1950s through the 1960s (see Oceania: Historical Archaeology in Australia; Europe, West: Historical Archaeology in Britain). Though archaeologists in North America grappled during this period and later with definitions of historical archaeology that were very parochial in retrospect, these parallel developments were symptomatic of the global nature of this emerging discipline. By the end of the twentieth century, scholarship in historical archaeology had recognized that any definition of the discipline must reflect the global nature of the cultures, sites, and times being studied by historical archaeologists. Of importance, these new and evolving definitions do not ordain any particular methodological or theoretical paradigm or platform. Historical archaeologists embrace the full range of theoretical approaches that may be in vogue anywhere within archaeology, while still taking advantage of the rich oral and written record of the past – the availability of the historical record remains the hallmark of the discipline that presents a broadness of data and dynamic sets of richly separate comparative data that allow historical archeologists to ask, and hope to answer, suites of questions not otherwise possible.

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY/Future 1443 See also: Africa, Historical Archaeology; Americas,

Central: Historical Archaeology in Mexico; Americas, North: Historical Archaeology in the United States; Americas, South: Historical Archaeology; Asia, East: Historical Archaeology; Europe, South: Medieval and Post-Medieval; Europe, West: Historical Archaeology in Britain; Historical Archaeology in Ireland; Historical Archaeology: Future; Methods; Oceania: Historical Archaeology in Australia; Tourism and Archaeology.

prehistory Literally, the time before written history. structuralism An approach to studying language and culture that argues for the common existence of complex mental structures or templates underlying all human consciousness. worldview/mindset An alternative term for the structuralist mental template. A worldview is a mental structure that arises through learning the normative grammar of binary opposition, for example, light/dark, raw/cooked, culture/nature.

Introduction Further Reading Deetz J (1996) In Small Things Forgotten, An Archaeology of Early American Life. Doubleday NY: Anchor Books. Falk L (1991) Historical Archaeology in Global Perspective. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Ferguson LG (1977) Special Publication Series, Number 2, Society for Historical Archaeology: Historical Archaeology and the Importance of Material Things. New York: Society for Historical Archaeology. Funari PPA, Jones S, and Hall M (1999) Historical Archaeology; Back from the Edge. London: Routledge. Lightfoot KG (1995) Culture contact studies: Redefining the relationships between prehistoric and historical archaeology. American Antiquity 60(2): 199–217. Orser CE, Jr. (1996) A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World. New York: Plenum. Schmidt PR and Walz JR (2007) Re-representing African pasts through historical archaeology. American Antiquity 72(1): 53–70. South S (1994) Pioneers in Historical Archaeology, Breaking New Ground. New York: Plenum. South S (1977) Method and Theory in Historical Archeology. New York: Academic Press.

Future Heather Burke, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary new, or processual, archaeology A perspective that seeks to understand long-term change in human society in terms of evolutionary processes in cultural development. normative Something that is prescriptive or part of the standard. Based on shared ideals, values, or rules for living, norms – while appearing universal – are in fact specific to particular groups. postmodernism An eclectic me´lange of perspectives that hold in common a disillusionment with Enlightenment ideals of progress, rationality, and universal truth. postprocessualism A collection of variant viewpoints in archaeology that suggest that the ways we construct the past are largely a construction of social and political currents in the present.

Archaeology is not a discipline renowned for predicting the future. Its focus is always on the past, although historical archaeology is, in many ways, the archaeology of contemporary communities. On the one hand, much of it deals with the origins of modern, western society and the modes of behavior constructed over the past 500 years. On the other, its recentness gives it a direct relevance to modern marginalized communities, particularly Indigenous or other colonized groups for whom the recent past is an area of contestation and dispute. So where is historical archaeology heading in the twenty-first century? One possible answer lies in these communities’ futures, and with all that they hold both in common and apart.

Where has it Come From? Historical archaeology was first defined as a separate entity in the late 1960s. Its practitioners initially devoted considerable effort toward defining their field, casting around for a core set of goals and a sense of direction that would justify their worth to established prehistorians and cultural anthropologists. Like all archaeology, the changing direction of historical archaeology has paralleled wider theoretical changes across the humanities and social sciences generally, themselves components of essential changes in modern, western modes of thought since World War II (see Historical Archaeology: Methods). In seeking a path, much early historical archaeology was heavily influenced by the ‘new’, or processual, archaeology of the 1960s. Processual archaeology was concerned with explaining long-term patterns in human behavior across both time and space in order to reveal the commonalities in the ways that human beings interacted with their environments. In historical archaeology this was translated into identifying, for example, the processes involved in producing the material patterns that could be observed at (and in some degree were also held to constitute) historical archaeological sites. Stanley South, one pioneer of this approach, defined a range of quantifiable artifact patterns that he believed could be used to identify

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sites independently of historical documents. The major problem with such approaches, however, is that identification was not explanation – South’s pattern recognition process could successfully label a particular ‘behavioral unit’ as a school, for example, but how a school functioned, or how wider attitudes to childhood or appropriate age-related behaviors constructed children (and by extension adults), let along how this might change over time, were not issues that the processual path could reveal (see Processual Archaeology). The alternative theories of structuralism, also in their heyday in the late 1960s and early 1970s, imported several key ideas from linguistics that shifted attention away from material artifacts as passive products of particular activity patterns, toward artifacts as symbolic representations of deeper, underlying worldviews. James Deetz’s seminal investigations into the transition between medieval and Georgian mindsets in seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury colonial Virginia, for example, married an analysis of deep mental structures with detailed, small-scale analysis of the nuances of material form and style. Deetz’s insights enabled him to produce a broad-ranging and perceptive historical archaeology that encompassed changes in architecture, dining, refuse disposal patterns, ceramic forms, gravestones, and color, within its scope. Since the 1980s, historical archaeology has taken many of structuralism’s symbolic strands and woven them together in the light of contemporary social politics to analyze a range of interests synonymous with postprocessual archaeology. Taking its cue from various elements of postmodernism, and inspired by philosophical and sociological literature, postprocessual archaeology rejected the belief that artifacts were merely passive residues of past human behavior, and argued instead that objects are, and always have been, an active medium through which people create themselves and their society. Objects are fashioned and used by people in the process of constructing who they are. In the last 20 years, historical archaeology has become increasingly oriented toward postprocessual questions of power, ideology, class and ethnicity, and the many ways in which material artifacts are used to construct and negotiate both personal and group identity in a variety of contexts.

Where is it Heading? Forecasting the future of historical archaeology is complicated by the continuing tensions over the extent to which historical archaeology should focus on the study of a globalizing process (the social creation of the modern world, usually via the

development of capitalism, as proposed by Orser), or its antithesis: the ‘messiness’ of local contexts and small-scale experience (as proposed by Johnson). The different trajectories in the development of historical archaeology between the Old World and the New further complicate this situation. In the Old, historical archaeology is most often an extension of the archaeology of long-standing literate societies; it is therefore methodologically defined as a discipline which has unique access to a distinctive class of material (documents). In the New, despite the existence of writing in some precolonial cultures, the abrupt appearance of colonizing nations means that historical archaeology is more often tightly defined according to a time period: as post-Columbian or according to the era of European colonial expansion. The expansion of European powers in places with long Indigenous histories, such as the Americas, Australia, and South Africa, has inevitably meant that historical archaeology in the New World has focused heavily on the many distinctions between Indigenous and colonizer pasts. These core epistemological issues, together with the explicitly political agenda of much postprocessual archaeology and the exploration of global/local tensions, suggest some of the ways in which the goals of historical archaeology might develop in the future. One such avenue moves beyond the archaeology of the colonial period as a product of a particular set of economic conditions or attitudes, to the archaeology of the more devastating – and historically rarely visible – social aspects of the colonial process (see Postprocessual Archaeology). There are several ways in which historical archaeology is beginning to do this. Myths of the frontier, or the enduring narratives created around the behavior of early colonizers and their relationships to the colonized, are one example. Constructed through folkloric tales of pioneering behavior, frontier myths are often materialized through the domestic evidence for life in a socially and economically marginal environment. Claims for defensive architectural features in everyday domestic structures, for instance, are one way in which historical archaeological sites are factored into stories that link such evidence to the creation of colonial mindsets and a fear of the unknown. Similarly, the reshaping of old forms of social identity in new contexts, the origins of notions of race as a defensive tactic in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, or the construction of ‘whiteness’ as a normative category in opposition to those it colonized, are current topics that are beginning this exploration. More significantly, in line with an interest in power, ideology, and colonialism, it is likely that

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historical archaeology will become increasingly linked to crucial postcolonial issues, at least in twenty-first century settler cultures. Many aspects of the recent past are still deeply ingrained in the social memory of descendent communities today, such as the removal of Indigenous people from their lands, the reshaping of local communities to suit wider political and economic agendas, even the deliberate erasure of Indigenous groups through violence. Massacre sites, or places where Indigenous people met with violence and death at the hands of settlers or other colonizing groups are just beginning to come into historical archaeological focus. These sites of negative heritage – places for which the memories are painful and raw despite the passage of time, and that often hold volatile, conflicting meanings – situate trauma in the landscape, but are seldom explored because of the variety of painful emotions they generate. They are rarely, if ever, recorded in historical documents, but live in the oral traditions of Indigenous peoples. As Indigenous people increasingly take control of their own heritage and the ways in which their past is presented, these sites will form components of wider discourses on settler culture and the ‘shared histories’ that much historical archaeology currently attempts to investigate. A move away from studying ‘races’, ‘ethnicities’, or other essentialized groups (but not necessarily the essentializing process which constitutes groups by comparison to each other) toward the social construction of difference and the various material ways in which this can be signaled or negotiated suggests a third potential direction for historical archaeological practice: a focus on the range of imagined identities that are constructed under modernity and its globalizing forms. Appadurai has alluded to a growing rootlessness in modern society as identities become less territorialized and the opportunities this creates for constructing an imagined past that in some cases may never have existed. This ‘invented nostalgia’ can also be linked to a growing emphasis on cultural tourism and visitor experiences of historical archaeological sites and thus to wider concerns with community archaeology, local agendas, and identity politics in a globalized world. There is a strong element of contemporary identity which reaches out to the recent past for its direction. There is also, however, an element that suggests that the ruptures brought about by colonialism in part require the reinvention of tradition and the recognition of negative heritage as an essential component of the present. See also: Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline; Methods; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology.

Further Reading Appadurai A (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deetz J (1977) In Small Things Forgotten. The Archaeology of Early American Life. New York: Anchor. Hall M and Silliman SW (eds.) (2006) Historical Archaeology. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Johnson M (1996) An Archaeology of Capitalism. Oxford: Blackwell. Johnson M (1999) Rethinking historical archaeology. In: Funari P, Hall M, and Jones S (eds.) Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge, pp. 23–36. London: Routledge. Leone M and Potter P, Jr. (1988) The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Orser CE, Jr. (1996) A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World. New York: Plenum. Orser CE, Jr. (ed.) (2001) Race and the Archaeology of Identity. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. South S (1977) Method and Theory in Historical Archaeology. New York: Academic Press.

Methods Charles E Orser, Jr., Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary artifact Archaeologically or historically interesting human-made object, such as a tool, weapon, or ornament. historical archaeology A branch of archaeological study and interpretation that deals with literate societies the objects and events since the beginnings of recorded history. soil zone A vertical or horizontal region of soil with common characteristics. stratification An arrangement or deposition of sediment or sedimentary rocks in a sequence of layers (strata).

As the name implies, historical archaeology is a subfield of archaeology in which the practitioners use at least two distinct but related sources of information: archaeologically retrieved data (artifacts, features, soil zones) and historical materials (personal accounts, governmental records, maps). The sources available to a historical archaeologist often will depend on the period of history being examined. Archaeologists investigating an outpost of the Roman Empire in Great Britain may have access to fewer sources than archaeologists excavating a twentiethcentury farmstead in the American Midwest. In all cases, however, the historical archaeologist’s main task is to combine the various sources of relevant information to provide the most thorough interpretation of

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the past possible. Historical archaeological research thus regularly involves both excavation and the examination of nonarchaeological sources of information (see Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline). When excavating, historical archaeologists often encounter extremely thin layers of soil, generally referred to as microstratification. All archaeologists, regardless of their area of expertise, may find thin layers of accumulated living surfaces. Thin layers of occupation are commonplace in historical archaeology because of the frequent study of house-lots and other activity areas that have been occupied for short periods of time. Historical archaeologists conducting investigations of post-Columbian history, or modernworld archaeology, commonly locate thin occupation layers. The possible presence of microstrata means that historical archaeologists must excavate recently occupied sites carefully, paying close attention to the way the soil has been naturally deposited. Historical archaeologists also often encounter deep, purposefully built features that contain thick layers of soil and artifacts. These features, particularly privies and wells, often serve as time capsules. Before the institution of regular curb-service trash pickup, site residents often used open holes as trash and garbage receptacles. Given the way in which things get deposited in such places, archaeologists generally discover that the deeper one digs into a well or privy, the older the materials. Excavating deep features, historical archaeologists often can construct timelines that document the history of the property being studied. The internal stratification in such features may be thick or thin, depending upon the circumstances of deposition. Upon the discovery of thick layers, perhaps representing the deposition of a large amount of material from the demolition of a structure, the archaeologist may decide to excavate within each soil zone using excavation levels of a standard thickness. In addition to the excavation and study of regular archaeological materials, in which all archaeologists must have expertise, historical archaeologists must also develop the skills of historians. Historical archaeologists must know how to locate, examine, and interpret the many historical records they may encounter in the course of their research. Historians spend their careers learning how to conduct documentary research, and historical archaeologists have learned a great deal from them. The way in which history is written, and precisely what it means once written, is a source of continued controversy among historians, and historical archaeologists must be conversant with the newest trends in historical interpretation. Numerous schools of thought exist, extending in scope from microhistory (perhaps written at the level of a single person’s life) to macrohistory (written to include

contacts and interactions on an international or even global scale). Historical archaeologists have discovered that their site-specific research can contribute to the understanding of large, worldwide historical processes, including the spread of empires and capitalism, the role of transnational exchange and commodity gift-giving in local situations, and the beginnings of material globalization. At the same time, the site-specific nature of most archaeological research also means that historical archaeologists can provide unique perspectives on daily life at the household level. Some of the documents historical archaeologists use will be straightforward and require little in the way of in-depth analysis. For example, nineteenthand twentieth-century city insurance maps show the precise locations and even the construction materials of buildings in urban settings, and historical archaeologists have used them to great benefit. Older maps, such as those compiled by colonial surveyors or administrators or perhaps by untrained individuals, may have been completed at a large scale or maybe not even drawn to scale. These maps are less precise and generally demand greater interpretation. Historical archaeologists also make extensive use of pictorial records and even drawings and paintings when available. In colonial settings, for instance, archaeologists can learn much about indigenous patterns of dress and the acceptance and rejection of foreign items for adornment and other purposes. Paintings and drawings can also help archaeologists locate sites by matching the image with the landscape. Images of individuals depicting unflattering or unrealistic physical characteristics can provide information about attitudes and biases that were present when the images were executed. Drawings in newspapers and weekly magazines provide examples. Historical archaeologists can use such information to help interpret past social context. Photographs can be an extremely useful source of information for historical archaeologists. These images can be used to show the past appearance of buildings long demolished, as well as an infinite variety of other objects. Most evocative are images of individuals who once lived at a site being studied. The presence of snapshots can provide a realism and humanity to archaeological research that is seldom matched with other sources of information. Literary works, even of fiction, are becoming increasingly important to historical archaeologists. Many authors have written about their own periods of history in terms that are expository and enlightening. Such works, if their voracity can be determined, can provide special insights into the contexts of the living society that can be gained through no other means. In many cases, writers may comment on the

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use and availability of material objects, thus giving the historical archaeologist special insights into the context and meaning of artifacts in the past. Historical archaeologists also make use of nontextual sources of information. These sources demonstrate the strong linkage between much historical archaeology and anthropology, because this category of information is consistent with the practices of ethnographers. The techniques learned from social and cultural anthropologists involve the collection of cultural traditions and the compilation of concepts and beliefs from indigenous groups. Many of the methods historical archaeologists use in this facet of their research may also derive from the fields of local and public history, which, in turn, have borrowed from anthropology. The methods historical archaeologists use to collect information that may only exist in personal memories extend from the practical use of recording devices and the transcription of interviews to the evaluation of cultural motifs and folk tales. Beginning in the late twentieth century, historical archaeologists began to appreciate the role that indigenous knowledge could play in their research. Rather than ignoring members of descendant communities who are not professional archaeologists, many historical archaeologists have actively engaged people who, though not scholars, nonetheless may retain a huge body of unique and important information in their personal recollections. Historical archaeologists have discovered that interactions and collaborations with members of descendant communities can add rich detail to their research and make their findings and interpretations relevant far beyond the confines of academic archaeology. The word ‘archaeology’ generally conjures up images of excavation and discovery beneath the Earth, but many historical archaeologists practice

‘aboveground archaeology’. This term refers to the examination of buildings, structures, and other cultural features, such as gravestones, that do not require excavation. Historical archaeologists often are able to incorporate into their interpretations inscriptions on grave markers, the designs of floor plans, and the construction techniques used in standing buildings. In incorporating aboveground features in their research, historical archaeologists share their methods with industrial archaeologists and historical architects. See also: Ethnohistory; Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline.

Further Reading Burns JA (ed.) (1989) Recording Historic Structures. Washington, DC: American Institute of Architects Press. Harris EC (1989) Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy, 2nd edn. New York: Academic Press. Howell M and Prevenier W (2001) From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kuppuram G and Kumudamani K (2002) Methods of Historical Research. New Delhi: Sundeep Press. Lock G (2000) Beyond the Map: Archaeology and Spatial Technologies. Amsterdam: IOS Press. McDowell-Loudan EE (2002) Archaeology: Introductory Guide for Classroom and Field. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Morriss RK (2000) The Archaeology of Buildings. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Tempus. Orser CE, Jr. (2004) Historical Archaeology, 2nd edn. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Rithie DA (2003) Doing Oral History: A Practical Guide. New York: Oxford University Press. Rosenzweig R and Thelen D (1998) The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life. New York: Columbia University Press. Sommer BW and Quinlan MK (2003) The Oral History Manual. Lanham, MD: Alta Mira Press. Wilson DA (2006) Interpreting Land Records. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

HISTORICAL MATERIALIST APPROACHES LouAnn Wurst, SUNY College at Brockport, Brockport, NY, USA Maria O’Donovan, Public Archaeology Facility, Binghamton, NY, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

historical materialism The methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history which was first articulated by Karl Marx (1818–83). Marxism Any political practice or theory that is based on an interpretation of the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (including the later Communist Parties and Communist states, as well as academic research across many fields) may be termed Marxism.

Glossary capitalism An economic system in which the means of production are mostly privately owned and operated for profit, and in which distribution, production and pricing of goods and services are determined in a largely free market.

Historical Materialism is a common term for the theoretical ideas of Karl Marx. Marxism is not a unified theoretical framework and any attempt to define

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a singular vision of Historical Materialism is doomed to failure. Discussing the many subtle differences within Marxism is impossible within the confines of this brief essay; however, archaeology has been most influenced by Western Marxism and we chose to focus on this approach. While Western Marxism also encompasses theoretical variation, there are several principles and concepts that define the core of historical materialism for most of these theorists. Any discussion of historical materialism must begin with the dialectic. Marx used the dialectic as both a theory to understand how the world works and as a method to study it. In dialectical thought, society is comprised of internal relations and it is the surface appearance of these relations which are taken to be its parts. Social entities do not and cannot exist apart from the underlying relations they are involved in, and dialectical social relations actually define what any entity will be. One common example of a dialectical relation is husband–wife, neither of which can exist without the other. In this simplified example, the internal relations define the surface appearance of the entities husband and wife. One of the central facets of the dialectic is the unity of opposites. Dialectical relations unite opposites – husband–wife, master–slave, capitalist–worker, etc. These opposing entities live within different material conditions and have different intrinsic interests. Thus, dialectical social relations always contain conflict and contradiction within them. It is the play of contradictions within relations that drives change. Change is constant within social relations and may entail small or major transformations; a series of small or quantitative changes may also build into a qualitative or structural change. In rooting change within the dialectic, Marxism excludes cause and effect scenarios. Change does not stem from one entity that impacts another, but from their relations. It follows, then, that social relations both constrain and enable change. Dialectical research emphasizes social totality and focuses on the whole of real lived experience. The web of relations that comprises the social world connects all aspects that ‘common sense’ understandings view as separate. There is no such thing as ‘the economy’ or ‘ideology’ that exists independently of the social totality and that can act upon it. Versions of Marxism, particularly Soviet-style Marxism, have been critiqued for their vulgar materialism. While these critiques may be appropriate, the unity of opposites and the emphasis on the social totality within Marxism imply that the mental and the material are part of the same web of social relations and are in reality part of the same thing. Thus, neither has more a priori explanatory force, although Marxist explanation is materialist in the last instance.

Social relations, and thus change, are never completely of the present. Marx famously expressed this idea as ‘‘People make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under given circumstances directly encountered and inherited from the past.’’ These circumstances include social relations, structures, material conditions, technology, etc. To fully understand a given society, it is necessary to place it within its historical and material context. As a method, Marx used the dialectic to study the world, to organize what he found and to present his findings. The best statement of Marx’s method is summed up in this quote: The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individual, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. (Marx and Engels, 1970: 42)

In other words, Marx started from a ‘material’ reality and derived relevant abstractions from this reality to grasp the significance and form of social relations. Thus, any Historical Materialist archaeology begins with a human population that is active, historically situated, and whose activity is fundamentally associated with production. A Historical Materialist method focuses attention on the production and reproduction of everyday life in all of its varied aspects and manifestations: people must produce things to live and reproduce, but they must also reproduce themselves and the social relations they enter into in order to engage in production. Production and reproduction are simply two aspects of the same dialectical totality of everyday life. Thus, humans make society through the playing out of the contradictions, constraints, and freedoms in the dialectical social relations that form everyday life. A focus on the production and reproduction of everyday life is the basic ‘stuff’ that archaeology deals with, and it has clear material referents (see Economic Archaeology; Social Inequality, Development of). A Historical Materialist archaeology of the study of everyday life must be built on the analysis of different forms of evidence. As McGuire points out, a dialectical archaeology is based on the contradictions and relations that exist between the patterns of different material forms, and it is the anomalies between various kinds of artifacts that are used in different social contexts that become the keys to interpreting the internal dynamics of society. By examining different lines of evidence, anomalies or paradoxes in the messages become evident, suggesting that different groups in any community did in fact live their own history

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in very different ways. Examining multiple lines of evidence points to the differing social and material strategies; understanding the reasons for differential material behavior is the crux of dialectical reasoning. Equally important in capturing the contradictions and relations of everyday life is the analysis of varying scales. Crumley and Marquardt argue for the relevance of temporal and spatial scale in the conduct of material strategies. People act, think, and draw on material resources in very different ways according to perceived scales and are constrained in very different ways at various scales. In this process, the same individuals and social groups can create different or contradictory social relations and material strategies. Thus, analysis at multiple scales provides essential insights into the reality of social relations. Finally, what distinguishes Historical Materialism from the other social theories is praxis, the political commitment to change the world. As Derek Sayer notes, ‘‘the study of Marx can be a coded form of social criticism (in East and West alike), it can be sniveling apologetics, but it can hardly be politically innocent’’. All Marxists would agree that there is real oppression and exploitation in the Capitalist world and that a vital part of any scholarship is challenging these wrongs. Praxis involves the dialectical interrelationship of critique, knowledge, and action: critique reveals this oppression and how we as scholars are related to it; knowledge helps us understand the structure of how this oppression works; and critique and knowledge provides the basis to take action to transform society. In this way Marxism is inherently political and subversive of modern Capitalist society. A Marxist archaeologist must always ask ‘‘scholarship for whom?’’ and question whether their scholarship challenges or reinforces the power relations of the social world. The implications of a Historical Materialist archaeology as both a theory and a method are clear. A series of features or aspects are the hallmark of a dialectical

Marxist approach: an emphasis on real, socially and historically conditioned contexts; a focus on the production and reproduction of everyday life; an emphasis on the web of social relations that exist within the larger social totality; abstracting from that totality only for analytical purposes; examining multiple lines of evidence (material and historical) at multiple scales to identify contradictory messages; interpreting how these relate to the internal dynamics of society; and using these understandings to engage in praxis in the modern world in which we work. See also: Colonial Praxis; Economic Archaeology; Marxist Archaeology; Political Complexity, Rise of; Social Inequality, Development of; Social Theory; Social Violence and War; State-Level Societies, Collapse of; World Systems Theory.

Further Reading Crumley CL and Marquardt WH (eds.) (1987) Regional Dynamics: Burgundian Landscapes in Historical Perspective. San Diego: Academic Press. Marquardt WH (1992) Dialectical Archaeology. In: Shiffer MB (ed.) Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 4, p. 101–140. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Marx K (1963) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. New York: International Publishers. Marx K and Engels F (1970) The German Ideology. New York: International Publishers. McGuire RH (1992) A Marxist Archaeology. San Diego: Academic Press. McGuire RH, O’Donovan M, and Wurst L (2005) Probing praxis in archaeology: The last eighty years. Rethinking Marxism 17(3): 355–372. Ollman B (1993) Dialectical Investigations. New York: Routledge. Ollman B (2003) Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Sayer D (1987) The Violence of Abstraction:The Analytical Foundations of Historical Materialism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Thompson EP (1978) The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press.

HOUSEHOLD ARCHAEOLOGY Penelope Allison, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

household archaeology A branch of archaeology concerned with the study of the material culture and activities associated with ancient households. material culture Buildings, tools, and other artifacts, including any material item that has had cultural meaning ascribed to it, past and present.

Glossary architecture The art and science of designing and erecting buildings. ethnography A branch of anthropology that deals with the scientific description of specific human cultures.

Introduction Broadly speaking, households tend to be a combination of a kinship group and a dwelling, forming a

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socioeconomic unit in which reproduction and early childhood socialization takes place. These households constitute the bulk of the population in ancient societies and are therefore fundamental building blocks for reconstructing the past social and cultural life. But archaeologists do not dig up households. They dig up the dwellings and the domestic artifacts of past societies but not the social units. Since the late 1960s, archaeologists have been developing approaches to the houses and domestic spaces they dig up to better understand the social behavior of the people who inhabited them. To the ‘New Archaeologists’ (see Processual Archaeology), like R. R. Wilk and W. C. Rathje, households were an essential level of inquiry for moving ‘from grand theories of cultural change and evolution to the practical archaeology of potsherds and stone tools’. But how do archaeologists investigate households through the archaeological record? What can we learn about households from their material remains? How do archaeologists get from the material remains to the social, or behavioral, level? The material remains of households do not directly provide evidence for household behavior. Rather they provide the material residues of household activities. By developing an understanding of the nature and interrelationships of these household activities we can learn more about household behavior and therefore about social behavior in the past.

Households as Economic and Social Units Wilk and Rathje argued that it is important to investigate households in archaeology because an understanding of the nature of change in household organization bridges the existing ‘mid-level theory gap’ (see Processual Archaeology). They argued that, at the level of the household, ‘‘social groups articulate directly with economic and ecological processes.’’ Richard E. Blanton argued that households were probably the major arena in which social productive strategies are played out. Thus, archaeologists have been principally concerned with households in the past as socioeconomic units of production in the wider community. Wilk and Rathje defined the activities of a household as being concerned with production, distribution, transmission, and reproduction. ‘Production’ consists of the pooling of labor of the household (e.g., planting, shepherding, weaving, wage earning) to procure resources and increase their value. ‘Distribution’ consists of the distribution of resources from producer to consumer within or outside the household (e.g., food). ‘Transmission’ concerns the transference of rights, responsibilities, and property between

generations within the household. ‘Reproduction’ refers to the rearing and socializing of children born into the household. These household activities are all for the benefit of the household unit, linking its members and possessions together and emphasizing the importance of a household as a social and economic unit. Wilk and Rathje divided these activities into three levels: (1) the social (i.e., the demographic unit); (2) the material (i.e., the dwelling with its possessions); and (3) the behavioral (the actual activities it performs). The material is the only level which is extant in the archaeological context.

Households as Consumption Units In the last two decades archaeologists have also been concerned with household as units of consumption. As well as being socioeconomic units and producers of material culture, households are also consumers. Households ‘consume’ goods because they are readily available (e.g., locally made pottery) but they will often go to extreme lengths to acquire goods because they are not readily available (e.g., fine nonlocal pottery or glassware). It is often a lack of availability that makes particular goods desirable. This desirability may lead to greater importation of luxury goods, in turn leading to local imitation of them, which may ultimately render them less desirable. Thus, relationships between household production and consumption are complex. Many studies of material-culture consumption in archaeology have stemmed from assumptions, both in Capitalist and Marxist systems, of a hierarchy of production over consumption rather than reciprocity, with consumption as a logical outcome of production rather than as an active agent in the process of production. This has led to many archaeological sites being excavated and analyzed for studies of production rather than consumption. For example, pottery is frequently analyzed typologically to investigate technological and chronological aspects of its manufacture and distribution. To investigate how and why it was used within particular households, precise information is needed on its find spots and on the variations of shapes and fabric across and between related sites – whether between a number of households from one community or between a number of related communities. For example, one can learn more about the culinary habits of a household, or a community, by focusing on the evidence pottery provides for food consumption, its social, cultural, political, and economic motivations and its relationship to settlement structures and acculturation. Quantitative and qualitative comparisons of nonlocal material culture can also provide information on household consumption

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and its relationship to a community’s political and economic status.

Households as a System of Membership Because household membership has been defined as being based on kinship relationships there is a common perception that the actual compositions of households are largely known, relatively standardized, and unchanging phenomena. Perceptions of unproblematic compositions of households stem from assumptions that the head of the household controls the activities and behaviors of ‘his’ [sic] socioeconomic unit. The contributions of the other members to household formation and to its interaction with the community are believed to be mitigated through that household head, and therefore largely unimportant. The complex mechanisms and ideologies that make up the household as a unit of production, reproduction, and consumption have been considered of little consequence. Thus, studies of the internal dynamics and intra-relationships of a household have often been by-passed in investigations of patterns of human social behavior. However, household dynamics are important factors in the social, political, and economic roles of the household in the wider community, not as a unit but as a system of membership. To understand the social significance of domestic space we need to go beyond the outward presentation of a household as a unit to the inward perspectives of the practical activities of daily life that provide information on members of a household and their relationships to each other. To validate a conception of households as productive entities, there needs to be a well-founded comprehension of what such entities might be composed of – the potential diversities of their internal organization (physical and ideological) both within a society and cross-culturally. In other words, an essential level of inquiry in household archaeology concerns the internal constitution and organization of households themselves. An understanding of the spatial, status, gender, and age relationships within households leads to a better comprehension of the complexity and diversity of the roles of households, as social and productive units in the wider community. Joyce Marcus stressed the need for an awareness of household status differentiation among the assumed homogeneous ‘commoners’ in sixteenthcentury Mayan societies – ‘one’ household does not stand for ‘all’ households in a community. Susan Lawrence studied the ephemeral remains of a mining settlement at Dolly’s Creek in the state of Victoria in Australia which was active from c. 1850s to 1870s. She showed that, while few traces of the

actual dwellings remain, the artifacts left behind in these spaces that the dwellings once occupied indicated the diversity of the types of household to be found in what is traditionally considered a maledominated arena, with rudimentary living standards. She was able to identify evidence for different household types – single men’s dwellings or family dwellings – and to demonstrate the diverse ways in which these households occupied these dwellings and presented themselves. In turn, she could demonstrate that life in such mining settlements was complex, and sometimes ‘gentile’. Lawrence’s findings throw new light on long-held and widely propagated perspectives of the rugged masculine world of early Australia, particularly in mining settlements.

Gender and Households Important to the study of household membership in the past is, therefore, the deconstruction of perceptions that households are largely unchanging and known socioeconomic entities, with a known set of power structures. Such perceptions stem from analogies with contemporary Western societies, which view the house as the locus of consumption and the woman’s domain, but under the authority of the male head of the household. In some cases, these assumptions have even led to a view that male presence tends to be invisible in archaeological households because the material culture of households informs mainly on female activities. Gender is not visible in the archaeological remains of households. It is largely through analogies with modern societies, through preconceived ideas about women’s activities, and through concerns for the perspectives of a male head of the household, rather than through anything readable in the archaeological data, that assumptions have been made about gender roles, gender distribution of activities and spaces, and the invisibility of certain members of the household. Notions of household member invisibility are determined by assumptions that other members are more visible. In the archaeological record of households, without some outside analogical inferences, males are no more or less visible than females, e´lites no more or less visible than subordinates. Engendered approaches to archaeology expose cultural and gender biases in investigations of past household behavior, particularly those that concern divisions of labor and the visibility of gender (see Engendered Archaeology). For example, critical approaches to the roles of women in production, for distribution within and outside the household, are important for developing better understanding of gender relationships within a household. In the past,

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scholars studying the Roman town of Pompeii have used the discovery of quantities of loom weights in the front hall, the so-called ‘atrium’, of a Pompeian house to argue that this particular house would have been a weaver’s workshop rather than a dwelling, where male weavers produced cloth for commercial distribution. There is textual evidence that both men and women were weavers in the Roman world. A household approach, analyzing the distribution pattern of all cloth-working artifacts across a number of Pompeian houses demonstrated that weaving seems to have been commonplace in the front hall in many houses. There is no reason, in a preindustrial society like that of Pompeii, for presuming a spatial and functional distinction between the production of cloth for consumption within the household and that for distribution outside, and therefore no reason for assuming a gendered distinction in this production. Historical archaeologists have demonstrated that even in the nineteenth century, largely European, societies, household production and consumption activities are not divided strictly along gender lines. The study of household material culture can provide information on the production and consumption activities of a household without unwarranted assumptions about the gender separation of household-focused tasks. Household archaeology can also use a consumption approach to increase the visibility of women in the archaeological record, and even to distinguish all-male households, such as in military barracks or in the temporary residences of miners.

Public and Private Traditionally the house has been seen as a private/female world and the outside world as a public/male world. This binary opposition has influenced many studies of past households, classifying private life as that pertaining to women, children, and slaves, and the household as being made up of elements that serve the master in his negotiations with the world outside the household. However, such assumptions are, again, part of the cultural baggage of modern scholars. The association of women with private and men with public are aspects for upper- and middle-class European societies which have become reified in historical documentation. Even in ancient Rome, the Vestal Virgins, a community of aristocratic women, resided in the center of the most central domain of Roman public life – the Roman forum – and, far from being a secluded religious sect, played an active role in Roman sociopolitical life. Cross-cultural studies show that perceptions of a domestic/female:public/male dichotomy as a universal concept have an unwarranted normalizing effect on our understanding of past household behavior. Indeed,

even in nineteenth-century urban contexts the instigation of public and cooperative housekeeping challenges the traditional definition of households as private and extends women’s ‘private’ roles to the ‘public’ community. From the 1870s, in cities like Paris, London, Moscow, Boston, and New York, middleand upper-class commercial cooperative apartment hotels; noncommercial cooperative homes for single working women; and the activities of domestic reformers saw household tasks socialized into cooperative institutions. Thus, studies of household archaeology must tread cautiously when attempting to treat excavated spaces as dichotomized public or private space and to associate them, accordingly, with specifically male or female activities.

Symbolism and Rituals Also significant to household archaeology are the roles of symbolism and rituals in household behavior, but again there is no clear dichotomy that separates ritual aspects of social life from everyday routine activities. Routine activities often have their own symbolic qualities, and ritual activities can be part of everyday routine. For example, eating can be a daily family ritual and ritual eating on celebratory occasions. Many aspects of women’s routine domestic roles can acquire cult status. Household material culture can also acquire a symbolic quality in structuring and reinforcing social status (for example the tea sets of aspiring Victorian middle classes). And, ‘everyday’ artifacts of one society can have symbolic significance when adopted by other societies (e.g., the Coca Cola bottle in the film ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’). Archaeologists need to be aware that such symbolism is inherent in the archaeological record of households.

The Temporality of a Household Past household behavior concerns temporality, both in terms of the daily life cycle and the life cycle of the household itself. It is difficult to isolate the remains of a single household through its archaeological vestiges. Even at sites that have experienced a catastrophic event and abandonment, such as at Pompeii, it is difficult to isolate a single, quantified, household. Some houses in Pompeii were built several centuries before the eruption in AD 79 and may have housed a number of households. Equally, in cultures where dwellings might be built specifically for one generation, household relationships undergo change in that the original individuals may remain but may remarry and the children will grow and multiply, and perhaps move away. Nicholas David showed how the built structures and family relationship in a

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contemporary compound of the Fulani, in Cameroon, demonstrated the types of complex, and changing, family groupings of which one must be wary when reading evidence for households in the archaeological record. Jason Yaeger and Cynthia Robin used this concept of household developmental cycles to argue that some of the observed heterogeneity of households within the Classic period Mayan settlements of San Lorenzo and Chan No´ohol near Xuantunich in Belize – settlements previously thought to be those of ‘uniform, homogeneous peasantry’ – documented consecutive generations residing within established households, with differing family groups and labor access. These developmental cycles indicate that most archaeological sites involve what have been termed ‘household series’. Household archaeology has to consider the potential variation in household organization over time. Only at sites that are abandoned after a brief occupation, such as hunter-gatherer sites or military camps destroyed during battle, might single-period households be assumed. In general, the archaeological remains of households are best employed to investigate patterns of household behavior that may persist over generations. Household archaeologists also have to be aware of the changing use of space throughout the day and avoid making overly simplistic ascriptions of static functions to domestic spaces. An area of the house where some household members may meet to conduct business with outsiders at certain times of the day may be given over to household production and more domestic activities by other members of the household at other times of day. This might well be the case in the front halls in Pompeian houses. Textual references and the display furniture found in these areas may indicate that this space was used for the morning ‘salutatio’, when the owner of the house would meet his clients. Perhaps this space was used for weaving later in the day, although we cannot necessarily assume this temporal segregation from the archaeological evidence. Given the difficulties of isolating the activities of single households, separating out the daily organization of activities through archaeological remains is practically impossible, without use of analogy.

Ethnographic, Textual, and Pictorial Analogy The foregoing discussion highlights the difficulties facing household archaeologists in their attempts to understand the behaviors and relationships of the people behind the structures and artifacts that they dig up. These difficulties stem from the fact that a household is not an archaeological phenomenon but an ethnographic one. Thus, many of these

difficulties may be resolved by recourse to ethnographic, historical, or pictorial analogy. Ethnographic Analogy

Ethnographic and ethno-historical analogy is useful for developing an understanding of the archaeological remains of households, particularly in prehistoric contexts. For example, Susan Kent distinguished differences in the construction and use of domestic space by contemporary Navajo, Euro-American, and SpanishAmerican households. The contemporary Navajo domestic space, and its observed differences from the other households, could then be used to help explain the use of space in ancient Navajo houses. Ethnographic studies of contemporary agricultural communities in the Maya lowlands can help in interpreting the spatial arrangements of house lots in precolonial and colonial communities in the Yucatan in Mexico but, as Rani Alexander warned, the often synchronicity of ethnographic and ethno-archaeological models do not necessarily reflect the diachronic processes found in the archaeological record. But ethnographic and ethno-historical analogy can also have a normalizing effect on past behavior, by superimposing patterns of modern or recent household behavior on previous sociocultural situations. For example, the use of architectural parallels between historic and prehistoric domestic spaces to interpret the use of the latter ignores the changing uses of individual spaces that have no impact on the structure of a house. Ethnography is fundamental to the study of household archaeology, but ethnographic data do not describe household behavior in the past. Rather ethnographic data can be used to explore variation in household behavior and highlight the potential for diversity and change in domestic worlds. That is, ethnography is a ‘signifier’ of complexity rather than a ‘prescriber’ of household behavior. Cross-cultural studies, of different parts of the world, are important to deepen our understanding of the range of potential variability in household behavior that the archaeological remains could represent. Textual Analogy

Household archaeology is also concerned with the households of historical periods. The availability of contemporaneous written documentation for the Classical, ancient Egyptian, Medieval, and post-Medieval worlds, and from much of the ancient Near East, often provides archaeologists working in these areas with a full body of data for the investigation of household behaviors. However, the relationships between the textual and the archaeological material can be as complex and as difficult to grasp as the relationships between prehistory and

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ethnography. Sometimes in historical archaeology some specific members of an archaeologically identified household may also be identified through documentary evidence (e.g., Nero and his Golden House in Rome). However, attempts to relate archaeological remains to extant textual evidence must be sensitive to the fact that the texts themselves are selective. For example, textual material often emphasizes and reinforces the roles of a society’s elites, while archaeology can frequently provide evidence of household behavior across a much broader social spectrum, even within elite households. Like ethnographic analogy, attempts to read the archaeological record, through direct associations with documentary evidence, can lead to a normalization of past domestic behavior which denies its historic, regional, or status specificity. Such readings serve to perpetuate perspectives of the inconsequence of household dynamics in the writing of history. They also compromise the ability of archaeological data to provide information which cannot be directly associated with textual information. As with ethnographic analogy, textual analogy can be used to negotiate with the archaeological remains, not to define them. For example, ancient Greek texts have been used to argue for strongly segregated households divided along gender lines, but there is a lack of archaeological evidence for strictly gendered divisions of domestic space. This has led to a reassessment of the textual evidence and a proposal that binary oppositions in the Greek world might be more evident in status than in male:female relationships. Similarly, negotiations between documentary and archaeological evidence for household composition in gold fields in colonial Australia challenge perceptions of them as being male dominated. Misuse of textual analogy and biased assumptions about task division between different household members can render invisible the activities of subordinate members of the household. A critical approach to both archaeological and documentary data can investigate relationships between ideological perspectives of household behavior, as often presented in the documentary evidence, and actual household practice, as presented in archaeological remains. Pictorial Analogy

Contemporaneous artistic or commemorative representations, such as sculpture, paintings, etchings, drawings, or early photography, often include depictions of dwellings and household objects and activities. If these representations have chronological and social proximity to the archaeological data, they can provide useful pictorial analogy. For example, depictions on Greek vases of men and women in association with moveable furniture and engaged in household

activities provide evidence for the engendering of these activities in the ancient Greek world. Artist’s depictions or early photographs of gold-mining settlements help to explain and interpret the fragmentary remains of these temporary dwellings. However, pictorial material can also distort our view of the material past. Like textual and ethnographic material, it embodies the world view of the creator which is not necessarily representative of the world views and the practices of those depicted, or indeed of the individuals represented by the archaeological remains. Such media often portray stereotypical situations or, conversely, desirable and imagined situations, like the numerous magazines in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries that advertise idyllic household furnishings and settings. Thus, pictorial representations can also be imbued with their own agenda and so pictorial analogy can, again, reproduce ideal rather than actual behavior. Modern Analogy

We frequently use, often inadvertently, analogy with our own culture to infer the nature of households in past societies. Perceptions that houses are occupied by nuclear families are probably the most all-pervading of such analogies. We can use archaeological evidence, and cross-cultural analogy, to test such inferences. While any type of analogy has the potential to bias interpretations of archaeological remains, if used critically, analogy provides essential data for household archaeology. The question is not whether or not analogy is appropriate but whether the particular analogical inferences made are appropriate to the particular archaeological data. In summary, cross-cultural analogy – ethnographic, textual, pictorial, and modern – is a particularly important analytical tool in household archaeology, not to describe household behavior in the past but to guard against assuming any universal concepts of household uniformity.

Households as Structures Because archaeologists often dig up dwelling sites, many household archaeology studies have focused on the physical fabric and layout of a dwelling – the architecture. Archaeologically excavated dwellings usually consist of foundations alone, so that only a floor plan can be discerned. Thus, emphasis is often placed on the two-dimensional layout of these remains, at the expense of their three-dimensional proportions. Only at sites like the Pompeii can a better understanding of the three-dimensional space of a house (e.g., its windows, decoration, and proportions) be developed (Figure 1). Thus, at many archaeological sites it is the two-dimensional arrangement

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Figure 1 Three-dimensional proportions of the House of the Ceii in Pompeii. ã 2008 Dr Penelope Allison. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

of domestic space that is used to explain domestic behavior. For example, ground plans of houses have been analyzed for their homogeneity or heterogeneity within a community, or across communities. The ways in which communities build their houses, and arrange the spaces within them, provide information on social and economic aspects of these communities, and the interrelationships of their member households. However, one can only extrapolate social behavior from household definitions and structural remains, often only a floor plan, if one makes assumptions that relationships between space and households are uniform across all societies. On the contrary, ethnographical analogy indicates that the use of specific space can be extremely variable. For example, more than one household can inhabit one structure and also a household group can inhabit more than one structure, as David showed for the inhabitants of the Fulani compound. Attitudes of privacy can also vary widely between different social groups. Analyses of the structural remains of a house present a producer-oriented view, that of the builder, rather than a consumer-oriented view, that of the household. Charles Stanish stressed that the architectural plan of a house was one of the most distinctive features of household organization and of the ethnicity of a household unit. He rightly argued that the spatial

organization of rooms within a domestic structure documented its intended arrangement of internal activity areas. He identified two different architectural household types at a number of settlement sites in southern Peru, variously dated from c. CE 900 to 1500. These two types, called domestic terrace type and paired structures, showed different structural organization that did not necessarily relate to chronological differentiation. Stanish argued that these two different architectural types belonged to different ethnic groups. However, builders and users of dwellings are not always a homogeneous group. Some buildings are built by some of the subsequent occupants, but many people live in dwellings constructed by close relatives or associates during their lifetime and have little or no input into the decision-making or construction process. Many others live in houses built by unrelated individuals or distant ancestors. In many societies, households inhabit spaces designed by the builders of an earlier period or by other socially or culturally dominant groups who impose the structures on them (e.g., modern Aboriginal housing in Australia). Indeed, the vast majority of individuals will not build the house in which they will dwell. Even when members of the household have contributed to the building of their own dwelling, these members can often be more concerned to outwardly imitate other dominant groups in the construction of their dwelling than to conform to the expected lifestyle of the household members (e.g., Californian bungalows in Mexico or apartments in Kuala Lumpur). However, while such dwellings can serve to constrain those lifestyles they can never completely reformulate them. To view architecture as a prescriber and dictator of household behavior is to be biased toward the perspectives of the builder as the signifier of domestic behavior and to undermine the significance of the activities of all the household members, and of interethnic marriage, in formulating their dwelling as a social space. A household is not essentially an architecturally dominated entity. In many cases in archaeology the structural remains of dwellings are either not extant in the archaeological record or they never existed. Thus, the identification of a household as a social entity is not limited to the identification of the structural remains of its ‘house’. If household archaeologists analyze only the patterning of structural remains it is difficult for them to understand the nature of the household that lived there.

The Material Culture of Households Households do not just live in houses, they also use material culture. While it is true that archaeologists do not dig up households, it is also true that they do not

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dig up just houses. Whenever they dig settlement sites, they invariably dig up household material culture. The structural remains are only part of that material culture. As ethnography and history can serve to flesh out these remains, it can warn us that architecture can conceal household behavior. For example, the home office in my nineteenth-century terrace house in Sydney was originally constructed as a parlor (Figure 2). This changed use of space, and the changed internal dynamics of a household, did not involve any structural change to the house. Archaeologists digging up such a house would not be able to identify this reuse through the floor plan alone. They would need to pay close attention to the distribution patterns of the house contents that might have fallen through the wooden floor boards (e.g., paper clips and parts of pens), what Amos Rapoport termed the ‘non-fixedfeature’ elements. There is often a considerable wealth of such elements in archaeological remains – pottery and glass vessels, stone, metal and worked bone implements, animal bones, vegetal remains – which are not part of the house structure, but which are evidently part of the household and which provide insights into the nature and distribution of household activities, and into relationships between social action and material culture. Studies of house floor assemblages for assessing spatial distribution of household activities had their beginnings in the southwestern United States in the 1970s (see Americas, North: American Southwest, Four Corners Region). However, the rich data sets and the documentary evidence from other parts of the world, particularly from Old World sites in the Mediterranean region, are well suited to this type of

investigation. Many recent studies in Old World archaeology have investigated the distribution of household artifacts within dwelling spaces. Through analyses of all the material culture of past households we can learn much about past household behavior. However, it is by no means a simple matter to identify the contents of a house, or more particularly of a room, in the archaeological record, because the depositional processes which occur during habitation – change of habitation, abandonment, and postabandonment – contribute to the house floor assemblages excavated by archaeologists. These depositional processes need to be carefully identified in the archaeological record, and relationships between the different assemblages and structural remains identified, before artifact assemblages can be used to study household behavior. Thus, the state of preservation of a site is a major factor in the success of such an approach. Choice of Site

House floor assemblages, as found on archaeological sites, are a palimpsest of activities that may cover several generations – the materialization of the ‘household series’ mentioned above. However, sites that were rapidly and completely abandoned are more likely to present house floor assemblages belonging to the final occupancy of that site. The New Archaeologists considered Pompeii to be the archetypal site for such ‘systemic house floor assemblages’, but even there the depositional processes are much more complex than widely believed. The Classic period Cere´n site in El Salvador was also destroyed by a volcanic eruption c. CE 500–680, but it was

Figure 2 Twentieth-century home office in nineteenth-century parlor in Sydney, Australia. ã 2008 Dr Penelope Allison. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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excavated by more modern techniques than Pompeii and so has better identified house floor assemblages. Sites that have suffered a human rather than a natural catastrophe can also provide good data for studying household behavior. The ancient Greek cities of Haleis and Olynthus were rapidly abandoned during political upheaval, leaving a wealth of archaeological remains. Failure to strike gold, or other desirable mineral resources, in mining settlements in both the ancient and modern worlds, often results in short-term occupation followed by swift abandonment. The destruction and rapid abandonment of military or frontier sites can also provide useful evidence of household activity in often tenuous and unstable conditions. Thus, the ideal sites for using artifact assemblages to investigate for patterns of household activities, and therefore household behaviors in a particular community, are those sites with relatively wellpreserved house floor assemblages. However, such sites can still display a range of patterns of reuse and discard which must be considered when using artifacts and their related activities to describe spatial functions within household contexts. Equally, investigations of household archaeology are not limited to such ideal sites. It is possible to investigate a particular household activity at less well-preserved sites on a site-wide basis, comparing it with other sites that are culturally or chronologically related. Analyses of the artifact assemblages in refuse locations in both rural and urban sites can provide information for intersite comparisons of household behavior. For example, insights into varying dietary behavior between the late Iron Age and early Roman periods in Britain, or into the changing diets of colonists as they come to terms with the environment and the isolation, can be gained by comparing assemblages of animal bone from a number of different sites. Thus, analyses of artifact distribution at archaeological sites play an important role in household archaeology by contributing less prescriptive approaches to the distribution of household activities than studies that rely on the structural remains. The use of computerized databases and statistical analyses has greatly facilitated such approaches to household material culture. The study of household activities requires a ‘rich’ description of all domestic remains. Electronic data collection and analyses allow archaeologists to process large amounts of data, rapidly and from a range of perspectives.

Conclusions It has been claimed that the investigation of households is an inappropriate inquiry for archaeology and that, because of its association with concepts of

kinship, and a need for ethnography, ethno-history and history to interpret spatial patterning, household archaeology is a misnomer. Some would argue that material remains cannot tell us anything about household behavior. The problem is not that archaeological remains cannot provide information on domestic behavior in the past, but rather that archaeological data are not always capable of answering the kinds of questions which anthropologists and social historians might ask of their own data. The investigation of household activities, their spatial distribution, and their changing temporal patterns, is an important level of inquiry for using the archaeological record to develop a better understanding of household behavior in past communities. The material-cultural remains of the houses that form the archaeological record – the structures and their contents – provide a wealth of information on past households. Emphasis on the spatial patterning of structures and other artifacts throws light on household organization of production and consumption. While it is very difficult to use the material culture to identify the nature and quantity of the members of a household and their interrelationships, the patterning of this material, however ephemeral and whether or not delimited by architectural remains, gives us a greater comprehension of the range and distribution of the activities, and possibly behavior and ideologies, of these households. Thus, the archaeological remains contribute to our knowledge of household behavior in the past, if household archaeologists ask questions that these data are capable of answering. The material-cultural remains can be compared to ethnographic, ethno-historical or textual data for similarities and differences. Any differences are not necessarily errors on the part of the archaeologists. Rather, they help us to understand the diversity of human behavior in the past that is often blurred or even obliterated by inappropriate use of analogy, even at the level of household activities. See also: Ethnoarchaeology; Ethnohistory; Middle Range Approaches; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites.

Further Reading Allison PM (ed.) (1999) The Archaeology of Household Activities. London and New York: Routledge. Allison PM (2004) Pompeii Households: Analysis of the Material Culture. Monograph 42. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA. On-line companion: http://www.stoa.org/ pompeianhouseholds. Blanton RE (1994) Houses and Households: A Comparative Study. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. London and New York: Plenum Press.

1458 HUMAN–LANDSCAPE INTERACTIONS Brandon JC and Barile KS (2004) The Chore of Defining the Household: Theorizing the Domestic Sphere in Historical Archaeology. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Cahill N (2002) Household and City Organization at Olynthus. New Haven: Yale University Press. David N (1971) The Fulani compound and the archaeologists. World Archaeology 3.1: 111–131. Kent S (1984) Analyzing Activity Areas: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of the Use of Space. Alberquerque: University of New Mexico. Lawrence S (2000) Dolly’s Creek. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Marcus J (2004) Mayan commoners: The stereotype and the reality. In: Lohse JC and Valdez F (eds.) Ancient Mayan Commoners, pp. 255–283. Austin: University of Texas Press. Nevett L (1999) House and Society in the Ancient Greek World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Human Evolution

Rapoport A (1990) The Meaning of the Built Environment: A Nonverbal Communication Approach. Tucson: University of Arizona. Smith M (1992) Braudel’s temporal rhythms and chronology theory in archaeology. In: Knapp AB (ed.) Archaeology, Annales and Ethnohistory, pp. 23–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stanish C (1989) Household archaeology: Testing models of zonal complementarity in the South Central Andes. American Anthropologist 91.1: 7–24. Wilk RR and Rathje WL (eds.) (1982) Archaeology of the household: Building a prehistoryof domestic life. American Behavioral Scientist, 25.6: 611–725. Yaeger J and Robin C (2004) Heterogeneous hinterlands: The social and political organization of commoner settlements near Xunantunich, Belize. In: Lohse JC and Valdez F (eds.) Ancient Mayan Commoners, pp. 147–173. Austin: University of Texas Press.

See: Modern Humans, Emergence of.

HUMAN–LANDSCAPE INTERACTIONS Joel W Grossman, Bronx, NY, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Akkadian A Semitic-speaking dynasty founded by Sargon the Great (Sharrukin, 2334–2279 BC) c. 2370 BC with Akkad (or Agade), an unidentified site, as his capital. Anasazi A major cultural tradition of canyon dwellers found in the southwestern United States between AD 100 and 1600. dendrochronology An absolute chronometric dating technique for measuring time intervals and dating events and environmental changes by reading and dating the pattern of annual rings formed in the trunks of trees. Holocene A geological period that extends from the present day back to about 10 000 radiocarbon years, approximately 11 430  130 calendar years BP (between 9560 and 9300 BC). marine transgression Phenomenon in which sea-level rises (or land sinks) and large areas of land become inundated. palaeoenvironmental reconstruction The determination of the prehistoric environment of an archaeological site, using the methodologies of geology, botany, palenology, and archaeozoology. palynology The science that studies contemporary and fossil palynomorphs.

Introduction The theme of ‘human–landscape interactions’ in the twenty-first century covers a number of very exciting new developments, insights, and debates in the fields

of environmental history, palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, and landscape archaeology. The field of landscape archaeology is relatively recent and many of the baseline concepts currently used to address human– landscape interactions were not developed until the 1970s. In the last 5 years, a confluence, or parallel maturation, has taken place between advances in archaeological theory, evolution of new high-resolution palaeoenvironmental sequences, and the emergence of new geospatial technologies. This survey first summarizes background assumptions and concepts underpinning modern approaches, highlights the major debates and areas of innovation about climate change, environmental causality and new research directions, and lines of investigation that have come to light as a result of these new insights. Then, in light of these developments, this article suggests several theoretical and applied technology avenues for future investigation in landscape archaeology. From a pre-World War II (WWII) focus on individual archaeological sites as isolated entities, archaeology has moved to their treatment as parts of a broader network of interrelated sites. More recently (post1970s), the discipline has incorporated the idea of environmental setting for a contextual treatment of archaeological data. Within only the last decade, the emergence of new high-resolution dating and analysis techniques has begun to yield important new sequences of environmental change. These have done

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nothing less than revolutionize traditional approaches to the study of man–landscape interactions in prehistory and history. Archaeology has only recently begun to grapple with the fact that these ‘environmental contexts’ are neither static nor constant. Rather, they are almost continuously changing, both independent of, and in response to, human interaction with the environment. As discussed below, recent advances and initiatives are beginning to transform the field from a two-dimensional (2D), mostly static approach (i.e., from solely a diachronic sequence of transformations out of context) to a dynamic, three-dimensional (3D) treatment of archaeological data in a geospatial universe. In fact, such a geospatial perspective will increasingly incorporate both the environmental diversity of past landscapes together with processes of climatic and environmental change and transformation. Technologically, the advent of such tools as highly resolved, decade-level sampling and dating capabilities, geographic information systems (GIS), and 3D modeling of ancient and modern landscapes, from real world bathymetric and topographic sources, provides the means to dynamically analyze and describe complex geospatial relationships between man and the landscape. This emerging integration of the concept of environmental change, spurred by high-resolution dating techniques and sophisticated 3D real world geospatial data control, is reorienting the field of landscape archaeology from a ‘flat’ 2D universe (as in flat paper maps) into the third dimension which is continuously changing in form and resource potential through time. These new 3D geospatial technologies are providing archaeology with the means to plan, target, and discover surviving (and often well-preserved) archaeological remains. These applied technology solutions are leading to the discovery of well-preserved high-integrity remains, even in heavily altered, or now inundated or land-filled, modern landscapes – based on what the environment used to look like, instead of what it looks like today. Recent discoveries and debates dominate in five areas of concern, not all complementary or consistent in their findings: (1) the recognition of magnitude and effect of long-term human impacts to the environment; (2) the effect of climate change on human settlement and land use history; (3) the advent and relevance of high-resolution dated sequences of environmental change; (4) very recent recognition of the critical role played by sea-level rise in human history in general, and in the origins of early urbanism in particular; and (5) new insights into the previously ignored significance and potential for archaeological preservation in inundated coastal estuaries, bays, and marshes. In essence, this article

is not about ‘global warming’ per se – it is in addition to it. Most new developments in landscape archaeology, or as some now refer to as landscape ecology and/or paleoecology, stem from the use of new high-resolution palaeoenvironmental pollen, ice or soils sequences to argue that significant environmental and climatic events occurred immediately before or after major changes in settlement patterns, economies or demographics of prehistoric cultures. Instead of studying periods spanning hundreds or even thousands of years, current breakthroughs in both New World and Old World archaeology reflect a shift to new highresolution temporal and analytical sampling units of 20–50 years, or less. The most current topic of debate is interpreting the role of climate change in general and the impact of droughts, in particular. As summarized below, droughts have been blamed for the demise of important cultural phases in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the American Southwest, Mexico, the Mayan area, and Andean South America. Similarly, others have argued that droughts were the incentives, or triggers, for early sedentary, centralized settlements and stratified societies. Several theorists and practitioners argue strongly for or against the existence and reality of catastrophic floods in prehistory. And the newest model for the emergence of Mesopotamian civilization highlights the role of sea level rise. As a counter to the often deterministic tone of many of these arguments, several cases highlight the role of past human cultures in bringing about significant, ecologically traumatic, long-term changes to prehistoric and early historic environments. Finally, in response to the recent recognition of the role of Late Holocene sea-level rise, or marine transgression, this overview will conclude with a discussion of the archaeological potential and significance of now buried and/or inundated landscapes, and of the geospatial tools that are being deployed to reveal them.

Theoretical Origins and Assumptions Baseline Geospatial Constructs

Modern landscape or environmental archaeology is an amalgam of techniques and ideas from several disciplines (geography, ecology, archaeology, palenology, paleoclimatology). Some of these were derived from social science and theory, others from hard sciences dealing with the earth and environmental history. This treatment focuses on the ecologically contextual, geospatial, and diachronic analysis of human–landscape interactions. The specialized topics

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of ‘spiritual landscapes’ and ‘architectural landscape archaeology’ are beyond the scope of this discussion. Prior to WWII, it was not uncommon for archaeologists to spend their entire careers studying a single site, treated almost in isolation – isolation from other contemporary sites and in isolation from the environment and landscape features surrounding it. Furthermore, following the Linnaean tradition of focusing on the identification of new ‘species’ (and in the case of archaeology, new material culture and artifact ‘types’), the study of prehistoric cultures was often done with little or no reference to current or past environment or topographic setting. Environmental context was not a baseline concern. In both the Americas and Europe, between the 1950s and 1970s, two streams of thought coalesced to form the conceptual and methodological building blocks of contemporary landscape archaeology. In the United States, the roots of a ‘regional’ approach in studying prehistoric settlements can be traced back to Lewis Henry Morgan’s work on Native American village organization (1881) and to Julian Steward’s 1930s study of the shifting hunting and gathering economy of the Shoshone Indians. Despite these early prototypes, modern American students did not begin to focus on the distribution and context of archaeological sites until the release of Gordon Willey’s 1953 survey work in the Viru Valley of Peru. While many parallel studies were done in Mexico and North America, it was Willey’s study of changing ‘settlement patterns’ in an arid coastal valley that set the form and direction of later spatial studies in American archaeology. At the same time, other baseline assumptions that helped form landscape archaeology came from biology and early efforts to explain how organisms and multiple communities of animal and plants formed a system of interconnecting elements. In 1953, Eugene Odum published Fundamentals of Ecology and introduced the concept of nonstatic or dynamic ‘ecosystem’ into the biological lexicon. The same year, Odum’s essay, Human Ecology, extended this biological concept to the study of human populations and culture. These intellectual constructs also served to infuse the idea of change and process to the often static treatment of human–landscape interactions. In Europe, one of the first conceptual attempts to incorporate the notion of environmental context emerged with the introduction of the concept of ‘site catchment area’. In 1972 this concept was borrowed and applied from earlier social and economic models by two archaeologists, Higgs and Vita-Finzi. The notion of site catchment area provided a functional, economic, and geographic framework to relate landuse patterns to environmental conditions and subsistence sources. It also assumed that these subsistence

activities took place within a circumscribed environmental context that would diminish in intensity and importance with increasing distance from the core site area. While the European ‘ecological catchment’ and the American ‘settlement pattern’ were spawned from different traditions, in the 1970s and 1980s archaeologists on both sides of the Atlantic borrowed freely and both concepts helped set the stage for later regional- and habitat-oriented treatments of archaeological data. Their adoption represented a paradigm, or conceptual, shift away from objects and ‘things’ (including ‘sites’), in and of themselves, to broader contextual investigation of spatial associations and interrelationships ‘between’ things, artifacts, sites, and resource areas. By the middle of the last decade, landscape archaeology began using constructs that attempted to weld process and landscape in a single model or paradigm. Archaeologists working in Mesoamerica adopted a new model, the Tropic Web, that integrates the ‘spatial’ aspect of ‘site catchment’ with the ‘dynamic’ elements of ‘ecology’ and change. This ‘dynamic and geospatial’ framework treats humans as elements of a network of resources and organisms that are intensely linked throughout their life cycles. A related concept, Task Space, was fielded by African archaeologists which treats landscape as a place where different tasks take place at specific times within a changing set of schedules. Both ideas also provided conceptual tools that began to ‘fit’ with the dynamic, real time, real world, 3D modeling capabilities of current geospatial technologies. Applied Technology: Dating and Proxies

These mixed traditions and approaches resulted from two impetuses toward a regional geospatial and environmental perspective: (1) the availability, beginning in the 1960s, of high-resolution aerial photography; and (2) externally imposed legal mandates to undertake regional archaeological surveys as part of the emerging environmental impact and historic preservation movement in developed regions. These new tools and procedures, in turn, aided archaeologists in seeking and discovering new sites in environmental contexts they may not have been otherwise investigated. Finally, just as the availability of low-altitude aerial photography in the 1960s provided archaeologists with handy geospatial tools for evaluating sites in an environmental context, the recent availability of high-resolution, radar-derived digital terrain models are today providing the capability to investigate and explore – remotely and safely – a study area from afar (Figure 1) (see Cultural Ecology; Cultural

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Figure 1 3D Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of a Highlands valley of New Jersey, U.S. The radar-derived coordinate and elevation data can be rendered as either two-dimensional contours, or as three-dimensional surface mesh models which permit the extraction of plan, profile and volume information for the analysis of the topographic and ecological context of historic and prehistoric sites within the drainage. (By Joel W Grossman, Ph.D., ã Joel W Grossman, Ph.D. 2008. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Resource Management; Landscape Archaeology; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Methods; Remote Sensing Approaches: Aerial; Geophysical; Settlement Pattern Analysis; Settlement System Analysis; Paleodemography). The ability of modern landscape archaeology to measure either environmental change, and/or man’s impact on it, partially resulted from the emergence of new dating techniques that have resolved increasingly finer units of analysis–from intervals of centuries, down to sampling and dating at 10–50-year intervals, or in the cases of tree rings, clay varves, and ice cores, intervals of 1 year. The majority of case studies highlighted below represent often radical reinterpretation of prehistoric man–landscape interactions, based on data from terrestrial and marine cores that are yielding both chronological and environmental evidence. These procedures, and the incorporation of techniques and data from other disciplines, are central to the following examples and case studies. Each in turn demonstrates the use of two elements: (1) subdecade-level dating with chronometric procedures (of these, perhaps the most important technological innovation was the advent of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating in the 1980s which both addressed the crude dating of early C14 techniques and enabled high resolution age determinations from samples as small as a charred seed; or from the counting of tree ring, ice or sediment layers from long core sample) (see Archaeometry; Carbon-14 Dating; Dendrochronology; Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Luminescence Dating; Obsidian

Hydration Dating) and (2) the use of what environmental scientists refer to as proxies. Proxies are subtle traces of minerals, radioactive elements, or organic compounds that show changes indicative of temperature or climatic shifts (see Archaeometry; Chemical Analysis Techniques; Geoarchaeology; Neutron Activation Analysis; Paleoethnobotany; Pollen Analysis). The following cases will stress the analytical basis for each set of climatic findings over individual theories or models. Old Biases and Impediments

The emergence of modern landscape archaeology and the understanding of the delicate and dynamic balance between human and natural forces did not come easily. The new perspectives of landscape archaeology or environmental history could not emerge until several key deeply held biases and culture-bound Western assumptions had been set aside. These were (1) the concept that preindustrial environments were pristine and unspoiled, and that the Holocene, or last 10 000 years following the retreat of glaciers, underwent little change and was static and (2) that indigenous peoples lived in child-like harmony with their environment. The notion of a pristine and stable or static past The first major barrier came from ingrained nineteenthand twentieth-century assumptions that colonial environments were, prior to the recent impacts, stable and reflected habitats and groundwater conditions unchanged for thousands of years. A second major

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assumption to be set aside was that in addition to being pristine, little if any environmental change had taken place since the retreat of the ice sheets 10 000– 12 000 years ago – what existed in the historic period had existed for thousands of years before. This notion arose in part from bias, and in part from imprecise available data control and dating techniques. It was only in the early 1970s that two pivotal documentbased studies of the colonial environment of North America – Crosby’s The Columbian Exchange and William Cronon’s Changes in the Land – began to plant the seeds of reevaluation. Not only had the landscape been impacted by European contact in the early fifteenth century, but also that it had been altered, if not at times carefully managed, by Native Americans long before European introductions. Cronon even suggested that what many early explorers described in exotic travelogues as the ‘natural untouched splendor’ of America’s eighteenth-century wilderness may have been artifacts of a generation of abandonment by Native Americans after their populations had been decimated by disease and/or pushed out of

their traditional territory by European colonists. In fact, it now appears that the traditional use of these eighteenth-century documentary accounts may not be as accurate as the well-dated botanical remains from the seventeenth-century archaeological sites. As summarized below, both the excavation of archaeological plant remains from mid seventeenth-century deposits and recent pollen sequences from the Mid-Atlantic region of the Eastern United States have documented plants indicative of disturbed environments as early as 1650 (Figure 2). The notion of the ‘native in harmony with nature’ Coupled with the misconception of supposedly stable pre-European environments of colonized territories in Africa, Asia, and America, was the associated bias that not only were the indigenous living in a ‘stable balance with nature’, but also that they were too ‘primitive’ and limited in numbers to cause any significant changes to their surroundings. That picture is no longer valid. Archaeological ground surveys and air photo analysis, for example, now suggest a

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Figure 2 Three Dimensional bar graph of dated plant remains from the 17th and 18th Century features discovered in the Dutch West India Company Block at Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan, New York (Grossman et al. 1985). The predominance of ‘‘weed’’ types introduced from Europe, predominantly adopted to ‘‘Waste Ground’’, suggests that the environment of Dutch New York had been disturbed and traumatized at least as early as the mid-17th Century. (By Joel W Grossman, Ph.D., ã Joel W. Grossman, Ph.D. 2008. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

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Mayan population of some 3 million people, and that at least 8000 kilometers (out of a total of 22 700 square kilometers, or 35% of their area) had been cleared and deforested by the Classic Period Maya. Instead of being sparsely populated as many early explorers recounted, these low densities may reflect only the sudden and drastic impacts of disease on indigenous peoples. Some early diaries of the first Spanish visitors to Peru described a 90% population decline along the coast, and coastal valleys devoid of people. Current estimates put New World population levels at 40–70 million inhabitants at the time of European contact. As is the case today, the higher the density of people, the greater the environmental impact, all things being equal.

Cases of Man-Made (Anthropogenic) Environmental Change Historical Antecedents

The awareness of man’s impact on the environment is not a new concept, nor a new scientific development. In 1868 George P. Marsh published The Earth as Modified by Human Action with the stated goal of addressing ‘‘. . . the character and, approximately, the extent of the changes produced by human action in the physical conditions of the globe we inhabit. . . .’’ He drew from Classical, Medieval, and historic sources to illustrate what would be described today as ‘quantified geospatial’ evidence and assessments of man’s impacts to the landscape. Marsh suggested major landscape and climate impacts based on records of nineteenth-century coastal drainage and land reclamation projects in coastal marsh and wetland areas (100 000–400 000 acres) in England, Holland, Hungary, and California. He also made the observation that the chronological analysis of official climate records, before and after draining, documented measurable fluctuations of between a tenth and a third of a degree, in temperature. What has changed, and what is illustrated by the following case studies of anthropogenic (man-made impacts), is the time-depth and geographic diversity of these impacts. The following cases illustrate the extent and magnitude of prehistoric alternations to the landscapes of Mexico, the Andes, and Lowland South America. They also illustrate the importance of modern high-resolution palaeoenvironmental sequences, new dating techniques, the importance of aerial photography and high-altitude remote sensing for the accurate measurement and documentation of these changes. A wide body of archaeological and ethnobotanical evidence indicates that in the New World (and presumably elsewhere) much of the environment

and landscape had been heavily altered and manipulated long before European settlement and impacts. In addition to evidence of large pre-Columbian populations and dense settlement patterns in concentrated areas of Mexico, the Andes, and the Lowlands of South America, the archaeological focus on landscape and wide-area studies are documenting massive earthmoving efforts, beyond those of mound and temple construction that altered topography and drainage patterns throughout wide regions of the Americas. As the following cases and recent compilations of long-term and wide-area multidisciplinary archaeological investigations document, these pre-contact, man-made alterations of the landscape were both broad in scope and ecologically significant. In addition to the following specific examples, a number of general changes took place independently of localized cultural and environmental conditions. These general impacts included an increase in the number and range of domesticated plants, expansion in the distribution of vermin and savaging species that lived symbiotically as by-products of human activities, a reduction in nonessential animal and plant species, and a general reduction in former distribution and habitats of animals of prey. In addition to these general cross-cultural impacts, and without belaboring the point, archaeologists (especially those working in the Americas) have begun to compile repeated cases of significant regional impacts and alterations to the environment by indigenous peoples, long before European contact. Recent archaeological treatments have revealed examples of well-documented prehistoric man-made impacts to ancient habitats in Mexico, the Andes of Peru and Bolivia, and in the lowlands of the Amazon basin. Middle America

Comparative studies by Charles Spencer between dry uplands of Mexico and the tropical savannas of Venezuela, have documented the construction of massive water-control systems that in many cases rival the productivity and environmental conservation capabilities of modern intensive agricultural systems. One example underscores the size and capacity of a huge prehistoric dam system in the Tehuaca Valley of Mexico. Built over several centuries, the 400-meterlong (c. 1200-foot-long) dam impounded a volume of 2.6 million cubic meters. This reserve of water was sufficient to irrigate land to support 1000 people, with an annual surplus. Although abandoned in AD 250, the author suggested that its topographic displacement surpassed those of modern efforts. Similarly, in Oaxaca, some 20 miles to the south, several hundred inhabitants built aqueducts and canals that efficiently irrigated the majority of the valley.

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In contrast, contemporary water-control systems generally irrigate only parts of the same area for agriculture, and leave major sectors dry and unusable. Finally, Spencer listed an extensive prehistoric system in the damp tropical plains of the Barinas region of Venezuela that drained and regulated fluctuating water levels throughout the year. Extensive networks of ditches and channels siphoned excess flood waters in the wet season and brought water to irrigate the same areas in the dry season. This seasonally adjustable, prehistoric water-control technology raised production to two crops per year, and appears to have supported populations some 20 times larger than todays. Andean South America

The Andean regions of highland Peru and Bolivia also featured massive landscape alterations and impacts to the precontact environment. Recent work in the highlands of the Lake Titicaca Basin, such as that of Clark Erickson, have reevaluated the economic and settlement patterns of the Pre-Inca Tiahuanaco cultures living around the lake between c. AD 800 and 1200. These also underscored the extent of anthropic, or man-made, alterations to the environment, clearly also long before European contact. Based on surface survey and the ability to measure landscape alterations with air photos, Erickson calculated that the Lake Titicaca peoples had built over 500 000 ha (123 500 000 acres) of terracing on the surrounding foothills. In the lower portions of the basin, extensive areas of perhaps as much as 256 ha (632 acres) had been transformed for intensive agriculture by the construction of sunken gardens or q’ochas. These plots provided static irrigation from groundwater for fields of potatoes, quinoa (Andean grain related to Amaranth), and feed for domesticated animals. Extensive canals irrigated fields and pastures in the dry seasons, apparently as early as 1800–2000 BC. Based on modern aerial imagery and remote sensing, it now appears that the entire landscape of the basin was managed and reconstructed – with little remaining to identify as natural or ‘pristine’. Lowland South America

Perhaps the most striking new insights and divergences from old assumptions pertain to the prehistoric ecology and environmental history of the Amazon lowlands of South America. Twenty years of diligent multidisciplinary archaeological, ethnobotanical, and chronometric work by Anna Roosevelt is producing a body of new evidence that debunks nearly a century of misconceptions concerning man–landscape interactions

in the Amazon basin. Long held assumptions are beginning to fall by the wayside in the face of this new, multidisciplinary evidence. These include (1) the notion that the Amazon was a pristine habitat, only recently impacted by modern deforestation; (2) the idea that the indigenous inhabitants lived in harmony with the lowland environment; and (3) the belief that early farmers could not subsist in the tropical rain forest. Work at three large prehistoric settlement areas in the delta flood plain, near the Amazon’s outlet into the Atlantic, in the Tapajos confluence region of Monte Alegre, have revealed well-dated stratigraphic sequences, a host of well-preserved botanical and food plant remains. and clear evidence that these inhabitants were not living in small scattered settlements, but instead in large raised platform mounds above the flood plain. Roosevelt surmised that these centers covered core settlement areas of 4 km2, each with population levels of 10 000 people, and that they developed long before European contact. These early Monte Alegre inhabitants practiced shifting ‘slash and burn’ agriculture that resulted in cleared regions around their settlements. The dense populations and clearing practices also appear to have created what Dr. Roosevelt suggested were degraded landscapes of localized treeless savannas, distinguished only by dense secondary stands of palms or other single-type stands of trees. In addition to these patterns of localized forest clearing, Roosevelt also identified what appear to be raised fields distinguished by layers of dark fertilized soils from the waste and domestic by-products of the local residents. The new sequence of dated pollen cores, archaeological plant remains, and the isotopic analysis of human remains suggest that the appearance of the dry interior open savannahs was not a ‘natural’ event with ancient roots, but instead the relatively recent prehistoric by-products of ‘anthropogenic,’ or man-made, land clearing. What one sees today is not the result of only modern deforestation and land clearing, but also the ancient products of prehistoric agricultural practices and localized alterations to the landscape by peoples living in relatively large and dense centers of population. This thesis recently gained support from an innovative nonarchaeological source. Recent work by a team of geochemists from the University of South Carolina has used deep-sea core samples from the Amazon discharge fan to argue that the savannahs were not ancient, but modern and that the Amazon basin had been covered by dense, highcanopy forests little changed for 70 000 years. The researchers used dated sediment samples to measure the relative ratios of carbon-13 to carbon-12, based

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on the fact that samples eroded from arid grasslands are significantly different from that of sediments from forested regions. The Amazon samples show consistently ‘high’ negative values indicative of runoff from forested areas versus open savannahs. The new core evidence also counters a widely held theory, first promulgated by an ornithologist in 1969, that explained the biodiversity of the Amazonian bird populations as the result of being isolated by stands of primeval forrest, each separated by vast expanses of open interior savannah. Known as the Refuge (or Refugio) Hypothesis, this model presumed that the savannahs were ancient and served to create ‘refuges’ of isolated forest stands that fostered species distinctions within and between animal and bird populations. The theory was also adopted by some lowland archaeologists to explain settlement patterns and cultural differences among modern indigenous peoples today. These new archaeological and deep-sea core data are the first concrete and testable evidence that refutes the popular Refuge Theory. They also suggest that clearing encountered by European colonists was, as Dr. Roosevelt suggests, the result of actions by prehistoric peoples, not natural forces. Historic Old and New World Environmental Impacts

As Marsh argued over a century ago, historical archaeology and a focus on environmental indices (pollen, seeds) is providing comparable material evidence of environmental trauma in the medieval and colonial periods in the Americas and Europe as well. In England, the analysis of pollen and metal traceelement fractions from three cores taken from peat bogs in the Northern Pennines have provided new evidence of long-term environmental impacts from the regional mining industry. The identification of shifting tree and plant communities from dated pollen cores indicate that small short-term forest clearings had begun in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. These early impacts were followed by substantial wide-scale clearing and deforestation in the subsequent Iron Age and Romano-British Periods. Landscape changes from local mining, however, were clearly evident by the Medieval Period. However, the measurement of lead and zinc levels in pollen core samples correlated with a permanent drop off of tree pollen, together with an increase in lead trace-element readings beginning in the eleventh century AD. It is noteworthy that a modern travel description on the Web treats the area as pristine, with idyllic terms as ‘‘one of England’s most special places – a peaceful, unspoilt landscape. . . .’’ The archaeological evidence and the archical record instead point to a long history of environmental degradation.

Comparable indicators of man-made environmental trauma to the colonial United States environment have also been documented for later seventeenth-eighteenth and eighteenth-century sites as well. Excavations by the author along the original colonial shoreline at Pearl Street and Broadway in Lower Manhattan led to the discovery of well-preserved seventeenth-century remains of the first warehouse of the Dutch West India Company, as well as the house foundations and artifacts of some of its principal residents and officials from the 1650s. Well-preserved and tightly dated plant remains excavated from privies and cisterns were found buried and preserved 8–12 feet below the modern grade of Lower Manhattan. Instead of varieties suggestive of well-tended rear yard gardens, nurtured soils, and neatly kept yards, the earliest 1650s plants from the Dutch West India block showed little evidence of ornamentals. When the colonial seeds were compared to ornately illustrated contemporary sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European Herbals (e.g., Leonart’s Fuchs’ (German) The New Herbal of 1543, or Culpeper’s (English) The Complete Herbal of 1649), they proved to be both predominantly of European origin and used as ‘medicines, dyes, and industrial products’ (Figure 2). Instead of indicating well-tended household gardens, the majority of the mid-seventeenth-century plants were adapted to acidic, heavily compacted, and disturbed soils, or waste ground similar to what one might find along heavily traveled dirt roads, open yards, or paths today. With the exception of the widely dispersed peach being present from the 1650s onward, the archaeological evidence for ethnobotanical indicators of potentially landscaped or intentionally planted specimens did not become evident until the first quarter of the eighteenth century. This unique archaeological evidence implies that Colonial Dutch New Amsterdam urban landscape had been traumatized and disturbed by the introduction of foreign, often genetically dominant, invasive ‘weeds’ as early as 1650 (purslane, bedstraw, Pigweed (amaranth), goosefoot/lambs quarter, copperleaf, carpetweed, carpetweed and indigenous berries, and squash and tobacco seeds). It also suggests that archaeologists, historians, and ecologists must proceed with caution in accepting accounts by later, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ‘naturalists’ of supposedly pristine environmental conditions in colonial America and elsewhere.

Cultural Responses to Climate Change The previous case studies have illustrated the range and severity of man-made impacts to the environment and landscapes of different culture areas in prehistory. Over the last 10 years, intriguing new theories

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have been presented by scientists from several disciplines about how climate change has influenced the rise and fall of ancient civilizations in both the Old and New Worlds. In particular, these theories have focused on droughts and, in one well-publicized case, floods, and most recently, the role of sea-level rise. The availability of high-resolution and welldated paleoclimatic and archaeological sequences are providing new insights and alternate interpretations about how and why complex urban societies formed and collapsed. Most of the following cases involve debates over the identification and cultural significance of long-term (300–500 year) mega-droughts on several well known but unexplained prehistoric economic and demographic collapses and disappearances. Peter deMenocal of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University notes the independent record of significant episodes of climate changes over the last 3000years of the postglacial Holocene period. Instead of being uniform and climatically stable, as once thought, it was punctuated by a series of widespread, continent-wide, periods of cooling and desiccation and droughts, throughout North America, that lasted for approximately 1500 years over the last 10 000 years. He also noted that where identified, these long-term droughts emerged suddenly, often in less than a decade. And as we well see below, he also argues that these episodes of long-term climatic change had devastating consequences for prehistoric and historic peoples of the Americas. These arguments fall into two subcategories: (1) studies that point to the negative effects of severe droughts; and (2) those that point to the onset of drought conditions as catalysts for major population movements and/or adaptations to changing landscape and environmental conditions. Only recently, highresolution environmental sequences of climatic and botanical changes, often now resolved down to 20–50-year intervals, have become available with sufficient chronological precision to be matched to comparable archaeological sequences of cultural growth, decline, or disappearance. Readers must be cautious of ‘single source’ explanations of culture change. Brian Fagan has warned that the ‘correlation’ of high-resolution data on environmental change (from sediment, lake, or ice cores) does not demonstrate a ‘causal relationship’. And as he underscores, these traumatic episodes of culture change are complex and difficult to ascribe to a single guiding force. Ancient Egyptian Droughts

Archaeologists have long been aware that significant population migrations played a role in the development of early sedentary agricultural settlements in both the Nile valley and Mesopotamia, as well as

in the formerly sparsely populated and dryer southern region of the Tigris and Euphrates river drainages. Additionally, a number of scientists have argued that climate change and a shift to dryer, more arid conditions played a significant role in bringing about the demise or collapse of early urban centers in both Egypt and Mesopotamia. Recently, alternative arguments are now being put forth that the onset of more arid conditions may have served as an important ‘trigger’ or causal factor for the emergence of early civilizations in both regions. All of these arguments are based on the chronological correlation of recently available high-resolution sequences of environmental and climate data, generally from marine and terrestrial cores, with longstanding archaeological sequences from different culture areas. For ancient Egypt, the 1000-year period between c. 5800 and 4800 BC saw the emergence of first goat and sheep herding, and then early mixed herding and farming communities in the Nile Delta. Beginning around 3300 BC, a period referred to as the Old Kingdom emerged as a period of prosperity and growth distinguished by the first urban centers, centralized state rule, large-scale construction of government and religious complexes, and the first pyramids. It was also was a period of continual and reliable Nile floods. However, sometime around 2200 BC, the Old Kingdom appears to have suddenly suffered social and economic anarchy and collapse. Scholars have spent their entire careers promulgating theories as to why, but generally without much evidence. Work by Fekri Hassan initially suggested that drought may have been a factor in the collapse of early Egyptian civilization. Hassan based this possible explanation on the simple stratigraphic observation that an important basin fed by the Nile River, the Fayum Depression, lacked any lake-bottom sediments dating to the period of the Old Kingdom. This suggested to him that, instead of the traditional 18–20 m of water, the depression had dried out and, that where once present, the sediments from this period had blown away. Multiple lines of recent geological and sedimentological evidence are substantiating Hassan’s thesis that drought may have brought about the demise and collapse of the Old Kingdom. The recovery of high-resolution sediment cores from the Nile Delta by Jean-Daniel Stanley, has recorded a band of red wind-blown sand, suggestive of severe drought, dating to c. 2150 BC, or at the same time as the collapse of these earliest Egyptian urban and religious centers. Other sediment cores from elsewhere in Egypt and North Africa have recorded the chemical and mineralogical fingerprints of similar layers of wind-blown sand of the same age. Scientists of

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the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) have also reported that high-resolution pollen and diatom sequences have identified parallel periods of drying and drought dating to around 2100 BC from Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, and equatorial Africa. These multiple lines of evidence now appear to have world-wide implications, with comparable effects on the settlement and culture histories of other regions, including the Near East and the New World. Hassan also argued that just as drought appears to have brought an end to the Old Kingdom, the beginning of the subsequent Middle Kingdom between c. 1900 and 1800 BC was distinguished by centralized efforts to control the short-term effects of drought. He points to the initial building of canals, a large dam and reservoir, and the dredging of the channel of the Nile linking the river to the Fayum Depression. These constructions both buffered against periods of drought and served to regulate the water level within the Fayum Depression in support of extensive irrigation agriculture surrounding it. He theorized that subsequent Nile floods breached the dam, inundated the depression, and rendered it unusable for agriculture until the third-century BC, or a period of abandonment lasting at least 1500 years. Mesopotamian Droughts

Similar work on sudden climate change by Dr. deMenocal has used deep-sea sediment cores taken from the Mediterranean to argue that abrupt climate change to cooler and dryer conditions brought about the sudden collapse of the Akkadian civilization in northern Mesopotamia around 4200 BP. Detailed chemical and particle analysis identified a thick lens of air-borne sand in the column beginning (dating to 4170 BP), which appears to have lasted for at least 300 years. This and other lines of archaeological and climatic evidence were combined to contend that, as was the case for the Old Kingdom of Egypt, the collapse of the Akkadian culture and the previously identified migration of its population to the south coincided with the onset of a major long-term period of drought in the region. As was the case for the advent of irrigation and water control systems in the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, others have used paleoclimatic evidence to suggest that a regional shift to more arid conditions also helped trigger the onset of both irrigation agriculture and urbanism in southern Mesopotamia. In 2004, two scientists – Nick Brooks and Harvey Weiss – independently used similar evidence to theorize that increased desiccation was not only responsible for the collapse and migration southward of the Akkadian peoples.

In addition, they both argued that drought may have played a role in the subsequent population increases, urbanism, social stratification and onset of irrigation agriculture in southern Mesopotamia, as well. North American Droughts

In a synthesis of both archaeological and climatic evidence from both New World and Old World archaeological chronologies Dr. deMenocal has highlighted both Old and New World examples of longterm drought relative to a number of archaeological culture sequences. His examples illustrate prehistoric shifts in settlement patterns, the abandonment of urban centers, and in the case of the Pueblo and Mayan cultures of North and Central America, their complete disappearance. He used evidence from sediment cores and tree ring dating to explain the longdebated decline of both the first European colonies in North America and, quite clearly, provided credence to the arguments by several archaeologists that drought was also the culprit behind the abandonment of the great Pueblo centers. Archaeological evidence and tree ring dates have also provided convincing evidence that the 1587 settlement of the Lost Colony on North Carolina’s Roanoke Island had disappeared during the most severe drought in 800 years. Similarly, the high mortality and near loss of the 1607 settlement of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement of North America, coincided with the driest period of drought in the prior 770 years of the local tree ring record. Finally, the correlation of sequences of climatic change with the pivotal benchmark dates of prehistoric culture change has provided convincing evidence to explain the thirteenth-century abandonment of the Anasazi ‘cliff house’ settlements in the American Southwest. Although often without much evidence to go on, earlier archaeological theories had suggested their demise through droughts, war, internecine conflict, or religious chaos. Recently, the availability of high-resolution sequences of climate change now presents a tightly dated record indicating that drought was indeed the primary cause of decline. Regional tree ring chronologies and drought distribution maps document that the thirteenth-century abandonment of Anasazi settlements coincided with the advent, around 1280 AD, of a significant, generationlong drought lasting at least 26 years. Central American Droughts

Similar lines of evidence from dated sediment cores help to explain the sudden decline of the Maya as well. Two came from land-locked lakes in the Yucatan peninsula. A third was recovered from a

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segment of a 500-foot-deep core drilled off the coast of Venezuela, to the south of the Maya heartland in the Caribbean. Using different lines of evidence, the core sequences together provided redundant records that drought played a key, if not a primary, role in the collapse of Maya urban centers and the depopulation of the peninsula between AD 800 and 1000. Radioisotope analysis of minute fresh water shells from the inland lake cores indicated that the onset of an extended, but ill-defined (c. 200 year) period of dryer conditions and reduced rainfall had occurred sometime around AD 900. More recently, based on radiocarbon determinations from the Venezuelan sediment column, Dr. Larry Peterson of the University of Miami was able to define a 200-year series of climate ‘signals’ – or indices of sudden climate fluctuations – dating from AD 750 to 950. Work by Gerard Haug used X-ray fluorescence to measure the relative amounts of trace titanium in a series of dated sediment samples. Titanium was tested for because it accumulated in the basin sediments as a small but measurable by-product (‘trace element’) of stream run-off from the Yucatan peninsula; the lower the titanium levels, the lower the rainfall. Four periods of reduced titanium measurements dated to AD 760, 810, 860, and 910. Each was interpreted to be an indicator of episodes of apparent drought, which correlated suggestively with the collapse of the Maya centers sometime after AD 800. These independent core-derived findings support the earlier thesis of an independent Texas archaeologist, Richard Gill, that drought was responsible for the abandonment of the Maya cities sometime after AD 800. Gill based his suggestion on a survey of the latest dates carved into monuments before different centers were abandoned. Despite a fudge factor of 30 years in the core-derived radiocarbon determinations, his archaeological chronology of calendar dates for the demise of the Maya matched the dates of the titanium ‘proxies’ of climate change with uncanny precision. Andean Droughts

A similar sudden climatic event in around the thirteenth-century AD has also been presented to explain the decline of the Middle Horizon urban centers in the Bolivian Andes (and by extension in highland Peru). Although somewhat less convincing than the wealth of tree ring data for the American Southwest, samples from a single ice core have been used by some to argue that the collapse of the pre-Inca urban center of Tiahuanaco on the Bolivian altiplano (11 000 feet elevation), surrounding Lake Titicaca, may also have occurred as the result of drought. Counted and measured like tree rings, the availability of a finely dated ice core from the Quelccaya area

of the southern Andes, 200 km to the north, provided a tightly dated 1500-year sequence of annual ice accumulation. The dated ice sequence indicated that a lessening of ice accumulations and a shift to significantly drier conditions began around AD 1040 and lasted for at least 200 years, or until the thirteenth century. This suggested change to dryer conditions also corresponded with a 30 foot drop in the level of Lake Titicaca. Archaeologists and climatologists have used this single line of dated climatic evidence to argue that the sudden and long-term climate shift to dryer conditions would have been of sufficient magnitude and duration to destroy or radically diminish the productivity of the traditional raised field system. In addition, new research on the Quelccaya ice cap used radiocarbon dating of ancient plants recently exposed by the retreating glacier to argue that the onset of the Late Holocene around 5000 BP was marked by a measurable shift to cooler conditions. This evidence of dated climatic change is also identical in age to comparable climactic events in the Old World. As discussed above, the climatic transition at 5200 BP is also coincident with parallel shifts and the emergence of urbanism in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and elsewhere. This independent ice core data indicated that a climate shift also occurred in the Americas at the same time as the windborne sand was recorded in sediment cores from the Mediterranean. These temporal parallels suggest that the shift may have been a world-wide event, with world-wide cultural consequences.

The Black Sea and ‘Noah’s Flood’ In 1997, two Columbia University oceanographers and geophysicists (and again not archaeologists), Walter Pitman and Bill Ryan, presented a widely heralded theory that the breaching of a shallow ridge around 7200 years before the present, literally ‘opened the flood gates’ from the Mediterranean and ‘deluged’ the lower elevations of a landlocked basin to create the Black Sea. The two researchers also upped the scientific ante by suggesting that the event correlated in time, and was one and the same as the Biblical tale of Noah’s flood. The well-publicized theory received much attention, and given the institutional affiliations of the proponents, was broadly accepted as . . . gospel. In his important 2004 synthesis, The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization, Brian Fagan captured the enthusiasm of the moment in vivid terms of prehistoric loss and angst: The rising lake . . . killed carefully tended gardens . . . Helpless villages watched as their thatched houses and storage bins vanished under the brackish tide. At some points, the shoreline advanced up the river valleys as fast as a young man could walk. (p. 113).

HUMAN–LANDSCAPE INTERACTIONS 1469 Alternate Data and Interpretations

Though popular in the West, the thesis apparently was developed with little consultation or reference to over 30 years of archaeological, environmental, and geological research on the Black Sea by Russian scientists. At the forefront of this research tradition was the work of a Ukrainian climatologist, Valentina Yanko-Hombach, whose investigations (like parallel studies in the West), used thousands of sediment cores and high-resolution seismic profiles to study the geological and environmental history of the Black Sea. Aside from the radiocarbon evidence that local agriculture did not flourish for another thousand years (suggesting the lack of any farming communities that would have been available to be drowned), her work on ‘foraminifera’ (microscopic marine shells that varied by species depending on the water being fresh or saline) suggested instead that the Black Sea basin had experienced not one major deluge, but in fact a series of many smaller ‘floods’ over many thousands of years. Her sediment cores identified salt-tolerant foraminifera varieties around 9500 years ago, and concluded that if there was a deluge, ‘‘Noah’s flood legend has nothing to do with the Black Sea.’’ In 2002 the Journal of Marine Geology published a special volume of papers dedicated to presenting alternate data and interpretations of the Black Sea issue. One Canadian-led study indicated that the salinity of the Black Sea was never as low as that of a freshwater lake, and that gradual processes were sufficient to account for reported changes in the water chemistry of the Black Sea. In addition, pollen data suggest that environmental conditions were not amenable to either pastoral or agricultural settlements along the shores of the Back Sea until 4600 BP, or 3000 years later than the postulated flood. The deluge hypothesis – and the international debate it precipitated – was promulgated long after the collapse of the Soviet Union and thus could not be attributed to political or Cold War barriers, only linguistic and cultural ones. What the debate does underscore is the critical need to evaluate different interpretations of cultural and environmental history with both a strong multidisciplinary and ‘crosscultural’ perspective. Sometimes in science it takes a small voice to muster the courage to say ‘‘the Emperor has no clothes’’ – hopefully in the same language as the audience. Stopping the Flood: The Trigger of Gradual Sea-Level Rise

As recently highlighted this year for its significance by a National Academy of Science review, two scientists,

an archaeologist and paleoclimatologist, Douglas Kennett and James Kennett presented a radical new interpretation of the role of Holocene climate change on the origins of civilization. Instead of prolonged droughts, they argue that a slow-down in the rate of marine transgression, or ‘sea-level rise’ – and the associated formation of high water tables, coastal estuaries, and marshes – may have played an even more critical role in the formation of city-states in Mesopotamian culture history. They summarized available climatic data for the Persian Gulf region and concluded that climate change between 10 000 and 5000 BP, but not drought alone, was responsible for the prehistoric demographic shifts and cultural changes documented in the archaeological record. They argued that between 9000 and 8000 BP the region experienced a period of high humidity and frequent monsoons that resulted in dispersed lakes, the availability of rich aquatic resources. High rates of sea-level rise also created inshoreline incursion rates of 110 m (c. 330 feet) per year, a rate equal to the loss of six miles of shoreline per century. This rapid shoreline incursion would, they postulate, have led to dispersed settlements that needed to periodically move inland. Then, after 8000 BP, the slowdown or demise of melting ice brought a slowdown in the rate of sealevel rise and marine encroachment. This change in turn led to the formation of stable wetlands and marsh habitats, which depend upon low rates of ‘marine transgression’ to maintain sediments deposition at pace with the rising waters. These ecological changes created important new subsistence sources including access to fresh water, a diverse set of new habitats for hunting and fishing of birds, fish, and land animals. This period also corresponded with the initial formulation, between 8000 and 6300 BP, of centralized settlements – the Ubaid Period – in southern Mesopotamia. They also make the point, overlooked by others, that irrigation agriculture can only be practiced in areas of high water table and that canal systems could have ‘only been successfully constructed after’ the wetlands and high water tables had formed and stabilized. Unlike earlier theories stemming from the original 1981 suggestion by Dr. Adams, that the early Mesopotamia centers developed as a ‘result’ of irrigation agriculture, the authors reverse the case and argue instead that irrigation agriculture came about ‘after’ the city-state had formed and only after the water table had stabilized near the surface. After 6300 BP – the Uruk Period – they point to an expanding population, the advent of canal systems, and the realignment of settlement patterns. Instead of being oriented to the irregular topography and shorelines

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of the marshes and estuaries, these growing urban centers followed lineal patterns paralleling the extensive network of the new canal and irrigation systems. In essence, while increasing aridity may have added to the process after 6200 BP, they argue the primary impetus was due to ‘‘a deceleration in marine transgression that stimulated the expansion of floodplains in southern Mesopotamia and formation of high water table necessary for large-scale, flood plain irrigation agriculture.’’ Not only does this new model present a convincing alternative to attributing demographic, settlement and economic shifts in culture history to catastrophic causes, but they also suggest, as did others 2 years before, that the source of several myths of biblical floods derived more likely from the area of southern Mesopotamia, not the Black Sea. They also conclude that both the Sumerian and the Christian flood sagas (myths) more likely reflected a period of rapid sea-level rise forming a rapidly expanding inland sea several thousand years before the advent of the Mesopotamian Urban centers.

Buried and Submerged Landscapes This important argument has put the process of marine transgression into a whole new light. In the context of landscape archaeology, it has now emerged as a central mechanism, if not a primary trigger, for the early concentration of settlements in littoral regions – as well as for the formation of the first urban centers in the near East. This new evidence has unequivocally raised the issue of environmental change in general, and the role of sea-level rise in the formation of estuary, wetlands, and marsh habitats, in particular, to be the central causal factor or impetus for the formation of sedentary settlements. In tandem with the release of Kennett’s and Kennett’s paper on the role of seal-level rise in the development of early Near Eastern civilizations, two archaeologists, Erlandson and Fitzpatrick released a paper in 2006 (see additional reading) calling for a recognition of the archaeological potential of submerged archaeological sites and called for regional studies that deal with local variation. . . ..careful reconstructions of coastal paleography and predictive modeling . . ..to help determine the most likely locations of ancient coastal settlements as well as the places where settlements are most likely to be preserved. . .

This call to arms dovetails nicely with new insights into late Holocene sea-level rise and the ability of 3D geospatial techniques (3D GIS and terrain modeling) to capture the topographic subtlety and

changing configuration of formally exposed cultural habitats (Figure 3). Holocene Fluctuations and Exposure

Recently, the availability of tightly dated and microsampled pollen cores have revealed far-reaching new insights into the Late Holocene trends in sea-level rise that appear to contradict widely held assumptions about climate change over the past 3000 years. Just as these new high-resolution palaeoenvironmental sequences are showing correlations with archaeological events over the past 6000 years in the Near East, new high-resolution sediment and pollen cores from coastal marshes in both Europe and the Americas are now documenting equally significant fluctuations in sea-level rise and sedimentation rates over the last 2000 years as well. Instead of static marsh habitats at the same water level over the last several millennia, it now appears that many of these sediment-filled drainages were exposed throughout the late prehistoric and early historic periods. The recorded high rates – orders of magnitude above the ‘official’ IPCC estimates of c. 11–21 cm per century – and extreme fluctuations in the rates of marine transgression over the past two millennia, are also strongly suggesting that much more of the late prehistoric landscape of now inundated drainages were exposed than we had previously suspected, when prehistoric settlements began to abound along the coastal drainages of North America and elsewhere. For example, recent high-resolution core sample fractions by Dorothy Peteet and her team at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the NASA/ Goddard Institute for Space Studies, taken at c. 4 cm (20–50 year) intervals from a Hudson River estuary (Piedmont marsh), upriver from New York City, documented extreme fluctuation is sedimentation rates – and by extension as a proxy for pollen-based indices of past disturbance – over the last 1500 years. The earliest and deepest core segment, dating from c. AD 500–1000, showed a rate of 18 cm per century, consistent with the nineteenth-century tide gage records for the region. However, it dropped to 3 cm per century between c. AD 800 and 1250, but jumped to from c. a 30–60 cm between AD 1250 and 1300. It then dropped down to 30 cm per century in the Colonial period, half the rate of the previous century, but nearly two to three times the currently generalized estimate of 11–21 cm per century. Several similar core sequences from the coasts of Nova Scotia and Maine have used the relative composition of foraminifera (microscopic shell species variously adapted to either fresh or saline habitats) to extend the earliest nineteenth-century tide gage

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Figure 3 Historic geospatial composite illustrating the process of 3D palaeo-environmental reconstruction of buried cultural landscapes, in this case the original topography and ground cover seventeenth century Colonial Manhattan. Relative topographic variability is extruded from historic map coverage, the actual elevations and depths from archaeological excavation records, or ‘ground truth’. The historic plant and tree cover is derived from excavated and dated archaeological plant remains and ethnobotanical records. Modern digital air photo coverage is used with computer-based GIS (Geographic Information Systems) software to georeference, or ‘rubber-sheet’, the historic landscape projection to real-world coordinates (By Joel W. Grossman, Ph.D., ã Joel W. Grossman, Ph.D. 2008, Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

records, back a century, to AD 1750. And like the new Hudson River core data, they also recorded historic period rates of 30–50 cm per century in Maine and 60 cm per century from Nova Scotia, with most of increases occurring in the eighteenth century. The dated column or core samples identified evidence of significant large climate signal, or fluctuation, in the region’s wetness, indicating the sudden onset of drought in the northeast, during what had been called the Medieval Warm Period in both Europe and the Americas, between approximately

AD 800–1350. This c. 500-year warm spell was followed by what climatologists have called the ‘Little Ice Age,’ between fourteenth and nineteenth centuries. Similar palaeoclimatic records of drought at this time from the Chesapeake estuary, and from the Jamestown Colony to the south, suggest that the entire northeastern US region experienced the sudden onset of a 4–5-century-long period of drought, parallel with the shift to warmer conditions. These shifts are thus beginning to document ‘order of magnitude’ variances in contrast to the ‘straight-line’

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mean regression plots of the commonly ascribed to the multimillennium time span between the post1850 tide gage data and the c. 3000-year-old chronometric dates for basal estuary or marsh sedimentation in the northeast. The new data instead suggests that rates of marine transgression appear to have (1) left significantly more dry land exposed than thought (the higher the rate of sea-level rise, the more land was formally exposed in the historic and late prehistoric periods), and (2) subject to sudden and significant shifts in regional climate trends. If these episodes of sudden climate change in the late prehistoric and historic (Medieval-Colonial) era patterns can be documented for other regions, then current discussions of ‘global warming’ may need to add, or factor in, the variable of ‘widely fluctuating’ LateHolocene rates if sea-level rise and sudden climate change to the widely held straight-line ‘handle’ of the modern ‘Hockey Stick’ of contemporary climate modeling. In terms of archaeological associations with the landscape, these episodes of higher late-prehistoric rates of sea-level rise also suggest that what were presumed to be low-lying or submerged landscapes within coastal drainages, may in fact have been significantly higher, dryer, ecologically diverse, and more available for human exploitation and settlement than previously presumed. These findings also strongly suggest that future palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental studies must now come to grips with the need to sample and analyse equivalent high-resolution (decade level) samples in order to ‘see’ comparable short-term climate shifts and changes in sea-level rates in other coastal regions. Submerged Archaeological Survivals

Recently, some astounding off-shore discoveries in the British North Sea, and off the coasts of Denmark and Sweden, have documented the unexpected survival of well-preserved archaeological sites in now submerged off-shore ocean settings. These discoveries show high levels of stratigraphic integrity, the survival of a broad-range of prehistoric food and ecological data, as well as a wide assortment of diagnostic chipped stone, wood, and bone artifacts. In 2003, British archaeologists and divers working in the North Sea discovered two prehistoric settlements, one tentatively dated to the Early Mesolithic (8500–10 000 BP) and another to the Late Mesolithic (5000–8500 BP). While a prehistoric antler harpoon had been earlier recovered in North Sea fishing net, and a deep-sea core sample yielded a chance find of a Stone Age chipped stone artifact, these submerged sites are the first to be confirmed

to have survived the often severe wave action of the North and Baltic seas. Marine archaeologists from the Estonian Maritime Museum also recorded a 1720 Russian or Swedish fort on the bottom of the Bay of Tallinn. The stone and timber fort was found at a depth of 8–11.5 m (24–35 ft), 900 m (2700 ft) off shore. In 1999, similar cases of submerged archaeological sites, that had clearly survived the forces of tidal action and sea-level rise, were discovered by Harold Lubke along the Baltic coast in the Bay of Wismar. Fifteen sites, belonging to at least two and possibly three prehistoric culture groups were recorded along now inundated shore areas, one group at c. 0–5 m and oldest at 7 to 8 meters (21–24 ft) below mean sea level (msl). These seafloor sites revealed rich assemblages of stone and bone implements, most prismatic blades consistent with late Neolithic types, preserved plant remains, small-boned vertebrates, as well as numerous wooden artifacts including prongs and fishing equipment, an elm wood bow, parts of log boats, bone and antler points, a bone knife, harpoon fragments, antler strikers (to make fires), and an antler pendent and boar tusk knives. The zoo-archaeological remains included deer, boar, and large amounts of minute fish bone, including a predominance of eel and cod. The best preserved of these delicate artifacts were recovered from a band of submerged ‘peat’ reflecting its transition from a dry land site, to a temporary matrix of a tidal marsh before being buried under off shore sands of the rising sea. An internally consistent series of 32 radiocarbon determinations returned dates between 4100 and 6200 BP, which together with the artifacts distinctions suggested three phases of prehistoric occupation within this 2000-year time span. In 2002 Lubke published an important paper entitled ‘Submarine Stone Age Settlements as Indicators of Sea-Level Changes and the Coastal Evolution of the Wismar Bay Area’. Lubke combined his depth and bathymetric data with the radiocarbon age determinations to recompute earlier widely accepted estimates of sea-level rise that had been based on standardized morphological and analytical procedures from dated sediment cores. The archaeologically anchored calculations showed that the sea had reached the elevation of the prehistoric sites 1000–2000 years earlier than thought, reaching the 7 m mark of the earliest and deepest site around 5100 BC instead of 4000 BC, and the higher 3 meter mark of the more recent site by 4100 BC instead of 2000 BC. In addition, like air-borne radar, a series of sideband-sonar scans of the bottom captured a broad range of topographic variability and defined specific landscape features that were found in association

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with the submerged prehistoric sites and could be used, in the future, to target the topographic characteristics of other similar underwater archaeological survivals. These included low beach gradients, original deposits imbedded in and protected by peat, wherethe local topography contains indentations, ‘fossil’ estuaries and river valleys, submerged gullies, depressions with former wetland deposits, on the flanks of submerged islands, bays, estuaries, near-shore lagoons, and other forms of partial shelter. Similarly from the Pacific Coast of North America Fedje and Jasenhans from Parks Canada and the Geological Survey of Canada documented well-preserved shell-fish-rich beaches and stands of submerged treestumps from drowned forests at a depth of 150 m (c. 450 ft) in Werner Bay of British Columbia. In addition, the recovery of a barnacle-encrusted chipped stone tool from a depth of 55 m (c. 150 ft) suggests human occupation predating 10 200 BP. As was the case for the Baltic, this unique find suggested rates of marine transgression that were significantly higher than prior estimates derived from traditional geomorphological coring and dating procedures. Like the European studies, high-resolution marine side-band sonar and remote sensing surveys reveled

that the Holocene artifact was found in association with drowned landscape features (palaeobeaches, former stream confluences, lakes, terraces, bogs, and estuaries) that suggested the potential for the discovery of other drowned sites in zones of now buried and submerged drainages and coastal formations. In addition, this evidence suggests that now submerged landscape of the Pacific Coast continental shelf was both exposed and occupied by humans in the Holocene. This new marine archaeological evidence, in conjunction with new palaeoclimatic evidence that the long-adhered- to ‘Ice-free corridor’ route for Early Man migrations into the Americas may not have been either open, or available, for some 2000 years after the earliest evidence of human occupations in south America – at Mont Verde in southern Chile – has added credence to the alternative theory in support of a coastal migration route. These important new insights and alternate estimates for marine transgression suggest strongly that the discovery of future buried and submerged archeological sites will depend on the availability of high-resolution 3D control of the original preinundation and prelandfill topography (Figures 3 and 4). These deep-sea survivals also suggest that if fragile

Figure 4 A 3D paleo-environmental reconstruction of prehistoric topography and habitat of the formally exposed New Jersey Meadowlands as it was before being inundated by rising sea levels ca. 2000–3000 BP. The digital terrain model, or 3D surface-mesh model, is derived from georeferenced 1865 US Army survey of bathymetry and mud-depth readings in the Hackensack Basin. The environmentally accurate 3D prehistoric tree and plant cover is identified from radiocarbon-dated pollen cores. (By Joel W Grossman Ph.D. ã Joel W Grossman 2008. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

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archaeological remains (with preserved organic artifacts and intact deposits) can withstand the rigors of coastal tides and wave action, they would have survived in Holocene tidal marshes as well. . . . and that we have to be prepared to look for them.

The Third Dimension: Modern Geospatial Strategies Both in England and the United States, several government-sponsored programs are using historic bathymetry, GIS, and 3D terrain modeling to reconstruct the topography and archaeological sensitivity of now both buried and submerged shore areas as they appeared prior to being covered by landfill or inundated by rising seas. For example, in England, Dr. Spikins of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne is directing a futuristic project entitled: A Search for Submerged Early Postglacial Sites: Prospection Based on GIS Based Predictive Model. High-resolution topographic reconstructions will be used to identify subtle underwater landscape features similar to those found in association with known sites. Also in England, scientists, working with a government-funded Estuarine Research Programme, are using GIS and 3D terrain to model and compare historic British Admiralty Charts dating back to 1847. Work directed by Dr. Daphne van der Wal is using these georeferenced correlations of historic naval charts to track changes in the estuary morphology and sedimentation rates over the last 150 years. In the eastern seaboard of the US, historic bathymetry from US Army Civil War-era mud depth surveys is being used by the author to develop 3D georeferenced reconstructions of the premarsh topography of the now inundated wetlands of the New Jersey Hackensack Meadowlands. Three-dimension terrain modeling is being used to define what the preinundation landscape looked like, and where people may have lived on it over the last 3000 years, and when the water level was 20–30 m lower than today. Historic GIS comparisons are defining which of the sensitive archaelogical areas may have survive modern impacts (Figure 4). As has been shown for earlier prehistoric submarine landscapes in Europe and the Pacific Coast of North America, these 3D terrain models of the Civil War-era bathymetry have documented a diverse ‘preinundation landscape’ of fresh water drainages, terraces, plateaus, ridges, tidal, and estuary zones beneath the modern water level. High-resolution sediment core sample sequences – taken at 4 cm or at 20–50-year intervals – will be used to create a detailed record of changing climatic, habitat, and sea-level rise. This record of localized environmental

changed will be used to ‘skin’ the digital premarsh landscape model with period-specific plant and tree cover (Figure 4). Scaled digital GIS overlays of all identified past impacts (canals, roads, infrastructure, land fills, toxic dumps, etc.) will be subtracted from areas of projected sensitivity to provide environmental review agencies with a target-specific strategy to focus resources on only undisturbed areas of surviving potential archaeological sensitivity (see Figure 5).

Future Directions This summary has highlighted current research issues and directions in landscape archaeology within the last decade. Instead of the traditional rationalization of archaeology and antiquity – war, population increases, trade, religion, irrigation agriculture – most without evidence to support them, the advent of high-resolution palaeoenvironmental chronologies of climate change have spawned a new generation of models which tie sequences of culture change to detailed records of climate change. Recent archaeological and ecological studies have also stressed the magnitude of human and cultural impacts to the environment in prehistoric and early historic times. These multiple lines of new evidence and explanations indicate that (1) archaeology must address ‘culture change’ with the assumption that ‘environmental change’ has been ongoing over the last 3000 years, (2) these changes have not been uniform, but have shown major fluctuations in the Holocene, (3) that these Holocene fluctuations in climate and sea-level rise are in addition to any modern ‘Green House’ascribed postindustrial climate shifts, (4) fluctuations in the rate of sea-level rise suggest that now inundated coastal bays, estuaries, and drainages, may have been more exposed and more available to human occupation that previously assumed, (5) palaeoenvironmental reconstructions will have to address ancient landscapes from the perspective of what they looked like in the ‘past’, versus the present, and finally (6) archaeological evidence may represent an important source of data to fill existing Late Holocene gaps in record of sea level rise and environmental change. Over the last 10 years, most of the major new insights have derived from refinements in the resolution and dating of regional sequences. Recent breakthroughs are beginning to highlight the ‘interplay’ between sequences ‘of environmental change, sea level rise, and ancient topography’. Instead of only ‘diachronic’ or chronological treatments – as in ‘point samples of ‘straws’ punched through a prehistoric layer cake’ – we will have to use the modern geospatial tools of GIS, 3D terrain modeling, and palaeoecological reconstruction to ‘geospatially correlate’ these

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Potential archaeological survivals

Subtraction of all modern infrastructure and impacts

Scaled GIS overlay of historic maps

Digital air photo project base map

Figure 5 Historic Impact Analysis using GIS to define un-impacted areas that could contain potentially surviving prehistoric and historic cultural resources after “subtracting” modern impacts from modern construction and landfills within the New Jersey Hackensack Meadowlands. (By Joel W Grossman Ph.D., ã Joel W Grossman Ph.D. 2008. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

high-resolution chronologies of environmental change, with the subtle topographic variables and contexts of past archaeological landscapes, some exposed, some buried, and some submerged (Figure 3). From a treatment of archaeological landscapes as 2D and predominantly static, we must now see them as 3D, geospatial and dynamic. See also: Archaeometry; Carbon-14 Dating; Chemical Analysis Techniques; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Cultural Ecology; Cultural Resource Management;

Dendrochronology; Ecofacts, Overview; Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Geoarchaeology; Landscape Archaeology; Luminescence Dating; Maritime Archaeology; Neutron Activation Analysis; Obsidian Hydration Dating; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Methods; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction in the Lowland Neotropics; Paleodemography; Paleoethnobotany; Pedestrian Survey Techniques; Pollen Analysis; Remote Sensing Approaches: Aerial; Geophysical; Settlement Pattern Analysis; Settlement System Analysis; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites; Toxic and Hazardous Environments.

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Further Reading Brooks N (2004) Beyond collapse: The role of climatic desiccation in the emergence of complex societies in the middle Holocene. In: Leroy S and Costa P (eds.) Environmental Catastrophes in Mauritania, the Desert and the Coast. Abstract Volume and Field guide. Mauritania, 4–18 January 2004. First Joint Meeting of ICSU Dark Nature and IGCP 490, pp. 26–30. Crosby AW (1972) The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. deMenocal P (2001) Cultural responses to climate change during the Late Holocene. Science 27: 667–673. Erlandson J and Fitzpatrick SM (2006) Oceans, islands, and coasts: Current perspectives on the role of the sea in human prehistory. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 1: 5–32. Fagan B (2004) The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization. New York: Basic Books.

Fisher A (2004) Submerged Stone Age-Danish examples and North Sea potential. In: Flemming NC (ed.) Council for British Archaeology Research Report 141: Submarine Prehistoric Archaeology of the North Sea, pp. 21–36. York: Council for British Archaeology. Flemming NC (ed.) (2004) Council for British Archaeology Research Report 141: Submarine Prehistoric Archaeology of the North Sea: Research Priorities and Collaboration with Industry. York: Council for British Archaeology Research. Kennett DJ and Kennett JP (2006) Early state formation in southern Mesopotamia: Sea levels, shorelines, and climate change. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 1: 67–99. Lentz DL (ed.) (2000) Imperfect Balance: Landscape Transformations in the Pre-Columbian Americas. New York: Columbia University Press. Lubke H (2002) Submarine stone age settlements as indicators of sea – Level changes and the coastal evolution of the Wismar Bay area. Greifswalder Geographische Arbeiten 27: 203–210.

HUNTER-GATHERERS, ANCIENT Luis Alberto Borrero, IMHICIHU-CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary ethnoarchaeology Ethnographic study of peoples for archaeological reasons, usually focusing on the material remains of a society, rather than its culture. sedentarization Process where tribes cease seasonal or nomadic lifestyle and settle down in all-year habitats. Selk’nam Also known as the Ona lived in the Tierra del Fuego island, in southern Chile and Argentina. They were one of the last aboriginal groups in South America to be reached by Westerners, in the late nineteenth century. Nunamiut Inuit people of Alaska’s Northwest Arctic and North Slope boroughs and the Bering Straits region.

Introduction When speaking of foragers and collectors we are referring to people living off the land by hunting wild animals, gathering wild plants, and fishing, people who are not exercising any control over the reproduction of exploited animals and plants. This remains true even in the present times when some contemporary hunters and gatherers, like the Ache of Paraguay who cut down trees and visit them later in the season to collect worms, or the Nukak of Colombia whose movements are organized depending on the wild orchards resulting from the seeds of the fruits that remained on the ground of abandoned camps. Today, only a few scattered groups pursue a hunting and gathering way of life, and often they do

so either by engaging in mutualistic associations with agriculturalists or pastoralists, or by practicing some horticulture or tending of animals. Often these economic arrangements are very close to slavery. Moreover, these hunters and gatherers are spatially restricted to economically and geographically marginal places in different parts of the world. This variety of situations prompted a debate around the definition of hunters and gatherers, which was centered in the forager populations of Southern Africa, the so-called Bushmen. At stake was their status as pure hunters and gatherers or as the result of contemporary pressing forces. Whatever the merits of both positions – and there is indeed value on both fronts – one basic result of the debate is a richer and more complex image of the many ways in which foragers can organize themselves, ranging from economically and socially complex to simple and highly mobile groups. This is important because foraging was in the distant past the basic way of life around the world, and as it is often emphasized, that was the case for at least 99% of human history. Another conclusion derived from this debate is that modern hunters and gatherers are not very good analogs for the interpretation of the archaeological past. This observation puts a limit on the value of ethnoarchaeological results, which many times were used to produce direct analogies for the interpretation of the archaeological record. Then, one result of the debate was to confirm that methodology is the field where ethno-archaeology can best contribute to the advancement of our interpretative skills as archaeologists. For example, ethno-archaeological studies can

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help us to decide which analytical methods are more suited for the description and explanation of the subsistence, social organization, or mobility of past foragers. Since the contemporary world is of limited value for the direct understanding of past societies, it follows that the results of archaeological research should be intensively used. Then, patterns derived from archaeological studies of hunter and gatherer adaptations should have a crucial role in shaping our image of past foragers. However, ethnographic and ethno-archaeological studies also produced results that impacted the practice and understanding of archaeology beyond methodology. In sum, it can be inferred that the results of both the contemporary and the archaeological research enterprises can be usefully combined in a single explanatory framework in order to learn about the past. The study of the interactions between foragers and their environments has always been a key research area. The extent of these relations was captured by the forager–collector continuum, as defined by Lewis R. Binford in a famous paper published in 1980. This continuum emphasizes the differences between very mobile communities with low numbers of people and whose subsistence exhibits little planning – the Foragers – and people who enjoy a limited degree of sedentarism, spending at least several weeks or months at a central hub engaging in a more sophisticated system of food exploitation and conservation, and aggregate in higher numbers – the Collectors. Moreover, a worldwide search conducted by Binford identified a latitudinal pattern in the distribution of hunter and gatherer societies. He found that those societies located closer to the equator usually had a forager orientation, while collector societies were numerically more at higher latitudes toward the Poles. These patterns are derived from the basic relationship that exists in nature between latitude and the distribution of resources. Some organizational properties of the bands exploiting thoseresources varied accordingly with seasonal and spatial availability. The already-mentioned Ache of Paraguay constitute a good example of what Binford called a forager society. Back in the 1960s, before they were concentrated in missions, the Ache moved around a lot, at times more than 60 times a year. High mobility produced many small camps that were used by a few people, who basically hunted medium-sized mammals and gathered fruits for the day. The camps were formed by simple huts which were made of palm leaves. They offered protection against the rain and were constructed in a few minutes. Ache bands aggregated only rarely, and only for a short time. On the other hand, the classic example of collectors is the

Nunamiut of Alaska, with whom Binford worked for years. They exploited several different resources, especially migratory caribou (Rangifer tarandus), other smaller mammals, fish, and birds and from a central location. Many of these resources were available at different times of the year and at widely separated places. Logistical expeditions, usually implying several days outside of the base camp, needed to be organized in order to exploit this variety of resources. Techniques of meat conservation were used to preserve meat for the winter. The Nunamiut spent most of the year in aggregation camps, where they occupied well-constructed wood structures. Being foragers and collectors are not the only ways in which hunters and gatherers can organize themselves, but it is a practical way of understanding some of the basic ties of small-scale human aggregations with the environment in which they made a living. In fact the forager–collector continuum can be partially assimilated to the distinction made by James Woodburn between hunters and gatherers with immediate and delayed-return economies. The archaeological applications of this concept clearly show that it is more a framework around which research can be organized, than a fixed formula within which cases can be accomodated. A fertile ground for archaeological research, which is at least partially derived from the forager–collector continuum, is the study of lithic instruments in terms of curated versus expedient technologies. In turn, studies of the design of instruments and the provenience of the rocks selected to construct them constitute refinements that help to tackle the study of hunters and gatherers around the world. Several expectations specifically derived from the forager or collector models for faunal remains were also useful for the development of new quantitative techniques of archaeofaunal analysis. In fact, many of these techniques were generated or discussed in ethno-archaeological settings.

The Oldest Foragers and Collectors The oldest evidences for hominins associated with stone tools and cut and marked mammal bones occur in Africa at places such as Gona, Ethiopia, or Olduvai, Tanzania. They clearly indicate that a foraging way of life was responsible for at least part of the assemblages dating 2.6 million years ago or less, and that animal protein was used at that early time. However, in those and other sites of the Pliocene– Pleistocene climatic periods, it is not always clear if the bones are the result of scavenging or of hunting activities by hominins. Recent research showed that scavenging niches probably existed at those times, niches basically created by abandoned field

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kills, which typically do not use all the tissues available on carcasses. On the other hand, the dental remains of hominins, the results of stable isotopes on their bones, their stone tools, and the placement of sites on the landscape suggest that hunting – a well-developed strategy among living primates, and presumably among primate ancestors – is a strong possibility. It is less evident which fossil markers are useful to distinguish scavenging from hunting activities. All kinds of studies were conducted to interpret the oldest archaeological sites, ranging from the identification and location of cut marks on bones to the representation of different skeletal parts at the sites. The superimposition of stone tool marks over carnivore marks is an important criterion that, in the few cases where they were found, showed that at least some part of the diet may have been related to scavenging. One of the difficulties that exist in order to infer a hunting strategy from the archaeological record derives from the fact that none of these early sites contain bona fide projectiles. Some bola stones in African sites or wooden spears found in northern Europe – where the environment allowed good preservation of organic remains – attest to their existence, but there is still no agreement concerning their importance within those ancient tool kits. However, the repeated deposition of stone tools and bones at particular places is well testified for those early sites, and taphonomic work demonstrated that those bone accumulations are much more than what can be expected from chance accumulations. The Oldowan industry was defined on the basis of the findings at these sites, a simple industry that by c. 1.6 million years ago was widely distributed in Africa. At that time or slightly earlier, there are evidences of hominins moving out of Africa into Asia and Europe. The process of global dispersion of Homo erectus, which is associated with the use of a bifacial lithic technology, began to fill the available habitats in new continents. Initially the dispersion was restricted to tropical climates, but at some point around 500 000 years ago or before, the peopling of Northern Europe took place. In Europe and the Near East they were replaced by Homo neanderthalensis, and by a different lithic technology. Systematic use of caves as habitation sites was one of the many behavioral characteristics that were acquired by people colonizing cold Europe.

Foraging Homo sapiens In a later period, with a chronology that is still disputed among archaeologists, the systematic accumulation of bones from a single or dominant species plus the presence of stone projectiles, makes it clear that

the use of a strategy for hunting was a strong possibility. The study of the stable isotopes of European human bone and teeth samples from near the end of the Pleistocene suggests that animal protein was an important part of the diet. It must be noted that this technique of stable isotopes can also enlighten on the importance of maritime versus terrestrial protein in the diet. The available results indicate that none of the early samples attest to the use of marine resources. The first evidences of their consumption are provided by faunal remains, basically mollusks. Then, in the long term it is clear that maritime foods were a very late addition to the diet. What these findings show is that a marine component was systematically incorporated in the subsistence at least at the time when modern humans appear. The oldest and wellsupported evidence for the consumption of marine resources comes from South Africa. However, the archaeological record of modern humans includes marine resources almost everywhere, from Gibraltar to England, and from Australia to the Americas. This use of the coastal resources attests to the systematic incorporation of a new habitat into the hominin world. This incorporation is easy to understand when we realize that the global dispersion of humans required the use of sea routes and oceanic navigation skills. The continent of Australia, for example, was reached sometime between 60 000 and 40 000 years BP, implying the use of open sea routes. The use of aquatic routes is a simple and economic way of dispersion, and many recent theories purporting to explain the human peopling of the Americas invoke Pacific or Atlantic coastal routes as alternatives to the classic – and, it must be said, better supported by the evidence – route across the Bering land bridge. At the end of the Pleistocene much of the known variation in subsistence strategies was already present in different and unrelated parts of the world. Human adaptations including systematic hunting of ungulates, differential transport of their bone parts, central home bases, and sophisticated techniques of lithic reduction, which are similar to those recorded during the Holocene, were established in America since the beginning of human colonization – at least 12 000 years ago – and in Australia, Asia, or Europe since c. 40 000 years ago or before. In Africa, on the other hand, they appear to be older than 100 000 years. In all these cases stone tools, hearths, sometimes bone tools, and varied subsistence remains are associated with modern humans Homo sapiens. In some places these early colonizers preyed upon what are today extinct animals, and humans are considered by some authors as crucial factors in the extinction process. However, nothing approaching hard proof of human involvement in the extinction

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was really offered by the archaeological record, and the reasons behind the removal of dozens of faunal species near the end of the Pleistocene in many places around the world still remains an unanswered question. Many sites where mammoth (Mammuthus sp.) and other extinct animal bones were deposited in association with hearths, projectile points, or other artifacts exist in North America or Siberia, but the situation is different in other regions of the world. For example, few sites with good stratigraphic association between human artifacts and bones of extinct animals exist in whole continents, such as South America or Australia. It appears that different extinction mechanisms need to be considered for different continents, or that other models need to be considered as well. The most important alternative to the human-caused extinction model defended by Paul Martin and others, takes into account climatic changes that occurred at the end of the Pleistocene, particularly the Younger Dryas Cold Event. Again, since the Younger Dryas was basically a Northern Hemisphere phenomenon; it is difficult to see the climatic model as simply replacing the human model. Most of the technological flexibility that is observed in contemporary hunters and gatherers groups – as expressed in weaponry, hearths, tents, boats, burial, processing tools, adornments – can already be documented for early modern humans in Europe, Asia, Australia, and America. Moreover, they are usually older in Africa. There are many regional differences, as we will see below, but still it can be defended that the basic skills and capacities that are known through ethnographic and ethno-archaeological research, were already in place several thousand years ago. Then, the process of dispersal implied the selection of the most appropriate strategies and techniques from an ample pre-existing pool. It must be noted that the dispersal of the species around the planet implied a change from tropical to a variety of nontropical environments. Accordingly, this process required a number of cultural and physiological adaptations to cold weather. This was the only way to colonize the lands located in the far north of the planet, including Scandinavia, Siberia, and Beringia. The expansion of foragers to America at the end of the Pleistocene was probably based on the existence of this knowledge. In the beginning the occupation of the northern lands was probably discontinuous, a pattern that was archaeologically detected even some 22 000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Maximum. Effectively, at this time the archaeological record shows that humans abandoned most of the Northern lands and concentrated in the Southern peninsulas of Europe where climate was milder. On the other hand, navigational skills were necessary in order to populate

Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the Southern and Central Pacific Ocean. All these enterprises required the capacity for cooperation and coordination of human populations that were dispersed across large distances. Cooperation is a basic way of reducing risks in adverse environments, and may hold the key for the successful colonization of distant and unknown lands. In terrestrial settings foragers needed to learn the basic trends in the use of places and their surroundings, including the acquisition of knowledge about the location of the lithic sources, the seasonal availability of different faunal and plant resources, or the less costly paths within the selected foraging areas. Communication was essential in order to make this kind of knowledge available for widespread peoples. On the other hand, in maritime settings foragers also needed to deal with long-term subsistence planning, since many of the lands that were populated by sea required several days of navigation. The process of dispersal across long sea routes probably implied a degree of isolation for the initial colonizers. Then, successful colonizers in new lands needed to be able to reproduce the basic technological repertoire of the original land. It can be defended that the process of global colonization was only possible using fine-tuned exploration skills. The acquisition of these skills was probably costly in terms of time, and may have required many generations. Once the process of human dispersal of Homo sapiens around the planet was basically completed, another process was initiated, one of cultural differentiation. Fusion and fission of bands, changes in band membership, demographic increases, and changes in hunting and collecting ranges were among the many small-scale processes that were contributing to this differentiation, which sometimes was prompted by differences in habitat, degrees of isolation, and historical reasons. In the end, cultural divergence was one of the basic results of these complex processes. Through different mechanisms, both isolation and marked proximity of bands or populations could precipitate cultural differentiation. As a result of the dynamic interaction occurring among different populations, hunters and gatherers experimented with drastically differing cultural trajectories. Some of these trajectories culminated in the abandonment of the forager way of life. The saturation of space in some regions, the beginnings of territorial organization, and the implementation of other ecologic and social strategies were just some of the paths that were taken by human populations. Cultural complexity and economic intensification was sometimes the result, a process that under certain conditions helped to constitute semisedentary societies. Classic ethnographic examples of this semisedentary

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condition are the societies of the British Columbia, which always defied classification. In other cases sedentary societies exerting a tight control over the reproduction of animals and plants were formed, resulting in the domestication of several species in different parts of the world. However, as already mentioned, sedentarization was not always the path selected by humans, and many populations maintained a highly mobile forager way of life well into the Holocene. In fact, in many places like the Near East, archaeological research demonstrated that hunting of wild animals continued to be an important task even after the beginning of sedentarization and food production. With the exception of Europe, the forager lifestyle was still practiced by a high proportion of the world population in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The twentieth century saw an important decline in the number of people living from hunting, gathering, and fishing, and at this time the process of their geographic encroaching was almost completed. In part as a result of this distribution, it must also be said that many societies were not constant in their economic orientation; for example, many bands were alternating between foraging and horticulturalist lifestyles in the Amazon and between foraging and pastoralist lifestyles in sub-Saharan Africa. The reasons behind these changes are to be seen not only in their geographic, but also in their social marginality. These changes in economic orientation usually constituted the only alternative that these people had to work independence of their sedentary neighbors.

The Selk’nam of Tierra Del Fuego The interaction between foragers and representatives of the Western society did not always end in the acculturation or the mere displacement of people. In fact the classic result was the extermination of the foragers. As an example, the case of the Selk’nam hunters and gatherers will be introduced and discussed. The Selk’nam were a terrestrially oriented society of foragers who inhabited the steppes and prairies of the northern part of the island of Tierra del Fuego, in the southern tip of South America. Their subsistence was based on the hunting of a middlesized ungulate – the guanaco (Lama guanicoe), a variety of birds (Chloephaga sp., Phalacrocorax sp.), and sea mammals (Otaria byronia, Arctocephalus australis). These foods were complemented with gathered plants and shellfish. Stranded whales also provided meat and especially blubber. The latter was a basic food for people living in the cold habitats of Tierra del Fuego. The Selk’nam had developed a system of hunting territories in which groups of individuals

had the right to exploit fixed portions of the land. They were highly mobile within these territories and formed aggregation camps that were mainly used for initiation ceremonies and the exchange of goods. The initiation ceremonies – many times associated with the stranding of a whale, that is, when there was plenty of food available – constituted the occasion when territorial limits were abolished. It was also possible to hunt and gather at other territories but only under conditions of dietary stress. To hunt in a different territory without authorization of the owners usually produced armed conflict between bands. It is not known how old this system was, but apparently it was a good regulator of the distribution of people and resources. The archaeological research on the foragers that were living in the region before they were called Selk’nam shows that these people were interacting with other societies, for example, with the so-called ‘canoe people’ who inhabited the southern and southwestern channels of what today are Chile and Argentina since more than 6000 years ago. Interactions with these and other societies existed during several centuries, and yet the archaeological record does not show major changes in the overall cultural configuration. In general, contact between forager societies could be sometimes violent, but it was relatively stable in the long term. Transformations occurred and the owners of the land changed, but the forager way of life remained. It is not possible to know exactly how many changes of this kind took place through the centuries before the European contact in the north of Tierra del Fuego, but it is clear that a basic subsistence mode persisted. However, this situation was going to change. At the end of the sixteenth century a new process of contact, this time with Europeans, started. During the following three centuries only ephemeral contacts occurred between European sailors and explorers and the Selk’nam, most of which occurred in the coasts of the Strait of Magellan. These contacts were usually violent. Finally, at the end of the nineteenth century, the introduction of sheep ranches began an aggressive process of usurpation of the hinterland of the Selk’nam, a process that prompted a number of linked changes. The Selk’nam were displaced from their birth territories, losing contact with the geographical features and subsistence resources which they were accustomed to. Under those conditions, at some point they began to hunt the sheep introduced by the ranchers, calling them ‘the white guanacos’. Retaliation of the ranchers was immediate. The killing of men and the displacement of the survivors, mainly women and children, to Salessian missions was the classic form that took this response. The remaining Selk’nam moved to the

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central part of the island, where a forested environment provided some protection. One of the reasons was that the forest was not considered economically interesting by the ranchers, who preferred open sheep habitats. One side effect of this concentration of Selk’nam bands in the forest was a complete disruption of the territorial system, a situation that resulted in systematic violence among members of different bands. Thus, internal warfare became an important factor in the process of Selk’nam extermination. Individuals were attracted by the offer of a roof and food at the missions, and began to congregate there at least on a temporary basis. The stage was set for the final blow, which was produced by the introduction of infectious diseases. The concentration of people in the missions, people who lacked immunity against European diseases such as measles, tuberculosis, or smallpox, was the crucial factor. Under the conditions imposed by the missionaries, the transmission of disease was both efficient and quick. In less than 20 years the social organization of the Selk’nam was transformed in ways that were not adequate to deal with the new situation of contact with a society that was so different from theirs. The few survivors took difficult jobs in the ranches, for example, as horsebreakers. A few decades after the initial contact with the ranchers, most of the pure blood Selk’nam were gone, and their culture was completely lost. Similar events and processes involved other cultural groups in Tierra del Fuego and in southern Patagonia, and the result was always the social and physical extermination of the local foragers. With slight differences in the timing and the actors, similar processes were documented in different parts of the world. The forager way of life was not well suited to deal with the world market.

Conclusions The net result of this study confirms that there is no single way of living as a forager but many. In terms of their capacity to interact with other ways of life, some of them proved to be more resilient, while others were more fragile. In the end none was flexible enough to

remain intact after intensive interaction. In classificatory terms, it is true that some of those forager societies are difficult to separate from less predatory ways of life. However, no matter how many forager cultural poses exist, there is always a basal line that defines one type of interaction with the land, its resources, and other people that is specifically forager. There is nothing typological in affirming this, but simply the statement that the understanding of the people who lived and live as foragers constitutes an unavoidable way to understand our current position on the planet Earth. See also: Ethnoarchaeology; Extinctions of Big Game; Migrations: Australia; Pacific; Modern Humans, Emergence of; New World, Peopling of; Ships and Seafaring; Siberia, Peopling of; Stable Isotope Analysis.

Further Reading Bettinger R (1991) Hunter-Gatherers. Archaeological and Evolutionary Theory. New York: Plenum. Binford LR (1980) Willow Smoke and Dog’s Tails: Hunter-gatherer settlement systems and archaeological site formation. American Antiquity 45: 4–20. Binford LR (2001) Constructing Frames of Reference: An Analytical Method for Archaeological Theory Building Using Ethnographic and Environmental Data Sets. Berkeley: University of California Press. Erlandson JM (2001) The archaeology of aquatic adaptation: Paradigms for a new millennium. Journal of Archaeological Research 9: 287–350. Fitzhugh B and Habu J (eds.) (2002) Beyond Foraging and Collecting. New York: Kluwer/Plenum. Gamble C (1994) Timewalkers. The Prehistory of Global Colonization. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kelly RL (1995) The Foraging Spectrum. Diversity in HunterGatherer Lifeways. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Lee RB and Daly R (1999) The Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Panter-Brick C, Layton RH, and Rowley-Conwy P (2001) HunterGatherers. An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Price J and Brown J (1985) Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers. The Emergence of Cultural Complexity. New York: Academic Press. Zeder M (1991) Feeding Cities: Specialized Animal Economy in the Ancient Near East. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.

I IDENTITY AND POWER Rosemary A Joyce and Laurie A Wilkie, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary identity Established characteristics that set certain individuals apart from others in society. ethnicity The national, cultural, religious, linguistic, or other attributes that are perceived as characteristic of distinct groups. cultural heritage Qualities and attributes of places that have aesthetic, historic, scientific, or social value for past, present, or future generations. class A social stratum whose members share certain economic, social, or cultural characteristics. material culture The artifacts and ecofacts used by a group to cope with their physical and social environment. ethnoarchaeology The study of contemporary cultures with a view to understanding the behavioral relationships which underlie the production of material culture.

Introduction Identity and power are closely intertwined in archaeological research, and both crosscut different theoretical approaches and areal traditions. Even when not explicitly central to a specific study, archaeologists always work with models of identity, whether in the form of localized group identities of culture, language, or ethnicity, or in the form of aspects of individual identity such as gender, age, sexuality, or social role or status. Power is similarly universally at issue in archaeology, even if it is not the explicit center of analysis. In the case of power, archaeologists are always concerned with different relations of power in the past, and also have to contend with the way archaeologies, especially those of identity, are related to contemporary power struggles. Power relations in the past range from shifting relations between persons that characterized hunter-gatherer societies in the deep past to the institutionalized relations between factions, classes, or identity groups in complex societies (see HunterGatherers, Ancient).

Neither identity nor power are open to being simply read off the material records that archaeologists explore. Over the history of archaeology, a range of approaches to interpreting material patterns as evidence of identity and as evidence of power relations has been developed. In the nineteenth century, and continuing into the first half of the twentieth century, archaeologists used variation in the style of artifacts that were used for the same purposes as evidence for different group identities. Beginning early in the twentieth century, and continuing to the present, differences within localized groups in such things as the amount, variety, expense to procure, or value of materials have been used to propose different individual and factional identities along lines of prestige, rank, status, wealth, or class. Inherent in both these approaches is the assumption that differences in identity would be reflected in use of objects that symbolized or represented individual and group identity and power. In the latter half of the twentieth century, processual and postprocessual archaeologists brought more explicit critical approaches to bear on how material things were related to identity. New approaches viewed differences in material patterns not just as reflections of pre-existing identities, but also as the means through which people shaped their identities. This led both to concerns with material patterns potentially masking differences, and to approaches to the way that individuals and groups actively manipulated the possibilities for identification in their social settings. Much greater attention began to be paid in the last two decades of the twentieth century to questions of individual experiences of personhood: to gender, sexuality, and age. While the kinds of evidence examined remained the same, the scales employed expanded to include the microscale of the person, the medium scales of the residential group and the community, as well as the regional scales of settlements across landscapes. Contemporary archaeology takes identity formation as active, multiscalar, and sees material culture both as means of formation of identities and of expressing and contesting them (see Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology).

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Identity: Self and Group In archaeological approaches, identity is inherently a multiscalar concept because it includes identities experienced at the scale of the person and those of persons in groups. This means that identity must be considered multiple, shifting, and relational. A person may act as a member of a group in one context, and as a member of a faction of the group in another. The same person may participate in identities that crosscut groups with which they otherwise identify, experiencing identification with others of the same sex, gender, race, ethnicity, or other identity. A person’s sense of identity may change as they mature and age, and their status may change as they learn and exercise skills and gain authority and status. From these social science observations, it follows that at the level of the person, identity should never be thought of as an essence, but should always be treated as in process. Identification, rather than identity, would be a better focus for research. Identification, of course, is not only a process of individuals, but of groups. Indeed, identification is indispensable for group formation, maintenance, and reproduction. While, on the one hand, groups are made up of persons who identify with each other, human societies also reify group identities of various kinds, often projecting them onto nonhuman features in the environment. People may identify as members of named or unnamed groups that reside together, work together, and hand down property over generations. These co-residential, familial, corporate, or house identities may be symbolized by constructed architectural features such as tombs, houses, estates, or shared property. Archaeologists routinely recover traces of these kinds of material foci of small group identities. At larger scales, groups of people may create settlements that are the context for common actions that bind together, reproduce, and symbolize broader identification, as citizens of towns, as members of regional networks of interconnected settlements, or as part of nation-states. Again, archaeologically recoverable materials, such as stylistically distinctive movable objects, or ‘public’ spaces and buildings, can provide evidence for these processes of urban, ethnic, and national identification. Within the same settlement contexts, at scales from the small group to the largest scale of the nation or international network, people may identify with others of similar status or history in different places, and distinguish themselves from others in their immediate vicinity through habits of dress, foodways, religious practice, and the organization of household space. All of these identities of class, faction, and ethnicity, may leave material residues for archaeological investigation.

Because identity is so fluid, archaeologists are challenged not to reify or simplify the situation. Treating one identity as more significant may be a choice made for the purposes of analysis, but it always must be countered by consideration of other aspects of identity. The same material remains may serve to link some people together through identification, and to differentiate them from others through disidentification. People may actively manipulate the multiple possibilities open to them, and always actively work to shape and reshape their identifications with others in ways informed by their understandings of the effects identity may have on power relations.

Power: Substance, Relationship, or Discourse? Power is every bit as complex a social scientific field of understanding as is identity. One of the major sources of variability in social theories of power is whether power is conceived of as a capacity that people have, or an aspect of relationships that results from differences between people in their abilities to make things happen. In the first case, power is seen as a kind of substantial thing. A person or group ‘has’ power, and may even be thought of as stockpiling power for specific uses. In archaeology, approaches growing out of this kind of theory of power may see some people as potentially distinguished by innate charisma, skill, or influence. The personalization of power may be seen as reflected in such things as ‘status badges’, objects that distinguish certain individuals, often recovered in mortuary contexts. It may be indirectly reflected in the accomplishment of community works, such as building of architectural projects, especially if these projects end up as the sites of the residence or burial of one or a few selected people. Here, the energy or labor of the people who built the architecture is seen as the mobilized effect of a power that an individual leader or leading class had. From this perspective, power may also be manifest in such things as control of locations of storage of everyday and special goods, monopolization of imported goods or products of skilled craftwork, or consumption of more, better, more expensive, or rarer goods. In these respects, approaches that take power as something different people or groups have merge with a slightly different view of power as relational. In these approaches, power is a matter of influence, of differential ability to get things done, and may even be rooted primarily in the way people assess each other. Power in this sense will still be detectable through its products, and will still potentially be reflected in differences in material culture. But it may be seen as

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more fragile, in need of constant building and rebuilding. From this perspective, rituals, feasts, and even public artworks may be projects undertaken to simultaneously represent power relations, and to reinforce them. The differences between people or groups with more and less power will be seen as less a matter of objective control of more wealth, labor, or resources, and more a matter of representation. For many contemporary social scientists influenced by the work of Michel Foucault, both of these classic approaches are mistaken, and power needs to be reconceived as a kind of continuous product of social relations. For archaeologists drawing on this latter theoretical literature, power may be seen primarily as ‘discursive’, as lodged in many small, cumulative practices through which each person continuously situates him- or herself in relation to others. These archaeologists creatively employ concepts never intended to be applied to societies outside Europe, identifying ‘surveillance’ as an effect of monumental architecture, for example, or proposing that sculpture in a uniform style was a medium of ‘governmentality’. It should be clear that these different ways of thinking about power actually merge somewhat into each other. All have material consequences. Power is to be seen in differences between people or groups. It is indexed by different amounts and qualities of goods available for consumption, or by the deliberate and stylized use of unusual, imported, or costly things to set off otherwise similar activities such as meals from those of less powerful people. Power may be performed explicitly in public scenes, festivals, feasts, and rituals, set in special arenas whose construction themselves required power to compel, coax, or persuade labor. Power will be projected, debated, contested, and is subject to being lost, denied, or diminished. These shifts in relative power will be archaeologically visible in changes over time in material culture on the level of small residential groups and larger communities, and even in the individual nutritional and health experiences recorded in the bones of individual people. Because identification divides up the human communities that produced archaeological sites into factions, strata, classes, or other groups, it is intimately tied to the exercise, representation, and contestation of power.

Categorical Aspects of Identity in Archaeology Classically, archaeologists have used different aspects of the identities of people and groups as focal perspectives for different analyses, even if they understand identity to be fluid, actively constructed, and multiscalar. Thus, there is a substantial archaeological literature on categorical aspects of identity. These

can be viewed as framed either at the level of the group (e.g., ethnicity, class, race) or of the individual (status and role, sex, and age). Each of the major approaches to identity has its own problems, its own history within archaeology, and often, specific forms of evidence routinely used. In the history of archaeology, there is a general trend from consideration of the regional linguistic-cultural group (understood as ethnicity) toward more concern with persons (and their gender, sexuality, and age). But already in the earliest scientific archaeology, status and role identities at the level of the person were part of models, and contemporary archaeology continues to be concerned with group identification. Ethnicity, Language, and Culture

Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century archaeology took regional distributions of artifacts as the beginning point to define localized patterns of material culture. These ‘cultures’ were seen as the material expression of unified groups of people, who shared history, values, and identity. In nineteenth-century archaeology, taking place within developing nationstates, each culture was presumed to have also had a singular, authentic language of its own. As nationstates consolidated and began to confront internal segmentation, archaeological culture-linguistic groups were often conceived of as analogues of localized identity groups, ethnicities, that the modern nation-states were attempting to absorb. Localized factional identity thus could be represented simultaneously as authentic, and as obsolete. Archaeology was actively employed to relate modern factions within nation-states to specific pasts. Factions within nation-states embraced these localized vestiges of the past in the same way as nations themselves did, if for different reasons. Archaeologists often contributed to the identification of spatial distributions of stylistically distinctive materials as evidence of ancestors of contemporary ethnic groups through their desire to be able to interpret the archaeological materials in terms of actual living culture. This equivocal history of association of style of material culture with language and ‘ethnic’ identity has continued to create problems for archaeology. On the one hand, because the material patterns were seen as reflecting an existing essential identity, it blocked consideration of the active use of material culture to create, reinforce, and recreate identities. By associating material culture identities with singular languages, it blocked research on the distinct ways that material culture works in identification, which may not always or even usually be analogous to the ways that language works. But at the same time, ethnicity provided a vocabulary to use to call out the distribution of distinctive material culture across

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the landscape. It allowed archaeologists to focus on how boundaries were created through differences in material culture, and how certain intimate practices, such as those of dress and foodways, were particularly important in the recreation of identity over time. Today, distributions of similar material culture are not assumed to represent evidence of identities on their own. Rather, bounded distributions of similar materials are taken as problems to be interpreted. In some instances, such as colonial Uruk settlements in Mesopotamia, or the neighborhoods of people from Oaxaca that persisted as enclaves for centuries in the great Mexican city, Teotihuacan, assemblages of distinctive material culture within communities with different patterns can be believably interpreted as evidence of ethnically distinctive groups. In these cases, the kinds of practices maintained as distinctive (especially religion and foodways) are particularly appropriate means for a group of people to maintain their differences from a larger, distinct, population. In the case of Teotihuacan, as these differences persist they remain more stable than the culture of the home region, eventually appearing archaic in comparison with contemporary Oaxaca. Similar situations can be amply documented in historic archaeology of European colonial enclaves, of Chinese communities overseas, or of communities of people of African descent. In the latter case, ethnogenesis and reproduction of ethnic identities routinely employed material culture of the dominant European culture in distinctive ways, demonstrating that our search for such factional identities within complex societies needs to observe not just the obvious stylistic distributions but more subtle differences in practices that might be taking place. So, for example, imported majolica pottery used in colonial Ciudad Vieja, El Salvador in the sixteenth century involved selection of bowl forms that were similar to those previously made of local materials. Ethnoarchaeological studies of the production and use of painted pottery in Amazonian Ecuador offer another example of the need for attention to subtler distinctions in order to see ethnic identities, while reminding us that these factional identities may be heterogeneous linguistically and historically. Here, within a single community, people from two different political factions produced vessels with structures of exterior ornamentation that were consistently different, even if the member of the political faction spoke a language different from the majority of the faction, and had learned to paint pottery in a different political and social setting. What this ethnoarchaeological work underlines is that identification is a process in which people use material culture, not an essence reflected or expressed in it. This work also underlines the fact that even in societies without institutionalized distinctions of social status, identity is political.

Status and Role

Early archaeologists complemented their interpretation of localized distributions of artifacts as cultures with identification of distinctions in material culture within these homogeneous culture areas. Here, the main axis of distinction was understood to correspond to differential social status, prestige, wealth, rank, or class (or all of these at once). Drawing on anthropological studies of the mid-twentieth century, processual archaeologists systematized approaches to these within-group identities. Drawing on the theoretical work of Elman Service, archaeologists assumed that as societies progressed from egalitarian bands (in which no permanent social distinctions other than gender were found) to tribes, chiefdoms, and states, distinctive individual or group identities would develop. In bands, persons were understood to temporarily occupy roles (such as leader of a hunt), but these were not usually treated as archaeologically perceptible identities. In tribes, differences in achieved rank were expected, such that for every person who achieved distinction (in skill, authority, or knowledge) there would be a position of differential status. In chiefdoms, in addition to achieved rank, ascribed rank was understood to be institutionalized, so that shared, higher social status could be perpetuated from generation to generation. In both of these situations, archaeologists allowed for the potential to identify rank statuses held by individuals through their use of distinctive symbolic ‘status badges’, especially in burials. These individualized status markers might be shared among members of an institutionalized ranked group. In state-level societies, institutionalized classes occupied distinctive prestige or wealth strata. These distinctions were perceptible not only in the individualized contexts of burials, but also in the shared residential contexts where members of one social stratum lived. Materially, these indicators of identity linked individuals to groups, which in the archaeology of complex societies and in historical archaeology are generally understood as social classes. Class and Wealth

Classes are a defining feature of complex societies, states, and the modern world. In modern social sciences, classes are sometimes treated as objective groupings of people of the same relative social standing, based on things such as level of education, income, or kind of employment. But the original selection of criteria actually stems from the kind of class distinctions social scientists recognize. For example, in countries like Great Britain, where there was a history of inherited noble titles, these inherited statuses still define different classes even though the members of the different

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classes (royalty, nobility, and commoners) may overlap in wealth and education, and even though employment categories crosscut these inherited classes. What distinguishes classes of all kinds is that they involve ranking of groups of people, so that one class is of higher wealth, prestige, or status than another. Archaeologically, then, class distinctions involve shared identities and ranking. Where a contemporary social scientist can use interviews and histories to establish identification and ranking, archaeologists must use material proxies. Archaeologists define classes based on materially observable criteria. Household wealth has been one of the easiest potential bases to define for class distinctions in archaeological settings. Nonetheless, there has been substantial debate about how to measure household wealth. Some approaches convert everything into labor equivalents, reasoning that the consumption of human effort is independent of any social conventions of value. Experimental archaeology can provide a basis to project how much work was involved in building such things as the residences of Maya nobles, or the tombs of Egyptian workers, nobles, and rulers. Assessing the labor value of movable objects can be more complex. Distance from the sources of raw materials or of production of finished products contributes to the expense involved in obtaining movable objects, so such exotics or products of long-distance exchange may receive special attention in assessing household wealth. Within any category of things, the amount of work involved may vary. ‘Production-step measures’ are a rough way to assess the different values of objects produced with more steps (more work) or fewer steps (less work, and thus less expense or value). Using ethnographic and historic analogies, archaeologists have suggested that the least useful way of stratifying groups in the past using movable objects is sheer numbers of things; this is much more strongly tied to such things as group population size, longevity of occupation, and approaches to disposal of materials. While archaeologists can produce reasonable arguments for the existence of different classes based on household wealth, these differences may crosscut more socially significant class identities, just as they do in many present-day societies. So another approach to class differences in archaeology has been to examine the symbolism of group status in things such as architectural form, decoration of artifacts, location of housing within settlements, and use of written or graphic symbols. From this perspective, it is not just important that some people’s houses took more labor to construct: they may be made of materials that distinguish them, they may follow models of higher status, and they may be embellished with elements that themselves are symbolic of social

orders. This is as important an approach in historical archaeology as it is in the archaeology of states in Mesoamerica, the Andes, and the Classical Mediterranean. Unlike household wealth, which actually creates a continuous scale of distribution of groups, these symbolic approaches lend themselves to identifying discrete strata or parallel segments within urban societies, like Indian castes or Aztec calpulli. When written documents are available, as they are in historical archaeology and in many complex societies, the material and visual symbols may be matched to literary terms that designate different class strata. While class is above all an identity of a group, class membership may be an important aspect of the identity of an individual as well. Documentary sources can offer critical indications of the class identity of individuals, whether these come in the form of tomb inscriptions or historical documents such as wills or legal cases. Sex, Gender, and Age

Gender has been another focus of archaeological research on identity that links individuals and groups. Gender identities are sometimes treated as simple analogs of biological sex. Mortuary and bioarchaeological studies identify adult males and females from specific traits, and then the nonbiological aspects of burials may be used to project aspects of gender identities. For example, the inclusion of certain kinds of pins in burials of females in British and European archaeological sites is taken as one of the material markers of female identity, contrasting with other kinds of clothing fasteners found with male burials. An emphasis on the display of gender differences in costume has thus been a second material route adopted by archaeologists attempting to discern gender identities. Representation of dichotomous patterns of dress in visual media provides a third way to see categorical gender identities. These approaches have been subject to considerable debate, critique, and refinement within archaeology, starting with the realization that sex itself is not really dichotomous, even if we do not consider the possible presence of biologically intersexed persons in a population. Children cannot be assigned to biological groupings on the same bases as adults, so there is always a third term in mortuary analyses, persons who may be assigned to the same gender identity as adults based on shared material patterns, or who may form a distinctive group based on age. Even within a group of adults assigned to the same sexed category, age distinctions may be relevant. In a study of burials from the central Mexican site of Tlatilco, it was noted that older males and females shared characteristics of burial treatment, as did younger adult males with younger adult females. Relatively

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little material culture linked the older and younger adults of the same sex. Considerations like these shift attention away from presumed identity groups symbolized by use of certain objects, to the way material culture was used in processes of identification. Race

Like gender, race has been treated as an essentialized identity inherent in biology. So too, as with gender, race has been subject to serious reconsideration by archaeologists, especially those involved in the study of the African diaspora and the history of European colonization. A simple forensic model takes race as something inherent in national origins that concentrated certain variants of physical traits in different world areas. A notable example of the pitfalls of this approach to race was the African Burial Ground Project in New York City, where the initial archaeological team failed to notice signs of distinction within the biological population that were important evidence of differences in identity among these people of African descent. Archaeologists now approach race as a historical identity created with reference to biology but not given in biology, and examine material evidence for distinctions of identity among people with similar biological characteristics. Archaeologists examine how specific practices, including religion, healing, and personal adornment, were reproduced within racially identified or identifying groups. With attention to racial identity, and the contrast between simple models archaeologists might once have used and the nuanced historical approaches they now routinely employ, archaeologies of identity most clearly intersect with contemporary issues of power.

The Politics of Identity All of the aspects of identity examined archaeologically involve potential exercises of differential power in the societies under examination. Class, gender, race, ethnicity, and status are all implicated in social ranking and stratification, in the relative placement or groups and individuals with differential access to wealth, authority, prestige, and agency. Writing about identity in the past also always involves archaeologists in issues of power in the present. There are at least two main reasons for this. First, relations of identity and power in the past can serve as a precedent for relations of power between groups in the present. These differential positions of power may be explicitly grounded in history, as in the use of archaeology by Nazi Germany to demonstrate the superiority of a mythical ‘Aryan race’ whose legacy was claimed by the Nazi state. Or they may be analogical bases for claims to naturalize contemporary power

relations, as when arguments are made for the ‘natural’ inferiority of women based in speculative claims that in early human history, men undertook complex tasks that privileged their intellectual development. Archaeologists investigating identity in the past have a responsibility to be exceptionally careful in outlining the logical assumptions they make to avoid contributing to such abuses. Even with such care, archaeologies of identity will still engage with contemporary politics because in the modern world, identity matters deeply as a basis for political action. The passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in the United States caused archaeologists in that country to engage with contemporary Native Americans who were concerned with the ways archaeological claims about identity affected their present-day political viability. By employing a simple model of identity between static distributions of things taken as reflections of essential folk identities, archaeologists created a framework in which historical change was the loss of identity, or the invention of false new identities. Even when archaeologists themselves moved on to use more sophisticated models of the relationships between identity and material culture, these nineteenth-century ideas about the integrity of identity and the closed bounded nature of groups remained in circulation and could be used to deny contemporary descendant communities legal standing. In Guatemala, contemporary Maya scholars and public intellectuals have pointed out that archaeological investigations have provided material for arguments of discontinuity from the Classic Maya past that contributed to characterization of the contemporary Maya as backward during the genocidal civil war in that country. These same intellectuals have contested the dominance of archaeological attention to ancient Maya warfare as a continued misrepresentation of ancestral Maya that colors contemporary understanding of the living Maya. The mobilization of the African–American community in New York City to call for a new research approach to the African Burying Ground represents a second kind of relation of archaeological identities to modern politics. The people involved were not claiming direct descent, and were not subject to losing material benefits due to archaeological use of outdated models of identity. Instead, their appeal for a voice was related to the potential archaeology offered to document otherwise lost histories. In some cases, archaeologists have found themselves uncomfortably placed in the middle of movements to claim connections with the past by nations, such as French celebration of Celtic heritage or the arguments that took place between national governments about custody of the remains of the European Iceman.

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Archaeologists are in a unique position to analyze the ways that remains of past societies become part of nationalist or factional discourses through which modern state governments or ethnic groups attempt to create solidarity by claiming deep roots. In their work on this modern process of identity formation through engagement with material culture, archaeologists have begun to identify problems with the modernist idea of ‘cultural heritage’, particularly the ways it elevates the materials of certain classes or groups as exemplary while quietly ignoring the material evidence of the experiences of others. Archaeologists have even been able to define concepts such as ‘negative heritage’, remains of the past that modern nations or factions deliberately eradicate because of the challenges they present to contemporary social values. Whether through their presence and celebration, or their excision from historical consciousness, the materials that archaeologists use to identify past identity formation remain politically potent in the present. See also: Cities, Ancient, and Daily Life; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Economic Archaeology; Engendered Archaeology; Ethnicity; Household Archaeology; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient; Individual, Archaeology of in Prehistory; Political Complexity,

Ideology

Rise of; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Social Inequality, Development of; Urban Archaeology.

Further Reading Bond GC and Gilliam G (eds.) (1994) The Social Construction of the Past: Representation as Power. New York: Routledge. Brumfiel EM (1992) Breaking and entering the ecosystem: Gender, class, and faction steal the show. American Anthropologist 94(3): 551–567. Diaz-Andreu M et al. (2005) The Archaeology of Identity: Approaches to Gender, Age, Status, Ethnicity, and Religion. New York: Routledge. Jones S (1997) The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and Present. New York: Routledge. Kane S (ed.) (2003) The Politics of Archaeology and Identity in a Global Context. Boston: Archaeological Institute of America. Meskell LM (2002) The intersections of identity and politics in archaeology. Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 279–301. O’Donovan M (ed.) (2002) The Dynamics of Power. Occasional Paper no. 30. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Orser CE, Jr. (ed.) (2000) Race and the Archaeology of Identity. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Schmidt P and Patterson T (eds.) (1995) Making Alternative Histories: The Practice of Archaeology and History in Non-Western Settings. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Stark MT (ed.) (1998) The Archaeology of Social Boundaries. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.

See: Ritual, Religion, and Ideology.

ILLICIT ANTIQUITIES Neil Brodie, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary due diligence The measures that an individual or institution can reasonably be expected to take when investigating the pedigree of an object being considered for acquisition in order to ensure its legality. provenance The history of ownership of an object.

An illicitly traded archaeological artifact (illicit antiquity) is one that has at sometime been traded in contravention of national or international legal

regulations. Typically, it will have been removed illegally from an archaeological site or monument, and/ or exported illegally from its country of origin. Possibly, it will have been stolen from a museum or other cultural institution, or from a private owner. The act of removal is normally unrecorded and probably destructive. Illicit antiquities are often sold by reputable vendors without any public indication of ownership history (provenance). In 1993, for example, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) released details of six pieces of sculpture that had been stolen from the storeroom of Angkor Wat, in Cambodia, and subsequently recovered. Three had been sold through Sotheby’s auction house. Four years later, in 1997, Peter Watson showed that many Italian antiquities sold at Sotheby’s

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London with no published provenance had come from one dealer in Switzerland, who was acting as a ‘front’ for another dealer, the Italian Giacomo Medici, who was in turn smuggling the antiquities out of Italy where they had been illegally excavated. Medici was arrested by the Italian Carabinieri in 1997 and in 2005 he was convicted of receiving and illegally exporting stolen antiquities. It is not known how many illicit antiquities he had managed to pass onto the market without provenance before his arrest. Over the last 20 years between 65% and 90% of antiquities offered for sale on the market have had no clear published provenance, which suggests that a large, perhaps major, part of the market is comprised of illicit antiquities. Even when an antiquity is sold with a provenance, it does not mean that the provenance is genuine. A now infamous example of what appears to be a deliberately confused provenance is provided by the Euphronios krater. In 1972, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York bought a sixth-century BC Attic red-figure krater attributed to the painter Euphronios. It cost the museum $1 million, which, at the time, was considered to be an outrageous price. The krater was said to have been bought from an Armenian living in Beirut through the mediation of US dealer Robert Hecht, who could document that it had been in the possession of the Armenian’s family, and thus outside Italy, since 1914. By 1973, however, doubts were being expressed about this apparently legitimate provenance, and it was suggested instead that the krater had, in fact, been excavated illegally in Italy in 1971. In 1993, the Metropolitan’s director at the time of purchase, Thomas Hoving, suggested that there had actually been two Euphronios kraters, a fragmentary one in the possession of the Armenian, and a better-quality one excavated illegally in 1971. Unbeknown to the Metropolitan, Hecht had switched pieces, selling the illicit one to the Metropolitan with the good provenance, and selling the Armenian’s poorer quality piece to a private collector. In 2001, the Italian Carabinieri raided Hecht’s Paris flat, where they seized a handwritten memoir. In this memoir, Hecht had recorded two different versions of his role in the Euphronios affair. One was that he had obtained the krater from the Italian dealer Giacomo Medici, mentioned above in connection with Sotheby’s. The other version was the one made public by the Metropolitan, that he had acquired it from the Armenian. In November 2005, Robert Hecht was charged in an Italian court with the illegal export of antiquities and conspiring to receive stolen art (see Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation). In 2006, the Metropolitan Museum ceded title of the Euphronios krater to Italy, along with title to 20 other antiquities, though refused to admit any knowledge of

illegal origin. The krater will return to Italy in 2008. The real provenance of the krater has still not been made public, and presumably is known only by Hecht, and perhaps Medici. The Euphronios krater is just one example of how a provenance might be invented or changed to disguise the illegal origin of a piece. There are many more. In 1997, the British dealer Jonathan TokeleyParry was found guilty of handling antiquities stolen from Egypt and jailed for 6 years. To smuggle the antiquities, Tokeley-Parry disguised them as tacky tourist souvenirs by first coating them with liquid plastic and then painting them with garish colours. Once back in England, the plastic and paint were removed with acetone and the pieces were restored to their original condition. To pass them off as legitimate he invented a provenance, an ‘old collection’, the Thomas Alcock collection. Thomas Alcock was said to be a British Army engineer who had passed through Egypt early in the twentieth century. TokeleyParry manufactured labels dabbed with used teabags to give them the appearance of age which he attached to pieces in an attempt to make the false provenance appear more convincing. It is virtually impossible to verify a provenance or to research an unprovenanced antiquity’s pedigree. Museums and salerooms are under no obligation to release information on the subject, and most usually do not. As a result, it is easy for an innocent or an unprincipled buyer to claim that there was nothing to suggest that a purchased piece was illicit. The difficulties attending provenance research have led to the development of the concept of ‘due diligence’. Due diligence describes the measures that an individual or institution can reasonably be expected to take when investigating the pedigree of a potential acquisition to ensure its legality. Due diligence should take account of the character of the vendor and the price asked (a suspiciously low price would indicate a dubious provenance), and should include checking the potential purchase against appropriate registers of stolen artifacts. Now that it is known that so many unprovenanced antiquities have an illegal origin, in future it will be difficult to claim innocent purchase without first conducting the necessary due diligence. Unfortunately, even due diligence cannot guarantee the legitimacy of a piece. Documents can always be forged, and it is not always easy to assess the character of a vendor, as was made clear by the conviction in 2002 of New York antiquities dealer Frederick Schultz. Schultz had bought pieces from Tokeley-Parry, knowing them to be stolen from Egypt, and had been until 2001 the president of the National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and Primitive Art, the United States’ foremost dealer association.

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The Archaeological Perspective From an archaeological perspective, the trade in illicit antiquities causes two problems. First, the unrecorded and unsystematic digging of archaeological sites and monuments to feed the trade reduces the total amount of information that is available about the past. Stratigraphies and contextual relationships are lost and fragile or unsaleable material is discarded or destroyed. Second, the recontextualization of looted objects in collections assigns them new meanings that are often flawed, and so any historical conclusions that are drawn from them are of uncertain reliability. These problems are nothing new. As early as 1904, for example, Robert Carr Bosanquet, then director of the British School of Archaeology at Athens, recognized them in his discussion of the collection of the British antiquary, George Finlay. In the early 1870s, Finlay had obtained through the offices of an agent in Athens a large collection of obsidian artifacts that were said to be from various Bronze Age sites of southern and central Greece. Bosanquet discovered that instead they had probably all been dug out of the Bronze Age site of Phylakopi on the Greek Cycladic island of Melos. The site context of this material had been destroyed, an act which has hindered investigation there ever since, and the true provenance of the artifacts had been replaced by a series of fictitious ones designed to capture Finlay’s interest, and his money. In 1993, David Gill and Christopher Chippindale encapsulated these problems in their memorable phrase, the ‘‘material and intellectual consequences of esteem’’. Like Bosanquet, Gill and Chippindale were looking at Early Bronze Age material from the Greek Cycladic islands, in their case the bleachedwhite marble figurines. When these Cycladic figurines first came to public attention in the nineteenth century they were considered to be ugly and barbaric, and of no value. Their aesthetic and monetary fortunes changed during the middle years of the twentieth century when their simple lines caused them to be viewed more positively as modernist archetypes, and they began to attract the attention of collectors and museums. Today, Cycladic figurines command high prices on the art market. Gill and Chippindale considered the consequences of this newfound esteem. It was during the 1950s and 1960s that large numbers of Cycladic figurines began to appear on the international market. Out of the 1600 figurines so far known, about 90% have no ownership history or documented find spot, and so were presumably looted. Gill and Chippindale further estimated that the material consequence of obtaining so many figurines would be that something like 12 000 graves and their contents have been destroyed.

They also discussed the intellectual consequences. Like Finlay’s obsidian, the invention of vague and unverifiable provenances for the looted pieces, such as ‘‘said to be from Naxos’’, or wherever, plays havoc with any attempt to trace patterns of their original production and distribution. Furthermore, acceptance of the figurines within the modern canon as ‘art’ has brought with it all the trappings of connoisseurship, so that today, in trade and collecting circles at least, Cycladic figurines are considered to be works of fine art that were produced by so-called ‘master carvers’, and created by a society with both the means and the inclination to support full time artistic specialization and production. Yet, as Gill and Chippindale point out, these are propositions that need to be investigated, not assumed.

Social Perspectives The damage caused by the looting of archaeological sites is not just a matter of scholarly concern. There can be serious social and economic consequences. For some communities and states, archaeological objects can function symbolically as material constituents of cultural identity, or they might be imbued with a spiritual significance. Their expropriation can help to weaken group identity and cohesion. In the United States, this issue was recognized by the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which acknowledges that the past appropriation of Native American human remains and cultural objects by nonindigenous individuals and institutions was illegal, and that, where possible, such materials should be returned to the possession of their rightful owners. Any future finds on federal or Native American land will similarly be subject to the ownership of the appropriate group (see Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act). The fact that archaeological artifacts are looted because of their monetary value cannot be overlooked. Often, sites are looted by poor subsistence farmers, and many people are uncomfortable describing the usually illegal excavation of artifacts that are sold for subsistence purposes as looting. The term ‘subsistence digging’ has been suggested as a preferred alternative. Any effort to stop subsistence digging in order to maintain the integrity of archaeological sites can be construed as valuing archaeological heritage over human life. It has been suggested that the characterization of such digging as ‘looting’ criminalizes already deprived communities, and subsistence diggers should be regarded as having a legitimate, economic interest in archaeological heritage. As a long-term subsistence option, however, such digging

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is unsustainable as the archaeological sites are quickly worked out. The illegal trade offers many opportunities for criminals. On the ground this might simply mean that the people digging the sites are breaking the law. But further up the trading chain there are opportunities for more extensive criminal involvement through activities such as corruption and money laundering, and it is increasingly being recognized in Iraq and Afghanistan that the money derived from the sale of antiquities can be used to purchase weapons. Thus although in the past the trade in illicit antiquities was seen to be a victimless crime, this is no longer the case.

The Proliferation of Forgeries The routine suppression and invention of provenances that characterize the trade facilitate the entry onto the market and into collections and museums of forged pieces. The best way to be certain of an artifact’s authenticity is to know its archaeological find spot and its history since excavation. For a piece with no provenance, clearly this is not possible. The authenticity of an unprovenanced piece can be judged only through scientific analysis or expert opinion, and neither method is foolproof. For example, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has on display a Cycladic figurine depicting a seated person playing a harp. It was acquired in 1947 with no published provenance and is considered to be one of the museum’s most important pieces, certainly in terms of its prehistoric collections. Some experts, however, have long doubted the figurine’s authenticity because of its abnormally long arms, made necessary by its incorrect hold of the harp, and other unusual features of anatomical detail. In 2000, it was revealed by a British artist that in January 1947 he had met a local sculptor on the Cycladic island of Ios who claimed to have been commissioned some years earlier by an Athenian antiquities dealer to produce a marble figurine of a harpist. The islander made a sketch of the figurine he had made, and it shows a remarkable similarity to the piece in the Metropolitan. If the figurine drawn in the sketch really is one and the same as the Metropolitan example, it means that the Metropolitan must have been duped into buying a fake. Not surprisingly, the Metropolitan is not convinced by this argument, and the piece remains on display. But the shadow of doubt that now hangs over the figurine’s credibility as a genuine artifact will only be dispelled by the publication of reliable information about its discovery and excavation, if indeed it was excavated. The issue of forgery is probably more acute than generally suspected. Oscar Muscarella, ironically of

the Metropolitan Museum, has identified hundreds of what he believes to be forgeries of Near Eastern artifacts, or genuine artifacts that have been subject to contemporary ‘enhancement’ to improve their monetary value, and he considers this number to be very much a minimum one. If Muscarella is right, and as the pieces he discusses have no documented provenance it is hard to prove him wrong, the infiltration of fakes into collections is more widespread that previously thought possible and poses a serious threat to scholarship.

Some Statistics Reliable statistics about the size of the trade in antiquities and the seriousness of the associated damage are notoriously elusive. This is because the trade is clandestine and there are no organizations charged with gathering relevant information about damaged archaeological sites and monuments. Nevertheless, some quantitative information about destruction ‘on the ground’ has been provided by archaeological surveys of regions and individual sites. In 1983, one study showed that 59% of all Mayan sites in Belize had been damaged by looters. Between 1989 and 1991, a regional survey in Mali discovered 830 archaeological sites, but 45% had already been damaged, 17% badly. In 1996, a sample of 80 was revisited and the incidence of looting had increased by 20%. A survey in a district of northern Pakistan showed that nearly half the Buddhist shrines, stupas, and monasteries had been badly damaged or destroyed by illegal excavations. In 2001, it was reported that 14% of known archaeological sites in Andalusia, Spain, had been damaged by illicit excavation. Between 1940 and 1968, it is estimated that 100 000 holes were dug into the Peruvian site of Batan Grande, and that in 1965 the looting of a single tomb produced something like 40 kg of gold jewelry, which accounts for about 90% of the Peruvian gold now found in collections around the world. In 2001, an archaeological survey of the area of ancient Lydia in western Turkey discovered 397 Iron Age tumuli. Ninety percent showed signs of looting and 52 tumuli had been completely destroyed. A survey of the Lower Ulu´a Valley in Honduras found that 60% of the 507 sites discovered had been damaged by looting and that 15% had been totally destroyed.

The Development of the Antiquities Market during the Twentieth Century The plunder of archaeological sites for their saleable antiquities can be traced back at least to the eighteenth century, and probably earlier. But it was during

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the twentieth century that the practice extended and intensified to achieve its present size and scope. This expansion was caused by at least five processes that were acting together to increase demand, reduce legal supply, and increase illegal supply. First, there was a continuing increase in the number of museums collecting archaeological material. Museums, art museums in particular, exert a primary effect on the market by acquiring unprovenanced antiquities, and in so doing exert a secondary effect by sending a clear signal to private collectors that such practice is acceptable. By displaying archaeological objects as treasures or great works of art, museums also increase their desirability. Second, Western artistic taste became more inclusive. While the proliferating museums were busy acquiring art, the range of material that was available for them to collect as art was also increasing. From the Renaissance through to the end of the nineteenth century, classical Greek and Roman sculpture had been thought to epitomize art, but the onset and development of modernism changed all that. Many artists started to draw inspiration from non-European and non-classical sources, and as a result since the end of the nineteenth century antiquities from all parts of the world have come to be seen as significant artworks, or at least to possess aesthetic qualities that appeal to Western taste. Third, although an increasing variety of antiquities was coming to be regarded as aesthetically worthwhile, their legitimate supply was diminishing as newly independent countries moved to introduce stringent regimes of heritage protection. One of the first actions of the newly independent Greek state was in 1833 to pass a law forbidding the export of antiquities. This law was promulgated in response to the depredation of Greek archaeological heritage that had taken place under the centuries of Ottoman occupation, particularly over the preceding 50 years, and which the Greeks themselves had been powerless to curtail. The Greek example has been followed many times over as countries freed from colonial rule have passed legislation to protect their archaeological heritage from illegal trade (see Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation). Fourth, improving technologies allowed better location of archaeological sites, easier access to them, and more efficient removal of material from them. It also became progressively easier to obtain information and to arrange transactions. Sites and monuments in previously remote (from the market) places such as West Africa and the Himalayas have since been devastated. Shipwrecks on the deep ocean floor have also become accessible and vulnerable. Finally, toward the end of the twentieth century, many political barriers to trade disappeared as the

formerly closed communist world opened up. Czech police, for example, estimate that thefts from cultural institutions increased 12-fold when the Czech Republic’s borders opened in 1990. The cumulative and deleterious effect of these processes on archaeological heritage can be seen in most areas of the world. The terracotta statues of West Africa, for example, were largely unknown 50 years ago, but over the past few decades they have been dug up in ever-increasing numbers to feed the growing demand for so-called ‘tribal’ or ‘primitive’ art. The results have been predictable. In 2000, ICOM issued its Red List of Endangered African Heritage, which detailed eight categories of archaeological objects that are under imminent threat from looting and theft, and appealed to museums, auction houses, art dealers, and collectors to stop buying them. The list included Nok terracottas from Nigeria and Djenne´ terracottas from Mali, and the Bura terracottas of Niger. Bura terracottas were not discovered until 1983, and so in less than 20 years they had passed from being an unknown to an endangered tradition.

Legal Responses As described above, since the nineteenth century, most countries have placed their archaeological heritage under some kind of legislative definition and control. International laws designed to inhibit the illegal movement of antiquities have been developing in parallel. At first, this international effort was responding to the plunder and destruction of art and other cultural objects during wartime, and in 1954 it culminated in the Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, and its First Protocol. A Second Protocol was added in 1999. By September 2006, the Hague Convention had been signed and ratified by 116 countries, though only 42 had acceded to the Second Protocol. The problems posed to archaeological heritage by the illicit trade in peacetime were also causing concern and in 1970 UNESCO adopted the Convention on the Means of Preventing and Prohibiting the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. This convention makes provision for intergovernmental action to control the trade, and by September 2006 it had been signed and ratified by 110 countries. Articles 7b(ii) and 9 of the UNESCO Convention were implemented in the United States as the 1983 Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act (CCPIA or CPIA). Under this act, the United States can reach agreement with a second country to place import restrictions on specific categories of cultural material which are thought to be in

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danger of pillage. In September 2006, the United States had bilateral agreements with 12 countries. The 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen and Illegally Exported Cultural Objects rectified some of the perceived shortcomings of the 1970 UNESCO Convention. In 2001, in response to the increasing exploitation of deepwater shipwrecks, UNESCO adopted the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, which offers protection to submerged landscapes as well as to shipwrecks and other sunken objects. Unfortunately, these national and international laws have seemed powerless to prevent the continuing expansion of the trade in illicit antiquities, and the associated archaeological destruction has grown worse (which is not to say that it would not have grown worse still without legislation). There are two reasons for this apparent failure of legislative regulation. One reason is poor subscription to the relevant international conventions. So although the United States set a good example when it ratified the 1970 UNESCO Convention in 1983, it was nearly 20 years before other major market countries followed suit. The United Kingdom and Japan did not become parties until 2002, and Switzerland until 2003. By 2006, neither the United States nor the United Kingdom had ratified the Hague Convention or its Protocols (although the United Kingdom had announced its intention to do so), and neither country was intending to accede to the 1995 Unidroit Convention nor to the 2001 UNESCO Convention on underwater heritage. The second and perhaps most important reason for the failure of regulation is that the relevant national and international laws are poorly enforced. International attention focuses on the illegal trades in drugs, arms, and, recently, people. At the national level, health, education, and security are usually more pressing priorities than heritage preservation, particularly in the developing world where most archaeological looting takes place (see Historic Preservation Laws). There is also disagreement about what should be the fundamental philosophy of protective legislation. Although there is a general consensus that the antiquities trade as presently constituted is inequitable and causing irreversible harm to the archaeological heritage, there is considerable dispute about how best to resolve the problem, whether by placing the trade under what might be characterized as ‘weak regulation’, or under ‘strong regulation’. Proponents of weak regulation, who term their perspective ‘cultural internationalism’, argue that, with the exception of a limited number of exceptional or otherwise significant pieces, most antiquities should be freely available for international trade. Free trade would increase

the amount of material in circulation, thereby improving public access, and profits could be used to protect important archaeological sites. The strong regulation perspective is that a free market does not assure an equitable circulation of cultural objects, nor does it increase public access. Instead, it causes a flow of antiquities into a limited number of acquiring communities – internationalism is a serious misnomer. Free trade would not be sustainable, and any money generated would need to pay for oversight of the regulatory regime, none would ‘trickle down’ to site protection. In effect, the debate is about whether the conservation of archaeological heritage would be favored more by public (strong regulation) or by private (weak regulation) ownership. In the absence of any reliable comparative statistics of site damage in public and private jurisdictions, and with only a few quantitative studies of market composition, it is hard to decide.

Ethical Responses The explanation sketched out above for the twentieth century development of the trade in illicit antiquities identified five causal processes, but their articulation and synergy were only realized through the agency of the various ‘players’, from academics and museum curators, through dealers, to the people on the ground that do the actual digging. The active implication of professional ‘experts’ in market processes has since the 1960s caused the development of ethical standards that are intended to insulate professional practice from the market (see Ethical Issues and Responsibilities). It seems inescapable that there should be a causative link between academic practice and the development of a market. The study and analysis of antiquities provide information about their age, their abundance, the geographical parameters of their production and consumption, and about their functional, aesthetic, and historical characteristics. This information helps to structure the market by providing typological categories and the means to judge quality and scarcity and therefore to estimate price. Back in 1904, Bosanquet blamed the looting of Phylakopi on the publication of an educational pamphlet by Finlay that had devoted seven out of fifteen illustrations to obsidian artifacts, and identified their Melian origin. It has been suggested many times since then that the market for ancient Greek pottery was formed by the publication of Johann Winckelman’s 1764 study of the pottery, his identification of its Greek origin (it had previously been thought to be Etruscan), and his comparison of its painted compositions to the work of Rennaissance masters. But although market formation might be an unintended consequence of study and publication, the

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expertise of academic and museum specialists is also crucial for market function. Although at first sight the mitigating impact of the UNESCO Convention may appear to have been limited, the expert negotiations that accompanied its initial drafting and, later, the US ratification acted to raise awareness among professional archaeologists, anthropologists, and museum curators about practices beside legitimate study and publication that help sustain the trade and that might be avoided. A series of declarations made in the early 1970s by the major archaeological and museum associations endorsed the principles enshrined in the UNESCO Convention, and increasingly since then codes of ethics and practice have been formulated with provisions to guard against professional involvement with the trade. Unfortunately, there has not always been unanimous agreement as to what the correct ethical response should be, particularly as regards publication policies and museum acquisitions (both discussed below). Professional archaeologists and museum curators possess the academically validated and thus socially recognized expert knowledge that allows them to pass authoritative judgments – either through scientific examination or the more traditional skill of connoisseurship – on the identity and the authenticity or otherwise of an antiquity. This service is an indispensable one for a market that is comprised largely of unprovenanced objects and badly infiltrated by fakes. Thus, while the academic study of archaeological material may be said to structure the market, the identification and authentication of unprovenanced antiquities allows the market to function. Recognizing this danger, professional associations now prohibit their members from identifying or authenticating unprovenanced objects in such a way that might support the market. Although it is accepted that the academic study and publication of legitimate archaeological material promotes a market, it is also recognized that the study of material with no provenance and that has in all probability been looted causes two further problems. One problem is the intellectual one discussed above concerning the reliability of interpretation: the study of unprovenanced antiquities is constrained by the absence of information relating to archaeological find spot that vitiates the context of understanding. The second problem is a commercial one: the study and publication of an unprovenanced object will in itself provide a provenance of sorts, an academic pedigree, and make it easier to sell in the future. Thus many archaeologists and museum curators believe that the academic study of unprovenanced material provides only a limited addition to historical knowledge, and one that is gained at the cost of a potentially larger loss of available information

through the consequential looting of more archaeological sites. The academic journals American Journal of Archaeology (in 1978) and American Antiquity and Latin American Antiquity (in 1991) tackled this issue when they decided not to publish any paper that offers first publication of looted or illegally exported material. This decision has not been universally welcomed, and the counterargument has been developed that some objects, particularly written materials, have an intrinsic importance, even out of context, that warrants their study and publication so that their information is saved for posterity. Museums have the potential to play a central role in the antiquities trade through their acquisition policies. As noted above, when a museum acquires an object with no provenance it contributes directly to demand and sets an ethical standard. Professional museums associations have responded to this problem by asking that their member museums formulate acquisitions policies incorporating guidelines about unprovenanced material. Museum associations also offer advice as to what degree of provenance might make an object acceptable for acquisition, although there is some disagreement as to what this might constitute. So, for example, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) recommends that unprovenanced objects should not be acquired at all, while the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) suggests that they are suitable for acquisition if it can documented that they have been out of their country of origin for more than 10 years. The different recommendations reflect a difference of opinion between those who believe that the acquisition of an unprovenanced object encourages further looting, and those who believe that the looting has already happened and the object needs to be ‘saved’. A compromise is the so-called ‘1970 Rule’, advocated by the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and Britain’s Museums Association (MA), whereby objects that are documented to have been out of their country of origin since 1970, the date of the UNESCO Convention, are acceptable for acquisition. People who live in the vicinity of archaeological sites are sometimes the people who loot them, and other times they are indifferent or acquiescent. This fact has made it clear that the ethical responsibilities of archaeologists go beyond simply refraining from activities that will sustain the market, and that archaeological research must have a public as well as an academic aspect. Where possible, archaeologists, particularly those who work in foreign countries, should endeavor to work with the consent of the local and/or indigenous public, to recognize the public claim on archaeological heritage and to respect local sensitivities. It is also the responsibility of

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archaeologists to ensure that their methods and aims are more widely understood, to employ and to train local people, and to publicize their results through popular as well as academic media. Sites (where appropriate) should be prepared for public presentation so that they can be incorporated into educational curricula and tourist itineraries. Many of these activities have a potential economic outcome, which can be crucial in poorer areas and should not be overlooked or neglected as being irrelevant to research. When local communities are accepted as stakeholders in the archaeological process, they are more likely to take a proprietorial interest in their local archaeology. See also: Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation; Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Historic Preservation Laws; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act; Politics of Archaeology; Pseudoarchaeology and Frauds; Who Owns the Past?; World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

Further Reading Atwood R (2004) Stealing History. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Brodie N, Doole J, and Renfrew C (eds.) (2001) Trade in Illicit Antiquities: The Destruction of the World’s Archaeological Heritage. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Brodie N and Tubb KW (eds.) (2002) Illicit Antiquities. The Theft of Culture and the Extinction of Archaeology. London: Routledge. Gill DWJ and Chippindale C (1993) Material and intellectual consequences of esteem for Cycladic figures. American Journal of Archaeology 97: 601–659. Meyer K (1973) The Plundered Past. New York: Athenaeum. Muscarella OW (2000) The Lie Became Great. The Forgery of Near Eastern Cultures. Groningen: Styx. O’Keefe PJ (1997) Trade in Antiquities. Reducing Destruction and Theft. London and Paris: Archetype and UNESCO. Renfrew C (2000) Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership. London: Duckworth. Tubb KW (ed.) (1995) Antiquities Trade or Betrayed: Legal, Ethical and Conservation Issues. London: Archetype/UKIC. Watson P and Todeschini C (2006) The Medici Conspiracy. The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities. New York: Public Affairs.

IMAGE AND SYMBOL Saburo Sugiyama, Aichi Prefectural University, Aichi, Japan; Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary materialization Action to make materials (landscape, building, objects, tools, etc.) based on a concept, image, plan, religion, scientific thoughts, or any kind of ideological reflection. nahualism Mesoamerican belief that a person is believed to be linked with a particular animal sharing same attributes and often can transform into that animal or metaphorically represent it in social life, particularly for rituals. teotihuacan Ancient planned city flourished during the first to sixth century in Mexican Highlands. It was one of the most populous pre-Columbian cities in the New World, with an estimated population of 100 000 to 150 000 inhabited in an urban area of 20 km2.

Image and symbol can be found widely in the archaeological record, and have been dealt with a variety of ways in material culture studies. As humans, we are fundamentally cultural beings who have long used images and symbols to communicate with other members of our society and beyond, beginning in the Paleolithic period. One may say that virtually all

artifacts can be explored as ‘images’ or ‘symbols’, or as the product or by-product of symbolic behavior to a certain degree. During the last two decades, new theoretical movements influenced by post-modernism and focusing more on ideology and individual actions have impacted many social sciences, including archaeology. As a consequence, image and symbol have become key themes in more fully and contextually understanding ancient societies. Particularly in postprocessual, behavioral, symbolic, or cognitive archaeology, images and symbols are discussed in terms of possessing meanings and functions beyond what they visually represent. This article begins with the definition of related words and concepts, presents certain theories associated with the study of images and symbols, then discusses some of their specific aspects, first by material, then by stylistic features. Throughout this article, image and symbol are discussed as units possessing two parts: a signifier (an image or symbol recorded in some material) and a signified (a meaning/concept to which the image or symbol refers). In archaeological contexts, the meaning (signified) of a signifier or set of signifiers is not often clear; frequently they depend on arbitrary local sets or conditions of other materials, and are historically specific. It is therefore proposed that the meanings

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signified need to be explored contextually or relationally with others, to understand the image and symbol (signifier) appropriately and comprehensively.

Definitions and Theories The terms and concepts related to image and symbol vary widely, they largely overlap and their usages differ significantly among archaeologists. These are defined as follows (Figure 1). All the terms we use here for images or symbols can be included in a general category ‘sign’, something that refers to the existence of a material, fact, condition, or quality. Signs can be grouped into three categories based on the type of relation between signifier and signified. ‘Representational image’ (representation, icon, portrait, or picture) is a reproduction or duplicate, outline, or silhouette of the form of a thing or person. A drawing of one thing (signifier) refers to what the form of the drawing indicates (signified), like a drawing of a dog referring to a real dog. ‘Indexical image’ is referring to, or indicating, another thing, person, or concept, by its nature or attributes, like a drawing of smoke from a house (signifier) and fire (signified), or thunder (signifier) and rain that the thunder predicts (signified). No matter what ethnic group or language is involved, anyone can universally identify or intuit the message signified by a representational or indexical image. ‘Symbol’, or emblem, is a sign that stands for an idea or an object by association, resemblance, or convention. The relationship

Representational (or Icon) Sign

Indexical

Symbol

between a signifier and thing signified is largely arbitrary, like white flag for ‘surrender’ or a dove standing for ‘peace’. Abstract or geometric designs may also be included in this category. Fundamentally, culture determines their relationships; therefore to understand the meaning (signified) of the symbol, one must know its arbitrary convention, which may have been shared only among certain cultural, ethnic, or linguistic groups. One of the best examples would be the letters of the alphabet, which are symbols for sounds, and combinations of letters forming words that represent ideas and objects. Thus, sentences we write or speak can convey more complicated descriptions of things or ideas (ideology, religion, worldview, sciences, etc.), which only people who are familiar with the language and/or writing system can understand. The above examples demonstrate how we express our ideas or interpretations of the world we conceive, and communicate with others about them fundamentally through images and symbolic notational systems. Although signs are comprised of these three basic categories, their boundaries are often unclear, overlapping or continuous, and complex. It is difficult to precisely understand the meaning (signified) without contextual and/or conventional information. For example, in Mesoamerica a representation of cacao fruit may have signified a food, chocolate beverage, or currency for commercial exchange. An image of a dove can merely mean a flying object, a food source, a message carrier, or a symbol of peace (Figure 2). How

Image------------

Image-----------------

(or Emblem)--------------

a dog image standing for a real ‘dog’

smoke from a house standing for ‘fire’

white flag standing for ‘surrender’

an ideographic letter standing for ‘person’, also phonetic sign -ren- in Chinese and -hito- in Japanese. Figure 1 Categories of ‘signs’.

Figure 2 Meanings of images vary by context, as in these images of doves.

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Figure 3 Mural depicting a deer and coyotes, Teotihuacan, Mexico.

can we determine what kind of meanings a drawing of cacao fruit or a dove convey? An understanding of the particular cultural tradition, associated materials, and/or specific cultural contexts in time and space are critical – for example, whether a dove image was found in a restaurant, in a post office, or in a United Nations building. An image of a mural painting depicting a deer and two coyotes, from the ancient city of Teotihuacan, Mexico, can be interpreted as being a simple representational image of two coyotes attacking one deer, or an indexical image referring to ‘hunting’ or ‘the law of the jungle’, or a symbol of ‘human sacrifice’. (Figure 3) Because of the long tradition of human sacrifice in Mesoamerica and excavation data obtained at the site, we now believe that the mural most likely functioned as a metaphoric expression of human sacrifice by extraction of the heart. However, one who is not familiar with Teotihuacan culture and archaeology may be more inclined toward the first interpretations. Even complete, naturalistic images like this Teotihuacan mural do not necessarily refer simply to what the figures represent. Symbolic expression is often neither complete nor comprehensive, but may include key elements that were sufficient for the members of a designated community to recognize their specific meanings. Therefore, we as outsiders should consider meanings in the regional context that particular images and symbols conveyed. Most importantly, the understanding of meanings is essential to further explore the sociopolitical conditions/ functions and historical particularities in which the image was created, such as who addressed the messages to whom, with what kind of ideological, sociopolitical, or economic objectives, and so on. As a social science, archaeology must explore such social functions underlying images and symbols.

Symbolism

Theories of symbolic or practice anthropology provide useful tools for realizing broader archaeological approaches to ancient imagery and symbolism. Since the 1980s there has been a growing interest in individual action, experience, ethos, emotion, and decision-making processes. A central focus of these individual action-based approaches is the dynamic inter-relationship between agent and ecology, structure, or system. Symbolic behaviors such as rituals are considered by symbolic anthropologists as one of the primary matrices for the reproduction of consciousness. For Clifford Geertz, a culture comprises a web of meanings which a society creates, reproduces, or transforms. Geertz deals with symbols as vehicles to carry these meanings, which are arbitrarily set and shared by community members. As outsiders, therefore, we are required to contextually ‘read’ these meanings through symbols in order to perceive their value systems, such as religion, worldview, ethics, and other ideological dimensions of a particular culture. We must strive to approach these underlying symbolic systems from a native’s point of view, if possible, by participating in their events, rituals, or daily life. Victor Turner suggests that these symbols function as mechanisms of social formation and transformation. He stresses the power of symbols which operate to unify community members and to change social institutions. According to these perspectives, symbols constructing webs of meanings are virtually everywhere in material culture, going beyond images or symbols that are readily recognizable. Not only does this apply to objects found in living spaces, such as ritual items or temple constructions, but also to open spaces, natural surroundings and phenomena, or to

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people’s actions, including ceremonial events or mortuary practices as sacred symbols. Food resources, household tools, and forms of economic transactions that have been discussed more in economic or technological terms, could also have conveyed symbolic meanings. Although we tend to define ‘image and symbol’ as what we now call linear or painted reproduction, sculpture, or craft products, ancient people may have conceived natural and artificial objects of much broader categories meaningfully and symbolically, and reproduced them as image, index, or symbol. We will return to this topic later in discussing more specific examples. In Marxist frameworks, symbols can be understood as functional in the sense that they represent dominant groups or conflicting power relations among social units. Symbols may have become social strategies or tools to support power over others. Thus, material symbols and their implied meanings do not just passively exist, but are actively involved in social formation and transformation processes through daily life and ritual actions practiced at different levels of the social hierarchy. In archaeology, these social functions may be better referred to by interpreting monumental constructions, images of rulers, or prestige objects as power symbols that would have required the control of raw materials, production and reproduction systems, or long-distance exchange routes. Accordingly, we would expect to encounter such relations and their symbolic correlates particularly in stratified societies.

Materials for Image and Symbol If we define image and symbol as signifiers or vehicles of meanings integrated in cultural contexts, we can interpret them using many different kinds of materials. From their form, size, material type, color, production techniques, and stylistic attributes, we can observe the developing human capacity to conceive the world and to interact with the surrounding environment. In fact, searching for the origins of meaning is one of the fundamental inquiries of world archaeology. It is directly related to defining the moment or process through which we became human. Questions of defining meaning can also be discussed in terms of the origins of cognition, consciousness, intelligence, perception, and language. Research by primatologists indicates that nonhuman primates demonstrate a variety of cognitive capabilities to certain degrees; however, their systems of perceived meanings and symbolic manifestations are apparently quite different from ours. Early examples of image and symbol can provide key information regarding how our ancestors began to construct and share

meanings, although the data are scanty and often useful only as indirect references (see Cognitive Archaeology). A large amount of pictorial information is available from later developed societies around the world. Different kinds of materials and forms used to create images and symbols are listed below, with a brief discussion of certain instances. These examples are not exhaustive, and do not include functional objects such as tools or weapons that also had particular functions as image or symbol. The purpose is to highlight various perspectives on what we customarily call image and symbol in the archaeological record. Sacred Geography and Site Formation

Images and symbols are not found only with ancient buildings or the objects discussed below; rather, some features of the natural environment may have also served as integral elements to forms, concepts, or visions symbolized in certain other materials. A particular mountain, cave, rock, river, lake, celestial object, or other natural feature would have been interpreted meaningfully by ancient peoples – for example, as a place of origin, a sacred spot connecting people to the upper- or under-world, a source of divine power, etc. The symbolism involved in features of the landscape can be archaeologically suggested by constructions or objects dedicated to them, and their spatial arrangement with artificial features like monuments, ritual spaces, petroglyphs, or dedicatory burials. Intended associations can be archaeologically illustrated in maps or through Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates in which specific alignments or significant distances may be recorded. Certain celestial phenomena seem to have been observed with special attention by many ancient societies. In Mesoamerica, the cycles and directions of the Sun, Moon, Venus, Pleiades, and solar/lunar eclipses were particularly integrated in monumental construction plans, the contents of rituals or mortuary practices, and in hieroglyphic writing. Ancient Mesoamerican understandings of such phenomena were not the same as those we conceive of today, based on Western astronomy. They often comprised central elements of Mesoamerican cosmology or cosmogony that were believed to have structured time and space of the present world, and the rising or setting spot of celestial objects on the horizon often coincided with the direction of particular constructions on special days. Archaeoastronomy has revealed that many other ancient societies also recorded the rising and/or setting of certain celestial objects, particularly during the equinoxes or solstices, the days in which the Sun passes the zenith, and the days of solar/lunar eclipses. The materialization of ancient

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Figure 4 Central N-S axis of Teotihuacan, Mexico.

worldviews, combined with features of the landscape and celestial phenomena, were integrated in the material culture and the spatial layouts of Egyptian monuments, Chinese cities, European megaliths, and Andean sacred centers as well. The central N–S axis of the highly planned city of Teotihuacan (Figure 4) was exactly aligned with its main street, the Avenue of the Dead, the central axis of the Moon Pyramid, and the summit of the sacred mountain located behind it. The huge ceremonial center was evidently designed for pilgrims to conceive the Avenue as an axis mundi, or the most sacred earthly passage from the center of the heavens to the underworld, through the sacred mountain, the pyramid, and the central avenue connecting to the lowest part of the valley, where the Citadel complex was constructed apparently to represent the entrance to the watery underworld. In contrast, the E–W axis of the city was clearly related directly with celestial movements or calendrical cycles. The main E–W axis was oriented exactly to the setting position of the Pleiades on the western horizon on the day when the Sun passed the zenith. The whole city harmoniously integrated its natural surroundings and celestial phenomena, and was a highly symbolic expression of a specific cosmology and conception of time and space. Abundant images and symbols in the pyramids, monumental sculptures, murals, ceremonial objects, as well as symbolic actions like human sacrificial rituals, complemented this worldview at Teotihuacan by giving it a material form, beginning with the foundation of the city. Monuments, Public Space, and Other Constructive Markers

Ancient monumental constructions around the world expressed specific symbolic meanings; particularly, pyramids, ceremonial architecture, plazas, colossal

Figure 5 Image from the Nasca lines.

sculptures, and other public buildings seem to have represented ideological dimensions often with sociopolitical implications, particularly in the cases of pre-industrial urban centers. The location, form, size, orientation, architectural style, and ornamentation of a public building may contain particular symbolic meanings defined by local tradition and/or references to historical events entailing political messages. Some of the architectural features in ceremonial centers, or stone alignments such as the Nazca Lines (Figure 5), have been interpreted as religious, cosmological, or astronomical/calendrical symbols. It has been proposed that they were constructed to proclaim the sacred political power of rulership to their community members and beyond. Recent studies indicate that the fac¸ades of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid at Teotihuacan commemorated in sculpture a mythical cosmological event (Figure 6): the initiation of time and space set in motion by this serpent-like divine creature. Another sculptural representation, in the form of a headdress, symbolized the maximum authority of a time bearer.

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Figure 6 Feathered serpent pyramid, Theotihuacan, Mexico.

In its broader sociopolitical context the monument proclaimed the idea of divine rulership, reinforced by recently discovered mass-sacrificial burials and symbolic offerings associated with the militarism. A Teotihuacan ruler, who administered the present world on behalf of the gods, could well have sponsored the erection of the monument, with the facade’s pictographic presentation on such a large scale, in order to convince the public of the divinity of political power as well as the significance of warfare for the continued prosperity of the city. Petroglyphs, Sculpture, Mural Art, Codices, and Portable Art

Most of the images and symbols depicted in the archaeological record belong to these highly variable categories of materials. They include rock art, sculptures, murals (Figure 3), engravings on constructions, drawings on ceramics, lithics, bones, woods, textiles, codices (Figure 7), etc. The great abundance of objects carrying images or symbols exhibit a wide variety of material forms, styles, sizes, techniques, colors, and so on. There exists substantial flexibility in expressing people, objects, phenomena, and complicated ideas. Certain features are discussed in the following section dealing with Ancient Art Styles (see Rock Art). Ritual Objects and Mortuary Remains

Rituals are central social institutions that structure the actions of practitioners. Symbolic objects used for ritual performance can be considered as vehicles of religious meanings that a society arbitrarily and conventionally produced to unify the members of their community. For example, during the early Bronze age in China, particularly the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the order of the heavens was believed to have been transmitted to ruling groups through ceremonies that the state governments orchestrated. The bronze vessels used for the ceremonies symbolized heavenly order and

Figure 7 Example of Codex drawing.

public morality that defined the quality of governance. The varied images and symbols covering the surfaces of these vessels included ancestral deities, regionally specific creatures and animals, ritual meanings, and the daily life of diverse members of society; they were symbols that proclaimed divine rulership, and territorial dominance over a subjugated public. Among ritual objects, mortuary items are overwhelmingly symbolic, and reflect the society’s belief system concerning life after death. These symbolic actions may have been communicated more esoterically than was the case in public ritual, among limited community members who shared more restricted understandings of the associated symbolism. In the case of dedication or sacrificial burial, the relation between the dead and the offerings found in association with them may not have been direct. Living community members who were responsible for the preparation of the grave would have expressed their religious ideology with political proclamations made through its symbolic offerings. (Figure 8) At the Moon Pyramid in Teotihuacan, nine obsidian figurines in the form of the Feathered Serpent, the symbol of maximum political authority, were buried in an important dedication burial of the pyramid, to proclaim the institution of divine rulership. This creature was the sacred symbol of governance most frequently associated with monumental constructions in Teotihuacan. The unique form of the deity was consistently identifiable among the pictorial records in murals, ceramics, sculptures, and other media. The uniqueness was also recognizable by unusually high

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Figure 9 Chinese character.

Figure 8 Feathered serpent obsidian figurine, Teotihuacan, Mexico.

quality of these masterpieces of chipped stone, as well as by the special location of the deposit, which only ruling groups could have controlled. Language and Writing Systems

Language may well have been fully developed by the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic period. Without a doubt, it is the most powerful system of communication, and the most flexible symbolic complex ever created by humans. However, the creation and initial formation processes cannot be reconstructed directly since no material remains referring to the earliest usages of language can be recovered in archaeological contexts. Another breakthrough for the wider dissemination of linguistic systems took place when writing systems were invented in association with particular languages. The earliest, or ‘pristine’, writing systems developed in Mesopotamia-Egypt, China (Figure 9), and Mesoamerica (Figure 10), independently from one another. They were later introduced and developed in other cultural/linguistic environments, transforming letter form, sentence structure, pronunciation, and meanings. The complicated messages encoded with a vocabulary and grammatical system were printed in diverse materials, like stone, wood, or paper, for contemporaneous and future readers beyond the societal boundaries, as written materials were often carried far from their places of origin. It is noteworthy that early writing systems were apparently created and developed along with the emergence of complex society, and that their practices were evidently controlled by ruling entities in those societies. In other societies, certain kinds of information were recorded systematically in other materials like the kipu system used by the Inca Empire of the prehispanic Andes (Figure 11). Apparently, the Andean kipu did not develop to represent language; however, as was the case with writing systems in other ancient societies, the kipu were also used

Figure 10 Maya glyph.

Figure 11 Andean kipu, a knotted record-keeping device.

by ruling entities to convey ideological and political legitimatization, and to control people and tribute.

Ancient Art Styles Ancient art styles are fundamentally different from those of Western traditions in terms of spatial arrangements, object forms, perspective, production techniques, and motivations. For example, realistic and

IMAGE AND SYMBOL 1503

perspective painting familiar in our modern art are rather unusual in the human history of image and symbol. Before impressionism or cubism arose, the classic Western tradition of images or portraits can be characterized as faithful reproductions that tended to convert three-dimensional existing people, objects, or phenomena perceptively into two dimensions on canvas, without significant distortion. The best instance of this ‘realism’ in modern art may be photography, an exact copy in form, size proportion, moment, light contrast, and color. What we call ancient, ethnic, or ‘primitive’ arts were produced with non-Western sensibilities to explicitly stylize or symbolize meanings (the signified) using diversified materials and techniques. These traditions exhibit great

cultural diversity in time and space, including different religions, worldviews, ethics, ethos, feelings, and intuitions. At the same time, we can observe certain features or artistic trends commonly shared among pre-industrial societies. In this brief description, some features differing from Western ones are stressed. Finally, the utility of the drawings of children, who have not been completely socialized into Western aesthetics, will be highlighted as a means of better understanding ancient images and symbols. Spatial Arrangement

Spatial patterns in ancient arts varied greatly. Whole spaces may be arranged using certain conventions

Figure 12 Inlay drawing, royal tomb of Ur dynasty, Mesopotamia, exhibiting linear arrangement of people.

Figure 13 Codex Feje´rva´ry Mayer, Mesoamerica.

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reflecting particular cultural traditions, social units, or material choices. In certain cultural traditions, objects or people may be depicted linearly, often facing to one direction (Figure 12). They may relate to one, two, or more cultural narratives, representing vertical divisions of a certain kind in the social hierarchy. In other cases, objects are drawn surrounding a central object with four different horizons integrated or scattered apparently without spatial structure (Figure 13). Some of the objects are depicted on their side or upside down on the same scene, like the deer representations in Figure 14, apparently without a consistent conception of horizontality. However, they may not have been illustrated as upside down, rather the convention may relate to a flexible perception of two-dimensional space, for which the canvas was conceived of three-dimensionally – being in Western terms, a combination of frontal view with profile and plan, as in cubism. The man standing on the right of Figure 14 also has two aspects; frontal and side views stylistically speaking. Thus, no perspective view was necessary for the ancient artist

to efficiently express a scene of hunting. Figure 13 exhibits a unique technique of what we call unfolding or rollout of a calendrical sequence, in which Mesoamerican spatial and temporal divisions of the world were ordinarily expressed with cardinal directionality, and their associated attributes such as deities or birds. All these elements were integrated in a single image. Here we can see again the fused conception of multi-horizontality, three-dimensionality, and historicity or time passage in a plan; it may remind one of what the cubists attempted in the early twentieth century. It also seems that in many ancient arts, each object was often drawn completely and rarely overlapped with other objects, as they may have been conceived of as independent. Explicit depictions of personified or deified images of natural beings are also commonly found in ancient art objects, including scenes of transformation or nahualism. As seen in Figure 13, some celestial objects like the Sun and the Moon are also depicted as personified or spiritualized beings in preindustrialized complex societies. Space management of ancient art objects is thus much more flexible, inconsistent, or ‘unreasonable’ than we may imagine from an internationally standardized Western sensibility, drawing on scientific understandings of how the natural world operates. Size and Proportion

Figure 14 Mold-made bronze ceremonial bell, Yayoi period, Japan, from Makoto Sahara.

The size of each person or object depicted on the same canvas or in an ancient art work differs greatly, not necessarily reflecting real proportions. The same adults in Figure 15 were portrayed in different sizes, although the drawing did not use perspective to show depth. This demonstrates a tendency of ancient drawing, in which important persons or objects were represented larger and centrally compared to modern drawings. Obviously, different sizes can reflect the degree of concern or importance of the persons or

Figure 15 A mural in a Korean tomb dated to the fourth century AD.

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objects depicted. Ceramics modeled with adornment on the surface of a Jomon pot from Japan (Figure 16) shows a bow and arrow pointing to a four-legged animal or a person. The importance of the bow and arrow may have made the animal/human representation much smaller than the actual size, as is suggested by Makoto Sahara. Multiple Viewpoints and Stylistic Attributes

In many cases, ancient two-dimensional drawings can be described as possessing multiple viewpoints rather than consistent single-view scenes. Some figures are drawn in frontal view, others from the side or above, as was discussed with Figures 13 and 14. It is also apparent that viewpoints vary depending on the objects being represented. In Figure 17 two people are standing in front, while a person on the extreme left side and four deer were drawn in profile, while four-legged animals on the right side and a dragonfly were represented as seen from the top within the same scene, which was engraved on a bronze bell from the Yayoi period, Japan. The pre-historic artist may simply have chosen a viewpoint which could demonstrate more comprehensively the object. The form, position, orientation, proportion, order, and other

Figure 16 Jomon pottery vessel, Japan.

Figure 17 Engraving on a bronze bell, Yayoi eriod, Japan.

stylistic attributes of the depicted objects may also depend on what the artist intended to express, no matter how inconsistent the viewpoint, form, size, proportion, direction, and other attributes were. In Figure 18 a Storm God on a Teotihuacan mural is depicted only with his head, two arms, elaborate headdress, and other ornamentation attached to the upper body in the central area of the mural. Below this, two legs are depicted; however, a torso is clearly missing if we consider this deity as a full-bodied representation. Maybe, the body was not important in comparison to the head with his identifiable symbolic complex, or this instance may have comprised a unique cultural convention at Teotihuacan. Historicity in Space

Image complexes are often used to describe the history of a society or narrative of an individual or god. Particular crucial moments or events may be represented together as a processual sequence on the same scene or sheet to represent the society’s central value systems like religion, myth, legend, royal history, worldview, ethos, and other ideological factors. The same trends can be observed in an individual account composed of a series of depictions about the birth of a divine entity, the Crucifixion or the Resurrection of Christ, the moment of spiritual enlightenment, or Nirvana in Buddhism. A long migration history of the Aztec tribes beginning from the legendary island of Aztlan and ending with the foundation account of the capital was

Figure 18 Teotihuacan mural depicting Storm God.

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Figure 19 Migration scene from the Codex Boturini, Mexico.

illustrated as a historical document, combined with a map-like rollout, together recorded on a long sheet (Figure 19). In this Codex Boturini, the act of rowing the boat symbolizing the departure, footprints signifying journey, and other subsequent incidents in the narrative evidently refer to a nomadic life and its progression over time. The sheet serves as a descriptive device of legend, history, chronology, and map simultaneously, successfully registering both temporal and spatial information. Consequently, the drawing illustrates an ‘inconsistent’ (from a Western perspective) sense of horizon, directionality, formality, proportionality, and other features described above.

R

Z

S

Figure 20 Differences in drawing related to handedness.

Right or Left Handedness

In primitive hand drawings or paintings from ancient societies, it is possible to infer whether the author was right- or left-handed. (Figure 20) A right-hander tends to draw sloping lines from the top-right down to the bottom-left. Scrolls are drawn in the direction of the letter ‘S’; animals are drawn preferentially with their head on the left side facing toward the left. On the contrary, a left-hander tends to draw sloping lines from the top-left down to the bottom-right; scrolls appear in a ‘Z’ direction; and animal heads are drawn facing to the right consistently unless the directionality was determined by other factors. This general trend is often useful to conceive the authorship of ancient art works, and to compare them with others from associated groups or individuals. Comparison with Child Drawings

Analysis of the drawings of children may be useful to better understand certain features of ancient art works since they both expose explicitly the intention of the drawings without the restrictions of Western conventions, such as a sense of realism or perspective views, as originally suggested by S. Makoto and others. All drawings presented here (Figures 21–23)

L

Figure 21 Child drawing: lacking torso.

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Figure 22 Child drawing: varied sizes of objects.

were drawn by Thai children from Pai village of 4–6 years. A man in Figure 21 shows a disproportional face, arms and legs, and lacks a torso completely. The face was fairly realistically illustrated, and we may therefore think that he (or she) was a central figure for the child. This reminds us of the representation of Storm God from the Teotihuacan mural, which also lacks a torso (Figure 18). The varied size of independently drawn objects can be observed in Figure 22 where a chicken, a dog, a house, and a rabbit were disproportionately drawn; all facing toward the left (therefore, the author may be righthanded). The rabbit might have had special significance in this scene. Aligned dots near the entrance to the house may signify footprints, suggesting movement. Therefore, it can be argued that a certain span of time may have been involved conceptually. In Figure 23, unrealistic size proportions can again be observed among the rabbit, fish, house, tree, and flower. The fact that animals are facing to the left and that the scrolls appear in an ‘S’ direction, also suggest right-handedness. In this child’s drawing, the personification of the Sun can be seen by a human face illustrated inside of the solar disk. Developing childhood cognitive systems, flexibility, and intuitive space management may be parallel to human’s evolving cognition capacity recorded archaeologically in hominid material culture, and their lack of full immersion into Western aesthetics may be parallel to nonWestern art observed in the archaeological record. Image and symbol systems, including language, were created during an early stage of human evolutionary history. They became one of the most important and powerful tools to conceive of the outside world, and to express and communicate comprehensively and flexibly with the community’s members regarding worldview, religious thought, legends, histories, or other kinds of value systems and fundamental ideological and social matters. In general terms, it can be said that the relations between the signifier (image and symbol) and signified (intended meanings and implied functions) may have developed as social organizations and cultural traditions became more complex, larger, or longer lived.

Figure 23 Child drawing: unrealistic size proportions.

Particularly, writing systems clearly became a powerful tool for ideological and social transactions in pre-industrial complex societies. Abundant pictographic information, therefore, can provide us references for the study of the human capacity for communication, developing cognitive systems, intelligence, and its inter-relation with social organization. It should be stressed that to better understand ancient images and symbols the motivation or intended meaning (signified) must be seen as a primary factor determining the object, shape, space distribution, size, proportion, viewpoint, color, or other features of it signifier. The art styles of ancient images and symbols look quite different from those

1508 INDIVIDUAL, ARCHAEOLOGY OF IN PREHISTORY

we currently conceive of in the Western tradition. However, the drawings of modern children seem to be comparable to ancient ones to a certain degree in some of their aspects. In archaeology, it is possible to partially reconstruct the cultural contexts in which image and symbol were created, and the relation between the signifier and signified should be evaluated, sometimes freely from our embedded Westerners art standards and ‘common senses,’ for a better understanding of culture and social histories in comparative contexts. See also: Archaeoastronomy; Cognitive Archaeology; Identity and Power; Landscape Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Rock Art; Writing Systems.

Indigenous Archaeology

Further Reading Renfrew C and Scarre C (eds.) (1998) Cognition and Material Culture: the Archaeology of Symbolic Storage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Miller D and Tilley C (eds.) (1984) Ideology, Power and Prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Geertz C (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Hodder I and Hutson S (2003) Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hodder I, Shanks M, Alexandri A, et al. (1995) Interpreting Archaeology: Finding Meaning in the Past. New York: Routledge. Sugiyama S (2005) Human Sacrifice, Warfare, and Rulership at Teotihuacan: Materialization of Ideology at the Feathered Serpent Pyramid. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sahara M (2005) Archaeology of Fine Art. Tokyo: Iwanami-shoten. (in Japanese).

See: Native Peoples and Archaeology.

Indigenous Rights and Archaeology

See: Who Owns the Past?.

INDIVIDUAL, ARCHAEOLOGY OF IN PREHISTORY Carolyn L White, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary behavioral ecology The study of the ecological and evolutionary basis for human behavior and the relationship between human adaptation and the environment. causality The relationship between cause and effect. In an archaeological sense, the relationship between the material data and the actions that produced those data. chaıˆne ope´ratoire An approach to studying the production of lithic material through a reconstruction of raw material procurement, reduction technology, use, and discard. identity A set of practices, ideas, meanings, or ideologies held by a particular group of people. multivocality The use or incorporation of many voices or perspectives and an understanding of the multiple interpretations possible for a given scenario.

narrative A particular story or communicated account that positions people within a historical context. neolithic A period beginning approximately 12 000 years ago marked by the domestication of animals, the development of agriculture, and the manufacture of pottery and textiles. New Archaeology A reorientation of archaeology that began in the 1960s, which adheres to an explicitly scientific, problemoriented, deductive approach to research. paradigm A working set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality. self-reflexivity An awareness of the role of the author (i.e., the archaeologist or anthropologist) in the creation of the data and interpretation of a particular site, culture, or research problem. structuralism A theoretical perspective that maintains that there are unobservable social structures (i.e., regular patterns or sets of practices) that people hold within a given society and those structures generate observable social phenomena that can illuminate those structures. social stratification The presence of a hierarchical arrangement of social strata within a society where various strata have unequal access to resources.

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Introduction Archaeologists by necessity move between the general and specific in excavating individual sites and relating those sites to broader interpretations and generalizing observations of the past over vast spaces and time periods. The archaeological record consists of materials made, used, lost, broken, and abandoned by individuals, and the role of the individual as a component of causality is widely recognized as a key factor in the creation of archaeological sites. The individual scale has been taken up by some, but larger scales of analysis are often preferred by archaeologists on account of many difficulties and restrictions that exist on the individual scale. Preservation conditions are often incompatible with the individual scale, making differentiation between occupation episodes elusive and the fine-grained analysis that the individual scale demands evasive. In a different sense, the individual scale has been rejected by other archaeologists who prefer to strive for broader, more general (and more widely applicable) interpretations about the past. Archaeological interest in identity, narrative, selfreflexivity, multivocality, and individualism is paralleled by social anthropology’s increasing distrust of ideas of peoples, institutions, communities, and classes as coherent entities, and marked by a return to life histories as an ethnographic endeavor. Interest in the individual level of scale, and in the role of particular individuals in the archaeological record, is hardly a recent trend; however, as interest in exposing the role of the individual has propelled a variety of lines of research, beginning with the New Archaeology. Recently, concern with gender, age, ethnicity, status, religion, and other aspects of identity – and the broader contributions of these features – has catalyzed research in the individual scale of analysis and in the recognition of difference in the archaeological record.

Approaches to the Individual Approaches to understanding the individual in prehistory vary according to time and place and theoretical perspective. Structuralist approaches employ the individual to access the collective. Evolutionary approaches view the individual, rather than the group, as the primary locus of selections. In considering the individual, the relationship between individual people and aggregate data is critical and the role that grouping people together has in understanding the past affects the models that are developed. Many have examined the collective experience, but the individual scale is critical to the construction of the collective. In the prehistoric past, archaeologists rely on various traceable aspects of human behavior. Choice

of raw materials, functional differentiations, formal characteristics of tools, production techniques and intentional behavior, and food acquisition serve as focuses of archaeological research. The very question of whether the archaeological record can reveal individual events, and by extension, individual lives, deeply affects the extent to which the individual has been taken up within various subfields. Is the archaeological record too coarse grained to record individual events? Some characterize the prehistoric archaeological record as snapshots of various points through time. The various timescales that are addressed across regions, continents, and millions of years provide an uneven record, at best. Some timescales permit ready accessibility to the individual scale of analysis, whereas others are judged to better serve a more aggregate perspective. In general, archaeological research is conducted within research structures established by the paths developed by previous scholars, defined by sets of research questions that have been pursued for years. Within these established research paradigms, it has proven challenging for some scholars to address the concept of the individual, on account of the way that those structures are configured. Recent work in the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic has made those structures and strictures plain, and has attempted to focus on individual lives in order to throw both the biased expectations and individual lives into relief. One of the many ways that archaeologists have addressed the individual in the archaeological record is to attempt to connect large-scale research questions with the idea of individual choice. In prehistoric North America, a behavioral ecological approach to prehistoric mobile groups guides a substantial pool of research. Within the context of behavioral ecology, there has been a tendency to focus on the behavior of the group; nonetheless, there is general acknowledgement that individual variation affects the ways that ideas are transmitted. The role of inter- and intragroup variability is widely acknowledged to be critical in influencing culture, though some archaeologists have found the condition of the archaeological record an insurmountable obstacle to accessing this level of analysis. Yet, researchers engaged in examining the shift to foraging practices acknowledge the role of individual decisions in the arrival at significant cultural shifts.

Methods There have been a variety of approaches to the study of individuals that reflect the shifting conceptualization of the idea and relevance of the individual and the examination of the archaeological record at this scale. Refitting studies, material culture analyses,

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burial data, interest in the body, and the examination of specific individuals are but a few realms within which the individual has been placed at center stage. One area of the individual scale that has been used with success has been that of refitting studies, and the use of such data to reach the individual scale of analysis. This examination of high-resolution data shows individual actions through time by taking objects that individuals shaped in the course of the construction/ manipulation of a single object. The examination of knapping scatters, the use of chaıˆne ope´ratoire to study the processes by which individual people made tools in single episodes, and an investigation of site formation processes using this data have created fine-grained, detailed information about the individual actions of single persons. These studies have led some scholars to examine individual sites in detailed ways in order to gain access into ‘particular’ high-resolution events. Scholars have examined the preferences and rules that guide the selection and discard of particular sorts of raw materials. Part of this effort seeks to assess and differentiate between the practices determined by individual preferences and which practices conform to embedded rules. This research attempts to see individuals as organizing agents at high-resolution sites. Along related lines, artifact studies have been a focus of interest for the examination of the individual in terms of artifact manufacture and stylistic variation (see Artifacts, Overview). North American archaeologists have attempted to explore the role of individual preference via the examination of artifacts, conducting statistical, mathematical, and qualitative analysis to understand variability in all manner of artifacts groups (lithics, ceramics, perishable materials, etc.). The impetus behind this research principally has been to separate change and variation created by individual preference from the broader cultural changes that are reflected in differences in artifact styles (see Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear; Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis; Stylistic; Vitreous Materials Analysis). Modes of burial, treatment at death, and the material goods interred with individual people provide information about social stratification, inequality, leadership, and many more aspects of life that relate to the status of individual people within their broader society (see Burials: Excavation and Recording Techniques). Archaeologists in southwestern and midwestern North America have examined these issues intensively. Burial data, both material culture and human remains, provide important information rank and placement of individuals within a broader community. Furthermore, human remains reveal

information about a very wide range of aspects of life in the past: disease, nutrition, work tasks, and gender, to name but a few. In this research, the results of individual bodies is brought together to reconstruct the more broadly drawn life of a community. Recent interest in the role of the body relates to aspects of social stratification and issues of identity. The materiality of the body, and the potentials and limitations applied to the body based on things like age, sex, race, and gender, have been fruitful avenues of research. Much of this work has been based on burial evidence, but scholars have also looked at personal adornment, the scale and movement of bodies through structures and landscapes, and more philosophical conceptualizations of what it means within to live in a body. In addition, the relationship between the body, the individual form, and the rendering of individual people in two and three dimensions is a recent line of interest. Finally, the identification of a Neolithic individual – ‘Otzi the Iceman’ – provides unparalleled information about Neolithic life. The extraordinary preservation of tools and other kinds of material culture, as well as the clothing and other objects worn on the body, and the information drawn from the body itself, provide information about this single person, but also provide unequalled information about the broader society from which this person came. See also: Artifacts, Overview; Burials: Excavation and

Recording Techniques; Engendered Archaeology; Ethnicity; Identity and Power; Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear; Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis; Stylistic; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Social Inequality, Development of.

Further Reading Gamble C and Porr M (eds.) (2005) The Hominid Individual in Context: Archaeological Investigations of Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Landscapes, Locales and Artifacts. London: Routledge. Hamiliakis Y, Pluciennik M, and Tarlow S (eds.) (2002) Thinking Through the Body: Archaeologies of Corporeality. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Hill JN and Gunn J (eds.) (1977) The Individual in Prehistory: Studies of Variability in Style in Prehistoric Technologies. New York: Academic Press. Kelly R (1995) The Foraging Spectrum: Diversity in HunterGatherer Lifeways. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Mithen S (1996) The Prehistory of the Mind: The Coginitive Origins or Art, Religion, and Science. London: Routledge. Pauketat TR and Loren DD (eds.) (2005) North American Archaeology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Strathern M (2004) The whole person and its artifacts. Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 1–19.

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INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY Marilyn Palmer, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary historical archaeology The archaeology of the period after c. AD 1450 in the Old World, and of the period after European contact in the New World, up to and including the present. industrial archaeology A multidisciplinary approach to the study, interpretation and in selected cases, preservation of the technological, economic, and social evidence for the period of industrialization from c. 1750 to the present day. post-medieval archaeology the archaeology of Europe, particularly the UK, between the end of the Middle Ages and the mid-eighteenth century (c. AD 1450–1750).

Introduction The archaeological study of the physical evidence of recent industrial activity has been one of the most important developments in archaeology, at least in Britain, in the second half of the twentieth century. Industrial archaeology has been transformed from a fringe activity in the 1950s to an internationally recognized element of the discipline of archaeology, demonstrated by the large number of cultural landscapes designated as World Heritage sites by UNESCO which have industrial activity at their heart (Figure 1). In this, however, lies the dichotomy of industrial archaeology – it is both an academic study of the ways in which people lived and worked in the past through the physical remains which survive into the present and at the same time a conservation movement to protect and interpret those remains (see World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws). Obviously, the two aspects come together: it is impossible to interpret industrial monuments unless they are understood through archaeological and historical study. But the popular and even the professional conception of industrial archaeology has tended to adopt its meaning as a movement to conserve the industrial past, which would be better termed ‘industrial heritage’, rather than its meaning as the study of the ways people worked in the past. This has hindered its acceptance at the academic level and it is only in the last two decades (1990s–2000s) that it has made considerable headway in this direction. Nevertheless, the emphasis on conservation and preservation of sites currently distinguishes industrial archaeology from both postmedieval and historical archaeology, and has led to a greater retention of volunteer interest, reflected in the contrasting nature of the membership of the two

major British societies concerned with the study of the recent past, the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology (SPMA) and the Association for Industrial Archaeology (AIA). The latter was set up in 1973 to represent the interests of industrial archaeology. It still attempts to hold a balance between the volunteers, who have dominated industrial archaeology in the past, and the professionals, who are playing an increasingly important role. However, volunteers still account for the majority of labor at working sites. In 1998, English Heritage undertook research to quantify volunteer effort in industrial heritage activity in the UK, and their report (Public Access to England’s Industrial Heritage) concluded that there was a total volunteer workforce of some 11 600 participating in the preservation and operation of industrial heritage sites in England, amounting to some £5.8 million pounds in value. The AIA publishes the premier British journal in the field, Industrial Archaeology Review. In the USA, too, a similar contrast exists between the membership and publications of the Society for Historical Archaeology and the Society for Industrial Archaeology, the latter being founded in 1971 and from 1975 publishing Industrial Archeology, edited by Patrick Martin of Michigan Technological University. In 1983, the journal World Archaeology devoted a volume to industrial archaeology (vol. 15. no. 2, 1983). In his overall survey of world industrial archaeology, the economic historian Walter Minchinton said that industrial archaeology had been one of the more successful British postwar exports but that he hoped that a similar survey in 10 years time would be able to report on a more extensive geographical activity, a widened topical scope and a greater professionalism in industrial archaeology throughout the world. More than 20 years on, this article takes up this challenge. It first considers the genesis and significance of these two meanings of industrial archaeology in a section on ‘Origins, definitions, and scope’. A second section considers the subject matter of the discipline, while a final section deals with the changes brought about by the dramatic development of contract archaeology in the 1990s and the need for research strategies to help eliminate the fragmentation created by such an approach.

Origins, Definitions, and Scope Industrial archaeology originated in Britain in the 1950s, after the postwar preoccupation with renewal had led to the destruction of much of the landscape

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Figure 1 The Iron Bridge across the Severn Gorge in Shropshire, the world’s first iron bridge, cast in Abraham Darby’s Coalbrookdale foundry in 1777 and erected in 1779. Now in the care of English Heritage, the bridge was originally saved by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust and is the centerpiece of an industrial landscape accorded World Heritage status.

associated with early industrialization. It is generally agreed that the term was first used in print by Michael Rix of the University of Birmingham Extra-mural Department in an article in The Amateur Historian, one of a sequence of articles dealing with various periods of archaeology. The banner was taken up in the UK by Kenneth Hudson in his Industrial Archaeology: an Introduction (John Baker, 1963), J. M. Pannell’s The Techniques of Industrial Archaeology (David and Charles, 1966), and Angus Buchanan in the Pelican Industrial Archaeology in Britain (1972). Industrial Archaeology and Historical Archaeology

In the 1950s, there was no systematic investigation of the physical remains of the recent industrial past in the UK, since the peculiarly British ‘postmedieval archaeology’ generally concerned itself with the period from c. 1450 to c. 1750. The term ‘historical archaeology’ was not generally used in the UK until comparatively recently, even when it became current in the USA and Australia from the 1970s. This is partly because the written history of Europe goes back into classical times and ‘historical archaeology’ could be used to refer to any period where texts and physical evidence can be used in conjunction, for example, as in the Greek and Roman periods. Industrial archaeology was therefore an appropriate term for the study of the classic period of industrialization from c. 1750 onwards. Some early practitioners of industrial archaeology, however, argued that the discipline was a thematic rather than a chronological one and could range from the prehistoric to the modern

period, notably Arthur Raistrick in his Industrial Archaeology: an Historical Survey (Eyre Methuen, 1972). It is now generally accepted that industrial archaeology is the systematic study of standing, as well as subsurface, structures of the classic period of industrialization from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. What characterizes this period is capital investment on a large scale in both buildings and machinery and the consequent organization of the labor force to maximize production. It is with this development that industrial archaeology is largely concerned, although it must be recognized firstly that ‘industrialization’, in this sense, began earlier in some industries than others and that therefore an interpretation of a particular site or industry may need to go back to the seventeenth century or earlier. Secondly, it is clear that the domestic or home-based method of production continued to coexist with factory production, albeit with many changes in the lifestyle of the workforce. The purpose of industrial archaeology, then, is to make use of a multidisciplinary approach, involving site and building survey, photography, stratigraphy, artifacts, landscapes, documentary research, and oral history to study, interpret, and, in some cases, preserve the physical evidence of the vast social and economic changes which have overtaken society in the past 250 years or so. It is generally concerned with the evidence for people at work and so defines a type of human activity rather than a type of site, since ‘work’, even after the so-called Industrial Revolution, could be based in domestic as well as nondomestic locations.

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In areas of the world with a shorter written history, historical archaeology was taken to embrace the study of industrial sites and artifacts. It was pointed out by Ian Jack and Judy Birmingham in Australian Pioneer Technology: Sites and Relics (1979) that the use of the term ‘industrial archaeology’ in Australia was inappropriate since the time span of British industrial archaeology embraced the whole of Australian history since European settlement. In the USA, many historical archaeologists also did not see the need for a different term for the study of industrial sites, since again the majority of their work was concerned with the colonial era and its implications. This point was put forward vehemently in a paper by Vincent Foley in an early (1968) issue of Historical Archaeology (see Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline). He argued that ‘‘the archaeologist must dig for his data. The ‘industrial archaeologist’ is performing archaeology when he excavates a site. He is not an archaeologist, however, if this excavation is only occasional or accidental to his normal method of procuring data.’’ Foley was strongly opposed by a fellow American, Robert Vogel (who went on to play a major role in American industrial archaeology), who argued in the subsequent issue of Historical Archaeology that it was equally important to record, understand, and interpret aboveground structures, taking as an example the ruinous structures of the Tredegar ironworks in Richmond, Virginia, a bastion of Confederate ordnance production. Donald Hardesty, in his classic The Archaeology of Mining and Miners: A View from the Silver State (SHA, 1988), pointed out that so often the standing buildings, machinery, and landscape features characteristic of many British industrial sites did not survive on US mining sites but ‘‘they are rich in trash dumps, residential house foundations, privies and other remains of the miners themselves’’ and that therefore excavation was essential. In the UK, though, aboveground remains undoubtedly formed the basis of most British industrial archaeology in the first 30 years of its existence as a discipline and the material culture of the workforce, which might have been obtained through systematic excavation, was neglected. The secondary role of excavation in industrial archaeology undoubtedly hindered its acceptance as a legitimate form of archaeology for several decades but – at least in Europe – this is now less of a problem since nondestructive activities such as landscape and earthwork survey and building analysis have become fully accepted aspects of archaeological work. More serious, though, was the fact that industrial archaeology concentrated on the technological analysis of specific industrial sites and areas and failed to consider the behavioral aspects of material culture or the processes of culture change. This justifiable

criticism has only begun to be remedied in the 1990s and 2000s, when the advent of ‘interpretive’ or ‘postprocessual’ approaches led to increasing concern with questions of power and inequality, labor relations, and class formation which are central research themes for industrial archaeology, as in Paul Shackel’s 1996 Culture Change and the New Technology: An Archaeology of the Early American Industrial Era. This development clearly brought industrial archaeology into a much closer relationship with existing subdiscipline of historical archaeology, as already practiced in North America, and Australasia. Industrial Archaeology and Industrial Heritage

The initial impetus for industrial archaeology in the UK was, then, the attempt to study, catalog, and preserve selected relics of the period when Britain was the world leader in the process of industrialization. It was a spontaneous growth, resulting in volunteer activity on a considerable scale in both preservation and recording. The Council for British Archaeology, which represents both amateurs and professionals, tried to give some shape to the enthusiasm for industrial archaeology by the introduction of standardized record cards, completed by volunteers. This grew into the National Record of Industrial Monuments based first at the University of Bath under Angus Buchanan and later subsumed into the National Monuments Record (NMR) of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME). Gazetteers of important industrial sites were built up on a county basis, many of which have found their way into local Sites and Monuments Records (now Historic Environment Records) and achieved a measure of recognition, if not always protection. English Heritage in the 1990s sought to take this activity to a national level by means of the Industrial Monuments Protection Programme, initially designed to update the lists of Ancient Monuments but resulting in some fundamental research on specific industries, especially in the extractive industries where landscape change threatened many sites. Unfortunately, the funding for this project was brought to an end prematurely in 2005 and the large amount of information gathered not adequately disseminated. Similar national recording programs of industrial sites have been carried out in other parts of the UK, especially in Northern Ireland where the government funded an official survey following a pilot study of County Down which had been carried out by E. R. R. Green in the late 1950s (Green was also to edit the first major series of regional industrial archaeology guides in the UK published by David and Charles). W. D. McCutcheon carried out this survey in the 1960s but his important The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland was not published until 1980 (Figure 2). Similar

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Figure 2 Wellbrook Beetling mill in Northern Ireland, a small water-powered mill for beetling or refining woven linen cloth, now in the possession of The National Trust.

work was carried out on the threatened coal industry by the statutory organizations in England, Scotland, and Wales while Stephen Hughes’ magisterial study for the Welsh Royal Commission of the threatened landscape of ‘Copperopolis’, the lower Swansea Valley in South Wales, set new standards for the recording of industrial buildings in their cultural context. Colin Rynne of the University of Cork in Ireland, who has carried out some important recording work and published in 2006, Industrial Ireland 1750–1930: an Archaeology, has pointed out that Ireland was regarded as a colony and that its industrial heritage has also to be thought of as ‘British’, an argument that could be extended into the Caribbean and parts of the eastern USA as well as Australia. Inventory work on industrial sites followed in Europe, generally with more professional and less amateur involvement than in the UK. Although French historians had for a long time been interested in industrial history, little notice was taken of industrial sites until the 1970s and it was not until 1983 that the Inventaire Ge´ne´rale began to include industrial sites with the foundation of an industrial heritage group within it, the Cellule du Patrimoine Industriel. A longterm project to create a national database of French industrial sites was initiated in 1986, and a similar database project was begun in the Netherlands where responsibility for the industrial heritage passed to the Projectbureau Industrieel Erfgoed (PIE), created in 1992. In Belgium, various categories of industrial building have been surveyed, particularly watermills and windmills, and a national survey published by Patrick Viaene in 1986. The Scandinavian countries have an important industrial heritage, particularly in

mining of copper and iron, which is increasingly being recognized as significant by their governments and both Rrs in Norway and Falun in Sweden have been designated as World Heritage sites (Figure 3). In Norway, buildings and sites of industrial interest have been recorded both by the Council for Culture and the Norwegian Technical Museum, while in Sweden, motivated by Professor Marie Nisser, the Central Office of National Antiquities is monitoring various recording initiatives. Further afield, industrial archaeology in the heritage sense has made rapid progress in Australia since the 1960s with the Australian National Trust publishing lists of industrial sites and conserving many of them at state level, notably the important mining landscapes of gold, copper, and silver at Moonta and Ballarat. In the United States, the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) was created in the 1930s but responsibility for recording industrial buildings and machinery is now shared by the Historical American Engineering Record (HAER), established in 1969 under the aegis of the National Park Service, which itself dates back to 1916. The records are maintained by the Library of Congress in what is termed ‘preservation by documentation’, a concept similar to that of the British National Monuments Records. Preservation itself has undoubtedly played a more major role in industrial archaeology than in other forms of archaeology since its inception and this has, of course, meant that sites are often not excavated below what is felt to be the best level for public appreciation. For example, a steel cementation furnace in Sheffield was excavated to the level at which it had been truncated rather than destroy it to find any

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Figure 3 Copper mining and smelting have dominated the Norwegian town of Røros since its foundation in the late-seventeenth century. Below the slag heaps are the ramshackle wooden workers’ houses with their grassed roofs, while the company town is dominated by the late-eighteenth century Baroque church. Mining continued in Røros well into the twentieth century, but the importance of the town’s historic remains were carefully conserved and accorded World Heritage status in 1982.

Figure 4 One of a row of eight mid-nineteenth century cementation furnaces from the Brightside Works in Sheffield, excavated by ARCUS, the Archaeological Unit of the University of Sheffield (by permission of ARCUS, Sheffield).

possible earlier remains (Figure 4). In Sweden, the medieval iron furnace at Lapphyttan was fully excavated archaeologically to understand more about the origins of blast furnace technology whereas the important standing structures of the iron making complex at Engelsberg, now a World Heritage Site, have been retained as industrial monuments in order to further public understanding of Sweden’s internationally important iron industry. In Poland, recording programs have been carried out on the numerous

surviving headgears associated with the coal industry in the region around Katowice with a view to preserving the most important of these. Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK have cooperated in an important new initiative, the European Route of the Industrial Heritage http://en.erih.net which links sites in all three countries, although the selection of sites is somewhat esoteric. In the USA, the National Parks Service has undertaken the consolidation and in some cases, the complete reconstruction of important

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industrial monuments, such as the early iron making furnaces at Saugus north of Boston and Hopewell in Pennsylvania and the site of Washington’s National Armory and Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in West Virginia. The involvement of historical archaeologists has led to a greater concentration on the workforce involved at such sites, something that was neglected until recently in British studies, although the work of ARCUS, the Sheffield-based archaeological contract unit, has begun to correct the over-concentration in the UK on technological detail as opposed to the human face of industrial archaeology, (as can be seen in The Historical Archaeology of the Sheffield Cutlery and Tableware Industry 1750–1900, edited in 2002 by James Symonds.). However, the way forward in the large-scale conservation of industrial sites and structures can only be through the process of ‘adaptive reuse’. Many are unsuitable for this technique, although exciting projects for the reuse of nineteenth century steelcased blast furnaces are already in place in Birmingham, Alabama, USA, and in the Landschaftspark near Duisburg in Germany, the former serving as a theater and the latter being used for a variety of recreational purposes, including a climbing wall in the ore store and diving training taking place in one of the now flooded gas holders. However, warehouses, malthouses, and textile mills are increasingly being converted for housing and there have been some spectacular conversions for retail use, such as the former chocolate factory in Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco. Industrial archaeologists must continue to press for and be involved in adequate archaeological recording of both buildings and their context prior to such conversions; preservation per se needs be selective but preservation by record is essential. Industrial archaeology is then a discipline in tension which seeks to maintain a balance between investigative techniques which can lead to destruction of sites and the preservation of sites and structures for posterity.

The Industrial Past: Buildings, Landscapes, Artifacts, and Documents Buildings

Since industrial archaeology began as a campaign to preserve, or at least to record, selected sites and structures deriving from the industrial past, more attention has been paid to the study of standing buildings than is true for most periods of archaeology. Industrial buildings are the visible symbol of the processes of

production in both space and time, and the analysis of these buildings requires the use of the archaeological concepts of function, context, and typology. The industrial archaeologist has to be able to recognize the buildings characteristic of particular industries in order to determine their function by examining form and topographical context. Typological sequences of structures such as lime, pottery, or brick kilns can help establish relative dates although in many cases the technology used was that deemed appropriate for the purpose: for example, primitive temporary clamps for brick manufacture were built alongside the construction sites of railway tunnels or canal locks in the nineteenth century for speed and convenience even though far more sophisticated methods of production were available. The final stage of the analysis involves the study of the building in its cultural context, attempting to understand its symbolism in terms of power structures and employer–worker relationships within the industry with which it was associated. The volunteer nature of early industrial archaeology meant that most of the fieldwork was site specific, consisting of studies of individual sites and buildings which were published in both regional and local journals. Widespread industrial change toward the end of the twentieth century, however, led to many types of industrial buildings and structures becoming redundant and in danger of demolition without record at the same time. Regional and national surveys were only possible with public funding and an excellent example of such work in the UK are the three volumes on textile mills published in the 1990s by RCHME on West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, and Cheshire, together with extensive recording in the Derwent valley of Derbyshire and yet unpublished work on southwest England (Figure 5). Valuable though these were, little attention was paid to any form of spatial analysis to try to determine how the workforce functioned within them. In this respect, the work of the architectural historian Robert Markus in his 1993 Buildings and Power has been influential in encouraging research students to attempt such analysis, for example, the work of Ian Mellor on various Yorkshire textile mills. In the USA, Mary Beaudry and Stephen Mzrowski have gone further in their multidisciplinary study of the textile town of Lowell in Massachusetts, demonstrating how the form of the settlement expressed the corporate image sought by the entrepreneurs who built the mills, with the female workforce safely ensconced in boarding houses (Figure 6). Patterns of settlement are as important in this period as in earlier periods of history in indicating economic and social organization, and

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Figure 5 A reconstruction drawing of Lombe’s pioneering silk mill at Derby as it may have appeared in 1721. The workforce operated in a space dictated by the circular and transverse silk throwing and twisting machines, which were themselves dependent on the power of the great waterwheel. (RCHME, ã Crown Copyright)

Figure 6 A bird’s eye view of part of Lowell, Massachusetts, by Bailey and Hazah 1876. The Boot Mills are shown between the river and the Eastern Canal, while at right angles to these are the eight rows of boarding houses in which female mill workers were housed.

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much more work is being carried out on domestic housing, one of the earliest studies being Lucy Caffyn’s Workers’ Housing of West Yorkshire (1986). It has also been increasingly recognized that industrial activities persisted on a domestic basis long after the introduction of the factory, and Paul Barnwell, Marilyn Palmer, and Malcolm Airs in 2004 brought together summaries of work being carried out in The Vernacular Workshop, while Marilyn Palmer and Peter Neaverson continued this in their 2005 The Textile Industry of South-west England: a Social Archaeology. Landscape Archaeology

The first use of the term industrial archaeology in print in 1955 coincided with the publication of W. G. Hoskins’ seminal Making of the English Landscape which popularized ‘landscape history’. Hoskins resented the intrusion of large-scale industrialization into the self-sufficient village communities in which he was interested but he did appreciate the potential of industrial archaeology to recreate a particular stage in the development of past society when industry was part of the rural economy. Landscape to both the historian and the archaeologist is the physical manifestation of changes wrought by man in both space and time. Buildings in their relationship to one another and to their topographical setting are part of landscape, and one of the major reasons for studying industrial landscapes is to transform a collection of individual structures into a coherent whole which has meaning in both technological and cultural terms. Technologically, the interrelationship of buildings and features in the landscape is usually determined by sequences of industrial production and the adaptation of these to local environmental conditions. Culturally, these interrelationships can reveal systems of industrial organization and social relationships, particularly those between the employer and his workforce. The task of the industrial archaeologist is to analyze the industrial landscape in terms of both the spatial and the sequential relationships of structures and features in order to illuminate the process of industrialization. Increasing professional activity has begun to reverse the site-specific tendency of early industrial archaeology, and most fieldwork and research programs now reach beyond the structures of prime technological significance to consider their wider context, examining sources of raw materials, provision of power, transport systems, associated industry and accommodation, as in Barry Trinder’s The Making of the Industrial Landscape and Marilyn Palmer and Peter Neaverson’s Industry in the Landscape, 1700–1900. Studies of industrial landscapes

normally take one of two forms: limited surveys of features associated with a particular site or structure or extensive surveys of whole areas. An outstanding example of the former in the UK is the work carried out by Wayne Cocroft, formerly of RCHME, on the extensive and complex site of the Royal Gunpowder Factory at Waltham Abbey in Essex, published in 2000 as Dangerous Energy. This exemplified the problems of determining both spatial and sequential relationships in the landscape, since it included a multiplicity of different buildings and earthworks and had a chronological depth from the mid-seventeenth to the end of the twentieth century. On a broader scale, Judith Alfrey and Kate Clark’s Nuffield-funded survey of the internationally important landscape of the Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire in the late 1980s sought to reveal change over time by means of detailed plot surveys making use of both historic maps and the contemporary landscape. Mark Bowden and Ian Goodall of English Heritage undertook an important survey of the Furness district of Cumbria to identify the relationships in the landscape between the surviving iron furnaces, the associated charcoal pitsteads and the sledways and tracks used for transporting the fuel. Considerable archaeological evidence also remained of the related woodland industries, including remnants of the huts occupied by the charcoal-burners and other itinerant woodland workers. Studies such as these are the essence of industrial archaeology, revealing both the spatial links in the landscape and the social context of technological development. Artifacts

To most historical archaeologists, artifacts comprise the main body of evidence from which information about the lifestyles of past societies is derived. Variations in the type and distribution of artifacts indicate material change and prompt investigation into its causes. Industrial archaeologists, however, have chronicled the development of the means of production in terms of changing structures but have paid less attention to the new types of artifacts produced as a result, although David Barker has worked on both the kilns and their products in the potteries of Stoke-on-Trent. This is an obvious area for cooperation between industrial and historical archaeology, since only by bringing the means of production and the products together can changes in material culture be identified and the reasons for change understood. Justine Bayley and Jim Williams of English Heritage have shown in a paper on ‘Archaeological science and industrial archaeology – manufacturing, landscape, and social context’ published in Understanding the Workplace: A Research Framework for Industrial Archaeology how scientific techniques can illuminate

INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY 1519

Figure 7 The strong-armed women or balmaidens employed to break up ore at tin and copper mining sites of Cornwall. The role of women in mining is often neglected but they played a major role in preparation and dressing work on the surface while their menfolk extracted ore underground.

most areas of industrial archaeology, from analysis of process residues to studies of the diet and health of the workforce. Such analyses, commonplace in historical archaeology, need to become an equally routine part of industrial archaeology although the cost of such analyses of often beyond the means of those working on industrial sites and structures. Documentary Sources

Both historical and industrial archaeology make routine use of textual evidence. The industrial period is rich in such sources but, since the majority of the workforce was illiterate until at least the end of the nineteenth century, they emanate from the employer rather than the employed. However, with the increasing tendency to give due weight to the human as well as the technological aspects of industrial archaeology, oral histories, photographs, and local collections of memorabilia all have their place in trying to bring the material record back to life (Figure 7). The definition of industrial archaeology used by The International Committee for the Industrial Heritage (TICCIH) rightly stresses that the discipline makes use of all methods of investigation most suitable for to increase the understanding of the industrial past and present.

Frameworks For The Future The first half-century of industrial archaeology was, then, largely driven by the need to ensure that buildings and structures from the industrial past which still existed in the contemporary landscape were recognized and, where possible, either recorded or preserved.

Much of the impetus had come from the voluntary sector with increasing professional involvement. The 1990s, however, certainly in the UK and to some extent elsewhere, witnessed a fundamental change in the funding of archaeology. In the UK, this has been expressed as ‘the polluter pays’, much archaeological work no longer being driven by research needs but by rescue priorities in advance of development and funded by the developers themselves. Although this has undoubtedly resulted in a vast increase in the amount of archaeological work undertaken on both sites and buildings, it has also led to profound criticisms that research – or the increase of knowledge and understanding – is no longer the imperative of most archaeological work that is now carried out, largely by contract archaeologists whose numbers have dramatically increased. It was to counter such criticism that English Heritage undertook a program leading to the publication of both regional and national research frameworks into which discoveries made through developer-funded work could be integrated. The regional research frameworks so far published in the UK have sections on both post-Medieval and industrial archaeology, while the AIA, in conjunction with English Heritage, published in 2005 Understanding the Workplace: A Research Framework for Industrial Archaeology in Britain, edited by David Gwyn and Marilyn Palmer. This concentrated on the role of human agency in industrial archaeology, the term ‘workplace’ implying not only a building in which work has taken place but also the people who operated within that workplace to carry out the processes. It is not a comprehensive agenda, omitting many themes

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such as landscape characterization, the extractive industries, and the analysis of artifacts, and needs to be read alongside David Barker and David Cranstone’s 2004 edited volume, The Archaeology of Industrialization, which emanated from a conference jointly organized between the Association for Industrial Archaeology and the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology at Bristol in 1998. The increasing involvement of professional archaeologists in industrial archaeology has also led to some useful developments in methodology, none more so than that devised by Michael Nevell and John Walker of Manchester University Archaeological Unit. They plotted when new types of industrial site first appeared in the landscape and then ascribed their introduction to one of the three social classes identified in the region, lords, freeholders, and tenants. This Manchester Methodology may not be applicable to areas with a less-defined social structure but resulted in industrial monuments being firmly embedded in the social archaeology of the region rather than just being seen for their technological importance in the development of industrialization. At the same time, industrial archaeology was securing a foothold in academia and Marilyn Palmer and Peter Neaverson put forward in Industrial Archaeology: Principles and Practice a theoretical approach to industrial archaeology which stressed the role of human agency in site formation. This agenda has been carried forward by contributors to the session of the Theoretical Archaeology Group which was published in 2005 as Industrial Archaeology: New Directions, edited by Eleanor Casella and James Symonds. Both publications stress the need to consider the significance of industrial sites within a framework of inference which seeks to establish social as well as economic and technological significance. Industrial archaeology in the sense of an academic study as opposed to a preservation movement has been moving much closer to historical archaeology as it is now conceived, with the term now becoming more widely used in the UK and perhaps subsuming both post-Medieval and industrial archaeology.

Conclusion Has, in fact, the term ‘industrial archaeology’ now outlived its usefulness? Should it instead be termed ‘later historical archaeology’ or ‘modern historical archaeology’, which defines the discipline as the study of material culture within a textual framework but also gives it a period definition? This would not be a popular solution, however, as Keith Falconer of English Heritage has said,

‘‘just as Britain is perceived to have pioneered the industrial revolution and have bequeathed industrialization to the world two centuries ago, so, in the last half century there is a similar perception that this country has pioneered and given the subject of industrial archaeology to the world.’’

Rather, we may have to continue to operate on two levels: the acceptance of a term such as ‘later historical archaeology’ for the academic study of the archaeology of industrialization, but a continuing popular recognition of ‘industrial archaeology’ as the study and conservation of the monuments of past industrial activity and generally synonymous with ‘industrial heritage’. In this sense, industrial archaeology has been extremely successful in achieving what its pioneers set out to do, achieve recognition for the importance of the remains of the industrial past and where possible their survival in the contemporary landscape. But in the second half of the twentieth century, industrial archaeology has developed from a purely amateur pastime, motivated by a desire to preserve the material remains of Britain’s industrial past, into a more mature scholarly discipline. New studies have contributed toward the development of social approaches to the discipline, while studies of industrial landscapes have explored ways in which these manifest not just the physical remains of industrial processes but also embody evidence for past hierarchical power relations. In these ways, industrial archaeology has broken free of its earlier constraints to become an archaeology of industrialization.

See also: Conservation, Archaeological; Historic Pres-

ervation Laws; Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline; World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

Further Reading Barker D and Cranstone D (eds.) (2004) Archaeology of Industrialization. Leeds: Maney. Beaudry MC (1989) The Lowell Boott mills complex and its housing: Material expressions of corporate ideology. Historical Archaeology 23: 19–33. Birmingham J, Jack I, and Jeans D (1979) Australian Pioneer Technology: Sites and Relics. Richmond: Heinemann. Buchanan RA (1972) Industrial Archaeology in Britain. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Casella EC and Symonds J (eds.) (2005) Industrial Archaeology: Future Directions. New York: Springer. Cossons N (2000) Perspectives on Industrial Archaeology. London: Science Museum. Gwyn D and Palmer M (2005) Understanding the Workplace; A Research Framework for Industrial Archaeology in Britain. Leeds: Maney.

INSECT ANALYSIS 1521 Markus TA (1993) Buildings and Power. London: Routledge. Nevell M (2004) From Farmer to Factory Owner: Models, Methodology, and Industrialisation. Manchester: Tameside Borough Council. Palmer M and Neaverson PA (1984) Industry in the Landscape, 1700–1900. London: Routledge. Palmer M and Neaverson PA (1999) Industrial Archaeology: Principles and Practice. London: Routledge. Rynne C (2006) Industrial Ireland 1750–1930: an Archaeology. Cork: The Collins Press. Shackel P (1996) Culture Change and the New Technology: An Archaeology of the Early American Industrial Era. New York: Plenum Press. Stratton M and Trinder B (1997) Industrial England. London: Batsford/English Heritage.

Trinder B (1982) The Making of the Industrial Landscape. London: Dent. Trinder B (ed.) (1992) The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Industrial Archaeology. Oxford: Blackwell.

Relevant Websites http://en.erih.net – European Route of Industrial Heritage. www.industial-archaeology.org.uk – Association for Industrial Archaeology. www.sia-web.org – Society for Industrial Archaeology. www.spma.org.uk – Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology. www.mnactec.com/TICCIH – International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage. www.sha.org – Society for Historical Archaeology.

INSECT ANALYSIS Scott A Elias, University of London, Egham, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary beetles Any of numerous insects of the order Coleoptera, having biting mouthparts and forewings modified to form horny coverings that protect the underlying pair of membranous hind wings when at rest. Bronze Age The period in history after the Stone Age characterized by the development of bronze and its use, especially for weapons and tools. coprolite Fossilized excrement. faunal remains Bones and other animal parts found in archaeological sites. iron Age A cultural stage characterized by the use of iron as the main metal.

Introduction Well-preserved insect fossils have been found in many archaeological settings. Fossil insects are now making an important contribution to the reconstruction of both natural and anthropogenic environments associated with archaeological sites. These fossils provide evidence about human lifestyles and living conditions, as well as evidence about the environmental setting of the sites. The biological evidence sometimes reveals far more about these matters than can be obtained from archaeological artifacts.

Types of Deposits Yielding Insects Chief among these are waterlogged sediments at sites of human occupation. These are commonly preserved in northern Europe. Insect exoskeletons in waterlogged sediments show excellent preservation, and

their abundance and taxonomic diversity is often incredibly rich (faunal assemblages including hundreds of identified species are not uncommon). Insect exoskeletons are readily preserved in situations where normal decomposition is retarded, due to the lack of oxygen. Examples of saturated organic deposits yielding insect fossils include ancient trackways through bogs and other wetlands, organic detritus from wells, and ancient occupation horizons below the current water table. Organic-rich sediments from ponds, lakes, and peat bogs in close proximity to archaeological sites also may contain insect faunas that are contemporaneous with nearby human occupation. Domestic debris from under floors, in trash middens, latrines, sewers, and barrow pits, have also yielded abundant insect remains. The garbage and sewage of past generations offer many clues to their lifestyles, sanitation, animal husbandry, and land use.

Environmental Indications from Insects The ecological sensitivity of insects makes them useful indicators of past environments, both natural and anthropogenic. Most European archaeological sites contain a mixture of synanthropic (human-associated) and nonsynanthropic insect remains. It is often difficult to make clear separations between these two components. In 1985 Kenward studied indoor and outdoor insect taxa found in modern buildings which helped to define potential sources of insects deposited in ancient dwellings (Figure 1). Insect remains can provide a wealth of archaeological detail and may yield information on human activities and environmental conditions not brought out by other types of data. Stored product pests, as well as scavengers and plant feeders, document food

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From nests and droppings of predators and scavengers

From stored products

From roof and walls

Insects seeking habitation sites Accidental entry in local flight

Migrating insects

From litter

Parasites of occupants

In imported material, casual transport, or on occupants Crawling

Figure 1 Cutaway section of a medieval house, showing potential sources of insect remains. Red arrows indicate household insects; green arrows indicate external insects. SA Elias (1994) Quaternary Insects and Their Environments. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

storage and use patterns, food types, building methods, and other details of domestic life, farming, and animal husbandry. Human parasites and synanthropes offer evidence of sanitation conditions, health, crowding, and human dispersal patterns. Carrion beetles, flies, and other insects provide forensic data on human and animal corpses.

European Studies British insect fossils have been studied from archaeological sites ranging in age from 10 kyr BP through the nineteenth century. More than 120 sites have been investigated for insects. An extensive gap in the fossil insect record extends from the Upper Paleolithic to the Early Neolithic period. Neolithic sites document the change from natural forest to cleared sites used for cultivation and grazing. One of the best-documented insect faunal successions of the Bronze Age was discovered at Thorne Moor in South Yorkshire. Here, fossils from an ancient trackway showed regional forest clearing and the rise of cereal pollen in the regional vegetation. Beetle species which are now extinct or extremely rare in Britain provide evidence of old, mature forests. Iron Age records abound in Britain, and insect fossils have been examined from numerous Roman sites. Stored product pests associated with grain have been found in a number of Roman sites in Britain.

Reconstructions of medieval life at Anglo-Danish sites in York have included detailed research on insect fossils. All of the insect assemblages from York reflect human habitations. Based on the quantity and quality of debris, the insect evidence suggests that the Romans were somewhat more hygienic than the subsequent Anglo-Danish inhabitants of York. The overwhelming impression from the insect evidence is one of squalor in Anglo-Danish times. Elsewhere in Europe, insects have been studied from medieval sites at Oslo, Norway, and the Orkney Islands. More extensive work has been done on Roman and medieval sites in Germany. In Greece, Panagiotakopulu and Buckland in 1991 have studied fossil insects from a Late Bronze Age site at Santorini. The fossil evidence indicates the establishment of field and stored grain pests in the Aegean region by about 3500 year BP. One cereal pest, Rhyzopertha dominica, probably originated in Africa, and arrived at Santorini through trade with Crete and Egypt.

Studies in the North Atlantic Region Buckland et al. in 1986 studied pre- and postsettlement insect faunas from an early Norse farm site in Iceland. The samples indicate a native fauna of a few species that became more diverse as humans modified the landscape (especially the draining of bogs and overgrazing of hillsides by sheep). Other Icelandic

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studies have documented the ecological effects of the Norse colonization of Iceland, which began in the ninth-century AD. Postcolonization faunas generally include several synanthropic insects that arrived with the Norse or with subsequent trading ships from Europe. The native subarctic biota of Iceland faired very poorly after Norse settlement. When the Norse established settlements on Greenland, they also brought a characteristic insect fauna with them. However, their attempts at agriculture and animal husbandry were hindered by the severe climate, and by about AD 1350, the settlements in western Greenland were abandoned. The end of Norse occupation was marked by a shift in the fossil insect assemblages. The ‘indoor’ synanthropic species died out immediately, and were replaced by ‘outdoor’ native Greenland species in the abandoned Norse farm houses.

Studies of Insect Parasites from Archaeological Sites The fossil remains of lice and their eggs have been found on mummies from around the world, including Greenland, Egypt, and the Aleutian Islands. Fleas have been found from Old World archaeological sites, beginning with Neolithic remains from the Island of Orkney, through Roman-age archaeological sites at York, and on through medieval assemblages from York, Dublin, and Norse Greenland.

Insect Fossils in New World Archaeological Sites Most insect fossil studies from New World archaeological sites deal with faunas from natural environments in the vicinity of the archaeological site. A few American studies have archaeological connections, however. Elias studied insect fossils from refuse pits at the Cahokia Mounds site in Illinois, and was able to document the seasonality of human use of the site. Coprolite Studies

The study of ancient human feces, preserved in dry caves as coprolites, has yielded some interesting information on insects and their interactions with Amerindians (see Coprolite Analysis). Some arthropods were consumed as food. These include cicadas and grasshoppers that were eaten by the Anasazi at Mesa Verde, Colorado, and ants and termites that were apparently eaten by Paleoindians at the Dirty Shame Rockshelter in Oregon. Other insects, such as fleas, lice, and mites, were external parasites that were either accidentally or deliberately consumed.

The remains of fly maggots and their pupal exuviae (the skin cast from the larva as it pupated) have been used in some New World sites to help determine mode and timing of burial. A study of fly remains from a Late Prehistoric Arikara Indian burial site at Leavenworth, South Dakota, placed the time of burial between late March and mid-October (the flies’ active season in South Dakota). Insects from Non-Anthropogenic Deposits at Archaeological Sites

Insect fossils from non-anthropogenic environments (i.e., undisturbed, natural habitats) provide data useful in building an environmental framework in which to place archaeological interpretations of a site. The insect faunas provide inferences on climate, soil, and regional vegetation. For instance, Elias in 1990 examined insect fossils from a Clovis archaeological site at False Cougar Cave, Montana. The insects were recovered from cave-floor sediments which also contained Paleoindian artifacts. Based on the insects, the regional climate environment was very similar to modern conditions by 10 500 year BP. A Clovis-age insect assemblage from the Lubbock Lake site in west Texas reflected climatic conditions that were cooler and wetter than the modern day.

South American Archaeology At Monte Verde, Chile, an archaeological site dating to c. 13 kyr BP contained insect fossils preserved in peat that were studied by Ashworth et al. The environmental reconstruction based on the insect fauna is that of a shallow creek with sparsely vegetated sand bars and some boggy margins, flowing through a rain forest (see Americas, South: Southern Cone). The Late Glacial palaeoclimate was interpreted as very similar to modern. No synanthropic insect species were found in the Monte Verde assemblages. There appears to have been a lack of adaptation of New World insects to synanthropic lifestyles until much later in the Holocene. This was probably because of a lack of suitable human-induced habitats, at least in western North America, until late in prehistory.

Comparison with European and Other Old World Studies Most New World studies are from the Late Pleistocene or Earliest Holocene, while all but one of the Old World Studies are Mid- to Late Holocene in age. Differences in types of human occupation and lifestyles between these times are important. In Europe, the

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more or less sedentary lifestyles from the Bronze Age through medieval times led to the accumulation of organic debris (in wells, cesspits, latrines, trash heaps) and associated insect faunas. In contrast to this, Paleolithic hunter-gatherers leading a transhumance lifestyle left very little organic debris on the landscape. Regrettably, the only substantial artifact records of these people are their stone tools. Their wanderings left little mark on the landscape, so that coeval insect faunas generally reflect undisturbed habitats. See also: Americas, South: Southern Cone; Coprolite Analysis; Invertebrate Analysis; Vertebrate Analysis.

Further Reading Ashworth AC, Hoganson J, and Gunderson M (1989) Fossil beetle analysis. In: Dillehay TD (ed.) Monte Verde, A Late Pleistocene Settlement in Chile, pp. 211–226. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Buckland PC, Grieg JRA, and Kenward HK (1974) York: An early Medieval site. Antiquity 47: 25–33. Buckland PC and Kenward HK (1973) Thorne Moor: A paleoecological study of a Bronze Age site. Nature 241: 405–406.

Buckland PC, Perry DW, Gislason GM, and Dugmore AJ (1986) The pre-Landnam fauna of Iceland: A paleontological contribution. Boreas 15: 173–184. Elias SA (1990) The timing and intensity of environmental changes during the Paleoindian period in western North America: Evidence from the fossil insect record. In: Agenbroad LD, Mead JI, and Nelson LW (eds.) Megafauna and Man, pp. 11–14. South Dakota: Mammoth Site, Hot Springs. Elias SA (1994) Quaternary Insects and their Environments. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Kenward HK (1985) Outdoors-indoors? The outdoor component of archaeological insect assemblages. In: Fieller NRJ, Gilbertson DD, and Ralph NGA (eds.) Palaeobiological Investigations. Research Design Methods, and Data Analysis, Association for Environmental Archaeology Symposium, No. 5B, pp. 97–104. McGovern TH, Buckland PC, Savory D, Sveinbjarndottir G, Andreason C, and Skidmore P (1983) A study of faunal and floral remains from two Norse farms in the western settlement, Greenland. Arctic Anthropology 20: 93–120. Osborne PJ (1983) An insect fauna from a modern cesspit and its comparison with probable cesspit assemblages from archaeological sites. Journal of Archaeological Science 10: 453–463. Panagiotakopulu E and Buckland PC (1991) Insect pests of stored products from Late Bronze Age Santorini, Greece. Journal of Stored Products Research 27: 179–184. Pauketat TR, Kelly LS, Fritz GJ, Lopinot NH, Elias SA, and Hargrave E (2002) The residues of feasting and public ritual at early Cahokia. American Antiquity 67: 52–65.

INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH Patty Jo Watson, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary archaeobotany Recovery, identification, and interpretation of plant remains (including pollen and other microscopic items) from archaeological deposits. Also known as palaeoethnobotany. archaeometry A general term referring to the use of chemical and physical methods and techniques in archaeological research to obtain information concerning dating (e.g., radiocarbon determinations), materials identification and sourcing, and subsurface prospecting (e.g., soil conductivity and resistivity surveys). archaeozoology See zooarchaeology. geoarchaeology Use of geological methods and techniques within archaeological sites (e.g., sedimentological analysis of cultural deposits to reveal their origins and transport histories) and/or within the regions surrounding one or more sites (e.g., mapping and analysis of landforms and rivers, providing the physical environments for archaeological sites). palaeoethnobotany See archaeobotany. zooarchaeology Recovery, analysis, and interpretation of animal remains (vertebrate and invertebrate) from archaeological sites. Also known as archaeozoology.

What is Interdisciplinary Archaeology? Contemporary archaeology, no matter where in the world it may be found, is interdisciplinary. Excavation teams include not only archaeologists expert in ancient architecture and artifacts, but also specialists in plant remains; animal bones; metallurgy; DNA extraction and analysis of samples from human and nonhuman bone or botanical materials; sediments and stratigraphy; and a host of other topics now regarded as essential to archaeological projects. It may seem selfevident that archaeologists must confer with many different kinds of scholars in order to understand the vast array of items and materials they unearth as well as the contexts of those items and materials. Nevertheless, both the nature and the practice of interdisciplinary archaeology are actually quite complex and rather recent developments in the history of archaeology. One source of complexity is the fact that different kinds of archaeology have different histories and different scholarly homes. Classical archaeology, for example, is traditionally grouped with the humanities, especially those centered upon the Greek and Roman civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean world, their languages and their histories. Prehistoric

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archaeology, on the other hand – addressing the earliest part of the human story in Africa, Europe, and Asia – developed in relation to geology, palaeontology, botany, and zoology; hence, it was traditionally grouped with the natural sciences. Students learning to be classical archaeologists studied Greek, Latin, history of art and architecture, and the massive literature of scholarship on Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations in the Mediterranean region and in Central and Eastern Asia. Students learning to be prehistorians studied stone tool typologies; sediments and stratigraphy; geochemical dating techniques; the environmental, ecological, and cultural implications of floral and faunal species and assemblages; the fossil record of human evolution in the Old World; and the archaeological remains left by hunter-gatherer-forager or early agricultural societies around the globe, as well as ethnographic information about such societies provided by European explorers of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries and by anthropologists of the late nineteenth to twentieth centuries. Because of the abundant written records left by ancient Greek and Roman societies and their predecessors, classical archaeologists did not traditionally concern themselves with systematic recovery of animal bones and plant remains because it was believed that essential information about the economies and physical environments of these societies was contained in their own records and archives. Another major source of complexity surrounding the issue of interdisciplinary research in archaeology is the practical one. It is extremely difficult to establish and maintain adequate integration among even a few nonarchaeological collaborators on the one hand, the archaeologists on the other, and the two groups in concert during all the stages of a project: survey, excavation, analysis, and publication. Simply making certain that each specialist has essential equipment, research space, and access to materials pertaining to that specialist’s area of expertise is daunting, especially if the work is being carried out in a remote locale, or in a country foreign to the scholars doing the work. Many interdisciplinary projects founder on these logistical issues alone, quite apart from conceptual matters of any sort.

Early Examples of Successful Interdisciplinary Archaeology The modern era of interdisciplinary research in archaeology was pioneered at the beginning of the twentieth century by a 70-year-old geologist, Raphael Pumpelly, who assembled a diverse field staff for his 1904 excavations at ancient sites in the Central Asian oases of Anau, Merv, and Samarkand. The group

included four archaeologists, two geologists/geomorphologists (Pumpelly and his son), and a cultural geographer. The materials recovered were analyzed and published by a zoologist, a chemist (who investigated the metal artifacts), two human palaeontologists/ physical anthropologists, and a botanist, as well as three of the four archaeologists from the field staff. Pumpelly’s demonstration of successful, explicitly interdisciplinary archaeological field research and publication did not immediately inspire further examples. In the years following World War II, however, interdisciplinary, ecologically oriented archaeology developed rapidly in both Europe and North America. In England, Grahame Clarke’s research at the Mesolithic site of Star Carr, and his major synthesis, Prehistoric Europe: The Economic Basis, were foundational. Roughly contemporaneously with Clarke’s work, Robert J. Braidwood’s Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, projects fielded a series of interdisciplinary teams in search of the earliest empirical evidence for agriculture and pastoralism in southwest Asia, beginning with excavations at the early village site of Jarmo (c. 8500 years old) in north Iraq. To recover and interpret the remains of the earliest domesticated plants and animals, Braidwood enlisted botanical and zoological experts, as well as geologists specializing in palaeoenvironmental research. Like Pumpelly, Braidwood obtained funding to take several of these experts in the natural sciences to the field with him, and to support their subsequent analyses of floral, faunal, and geological materials. Moreover, he succeeded in assembling a panel of such experts who collaborated with him for several decades as the research ramified to other sites and other geographic locales in western Asia.

The Development of Interdisciplinary Archaeology The research by Braidwood and his interdisciplinary collaborators provided an extremely influential model for prehistoric archaeology in both the Old and New Worlds. Interdisciplinary, palaeoenvironmental, palaeoecological archaeology became the norm to the extent that three new subdisciplines grew to autonomous maturity during the 1970s and 1980s: archaeobotany or palaeoethnobotany, geoarchaeology, and zooarchaeology (see Paleoethnobotany; Geoarchaeology; Archaeozoology). In addition to these three areas of research, now well established in the interdisciplinary space between archaeology and botany, archaeology and zoology, and archaeology and geology, respectively, several other zones of cooperation have developed or are developing between archaeologists and experts in specific scientific methods or techniques, such as radiometric means of

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dating archaeological materials, DNA analysis of human and nonhuman organic remains, and sourcing of artifacts or raw materials via trace element analysis. All the techniques and methods just noted, and many others actually and potentially applied to archaeological research, are sometimes jointly referred to as ‘archaeometry’. Archaeometric procedures as well as archaeobotany, geoarchaeology, and zooarchaeology are variously engaged by archaeologists of all persuasions. Archaeology everywhere in the world has become more and more intricately interdisciplinary, a trend that will continue for the foreseeable future. This, in turn, means that crucial practical issues of coordination and integration will also continue to present major challenges for all the collaborators in each interdisciplinary archaeological endeavor, and will continue to demand careful, persistent attention at the scale of the individual human beings working together in those endeavors. See also: Archaeometry; Archaeozoology; Geoarchaeology; Paleoethnobotany.

Further Reading Braidwood R (1960) The agricultural revolution. Scientific American 203: 130–148. Braidwood L, Braidwood R, Howe H, Reed C, and Watson P (eds.) (1983) Prehistoric Archeology Along the Zagros Flanks.

Interments

vol. 105. Chicago: University of Chicago, Oriental Institute Publication. Butzer K (1975) The ‘ecological’ approach to prehistory: Are we really trying? American Antiquity 40: 106–111. Butzer K (1982) Archaeology as Human Ecology: Method and Theory for a Contextual Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. C¸ambel H and Braidwood R (eds.) (1980) Prehistoric Research in Southeastern Anatolia (Pub. No. 2589). Istanbul: Istanbul University Faculty of Letters. Clarke G (1972) Prehistoric Europe: The Economic Basis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Flannery K (1986) Guila´ Naquitz: Archaic Foraging and Early Agriculture in Oaxaca, Mexico. New York: Academic Press. Marquardt W (ed.) (1999) The Archaeology of Useppa Island (Monograph No. 3). Gainesville, FL: University of Florida, Institute of Archaeology and Paleoenvironmental Studies. Marquardt W and Watson P (eds.) (2005) Archaeology of the Middle Green River Region (Monograph No. 5). Gainesville, FL: University of Florida, Institute of Archaeology and Paleoenvironmental Studies. McDonald W and Rapp G (eds.) (1972) The Minnesota Messinia Expedition. Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota Press. Moore A, Hillman G, and Legge A (eds.) (2000) Village on the Euphrates: From Foraging to Farming at Abu Hureyra. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pumpelly R (ed.) (1908) Prehistoric civilizations of Anau: Origins, growth, and influence of environment. Explorations in Turkestan, Expedition of 1904 (2 vols.). Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington. Watson P (1997) The shaping of modern paleoethnobotany. In: Gremillion K (ed.) People, Plants, and Landscapes: Studies in Paleoethnobotany, pp. 13–22. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.

See: Burials: Dietary Sampling Methods; Excavation and Recording Techniques.

INTERNET, ARCHAEOLOGY ON Julian D Richards, University of York, York, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary digital preservation Long-term, error-free storage of digital information, with means for retrieval and interpretation, for all the time span that the information is required for. metadata Data about data. Metadata describes how and when and by whom a particular set of data was collected, and how the data is formatted. Semantic Web The Semantic Web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which web content can be expressed

not only in natural language, but also in a form that can be understood, interpreted, and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share, and integrate information more easily. XML The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language that supports a wide variety of applications. Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of data across different information systems, particularly systems connected via the Internet.

The influence of the Internet in our everyday lives is so pervasive that it is hard to credit it as a stillimmature technology. Twenty years ago it did not

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exist. By July 2005, according to Hobbes’ Internet Timeline, there were 353 million Internet hosts, that is, computer systems connected to the network with registered Internet (IP) addresses. The extent of Internet penetration in the developing world is still patchy, although this is a rapidly changing picture. In December 2005, only 2.5% of African households had Internet access, whereas for the United States the figure was 68%, and for the United Kingdom 63% http://www.internetworldstats.com/. The origins of the Internet can be traced back to the Cold War and the Space Race. In 1957 the USSR launched the first Sputnik; USA formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). In 1969 ARPANET was commissioned to provide a computer network for the US Department of Defence which connected the military with university and civilian contractors. The intention was also to provide a distributed system of computers capable of withstanding a nuclear strike. In 1971 the first e-mail program was invented; e-mail rapidly grew to comprise 75% of all traffic on ARPANET, and in 1973 the first international connection was made to link University College London with ARPANET. Within a short space of time academic networks were established and from 1981 BITNET provided e-mail and file transfer (FTP) facilities at City University, New York. By the mid-1980s, therefore, the Internet existed as a network of networks across which it was possible to transmit computer files. However, for this to be transformed into the World Wide Web, three things were required: (1) a means of specifying the internet addresses of specific files, (2) a protocol for information transfer, and (3) a uniform way of structuring hypertext documents providing links to other documents. The first was provided by the development of Universal Resource Identifiers (URIs), and later Universal Resource Locators (URLs). These domain names could be mapped to the numeric addresses of each computer connected to the Internet, and specific files hosted on the computers could be referenced. Second, a HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) provided an agreed means of transmitting files from the computer, or web server, on which it was held, to the user’s own computer. Third, the specification of HTML, a HyperText Markup Language, provided a standard for machine-readable instructions to software browsers for how to display interlinked text files. In 1991, the World Wide Web was effectively ‘released’ to the world when CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) made its linemode browser available. This was able to parse and display blocks of text, and to highlight hypertext links, but it was not suitable for a Windows environment. In 1993, access was therefore revolutionized when

the US National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) released Mosaic, the first Windowsbased browser. This was followed, the next year, by Netscape Navigator, and eventually by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Most early web applications were academic in aim but this soon began to change. In 1993 the website http://www.whitehouse.gov/ was launched, closely followed, in 1994, by the first internet shopping malls. Archaeology has made innovative use of the Internet for dissemination and communication since the beginning. In common with other disciplines, e-mail was rapidly adopted, first by the academic sector, followed by private individuals. A number of discussion lists, such as ARCH-L and BRITARCH provided active fora for heated debate, as well as more routine announcements. ARCH-L has online archives going back to May 1992 http://listserv.tamu.edu/archives/ arch-l.html. More focused lists create online communities of archaeological specialists, although some regret the time required just to monitor all the lists in which they have an interest. The most significant impact of the Internet on archaeology has come about through the use of the Web for publication and dissemination. By creating its own website, any project, whether major statefunded research, or local archaeology society, or community-based, is able to promote itself online. New web tools such as ‘blogs’: weblogs which are online journals or diaries, or ‘wikis’: collaborative online environments to which a number of people can contribute, allow higher levels of interaction. Other innovations, including automated web newsfeeds, webcams, and webcasts, have been used very effectively by fieldwork projects to broadcast regular updates on new discoveries (see Popular Culture and Archaeology). Enthusiasts have created websites for every possible archaeological subject. While this can be seen as a democratizing process, allowing everyone access to the means of self-publication, the downside is the lack of traditional academic control and review, leading to the easy promulgation of unscientific nonsense. The multivocality allowed by the Internet has resonated with many postmodern archaeological thinkers, but it demands high-level skills of source criticism from its users. There are, however, a number of authoritative archaeological websites, which have followed traditional publication models. The first peer-reviewed e-journal for Archaeology, Internet Archaeology http://intarch.ac.uk, was first published in 1996. Antiquity http://antiquity.ac.uk has also developed a web presence of additional features. Most archaeological journals have responded to the growth of the Internet by providing parallel online editions, using

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the PDF format. The JSTOR archive http://www. jstor.org/ now provides access to a large number of scholarly journals, including American Antiquity. However, this is really a means of using the Internet for electronic distribution of a traditional printed journal, rather than electronic publication in its own right. Other projects have been highly innovative in exploiting the potential of the Internet to provide access to elaborate graphics, including multimedia, online Geographic Information System (GIS), and searchable databases. The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery http://www.daacs. org/ provides an excellent example of a highly interactive excavation publication. The Internet can also provide access to material which would never have been published in traditional form. Archaeology has suffered from a growing problem of gaining access to unpublished grey literature, reporting the results of contract archaeology. In the UK, the OASIS project has provided an index to that literature and is gradually making it available online, together with an online recording form for reporting new fieldwork http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/project/oasis/. In the United States, the National Parks Service has set up NADB-Reports – a bibliographic database of gray literature. The Internet has also allowed unparalleled access to primary sources. In the UK, the Archaeology Data Service (ADS) provides online access to a growing number of archaeological fieldwork archives http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/; in the USA the Perseus Project has a particular focus on classical texts and archaeology http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/. However, the majority of archaeological content available via the Internet is only accessible by searching online databases in what is known as the ‘deep web’, as opposed to the ‘surface web’ of indexable web pages and images. Examples of deep web content include the National Monuments Records, or sites and monument inventories of a number of countries or regions. Among the first to go online was Scotland, which now provides sophisticated map-based searching of its CANMORE inventory http://www.rcahms. gov.uk/. The online database of the Portable Antiquities Scheme http://www.finds.org.uk, which holds information about finds reported by members of the public under the Treasure Act for England and Wales, is an interesting example of a community-fed online resource. As the Internet grows as a primary means of providing access to archaeological information fears have been expressed that it disenfranchises those who lack the technical skills or high-speed connections that are commonly assumed. Although there are parts of the developing world – as well as sections of the population of the developed world (particularly the

aged) – for whom this is true, it is not clear that these problems are greater than those of access to academic libraries, and in most cases they are substantially less. As the quantity of Internet information grows another difficulty is finding what you want. A number of sites have developed which attempt to provide guides to archaeology on the Internet, or a subset of it. The Archaeology pages at About.com http:// archaeology.about.com/ or those provided by the popular archaeology magazine Current Archaeology http://www.archaeology.co.uk/ are among the most successful. The former has a useful set of links to archaeological blogs. Other sites, sometimes described as web gateways, provide lists of links to sites, often with summary abstracts. The ARCHNET site, currently hosted at the University of Arizona http://archnet. asu.edu/, is one of the most useful resources; one of the most innovative sites is that provided by the British Archaeological Jobs Resource http://www.bajr.org/. However, one of the greatest problems facing these sites is keeping up to date with the logarithmic growth of the web; most depend upon considerable investment of time and expertise, and it is difficult to see how they can be sustainable in the long term without institutional support. Most Internet users will also turn to a search engine to find what they are looking for, and the dominance of ‘Google’ makes it the first port of call for most people looking for archaeology on the web. Google is an extremely valuable tool in some circumstances and is difficult to beat as a free text index, but it does not provide access to the ‘deep web’, and it cannot take advantage of structured information held in databases. Thus it cannot distinguish, for instance, between Barrow as a place, a person, or an excavation tool. Library catalogs use simple metadata (‘data about data’) for author, title, date, place of publication, and subject, in order to help us find the book we want. The Dublin Core has been adopted as the agreed metadata standard for resource discovery for electronic resources. The Open Archives Initiative has also agreed a standard (OAI-PMH) for metadata harvesting, which allows the crosssearching of structured information held in distributed databases. Nonetheless, for such searching to be effective requires adherence to standards and the adoption of agreed archaeological vocabularies and subject thesauri. It is envisaged that in the future, Internet tools will be able to make much more effective use of structured data. The mark-up language HTML just controls how a web page is rendered by the browser software. Tim Berners-Lee’s vision for a Semantic Web shows how XML will be used to tag the content of web pages, allowing more automated harvesting and assimilation of relevant information. In the United

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States the term ‘cyberinfrastucture’ has been used to describe a web-based research environment in which multiple datasets can be integrated and analyzed; elsewhere the term ‘e-Science’ has been adopted to reflect new ways of undertaking collaborative research using the Internet. Finally, there is an underlying concern that because of the lack of central control of the Internet there are problems with the longevity and sustainability of archaeological pages. Many sites are transient and web addresses change. The ‘Internet Archive’ takes regular snapshots of many websites but there are long-term issues about the preservation of digital data. In the UK the ADS is seeking to address some of these problems, and other countries are becoming aware of the need to archive digital data, but there are inevitably challenges in coordinating preservation activity at an international level, while the Internet continues to evolve at such a rapid rate. See also: Interpretation of Archaeology for the Public; Popular Culture and Archaeology.

Further Reading Lock G (2003) Using Computers in Archaeology: Towards Virtual Pasts. London: Routledge. Richards JD (2002) Digital preservation and access. European Journal of Archaeology 5(3): 343–367.

Relevant Websites http://archaeology.about – About Archaeology. http://antiquity.ac.uk – Antiquity. http://ads.ahds.ac.uk – Archaeology Data Service. http://archnet.asu.edu – Archnet. http://www.bajr.org – British Archaeologicsl Jobs Resource. http://www.archaeology.co.uk – Current Archaeology. http://www.daacs.org – Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery. http://intarch.ac.uk – Internet Archaeology. http://www.internetworldstats – Internet World Stats. http://www.jstor.org – Journal Storage. http://www.finds.org.uk – Portable Antiquities Scheme. http://listserv.tamu.edu – Texas A & M University. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu – The Perseus Digital Library. http://www.rcahms.gov.uk – The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. http://www.whitehouse.gov – The White House.

INTERPRETATION OF ARCHAEOLOGY FOR THE PUBLIC John H Jameson, Southeast Archeological Center, Tallahassee, FL, USA Published by Elsevier Inc.

Glossary community A group or class of people having common interests, likeness, or identity. Communities include educational, professional, academic, governmental, descendant, and local. Communities are not discrete in that they can and do overlap. For example, members of a descendant community may also be part of the educational and the professional communities. community-based archaeology A partnership established between professional archaeologists and nonarchaeologists in order to develop more meaningful public interpretation and programming. In this relationship, archaeologists not only study communities as part of their research agenda, but also include substantive input from community members in all phases of planning, research, and interpretation. cultural heritage A collection of social, cultural, scientific, archaeological, architectural, historical, artistic, spiritual, or religious values, unique and nonrenewable, attributed to tangibles and intangibles associated with objects, sites, landscapes, structures, or natural features.

cultural resource Similar and often synonymous with cultural heritage, sometimes used to refer to cultural and legal aspects of properties and sites. heritage tourism The travel, visitation, and economic activities directed at and associated with an area’s cultural heritage, recreational resources, and natural resources. ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) An international nongovernmental organization of professionals (e.g., architects, historians, archaeologists, art historians, geographers, anthropologists, engineers, and town planners), dedicated to the conservation of the world’s historic monuments and sites, as well as promoting the application of theory, methodology, and scientific techniques to the conservation of the architectural and archaeological heritage. Its work is based on the principles enshrined in the 1964 International Charter on the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (the Venice Charter). ICOMOS Ename Charter on Interpretation of Cultural Heritage Sites (Ename Charter) An initiative of the Ename (East Flanders, Belgium) Center for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation, adopted by ICOMOS, to define the basic objectives and principles of site interpretation in relation to authenticity, intellectual integrity, social responsibility, and respect for cultural significance and context. public archaeology Commonly refers to archaeological activities that are publicly funded or directed. Sometimes used to

1530 INTERPRETATION OF ARCHAEOLOGY FOR THE PUBLIC refer to compliance-driven archaeological work (cultural resource management or CRM), as well as activities that are oriented toward public understanding and participation. stakeholder Any person or group that can claim a social, economic, cultural, scientific, archaeological, historical, artistic, spiritual, religious, or community connection to cultural resources and heritage.

Introduction As a specialty within the sphere of public archaeology and cultural heritage management, the public interpretation of archaeological and cultural sites has come to be recognized as an essential component in the conservation and protection of cultural resources and sites and to foster public stewardship around the world. In the United States, the development of resource protection legislation and cultural resource management (CRM) strategies in the 1960s and 1970s, and the resultant very rapid accumulation of archaeological and historical site information and collected artifacts, led to concerns for inclusiveness and sensitivity to heritage values of multidimensional constituents or ‘stakeholders’ (see Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation). By the late 1980s, many archaeologists in the United States and elsewhere were addressing the contemporary context of their research as part of a growing practical and ethical awareness. The 1990s saw the emergence of greater energy and funding devoted to the public interface of archaeology as the professional community became aware that intellectual introversion was no longer acceptable and that more attention should be paid to the mechanisms, programs, and standards of public presentation. Among leading professional interpreters, only the programs and presentations that attempted to go beyond rote informational recitation and convey emotional as well as intellectual connections between the lay public and the rapidly expanding body of archaeological knowledge were acceptable. In the face of an increasing public interest and demand for information, archaeologists and their cultural heritage colleagues began to more actively collaborate to devise effective strategies for public presentation and interpretation. Until the 1990s, publications on public presentation and interpretation strategies and standards were rare and largely obscured in isolated accounts and academic grey literature.

esthetic, artistic, spiritual, emotional, and other values stemming from introspection. An expansion and broadening of the content of ‘archaeological knowledge’ to be more inclusive and less authoritative has emerged, broadening the definition and meaning of ‘expert’. An important result has been the emergence of the interpretive narrative approach in archaeological interpretation, where archaeologists actively participate in structuring a compelling story instead of just presenting sets of derived data. The narrative is used as a vehicle for understanding and communicating, a ‘sharing’ as well as an ‘imparting’, of archaeological values within the interpretation process. This trend is resulting in profound ramifications for definitions of significance in heritage management deliberations and what is ultimately classified, conserved, maintained, and interpreted. It will change the role we play and the values we present in historic preservation and education. It will affect our strategies for conducting research and the public interpretation of that research. The challenge for archaeologists, cultural historians, and other resource stewards is to educate ourselves on the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities to deal with these developments. Paramount for educators and interpreters is ensuring that our audiences connect with and understand cultural heritage values, those tangibles and intangibles that define what is important to people. We strive in these endeavors to develop more holistic interpretations in which the values of sustainable environment and heritage are inextricably linked. We have recognized that multidisciplinary and inclusive approaches are the most effective. The sites we deal with are no longer limited to great iconic monuments and places, but now include millions of places of importance to sectors of society that were once invisible or intentionally ignored. These sites can play an important role in fostering peaceful multicultural societies, maintaining communal or ethnic identities, and serving as the indispensable theater in which the ancient traditions that make each culture a unique treasure are performed periodically, even daily. The values of these previously ignored and heretofore low-priority sites and features are often not readily obvious in the material fabric or surrounding geography, but they must be identified and require a narrative for the fullness of their meaning to be properly conveyed to locals, site visitors, and the public at large. This is accomplished through processes of public interpretation and education.

Standards Development For today’s archaeologists, traditional definitions for the terms ‘historic’, ‘archaeological’, and ‘scientific’ are changing to incorporate intangibles such as

The NPS Interpretive Development Program (IDP)

The US National Park Service (NPS) has been a leader in North America in developing interdisciplinary and

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more holistic approaches to public interpretation of heritage. The agency regards interpretation as ‘‘a distinct profession encompassing a philosophical framework that combines the essence of the past with the dynamism of the present to shape the future’’ (NPS IDP 2006). The NPS Interpretive Development Program (IDP), conceived by NPS in the mid-1990s, and still evolving in the early years of the twenty-first century, encourages the stewardship of park resources by facilitating meaningful, memorable visitor experiences. Based on the philosophy that people will care for what they first care about, the program aims for the highest standards of professionalism. It calls for a mission-based training and development curriculum, field-developed national standards for interpretive effectiveness, a peer review certification program, and developmental tools and resources. It is designed to foster accountability and professionalism in interpretation, facilitate meaningful and memorable experiences for visitors, raise the level of public stewardship for park resources, and facilitate learner-driven skill development. Before the 1990s, training for NPS interpreters included a detailed introduction to significant names, dates, and references to important books. Often this introduction was coupled with an exercise in writing a personal definition of interpretation. The IDP approach incorporates many important aspects of these methods but with a strengthened sense of individual responsibility: professional interpreters are trained to search for understanding the process of interpretation in fostering resource stewardship. NPS interpreters are expected to be able to articulate the outcomes of interpretation in order to make personal choices in approach and establish the relevance of interpretation for resource decision makers. The program is based on the precept that effective interpretation moves beyond a recitation of scientific data, chronologies, and descriptions. The IDP program has adopted an interpretation formula expressed as an equation: (KR þ KA)
AT ¼ IO (Knowledge of the Resource þ Knowledge of the Audience
Appropriate Techniques ¼ Interpretive Opportunities). The interpretive equation applies to all interpretive activities and embraces a discussion of multiple points of view incorporating related human values, conflicts, ideas, tragedies, achievements, ambiguities, and triumphs. The ultimate role of interpretation is to support conservation by facilitating public recognition and support of resource stewardship. This is accomplished by facilitating opportunities for visitors to forge linkages with resource meanings that contribute to the development of a stewardship ethic. The program’s credo is ‘‘Interpretation is a seed, not a tree’’ (NPS IDP 2006).

The IDP program attempts to define the ‘art’ and ‘skill’ of interpretation, effective interpretation techniques, and modes of delivery. The techniques and modes used are tailored to the backgrounds and identities of target audiences and communities, as well as other constituent stakeholders. To date, 12 training modules for interpretation have been developed, listed as follows in ascending degrees of specialty and employee development: . Module 101: Fulfilling the NPS Mission: The Process of Interpretation . Module 102: Informal Visitor Contacts . Module 103: Prepare and Present an Interpretive Talk . Module 210: Prepare and Present a Conducted Activity . Module 220: Prepare and Present an Interpretive Demonstration or Illustrated Program . Module 230: Effective Interpretive Writing . Module 270: Present an Effective CurriculumBased Program . Module 310: Planning Park Interpretation . Module 311: Interpretive Media Development . Module 330: Leading Interpreters: Training and Coaching . Module 340: Interpretive Research and Resource Liaison . Module 440: Effective Interpretation of Archeological Resources These specialties relate to a set of competencies developed by NPS for national standards in interpretation. They stand as a goal to foster interpretive excellence nationwide in NPS areas at every stage of an employee’s career. A standard rubric is developed and used by peer review certifiers in measuring whether a specific product demonstrates the elements of success in that area, at a point in time. Employees use the rubric as a guide for self-assessment and to determine whether they need to work on skills or complete other preparation before attempting to meet the certification standards. The basic or core assessment rubric is expressed in two interconnected parts: 1. The project/program is successful as a catalyst in creating opportunities for the audience to form their own intellectual and emotional connections with meanings/significance inherent in the resource. 2. The project/program is appropriate for the audience, and provides a clear focus for their connection with the resource(s) by demonstrating the cohesive development of a relevant idea or ideas, rather than relying primarily on a recital of a chronological narrative or a series of related facts.

1532 INTERPRETATION OF ARCHAEOLOGY FOR THE PUBLIC The ‘‘Effective Interpretation of Archaeological Resources’’ Training Module

The 12th module, ‘‘Module 440, Effective Interpretation of Archaeological Resources,’’ was developed in the late 1990s as a ‘shared competency’ specialty where archaeologists and interpreter-educators are trained to work together in creating more effective programs. The module includes the premise that modern public interpretation programs should seek to present a variety of perspectives to multicultural audiences that result in a greater understanding and appreciation of past human behavior and activities. In these settings, archaeologists, interpreters, educators, and site managers collaborate in using their knowledge and skills to create opportunities for the audience to form intellectual and emotional connections to the meanings and significance of archaeological records and the peoples who created them. The module was created in association with the NPS Stephen T. Mather and Horace Albright training centers, by an interdisciplinary task group. Considered an advanced specialty, the module was designed to be an elective training opportunity for both archaeologists and nonarchaeologists. Intended to strengthen the relationships between archaeology and public interpretation, the overall purpose of the training is to make public archaeological presentation and interpretation more accurate and effective. It calls for archaeologists, interpreters, educators, and others to be trained together in the skills and abilities (shared competencies) needed to carry out a successful interpretation program. The module stems from an NPS-wide

push to improve training and development of its employees and to promote better methods for interpreting archaeological resources. Courses and workshops guided by the module are designed to improve interdisciplinary communication for a team approach to developing and carrying out effective public interpretation programs and projects. They are also designed for multi-agency, cross-cultural, and international relevancy. During the training, interpreters and educators gain knowledge of archaeology for developing presentations and media about archaeological resources. Archaeologists gain the foundation of knowledge and skills in interpretation necessary to develop interpretive presentations and media about cultural resources. All groups gain knowledge and skills through increased dialogue and interactions between archaeologists and interpreters for joint development of effective interpretation of archaeology. Two major goals of courses and workshops are to create opportunities for audiences to (1) learn about archaeological interpretations and how they are made, and (2) to ascribe their own meanings (values) to archaeological resources, helping to increase public understanding and concern for preservation and protection of archaeological values. Partcipants typically include archaeologists, interpreters, guides, education specialists, museum specialists, and site managers. The module is being applied at training courses and workshops at national parks and other cultural sites throughout the United States (Figure 1). The NPS Management Policies document, revised in 2006, reiterates the importance of educational and

Figure 1 Interdisciplinary focus group discusses public archaeology program during 40-hour Module 440 ‘‘Effective Interpretation of Archeological Resources’’ training, Old Dorchester State Park, South Carolina, 2004.

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interpretive programs in the NPS and the leadership role that NPS plays: ‘‘visitors will be offered authentic experiences and opportunities to immerse themselves in places where events actually happened, experience the thrill of connecting with real objects used by previous generations, enjoy some of the most beautiful and historic places in America, and understand the difficult moments our nation has endured.’’

Programs will ‘‘provide each visitor with an interpretive experience that is enjoyable and inspirational within the context of the park’s tangible resources and the meanings they represent’’ (NPS 2006). Evolving Philosophies of Interpretation

The National Association of Interpretation (NAI) definition for interpretation, which closely parallels the NPS IDP definition, states: ‘‘Interpretation is a communication process that forges emotional and intellectual connections between the interests of the audience and the inherent meanings in the resource’’ (NAI 2005). Recent international developments related to interpretation are attempting to distinguish between the terms ‘presentation’ and ‘interpretation’ in ways that seem to cross-cut the NPS/IDP definitions. Though similar to the NPS definitions, the recently formed ICOMOS International Committee on Interpretation and Presentation (ICIP), in its mission statement, states: ‘‘Presentation’’ denotes the carefully planned arrangement of information and physical access to a cultural heritage site, usually by scholars, design firms, and heritage professionals. As such, it is largely a one-way mode of communication. ‘‘Interpretation,’’ on the other hand, denotes the totality of activity, reflection, research, and creativity stimulated by a cultural heritage site. In this respect the input and involvement of visitors, local and associated community groups, and other stakeholders of various ages and educational backgrounds is essential to interpretation and to the transformation of cultural heritage sites into places and sources of learning and reflection about the past, as well as valuable resources for sustainable community development and intercultural and intergenerational dialogue (ICOMOS ICIP 2006).

In the ICIP definition, ‘interpretation’ appears to be a more loaded term. The NPS IDP program, historically emphasizing the art and skill of interpretation, rather than its social and political underpinnings, nevertheless appears to be moving in a more broad conceptual, albeit qualified, direction: ‘‘I think we’re moving toward embracing the larger concepts of visitor experience. Visitor experience includes interpretation ... As for interpretation itself; I see their [ICIP’s] definition as one more abstract attempt to herd cats. I’m not sure what it really means. I think the IDP

and NAI approach is more helpful because it identifies the actual work involved. Interpreters do all the things the larger definition suggests, but can now be precise about how and when they do interpretation’’ (David L. Larsen, personal communication, 2006; author’s added emphasis in italic font).

The Ename Charter initiative In response to increased economic and political pressures from the tourism industry, coupled with an enhanced public interface, the standards for interpretation of heritage sites have become important topics for international discussion and debate. During the spring of 2002, an initial draft of a charter dealing with the interpretation of cultural heritage sites was written by the staff of the Ename (Belgium) Center for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation, based on close consultation with colleagues, and following the model of earlier charters in the cultural heritage field. The Ename Charter mission is to provide ‘‘international standards and guidelines for authenticity, intellectual integrity and sustainable development in the public preservation of archaeological and historical sites and landscapes’’ (Ename Center 2006). The first draft of the charter was circulated widely during the summer of 2002 in anticipation of the Ghent Conference on Heritage, Technology and Local Development. As a follow-up to this conference and the workshops and discussions held in Ghent, a special roundtable discussion on the Ename Charter was organized by the NPS in Washington in November 2002. Subsequent drafts of the charter have attempted to refine more internationally workable approaches to protecting the physical integrity and authenticity of sites, ensuing that all aspects of a site’s significance are impartially made known to visitors, preventing the site’s significance from being used for political propaganda, and ensuring an ethical, professional approach to heritage interpretation. The Ename Charter principles The Ename Charter on Interpretation is internationally significant in the history of heritage management in that it addresses the purpose and principles of public interpretation, arguably the most important activity that occurs at a historic site, by delivering the conservation, education, and stewardship messages that represent the transcendent humanistic values of the resource. Having gone through several drafts and revisions, the current draft (dated 12 December 2006, Table 1) continues to be scrutinized by the international community of interpretation experts. The main body of the charter is a set of basic principles for interpretation that provide an outline of professional and ethical standards.

1534 INTERPRETATION OF ARCHAEOLOGY FOR THE PUBLIC Table 1 ICOMOS Charter for the Interpretation of Cultural Heritage Sites, draft dated 12 December 2006 (Ename Center 2006) PREAMBLE Since its establishment in 1965 as a worldwide organisation of heritage professionals dedicated to the study, documentation, and protection of cultural heritage sites, ICOMOS has strived to promote the conservation ethic and to help enhance public appreciation of humanity’s material heritage in all its forms and diversity. As noted in the Charter of Venice (1964) ‘‘It is essential that the principles guiding the preservation and restoration of ancient buildings should be agreed and be laid down on an international basis, with each country being responsible for applying the plan within the framework of its own culture and traditions.’’ Subsequent ICOMOS charters have taken up that mission, establishing professional guidelines for specific conservation challenges and encouraging effective communication about the importance of heritage conservation in every region of the world. These earlier ICOMOS charters stress the importance of public communication as an essential part of the larger conservation process (variously describing it as ‘‘dissemination,’’ ‘‘popularization,’’ ‘‘presentation,’’ and ‘‘interpretation’’). They implicitly acknowledge that every act of heritage conservation – within all the world’s cultural traditions – is by its nature a communicative act. For the vast range of surviving material remains of past communities and civilisations, the choice of what to preserve, how to preserve it, and how it is to be presented to the public are all elements of site interpretation. They represent every generation’s vision of what is significant, what is important, and why material remains from the past should be passed on to generations yet to come. The need for a clear rationale, standardised terminology, and accepted professional principles for Interpretation and Presentationa is evident. In recent years, the dramatic expansion of interpretive activities at many cultural heritage sites and the introduction of elaborate interpretive technologies and new economic strategies for the marketing and management of cultural heritage sites have created new complexities and aroused basic questions that are central to the goals of both conservation and the public appreciation of cultural heritage sites throughout the world: – What are the accepted and acceptable goals for the Interpretation and Presentation of cultural heritage sites? – What principles should help determine which technical means and methods are appropriate in particular cultural and heritage contexts? – What ethical and professional considerations should help shape Interpretation and Presentation regardless of its specific forms and techniques? The purpose of this Charter is therefore to define the basic principles of Interpretation and Presentation as essential components of heritage conservation efforts and as a means of enhancing public appreciation and understanding of cultural heritage sites.b DEFINITIONS For the purposes of the present Charter, Interpretation refers to the full range of potential activities intended to heighten public awareness and enhance understanding of cultural heritage site. These can include professional and popular publications, public lectures, on-site installations, formal and informal educational programmes; community activities; and ongoing research, training, and evaluation of the interpretation process itself. Presentation more specifically denotes the carefully planned communication of interpretive content through the arrangement of interpretive information, physical access, and interpretive infrastructure at a cultural heritage site. It can be conveyed through a variety of technical means, including, yet not requiring, such elements as informational panels, museum-type displays, formalized walking tours, lectures and guided tours, and multimedia applications. Interpretive infrastructure refers to physical installations, facilities, and areas at a cultural heritage site that may be specifically utilised for the purposes of interpretation and presentation. Site interpreters refers to staff or volunteers at a cultural heritage site who are permanently or temporarily engaged in the public communication of information relating to the values and significance of the site. Cultural Heritage Site refers to a locality, natural landscape, settlement area, architectural complex, archaeological site, or standing structure that is recognized and often legally protected as a place of historical and cultural significance. OBJECTIVES In recognizing that interpretation and presentation are part of the overall process of cultural heritage conservation and management, this Charter seeks to establish seven cardinal principles, upon which Interpretation and Presentation – in whatever form or medium is deemed appropriate in specific circumstances – should be based. Principle 1: Access and Understanding Principle 2: Soundness of Information Sources Principle 3: Attention to Setting and Context Principle 4: Preservation of Authenticity Principle 5: Planning for Sustainability Principle 6: Concern for Inclusiveness Principle 7: Importance of Research, Evaluation, and Training Following from these seven principles, the objectives of this Charter are to: 1. Facilitate understanding and appreciation of cultural heritage sites and foster public awareness of the need for their protection and conservation. 2. Communicate the meaning of cultural heritage sites through careful, documented recognition of their significance, through accepted scientific and scholarly methods as well as from living cultural traditions. 3. Safeguard the tangible and intangible values of cultural heritage sites in their natural and cultural settings and social context. 4. Respect the authenticity of cultural heritage sites, by communicating the significance of their historic fabric and cultural values and protecting them from the adverse impact of intrusive interpretive infrastructure. Continued

INTERPRETATION OF ARCHAEOLOGY FOR THE PUBLIC 1535 Table 1 Continued 5. Contribute to the sustainable conservation of cultural heritage sites, through promoting public understanding of ongoing conservation efforts and ensuring long-term maintenance and updating of the interpretive infrastructure. 6. Encourage inclusiveness in the interpretation of cultural heritage sites, by facilitating the involvement of stakeholders and associated communities in the development and implementation of interpretive programmes. 7. Develop technical and professional standards for heritage interpretation and presentation, including technologies, research, and training. These standards must be appropriate and sustainable in their social contexts. PRINCIPLES Principle 1: Access and Understanding Interpretation and presentation programmes, in whatever form deemed appropriate and sustainable, should facilitate physical and intellectual access by the public to cultural heritage sites 1.1. Effective interpretation and presentation should enhance experience, increase public respect and understanding, and communicate the importance of the conservation of cultural heritage sites. 1.2. Interpretation and presentation should encourage individuals and communities to reflect on their own perceptions of a site and establish a meaningful connection to it by providing insights – as well as facts. The aim should be to stimulate further interest and learning. 1.3. Interpretation and presentation programmes should identify and assess their audiences demographically and culturally. Every effort should be made to communicate the site’s values and significance to its varied audiences. 1.4. The diversity of language among visitors and associated communities connected with a heritage site should be reflected in the interpretive infrastructure. 1.5. Interpretation and presentation activities should also be physically accessible to the public, in all its variety. 1.6. In cases where physical access to a cultural heritage site is restricted due to conservation concerns, cultural sensitivities, adaptive re-use, or safety issues, interpretation and presentation should be provided off-site. Principle 2: Information Sources Interpretation and presentation should be based on evidence gathered through accepted scientific and scholarly methods as well as from living cultural traditions. 2.1. Interpretation should show the range of oral and written information, material remains, traditions, and meanings attributed to a site. It should also clearly identify the sources of this information. 2.2. Interpretation should be based on a well researched, multidisciplinary study of the site and its surroundings, but should also acknowledge that meaningful interpretation also necessarily includes reflection on alternative historical hypotheses, local myths, and stories. 2.3. At cultural heritage sites where traditional storytelling or memories of historical participants provide an important source of information about the significance of the site, interpretive programmes should incorporate these oral testimonies – either indirectly, through the facilities of the interpretive infrastructure, or directly, through the active participation of members of associated communities as on-site interpreters. 2.4. Visual reconstructions, whether by artists, architects, or computer modelers, should be based upon detailed and systematic analysis of environmental, archaeological, architectural, and historical data, including analysis of written, oral and iconographic sources, and photography. The information sources on which such visual renderings are based should be clearly documented and alternative reconstructions based on the same evidence, when available, should be provided for comparison. 2.5. Interpretation and presentation activities and the research and information sources on which they are based should be documented and archived for future reference and reflection. Principle 3: Context and Setting The Interpretation and Presentation of cultural heritage sites should relate to their wider social, cultural, historical, and natural contexts and settings. 3.1. Interpretation should explore the significance of a site in its multi-faceted historical, political, spiritual, and artistic contexts. It should consider all aspects of the site’s cultural, social, and environmental significance. 3.2. The public interpretation of a cultural heritage site should always clearly distinguish and date the successive phases and influences in its evolution. The contributions of all periods to the significance of a site should be respected. 3.3. Interpretation should also take into account all groups that have contributed to the historical and cultural significance of the site. 3.4. The surrounding landscape, natural environment, and geographical setting are all integral parts of a site’s historical and cultural significance, and, as such, should be taken into account in its interpretation. 3.5. Intangible elements of a site’s heritage such as cultural and spiritual traditions, stories, music, dance, theater, literature, visual arts, personal customs and cuisine should be noted and included in its interpretation. 3.6. The cross-cultural significance of heritage sites, as well as the range of perspectives about them based on scholarly research, ancient records, and living traditions, should be considered in the formulation of interpretive programmes. Principle 4: Authenticity The Interpretation and presentation of cultural heritage sites must respect the basic tenets of authenticity in the spirit of the Nara Document (1994). 4.1. Authenticity is a concern relevant to human communities as well as material remains. The design of a heritage interpretation programme should respect the traditional social functions of the site and the cultural practices and dignity of local residents and associated communities. Continued

1536 INTERPRETATION OF ARCHAEOLOGY FOR THE PUBLIC Table 1 Continued 4.2. Interpretation and presentation should contribute to the conservation of the authenticity of a cultural heritage site by communicating its significance without adversely impacting its cultural values or irreversibly altering its fabric. 4.3. All visible interpretive infrastructure (such as kiosks, walking paths, and information panels), when deemed appropriate and necessary must be sensitive to the character, setting and the cultural and natural significance of the site, while remaining easily identifiable. 4.4. On-site concerts, dramatic performances, and other interpretive activities – when deemed appropriate and sensitive to the character of the site – must be carefully planned to minimise disturbance to the local residents and to the physical surroundings of the site. Principle 5: Sustainability The interpretive plan for a cultural heritage site must be sensitive to its natural and cultural environment, with social, financial, and environmental sustainability among its central goals. 5.1. The development and implementation of interpretation and presentation programmes should be an integral part of the overall planning, budgeting, and management process of cultural heritage sites. 5.2. The potential effect of interpretive infrastructure and visitor numbers on the cultural value, physical characteristics, integrity, and natural environment of the site must be fully considered in heritage impact assessment studies. 5.3. Interpretation and presentation should serve a wide range of educational and cultural objectives. The success of an interpretive programme should not be judged solely on the basis of visitor attendance figures or revenue. 5.4. Interpretation and presentation should be an integral part of the conservation process, enhancing the public’s awareness of specific conservation problems encountered at the site and explaining the efforts being taken to protect the site’s physical integrity. 5.5. Any technical or technological elements selected to become a permanent part of a site’s interpretive infrastructure should be designed and constructed in a manner that will ensure effective and regular maintenance. 5.6. Interpretive activities should aim to provide equitable and sustainable economic, social, and cultural benefits to the host community at all levels, through education, training, and the creation of economic opportunities. To that end, the training and employment of site interpreters from the host community should be encouraged. Principle 6: Inclusiveness The Interpretation and Presentation of cultural heritage sites must be the result of meaningful collaboration between heritage professionals, associated communities, and other stakeholders. 6.1. The multidisciplinary expertise of scholars, conservation experts, governmental authorities, site managers, tourism operators, and other professionals should be integrated in the formulation of interpretation and presentation programmes. 6.2. The traditional rights, responsibilities, and interests of property owners, nearby residents, and associated communities should be noted and respected in the planning of site interpretation and presentation programmes. 6.3. Plans for expansion or revision of interpretation and presentation programmes should be open for public comment and involvement. It is the right and responsibility of all to make their opinions and perspectives known. 6.4. Because the question of intellectual property and traditional cultural rights is especially relevant to the interpretation process and its expression in various communication media (such as on-site multimedia presentations, digital media, and printed materials), legal ownership and right to use images, texts, and other interpretive materials should be discussed and clarified in the planning process. Principle 7: Research, Evaluation and Training Continuing research, training, and evaluation are essential components of the interpretation of a cultural heritage site. 7.1. The interpretation of a cultural heritage site should not be considered to be completed with the completion of a specific interpretive infrastructure. Continuing research and consultation are important to furthering the understanding and appreciation of a site’s significance and should be integral elements in every heritage interpretation programme. 7.2. The interpretive programme and infrastructure should be designed and constructed in a way that ensures periodic content revision and/or expansion. 7.3. Interpretation and presentation programmes and their physical impact on a site should be continuously monitored and evaluated, and periodic changes made on the basis of both scientific and scholarly analysis and public feedback. Visitors and members of associated communities as well as heritage professionals should be involved in this evaluation process. 7.4. Every interpretation programme should be seen as an educational resource and its design should take into account its possible use in school curricula, communications and information media, special activities, events, and seasonal volunteer involvement. 7.5. The training of qualified professionals in the specialised fields of heritage interpretation and presentation, such as content creation, management, technology, guiding, and education, is a crucial objective. In addition, basic academic conservation programmes should include a component on interpretation and presentation in their courses of study. 7.6. On-site training programmes and courses should be developed with the objective of updating and informing heritage and interpretation staff of all levels and associated and host communities of recent developments and innovations in the field. 7.7. International cooperation and sharing of experience are essential to developing and maintaining standards in interpretation methods and technologies. To that end, international conferences, workshops and exchanges of professional staff as well as national and regional meetings should be encouraged. These will provide an opportunity for the regular sharing of information about the diversity of interpretive approaches and experiences in various regions and cultures. a

See definitions in text. Although the principles and objectives of this Charter may equally apply to off-site interpretation, its main focus is interpretation and presentation at, or in the immediate vicinity of, cultural heritage sites. b

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The principles place emphasis on the essential roles of public communication and education in heritage preservation and are presented under the following basic headings: Access and Understanding; Information Sources; Context and Setting; Authenticity; Sustainability; Inclusiveness; and Research, Education, and Training. On the surface, the principles are generally commonsensical in terms of conditions and prescriptions for effective public interpretation. Just ‘how’ the principles are articulated, however, will determine how well they are received in international circles and whether they will be considered desirable, practical, and feasible. In countries with fragile or questionable human rights histories or poorly developed infrastructure, practical applications could be problematic. Because of their importance in outlining the major issues and foci of international dialogue and points of contention, they are given in their entirety below. ICOMOS initiatives In January 2004, the Executive Committee of the International Committee on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) agreed that the work of review and revision of the Ename Charter would be undertaken under the auspices of a small editorial group working closely with a team chosen by the Ename Center. Unlike other charters in the past, whose drafting and initial review process was the responsibility of one ICOMOS International Scientific Committee (ISC), the present charter’s broad nature and general pertinence initially precluded it from having a single sponsor ISC. The plan set forth by ICOMOS called for the text to be debated and further scrutinized with extensive discussion in order to reflect the global consensus and universal wisdom that is the hallmark of all ICOMOS doctrinal documents. The review time was extended until the ICOMOS General Assembly in Quebec, Canada, in 2008. The issues that continue to be discussed and debated include: . defining mechanisms for securing stakeholder participation, in that there are no universally shared views on who are the valid stakeholders; . further analysis, in terms of establishing acceptable boundaries and better guidance as to their interpretation, on the interpretation of religious and sacred sites, places of memory and the so-called sites of conscience; . further discussion on the nature and circumstances of ‘authenticity’ as it relates to both tangible and intangible heritage resources; . the question of the universal need to interpret heritage sites and categories and the circumstances that surround them that influence decisions to interpret as well as the level of interpretation; and

. defining ‘target audience’ to include not only the professional preservation community, but also the growing numbers of specialists that conceive, design, and build interpretation programs and infrastructure, knowing little about the principles of heritage conservation and management. The Charleston Declaration International dialogue and reaction spurred by the Ename Charter initiative led ICOMOS to expand global discussions using the Ename Charter as a stimulus to guide and inform the process. In early May 2005, in recognition of high public interest and the effects of mass tourism, the connections to current heritage management practices, and technological advancements, US/ICOMOS held a conference in Charleston, South Carolina, to better articulate a consensus on internationally applicable public interpretation principles. The main outcome of the conference was the Charleston Declaration on Heritage Interpretation, issued on 7 May 2005, which reiterated the importance and purpose of establishing a set of internationally relevant principles for interpretation and called for further international dialogue. The declaration pointed out that additional clarifications were needed before the adoption of a doctrinal document on interpretation at the ICOMOS General Assembly in Quebec in 2008. In addition, the declaration recognized that more scrutiny is needed on four major issues: . defining mechanisms for incorporating stakeholder perceptions and values; . providing guidance for interpretation of religious and sacred sites, places of contested significance, and sites of conscience or ‘painful memory’; . defining the concept and role of ‘authenticity’; and . how the categorization of heritage sites and the circumstances that surround them affect opposition or support among cultures and communities as well as the level of interpretation. The Ename Charter and the Charleston Declaration are important in that they address international standards of public interpretation through conservation and stewardship messages that relate to cultural heritage values. The use in the charter of such terms as ‘responsibility’ and ‘appropriateness’ calls for careful scrutiny in how certain terms and expressions are worded and how well the charter is ultimately accepted internationally.

Today’s Challenges The Issue of ‘Authenticity’

At Chaco Canyon in the mid-1990s, Christine Finn examined the quandary of NPS employees in dealing with ritual objects left at Casa Rinconada. In her

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essay, she raises the issue of ‘authentic’ use of an ancient site, and asks whether it is possible to discriminate one use as more worthy than another. The Native American community argued their right through inheritance or continued use: How might more recent visitors, such as twenty-first century New Age followers, claim their right to use the site? Is their use, for ritual purposes, an expression of care and understanding, or does it mark a lack of consideration for earlier claims on the site? Is the site, or the significance of the encompassing landscape, the main issue? Chaco Canyon, she points out, as a celebrated heritage complex located in the desert US Southwest, continues to be a valuable resource to Native Americans while also becoming a ceremonial center for New Age followers, who were, ironically, in part inspired by Native American knowledge. As this case exemplifies, and as is reflected in the conclusions of the Charleston Declaration, further discussions are needed on the concept and meaning of ‘authenticity’ in interpretation. Traditional attitudes that focus on static, material authenticity will need to be replaced with more conditional and contextual definitions shaped by acknowledgement of dynamic processes of cultural change and diversity rather than judgments based on fixed criteria. Definitions of authenticity must be tempered or guided by local and community-based, inclusive analyses. Any analysis model for authenticity should reflect and represent multiple perspectives on what is authentic or ‘true’ about a site or place and should provide a roadmap for practical solutions. The nature and qualifications of ‘experts’ on authenticity should reflect the diversity of cultural affiliations and values attributed to the site, which, in turn, should be periodically reviewed and reassessed. Toward More Inclusive Interpretation

In heritage management, some of our most serious challenges involve defining and applying universal principles of interpretation. In present-day discussions and debates about interpretation standards, the subject of inclusiveness tends to be one of the more contentious and problematic issues. There are many, often overlapping, roadblocks to inclusiveness involving cultural, political, economic, and social factors. It can seem hopeless in a wide variety of sites and settings: can Jerusalem, for example, ever be interpreted in a way that we can describe as inclusive to all, or even a majority, of stakeholders? When we contemplate the challenges posed by the study and commemoration of heritage places within modern multicultural societies, we step into a complicated maze of terminology and semantics centered on international debates about relevance and conscience

as well as cross-cultural and international priority and appropriateness. We come to the table with developing, and sometimes divergent, assumptions and purposes for site commemoration and treatment. While no country or region in the world practices or exhibits multiculturalism in the same manner, most of the these conversations occur in countries from the Western cultural tradition, or, at least, the terminology used in these discussions stems from the predominately Western ideas of equal treatment, ethnic sensitivity, and accountability for multiple points of view that are constantly and openly debated. Many of the categories used in heritage site management, such as national park, national monument, and world heritage site, are notions of commemoration originating in the West (see World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws). This is mentioned here so as not to forget that, as we enter into discussions of international and universal relevance, we need to be cautious in avoiding terminology that can appear, to a non-Westerner, to be patronizing and insensitive. Multiculturalism is one of those terms that are difficult to describe definitively, but it is important in our discussions here in that it describes the general sociopolitical environment that is necessary for public policy in managing cultural diversity in multiethnic societies, stressing mutual respect and tolerance for cultural differences within a country’s or region’s borders. As a policy, multiculturalism emphasizes the unique characteristics of different cultures, especially as they relate to one another within national boundaries. Multiculturalism is a view, or policy, that immigrants and other groups should preserve their cultures with the different cultures interacting peacefully within one nation. This has been the official policy of Australia, Canada, and the UK. Multiculturalism has been described as preserving a ‘cultural mosaic’ of separate ethnic groups, and is contrasted to a ‘melting pot’ that mixes them, the United States commonly being given as an example of a melting pot. Some use the term multiculturalism differently, describing both the melting pot, and the ‘cultural mosaic’ condition, such as in Canada, as being multicultural and refer to ‘pluralistic’ versus ‘particularist’ multiculturalism. Pluralistic multiculturalism, similar to the melting pot concept, views each culture or subculture in a society as contributing unique and valuable cultural aspects to the whole culture. Particularist multiculturalism is more concerned with preserving the distinctions between cultures. Probably no country falls completely into one, or another, of these categories (see Culture, Concept and Definitions). The nature of the reality of multiculturalism in any one country or region affects public policies and

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attitudes about inclusive heritage interpretation and where to focus the discussions; that is, what are the messages, and to whom are the messages directed? Fundamental Questions

In our deliberations regarding who owns the past and what constitutes inclusive public interpretation, we can couch our discussions within the framework of attempting to answer some fundamental questions. While present and future deliberations will not easily resolve these questions, they certainly encompass many of the key issues. First, what constitutes an ‘inclusive’ public interpretation of heritage? The Ename Charter on Interpretation (Table 1) defines ‘inclusiveness’ as that which seeks to ensure that the interpretation of a cultural heritage site is not merely a carefully scripted presentation prepared by outsiders, but should instead actively involve the participation of associated communities and other stakeholders. In all aspects of site commemoration and site management, whether these are interpretive programs, exhibits, physical maintenance activities, or the effects of heritage tourism, according to the charter, an interpretation program must be seen as a community activity rather than something imposed by persons or institutions perceived to be outside the community. ‘Community’ in this sense is simply a group or class having common interests, or likeness or identity. Communities include educational, professional, academic, governmental, descendant, and local. Communities are not discrete in that they can and do overlap. For example, members of a descendant community may also be part of the educational and the professional communities. In discussions of inclusiveness, our ideal for communities is that they be involved in participatory education and public interpretation where members of a community actively participate in developing, carrying out, delivering, or otherwise producing the program or elements of the program or interpretive product. The second question we might pose is ‘‘Does the term ‘inclusive’ connote democratic or equal treatment? How does it relate to, appeal to, and be available to, broad masses of people?’’ If we accept the assumption that some form of multiculturism is a necessary backdrop for inclusiveness, our approaches to commemoration and public interpretation should follow an objective process that seeks to identify the attributes, or values, inherent in the resource that make them important to people and therefore worthy of protecting, preserving, and celebrating. Third, we might ask, in multicultural societies, how are standards of significance and authenticity promulgated and agreed upon, and how are they effectively formalized while accommodating multiple

points of view? One corollary question is, once commemoration standards are formalized in terms of management strategies and oversight procedures, how are the values of immigrant and minority communities, as well as evolving values of the ‘majority’ addressed and accommodated within the identification-commemoration process? A second corollary question is, are formally managed monuments and sites a reflection of a timeless ideal or a changing reality, and can these purposes coexist? Public interpretation treatments worldwide run the gamut for tendencies of inclusiveness and exclusiveness. What does a Palestinian, or Palestinians as a group, believe as authentic and therefore worthy of protection and commemoration? How does this compare in terms of commonality of commemoration, sense of place and setting, etc., with the heritage values of Israelis for the same territory or site? Can divergent communities in terms of values and opinions on commemoration ever arrive at a consensus, or even develop a constructive dialogue, about the rights of inclusion in heritage interpretation and site management? Inclusiveness through Values-based Management

One approach that seems to result in more democratic and far ranging treatments, involving a comprehensive assessment based on input from a broad range of stakeholders, is what has been termed ‘values-based management’. Values-based management aids inclusiveness by providing a mechanism for accountability for the totality of values and significance attributed to a site or set of sites. ‘Values’ in this sense relate to tangibles and intangibles that define what is important to people. In all societies, a sense of well-being is associated with the need to connect with and appreciate heritage values. An understanding of how and why the past affects both the present and the future contributes to people’s sense of well-being. In heritage management, we articulate ‘values’ as attributes given to sites, objects, and resources, and associated intellectual and emotional connections that make them important and define their significance for a person, group, or community. Practitioners of values-based management strive to identify and take these values into account in planning, physical treatments, and public interpretation efforts. In theory, values-based management, if thoroughly and impartially executed, will result in more democratic and inclusive interpretations by accounting for the values of all stakeholders. This is the ideal. Some notable examples of values-based management were published in a series of studies sponsored by the Getty Institute in 2003. And there are many more examples from the US and elsewhere: Chaco Canyon National Historic Park in the United States;

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Port Arthur World Heritage Site, Tasmania, Australia; and Hadrian’s Wall World Heritage Site in the UK. Although differing ethnic groups will not agree on the meaning of, or share the same perspective toward, concepts of value, all people who ascribe meaning and significance for a site will relate to concepts of value in some significant way. Perhaps an extension of the values-based approach that can facilitate more inclusive interpretation is to develop mechanisms of identifying more broadly defined value categories. More broadly defined concepts of value would aid inclusiveness by making meanings accessible and relevant to wider communities of stakeholders. It seems that many of the contested issues surrounding values’ assessments are rooted in divergent concepts of authenticity. Authenticity involves factors that ascribe values or meanings that make something real and not an imitation; they ascribe concepts of ‘truth’ or legitimacy for a society, group, community, or individual, perhaps a topic for another future colloquium, and, indeed, ICOMOS. Beyond Recitation: The Application and Art of Interpretation

Effective interpretation: Fostering audience links to resource meanings and universal concepts Another possible avenue toward a more inclusive and internationally relevant public interpretation of heritage is to consider the utility and development of universal values and concepts that can provide the greatest degree of relevance and meaning to the greatest number of people. A major goal of interpretation is to provide links for audiences between tangibles and intangibles and to place the audience or visitor in relationship with broad meanings. The NPS IDP, discussed earlier in this article, has identified links to universal concepts as key to effective interpretation in all modes of delivery. IDP describes universal concepts as intangible resources that almost everyone can relate to, that is, universal intangibles. While not all people are likely to agree on the meaning of or share the same perspective toward a universal concept, according to the IDP philosophy of interpretation, all audiences can relate to the concept in some meaningful way. For example, the rocks (tangible) of Yosemite National Park tell many stories of beauty, danger, and mystery (intangible). Universal concepts make meanings accessible and the resource relevant to widely diverse audiences. They do not always have to be explained to be experienced or understood. Approaches and techniques for presenting universal concepts will differ from one type of resource to another. In all modes of delivery, the interpretive product should capture and illustrate the tangible to intangible/universal concepts.

According to IDP, the interpretive product should include a variety of universal concepts such as time, change, tranquillity, peace, safety, security, shelter, and solitude. It should be appropriate for the audience and provide a clear focus for their connection with the resource by demonstrating the cohesive development of a relevant idea or ideas, rather than relying primarily on chronological narrative or a series of related facts. It should provide opportunities for audiences to make both intellectual and emotional connections to resource meanings by using analogies, comparisons, word pictures, and other methods to link tangibles and intangibles. According to IDP, ‘‘the visitor is sovereign’’ in terms of forming his or her own intellectual and emotional connections with meanings and significance inherent in the resource. The interpretive product should serve as a catalyst in creating opportunities for the audience to form these connections (NPS IDP 2006). Interpretation as a mechanism for resource sustainability Many of the established principles for interpretation in the United States and internationally stem from the writing and philosophy of Freeman Tilden. Tilden defined interpretation as an educational activity that aims to reveal meanings and relationships through the use of original objects by first-hand experience and illustrative media, rather than to simply communicate factual information. Freeman’s six principles emphasized relevance to the experience of the audience and interpretation as a teachable art form. According to Tilden, the chief aim of interpretation is not instruction, but provocation, and must address itself to the whole person rather than any phase. Tilden advocated what we would describe today as a ‘layered’ approach to interpretation that takes into account the perspectives of a variety of audiences differentiated by age, sociocultural background, and other factors. Later advocates have built on the foundations of Tilden and applied postmodern theoretical approaches. Jon Kohl, for example, defines interpretation in terms of ‘‘a ‘paradigm’, a deeply embedded set of beliefs that together form a story or worldview.’’ To Kohl, each culture has a story that explains its people’s creation, significance, and destiny. This set of beliefs directs how they relate to resources. Kohl advocates expanding the scope and ultimate goal of interpretation beyond conservation goals toward an integration of ‘‘deep stories’’ that ‘‘carry it across the divide to conservation in the short-term and sustainability of natural and cultural resources in the long.’’ For interpreters, he says, these changes will first be felt in conservation, a sector of sustainable resource management, and then later for sustainability issues in general.

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Kohl believes that effective interpretation in the future will involve a paradigm shift that rewrites the worldview script by interpreting new ideas and meanings in order to move society toward sustainability. Interpretation through inspiration and cognitive connection Many cultural heritage specialists today are not content to rely solely on traditional methodologies and analytical techniques in their attempts to reconstruct human history and bring it to life for people. They want to venture beyond utilitarian explanations and explore the interpretive potential of cognitive imagery that archaeological information and objects can inspire. They realize the value and power of artistic expression in helping to convey archaeological information to the public. Archaeologists are increasingly concerned with how the past is presented to, and consumed by, nonspecialists. They want to examine new ways of communicating archaeological information in educational venues such as national parks, museums, popular literature, film and television, music, and various multimedia formats. Archaeology and archaeologically derived information and objects have inspired a wide variety of artistic expressions ranging from straightforward computer-generated reconstructions and traditional artists’ conceptions to other art forms such as poetry and opera. Although some level of conjecture will always be present in these works, they are often no less conjectural than technical interpretations and have the benefit of providing visual and conceptual imagery that can communicate contexts and settings in compelling ways. Two such interpretive formats,

two-dimensional paintings and popular history writing, are used by the NPS as public interpretation and education tools (Figures 2 and 3). Interpretation in popular history writing Today, many public archaeologists have come to agree that ‘both’ quality research and the public interpretation of research findings are indispensable outcomes of their work. After all, is not the ultimate value of archaeological studies not only to inform but also ultimately to improve the public’s appreciation of the nature and relevance of cultural history? This improved appreciation results in an improved quality of life for all persons. Exhibits and popular history writing are two of the most effective techniques for public interpretation of archaeology. To be successful, both techniques must not only inform but entertain. The goals are to connect, engage, inform, and inspire, resulting in a lasting and improved appreciation of the resource. Too often, among the flood of reports and artifacts that have come from cultural heritage studies, archaeologists and cultural heritage managers lose sight of the purpose of the compliance process, which is to provide public enjoyment and appreciation for the rich diversity of past human experiences. An important, and some would say the ‘most’ important, outcome of mitigation programs is the production of publications, programs, and exhibits that provide public access to research findings. For example, an important outcome of the Richard B. Russell (RBR) CRM program of the US Army Corps of Engineers, a major reservoir and dam project of the 1980s, was the

Figure 2 ‘‘Sara’s Ridge Archaic Site.’’ Interpretive oil painting by Martin Pate, based on archaeological site information and base map, Richard B. Russell Dam and Reservoir, Georgia and South Carolina. Image courtesy Southeast Archeological Center, National Park Service.

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the fundamental integrity of the original material. The universal praise of Beneath These Waters from the educational, scientific, and local communities was a testament to the success of the book in providing informational access to the research findings. The Challenges of Heritage Tourism

Figure 3 ‘‘Unlocking the Past.’’ Oil painting by Martin Pate. The painting is meant as a metaphor for the theme and topics of the Unlocking the Past outreach project that discussed the nature of historical archaeology in North America. The image is being used by the Society for Historical Archaeology as a logo for its education and outreach efforts.

production of publications and exhibits that provided public access and interpretation of the findings of the RBR studies. In the production of the RBR popular history volume, Beneath These Waters, the NPS and the Corps jointly produced a popular account that was both informative and entertaining. In preparing Beneath These Waters, the NPS chose a team of professional writers adept at the art of effectively translating technical information for the lay public. The writers, not formally trained in archaeology or history, faced distinct disadvantages in taking on the task of writing the book. As they pored over the various technical archaeology and history reports, however, they realized that this initial detachment from technical know-how had given them an important advantage in writing a popular history. They could apply objectivity in reviewing the project and its results, unencumbered by the predictable baggage of professional biases, cultivated styles, and emotions attached to a project of this magnitude and importance. The writers’ task was to take the results of two decades of research, strip them to the essentials, and reclothe them for a general audience without losing

Another current and ever-growing challenge that will affect the inclusiveness of heritage management and interpretation is the juggernaut of tourism. By definition, heritage tourism is collaboration between conservationists and commercial promoters. In heritage tourism, our goal is to harness people’s fascination and sense of connection to the past and turn it into a commodity. It is often an uneasy association because the motives of these respective groups are not always compatible. While there is general recognition that heritage tourism can work to promote preservation of communities’ historic and cultural resources, and also educate tourists and local residents about the resources, the resulting effects are not always viewed as beneficial, especially from those of us on the conservationist side of the fence. Nevertheless, because heritage tourism is a growth industry in almost every part of the world, the issues it conjures up – good and bad – must be addressed. Globalization and global tourism are changing our world in ways that we are just beginning to understand. Heritage tourism, with its ties to the currents of rapidly evolving global economies, is causing increasing needs and demands for cross-cultural and international communication and interdisciplinary training. Greater importance is being placed on transferable skills such as the application of interdisciplinary approaches, writing for both academic and nonacademic audiences, oral presentation, and experience with multimedia packages. Heritage tourism run amok – when the relationship lacks conservation-driven decision making and objectively derived values assessments – threatens or limits the goal of inclusiveness in interpretation by rendering community and other stakeholder involvement superficial. Interpretation of the meaning of sites is inherently important to the conservation process and therefore plays a defining role in conservation/tourism interactions. Those of us whose primary goals and interests are conservation should be determined that our values and standards in this relationship are not compromised or diminished.

Conclusions The last few decades have witnessed a dynamic period of evolving standards and philosophy in public

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archaeology and heritage interpretation. Philosophical approaches and techniques exemplified by the NPS IDP have formed a basis for the development of international definitions, standards, and approaches that lead to more effective strategies for site protection and conservation through enhanced public stewardship. Discussions on issues such as authenticity and inclusiveness will continue to dominate international debates about the significance and proper use of sites. The challenges for international relevance and application posed by the ICOMOS Ename Charter initiative will form the center of future debates and deliberations. The goal of more inclusive interpretations will require an acceptance of divergent definitions of authenticity that depend on a level of tolerance of multiple definitions of significance with concomitant, objectively derived, assigned and ascribed heritage values. We can hope that these efforts lead to the recognition of humanistic values that are reflected in heritage tourism practices, as well as site commemoration and protection decisions by controlling authorities. See also: Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation; Archaeology Today; Cultural Resource Management; Culture, Concept and Definitions; Native Peoples and Archaeology; Popular Culture and Archaeology; World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

Further Reading DeCunzo L and Jameson JH, Jr. (eds.) (2005) Unlocking the Past Celebrating Historical Archaeology in North America. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. De la Torre M (2003) Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage. Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute, The J. Paul Getty Trust.

Ename Center for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation (2006). ICOMOS Ename Charter for the Interpretation of Cultural Heritage Sites. Fifth Draft, 12 Dec. 2006 http://www. enamecharter.org/index.html (accessed 14 Dec. 2006). Finn C (1997) ‘‘Leaving more than footprints’’: Modern votive offerings at Chaco Canyon prehistoric site. Antiquity 71(271): 177–178. ICOMOS ICIP (2006) Mission Statement. http://icip.icomos.org/ ENG/about_missionstatement.html (accessed 18 Apr. 2007). Jameson JH, Jr. (2004) Public archaeology in the United States. In: Merriman N (ed.) Public Archaeology, pp. 21–58. New York: Routledge. Jameson JH, Jr. (ed.) (1997) Presenting Archaeology to the Public: Digging for Truths (ed). Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Jameson JH, Jr. (ed.) (2004) The Reconstructed Past: Reconstructions in the Public Interpretation of Archaeology and History. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Jameson JH, Jr., Ehrenhard JE, and Finn CA (eds.) (2003) Ancient Muses: Archaeology and the Arts. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. Kohl J (2003) Post-revolution interpretation. Legacy (Nov./ Dec. 2003, Parts 1–3). Interpreters and the Big Story. http:// jonkohl.com/publications/categories/interp.htm (accessed 25 May 2006). McManamon FP and Hatton A (eds.) (2000) One World Archaeology, Vol. 33 Cultural Resource Management in Contemporary Society – Perspectives on Managing and Presenting the Past. New York: Routledge. NAI (2005) National Association for Interpretation: Mission, Vision, and Core Values. http://www.interpnet.com/about_nai/ mission.shtml (accessed 18 Apr. 2007). NPS (2005) Module 440: Effective Interpretation of Archeological Resources. http://www.nps.gov/idp/interp/440/module.htm (accessed 18 Apr. 2007). NPS IDP (2006) The Interpretive Development Program, Aiming for High Ground. http://www.nps.gov/idp/interp/ (accessed 15 Jun 15 2006). Tilden F (1957) Interpreting Our Heritage:Principles and Practices for Visitor Services in Parks, Museums, and Historic Places. New York: Van Rees. Stone PG and Molyneaux B (1994) Introduction. In: Stone PG and Molyneaux BL (eds.) The Represented Past: Heritage, Museums, and Education, pp. 1–28. New York: Routledge.

INTERPRETIVE ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY John H Jameson, Jr., Southeast Archaeological Center, Tallahassee, FL, USA Published by Elsevier Inc.

Glossary esthetic art Art forms that are produced for recreational or pleasurable purposes or are perceived to possess recreational or pleasurable qualities or values. environmental art Art that demonstrates a relationship with nature. The setting for these works is often a mixture of natural or cultural elements of landscape.

interpretive art In cultural heritage and archaeology interpretation, interpretive art is any art form used to explore the interpretive potential of cognitive imagery that cultural and archaeological information and objects can inspire. In this sense, it is used to help create opportunities for visitors to sites and exhibits to form their own intellectual and emotional connections to the meanings and significance of archaeological information and the people and events that created them. interpretive narrative archaeology A narrative approach in presenting and interpreting data being employed by an increasing number of archaeologists in the USA and worldwide. It is sometimes described as ‘story telling’, presented in the third person, and, less commonly, in the first person. Its goal is to make the results of archaeological research more relevant and

1544 INTERPRETIVE ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY meaningful to the members of the public in whose interest such work is undertaken. In other cases, it is a first person attempt to personalize, contextualize, and demystify the research process. More than just ‘telling the story’, interpretive narrative archaeology serves to place interpretation at the center of the archaeological endeavor. public art Art created in any media that has been planned and executed with the intention of being located or staged in the public domain, often in an outdoors and readily accessible setting. The term is also applied to art forms that are exhibited in a public space and publicly accessible buildings. Public art is not confined to physical objects in that art forms such as music, dance, and poetry have proponents that specialize in public art. utilitarian art Art forms that reflect the necessities of life.

History is a great deal closer to poetry than is generally realised: in truth, I think, it is in essence the same. (A. L. Rowse) Only imagination fleshes out the sound and taste of time past, anchoring the flavor of lost moments in the welter of objects left behind. (Carmel Schrire, in Digging Through Darkness, Chronicles of an Archaeologist (1995))

Introduction Archaeology is an indispensable tool in the construction, elaboration, and interpretation of history. Viewed as a sub-discipline of anthropology, with obvious philosophical links to such fields as history and cultural geography, archaeology uses material cultural and other vestiges of the past, such as artifacts and historical accounts, to refine, expand, and update our knowledge of mankind’s history as well as cultural and physical development. Being one of the most interdisciplinary of fields, it is alternatively taught as a specialty or concentration within history and other social science university departments around the world. Archaeological methods are used in scientific investigations of past human behavior to produce more accurate historical accounts and interpretations, helping us to understand the relevance and importance of the present as well as the past. Our studies of the past are creations of the present defined by social relationships and values of the present. In recent years, an enhanced and expanded attention to educational and community-based archaeology and inclusiveness has helped focus the public eye on the importance and relevance of archaeology in preserving and protecting multicultural values for diverse audiences. As an interdisciplinary field of study that investigates the past by finding and analyzing evidence from material culture within a contextual and natural fabric, with a focus on predicting human behavior, archaeology has long attempted to recognize and define ‘artistic’ objects and their associated values. The early history of archaeology as an academic field in

the United States was influenced by the Victorian preoccupation with classical antiquity in both the Old and New Worlds, coupled with emerging ethnological concepts that concentrated on Native American cultures. These factors helped to create a philosophical and theoretical framework for early American archaeology in the nineteenth century that attracted scholars from the academic fields of history, classical studies, the fledgling field of anthropology, as well as the art world. Although archaeological method and theory in the twentieth century was expanded and transformed, drawing heavily from the physical and social sciences, the philosophical and conceptual links to the study of art have persisted to the present day.

Art and Imagery as Public Interpretation and Education Tools in Archaeology Archaeology and Interpretive Art

During the past two decades, archaeologists, interpreters, and educators worldwide have increasingly collaborated to more effectively interpret archaeology and cultural heritage. Employing an interdisciplinary team approach, public interpretation practitioners use their knowledge and skills to create opportunities for the public to form intellectual and inspirational connections to the meanings and significance of the archaeological materials and the peoples who created them. Increasingly, they have come to appreciate the value and power of artistic expression in helping to convey archaeological information to the public and giving it new meaning. What we have termed ‘interpretive art’ has been used successfully in paintings, drawings, posters, teaching guides, reports, popular histories, and Web presentations as ways of engaging, informing, and inspiring the public about the value of archaeology. Interpretive message and associated meanings can be delivered through divergent artistic expressions such as two-dimensional oil paintings, three-dimensional exhibits, public sculpture, and popular history writing. Successful programs utilize techniques that both inform and entertain. The goals are to connect, engage, inform, and inspire, resulting in a lasting and enhanced appreciation of the resource (see Interpretation of Archaeology for the Public; Popular Culture and Archaeology). At the Southeast Archeological Center in Tallahassee, Florida, in our outreach and public interpretation efforts, we have enlisted painters and writers to produce artistic works with the goals of complementing and helping to explain the archaeological record, while also engaging, entertaining, and inspiring the audience. We believe that our interpretive oil paintings also help dispel false or stereotypic imagery by

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offering an alternative, more plausible scene. Esthetically pleasing paintings can attract and engage while also serving a number of other interpretive objectives such as supplying detailed information about the resource and carrying conservation, commemorative, or metaphorical messages (Figures 1–3). Some parallels to this team-oriented interpretive strategy can be drawn from recent developments in the realm of the so-called ‘dinosaur art’ where the expert palaeontologists have learned to work cooperatively with dinosaur artists – to work with the artists rather than to dismiss what the experts perceive as inaccurate depictions stemming from the public’s fascination with these fantastically large, powerful, and grotesque creatures. As with archaeology, the public’s attraction to dinosaurs does not usually spring from a scientific source. The palaeontologist’s inability to say what dinosaurs really looked like has no power to drive away inaccurate icons. Media-savvy palaeontologists have learned to wait

to publicize a dinosaur discovery until they have a commissioned painting of the creature to show. They have learned that, by working with the artist, the experts can at least inform the public about what is known. The artists usually want to be as accurate as possible because doing so lends credence and prestige to their work. Most dinosaur images today, including those depicted in television and movies, are guided by hard data, though hard data can only be a starting point. We believe that archaeologists should likewise take advantage of the public’s natural curiosity in working with artists to create images grounded in hard data – announcing new discoveries and new interpretations – even if this is just a starting point, as with dinosaur art. History well told makes a compelling story. In producing popular accounts rooted in historical and archaeological research, we have partnered with artists and writers to produce works that reflect dramatic and skillful writing as well as accurate information. Popular

Figure 1 Example of interpretive art for a public awareness poster with a conservation/protection message. Courtesy, Southeast Archaeological Center, National Park Service. Oil painting by Martin Pate.

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Figure 2 Example of interpretive art used in a commemorative poster for the 50th anniversary of the Southeast Archaeological Conference. Courtesy, Southeast Archaeological Center, National Park Service. Oil painting by Martin Pate.

Figure 3 Example of interpretive art with a metaphorical message about historical archaeology and the components of research, coupled with public interpretation. Courtesy, Southeast Archaeological Center, National Park Service. Oil painting by Martin Pate.

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writers of cultural resource themes can tell stories inspired by archaeology that are appealing because of the nature of the material and because of the way the story is told. They are interpreters who contribute not only to the esthetic expressions of art, but also to human understanding and increased knowledge. Stories well done are stories that reveal how people and societies have actually functioned. They prompt thoughts about the human experience in other times and places. These esthetic and humanistic expressions about cultural history inspire us to immerse ourselves in efforts to reconstruct more distant pasts, exploring the ways people constructed their lives. This evokes in us a sense of beauty and excitement and gives us added and enhanced perspectives on cultural history, society, and the human condition. For example, in preparing the highly demanded and award-winning popular history Beneath These Waters, the National Park Service chose a team of professional writers adept at the art of effectively translating technical information for the lay public. Contract writers Sharyn Kane and Richard Keeton, because they were not formally trained archaeologists or historians and were unfamiliar with the world of government contracting, overcame some distinct disadvantages in accomplishing the task of writing this book. Guided by a scope of work and in collaboration with government archaeologists, the authors’ task was to take the results of two decades of research from the multivolume Richard B. Russell Reservoir cultural resources studies, strip them down to the essentials, and reclothe them in a fashion that would be well received by general, but diverse, audiences without losing the fundamental integrity and accuracy of the original, research-derived material. Utilitarian versus Esthetic in Archaeological Public Interpretation

Public interpretation of archaeology involves methodologies associated with conveying factual and stimulating explanatory information to the lay public. The popularity of its products and programs reflects a growing public awareness of the importance of archaeology and the ways in which the past is represented, including the inherent value of understanding imagery both ‘from’ and ‘of’ the past. Art is something created by humans that is evocative; it is more than symbolism or simple representation. It causes the viewer to feel something: anger, joy, sadness, fear, energy, violence, tranquility, loneliness, and awe. It causes the viewer to think. It makes a social or cultural statement. It makes us see humor where we have not seen it before. It places us in settings and

moods that we have not yet encountered. It allows us to experience something in a new way. It is much more and different than mimicry. Art can do many things to us at the same time. An artist shows imaginative skill in arrangement or execution. Rendering an esthetically pleasing effect is the rendering of an altered nature or an altered material world. Aristotle in the fourth century BC wrote that this modification of nature and objects produces two types of art: utilitarian art that is necessary for life; and pleasurable or esthetic art that is produced for recreation. Art in the latter sense is the conscious use of skill and creative imagination in the production of esthetic objects. But the classification of objects as art is cultural, subjective, and at times, controversial. Archaeologists, both historians and prehistorians, have had a long-standing interest in art and the relationships of archaeology and art. Today, we can find university curricula that teach archaeological approaches to the study of art which are distinct from those of the other disciplines that study art. Here, ‘archaeology of art’ takes an anthropological approach that often challenges Eurocentric and traditional Western interpretations. Archaeologists are increasingly examining how archaeological information is communicated in national parks and museums; by popular literature, film, television, music, and various multimedia formats; and its overall effectiveness. We want to explore the potential of cognitive imagery that springs from an association with archaeology and its attempts to reconstruct past lifeways. We want to know how certain interpretive methodologies, in various settings, using certain media formats, can contribute to both public and professional understanding of human history. Esthetic art has been in our own culture and in cultures around the world since recorded history, yet archaeologists rarely ask questions about esthetics in their research designs, but rather have concentrated on the utilitarian explanations. Although the esthetic qualities of things are sometimes acknowledged in the archaeological literature, they are rarely discussed. This strategy has not only been convenient, but perhaps partially justified if one assumes, as some have, that the purpose for esthetic art is lost with an unrecorded culture. But, if only unsatisfactory utilitarian reasons can be found to justify an artifact and its attributes, then the motive for its being or creation must be esthetic. Perhaps it is time for archaeologists to more earnestly address and relate to esthetic art forms that have been as important in all cultures as ways of showing imaginative skills. We pose the question: might an emphasis on

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esthetic qualities also be an important element in the interpretation of the past? Perhaps more accurate interpretations would be rendered, and apparent theoretical contradictions in the archaeological record explained, if the esthetic arts were more fully considered. Palaeoarchaeologists have long been at a loss, beyond utilitarianism, to explain the remarkable skill levels and apparent ‘artistic’ attributes in many varieties of Palaeo-Indian creations, including cave paintings and projectile points and tools. Baker (1997) has pointed out that the knowable dimensions of a given culture are inversely proportional to its remoteness in time. More hard data is available as we come to more recent time periods and thus a less speculative starting point for the interpretive artist as well as the technical experts. As a result, it is difficult for an archaeologist to define or differentiate between utilitarian and esthetic art forms in ancient cultures. The Palaeolithic cave paintings in southern France were created over 30 000 years ago. However, the lack of knowledge of the culture seriously impedes the archaeologist from defining functional aspects of these images. In contrast, the Folsom projectile point manufactured approximately 10 000 years ago in North America has the obvious utilitarian art form of piercing and cutting in the food gathering process. With a paucity of observable material culture, are we left only with subjective or logical explanations? Do the ‘flutes’ on the Palaeo-Indian projectile represent a pleasurable or esthetic art form in addition to its utilitarian function? Those of us familiar with Palaeo-Indian traditions often do not consider these examples of stone craftsmanship to be works of esthetic art. Others, however, speculate that they may represent some kind of ceremonial function, possibly within the realm of magic or religion. But these are vague speculations at best. We suspect that some utilitarian objects through time and culture change are embellished or elaborated, sometimes to a point where the original utilitarian forms are barely, if at all, recognizable. We observe what appears to be a combining or blending of esthetic and utilitarian attributes, and this combination has occurred across all time lines.

Archaeology as a Catalyst for Human Inspiration and Interpretation Facilitating Connections to Values and Meanings

The practice of archaeology, and archaeologically derived information and objects, can inspire a wide variety of artistic expressions ranging from computergenerated reconstructions and traditional artists’ two- and three-dimensional conceptions to other art forms such as poetry, opera, storytelling, and more

modernistic genres such as landscape art. Although somewhat conjectural, these works are often no more suppositious than technical interpretations and have the benefit of providing visual and conceptual imagery that can communicate contexts and settings in compelling and unique ways. These connections broaden the significance and relevance of archaeology for scholars as well as the general public. The cognitive connections between archaeology and art reflect an inductive approach in defining and explaining archaeologically derived information and making it meaningful to the public. An emphasis on using artistic expression in interpretations is consistent with a new direction in archaeological practice that challenges the positivist paradigm of processual archaeology and promotes the relevance and validity of inductive reasoning over deductive reasoning. Ancient Muses: Archaeology and the Arts

In Ancient Muses: Archaeology and the Arts (2003), the authors explored a variety of outcomes stemming from the interplay of archaeological inquiry, observation, and certain artistic expressions, and how these can demonstrate and be applied to more meaningful and effective approaches to interpretation that emphasize public awareness, access, and inspiration. The international contributors to Ancient Muses articulated their philosophical underpinnings by explaining the importance of the development of interpretive narrative archaeology and interpretive historical fiction that employ the imaginative uses of arts such as storytelling and drama in making the past come alive for public audiences. For example, Ancient Muses describes how contemporary Native American groups such as Navaho and Hopi look to the rock art as inspiration from their ancestors and a renewed understanding of the timelessness of their culture. Similarly, Aboriginal people in Australia are described as using visual arts to establish and maintain connections with the world around them; beyond mere indicators of cultural interaction, rock art images are used to convey social and cultural information and provide visual cues for oral histories. An article on archaeology and poetry describes ways in which both the poet and the archaeologist ‘see’ what is not so obvious; both poet and archaeologist continually reinterpret inanimate objects or ‘things’ that they try to explain or enable to ‘speak’ to us about their meanings. A piece involving the screenplay for the film ‘The English Patient’ portrays the translation of a ‘too perfect’ novel into film and the process of transformation of text and image over time. Another article describes interpretive writing experiences that attempt to meet the challenge of breathing life into the findings of technically oriented archaeological reports.

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More fine arts-related discussions convey how a public sculptor was inspired by his exposure to archaeology and cultural history in creating public sculpture. A team composed of an archaeologist and a librettist tell an intriguing tale about how the their interaction and collaboration produced an original, historically based libretto, and eventually a full production opera. Fifth World Archaeological Congress (WAC 5) Session

Another forum for discussion of this topic was the Fifth World Archaeological Congress (WAC 5) in 2003. In this international forum, held in Washington, DC, there were demonstrations of examples and practices from both artists and archaeologist/artists, and their interplay, that promote the relevance and validity of the deductive reasoning approach and a shift in how many archaeologists plan and conduct research and evaluate significance. For example, Lance Foster, a member of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, professes to be both an American Indian artist and an archaeologist: ‘‘I have always been Indian, and I have always been an artist . . . In examining the relationships between Indian art and archaeology, I believe I have found a unique personification . . . I wanted to talk about art, from the gut, from my experience as both an Indian artist of the Iowa tribe, and as an archaeologist.’’

David Middlebrook, a renowned sculptor from California, in an example of public art, explains: ‘‘What peeked my interest were the thirty-thousandyear-old cave paintings of southern France which I believe were the first signs of the intellectual revolution. I have incorporated these images into many of my large scale public art pieces. In recent years I have become at one with the technical and esthetic challenges of combining natural materials with intellectual and emotional content. The engineering tension and balance is part and parcel with the intent and substance of the work’’ (Figures 4 and 5).

Johannes Kranz of the foundation ‘Casa de los Tres Mundos’ in Nicaragua explained that the foundation is erecting a sculpture park composed of oversized copies of archaeologically recorded pre-Columbian artifacts. The oversized copies have been molded to ‘‘give back a piece of history and identity to the people of a newly constructed village’’. Here, an innovative educational and preservation initiative ‘‘serves as a model for joint efforts in community building, the strengthening of local identity and the challenge of preserving cultural heritage in similar projects throughout the world, particularly in underdeveloped countries’’. Christine Finn, also co-editor and contributor to the Ancient Muses book, discussed ‘Figures in a

Landscape’: Jacquetta Hawkes’s 1953 film about the landscape sculpture of Barbara Hepworth. In the 1920s and 1930s, Barbara Hepworth was one of a small group of pioneering sculptors in London committed to exploring abstraction. By the early 1930s, she had developed her mature style: a sensuous kind of organic abstraction, sometimes incorporating strings, wires, colored paint, or holes piercing the sculpted form. Jacquetta Hawke’s film about Barbara Hepworth was one of many works that had the goal of reminding archaeologists swept up in a frenzy of postwar scientific and theoretical advances of the human values of their profession. Hawkes’ work now begs re-evaluation at a time when archaeologists are more aware of the need to communicate to the general public. In ‘Stratigraphy: Digging Living Layers’, Nicola Laneri, another contributor to Ancient Muses, described a project consisting of a multimedia art installation that represents an ‘excavation’ of different ethnic ‘layers’ in a New York City neighborhood. This archaeological excavation of a contemporaneous context is provided using multimedia, including digging sounds, depictions of material culture, and images of a dialogue between the ‘conservation’ of the Italian tradition, represented by the words of Rosa Morrone, the owner of an Italian bakery in East Harlem since the 1950s, and the neighborhood’s ‘innovative’ facade, expressed by the words and work of the Puerto Rican painter-muralist-chalker James DeLavega. The images and objects that form this project embody the diverse ethnicities (Italian, Puerto Rican, Mexican) now present in the neighborhood and how diverse forms of cultural interactions (peaceful and violent) between these groups have led to the re-creation of ‘new’ material culture (e.g., espresso coffee made with an Italian Moka machine and Puerto Rican coffee, pizza prepared by Mexicans, Italian Madonna statues dressed with real hair – an Hispanic tradition – and worshipped by Asians) shared amongst all of these communities and remade throughout the cultural, functional, and ritual transformation of their values during the last century. In his paper ‘Sherds ABOVE the Loess: historical archaeology as art,’ David Orr contended that archaeological objects recovered from American historic sites, like those extracted from antiquity, possess an intrinsic esthetic power far removed from their scientific or historic value. This paper addressed these origins and provided an approach to the utilization of historical archaeological objects and assemblages as ‘works of beauty’ and worthy of a fine arts approach. This realization, he said, should give all of us a new perspective on the complex matrix of functions which historical archaeological material possess. An example was given that focused on a select group of

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Figure 4 An example of David Middlebrook’s public sculpture.

early eighteenth century English slipware pottery found in one context in Philadelphia and how this assemblage could easily produce a very striking art historical/esthetic exhibit. Yet, properly staged, such an esthetically motivated exhibit of historical archaeological ‘treasures’ would not be antithetical to American anthropologically driven archaeologists. In ‘From rock art to digital image: archaeology and art in aboriginal Australia,’ Claire Smith and Kirsten Brett explored the changing uses and meanings of Aboriginal arts from the Barunga–Wugularr region of the Northern Territory, Australia. The central theme here was the manner in which Aboriginal people use visual arts to establish and maintain connections with the world around them. Rock art images are used to convey social and cultural information and provide visual cues for oral histories.

When transferred into a digital format they can form the basis for educational tools that effectively extend indigenous forms of instruction. Archaeological Interpretation and Environmental Art

Generally speaking, environmental art is art that demonstrates a relationship with nature. The setting for these works is often a mixture of natural or cultural elements of landscape. Much environmental art is ephemeral, is site-specific, and involves collaborations between artists and others such as scientists, educators, and community groups. It usually involves an interpretation of a natural form and is based on the premise that creating artworks informs humans about natural and environmental forces, issues, and processes. Environmental art ‘‘re-envisions our

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Figure 5 Detail of Middlebrook public sculpture showing prehistoric pictograph images.

relationship to nature, proposing through the (artist’s) work new ways for us to co-exist with our environment’’. Seemingly taking their cues from the experimental archaeology model as well as from environmental art, some archaeologists have explored participatory methods of interpretation where the archaeologists attempt to experience and articulate new meanings and values for the resource. In these contexts, the landscape is seen not as something to be copied, but as a primary source for the creation of the work that is both artistic and interpretive. The place and the setting mold the work which is static and rooted in place. Its meaning and identity are not transferable to another location: the place is the work and the work is the place. In these archaeological interpretation experiments with environmental art, the appreciation of the work becomes anchored in the landscape. By being both ‘of’ the past and ‘of’ the

present, these archaeologists claim that the work enriches understanding of both, in recognition of the multiplicity of meanings in a particular place and a particular landscape. Both the practices of interpreting the past and producing art, they contend, result in the production of new meaning of setting and resource, transforming our understanding of place and space. In this case, art and archaeology act together dialectically to produce a novel conceptualization of the past that can appeal to different audiences in different ways and produce a means of relating to the past that is much more than the sum of its component parts. In an intriguing example from Leskernick Hill on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, England, in the late 1990s, Bender et al. (2000) explore the conceptual links between producing landscape art works in the present and how this contributes to an understanding and interpretation of prehistoric lifeways. Initially, in

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an attempt to represent our experience of the hill, they experimented with writing. They opened up their interpretive text by juxtaposing diary entries with conventional prose, but eventually decided that they also needed to create more open-ended drawings and images, ones which were more subjective, full of question marks, and in some way more indicative of their various interpretative leaps, perspectives, and knowledge. To Bender and the other project archaeologists, art was seen to provide alternate ways of telling the story and expressing the ‘powers’ of stones on Leskernick Hill. They tried to capture what they perceived as a powerful sense of place that the rocks evoked through their inherent sculptural properties and positioning on the site and cultural landscape. They did not aspire to recreate the specific meanings that the stones had to the Bronze Age inhabitants of the site, but rather to propose a creative response to the physical setting and attributes of the cultural landscape. One of the many ways in which they explored this included physically transforming, and adding to, the surface structures of the hill by wrapping the stones and ‘creating installations’: ‘‘One key response we had to the stones was to wrap them. In doing this we were acknowledging and making tangible our actions within, reactions to, and interpretations of, Leskernick’s stoney landscape, and the possible significance of these stones to its prehistoric inhabitants. The process of stone wrapping served to energise the stones with our ideas and thoughts ... We wrapped stones of particular shapes: triangular, ‘whale-backed’, and pyramidal stones. These stones seemed to be of particular significance to the prehistoric inhabitants of the hill, being centrally positioned within the back walls of the houses, or sometimes having enclosure walls ‘illogically’ incorporating them and in the wider landscape of the settlement sometimes having cleared areas around them . . . Wrapping with fabric curiously confounded the observer’s perception of depth and volume . . . Wrapping the stones with cling film altered and obscured surface texture but still preserved the shape. We regard shape as being a key element in the choice and arrangement of stones on the hill . . . Wrapping stones within cling film and highlighting them with paint we found was a particularly effective way of visually expressing the significance of these stones.’’

One of their goals was to find ways to make the archaeological recordings of the past, and otherwise their engagement with it, more three-dimensional. They consciously attempted to avoid nostalgia for a vanished past or an irrational mystical relationship to culture or nature. Their work did not aim at replication but in situ transformation, attempting to rework a sense of place into present-day consciousness. They also attempted to find a middle ground between the

personal idiosyncratic approach to landscape characteristic of contemporary environmental artists and the disengaged and disinterested ‘objectivity’ of visual representation in contemporary archaeology: ‘‘We are working on a hill in which a symbolic geography of place has been pre-constructed for us by its Bronze Age inhabitants. We are attempting to create a dialectic which mediates between it and ourselves, past and present. We engage with the stones through our bodies. We perceive Leskernick hill from within, not from looking at it as if in a painting. The meanings are a product of our encounter and participation and personal involvement creates perceptual intensity. The body is a constant in relation to a continuum of shapes and sizes and forms on the hill. An awareness and interpretation of the significance of different stones on the hill is ultimately a relationship between the body and the object. Our wrapped stones mark a place, they also mark a situation, an orientation, a relationship . . . For us, performing art is a process of engagement and enablement. It allows us to see the hill, its stones and the prehistoric architecture, in a new way. Through the visual transformation of the stones they become solid metaphors linking our experience of place to the past. Wrapping stones is, in essence, to follow the lead already provided by them, it is to be objectively guided in which we attempt to emphasize the form and character of the stones and the particular properties they possess . . .Our art both aids us in interpreting the past in the present and can be appreciated, on another plane, as a contemporary cultural work. By both being of the past and of the present we would claim that it enriches our understanding of both in a recognition of the multiplicity of meanings in a particular place and a particular landscape.’’ (Bender et al. 2000)

Conclusions This chapter has discussed ways where art has been used as public interpretation and education tools as well as examples of the reciprocal effect where archaeology and archaeological information and objects have inspired artistic expression in unique and interesting ways, expanding and adding to our understanding about the value of archaeology. Experiments in environmental art have allowed some archaeologists to understand, appreciate, and interpret objects, sites, and cultural landscapes in new and innovative ways. These artistic expressions are important enhancements to archaeology’s traditional roles of analyzing and interpreting evidence from material culture and the natural environment; they enable archaeologist practitioners as well as the public to gain a greater understanding and appreciation for the resource. The preservation of archaeological sites and objects depends on the cooperation and interest of nonarchaeologists who are most often the conveyors of

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archaeological knowledge to the lay public. In fact, the most effective presentations and the most inspirational experiences come about when archaeologists and nonarchaeologists collaborate in a team approach. If we want more effective and inspirational appreciation of archaeology, we need to reach out to our communication partners: park interpreters, exhibit planners and designers, Web designers, writers, poets, musicians, screen writers, operatic composers – artisans of all types – to produce inspirational imagery and stories based on archaeological and historical facts. See also: Internet, Archaeology on; Popular Culture and Archaeology.

Further Reading Baker T (1997) Art and the Folsom Point. (http://www.ele.net/ art_folsom/art_fols.htm), 2002. Bender B, Hamilton S, and Tilley C (2000) Art and the RePresentation of the Past, adapted for the Internet by Basu P. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/leskernick/articles/art/art.htm, 2006. Finn CA (2004) Past Poetic: Archaeology in the Poetry of WB Yeats and Seamus Heaney. London: Duckworth. Finn C and Henig M (2002) Outside Archaeology: Material Culture and Poetic Imagination. British Archaeological Reports (BAR) International. Greenmuseum (2006) What is Environmental Art? http://greenmu seum.org/what_is_ea.php, 2006. Harrison T (1998) Herodotus and The English Patient. Classics Ireland, Vol. 5. Dublin: University College Dublin. Hyder WD (1998) Basketmaker spatial identity: Rock art as culture and praxis. In: Faulstich P (ed.) International Rock Art Conference (IRAC) Proceedings, Vol 1: Rock Art as Visual Ecology. Tucson, AZ: American Rock Art Research Association.

Jameson JH, Jr. (1997) Introduction. In: Jameson JH, Jr. (ed.) Presenting Archaeology to the Public: Digging for Truths, pp. 11–20. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Jameson JH, Jr. (2000) Public interpretation, education, and outreach: The growing predominance in American archaeology. In: McManamon FP and Hatton A (eds.) Cultural Resource Management in Contemporary Society, One World Archaeology 33. London: Routledge. Jameson JH, Jr. (2003) Art and imagery as public interpretation and education tools in archaeology. In: Jameson JH, Jr., Ehrenhard JE, and Finn CA (eds.) Ancient Muses: Archaeology and the Arts. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. Jameson JH, Jr. and Baugher S (2007) Public interpretation, outreach, and partnering: An introduction. In: Jameson JH, Jr. and Baugher S (eds.) Past Meets Present: Archaeologists Partnering with Museum Curators, Teachers, and Community Groups. New York: Springer. Jameson JH, Jr., Ehrenhard JE, and Finn CA (2003) Introduction. In: Jameson JH, Jr., Ehrenhard JE, and Finn CA (eds.) Ancient Muses: Archaeology and the Arts. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. McCarthy JP (2003) More than just ‘‘telling the story’’: Interpretive narrative archaeology. In: Jameson JH, Jr., Ehrenhard JE, and Finn CA (eds.) Ancient Muses: Archaeology and the Arts. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. Morwood MJ and Smith CE (1996) Contemporary Approaches to World Rock Art. http://www.une.edu.au/Arch/ROCKART/ MMRockArt.html, 2002. Santayana G (1894) The power of art. In: Sonnets and Other Verses. London: Stone & Kimball. Schrire C (1995) Digging through Darkness, Chronicles of an Archaeologist. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. SEAC (2003) About SEAC’s Interpretive Art Projects. http://www. cr.nps.gov/seac/about_interpart.htm, 2006. SEAC (2003) WAC-5 Conference Session: Archaeology and the Arts: the Ancient Muses and Other Inspirations. http://www.cr. nps.gov/seac/WAC/JJ_Muses.doc, 2006. Wikipedia (2006) Public Art. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_ Art, 2006.

INTERPRETIVE MODELS, DEVELOPMENT OF William Howard Walker, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary cultural evolutionism The continuous, accumulative and progressive process by which cultural phenomena, systemically organized, undergo change, one form or stage succeeding another. Cultural evolutionism is the application of the general theory of evolution to cultural phenomena as distinguished from biological or physical phenomena. culture history approach The description of cultures as clusters of material culture traits created by processes of innovation, diffusion, or migration. historical particularism Historical particularism claims that each society has its own unique historical development and must

be understood based on its own specific cultural context, especially its historical process. interpretive model An interpretive model is simply composed of the assumptions that form the foundation for interpreting evidence and arguments. postprocessual archaeology A humanistic approach, attempting to get at past peoples’ own views of how they did things and what was significant. It derives from postmodern philosophy in the social sciences. processual archaeology Processual archaeology is the study of process, that is to say, investigations of the way humans do things, and the way things decay.

Interpretive models in archaeology, sometimes also described as models of inference, emanate from theories that describe the organization of society or culture and how they change through time. Implicit and

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explicit in these theories are assumptions about the relationship between human activity and material culture. These assumptions form the logic or models archaeologists use to interpret patterning they find in archaeological materials. In this article, the author explores highlights in the history of some of these models and focus on classical evolutionary, historical particularist, functionalist, ecological, and practiceoriented social theories.

Classical Evolutionism In the late nineteenth century, interpretive models in archaeology were guided by the conception of cultures as organizational stages along a continuum from simple to complex. These societal stages, for example, savagery, barbarism, and civilization, were recognized by their degree of technological, social, and ideological sophistication relative to conceptions of progress and rationality in industrial states and empires of the time (England, France, United States, etc.). It was assumed that progress from the lower stages of savagery to the upper stages of civilization was a universal process, albeit that societies passed through these stages at different rates, mediated by natural and social processes. In some versions, there was an explicit recognition that progress was hampered by biological inferiority, but in others social factors were heavily weighted as the basic biological apparatus or ‘psyche’ was assumed universal. Stage Models

This understanding of cultures allowed ethnologists to organize vast amounts of data. Given that artifacts and architecture were significant attributes of these stages reflecting social, technological, and ideological sophistication, known material culture patterns in living societies became ready-made analogical packages for archaeological interpretation. One could match known cultures of different evolutionary stages to unknown ones with similar artifact assemblages and begin interpreting specific finds according to the logic of that stage. This approach was particularly powerful if living descendants of these cultures existed in similar evolutionary stages. In the American Southwest, the prehistoric Pueblos, for example, were assumed analogous to ethnographically extant Pueblo Indian cultures whose lifeways were classified as representative of the lower state of barbarism. Therefore, evolutionary oriented ethnologists working the Southwest extrapolated from living Pueblo peoples to prehistoric ones. Jesse Walter Fewkes, who eventually became the director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of American Ethnology, explored

religion, architecture, migrations, kinship, farming, and oral traditions by working through the logic of classical evolutionary assumptions and known Pueblo beliefs and practices. Despite the inherent ethnocentrism of this approach, it is interesting to note that its explicit linkage between ethnography and interpretation led to questions that in the practice oriented studies of today seem quite prescient. Soviet Archaeology

Also an early creative, but largely isolated interpretive model that derives from a synthesis of classical evolutionism and Marxist social theory was the rise of Soviet archaeology. Its history was briefly chronicled for Western scholars in Bruce Trigger’s first edition of The History of Archaeological Thought. Marx and Engels shared with other nineteenth century social evolutionary theorists a teleological understanding of human history. Their dialectical materialism also highlighted the importance of technology and was deeply committed to social rather natural explanations for cultural differences. In that archaeology, the earlier evolutionary stages were replaced by Marxist understandings of different socioeconomic forms of society. Although implemented in a politically repressive fashion, the explicit linkage between favored Marxist theory and archaeological interpretation exemplified a now widely held assumption about the interpretive process; material patterns and inferences are what your theory makes of them (see Marxist Archaeology).

Historical Particularism In the early decades of the twentieth century, interpretive models based on evolutionary analogies gave way to inferences built on historically contingent processes of migration, innovation, and diffusion. This understanding of culture was aptly titled the ‘historical particularist school’ and its archaeological advocates culture historians. This shift in interpretive modeling had its roots in a new atomistic understanding of culture as comprised of discrete units known as culture traits. Rather than looking at societies as rungs on a rationally progressive ladder of history, ‘culture historians’ instead envisioned cultures as temporary clusterings of discrete traits flowing through time. Later critics of this approach have referred to it as the water flow model of culture. As ideal (beliefs, values, emotions) and material traits (symbols, houses, tools) flowed through time and across space, they formed and re-formed different cultures. Archaeologists saw their science as an historical one that

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consisted of identifying, tracking, and explaining these configurations of traits. Initially in Europe, where many nations could trace their populations to local prehistory, earlier evolutionary approaches were transformed into nationalist culture histories. Later, under the influence of Gordon Childe, these tendencies were muted in favor of interpretations that were international and emphasized the innovation and spread of functionally useful traits. In the Americas where archaeologists were by and large derived from immigrant populations rather than indigenous Native Americans communities, nationalist archaeologies were less pronounced. Archaeology was situated in anthropology departments rather than archaeology or history departments as it was in Europe. In the Americas, archaeology was identified with the ethnological study of aboriginal peoples. While stage-based approaches generated interesting cross-cultural patterns, they were typically weak with respect to specific societies. A trait-based approach to cultures in archaeology went hand in hand with an emphasis on detailed ethnographic observation and particularist studies in American anthropology as a whole. A number of early North American culture historians were also ethnographers, and their creative urge to apply historical particularist theory to archaeology stimulated their archaeological students and colleagues to see new possibilities in seriation and stratigraphic techniques that had been known for some time. Indeed, they became topics of theoretical consideration. Culture historians realized that an atomistic approach to culture and history provoked and facilitated a much finer parsing of material trait variability into archaeological cultures. The interpretive model of an archaeological culture defined by clusters of styles of ceramics, lithics, housing, grinding stones, etc., focused attention directly on the particulars of prehistoric cultures and away from ethnological stages. As a result, culture historians dramatically expanded knowledge of the spatial and temporal patterning of material culture in the archaeological record. To explain these patterns, interpretive modeling turned to discussions of diffusion, innovation, and migration. This was particularly useful in the context of the New World where well-known historical changes were not easily accommodated into the progressive evolutionary models of earlier scholars. For example, it had long been known that ethnohistoric Native American cultures seemed ‘less evolved’ than those associated with prehistoric mound building in the eastern United States. Similarly, the famous horse nomad societies of the North American plains had

clearly emerged after the introduction of horses by Spanish and other European explorers. As Clark Wissler noted in his critique of evolutionary theory, many of these Plains societies seem to have deevolved from barbarian farmers to savage hunters during the colonial period. In the Old and New Worlds, this atomistic understanding of culture led to the majority of spatial temporal designations (i.e., phases) still in use today, albeit often stripped of their culture historical assumptions. Although successful, and one of the more unified examples of archaeological method and theory, culture history also had its weaknesses, especially when compared with the emerging functionalist social theory associated with anthropology and other social sciences of the time. Ironically, while ethnologists such as Wissler had justified this theoretical approach by appeals to ethnography and history, ethnographic analogy was less central to the interpretive models of culture historians. The function of traits was perceived as relatively self-evident (houses were shelters, ceramics stored food, arrows were projectiles, etc.), and therefore questions about artifact uses and activities were not emphasized. Instead, how artifacts were acquired and transmitted across time and space drew intellectual energies. Since the processes creating such distributions were already known through migration, innovation, and diffusion, explicit integration of ethnographic analogies in interpretation were unnecessary. Not surprisingly, as culture-process-oriented questions about ecology, social organizational or conflict began to crop up in the changing theoretical landscape of the social sciences, archaeological contradictions between archaeological and anthropological interpretive models became a theoretical concern. Initially, this contradiction between the archaeological study of culture and that of anthropologists and historians was addressed by seeking to define material traits that served as process markers. Gordon R. Willey, for example, influenced by Julian Steward’s ecological theory, defined ‘settlement pattern’ as a trait in his Florida Archaeology. Such comprises, however, were cumbersome and archaeologists began to actively push the boundaries of particularist theory in the 1930s and 1940s.

Functionalism In a scathingly critical but brilliant piece, Walter Taylor emphasized this discrepancy arguing that culture was an emergent property, literally a mental construct ‘‘objectified and made observable through the action-systems of the body. . . . it follows from this that culture is unobservable and non-material.’’

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By removing all materiality from the concept of culture, Taylor ushered in an era of explicit theoretical archaeology whose ramifications are still being worked out. His call for interpretations focused on reconstructions of past cultural contexts foreshadowed more recent studies of archaeological sites formation processes, gendered activities, technological style, practice, agency, and ecology. His explicitly mentalist rendering of culture led him to propose a conjunctive model of archaeological inference where archaeological patterns were modeled as material manifestations of ideas. With the terminology and social theory available to him, he was unable to convince many archaeologists to follow his approach. Until postprocessual archaeologists, such as Ian Hodder, began to talk about the material record as text, practice and active, many of the nonmaterialist themes Taylor proposed went unaddressed. Archaeologists instead seized on the inherent assumptions he suggested about the deeper organization of material patterning in archaeological sites and began pursuing functional and ecological questions. Understanding of what constitutes a culture shifted once again. Rather than being a contingent clustering of traits, the metaphor of an organism with systems of relations (like organs) became a more favored means for realizing the emergent organization of culture. Settlement pattern studies and archaeological survey became an early and effective means for finding evidence of such organisms on ancient landscapes. Willey’s former trait ‘settlement pattern’ was transformed into a topic of study in its own right in Archaeological Settlement Patterns in the Viru´ Valley, Peru. Other scholars recognized that warfare was an important process that also deserved important attention, as did study of religious processes and the growth of political and economic power. In eastern North America, scholars such as Raymond S. Baby, Preston Holder, William Ritchie, Antonio J. Waring, and William S. Webb explored religious processes that had previously gone unstudied. Ethnographic analogy was back. Many of the organizing principles of culture broached by Taylor could be found there. Charles Di Peso presented a detailed and radical interpretation of the Site of Casas Grandes in northern Mexico linking the regional economic and political history of the American southwest to the empires of the valley of Mexico. The use of such analogies highlighted a clear need for ethnographic information appropriate to archaeological interpretations that was not necessarily available in past ethnographic work. Archaeologists, therefore, began to go out and conduct their own studies in the form of ethnoarchaeology (see Ethnoarchaeology).

Processual Archaeology These functional approaches to cultural organization were consolidated in the 1960s by a ‘processual’ or new archaeology and its proponents such as Lewis R. Binford who applied Leslie White’s understanding of culture as an adaptive system. In such a framework, the institutional organization found in earlier functional studies of religion, war, politics, and economy was placed within a larger contextual framework of cultural ecology. Material patterns were assumed to be reflections of the ongoing cultural processes of adaptation both developmentally (internal society changes) and in response to external environmental changes. To enhance, as well as justify, this understanding of culture, an important development for interpretation was the explicit discussion of modeling and the process of inference itself. It became common-place for archaeological interpretations to integrate references to theory from the philosophy of science in these discussions. Ideally models not only explained cultural adaptations but also took the form of testable propositions or hypotheses. Although regional histories were still critical to this endeavor, the greater goal was to produce broadly applicable conclusions about culture and history that transcended particular cultures or times. In conjunction with this emphasis on building a new archaeological science, innovative technologies such as computers as well as spatial and mathematical techniques, were introduced in interpretive models to give them more rigor and assess the reliability of interpretations. In such an archaeology, artifacts were initially considered as representative of different parts or aspects of the cultural system (see Artifacts, Overview). Binford introduced the terms technomic, sociotechnic, and ideotechnic to classify artifacts into functional categories. Following White, Julian H. Steward, and others, these materialist theory categories also reflected a hierarchy of causes. Technology, defined as the harnessing of energy in the environment for subsistence and other basic needs, was assumed to be the driving force that conditioned the organization of social institutions which in turn laid the causal groundwork for particular systems of belief. As technological needs changed so would social organization and ideology. Finally, this causal layering of culture and its subsystems prioritized group activities and longer-term processes rather than individual activities and specific events. Behavioral Archaeology

This combination of scientific goals, causal priorities, and units of analysis has generated a range of critical

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and alternative archaeological models of interpretation beginning in the 1970s that continues today. In the mid-1970s, J. Jefferson Reid, Michael B. Schiffer, and William R. Rathje called for a ‘behavioral archaeology’, arguing that to achieve the goals of such a process-oriented study scholars needed to refocus the discipline on building knowledge of the relationship between behavior and material culture in all times and places (see Behavioral Archaeology). Schiffer proposed a pathway model of archaeological inference to understand how patterns in the archaeological record were causally produced by earlier events in the history of the artifacts involved. He argued that given a detailed knowledge of correlations between activities and artifact patterns in different stages of an artifact’s life history (e.g., manufacture, use, re-use, discard) derived from ethnographic (especially ethnoarchaeological) settings, one could define traces in the archaeological record of these earlier activities. In effect this model suggested that any interpretation was at root a series of hypotheses about past artifact life histories. Behavioral archaeologists differed from Taylor by arguing that culture was an emergent product of the behaviors, rather than ideas, making up these histories. Although initially framed as working within the same materialist framework as other processual archaeologists by emphasizing artifact histories, behavioralists were forced to elevate the importance of specific site formation process events, as well as individual scale activities. This was telling, as it led to a break between behavioralists and other processual archaeologists and exposed undertheorized aspects of the interpretive models of the time that have since been pursued in practice and agency-based models. In a famous exchange between Schiffer and Binford, each described the other’s interpretive model as lacking the dynamism to accurately characterize variability of the archaeological record. Schiffer argued that frequencies, forms, associations, and spatial relations of artifacts changed from one stage to another stage in their life histories. Therefore, it was critical to partition out these changes. Depositional patterns, he argued, were distorted versions of earlier manufacturing and use patterns. For example, the distribution of ceramics in a site likely reflected the spatial locations of refuse disposal activities rather than use locations at a site. Processual Debate

In contrast, Binford balked at the consideration of transformations and reconstructions of life history stages, asking if the archaeological record results from the output of a culture and its subsystems, how

could it be a distortion of itself? Why not simply link material variability directly to its organizing principles. That, at lower scales of analysis, sites contain artifacts that were once in a different place is simply to be expected given a specified set of organizing principles in an adapting system. It is the organization of that system and not the minutiae of its artifact variability that ultimately counts. Much has been made of this exchange, but what seems clear is that while they shared an ideological allegiance to science and processual archeology, at the root of this debate were different interpretive models originating in different understandings of culture. For Binford it was an adaptive system; for Schiffer it was an emergent property of behaviors. Indeed, Schiffer called for the formation of a new behavioral science based on artifact–people relationships to explore such phenomena, and has in his subsequent books explored the role of artifacts in communication and the history of science and technology. This is a significant difference that has since the mid-1980s taken archaeologists, behavioral and otherwise, far from functional interpretative models of culture. For example, a small but vocal group of scholars inspired by Robert C. Dunnell, known as Darwinian or Selectionist archaeologists, has argued that much of the evolutionary talk in archaeology owes its heritage to Spencerian conceptions of cultural evolution rather than to the more reputable biological science of Charles Darwin. They have persistently argued that culture, activities, and artifacts should be approached as variable phenotypic properties under the influence of the forces of evolution, particularly natural selection. Although this program is still developing it is clear that many of its adherents have focused on looking at artifacts as extensions of their users’ phenotypes. Their interpretive models therefore assume, like those of palaeontologists, that ever-changing populations of past artifacts can be modeled through the consideration of their adaptive fitness in specific historical contexts.

Postprocessual Archaeologies In an equally radical but more widely appreciated development, Ian Hodder proposed a postprocessual archaeology that would focus on themes undervalued or ignored in processual archaeology, such as the role of individuals and the ideological components of their actions including their intentions, beliefs, and symbols. His model, reminiscent of Taylor’s, assumed that beliefs interceded between people and their artifacts. Like-minded scholars agreed that culture was better understood not as an organism, but instead as the product of thinking more similar to a literary text.

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Books such as this encyclopedia can be created by one or more people, and then read and differently interpreted by others to produce new and varied texts. In short, for Hodder, culture was a form of symbolic information similar to a language whose organization and interpretation was mediated by its expression in speech, writing, and other symbols including the material culture patterns examined by archaeologists. In addition to this model of the relation between people, objects, and culture, Hodder also contested the importance of science promoted by earlier archaeologists. Where once science and the philosophy of science had served to justify innovations and changes in archaeological method and theory, they became for him obstacles that impaired the interpretive or reading process. Although named by Hodder and unified by its general opposition to processual archaeology, postprocessual archaeology in the 1990s was actually a mix of many archaeologies reflecting differing conceptions of culture and society. Anyone with an interest in questions such as religion, gender, semiotics, or even Marxist theory was so labeled. Processualists, as well as others estranged from processual archaeology such as Behavioral archaeologists and Darwinian archaeologists, also continued to contribute to the plurality of archaeologies evolving since the 1980s. As a group, despite their great differences with respect to the philosophy of science, they all share to relative degrees an interest in smaller-scale phenomena associated with the causal properties of material culture and individual activities. Although no unified understanding of culture or society has gained preeminence since the mid-1980s, a focus on practice and agency theories may do so in the future. As archaeologists have searched for new ways to conceptualize culture, artifacts, and activity, several trends have emerged including a renewed interest in material culture studies and a more critical approach to long lived dichotomies (e.g., material/ideal, human/ animal, people/things, natural/supernatural, belief/ action) associated with the study of society and culture. As processual and postprocessual scholars alike have moved into new territory, they have all recognized to some degree the limitations of assuming these categories are real rather than analytical tools whose utility should be judged on a case-by-case basis. Behavioral archaeologists and Selectionists, for example, have been intensely interested in experimental archaeology because both models of interpretation, specifying that an artifact’s performance characteristics in activities is central. For Selectionists, performance variability leads to variable fitness in evolving populations; for behavioralists, performance

characteristics provide a window into the causal contributions an object makes to an on-going chain of events in its life history. In both cases, albeit for different reasons, the distinction between animate people and inanimate things has not been helpful. For the Selectionist the extended phenotype unifies people and things under one unit of selection. Behavioral archaeologists recognize that there are no behaviors without material objects, and that topics such as communication, archaeological site formation processes, ceramic design, or prehistoric religion, become clearer when people–object interactions are treated as one unit of analysis. Similar to practice theory (described below), this approach allows behavioralists to incorporate the beliefs, intentions, and properties of objects into one material object of study. For decades, it was common to assume that traces of religion and other topics (e.g., gender) were inherently more difficult to identify archaeologically because they were commonly classified by such dichotomies as immaterial, lacking utility, and nonrational. But as Kent V. Flannery and Joyce Marcus have demonstrated in Oaxaca, the material evidence of religion is relatively robust when one looks for it. Practice-oriented perspectives (the author would include but not subsume behavioral archaeology here) build classifications based on interactions rather than normative assumptions about them. They therefore see culture or society as the emergent property of practices. Such perspectives have demonstrated during the last 20 years that theorizing the relationship between people and objects facilitates identification and interpretation far more archaeological variability than had previously been recognized or imagined.

Practice Theory In practice theory, it is assumed that both motivations and actions are contained in practice. Practices themselves create and recreate the emergent properties or structures of culture. That is, cultures are created through practice, and at the same time change it because of the inherent variability of practice. By recognizing that analytical categories are tools and not reality, one is free to discard them for more precise instruments. Just as earlier scholars recognized cultural subsystems and institutions in the historically contingent clusters of culture historians, practice theorists ask whether topics described as ideational cannot be more usefully addressed by looking for variation in what people do rather than in models that distinguish beliefs from actions, utilitarian from nonutilitarian, or religion and technology. For example, people’s interactions with the environment, so critical

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in processual archaeology are transformed into new analytical possibilities through consideration of practice. While still relevant to interpretations, they are modeled as local practices that will likely be far more variable than pragmatic commonsense anticipates. Such models like many others before them derive from a consideration of ethnographic materials. Artifact Agency

Luckily, social science interest in practice-related theory has reinvigorated material culture studies across the academy. One of the hottest topics in contemporary social theory is the realization that people’s practice is conditioned by the agency or causal properties of objects. When people perceive and interact with objects as if they were alive, this creates social relationships between them that defy rationalist models of social action. Alfred Gell in his book Art and Agency makes a persuasive argument for inferring the agency of artifacts by analyzing how people’s actions track that animacy. An analogous model of inference is highlighted in Schiffer and Miller’s artifact-based approach to the study of human communication. On a broader canvas, Bruno Latour and other scholars interested in the relationship between society and technology have also promoted a model of artifact animacy. They have argued that regardless of whether people perceive agency in material objects, the properties of artifacts and systems of people and artifacts have causal affects on the analogous to social agents. They, therefore, advocate reconceptualizing society as composed of both human and nonhuman social actors. In what has become known as actor network theory, they describe these social actors by the neutral term ‘actants’. Actor network theory calls for a symmetrical relationship between people and objects that erases the common sense notion of animate human actors and inanimate passive things. Structured Deposits

Such diverse practice-based material-culture-oriented research has stimulated archaeologists to ask new questions about the relationship between artifact agency and the formation of archaeological deposits. Ethnographic evidence, since the early work of classical evolutionists, has demonstrated that people interact with a range of innate material objects that they consider in some sense to be alive or to possess vital powers. When interpretive models emphasize practice theory and object agency, archaeologists have a new tool for linking broad questions about politics, economics, social organization, and religion to the formation of archaeological deposits.

Since the late 1990s, archaeologists aware of such theories have looked for and found evidence of purposely ‘structured deposits’, sometimes called ‘ritual deposits’, in a range of societal scales from small-scale farming hamlets to complex urban cultures. Richard Bradley has succinctly summarized the significance of these deposits, noting that their patterning often highlights the significance of the materials comprising the artifacts, their histories of social interaction, and the significance of the particular places where they are recovered. Objects found in structured deposits are a mixture of mundane and extraordinary things, but because of their social nature enter the record in organized groups. Some are brought together by their agency, and others kept apart. Finally, these attributes of their organization (the structuring) may result from the enactment of narratives, such as might attend ritual practices recalling past sacred events. Joshua Pollard and others argue today that the term structured deposit implies that some deposits are unstructured and that the true lesson for practiceoriented archaeologies is that all deposits reflect the social nature of human–object interactions. In common with Latour, they ask how would the agency of artifacts affect all forms of activity, ritual and otherwise, and what does that mean for interpretations of the past? In conclusion, differing conceptions of what constitutes culture create specific questions that become the focus of interpretive models in archaeology. Archaeological history, therefore, has changed in relation to innovative understandings of culture including classical evolutionism, historical particularism, processualism, and practice theory. The key to understanding each of these models is understanding the linkages they make between artifacts, people, and culture. See also: Agency; Artifacts, Overview; Behavioral

Archaeology; Cognitive Archaeology; Culture, Concept and Definitions; Ethnoarchaeology; Evolutionary Archaeology; Historic Roots of Archaeology; Historical Materialist Approaches; Marxist Archaeology; Philosophy of Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Social Theory.

Further Reading Binford LR (1962) Archaeology as anthropology. American Antiquity 28: 217–225. Childe VG (1925) The Dawn of European Civilization. London: Kegan Paul. Clarke DL (1968) Analytical Archaeology. London: Methuen.

1560 INVERTEBRATE ANALYSIS Dobres M-A and Robb JE (2000) Agency in archaeology: Paradigm or platitude? In: Dobres M and Robb J (eds.) Agency in Archaeology, pp. 3–17. Routledge: London. Dunnell RC (1980) Evolutionary theory and archaeology. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 3: 35–99. Flannery KV and Joyce M (eds.) (1983) The Cloud People: Divergent Evolution of the Zatopek and Mixtec Civilizations. New York: Academic Press. Gell A (1998) Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hodder I (1985) Postprocessual archaeology. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 8: 1–26.

Renfrew C and Zubrow BW (1994) The Ancient Mind: Elements of Cognitive Archeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schiffer M (1987) Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Schiffer MB and Miller AR (1999) The Material Life of Human Beings: Artifacts, Behavior, and Communication. New York: Routledge. Taylor WW (1948) A Study of Archaeology. Memoir 69. Menasha, WI: American Anthropological Association. Willey GR (1953) Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 155: Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Viru´ Valley, Peru. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.

INVERTEBRATE ANALYSIS Daniella E Bar-Yosef Mayer, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary aperture The opening of a gastropod shell from which the mollusk comes out while alive. Bivalvia A molluskan class of marine and freshwater animals that have a shell composed of two valves. Gastropoda Class of mollusks that are snails, mostly having a shell that is usually coiled, that live in marine, freshwater, and terrestrial environments. A few members of this class have no external shell. operculum Chitinous or calcareous plate attached to a snail’s foot with which it closes the shell aperture when the animal withdraws into its shell. Polyplacophora A mollusk class that has a shell made of eight plates. Chitons. Scaphopoda A molluskan class of animals that burrow into sandy bottoms, usually at great depths, and have a slightly curved tube-like shell that is open at both ends. Tusk shells. sclerochronology The rate of growth of an animal as studied by the formation of rings (daily, seasonal, or annual). spire The top part of a gastropod shell that includes all whorls except the last one. umbo The tip of a bivalve behind the hinge area where the two valves connect to each other (plural: umbones).

Invertebrates are animals that do not have a vertebral column. Most, notably mollusks (mollusc ¼ British spelling; mollusk ¼ American spelling), arthropods, echinoderms, corals, and very rarely sponges can be found in the archaeological record, whether the result of human activities or reflecting the former natural environment of a site. The invertebrate remains most commonly encountered in archaeological sites are those of phylum Mollusca, the second largest in the

animal kingdom (after Arthropoda) and consists of about 100 000 species. The phylum is divided into eight classes, five of which bear shells that may be encountered in the archaeological record: Gastropoda (snails), Bivalvia (also known as Pelecypoda or Lamellibranchia; bivalves), Scaphopoda (tusk shells), Polyplacophora (chitons), and Cephalopoda (cuttlefish) (Figure 1). The latter have a small internal skeleton that is rarely encountered in archaeological sites. All others have an external skeleton, the shell, made of calcium carbonate. Most molluskan remains retrieved from archaeological sites occur naturally in marine environments while certain snails and bivalves are present also in freshwaters (rivers, springs, and lakes), and some snails are exclusively terrestrial.

Mollusks as Ornaments, Artifacts, and Shell Money The earliest evidence for use of mollusks by humans is from burial contexts of early modern humans (Skhul and Qafzeh caves, Israel) dating to about 100 000 years ago. Marine shells, especially small gastropods (such as Nassarius and Columbella) and bivalves (such as Glycymeris and Cerastoderma) and Dentalium (scaphopods) were the preferred species for decoration throughout the Upper Palaeolithic in parts of Europe, the Near East, and North Africa (Figure 2). In South Africa Nassarius was also a preferred genus during the Middle and Late Stone Age, while Dentalium was used in the Late Pleistocene of western Australia. Shell, being relatively easy to obtain from the beach or from freshwater sources, and made of a relatively soft material (hardness: 3 on the Mohs scale) is a preferred source for making ornaments to this day.

INVERTEBRATE ANALYSIS 1561 Apex

S p i r e

Suture

Hinge

Umbo

Columella Muscle scars Inner lip

B o d y

Aperture Columella Ventral margin

Outer lip

w h o r l

(b)

Base

(a)

Anterior end

Posterior end

(c)

Figure 1 Mollusks commonly encountered in excavations: a, gastropod, b, bivalve, c, scaphopod.

Figure 2 Selection of shell ornaments from Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites: 1, 2. Dentalium sp.; 3. Antalis spp. (six specimens); 4–6. Nassarius gibbosulus; 7. shell artifact of unknown species; 8. Cypraea spurca; 9. Cypraea erosa nebrites Red Sea; 10. Columbella rustica; 11. Conus mediterraneus; 12. Theodoxus jordanii (two specimens); a freshwater species; 13. a worked ‘cassid lip’ of Phalium granulatum; 14. Glycymeris insubrica; 15. Acanthocardia tuberculata; 16. Donax trunculus; 17. pendant of Pinctada margaritifera (Photo: Daniella Bar-Yosef).

It can be used as a simple bead (i.e., a natural shell with a perforation), or it can be made into an artifact so that the initial shape is no longer recognizable. The most common personal ornaments made of shell are disc beads, pendants, and bangles. Methods for producing holes consist of grinding, gouging, drilling, hammering, a combination of those, or relying on natural perforations that are a result of abrasion. Those should not be confused with holes produced by natural predators, primarily gastropods of superfamilies: Naticacea and Muricacea. Shell bangles made of Spondylus gaederopus from the Mediterranean occur throughout the Balkans and further areas of Europe. Bangles made of Lambis truncata were common in the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age of the Levant, and similar bangles made of Turbinella pyrum were common in the Bronze Age cultures of the Indian subcontinent. By contrast, Glycymeris bangles are common phenomena among southwestern US cultures. In Central and South America ornaments and other artifacts of Spondylus sp. were desired for their red colors. Occasionally operculi (sing. operculum)of gastropods were used for ornaments as well. Shells served as functional artifacts, such as containers (e.g., valves used as cosmetic palettes in ancient

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Egypt and Mesopotamia), bailer shells used as pails, digging tools, fishing hooks, musical instruments (and especially trumpets made of Charonia tritonis and other large gastropods). Shells were used as currency in different parts of the world in different periods. To serve in this function the shells have to answer several criteria: to be durable, hard to forge, easily identifiable, not too easy to obtain, and their value needs to be agreed upon. The best-known examples are from Bronze Age China where cowries were used as shell money, California – where Dentalium served in this capacity, and Cypraea moneta (cowrie) that originated in the Maldives served Europeans to buy slaves in western Africa during the seventeenth–eighteenth century. In the northeastern US wampum belts made of Mercenaria and Busycon also served as currency, especially during postcontact fur trade. Busycon served to produce many other shell artifacts, including shell gorgets. Studying shell artifacts throws light on past economies as expressed in ancient trade routes and exchange systems, and it testifies to past spiritual lives as evidenced in funerary customs and other rituals.

Mollusks as a Food Source Mollusks were first exploited as food in the Middle Palaeolithic/Middle Stone Age, but their ‘systematic’ use over long periods of time as a major dietary component seems to have begun in the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene. Shells that are food debris usually accumulated in large heaps referred to as shell middens (especially large heaps in Brazil are known as sambaqui; Figure 3). Shell middens, however, usually contain not only shell but also artifacts and other food refuse such as animal bones and botanical remains, and therefore should really be called

shell-bearing sites. Because of their large size, shell middens or shell mounds are typically excavated by sampling. Often shell middens are characterized by species preference, that is, one or very few shell species are present in any site, either due to preference or availability. Those include bivalves (most common), gastropods (very often limpets), polyplacophorans (chitons), or sea urchins (see below). The decrease in shell size over time that is commonly observed in middens is often attributed to human overexploitation of the largest individuals in the population harvested. The repeated exploitation of the same species allows to carry out analyses of changes in stable isotopes, especially @ 18O, to determine long-term climate changes. Changes in oxygen isotope ratios reflect changes in temperature and serve to determine seasonal occupation of the shell midden, but also to infer on sea level changes. Seasonality can also be determined by making thin sections (especially of bivalves), and identifying seasonal (or daily) growth increments that reflect warmer or cooler seasons. Yet another method for determining seasonality of oyster middens would be by measuring parasitic gastropods (odostomes) that are associated with them. Occasionally shells from a midden had secondary use as raw material for ornaments, tools, and vessels (see above). During Roman Empire times oysters were cultivated. Land snails were sometimes popular food items. Prehistoric populations in North Africa created ‘escargotieres’ (land snail middens), the Romans imported Helix snails to Britain, and snails endemic to Cyprus were imported to the Levant during Hellenistic times, in addition to using local species (see Shell Midden Analysis). Shellfish are known to have been used as bait, and thus serve in another capacity as a food source, but this can hardly be detected archaeologically.

Figure 3 The Brazilian shell mound sambaqui of Garopaba do Sul. Photo: Manoel Gonzalez. (a) View of mound; (b) shell-bearing strata.

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Mollusks Used in Construction and Pottery Production In the Near East, especially during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, shells, especially Glycymeris sp., were used to create a layer of shells in the foundation of floors, apparently to improve drainage. On other occasions shells were collected to produce lime for making plaster, also for use on floors. The same lime could be used for other purposes such as tanning hides or processing various foods. In some areas today shells are used to serve as insulation material. Bivalve shells of different species have been used in pottery production in three different ways: crushed shells were used in pottery as temper (in a few sites in Africa, sponge was used for the same purpose), complete valves were used for burnishing pottery, and occasionally Cardiidae shells were used to create a pattern based on grooves on pottery vessels before firing them (see Ceramics and Pottery).

Textile and Textile Dyes In the Mediterranean, beginning in the Middle Bronze Age, several species of the family Muricidae were used to extract ‘purple dye’. These are pigments in different hues of red–purple–blue that develop when the contents of the hypobranchial gland of these snails is exposed to sunlight. This specialized craft was later attributed especially to the Phoenicians, throughout the first millennium BC, and large heaps of crushed muricids, as well as basins for keeping the snails and processing the dyes, are encountered around the Mediterranean. This craft was also undertaken in other parts of the world using different species of muricids. Byssus threads that the bivalve Pinna nobilis uses to attach itself to the substrate, were collected in Roman times to produce silk-like fabrics. These are known from historic records but are not encountered archaeologically (see Textiles).

Paleoenvironment and Dating Climate and seasonality reconstructions are typically undertaken when studying middens. In other sites land and freshwater snails are useful in reconstructing past environments. While both were rarely used for making beads, land snails often burrow into the archaeological sediments on their own while freshwater snails most often were inadvertently brought to the site either with mud for the construction of mud bricks, or with drinking water. In addition, the presence of freshwater snails, especially Bulinus sp., which is the host of the Schistosoma

worm, is sometimes taken to indicate the presence of schistosomiasis (bilharzia), a parasitic disease. Radiocarbon dating of shells is possible but should be used cautiously and with correction for reservoir age. Differentiating between recent and fossil mollusks can be done either by radiocarbon dating, or by measuring strontium isotopic compositions (87Sr/86Sr). Specific shell artifacts may be a diagnostic tool for determining relative chronology similarly to pottery and lithic types (see Carbon-14 Dating; Dating Methods, Overview). Methods for shell analysis are highly diverse and to date there are no standard methods. The growing number of professional meetings of archaeomalacologists in recent years is likely to advance certain aspects of molluskan (as well as other invertebrates) analysis. The description of a shell assemblage is based on identification and quantification. The basic step in the analysis of any invertebrate is species identification. Because of the broken and abraded nature of shells (that first rolled on the beach, then were manipulated by humans in antiquity, and finally were buried in archaeological sediments), the use of faunal guidebooks is often not satisfactory. The comparison to identified specimens in comparative collections in museums and other curated collections is required, and it is often necessary to compare to several identified specimens, also because of the natural (genetic) variability within each species. The analysis of shells that were used as ornaments is not always possible when the indicative body parts were cut or broken, but often faded remains of the spire or the natural sculpture of the shell can serve as clues, as well as their finding within debris in the case of workshops for shell ornament production. The next step will be determining the archaeological type (beads, pendants, bangles, etc.), which varies between geographic and temporal zones. Creating a typelist (similar to such lists used for pottery and lithics) is a useful tool for describing precise definitions of the types. It is often important to add a taphonomic description of the shells, that can indicate whether they were collected alive or dead, heavily abraded by the actions of the waves, wind and sand, or fresh (see Taphonomy). The proportions between complete shells, broken ones, and small fragments may be useful in determining the existence of a workshop versus the finished objects that may have been traded.

Quantification Counting of shells that were used as artifacts is important because it has been demonstrated that the proportions of different shell species change in different periods, and can thus be chronological indicators.

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Figure 4 Cylinder seal made of the coral Acropora from Tel Assawir in Israel, sixteenth to fifteenth centuries BCE. Credit: Adam Zertal and Ron Beeri.

The same can be said of shells in a midden, that can be a more sensitive indicator of seasonal or periodic changes in mollusk consumption due to availability or preference of certain species. Minimum number of individuals (MNI), number of individual specimens (NISP), and weight are the most commonly used criteria. MNI of gastropods is calculated by counting the number of occurrences of the apex, the base, or other elements of the shell. MNI of bivalves can be calculated either by counting all umbones and dividing them by two (as each valve has an umbo), or by differentiating between right and left valve and counting one of them. The decision on which counting technique to use depends on the species studied as well as the analyst’s preference.

and are assumed to have had medicinal and talismanic purposes. Rare worked specimens include a few cylinder seals (Figure 4). Additional invertebrates encountered rarely are barnacles attached to sea turtles, whales, or mollusks. Some barnacles are edible and are found in middens. Crustaceans and insects that were eaten, or bees that were tended for their beeswax and honey, are rarely visible archaeologically, although some beeswax remains on pottery have been recorded. Insects were used in antiquity to make textiles, especially silkworms to produce silk, and bugs of the family Homoptera and Kermes insects to produce dyes, but they are not visible in the archaeological record (see insect analysis).

Other Invertebrates

See also: Archaeozoology; Ceramics and Pottery; Insect Analysis; Shell Midden Analysis; Textiles; Vertebrate Analysis.

Other invertebrates that have skeletal remains and preserve in archaeological sites are mainly echinoderms and corals. Sea urchins are the echinoderms most often found, and in some cases when used as food an ‘urchin midden’ is created. The spines, lantern elements, and periproct are the test parts that disintegrate along plate margins. The reconstruction of numbers and sizes of urchins exploited, depends heavily on the fine sieving of archaeological sediments. Sponge particles were noted in Palaeolithic sites of Italy. Corals are occasionally encountered

Further Reading Antczak A and Cipriani R (eds.) (in press) Early Human Impact on Megamollusks, British Archaeological Reports. Oxford: Archaeopress. Bailey GN and Parkington J (eds.) (1988) The Archaeology of Prehistoric Coastlines. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bar-Yosef Mayer DE (ed.) (2005) Archaeomalacology: Molluscs in Former Environments of Human Behaviour. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

INVERTEBRATE ANALYSIS 1565 Bar-Yosef Mayer DE (2005) The exploitation of shells as beads in the Palaeolithic and Neolithic of the Levant. Pale´orient 31/1: 176–185. Campbell G (in press) Sorry, wrong phylum: A neophyte archaeomalacologist’s experiences in analyzing a European Atlantic sea urchin assemblage. Archaeofauna. Claassen C (1998) Shells. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. Meehan B (1982) Shell Bed to Shell Midden. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.

Koike H (1986) Prehistoric hunting pressure and paleobiomass: An environmental reconstruction and archaeozoological analysis of a Jomon shellmound area. In: Akazawa T and Aikens CM (eds.) The University Museum Bulletin, Vol. 27: Prehistoric HunterGatherers in Japan: New Research Methods, pp. 27–53. Tokyo: University of Tokyo. Thomas KD and Mannino MA (2001) The exploitation of invertebrates and invertebrate products. In: Brothwell DR and Pollard AM (eds.) Handbood of Archaeological Sciences. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Islamic Civilizations See: Africa, East: Swahili Coast; Africa, Historical Archaeology; Asia, West: Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations; Europe, South: Medieval and Post-Medieval.

Isotope Analysis

See: Stable Isotope Analysis.

L LANDSCAPE ARCHAEOLOGY Wendy Ashmore and Chelsea Blackmore, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Annales School Approach to history (originally, French history) emphasizing among other things a blending of history with the social sciences, favoring comparison and structure over noncomparative narrative histories; took shape with establishment of the journal Annales, in 1929. axis mundi Literally, ‘axis of the world’; a centering place, offering passage from one cosmic realm to another and around which a properly ordered world is arranged. ethnoarchaeology The study of living people by archaeologists, usually with the goal of understanding how customs and behavior are expressed in material traces. ethnohistory Study of relatively recent societies through accounts of explorers, missionaries, native chroniclers, such archival resources as land titles and census documents; often focuses on situations of colonization. fengshui Literally, ‘wind and water’; Chinese art and science through which one’s life is placed in harmony with forces of the universe. historical ecology Study of past ecosystems by chronicling change in human–landscape relations over time. inhabitation Social practices by which people understand their own lives and landscapes, with reference to occupants and actions in the same locale, in other times (after Barrett). panopticon A space (originally a prison, as designed by Bentham) in which all areas can be observed from a single central position, usually without certainty, among those being observed, about whether surveillance is actually taking place. phenomenology Philosophical approach giving primacy to direct experience and encounter with the world, stemming from work by Husserl and later, Heidegger and others. settlement pattern Material traces of people’s presence on the land, usually highlighting buildings and other constructed features, and their distribution. worldview Comprehensive, culture-specific conception of the universe and humanity’s place therein.

‘Landscape archaeology’ has been defined in multiple ways, all of which involve archaeological study of people’s involvement with their surrounding environment. Differences arise from contrasting intellectual traditions, the theoretical stances in which the authors work. For some, the critical relations are

ecological, grading into environmental archaeology or geoarchaeology. For others, focus is on the sets of meanings derived from landscape experience. Still others recognize combinations of analytical and interpretive foci. Important to virtually all are reliance on multidisciplinary approaches, including more than archaeological data alone. Landscape archaeology attends both to sites and settlement remains and to spaces in between. As a consequence of the latter, landscape archaeology sometimes can be linked conceptually to distributional or nonsite archaeology, in which the subject matter is the discoverable array of material traces, commonly at the level of individual artifacts. The investigative scale of landscape archaeology is usually regional in scope, although US historical archaeologists use the term to refer to the study of formal gardens. At the wider scale, landscape archaeology facilitates recognition of extensive material remains, such as roads and agricultural fields, which do not fit comfortably in traditional notions of the archaeological site. Such wide scale also highlights the importance of people’s movements across the land, whether for economic, social, ritual, or other reasons. The more spatially expansive definitions consider landscape archaeology to deal with long-term, historically contingent cases, and the cumulative materialized relations between localized social groups and the settings in which they live and move. These relations are recursive between the landscape and the behaviors and beliefs of its human occupants. Despite the multiplicity of specific, contrasting definitions, landscape archaeology is widely viewed as potentially unifying across theoretical divides.

Theory in Landscape Archaeology Landscape has a long history in archaeology, although that history differs across intellectual traditions, especially in the English-speaking world. Many authors call attention to the etymology of the word, from the Dutch landschap, and its relation to a genre of painting in seventeenth-century Europe. For some, the distinctly Western ‘gaze’ involved, and the perspective views that simultaneously distance the scene

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and make possessions of its contents, are bound up with the patronage of wealthy landowners underlying the creation of the pictures. For other authors, landscape is more concerned with territory, and with economic or ecological dimensions of nature and environment. Not surprisingly, theoretical perspectives about landscape in archaeology have changed in tandem with wider intellectual, political, and economic currents, most consistently reflecting attitudes toward forms of human involvement with land. Sherratt discusses pertinent European trends within a wider set of fluctuations in European intellectual movements since the Renaissance. In his view, times of stability support considerations favoring comparison, determinism, order, and stages, a collectivity he glosses as an Enlightenment attitude, in which emphasis is given to evolution, and in spatial analyses, to settlements. He associates landscape studies with times of political and economic instability, in which Romantic attitudes favor contextual, relativist, and meaningoriented studies. To consider further how definitions and theory have shifted in intellectual time and space, the remainder of this section adapts from more extended discussion elsewhere, treating Anglophone traditions, primarily in Britain and North America. Turning first to late-nineteenth-century North America, Euro-Americans equated the notion of landscape with nature unspoiled by humans. Somewhat ironically, Yosemite, Niagara Falls, and other places modified by Olmstead for health or esthetic reasons quickly became naturalized in popular thought. Despite Sauer’s 1925 scholarly distinction between ‘cultural’ landscapes and ‘natural’ ones, the notion of landscapes as pristine nature remains frequent in the US, among scholars as well as the public. In Britain, by contrast, a deeper, long-standing interest in prehistoric and historical landscapes is tied in part to genealogical interest in local and regional traditions, and was given immense boost from availability of aerial photography and production of the Ordnance Maps after World War I. Americanist archaeological landscape studies of the late twentieth century derive most directly from cultural ecological studies of Steward and Willey’s settlement pattern research. Both were significant foundations for the positivist ideas dominating USbased archaeology in the late twentieth century, and both supported examination at a regional scale. Theoretical trends in the US New Archaeology broadly paralleled those in a New Geography at mid-century, and archaeologists cited widely from Chisholm, Chorley, Haggett, and (early) Harvey. In this time of economic and political optimism (despite the Cold War), landscapes and other kinds of space were

objects to be measured and compared, analyzed, and interpreted via powerful statistical models. The land remained a neutral and passive object, used by people but otherwise relatively detached from them. In Britain as well, scientific approaches prevailed in archaeology amid the economic and ecological perspectives of the 1960s and 1970s, and a similar array of positivist geographers was influential. Whether emphasizing a functional view to reconstructing ancient land use, or focusing on social and economic systems at varied spatial scales, landscape archaeology at this time was broadly consistent on both sides of the Atlantic. Already in the 1970s, however, positivist stances increasingly were challenged in both the US and UK, by post-positivist philosophies, humanist concerns, and calls for social relevance – and social justice – in uncertain times of economic flux and the Vietnam War. Space (including landscapes) and human action were recast as matched participants in perpetually recursive mutual constitution. Existentialism, feminism, idealism, phenomenology, and interactionism proved to be important philosophical influences. Despite these challenges, positivist archaeology remains strong in the US, if with widening exploration of post-positivist stances. In landscape research, theory from economic geography, ecology, and anthropology continues to support inferences about social and economic dimensions of land use. Some landscape analysts focus more closely on physical terrain, with theory drawn at least as often from the physical and natural sciences as from the social. In all of the foregoing, location and distribution of material resources figure importantly, if with growing attention as well to monuments and rock-art or other material inscriptions of social meaning. Historical archaeologists in the US tend more toward humanistic perspectives, writing of landscapes most often in terms of colonial gardens. Although reference remains relatively sparse regarding existentialism, feminism, idealism, phenomenology, and other strands of social theory sparking recent social geography, growing attention turns to the potentials in practice theory, structuration, and Marxist thought. In the UK, landscape research is generally more humanistic and post-positivist, and archaeologists invoke social theory from a range of sources, especially structural Marxism, phenomenology, various forms of practice theory, and occasionally, feminist thought. Most practitioners stress the idea of landscape as socially constructed, emphasizing that the same piece of ground holds different social attachments and contrasting symbolic meanings for different people and groups, at any one time and through time as well. Attachments and meanings may be attested materially,

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inscribed on the land in architecture, rock-art, or other media; additionally, or alternatively – and more challenging for archaeologists – the attachments and meanings may reside in memories, shared orally, if at all. Location and distribution of material markings figure significantly as subjects of inquiry, especially stone monuments, construction, and rock-art, and objects or settings commonly thought to materialize performance of ritual. Materially unmarked landscape elements gain increasing importance as well, as inferred cues in orienting and organizing human activity. Whether expressed materially or not, however, attachments and meanings are commonly considered fundamental for orienting individuals and societies, integral to social identities and often, to moral grounding.

Landscape and Ecology Landscape as ecological study commonly emphasizes long-term interaction between humans and the terrain on and in which they live. A principal advantage of such a perspective is the enhanced potential for recognizing climatic, geomorphic, economic, ideational, and/or political change in a single defined setting. This combined temporal and environmental focus relates to the long-dure´e of Braudel and the Annales School of history. Although landscapes are often described as comprising palimpsests of cumulative change, archaeologists focus alternately on identifying either episodes within the sequence or their cumulative effects. Geomorphic changes in the landscape include localized human and geological effects, as well as more widely experienced effects from climate shifts. Fluvial hydrology, for example, reveals alterations wrought by natural forces of alluviation and erosion, and also recognizes human intervention. The degraded modern landscape of Greece has long been attributed to combined effects of farming and climate change; working in the Argolid specifically, van Andel and Runnels attribute the situation more specifically to Bronze Age and Byzantine episodes of major soil erosion, involving archaeological and geomorphic evidence of rapid forest clearing for agriculture with no substantial soil conservation measures. In Oaxaca, Mexico, of the late first millennium BC, Joyce and Mueller document that intensification of agriculture in the highlands around Monte Alba´n immediately preceded an increased sediment load in the rivers draining the watershed. The result transformed hydrology and boosted agricultural potentials far downstream, in the broad Rı´o Verde Valley at the Pacific coast. The ramifications of geomorphic and anthropogenic changes to the landscape can have dramatic and long-lasting impact on human and other life.

Many ecological studies are more directly economic in focus, examining evidence of human land use and ecological potentials. In the 1960s, Vita-Finzi and Higgs were influential in examining foraging and farming landscapes in the Levant, developing retrodictive models of what economic strategies were plausible in light of inferred technologies, demography, and landforms of Paleolithic and Neolithic times. More than two decades later, Kirch extended social inference of such study, in Polynesia contexts. After he had assessed the differential resources and subsistence capacities of varied islands, as well as their archaeological records of human occupation, landscape archaeology allowed him to link contrasts between trajectories of demographic prosperity and ecological disaster to degrees of cooperation-based social organization, as well as in subsistence strategies per se. These and related inquiries for some define historical ecology, a pursuit intersecting with landscape archaeology, in which analysts highlight the cumulative political and economic relations between people and the land, over hundreds and often thousands of years, frequently with implications for the present day. In Burgundy, for example, Crumley and Marquardt’s research has documented the impact of factors as diverse as the Roman conquest and climate change on the lives of the Celtic populace of the region from the Late Iron Age through the Middle Ages. Landscape approaches are crucial for inquiries about large-scale land management strategies, the transformation of extensive tracts, and the social order responsible for these actions. As Erickson’s work documents, the extent of artificial terracing in pre-Columbian Andean landscapes attests to labor investment in antiquity on a collective, cumulative scale even larger than that involved in construction of civic buildings, and at least several hundred years before imperial Inka labor tribute levies. Although features of agricultural intensification are massive in aggregate, however, Erickson’s ethnoarchaeological studies reveal that the labor involved did not always or necessarily require oversight by authority more centralized than a network of kin groups. This Andean research has had clear, constructive implications for agricultural development programs today. Many ancient peoples have modified surface hydrology, as well as topography. In the Maya lowlands, for example, extensive, if often subtle alteration began as early as 400 BC, in Preclassic times, directing water to plaster-lined reservoirs instead of letting it escape through porous karst limestone bedrock, where it thereby would have eluded reach of humans. In this case, and in contrast to at least parts of the Andean terracing just cited, the concentration of water resources, their eventual focus on providing

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water to urban centers, and the magnitude of modification over hundreds of square kilometers are thought ultimately to imply centralized direction and control. Indeed, landscape inquiry has confirmed extensive and long-standing ecological management around the globe, by societies with quite varied characteristics of size and internal organization. Because of that, the idea of pristine landscapes, unmodified by humans, has become untenable virtually anywhere. Through landscape inquiry, the vast expanse of Amazonia has yielded evidence for millenia of human intervention, in earthworks as well as indications of repeated forest cutting. Inference that Australia’s outback was ‘untouched’ any time recently is similarly misleading, on the basis of geographic and archaeological findings, as well as resounding testimony in Aboriginal narratives.

Landscape, Cosmology, and Worldview People experience landscapes as land, water, and sky. They also learn well the seasonal temperatures, changeable winds, and sensory events, from storms on the ground to eclipses in the heavens. Prominent features of topography or constellations come to signify locations, episodes, or supernatural actors in creation narratives. Sun and moon are among the most commonly deified forces, whose actions take place eternally in the landscape embracing sky, horizons, and unseen netherworld. The passage of the seasons, as well as predictability of rain, temperature, and other weather conditions are all read from movements of those and other celestial bodies. In parallel ways, the contours of visible terrain come to embody cosmology and mythic history. These collectively are fundamental aspects of worldview, the principles by which the world is properly constituted. Multiple scholars have noted that, in the worldview of local occupants, visually dramatic places in the landscape, especially involving abrupt transitions in elevation, landform, waterfalls, and other such features, tend to be treated as places where components of the universe join. Analysts frequently call such a location an axis mundi, following influential writings by Eliade and Tuan. These kinds of places are prime spots for attachment of cosmogonic and migration narratives, and for marking materially, by rock-art and other means. Repeated movement across the landscape, over the span of days, seasons, years, and lifetimes, situates the oral texts as social memory of inalienable landscape knowledge. Increasingly, archaeologists collaborate with indigenous peoples in acknowledging and seeking to understand meaningful landmarks of these narratives, as in recent studies by Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson, or by Zeden˜o, in different portions of what is now the US Southwest.

Human-made marks on the landscape, as rock-art or standing monuments of some other sort, may become naturalized over time, as primordial. Ancient architecture, especially as ruin mounds, may be attributed as readily to supernatural forebears as to human ancestors. Recorded accounts of the building of Stonehenge, by Merlin of Arthurian legend, or by supernatural giants, dramatize this tendency. While these monuments may cease to be occupied in their original ways, they almost surely retain some meaning as visible parts of the landscape. Richards argues that the megalithic stones, earthen mounds, and ditch rings of Neolithic Orkney embodied and replicated the surrounding expanses of earth, stone, and water, which modern observers see more clinically as simply glaciated terrain. The caveat about persistence of meaning stems from reminders, such as the Orkney instance, or Blake’s reminder of naturalized archaeological Nuraghi tower monuments of Bronze Age Sardinia; features that today seem close to neutral or empty of reported local meaning. Analysts often take implications of cosmological meaning to define ‘sacred’ landscapes. As useful as this term can be, it also begs a definition for what constitutes sacrality, and for what the limits of sacred and mundane are in particular cases, especially in societies less secularized than the modern Western world. Especially when treating of ancient societies who have left no written accounts, archaeologists are severely challenged to determine what, if any, significance modern distinctions between sacred and nonsacred might have had in antiquity. Frequently, cosmology and worldview also inform inscription of social and political order in the landscape, at multiple scales. Site choice for building a house, shrine, field, or settlement is affected not only by physical terrain and economic resources, but also by beliefs about proper disposition of humans on the land. In China, the ideas that underlie the principles of fengshui and its goals of maximized auspiciousness for inhabitants apparently guided placement of houses or settlements from the prehistoric period. Parallel kinds of principles, based on such notions as cardinal orientations of world quarters, or importance of sighting alignments with particular astronomical phenomena, provide directives in other societies, states, and otherwise. Wheatley’s writings about Chinese cities influenced much subsequent thinking on the matter. Often conceptions of the cosmos are mapped onto the earth, as in building positions and alignments in urban landscapes of New Kingdom Egypt, at Teotihuacan in Mexico, or among the Classic Maya. Beyond a single town or city, landscapes are similarly shaped by worldview. In the Southwest, ancestral Keres landscapes achieved this mapping in the

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distribution of shrines extending in cardinal directions from the cosmologically organized town plans, often with orienting reference to prominent mountains or other ‘natural’ landmarks. Far to the south, in the landscape around Cuzco, Peru, ritual circuits of the Inca were mapped along sight lines extending radially, to varied distances from the capital. Within this sacred landscape, the radiating lines, or ceques, were marked at irregular distances by huacas, sacred places or objects imbued with supernatural force, which recalled cosmic or legendary events in the Inca past. Lamentably for archaeologists, the huacas themselves are not always visually distinguished from other natural features, in predictable location or form, and this makes their identification dependent on oral tradition and written accounts. The strong benefit of ethnohistory available for interpreting Inca belief is what is so prominently lacking for societies in many locales, especially deep in prehistory. Nevertheless, painstaking landscape studies in those situations, such as research by Bradley, Richards, and other scholars of Neolithic Britain, are testimony to the productivity of proposing working understandings of those sacred landscapes. In each of the foregoing instances and many others, landscape is often central to interpreting ancient cosmology and worldview.

Landscape, Identity, and History Whether referring to sacred or mundane characteristics, the foregoing sections illustrate that people engage landscapes in long-term reflexive exchange, establishing both possible and proper ways of living in the world. In the process, individuals and groups come to identify with the landscapes they inhabit. With establishment of identity in this sense, landscapes also become repositories of social memory and history. Landscapes as identity materialize the reciprocal and always fluid relationship between the physical terrain, language, history, and cultural ideologies. That is, as people live within and move among arenas that shape their worldview, they simultaneously reinvest and modify meanings of the land. As Basso describes among the modern Western Apache, for example, conversations and stories are punctuated with place names that spatially situate actions of known, legendary, or deeply ancient others. By such narratives, landscapes are socialized and history is emplaced. The places named also come to carry moral values associated with cited actions and their consequences. Landscapes thereby become conceptual tools as much as they are physical arenas, and in so doing, comprise conceptual frameworks to guide people in their daily actions and interactions with others.

As with language, understanding of a landscape is built on social memory and the experiences tied to it, serving as a form of cultural logic. From his studies in prehistoric contexts of Iron Age and earlier contexts in Britain, Barrett writes of parallel kinds of identification, memory, and history. He adopts the term ‘inhabitation’ to describe the social practices through which direct experience, shared memories, and operative modes of understanding (such as concepts of time) make a landscape and its monuments meaningful for its current set of occupants. In Britain, he argues that Iron Age people transformed experience of the landscape and monuments inherited from earlier times, replacing rituals that were millennia old with new, more pragmatic practices of land-use and living in the present. What archaeologists encounter today is a landscape that has visually collapsed distinct identities and histories from the past, but which inquiry reveals to be convergent in location only, and substantially divergent in meaning. Mnemonic landmarks of identity take many forms. Among the most common are mortuary sites. Building from arguments by Saxe, Goldstein, Renfrew, and Charles, archaeologists frequently draw on grave or mortuary monument distributions to map social territories. Most commonly, clusters of interments are inferred to denote either central places or boundaries of the land identified with the group in question. At the same time, Buikstra (writing about the lower Illinois valley) and Sharples (writing about Neolithic Orkney) caution that different portions of a kingroup or community may be buried in multiple, distinct locations. From these combined perspectives, tracking the places and forms of mortuary practices, especially over multiple centuries or millennia, can yield provocative insights about changing social identities within a regional landscape. In the lower Illinois valley, for example, Buikstra and Charles detect not only significant changes over time in form and topographic location of burials and cemeteries, but also concomitant shifts in emphasis on mortuary ritual versus ancestor cult, and from these observations, propose sequential transformations in social identities, among those who were burying their dead. Identification with specific landscape features may affect social standing, whether by design, or as unintended consequence. For instance, otherwise socially subordinate groups sometimes benefit from access to economic and symbolic resources, such as water, when they are rare or patchy in distribution. Among many cultural groups, not only is water essential for survival but also it carries symbolic connotations connected to the supernatural. According to Scarborough, Fash, Lucero, and other archaeologists, leadership authority in pre-Columbian lowland Maya

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society relied in large measure on control of water sources, often along with their augmentation, as with reservoir catchments. The landscape of water resources thereby mapped the bases of social power, its establishment and maintenance, and the varied degrees of its centralization. In other circumstances, however, special or unique landscape resources can foster resistance to authority. By the fourteenth century, the Hauz-i Rani, or ‘Queen’s reservoir’ near Delhi, had become known as the site of a miracle involving a sufi Islamic saint. Beyond its economic importance, the water of this hauz held an unusual degree of sacred significance. Otherwise politically and economically disadvantaged residents in the vicinity came to be considered special disciples, and the association allowed them a degree of autonomy relative to the Delhi Sultanate. As Kumar writes, the beneficial distinction depended on the historical conjunction of the capital’s location in Delhi, and on political and economic prosperity at that hub. When the imperial capital changed location, economics declined, and homage to the sufi saint shifted to a different locale; the sacrality and special standing of the hauz and its village dissolved. The changing fortunes of the Hauz-i Rani village have material history in the elaborate medieval architecture at the shrine, and the sequence of its ruination in subsequent centuries.

Landscape, Gender, and Sex Many authors have called attention to the notion of landscape as a product of the rise of capitalism and its attendant social inequities, especially in class and gender. Through the advent of landscape painting, and the linear perspective that permitted such imagery, wealthy landowners could commission portraits of their holdings. Not only did this distinctly Western gaze objectify the surrounding world, distancing and removing it from direct experience, the vantage also marked possession and feminization of landscape by the men who contracted for the works. In other words, the mere concept of landscape is loaded with connotations both of control and of hierarchical gender relations. Just as landscape embodies cosmology, history, and social identity, it can also materialize gender. Specific features of earth or sky may be identified as female, male, or other genders, often with implications of primordial (and perpetual) acts of sexual reproduction. Recognition of gender attribution in antiquity commonly depends on availability of ancient texts, depictions, or strong cultural continuities from the past. Earth and sky are frequently creator deities, but neither partner is universally male or female. While the

idea of Mother Earth is acknowledged as widespread across time and cultures, in ancient Egypt, texts and images distinguish earth, along with nourishing floodwaters of the Nile, as male. In other cases, gender identities are attributed to portions of the land, or to individual celestial bodies. Of the latter, sun and moon are regularly, though not universally, recognized as male and female, respectively, while individual stars or planets are more varied. Among the Maya, for example, Venus was and is emphatically male, the younger brother of the Sun, one of the earliest and most influential deities in creation. Within the earthly plane of ancient Greece, a gendered landscape materially unified rural and urban worlds. According to Cole, the most important sanctuaries of Artemis, goddess of wilderness and fertility, were located in the countryside, with replicas within city limits. While the shrines themselves expressed societal unity implicitly, ritual processions of women between the two enacted it explicitly, because women’s unprotected movements were behavioral if not material testaments to the security and stability across society’s spatial expanse. In a complementary vein, customary gendering of activities may attach gender identities to the specific spaces where those activities are carried out. Seclusion and gendered exclusion in nunneries and monastic landscapes are among the most striking examples, well attested with material evidence. At the other end of a continuum of exclusivity, some gender-specific activities – often for performance of ritual – may keep one or another gender off-limits only for the duration of the event. The latter sort of instance leaves little or no material trace for archaeologists to discern. In between those extremes of archaeological visibility one can cite instances from gendered landscapes as mutually contrastive as the arctic north and equatorial Africa. In the Arctic, structuralist analysis of Inuit worldview links women with winter, the sea, and marine life, while men are associated with summer, land, and terrestrial animals. McGhee’s examination of Thule artifacts, their inferred uses, and the sources of raw materials suggests that a similar gendered distinction of time and space ordered the Thule world a millennium ago and more. Linkage of women with ivory from sea mammals and men with hunting gear made from terrestrial materials is one part of the conclusions reached. According to Bodenhorn’s recent ethnographic work in northern Alaska, a similar worldview may lie today behind men’s valuation of their wives’ abilities to ‘call’ to sea mammals, and bring them close for the men to hunt. In this account, men may do the physical work of the hunt, but they do it in a

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female landscape realm and rely on women’s skills to complete the act. This collaborative partitioning of a gendered Arctic landscape contrasts with the findings of historical archaeology, ethnohistory, and ethnoarchaeology in iron smelting of Tanzania. There, place names are glosses of words for men’s and women’s genitalia, and for actions in sexual intercourse, such that an ancient smelting furnace tower is a phallus, a nearby river is named for vaginal fluid, and other localities constitute steps in coition, especially men’s actions. From Schmidt’s combined analytic perspectives, the material landmarks complement verbal labels, the whole conveying a complex but unified message of social and sexual hierarchy and male prowess, and equating the process of iron smelting with reproduction. More to the point, customs regarding women’s exclusion from the smelting process confirm the visual message of the landscape, linking success in metallurgical production with success in procreation, and by extension with societal prosperity.

Landscape, Movement, and Pilgrimage As is clear from preceding sections, movement is a critical factor in landscape knowledge, and in endowing landscapes with meaning. Seasonal rounds among nonsedentary societies familiarize people with places to which they attach histories and legends, in which they gain economic resources, or from which they infer acts of supernatural creation. Darnell describes the caravan tracks inscribed by wear across economic, political, and ritual landscapes of pharaonic Egypt, while Snead details paths carved by centuries of repeatedly walking established routes in the Puebloan Southwest. In deep antiquity of markedly different cultural traditions, scholars such as Bradley, Bender, and Tilley suggest inference of long-past pathways by phenomenological re-enactment of plausible routes. In particular, they point to rock-art and visually striking changes in topography as likely signposts guiding such movement. Indeed, Thomas infers a rather intricate choreography of movement, guided by extant or reconstructed visual cues in the landscape, leading toward Neolithic Avebury, and into the carefully structured circular enclosure of ditch and megaliths. Pilgrimage combines landscape movement with spiritual belief, as a formalized act of faith involving a destination, a journey, and experience of ambient geography. In ancient times as now, the process of pilgrimage itself is as much a physical undertaking as a spiritual one: the endurance of the pilgrim, the ruggedness of the landscape, and the remoteness of

the destination enhances social and spiritual qualities of the journey. Spiritual magnetism, the hallmark of pilgrimage centers, is often associated with miraculous cures, supernatural beings, difficulty of access, and sacred geography. Archaeological studies of pilgrimage have been largely the domain of classical and historical archaeologies. Ancient Greek women’s passages between rural and urban sanctuaries of Artemis have already been cited. For prehistoric times and nonliterate traditions as well, however, pilgrimage may offer an appropriate explanatory model for understanding sacred places and landscape crossings. According to Silverman, shrine mounds, well-swept open spaces, and an array of temporary buildings identify Cahuachi as a pilgrimage destination between AD 200 and 400 in the landscape of south coastal Peru. Sheets finds that well-worn tracks in Costa Rica lead consistently to (or from) pre-Columbian ceremonial sites. Parker Pearson and his colleagues contend that Stonehenge and the great earthen henge at Durrington Walls were end points for circuits through the encompassing ceremonial landscape, and that completion of the local pilgrimage in opposite directions at the two solstices commemorated complementary transitions between life and death in Neolithic Britain. Cross-cultural evidence from caves, materializing day-to-day observances or more specialized rituals, suggest that pilgrimages to such portals cross landscapes of quite varied spatial scale. In Mesoamerican landscapes of ancient and modern times, caves and settlements sometimes have close spatial linkages, although even over that short distance, formal, paved roads often mark passage from the mundane world of daily life to the supernatural portal into the earth. In contrast, the cave of Naj Tunich, in Guatemala, is far from any substantial settlements, but the existence and contents of its mural drawings and Maya inscriptions, as well as physical modifications to its chambers, attest to visitors from afar over more than the last millennium, arguably as pilgrims. Archaeologically, it is the abundance of traces of reverential visits within the cave paired with the absence of nearby settlements that together point to acts of pilgrimage. Pilgrimage stations and other sacred landmarks also prove powerful tools in political propaganda, particularly when those sites acted as intra-regional destinations. For example, Roman conquerors actively seized on such places to transform the landscapes of Celtic peoples under their dominion. At the same time as they rearranged human occupation of the Celtic landscape by settling people into the lowland valleys that were conducive to more intensive agricultural production, the Romans also erased

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markers of tradition Celtic religion. That is, to extinguish the continuation of pagan beliefs and practices, the Romans destroyed oak groves and other landscape features sacred in Celtic worldview. Destruction of sacred monuments alters landscapes of belief, and is known from both ancient and modern times, as conquering armies raze buildings and monuments that had been cues to belief and ritual – from temples that fell to the Spanish conquest of the New World, to destruction of mosques and churches in the interethnic wars of eastern Europe in the late twentieth century.

Landscape and Gardens Among other contributions, landscape archaeology has helped redirect archaeological focus to the ideological, physical, and cultural importance of some in-between spaces that had been traditionally ignored. In addition to reporting on roads, water bodies, and other features already cited, garden studies offer notable illustration of this point. Although traditionally associated with historical archaeology and art history, such studies provide a unique means with which to explore materialized discourse on social hierarchy. Appreciation of formal gardens as archaeological landscapes has grown as preservationists have enlisted archaeologists’ aid, to understand and conserve historical settings of recent centuries. Except in the Classical world, application of garden archaeology to societies deeper in antiquity is still underdeveloped, although important studies are underway at places such as Petra and have been part of the understanding of space and social identity of ancient life in Egypt. More than any other kinds of landscape, gardens are purely human constructions, bounded and cultivated. While garden studies include barnyards, social forecourts, pathways, kitchen gardens, and work-yards, the majority of research has focused on formal ‘pleasure’ gardens. These are typically much more than an array of plants, trees, and flowers. Rather, their spatial organization depends on the intimate relationship between the house and the garden, linked by proximity, design, proportions, and access. During the Renaissance, gardens were a means to display social status and a resource for enhancing social mobility. By the mid-seventeenth century, manufactured pastoral landscapes also provided respite from stresses of urban life for many among the bourgeoisie. Nobles, on the other hand, viewed emulation of their gardens, dress, or custom as conspicuous and ostentatious consumption, a display of poor taste by men aspiring above their station.

Florescence of formal gardens reflected upper-class interests in classical history: Greek and Roman art, science, and esthetics became the ultimate expressions of refinement and taste. Expressed materially by inclusion of urns, statues, and terraces, garden spaces became overt commentaries on morality and social legitimization. For example, construction of terraces and creation of visual focal points used geometry and principles of optics to manipulate perceived space, exaggerating the grandeur and scale of gardens in relation to adjoining homes. As public vistas to be awed and admired, formal gardens created spaces of exclusion and inclusion. These contrived idyllic scenes also blurred distinctions between artifice and nature, thereby naturalizing (and legitimating) the authority of landowners – while simultaneously rendering invisible those responsible for the physical acts of landscape construction. Application of Renaissance principles and artistic styles also associated the landowners with a revered past, using innuendo to strengthen claims of property and social rights. Royalty was not immune from such declarative ostentation, as in the seventeenth-century garden landscape of Versailles. Leone’s work reveals similar principles – and goals – in action at the eighteenth-century William Paca Garden and others in Annapolis. Within colonial America, work gardens and vegetable patches also became a common feature of the urban and domestic landscape, across social classes. While relatively small in scale and hidden from view, these gardens, too, reflected particular worldviews. Just as formal gardens were the ultimate expression of polite society and social virtue, so too did kitchen gardens symbolize the importance of family life and domesticity. Kitchen gardens were also integral to the economic success of urban families. In Lexington, Virginia, for example, the lack of commercial markets made families dependent on the productivity of these small plots of land. The vegetables and goods produced sustained the family and any excess was used in trade for goods and services needed in town. The creation and success of the domestic garden was not simply economic or utilitarian in plan and effect, but was also seen as a way to attract men to their homes and make them content within the domestic realm. Indeed, Kealhofer identifies spatially nested landscapes of seventeenth- and early eighteenthcentury tidewater Virginia that collectively solidified colonial landowners’ identities, both in contrast to Native American neighbors and along rungs of a social ladder within the colonist community. While some formal gardens were focal points of social knowledge within communities, direct experience of the gardens themselves was commonly

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restricted. Archaeological evidence restores the shade trees and fencerows that once shielded gardens from prying eyes, limiting access to a privileged few. On slave-holding plantations of eighteenth-century America, the house yard, work gardens, and common grounds of enslaved and free laborers were pointedly excluded from the more luxuriant spaces. This allowed planters to hide slaves from sight, establishing instead an atmosphere of ‘natural’ tranquility. At the same time, however, slaves could develop a landscape of resistance effectively hidden from the eyes of the overseers and owners. Slave-held houseyard gardens thus embodied independence, control, and pride of ownership, materializing resistance within the spatial confines of the plantation. Many slaves also planted gardens removed from plantation space and control, embodying freedom within a remote landscape that excluded whites.

Landscape, Legitimization, and Conflict If landscapes create a particular way of understanding the world, then they are also important vehicles for naturalization of social and political agendas, particularly those involving social and economic disparity. As already discussed, formal gardens and plantations are prominent illustrations of such agendas, as are pilgrimage destinations. By materializing a hegemonic social memory, landscapes legitimate positions of authority and privilege. Alternative viewpoints, however, instantiate resistance and reshape the landscape. Both social control and rejection of landscape form shape the way in which the world is perceived, engaged, and constructed. First is the construction of authority. Particularly in state societies, those in power shape landscapes to validate and reinforce their own authority. Discussions of city planning in antiquity demonstrate repeatedly that those who commissioned the constructions invoked spatial principles, grounded in culturespecific worldviews, that would situate the activities of religious and political leaders in the most respected positions, those most imbued with sanctified power. Wheatley’s compelling writings established the relation between worldview and city plan, in ancient China and elsewhere, and especially since his work at mid-century, others have written of how aspects of worldview were manipulated to enhance the authority of those in charge. Steinhardt writes of city plans in a succession of Chinese capital cities as calling on worldview and the authority of the past in this regard, and especially in the time of Khubilai Khan. In his new-built capital, deliberate recreation of a revered ancient urban landscape helped legitimize the political claims of the new Mongol dynasty.

Elsewhere, Maya kings supported their own claims by invoking principles of cardinal directionality of the Maya cosmos, and the symbolic auspiciousness of each of the cardinal quarters for situating ruler’s palaces, arenas for public spectacles, and mortuary monuments. As in China, Maya cityscapes were landscapes of power. In medieval South India, Fritz shows that the idea was literally extended into the landscape beyond the political capital at Vijayanagara. There the king reinforced his authority not only within the urban precincts, but also by regular circuits to a series of hinterland stations where he could be re-identified ritually as the human avatar of divinity. This was indeed an extensive landscape of power, legitimization, and authority, if one without overt evidence of contest or resistance. Historical archaeology in the US has yielded numerous examples of landscape manipulation in the production and codification of ideology, and in some cases, the resistance such manipulation inspired. Under the antebellum plantation system in the American South, slaves were considered personal possessions and sources of surplus production, and as such were kept under direct surveillance to ensure productivity and efficiency. Beyond the gardens described earlier, the landscape of plantation space was tightly regulated, tracing a physical map of domination and subordination. Overseer and plantation houses were often centrally located in relation to the fields and slave cabins, providing optimum conditions for surveillance by those in authority. The landscape was in many ways reshaped as panopticon. Throughout the world, colonization and westernization have reinvented landscapes by physical reorganization. As with imperial Romans in Celtic lands, policies of colonization have sought to restructure indigenous landscapes into patterns suiting the colonizers, and often reflecting principles of private property and marked social hierarchy characteristic of states and empires. The landscape policies used to promote hierarchical differences, however, also create space for resistance. An example is the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, in what is now New Mexico. After initial Spanish attempts to quell the rebellion, multiple Puebloan communities expressed their resistance by relocating to defensive hilltops locations, where they established whole new settlements according to staunchly guarded principles of spatial and social order, with material orientation to established indigenous landscape referents. Indeed, fortification and defensive settlement systems emphatically mark contested landscapes, whether involving colonization or competition, and from cases relatively small in scale to those as expansive as the Great Wall of China.

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In a different landscape of containment, women’s prisons in nineteenth-century Australia illustrate practices of resistance, attested archaeologically but absent or obscured in written records. Casella writes of a holding facility in Tasmania in which walls, fences, and rules rigidly structured movement and activities, of both staff and inmates. Despite these barriers, however, such barred goods as liquor and tobacco reached inmates in solitary confinement in surprising quantities, and Casella suggests that some of the buttons unearthed might even have been secret currency for the prohibited transactions. Exclusionist in different and broader ways is colonization and other forms of culture contact that deny the prior and continued presence of indigenous peoples on the landscape. Much of European expansion in North America was dismissive in this way, colonists seeing as ‘vacant’ and unused the landscapes that, in fact, were already long and extensively occupied, and that their residents had imbued richly with economic worth, identity, and spiritual meaning. This kind of contest over landscape continues to this day in many parts of the postcolonial world, involving litigation and attempts at diplomacy, and at times violence. If far from unique, a particularly well-documented instance of such landscape contest is the War of the Little Big Horn, multiple perspectives on which are attested both historically and archaeologically. It is also possible for competing views of landscape to coexist, with or without overt conflict. Contrasting worldviews, or economic strategies, or political histories may coincide in filling the same landscape with multiple uses and multiple, disparate meanings. One thinks readily of modern cases, as in Israeli and Palestinian occupation of the same land, Mongols and Chinese in Inner Mongolia, or Hopi and Navajo

Language

See: Writing Systems.

(and non-Native Americans) in what is now the US Southwest. Archaeological examples are sometimes recognized, if infrequently, in mutually proximate populations with distinct architecture and other material forms of culture. See also: Cognitive Archaeology; Cultural Ecology; Explanation in Archaeology, Overview; Geoarchaeology; Human–Landscape Interactions; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Rock Art; Settlement Pattern Analysis.

Further Reading Anschuetz KF, Wilshusen RH, and Scheick CL (2001) An archaeology of landscapes: Perspectives and directions. Journal of Archaeological Research 9: 157–211. Ashmore W (2004) Social archaeologies of landscape. In: Meskell L and Preucel RW (eds.) A Companion to Social Archaeology, pp. 255–271. Oxford: Blackwell. Ashmore W and Knapp AB (eds.) (1999) Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspectives. Oxford: Blackwell. Bender B (ed.) (1993) Landscape: Politics and Perspectives. Oxford: Berg. Bender B and Winer M (eds.) (2001) Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile, and Place. Oxford: Berg. Crumley CL (ed.) (1994) Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. David B and Thomas J (eds.) (2007) Handbook of Landscape Archaeology. World Archaeological Congress (WAC) Handbook Series. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Rossignol J and Wandsnider L (eds.) (1992) Space, Time, and Archaeological Landscapes. New York: Plenum Press. Tilley C (1994) A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths, and Monuments. Oxford: Berg. Ucko PJ and Layton R (eds.) (1999) The Anthropology and Archaeology of Landscapes: Shaping Your Landscape. London: Routledge.

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LITHICS Contents Analysis, Use Wear Manufacture

Analysis, Use Wear William Andrefsky, Jr., Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary chipped stone A method of manufacturing stone tools through lithic reduction, wherein lithic flakes are struck off a mass of tool stone with a percussor. conchoidal fracture Conchoidal fracture describes the way that brittle materials break when they do not follow any natural planes of separation. debitage The totality of waste material produced during lithic reduction and the production of chipped stone tools. This assemblage includes, but is not limited to, different kinds of lithic flakes, shatter, and production errors and rejects. lithic flake A thin, sharp fragment of stone that results from the process of lithic reduction. striking platform The surface on the proximal portion of a lithic flake on which the detachment blow falls.

Introduction Lithic artifact analysis is the study of stone artifacts in an effort to reconstruct past cultures, lifeways, technology, and behavior using those stone artifacts. Researchers interested in lithic analysis often study both the lithic tools used to perform various tasks and the lithic ‘debitage’ (debris) resulting from tool production and use. Lithic analysis begins with an understanding of how tools are produced and manufactured. This includes not only an appreciation of how stone is fractured and shaped, but also an understanding of the properties of various kinds of stone and how that stone is acquired by tool makers (see Chemical Analysis Techniques). Lithic analysis also includes the classification, measurement, and tabulation of different stone tools and debitage. Different sizes, shapes, and amounts of lithic artifacts reveal different kinds of information about past technologies, cultures, and behaviors. The analysis of lithic artifacts also includes an understanding of the wear created along the edges of tools during their use (‘microwear’ analysis). Distinctive kinds of edge damage, polishes, and debris accumulated on stone tools reveal how the

tool was used and sometimes what it was used for (see Blood Residue Analysis; Phytolith Analysis; Starch Grain Analysis). There are two primary kinds of lithic artifacts; ‘chipped stone’ artifacts and ‘ground stone’ artifacts. The most abundant and most common lithic artifacts are the chipped stone variety (those made by cracking off pieces of stone to shape it). Ground stone artifacts are less ubiquitous and are formed by grinding or abrading the stone surface (e.g., mortars and pestles). This article deals with the analysis of chipped stone artifacts.

Mechanics of Lithic Production Chipped stone artifacts can only be made from a relatively small proportion of all available stone types. Only stone that has uniform or homogenous texture, and has very small or microscopic grain size, and is very hard and brittle can be made into chipped stone tools. These qualities of stone allow the toolmaker or ‘knapper’ to break the stone in a controlled and deliberate manner to shape it. Common stone types used for making lithic artifacts include obsidian, flint, chert, and quartz. Chipped stone artifacts can be characterized as either ‘objective pieces’ or ‘detached pieces’. Objective pieces are those items that have been cracked, flaked, or modified in some way, and may include rock cobbles, broken pieces of stone, or more formalized cores. Detached pieces are those items that have been removed from objective pieces during the modification process. Detached pieces are referred to as blades, flakes, chips, spalls, or debris. Detached pieces are often removed from objective pieces by either percussion or pressure flaking techniques. The removal of a flake or chip by applying pressure to the objective piece without striking is known as ‘pressure flaking’. This is usually done by placing the tip of an antler or sharpened bone on the objective piece and pushing down and in on the point of applied force. The removal of a flake or chip by striking the objective piece with a hammer or percussor is known as ‘percussion flaking’. The percussor is often a stone cobble or pebble (‘hammerstone’), but may also be made of bone, antler, or wood. Different

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amounts of force used to remove detached pieces are recognized as different load applications. The load application and the angle at which the load is applied to the objective piece will determine the shape and size of the detached piece. Percussion flaking generally has a greater load application than pressure flaking. One of the most common objective pieces is known as a ‘core’. A core is a mass of homogeneous lithic material that has had flakes removed from its surface. Cores come in a variety of sizes and shapes from all different parts of the world and from all different periods of time. The primary purpose of a core is to supply flakes that can then be used as cutting tools or be made into a more formalized tool. Different core technologies were developed and used based upon the needs or the toolmakers, availability of stone, and the techniques of core reduction passed from one toolmaker to another. Figure 1 illustrates different examples of objective pieces and detached pieces.

Flake Properties The production of lithic artifacts depends upon the controlled removal of detached pieces from an objective piece. Often the detached pieces have characteristics of conchoidal fracture. Flakes with characteristics of conchoidal fracture are called ‘conchoidal flakes’ (Figure 2). Conchoidal flakes can be recognized as having two surfaces: a dorsal and a ventral surface.

The ventral surface is the surface that has broken away from the objective piece and is usually smooth and shows no evidence of previous flake removals. The dorsal surface is opposite the ventral surface and may show signs of the original exterior of the rock (‘cortex’) or of previous flake removals. Only the dorsal side of the conchoidal flake will have evidence of the original exterior of the rock. Specific properties of flakes are related to the technology used to detach the flake and can reveal information about the type of tool manufactured and the technique(s) used. Typically, conchoidal flakes will have a point of applied force that removed the flake from the objective piece, known as a ‘striking platform’. Depending upon the physical characteristics of the original objective piece there are several different kinds of striking platforms. Some are flat, some are rounded, and others are angular with multiple facets. In some cases, there will be a projection at the base of the striking platform on the ventral surface of the flake known as a ‘lip’. A lip is formed as a result of impact with soft-hammer percussion or pressure flaking technology. The end of the flake containing the striking platform is the ‘proximal end’. Opposite the proximal end is the ‘distal end’. The distal end of the flake is where the force of the original point of impact terminates. Different shapes of flake terminations reveal different kinds of information about the manner in which the flake was detached. The sides of the flake

Figure 1 Example of various tool and debitage types: (a), hafted biface; (b), unhafted biface; (c), core tool; (d), angular shatter; (e), flake tool; (f), proximal flake; (g), flake shatter.

LITHICS/Analysis, Use Wear 1581 Bulb of force

Striking platform

Proximal end

Compression rings Lateral margin

Distal end (a)

(b)

Figure 2 Conchoidal flake showing common flake characteristics: (a), ventral side; (b), dorsal side.

Chipped stone artifacts Human modification? Yes = tool, No = debitage

Tool Bifacial flaking? Yes = biface No = nonbiface

Biface Contains haft element? Yes = hafted biface No = unhafted biface

Nonbiface On flake? Yes = flake tool No = core tool

Debitage On flake? Yes = flake debitage No = nonflake debitage

Flake debitage Contains striking platform? Yes = proximal flake No = flake shatter

Nonflake debitage = Angular shatter

Figure 3 Flowchart showing chipped stone typology with seven artifact types.

between the proximal and distal ends where the dorsal and ventral sides meet are called the lateral margins. Lateral margins are often where the flake or blade is intentionally modified by the toolmaker or modified as a result of use. The area below the striking platform on conchoidal flakes may have a raised hump on the ventral surface. This feature is called the ‘bulb of force’. The size and location of the bulb of force indicates the amount of load applied in the flake removal process and the density of percussor used. The bulb of force is always on the ventral surface of a flake, and never on the dorsal surface. Below the bulb of force and radiating away from the proximal end there may be compression rings. These rings show the direction of applied force as it traveled through the objective piece when the flake was detached. Another characteristic that is frequently found in association with the bulb of force is a scar from a small chip or flake on the bulb. This is called an ‘eraillure’ flake scar and is produced during the original impact of the flake removal.

Lithic Artifact Classification One of the most important components of lithic analysis is the classification of stone artifacts. Figure 3 shows a flowchart that defines types based upon a series of attributes either present or absent. The typology is based upon the morphology of chipped stone artifacts and is not intended to reflect function (see artifact function in the following section). This basic chipped stone classification system encompasses all shapes of stone artifacts, and can be altered, modified, or expanded depending upon the needs of the researcher. There are a total of seven artifact types in this morphological typology. Three of the artifact types are debitage (‘proximal flakes’, ‘flake shatter’, and ‘angular shatter’), and four are tools (‘hafted bifaces’, ‘unhafted bifaces’, ‘flake tools’, and ‘core tools’) (see Figure 1 for examples). The typology begins with chipped stone artifacts. If the artifact is not made from chipped stone, it is not included in the flowchart. All chipped stone

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artifacts located on the left side of the chart are objective pieces that have been intentionally modified or modified by use (tools). Chipped stone artifacts that have no intentional modification or modification resulting from use are on the right side of the chart (debitage). Tools that have two surfaces which meet to form an edge that circumscribes the entire tool, and which have flakes removed on both surfaces are bifaces. Those tools without biface shaping and flaking are nonbifacial tools. Bifaces are further separated into those with haft elements (hafted bifaces) and those without haft elements (unhafted bifaces). The tools included in the nonbifacial category are separated into flake tools and core tools based on the presence of a single recognizable dorsal and ventral surface (flake characteristics). Those tools with a single recognizable dorsal and a single recognizable ventral surface are considered flake tools and the other tools (not bifaces and not flake tools) are considered core tools. The debitage (artifacts on the right side of the flowchart) are also separated based upon flake characteristics into a flake group and a nonflake group. The flake debitage is further separated based upon the presence or absence of a striking platform. Proximal flakes are those with a recognizable striking platform. Flake debitage without a striking platform is considered to be flake shatter. All debitage without a single recognizable dorsal and ventral surface is considered to be angular shatter. Once the artifact assemblage is classified, based upon this typology or another typology, the specimens can be tabulated, measured, and assessed. Attributes related to size, shape, technology, raw material characteristics, and function can be recorded. Some functional parameters can only be determined by microscopic analysis. The section below discusses techniques of determining tool function using microwear analysis.

Tool Function Microscopic inspection of artifacts can be conducted on tools and debitage to evaluate how the artifact was used. Lithic tool functions using ‘microscopy’ are understood at different scales of interpretive detail. Some forms of microwear analysis interpret tool function as type of action (scraping, slicing, chopping, etc.). Other types of microwear analysis attempt to interpret tool functions in more detail, such as the type of material being worked (bone, hide, flesh, etc.). Each of these different scales of interpretive detail come with different levels of confidence in their accuracy, and in some cases are dependent upon the type of microscopy equipment employed by the investigator.

Most researchers recognize three kinds of magnifying equipment used for microwear analysis; ‘scanning electron microscope’ (SEM), ‘metallurgical microscope’, and the ‘stereomicroscope’. The SEM captures an image with a controlled electronic field and is effective at over 10 000 magnification. Magnification at this level may not recognize larger evidence of wear such as breakage patterns on the edge of the tool. The metallurgical microscope is useful for magnification of objects in the 100–500 range. These microscopes use incident lighting that illuminates objects from above at a 90 angle. Stereomicroscopes are effective in the range of approximately 6–150 magnifications and use external lighting. There are advantages and disadvantages to each microscope, ranging from equipment cost, to amount of time required for analysis, to appropriate scale of resolution. In general, three kinds of wear have been recognized by microscopy techniques in lithic analysis; ‘striations’, ‘polishes’, and ‘microchipping’. Striations result from the contact of the worked material and the tool and it occurs when debris is introduced during the operation of the tool, resulting in scratches (striations) on the tool surface. Polishes are produced by abrasion and deposition of silica on the stone tool. Silica is often deposited as a result of working materials such as wood from which silica is displaced and transported to the tool surface. Striations and polishes are best viewed under high magnification with either a metallurgical microscope or with the SEM. Microchipping is caused by the contact between the tool edge and the material being worked. Different patterns of microchipping are produced by different actions of tool use and by the relative density of material being worked. The stereomicroscope is effective for recognizing various patterns of microchipping damage. Microwear analysis of lithic artifacts is influenced by a wide variety of variables that make tool functions challenging to interpret. For instance, the type of stone a tool is produced from is known to break differently under similar kinds of stresses or impacts. This means that stone type may have different kinds of chipping damage when performing the same kinds of tasks. The edge angle of the cutting tool will also influence the size and amount of chipping damage. Similarly, the angle and direction of the tool to the worked surface also adds variability to the wear pattern. Tools from archaeological sites have the added problem of postdepositional wear such as trampling, erosion, and weathering. Researchers often switch from one microscope to another while conducting lithic analysis. For instance, a stereomicroscope might be used initially to scan the artifact surface for evidence of use.

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Once detected, the location on the artifact with evidence of use might be greatly magnified in search of polishes, striations, or debris. Since different artifact assemblages are composed of different kinds of raw materials and different kinds of weathering contexts, microwear analysis of excavated lithic artifacts is often conducted in unison with experimental studies using materials gathered from the same region or from the same raw material source. Experiments such as making cutting tools and cutting or slicing different kinds of plants and animal parts are conducted to establish a control sample for comparison against the excavated artifacts. See also: Blood Residue Analysis; Chemical Analysis Techniques; Phytolith Analysis; Starch Grain Analysis.

Further Reading Andrefsky W, Jr. (1998) Lithics: Macroscopic Approaches to Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Andrefsky W, Jr. (ed.) (2001) Lithic Debitage: Context, Form, Meaning. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Hayden B (ed.) (1979) Lithic Usewear Analysis. New York: Academic Press. Henry DO and Odell GH (eds.) (1989) Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association No. 1: Alternative Approaches to Lithic Analysis. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association. Keeley LH (1980) Experimental Determination of Stone Tool Uses: A Microwear Analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kooyman BP (2000) Understanding Stone Tools and Archaeological Sites. Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Odell GH (ed.) (1996) Stone Tools: Theoretical Insights into Human Prehistory. New York: Plenum. Rosen SA (1997) Lithics after the Stone Age: A Handbook of Stone Tools from the Levant. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press. Torrence R (1989) Time, Energy, and Stone Tools. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whittaker JC (1994) Flintknapping: Making and Understanding Stone Tools. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Manufacture Harry J Shafer, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary attribute Any visible characteristic of an artifact. bending fracture Fracture caused by bending that exceeds the elastic limits of the material. The flake characteristically has the remnants of the biface edge at the striking platform and a lip on the ventral side formed by the bending fracture. It is a common fracture for stone tools used in cutting, chopping, and piercing.

Controlling bending fractures using soft-hammer and punch techniques was a common method of thinning bifaces. biface Artifact chipped or flaked on both faces. billet A tubular-shaped implement associated with soft-hammer flaking, usually of antler or bone, used to create bending fractures to thin bifaces. bipolar technology Applying a force to a stone set on a hard anvil. The stone is subjected to forces from the initial blow and a rebound force created by the anvil. blade Flakes removed from a specially prepared core that are over twice as long as they are wide, generally have parallel edges, and one or more longitudinal ridges. blade core Core especially prepared for the removal of blades. blank Term used to describe the beginning or early stage core in stone tool manufacture. A flake blank may be reduced into a uniface or biface tool, depending on the objectives of the flintknapper. bulb of percussion Pronounced bulb formed on the interior of a flake immediately beneath a direct impact usually associated with hard-hammer flaking. The bulb is an extension of the Hertzian cone. burin-like removal The removal of a flake from the longitudinal or transverse axis of a flake, uniface, or biface. The resulting angle created by the platform and flake facet was once regarded as a burin-like tool for woodworking. This interpretation no longer holds favor since the spall may have been the objective and used as drill bits. A burin-like facet can also be produced by direct impact blows on projectile points. chert Cryptocrystalline rock (sedimentary rock) formed in limestone. chalcedony Cryptocrystalline rock similar to chert but differs by having a fibrous structure. Chalcedony, also includes agate, is formed under similar conditions as chert and may be found in the same matrix. conchoidal Shell-like characteristics of Hertzian cone fracture. Diagnostic features include cone initiation, bulb of percussion, and wave characteristics created by fracture propagation. cone fracture See Hertzian cone. core The mass from which flakes are removed. cortex The outer rind of a pebble or cobble. cryptocrystalline A class of rocks that have microscopic crystals not visible to the eye; including chert, flint, chalcedony, Novaculite, jasper, among others. debitage The term used to describe wastage from chipped stone manufacture (flakes, shatter). Debitage may also include discarded cores and items broken in manufacture. dorsal The exterior side of a flake that may have flake scars or cortex. edge abrader Stone, usually quartzite, used to abrade the edges of a blank or preform to facilitate soft-hammer or punch flaking. end shock Snap fracture that occurs near the middle of a biface caused by a blow struck near one end. eralliure Tiny flake scar on the bulb of force created by the force waves of impact. feather termination A fracture that terminates at the surface of the core creating a very acute and sharp angle. flake Sliver removed from a mass or core. flint Common name for chert. Some argue that the only true flint is that at Dover, England, used extensively to make gunflints for the British Colonial Empire. Dover flint is a dark gray to black chert. flintknapper An individual who shapes flint or other stone through the process of knapping or lithic reduction, to manufacture stone tools. flute Flake removed from the base to create a longitudinal groove on one or both sides of a biface, characteristic of Clovis and Folsom projectile point technologies.

1584 Manufacture formal tool Tools made to conform to a specific form or design. Example: grooved axes, biface projectile points. Hertzian cone The fracture cone created by a hard hammer striking the surface of cryptocrystalline stone such as chert, obsidian, or Novaculite. hard-hammer Using a stone or other similarly hard material to flake cryptocrystalline rocks. hinge fracture or termination A fracture that loses its energy and terminates at the surface of a core by reversing its fracture path. igneous Rocks formed by volcanic activity. Examples are obsidian, basalt, andesite, dacite, and rhyolite. lipped flake See bending fracture. mano (Spanish for hand); in archeology the term for hand stone used with a grinding slab or metate for grinding seeds and other substances. metamorphic Rocks that become melted by heat or pressure. Example: quartzite. metate Grinding slab used in conjunction with a hand stone or mano. novaculite Cryptocrystalliine rock found in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas and in the Caballos Formation in the Marathon Uplift in the Big Bend region of Texas. These are the same geological formation and material. obsidian Glassy igneous rock that cools so rapidly that a crystalline structure cannot form. Usually occurs in black or gray, but green, burnt sienna, and speckled deposits also occur. overshot or outrepasse´ A flake that carries across the core and terminates on the opposite side removing part of the core edge or end. preform A late stage in the manufacturing trajectory of a formal stone tool. pressure flaking Applying pressure at the edge of a core by using an antler, bone, or some other suitable material to create a bending fracture. quartzite A metamorphic rock formed under heat or pressure that fuses quartz sand particles together to form a homogenous mass. quarry Locality where toolstones outcropped and were procured by prehistoric people. sedimentary rocks Sediments such as silts, clays, and sands become compacted in the ocean floor and become solidified into sedimentary rocks. Example: limestone, siltstone, sandstone. soft hammer A percussion tool that is softer than the material being flaked. causing a bending fracture rather than a coneinitiation fracture characteristics on flakes. step fracture or termination Results when a flake detached from the core is pulled away too rapidly; the flake will bend beyond its elastic limit and snap before it terminates. striking platform The surface from which the blow to remove a flake is struck. Striking platforms on flakes are described by the nature of this surface, cortex, single faceted, multiple faceted. terminations How the fracture path of a flake ends, includes feature, hinge, step, and overshot. uniface Artifact flaked or chipped on only one face. ventral The bulbar or interior side of a flake. wedge fracture (see bipolar) Created by bi-polar impact where force is generated from two directions, from the hammer and from the anvil. Fracture may propagate around the cone splitting the core into multiple pieces.

Human-made flakes and other chipped stone materials are major keys to identifying prehistoric sites throughout the world. Much can be learned about people in the past from the way in which they solved

problems basic to human survival. Tools used to perform tasks often reveal what those tasks were, and knowing something about what ancient people did can tell us how they lived. Stone tools preserve longer than any other material made and used by human hands. Much of human history and culture is read in stone artifacts. Of all classes of material culture produced by humans through the ages, stone artifacts are the most likely to survive the ravages of nature. Chipped stone tools provide the earliest evidence of human technologies in our human past, dating back perhaps as early as 2.5 million years ago. Tracing the evolution of stone technology provides a scale with which archaeologists can measure human technological evolution. Methods and techniques of making stone tools, tool types, and styles of the tools changed over time. Raw material selection based on the size and quality of material suitable for stone tool manufacture was a critical variable in how and why the stone was reduced. The various methods of making stone tools, tools used in the manufacture, the manufactured product, approaches and style of reduction, manufacturing trajectories and reduction systems, failures, and wastage (debitage) are topics discussed. The term lithics is derived from the Greek word lithos meaning stone. This natural material comes in many different forms and is created by three geological processes that serve to classify all rocks: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. Certain rocks in each of these classes were used to make chipped and ground stone tools. It is important to distinguish the types of stones chosen to be altered into tools because these classes of rocks have different qualities and are not uniformly distributed across the landscape. People had to use their technological expertise to adapt to the various kinds and sizes of stones available in their environment, or develop social networks to acquire good material. Unusually high quality stones such as obsidian or fine chert were highly sought after and sometimes considerable effort went into obtaining access. Alternatively, it was necessary to alter the available stone by annealing to create a more suitable material for chipped stone tools. The approach to reducing stone into a tool depended upon a number of factors: the kind, size, and quality of raw material, kind of tool, tool size, tool form, and tool style. How one learned to make stone tools, or the technological style, was an important component of the reduction system as well (see Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear).

Fracture Characteristics Cryptocrystalline rocks with high silica (SiO2) content (e.g., flint, chert, jasper, silicified shale, fine-grained

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quartzite, fine grained basalt, and obsidian) fracture conchoidally unless the mass is flawed. The term conchodial means ‘shell-like’ because the bulbar surface created by the fracture is reminiscent of a shell. This is because a cone is created when a hard percussor such as a hammer stone makes contact with the surface of the mass or core. This cone type fracture is called a Hertzian cone. The other major fracture initiation type in chipped stone tool manufacture is the bending fracture created by using a billet, punch, or pressure tool. Conchodial and bending fractures can be controlled by an experienced flintknapper and used to one’s advantage. Granular or coarse rocks such as quartzite and rocks with large crystals, such as granite and diorite, are more resistant to fracture and were often selected for hammer-stones, grinding stones, and ground stone axes because of that very quality. Different stones were selected and used for different qualities, and different methods of reduction were used in shaping the stones into tool forms. The methods of reducing siliceous and crystalline materials included the uses of hard hammers, soft hammers (billets), punches, pressure, pecking stones, and grinding stones. The qualities of a rock were used to the advantage of the ancient stoneworker. Homogenous rocks with high silica such as chert, flint, and obsidian fracture in highly predictable ways. Coarse rocks with granular or crystalline structure such as quartzite or granites, or rocks with cleavage planes such as silicified wood or laminated shale, fracture differently. How rocks fracture or resist fracture is one of the main topics addressed.

Types of Rocks The rock family tree begins with volcanic activity and the formation of ‘igneous’ rocks. These chemically rich rocks break down from weathering, producing gravels, sands, silts, and clays. As the finer sediments of clays, silts, and sands are deposited on the shallow ocean floor, they compact and become solidified into ‘sedimentary’ rocks. As sedimentary rocks are forced deeper into the Earth’s crust, pressure and heat alter their structure through metamorphosis. ‘Metamorphic’ rocks melt through volcanic activity and the cycle begins again. Finer divisions are made within these three rock categories. For example, there are two basic types of igneous rocks, intrusive (such as diorite, granite) and extrusive (such as basalt, andesite, dacite, rhyolite, obsidian). Intrusive rocks are forced upward from molten rock beneath the surface and cool within the crust; some are later exposed through erosion. The cooling is slow, allowing crystals to form. These igneous rocks are coarse. Extrusive igneous rocks are ejected by volcanic activity and

cool more rapidly, leading to smaller crystals and finer structures. All of the extrusive igneous rocks can be shaped by chipping. Silica content, however, increases from basalt, andesite and rhyolite to obsidian. Obsidian, a natural glass, has the highest silica content and is rapidly cooled magma, which cools so quickly that crystalline structure does not have time to form. Sedimentary rocks are grouped into three classes: clastic, chemical, and biological. Clastic rocks include sandstone, shale, mudstone, siltstone, and conglomerate. Chemical rocks include limestone, dolostone (dolomite), and evaporates such as gypsum and salt. Biologic rocks include coal and chert. Chert and chalcedony are formed by the same process, but chalcedony has a more fibrous structure and is characteristically semi-translucent. A common term for chalcedony is agate. Both chert and chalcedony are replacement materials within fossil casts in sedimentary deposits. An example of replacement is silicified wood where chalcedony has replaced the cellular structure of the decayed wood.

Chipped Stone Tool Manufacture Manufacturing tools by chipping away the mass follows a linear trajectory of reduction. Each flake removed is one step toward finishing a tool. The key to chipping cryptocrystalline materials is to control the breakage and guide the fracture path in such a way that the mass is reduced and the impact damage is carried away by the resulting flake. The flake retains the bulbar features of the impact, leaving only the negative bulbar features on the core. Mistakes, such as inadvertently damaging the mass or core during flake removal, can be made at each step, however, these could halt the process and ruin the piece. These ruin pieces provide critical evidence of the manufacturing trajectory since failure can occur at any point in the reduction process. Failed pieces leave traces of the methods and strategies of tool manufacture and provide very important technological information and insight into the manufacturing trajectory and intent of the flintknapper (Figure 1). Controlling the direction of fracture originating from the Hertzian cone of force is the key to shaping stone tools. The intent is to direct the fracture path along a trajectory that literally sculptures the finished tool. A critical step in controlling the fracture path is proper preparation of the striking platform – that point on the surface of the core which will be struck by the percussor (hammer stone, bone or antler billet, punch, or pressure flaking tool). Proper preparation of the platform by strengthening it by trimming or grinding will increase the probability of a successful flake

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6

5

1 3 2 Figure 1 Anatomy of hammerstone-struck flake. 1, Bulb of percussion; 2, striking platform; 3, proximal end; 4, distal end; 5, exterior or dorsal surface; and 6, interior or ventral surface.

removal. Improper preparation, on the other hand, will increase the odds of failure. Failure can occur at any point in the manufacturing trajectory of a chipped stone tool, or at any time a flake is removed. Failed efforts provide important technological information to archaeologists because each failure freezes the reduction trajectory at that point. Often the technique, strategy, and style of the ancient flintknapper can be seen in a failed piece better than in a finished piece. Finishing a stone tool often removes the traces of previous reduction steps. Several techniques of reduction may be employed during the course of making a chipped stone tool, depending on the stage of reduction and the attributes desired for the finished product. How the fracture is controlled is also partly due to the type of implement used. A hard percussor, such as another stone, creates a typical Hertzian cone when contact is made with the core. Characteristic attributes of a cone-type of fracture initiation are the round impact scar at the top of the cone on the striking platform, striking platform remnant, a strong bulb of force, and a relatively thick bulbar cross section. This type of percussor requires a strong striking platform to insure proper flake removal. If the platform is too thin the hammer will crush the edge and often ruin the piece. A crushed edge also dispenses the energy of the blow. The advantage of using a hard-hammer percussor is that it allows a flintknapper to take the initial steps of breaking a mass and creating pieces such as large flakes or preformed core for further reduction, or removing flakes from a core to be used as blanks for further reduction. Thinning a biface using a hard hammer is difficult because of the strong platform necessary for successful flake removal. Usually this is not possible when the objective is a small biface 10 cm or less in size such as a projectile point. Exceptions do occur. For example, the ancient Maya in northern Belize made massive bifaces, most were used

Figure 2 Illustration of hard-hammer percussion that produces a Hertzian cone fracture initiation.

for axes, but huge symbolic bifaces (‘eccentrics’) up to 75 cm long were also made from the massive chert outcrops for which the area is known. In the Maya case, stone mass worked in favor of the flintknapper in thinning large bifaces using only limestone hammers. The Maya resolved the hard-hammer problem by creating a 90 striking platform by beveling the edge which provided the necessary contact surface for the stone hammer. The thickened edge withstood the hammer blow allowing large thinning flakes to be removed from the faces of the biface (Figure 2). Striking the edge with a soft percussor such as an antler billet creates a bending type of fracture initiation. A Hertzian cone fracture is not the result of a soft hammer, although an attribute of a Hertzian fracture may occur such as a slight bulb of force. Controlling a bending fracture initiation also requires critical attention to the striking platform and existing flake scar ridges created by the removal of previous flakes. Strengthening the platform is done by dulling the edge either by raking it with a hammer stone or grinding the edge with an abrasive stone. The flint worker will select a place on the biface edge where a ridge was created by the intersection of two flake scars. The ridge provides a reinforced point that is ground or strengthened. The intent is to use the flake scar ridge to direct the fracture path across the surface of the biface at least to mid-point or beyond. This is the most basic method of thinning a biface intended for use as a knife or a dart point. The resulting soft-hammer flake will have a characteristic lip at the striking platform. This lip is the result of bending the edge of the biface to the point that it fractured. A diagnostic ‘biface thinning’ flake is created that is usually thin, arched in profile, has a lipped striking platform, and facets from previously removed flakes on the exterior surface. The ideal biface thinning flake is not always the result of soft-hammer flaking. Crushed or snapped striking

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platforms occur frequently, and sometimes there is no discernable lip at all. Archaeologists have debated the pros and cons of hard-hammer and soft-hammer flaking for years, because under certain circumstances a bending flake can be removed with a hard hammer, and a cone-initiation flake can be produced with a soft hammer, but these instances are not frequent enough to define a technological pattern. Modern-day lithic replicators use stones or heavy copper billets for hard-hammer flaking, and copper billets for soft-hammer flaking. The copper is a substitute for antler billets, which wear out frequently and have to be replaced, whereas the copper will last for decades. Prehistoric flintknappers did not have access to copper for billets and primarily used antler, bone, or ivory where available. Another effective method of reduction is the use of indirect percussion requiring the use of a punch. The punch is usually an antler tine or bone, shaped for the purpose. The punch is precisely placed on the striking platform and tapped with a hammer. This technique was probably more widely used than archaeologists have recognized, but there are advantages and shortcomings to the technique. The advantage is one of control, especially if the flintknapper is removing blades from a prepared core. Precision in impacting the core striking platform is critical to successful blade removal. The punch can be precisely placed on a ridge that will guide the fracture path through the core. The same advantage holds true when a punch is used to thin and shape a biface. The disadvantage comes with the difficulty of securing the core or biface sufficiently to withstand the punch blow. If the core or biface is not well secured, it will move and the movement will dispense the energy from the blow and no flake will result. Punch blades and flakes often display slight lipping and bulbar features because the punch flake can be initiated by a bending fracture, but the compressive force also produces a slight bulb of force. The striking platforms for both blade cores and bifaces were often strengthening by grinding or abrading. Most finely made bifaces were finished and shaped by pressure flaking. Pressure flaking has the same advantage as indirect percussion in that the flaking tool can be placed precisely on the platform. Flint workers then apply pressure using various techniques of applying force, either with the hands and forearms, or by placing the elbows inside of the knees and using leg pressure to assist the hand and arm pressure. Pressure flakes have similar characteristics to punch flakes in that there are often subtle lips and bulbar features, but are smaller than punch flakes. Small bifaces such as arrow points were made entirely by pressure flaking as were some small thin dart points (Figure 3).

Figure 3 Illustration of pressure flaking.

The products of core-blade technology are found in many sophisticated stone technology systems where appropriate raw material was available, namely fine grained chert, flint, obsidian, or quartzite. Blades are prismatic flakes removed from prepared cores that are over twice as long as they are wide. Blades make highly efficient cutting tools as well as blanks for a variety of other tools such as awls, perforators, end scrapers, burins, and cores for the production of burin spall tools. To produce a blade core, the nodule was prepared by creating a suitable striking platform with an appropriate angle of about 70–80 ; platform preparation depended upon the type of percussor used, whether a hammer stone, billet, punch, or pressure. With any technique, the flintknapper had to ensure that the platform and outer surface met at the appropriate angle; if not, then such an angle needed to be created. Next, the flintknapper needed to create an intersection of a ridge created by the removal of one or more flakes down the face of the core. The ridge is critical in directing the path of the blade as the fracture propagates down the core. With hard-hammer blade removal, the critical factor is to remove any overhanging platform remnant created by the removal of previous flakes. Use of a hard hammer creates prominent negative bulbs that often leave such an overhang. With billet percussors, the overhang not only needed to be removed, but the edge of the platform needed to be strengthened by grinding. This helps prevent step or hinge fractures that would otherwise ruin the core. The same concerns also needed to be addressed with indirect or punch percussors. Obsidian platforms used in the pressure removal of blades were often abraded to create tiny surface flaws that aided in initiating fracture during blade production. Blade cores have the diagnostic polyhedral shape created by multiple facets resulting from blade removal.

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Fluting is a form of blade removal. Flutes are channel flakes removed from the base of a biface to thin the haft element. To prepare a biface for fluting, the late-stage preform was thinned in such a way that the longitudinal midsection was the thickest part of the biface. This subtle ridge served to guide the fracture path of the channel flake much like a ridge on a polyhedral blade core. The striking platform was prepared at the base by either retouch or grinding to strength the edge. The flute was removed on one face possibly using one of several techniques such as a billet, a punch, or even pressure. The preparation and removal of the flute was repeated on the opposite face. Failed attempts to flute a point included several problems, the most common of which was the end shock or snap that broke the piece in half. Another was an overshot flute that terminated through the piece prematurely, literally splitting the preform. Other failures were caused by collapsed platform, hinging or stepped flakes that also terminated prematurely. Failed attempts at projectile point manufacture usually mark site or location within the site where flintknapping took place. Finished projectile points, on the other hand, may be recovered hundreds of kilometers from the point of manufacture. Fluted projectile points are most widely identified with the Clovis and Folsom complexes in North America. Bipolar flaking is yet another method of reducing a mass into sharp-edge flakes or flake blanks. A pebble or cobble is placed on an anvil, such as another stone, and smashed on top with a hammer stone. The resulting impact causes the core to be subjected by forces from two directions, much like cracking a walnut placed on an anvil. The attributes of bipolar flakes and cores are much different from those created by previously described methods. Flakes are removed from the exterior of a nucleus. The nucleus exhibits crushing and direct impact scars on both ends. Bipolar flakes are often trapezoidal or thin slivers with crushed platforms. The disadvantage of bipolar flaking is that the stone worker has little control over the products. The advantage is that round pebbles and cobbles that lack sufficient facets or angles for hard-hammer use can be fractured by the bipolar method. In cases where small pebbles are the only resource available, it allows the knapper to obtain sharp-edge flakes or cores for the use in cutting tasks. Bipolar technology is often found in areas where the only available resource occurs in the form of small pebbles (Figure 4).

Breakage Problems Regardless of one’s skill level, failure will occur in the manufacture of chipped stone artifacts, especially at any stage in the linear reduction of bifaces. The most

Figure 4 Bipolar reduction method.

common failure problem is end shock which is a snap fracture caused by vibrations set up when a blow is struck near one end of the piece. The vibrations cause the core to bend, exceeding its elastic limits. Another problem is platform collapse or crushing caused by improperly preparing or strengthening the striking platform. Improper platform preparation may also cause the flake to snap before termination causing a step fracture to occur. Yet another example of failure is a premature termination of the flake as the fracture rolls out to the surface, causing a hinge fracture to occur. Overshot flakes are caused by the opposite of the hinge flake in that the flake terminates hinging downward cutting the core in two. Any of these failures can occur at any step along the way. That is why archaeologists pay attention to the failures and related debitage because these artifacts clearly document the trajectory of manufacture, the intent of the flintknapper with regards to the style of being made, how the manufacturing process was achieved, which tools were used, and even the level of skill employed.

Manufacturing Tools Tools used to manufacture chipped stone artifacts recovered from archaeological contexts include hammer stones, antler billets, antler and bone punches, and antler and bone pressure flaking tools, stones used as edge grinders in platform preparation for biface thinning. These may be of chert, limestone, quartzite, or sandstone.

Debitage or Chipping Waste Debitage or chipping waste is the most commonly encountered artifact in preceramic cultures worldwide. Debitage refers to all waste material created during the course of stone artifact manufacture, including flakes, cores, broken and aborted preforms.

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Archaeologists are well acquainted with the attributes that distinguish human-made flakes from those created by natural processes or ‘geofacts’. Geofacts are flakes or spalls created by natural forces such as landslides, stream action, exfoliation, and frost fracturing. Human-made flakes retain attributes that are directly attributable to the forces that produced them, such as prominent striking platforms (sometimes prepared), bulbs of force (Hertzian cone remnants), or lipped striking platforms, and flake scars from flakes previously removed from a core. Cores, masses from which flakes were removed, exhibit negative flake scars, negative bulbs of force, often prepared striking platforms, sometimes multiple striking platforms and flake scars showing flakes removed from different directions. Artifacts broken in manufacture such as bifaces, discarded tools used in chipped stone tool manufacture such as hammer stones, billets, punches, pressure implements, that are discarded at the chipping location of workshop are also considered as debitage or wastage. Archaeologists can learn much information from debitage analysis. For example, when biface tools such as projectile points are the object of production, debitage from the manufacture of a single point reveals the technological methods, strategy, and trajectory of the process. Furthermore, recovery of the microdebitage (flakes smaller than 10 mm), will likely identify the location where person worked.

Annealing or Heat Treating There are many examples in human history when people’s access to good quality raw material for stone tool production was either limited to poor quality material or was unavailable within their locality or region. The knapping quality of chert and fine-grained quartzite could be improved by controlled heating or annealing. How this was done is often a point of debate, but it was performed most likely in earth ovens. The objective was to slowly subject the stone to rising temperatures sufficient to cause annealing of the crystalline structure, but not too hot to cause the moisture in the matrix to expand. When the latter occurred, thermal fracture caused internal fractures and ruined the stone for all practical purposes. Annealed chert or quartzite lose some of their tensile strength, thereby facilitating reduction by billet and pressure flaking. The edges are sharper but more delicate, and are highly suitable for sharp-edge cutting tools and projectile points. Annealed stone is not good for heavy-duty cutting or chopping, however, due to the more brittle character of the material. Annealing often changes the color of the stone as well. Iron in the matrix will assume a reddish or pinkish hue if the

heating environment allows oxidation, or a gray hue if heated in a reduced environment.

Ground Stone Tool Manufacture Ground stone tools are shaped by two separate processes, by use, or intentionally shaped to conform to a desired form. Ground stone materials were intentionally selected because they are not conducive to conchodial fracture. Coarse-grained or coarse crystalline materials (such as basalt, andesite, rhiolite, granite, sandstone, silicified sandstone, quartzite, among others) depending on what was locally available in the outcrops or gravels, were used as grinding implements such as grinding basins (cairns, metates, mortars) and grinding stones (manos, mullers, pestles). These types of artifacts acquired their shapes through use. They were initially shaped by pecking and grinding, using material of equal density as a pecking stone. Pecking creates tiny impact craters that remove bits and pieces of material with each blow. Pecking is time-consuming, but an efficient method of shaping a coarse rock preform. Once shaped, the grinding basin and grinding stone assume their characteristic use-shape which is the form that most often appears archaeologically. Artifacts intentionally shaped by pecking, grinding, and polishing include a very wide variety of tool forms. Functional tools such as axes, celts, and adzes, for example, may be made of very hard crystalline material, including igneous rocks such as granites, porphyry, and basalt, or metamorphic rocks such as quartzite or metamorphic sandstone. The density of the rock served as an advantage for such tools used in heavy cutting and chopping tasks because of their resistance to fracture. See also: Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear.

Further Reading Andrefsky W (1998) Lithics: Macroscopic Approach to Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clark JE (1982) Manufacture of Mesoamerican prismatic blades: an alternative technique. American Antiquity 47(2): 355–375. Cotterell B and Kamminga J (1979) The mechanics of flintworking. In: Hayden B (ed.) Lithic Use-Wear Analysis, pp. 97–112. New York: Academic Press. Kooyman B (2000) Understanding Stone Tools and Archaeological Sites. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Schick KD and Toth N (1993) Making Silent Stones Speak. New York: Simon and Schuster. Shafer HJ and Hester TR (1983) Ancient Maya chert workshops in Northern Belize, Central America. American Antiquity 48: 519–543. Whittaker J (1994) Flintknapping: Making and Understanding Stone Tools. Austin: The University of Texas Press. Whittaker J (2004) American Flintknappers. Austin: The University of Texas Press.

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Living Archaeology

Looting

See: Ethnoarchaeology.

See: Illicit Antiquities.

LUMINESCENCE DATING James Feathers, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) A method in luminescence dating using a narrow bandwidth of visible light to stimulate a luminescence signal in order to measure the accumulated radiation dose during the time elapsed since material containing crystalline minerals was either heated (lava, ceramics) or exposed to sunlight (sediments). radionuclide An atom with an unstable nucleus, which is a nucleus characterized by excess energy which is available to be imparted either to a newly created radiation particle within the nucleus, or else to an atomic electron. thermoluminescence (TL) A method in luminescence dating using heat to stimulate a luminescence signal in order to measure the accumulated radiation dose during the time elapsed since material containing crystalline minerals was either heated (lava, ceramics) or exposed to sunlight (sediments).

Luminescence is light emitted from crystalline materials after an initial absorption of energy. It is distinguished from similar phenomena such as fluorescence by a time interval between absorption and emission, a delay that allows, under ambient conditions, an accumulation of stored energy that can serve as a clock. Energy is accumulated by absorption of ionizing radiation, typically from natural radiation sources in the sample and its surroundings. Ionization produces free charge carriers (electrons and electron vacancies, or holes) that then become trapped at local, chargedeficient defects within the crystal lattice. Absorption of other energy, typically heat or light, may release electrons and holes from these traps, and their recombination with opposite charge as they return to ground state produces luminescence. Where light releases the trapped charge, the resulting signal is called optically stimulated luminescence (OSL). Where heat is the

agent, the signal is called thermoluminescence (TL). Either can be used for dating. Only defects that do not lose their trapped charge under ambient conditions can be used for dating. From these, the intensity of luminescence is proportional to the amount of trapped charge accumulated since the last significant exposure to heat or light. If the average radiation dose rate over time is known, this accumulated charge can be related to elapsed time. Because of long half-lives of the major natural radionuclides (238U, 232Th, and 40K), the dose rate is nearly constant over archaeological time, allowing current dose rates, in most cases, to be used to estimate average dose rate. Figure 1 is a simplified version of what happens. In remote geological time when the crystal structure is formed, all traps are empty. With time, the traps fill as a function of ionizing dose rate and availability of empty traps. If all traps fill, the sample is said to be saturated. When the sample is exposed to sufficient heat or light, the traps are emptied (the zeroing mechanism). After being emptied, the trapped charge builds up once again, a cycle that may be repeated several times, until the sample is retrieved for dating. The sample is heated or exposed to light in the laboratory and the resulting luminescence is measured. The intensity is calibrated against artificial irradiation in the laboratory to determine how much ionizing dose is required to replicate the natural signal. This is called equivalent dose (De) and dividing by the dose rate yields an age. The event dated is the last sufficient exposure to heat or light. This allows dating of materials heated in antiquity, such as ceramics or burned lithics. Sediments exposed to light when deposited and subsequently buried can also be dated. The main sample requirement is a suitable dosimeter – a crystalline material that produces a luminescence signal and is sensitive to dose. Quartz and feldspar (particularly

Level before deposition

Bleaching

Latent luminescence

,

The ‘natural signal

OSL/Independent age ratio

LUMINESCENCE DATING 1591 1.5

3.1 ± 0.4

1.0

Aeolian Freshwater

100

Marine Years of burial Laboratory measurement

Figure 1 Simplified schematic of the process of luminescence dating (Aitkin 1998). Latent luminescence refers to the accumulation of trapped charge, while ‘bleaching’ can be from exposure to either light or heat.

potassium feldspar) are the two most common dosimeters used. Their ubiquity gives luminescence a wide range of applicability, often being suitable where materials for other dating methods (see Dating Methods, Overview) are not present. Small surface scatters of artifacts, for example, have been dated by luminescence. But it does not work everywhere. A sensitive dosimeter may not be present (quartz often has a poor signal) or the trapped charge may ‘leak out’ over time (called anomalous fading and often a problem with feldspars if not corrected for). Laboratory procedures involve measuring De and the dose rate. Most research has been directed at getting an accurate measure of De – making sure only stable traps are sampled, correcting for changes in luminescence sensitivity between natural and artificially irradiated aliquots, testing for the possibility the sample was only partially zeroed in antiquity, and taking into account anomalous fading. But there can also be problems getting an accurate assessment of dose rate, including lower efficiencies of alpha irradiation, complicated radioactive environments, changing dose rates through time, and uncertain moisture contents. These complications provide wide room for error, but if measurements are careful, the method is remarkably robust, and luminescence ages often compare favorably with independent dating results (Figure 2). Improved methods and instrumentation have allowed precisions of 5–10% to be achieved routinely. But every date, just as the case for any other dating method, needs to be evaluated critically, requiring archaeologists to understand the intricacies of the method.

OSL age (ka)

Deposition

Glacial 10 (n = 53)

100 200 300

300

1

200 100

0.1 0.1

1 10 100 Independent age estimate (ka)

Figure 2 Comparison of quartz OSL ages with independent age estimates using a logarithmic scale (the inset shows the linear scale). The ratio of OSL to independent age is plotted in the top part of the figure, showing some statistical disagreements, although whether the OSL or independent ages are in error is not known. Data compiled by Murray AS and Olley JM (2002) Precision and accuracy in the optically stimulated luminescence dating of sedimentary quartz: A status review. Geochronometria 21: 1–16.

The upper limit on dating depends on the onset of saturation or on thermal fading of relatively shallow traps, which are deep enough for dating young samples but which lose some of their signal over long times. Saturation comes earlier in quartz than in feldspar, limiting dating by quartz to about the last 100 000 or 200 000 years, depending on the dose rate, while feldspars, if anomalous fading can be controlled, may date up to 1 million years. That luminescence is applicable well beyond the 40 000-year range of radiocarbon (see Carbon-14 Dating) has allowed significant applications in Old World archaeology. Dating burned lithics has refined the chronology of the Middle Palaeolithic and the transition to the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe and the Near East. Dating buried sediments has provided detail on the poorly known chronology of the Middle Stone Age in sub-Saharan Africa. The lower limit on dating depends on the strength of the signal from low doses, but nineteenth and even twentieth century dates of good precision have been obtained. An advantage of luminescence for young

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samples is that it produces calendar ages that need no further calibration against independent dating evidence. Luminescence can often exceed the precision of radiocarbon for dates during the past 1000 years, when the calibration curve for radiocarbon often produces multiple intercepts. Although luminescence often lacks the precision of radiocarbon or tree-ring dating, it has one distinct advantage that makes it the method of choice in some situations even where other datable materials are available. A distinction is often made between ‘dating’ events, the event actually addressed by the dating method, and ‘target’ events, the event of archaeological interest. Where the two do not coincide, bridging arguments are required to associate the two events. With luminescence, bridging arguments are often obviated because the dating event and target event are the same. Ceramics are dated to when they were last heated, usually when made or used, which is what archaeologists want to know. Lithics are most likely dated to when they were accidentally burned either during manufacture (normal heat treatment is usually not to high enough temperatures) or during occupation, again an archaeologically relevant event. For sediments, attempts to date them by their contents using methods like radiocarbon are often unsuccessful because deposition has incorporated old material, but luminescence dates the depositional event itself. This advantage is well illustrated by attempts to tease apart mixed assemblages. Ceramics of different ages found in the same deposit cannot be easily differentiated by, for example, associated charcoal using radiocarbon. But luminescence has demonstrated that ceramics found together, even side by side in the same pit, can be separated in age by centuries. Here the high precision of radiocarbon must be traded for the better accuracy of luminescence. Dating individual artifacts by luminescence also allows measurement of the tempo of technological change. Artifacts successions are usually dated in relative terms by averaging methods like seriation or ceramic crossdating, which can detect changing modes, but not beginnings and ends. Most current research in luminescence is directed at dating unconsolidated sediments, not only because of wide applications in quaternary geology, but because, unlike ceramics or lithics, all grains in sediments may not be the same age, either because some were not fully reset at the time of deposition or because of mixture after deposition. This problem has been addressed by either component analysis of the luminescence signal or by measuring single grains. The luminescence signal is a

composite of signals arising from traps which differ in their response to sunlight. Various techniques have been devised to isolate the ‘fastest bleaching’ component which is most likely to have been reset to zero at the time of deposition. Comparison with a slower bleaching component informs on the extent of bleaching. By determining De on single grains, or single aliquots containing a small number of grains, the fully reset grains may be isolated from the partially bleached ones and mixed assemblages may be identified. Measuring single grains has become practical by advances in instrumentation and in single-aliquot methods for determining De, although interpreting the distribution of De values from grains of a single sample is not always straightforward. Identifying mixtures is important for understanding site-formation processes and assessing the integrity of stratigraphy. These problems are particularly relevant for controversial issues such as colonization of Australia and settlement of the New World, both areas where luminescence dating has been applied. Isolating only well-bleached grains has also proven useful in dating construction episodes in monumental architecture and in dating the covering of rock art by mud wasp nests. See also: Amino Acid Racemization Dating; Carbon-14 Dating; Dating Methods, Overview; Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Obsidian Hydration Dating.

Further Reading Aitken MJ (1985) Thermoluminescence Dating. London: Academic Press. Aitken MJ (1998) An Introduction to Optical Dating. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Btter-Jensen L, McKeever SWS, and Wintle AG (2003) Optically Stimulated Luminescence Dosimetry. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Chen R and McKeever SWS (1997) Theory of Thermoluminescence and Related Phenomena. Singapore: World Scientific. Feathers JK (2003) Use of luminescence dating in archaeology. Measurement Science and Technology 14: 1493–1509. Mercier N, Valladas H, and Valladas G (1995) Flint thermoluminescence dates from the CFR Laboratory at Gif: Contributions to the study of the chronology of the Middle Palaeolithic. Quaternary Science Reviews 14: 351–364. Murray AS and Olley JM (2002) Precision and accuracy in the optically stimulated luminescence dating of sedimentary quartz: A status review. Geochronometria 21: 1–16. Murray AS and Wintle AG (2000) Luminescence dating of quartz using an improved single-aliquot regenerative-dose protocol. Radiation Measurements 32: 57–73. Roberts RG, Galbraith RF, Olley JM, Yoshida H, and Laslett GM (1999) Optical dating of single and multiple grains of quartz from Jinmium rock shelter, northern Australia. Part II: Results and implications. Archaeometry 41: 365–395. Wintle AG (ed.) (1997) Luminescence and ESR dating and allied research. Radiation Measurements vol. 27(5/6): 819–892.

M MACROREMAINS ANALYSIS Gary W Crawford, University of Toronto at Mississauga, Mississauga, ON, Canada ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary azuki bean (also spelled adzuki) An annual vine widely grown throughout East Asia and the Himalaya for its small (approximately 5 mm) bean. caryopsis Dry, one seeded fruit (grain) of grasses (Poaceae) in which the seed coat firmly adheres to the seed. cotyledon A significant part of the embryo within the seed of a plant, upon germination, the cotyledon usually becomes the embryonic first leaves of a seedling. embryo The rudimentary plant found within a seed. Fabaceae The botanical name of a large and economically important family of flowering plants, which includes the plants commonly known as legumes. flotation The methods by which plant remains are extracted from sediment by immersing the sediment in water and collecting the suspended or floating plant remains. hilum On certain seeds, the scar at the point of attachment of the stalk (funiculus) that links the seed to the plant. Poaceae A family, in the Class Liliopsida of the flowering plants, is also known as Gramineae.

Macroremains from archaeological sites include seeds, fruits, chaff, buds (leaf or flower), rinds, underground structures such as tubers as well as wood, and other stem fragments. All have a role in understanding human–environmental interaction and culture in the past. In turn, preservation conditions, archaeological retrieval methods, and culture of the inhabitants of a site all impact our understanding of archaeological plant remains. Plant macroremains make an important contribution to archaeology, so much so that the introduction of flotation recovery of plant remains started a revolution in our interpretations of the past.

Preservation Plant tissues decay by being consumed by microorganisms. They will be preserved if they cannot be consumed by these organisms or in the absence of such organisms. Preservation normally involves charring, desiccation (drying), or waterlogging. Charring

removes hydrogen and oxygen and leaves a carbon skeleton of items such as wood, a seed, or fruit and occurs when plant remains are exposed to excessive heat near, or in, hearths, or when a structure burns such as in a house fire. In some cases, plant material such as chaff is mixed with clay to make pottery and the subsequent firing will preserve some of the chaff in the pottery wall. Only in the relative absence of oxygen will charring occur. The higher the temperature, the worse the preservation will be. Delicate materials such as leaves and fibers of herbaceous plants rarely survive unless the temperature is quite low. Tougher plant tissues such as seed coats, particularly of nuts and other dry seeds, are retained at higher temperatures. Plant remains stored in containers, under soil, or otherwise protected from the air will usually be the best preserved by charring. Carbon is relatively stable so does not decay when exposed to oxygen. At dry sites such as protected caves and rock shelters (see Caves and Rockshelters) as well as at sites in deserts, plant tissue preserves because of the lack of moisture that microorganisms require. A wider range of plant tissue such as leaves and other soft tissue survives in such contexts. The plant remains may appear almost fresh. At the Guila Naquitz site in the dry highlands of Mexico, bean pods and quids of chewed maguey have been recovered. At Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, thousands of objects made from wood, gourds and other plant material left behind by indigenous miners are preserved. Mud to make adobe walls is usually mixed with plant stems and chaff and when the bricks are sun-dried the stems and chaff are preserved inside the bricks. In extremely wet conditions, preservation occurs when oxygen cannot be replenished in the water. This often occurs in deep marine or lake settings, alluvial flood deposits, bogs, and landslides. In these settings, aerobic (oxygen consuming) microorganisms that are mainly responsible for the decay of organic material cannot survive. Sites such as Torihama in Japan, Hemudu in China, and Scowlitz in British Columbia, Canada are examples of wet sites with excellent preservations of plant remains. In other instances the plant remains themselves are not preserved, but their impressions are. Impressions

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of seeds and fruits in contact with clay during the manufacture of pottery occasionally occur on the interior and exterior surfaces of pottery. These impressions retain the surface form and sometimes the cellular pattern of the seed, fruit or stem that made the impression. At Pompei in Italy, plant remains are preserved as casts of the original item in the volcanic ash or as charred remains.

Recovery The methods for recovering macroremains depend on the type of deposit being excavated. Samples from dry sites can simply be dry-screened to separate the plant remains from the surrounding sediment. Plant remains from wet sites may be recovered by wet-screening, that is, by using pressurized water to wash the sediments though a screen or set of nested screens that divide the material into size grades. Another method, flotation, is used where charred material is the main form of plant remains. For flotation, large volumes of soil (often 10– 50 l) are collected from a variety of contexts. The samples may be the complete fill from a pit or other context or may be a subsample depending on time and budget constraints. In general, all context types at a site are sampled. If a pit is excavated in a deeply stratified site, each pit layer is normally sampled. If the site is a large village with a variety of contexts such as house floors, hearths, storage pits, and refuse dumps, then each of these should be sampled. Once collected, the soil is partially dried. Too much drying can cause the delicate charred remains to break. The soil volume is measured and recorded along with the sample’s location. In the simplest method, bucket decanting, the soil is gently poured into a bucket of water, stirred, and the material suspended in the water decanted through a fine-mesh (usually 0.2 mm) sieve (Figure 1). The suspended material, or light fraction, is trapped in the sieve while the water passes though it. This is repeated

Figure 1 The bucket decanting flotation method.

until no more material is in suspension. The soil in the bottom of the bucket is then screened through a mesh of roughly 1–1.5 mm. The material caught in this screen is the heavy fraction and will contain small artifacts and plant remains that did not float. In fact, flotation is recommended for the rapid collection of all small items in certain contexts. Both fractions can be placed in separate pieces of cloth that are tied into a self-contained bags, dried and stored for analysis. For processing large volumes of soil, a number of mechanized methods are available but they are all based on the same principle as the bucket-decanting technique.

Initial Sample Preparation Analysis of light fractions follows a standard procedure at each lab in order for data to be comparable. Methods may vary depending on the lab and the samples (samples from Ontario have large quantities of wood charcoal, maize cob fragments, and kernels while samples from China often have only small seeds, but the techniques are all designed for efficiency and accuracy). Seeds vary in size and are mixed with other debris so preparing a sample so that it is easier to view and quantify is important. In the lab, samples are weighed and then passed through a series of nested geological sieves normally of the following mesh sizes: 6.35, 4.00, 2.38, 2.00, 1.41, 1.00, 0.71, 0.42, and 0.21 mm. The number of screens can vary depending on the sample size (fewer screens for smaller samples), but this is typical for a 20 g sample. The analyst can microscopically scan particles of roughly the same size making observations consistent. Seeds of the same type, because they are roughly the same size, will be separated to a great extent too. Weights of each of the portions are recorded. The first sample weight and the fraction weights are not used in the final tabulations but are used to audit the analysis. The fractions above the 2.38 or 2.00 mm screen are

MACROREMAINS ANALYSIS 1595

separated entirely into their constituent components, which may include wood charcoal, nutshell, large crop seeds (maize, wheat, barley etc.), unidentified plant remains, bone, stone flakes, and uncarbonized organic material such as rootlets. Seeds of wild plants are usually found in the fractions smaller than 2.38 mm, and their weight is usually quite small. Each of the larger components is weighed and the seeds counted. Mineral and uncarbonized organic material are not included in the final results that are limited to archaeologically significant material. Each of the other components is reported as a percentage of the total component weight and density (g/l of soil). Only carbonized seeds or items for further study are removed from the smaller material. Watchmakers’ tweezers, fine brushes, and dissecting needles all can be used to extract delicate seeds from the sample. Some analysts count the seeds but do not separate them. This may not be a problem but the author prefers to store the seeds and other interesting specimens separately by type in gelatin capsules so they are easier to check and reanalyze. The seeds are weighed together as a component. The percentage summaries of the gross composition of the samples are based on the material larger than 2.00 mm. The author has found that the smaller fragmentary material is easily misidentified and it may take hours or days to split (with a wide margin of error) the smaller material into wood charcoal, nutshell and so on. Given the available resources of most labs, separating an entire sample into its constituent components is neither accurate nor efficient. Data are best recorded in a computerized database. In the lab data are first recorded on a hard copy of the same form used for data entry on the computer. Any relational database will suffice. Retrieval of samples fitting particular criteria is fast and accurate and tabular summaries of data can be quickly achieved.

Identification and Documentation The majority of seeds and fruits recovered from archaeological deposits are larger than 0.5 mm in at least one dimension so a binocular dissecting microscope is ideal for the majority of observations. Items to be identified are three dimensional and the binocular configuration allows the analyst to see small objects with proper depth perception. A magnification of between 10 and 50 times is usually sufficient. When details such as cell patterns smaller than 0.5 mm (e.g., 10–50 mm) need to be documented a light transmission microscope or scanning electron microscope (SEM) is useful. Figure 2 illustrates a specimen viewed with two types of microscopes. Cost and time obviate the use of the SEM for the examination of most specimens. Proper documentation, particularly of new or potentially controversial discoveries, needs to be properly published. In the author’s work the specimens are usually documented with a digital photography system and supporting software (Nikon Digital Sight and Nikon’s Eclipsenet software). This setup permits fast digital measurement, photography, and data recording (Figure 2). Identifications must be confirmed by comparison with modern reference specimens. A reference collection with a comprehensive representation of plant taxa from one’s research area(s) is essential. Specimens are arranged taxonomically, that is by plant family and then within families by genus, species, and subspecies. At the University of Toronto we use the Montgomery seed collection, which is the basis of the Montgomery Seed Manual, in addition to the reference collection in the author’s lab. Seeds and fruits within a single plant family share more traits than do plants in different families. Overall shape, size, and symmetry, seed coat morphology, shape and position of the embryo and endosperm, the number of cotyledons, and the nature of the attachment of the seed to the plant are among the most

Figure 2 An example digital image of a charred Rubus (raspberry/bramble) seed (R) compared to its modern counterpart (L) with measurements taken using the Nikon Digital Sight imaging system and its companion Eclipsenet software.

1596 MACROREMAINS ANALYSIS

Figure 3 Comparison of modern azuki bean (L) and an archaeological specimen from South Korea (R). Both specimens show characteristics typical of beans: cotyledons (c), plumule (p), and seed coat (s). The size of the archaeological specimen is significantly smaller than its modern counterpart indicating it likely represents a wild or early domesticated form.

significant characteristics used to identify specimens (Figure 3). Charred seeds in particular are often broken so sometimes only one or two characteristics remain and they may not be enough to make an identification. A typical analysis will report a number of unidentifiable seeds. Two important economic plant families, grass (Poaceae) and bean (Fabaceae), exemplify how fruit and seed structures are used in the identification process. The seed (grain) of grasses is called a caryopsis. The grain is held within two tough leaflets called the palea and lemma, the structure and form of which can help identify a grain. The embryo at one end of the seed and that end (proximal end) is normally pointed. The opposite end (distal end) of the grain is normally blunt. In some cases the grass embryo extends the length of the grain but in most it does not. The main domesticated grass in the New World is maize and it belongs to the Maydeae subgroup (tribe) of the grasses. Wheat and barley, two significant crops from the Near East, are members of the Hordeae tribe of grasses. Superficially, maize looks quite different from either barley or wheat (Figure 4). Maize kernels are broad and flat with a crescent-shaped embryo comprising a significant part of one face of the grain. Wheat and barley are long and narrow with a short embryo relative to the grain length. Wheat and barley differ from each other in subtler ways than they do with maize. For example, barley has a shallow groove ventral furrow down the face of the grain opposite the embryo while wheat has a deep, narrow groove. In the bean family, the fruit is a legume, a pod with two sides joined by a suture. This fruit is quite different from that of grasses. Inside the pod is a single row of seeds. The seeds have two halves (cotyledons) that are part of the embryo. The embryo also has a primordial root (the radicle), and leaves (plumule). The form and position of these are diagnostic

(Figure 3). On the outside of the seed, the hilum is the scar left by the attachment to the plant. Its position and form also helps distinguish one type of bean from another. Determining the wild or domesticated status of a specimen is critical when investigating the transition to agriculture. The problem is made complex by the understanding that a domesticated plant or crop is the same species as its wild relative. Crops are adapted to human-created ecosystems and have advantages to people that are often disadvantages in to plants adapted to wild habitats. Wild dispersal mechanisms are suppressed so that plants are easier to harvest, protective tissues are reduced so that plants are easier and tastier for people to eat, seed coat thickness may be reduced so that seeds germinate soon after they are planted, and the seed, fruit, stem, or other part that people value may increase in size (Figure 5). This is not a comprehensive list of the impact of domestication, but they represent characteristics that affect plant anatomy. In grains one of the first characteristics to change is the brittleness of the rachis, or tiny stem that connects the grain to the plant. An irregular scar indicates the grain was ripped from the plant (by people) while a clean scar indicates a natural break. Wood, either in the form of charcoal or as uncharred fragments can be identified in order to assess the local woodlands in the past, as well as to determine the choices people were making for fuel and raw materials. Other significant plant tissues are roots and tubers as well as rinds of large fruits such as squash and gourd. Large fragments or complete root structures such as the potato are rarely recovered; the remains are usually fragmentary. The tissues of these structures may shrink, expand, deteriorate, or otherwise distort due to charring, drying, or waterlogging. Techniques are being developed to identify such tissues. Fragments no larger than a cubic centimeter are best examined with a SEM. The cells of starchy roots and tubers are usually

MACROREMAINS ANALYSIS 1597

Figure 4 Three types of grass. Charred wheat (top left) and barley (bottom left) from Japan, and maize (right) from Ontario. The ventral (L) and dorsal (R) views of wheat and barley show the embryo and furrow (groove) respectively. The maize embryo is missing but the embryo scar has the typical arched form of grasses. Maize kernels do not have a ventral furrow.

7 Daundong site specimens Wild specimens (archaeological) Modern crop

6

Width (mm)

5 4 3 2 1 0 0

1

2

3

4 5 6 Length (mm)

7

8

9

Figure 5 Seed size variation of azuki beans in the archaeological record of South Korea compared to the variation of a modern cultivar. The specimens from Daundong are an early crop whose seed size is intermediate between wild and modern sizes.

spheroidal and fit together with a relationship to adjacent cells. That is, they fit together because they developed together. Other surfaces are notable due to their reflective properties (shiny vs. dull). Other cellular patterns associated with vascular tissues such as tension fractures and cavities are often present and can be used to help identify the remains.

Data Presentation There are many ways to present data depending on the problem being investigated. An example of a data set is from the Carlson Annis site, Kentucky (Figure 6). Carlston Annis is one of many large Archaic period shell mounds found throughout the

Southeast US. In this case, one priority was to learn about patterns through time (c. 5000–2500 BC) at the site so a graphic representation of percentage composition helped visualize patterns, particularly those involving relative abundance of all classes of plant remains. The samples are ordered from youngest to oldest (top to bottom) and by type of material (left to right) with sample components first and potential plant food-related material second. The data table can alternatively be presented as densities, that is, number or weight of items per liter of soil. In the case of the Carlston Annis site, acorn is more common than hickory in the younger layers. Either people were developing a taste for acorns or they were more abundant locally making them a sensible food choice. The second hypothesis is sensible because of its simplicity. Oaks likely became more common because hunters and gatherers are known to have used fire to help manage local habitats and oaks tend to be fire tolerant while hickory is not. Just after this period and elsewhere in Kentucky people had turned to agriculture and practiced slash and burn (swidden) agriculture. They appear to have developed slash and burn techniques from their knowledge of burning as hunter-gatherers. The site has a relatively low incidence of charred seeds. Its site is known to have had a large population of earthworms that ingest nearly all small items, thereby significantly reducing the number of seeds that archaeologists could recover.

Outlook Today thousands of specialists are recovering and analyzing macroremains around the world. Flotation has been used for decades in some regions such as the

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

36.90 55.39 110.90 77.08 40.88 43.91 56.82 34.67 49.11 99.88 108.04 98.05 95.38 176.88 171.61 69.81 14.96 16.12 3.65

1.24 0.91 1.48 1.94 0.65 2.54 3.60 0.30 1.86 6.61 6.25 16.13 10.62 16.76 16.63 4.40 5.28 6.53 2.40

Total 1360.04

104.86

%

0 50 ⫻ 10

Wa lnu Tu t she be ll r Sq ua Se sh rin ed d s

Me at

Acorn

Sh ell

Hic ko ry

nu tsh ell

Plant food

To ta we l pla igh nt f t (g oo m) d

Sample components

Sm all bo ne Wo od ch arc oa l Un ide rem ntif ain ied pla s nt Pla nt foo d

Le ve l Sa mp (ex le w clu eig Fla ding ht (g m fin ke ed ) s eb ris ) Sh ell

1598 MACROREMAINS ANALYSIS

100 Less than 1.0%

Figure 6 Carlston Annis, unit C13 flotation sample contents as percentage of sample weight and total plant food weight.

Near East and North America but has only recently been systematically applied in areas such as China. Clearly, macroremains analysis is an indispensable part of archaeological research. New techniques such as DNA and residue analysis are helping identify plants and the evolution of domestication but the first steps will continue to be flotation or mechanical screening of waterlogged contexts (see Sites: Waterlogged) and desiccated soils and the microscopic analysis of macroremains resulting from these recovery techniques. Interpretations need to develop beyond the narrow confines of typical archaeological interests to issues involving sustainable agricultural methods, contemporary plant management, ideology, agency, forensics, and others. See also: Caves and Rockshelters; Coprolite Analysis; Ecofacts, Overview; Fiber Artifacts; Frozen Sites and Bodies; Organic Residue Analysis; Paleoethnobotany; Phytolith Analysis; Plant Domestication; Pollen Analysis; Preservation, Modes of; Sites: Waterlogged; Starch Grain Analysis.

Further Reading Dimbleby GW (1978) Plants and Archaeology. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Ford RI (1985) Commentary: Little things mean a lot – quantification and qualification in palaeoethnobotany. In: Ford RI (ed.) Prehistoric Food Production in America, pp. 215–222. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Greig J (1989) Archaeobotany. Strasbourg: European Science Foundation. Hastorf C (1999) Recent research and innovations in paleoethnobotany. Journal of Archaeological Research 7(1): 55–103. Hather JG (1993) An Archaeobotanical Guide to Root and Tuber Identification. Bloomington, IN: Oxbow Books. Hather JG (2000) Archaeological Parenchyma. London: Archetype. Hillman GC (1983) Interpretation of archaeological plant remains. In: Van Zeist W and Casparie WA (eds.) Plants and Ancient Man: Studies in Palaeoethnobotany. Rotterdam: Balkema. Marquardt WH and Watson PJ (2005) Archaeology of the Middle Green River Region, Kentucky. Gainesville: Institute of Archaeology and Paleoenvironmental Studies, University of Florida. Pearsall DM (2000) Paleoethnobotany: A Handbook of Procedures. San Diego: Academic Press. Renfrew JM (1973) Palaeoethnobotany: The Prehistoric Food Plants of the Near East and Europe. Figures Drawn by Alan Eade. New York: Columbia University Press.

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MARITIME ARCHAEOLOGY Jeremy Green, Fremantle, WA, Australia ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary maritime Connected with the sea, especially in relation to seafaring, commercial, or military activity.

Introduction Maritime archaeology as a discipline has had a troubled genesis. Starting in the postwar period with the advent of commercially available SCUBA equipment, diving soon became a recreational sport. As the equipment became more accessible, so the sport became more popular. As a result people were soon discovering shipwrecks and the artifacts that they contained, particularly in the Mediterranean. Of course, people had known about ‘things’ in the sea or underwater long before. Hard-hat diving was widely used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for salvage and underwater operations. In fact, salvage-diving, or working underwater, had been in operation since the seventeenth century when divers using a diving bell had salvaged the guns from the Swedish warship Wasa at a depth of about 30 m. The first ‘archaeological’ operation was probably the discovery by Greek sponge divers of the Antikythera ship in 1900. Here the divers were under the instruction of archaeologists who directed the operations from the surface. Throughout the postwar period, various nonarchaeological groups have worked in the Mediterranean on a variety of Greek and Roman wrecks and these operations were often conducted with great care and proficiency, but unfortunately sometimes not with rigorous archaeological principles. The Grand Congloue´ wreck excavated by Jacques Cousteau in 1952 was one of the first excavations of a site using the aqualung. The work was featured in an article titled ‘Fish men discover 2,200-year-old Greek ship’. Cousteau describes the use of an air lift as something akin to a browsing horse and munching shells, sand, shards, and things too big for it to eat, such as parts of amphora which, when jammed in the pipe mouth, were pulverized to allow them to go up the air lift. Of course, this was very early days and there were, needless to say, no archaeologists on that project.

The first underwater archaeological excavation was of the Cape Geledonia wreck in 1960 by George Bass. This was a groundbreaking excavation; archaeologists who could dive, plus divers who were experienced in archaeological sites, joined an international team that established a benchmark for conducting archaeology underwater. The watchword then was: ‘‘It is easier to teach an archaeologist to dive that a diver to be an archaeologist.’’ By the 1960s, the field of maritime archaeology was expanding. European countries and countries bordering the Mediterranean were beginning to establish modest maritime archaeological programs. However, at the same time, there was a growing interest in looting and treasure-hunting, and many important sites in the Mediterranean were completely destroyed for their cargos of amphora. Against this background, the discipline of maritime archaeology slowly evolved, largely independently from traditional terrestrial archaeology and often at times against enormous adversity. In order to conduct a maritime archaeological program, it is necessary to have legislation to protect the underwater cultural heritage (UCH). In many European countries this was enacted early, but in many countries the legislation was either inadequate or nonexistent (see Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation). The first example of single-purpose legislation to protect shipwrecks was enacted in 1963 in Western Australia (a state with a population of about 1 million people at that time). Today, the state has over 1200 known shipwrecks that are protected by legislation and these are managed by a state government department with a staff of ten people. In the United Kingdom, on the other hand, where there are literally hundreds of thousands of wrecks, for a long time the legislation was inadequate and till 2002, only 47 sites were protected. The level of management in the UK can be judged by the fact that about 70 000 sports divers undertook 1.5 million dives in 1992, while at the same time there were only 20 or so paid professional diving archaeologists. While the situation in the United Kingdom is not a particularly encouraging example, many countries have no legislation and no means of looking after sites. Other countries have relatively modest programs but there are few places in the world that can be said to have an ideal situation. A recent UNESCO convention (see below) will ultimately help to redress this situation.

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What Do We Do and What Do We Study? Maritime archaeology is often considered to be an expensive activity because of the resources and equipment that are necessary to operate underwater. However, the archaeological rewards are often enormous. Because UCH has until recent times not been accessible, the resource is extremely large. Once it was considered to be the study of things that were literally underwater, shipwrecks and submerged land sites such as harbors. Today, maritime archaeology also encompasses studies involving maritime activities, such as fishing, commerce, exploration, shore-based facilities that relate to maritime activities, and maritime landscapes. Therefore the maritime archaeologist of today is dealing with a highly diverse subject. Shipwrecks have been the main focus of study, particularly in Europe and the Mediterranean. Here the discipline has concentrated on the development of ships and shipbuilding. In the Mediterranean, the Institute for Nautical Archaeology, in Turkey, starting with the Cape Geledonya shipwreck, has pioneered a series of excavations that have helped to understand the development of shipbuilding from the early Bronze Age through to the Byzantine Period. This work has been complemented by other important studies in France, Italy, Greece, Israel, and Egypt. This has led to an understanding of how and why these ships were built and the nature of the trade networks and maritime commerce that they were involved in. In some cases, replicas of the shipwrecks have been built to help understand their sailing capabilities. In Northern Europe, parallel studies have been undertaken, looking at the evolution of shipbuilding from the Roman period through to the post-medieval. In particular, the ships of the Viking period have been extensively studied, starting with the early land finds of land-based ship burials in Norway and the UK. These finds were complemented by a number of ships from the Viking period discovered in Denmark at Roskilda. This work led to the development of an extensive program of replicating these vessels and studying their sailing characteristics. Following this, studies of merchant ships have been undertaken, especially of the cog and other similar vessels that operated in the Northern European waters. In the early period, the lack of extensive written record made the study of shipwrecks less complex. With only tantalizing references to ships, their cargos, and the people who sailed in the vessels of, say, the Bronze Age, the archaeological finds provide unique evidence of the times. For example, the writings of Homer are one of the few sources of written evidence relating to ships in the Bronze Age, even though he

probably wrote much later than the events to which he referred. Despite all Homer’s writings about the siege of Troy and the warfare, we still have little understanding of what their ships or everyday life was really like. In Homer’s Iliad, the besiegers of Troy appear to have lived on barbecued meat alone, with no reference to fishing. In the Odyssey, there are more references to sailing and the ships, but they are so tantalizing! In ‘Calypso’s island’, we hear of Odysseus being given a bronze double ax and adz to fell the trees. Poplar and firs were split and trimmed. The planks were bored and wedged and knocked home, locked with pegs and joints. The vessel was fenced with twigs and wicker bulwarks, stem to stern. This was written some 2700 years ago. Today we can compare some of these words with vessels that were built in those times. Archaeological excavation is likely to be the only way more can be discovered about these issues since it is unlikely that another Odyssey will be found in the archives. As we progress forward in time, more and more written material becomes available to the maritime archaeologist. Beyond the medieval period, maritime archaeology becomes a more complex field of study. The maritime archaeologist is now faced with a growing source of alternative information to compliment the archaeological record. Records, letters, bills of lading, paintings, etchings, ship plans, and a whole range of complementary evidence becomes available (see Ships and Seafaring). As we progress further in time to the Industrial Revolution, this written record grows in volume until, by the nineteenth century, it is almost overwhelming. In these later time frames, which have only recently begun to be studied, we see a different form of maritime archaeology evolving, where the simple excavation of one particular site is not likely to illuminate the times in the same way that a Bronze Age or Classical Period shipwreck would. Questions have to be asked about the relevance of the site: was it a typical example of the times, how did it fit into the pattern of other similar or different vessels doing the same type of thing? Thus these types of studies become more integrated in historical and social issues. This is, of course, not history, which itself tends to study the broad issues and certainly does not examine detailed material culture. If we take the example of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), historians and archivists have studied and tried to understand the broad questions of how the company operated between 1602 and 1797. However, it was not until the discovery and excavation of VOC shipwrecks, that the archaeologists started to ask detailed questions of the historians about the material that they were

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encountering. This can be illustrated by the following example. In the 1980s, contemporary thought was that Northern European ships were built in the conventional manner, with first the keel, then the ribs, and then the planking placed over the ribs as skin (this was known as ‘frames-first’). It was known that in the Classical and Roman period, ships were built differently by laying the keel, then building up the planking to form an outer shell, and then inserting the ribs last (‘shell-first’). When a seventeenth century VOC ship was excavated and found from the archaeological excavation to have been built shell-first, the report was initially greeted with incredulity. The archaeological evidence was, however, irrefutable and it was not till this point that examination of contemporary paintings and treatise of ship construction showed several examples of the shell-first construction which continued up until the late seventeenth century. That in itself began a new research theme for the historians, seeking to understand how and why this unusual technique persisted for such a long time. So in this time frame, when there are some records and some archaeological sites, in a way the archaeological record and the historical record complement each other. In some cases, the historical record will be the only information indicating a particular thing, that does not exist, for whatever reason, in the archaeological record. In other cases, the reverse is true. So the maritime archaeologist has the additional problem of accessing historical records, often in a foreign language, in order to obtain a complete understanding of the study. Archival research is not a traditional part of an archaeologist’s work, nor are the historians used to dealing with the minutia that this level of archaeological work requires. When we reach the nineteenth century, the problem for the maritime archaeologist becomes immense. The level of information, other than the archaeological record, is often huge. The approach here has been to take a much broader overview. Few archaeological excavations have been conducted on nineteenth century sites and where they have, the sites have had exceptional significance. The study of the nineteenth century has also had a more regional significance to countries that have had a relatively modern maritime tradition. Thus, the US (apart from states with connections with the Spanish Plate Fleets), Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, all with European colonial connections, have been in the forefront of this field of study. However, as recently pointed out by a number of writers, this field of study has largely failed to develop a sophisticated theoretical basis. A new and interesting field of study deals with the iron and steam shipwrecks of the Industrial Revolution (see Industrial Archaeology). The study is

particularly interesting because, initially, people thought that iron wrecks would ‘last for ever’. Corrosion studies have shown that contrary to this belief, iron shipwrecks are disintegrating at an alarming rate. This can be seen when examining the most recent pictures of the Titanic compared with pictures taken when the vessel was first found in 1985. The research concentrates on issues of how to conserve these rapidly disintegrating artifacts. A number of complex projects have involved the excavation of complete ships and subsequent conservation and display. The first example was the raising of the seventeenth century Swedish warship Wasa in Stockholm Harbour in 1961. This was another landmark for maritime archaeology. For the first time, an almost complete ship was brought to the surface, not for salvage, but for archaeology. This immense project brought home the impact of the past – at that dramatic moment when the vessel first broke surface and floated into the dry-dock. The raising of the Mary Rose in 1982 was another example. However, strangely, neither of the projects has become a springboard for advancement in the field. Admittedly, both projects have excellent displays, but with the Wasa there have been no more than a handful of academic papers and the recent publications on the Mary Rose have been disappointing.

Theoretical Questions Maritime archaeology involves recovering the archaeological information through survey, excavation, recording, and documentation. The theoretical questions which then have to be addressed relate to the interpretation of this information, first at a more particularistic, object-oriented level, and, by extrapolation, to the deeper patterns of cultural systems. There are several schools of thought governing maritime archaeological research. Historical particularism studies the material culture and is artifactorientated and concerned with the artifacts and their functions. This approach is particularly appropriate for the archaeology of shipwrecks, because, being a relatively new field of study, the material artifacts are often not well understood. It is important, therefore, to build a clear understanding of the function of the material before the interpretation can take place. It has been stated that one of the most important objectives for maritime archaeology is simply to build up catalogs of material from wreck sites in order to create a springboard for the generation of hypotheses. Other approaches involve the development of hypotheses that can be used to study societies and the way they operated. More recently, with sites belonging to the post-medieval period, the use of an

1602 MARITIME ARCHAEOLOGY

integrated approach has been widely used. Here, both the archaeological and historical records are combined to attempt to obtain a clearer overall picture. For example, many items will not appear in the archaeological record of a shipwreck; perishable items may disappear, the origin and destination and the reason for the voyage may not be known; conversely, the historical record may not record items on board the ship or the way the ship was built and its type. Through the careful integration of both sources a much more informed picture can emerge, providing a deeper understanding of the significance of the site. Obviously, this is not always possible, but it is clear that an integrated approach will produce a better result. Post-excavation research will initially focus on the artifacts through their classification and identification. At this first level, the objective is identification, to which end scientific techniques may be applied to assist in determining the type of material the object was made of and its dating. Additionally, the historical record may be helpful in the identification and dating of objects where there are contemporary descriptions of similar material. At the next level, the archaeological research becomes involved with the interpretation of the function of the object and its relation to the other objects on the site. For sites that have a supporting written record, the documentary evidence can be very important, since it can provide information to explain why particular objects were present and what their function was. The final stage is reached with the study of the pattern of the material in relation to other sites and its relevance to broad historical interpretation which then leads to the formulation of the theories or hypotheses that can be used to explain major trends or processes. Irrespective of which theoretical framework is adopted, the objective of a maritime archaeologist will be to find out as much as possible about the material. This can then be used in conjunction with other information of a similar or associated nature to gain a broader concept of its significance on the site and, subsequently, its relevance in broad historical terms.

Finding Sites Most of the techniques used by maritime archaeologists today for the location of sites originate from other fields, particularly the offshore oil industry, although the equipment and resources that are generally used by maritime archaeologists are modest in comparison. Even though high-technology equipment has been used to find sites over the years, the majority of archaeological wreck sites

have in fact been found by chance, often through the fishing industry. The three main systems used to locate sites are visual searching, either using divers or remotely operated vehicles with video cameras; magnetometers that detect the presence of ferrous metal (usually applied to searching for iron shipwrecks); and sonar, particularly side-scan and multibeam sonar, that presents a sonar image of the sea bed. The use of remote sensing equipment is becoming common now that it is more readily available and, unlike diver operations, can be conducted over long periods of time without interruption. Where a maritime archaeologist is faced with the need to locate a site, it is essential to carry out the appropriate initial research prior to the survey, and that the survey is conducted in a systematic manner. Often, in the past, searches have been conducted with totally unscientific and illogical principles. However, today with the advent of precise positioning through the Global Positioning System (GPS), with a cheap hand-held instrument, a position can be determined anywhere on the surface of the Earth to an accuracy off by just a meter or so.

Management Legislation underpins much of the work of the professional maritime archaeologist. There has also been considerable debate within maritime archaeological circles over codes of ethics (see Ethical Issues and Responsibilities). Part of this debate relates to the question of dispersal of collections. Is it acceptable, for example, to excavate a site and then sell the collection? Is it acceptable for a museum to buy material on the auction market which has clearly come from a site that has not been excavated in an archaeological manner? In many situations, the archaeologist is required by law to sell the collection. In other cases, the sale of the collection finances the excavation work, and by necessity the material must be sold in order to carry on working. It is quite clear that, at the turn of the century, we have seen major and important wreck collections sold at auction. While some material has gone to museums, the majority has been dispersed, and thus been lost. Usually the only way that the material has been recorded is in an illustrated auction catalog which, for archaeological purposes, is totally inadequate. The issue has been addressed in a number of forums: the ICOMOS International Committee on the Underwater Cultural Heritage and the International Congress of Maritime Museums being the most significant. As far as the question of artifacts from shipwreck sites is concerned, there are now several schools of

MARITIME ARCHAEOLOGY 1603

thought holding widely divergent views on these issues. The purists argue that the collection is unique and, if dispersed, the information will be lost forever. Therefore, no excavation should take place unless the material can be conserved and then preserved. The pragmatists state that sites will be excavated or looted and, unless the material is recorded, it will be totally lost. Their approach is to work with the salvors and try to preserve and record as much as possible. The purists claim that this is self-defeating. By giving archaeological respectability to looting or salvage, it is legitimized and, in the long run, even more material will be lost. The treasure hunters argue that, but for them, the sites would never be found. In their eyes, archaeologists are incompetents who are trying to take away the right they have, as treasure hunters, to the rewards for their endeavors. Within this hotbed of dissent exist questions relating to the position of amateurs and nonprofessionals – questions of who is to take responsibility for conservation, storage, and display of material. It is, therefore, not surprising that some terrestrial archaeologists find the maritime field difficult to accept as a fully fledged academic discipline.

The Issue of Treasure Hunting In the US, the discovery of shipwrecks of the Spanish Plate Fleet generated a whole industry in treasure hunting that began in the 1960s. By the beginning of the 1970s, the field was divided into roughly three camps: the treasure hunters out for commercial gain and little else; a small number of archaeologists working for professional organizations that conducted archaeological projects; and a number of amateur and volunteer divers who wanted to help preserve the archaeological record, usually acting independently. By the mid-1980s, the discovery in Southeast Asia of shipwrecks that had marketable Chinese and Asian ceramics opened a new floodgate of treasure hunting and looting of archaeological sites in Asia. No discussion about maritime archaeology is complete without some reference to treasure hunting. There are three kinds of treasure hunters: professional, semiprofessional, and amateur. The professionals typically use off-shore equipment and work in deep water, the semi-professional generally works on smaller vessels with less skilled divers, and the amateur is simply someone who loots in his spare time. The history of maritime treasure hunting probably starts with the amateur divers who started in the 1950s in the Mediterranean, collecting amphora and selling them. In the Carribean, the treasure-hunting business started with the discovery of the first of the Spanish Plate Fleet ships in the 1960s. Up until the 1980s,

treasure hunting was connected with finding gold, silver, and other valuable items. In 1983, a Chinese junk, dating from the mid-seventeenth century, was discovered in Indonesian waters. The wreck contained a remarkable collection of Chinese porcelain, which was ultimately sold at Christie’s in Amsterdam, and made a small fortune for the finder. The finder went on to discover the Geldermalsen which contained a huge cargo of Nanking porcelain. There has never been an event quite like the sale of the Nanking Cargo. It composed over 160 000 ceramic items and 126 gold ingots, all of which sold for about £10 million. The suggested price in the catalog was generally far exceeded at the time of the auction, often by up to ten times. The auction was the second highest total for a Christie’s sale and no doubt, for them, a very profitable operation. From this moment on, shipwreck treasure hunting was not just looking for gold and silver. Asia became the new center for treasure hunting, and while there has never been an auction on the scale of the Nanking Cargo, many sites are being looted and destroyed, and the finds sold at auction. The arguments between treasure hunters and maritime archaeologists have largely reached a stalemate. Archaeologists are not going to become involved in selling artifacts and maintain it is not possible for an untrained person to conduct archaeological excavation. Treasure hunters say they are the only people finding wreck sites and there are plenty of sites to go around. In the interim, underwater sites are being salvaged of artifacts that have commercial value, often with official approval of the country involved. Sadly, the commercial exploitation of underwater archaeological sites continues, with little or no concern from governments that are, in reality, the guardian of the national cultural heritage (see World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws).

The UNESCO Convention On the international level, the UNESCO Draft Convention for the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage was adopted by the Plenary Session of the 31st General Conference in 2001, thus becoming UNESCO’s fourth heritage convention. The convention acknowledges the importance of UCH as an integral part of the cultural heritage of humanity and a particularly important element in the history of peoples, nations, and their relations with each other concerning their common heritage. It also emphasizes the importance of protecting and preserving the UCH, which it considers the responsibility of the government of each state. It notes the growing public interest and appreciation of UCH; the public’s

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right to enjoy the educational and recreational benefits of the UCH; and how public education will contribute to awareness, appreciation, and protection of that heritage. The convention further observes that UCH is threatened by unauthorized activities directed at it, and that there is a need for stronger measures to prevent such actions. The convention also notes that there is an increasing commercial exploitation of UCH aimed at the sale, acquisition, or barter of UCH. As one can imagine, this was not an easy process; it had taken over a decade to reach this conclusion and was again a reaffirmation that society considers the protection of UCH more important than its exploitation. Prior to the UNESCO Draft Convention on Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage, there was no international instrument to provide significant legal protection to UCH: shipwrecks, sunken cities, underwater cave paintings, and so forth. Although some nations possessed laws to provide protection in their own waters, others did not. This led to confusion about the rights of a nation to protect its cultural heritage, whether submerged in its own waters or another nation’s, or on the high seas. The main feature of the draft convention is that, among signatories, no activity directed at UCH may occur without a permit, no matter where the heritage is located. It provides guidance on the permitting process, including from which party the permit must be sought, depending on the location of the heritage. The draft convention covers all traces of human existence having a cultural, historical, or archaeological character which have been partially or totally underwater, periodically or continuously, for at least 100 years. It requires the consideration of on-site preservation of UCH as the first option before allowing any activities directed at it. Responsible nonintrusive access to observe or document on-site UCH ‘‘shall be encouraged to create public awareness, appreciation, and protection of the heritage. . . ’’. UCH may not be commercially exploited. Signatories have the exclusive right to regulate and authorize activities directed at UCH in their territorial sea and contiguous zone, and may enforce this right. On matters in a signatory’s exclusive economic zone (out to 200 nautical miles), however, the draft convention does not provide any new enforcement authority. There are several provisions making it clear that the convention must be interpreted consistent with international law, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Signatories must require their nationals to report any discovery of UCH (even if discovered in another signatory’s waters), and must prohibit them from engaging in activities directed at the heritage without a proper

permit and to enforce those regulations against foreign-flag nationals and vessels, at least in the territorial sea and contiguous zone.

Ethics Maritime archaeologists have discussed over a long period of time the international issue of ethics. Can maritime archaeologists legitimately work for a treasure hunter and maintain that they are in fact archaeologists? There was a time when the answer to this question would be ‘may be’. But today the answer is clearly ‘no’. Any situation where archaeological material is sold or dispersed so that it makes it impossible, in the future, to reassemble it in order for it to be reassessed, is not archaeology. No matter how well-intentioned the individuals are that associate themselves with this situation, they are being unethical, albeit there is no formally adopted code of ethics, except what is implied in the UNESCO convention. Such people who become involved in the treasurehunting industry give it a false sense of legitimacy and, ultimately, add to the future destruction of yet more sites.

The Future Maritime archaeology is a discipline that is evolving. Although it has suffered from limitations of being a relatively expensive field of study, currently it is developing rapidly in the high-technology area. Numerous projects involving deep-water archaeology are revealing well-preserved finds that have great interest, both to archaeologists and the general public (see Robotic Archaeology on the Deep Ocean Floor). This technology, a product of commercial oil exploration, provides opportunities to investigate sites that have never been touched and that are often extraordinarily well preserved. The challenge here will be to ensure that such sites are properly investigated and that they do not become the regime of commercialism rather than science. Growing issues relate to the management of archaeological sites and the access of the sites to the public, but through this process it is likely that sites will be better regulated and the archaeology better managed. More theoretical studies are expected, with the greatest development expected in the understanding of development of maritime technology. The most significant issue is, in reality, that in the last four decades, a whole new source of archaeological information has become available for study. How, therefore, are we to ensure that this resource is managed in a way that the information is not lost and that society can benefit from this?

MARXIST ARCHAEOLOGY 1605 See also: Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation;

Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline; Illicit Antiquities; Industrial Archaeology; Robotic Archaeology on the Deep Ocean Floor; Ships and Seafaring; Underwater Archaeology; World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

Further Reading Bass GF (1967) Cape Gelidonyia: A Bronze Age shipwreck. Transactions American Philosophical Society 57(8): 1–77. Bass GF (2005) Beneath the Seven Seas: Adventures with the Institute of Nautical Archaeology. London: Thames and Hudson. Bass GF (ed.) (2004) Serce Limani: An Eleventh-Century Shipwreck: The Ship and Its Anchorage, Crew, and Passengers. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press. Bass GF and van Doorninck FH (1982) Yassi Ada, Vol. 1: A 7th Century Byzantine Shipwreck. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press. Blackman DJ (1973) Marine Archaeology. Proceedings of the 23rd Symposium Colston Research Society Held University of Bristol April 1971. London: Butterworths. Bruce-Mitford R (1975) The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, Vol. 1: Excavations, Background, the Ship Dating and Inventory. London: British Museum. Cousteau J-Y (1954) Fish men discover a 2,200-year-old Greek wreck. National Geographic Magazine 105(1): 4–7. Cederlund CO (1983) British Archaeological Reports, International Series 186: The Old Wrecks of the Baltic Sea: Archaeological Recording of the Wrecks of Carvel-Built Ships. Oxford: BAR. Cederlund CO (ed.) (1985) British Archaeological Reports, International Series 256: International Symposium on Boat and Ship Archaeology. Oxford: BAR. du PlatTaylor J (1965) Marine Archaeology. London: Hutchinson.

English Heritage (1999) Towards a Policy for Maritime Archaeology: An English Heritage and RCHME Discussion Paper. Fenwick V (1998) Historic Shipwrecks: Discovered, Protected and Investigated. Stroud, UK: Tempus. Litwin J (2000) Down the river to the sea. Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on Boat and Ship Archaeology, Gdansk 1997. Gdansk: Polish Maritime Museum. Marsden P (2003) The Archaeology of the Mary Rose, Volume 1: Sealed by Time: The Loss, and Recovery of the Mary Rose. Portsmouth: The Mary Rose Trust. Prott LV, Planche E, and Roca-Hachem R (2000) Background Materials on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage. Paris: UNESCO. Reinders R and Paul K (eds.) (1991) Carvel Construction Technique: Skeleton-First, Shell-First: Fifth International Symposium on Boat and Ship Archaeology, Amsterdam 1988. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Ruppe´ CV and Barstad JF (eds.) (2002) International Handbook of Underwater Archaeology. New York: Kluwer Academic/ Plenum. Steffy JR (1994) Wooden Ship Building and the Interpretation of Shipwrecks. College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press. Throckmorton P (1987) History from the Sea, Shipwrecks and Archaeology. London: Michell Beasley. UNESCO (1972) Underwater Archaeology, A Nascent Discipline. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO (2001) Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, 15 Oct–3 Nov 2001, Paris. http://www. unesco.org/culture/laws/underwater/html_eng/convention.shtml accessed Mar 2007. Westerdahl C (1994) Crossroads in ancient shipbuilding. Oxbow Monograph 40: Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Boat and Ship Archaeology, Roskilde, 1991. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

MARXIST ARCHAEOLOGY LouAnn Wurst, SUNY College at Brockport, Brockport, NY, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary historical materialism methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history which was first articulated by Karl Marx (1818–1883). Karl Marx German philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary. Marxism the philosophy and social theory based on Karl Marx’s work on one hand, and the political practice based on Marxist theory on the other hand.

For most westerners, the term Marxism conjures a plethora of contradictory images. For some, it is cast as a bogeyman – an irrelevant icon of either a rigid

evolutionism or failed political idealism. Some have rejected Marxism as part of the larger postmodernist critique of all totalizing discourses. Its equation with economic determinism and communism as the inevitable outcome of history is hard for most social scholars to swallow, especially with the recent collapse of many communist states. On the other hand, many scholars have argued that Marxism represents some of the most powerful theoretical ideas of the modern age and the only true potential for emancipatory action. Reconciling these disparate stances is not easy. This stems from the fact that Marxism does not refer to a single, consistent social theory; there is often more difference than similarity between selfproclaimed Marxists. Ambiguities in Marx’s work and the often-hidden nature of his influence in Western scholarship are at the root of many differences. Divergence in Marxist theory is also linked to historical

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contexts and, in Anglophone archaeology, its specific development and research agendas. Thus, Marxism is best seen as a tradition rather than a theory, recognizing that it often takes many different forms. There is, however, a series of principles that all Marxists, no matter what bent, share. All look to the writings of Karl Marx for inspiration and engage in the larger tradition of Marxist scholarship that builds on his work. All Marxist archaeologists propound some form of historical materialism, including a dialectical approach that treats society as a totality of interconnected social relations defined by contradiction and conflict. They reject ‘commonsense’ ideas of linear causality based on abstracting discrete social entities, that is, the economy, instead focusing on relations evident in and connecting material/ideal oppositions. All Marxists emphasize that people make history through praxis, or theoretically informed action. For archaeologists, this means recognizing that our knowledge of the past is created in and influenced by modern social and political conditions that derive from a capitalist system defined by relations of power and inequality that are unjust. Finally, Marxist archaeology is geared toward not simply understanding these relations, but changing them. As such Marxism represents a form of political action (see Economic Archaeology; World Systems Theory). Marx is best known for his study and critique of capitalism. Except for historical archaeology, this is a context that is far removed from much archaeological research. In this respect, archaeologists have applied historical materialism in several different ways – abstracting general concepts and ideas and applying them to noncapitalist contexts; and using it to understand the workings of archaeology and its products in the modern capitalist world. In other words, Marxist ideas have been applied to construct knowledge about the past as well as to critically confront our role in the construction of knowledge in the present.

Marxism and Knowledge about the Past Marxist archaeologists have creatively applied many aspects of Marx’s general concepts and ideas to our understandings of life in the past. One obvious area has been questions of state formation and the origins of complexity, with its accompanying relations of class and hierarchy. The application of a Marxist model to this, one of the burning questions in archaeology, dates from the work of V. Gordon Childe, undoubtedly the most prolific Western archaeologist of the twentieth century and the first to explicitly use Marxist theory in his work. Childe presented a theory

of historical development punctuated by revolutions (Neolithic, Urban, and Industrial) based on changes in relations of production. This focused attention on questions of labor, appropriation of surplus production, exploitation, and class struggle. While many of Childe’s specific arguments have been discredited by new empirical data, the Marxist emphasis continues in the contemporary research on state formation by Thomas Patterson, Elizabeth Brumfiel, Antonio Gilman, Philip Kohl, and Allen Zagarell. Other scholars have fruitfully extended a similar historical materialist framework to pre-state or nonstratified societies, recognizing that questions about the relations and mode of production, labor, inequality, and exploitation are not limited to the modern world. Examples would include Jon Muller’s and Charles Cobb’s study of the Mississippian period in the southeastern United States and Dean Saitta’s analysis of power and labor relations in both Cahokia and Chaco Canyon. A slightly different tack was taken by Marxist archaeologists who adopted a world-systems approach. World-systems theory was developed by Immanuel Wallerstein to account for the formation and growth of capitalism on the global stage. Wallerstein’s appeal lay in theorizing spatial parameters for inequality, conflict, and contradiction in terms of regional core and periphery relations. Archaeologists have critically and creatively applied these ideas to unequal geographic development in the Near East, the Mediterranean world, and the American Northwest/Southwest. Worldsystems theory continues to be widely used, although typically alienated from its Marxist roots. Other Marxist archaeologists have focused more specifically on class relations in various social contexts. Class can be defined as social groups that occupy different productive relations and entails differential control over labor and surplus production. Real classes exist only in concrete historical circumstances where the relations are inherently conflictual and contradictory. Archaeologists have seldom adopted an explicit class approach, but the Marxist-derived terminology of ‘dominance and resistance’, power, and struggle has become mainstream.

Marxism and Modern Archaeology Marxist approaches have also had a profound impact on our understanding of the role that archaeology plays within the modern capitalist world. Archaeologists in colonialist contexts have been confronted by well-organized First Nation and descendant communities who have led us to questions ‘archaeology for whom’? Marxism provides powerful tools to deal

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with this question by focusing attention on class, inequality, and exploitation. In North America, Bruce Trigger and Randall McGuire used a Marxist approach to examine the way that mainstream images of Native Americans functioned ideologically to support colonialism and the modern capitalist state. Archaeologists are today scrambling to engage various descendant communities in a dialog that seeks to move beyond these past injustices. Marxists have also approached the archaeological study of the present through Critical Theory. Mark Leone’s research in Annapolis is a prime example. Leone focused on ideology as people’s taken-forgranted beliefs that mystify the true nature of social relations to uphold dominant power relations. To promote struggle and change, the Annapolis public education program introduced visitors to the contradictions and social inequalities of the capitalist system evident in landscape, architecture, and material culture. Other archaeologists have applied an explicitly Marxist class analysis to the structure of modern archaeology, making strong connections between archaeology and American socio-economic and class relations. These studies have demonstrated that archaeology is an inherently middle class practice, evident in the kinds of questions asked about the past, the kinds of knowledge that are privileged, and the nature of the interpretations that are constructed. We have also learned that archaeology is as plagued by a class structure defined by inequality and exploitation as any other arena of the modern capitalist world. Patterson has argued that for the past 70 years, archaeologists have been engaged in a conversation with ‘‘Marx’s ghost’’. While most of this engagement is hidden, there are few burning questions in archaeology that have not been informed by Marx’s ideas.

Material Culture

See: Artifacts, Overview.

Archaeologists have engaged ‘‘Marx’s ghost’’ through a variety of concepts – class, state formation, inequality, power, ideology, etc. Acknowledged or not, Marxism is a vital part of archaeology’s theoretical development. Marxist archaeologists have made valuable contributions to our knowledge of the past as well our role in the construction of knowledge in the present. See also: Colonial Praxis; Economic Archaeology; Historical Materialist Approaches; Political Complexity, Rise of; Social Inequality, Development of; Social Theory; Social Violence and War; State-Level Societies, Collapse of; World Systems Theory.

Further Reading McGuire RH (1992) A Marxist Archaeology. San Diego: Academic Press. McGuire RH and Walker M (1999) Class confrontations in archaeology. Historical Archaeology 33(1): 159–183. McGuire RH and Wurst L (2002) Struggling with the past. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 6(2): 85–94. McGuire RH, O’Donovan M, and Wurst L (2005) Probing praxis in archaeology: The last eighty years. Rethinking Marxism 17(3): 355–372. O’Donovan M (2002) Grasping power: A question of relations and scales. In: O’Donovan M (ed.) The Dynamics of Power, Occasional Paper No. 30. pp. 19–34. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigations and Southern Illinois University. Patterson TC (1999) The political economy of archaeology in the United States. Annual Review of Anthropology 28: 155–174. Patterson TC (2003) Marx’s Ghost: Conversations with Archaeologists. Oxford: Berg. Spriggs M (ed.) (1984) Marxist Perspectives in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trigger B (ed.) (1989) A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. Wurst L (2006) A class all its own: Explorations of class formation and conflict. In: Hall M and Silliman SW (eds.) Historical Archaeology, pp. 190–206. Oxford: Blackwell.

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METALLOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS Peter Northover, Oxford University, Oxford, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary electron microscopy Uses both wave and particle properties of electrons to form images and generate other signals. The principal division is between transmission and scanning electron microscopes. In the transmission electron microscope (TEM), as the name implies, a focused beam of electrons passes through the sample and the contrast in the projected image is formed by the interaction of the beam with microstructural features in the sample. In high-resolution electron microscopes (HREMs) the spatial resolution achieved can be as small as 0.08 nm. In the scanning electron microscope (SEM) a focused beam of electrons is scanned in a raster over the sample surface. The interaction of the beam with a small volume of material at the sample surface produces a number of signals. Secondary electrons are low-energy electrons ejected from the surface and the contrast of the image depends on the number reaching the detector, which is a function of the surface topography. Images can also be formed by ‘backscattered electrons’ where the contrast additionally contains compositional information as backscattering is related to atomic number. With a specially prepared sample with a strain-free surface, backscattered electrons can also give important crystallographic information (‘electron backscatter diffraction’ (EBSD)). Also ejected are ‘Auger’ electrons whose energy depends on the atomic species present and, often, the state of their chemical bonding. The electron beam may also cause light to be emitted (‘cathodoluminescence’) or generate an X-ray spectrum characteristic of the elements present. The combination of a rastered beam and the X-ray analysis allows ‘elemental mapping’. light or optical microscopy (OM) Most generally used in metallography using reflected light in ‘bright field’, with a maximum spatial resolution of approximately 250 nm. The use of low magnifications or macroscopy is also of importance in studying large and complex structures. Variations that can be useful in identifying phases, including corrosion products, are dark field, where annular illumination means that the illuminating light is not collected but only light scattered from surface features, polarized light, and ‘differential interference contrast’ which in reflected light can emphasize shallow surface relief. A different form of optical microscopy is confocal microscopy. This is an imaging technique usefully used in archaeological metallography to reconstruct three-dimensional images by using a spatial pinhole to eliminate out-of-focus light or flare in specimens that are thicker than the focal plane. The information collected can be used to produce contour or relief maps of surfaces and measure surface roughness, for example, in quantifying grinding and polishing traces. ‘Raman’ and ‘infrared microscopy’ are more specialized optical techniques. Raman microscopy depends on the scattering of laser light by the vibration of chemical bonds which can give very precise information about the molecular species present. ‘Infrared microscopy’ utilizes the absorption of infrared radiation by chemical bonds. microhardness testing In combination with optical microscopy to aid interpretation measures the resistance of a

material to indentation. A diamond indenter is pressed into the sample under a known load for a known time, and the size of the impression measured. This gives a hardness number which is a function of yield stress and work hardening rate. For samples of ancient metals it may be the only means of measuring mechanical properties that can be applied. proton microprobes Have primarily been used in archaeology as a microanalytical tool but they can be used in a scanning mode to produce elemental maps using all the signals available. These include X-rays (PIXE or particle induced X-ray emission), gamma rays, and backscattered protons. (‘Rutherford backscattering’ (RBS)). The energy of the backscattered particles depends on the species of atom they are interacting with and the depth at which the scattering takes place. Because of the sensitivity of this technique for some light elements it permits the three-dimensional reconstruction of the corrosion and patination of metal artifacts. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy Can give a measure of the chemical state of atoms in the surface of a material. XPS spectra are obtained by irradiating a material with a beam of X-rays while simultaneously measuring the energy and number of electrons that escape from the surface one to ten. It is potentially a very useful technique for assessing the surface state of some artifacts, for example, the patination of gold, in relation to their appearance.

Metallography The application of metallographic techniques in archaeology greatly enlarges our understanding of the form, function and context of metalwork, and metal debris far beyond that provided by typology, stratigraphy, and compositional analysis. Even in the last mentioned it has a part to play, but more importantly addresses the question of how an object was designed and made, how functional it was, how it was intended to look, how it was used and what happened at its deposition. In short, it enables one to write a very full biography of metal artifacts in a way that can and should be fully integrated to the narrative of a site, a region, or a culture.

Introduction Metallography in its broadest definition encompasses all aspects of the characterization of the structure of metals and alloys, and the objects made from them, in relation to their composition and properties. In an archaeological context a very wide range of metallographic techniques can be used to write and collate the biographies of metal artifacts based on the premise that every process or event in the life of an artifact from manufacture to conservation leaves a trace that potentially can be read. In doing this methods will be

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used that are described in other sections of this work besides the variety of microscopic methods which form the core of this article. A further general point relates to resolution: at all levels of resolution from the macro- to the nano- there is information of relevance, indeed of importance, to archaeology. As an example, what was possibly the first application of high-resolution electron microscopy (HREM) to archaeology was in elucidating the structure of the glossy black surface of Chinese mirrors from the Han Dynasty. This is an important issue because archaeology has tended to be content with examining metal with a restricted resolution, rarely exceeding the power of the optical microscope and the wavelength limit of light. Going beyond this with any appropriate technique can open up completely new avenues of research. A case in point is the characterization of intergranular corrosion using high-resolution scanning Auger microscopy. This showed that between the majority cuprite corrosion product and the bronze grains was a layer of cassiterite (tin dioxide) only 70 nm thick: this had not previously been suspected because the question had never been examined at that resolution, while its identification can open the way to an improved understanding of internal corrosion in copper alloys.

Surface studies Metalwork from archaeological contexts, with the exception of some precious metal finds can be expected to be significantly corroded so that the traces of forming, finishing, use, and deposition might be expected to be visible only on a relatively coarse scale. This is not necessarily so since the preservation of detail, such as use wear or combat damage, depends very much on the mode of corrosion. An extreme example of preservation can be seen in the Late Bronze Age hoard from Isleham, Cambridgeshire where some parts of a large mass of scrap metal were effectively protected for the environment for over 3000 years. As a result some of the bronze has a surface layer of corrosion products less than 1 mm thick and it has been possible to use a confocal surface profiler to provide a quantitative measurement of grinding polishing traces as a step toward assessing the type and grade of abrasives used for producing a polished surface. Other surface techniques, for example X-ray photo-electron spectroscopy (XPS) can be used to characterize the corrosion product or, in say a Renaissance bronze, to provide analysis of a patina and relate it to the metal substrate. Where an object is more corroded it may well be possible that within the stratified corrosion products is a layer which preserves the

original surface detail and which may be revealed by suitable cleaning (usually mechanical). It may even be possible to detect a chemically treated or patinated surface within such corrosion layers by a technique such as Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS) in a proton microprobe. Because of its high energy (typically 3 MeV) the proton beam has a much greater penetration than other microbeams and an analysis of the energies of backscattered protons can provide compositional and structural data over depth. Identifying an unusual species in a confined layer could well highlight an ancient patination process that might be difficult to observe in any other way. Even so, to calibrate any surface technique properly, and to relate the surface to the underlying metal structure, some form of sampling and microscopic study is necessary, supported as appropriate by microanalysis.

Sampling While, as will be described later, there is much to be learned from the macro- and microscopic examination of the surfaces of artifacts, the majority of their history is contained within them and so the removal of one or more samples is in general essential. It must be said, though, that as with compositional data, to recover microstructural information from a metal artifact sampling or other intervention may not be necessary. For example, developments in radiography can reveal structure on a variety of scales, even down to fine microstructural detail such as deformation twins, especially where the detail has been highlighted by corrosion. Where the removal of samples is necessary, their size and location should be determined by the information sought from an object but this will be constrained by its condition and geometry – it is much simpler to cut a section from a sharp cutting edge than a thick circular section bracelet. The microscopy technique used also has an influence. For transmission electron microscopy (TEM) which is not used as often as it should be in archaeology, sufficient material has to be removed to be able to prepare a thin foil 3 mm in diameter. For optical microscopy (OM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) the sample may be as small as a single fragment of gold thread a few micrometers thick, or as large as a complete crosssection of a pattern-welded sword or, indeed, a complete object. In some circumstances metallography can be carried out in situ on an object, with a small area perhaps 2–3 mm in diameter being polished and etched. As an example, this technique has been used with success in a major study of medieval and renaissance armours.

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Where a sample has been taken for study of a crosssection it is rarely so large that it can be prepared without being mounted. (Samples for scanning electron microscopy are discussed briefly in a later section). Mounting can be hot or cold. Cold mounting in epoxy, acrylic, or polyester resins has the advantage that delicate or brittle specimens can be mounted without being crushed by the hydrostatic pressure in a hot mounting press, and also low viscosity resins can be used to impregnate porous samples such as bronze massively corroded by fuel ash. Tin and lead require particular care as even some cold resins reach a temperature during curing which will significantly alter their microstructure. This is even more true of hot mounting, but hot mounting is undoubtedly an efficient process and some resins have useful properties such as conductivity or good edge retention. Once samples are mounted for optical or other microscopy they need to be ground and polished, using successively finer grades of abrasive. Modern industrial methods of metallographic preparation are designed to provide flat, damage free surfaces of a wide variety of materials using a minimal number of process steps. Developments such as diamond grinding disks and polycrystalline diamond suspensions undoubtedly produce good results but removal rates are often too rapid for small samples and a more traditional multistep approach is safer. The final polish is aimed at producing a visually scratch-free and undeformed surface. Each grinding and polishing stage, besides removing metal, deforms the surface layers of the sample and this deformation will become visible once the sample is etched and obscure a lot of detail. A deformed surface also precludes important new techniques such as electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) in the scanning electron microscope. Care also has to be taken in preparing soft metals such as tin, lead or pure gold and silver to ensure that grinding and polishing debris is not left embedded in the soft metal. In all these latter circumstances the final polish could require specialized compounds such as colloidal silica, or be substituted by chemical or electrolytic methods (see Metals: Primary Production Studies of). Finally, for the optical microscope, or for accurate microanalysis in a scanning electron microscope or electron microprobe the sample surface must be placed normal to the incident beam.

Optical Microscopy The optical microscope should be the workhorse of metallurgy in archaeology for the range of compositional and structural data that it can provide. Should be, because compositional analysis using

drilled rather than cut samples, or surface analyses using X-ray spectrometric methods still dominate some projects and much that is relevant to archaeology is therefore lost. Indeed, it has been demonstrated that in some circumstances optical metallography can lead to important archaeology that could not have been reached by any other methods. Versatile though they are, optical methods have a spatial resolution limited by the wavelength of light and, as the power of the objective lenses is increased, a decreasing depth of field and field of view. Current developments in microscopy deal with this by highly accurately controlled motorized stages. When a sequence of images is obtained by stepping the stage along the Z-axis, software can add the in-focus parts of each image to produce a fully focussed image of all parts of an object or a sample surface. The most-fully featured versions of these systems permit a full set of photogrammetric measurements, such as contour maps, depth profiles, etc.; even just knowing whether a feature is a hole or standing proud of the surface. Scanning the stage along the X- and Y-axes enables mosaics of large samples to be produced, reviving the traditional technique of macroscopy, albeit at the cost of very large image files. With lenses optimized for digital cameras just coming into service the possibilities of quantitative analysis of metallographic images have never been better, and a position should be reached where microstructures are routinely recorded quantitatively, with the data treated statistically in the same way as compositional analyses. First steps in this direction have revealed its power and have given new insights into the history of a number of metalwork assemblages. It is important always to examine a sample before etching: etching by definition damages the polished surface and can obscure or remove structural features such as corrosion products, inclusions, or gas or shrinkage porosity, or other manufacturing defects. With an optical microscope several forms of illumination are available, and at this stage it is planepolarized light and dark field illumination, in addition to normal bright field incident illumination, that aids the characterization of these structures. Further identification of inclusions may be made using infrared and Raman microscopy. Many details of the original microstructure and alloy can be preserved in more or less fully corroded samples (Figure 1) and can be recovered using these techniques following careful sample preparation. Also, process variables, such as the overall amount of reduction a piece of wrought metal has received can be measured from the elongation of nonmetallic inclusions such as sulphides, calibrated by measurement of experimental test samples.

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Etching The full history of a sample will only be revealed by etching, that is, using a chemical reagent to differentially attack the polished surface (in specialized cases an electrolytic method may be required). The ideal case of a defect-free single crystal would produce no reaction but that ideal does not exist, and certainly not in the archaeological world. Etching will specifically highlight major and minor structural features and variations in composition, although a different etch might be required to produce the best contrast for each feature. Fortunately the metallurgical literature contains lengthy lists of recipes for all combinations of alloys and structure, but

Figure 1 Deformed copper drift pin from HMS Pomone, 1811: field of view is 300 mm.

unfortunately there can often be safety issues with toxicity (cyanides), burns (hydrofluoric acid), and explosion (picric acid).

Microstructure The first part of this discussion applies primarily to nonferrous metals, especially alloys based on copper, silver, or gold, and iron and steel will be reviewed below. This distinction is a function both of the different crystal structures of the two alloy groups, and also because much ancient iron, especially in the west and in Africa has been produced by a direct bloomery process and has not been molten in bulk. The macro- and microsegregation following on casting of nonferrous metals and alloys (and also in cast irons) are readily displayed with the correct etch. This may take some selection since etching response can be radically affected by the presence of specific impurities, for example, antimony and iron in bronze. The etching of cast structures also permits some estimation of process variables, especially cooling rate. This controls the scale of the microstructure, for example, dendrite arm spacing or cell size, and the size and dispersion of included phases, and also the retention of metastable phases or structures. These features can also usefully be mapped using backscattered electron imaging in the scanning electron microscope with atomic number contrast, and by elemental mapping in the electron microprobe (Figure 2). This, in turn, can give some information on other factors, for example, the mould type and material, when no other

Figure 2 Backscattered electron image in atomic number contrast of inclusions in copper drift pin; high atomic number elements (lead, bismuth) show white.

1612 METALLOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS

evidence is available. Subsequent steps in processing can be identified may be more or less easily: while the effects of heat in homogenizing a structure, whether deliberately as a heat treatment or accidentally in a fire, are usually very clear, seeing when a cast structure has been deformed through cold work is often problematic, it simply being difficult visually to detect small distortions of a dendrite. When a cold worked structure is heat treated (annealed) at a sufficient temperature a new, strainfree grain structure nucleates and grows. In alloys that share the crystal structure (face-centered cubic) of copper, silver, and gold this structure is particularly distinctive, with polygonal equiaxed grains crossed by parallel-sided bands which are growth defects called twins. When this grain structure is itself cold worked the effects of deformation can be picked out by etching in the form slip traces (lines) or deformation twins (narrow lenticular bands), followed by deformation of the grains and ultimate destruction of any clear structure. By comparing these results with those from experimentally deformed alloys of the same type this can be quantified so that the amount of cold work can be measured and, coupled with estimating the elongation of ductile inclusions, the working history of the sampled area can be estimated. Observations of the mechanical behavior of the alloys may be supported by microhardness testing; in studying material from industrial archaeological contexts larger sections may be available for study and mechanical testing undertaken. Other variables can be also be quantified: metallographic and microanalytical observation of segregation can provide a determination of heat treatment temperatures as the distributions of different elements are homogenized at different temperatures. The recrystallized grain size is a function of annealing time and temperature and prior cold work: very large grain sizes can be indication of exposure to high temperature during a fire or cremation. If the heating is under oxidizing conditions a band of oxide inclusions may form below the metal surface; in extreme cases there may be visible signs that the metal has begun to melt. Optical metallography (supported by SEM) can also be used to characterize other aspects of metalworking such as plating, patination, and joining techniques, even where much else is corroded. Indeed, the characterization of intermetallic inclusions in corroded tin alloys such as pewter and solder may be the only guide to what was originally intended. Wrought iron, cast iron and steel are not always so rich in directly diagnostic microstructural features as, say, copper-based alloys. Even in antiquity carbon was not the only element alloyed with iron, phosphorus being the most important. Because the impact

and interaction of these elements is not always readily visible in the microstructure it is true to say that metallography of iron is incomplete with a partnership with microanalysis, and with elemental mapping at both micro- and macroscales. Such mapping can also identify features such as weld lines which are otherwise effectively invisible; also some of the diagnostic species are immobile during corrosion, so structural features can be followed into corroded areas, or even located in completely corroded material. Methods of working are different with hot forging of wrought alloys the norm rather than, with few exceptions, the cold working characteristic of nonferrous alloys. A second difference, in steels with sufficient carbon, lies in the importance of quenching to transform the microstructure athermally to produce hard and strong martensitic structures, whose properties can be improved by low temperature heat treatments called tempering. (Martensites also occur in nonferrous metals but in archaeological contexts are confined to high tin bronzes). Here, too, nonmetallic inclusions hold important information about production history: these include slag from the bloomery or puddling processes or forge welding, or sulphides in iron smelted by coal-, or coke-fired blast furnaces, in the west an indication of recent date. Also, as with nonferrous metals, a metallographic study should be supported by hardness and, if possible, other mechanical testing.

Electron Microscopy Beyond the constraints set by the wavelength limit of light, the world of electron microscopy offers almost unlimited resolution, current research in aberration correction lenses in transmission electron microscopes giving spatial resolution down to 0.08 nm. The most commonly used form of electron metallography is secondary electron imaging (SEI) in the SEM. Increasingly, instruments with large specimen chambers and low vacuum or variable pressure mean that large objects can be examined without preparation so that the maximum of surface detail and attached organic and other material can be imaged. For smaller objects the technique has been exceptionally useful in the investigation of jewelry, gold in particular giving excellent contrast and allowing even the smallest features of granulation and soldering to be explored. New software now means the three-dimensional potential of SEM images can be fully realized with the same possibilities of contour mapping, depth profiling, and surface roughness measurement as with optical techniques, as well as creating anaglyphs for a true three-dimensional view.

METALLOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS 1613

SEI is not the only imaging technique, backscattered electron imaging (BEI) in topographic and atomic number contrast, EBSD, and cathodoluminescence (CL) all having uses. EBSD has great potential for the future because, at the expense of stringent sample preparation requirements, it gives important crystallographic data. When metals sections are formed, the methods used can influence the preferred orientation of grains and the resulting texture can be quantified by EBSD. Applications might include differentiating between rolled and hammered sheet for making coin blanks, or exploring how the making of sheet bronze for cauldrons and shields might have changed over time, or perhaps even providing convincing evidence of hot working of silver and bronze. EBSD has also been used to explore how microstructure might change with time through phenomena such as discontinuous precipitation of an alloying element from supersaturated solid solution or diffusion induced grain boundary migration. This has been most studied in silver but has a wider significance. These grain boundary changes could be studied in greater detail in the TEM and the mechanisms probably fully understood. This has not happened for a number of reasons: specimen preparation is challenging, access for archaeology to instruments and trained microscopists has not been easy but, probably most importantly, the relevance of the technique to metallurgical questions in archaeology has often not been recognized. Hence any review of the technique will be little more than a wish list but it could have a considerable impact. First and foremost, many microstructural features could be correctly identified for the first time, such as the composition and structure of carbonitride precipitates in ancient iron, or the interpretation of cold worked microstructures in iron and steel. Questions long discussed, such as the impact of certain conservation techniques which use moderately elevated temperatures, or the origins of the extreme ductility of certain alloys such as some arsenical coppers could at last be resolved. Nanotechnology is a modern coinage but its products have been in use for two milleniums or more: the purple surface of shakudo, or the techniques of luster ware are two

Metallurgy

examples and they will not be fully appreciated until observed with sufficient resolution and, equally significantly, quantified (see Conservation and Stabilization of Materials).

Conclusions The panoply of modern metallographic techniques can illuminate a whole gamut of archaeological problems, but whatever the question some features are constant. There will always be a premium on the highest quality of sample preparation, and there can be no a priori limitation of the resolution with which they are examined. More basic than any of these is that the subject must move from being observational and qualitative to being fully quantitative, with data that can be treated statistically, and correlated with other datasets both analytical and archaeological. It should simply be a normal, and fruitful, part of a holistic approach to metal objects and metallurgy in archaeological and historical contexts. See also: Chemical Analysis Techniques; Conservation and Stabilization of Materials; Metals: Chemical Analysis; Primary Production Studies of.

Further Reading ASM Handbooks (1986) ASM Handbook, Vol. 10: Materials Characterization. Materials Park, OH: ASM International. Northover JP (1996) Metal analysis and metallography of early metal objects from Denmark, Appendix I. In: Vandkilde H (ed.) Jutland Archaeological Society Publications, 32: From Stone to Bronze: The Metalwork of the Late Neolithic and Earliest Bronze Age in Denmark, pp. 321–358. Moesga˚rd: Jutland Archaeological Society. Northover JP (1998) Analysis of copper alloy metalwork from Arbedo TI, Annex 1. In: Schindler MP Antiqua 30: Der Depotfund von Arbedo TI, pp. 289–315. Basel: Schweizerische Gesellschaft fu¨r Ur-und Fru¨hgeschichte. Scott DA (1991) Metallography and Microstructure of Ancient and Historic. Marina del Rey, CA: Getty Conservation Institute in association with Archetype Books. VanderVoort GF (1984) Metallography: Principles and Practice. New York, London: McGraw-Hill. VanderVoort GF (2004) ASM Handbook, Vol. 9: Metallography and Microstructures. Materials Park, OH: ASM International.

See: Metallographic Analysis; Metals: Chemical Analysis; Primary Production Studies of.

1614 METALS/Chemical Analysis

METALS Contents Chemical Analysis Primary Production Studies of

Chemical Analysis Thilo Rehren, Institute of Archaelogy, London, UK

human activities from the archaeological record requires chemical analysis in conjunction with traditional archaeological approaches.

ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Reason for Analysis

Glossary alloy A combination, either in solution or compound, of two or more elements, at least one of which is a metal, and where the resulting material has metallic properties. metal An element that readily loses electrons to form positive ions (cations) and has metallic bonds between metal atoms. trace element An element in a sample that has an average concentration of less than 100 parts per million atoms, or less than 100 micrograms per gram.

Introduction Metal objects play a significant role in most postNeolithic societies, which is reflected in the denominators for major chronological units (Copper Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age). The sequentiality of these units further reflects the stepped introduction of major metals and alloys, spanning from the earliest use of native metals (gold and copper) probably some 10 000 years ago, and continuing to this day with the development of ever more sophisticated alloys. Here, we will restrict ourselves to the metals and alloys known before c. AD 1500, primarily the metals gold, copper, lead, silver, tin, iron, and mercury, and the alloys bronze (copper–arsenic and copper–tin), brass (copper–zinc), and steel (iron–carbon). The first origin of many metals was from natural occurrences (‘native metals’), not requiring elaborate mining activities and smelting from ores. This is limited to specific geological areas and typical of the earliest use of gold, silver, copper, iron, and mercury. Supply of metals increased dramatically with the inception and spread of mining and extractive metallurgy; the geological limitation of metal production to areas rich in specific ores, however, remained. Many civilizations flourished in areas devoid of metal ores, such as the large river valley cultures; others were rich in one metal but not another. Thus, production, trade and exchange, and recycling of metals were of considerable importance from an early period onwards. Identifying and understanding these past

The use of metal objects can be seen as falling in one of three broad categories: decorative (jewelery, inlays), military (arms and armor), and domestic (tools, general implements). These exploit different metal properties perceptible in antiquity, such as color, sonority, density, malleability, hardness etc. One reason to analyze metal objects is to understand whether for a given object these properties have been either selectively exploited, or even modified to suit the purpose. This acquaints the analyzer with the state of metallurgical knowledge, or relative priorities of these parameters, and of the person or society producing the object. Reconstructing the techniques used to smelt and process metals from the waste left behind is a closely related field. Another reason is to discuss the functionality of objects, for example, whether they were made for display only or for real use; this can be a question for funerary or dedicatory objects. Chemical analysis is also a main avenue toward identifying the geological origin of a given object, in particular in combination with isotopic analysis. Basic curiosity, the desire to classify objects by material types and to identify similarities and differences in composition in order to form groups, and finally the necessity to identify the most suitable conservation methods are further reasons for analysis. Thus, four main research fields prevail in the analysis of metal objects: identifying their composition and current condition, establishing compositional groups, reconstructing metallurgical practice, and locating the geological origin of the metal. Of these four research fields, the first two are predominantly descriptive and the latter two mostly interpretative; the first and the third are absolute in that they consider only the material at hand while the second and fourth are relative as they require existing comparative material. This has major ramifications for the analytical practice; research requiring comparative data will have to match the type of existing data when conducting new analyses.

METALS/Chemical Analysis 1615

Analytical Practice The metallurgical analysis in archaeology draws from the entire range of materials science methods of analysis, but several approaches have been particularly successful and therefore more widely adopted. These include methods which do not alter the physical integrity of the metal objects, such as neutron activation analysis (NAA), X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF), electron Probe micro-analysis (EPMA) and protoninduced X-ray emission or gamma emission (PIXE or PIGE); those which require a sample to be removed and dissolved, such as atomic absorption analysis (AAS) and inductively coupled plasma either with optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) or mass spectrometry (ICP-MS); and those which remove a minute amount of material through evaporation or ablation, such as laser ablation ICP-MS, or secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). Ideally, the choice of analytical method and instrument is governed primarily by the particular research questions, moderated only by curatorial constraints. In reality, costs of analysis and ease of access to or availability of instruments often play a decisive role. For all methods it is imperative to monitor and report data quality (accuracy and precision) through publishing results for analysis of certified reference materials along with the unknown samples, in order to be able to compare data from different laboratories. Main practical considerations are sample size and location. Archaeological metals are often heterogeneous with grain sizes up to several millimeters; intentional surface treatments such as gilding or patination, or unintentional alterations through corrosion or conservation treatments, can result in major differences in composition between the surface and the body of an object. Sampling and analytical method have to take account of this, allowing, for instance, for invasive sampling to characterize both the surface and the body, and to ensure sufficiently large volumes of material to be analyzed, either in situ or after removal of a sample from the object. These volumes can be much larger than normally offered by LA-ICP-MS or SIMS, which typically analyze volumes of a few tens of cubic micrometer only. A balance between the curatorial desire to minimize the sampling impact and the analytical need for a representative sample is sometimes difficult to achieve. Identifying Composition and Condition

The analytical emphasis in identifying composition of nonferrous metals is on the main constituents down to about one half of one percent by weight. Components below that level have only a limited effect on the properties of the main metal, and their presence or

absence will not have resulted in perceptible changes in properties that could be linked to archaeologically relevant alloy selection for particular types of objects or specific purposes. Correct alloy identification for categorization purposes or conservation treatment also does not require more detailed analyses. This type of information is easily available from a range of analytical techniques, including scanning electron microscopes with energy-dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS) and portable XRF instruments, and often without the need for invasive sampling. Surface analysis only requires a small area to be cleaned to expose fresh metal, and can be done in conjunction with normal conservation treatment. The nature and degree of corrosion is best studied by optical microscopy, ideally of a polished cross section, and in combination with X-ray diffraction and SEM-EDS analysis. Analyzing iron and steel requires accurate determination of the carbon content at levels between 0.01% and 1% by weight. Few of the analytical instruments used in nonferrous metal analysis are capable of doing this, and methods established in industry normally require much larger and better preserved samples than typically available in archaeology. Here, optical metallography often is the most appropriate method. Establishing Compositional Groups

Within the broader metal and alloy types, much information regarding distribution and circulation of metals between societies can be gained from a more detailed analysis of minor and trace elements. This enables forming chemically defined groups, informing on metal supply in a given society and adding an independent dimension to artifact groups defined by stylistic criteria. It requires comparing data from different laboratories and thus needs both precise and accurate data, typically using the more advanced methods of chemical analysis. Establishing compositional groups now often includes isotopic characterization and provenancing (see ahead), but remains an important line of enquiry on its own. Reconstructing Metallurgical Practice

Chemical analysis of metal artifacts informs about alloying and refining practice, heterogeneity of complex objects (soldering, surface treatments, repairs, etc.), and possible corrosion effects. Analytical practice depends on the metal or alloy in question, and considers main components as well as trace elements and nonmetallic inclusions. The best analytical approach combines chemical and microscopic analysis to understand the spatial distribution of chemical components within an object. EPMA offers this combination in one instrument, but optical metallography can be combined

1616 METALS/Primary Production Studies of

with almost any chemical method. A major field in its own right is the analysis of metallurgical waste (slags, crucibles, furnace remains, etc.) to reconstruct smelting techniques (see Metals: Primary Production Studies of). The approach here is mainly based on geological methods. Locating Geological Origin

Provenancing follows on from the formation of compositional groups and compares their chemical and, in particular, isotopic signature with ore deposits or production sites. The most widely used method is determining the isotope ratio of the four stable lead isotopes in a series of artifacts, and comparing it with the isotope ratios of known ore fields or smelting sites. The minute lead content present in most metals is sufficient to determine these ratios, enabling lead isotope analysis (LIA) for almost all metals and alloys. A mismatch between a potential source field and an object group demonstrates that that object does not come from that source, provided the source characterization is complete and the metallurgical history of the metal object does not include addition of alien lead for alloying or refining purposes. A match between source field and artifact is not on its own proof of origin, but requires further supporting evidence such as contemporary mining activity at and cultural contact with the source region. The lead isotope ratio of a source is determined by its geological history; thus, any source with the same geological history will have the same isotope signature, resulting in widespread overlap between contemporary ore sources. Provenancing by LIA relies equally on high-precision and high-accuracy measurement of isotopic ratios, using thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS) or multi-collector ICP-MS with appropriate analytical protocols, and the availability of substantial comparative geological data even for remote and very small ore sources. The chemical composition of smelted metals does differ significantly from the composition of the ore, and enables only a broad discussion of potential relationship between source regions and metal artifacts; this can contribute significantly to the discussion in the case of overlap in isotope ratios between various possible source fields. Interpretation of Data

Any data interpretation needs discussion of analytical error, accuracy, and precision. In addition, the interpretation of the chemical composition of archaeological metal artifacts requires an understanding of the effects of the different metallurgical processes involved in

their production. Smelting, refining, alloying, and recycling or corrosion all influence the chemical composition of the metal; identifying their respective signatures and effects as the result of the production history of an object is at the core of metallurgical analysis. Understanding which signatures and effects are determined by natural processes and governed by the laws of physics eventually enables identification of those which are due to human activity and choice. Bringing these into the open is the ultimate purpose of metallurgical analysis in archaeology. See also: Metals: Primary Production Studies of; Neutron Activation Analysis.

Further Reading Craddock PT (1995) Early Metal Mining and Production. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Junghans S, Sangmeister E, and Schro¨der M (1968) Kupfer und Bronze in der Fru¨hen Metallzeit Europas. Berlin. Junghans S, Sangmeister E, and Schro¨der M (1974) Kupfer und Bronze in der Fru¨hen Metallzeit Europas. Berlin. Pernicka E (1990) Gewinnung und Verbreitung der Metalle in pra¨historischer Zeit. Jahrbuch des Ro¨misch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz 37: 21–129. Pollard M and Heron C (1996) Archaeological Chemistry. Letchworth: RSC Paperbacks. Tylecote RF (1987) The Early History of Metallurgy in Europe. London: New York: Longman.

Primary Production Studies of Thilo Rehren, Institute of Archaeology UCL, London, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary alloy Intentional combination of two or more metals to produce a material with properties different from the starting metals. Naturally occurring combinations of metals should be labeled ‘natural alloy’ to avoid the impression of intentionality in their production. beneficiation Mechanical separation of different minerals in an ore, producing a concentrate which is further processed by smelting, and tailings which are discarded. crucible Ceramic vessel used in the processing of metal or glass at temperatures above 200  C. melting Physically transforming a metal from the solid state to the liquid state, typically in preparation for either alloying or casting, or both.

Primary Production Studies of 1617 ore A naturally occurring combination of minerals from which one or more metals can be economically extracted. slag Waste material from the smelting or melting of metal. smelting Chemical transformation of an ore into a metal. Typically requires reducing conditions and elevated temperatures, and also produces slag and gaseous waste.

these aspects of production is at the core of archaeometallurgical analysis of slag. The nature of the material to be studied is best suited for a combination of chemical and mineralogical methods of analysis.

Reason for Analysis Introduction Metallurgy plays a significant role in most postNeolithic societies. A number of metals and alloys were known before c. AD 1500, namely gold, copper, lead, silver, tin, iron, and mercury, and the major alloys of bronze (copper–arsenic and copper–tin), brass (copper–zinc), pewter (lead–tin), and steel (iron–carbon). The first origin of many metals was from natural occurrences (‘native metals’), not requiring elaborate smelting or processing, and hence not leaving much waste or slag from their production. Supply of metals increased dramatically with the inception and spread of mining and extractive metallurgy; the geological limitation of metal production to areas rich in specific ores, however, remained. Many civilizations flourished in areas devoid of metal ores, such as the large river valley cultures; others were rich in one metal but not another. Thus, from an early period on metals were traded long distances, both as ingot and as finished artifacts, offering opportunities for provenancing studies (see Metals: Chemical Analysis). The waste materials, in contrast, remained at their production site, giving reliable evidence of production local to the archaeological site. Metallurgical activity leaves three main types of evidence in the archaeological record: metal objects and waste metal, associated products such as slag, and remains of installations such as furnaces or hearths. Of these, slags are typically the best-preserved, most abundant and most informative, but their study requires scientific analysis and expert interpretation. Even the most fundamental of identifications are not always possible using field methods and visual inspection alone. In extreme cases, true metallurgical slag can be confused with geological or other artificial materials. The differentiation between primary production or smelting and secondary production or reworking is typically given by the wider archaeological context, but cannot be taken for granted. It is often difficult to distinguish between ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy, or primary production versus secondary working. Studying the waste material can give very specific information about metallurgical processes and ore types, production technologies, and scale of production, none of which is available from the study of finished objects. Identifying and understanding

The production and working of metal is controlled by two main factors: technical constraints and cultural traditions. While there are certain fixed physicochemical conditions to be met for specific metallurgical operations such as smelting, alloying, refining, casting, and recycling, there are also many different configurations which may fulfill these conditions. The composition and quantity of the resulting materials, primarily metal and slag, reflect both factors. It is by identifying the fixed physico-chemical constraints that the culturally determined configurational factors can be revealed, producing archaeologically relevant information. The most basic reason for slag analysis is to identify the type of metallurgical process, metal and ore type smelted or worked at a given site. This is mostly done through chemical analysis. Ore deposits comprise two complementary materials: the rich mineral and the gangue or host rock. Ore beneficiation mechanically separates the rich mineral from the gangue. Smelting then extracts the metal from the rich mineral through a series of chemical reactions while transforming remaining gangue to form the slag. In this process, unwanted components of the rich mineral are either transferred into the slag or escape as volatile components with the fumes. The type of rich mineral, such as oxidic, sulfidic, or complex, is broadly reflected in the composition of the smelted metal. The slag, however, contains all the gangue components as well as components of the rich mineral, effectively giving a more complete representation of the ore body. This picture is complicated through the addition, conscious or not, of further material to the slag, such as fluxes, eroded furnace wall material, and fuel ash. Alloying, refining, casting, and recycling all produce their own compositionally distinct types of waste material, typically in much lower quantities than smelting and often in close relationship to technical ceramics such as crucibles and hearths. The second reason is to identify the nature of the operation. Metallurgical processes require elevated temperatures, typically in the range of 800–1400  C, and a wide spectrum of redox conditions, spanning from highly oxidizing to strongly reducing. Each metallurgical process has its own characteristic combination of temperature and redox condition. Neither

1618 Primary Production Studies of

can be determined directly, but find their direct expression in the mineralogical makeup of the slag. Identifying these parameters is crucial for the basic identification of the process, as well as for identifying its particular configurational aspects, and relies heavily on mineralogical analysis. Finally, the production remains are often well preserved and the best available indicator for the scale of operation of a given workshop or smelting site. Careful determination of total slag quantity and composition, in combination with an assumed or directly determined ore quality, can provide good estimates of metal production quantities by using mass balance calculations. Similar estimates can be made for workshop remains such as crucibles or smithing debris; quantities can be determined either for a site overall, or on an average annual basis if the lifespan of the site or workshop is known. Quantification is crucial for discussions of subsistence or surplus production, craft specialization, and trade relationships. Of these three research fields, the first two are predominantly descriptive and require a good knowledge of ore geology, geochemistry, metallurgy, and petrology for their interpretation. The third is often speculative and based on assumptions concerning overall preservation or recovery rates of waste material, and the average or typical quality of ore or metal for which often no reliable data is available.

Analytical Practice Slag analysis in archaeology draws almost exclusively from Earth science methods, primarily geochemistry, ore petrology, and igneous petrology. Ideally, this involves a multielement fully quantitative chemical method such as X-ray fluorescence (XRF) or inductively coupled plasma (ICP) spectrometry in combination with optical and electron microscopy for a qualitative or semi-quantitative assessment of mineralogical parameters. In reality, costs of analysis and ease of access to, or availability of, instruments and expertise often play a decisive role in selecting methods of analysis. For all quantitative methods it is imperative to monitor and report data quality (accuracy and precision) through publishing results for analysis of certified reference materials along with the unknown samples, in order to be able to compare data from different laboratories. Smelting slag often occurs in huge quantities, measuring in tons or even thousands of tons; the main practical considerations here are sample size and representativity. Sampling methods developed for Earth sciences are often appropriate, including sampling of stratified profiles and reducing large sample

volumes through homogenization and quartering into aliquots suitable for the chosen instrument. Curatorial constraints are often more important in the analysis of other waste materials, such as crucible fragments, which have a stronger developed object character and do not occur in such large quantities. Here, crosssections prepared for reflected light microscopy (RLM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with attached energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS) are more suitable than bulk chemical analysis. SEM-EDS has relatively high detection limits in the order of 0.1 wt.% for most elements, and therefore provides only limited chemical information; however, it offers a high spatial resolution of what is analyzed, ideal for complex and multiphase materials such as crucibles with internal slag and external vitrification. A balance between the curatorial desire to minimize the sampling impact and the analytical need for a representative sample is sometimes difficult to achieve, and may require the use of noninvasive and nondestructive methods such as surface-XRF or micro-XRF.

Identifying Metal, Metallurgical Process, and Ore Type Some slags can be very similar in appearance to certain rocks or other archaeological waste materials, such as over-fired ceramic, burnt brick, etc. Bulk chemical analysis is normally sufficient to identify metallurgical slag. Most shaft furnace slag is characterized by iron oxide levels between 40 and 80 wt.%, mostly less than 50 wt.% and often less than 30 wt.% silica, and less than 10 wt.% alumina. Geological or clay-based materials have typically less than 20 wt.% iron oxide, more than 10 wt.% alumina, more than 50 wt.% silica, and higher levels of alkali and alkali earth oxides than slags. Glassy blast furnace slags may not fall within these brackets but have much lower iron oxide and higher silica concentrations; these are typically identified as metallurgical slag by their elevated base metal content and often lime-rich bulk composition, when compared to geological or clay-based materials. Almost all pre-modern iron production is based on the bloomery process which produces a slag with 50–70 wt.% combined iron and manganese oxide, and base metal concentrations of less than 0.1 wt.%. The main slag phase crystallizing from these slags is fayalite, Fe2SiO4. Minor oxides and trace elements, such as lime, titania, phosphate, arsenic, and nickel, can be indicative of specific ore types, but can also derive from fuel ash or absorbed furnace wall material; these need to be considered when interpreting the analytical data.

Primary Production Studies of 1619

Most early copper slag is also fayalitic and can appear very similar to iron smelting slag, but contains higher levels of copper and other base metals, up to a few percent by weight. Further discriminating criteria are the redox condition as preserved in the oxidation state of iron (metallic, ferrous, or ferric), with copper slag being less reducing, and having higher sulfur levels if a sulfidic ore was smelted. The redox conditions in these iron-rich slags are best determined through RLM of the free iron oxide phase, wuestite (‘FeO’) in iron slag or magnetite (Fe3O4) in copper slag. Lead and tin slags are often glassy and mostly characterized by elevated levels of their respective metal, often present also as metallic inclusions. Lead slags in particular can be very variable in their chemistry and mineralogy, ranging from fayalitic to extremely rich in barium oxide, calcium fluoride or oxide, and lead oxide, reflecting the wide range of gangue minerals associated with lead ores. A crucial question for lead slags is whether the smelting was for lead or for the silver associated with many lead ores; no clear criteria have yet been developed for this distinction. Most secondary metallurgical processes leave their own specific waste materials; their comprehensive treatment however is beyond the scope of this article. They are on average richer in the metal(s) processed than the average smelting slag. The differentiation between iron smithing and smelting slag by chemical and mineralogical methods can be difficult for individual pieces, but morphological criteria together with the archaeological context often allow reasonably safe identification. The close association of most nonferrous secondary production waste with ceramics, typically crucibles, has already been mentioned. Only in very early periods (Early Bronze Age I and earlier in the Old World) was copper smelted in crucibles; copper-rich crucible slag in all later periods is almost certainly from secondary processes, such as alloying, casting, or refining.

Production Technology Once the basic metallurgical processes – ferrous or nonferrous smelting, secondary processing, casting, etc. – have been identified, further questions can be asked concerning the actual process parameters such as temperature, redox condition, and consistency of operation. Process temperatures can be estimated by comparing bulk compositions with appropriate phase diagrams; this works best for relatively simple systems where the three or four major oxides add up to more than 95 wt.%. For more complex systems,

experimental determinations of melting temperatures are more reliable. Both approaches rely on the assumption that the entire material was liquid during the process; the presence of un-reacted components, typically residual quartz, distorts the data. Microscopic analysis is therefore necessary to assess the degree of melting; in addition, it offers insight into the cooling history through grain size and shape criteria. Redox conditions can be determined through Moessbauer spectrometry; however, care has to be taken to avoid contamination through later corrosion or weathering of the material. This is again best checked through microscopic analysis; the identification and relative abundance of suitable primary iron-rich phases (metallic iron with or without carbon, fayalite, wuestite, magnetite, hematite) gives good qualitative data about the redox conditions at the time of solidification of the slag, while any corrosion products such as iron hydroxides or partially oxidised fayalite can be identified as secondary. The consistency with which a metallurgical process is performed indicates the level of skill, while changes over time may reflect changes in ore supply or practice. Both are archaeologically important aspects, and require that larger series of analyses of well-dated material are undertaken. Comparison of metallurgical practices between sites and regions may further reveal culturally specific styles or modes, or instances of independent development or shared technologies.

Quantifying Production Another archaeologically relevant aspect is the amount of metal produced or worked per unit of time. This can only reasonably be quantified for smelting sites where full recovery – or at least full quantification – of slag is possible. In order to estimate the amount of metal produced per unit of slag, one needs to know the average ore composition as well as the average slag composition. Using mass balance calculations it is then possible to identify whether the slag can indeed originate from that particular ore, or whether other materials contributed to the slag formation, such as fluxes or eroded furnace wall material. It is then further possible to calculate the theoretical amount of metal produced per unit of slag. This depends to a large extent on the richness of the ore; for iron smelting, the ratio can vary from 0.1 to 10. Few calculations have been done for copper; but on theoretical grounds it is unlikely that the ratio is higher than 0.8 or much lower than 0.4 if the main sulfidic ore, chalcopyrite, was used and the slag has the typical fayalitic composition.

1620 MIDDLE RANGE APPROACHES See also: Metallographic Analysis; Metals: Chemical

Analysis.

Further Reading

Craddock PT (1995) Early Metal Mining and Production. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pollard M and Heron C (1996) Archaeological Chemistry. Letchworth: RSC Paperbacks. Tylecote RF (1987) The Early History of Metallurgy in Europe. London, New York: Longman.

Bachmann HG (1982) Occasional Publication 6: The Identification of Slags from Archaeological Sites. London: Institute of Archaeology.

Microremains

See: Phytolith Analysis; Pollen Analysis; Starch Grain Analysis.

MIDDLE RANGE APPROACHES Jerimy J Cunningham, The University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

archaeological remains. Middle range approaches generally fall into two distinct types: technically sophisticated experimental approaches to understanding patterns and ethno-archaeological research.

Glossary conceptual independence An epistemic value in postpositivist science in which two theories or components within a theory do not share exactly the same axiomatic principles such that their research necessarily results in the same conclusion. Conceptual independence is at the heart of archaeology’s quest to integrate independent lines of evidence. middle range theory (in archaeology) Refers to theories about the causal forces that create the archaeological record. Middle range theory is usually associated with ‘source-side’ experimental and ethno-archaeological work that seeks to identify the natural, cultural and taphonomic processes that create material culture patterns in the present in order to develop a conceptual framework for the analysis of the archaeological record. middle range theory (in sociology) Refers to theories at a mid-level of abstraction derived primarily from focused empirical study. The term was introduced by Robert Merton in sociology to balance a perceived opposition between high level theory that could not be tested directly against bodies of data and ‘on the ground’ empirical studies.

Introduction Middle range approaches are generally considered to be ‘source-side’ programs of research because they study modern material culture to devise an interpretive baseline from which to decode the archaeological record. The overriding goal of middle range research is to identify the numerous causal forces that combine to create the material patterns observable in

Mertonian and Binfordian Middle Range Theory While many of the analyses described as middle range research seem quite straightforward, few concepts in archaeology have proved as slippery as the notion of ‘the middle range’. Middle range theory was initially coined by Robert Merton in sociology to moderate an opposition he saw between highly abstract theoretical debates and empirically focused studies. Middle range theories were proposed as a way of balancing this opposition. They would allow sociologists to move beyond atheoretical empirical studies and build mid-level constructs that could promote further empirical testing while simultaneously speaking to broader theoretical issues. In the late 1970s, the term was introduced into archaeology by Louis Binford and quickly became one of the most important concepts, in processual archaeology’s scientific approach to knowing the past. Binford suggested that middle range research could address a fundamental problem in archaeology. Archaeologists generally drew on anthropological theory of social systems to interpret the material record; yet these theories explained human behavior rather than the material culture patterns that are the focus of archaeological analysis. In order to carry out deductive testing strategies championed by processual archaeology, explicit

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and unambiguous linkages needed to be identified between human behavior and material culture. Binford thus enlisted ethno-archaeology to generate this essential component of processual archaeology’s epistemology, charging it with building a body of ‘middle range theory’ that identified material correlates for the human behaviors referred to in its explanatory models. While much has been made of the distinction between Binford’s and Merton’s versions of middle range theory, they do share the view that middle range theories are primarily developed through inductive empirical studies. Merton was certainly cognizant of the ways that general theoretical tendencies impacted the definition of the lower-level ‘concepts’ in data collection, but he saw middle range theory primarily as an outgrowth of empirical research. Because middle range theories were to be abstracted directly from data, the resulting theory could be used by a number of conflicting general theories or might even be combined into an entirely new theoretical entity. Binford shared this view, although he seems to have come about it independently. While ethnoarchaeology must be inspired by archaeology’s interest in ‘functional relations’, middle range theory was to be developed primarily out of inductive programs of ‘theory-building.’ He felt this was possible because in ethnoarchaeological research there is ‘‘little problem of inference regarding the identity of the agent producing the pattern or traces . . .’’. What is quite distinct about Binford’s version of middle range theory is how restricted its application is compared to sociological uses. Rather than as an alternative to general theorizing, he employed the concept specifically to solve the archaeological problem of translating a static material record into human behavior. This limited, inductive basis for middle range theory had an unexpected but important spin-off. As positivism slowly waned in the social sciences, middle range theory became a lynch pin in processual archaeology’s response to the contextualist challenge offered by Thomas Kuhn. Binford brilliantly noted that, in contrast to relativist responses to paradigmatic knowledge, conceptually unrelated bodies of theory could be combined to create a mitigated or methodological form of objectivity. When data or theoretical propositions developed under one body of theory are used in a test of an unrelated theory, the test is ‘independent’ because different background knowledge (from that being tested) is used to constitute the data as evidence. Middle range theories were uniquely positioned to generate conceptual independence because they were ‘built’ from ethnoarchaeology’s inductive programs of research and thus seemingly did not rely on archaeology’s general theory. By introducing middle range theory into

archaeological testing as an independently generated ‘linkage’ between explanatory theories and the archaeological record, processual archaeology felt it could avoid the tautologies implied by paradigmatic knowledge. Ethno-archaeology’s middle range theories thus worked much like the data created by technical specialties such as C14 dating, lithic usewear analysis or stratigraphy. These analyses draw on background knowledge from other (nonarchaeological) sciences, which meant that when their findings (a date, a pattern of microwear, or a stratigraphic layer) were introduced into archaeological interpretations, they created opportunities for noncircular assessments of that interpretation. The concept of the ‘middle range’ emerging from processual archaeology thus possessed two related meanings. First, it referred to the study of the causal processes that create the archaeological record, echoing behavioral archaeology’s interest in ‘Formation Processes.’ Second, it also referred to distinct bodies of theory that were conceptually independent of archaeology’s general explanatory theory. By using these ‘middle range’ theories in archaeological testing programs, the field could seemingly escape relativism.

Middle Range Ambiguities Experimentally-based analyses of archaeological materials, such as lithic use wear analyses, the chemical analysis of pottery, the study of artifact production sequences, as well as taphonomy have emerged at the vanguard of middle range approaches in archaeology. These studies draw from other bodies of theory – usually anchored in the hard sciences – to identify the natural and technical processes that impact the creation of the archaeological record. They have dramatically increased the amount of variation that can be routinely studied in archaeological remains and they have successfully identified many of the technological constraints that influence material patterns. Because they draw from the hard sciences, they have also proven particularly effective in identifying causal relations that likely hold across both time and space and thus provide a secure basis for archaeological inferences about the past. The primary drawback of this form of middle range research has been the limited scope of the knowledge that it has produced, which rarely addresses the broader social and cultural processes of interest to archaeology. In contrast, ethnoarchaeology encountered several difficulties in achieving the middle range goals that were established for it. Unambiguous material correlates failed to materialize as ethnoarchaeology discovered that human societies were much more diverse than originally expected. The suggested inductive

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emphasis to ethnoarchaeological research proved particularly detrimental in the face of this complexity because, as anthropologists had long known, theoretical frameworks are absolutely essential to rendering fluid human acts in meaningful units for analysis. Ethnoarchaeology thus faced a conundrum: if its middle range research remained inductively focused, it risked producing eclectic and irrelevant findings, but if it drew on familiar archaeological theories for guidance, it risked violating the very independence that made its middle range research important in archaeology’s epistemology. Ethnoarchaeology’s inability to find the material correlates has resulted in a radically expanded concept of ‘the middle range’. The most successful ‘middle range approaches’ use high-tech analysis anchored theoretically in the hard sciences to identify a limited set of causes of the archaeological record. This research closely matches processual archaeology’s conventional definition by pairing independence with a study of the causes of material patterning. Colloquial uses in archaeology continue to see middle range theory as the study of behavioral–material ties, but often do not stress independence. Marxists, for example, have recently called for the development of middle range theories that identify how the extraction of surpluses and the workings of ideology affect archaeological patterns. The goal here is to examine how processes deemed important to a particular general theory are reflected in material culture, rather than to call for the development of a body of theory that is entirely independent from it. Other, philosophically inspired re-analyses of middle range theory have pointed out that all archaeological interpretations inevitably make inferences about behavioral– material relations. They have also noted that the independence once considered to be an unique outgrowth of middle range research’s distinctiveness from archaeological theory is actually found in varying degrees in all bodies of theory. Independence may occur when different theories fragment horizontally, as occurs when archaeology uses data developed in the harder sciences, or vertically, as when higher level theories fail to entirely define the data it investigates.

The implication is that the concept of ‘the middle range’ may have outgrown its usefulness because it no longer refers to a specific set of approaches or a definable body of theory. On the other hand, recent trends following the processual–postprocessual debate suggest that Merton’s original definition may make a comeback. Archaeologists are now re-emphasizing mid-level research topics such as gender, style, and agency that are not tied to specific general theories and thus closely resemble the ‘middle range theories’ Merton hoped to foster in sociology. Therefore, archaeological uses of the concept of ‘the middle range’ may relate to one or any combination of the following: site-formation processes, behavioral–material relations, conceptual independence, and/or theories aimed at creating a balance of theoretical and empirical content. See also: Behavioral Archaeology; Ethnoarchaeology; Experimental Archaeology; Explanation in Archaeology, Overview; Interpretive Models, Development of.

Further Reading Binford LR (1977) For Theory Building in Archaeology. New York: Academic Press. Binford LR (1981) Bones, Ancient Men and Modern Myths. New York: Academic Press. Binford LR (1983) Working at Archaeology. New York: Academic Press. Kosso P (2001) Knowing the Past: Philosophical Issues of History and Archaeology. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books. Merton RK (1968) Social Theory and Social Structure, 3rd edn. New York: Free Press. Raab LM and Goodyear AC (1984) A review of middle-range theory in archaeology. American Antiquity 49: 255–268. Schiffer MB (1976) Behavioral Archaeology. New York: Academic Press. Shott MJ (1998) Status and role of formation theory in contemporary archaeological practice. Journal of Archaeological Research 6: 299–329. Tschauner H (1996) Middle-range theory, behavioral archaeology, and postempiricist philosophy of science in archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 3: 1–30. Wylie A (2002) Thinking from Things: Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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MIGRATIONS Contents Australia Pacific

Australia David Cameron, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary phylogenetics Study of evolutionary relatedness among various groups of organisms (e.g., species, populations). Pleistocene Period from 1 808 000 to 11 550 years BP.

Introduction There are currently two main theories regarding the human migration to, and population of, Australia. The first is the multiregionalist hypothesis, which argues that prehistoric ‘gracile’ people from southern China, followed by a more ‘robust’ group which had origins from earlier Homo erectus populations of Indonesia, first populated Australia. The other theory is the ‘Out of Africa’ hypothesis that argues for one main population of modern Homo sapiens occupying Australia around 60 000 years ago as part of an ongoing worldwide migration that originated from Africa around 200 000 years ago. It was these modern human African populations that were largely responsible for the demise of the more archaic indigenous human populations, including the Neanderthals of Eurasia as well as H. erectus and H. floresiensis from Asia, not through a prehistoric genocide, but more likely a greater ability to compete for finite resources.

The Origins of Modern Homo sapiens The earliest evidence to date for the emergence of truly modern humans is from Africa, as defined by the Homo sapiens fossils from Herto, Middle Awash, and Ethiopia. These fossil specimens and stone artifacts have been dated to around 165 000 years ago by precise age determinations based on the argonisotope method. Molecular studies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) support the idea of recent African origins. The molecular studies of Neanderthal mtDNA

also show a divergence from a modern human sample far outside the range observed in modern humans and, as such, the Neanderthal lineage is now believed by most to go back to at least 500 000 years ago, well before the emergence of H. sapiens. As in studies of mtDNA, patterns of nuclear DNA distribution are significantly more variable in Africa compared with the rest of the world and it has been possible to estimate the time of the first appearance of some of these patterns in Africa at between 200 000 and 100 000 years ago. The extremely limited genetic distance between modern H. sapiens populations throughout the world today strongly supports a recent and common ancestry from Africa.

The Asian Fossil Evidence Most of the fossil evidence of H. sapiens in Northeast and Southeast Asia dates to less than 20 000 years ago, although a cranium and maxilla have been recovered from Ziyang which have been dated to 38 000 years ago. An occipital bone from Shanxi Province in China has been dated to 28 000 years ago as well. Indeed, the specimens from the Upper Cave at Zhoukoudian in China, which had previously been considered to be Late Pleistocene, are now thought to be early Holocene, around 11 000 years old. This also applies to the Liujiang specimen from southern China, whose dating has swung back and forth: formerly thought to be well back in the Late Pleistocene, it has been considered by some to represent Holocene, possibly as late as Neolithic, burial into Late Pleistocene deposits, but its dating and stratigraphy has recently been reconsidered, and it has apparently been reconfirmed at probably 67 000 BP (Before Present). In Southeast Asia, the oldest H. sapiens are burials from northern Vietnam dating to 20 000 years ago. The fragmentary skull from Niah Cave in Borneo was originally thought to date approximately 40 000 years ago, but the original excavator did not realize that the remains were a burial dug into somewhat (or much) older deposits, so an age for this specimen remains problematic. The Wajak skulls from Java, Indonesia have been thought to be Late Pleistocene based solely on their robust appearance, but recent radiocarbon dates of 6560 BP for the human femur

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Figure 1 Major human palaeoanthropological sites.

and 10 560 for associated fauna have been obtained (see Figure 1 for locations of sites discussed in this article).

Palaeo-Environment and Colonization of Australia The migration route taken by the first Australians to reach the continent would not have been an easy one. The islands of Southeast Asia were largely covered in thick and dense rainforest and jungles and, even at its maximum, the lower sea levels of the glacial periods (which meant that Australia and New Guinea defined a single land mass) were still high enough so that a substantial sea voyage would be required to reach this expanded continent (known as Sahul). Indeed, all through the island of Indonesia, these people would have had to make a number of sea-crossings between islands, some of which were at least 50–60 km distant. As such, the first Australians must have had access to boat-making technology of some sort (see Ships and Seafaring). Even though much of the interior region during the earliest phase of human habitation would have been very much like it is today; the semi-arid areas would have been quite different. As the archaeology and palaeo-environmental reconstructions at Lake Mungo indicate, this area which is semi-arid today, would

have been defined by a large lake teeming with fish and shellfish around 40 000–30 000 years ago. Also giant marsupials (megafauna) would have, along with the earliest humans of the continent, wandered on the shores of the lake. Around 11 000 years ago with the interglacial the Arafura plain, that ‘joined’ Australia and New Guinea, was flooded, thus separating them. Associated with this was increased rainfall and warmer temperatures which made inland parts of the continent more habitable and triggered a westward migration by most of the early population that had lived along the eastern coastline.

Multiregionalism and ‘Out of Africa’ Two main theories relate to the origins of the earliest Australians. The first is the multiregional model proposed by Wolpoff, Wu, and Thorne. They argue for an independent evolution of human groups in different regions of the world through time. This theory suggests that there is a continuation of anatomical form from Homo erectus of Java through to the first Australians. As such the original human colonization of Australia is said to have had two distinct migration episodes, the earlier migration of a ‘gracile’-like people, and the other later migration of a more ‘robust’like people. The so-called ‘gracile populations’ (as represented by many of the Willandra Lakes fossils)

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are said to have originated from present-day southern China, while the later ‘robust’ populations (like in Kow Swamp and Coobool Creek; Figure 1) are said to have originated from present-day Indonesia, from the H. erectus population. The alternative hypothesis associated with the ‘Out of Africa’ hypothesis, as originally proposed by Brauer and Stringer, suggests that indigenous Australians are represented by one migration occurring around 60 000 years ago, with little significant biological contact after this initial colonization, that is, there was a recent origin of modern humans from Africa followed by a rapid biological dispersion throughout Europe and Asia, including Australia. These modern populations quickly replaced the original populations in Europe and Asia without any significant inbreeding; the demise of the more ‘archaic’ human populations occurred simply by their succumbing to the competition for the available resources with recently arrived modern humans. The oldest Australian hominin fossils have so far been discovered at Lake Mungo (Figure 1); it is one of these specimens designated Lake Mungo 3 (LM 3) that has now been dated to between 60 000 and 40 000 years ago. The Lake Mungo fossils are described as having a high frontal (forehead) and relatively thin cranial walls, the cranium is spherical in shape, the frontal lacks a supra-orbital torus (bony brow ridge), and the face is relatively flat and lies immediately below the frontal. In other words, this early population is truly modern (Figure 2a). Apart from LM 1, LM 3, and some other, much less complete, specimens from the Willandra Lakes, the main candidate for what the multiregionalists define as ‘gracile’ among the Australian fossils is the skull from Keilor (Figure 1). Keilor, in particular, is said by Thorne to resemble the cranium from Wajak in Java, some specimens from Ziyang in southern China dated to around 38 000 years ago, and Liujiang arguably dated at 67 000 years. The isolated incisor teeth from Liujiang are ‘shovel-shaped’ and this incisor morphology has often been argued to represent a regional trait linking Chinese H. erectus and modern East Asians. This feature, however, is also observed in Neanderthals, 400 000 year-old specimens of Homo heidelbergensis from Africa and Asia and even their presumed African ancestor Homo ergaster (around 2 million years ago), and their ancestor Australopithecus (around 3.5 million years ago). As such, it is simply a ‘primitive’ feature for the hominins and is not unique to the Australian–Chinese fossil hominins at all. Indeed, incisor-shoveling is not strongly developed in Aboriginal Australians, including the Keilor skull, so that if this ‘regional continuity’ character

Figure 2 LM and KS specimens. (a) Willandra hominin specimen 1 (Lake Mungo) from southern New South Wales. (b) Kow Swamp 1 from Victoria.

was correct it would be evidence against a China– Australia link, not for it. The so-called ‘robust’ Pleistocene Australians are argued by multiregionalists to include the skulls from Kow Swamp, Cohuna, and Coobool Creek, all apparently dating from about 9000 to 12 000 years ago (Figure 1). They are said to have large jaws and teeth, thick skull bones, prominent continuous brow ridges and, in particular, flat receding foreheads. The multiregionalists argue that these ‘robust’ fossils all demonstrate a continuity of morphological features with Javanese H. erectus, and share no physical and/ or genetic influence from the Pleistocene of Africa. Indeed, much of the entire multiregional scheme has been based on comparisons of Early Pleistocene Indonesian H. erectus specimens from Sangiran and the Late Pleistocene Australian modern human fossils from Kow Swamp (Figure 2b). What of the other Australian fossils? One from the Willandra Lakes (WLH 50) (Figure 1), is indeed very robust, and has thicker skull bones than any from Kow Swamp and dates to 14 000 years ago. Recently, Wolpoff and colleagues have argued in depth

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that WLH 50 provides evidence for a H. erectus– Australian lineage. Most, however, agree that the unusual cranial thickness and robusticity observed in WLH 50 is the result of a pathological condition known as hemoglobinopathy. Therefore, while Wolpoff and colleagues spent considerable time analyzing WLH 50, they were not able to rule out the possibility that WLH 50 may have suffered a pathological condition. As such, their suggested evolutionary sequence from H. erectus to Australia is based on one specimen, and one that is extremely problematic. Another, from Cossack, Western Australia, is very large and appears to have a flat receding forehead, but it is distorted and compressed, so it is difficult to interpret its actual morphological shape. Nitchie, from western New South Wales, is very much like Keilor but has larger brow ridges, and this highlights a problem – the boundary between the two groups is not clearly delineated. Keilor, in fact, is every bit as large as any Kow Swamp individual, and has an enormous palate. Lake Mungo 3 has thick skull bones and large teeth, but is ‘gracile’ in shape. Both are very different from the tiny LM 1, the only one which is really ‘gracile’ at all (see below). As far as the dates go, the ‘graciles’ appear earlier; LM 1 and 3 are either 40 000 or 60 000 years old; Keilor is the latest Pleistocene (probably 10 000–20 000 years old). Of the ‘robusts’, WLH 50 is 14 000 years old, the Kow Swamp specimens vary from 9000 to 12 000 years ago, and Coobool about the same, while Nitchie (if it truly belongs to this group) is only 6000. If the multiregionalists are correct, the ‘graciles’ arrived first, the ‘robusts’ much later.

Were There Two Distinct Prehistoric Populations within Australia? Peter Brown and others have argued that there is no difference between the suggested ‘gracile’ and ‘robust’ fossil specimens and thus only one population is present. A single origin for the first Australians is likely if one takes into account (1) temporal considerations, (2) sexual dimorphism, that is, difference between the sexes in overall size and anatomical robusticity, and (3) cultural practices, for example, intentional cranial deformation (see below). While the multiregionalists suggest that the ‘graciles’ came first, followed by a ‘robust’ population, it could also be that there was gradual change within a single population toward greater robusticity. A recent study by Anto´n and Weinstein was the first to draw attention to this trend in overall increased robusticity during the later Pleistocene fossil hominin record. Sexual dimorphism also needs to be considered. For example, Colin Pardoe and Colin Groves

independently examined the sex allocations of the specimens and concluded that, if the multiregionalists were right about sex, their males were represented by ‘robust’ while most of their females were represented by ‘gracile’ specimens. In other words, the criteria one uses to determine sex are the same as those to determine which of the two ‘types’ one is examining. Another important factor that Brown identified was the cultural practice of artificial cranial deformation, which appears to account for much of the ‘distinct’ morphology of the ‘robusts’ especially those from Kow Swamp. Cranial deformation is a result of parents deliberately or unintentionally altering their children’s head shape in infancy; it is said to look more attractive, or it is culturally distinctive, or it may simply result from swaddling or other cradling practices. It has been very widespread throughout the world over time: the Maya, the Aztec, some Plains Indians, some Hawaiians, the people of Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu, offshore islanders in Papua New Guinea, Lebanese Maronites and other Middle Easterners, and some women in the Toulouse region of France, all had artificially deformed crania. Brown analyzed crania from Arawe, in the island of Melanesia, that are known to have been deliberately deformed, and compared them to crania from the Sepik River Region, known not to be affected by cranial deformation. He demonstrated that many of the ‘unique’ features observed in the Australian ‘robust’ crania are also present in the Arawe deformed specimens, that is, their ‘distinct’ morphology is likely the result of these populations practicing cranial deformation and certainly has nothing to do with a proposed link between them and the earlier H. erectus populations of Indonesia. Also, while the Kow Swamp crania do show significant cranial thickness, Brown demonstrated that the thickness of the cranium observed in the female LM 1 is within the range observed in the Holocene female Murray Valley sample, while the male LM 3 specimen falls within the range of not only the male Murray Valley collection, but also the male Kow Swamp sample. Thus, again, cranial thickness between the ‘robust’ and the ‘gracile’ samples is not very distinctive at all. The upper face of the ‘robust’ Late Pleistocene/ Early Holocene Australians and the Indonesian Middle Pleistocene H. erectus has most frequently been used by the multiregionalists as a unique ‘complex’ uniting these two demes to the exclusion of all others. This is particularly true of the long, flat frontal and developed supra-orbital torus. The supraorbital region of the Kow Swamp individuals is superficially similar to those observed in the Sangiran

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H. erectus specimens with developed and continuous brow ridges. They are, however, even more similar to Middle Pleistocene African H. heidelbergensis fossils such as Kabwe (Zambia) and European ones such as Petralona (Greece), relative to H. erectus. Indeed they are well within the range of early and modern H. sapiens, that is, it is not a unique feature shared with H. erectus and the Australian Kow Swamp population (Figure 3). Finally, there is no morphological evidence to support a Chinese origin for the Pleistocene Australians (e.g., Mungo and Keilor specimens), or Indonesians (e.g., Wajak cranium). Indeed, the only truly ‘gracile’ Australian specimen is LM 1. A single specimen falling outside the general range is certainly noteworthy, but must be inconclusive. More significantly, however, LM 1 could be a juvenile. When cremated, her skull came apart at the sutures, but matrix still covered the crucial basicranial region, which would tell us whether she was mature or not. The development of the supra-orbital torus in most nonhuman primates, including early hominins, is associated with a process known as neuro-orbital disjunction (Figure 4). This is defined by the face being pushed out from the braincase, as in H. erectus; the braincase,

Figure 3 Comparison of Australian material with other nonerectus hominins. (Top left) H. heidelbergensis specimen from Petralonaq, Greece. (Top right) H. heidelbergensis specimen from Kabwe, Africa. (Bottom left) Modern human from Kow Swamp, Australia. (Bottom right) Homo erectus specimen Sangiran 17 from Indonesia.

including the anterior cranial fossae (which houses the frontal lobes of the brain), is positioned behind the face, so that the frontal lobes are long and relatively low. In other words, the robust supra-orbital of H. erectus is the result of the frontal (forehead) requiring a strong bridge of bone to haft the braincase to the upper face. Thus, the supra-orbital torus is a structural ‘supporting beam’ connecting the large and posteriorly oriented braincase to the face. The condition in H. sapiens over the last 170 000 years or so, however, is for the complete opposite condition, that is, the anterior cranial fossae (which houses the frontal lobes of the brain) are located directly above the orbits (eye sockets), as opposed to the more posterior position of H. erectus. This results in a vertically oriented frontal bone, with the face positioned directly beneath, reducing the need for a structural ‘supporting beam’ (supra-orbital (browridge)) linking the face to the cranium. This can be referred to as neuro-orbital ‘convergence’, that is, the face is high and vertically flat. This is clearly the condition in Kow Swamp individuals, even taking into account those individuals whose frontals have been affected by intentional cranial deformation; indeed, individuals that are not influenced much by intentional deformation show that the anterior

Figure 4 Neuro-orbital disjunction/convergence. (Top) A modern human from Kow Swamp (KS 1) showing the modern human condition of neuro-orbital convergence, as opposed to (bottom) the more archaic condition of neuro-orbital disjunction observed in the early H. erectus Sangiran 17 specimen.

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outgroup is a group of closely related taxa, which are not directly part of the study group. If we were studying hominids, for example, the obvious outgroup would be the early Miocene hominoids and the Old World monkeys. Synapomorphies establish sister-group relationships between taxa, while primitive features that are shared by at least two outgroups are assumed to be symplesiomorphies and cannot be used to allocate species to a clade. For example, when examining the New World and Old World monkeys an obvious symplesiomorphic feature is the presence of a tail, but when the great apes are included in such a study, the absence of a tail is a synapomorphy linking all primates without tails as hominoids. When looking at a finer resolution of detail, let us say groups within the hominoids, the absence of a tail is now of no phylogenetic significance as all hominoids are defined by not having a tail. The absence of a tail in hominoids is meaningless in trying to determine which species are closely related. In this case the absence of a tail becomes a primitive, or plesiomorphic, feature of the hominoids. A synapomorphy of the hominins, however, might be an increase in brain size (relative to body weight). The parsimony analyses were generated using the computer program PAUP* version 4.0 beta.

cranial fossae are located directly above the orbits in the typical modern H. sapiens fashion, and not posterior to them as in H. erectus (Figure 5). Therefore, the suggested ‘similarity’ between H. erectus and the Kow Swamp H. sapiens is the result of two very different processes, one biological (neuro-obital disjunction in H. erectus) and the other cultural (cranial deformation in some demes of H. sapiens). The phylogenetic analysis of Cameron and Groves of these hominins also clearly shows that both the Australian ‘gracile’ (Lake Mungo) and ‘robust’ (Kow Swamp) populations cluster together and with modern H. sapiens and not H. erectus, even taking into account cranial deformation of the Kow swamp population. Phylogenetic systematics was first established by Willie Hennig to help determine relationships and classify organisms that are based on evolutionary affinities as a result of identifying shared unique features. It is also often referred to as cladistics. Unique features shared between species are used to help establish a common ancestry. Phylogenetics is based on the allocation of taxa to groups based on the recognition that they share unique characters (synapomorphies) that distinguish them from their ancestors as well as more distantly related groups. The identification of these derived characters is based on the study of an outgroup. An

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Figure 5 Phylogenetic analysis (bootstrap with 1000 replications) of 27 cranial features (CM ¼ Cro-Magnon, KS ¼ Kow Swamp). This cladogram demonstrates that Kow Swamp reflects a modern human condition as opposed to Homo erectus.

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Large supra-orbitals are known to occur in a number of recent H. sapiens too, especially in large robust males with narrow skulls, including some northern Europeans and African Bushmen, and in a number of fossil H. sapiens from Africa (Dar es-Soltan), Western Asia (Skhul V, Qafzeh), Europe (Madlec, Predmosti, Cro-Magnon), and East Asia (Zhoukoudian Upper Cave specimen 101). The robust supra-orbital is a primitive human feature, and not evidence of regional continuity. Its development in H. sapiens is a result of differential brain development and growth patterns, and as such, is distinct from the condition observed in H. erectus and other earlier hominins. The remaining features that multiregionalists use to support a regional continuum between the Middle Pleistocene Indonesian H. erectus and the Late Pleistocene Australasians are largely functional in origin. These features include a large robust mandible (lower jaw), and large post-canine teeth (premolars and molars), which are clearly associated with the development of the masticatory apparatus (upper and lower jaws) and responses to diet. They are closely integrated as a functional complex and should not be isolated as individual features. As Wolpoff himself has shown, a large dental complex is observed in the sub-Saharan Africans, second only to Australians. These and other modern human groups were in most cases dependent on the mastication of largely unprepared food resources (little preparation before consumption), the molars pulping and grinding tough food items. In order to house a large dental complex, one requires a large robust mandible with its associated musculature. Clearly a small mandibular frame housing a large dental complex will result in masticatory stresses resulting in disastrous stresses and a breakdown of the masticatory system. As such, selective pressures would result in an increase in mandibular robusticity and increased post-canine tooth size to help cope with a tough and gritty diet; not to do so would result in a biomechanical failure of the masticatory apparatus and thus early death.

The Archaeological Evidence The original Australians are among the earliest known true modern humans. To get to Australia required an ocean voyage over considerable distances. Indeed the minimum distance, even during Glacial Maximum, would still be around 50 km. Two open sea routes are most likely as the entry points to Australia. The first is the eastern route via Indonesia to New Guinea and the other is the southern route from Indonesia to Northwest Australia. Either way it suggests that these people had extensive and sophisticated knowledge

of working with wood, bamboo, and other related materials. Not only this, but the early Australians are distinguished from the later occupants of Europe in terms of art and burial practice; in both cases in fact, Australia has the earliest evidence of these practices. For example, at Mandu Mandu Rockshelter the earliest known evidence of beads (modified cone shells) has been documented at 32 000 years ago, while the female Mungo individual (LM 1) is the oldest cremation known anywhere in the world. By 26 000 years ago, the ancestors of indigenous Australians were using very sophisticated fishing techniques including gill nets and traps. This does not mean that navigation, art, beadwork, cremation, gill nets, and fishtraps were invented in Australia and spread elsewhere. It may be so, but the sea barriers are vast, and contacts must have been few. Instead, it is more likely that these commonalities mean one of two things. Some of these cultural practices may well have been developed in Australia and in the rest of the world independently: their common humanity responded to similar challenges in similar ways. But some of the Australia/rest-of-the-world similarities are so complex in all their details that only one conclusion can be drawn: they already existed in the common ancestor, before the colonization of Australia over 60 000 years ago. Language surely arose once, as did the control of fire, religion, and music. These are cultural items for which there is no direct evidence, and yet the principle of parsimony suggests very strongly that they are much earlier in their genesis. It is likely that the original colonization of Australia was based on coastal movements through the landscape; by 25 000 years ago, however, the inland region had been penetrated. The occupation of the interior of the continent may have been via the many extensive river systems. The stone tool tradition for the first 30 000–50 000 years is not particularly distinctive and is referred to as the Core Tool and Scraper Tradition. It was not until the mid-Holocene (around 5000 years ago) that the tool tradition rapidly changed and we get a more refined tradition known as the Australian Small Tool Phase. This new technology includes stone knives, daggers, neatly trimmed spear points and barbs, and many other micro all-purpose tools. If there was a separate dual migration into Australia by ‘robust’ and ‘gracile’ populations, then there is certainly no evidence for it within the archaeological record. Indeed, overall the archaeological record demonstrates a continuum within and between the earliest inhabitants and the later descendants until the ‘arrival’ of the mid-Holocene small tool tradition.

1630 MIGRATIONS/Australia

The Molecular Evidence The extraction of ancient mtDNA from a number of Australian Pleistocene modern human remains by Adcock and colleagues allows us for the first time to examine and compare early modern human mtDNA, dating between perhaps 60 000 to 8000 years ago, with recent modern humans. Mitochondrial DNA samples have been extracted from the early ‘gracile’ specimens from Willandra Lakes (LM 3) and later ‘robust’ populations from Kow Swamp and the ‘gracile’ near-Holocene Willandra Lakes bones. The LM 3 mtDNA is closer to modern humans than to the (later) Neanderthal samples, thus confirming the distinctiveness of the Neanderthals from living humans. The near-Holocene ‘graciles’ from Willandra Lakes, and Kow Swamp, show absolutely no difference in their mtDNA, suggesting that the presence of two distinct populations within Australia is refuted. Indeed, neither ‘robust’ nor ‘gracile’ populations can be differentiated from living indigenous Australians.

Origins of the First Australians There is little, if any, evidence to support dual migration into Australia, that is, one from southern China and another from Indonesia. Any real or imagined differential degree of robusticity between the early and later Australians can be explained by time difference, and during the Holocene we see the reverse condition happening, from ‘robust’ to more ‘gracile’ (within only a few thousand years) just as happened in many other non-Australasian populations, including Africa. Cultural influences may also have played a part; the later Kow Swamp people practiced cranial deformation while the earlier Willandra Lakes population did not. Over a considerable time range, it is not difficult to see adaptive, selective, and cultural forces operating within a relatively isolated population. Was the pre-Mango Australian population part of an ‘Out of Africa’ population migratory wave, which started around 150 000 years ago? Well-developed neuro-orbital convergence first appears in the African fossil record with specimens like the Omo-Kibish H. sapiens, dated to over 130 000 years ago. The more archaic Indonesian Middle–Late Pleistocene H. erectus populations, with the exact opposite condition of neuro-orbital disjunction, had nothing or very little to do with the biology of the Late Pleistocene of Australia. In order to maintain such a link would require a significant biological reversal by the Australian population to neuro-orbital convergence which, given the laws of parsimony, is most unlikely. There is absolutely no evidence supporting

an early ‘gracile’ migration from China around 60 000 years ago followed later by a ‘robust’ migration from Indonesia around 15 000 years ago. The recent dates for the Ngandong (Solo) H. erectus specimens, at around 50 000 to 30 000 years, if accepted, postdate the arrival of the modern humans in Australia by at least 10 000 years (probably more). If these dates are correct, then two species of Homo occupied this region around 50 000 years ago and this means that the Solo people cannot have been ancestors of people who lived earlier than they did. Instead, the Solo people were a persisting primitive form of H. erectus, unaffected by the moderns who had to pass through Indonesia to get to Australia. The Ngandong people eventually succumbed to competition pressures from modern H. sapiens who settled in the area. Finally, the recent spectacular fossil hominin specimens finds from Liang Bua Cave, Flores (LB 1) which date to the last 100 000 years, and are now allocated to the hominin species H. floresiensis, show that at least three species of Homo were present in the area of Indonesia during the human migrationary event to Australia. H. floresiensis has a combination of derived H. sapiens-like features as well as very primitive Plio/ Pleistocene features. For example, it is defined like H. sapiens in having marked neuro-orbital convergence, but is also defined by the Plio/Pleistocene hominin condition of having a small brain (relative to body size) as well as a large postcanine dental complex. While the describers suggest that H. floresiensis is a dwarf representative of H. erectus, it shares few, if any, derived H. erectus features. Indeed, the phylogenetic studies by Cameron of the skull LB 1 using 36 morphological features indicate that this small hominid species is closer in morphological form to H. habilis as opposed to H. erectus or H. sapiens (Figure 6). It is thus likely that like H. erectus, H. floresiensis originates from an early Plio/Pleistocene hominin species, and in the case of H. floresiensis at least, a H. habilis-like ancestor, which originated in Africa or possibly Eurasia around 2 million years ago. There is now clear evidence that at least three species of Homo occupied Asia from around 60 000 years ago. This refutes the multiregionalist scheme that argues that only one species was present, evolving into a ‘geographical lineage’ of H. sapiens. The evidence confirms that a population of modern H. sapiens occupied this area ‘side-by-side’ with the more archaic populations of H. erectus and H. floresiensis. The early Plio/ Pleistocene indigenous populations of H. erectus and H. floresiensis ended in extinction, while the much later migration of H. sapiens resulted in the ‘successful’ occupation of the New and Old Worlds before the

MIGRATIONS/Australia 1631 Pan Pr. afarensis A. africanus K. platyops 17

P. walkeri

60 62 28

P. boisei P. robustus K. rudolfensis H. ergaster

19 13

H. georgicus 21

19

66

E. H. erectus L. H. erectus

34

H. pekinensis 12

E. H. neanderthalensis

23 47

L. H. neanderthalensis

76 33

88

E. H. sapiens H. sapiens

22

H. heidelbergensis H. habilis H. floresiensis Figure 6 Phylogenetic analysis (bootstrap tree with 1000 replications) including H. floresiensis and early and late hominid(in) specimens. Based on 36 anatomical features clearly showing, H. floresiensis reflects an early hominin condition.

Holocene, with one of these populations occupying Australia around 60 000 years ago.

Conclusion

Further Reading

The available human fossil, archaeological, and molecular evidence all point to the same conclusion that Australia was populated by modern H. sapiens around 60 000 years ago. There is no evidence that Australia was occupied ‘in mass’ by dual migrations. The earliest origins of the indigenous aboriginal Australians like that of all other H. sapiens is tied to our earliest African ancestors dating back to around 200 000 years. Other more archaic hominin groups, which occupied Southeast Asia, including H. erectus and H. floresiensis had little, if anything, to do with the emergence of H. sapiens and certainly played no part in the colonization of Australia by modern H. sapiens around 60 000 years ago.

Eastern Europe

See also: DNA: Ancient; Modern, and Archaeology; Modern Humans, Emergence of; Molecular Archaeology; Oceania: Australia; Paleoanthropology.

Brown P, Sutikna T, Morwood MJ, et al. (2004) A new smallbodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia. Nature 431: 1055–1061. Cameron D and Groves CP (2004) Bones, Stones and Molecules: ‘Out of Africa’ and Human Origins. Burlington, MA: Elsevier/ Academic Press. Moorwood M, Soejono RP, Roberts RG, et al. (2004) Archaeology and age of a new hominin from Flores in eastern Indonesia. Nature 431: 1087–1091. Oppenheimer S (2003) Out of Eden: The Peopling of the World. London: Constable. Stringer C (2002) Modern human origins: Progress and prospects. Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society of London B 357: 563–579. Stringer C and McKie R (1996) African Exodus: The Origins of Modern Humanity. London: Pimlico.

See: Europe, Eastern, Peopling of.

1632 Pacific

New World

See: New World, Peopling of.

Pacific Ian Lilley, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary applied relief Decoration created by adding clay strips, knobs and so on to the surface of a pot before firing, often with incised decoration and sometimes itself incised. calibration Adjustment of dates to match calendar years, required because of variation introduced by different forms of dating and based on rigorous cross-dating of timber of known age. gracility Relatively light physique. Holocene The current geological epoch, beginning at the end of the last glaciation some 10 000–15 000 years ago. hominids Primates in the human line (i.e., the genus Homo). incised Decoration cut into the surface of a pot before firing. luminescence A dating technique measuring the strength of residual light energy captured in quartz crystals exposed to the sun then buried or otherwise concealed from light. megafauna Generally but not always large species of animals closely related to those alive now, mostly but not inevitably now extinct and including reptiles (e.g., giant monitor lizards) and birds (e.g., ratites such as New Zealand moa) as well as mammals. Melanesia (the ‘black islands’) Includes mainland New Guinea and, excluding Micronesian Nauru, all of the islands south of the equator out to and including Fiji in the east and New Caledonia in the south. Island Melanesia refers to Melanesia without mainland New Guinea. The Indonesian province of Papua covers the western half of New Guinea. The eastern half comprises the mainland provinces of Papua New Guinea, which also includes the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago and northern Solomons. Micronesia (the ‘small islands’) Includes all the islands north of or straddling the equator between Palau and the Marianas in the west and the Marshalls and Kiribati in the east. mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) Special DNA passed on only from mothers. paddle-impressed Decoration (only sometimes intentional) created on hand-made pottery with a small carved or cordwrapped paddle used to shape and thin the walls of the pot before firing. Pleistocene The previous geological epoch, dating from about 2 million years ago to the end of the last glaciation 10 000–15 000 years ago. Polynesia (the ‘many islands’) Has several components. Triangle Polynesia encompasses the area between Hawai’i, Aotearoa/New Zealand and Rapa Nui/Easter Island, including Tuvalu. It subsumes West Polynesia, formed by Tuvalu, Tonga and Samoa, and East Polynesia, which covers all of the remainder. New Zealand and nearby islands are increasingly

separated as South Polynesia, as is the case in this article. The ‘Polynesian outliers’ are Polynesian communities in Melanesia and Micronesia resulting from recent westerly back-migration, while the Mystery Islands are those with signs of prehistoric use which were unpopulated when first found by Europeans. proto language Now-extinct language forming the common ancestor of groups of modern languages. radiocarbon (carbon-14, C14) A dating technique measuring the strength of residual radioactivity in certain atoms of carbon affected by cosmic radiation and absorbed by living tissue before decaying at a known rate upon the death of the organism. robusticity Relatively heavy physique. sexual dimorphism Size differences between the sexes (among humans, females are usually smaller than males). stratigraphic association Analytical links between objects deposited together in the same sediment or in the same period and thus assumed to be linked in use in the living culture that produced them in the past. The Bird’s Head The western end of the island of New Guinea, which looks like the head of a large bird, the body of which extends to the east. Y-chromosome The distinctive male chromosome, shaped roughly like a Y.

The human history of the Pacific was structured by three principal phases of migration. The first occurred in the Late Pleistocene, when modern humans spread from Southeast Asia into Greater Australia and the neighboring Bismarck and Solomon Islands archipelagoes. Greater Australia is the continent known as Sahul, which formed when lowered sea levels joined New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania during the last glaciation. On the other side of the planet, modern humans were beginning to move into Ice Age Europe at about the same time. The initial dispersal into Near Oceania, the region to the end of the main Solomons chain, registered a profound shift in human affairs. People island-hopped across a significant sea barrier from the Old World, which had long been inhabited by hominids, to an entirely naı¨ve new world with an anachronistic marsupial fauna where there was no chance that human progenitors had evolved and ‘hominized’ the landscape. The second major colonization occurred more than 35 000 years later, and saw the settlement of the last unoccupied part of the globe outside Antarctica. From about 3500 BP, pottery-making sailor-farmers also ultimately of Southeast Asian origin produced the ‘Lapita phenomenon’ in the Bismarcks and then continued on to become the first people to occupy

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Remote Oceania, that part of the Pacific beyond the main Solomons. Lapita is characterized as a vast ‘community of culture’ which, at least as far east as Fiji, was maintained by long-distance ties through which people, ideas, and goods such as pottery and obsidian moved over great distances. The final phase of migration was signaled by the appearance of Europeans in Oceania in the sixteenth century AD. We are still in this final phase, in the sense that colonialism and its aftermath have fostered continuing large-scale migration not only to, but also within and from, the Pacific. Until recently these movements received little archaeological attention outside Australia and New Zealand, but historical archaeology is now starting to make strides in many parts of the Pacific. These advances cannot be covered here but some are dealt with elsewhere (see Oceania: Historical Archaeology in Australia). It should also be noted that recent population shifts have substantive archaeological consequences which should also be subsumed as historical, colonial, or contact archaeology. Recent migrations have profound social and political implications for archaeological practice as well, arising as settlers and indigenous peoples work through their differences concerning perceptions of history and access to archaeological evidence (see Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Native Peoples and Archaeology; Politics of Archaeology; Who Owns the Past?).

Language and Biology Biology and historical linguistics play central roles in the study of Pacific migrations. Echoing early models proposing waves of physically distinct migrants, some biologists remain convinced that the earliest inhabitants of Near Oceania can be sorted into groups with separate origins in Java, China, India, and elsewhere. Others propose a single original colonization by biologically diverse people followed by continual biologically-minor mingling with external source areas, as well as important evolutionary modification owing to gene flow, genetic drift, and adaptation to varying environmental contexts. Skeletal characteristics such as robusticity and gracility, which multipleorigins models identify as crucial markers of separate origins, have been shown by proponents of the singleorigin model to relate to sexual dimorphism and climatic variation. The single-origin model is based on genetic as well as skeletal evidence and accords best with the archaeological record, in which there is no evidence for serial major migrations in the form of sudden appearances of novel items of material culture or new patterns of behavior with demonstrable nonPacific origins.

Linguistics has little to say about the initial colonization and early history of Near Oceania. The languages of the Pacific fall into two classes: Austronesian and non-Austronesian (or Papuan). The 700þ Papuan languages include most of the languages of New Guinea and some on nearby islands to the west as well as to the east as far as New Georgia in the Solomons. They are linked at the highest level only because they are not Austronesian, though several lower-order groupings have been detected. There have been efforts to extract historical patterns from such relationships, but they do not speak with any certainty to questions concerning very early periods. There are suggestions that some languages and groupings may have significant time depth, and that some in the New Guinea highlands may be distantly related to Australian languages. This last contention is supported by biological studies showing that Aboriginal Australians have affinities with Melanesians and particularly highland New Guineans, who were isolated from major biocultural changes that unfolded on the coasts and islands of Melanesia in the Late Holocene (see Oceania: Micronesia; New Guinea and Melanesia). Austronesian languages were the only pre-European languages in Remote Oceania. Ultimately of Taiwanese descent, they are also spoken almost everywhere in Island Southeast Asia and, in Near Oceania, in some coastal and lowland parts of New Guinea and most of the Bismarcks and main Solomons. All Austronesian languages located east of the Bird’s Head in western New Guinea, including all but the most westerly parts of Micronesia, form a group known as Oceanic. In Melanesia, Oceanic splits into a number of major subgroups. Changes in an ancestral language in one of these subgroups eventually produced the very closely related set of languages that spread through Polynesia. All Micronesian languages except those of the Marianas, Palau, and Yap fall in one subgroup which originated in central Melanesia. Yapese is a complicated case, but seems most closely related to Oceanic Austronesian in the Admiralty Islands in the northern Bismarck Archipelago. The languages of Palau and the Marianas are Austronesian but not Oceanic, being Western Austronesian of Southeast Asian type. Although the facts and the theory are continually debated, biology backs the broad linguistic picture concerning the colonization of Remote Oceania: the people came from Southeast Asia via Island Melanesia, where they mingled with existing populations before continuing to the east. Because the indigenous people of Remote Oceania share certain distinctive biological markers and all speak Oceanic, it is generally accepted that their ancestors brought Austronesian languages with them, in the welldescribed form of Proto-Oceanic. Linguistics and

1634 Pacific

biology agree that these colonists largely avoided mainland New Guinea, though both disciplines have detected traces of a pre-Oceanic Austronesian incursion along the north coast from the west. It now also seems likely that they leapfrogged the main Solomons chain. There is growing biological evidence for sex-based differences in these patterns of dispersal. The distribution of male (Y) chromosome markers reveals a complex pattern of interrelationships between Southeast Asia, Melanesia, and Polynesia, but the female genetics (mitochondrial DNA), like the linguistics, indicates a swift and homogenous Austronesian dispersal. The archaeological witness to this spread is the Lapita cultural complex, described below.

The Archaeology of Pleistocene Migration in Near Oceania There are long and short chronologies for the initial occupation of Near Oceania. The former is based on luminescence dating and the latter on radiocarbon. The short model proposes that people first arrived in Greater Australia and nearby archipelagoes no more than about 45 000 BP (Figure 1). The long chronology asserts that this is because radiocarbon cannot reliably date anything older. Luminescence methods date colonization at 50 000–60 000 BP. It is reasoned that much older dates are implausible because there is no evidence of that antiquity in Tasmania, which was connected to the mainland between 62 000 and 70 000 BP. The short chronology rejects dates older than 45 000 BP for three main reasons. First, no older dates have secure stratigraphic associations with undoubted

cultural remains. Second, the long chronology does match knowledge of modern human dispersal elsewhere in the world. There are no modern human remains in Island Southeast Asia – through which the first migrants to Australia must have passed – older than 45 000 years. Lastly, the calibration of luminescence dates to calendar and radiocarbon dates is not well understood, so very old luminescence determinations may in fact be the same in calendar years as younger radiocarbon dates. There are no dates of any sort older than 40 000 BP for human activity in New Guinea, the Bismarcks, or the Solomons (Figure 2). In the short chronology this is taken to mean that the whole of Near Oceania was settled in a single migratory process, although available radiocarbon dates indicate that the New Guinea highlands, the Solomons and the Admiralties may not have been settled until around 10 000 years later than the rest. The long chronology argues instead that the different dates for initial settlement of Australia and New Guinea mean colonization occurred at different times and by different routes even though the two landmasses were joined at the time. It will be some time before this matter can be settled. Only four sites with Pleistocene deposits have been excavated in coastal New Guinea. Only two, Jo’s Creek and Lachitu Cave, date to the period of initial colonization and no detailed reports are available for any of them. More work has been done in the New Guinea highlands, but we still know very little about initial settlement of the uplands. Work at the two most ancient highlands sites indicates among other things that the earliest stone artifacts include distinctive ‘waisted’ tools (i.e., notched for a handle;

Figure 1 The raised coral terraces of the Huon Peninsula, New Guinea, in the vicinity of the 40 000-year-old Jo’s Creek site. Photograph by author.

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Figure 2 Misisil Cave, western New Britain, the first Pleistocene site discovered in the Island Pacific. Photograph by author.

Figure 3 Ground stone tools, New Guinea. Photograph by author.

Figure 3). Similarities between such tools and certain artifacts in Australia may reflect the introduction of a technological tradition of Asian origin common to all of Sahul’s first inhabitants. Waisted tools have also been found at Jo’s Creek, where they have been speculatively linked with very early forest clearance. Some of the highlands sites also contain the remains of extinct ‘giant’ species of animals. Collectively known as ‘megafauna’, such creatures lived throughout Sahul and their hunting by humans has been linked with the patterns in which the continent was colonized. Popular accounts usually paint ‘blitzkrieg’ scenarios in which the new colonists rapidly eliminated the megafauna. Faunal extinctions are commonly associated with human colonization, as is the case in Remote Oceania, discussed below. There is however no evidence that this occurred with the

megafauna in Near Oceania. There is only a handful of sites in Sahul where there is any indication of interaction between people and extinct giant fauna, and none where there is unambiguous evidence for hunting, let alone mass extermination. First used some 39 500 years ago, Buang Merabak cave in central New Ireland contains the earliest evidence for colonization of the Bismarcks. There are dates of the same general magnitude from elsewhere in New Ireland as well as from coastal and interior sites in New Britain. There is very little evidence from the Bismarcks for the period following the first influx of people until about 20 000 BP. It seems that the first settlers were at least partly coastally oriented, as all early coastal sites contain marine mollusk remains. This focus is logical, given the sea-crossings involved in colonizing the islands. However, there are few fish bones in the sites and people also exploited forest fauna such as birds and bats, suggesting the first colonists were relatively generalized foragers rather than marine specialists. A generalized foraging strategy was probably critical to the success of the movement of people from northern Sahul (i.e., New Guinea) to Island Melanesia, where the diversity and richness of the terrestrial and near-shore marine biota diminish dramatically with increasing distance east. There may have been another significant migration around 28 000 BP, the oldest date yet obtained for the colonization of the main Solomons chain. This movement required a 180-km open-sea crossing from New Ireland and it seems there was little interaction with the Bismarck Archipelago after the shift occurred. The move saw people encounter an environment biotically even more depauperate than the Bismarcks. In the Pleistocene the Solomons had only a restricted

1636 Pacific

range of bats, rats, and reptiles. The cuscus (phalanger) that was important human prey in the Bismarcks at that time does not appear in the Solomons until the Late Holocene. Moreover, although the diversity of pelagic fish was probably relatively constant throughout the Indo-Pacific region, the reefs of the Solomons are less diverse than those of the Bismarcks. There was another significant change around 22 000–20 000 BP. This is when people occupied the Admiralties for the first time, by island-hopping from New Ireland and/or the north coast of Sahul/New Guinea. Both routes were used in the historical period and both regions have more recent archaeological connections with the Admiralties. This movement required an open-sea journey of over 200 km, about a third of which would have been out of the sight of land. This makes it the longest sea journey anywhere in the world up to this time and the only attested Pleistocene voyage beyond the limits of island intervisibility. The significance of this event as a milestone in human migration should not be underestimated. Even today the journey requires capable marine craft and noteworthy navigational ability. Matters of voyaging are taken up again in general terms later.

The Last 3500 Years: The Settlement of Remote Oceania Melanesia

The colonization of the remote Pacific began with the spread of the Lapita cultural complex from the Bismarck Archipelago from 3300 BP (Figures 4 and 5). A mixture of Southeast Asian and Melanesian

cultural traits, Lapita is typified by highly distinctive pottery, the first ceramics in the Oceanic Austronesian-speaking Pacific, which flourished in their classic form until about 2700 BP. The pottery’s elaborate decoration includes stylized human faces, and was created with a dentate (toothed) stamp following systematic rules. Some of the pots were very large and at least some were painted as well as stamped. Other characteristics of the cultural complex included the first domesticated pigs, dogs, and chickens in the Pacific, distinctive shell artifacts, and village locations that allowed easy access for seagoing canoes and longdistance movement of goods, particularly obsidian. Lapita took about 400 years to spread from the Bismarcks to Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga. Only a handful of Lapita sherds has been found on the New Guinea mainland, though, and it seems that the cultural complex never became established there. The main Solomons may also have been leapfrogged in the initial Austronesian push out from the Bismarcks. Only late Lapita ceramics have been found in the archipelago, even though classic Lapita is known in the Reef-Santa Cruz islands, which are politically part of the modern state of Solomon Islands but are remote from the main island chain. Current models have late Lapita groups moving into the Solomons proper from the Bismarcks as well as back-migrating from the Reef-Santa Cruz islands. The two groups met at a sharp and well-described linguistic boundary within Oceanic Austronesian known as the Tryon– Hackman Line. Other models for the settlement of Remote Oceania have been raised from time to time, particularly regarding pre-Lapita/pre-Austronesian migrations and

Figure 4 Yellow tephra (ash) from Mt. Witori eruption c. 3600 BP. This distinctive ash separates pre-Lapita strata from Lapita-period strata in much of western New Britain. Photograph by author.

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Figure 5 Dentate-stamped Lapita sherd from New Caledonia. Photograph by Christophe Sand, Director, Department of Archaeology, New Caledonia.

non-Lapita migrations contemporary with Lapita. It was once thought that New Caledonia in particular was a good case for pre-Austronesian occupation, owing to the presence on various islands in the archipelago of tumuli (mounds) presumed to mark a human presence of great antiquity. Sampling of these sites has found no evidence for either human activity or great antiquity, but their origins remain a mystery. New Caledonia also has Podtane´an pottery. This ware is contemporary with, geochemically identical to, and often associated stratigraphically with local Lapita yet it bears no Lapita decoration, being paddle-impressed instead. Moreover, it persisted for almost 1000 years after Lapita disappeared. It has been taken to reflect a population dispersal contemporary with but separate from Lapita, but is now generally thought to result from social differences within a single migratory group. In other parts of the southwest Pacific there is little if any pottery dating to the Lapita period but exhibiting non-Lapita decoration. The existence of Podtane´an ceramics is thus a major difference between New Caledonia and the rest of the Lapita domain. There were other differences as well, even if the overall cultural characteristics of the very first settlers were close to those of Lapita groups elsewhere. Thus, Lapita colonists brought the commensal Pacific rat to New Caledonia as elsewhere, but not the critical Lapita triad of pig, dog, or chicken. Nor did they bring kava or the spiny rat, both of which have been linked with Lapita dispersal at least as far south as central Vanuatu. These absences may reflect sampling error, but could imply things were more different at the time of initial landfall than is currently hypothesized.

Be that as it may, it took only a few generations for the first settlers of New Caledonia to develop a range of cultural characteristics that signal the appearance of a distinctive southern Lapita province. In like vein, it was once hypothesized that Vanuatu was initially occupied by the makers of incised and applied-relief Mangaasi ceramics during the Lapita period, but before the appearance of Lapita pottery and its makers in those islands. Recent excavations have established that Lapita dating to 2900–3000 BP is the earliest cultural evidence, that classic Lapita was replaced within a few centuries by plain or differently decorated wares, that Mangaasi developed only about 2000 BP out of earlier post-Lapita ceramics and that pottery production ceased in the central islands about 1200 BP. At the time of writing, a spectacular new find of a Lapita cemetery at Teouma on the central island of Efate´ is promising to add a significant dimension to our knowledge of Vanuatu’s early prehistory. Fiji is often considered together with neighboring Samoa and Tonga and nearby islands in West Polynesia, but cultural divergences emerged soon after virtually simultaneous Lapita colonization of all three island groups around 2900 BP by people who made what is known as Eastern Lapita, typified by a reduced range of vessel forms and simplified decoration. Lapita evolved into Polynesian Plainware by about 2600 BP. Although links among the archipelagoes were active throughout prehistory, the process of divergence soon saw western Fiji change in ways which tied it to Island Melanesia while patterns in eastern Fiji were more akin to those in Polynesian Samoa and Tonga. This means that in the east the evolution of Plainware also saw the range of vessel forms shrink, leaving assemblages conventionally thought to have been produced by an archaeologically, linguistically, and biologically wellattested ancestral Polynesian society from which all Polynesian societies descend. Plainware ended throughout Fiji about 1500 years ago, to be replaced by decorated wares suggesting connections with northern Vanuatu. The chronological and technological abruptness of the replacement may indicate new people migrated to Fiji with the ceramics, though some scholars see no connections between postLapita changes in Fijian ceramics and those outside the archipelago. Within the last 1000 years, there was widespread agricultural intensification which coincided with the appearance of fortified villages. It is unclear whether the development of fortifications resulted from internal social processes or clashes between immigrants and locals. It has been argued that there is good evidence for a post-Lapita ‘community of culture’ akin to that of the Lapita period, in the form of synchronous widespread

1638 Pacific

ceramic changes, and specifically the contemporaneous appearance of applied-and-incised decoration broadly similar to Mangaasi in Vanuatu. This grouping is seen to stretch from the Admiralties in the north at least as far as central Vanuatu, and perhaps also to New Caledonia and Fiji. Others have strongly asserted their disagreement, arguing that any widespread similarities result from shared Lapita heritage rather than continuing long-distance interaction. It remains indisputable, though, that historical patterns of human phenotypic variation indicate there was substantial post-Lapita gene-flow through Melanesia, meaning people must have remained connected in some way throughout the region’s late prehistory. Polynesia

It has been contended that settlement of the huge area of the Pacific beyond West Polynesia was continuous, flowing on without pause after the Lapita settlement of Samoa and Tonga. However, current data place a pause of at least 1000 years in West Polynesia before people moved again after ‘becoming’ the Polynesians ancestral to today’s populations. Precisely when this dispersal occurred is debated. A short chronology indicates colonization of the Marquesas between 1400 and 1700 BP, and perhaps earlier. This archipelago has long been proposed as the first part of East Polynesia to be settled. The short chronology times the settlement of the Cook and Society Islands to no earlier than about 1200–1400 BP, in line with the conventional view that these archipelagoes were bypassed as people spread from West Polynesia to the Marquesas (Figure 6).

The earliest radiocarbon date accepted by the short chronology for remote Easter Island is 800 BP. The best-dated material in Hawai’i signals initial colonization at no more than 1400 BP. The short chronology recognizes only post-1000 BP dates in the remote eastern islands. This reiterates the short chronology for New Zealand in South Polynesia, which proposes first settlement of the mainland in the last 800–1000 years and of the Kermadecs and Chathams by 800 and 700 years ago. This overall pattern accords with geological evidence concerning the emergence above sea level of habitable and/or stepping-stone islands in East Polynesia. The foregoing dates compress the prehistory of East and South Polynesia, and imply that cultural change was faster than hitherto thought. Critics contend that the short chronology excludes valid earlier dates for environmental change indicative of human activity, that there is evidence the Societies were settled as early as the Marquesas, that there are more than half a dozen secure dates at 1000 BP or earlier in Mangareva and the Pitcairn Group, the region from where Easter Island was colonized, and that by 1200 BP the Marquesas and central archipelagoes were all well-populated and linked by frequent interaction. A long chronology dates occupation of Hawai’i to at least 1200 BP, if not 1500–1800 BP, and proposes that Easter Island was also settled from 1200 to 1300 BP, but accepts the short chronology for South Polynesia. Whichever chronology is eventually accepted, it is clear that the furthest-flung islands of Polynesia were effectively isolated not long after colonization.

Figure 6 Opunohu Bay, Mo’orea, Society Islands. The stunning landscape is typical of Polynesian high islands and is the remains of an eroded volcanic caldera. Photograph by Dr. Jennifer Kahn, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Archaeology, School of Social Science, University of Queensland.

Pacific 1639

Hawai’i, Easter Island, and New Zealand may have seen occasional visits, but they were all completely cut off at the time of European contact. Interaction waned in the central islands, too, but only after more than five centuries of interaction following colonization. This process saw the societies of the remote Pacific differentiate to a degree while remaining recognizably closely related. The usual sequence saw the appearance of complex centralized chiefdoms structurally like those in West Polynesia, archaeologically associated with agricultural intensification and monumental architecture including the famous moai heads on Easter Island (Figure 7). The Hawaiian chiefdom was the most complex in the Pacific, approaching the status of an archaic state. At the same time, while the West Polynesian and indeed the Lapita roots of East Polynesian cultures remained apparent during the early post-colonization period, the region also witnessed the rapid materialization of a variety of distinctive traits. The best known are an astonishing diversity of fishing gear, as well as new types of basalt adze. The latter descend from other

distinctive types created in West Polynesia as colonists there adapted to crossing the ‘Andesite Line’ separating the complex continental geology of the southwest Pacific from the simplified basaltic geology of the more remote Pacific. New Zealand stands isolated from East Polynesia, not just because it is geographically remote but also because its combined land area is very large and it has a temperate rather than tropical or subtropical climate. This meant that East Polynesian colonists could grow only a restricted range of their familiar domestic plants, and then only in the North Island and the north of the South Island. Nor did domestic pigs or chickens make it: dogs alone survived the transfer. In the colder and more mountainous South Island, people gave up agriculture altogether to become full-time foragers. This process was aided by the presence throughout New Zealand of various species of flightless birds called moa, some of which were three times the size of a modern ostrich. All were exterminated by hunting or habitat modification, continuing a pattern of human environmental impact that played out throughout Remote Oceania and in places such as Easter Island reached extremes which dramatically undermined people’s capacity to survive. Two other aspects of Polynesian migration need to be mentioned briefly. The first is the presence of the ‘Polynesian outliers’. These are Polynesian communities in Melanesia and Micronesia resulting from westerly back-migration in the recent prehistoric and early historic periods. They remind us that while the strength of population movement certainly waxed and waned through Pacific prehistory, it never ceased entirely. The second phenomenon worthy of a passing note is what are known as the Mystery Islands. These are places such as Norfolk Island, off Australia, which exhibit signs of prehistoric use by Polynesians but which were unpopulated when first found by Europeans. They indicate that while the settlement of the remote Pacific was a prodigious feat, some colonies ultimately failed. In some cases, this was because the Mystery Islands were simply too remote and resource-poor to sustain viable human societies without contact with parent communities. Micronesia

Figure 7 The meae Iipona, at Puamau, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands, Polynesia. Meae, ritual structures often associated with life-size wooden or stone tiki (anthropomorphic sculptures), were elaborated in the Marquesas to an impressive monumental size. This site has the largest tiki in the Marquesas, standing 2.43 m tall. Photograph by Dr. Jennifer Kahn, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Archaeology, School of Social Science, Unviersity of Queensland.

Historical linguistics indicate that Central and Eastern Micronesia were settled from Vanuatu or the southeast Solomons, but archaeological research has revealed few connections dating to late or early post-Lapita times. None of the high islands of the Carolines – from west to east, Chuuk, Pohnpei, and Kosrae – has an archaeologically complete cultural sequence. Colonization occurred about

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2000 BP (Figure 8). After a series of changes including the loss of ceramics by about 500 BP, Pohnpei and Kosrae went on to develop complex chiefdoms with astonishing monumental architecture (Figure 9). The Micronesian atolls were first occupied at the same time as the high islands. Atoll societies did not develop complex political systems. At scarcely 3 m above sea level, they are fascinating nonetheless owing to the adaptations needed to cope with life on such small, remote, and precarious landforms. Shell technology was highly developed in the absence of stone, and the Caroline Islanders had the most sophisticated seafaring technologies in the Pacific. Interestingly, shell technology also dominated on the rocky high islands, suggesting they were first settled by atoll-dwellers.

Western Micronesia was settled straight from Southeast Asia, and/or Taiwan in the case of the Mariana Islands. There are earlier indications for environmental disturbance but reliable direct evidence for human activity in the Marianas and Palau dates to a maximum of 3500 and 3300 BP respectively, and in Yap to about 2000 BP. This has given rise to the same sort of debate about short and long chronologies seen elsewhere in the Pacific. The short chronology indicates initial occupation of Western Micronesia around the same time as the beginning of Lapita in the Bismarcks, but the two dispersals were probably not related. The earliest Western Micronesian ceramics, Marianas Red ware and Lime Infilled ware, are only generically similar to Lapita, suggesting a common origin in Southeast Asia.

Figure 8 Chuuk Lagoon, Chuuk (Truk), Micronesia. Photograph by Dr. Paul Rainbird, Head, Department Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Wales.

Figure 9 Monumental architecture on the artificial islet of Nan Douwas, Nan Madol, Pohnpei, Micronesia. Photograph by Dr. Paul Rainbird, Head, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Wales.

Pacific 1641

Theory Conventional explanations of Pacific prehistory are global exemplars of migrationist culture history, and suffered little from the ‘retreat from migrationism’ that accompanied the rise of processual theory in the late twentieth century. In part this is because of the inescapable fact that an island world such as the Pacific could only have been settled by migration. In the case of Remote Oceania, uninhabited prior to the appearance of Lapita, it also seems obvious that this migration involved culturally, biologically, and linguistically closely-related people. Most criticism has focused on attempts to push the situation in East and South Polynesia, where this was undoubtedly the case, backward to cover the Lapita phenomenon in Melanesia and West Polynesia. While there is little doubt the latter reflects some sort of migration of the descendants of Southeast Asian and Melanesian people, there has been considerable debate concerning the dynamics and long-term consequences of their dispersal through the New Guinea region in particular. The consensus is that many characteristics of modern coastal and island cultures in Melanesia stem from contact between existing communities and Southeast Asian people who, in addition to introducing pottery and Austronesian languages, brought with them a package of cultural innovations incorporating ‘full-blown’ agriculture, efficient ocean-going watercraft which enabled longdistance interaction, and perhaps a weakly hierarchical sociopolitical order, as they migrated rapidly through the region. For many researchers, such features put the Lapita phenomenon on par with the world’s other major agricultural dispersals. There are empirical and theoretical alternatives, however. Empirically, there is considerable evidence that the ethnographically known cultures of Near Oceania are the products of very long-term trajectories of change. It might well be that Southeast Asian people introduced pottery technology, Austronesian languages, and possibly certain sociopolitical institutions to Melanesia. It is also true, though, that the existence of very early islands sites shows open-ocean travel has a Pleistocene history in the region, that data from New Guinea and the Bismarcks suggest agriculture may have been established by the Early Holocene and that the presence of New Britain obsidian in Pleistocene sites far distant from its sources shows long-distance interaction networks were developed well before the Austronesian expansion into Melanesia. At a theoretical level, the argument has long been that culture history is a conceptually impoverished approach that ought to be replaced by a less tidy but

intellectually more rigorous and empirically more accurate processual model that separates language, biology, and culture rather than attempting to join them in a seamless historical narrative. There is a moral dimension as well, based on the assertion that the conventional culture history descends from and perpetuates racist myths separating the brutish inhabitants of Melanesia (i.e., the ‘black islands’) from the fairer-skinned and culturally more elevated Polynesians. Similar attempts have been made to deconstruct conventional models of West Polynesian prehistory, and especially the so-called phylogenetic model of ancestral Polynesian society. The contention is that such models are undermined by a growing number of empirical inconsistencies, but that these are ignored owing to the strength of expectations generated by historical linguistics and biology (especially genetics). A hypothetical alternative sequence for West Polynesia argues for a high degree of continuity between the Lapita and post-Lapita periods and suggests that the characteristics of Polynesian societies recorded by European observers may have arisen only within the last millennium. While acknowledging the empirical and theoretical issues at stake, some scholars have sought to enliven debate by approaching Lapita and other aspects of Pacific migration from fresh perspectives. One attempt to meld aspects of the indigenist and migrationist stances on Lapita origins and explain how Southeast Asian and Melanesian cultural elements could be integrated with entirely novel developments in a coherent whole proposes that the Lapita complex began as a diaspora in the sociological sense, produced by processes of hybridization and creolization in the Bismarcks. These processes gave rise to a culturally distinctive social formation which allowed dispersed and highly mobile peoples to remain socially cohesive owing to a unifying ideology materialized in their elaborately decorated ceramics. Another model focusing on the colonization of Remote Oceania distinguishes colonization from migration, in which the destination as well as the source of the population movement are inhabited. Each produces a distinctive pattern of cultural evolution: colonization, or dispersal, follows a pattern consistent with the phylogenetic approach to the settlement of East Polynesia, while migration is a reticulate process more like that described by the diaspora hypothesis.

Voyaging The conceptual distinction of colonization from migration is tied to the reassessment of past work on pre-European voyaging in Oceania. Consideration of

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Figure 10 Modern inter-island sailing canoe, Bismarck Archipelago. Traditional canoes varied widely in size and design through the Pacific, and in places such as Micronesia were very sophisticated craft, but those used in the initial colonization of the region may not have differed much from the one shown here. Photograph by author.

the matter has swung between positions that see the settlement of the Pacific as a series of accidental landfalls and those holding that the process was purposeful. The latter has been the prevailing view for some time, with many scholars believing that the archaeological pattern of population dispersal through time and space results from a conscious three-phase strategy of exploration of Remote Oceania. This strategy began with the Lapita diaspora and followed the development from Pleistocene times of seafaring technologies in the sheltered ‘voyaging corridor’ of Near Oceania, where seas are relatively benign and islands quite close together. The first phase, which took people beyond the Solomons for the first time, entailed exploring against the wind so that return voyages with the wind to the point of origin were relatively straightforward. The second phase involved exploring across the wind, where a higher degree of difficulty in returning home was balanced by the knowledge gained about island distribution in the first phase. The final phase, which saw the colonization of South Polynesia late in prehistory, was with the wind, making return voyages harder still, but again balanced by knowledge gained in the first two phases. The difficulty with assessing this elegant model, which is based largely on modern experience, is that there is virtually no archaeological evidence for the seafaring technologies in question. The ‘against, across and down the wind’ hypothesis assumes that the large sea-going craft and superior navigational skills evident in parts of the Pacific in the recent past were present in the remote past as well. This assumption underpins the approach taken in well-known

voyages between major island groups made in modern versions of Oceanic watercraft. It has been contended that the three-phase scenario confuses pattern with purpose, in so far as the pattern broadly reflects a succession of stepwise movements to the next closest islands. This replicates the case with nonhuman biological dispersals through the region. Such movements require neither special high-level navigational skills nor large and sophisticated canoes. Moreover, continual and sometimes quite radical refinements to archaeological settlement chronologies mean that the timing of movements no longer supports the three-phase settlement model in the way it once did. Overall, the evidence suggests that only steerable outrigger sailing canoes were required for the Lapita dispersal to West Polynesia, and relatively simple double-hulled canoes for the settlement of East and South Polynesia (Figure 10). It also seems likely that vessels of both sorts were primarily sailed downwind. To sail what would normally be upwind, people took advantage of seasonal wind-reversals, as they did in ethnographic times, or, in the case of long-distance dispersals against the wind over more extended periods, longer-term trends such as those caused by El Nin˜o cycles. See also: Asia, South: Paleolithic Cultures; Ethical Issues

and Responsibilities; Extinctions of Big Game; Migrations: Australia; Native Peoples and Archaeology; Oceania: Australia; Historical Archaeology in Australia; Micronesia; New Guinea and Melanesia; New Zealand; Political Complexity, Rise of; Politics of Archaeology; Ships and Seafaring; Who Owns the Past?.

MODERN HUMANS, EMERGENCE OF 1643

Further Reading Kirch P (2000) On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lilley I (ed.) (2006) Archaeology of Oceania: Australia and the Pacific Islands. Oxford: Blackwell.

Siberia

See: Siberia, Peopling of.

Models

See: Interpretive Models, Development of.

Sand C (ed.) (2003) Pacific Archaeology: Assessments and Prospects. Noume´a: De´partement Arche´ologie, Service des Muse´es et du Patrimoine de Nouvelle-Cale´donie. Weisler M (ed.) (1997) Prehistoric Long-Distance Interaction in Oceania: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Auckland: New Zealand Archaeological Association.

MODERN HUMANS, EMERGENCE OF Ofer Bar-Yosef, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Archaic, near Modern humans Humans that fall within the category of early Homo sapiens. They were contemporary with the late Neanderthals in Europe as well as contemporary with late Homo erectus in eastern Asia. blade A piece of flint (or other hard rock) detached by direct or indirect (with the help of a punch) knapping from a nodule (called ‘core’) and its longer axis is more than twice its width. Levallois A distinctive knapping tone technique which enabled artisans to obtain flakes, blades and triangular points by shaping carefully the nodule (a core), in a flattish form. Named after a suburb of Paris where it was first recognized in the river gravels of the Seine. modern humans Anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens, who evolved in Africa before 200 000–100 000 years ago. Mousterian A cultural term used to designate Middle Paleolithic age lithic industries across western Eurasia. The different combination of tool-types were made by both Neanderthals and near Modern humans. mtDNA Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is DNA that is located in mitochondria.

Introduction Two different models explanation the origin and dispersal patterns of modern humans. The first model, ‘out of Africa’, is based on the interpretations of several

sources including the genetic evidence (mainly the mtDNA), the available fossils, and the wealth of archaeological evidence. The second, a competing model, known as the ‘multiregional continuity’, suggests an alternative interpretation of the same fossils, and gains support from the dichotomy between the lithic industries of East Asia and the rest of the Old World. In the former region, stone artifacts exemplify continuity through most of the Palaeolithic sequence, while the latter, the largest landmass, was characterized by relatively numerous turnovers in lithic technology and tool types. Such changes in composition of stone industries can be seen as supporting population turnovers. Genetic studies propose rough chronological steps and geographic routes for the dispersals of humans into Eurasia. Based on these investigations, archaeologists test for corresponding evidence based on the stone artifacts and their manufacturing procedures. There is little doubt today that archaic (or near-) modern humans, originated in East Africa some 200 000 years ago (all dates are uncalibrated BP), and are represented by fossils from Omo-Kibish and Herto sites in Ethiopia (200 000–160 000 years ago), and later by the Skhul-Qafzeh group in Israel (120 000– 90 000 years ago). The paucity of fossils from most other parts of Asia, except for a few Chinese skulls, accounts for the many unknowns concerning this continent. This period is called in the archaeological terminology the Middle Palaeolithic in most of the Old World, except for sub-Saharan Africa where the

1644 MODERN HUMANS, EMERGENCE OF

common term is Middle Stone Age (MSA; a translation from the Greek-based term ‘Palaeolithic’). Additional ‘out of Africa’ by the bearers of Upper Palaeolithic blade tools, and the first users of body ornaments, occurred some 55 000–45 000 years ago. Groups of these people colonized most of Europe and North Africa, and expanded through Western Asia into northern Asia. A southern route through the margins of the Arabian Peninsula into India is poorly known. By the time they reached SE Asia and Australia (c. 40 000 years ago), the production of flake industries was the common knapping method for shaping their tool kits. Hence, for brevity, this article discusses first the early wave of African migrants and then the second, known as the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution, or the dispersals of modern humans (Figure 1).

of two basic knapping techniques was recorded in both regions including the Nile Valley that served, more than once during prehistoric times, as a corridor for human movements in both directions. One knapping technique is known for the production of blades, by either unidirectional or bidirectional detachments from a core that often had a cylindrical shape or at least a rounded striking platform. The second way of detaching desired blanks from a core, often with a lenticular cross section, is the famous Levallois technique. This technique incorporates several different methods for the detachments of flakes, blades, and triangular points. Interestingly, the early Middle Palaeolithic humans, beginning c. 250 000 years ago, produced bladeshaped artifacts in East Africa (defined as blanks of which the length is more than twice the width). This phenomenon is better known from the Levant, the Caucasus, and east of the Caspian Sea, where the production of blades and pointed elongated blanks was carried out during the early Middle Palaeolithic (250 000–130 000/90 000 years ago).

The Dispersals of Archaic, Near-Modern Humans The archaeological sequences from East Africa and Western Asia are not the same. However, the presence 40

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In East Africa, the supposed homeland of the archaic modern humans, the Levallois technique seems to prevail. Blanks were shaped as side-scrapers and points and in addition bifacial (foliate) points were a component of the tool kit. The Nile Valley produced a similar sequence with foliates present as a distinct tool type until about 100 000/90 000 years ago, while later the industries fall into the Mousterian dominated by the use of the Levallois technique. Foliates and tanged points characterized the Aterian that was known from eastern Sahara through the Maghreb, where they lasted longer, to about 30 000/28 000 years ago.

Archaic Humans and Neanderthals in Western Asia The study of the Levantine Mousterian benefited from the earlier discovery of the long stratigraphy of Tabun Cave (Mount Carmel). Dorothy Garrod, the original excavator, identified three major layers that more recently were adopted as terms for classifying the industries, from late to early, as ‘Tabun B-type’, ‘C-type’, and ‘D-type’. Assemblages, generally similar to those of Tabun Cave, were discovered in other sites in the Levant. In addition, the radiometric chronology (basically through thermoluminescence dating (TL), electron spin resonance (ESR), and 14C; (see Carbon14 Dating; Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Luminescence Dating) facilitated the ordering of the three different industries, briefly described here. The earliest, Tabun D-type, is characterized by the production of elongated blanks defined as blades and when retouched, known as Abu Zif points. The blanks were removed from cores with basal preparation that occasionally produced the impression that the reduction sequence was bidirectional. This type of industry was found all over the Levant, in the Caucasus, and beyond the Caspian Sea. Their Levantine and Caucasus dates are from 250 000 to 130 000 years ago, and probably 90 000 years ago further east. It is quite possible that their presence and dates mark the dispersal pattern of the archaic modern humans, the population that made them. Unfortunately, no fossils were found in the excavated sites. The more recent Mousterian is the Tabun C-type, best described from Qafzeh Cave (near Nazareth, Israel). The common products of this method are suboval and subquadrangular flakes, sometimes of large dimensions, struck from Levallois cores through centripetal and/or bidirectional exploitation. Triangular points appear in small numbers. The industry dates to 140 000/130 000–90 000/85 000 years ago

and contained human burials in Skhul and Qafzeh caves, as well as the use of seashells for body decorations, and plenty of red ocher. The latest Mousterian is Tabun B-type, dominated by the production of mainly flakes and triangular Levallois points, frequently with a broad-base striking platform removed from unidirectional convergent cores. In several sites such as Tabun, Kebara, Amud, Dederiyeh, and Shanidar Caves, Neanderthal burials were exposed. It seems that the arrival of this new population in the Levant, and the Zagros Mountains, was triggered by the cold conditions across Europe during OIS 4. Additional evidence for the presence of Neanderthals was discovered in Sakajia cave, and is evidenced by their stone industries in many localities in the Caucasus mountains and foothills. Hence, the Levant was occupied by a northern population, the Neanderthals. However, after about a span of 40 000/30 000 years, there is a wealth of evidence for a major change. New groups of people took over the region at about 50 000/45 000 years. This was the wave often referred to as the recent dispersal of modern humans, the bearers and initiators of the Upper Palaeolithic, a change that is also seen as a technological and cultural revolution.

The Cultural Attributes of Fully Modern Humans – The Bearers of the Upper Palaeolithic The Upper Palaeolithic cultural package does not appear at once and is demonstrated by numerous discoveries in African and Eurasian sites, through the variability of shaped stone artifacts, use of new raw materials, and artistic expressions. In a comprehensive short review, the novelties of this period, some originating in older cultures, were as follows: 1. Systematic production of prismatic blades, with only rare cases where flake production continued to be the dominant mode. The exceptions are sites in East Asia (mostly the Chinese plains), SE Asia, and Australia, where the common Upper and Late Pleistocene industries are flake dominated (such as the Hoabinian culture). 2. The exploitation of animal teeth, bones, antlers, and ivory as raw materials, although they were available to Middle Palaeolithic humans, for the production of domestic or ritual tools and ornamentations, as well as for art objects. The presence of bone tools, although not in every East Asian site, facilitates today the recognition of their attribution to the Upper Palaeolithic (see Bone Tool Analysis). The only geographic and chronological exceptions are the rich

1646 MODERN HUMANS, EMERGENCE OF

assemblages of Howieson’s Poort in South Africa, and in particular the Bloombos Cave, generally dated to 80 000–60 000 years ago. 3. Systematic usage of body decorations including beads and pendants made from marine shells, teeth, ivory, and ostrich egg shells is recorded from both Europe, Western and Central Asia, and Africa, and is seen as communicating the social identity of individuals and their group. Again, the exception are the contexts of Howieson’s Poort, and the lack of cultural continuity within the following MSA assemblages can be interpreted as the lost body of knowledge by the inhabitants of this region. 4. Long-distance exchange networks for providing lithic raw materials and marine shells are recorded from distances of up to several hundred kilometers, and are consistently different from the shorter procurement ranges during the Middle Palaeolithic. 5. Although Middle Palaeolithic spears hafted with Levallois or other Mousterian points were recorded in a few instances, the Upper Palaeolithic period witnessed the invention of improved hunting tools such as spear throwers, and later bows and arrows and boomerangs. These devices facilitated targeting animals from longer distances and could have brought higher rates of hunting success. 6. Human and animal figurines, decorated and carved bone, antler, ivory, and stone objects are reported from many Upper Palaeolithic contexts. Representational, abstract, and realistic images, either painted or engraved, began to appear in caves, rockshelters, and exposed rocky surfaces by 36 000 years ago. The Franco-Cantabrian region differs from the rest of the Upper Palaeolithic world possibly due to two factors: first, the pressures faced by local hunter-gatherers interacting with newcomers moving to an area richer in food resources during harsher times (c. 40 000–12 000 years ago). Second, a cultural continuity from the Chaˆtelperronian– Aurignacian to later cultural entities. 7. Storage facilities often characterize sites in regions of the northern latitudes, where seasonal depletion of resources led modern humans to this invention. 8. Grinding tools appear during the Upper Palaeolithic in the subtropical belt and the Mediterraneantype vegetation, where plant food was always a major component of human diet. Unfortunately, knowledge concerning the exploitation of plant food during the Palaeolithic is limited due to poor preservation in most sites. 9. Hearths in Upper Palaeolithic sites, with or without the use of rocks for warmth banking and parching activities, are often recorded although

variable types of hearths are known from the Middle Palaeolithic and MSA contexts. 10. Distinct functional spatial organization within habitations and hunting stations such as kitchen areas, butchering space, sleeping grounds, discard zones, and the like are relatively common in Upper Palaeolithic sites (see Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites). These features reflect the social structure or a particular combination of members of the band such as males’ task group. Although a few Middle Palaeolithic and MSA sites disclosed somewhat similar arrays, the clearest spatial organization characterizes modern humans. 11. Finally, intentional burials, a few with some grave goods, were exposed in Middle Palaeolithic sites. Upper Palaeolithic sites rarely disclose burials, and those often incorporate offerings or body decorations such as the famous ones from Sungir (Russia). It seems that the paucity of burials is due to a change in mortuary practices, when the dead were buried outside the main living area, or left to rot in particular places. Hence, they are not found within the traditional confines of the archaeological excavations that often target the occupational horizons.

The Dispersals of Modern Humans and Their Upper Palaeolithic Cultures There is no doubt that outside Africa the Initial Upper Palaeolithic in the Levant began some 47 000/45 000 radiocarbon years ago, and therefore, given the cultural roots, emerged earlier in northeast Africa. In the Nile Valley, a series of Upper Palaeolithic sites rich in blades seem to form a continuity from a late bladey Mousterian industry. The near-modern human skeleton discovered at Taramsa 1 was buried in a sandy deposit, and its context, a Middle Palaeolithic industry, dated it to 80 000–50 000 years. While the human remains are pre-Upper Palaeolithic, the lithics of a later exploitation of the site, dated to 38 000– 37 000 years, demonstrate transitional morphologies of the artifacts closely resembling the Levantine Initial Upper Palaeolithic exemplified by sites such as Boker Tachtit and the early layers at Ksar Akil rockshelter (c. 47 000–42 000 years). In addition, the first body decorations as perforated seashells are known from this period. The industry of this initial phase of the Upper Palaeolithic leads to the development of blade detachment, and among the tools, besides end scrapers and burins one finds the Emireh points (similar to the African Bambata point), and the chamfered blades and flakes that also appear in the Dabban, the Early Upper Palaeolithic in Cirenaica (Libya).

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The following phase in lithic production evolved into the Early Ahmarian, a blade-dominated industry with rare bone tools. The bearers of these cultures, as recognized recently by European archaeologists, migrated into Europe at c. 43 000/42 000–38 000 years ago. The migration from the Levant into Europe took two paths. One was through the Balkans, where the Bachokirian culture was identified in Bacho Kiro and Temnata Caves, into the Czech Republic (Moravia), where the incoming people produced the Bohunician, a stone industry made by the same procedures as the earlier Boker Tachtit in the Negev (Israel). Along the Danube River Valley, they reached southern Germany and the Atlantic coast. The southern path took them through Greece into Italy (as the Adriatic Sea was a landmass at that time), and into the Alps foothills, across to southern France where the Chatelperronian is possibly the earliest cultural expression some 40 000/38 000 years ago. The move into the Iberian peninsula caused the retreat of Neanderthals into the Pyrenees and in the south to isolated areas such as Gibraltar and Portugal. While entering Europe, groups of foragers moved from the Balkans, around the Black Sea, which was a large freshwater lake, into the Russian plain. Neanderthals found refuge moving into northern latitudes and southward into Crimea. Another route from the Levant, or through the southern path along the Zagros ranges, led eastward, beyond the Caspian Sea, across Central Asia where Lake Aral was a large water body, into northern Asia. The Early Upper Palaeolithic blade assemblages from Kara Bom, the Denisova cave, which provided also a rich collection of ivory beads and pendants, the Ust-Karakol site, and others in the Altai region, support this observation. The earliest dates for the Upper Palaeolithic seems to cluster around 38 000 years ago. The geographic trend marked by later dates for Upper Palaeolithic contexts continues from Siberia into Mongolia, northern China (Inner Mongolia), and later into Korea and Japan. The dispersal of modern humans forced earlier populations such as the Neanderthals to seek refugia in mountainous areas, such as the Caucasus where the replacement of one population by newcomers occurred around 35 000–34 000 years. The earliest Upper Palaeolithic in this region is characterized by small prismatic cores, the production of bladelets shaped into microliths of various forms, as well as bone and antler objects. The vast region of East and Southeast Asia did not witness the same shift in knapping techniques. In the Chinese plains and hilly region, from the Western Hills where Upper Cave Zhoukoudian is located, to the eastern margins of the Himalayas, the small flake

industry marks the Upper Palaeolithic, together with the rare presence of bone tools. The same core and flake assemblages are known from the Hoabinian culture as well as from the earliest contexts in Borneo and Australia dated to c. 40 000 years ago. It seems that the important cultural boundary was along the mountain ranges of Southeast Asia oriented in a north-to-south direction. Hence, the movements of modern humans were in two directions from Southeast Asia. One path led north into China. The other route led foragers to initiate the first colonization of the Australian continent. North African environments, along the Nile Valley and in the Maghreb, seem to exhibit a similar sequence of technological changes as in the Levant. Rapid changes in tool types occur in every region, thus creating a room for recognizing local entities. For example, in Western Europe, the rich Aurignacian culture emerged after the first wave of colonization. It is known for its art objects, cave art, use of ivory and bones for making tools and body decorations, and a particular stone artifact. All its roots can be found in Western European entities such as the ‘Proto-Aurignaician’ or ‘Fumanian’, which is closer in composition to the Levantine Ahmarian. In Africa itself, both the archaeology and the genetics indicate a southern movement from East Africa into South Africa, a process that was repeated several times later. It is suffice to indicate the move of the ‘agricultural package’ from the Ethiopian plateau, or the Bantu herders into southern Africa. Hence, archaeological observations tend, in general, to correspond to the propositions made by the geneticists, but the recording of the detailed global puzzle of human dispersals, the exact routes, and the dating of the various stages require further investigations. See also: Asia, Central, Steppes; Asia, East: China,

Paleolithic Cultures; Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures; Asia, South: India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South; Paleolithic Cultures; Asia, West: Paleolithic Cultures; Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures; Bone Tool Analysis; Carbon-14 Dating; Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Europe, Eastern, Peopling of; Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear; Manufacture; Luminescence Dating; Migrations: Australia; Paleoanthropology; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites.

Further Reading Bar-Yosef O (2002) The Upper Paleolithic revolution. Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 363–393. Brooks AS, Yellen JE, Nevell L, and Hartman G (2006) Projecile technologies of the African MSA: Implications for modern human

1648 MOLECULAR ARCHAEOLOGY origins. In: Hovers E and Kuhn SL (eds.) Transitions before the Transition: Evolution and Stability in the Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age, pp. 233–256. New York: Springer. Clark JD (1993) African and Asian perpectives on the origins of modern humans. In: Aitken MJ, Mellars P, and Stringer C (eds.) Origin of Modern Humans and the Impact of Chronometric Dating, pp. 148–178. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Conard NJ (ed.) (2006) When Neanderthals and Moderns Met. Tu¨ bingen: Kerns Verlag. Deacon HJ and Deacon J (1999) Human Beginnings in South Africa: Uncovering the Secrets of the Stone Age. Cape Town, South Africa, and Walnut Creek, CA: D. Phillips and Altamira Press. Derevianko AP and Shunkov MV (2004) Formation of the Upper Paleolithic traditions in the Altai. Archaeology Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 3(19): 12–40. Forster P (2004) Ice ages and the mitochondrial DNA chronology of human dispersals: A review. Philosphical Transactions of the Royal Society London B 359: 255–264. Gamble C (1999) The Paleolithic Societies of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gorring-Morris N and Belfer-Cohen A (eds.) (2003) More than Meets the Eye: Studies on Upper Palaeolithic Diversity in the Near East. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Modern Material Culture Studies

McBrearty S and Brooks AS (2000) The revolution that wasn’t: A new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior. Journal of Human Evolution 39(5): 453–563. Mellars P (2004) Neanderthals and modern human colonization of Europe. Nature 432: 461–465. Mellars P (2005) The impossible coincidence. A single-species model for the origins of modern human behavior in Europe. Evolutionary Anthropology 14: 12–27. Underhill PA (2003) Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology LXVIII: Inferring Human History: Clues from Y Chromosome Haplotypes. Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. VanPeer P (1998) The Nile Corridor and the Out-of-Africa model: An examination of the archaeological record. Current Anthropology 39 (Supplement): S115–S140. Wolpoff MH, Hawks J, Frayer DW, and Hunley K (2001) Modern human ancestry at the peripheries: A test of the replacement theory. Science 291: 293–297. Zilha˜o J (2006) Nenaderthals and moderns mixed, and it matters. Evolutionary Anthropology 15: 185–195.

See: Ethnoarchaeology.

MOLECULAR ARCHAEOLOGY David M Reed, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary activity area Site with ancient chemical evidence in soil and artifacts including micro-debitage from domestic and ritual activity. isotopes Elements having nuclei with the same number of protons (the same atomic number) but different numbers of neutrons, widely used to date materials based on a knowledge of the decay rates of naturally occurring isotopes, and the current abundances. phylogenetics The study of evolutionary relatedness among various groups of organisms (e.g., species and populations); it constitutes a means of classifying groups of organisms according to degree of evolutionary relatedness. residue analysis Identification and quantification of organic residus in archaeological artifacts.

Introduction Molecular archaeology is the application of techniques developed for physics, chemistry, and biology for the study of ancient artifacts and biological remains at an atomic or molecular level. It encompasses archaeological chemistry, biomolecular archaeology, ancient DNA, and chemical palaeodiet analysis. Any research that addresses archaeological issues at a chemical level, by examining human or nonhuman tissues, organic residues from archaeological sites and objects, extraction of genetic material from plants and animals, determination of diet from stable isotope or trace elemental composition, and sourcing of objects by chemical signatures, may be considered a form of molecular archaeology. The insights provided from molecular archaeology allow scientists to examine evidence at finer scales than obtained previously. Ultimately, it is the application

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of the systematic analysis of molecules to reconstruct the past in the pursuit to answer fundamental anthropological questions, including who were are ancestors, where did they come from, how were they organized, what did they eat, when and from which progenitors were cultivars and animals domesticated, who did ancient people interact with as they migrated and settled the world, and what diseases afflicted them? Addressing these questions is achieved through the scientific application of destructive and nondestructive methods to characterize historical and archaeological organic and inorganic materials. Molecular archaeology intersects and utilizes numerous disciplines such as population genetics, geochemistry, statistics, anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and palaeontology. Its practice requires both an understanding of archaeology, particularly the group under investigation and archaeological site burial conditions, and expertise in a physical or biological science. Methods include noninvasive techniques that leave objects in essentially the same state before and after analysis, destructive techniques that require the consumption of milligram or smaller quantity of an object, and nondestructive techniques that may require a small sample of an object to be removed, but the object or its sample can be reanalyzed at a later date or with alternative technologies. The discipline of molecular archaeology may be subdivided into the fairly distinct subdisciplines of archaeochemistry, biogeochemistry, and archaeogenetics. Although there is some overlap in their service to solving archaeological issues, each has developed independently. Within these areas, archaeologists directly examine original biochemicals preserved in the organic and inorganic phases of bones and teeth, or chemicals attached to or contained in tools, pottery, and other artifacts. From the results of their study, as illustrated with case examples below, inferences may be drawn about human ancestry, genetic development, cuisine, agricultural technologies, and production techniques.

Archaeochemistry Central areas of contribution for archaeochemistry include provenance studies, residue analysis, activity area analysis, and reconstruction of production technologies (e.g., glass working, metallurgy, or ceramics). A growing number of techniques for physicochemical analyses are applied to artifact analysis. For example, in X-ray fluorescence, an item is bombarded with X-rays causing the emission of secondary X-rays whose wavelengths can be measured and are characteristic of the elements present in the item. Chemical

compounds and trace elements can be identified by their characteristic emissions when electrically excited, as with optical emission spectroscopy, or from the gamma rays produced as radionuclides decay, as occurs in neutron activation analysis. Chromatographic approaches separate a sample into its constituent components and then measure or identify the components. Spectroscopic techniques identify substances from the electromagnetic spectra arising from either emission or absorption of radiant energy. Each technology has benefits, appropriateness, and principles that hold keys to assist us in unravel the past. Provenance Analysis

The cultural components of power, wealth, labor, regional interactions, and social organization can be inferred from a detailed understanding of the resources and activities involved in an artifact’s construction and deposition. Provenance determination involves the characterization of an object’s composition (mineral or chemical profile) and the natural sources of raw materials used in its manufacture to reconstruct source material procurement activities including production technologies and trade networks. Material evidence for early trade between Egypt and Canaan is limited even though written evidence is abundant in biblical and Egyptian documents. Natural asphalt or bitumen (a crude oil by-product occurring in seeps) was used to waterproof reed baskets, as an adhesive, in mortar and cement for building, to pave roads, for mummification, and for other uses. The demand for bitumen led to it becoming an important trade item between Egypt and the Dead Sea. Organic geochemical analysis was used to determine that natural asphalts were imported from the Dead Sea to Egypt between 3900 and 2200 BC and may have continued until much later. Residue Analysis

To characterize a sample of residue, a small amount of a material, milligram or smaller, is subjected to chemical composition determination by mass spectrometry, chromatography, or other suitable sensitive technology. The results produce a chemical profile that can be matched with known references. For example, scientists developed a technique to determine the color of wine from residues in ancient containers. Using mass spectroscopy, they found evidence for tartaric and syringic acids in jars from Tutankhamun’s tomb indicating that they had contained a wine from red grapes. In another culinary study, chemical residue analysis of pottery indicated that the Maya

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were consuming Theobroma cacao, or chocolate, as early as 500 BC, more than 1000 years earlier than previously known. Activity Areas

Human activities can leave chemical evidence in soils and sediments. Remnants in the solum include microdebitage from kitchen, ritual, or craft activities, botanics, pigments, and incense can all leave chemical signatures discernible from the natural soil makeup. In tandem with and in the absence of macro-remains, chemical analysis of soils and floors can provide evidence for improving our understanding of household organization, the dynamics of domestic, ritual, and craft activities, and the locations of such past activities. Production Technologies

Glass composition varies by differences in the raw materials and recipes used in manufacturing. Primary glass production encompasses the mixing and manipulation of raw materials to manufacture glass, while secondary work included converting imported glass into final objects. Associating the evidence for glass production in Bronze Age Egypt between its primary and secondary components has implications for understanding Mediterranean trade activity from 1500 to 1000 BC. Control over production and consumption was maintained by the high statuses, and a rise in trade and consumption in the Near East, Middle East, and the Mediterranean was commensurate with the rise of elite groups. Written accounts record pharaonic requests for glass importation, but not for glass production within Egypt. The silica, lime, and soda used for the manufacture of Egyptian glass varies according to procurement location, opening the opportunity for analysis with chemical fingerprinting. Reconstruction of the production technology of the late Bronze Age glass industry from the analysis of glass artifacts and debris indicates that several steps were involved. After plant ash, crushed quartz, and other raw materials were procured, they would be converted to a raw glass at relatively low temperature (900–950
C). Incompatible salts were removed by washing raw, crushed glass with water, then the pulverized raw glass would be mixed with a colorant (metal oxides), to emulate turquoise or lapis lazuli, and turned into ingots at higher temperatures (1000–1100
C). Colored glass ingots were transported to distant workshops for the final steps of creating polychrome glass vessels. Different concentrations of potassium in blue-colored glasses are attributable to different plant ashes used during production, further indicating that glassmaking centers specialized in particular coloration.

Biogeochemistry Diet, evolutionary history, life history, growth, health, development, behavior, climate, and habitat are inferable from the results of the studies of morphology, pathology, and chemical composition of the bones and teeth of humans and other animals. Food procurement strategies reflect the technologies employed by ancient humans, and in turn provide clues about sociopolitical and economic development of ancient peoples. These approaches are founded on biogeochemical principles. Two chemical approaches are commonly examined by archaeologists for the reconstruction of ancient diets and agricultural systems – trace elements and stable isotopes. Teeth and osseous remains provide the source material for analysis. Both approaches are predicated on empirical observations of natural variations and chemical processes involved in the uptake and metabolism of plants and animals. Trace Elements

The application of trace elemental measurements of bone composition has been undergoing re-evaluation. Much early work has been discredited because of advancement in our understanding of diagenesis (i.e., the alteration of chemical composition during burial) and the complexity of the relationship between diet, metabolism, and the resulting trace elemental composition of tissues. Measured amounts of trace elements must correspond in a predictable manner to those present at the time of death of an animal. Calcium (Ca) is the most common element in bone. Strontium (Sr) and barium (Ba) are chemically similar to (i.e., belong to the alkaline earth metals group) and substitute for calcium during metabolism. Intense study of strontium metabolism in humans and its distribution in food webs arose from concern about the global spread of radioactive 90Sr from thermonuclear tests. In principle, the analysis of Sr/Ca and Ba/Ca reflects trophic position in food webs. This occurs because calcium more efficiently passes through the gut wall than its heavier elemental partners and leads to ratios in tissues lower than the food consumed. Furthermore, feeding experiments on laboratory animals indicate that the amounts of strontium, barium, and zinc in tissues relate to dietary intake. Strontium in bone depends on the dietary amounts of protein and fiber. Barium levels behave similarly to strontium, but depend additionally on dietary iron. Levels of zinc correlate to the amount of dietary protein. Therefore, trace elemental studies hold the potential to define the proportions of dietary fiber, protein, and

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iron consumed, but are unlikely to address more specific questions regarding food sources. Other trace elements have fallen into disuse as appropriate diet indicators and have become diagenetic monitors. For palaeodietary reconstruction, the field of stable isotopic chemistry has nearly replaced trace elemental research, particularly since tissue fractions can be carefully tested for the preservation of the living state isotopic composition. Stable Isotope Chemistry

The term isotope refers to a difference in the number of neutrons in the nuclei of an atom. The masses of isotopes differ because atomic mass is determined by the total number of protons and neutrons composing an atom. Two fundamental isotopic species of elements occur – stable and unstable (radioactive). Nuclides which transform into different nuclides only through an external agent are considered stable. In contrast, radioactive isotopes spontaneously transform into one or more different nuclides. Isotope ratio mass spectrometry relies on the principle that electrically charged atoms can be separated by their masses based on their mass-to-charge ratio when passed through a magnetic field. Differences in isotopic composition are measured by comparing isotope ratios of a sample to a reference material. Their ratio is expressed in d-notation as d ¼ (Rsample – Rreference)/Rreference)  1000%, where R refers to the abundance ratio of the rare isotope to the most abundant isotope of the element under consideration. Stable isotope ratio analysis has been a significant tool in geochemistry since the 1940s when the introduction of improved mass spectrometer designs was developed and the foundations of natural fractionation processes were ascertained. These methods were introduced to archaeology and palaeodietary reconstruction in the late 1970s with seminal reports on maize consumption through time by ancient Amerindians from eastern North America and experimental demonstrations that the stable isotopic ratio of animal tissues reflects their diets. The stable isotope analysis of skeletons has expanded to include multiple tissue fractions, control of the problems associated with diagenesis and contamination, and a more thorough understanding of the relationship between the isotopic composition of foods consumed and the incorporation of isotopic signatures into various tissues. Bones contain organic (collagen, protein, and lipid) and inorganic (apatite) fractions. Burial introduces diagenetic contaminants that require careful removal before either fraction can be analyzed. The analysis of

collagen and bioapatite bone fractions for the ratio of the stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen allows for estimating the proportion of marine versus terrestrial components of an individual’s diet and, in some cases, reveal the proportion of maize consumed. The isotopic composition of the diet is basically reflected in a consumer’s tissues when fractionation due to metabolic processing is taken into account. Isotopic fractionation is the systematic separation of isotopes by different physical or chemical processes which create differences in the isotopic ratios of an element. Because of the large proportional differences in their atomic masses and their ubiquity in nature, the isotopic fractionation of the stable isotopes of hydrogen (R ¼ 2H/1H), carbon (13C/12C), oxygen (18O/16O), nitrogen (15N/14N), and sulfur (34S/32S) are particularly important and well studied. The primary determinant of the carbon isotope ratio signature in the food eaten by humans is the isotopic variability due to differences in photosynthetic processes. In addition, herbivore tissues show an enrichment in 13C and 15N relative to the plants they eat and carnivores show a further enrichment. Thus, the primary plant signatures fractionate as the trophic level increases in both marine and terrestrial food webs. The stable isotopic ratio analysis of strontium (87Sr/86Sr) has been used to reconstruct patterns of residence and mobility. The ratio of 87Sr to 86Sr in the food chain is defined geographically by its ratio in the geology of an area. 87Sr/86Sr values measured in the hydroxyapatite mineral portion of skeletal tissues (typically teeth) will reflect that of food source soils. Stable oxygen isotope ratios assist in resolving issues of migration and reconstructions of palaeoclimate. The fractionation of 18O versus 16O occurs during evaporation, condensation, and precipitation of meteoric water and depends on temperature, which varies according to latitude and altitude. Empirical observation of modern samples and experimentally determined fractionation equations provide the basis for estimating unknown water sources. The isotopic composition of tissues reflects the isotopic composition of the water consumed by an animal and in turn reflects the physical and climatic conditions of water sources. Dental enamel does not remodel and is mineralized by 13 years of age in humans, while bone mineralizes and remodels over the lifetime of an individual. Therefore, movement from one isotopically distinct location to another is recorded in skeletal tissues and can be reconstructed from a knowledge of the d18O signatures in waters across a region under investigation.

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The d18O of cellulose has been correlated to d18O values of source water on a regional scale. The d18O composition of precipitation varies naturally by season and latitude, thus providing a regional signature when metabolized by plants. As an example, maize (Zea mays) cobs from archaeological sites in the American Southwest were examined and their d18O values compared to the values of maize experimentally grown with waters of known d18O compositions. The proportions of water sources (seasonal precipitation or nonlocal perennial streams) could be estimated from the d18O of the plant cellulose and provided an indication of the farming practices applied. In application to burials from Tlailotlacan (a Zapotecan enclave of the ancient central Mexican city of Teotihuacan), stable oxygen isotope analysis reinforced and expanded our understanding of mobility and ethnic patterns associated with these inhabitants and their Oaxacan roots. Ethnic enclaves at Teotihuacan, indicated by differentiation in artifacts and architecture, had been a part of its urbanization process since its earliest phases. Zapotec immigrants were identified by their foreign d18O values and showed that there was ethnic continuity and continual interaction with several distant locations (400 km) during the enclave’s existence (c. AD 200–750). A parallel study of burials from Tlajinga 33, also in Teotihuacan, further demonstrated the continual influx of foreigners to the urban center, with many individuals arriving during their childhoods. Teotihuacan was more than a multiethnic New World urban center; it was a city in which immigrants were continually integrated into the social, familial, and economic structures of the state and the process of urbanization influenced the geographic and social mobility of people across ancient Mesoamerica. Photosynthetic differences among the carbon dioxide assimilation processes of plants are the main natural source of fractionation for stable carbon isotope ratios. Because of their different discrimination of 13 C relative to 12C, C4-based plants show distinct 13 d C values in comparison to C3-based plants. A third form of photosynthesis, crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM), shows d13C values between those of C3- and C4-based plants. Altitude, temperature, and humidity also alter d13C values. Overall, C3-based plants show an average d13C value of –27.1  2.0%, while C4-based plants average –13  1.2%. Nitrogen isotope ratio values show primary differences between terrestrial and marine sources. Terrestrial plants generally have nitrogen isotopic compositions close to atmospheric nitrogen, because the fixation of nitrogen involves little fractionation. Marine organisms generally have d15N-values more positive

than terrestrial ones because of the larger degree of fractionation occurring from de-nitrification and marine biogenic nitrogen is typically enriched in 15N. Thus, terrestrial nitrogen isotopic values range between 0% and 10%, while marine sources span between 7% and 20%. When the isotopic values of local plants and animals are available as signatures of the source foods, then the isotopic composition of skeletal tissues can provide an estimate of the diet of the consumer. When possible comparative isotopic sources should come from archaeological material (botanical or low mobility animal remains), modern sources are often altered relative to the prehistoric. Environmental strontium values have been changed significantly due to nuclear testing. The isotopic ratio of stable carbon in atmospheric carbon dioxide globally shows the influence of fossil fuel use over the last 150 years. Deeper temporal changes in atmospheric CO2 have occurred because of long-term temperature change that happens over the course of global climatic variation.

Archaeogenetics Principles of Genetics

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) refers to the sequence of nucleotide bases (adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine) that join together in a long molecular chain and form genomes – the instruction code for building and running biological organisms. The 3 billion bases of the human genome are divided into 24 chromosomes consisting of 22 autosomes and, either, two X, or one X and one Y, sex chromosomes. An additional piece of DNA, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), contains slightly more than 16 500 bases and resides separate from nuclear DNA. Nearly all of the DNA sequence is identical in all humans, but about 0.1% varies at locations across the genome, mostly as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). These SNPs, where one nucleotide has spontaneously changed, or mutated, to another, are inherited generation to generation and are the fundamental data for reconstructing ancestry. Ancient DNA analysis refers to the extraction of genetic material from plants, coprolites, humans, and nonhuman animals from museum or archaeological specimens. The retrieval and analysis of ancient DNA is considerably more difficult than of modern DNA. Not only is it fragmentary, due to degradation, but extracting uncontaminated genomic material requires exacting procedures. Thus, much focus has been on possible sources of contamination, methods to overcome biochemical inhibitors to sequence amplification, and ways to authenticate the ancient DNA sequences.

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Genetics (DNA and molecular markers) gives access to information at the individual, intrapopulational, and interpopulational levels. Comparison of the genetic profiles of multiple individuals is a means for determining biological distance and thus kinship. Comparing collections of genetic profiles from different populations reveals their relationships in evolutionary terms and their diachronic associations. Anthropological genetics proffers the capacity for inferring kinship structure, population movements, and the biological relatedness of populations across regional and continental distances directly from archaeological skeletal remains. Understanding the populational, genetic, and social structures of ancient cultures can improve our interpretations of human migrations, our models of the social structures and relationships among cultural divisions, and the demographic structures of past societies. Since ancient societies, especially prestate ones, organized their labor, economic, political, and social institutions and activities by age, sex, kinship, and social rank, our models and reconstructions are dependent on the quality of our knowledge of genetic and social relationships. Differences among people according to their sex and kinship are central to anthropological models of the evolution of ancient societies, especially the political and economic structures. Reconstruction of cultural institutions in archaeology is often performed by ethnographic analogies to settlement survey and excavation data. Rarely does direct evidence exist for examining kinship models from archaeological remains. Individual relatedness among people in households, residential groups, and communities would provide reconstructions with direct evidence for the kinship organization of the society under study. Genetic relations are difficult to reconstruct, except in unique circumstances where written records exist and, even then, relationships are only recorded for the uppermost levels of society, so the vast majority of people remain anonymous. With the recent advent of ancient DNA techniques, we have the potential to reconstruct kinship ties for all social statuses. Expertise in genetics and nucleic acid extraction, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification, sequencing or genotyping of informative genetic components (e.g., mitochondrial DNA, microsatellites, and X or Y chromosomes), statistical analysis, and phylogenetics is required to reconstruct the complex evolutionary history of organisms. Deoxyribonucleic acid is extracted and authenticated from archaeological, museum, and fossils samples. Genetic reconstruction can then proceed to tackle the questions of the genetic structure of extinct species in relation to contemporary species, solve the phylogenetic relationships within our genus Homo, and uncover

kinship structure and the biological sex of individuals buried in cemeteries, to infer the routes and times of human movements, and determine the genetic composition of microorganisms. Evolutionary Relationships

Key to studies of this type is an understanding of phylogenetics, tokogenetics, and coalescent theory. Phylogenetics is the science of classification, or taxonomics, and representation of the biological and genealogical relationships among biological entities arising through evolution. Phylogenetic analysis is a mathematical approach based on computation of the similarities and differences among sampled populations for inferring or estimating evolutionary relationships, estimating the time of divergence between entities, and chronicling the series of events along lineages. The evolutionary history of taxa may be represented as trees. Typically, hierarchical relationships are shown as a schematic tree comprised of nodes connected by branches. A node indicates the stage at which two or more branches diverge. Thus, the evolution from ancestors (internal nodes) to extant descendants (terminal nodes, tips, leaves, or operational taxonomic units) is estimated from the variations in a set of characters. In molecular phylogenetics, the characters are DNA or protein sequences. Groups within a tree are either monophyletic, polyphyletic, or paraphyletic. A clade or monophyletic group is a natural taxon in which all members are derived from a unique common ancestor with respect to the entire tree, have inherited a common set of traits, and thus have a shared evolutionary history. A group excluding some of its descendants is paraphyletic. In opposition to monophyletic is polyphyletic, in which a group shares a common ancestor with another group and probably represents an incomplete clade. Networks best represent intraspecific relationships (tokogeny). This is because species phylogenies are the result of reproductive isolation and population fissioning over longer time periods during which mutation combined with population divergence led to the fixation of some alleles and to nonoverlapping gene pools. In contract, intraspecies genealogical relationships arise by the sexual reproduction of fewer, more recent mutations and recombination. Evolutionary processes occurring among sexual species are hierarchical because an ancestral species gives rise to two descendant species. Within sexual species the processes are nonhierarchical because two parents combine their genes resulting in offspring. Tracing the merging of ancestral lineages backwards through time is coalescence. Models of DNA polymorphism in a population include not just

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mutation, but the genealogy of sampled sequences as determined from the additional sources of variation – recombination and coalescence. Under coalescent theory, sampled lineages are treated as randomly picking their parents, tracking backwards through time until their lineages coalesce into a single lineage of the most recent common ancestor. This approach is more appropriate when the questions involve migration, or estimate or model other parameters such as population size or bottlenecks, admixture, or other demographic features impossible to address with phylogenetic methods. Polymerase Chain Reaction

The advent of the PCR and associated molecular biological laboratory advances have been the foundation for successful work in archaeogenetics. Since only tiny amounts of genetic material can be collected from specimens and only short stretches of the genetic code can be read at a time, a method for copying specified chunks of DNA is required. PCR, though a thermochemical reaction, is the process of amplifying (repeated copying) unique DNA sequences from a mixture of sequences with the use of primers (short oligonucleotides designed to match and prime DNA sequences). The amplified DNA can then be analyzed further with sequencing instruments that read the nucleotide code (A, C, G, or T), or with methods to test for known genetic markers. Mitochondrial DNA

The majority of ancient DNA studies are based on the amplification of multicopy DNA sequences like mtDNA and chloroplast DNA. The mtDNA genome has been fundamentally useful to ancient genetics because thousands of copies exist per cell while nuclear genes have only two copies per cell, it is only maternally inherited, it is haploid (having one set of genes), and does not undergo recombination as it is passed intact from mother to child. An extensive understanding of its worldwide diversity has been developed, particularly in terms of stable polymorphic sites or haplogroups, from which maternal lineages can be identified and related to populations that are divergent from each other or that share haplotypes. Similarly, paternal lineages may be traced via the Y chromosome, also uniparentally inherited without recombination, but it has only one copy compared to the thousands of copies of mtDNA per cell. Since the DNA of living populations only relates to surviving descent lines, ancient DNA holds the potential to uncover extinct lineages.

Archaeogenetic Applications

Successful analysis has been performed on remains consisting of osseous matter, hair, teeth, and fossils. Determining the point of origin, when the process began, and sometimes from which wild ancestor domesticated plants and animals were derived has been advanced by ancient DNA studies. The genetic changes (e.g., reduced variation) occurring from the process of long-term selection for domestication and comparison of ancient DNA against modern relatives has provided insight into the domestication history of dogs, cattle, horses, goats, squash, and maize, among others. Ancient DNA studies provide a powerful, direct appraisal of genetic relationships among extinct species and to their present descendants. Pleistocene animal genetic history Several extinct Pleistocene animals have had their DNA analyzed, including mammoth, mastodon, ground sloth, cave lion, and cave bear. The population history and phylogeography of species can be traced over time when many individuals have been preserved. For example, ancient DNA analysis of Late Pleistocene brown bears indicated that the mtDNA brown bear lineages have changed from a pattern of coexistence in a single area 35 000 years ago to the modern pattern of lineages distributed into different geographical regions worldwide. In another study, ancient mtDNA retrieved from moas as old as 3500 BP showed that Australian emus and cassowaries were closer relatives to moas than to kiwis. Apparently, flightless birds colonized New Zealand twice, once by ancestors of moas and independently by ancestors of kiwis. Human ancestral genetic history Resolving the genetic affinities of Neandertals and contemporary hominids is central to two competing theories of modern human origins – the replacement model and the multiregional model. Under a theory of replacement, modern humans rapidly replaced archaic hominid forms such as Neandertals as they spread from Africa throughout western Asia. Alternatively, under the multiregional model, genetic exchange occurred and continuity existed between archaic hominids and modern humans. mtDNA segments amplified from Homo neanderthalensis remains shows them to be genetically distinct from contemporary humans and phylogenetically outside the mtDNA variation of living humans. As estimated from the population genetic analysis of mtDNA sequences retrieved from Neandertal specimens, their genetic contribution to early modern humans appears to be less than 25% and very likely Neandertals went extinct without

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contributing mtDNA to living humans. The mtDNA lineage that leads to Neandertals diverged about 500 000 years BP, while the common maternal ancestor of Homo sapiens sapiens probably lived around 170 000 years BP. Thus, from the mtDNA evidence, a recent African origin and little genetic intermixing is supported. Cultivar genetic histories The evolutionary histories of cultivars such as maize (Zea mays), grape (Vitis vinifera), Cucurbita (squashes, pumpkins, and gourds), and olive (Olea europaea L.) are being resolved in the light of new DNA studies and phylogenetic analysis. The timing and nature of plant domestication in the Americas has been a major research focus. The genus Cucurbita consists of a dozen or more domesticated and wild species distributed throughout the Americas. Before European contact, six different species were domesticated and formed important sources of food in Native American economies. Molecular evidence (chloroplast DNA and mtDNA) from extant specimens indicates that domestication of C. pepo occurred twice; once, possibly in southern Mexico 10 000 BP or earlier, as a lineage that includes pumpkins among its members, and again, another lineage with members including acorn squash and ornamental gourds, was domesticated possibly in the Ozark Mountains around 5000 BP. Peopling of the Pacific islands One of the more perplexing and complex mysteries of prehistory has been the timing and pattern of the settlement of the islands of the Pacific Ocean. One approach is to study commensal species. The Pacific rat (Rattus exulans) is an especially useful species because its distribution ranges from Southeast Asia across the Pacific Ocean to Easter Island, its remains are associated with the Lapita cultural complex and later Polynesian settlements, they do not swim, thus required human transportation, and the species is distinct from the European rats (R. rattus and R. norvegicus) introduced later.

Variation in extant rat population mtDNAs throughout Oceania identified pathways taken by the human settlers as they carried the Pacific rat with them for food beginning 40 000 years BP. Three distinct haplogroups of R. exulans have been identified, lending strongest support to a model of Lapita settlement and interaction with indigenous inhabitants over a period 6000–3000 years BP, along a voyaging corridor from eastern Indonesia to the Bismarck and Solomon Islands. See also: Archaeometry; Chemical Analysis Techni-

ques; DNA: Ancient; Modern, and Archaeology; Metals: Chemical Analysis; Primary Production Studies of; Migrations: Australia; Pacific; Neutron Activation Analysis; Organic Residue Analysis; Stable Isotope Analysis; Trace Element Analysis.

Further Reading Adriaens A (2005) Non-destructive analysis and testing of museum objects: An overview of 5 years of research. Spectrochimica Acta B 60: 1503–1516. Jackson CM (2005) Glassmaking in Bronze-Age Egypt. Science 308: 1750–1752, (DOI: 10.1126/science.1112553.). Matisoo-Smith E and Robins JH (2004) Origins and dispersals of Pacific peoples: Evidence from mtDNA phylogenies of the Pacific rat. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 101 (24): 9167–9172, (DOI: 10. 1073_/pnas.0403120101.). Reed DM (ed.) (2005) Biomolecular Archaeology: Genetic Approaches to the Past. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, Center for Archaeological Investigations. Rehren T and Pusch EB (2005) Late Bronze Age glass production at Qantir-Piramesses, Egypt. Science 308: 1756–1758, (DOI: 10.1126/science.1110466.). Serre D, Langaney A, Chech M, et al. (2004) No evidence of Neandertal mtDNA contribution to early modern humans. PLoS Biology 2(3): e57, (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020057.). Wendt CJ and Lu S-T (2006) Sourcing archaeological bitumen in the Olmec region. Journal of Archaeological Science 33: 97–98. White CD, Spence MW, Longstaffe FJ, and Law KR (2004) Demography and ethnic continuity in the Tlailotlacan enclave of Teotihuacan: the evidence from stable oxygen isotopes. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 23: 385–402.

N NATIVE AMERICAN GRAVES PROTECTION AND REPATRIATION ACT Keith W Kintigh, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary cultural affiliation A reasonably strong relationship of shared identity between a modern Native American tribe and the earlier group to which a set of human remains or cultural items belonged. Kennewick man Name assigned to the remains of a prehistoric man found on a bank of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington. Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) U.S. Legislation passed in 1990 that specifies the conditions under which Native American human remains and restricted classes of cultural items are subject to repatriation.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA; 25 USC 3001 et seq.) is the primary US federal law that enables the repatriation of Native American human remains and objects with particular cultural significance. In addition, it authorizes a program of federal grants to assist in the repatriation process. While its focus is repatriation, the law prohibits trafficking in Native American human remains and other cultural items obtained in violation of the law.

Scope NAGPRA covers specifically defined Native American ‘cultural items’ that were either held by museums or federal agencies as of 16 November 1990 or that are newly found on federal or Indian lands. Under NAGPRA, ‘cultural items’ are human remains, funerary objects, and narrowly defined classes of ‘sacred items’ and collectively owned ‘objects of cultural patrimony’. Claimants recognized by the law include lineal descendants (in the rare cases in which they can be identified), federally recognized Indian tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations. The Smithsonian

Institution is exempt from NAGPRA but is covered by the National Museum of the American Indian Act (20 USC 80q). The implementation of the law is governed by regulations promulgated by the Department of the Interior (43 CFR 10). Generally speaking, a federally recognized Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization that is determined to have a ‘cultural affiliation’ with human remains or other cultural items is entitled to their repatriation. Cultural affiliation is defined in the law to mean ‘‘a relationship of shared group identity which can be reasonably traced historically or prehistorically between a present day Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization and an identifiable earlier group.’’ As the pivotal concept in the law, cultural affiliation defines the threshold for closeness of relationship that is required for a modern group to be entitled to repatriate Native American human remains or other cultural items. NAGPRA provides for repatriation of human remains and other cultural items that are held by museums or federal agencies and, somewhat differently, with human remains and objects that are newly discovered on federal or Indian land as a result of an ongoing excavation or inadvertent discovery.

Museum Collections Under the law, museums (including universities) receiving federal funds and federal agencies were required to inventory their collections of human remains and associated funerary objects regardless of the ownership of the land from which they were acquired. In consultation with tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations, they were required to determine the cultural affiliation of these human remains and objects whenever possible. Each museum and agency had to provide affected groups with this inventory and a summary of its collections of unassociated funerary objects (those without associated human remains), sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. The Secretary of

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the Interior is required to publish notice of completed inventories and intended repatriations in the Federal Register. Native American lineal descendants, federally recognized Indian tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations that are identified by the museum or agency as culturally affiliated (or that separately demonstrate their cultural affiliation) are entitled to the repatriation of the affiliated remains or other cultural items from the custodial institution so long as there are no competing claims. NAGPRA provides museums and agencies with deadlines for the distribution of inventories and summaries. However, there is no deadline for culturally affiliated tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations to make a claim (so long as the museum or agency has not repatriated the human remains or other cultural items to another claimant). In the absence of a claim, the museum or agency retains the human remains or objects. The law does not explicitly provide for the disposition of culturally unidentifiable human remains or other cultural items (those lacking cultural affiliation). Museums repatriating such remains and objects on their own initiative do so without the shield from legal claims of breach of fiduciary duty, public trust, or violations of state law that NAGPRA provides for repatriations that are accomplished pursuant its provisions. NAGPRA does not prohibit scientific study of human remains or objects in museum or agency collections. It includes a rarely, if ever, used provision that permits delay of repatriation for the completion of scientific study whose outcome would be of ‘major benefit to the United States’.

Intentional Excavation and Inadvertent Discovery Human remains or other cultural items that are intentionally excavated or inadvertently discovered on federal or Indian land after 16 November 1990 are subject to somewhat different provisions of NAGPRA. As with museum and agency collections, lineal descendants have the highest priority as claimants of human remains and associated funerary objects. If the remains or other cultural items are from Indian land, ownership lies with the tribe on whose land they were discovered. Failing that, ownership or control is vested in a culturally affiliated tribe if one is identified and makes a claim. In the absence of a culturally affiliated tribe, a tribe that is legally recognized as having aboriginally inhabited, the area in which the remains or objects were discovered can claim them. The disposition of human remains or objects that are not claimed

will be determined by regulations that have not yet been issued by the Department of the Interior. The intentional excavation of Native American human remains or other cultural items on federal or Indian land is allowed only with a federal permit (issued under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act) and after consultation with appropriate Indian tribes or Native Hawaiian organizations. Inadvertent discoveries of human remains or other cultural items on federal or Indian land entail prompt notification of the land-managing agency or tribe, consultation with appropriate tribes, and if grounddisturbing activities precipitated the discovery, cessation of those activities. NAGPRA does not govern ongoing excavations on nonfederal, non-Indian land. However, human remains or other cultural items recovered from these lands as a part of a federal undertaking are subject to the National Historic Preservation Act (16 USC 470 et seq.) In the absence of any federal entanglement, state law or local ordinance may apply.

Review Committee The law establishes a Review Committee, appointed by the Secretary of the Interior, whose primary responsibility is to hear disputes and provide recommendations on their resolution. The committee is charged with compiling an inventory of culturally unidentifiable human remains and making recommendations about a process for their disposition. It also makes an annual report to Congress. The committee is composed of three members nominated by museum and scientific organizations, three nominated by Indian Tribes and Native Hawaiian Organizations (two of whom must be traditional religious leaders), and one member from a list composed, and agreed to, by the other six. Staff support to the committee is provided by the Department of the Interior and is presently housed in the National Park Service.

History Passed in 1990, NAGPRA was the culmination of several attempts to pass repatriation legislation. However, it was the first national legislation that included a substantial and open effort to accommodate scientific and museum concerns as well as Native American interests. NAGPRA was the result of a compromise among national organizations representing American Indian organizations, professional organizations representing the scientific community (primarily the Society for American Archaeology), and the American Association of Museums. As passed, the

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law was supported by a broad range of organizations representing American Indian, scientific, museum, and preservation interests.

Implementation NAGPRA has had a dramatic effect on the day-today practice of archaeology and physical anthropology in the US. For ongoing excavations, Federal agencies have often routinized repatriation from lands under their jurisdictions through formal agreements with tribes. Because of these agreements, the process typically operates smoothly, although determinations of cultural affiliation seem more often assumed than demonstrated (as the law requires). Archaeologists’ consultation with tribes is now commonplace, even when excavation of human burials is not anticipated. In part, this is due to legal requirements, in part to archaeologists’ changing views of their ethical obligations and in part to a realization of the mutual benefits of this increased dialog (see Politics of Archaeology; Who Owns the Past?). In museum contexts, NAGPRA helped stimulate interactions of archaeologists and museum professionals with Native Americans that were felt to be constructive by all parties. These relationships have frequently led to Native involvement with museums extending beyond repatriation to exhibit design, curatorial practice, and other museum activities. To date, the proportion of disputed repatriation claims has been very small. However, considerable criticism has been leveled at individual federal agencies and some museums, both by Native Americans and archaeologists, for their failure to follow the provisions of the Act. A more fundamental criticism comes from some scientists who argue that scientific progress should not be subordinated to what they describe as essentially religious concerns of Native Americans. From a different angle, some Native Americans and some archaeologists argue that repatriation of Native American human remains and objects is an ethical or human rights issue in which science should have no say. Milder critics would say either that NAGPRA goes too far to accommodate the interests of scientists or it is overly favorable to Native Americans.

Courts The most prominent NAGPRA court case was a challenge by a group of scientists of a federal agency finding that a 9000-year-old skeleton known as Kennewick Man was culturally affiliated with a coalition of five Northwest US tribes. The court rejected this finding and ruled that the remains were not Native American under the definition in the Act. The court ruled that age alone is insufficient to satisfy the definition and that in order to be considered Native American, some relationship must be shown between a set of remains and a modern Indian tribe. The court ruled that the plaintiff scientists could pursue additional studies of the remains (Bonnichsen v. United States, 217 F. Supp. 2d 1116; D. Or. 2002). Another suit, Na Iwi O Na Kapuna O Makapu v. Dalton, challenged the Navy’s use of standard methods of physical anthropological examination in the completion of a NAGPRA inventory. The court held that ‘‘Examinations done for the purpose of accurately identifying cultural affiliation or ethnicity are permissible because they further the overall purpose of NAGPRA, proper repatriation of remains and other cultural items (894 F. Supp. 1397; D. Haw. 1995).’’ See also: Politics of Archaeology; Who Owns the Past?.

Further Reading Clark GA (1996) NAGPRA and the Demon-haunted world. SAA Bulletin 14(5): 3. Goldstein L and Kintigh K (1990) Ethics and the reburial controversy. American Antiquity 55(3): 585–591. Klesert AL and Powell S (1993) A perspective on ethics and the reburial controversy. American Antiquity 58(2): 348–354. Lovis WA, Kintigh KW, Steponaitis VP, and Goldstein LG (2004) Archaeological perspectives on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act: underlying principles. In: Richman JR and Forsyth MP (eds.) Legal Perspectives on Cultural Resources, pp. 165–184. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. Meighan CW (1992) Some scholars’ views on reburial. American Antiquity 57(4): 704–710. Society for American Archaeology (1986) Statement concerning the treatment of human remains. Bulletin of the Society for American Archaeology 4(3): 7–8. Trope JF and Echo-Hawk WR (1992) The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act: background and legislative history. Arizona State Law Journal 24(1): 35–77.

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NATIVE PEOPLES AND ARCHAEOLOGY George P Nicholas, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Aboriginal people in Canada Recognized in Canadian Constitution Act, 1982, sections 25 and 35, respectively, as Indians, Me´tis, and Inuit. Indigenous archaeology An expression of archaeological theory and practice in which the discipline interacts with indigenous values, knowledge, practices, ethics, and sensibilities. Indigenous peoples Refers to so-called Fourth World and/or formerly disempowered, disenfranchised, or colonized peoples. Depending upon region, this term may be synonymous with Aboriginal, First Nations, First Peoples, and Native, amongst others.

Introduction Indigenous archaeology is an expression of archaeological theory and practice in which the discipline intersects with Indigenous values, knowledge, practices, ethics, and sensibilities, and through collaborative and community-originated or -directed projects, and related critical perspectives. Indigenous archaeology seeks to (1) make archaeology more representative of, responsible to, and relevant for Indigenous communities; (2) redress real and perceived inequalities in the practice of archaeology; and (3) inform and broaden the understanding and interpretation of the archaeological record through the incorporation of Aboriginal worldviews, histories, and science. It is an approach to archaeology defined as much by the practice of non-Indigenous researchers working with Indigenous peoples, as by initiatives led by Indigenous archaeologists and communities themselves. Indigenous archaeology is conducted by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous practitioners, one of many points of similarity it has with feminist archaeology (in which there are male practitioners) – what matters is not the identity of the practitioner but rather achieving the goal of decolonizing the discipline and otherwise questioning the knowledge we obtain through archaeology. Some initiatives exclusively involve members of one or more Indigenous communities. In addition, the field of study is not limited to tribal lands or sites, but to the entire archaeological record worldwide. Thus, Indigenous archaeological studies have included a Secwepemc First Nation archaeologist working on Secwepemc sites in British Columbia, Canada; an archaeologist of European

descent working with an Aboriginal community in Australia; a Ghanan archaeologist conducting ethnoarchaeological research in Ethiopia; and a Native American (Ojibwe) excavating at C ¸ ata¨lho¨yk in Turkey. In its broadest sense, Indigenous archaeology may be defined as any one (or more) of the following: (1) the active participation or consultation of Indigenous peoples in archaeology (Figures 1 and 2); (2) a political statement concerned with issues of Aboriginal self-government, sovereignty, land rights, identity, and heritage; (3) a postcolonial enterprise designed to decolonize the discipline; (4) a manifestation of Indigenous epistemologies; (5) the basis for alternative models of cultural heritage management or stewardship; (6) the product of choices and actions made by individual archaeologists; (7) a means of empowerment and cultural revitalization or political resistance; and (8) an extension, evaluation, critique, or application of current archaeological theory. Not coincidently, the lack of precise parameters to this field contrasts with the preciseness of Western science and philosophy, and is more in line with the openness and lack of rigid categorization often found in Indigenous worldviews and ethnoclassification systems (i.e., where greater variation in classification of, e.g., gender roles, may not only accepted but expected). Such a nonabsolutist view is also found in feminist standpoint theory.

Nomenclature The term ‘Indigenous archaeology’ and recognition of the concept are relatively recent developments. The earliest use of the term is in Dewhirst’s 1980 monograph, The Indigenous Archaeology of Yuquot, but this referred to the Aboriginal (vs. European) component of the archaeological site. However, essential aspects of the still-unnamed concept appear in print at least a decade earlier. David Denton’s 1985 statement that ‘‘The development of native archaeologies requires an ongoing dialogue between traditional scientific archaeology and various native perspectives on the past’’ (emphasis added) is one of several that recognized the need for broadening the scope of archaeology. It was not until the late 1990s that the term was used with some consistency in its modern connotations. The first published definition of Indigenous archaeology is by Nicholas and Andrews (1997) who used it in reference to ‘‘archaeology with, for, and by Indigenous peoples’’. Thereafter, the term appears with increasingly frequency, becoming widespread in 2000 with the publication of Joe Watkins’ volume,

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Indigenous Archaeology: American Indian Values and Scientific Practice. Although Watkins did not define the term, his review of the historical development of Indian-archaeologist relations in North America (particularly as related to CRM and to reburial and repatriation issues) contextualized key aspects of the concept. The term has now gained wide recognition, despite the fact that it still resists formal or consistent definition. The ‘indigenous’ part of Indigenous archaeology most often relates to the involvement of so-called Fourth World and/or formerly disempowered, or disenfranchised, or colonized peoples in the process of doing archaeology (Figure 3). Maybury-Lewis’ definition of ‘Indigenous peoples’ as those who are ‘‘marginal or dominated by the states that claim jurisdiction over

Figure 1 Randi Hillard, Nuxalk First Nation, examining 3000year-old shell midden at an ancestral Secwepemc archaeological site in Kamloops, British Columbia, 2002 (G. Nicholas, Photo).

them’’ (2002: 7) generally coincides with how the term is constituted in the present archaeological context. There are, however, indigenes who are not disenfranchised or disempowered; in many parts of Africa, for example, they are the government. Likewise, while archaeology in China has always been ‘indigenous’, that falls outside of the realm of ‘Indigenous archaeology’. In Australia, ‘indigenous archaeology’ most often refers to the archaeology of the pre-contact period. Indigenous archaeology generally refers to projects and developments associated with or initiated by Aboriginal peoples in the United States, Canada, and Australia, but may include others (e.g., African Americans). However, expressions of Indigenous archaeology also appear widely elsewhere, including in parts of Africa (e.g., South Africa, Kenya), New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, northern Europe, Siberia, and Central and South America. This has created discussion around the questions of ‘‘who is ‘indigenous’?’’ and why some individuals do not consider themselves as such. In Central America, for example, only a small percentage of the native-born population currently self-identifies as ‘indigenous’. This clearly reflects important political and social issues regarding identity and self-representation. Aspects of Indigenous archaeology may overlap with or be synonymous with ‘native archaeology’, ‘internalist archaeology’, ‘anthropological archaeoogy’, ‘collaborative archaeology’, ‘covenantal archaeology’, ‘vernacular archaeology’, ‘community archaeology’, ‘stakeholder archaeology’, ‘participatory action research’, ‘ethnocritical archaeology’, ‘reciprocal archaeology’, and ‘ethical archaeology’.

Figure 2 Hopi tribal member LaVern Siweumptewa interpreting a petroglyph map depicting clan migrations at the site of Wupatki in northern Arizona, with Micah Loma’omvaya, Bradley Balenquah, and Mark Elson looking on. Photograph by T. J. Ferguson, July 29, 1998.

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Figure 3 Sharon Doucet, Ehattesaht/Nuu-chah-nulth Nation, British Columbia, represents one of a growing number of Native Americans who see archaeology as a vital bridge between past and present (G. Nicholas, Photo).

History The first stage in the development of Indigenous archaeology can be traced through the work of anthropologists and archaeologists who worked closely with Aboriginal communities in the late nineteenth and early-to-mid twentieth centuries. In North America, they included Harlan Smith, Jesse Fewkes, Frank Cushing, Alanson Skinner, and Arthur C. Parker (himself Seneca Tribe); in Australia, Norman Tindale and Donald Thompson; in Saharan Africa, Jean-Paul Boeuf. During this seminal period of historical particularism, collaborative investigations were encouraged (if only indirectly) in the voracious pace of the ethnographic, linguistic, archaeological, and biological fieldwork of Franz Boas and his colleagues and students. The emphasis was on assembling large volumes of data to understand the unique character and history of each culture, and on original fieldwork, emic analysis, subjective data, and a relativistic approach. Early archaeologists and anthropologists thus often worked closely with Aboriginal community members (such as George Hunt and Paul Silook in North America; Charlie Lamjerroc and Charlie Mangga in Australia – although many are unnamed), relying on them to aid in locating or interpreting artifacts and sites, and for translations and other liaison services. In return, these community members not only benefited in terms of financial compensation and status, but also had a direct, often lasting influence on local archaeological practice. Another significant development that encouraged collaboration was archaeologists’ use of the direct historical approach to interpret archaeological sites by reference to nearby

historic Aboriginal communities (see Anthropological Archaeology). For the most part, however, the involvement of Indigenous peoples in archaeology conducted on their traditional lands was generally limited to service as guides and crew members, or often merely unwitting bystanders. Indigenous communities usually benefited little from these interactions. These communities also had little meaningful input into the design of research projects, or involvement in decisions that directly affected their cultural heritage; in fact, the blatant quest to excavate human remains for display or study was often a violation of social mores and religious beliefs. As a result, archaeology was increasingly viewed as harmful and disturbing to many, and of little relevance or value. Although there were numerous exceptions, the primary beneficiaries of archaeology have long been archaeologists themselves and the institutions they serve, or, in the case of CRM projects, commercial interests, and the broader public. During the latter part of the twentieth century, major changes took place in the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the dominant society. By the 1960s, the increasing move toward Aboriginal cultural revitalization and politicization, coupled with a rapidly approaching postcolonial, postmodern world order, and changing public attitudes in the wake of the Vietnam War and other events, contributed to the emergence of Indigenous archaeology in North America. Comparable situations emerged elsewhere, including the outstation movement in Australia, and the independence of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) in Africa. In the Americas, Africa, Australia, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere, demands for tribal recognition, national sovereignty, and/or acceptance of ethnic identity and values were often as much inspired by cultural heritage issues as they were by calls for social justice and restitution. In the United States, for example, Vine Deloria, Jr., clearly articulated aspects of Native American dissatisfaction, including the legitimacy and practice of anthropology and archaeology and the callous treatment of ancient human remains. The emergence of the American Indian Movement in the early 1970s not only brought such concerns to national attention, but also launched actions to stop the desecration of ancestral remains and places of cultural significance. Increasing political clout and support from a sympathetic (albeit wary) public resulted in federal legislation as the American Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (1975) and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978). Significant federal legislation or rulings on Indigenous rights were passed in New Zealand (Treaty of Waitangi Act (1975)),

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Australia (Mabo v Queensland (1992)), Canada (Delgamuukw v Regina (1997)), and elsewhere. Within the context of these above events, two broad, interrelated themes have contributed to the grassroots development of Indigenous archaeology: (1) the treatment of the dead (and sacred objects and places); (2) cultural heritage and legislative concerns about the ownership of cultural and intellectual property. Treatment of the Dead

Indigenous objections to the collection, study, and display of human remains by archaeologists and others have had a significant effect on the practice and politics of archaeology and in some countries led to the passage of legislation to protect their religious practices and heritage. Long-standing concerns regarding both excavated and fortuitous finds relate foremost to the belief in the sanctity of human burials, and also to other factors including disrespectful or inappropriate handling, display, and curation. During the late nineteenth century, institutions worldwide assembled major collections of nonEuropean skeletal remains to aid the study of human biological and cultural evolution, or to establish racial classification systems. In addition, some scholars felt it necessary to establish a record of the soon-to-beextinct Indigenous peoples of various lands. Human remains were obtained not only from archaeological sites, but also by raiding Aboriginal cemeteries or collecting corpses on battlefields or from morgues; specimens were purchased and sent to museums around the world. Thus, over the past several centuries, the remains of tens of thousands of ancestral Aboriginal people were sent throughout colonial alliances worldwide, and accumulated in museums and other repositories where they often went unstudied or were simply forgotten about. In the United States, this included Ishi’s brain; in South African, Sarah Baartmann’s remains. Indigenous peoples long demanded that such practices cease, citing the desecration of their ancestors and sacred sites, as well as the double standard of ‘scientific’ inquiry – Aboriginal human remains brought to laboratories to study, while those of European descent quickly reburied. In the 1970s, the American Indian Movement and others took direct action against archaeologists investigating human remains, but with little lasting effect. Reburial and repatriation issues subsequently rose to national and international prominence in the 1990s in response to the highly publicized looting of the Slack Farm site in Kentucky (1988) and similar events; to charges that archaeology was scientific colonialism; and to

changing attitudes toward Aboriginal rights. The adoption of the Vermillion Accord on Human Remains by the World Archaeological Congress in 1989, and the passage of the National Museum of the American Indian Act (1989) and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990) in the United States, and the South African Resources Act (1999) directly addressed Indigenous concerns about the treatment of their dead, and for the first time placed moral values above scientific ones. The reaction of the archaeological community to reburial and repatriation varied widely. Some felt that political correctness had trumped science and reason, while others were sympathetic; the majority fell in between with a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude. Despite initial fears, legislated or voluntary concessions by archaeologists to Indigenous concerns have proved beneficial to the long-term relationship between these groups simply because the controversies obliged interaction and communication. Important lessons about collaboration were provided by the Smithsonian Institution’s repatriation of 1000 individuals to Larsen Bay, Alaska, in 1991, the return of War God fetishes to Zuni Pueblo in 1989, and by a number of major repatriations in Australia, including the return by the Australian National University of the Kow Swamp remains in 1990 and of Mungo Lady to Lake Mungo in 1992, and that by the Natural History Museum, London, of 17 Tasmanians to Australia. The willingness of some archaeologists and major scientific organizations to work with descendant communities to rectify past inequities set the stage for later collaborations. Although the Kennewick Man (the ‘Ancient One’) case (1995–2005) in the United States demonstrated that significant differences remain, the number of Native communities allowing or requesting the scientific study of ancestral human remains is increasing. As the result of reburial and repatriation legislation, in many countries archaeologists are now required to consult with Indigenous governments and organizations, and to adhere to established protocols and permitting system for field and research projects in their territory, or for studying human remains. In many cases, this brought archaeologists into direct contact with Indigenous groups, whose views began to inform the research process. Cultural Heritage Concerns

Cultural heritage and traditional lands are defining elements of Aboriginal ethos and worldview. As a result, the care of ancestral sites has figured prominently in both the origins of and goals of Indigenous archaeology. By the mid-1960s, the preservation of archaeological sites was increasingly a focus of

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attention of CRM and heritage legislation in North America and elsewhere (National Historic Preservation Act, US (1966); Australian Heritage Commission Act (1975)). Such legislation was aimed at broad public values, but did not specifically address the concerns or desires of the Indigenous minority whose ancestors created the vast majority of archaeological sites in formerly colonized countries, and who lacked the authority to make decisions about the preservation and management of their own heritage. While ‘consultation’ with members of descendant communities has now become a frequent, and sometimes required component of heritage management, it too often has remained only nominal with little true power sharing. In addition, many Aboriginal communities lack funds and personnel to devote to archaeologists’ requests for information and externally imposed timelines. However, Indigenous organizations in southern Africa, Australia, Canada, and elsewhere increasingly require research, media, and travel permits for archaeological and ethnographic work conducted there. Although federal and state or provincial legislation has protected the material heritage of Indigenous peoples, two aspects have been especially problematic. The first is the concept of ‘significance’ and its application in evaluating the value of heritage sites, as required by specific legislation. Within most archaeological projects, scientific values have been given primacy, although historical, religious, and community values are also considered, as in Botswana. Such a priority often runs counter to non-Western perspectives that do not require ‘significant’ places, ancestral sites, or entire landscapes to possess material evidence of what happened there (or even to have been culturally modified at all). However, concerns about oral history and intangible heritage have been addressed by policies or legislation in South Africa, Canada, and elsewhere, and, more generally, by UNESCO. The second issue concerns the notion of ‘stewardship’ and the role of archaeologists and their professional organizations as stewards of the archaeological record on behalf of (or in the interest of) descendant communities, especially those who may not be able (or willing) to care for it ‘properly’. Indigenous and non-Indigenous critics have charged that stewardship has generally been a unilateral, paternalistic process, with archaeologists assuming control over the process and imposing a different value system on the past. Indigenous peoples have gradually achieved greater and more meaningful control over tangible and intangible cultural heritage through various avenues over the past 30 years, although there have been regular setbacks when legislation is changed or legal precedents overturned. New or broadened legislation has

ensured greater direct Aboriginal involvement, such as the requirement for First Nations in British Columbia to review archaeological permit applications (Heritage Conservation Act (1996), Canada), and offered new levels of protection (e.g., Northern Territory Aboriginal Sacred Sites Act (1989), Australia, and UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003)). In the United States, a 1992 amendment to the National Historic Preservation Act allowed tribes to establish their own Tribal Historic Preservation Offices, enabling direct involvement in heritage preservation on tribal lands. Successful negotiations for Aboriginal management or co-management of tribal lands and heritage sites also occurred with more frequency (such as Uluru and Kakadu National Parks in Australia), albeit with some federally imposed limits. Tribal involvement in archaeology was underway as early as the 1950s in many countries in Africa following independence. In the United States, it began in the 1970s with the Zuni Archaeology Program (in 1975) and the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department (in 1978) as the first major initiatives to address specific concerns of Indigenous peoples relating to CRM and also to provide training. During the 1980s and 1990s, state government agencies and Indigenous organizations began to establish programs to train community members (e.g., ‘Aboriginal rangers’ in Australia) to monitor CRM projects. College and university-level archaeology programs provided new opportunities for Indigenous people to gain access to important tools (Figures 4, 5 and 6). Various museums worldwide have responded to Aboriginal concerns by considering and integrating alternate curation and management practices, shifting their roles from repositories of antiquities (or ‘captured heritage’) to holders of cultural treasures. The Museum of South Australia, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the National Museum of the American Indian, and others actively promote Indigenous perspectives in exhibits and education programs. In addition, the rise of community-based museums has provided new opportunities to explore and articulate local values in cultural heritage. In the United States, new sources of funding, including casinos, have enabled some groups to fully fund their own archaeology programs (e.g., Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Connecticut).

Theoretical Foundations In general practice, Indigenous archaeology employs all of the basic elements of archaeological theory, namely those associated with culture historical, processual, and postprocessual approaches. At the same time, its character has been influenced by the

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broadening discourse in anthropology and, somewhat later, archaeology that began to take shape in the late 1970s. It is thus a logical step in the historical development of archaeological thought and practice. This is especially evident in the shift in emphasis from the etic, empirical, and problem-oriented aspects of cultural historical and processual archaeology to the more emic, reflexive, and agency-oriented aspects of postprocessualism. Nonetheless, individuals in many Indigenous communities believe that they do not need archaeology to tell them what they already know about the past through other means. Critics have suggested that Indigenous archaeology represents a highly subjective, ‘anything-goes’ approach. Some explanations by Indigenous peoples of

Figure 4 Lunch break during a trip to relocate a dugong hunting magic site inside the scrub in northern Cape York. Pictured are Kaio Ropeuarn, Mickeri Peter, Andrew Peter, Meun (Shorty) Lifu and Christo Lifu. (Photo Susan McIntyre - Tamwoy).

how things were in the past are, in fact, embedded in religious belief and thus do fall outside the realm of Western notions of science and history. However, as defined here, Indigenous archaeology is a relatively coherent body of method and theory contextualized by the needs, values, and critiques of Indigenous peoples. For example, it may operate as an extension of traditional archaeological methods conducted with, for, or by communities in CRM surveys; a pursuit of land claims; or supplementing or validating traditional histories. Much of Indigenous archaeology is strongly oriented to identifying and hopefully addressing the limitations and biases of Western science, as well as the significant power imbalances faced by minority communities. It attempts to make archaeology more relevant, more responsible, and more representative through a strongly postcolonial orientation that runs parallel to, or intersects with Marxist theory, cultural relativism, feminist theory, and other explicitly Indigenous constructs. In turn, decolonization theory developed, in part, to address some of the key issues raised by Indigenous archaeology. Depending upon its context, Indigenous archaeology may include any of the following theoretical elements in designing and implementing research practices: . Indigenous epistemology – local explanations of worldview (how things came to be); . interpretive archaeological theory – reflexivity, multivocality; recognition of relative and situated nature of knowledge; . Marxist theory – exposing power relations, inequalities, motive, and means for social change; theoretically informed action;

Figure 5 Dr Innocent Pikirayi supervising University of Pretoria 1st-year students on Bantu-speakers’ farming settlement excavation. Mmakau, Ga-Rankua, South Africa, 2005 (Photo courtesy of Sven Ouzman).

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Figure 6 Students in Simon Fraser University’s Indigenous Archaeology Field School, 2004. Excavation of middle Holocene site on Kamloops Indian Reserve, Kamloops, British Columbia (G. Nicholas, Photo).

. critical archaeology – recognition of class-based nature of science and history, exposing the means by which knowledge is produced and its emancipatory potential; and . feminist theory – demarginalization, reconceptualization, re-examination of categories, concepts, standpoints and perspectives; considering other viewpoints or ways of knowing. Indigenous Methodologies

The principal goals of Indigenous archaeology are to broaden the scope of archaeology and to transform its practice. It seeks to do so primarily through its applications in a number of overlapping spheres in which Aboriginal peoples have a vested interest, especially heritage preservation, education, community history and traditional knowledge, cultural revitalization, and repatriation of knowledge and objects of cultural patrimony. However Indigenous archaeology has a dual and sometimes contradictory nature since it utilizes (indeed adds to) the spectrum of methods employed in archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and related fields, but also challenges them by developing alternative approaches to interpreting past lifeways. The resultant tension between competing Indigenous and Western ideologies has proved to be a productive area of new ideas. The methodologies of Indigenous archaeology emphasize ethical and culturally appropriate behavior at all stages of research, a shift in the frame of reference (i.e., the postcolonial strategy of ‘de-centering’), reflexive approaches, research ethics, a recognition of the subjectivity of scientific objectivity, a concern with benefit sharing and community participation,

and flexibility as to how and when community members will involve themselves. Research projects are designed with community needs and values in mind, which are often prioritized over the recovery of scientific data (which can lead to conflict with government permitting agencies). Archaeologists working with, and especially for, Indigenous peoples may thus be requested to serve as consultants, cultural brokers, facilitators, advocates, policy analysts, needs assessors, or expert witnesses. Given the different ways in which Indigenous peoples construct the world, it is no surprise that the heritage concerns of communities often go well beyond the scope of archaeology. Research methods are informed by local (internalist) values, coupled with the recognition that not all elements of past lives are reflected in material culture. The four-field approach to anthropology therefore has great relevance since it provides access to and a framework for understanding all aspects of a society, including emic and etic perspectives. Oral histories often have a central role in Indigenous archaeology, for example, especially when different (i.e., customary) definitions of significance are identified, or when linked to archaeology through the congruence of methods and data, as promoted by Indigenous scholars. Eliminating the standard division between ‘historic’ and ‘prehistoric’ periods also removes an unnecessary separation of contemporary Aboriginal peoples from their past. The nature of research is also influenced by local worldviews, which can have significant implications for appropriate CRM strategies, for example, the absence of the familiar Western dichotomies of past/present and real/supernatural realms, plus time being viewed as nonlinear, mean that ancestral spirits are part of the contemporary landscape. The scale of investigation may vary substantially, from landscape-centered to artifact-focused, from tangible to intangible cultural heritage. Concerns arise over biases or limitations associated with traditional survey and site sampling methods, as well as with the adequacy of site significance evaluations and predictive models (especially when the latter are seen or believed to contradict community knowledge of traditional or precontact land-use practices). Field methods include standard data observational and collection strategies from archaeology, such as site survey, testing, and excavation techniques. In general, however, there is less reliance on empirical approaches and more standing given to nonempirical sources, including oral histories, folklore, traditional knowledge, and religious beliefs. Ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological methods include walking the land to identify traditional cultural properties, and use of focus groups, interviewing, and participant observation (all with informed consent), which may be used to

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discuss customary law or to identify local concerns about, or perceptions of what constitutes heritage sites. At the request of the community, projects may be designed to use non-destructive, non-invasive field methods either entirely or to the degree possible. Artifacts and other materials may be reburied on site after analysis. Other methods of note include the occasional use of non-Cartesian site grids to locate circular subsurface test units; the use of toponomic information to direct fieldwork; alternative classification systems; and alternative curation methods (e.g., smudging artifacts). Customary or hybrid ceremonial activities are sometimes conducted prior to, during, or at the close of fieldwork, and may include storytelling, drumming, singing, and offerings by elders or community members to honor the ancestors, as well as smudging and ocher face paint to cleanse or protect crew members. Care is taken to use appropriate terminology, recognize the problematic nature of some terms by archaeologists (e.g., ‘prehistory’) and to show respect, especially to elders, the traditional custodians of Indigenous knowledge. There have been major changes in the manner that human remains are treated, both in response to federal legislation and community consultation (Figure 7). Although there have been well-publicized examples of Native Americans employing NAGPRA to repatriate and rebury human remains without scientific study, there are as many cases where tribes have allowed or even requested such study, including aDNA testing and radiocarbon dating. Some Indigenous archaeologists work in this realm, or as mediators between archaeologists and communities.

Figure 7 Carrie Dan, Kamloops Indian Band, British Columbia, Canada, preparing birchbark baskets to hold human remains prior to reburial. Ms. Dan has a degree in Archaeology and has been involved in several studies of human skeletal remains. She has also served as an intermediary between Aboriginal communities, tribal governments, and archaeological consulting firms.

The broad operating framework of Indigenous archaeology is defined by a series of incentives that range from federal legislation to local community needs and initiatives, filtered through the continuing discourse between (and within) the Aboriginal and archaeological communities. Foremost are meeting the needs of the community, in terms of capacity building or resolving conflicts between developers. Much of the efforts of Indigenous archaeology deal with enabling communities to manage their own cultural heritage or to evaluate the work done by others on their territory. In Australia, North America, and elsewhere, the Indigenous people employed full or part time in archaeology today numbers at least in the hundreds, facilitated in many cases by new opportunities for academic, field-school, or work experience-based training. In some countries, however, Indigenous minorities are suppressed and part of the suppression involves distancing them from their archaeological heritage. Contemporary tribal politics affecting archaeology include drafting heritage policies and the development of tribal permitting systems, research protocols, and guidelines. Involvement in archaeology by descendant communities can also be viewed as expressions of both resistance and cultural sovereignty. Increasingly, consultation with communities is a requirement of federal, state, or provincial legislation. Indigenous communities and organizations in some countries are creating their own archaeology or cultural heritage departments, as well as consulting companies. These mechanisms help provide access to and at least some control over the process and products of archaeology on tribal lands, as well as offer an alternative to the type of stewardship model endorsed by the Society for American Archaeology and other organizations. The introduction and integration of new large-scale resource management strategies by federal agencies has developed in direct response to concerns raised by Indigenous peoples. In North America, these initiatives include ‘traditional cultural properties’ (under Section 106, NHPA), and ‘Aboriginal cultural properties’ (Parks Canada), which are similar to some Indigenous stewardship programs that integrate cultural and natural resources. Community-based protocols identifying who has rights to use and publish data and photographs are beginning to address long-standing concerns about cultural and intellectual property. Access to research results by the community, in appropriate formats (from public talks to DVDs, and from lay-oriented, jargon-free publications to technical reports), is important. There is growing use of film, digital recordings, and webbased media to record or present Aboriginal interpretations of cultural landscapes or other aspects of their culture, such as the Nganampa Anwernekenhe film

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series made by Indigenous Australians for both their own needs and public television. Tribal and public museums are also developing new ways to effectively present Indigenous and ‘scientific’ interpretations of the past, but also working to prevent the loss of intellectual property (e.g., the Hoodia biopiracy case in southern Africa). In sum, Indigenous archaeology requires developing respect and trust through meaningful community interaction, consultation, negotiation, and collaboration; culturally appropriate behavior; a relatively informal, personal approach, and a long-term commitment to the community.

Reactions to Indigenous Archaeology Reactions to Indigenous archaeology were initially mixed. Some expressed dismay that federal reburial and repatriation legislation, plus the inclusion of Aboriginal people and values in archaeology, would be the end of some types of archaeological investigations and encourage hyper-relativism. There were also concerns about the credibility of Indigenous people doing archaeology, especially where their research could be used in CRM or land claims. Today, however, Indigenous archaeology has become widely recognized worldwide and part of the vocabulary of archaeology. One indicator of its recognition is its appearance as a topic in introductory archaeology textbooks. Students are growing up in a world where Indigenous archaeology is part of the archaeological landscape that they encounter, no different in some respects from other aspects of archaeological theory and practice. At the same time, mainstream archaeology’s reaction to Indigenous archaeology is similar to its reaction to feminist archaeology. There are striking parallels between the two in terms of their developmental history, the critiques they offered, the body of new methods and theory that each developed, and their persistent marginal status within the discipline, rather than as approaches that are broadly transformative. Throughout the world, Indigenous people’s increasingly sophisticated critique of archaeological practice, coupled with the development of Indigenous archaeology, has contributed significantly to the development of new ethical standards and codes by professional organizations, including the Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists, the Australian Archaeological Association, and the Canadian Archaeological Association, the Society for American Archaeology, and the World Archaeological Congress. The World Archaeological Congress’ code of ethics is framed around the obligations archaeologists have to

Indigenous peoples; WAC also actively promotes and financially supports Indigenous participation in all of its meetings. Indigenous archaeology has a relatively limited presence within the Society for American Archaeology. However, the society does support Aboriginal archaeologists through the Arthur C. Parker scholarship for Native Americans and Native Hawaiians, and has published the working together section of the SAA Archaeological Record. Other organizations have provided important venues for exploring Indigenous issues in archaeology, including the Chacmool Archaeology conference, which hosted Indigenous Peoples and Archaeology in 1999, and Decolonizing Archaeology in 2006. Finally, Indigenous concerns regarding education have contributed to the creation of Native Studies and Indigenous Archaeology programs in universities and other academic setting. There are also communitybased initiatives, a growing number of which offer credentials and training in archaeology.

Conclusions Significant challenges remain to achieving the premise and promises of Indigenous archaeology. The scope of archaeology has clearly broadened through many ‘working together’ projects. However, very few ‘collaborations’ with Indigenous groups actually include true power sharing and negotiation regarding the process and products of archaeology. This is a major hurdle since the idea that the giving up of control frightens many archaeologists, but may lead to greater enrichment and sharing both in terms of what and how we know about the past and in terms of dealing with it in the present. Major issues regarding ownership of and access to cultural and intellectual property have yet to be seriously engaged. Indigenous peoples need more opportunities for education and training in archaeology. Mainstream archaeology needs to better understand how and why Indigenous peoples may view it as threatening to them. Indigenous archaeology grew out of efforts by marginalized peoples worldwide to challenge the imposition of archaeology on their lives and heritage. It has in a relatively short time developed into a distinct body of methods and theory designed to promote ethical and inclusive practices that will further democratize the discipline, and stimulate new ideas that will significantly increase the scope of archaeology as a socially relevant and still scientifically sound discipline. See also: Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation; Cultural Resource Management; Engendered Archaeology; Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Historic

NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS 1669 Preservation Laws; Illicit Antiquities; Marxist Archaeology; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act; Politics of Archaeology; Who Owns the Past?.

Further Reading Atalay S (guest editor) (2006) Decolonizing Archaeology. American Indian Quarterly 30(3&4): 269–503. Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Studies (AIATSIS) (2000) Guidelines for Ethical Research in Indigenous Studies. Conkey M (2005) Dwelling at the margins, action at the intersection?: feminist and indigenous archaeologies, 2005. Archaeologies 1.1: 9–59. Davidson I, Lovell-Jones C and Bancroft R (eds.) (1995) Archaeologists and Aborigines Working Together. Armidale: University of New England Press. Denton D (1985) Some Comments on Archaeology and Northern Communities. Heritage North ’85 Conference. Yellowknife, NWT. Dewhirst J (1980) The Indigenous Archaeology of Yuquot, A Nootkan Outside Village. Ottawa: National Historic Parks and Sites Branch, History and Archaeology. Dongoske KE, Aldenderfer M and Doehner K (eds.) (2000) Working Together: Native Americans and Archaeologists. Washington, DC: Society for American Archaeology. Ferguson TJ (2003) Archaeological anthropology conducted by Indian tribes: Traditional cultural properties and cultural affiliation. In: Gillespie SD and Nichols D (eds.) Archaeology is Anthropology, Archaeological Papers of the American

Nautical Archaeology

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Anthropological Association 13, pp. 137–144. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association. Fforde C (2004) Collecting the Dead: Archaeology and the Reburial Issue. London: Duckworth. Maybury-Lewis D (2002) Indigenous Peoples, Ethnic Groups, and the State. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Mihesuah DA (ed.) (2000) Repatriation Reader: Who Owns American Indian Remains?. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Nicholas GP and Andrews TD (1997) Indigenous archaeology in the postmodern world. In: Nicholas GP and Andrews TD (eds.) At a crossroads: Archaeologists and First Peoples in Canada, pp. 1–18. Burnaby, BC: Archaeology Press, Simon Fraser University. Nicholas G and Hollowell J (2007) Ethical challenges to a postcolonial archaeology: The legacy of scientific colonialism. In: Hamilakis Y and Duke P (eds) Archaeology and Capitalism: From Ethics to Politics. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Peck T, Siegfried E and Oetelaar GA (eds.) (2003) Indigenous Peoples and Archaeology: Honouring the Past, Discussing the Present, Building for the Future. Calgary: Archaeological Association of the University of Calgary. Smith CL and Wobst HM (eds.) (2005) Decolonizing Archaeological Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge. Smith LT (1999) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books. Swidler N, Dongoske KE, Anyon R and Downer A (eds.) (1997) Native Americans and Archaeologists: Stepping Stones to Common Ground. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Trigger B (1980) Archaeology and the image of the American Indian. American Antiquity 45(4): 662–676. Watkins J (2000) Indigenous Archaeology: American Indian Values and Scientific Practice. Mountain View, CA: Altamira Press.

See: Maritime Archaeology.

See: Modern Humans, Emergence of.

NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS Leah Minc, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary accuracy The closeness of a measurement to its true value. b-decay A form of ionizing radiation released by certain radioactive materials, consisting of high-energy

electrons or positrons designated by the symbols b
and bþ, respectively. g-ray An energetic form of electromagnetic radiation equivalent to a high-speed photon produced by radioactive decay; denoted by the Greek letter g. half-life The length of time required for one-half of the initial activity of a radioisotope to decay; after one half-life, 50% of the original activity remains; after two half-lives, only 25% of the original activity remains. isotope Any of several different forms of an element with different atomic mass; isotopes of an element will have nuclei

1670 NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS with the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons. neutron flux The density of neutrons available to irradiate a sample, typically measured in neutrons per cm2 per second. precision The closeness of repeated measurements of the same quantity; measurement replicability. provenance The geographic origin of an artifact, object, or raw material. radioisotope A radioactive isotope of an element; the radioisotope may be naturally occurring or artificially produced through irradiation. radionuclide An atom with an unstable nucleus which undergoes radioactive decay by emitting a g-ray(s) and/or subatomic particles. sensitivity The smallest amount of a chemical or element detectable by an analytical method.

Introduction Neutron activation analysis (NAA) is a sensitive analytical technique for determining the amount of different elements (major, minor, or trace) present in a sample. The technique is most accurately viewed as a method of quantitative chemical analysis based on the nuclear properties of constituent elements. Briefly, NAA involves placing a small amount of sample material in a flood of neutrons (typically generated by a nuclear reactor) in order to activate or create radioactive isotopes of the elements present (Box 1). As these excited isotopes return to a stable state, they emit charged particles and noncharged g-rays, in a process known as radioactive decay. The detection of those decays permits both the identification of elements originally present in the sample and the precise determination of their quantity. In the classic case of NAA, chemical separation of elements following irradiation was required to allow the measurement of radioactive emissions with fairly simple instrumentation. Today, however, ‘instrumental neutron activation analysis’ (INAA), in which detection instrumentation separates and identifies elements by their g-rays, is the standard method.

History of NAA Neutrons were discovered in 1932, and within 4 years the basic principles of neutron activation analysis had been established by the work of Georg von Hevesy and Hilde Levi at the Niels Bohr Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, using a radium–beryllium source for neutrons and an early Geiger-counter assembled by Levi. However, neutron activation analysis only became practical as a method for elemental determination in the mid-1960s, with the availability of high-intensity neutron sources provided by research reactors (Figure 1), and with the development of

Box 1 Elements and Isotopes An element X is defined by its atomic number Z (which represents the number of protons) and by its mass number A (which represents the sum of its protons and neutrons). An element can be designated as AZ X although Z is redundant with the chemical symbol X and is generally omitted. Electrons, arranged in a series of shells surrounding the nucleus, are equal in number to Z. Isotopes of an element have the same number of protons, but different number of neutrons, i.e., same Z but different A. A few elements are ‘mono-isotopic’, that is, having only one natural isotope. Most elements, however, have more than one naturally occurring isotope, in which case the relative fractional abundance of the isotopes is generally constant or fixed. For example, aluminum is mono-isotopic; all naturally occurring aluminum is 27Al. In contrast, iron has four naturally occurring stable isotopes with the following abundances: 54

Fe Fe 57 Fe 58 Fe 56

5.8 % 91.7 % 2.2 % 0.3 %

During irradiation, each isotope undergoes a distinct reaction and subsequent decay, and yields gamma rays characteristic of the specific isotope. Since most isotopic ratios are assumed to be constant (there are some important exceptions), any one isotope can be analyzed to determine the amount of element present. The terms ‘radioisotope’ and ‘radionuclide’ refer to isotopes which are radioactive. These may be naturally occurring in the environment, or more typically, are created through activation by neutrons.

high-resolution g-ray detectors that enabled the analysis of complex g-spectra. During the 1970s, INAA rapidly emerged as the preferred technique for trace-element characterization, owing to its accuracy and sensitivity, and to number of elements that can be identified simultaneously (Table 1). INAA remains competitive with more recent instrumental techniques of multielement analysis (including ICP-MS), and is considered superior in the analysis of certain suites of elements, such as the rare earth or lanthanide elements. The technique helped establish the foundations of modern geochemistry, and INAA continues to make a major contribution through its application in a broad range of fields, especially geology, the environmental sciences, biology, chemical engineering, and medical research. Over the past three decades, INAA has become a major analytical tool in archaeology, as well. The technique was first applied in provenance studies of ceramics by researchers at Brookhaven National Lab and at Oxford in the late 1950s, although these early efforts

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were frustrated by the poor-resolution detectors available at the time, which were unable to distinguish closely spaced g-peaks. By the mid-1960s, however, the development of lithium-drifted germanium (Ge–Li) g-ray detectors had significantly improved detector resolution and paved the way for successful analyses of obsidian in Europe and North America. These early studies established both the provenance

hypothesis (which holds that each raw-material source carries a unique combination of trace elements as a chemical signature or fingerprint) and the importance of INAA as a method for sensitive, multielement analysis of artifact composition. INAA is now routinely employed by archaeologists in materials science and provenance investigations of lithic, ceramic, metal, glass, and organic artifacts. The primary application remains that of provenance studies, in which archaeologists utilize INAA to ‘source’ artifacts based on their characteristic traceelement composition; once finished artifacts have been linked in their geographic point of origin, mechanisms of trade and exchange, political geography, and social controls over the circulation of goods can be modeled based on the distribution of artifacts from that source. Other applications of elemental analysis include authentication (verifying the antiquity of an artifact based on its trace-element composition), explorations of ancient technology (utilizing traceelement composition to infer technological processes, particularly those of metallurgy and the production of glass), and investigations of health and diet (examining consumption patterns and nutritional status of prehistoric populations from bone chemistry) (see Trace Element Analysis).

Basic Principles of INAA

Figure 1 The core of a research reactor provides a highintensity source of neutrons to activate samples. Irradiation facilities may be located directly in-core or in locations surrounding the core.

INAA is the sequence of events involving the irradiation of a material, the creation and subsequent decay of radioactive nuclei, and the detection and quantification of those decays. Irradiation is one type of nuclear reaction involving projectile particles and target nuclei (Box 2). Although there are a variety of different possible projectiles in nuclear reactions, in INAA the

Table 1 Advantages and disadvantages of INAA Advantages of INAA Scope Multielement Sensitivity Nuclear technique Ease of sample preparation Nondestructive

67 common and rare earth elements become radioactive when exposed to the neutron flux in a reactor; of these, over 50 can be identified and measured quite readily. By combining different irradiation and decay times, it is possible to measure a large number of elements from the same aliquot of sample; e.g., a typical analysis will provide data on 35–40 elements in a single sample. The method permits measurement of all detectable elements with great sensitivity; many elemental concentrations are measurable in parts per million (ppm) or parts per billion (ppb). INAA can determine element regardless of chemical or mineral form; some isotopic identifications are possible. Both liquid and solid materials can be irradiated without chemical pre-processing, thereby increasing efficiency and reducing concerns of contamination that may accompany acid digestion or chemical separations. Although a small amount of material is removed from the artifact for analysis, that sample can be reanalyzed multiple times; i.e., the sample is not destroyed during analysis.

Disadvantages of INAA Not widely available INAA generally requires a research nuclear reactor as a neutron source. Slow turn-around time Decay times of up to 4–5 weeks may be required prior to measuring long half-life elements. Bulk analysis INAA provides no information on within-sample variation or heterogeneity, such as that provided by the electron microprobe (EMPA) or LA-ICP-MS. Radioactive waste The irradiated sample material becomes radioactive waste, and cannot generally be returned to the researcher.

1672 NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS

projectiles are neutrons, and the target nuclei are the elements present in the archaeological sample. Typically, a small amount of material is removed from the artifact, encapsulated for irradiation, and exposed to the flow of neutrons generated by a nuclear reactor. During irradiation, the bombarding neutrons collide with nuclei present in the sample to form compound nuclei in an excited state (Figure 2). The excitation energy of a compound nucleus is due to the additional neutron, which upsets the balance between the repulsive electromagnetic forces separating protons and the attractive nuclear force which binds

Box 2 Nuclear Reactions In general terms, we can denote the processes of reaction as: aþA!B þbþQ where: a is the colliding particle, A is the target nucleus, B is the product nucleus, b is the resulting particle, and Q is the energy released. Nuclear reactions are usually written by the abbreviated convention: Aða; bÞB

protons and neutrons equally to each other. In response to this imbalance, the compound nucleus almost instantaneously de-excites to a more stable configuration through emission of one or more prompt g-rays (gp) or a charged particle. The resulting nucleus may be stable; more typically, however, the result is a still radioactive nucleus which then further de-excites emitting one or more delayed g-rays (gd), with a half-life ranging from less than a second to many years. It is these delayed g-rays that are utilized by INAA for elemental determinations. Both the ‘energy’ carried by the g-ray (measured in kiloelectron volts or keV), and the rate or ‘half-life’ of the decay are characteristic of a particular isotope (Figure 3). By collecting and measuring the full spectrum of g-rays emitted by a sample, it is possible to identify and precisely quantify the range of radioisotopes present in the sample, and thus to determine the elemental composition of the sample. As the name NAA suggests, the technique requires: (1) a source of neutrons, (2) a detailed knowledge of the reactions that occur when neutrons interact with target nuclei, and (3) instrumentation suitable for detecting, recording, and analyzing the resulting radioactive decays. Neutron Sources

A number of conservation conditions apply to any reaction equation, including:

. The mass number and the charge must balance on each side of the reaction arrow.

. The total energy before the reaction must equal the total energy after the reaction.

Neutron sources available for INAA include nuclear reactors, accelerators, and radio-isotopic neutron emitters, such as PuBe sources. Nuclear reactors are generally preferred, however, in that they offer the highest concentration of available neutrons (a parameter termed the ‘neutron flux’, measured in neutrons

Delayed g - ray gd

Prompt g - ray gp

Target nucleus

Radioactive nucleus Incident neutron Unstable compound nucleus

Figure 2 Schematic overview of neutron activation and subsequent decay.

Stable product nucleus

NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS 1673

100

100

1010

80

% of activity remaining

60

50

40

25 12.5

20 0

0

1

2 3 Half-lives

6.25

3.125

4

5

Figure 3 The half-life of a radioactive isotope is defined as the length of time required for one-half of the activity to decay away. After one half-life, 50% of the original activity remains; after two half-lives, only 25% of the original activity remains. Half-life is a distinguishing feature of radioisotopes, and can vary from less than 1 s to thousands of years.

per cm2 per second), and thus permit greater sensitivity in elemental analysis. Within the core of a nuclear reactor, the controlled fission chain reaction in the uranium fuel rods creates a stream of neutrons. The fission reaction is initiated by the absorption of a nuetron into a heavy nucleus of a 235U atom, which splits into several smaller nuclei and generates considerable heat. Each fission also produces an average of c. 2.5 extra nuetrons that can be used to induce further fissions, thereby propagating the fission chain reaction. Neutrons in excess of those needed to sustain the chain reaction can be utilized to irradiate sample materials. Water surrounding the reactor core serves to cool the system and to reflect neutrons back into the core, concentrating them near the fuel and irradiation facilities. An equally important role of the water, however, is that is moderates or slows down the neutrons, increasing the probability that they will collide with and be absorbed by a 235U nucleus and perpetuate the chain reaction. Moderating materials such as water and graphite also increase the probability that free neutrons will be slowed sufficiently to interact with nuclei of the target material as well. All reactors produce neutrons with a range of energies, depending on the degree of moderation that the neutrons have experienced (Figure 4). The resulting neutron energy spectrum is typically divided into three main components: 1. Fast or fission flux. Neutrons born of the 235 U fission, which still have much of their original energy, that is, their energy has not been moderated (> 0.5 MeV). 2. Intermediate or epithermal flux. Neutrons with intermediate energies (from 1 eV to 0.5 MeV) which have been partially slowed down through

Relative neutron flux

108

Thermal neutrons Epithermal neutrons

106 Fast or fission neutrons 104

102

10 10−5

10−3

10−1

10

103

105

107

Neutron energy (eV) Figure 4 The energy spectrum of neutrons produced by the fission of U235 atoms in a reactor core. As fast or fission neutrons are slowed to thermal equilibrium with the moderating medium, the probability that they will activate a nucleus in the target sample increases significantly.

collisions with surrounding material. Many isotopes experience resonance (and a correspondingly high probability of neutron absorption) for specific neutron energies in this region. 3. Slow or thermal. Low-energy neutrons (energies below 0.5 eV) that have been slowed down by (and lost energy to) the moderating medium of the reactor, and are in thermal equilibrium with atoms in the reactor’s moderator. These ‘slow’ neutrons still have an average velocity of 2200 m s
2; however, at low neutron energies, the reactions of very many nuclides obey the Maxwellian 1/V law, that is, the probability of neutron absorption is inversely proportional to the neutron velocity. Research reactors (which exist to generate neutrons for scientific purposes) range in size and power output, and hence in neutron flux. Small university research reactors with 100–200 kW power can generate thermal neutron fluxes on the order of 1010–1011 n cm
2 s
2. Larger research reactors of 10–70 MW thermal power provide neutron fluxes up to 1015 n cm
2 s
2. Irradiation facilities (locations where sample materials can be loaded for irradiation) may be placed in the center of the core, or peripheral to the core fuel assembly. In addition, most research reactors have pneumatic facilities (much like the send-and-receive-station at the drive-up window at the bank), for the rapid irradiation and retrieval of samples for the analysis of short halflife isotopes. Since flux varies considerably with distance from the core center, it is necessary to know the neutron energy spectrum for a specific irradiation location or facility at a given reactor.

1674 NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS Neutron Reactions

At the base of INAA is the sequence of events involving both nuclear reaction and nuclear decay. Nuclear reactions are changes induced in nuclei by interactions with projectile nuclei of sufficient kinetic energy. There are two fundamental types of reaction that occur during irradiation: neutron capture and transmutation. Neutron capture The most common type of nuclear reaction that occurs when target material is placed within a beam of neutrons is ‘neutron capture’ also designated as the (n, g) reaction. In this case, a low-energy or thermal neutron is absorbed by the nucleus, increasing the mass of the nucleus by 1 and creating a highly unstable compound nucleus. This excited nucleus almost immediately decays through release of a prompt g-ray (gp), hence the term (n,g) reaction: 1 0 nth

Aþ1 þA X þ gp þ Q Z X !Z

In some cases, the loss of a prompt gamma results in a stable isotope. More commonly, the resulting configuration remains in an excited state (indicated by the asterisk) and will undergo further radioactive decay. In the case of mono-isotopic aluminum, thermal neutron bombardment leads to the following reaction: 1 0n

 28 þ 27 13 Al ! 13 Al þ gp þ Q

or

28  27 13 Alðn; gÞ13 Al

Note that neutron capture results in an isotope of the same element, having increased the mass number from A to A þ 1, while Z remains unchanged. Transmutation The absorption of an epithermal or fast neutron, in contrast, creates a highly unstable compound nucleus which de-excites by the release of a charged particle, usually a proton, denoted the (n,p) reaction: 1 0 nf

A  1 þA Z X ! Z
1 X þ 1 p þ Q

Note that in this case, A remains the same, while Z decreases to Z
1. Less frequent transmutations involve the (n,a), (n,2n), and (n,t) reactions. For aluminum, the (n,p) reaction involving the addition of a neutron and the loss of a proton transmutes aluminum into magnesium, while in a similar reaction silicon is transformed into an isotope of aluminum: 27 27 13 Alðn; pÞ12 Mg

or

28 28  14 Siðn; pÞ13 Al

It is important to note that, depending on the available neutron energy spectrum, the same radio isotope can be produced from two different reactions on two

different stable isotopes. However, most research reactors have a ‘well-thermalized’ neutron spectrum where 90–95% of available neutrons are thermal neutrons, so that the (n,g) reaction is most common. In some cases (such as in the analysis of easily activated metal artifacts), an epithernal neutron activation may be desired; in these cases we can filter out thermal neutrons through the use of a cadmium foil, to increase the percentage of (n,p) reactions. Radioactive Decay

The corollary of neutron activation is radioactive decay, that is, the spontaneous transformation within an excited nucleus which results in a change of the N/Z ratio toward a more stable configuration. The most common decay mode following neutron activation involves b-decay (Figure 5). In this process, the active isotope emits a b-particle, which is physically equal to a high-speed electron. Two distinct forms of b-decay are possible: b– Disintegration Most of the isotopes formed by thermal-neutron capture show a ‘neutron excess’. The extra neutron can be annihilated by the reaction: n ! p þ b
þ n
whereby a neutron is transformed into a proton, and a negatron (b
) together with an antineutrino (n
) is emitted: Aþ1  X z

!

Aþ1 zþ1

X þ b
þ n
½þgd 

b+ Disintegration When a nuclear reaction yields as isotope with a proton excess, the excess proton may be transformed according to the reaction: p ! n þ bþ þ n whereby a proton is converted into a neutron, and a positron (bþ) together with a neutrino (n) is emitted. (Electron capture followed by X-ray emission is an alternative decay mode here.) Aþ1  Zþ1 X

!

Aþ1 Z

X þ bþ þ n½þgd 

In either case, some radioisotopes are ‘pure b-emitters’, that is, they decay directly to a stable state by the emission of b-particles only. These isotopes pose a problem for INAA: b-particles are not monoenergetic, rather the energy lost during decay is divided between the b-particle and the antineutrino. As a result, b-particles can carry a range of energies, and their energy is not characteristic of a particular isotope. Fortunately, most radioisotopes retain a small amount of excess energy which is given off as g-rays, which do carry an energy indicative of a specific decay and thus identify the parent isotope. For example, the thermal neutron irradiation of aluminum yields the following reaction and subsequent

NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS 1675 1 n 0

→

1 p 1

+

0 e −1

1 p 1

→

1 n 0

0 e +1

+

Neutrino Antineutrino

b+

b – Particle

Stable nucleus with one less neutron and one more proton

Stable nucleus with one less proton and one more neutron

b – Decay

b + Decay

Particle

Figure 5 Alternative forms of b-decay following activation. In b-decay, the extra neutron is converted to a proton, whereas in bþ decay, an excess proton is converted to a neutron. Both forms of b-decay generally produce one or more g-rays as well, but some isotopes are pure b-emitters.

*

28 decay: 28 13Al ! 14Si þ b þ n þ gd, with a characteristic gamma ray at 1779 keV and a half-life of 2.25 m. Similarly, the irradiation of sodium with thermal neutrons gives the following reaction and decay: *

24 24 11Na ! 12Mg þ b þ n þ gd and yields a peak at 1368 keV with a half-life of 15 h. g-Rays are high-energy photons, with energies generally higher than (but overlapping) those of X-rays in the electromagnetic spectrum. In contrast to b-particles, g-rays are monoenergetic, and their energy is completely defined by the energy levels between which they occur. Excited nuclear states represent quantized energy levels that can be visualized as concentric energy ‘shells’ somewhat in the same way that orbital electrons occupy discrete energy shells in Bohr’s model of the atom. During activation, the energy in the nucleus is excited to a higher state; as nuclei de-excite, they lose energy and fall to a lower energy state. The energies of g-rays emitted in these state-to-state transitions are completely defined by the energy levels (‘shells’) between which they occur, and thus are characteristic of a specific transition of a specific radioisotope. g-Emission frequently accompanies b-decay and carries away the energy of the excited levels. The de-excitation of a radioactive nucleus can occur by one g-ray between the excited and the ground level, or by a cascade of g-rays between several lower excited levels or by both. This last phenomenon is called

137Cs

60Co

(30.17 years) b1 (93.5%) b2 (6.5%)

661.7

(5.272 years) b 1 (99.88%) 2505.7 b2 g1 (0.12%) 1332.5

g

g2 0

137Ba

0 60Ni

Figure 6 Decay schemes for 137Cs and 60Co. For 137Cs, 6.5% of the b-decays decay directly to ground state, while the majority go to an excited nuclear state of 137Ba. The g-ray released from that excited state carries an energy of 661.7 keV. For 60Co, most b-decays (99.88%) drop to the 2505.7 keV level, and then deexcite to ground state in two stages. The result is two g-rays with energies corresponding to the difference in these energy states: g1 ¼ (2505.7
1332.5) ¼ 1173.2 keV; and g2 ¼ (1332.5
0) ¼ 1332.5 keV. These two g’s appear simultaneously and are said to be in cascade.

g-branching. Decay schemes are graphic illustrations of the way in which a particular radioisotope reaches stability or ground state (Figure 6). Detecting Gamma Rays

The instrumental detection of any particle or radiation depends upon the production of charged secondary particles which can be collected together to produce an electrical signal. Charged particles, for example, a- and b-particles, produce a signal within

1676 NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS

a detector by ionization and excitation of the detector materials directly. g-Ray photons are uncharged and consequently cannot do this. Instead, g-ray detection depends on intermediate interactions which transfer the g-ray energy to electrons within the detector material. These excited electrons have charge and lose their energy by ionization and excitation of the atoms of the detector medium giving rise to a measurable unit of electric current. Most g-ray detectors in use today are high-purity germanium (HPGe) detectors (Figure 7). At extremely low temperatures, germanium approximates a nearperfect semiconductor material, with no free carriers of electrical charges but with a low threshold energy, such that a very small amount of input energy will generate an electrical pulse. When cooled by liquid nitrogen (at 77 K), the average energy required to produce such a pulse in germanium is 2.98 eV. g-Rays penetrating the detector crystal create charged particles through the photoelectric effect. As a g-ray photon is absorbed by the detector material it will eject a photoelectron, generating a small pulse of electrical current with a voltage proportional to the energy lost by the incoming g-ray. The functions of the electronic system are to collect that charge, measure, its intensity, and store the information. In modern detector systems, electrical pulses are assigned (based on pulse height) to one of c. 16 000 channels which together represent the entire energy spectrum; the true energy of each channel (in keV) is determined through calibration against a known g-ray source. The accumulation of pulses or ‘counts’ in several adjacent channels creates a peak in the spectrum, representing the radioactive decay of a specific isotope.

g-Ray spectra are typically complex (Figure 8). The decay of any one radioisotope may generate dozens of peaks of varying intensities, and multielement characterization generally involves the analysis of many, closely spaced and sometimes overlapping g-peaks.

Nuclide Identification and Quantification As we have just seen, the different radioisotopes produced in activation are distinguished by their different g-ray energies and by their half-lives. Based on peak height or peak area (the number of pulses associated with a specific g-ray energy), the radioisotopes can also be analyzed quantitatively, permitting measurement of the concentration of the element(s) of interest. There are two primary approaches to quantifying elements based on their g-ray spectra: the parametric approach and the direct-comparison approach. The ‘parametric approach’ (also called the absolute, standardless, or K-zero approach) holds that if all the parameters controlling the induced activity are known, then the quantity of the elements present can be calculated directly from the measured radioactivity (Box 3). The necessary irradiation parameters include the neutron flux and its energy spectrum, the isotopic neutron-capture cross-section (a measure of the probability of reaction with a neutron of a given energy), the duration of irradiation, and the half-life and/or decay constant of the isotope in question. Measurement parameters include the length of decay prior to collecting a g-spectrum, the duration of the g-count, the detector efficiency (fraction of total gamma rays detected), possible interferences between g-peaks, and natural or background radiation in the

To electronics (amplifier, etc.) Germanium crystal detector

Dewar

Liquid nitrogen fill collar Preamplifier End cap

‘Cold-finger’ to liquid nitrogen

Figure 7 Exploded view of an HPGe gamma-ray detector. The ‘cold-finger’ connects the germanium crystal to a well of liquid nitrogen contained in an adjacent dewar, chilling the crystal so that it becomes a near-perfect semiconductor. Courtesy of AMETEK.

NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS 1677 12

Sc-46 Sc-46

11 10

Fe-59

Ce-141

Fe-59

Th (Pa-233) C-51

9

Co-60

Cs-134

Hf-181

Co-60

8 Eu-152

7 6 Peruvian vessel P-4

Sb-124

5 4 3 100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1000

1100

1200

1300

1400

1500

1600

1700

Energy (keV) Figure 8 Complex g-ray spectrum resulting from the irradiation of a ceramic vessel from Peru. Several of the isotopes are represented by multiple g-peaks.

Box 3 The Parametric Approach to INAA The parametric approach holds that if all the parameters governing the generation and subsequent decay of radioactivity can be specified, then the amount of an element present in an irradiated sample can be determined from the area of the associated peak in the g-spectrum. Generically, to quantify a specific isotope, the necessary parameters are as follows: Peak Areag ¼ Peak Areag m fi NA AW sth Fth I Fepi l ta td tc fg Eg

mfi NA ðsth fth þ fepi IÞð1
e
li ta Þðe
li td Þð1
e
li tc Þðfg Eg Þ AWl

¼ total peak area or counts associated with isotope of interest; ¼ sample mass of element in grams; ¼ fractional abundance of isotope; ¼ Avogadro’s number (6.02  1023 atom/mole); ¼ gram atomic weight (gm/mole) of element; ¼ spectrum-averaged thermal neutron reaction cross-section; ¼ thermal neutron flux during irradiation; ¼ epithermal neutron reaction cross-section; ¼ epithermal neutron flux during irradiation; ¼ decay constant for the nuclide (a function of half-life); ¼ irradiation or activation time; ¼ decay time (from end of irradiation to beginning of count); ¼ count time (for collection of gamma spectrum); ¼ frequency of decays at g energy (% of total due to branching); ¼ detector efficiency at a given g energy and geometry.

The number of nuclei of a given isotope in the sample is based on sample weight, isotopic abundance, and Avogadro’s number, which expresses the fact that one gram-atomic weight of any element contains the same number of atoms. During irradiation, the activity of a radioactive nuclide grows according to neutron flux (the number of available projectiles), the neutron capture cross-section (the probability of activation), and half-life of the isotope in question. Following irradiation, the activity of a radioactive nuclide decays according to the exponential law. During that decay interval, the sample is placed near a gamma detector, which detects a fraction of the total decays according to its relative efficiency.

1678 NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS

spectrum. A flux monitor (such as a small piece of high-purity gold wire) is included with each batch of samples in order to determine the flux for particular irradiation; other parameters are known through experimentation or system calibration. The K-zero method has become the standard for INAA in Europe. It offers great flexibility, in that in theory, it is possible to quantify any element with enough activity to generate a peak in the g-spectrum. An alternative approach, the ‘direct comparison’ or standard comparator method, is more common in the United States. The samples or unknowns are irradiated along with several replicates of standard reference materials or SRMs. These are materials for which elemental concentrations are known quite accurately through a variety of chemical analyses, and the ‘true’ composition is certified and published. In the United States, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the US Geological Survey (USGS) create, analyze, and certify SRMs, as do a number of nongovernment agencies. SRMs commonly used in the analysis of archaeological materials include NIST1633 (coal fly ash), NIST688 (basalt rock), NIST278 (obsidian), and NIST279 (brick clay). Under the direct comparison method, the samples and standards are irradiated under the same conditions (frequently simultaneously); thus, all the parameters determining the induced activity for a given isotope are held constant for both unknowns and standards, and so cancel out. Elemental concentrations in the unknowns are then determined through simple weight-ratio comparisons with the reference materials of known composition (Box 4). The direct comparison method is sometimes credited with being more precise than the parametric approach, as well as easier to implement, but the

analysis is limited to quantifying those elements present in the SRM. Adherents of this approach must also specify the element library or ‘known’ values used for a given SRM, as the original certified values may be revised over time. In either approach, is it common to include samples of a material of known composition to serve as a check on the accuracy and precision of results. These ‘check standards’ also serve as a basis for interlab calibration, ensuring that the results obtained by one INAA lab are comparable to those of other labs.

Irradiation Protocols and Procedures Analytical procedures differs by INAA lab and by the type of material being analyzed, but a full multielement suite typically involves two irradiations, one for isotopes with very short half-lives (on the order of minutes to hours), and a second one to build up activity in the longer half-life isotopes (on the order of days to years). To analyze for elements with short half-life isotopes (Al, Ca, Cu, Ti, V, K, Mn, Na), a sample will generally be irradiated for a brief period of time (e.g., 20 s to several minutes depending on available flux) using a pneumatic tube system to deliver the sample to an incore location. Following irradiation, multiple counts of gamma activity may be necessary, the first shortly after irradiation (for Al, Ca, Cu, Ti, and V), and a second count several hours later (for Ba, Dy, K, Mn, and Na) after the more active isotopes have died down. Because the isotopes are decaying rapidly, count times are relatively short (e.g., 500 s). The data for elements with intermediate and long half-life isotopes (including As, Ba, La, Lu, K, Na, Sm, U, Yb, Ce, Co, Cr, Cs, Eu, Fe, Hf, Nd, Rb, Sc, Sr, Ta, Tb, Th, Zn, Zr) require an extended irradiation

Box 4 The Direct Comparison Method of INAA If we hold all irradiation and measurement parameters constant (including irradiation time and location, flux, decay time, counting time, and position relative to detector), then the analytical problem in Box 3 simplifies to a direct comparison between the activity generated in our sample relative to the activity generated in a standard of known mass: Activitysample Masssample ¼ Activitystandard Massstandard where activity is measured in counts per second (cps) based on total peak area. For example, a 200 mg aliquot of the SRM NIST1633A containing 14.3% aluminum (28.6 mg) yields 72 cps at the 1779 keV line associated with aluminum. In contrast, our 200 mg sample of clay, irradiated and counted under identical conditions, yields 60 cps at the 1779 keV line. What is the aluminum content of the clay sample? 60 cps ?mg of Al ¼ 72 cps 28:6 mg of Al Solving this simple equation indicates that the clay sample contains 23.8 mg of aluminum, or 11.9% by weight. (Note that the analysis of other elements may require additional steps, such as the resolution of peak interferences.)

NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS 1679

(4–40 h is not uncommon). Following irradiation, two separate counts of g-activity are done of each sample, typically after a 1-week decay period for the intermediate isotopes, and again after 4 weeks for the longest half-life isotopes. Both of these counts may involve collection times of several hours per sample. The resulting data consist of a table of concentration values in percent (%), parts-per-million (ppm), or parts-per-billion (ppb), depending on the element, and associated measurement error. The ‘sensitivity’ (the least amount of an element detectable) of the analyses varies by element (Figure 9) and by the composition of the sample matrix. Similarly, both ‘accuracy’ (the closeness of a measure to its true value) and ‘precision’ (the closeness of repeated measurements of the same quantity) will vary by element, owing to differences in isotopic abundance, cross-section, gamma branching ratios, and matrix and spectral interferences. Coefficients of variation in the range of 1–3% are routine for the more precise elements (including many of the transition metals and lanthanide elements), but can be as high as 10–15% in the more poorly characterized elements. Preparing Samples for INAA

Archaeological materials of mineral origin should be cleaned of surface contamination, crushed to a powder (the consistency of table salt), and dried. For ceramic sherds, surface contamination and pigments (slips, glazes, and paints) are best removed through abrasion with a solid tungsten-carbide rotary file; a small piece of the clean sherd is then ground using a mortar and pestle and dried. For whole vessels and museum specimens, it is frequently possible to drill into the vessel and collect powdered material from the base or other discrete location. Lithic samples can be crushed in a

press or cut with a rock saw; fragments should be checked carefully for surface residue or metal contamination, and then cleaned with acetone or aqua regia, rinsed with de-ionized water, and dried. Powdered sample materials can be archived in liquid scintillation vials or other clean containers. Researchers should guard against cross-sample contamination by thoroughly cleaning all equipment between samples, and should control for other possible sources of contamination including chemical residue and dust within the sample preparation area. Skin oils and salts similarly can contaminate samples, but can be avoided by wearing examination gloves. Keep in mind that INAA is a bulk analysis method: any contamination included with the sample will appear as part of the artifact’s composition. Final encapsulation for irradiation is frequently done at the INAA lab proper. Typically, 200–500 mg of powdered material is placed in clean vials of highpurity polyethylene or fused silica (‘quartz’), and carefully weighed before the vials are heat-sealed. Additional sample material may be archieved for future analysis; however, the irradiated material will generally not be returned to the researcher due to the presence of long-lived radioisotopes and will ultimately be discarded as radioactive waste. Selecting a Lab

Many university and government research reactors have the facilities for INAA; however, smaller reactors may not generate a sufficient neutron flux to support sensitive analyses. In other instances, reactors may have the necessary irradiation facilities and detection equipment, but lack personnel with expertise in working with archaeological materials.

H

He

Li Be

B

Na Mg

Al Si P

K Ca Sc Ti

C

N

O

V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te Cs Ba *

F Ne

S Cl Ar

I

Xe

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn

Fr Ra ** *

La Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb` Dy Ho Er Tm Yb Lu

** Ac Th Ac Th 1 mg/g

100 ug/g

10 ug/g

1 ug/g

100 mg/g

10 ng/g

1 ng/g

1 pg/g

Figure 9 The sensitivity of INAA varies by element, from percent level to parts-per-trillion.

1680 NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS

Archaeologists interested in conducting INAA should preferably consult with an established archaeometry program and/or with labs having a demonstrated expertise in geochemical INAA with a reputation for quality results. Other considerations in selecting a lab include: the suite of elements included in a standard analysis, access to a comparative database of potential raw materials for your research area (critical for provenance determinations of lithics and clays), policies concerning publication of data and archiving samples, turn-around time, and cost (which currently ranges from c. $25 to >$100 USD per sample).

Applications of INAA Data INAA can provide high-quality data on elemental composition for a broad range of artifact types. The successful utilization of those data, however, requires a detailed understanding of what factors affect trace-element composition. Generically speaking, the chemical makeup of an artifact is influenced by a series of natural, cultural, and postdepositional factors. Depending on the question of interest and the material at hand, researchers need to evaluate the relative contribution of these factors, and the extent to which a given factor enhances or blurs the pattern under investigation. Most provenance studies, for example, utilize geographic variation in the natural composition of raw materials, such as obsidian flows or clay mines, to define the trace-element signature of a given source. These raw materials differ, however, in the distinctiveness of their original composition, and in the role of cultural modification and postdepositional contamination in obscuring that signature (Table 2). The problems and potentials raised

by several raw material types are introduced in the following. Analysis of Obsidian and Igneous Rock Artifacts

Fortunately for archaeologists, natural factors combine to give obsidian sources a highly distinctive chemical signature. Each obsidian flow represents a unique geologic event, distinct in time and space, representing the molten contents of one magma chamber. While the product of any one eruption is remarkable homogeneous in composition, multiple flows from the same volcano will be distinct, and differences between volcanoes are strong (Figure 10). Cultural utilization and subsequent discard of obsidian tools do not significantly alter the original chemical makeup of the raw material, although exposure and extreme heat may hydrate the surface of an artifact. As a result, each obsidian source has a unique signature that is easily characterized by INAA or other less sensitive techniques, such as XRF. An obsidian artifact can be easily matched to a specific source along a profile of elements (Figure 11) or through a series of bivariate plots. Comprehensive databases of obsidian composition have been developed for many regions, and the International Association for Obsidian Studies maintains an online catalog listing obsidian sources worldwide. In the Mediterranean and in Mesomerica, for example, these databases now support detailed examinations of how widely obsidian was traded, and the relative accessibility of obsidian from a given area through time. Related studies have utilized these data to model the nature of exchange systems, differentiating between down-the-line, reciprocity, simple market,

Table 2 Range of factors affecting trace-element composition Natural factors Obsidian artifacts Composition of parent material mineralogy of magma fractional crystallization Weathering of cooled rock Ceramic artifacts Parent material mineralogy clay fraction aplastic inclusions Clay formation processes erosion redeposition sorting of size fractions Weathering of clay horizons in situ loss of mobile cations accumulation of metals

Cultural factors

Post-depositional factors

None

Weathering of exposed surfaces surface hydration locally reduced element concentrations Exposure to high-temperature (burning)

Paste recipes mixing clays refining/sifting addition of temper Firing differential or incomplete loss of water and organics loss of volatile elements Vessel use absorption of contents

Contamination by ground water industrial pollutants Weathering of exposed surfaces

NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS 1681 50 Different flows within the Greater Sevkar source: Pokr Sevkar Metz Sevkar West

Metz Sevkar

Chalco area

200

30 Metz Satanakar

Chromium (ppm)

Lanthanum (ppm)

40

250

150

100 Huexotla area

20 50

Bazenk 10 1.3

1.5

1.9 1.7 Scandium (ppm)

2.1

2.3

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or complex market exchange. Finally, although obsidian is by far the easiest raw material to ‘source’, INAA has also enabled provenance determinations of other igneous rocks, such as basalt and andesite used for ground-stone tools, sculpture, or architecture. Analysis of Ceramics and Clay Artifacts

Ceramic clays, in contrast, are inherently more variable, making provenance determinations more complex. Generated through the weathering, erosion, and redeposition of alumina-rich rocks, clay composition frequently displays clinal variation over space, and stratigraphic variation through time. Further, ceramics are an extremely plastic medium; the natural composition of the clay may be modified during vessel manufacture and use (through sifting, refining or mixing raw

clays, the addition of temper, firing, or absorption of contents), and finally by exposure to groundwater contamination following discard, all of which affect the trace-element composition of the artifact. The range of variation within a sample of ceramics produced from the same clay source can be broad, with relatively weak distinctions between different clay sources (Figure 12). To establish ceramic provenance, multivariate statistics are required to match the chemistry of a ceramic vessel against a potential clay source based on 20–30 different elements simultaneously. Measures such as the Mahalanobis distance (D2) statistic assess the probability that an artifact belongs to a specific clay source based on element concentrations as well as on the degree of variability encountered within the source material. In this situation, the sensitive, multielement analysis provided by INAA becomes critical, so that measurement error does not contribute to the challenges in distinguishing between sources. Given the generally wide-spread availability of potential potting clays, few studies have undertaken comprehensive raw material surveys similar to those available for obsidian sources. Rather, ceramic provenance is established most readily by comparing pottery vessels against production debris (such as kiln wasters) from a known pottery producing center. Where finished ceramics must be tested against natural clays, it is frequently advisable to pair INAA with a visual analysis technique (e.g., optical mineralogy or electron microprobe analysis) to assess how components of the

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ceramic paste, such as a specific type of mineral temper, contribute to the bulk chemical composition. In spite of these challenges, regional and local databases have been developed for important ceramic types, including trade wares and higher status ‘elite’ wares. These studies have led to examinations of long-distance exchange of the ceramics themselves, and of important commodities such as wine, olive oil, and salt, based on ceramic shipping containers. Once ceramic vessel provenance is known, a host of other topics can be addressed as well, including the organization of market exchange, determining the presence of political borders impeding trade, monitoring the movements of people through migration or resettlement, establishing the geographic extent of a group’s historic territory based on the location of clays used in their traditional pottery, and assessing the use of imported pottery vessels as markers of power and authority, to name just a few. In addition to provenance determinations, traceelement data have also clarified aspects of ceramic technology, including providing insights into the selection and modification of raw materials. Similarly, compositional data have been employed to evaluate changes in the organization of ceramic production, as for example, when the appearance of a more standardized or uniform ceramic paste is interpreted as resulting from the transition from small scale domestic production to a more intensive, workshop level of production. Analysis of Limestone Artifacts

An important raw material for architecture and sculpture, limestone is formed through the deposition of fine mineral sediments and carbonate mud (from the disintegration of microorganisms such as green algae) in an ancient marine environment. These sediments were generally well-mixed and widely dispersed before deposition, such that spatial variation in limestone composition can be subtle over large areas. Conversely, limestone mined from the same locale may show significant stratigraphic variation in composition, due to changes in sedimentation and paleo-oceanic conditions over eons of time. Provenance determinations of limestone are possible, however, with sensitive, multielement analysis such as provided by INAA. For example, the Limestone Sculpture Provenance Project initiated by Brookhaven National Lab has characterized the main limestone quarries used for the production of Medieval sculpture and religious architecture in western Europe. Their INAA database currently comprises more than 2200 analyses based on sculptures in museum collections, quarries in Europe and the Nile Valley, as well as

from French monuments and British cathedrals. Compositional information in the database is used to group sculptures and relate them to quarry stone by multivariate statistical procedures. Because many sculptures in museum collections were removed from their original sites long ago, the compositional data allow art historians to answer questions concerning their geographic origin and attribution. Analysis of Metal Artifacts

Native metals, which include gold, copper, silver, and meteoric iron, occur in metallic state and can be worked as found. Where significant deposits of native metals are recovered – such as the copper nodes of Cyprus or the Great Lakes region of North America – trace-element contaminants in the metal can be utilized to determine artifact provenance. Most metals, however, occur in the mineral state as complex ores (which may not appear metallic at all) from which the metal must be extracted through smelting and refining. Further, as precious commodities, metal objects were frequently recycled, melted down, and recast. This extensive processing destroys any trace-element signature that might reflect provenance, such that other methods of determining source (such as lead isotope analysis for bronzes) must be used. The compositional data provided by INAA may still provide a wealth of information for metal artifacts, however. Trace-element studies can provide key insights into advances in metal-working technology (e.g., arsenic vs. lead–tin bronzes) as the type of ore utilized leaves tell-tale markers in the finished artifact. Trace-element analyses can also readily distinguish native versus smelted (imported) copper in the New World, as well as identify potential counterfeits of precious metal objects, based on relative purity. Other applications include assessing changes in monetary standards, the debasing of currencies, and the degree of political control over coinage and mints, from changes in the ratio of constituent metals.

Conclusion INAA has become a mainstay of archaeological materials science research, contributing to the characterization of many tens of thousands of artifacts in archaeological studies spanning the globe. The sensitivity, precision, and multielement capability of INAA make this method particularly useful in characterizing complex materials such as ceramics, in the analysis of materials with low element concentrations, or where the amount of material available for analysis is limited. Although provenance studies remain the most popular application of this method,

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the high-quality compositional data generated by INAA can be employed to address a broad range of economic, technological, and ecological issues, whose limits are set only by our ability to phrase the research questions. See also: Archaeometry; Chemical Analysis Techniques; Metals: Chemical Analysis; Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Trace Element Analysis; Vitreous Materials Analysis.

Gilmore G and Hemingway J (1995) Practical Gamma-Ray Spectrometry. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Glascock MD and Neff H (2003) Neutron activation analysis and provenance research in archaeology. Measurement Science and Technology 14: 1516–1526. Kruger P (1971) Principles of Activation Analysis. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Neff H and Glascock MD (1995) The state of nuclear archaeology in North America. Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry 196: 275–285. Potts PJ (1984) Neutron activation analysis. In: Potts PJ (ed.) A Handbook of Silicate Rock Analysis, pp. 399–439. New York: Chapman and Hall.

Further Reading

Relevant Websites

Alfassi ZB (1990) Activation Analysis, 2 vols. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Bishop RL and Blackman MJ (2002) Instrumental neutron activation analysis of archaeological ceramics: Scale and interpretation. Accounts of Chemical Research 35: 603–610.

http://www.limestonesculptureanalysis.com – Limestone Sculpture Provenance Project. http://www.peak.org – International Association for Obsidian Studies.

New Archaeology

See: Processual Archaeology.

NEW WORLD, PEOPLING OF Tom D Dillehay, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Clovis culture (also Llano culture) A prehistoric Native American culture that first appears in the archaeological record of North America around 11 000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age. Monte Verde an archaeological site in south-central Chile, which is suspected to date 12 500 years BP, making it one of the earliest inhabited sites in the Americas. Taima-Taima A Late Pleistocene Palaeo-Indian site in Venezuela.

Introduction For decades, scientists thought that the New World was first populated by migrants from Asia who wandered down the center of the hemisphere about 11 500 years ago. This conventional view of the first Americans dates to the early 1930s, when stone projectile points that were nearly identical were found at

archeological sites across the American Southwest and the Great Plains. They hinted at a single human migration and cultural tradition that scientists labeled Clovis, after an 11 200-year-old site near Clovis, New Mexico. Because no older sites were known to exist at that time in the Americas, archeologists thought that the Clovis people were the first to enter. These first people presumably walked across dry land, the Bering Land bridge, that connected modern Russia and Alaska at the end of the Ice Age, when sea levels were hundreds of feet lower than they are today. From there the earliest Americans would have traveled south through an ice-free corridor that some geologists believe existed in what are now the Yukon and Mackenzie river valleys, then along the eastern flank of the Canadian Rockies to the continental United States and on to Latin America. Much rethinking about the peopling of the Americas has taken place in recent years as a result of new discoveries in archaeology, historical linguistics, genetics, and palaeoanthropology. Several archaeological sites in both North America and South America have much potential to document earlier traces of human occupation. The eastern woodlands

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of the United States in particular has yielded more convincing evidence of sites ancestral to the widely documented 11 500-year-old Clovis culture, which is best known for its fluted or channeled projectile point and big-game hunting tradition. For instance, Meadowcroft Shelter in Pennsylvania, Cactus Hill in

Virginia, Topper Site in South Carolina, Little Salt Springs in Florida, and others suggest that people who were both hunters and gatherers may have lived in those areas as far back as 16 000 to 13 000 years ago (Figure 1). These possibilities are supportive of the 12 500-year occupation at Monte Verde and slightly

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later sites in South America, because if people first came into the Americas across the Bering Land bridge, we would expect earlier dates in North America. It also is likely that multiple early migrations took place and people moved along the edge of the ice sheets and coastlines from Siberia to Chile and from northern Europe into eastern North America. There also is discussion of possible influences, albeit presently very remote due to scarce evidence, from Africa and even Australia. Some palaeoanthropologists even believe that the oldest human skeletal material from Brazil more strongly affiliates with ancient Africans and Australians than with modern Asians and Native Americans. This hints at the presence of non-Mongoloid as well as Mongoloid populations in the Americas. Linguists and geneticists also postulate earlier migrations. Some linguists believe that a high diversity of languages among Native Americans could only have developed from an earlier human presence in the New World, perhaps as old as 20 000–30 000 years ago. Several geneticists present the same argument derived from gene diversity. Based on comparisons between certain genetic signatures shared by modern Native Americans and modern Siberians, it has been estimated that people from Siberia entered the New World at least 25 000 years ago. It also is likely that there were multiple migrations into the Americas, as suggested by several genetic studies. Specifically, geneticists have focused on two types of evidence extracted from the cells of modern Native Americans: mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down only through the mother to both son and daughter; and the Y chromosome, which is transmitted only from father to son. So far, the genetic evidence sends mixed signals about the number of migrations. Some scientists believe in a single migration; others postulate multiple ones. These new discoveries and ideas are not without their critics. Advent Clovis proponents who staunchly defend the Clovis-first theory still hold to the notion that the first Americans were mainly big-game hunters who entered the Americas from Siberia no earlier than 11 500 years ago. This theory has been dismissed and replaced by a pre-Clovis model in recent years, which believes that multiple migrations occurred long before 12 000 years ago by different populations equipped with a wide variety of technologies and subsisting on a broad spectrum of plants and animals and that pre-Clovis people gave birth to Clovis people. Yet Clovis proponents believe that notions of a pre-Clovis are based on questionable radiocarbon dates, human-made artifacts, geological context of sites, and interpretations of the evidence. Although these criticisms are often constructive and encourage

a more rigorous scientific approach to the study of the first Americans, they are often based on anecdotal tales and little scientific evidence. Despite continuing debates over the first peopling of the Americas and the ambiguity and paucity of some evidence, three issues are becoming clearer. Although the Clovis culture is the most widely distributed early record in North America and accounts for a major portion of the first chapter of human history in the north, it fails to explain early cultural and biological diversity in all of the Western Hemisphere, especially in South America. Second, Northern Hemisphere agendas about the peopling of the New World, which were developed in the historically better investigated regions of North America, have created unrealistic expectations or preconceptions about the significance of cultural developments in Central and South America. Despite the likely migration of early people from the north to the south, the archeological records of each continent must be viewed in their own terms and not be judged by preconceived notions often based on meager evidence or over-extended interpretations. Third, regardless of the quality of evidence, the first American populations seemed to have been a melting pot for a long time and possibly had their physical, genetic, and cultural roots in different areas at different times. It is certain that the first migrants into the Americas adapted to many different environments quickly, creating a mosaic of contemporary different types of hunters and gatherers (such as big-game hunters, general foragers who hunted and gathered plant foods, coastal fishermen) immediately after they entered new environments. Further, a key issue is not so much rapid migration but rapid social and economic change and a steep ‘learning curve’ across newly encountered environments – that is, the adaptation of technological, socioeconomic, and cognitive processes from one generation to another. As the different archaeological records of South America and parts of the eastern United States suggest, this was not a single unitary process, but many. While hunter and gatherer groups were settling into one new environment, others were probably just moving into neighboring ones for the first time. Others probably stayed for longer periods in more economically productive environments. All of these processes must have begun sometime before 12 000 years ago in order to produce the types of technological and economic diversity reflected in the archeological record by 11 000 years ago. The record left behind by these processes is characterized by variable site sizes, locations, functions, occupations, and artifacts that clearly reflect different adaptations to different environments.

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Climates, Environments, and Archaeological Records A major factor determining expanding and receding ice sheets in high-latitude regions of the world, changing sea levels, mammal extinction, regional biotic restructuring, and the movement of Late Pleistocene fauna, flora, and people was climatic change. Although glacial ice sheets greatly affected the routes available to early migrants in the higher latitudes of North America and the southern Andes, they had little to no affect on the middle sections of North America, all of Central America, and most of South America. During the terminal Pleistocene between 13 000 and 11 000 years ago, sea levels were 70 or more meters lower than at present, and the Pacific and Atlantic shorelines were considerably farther out than their present position. As the continental ice sheets melted and retreated, the oceans rose and inundated most of the continental shelves. Most any early archeological

sites along old shorelines have thus been destroyed or inundated by water. Widespread extinctions also accompanied these changes, particularly the loss of more than 30 genera of large mammals (for instance, ancient bison, horse, bear, mammoth, mastodont, and saber-tooth tiger). It is not known whether climatic change, human overkill (Figures 2 and 3), or both led to extinction. Major changes in vegetation communities also have taken place over the past 18 000–10 000 years. During the period from 13 000 to 10 000 years ago, when most American environments were likely inhabited by humans, temperatures were generally warmer in the summer and cooler in the winter, and rainfall was increasing. Patchy heterogeneous biotic zones were shifting to broadly homogenous mosaics with new and different mixtures of plant and animal species. In contrast to many interior regions, coastal areas displayed a combination of higher and more reliable and greater ecological

Figure 2 General view of the excavated springs at the Taima–Taima site in Venezuela where El Jobo projectile points were found with the bone remains of mastodont and other extinct animals. Courtesy of Alan Bryan and Ruth Gruhn.

Figure 3 Variety of El Jobo projectile points and other stone tools from the Taima–Taima site and other localities. Courtesy of Alan Bryan and Ruth Gruhn.

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diversity. These features may have been particularly desirable as cold and aridity reduced ecological productivity over much of the extreme northern and southern latitudes, but even in some of these areas human occupation may have been intermittently concentrated in short-lived warming episodes. In the high Andean mountains, for example, this is indicated by the pulsing of occupation at several caves and rockshelters and the abandonment of some areas. Taken together, the palaeoecological and archaeological evidence is still a long way from accurately transforming palaeoclimatic data into clear statements about the productivity, availability, and reliability of resources for human use. On both a regional and local level, climatic shifts must have greatly influenced human land and resource use patterns, resulting in differential patterns of archaeological site location, abandonment and occupation, and artifact type and use. Yet, climatic factors, such as ice sheets, rainfall, and aridity, are only one among several (e.g., technology, social alliances, perceived alternatives) influencing human decisions to occupy, or abandon, parts of a landscape and how the archaeological record of each landscape is preserved for scientific study. Certain regions of the Americas have received far better archaeological scrutiny than others. There are various reasons for this, often to do with logistics and conveniences and more commonly because of archaeological impact studies and changing scholarly research interests. For instance, densely populated parts of the United States have received greatest archaeological coverage, because they are where most modern development and impact studies occur and travel and access is easy. Some regions, such as the deserts of the American Southwest and the coastal plains of Peru and Chile, have a rich Late Pleistocene heritage and high archaeological visibility due to the absence of vegetation. On the other hand, there has been little archaeological field-work in the tropical

forests of South America before the 1970s. In this region archaeologists have prospected more areas around rivers and lakes and in caves and rockshelters where accessibility and visibility are easier.

Landscapes, Technologies, Economies, and Founding Populations Before reviewing general patterns in the archaeological records of North and South America, a comment on founding populations and demography is useful. Whether small founding populations were engaged in the initial dispersion or colonization (meaning more territorial) in the Americas, they surely had demographic requirements. That is, other people were a crucial resource that probably placed limits on how far away a group could venture from its nearest neighbor. Any small founding group probably needed to maintain networks of potential mates, social interaction, and exchange of information on foods, and other resources. Such social ties would help to explain the general uniformity of technology across vast areas of a continent, such as the similarities in Clovis and later projectile points in North America and in the many different stone tool industries in many parts of South America (Figure 4). One of the most important factors determining the long-term and long-distance movement of founding populations across different landscapes was their ability to adapt their technologies and social organizations to the exploitation of new food sources and yet maintain social ties with neighboring or splinter groups. Any constraints on this movement were likely to be greatest where resources were limited. In homogenous, relatively static environments such as the boreal forests of high latitude zones in North America, the grasslands of the Great Plains in North America, the Pampa and Patagonia grasslands of South America (Figure 5), and the coasts in both continents, where

Figure 4 General view of the excavated Tibito´ site in Colombia showing a large boulder surrounded by stone tools and the bone remains of extinct animals.

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Figure 5 General view of Panualauca Cave in the high grasslands of central Peru where early human artifacts were associated with the bone remains of palaeocamelids.

resources were patchy and probably less reliable in time and space, groups probably had little choice but to move more often. The temperate deciduous forests of the Eastern United States and parts of the Andes, Brazil, and Venezuela, which were more heterogeneous and generally richer in foods, may have supported more different types of economies, and groups may have stayed longer in some areas. Temperate and tropical forests, in particular, probably gave people many subsistence options and the opportunity to reside longer, but perhaps less incentive to specialize or concentrate on particular resources. Further, because people likely would have spent more time exploring these areas and getting to know the variety of resources available, these longer stays may have sparked more social cohesion and perhaps more complexity. Greater social and economic complexity generally is inferred from the appearance of new kinds of archeological sites, such as burials and rock art, the adoption of new stone technologies, the exploitation and manipulation of new food types, including domesticated plants, and an increase in the exchange of products over long distances. There is archaeological evidence that by 12 000 to 11 000 years ago people had colonized most broad environments in the Americas, such as deciduous forests, coasts, tropical rain forests, cold steppe and shrub grasslands, and deserts. With the exception of eastern Beringia (Alaska and Yukon territory) in the far northwest, firm evidence for early colonization of the northern boreal forests and tundra of modern Canada is still lacking, although promising evidence comes from the site of Bluefish Caves where modified bones suggest early human habitation before 12 000 years ago. Another series of early sites is found in the Nenana Valley of Alaska that date between

11 500 and 11 000 years ago and reveal stone tool technologies remotely similar to those in eastern Siberia. Thus, it appears that by at least 11 500 years ago, people with similar tool technologies moved from far eastern Russia to Beringia and thus became some of the first people to have entered the New World. It is not known whether these people migrated farther south through ice-free corridors or followed the Pacific coastline. Further, the stone tool industries from these areas appear to have little resemblance to Clovis stone tools. By 11 200 years ago, there is widespread evidence of the Clovis culture throughout the middle sections of North America and in parts of northern Mexico. Clovis and other point traditions are widely distributed in the eastern United States and Canada at the Vail, Bull Brook, Shoop, Shawnee-Minisink, Debert, and other sites. In west-central North America, along the eastern slopes of the Rockies and on the southern plains, Clovis sites are common. Studies in the Plains and Southwest deserts reveal parallel or sequential point traditions associated with hunting economies, especially biggame (mammoth, giant ground sloth) in open terrain. These also include Clovis followed by several regional point styles such as Folsom, Midland, Goshen, and Plainview. Some of the earliest Clovis sites are found in the least expected places, for instance, the southeastern United States where several localities (Little Salt Springs, Thunderbird, Topper) date earlier than those in the west and southwest United States. In addition, Clovis is much less frequent in the far western United States where nonfluted points are more prevalent and associated with varying hunting and gathering economies. Although generally perceived as a big-game hunting tradition, not all Clovis and other early sites support this notion. Better preserved than plants, faunal remains suggest that any idea of a single Late

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Pleistocene economy is unrealistic. For instance, at Meadowcroft Shelter and other early woodland sites in eastern North America, both Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene (c. 11 500–8000 years ago) faunas are dominated by small and medium-sized animals, perhaps reflecting greater environmental stability in the eastern woodlands and earlier extinction of large mammals. If so, then human populations may also have been better able to maintain themselves in the woodland habitats of the Eastern United States than elsewhere. In fact, some archaeologists have proposed that rather than being specialized big-game hunters, Clovis and later point-makers were broad-spectrum hunters and gatherers, particularly in the eastern woodlands and southern areas where the environment was more diversified than northern latitudes. In contrast to North America, the fluted point tradition played a minor and late role in the peopling of South America. Instead, a wide variety of fluted and nonfluted point industries associated with broad-spectrum economies are found in many regions from at least 12 500 to 11 000 years ago. In the Andes and in the eastern tropical lowlands and southern grasslands, many caves and rockshelters were occupied intermittently from at least 11 800 to 11 000 years ago, especially in eastern and central Brazil and in extreme southern Patagonia. It is not known whether this pulsing of rockshelter occupations is simply an artifact of climatic change or simply human patterns of social and economic change. Strong similarities in the dates of occupation pulses as far apart as 1000 km, however, implicate climatic changes operating on subcontinental scales. The surviving evidence of recently discovered human occupation of the central Amazon basin and other forested areas where archaeological exploration and visibility are minimal may be no more than a small sample of the populations that once concentrated there and elsewhere. In summarizing the evidence from South America, it is clear that early technological and economic developments show cultural diversity at the outset of human entry and the establishment of ever increasingly distinct regional economic combinations along the coasts and in highland Andean valleys. Although the current archaeological evidence is still too scanty to discern the specifics of these developments in all environments, two general transitions can be inferred. The first was a change in adaptive strategies and organizational abilities during and at the end of the Pleistocene period. This transition signifies the rapidly increasing ability of people to recognize the environmental potentials that existed in coastal wetlands, desert oases, intermontane valleys, lowland river valleys, and high altitude grasslands, to communicate these potentials to others and to take

advantage of them, and to develop the social organization required to exploit resources in a wider variety of compressed environments. Second, early people probably learned many hunting and gathering techniques, and on occasion employed them to domesticate some plants (i.e., squash, beans, chili peppers, and chenopodium) and to begin a semisedentary or subterritorial lifestyle in some areas by at least 10 000 to 9000 years ago. With the exception of only two sites in South America – Taima–Taima in Venezuela and Tagua–Tagua in Chile – there is no hard evidence to show that big-game hunting was the mainstay of the earliest known South Americans. Instead, most early South Americans employed a broad-spectrum economy that was associated with many different tool technologies and reduced territorialism. Another dimension of Late Pleistocene subsistence throughout the Americas remains difficult to investigate though the evidence of older sites suggests that marine foods also were exploited. Changes in sea-level and occupation hiatuses at several coastal sites in Peru (Quebrada Tacahuay, Quebrada Jaguay, Quebrada de los Burros) and Chile (Huentelafquen, Quebrada de Las Conchas) during the 11 000–10 000-year period mean that earlier marine-oriented sites may exist on submerged continental shelves. Freshwater and brackish fish also were taken in northern Peruvian Paijan sites dated around 10 500 years ago and several early sites along rivers in eastern Brazil (Figure 6). Similar evidence is being retrieved from a few sites along the submerged shelves of Florida and Washington states. These patterns eventually may help to explain the rise of later more socially and economically complex societies in some areas of Mexico and South America where we know that large nomadic hunter-gatherer bands eventually settled down to establish productive food economies and dynamic social systems by at least 9000 years ago. Not known are the conditioning factors that brought about these changes in regional environmental settings. The archaeological evidence for these changes is weak in most areas. Only in the past 20 years have we come to realize how widespread broad-spectrum economies were in the Late Pleistocene of the eastern woodlands of the United States and especially along the Pacific coast, lowland tropical forests, and northern Andean regions of South America. This is probably a result of increased archaeological research and better archaeological recovery techniques (i.e., ground penetrating radar to find buried sites, extraction of plant remains from archaeological sediments) to find new foods which have opened the minds of archaeologists to the idea that not all early people were big-game hunters but exploited a wide variety of food types in many different

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Figure 6 General view of the Pedra Furada site in eastern Brazil where Late Pleistocene human artifacts were excavated.

Figure 7 General view of the Monte Verde site where an early human campsite was excavated in southern Chile.

Figure 8 View of the remains of a wishbone-shaped hut structure excavated at Monte Verde.

environments. Examples of different foods are the thousands of snails recovered from Late Pleistocene Paijan sites on the north coast of Peru; the variety of seeds, nuts, soft leafy plants, tubers, and seaweeds

recovered from floors of residential huts at Monte Verde (Figures 7 and 8); and the abundant remains of palm nuts and other plant types found at several caves and rockshelters in eastern Brazil. Despite these kinds

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of foods, other groups developed economic practices that often relied on a specific species, for instance, hunting high quantities of bison on the Great Plains of North America and camelids (guanaco) or a few other species on the high puna or tundra of the Andes. If many Late Pleistocene populations were not as big-game focused as earlier interpretations suggested, the impression of long-distance movement over the landscape is suggested in many areas of the Americas by the infrequency of sites, which are often many kilometers apart. The absence or infrequency of sites, of course, also may represent a sampling bias, with the surviving sample of sites located and studied by archaeologists today probably representing no more than a fraction of the original settlements. As noted earlier, the constant destruction of sites by modern construction or by erosion and other natural forces make it difficult to find sites in many places. The strongest evidence for the movement of early people across the landscape and the exchange of goods between them primarily comes from Clovis and Folsom sites on the Great Plains of North America, where some of the raw material used to make projectile points and other stone tools often traveled hundreds of kilometers to reach a site. The presence of exotic stone material in sites offers some support for great human mobility, or the alternative possibility that people developed geographically more extensive exchange and alliance networks as a means of coping with more unproductive environments where quality resources were scare or unavailable. Long-ranging contacts between Late Pleistocene populations also may be indicated by the general uniformity of the Clovis and other early point technologies across North America and to a lesser extent across South America. The scale and intensity with which similar point types moved across the Americas decreased significantly after 10 000 years ago, when people became less

mobile and more territorially settled into regional environments.

Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Connections Both North and South American archaeology have long shown an interest in comparing Pleistocene and Holocene social and economic strategies. Traditionally, archaeologists have treated the Late Pleistocene period as a separate historical and cultural phenomenon, not paying much attention to the fact that this was the epoch that planted the initial seeds for the social and cultural foundations of subsequent Holocene societies. Studies have contrasted mobile, nonterritorial Late Pleistocene groups who primarily hunted territorial grazers (e.g., mammoth, mastoon, bison, and paleocamelids) with more semisedentary or territorial Holocene communities whose subsistence needs were met from a combination of plants, shellfish, and large and small game. Recent studies suggest that the importance of plant foods in Late Pleistocene subsistence has been underplayed. Supporting empirical evidence for the importance of plants comes from the well-preserved site of Monte Verde (Figures 9 and 10) in the forests of southern Chile, as well as from the wide range of plant food remains known from several sites in the Eastern United States and in Brazil, Peru, and Colombia. Exploitation of plant foods may have been facilitated by the innovation of new technologies, such as digging-sticks to extract edible roots and tubers. Grinding stones for processing hard foods such as nuts and some fruits also are more commonly excavated in early sites, especially in the forested United States (Thunderbird, Gault, Dust Cave) and the forested lowlands of South America (Pena Roja, Monte Alegre, Santana do Riacho, Lapa Verhelma IV).

Figure 9 View of the wood foundations of a long tent-like structure at Monte Verde.

1692 NEW WORLD, PEOPLING OF

Figure 10 Human footprint preserved near the tent-like structure at Monte Verde.

In recent years, more archaeologists are beginning to examine the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene periods from a different perspective; they are considering how later social developments were predicated on the cultural diversity (mainly technology) and broad-spectrum economies of earlier hunters and gatherers. The rapid efficient adaptation of regional Late Pleistocene and subsequent Early Holocene populations to diverse environments may partially explain why some forms of incipient social and economic complexity appeared earlier in parts of Mexico and South America than in North America. For instance, squash and possibly other cultigens may have appeared as early as 10 000 to 9000 years ago at sites in Ecuador and Peru, while pottery production was established by at least 5500 years ago in parts of Colombia, Brazil, and Ecuador, human mummification by 7000 years ago in northern Chile, monumental architecture by 6500 years ago in the Lower Mississippi Valley, and by 5500 years ago in Ecuador and Peru, and so forth. What triggered these early cultural developments in diverse environments is not well understood. It might relate to advanced hunter

and gatherer societies intensifying broad-spectrum diets in lush environments such as patchy forests and low coastal wetlands, in highly compacted ecotones along the flanks of the central highlands of Mexico and the Andes farther south, and in the confluences of large river systems such as the Mississippi and Amazon. In each of these areas there is growing archaeological evidence to suggest that different social and historical processes were acting in terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene times to form early food producing and more territorial, if not permanently settled, groups in some areas. Social and economic intensification are seen to be causally interlinked in parts of the Eastern United States, Mexico, and South America. Increased manipulation or control of the environment, combined with improvements in technologies designed to extract more food resources, probably led to increases in human population size and density and to the formation of new territorial and alliance systems between different groups, especially along the interior rivers of the eastern forests of the United States and along the desert coasts and adjacent western slopes of the Andes in Peru and north Chile where culturally complex societies developed in the Early to Middle Holocene period (9000–7000 years ago). The appearance of new technologies (facilities for storing and preserving food, grinding stones, permanent domestic structures) during this period in these regions suggests increased food productivity and more localized territorialism. America north of Mexico and high-latitude regions of the extreme Southern Hemisphere presently do not show the same early complexity of plant domestication, technological diversity, and population density that characterizes many highland and lowland areas in Central and South America. (An exception is early mound cultures dating as far back as 7000 to 6000 years ago along parts of the lower Mississippi River, albeit cultivars are absent.) The reason is surely not that northern and extreme southern populations were cognitively unable to undertake the kinds of developments observed in the archeological records of more complex intervening populations, but that they chose to deploy them rarely or infrequently. The former populations may not have been, as the anthropologist Martin Wobst has noted for Europe and other regions of the world where less complex hunters and gatherers existed in Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene times, ‘situationally appropriate’, in part because environmental conditions did not demand such high-cost responses, or, it might be that they had narrower, single-species-focused hunting strategies, like the Clovis mammoth hunters in the

NEW WORLD, PEOPLING OF 1693

American southwest. More conservative, but arguably more stable, adaptations such as those on the north coast of Peru and in parts of the southeastern United States and of the tropical lowlands of South America, for instance, could thus maintain themselves. Until scientists carry out more research on these and other topics, we will not better understand the uneven early cultural developments that took place across the Americas and the lingering influences that they had on later cultures. One aspect of early cultures that is poorly understood is social organization. Several archaeologists believe that the shift from hunters and gatherers to agriculturalists and herders in many parts of the world was sparked not only by new technological innovations and the exploitation of new plant foods but also by major changes in the social organization of families and household groups. For early mobile or semisedentary hunters and gatherers, the band model of social organization, with its sharing of resources among members, was probably the most viable way to survive as groups moved and settled into unknown territories. The mobility of bands across unpopulated terrain allowed them to adapt to environmental challenges and to social conflicts. What mobility could not provide in the way of resources, exchange with neighbors could. But eventually some groups settled down, became more socially and culturally complex, and developed into agriculturalists and/or herders. Not until the onset of a sedentary lifeway in parts of the Americas during the Early to Middle Holocene period, can we observe a dramatic reorganization of social and economic relations between neighboring groups. These changes must have been accompanied by changes in the nuclear family and the aggregation of new and larger communities made up of different types of families and social groups that served as the primary units of production and reproduction. These are the transformations archaeologists must begin to identify in order to better understand the ways that laid the foundations for subsequent developments.

Epilog This brief essay has attempted as much to point out major historical developments in the first peopling of the Americas as some of the limitations of our thoughts and to suggest different avenues of research on early human migration and colonization. Although not a primary theme here, little attention has been given to the concrete steps we need to take toward more profitable future research. It thus seems fitting that this essay should end in emphasizing, not the inferences to which the current evidence seems to

point, but rather ways to improve that evidence and our interpretation of it. One way to improve it is to enlarge and fill out the archaeological record in traditional terms of finding, excavating, dating, and publishing more sites. The relatively few sites and archaeological patterns mentioned in this article, and fewer still which are fully published, are an obvious handicap. Second, reliable dating methods need to be more widely applied to sites if we are to identify regional trends and processes of migration and colonization with greater precision. Third, systematic attention must be applied to faunal, floral, settlement, and other data, which in turn must be integrated with other data sets (genetics, human skeletal, geological, linguistic) in order to study more closely the changing relationships between independent and dependent climatic and cultural variables. Fourth, specialists need to model their data and interpretations more in terms of process-dependent and context-dependent culture change over long periods of time vast spaces in the Americas. In order to test the kinds of relationships discussed above, many more sites require investigation for the purpose of identifying the dynamics of big and little culture traditions. Finally, relatively new methods that have been successfully applied elsewhere to relate artifact differences and similarities to the cultures producing them should be brought to bear on the problems discussed here. See also: Americas, South: Early Cultures of the Central

Andes; Extinctions of Big Game; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading Adovasio J (2002) The First Americans, New York: Random House. Anderson DG and Sassaman K (eds.) (1996) The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Bryan AL (1973) Paleoenvironments and cultural diversity in Late Pleistocene South America. Quaternary Research 3: 237–256. Dillehay DT (1999) Monte Verde: A Late Pleistocene Settlement in Chile, Volume 2: The Archaeological Context and Interpretation. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press. Dillehay TD (2000) The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory. New York: Basic Books. Dixon J (1999) Bones, Boats and Bison. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Meltzer D (2004) Peopling of North America. Developments in Quaternary Science 1: 539–563. Nichols J (2002) The first American languages. In: Jablonski N (ed.) Memoirs of the California Academy of Science Number 27: The First Americans, The Pleistocene Colonization of the New World, pp. 273–293. San Francisco: University of California Press. Schurr T (2004) Molecular genetic diversity in Siberians and native Americans suggests an early colonization of the New World. In: Madsen D (ed.) Entering America: Northeast Asia and Beringia Before the Last Glacial Maximum. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

1694 NEW WORLD, PEOPLING OF Stanford D and Bradley B (2002) ‘Ocean Trails and Prairie Paths: Thoughts on the Origins of Clovis.’ In: Jablonski N (ed.) Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences Number 27: The First Americans, The Pleistocene Colonization of the New World, pp. 255–272. San Francisco: University of California Press.

Steele G and Powell J (2002) ‘Facing the past: A view of the North American human fossil record’. In: Jablonski N (ed.) Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences Number 27: The First Americans, The Pleistocene Colonization of the New World, pp. 93–122. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences.

O OBSIDIAN HYDRATION DATING Peter J Sheppard, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary PIXE-PIGME Proton-induced X-ray emission and protoninduced gamma ray emission are methods of determining the elemental composition of material surfaces by using a proton beam to excite atoms which emit X-rays or gamma rays which are characteristic of the atom. This method is commonly used in the nondestructive geochemical characterization of obsidian. INAA Instrumental neutron activation analysis is a method of elemental analysis routinely used to determine major and trace element compositions of archaeological materials. The method commonly employs neutron radiation from a nuclear reactor to create isotopes of the elements to be measured. The decay of radioactive isotopes allows the detection and quantification of the elements in the sample. anisotropic Materials which have different chemical and electrical properties in different directions are anisotropic while those which do not are isotropic. Anisotropic crystals break a ray of light into two rays. This birefringence reflects the crystal structure.

Introduction The association between the date and the event being dated is of particular importance in dating. Dating the manufacturing event of an artifact may require different methods than determining its date of last use or deposition in the archaeological record. Often archaeologists have poor control over the association between the actual item dated and the event they wish to date. It is for this reason that the development, in the 1960s, of obsidian hydration dating (OHD) was greeted with such interest, as it promised to date actual artifacts and the behavior associated with their manufacture and to provide access to abundant, inexpensive dates on obsidian, a generally well-preserved material. Obsidian

Obsidian is a form of volcanic glass produced by rhyolitic volcanism. Rhyolite is an igneous rock with

silica content in excess of 65% SiO2. Obsidian is formed when rhyolitic magma with a low gas and water content quickly cools to form a solid without the time for a crystalline phase to develop, creating an isotropic glass. All glasses are unstable and eventually devitrify. Obsidian is under-saturated with water and over time equilibrium is restored by the slow diffusion of water into the obsidian to create the hydrated material called perlite. It is this time-dependent hydration process that forms the basis of OHD. Although obsidian is a comparatively rare material, its excellent flaking properties have resulted in it being widely distributed. Obsidian is found along the Ring of Fire which encircles the Pacific (west coast of the Americas [including Easter Island], Japan, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, western Tonga, and New Zealand), the eastern Mediterranean, Anatolia, and the East African Rift Valley. Obsidian may be common in archaeological sites and in New Zealand, sites near major sources may contain many hundreds of kilos of obsidian flakes. Trade in obsidian is common. Therefore, although obsidian dating might be considered to have limited geographical applicability, the wide distribution of this exotic material makes it useful as a dating material in many areas of the world. History of OHD

In 1955 Ross and Smith noted a sharp boundary between water-rich perlite and the glassy obsidian which made up the interior of a sample. Friedman and Smith in 1960 using 600 obsidian artifacts from around the world demonstrated that microscopic measurement, of the thickness of the perlite layer had the potential for dating archaeological sites where flaked obsidian had been found. The thickness of the perlite was related to the amount of time since the production of the fresh-flaked surface. Typically this hydrated layer was some microns thick in archaeological samples (e.g., 0.5–10 mm) and was able to be measured rapidly with comparatively simple equipment, promising the rapid production of large numbers of dates from sites containing abundant obsidian flakes. OHD was widely adopted in the American

1696 OBSIDIAN HYDRATION DATING

Great Basin, California, and Central America, and by 1988, the University of California Dating Laboratory produced a catalog of over 13 000 readings. Since its early promise, it has become apparent that application of the method requires greater control over a variety of factors such as obsidian composition, soil temperature, and measurement protocols leading some investigators in the 1990s to doubt its general applicability as a dating method. Theory

When a new surface is produced on a piece of obsidian, water immediately begins to be absorbed into the body of the glass, producing a hydrated layer with a higher refractive index and density than the interior. For most archaeological purposes we can assume a constant relative humidity and sufficient water to generate hydration. Friedman and Smith created dates by cutting petrological thin-sections from each artifact – in effect taking a thin slice (c. 30–60 mm thick) which showed, under a transmitted light microscope, a cross-section of the artifact containing the current surface and the transition from the outer hydrated surface layer into the unaltered body of the artifact. They determined that the thickness of the hydrated layer X was related to the square root of time T by a rate constant k. X ¼ kt0:5

ð1Þ

The unknown hydration rate (k) was determined by radiocarbon dating organics associated with obsidian at sites and then estimating a rate which was applied to artifacts of unknown age from other contexts in the same climatic zone (see Carbon-14 Dating). The use of broad climatic zones was an attempt to account for the effect of temperature on this chemical reaction. At higher temperatures the rate of hydration would be expected to increase. Unfortunately the use of such broad climatic zones as proxies for site soil temperatures is too imprecise an estimate. In addition, although Friedman and Smith’s work reported that variation in the composition of obsidian could affect the rate constant k, it did not take enough account of such variation. In subsequent studies Friedman and Smith investigated the effect of temperature on hydration rate under experimental conditions where they hydrated obsidian at elevated temperatures from 95 to 245
C. Their work demonstrated that the Arrhenius equation approximated the relationship of temperature to the hydration rate: K ¼ A expE=RT

ð2Þ

In this formula K is the rate constant for a particular obsidian while T is absolute temperature of the reaction (degrees Kelvin), R the universal gas constant, E the activation energy, and the pre-exponential A is related to the physical and chemical characteristics of the particular obsidian. Of particular importance in this formula is the relationship between the activation energy and temperature, as it can be shown that given the average known activation energy of obsidian, small changes in temperature can lead to significant changes in age (e.g., 1
C T producing 10% difference in age). This indicates the importance of an accurate estimate of the hydration temperature history. In this equation, then, the terms E and A are specific to the artifact and the value T must be estimated by some means. In order to determine the length of time an artifact has been hydrating, we need to know the hydration depth, something about the artifact specific chemistry, and environmental temperature. Method

Determining the hydration rate Obsidians with different chemical compositions hydrate at different rates. Although a variety of correlations have been proposed between rate and chemistry, current research demonstrates a good relationship between compositional (connate) water content and hydration rate. Measurement of the water content can be conducted using infrared spectroscopy; however, it has been shown that there is a good correlation between water content and obsidian density. Density can be measured using simple laboratory equipment although care must be taken to ensure very precise measurements and reduce the errors associated with vesicles and other physical variation in the glass. This method seems particularly useful for the ‘drier’ obsidians of the southwest Pacific. Other methods of determining hydration rates have been used. The earliest method simply dated contexts containing obsidian samples, using radiocarbon dating or dendrochronology (see Dendrochronology), and then developed a time versus hydration depth relationship. Problems with this included the accuracy of the dates and their association with the artifacts and the assumption that all the samples had the same geochemistry and hydration temperature history. An advance on this was the use of experimental hydration of obsidian from specific sources to derive rates; however, the fact that hydration proceeds very slowly means the time needed to make a measurable hydration rim might well exceed an experimenter’s lifetime. To speed up the process the experiments now are generally made in pressure vessels at higher temperatures and the

OBSIDIAN HYDRATION DATING 1697

resulting curve extrapolated to low temperatures comparable to those experienced by artifacts to be dated. A fundamental assumption here is that these hightemperature results can be reasonably extrapolated downward. A more general problem is the creation of specific rates for obsidian ‘sources’ or varieties. It may be possible to determine a rate or rate range for an obsidian variety, but it is clearly better to determine a specific rate for each sample to be dated. If individual rates are not determined then it is imperative that samples be assigned to ‘sources’ or obsidian classes with common geochemistry. This most often will require the use of methods of geochemical characterization (e.g., PIXE-PIGME, XRF, or INAA) (see Neutron Activation Analysis). Temperature

Gray scale intensity

Estimating the temperature at which the hydration reaction has occurred is a potential source of considerable error. Understanding this variable is also complicated by the fact that the temperature may have changed over time as the artifact is gradually buried or redeposited in fill. Modern research has shown that even site specific micro-climatic variation can be important. Some effort has gone into soil temperature modeling but most research depends on the use of analog thermal cells which are placed in the archaeological site for a year to monitor EHT. The amount of water diffusing into these cells correlates with the EHT although the rate may not be completely analogous with obsidian hydration. Of course the problem of estimating the overall temperature history of the artifact remains. The best samples will be those whose context has not changed at all since deposition (i.e., constant depth below surface). We are still left, however, with the potential effect of unknown climate and microclimate (e.g., change in ground cover) change over time. 190 185 180 175 170 165 160 155 150 145 140

Measuring the hydration rim Diffusion of water into glass changes the optical properties of the hydrated zone making it visible. The width of the band from the artifact surface to the diffusion front is the hydration band thickness. Most measurements of the hydration depth have been made on thin-sections (30–60 mm thick) by optical means. Measurement is normally made using oil immersion objectives at 1000 magnification with the assistance of specialized eyepieces designed for microscopic measurement. The best possible resolution of these optical devices in visible light is c. 0.2 mm. Recently computer image analysis (Figure 1), as developed by Ambrose and refined by Jones, has allowed finer resolution and the objective definition of the diffusion front. This method allows integration of measurement over the width of the captured hydration band and facilitates rapid repeat measurements and statistical analysis of stored images. Computer image analysis is still dependent on optical imaging and the production of a thin section which is destructive of the artifact. An ideal method would be nondestructive and simply involve some instrument-based objective measurement of a property of the unaltered sample which can be correlated with hydration depth. A variety of methods (e.g., secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS)) have been tried over the years with most involving geochemical profiling measuring the parameter of interest at gradually increasing depths. Most recently, a Fourier transform spectrometer-based system developed by Kondo and Matsui has been used with reported accuracy of less than 0.1 mm, while Stevenson has made use of acoustic microscopy which promises to be a fast and economic method. Whatever the method, it is important to incorporate some notion of the error inherent in the measurement process, as well as all other estimates or measurements, as part of the final date.

Outer surface

Unhydrated obsidian

Hydration band 0

10

20 Pixel number

30

40

Figure 1 Gray scale analysis of a plane light obsidian band image. Each pixel is 0.075 mm wide giving a band-width of approximately 0.82 mm between the inflection points. Analysis conducted with Rim-Buster software developed by Martin Jones.

1698 OBSIDIAN HYDRATION DATING Case Studies and Usage

Given the considerable number of variables which need to be evaluated and their cumulative errors, and the assumptions often associated with their measurement, skepticism about the utility of OHD may be well founded and we should be very careful in accepting older chronologies. Yet, thanks to a small band of dedicated researchers, we know considerably more today about the basics of OHD and the methodology is much more refined and useful. In a comprehensive review of OHD, Martin Jones has concluded that although absolute dating may always be problematic, especially given the difficulty of estimating EHT ‘history’ of an artifact, relative dating within sites and what he calls absolute relative dating, may be very useful in sites which contain numerous obsidian flakes. This, in fact, was the recommendation of Friedman and Smith in their original 1960 paper where they state: ‘‘The Method in its present state of development is especially suited to determine relative chronologies on layered sequences of artifacts from a single site, or region.’’ If we are dealing with obsidian samples from the same geochemical source and the same site, then we may assume that all parameters relating to hydration rate and EHT are constant and the only uncertainty is associated with the hydration band measurement. If, in addition, we have some obsidian samples which are very tightly cross-dated by radiocarbon or some other method, then we may use these samples to estimate a site-specific EHT. We are then able to estimate absolute sample ages within a particular site. Under these circumstances we can produce, very cheaply, large numbers of ages or relative ages which relate different components of an archaeological site to each other, possibly defining a fine-grained construction or occupation sequence. A good example of this type of work, which did not in fact require the determination of an age, is the study of hydration bandwidths on volcanic glass in the ‘Aoa site in American Samoa in order to evaluate whether there was disturbance which had mixed artifacts between layers. Another very useful application of site-specific OHD is the dating of the last 250 years in historic or protohistoric sites where radiocarbon dating is not

possible. Jones has dated components of the protohistoric Papahinau site in New Zealand which extends into the mid-nineteenth century, and shown the presence of two distinct occupation phases. Similarly Ambrose has made use of the very fast hydration occurring in the tropics to refine the chronology of an obsidian mining site in Papua New Guinea whose use extends into the historic period. See also: Amino Acid Racemization Dating; Carbon-14 Dating; Dating Methods, Overview; Dendrochronology; Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Luminescence Dating; Neutron Activation Analysis.

Further Reading Ambrose W (1998) Obsidian hydration dating at a recent age obsidian mining site in Papua, New Guinea. In: Shackley MS (ed.) Archaeological Obsidian Studies, pp. 205–221. New York: Plenum Press. Ambrose W (2001) Obsidian hydration dating. In: Brothwell DR, and Pollard AM (eds.) Handbook of Archaeological Sciences, pp. 81–92. Chichester: Wiley. Ambrose W and Stevenson C (2004) Obsidian density, connate water, and hydration dating. Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 4(2): 5–16. Clark J, Sheppard P, and Jones M (1997) Late ceramics in Samoa: A test using hydration-rim measurements. Current Anthropology 38: 898–904. Friedman I and Smith R (1960) A new dating method using obsidian: Part I, the development of the method. American Antiquity 25: 476–493. Jones M (2002) A Brief Prehistory of Time. PhD Dissertation. University of Auckland. Jones M, Sheppard P, and Sutton D (1997) Soil temperature and obsidian hydration dating: A clarification of variables affecting accuracy. Journal of Archaeological Science 24: 505–516. Ridings R (1996) Where in the world does obsidian hydration work? American Antiquity 61: 136–148. Stevenson C, Abdelrehim I, and Novak S (2001) Infra-red photoacoustic and secondary ion mass spectrometry measurements of obsidian hydration rims. Journal of Archaeological Science 28: 109–115. Stevenson C, Abdelrehim I, and Novak S (2004) High precision measurement of obsidian hydration layers on artifacts from the Hopewell site using secondary ION mass spectrometry. American Antiquity 69: 555–567. Stevenson C, Mazer J, and Scheetz B (1998) Laboratory obsidian hydration rates: Theory, method, and application. In: Shackley MS (ed.) Archaeological Obsidian Studies, pp. 205–221. New York: Plenum Press.

OCEANIA/Australia 1699

OCEANIA Contents Australia Historical Archaeology in Australia Micronesia New Guinea and Melanesia New Zealand

Australia Judith Field, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary human colonization Human colonization is a broader category than the related subconcept of colonialism, because whereas colonialism refers to the establishment of settler colonies, trading posts, and plantations, colonization encompasses all large-scale emigrations of an established population to a ‘new’ location, such as immigration, the establishment of expatriate communities, and the use of guest workers. Last Glacial Maximum The time of maximum extent of the ice sheets during the last glaciation (the Wu¨rm or Wisconsin glaciation), approximately 20 000 years ago. The conditions of the Last Glacial Maximum in Australia persisted for probably 10 000 years. Sahul The name given to the single Pleistocene-era continent which combined Australia with New Guinea and Tasmania.

Australia is an island continent exceeding 3.1 million square kilometers. It comprises a very old, relatively flat landscape and is the driest continent on earth. The modern land mass covers over 40 of latitude with a diverse range of environments: from the dominant arid core to rainforest and temperate forests on the margins to alpine areas in the southeast. The period of human history has been influenced by rising and falling sea levels and fluctuating climatic conditions. At various times in the past, as a result of lowered sea levels associated with glacial periods, the Australian continent was joined to Papua New Guinea and Tasmania – known as Sahul. Environmental change drove shifts in vegetation structure and faunal populations. There was significant contraction and expansion of the continental land mass as a result of sea level fluctuations through the last glacial cycle with sea levels at their lowest during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) (c. 30–19 ka). When Europeans arrived and settled here around 230 years ago they were met by an indigenous population of mobile hunter-gatherers

with sophisticated cultural and spiritual systems, including c. 250 languages, a material culture with few formal tools but including some sophisticated items such as an aerodynamic foil – the boomerang, and an environment with a unique vegetation and fauna. The nature of the climate and landscape in Australia has provided limited preservational opportunities for organic remains with archaeological investigations focused predominately on caves and rockshelters. Shell middens, open sites such as lithic scatters, stone arrangements, quarries, and a diverse array of rock art have also provided insights into the histories of indigenous Australians. Historically, the focus has been on the timing and pathways of human colonization of the continent, the physical anthropology of these populations and the possible links to Late Pleistocene faunal extinctions (see Oceania: Historical Archaeology in Australia). As yet none of these issues has been clearly resolved but a complex picture has emerged of environmental change and the dynamic nature of human adaptive responses at the local and regional level. While considerable attention has been focused on the Pleistocene, the Holocene has also received concerted archaeological research of a similar scale. Some of these issues are addressed here and key examples are presented to provide an insight into the nature of the Australian archaeological record.

Timing and Patterns of Initial Colonization Initial human colonization of the Australian continent is conservatively estimated at around 45 ka, though some researchers argue for an arrival predating this time by 10 000–15 000 years. Any archaeological sites that formed on the continental shelf, which included the Torres Strait and Bass Strait, are now submerged because of sea level rises at the terminal Pleistocene, before c. 10 ka (Figure 1). Environmental proxies such as fossil pollen (vegetation) and charcoal (fire) records have been used to support arguments for initial human colonization before

1700 OCEANIA/Australia

Sulawesi

Papua NEW GUINEA

Nombe

Huon Peninsula

Flores Torres strait

Timor

Malakunanja II Nauwalabila l Ngarrabullgan Urumbal Pocket

Carpenters Gap GRE8 Karrku Puritjarra Kulpi Mara AUSTRALIA Wilgie Mia

Cuddie Springs Lake Mungo

Devil's Lair

Wyrie Swamp

TASMANIA

Kow Swamp

Nunamira Cave

Figure 1 Map of Australia and region showing the location of sites mentioned in the text. Modern-day Australia is marked by the dark outline and the pale outline is the continental margins during the time of lowest sea level at the LGM c. 30–19 ka when Tasmania and New Guinea were joined to the mainland, together comprising Sahul.

100 ka. Fluctuations in microscopic charcoal (fire frequency) have been interpreted as indicators of a human presence, though this has not been supported by the archaeology. Landfall of the first colonizers is most likely to have been coincident with a time of lower sea levels and involved a minimum 90 km open sea crossing. As such it demonstrates a sophisticated knowledge of seafaring, language, and construction of suitable watercraft which is consistent with a maritime economy. There are at least two colonization pathways into Australia, with most consideration given to the southern route from southeast Asia, through Java to Flores and Timor, the latter yielding archaeological evidence dating to >35 ka. There was an approximate 2000 km coastline along which people may have landed and subsequently based their coastal marine economy. A less often discussed second route, is through Halmahera,

Papua/Irian Jaya, across New Guinea and down across the Carpentarian Plain into northeastern Australia. There is good evidence for a 40 000 year occupation from the Huon Peninsula in New Guinea, and Late Pleistocene occupation of the Solomon Islands and New Ireland. Two sites dating to c. 40 ka are found in north Queensland – GRE8 (Figure 2) near the base of the Gulf of Carpentaria and Ngarrabullgan Cave (Figure 3) in the east on the Great Dividing Range that runs down the eastern coast of Australia. The debate by archaeologists over colonization pathways continues, but whenever people arrived on the Australian continent it is clear that by the time Europeans landed here Aboriginal people occupied all environmental zones and were present in relatively large numbers, with estimations of 750 000– 1 000 000 at European contact. Three models were developed to account for the patterns of colonization.

OCEANIA/Australia 1701

Figure 2 GRE8 Rockshelter in Northern Australia where occupation deposits have been dated to c. 40 ka. The archaeological sequence is arguably continuous through the peak period of aridity during the LGM, and may have been part of a refuge area during this time. GRE8 is located adjacent to the permanent spring-fed Gregory River in the limestone gorge country of the Riversleigh Fossil World Heritage Area. Photograph ã Michael Slack.

Figure 3 Ngarrabullgan Rockshelter is located on top of Mt. Mulligan, an 18-km-long mesa surrounded by dry sclerophyll woodland. Despite <40 cm of cultural deposit, it documents an occupation sequence that extends back to around 40 ka. It was abandoned just prior to the onset of the LGM and was not reoccupied until the mid-Holocene. Photograph ã Bruno David.

In 1957, Birdsell’s tri-hybrid model argued that people took somewhere between c. 1300 and 2200 years to occupy the continent. Environmental zones appear to have been no significant barrier, Birdsell arguing that carrying capacity was the rate-limiting step. Circa 1977, Bowdler proposed that the continent was occupied by traditional coastal dwellers possessing the adaptations and technology to exploit coastal and riverine environments thus defining the pathways

of colonization. Her model was developed when little investigative work had been undertaken in the arid core. While her model is still relevant for the debate about colonization, more recent research at Puritjarra Rockshelter has demonstrated that occupation of central Australia dates to the Late Pleistocene (Figure 1). More recently, Horton has argued that the colonization of the continent was determined by the presence of freestanding water, and, as the continent dried out in

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the lead-up to the LGM, people moved away from the arid regions and became more concentrated in the coastal regions. As the climate improved toward the close of the Pleistocene, people started repopulating the more arid areas. The patterns of occupation in the arid zone during the late Pleistocene have been dynamic but for the most part were probably ephemeral. In his model of arid zone occupation, Peter Veth defined three identifiable regions: ‘refuges’ or ‘islands’ where resources were relatively secure in the riverine/gorge systems and the montane uplands; ‘corridors’ – stony lowlands that would have been accessible during climatically favorable periods, but were abandoned during the Glacial Maximum; and ‘barriers’ – the large sand-ridge deserts. The latter are argued to have only been fully occupied since the terminal Pleistocene following technological and economic developments enabling access to previously sequestered resources. Tracking the timing and patterns of colonization has depended to some degree on the use of different dating techniques. As new methods have been developed, chronologies for earlier dated sites have been discarded, reevaluated or confirmed. Radiocarbon dating of archaeological sequences has been supplemented by luminescence techniques, electron spin resonance (ESR), and Uranium series (U-series) dating. As luminescence dating became more accessible, including aliquot and single grain methods of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), the timing of colonization of the Australian continent appeared to extend well beyond the purported 40 000 year ‘radiocarbon

barrier’. The two sites that have been of importance in these discussions are Nauwalabila I and Malakunanja II, located in the north of the Northern Territory (Figure 1). Both have reported luminescence ages in excess of 50 ka, but perceived problems associated with the interpretation of all dates (radiocarbon and luminescence) from these deep sandy sequences have not seen them broadly accepted into the current datasets. In southeastern Australia, the oldest human remains (WLH3) have been recovered from the dunes of Lake Mungo (Figure 4), one of a series of lakes on the ancestral Willandra Creek system in the semi-arid zone of western New South Wales. While OSL, ESR, and U-series studies placed a minimum age of 60 ka on the male skeletal remains of WLH3, further assessment of the geomorphological and archaeological contexts has seen this estimation revised to c. 42 ka, which is consistent with other skeletal remains from this locality. Age–depth curves have been used to attribute an initial occupation age of c. 50 ka for the Lake Mungo sequences. While estimates of an early settlement of the Australian continent are tantalizing for some, these arguments must also consider how and why these early arrival dates predate the occupation sequences currently known from Southeast Asia.

The First Australians Australia was colonized by modern humans, who arrived by watercraft, probably around 45–50 ka. There are very few known examples of Pleistocene

Figure 4 Lake Mungo lunette in the Willandra Lake World Heritage Area. These dunes have yielded the oldest known human remains from Australia and have provided a rich record of human occupation in the semi-arid zone of southeastern Australia. Photograph ã Judith Field.

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skeletal remains and these are mainly derived from the southeast of the continent. Different models have been proposed to account for the apparent variation in skeletal morphologies observed among Aboriginal populations. Birdsell’s colonization model involved three separate migrations of people through the Late Pleistocene and his conclusion evolved from the study of the physical appearance of modern Aboriginal populations (see Migrations: Australia). There is little empirical evidence to support his hypothesis, nor the assertions of Alan Thorne who has argued that Australian Aborigines were derived from two different founding populations. Morphologically robust or archaic populations (cf. Kow Swamp, Victoria) were linked to the Homo erectus fossils from the Solo River in Central Java. Morphologically gracile remains (e.g., Lake Mungo) were argued to be derived from the Asian Homo erectus (e.g., Peking Man). Colin Pardoe has further argued that the two morphologies from the Willandra Lakes area are within the documented range for modern humans and represent natural variation explained by sexual dimorphism: robust being male and gracile being female or juvenile. The ‘unitary origin model’ proposed by Pardoe argues that variation in biological anthropology can be accounted for on the basis of evolutionary principles – adaptation, gene flow, and genetic drift – and does not require multiple founding populations. The colonization of the continent would have been rapid. Differences in physical anthropology have been identified across Australia and necessarily correlate with the environmental zone and population densities or carrying capacity within those zones. Desert peoples are more gracile, following Allen’s and Bergmann’s rule, and have greater sexual dimorphism, in contrast to those peoples from the temperate zone who have a heavier body mass and different body proportions. The apparent near coincident timing of occupation of many different landscapes across the continent supports Pardoe’s proposal for a rapid colonization, with most environments occupied by c. 30 ka. With the onset of the LGM, the more arid regions of the continent were abandoned resulting in changes to the genetic makeup, which is detected in modern day populations that are intermediary between the arid zone and the temperate margins. Of further interest are the changes in stature and size of humans between the Pleistocene and the Holocene period (post 10 ka) as people became smaller and less robust. These changes have been documented globally; however, in Australia these changes are not correlated to the development of agricultural societies. Different hypotheses have

been forwarded to account for these changes and include environmental stress and dietary change.

Megafaunal Extinctions A popular and vigorous debate has waxed and waned over the years in relation to the timing and causes of megafaunal extinctions in Australia. The megafauna are mostly classified as animals in excess of 40 kg that disappeared towards the close of the Pleistocene period. They included a number of marsupial giants the largest of which – the Diprotodon – weighed in at approximately 2.7 tonnes; the giant flightless bird, Genyornis; the giant goanna, Megalania and a range of giant kangaroos, and wallabies. However, there are a number of now extinct species that weighed in at considerably less than 40 kg. Those species that did not become extinct underwent phyletic dwarfing and their modern day representatives are in some cases considerably smaller than their Pleistocene relatives. The main contenders in the extinction debate have always been people and/or climate. Blitzkreig, first developed by Paul Martin for North America and developed for the Australian context by Tim Flannery, provided a neat explanation which laid the blame squarely at the feet of Aboriginal people – specialized hunters who swept across the continent killing off the naı¨ve giants. A second human-mediated extinction explanation lies with ecosystem disruption through landscape burning and hunting pressure – effectively delivering the same outcome (Figure 5). Either way, these events are argued to have resulted in a terminal extinction date for megafauna in Australia of 46.5 ka. A third model deals with the large-scale effects of climate change, the resultant loss of freestanding water and the physiological implications of increasing aridity and reconfiguration of habitat. The latter was first proposed by David Horton for the Australian context and revisited in recent years by the author and colleagues Stephen Wroe and Richard Fullagar. It was not until recently that significant headway was made into elucidating the chronologies and consequently timing of the extinction event. Significantly, there is little evidence for the coexistence of megafauna with people, the site of Cuddie Springs in southeastern Australia, and Nombe Rockshelter in the New Guinea highlands providing the only secure evidence of an association of humans (stone artifacts) and megafauna (fossil remains). While a couple of younger sites are known where fragmented remains of megafauna are found, these are derived from culturally sterile horizons. For the Australian mainland, the Cuddie Springs site provides clear evidence of a significant temporal overlap of humans and a few species

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Figure 5 Senior Martutjarra man burning heavy spinifex, Great Sandy Desert, July 1996. Photograph ã M. A. Smith.

Figure 6 The Cuddie Springs claypan, at the center of which is preserved a long fossil record, the upper horizons of which co-occur with an archaeological record and dates to c. 36 ka. Photograph ã Judith Field.

of megafauna. The Cuddie Springs site (Figure 6) is critical to our understanding of the potential associations and interaction of humans and megafauna as it lies within the modern semi-arid zone but was within the arid zone during the Late Pleistocene. It is an ancient ephemeral lake within which is found a stratified sequence containing a fossil faunal record that extends back over hundreds of thousands of years. In the upper horizons these fossil fauna, including some species of megafauna, co-occur with an archaeological record which begins around 36 ka. The archaeological record opens when the environs were dominated by chenopod shrubland and the lake was in an extended wet phase. Low concentrations of flaked stone artifacts are found amongst the mostly complete bones of

a range of megafauna (Figure 7). The faunal remains from the lowest archaeological horizon (Stratigraphic Unit 6B) are predominantly the giant flightless bird Genyornis newtoni, which was similar in size to the modern emu though much more robust. Isotope studies identify Genyornis as a browsing feeder – a common feature of the extinct suite of fauna from this period. Higher up the Cuddie Springs sequence (Stratigraphic Unit 6A), the environment changes to open grasslands, the number of megafauna is reduced, the proportion of extant fauna increases and grindstones are documented for the first time, dating from c. 30 ka. Significantly, only a handful of megafauna species has been documented in these horizons. The evidence indicates late survival of some species of megafauna

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Figure 7 The lower limbs bones of G. newtoni (at left) and a macropod mandible in association with a flaked stone artifact (arrow) in the lake sediments at Cuddie Springs. Photograph ã Judith Field.

though it is a depauperate suite compared to the documented range of species known from Australia (>60 species). A recent review of the currently available datasets has shown that 65% of megafauna in Australia may have disappeared prior to the arrival of people. The decline initially occurred during the penultimate Glacial Maximum between 130 and 150 ka. By the time people arrived, c. 43–45 ka, only 13% (c. 8) of the known megafauna species remained. The trend to aridification of the continent that had begun some hundreds of thousands of years previously, perhaps the added hunting pressure of a new predator, and increasing uncertainty in climate in the lead-up to the LGM may have combined to see the last of the megafauna disappear. Some of the smaller species may have survived the LGM only to become extinct by c. 16 ka. Interestingly, despite intensive archaeological investigations in Tasmania there is no evidence that megafauna were extant here when humans arrived and, on the mainland, only one site provides the archaeological evidence which demonstrates coexistence with people. Claims for human-mediated extinctions of Genyornis in the Lake Eyre basin in southern Australia, do so in the absence of any evidence for the presence of people at that time, or palaeoenvironmental data indicating vegetation change and/or fire activity. The explanatory hypotheses for the extinction of the megafauna in Australia all suffer the same problem – the thin datasets that are currently available. However, viewing the fossil record over the longer

time scale has now provided a perspective which appears to exonerate people as the primary mover in these events, indicating instead a complex palaeoecological problem. Whatever happened, there is mounting evidence that the activities of people were only a footnote to the large-scale processes in train long before humans set foot in Sahul.

Technology The toolkits possessed by Pleistocene huntergatherers in Australia were, in relative terms, very simple (see Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient). Formal tools were few but included waisted stone hatchets (ground edge axes) from the Huon Peninsula in New Guinea at c. 40 ka, stone hatchets from Northern Australia in deposits dating to over 30 ka, and bone points from Devil’s Lair dating to nearly 30 ka. In general, artifact manufacture was effectively determined by both raw material type and flaking quality. Pleistocene assemblages were initially classified as the Core Tool and Scraper Tradition with the Small Tool Tradition attributed to later Holocene assemblages. These labels have now been discarded as regional variations in assemblages have become apparent and it has been established that flaked stone artifact assemblages can be more productively evaluated on the basis of the continuum of a reduction sequence rather than on morphological types. Attributing a function to the many and varied artifacts produced in these reduction strategies is best determined by

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functional studies that also incorporate use-wear and residue analyses. Expedient flaked stone tools dominate Pleistocene assemblages. These assemblages are mostly small in number (200), and are generally made of locally available stone. The few exceptions to these are the rich artifact assemblages from southwest Tasmania, excavated as part of the Southern Forests Archaeological Project; and from the Cuddie Springs site in central northern New South Wales. Notably, grindstone fragments have also been recovered from horizons dated to c. 30 ka at Cuddie Springs. On the basis of functional studies, these grindstones are argued to have been used for grass seed processing among other tasks. Of the other artifacts found at this site, some were used to prepare and maintain wooden tools, others were used for food processing with butchering tools also being common. Like other Pleistocene archaeological sites, stone raw materials at Cuddie Springs are dominated by locally available silcrete. At this site some raw materials, for example, feldspar porphyry, have been imported from distances greater than 100 km.

Holocene Toolkits The flaked and ground stone tool technologies of the Holocene show marked variation in style and form as seen in the Kartan Industry (first identified on Kangaroo Island) and Gambieran sequences (from the Mt Gambier Region) from the southern regions of the continent. However it is from the mid-Holocene (c. 5 ka) that marked changes are observed in the stone tool assemblages from mainland Australia both in implement types and manufacturing techniques. They are considerably physically smaller and have commonly been referred to as the Australian Small Tool Tradition. Ground edge hatchets, microliths or backed artifacts, spear points, drills, and other items became common in artifact assemblages from this period. Distributions of tool types also varies with tula adzes (a hafted woodworking tool) being primarily confined to the more arid areas of the continent, unifacial and bifacial points concentrated mostly in the north of the continent but also found down through the center. Kimberley points are bifacially flaked from fine-grained siliceous materials such as quartzite or silcrete using pressure flaking. They vary in length, the longest being around 10 cm long though they are usually about half this size. Bifacially flaked points are restricted to the north and variations on these points (e.g., Pirri points) can be found down through the center of the continent. Microliths come mainly from the southern areas. While microliths seem to peak in production around

2–3 ka, they decline in use around 1 ka in many of the east coast sites. The primary function of microliths has never been clearly established though they were probably used as armatures in composite spears and knives. Grindstones are ubiquitous in the arid/semiarid areas where they were used mainly for processing grass seeds, Nardoo (a small freshwater fern with starchy sporocarps), and perhaps some Eucalyptus and Acacia species (Figure 8). Grindstones have also been recovered from more temperate regions though their functions may vary according to resource availability (see Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear). Two zones which are thought to have had barriers to permanent settlement are the arid zone and the rainforests. Both were colonized at vastly different times but permanent occupation of both may have been constrained by similar problems – access to resources and climatic fluctuations. In the case of the arid zone access to carbohydrates, in the form of grass seeds, may have limited occupation as their exploitation involved a high-energy input/low-energy return. In the rainforest, permanent settlement may have been controlled by access to toxic starchy nuts which were a high-energy input, high-energy return food item.

Figure 8 Anmatyerre woman grinding acacia seeds, Utopia, June 1983. Photograph ã M. A. Smith.

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Arid Zone Occupation Puritjarra Rockshelter in Central Australia (Figure 9) provides some of the earliest evidence of human occupation of the arid core. Other sites, on the northwest arid margin such as Riwi Rockshelter and Carpenters Gap, attest to occupation of this region as early as 40 ka. While the earliest occupation dates are towards the margins, both Puritjarra and a second site, Kulpi Mara, were occupied from around 30 ka and attest to the fact that most desert landscapes were visited during the Late Pleistocene. Coinciding with the period of peak aridity, most sites were abandoned from around c. 20–13 ka. Whether these patterns are taphonomic, a sampling bias or a real signal has yet to be clearly demonstrated. Certainly from the midHolocene (c. 5 ka), with climatic amelioration, occupation of these regions was re-established with increased intensity of use in the last 1500 years. As with the rest of the continent, water availability appears to have dictated the movement of people, though more intensive use of particular technologies such as seed grinding and perhaps kinship networks would have also contributed to the ability of people to maintain a presence in this environment. Cultural transformation and changes in occupation patterns would have been a feature of the intense arid period during and immediately postdating the LGM. Certainly, exchange networks have been postulated for the Late Pleistocene period where items such as ochre, marine mollusks, and lithics may have been traded through the northwest of the continent. A number of ochre mines have been identified and linked to extensive trade networks through the center of the continent: they include Wilgie Mia and Bookartoo.

Mineral magnetic studies have linked the ochre found at Puritjarra to the Karrku mine (Figure 10) to the northwest of this site.

Rainforests The Australian rainforests are thought to be one of the last environments to be colonized by Australian Aborigines, with permanent settlement of this environmental zone not occurring until the last few thousand years. Pollen cores from the northeast of the continent have been interpreted, from microscopic charcoal patterns and shifts in forest types, as evidence of a human presence in these areas over 40 000 years ago. However, the archeological evidence has not been forthcoming to support rainforest occupation in any intensive way until 2 ka. The archaeological site of Jiyer Cave, located on the Russell River on the Atherton Tablelands southwest of Cairns, provided the first indication of antiquity of rainforest occupation when basal ages of c. 5000 BP were obtained, and until recently it was the earliest evidence of rainforest occupation in Australia. Recent work in the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area on the Tully River to the south of this area (Figure 1) has now extended this occupation to c. 8000 cal BP at the site of Urumbal Pocket (Figure 11). However, occupation rates prior to 2 ka are indicative of ephemeral use of this landscape and it was not until c. 1.8 ka that permanent occupation of the rainforest is established. Excavations here have yielded evidence of a sustained increase in toxic nut exploitation, particularly Beilschmiedia bancroftii, the yellow walnut, from around 2.5 ka climaxing at c. 1.5 ka. The pattern of

Figure 9 Puritjarra Rockshelter, Central Australia, November 1986. Photograph ã M. A. Smith.

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Figure 10 The Karrku ochre mine near Puritjarra Rockshelter in Central Australia. Photograph ã Tim Wimbourne.

Figure 11 Excavations underway at Urumbal Pocket located in the wet tropics region of northeastern Australia. The site is adjacent to the Tully River channel which was dammed 50 years ago for hydroelectricity. The basal occupation dates of c. 8 ka make it the oldest known rainforest occupation on the Australian continent. Photograph ã Judith Field.

toxic nut use lags just behind artifact discard rates at each site investigated in the study. At least for Australia, it would appear that like the arid zone, the development of technologies that provide access to particular plant food resources may be the limiting factor in permanent occupation of these environments.

Tasmania The most southern extension of Australia is Tasmania and it has provided a unique record of human

occupation from the Late Pleistocene that rivals in richness the Palaeolithic records of southern France. Current evidence indicates that Tasmania was repeatedly occupied from c. 35 ka, though there is a gap in some archaeological sequences from c. 13 to c. 9 ka. The Tasmanian record has been shaped by its high latitude (which during the LGM had pronounced glacial activity), topography, and also the environmental shifts resulting from rising sea levels during the LGM. Following marine transgression Tasmania was changed from being part of mainland Australia to an island. Furthermore, there were, and are, great

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Figure 12 Nunamira Rockshelter in the Florentine Valley in Tasmania has yielded one of a number of extremely rich occupation sequences from the southwest and these sites represent some of the southernmost known archaeological sites that were occupied during the LGM. Photograph ã Richard Cosgrove.

differences in environment between the wetter and mountainous topography of the western part of the island, and the drier eastern region where dry sclerophyll forest dominates today. Changes in the use of rockshelters, such as Nunamira in the southwest (Figure 12), have been correlated to climatic and environmental changes. The Southern Forest Project investigators argued that people were highly adaptable and exploited opportunities provided by climatic fluctuations to revisit areas and exploit resources where possible. These changes are evidenced in the archaeological records which document the changing use of rockshelters over time where cyclical patterns can be correlated to climatic fluctuation. The Pleistocene sites from the southwest have sequences dominated by the bone of Bennett’s wallaby. Other small marsupials including wombats, possums, and in some places platypus, are present, with the artifact assemblages dominated by quartz, though chert, quartzite, chalcedony, hornfels, and silcrete are also represented. Interestingly, the southwest was apparently abandoned after the Pleistocene/Holocene transition, with occupation sequences for this period coming from northern and inland Tasmania and the Bassian Plain. People may have migrated north to the mainland before the marine transgression around 12 ka isolated Tasmania from the mainland. Arguably, Tasmania’s geography and climate were the limiting factors in constraining human population. In terms of technology, items such as boomerangs and spear

throwers are not known from Tasmania, though thumbnail scrapers (small, marginally retouched flakes) were common in the Pleistocene sequences from the southwest, as is Darwin Glass – which has been found up to 100 km from its source. Certain plant foods such as the daisy yam, while abundant here and exploited widely on the mainland, were never recorded as having been eaten in Tasmania. Interestingly, of the >600 000 bones recovered during the investigation of the southwest of Tasmania, not a single megafauna bone (or part thereof) was found in a cultural deposit, though megafauna have been found elsewhere on the island. It would appear that the arrival of humans postdated the extinction of the megafauna with no known evidence to support coexistence or interaction with humans.

The Holocene The increase in occupation sites and rates of artifact discard that occurred after c. 5 ka in Australia have been viewed by some to also signal increased social complexity in social systems, or a trend to ‘intensification’ and in some places a move to more permanent occupation of particular areas. One of the apparent markers of this change is the presence of backed artifacts: small crescent or segment shaped tools which are triangular in cross section, either symmetrical or asymmetrical, with blunting retouch on the thicker margin opposite the cutting edge (see below).

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Of increasing interest and apparent complexity are the changes now documented through the Holocene period, particularly the last 4000 years when climate became more stable and similar to the present day. Coincidentally, the Dingo (the Australian native dog) also arrived on mainland Australia around 4000 years ago and has been associated with the extinction of some faunal species on the mainland – the Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacinus sp.) and the Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus sp.). A dramatic increase in the number of sites, discard patterns, and changes in behavior as witnessed by the development of semipermanent campsites, the increase in use of grass seeds as well as the diverse nature of the rock art occurred around the mid-Holocene. Various hypotheses have been proposed to account for these changes, the most debated being that of Harry Lourandos’s intensification. His ideas have acted as a catalyst for a new generation of researchers trying to unravel the complex nature of the archaeological record through this time and to try and formulate a cohesive explanation for the distinct changes in the archaeological record. The artifact technologies identified from this period were initially labeled the Australian Small Tool Tradition, however the degree of variability now recognized across regions has seen this term discarded. Of particular interest is the proliferation of microlith technology, which are small crescentshaped flakes, triangular in cross section that have been blunted by retouch along the back (Figure 13). Backed artifacts have arguably been used for a variety of functions including armatures in composite spears. While fundamentally conforming to the shape described above, they varied in size from around 10 mm to c. 50 mm in length and have been accorded a variety of names including ‘Bondi points’. While their proliferation has been documented from around 6000 BP, they have been recovered from in and around the GRE8 site, which has been dated to the terminal Pleistocene (c. 10 ka). Backed artifacts decline in use in many localities from around 1000 BP though no explanation currently exists to explain this decline. The Late Holocene saw the proliferation of many artifact types including the Elouera, the Kimberley Point (a bifacially flaked point made from fine grained siliceous stone), the tula adze (an arid zone implement for woodworking), and the Pirri graver (a wood graver overlapping in distribution with the tula adz). In addition, grinding stones and hatchet heads became more common from around 4000 BP.

Figure 13 A backed artifact from deposits dated to c. 10 ka in Northern Australia. Photograph ãJudith Field.

Major trade routes covered most of the continent and have been documented in the ethnographic literature. Pituri, a narcotic plant from southwestern Queensland, was widely traded across the continent, as were pearl and baler shells. Ochre and grindstone slabs were also moved great distances with well-documented trade routes moving through the center of the continent south to north and vice versa. These trade routes were also important social and economic pathways where not only goods (e.g., stone raw materials) but knowledge, ceremonies, and genes were exchanged. The Australian archaeological sequences attest to a diverse and rich cultural history. The dynamic nature of Aboriginal life reflects adaptation to significant shifts in climate and environment over the period prior to the next major wave of colonization by Europeans. Each decade of research brings significant developments in our understanding of the lifeways of these indigenous populations. See also: Extinctions of Big Game; Hunter-Gatherers,

Ancient; Migrations: Australia; Oceania: Micronesia; New Guinea and Melanesia.

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Further Reading Allen J and O’Connell J (eds.) (1995) Transitions: Pleistocene to Holocene in Australia and New Guinea. Antiquity 69 (Special Issue No. 265): 649–862. Brumm A and Moore M (2005) Symbolic revolutions and the Australian archaeological record. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 15(2): 157–175. Flood J (1985) Archaeology of the Dreamtime: The Story of Prehistoric Australia and its People. Sydney: William Collins. Hiscock P (2007) Archaeology of Ancient Australia. London: Routledge. Morwood M (2002) Visions from the Past: The Archaeology of Australian Aboriginal Art. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.

Oceania/Australia, Peopling of

Mulvaney DJ and Kamminga J (1999) Prehistory of Australia. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Murray T (ed.) (2004) Archaeology from Australia. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing. Pardoe C (2006) Becoming Australian: Evolutionary processes and biological variation from ancient to modern times. Before Farming 2006/1 (Article 4): 1–21. Veth P (1989) Islands in the interior: A model for the colonization of Australia’s arid zone. Archaeology in Oceania 24: 81–92. Wroe S and Field J (2005) A review of quaternary extinctions and climate: An alternative paradigm. Quaternary Science Reviews 25: 2692–2703.

See: Migrations: Australia.

Historical Archaeology in Australia Judy Birmingham, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary conservation The process through which the historical integrity of archaeological resources is prolonged through careful management. excavation The principal method of data acquisition in archaeology, involving the systematic uncovering of archaeological remains through the removal of the deposits of soil and the other material covering them and accompanying them. historical archaeology Archaeological study of historically documented cultures.

Introduction Historical archaeology – the archaeology of the modern world – began as a discipline in Southeastern Australia in 1967, coincident with the Society for Historical Archaeology in the United States and similar studies in South Africa. Undergraduate courses began at Sydney University in 1974, building on both academic and community-based interest and research, including theses, extending back to the 1930s. Academic teaching and research centers, along with conservation legislation, spread across Australia over the next 20 years, with research, professional, and

consultancy streams well-established for the last two decades. Starting in 1967 the earliest historical excavations in Australia were at Irrawang, Wybalenna, Fossil Beach, and Port Essington. They were conducted from Sydney, Melbourne, the Australian National Universities, and, partly at least, initiated by student demands for local fieldwork opportunities. Promising as these initial excavations were, Commonwealth and State conservation legislation of 1975 and later focused effort on assessment and recording of standing elements of the National Estate for the next decade. The universities of Sydney, New England, and then La Trobe remained the primary academic centers for teaching and research in historical archaeology until the expansion in the 1990s to Flinders and James Cook Universities, as well as those of Western Australia and Queensland. Since 1992, Sydney University’s Archaeology Computing Laboratory has been a key GIS and digital data training and research facility (see Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline; Methods). Teaching of underwater excavation, recording, and conservation, once limited to a graduate diploma in Western Australia, has expanded significantly with postgraduate research and field programs available at James Cook and Flinders Universities. The WA Maritime Museum in Fremantle remains a key center for maritime research. Postgraduate research is now a significant component of the discipline, and theses can be found listed on most university web pages. Graduates are quickly absorbed into urban development consultancy work,

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or employed in government heritage conservation management. University-based research has expanded since the 1990s, with funding supporting larger synthesizing programs. Opportunities for professional archaeologists expanded following the heritage protection reforms, which established a demand for university-trained historical archaeologists. A good entry point for information is the Australian government heritage web site which presents guides to relevant legislation in different fields, as well as to professional associations, publications and newsletters, and web resources. The Australian Society for Historical Archaeology (ASHA), begun at Sydney University in 1969, focused at first on excursions and lectures but quickly moved into publication – its newsletters from 1971, its journal from 1983, and its occasional publications such as Archaeology and Colonisation: Australia in the World Context in 1988, and Wybalenna in 1992. In 1992, the Society changed its name as well and retitled its journal Australasian Historical Archaeology (AHA) to reflect the inclusion of New Zealand and to make clear its wider regional perspective. In addition to the journal, it currently has a quarterly newsletter online, and an annual conference. The Australian Association of Consulting Archaeologists was formed following the advent of professional employment, and has an online register of consultants, as well as monthly newsletters. It has a new series of consultancy monographs. The Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology (AIMA), started in Fremantle, also has a long history. It has an annual bulletin (volume 1, 1978), a special publications series, and an annual conference, increasingly held jointly with ASHA and/or Australian Archaeological Association (AAA). The Australian Archaeological Association embraces both prehistoric and historical archaeology and has a journal published twice a year (volume 1, November 1974) with full online index, and also has an annual conference. Other relevant publications are Archaeology in Oceania, Historic Environment, published by Australia-ICOMOS, and numerous research monographs from the Centre for Archaeological Research, Australian National University, Canberra.

Archaeologies of Convicts The forced migration of convicts from Britain was the primary reason for founding the colony at Sydney, and the substantial legacy of convict sites and structures remain a focus of historical archaeology. The extensive secondary punishment sites of Norfolk Island (1825–56) and Port Arthur (1830–77) with

their associated work stations as well as smaller institutions like Sarah and Maria Islands, and the remoter Port Essington, Fort Dundas, and Raine Island have been mapped and recorded. Convicts worked in Western Australia from 1850 to 1868 and left a legacy of public works and roads. South Australia was transportation free. Physically the colonial landscape was essentially shaped by convicts, whether quarrying stone to build jails, barracks, and fortifications; roads and bridges; or as laborers on settler estates and eventually as freed settlers (emancipists). Socially, convictism within the settlement meant an unusually fluid colonial structure. Most convicts were not confined, and moved to assignment and tickets of leave: when their sentences ended, they continued to merge with other colonists equally determined to forge ahead in a new land. One consequence is that without reference to documents, the roles and activities of convicts are virtually indistinguishable in the archaeological record. New detail on the convict system has come from rescue excavations. Remains of Old Sydney Gaol was one of the earliest, as were parts of Government Houses at Sydney, Norfolk Island, Hobart, Port Macquarie, and elsewhere. Traces of early convict activities in Sydney and Parramatta include locally made earthenware vessels and bricks made from local clay as well as ephemeral remains of early domestic structures. More recent research has investigated strategies of power, gender, and resistance especially in places of secondary confinement, as in excavations at Ross Female Factory, one of several such institutions. Evidence of the three categories of prisoners at the Factory was recovered – the newly arrived, those ready for hiring out to work, and those serving time for more crimes. The hidden and lost below-floor artifacts suggested that the third class of prisoners were more proactive in further bending rules about liquor, smoking, and adornment. Revisiting the earlier salvage clearance of the Norfolk Island hospital privy has allowed analysis of its deposit of Second Settlement artifacts with their seeming dark insights into the power-plays of sick convicts there. More distant again, the limited excavations and wider survey at the military outpost of Port Essington identified three construction phases between 1838 and 1849, one characterized by convict workmanship. Artifacts from the excavations plus intensive historical research produced a study contextualized with British Empire trade and military policy as well as within the colony. Similarly, analysis of convict building programs may provide insights into changing government

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policies and efficiency (1826–40s), as shown in the Great North Road stockades or the Fort Dundas military outpost (1824–28). Variations in both ground plan and quality of construction work give rise in each location to interesting inferences about the nature of control and supervision of the work gangs, and ultimately about power and resistance. Poor-quality work flows from inadequate control of work gangs, changes of ground plan facilitate greater control, excellent construction means efficient management – all interesting hypotheses for testing. At different times good behavior by convicts earned them transfers to work on probation stations (Tasmania), and assignment to free settlers as laborers in NSW. Sometimes on estates in NSW, the separate barracks built for assignees survive. Once free, emancipists merged into the colony’s growing population. Some who can be textually identified lived in Sydney’s Rocks as shown in the Cumberland St. excavation (and others), and developed family homes indistinguishable from nonconvict households, with good tableware, toys, ornaments, and reasonable diet despite very average building structures, street refuse, and adjacent slaughter-yards.

Archaeologies of Settlement In contrast to convicts under sentence, free settlers were quick to take advantage of land opportunities in the new colony intent on self-advancement as well as re-creating traditional social structures. The first phase of settlement was in the Southeast expanding to grazing lands beyond the Blue Mountains by 1820, and Melbourne in 1839. Wider settlement into the interior of the continent from the 1850s was spearheaded by prospectors looking for more gold, and explorers followed by pastoralists seeking grazing land. Missionaries, traders, and other ethnic communities followed and settled – missionaries wherever they could find Aboriginal souls to save, the Chinese in and around goldfields, Afghans providing camel transport to new settlements. Permanent and intermittent coastal settlements also continued – Asians along the north coast seeking trochus, pearl, and beche de mer, mixed communities in sealing and whaling settlement along the south. Archaeology can reveal a variety of ethnic, cultural, gender, and power relationships as well as colonist lifestyles: it has the capacity to explore the settlement system more fully since it is not confined to those with the written word such as servants and laborers, foreign immigrants, and most notably indigenous populations. Archaeology made an early start on the colonial mansions, symbols of colonial power with elegant

material culture, carrying out heritage assessments and conservation works, sometimes with minimal excavation. Some of these detail their owners’ ingenuity, enterprise, and management practices: at Elizabeth Farm Parramatta and Camden Park, two contrasting homes of the powerful Macarthur family, excavations reflect their owners’ commitment to the colony and their own aggrandizement within it. Others, now ruined, have been more extensively excavated. Jamison’s estate at Regentville (1824–69) was founded on cattle, and well details the creative energy of these early settlers – the innovative flushing closet, his impressive Mason’s ironstone dinner service, the terraced vineyards, the new steam mill technology, and the complex linkages of Jamison properties from his city residence, via the grand house on the Nepean River to his inland pastures. James King, a settler who set up his pottery manufactory of Irrawang in the Hunter Valley about 1830 to provide high-quality domestic wares at prices little higher than imported wares, displays the same restless innovative energy as Jamison, and seems to reflect the new business practices of the great Josiah Wedgwood. At Lake Innes House excavated finds from servants’ cottages suggested more conservative practices, a British model for land owner–servant relationships. Dundullimal station near Dubbo, built of wooden slabs in c. 1842, was typical of early properties further inland. By the 1880s, money from gold finds as well as pastoral exports had brought prosperity and bigger houses: and the succession of homesteads such as at Saumarez, near Armidale, document the grandeur of the settlers’ ambition. By contrast, in the interior, where pastoral expansion rapidly followed 1860s–70s exploration and gold rushes, grandeur yielded to function. New pastoral stations, set in leases covering thousands of hectares, were sometimes larger than English villages with housing and services for livestock, managers, stock-workers, and families. The archaeological research of today, whether of coastal or interior pastoral settlements, probes the total station system – homesteads, outhouses, and workers’ quarters of shepherds, gardeners, or stockmen: employed, assigned, or convicts; Aboriginal or white – and includes the Aborigines on whose labor most employees depended. Less visible in the landscape is the spread of missions throughout the interior and especially northern Australia and the Torres Strait to save the souls of the Aboriginal people encountered. Anglican, Catholic, and Lutheran missionaries were key players, and the mission stations they established became centers for rations distribution, religious conversions, and culture change. For example, the early layout of the

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cemetery at Benedictine New Norcia (founded 1846) visibly embodied its hierarchical structure while at Killalpaninna Lutheran Mission (1866–1916) Aborigines and missionaries were buried separately, on either side of the church. The significant records of indigenous cultures during this time of change generated at numerous missions have been extensively studied: many of the sites retain potential. Survey at Killalpaninna demonstrated, perhaps for the first time archaeologically, how complex this cultural interaction was as it played out across the landscape. The sparse pattern of European occupation has sometimes left short-lived settlements that can be studied archaeologically. Every kind of mining rush had its initial tented camps near the diggings: camps of Chinese immigrant workers are especially visible. Most were abandoned as alluvial workings gave way to less mobile reef-mining operations, which were sometimes the start of more permanent mining townships. Construction camps arose for roads, railways, dams, and canals, even the Snowy River scheme, and were then abandoned. Even official settlements did not always survive. A few, such as Corinella, Risdon Cove, Reeves Point, and Somerset were conceived as permanent, others such as Fort Dundas (1824–28) and Port Essington (1839–49) were outposts set up only for diplomatic, strategic, or commercial reasons. Some of these sites, earlier investigated by archaeologists, are now being revisited. More recent research goes beyond confirming historical sources to investigate power relationships revealed in spatial details, sharing of resources, efficiency, work management, and changes over time.

Archaeologies of Interaction Sporadic early European shipwrecked explorers and traders, Macassan trepangers, global whalers and sealers, as well as the great influx of post-1788 white colonists and pastoralists, missionaries, and convicts all encountered Australia’s earliest Aboriginal peoples. The rich archaeological evidence of these intercultural imprints continues to be recovered and studied, and indigenous Australians increasingly take ownership of these studies of their own recent past. Traditional terminology uses Contact or Postcontact Archaeology to denote recent Aboriginal sites marked by a European–Aboriginal mix of artifacts, structures, and spatial patterning. Some excavation of Post-contact sites took place in the 1960s: first an Aboriginal midden adjacent to the Port Essington settlement, then the European-style government settlement built for Tasmanian Aborigines during their time at Wybalenna (1832–45) by G. A. Robinson ‘‘to

house, Europeanize and Christianize’’ the Tasmanian Aborigines he had gathered around him. The mixed material culture found on floors and around these cottages demonstrated how Aboriginal use of, and interaction with, unfamiliar European items was more revealing than their presence alone. The 1990s excavation at Burghley investigated a European stock hut (c. 1827), used by Aborigines after its abandonment about 1836–37 until c. 1842, again with mixed material culture. In more densely populated coastal Australia these sites are not common: one or two European items sometimes occur late in upper layers of Aboriginal rock-shelter deposits, while surface camp sites rarely survive. The story is different inland. With expansion into the interior from the 1860s, semi-permanent Aboriginal camps developed close to places of white settlement, such as missions, telegraph stations, police outposts, pastoral stations, and mining sites. The surface scatters that mark these camps have been studied at sites including Ooldea mission (1919–35) and Killalpaninna mission (1866–1920), the 1872 Overland Telegraph Stations such as Strangways and Charlotte Waters (cf. the 1990s Central Australia Archaeology Project), police camps at Boggy Hole (1889–91) and Illamurta Springs (1893–1912), Engoordina Station (1880–81) and Arltunga gold mining area (1888–1912). Most camps housed relatives of mission children, domestic employees, and Aboriginal stockmen, especially when bush food was sparse, since rations were often issued at these stations. Artifacts included recycled European tablewares, clothing, food cans, wire, bottle glass, and iron tools. More distant campsites too had European artifacts, but fewer. Traditional flaking is found on raw materials like ceramic insulators and glass bottles. Similar camp-sites are also found on explorer routes; explorers’ notes in their journals speak of rewards of iron hatchets and hoop iron to Aboriginal guides. Documenting this oral history, especially where archaeological evidence survives, often has special relevance in that, in law, continuity of traditional land use and practices has to be demonstrated if Native Title is to be recognized. Today the term ‘shared landscapes’ is sometimes preferred where pastoral leases and land grants mindlessly overran the visible camps, relics, and burials of the indigenous owners still in occupation. In current projects, Aboriginal communities have been increasingly working with field archaeologists to map places and record the associated oral memories so lacking in earlier formal white viewpoints of what happened. Collaboration with Aboriginal stockmen in Kimberley near Hall’s Creek, then with former

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pastoral communities in coastal northern NSW, mapped remembered places, camps, and artifacts, together with events, people, and values. Other recent examples illustrating the range of collaborative projects in the Post-contact field include Corranderk Mission Station (1863), Blacktown Native Institution (1821–29), Poonindie Mission (1850–96), Ebenezer Moravian Mission (1859–1904), and Peel Island Lazoret (1907–59). Different forms of cultural interaction are to be seen along Australia’s north coast among those engaged in the pearling, trochus, and trepang activities from Cossack and Broome to Arnhem Land. The archaeological footprint of Macassan traders as they harvested trepang and smoked their catch on shore was the subject of early field work and study, and continues topically. Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait Islands form a distinct cultural group and have a different history of interaction. Their maintenance of their traditional culture and complex trading networks within their sphere of interaction allowed them to remove the legal fiction that the settlement of the continent was anything other than an invasion.

Archaeologies of Australian Cities Australian urban excavation rarely presents Old World depth and complexity, but still has more superimposed structural and occupation layers than the majority of sites in rural and remote Australia. Such excavation since the 1970s is development driven under heritage legislation, so that in general, time frames are tight and site boundaries prescribed by development rather than research priorities. Finance is not always sufficient to cover the processing, publishing, and storage of finds, and the site-specific nature of these investigations does little to support inter-site comparison and analysis. Fuelled by growing public concern, rescue archeology had a lively start in 1974, when a very early burial, disturbed during construction of Sydney’s Town Hall Square was immediately excavated by Sydney University’s new Historical Archaeology students. Regulations for rescue excavation followed the extensive heritage survey and assessments of government-owned assets throughout Australia – including hospitals, asylums, jails, and naval and defense establishments in several Australian cities – which were required by Commonwealth legislation of 1975, a huge task involving many historical archaeologists over the next decade and more. From 1975 into the 1980s, historical archaeology accelerated in the Sydney CBD under State legislation, with excavation in advance of development

at the important sites of Hyde Park Convict Barracks, the historic Sydney Hospital, Old Sydney Gaol, and the Colony’s First Government House by 1984, followed in the later 1980s by The Australian Gaslight Co. site, and excavations in the Haymarket, Paddy’s Market, Darling Harbor, and CSR-Pyrmont, as well as increasing excavation of historic Parramatta. Earlier rescue projects primarily involved public buildings and accessed well-ordered government records: now excavators were using municipal residence records to structure comparative analyses of working-class households. Heritage legislation in other states followed during the 1980s, with the Little Lonsdale project (1987–88) and City Link (1989) in Melbourne. In 1988, the Seventh Annual ASHA Conference – Archaeology in the World Context – discussed the implications of this expanding body of nineteenth and twentieth century archaeological data in a more international context, reviewing current approaches to the analysis of urban rubbish fills, whether underfloor, well, or privy fills or yard rubbish derived from single households or successive occupancies. In 1994, Sydney’s important Cumberland St. excavations used a combination of finds and municipal records to explore the nature of the households revealed. Dietary remains as well as selection and quality of household goods suggested how rapidly former convicts seemed to have climbed the social ladder. Conversely, street and yard assemblages add rich archaeological data on low-efficiency sewage and water systems, and street butchering and vegetable refuse. A La Trobe University project, Exploring the Archaeology of the Modern City, later developed the 1988 conference themes by revisiting slum-land stereotypes in both Melbourne and Sydney. Other recent work on the Rocks has set the Chinese presence there in a wider context. Analyses of shipwreck cargoes now include new emphasis on urban consumer preferences, as well as intercolonial ceramic and other trade networks (Figure 1). Another archaeological focus has been mapping early Sydney archaeologically in relation to historic sources. To date such early sites include the Brickfields Hill brick and pottery-making sites, the first burial ground, the earliest jail , the first Observatory, earliest defenses, stretches of the original shoreline, and the foundations of the first Government House. In fact, since the boundaries of city sites are constrained by development needs rather than research questions, archaeologists are left to make the best of what they uncover. One solution is archaeological forward planning with the incorporation of potential city sites (and prepared research questions) into the

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Figure 1 Historical archaeological and shipwreck sites in Australia referred to in the text. Map by Andrew Wilson, Archaeological Computing Laboratory, University of Sydney.

planning process instead of repetitive reaction to oneoff excavations. Such a policy is now in place for Parramatta, the second town laid out in the Colony by Governor Phillip in 1789, which is undergoing major redevelopment. Five huts have been excavated here since 1985.The historic plan is known so that projections can be made about excavation potential into a preformulated integrated program with consistent themes, from the initial convict huts through all phases of its later development. Access to archaeological results can still be a problem, with completed reports – as required by excavation permits – mostly stored in State heritage libraries. Urban excavations often offer public participation in the dig, as well as Open Day visitation, and recommend conservation of significant remains.

A few become museums like the Museum of Sydney (on the site of First Government House), Hyde Park Barracks museum, or the Rocks Discovery Centre in Sydney. Many excavation sites are now commemorated by interpretive displays: variations on the Sydney Time Map which leads from site to artifact to people and back have proved promising. Other information is to be found in archaeological newsletters, web sites, and journal articles, and there are a number of monograph series and books. However, publication of the excavations themselves is often delayed where archaeological assemblages are ill-defined, historical records poor, and/or quantities of uninformative finds large. Recent overview publications of history and archaeology on the Rocks sites are a welcome development.

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Archaeologies of Industry Industrial activity began with white settlement partly for survival, and thus was always scouting for commercial prospects, the real business of colonization into which archaeology can offer unique insights. Research questions involve the selection, adaptation, and/or rejection of necessary technology; sources and availability of expertise; and the character, conditions, social and cultural needs of the workers involved. Many Australian industrial sites offer potential for investigating such questions. In the 1960s much historic technology was still in use in city foundries and brickworks as well as in country towns, but redevelopment was imminent. Archaeological enthusiasts – from National Trust members to professional engineers – were tireless in recording this disappearing heritage, imported and locally-adapted industrial technology. Site plans, drawings, flowcharts, and photography were followed by histories and workers’ interviews; excavation was rare. Early recorded sites included windmills, waterwheels, and horse-mills; saltworks, breweries, flourmills, olive and grape presses, wool-scours; lime kilns, brickworks, and potteries; and water supply, sanitation, and sewage farms in country towns or city suburbs. These studies – usually single-site – concentrated on how the site operated, identifying technology used, changes over time, sources of raw materials, nature of the plant, plans of its layout and flowchart of processing, with reference to company financial records of costs and returns. Others extended beyond the site to their transport systems, and the local communities and distant boardrooms behind them. The main questions concerned how the site worked, with emphasis on observation and recording of the processes involved and choices made. For mining sites, the location was determined by the resource. The mining of Australia’s rich mineral resources moved across huge landscapes in all states. The mining of coal began in 1801 near Newcastle, copper in South Australia from 1844 at Burra and Kapunda, tin from 1871 at Tingha, and silver–lead–zinc from Silverton and Broken Hill from 1883. Gold has left the most numerous surface traces, from Sofala in NSW and Castlemaine in Victoria in the 1850s, Hill End and the Palmer River in the 1870s, Pine Creek from 1877, and Kalgoorlie–Coolgardie from 1893. Recording processes and plant surviving in these distant locations continues; conversely, development pressure is often less (Figure 2). Preservation of industrial relics is a different matter. While industrial sites now come within regional planning schemes because of their heritage values,

assessments by professional interest groups often conflict disastrously with commercial interests. Sometimes there are conservation solutions. The massive mining company BHP Newcastle initiated their own historical recording of the recently closed 1915 complex, while in small towns local councils may support potteries, breweries, foundries, or pipe-works for tourist visitation. Some dramatic industrial structures are retained with new uses after closure: examples include Lithgow’s blast furnace, Perth’s Swan Brewery, the Commissariat Store in Brisbane, and Sydney Park on the site of the old Austral Brickworks. Such sites often undergo a great change after their original features have been recorded, although a crucial part of a long-familiar skyline does remain. Others become museums – the Living Museum of the West, based on the former Hughes Pipeworks in Footscray, and Sydney’s Eveleigh Railway Workshops Technology Park, or the impressive Power House Museum. Others of huge historic significance – Pyrmont Railway Yards in Sydney, the hub of a century of wool export – can be reduced to rubble without trace. Some mining remains in the bush are protected by incorporation into National Parks such as Hill End and Yerranderie. In Victoria the rich heritage of goldmining relics and sites around Bendigo and Castlemaine are conserved as part of the major Heritage Victoria Gold Mining project. South Australia also presents its varied heritage of Cornish engine houses and UK copper-mining technology as a tourist resource. These spectacular industrial monuments still signify remarkable past enterprise. An early model applied to industrial archaeological sites concerning sources and adaptations of imported technology was the Swiss Family Robinson model, based on the adaptation of equipment from the colonizing country to new needs, as well as adaptation of practice and expertise. Australian experience has also been compared with other colonies – South Africa, Canada, and Jamaica. Archaeology also proved informative on the gap between what the Board knew in London and what was really happening on site. These included frequent disasters over imported technology – expensive boilers at Hill End or Arltunga were hauled huge distances but scarcely worked and rarely utilized processes; the Peake copper smelter that worked for just 6 days. In Western Australia, evidence of the Coolgardie rush of 1893 survives in Kalgoorlie’s still operating mines and extensive mining relics. A major heritage item is the Goldfields Water Scheme (1898–1903) with eight pumping stations, the great Mundaring Weir, and a pipeline 523 km long to carry water from the coast to

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Figure 2 Historical archaeological sites in Southeastern Australia referred to in the text. Map by Andrew Wilson, Archaeological Computing Laboratory, University of Sydney.

the goldfields as well as the associated work camp sites, now the subject of archaeological study. Research directions today include the social contexts of industrial sites. Settlements as well as mine-shafts are integrated into the industrial landscape – employees’ households, single-men quarters and mess room or pub, together with oral histories, wherever possible, backgrounding employee families. Such projects include the archaeological traces of transient Chinese miners, alluvial mining sites, techniques and trade routes that followed gold rushes across Australia from 1850.

Maritime Archaeologies Maritime archaeology in Australia developed as a response to shipwreck looting in Sydney with the wreck of the Dunbar, followed by the spectacular violation of Dutch East India Company and British colonial wrecks off the coast of Western Australia. Destruction of wreck sites and legal battles over artifact ownership brought about the national Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976, followed by State legislation either as separate acts (e.g., South Australia Historic Shipwrecks Act 1981) or incorporated into general heritage legislation.

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Shipwrecks continue to be found, such as that of the convict ship Hive in 1835 in Jervis Bay (NSW). However, the online Australian National Historic Shipwreck Database, set up in 1988 by AIMA and now federally run, now contains well over 6500 wrecks, approaching some 98% of those known. This is supplemented by online lists from State maritime heritage agencies, which give location maps, maintained by Department of the Environment and Heritage. Amateur diving enthusiasm ensures that dive heritage trails get continuing support around Australia and beyond: maritime research themes have also expanded well beyond wreck excavation. The research potential of wreck cargoes, often tightly dated with detailed records, to provide information about consumer demands as well as intercolonial trade routes, risks, and practices across half the known world is now being realized. The Sydney Cove, wrecked in the Bass Strait with ceramics from Canton in 1797 and the wooden casks on board the William Salthouse wrecked in 1841 bound for Melbourne, have opened up this field. The investigation of the manufacture and stowage of the 36 casks (containing flour, salted provisions, nails, and various liquids) is one example of such archaeological enquiry. The scholarly publication of the Eglinton cargo adds background to what colonists wanted for their mansions in 1852. There are wider questions to be asked of the wrecks themselves. What can be learned about eighteenth to nineteenth century preparation of vessels for these long voyages of exploration and survey? At any given time, what shipboard conditions did immigrants to Australia have to endure? More specifically what can be learned from the scanty remains of HMS Sirius, flagship of the first fleet, wrecked off Norfolk Island in 1789, or from the more numerous artifacts of the HMS Pandora wrecked in 1791 after involvement with the Bounty mutineers. Maritime research has also moved on-shore, where investigation extends to shore bases of fishing and pearling in the north, also the archaeology of shore-whaling and sealing, now the subject of a well-funded collaborative research project in southern Australia and New Zealand. Centered in Flinders University, it is studying the physical remains of social behavior in remote locations as well as whaling industry technology and economics. Shipwreck survivor camps are a new area of investigation, offering the potential for archaeological insights into group behavior in such extreme conditions. A surviving example, well-known from historical texts, is the Sydney Cove camp on Preservation Island described by Strachan. Another is that from the French whaler Perseverant (1841).

Future Directions In the course of four decades Australian Historical Archaeology has achieved active academic departments with teaching and research in at least six states and territories, with heritage legislation and cultural resource management established in almost all states. There are national and state site registers, and professional expertise in rescue archaeology is widespread. Rescue projects involving industrial complexes, regional surveys, and large urban excavations in many cities have produced significant new information, although the physical storage of excavated material remains a problem to be solved. The scope for future development is encouraging. First, academic funding can increasingly be sought for large integrative archeological projects – surveys of whaling and sealing sites, of transcontinental contact sites, and inter-colonial urban archaeology – which add significantly to the synthesis of earlier projects. Second, digital technology is increasingly easing the earlier problems of gray literature – the inaccessibility of many rescue dig reports and bodies of data. Archaeologists now not only put reports but also find databases online. Digital technology continues to transform most technical aspects of the discipline – data entry, statistical results, mapping, and survey. Of particular interest is its role in interpretation of archaeological results to the public with immediate association of images, tables, maps, and text. Third, digital technology also means changes in how this information is presented that is, changes in the nature of delivery. Time-mapping and interactive displays developed at the Archaeology Computing Laboratory are increasingly relevant in museum and on-site displays, while computer games offer new opportunities. In these interpretations, digital technology can present sites, artifacts, and historical texts with complex interactive dialog that may challenge the long-standing dominance of the written word. Places, structures, and objects in many phases and from new angles interact on the screen suggesting alternative interpretations. Historical archaeology continues to bring its own perspective on Australian life. The questions raised by new archaeological finds become more interesting as the probability of additional historical texts recedes. Archaeological discoveries can trigger reassessment of earlier text-based interpretations, and offer today’s archaeologists and historians new evidence. It is characteristic of archaeological data to be physical and specific and this imparts a curiously sharp edge to its arguments that is not to be blunted by the current trend toward the writing of blended historical

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narrative. Genuine conflict between physical evidence and historical interpretations is a key arena for historical archaeology to make its own contribution to understanding Australia’s past.

Micronesia Scott M Fitzpatrick, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

See also: Africa, Historical Archaeology; Americas, Central: Historical Archaeology in Mexico; Americas, North: Historical Archaeology in the United States; Americas, South: Historical Archaeology; Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation; Asia, East: Historical Archaeology; Europe, South: Medieval and Post-Medieval; Europe, West: Historical Archaeology in Britain; Historical Archaeology in Ireland; Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline; Future; Methods; Industrial Archaeology; Maritime Archaeology; Urban Archaeology.

Further Reading Birmingham J (1992) Wybalenna: The Archaeology of Cultural Accommodation in Nineteenth Century Tasmania. Sydney: Australian Society for Historical Archaeology. Birmingham J, Jack R, and Jeans D (1979) Australian Pioneer Technology: Sites and Relics: Towards an Industrial Archaeology of Australia. Richmond, VIC: Heinemann Educational Australia. Casella, E (2002) Archaeology of the Ross Female Factory: Female Incarceration in Van Diemen’s Land, Australia. Launceston, TAS: Records of the Queen Victoria Museum, No. 108. Connah G (1988) The Archaeology of Australia’s History. Sydney: Cambridge University Press. Harrison R and Williamson C (2002) Sydney University Archaeological Methods Series, Vol. 8: After Captain Cook. The Archaeology of the Recent Indigenous Past in Australia. Sydney: University of Sydney Archaeological Laboratory. Karskens G (1999) Inside the Rocks: The Archaeology of a Neighborhood. Sydney: Hale and Iremonger. Kerr JS (1984) Design for Convicts. Sydney: Library of Australian History with National Trust of Australia (NSW). Mayne A and Murray T (2001) The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes: Explorations in Slumland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nash M (2001) Cargo for the Colony: The 1797 Wreck of the Merchant Ship Sydney Cove. Woden, ACT: Navarine Publishing. Staniforth M and Hyde M (2001) Maritime Archaeology in Australia: A Reader. Blackwood, SA: Southern Archaeology.

Relevant Websites http://www.heritage.gov.au – Australian Heritage Directory. http://www.asha.org.au – Australian Society for Historical Archaeology. http://www.aacai.com.au – Australian Association of Consulting Archaeologists Inc. http://www.aima.iinet.net.au – Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology Inc. http://eied.deh.gov.au/nsd/public/welcome.cfm – National Shipwreck Database. http://www.australianarchaeologicalassociation.com.au – Australian Archaeological Association Inc. http://car.anu.edu.au – Centre for Archaeological Research.

Glossary Achugao Pottery found in the Marianas that has parallel incised lines in curved or rectilinear patterns around the necks of vessels with stamped or incised circle motifs with colored slips, usually in red or black. Betel nut The nut from the betel palm (Areca catechu) that is chewed with pepper leaf (Piper betle) and slaked lime to produce a euphoric effect. Betel nut was chewed by prehistoric peoples in western Micronesia and is still used widely today in Yap and Palau. Chelechol ra Orrak An archaeological site in the Palauan archipelago that contains some of the earliest human burials found thus far in the Pacific Islands, dating to 2800–3000 years BP. Latte Prehistoric stone pillars used in the Marianas for supporting house structures. Nan Madol An archaeological site on the island of Pohnpei constructed of large basalt columns and foundation stones on artificially built islets. This enormous complex was home to the Saudeleur dynasty from about 1500 to 500 year BP and is one of the most impressive sites in all of Micronesia. Remote Oceania A term used to describe a part of the Pacific that includes those islands that are geographically separated over great distances and are generally not intervisible; includes those islands in Polynesia and Micronesia. San Roque Pottery found in the Marianas that is decorated with circular motifs. Sawei An extensive exchange system that involved peoples from the coral Outer Islands who traveled to Gagil in Yap to exchange resources. Sekau/Seka A drink prepared from the pepper plant (Piper methysitcum), also known as kava, that was introduced into eastern Micronesia by early colonists. The use of the plant has a long tradition in Pohnpei, where the roots of the plant are pounded into a pulp on a large basalt stone and twisted through strands of hibiscus bark. Stone money Large circular or ovoid disks of limestone that were carved in the Rock Islands of Palau by Yapese islanders and brought back to Yap for use as exchange items and symbols of wealth and status; also known as rai to the Yapese and balang in Palauan. Tasa The capstones of latte (Marianas). Taro A tuber crop imported to the Pacific Islands and one of the most important foods to peoples in the region today and in the past.

Introduction One of the last great waves of human migration was the peopling of the Pacific. As early as 3500 years ago, people began colonizing the western and southwestern Pacific, and over the next 2500 years, even the most remote islands had been visited by humans

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across this seemingly boundless ocean. The Pacific, despite its vastness, became a highway for peoples who were skilled in sailing and navigation. The Pacific is traditionally divided into Melanesia (‘black islands’), Polynesia (‘many islands’), and Micronesia (‘small islands’). ‘Micronesia’ was a term first coined by the Frenchman Gre´goire Louis Domeny de Rienzi, but it was Se´bastien-Ce´sar Dumont d’Urville (1832) who is credited with classifying the Pacific into these three regions. Although they do share some geographical and cultural similarities, the regions are not all mutually inclusive. Some islands such as Kapingamarangi and Nukuoro along the southernmost boundary of Micronesia are distinctly Polynesian (Figure 1). Micronesia is an archaeologically rich, culturally diverse, and geographically vast region of the northwest tropical Pacific made up of over 2000 islands and reef islets. Micronesia, like Polynesia, is considered a part of ‘Remote Oceania’ in which there is great distance between islands, most of which are not intervisible. These factors played a role in the timing of island colonization, whereby the most remote islands were typically settled much later than those adjacent to larger land masses. Despite the fact that Micronesia has a complex history of settlement by humans prehistorically, the name in geographic terms suffices quite well, and led to F.W. Christian (1899) to call it the ‘sea of little lands’. Micronesia encompasses an area of ocean of around 7.4 million km2 with a total land area only

2700 km2, comparable to the size of the United States, but with an area the same as the state of Rhode Island. In fact, the largest island in the region is Guam, which is only 544 km2. Micronesia is typically divided into four main island groups – the Marianas, the Carolines, the Marshalls, and Kiribati – but contains numerous other coral atoll outliers. The Marianas stretch in a north– south line in the northwest corner of Micronesia and include the larger islands of Guam, Saipan, Rota, and Tinian. Guam has the distinction of being the first island group in the Pacific Islands contacted by Europeans after Magellan landed there in 1521. The Carolines are the largest group, comprised of over 950 islands spanning 3200 km from Palau in the west to Kosrae in the east. The Western Carolines include Palau and Yap, and Chuuk, Kosrae, and Pohnpei are located in the Eastern Carolines. It is important to note that there are also hundreds of atolls and reef islets interspersed between these larger islands, some of which were settled prehistorically. The Marshall Islands lie at the extreme eastern margin of Micronesia and are made up of 29 atolls and several small coral islands that together form an area of only 180 km2. The largest of these atolls is Majuro with 64 individual islets that surround a lagoon 300 km2 in area, but only around 9 km2 of it is land. The nation of Kiribati straddles the equator and consists of three main island groups – the Line Islands, the Phoenix Islands, and the Gilberts, as well as the island of Banaba.

Figure 1 Map of Oceania and general boundary of Micronesia. Drafted by Scott M. Fitzpatrick.

1722 Micronesia

Roughly 1200 different languages have been recorded historically and in modern times in the Pacific Islands. About 1000 of these languages belong to the Austronesian family that is spread from Madagascar through much of Southeast Asia, Melanesia (excluding New Guinea), and all of Polynesia and Micronesia. However, there are slight differences in the division of these languages within Micronesia. The islands in Yap, the Eastern Carolines, Marshalls, and Kiribati are considered part of the Oceanic subgroup (which includes all of Polynesia and much of Melanesia), whereas Palau and the Marianas (as well as the Philippines) speak languages in the Western Malayo-Polynesian subgrouping. Based on the linguistic evidence, the prehistoric human settlement of Micronesia likely took place in three major events, but must have included multiple migratory movements. The first was the settlement of the Marianas and Palau from island Southeast Asia, the second may have derived from the Bismarcks to Yap, and the third to central and eastern Micronesia from somewhere around the Solomons and/or Vanuatu. That Micronesians were able to colonize and adapt to these remote islands is a testament to their sophisticated maritime technologies and ability to sail and navigate using the stars as a compass. Micronesians are considered to have developed the most advanced sailing techniques in the Pacific, allowing them to stabilize and maneuver their outrigger canoes with great efficiency and speed. Modern voyaging experiments demonstrate how navigators using traditional skills and knowledge, passed down from generations to generations, were able to successfully travel between islands almost at will, treating these voyages as accomplishments of endurance rather than exceptionally difficult navigational exercises. This allowed them to maintain linkages with peoples on other islands through intermarriage and exchange, although some Micronesian peoples such as those in Palau eventually lost the need or desire to travel long distances over open ocean.

Environment Micronesian islands have a tropical climate with small seasonal changes. However, there are some marked differences in rainfall patterns. Islands in the western part of Micronesia frequently have a higher precipitation in June and July and a drier season between February and April. Larger volcanic islands to the east such as Pohnpei and Kosrae receive more rainfall annually than the others. In fact, Pohnpei is considered to be one of the wettest places on earth, with an astonishing 300–400 inches of rainfall every year. The southern Marshall Islands, for example, typically

receive more rainfall than the northern ones, and the opposite is true for the Gilberts (Kiribati). There are four main island types in Micronesia – high volcanic (e.g., Pohnpei, Kosrae), island-arc (e.g., Palau, Yap), raised coral or limestone (e.g., Fais, Satawal, Rock Islands), and coral atoll (e.g., Kayangel, Ulithi, the Marshalls). The western part of Micronesia (Western Carolines, Marianas) lies west of the Andesite Line, which separates the deeper, igneous rock of the Central Pacific Basin from the partially submerged continental areas of acidic igneous rock on its margins. Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, New Guinea, and New Zealand are all eastward extensions of the continental blocks of Australia and Asia and lie outside the Andesite Line. Within the closed loop of the Andesite Line are most of the deep troughs, submerged volcanic mountains, and oceanic volcanic islands that characterize the Central Pacific Basin. Here, basaltic lavas gently flow out of rifts to build huge dome-shaped volcanic mountains whose eroded summits form island arcs, chains, and clusters. Outside the Andesite Line, volcanism is more explosive, and the so-called Pacific rim of fire is the world’s foremost belt of volcanic activity. The most prevalent island type in Micronesia is the coral atoll. These are remnants of submerged volcanic peaks that have emergent coral reefs developed on the uppermost fringe of the peaks. They usually have a deep lagoon or several smaller ones with coral sand beaches. Freshwater must either be collected from rainwater in some type of catchment or from wells dug into the island’s interior to tap what is known as the Ghyben–Herzberg lens (a lens of freshwater that lays atop the denser saltwater). The majority of coral islands extend in an arc east to southeast from the Caroline Islands through the Marshalls, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Tokelau, and Tuamotu. Chuuk, for example, primarily consists of coral atoll reef islets that surround an immense lagoon approximately 2125 km2 in area, although there are a few volcanic islands found in the southern half of this group. Studies on climate changes during the Late Holocene have shown that atolls in Micronesia were not able to form until sea level, which was steadily rising, had begun to stabilize to its present-day height. Because of their insular nature, islands in Micronesia have an impoverished fauna, especially in terms of terrestrial species. A number of these, including the fruit bat (Pteropus spp.), coconut crab (Burgis latro), and various species of crabs, were eaten in the past and are still relished today. Archaeological evidence suggests that pigs (Sus scrofa), dogs (Canis familiaris), two different species of rats (Rattus rattus mansorius and Rattus exulans), and possibly chicken (Gallus gallus) were introduced by native peoples.

Micronesia 1723

But, these were typically not all present on every island. Prior to the historic period, a variety of bat, bird, crab, frog, and snake species were present. Marine resources such as fish and shellfish played a more prominent role in the diet of prehistoric Micronesians compared to terrestrial animals. The green (Chelonia mydas) and hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) were important for their meat and carapaces and shellfish were heavily exploited for both food and manufacturing tools. Of these, giant clams (tridacnids) was preferred for their meat, dense shell for making tools (particularly adzes), and probably as containers. Other species such as Terebra, Conus, Mitre, Anadara, Cassis, Trochus, and Pinctada shells were important for producing adzes, fishhooks, graters, beads, or ornaments. Other invertebrates used by Micronesians as food include sea urchins (Echinoidea), the sea worm (Sipuncula), starfish (Asteroidea), sea cucumbers (Holothurioidea), octopus (Cephalopoda), shrimp (Natantia), and various crustaceans. Animals transported by humans to the islands such as pigs (identified only from Palau and Fais) and dogs may have supplemented the diet, although neither seems to be found in any great quantities at archaeological sites. Although marine foods were abundant and an important source of protein and calories, plants introduced by humans were critical to the long-term survival of human groups. These crops included bananas (Musa spp.), coconuts (Cocos nucifera), taro (Colocasia esculenta and Cyrtosperma chamissoni; rarely Alocasia macrorrhiza), breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis), yams (Dioscorea alata, D. nummularia, D. pentaphylla or cumingi), and pandanus (Pandanus tectorius). The Polynesian chestnut (Inocarpus edulis) also provided an additional source of food for some peoples. In general, taro and yam are most preferred in the west, while breadfruit was more of a staple in the east (Figure 2).

The Prehistoric Settlement of Micronesia The Mariana Islands

Evidence from sites such as Tarague Beach on Guam and Achugao Point, Chalan Piao, and Laulau on Saipan demonstrates that the settlement of the Marianas occurred by at least 3500 year BP. Some linguists have proposed a colonization of the Marianas by peoples from Taiwan, though others argue that Chamorro speakers have more immediate links to the Philippines. Recent genetic evidence suggests that the Marianas and Yap were probably settled independently from islands in Southeast Asia and that gene flow may have also occurred from

Figure 2 Swamp taro (Cyrtosperma chamissoni ). Photo by Scott M. Fitzpatrick.

central-eastern Micronesia. If the Marianas were settled from some part of Southeast Asia, it has been hypothesized that Yap and Palau might have been stepping stones to the northern reaches of western Micronesia, although it seems more likely that the Marianas were settled independently. Ceramics found in the earliest occupation layers in the Marianas known as Achugao Incised and San Roque Incised are much different than other pottery traditions found in Micronesia. Some of the decorative techniques appear reminiscent of the dentate-stamped Lapita pottery found in the islands of Melanesia and western Polynesia. Achugao pottery has parallel incised lines in curved or rectilinear patterns around the necks of vessels with stamped or incised circle motifs with colored slips, usually in red or black. Decoration on the much rarer San Roque pottery consists of circular motifs. Lime was used to fill in the decoration on both ceramic types after firing. It has been suggested that pottery seen in the Marianas, as well as those ceramics from Luzon (northern Philippines) and Lapita, share similarities with the red-slipped pottery found in Yu¨an-shan assemblages in Taiwan. In addition to pottery, other artifacts such as beads and bracelets made from Conus shell are found. Some of the more interesting features in Marianas prehistory are the latte stones made from limestone, sandstone, or basalt which begin to show up in the archaeological record around 1000 year BP. These stone pillars with capstones (tasa) were arranged in pairs numbering between three and seven (often occurring in clusters) and used to support house

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Figure 3 Latte stone from the Marianas. Photo by Michiko Intoh.

structures. A study of 234 sets of latte on Guam found that over 80% were in sets of four or five and were rarely more than 2.5 m high. The House of Taga site on Tinian, however, has columns over 5 m high. Although there has been some debate about the true function of latte stones, it is likely that they served multiple purposes centering around habitation, domestic activities, and preventing rats from gaining access to food supplies. It is quite possible they also served other functions that were more ritual or symbolic in nature. Needless to say, the carving, transport, and use of latte stones clearly represent a gradual rise in Marianas’ social complexity (Figure 3). The Western Caroline Islands

Prior to the late 1990s, early dates from Palau and Yap hovered around 2000 year BP, even after nearly 30 years of investigation. A wealth of archaeological information derived from cultural resource management projects on Koror and the large volcanic island of Babeldaob, as well as recent research in the smaller Rock Islands of Palau, now suggests that the settlement took place closer to around 3000– 3300 year BP, nearly contemporaneous with the earliest prehistoric sites known in the Marianas. Good evidence for this period of occupation comes from Ulong Island and the Chelechol ra Orrak site which contains the oldest-known burials yet found in the Pacific Islands (c. 2800–3000 year BP). Palaeoenvironmental cores that show an increase in charcoal fragments (possibly from people burning forested

areas for growing crops), and pollen from plants transported by humans, suggest that human settlement may have occurred even earlier around 4500 year BP. However, similar to what is seen in the Marianas, no archaeological evidence has yet been found to support the early palaeoenvironmental dates and so it is still a debated issue whether human settlement did in fact take place this early. Palauans appear to have genetic contributions from Southeast Asia, central-eastern Micronesia, and New Guinea, a reflection of their long history and geographical proximity to all three regions. Computer simulations of drift voyaging suggest that Palau was likely colonized by peoples from the southern Philippines (Mindanao), matching up well with the linguistic evidence. Because of its ecological diversity, Palau has a number of species not found in the other islands such as the marine crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), which was present at historic contact, but was either rare or unimportant as a resource. Among larger marine vertebrates, the now endangered dugong (Dugong dugong) was highly prized for its vertebras, which were worn as bracelets (klilt) by men of high status in Palauan society. Palauans and Yapese both brought with them a number of important crops, the most important of which was taro (Cyrtosperma chamissonis) that was grown in swamp ponds. Although swamp taro was an extremely important crop to the Yapese, they also grew yams in gardens created by slashing and burning sections of the forest. In addition to the various plants that Western Carolinian populations purposefully brought with them for food were other cultigens that did not necessarily fulfill a dietary need, but still important culturally. These include nuts from the betel palm (Areca catechu), which is chewed in combination with pepper leaf (Piper betle) and slaked lime to produce a calming, euphoric effect in the user. Areca palms are an important cash crop today in Palau and Yap and are often found surrounding men’s houses or residences. Evidence for betel nut chewing in Palau dates back nearly 3000 years (Figure 4). The initial colonizers of Palau probably focused on settling the larger islands of Babeldaob and Koror, although the smaller Rock Islands were also used for specific purposes such as burying the dead. By about 2500 year BP, people in Palau began constructing monumental earthworks along ridgelines such as terraces and later on, flat-topped ‘crown and brim’ formations. These large complexes are not found elsewhere in the Pacific Islands and probably served multiple functions that were agricultural, domestic,

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Figure 4 Betel nut (Areca catechu) palms surrounding a traditional Palauan men’s house (bai ). Photo by Scott M. Fitzpatrick.

Figure 5 Terrace formation on the island of Babeldaob in Palau. Photo by Calvin Emesiochel.

ceremonial, defensive, and/or symbolic in nature (Figure 5). After 1500 year BP, most terraces were completely abandoned and stonework villages on both the coralline and volcanic islands are seen. By 800 year BP, ancient Palauan life was centered in these villages which contain a variety of stone architecture, including house and cooking platforms, meeting house (bai) foundations, docks, bathing areas, chiefly backrests, and extensive pathways that linked sections of the villages together. Not only were these stone constructions utilitarian and probably defensive, but platforms were used for interring the dead and served as indicators of status, rank, and power. When Europeans arrived, these villages were still in use and continue today as places of residence for many inhabitants. Artifacts commonly found at stonework village and other archaeological sites in Palau include

ceramics that were locally made and primarily tempered with ‘grog’ (crushed fragments of fired pottery); some earlier samples contain calcareous or volcanic sand. Ornaments and tools made from the giant clam, Terebra, and Conus, and stone tools are found, but the latter in much fewer numbers. Archaeological research in Yap that began in the 1950s began to identify many features on the surface such as stone construction for house platforms, alignments, pathways, and walls. The earliest acceptable radiocarbon dates for Yap hover around 2000–2200 year BP and come from the sites of Pemrang and Rungruw at the southern end of Yap proper. Similar to many other Micronesian islands, the most ubiquitous artifacts found in Yap are ceramics, but with others made from shell and stone. The earliest ceramics contain calcareous sandtempered (CST) pottery and after about 600 year BP, a laminated type becomes more common. However, like the Marianas and Palau, palaeoenvironmental sequences with charcoal and pollen suggest that initial settlement may have occurred a thousand years earlier, although further work is needed to substantiate these findings. Genetically, the Yapese appear to have been independently settled from somewhere in Southeast Asia. The distribution of a particular genetic sequence on Yap and throughout central-eastern Micronesia suggests that these areas were linked culturally in the past. This is evidenced by the extensive exchange relations that were known historically between Yap and the coral atoll dwellers to the east. When Europeans arrived, there were peoples living in over 140 villages on the four main islands of Yap (Yap, Maap, Rumung, and Gagil-Tamil), which were socially ranked – higher-ranked villages were located on the coast and lower-ranked ones were inland. As a result, the higher the ranking, the more privileged access these groups had to resources from the land and sea. However, these ranking systems were dynamic and could change as conflicts occurred, so it was critical that villages continually validate their ranking by establishing and maintaining exchange relationships with other groups, including those outside of Yap. Some of the most dominant features of Yapese settlement are the faluw (young men’s house), pebaey (council house), stone paths, and taro gardens. Villages are divided into tabinaw or plots and often surrounded by hedges. Wunbey (paved plazas) are built on top of these. Other obvious markers of village life in Yap include their famous ‘stone money’ (rai) that can be seen lined up along pathways or in front of residences (Figure 6). These unusual disks are

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Figure 6 Stone money disks (rai ) set upright against the foundation of a residence in Yap. Photo by Michiko Intoh.

usually circular or ovoid in shape and made from limestone quarried in the Rock Islands of Palau (see below). It has been proposed that as populations grew (perhaps as high as 30 000 people by the mid-1800s), the Yapese shifted from small-scale cultivation of crops on hillsides to coastal areas for growing taro. According to Japanese administration censuses taken during the turn of the nineteenth century, these numbers declined rapidly after contact to less than 8000. The Central and Eastern Caroline Islands

Based on archaeological and linguistic evidence, the islands of Chuuk, Pohnpei, and Kosrae appear to have been first colonized by at least 2000 year BP from somewhere in southeast Melanesia or perhaps Fiji/western Polynesia. The languages here are classified into a subgroup of Oceanic languages called Nuclear Micronesian, which implies that the initial settlers of these islands probably came from somewhere in the vicinity of early Lapita expansion between the Bismarcks and the Solomons or Vanuata. Artifactually, all of the high islands in the Central and Eastern Carolines have CST pottery during initial colonization at 2000 year BP. However, the manufacturing of pottery ceases on all of these islands by about 700 year BP or slightly before. Various theories have been proposed to account for why peoples here and in other parts of the Pacific stopped making pottery, but it could be tied to a number of factors, including a change in cooking practices or a breakdown of trade relations in which pottery played a part in transferring goods. For subsistence, those islands around the central part of Micronesia such as Chuuk tend to rely on taro, but also breadfruit which is seasonally available. The Piper methysticum plant, known as kava

in Polynesia, was also brought into Pohnpei and Kosrae where it is known as sekau or seka, respectively. The roots of this pepper plant are pounded into a pulp on a large basalt sekau stone which are often found in prehistoric and modern villages. To prepare the drink, the pulp is strained with water by twisting it through the inner strips of bark from the hibiscus tree. The sekau/seka is shared in a communal cup by users, which usually numbs the mouth, relaxes the individual, and increases the senses. Some archaeologists have suggested that Pohnpei, the third largest island in Micronesia (330 km2), was originally settled by peoples around 2300–3000 year BP due to similarities in language, agriculture, and artifacts – this is slightly earlier than the most wellaccepted chronologies dating closer to 2000 year BP. The most common types of archaeological sites found on Pohnpei are those with stone architecture. The site of Nan Madol, built on nearly 100 artificially constructed islets covering 80 ha, is constructed of large foundation boulders used to support columnar basalt columns. It is by far the most impressive example of stonework in Micronesia (and arguably the Pacific) and represents one of the finest examples of architectural prowess known in prehistoric Oceania. The site contains dozens of structures, including stone enclosures, platforms, and tombs. Also affectionately known as the ‘Venice of the Pacific’ because of the channels that can be accessed by boat during higher tides, Nan Madol construction began around 1500 year BP and lasted for about 1000 years with the most intensive building taking place during the last few hundred years of its use. These structures have been interpreted as serving as chiefly residences for the island’s elite ruling class known as the Saudeleur. According to oral traditions, the Saudeleur dynasty was later overthrown by an invading group around 500 year BP by a man called Isohkelekel who led 333 warriors in a battle to defeat the ruling class. Other stone constructions found on Pohnpei include vaults or tombs (lolong), platforms (pehi), and enclosures (keltakai). After about 1000 year BP, adzes made from Terebra and Mitre shell appear, and 200 years later pearl shell trolling lures are found (Figures 7 and 8). The colonization of Kosrae was probably contemporaneous with other islands in the Central and Eastern Carolines, although limited palaeoenvironmental research suggests that the island was colonized earlier around 2500 year BP. The best-known site on Kosrae, located on Leluh Island, is similar to Nan Madol in that it was constructed using columnar basalt columns to form walls and foundations. The site covers an area of 27 ha with a canal running through the center

Micronesia 1727

Figure 7 The corner of a tomb enclosure at the Nan Madol site known as Nan Douwas. Photo by Scott M. Fitzpatrick.

contact; only a few hundred people were estimated to be living on Kosrae in the 1870s. Of the three high islands in this region of Micronesia, Chuuk (formerly known as ‘Truk’) has received the least attention archaeologically, although it does have some of the best evidence for historic sites dating to the Japanese administrative period and World War II (WWII). The earliest settlement of Chuuk is found on the island of Fefan dating to around 2000 year BP, but could be slightly earlier. Some archaeological deposits found within the intertidal zone off Fefan are indicative of stilt houses being constructed. The cultural chronology for Chuuk is somewhat vague with a long ‘gap’ of a thousand years between 700 and 1500 year BP where little information exists about prehistoric settlement. The Winas Phase probably represents the initial settlement of Chuuk lagoon and the sites on Fefan island may contain the oldest pottery-bearing sites in central and eastern Micronesia. Ceramic vessels are typically CST plain bowls or pots with little to no decoration. Tridacna shell tools and Conus ornaments are also found, reminiscent of those seen in the Solomon Islands. The later Tonnachaw Phase lasts from 700 year BP to the present. No ceramics are present, but a number of other artifacts are found such as coral pounders, Terebra shell adzes, and breadfruit peelers made from cowry shells. Archaeologists have identified seven major site types on the island, most of which are associated with later periods of occupation. These include coastal residences with lineage houses (wuteyches), coastal wuuts (canoe houses), interior residences that were domestic in nature, interior fanang (cookhouses), ridge and summit sites that are midden rich, forts with rock-wall structures located at higher elevations, and rock art.

Figure 8 Columnar basalt columns used to construct the wall of a structure at Nan Madol in Pohnpei. Photo by Scott M. Fitzpatrick.

The Marshall Islands

of the site to allow access to the sea. The site is said to be the residence of the paramount chief and his subchiefs. Pottery recovered here is similar to late Lapita plainware, but shares closer affinities with pottery from Chuuk. Through time, the population began to increase, especially between 300 and 900 year BP, and groups began more intensively settling the coastal margins and upper valleys. By 500–600 year BP, nearly all of the major land areas, including the coastlines, flatter uplands, and islands in mangrove, have evidence for prehistoric habitation. At contact, populations are estimated to have reached between 7000 and 10 000 people, but declined rapidly after European

The Marshall Islands are probably best known for being used as an atomic testing ground by the US military after WWII. In total, 67 devices were detonated between 1946 and 1958, all of which took place on either Bikini or Enewetak atoll. Because of the focus placed on the Marshalls during and after WWII, there are extensive historic remains on the islands such as concrete bunkers, artillery, and wreckage of planes and other vehicles, although good evidence is emerging that the islands were intensively settled prehistorically as well. Several extremely early radiocarbon dates have been collected from Bikini that date from about 2800–3500 years ago, but they are much older than other chronological sequences and are considered

1728 Micronesia

dubious by most researchers. It is likely that settlement of the Marshalls took place closer to around 2000 year BP based on dates from several atolls including Kwajalein, Bikini, and Majuro. Linguistic models suggest the Marshalls were colonized by groups originating in eastern Melanesia; this is also supported by computer simulations of voyaging, but it is also possible that peoples moved northward through Tuvlau and Kiribati from Fiji. Although atolls are rich in marine foods, prehistoric Marshallese also cultivated crops in order to survive on these small, remote islands. Differences in rainfall between the northern and southern Marshall Islands led to the giant swamp taro Cyrtosperma and breadfruit being emphasized in the more southerly and wet islands, and coconut and pandanus in the northern and more arid islands. Dozens of archaeological sites have been identified in the Marshalls and as expected, nearly all of the portable artifacts found in these sites are made from bone and shell due to the lack of local volcanic stone. Examples include shell adzes made from Cassis, Conus, Lambis, and Tridacna, Spondylus beads, and Conus rings. Pearl shell was also used to manufacture trolling lures and fishhooks. The few stone artifacts found in archaeological deposits may have been made from stone that drifted to the islands on driftwood masses. Twentynine burials at Laura village on Majuro that date to 1400–1800 year BP and contain hundreds of ornaments such as beads, shell rings, and a few bone and shell tools testify to inhabitants caring for the deceased during the early prehistoric period. Kiribati

Relatively little is known about the prehistory of Kiribati, a likely result of their remoteness and lack of good accessibility, but also a feeling by past researchers that the settlement of these smaller atolls and limestone islands lacked stratified deposits or were peripheral to the understanding of Pacific settlement compared to other high island groups. We now know this not to be the case and there has been a steady increase by archaeologists since the early 1980s to investigate these types of island throughout Micronesia. Linguistically, peoples in Kiribati as in the Central and Eastern Carolines speak languages within Nuclear Micronesian. A majority of the archaeological work conducted on prehistoric settlement in Kiribati has been done in the Gilberts. Excavations on the island of Makin by Japanese archaeologists revealed cultural deposits at a depth of over 3 m that dated to around 1600 year BP. The artifacts found, including fishing lures made from Cassis

shell, appear to be closely related to those found in eastern Polynesia. Studies conducted later on the islands of Tarawa and Tamana revealed a diversity of fishing gear such as fishhooks and lure shanks, shell beads, and pavement and alignments made from coral rock. More recent archaeological work on Nikunau shows that prehistoric peoples were building earth ovens using coral and clam shells.

Exchange Systems and Interaction Spheres The ability of Micronesians to cross vast distances and interact with other island communities was crucial to their successful colonization and long-term settlement, livelihood and, at times, survival. Anthropologists and archaeologists are not only interested in discovering when the islands were settled, but how islanders initiated or maintained contact with each other and the items exchanged as a result. Because interisland interaction was fairly commonplace in many parts of the Pacific, including Micronesia, the transfer of commodities, ideas, and knowledge becomes a crucial part of trying to understand why and how cultures may have changed over time. One of the most well known and documented exchange systems in Micronesia was the formal gift exchange between the people of Gagil on Yap and coral atoll dwellers from the east. This exchange system, called the sawei (literally referring to the Ulithian term for baskets used to transport gifts), involved peoples from Ulithi, Fais, Woleai, Eauripik, Sorol, Ifalik, Faraulep, Lamotrek, Elato, Satawal, Polowat, Pollap, Pulusuk, and Namonuito who paid tribute to the Gagil district in the form of shell valuables, sennit cord (coconut fiber rope), and various other items in return for goods that were scarce in the

Figure 9 Stone money disk found at the Metuker ra Bisech quarry site in Palau. Photo by Scott M. Fitzpatrick.

Micronesia 1729

low-lying coral islands (e.g., pottery, timber). This exchange required crossing hundreds of kilometers of open ocean with outrigger canoes and began centuries prior to European contact (Figure 9). Another interesting case of exchange was the quarrying of ‘stone money’ by Yapese islanders in western Micronesia. Disks of limestone (also referred to as rai by the Yapese and balang in Palauan) up to 4.5 m in diameter and weighing over 8 tonne, were carved from the many natural limestone caves around the Palauan archipelago and transported by oceangoing canoes or European trading ships back to Yap Island 400 km away. The production of these exotic valuables is known, in part, from European explorers who participated in the transport of these disks back to Yap in the 1800s. A rich collection of ethnographic data and oral traditions suggests that stone money manufacture took place prior to European contact. This makes these megaliths the heaviest portable objects ever moved over open ocean by Pacific Islanders. Although the sawei and stone money production are two of the most prolific examples of exchange and cross-cultural interaction in Micronesia, there are numerous other cases of artifacts being transferred between islands. Pottery from Palau found in Ngulu, Yapese pottery, and volcanic stone recovered on eastern atolls, and similarities of pearl-shell trolling lures found in the Marshalls and Solomon Islands are indicative of long-term prehistoric exchange systems operating within and between widely separated archipelagos.

Conclusions and Outlook Micronesia, as one of the three main regions of the Pacific, is a lesser-known but still archaeologically fascinating part of the world. Although research has been going on in Micronesia for decades, it is still in its infancy, with a disproportionate amount of work taking place in the western part of the region and generally decreasing as one moves eastward. Nonetheless, despite the vastness of ocean that these smaller islands occupy, particularly the hundreds of coral atolls scattered across its surface, it is clear that prehistoric peoples were able to successfully colonize these islands by at least 2000 years ago and as early as 3500 year BP according to archaeological evidence. Palaeoenvironmental data suggest that colonization of many of these islands may be hundreds or even thousands of years earlier. Linguistic, genetic, and archaeological research indicate that most, if not all of the major island groups,

were settled independently from Southeast Asia, and possibly New Guinea in the case of western Micronesia, while those in the Central and Eastern Carolines and Marshalls have their likely origins in Melanesia or parts of western Polynesia. Archaeological research also demonstrates that there is a strong tradition of transporting larger stones (megaliths) to use as exchange items and for construction. The interisland movement and exchange of these megaliths indicates the ability of relatively small populations to coerce, force, or in some way encourage commoners to perform hard labor and risk their lives to achieve the goals of elite groups. As archaeology continues to grow and develop in Micronesia, we will likely see many of the chronological gaps between archaeological and palaeoenvironmental data filled in, and gain a better understanding of just how extensive peoples were moving and interacting as part of archaeologically and historically documented exchange systems and interaction spheres. See also: Exchange Systems; Migrations: Pacific;

Oceania: New Guinea and Melanesia.

Further Reading Athens JS and Ward J (2004) Holocene vegetation, savanna origins and human settlement of Guam. Records of the Australian Museum. Supplement 29, 15–30. Butler BM (1994) Early prehistoric settlement in the Mariana Islands: New evidence from Saipan. Man and Culture in Oceania 10: 15–38. Davidson J (1992) New evidence about the date of colonisation of Nukuoro Atoll, a Polynesian outlier in the Eastern Caroline Islands. Journal of the Polynesian Society 101: 293–298. Fitzpatrick SM (2003) Early human burials in the western Pacific: Evidence for a c.3000 year old occupation on Palau. Antiquity 77: 719–731. Hezel FX (1983) The first taint of civilization. A history of the Caroline and Marshall Islands in the pre-colonial days, 1521–1885. Pacific Islands Monograph Series 13. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Hunter-Anderson RL and Zan Y (1996) Demystifying the Sawei, a traditional interisland exchange system. ISLA: A Journal of Micronesian Studies 4: 1–45. Intoh M (1997) Human dispersals into Micronesia. Anthropological Science 105: 15–28. Lum JK and Cann RL (2000) mtDNA lineage analyses: Origins and migrations of Micronesians and Polynesians. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 113: 151–168. Rainbird P (2004) The Archaeology of Micronesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weisler M (2001) Life on the edge: Prehistoric settlement and economy on Utrok atoll, southern Marshall Islands. Archaeology in Oceania 36: 109–133.

1730 OCEANIA/New Guinea and Melanesia

New Guinea and Melanesia Robert L Welsch, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA and The Field Museum, Chicago, IL, USA Adam M Levine, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA Published by Elsevier Inc.

Glossary Austronesian The Malayo-Polynesian family of languages that extends from island Southeast Asia to Polynesia, but does not include the many hundreds of Papuan languages on New Guinea and the larger Melanesian islands. Far Oceania The Pacific Island groups lying east of the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands, that were settled much later, generally within the last 3500 years. Lapita The common name of an ancient Pacific Ocean pottery that is believed by some to be the common ancestor of several cultures in Polynesia and surrounding areas. Melanesia A division of Oceania in the southwest Pacific Ocean comprising the islands northeast of Australia and south of the equator. Micronesia A division of Oceania in the western Pacific Ocean comprising the islands east of the Philippines and north of the equator. Near Oceania The Pacific Island groups nearest Asia that were settled earliest, principally including the Melanesian Island groups of New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands. New Guinea An island in the southwest Pacific Ocean north of Australia. Polynesia A division of Oceania including scattered islands of the central and southern Pacific Ocean roughly between New Zealand, Hawaii, and Easter Island. pottery Ware, such as vases, pots, bowls, or plates, shaped from moist clay and hardened by heat. sherds The individual pieces of broken pottery vessels.

On 1 November 1910, after a year-and-a-half collecting ethnological specimens in Melanesia for The Field Museum, the anthropologist A. B. Lewis called in at the Catholic mission station at Vuna Pope on the Gazelle Peninsula of eastern New Britain in what is now Papua New Guinea. Here he was shown a peculiar kind of pottery that had been found by one of the Catholic priests that was unlike any he had observed or collected in other parts of Melanesia. He wrote in his diary that ‘‘On the island of Watom broken pottery is found, with ornamental patterns of fine incised lines and dots. This is different from anything I have seen’’. Lewis was one of the first anthropologists or archaeologists to see these distinctive potsherds, some of which were described in two short papers by Father Otto Meyer. Having been Franz Boas’s fourth PhD student as well as a curator at The

Field Museum, Lewis was broadly trained as an anthropologist. He had seen dozens of pottery-making traditions in Melanesia, both contemporary and archaeological, yet he did not recognize and identify this style of dentate stamped potsherd as Lapita as any Pacific archaeologist would today. The reason was that it would be more than 40 years before similar sherds would be found at the site now known as Lapita in New Caledonia, which gave this pottery the name by which it is known today. During an expedition to New Caledonia a few months later in 1911, Swiss ethnologist Fritz Sarasin, then director of the Museum fu¨r Vo¨lkerkunde in Basel, happened upon similar potsherds at Kone´, a community along the west coast of Grand Terre. Sarasin was surprised to find that ‘‘Mixed with these primitive tools were a large number of pottery fragments some of which bore dentate stamped decoration’’. His colleague, the French geologist Maurice Piroutet likened these potsherds to fine Etruscan pottery or Corinthian style vases, but assumed that they were much more recent than such European antiquities. Decades later, sherds from this site were radiocarbon-dated at 2500 BP, roughly contemporaneous with those Corinthian vases to which Piroutet had likened them. Neither this style of dentate stamped pottery nor the site in New Caledonia where it was first found would emerge onto the archaeological map of Melanesia until after July 1952, when archaeologists E. W. Gifford and Richard Shuttler visited Kone´ excavating for a week at a site near a beach on the Foue´ peninsula. One of the villagers had brought them a dentate sherd from the same area Sarasin and Piroutet had learned of 40 years earlier. Here Gifford and Shuttler conducted the first systematic excavation of these dentate potsherds in situ, discovering the actual source of the sherds (their New Caledonia Site 13), later obtaining dates from two pieces of associated charcoal of 846 BCE and 481 BCE. They asked laborers from the community helping them what the name of the site was in Haveke, the local language, and they were told Xapetaa, which Gifford and Shutler heard and recorded as Lapita, the name such sherds have been known by ever since. When Gifford and Shutler analyzed these sherds, they recognized a similarity both to the sherds from Watom that Father Meyer had described four decades earlier and others that W. C. McKern had excavated in 1920–21 at Tonga. These Tongan potsherds were also dentate stamped and had come from a stratified site, but until then they had remained undated. McKern had presumed they were quite recent sherds closely related to historic traditions in Fiji. The sherds from Lapita were also similar to some found a few

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years earlier on the Isle of Pines. Although Gifford and Shutler were the first to connect Tonga, New Caledonia, and Watom through Lapita-style pottery, their field report made rather little of these connections.

Lapita and the Link between Melanesia and Polynesia In 1955 the young archaeologist Jack Golson took up the first archaeological post at the University of Auckland, and almost immediately turned his attention to excavating sites in Tonga, Samoa, and New Caledonia. He added new locations to the growing list of sites with dentate stamped pottery, but little was made of these sites until he moved to the Australian National University in 1961. Golson proposed ‘‘some early community of culture linking New Caledonia, Tonga, and Samoa, antedating the ‘Melanesian’ cultures of the first and ancestral to the historic Western Polynesian cultures of the other two. This community is expressed in terms of variants of the same pottery tradition’’. From Canberra, he sent out graduate students to excavate sites across the same region: Jim Specht re-excavated Meyer’s site at Watom, Jens Poulsen worked on Tongatapu, and Colin Smart excavated in New Caledonia. About the same time, Lawrence and Helen Birks were excavating at Sigatoka in Fiji, and Roger Green (1968) was working in Western Samoa. But it was Golson, who began to synthesize these scattered early field reports into a single interpretation of their significance for Pacific prehistory, suggesting that Lapita-style pottery was a key element of what he believed was a prehistoric ‘cultural complex’, a ‘community of culture’ that he understood to extend from New Britain and the Bismarck Archipelago, through New Caledonia and Fiji, to Tonga and Samoa. The feature of Lapita pottery that has excited Pacific archaeologists ever since has been its wide distribution from New Guinea and the Melanesian Islands into western Polynesia, especially Tonga and Samoa. As an ornate type of decorated pottery with wide distribution across more than 4000 km of the southwest Pacific, Lapita has appeared to many as the key to the peopling of what archaeologist Roger Green dubbed ‘remote Oceania’ (southern Melanesia and all of Polynesia) from ‘near Oceania’, presumably from the Bismarck Archipelago. Archaeological interest in Lapita, thus, began as a way of understanding the peopling of Polynesia rather than as an effort to understand the broad sweep of Melanesian prehistory, which by the 1970s was already known to reach back as far as 25 000 BP in the open site of Kosipe in the Papuan Highlands on the island of New Guinea.

The Limits of Melanesia Most Pacific archaeologists and anthropologists today divide the Oceanic region into three ethnolinguistic provinces – Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia – distinctions that date back to the French explorer J. Dumont d’Urville, who visited the Pacific in 1826–29. Because the people of New Guinea, the Bismarks, the Solomons, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Fiji had darker skin tones, he christened their region as Melanesia (meaning ‘dark islands’) distinguishing this region from Polynesia (meaning ‘many islands’) – Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti, Hawaii, and New Zealand – and Micronesia (‘small islands’), which included the many atolls in the Mariana, Caroline, Marshall, and Kiribati groups. These groupings also contrasted with another grouping, Malaysia (‘the Malay islands’) that included all of island Southeast Asia. D’Urville’s classification drew heavily on what he interpreted as distinct racial differences among the several regions of Oceania. Although these three geographical regions are reasonably well fixed in the minds of most archaeologists and anthropologists today, they were not widely used by scholars until well into the twentieth century. Most nineteenth-century maps, for example, merely distinguish Polynesia (a term typically written across both Micronesia and Polynesia) from Australasia, which included Australia, New Guinea, the Melanesian islands, and New Zealand (see Oceania: Micronesia; Migrations: Pacific). Younger scholars may assume that Melanesia is largely an ethnolinguistic classification, but if viewed from a Melanesian point of view these several regions are fairly arbitrary, referring neither to linguistic, ethnic, or culture-historical criteria. Polynesia works fairly well as an ethno-linguistic category because the region was settled so late (within 3000 years) and had a certain amount of isolation from the rest of the world until the late eighteenth century. But Melanesia has had a much more complex history as a region, older than Australia and any other part of the Pacific, with more linguistic, cultural, and biological diversity than any other part of Oceanic subregion. As early as Captain Cook’s voyages, it was clear that the languages of Polynesia were related to languages of island Southeast Asia. Later, it seemed clear that some of the languages of New Guinea, the Melanesian islands, and Micronesia were also related. This widespread language family was formerly known as Malayo-Polynesian, but is mostly referred to as Austronesian today. Linguists have further divided Austronesian into Polynesian, Melanesian, and Micronesian groupings, but unlike d’Urville and the anthropologists of the early twentieth century, linguists

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typically place Fiji in Polynesia, not in Melanesia. For linguists, the Melanesian languages only include those Austronesian languages of Melanesia, while the other languages belong to one of eight or more unrelated non-Austronesian language groupings. These are the so-called Papuan languages, a term that is confusing because these many distinctive languages may not be related to one another and share only one feature, the fact that they are not Austronesian languages.

Lapita and the Peopling of Eastern Oceania Of all the archaeological conundrums that have engaged the imaginations of Pacific prehistorians, the most important is surely the Lapita phenomenon. Soon after Golson and his students began plotting the distribution of pottery bearing the Lapita style, archaeologists began to define Lapita as a ‘distinctive’ type of dentate pottery. Such descriptions suggest a stylistic uniformity not always realized in the actual archaeological record, since Lapita sherds vary in style both over time and across their broad regional distribution. But even with such variation, as more Lapita sites were uncovered in the Bismarcks and the other Melanesian Islands, some sort of connection between New Britain and western Polynesia seemed obvious. Lapita sherds were in the earliest strata of Tongan and Samoan excavations, suggesting that Lapita marked the migration of people from the older settlements Melanesia to settle Polynesia. For many archaeologists Lapita pottery soon became associated with Austronesian languages and according to this view, the people who had Lapita pots became bearers of the Lapita Culture. As Peter Bellwood put it, ‘‘the Lapita Culture is the record of a number of highly mobile groups of sea-borne colonists and explorers, who expanded very rapidly through Melanesia in the mid-late second millennium B.C., and on into Polynesia’’. There were three problems with this earliest Lapita model that have been at the heart of archaeological debate ever since. First, the concentration of Lapita potsherds was densest in the Bismarcks, where people typically had darker skin tones than Polynesians. How could archaeologists account for Polynesians having lighter skin than the Melanesians when the oldest Lapita sherds had been found in Melanesia not Polynesia? Some explained away this problem by arguing that Lapita pottery had come from the Indonesian islands where people were more coppercolored than in Melanesia. But no Lapita sherds had been excavated west of the Bismarcks, and

even today the only unambiguous Lapita finds west of Manus are at Aitape, although Bellwood and Koon have suggested that a related tradition was found at Bukit Tengkorak, a very late cave site in Sabah (North Borneo). Others have argued that there was considerable biological variation already present in Melanesia, a random sampling of which could have produced the genetic patterns found in Polynesia today. The second problem concerned the meaning of Lapita sherds. Pots are not people, and the presence of Lapita sherds across the region does not guarantee that the people who used these pots had the same biology, spoke the same language, or shared the same customs. On seeing similar sherds in both western Polynesia and Melanesia, Golson’s notion of an ‘early community of culture’ suggested a shared material culture as well as other cultural features that preceded an intrusive Melanesian culture. As archaeologists excavated more sites, they found Lapita sherds associated with obsidian (from New Britain and Manus) and certain kinds of shell ornaments. This suite of elements have come to be known as the ‘Lapita cultural complex’, a term of art that usually implies that all those who possessed these items were members of essentially the same cultural group that was ancestral to modern Polynesians. Some authors have accepted sites without one or another of these three elements – including sites lacking Lapita pottery itself – as belonging to the Lapita cultural complex. But as Terrell notes it is difficult to support the notion that every site with either Lapita pottery, obsidian, and shell ornaments spread out over more than 4000 km of the Pacific shared the same ethnicity, especially when humans had inhabited parts of the region for more than 30 000 years. The third problem had to do with whether these early makers of Lapita pottery had intentionally set off to explore and colonize the previously uninhabited islands of southern Melanesia and western Polynesia. The distribution of Lapita gave credence to an argument that the part-Maori anthropologist Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck) had espoused in his book Vikings of the Sunrise, since the distribution suggested a gradual and intentional expansion further and further into the Pacific. Andrew Sharp had challenged the intentional model of settlement, arguing that deliberate sailing eastward into remote Oceania would have been far too dangerous. Thus, he argued that southern Melanesia and western Polynesia were settled through accidental voyaging by people blown off course. Sharp’s book prompted a symposium organized by Jack Golson discussing and challenging Sharp’s controversial views that contradicted the oral history of many Polynesian communities. More recently,

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Geoffrey Irwin conducted computer simulations finding that Pacific Islanders settled only those places that were safest to find and return from. He concluded that by the Lapita period islanders had perfected their sailing techniques in a voyaging corridor in Melanesia. Most scholars now accept that exploration was unambiguously deliberate, careful, and more rapid than scholars had previously assumed. Two key debates remain regarding the Lapita phenomenon: (1) where was Lapita pottery first developed or invented? and (2) how accurate is the assumption that the presences of Lapita pottery indicates an invasive, migrant population and culture? Archaeologists have suggested three general theories or models to deal with these issues. The earliest model, associated most strongly with Peter Bellwood, Roger Green, Patrick V. Kirch, and Matthew Spriggs, is culture historical and holds that Lapita pottery was an entirely new cultural artifact in Melanesia, marking the arrival of a new and intrusive migrant population from Asia that spoke an Austronesian language. This view – following linguistic models – sees Lapita Culture or the Lapita Cultural Complex as originating in Taiwan, spreading into island Southeast Asia, the Bismarck Archipelago, island Melanesia, and finally western Polynesia. To address the supposed racial similarities between Tonga and Southeast Asia not shared by darker-skinned Melanesians, Bellwood, in particular, has seen this migration as extremely rapid. According to this model these newcomers spoke an ancestral Austronesian language. They brought pottery, horticulture, pigs, dogs, and chickens, as well as outrigger canoes that would allow them to explore the far reaches of the Pacific. This model sees Lapita culture as essentially homogeneous across its distribution, representing a single ethnicity from eastern Indonesia as far as Samoa. Kirch finds support for this model in Robin Torrence’s excavations around Talasea in New Britain, where Lapita pottery first appears in the lowest strata after the 3600 PB Witori eruption. Note, however, that Jim Allen and Peter White have used this same evidence to support the second model that has come to be known as the Melanesian Homeland model. The Melanesian Homeland model emerged in the 1980s following J. Peter White’s discovery of obsidian in his excavations at Balof rock shelter. The earliest occupied strata in Balof were unambiguously preLapita and date to about 6000 or 7000 BP, yet more recent layers contained pieces of Talasea obsidian from New Britain. In later layers obsidian comes from Lou Island in the Admiralities. The movement of obsidian along 600 km of coast in the Talasea case and across 150 km of open sea from Lou led White to suggest that the Lapita phenomenon could have

evolved gradually within the Bismarck Archipelago building on pre-existing trade networks. Responding to Roger Green’s argument that Southeast Asians brought the Lapita cultural complex to the Bismarcks, White and Allen suggested that while ‘‘such contacts [with Southeast Asians] may have resulted in the acquisition of certain items and technological knowledge . . . most of the technological knowledge and economic aspects of the [Lapita] complex could have developed within a local context’’. In the following decade or so, Allen and White argued in favor of the indigenous development of Lapita pottery, tanged obsidian blades, and shell ornaments, as opposed to the introduction of these elements from the west. Following Torrence’s research there is reason to believe that volcanic eruptions actually opened up some regions to new settlement, or perhaps settlement by new communities. This model was the impetus for a great deal of research under the auspices of the Lapita Homeland Project, a research program that funded or facilitated excavations throughout many parts of the Bismarck Archipelago, including the work of Kirch at Talepakealai on Mussau. Supporters of the Melanesian Homeland model accept that peoples who had access to Lapita pottery, obsidian, and associated ornaments were the earliest settlers of western Polynesia (especially Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa). But they see the origins of the elements that were innovative as due to local, in situ development in the Bismarck Archipelago rather than as technologies or items brought from Southeast Asia. Jean-Christophe Galipaud proposes a variant model that sees Lapita itself, and perhaps the plainware so often found in Lapita sites, as introduced from Southeast Asia. But he sees the Lapita phenomenon as a cultural tradition, rather than as a horizon or just the presences of pots. These traditions involved a variety of elements besides Lapita pottery, all of which developed and changed within different parts of Melanesia providing a continuity that persisted even when Lapita pottery ceased being made or used. A third theory about Lapita, called the Voyaging Corridor model, was suggested by John Terrell and developed more fully by Terrell and Welsch. This model sees the spread of Lapita culture as a much slower and more complex cultural process. Development of Lapita pottery likely occurred in the Bismarcks, but following Terry Hunt this model sees Lapita as a kind of pottery that could as easily suggest trade or exchange among diverse peoples as it could identify common ethnicity. Since pottery was present in some parts of the region – such as at Vanimo on the north coast and at Dongan on the Ramu – before the

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development of Lapita not every community was as eager to adopt this style of pottery as others. At the heart of this model is the assumption that the northern coast of New Guinea, along with New Britain, New Ireland, and parts of the Solomons were already inhabited by peoples with great linguistic, cultural, and biological diversity that mimics the diversity found in these same regions today. Thus, Lapita emerged within pre-existing networks of trade and exchange that have always linked culturally diverse peoples. The peopling of southern Melanesia and western Polynesia almost certainly occurred after development of Lapita pottery and may well mark an expansion of human settlement out from the voyaging corridor of northern New Guinea and the Bismarcks after sailing technology and skills had developed in the ways that Irwin has suggested. This model also finds support in recent excavations revealing an abundance of diversity ‘within’ Lapita pottery. Most Pacific archaeologists accept one or another of these three models as a way of understanding and interpreting the Lapita phenomenon. Over the past quarter century, archaeologists have learned a great deal about the distribution of Lapita and its associated elements, but because of the vast area over which Lapita sherds have been found and the many possible additional sites where they might be expected according to these models, much remains unresolved. At present there really is no general consensus about the settlement of remote Oceania, except that people with Lapita pottery were involved. One problem with the extraordinary archaeological interest in Lapita is that such research has focused narrowly on the past 3500 years of Melanesian prehistory rather than the previous 30 000 or 40 000 years. In addition, interest in Lapita has often been more about what Lapita has to say about Polynesian origins than about what was actually happening in Melanesia itself.

The Earliest Settlement of New Guinea and Australia Unambiguous evidence of early settlement on the island of New Guinea came surprisingly late given the intense interest anthropologists had given the region. By 1965 it was clear that during the Pleistocene, New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania formed a single land mass that has come to be known as Sahul. Chappell suggests that the period was characterized by sea levels 50 m below their current height. These lower sea levels exposed considerable stretches of land to human settlement that is now submerged, which may account for some of the difficulty archaeologists have had in finding early lowland sites. Yet even with low sea levels, settlement of Sahul from an

equally vast Southeast Asian landmass (known as Sunda) was not a simple matter because a deep sea trench separated the two and required some sort of sea crossing. Kirch has referred this crossing as the first ‘‘purposive voyaging in the history of humankind.’’ The earliest settlement of Sahul remains highly controversial. Fullagar et al. proposed a thermoluminesence date for the Jinmium rockshelter in Australia of a very early date (176 000–116 000 BP), and Roberts et al. dated a site called Malakunanja in Arnhem land to 55 000 BP. These dates remain tentative but suggest that humans have probably inhabited Sahul for at least 50 000 years. The first evidence of early settlement in New Guinea began to emerge in the 1960s when Susan Bulmer and Peter White excavated sites in the Central Highlands dated at 8000–11 000 BP. White et al. reported on an even earlier site at Kosipe in the Owen Stanley Range dated to 26 000 BP. More recently, Les Groube excavated what remains the earliest site on the New Guinea mainland at Bobongara on an uplifted terrace of the Huon Peninsula dated to 40 000–60 000 BP. Uplift seems to have protected this site while other early coastal sites were submerged. (Currently this site is being proposed as a World Heritage site.) Groube suggests that a kind of agroforestry was being practiced during much of this early period. Gorecki et al. and Smith and Sharp have also identified settlement sites in New Guinea dating to 30 000 BP or earlier (at Lachitu and Kuk, respectively). There is now unambiguous evidence for the human settlement of New Guinea for more than 30 000 years, and further excavations may double this date.

When and How Did Humans First Reach Island Melanesia? Such early dates were somewhat expected for New Guinea, which was attached to Australia. But it came as a total surprise to Pacific archaeologists when Jim Specht found radiocarbon dates from the Pleistocene in New Britain at the Misisil cave site. New Britain and New Ireland had never been connected to the New Guinea mainland; nevertheless, these early dates demonstrated comparably early settlement in the Bismarcks. Since then Pavlides, Leavesley and Allen, and Gosden and Robertson have all identified early settlement sites dating to more than 30 000 BP on New Britain and New Ireland (at Yombon, Buang Merabak and Matenkupkum, respectively). Most of these sites (except for Yombon) were rock shelters or caves. Similarly, Wickler and Spriggs have excavated the Kilu rock shelter in Buka where the earliest settlement dates to 29 000 BP.

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Thus, it would appear that the people first crossed the Vitiaz Strait separating the Huon Peninsula from New Britain at least 30 000–40 000 years ago. From New Britain they next settled New Ireland, followed both by northerly and southerly colonizations of the Admiralty Islands and Solomon Islands, respectively. Fredericksen et al. excavating the Pamwak rock shelter on Manus found support for this model when they dated the earliest settlement of the Admiralty Islands to 13 000 BP. Similarly, Roe excavated the rock shelter site of Vatuluma Posovi on Guadalcanal and midHolocene sites with slightly earlier dates, and Spriggs obtained comparable dates from the Nissan, situated between New Ireland and Bougainville in the northern Solomon Islands. South of the Solomons, current research suggests that first human settlement was generally associated with Lapita pottery.

From Hunting to Horticulture: The Beginning of New Guinea Food Production By the 1950s, when sociocultural anthropologists first began studying the peoples who inhabited the Central Highlands of New Guinea, they recognized that most of these densely populated communities subsisted on sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas). The problem this presented was the fact that sweet potatoes were a New World crop from South America. Short of some early trans-Pacific contact between Melanesia and South America, these sweet potatoes must have reached Melanesia sometime after Magellan’s voyage in 1519–20. James B. Watson suggested that the arrival of sweet potatoes had triggered a revolution in the highlands that brought these communities from hunting to horticulture in a few centuries. Watson assumed that lowland and coastal peoples in New Guinea may have long had horticulture involving taro and other crops, but proposed that introduction of sweet potatoes had led to an ‘Ipomoean revolution’, leading to rapid growth of populations and population densities in the highlands as well as development of intensive exchange networks. Excavations at Kuk plantation in the Western Highlands by Golson and his colleagues led to discovery of early drainage ditches in what had been a swampy area in the Western Highlands as early as 10 000 BP. Golson also found evidence of an early digging stick in one of these ditches, suggesting that millennia before the arrival of the sweet potato, New Guinea Highlanders were cultivating root crops such as taro. What makes this site so important archaeologically is Kuk was essentially isolated in the middle of the New Guinea highlands from and independent of other centers of agricultural evolution in China, the Indus valley, the fertile crescent, and the

Nile. Moreover, unlike these other areas at Kuk early inhabitants depended on root crops – and perhaps tree crops – rather than cereal grains. Brookfield and White had also challenged Watson’s model arguing for a much longer and more gradual evolution of horticulture than the later had envisioned. More recent excavations at Kuk suggest that the transition from foraging to horticulture was a complex process extending over several thousand years. Denham and his colleagues find early cultivation at 10 000 BP, mounding appears about 7000 BP, and full blown network of drainage ditches from beginning around 4400 BP. They have also documented domestication of bananas at Kuk about 7000 BP. (Kuk has also been nominated as a World Heritage Site.) Susan Bulmer’s excavations at Kiowa in the Western Highlands and White’s excavations at Kafiavana in the Eastern Highlands produced pig bones with carbon dates of 5000–6000 BP, suggesting that pigs were introduced to the island from Southeast Asia through human agency. The low intensity of pig husbandry found in many parts of New Guinea makes it difficult to determine whether such early pigs were feral or domesticated. Even today in the Western Province, the domestic pig herds are heavily interbred with the feral herds, since domestic boars are gelded. But if taro and other root crops were being grown in the highlands, there is no reason to discount the possibility that some of this production was used to domesticate a semiferal herd from an early date. Golson and his colleagues accepted the Ipomoean Revolution as having important consequences for agriculture, pig husbandry, exchange systems, and rapid population growth, along some of the lines Watson had suggested. But they have demonstrated that the shift from hunting to horticulture had begun nearly 10 000 years earlier than Watson had imagined. The key feature of the Ipomoean revolution was that sweet potatoes grow much faster than taro and provided much greater yields, thereby allowing more food for both human and pig populations, which lead to human population densities more than 500 per km2 in some areas and the emergence intensified horticulture, production of surpluses, and coordinated exchange systems of thousands of pigs in the Te and Moka exchange networks that swept through the highlands valleys. Another likely consequence of agricultural intensification in the New Guinea highlands was the creation of vast anthropogenic grasslands first suggested by Harold Brookfield and developed more systematically by Geoffrey Hope and J. M. B. Smith. More recent advances in palynology and residue analysis have confirmed that the expansion of grasslands

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as linked to the intensification of horticulture, but much of this expansion has arisen over the past millennium or so. In a similar way, current studies have focused attention on tree crops as an important aspect of early plant domestication. Arboriculture was probably far more important in the lowland rainforests than archaeologists had previously believed. Cultural anthropologists have come to recognize that sago, the most important lowland crop, is tended and weeded in a very nonintensive way to produce greater yields and to speed up or slow down the timing of maturation. Other tree crops such as breadfruit, pandanus, galip, and other fruits and nuts are often planted and minimally tended, yet they yield important edible products for a generation or more. Such studies have emerged primarily in the lowlands and coastal areas once archaeologists recognized that the landscapes we see today are fairly recent phenomena. Swadling had noted that when sea levels rose after the last glacial maximum it produced a huge bay in what is now the Sepik and Ramu Rivers. But silt from the mountains over the past 6000 years has filled in this bay to produce the current coastline. Similarly, Terrell has suggested that what now appears as a long straight shoreline at Aitape was once a complex series of islands and lagoons complete with a rich array of food resources. Kyle Latinis has argued that in such environments trees likely played a much more important role than other cultigens. Andrew Fairbairn has built on these studies and those at Kuk to suggest the need for more intensive archaeobotanical methods to understand the evolution of horticulture and plant use in Melanesia.

Evidence for Social Hierarchies in Prehistoric Melanesia In attempting to characterize differences between Melanesia and Polynesia, Marshall Sahlins suggested that Polynesian societies were organized by hereditary chiefs and social rankings, while Melanesian societies were more egalitarian and typically organized by achieved forms of leadership particularly ‘big men’. Sahlins’s model was so compelling for both sociocultural anthropologists and archaeologists that it dominated the Oceanic stage for a generation, leading few archaeologists working in Melanesia even to look for evidence of social hierarchy of the sort archaeologists had been finding in Polynesia. More recently, Bronwen Douglas and Nicholas Thomas have argued that Sahlins’s dichotomy oversimplifies social patterns in both regions, and some communities in Melanesia clearly had hereditary leadership.

The earliest immigrants to Melanesia (40 000– 20 000 BP) likely had an egalitarian social structure. But until 5000 or 6000 years ago, there is little archaeological evidence of any kind of social pattern; it suggests nothing about social stratification one way or another. Kirch, drawing on his model of the Lapita phenomenon, has suggested that ancestral Austronesian societies in island Southeast Asia were ranked. In his view, early Lapita communities in Melanesia were similarly ranked, and their descendants brought social stratification and hereditary leadership with them into Western Polynesia. Some archaeologists have found tentative evidence for social hierarchy, most notably an intensified economy and increased sedentism, but Pavlides has pointed out that these patterns predated Lapita. Kirch interpreted Lapita shell ornaments as exchange valuables, but shell and shark-tooth necklaces from pre-Lapita Melanesia may carry equivalent ritual or exchange value. Pawley reconstructed two Proto-Oceanic terms that he interprets as ‘chief, or person of chiefly rank’ and ‘first born son of a chief’. But Lichtenberk reconstructed the same terms to mean ‘leader’ and ‘oldest child,’ respectively. To date only eight burials from the Lapita period have been excavated, and none of them are associated with grave goods. Hayden has argued that pottery is itself a marker of social status which, when first created, functioned as a conveyor of elite power rather than as a utilitarian good. The problem with all of these arguments is that up to now the evidence of social stratification has been quite weak. It remains an open question whether some or all societies with Lapita pottery were socially ranked. Toward the end of the ‘Lapita period,’ there is more convincing evidence of social hierarchy, most notably megaliths that resemble those associated with social rank in Polynesia. Christophe Sand, for example, has identified monumental platform sites that rival the ‘megalithic’ sites of the Marquesas in size. Analogous remains have been found in ethnological contexts in the Loyalty Islands and Ile des Pins by Jean Guiart. Other sites have also been found in Island Melanesia in Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and Fiji. Some of these sites were quite large, such as a site on Grande Terre, New Caledonia with 100 structures, whose dense population alone suggests considerable social stratification. To supply these populations the most extensive pondfield terraces in Oceania have been found on New Caledonia (the Grande Terre). Irrigation channels and mounding systems have been identified on New Caledonia and Vanuatu, respectively. Such mounding systems have also been identified in the Solomons and the Bismarck archipelago.

New Guinea and Melanesia 1737

Most of these sociopolitical developments seem to be in situ Oceanic developments, rather than elements diffused from Southeast Asia. Several scholars have suggested that the Melanesian outliers had inherited a degree of sociopolitical complexity from Polynesia and that these traits were diffused into southern Melanesia (i.e., a ‘backwash’). Such possibilities for cultural transmission from Polynesia back into Melanesia have given a much greater significance to the Polynesian outliers, who were much less isolated than early anthropologists and archaeologists had assumed. Although the Polynesian outliers may not always be the source of Melanesian sociopolitical evolution, the study of these outliers has undergone a dramatic paradigm shift from the ecological and adaptational approach of a generation ago to a more comprehensive approach stressing both material and immaterial concepts. The development of social complexity in Melanesia should best be approached as a multifaceted process driven by the complex interrelationship among many spheres of society.

From Potsherds to Historic Exchange Systems: Linking the Prehistoric Record to the Present Among the most interesting features of ethnographically studied societies in Melanesia are its extensive exchange systems, often involving dozens of communities speaking a variety of mutually unintelligible languages. The most famous of these systems is the Kula ring of the Massim district described by Malinowski, but anthropologists have described other networks including the Hiri trade between Port Moresby and the Papuan Gulf, the exchange system across the Vitiaz Strait that linked communities from Lae to Madang and west New Britain, the islands in Geelvinck Bay, and the extensive network along the Sepik Coast. All of these networks involved exchanges of pottery, shell rings and other ornaments, and a variety of other crafts, raw materials, and foodstuffs. Although pottery, shell ornaments, obsidian, chert, and jade preserve well in archaeological sites, most other materials do not, making it extremely difficult to see continuity from prehistory into the historic record. Two strategies have been suggested as ways of exploring these continuities. Ian Hughes took an ethnographic approach, conducting interviews with dozens of communities across the highlands and into the lowlands. These interviews recorded oral accounts about traditional exchanges in the generations just prior to contact, and unlike most parts of Melanesia they were possible because first contact

came so late to the highlands, from about 1930. Hughes noted a remarkable movement of objects from community to community across diverse language groups, even between groups that were chronically at war. A similar strategy has been employed by Welsch and Terrell, who attempted to document the extent and nature of the precontact and early postcontact exchange system. They found that precontact exchanges involved pottery, shell rings, foodstuffs, raw materials, and a wide variety of goods such as bows, arrows, and string bags. Along the Sepik coast exchange was organized around hereditary friendship rather than as trade between anonymous partners. In precontact times most individuals had friends in 20 to 40 communities, many speaking different languages. This network resembles the exchange network across the Vitiaz Strait, but seems more complex and was less centered on any particular community. It consists of a more extensive social field. Such studies as this one and Hughes’s project have been challenged as ‘ethnographic analogies’ that offer little in the way of explanation for prehistoric patterns. Such studies may not describe early prehistoric patterns completely, but they are not merely ethnographic analogies because these historic patterns actually developed from the prehistoric patterns that preceded them. The second and more obvious archaeological strategy has been employed by Ian Lilley, who excavated at Sio on the New Guinea mainland and in the Siassi islands on the other side of the Vitiaz Strait. Comparing artifactual material in these two sites, Lilley attempted to decipher from the prehistoric evidence the local development of the modern trade networks that Harding had observed first hand. But while there was some evidence of Lapita at Siassi, early crossstrait trade seems quite limited. Much later, a protosystem emerged about 1600 BP, with new ceramic traditions on the mainland sporadically traded to Siassi in exchange for New Britain obsidian. Lilley also found significant differences between this protosystem and Harding’s historic system, most notably the importance of historic middleman traders and the local emphasis on pig and dog teeth and shell bead, all of which occurred in minimal quantities. Other scholars – especially Jim Allen, Susan Bulmer, and James W. Rhoades – have used a similar strategy to explore the development of the Hiri trading system westward into the Papuan Gulf from the Motu of Port Moresby. Excavating in different locations they compared the production of Motu pottery and its penetration into the Gulf. This exchange network was of fairly recent origins as most of the deltas in the Papuan Gulf are at most 2000 or so years old. Nevertheless, considerable continuity has been observed

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over the past several hundred years, much as across the Vitiaz Strait. Geoffrey Irwin used a similar but somewhat more comprehensive approach to study the origins of the historic pottery trade at Mailu and in the Massim. Although the exchange systems in the Trobriands and other parts of the Massim centered historically on shell valuables, many other objects were exchanged as well. People at Mailu made pots in abundance, trading them to their neighbors to their east and west. Irwin observed that pottery at Mailu became thinner and thinner over time to save material and create a kind of planned obsolescence established itself as a specialized producer of pottery. But when comparing the two sites Irwin found that shell valuables in the Kula ring were sometimes traded toward Mailu, but that this path for shells waxed and waned at various times. Each of these patterns is somewhat different, just as the local particularities are varied. Nevertheless, such studies are attempts to understand how the present and recent past is connected to the prehistoric past. In some cases, such as Lilley’s case study, there are discontinuities in the prehistoric record. But in others such as at Mailu and the Massim, the system has changed in significant ways without ever ceasing entirely. Much the same can be said about the entire broad sweep of Melanesian prehistory that stretches out over at least 40 000 years. Despite some discontinuities and abrupt changes in prehistoric social patterns, it will help archaeologists and prehistorians to see the Melanesian past as part of a very long and broad sweep of time. See also: Exchange Systems; Migrations: Pacific; Oceania: Australia; Micronesia; New Zealand; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading Allen J and White P (1989) The Lapita homeland: Some new data and an interpretation. Journal of the Polynesian Society 98: 129–146. Bellwood P (1979) Man’s Conquest of the Pacific: The Prehistory of Southeast Asia and Oceania. New York: Oxford University Press. Brookfield HC and White JP (1968) Revolution or evolution in the prehistory of the New Guinea Highlands: A seminar report. Ethnology 7: 43–52. Golson J (1962) Polynesian Navigation: A Symposium on Andrew Sharp’s Theory of Accidental Voyages. Wellington: The Polynesian Society. Golson J (1971) Lapita ware and its transformations. In: Green RC and Kelly M (eds.) Studies in Oceanic Culture History (vol. 2), p. 67–76. Pacific Anthropological Records 12. Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum. Gosden C (1991) Long-term trends in the colonization of the Pacific: Putting Lapita in its place. In: Bellwood P (ed.)

Indo-Pacific Prehistory 1990: Proceedings of the 14th Congress if the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association, pp. 333–338. Canberra: Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association. Green RC (1991b) Near and remote oceania: Disestablishing ‘Melanesia’ in culture history. In: Andrew Pawley (ed.) Man and a Half: Essays in Pacific Anthropology and Ethnobiology in Honour of Ralph Bulmer, pp. 491–502. Auckland: The Polynesian Society. Groube LM, Chappell J, Muke J, and Price D (1986) A 40,000 year-old human occupation site at Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea. Nature 324: 453–455. Irwin GJ (1992) The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kirch PV (2000) On the Road of the Winds. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lilley I (2006) Archaeology of Oceania: Australia and the Pacific Islands. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Sand C (2002) Melanesian Tribes vs. Polynesian Chiefdoms: Recent archaeological assessment of a classic model of sociopolitical types in oceania. Asian Perspectives 41(2): 284–294. Spriggs MJT (1997) The Island Melanesians. Oxford: Blackwell. Terrell JE and Welsch RL (1997) Lapita and the temporal geography of prehistory. Antiquity 71: 548–572.

New Zealand Richard Walter and Chris Jacomb, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary K-selected A species is described as a K-selected (or competitor) species as a reference to its reproductive and survival strategy. A K-selected species produces few offspring but these are usually nurtured and protected until they reach reproductive age. Humans are a good example of K-selected species as opposed to r-selected species, such as rabbits, which breed within a few months of birth and reproduce many offspring per breeding cycle. mDNA Mitochondrial DNA. mDNA is DNA that is located in the mitochondria rather than the nucleus of the cell (nuclear DNA). mDNA is passed on only from the mother to the offspring whereas the offspring receive equal contributions of nuclear DNA from both parents. Because mDNA is essentially cloned from generation to generation, most change is the result of mutation. Since the mutation rate of mtDNA is easily measured, mDNA serves as a useful tool for tracking genetic change through time. Treaty of Waitangi The treaty of Waitangi is the founding document of agreement between the Maori and the British Crown. Written in both English and Maori, it was first signed on 6 February 1840 in Waitangi, the Bay of Islands. The treaty was initially set up to assist in the peaceful settlement of Europeans and enabled the Crown to set up a governorship to establish laws, in New Zealand. In return, Maori received the same rights and status as the British citizens and continue to have tribal control over their lands, fisheries, forest, valuables and cultures.

New Zealand 1739 wiggle matching Wiggle matching is a technique used in radiocarbon dating to improve age estimates. It relies on the fact that there have been fluctuations in the concentration of radioactive carbon isotopes (radiocarbon) in atmospheric carbon dioxide through time, and that these fluctuations are recorded in the carbon isotope ratios in living organisms. A high-resolution sequence of radiocarbon dates from organic samples can be matched against wiggles in the radiocarbon calibration curve to provide a more accurate assessment of the age of the dated samples.

Background New Zealand is a continental landmass 270 000 km2 in area separated from its nearest neighbor by more than a thousand kilometers of ocean. It was the last major landmass in the world to be colonized by humans and this colonization event was different from other such events in fundamental ways. For most of world prehistory human colonization was characterized by population expansion into adjacent zones. The lifestyles and technologies of the homeland could be reproduced with relatively minor adjustments and there were few technological barriers to return movement or communication between homeland and colony. New Zealand colonization involved quite different sets of circumstances. First, the New Zealand environment is radically different from its first settlers’ homeland and there were severe limits on the ability of the colonists to reproduce their traditional economies or lifestyles. New Zealand was settled by people from eastern Polynesia who traveled in large, ocean-going, double-hulled canoes that traveled some 3000 km over deep ocean. These settlers came from tropical volcanic islands and small coral atolls and moved into a large continental archipelago straddling the subtropical to sub-Antarctic zone. Their island production system relied on a range of tropicaladapted crops, few of which would grow in New Zealand. The second factor is the problem of isolation. Once arrived in New Zealand further contact with the island world would have been extremely difficult and for all intents and purposes New Zealand prehistory unfolded in isolation from any outside influence until sustained interaction with the West starting in the late eighteenth century. The reason for this is not just the sheer length of the journey. The prevailing winds of East Polynesia are easterly and the trip to New Zealand was across and slightly down the wind, sailing into a large target. The return journey would have been much more technically difficult and it would have aimed toward much smaller targets. In sum, the colonization of New Zealand involved introducing humans into an environment from which they could not easily return, and where few aspects of their original lifeways could be continued. As a

consequence much New Zealand archaeology has been concerned with questions of adaptation and cultural change. To put this into perspective, Maori society, as described by the European explorers of the eighteenth century, had many distinctly Polynesian characteristics including elements of language, technology and deep ideological and sociopolitical structures. These reflect the ancestral roots of Maori society in the island homelands of tropical Polynesia. Yet at the same time Maori society was unique. Centuries of isolation in a radically different land and without any significant contact with the outside world had allowed Maori society to diverge radically in areas such as material culture, art, economics and social practice. Thus in all meaningful ways Maori society can only be described as an indigenous New Zealand society. It is the development of this indigenous society from its Polynesian roots that stands at the heart of New Zealand archaeological inquiry and in the following sections of this essay we discuss some of the major issues involved in this inquiry. The shortness of the New Zealand prehistoric timescale makes it difficult to define the course of culture change with any precision but several key chronological indicators are discernable in the archaeological record. On the basis of these, archaeologists often divide the New Zealand sequence into two phases: an early Archaic phase and a later Classic phase. These phases are useful archaeological constructs but in no way imply cultural discontinuity. Indeed, despite the marked variation that underpins the two-phase sequence, there are much stronger threads of continuity running right through New Zealand prehistory and extending back to the islands of Polynesia.

Colonization As an isolated island nation the colonization question has always been central to the study of New Zealand’s past and various models for the peopling of New Zealand have been proposed. Captain James Cook, during his exploratory visits in the late eighteenth century, described the Maori people of New Zealand as members of a wider Polynesian nation and despite some early speculation about pre-Polynesian migrations from Melanesia, the single origins of the Maori ancestors in island Polynesia is, today, undisputed. The more detailed questions that have engaged archaeologists are: where in Polynesia was New Zealand colonized from, and when did this happen. We address each of these issues in turn. Maori tradition refers to a mythical homeland, Hawaiiki, from where the founding canoes set out on their long journey to New Zealand. The exact location of this homeland is not stated within the

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traditional histories, but there are hints of shared ancestral names and genealogies that suggest the Cook Islands as a likely place. Other lines of evidence are helpful but less precise. According to comparative ethnography, Maori society falls within an East Polynesian culture area that is defined on the basis of shared terminologies for key elements of social life, on kinship patterns, social organization, and on material culture. Linguistic models are consistent with this view. The Maori language of New Zealand belongs to a lower-order subgroup of the Polynesian language family known as Tahitic which includes Tahitian and most languages of the Cook Islands, the Austral Islands, and the Tuamotus. The archaeological record, while entirely consistent with linguistics and comparative ethnography, does not serve to narrow the field very much (Figure 1). The earliest archaeological sites in New Zealand fall within the Archaic phase which is characterized by a distinctive artifact assemblage very similar to those found in sites of similar age in the Cook Islands and French Polynesia. The artifacts include highly specialized stone adze forms, imitation whale-tooth necklaces, one-piece fish hooks and a variety of small

bone tools. Many of these artifact forms display stylistic and functional variations that are never found in West Polynesia and this reinforces the notion of a distinct East Polynesian cultural complex of which New Zealand Maori culture is a part. At present all evidence points to Hawaiiki as being located within a zone encompassing the southern Cook Islands, the Austral Islands and the Society Islands. The argument of proximity plus aspects of oral history and tradition suggests that the southern Cook Islands is the most likely point of origin for the first canoes, but until stone tools are found in New Zealand that can be geochemically sourced to an East Polynesian island, it is unlikely that a more precise answer will be given soon. The timing of settlement has been debated since the beginnings of New Zealand archaeology. Maori traditional accounts were used by nineteenth-century ethnographers to suggest an initial discovery around AD 800 followed by a massed colonization in about AD 1350 by around a dozen canoes. The advent of radiocarbon dating provided empirical evidence to supplement tradition, but still could not narrow this range down with any certainty. One study, based on

Homeland or ‘Hawaiiki’ zone Hawaiian Is

Marshall Is Line Is Kiribati

Tuvalu Vanuatu .. Fiji ..

0⬚ Marquesas Is

Tokelau Samoa

Tuamotu Is Cook Is

Tonga

Society Is Austral Is

New Caledonia

20⬚ Pitcairn Group Mangareva Rapa Nui

40⬚ New Zealand 170 ⬚E

0 170 ⬚W

150⬚

1000 km

130⬚

Figure 1 South Pacific Ocean showing location of New Zealand and the Polynesian homeland zone.

110⬚

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palynological evidence for deforestation, raised the argument that settlement began as early as AD 500 and this led to a reassessment of existing dates. But instead of pushing the settlement date back, the result was to reject many of the existing dates and to move the estimated age of settlement to around AD 1200. There is still no real consensus among archaeologists although most believe that settlement occurred in the thirteenth to early fourteenth century. A possible terminus anti quem for New Zealand settlement exists in the tephrochronological record. About seven centuries ago a volcanic event known as the Kaharoa eruption resulted in the deposition of a thin ash layer over about a third of the North Island’s east coast. No in situ archaeological deposits have been found sealed below a securely identified primary deposit of Kaharoa Ash which has been accurately dated using wiggle matching of radiocarbon ages to AD 1314  12 (Figure 2). Early European explorers observed Polynesians using large double-hulled sailing canoes and rare examples of double-hulled craft were observed in use by Maori during Cook’s (1769–77) and Tasman’s (1642) visits to New Zealand. It is assumed that double-hulled voyaging canoes broadly similar to those observed by early European visitors were the vessels that brought the first settlers to this country. There has been much debate about the nature of the voyages of discovery. Were they accidental ‘drift’ voyages or deliberately targeted in specific directions. If deliberate, what was the clue that land existed as far as 3000 km over the horizon? Computer simulations have shown that drift voyaging would not have been a successful exploration strategy and that the voyages must have involved deliberate navigation. One very obvious clue to the presence of land over the horizon would have been the flight paths of migratory birds. New Zealand had the largest number of marine bird species in the world and many are migratory. It has been estimated that several billion marine birds nested in New Zealand before the arrival of humans. Each year, for example, millions of mutton birds (Puffinus spp.) migrate between the north Pacific and New Zealand and at least some must have flown over eastern Polynesia during their journey south or north. Whatever the cause, the discovery voyage was deliberate. Once the direction of voyaging had been decided, sophisticated techniques of oceanic navigation including observations of wind direction, sea currents and wave patterns as well as the positions of the sun, moon and stars, would have made the journey itself relatively straightforward. With good winds, the voyaging canoes could have made the journey in less than two months.

Early Adaptation Over several thousand years the Polynesian people had developed a ‘portable economy’ which they introduced to each new island they settled. This economy revolved around a set of domestic plants and animals that were mainly of Southeast Asian origin and included breadfruit, coconut, banana, taro, yam, gourd as well as industrial species such as paper mulberry. It also included domestic animals: chicken, pig, and dog. The problem is that New Zealand’s environment was not suited to most of these species and so the settlers found themselves having to develop new economic strategies as their existing systems failed. This involved the adaptation and transformation of previous practices, a re-sorting of priorities, the discovery of entirely new sources of food, and the invention of strategies and technologies for their exploitation. Climatic conditions limited any type of horticulture based on the tropical domesticates to warmer parts of New Zealand including parts of the South Island and within that zone wet field cropping of taro would have been even more restricted – to northern New Zealand. The early settlers also had to deal with seasons, something that was largely irrelevant to horticultural life in the islands. The only crop plant brought to New Zealand by the first settlers that thrived in the cooler climes was the South American sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas or kumara in Maori). But in order to create a viable kumara production system, new technologies were required. The most important of these was the invention of the storage pit – an excavated earth chamber with a low roof. Kumara pits were used to preserve tubers over the winter months for food, and so that seed stock was available during the next planting season. Today the remains of thousands of kumara storage pits can be seen scattered across the northern landscapes. Soils for gardening were modified by the addition of material such as sand or gravel mulch, which may have extended the growing season. Along with kumara some of the other imported plants, including gourd, taro, and yam, were grown, but their importance was very localized. The most important component of the plant-food regime after the invention of kumara storage was the inclusion of an indigenous wild plant component. Although no longer eaten and something of a mystery as to how it was prepared, early explorers describe the root of the native bracken fern (Pteridium esculentum) as one of the most common plant foods in many parts of the country. The two animal domesticates, pig and chicken, never arrived in New Zealand. They were probably placed on the colonizing canoes but either did not

1742 New Zealand

Bay of Islands

North Island

Kaharoa Tephra (AD 1314 ± 12)

Lake Taupo

South Island

N Southern limit of tropical Polynesian horticulture

Riverton Bluff

Major hunting zone (coastal = moa and seal Inland = moa)

0

100

200 km

Figure 2 New Zealand showing the location of the Kaharoa tephra and places mentioned in the text.

survive the journey or died out for some reason shortly after arrival. The dog (Canis familiaris) survived and became a small but important part of the Maori diet as did rat (Rattus exulans), a feral animal but one which was introduced to New Zealand, deliberately or otherwise, on the ancestral canoes.

While Polynesian horticulture was difficult and domestic animals were not successfully introduced, the first colonists found in the new environment an abundance of easily hunted meat sources beyond anything available in Polynesia. Colonies of fur seals (Arctocephalus forsteri) were found along the coasts

New Zealand 1743

of the mainland and offshore islands and these became a major seasonal resource. Other sea mammals were also exploited at a much lower intensity including sea lions, elephant seals, dolphins, and pilot whales, although the latter were probably only taken from natural strandings. On land there was a range of flightless birds available including 12 species of the now extinct ratite known collectively by the Polynesian term ‘moa’. Moa were one of the largest and most powerful birds that ever lived but having evolved in an environment that was effectively without terrestrial predators, they were particularly susceptible to human hunting. The earliest sites in New Zealand contain an abundance of moa bone, indeed the earliest period of New Zealand prehistory was once referred to as the ‘moa-hunter period’ of Maori culture. In fact, while moa hunting was dominant in some parts of the country New Zealand’s early economy appears to have been highly regionally varied. In the north, horticulture was established early, and because of the lower standing biomass of moa and sea mammals there, hunting was of lesser significance. In the south, and particularly along the southeast and south coasts of the South Island, moa and seal densities were much higher, and horticulture impossible. Here the economy was based on hunting, probably with a high seasonal component and thus New Zealand’s South Island is one of the few places in the world that was colonized by horticulturalists who then adopted a hunting and gathering economy. A number of sites dating to this early period of prehistory have been excavated and these paint a picture of a society that had adapted very quickly to the radically different environment and climate of New Zealand, but one that still retained many aspects of the way of life of the islands. New Zealand contains a rich array of high-quality industrial stone including obsidians, metasomatized argillites, greywackes, nephrite (a form of jade), cherts, and basalt. These resources are widely spaced across the country, but generally occur in small highly localized sources. Practically, all of the sources were discovered and in widespread use within a generation or two of first settlement of New Zealand and the earliest known sites contain a diversity of stone types from across the country. This is indicative of a very rapid and efficient exploratory phase and suggests a high level of mobility in the immediate post-colonization generations. It is likely that early exploration and mobility was facilitated by the use of sailing canoes like those that brought the first colonists from the tropics. The settlement pattern of New Zealand’s early period is reminiscent of the island homeland. In the Cook Islands during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries communication networks linked

small nucleated villages located on the reef passages of each island and were a medium for the transfer of a range of materials especially of industrial stone and shell. In New Zealand the earliest sites also include villages many of which were located on river mouths and harbors – analogous positions to the coral reef passages of the islands. As in the islands there is evidence of high levels of mobility in the form of importation of lithic resources, and thus it is possible that communication networks similar to those of the islands linked these early communities. Throughout Polynesia archaeologists recognize the dynamic interaction between landscape and culture. In New Zealand humans both transformed the natural world and responded to the environment through processes of cultural, social, and technological adaptation. When New Zealand was first settled most of the land was heavily forested to the shoreline. Sediment cores indicate an increase in charcoal deposition and a rise in the relative proportion of fern and grasslands relative to forest species from around the beginning of the fourteenth century. This is believed to be related to the conversion of forest land to horticulture in the north and the promotion of more productive phases of vegetation succession including bracken growth in other places. Avian extinctions also followed human arrival of which the most significant was the disappearance of the moa, along with some 30 other bird species. Indeed by European arrival not only was the moa extinct, there was no certain reference to it in Maori oral histories and tradition and thus all we know of Maori interaction with moa is via the archaeological record. Until recently, most archaeologists believed that this interaction occurred over a period of four or five centuries with extinction occurring around the early sixteenth century. However, recent studies indicate that moa extinction may have occurred within 60 to 160 years of human arrival. New Zealand’s terrestrial fauna (entirely avian except for three small bat species) had evolved for millennia in the absence of mammalian predators. The K-selected moas with their small clutches, long lives and relatively large size, were extremely vulnerable to any new predation, let alone highly organized predation by a rapidly increasing population of human hunters. To add to the loss of moas, sea mammals were becoming severely depleted by the end of the fifteenth century and the large breeding colonies of fur seals were by then restricted to southern New Zealand. By later prehistory seal populations had dropped to the point where they were no longer more than a supplementary dietary component, and a hunting economy based partly around the occupation of grounds adjacent to breeding colonies was no longer practiced.

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The Development of Classic Maori culture By the early sixteenth century there had been two hundred years of relatively unrestricted population growth from a founding population estimated on the basis of mDNA analysis to be approximately 200. Populations would have risen by this time to a few thousand. With the extinction of moa and the drastic decline in seal numbers southern New Zealand, which had previously supported viable populations, had become quite marginal and the focus of occupation shifted to the warmer horticultural north. This marks the beginning of a series of changes that culminated in the Classic phase which is an assemblage of cultural characteristics based on observations of Maori life by the first European explorers. The chronology of the emergence of Classic Maori culture is uncertain but trajectories of change can be identified archaeologically from this time including the development of new site types, new artifact assemblages, different patterns of resource utilization and movement, and economic practices. Site types. The site type most commonly associated with the Classic phase is the pa (Figure 3). These are often described as fortified settlements, but they probably include a wider range of functions. The earliest pa for which radiocarbon age estimates have been obtained date to approximately AD 1500 and today approximately 7000 pa sites have been recorded ranging in size from a few hundred square meters to many hectares. Pa are characterized by

earthwork defenses including ditches, banks, and artificially steepened scarps. They were usually located on easily defendable positions such as hill tops, ridges, and headlands surrounded by steep cliffs. European observations of pa document the use of high wooden fences or palisades with elaborate gateways and archaeological excavations bear this out. Internally, pa sites may contain structures including terraces with food storage pits, houses, and drainage systems. Some pa are probably best described as defended settlements, others as citadels for retreat at times of war and others as defended outposts located adjacent to remote resources. Generally, pa are found close to resource zones such as large shellfish beds, fishing grounds, and rich horticultural soils. Few pa have been investigated archaeologically and oral traditions of pa tend to be restricted to accounts of major battles. As a result there is still little known about this important class of site, but their appearance is often linked to other changes in social and economic life. Oral tradition associates many of the larger pa with the political activities of named chiefs and in many instances they clearly have a connection with tribalism, boundaries in the landscape and with personal and tribal identity. Some archaeologists have linked the emergence of pa to population growth and the development of political complexity, especially of the emergence of Polynesianstyle ranked chiefdoms. In many parts of the country pa are concentrated in places with high-yielding

Figure 3 Maungawhau (Mt Eden) in Auckland city. One of a number of large volcanic cone pa of the region. (Photo Courtesy of the Auckland Institute and Museum).

New Zealand 1745

horticultural soils and this has further stimulated discussions of intensification, competition, and the development of political complexity. In fact, there is independent evidence in the archaeological record to suggest that simple kin-based chiefdoms were present throughout New Zealand prehistory and that horticultural intensification was minimal. Thus while the emergence of pa is definitely related to social change the nature of this relationship is far from clear. New artifact assemblages. Although there was continuity in the general form of the artifact assemblage, the styles of many artifacts changed through time. While adzes of the Archaic phase were, for the most part, markedly quadrangular, and often with a lashing modification at the butt, those of the Classic phase were generally of a rounded quadrangular cross section and lacked such modification. Early adzes were made using percussion technology before grinding and polishing part of the surface, while later adze manufacture relied much more on abrasive techniques. This change is largely attributable to changes in stone material used for adze making. Fish hooks of the Archaic were most commonly made in one piece – often of moa bone – and were replaced in the Classic by two-piece forms that employed a bone point and a wooden shank. Fishing lures with bone points were also used throughout the sequence with the shanks of early forms being predominantly stone or bone and those of later forms either bone or wood (Figure 4). The ornaments, dominated in the Archaic by large necklace units in bone, ivory or serpentine, were replaced in the Classic phase by generally smaller neck or ear pendants often of bone, teeth, or nephrite. By European arrival a sophisticated Maori art tradition was in place that still thrives in modern New Zealand. Classic Maori art was particularly well developed in the areas of tattoo, textile manufacture, and wood carving. Archaeological evidence shows that all of these art forms were present from the Archaic but Maori art has diverged sufficiently from that of other East Polynesian cultures to infer a period

Figure 4 Maori stone adze. (Photo Courtesy of the Auckland Institute and Museum).

of radical development and transformation leading to the emergence of the Classic Maori art tradition. Patterns of resource utilization and movement. A remarkable characteristic of early settlement is that within a generation of landfall, nearly every major stone source in the country had been discovered, and was being transported long distances. For example, obsidians from the northern North Island are found in early sites more than 1000 km away in the southern South Island and argillites from the northern South Island are found in early sites 750 km distant in the far north, as well as in the southern South Island. By the Classic phase most stone sources were no longer being moved over long distances and there was a greater concentration on local material. There is one exception to this and that involves the use of nephrite. Although present in very small amounts in some Archaic sites, the use of nephrite became much greater in the Classic phase where it was used for weapons, adzes, and ornaments. Nephrite is only found in the South Island, and is almost entirely restricted to a small number of source areas on its mid-southern west coast. A small number of nephrite adzes have been found in early sites, mainly those located close to the source areas, but by the time of European contact it was in widespread use over much of New Zealand. Whatever the reason for the increased use and distribution of nephrite, its widespread presence late in the sequence indicates that the transport and trade mechanisms present in the Archaic were still available in the Classic, although there may have been changes in the detail of their employment. Economic practices. The tropical food plants introduced from Polynesia would only grow easily in the frost-free north. Their successful cultivation became increasingly marginal to the south, with their effective limit being kumara gardening in the vicinity of Banks Peninsula. Although horticulture was practiced, where possible, throughout New Zealand prehistory, it is likely that it played a less important role in the economy during the Archaic phase when meat sources were more abundant. In the centuries following the loss of the moa and seal and as populations grew there is evidence for the expansion of horticulture – more and more land was cleared and brought into production. The direct record of this is in the form of modified soils, drainage systems, and concentrations of pit and terrace complexes associated with food storage. There is indirect evidence of land clearance in the sediment record. The increase in kumara production coincides with the growth of the pa complex, and some archaeological explanations stress the idea that increasing investment in land stimulated a need for defending that land from outsiders. The whole result was the development of

1746 New Zealand

bounded and defended territories. Again, the archaeological evidence while generally supportive of such a model is yet untested.

European Contact Early contact, exploration, sealing, flax trading, whaling. The first known visits to New Zealand after initial Polynesian settlement were by explorers from Europe. New Zealand was given its modern name by Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1642. The next visit was by James Cook in 1769 who was leading a scientific expedition to the Pacific and who managed to chart, with remarkable accuracy, the whole of the coastline of the country. The main contributions of these visits to archaeology are the observations made about how people lived and, from 1769 onward, the material culture collected and now held in museums in Europe and elsewhere. Within decades of Cook’s visits, European commerce began to move into New Zealand waters. The most important resources New Zealand had to offer were flax (Phormium tenax – mainly used for making rope), sealskins, and tall, straight kauri (Agathis australis) trees in the north of the country which were sought after as spars for ships. The earliest European settlements were in places with good harbors adjacent to supplies of these resources. These include Bluff and Riverton, near the southern tip of the South Island which were close to good sealing grounds and stands of flax, and the Bay of Islands, close to kauri forests. European contact wrought many rapid changes to Maori society and culture. Perhaps one of the most significant in terms of social organization and belief systems was that of Christianity, although unlike other parts of Polynesia large-scale conversion took many decades. It introduced many new technologies (iron, muskets) and major new food types (potato, wheat, pig). Alcohol, tobacco, and new diseases were less beneficial European introductions. Although there were many changes to Maori lifeways as a result of European contact and commerce, there were, again, many lines of continuity. In spite of the introduction of Christianity, traditional practices and beliefs continued, modified as necessary to conform to new ideologies. Many traditional architectural forms and settlement structures seem to have continued, as did the use of pa. Maori were actively engaged in commerce from at least the late 1790s and had become a major economic force in the south Pacific five decades later. Through commercial activity muskets had become readily available to those tribes situated close to European settlements and by the 1820s, this had caused an imbalance in power relations. A period of widespread musket warfare ensued during which

time pa designs changed to accommodate the use of guns. The new ‘gunfighter pa’ were designed with corner bastions that allowed flanking fire along the outer walls of the fortifications. The tribes that obtained the earliest arsenals of muskets were able to expand rapidly into neighboring territory and numerous such expansions are documented for the early nineteenth century. Later, disputes over land acquisition and access to commercial opportunities led to conflict with the European settlers resulting in the Land Wars which lasted on and off for almost three decades from the mid-1840s. During this time pa were adapted for defense against artillery fire with deep trenches and underground chambers reinforced with timber roofs and walls. Such sites are important features of the archaeological landscape relating directly to the formative period during which modern New Zealand society was forged.

Summary The New Zealand archaeological sequence is short by comparison with most parts of the world but it contains a rich record and one that offers interesting archaeological opportunities. Almost uniquely in world terms, first European contact with Maori was at a time of scientific inquiry and many of the first encounters were by skilled and educated observers who left detailed records. To this body of material, Maori knowledge in the form of oral histories, traditions, and genealogies has been added, resulting in a detailed documentation of an indigenous society prior to European influence. This serves as an excellent foundation from which to investigate the emergence of this indigenous society out of a very differently adapted cultural baseline. To make matters more interesting still, the entire unfolding of Maori history occurred in isolation from any outside influences, a situation that is also unique in world terms. A century of archaeology in New Zealand has contributed a good knowledge of material culture and of economic change, but much remains to be done in both substantive and theoretical terms, in terms of understanding the processes of culture change that resulted in the emergence of Classic Maori culture as seen by the first European visitors and as recorded in Maori oral history. Contemporary archaeological work in New Zealand takes place in partnership with Maori whose ancestral relationship to New Zealand’s heritage places and prehistoric material culture is recognized in statute and through the Treaty of Waitangi. Maori have been active in historical scholarship for more than a century and are increasingly involved in archaeological research and teaching. Most recently, Maori scholars and tribal representatives have been engaging in international debates about who owns

ORGANIC RESIDUE ANALYSIS 1747

the past and the repatriation of taonga (objects of cultural value) and human remains from overseas. This is contributing to the development of a richer and more culturally informed archaeology. See also: Migrations: Pacific.

Further Reading Anderson A (1989) Prodigious Birds: Moas and Moa Hunting in Prehistoric New Zealand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Oceania/Peopling of

Oceania/Polynesia

Davidson J (1984) The Prehistory of New Zealand. Auckland: Longman Paul. Duff R (1956) The Moa-Hunter Period of Maori Culture. Wellington: Government Printer. Holdaway S and Furey L (eds.) (2004) New Zealand Archaeological Association Monograph 26. Change through Time, 50 Years of New Zealand Archaeology. Auckland: New Zealand Archaeological Association. Prickett KE (1982) The First Thousand Years: Regional Perspectives in New Zealand Archaeology. Palmerston North: Dunmore Press. Sutton DG (1994) The Origins of the First New Zealanders. Auckland: Auckland University Press.

See: Migrations: Pacific.

See: Migrations: Pacific.

ORGANIC RESIDUE ANALYSIS Eleanora A Reber, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Wilmington, NC, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary acyl lipids Acyl lipids are the various components making up fat or oil. Pure fat or oil is made up largely of triacylglycerols – three fatty acids attached to a glycerol backbone. These compounds can break down so that each glycerol backbone contains only one or two fatty acids, in which case the newly produced compound is called a monoacylglycerol or a diacylglycerol, with fatty acids unattached to a glycerol called free fatty acids. absorbed residue Residual components from ancient activity (cooking, resource processing, etc.) which are absorbed within a porous archaeological matrix and able to survive chemical and microbial degradation during deposition. alkanols Alcohols with a long carbon chain that are found primarily in plant waxes. biomarker Components unique to a specific source or a class of sources: cholesterol is a biomarker for animal lipids, while theobromine is a biomarker for cacao, and various terpenoids are biomarkers for different families, genera, and species of trees.

compound-specific isotope analysis A type of analysis that allows the separation of constituents in a residue by gas chromatography followed by the analysis of the carbon stable isotope ratio of each separate compound. derivatization A chemical reaction performed on the constituents of a residue to make it more amenable to chromatographic analysis. fatty acids Long carbon chain carboxylic acids that make up the major constituents of acyl lipids. Fatty acids are often stripped from the glycerol backbones during analysis and their relative abundance determined, to help interpret the origin of a residue. gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) A type of analysis in which a complex mixture of components are separated in the gas chromatograph, and each component is identified through mass spectrometry. organic residue analysis The analysis of any type of residue remaining attached to, or absorbed within, an archaeological artifact. unsaturation The presence of double bonds in an organic compound. visible residue Chemical components that are absorbed within the pores of a visible encrustation on an artifact, with a charred residue yielding the best chemical preservation.

1748 ORGANIC RESIDUE ANALYSIS

Introduction The advantage of organic residue analysis is that it provides a direct link between an artifact and human activity by looking at the residues of ancient use of the artifact. Residues can be analyzed with a variety of analytical tools, depending on the research design and type of artifact. Recently, most activity in organic residue analysis has centered on ceramic residues. In essence, any organic residue study must take into account a range of problems: how the residue originated, how it was preserved through time, what effect environmental degradation had on the residue and its constituents, and how to interpret the surviving residue in terms of human behavior.

Survival of Residues The full chemical process behind the preservation of organic residues is incompletely understood. It is known, however, that some organic compounds do preserve throughout their deposition in archaeological context either by being absorbed within the ceramic matrix of a potsherd, or by retention in the pores of a visible encrustation on the surface of a ceramic sherd or stone tool. Absorbed

Absorbed residues often result from long-term use of the artifact, with the residue comprised of various components absorbed during the use-lifetime of an artifact. Absorbed residues occur primarily in pottery, though recent studies suggest that they may also occur in porous rocks. In order to become an absorbed residue, chemical components must be sufficiently soluble in water that they are able to absorb within the porous matrix in the first place, but not so soluble that they are washed out of the artifact by rainfall during deposition. As a result, absorbed residues are primarily made up of lipids, and occasionally proteins, which fulfill this condition. Visible

Visible residues, as shown in Figure 1, may result from either a single use of an artifact – a major culinary disaster in the kitchen, or a very messy episode with a stone tool – or from a buildup from repeated use. Because the constituents of a visible residue do not have to have been absorbed within a porous matrix, a wider range of components can be preserved in this way, including starch grains and other components less water-soluble than lipids. Organic components, as well, may be preserved in a visible residue, most notably phytoliths and pollen (see Phytolith Analysis; Pollen Analysis).

Figure 1 A visible residue encrusted on a sherd of early stumpware from the George Reeves site in Illinois (11S650).

Environmental Degradation

In both absorbed and visible forms, only certain types of chemical components are able to survive archaeological deposition. Various experimental studies have been undertaken on this point, and have established that the overall result of environmental degradation of organic residues is the preferential disappearance of water-soluble, shorter-chained and polyunsaturated constituents. Longer-chained and saturated components tend to preserve proportionally longer. Residue degradation takes several forms. First, water-soluble components such as sugars are washed out of the residue and into the soil. The components of the residue then begin a complex series of reactions: microbial, thermal, and oxidative. Microbial degradation is caused by the activities of microbes and bacteria. Thermal degradation results from chemical reactions produced by the exposure of residue constituents to heat. This type of reaction can be very useful to analysts. For example, the best indicator for the presence of marine processing in a vessel is the presence of o-(o-alkylphenyl)alkanoic acids, which are thermally produced from triunsaturated fatty acids. Oxidative degradation results from the reaction of oxygen with various residual components, and is responsible for the preferential degradation of polyunsaturated acyl lipids.

Lipid Residues Lipid residues are the primary constituents of most absorbed ceramic residues. They are comprised of

ORGANIC RESIDUE ANALYSIS 1749

various classes of lipid, including acyl lipids, terpenoids, waxes, alkanes, and alkanols. Lipid residues must first be extracted from their matrix, whether it is an absorbed or visible residue. They must then be analyzed and interpreted. The three primary types of interpretation involve biomarkers, relative abundances, and compound-specific stable isotope analysis. Relative abundances of components can also be useful in interpreting residues, but must be used carefully, due to the effects of environmental degradation. Even with this caution, however, residues comprised primarily of plant-based components contain more unsaturated fatty acids relative to unsaturated fatty acids, as shown in Figure 2, while those originating from animal-based materials contain more unsaturated fatty acids, and occasionally the presence of the biomarker cholesterol.

Types of Analysis

Various types of instrumental analyses have been applied to residue analysis. For residues with a complex mixture of components, which includes most absorbed residues, some sort of chromatographic separation of constituents prior to identification is preferable. The standard approach involves the use of a GC/MS. Liquid chromatography (LC/MS) produces a similar effect, and works well on less volatile constituents of a residue, though less well on more volatile constituents. Both types of analyses produce a chromatogram, shown in Figure 2, which indicates the various separated components and their relative abundance in the form of peaks. Each peak in the chromatogram has a corresponding mass spectrum, such as that in Figure 3, which allows the identification of component. The extracted residue is usually split into different fractions, which are processed and derivatized in various ways to maximize the desired information. Usually, a total lipid extract is analyzed by GC/MS in order to view the entire residue and its state of preservation. Visible residues are amenable to a wider range of analyses than absorbed residues, as the carbonized residue may undergo Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectrometry (FT-IR) which allows the detection of components that cannot successfully undergo chromatographic analysis. Microscopic analysis of visible residues is also useful, sometimes permitting the identification of starch grains and macroscopic remains embedded in the residue.

Extraction

The standard method for extraction of absorbed ceramic residues was set forth by Evershed et al. in 1992. It involves powdering a potsherd in a mortar and pestle, and extracting the organic constituents in a strong solvent. The solvent is then removed from the powdered matrix and blown down to produce a pure residue. Although experiments have been undertaken on nondestructive analyses of absorbed residues, the destructive approach has so far been more effective. The extraction of visible residues is based on the standard methodology for absorbed residues, with the use of smaller amounts of solvent. C16:0

C18:0

Relative intensity

C18:1 C18:2

C20:0

C22:0

Docosane-dioic acid

C17:0 C14:0

C24:0

C15:0 C19:0

C21:0

C23:0

Time (min) Figure 2 A gas chromatogram of the fatty acid methyl ester fraction of an absorbed residue extracted from a potsherd. The subscripts refer to number of carbons followed by the number of double bonds (unsaturation) present; C18:2 refers to an eighteen-carbon chain fatty acid with two double bonds. The relatively high abundance of unsaturated fatty acids in this residue suggest a primarily plant origin for the residue.

1750 ORGANIC RESIDUE ANALYSIS Compound-specific Isotope Analysis

Compound-specific isotope analysis is very useful in areas where the biome includes both C3 and C4 photosynthesis, either naturally or through importation of crops. A good example of this is the identification of maize in absorbed pottery residues. The diet in southeastern and Midwestern North America is primarily C3, with very few CAM or C4 plants present in the diet except for the imported tropical grass maize. Maize does not have a biomarker, but it is abundant in the alkanol n-dotriacontanol. Compound-specific isotope analysis of a residue can determine if the n-dotriacontanol is C3 or C4 in origin, as shown in Figure 4. If the component is C4

Relative abundance

239

m/z

in origin, it is reasonable to argue that maize was processed in the pot.

Conclusions Organic residues have great potential to uncover the specific ways in which people used pottery, stone tools, or other artifacts containing residues. When interpreting residues, however, it is essential to remember that many constituents of the residue may have been washed out during deposition, or degraded chemically or microbially. It is also important to determine, if possible, whether the residue was the result of a single use, or of a series of different uses. This accomplished, however, organic residue analysis allows a unique look at ancient artifact use. See also: Coprolite Analysis; Macroremains Analysis; Paleoethnobotany; Phytolith Analysis; Pollen Analysis; Starch Grain Analysis.

73 143 173

69 100

225 200

357 372

Figure 3 A mass spectrum identified as dehydroabietic acid, a common biomarker for resins from pine trees. The numbers and lines refer to the abundance of various molecular weight fragments, with 239 being the molecular weight of the most stable fragment of the compound, and 372 being the molecular weight of the unfragmented compound.

Internal standard n-Triacontanol −30.30‰ n-Octacosanol −29.10‰ n-Hexacosanol −26.50‰ n-Tetracosanol −25.87‰

Further Reading

300

n-Dotriacontanol −19.97‰

n-Docosanol −29.65‰

Time (min) Figure 4 A gas chromatogram of the neutral fraction from a residue extracted from a sherd from Louisiana. The stable carbon isotope ratio of each compound is noted under the compound name – note the difference in isotopic ratio between n-dotriacontanol and the other alkanols present. The internal standard was added to help measure the amount of residue present.

Evans K and Heron C (1993) Glue, disinfectant and chewing gum: Natural products chemistry in archaeology. Chemistry and Industry 12: 446–449. Evershed RP, Heron C, Charters S, and Goad LJ (1992) Chemical analysis of organic residues in ancient pottery: Methodological guidelines and applications. In: White R and Page H (eds.) Organic Residues in Archaeology: Their Identification and Analysis, pp. 11–26. London: UKIC Archaeology Section. Evershed RP, Stott AW, Raven A, Dudd SN, Charters S, and Leyden A (1995) Formation of long-chain ketones in ancient pottery vessels by pyrolysis of acyl lipids. Tetrahedron Letters 36: 8875–8878. Evershed RP and Tuross N (1996) Proteinaceous material from potsherds and associated soils. Journal of Archaeological Science 23: 429–436. Hansel FA, Copley MS, Madurera LAS, and Evershed RP (2004) Thermally produced o-(o-alkylphenyl)alkanoic acids provide evidence for the processing of marine products in archaeological pottery vessels. Tetrahedron Letters 45: 2999–3002. Heron C, Evershed RP, Goad LJ, and Denham V (1989) New approaches to the analysis of organic residues from archaeological remains. In: Budd P, et al. (eds.) Archaeological Sciences 1989: Proceedings of a Conference on the Application of Scientific Techniques to Archaeology, Bradford, September 1989, pp. 332–339. Oxford: Oxbow. Reber EA, Dudd SN, van der Merwe NJ, and Evershed RP (2004) Direct detection of maize processing in archaeological pottery through compound-specific stable isotope analysis of n-dotriacontanol in absorbed organic residues. Antiquity 78: 682–691. Regert M, Garnier N, Decavallas O, Cren-Olive´ C, and Rolando C (2003) Structural characterization of lipid constituents from natural substances preserved in archaeological environments. Measurement Science and Technology 14: 1620.

OSTEOLOGICAL METHODS 1751

Origins/Agriculture

See: Plant Domestication.

Origins/Animal Husbandry

Origins/Writing

See: Animal Domestication.

See: Writing Systems.

Osteoarchaeology

See: Bioarchaeology.

OSTEOLOGICAL METHODS Concepcio´n de la Ru´a, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary attrition Wear, usually used in reference to the teeth. calcification The process of formation of bones and teeth. collagen A fibrous structural protein constituting about 90% of bone’s organic content. diaphyses The shaft of a long bone. DNA Deoxyribonucleic acid, the molecule of heredity that contains the genetic code. epiphysis The cap at the end of a long bone that develops from a secondary ossification center. eruption (of teeth) The emergence of teeth through the gum. hydroxyapatite A dense organic, mineral matrix; the second component of bone. long bones Term for the bones of the arms and legs, specifically, the humerus, radius, ulna, femur, tibia, and fibula. proximal Closest to the center of the mid-line of the body; in limbs, closest to the point of attachment to the trunk pubic symphysis The junction of the right and left pubic bones at the mid-line. sciatic notch Part of the pelvis located at the junction between the ilium (upper, flat portion of the pelvis) and the ischium (lower portion of the pelvis). sphenooccipital suture (basilar suture) A synchondrosis lying between the sphenoid and the occipital bones at the skull. ventral arc Slightly elevated ridge across the ventral surface of the female pubis.

Introduction Skeletal remains are often found by archaeologists in their work, both in ancient layers and in more recent graves. Recovering and interpreting human bones provides information of interest in fields such as forensic osteology, human palaeontology, physical anthropology, and archaeology (Figure 1). Archaeologists concentrate on cultural residues of former human occupations, yet a great deal of information is gained from the skeletal remains. The study of human remains from archaeological contexts is known as bioarchaeology. Study of the skeleton makes it possible to estimate an individual’s age, sex, and stature. The analysis of individuals representing biological populations may offer insight into diet, health, biological affinity (metrics and genetics), and population history. Identifying the human remains by element, side, age, and sex are the first task of human osteology. Such identification is often critical in answering archaeological questions.

Morphological Analysis Methods for Estimating Age

These involve estimating the individual’s age-at-death rather than the amount of time that has elapsed since

1752 OSTEOLOGICAL METHODS Bioarcheology Human paleontology

Osteological remains

Wide sciatic notch

Forensic osteology Female

Male

Physical antropology Figure 1 Human osteology: relationship with other scientific disciplines.

death. The progression of changes the skeleton undergoes over the course of a lifetime forms the foundation for studies of skeletal aging. It is important to know that there is substantial variation among different individuals in the rate and timing of development changes. There is, therefore, always a degree of imprecision in aging skeletal remains. Osteological standards are based on a population whose individuals have known ages. Seven age classes are commonly used to classify human osteological remains: fetus (before birth), infant (0–3 years), child (3–12 years), adolescent (12–20 years), young adult (20–35 years), middle adult (35–50 years), and old adult (50 þ years). Subadult age estimation The principal criteria for estimating age in subadults are: dental development, epiphyseal closure, and length of long bones. Dental development Dental calcification (tooth formation) and eruption (emergence from the gum) are the most accurate indicators of chronological age in subadults. Several published standards exist for aging the skeleton through the use of dental formation and eruption. In general terms, there are four distinct periods of emergence of the human dentition: (1) emergence of most deciduous teeth during the second year of life, (2) emergence of the two permanent incisors and the first permanent molars usually between 6 and 8 years, (3) emergence of the most permanent canines, premolars, and second molars between 10 and 12 years, and (4) the emergence of the third molar s around 18 years. It can be noted that dental development is

sensitive to sex and population differences (see Paleodemography). Epiphyseal closure The epiphysis of postcranial bones unites with the diaphyses at a known age. Because these unions occur at different times in different bones, they are useful for estimating age, especially between 10 and 20 years, when data on dentition and length of long bones are of limited value. Union begins earlier in females than in males and these ages also vary by individuals and populations. The approximate chronology of epiphyseal union for several human skeletal elements is shown in Table 1. Length of long bones In the absence of teeth and various epiphyses, subadult individual age may be estimated from long bone length. This method is not very accurate because growth rates vary among populations; nevertheless, it is especially useful for predicting age at death of fetuses and very young infants. The procedure consists of comparing the isolated long bone lengths to an appropriate reference series in order to derive ages. Adult age estimation The application of a multifactorial approach that integrates pubic symphysis face, auricular surface, dental attrition, suture closure, and microscopic methods is more accurate than reliance on any single age indicator. Pubic symphysis face One of the best areas to determine age at death of an adult is from the pubic symphysis of the os coxae. Age-related changes at the

OSTEOLOGICAL METHODS 1753 Table 1 Timing of the fusion of epiphyses for several human bones (age in years)

Table 2 The Suchey–Brooks pubic symphysis scoring system: descriptive statistics

Epiphysis

Males

Females

Phase

Clavicle: medial epiphysis Scapula: acromial process Humerus: head trochlea lateral epicondyle medial epicondyle Radius: head distal epiphysis Ulna: distal epiphysis Os coxae: iliac crest Os coxae: Ischium-Pubis Femur: head/lesser trochanter greater trochanter distal epiphysis Tibia: proximal epiphysis distal epiphysis Fibula: proximal epiphysis distal epiphysis

18–22 14–22 14–21 11–15 11–17 15–18 14–19 16–20 18–20 17–20 7–9 15–18 16–18 14–19 15–19 14–18 14–20 14–18

17–21 13–20 14–20 9–13 10–14 13–15 13–16 16–19 16–19 17–19 7–9 13–17 13–17 14–17 14–17 14–16 14–18 13–16

Mean
st. dev.

95% range

Mean
st. dev.

95% range

1 2 3 4 5 6

19.4 25.0 30.7 38.2 48.1 60

15–24 19–40 21–53 26–70 25–83 42–87

18.5 23.4 28.7 35.2 45.6 61.2

15–23 19–34 21–46 23–57 27–66 34–86

pubic symphysis have been recognized in studies by different authors. The Suchey–Brooks system consists of six phases for defining the progressive changes of the surface with age. The young adult human pubic symphysis has a rugged face traversed by horizontal ridges. This surface loses relief with age and is bounded by a rim by the age of 35. Subsequent erosion occurs after this age. Statistics for this six-phase system are shown in Table 2. Auricular surface (Os Coxae) This is the surface of the sacro-iliac joint. Certain advantages of this surface for aging individuals are that changes extend well beyond the age of 50 and that it is more likely to be preserved than pubic symphysis. A system described by Lovejoy and colleagues consists of eight phases for classifying age-related changes to this surface (Table 3). Dental attrition Dental attrition or wear generally proceeds throughout life and can be used to estimate age. Although attrition rates vary greatly between populations and individuals because of differences in diet, occlusion, and dental morphology, a good correlation has been shown between known age and tooth wear. Since teeth erupt at different ages, they show different rates of wear. A first molar accumulates about 6 years of wear before the second molar erupts (assuming eruption at 6 and 12 years, respectively). When a similar account of wear is found on a third molar of another individual (a third molar may have erupted at the age of 18), the age of that individual can be estimated as 24 years.

2.6 4.9 8.1 10.9 14.6 12.4

2.1 3.6 6.5 9.4 10.4 12.2

Sample: female (n ¼ 273), male (n ¼ 739). Mean and range: ages in years.

Table 3 Auricular surface: phases of change and age related range (in years) Phase

Age range

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–44 44–49 50–60 >60

Cranial suture closure Sutures between various cranial bones fuse progressively as the individual ages. The reliability of this method is greater for some sutures, such as lateral-anterior, spheno-occipital, and basilar sutures. For the latter, at least 95% of all individuals have fusion between 20 and 25 years of age, with a main tendency at 23 years of age. Bone microstructure The normal remodeling of bone during adult life has been used for aging skeletal material. This is a destructive procedure, undertaken mainly on the long bones that depend on osteonal remodeling of bone with age. Methods for Estimating Sex

Sexual identification of human skeletal material is most accurate above the age of around 18. When the individual reaches maturity, male and female bones become differentiated, and therefore useful in sexing. The differences between sexes are of size and shape. In general, the bones of males are longer, more robust, and rougher than those of females. Shape differences are especially pronounced in the pelvis, but the skull also presents sex differences in humans. All the morphological techniques for sexing skeletal remains present a certain error rate; however, molecular techniques (DNA) are more precise, even for fragmentary and subadult remains.

1754 OSTEOLOGICAL METHODS

Sexing the pelvis Morphological methods used to determine sex through the pelvis are based on the landmarks described below. Pubis The pubis is longer in females and the subpubic angle is wider. Phenice’s method based on pubic region described three distinctive characteristics in females: ventral arc, subpubic concavity, and the contour of the medial aspect of the ischiopubic ramus that displays a sharp edge. After sexing the specimen with this method, further features described below can be observed to confirm the sex diagnosis. Sciatic notch The sciatic notch is located at the junction between the ilium and the ischium. It is wide in females (forming an angle of about 60 ) and narrow in males (angle of about 30 ) (Figure 1). Pre-auricular sulcus This is a groove between the sciatic notch and the sacroiliac articulation, and is most often found in females. There are other morphological features of minor value that help in sex estimation, such as the auricular area (more elevated in females than in males) and the acetabulum (larger in males to accommodate a larger femoral head). The application of metric techniques to sex estimation is difficult because many of the remains are very fragmented. The simplest technique is the ratio between the length of the pubis to the length of the ischium, described as an index that is around 155 in males and between 160–170 in females. Sexing the skull Sex estimation made from the skull is not as accurate as that based on the pelvis. In general, males tend to be larger and more robust than females. Males also display larger mastoid processes, more prominent supra-orbital ridges and glabellar region, and heavier temporal and nuchal lines. Male mandibles are characterized by squarer chins and larger teeth, with the lower canines revealing the greatest dimorphism. Sexing the long bones Sexual differences in the long bones are less consistent than those on the pelvis and skull. Although male bones tend to be larger and more rugged, incorrect identification is due to the overlap between the ranges of size in males and females in the same population. Maximum diameters of the heads of the femur, humerus, and radius are good indicators of sex in adults when they fall outside the overlap zone. Femoral heads with diameters exceeding 48 mm are usually male, whereas those measuring less than 43 mm are usually female.

Many studies have been conducted on known-sex samples to derive discriminant equations capable of classifying sex accurately in more than 85% of the cases for a variety of skeletal remains (femur, humerus, ulna, etc.). These equations are based on a combination of measurements. Estimation of Stature

The correlation between body height and limb-bone length across all ages allows the anthropologist to reconstruct an individual’s stature from different long bones. However, the correlation varies between different populations, making it difficult to generate equations useful in estimating stature in different human populations. Trotter and Gleser formulas for stature estimation in whites and blacks are the ones most frequently used in North America, whereas Genoves’ formulas are more appropriate for Mesoamerican remains. Numerous other formulas have been developed using different samples and approaches (forensic/ archaeological). There are a number of human osteology manuals (Bass and Ubelaker are the standard works) that provide useful tables for stature estimation in different human groups.

Chemical Analysis of Bones The chemical analysis of osteological remains has played an important role in the reconstruction of subsistence patterns in past human populations. Conventional approaches used plant and animal, as well as utensil, remains. The interaction between these elements is complex due to difficulties in preservation of food remains. Certain aspects of the chemical composition of human bone are determined by the types of food consumed, providing a more direct and objective means to generate human subsistence patterns. Bone tissue is a composite of two kinds of component: the organic component is mainly a large protein molecule known as collagen (90%), and the inorganic component is hydroxyapatite, in the form of calcium phosphate, which impregnates the collagen matrix. The principal chemical analyses for dietary reconstruction are those of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes (performed mainly on the organic portion of the bone) and those of trace elements (strontium, barium, etc.) (on the inorganic portion). Stable isotope analysis There are two stable isotopes of carbon: 12C and 13C. Ratios of these isotopes in mammalian bones reflect the consumption of different foods. There are two types of plants according to the photosynthetic pathways they use: the so-called C3 plants, which discriminate against the heavier

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isotope of carbon (13C) and are enriched in 12C, and the C4 plants (generally speaking, tropical gramineae such as maize, sorghum, sugarcane, millet, and soya), which do not discriminate the 13C isotope. On the other hand, high levels of 13C occur in certain kinds of marine animals exploited by humans. Since the carbon in bone collagen comes from food consumed, the isotopic ratios allow for differentiating between foods of marine or terrestrial provenance, and in turn, the latter can be separated according to the proportion of C3 and C4 plants ingested. Organisms eating more C3 plants will show higher 12 C/13C ratios in their bones. The isotope ratio is expressed: d 13C% ¼ [(13C/12C sample / 13C/12C standard) – 1]  1000. The standard for carbon is a marine carbonate fossil from the Peedee formation in South Carolina (PDB, PeeDee Belemnite). Existing data indicate that subsistence based entirely on C3 plants provides an isotopic ratio of between –18% and –22%, whereas one based on C4 plants has a value of between –4% and –7%. Like carbon, nitrogen occurs in two isotopic states: 14 N and 15N. The heavier (15N) concentrates as it travels up through the food chain. Marine plants have higher concentrations of this isotope than land plants. As a consequence, people feeding on marine food sources are expected to have higher 15N/14N ratios than those subsisting on terrestrial food sources. Isotope analysis is made from a tiny sample of bone tissue (1 g), from which collagen is extracted to measure the isotope values with a mass spectrometer. Trace element analysis Trace elements are chemical elements that are found in small amounts in the body. The main source of trace elements is diet, with the bone being the main depositary in the organism. The variations that occur in the concentration of these throughout the trophic chain are the reason for their use in the study of the diet. The strontium (Sr) enters the land-based food chain from the soil and ground water via roots of plants. The amount of strontium gradually decreases moving up the food chain (from herbivores to omnivores and carnivores). The more appropriate method of analysis consists in comparing Sr levels in the different elements of the trophic chain represented in a site. This Sr measurement indicates the relative proportion of vegetables in the human diet. Elements such as barium (Ba) and magnesium (Mg) have a similar behavior to Sr. Other elements, such as copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn), reflect meat intake, being deposited mainly in the muscular tissue and, to a lesser extent, in the bone. Accordingly, carnivores will feature the highest levels of these elements, with reduced amounts in omnivores and herbivores.

Assessing the results for trace elements is complex due to the possible existence of diagenetic processes that, following burial, may alter the biogenic proportions of the trace elements present in the bone. This makes it essential, therefore, to perform examinations of the taphonomy of soil-buried bones. There are numerous applications for chemical analyses in bioarchaeology, with major ones involving studies dealing with the introduction of C4 plants such as maize, those referring to intra- and interpopulational social differences, the assessment of marine versus terrestrial food webs, and the change of diet in the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition.

Molecular Analysis of Bones Under certain conditions, skeletal specimens retain a sufficient number of DNA molecules to permit their recovery and analysis. DNA is the molecule of heredity and almost every human cell has a complete copy of their DNA. After an organism dies, the DNA molecules degrade rapidly, but sometimes, fragments of DNA are present in the biological remains (bone tissue, muscles, and hair, amongst others). The ability to recover DNA from ancient human remains potentially allows for addressing questions of importance to different scientific fields (Figure 1), such as estimation of sex, disease status, ancestry, diet, and individuation. Sampling

Sampling of skeletal elements for molecular analysis is important in order to obtain reliable results. In the case of samples recovered in modern excavations, specific procedures should be employed in order to minimize the contamination and degradation of samples. The use of disposable latex gloves and masks during excavation should be recommended, while the use of preservatives and humidity (washing) should be avoided. When the molecular analysis is applied to museum collections, sampling should be made minimizing damage and the loss of morphological information, because this type of analysis is often destructive. Morphological information should be recorded through photographs, radiographs, and casts, at least for important specimens. It is often useful to first attempt to analyze fauna bones from the same layer as humans and, whenever possible, more than one sample is to be taken per individual, in order to replicate results in an independent laboratory. Methodology

Working with ancient DNA (aDNA) involves a number of limitations, namely the scarcity and fragmentation of DNA that is recovered, and the risk of

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contamination. To avoid contamination, the processing of the samples in the laboratory involves the application of strict criteria, as detailed in the specialized literature, for the authentication of results. The major problem in aDNA analysis is contamination by exogenous DNA. Some potential sources of contamination, such as microorganisms or personal manipulating samples, are not difficult to detect and overcome, but laboratory contamination related to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products is more difficult to avoid. The PCR preferentially amplifies well-preserved DNA molecules, which are more likely to be modern than ancient DNA. Products of previous PCR reactions may produce laboratory contamination. However, a number of techniques can be applied to reduce the chances of contamination. The general methodology of aDNA analysis involves several stages. First, extraction and isolation of DNA from a bone or tooth sample. Second, a specific sequence of the DNA is amplified using PCR, an in vitro technique to produce many copies of this DNA, starting from only a few original molecules (DNA template). Finally, the amplified DNA sample is analyzed by enzymatic digestion (restriction fragment length polymorphism: RFLP) and/or sequencing, typically specific regions of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Limitations

Limitations of aDNA analysis are mainly related to the preservation of DNA, which seems to be influenced primarily by environmental factors rather than by time, at least for younger remains (up to 10 000 years). In general, samples recovered from environments with cooler temperatures, neutral or

Overkill Hypothesis

slightly alkaline pH, and dry conditions are best for DNA preservation, although samples found in wet anoxic conditions or frozen in permafrost have also yielded DNA. Typically, the quality and quantity of DNA is better from tooth than bone, and better from hard tissue than from soft tissue, due to the hydroxyapatite content that binds DNA and thus protects it from subsequent degradation. It is also well known that mtDNA (non-nuclear genome) is easier to retrieve than nuclear DNA, because the greater number of copies present in the cell favors their survival and recovery. There is currently no clear consensus on the time limit regarding remains that may still contain DNA fragments. The Neanderthals from Feldhofer (Germany) (40 000 years) and Vindija (Croatia) (42 000 years) are the oldest human remains analyzed to date. See also: Bioarchaeology; DNA: Ancient; Forensic Archaeology; Paleodemography; Stable Isotope Analysis; Trace Element Analysis.

Further Reading Bass WM (1995) Human Osteology: A Laboratory and Field Manual, 3rd edn. Missouri: Missouri Archaeological Society. Katzenberg MA and Saunders SR (eds.) (2000) Biological Anthropology of the Human Skeleton. New York: Wiley-Liss. Kelley MA and Larsen CS (eds.) (1991) Advances in Dental Anthropology. New York: Wiley-Liss. Pa¨a¨bo S, Poinar H, Serre D, et al. (2004) Genetic analysis from ancient DNA. Annual Review of Genetics 38: 645–679. Richard MP, Schulting RJ, and Hedges REM (2003) Sharp shift in diet at onset of Neolithic. Nature 425: 366. Ubelaker DH (1989) Human Skeletal Remains: Excavation, Analysis, Interpretation, 2nd edn. Washington DC: Taraxacum. White TD and Kolkens PA (2005) Human Bone Manual. New York: Elsevier/Academic Press.

See: Extinctions of Big Game.

P PALEOANTHROPOLOGY Ian Tattersall, American Museum of Natural History, New York City, NY, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary hominid Any member of the biological family Hominidae, including extinct and extant humans, and sometimes the chimpanzee/bonobo group. Palaeolithic period Also called Old Stone Age, http://www. britannica.com/eb/art-6821?articleTypeId¼1 ancient cultural stage, or level, of human development, characterized by the use of chipped stone tools.

Introduction Palaeoanthropology is the multidisciplinary branch of science uniting the many diverse fields that contribute to understanding the evolution and prehistory of human beings, Homo sapiens, and their extinct relatives. These hominoid primates have traditionally been classified together in their own zoological family, Hominidae, to the exclusion of their closest living relatives the great apes (the chimpanzee and bonobo, the gorilla, and the orangutan). However, during the last quarter-century or so, it has become widely believed that the closest living relative of H. sapiens is in fact one subset of the great apes (in most views, the chimpanzee/bonobo group) rather than the entire ensemble, and in consequence many scholars have expanded their notion of Hominidae to include at least one of the great apes. When this is done, the grouping that excludes all of the apes is reduced to a lower rank, the subfamily Homininae, or even the tribe Hominini. At the present stage of our knowledge, classification of these forms is essentially a matter of taste, although it is important to be aware that the same term does not always denote the same species content. In this article the noun Hominidae (and its derived adjective, hominid) is used in its traditional exclusive sense (for living humans and their extinct relatives only), mainly because of the extraordinary diversity of extinct forms this group is now known to contain. The term ‘human’ is more contentious yet,

since it has never been formally defined. Thus, the phrase ‘human evolution’ is generally taken to refer to the evolutionary history of the ensemble of species belonging to Hominidae, while in contrast most authorities would only apply the descriptive adjective ‘human’ to members of the genus Homo, and the expression ‘fully human’ is usually reserved for fossil members of our species H. sapiens who resembled us not only anatomically but behaviorally as well (see below). The reader should expect inconsistency in this area, even in this article! The science of palaeoanthropology is itself subject to similar vagaries of definition, bringing together as it does a very diverse group of scientific specialties – none of which, apart from human palaeontology and archaeology, is uniquely brought to bear on the evolution of the human family. The field began to take on its recognizably modern form early in the second half of the twentieth century, when the Kenyan palaeontologist Louis Leakey and his wife, the archaeologist Mary Leakey, actively recruited scientists from other fields to help investigate the fossil hominid- and stone tool-bearing deposits of Olduvai Gorge, in Tanzania. In the late 1960s the American physical anthropologist Clark Howell formalized the multidisciplinary approach to palaeoanthropology in his pioneering explorations of the fossiliferous and artifact-bearing sediments of the Omo Basin in southern Ethiopia, setting a collaborative model that has since been followed by the vast majority of such investigations in Ethiopia and elsewhere. The essential core of palaeoanthropology is the discipline of hominid palaeontology, the branch of vertebrate palaeontology that deals with the recovery and analysis of the fossils that directly document the hominid past. Hominid palaeontology is an older science than palaeoanthropology, tracing its origin back to the discovery of the original Neanderthal fossil in 1956. Analyses of hominid fossils can take many different forms, ranging from systematic studies that attempt to sort the available fossils into species and to determine the relationships of those species to others, all the way to functional morphological investigations aimed at reconstructing how members of

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extinct species moved and behaved when they were alive. But fossils do not exist in isolation; as part of the larger enterprise, vertebrate palaeontologists of other specialties are needed to identify nonprimate fossils and to reconstruct the larger animal communities of which the early hominids formed part. This is also true of taphonomists, who study how living communities are converted into fossil assemblages and how we can read back from one to the other, and of palaeoecologists, who put together the larger picture of what those communities were originally like. Geochronologists, stratigraphers, and geologists of other kinds are needed to assign dates to fossil assemblages and to interpret the strata in which they are found. Isotopic chemists can contribute to understanding the dating, environments, and diets of fossil hominids, while molecular geneticists are increasingly bringing their expertise to bear on questions of early human relationships and demographics. Archaeologists of various kinds are essential in the interpretation of early hominid behaviors and economic strategies in the later phases of human evolution, when hominids had begun to leave behind a record of stone tools, and eventually of a much broader spectrum of material culture. And so on – specialists of all these kinds and and many more contribute to our understanding of the history of early humans in all its many dimensions, even when many of them are only part-time palaeoanthropologists.

The Data of Palaeoanthropology Central to palaeoanthropology is the hominid fossil record. Fossils may actually be any kind of evidence of early life – ancient footprints are technically fossils, for instance – but in practice almost all hominid fossils consist of bones and teeth. This is because these are the hardest tissues of the body, and are hence most likely to escape the destruction by scavengers and weathering that is the normal fate of a dead mammal’s remains. The same destructive mechanisms also ensure that rarely is a complete hominid skeleton, or even a complete dentition, preserved. Sometimes, however, the remains of hominids and other mammals are covered by protective river muds or other such sediments before they are destroyed; and as those sediments build up into thick layers of rock the original components of the bones and teeth are replaced by minerals – which may on occasion replicate the physical features of the originals in amazingly fine, even microscopic, detail. Sedimentary rocks may accumulate in this way to great thicknesses – hundreds or even thousands of feet – but should they eventually be eroded away by water or wind there is a brief window of time in which any fossils they

contain will be exposed at the surface and thereby become available for collection by palaeontologists. It is these that are the database of palaeoanthropology, and it should be evident that, for palaeoanthropologists, being at the right place at the right time is critical. Vastly more fossils are lost to erosion than ever make it to the palaeontologist’s workbench, which is one of the many reasons why the fossil record of any kind of organism will always be highly incomplete. As a result, the practice of hominid palaeontology has been likened to doing a huge jigsaw puzzle with only a few of the pieces – and no picture on the box. Fossils have three essential qualities: what they look like (broadened these days to include their microscopic and chemical qualities and in some cases their DNA content); where they come from; and how old they are. Generally, fossils are sorted into species on the basis of their external appearance (not an easy task, since there is no quantifiable degree of morphological distinction that corresponds to species difference), in a process known as ‘alpha taxonomy’. Once species identities have been established, the relationships among species are determined on the basis of their possession of ‘derived’ characteristics – those inherited from a recent common ancestor. This procedure yields a branching diagram known as a ‘cladogram’ that specifies which species and groups of species are most closely related by recency of common ancestry. Cladograms represent testable hypotheses since the distributions of one set of characteristics can be compared to those of other characters or sets. But although cladograms establish closeness of relationship among species in terms of recency of common ancestry, they do not specify the ‘kind’ of relationship involved. There is (and in principle can be) no distinction made between the relationship between an ancestor and its descendant, and between two descendants of the same ancestor. When you start to identify ancestors and descendants, you are making an ‘evolutionary tree’, which is inherently a less testable kind of proposition. This is entirely appropriate: even if any fossil species did not necessarily have any descendants, it must have had ancestors. But in interpreting such formulations you have to bear in mind the cladogram on which the tree was based. Finally, when you add to the tree everything you know about the functional anatomy, the ecology, the age, the inferred adaptations of a species and so forth, you have a ‘scenario’. This is, of course, inherently the most interesting kind of evolutionary proposition, but it is also the farthest from the testable base. Palaeoanthropology is renowned as one of the most controversy-ridden of the sciences, and a major reason for this is that palaeoanthropologists have often

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dived in at the deep end, as it were, and started out with the scenario. This has given rise to a discipline that has too often been one of pure storytelling, your choice among scenarios depending on who is the best storyteller, rather than on the rigor with which the basic evidence is analyzed. Of course, given the scale of the unknowns (and unknowables) in a historical science such as palaeoanthropology, a certain degree of uncertainty is inevitable. Still, it is wise to remember when evaluating any palaeoanthropological scenario that palaeoanthropologists continue to disagree on how many species they are dealing with in the hominid fossil record, as well as on how the species they recognize are related to one another. A major ingredient in creating scenarios has often been the age of the fossils concerned. Palaeoanthropology was born in a time when evolutionary theory was dominated by a body of thought known as the ‘evolutionary synthesis’. Under this construct, evolution was viewed as an essentially linear process, with each species merely representing an ephemeral segment of a steadily changing lineage. As long as species were thus seen more or less as links in a continuous chain running through time, the age of a fossil species could be seen as the key to its evolutionary position. Now, however, it is generally acknowledged that the evolutionary process is more typically one of natural experimentation than one of gradual refinement. Speciation – the origination of new discrete species – is seen as a relatively common phenomenon, with many new species emerging, competing on the ecological stage, and as likely as not eventually going extinct. As a result, understanding evolutionary histories is now seen as a matter of analysis rather than simply of discovery. Knowing the age of a fossil hominid species is not by itself enough to tell you its evolutionary significance. Nonetheless, along with its geographical provenance its age is one of the most important attributes of any fossil, and palaeoanthropology has been revolutionized since its birth in the mid-twentieth century by the introduction of ‘chronometric’ methods, which can assign to fossils an age in years (before this, only ‘relative’ dating was available: this fossil species is older or younger than these others). Most chronometric methods, many of them described elsewhere in this encyclopedia (see Dating Methods, Overview) date the rocks in which fossils are found, rather than the fossils themselves.

Hominid Emergence H. sapiens is today the only hominid on Earth (see Modern Humans, Emergence of). In the past this selfevident fact encouraged the view that our species is the culmination of a single progressively evolving

lineage. However, extensive additions to the hominid fossil record over the past half-century or so have made it increasingly clear that, in contrast, the hominid story was one of evolutionary diversity from the very start (see Figure 1). Both the fossil record and molecular genetic analyses of human beings and their closest living relatives point to an origin of the hominid family in the period between about 7 and 8 million years (Myr) ago. This was a time in which climatic and topographic changes in Africa (where Hominidae originated) were beginning to fragment that continent’s formerly monolithic forests and to create new woodland and eventually grassland environments. There are many variants on the precise scenario, but it is generally agreed that the arboreal hominid precursor, a member of the hominoid group that also included the ancestor of today’s great apes, was forced to take up at least a semi-terrestrial existence by the shrinking of its ancestral habitat. Once on the ground this ancestor, unlike the precursor of today’s quadrupedal ‘knuckle-walking’ apes, adopted a bipedal style of locomotion. There has been extensive debate over what the ‘critical advantage’ of twolegged locomotion might have been to the hominid ancestor. Among many other suggestions are more efficient terrestrial locomotion, better shedding of the sun’s heat in the open away from the trees, freeing up the hands to carry and manipulate objects, and seeing dangers farther away over tall grass. Most plausibly, though, the hominid ancestor was most comfortable walking upright over the ground because it already favored holding its trunk erect when moving in the trees. Once it had adopted this way of getting around in the open, all of the associated advantages – and disadvantages – followed. The notion that terrestrial uprightness was the key to hominid identity has been strengthened by fossil discoveries in eastern Africa that date to between about 7 and 4 Myr ago. Three genera of early hominids – Sahelanthropus, Orrorin, and Ardipithecus – have been described from this period. All of them are pretty fragmentary, but each has been described as a biped, even if on less-than-ideal evidence. They make up a rather heterogeneous assemblage, but if they were all upright hominids – rather than indicating, for example, that a variety of different hominoids experimented with bipedalism on the ground in response to similar environmental pressures – they provide eloquent support for the idea that, from the very beginning, Hominidae has typically shown an evolutionary pattern involving experimentation with the many ways that there evidently are to be a hominid. The genus Australopithecus – first represented in northern Kenya by a species (A. anamensis) that shows definitive signs of upright bipedalism at over

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Mya

Mya

H. sapiens

0

0 H. floresiensis

H. neanderthalensis

H. heidelbergensis

H. erectus 1

1

H. cepranensis

H. mauritanicus

H. habilis 2

H. ergaster

K. rudolfensis

Au. africanus

P. robustus P. boisei

2

P. aethiopicus

Au. garhi

3

3

Au. bahrelghazali K. platyops

Au. afarensis

4

4

Au. anamensis

Ar. ramidus

5

5

Ar. kadabba 6

6

O. tugenensis

S. tchadensis 7

7

Figure 1 One possible phylogeny (evolutionary tree) of the family Hominidae, showing time on the vertical axis. Solid black bars indicate documented time ranges; dotted lines indicate possible relationships, many of them highly speculative. ã2008 Dr. Ian Tattersall. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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4 Myr ago – is the best known of the early hominids. Its most famous representative is the fossil popularly known as Lucy, a partial skeleton of the species A. afarensis from 3.2-Myr-old deposits at Hadar in Ethiopia. Lucy and similar fossils are short-statured (females were not much over 3 ft tall, males not much over 4 ft), and retained many features that would have aided climbing in the trees (narrow shoulders, long arms relative to legs, long and somewhat curved hands) but show structures of the pelvis and leg that clearly indicate upright posture and locomotion. Although their dentitions have features, such as reduced canine teeth, that recall later hominids rather than apes, their skulls are very ape-like in structure, with large, protruding faces in front of tiny braincases that contained ape-sized brains with volumes no more than about a third of the modern human average. Indeed, many palaeoanthropologists like to refer to these archaic hominids as functionally ‘bipedal apes’. Fossils usually allocated to Australopithecus species are found in eastern and southern African sites (and one in Chad, in central-west Africa) that are dated to beween about 4 and 2 Myr ago. Most sediments containing them appear to have been laid down in forest-edge or woodland contexts, to which such creatures appear to have been largely confined, though occasionally there is evidence of conditions ranging from closed forest to grassland. By about 2 Myr ago, hominids of this kind had largely disappeared, with the exception of a ‘robust’ group, allocated to the genus Paranthropus, which lingered until about 1.4 Myr ago.

The First Stone Tool Makers There is, at least at the beginning, no reason to infer that the cognitive skills of the archaic hominids differed significantly from those of today’s apes – which are, indeed, quite impressive. But no modern ape, even with intensive coaching, has been able to master the special skills involved in fracturing a piece of stone to obtain a flake with a cutting edge. Nonetheless, at about 2.5 Myr ago, well before we have any fossil evidence that any significant anatomical advance had been achieved, ancient hominids spontaneously began to manufacture stone tools, initially simply sharp-edged flakes knocked off one river cobble using another. With the introduction of such simple stone tools and the inauguration of what is known as the Palaeolithic period (the Old Stone Age), we witness the birth of the archaeological record, the direct material register of ancient human activity. The first archaeological sites are places on the landscape where ancient hominids butchered the remains of

dead animals, the larger ones at least presumably scavenged rather than hunted. Indeed, it has been argued that early hominids were themselves favorite prey species of the many large carnivores that roamed the burgeoning African grasslands. Dismemberment of carcasses by hominids is attested to by cut-marks made by the stone tools on the animal bones, and we know that the tools were manufactured on site, from suitable stones carried in by forward-thinking hominids, because archaeologists have refitted entire cobbles from fragments of ‘foreign stone’ found among the remains. Largely because they fall within the period of early stone tool manufacture, several 2.5–2.0 Myr-old African hominid fossils have been described as belonging to ‘early Homo’, but in all likelihood the first stone tools were made by archaically proportioned hominids whose (poorly known) morphology does not warrant including them in our own genus. If so, we see here the beginning of a pattern that is repeated throughout the story of human evolution: new technologies tend not to be introduced by new types of hominid. The first widely recognized species of Homo is H. habilis (‘handy man’), a form first described in the 1960s from Olduvai Gorge, and so-named because it was associated with crude stone tools of the eponymous Oldowan tradition. Almost half a century later this species has come to embrace a very motley assemblage of fossils indeed, none of them particularly advanced in aspect. The first hominid species to have a body size and structure essentially similar to our own is H. ergaster, most dramatically exemplified by the amazingly preserved 1.6-Myr-old Turkana Boy skeleton from northern Kenya. Other fossils from the same region that are assigned to this species range up to almost 2 Myr in age. The remains of an adolescent who would have topped 6 ft had he lived to adulthood, the Turkana Boy is our first definitive evidence of a hominid who was definitely emancipated from the woodlands and forest fringes that had sheltered his forebears. Yet his brain remained rather small, not much more than half the size of ours today, and his face was still quite large and protruding. What is more, the earliest H. ergaster continued to make Oldowan stone tools similar to those their predecessors had been manufacturing for million years. Some change in lifestyle is perhaps implied by the fact that soon after H. ergaster appeared on the scene hominids spread out of Africa for the first time, although findings in such Eurasian localities as the 1.8-Myr-old site of Dmanisi in the Caucasus show that this expansion was not propelled by larger brains or by better stoneworking technology. Still, it set another repetitive pattern, this time of the spread of repeated waves of new kinds of hominid out of Africa.

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At about 1.5 Myr ago, a new kind of tool finally showed up in the African record. This is the ‘Acheulean handax’, a much larger implement consciously fashioned with multiple hammer-blows to a regular shape, most commonly that of a teardrop. Here we have a tool that was made to a ‘mental template’ held in the mind of the toolmaker, who was doing more than seeking just a cutting edge. But while it seems that we are indirectly glimpsing a cognitive advance here, it is impossible to know what its correlates were in the wider aspects of behavior. The handax-making tradition seems to have been confined to Africa for a long time, during which a new kind of hominid emerged there, this one with a brain approaching three-quarters of the modern size. Known as H. heidelbergensis (because it was first discovered in Germany), this species appeared in Africa at about 600 thousand years (kyr) ago – in association with remarkably crude tools – and spread rapidly throughout the Old World. Hominids of this kind may have been the makers of the first artificial shelters, constructed at Terra Amata in France some 400 000 years ago. This site also has indications of the domestication of fire in hearths, something that only subsequently became a regular feature of hominid life (although a recent report from Israel dates hearths back to 790 kyr). Still, we have to wait until after 300 kyr ago to find the next important innovation in stone tool-making, again in Africa. This was the ‘prepared-core’ technique, whereby a stone ‘core’ was elaborately shaped until a single blow would detach a more or less finished tool.

The Appearance of Modern Humans The classic practitioner of prepared-core technology was undoubtedly H. neanderthalensis, the bestknown member of an endemic European and western Asian hominid radiation that traces its roots back to at least 500 kyr ago. One reason the Neanderthals are so well known as fossils is that they practiced burial of the dead, though whether this exercise had the same connotations to them as it does to us is not clear. H. neanderthalensis possessed a brain the size of our own, although it was enclosed in a skull of very different appearance, with a long, low profile and large double-arched brow ridges over a protruding face with swept-back cheekbones. Its body proportions were also different from ours, especially in the funnel-shaped rib cage that tapered outward to match a widely flaring pelvis. Neanderthals made stone tools beautifully but rather monotonously, their Mousterian utensils varying little over time or space. They rarely took advantage of other materials such as bone and antler. The Neanderthals were resident

in Europe when the first H. sapiens arrived from the south and east some 40 kyr ago. With their ultimate origins in Africa, these immigrant ‘Cro-Magnons’ had at their disposal the entire cognitive apparatus that distinguishes modern humans today. This is borne out by the abundant evidence they left behind of symbolic consciousness: phenomenal art on cave walls; delicate animal carvings and engravings; notations on bone plaques; flutes made from vulture bones; and so on. These people were fully equivalent in anatomy and sensibility to us, and it was the Cro-Magnons who presumably outcompeted the long-established Neanderthals into extinction within a dozen millennia. Yet the first anatomically modern H. sapiens, who evolved in Africa between about 200 and 150 kyr ago, appear to have had none of these complex behaviors. The earliest African H. sapiens are associated with very crude stone tools, and the earliest anatomically modern humans we know of who lived outside Africa – in Israel, between about 90 and 100 kyr ago – had an identical technology to that of the Neanderthals. Moreover, there was no displacement of the Neanderthals in this region until Cro-Magnonequivalent stoneworking techniques appeared less than 50 kyr ago. What was going on? To understand this, we have to return to the disconnect between new hominids and new ways of behaving. What most plausibly happened is that the potential for the symbolic behaviors that are the most fundamental hallmark of living humans was born with the biological reorganization that produced the distinctive modern human anatomy; but that this potential lay unused until it was ‘released’ by a cultural innovation. To many it seems most likely that this innovation was the invention of language, which is the ultimate symbolic activity and facilitator of symbolic thought. This places the origin of our unprecedented human consciousness squarely in the realm of emergence – the phenomenon whereby a chance combination of factors produces an entirely unanticipated result.

Conclusion By any calculation, symbolically reasoning H. sapiens is not a simple behavioral extrapolation from the hominids that preceded it. Our species does not do what they did, only a little better. Instead, we are radically and qualitatively different from any of our predecessors. Evidently, by 200 kyr ago the human brain had, for whatever reasons, evolved to a point at which a relatively minor genetic change was capable of producing an instrument with an entirely new potential: a potential that had then to be ‘discovered’ by its possessor, in much the same way that birds possessed feathers for millions of years before

PALEOANTHROPOLOGY, COMPUTER-ASSISTED 1763

co-opting them for flight. As extraordinary as its result may be, the evolutionary mechanism involved in the acquisition of modern human consciousness was thus entirely routine. Palaeoanthropology is a diverse discipline with many subdivisions and ramifications, and more than its share of controversies. But if any of its messages is clear, it is that modern H. sapiens has not been burnished to its current condition by eons of gradual perfectioning selection. Remarkable behaviorally as we human beings undoubtedly are, we are not a fine-tuned product of gradual evolutionary refinement. Instead, we are the random result of a long process of highly sporadic evolutionary experimentation that dates back to the first bipedal hominoids and well beyond. See also: Amino Acid Racemization Dating; Asia, West:

Paleolithic Cultures; Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures; Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Luminescence Dating; Modern Humans, Emergence of; Obsidian Hydration Dating; Paleoanthropology, Computer-Assisted.

Further Reading Delson E, Tattersall I, Van Couvering JA, and Brooks A (eds.) (2000) Encyclopedia of Human Evolution and Prehistory, 2nd edn. New York: Garland Publishing. Hart D and Sussman RW (2005) Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators, and Human Evolution. New York: Westview Press. Johanson D (1996) From Lucy to Language. New York: Simon and Schuster. Kingdon J (2003) Lowly Origin: Where, When and Why Our Ancestors First Stood Up. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Klein R (1999) The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins, 2nd edn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schick KD and Toth N (1994) Making Silent Stones Speak: Human Evolution and the Dawn of Technology. New York: Simon and Schuster. Stringer CB and Andrews P (2005) The Complete World of Human Evolution. New York: Thames and Hudson. Tattersall I (1995) The Fossil Trail. New York: Oxford University Press. Tattersall I (1998) Becoming Human. New York: Harcourt Brace. Tattersall I and Schwartz JH (2000) Extinct Humans. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. White R (2003) Prehistoric Art: The Symbolic Journey of Humankind. New York: Abrams.

PALEOANTHROPOLOGY, COMPUTER-ASSISTED Marcia S Ponce de Leo´n, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary computer graphics A set of devices, methods, and procedures to visualize and manipulate visual object representations in a virtual environment. computed tomography (CT) X-ray-based imaging method that permits reconstruction of cross-sectional images of patients and other objects from radiographic projections. geometric morphometrics (GM) Methods of quantification of organismic form that integrate real-space geometric properties of the morphology of organisms into multivariate analysis. virtual reality (VR) A computer-based environment in which a user interacts with geometric object representations using input and output devices that provide perceptual equivalence to physical reality. real virtuality (RV) An environment in which a user interacts with physical models of three-dimensional objects generated or modified by computer-assisted procedures. rapid prototyping (RP) Technologies that transform objects from virtual reality back to the physical world.

Computer-assisted palaeoanthropology (CAP) is a new discipline that emerged with the advent of novel techniques in the fields of biomedical imaging, computer

graphics, rapid prototyping, and geometric–morphometric analysis. The major reason to bundle these disciplines into a coherent transdisciplinary approach is to tackle a central problem of palaeoanthropology, namely the scarcity of the fossil record and the incompleteness of most specimens. In order to gain a maximum of information from the scant but precious material evidence, the primary aim of CAP (see Paleoanthropology) is to enhance the investigative power while minimizing the invasiveness of methods used for fossil data acquisition, preparation, reconstruction, anatomic diagnosis, and comparative morphometric analysis. The basic concept of CAP is to enable the user to perform these tasks in a ‘virtual reality’ setting (Figure 1). The first step in a typical CAP workflow is the acquisition of three-dimensional (3D) data from a fossil specimen – which may still be embedded in sediment – with the technique of ‘computed tomography’ (CT). The development of CT in the 1970s marked an important step toward the improvement of noninvasive medical diagnostics, as it permits acquisition of serial cross-sectional image data from patients. CT was quickly adopted for ‘fossil diagnostics’, giving insights into internal anatomic features of fossil specimens, and into regions still covered by sediment. Parallel to these

1764 PALEOANTHROPOLOGY, COMPUTER-ASSISTED Fossil in matrix

Volume data acquisition

Virtual preparation and reconstruction

Physical replicas

Morphometric analysis

Morphogenetic modeling

Figure 1 CAP consists of three main steps. Digital volume data of hominid fossils still embedded in sediment are acquired with CT. All subsequent steps are performed noninvasively through interactive computer graphics tools. Virtual preparation is performed with data segmentation tools. Segmented data are transformed subsequently into 3D object representations, which can be manipulated interactively on the computer screen to perform reconstructive tasks. Finalized virtual fossils can be transformed into physical models with RP technology. Virtual sampling of two- and three-dimensional measurements permits extensive comparative morphometric analyses. Computer models of processes of taphonomy, evolution, and development lead to a better understanding of the causes underlying fossil form variation.

developments the rapid increase of computer power and advancements in the area of image processing and ‘computer graphics’ opened up new fields in the visualization and interactive manipulation of 3D objects in a virtual environment. In CAP, these techniques build the basis for virtual fossil reconstruction. Applying 3D data segmentation procedures to volumetric CT data sets, it is possible to free a fossil fragment embedded in sediment with a ‘computer chisel’, and to extract internal anatomical structures

such as the labyrinthine cavities of the inner ear. After data segmentation, a geometric description and a graphical representation of the fossil fragments are created through 3D reconstruction procedures. These fragments are then recomposed in virtual reality. This procedure is analogous to the assembly of a 3D puzzle in which important pieces are deteriorated or have been lost. The primary aim of virtual reconstruction is to reverse the fossilization process in order to infer the morphology of the specimen at the

PALEOANTHROPOLOGY, COMPUTER-ASSISTED 1765

1

6

2

7

3

4

5

8

Figure 2 Virtual reconstruction of a fragmentary Neanderthal child skull from the site of Devil’s Tower, Gibraltar. Only five original fragments are preserved (dark gray): parts of the mandible, the right maxillary and temporal bones, the frontal bone and associated left parietal bone. Virtual reconstruction proceeds in eight steps. 1: orientation of the fragmentary mandible along the virtual midplane of the skull; 2: mirror-image completion (white) of missing left mandibular ramus and right milk molars; 3: establishment of dental occlusion between mandibular and maxillary dentition; orientation of maxilla relative to midplane; 4: articulation of the right temporal bone with the maxilla and orientation according to the anatomy of the inner ear; 5: mirror image completion of missing parts on the left side; 6: articulation of frontal bone and left parietal bone; 7: mirror image completion of missing right parietal bone; and 8: docking of independent reconstructions of the face/cranial base and cranial vault.

time of its death (Figure 2). This involves correction of distortions that occurred during fossilization, reestablishment of anatomic connections between preserved parts, and completion of missing parts by mirror-imaging preserved antimeres. During this process, each reconstructive step follows predefined

anatomic criteria. This prevents a reconstructive bias toward preconceived morphologies, ensures reproducible results, and makes the entire procedure accessible to other researchers. Additionally, the reliability of the process as a whole can be evaluated by creating a range of potential reconstructions.

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Virtual reconstruction is an iterative process in its essence, in which reconstructive attempts can be gradually refined without physically dismantling earlier versions and exposing the original specimens to further damage. A major advantage during this process is the absence of physical forces such as gravitation. Each piece of the fossil puzzle can be fixed in virtual anatomic space without the need for glue, plaster, or stabilizing elements. Handling fossil fragments in virtual reality instead of physical reality is of immediate benefit. Whereas physical preparation, manipulation, and reconstruction are highly invasive and potentially destructive processes, the analogous computer-assisted procedures are completely noninvasive. Additionally, CT volumetric data provide unlimited access to all external and internal anatomic structures from an infinite number of views. The finalized virtual reconstruction of a fossil represents the basis for various further analyses and procedures: virtual fossils can be used as a guide during physical preparation, transformed into physical hard copies, and submitted to comparative morphometric analysis. Transforming a fossil reconstruction from virtual reality into ‘real virtuality’, that is, into a physical hardcopy, is typically achieved with rapid prototyping (RP) technologies. A widely used method is stereolithography, where, analogous to the construction of topographic models from piles of cardboard layers, the object is constructed from automated superpositioning of cross-sectional layers. In this manner, it is possible to build models containing arbitrary geometric complexity, including cavities, in a single production step. Stereolithographic replicas of fossil specimens – before and after virtual reconstruction – represent a valuable noninvasive and secure alternative to classic mold-and-cast techniques. RP replicas convey touchand-feel information and are thus ideal for teaching purposes and for interactive museum exhibits. Similarly, RP models drawn at different stages of virtual reconstruction can be used to monitor spatially complex matching tasks. Comparative morphometric analyses of reconstructed fossil specimens represent an essential part of CAP and range from functional and biomechanical analysis to the analysis of patterns of evolutionary diversification and developmental differentiation. Because virtual fossils are graphical objects, they provide an ideal basis for exploration of a wide variety of one-, two-, and three-dimensional measurements. By supplementing the classic repertoire of rulers and calipers with virtual morphometric tools, spatial position of anatomic landmarks, areas of muscular attachment, paranasal sinus volumes, surface curvatures, bone thickness distribution, moments of

inertia, strain distribution, and so on can be measured. The new field of ‘geometric morphometrics’ (GM) is of special relevance for CAP, because GM methods integrate real-space geometric properties of 3D biological forms into multivariate analyses. Using special-purpose computer graphics tools, it is possible to explore complex patterns of shape variability in multivariate space and to visualize them as 3D patterns of shape change in virtual organismic forms. These methods have proved instrumental to identify differences and commonalities between patterns of growth in fossil and extant hominoid species. CAP also comprises computer simulations of form variation in fossils, be it to test hypotheses regarding taphonomic deformation of a given fossil specimen, or to test more general hypotheses about how empirical patterns of form variability are related to underlying evolutionary and developmental processes. The possibility of archiving and retrieving virtual fossil specimens opens new avenues of comparative analysis. Making use of an extended database of digital fossils and the virtual desktop, it becomes possible to inspect fossil specimens that are literally separated by continents in side-by-side comparisons and to derive new measurement series for testing hypotheses without requiring re-examination of the original specimens. However, virtual hominid fossils also raise questions of copyright and access regulations that still need to be resolved. Hominid specimens often represent national treasures, and many of the most valuable specimens come from countries where access to scientific knowledge, especially in its digital form, is severely hampered by infrastructural, educational, and political hurdles. Problems arising from the resulting unidirectional knowledge transfer are similar to problems associated with ‘gene trading’. See also: Anthropological Archaeology; Paleoanthro-

pology.

Further Reading Bookstein FL (1991) Morphometric Tools for Landmark Data: Geometry and Biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dryden IL and Mardia K (1998) Statistical Shape Analysis. New York: Wiley. Zollikofer CPE and Ponce de Leo´n MS (2005) Virtual Reconstruction: A Primer in Computer-Assisted Paleontology and Biomedicine. New York: Wiley. Zollikofer CPE, Ponce de Leo´n MS, Lieberman DE, et al. (2005) Virtual cranial reconstruction of Sahelanthropus tchadensis. Nature 434: 755–759. Zonneveld FW and Wind J (1985) High-resolution computed tomography of fossil hominid skulls: A new method and some results. In: Tobias PV (ed.) Hominid Evolution: Past, Present, and Future, pp. 427–436. New York: Alan R. Liss, Inc.

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PALEODEMOGRAPHY Douglas H Ubelaker, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA Published by Elsevier Inc.

the ‘stationary’ nature of past populations and the applicability of model tables developed from more recent modern populations.

Glossary

Early History

crude birth rate The number of childbirths per 1000 persons per year. ethnography The branch of anthropology that deals descriptively with specific cultures, especially those of nonliterate peoples or groups. gross reproductive rate The average number of female children a woman would have if she survived to the end of her childbearing years and if, throughout that period, she were subject to a given set of age-specific fertility rates and a given sex ratio at birth. This rate provides a measure of replacement fertility in the absence of mortality. life expectancy A statistical measure of the average length of survival of a living thing. It is often categorized by things like gender and geographic location. mortality rate Measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in some population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit time. The crude death rate is the total number of deaths per 1000 people. taphonomy The branch of palaeontology that deals with the process of fossilization.

The roots of palaeodemography extend back to the work of E. A. Hooton with skeletal samples from Madisonville, Ohio, and Pecos Pueblo, New Mexico. While at that time, most reporting of human skeletal data consisted largely of tables of measurements and observations published as appendices within archaeological reports, Hooton introduced a population approach which included a look at mortality and other demographic type issues. In the late 1940s, J. Lawrence Angel, a 1942 doctoral student of Hooton, used similar approaches to study samples from ancient Greece. His work in the area continued through the 1950s and culminated in several publications in the 1960s that explored theoretical aspects of demographic reconstruction and broad correlations of demographic factors with cultural and other biological variables. Other notable contributions during this period include Acsa´di and Nemeske´ri’s work in Hungary, M. Fuste´’s research on the length of life in ancient Spain, M. S. Goldstein’s comparative study of vital statisties derived from skeletal samples, and New World studies of Anderson, Blakely, Walker, Churcher, and Kenyon. These studies examined a variety of samples, including communal ossuary deposits to generate age and sex profiles and related vital statistics. In 1970, Acsa´di and Nemeske´ri published a book, presenting details on palaeodemographic method and theory, including life table construction from skeletal data. The volume synthesized their considerable work on a variety of Hungarian samples from archaeological contexts and presented their ‘complex’ method of estimating age at death in adults. This landmark publication presented methodology utilized for decades in Europe and elsewhere and demonstrated how demographic profiles could be used to examine long-term trends in mortality and adaptation. Shortly thereafter, similar approaches were utilized in the Americas to address broad anthropological problems. Ubelaker utilized palaeodemographic methods and ossuary samples from the mid-Atlantic area of the United States to reconstruct mortality profiles, life tables, and generate new estimates of population size. Buikstra working with skeletal samples from

Palaeodemography refers to the science of reconstruction of demographic information from ancient evidence. Following traditional definitions of palaeodemography, such evidence usually takes the form of human skeletons recovered from archaeological contexts. In these types of analyses, meaningful samples of archaeologically recovered human remains are researched to determine the age at death and sex. These data are then grouped to reveal information on life expectancy, age-specific mortality, survivorship, and related demographic characteristics. Presentation can take the from of mortality curves, survivorship curves, life tables, or a variety of other statistical expressions. A more general definition of palaeodemography can include other types of archaeological evidence (e.g., house structures, settlement patterns, faunal remains) and address different anthropological questions (size and duration of settlement, status and gender roles, and bioarchaeological issues relating to mortuary site interpretation.) Much of the methodology employed is based on uniformitarianism principles, namely that basic processes operating today can be used to understand demographic aspects of past populations. Interpretations are made regarding

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the Lower Illinois Valley of the United States used reconstructed demographic information to elucidate mortuary site dynamics and examine archaeological hypotheses. Through these works and others in the 1970s, palaeodemography emerged not only as a novel way to organize age at death data, but as a promising approach to understand past patterns of mortality and address broad anthropological issues.

Critical Evaluation Later, in the 1970s, critiques of palaeodemography and its applications to skeletal samples focused on the difficulty of obtaining accurate ages at death, especially for adults and sampling issues. In a series of publications, Bocquet in 1977 and 1986 (1977, 1986) and Bocquet and Masset in 1982 and 1985 argued that demographic reconstructions from ancient skeletal samples are weakened by inaccuracy of age at death estimates and the underrepresentation of the very young in skeletal samples due to preservation issues. Their age at death criticism focused on their contention that age estimates are heavily influenced by the age structure of the reference sample used in developing the age methodology. They also argued that modern historical samples were of little use in modeling demographic factors in ancient samples. Van Gerven and Armelagos responded to the age at death concern, pointing out that in their study of ancient Nubian remains from Egypt aged using methods developed from the Todd collection in Cleveland Ohio; their suggested age distribution for the ancient sample was different from that of the reference collection. Thus, their application of the methodology likely produced reliable age at death data for the ancient sample and was not just duplicating the ages of the Todd collection, as suggested by Bocquet and Masset. Buikstra and Konigsberg also responded, arguing that sampling issues could be addressed using archaeological information and rigorous analysis. They did agree however on the need to improve methods of age estimation and statistical treatment of the data. Sampling issues can affect palaeodemographic reconstruction at a variety of levels but enumeration of infants is especially difficult. Taphonomic factors can produce poor preservation of infant remains since they lack the size and mineralization of older individuals. If remains are poorly preserved, they are more likely to be overlooked by excavators and excluded from the overall sample. Since low numbers of infants in mortuary samples may reflect combinations of low infant mortality/fertility and preservation, they can be difficult to evaluate. To avoid the issue of infant prescrvation, Buikstra et al. suggested using the

proportion of the number of deaths over age 30 to the number over age five to evaluate mortality/fertility issues (see Paleopathology).

Estimates of Age at Death Since estimates of age at death represent the cornerstone of palaeodemography, it is important that they be as accurate as possible. The vast literature on methodology of age at death estimation is too vast to be summarized here. In general, it reveals that the margin of error increases with increasing age and is dependent upon which skeletal and dental elements are available for analysis. For subadults, the method of choice is dental development; however, other aspects of growth and development (e.g., bone size, dental eruption, epiphyseal appearance, and fusion) also provide useful information. For adults, a variety of techniques are available, of varying accuracies at different stages in adult age (e.g., epiphyseal union, metamorphosis of the sternal ends of the ribs and symphyseal faces of the pubic bones, degenerative changes (such as osteophytosis of vertebral bodies), microscopic alterations in cortical bone, and factors of tooth morphology). Most workers also agree that combined techniques produce more accurate results than individual ones (see Osteological Methods). Progress continues with aging methodology. Thus it is important to consider new techniques and to select appropriately. Reanalysis of material using new techniques can produce variations in sex and age data. Debate also has focused on the nature of the reference samples utilized in methodological development. Promising new techniques continue to be developed; noteworthy examples include the Lamendin technique examining tooth root translucency and the point of attachment of the periodontal membrane, which is especially valuable for estimating age at death in older adults and tooth cementum annulation involving counts possibly correlated with absolute age. A three-day workshop on palaeodemography in June, 1999, at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, reinforced concern over the above issue. The ‘Rostock Manifesto’ that emerged from this workshop appealed for new research on appropriate reference collections to sharpen aging methodology and renewed focus on evaluation of mathematical approaches, especially Bayes’ theorem.

Sex Estimation Reliable estimates of sex from skeletal remains allow sex-specific demographic variables to be evaluated. Most researchers working with skeletal and dental

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morphology do not attempt sex estimates for subadults. Sex can be estimated with considerable accuracy for adults, if preservation is good and the pelvis is present. Some studies have suggested that systematic errors are possible working with ancient samples with variable preservation. Investigator experience is an important factor as well. Due to advances in molecular research, it is now possible to determine sex from even fragmentary remains using DNA analysis. This methodology is applicable to subadults as well as adults, subject to adequate preservation of the molecular material.

Assumption of Stationary Population As noted by Sattenspiel and Harpending, mean skeletal age at death values reflect life expectancy at birth only if the population is stationary (not in growth or reduction). Age at death values increasingly reflect fertility issues as populations depart from the stationary model. Some general indicators of population growth or decline status may be available from archaeological information.

Statistical Approaches One of the positive products of the historical debate on palaeodemography discussed above has been focused discussion of statistical approaches to age estimation and related issues. Konigsberg and Frankenberg argue that the field has been strengthened by debate and offer suggestions for more vigorous statistical analysis of aging methodology, especially in regard to reference samples. A variety of statistical approaches to aging methodology and palaeodemographic reconstruction have been suggested. Such discussion is relevant since Herrmann and Konigsberg demonstrated how different statistical approaches can yield distinct palaeodemographic products in their analysis of the Kentucky Indian Knoll sample. Much of the discussion has focused on specific statistical approaches to age estimation.

Models A variety of investigators have turned to modeling as a useful approach to palaeodemographic interpretation. Model life tables reflect broad patterns of mortality within the samples selected, but it can be difficult to fit them to the type of data available in palaeodemography. Uniformitarianism limitations also enter such applications since such use assumes that data from one group of samples can be applied to the specific sample being studied. Models have been used convincingly to explain patterns of mortality and to examine the reasonability of palaeodemographic

reconstructions. Model life tables can offer insight into the related demographic variables of gross reproductive rate and crude birth rate in addition to the traditional life expectancy.

Fertility As noted above, values of age at death data in a palaeodemographic study are influenced by fertility in addition to mortality. As early as 1979, Bocquet used age structure in ancient samples to suggest fertility (4.5–6 children per female). Johansson and Horowitz noted that a growing population (nonstationary) will produce more at-risk infants than in a stationary population and thus age at death data from mortuary samples would suggest lower life expectancy than is actually the case. The reverse would be true for populations with negative growth. Johansson and Horowitz argued on this basis that skeletal age distributions can be used to suggest fertility in the population. Various such approaches have been suggested by Milner et al. and Paine and Harpending, although the fertility versus mortality discussion has not yielded academic agreement.

Accuracy Much of the literature discussing the merits of palaeodemography has a distinct theoretical tone, primarily because it usually is not possible to compare products of research with known information. An exception consists of Lanphear’s 1989 study of 296 individuals from a nineteenth-century poorhouse cemetery. Lanphear found no significant differences between ages estimated from skeletons as well as the demographic reconstructions they produced and those recorded in the archival records for the cemetery. The study suggested that despite theoretical concerns, palaeodemographic techniques yielded accurate results. In their study of a large nineteenth-century cemetery sample from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Ubelaker and Jones found similar results. Demographic profiles reconstructed from age at death data derived from skeletal analysis compared favorably with those developed from church records, once the data were reconciled for young infants missing in the archaeological sample.

From Skeletons to an Estimate of Population Size Ossuary deposits present special challenges and opportunities to the researcher. By definition, ossuaries contain multiple individuals, frequently commingled and disarticulated. Such samples present challengers

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in excavation, as well as analysis, especially in sorting out single individuals, developing estimates of the number of individuals represented and evaluation of sex and age at death. In some contexts, social factors leading to ossuary burial are at least partially known, providing opportunities to assess key sampling issues important in demographic reconstruction. In the Mid-Atlantic area of the United States and the Great Lakes area of southern Canada, ethnographic information suggests that such ossuaries culminated from social practices in which the Indian groups periodically assembled the remains of their decedents for communal burial. Each ossuary represented a specific period of time and the groups went to great efforts to include all who had died since the previous burial ceremony. The resulting ossuaries thus address two of the major concerns in palaeodemographic reconstruction, namely the extent to which all decedents are represented and the time period represented. If preservation is favorable, the ossuaries represent prime samples for demographic study. In 1953 and 1971, two ossuaries were discovered in the Mid-Atlantic area of the United States. Excavation and analysis revealed that at least 131 and 188 individuals were represented respectively. Ages at death were estimated using a variety of techniques, but demographic reconstruction focused on what were believed to be the most accurate and relevant methods given the state of bone preservation and representation. For subadults, age was assessed using standards of dental formation. For adults, ages were estimated utilizing histological methodology applied to ground thin sections taken from the femoral midshafts.

The resulting ages at death were assembled to form mortality curves, survivorship curves, and life tables. An example of the life table reconstructed from the second (larger) ossuary is presented in Table 1. The life table presents agespecific mortality information for successive 5 year cohorts but suggests a life expectancy at birth of about 23 years. A product of life table reconstruction can be the crude mortality rate (number of individuals dying per thousand per year in the population). This statistic can be computed directly from the life expectancy at birth value; for the larger ossuary, the figure was 43.5. This suggests that the death rate for the population represented was 43.5 per thousand in the population per year. The total number of deceased individuals was known through analysis (188). The number of years represented by the ossuary (about three years) was estimated using archaeological information (extent of articulated individuals vs. nonarticulated individuals). Using this information, the size of the contributing population could be estimated (approximately 1441 persons). This estimate could then be considered with site survey information as well as ethnohistorical sources for an overall anthropological evaluation of the mortuary site and its cultural context.

Status and Growth Studies Once palaeodemographic variables have been generated with confidence, they can be utilized to assess other anthropological issues. Sullivan utilized palaeodemographic data to examine status in a York Medieval sample.

Table 1 Life table reconstructed from skeletons in Ossuary II in Maryland Age interval (x)

No. of deaths (Dx)

% of deaths (dx)

Survivors entering (lx)

Probability of death (qx)

Total years lived between X and X þ 5 (Lx)

Total years lived after lifetime (Tx)

Life expectancy (e
x)

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70

56 12 7 14 9 12 21 20 13 11 8 4 0 1 0

29.79 6.38 3.72 7.45 4.79 6.38 11.17 10.64 6.91 5.85 4.26 2.13 0.00 0.53 0.00

100.00 70.21 63.83 60.11 52.66 47.87 41.49 30.32 19.68 12.77 6.92 2.66 0.53 0.53 0.00

0.2979 0.0909 0.0583 0.1239 0.0910 0.1333 0.2692 0.3509 0.3511 0.4581 0.6156 0.8008 0.0000 1.0000 0.0000

425.525 335.100 309.850 281.925 251.325 223.400 179.525 125.000 81.125 49.225 23.950 7.975 2.650 1.325 0.000

2297.900 1872.375 1537.275 1227.425 945.500 694.175 470.775 291.250 166.250 85.125 35.900 11.950 3.975 1.325 0.000

22.98 26.67 24.08 20.42 17.95 14.50 11.35 9.61 8.45 6.67 5.19 4.49 7.50 2.50 0.00

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Saunders and Hoppa point out that subadult mortality may reflect bias affecting bone growth studies. The growth of survivors may be different from that of nonsurvivors. This key point is relevant to the larger issue of how evidence of mortality and morbidity relates to health and disease in the once living population.

and offer unique, exciting opportunities to address broad anthropological issues.

Temporal Trends

Further Reading

Palaeodemographic reconstruction offers detailed information about a specific skeletal sample from an archeological context and the once living population represented. When grouped with similar studies derived from samples in key geographic and temporal locations, long-term trends can be examined. Such trends offer information about temporal shifts in the quality of life, adaptation, mortality, morbidity, and how such variables may correlate with other anthropological or ecological information. Synthetic works have examined how demographic variables derived from skeletal studies correlate with the development of agriculture, broad social/historical issues, and quality of life factors. Regional studies reveal variation in long-term trends. Working with samples from the southern Levant, Eshed et al. found that during the transition from hunting-gathering (Natufian) to the Neolithic, life expectancy increased, perhaps along with fertility. However, in Portugal, Jackes et al. found that the transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic showed negligible demographic change, although tooth size exhibited reduction. Samples from northeastern Hungary revealed slight temporal increases in life expectancy between Bronze Age and Iron Age samples.

Summary Palaeodemography represents a rich field of inquiry, historically strengthened by debate and probing for new methodology and applications. Contemporary approaches have been termed a ‘thicker’ prehistoric demography, more cognizant of sampling issues, aging methodology, and statistical approaches. As pointed out by Piontek and Weber, palaeodemography is a unique field that should not be judged using standards of modern demography but rather on its own terms. It offers an opportunity to allow the skeletal samples and other related archaeological information to reveal their biocultural information. Such data provide a very human look into the past

See also: DNA: Ancient; Osteological Methods; Paleopathology; Plant Domestication; Stable Isotope Analysis; Statistics in Archaeology; Trace Element Analysis.

Acsa´di G and Nemeske´ri J (1970) History of Human Life Span and Mortality. Budapest: Akade´miai Kiado. Angel JL (1969) The bases of paleodemography. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 30(3): 427–437. Buikstra, JE (1976) Northwestern Archeological Program Scientific Papers No. 2: Hopewell in the Lower Illinois Valley: A Regional Study of Human Biological Variability and Prehistoric Mortuary Behavior. Northwestern Archeological Program, Illinois. Eshed V, Gopher A, Gage TB, and Hershkovitz I (2004) Has the transition to agriculture reshaped the demographic structure of prehistoric populations? New evidence from the Levant. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 124(4): 315–329. Fuste M (1954) La duracio´n de la vida en la poblacio´n espan˜ola desde de la prehistoria hasta nuestros dı´as. Trabajo del Inst. Bernardino de Sahagu´n de Antropologı´a y Etnologı´a 14: 81–104. Hooton EA (1930) The Indians of Pecos Pueblo: A Study of Their Skeletal Remains. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. Hoppa RD and Vaupel JW (2002) Paleodemography: Age Distribution from Skeletal Samples. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jackes M, Lubell D, and Meiklejohn C (1997) Healthy but mortal: Human biology and the first farmers of Western Europe. Antiquity 71: 639–658. Konigsberg LW and Frankenberg SR (1994) Paleodemography: ‘Not quite dead’ Evolutionary Anthropology 3: 92–105. Lamendin H, Baccino E, Humbert JF, Tavernier JC, Nossintchouk RM, and Zerilli A (1992) A simple technique for age estimation in adult corpses: The two criteria dental method. Journal of Forensic Sciences 37(5): 1373–1379. Milner GR, Wood JW, and Boldsen JL (2000) Paleodemography. In: Katzenberg MA and Saunders SR (eds.) Biological Anthropology of the Human Skeleton, pp. 467–497. New York: Wiley-Liss, Inc. Paine RR (1997) Integrating Archaeological Demography: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Prehistoric Population. Carbondale, IL: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Ubelaker DH (1974) Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology No. 18: Reconstruction of demographic profiles from ossuary skeletal samples: A case study from the tidewater Potomac. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Ubelaker DH and Jones EB (2003) Biological and cultural analysis of human remains. In: Ubelaker DH and Jones EB (eds.) Human Remains from Voegtly Cemetery, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pp. 12–43. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, No. 46. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Ubelaker DH and Pap I (1998) Skeletal evidence for health and disease in the Iron Age of northeastern Hungary. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 8: 231–251.

1772 PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE LOWLAND NEOTROPICS

PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE LOWLAND NEOTROPICS Dolores R Piperno, National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary palaeoecology The scientific discipline that studies the relationship of organisms, including humans, that lived in the past to their biotic and physical environments. phytoliths Types of fossilized plants that are formed within the cells of living species and survive for long periods of time after they are deposited into the environment when plants die. multiproxy environmental reconstructions Employing a number of different types of fossil indicators of past vegetation and climate in order to minimize the shortcomings and maximize the strengths of each technique. charcoal particles Small, often microscopic, pieces of burned plant tissue that typically survive for long periods of time in lake sediments and soils, and are used to reconstruct fire history.

Introduction: Archaeology and Palaeoenvironmental Reconstruction Archaeologists want to understand the physical and biotic environments that past human cultures colonized and lived in for a number of important reasons. For example, investigators who study prehistoric diets and land-use patterns know that the environment to a significant degree determines the type, quality, and abundance of wild plants and animals that hunters and gatherers can exploit and potentially take under cultivation and domesticate. Dramatic oscillations of climate and vegetation may result in fluctuations in the density and distribution of the resources, leading to dietary innovation and change. The technologies (milling stones, fishing gear, hunting traps, projectile points, various types of chipped stone tools) that are best used to procure plants and animals and turn them into food, clothing, shelter, and other utilitarian items may also depend on the types and density of resources available for exploitation. Other major issues in archaeology that require good environmental reconstructions have to do with ancient migrations of humans from one area of the world to another, together with often related questions of human adaptations to coastal environments. In these cases, archaeologists must have good data on past fluctuations in sea level and other characteristics of marine environments. Rising and falling sea levels result in, respectively, a loss or exposure of land area,

which, among other things, might affect the timing of human colonization of major landmasses along with the technology required to do so. For example, through detailed reconstructions of sea-level fluctuations during glacial advances and retreats, scientists now understand that when human populations settled the Australian continent from Southeast Asia probably by 40 000 years ago, consecutive expanses of deep water hundreds of kilometers wide separated northern Australia from the nearest land masses, and sophisticated use of water crafts was required. In contrast, the initial peopling of the Americas from northeastern Asia sometime before 15 000 years ago occurred over a large land bridge exposed by lower sea levels and did not require passage by boats over long stretches of deep ocean. Nonetheless, if archaeologists, prominently including Ruth Gruhn, who believe that early migrations followed nearshore coastal routes are correct, boats dodging glaciers and hopping from island to island around icy fjords would probably have been a necessary component of the original migrations from the Old World to the New, and down through the westernmost portions of North America. The quality and quantity of resources that are typically important in the diets of human groups living on or near coastlines – such as various types of fish, shellfish, and sea mammals – also heavily depends on prevailing ocean temperatures and currents. These issues have perhaps been studied in the most detail along the Peruvian coast, where fine-grain reconstructions by Daniel Sandweiss and others of changes in coastal environments during the past 11 000 years, including the timing and effects of ENSO (El Nin˜o/Southern Oscillation) cycles that brought severe droughts or floods, have greatly increased understanding of the complex patterns of human coastal adaptations along this important area of western South America. A palaeoenvironmental reconstruction may, therefore, deal with a wide variety of characteristics of past landscapes: vegetation, climate, topographic and hydrological features, specific landforms such as glaciers, lakes, and swamps, and still visible markers of human activity such as prehistoric irrigation ditches and canals. Table 1 provides a brief guide to the kinds of studies carried out by various specialists, including archaeologists, that archaeologists rely on. These kinds of studies have long been carried out all over the world and as time goes on and more techniques

PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE LOWLAND NEOTROPICS 1773 Table 1 Types of data used to reconstruct quaternary environments Source of data I. Continental Soils Lakes and Swamps

Wind-borne deposits (loess, sand dunes, desert dust) Speleothems (carbonates found in caves) Vertebrate fossils Tree rings Mountain glaciers and ice sheets Ice cores Various topographic features Various types of archaeological data II. Marine Ocean sediments Coral reefs Marine shorelines

What is studied

Phytoliths, charcoal, soil types, pollen (in some cases) Pollen, phytoliths, charcoal, diatoms, macrofossils, insects, sediment types and mineralogical composition, stable carbon and oxygen isotope ratios, invertebrate fossils (mollusks and ostracods) Phytoliths, pollen (in some cases), overall types and characteristics Stable isotope compositions

Terminal positions Varves, stable isotope composition, dust and charcoal particles Includes remnants of human activity, such as rock art and traces of irrigation, mounding, terracing, ditching, etc. Plant and animal remains Pollen, phytoliths, charcoal, fossil plankton composition, isotopic composition of planktonic and benthic fossils, mineralogical composition of sediments, etc. Species characteristics, stable isotope studies Shoreline positions based on calculated sea level position

Modified from Williams et al., 1998, Table 1.1.

capable of providing high-resolution data are developed, the precision of reconstructions increases accordingly. Most researchers involved with studying the palaeoenvironment use their accumulated data primarily to understand the past, not to inform present-day debates or predict what the future may hold. However, as it becomes more clear that reconstructions of the ancient world have direct relevance to managing in an intelligent way our present and future landscapes, environmental historians can increasingly share in the responsibility of developing informed environmental policies and mitigating future, detrimental global climatic and other changes. For example, what we have learned about the origins and antiquity of the planet’s current store of biodiversity (e.g., how the extreme Ice Age conditions of the past 2 million years impacted tropical and other landscapes), should allow conservation biologists to better model plant succession following major ecosystem disruptions, as well as to predict and pattern forest regeneration when planning regrowth programs. Moreover, the documentation of the often considerable to sometimes profound impact of human populations on the vegetation and overall biodiversity of many past landscapes, discussed in detail below, has helped to make it clear that indigenous societies did not often practice strategies that conserved many of their resources. Many societies instead used their environments to the limit of their technology to attempt to ensure their short-term success. These

facts remind us that in order to better preserve and protect remaining biodiversity we not only have to have better data from ecologists, foresters, and climate modelers; we, the anthropologists, have to straightforwardly assess past and present human behavior, its proclivities, and its goals. Another possibly crucial area of insight into future global conditions, this time concerning the effect of increasing atmospheric CO2 on the European climate, has been provided by scientists called palaeooceanographers, who gather biological and physical data from the oceans and study their relationships to what happens over land surfaces. These scholars have learned that processes occurring deep in the oceans profoundly affect climate and vegetation over both nearby and distant continents. For example, it would be easy to assume that ever-higher amounts of atmospheric CO2 robustly predicted by climate modelers if fossil fuel injections into the atmosphere are not slowed considerably would lead to global-wide warming. However, studies of changes in the deep ocean circulation and how they affected the Earth’s climate during the final stages of the last Ice Age between 14 000 and 10 000 years ago, when the Earth was ‘warming’ considerably, show us this assumption might be a mistake with serious consequences for some highly populated and developed areas of the world. Palaeooceanographers using geochemical and other indicators have discovered that something they call the ‘North Atlantic conveyor’, part of a chain of ocean currents that brings warm water and air from

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the tropics to the far North Atlantic and heats much of maritime and continental Europe, was actually disrupted or halted completely by influxes of glacial meltwater and run-off from rivers as the Ice Age was ending. This was a major cause of the Younger Dryas, the temporary return to Ice Age conditions that affected much of the world between 11 000 and 10 000 BP. What makes all of this very real for us today is that a recent study documented for the first time that the ocean conveyor may have slowed considerably during the last 30 years, presumably due to the same melting glacier and river run-off effects that caused climate reversal 11 000 years ago. Climate is a particularly dangerous thing for human populations to tamper with because it is nearly impossible to predict when a threshold for climate changes, such as those that involve ocean circulation, is close to being reached, and resulting shifts in temperature and precipitation tend to be quite abrupt. For example, palaeoclimate studies have shown that temperature can decrease by 10  C (about 23  F) in less than 30 years. If the conveyor belt breaks down or continues to slow, Europe may in the near future experience severely colder temperatures that could lead to significant socioeconomic disruptions. These examples show how understanding past environments and factors that controlled global change can help us to better plan for the future.

Reconstructing Vegetation, Climate, and Human Land Use A major area of palaeoenvironmental research is the reconstruction of past vegetation, climate, and human land usage from microfossil plant remains (those that cannot be seen with the naked eye) found in the sedimentary records of lakes and swamps. Increasingly, terrestrial soils – those found directly underneath extant, dryland vegetation – are also being used for this purpose. My own involvement in the environmental sciences focuses on these types of environmental reconstructions. These kinds of studies are carried out by scientists who are generically called palaeoecologists. Analyses have long been carried out in every region of the world and there is a voluminous literature. Increasingly, archaeologists are learning during their graduate careers or later how to carry out palaeoecological field and laboratory work, and this combined with numerous interdisciplinary collaborations has injected a strong archaeological component into research goals and interpretations of the assembled data. Because vegetational zones vary greatly along latitudinal and elevational gradients and each region has its own set of naturally occurring plant species, the

actual varieties of fossil plants retrieved and studied vary markedly from place to place. However, because the vegetation of any region is a direct correlate of the prevailing climate, trends in precipitation and temperature through time can often be inferred from the reconstructed vegetation, no matter what the type. Humans can exert very large impacts on landscapes independent of climate and, therefore, a major pursuit of palaeoecologists is documenting past landscape changes caused by prehistoric agriculture and other activities that extracted resources from the environment. Such endeavors are possible because plant succession after human interference is often different from that associated with natural kinds of landscape disturbances (e.g., tree blowdowns and floods; see below). There is a huge literature documenting a human presence on, and disturbance of, past landscapes, and there are few archaeologists who do not recognize the importance of environmental reconstructions and effectively assimilate and use palaeoecological data in their own research. In summary, the major questions asked of these types of retrospective analyses vary little regardless of the world region under study. They include: (1) what was the prevailing climate and vegetation of the area during the time period during which sediments accumulated at the site, (2) have significant changes in vegetation and climate occurred and if so, what were the causes, (3) where a human presence has been documented near the study site, what were the ecological contexts of human occupation and what were the relationships between human settlement/subsistence strategies and the reconstructed environment through time, and (4) can human alteration of vegetation be detected; if so, when did it occur and what kinds of cultural practices was it associated with?

Environmental Reconstructions: Field and Laboratory Procedures The first task for palaeoecologists is retrieving sediments from places that are likely to have accumulated undisturbed sediment continuously or nearly so in the past. Lakes and large swamps generally offer the best sets of conditions. In such settings, pollen grains, phytoliths, and charcoal from a watershed of usually definable area arrive at and settle to the bottom of lakes, creating detailed, organic-rich sedimentary records that are like a book of the past waiting to be opened and read. Anoxic conditions often created by the water kill organisms that would burrow through and disturb sediments after deposition has taken place. In addition to lakes, deep and often ancient (hundreds of thousand year-old) deposits of loess found over widespread areas of a number of the

PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE LOWLAND NEOTROPICS 1775

world’s regions such as northern China and the western USA can also provide detailed information. Also, terrestrial soils can be profitably studied even though pollen preservation is usually not good enough to provide suitable records because the soils contain phytoliths and charcoal pieces, which survive for long periods of time in quantities that can be productively analyzed and also radiocarbon-dated. Retrieving sediments from lakes and swamps is accomplished through the use of various types of hand- or motor-driven samplers that are attached to coring tubes of precisely measured length and width, and that remove sediment in ways that do not disturb it. A hand-operated coring device known as the ‘Colinvaux-Vohnout locking piston corer’, itself a modification of the ‘modified Livingstone sampler’, is most commonly used to core sediments that are underneath permanent standing water (Figures 1 and 2). As already noted, where lakes and swamps are not present, phytolith and charcoal studies of terrestrial sediments can be carried out. This type of analysis simply requires digging a suitable number of holes by

Figure 1 Coring a lake in tropical southwest Mexico with a Colinvaux-Vohnout locking piston corer. The author is about to insert the core barrel containing the sampling tube down a hole created by metal casing tubes through 7 m of water into the sediment below. The coring takes place on a stabilized wooden platform constructed on a raft of rubber boats. (Photo by Ruth Dickau.)

hand and sampling them over continuous intervals of a soil sequence. Informative results have recently been acquired throughout temperate and tropical regions of the Old and New Worlds. Terrestrial sequences can be particularly valuable because they can be undertaken in any area desired and thus provide good insights into vegetational changes for a specifically defined tract of vegetation. Conservation and other biologists interested in understanding how past human and natural disturbances may have affected the present composition and structure of tropical forest segments that are being preserved, mapped, and censused on a continual basis are finding them particularly useful, for example. No matter what the goals of the analysis are, terrestrial soil studies reduce the dependence on the occurrence of lakes and swamps for providing vegetational reconstructions. After sediments are recovered and transported back to the laboratory, various laboratory techniques may be used to isolate the fossils under study. These are the usual kinds of ‘cookbook’ approaches that investigators develop and modify according to sediment characteristics and other variable circumstances. Importantly, many investigators now employ what is called a ‘multiproxy’ approach to data retrieval and interpretation. That is to say, a number of different microfossil (and sometimes also macrofossil) indicators are studied, and results from each are combined and interpreted with respect to one another. At the present time, pollen, phytolith, charcoal, and diatom analyses are most often employed in tandem in lake palaeoenvironmental work. Some temperate zone investigators utilize macrofossils that may occur in high numbers near the edges of lakes and can provide species-specific determinations of taxa. Pollen grains, the male elements of gymnosperms and flowering plants that are often identifiable to the family or genus level, have the longest history in this kind of endeavor and there is a voluminous literature from all over the world. During the last 20 years investigators have increasingly employed phytolith analysis side-byside with pollen studies to document the terrestrial vegetation. Phytoliths are particles of silica formed within plant cells that survive for long periods of time, including in contexts such as in oxidized sediments where pollen grains have long decayed. Phytoliths also occur in many types of plants and often are diagnostic to the family and genus level. The advantages of studying more than one kind of fossil indicator of vegetation and climate are substantial. Pollen and phytolith analysis (see Pollen Analysis; Phytolith Analysis) each have strengths that typically redress the other’s weaknesses and thus are highly complementary. For example, in the tropics pollen analysis can have difficulties in recognizing

1776 PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE LOWLAND NEOTROPICS

Figure 2 The newly opened sediment cores in the author’s laboratory from the lake shown in Figure 1. The length of each core segment is about 1 m. In addition to data derived from pollen, phytoliths, and diatoms occurring in the sediments, a substantial amount of information can be obtained from physical characteristics of the sediments. For example, the zone of compacted red clayey silt at the left of the core segment that is second from the top represents a period from about AD 500 to AD 1000 when the lake dried out and sediments were exposed to the air and became oxidized. This interval is probably associated with a regional drought, likely the same major drying event recorded by other investigators working in the Yucatan peninsula that is associated with the demise of the Maya civilization. The zones of dark organic sediment were formed underneath standing – often deep – water, indicating the region was receiving a significant amount of annual rainfall during those intervals. In the core segment beneath the one containing red soil, the sediments are strongly laminated (they have numerous fine bands, each of which accumulate over the period of a few years or even seasonally during a single year), and the laminations further indicate that deposition was undisturbed. Before sampling, the sediments were carefully cleaned to eliminate any possible contamination occurring when the core barrels were cut open. (Photo by Enrique Moreno.)

and adequately quantifying the many insect-pollinated arboreal and herbaceous taxa of mature tropical forest. Phytolith analysis provides significant information on this aspect, improving our ability to understand tropical forest history. Conversely, in the recognition of woody, early secondary tropical forest growth that is increasing on a landscape under slash and burn cultivation, where phytolith analysis may be ‘silent’ (e.g., the tree taxa Ficus and Cecropia among others do not produce many identifiable phytoliths), pollen come to the rescue and identify these associations (see Figures 3 and 4 for examples). In both the temperate and tropical zone, phytoliths provide much more information on grassland reconstructions than can pollen analysis, identifying, for example, grasses to the subfamily, tribe, and sometimes genus levels that allow temperature and rainfall changes through time to be identified. Diatoms, unicellular aquatic plants that live in lakes, are also commonly utilized to reconstruct characteristics of lake basins such as lake levels, salinity, and productivity. Some types of diatoms that proliferate in water enriched by nutrients contained in surrounding terrestrial soils may be used to infer soil erosion in the watershed caused by human activity. The identification of pollen, phytoliths, and diatoms requires large modern reference collections.

These allow the investigator to compare fossil and modern plants and assign what they find in palaeobotanical records to taxa at appropriate taxonomic levels (family, genus, species) or habitat preferences (forest, scrubland, prairie, agricultural field). Constructing such collections, especially in regions where biological diversity is high, is often a long-term task. Pollen and phytolith analysts are increasingly publishing large monographs and keys to regional flora. The accumulation of a very large amount of information on pollen and phytolith production and taxonomic patterns during the last 15 years, together with the availability of more tightly focused morphological studies devoted to restricted taxa sets (e.g., domesticated plants and their putative wild ancestors), has considerably improved the quality of palaeoecological reconstructions. In order to make temporal sense of the accumulated data and determine ages for major events documented in palaeoecological sequences, a chronology must be constructed. Lake sediments are often highly organic and dateable with radiocarbon, and this has been the traditional method of choice in these situations. Now that accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) determinations of very small amounts of carbon are possible (radiocarbon laboratories can now reliably date as little as 100 micrograms of organic

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Figure 3 A phytolith influx diagram from Lake La Yeguada, Panama. The chronology was obtained from more than two dozen internally consistent radiocarbon dates on sediments encompassing the bottom to the top of the sequence. The portion of the sequence dating to between 14 000 and 11 000 BP represents the Ice Age. It can be seen how trees and other plants of mountain forests are represented during this interval (Magnolia, Carex, other Montane taxa) when the climate was much cooler and they descended from higher elevations. Beginning 11 000 BP. when the Ice Age ended and the climate became much warmer, these taxa are replaced by others that grow today in lowland tropical forest (Chrysobalanaceae, Perebea, Protium, Trichomanes, the Podostemaceae). The category ‘Total arboreal’ represents mostly taxa of mature forest; the marked decrease in this category at 7000 BP represents the onset of slash and burn agriculture in the lake’s watershed. At about 350 BP there is a rapid regrowth of the forest, which probably resulted from the tragic decimation of indigenous populations after Europeans arrived in the region. This sequence demonstrates that long-term slash and burn agriculture is possible and that this kind of indigenous agricultural system can allow regeneration of a species-diverse forest when agricultural pressure is relaxed. Reprinted from Piperno, et al. 1991. The figure is continued on the next page.

1778 PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE LOWLAND NEOTROPICS

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Pollen influx grains cm2−1 yr−1 ⫻ 103 Figure 4 A summary pollen influx diagram from Lake La Yeguada, Panama. The increase in secondary forest taxa (Trema, Pilea) and Cecropia at 7000 BP coincides with the significant decline of primary forest at the same time evidenced in the phytolith records indicating that slash and burn agriculture has begun (Figure 3). At 4200 BP the secondary forest trees decline greatly along with charcoal amounts, and tree phytolith frequencies remain greatly suppressed, indicating that agriculture intensified to the point that even successional woody growth was being cut. The pollen analysis was carried out by Mark Bush. Reprinted from Piperno et al. (1991).

material), dating small volume sediment samples taken from precise intervals of a core sequence is preferred to the past option of using larger volume (also called ‘bulk’) sediment samples. Simple linear regressions can be used to construct age–depth relationships and provide statistically robust interpolations of sedimentation rates and dates of deposition for the entire sequence. Some researchers routinely calibrate carbon-14 determinations now before constructing the age–depth relationship.

Other types of fossil materials found in lake sediments are also suitable substrates for radiocarbon analysis and are increasingly being employed for this purpose. They include plant cuticles, wood, and the very pollen and phytoliths that provide direct evidence on past vegetation. The capacity to date a wide range of materials is important because sometimes 14C analysis on lake sediments is not the most accurate way to date the pollen and phytolith records. For example, it has long been known that in lakes

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located on karstic or limestone landscapes, old carbon from the ancient limestone that is dissolved in the water and then incorporated into organisms such as algae that live in lakes typically lead to radiocarbon determinations on sediments that are artificially old, sometimes by thousands of years. More geographically widespread problems that make sediments artificially young have also been identified, the most serious of which seems to be the presence of soluble humic acids from plant materials that percolate downward through sediments and can result in ages erroneously young by thousands of years. Pretreatment by radiocarbon labs usually cannot adequately remove the humics because a heavy base treatment is required, which will often destroy or greatly reduce in quantity the other, suitable organic material in the sample that one wants to date. The way round these potential problems is to simultaneously date sediments and other suitable materials (e.g., pollen grains, phytoliths, microscopic charcoal, macrofossils; plant cuticles) from selected strata (e.g., the basal and middle parts of the sequence; levels where important boundaries are identified), and compare and contrast the results. Investigators are increasingly using a mixture of sediment and other dates from a few selected parts of sequences to make sure they agree. If there appears to be a problem, for example with humic acid contamination, then sediments shouldn’t be used to construct the chronology. The best kind of material(s) from which to derive a chronology depends on a number of factors (e.g., whether the site is in or near a floodplain and receives periodic floodwater inputs; if humic acid presence is considerable; if hardwater error is likely to be present). After the pollen, phytoliths, and diatoms occurring in a palaeoenvironmental sequence are identified, counted, and dated, the data are usually presented in the form of a diagram, composed of the assemblage from each level or stratum plotted against its stratigraphic depth or age. The diagram consists of two parts, a horizontal line with constituents of the assemblage together with frequencies of the various identified taxa, and a vertical line showing depths and dates of the assemblages (Figures 3–6, to be discussed in more detail below). Fluctuations in percentages, concentrations (an estimated number of each represented taxon occurring in a unit volume of sediment), or accumulation rates of species through time (an estimated number of each represented taxon that was deposited over a unit area of sediment every year – its calculation requires a good estimation of sedimentation rates over the entire length of the sequence) are assumed to reflect associated changes in vegetation composition and/or plant usage. When quantifying results, it is a good idea to compute and

present all three types of data values commonly used – percentages, concentrations, and accumulation rates. Each one has its own unique, skew-inducing tendencies as well as its strengths, and evaluating the three in tandem can often allow the investigator to weigh and make sense of conflicting trends that may be indicated by one or more of them. When interpreting vegetational change, careful consideration must also be given to the factors of over- and under-representation of taxa caused by differences in the quantities in which plants choose to produce them and to what taxonomic level they can be identified. Investigators may choose to delimit zones in stratigraphic diagrams built from phytolith, pollen, or other botanical data. The purpose of zones is to make the description and comparison of fossil data easier. Some investigators, including the author, do not routinely zone pollen or phytolith diagrams, feeling that no single zonation will adequately account for the complex record of palaeoenvironmental change often present in a long stratigraphic sequence. Relying on a good carbon-14 chronology and good knowledge of the study region’s ecology, and describing vegetational and lithologic events according to them, is often an equally effective means of interpreting and inferring past conditions. Either visual inspection of important transitions and where they occur or numerical procedures can be used to zone diagrams. It has been the case that zonations done without recourse to formal mathematics are often very similar to those done with the aid of numerical procedures. Even when this is not the case, there is no guarantee that zones produced by numerical methods are more valid than others.

Case Studies from the Neotropics The editors of this volume asked the authors to provide case studies from more than one region of the world. Using the ones the author knows best, those found within tropical latitudes of the New World, in the remainder of this chapter she compares and contrasts palaeoenvironmental records from Central and South America, showing how they relate to and inform existing and future archaeological discourse on prehistoric settlement, technology, and land usage in the lowland tropical forest. The author provides ecological in addition to regional contrasts, showing how present data indicate that seasonal tropical forests in the Americas, those that experience at least a 3- to 5-month ‘dry season’ annually during which little to no rain falls, were probably impacted by human societies longer and more intensively than were evergreen formations or true rain forest, those that do not receive a long and marked dry season.

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14C

years BP Depth (cm)

Arboreal

10

30 40 50 60 70 80

(Bulk) 4090 ± 40 (Phyt) 4230 ± 290

90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 10

10

10

10 10

10

10

10

10

10

10

10

10

10

10

10 20 30 4050 60 70 10

10

10

10

10

10

10

10 20 30 40 50 60 10 10

Note: Hatched areas = 5% exaggeration. Soil

Fine compact clay

Oxidized clay

10 2030 10

10

10

10

10 10

10

10

10 20

10 20 3040 50 60 70 80 90100 10

10 20 10

50000 100000 150000

Pollen grains/cc

Percentages based on Gymno/Angiosperm pollen sum.

Weathered bedrock

Figure 5 A percentage pollen profile from El Venancio, Mexico. Notice the very high percentages of weedy taxa (Poaceae (grasses), Asteraceae (composites), total herbaceous category), low percentages and variety of trees (taxa grouped in the ‘Arboreal’ category), and presence of maize. The basal radiocarbon dates are derived from sediment and also phytoliths and charcoal isolated from the same sediment sample; the two determinations agree well with each other, indicating that deposition of pollen-rich sediment began about 4000 BP at the 100 cm level of the sequence. Sediments below 100 cm are oxidized and contain few pollen grains. Reprinted from Piperno DR (2006c) Agricultural impact on vegetation and quaternary vegetational history in Central America. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 93: 274–296, with permission from the Missouri Botanical Garden Press.

PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE LOWLAND NEOTROPICS 1781

20

R yr Sp ica o Tr ndi em as a Un kn ow n

M

Po ac ea e Cu l Ze tige a ns M ma or y ac s ea e

Rh izo p As hor a te ra ce ae Bo rre Ch ria en oAM S

1782 PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE LOWLAND NEOTROPICS

100 125 150 175 200 225 250 275 3350 ± 60

300 325

4750 ± 60

350 375 400 425

20

20

20 40 60 80

20

20 40 60 80

20

Figure 6 A summary percentage pollen profile from Kob Swamp, Belize. Cultigens are manioc and cotton. Notice how trees representing high forest in this area (Moraceae) sharply decline in frequency and weedy taxa greatly increase when maize is first recorded. Reprinted from Jones (1994) with permission of the American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists.

During the past 15 years, available palaeoecological data relevant to the last 20 000 years of Neotropical forest environmental history has greatly increased. This temporal span covers the maximum extension of northern hemisphere glaciation and some of the most intense climatic forcing known to have occurred in the lowland tropical forest during the last transglacial period (18 000–11 000 BP), and it accommodates the last 4000 to 5000 years of the Ice Age (c. 15 000 to 11 000 BP), when most archaeologists believe humans first colonized Neotropical latitudes. Palaeoecological data frequently go hand-in-hand with the discovery and investigation of nearby archaeological sites; the latter contexts provide allied information about the available forest plants and animals that were most frequently exploited and manipulated by people. In brief, the research indicates that the lowland Neotropical forest was settled by at least 11 000 BP by small groups of hunters and gatherers, who in short order began to modify tropical forest using fire. Because the archaeologist Tom Dillehay has shown that human settlement at Monte Verde, Chile occurred by c. 13 000 BP, earlier evidence of tropical forest occupation probably awaits archaeological research. Space constraints do not permit a detailed discussion of the kinds of environments that humans first encountered in the Neotropics, but a now-large literature documents that much cooler and drier conditions prevailed throughout low latitudes between

c. 20 000 and 11 000 BP. These conditions caused forests in what are now seasonally dry areas to become grasslands or other kinds of plant communities dominated by herbaceous and/or low tree associations, whereas in areas now supporting wet, evergreen forests, mountain trees descended into and occupied the lowlands along with the most cool-tolerant lowland forest taxa (Figures 3 and 4). Arguably, the best way to determine what kinds of habitats people were living in and what kinds of resources they were actually exploiting is to correlate reconstructed Pleistocene vegetation from palaeoecological sites with archaeological sites of the same age located nearby. This is possible for a number of important localities containing early human occupants, indicating that between c. 13 000 and 10 000 BP what were probably highly mobile hunters and gatherers lived in and exploited a wide variety of resources and ecological settings, from species diverse tropical forest to savanna/scrubland. Characterizations of the earliest tropical Americans as either megafaunal specialists or generalized hunters and gatherers is overly simplistic and unsatisfactory. Both palaeoecological and archaeological data make it clear that there was an early and independent development of agriculture in the lowland Neotropics. Combined microbotanical studies (pollen, phytoliths, and starch grains) indicate that human manipulation of a variety of seeds, roots, and probably trees leading

PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE LOWLAND NEOTROPICS 1783

to their domestication took place in the early Holocene (10 000–7000 BP). Older views that early tropical forest food-producing systems were root-and/or treebased and that seed crops were mainly creations of people living at high and dry elevations, should be set aside. In the seasonally dry tropical forest, where it appears that most important tropical seed and root crops were originally brought under cultivation and domesticated, cultivation of seed crops such as maize and various species of squashes and gourds is every bit as effective as root crop cultivation. These factors have important implications for the age and trajectory of human forest disturbance. A large number of researchers are now actively investigating prehistoric human impacts on tropical landscapes. Their examinations of palaeoecological data combined with allied studies of modern pollen, phytolith, and charcoal deposition across a range of tropical habitat types have led to a commonality of views about how to interpret ancient data sets, making it possible for trends recognized from sequence to sequence to be meaningfully compared and evaluated. For example, in a long depositional sequence sampled at an appropriate resolution (at intervals of from 300 to 100 years or less), most investigators interpret a continued presence of high frequencies of charcoal over thousands of years of a lake’s history as being indicative of human-set fires. This is because, as has been documented a number of times for modern forests of different regions, the high humidity, moisture, and shaded understory of forests make the likelihood of natural ignitions occurring that frequently very low. Similarly, when large proportions of phytoliths from early invasive herbaceous plants such as the Poaceae and Heliconia are continually burned over long periods of time, human interference is indicated. Studies of modern contexts indicate these patterns do not occur in the absence of human disturbance. We should also remember that ENSO became a part of the post-Pleistocene climate system only after 6000 to 5000 BP, thus Holocene fire events before then are almost certainly rooted in other causes. Moreover, the widespread and destructive fires that have occurred in tropical forests (in Indonesia, for example) in the past 25 years during strong ENSO events were virtually all started deliberately by farmers and commercial developers to clear land. The fires spread and became so devastating because logging and slash and burn cultivation had already created huge fuel loads and highly flammable conditions. Relying on pollen and phytolith profiles constructed from modern, old growth forests where vegetational censuses and other detailed plant inventories are available, as well as on vegetation currently experiencing varying types of anthropogenic pressure, various

investigators, including Mark Bush in Amazonia, the late Barbara Leyden in Mexico and Guatemala, and myself in Panama, have developed pollen and phytolith population markers of human disturbance and agricultural activity for different types of Neotropical forest. For example, in wetter forests, increases of weedy herbaceous taxa along with pollen from major secondary forest trees such as Pilea, Trema and Alchornea occurring at the same time that pollen or phytoliths from a variety of more mature forest taxa are declining usually can be confidently interpreted as human disturbance. In regions where tree diversity is lower and polleniferous families like the Moraceae are important components of the mature forest, rapid and steep declines of Moraceae and other tree pollen grains combined with simultaneous increases in weedy herbaceous plants and early secondary forest trees such as Trema indicate human forest clearance. These efforts have gone hand-in-hand with those dedicated to constructing large modern reference collections of Neotropical pollen grains and phytoliths. They have resulted in the identification of many tree and shrub taxa that were unknown microfossils in older palaeoecological work, and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions that are more finely resolved. The recovery of pollen and phytoliths from cultivars provides another important source of information for documenting past human influences and agricultural practices. A few things concerning the interpretation of cultivar pollen and phytoliths in tropical lake sediments should be remembered. One is that maize phytoliths and pollen grains can be straightforwardly identified on the basis of both size and morphological characteristics in regions outside of the natural distribution of its wild ancestor and other close wild relatives in the genus Zea, which collectively are known as teosintes. The zone where the presence of Zea grains means maize was being grown stretches from Costa Rica south into Panama and on throughout South America. However, because maize pollen grains are so large, they are also heavy and do not travel very far from their original source. A recent study showed that 95% of all maize grains come to rest within 50 m of their source plants, and the author still remembers well her first pollen course when we sampled moss pollsters occurring 10 m from a maize field and often could not find any maize pollen at all in a 200 grain count. Therefore, maize will often be under-represented in lake sediments unless cultivation occurred at or close to the lake edge. Many crops do not leave recognizable pollen or phytolith signatures at all in lacustrine records because of factors related to the low production or limited taxonomic utility of their microfossil products. This

1784 PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE LOWLAND NEOTROPICS

is the case for the many root crops that were cultivated in Central and South America, although manioc pollen has been identified in sites from the Colombian Amazon Belize, and Mexico, probably because the coring locations were very near – possibly in one case even directly underneath – prehistoric fields. The end result is that there may be strong indications of forest disturbances and clearing in lake records without evidence of the crops that caused the clearing. Phytolith and starch grain records from archaeological sites located in or near a lake’s watershed are necessary to fill in these lacunae, as they have already done in Panama and northern South America.

Major Trends and Patterns of Prehistoric Tropical Forest Modification Dozens of palaeoecological sequences from lakes and large swamps are available from the full range of types of tropical forest – evergreen, semi-evergreen, and deciduous – reaching from southwestern Mexico to the Amazon Basin. The data show that the development and spread of agriculture in the American lowland tropics sometimes exerted profound influences on the structure and composition of the vegetation. Regions far removed from ancient centers of civilizations such as Central Panama and parts of the Amazon Basin experienced systematic interference with tropical forest thousands of years ago. Fire was an important instrument of vegetational modification for people practicing agriculture in tropical America. Between 7000 BP and 5000 BP, depending on the region, palaeoecological records show that slash and burn cultivation had emerged in Caribbean Mexico, central Panama, the Colombian Amazon, the Ecuadorean Amazon, and probably eastern Amazonia. In some regions of Central and South America, forest clearance by agricultural populations was so severe millennia ago that defining climatic events from vegetational patterns in lake records is nearly impossible for Middle and Late Holocene periods. Often, especially in highly seasonal forests in Central America, human impacts were intense and prehistoric agriculture removed or greatly reduced in frequency a significant number of primary forest trees and shrubs. A review of some of these records follows. Pollen and charcoal data generated in my laboratory from a large swamp called El Venancio, located in Guerrero, Mexico very close to the presumed cradle of maize domestication, provide the first indications of ancient agriculture and associated deforestation in the deciduous forests of the Central Balsas River Valley (Figure 5). Here, maize, high amounts of charcoal, and severe forest clearing are evidenced from

the base of the sequence dated to 4000 BP. An older Mexican sequence generated by Kevin Pope, Mary Pohl, and John Jones from San Andre´s, located on the Caribbean coast of Tabasco in what would become the Olmec heartland 3000 years later, records slash and burn cultivation with maize starting at 6200 BP. Two pollen and charcoal records studied by the same group of investigators from swamps called Kob and Cobweb, located about 55 km apart in northeastern Belize, show an early phase of intensive deforestation resulting from slash and burn agriculture starting by 4000 BP (Figure 6). A number of lake sequences generated recently from the Pacific and Caribbean watersheds of Costa Rica demonstrate slash and burn cultivation dating from 4800 BP to 2950 B.P. Maize is present in the earliest deposits of all of them. Moving further south to Lake La Yeguada, central Panama, the initiation of slash and burn agriculture is indicated by 7000 BP, when primary forest trees decrease greatly in the phytolith record and pollen from early secondary woody growth (Cecropia, Ficus) increases significantly (Figures 3 and 4). Shortly after this time maize pollen is first recorded and it continues to be present throughout the sequence. Cucurbita (squash) phytoliths make an appearance at about 6000 BP. At 4200 BP even the secondary growth trees and charcoal decline greatly, indicating that a larger portion of the woody growth was being cut and could no longer contribute charcoal to the record because fallow periods were probably being shortened (Figures 3 and 4). This region of Panama has also seen longterm archaeological research by Anthony Ranere and Richard Cooke and its pre-Columbian cultural records are among the best in the lowland Neotropics. Excavations and systematic archaeological foot surveys indicate that sites identified as hamlets and hamlet clusters near La Yeguada during the 7000 BP to c. 5000 BP period are very similar in size and other aspects to those of modern slash and burn agriculturists, and that site numbers increased 15-fold at that time compared with the 10 000 to 7000 BP period. Several of these occupations have yielded phytolith and starch grain records of agriculture from 7000 to 3000 BP, making it clear that agriculture supported ever increasing human populations, who in turn placed increasing pressure on their environment. Here is a case where combined archaeological and palaeoecological investigations provided a particularly detailed picture of tropical forest history. Moving further south into the Amazon Basin and other areas of South America, a varied scale and intensity of human forest disturbance becomes more apparent. For example, disturbance resulting from

PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE LOWLAND NEOTROPICS 1785

human agricultural pressure started in the western and eastern Amazon Basin (Lakes Ayauchi and Geral, respectively) during the sixth millennium BP and intensified during the next few milleniums. However, periods of particularly intensive agriculture occurred between c. 3350 BP and the Conquest period, later than in sequences just discussed from Central America, and during the maximum periods of disturbance there are never the declines in tree pollen and phytoliths nor increases in frequencies of herbaceous plants that indicate large-scale destruction of the forest, as occurs in many Central American sequences. Records recently generated by various investigators for the Choco´, western Colombia and the Rı´o Napo region of the Ecuadorian Amazon are examples of even more minimal human disturbance on very wet, aseasonal, and still densely forested northern South American landscapes. In these cases, maize is not recorded until c. 1000 BP in a 4200 year-long sequence, but this signal of agriculture is still not accompanied by signs of significant forest clearing (the Choco´ record). Charcoal is common during certain periods, but neither maize nor signs of forest clearing in the way of declining tree frequencies are recorded at all over more than 10 000 years of time (Rı´o Napo area). Moreover, three sequences now available from high rainfall areas in northern Brazil dating to the past 10 000 years and more record no burning, cultivar presence, or tree felling at all. The Central American sequences contain evidence for significant to severe forest clearing more often than do existing South American records. When the ecological settings of the sites are compared it can be seen that lake records from Central America that demonstrate the most intensive disturbance (El Venancio, Mexico; Belize, Costa Rica, La Yeguada, Panama) are located in areas where the vegetation is or was highly seasonal tropical forest. In other ecological settings in Central and South America, especially those that supported wet, nonseasonal, evergreen formations, human disturbance is often less severe and even undetectable.

Discussion and Summary There has been a great deal of discussion in professional and public outlets recently about the scale and intensity of indigenous alteration of tropical landscapes before European arrival, especially in Amazonia. Arguments concerning prehistoric landscapes are increasingly being polarized into ‘pristine’ versus ‘cultural parkland’ scenarios and soon it will be politically incorrect to argue that Native Americans

did not profoundly alter their landscapes and even reduce biodiversity in some places (20 years ago the opposite was the case). However, palaeoecological data indicate that the chronologies, severity, and trajectories of human impacts varied considerably. It makes sense that seasonal tropical forests, where soils are most fertile and many staple seed and root crops appear to have been originally domesticated, were probably more significantly affected over more protracted timescales than were forests in nonseasonal regions, where soils were poorer, vegetation did not hold as many nutrients and was much harder to burn effectively, and crop plant evolution largely did not take place. Regions that otherwise supported early agricultural developments through participating in the initial dispersals of domesticated plants, as occurred in Central Pacific Panama, for example, also were likely to have experienced early and significant forest modification. Many anthropologists and archaeologists still do not understand the importance these contrasting ecologies – seasonal versus aseasonal – had for prehistoric cultural developments in the tropical forest. Even today, population densities in the lowland tropics are higher and agriculture is more developed and sustained in areas of former drier forest. The result is that far fewer of these forests remain than semi-evergreen and evergreen formations, contributing to the greater distinction that rain forests enjoy. The geographer Carl Sauer was one of the most erudite scholars who studied early humans in the tropical forest, and his comment that ‘‘the mastery of the forest requires no axe’’ has been shown by palaeoecological data to be particularly prescient. Everywhere a record of agriculture is recorded by way of cultivar presence and forest clearance, charcoal frequencies are also very high. As Sauer also noted, Neotropical trees are thin-barked and therefore poorly insulated and can be easily killed by simple ringing and fire, making the use of stone axes irrelevant during early periods of food production in areas having long and marked dry seasons. In central Panama, for example, stone axes did not become common until shortly after 3000 BP, when a major settlement shift occurred and people had to clear the larger trees and moister environments of the major river valleys for the first time. The recent discovery in the Amazon of large areas of terra preta, black earth containing ceramics and organic cultural debris and probably representing middens formed by dense and permanent human settlements, at numerous places near water courses, together with the excavations of what were large and permanently occupied sites in regions such as the upper Xingu that are replete with defensive structures

1786 PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE LOWLAND NEOTROPICS

and linked by extensive roadways, make it abundantly clear that starting at about 2000 BP, parts of the Amazon Basin near major rivers and tributaries were indeed very well populated in later prehistory. We should take care, however, not to extend these findings to other areas of the Amazon, especially the interfluves (areas located away from major watercourses and tributaries also called the terra firme forests, where soils and overall resource abundance are much poorer), until a lot more data are in hand. We know next to nothing about prehistoric society in the enormous expanses of the interfluves, but already detailed palaeoecological information from large lakes located just 15 to 30 km north of the main Amazon river channel near Santarem indicates that human landscape alteration occurred later and was not as severe as what transpired in extra-Amazonian contexts in South and Central America, and probably along waterways of Amazonian areas just described where large settlements have been documented. Moreover, there still is no evidence for maize or manioc agriculture anywhere in core and eastern Amazonia until after 4000 BP (David Browman and colleagues inaccurately imply that the crops have been documented with phytolith and pollen evidence earlier than that). Similarly, when the author studied phytolith-rich records from terrestrial soils sampled from directly underneath a forest preserve 90 km north of Manaus, Brazil, she could not detect a human influence on the vegetation during the past 7000 years. Future archaeological research should reveal whether areas like these for some reason never supported persistent human occupation. In short, facts on the ground are at variance with the pristine forest vs. cultural parkland dichotomy in the Amazon and elsewhere. The Amazon Basin is precious for natural and social scientists of all stripes because it holds the greatest contiguous expanse of tropical forest and largest store of biodiversity in the Americas, together with a lot of the remaining indigenous cultural and linguistic diversity. Other, long-neglected regions of tropical Central and South America are demonstrating more ancient agricultural practices, earlier nucleated and sedentary villages, and longer and more intensive forest modification when compared with the Amazon. If we are to understand the history of tropical environments and how forest was originally lost to the human hand and can possibly be gained back, we have to also make these areas foci of our future endeavors. See also: Human–Landscape Interactions; Paleoenvir-

onmental Reconstruction, Methods; Phytolith Analysis; Pollen Analysis.

Further Reading Broecker WS and Denton GH (1990) What drives glacial cycles? Scientific American 262: 48–56. Bush MB, Miller MS, DeOliveira PE, and Colinvaux PA (2000) Two histories of environmental change and human disturbance in eastern lowland Amazonia. The Holocene 10: 543–553. Bush MB, Silman M, de Toledo M, Listopad C, Gosling W, Williams C, de Oliveira P, and Krisel C (2007) Holocene fire and human occupation in Amazonia: A spatial perspective. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 362: 209–218. Diamond J (2005) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. London: Penguin Books. Dillehay TD (1997) Monte Verde: A Late Pleistocene Settlement in Chile. Volume 2: The Archaeological Context and Interpretation. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Gruhn R (1994) The Pacific Coast route of initial entry: An overview. In: Bonnichsen R and Steele DG (eds.) Method and Theory for Investigating the Peopling of the Americas, pp. 249–256. Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University. Heckenberger MJ, Kuikuro A, Kuikuro UT, et al. (2003) Amazonia 1492: Pristine forest or cultural parkland? Science 301: 1710– 1714. Jones (1994) Pollen evidence for early settlement and agriculture in Northern Belize. Palynology 18: 205–211. Lehman J, Kern C, Glaser B, and Woods WI (2003) Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin, Properties, Management. Netherlands: Kluwer Acadecmic Publishers. Leyden B (2002) Pollen evidence for climatic variability and cultural disturbance in the Maya lowlands. Ancient Mesoamerica 13: 85–101. Mann A (2006) 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. O’Connell JF and Allen J (1998) When did humans first arrive in greater Australia and why is it important to know? Evolutionary Anthropology 6: 132–146. Pennington RT, Latvin M, Prado DE, Pendry CA, Pell SL, and Butterworth CA (2004) Historical climate change and speciation: Neotropical seasonally dry forest plants show patterns of both Tertiary and Quaternary diversification. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B 359: 515–538. Piperno DR, Bush MB, and Colinvaux PA (1991) Palaeoecological perspectives on human adaptation in central Panama. II. The holocene. Geoarchaeology 6: 227–250. Piperno DR (2001) Phytoliths. In: Smol JP, Birks HJB, and Last WM (eds.) Tracking Environmental Change Using Lake Sediments. Volume 3: Terrestrial, Algal, and Siliceous Indicators, pp. 235–251. Dordrect, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Piperno DR (2006a) Phytoliths: A Comprehensive Guide for Archaeologists and Paleoecologists. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. Piperno DR (2006b) Prehistoric human occupation and impacts on Neotropical forest landscapes. In: Flenley J and Bush MB (eds.) Tropical Rain Forest Responses to Climatic Change, pp. 193–218. West Sussex, United Kingdom: Praxis Publishing Ltd. Piperno DR (2006c) Agricultural impact on vegetation and quaternary vegetational history in Central America. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 93: 274–296. Piperno DR and Pearsall DM (1998) The Origins of Agriculture in the Lowland Neotropics. San Diego: Academic Press. Pope KO, Pohl MEd, Jones JG, et al. (2001) Origin and environmental setting of ancient agriculture in the lowlands of Mesoamerica. Science 292: 1370–1373.

PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION, METHODS 1787 Quadfasel D (2005) The Atlantic heat conveyor slows. Nature 438: 565–566. Sandweiss DH, Richardson JB, III, Reitz EJ, Rollins HB, and Maasch KA (1996) Geoarchaeological evidence from Peru for a 5000 Years B.P. onset of El Nin˜o. Science 273: 1531–1533.

Sauer CO (1958) Man in the ecology of tropical America. Proceedings of the Ninth Pacific Science Congress, Bangkok 20: 104–110. Williams M, Dunkerly D, De Deckker P, Kershaw P, and Chappell J (1998) Quaternary environments, 2nd edn. London: Arnold.

PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION, METHODS Petra Dark, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary glacial Period of cold conditions with major expansion of ice sheets and glaciers. interglacial Period of warm conditions, such as the Holocene. isotopes Elements with the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons in the nucleus, resulting in differences in atomic mass. Unstable isotopes undergo radioactive decay at a fixed rate and may be used for dating, for example, carbon 14. For stable isotopes the differences in mass may result in differences in behavior during environmental processes such as evaporation and precipitation, or during metabolism of an organism, providing a source of information on past conditions. Holocene The period since the end of the last glaciation (i.e., the last 10 000 radiocarbon years, equivalent to the last 11 500 calendar years).

Introduction While much of our evidence for the human past comes from excavation of archaeological sites and examination of the artifacts and biological remains retrieved from them, a considerable amount of information about the environment in which people lived, the natural resources available to them, and the effects people had on their environment, can be obtained from ‘natural’ deposits which formed away from sites of human habitation. The deposits themselves, and the biological remains that they contain, may inform us about past climate, sea level, soils, vegetation, and animal communities, all of which affected human lifestyles.

Where is Nonsite Environmental Evidence Found and What Can It Tell Us? Many different types of deposit may be used for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, on a range of temporal and spatial scales.

Ice Sheets and Glaciers

Long-term (multiple glacial–interglacial cycles) and large-scale (up to hemispheric) climate change may be reconstructed from ice cores, for example, from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The ice forms annual layers due to variations in its texture and color at different times of year, so the ice cores are intrinsically datable at high resolution. A range of climate proxies may be studied, including presence of dust particles, and oxygen isotope ratios (18O/16O). The layers of ice may also preserve a record of major volcanic eruptions, such as Vesuvius in Italy (AD 79) and Tambora in Indonesia (AD 1815), because acidic gases produced during the eruption can become incorporated into the ice and detected chemically or by changes in electrical conductivity of the ice. On a more regional scale, glaciers may be used for reconstruction of past climate by study of variations in the size of the glacier through time. Glaciers increase in size/advance with increased precipitation and cooler conditions, and reduce in size/retreat when there is more precipitation and warmer conditions. Marine and Estuarine Sediments

Annually resolved long-term climate records may also be obtained from deep ocean sediments, where changes in sediment texture or composition may reflect deposition at different times of year. Climate can be reconstructed on the basis of sediment chemistry (especially stable isotopes) or the presence of biological indicators such as foraminifera (single-celled organisms with a calcareous shell), ostracods (small aquatic crustaceans), and diatoms (single-celled algae). Such deposits may also provide information on past sea level, which in turn affected the form of past coastlines. Former sea level and coastlines can also be reconstructed on the basis of the types of sediment formed at the interface between land and sea. Coastal areas may preserve long sequences of alternating layers of organic peat, formed during periods of marine regression when sea level was relatively low, and inorganic

1788 PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION, METHODS

silts, formed as sea level rose during periods of marine transgression. The peat layers in these sequences can be radiocarbon dated to provide a chronology of sealevel change over long timescales. Speleothems

Speleothems are mineral deposits such as stalactites and flowstones, found in caves, which gradually form over many millenniums. The chemical composition of the thin layers of calcite deposited is related to climate outside the cave, and can be analyzed using methods such as stable isotope analysis. The speleothems may contain annual layering, or can be dated using uranium series dating. Lake Sediments and Peat Deposits

Lake sediments and peat deposits are very rich sources of information about past environments, especially for the Holocene, because the permanently waterlogged conditions preserve a wide variety of organic remains rarely found elsewhere. These range from entire archaeological sites, to remains of former forests submerged by rising lake levels or engulfed by peat in response to a wetter climate, to microscopic plant and animal remains such as pollen grains and insects. Such remains provide information not only about conditions immediately in the lake or on the mire surface, but also about the surrounding environment. Like marine sediments, lake sediments may contain annual layers (sometimes known as ‘varves’) allowing high-resolution reconstruction of climate change, again often involving analysis of sediment chemistry or the remains of organisms responsive to temperature, such as chironomids (midges). The quality of the water, in terms of its acidity/alkalinity, or nutrient status, may be reconstructed from the remains of diatoms, which are especially useful for showing whether lakes have been affected by environmental pollution such as ‘acid rain’ or run-off of nutrients from surrounding farmland (which may lead to the process of eutrophication, in which the lake becomes very nutrient-rich, potentially causing loss of biodiversity). Lakes also act as ‘sinks’ for eroded soil, enabling reconstruction of long-term patterns of soil erosion, which may be linked to land-use in the catchment. The quantity and origin of such eroded soil may be determined by chemical or mineral magnetic analysis. Where annual layering is absent, the period of deposition of lake sediments is usually determined by radiocarbon dating if the deposits contain sufficient organic material. Radiocarbon dating is also usually required for peat deposits. Peat not only contains a wide range of

biological remains, but can itself yield information on past climate from changes in the degree of peat humification (the degree of decomposition of the peat) over time. Peat that is highly humified (strongly decomposed) would have formed under relatively warm and/or dry conditions, while peat that is poorly humified (well preserved) formed under relatively cool and/ or wet conditions. For northwest Europe such changes were used in the early twentieth century to establish the broad pattern of climate change during the Holocene, and recent refinements in the methodology and associated dating techniques are showing it to be a powerful tool for reconstruction of climate change on a regional to continental scale. In addition to the state of preservation of the peat, the types of plant remains it contains provide information on conditions on the mire surface at the time of deposition. Furthermore, recent research has combined analysis of plant remains with the study of microscopic organisms known as testate amebas. Different species respond in characteristic ways to variations in wetness of the peat surface, and their distinctive shells (or ‘tests’) are preserved in the peat. Soils

The nature of the soil can provide much information about past land use, even away from archaeological sites. By studying the characteristics of the soil profile (the different layers in the soil), it is possible to gain information on whether an area was formerly under woodland, whether it may have been plowed, and the extent to which it has suffered from erosion. Microscopic study of the soil structure and composition (soil micromorphology) may assist in interpretation by allowing identification of soil components, leading to greater understanding of soil origins and formation processes. Chemical analysis may also provide clues to former agricultural practices, such as application of manure or grazing by domestic animals, which may be detected by phosphate analysis (see Soils and Archaeology). Both human activity and natural factors, such as climate change, may cause soil movement away from its point of origin and deposition elsewhere. In hilly areas soil may move down-slope and become deposited in valley bottoms, where it is termed colluvium. Colluvium has often formed as a result of soil destabilization when previously wooded sites are cleared and used for arable agriculture. Colluvium in areas of chalky and limestone soils may be rich in mollusk shells, which can be used to reconstruct the environment in which the deposit formed. Soil that erodes into streams and rivers may later be deposited as alluvium, either along river courses or at

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the mouth of the river where it meets the sea. Alluvial soils are often favored for agriculture, as they tend to be mineral rich and moisture retentive. However, alluvium deposition sometimes caused problems for past societies, such as clogging the ancient harbor at Ephesus in Turkey, making it inaccessible from the sea.

Biological Indicators of Past Environments As noted above, plant and animal remains are key indicators of past environments, and may range in size from whole trees to microscopic organisms such as diatoms. Tree remains can be particularly useful where they are of species suitable for tree-ring dating or dendrochronology (e.g., oak or pine). Tree rings can also yield information on past climate change, which may result in variations in ring width and changes in stable isotope ratios of the wood. Periods of very narrow tree rings have also been linked to the short-term effects of major volcanic eruptions on climate, potentially involving a drop in temperature of a few tenths of a degree for up to a decade. The most useful and widely employed biological remains for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction are those groups which occur abundantly in a range of contexts, can be identified to species level, and have a narrow ecological range. Assemblages of the remains of such organisms can be used to reconstruct past environments on the basis of knowledge of their ecological requirements, applying the principle of uniformitarianism (‘the present is the key to the past’). Thus, if a species requiring a particular set of conditions today is found in a Neolithic context, we might assume that similar conditions existed in the Neolithic period in that area. In practice such an approach is best applied where many different species are present, as a single species today may not occupy all possible niches in which it might be able to survive. The type of context is key in determining which plant and animal remains are available for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. The most widely used biological method is analysis of pollen grains and spores (‘palynology’), which are commonly preserved in huge numbers in waterlogged environments, allowing changes in vegetation to be traced over thousands of years. Not all species of flowering plant produce distinctive pollen, but there are several key indicators of human activity that allow the effects of people on the environment to be reconstructed. In naturally wooded landscapes human activity involving woodland clearance may be detected by a decline in tree pollen and increase in that of sun-loving herbs, while agriculture may be evident

from remains of crop plants or plants that benefit from grazing, for example, ribwort plantain (Plantago lanceolata) in northwest Europe (see Pollen Analysis). Pollen analysis is often accompanied by analysis of other biological remains to assist in interpretation, including larger (macroscopic) plant remains such as seeds. These have the advantage that they are usually more closely identifiable than pollen grains, but they are rarely as abundant. Microscopic charcoal particles are also commonly used to complement the pollen record. Such particles may originate from fires of natural or human origin, but in parts of the world where natural fires are rare they may help in identification of the role of human activity in environmental change. An example of an area where several types of biological remains have been used to reconstruct past environments is the Vale of Pickering in northeast England. The well-known early Mesolithic site of Star Carr lay on the edge of a large lake that gradually filled with sediment during the Late Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods. Analysis of plant and animal remains from the archaeological site showed the range of animal species hunted by the occupants, the nature of the local environment over the several decades of its occupation, and the use of fire for burning local reedswamp. This was complemented by the longer-term and more regional picture of environmental change provided by analysis of the deep sediments from the center of the lake. Here analysis of sediment composition, pollen, charcoal particles, macroscopic plant remains, mollusks, and ostracods, combined with radiocarbon dating, showed how the environment was affected by climate change and use of fire by human groups both at the Star Carr site, and elsewhere in the landscape, throughout the period from c. 13 000 to 6500 BP. See also: Human–Landscape Interactions; Insect Anal-

ysis; Invertebrate Analysis; Macroremains Analysis; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction in the Lowland Neotropics; Phytolith Analysis; Pollen Analysis; Soils and Archaeology; Vertebrate Analysis.

Further Reading Bell M and Walker MJC (2005) Late Quaternary Environmental Change: Physical and Human Perspectives, 2nd edn. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. Berglund BE (ed.) (1986) Handbook of Holocene Palaeoecology and Palaeohydrology. Chichester/New York: Wiley. Birks HJB and Birks HH (1980) Quaternary Palaeoecology. London: Edward Arnold. Brothwell DR and Pollard AM (eds.) (2001) Handbook of Archaeological Sciences. Chichester: Wiley.

1790 PALEOETHNOBOTANY Butzer KW (1982) Archaeology as Human Ecology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Charman DJ (2002) Peatlands and Environmental Change. Chichester: Wiley. Goldberg P and Macphail RI (2006) Practical and Theoretical Geoarchaeology. Malden, MA, USA/Oxford, UK/Victoria, Australia: Blackwell Publishing. Last WM and Smol JP (eds.) (2001) Tracking Environmental Change Using Lake Sediments. Vol. 2: Physical and Geochemical Methods. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Lowe JJ and Walker MJC (1997) Reconstructing Quaternary Environments, 2nd edn. Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman Limited. Mackay A, Battarbee R, Birks J, and Oldfield F (eds.) (2005) Global Change in the Holocene. London: Arnold.

Roberts N (1998) The Holocene: An Environmental History, 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell. Shane LCK and Cushing EJ (eds.) (1991) Quaternary Landscapes. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Smol JP, Birks HJB, and Last WM (eds.) (2001) Tracking Environmental Change Using Lake Sediments, Vol. 3: Terrestrial, Algal and Siliceous Indicators. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Smol JP, Birks HJB, and Last WM (eds.) (2001) Tracking Environmental Change Using Lake Sediments, Vol. 4: Zoological Indicators. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Williams M, Dunkerley D, DeDeckker P, et al. (1998) Quaternary Environments, 2nd edn. London: Arnold.

PALEOETHNOBOTANY Christine A Hastorf, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA Steven Archer, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, VA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary stratigraphy The science of rock strata, their relative and absolute ages, and the relationships between strata. water flotation The archaeological method of flotation or water separation involves the use of water (sometimes impregnated with chemicals) to recover tiny artifacts such as seeds, charcoal, nut shell fragments, microdebitage, and bone fragments from soil or feature fill deposits.

‘Palaeoethnobotany’ is the study of human relationships with plants in the past, generally as an adjunct or subdiscipline within archaeology. Although the terms ‘archaeobotany’ and ‘palaeoethnobotany’ have slightly different origins, primarily with respect to initial research aims, today palaeoethnobotany and archaeobotany are often seen as interchangeable terms. Palaeobotany is considered a different subdiscipline, studying plants from earlier times not linked to human impact, as in the Jurassic or Cretaceous times. Although earlier archaeologists had incorporated fortuitous discoveries of plant materials into their interpretation of the past, beginning as far back as the late nineteenth century, modern palaeoethnobotany is a product of the late 1960s processual archaeology, which, building on the work of archaeologists such as Julian Steward, emphasized the central role of biology and the environment in the interpretation of the human past (see Processual Archaeology). The

processual era of archaeology saw the advent of many of the most basic tools of palaeoethnobotanists, from sampling design through the now-standard technique of water flotation for recovery of charred plant and other tiny materials. While contemporary palaeoethnobotanists often engage with so-called ‘processual’ issues of diet, environment, and ecology, the research agenda has broadened to include many other themes, such as foodways, gender, interpersonal power issues, identity, trade and exchange, political economy, and all the other topics archaeologists generally engage with through analysis of material culture. After all, for most of human history, the majority of ‘material culture’ was constructed from plants, the most diverse and dynamic group of raw materials available. Plants, however, preserve differently in the ground than more durable objects of bone, stone, and ceramic, and foresight as well as specific tools and processes are necessary to reveal them. While basic sampling and recovery for plant macroremains has become commonplace (see Macroremains Analysis), research has continued to yield new categories and contexts for archaeological plant remains. Macroremains such as formerly indistinguishable lumps of tissue are now identifiable due to extensive botanical comparative work using scanning electron microscopy (SEM); new categories of microremains, such as starch grains (see Starch Grain Analysis), offer exciting new potentials to interpret traditional ‘blind spots’ in archaeobotanical data; microstratigraphy has permitted the observation of plant material in situ, and various isotopic, spectroscopic, chromatographic, chemical, and molecular techniques record the presence of plants no longer visually recognizable in residues, or as traces in

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human or animal skeletal material (see Chemical Analysis Techniques; Organic Residue Analysis). Because plant remains can be either difficult to see or completely invisible to the naked eye, specialized sampling and recovery techniques are employed during excavation. Dependent upon the research design, deposits can have bulk soil samples removed from the site and processed by specialized recovery techniques; such samples may be many liters in volume in the case of flotation samples, or a few scant milliliters or grams for pollen, phytolith, and other microscopic material. Generally archaeobotanical analysis succeeds when a systematic, ‘blanket’ sampling strategy of most or all contexts is employed, enriching interpretation when deposits without obvious quantities of plant remains can be contrasted with material that looks dark or ‘organic-rich’ during excavation. Aside from fortuitous discoveries of preserved material, macrobotanical plant remains (those visible to the naked eye, but identified using microscopy) are generally recovered from archaeological sites via water flotation, less rarely via nested sieving. Various machine designs have been developed, ranging from simple, nonmechanized setups to elaborate machinedriven froth and water-recycling systems. All water flotation machines share the basic essential principle of using water to separate items with a lower effective specific gravity (charred plant remains, the ‘light fraction or residue’) from the nonbuoyant material or ‘heavy fraction or residue’. Separation of the material into size classes may occur at the flotation stage, or later in the laboratory. In extremely arid sites, such as dry caves (where noncharred material may also survive), botanical remains may be recovered simply with fine sieving. In waterlogged sites, chemical flotation, wherein the specific gravity of the liquid used is increased, may be necessary to properly separate the plant component from the other materials in the deposit matrix. Seeds (including seed-like structures such as nuts, endocarps, or caryopses) and carbonized wood are the most common materials found in flotation samples, but other botanical material, including ‘parenchyma’ (root, tuber, or fruit storage tissue), stems, leaves, inflorescence ‘chaff’, fungal structures, fruit rinds, or attachment structures may also be preserved. Laboratory identification of macrobotanical material is generally performed by trained analysts who work with identification keys and comparative reference material. The charring process distorts some aspects of seed, wood, and parenchymous tissue anatomy, but much often remains, allowing genus- and often species-level identification, particularly of seeds. The distortion produced by charring may also yield contextual information, as tissues will distort differentially under particular firing conditions (open fire, reduced

atmosphere, or dependent on the moisture content of the tissue when it was exposed to fire). Most routine work is conducted using stereoscopic binocular dissecting microscopes, although the increased availability of SEM has permitted greater identification of amorphous tissues and more precise examination of morphological features, such as seed testa thickness and other indicators of domestication or other taxonomic significance. A macrobotanial study of a long-term domestication process of the pseudo-cereal Chenopodium quinoa is illustrated from the southcentral highlands of Bolivia (Figure 1). After first identifying grains from flotation samples from Chiripa, Bolivia, Bruno then completed an SEM study of the testa thicknesses of these seeds. In that study, she found that testa thickness varied from the thick wild seeds to the thin domesticated one from the beginning of agriculture up to today, although the domesticates did increase through time. Quantification of plant remains is less codified in comparison with standard zooarchaeological bone quantifications (such as minimum number of individuals (MNI), number of identified specimens (NISP), useable meat, or biomass calculations), in part because the materials recovered are generally more fragmentary, diverse, and represent not only food taxa, but also commensal and weedy taxa, fuels such as wood or dung, tools, architectural debris, and many other nondietary components. Basic density calculations, normalizing plant part counts, or weights to volume of soil are considered standard, as are percentage presence, diversity, and richness measures of flotation samples. Other ratios or analytic transformations are dependent on the research questions of the investigation. For dietary or other food-related interpretation, comparisons of edible portions to processing waste or fuel (such as maize kernels to cobs, grain to chaff, or nutshell to wood) have been used. Attempts to estimate proportional caloric dietary contributions from macrobotanical remains are fraught with difficulty, although some attempts have been made to statistically rank data from flotation samples in an attempt to understand dietary patterns. Applying more multivariate covariance analyses, especially by usage or environmental zone is increasingly opening up the data. Much work, particularly in cultural resource management contexts (see Cultural Resource Management), continues to be published simply as basic appendixes of identified material, although more research is reaching the general archaeological literature, especially with the increasing interest in foodways. Data presentation ranges from simple presence or absence to elaborate graphs and three-dimensional relationships. The most effective macrobotanical results come from research

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Figure 1 Scanning electron micrographs of experimentally charred modern Chenopodium, showing intact testa and pericarp morphology: a, C. quinoa: the thin testa is intact, and a patch of the pericarp remains in the center; b, C. quinoa var melanospermum: the thick testa is split, and some pericarp remains; c, C. pallidicaule: the testa is intact, and pericarp remains on the margins; d, C. ambrosioides: the testa is intact, and some of the pericarp remains at the bottom of the image. (Reproduced from Bruno M (2006) A morphological approach to documenting the domestication of Chenopodium in the Andes. In: Zeder M, Bradley D, Emshweler E, and Smith BD (eds.) Documenting Domestication, New Genetic and Archaeological Paradigms, pp. 32–45. Berkeley: University of California Press, with permission.)

that thoroughly collected the plant matter, systematically identified the material, and kept the statistical manipulation to a minimum, in line with the intensity of collection. A clear illustration of this is in Johannessen’s research where she demonstrates the long domestication and propagation of indigenous local seeds throughout the Midwestern US, long before maize entered the region, illustrated in Figure 2. Beginning in the late 1970s, a suite of new so-called ‘microremains’ began to emerge more prominently as part of the archaeobotanical toolkit. Microremains are generally described as plant remains too small to be seen without microscopy, and are usually chemically extracted from soils and sediments. Palynology (see Pollen Analysis) has had a long history of indirect application for archaeologists, tracking ecological

and climate change over long periods of time through off-site coring studies, yet renewed attention was paid to the potential of on-site pollen for archaeological interpretation. Phytoliths, plant opal silica particles, were first described as a potential archaeological tool by Rovner in 1971, and the first major interpretive study was by Pearsall in 1979 where she tracked the entry of maize into Ecuador. Archaeological palynology rests on the interpretation of pollen, the male gametophyte of flowering plants, as well as spores from nonflowering plants and fungi, which have a similar chemical structure. Palynology as a palaeoecological reconstructive technique has been well known since the late nineteenth century, using core samples from highly stratified natural deposits such as varves and other lake sediments. Taxonomic identification of pollen is quite

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secure, often possible to genus or other subfamily levels, although wind-pollinated (anemophilous) species will tend to be overrepresented simply because they produce many more times the amount of pollen than animal- or insect-pollinated species. This discrepancy in production may be valuable to archaeologists, as unusual amounts of nonanemophilous pollen grains may indicate deliberate use of plant taxa. Its success as an on-site tool in archaeological sediments is highly variable; because pollen is omnipresent in

the air, pollen samples are more susceptible to contamination than macrobotanical or phytolith samples. Moreover, the conditions necessary for pollen preservation and the amount of contamination via translocation through soil profiles on open-air sites is the subject of some concern and unresolved questions. Pollen is chemically extracted from soils and sediments, generally using very small initial volumes of matrix, on the order of a few cubic centimeters. There is some debate over whether the procedures perfected

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for lake sediments and core samples should be used unmodified on samples from archaeological contexts. Generally, though, strong reagents such as hydrofluoric acid are used to dissolve the mineral fraction, leaving only the organic material, including the polymer sporopollenin, which comprises the exine, or outer structure of fossil pollen grains. Additional organic material such as charcoal particles or cellulose may also be preserved in the pollen extraction procedure; these may provide supplementary contextual information to the analyst. Pollen is identified using a combination of published keys, atlases, and comparative collections; pollen morphology and taxonomy is well described and understood due to its long history of application. Pollen is generally quantified by a standardized count of several hundred identifiable pollen grains. Usually a precise amount of an exotic ‘tracer’ pollen grain or spore is also added to the pollen sample during the extraction procedure, which provides a way to quantify pollen abundance in a sample. Counts of the exotic type are tallied along with the original grains present in the sample. The ratio of archaeological pollen grains to tracer grains counted during the analysis provides an estimation of the density of pollen preserved in the original sample. Traditionally, pollen frequency diagrams have been the primary means of presenting and interpreting pollen data; arranged stratigraphically, these charts present the fluctuating relative levels of pollen types through time. These depictions represent a sequence through time. Phytoliths are rapidly becoming an interpretive boon to archaeological interpretation as they become better understood in terms of formation process, recovery, and interpretive capacity (see Phytolith Analysis). Phytoliths are plant cells or intercellular voids in plant tissue that have accumulated silica from groundwater and solidified. They retain distinct shapes and are taxonomically identifiable to varying levels of specificity. Phytoliths are generally pursued on sites where macrobotanical recovery is sparse, because silica is much less susceptible to destruction than fragile charred plant tissue. Nonetheless, like pollen, they are a complementary rather than substitute data set. Phytolith production is primarily genetically controlled, and many plant families produce either no phytoliths at all, or amorphous or redundant phytolith types that are not taxonomically distinct. Phytolith production will also vary according to various edaphic, environmental, and climatic conditions, where increased evapotranspiration rates may increase silica deposition in tissues. In general, monocotyledonous species, particularly the grasses (Poaceae family), tend to be heavy silica accumulators

and are overrepresented in comparison to dicotyledonous species in phytolith assemblages. Phytoliths can be recovered from both artifacts such as stone tools and pottery as well as bulk soil samples. Extraction laboratory processes are variable by necessity, as some soils react poorly with individual chemicals used in processing. Generally, though, removal from soil consists of physical or chemical separation of phytoliths from the surrounding soil matrix by some combination of disaggregation, removal of organic materials through combustion or acid digestion, and usually a chemical flotation separating the phytoliths from mineral components of the sediment sample. Phytoliths are generally quantified using transmitted light microscopy at magnifications of 100–1000. Phytoliths fall in the range of 5–500 mm (0.005–0.05 mm), and their translucent, three-dimensional structure requires viewing in multiple orientations for secure identification. SEM is also a productive tool in comparative phytolith studies, but cumbersome for general counting purposes. The analytical classification of phytoliths has been hampered until recently by the lack of a standardized descriptive terminology. In 2005, the first International Code of Phytolith Nomenclature (ICPN) was published, providing a common language for description of phytolith forms, permitting easier comparison between regions and analysts. Some identification keys and regional publications exist, and specific taxa such as domesticates are well described. However, most analysts must develop a regional comparative collection for their study area. Several researchers have made image and other descriptive databases of comparative collections available online. Phytolith quantification procedures were largely borrowed from palynological techniques. Standardized counts (i.e., counting a target number of known forms) are the most common quantification, although other methods may be employed. Because phytoliths do not have the same type of specific taxonomic affiliation of pollen, multivariate statistical techniques such as principal components, factor analysis, or correspondence analysis are often used in lieu of the traditional pollen frequency diagram when interpreting multiple phytolith samples, although such diagrams may be useful when phytoliths are recovered from soil cores or other types of column samples. Phytoliths have also been used as material for generating accelerator mass spectroscopy radiocarbon dates, via carbon sometimes occluded in phytoliths. Starch grains have been the subject of much recent research. They are nutrient storage structures that form in all parts of plants, but are particularly numerous and large in edible roots and tubers, the staples of numerous diets and economies.

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Like pollen, they are composed of organic polymers that are durable in many buried environments. Starch grain analysis has great potential to address a traditional ‘blind spot’ in archaeobotancial analysis, namely horticultural root and tuber crops, which preserve poorly as macroremains and are common staples in tropical and subtropical regions where general preservation conditions are also poor. Extraction procedures and taxonomies are at the earliest stages of development, although research is progressing quickly. Starch grains are classified by size, shape, surface decoration, and the shape of the ‘extinction cross’ produced by the crystalline structure of the grains when viewed in cross-polarized light. However, it is difficult to interpret starch grains recovered from generalized contexts such as soil samples, as too little is known about life-cycle production across a range of plant types. Starch grain analysis has proved most fruitful in specific contexts such as residue studies of food preparation artifacts, where a limited number of possible starchy plants may be distinguished from one another. Numerous other high-powered techniques in archaeology are shedding light on archaeobotanical issues such as stable isotopes, organic residues, and lipid analysis, providing further evidence of plant use in the past by humans. These techniques used together increase our potential to visualize past use of plants.

See also: Archaeology Laboratory, Overview; Blood Residue Analysis; Bone Tool Analysis; Cultural Resource Management; DNA: Ancient; Ecofacts, Overview; Insect Analysis; Interdisciplinary Research; Invertebrate Analysis; Macroremains Analysis; Organic Residue Analysis; Phytolith Analysis; Pollen Analysis; Preservation, Modes of; Starch Grain Analysis; Taphonomy; Vertebrate Analysis.

Further Reading Bruno M (2006) A morphological approach to documenting the domestication of Chenopodium in the Andes. In: Zeder M, Bradley D, Emshweler E, and Smith BD (eds.) Documenting Domestication, New Genetic and Archaeological Paradigms, pp. 32–45. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ford RI (1994) The Nature and Status of Ethnobotany, 2nd edn. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Hastorf CA and Popper VS (1988) Current Paleoethnobotany. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hather JG (ed.) (1994) Tropical Archaeobotany: Applications and New Developments. London: Routledge. Miller N and Gleason KL (eds.) (1994) The Archaeology of Garden and Field. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Pearsall D (2000) Paleoeothnobotany, A Handbook of Procedures, 2nd edn. New York: Academic Press. Piperno D (1988) Phytolith Analysis: An Archaeological and Geological Perspective. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Renfrew JM (1973) Palaeoethnobotany. London: Metheun & Co.

PALEOPATHOLOGY Christopher J Knu¨sel with Alan R Ogden, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary acute disease A disease or condition, the onset of which is sudden, and that can lead rapidly to death, oftentimes before the bone has occasion to react. chronic disease A disease or condition that is slowly acting over a considerable period of time. These are the types that most often affect the skeleton. disease A lack of well-being (e.g., an infectious disease such as smallpox, alcoholism). disorder An abnormal functioning of part of an organism (e.g., a chromosomal disorder, such as Klinefelter’s syndrome, an XXY male). dysplasia (dysplastic, adj.) The malformation of bone. enthesis A tendinous or ligamentous attachment that is a dynamic entity, having its own blood and nerve supply. There are

two types based on their structure and location: fibrous, those that attach muscles or ligaments to the metaphyses or diaphyses of bones in adults and to the periosteum in subadults, and fibrocartilaginous, that are found at apophyses and epiphyses of the long and short bones, and that occur between joints of the vertebral column. These attach to the periosteum that surrounds bone via compact fibrous connective tissue. enthesophyte An ossified projection of bone deriving from a tendon or ligament that relates to the increased number of capillaries and consequent change in blood flow that stimulates osteoblasts to lay down a localized deposit of bone that results in an hypertophied insertion site. etiology The cause of disease. granuloma (granulomatous, adj.) Newly formed tissue caused by chronic inflammation and made of granulations, which are small masses of formative cells containing loops of newly formed blood vessels that emerge over any lesion as the first step in the healing process. Granulomata or granulomas occur in treponemal disease, tuberculosis, and in dental disease, among others, that are characterized by chronic inflammation. hyperplasia (hyperplastic, adj.) An abnormal increase in the number of cells in a tissue.

1796 PALEOPATHOLOGY hypoplasia (hypoplastic adj.) An abnormal decrease in the number of cells in a tissue. joints The articulations between bones are divided into three classes: synarthroses or immovable, amphiarthroses or slightly movable, and diarthroses or freely movable joints. The diarthrodial joints are covered by a layer of hyaline cartilage, which is composed of 65–80% water, fibrous protein (collagen), proteoglycans (macromolecules found throughout the body consisting of a protein core and at least one and, more often, tens or hundreds of carbohydrate chains), and chondrocytes (cells that produce cartilage), measures between 1 and 5 mm thick. It covers articular surfaces and has no blood or nervous supply and is not connected to the lymphatic system. The cartilage, then, obtains its nutrients directly from the synovial fluid (a lubricant produced by the synovial membrane, which does have a substantial blood supply and is innervated), which surrounds the joint and is supported by capsular ligaments. kyphosis (kyphotic, adj.) An anteroposterior deviation of the spine and vertebral column. lesion (lesional, adj.) A term used originally to describe an injury (i.e., insult) to a tissue, but now used generally to describe all disease changes (morbid conditions) to organs and tissues. Lesions may have sharp or rounded margins that relate to the duration of the lesion-forming process. Sharp margins or borders indicate an aggressive or recent occurrence, while rounded margins suggest a more chronic or lengthier period since occurrence. Inactive or well-remodeled lesions are healed, while active new bone formation suggests an active inflammation and infection at the time of death. neuropathy A disorder or disease affecting the nervous system. osteophyte (osteophytic, adj.) A projection of ossified bone (spicule), normally used in a general way and especially for describing spondylosis deformans (osteoarthropathies of the vertebral column). pathogen A disease-causing organism. passive hyperemia (also venous hyperemia, emia, variant of h(emia) = blood) Decrease in blood flow resulting from blockage or obstruction in the flow of blood from a body part (which results in bone deposition), the opposite of active hyperemia, which results from the increase in organ blood flow that is associated with increased metabolic activity of an organ or tissue (and which tends to be associated with bone resorption). Exercise or functional hyperemia results from the recruitment of muscles in movement. sclerosis (sclerotic, adj.) A radiological term used to describe increased density of bone, seen as white (increased radiodensity) on a radiograph. prevalence The number of affected individuals out of the total observed, a ratio (used in palaeopathological studies). woven or fiber bone A disorganized, quickly formed, latticelike bone that is similar to that found in infants and is associated with insult to the bone tissue.

Palaeopathology: Definition and Disciplinary Place Literally, palaeopathology refers to the study of suffering in the past. Today, it is best defined as the study of the differential diagnosis of disease and disorder in past populations. It is allied to palaeodemography, the study of the dynamics of population structure of past human groups (age-at-death, longevity, sex-linked mortality, etc.), and palaeoepidemiology,

the study of the occurrence and spread of disease in past communities. These disciplines provide a complement to historical and clinical understandings of disease and disorder for periods and peoples without written records and for individuals and populations that these sources do not document. In more recent historical periods, palaeopathological studies act as a complement to historical epidemiological studies of disease and disorder, especially of those groups or peoples that are less likely to be recorded in historical documents or in instances when diagnostic criteria for disease, did not exist or were not fully appreciated. Individuals or selected specimens of diseased individuals with known case histories are especially useful in establishing diagnostic criteria, especially for individuals and populations prior to the advent of modern antibiotics. Equally, palaeopathological study of diseased remains can help to understand modern disease manifestations (see discussion on leprosy and Paget’s disease). When placed in their archaeological context, palaeopathological studies also have the potential to highlight the social, economic, and cultural consequences for past populations and individuals.

Bone and Disease Only a proportion of diseases affects bone, often less than 5%, so the diseases that one studies in bones are only a fraction of those that affect the human body. When diseases do affect bone, they often do so in their latter stages when disease becomes chronic. Acute conditions, on the other hand, often cause death before the disease affects bone; these diseases cannot be studied by way of lesions in human remains, except in instances of unusual preservation of soft tissue and by palaeodemographic analysis. Skewed palaeodemographic profiles toward a high frequency of juveniles and young adults may reveal the passage of a contagion, even in the absence of skeletal lesions (Figure 1). Bone lesions associated with disease result from metabolic insult to bone remodeling. Healthy, normal bone possesses a fine balance between modeling (or growth) and remodeling (cellular turnover or development) that is mediated by osteoclasts, specialized bone cells that resorb (i.e., remove) bone, and osteoblasts, those cells that are responsible for laying down new bone. Because this balance – between removing old or damaged bone and replacing it with new bone – is disturbed by disease pathogens, bone response to disease tends to be very similar for a wide range of conditions. Inflammation of the periosteum, the neural and vascular supplying membrane around bone, is a common response to infection. Under conditions of

PALEOPATHOLOGY 1797 Comparison of the Royal Mint and Beckett Street AD 1849 mortality profiles Royal Mint Beckett Street

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Age range

Figure 1 Plague, as identified at the Royal Mint Site, London, UK (blue), strikes indiscriminately, affecting young adults disproportionately, more often those living in urban centers in the past, where contagions spread more readily. In contrast, the mortality profile of a cholera cemetery (red) based on archive documents from mid-nineteenth-century Beckett Street, Leeds, UK, demonstrates that this water-borne infectious disease disproportionately affects the very young and the very old. Both are acute diseases that leave no bone lesions. From Margerison, BJ (1997) A Comparison of the Palaeodemography of Catastrophic and Attritional Cemeteries. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Bradford.

and recording of lesion type and distribution is fundamental to publication. Case studies – publications based on a single or small group of individuals – are still of value, especially for rare or very well-preserved examples. In the last 30 years or so, researchers have adopted a population approach in order to compare human groups through time and across geographic space. This interest has been given increased attention through genotyping of disease pathogens permitted by modern genetic studies – mainly of infectious diseases such as plague (Yersinia pestis), human and bovine tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis and M. bovis, respectively), and leprosy (M. leprae). These studies permit researchers to identify mutations and to draw phylogenetic trees (ancestor–descendant relationships) based on the genetic endowment of modern pathogens, especially among the Mycobacteria, which preserve extremely well in archaeological human remains. Information derived from archaeological remains is useful in genetic studies of modern disease pathogens in order to corroborate suspected mutation events and their timing in the past.

The Osteological Paradox active hyperemia (decreased arterial blood flow with high oxygen tension), bone is resorbed, while passive hyperemia (increased venous blood flow under moderate oxygen tension) produces bone formation. Thus, some diseases result in bone loss, others in increased bone deposition, and still others demonstrate a mixed response of bone deposition and bone resorption. Although bone response is not specific to particular disease pathogens, the patterning of lesions in the skeleton often is. Not only the type of bone response but also the patterning of lesions is thus fundamentally important to differentiating among diseases.

Historical Perspective Early palaeopathological studies tended to focus solely on the diagnosis of cases of particular conditions as a means to extend the natural histories of them – to establish their temporal and geographic origins and spread. Often these diagnoses were made based on clinical knowledge (often by medically qualified individuals) but without a thorough description of the lesions or their full patterning in the skeleton. These diagnoses, then, tended to rest on the authority of the researcher. Today, especially given the varied backgrounds and experience of those undertaking skeletal analysis, a more descriptive approach is recommended, and accurate description

Since perhaps the Medieval period, there has been the notion that death is the great leveller – all are equal in death. This is decidedly not the case. Skeletal analysis reveals that the inequalities of life leave their traces in the human skeleton, but because disease that affects the skeleton is in its chronic form, the epidemiological interpretation of these lesions is not as straightforward as equating lesions with ill health and imminent death. Individuals lacking lesions succumbed to illness due to low immune resistance, before the disease could elicit bone reactions. Although lacking lesions, these individuals were, in fact, less healthy. Those displaying inactive or healed lesions, then, were the ones whose resistance to disease was high (and whose frailty was low) and, as a consequence, survived the onset of disease. This perspective has been termed the ‘osteological paradox’, one that has had a major impact on the way that disease and health are interpreted from the study of human remains. The full significance of the paradox, however, cannot be fully exploited without considering that the morbid conditions of the past had deleterious social and personal consequences for those afflicted. One must also consider individual access to remedial and palliative care and cures that have been available since deep antiquity. As in today’s society, access to care is likely the key factor in the past, and this access was heavily conditioned by the social standing of the afflicted individual. Whatever the case, it is clear that one

1798 PALEOPATHOLOGY

cannot simply study the physiology of peoples without due consideration of their cultural, social, economic, and political context. There are two means by which to reconstruct social standing or status from the archaeological record. A method traditionally employed by archaeologists equates the richness of grave goods, funerary architecture, and placement of the grave with respect to others with the social position of the individual during life. An alternative method relies on an osteological approach based on measurement of stature, body proportions (i.e., growth and development), and other biological indicators, such as nutrition, longevity, and health status that have been linked to social standing in living groups. A biocultural approach employs both of these approaches as complements (see Bioarchaeology; Osteological Methods).

Nonspecific Indicators of Disease and Population Stress Any number of bacteria can produce inflammation due to infection, which normally starts in the soft tissues of the body and, only upon becoming chronic, produce bony reactions. These generalized reactions that lack the appearance and patterning of specific bone disease, as well as those that cannot be determined due to inadequate preservation of the skeleton, are termed ‘nonspecific’ disease. The most commonly occurring type of bone reaction is due to the infiltration of skin bacteria, most commonly by Staphylococcus aureus, into an open wound that causes inflammation and new bone formation (Figure 2). If the bacteria gain entry to the medullary canal, osteomyelitis results with its distinctive sheath of bone formation called an involucrum, its pus-draining sinuses called cloacae (singular cloaca), and a sequestrum, necrotic or dead bone (Figure 3). Due to the skin’s role as a protective barrier, these bacteria do not normally pose a health threat. In individuals who suffer from a compromised immune system, through disease or injury, these bacteria enter the bloodstream and can cause infection some distance from the point of entry. Due to their nondiagnostic pattern, the prevalence of these nonspecific bone reactions is used to indicate that individuals and populations had experienced ‘stress’ that led to infection. Stress may result from a variety of causes, physical as well as mental, that act to reduce the immune response such that an individual is at a heightened risk of ill health. Because these conditions have multiple etiologies, they are often used as a population-level indicator of stress. Stress also influences the development of skeletal structures: lines of arrested growth or Harris’ lines in long bones, enamel hypoplastic defects in teeth

Figure 2 This section of tibia shows striated woven or fiber bone from a Medieval Blackfriars house, Gloucester. Photograph courtesy of Prof. Donald J. Ortner, Smithsonian Institution, from the collections of the Biological Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford.

(Figure 4), subperiosteal infection (new bone formation on the cortical surface of bones indicative of inflammation of the periosteum) (Figure 2), porotic hyperostosis and cribra orbitalia (indicators associated with iron deficiency) (Figure 5), and thinning of cortical bone in long bones (an indicator of malnutrition). These are usually recorded in a presence or absence manner and prevalence rates for a given population calculated on the number of bones observed and affected (to indicate the state of skeletal preservation of the skeletal material). Teeth, being the most highly mineralized body structures, are a unique and, indeed, are sometimes the only source of information relating to past individuals and the societies to which they belonged. Their health is a good indicator of individual and population health. Unlike bone, in life, teeth interact directly with the environment (chewing, wear, and trauma) and, after death, are highly resistant to most taphonomic processes. The well-preserved lesions produced by diseases of teeth and jaws can also tell us much about diet, which is strongly related to culture and economic and social status. Unlike bone, teeth do not undergo remodeling or repair in life, so they retain deposits laid

PALEOPATHOLOGY 1799

Figure 5 The resorptive changes of diploic hyperplasia of cribra orbitalia in the orbits of an individual from Late Anglo-Saxon, Thetford, Norfolk, UK. Note that these are resorptive (i.e., loss of bone) lesions, unlike those in Figure 22. Photograph courtesy of the Calvin Wells Collection, Biological Anthropology Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford.

Figure 3 Osteomyelitis, chronic bone infection, secondary to a fracture of the femur in a male from Medieval Chichester, West Sussex, UK. The bony sheath of reactive new bone, the involucrum, can be seen to envelop the distal end of the bone. A large, pus-draining sinus, a cloaca, can be seen in the popliteal space. A sequestrum can be seen in the cloaca, which, in this case, has been retained through a re-established blood supply and subsequent fusion to the margin of the cloaca. Photograph courtesy of Prof. Donald J. Ortner, Smithsonian Institution, from the collections of the Biological Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford. Figure 6 Lower left mandible of an adult from Medieval Hereford, showing the decayed, dead, and worn roots of a molar that developed a chronic abscess. Note, too, the flat wear of the remaining molar and the tipped and impacted wisdom tooth behind it.

Figure 4 Teeth from an 8-year-old from Medieval Hereford, showing depressed bands of poorly formed (hypoplastic) enamel, revealing that this individual had been very unwell or severely malnourished at 3–4 years of age when these regions of the teeth were developing. Photograph courtesy of Alan R. Ogden from the collections of the Biological Anthropology Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford.

down in layers during childhood and adolescence. Teeth, then, retain permanent indications of diseases linked to diet, such as caries, abscesses, and tooth loss (Figure 6), as well as to stressful episodes, especially in the young when teeth are developing. A group of relative indicators complements these indicators of health, including growth studies of subadults based on dental development and limb length, adult attained stature, sexual dimorphism (less sexually dimorphic populations tend to be less healthy), and asymmetries of bilateral structures due to development instability (i.e., fluctuating asymmetry) in the dentition and skeleton of adults and subadults. In general, males appear to be more sensitive to growth-disrupting stress than females (Figure 7). Life

1800 PALEOPATHOLOGY 54

Long limbs

Long limbs

Low weight

High weight

Relative lower limb length

52

50

48

Sex

46 Short limbs

Short limbs

Low weight

High weight

44 16

18

20

22

24

26

28

30

32

m f

34

Body mass index Figure 7 The relationship between body mass and relative lower limb length among 1351 males (green) and females (red) of populations dating from the Roman to Medieval periods. Individuals of a lower social status would tend toward the lower-left quadrant (short limbed and light weight, indicating growth stunting), and those of a higher social status would tend toward the upper-right quadrant of the graph (long limbs and heavier, indicating better growth circumstances). Note the diffuse scatter of males, who are more susceptible to environmental insult, compared to the females, who are much less scattered. Schweich M (2005) Diachronic Effects of Bio-Cultural Factors on Stature and Body Proportions in British Archaeological Populations. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Bradford.

expectancy from birth also features as a relative source of information on population health, but such studies are hampered by difficulties in precisely aging adults after the attainment of physiological maturity.

Specific Infectious Disease Perhaps the most important finding so far realized from the study of palaeopathological conditions concerns the effect the environment – natural and humanly created – has on human health. Contrary to the perceived notion that people made progress toward civilization because of the benefits of a settled, village or urban, lifestyle, palaeopathological studies have demonstrated that this process exposes people to a host of diseases that are not present in their hunter-gatherer forebears. It is with the origin of agriculture and with the advent of more highly agglomerated populations in villages and urban centers that the first signs of density-dependent diseases – crowd diseases – are found. They spread by airborne infection from exhaled phlegm or sputum, other bodily excreta, or contaminated food or goods and not only include some of the biggest killers in history, such as cholera (Figure 1), influenza, and plague (Figure 1), which leave no macroscopically discernible bone lesions, but also those that do leave osseous manifestations, including, importantly, the mycobacterial diseases, leprosy and tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, a major killer in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, remains a public health concern worldwide today. Tuberculosis is considered a disease of poverty because it thrives in situations of social deprivation. The tuberculous bacterium has many forms, including those that affect humans (M. tuberculosis) and cattle (M. bovis), both of which influence human populations, the former through human-to-human pulmonary transmission and the latter from this form of transmission and also from the ingestion of contaminated milk or meat that produces a gastrointestinal form of the disease. Both forms may affect the skeleton, producing characteristic lesions in the form of vertebral body collapse and kyphosis (Figure 8), new bone deposition on the visceral surface of ribs (Figure 9), and destruction of joints in the body, most often those of the lower limb. The gastrointestinal form of the disease is most often diagnosed from pelvic lesions, of the sacrum (Figure 10) and ossa coxae. Palaeopathological study has had perhaps its greatest impact on elucidating leprosy (or Hansen’s disease), caused by M. leprae, a close relative of tuberculosis. Based on its modern distribution in the tropics and subtropics, where it is associated with poverty, one would not have predicted that the disease was once prevalent in Northern Europe, where its presence has been confirmed by human remains

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Figure 10 Space-occupying lesion of the sacrum in a suspected case of gastrointestinal tuberculosis from Medieval Fishergate, York, UK. Photograph of the author, courtesy of York Archaeological Trust.

Figure 8 Vertebral kyphosis (anterior bending) due to collapse of the vertebral column from the destruction of vertebral bodies by M. tuberculosis from Medieval Wakefield. Photograph courtesy of Jean Brown from the collections of the UK Biological Anthropology Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford.

Figure 11 Sculpture of the parable of Lazarus from the Cistercian Abbaye de Cadouin, Dordogne Valley, France. The leper holds an identifying clapper and shows collapse of the bridge of the nose and a lepromatous nodule on the forehead (visible in the lower middle part of the photograph). Adapted from Manchester K and Knu¨sel CJ (1994) A Medieval sculpture of leprosy in the Cistercian Abbaye de Cadouin. Medical History 38(2): 204–206.

Figure 9 Visceral surface rib lesions from Anglo-Saxon Addingham, West Yorkshire, UK, visible as shiny bands indicative of respiratory infections, including tuberculosis. Photograph courtesy of Jean Brown from the collections of the Biological Anthropology Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford.

recovered in Denmark and Britain in large numbers, as well as elsewhere. Due to its biblical associations, the disease also contributed to a highly representative artistic depiction in the period (Figure 11) that demonstrates detailed familiarity with the facially disfiguring and symmetrical (i.e., affecting both limbs) lower limb infections that are complicated by motor and sensory neuropathy. Palaeopathological studies have clarified the unique characteristics of the disease including the rhinomaxillary syndrome that develops from direct infection with M. leprae (Figure 12), unique circumferential remodeling that leads to destruction of the phalanges (Figure 13), the latter as a consequence of motor and sensory neuropathy that exposes the feet and hands to ulceration and

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were founded in large numbers in the Middle Ages by wealthy benefactors as a sign of Christian charity. Treponemal Disease

Figure 12 The rhinomaxillary syndrome of leprosy with characteristic rounding of the margins of the nasal aperture in a Medieval individual from Chichester, West Sussex, UK. Photograph courtesy of Dr. Alan R. Ogden from the collections of the Biological Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford.

Figure 13 Circumferential remodeling (thinning) of the shafts of the phalanges and joint destruction associated with the neuropathy of leprosy from Medieval Chichester. Photograph courtesy of Prof. Donald J. Ortner, Smithsonian Institution, from the collections of the Biological Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford.

infection. The disappearance of the disease in the Medieval period may not only be attributed to the rise of tuberculosis, which confers immunity from leprosy (but not vice versa as evidenced by tuberculosis claiming the lives of many sufferers of Hansen’s disease today), but may also be as a consequence of medieval segregation of sufferers in leprosara, which

The treponemal diseases consist of four closely related ailments caused by a spirochete (bacterium) of the genus Treponema. Controversy exists as to whether these are manifestations of one disease that changes its expression under differing environmental and social conditions (the unitarian hypothesis), or whether the four types are separate diseases that evolved from a now-lost common ancestor (the nonunitarian hypothesis). The most geographically circumscribed form, found in the American tropics, is pinta, a skin disease, which affects adolescents and young adults and is transmitted by skin-to-skin contact. It has no osseous manifestations. The treponemal diseases, in a similar way to leprosy, expanded their geographic range during the Medieval period, affecting people throughout Europe, despite the fact that they are largely diseases of the tropics and subtropics today. Poor diet, inadequate and crowded living conditions, illicit sexual behavior, and the social and psychological disruptions of warfare may all have compromised or lowered the immunity of individuals to treponemal disease. All forms are recurrent and debilitating. The occurrence and spread of syphilis is bound up with the political turmoil of Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Europe and the ‘Age of Discovery’, when its manifestations took their toll on the warring armies and populations of the Italian city-states and European monarchies. As a consequence, the disease came to be known by a series of ethnic labels (the French pox or Morbus Gallicus, the Spanish plague or Lues Hispanicus). Controversy has since surrounded the origins of the disease, whether it was a disease of the New World brought to Europe by the crews of exploring sailing vessels, or rather it is an older disease that underwent epidemiological change at this time. Syphilis, the venereal form of the disease, became a highly visible public health concern in Europe, as much as a consequence of the hushed atmosphere that surrounds sexual activities and their association with illicit deviancy as due to its debilitating effects. Recent studies demonstrate that a number of named aristocrats, both male and female, suffered from the venereal form, as did those of less lofty social origins. Yaws, a disease of the tropics today, and bejel (also called nonvenereal or endemic syphilis or treponarid), a disease of the arid regions of Southwest Asia and the Balkans, are nonvenereal forms of the disease that affect infants and young children and are transmitted by contact with early and open spirochete-containing lesions. Their physical manifestations are almost

PALEOPATHOLOGY 1803 Table 1 A chart showing the parts of the skeleton most often afflicted in a series of infectious diseases Skeletal element

Disease Leprosy

Neurocranium Viscerocranium Mandible Dentition Clavicle Scapula Humerus Radius Ulna Carpals Metacarpals Manual phalanges Cervical vertebrae Thoracic vertebrae Ribs Sternum Lumbar vertebrae Sacrum Os coxae Femur Tibia Fibula Tarsals Metatarsals Pedal phalanges

Tuberculosis

Bejel

Yaws

xxx

xxx

xxx

xxx

xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx

xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx

xxx xxx

xxx

xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx

xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx

Syphilis xxx

xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx

xxx xxx xxx

xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx

xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx

xxx xxx xxx xxx

Sources: Steinbock, R T (1976) Paleopathological Diagnosis and Interpretation. Springerfield, IL; Thomas, CC, Aufderheide, AC and Rodriquez-Martin C (1998) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Paleopathology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Note that yaws may affect the neurocranium in some cases and may have done so with greater frequency in the past.

identical and are also similar to those produced in venereal syphilis (Table 1). All produce cutaneous and mucosal rashes that, when transmitted to bone (in less than 1–5% of cases), elicit inflammatory periosteal new bone formation and destructive granulomatous lesions called gummas. The nasopalatal region and tibiae (producing characteristic ‘sabershin’ deformities) are more often predilected in yaws and bejel, whereas, neurocranial involvement, referred to as caries sicca, is more severe and more common in venereal syphilis, although it is found in a small percentage of yaws and bejel sufferers. Due to the similarity in bone involvement, it is very hard to distinguish the venereal form from the nonvenereal forms. Venereal syphilis is the only one of the group that produces neurological manifestations (tabes dorsalis), although these do not produce diagnostic bone lesions. Importantly, however, syphilis is also the only one of the treponemal diseases that can be transmitted transplacentally, producing characteristic dental dysplasias in the form of Hutchinson’s incisors and mulberry (i.e., multi-cusped) molars. These dental lesions of congenital syphilis, then, are most sought after by palaeopathologists interested in the origin and spread of the venereal form.

Diseases of Affluence and Increased Longevity Some conditions and diseases are related to overall advantageous socioeconomic status, prolonged longevity, and lifestyle/dietary factors. Both gout and DISH (diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis, hyperostotic or Forestier’s disease) are found in older individuals, normally males. The symmetrical (i.e., occurring in bilateral structures) erosive lesions of gout are caused by the deposition of urate crystals within and around joints, with the feet and frequently the first metatarsophalangeal joint often being affected (Figure 14). Its etiology is incompletely understood, but it appears to be associated with a fatty diet, rich in protein, and high alcohol intake, which in the past involved lead in the distillation process. Imbibed lead accumulated in the kidneys, causing renal failure, and the eventual accumulation of high levels of uric acid led to the formation of urate crystals. There may also be an hereditary component. The etiology of DISH is unknown, although its occurrence in the remains of monastic populations and individuals buried in propitious locations in Medieval churches and churchyards would seem to

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Figure 14 The erosive lesions of gout from a Carmelite friary, Medieval Lincoln, UK. These would have filled with urate crystals during life. Courtesy of the collections of the Biological Anthropology Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford.

suggest a dietary and/or lifestyle link. Overweight and adult onset diabetes mellitus accompanies DISH in some modern sufferers. Its skeletal manifestations are striking in advanced cases, with ossifications of tendinous and ligamentous entheses (producing enthesophytes) and ossification of the anterior longitudinal ligament on the right anterolateral side of the vertebral bodies (Figure 15) as well as at attachments for ligaments and muscles (i.e., extravertebral entheses). The left side of the vertebral column is thought to be spared due to the pulsation of the descending aorta with the passive hyperemia of the inferior vena cava contributing to bone formation on the right. Both gout and DISH are age-related conditions – that is, their occurrence increases with age. Thus, their prevalence, rather than indicating solely population ill health, also relates to increased age-atdeath and a rich diet. These conditions appear to correlate with higher social status, among them cloistered ecclesiastics, aristocrats, and gentry in the past. Osteoarthritis, an age-related degenerative joint condition, is perhaps one of the more perplexing conditions. Long linked to the physical behavior of individuals in the course of their daily activities, this association has been difficult to demonstrate from osteological studies, in part, perhaps, because those individuals who develop the condition from activity at a more youthful age retain the condition into old age when population prevalence rates increase as a whole. The relationship to activity has also been clouded by clinical evidence that some elite athletes, even when remaining highly active in their elderly years, do not have a higher prevalence of the disorder. A higher number of women than men are affected. It seems from recent studies that the predisposing factor

Figure 15 The ‘flowing candle-wax’ fusion of the anterior longitudinal ligament on the right anterolateral aspect of the vertebrae in DISH from Roman Droitwich, Worchestershire, UK. Photograph courtesy of Jean Brown from the collections of the Biological Anthropology Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford.

Figure 16 Eburnation and porosity at the articulation of the patella with the femoral condyle when the lower limb is extended in a Medieval individual from Fishergate, York, UK. Photograph by the author, courtesy of York Archaeological Trust.

may be postural and weight related with consequent abnormal loading of the body’s joints, producing subchondral (i.e., in bone beneath the cartilage) micro-fracture, joint instability, and ossification of surrounding support structures. In the diarthrodial joints of the body, osteoarthritis is diagnosed on the presence of eburnation of parts of the articular surface and porosity that relate to the breakdown of cartilage (Figure 16). Joint space narrowing seen in clinical

PALEOPATHOLOGY 1805

cases is commensurate with joint surface contour change in bone specimens. Some researchers include para-articular (i.e., those that surround a joint) osteophytes as part of their diagnostic criteria, while others see para-articular osteophytosis as a separate condition and thus score it separately. The latter may be a response of soft tissue support structures to joint instability. Degeneration of the vertebral column, because it consists of fibrous joints (these cannot develop eburnation because they lack a synovium), is called ‘spondylosis deformans’.

Congenital Conditions Bone disorders arising from congenital conditions, those present at birth or that develop in the course of growth and development, can also be observed in skeletal remains. These may be due either to trauma during birth or to an underlying genetic predisposition, sometimes with a link to environmental pollutants and maternal health and nutrition. Palaeopathological studies of congenital conditions have tended to concentrate on those producing a developmental absence of an entire anatomical structure or a part thereof, examples being spina bifida occulta, an open vertebral canal, or mid-line defects such as cleft palate, or skeletal dysplasia, such as seen in club-foot deformity (talipes equinovarus) that develops in utero, or muscular torticollis (wryneck deformity) and hip dysplasia from damage to the nerves and/or musculature from traction injuries (i.e., pulling) during a difficult birth (Figure 17). Many congenital conditions are identified based on the changes they bring not only to morphology, but also to shape, size, and proportion. Among the most commonly identified in the archaeological record is achondroplasia or dwarfism, from a mutation of the FGFR3 gene on chromosome 4, which alters the relative proportions of the limbs with respect to the axial skeleton, producing short stature. Down’s syndrome or trisomy 21, linked to non-disjunction of chromosome 21 in the ovum inherited from the mother, has also been identified due to the effect that this disorder has on cranial shape and dimensions. Since many congenital syndromes influence cranial development, a similar approach using craniometrics and larger population samples will increase what is, at present, an under-explored area of enquiry. Since many of these conditions produce mental impairment (e.g., a lack of or reduction in normal function), their identification in the archaeological record permits insight into the social circumstances that contribute not only to their occurrence but also to the survival and perceptions of people with identified mental disability from their burial treatment. Because these types of

Figure 17 The cranial asymmetry and twisting of the cranial base seen in muscular torticollis or wryneck deformity in a Medieval adult female from St. Helen’s-on-the-Walls, York, from the collections of the Yorkshire Museum. The left mastoid process is atrophied, the occipital flattened on the right, with slight bulge on left, and the right parietal is larger than that of the left side. Courtesy of Rebecca Storm, Biological Anthropology Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford, from the collections of the Yorkshire Museum. From: Storm RA (forthcoming) Human Skeletal Asymmetry: A Biometrical Study of Fluctuating Asymmetry to Assess Health and Social Status of English Populations from the 7th to the 19th Centuries. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Bradford.

conditions often affect both appearance and behavior, they are ideal candidates for the application of the biocultural approach that would permit assessment of social reactions to the impaired.

Metabolic and Deficiency Disorders Rickets and scurvy are deficiency diseases that result from inadequate metabolization of vitamins D and C, respectively. Scurvy results from an absence of sufficient vitamin C in the diet; whereas, rickets results from insufficient exposure to sunlight as much as from a dietary deficiency. Indeed, sufficient metabolization of vitamin D can be achieved simply through exposure of the skin to the ultraviolet light in sunlight. Lack of exposure or diminished exposure due to air pollution in industrialized urban centers of the nineteenth century became synonymous with the occurrence of rickets. Vitamin D is responsible for the maintenance of blood calcium and phosphorus levels, which are essential for normal endochondral (i.e., bone that forms from a cartilaginous precursor) bone formation. Without vitamin D, cartilage is not converted to bone mineral (hydroxyapatite). Rapidly growing infants and younger children are most at risk of developing rickets when the forces produced in

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normal posture and movement cause bending in the poorly mineralized bones. Although all bones of the body can be affected, the most common features of the disease are mediolateral bending in the tibiae and fibulae and anterior bowing of the femora. Although scurvy has become associated with long-distance sea voyages of the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, it is also found in industrialized nineteenth-century urban populations subsisting on an impoverished diet lacking in fresh fruit and vegetables or subsisting on only cooked meat (raw meat contains vitamin C, but it is destroyed in the process of cooking). Vitamin C is essential for collagen (the protein in bone responsible for its flexibility) and osteoid (bone matrix laid down by osteoblasts) production, as well as strong blood vessel walls. The major physical manifestation of vitamin C deficiency is hemorrhaging (bleeding). Because entheses are attached to the periosteum in infants and children, simple movements, even of the eye, and chewing causes bleeding which causes porous new bone formation (Figure 18). These formations are especially notable in the temporal fossae of the cranium, through which the temporalis muscles (the major muscles for mastication) pass, as well as in the jaws. Both of these diseases are found sporadically in earlier periods and their occurrence is often used as a population indicator of poor childhood health. Although palaeopathologists encounter a number of other metabolic diseases in the course of population analyses, one of the most enigmatic and relatively commonly encountered is Paget’s disease or osteitis deformans, especially in European populations, which was first and famously described by Sir James Paget, who monitored the progression of the disease in a group of patients at the end of the nineteenth century. Despite its relatively common occurrence and distinctive physical manifestations, its cause remains obscure. Among the suspected etiologies is genetic predisposition, because it occurs in members of the same family, and exposure to paramyxoviruses, such as measles or canine distemper. The disease is progressive, affecting males over the age of 40 most commonly. It is characterized by diffuse porous bone formation with thickened cortical bone predominately of the axial skeleton (Figure 19), although bones of the appendicular skeleton can also be affected. The potential of palaeopathological studies to shed light on modern diseases comes in the form of a group of elderly males buried within a church and chapel associated with the Augustinian monastic house at Runcorn in Cheshire, England. Based on these individuals’ placements within the nave and chapel of the monastic church, locations normally reserved for those of high social

Figure 18 Fiber bone deposition in the orbits of a child due to the haemorrhaging (bleeding) of scurvy. These are bone-depositing lesions, unlike those in cribra orbitalia in Figure 5. Photograph courtesy of Jean Brown from the collections of the Biological Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford.

Figure 19 The thickening of the cranial vault of Paget’s disease in the cranium of NP 21 from Norton Priory, Cheshire. Photograph courtesy of Dr. Alan R. Ogden, Biological Anthropology Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford.

standing (often families) in Medieval society, and the recovery of a coffin adorned with the family crest of the Haltons, an aristocratic family local to the area, these remains suggest that a genetic predisposition may be implicated in the disease etiology. The distribution of the lesions in these individuals demonstrates the variability of bone lesions that is a common feature of bone disease (Figure 20).

PALEOPATHOLOGY 1807

Figure 20 The variable pattern of Paget’s disease in six males buried intramurally at Norton Priory, Cheshire. NP 21 is thought to be Roger, brother of the third Baron Halton. Courtesy of Dr. Alan R. Ogden, Biological Anthropology Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford.

Neoplastic Disease The neoplastic diseases, tumor-forming conditions, carry the suffix ‘-oma’, meaning a swelling or tumor, which is accompanied by a prefix that indicates in what type of tissue or cell type the primary seat of the tumor originally developed. The benign forms are localized and usually not life threatening. The osteoma, a form of benign tumor, is the most frequently encountered form, often on the surface of the cranial vault, where they appear as hard bony swellings. Malignant neoplastic diseases (cancers) grow rapidly and spread from one tissue to another (i.e., they metastasize). They require enormous blood supplies in order to support their increased metabolic requirements. As a consequence, they are associated with rapidly expanding, bone-destroying lesions that elicit no bone-healing response. Neoplastic lesions, in most cases, are distinguished from other bone-destroying conditions by their lack of sclerosis (radiodensity) around their irregular lesion margins (Figure 21). The most common types of cancer are carcinomas that affect epithelial tissue (e.g., linings of organs) and sarcomas that occur in tissues originating in mesenchyme (e.g., connective tissues, including muscles and bone) with the former being more common than the latter. Carcinomas differ from sarcomas in that in the majority of cases, c. 80%, they metastasize from their primary location to others throughout the body via the circulatory or lymphatic systems. Contrary to the grand majority of carcinomas, primary carcinoma of the prostate gland is among the

Figure 21 A radiograph showing the lack of sclerosis around perforating lesions of the cranial vault in neoplastic disease from Anglo-Saxon Eccles, Kent. Radiograph courtesy of Dr. Jo Buckberry from the collections of the Biological Anthropology Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford.

few neoplastic diseases that regularly produce bone formation. In prostatic carcinoma, lesions tend to be found in the pelvic area, but may also be found in bones throughout the body if they metastasize. Primary carcinomas of the lung and breast produce mixed lesions, both resorptive and depositional, often of the rib cage and then throughout the body after metastasis. Bone deposition also often occurs within medullary canals and is thus identified as radiodense (white) areas in radiographs. A major interest of researchers today is whether the prevalence of neoplastic disease is increasing and, if so, is this

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due to increased longevity, older individuals being more likely to develop neoplastic disease, or more predominant environmental carcinogens.

Trauma-Related Lesions Trauma as identified in human remains represents an interaction between the timing of bone breakage and the death of the individual, bone breakage being dependent on the amount of collagen present in the bone when the traumatic episode occurs. Postmortem fractures (or new breaks) are those that occur long after death and relate to excavation and handling of archaeological bone. Antemortem fractures, or those that occur before death, indicate that the individual survived the traumatic episode. A fracture callus, a fibrous bony sheath that develops around the fracture site that is indicative of healing, distinguishes these. Perimortem fractures are those that occur around the time of death. This means that they could relate to violent injuries or from impacts to the bone in the immediate postmortem period when it is still full of collagen but when the individual had already expired (as in rock falls, for example). These are identified by their helical or spiraling fracture outline, as well as by their smooth fracture surfaces. Due to the biomechanics of bone bending, beveling occurs endocortically in long bones and endocranially within cranial bones in cases of perimortem trauma (Figure 22). The identification of such fractures can lead to insights into the manner (although not its cause) of death (e.g., by blunt force trauma) (Figure 23). Disability and the availability and efficacy of treatment can be monitored from the type of fractures sustained and how these have healed. Perimortem fractures, their occurrence and patterning, are the most direct means by which to monitor violence and warfare in the past.

Figure 22 An endocortical bevel in bone. Photograph of the author from the collections of the Biological Anthropology Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford.

Activity-Related and Occupational Conditions Although diseases such as DISH (see above) have been associated with an occupational pathology based on archaeological context, one of the most direct routes to such conditions are those linked to clinical descriptions of not only individuals engaged in strenuous physical exertion, but moreover the movements associated with the condition and the injuries incurred in making them. Among these are spondylolysis (Figure 24), which is associated with

Figure 23 A blunt force depressed cranial injury with radiating fractures, a diagnostic feature of perimortem cranial injuries, extending from the central depression in a Medieval male from the Late Medieval Battle of Towton. The piece of bone attached to the margin of the depression resulted from comminution (crushing) of the fractured area and was found within the cranial vault of this individual. Photograph courtesy of Dr. Shannon Novak from the collections of the Biological Anthropology Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford.

Figure 24 Spondylolysis, a fracture of the neural arch of the fifth lumbar vertebra in a male buried in the lay cemetery of the Gilbertine monastery of St. Andrew, Fishergate, York. Photograph of the author, courtesy of York Archaeological Trust.

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lateral flexion and occurs in gymnasts and cricket fast bowlers today; medial epicondylar avulsion fractures (Figure 25), associated with flexed-elbow throwing motions, as used by baseball pitchers;

Figure 25 A medial epicondylar avulsion fracture with the unattached fragment from Norton Priory, Runcorn, Cheshire. Photograph courtesy of Dr. Alan R. Ogden from the collections of the Biological Anthropology Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford.

shoveller’s fractures from retraction of the scapula against resistance (Figure 26); and osteochondritis dissecans from trauma produced by powerful and repetitive joint movements in youth (Figure 27). Palaeopathological studies of such conditions provide a time death for modern clinical conditions, evidence for sexual division of labor, youthful behaviors, evidence for behaviors unrecorded elsewhere in the archaeological record, and complementary evidence for the use of material culture. In this, as in other conditions reviewed here, palaeopathological analysis is the most direct and often the only source of information about the health and well-being of past populations. See also: Bioarchaeology; Burials: Dietary Sampling

Methods; Excavation and Recording Techniques; DNA: Ancient; Health, Healing, and Disease; Osteological Methods; Paleodemography.

Further Reading

Figure 26 A left lateral view of a shoveller’s fracture of cervical vertebra 7 in a male from Roman Baldock, Hertfordshire, UK. Photograph courtesy of Jean Brown from the collections of the Biological Anthropology Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford.

Figure 27 Osteochondritis dissecans of the knee in a Medieval male from Fishergate, York, UK. Photograph of the author, courtesy of York Archaeological Trust.

Aufderheide AC and Rodriquez-Martin C (1998) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Paleopathology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boylston A and Ogden A (2005) A study of Paget’s disease at Norton Priory, Cheshire, a Medieval religious house. In: Zakrzewski S and Clegg M (eds.) Proceedings of the 6th British Association of Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology (BABAO) Conference pp. 69–76 British Archaeological Reports (International Series) 1383. Oxford: Archaeopress. Dutour O and Palfi G (eds.) (1994) L’origine de la syphilis en Europe, avant ou apre`s 1493? Errance, France: Centre Arche´ologique du Var. Fiorato V, Boylston A, and Knu¨sel CJ (eds.) (2000) Blood Red Roses: The Archaeology of a Mass Grave from Towton, AD 1461. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Goodman AH, Brooke Thomas R, Swedlund A, and Armelagos GJ (1988) Biocultural perspectives on stress in prehistoric, historical, and contemporary population research. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 31: 169–202. Ortner DJ (2003) Identification of Pathological Conditions in Human Skeletal Remains, 2nd edn. Amsterdam: Academic Press. Palfi G, Dutour O, Dea`k J, and Huta`s I (eds.) (1999) Tuberculosis: Past and Present. Szeged, Hungary: TB Foundation. Roberts CA and Manchester KM (2005) The Archaeology of Disease, 3rd edn. Stroud, UK: Alan Sutton Publishing. Roberts CA, Lewis ME, and Manchester KM (eds.) (2002) The Past and Present of Leprosy: Archaeological, Historical, Palaeopathological, and Clinical Approaches, B.A.R. International Series 1054. Oxford: Archaeopress. Rogers J, Waldron T, Dieppe P, and Watt I (1987) Arthropathies in palaeopathology: The basis of classification according to most probable cause. Journal of Archaeological Science 14: 179–193. Wood JW, Milner GR, Harpending HC, and Weiss KM (1992) The osteological paradox: Problems of interpreting prehistoric health from skeletal samples. Current Anthropology 33(4): 343–370.

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Palynology

See: Pollen Analysis.

PEDESTRIAN SURVEY TECHNIQUES Andrew K Balkansky, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, IL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary full-coverage survey Involves the systematic examination of large contiguous blocks of terrain at a uniform level of intensity. intensive site survey Characterized by the complete or nearcomplete coverage of the survey area at a high resolution, most often by having teams of survey archaeologists walk in a systematic way (e.g., in transects) over parcels of the landscape in question, documenting archaeological data such as lithics, ceramics, and/or building remains. pedestrian survey Involves walking the surface of an archaeological site or large region in stratified patterns.

Site Discovery: Pedestrian Survey Techniques It goes without saying that pedestrian survey is about finding archaeological sites, but ever since the survey boom years in the 1960s and 1970s, surveyors have disagreed over their proper means of discovery and precisely what entity constitutes the site. However, much of the methodological disagreement is subsumed within Kowalewski’s rules for surveyors: (1) that ‘scientific observations ought to find significant structure’ and (2) that regarding sites and other spatial objects ‘we have to scale our recovery efforts to their size, plus a little more area to make sure we have correctly defined them’. Beyond these rules on structure and spatial scale, alternative survey methods are best judged with respect to the anthropological questions of interest. This article focuses on the generic concerns shared by most surveyors, allowing that specific applications of method are best adapted to local conditions and research problems.

Definitions and Technical Issues Plog et al. define an archaeological site as the ‘‘discrete and potentially interpretable locus of cultural materials’’. This definition of site – and leaving aside issues

arising from nonsite and distributional approaches – still leaves much to the imagination. Archaeologists working within different survey traditions or with different research questions in mind inevitably make varied decisions concerning the material that need be present, and the means of delimiting sites. Surveys are best designed when decisions of this kind are explicit and applied consistently in the field so that survey results are replicable and comparable with other projects. One guideline is to demarcate sites restrictively, since it is far easier to combine sites than to split them apart during later stages of analysis. Another important guideline is that surveyors should be able to illustrate the complete data flow from initial site visit to final settlement pattern map (see Sites: Mapping Methods). Apart from defining sites, the growth of survey methods brings further diversity in technique with differing approaches to sampling, intensity of coverage, collections, site recording, and standards of publication. The use of full-coverage survey techniques has become the primary means to study regional variation and change over time for much of problemoriented settlement archaeology. The rationale for full-coverage survey is the unpredictable nature of prehistoric settlement, such that no subregion or sample adequately describes the whole. The results of fullcoverage surveys, moreover, allow for accurate characterization of site hierarchies, the spacing between sites on the large scale, discovery of rare or unique sites, and analyses of boundary conditions within and among regional settlement systems. The dispute over whether full coverage is better than probabilistic sample surveys has died down, having for a time resembled the old Miller Lite beer commercials in which ex-survey stars could be imagined to say, ‘‘Tastes great! Less filling!’’. Today, wherever possible, and most especially in arid and semiarid regions with complex, sedentary populations, full-coverage survey is almost always the chosen method (notably in Andean South America, Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, and the Southwestern United States). Sampling nonetheless remains entrenched in European archaeology and much of the United States, owing to difficult

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surface visibility in temperate forests and the needs of cultural resource management. Similarly, survey in tropical lowlands has emphasized transects and probabilistic sampling rather than full coverage (e.g., surveys in the Maya area). The real question, however, is not which method is better but how best to integrate full coverage with probabilistic samples in long-term, region-oriented research programs. For most areas, probabilistic sampling makes more sense if it follows a full-coverage survey, or once there was knowledge of the actual universe of sites. The global reach of the highland Mesoamerican survey technique illustrates the adaptability of the full-coverage method, as well as the more general issues arising from surveys of all kinds.

Highland Mesoamerican Survey Technique The highland survey method was pioneered by William T. Sanders in the Basin of Mexico and then exported to Oaxaca (Mexico), Peru, and China among other world areas. In highland Mexico before the advent of pedestrian surveys in the 1960s the known sites numbered in the low hundreds; since then, over 10 000 sites have been mapped and published. These settlement data have been essential to developing second- and third-stage research (intensive site surveys and excavations) at sites first recorded on survey as well as reanalyses of survey data for questions beyond those posed by the original surveyors. Expansion of this method around the globe is also bringing areas formerly overlooked into comparative studies of societal organization and change. Highland surveys are designed for 100% aerial coverage given the view that probabilistic surveys obscure the regional variability of sites and are especially troublesome for the subset of larger sites (consider the interpretive difficulties should one miss Teotihuacan in the Basin of Mexico). To put the matter another way: the goal for full-coverage survey is finding sites, not finding reasons to explain why you did not. Thus, the discussions over proper spacing between surveyors and what sorts of terrain to cover miss the point: the best technique – if you want to find all the sites – is to walk in a zigzag within given transects rather than perfectly straight like soldiers on parade. Similarly, walking over unplowed terrain as well as establishing base camps in the mountains extends the range of survey coverage in remote locations, further raising the likelihood of finding all the sites still visible on the surface. Good indirect measures of the intensity of coverage are finding rare artifacts, such as projectile points, or large numbers

of very small sites. Of 1000 sites recorded on a recent survey in the Mixteca Alta, Mexico, more than half were less than 1 ha in size. Objectives for these surveys are to obtain specific regional data sets: site size over time; site plans drawn to scale; artifact distributions; place names; ancient and modern agricultural features; and data on the natural environment. Data of all kinds are recorded directly onto air photo enlargements or scaled topographic maps of the region. Artifact and especially pottery collections are made opportunistically to date occupations and observe their distributions on the regional level, not to measure within-site variation best left to a second stage of more intensive research at one or a few sites. Most surveyors using the highland technique bring detailed site forms paired with notebooks for data recording in the field. Monographs by Jeffrey R. Parsons are among the basic sources on the method. Recent updates of the highland method include the Brian S. Bauer and R. Alan Covey surveys near Cuzco (Peru) with their targeted second-stage sampling, and intelligent use of new technology such as the personal data assistant (PDA), global positioning system (GPS), and laser distance meters. The use of transit and stadia rod much less the total station on full-coverage surveys remains a dubious prospect in regions with hundreds of sites, but it is nonetheless worthwhile to generate digital information and maps by other means or as parts of targeted second-stage sampling. Apart from their methodological unity, the surveys mentioned above all emphasize site function and inter-site relationships as basic to social organization and change, making them suitable for comparative studies.

Future Directions The first law of regional survey states that ‘‘other things being equal more survey coverage is always better’’. But how should one follow this mandate while still getting good answers to anthropologically informed questions? Survey methods of all kinds must be justified with reference to the structure, scale, and questions being asked of past settlement. Those issues aside, several observations on the future of survey seem in order. First, not all surveyors hold to common standards of site recording and publication, making regional comparisons more difficult (more impressionistic, less quantifiable) than they ought to be. Second, the burgeoning ‘gray literature’, or backlog of unpublished survey data is reaching scandalous proportions. Since for most sites the survey visit is the only scientific work that will ever be done, and given the unprecedented rates of site destruction, surveyors and funding agencies must allow for the costs

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of analysis and write-up in their research designs. Third, the greatest hidden strength of pedestrian survey should be further exploited: the surprising results that come with each expansion of a region’s existing survey coverage. Fourth, the discovery and analysis of variation within regional and macroregional settlement systems remains a ‘growth industry’ for young scholars with sufficient stamina who are looking for future research directions. See also: Cultural Resource Management; Settlement Pattern Analysis; Settlement System Analysis; Sites: Mapping Methods.

Further Reading Bauer BS and Covey RA (2002) Processes of state formation in the Inca heartland (Cuzco, Peru). American Anthropologist 104: 846–864. Blanton RE, Feinman GM, Kowalewski SA, et al. (1999) Ancient Oaxaca: The Monte Alba´n state. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Persian Empire

Fish SK and Kowalewski SA (eds.) (1990) The Archaeology of Regions: A Case for Full-Coverage Survey. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Kowalewski SA (1990) Scale and complexity: Issues in the archaeology of the Valley of Oaxaca. In: Marcus J (ed.) Anthropological Papers of the Museum of Anthropology 84, Debating Oaxaca Archaeology, pp. 207–270. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Kowalewski SA, Balkansky AK, Stiver LR, et al. (2007) Origins of the n˜uu: Archaeology in the Mixteca Alta, Mexico. Boulder: University Press of Colorado (in press). Parsons JR (1971) Memoirs of the Museum of Anthropology 3. Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Texcoco Region, Mexico. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Plog S, Plog F, and Wait W (1978) Decision making in modern surveys. In: Schiffer M (ed.) Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 1, p. 383–421. New York: Academic Press. Sanders WT, Parsons JR, and Santley RS (1979) The Basin of Mexico: Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization. New York: Academic Press. Underhill AP, Feinman GM, Nicholas L, et al. (1998) Systematic, regional survey in SE Shandong Province, China. Journal of Field Archaeology 25: 453–474. Wilson DJ (1988) Prehispanic Settlement Patterns in the Lower Santa Valley, Peru. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

See: Asia, West: Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations.

PHILOSOPHY OF ARCHAEOLOGY Merrilee H Salmon, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary act-utilitarianism An ethical theory that identifies the moral goodness of an action with the amount of (nonmoral) good (such as knowledge or happiness) that follows from the action. Bayesian confirmation A model of confirmation that regards a hypothesis as confirmed when its probability after a particular test is higher than its prior probability. confirmation The relationship between hypotheses and the evidence that supports them, or, in the case of disconfirmation, fails to support them. deductive-nomological explanation A philosophical model that says that (some) scientific explanations are correct deductive arguments. The explanatory premises of these arguments consist of true statements of initial conditions along with at least one

universal law. The conclusion of these arguments is a statement that the event-to-be-explained did in fact occur. hypothetico-deductive confirmation A model of confirmation in which a hypothesis is said to be confirmed when some observable prediction that follows deductively from the hypothesis turns out to be true. models of scientific explanation Accounts that attempt to identify the essential features of scientific explanation. new archaeology Refers to an approach to archaeology that emphasizes the explicit use of scientific methods and adopts scientific goals. postprocessual archaeology Refers to an approach to archaeology that is critical of the new archaeology for its emphasis on science and ecological factors to the neglect of prehistoric symbolic behavior. prior probability The probability of a hypothesis before it is subjected to a particular test. rule-utilitarianism An ethical theory that identifies morally good behavior with following those rules of behavior that result in the greatest amount of (nonmoral) good in the world. systems explanation A type of archaeological explanation that invokes systemic features, such as negative and positive

PHILOSOPHY OF ARCHAEOLOGY 1813 feedback, rather than external influences to account for patterns of change and development in archaeologically known societies. typology A system of classification based on qualities common to a number of individuals that distinguish them as an identifiable class.

Introduction The philosophy of archaeology, like the philosophy of other disciplines, such as art, law, and biology, asks philosophical questions about the discipline in question and applies the critical apparatus of philosophy to answer them. Philosophy of archaeology examines the definitions of basic archaeological concepts, the principles for how to classify archaeological materials, and the nature of archaeological knowledge. It also examines the ethical issues that arise in the conduct of archaeological investigations and dissemination of the information obtained from those investigations. Consideration of these foundational questions is not limited to professional philosophers. Archaeologists often don a philosophical hat to engage in critical examination of their discipline. Ideally, the philosopher of archaeology should have a foot in both fields, with enough knowledge of archaeology to understand its workings and enough critical philosophical ability to examine the arguments for various approaches to problematic issues and to write clearly about them. Most archaeologists confront opportunities for philosophizing at various points in their careers. Introductory texts, for example, typically begin with an account of the nature and aims of archaeology. Such an account requires the archaeologist to step back from doing fieldwork, analyzing materials in a laboratory, reporting discoveries and other normal disciplinary activities. In a philosophical mode, the archaeologist considers instead such questions as whether archaeology is a science, how archaeology is related to history, and what methods work best to acquire and organize archaeological knowledge. Philosophical questions about standards of evidence and criteria for successful explanation also occur at the beginning of archaeological studies.

Definition and Classification While most archaeology texts begin with a definition of the discipline, the definitions vary. Some present archaeology as a study of the prehistoric past, with goals similar to those of history, that is, to construct an explanatory narrative, based on material remains rather than written records, about past events. Other definitions characterize archaeology as a branch of anthropology, which studies societies

that are accessible only through their material remains. Most contemporary definitions emphasize the study of past cultural and social systems through their material remains rather than focusing on the materials themselves as the objects of study, but one group of contemporary archaeologists rejects the affiliation with anthropology in favor of an evolutionary biology model in which artifacts evolve through a process resembling natural selection. Even definitions that appear to be similar can differ in subtle ways, particularly with respect to the emphasis on science, the sorts of knowledge we can obtain from archaeological data, the importance of chronology, and on distinctions between stylistic and functional features of artifacts. Nineteenth-century archaeologists worried mainly about how to classify antiquities in a systematic way. Archaeologists organized – often at their own expense – expeditions to collect materials from the great ancient civilizations and from places mentioned in the bible. Materials from Europe’s prehistoric past also received some serious attention. Archaeologists persuaded universities, governments, and private donors to build museums to house the collections. A major concern of archaeology – one could even say its defining characteristic – was to classify and arrange these collections in terms of chronological age and culture area. Thomsen, the first curator of the Danish National Museum, for example, invented the Three-Age System of stone, bronze, and iron as a basis for organizing prehistoric European artifacts. The flavor of the early classificatory schemes is still present in some museums. The archaeological museum of Florence (Italy), for example, consists of a series of rooms crowded with statues and other artifacts that are identified by period and provenance, but without further information. Today, most museums that can afford to do so have reorganized their collections to reflect contemporary archaeology’s concern for social relationships. The contrast between the old and new ways of handling collections is evident in the elegantly revamped Rosengarten Museum in Konstanz (Germany). One room is carefully preserved in the old style as a memorial to the donor of the original collections, while the other rooms have been arranged in the modern manner. The result is a striking testimony to a shift in understanding of the primary nature and goals of archaeology. Although early museums organized their collections along antiquarian lines, archaeologists have always been interested in the people whose material remains offer our only access to their lives. When archaeology was new – and its birth as a discipline came in the early nineteenth century – scholars had not yet developed schemes for controlled excavation

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or modern dating techniques. Even to identify stone tools as the handiwork of ancient people rather than as fossils involved inferences questioned by Thomsen’s contemporaries. Definitions of archaeology have shifted from a focus on the need for systematic classifications to a concern with how to understand the lives of past human societies in part because of the realization that meaningful systems of classification involve theorizing about the societies that produced the artifacts. While nineteenth-century archaeologists could only speculate about past social systems, advances in archaeological techniques have made genuine knowledge possible. With this increase in knowledge, archaeologists are better able to articulate what they have always found interesting about material culture. Once archaeologists accept a definition of ‘archaeology’ that requires explaining and understanding the social and cultural aspects of the lives of people known through their material remains, the research goals of archaeologists change, and a new set of philosophical questions arises: What are the basic terms of the discipline and what do they mean? Can archaeology provide objective knowledge of the past? What are the standards of proof in archaeology? What are the features of a good archaeological explanation? What are the relationships between style and function in archaeological materials? How do we distinguish the one from the other? What moral constraints limit our studies of artifacts and human remains? With respect to these philosophical questions, let us look first at attempts to define two of archaeology’s most important concepts: ‘site’ and ‘artifact’. Whereas dictionaries define ‘site’ as a spatial location, in archaeology ‘site’ has special significance because it structures archaeological investigation. For many with an amateur interest in archaeology, ‘site’ calls up grand scenes of Pompeii or King Tut’s tomb. Midtwentieth-century archaeologists, such as Paul Martin and Fred Plog, however, present a more inclusive characterization: ‘‘A site is any place formerly occupied or utilized by a prehistoric group.’’ This definition of ‘site’ is theoretical, which is to say that its purpose is to help to construct an archaeological theory by identifying the phenomena that are of interest to archaeological investigators. One role of this particular theoretical definition of ‘site’ is to broaden the traditional understanding so that archaeological investigation can be appropriately conducted on and archaeological protection extended to sites that are barely recognizable by nonarchaeologists. Many sites in Arizona, where the framers of this definition worked, are unimpressive surface scatters of lithic debris and sherds. Although these surface sites seem meager, a careful study of them can reveal much information about the

prehistoric inhabitants of the region. Philosophers might criticize this definition of ‘site’ for being too broad because many places formerly occupied or used by a prehistoric group are devoid of all traces of their former occupation or use, and thus irrelevant to archaeology. Despite this defect, the philosophical importance of the definition is clear. Definitions are not merely a matter of words. They shape a particular vision of what archaeology is and how – or where – it should be done. Archaeologists’ definitions of ‘artifact’ also have theoretical significance. While sites are the places of primary archaeological investigation, artifacts are the things that make sites interesting. The distinction between artifacts, which are marked in some way by humans, and natural objects, which have not undergone any intentional modification or selection, is fundamental. The latter are outside the scope of archaeology. ‘Artifact’ was employed as early as 1841, when Boucher de Perthes used it to refer to so-called ‘hand-axes’ that were found in association with bones of extinct animals in gravel deposits near the Somme River. Boucher de Perthes’s artifacts, and his account of their nature – that is, as stones modified by humans rather than natural fossils – were instrumental in building the case for the long period of human habitation of Earth, a striking and controversial idea in his time. Modern archaeology requires a definition of ‘artifact’ that encompasses more than stone and bone tools. If the archaeologist wants to understand and explain past cultural behavior, the definition should ensure that the term ‘artifact’ would apply to all material remnants of what might be called ‘cultural activity’. Thus, a definition is needed that will apply the term ‘artifact’ to a stone that was selected and used for polishing pottery, even though it was not modified in any way. Similarly, the definition should make it clear that ‘artifact’ applies to deliberately constructed spatial relationships among objects, even though spatial relationships are not material things. When we realize that good definitions should avoid vagueness as well as being neither too broad nor too narrow, we can see that definition of key terms such as ‘site’ and ‘artifact’ is a challenging task. The problem of definition is intimately related to the larger problem of typology, or how to classify archaeological materials. Most archaeologists are familiar with the mid-twentieth-century controversy about whether archaeological types are constructs imposed by archaeologists in order to organize the materials they study (J. A. Ford) or whether types are inherent in the materials and thus discovered by archaeologists rather than created by them (A. C. Spaulding). Contributions to this debate are reminiscent of the debates among medieval philosophers about the reality of

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universals, that is to say whether general concepts, such as ‘truth’ or ‘man’, existed independently, were concepts that existed in the minds of those who created and used them, or were mere names applied to particular things. The debates about the basis of classification filled the pages of archaeological journals throughout the 1950s. Similar debates have occurred among biologists about their own systems of classification, and typologies continue to engage archaeologists and philosophers as well. While sophisticated physical methods of dating materials now answer many chronological puzzles that older typologies were designed to solve, archaeological theory – like any scientific theory – is still intertwined with, and dependent on, systems of classification. The most comprehensive current work on classification argues that typologies are instruments created by archaeologists to solve particular problems. This instrumental view of classification allows for different ways of organizing material culture depending on what questions the archaeologist is asking. The emphasis has also shifted from an abstract treatment of typologies to practical aspects of creating and using systems of classification in archaeology as well as the importance of defining key terms so that archaeologists can successfully communicate the results of their work. Definition and typology are topics of perennial interest to archaeologists, and as the discipline grows and changes focus, new definitions and new systems of typology will be needed.

Confirmation and Archaeological Knowledge As we have seen, most recent definitions of archaeology suggest that we can gain ‘knowledge’ of past societies by studying their material remains. During the 1960s and 1970s, the ‘new archaeologists’ were particularly concerned with the scientific credentials of archaeological knowledge. They urged archaeologists to adopt rigorous scientific methods of confirming hypotheses and explaining archaeological findings, and they turned to philosophers of science, especially C. G. Hempel, for explication of those methods. Their accounts of Hempel’s work and its relevance to archaeology attracted critical attention from philosophers as well as other archaeologists. The philosophical problem of ‘confirmation’ concerns the relationship between evidence for some claim (the hypothesis) and the truth of that claim. New archaeologists criticized their colleagues for using ‘inductive methods’. By this they meant gathering data without any prior notion of what the data would reveal and then letting the data ‘speak for themselves’ to reveal patterns or generalizations. In contrast, the

new archaeologists promoted using the ‘hypotheticodeductive’ method in which a hypothesis was stated and then tested on the basis of predictions that could be deduced from the hypothesis. If a prediction follows with certainty from the hypothesis, and is observed to be true, the hypothesis is confirmed; if the prediction turns out to be false, the hypothesis is disconfirmed. In the ensuing discussions of the proposal to adopt the hypothetico-deductive model of confirmation, no one defended the crude version of inductivism that the new archaeologists rejected. However, critics did argue that the new archaeologists’ account of the method was oversimplified and that despite its ‘hypothetico-deductive’ name, the method depended on inductive reasoning. Critics pointed out that there were philosophical rivals to Hempel’s account of scientific confirmation, including Hempel’s own alternative accounts. Philosophers noted that philosophical models represent attempts by philosophers to analyze patterns of scientific reasoning rather than recipes to be followed for doing ‘real science’. Many archaeologists were already using more or less sophistical statistical reasoning to support their hypotheses. Such work, while scientifically sound, does not accord with the simple form of the hypotheticodeductive method. A version of a Bayesian model for confirmation was also suggested as a one that archaeologists might find useful as a tool for analyzing informal arguments of confirmation. That model allows for predictions to follow from hypotheses with probability rather than certainty, and supplements the core idea of the hypothetico-deductive model with considerations of ‘prior probabilities’. The prior probability of a hypothesis is the probability that it has before a particular test of it occurs. The prior probability could be based on several factors, including outcome of earlier tests of the hypothesis, the plausibility of any causal mechanisms involved in the hypothesis, the ‘fit’ of the hypothesis with already established theories, and so forth. Scientists routinely consider the prior probability of hypotheses to decide whether they are worth testing. Consideration of prior probabilities also offers a way to choose between different hypotheses that are equally supported by the same observational data. In such cases, the hypothesis that has the higher prior probability retains its relative ranking after the test. Few archaeologists are currently debating conflicting philosophical models of confirmation, though it is still an important issue for philosophers of science. While a better understanding of the philosophical issues involved in confirmation can increase understanding of how science works, it is also true that doing good science does not require adhering to a particular philosophical vision of confirmation.

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Explanation The nature of scientific explanation is probably the philosophical topic that has provoked the greatest number of interchanges between philosophers of science and archaeologists. The new archaeologists believed that archaeologists could make their explanations scientific by formulating them according to the pattern of Hempel’s deductive-nomological (D-N) model, which says that for an event to be explained scientifically, its description must be shown to be the conclusion of a deductive argument that has as its premises statements of initial conditions and at least one universal law. To take a rather old-fashioned but simple example of D-N explanation, one explains why inserting a penny in place of a blown fuse restores electrical current by citing the initial condition that the penny is made of copper, along with the universal law that all copper conducts electricity. Critics were quick to point out that Hempel never claimed that all scientific explanations fit this model; it is one model among many. Many archaeologists, concerned about the difficulty of finding universal laws required for D-N explanations, looked for less stringent explanatory models. Philosophers of science, already heavily engaged in trying to understand the nature of scientific explanation, were drawn into the debates about the nature and possibility of scientific explanation in archaeology, and found that archaeology provided a good testing ground for some of their theories. Instead of merely claiming that the new archaeologists had failed to understand Hempel, some philosophers tried to make a more positive contribution by considering philosophically acceptable alternative models of explanation. They also distinguished between formal models that focused on the structure of explanation and its ontological and epistemological basis, and substantive models of explanation in a discipline, which look at appropriate generalizations and facts that can be mustered to explain archaeological phenomena. Hempel himself had already proposed an alternative inductive-statistical model that used statistical laws and allowed for probabilistic rather than deductive support of the conclusion/event to be explained, and had argued that this model was better suited to history and the social sciences. Systems explanations of the archaeological record are popular with many archaeologists. The term ‘systems’ can refer to both formal and substantive features of explanations, and the failure to recognize this distinction caused some confusion in early discussions of the topics. Archaeologists proposed substantive systems explanations as alternatives to diffusionist explanations of cultural phenomena

such as the spread of agriculture. Diffusionist models account for cultural change and innovation by looking for an external source of an idea or trait and then tracing its spread (diffusion) to other cultures. Systemic explanations focus on the following internal features: (1) multiple interacting causes that can reinforce or counterbalance one another, (2) negative feedback mechanisms that promote stability in the face of pressures for change, and (3) positive feedback mechanisms that amplify some factors, allowing for change within the system. Systems explanations are sometimes called ‘neofunctionalist’. Whereas contemporary systems explanations bear some resemblance to Radcliffe-Brown’s structural–functional explanations, they differ in several important ways. (1) They treat the archaeological record on a par with historical documents as a source of evidence. (2) They provide a mechanism – positive feedback – to explain change. Although structural– functional explanations recognized negative feedback mechanisms, such as joking relationships that maintained social stability through release of tensions, they could not account for beneficial changes in societies and tended to regard any change as harmful. (3) Systems explanations emphasize the significance of humans’ physical environment as well as their social environment. A central tenet of the new archaeology is that societies cannot be considered in isolation from the physical surroundings that both shape and are shaped by them. By supplementing negative feedback mechanisms with positive feedback, by broadening the notion of a system to include the physical environment of a society, and by analyzing the archaeological record for appropriate evidence, systems explanations offer a theoretical framework for organizing and extending archaeological knowledge. Some archaeologists argued that ‘the systems model’ of explanation was a superior alternative to the D-N model because it did not require laws. However, although the systems explanations that archaeologists use do not address the problem of laws in an explicit way, their reliance on laws is implicit in their requirement for causal mechanisms. The ‘systems model’ uses different kinds of substantive principles from those adopted by diffusionist models, but it simply is not a model of explanation in the same formal sense that the deductive-nomological model is – indeed, some systems explanations can be construed as examples of the D-N model or of the inductive-statistical model. The point to be made about philosophical models of explanation is similar to that about confirmation. The problem of finding a set of general criteria that characterize genuine scientific explanation is a serious concern for philosophers, who have argued

PHILOSOPHY OF ARCHAEOLOGY 1817

for alternatives that focus on various aspects of successful scientific examples of explanation. It is difficult to describe briefly the differences among the philosophical models, but a few distinguishing features can be mentioned. Some models, like Hempel’s, emphasize the logical connection between explanatory factors and that event which is to be explained. Other models emphasize the causal relationships that are important to sound explanations, and still others emphasize the ways in which good explanation serve to unify scientific knowledge. A common feature of these models is that all of them invoke laws. As with philosophical studies of confirmation, we can note that while philosophical analysis of scientific explanation can deepen our understanding of science and our appreciation of it, doing good scientific work does not depend on having the ‘right’ model. A diverse group of critics of the ‘new archaeology’ characterize themselves as ‘postprocessual archaeologists’. Many of them are unhappy with the new archaeologists’ concern with laws and scientific explanation, as well as their preoccupation with environmental and ecological matters. Postprocessualists emphasize instead the symbolic function of prehistoric human behavior, and decry its neglect by new archaeologists. Moreover, they believe that it is possible to recapture this symbolic behavior from archaeological remains. Their work involves distinguishing function from style in cultural remains and studying carefully the stylistic features. They analyze and explain their results using ‘general principles’ that govern certain kinds of symbolic behavior, such as the pattern of distinguishing the ‘raw’ (natural) items from the ‘cooked’ (culturally transformed). By invoking general principles, however, their own interpretations also appeal implicitly to laws, even if these are employed in the service of so-called interpretation rather than explanation. From the viewpoint of the new archaeologists, the postprocessualists use principles that depend on questionable anthropological theorizing and lack empirical support. It is fair to say that the theories of both new archaeologists and postprocessualists involve lawful explanation or interpretation, although the aims of the two groups and the content of the laws they invoke are very different (see Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology).

Ethical Issues Archaeologists’ concern with the ethics of their profession is evident in the codes of ethics that have been formulated and revised by their professional societies and in their adherence to international and local standards regarding the treatment of cultural property.

The effort involved in formulating codes of ethics requires intense reflection on general principles of ethics and careful consideration of how these principles can be applied. Archaeologists are committed to acquiring and disseminating knowledge and preserving archaeological resources so that they can continue to be used by future generations for acquiring knowledge. These separate goals can conflict with one another, especially when the use of improperly acquired (looted) material would significantly increase our knowledge of the past. On the one hand, some argue that in this sort of case, the increase in knowledge trumps the conservation principle (e.g., the looted material is already in a private collection; no further damage to the site from which it came occurs). In other words, more good (i.e., total knowledge) will result from the act of publishing the work than from the act of not publishing. An ‘actutilitarian’ ethical principle underlies this reasoning, namely ‘‘Act in such a way as to increase the total amount of good in the world.’’ On the other hand, the conservationists adopt a ‘rule-utilitarian’ stance: greater good will result from following the ‘rule’ of not using looted material than from allowing special exceptions because the no-exception policy discourages future looting and ultimately results in the greater good of more knowledge. Both appeal to an ethical principle that examines the ‘consequences’ of action, but one judges each particular individual act and the other looks at the consequences of following a rule of behavior. Most ethicists regard actutilitarianism as an untenable theory because of its apparent arbitrariness. Rule-utilitarianism shows more promise, but coming up with a set of rules that are complete and compatible is highly problematic as well, and no ethical theory can be general enough and precise enough to cover every possible action. Further ethical issues arise because archaeologists typically investigate material cultures that are not part of their own heritage and conduct their surveys and excavations on land that does not belong to them. The fundamental ethical principle they follow here is one that appeals to the justice or fairness of behavior rather than to its consequences. Although it is a matter of some serious dispute, most archaeologists agree that the rights of others must be respected even when doing so may result in a loss or decrease of archaeological knowledge. Disagreements still arise among those whose rights compete and amongthose who doubt that some groups’ rights are violated by the pursuit of archaeological knowledge. These disputes are apt to be settled more fairly when representatives of the affected groups negotiate with one another, and many archaeologists have been party

1818 PHYTOLITH ANALYSIS

to such negotiations. Working out the details of what is just and fair in individual cases can be a very difficult and delicate task even when the principles are clear. Moreover, in many instances, particularly when government regulations are involved, the principles themselves can be opaque. In some exemplary cases, archaeologists who manage major museums that acquired those collections in times less sensitive to issues of cultural patrimony have been able to work out agreements in which the cultural heirs own the property and can use it when it is needed, while the museum agrees to care for it and display it in accord with conditions set out by the heirs. In these agreements, fairness is preserved and everyone benefits. Archaeologists’ sensitivity to the issues of cultural patrimony and abuses under colonialism reflects their anthropological training. Their continuing attempts to solve the difficult problems by focusing on ethical issues in their publications and meetings have created a climate of professionalism with very high ethical standards. See also: Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Explanation in Archaeology, Overview; Goals of Archaeology, Overview; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology.

Further Reading Adams WY and Adams EW (1991) Archaeological Typology and Practical Reality: A Dialectical Approach to Artifact Classification and Sorting. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. Hempel CG (1965) Aspects of Scientific Explanation. New York: The Free Press. Hodder I (1986, 1991, 2003) Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Salmon MH (1982) Philosophy and Archaeology. New York: Academic Press. Salmon MH and others (1999) Ethics in Science: Special Problems in Anthropology and Archaeology: Special Issue of Science and Engineering Ethics 5: 3. Salmon WC (1998) Causality and Explanation. New York: Oxford University Press. Watson PJ, LeBlanc S, and Redman C (1971) Explanation in Archeology: An Explicitly Scientific Approach. New York: Columbia University Press. Watson PJ, LeBlanc S, and Redman C (1984) Archaeological Explanation: The Scientific Method in Archaeology. New York: Columbia University Press. Willey GR and Sabloff JA (1993) A History of American Archaeology, 3rd edn. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd. Wylie A (2002) Thinking from Things: Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

PHYTOLITH ANALYSIS Arlene Miller Rosen, University College London, London, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary archaeobotany The recovery and identification of plant remains from archaeological contexts, which assist in reconstructing past environments. C3 plant A plant that produces the 3-carbon compound phosphoglyceric acid as the first stage of photosynthesis. C4 plant A plant that produces the 4-carbon compound oxalocethanoic (oxaloacetic) acid as the first stage of photosynthesis. microbotanical remains Those plant remains from archaeological sites that are visible to the naked eye, primarily seeds and charcoal. paleoenvironmental reconstruction Investigations which are undertaken to reconstruct the climate and vegetation of a specific time and place. phytoliths Minute particles formed of mineral matter by a living plant and fossilized in rock.

Phytolith analysis is one of the most versatile of all the techniques used in archaeobotany. Researchers have used phytoliths to answer both traditional and nontraditional archaeobotanical questions, within archaeological as well as palaeoenvironmental sampling contexts. Some of the most common uses for phytoliths in archaeology are: (1) the identification of plant taxa utilized at archaeological sites in studies of diet, farming practices, foddering, and construction materials; (2) detection of plant parts used for determining ancient activities, such as husks from grain-storage areas or plant stalks used for matting; (3) determining the seasonality of site occupations by examining the ratios of grass floral parts to stem segments; (4) the reconstruction of off-site vegetation changes in the past, from phytolith assemblages in lake-cores; and (5) identifying the earliest appearance of cultigens such as maize in South America, rice in China, and bananas in Africa. Some less traditional uses of phytoliths include: (1) evidence for both

PHYTOLITH ANALYSIS 1819

natural and human-induced fire ecology by distinguishing phytoliths from burned material versus those from unburned deposits; (2) analysis of phytolith properties indicating irrigation agriculture in alluvial valleys versus dry-farming in interfluvial settings; (3) identifying the first African cattle pastoralists from phytolith densities in animal pens; (4) reconstructing climatic records from carbon and oxygen isotopes found respectively within organic matter occluded inside phytoliths, and oxygen from the SiO2 itself (see Stable Isotope Analysis); and (5) direct radiocarbon dating of organic matter trapped within phytoliths (see Dating Methods, Overview; Carbon-14 Dating). The term ‘phytolith’ comes from the Greek words for ‘plant stone’. They are mineralized particles that form within living plants and can consist of calcareous or siliceous materials. Most phytoliths are primarily inorganic and form from amorphous silicon dioxide (SiO2) which is precipitated from soluble monosilicic acid derived from the soil water. Plants commonly deposit silica within epidermal cell walls forming an exact replica of the cell, but some plants produce silica bodies in other localities as well. The uptake and precipitation of plant silica is both passive and active. In grasses and sedges, silica is deposited within plant hairs and short cells (also called ‘silica cells’) in a manner controlled by the plant physiology. Other cells can become silicified due to environmental conditions controlled by temperature, evapotranspiration rate, soil texture, water availability, and the quantity of dissolved silica in the soil water. Both monocotyledons (grasses, sedges, and palms) and dicotyledons (woody, herbaceous plants) produce phytoliths, but generally, phytoliths are far more abundant within the monocots. Since many genera of monocots were among the most useful plants in antiquity, the phytolith record can contribute a great deal to studies of palaeoethnobotany (see Paleoethnobotany). Monocots can be easily distinguished from dicots since the monocots are typified by a number of forms recognizable as fossilized epidermal cells which recur with regularity, whereas dicots often produce irregular shapes that do not recur repeatedly. This is a valuable distinction for environmental studies and allows the researcher to track grassland/ forest boundary shifts through time from lake cores and sediment sections in ecotonal areas. In archaeological sites, this distinction helps reconstruct the general vegetation in the area around the site as well as indicates the types of fuel used for hearth fires. Within the monocots, phytoliths take two main forms which include the single-celled phytoliths

consisting of individual disjointed cells, and the multi-celled forms (or ‘silica skeletons’) that consist of two to hundreds of adjacent cells silicified as a single body. The single-cell variety are by far most common in grasses from temperate climates, whereas the multi-celled forms are very common in areas with high evapotranspiration rates, primarily semi-arid environments. This phenomenon is enhanced under circumstances in which the monocots grow in heavy moisture-retaining soils, or under conditions of irrigation in alluvial valleys. Phytoliths are easily recovered from archaeological deposits. A small amount of sediment (from about 2 to 30 g) is collected with a clean utensil and placed in a sealable plastic bag. In the laboratory, researchers extract the phytoliths by removing calcium carbonate residues, organic matter including micro-charcoal, and sediment material that is less than 2 mm in size (clay particles) or greater than about 500 mm (medium sand and larger), thus keeping the silt and fine-sand fractions of the sediment. This is floated in a heavydensity liquid that is calibrated to separate out the light opaline phytoliths from the quartz and heavy mineral material. The remaining phytolith residue is washed and mounted on microscope slides. These slides are usually examined under a microscope at 400
magnification and phytoliths are counted. The resulting counts can give either relative percentages or absolute numbers per gram sediment depending upon the research methods. The process of identification of phytoliths is different for single-celled forms versus multi-celled types. Single-celled types include forms traditionally called saddles, bilobes, crosses, bulliforms, rondels, cones, and other such terms denoting shape (Figure 1). In a very general way, some of the traditional categories of shapes used to designate single-celled phytoliths are broadly related to plant family or subfamily. For example, cones are most often associated with the sedge family (Cyperaceae). Within the grass family (Gramineae), rondels are commonly formed in pooids (festucoids), bilobes in panicoids, and saddles in the chloridoid grass subfamilies. These distinctions have allowed phytolith researchers to determine the likely environmental conditions represented by these types. Sedges are associated with moist micro-environments and standing water, pooids are C3 plants found in cool moist environments and high elevations. Chloridoids are C4 plants associated with warm, sunny, arid to semi-arid environments, whereas panicoids are found in warm/moist environments such as tropical regions or marshy areas in semi-arid environments. These designations are very useful environmental

1820 PHYTOLITH ANALYSIS

Figure 1 Bilobe-shaped phytoliths from foxtail grass (Setaria viridis). Scale ¼ 10 mm.

Figure 3 Variant 1 cross-shaped phytoliths from the leaves of maize (Zea mays). Scale ¼ 15 mm. Photograph courtesy of D. Piperno.

Figure 2 Dendritic phytoliths from the husk of wheat (Triticum aestivum). Scale ¼ 10 mm.

indicators off-site as well as within archaeological contexts. In hunter-gatherer campsites, this level of taxonomy can indicate environmental conditions at the time of occupation. In pastoralist sites, researchers can determine the micro-environments used for grazing when analyzing samples from animal enclosures or ash from dung fuels. For agricultural sites, grass subfamily might indicate the location used for agricultural fields from the subfamily of the weed grasses. More recently, there has been a concerted effort to develop an International Code for Phytolith Nomenclature in order to standardize terms used universally. This code proposes a glossary of terms relating to shape, surface texture, ornamentation, and anatomical origin. Both single-cell and multi-cell phytoliths can also indicate the part of the plant represented in a particular archaeological sample. This is based on differences

in the shape of long-cells originating in the stems of grasses as opposed to those from the floral parts or husks of the grass. Long-cells from the stem are smooth-sided trapezoids, usually rectangular in shape. Those from the husk are dendritic trapezoids with wavy, sharply peaked cell walls (Figure 2). This distinction is very useful for determining such things as seasonality in hunter-gatherer or nomadic pastoral sites since the floral parts of grasses only appear in abundance during the flowering season, usually during the spring or early summer. In settled agricultural sites, this distinction can indicate grain-storage areas, or cereal-processing stations likely to include remains of cereal husks. Many phytoliths from smooth-sided long-cells could indicate localities at the site where large amounts of stems decayed, as in areas with matting, basketry, or roofing material. More precise taxonomic designations, down to plant genus or even species, are also possible for single-cell phytoliths. Using multivariate and morphometric analyses of single-cell forms, phytolith analysts have been able to identify crops such as maize (crosses from leaves, short-cells from cobs) (Figure 3), rice (keystone bulliforms from leaves or double-peaked hairs from husks) (Figure 4), wheat and barley (dendritic long-cells and others), banana (short-cells from leaves), and a variety of palms. Multi-cell phytoliths are composed of suites of adjacent cells silicified together as sheets. Since they represent an assemblage of different cell types, they can often be identified down to genus and sometimes to species. Identifications of multi-celled forms from

PHYTOLITH ANALYSIS 1821

Figure 4 Keystone bulliform phytolith from rice (Oryza sativa). Photograph courtesy of E. Harvey.

Figure 5 Diagnostic multi-cell phytolith from the husk of wheat (Triticum aestivum). Scale ¼ 10 mm.

Figure 7 Multi-celled phytolith from the husk of foxtail millet (Setaria italica). Scale bar equals 10 mm.

husks have been made for cereal genera including wheat (Triticum sp.) (Figure 5), barley (Hordeum sp.), rice (Oryza sp.) (Figure 6), broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), and foxtail millet (Setaria italica) (Figure 7), and for some weed grasses including wild oat (Avena sp.), goat-faced grass (Aegilops sp.), rye grass (Secale sp.), foxtail grass (Setaria sp.), brome grass (Bromus sp.), common reed (Phragmites sp.), and others. In addition to these more standard types of archaeobotanical studies, phytoliths have been used in palaeoclimatic reconstruction in conjunction with pollen and diatom data from pollen cores. In these studies, the distributions of phytoliths from grasses are compared with variations in tree genera from pollen to obtain a broader picture of vegetation associations from a particular region. Phytoliths from C3 versus C4 plants have also been compared with diatom data indicating lake-level changes or salinity. When analyzed in conjunction with macrobotanical remains, phytoliths contribute additional dimensions to an overall picture of palaeoethnobotany by allowing researchers to access the record of plant shoots in addition to the record for seeds and wood charcoal. Since unlike macrobotanical materials phytoliths do not need to be charred to be preserved in the archaeological record, they contribute archaeobotanical information in unburned archaeological contexts. Finally, in many archaeological settings with poor macrobotanical records, phytoliths are the only indicators of plant use. See also: Carbon-14 Dating; Coprolite Analysis; Dating

Figure 6 Multi-cell phytolith from the husk of rice (Oryza sativa). Scale ¼ 10 mm.

Methods, Overview; Macroremains Analysis; Paleoethnobotany; Pollen Analysis; Stable Isotope Analysis.

1822 PLANT DOMESTICATION

Further Reading Meunier JD and Colin F (eds.) (2001) Phytoliths: Applications in Earth Science and Human History. Lisse: A.A. Balkema. Pearsall DM (2000) Phytolith analysis. In: Paleoethnobotany: A Handbook of Procedures, pp. 355–496. New York: Academic Press. Piperno DR (2006) Phytolith Analysis in Archaeology and Environmental History. Walnut Grove, CA: AltaMira Press.

Rapp G and Mulholland SC (eds.) (1992) Phytolith Systematics: Emerging Issues. New York: Plenum. Rosen AM (1999) Phytolith analysis in Near Eastern archaeology. In: Pike S and Gitin S (eds.) The Practical Impact of Science on Aegean and Near Eastern Archaeology, pp. 86–92. London: Archetype Press.

PLANT DOMESTICATION Deborah M Pearsall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary agriculture Subsistence system characterized by large-scale field systems and reliance on a small number of productive domesticated plants. Agriculture leads to population growth, landscape modifications, and vegetation alteration, resulting in creation of an agro-ecology. crop Plant under cultivation, regardless of its genetic status. cultivation The full range of activities undertaken to care for plants; in addition to planting and harvesting, which can lead to genetic change, cultivation includes weeding, watering, pruning, and transplanting. The latter activities may increase the abundance or change the distribution of plants. domestication Process of genetic change through which plants are altered from the wild state, and when fully domesticated become dependent on humans for their reproduction. For plants that reproduce by seed, domestication comes about through the repetitive process of harvesting seeds, replanting, and harvesting. horticulture Subsistence system characterized by small-scale plantings. In comparison with agriculturalists, horticulturists maintain more diverse plantings that include wild or cultivated plants. neolithic or formative Stage of cultural development characterized by the emergence of farming as the mainstay of life, typically accompanied by the appearance of ceramics, large substantial villages located for access to fertile land, and ceremonialism. slash and burn agriculture Also called shifting cultivation, a practice involving cutting forest, burning vegetation, planting for 2–5 years, then fallow (allowing forest regrowth). New plots are opened to replace those in fallow. Extensive (requiring land) rather than intensive (requiring increased labor input). In sediment cores sustained charcoal and secondary forest indicators are markers.

Introduction ‘‘As American as Apple Pie’’? Where did these plants come from? 1. Apples: Balkans to Caspian Sea

2. 3. 4. 5.

Sugar (cane): New Guinea Cinnamon: Southeast Asia Tapioca (manioc) thickener: Brazil Wheat flour: Near East

Many foods considered typical of an ethnic group or culture are actually made from plants that originated in far different places. The example of apple pie illustrates how Old World crops were carried to the New World during the Age of Discovery, and captures crop movements that predate this era. Wheat, for example, was spread from its homeland in the Near East into Europe many millennia before Columbus. People began to move plants soon after their domestication, and this process is closely linked to the emergence of agriculture as the dominant way of life of our species: the subsistence system that fueled commerce and trade, provisioned elites, supported large populations, and had physical and social consequences still felt today (see Agriculture: Biological Impact on Populations; Social Consequences). This contribution focuses on the archaeological record of plant domestication and of agriculture: the ‘what’, ‘where’, and ‘when’ of these processes. Why humans domesticated plants and became agriculturalists is considered briefly at the close.

Understanding Domestication and Agriculture through Archaeology Plant remains form part of the archaeological record. Water flotation and fine sieving have improved recovery of plant macroremains, and enhanced our ability to study plant domestication and agriculture. Identifying charred, dried, or waterlogged fragments as the remains of domesticated plants can require specialized methods, such as statistical analysis of size or microscopic examination of anatomical features. During the process of domestication, plants undergo

PLANT DOMESTICATION 1823

selection for traits that make them more desirable to humans, and better able to compete under cultivation. These traits distinguish domesticates from their wild ancestors and include loss of natural dispersal mechanisms, increased size of edible parts, and more uniform appearance (see Macroremains Analysis; Paleoethnobotany). Major domesticates are part of complexes of related wild and weedy species, and the analyst must determine whether the preserved plant remains match the wild, weedy, or domesticated forms. If remains come from an archaeological site far from the homeland of the domesticate, it may be possible to eliminate related wild species from consideration. In some cases, domesticated plants become so changed from wild species that identification is straightforward. Analysis of pollen, phytoliths, and starch microfossils from sites, artifacts, agricultural fields, and coprolites (preserved feces) also form part of the archaeological record of domestication (see Pollen Analysis; Phytolith Analysis; Starch Grain Analysis; Agricultural Fields, Identification and Study; Coprolite Analysis). Naturally accumulating sediments in lakes, swamps, and alluvial settings are also excellent sources of plant microfossils that document human modification of environments, including clearance for slash and burn agriculture (see Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Methods). Approaches for identifying microfossils are the same as described for macroremains. It is essential to understand the archaeological context of domesticates, especially their age. Macroremains and microfossil extractions may be directly radiocarbon dated, wood charcoal associated with domesticates may be dated, or domesticates may be associated stratigraphically with artifacts of known age (see Dating Methods, Overview). Dating by association is impacted by postdepositional disturbance, for example, movement of dried macroremains by rodents. Microfossil residues recovered directly from surfaces of artifacts used for crop processing, cooking, or consumption provide clear associations. Agriculture is also identified through its consequences. Plants were domesticated by forgers in the Early Holocene. It took 1000–6000 years, depending on the region, for farming to become a mainstay of life, and for Neolithic or Formative cultures to appear. Successful, expanding Neolithic populations sometimes carried agriculture from primary centers into areas occupied by foragers, incorporating those people or pushing them into environments not suited for agriculture. In other cases individual crops spread and were accepted by foragers, sometimes followed by local domestications.

Other Approaches to Investigating Domestication and Agriculture We would understand less about the origins of plant domestication and agriculture without data from the biological and agricultural sciences. The likely area of origin for a domesticate may be inferred from geographic distributions of ancestral and related wild species, as determined by DNA and molecular studies of plants. Ideally, early archaeological remains correspond to the probable origin area, but sometimes domesticates are only documented once they spread into environments with better preservation or a longer history of research. Plant-breeding studies, experiments on harvesting wild grains, and study of domestication processes are among the other contributions from the biological and agricultural sciences (see DNA: Ancient; Modern, and Archaeology). A primary result of agriculture is change in diet from wild foods to domesticated plants. This dietary shift has consequences that leave their marks on the human skeleton, and provide information on the timing and nature of the transition. Diet change is studied through stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis, trace element analysis, and analysis of nonspecific indicators of stress, including dental caries (see Chemical Analysis Techniques; Health, Healing, and Disease; Trace Element Analysis).

The ‘Where’, ‘What’, and ‘When’ of Plant Domestication and Agriculture A useful starting point is Harlan’s proposal that there were three independent systems of plant domestication, each with a center and a noncenter: Near Eastern center and sub-Sahara Africa noncenter; north China center and Southeast Asia/south Pacific noncenter; and Mesoamerican center and South American noncenter (Figure 1). As knowledge has grown, centers have become larger, and within noncenters the origins of some crops can be pinpointed. Agriculture emerged independently and contemporaneously among foragers within these three systems. There were multiple independent plant domestications within regions in some cases, and movement of ideas and/or plants in others. When we consider our current understanding of the origins and movements of domesticates, it becomes apparent that some are linked by common geographic origin and complementary dietary and subsistence roles. The Near Eastern cereals and pulses provide one example. There are also cases in which suites of domesticates formed and re-formed under different environmental conditions. An example of this is the

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Figure 1 Centers and noncenters of agricultural origins: A1, Near East center; A2, African noncenter: B1, North Chinese center; B2, Southeast Asian and South Pacific noncenter; C1, Mesoamerican center; C2, South American noncenter. From Harlan JR (1992) Crops and Man (2nd edn.). Madison, Wisconsin: American Society of Agronomy.

New World maize–beans–squash suite: maize, domesticated once in western Mexico, occurs in combination with four species of beans and five species of squashes (Figure 2). How long did domestication take? For cereals, estimates based on experimental harvesting and planting range from 20–200 to 1000 years. For any seedpropagated domesticate, there were key changes in seed dispersal and competition in the agricultural field that had to become fixed genetically. For domesticates propagated vegetatively using stem or tuber cuttings, domestication was likely rapid: experiments on yam suggest less than 10 years. Domestication was rapid enough to be virtually ‘invisible’ archaeologically. Calibrated BC radiocarbon dates (cal BC) will be used to facilitate comparisons among regions. Dates designated cal* have been estimated graphically. Near East (West Asia) and Sub-Saharan Africa

First domestications: 9000–8500 cal BC The earliest evidence of plant domestication in the Near East comes from the Levant (eastern Mediterranean), a region of winter rainfall and marked seasonality (see Tables 1 and 2). Plants domesticated by sedentary or near-sedentary foragers include the domesticated cereals barley, einkorn, and emmer; the pulses pea,

chickpea, lentil, and bitter vetch; and the fiber flax. Genetic evidence suggests that the ‘founder crop’ cereals were domesticated once or very few times. The Pre-pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) or early Prepottery Neolithic B (PPNB), 9000–8500 cal BC, was pivotal in the emergence of crop-based subsistence. This was the time period between the appearance of intensive wild plant use (wild cereals, lentil, bitter vetch, flax, tree fruits) at Natufian sites like Ohalo II, Abu Hureyra, and Mureybit, and abundant evidence for domesticated plants in the PPNB (see Table 2). This timing supports the thesis that climatic instability in the Early Holocene was an essential factor in the shift to domesticated cereals (see Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant). First expansions: 8000–6500 cal BC The founder crop suite was adopted in its entirety or in subsets in the rest of the Fertile Crescent and adjoining areas. By the PPNB it had spread northwest and east into the uplands of Anatolia (eastern Turkey) and the Zagros mountains (Iraq, Iran) where goat and sheep pastoralism developed, by sea to Cyprus and Crete, and into the Balkans and Greece (see Tables 1 and 2) (see Animal Domestication). The founder crop suite was suitable for expansion, providing a balanced diet.

Giant ragweed, sunflower Erect knotweed Marshelder, chenopod Maygrass, little barley

60⬚ N

Grape, olive, pea, bread wheat, fig, rye Barley, bitter vetch, chickpea, date palm, flax Einkorn, emmer, grasspea, lentil, faba bean

Oats Squash Soybean

Cotton Chenopod, amaranth Bean (tepary)

30⬚ N

Sweet potato Cocoyam, sapodilla Achira, chile pepper Arrowroot, avocado Llerén, jack bean Tobacco, cacao

Squash Maize

Bean (common and lima) Squash

0⬚

Barnyard millet Broomcorn millet Foxtail millet Rice (japonica)

Pearl millet Sorghum

Adzuki bean Kodo millet, green gram Little millet, black gram

Manioc

Squash, bean (common) African rice Groundnut Okra

Yam Cotton Bean (lima) Jack bean Squash

30⬚ S

180⬚

120⬚ W

90⬚ W

60⬚ W

30⬚ W

Finger millet Tef, enset

Banana Taro

Hyacinth bean ?

Bean (common) Peanut Chile pepper Coca

Breadfruit, coconut Yam, aroids

Bottle gourd Cowpea

Oil palm, yams

0⬚

Figure 2 Areas of origin of selected important domesticated plants. Figure drawn by Kristin Smart.

30⬚ E

60⬚ E

90⬚ E

120⬚ E

150⬚ E

180⬚

PLANT DOMESTICATION 1825

150⬚ W 60⬚ S

Potato Oca Ullucu Squash Jicama Quinoa

?

Rice (indica)

1826 PLANT DOMESTICATION Table 1 Crops of the Near East and Africa Common name

Scientific name

Use

Near Eastern crops Barley Bitter vetch Bread wheat Chickpea Date palm Einkorn wheat Emmer wheat Faba (broad) bean Fig Flax Grape Grasspea Lentil Oats Olive Pea Rye

Hordeum vulgare Vicia ervilia Triticum aestivum Cicer arietinum Phoenix dactylifera Triticum monococcum Triticum turgidum Vicia faba Ficus carica Linum usitatissimum Vitis vinifera Lathyrus sativus Lens culinaris Avena sativa Olea europaea Pisum sativum Secale cereale

Grain Pulse Grain Pulse Fruit Grain Grain Pulse Fruit Fiber Fruit Pulse Pulse Grain Oil Pulse Grain

African crops African rice Bambara groundnut Bottle gourd Cowpea Enset Finger millet Hyacinth bean Oil palm Okra Pearl millet Sorghum Teff Yam, white Yam, yellow

Oryza glaberrima Voandzeia subterranea Lagenaria siceraria Vigna unguiculata Ensete ventricosa Eleusine coracana Lablab niger Elaeis guineensis Abelmoschus esculentus Pennisetum glaucum Sorghum bicolor Eragrostis tef Dioscorea rotundata Dioscorea cayenensis

Grain Pulse Container Pulse Starch Grain Pulse Oil Vegetable Grain Grain Grain Root/tuber Root/tuber

These early expansions probably represent movements of farmers who replaced or assimilated local foragers (Figure 3). Cyprus and Crete Excavations on Cyprus have identified Neolithic sites, such as Mylouthkia, that date to the early PPNB (c. 8800–8400 cal BC) and document the introduction of domesticated cereals, domestic pig, and wild cattle, sheep, and goat, probably from Syria. By the late PPNB (7500–6500 cal BC), there is a substantial Neolithic presence. Khirokitia, for example, has dozens of stone-walled circular houses (see Table 2). The site of Knossos (Table 2) documents that Crete was colonized by farmers about 7000 cal BC. The relationship between the farming populations of Crete and those of mainland Greece is unclear. The first dispersals of crops westward may have been by sea directly to the islands, rather than through Anatolia. Central and Western Anatolia, Greece, Balkans The earliest farming communities in central and western

Anatolia date to middle PPNB (8400–7500 cal BC), and share many characteristics with PPNB sites in the Levant (see Table 2). The lack of PPNA sites, and the sudden appearance of large PPNB-like villages, suggests an influx of farmers. Domesticated animals are lacking. The spread of agriculture into Greece resembles the western Anatolia situation, a late PPNB (7500–6500 cal. BC) introduction by migrants (see Table 2). The relationship between local foraging populations and the earliest Neolithic settlements is unknown. At Franchthi Cave, for example, wild plant foods characterizing the Mesolithic period were replaced suddenly by domesticated animals and plants. Craniometric data, showing high homogeneity among Early Neolithic skeletons, support the idea that colonizing farmers originated from central Anatolia, and entered Greece and the Balkans through western Anatolia. Domesticated plants appeared relatively late in the Balkans. Neolithic sites resemble those of Anatolia and Greece and overlap temporally with Mesolithic sites. The incoming farmers at sites such as Anza, Obre, and Slatina brought the founder-crop package. Broomcorn millet, introduced from the Ukraine or central Asia, which was present by the Late Neolithic (see Table 2). Neolithic sites in the eastern Mediterranean cluster on water-retentive soils, such as alluvial deposits and lake edges, enhancing crop success under the Mediterranean climatic regime. Plant cultivation was a small-scale activity; there was little impact on vegetation before 4500 cal* BC. Spread of Farming into Western, Central, and Northern Europe and Northern Africa: 6500–4000 cal BC There is debate about the relationship between incoming farmers, who often founded villages in locations distinctive from forager settlements, and resident Mesolithic foragers. How much and what kinds of interactions occurred? Were foragers assimilated or replaced? Were domesticates introduced and accepted by Mesolithic peoples, in the absence of migration? In Europe, it appears that a mixture of processes occurred, with rapid spread of farmers along the northern Mediterranean coast, into the Danube Valley, and into Germany and the low countries, but slower spread, with Mesolithic population involvement, in western Europe and the colder Atlantic and Baltic coastlines (see Tables 1 and 2). Two important events contributed to the expansion of agriculture out of the eastern Mediterranean and southeastern Europe: regional episodes of resource shortfall caused by land degradation, and increasing importance of pastoralism and cultivation of pulses

PLANT DOMESTICATION 1827 Table 2 Selected archaeological sites from the Near East, Mediterranean, Europe, and Africa Location

Site

Crops (domesticated unless indicated otherwise)

Dates (associated)*

Near East

Abu Hureyra Abu Hureyra Abu Hureyra

Wild plants Rye Einkorn, emmer, 2-rowed barley, 6-rowed barley, naked barley, lentil, chickpea Wild plants Wild plants Emmer, 2-rowed barley (either wild or domesticated) Einkorn, emmer, two-rowed barley, lentil, pea, chickpea, flax Emmer, pea, lentil, bitter vetch, chickpea, flax Einkorn, emmer, 2-rowed barley, naked barley Einkorn, emmer, barley, pig Einkorn, emmer, 6-rowed barley, lentil, flax

11200–10500 cal* BC

Ohalo II Mureybit Aswad Jericho

Cyprus

Crete Anatolia

Cayonu Ali Kosh Mylouthkia Cap AndreasKastros Khirokitia Knossos Hacilar Asikli Ho¨yu¨k Can Hasan III C ¸ atal Ho¨yu¨k

Greece Balkans

Franchthi Cave Franchthi Cave Anza Obre Slatina

Italy

Spain

S. Central Europe Egypt

Sudan Cameroon Uganda

Gomolava Grotta dell’Uzzo Rendina Scamuso Coveta de L’Or Cueva de los Murcielagos Hienheim Ulm-Eggingen Nabta Playa Fayum Merimde Kadero 1 Nkang Munsa sediment core

Einkorn, emmer, 6-rowed barley, lentil, pea Bread wheat, cattle, pigs, sheep, goat Einkorn, emmer, barley, lentil Einkorn, emmer, free-threshing wheat, 2-rowed barley, lentil, bitter vetch, pea Einkorn, emmer, 2-rowed barley, rye, lentil, bitter vetch Einkorn, emmer, free-threshing wheat, barley, pea, bitter vetch wild plants Emmer, two-rowed barley Einkorn, emmer, free-threshing wheat, 6-rowed barley, lentil, bitter vetch, pea Einkorn, emmer, free-threshing wheat, 6-rowed barley, lentil, bitter vetch, pea Einkorn, emmer, free-threshing wheat, 6-rowed barley, lentil, bitter vetch, pea Broomcorn millet Einkorn, emmer, lentil, barley Wheat, barley Einkorn, emmer, hulled barley, lentil, pea Einkorn, emmer, free-threshing wheat, hulled 6-rowed barley, naked 6-rowed barley Emmer, free-threshing wheat, naked 6-rowed barley Einkorn, emmer, barley, flax, poppy, pea, lentil Einkorn, emmer, barley, flax, poppy, pea, lentil Wild plants Emmer, 2-rowed barley, 6-rowed barley, flax Emmer, 6-rowed barley, lentil, pea, flax Wild sorghum (cultivated) Banana Banana

Dates (direct)*

10700 cal BC 8750–7500 cal* BC c. 20500 cal* BC 10500–8750 cal* BC 9000–8750 cal* BC 8300–7500 cal* BC 8200–7700 cal* BC c. 8000 cal* BC c. 8800–8400 cal BC 7500–6500 cal BC 7500–6500 cal BC 7000 cal BC 8400–7500 cal BC 8400–7500 cal BC 7500–6500 cal BC 7500–6500 cal BC

c. 6900 cal BC 6000–5757 cal* BC 5750 cal* BC 5800–5750 cal* BC 4800–4500 cal* BC 6250–5750 cal* BC 6000–5700 cal* BC 6000–5700 cal* BC 5500–5300 cal* BC 5300–4500 cal* BC 5300–4750 cal* BC 5500–4500 cal* BC ca. 6750 cal* BC 5750–5000 cal* BC 5800–5400 cal* BC c. 5000 cal* BC 1st millennium BC cal 3220 cal BC

*Calibration estimated graphically.

as fodder. Both occurred in the context of increases in human and animal populations. These forces fueled site abandonments, population dispersals, and the emergence of pastoral mobility on the edges of settled areas. Western Mediterranean Neolithic populations spread, likely by sea, into Albania and Italy by 6000 cal BC. Farmers reached southern France and the Iberian Peninsula between 5800 and 5400 cal BC.

Throughout the region, Neolithic populations settled where Mesolithic populations were sparse. Neolithic sites are more ephemeral than in the Near East since timber, rather than mud brick, was used for most construction. Neolithic and Mesolithic settlements overlap temporally – by as much as 1000 years in Portugal. Craniometric study of skeletons from sites in the western Mediterranean shows greater heterogeneity among Neolithic groups than seen in southeastern Europe. This suggests the spread of farming

1828 PLANT DOMESTICATION

Figure 3 The spread of the founder suite of Near Eastern crops into Europe and North Africa; dates are calibrated BC. Figure drawn by Kristin Smart.

was not a simple case of population migration (see Table 2 and Figure 3). Central, North, and Northwestern Europe After 5400 cal BC, while farming was spreading along the Mediterranean coast, the founder crops, cattle, and perhaps pig spread northward up the Danube valley and through Europe north of the Alps to Germany and the Paris basin. This followed a 600-year standstill on the edge of the Hungarian Plain, perhaps due to soil conditions and climate (see Figure 3) (see Europe: Neolithic; Europe, Northern and Western: Early Neolithic Cultures). This expansion was associated with the Linear Pottery Culture (LBK), characterized by timber longhouses, incised pottery, association with fertile loess soils, and floodplain-edge locations for villages. The LBK appeared around 5700–5500 cal* BC in south-central Europe (see Table 2). While there is strong evidence for expansions of populations from western Hungary, relations with Mesolithic peoples are debated, as is the ‘package’ nature of the introduction. In north-central Europe, 5500–5000 cal BC saw the appearance of several phases of LBK and the establishment of farming in upland loess basins. Sites with botanical remains are numerous, and document the full suite of founder crops.

There was another slowdown in the expansion of agriculture into the coastal plain of northern Europe and the British Isles (see Figure 3). Entrenched Mesolithic populations and less favorable soil and climate may have slowed the spread. Domesticates adapted to Mediterranean climate, where the limiting factor was summer drought, had to adjust to the cold of northern Europe. Mesolithic peoples adopted Neolithic traits, like pottery and stone adzes, or were incorporated into farming communities (see Europe, Northern and Western: Mesolithic Cultures). A complex situation existed in the final expansion of agriculture into Britain, Ireland, and southern Scandinavia. Did Mesolithic foragers accept the agricultural package, incorporate pieces of it, adapting them for their own purposes, or was agriculture established by separate Neolithic populations? All these processes may have been at work. Understanding the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition or relationship is complicated by chronology and context issues and submergence of Late Mesolithic coastlines around Britain and Ireland. The very uniform characteristics of the Middle Neolithic (substantial houses, tombs, farming economy of cereals and domestic animals), established by 4000 cal* BC in southern and eastern England and by 3750 cal* BC in Ireland, may color our perspectives on the nature of the earliest Neolithic (c. 4400–3750 cal* BC).

PLANT DOMESTICATION 1829

Egypt and North Africa The fertile Nile valley was once considered a homeland of agriculture. We now know that no ancestors of Near Eastern crops grew there, but once the valley filled with rich sediments after sea level stabilization (6500–5500 cal BC), it became a perfect area to grow the founder crops. Neolithic sites appeared suddenly in the Nile valley between 5500 and 5000 cal BC (see Figure 3). To the south, the monsoonal summer rainfall climate of Sudan inhibited the spread of the founder crops for millenniums. West of the Nile are sites with pottery that predate this introduction. More than 120 wild plants, including wild sorghum, were recovered from the Nabta Playa site, in association with evidence for cattle management (see Table 2). Genetic research suggests cattle could have been domesticated in North Africa. Pastoral peoples spread along the North African coastline beginning around 5500 cal BC; arrival of cereal agriculture is less clear, with a current date of 2000 cal BC (see Animal Domestication; Africa, North: Sahara, Eastern). Sub-Saharan Africa Plant domestication in subSaharan Africa was apparently late, some 3000 years after Near Eastern crops appeared in Egypt. Limited data from the Sahara, the Sahel, East Africa, and southern Africa suggest agriculture began around 2300 cal* BC in the Sahara, and much later elsewhere. This picture is likely biased by poor preservation, however, and limited numbers of excavations practicing systematic botanical recovery. Finger millet, sorghum, and pearl millet must have been domesticated earlier: all were introduced into South Asia by 2300 cal* BC, with finger millet present by 3000 cal* BC. Plant domestication in the drier parts of Africa apparently followed the emergence of pastoralism (see Figure 2). The grasslands and parklands south of the Sahara are considered the homeland for sorghum and pearl millet. These zones extended northward under the wetter conditions of the Early Holocene. The more mobile lifestyle of cattle pastoralists was perhaps a better fit to plant collection than cultivation. Increasing desiccation of the Sahara after 3000 cal BC caused herders to move south, triggering plant domestication in the Sahel and savanna regions. Evidence to test this model is currently lacking. Modern plant distributions establish two other zones of domestication: the forest–savanna boundary in West Africa (African rice, yam, oil palm, cowpea, bambara groundnut) and the Ethiopian highlands (finger millet, tef, enset) (see Figure 2). Earliest finds of domesticated plants are 2000–1500 cal BC for pearl millet and 1250–1 cal* BC for sorghum and African rice. Morphologically wild sorghum may

have been cultivated at Kadero 1 in east Africa by 5000 cal* BC (see Table 2). Pearl millet was spread rapidly into West Africa as part of a mixed economy of cattle-keeping and foraging. Important crops that became mainstays of west African agriculture – sorghum, African rice, cowpea, bambara groundnut, and okra – appeared between 500 BC–AD 500. We know little about plant domestication in the forests of Africa. Sediment cores taken near the Munsa site in Uganda document banana phytoliths at 3220 cal. BC. Bananas were domesticated in New Guinea by 8000 cal BC and introduced into eastern Africa. Banana was likely grown by people already practicing agriculture, and familiar with vegetative propagation. The prehistory of the African yam is unknown; banana is a logical companion plant. Pollen evidence from west and west-central Africa documents increases in oil palms, useful plants that are known colonizers of agricultural fields, after 1200 cal BC (see Tables 1 and 2) (see Africa, Central: Foragers, Farmers, and Metallurgists). East, South, and Southeast Asia

This region gave rise to important grains as well as root and tuber domesticates (see Tables 3 and 4). We know more about rice than taro or yam, however, because of the greater likelihood that seeds, rather than root/tuber macroremains, will survive archaeologically. Microfossils are beginning to fill in the picture of vegetatively propagated crops. East Asia: China, Korea, Japan Early domestication in China: 8000–6500 cal BC Agricultural villages appeared in the Yellow River and Yangtze River valleys in north and central China around 7500–7000 cal* BC (see Table 4). There is evidence for cultural continuity in each region from the terminal Pleistocene to the early Holocene. Exploitation of wild cereals – foxtail millet in the Yellow River region and wild rice in the Yangtze – characterized subsistence prior to agriculture; pottery, which predated agriculture, would have facilitated cereal cooking. In the Yellow River valley the earliest Neolithic sites are large: at Jiahu over 300 pits and 30 house floors were excavated. The cultural complexity of Jiahu suggests earlier farming communities existed. Foxtail millet was domesticated locally from green foxtail (Setaria viridis). North China was also the home of domesticated broomcorn millet, documented beginning at 6500 cal BC. The occurrence of rice at Jiahu and other Yellow River sites suggests cultural influences from the Yangtze region, one homeland of

1830 PLANT DOMESTICATION Table 3 Crops of East, South, and Southeast Asia Common name

Scientific name

Use

Adzuki bean Banana

Vigna angularis Musa, Eumusa section

Barnyard millet (sawa) Black gram (urd bean) Breadfruit Broomcorn millet Cabbage tree Candlenut tree Coconut Elephant ear taro Elephant yam

Echinochloa colona

Pulse Starchy fruit Grain

Vigna mungo

Pulse

Artocarpus altilis Panicum miliaceum Cordyline fruticosa Aleurites moluccana Cocos nucifera Alocasia macrorrhiza Amorphophallus paeoniifolius Setaria italica Cyrtosperma merkusii Vigna radiata

Fruit Grain Fruit Fruit Fruit, fiber Root/tuber Root/tuber

Paspalum scrobiculatum Panicum sumatrense Oryza sativa Oryza sativa Glycine max Colocasia esculenta Dioscorea alata

Grain Grain Grain Grain Pulse Root/tuber Root/tuber

Foxtail millet Giant swamp taro Green gram (mungbean) Kodo millet Little millet Rice, indica Rice, japonica Soybean Taro Yam

Grain Root/tuber Pulse

rice (see Figure 2) (see Asia, East: China, Neolithic Cultures). Early farming communities in the middle Yangtze River valley, such as Pengtoushan and Bashidang, were also substantial villages. Rice was present, and at Bashidang has been identified as domesticated. Rice was domesticated by 8000 cal* BC, as indicated by the Diatonghuan phytolith study, which also provides evidence that wild rice grew in the middle Yangtze. A core from nearby Poyang Lake also documented Oryza in late Pleistocene sediments (c. 13000 cal* BC), and wild rice was present in the lower Yangtze in the early Holocene (see Table 4). Genetic research indicates that rice was domesticated twice from the Oryza rufipogon–O. nivera complex. Japonica rice, commonly grown in upland areas, was domesticated in China; indica rice, grown in lowland settings, arose independently in eastern India, Myanmar, or Thailand (see Figure 2). Spread of agriculture: South China, Korea, Japan Neolithic villages appeared in South China between 5000–3000 cal BC. Agriculture likely spread along two axes, from the middle Yangtze south to Hong Kong, and along the coast from the lower Yangtze.

Table 4 Selected archaeological sites from East, South, and SE Asia Location

Site

Crops (domesticated unless indicated otherwise)

Dates (associated)*

China

Jiahu, North China

6561–5529 cal BC

6995–6000 cal BC 7000–5500 cal BC 12 000–11 000 cal* BC

Rice

9250–8000 cal* BC

Rice Rice Foxtail millet, broomcorn millet

11 900–11 000 cal BC 5000 cal* BC

Korea

Xinglonggou, Northeast China Pengtoushan, Central China Bashidang, Central China Diatonghuan (Wangdong), Central China Diatonghuan (Wangdong), Central China Yangtze River palaeo-estuary core Zenpiyan, South China Tongsamdong

Wild and domesticated rice and foxtail millet, nuts, fruits Foxtail millet, broomcorn millet Wild or domesticated rice Rice Wild rice

India, Pakistan

Thailand New Guinea

Oun 1 Various Various Mehrgarh

Kot Diji Harappa Khok Phanom Di Ban Chiang Kuk swamp

*Calibration made graphically.

Rice Soybean Rice 6-row barley, hulled emmer, einkorn, 2-rowed barley, possibly durum or bread wheat, date Banana Rice Rice Rice Colocasia taro, banana

Dates (direct)*

6250 cal* BC

3360 cal BC (foxtail) 1950 cal BC 1000–900 cal BC 3000–1500 cal BC 7000 cal BC

after 2500 cal* BC after 2750 cal* BC 2300–2000 cal BC 2300–2000 cal BC 8220–7910 cal BC

PLANT DOMESTICATION 1831

Rice is documented by 5000 cal* BC. Neolithic villages with rice and foxtail millet appeared in Taiwan after 3500 cal BC. There are marked similarities in the material culture of Neolithic villages in southern China, suggesting population expansion. The degree to which local foragers were assimilated or pushed aside by farmers is unknown. Rice agriculture also spread north from central China into Korea where, by 1250–500 cal* BC, evidence of intensive paddy (wet-field) agriculture is present. Rice is dated by association to 3000–1500 cal BC, and directly to 1950 cal. BC. Sites of the Middle Chulmun through Middle Mumun (3000–1000 cal BC) document that foxtail and broomcorn millet were introduced and grown as dry-field crops prior to the introduction of rice, and continued to be used after wet-field production was established. Foxtail millet is direct-dated to 3360 cal BC, and soybean was present by 1000–900 cal BC (see Table 4). The Jomon culture of Japan (14 750–500 cal* BC) was characterized throughout its long history by sedentary forager-fishers who utilized a broad range of plant resources. Some plants were cultivated/managed, including herbaceous plants like bottle gourd, perilla, Vigna beans, burdock, yam, and goosefoot. Landscapes were altered to encourage nut species like chestnut and walnut. Rice, barley, and several millets appeared around 3750–2500 cal* BC, and became more common after 1750 cal* BC. Introduced crops contributed little to subsistence in relation to nuts and local herbaceous plants, however, until Yayoi immigrants from Korea introduced wet paddy rice agriculture between 1250–500 cal* BC (see Asia, East: Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures; Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers). South Asia: Pakistan, India The South Asian crop complex originated in four regions: the Near East (einkorn, emmer, bread wheat, barley), Africa (sorghum, pearl millet, cowpea, hyacinth bean, finger millet), East Asia (rice, foxtail millet, broomcorn millet), and locally (the pulses black and green gram, kodo, and little millet) (see Figure 2). Near Eastern founder crops and caprines dispersed eastwards across the Iranian Plateau to Central and Southern Asia between 8000–6750 cal* BC, either through population migration or local acceptance of domesticates (see Figure 3). By 7000 cal BC Near Eastern crops are documented at the preceramic Mehrgarh site in western Pakistan, with native Zebu cattle, sheep, and goat appearing near the end of the preceramic. Mehrgarh is located near the eastern limit of the winter rainfall zone, to which the Near

Eastern founder crops and farming practices were adapted (see Table 4) (see Asia, South: Neolithic Cultures). African finger millet appeared in South Asia at 3250 cal* BC, joining indigenous little millet as part of a summer cultivation system. Asian foxtail millet appeared about the same time. Introduced millets played minor roles in agriculture initially, with little impact on farming systems. The three summercultivated millets spread into the Indus River valley, where subsistence was oriented towards wintercropping. By the end of the Mature Harappan Phase (2600–1900 cal BC) of the Harappan civilization of Pakistan and northwest India, winter-cropped wheat and barley and summer-cropped millets were grown (see Table 4). Multicropping became established, and millets spread throughout South Asia (see Asia, South: Indus Civilization). The African cereals sorghum and pearl millet were introduced around 2500 cal* BC. Both produce large seeds, and sorghum soon assumed a dominant position. East Asian broomcorn and barnyard millet also appeared around this time. Early Neolithic villages practicing a mixed economy of Near Eastern crops and rice date to 3000 cal BC in the Ganges valley in eastern India. The Neolithic of inland peninsular India is also late, around 3500 cal BC. It was based on Near Eastern cereals, native legumes and millets, and by 2000 cal BC, African pearl millet and sorghum (see Asia, South: Ganges Valley). Domesticated rice was likely present in eastern India by 3000 cal BC, but since wild rice grows there, it is sometimes unclear whether archaeological rice remains are domesticated or wild. Domesticated rice was present after c. 2750 cal* BC at Harappa. As discussed earlier, indica rice was likely domesticated in eastern India, Myanmar, or Thailand. Rice is documented much earlier in Thailand (see below), and perhaps spread into eastern India as part of a Neolithic expansion. Banana was introduced into South Asia at 2500 cal* BC, demonstrating another influence on the development of the complex South Asian agricultural system. Southeast Asia, New Guinea, Pacific The picture of plant domestication and agriculture in this diverse region is evolving, especially as microfossil data accumulate. New Guinea appears to have an independent history of plant domestication, with agriculture a secondary development elsewhere. Whether or not indica rice domestication was primary is unresolved, as is the extent to which local foragers contributed to the development of agriculture.

1832 PLANT DOMESTICATION

Figure 4 Traditional agriculture in Bali. Use of animal traction and the plow were technological advances associated with intensification of agriculture in many areas of the Old World. Photo credit: Edmund Lowe.

Mainland Southeast Asia By 3000 cal* BC or slightly later, agricultural villages and rice agriculture were present in much of mainland Southeast Asia. A welldefined incised and stamped pottery style associated with rice cultivation links the Neolithic of southern China, Vietnam, and Thailand. Cattle, buffalo, and pigs were likely domesticated in the late Neolithic (see Figure 4). Domesticated rice is documented at Khok Phanom Di and Ban Chiang in Thailand, in contexts dated 2300–2000 cal BC (see Table 4). Archaeological evidence is currently lacking for the native root crops of this region, making it impossible to evaluate the role these played in early agriculture. Environmental records from Thailand indicate that food production predated the Neolithic, and that agricultural intensification was a two-phase process that varied temporally among regions. Indications of food production – burning, disturbance of forests and grasslands – are documented at 6750–5750 cal* BC in northeast and central Thailand, and at 5000–3750 cal* BC in southern Thailand. In the Khok Phanom Di area, disturbance indicators date to 9250–6750 cal* BC, with rice and rice weeds identified at 8000–6750 cal* BC. Agriculture was late in northwest Thailand, with no evidence of human impact on landscapes until AD 100–300 (see Table 4). Island Southeast Asia, Pacific Agriculture was introduced into this region by expanding Neolithic populations, beginning after 2500–2000 cal BC in the Philippines and Indonesia. Between 2000 and 800 cal BC Lapita populations, producing related forms of redslipped and stamped or incised pottery, shell artifacts,

and stone adzes spread over 10 000 km to the central Pacific. After an apparent standstill there at 800 cal BC, eastern Micronesia was settled by 500 cal BC–AD 1, Polynesia between AD 600–1250, and New Zealand by AD 1200 (see Migrations: Pacific). There is no evidence that rice was introduced beyond the Philippines and Borneo; agriculture in the Pacific was based on tubers and tree fruits, including aroids (taro, elephant ear taro, giant swamp taro, elephant yam), yams, sweet potato, banana, breadfruit, coconut, cabbage tree, candlenut tree, and gourd. There are too few botanical data to infer the sequence of introductions and relative contributions of crops on different islands. Starch residues and pollen document non-Colocasia aroids (likely elephant ear taro or elephant yam) in eastern Micronesia by AD 100 and in southeastern Polynesia by AD 800. New Guinea Evidence from Kuk swamp indicates that plant domestication began independently in Highland New Guinea during the early to mid-Holocene, prior to the earliest agricultural influences from Southeast Asia. New Guinea was not isolated – bananas spread to Africa and India – but the practice of mounded cultivation at Kuk is distinctive. Raised island beds are documented by 4950–4440 cal BC. Forest clearance, use of fire, and disturbed environments were widespread after 5000–4500 cal BC, resulting in establishment of an anthropogenic landscape. Colocasia taro and Musa (Eumusa section) bananas were cultivated at Kuk beginning during Phase 1 (8220–7910 cal BC). This is the earliest evidence for

PLANT DOMESTICATION 1833

these vegetatively reproduced crops (see Table 4) (see Oceania: New Guinea and Melanesia). New World

Plant domestication and agriculture began in the early Holocene in the Americas (see Tables 5 and 6). There are constraints on our understanding of these processes, the most formidable being a paucity of archaeological data for regions identified on the basis of genetics and plant distributions as areas of origin of major crops. Other challenges include the common occurrences of multiple domestications, and the mobility (low archaeological visibility) of populations engaged in early planting and harvesting. Finally, there are many domesticates from the lowland Neotropics for which little is known about the wild ancestors (see Figure 2). Mesoamerica The lowlands of Mexico and Guatemala were home to maize, the most important seed crop of the New World, squashes, beans, cotton, chili peppers, and a variety of tree crops. This is a larger domestication center than the Near East, and also differs from that center in that crops did not disperse as a ‘package’ (see Americas, Central: Early Cultures of Middle America). Early evidence for domestication The best-known data come from two caves, Coxcotlan and Guila´ Naquitz, located in the semi-arid highlands of central Mexico (see Table 6). While not located in the area of origin of maize – the lowlands of west Mexico – the excellent preservation of crop remains in these dry caves has influenced perceptions of the history of plant domestication. Maize, squash, and bottle gourd first appeared at Coxcotlan during the Coxcatlan phase, 5800–4400 cal* BC; by 4550 cal* BC tree fruits were present whose dispersal and maintenance must have depended on humans, as were large quantities of Setaria grass. Another squash, common bean, tepary bean, and chili pepper appeared over the next 2000 years. The antiquity of domesticates in the Coxcotlan sequence has largely not stood up to direct-dating of crop remains. Coxcatlan-phase maize was direct-dated no earlier than 3600 cal BC, common beans no earlier than 300 cal BC, and tepary bean remains from later levels are no older than 440 cal BC. Only bottle gourd was as ancient as expected from site stratigraphy. Guila´ Naquitz also documents early domesticated squash, possibly chili pepper, and bottle gourd. Direct dates confirmed that squash and bottle gourd were ancient. Maize cobs not recovered from the welldefined living floors at the site have been directdated to 4280–4210 cal BC (see Table 6).

Table 5 Selected crops of the New World Common name

Scientific name

Use

Achira Amaranth Arrowroot Avocado Bean, common Bean, lima Bean, tepary Cacao Chenopod

Canna edulis Amaranthus cruentus Maranta arundinacea Persea americana Phaseolus vulgaris Phaseolus lunatus Phaseolus acutifolius Theobroma cacao Chenopodium nuttaliae; C. berlandieri Capsicum spp. Erythroxylon coca, E. novogranatense Xanthosoma sagittifolium Gossypium barbadense, G. hirsutum Polygonum erectum Ambrosia trifida Psidium guajava Canavalia plagiosperma, C. ensiformis Pachyrrhizus ahipa Hordeum pusillum Calathea allouia Pouteria lucuma Zea mays Manihot esculenta Iva annua Phalaris caroliniana Oxalis tubersosa Inga spp. Arachis hypogaea Solanum tuberosum Chenopodium quinoa Manilkara achras Annona spp.

Root/tuber Seeds Root/tuber Fruit Legume Legume Legume Fruit Seeds

Seeds Seeds Fruit Legume

Cucurbita pepo Cucurbita spp.

Seeds Fruit,

Helianthus annuus Ipomoea batatas Nicotiana rustica, N. tabacum Ullucus tuberosus Dioscorea trifida Pouteria campechianum

Seeds Root/tuber Stimulant

Chili peppers (ajı´) Coca Cocoyam Cotton Erect knotweed Giant ragweed Guava Jack bean Jicama Little barley Llere´n Lucuma Maize Manioc Marshelder Maygrass Oca Pacae Peanut Potato Quinoa Sapodilla Soursop, custard apple Squash, pepo Squash container Sunflower Sweet potato Tobacco Ullucu Yam Yellow sapote

Spice Stimulant Root/tuber Fiber

Root/tuber Seeds Root/tuber Fruit Grain Root/tuber Seeds Seeds Root/tuber Fruit Legume Root/tuber Seeds Fruit Fruit

Root/tuber Root/tuber Fruit

Direct-dating of maize from highland Mexican sites shows that maize was not especially early there; maize spread first into lowland tropical environments like its west Mexico homeland (see Figure 5). The spread of maize into highland Mexico was likely delayed due to drier, cooler conditions there and the low productivity of early maize in comparison to other resources. Genetic studies suggest that maize was domesticated once, 9000 years ago in west Mexico, and underwent a prolonged domestication

1834 PLANT DOMESTICATION Table 6 Selected New World archaeological sites Location

Site

Crops (domesticated unless indicated otherwise)

Dates (associated)*

Mexico

Coxcotlan Cave

Wild tree fruits, including avocado; wild Setaria grass; Maize, C. pepo, C. mixta squash, bottle gourd Bottle gourd Maize Common bean Phasolus acutifolius Wild tree fruits, cactus, and agave; C. pepo squash, wild or domestic chili pepper, wild bean, bottle gourd Wild bean C. pepo squash Bottle gourd Maize Cultivated Zea Maize Manioc (possibly domesticated) Sunflower, cotton Sunflower Slash and burn indicators Intensification of slash and burn indicators Maize Arrowroot Arrowroot, lleren, bottle gourd, squash Manioc, primitive Zea, maize Maize Maize, Zamia cf. skinneri, Dioscorea, Fabaceae, Maranta cf. arundinacea, manioc, cf. Calathea Maize, cf. Dioscorea, cf. Calathea, cf. Maranta, Fabaceae Squash (directly dated extracts) Lleren, bottle gourd Maize Wild squash in oldest strata, domesticated in later strata Maize, cotton, jack bean Maize, achira, manioc, arrowroot, jack bean Maize Arrowroot, palm, avocado Palm, avocado, arrowroot family Palm, avocado, arrowroot family Maize Maize Maize Potato, manioc, sweet potato, ullucu, jicama Oca, Capsicum chinensis, lucuma, common bean, lima bean Common bean Lima bean Bottle gourd, quinoa, Cucurbita andina Common bean, lucuma, coca, Solanum, maize Cucurbita, Gossypium, Capsicum, achira Squash, quinoa, manioc, ciruela de fraile, peanut Maize Bottle gourd

Before 4550 cal* BC

Coxcotlan Cave Coxcotlan Cave Coxcotlan Cave Coxcotlan Cave Coxcotlan Cave Guila´ Naquitz Cave

Panama

Guila´ Naquitz Cave Guila´ Naquitz Cave Guila´ Naquitz Cave Guila´ Naquitz Cave San Andres site, core San Andres site, core San Andres site, core San Andres site, core San Andres site, core Lake La Yeguada core Lake La Yeguada core Lake La Yeguada core Cueva de los Vampiros Aguadulce Aguadulce Cueva de los Ladrones Gran Chiriquı´ stone tool study Gran Cocle´ stone tool study

Ecuador

Colombia, Andes

Peru

Vegas, site 80 Vegas, site 80 Vegas, site 80 Vegas, site 67 Real Alto Real Alto Loma Alta San Isidro Sauzalito El Recreo Hacienda Lusitania core Hacienda El Dorado core Paramo´ de Pen˜a Negra I Tres Ventanas Cave Guitarrero Cave Guitarrero Cave Guitarrero Cave Ayacucho Caves Ayacucho Caves Ayacucho Caves Quebrada de Las Pircas sites Waynuna Siches complex

Dates (direct)*

5800–4400 cal* BC 5248–5200 cal BC 3600 cal BC 300 cal BC 440 cal BC 10800–7720 cal* BC

6360–6310 cal BC 8020–5828 cal BC 7973–6808 cal BC 4280–4210 cal BC 5100 cal BC 5000 cal BC 4600 cal BC 2500 cal BC 2725–2675 cal BC 5800 cal* BC 5800–3800 cal* BC 4800 cal* BC 7800 cal* BC Ca 5800 cal* BC 5800–5050 cal* BC Ca. 5800 cal* BC 5800–3050 cal* BC

5800–3050 cal* BC 9840–8555 cal BC 8300 cal* BC 5800 cal* BC 10685–6080 cal BC 4500–2250 cal* BC 2800–2400 cal BC 3750–2500 cal* BC 9250–8500 cal* BC 8750–8500 cal* BC 6760–6500 cal* BC Before 3900 cal* BC 5550 cal* BC 7320–4000 cal* BC 9250–6750 cal* BC 9250–8500 cal* BC

5800 cal* BC

430 cal BC 1495–1325 cal BC 6500–5250 cal* BC 5250–3800 cal* BC 3800–2250 cal* BC 7200–6250 cal* BC 2000–1600 cal BC 6750–5000 cal* BC Continued

PLANT DOMESTICATION 1835 Table 6 Continued Location

Argentina

Brazil Colombia, Amazon

Site

Crops (domesticated unless indicated otherwise)

Dates (associated)*

Paloma Chilca 1

Bottle gourd, squash, guava, Phaseolus Bottle gourd, squash, Phaseolus, achira, jicama, jack bean Capsicum, common bean, maize Maize, quinoa, amaranth, oca, achira, ullucu, potato, Cucurbita Forest disturbance Slash and burn indicators, maize Palm, domesticated Cucurbita, lleren, bottle gourd Palm Phytolith extract Maize, manioc, forest disturbance indicators Maize, manioc, cotton, cacao, chile peppers, avocado Slash and burn indicators; maize Intensification of agriculture Maize, common beans Maize Maize, arrowroot, yam, ginger, guapo (root crop) Maize, squash Canna Phaseolus Maize

6500–3750 cal* BC 4500–2900 cal* BC

Huachichocana ChIII NW Argentina, stone tool residue study Geral Lake, lower Amazon Geral Lake, lower Amazon Pen˜a Roja Pen˜a Roja Pen˜a Roja Abeja Abeja

Ecuador, Amazon Venezuela

La Plata Basin Caribbean

Lake Ayauchi core Lake Ayauchi core Parmana Parmana Middle Orinoco, stone tool residue study Los Ajos Los Ajos Los Ajos Sites in Dominican Republic El Jobito site, Dominican Republic Lake Miragoane, Haiti En Bas Saline site, Haiti Maruca site, Puerto Rico Maruca site, Puerto Rico Puerto Ferro site, Puerto Rico Maisabel core, Puerto Rico Laguna Tortuguero core, Puerto Rico Tutu site, US Virgin Islands Three-dog site, Bahamas

8750–7720 cal* BC 4250–1500 cal* BC 4550 cal* BC 1600 cal* BC 8160–8125 cal* BC 8250 cal* BC 6500 cal* BC 3500–2800 cal* BC AD 385–1175 4000 cal* BC 400 cal* BC 1050 cal* BC AD 1000–1500 AD 450–800 2760 cal BC 2050 cal* BC 1300 cal* BC 1700 cal* BC

Maize

AD 1020

Maize Maize Maize, Xanthosoma sagittifolium, cf. Manihot esculenta Maize, cf. Manihot esculenta, sweet potato Maize, cf. Manihot esculenta, cf. Ipomoea batatas, Zamia portoricensis Maize Slash and burn indicators

AD 1000–1500 AD 1200–1500 1500–1000 cal* BC

Maize Maize

AD 1200–1500 AD 800–900

period of 300–1000 years, depending on the size of the initially cultivated populations. Maize evolution continued after its dispersal, and hundreds of distinctive land-races developed. The earliest maize in Mesoamerica to date is documented from a sediment core near the San Andres site on the Gulf coast (5100–5000 cal BC). Maize pollen and/or phytoliths document the crop in south Pacific coastal Mexico, Pacific coastal Guatemala, northern Belize, and Honduras by 3500 cal BC. Maize was carried south through the tropical lowlands prior to this time, however, since it is documented earlier in Panama and Colombia (see below) (see Table 6) (see Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction in the Lowland Neotropics).

Dates (direct)*

800–400 cal* BC 700 cal* BC 785 cal BC and after 3350 cal BC

Emergence of the Formative Domesticates appear in the Mesoamerican highlands in the context of seasonal camps. Populations became less mobile over time; in the Tehuacan valley, for example, by late in the Archaic (4550–2800 cal* BC) hamlet-size sedentary occupations were present. Villages situated along waterways appeared in the Early Formative (1800–1300 cal* BC). In lowland Mesoamerica there was a shift in settlement and subsistence from 2000–800 cal BC, with increasing sedentism, and major investments in monumental architecture. These shifts underlay the emergence of Maya civilization. Lake and swamp cores throughout Mesoamerica document the onset of shifting cultivation between

1836 PLANT DOMESTICATION

60 ⬚ N Bottle gourd

? AD 1-400

?

AD 1-200

2000

AD 450

6100

4200 8000-7000

1700-1500

Maize 5100

3500 AD 450

5800 7250

4000

2400 5800 7200

1600 ?

Manioc 2000 6400 4200-1500

2700

150 ⬚ W

120 ⬚ W

90 ⬚ W

60 ⬚ W

Figure 5 The spread of bottle gourd, maize, and manioc around the New World; dates are calibrated BC. Figure drawn by Kristin Smart.

3800–3050 cal* BC, and establishment of intensive agriculture between 1300–50 cal* BC. Throughout the New World, domesticates first appeared among relatively mobile foragers having little impact on the environment, followed by reduced mobility and increasing environmental impacts (see Figure 6). North America Eastern Woodlands, Northeast, Plains For millennia, foragers in the Eastern Woodlands relied on game and native plant foods, including nuts, fleshy fruits, grains and oil seeds, legumes, and root and tubers. Between 3200–1785 cal BC native species of squash, chenopod, marshelder, and sunflower were domesticated. Maygrass, erect knotweed, little barley, and

giant ragweed were grown and moved outside their native ranges but did not undergo genetic change (see Americas, North: Eastern Woodlands). Over time these crops became increasingly important relative to other plant resources; there was a shift to greater reliance on food production during the Middle Woodland (500–200 BC to AD 200). Maize is direct-dated to AD 1–200, and is likely somewhat earlier. The introduction of maize had little effect on subsistence until AD 900 and after, when it suddenly came to dominate paleoethnobotanical assemblages, and native domesticates declined or disappeared. Common bean was introduced around 1000–1200 AD. Environmental records document landscape modification associated with cultivation beginning around

PLANT DOMESTICATION 1837

Figure 6 Slash and burn. In traditional slash and burn agriculture, burning of vegetation releases nutrients for crops, such as the maize being planted here, and provides evidence for shifting cultivation in palaeoenvironmental records. Photo credit: Deborah M. Pearsall.

2500 cal *BC in the Eastern Woodlands, and document anthropogenic landscapes after 800 AD. Fire was a major tool in altering vegetation for human use. North American domesticated chenopod, pepo squash, and sunflower are closely related to Mesoamerican domesticates, raising the question of the primary or secondary status of domestication in Eastern North America. DNA analysis of wild sunflowers supports separate origins for North American and Mesoamerican lineages, although domestication was contemporaneous in Mexico and Eastern North America (c. 2700 cal BC). There are also two separate lineages of domesticated pepo squashes. North American pepo was domesticated from a wild squash ranging from northeastern Mexico into the Mississippi valley. Mexican pepo squash falls into a separate lineage; the ancestor is unknown. Current data thus indicate that plant domestication in Eastern North America was independent of Mesoamerica (see Figure 2). Agriculture spread into Northeastern North America from the Eastern Woodlands. Domesticates grown included squash (4540–4190 cal BC), sunflower (1300 cal* BC), maize (AD 454–435), tobacco (AD 850– 950), and common bean (AD 1200). Regional differences existed in the impact of these introductions, as well as the importance of chenopod, erect knotweed, little barley, and marshelder. In general, little change occurred until maize was introduced; the period from AD 450–1000 saw the development of mixed economic systems, with intensification of food production based on maize after AD 1000.

Agriculture was also introduced into the Plains, predominantly from the east, but with some influence from the southwest. Archaic (4500–500 cal* BC) subsistence on the Plains was characterized by collection of native annuals; by late in this period, chenopod and others were perhaps cultivated. The earliest directdated domesticates are squash (2218–2142 cal BC), marshelder (628–609 cal BC), and maize (AD 813– 878). Maize was found in contexts dated 4224–2917 cal BC, and in the Middle Woodland (AD 1–400). It is reasonable to assume that maize was introduced around AD 1–400 , since it was present in the east by then (see Figure 5). During the Woodland Period (500 BC to AD 800–900), populations of the Plains became more sedentary, ceramics were introduced, and cultivated plants were increasingly used. The maize-based Plains Village tradition (AD 900–1600) developed out of this foundation (see Americas, North: Plains). Southwest The Mesoamerican domesticates maize, beans (common and tepary), and pepo squash form the core of southwestern agriculture, with cotton and bottle gourd also introduced early on, and other beans and squashes being later arrivals. Indigenous plants also played a role in southwestern agriculture; panic grass, little barley, and amaranth may have been cultivated. The earliest direct-dated domesticates were maize (2050 cal* BC), an unknown amaranth (1000 BC), common bean (1050–550 BC), squash (850 BC), and Amaranthus cruentus (500 BC).

1838 PLANT DOMESTICATION

Cotton was direct-dated to AD 200–400, but was likely introduced earlier. The period between 1500 BC and AD 500, the Early Agricultural Period, was one of change, with the widespread adoption of maize and the beginning of population-growth and aggregation (see Figure 5). Central America Domesticated plants were seen early in Central America, notably Pacific coastal Panama. Central America and Northern South America form a macroregion that is the likely area of origin for domesticated arrowroot, llere´n, cocoyam, sweet potato, achira, avocado, one species of chili, jack bean, and lima bean. Until genetic research narrows the homelands of these crops further, we cannot evaluate whether plant domestication was independent in Panama (see Americas, Central: Lower Central America). Many native wild resources were used throughout prehistory in Central America, including tree fruits, palms, starchy tubers and stems, and grasses. Some were likely cultivated: firing of forests and small-scale land clearance date to 11 050 cal* BC at Lake La Yeguada. Rock shelters and small open-air sites, some located adjacent to alluvial land, date to 11 050– 5800 cal* BC (see Table 6). Arrowroot was the first documented domesticate, dating to 7800 cal* BC at one site and 5800 cal* BC at others. By 5800 cal* BC maize and bottle gourd were introduced, and llere´n and squash were present. Manioc was introduced between 5800–5050 cal* BC (see Figure 5). Slash and burn agriculture is evident beginning around 5800 cal* BC, and intensifies from 5800–3800 cal* BC. During this time (Late Preceramic), stone tool residue studies document zamia (Zamia cf. skinneri) and yam (Dioscorea). With the appearance of the earliest ceramic-producing cultures in Panama (3800–1300 cal* BC), the domesticate list expanded to include sweet potato, yam, canna (cf. Canna), and cacao, and sediment records show increased environmental impacts of agriculture. After 3000 cal* BC, maize and manioc became staples, and increased forest clearance led to declining use of wild resources. Common bean is documented by 350 cal* BC (see Table 6). South American Andes The Andes encompasses deserts, tropical forests, and high elevation environments. The northern Andes (Ecuador, Colombia, western Venezuela) are part of the domestication macroregion discussed above. The Andes are also home to domesticates whose areas of origin are more precisely known: squash and common bean (northern mid-elevation Andes), lima bean, jack bean, cotton, and squash (coastal southwest Ecuador

and adjoining mid-elevation Andes), and potato, oca, ullucu, squash, jicama, and quinoa (mid-high elevation Andes of central Peru and Bolivia). Multiple domestication events occurred in the Andes, but domesticates introduced from Mesoamerica and eastern South America also played significant roles in the emergence of agriculture (see Figure 2) (see Americas, South: Early Cultures of the Central Andes; Northern South America). Early record of plant domestication: 9800– 3000 cal BC Plant domestication began around 9800 cal BC in coastal Ecuador. Squash phytoliths recovered from terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene strata at Vegas sites (11 800–5300 cal BC) provide a rare look at the domestication process. Squash phytoliths dating to the earliest levels were smaller, in the range of wild squash, than those from later levels. Domesticated-size squash phytoliths were directly dated to 9840–8555 cal BC, and characterize the later part of the sequences. Other domesticates included bottle gourd, llere´n, and maize, which was introduced before 5800 cal* BC (see Figure 5). Maize was grown at farming villages of the Valdivia tradition (4500–2250 cal* BC), as was cotton, jack bean, achira, manioc, and arrowroot. Coastal agriculture remained broad-based for many millennia, incorporating wild/managed tree fruits, domesticated roots, tubers, pulses, and maize. Cotton and jack bean were likely domesticated in southwest coastal Ecuador or northern coastal Peru (see Figure 2 and Table 6). In the Colombian Andes, domesticated arrowroot is documented at 9250 cal* BC at the San Isidro site. Palms and avocado were also present at San Isidro and other sites, but whether they are domesticated or wild/managed is unknown. Pollen records document maize in association with forest clearance and disturbance beginning at 7250 cal* BC in one core, and in several sequences from 5500 cal* BC and after (see Table 6). Plant domestication may be equally ancient in the Peruvian sierra, but dating ambiguities exist for desiccated macroremains. Oca, chili pepper, lucuma, and common and lima beans were recovered from Guitarrero Cave in strata dated 9250–8500 cal* BC, but beans were direct-dated much younger. Several root crops were recovered from Tres Ventanas Cave in equally ancient strata, but one was direct-dated 5800 cal* BC. At Quebrada de Las Pircas (7200– 6250 cal* BC) all direct dates on domesticates, including manioc and peanut, were modern. In this case the direct dates should be rejected in favor of the associated dates, since the domesticates have primitive morphologies. None of the domesticates from

PLANT DOMESTICATION 1839

caves in the Ayacucho region, including early maize, have been direct-dated, making those results difficult to interpret. Maize microfossils on stone tools from the Waynuna site in the southern Peruvian Andes places maize there by 1600–2000 cal BC. Domestication of the diverse array of local Andean tubers, pulses, and quinoa was likely underway before 5800 cal* BC (see Table 6). Domesticates were introduced onto the Peruvian coast in this timeframe. Bottle gourd, squash, guava, and perhaps Phaseolus appeared first, followed by achira, jicama, and jack bean. Maize has not been documented in any secure preceramic context. Moving south from coastal Peru, while there is clear evidence for domesticated plants and farming villages by 500 BC in northern Chile and Argentina, most earlier finds are desiccated macroremains, none direct-dated. Associated dates of 8750–7720 cal* BC for maize are difficult to accept, given the Peruvian dates. Microfossils recovered from grinding stones from sites in northwest Argentina support a more reasonable date for plant domestication and maize introduction: 4250–1500 cal* BC for maize, quinoa, amaranth, oca, achira, ullucu, potato, and squash (see Figure 5) (see Americas, South: Southern Cone). The later record of agriculture: post-3000 cal BC On the Peruvian coast, by the late preceramic (3100/2750–2250/1750 cal* BC), 9–15 domesticates were typically present at sites. Among the new crops were: cotton, chili peppers, lucuma, avocado, pacae, soursop, sweet potato, manioc, and common and lima bean. While some fruit trees and cotton may have been domesticated locally, most crops were introduced from the sierra or eastern lowlands. There was increased reliance on plants in general, and on domesticates in particular, but no single plant food dominated. Settlements were located to take advantage of maritime resources. Cotton was widespread and abundant, reflecting a focus in local economy. The Initial Period (2500/1750–1250/1000 cal* BC) and Early Horizon (1000–400 cal* BC) saw few changes in the crop list. Maize was present by 2500 cal* BC, as was potato. Throughout the central and north coasts, there was a settlement shift in the Initial period to locations adjacent to productive lands in the lower and middle valleys. There was a slight decline in crop richness in the Early Horizon, with disappearance of potato, sweet potato, and jicama, and fewer tree fruits. Early agriculture was oriented to self-watering lands along rivers and their outflows, and in locations where short ditches or embankments could guide water. The earliest dated irrigation canals are small

ditches in the Zan˜a valley, dated 5000–3750 cal* BC. Irrigation canals were eventually constructed in 25–30 coastal valleys, with the largest system and area irrigated located on the north coast, dating AD 1000. Significant maize cultivation on the coast or in the sierra would have depended on irrigation. Shift of site locations during the Initial Period to inland valleys, and the first appearance of maize on the coast, likely signaled the beginnings of canal irrigation. Intensification of agriculture in the highlands was also linked to creation of productive agricultural lands through landscape modification, including irrigation, terracing, and raised fields. Eastern South America, Caribbean Eastern South America The record of plant domestication is scant for eastern South America. The antiquity of domestication in the Amazon, Orinoco, and adjoining regions must be inferred from data from regions into which crops from this area spread. The major crops include manioc (Brazilian uplands) (see Figure 7), peanut, chili pepper, coca (Western Brazil, lowland Bolivia, and adjoining eastern Andean slopes), and perhaps arrowroot, llere´n, and yam (Central America to northern South America) (see Figure 2). Many tree fruits native to the eastern lowlands have a long history of management (see Americas, South: Amazon Basin). The eastern lowlands were occupied in the early Holocene, and site locations suggest exploitation of tropical forest and riverine resources. Lake cores do not provide evidence for fire and human disturbance in the lower Amazon until 4550 cal* BC, late in comparison to other areas. Intensification of disturbance indicating maize slash and burn agriculture does not appear until 1600 cal* BC. Eastern Ecuador and Colombia document longer histories of agriculture. Palm and domesticated squash, llere´n, and bottle gourd were direct-dated to 8250–6500 cal* BC at the Pen˜a Roja site in Colombia, only slightly later than the first appearance of these crops in Andean Colombia. At a later site, Abeja, maize and manioc pollen were recovered in a stratum dated before 3500–2800 cal* BC, associated with forest disturbance indicators. Site occupations dated AD 385–1175 document cotton, cacao, chili peppers, and avocado (see Table 6). At Lake Ayauchi in Amazonian Ecuador, forest clearance started around 4000 cal* BC, associated with the first evidence for maize. Intensification of agriculture occurred by 400 BC, when frequencies of maize increased. There was a delay in the spread of maize from the Andes into the western Amazon. Agriculture appeared late in the middle Orinoco basin of Venezuela. Maize cobs from the Parmana

1840 PLANT DOMESTICATION

Figure 7 Manioc harvest. Harvesting the roots of manioc, an ancient crop and important food of the lowland Neotropics. Photo credit: Deborah M. Pearsall.

site were direct-dated to AD 1000–1500. Starch from stone tools, including ‘manioc grater chips’, from other Middle Orinoco sites documented maize, arrowroot, and yam by AD 450–800. This represents a long delay in the spread of maize into eastern South America, where root crops, not maize, are the mainstays of diet today. The absence of early evidence for manioc remains a puzzle (see Table 6). In southeastern Uruguay, research at the Los Ajos mound complex has documented permanent villages and presence of maize and domesticated squash just after 2760 cal BC. Stone tool residues also document Canna (2050 cal* BC), maize (1775 cal* BC), and Phaseolus (1300 cal* BC). The antiquity of maize in southeastern Uruguay is in line with a spread of maize down the eastern Andean foothills and through northwest Argentina (see Figure 5). Caribbean At European contact Caribbean populations cultivated a combination of roots, tubers, seed crops, and tree crops carried into the archipelago by prehistoric migrants from Mesoamerica and northern South America. The introduced domesticates included most of the lowland Neotropical crops discussed above. The history of these introductions, and how a uniquely Caribbean agricultural system was forged from local and introduced plants, is incompletely understood (see Americas, Caribbean: The Greater Antilles and Bahamas; The Lesser Antilles). Archaic-age (5750/5000–200 cal* BC) migrants into the Caribbean combined foraging with cultivation of local and introduced species. Maize is documented in Archaic contexts in the Dominican

Republic (1700 cal* BC) and Puerto Rico (1500– 1000 cal* BC), in association with possible manioc, cocoyam, and wild/managed yam, canna, palms, and pulses. Since maize was not present in the Orinoco basin at this time, introduction from Mesoamerica was likely. Fruit trees, including avocado, sapodilla, and yellow sapote, were also among Archaic-age introductions. Lake cores on Haiti and Puerto Rico indicate shifting cultivation around 3300 cal BC (see Table 6). Around 500 BC, populations of the Saladoid and Huecoid ceramic traditions migrated into the Caribbean from the Orinoco basin. Cultivation of root and tree crops was likely. By AD 800, maize is confirmed in ceramic-age contexts, and sites of the Ostionoid tradition (AD 1200–1500) documented two types of maize, manioc, chili pepper, and possibly sweet potato and Zamia. Reliance on staple crops likely intensified during this period.

Conclusion Domesticated plants feed most of the earth’s population today. Methodological advances in archaeology and increased interest in the origins of domestication and agriculture have led to a degree of consensus on the ‘what’, ‘where’, and ‘when’ of these processes. There are three thresholds of domestication and agriculture within the primary centers. First, in the Early Holocene there were frequent and dispersed plant domestications; some were advantageous and left traces in the archaeological record. First domesticates included food plants – mostly annuals grown for their

PLANT DOMESTICATION 1841

nutritious seeds and starch-rich roots, tubers, or stems propagated by cuttings – as well as useful species like gourd (floats, containers). Long-lived fruit and nut trees were managed, but slower to undergo genetic change. In two centers, Eastern North America (United States) and sub-Saharan Africa, this first threshold dates to the mid-Holocene. Second, early domesticates spread, sometimes widely, through social interactions among forager/ horticulturists. Cultivation was small-scale in wellwatered settings, use of wild and managed species continued, and local species were sometimes domesticated. These developments initially had little effect on societies. Third, increasingly productive crops fueled population growth within communities, which led to the spread of societies dependent on agriculture into new habitats, and creation of built environments for farming. Interactions between expanding farming populations and local foragers were likely complex, and remain poorly understood. The third threshold is the most visible of the process, having left its mark on the landscape in the form of irrigation and drainage canals, planting terraces and mounds, or plowing scars; in sedimentary records in the form of evidence for deforestation and erosion; and in sheer numbers of Neolithic/Formative archaeological sites. There is considerable variation in the time lapse between first domestications and dependence on agriculture – 1000–6000 years – for reasons likely rooted in historical circumstances and differences in environments and crops. There is less consensus on the ‘why’ of domestication and agriculture, except for a fundamental understanding that these are separate phenomena, best understood as processes, not revolutions. Many would agree that domestication grew out of normal foraging behaviors in the changing conditions of the early Holocene: behaviors that were mutually beneficial to foragers and plants, or that optimized caloric return for energy expended by foragers. Some would argue that an external ‘push’ was required to start the process: deteriorating climate or increasing populations. Others emphasize the role of social factors and individual decision-making in the emergence of agriculture: gaining prestige by producing surplus food for feasting. The future holds great potential for testing these and other ideas about why humans domesticated plants and became agriculturalists, and for filling in gaps in our knowledge of understudied crops and regions. See also: Africa, Central: Foragers, Farmers, and Metallurgists; Africa, North: Sahara, Eastern; Agricultural Fields, Identification and Study; Agriculture:

Biological Impact on Populations; Social Consequences; Americas, Caribbean: The Greater Antilles and Bahamas; The Lesser Antilles; Americas, Central: Early Cultures of Middle America; Lower Central America; Americas, North: Eastern Woodlands; Plains; Americas, South: Amazon Basin; Early Cultures of the Central Andes; Northern South America; Southern Cone; Animal Domestication; Asia, East: China, Neolithic Cultures; Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures; Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers; Asia, South: Ganges Valley; Indus Civilization; Neolithic Cultures; Chemical Analysis Techniques; Coprolite Analysis; DNA: Ancient; Modern, and Archaeology; Europe: Neolithic; Europe, Northern and Western: Early Neolithic Cultures; Mesolithic Cultures; Health, Healing, and Disease; Interdisciplinary Research; Migrations: Pacific; Oceania: New Guinea and Melanesia; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction in the Lowland Neotropics; Paleoethnobotany; Phytolith Analysis; Pollen Analysis; Starch Grain Analysis; Trace Element Analysis.

Further Reading Babot Marı´a de Pilar (2004) Tecnologı´a y utilizacion de artefactos de molienda en el noroeste prehispa´nico. Tucuman, Argentina: Tesis Doctoral, Universidad Nacional de Tucuman. Bellwood P (2005) First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Colledge S, Conolly J, and Shennan S (2004) Archaeobotanical evidence for the spread of farming in the eastern Mediterranean. Current Anthropology 45(Supplement): 35–58. Crawford GW and Lee G-A (2003) Agricultural origins in the Korean Peninsula. Antiquity 77(295): 87–95. Denham TP, Haberle SG, Lentfer C, et al. (2003) Origins of agriculture at Kuk swamp in the highlands of New Guinea. Science 301(5630): 189–193. Dickau R (2005) Resource Use, Crop Dispersals, and the Transition to Agriculture in Prehistoric Panama: Evidence from Starch Grains and Macroremains. Philadelphia, PA: Doctoral Thesis, Temple University. Erickson DL, Smith BD, Clarke AC, et al. (2005) An Asian origin for a 10,000-year-old domesticated plant in the Americas. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102(51): 18315– 18320. Harlan JR (1992) Crops and Man, (2nd edn.). Madison, Wisconsin: American Society of Agronomy. Harris DR (ed.) (1996) The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Harter AV, Gardner KA, Falush D, et al. (2004) Origin of extant domesticated sunflowers in eastern North America. Nature 430(8): 201–205. Horrocks M and Weisler MI (2006) Analysis of plant microfossils in archaeological deposits from two remote archipelagos: The Marshall Islands, Eastern Micronesia, and the Pitcairn Group, Southeast Polynesia. Pacific Science 60(2): 261–280. Iriarte J, Holst I, Marozzi O, et al. (2004) Evidence for cultivar adoption and emerging complexity during the mid-Holocene in the La Plata basin. Nature 432(2): 614–617. Londo JP, Chiang Y-C, Hung K-H, et al. (2006) Phylogeography of Asian wild rice, Oryza rufipogon, reveals multiple independent

1842 POLITICAL COMPLEXITY, RISE OF domestications of cultivated rice, Oryza sativa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103(25): 9578–9583. Lu TLD (1999) BAR International Series 774: The Transition from Foraging to Farming and the Origin of Agriculture in China. Archaeopress. Marshall F and Hildebrand E (2002) Cattle before crops: The beginnings of food production in Africa. Journal of World Prehistory 16(2): 99–143. Matsui A and Kanehara M (2006) The question of prehistoric plant husbandry during the Jomon Period in Japan. World Archaeology 38(2): 259–273. Mbida CM, VanNeer W, Doutrelepont H, et al. (2000) Evidence for banana cultivation and animal husbandry during the first millennium BC in the forest of southern Cameroon. Journal of Archaeological Science 27: 151–162. Minnis PE (ed.) (2003) People and Plants in Ancient Eastern North America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books. Minnis PE (ed.) (2004) People and Plants in Ancient Western North America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books. Neumann K (2005) The romance of farming: Plant cultivation and domestication in Africa. In: Stahl AB (ed.) African Archaeology, pp. 249–275. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Plant Remains

Penny D and Kealhofer L (2005) Microfossil evidence of land-use intensification in north Thailand. Journal of Archaeological Science 32: 69–82. Perry L, Sandweiss DH, Piperno DR, et al. (2006) Early maize agriculture and interzonal interaction in southern Peru. Nature 440(2): 76–79. Piperno DR and Pearsall DM (1998) The Origins of Agriculture in the Lowland Neotropics. San Diego: Academic Press. Piperno DR and Stothert KE (2003) Phytolith evidence for early holocene Cucurbita domestication in southwest Ecuador. Science 299(5609): 1054–1057. Price TD (ed.) (2000) Europe’s First Farmers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Weber SA (1998) Out of Africa: The initial impact of millets in South Asia. Current Anthropology 39(2): 267–274. Zhao Z (1998) The middle Yangtze region in China is one place where rice was domesticated: Phytolith evidence from the Diaotonghuan Cave, northern Jiangxi. Antiquity 72: 885–897. Zohary D and Hopf M (2000) Domestication of Plants in the Old World, (3rd edn.) Oxford: Oxford University Press.

See: Macroremains Analysis.

POLITICAL COMPLEXITY, RISE OF R Alan Covey, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary archaic state See state. chiefdom A regional polity with hierarchical organization, limited political offices (chiefs), but lacking specialized administration. complexity, political Forms of social organization characterized by the presence of political offices, institutions, and the hierarchical structuring of information exchange and decision making. core-periphery model An approach to states that distinguishes between highly integrated and economically developed territory near the capital (core) and less well integrated and developed regions in outlying areas (periphery). empire A centralized state that is sufficiently large and complex to administer other states and/or multiple ethnic groups.

heterarchy Power distribution arrangement where multiple upper-level entities divide power broadly, as opposed to its narrow concentration in upper levels of a hierarchy. Malthusian effects The observation by T. R. Malthus that human populations grow to outstrip increases in food production. This term is used here without any adherence to Malthus’ personal views on how society should respond to such conditions. neoevolutionary theory Comparative evolutionary approach to human social organization. polygyny Household arrangement where a prominent or elite man takes multiple wives. satisfizing strategy A production strategy that seeks to meet perceived needs, then ceases or reduces production (rather than seeking to intensify or maximize production). sedentism Residential pattern characterized by relatively permanent occupation of a single locale. settlement hierarchy The archaeological identification of multiple tiers of settlement within a given region, most easily identifiable as peaks on a histogram of regional site size distribution. state A regional polity characterized by social stratification and a centralized and specialized administration.

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Virtually all humans living today participate to some degree in at least one of the few hundred nation-states that have occupied and incorporated the habitable parts of the planet. Our species spent most of its history dispersed in bands of hunter-gatherers, so present conditions represent a radical departure from the past. Archaeology is well suited to study the rise of complexity because it is the discipline that addresses large-scale spatiotemporal patterning in the human developmental trajectory. The rise of political complexity involves the establishment and elaboration of political offices and institutions that did not exist among egalitarian foragers and collectors of the Palaeolithic.

Defining Complexity To be useful to archaeologists, complexity must be defined in a meaningful way such that material expectations relevant to the archaeological record may be developed. Political complexity can be assessed or documented by the appearance of offices, institutions, and the hierarchical structuring of information exchange and decision making. The concept of ‘complexity’ should not be regarded as the opposite of egalitarianism. Current literature on egalitarian groups emphasizes that while permanent political institutions and hierarchies are absent, interpersonal relationships and consensus-building mechanisms are by no means ‘simple’. Thus, complex societies are nonegalitarian, but egalitarian ones are not undifferentiated. Complex societies are characterized by reduced residential mobility, intensified economic production, some degree of labor specialization, the presence of hierarchical posts and titles, institutionalized leadership, and hereditary status differences; these features tend to be integrated regionally to varying degrees.

Approaches to Complexity The concept of political complexity emerged in early centralized state societies (see Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of), where philosophers and historians developed typologies or continua to describe domestic organization and civil institutions of their own societies, as well as to rank their ‘barbarian’ neighbors relative to their own perceived organizational and cultural superiority. Notions of progress toward civil society date at least to classical antiquity – Aristotle’s Politics distinguishes between the patriarchal household (oı´koB), small villages and regional polities, and the city-state (po´liB), a continuum based on the same distinction between

kin-ordered (societas) and civil societies (civitas) seen later in Latin literature. Early formulations of concepts of ‘civilization’ and ‘barbarism’ reflect a core– periphery model of contemporary political arrangements with slight attention dedicated to diachronic aspects of social evolution. In writings from classical antiquity and the Renaissance, political complexity tends to be conceptualized as a quality that is concentrated in the here-and-now, one that diminishes when moving backward in time or outward in space. Contemporary archaeological approaches to political complexity are intimately tied to colonialism and the same kinds of teleological and ethnocentric constructions of ‘civilization’ and ‘progress’ seen among earlier writers. The first European archaeologists focused on unraveling the prehistory of their own nation-states and exploring the ruins of ancient civilizations in the classical world (and, later, in their colonies). By the eighteenth century, archaeologists were beginning to recognize large-scale technological developments occurring in European prehistory, which became the basis for cross-cultural comparisons and regional chronologies. In the early 1800s, Christian Ju¨rgensen Thomsen formulated a system of three prehistoric ages (Stone, Bronze, and Iron) that was based on technological innovations. Continued archaeological research refined the three-age system for European archaeological sequences, which, thus derived, provided a material-culture platform for subsequent evolutionary theories. The nineteenth century saw attempts to develop global approaches to cultural development that could be used in synchronic and diachronic analyses. Those formulated in anthropology presumed an evolution of social complexity that was unidirectional and unilineal, one that could be linked to specific sociocultural practices and material culture. The evolutionary approaches of Lewis Henry Morgan, Edward Taylor, and others drew from the writings of classical antiquity, the Old Testament, and accounts of European travelers; they also took into account the relative chronologies developed by European archaeologists. For example, Morgan, in his Ancient Society (1867), laid out a seven-stage typology through which human societies had risen from conditions of savagery to civilization (Figure 1). Each step toward civilization was achieved by the innovation or adoption of a new economic resource or technology – fishing/fire, bow and arrow, pottery, food production/durable architecture, iron metallurgy, and writing. While evolutionary theories were widely rejected in the first half of the twentieth century (particularly by Boasian anthropologists in the United States),

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Writing Iron Animal domestication, irrigation, stone/adobe architecture Pottery Upper Archery Middle Fishing, fire Lower

Upper Middle Barbarism Lower

Savagery

Figure 1 Morgan’s seven-step evolutionary sequence from Ancient Society.

archaeologists continued to use classification systems and were influenced by their underlying assumptions of societal progress. The three-age system proved a useful heuristic for approaching prehistoric technological innovation and diffusion in Europe, but was problematic for other parts of the world, where political complexity lacked the same sequence of innovations and technologies in those materials. Archaeologists came to recognize that the material from which a tool was made was of less social significance than the use to which such a tool was put; this inspired the development of evolutionary approaches that focused on ecology, energetics, and economic innovations. Unlike nineteenth-century social evolutionary theory, which incorporated material culture patterns that had been developed by archaeologists, so-called neoevolutionary approaches by Julian Steward, Gordon Childe, Leslie White, and later writers derived their material correlates of social organization and change from comparative studies of ethnography, ethnohistory, and history. These scholars viewed political complexity as the result of plant and animal domestication – food production increased available energy resources and permitted population growth, leading to rapid social and technological innovations culminating in processes of urbanization and the development of centralized states and empires. While Steward favored a multilineal evolutionary taxonomy for social evolution, Childe and White generally embraced an evolutionary scheme involving a limited number of rapid macroevolutionary transformations (‘revolutions’) separated by multilineal microevolutionary developments that followed specific culturehistorical trajectories. These processual orientations were more fully expressed in the 1960s by Elman Service, Morton Fried, and others, who promoted evolutionary taxonomies that articulated some important social features of complex societies: hereditary inequality, political offices, differential access to resources, political centralization and specialization, and the

development of supra-kin politico-legal systems (Figure 2). Service’s typology has remained influential among archaeologists, who have worked to identify material correlates of the societal transformations concomitant with the development and elaboration of political complexity. Critics of neoevolutionary theory fault it for being teleological and static, fetishizing the state (or, worse, projecting the values of a contemporary nation-state onto the past), masking organizational diversity, and failing to account for the role of individual agency. While acknowledging the limitations of the archaeological record vis-a`-vis behavioral and cognitive aspects of social change, neoevolutionary archaeologists have advanced more dynamic approaches to social evolution (Figure 3). Evolutionary trajectories are not inevitable, and types should not be viewed as unidimensional or unidirectional; rather, in the tradition of Childe and White, social change may be viewed as a dynamic adaptive landscape (sensu Sewall Wright) where complexity is measured in terms of ecological fitness maxima that fluctuate through time (Figure 4). Classificatory systems describe a limited number of general patterns of institutional organization that were durable enough under given conditions to be materialized archaeologically – the results of macroevolutionary transformations of the sort termed ‘revolutionary’ by earlier researchers. Internally, broad categories subsume substantial microevolutionary variation – they encompass both diachronic fluctuations and inter-regional variability – but they can be useful for developing research hypotheses and for making comparative analyses of social institutions. Comparative ethnographic and ethnohistoric studies reveal that while the material record may seem straightforward to archaeologists, human groups have pursued a wide range of organizational strategies. Neoevolutionists recognize the specific differences but they often want to focus on significant and repetitive patterns. This article considers two macroevolutionary transformations linked to complex societies, looking first at the development of political offices and centralized regional political organizations (chiefdoms), and subsequently at the innovation of centralized and specialized civil government (states). In considering intra-type variation, the dynamics of large-scale multiethnic states (empires) are also considered.

Pathways to Complexity Much ink has been spilled in the debate over how increasingly complex forms of social organization could be promoted as desirable alternatives to prevailing patterns of organization. When distilled to its

POLITICAL COMPLEXITY, RISE OF 1845 Service (1962)

Fried (1967)

Band Egalitarian society Increased scale sodalities Egalitarian

Ecological demography redistribution

Tribe

Rank society Redistribution labor specialization Restricted access to basic resources Complex

Chiefdom

Complex

Stratified society Legal system Specialized institutions and agencies

State

State Figure 2 Neoevolutionary typologies of Elman Service and Morton Fried.

Time

Growth/fissioning

Centralization

Complexity

Autonomous village societies

Complexity

Chiefdoms

Chiefly cycling Specialization

States and empires

Time Figure 4 An example of dynamic ‘evolution without stages’.

Expansion/decline

Figure 3 A schematic of dynamic social evolution, showing microevolution within types, as well as limited qualitative transformations between types.

simplest form, theoretical discussion revolves around the roles of consensus and coercion in generating intracommunity and intercommunity cooperation and conflict (Figure 5). Coercion-oriented perspectives focus on class conflict or interpolity warfare, while consensus-based theoretical approaches emphasize the managerial roles of an emergent elite or the importance of long-distance economic and exchange

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Consensus Coercion

Elite power base

Scale of interaction Intracommunity

Intercommunity

Elite management

Regional trade

(infrastructure, monuments)

(regional artifact distributions)

Class struggle

Aggressive expansion

(local status distinctions)

(regional settlement patterns)

Figure 5 Simple schematic of approaches to the emergence of complexity.

networks. It is worth noting that these basic mechanisms are implicated in the rise of both chiefdoms and states, although individual behavioral strategies may vary over time. Some models see both coercion and cooperation at both the intrasite and intersite and interpolity levels. Recognizing the dialectical relationship between individuals and institutions, a complete treatment of the rise and elaboration of complex political organization should ideally account for both individual behavior as well as institutional structures. It is important to acknowledge the fundamentally archaeological nature of the problem, however, and to admit that the archaeological record is coarse grained, and that the clearest material patterns will tend to reflect behavior that is normative and recurrent rather than idiosyncratic and innovative. In the absence of text or other auxiliary lines of evidence, archaeologists are more likely to identify enduring institutions than individual behavior, and punctuated periods of institutional innovation will remain difficult to sort out unambiguously. Timing the Emergence of Complexity

Humans possessed a fully modern capacity for culture tens of thousands of years before the first complex societies coalesced, and human groups developed technology and crafted intricate forms of egalitarian social organization that enabled them successfully to colonize Arctic tundra and vast deserts. If complexity is decoupled from human biological evolution – if, as some researchers have argued, it subverts millennia of biocultural evolution based on egalitarianism – then we must look elsewhere for explanations of why complexity developed

when and where it did, and why complex forms of social organization seem to be effective. Many researchers argue that Pleistocene climatic conditions yielded resource distributions that favored the persistence of egalitarianism, and that the amelioration of global climate in the Holocene presented human groups with a new set of environmental parameters in which sedentism and food production were viable possibilities. Such observations may help to explain why complexity would not be pronounced before the Holocene, but they still fail to provide a meaningful social perspective on how complexity appeared in certain parts of the world and became so common in the past 5000 years or so. Factors in the Emergence of Complexity

While some researchers cite environmental conditions to explain the rise of complexity, others would invoke human population growth as an important aspect of the process. Population growth appears to be a characteristic common to all forms of human social organization, but archaeological estimates of population are crude at best, leaving the field with a lack of consensus regarding whether population growth necessitated technological innovations and new forms of social organization, or whether growth was a consequence of such developments. Probably neither alternative is exclusively responsible, and it is undeniable that innovative behavior occurs in the absence of stress (as a common satisfizing strategy), as well as in cases where ecological and social pressures are present. Humans are innovators who develop, implement, and improve resources and technology to improve net caloric return on labor investments and reduce the risks inherent to food-procurement strategies. Innovations intended to reduce proximate work loads and risk can paradoxically have a perverse ultimate impact as the Malthusian effects of increased resource availability are felt over time. Population growth, implicated by many researchers in the rise of complexity, influences the tempo of such processes and is also an effect of them – given the rough tools at our disposal for measuring population growth over short spans of time, this presents a critical problem for archaeologists. The rise of complexity has been linked to reduced residential mobility, increases in the size and density of population, and higher per capita energy production. Higher population size and density may be obtained by greater resource (energy) availability, which is made possible by the intensive exploitation of highly productive patches of wild resources (especially marine resources), the intensification of

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agropastoral production (through improved infrastructure, technology, scheduling, and genetic manipulation of domesticates), or a combination of wild and produced foods. Some researchers challenge the identification of complex hunter-gatherers in the ethnographic and archaeological record, but most would agree that there are multiple economic paths to complexity, and that particular case studies should be expected to vary in terms of the social solutions crafted over the long term. Regardless of economic base, several factors influence the rise of complexity, including population growth rate, technological capacity, and the degree of circumscription. Complexity might arise through a combination of consensual and coercive means, depending on the relationship between fortuitous/obligate innovation and regional demography.

Egalitarian Social Organization Egalitarian social organization – where social statuses are achieved, power is rooted in personal charisma, and permanent political offices are absent – is commonly observed among both nomadic foragers and sedentary horticulturalists, indicating that foodprocurement strategy alone does not determine the rise of complexity. Ethnographic accounts of egalitarian groups describe population ranges from microbands of a few individuals to villages of several hundred people. Individuals and families in egalitarian groups maintain wide social networks and change residential locations based on food-procurement needs, as well as to satisfy both positive and negative social needs. Egalitarianism is thus encouraged by lower ecological and social costs for residential mobility (or, put differently, higher costs for permanent residence), operating most effectively under conditions of modest regional population densities relative to resource potential. Band societies tend to fluctuate between periods of dispersal and temporary aggregation, while autonomous villages are characterized by patterns of population growth and fissioning that discourage the emergence of regional political hierarchies. Egalitarian groups tend to have social leveling mechanisms that undermine the emergence of hereditary status categories – status is gained by underwriting feasts and distributing (rather than accumulating) gifts (see Food and Feasting, Social and Political Aspects). They also practice self-dampening household-oriented economies where intensive resource development is rare and material goods are produced and exchanged to maintain the social networks that constitute an essential risk-reduction strategy.

Archaeologically, egalitarian social organization manifests itself materially at the regional and site level. Regionally, settlement hierarchies are modest or absent, and material culture production and distribution do not pattern in a way that suggests specialized production or hereditary status inequality. At the site level, domestic architecture tends to be fairly uniform, although there may be a distinction between nuclear and extended family residences within or between sites, depending on economic activities. Sedentary groups sometimes construct corporate architecture used for sodality activities (e.g., a structure for initiated men), or to accentuate gender categories (e.g., a menstrual building), but the lack of special offices and full-time ritual specialists may be inferred by the absence of architecture devoted to full-time religious activity. Egalitarian societies typically lack full-time craft specialists; regionally, style should be heterogeneous (with localized or idiosyncratic patterning) and exotic goods and technology should be widely distributed. Mortuary contexts should not communicate differential investments of labor or materials based on inherited statuses.

Features of Emergent Complexity The ethnographic literature for autonomous village societies describes cases of male (and some female) aggrandizers, individuals whose scheming, charisma, and hard work aid them in building and manipulating larger social networks than less prominent individuals. Such individuals are turned to for conflict resolution, and their persuasive power is critical for increasing local production to stage important feasting events. Such ‘big men’ also provide critical leadership in times of intercommunity conflict and have stronger regional exchange ties than less prominent men. Certain of these men are polygynous, possess specific titles and symbols connoting their prestige, and are credited with enhanced ties to the supernatural. These are all features of leadership seen in chiefdoms, but ‘big men’ in egalitarian societies are not able to pass their prestige on to their children, and in cases where titles are inherited they are not linked to offices with real political power. Chiefdoms differ from autonomous villages in terms of their territorial extent and the kind of internal differentiation present within a given community or polity. A chiefdom is thus a regional polity in which multiple villages are administered by the emerging chiefly elite at a paramount settlement. Chiefdoms are characterized by hereditary inequality, which may be expressed socially through rules of ranking or by outright stratification. Labor specialization is

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more pronounced in chiefdoms, with attached craft specialists and retainers surrounding the elite. Whereas a ‘big man’ earns status through hard work, a chief is released from subsistence labor by virtue of perceived genealogical superiority, supernatural ties, and access to a fund of coercive power. Economically, a chiefdom should have some degree of resource intensification. Intensive agriculture stands out as the most effective means of promoting a centralized political economy, differential access to productive resources, and the production of stored surpluses to fund specialized labor (or buffer against production variability). Pastoralism and certain wild resources can provide intensive resource bases, but these tend to support only modest (i.e., nonstate) levels of complexity in the absence of agriculture. Redistribution of the polity’s products was once thought to be the basis of the emergence of chiefly economic power, but archaeological and ethno-historic research indicates that chiefdoms tend to promote local economic self-sufficiency, drawing tribute in labor or kind to support the chiefly elite and their retainers and attached specialists. Emergence of the Chiefdom

Coercion-based approaches to complexity assert that villages and individuals will not permanently cede their autonomy voluntarily; chiefdoms are thus expected to develop in circumstances where residential mobility is constrained (through either environmental or population circumscription) and where intra- and intercommunity conflicts result in proven warriors being vested with temporary powers that ultimately become institutionalized. Warfare has the potential to promote an emergent warrior elite, but not simply by placing power in the hands of skilled fighters. Male and female prisoners taken in intercommunity conflicts often become slaves, creating an emergent underclass, as well as households with a disproportionate number of adult laborers. Prominent men in egalitarian societies are more likely to practice polygyny and take male and female prisoners to add to their households – few authors have pointed this out, but such developments would tend to differentiate domestic units within a community and to favor the emergence of specialized craft production and a regional prestige goods economy. Captives and secondary wives could work to meet subsistence requirements and to produce surpluses for feasts – without the need to be reciprocated – leaving ambitious men and women to invest in acquiring exotic goods or producing laborintensive prestige items from nonlocal materials. As discussed above, cooperation-oriented approaches to complexity focus not only on exchange

networks, but also on leadership roles in the development of intensification projects within a community. Intensification changes the productive landscape, creating a resource hierarchy between permanently farmed patches of centrally/privately held lands and unimproved lands available to all community members for shifting cultivation. Charismatic leaders who organize the creation of such resources may appeal to community interests to mobilize labor, but probably benefit later with disproportionate access to these lands. Dynamic Cycles in Chiefly Societies

The unspecialized nature of political offices in chiefdoms encourages an inherent instability. Because the chiefly office exists apart from its individual holders and is predicated upon social ranking, fierce competition exists between many eligible would-be chiefs for a limited number of generalized positions of power. A chief must outcompete rivals – including close relatives, as well as unrelated neighboring chiefs – without compartmentalizing sociopolitical control. This often leads to situations where a chief controls a limited set of resources or territory within which an attempt is made to amplify or maximize surplus production. Chiefs mobilize surpluses to underwrite competitive ritual displays, feasts, and acts of generosity, but the overexploitation of labor and natural resources can lead to social or ecological collapse. Individual personalities influence the trajectory of (in)stability; a capable chief will moderate managerial and extractive roles to meet evolving circumstances, while one who fails to achieve the right balance may be assassinated or ousted by rivals or disgruntled subalterns. Paradoxically, chiefly competition yields conditions where local economic self-sufficiency is encouraged as a means of recognizing goals of regional cohesion and control. In stable chiefdoms, this may be resolved institutionally (and individually) through the sanctification of authority, vertical alliance building between paramount and subordinate chiefs, prestige good exchange, and periodic interpolity warfare. The importance of individual agency in social stability is illustrated particularly well by periods of instability that occur at times of chiefly succession. In more stable chiefdoms, successors are usually appointed and prepared for office through the creation of political ties and instruction in ritual and esoteric knowledge. In larger chiefdoms, however, several prestigious individuals (local chiefs, close male relatives of the decedent) may take advantage of an interregnum to challenge the chief-designate for the paramountcy, and subordinates may attempt

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to assert local autonomy. In regions with competing paramount chiefdoms, other paramounts may capitalize on the vulnerability of a rival, attracting former supporters of that chiefdom, extending control over nearby areas, or simply consolidating control over current holdings. Due to cycles of competition and the evolution of institutional structures, the organization of chiefly societies often fluctuates or cycles between strong, centralized, and weak, decentralized forms. Major upheavals and fluctuations in chiefly authority do not always result in regular system-wide changes in organizational hierarchy; alternately, short-term cycles stimulated by individual competition may influence the long-term trajectory of regional polities. Processes of short-term centralization may be marked by outward expansion of chiefly interests, accomplished as a strong paramount sends competitors into interpolity conflicts or channels them into peripheral leadership positions. If a neighboring group is also strong and centralized, marriage alliances might be sought between elite families; if weak and decentralized, a neighboring group might be targeted for conquest. During periods of centralization, tribute flows should be uninterrupted and prestige and long-distance exchange goods should be managed by the chiefly elite. Military conflict should be directed outward from the system, and core areas should be well integrated. Periods of disintegration, on the other hand, should be characterized by deterioration of the core area, and if prolonged, territorial predation by neighboring polities. Marriage exchange partnerships will be interrupted, and peripheral areas may either contest central authority or shift allegiance to a neighboring chiefdom. As peripheral tributary and long-distance exchange relationships break down, the chiefly structure will be affected, and rebellions, assassinations, and coups will be more likely. Ideological devices may be co-opted by competitors and rules of social ranking suspended as internal military success decides contests for office – to the long-term detriment of the system. Short-term decentralization is most likely during periods of succession or environmental perturbation (e.g., cyclones, droughts, earthquakes). Over the long run, however, rules of chiefly succession and sanctity, competition with neighboring groups, and ecological factors may contribute to long-term cycles of centralization or decentralization. Archaeological Correlates of Chiefdoms

Archaeologically, chiefdoms will be most effectively identified based on societal features not present in egalitarian societies, as well as by the absence of institutions seen in states and empires. A multitier regional

settlement hierarchy provides evidence of vertical political integration lacking in egalitarian societies. Clear status differences should be identifiable at the site level, including differential investment in domestic architecture and burials. Elites should exhibit better health and access to exotic goods, even in childhood. Monumental religious architecture may be present in chiefly societies, although temples should not exhibit regional standardization.

The Development of Centralized State Polities Organizational cycling in chiefdoms may be the source of the institutional innovations that brought about the emergence of the first centralized states in a limited number of world regions (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus, central China, Mesoamerica, and the Andes). States, like chiefdoms, are centralized regional polities with intensive economies and hierarchical social organization. Unlike chiefdoms, which have only marginally differentiated political offices, states possess specialized offices and more complex constructions of power and status within elite and commoner strata (see Social Inequality, Development of). Most states are organized at a scale that transcends maximal kin groupings – they are civil societies where the state holds a putative monopoly over sanctioned internal and external expressions of force. Processes of First-Generation State Formation

Conflict-oriented interpretations of state formation view the first states as paramount chiefdoms that successfully conquered at least one other paramount chiefdom and then developed a specialized powersharing structure to administer territories and populations on a scale that undifferentiated chiefly leadership could not monitor effectively. Because first-generation state formation involves a regional extrapolation of chiefly power, with administrative specialization following territorial expansion, conquest models seem consistent with the archaeological evidence as well as historical descriptions of state formation in some parts of the world. Cooperationbased approaches to state formation emphasize the role of economic intensification, specialized craft production, and regional trade networks, arguing that economic specialization could drive population growth and nucleation, creating the need for new offices and institutions to manage emerging urban centers and regional economies. Institutional Features of Archaic States

Political complexity in archaic states is qualitatively different from chiefdoms and autonomous villages.

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Chiefdoms form in societies that have kin- or community-based institutions (sodalities), but the power of the chiefly office is typically not derived from these institutions. Power in states is not simply vested individually in a horizon of competing elites, but is distributed in hierarchical offices representative of a number of central institutions whose powers, functions, and constituencies overlap to varying degrees. The ruling elite of an archaic state may hold the paramount titles for military, political, religious, and economic institutions – and may compete for these offices in a manner not unlike chiefly competition – but lower-order offices are inevitably staffed by a new stratum of intermediate elites that may include formerly hostile local elites and distinguished commoners (and, eventually, bureaucrats). States also have kin-based structures, but governmental power is concentrated in elite-dominated institutions. States are socially stratified, and have a specialized division of labor that is visible in social hierarchies at the capital, as well as in a rural–urban continuum that becomes more accentuated through processes of urbanization. State political economies coordinate agropastoral production centrally, using tribute and taxes to intensify surpluses that can support a standing military and non-food-producing sectors of society (craft specialists, administrators). Storage of staples and direct elite access to and monopoly over exotic goods become important state priorities. A state religion is an important institution for promoting the state ideology and political economy, and the ruling elite invests in sponsoring religious activity, promoting the state cult, and managing the ritual calendar. As civil societies, states also attempt to monopolize internal and external expressions of force. A judicial system and code of law replaces kin-based mechanisms of conflict resolution, regulating internal disputes; raiding and territorial conquests are achieved by state armies led by members of the ruling elite. While elites may occupy the upper echelons of the court system and army, lower-order positions (e.g., legal functionaries, record-keepers, and soldiers) are often staffed by commoners, whose ambition and ability permit a certain degree of social advancement. Archaeological Features of Centralized States

Evidence for centralized state organization is strongest when multiple indicators are unambiguously identifiable at the regional level, at individual sites, as well as in special proveniences that do not exist in non-state societies. From a practical standpoint, this requires an archaeological database of considerable breadth, and much of the debate over archaic states arises over interpretive disagreements between

researchers responsible for collecting different aspects of the total database. At the regional level, military expansion and information exchange models presume a hierarchical settlement pattern that is indicative of regional political integration by a central government. For many archaeologists, a four-tier regional administrative hierarchy (although some use just site-size hierarchies) has been taken as strong evidence for a centralized state. It is easy for researchers to infer a four-tier hierarchy from small regional data sets or out of ambiguous settlement patterns; this criterion is most persuasive when combined with other lines of evidence for a qualitative regional reorganization of society compared to earlier time periods. Excavations at the urban capitals of early states can provide the clearest evidence for state hierarchies and institutions – state capitals possess the fullest range of state infrastructure and the most obvious evidence for complex social hierarchy – but such sites are rarely accessible for horizontal excavation projects. Even when state capitals have not been buried under modern cities, the scale of urban archaeology requires massive investments of time and labor to develop material culture patterns related to life in the state capital. Excavations at lower-order administrative sites are critical for moving beyond monolithic, top-down views of the state and developing perspectives on how state administrative policies were (or were not) implemented locally. Rural food producers comprised the vast majority of the population of archaic states; archaeology can show how farmers and herders were affected by the changing fortunes of the state. Archaeologists have suggested a number of other possible material correlates for state-level organization, including the presence of palatial residences, royal tombs, standardized temples, and morphologically distinct types of administrative buildings. Not all of these criteria represent qualitative developments – for example, palaces and royal tombs might not be significantly larger than elite residences and tombs in chiefdoms – so archaeologists should seek as many independent indicators as possible, attempting to identify both a qualitative social transformation (in a culture-historical sense) as well as archaeological features that are compatible with other known cases of state formation.

Developmental Trajectories of Archaic States Archaeologists working within a neoevolutionary framework consider archaic states to have been dynamic and inherently unstable systems in which

POLITICAL COMPLEXITY, RISE OF 1851

ecological variability and human agency affected the longue dure´e. Institutional arrangements and the individuals influencing their structures should be expected to have changed over time, particularly in the case of first-generation states, which endured for several centuries. Institutional and Hierarchical Evolution

While all archaic states possessed a specialized governmental structure, the development of and relationship between offices and institutions was not uniform. There is no reason to believe that political, economic, religious, and military institutions emerged at the same time (or in the same order), or that state institutions and the ideologies justifying them were static over the state’s developmental trajectory. Comparison of first-generation states with later ones suggests that the life cycle of a state will see a tendency toward more complex institutional organization, as well as more heterarchical interinstitutional relationships and an increasingly bureaucratic organization. Such tendencies are reflected in the proliferation of intermediate offices in state capitals and at lower-order administrative sites; the longrange (in)stability of the state comes to depend on balancing the interests of ruling elites, intermediate elites, and commoners. Secondary State Formation

Peripheral regions are influenced by state formation and expansion, and one local reaction to external state influence is to adopt some or all of the features of centralized states. Such processes of secondary state formation may involve autonomous chiefly polities urbanizing and establishing specialized governments, but other secondary states form as state administrative centers break away from the capital to assert political autonomy. Secondary states often have populations and territories that fall within the administrative scope of a successful chiefdom; these are sometimes referred to as city-states, although many researchers prefer to employ culture-specific terms (e.g., comunidad, polis, altepetl, cacicazgo, nome) for such polities. Secondary state formation processes are expected to vary based on contingencies related to the expansion of first-generation states and the diffusion of the concept of the state. Archaeologists have not developed a distinct set of material correlates for identifying secondary state formation. Collapse, Decline, and Conquest: The Eclipse of the Archaic State

Archaic states are arguably at their strongest while in phases of territorial expansion. Internal competition

is channeled outward, while successful military campaigns bring in plunder and tribute from newly administered areas. Subsequent phases of consolidation and decline see a proliferation of elite categories, as well as the number of elites at the state capital. Over the long term, the capital and its rural hinterland may be dominated by a burgeoning and highly differentiated elite that is engaged in costly status displays, monumental constructions, and ideological communication. Elites at lower-order sites may present problems for the ruling elite over the long term. If vested with insufficient power and authority, they may fail to maintain order and deliver taxes or tribute; if given too free a rein, they may embrace local power structures and seek to break away from the central government. As local economies develop and standardize and regional exchange networks come under less restricted management, central elites will find it increasingly difficult to administer peripheral regions. Over the long term, states may collapse (a failure of central authority), experience decline (as the periphery develops and exerts autonomy), or weaken to the point where other states can conquer them (see State-Level Societies, Collapse of). States almost universally fail due to problems with self-regulation and an imbalance between food producers and elites.

Empires: The Extrapolation of State Institutions When compared with first-generation states, empires constitute an increase in territorial extent, administrative complexity, and ethnic differentiation, although the development of empires does not appear to involve the kind of qualitative social reorganization seen in the emergence of chiefdoms and states. In attempting to arrive at a meaningful definition of the term ‘empire’, it is useful to distinguish between modern empires that have thrived in the capitalist world system and those that flourished before transoceanic colonial systems developed. Such early empires have typically been identified on the basis of supra-state administrative characteristics; essentially, an early empire is a state that has developed an administrative apparatus capable of governing other states, or of transcending ethnic affiliation (much in the way that a state constitutes organization beyond that of the kin group). Each of these classificatory criteria has its weaknesses – the state-administration haracteristic imposes an artificial distinction between the nascent macroregional tendencies of first-generation states, while the multiethnic criterion may be difficult to evaluate archaeologically. Empires are territorially expansive, although they do not necessarily pursue continuous or uniform

1852 POLITICAL COMPLEXITY, RISE OF

territorial control. The distinction may be made between a highly integrated core or heartland region and a much larger scattering of peripheral or provincial regions linked to varying degrees to the imperial core. Most imperial core regions constitute centralized states that formed and consolidated and were then transformed during subsequent phases of imperial territorial expansion and provincial administrative consolidation. Provincial regions are bound to the core through a suite of dynamic strategies that vary over space and time. Researchers distinguish between direct/indirect control and hegemonic/ territorial control, but such dyads fail to capture the complexity of imperial negotiations. The Elaboration of Regional Elite Networks

Rapid imperial expansion and decline are partially due to the emergence of a macroregional elite culture. This is the result of previous periods of state integration and the rise of complex elite hierarchies that intermarry and share certain cultural elements. Successful imperial administration requires more pronounced bureaucratic structures, as well as a tolerance of local cultural and religious practices, which are organized under an overarching imperial ideology. Due to their scale and the limits of information exchange in the ancient world, early empires tend to be polities that tolerate a more indirect control over political economy and religion. Military force and judicial force are still treated as state monopolies, although many empires use mercenaries or client kingdoms to achieve stability in frontier regions. Cycles of Imperial Development

Because they depend so heavily on intermediate elites, empires are more fluid sociopolitical arrangements, and they are prone to form and collapse more rapidly than first-generation states. The ruling elite – and the overall imperial identity – can often be replaced without requiring substantial transformations to lowerorder administration, or to the social organization religion, and economy of local communities. Some empires are known to have risen and balkanized in a single generation, and without written documents these political changes might be difficult to detect archaeologically. As the organizational scope reaches macroregional scale and imperial ideologies and elite identities become more idiosyncratic and restricted socially, it might be argued that the study of imperial societies becomes more appropriately the subject of history than archaeology. At the very least, the written record assumes a much more significant role in identifying and interpreting such polities.

The Adaptive Fitness of Complexity Archaeology provides the sole means of assessing the nature of two important organizational transformations occurring in the human trajectory. Socioevolutionary theory approaches comparative aspects of the dynamic fluctuations that follow these transformations from either a diachronic or a comparative perspective: chiefdoms and states are types that encompass substantial diversity. The recent trajectory in socioevolutionary theory has embraced a dynamic view of complex societies that recognizes some of their instability. More complex forms of social organization undoubtedly enjoy some adaptive advantages over less complex ones, but they also exhibit serious problems in terms of self-regulation of population, territorial integrity, and ecological sustainability. More complex societies benefit from technological advantages and systemic cohesion, but are also subject to more spectacular collapses. See also: Africa, Central: Foragers, Farmers, and Metallurgists; Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas; Africa, East: Ethiopia and Eritrea; Africa, North: Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic; Nubia; Africa, South: Herders, Farmers, and Metallurgists of South Africa; Africa, West: Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists; Villages, Cities, and States; Americas, Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya; Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica; Americas, North: American Southwest, Four Corners Region; Eastern Woodlands; Americas, South: Early Cultures of the Central Andes; Inca Archaeology; Inca Ethnohistory; Asia, East: China, Neolithic Cultures; Chinese Civilization; Asia, Northeast, Early States and Civilizations; Asia, South: Baluchistan and the Borderlands; India, Deccan and Central Plateau; Indus Civilization; Megaliths; Asia, Southeast: Early States and Civilizations; Asia, West: Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations; Arabian Peninsula; Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad; Phoenicia; Southern Levant, Bronze Age Metal Production and Utilization; Southern Levant, Chalcolithic Cultures; Cities, Ancient, and Daily Life; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Craft Specialization; Exchange Systems; Europe, Northern and Western: Bronze Age; Iron Age; Europe, South: Greece; Rome; Food and Feasting, Social and Political Aspects; Social Inequality, Development of; State-Level Societies, Collapse of.

Further Reading Alcock SE, D’Altroy TN, Morrison KD, and Sinopoli CM (eds.) (2001) Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History. New York: Cambridge University Press.

POLITICS OF ARCHAEOLOGY 1853 Earle TK (ed.) (1991) Chiefdoms: Power, Economy, and Ideology. New York: Cambridge University Press. Earle TK (1997) How Chiefs Come to Power: The Political Economy in Prehistory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Feinman GM and Marcus J (eds.) (1998) Archaic States. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Haas J (ed.) (2001) From Leaders to Rulers. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Press. Price TD and Feinman GM (eds.) (1995) Foundations of Social Inequality. New York: Plenum Press.

Runciman WG (ed.) (2001) The Origin of Human Social Institutions. New York: Oxford University Press. Sinopoli CM (1994) The archaeology of empires. Annual Review of Anthropology 23: 159–180. Trigger BG (2003) Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study. New York: Cambridge University Press. Upham S (ed.) (1990) The Evolution of Political Systems: Sociopolitics in Small-Scale Sedentary Societies. New York: Cambridge University Press.

POLITICS OF ARCHAEOLOGY Laurajane Smith, University of York, York, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Ancient Monuments Protection Act Act recognizing the need for a governmental administration on the protection of ancient monuments finally passed, after a number of failed attempts on heritage protection acts. Cultural Resource Management (CRM) The vocation and practice of managing cultural resources, such as the arts and heritage.

The first laws, and other legal decrees to protect national antiquities, ancient monuments, and historic buildings date back to the seventeenth century in Europe, although it was not until the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century that such laws became commonplace in the West. These early acts, and other legal instruments and public agencies, included the English Ancient Monuments Protection Act of 1882, the 1807 chancellery recommendations in Denmark, the establishment in the 1830s of the Comite´ historique in France, the enactment of a Monuments Protection Act in Germany in 1902, and the 1906 Antiquities Act in the USA, amongst others. A second ‘wave’ of legislative activity occurred in the second half of the twentieth century, stimulated not only by the destruction caused by World War II and the extent of post-War redevelopment, but also the extent of 1960s urban expansion, development, and urban renewal projects. These events, alongside increasing public debate about environmental issues during the 1960s and 1970s, saw the amendment of existing laws to extend the powers of protection and/ or the development of new, more extensive legislation

in many Western countries to protect archaeological resources and monuments. Archaeologists, and before them antiquarians, have played active roles in the development and implementation of this legislation. Individual archaeologists and archaeological/anthropological societies have been active in lobbying for legislation and have even participated in the drafting of bills. John Lubbock and his championing of the Ancient Monuments Protection Act of 1882 in England is perhaps the most well-documented archaeological advocate for the legal protection of archaeological sites. The development of legislation to protect archaeological data – sites, monuments, structures, etc. – has had significant consequences for archaeological practice. Not only did these laws help to protect archaeological data from destruction, looting, and the collecting activities of amateur archaeologists, they also helped formalize the policy process concerned with the protection and management of archaeologicalsites. This process, often referred to as Cultural Resource Management (CRM) in North America, Archaeological Heritage Management (Europe), and Cultural Heritage Management (Australasia), is often based on legal documents, administered by governmental agencies and supplemented by a range of national and international policy documents. CRM is now the area of archaeological practice that employs the majority of archaeologists, who find employment in national and local government agencies, as private consultants, and in amenity societies, museums, and other public and private cultural organizations. The CRM process is not only defined by the relevant national legislation and the policy guidelines of national governmental agencies, but may also be influenced by a range of international agreements. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural

1854 POLITICS OF ARCHAEOLOGY

Organization (UNESCO) administers a number of international agreements concerned with the protection of archaeological and other heritage resources. These agreements take the form of Conventions, Recommendations, Declarations, and Guidelines that, while not laws, require Member States (those nations who are signatories to the agreements) to uphold certain practices and principles or face international censure. Relevant agreements include the 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (Hague Convention); the 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property; the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (the World Heritage Convention); the 1956 Recommendation on International Principles Applicable to Archaeological Excavation; and the 2003 Declaration concerning the Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage, among many others. The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) is a professional organization that lobbies governments and intergovernment organizations such as UNESCO and ICCROM about the management and conservation of archaeological and other cultural and historic resources. ICOMOS has produced a number of international and national Charters to help guide management, preservation, and conservation practices, and while these are not legal documents, they carry professional authority. Influential international Charters include Athens Charter for the Restoration of Historic Monuments of 1931; the International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (Venice Charter) of 1964; and the Charter for the Protection and Management of the Archaeological Heritage, 1990; while national charters include the Charter for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Significance (Burra Charter), 1999 (Australia ICOMOS) and A Preservation Charter for the Historic Town and Areas of the United States of America, 1992 (US ICOMOS). The CRM process, with its legal and public policy base, tends to privilege and give authority to archaeological values and practices in the management and preservation of material culture. Not only do archaeologists numerically tend to dominate the CRM process through the various jobs and roles they play within the management process, but it has also often been archaeological values and conceptualizations about the nature and meaning of material culture, or cultural resources, that are embedded in preservation and conservation laws, public policy, and international agreements. Subsequently, archaeologists, their knowledge about the past and basic disciplinary values, are continually legitimized and granted authority on a

day-to-day basis through the legal and policy practices of CRM. The authority that archaeological knowledge and values obtain in this way often means that archaeologists are vested with a considerable amount of power over the disposition and fate of material culture. This does not mean to say that archaeologists and archaeological values are ‘all powerful’ – economic expediencies often see the destruction of archaeological sites in the face of major developments. However, what it does mean is that archaeologists and archaeological knowledge and values are often given more power and authority in the management process than many others who may have a cultural, political, or historical interest in, or a stake in, the management of the past (see Who Owns the Past?). This becomes problematic when other less powerful interests may disagree with or contest the archaeological knowledge, values, and practices concerned with the management, curation, and use of material culture. What is significant here for understanding the ‘politics of archaeology’ is that conservation and preservation laws and policies, through the CRM processes that they establish and maintain, give authority and power to archaeological knowledge and values, often over that of other culturally or historically interested groups. Conflicts over the management, curation, interpretation of material culture, and so forth, between management archaeologists and other community interests are very common in the CRM process. Of particular note are the conflicts that occur between archaeologists and Indigenous groups in postcolonial countries, often over the repatriation or return of human remains and cultural artifacts from archaeological, government agencies, and museums back to the communities. Although conflicts between archaeologists and Indigenous peoples are often the most visible, other tensions may exist between other community groups and archaeologists over the use or interpretation of material culture. These conflicts are not simply tussles and tensions over the ‘ownership of the past’ as they are often characterized – they are often about the rights and abilities of communities and other groups to control the ways they are represented, recognized, and perceived by the rest of the society. Archaeological sites and artifacts are often valued and characterized in the CRM process as archaeological data, but to many others these things may be more readily understood as ‘heritage’. As heritage, material culture (sites, places, artifacts etc.) stand in for and represent a sense of cultural, social, and/or historical identity. In the wider politics of cultural, social, or historical recognition, it is often important for subaltern community or cultural groups to attempt to control how they are represented.

POLLEN ANALYSIS 1855

Subsequently, the conflicts over the possession or rights to control material culture/heritage are not simply about rights of possession, but are important statements of authority and control in the cultural politics of representation. Archaeological interpretations of material culture and the past become more than simple neutral or ‘objective’ statements, but rather themselves work to validate and authorize – or not – community and other interests, knowledge, and claims about the past and their own cultural, social, and/or historical identities. When archaeological views about the past conflict with a group’s own sense of identity, the conflicts can become fraught not only because of the authority with which archaeological knowledge is given in the CRM process and in wider Western culture, but the degree to which archaeological knowledge is used to legitimize, arbitrate over, and regulate other nonarchaeological knowledge claims. CRM, and the laws that underpin it, may be understood to establish archaeologists and archaeological knowledge within a framework of relations with other interests and interest groups with a stake in how the past is understood. The ‘politics’ of these relations rests on the differential levels of authority and power given to different knowledge claims about the past and the values attributed to material culture. Archaeology cannot be characterized as simply another interest in the CRM process, because of the authority and power given to archaeological knowledge claims in the legal process. See also: Cultural Resource Management; Historic Preservation Laws; Illicit Antiquities; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act; Native

Peoples and Archaeology; Who Owns the Past?; World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

Further Reading Carman J (1996) Valuing Ancient Things: Archaeology and Law. London: Leicester University Press. Choay F (2001) The Invention of the Historic Monument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Deloira V, Jr. (1992) Indians, archaeologists, and the future. American Antiquity 57(4): 595–598. Jokilehto J (1999) A History of Architectural Conservation. Amsterdam: Elsevier, Butterworth, Heinemann. Kehoe AB (1998) The Land of Prehistory: A Critical History of American Archaeology. New York: Routledge. Langford RF (1983) Our heritage – your playground. Australian Archaeology 16: 1–6. McNiven I and Lynette R (2005) Appropriated Pasts: Indigenous Peoples and the Colonial Culture of Archaeology. Walnut Creek: AltaMira. Meskell L (ed.) (1998) Archaeology under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. London: Routledge. Murtagh WJ (1997) Keeping Time: The History and Theory of Preservation in America. New York: Wiley. Pickard R (ed.) (2001) Policy and Law in Heritage Conservation. London: Spor Press. Smith C and Wobst HM (eds.) (2005) Indigenous Archaeologies: Decolonizing Theory and Practice. Routledge: London. Smith L (2004) Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage. London: Routledge. Swidler N, Dongoske KE, Anyon R, and Downer AS (eds.) (1997) Native Americans and Archaeologists: Stepping Stones to Common Ground. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Watkins J (2000) Indigenous Archaeology: American Indian Values and Scientific Practice. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Zimmerman LJ (1998) When data become people: Archaeological ethics, reburial, and the past as public heritage. International Journal of Cultural Property 7(1): 69–86.

POLLEN ANALYSIS John G Jones, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary anemophily A form of pollination whereby pollen is distributed by wind. biostratigraphy The science of dating rocks by using the fossils contained within them. sporopollenin A major component of the tough outer (exine) walls of spores and pollen grains.

zoophily A form of pollination whereby pollen is transferred by vertebrates, particularly by hummingbirds and other birds, and bats, but also by monkeys, marsupials, lemurs, bears, rabbits, deer, rodents, lizards, and other animals.

Pollen, the male sex cell of flowers, is produced by all plants. These grains usually have a durable outer shell or exine composed of sporopollenin, a complex polymer similar to lignin. This durable shell allows pollen grains to be preserved under ideal circumstances for millions of years. Theoretically, most or all pollen grains are distinctive and thus can be identified

1856 POLLEN ANALYSIS

under the microscope. In reality, there are many limitations and pollen types can usually only be identified to the family or genus level, although many exceptions exist. This combination of relative abundance and its diagnostic nature makes the analysis of pollen one of the most powerful tools in the archaeologist’s arsenal. Pollen analysis has been widely used in medicine, botany, forensics, and perhaps most importantly in geology (where it has been widely employed for biostratigraphic analysis of oil-bearing deposits). Pollen is routinely extracted from lignites, coals, shales, and other organic-rich rocks. Archaeologists use pollen analysis in a variety of ways including as an aid in palaeoenvironmental reconstruction; in dietary studies, to establish the presence and origins of agriculture, and to determine ground stone or other artifact use (see Artifacts, Overview; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction in the Lowland Neotropics; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Methods; Plant Domestication). All plants produce pollen or spores, though in varying amounts, and the mechanisms for pollen dispersal largely dictate the quantity of grains produced by any plant. Anemophilous plants, which rely on the wind for pollination, tend to produce copious quantities of grains as there is a high degree of chance that any given grain will successfully travel to an awaiting stigma. As a result, these anemophilous types tend to be commonly encountered in archaeological samples. Members of this group include pine, oak, ragweed, and grasses. Zoophilous or insect-pollinated plants produce much less pollen as they rely on an animal to directly carry pollen from one flower to another. These grains are much less commonly encountered in archaeological samples, but are often very diagnostic. Depending upon the amount of sporopollenin contained with the pollen, some grains are more durable than others, and thus they tend to be more commonly encountered or even over-represented in fossil pollen assemblages. Pine, grasses, and members of the families Asteraceae and Chenopodiaceae are typically overrepresented in many samples. Other pollen types are exceedingly fragile or are so rare that they never show up in archaeological sediments. In many archaeological sites, particularly those exposed to cyclic wetting and drying, pollen is not well preserved. The careful analysis of even poorly preserved grains, however, can provide at least a listing of plant species that were once present in the site area, information that is still valuable. However, differentially or poorly preserved assemblages must be recognized and caution should be observed when drawing interpretations from these assemblages. To help identify poorly preserved assemblages, palynologists usually add a known quantity of exotic

tracer spores to each sample. As a known quantity of spores is added to a known quantity of sediment, the quantity of recovered spores allows for the calculation of concentration values which can indicate overall preservation. The presence of these spores also serves to verify that laboratory error did not occur if tracer spores are found, but fossil pollen grains are not. Palynologists must consider all of these factors when drawing interpretations from their pollen samples. Pollen is extracted from archaeological sediment samples through a series of chemical treatments, including the removal of carbonates with hydrochloric acid, and the removal of silicates with hydrofluoric acid, while other alkaline and acid bath treatments remove unwanted organics and remaining minerals. Fossil pollen survives these treatments and the resulting residue consists of pollen, spores and charcoal. After extraction, pollen samples are usually examined on a light microscope at 400–1250. These high magnifications are necessary to see the diagnostic features of the tiny grains: apertures, surface textures, shape, and size. Although a few exceptions occur, most pollen grains fall within the size range of 15–80 mm, and the unique combinations of surface patterns, openings in the grains called pores and colpi, shapes, sizes, and other micromorphological features allow for positive identification of pollen grains. Reference collections and published keys aid in the identification of fossil pollen grains. Most analysts will scan a microscope slide counting a specified number of grains, giving a fair representation of what the past environment was like. These data, coupled with ample radiocarbon dates, provide a clear look into past conditions at a given archaeological site. In the case of a sediment core, a series of these counted pollen samples from known depths can be graphed into a stratigraphically constrained composite picture of the fossil pollen record, documenting changes in past environment and climate, human activity, and deforestation and reforestation. Figure 1 shows a graphic representation of a sediment core from Sipacate, Guatemala, and is fairly typical of what a detailed pollen analysis can provide. The basal section, dated to the period just before 3583 to c. 3356 BC, shows an environment dominated by red mangroves, with little evidence of human activity in the area. Around 3356 BC, there is a dramatic decrease in mangrove pollen, coinciding with an increase in Cyperaceae (sedge), Poaceae (grass), and Typha (cattail) pollen, indicating that the environment became less saline, and thus more favorable for human occupation and agriculture. Shortly afterward, the appearance of Zea mays (maize) pollen indicated that people were now farming in the area. The sustained presence of significant quantities of

Sipacate, Guatemala Pollen percentage diagram Herbs and cultigens

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POLLEN ANALYSIS 1857

Figure 1 Pollen percentage diagram from a sediment core from Sipacate, Guatemala.

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Ze a C m oc ay oo s lo ba M or Pi ace n a Q us e u Sp erc o us M ndl an es gr ov es

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1858 POLLEN ANALYSIS

in the nearby mountains. Their deliberate introduction into the sediments making up the burial fill over 50 000 years ago, possibly as a grave offering, has been interpreted as perhaps the earliest evidence of religion. The role of pollen analysis in archaeology is not limited to prehistoric studies, but instead can help document past activities of all ages. Historical archaeology benefits much from detailed pollen analyses, as illustrated at Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. Here, a series of late eighteenth century stone walls were constructed near springs on Monticello Mountain, the purpose of which were to protect the precious water sources from being choked due to agricultural erosion. Despite the extreme oxidizing environment of the area, pollen was nearly perfectly preserved because of the fine-grained clays which served to protect the grains. As the deposits were laid down in annual increments, likely resulting from erosion due to wheat farming activities near the top of the hill, the pollen record then documents a beautiful record of plants occurring at the site, and crops being grown by Mr. Jefferson (Figure 2). Finally, pollen analysis has demonstrated its potential in the field of nautical archaeology. Ancient cargos, ports of call, and foodstuffs have all been identified by pollen in sunken vessels from around the world.

charcoal fragments, also present in the pollen samples, confirms the continued human occupation of the region. Samples toward the top of the core show the return to a more saline environment; however, people continued to live in the region. In addition to providing information on past climates and human plant interactions, pollen analysis of grinding stone surfaces can offer insights into past modes of food preparation and ancient crops. Ancient pollen grains taken directly from the surfaces of grinding implements can reveal which crops were prepared using these tools. A study of pollen from desiccated human feces or coprolites can provide information on ancient food preferences and dietary patterns (see Coprolite Analysis). Since pollen survives digestion, grains taken in with the deliberate ingestion of flowers or fruits, as well as through their accidental ingestion, will be found in preparations of fecal materials demonstrating past food choices. Ancient cultural practices can also be illuminated from careful pollen analyses. In 1975, Leroi-Gourhan identified clusters of pollen from extralocal sources within a Neanderthal burial at Shanidar Cave in Iraq. These clusters of pollen grains were thought to represent flowers that would not have been expected to occur near the cave location, but were instead collected

PawPaw alignment, Monticello Pollen percentage diagram

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he Pl noan Am Po tag a o Tr cea ifo e U lium rfi c C a/C er e an Ze ale nab is am a C a ar y s C ya as ta ne a Fa g Fr us ax lle inu x s Ju gl a Li ns rio Pi den nu d s ron

Herbs and cultigens

383.0 382.9 382.8 382.7 382.6 382.5 382.4 382.3 382.2 382.1 382.0 381.9 381.8 381.7 381.6 381.5 381.4 381.3 381.2 381.1 381.0 380.9 380.8 380.7 380.6 380.5 380.4 380.3 380.2 380.1 380.0 379.9 379.8 379.7 379.6 379.5 379.4 379.3 379.2

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Figure 2 Pollen percentage diagram from a sediment profile from PawPaw Alignment, Monticello, Virginia.

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Despite these successes, pollen analysis does have a few drawbacks. Pollen can sometimes be difficult to extract and identify, and many types cannot be identified to a fine taxonomic level. However, it remains one of the most powerful tools available to the archaeologist interested in past environments, agricultural origins, and prehistoric diet. See also: Artifacts, Overview; Coprolite Analysis; Macroremains Analysis; Organic Residue Analysis; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction in the Lowland Neotropics; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Methods; Phytolith Analysis; Plant Domestication; Starch Grain Analysis.

Further Reading Bohrer VL (1981) Methods of recognizing cultural activity from pollen in archaeological sites. The Kiva: 46(3): 135–142.

Bryant VM, Jr., and Hall SA (1993) Archaeological palynology in the United States: A critique. American Antiquity 58(No. 2): 277–286. Bryant VM, Jr., and Holloway RG (1983) The role of palynology in archaeology. In: Schiffer MB (ed.) Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 6, p. 191–224. New York: Academic Press. Erdtman G (1969) Handbook of Palynology. New York: Hafner Publishing Co. Faegri K, Kaland PE, and Krzywinski K (1989) Textbook of Pollen Analysis by Knut Faegri and Johs. Iversen, 4th edn. New York: Wiley. Iversen J (1941) Land occupation in Denmark’s Stone Age. Danmarks Geologiske Undersogelse, 2 Raekke, nr. 66. King JE, Klippel WE, and Duffield R (1975) Pollen preservation and archaeology in eastern North America. American Antiquity 40: 180–190. Leroi-Gourhan A (1975) The flowers found with Shanidar IV, a Neanderthal burial in Iraq. Science 190(No. 4214): 562–564. Neff H, Pearsall DM, Jones JG, Arroyo B, Collins SK, and Freidel DE (2006) Early Maya adaptive patterns: Mid–Late Holocene paleoenvironmental evidence from Pacific Guatemala. Latin American Antiquity 17(3): 287–315. Traverse A (1988) Paleopalynology. Boston: Unwin Hyman.

POPULAR CULTURE AND ARCHAEOLOGY Cornelius Holtorf, University of Lund, Lund, Sweden ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary cultural heritage Qualities and attributes of places that have aesthetic, historic, scientific or social value for past, present or future generations. These values may be seen in a place’s physical features, but importantly can also be intangible qualities such as peoples associations with, or feelings for a place. rescue archaeology Emergency salvage of sites in immediate danger of destruction by major land modification projects such as reservoir construction.

This article reviews the most important perceptions of archaeology and archaeologists in contemporary popular culture. One of the most important insights that will emerge is that archaeology, unlike many other scientific disciplines, is largely perceived in flattering terms. In popular culture, the archaeologist is a hero and role model, competent and resourceful, serving the interests of society and occasionally of humanity through new discoveries and important revelations. This positive appeal is an important, though often underappreciated, asset of professional archaeologists and their discipline. The available literature on this subject is very small, often anecdotal, and

does not amount to a sustained academic debate. In recent years, however, the academic interest in the portrayal of archaeology in popular culture has increased substantially. The themes archaeologists are associated with in popular culture can be divided into four main categories: the archaeologist as adventurer; the archaeologist as detective; the archaeologist making profound revelations; and the archaeologist taking care of ancient sites and finds. These themes are characteristic for the contemporary Western world, although they have roots that go back at least as far as the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, the meaning of archaeology in popular culture outside the Western world could not be covered in this article.

The A Theme: The Archaeologist as Adventurer According to Roslynn Haynes, scientific discovery is the greatest of all adventures, and the scientist as heroic adventurer is one of six recurring archetypes of scientists in Western literature. By the same token, the theme of adventure is the single most important association with archaeology throughout popular culture. Archaeology has come to stand for a quest involving travel to exotic locations, simple living and working conditions in the field, unexpected tests and

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Figure 1 The archaeologist as adventurer, cartoon by Quentin Drew.

dangers, followed by spectacular discoveries, recovery of treasures, and the successful return home of the virtuous hero – all forming parts of essential adventure stories (Figure 1). The associations of archaeology with adventure are as old as archaeology itself. In a famous passage written more than three decades before Indiana Jones, the American archaeologist Alfred Kidder argued that In popular belief, and unfortunately to some extent in fact, there are two sorts of archaeologists, the hairychested and the hairy-chinned. [The hairy-chested variety appears] as a strong-jawed young man in a tropical helmet, pistol on hip, hacking his way through the jungle in search of lost cities and buried treasure. His boots, always highly polished, reach to his knees, presumably for protection against black mambas and other sorts of deadly serpents. The only concession he makes to the difficulties and dangers of his calling is to have his shirt enough unbuttoned to reveal the manliness of his bosom. (Alfred Kidder, 1949: XI)

The A theme has often been employed to tell the stories both of archaeologists’ research in the present and of the history of archaeology. In this view, the archaeologist is an uncompromising adventurer and explorer who conquers ancient sites and artifacts, and earns just rewards for pushing forward the frontiers of our knowledge about the past. The three existing Indiana Jones movies (Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981; Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, 1984; Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, 1989) created by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are quintessential action/adventure films. The archaeologist hero, a young University Professor, was played each time by Harrison Ford. Indiana’s clothes and

fearless character, the exciting storylines with many action scenes, and the exotic sets – all were carefully developed to suggest classic adventure in the tradition of King Solomon’s Mines (1950) and Secret of the Incas (1954). So much so that the poster to the second film proclaimed that ‘‘If adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones.’’ All films were international successes, and led to the creation of a lot of merchandise as well as computer games, comic books, roleplaying sourcebooks, a TV series, and various kinds of novels for all age groups. The three films together grossed more than US$ 1 billion at the box office alone. When Indiana Jones once appeared in late December on the German TV channel ARD, they advertised that ‘‘Christmas has been saved.’’ Indiana Jones is the most widely recognized and most enduring image of an archaeologist. His incredible popularity may partly rely on the fact that ‘‘No one’s got balls like Indiana Jones’’ as an ad in Playboy claimed. In a recent ranking by Premiere Magazine (April 2004) – two decades after the height of the cinematic Indiana Jones fever – the character still made rank no. 7 among ‘The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time’. Even Disney has embraced Indiana Jones. Since 1995, Disneyland’s ‘Adventure Land’ features a ride called Indiana Jones Adventure – Temple of the Forbidden Eye which has proved to be extremely popular. Another ride with reference to the no.1 movie archaeologist was created in Disneyland Paris as Indiana Jones et le temple du peril. The British holiday park Chessington World of Adventures features a broadly similar though less-advanced ride in its Forbidden Kingdom area. It carries the promising title Tomb Blaster. Stereotypes associated with adventure inform very much the image of archaeologists in children’s toys (e.g., Lego, Playmobil), comic series, contemporary advertising, literary fiction, films as well as widely read magazines like National Geographic Magazine, among other areas of popular culture (Table 1). In particular, the ‘colonial style’ clothes in which archaeologists appear often reveal intended associations with heroic adventures. Unfortunately, these cliche´s and narratives are not always harmless entertainment but can have highly problematic undertones that smack of colonial and imperial attitudes. For example, in the movie March or Die (1977) Max von Sydow plays the archaeologist Franc¸ois Marneau who is trying to secure an ancient Moroccan treasure at all cost. He is quite ready to sacrifice human lives and peace with the Arab tribes for what he – misguidedly – considers the greater good of archaeology. Similarly, the American TV game-show Legends of the Hidden Temple (Nickelodeon, 1993–1996) involved a race of the participating children teams through

POPULAR CULTURE AND ARCHAEOLOGY 1861 Table 1 Adventurer-archaeologists of popular culture Lara Croft Rick Dangerous Professor Sydney Fox, historian in the Department of Ancient Studies Professor Indiana Jones Indiana Pipps, Indiana Ding, Indiana Goof, Indiana Jo¨ns, Arizona Goof, etc. Will Rock Professor Robson

Professor Bernice Summerfield Vash

The heroine of the computer game and Tomb Raider films The hero of a classic computer game The heroine of the TV-series Relic Hunter

The hero in novels by various authors and three films by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg Goofy’s cousin who appears in Disney’s Donald Duck stories under various names in different countries The hero of a computer game The hunky professor in the soft-porn film series The Adventures of Justine (1995–1996) The heroine of several novels by various authors, originally part of Doctor Who Character in the TV series Star Trek

an elaborate obstacle course evoking ruins in the jungle, in order to retrieve an artifact from ‘Olmec’s Temple’. In order to succeed they needed to bribe several ‘native’ Temple Guards along the way. As shown in a brilliant analysis by the Austrian writer and expert in German literature Christiane Zintzen, a particularly well-suited template for such archaeological narratives has been the life and career of Heinrich Schliemann (1822–1890). Like few others, he personified both to himself and to others the lonely hero on a long journey. Despite being an outsider, he knew ‘the truth’ – in this case about the historical reality of Homer’s Troy – early on but was ridiculed until he finally embarked on his quest alone and under great difficulties. In the end, however, Schliemann, like the archetypal hero, proved himself right by making great discoveries, becoming accepted as scholars, and celebrated as a national hero. Many have since then drawn inspiration and motivation from this truly mythical story, so that one may even speak of a ‘Schliemann Effect’. Best-selling accounts of archaeological romances involving mystery, adventure, and hardship but concluding with the reward of treasure were pioneered by the author Kurt W. Marek (1915–1972) alias C. W. Ceram who published in 1949 his instant classic Go¨tter, Gra¨ber und Gelehrte (Gods, Graves, and Scholars). This book tells the story of the ‘great’ archaeological adventures and discovery processes in the eastern Mediterranean, Egypt, the Middle East, and central America by focusing on the archaeologist heroes themselves. Among them are the celebrities Heinrich Schliemann, Arthur Evans, Howard

Carter, and Leonard Woolley. The appeal of this subject was such that Go¨tter, Gra¨ber und Gelehrte has been translated into 30 languages and sold approximately 5 million copies worldwide. The success of Ceram’s writing lies in a mixture of facts and exciting story-telling where the readers suffer with their heroes until they eventually succeed. The use of numerous historical details and the frequent allusions to archaeology continuously advancing our knowledge by deciphering more and more of the past became key elements of a new literary genre thus established: the archa¨ologischer Tatsachenroman, or fact-based archaeological novel. This genre was very successfully continued by Geoffrey Bibby, Rudolf Po¨rtner, Philipp Vandenberg, among others. In the same spirit, if to you ‘‘the idea of exploring the ancient tombs of pharaohs sends shivers down your spine and swells a yearning in your heart,’’ travel companies like Fodors advise you (on their web pages) to ‘‘just go.’’ They offer special archaeological ‘explorations’ to far-away places where ‘‘plenty of secrets still remain hidden for modern-day explorers to unearth.’’ For those who do not travel, there is still TV with its many archaeological documentaries. A summary on the Internet of the recent British series Great Excavations (Channel 4, 2000) could not have been written better by Ceram himself: [The series tells] the story of the fascinating and often eccentric science of archaeology, from its beginnings in the 18th century to the present. It is a tale of chance finds and clever deduction, of private enterprise and national plunder, of romantic adventures and sheer cunning, of the hunt for mysterious ancient civilisations and the desire for invaluable objects.

These story elements are also reminiscent of the archaeological adventures of Lara Croft, archaeological action heroine that over the past decade acquired first computer game acclaim and then movie fame. To date she is the only video game character who made it onto the cover of fashion magazines and to have appeared in car commercials. Lara can be described as a blend of Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Pamela Anderson. She is portrayed as (the stereotype of) the perfect woman, combining girl power with male fantasies. Yet contrary to how it might seem at first, Lara Croft does arguably not break the rule that heroic adventurer archaeologists are male. Instead, she can be seen as a male protagonist in female masquerade, for her body is the only thing female about her. This is hardly surprising though, given that the genre of the adventure story demands stereotypically male characteristics for its heroes. On the other hand, it may be precisely these characteristics that make Lara the epitome of the empowered woman.

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One aspect that is sometimes forgotten in archaeological hero-stories is their final element: the eventual downfall of the hero and his being cut down to size. Even the glory of Schliemann began to fade after his death, when questions were raised about the ownership of the artifacts he shipped out of their countries of origin. By the same token, Indiana Jones, in the Last Crusade, manages to get hold of the Holy Grail and save his father but in the end he cannot hold on to it and remains an ordinary mortal. However far the A theme may stray from the realities of professional archaeology, it has at least in parts been created and promoted by archaeologists themselves. It is beyond question that Heinrich Schliemann fabricated his autobiography so that his own heroic role would stand out more clearly. Even nowadays, archaeologists often do not hesitate to use phrases and generally represent themselves in ways that immediately evoke the A theme. Numerous exhibitions and their catalogs appeal to visitors through the term ‘treasures’ in their titles. The Swedish archaeologist Go¨ran Burenhult, who wrote a series of TV programs and books about his archaeological adventures, is introduced on the dust jacket of one of the volumes with the words: To be an archaeologist is precisely as exciting as it sounds – at least if one works like Go¨ran Burenhult. If one is an explorer of foreign cultures, then and now, whether here or on the other site of the globe.

Archaeologists have for a long time, even amongst themselves, considered the rituals of fieldwork and the making of finds as the core of their discipline: archaeological fieldwork certainly can be an adventurous experience. Arguably, there is a bit of an adventurer and Indiana Jones in every archaeologist. Indeed, many archaeology students chose their subject out of fascination for figures like Indiana Jones. Unfortunately, this has as a consequence that gender issues are far from unimportant in the discipline.

the opposite to the ‘hairy-chested’ archaeologist in the following terms: The hairy-chinned archaeologist [. . .] is old. He is benevolently absent-minded. His only weapon is a magnifying glass, with which he scrutinizes inscriptions in forgotten languages. Usually his triumphant decipherment coincides, in the last chapter, with the daughter’s rescue from savages by the handsome young assistant.

This Sherlock Holmes-type figure has become a common cliche´ for the archaeologist (Figure 2). Although the detective has been associated with other disciplines too, the link with archaeology is extremely close. As has often been pointed out, both archaeology and forensic science and criminology draw, in parts, on seemingly incontrovertible material evidence, which is carefully documented and taken to provide significant clues as to what really had happened at the site under investigation. Both use advanced technology helping them to come up with reconstructions of the past based on circumstantial evidence (Table 2). Many archaeological TV documentaries, for example, those on Discovery Channel including Time Team, tend to adopt detective-style narratives to tell their stories. The same is true for a large number of adventure and computer games such as Riddle of the Sphinx (2000) and The Mystery of the Mummy (2003). The genre of the archaeologist as detective has often been parodied. The perhaps best-known example are Calvin & Hobbes’ excavations. Another brilliant example is the author and illustrator David Macaulay’s (1979) account of the Motel of the Mysteries, a late twentieth-century ruin re-discovered in 4022 by the mediocre amateur archaeologist Howard Carson. The site was to reveal ‘wonderful things’ indeed about a mysterious lost civilization. Arguably, a special case within the detective category is the antiquarian scholar, usually an elderly

The D Theme: The Archaeologist as Detective As contemporary Western societies are characterized by increasing specialization, professionalization, and scientification, it is not surprising that the past too is expected to be dealt with by experts, in this case historical and archaeological scholars who have the skills to investigate the past. Archaeologists have long been considered – and considered themselves – as professional detectives of the past. They solve profound mysteries and reveal the secrets of the past for us all. Alluding to this role, Alfred Kidder described

Figure 2 The archaeologist as detective, cartoon by Quentin Drew.

POPULAR CULTURE AND ARCHAEOLOGY 1863 Table 2 Detective/scholar archaeologists of popular culture Dr. Cornelius Daniel Jackson, Egyptologist Professor Henry Jones Sr. Professor Kilroy, Professor Articus, Dr Charles Lightning Martin Myste`re Dr Eric Leidner Professor William Harper Littlejohn Evelyn O’Connell (Carnarvon), Egyptologist Amelia Peabody and Radcliff Emerson, Egyptologists Jean-Luc Picard, Professor Richard Galen Professor Hercules Taragon, Americanist

A chimpanzee in the film The Planet of the Apes The hero in the film Stargate and subsequent TV series Stargate SG-1 Indiana Jones’ father (see Table 1) A character with different names in the Lego Adventurers theme featuring Johnny Thunder The hero in an Italian comic series The murderer in Agatha Christie’s Murder in Mesopotamia (1936) A character in the 1930/40s Doc Savage novels by Lester Dent and other (associated comics, radio shows and a movie from 1975) Major character in the Mummy films and recent role playing games Main characters in a series of novels by Elizabeth Peters The captain of the Enterprise and his former teacher in the TV series Star Trek A character in two Tintin adventures

male professor with glasses and a beard, somewhat dull but not always unattractive, obsessed with his research – which he perceives as a large puzzle, keeping a journal containing his theories, and a little out of this world. This, for instance, was the role played by archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler on British TV during the 1950s. The gentleman-like scholar, like the detective, creates light where there was darkness, solving academic mysteries through the skills of careful observation, enormous knowledge, strict logic, and some intuition when it matters most (Table 3). In a way this character is thus a hero too, although not in the sense of the classical adventure discussed earlier (which is why some prefer to speak of an anti-hero in this context). The narrative that goes with scholarship in popular culture nevertheless bears an astonishing resemblance to that common in adventures: scholars leave behind their own familiar world, fully committed to command other worlds; they work in their fields exploring uncharted territories without fear or hesitation; they make sensational discoveries, and eventually they announce their enlightenment to the world at large, which in turn rewards them with recognition, although their own motivation is entirely selfless. Indiana Jones’s father Professor Henry Jones, who was famously played by Sean Connery in the Last Crusade, is designed precisely in this mould. He does not like being disturbed and never had time for his son since he followed his personal quest of scholarship for all his life. Yet then the scholarly passion of his father suddenly merge with Indy’s adventure, and the Professor’s scholarship becomes as important as Indy’s fighting skills for the successful completion of their joint adventure. In this case as well as in The Mummy and Stargate movies, the Relic Hunter

Table 3 Similarities between the detective story and the factbased archaeological novel as represented by Ceram Detective story 1. The detective 2. The crime, lying in the dark 3. The motive which can explain the crime 4. Techniques of delay (false tracks, resistance, competition, envious opponents) 5. Great excitement immediately before the revelation or discovery Fact-based archaeological novel (Ceram) 1. The archaeologist 2. The archaeological artifact, lying in the dark 3. The key which can explain the artifact (e.g., Rosetta Stone) 4. Techniques of delay (false tracks, resistance, competition, envious opponents) 5. Great excitement immediately before the revelation or discovery Source: Scho¨rken (1995: 74), my translation.

episodes, the Lego Adventurer products and the Doc Savage series, among others, the detective/scholar and the adventurer together form the classic team for solving archaeological mysteries where many pieces of a puzzle first have to be found and then put together. Only at the end, the full picture will be revealed. These correspondences between criminological and archaeological mysteries are certainly one reason why archaeologists and archaeology occur frequently in detective fiction. Fore example, the bestselling American author Tony Hillerman (e.g., A Thief of Time, 1989) likes to combine themes about native American archaeology with the work of his police officer Joe Leaphorn. Agatha Christie, whose Hercule Poirot is explicitly inspired by archaeological methodology, was even married to the archaeologist Max Mallowan and participated in a series of his excavations herself.

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However, in popular culture, not all archaeological scholars are successful detectives, becoming heroes in their own fields. Some seem to be doing little else than conducting arcane research through which they accumulate obscure facts and artifacts. They are from educated middle-class backgrounds and come across as dull and boring people, so that popular culture occasionally makes fun of them. This is the case with Jean-Luc Picard, Captain of the Enterprise and a dedicated amateur archaeologist. When, in the Startrek episode ‘Qpid’, he addressed the Federation’s Archaeology Council, his ‘scientific’ speech is described (and indeed performed) as ‘dull’ and ‘pedantic’. Another boring archaeologist was depicted in the popular 1980s BBC sitcom Hi-De-Hi, written by David Croft and Jimmy Perry. The series was set in a typical British holiday camp in the 1950s and 1960s. Jeffrey Fairbrother, a former Professor of archaeology, is the awkward and uncomfortable new entertainment manager who introduces himself with the following words: I left my seat at Cambridge as Professor of Archaeology, essentially, to discover just how to stop being boring. It’s no secret that being boring is what led to the end of my marriage, and I found, to my surprise, that many of my students were falling asleep during my lectures too because they were bored as well.

Scholars, like detectives, are widely considered benevolent and harmless. Indeed, their scholarship and methodology is often seen as appealing and enviable. In the context of the scholars’ own families, however, the complete dedication given to their research can be more sad than funny. This is well illustrated by Henry Jones who, in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, emerges as a father who had been obsessed with his scholarship for all his life and never had time for his son. At the end of the film he finally seems to realize his mistake (Son: ‘‘What did you find, Dad?’’ – Father: ‘‘Me?’’). In addition, there can be a side to this character yet more dangerous. Whether by some historical coincidence or as a result of misguided ambitions, the scholar may end up on the ‘wrong’ moral side. Such figures can become potent enemies even to their own colleagues, as demonstrated by the Nazi archaeologist Dr Elsa Schneider in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and the corrupt archaeologist Alex West who works for an auction house, in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001).

The R Theme: The Archaeologist Making Profound Revelations A third common stereotype of archaeology in popular culture is that it is a source of sensational revelations,

although they occur also in association with many other sciences. Curiously, this theme has previously attracted little attention although it occurs frequently and is easily recognizable. Not unusual, for example, are archaeological newspaper stories with headlines like ‘‘Dresden Stonehenge discovered: Stone Age observatory is 7000 years old!’’ (Bildzeitung Dresden, 7 August 2002), ‘‘Norrbotten was multi-cultural already 10,000 years ago’’ (Norrla¨ndska Socialdemokraten, 19 September 2003), or ‘‘Go¨teborg’s inhabitants are really Germans’’ (Aftonbladet, 19 October 2002; all my translations). Examples for these kinds of revelations cannot always be blamed on floppy journalism but they are, at least in parts, the doing of archaeologists and scientists of other disciplines themselves. It has become normal to expect from archaeologists new revelations whenever they present their work (directly or via mediators) to large audiences. The stronger and more sensational the claim, the more ‘interesting’ and ‘worthwhile’ a specific project is perceived to be. Parodies have made that principle particularly obvious. For example, in 1999 the American satirical paper The Onion ran a story entitled ‘Archaeological Dig Uncovers Ancient Race of Skeleton People’. After finding ancient skeletons, the excavator is cited as stating that ‘‘the implications are staggering’’: ‘‘We now know that the skeletons we see in horror films and on Halloween are not mere products of the imagination, but actually lived on Earth. [. . .] These skeletons may, in fact, be ancestors to us all. Any of us could be part skeleton.’’ By the same token, on 1 April 2004, the campaign for awarding the German town of Bremen the title of ‘European Cultural Capital 2010’ published a short film and press statement announcing the ‘archaeological sensation’ that the ‘mystery of the Sphinx of Gizeh’ has been ‘revealed’: it is said to have been part of a sculpture of the town musicians of Bremen, a well-known German fairy tale. Generally, the R theme is compatible with both the A theme and the D theme, and usually occurs in conjunction with either one or both of them. The basic notion is that at the end of an adventure or a detective story a sensational discovery is made that often contains a truth significant and important to everybody. In this vein, the British Time Team TV series promises that each program ‘‘unlocks the secrets of the past in just three days.’’ How significant such ‘secrets’ can be, is illustrated in Hammond Innes’ adventure novel Levkas Man (1973). Here, a series of excavations and finds gradually reveal to a desperate palaeoanthropologist that ‘‘Man is a killer’’ who ‘‘carries the seed of his own destruction in him,’’ thus questioning whether there is ‘‘any hope for our species.’’

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Similarly, large issues have been addressed in popular nonfiction literature about archaeology. The German TV author Gisela Graichen suggested in one of the books accompanying her programs that archaeologists could find the mechanisms that govern the rise and fall of civilizations and reveal the reasons why some societies flourish and others collapse. Based on their understanding of the past, archaeologists may thus be able to develop strategies of survival for our future as human beings. It is only a small step from here to the heroic Lara Croft whose archaeological expertise helps her directly to save the world from its imminent destruction by evil enemies. The archaeologist thus often comes across as a potential savior, sometimes resembling a seer or messiah, whose revelations enlighten our ordinary lives and may even be able to save us from imminent doom. The reason why archaeologists should have special access to such great truths goes beyond their ability to solve mysteries and recover treasures. Inasmuch as it is possible to bring lost civilizations and the dead back to life and make ancient artifacts speak, terms often used to describe archaeology, it involves supernatural powers and achieves true miracles (Figure 3). Nowhere is the notion of the archaeologist having access to eternal truths better exemplified than in the Indiana Jones film scripts. Whereas in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones seeks to recover the Ark of the Covenant, which is believed still to hold the ten commandments, in the Last Crusade he hunts, together with his father, for nothing less than the Holy Grail.

Taking the R theme to an extreme, the Swiss author Erich von Da¨niken has been a master of linking mysterious archaeological sites, such as Stonehenge in the UK and the Nasca lines in Peru, with large existential questions about humans on earth and some powerful explanations involving visits by beings from outer space. Da¨niken, who incidentally never claimed to be an archaeologist, made his fame by revealing the possibility of extraterrestrial origins of ancient human civilizations. With over 65 million sold books, he alone has probably reached more readers than all the writings of professional archaeologists worldwide put together. When a certain threshold of revealing secrets is overstepped, there is, however, the risk that the past takes revenge. As The Mummy films and numerous novels and adventure games vividly illustrate, the unscrupulous archaeologist who disturbs the peace of the dead and compulsively seeks to recover secrets of ancient civilizations may have to face the mighty forces guarding them. Archaeologists run the risk of tampering with forces that they do not understand. They are the people who raid the tomb, irrespective of the wishes and warnings of the local or indigenous population, awaken the dead, activate the curse, and bring down some immense supernatural nasty upon the world. (Russell 2002: 46)

It is not surprising that this metaphysical dimension of archaeology enjoys considerable public interest. Archaeology commands some of the same appeal as flying saucers, horror movies or the X Files. It holds for all of them that when you are dealing with unknown mysteries, you can expect some (nasty) surprises. Although satisfying the public demand in addressing large existential questions is arguably an important social function of both archaeology and cultural heritage, archaeologists are often reluctant to get into any kind of speculations that cannot withstand scientific scrutiny. ‘Alternative’ archaeologists like Erich von Da¨niken or Graham Hancock have thus been able to claim the vacated territory with considerable success.

The C Theme: The Archaeologist Taking Care of Ancient Sites and Finds

Figure 3 The archaeologist bringing ancient civilizations back to life, cartoon by Quentin Drew.

A final theme within which archaeology is being given meaning in contemporary popular culture has only over the past few years gained in significance, as developer-funded rescue archaeology and cultural heritage and resource management have been thoroughly transforming the landscape of professional archaeology throughout the Western world. Archaeologists have become the Heritage Police.

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Figure 4 The archaeologist taking care of ancient finds, cartoon by Quentin Drew.

This theme revolves around the notion that in managing ancient sites and finds, archaeologists bear the responsibility of taking care of what are scarce and nonrenewable resources. Accordingly, the archaeologist, whether a civil servant or an employee of a commercial company, is a caring specialist with limited time and limited resources who tries to salvage, for the benefit of society and humankind, valuable archaeological sites or artifacts – and the historical information they may possess – from decay or destruction (Figure 4). In addition, these professional rescuers, who are committed to working according to ethical principles, also fight things like tomb-raiding (a´ la Lara Croft) and the illicit antiquities trade. Whereas the A theme is usually far-away archaeology, the C theme tends to be close-to-home archaeology. Whereas the former can be appreciated in national and indeed international media, the latter is particularly visible in local media such as newspapers. Local papers contain numerous reports about precisely what has been rescued where and which preserved archaeological sites or recovered finds exhibited in museums might draw visitors to the area. So strong is this fascination with caring for ancient sites and preserving historical evidence at risk that local rescue projects might even then be deemed newsworthy when nothing has been found: ‘‘No archaeological finds where National Road 29 will run’’ (Blekinge La¨ns Tidning, 2 October 2002, my translation). The C theme is now also entering the worlds of film and fiction. The well-known Swedish author P. C. Jersild published in 2003 a novel (De ondas kloster) about a small archaeological rescue firm

struggling under various pressures as clues about the Medieval site under investigation emerge. Similarly, in the movie The Body (2001), the remains of none less than Christ come to light on a rescue dig in Jerusalem. The film archaeologist Dr Sharon Golban explains the circumstances of the discovery with the words: ‘‘They wanted to put up flats in about three months so we had to be quick.’’ The National Geographic Society, too, is now extending the appeal of their documentary films to include the C theme. A DVD of the 2002 production Inca Mummies: Secrets of a Lost Empire features on its cover not only some of the usual emblems of the A theme but also an invitation to ‘‘join archaeologists racing to rescue priceless Inca relics from looters and urban sprawl.’’ Although C and D themes are very compatible with each other and indeed often combined, the two are nevertheless not interchangeable. The archaeologist as specialist caretaker and manager of precious resources is not a detective carrying a notebook and a magnifying glass but rather a professional expert who wears either suit and tie or protective clothing suggested by the appropriate Health and Safety regulations. Even science-fiction adventures, which are often featuring archaeologists, have now begun to reflect the real changes to the profession of archaeology on planet Earth. For example, the Startrek episode Q-less (1993) featuring rogue archaeologist Vash who has previously been expelled from the Federation’s Archaeology Council for selling illicit artifacts, contains a strong ethical message. When she is resuming her illegal activities, omnipotent alien Q informs the bridge crew of space station Deep Space Nine that Vash is ‘‘setting Federation ethics back two hundred years. Believe me, gang, she is far more dangerous to you than I am.’’ The C theme in archaeology has both comical and tragical elements. On the one hand, precisely why should anybody want to rescue a few ancient artifacts? On the other hand, the archaeologist can often not prevent but only alleviate the destruction of archaeological sites. In popular films like the Swedish comedy Den ofrivillige golfaren (1991), where a somewhat hopeless character played by Claes Ma˚nsson represents the state archaeologist Berglund, both elements are coming together. The audience smiles about the seemingly ridiculous endeavors of the naive and inept archaeologist but at the same time feels for this poor guy who is trying to do his important job, without being taken seriously by anybody. The work of the caretaker archaeologist is usually appreciated by people. But when personal interests are involved, for example, when peoples’ personal beliefs, finances, or livelihoods are concerned, the

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stakes rise quickly and the archaeologist can be perceived as a formidable enemy. It may suddenly appear questionable why all this academic attention to ancient remains should be so sensible after all. For example, in the British film Pascali’s Island (1988), set on an Aegean island during the end of the Ottoman Empire, the local Pasha feels threatened by the archaeologist Anthony Bowles who lets it known that he will report his valuable discoveries to the national authorities in Constantinople so that the Sultan can take care of it in the proper way. The irony is that Bowles himself turns out to be a swindler who is seeking to get rich from the greedy Pasha.

Alternative Themes Any categorization has its limits in where it draws boundaries between different types and regarding those types that do not fit in any of the categories. My own attempt at categorizing the portrayals of archaeology in popular culture has not been able to place convincingly a few depictions which I would nevertheless like to mention briefly. Alternative categorizations have similar limitations. There is for example the archaeologist as a vulnerable romantic. Although this character is arguably linked to the A theme and often, for example, wears similar clothes, the archaeologist Tom Baxter in the movie The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) is no Indiana Jones. ‘‘I am honest, dependable, courageous, romantic, and a great kisser,’’ he says about himself. When this ‘poetic little archaeologist’ falls in love with a woman he gives up his archaeological explorations, telling her ‘‘I want to learn about the real world with you.’’ Adventurous in a different way is the young French archaeologist Lina in the B-movie Summer Lovers (1982). While working on the excavation site of Akrotiri on Santorini, exciting Lina enters into a romantic relationship with a visiting American tourist and his girlfriend, both of whom experience mutual attraction to her. In this portrayal, the archaeologist represents the intriguing ‘Other’ through whom the two Americans ultimately find each other again. Finally, there is the archaeologist as a fairly ordinary person in an ordinary social context, with all the ordinary problems that may entail but that have nothing to do with archaeology. The German author Barbara Frischmuth, for example, showed in her novel Bindungen (1980) how the archaeologist Fanny looks back at her family past and contemplates her present life while visiting her sister who has built up a seemingly happy family idyll. Other stories about the archaeologist as a very normal person are The Archaeologist (1998) by the academic Richard

Jenkins and The Realms of Gold (1975) by the English writer Margaret Drabble. In the latter novel, the famous archaeologist Frances Wingate, divorced and mother of four, has escaped a past of marital violence. While she finds herself madly in love with the weird and married academic Karel Schmidt, she is in the process of rediscovering her family history. The most striking variation of this theme can be found in Japanese Anime and Manga which frequently feature archaeologists who are depicted as nice, forgetful, and well-meaning males, usually young. In Cardcaptor Sakura there is, for example, the archaeologist Fujitaka Kinomoto (aka Aiden Avalon) who is a busy professor at the local University. Although he is often absent, Fujitaka is a loving father of two children including Sakura herself. Since his wife died at the age of 27, he raises them on his own. The main focus is again on the nonprofessional family life of the archaeologist.

Conclusions In this article, the author distinguished and discussed four main themes which can account for practically all portrayals of archaeology in contemporary popular culture in the Western world. Each theme represents one particular dimension of what might be called ‘archaeo-appeal’. Significantly, there are some dimensions which all these themes share. None of the four themes take the past itself particularly seriously. Mostly, archaeologists are not portrayed in relation to their actual ability to find out what happened in the past but in relation to certain other qualities of their endeavor. These qualities may be the adventurous character of archaeological fieldwork, the exciting detective-work that leads to important discoveries which may solve historical mysteries, the possibility and hope of eventually being able to make great revelations, and the professional duties of the specialist who takes good care of the archaeological heritage as a nonrenewable resource. It is as if any specific historical information or interpretation has meaning only in so far as it contributes to any of these themes, making the adventure more adventurous, the mystery more (or less) mysterious, the revelation more likely (or pertinent), and the protection more urgent. In none of the four themes are thus the actual results of archaeological work particularly important. Instead, what matters most are various aspects of the process of doing archaeology. Just like an adventure story is not characterized by precisely what the hero accomplishes but how he gets there, so a detective story does not rely a lot on what the solution of the case eventually is, and professional management of a scarce resource is not really about

1868 POSTPROCESSUAL ARCHAEOLOGY

protection for any specific site or artifact and its historical information. I would argue that even great archaeological revelations are often more effective at making audiences gasp at ‘how’ somebody could have reached them than at making them appreciate the validity of ‘what’ they actually imply. The phenomenon that the object and the results of scientific studies can seem less interesting than the desire and the process of studying themselves is not unique to archaeology. They occur also in other sciences featuring unsolved mysteries, adventurous fieldwork, searches for evidence, and the prospects of large revelations, among other popular themes. In other words, all scientific disciplines are to some extent perceived and appreciated in metaphorical terms, that is in other terms than what they literally claim to be about. See also: Careers in Archaeology; Interpretation of Archaeology for the Public; Politics of Archaeology; Pseudoarchaeology and Frauds.

Further Reading Bray W (1981) Archaeological humour: The private joke and the public image. In: Evans J, Cunliffe B, and Renfrew C (eds.) Antiquity and Man. Essays in Honour of Glyn Daniel, pp. 221–229. London: Thames and Hudson.

Postmodern Archaeology

Ceram CW (1980) Gods, Graves and Scholars: The Story of Archaeology (first published in German in 1949). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Haynes R (1994) From Faust to Strangelove. Representations of the Scientist in Western Literature. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Holtorf C (2005) From Stonehenge to Las Vegas. Archaeology as Popular Culture. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. Holtorf C (2007) Archaeology is a Brand! The Meaning of Archaeology in Contemporary Popular Culture. Illustrated by Quentin Drew. Oxford: Archaeopress and Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Kidder A (1949) Introduction. In: Amsden C (ed.) Prehistoric Southwesterners from Basketmaker to Pueblo, pp. XI–XIV. Los Angeles: Southwest Museum. Macaulay D (1979) The Motel of the Mysteries. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Russell M (2002) ‘‘No more heroes any more’’: The dangerous world of the pop culture archaeologist. In: Russell M (ed.) Digging Holes in Popular Culture. Archaeology and Science Fiction, pp. 38–54. Oxford and Oakville: Oxbow/The David Brown Book Company. Scho¨rken R (1995) Begegnungen mit Geschichte. Vom auberwissenschaftlichen Umgang mit der Historie in Literatur und Medien. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Tru¨mpler C (ed.) (2001) Agatha Christie and Archaeology. London: British Museum Press. Zarmati L (1995) Popular archaeology and the archaeologist as hero. In: Balme J and Beck W (eds.) Gendered Archaeology. The Second Australian Women in Archaeology Conference, pp. 43–47. Canberra: ANH Publications. Zintzen C (1998) Von Pompeji nach Troja: Archa¨ologie, Literatur und o¨ffentlichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert. Wien: WUV Universita¨tsverlag.

See: Postprocessual Archaeology.

POSTPROCESSUAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Glossary

postprocessual archaeology Sometimes called postmodern archaeology; includes several modes of archaeological interpretation that rose to prominence in the 1980s as alternative to, or supplementary to, processual archaeology. processual archaeology Also called ‘New Archaeology’, an approach to the past that dominated Anglo-American archaeology during the 1960s–70s when general principles (processes) of human social behavior were stressed.

archaeology Study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, artefacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes. Ian Hodder British archaeologist, who introduced the phrase ‘postprocessual archaeology’ in 1985. Lewis Binford American archaeologist, leader of the New Archaeology movement in the 1960s/70s.

The phrase ‘postprocessual archaeology’ was introduced in 1985 by the British archaeologist, Ian Hodder, as a blanket term for several approaches to archeological interpretation alternative, complementary, or supplementary to those advocated by proponents

Patty Jo Watson, Washington University-St. Louis, MO, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

POSTPROCESSUAL ARCHAEOLOGY 1869

of processual archaeology (the latter is also known as New Archaeology). Processual archaeology rose to prominence in the 1960s–70s under the leadership of Lewis R. Binford. Most processualists were trained in anthropology departments in the Americas, especially the United States and Canada, their research – whether in the Old World or the New – typically being focused on prehistoric time periods and upon economic, ecological, and environmental aspects of ancient lifeways. This proved to be a strong and productive trajectory that occupies a central position in early twenty-first century archaeology. As practiced in the 1960s and 1970s, however, processual archaeology was almost completely bereft of concern for past cognitive systems, and for individual social and political action (agency) in the human past. Moreover, 1960s–70s processualists accorded little or no attention to the sociopolitical contexts of archaeology and individual archaeologists, which shaped and biased theoretical orientations and resulting interpretations of the archaeological record. All three of the issues just noted are central to postprocessual archaeology. The major impetus to the varied approaches loosely grouped as postprocessual came from England and the European continent where post-Paleolithic archaeology has deep roots within history, in contrast to its development in the United States where archaeology has been a subfield of anthropology since the late nineteenth century. Hence, postprocessual archaeology features a strong emphasis on cultural history, as well as close attention to the concepts and scholarly programs of a wide array of European social theorists (e.g., Pierre Bourdieu, Fernand Braudel, Michel Foucault, Anthony Giddens, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Ju¨rgen Habermas, Max Horkheimer, E. Le Roy Ladurie, Claude Levi-Strauss, Herbert Marcuse, and Paul Ricoeur) and to the strictures of venerable European scholarly groups (e.g., the Annales School and the Frankfurt School). In addition to the approaches indicated above (agency and practice, critical theory, hermeneutic or interpretationist perspectives, symbolic structuralism, poststructuralism), postprocessual archaeology also includes marxian, feminist, and indigenist perspectives upon archaeology and archaeologists. Finally, a few postprocessualists are beginning to experiment with phenomenological and semiotic means of approaching the human past. There is considerable literature on and about postprocessual archaeology, much of it programmatic, but increasing numbers of articles and books presenting substantive results of postprocessual research – or of combined processual and postprocessual approaches – are now available.

Perhaps the largest, most comprehensive, and longest lasting of such projects is that directed since 1993 by Ian Hodder at the remarkable prehistoric site of C¸atalho¨yu¨k in Turkey. Interested readers are directed to the series of published volumes issued to date, and to the project website. In summary, it may be concluded that the quite successful but also quite narrow scope of Americanist processual archeology left that approach vulnerable to critiques and alternative emphases provided by a number of British and continental European scholars beginning in the early 1980s. At present, there are many different postprocessual programs, some being in conflict, to greater or lesser degrees, among themselves. Others are relatively compatible with processual orientations, and still others are overtly opposed to processualist archaeology. To a certain extent, the tension among these different views of archaeological theory and consequent methods and techniques to investigate the archaeological record is salubrious, because it prevents a monolithic approach to the extremely complex subject of the human past. On the other hand, the bewildering variety of interpretive modes can make public education about archaeology and its results difficult and confusing. It is this latter issue that makes the work at C¸atalho¨yu¨k even more interesting because – although the project has several more years to run so that the final results will not be available for some time – it does include a major component of public outreach, locally and internationally. See also: Cognitive Archaeology; Engendered Archaeology; Native Peoples and Archaeology; Marxist Archaeology; Philosophy of Archaeology; Processual Archaeology.

Further Reading Balter M (2005) The Goddess and the Bull. C ¸ atalho¨yu¨k: An Archaeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilization. New York: Free Press. Hill J (1991) ‘The accumulation of knowledge in archaeology’. In: Preucel R (ed.) Processual and Postprocessual Archaeologies: Multiple Ways of Knowing the Past, Paper No. 10, pp. 42–53. Carbondale, IL: Center for Archaeological Investigations; Southern Illinois University. Hodder I (1985) Postprocessual archaeology. In: Schiffer M (ed.) Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 8, pp. 1–26. New York: Academic Press. Hodder I (ed.) C¸atalho¨yu¨k Excavation Reports, vols. 1–6 (and continuing). Cambridge, UK: McDonald Institute Publications. Hodder I and Hutson S (2003) Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology, 3rd edn. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Preucel R (1991) The philosophy of archaeology. In: Preucel R (ed.) Processual and Postprocessual Archaeologies: Multiple Ways of Knowing the Past, Paper No. 10, pp. 17–19. Carbondale, IL:

1870 POTTERY ANALYSIS/Chemical Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University. Preucel R (2006) Archaeological Semiotics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Press. Reitz E, Scarry M, and Scudder S (eds.) (2008) Case Studies in Environmental Archaeology. New York: Plenum.

Potassium-Argon Dating

Pot-hunting

Pottery

Relevant Website www.catalhoyuk.com – Catalho¨yu¨k, Excavations of Neolithic Anatolian mound.

See: Dating Methods, Overview.

See: Illicit Antiquities.

See: Ceramics and Pottery.

POTTERY ANALYSIS Contents Chemical Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis Stylistic

Chemical Josefina Pe´rez-Arantegui, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary accuracy The degree of conformity of a measured or calculated quantity to its actual (true) value. archaeological chemistry The analytical chemistry as applied to archaeological problems, which enables scientists to gain new insights into historical and cultural practices and events. atomic emission spectrometry Uses quantitative measurement of the optical emission from excited atoms to determine analyte concentration. energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry A chemical microanalysis technique performed in conjunction with a scanning electron microscope. The technique utilizes X-rays

that are emitted from the sample during bombardment by the electron beam to characterize the elemental composition of the analyzed volume. hierarchical cluster analysis A method of cluster analysis comprised of agglomerative methods and divisive methods that finds clusters of observations within a data set. The divisive methods start with all of the observations in one cluster and then proceeds to split (partition) them into smaller clusters. inductively coupled plasma A type of plasma source in which the energy is supplied by electrical currents which are produced by electromagnetic induction, that is, by time-varying magnetic fields. mass spectrometry An analytical technique used to measure the mass-to-charge ratio of ions. It is most generally used to find the composition of a physical sample by generating a mass spectrum representing the masses of sample components. neutron activation analysis A nuclear process used for determining certain concentrations of elements in a vast amount of materials. It allows discrete sampling of elements as it disregards the chemical form of a sample, and focuses solely on its nucleus.

POTTERY ANALYSIS/Chemical 1871 principal components analysis A technique for simplifying a data set, by reducing multidimensional data sets to lower dimensions for analysis. provenance The origin or source from which something comes, and the history of subsequent owners. statistical treatment The statistical treatment of data that involves basing the error estimation on firm theoretical principles. wavelength-dispersive X-ray spectrometry A method used to determine the energy spectrum of an X-ray radiation. X-ray fluorescence The emission of characteristic ‘secondary’ (or fluorescent) X-rays from a material that has been excited by bombarding with high-energy X-rays or gamma rays.

Introduction Identifying the constituents of a substance (elements or compounds) and measuring how much is present are the aims of the chemical analysis, called qualitative analysis in the first case or quantitative analysis in the second one. Analysis of artifacts, ceramics in this case, is the second major application of the physical sciences to archaeology. The aims of these analytical studies are to obtain information in three main areas: provenance, technology, and usage. Traditionally chemical analysis of pottery for elemental component determination provides a compositional ‘fingerprint’ of the samples, for grouping together pottery made from the same raw materials or for distinguishing between groups of pottery made from different raw materials. This chemical characterization of the pottery can be used in provenance studies, which involve also the characterization and identification of the natural sources of raw materials used to make objects, and thus establishing the pattern of trade and exchange. Provenance studies assume that the chemical composition of the fired ceramic is similar and indicative of the chemical composition of clay raw material. Technological studies are concerned with identifying raw materials used, how these raw materials were processed and what techniques were used in making the ceramic objects, and also with why particular raw materials and production methods were used and why changes in technology occurred. In the case of pottery, usage studies are related to the identification of organic residues in the ceramic by chemical analysis, and not to the analytical pottery composition itself.

History The application of analytical chemical knowledge in order to solve archaeological problems in ancient ceramics is a discipline which grew rapidly in its scope and is now in its maturity. But the chemical analysis of pottery is much more than a straightforward application of existing instrumental methods to new

questions, because many of the analytical questions are unique to archaeological materials and this discipline requires an understanding of other related disciplines such as geochemistry and material science. The application of analytical chemistry to archaeological artifacts has a long history since the eighteenth century, with the contributions of Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1743–1817) and Humphry Davy (1778– 1829) to the analysis of glass, ancient coins, and pigments. One of the first analytical examples related to pottery is found in a report by H. Diamond published in 1867 which includes a section on a Roman ceramic glaze studied by Michael Faraday. But it is toward the end of the nineteenth century when the results of chemical analysis became more common in reports; thus the Swedish archaeologist Gustav Nordenskio¨ld submitted pottery sherds found at Mesa Verde (Colorado, USA) to petrological analysis and the results appeared in a volume published in 1893, and the first chemical analysis of ancient ceramics, a research on Athenian pottery, was carried out at Harvard University by Theodore William Richards (1868–1928) and published by the American Chemical Society in 1895. These early analytical researches were undoubtedly of great interest to archaeologists, but they tended to be of rather sporadic nature and were limited in their scope. The growth of the chemical analysis of archaeological materials in the twentieth century was especially due to the apparition of instrumental analytical techniques and the rapid scientific and technological advances. The intensive application of analytical methods in archaeology became possible only with the development of refined methods of analysis on a microscale, due to the requirements of a nondestructive or quasi-non-destructive material sampling, and with the establishment of new laboratories where chemists worked in close collaboration with scholars and archaeologists. One of the first instrumental analytical techniques used in the ceramic analysis was neutron activation analysis (NAA), which was applied to the study of ancient Mediterranean ceramics by E. V. Sayre and R. W. Dodson in 1957 and published in the American Journal of Archaeology. In 1960, Nature, the prestigious scientific journal, published the work of E. E. Richards and K. F. Hartley on Romano-British pottery by spectrographic analysis (atomic emission by direct current arc), and the research of V. M. Emeleus and G. Simpson on ancient Roman ceramics by NAA. Since the 1960s, all the different analytical techniques developed until now have been also applied to the elemental analysis of archaeological material in general, and ceramics in particular (see Neutron Activation Analysis).

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Chemical Analysis in Ancient Pottery When ancient pottery is submitted to chemical analysis, the archaeological research questions must have been first defined: on provenance, technology, or usage. In order to guarantee the maximum quality of the obtained data, the collaboration between analytical chemists and archaeologists must also be encouraged and both must be involved in defining these questions, within the aim of a better understanding of the past. In the analysis of archaeological materials, the problems facing the analytical chemist are in general quite different from those in the conventional analytical laboratory; therefore some particular requirements of analytical techniques must be considered, related to the type of analysis, the type of object, or the nature of analysis. In the case of pottery, the analysis can be specific to a single object or small groups of objects, but generally the analysis is systematic, on a large number of samples with a statistical significance. The heterogeneous nature of the pottery is an important feature of the material which influences the amount of sample taken for analysis, and also the object size or its specificity should be considered in the sampling or in the election of a nondestructive analytical method. The choice of the final method of analysis employed is related to the type of archaeological problem to be solved and the necessary analytical information to be extracted (see Sampling Methods, Theory and Praxis). The chemical analysis of ceramics, also called elemental analysis, provides identification and quantification of the elements present in the samples. The results are given as weight percentage (wt.%) for major and minor elements or in units of microgram per gram (mg g–1, also called ppm, parts per million) for trace elements. In pottery analysis, major elements are expressed as element oxides, due to the clay nature, by means of the stoichiometric proportions of the oxide formula. By chemical analysis, the elemental composition of pottery could be determined for major, minor, and trace elements. Ceramics are formed by clay materials with different quantities of nonplastic inclusions, natural or added as temper, so elements like silicon, aluminum, calcium, iron, potassium, magnesium, etc., appear in high proportions. The choice of what elements will be determined depends on the analytical information needed to solve the archaeological problem; in general, major and minor elements define more the nature of clays and the raw materials being used and trace or ultratrace elements are preferred for provenance studies. Generally, the chemical composition of the pottery is given as ‘bulk’ or total

composition of the ceramic body, although sometimes only the ceramic surface is interesting to be analyzed. Other factors that need to be considered in interpreting chemical composition data are possible changes in composition either during firing (very unlikely), or during burial subsequent to discard. Postdepositional geochemistry should be taken into account, especially if there was any groundwater around in the burial environment, and consequently only immobile elements should be considered in defining compositional groups. In ceramic studies, the steps summarized in Figure 1 can be followed for chemical analysis in ancient material. Some of these steps are described in the next sections, especially those related to the object sampling and the selection of the analytical technique. Sample Selection and Preparation

The chemist should assist in the selection of pottery for chemical analysis in order to ensure that the fragments studied are representative of the available assemblage. Except for specific analysis of precious objects, usually pottery analysis involves the selection of a group of fragments with statistical significance, whether we study provenance or research technology or usage. Because of the ceramic-body compositional heterogeneity (a term meaning that the body composition varies from one part to another) and the variability in chemical compositions within an individual raw material source and the possible similarity of different sources, ceramic studies based on chemical compositions involve the analysis of a large number of samples, which are then grouped together using statistical methods. In selecting ceramic fragments for analysis, it is important that, as far as is feasible, each group (ideally 15–20 samples) is made up of pottery of a single type, period, and site. After the fragment or group of fragments has been selected, the first main question that should be asked is that it is possible to sample the objects. Here sampling means to separate a small part of the material being analyzed. In some cases for different reasons, no small part of the object can be taken to continue the chemical analysis, and then only a nondestructive analytical method can be chosen. But, if the object can be sampled, we can resort to a nondestructive or also to a destructive method. However, to be able to use a destructive method has the advantages, in general, of using more attainable and less expensive analytical techniques, avoiding surface compositional differences or contaminations, and, most importantly, being capable to sample a bigger quantity of ceramic and then obtaining a more representative analytical result of the object composition.

POTTERY ANALYSIS/Chemical 1873

Ancient pottery

Archaeological data

Archaeological questions 1. Provenance 2. Technology 3. Usage

Chronology Site Ceramic style Typology References …

Is it possible to sample the object? No

Yes

Without sampling

With sampling

Nondestructive method

Destructive method

Chemical analysis

Analytical technique selection

Sample selection and preparation Analytical method application Measurements

Results Statistical treatment

Conclusions Figure 1 Steps in the chemical analysis of ancient pottery.

If we have decided to sample the objects (see Figure 2) and we want to perform a meaningful chemical analysis, first of all, we must obtain a small, homogeneous sample, whose composition is representative of the larger fragment, from each selected ceramic fragment. The small sample is obtained by drilling or by grinding to a fine powder and it is collected by taking portions from several places chosen at random because of the ceramic body heterogeneity. Sample preparation should take into account that the variance of the sampling operation will be added to complete the overall variance, therefore all steps

in this operation should contribute to reduce the uncertainty. This is why the particle size of the solid sample must be reduced as much as possible, and the sample size and the number of replicate analyses are decided according to a desired level of sampling variance with a specific confidence level. After the solid sample is prepared, guaranteeing sample representativeness and avoiding contamination, the analytical procedure selected for analysis can be applied on the solid sample (i.e., on pressed pellets), but sometimes the sample needs to be dissolved and acid digestion or fusion may be used to convert it in a sample solution.

1874 POTTERY ANALYSIS/Chemical

Group of selected objects/fragments

Randomly extraction of powdered samples

Sampling

Representative bulk samples

Grinding and mixing

Solid sample preparation

Weighing

Homogeneous laboratory subsamples

Sample preparation for analysis

Pressed pellets or acid dissolution or fusion

Samples prepared for analysis Figure 2 Steps in the ceramic sample preparation for analysis.

Analytical Methods

A large number of analytical techniques can be chosen for the chemical analysis of archaeological ceramics. The most popular analytical methods that have been used in pottery analysis are NAA, X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry, and inductively coupled plasma–atomic emission spectrometry (ICP– AES), or more recently inductively coupled plasma– mass spectrometry (ICP–MS). Until the 1980s, the standard analytical method for multi-trace-element analysis was NAA, because of its detection limits and the possibility of a nondestructive analysis. NAA is a technique where some of the elements in the sample are converted into artificial radioactive elements by irradiation with neutrons. The artificial nuclei decay by one or several standard pathways for radioactive decay, and, if this radioactive decay is detected and the emission intensity measured, this is related back to the original concentration of the parent element in the irradiated sample. Routinely detection levels for NAA are of the order of 10 ng g–1 or better, up to perhaps 10 mg g–1, although there is a variation in the sensitivity and detection limits from element to element, and not all the elements can be determined. XRF is an analytical technique used for the determination of major and minor elements, with the advantage of analyzing directly the solid samples.

In XRF, X-rays used to irradiate the sample strike the solid and several processes take place, but one of them, the transference of part of the primary energy to the atoms, results in vacancies in the sample atoms because of the ejection of an electron. These vacancies give rise to a secondary (fluorescent) X-ray emission with characteristic wavelengths. This X-ray emission is the basis of the identification and quantification of the elemental composition of the sample. Two approaches are possible for the detection of the emitted X-ray: energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDXS) and wavelength-dispersive X-ray spectrometry (WDXS). In general, analytical performance of WDXS systems is better, with lower detection limits and higher precision. The principal limitation on the analytical accuracy of those techniques (NAA and XRF) that required solid reference samples is the quality of the certified standard reference materials. ICP–AES requires the sample to be in a liquid form (normally in an aqueous solution). The liquid sample is aspirated into the plasma and the high plasma temperature makes possible the dissociation of all compounds and they even attain an excited state, so that they strongly emit characteristic lines. These emission lines belong to the ultraviolet–visible (UV–Vis) region of the electromagnetic spectrum, and they are related to the presence and proportion of the chemical elements in the sample. ICP–AES allows a

POTTERY ANALYSIS/Chemical 1875

multielement analysis with low detection limits and good precision for major, minor, and trace elements in ceramic analysis. A major benefit of the ICP is the possibility of being connected to an MS to give a more powerful technique: ICP–MS. Plasma temperature is high enough to ionize a high proportion of the sample atoms, making the plasma an ideal source of ions that can be extracted from the plasma and injected into a mass spectrometer. Individual charge ions are then separated according to their mass–charge ratio and they can be counted separately in order to be identified and quantified; this provides a chemical analysis of the sample. ICP–MS has the advantages of even lower detection limits and the possibility of monitoring the concentration of individual isotopes. Some differences in analytical sensitivity, precision, and accuracy exist among techniques and laboratories involved in the chemical analysis of archaeological ceramics (see Chemical Analysis Techniques). Large differences in these analytical parameters become significant in the formulation of databases where comparability of the data is being wanted. Small differences become significant when comparing pottery produced from clay resources located within a discrete geological environment. But these differences do not prevent to obtain good analytical results. In every case, the level of precision required for ceramic characterization studies, the use of standards, and the preparation and submission of samples for laboratory analysis should be evaluated in order to select the best analytical technique that allows the archaeological questions defined to be answered. Finally, some statistical tools help us to present and to evaluate the analytical results obtained. Data are given as average values of several replicates, together with their standard deviation (as an estimation of the precision). Some statistical tests are useful to avoid errors and to evaluate accuracy. Student’s t is a statistical tool used most frequently to express confidence intervals (one of the most common estimations of the uncertainty in experimental measurements) and for comparing results from different experiments to decide whether they are ‘different’ or ‘the same’ from each other. Most of the ceramic studies lead to a high number of data (many chemical components from numerous groups of samples); therefore statistical multivariate analysis of these data is necessary to understand the results. Some of the most usual statistical treatments are principal components analysis (PCA) or hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), which help to reduce the number of variables and to group the samples.

Case Studies Chemical Analysis of Pottery to Characterize a Workshop Production

Although in many parts of the world the chief evidence of pottery production (workshops and kilns) is extremely infrequent, the reconstruction of pottery production should start with archeological excavations of pottery workshops and kilns (see Ceramics and Pottery). Then the pottery and other appropriate production debris would be subjected to a range of analytical, microscopy, and radiography techniques in order to establish what raw materials were used, how they were prepared, and how the objects were made. This was the case of the local ceramic production during the Islamic period in the city of Zaragoza (in the northeast of Spain). In 1989, an Islamic potters’ suburb was located and excavated on the eastern side of the ancient city; the kilns were working from the end of the tenth century to the beginning of the twelfth century AD. Thousands of ceramic objects, both glazed and nonglazed, and also potters’ tools were found associated with ten kilns and some waster spots. The study of this archaeological material would allow a better knowledge of the ceramic technology during this period. Therefore a large program on technological features of this production was carried out, considering the different ceramic variants (forms and decorations). The research started with the study of the material found inside one of the kilns, the most representative of the eleventh century production. Several fragments of ceramic objects, potter tools, and wastes were selected and submitted to chemical analysis. These results were completed with mineralogical and petrographic analyses and textural studies by image processing. From an overall selection of 100 samples, only 56 were chosen for chemical analysis after a preliminary observation of their thin sections (see Pottery Analysis: Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis). Determination of ten major and minor elements (Si, Al, Fe, Mg, Ca, Na, K, Ti, P, Mn) and some trace elements (Ba, Ce, Dy, Eu, La, Li, Nb, Nd, Sc, Sm, Sr, V, Y, Yb, Zr) were carried out by ICP–AES. This analysis was undertaken on representative 500 mg subsamples, drilled from freshly fractured surfaces of the sherds. Fusion was used to prepared sample solutions. Chemical results were submitted to a computer-assisted multivariate statistical treatment by cluster analysis in order to group samples with similar composition. Chemical analyses showed the samples distributed in two main groups: one made from noncalcareous clays (CaO < 1 wt.%) and another prepared from

1876 POTTERY ANALYSIS/Chemical

calcareous pastes (CaO > 14 wt.%). The fragments with noncalcareous bodies belonged to cooking pots, and this relation between chemical composition (low CaO content) and utilization (objects exposed to fire) has been also proved in other ceramic productions as a technological character. Another observed technological division was that all objects covered and decorated with glaze (lead glazes in this case) were manufactured with calcareous clays. This type of clay would have the advantage of producing a buff color in an oxidizing atmosphere, and the ceramic body tends to have higher thermal expansion coefficient with best adherence between body and glaze. The main calcareous group was formed by three subgroups (see Figure 3), each subgroup was related to different ceramic forms or decorations (tin glazes TG, cuerda seca CS, transparent colored glazes CG, red slips RS, or nondecorated ND). The analytical results indicated that a selection of raw material was used for each production variant, with significant technological differences detected in each group – different proportions of clay matrix and inclusions. Cluster 1 included small glazed objects, in cluster 2 were tin-glazed and decorated-glazed ceramics, while unglazed fragments belonged to cluster 3. Chemical composition of cluster 3 would be the most similar to the original raw clay. In summary, chemical composition in major and minor elements was applied in order to know the nature of clay raw materials used in these Islamic workshops. The variation in some elements (aluminum, silicon, potassium, or rare-earth elements) also allows knowledge about raw material preparation. The technological features were also supported by petrographic and texture analyses. The chemical analysis of this pottery production also led to the establishment of the compositional reference of these ceramics to be used in other provenance studies, in major and minor elements and also in trace elements, which can be compared with ceramic fragments found in other archaeological sites of the same historical period. In this way, four average chemical compositions with their respective standard deviations were defined for the four reference groups. Study of Trade Routes and Cultural Contacts

The transformation of clay raw material into the final fired object is a complex process that could influence the final composition of the pottery. In order to compensate for all factors included in the ceramic process, the normal procedure of provenance studies is to compare the chemical composition of finished pottery bodies not with the ancient raw material source (usually very difficult to identify), but with other fired

objects of certain or assumed provenance. Reference groups of known provenance are established from workshop products and kiln wasters, as with the later case described above, or by comparison with fragments of accepted provenance, certified by experts or other archaeological information. This was the procedure selected to study the possible provenance of Roman glazed ceramics found in the western Mediterranean. Lead-glazed pottery was a tradition that originated in the eastern Roman world, but spread to all the other regions during the first century BC and several possible production centers had already been studied and suggested for the western Roman area, including Italy, Gaul, Britain, Germany, and Spain. Therefore a study was undertaken to shed new light on Roman glazed ceramic production and importation to the western Mediterranean (see Vitreous Materials Analysis). Unfortunately, Roman glazed ceramic fragments are scarce at archaeological sites, so a very limited number of samples was selected for chemical analysis; 68 objects were chosen from different sites, chronologies, glaze colors, and potential origins. The selection was thought to be representative of the glazed ceramic found in the Ebro Valley (northeastern Spain). Laboratory subsamples to be analyzed were extracted with a diamond drill from the ceramic body core to avoid contamination with material from the lead glaze. Solutions were prepared from the powdered samples (50 mg) by acid attack in open beakers. Determination of eight major and minor elements (Na, Mg, Al, K, Ca, Ti, Mn, and Fe) was carried out by ICP–AES. A more exhaustive examination of the results needed a statistical treatment of the data, so HCA was used to classify fragments according to their chemical composition (see Figure 4). In this case, every group is defined by an average chemical composition and these compositions should be compared with other reference groups of known provenance. At that moment, only two references had been published on body analyses of Roman leadglazed ceramics with provenance established by experts and archaeological evidences; this is why only major and minor elements were chosen to be analyzed and not trace elements. Although inherently less powerful than the trace element analysis for provenance studies, this approach through major and minor element determination gives more insight into the nature of the clays used. A statistical comparison (t test or Student’s test) of the different chemical compositions allowed to attribute some of the groups to production centers in Italy (second and third centuries AD) and Gaul (Lyon area, first century AD); however, other centers in the eastern Mediterranean and central Gaul were excluded.

POTTERY ANALYSIS/Chemical 1877 9.600 8.000 6.400 4.800 3.200 1.600 0.000 |---------|---------|---------|---------|---------|---------| .--------------------------------IS01 | .-----------------IS02 | .-------L-----------------IS12 | .--L-------------------------IS05 .L---L----------------------------IS04 .----L---------------------------------IS21 | .-------------------------IS03 | | .-----------------IS07 | | .-L-----------------IS08 | | .-L-------------------IS11 .-----L------------L---L---------------------IS10 .---------L--------------------------------------------IS06 | | .-------------------IS09 | | .---------------IS16 | .---L---L---------------IS17 | | .-------------------IS13 | .--L---L-------------------IS14 | | .----------------IS25 | | .--L----------------IS38 | | .--L-------------------IS37 | | | .--------------------IS28 | .--L---L-L--------------------IS39 | | .------------------IS22 | .---L----------L------------------IS26 | | .-----------------------IS29 | .---------L-----------------------IS36 | | .---------------------IS35 | .------L-----------L---------------------IS40 | | | | .--------------------------IS15 | | | .---------------------IS24 | | | | .------------------IS27 | | | | .L------------------IS31 | | | | | .--------------IS49 | | | .--L-L----L--------------IS51 | | .-L-L------------------------IS34 | | .-L----------------------------IS30 | | | .----------------IS18 | | | .--L----------------IS50 | | | .--L-------------------IS20 | | | .--L----------------------IS19 | | | | .-----------------IS43 | | .----L----L-------L-----------------IS52 | | | .----------------------IS32 | | | | .-----------------IS42 | | | .---L----L-----------------IS44 | | | .-L--------------------------IS46 | | | | .--------------------IS33 | | | | .-L--------------------IS41 | | | | | .--------------IS47 | | | | .--L-------L--------------IS48 ------L-------------L----L------L--L-------------------------IS45 |---------|---------|---------|---------|---------|---------| 9.600 8.000 6.400 4.800 3.200 1.600 0.000

ND RS ND ND RS CG RS RS RS ND ND ND

Level 4.962 2.608 3.852 4.458 5.147 6.007 3.940 2.585 2.887 3.341 6.986 8.618














ND CG ND ND ND CG TG TG TG TG ND ND CG ND TG CG

2.939 2.329 3.645 2.959 4.079 2.516 2.958 3.400 3.050 4.487 2.843 5.162 3.618 5.250 3.280 6.268


              

ND ND TG TG CG CG TG TG ND CS CG ND CS CS CG CG CG TG CG CG CG CG CG

4.089 3.292 2.754 2.966 2.084 3.751 4.366 4.710 2.474 2.880 3.430 3.980 2.679 5.490 3.417 2.617 4.127 4.425 3.185 3.363 2.151 3.911 ----Level

                      







Figure 3 Dendrogram from statistical analysis of the chemical data, showing the three subgroups. TG, tin glazed; CS, cuerda seca; CG, transparent colored glazed; RS, red slip; ND, nondecorated. Symbols represent the textural subgroups: open star, group 1a; solid star, group 1b; open square, group II; solid circle, group III.

These conclusions demonstrated cultural and trade contacts of southern Gaul (the Rhoˆne Valley) and Italy with the Ebro Valley in Spain, especially following fluvial routes.

Conclusions Chemical analysis provides a very good tool for the study of ancient pottery in several aspects of archaeological researches: provenance, technology, and usage,

1878 POTTERY ANALYSIS/Chemical 6.000 5.000 4.000 3.000 2.000 1.000 0.000 |---------|---------|---------|---------|---------|---------| Level .--------------------------V15 2.538 .----------L--------------------------V28 3.677 .----------------L-------------------------------------V40 5.376 | | .---------------------------V52 2.620 | | .-----------------V25 1.658 | | | .-----------V04 1.097 | | | | .--------V07 0.742 | | .-L-----L--L--------V05 1.816 | .L-------L-------------------V27 2.765 | | .-----------------------V66 2.278 | | | .------------------V18 1.745 | | | | .--------------V35 1.377 | .-----L----L----L---L--------------V83 3.371 | | | .----L----------------------------------V39 3.810 | | | | .-----------------------V24 2.205 | .L---------------L-----------------------V03 3.900 | | | | .-------------V42 1.290 | | | .------V48 0.581 | | .--L------L------V47 1.507 | | | .----------V01 0.990 | | | .-L----------V12 1.181 | | .--L---L------------V11 1.831 | | .-----L-------------------V10 2.425 | | | .--------------------V54 1.900 | | | .-L--------------------V65 2.168 | | | | .---------------V34 1.466 | | | | | .-----------V08 1.063 | | | | |.--L-----------V33 1.309 | | | | .-LL--------------V57 1.656 | | | | | .------------Va6 1.126 | | | | .L----L------------Vb6 1.794 | | | | .-L------------------V55 1.961 | | .----L--L-L--------------------V51 2.951 | | | | | | .---------------V56 1.451 | | | .------L---------------V70 2.115 | | | .-L----------------------V69 2.305 | | | .---L------------------------V76 2.795 | | | | | | | | .-----------V60 1.052 | | | | .L-----------V68 1.190 | | | | .-L------------V61 1.332 | | | | .----L--------------V59 1.825 | | | | | .------------V58 1.127 | | | | | .-L------------V02 1.383 | | | | .-L----L--------------V43 2.094 | | | | .-L---------------------V36 2.222 | | | | | .---------------V64 1.460 | | | | | .----L---------------V82 1.953 | .-------L---------L-L----L--L--------------------V71 4.791 | | | | .------------------------------------V21 3.551 .----L-----L-----------L------------------------------------V74 5.893 | | .---------------------------------------V72 3.822 -L-------------------L---------------------------------------V37 ----|---------|---------|---------|---------|---------|---------| Level 6.000 5.000 4.000 3.000 2.000 1.000 0.000 Figure 4 Dendrogram from statistical analysis of Roman glazed-body results.

and making use of the physical sciences even other archaeological questions that go beyond these aspects can be answered. Collaboration between analytical chemists and archaeologists must be encouraged and

both must be involved in defining the archaeological questions to arrive at the maximum quality of the obtained data, within the aim of a better understanding of the past.

POTTERY ANALYSIS/Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis 1879 See also: Ceramics and Pottery; Chemical Analysis Techniques; Europe: Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies; Metals: Chemical Analysis; Neutron Activation Analysis; Pottery Analysis: Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis; Stylistic; Sampling Methods, Theory and Praxis; Statistics in Archaeology; Vitreous Materials Analysis.

Further Reading Archaeological Chemistry. ACS (American Chemical Society) Symposium Series. Goffer Z and Winefordner JD (2006) Archaeological Chemistry. 2nd edn. New York: Wiley. Henderson J (2001) Science and Archaeology of Materials: An Investigation of Inorganic Materials. London: Routledge. Martini M (ed.) (2004) Physics Methods in Archaeometry. Amsterdam: IOS Press. Neff H (1992) Chemical Characterization of Ceramic Pastes in Archaeology. Madison, WI: Prehistory Press. Orna MV (ed.) (1996) ACS Symposium Series 625: Archaeological Chemistry: Organic, Inorganic and Biochemical Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press. Orton C, Tyers P, and Vince A (1993) Pottery in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pollard AM and Heron C (1996) Archaeological Chemistry. Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry. Rice PM (1987) Pottery Analysis: A Sourcebook. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wisseman SU and Williams W (eds.) (1994) Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Materials. New York: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers.

Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis Ian Whitbread, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary petrology A field of geology which focuses on the study of rocks and the conditions by which they form. There are three branches of petrology, corresponding to the three types of rocks: igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary. polarizer A device that converts an unpolarized or mixedpolarization beam of electromagnetic waves (e.g., light) into a beam with a single polarization state (usually, a single linear polarization). thin section A laboratory preparation of a rock, mineral, or soil sample for use with a polarizing petrographic microscope.

In the 1930s it was realized that materials constituting the fabric of a pot are a source of valuable archaeological information. Before the advent of scientific analysis, archaeologists assumed that most

coarse wares were locally produced, but subsequent petrological research has shown that in several cases they were traded, sometimes over very long distances. This applies particularly to some prehistoric wares and to later utilitarian pottery, such as kitchenware, thick-walled storage ware, and specialized products such as cooking ware and transport containers. Coarseware fabrics contain 10–30% inclusions and voids, and can be likened to sedimentary rocks. On this principle, analytical techniques have been adapted from petrological methods developed in the Earth sciences. These include examining the composition, frequency, size, morphology, and arrangement of inclusions, voids, and the fired clay matrix that make up the ceramic fabric. Ceramic petrography is the process of describing these properties at macroscopic (visible to the unaided eye) and microscopic levels of magnification. Ceramic petrology, on the other hand, is the broader study of ceramic classification, production, and trade based on the results of petrographic analysis. There are several advantages in using ceramic petrology. Macroscopic analysis can be undertaken in the field with minimal equipment, allowing rapid and efficient examination of large pottery assemblages of up to tens of thousands of sherds. Observations from these studies can be directly related to results from laboratory-based microscopic analyses. The latter generate much more accurate data, but consider only a limited number of samples, typically 20–300. As petrography maintains the structural integrity of the fabric, technological information can be acquired concerning the potters’ selection and processing of raw materials, forming techniques and firing conditions. Perhaps most importantly, analysis of mineral and rock inclusions in the pottery allows direct comparision with regional geology and its related literature. Of course, there are disadvantages too. Ceramic petrology relies heavily on the analyst’s interdisciplinary experience. The diverse ways in which potters interact with geological materials mean that there are few reliable rules to guide fabric classification and interpretation. Quantification of petrographic results does help, but it is a complex and time-consuming process. Ceramic petrologists therefore take great care in defining appropriate archaeological questions, selecting samples, testing various classificatory schemes, and exploring interpretive models before delivering a conclusion. Instrumentation used in petrography is relatively affordable and widely available. It operates at three levels: hand lens, stereomicroscope, and polarizing microscope. Hand lenses (10) are used in field assessments when classifying large quantities of pottery using macroscopic characteristics. Stereomicroscopes (20–100) provide improved resolution in

1880 Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis

Figure 1 Thin section of a pottery fabric containing volcanic rock and mineral inclusions viewed in plane-polarized light. Similar to natural light, a polarizing filter under the sample means that light striking the thin section is vibrating in only one plane (top to bottom). As a result, the green amphibole characteristically changes color on rotation. Most inclusions are colorless plagioclase feldspar and quartz, distinguished from voids (thin wavy lines) by their gray to white interference colors under crossed polars (Figure 2). Note that the large rock fragment with green amphibole is rounded, indicating that the grain has been transported. Width of field is 4.2 mm.

Figure 2 Same sample as Figure 1 viewed under crossed polars. A second polarizing filter has been inserted above the thin section, at 90 to the lower polarizer, that is, left to right. All undisturbed light is blocked, so voids and volcanic glass appear black. Most of the sample refracts light so it can still be seen as false interference colors caused by the disturbed light path, for example, interference colors of the green amphibole are blue to red. Interferences colors go into extinction (black) four times on rotation as each inclusion is aligned with the upper and lower polarizing filters. Width of field is 4.2 mm.

both field and laboratory environments. These techniques are used to study fresh breaks in pottery and require minimal sample preparation and damage to artifacts, but the accuracy of inclusion identification is severely limited. Polarizing microscopes (20–600) are the most powerful tool, but require samples of 10  20 mm2 or more to be removed from the pot and prepared as thin sections in the laboratory. To make a thin section, a flat surface is ground on the sample, which is then mounted on a glass microscope slide before being ground down to a final thickness of 0.03 mm. Ideally, enough sample is removed for at least two thin sections in case one is lost in grinding. When ground to a thickness of 0.03 mm, rock and mineral inclusions become translucent and can be identified under the polarizing microscope using the light refracted through them. Polarizing filters control the two types of lighting conditions commonly used: plane-polarized light (Figure 1) and crossed polars (Figure 2). Minerals are identified by their structure and by optical properties measured with reference to polarizing filter orientations. Ceramic petrology operates at the interface of archaeology, geology, and ceramic technology. Anna Shepard played a major role in founding this field, and her book, Ceramics for the Archaeologist, continues to be indispensable, despite being largely updated by Rice. Nevertheless, some of the challenges that Shepard faced resulted from archaeologists’ difficulty in fully appreciating the application and value

of her studies. Pottery analyses (see Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Stylistic) have come a long way since then, but few archaeologists have first-hand experience of working with ceramic petrology. The questions posed need be archaeologically sound, but also appropriate to both the technique and the pottery available for study. Sampled pottery must be accurately classified by shape and decoration for fabric distinctions to be mapped into archaeologically meaningful categories. It is likewise advantageous if different rock types occur in discrete parts of the study region. A useful guide is to view the analysis in four stages, each developing new insights: description, characterization, technology, and provenance. Description identifies the geological nature and diversity of a pottery assemblage or ware, whereas characterization is used to sort similar fabrics into geological and/or technological groups using a structured set of criteria. Technology and provenance are more demanding levels of interpretation concerned with pottery production and trade/exchange networks.

Technology Technology is socially embedded. We can therefore gain new perspectives on ancient societies through their use of technology. As a synthetic product made by combining raw materials, manipulating them and transforming them through heat, pottery lends itself to this purpose. Potters engage in a chain of actions

Stylistic 1881

and decisions – a chaıˆne ope´ratoire – comprising essential actions (collecting clay, forming and firing, etc.) and choices (e.g., which particular materials, forming technique, etc.) made at each point in the chain where a variety of equally viable options are available. Consistent patterns of decision making in this chain lead to technological traditions that reflect broader social identities (see Ceramics and Pottery). Potters may use clays singly or mix two or more clays to achieve particular working, firing, and functional properties. They may also add inclusions to the clay body (temper) as opening material, aiding moisture escape from thick-walled vessels and increasing toughness of the finished product. Ceramic petrology can identify temper through compositional and micromorphological differences between inclusions. It can also identify technologically significant inclusions that do not occur naturally in clays, for example, grog (crushed pottery), slag, or bone. Limestone (calcium carbonate) inclusions have also received special petrographic attention because their chemical reaction during firing can damage the final pot. Ethnographic studies have shown how different technological traditions have overcome this problem. Clay mixing is more difficult to detect, but heterogeneity in the fired clay matrix is sometimes found and may result from natural mixtures or the work of a potter. Cooking ware production requires careful selection of raw materials to diminish the effects of thermal shock arising from repeated heating and cooling. Petrography has been employed alongside other techniques in ethnographic studies of traditional cooking ware production to better understand how these selection processes may have worked in the past.

Provenance Determination Ceramic petrology is most commonly used to identify pottery sources and map exchange networks. There are two ways to approach these studies. Site-specific projects address pottery assemblages from one site aiming to characterize locally produced and imported wares and, where possible, identify provenances for the latter. At Knossos, Crete, Wilson and Day took a multilayered approach to early Bronze Age pottery fabrics, defining ware categories based on surface treatment, decoration, and macroscopic fabric properties before comparing shape and microscopic distinctions within and across ware boundaries. They identified local and imported wares, but their results also revealed evidence of standardization and probably specialization at several workshops in the region, each distributing its wares beyond the immediate locale. The alternative approach is to explore the production and distribution of a particular type of

pottery over a region, by sampling specific wares from several sites. Whitbread used petrography to characterize the fabrics of Greek transport amphorae, specialized containers used to ship liquids in the classical world. The results show that fabrics discriminate amphorae produced in disparate parts of the Aegean region, some centers producing a variety of fabrics reflecting production in different local workshops. See also: Ceramics and Pottery; Pottery Analysis:

Chemical; Stylistic; Vitreous Materials Analysis.

Further Reading Bishop RL and Lange FW (1991) The Ceramic Legacy of Anna O. Shepard. Niwot, CO: University of Colorado Press. Morris EL and Woodward A (2003) Ceramic petrology and prehistoric pottery in the UK. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 69: 279–303. Peacock DPS (1977) Ceramics in Roman and Medieval Archaeology. In: Peacock DPS (ed.) Pottery and Early Commerce: Characterization and Trade in Roman and Later Ceramics, pp. 21–33. London: Academic Press. Pen˜a JT (1992) Raw materials use among nucleated industry potters: The case of Vasanello, Italy. Archaeomaterials 6: 93–122. Press F and Siever R (2001) Understanding Earth, 3rd edn. New York: W.H. Freeman. Rice PM (1987) Pottery Analysis: A Sourcebook. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shepard AO (1956) Ceramics for the Archaeologist. Publication 609. Washington DC: Carnegie Insitution of Washington. Whitbread IK (1995) Fitch Laboratory Occasional Paper 4: Greek Transport Amphorae: A Petrological and Archaeological Study. London: British School at Athens. Whitbread IK (2001) Ceramic petrology, clay geochemistry and ceramic production – From technology to the mind of the potter. In: Brothwell DR and Pollard AM (eds.) Handbook of Archaeological Sciences, pp. 449–459. London: Wiley. Wilson DE and Day AM (1994) Ceramic regionalism in prepalatial central Crete: The Mesara imports at EM I to EM II A Knossos (with a contribution by V. Kilikoglou). Annual of the British School at Athens 89: 1–87.

Stylistic Emily R Lundberg, Consultant in Caribbean Archaeology, Bozeman, MT, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary assemblage A defined grouping of items, especially an analyst-defined grouping of artifacts. iconography Pictorial or symbolic imagery, especially as representative of religion or ideology.

1882 Stylistic seriation A method for determining the serial order of multiple groupings (assemblages) of artifacts, based on hypothetical popularity curves for individual artifact types. sherd A ceramic fragment; also ‘shard.’ vessel feature An element or trait of a ceramic vessel, as defined for analytical purposes.

Introduction ‘Stylistic’ analysis of pottery refers to the generation and interpretation of data emphasizing observed qualities of production and appearance such as form, finish, and decoration. It includes a broad range of methodologies that, in a general way, contrast with studies focused on ceramic technology. Whereas studies of ceramic chemistry and composition focus on source materials and technological qualities (see Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Petrology and ThinSection Analysis), stylistic studies deal with artifacts’ style. In early archaeological work, ‘style’ often equated with artistic expression because in practice it was the decorated sherds that received the most attention. Today the term ‘style’ is variable in archaeological usage but usually has a broader meaning. Characteristics of style reflect preferential choices of the artisan, which are attributable to a combination of cultural norms and the individual’s esthetic expression and skill. In contrast, technical choices are based on performance goals. Unlike specialized technological analyses, stylistic data are obtained mostly through macro-observation. Stylistic analysis is not a field with any definite boundary, however. Style and function are opposites in concept, but in reality most traits of pottery reflect aspects of both, to greater or lesser degree. Most modern ‘stylistic’ research includes information that is primarily technological or functional. For instance, a basic pottery study will often record technological variables such as temper types, which are the nonclay particles mixed with the clay, as well as functional variables such as morphological types, for example, ‘bottle’ or ‘griddle’. Studies focused on vessel functions, in fact, derive interpretations from stylistic data, in tandem with functional ethnographic analogies and use-wear evidence. The conceptual contrasts between stylistic and technological/functional research may correspond to differences in investigative techniques but become blurred during formulation of integrated conclusions about pottery as a reflection of culture and society (see Ceramics and Pottery).

Aims The potential aims of pottery analysis are many and diverse because pottery reflects multiple aspects of

culture and society. Pottery vessels are made by individuals operating within a social environment, serve a function within an economic system, and reflect cultural norms for the appearance of the finished product. Therefore, all of those subjects may be addressed through studies of pottery. There is no single formula, or set of formulas, by which archaeologists analyze pottery. Instead, many directions have been explored, with continual attempts to improve the ways in which the data relate to multiple cultural and social variables. As with other archaeological research, approaches to such studies are influenced by the investigator’s theoretical perspectives. The level of previous research in a given region also affects the questions that can be productively addressed through pottery. In some situations there are unresolved basic questions about which peoples produced which kinds of pottery. In other situations it is possible to use pottery to investigate questions of a less historical and more anthropological nature, such as development of powerful political systems, for example. The various regions of the world have unique archaeological research histories, as well, which has resulted in diverse methodological practices and nomenclature.

Opportunities and Problems Pottery has the potential for infinitely variable forms and artistic expressions created by human artisans. Unlike natural materials used as collected, the clay mixture from which the artisan makes pottery also is composed by him or her, again with a potential for infinite variation. Thus, pottery embodies a great deal of the human element, reflecting of multiple aspects of a society. In many archaeological cultures, pottery fragments are an extremely abundant artifact type. These fragments, which are called ‘shards’ in British literature and ‘sherds’ or ‘potsherds’ in most US-based literature, offer a tremendous opportunity for data collection. It is not unusual for several thousand pottery sherds to be individually processed and recorded by analysts in a single project. These large quantities allow statistically valid conclusions. Furthermore, for those regions and eras in which pottery is ubiquitous, there is a constant resource for site comparisons. The same factors that provide opportunities in pottery analysis also create pitfalls. The numbers and fragmentary condition of pottery sherds often require extensive labor and time for proper treatment and analysis. Usually some sort of sampling procedure must be imposed for any detailed analyses, and sampling always introduces new sets of considerations. Pottery found in fragments also raises questions about

Stylistic 1883

relationships to the numbers and types of whole vessels. Large numbers of finds must be somehow translated into descriptive classes that are meaningful to research. Most significantly, a multitude of potentially relevant factors must be considered in drawing conclusions from analytical data derived from pottery, due to pottery’s potential range of expression and the way that it is embedded within many cultural systems.

Pottery Description Terminology

The term ‘pottery’ usually refers to earthenware, a type of ceramic ware that is not fired at extremely high temperatures. ‘Ceramic analysis’ is a term with very wide applicability, inasmuch as most aspects of analysis are transferable between earthenware and higher-fired ceramic wares like stoneware or porcelain. Although any object fashioned from fired clay might be analyzed as pottery, here we will discuss only vessels (containers). A specialized vocabulary has evolved in this subfield of archaeology, due to the necessity of specifically referencing various parts and features of ceramic vessels. Figure 1 shows the labeling of a few basic vessel parts. Descriptions of ceramic vessels include traits relating to manufacture, morphology (shape), surface finish, and decoration. Such traits again comprise a specialized vocabulary, which must have clear meanings within any given study, either from widely accepted usage or from specific definitions provided in the study.

Illustration and Extrapolation

Illustration of pottery vessels and sherds can capture and convey more information than words or data tables. The most informative studies, therefore, are well illustrated. Photography is advantageous in many situations, especially when color and surface textures are important. Photographs of sherds, however, do not often do justice to the information about form that the human brain can grasp from even a relatively small sherd. Schematic drawings of various kinds are extremely useful for presentation of information. Figure 2 shows three levels of information presented for a single sherd from a vessel rim. The first (a) provides surface detail of the sherd but little information about the vessel form from which it came. The second (b) is an example of the rim profile that can be drawn if the vessel has a level rim, providing information about contour and thickness. This is done by holding the sherd so that its entire rim edge is level, in a single plane, and transferring the profile to paper by tracing and measuring. The third example (c) conveys more information at a glance. The source vessel for the sherd has been extrapolated, based on the combination of rim profile and mouth diameter. A circular vessel’s mouth diameter is determined by matching the arc of the sherd’s rim to circular template drawings of known diameter. Noncircular vessels create much difficulty for extrapolation, which is possible only if the sherd section is relatively large and there are whole similar vessels available in comparative collections.

Characterizing Pottery Assemblages Vessel parts Rim, ending in lip Body Base

Orifice/mouth Upper wall Corner point/keel/ shoulder angle Lower wall

Figure 1 Basic terminology for parts of a ceramic vessel.

In many projects there is a need to characterize a collection or grouping of pottery sherds and/or vessels. A defined grouping or set of artifacts is an assemblage, and comparison of pottery assemblages is frequently useful in archaeological research (e.g., from one site to another, or from one site layer to the next, etc.). If the assemblage includes many items, it is described in summary form.

Illustrations of one pottery sherd

26 cm dia.

(a) Rim sherd photograph

(b) Rim profile drawing

(c) Extrapolated vessel

Figure 2 (a–c) Comparison of three different ways to illustrate information about the same sherd from a bowl rim.

1884 Stylistic

Summarizing a large amount of material essentially involves a process of classification. Classification is simply a process of hypothetically sorting items (which may not be physically separable or tangible) into groups (classes) based on selected sorting criteria. The set of criteria that defines any given class, or an hypothetical specimen that embodies all those criteria, is a ‘type’, and the results of the classification may be called a ceramic ‘typology’. Humans regularly and unconsciously classify things and concepts in daily life. In research, however, a good classification must be well defined and standardized. Because summarization highlights certain information at the expense of other potential information, a classification should be designed to fit the intended objectives. In a simple analogy, person A may look at a field of wildflowers and report that it contains white, blue, and pink flowers, while person B may look at the same field and report that it includes tallstemmed flowers as well as groundcovers. These reports are simple classifications making use of two different traits as sorting criteria: flower color and plant height. They are equally valid; the first might be more useful to a painter, however, while the second might be more useful to an ecologist. The purpose of a ceramic classification must be understood, with classificatory criteria selected to suit that purpose. Methods of Ceramic Classification

Factors that affect any classification are: 1. nature of the items to be classified (three common categories for pottery are sherds, vessel features, or whole vessels); 2. sorting criteria (selected traits and their range of potential alternative states); and 3. sorting order (if any traits are to be given precedence over others). The combination of these three factors determines the structure of a classification and thus the results and applications that will be possible. Each of these factors should be made explicit. Of course, any classification method can be applied to any grouping of items and re-applied to different groupings, and the selection of assemblages to be classified is as important as the method itself. Sherd classification Broken pottery fragments or sherds usually are the items actually recovered in archaeological field work. If they are classified on the basis of direct observations, without prior manipulation, there is a savings in time and expertise required. The trade-off, however, is that the sherd classification uses a culturally artificial class of items, lacking

the cultural information associated with the whole artifacts from which the fragments came. Sherd classifications are limited in potential objectives, inasmuch as vessel morphology is omitted in the sorting criteria. Technology in terms of sherd material (also called ‘paste’ or ‘fabric’), sherd surface finishes, and surface decorative techniques can be addressed, although without linkage to vessel types in the cultural repertoire. Typically a sherd classification has a defined sorting order, in which initial classes are created based on one primary criterion and then each class is subdivided one or more times based on further criteria. As a result, all classes at each level are mutually exclusive. This sort of classification saw widespread usage during the mid-twentieth century in the United States, where it was labeled the ‘type-variety’ method. Ceramic types were identified by a few primary criteria of sherd fabric (e.g., temper, thickness, hardness) and/or surface (e.g., smoothness, gloss). Subtypes or ‘varieties’ were created on the basis of further distinctions, such as plain versus variously decorated surfaces, or even rim or vessel-wall contour elements when present on sherds (Table 1). These subtypes indicated the range of variation present within a given ceramic type, for the assemblage classified. Thus, assemblages could be compared on that basis, insofar as allowed by data collected from sherds. The most similar assemblages have the most overlap in types and varieties represented and in the relative abundance of each. Vessel feature classification Classification of vessel features moves a step closer to the intentions of the pottery maker. Vessel features exist only as definitions of the analyst, however, not as physically separate items or separate objectives of the potter. They may be definable parts of vessels, such as bases or handles, or they may be vessel traits, such as base thickness or handle decoration. In order to classify vessel features, it is not necessary to reconstruct (or hypothetically reconstruct) whole vessels because their occurrences together on individual vessels is not at issue. In a purely featurebased classification, the relative abundance of each feature trait is determined separately (Figure 3). The usefulness of a classification of vessel features depends upon the range and definition of features selected, together with the possible alternative states to be recorded. There is no universally applicable template for this because sorting criteria usually are developed from prior work in the area and from the nature of the pottery in question. For example, one set of pottery may have multiple distinctive rim types while another set includes no informative differentiation for that trait.

Stylistic 1885 Table 1 An example of a portion of a type-variety ceramic classification system applied to sherds, with ware types based on differences in ceramic paste mixturesa Sherd type

Variety

Bay – tempered with grit and finely ground shell; thickness variable; surfaces usually reddish.

Bay plain Bay lip punctated Bay inner lip incised Bay vertical incised

Harbor – tempered with larger shell particles, no grit; thin, well fired surfaces well smoothed and even.

Harbor plain Harbor red-painted

a

Bullen, RP (1962) Ceramic Periods of St. Thomas and St. John Islands, Virgin Islands. Orlando: William L. Bryant Foundation. American Studies Report 4.

Feature types

Interiorthickened

Direct (undifferentiated)

Broad line

Same, miniature

Elongated, nonlevel cooking vessel, loop or tab handles

Fine ware wide-mouth liquid decanters and cups

Large flaring cooking vessel

Medium-deep open bowl

Shallow bowl with noncircular, nonlevel rim

Necked jar, liquid storage 20 cm

Figure 4 An example of vessel classification, showing types formed primarily on the basis of shape and size. (Secondary characteristics of paste, surface, decoration, etc., also would be associated with each type). Adapted from the author’s work, US Virgin Islands.

Method of incising (decoration drawn in wet clay):

Narrow line

Convex cooking vessel

Shallow serving/ritual bowl, painted red decoration

Rim form:

Flanged

Vessel types

Broad line with punctations

Figure 3 An hypothetical example of ceramic feature classification, showing three potential trait types (or attribute states) for each of two features.

Classification of vessel features has been used successfully to trace general cultural relationships. Because vessel features reflect cultural practices learned by the pottery makers, a defined set of features can be associated with a cultural group. As a culture evolves through time, vessel feature types will change incrementally. Similarly, there will be fewer differences between more closely related contemporaneous cultures than between distantly related cultures. Comparison of ceramic assemblages on the basis of feature types present therefore provides evidence for temporal and spatial cultural relationships. Vessel classification Whole vessels carry additional meaning because they are the intended products of the pottery makers, which is not the case for sherds or vessel features. Classification of whole vessels into vessel types (Figure 4) parallels archaeological work with other kinds of artifacts. The pottery in use by a

single community may include diverse vessel types that are strikingly different from each other, with little overlap of vessel features. That level of information is not available from feature analysis alone. In addition, only vessel analyses can fully address vessel functions, which add a further dimension to interpretations. Vessel function is a useful dimension for tracing cultural similarities and differences, but it also reaches into the economic and subsistence systems in which the vessels are used. In some circumstances it carries implications for social systems, as well. As a practical consideration, vessel analysis usually involves increased difficulty. Whole vessels are not common finds in most archaeological sites. Therefore, the ‘identification’ of vessels requires manipulation of the pottery fragments, in order to reconstruct mended-sherd vessel sections that are as large as possible. Further manipulation of sherds or sherd groups is necessary in order to record data that are not directly observable (e.g., rim diameter estimates and vessel shape extrapolations). Furthermore, there is increased complexity in data analysis because cooccurring traits are the focus of interest. After traits are recorded for individual vessels, there are choices

1886 Stylistic

in the criteria used to define classes and types – whether certain traits are given priority, or whether quantitative methods are applied, for example. Vessel typologies often are untidy in the sense that there may appear to be a continuum between some defined types or certain classes may appear to overlap, due to the potential for infinite variation in pottery. The analyst is frequently faced with determining the most useful way to present similarity and difference, for descriptive and comparative purposes. As with any artifactual classification, a vessel classification is imposed by analysts according to their own backgrounds and the information available. It does not duplicate the ideas of the pottery makers, but rather is an attempt to summarize a given assemblage in a way that is useful for understanding pottery within its cultural and social setting. Ceramic Repertoires and Wares

Another essential concept in working with pottery assemblages is the difference between a ceramic repertoire and a ‘ware’. The ceramic repertoire of a group or a culture includes all the pottery commonly produced and/or used. In contrast, a ceramic ware is a technologically distinct subset of the repertoire. For example, a modern North American kitchen may contain a set of unbreakable dishware for everyday use by the family’s children, as well as a set of more formal and fragile ceramic ware for use by adults or for special occasions. These are different serving wares, both included in a single cultural repertoire. Wares are identified by classes distinguished on the basis of technological traits. They can be basically identified from sherd analysis, although further characterization and the possibility of unique vessel forms associated with particular wares must be addressed through vessel analysis. An emphasis on vessels, and on all the traits that are linked together in identified vessel types, allows an understanding of vessel repertoires and their constituent wares. Interpretations based on ceramic analysis can become hopelessly mired if wares and repertoires are confused. For questions concerning cultural relationships, the pertinent focus of inquiry might be an entire ceramic repertoire. For certain other questions, identification of ware types is essential. One example would be intergroup ethnic or political distinctions that might be recognizable on the basis of differentiated high-status or ritual wares associated with undifferentiated domestic wares. Another line of research based on ware types is the identification of trade networks in regions where pottery made in specific production centers was widely traded.

Tracing Cultural Relationships through Vessel-Assemblage Comparison Objectives and Samples

A classification is a beginning, not an end. One of the potential purposes of ceramic classifications is to contribute to a local or regional prehistoric culture history. If pottery assemblages that form a chronological series are characterized through vessel classification and then compared, changes occurring through time will be demonstrable. As the ceramic changes are understood in terms of functional or nonfunctional variables, they carry implications for changes in social phenomena. An example of this sort of research is a current project for Caribbean prehistoric material of the US Virgin Islands, where a basic cultural chronology is not yet fully developed. Functional interpretations for various vessel types also are in early stages. For each ceramic assemblage to be analyzed, the source is a defined layer, or stratum, within a controlled excavation unit or group of contiguous units. Thus, the samples for analysis are stratigraphic assemblages. Each well-defined stratum represents a delimited depositional period. With radiocarbon dating results from organic material recovered from the stratum, an estimated age range is associated with each selected stratum and with the ceramic artifacts recovered from it. Initial Processing

Once an assemblage is selected for analysis, all the sherds assigned to it (based on field data) are identified, cleaned, examined for fragments that mend together, and labeled. At the same time, sherds can be categorized according to how they will be handled for data recording. In this case, categories include individual vessel parts (rims, bases, handles, and other distinctive parts), vessel wall (or ‘body’) sherds that are informative in some way (e.g., having evidence of decoration or distinctive contour), and body sherds that are not linked to any source vessel and not informative within the parameters of the analysis method. Sherds are counted and weighed within each category in order to produce a basic quantification of the items in the assemblage. At this stage the initial processing is complete, and the result is a catalog that identifies and quantifies the ceramic contents of each field sample. Attribute Data Recording

Prior to analysis, the attributes to be recorded have been determined and described in a guide, for recording to be done on paper, and/or set up within database

Stylistic 1887 Table 2 An example of data fields recorded for vessel analysisa

Vessel Classes

Data fields

Notes

Lot no.

Each sherd or sherd-group recorded separately constitutes a lot, with a number tied to the catalog number of the field sample. This refers to the field source of the sample. Cross-mends are mends of sherds from different field samples.

In this kind of methodology, vessel classes are defined from patterns of co-occurring attributes. Sometimes, such patterns have been sought through mathematical cluster analysis programs, with varying success. In the example case discussed here, the database records are queried based on hypotheses formulated from the material and its cultural tradition. Extrapolated vessel sketches are used as cross-checks to the database. Priority is given to attributes that describe vessel shape and size because these are closely associated with the potter’s functional objectives. Resulting vessel classes are primarily morphological, with information added by other attributes associated with particular classes. Functional hypotheses for the vessel classes are interpretations based on morphology in conjunction with related ethnographic information and evidence associated with use, such as sooted surfaces from use over fire, other adhering material, and eroded surfaces caused by wear or contents. Sometimes functional interpretations appear to coincide with vessels of a particular ware type. When vessel classes are used to summarize an assemblage, they can be presented in alternative ways. One method is illustration of several examples in each class, which shows the range of variation. Another method is illustration of one typical example from each class (as in Figure 4). A third option is illustration of an idealized type vessel, which is an example that does not really exist but includes all the typical traits together in one hypothetical vessel. Frequently, a combination of methods is used for presentation of results. The formation of vessel classes is expectedly imperfect, in that some attributes appear to have a continuum of variation and some specimens appear to be intermediate between two classes. Clearly, the vessel classes defined by the analyst are an artificial structure, although as analysis-based evidence mounts there should be increasing congruence with the functional objectives of the original users. Nevertheless, vessel classes usefully compare related assemblages.

Provenience unit Level Cross-mend lot(s) No. of sherds No. of sherd-units Weight Maximum size Vessel part Vessel form

Orifice form Rim/lip form Interior orifice diameter Maximum vessel height Wall thickness Exterior surface finish Interior surface finish Paste texture

These are mendable sherd groups.

Choices include rim, body, base, appendage, etc. This field, like several of the following, includes choices that are described and also sketched for easy reference.

Categories are primarily based on size of nonclay inclusions.

Decorative technique Decoration location Base type Handle/lug type Comments a

Excerpted from an analysis form developed by Ken S. Wild, Virgin Islands National Park, and the author for a project on behalf of the Virgin Islands National Park, National Park Service, US Department of the Interior.

software. In this example, data are recorded first in tables printed on paper and later entered into a computer database, a duplication which safeguards original data. A list of the data fields included in this analysis is shown in Table 2. For each, there are multiple possible alternatives, or attribute states. Many are illustrated in the associated guide, and some are exemplified in a comparative sample collection. Emphasis is placed on vessel rim sections, which provide the most information about the original vessel. This particular analytical structure was developed on the basis of prior research, regionally informative traits, and the material at hand. With continual modifications as needed, it serves an intended purpose. There is no all-purpose or ‘best’ structure, however. Certainly, the attribute selection for material from other areas would be different.

Vessel-Assemblage Comparison, Typology, and Interpretation

Because similarity of pottery suggests cultural relationship, comparison of ceramic assemblages is a typical process in building a cultural history, such as a sequence of prehistoric cultures. Similar assemblages are grouped together in classes that may be defined as ‘styles’, ‘phases’, or other terms in use in particular areas. For prehistoric eras for which ethnicity is unknown, a local culture often is labeled by the name

1888 Stylistic

given to such a pottery class. Assemblage comparisons vary according to the nature of the assemblage descriptions, whether based on sherds, vessel features, or whole vessels. There is no formula for the number of traits or vessel types to be compared, but more comprehensive comparisons will yield more valid results. Two vessel-assemblages that share the same vessel types, with only minor differences, could easily be grouped together in the same class, which the archaeologist may have defined as a style, phase, local culture, or similar concept. Such groupings or classes of similar pottery assemblages may in turn be grouped into larger classes based on general similarity, which are labeled by terms like ‘tradition’ or ‘series’. They imply cultural continuity through time and/or cultural similarity across a regional area. These kinds of hierarchical classifications, sometimes called ‘cultural typologies’, are conceptualizations in the same way that any typology is a conceptualization. They serve to organize information and facilitate communication about it. Culture itself is a concept, whether with reference to prehistoric or modern cultures. Cultures can be conceptually subdivided into subcultures or aggregated into larger cultural groupings (e.g., Western culture, French culture, urban culture), depending upon the relevant context. In the same way, there are no ‘correct’ classifications of archaeological cultures, simply more or less effective classifications for the intended purposes. Potential lines of interpretation are determined by factors such as the selected sample, collected data, and comparative groupings. A vessel-assemblage comparison, like that described here, will shed light on the culture history of the area. In simple terms,

similar vessel assemblages indicate shared culture. Thus, the geographical and temporal extent of similarity is indicative of cultural relationships. At the same time, other cultural evidence must be considered because ceramic relationships may not always coincide with relationships in other aspects of culture or in social networks. When studies of vessel assemblages also include vessel functions, further interpretations are possible. It may be the case, for instance, that a particular vessel type, related to a specific function, can be traced through time even as it changes in secondary stylistic traits (Figure 5). Such a case would suggest that aspects of culture – at least subsistence practices related to that vessel’s function – had not changed while ethnicity or art style may have changed. In the opposite case, stylistic traits could remain unchanged while particular vessel functions are lost or adopted. This would suggest something different, perhaps a stable ethnic population adopting a new technology or changing the size of households that cook and eat together. Each of these lines of evidence leads to a different interpretation of the social environment, which would not have been possible without focusing research on whole vessels, the artifacts produced for intended functions.

Tracing Relative Chronology through Seriation Chronology is an important aspect of archaeology, and several different methods are available to determine the age of various archaeological materials. When it is not possible to associate material with a date, however, it is useful to at least determine the

Evolution of vessel types Domestic bowl

Domestic cooking vessel

Assemblage C AD 800–1000

Assemblage B AD 600–800

Assemblage A AD 400–600

20 cm Figure 5 An example showing two hypothesized vessel function lines through three ceramic styles in a local area with cultural continuity. Adapted from the author’s work, US Virgin Islands.

Stylistic 1889

sequential position of materials, in relation to other (earlier and later) materials. This is called ‘relative dating’. Pottery often has proved to be useful evidence for relative dating because of its many variables subject to change through time. One of the specific methods developed to derive relative dating from artifacts is seriation, a process for placing samples in serial order. The seriation method compares the quantities of selected artifactual types in different samples. It is based on the theoretical waxing and waning of the popularity of any given artifact trait. As an example, there might be a situation in which there are several collections of pottery sherds from the surfaces of sites in a given locality but neither their dating nor their sequential order is known. In that case seriation might prove useful in placing the sites in sequential order (based on their surface assemblages). First, the analyst defines a limited number of ceramic traits that appear to be differentially represented in the assemblages. Then, all sherds are examined and the occurrences of those traits are counted and converted to percentages for each assemblage. Finally, the percentage frequencies are compared, often by means of a graphic device like a bar chart. The objective is to order the samples such that the frequency of each of the selected traits consistently increases and/or decreases. Figure 6 shows how a seriation chart is composed, in simplified form. The samples shown must be placed in sequence either as A–B–C–D or as its reverse, D–C–B–A. Any other sequence would destroy the regular progression of frequency for trait types 1 and 2. It is not possible to know which end of the sequence is first and which is last, however, unless there is additional information from other sources. This method provides only rough estimates of relative chronology. Many social or historical factors potentially might affect the popularity curve for any given

ceramic trait, in such a way that it would not conform to the hypothetical model. An estimate, however, can be very useful as a basis of hypotheses for later testing. More complex methods of seriation, derived from the same principles, have been developed to fit individual circumstances for purposes other than relative dating. For example, some scholars have found it possible to estimate a calendrical date range for an archaeological deposit if it includes various artifacts of known periods of popularity. Figures representing the relative abundance of such artifacts are inserted in mathematical formulae to obtain the date estimate.

Tracing Demography through Ceramic Refuse Ceramic refuse in archaeological sites can contribute to demographic studies both on a local scale and on a regional scale. At the household level, pottery recovered from a house floor or from an associated refuse pile holds clues to the number of occupants in the house. For example, the types and quantities of various cooking and serving vessels are relevant to the number of people using them, if there is a fairly good estimate for the length of occupation represented. Working from the opposite direction, the duration of occupation of a house or village can be estimated from its associated ceramic refuse if average household size is already known from prior research and if there are data to support assumptions about vessel breakage and replacement rates. Obviously, these sorts of studies are dependent upon adequate ceramic classification and chronology. The more data supporting the underlying assumptions of the model, the more valid the conclusions. On a wider, inter-settlement scale, patterns of ceramic refuse can serve as data to support models of social organization. For example, an unusually

Seriation graph Ceramic sample group

Ceramic type 1

Ceramic type 2

Ceramic type 3

A

B

C

D (Bars indicate percentage of each type within each sample group) Figure 6 Bar-graph illustration of hypothetical seriation results for three ceramic types defined in four ceramic sample groups (A–D).

1890 Stylistic

large or complex archaeological site may be hypothesized as having been a civic or ceremonial center during a particular period of time. The quantities and types of ceramic refuse will help researchers determine whether the site was a residential settlement and which activities were carried out there. Furthermore, refuse in a regional center may include pottery sherds representative of multiple satellite communities or even culturally differentiated groups. If ceramic styles of the region are well understood, the ceramic data will be relevant to regional social structure and the size of the center’s area of influence.

Tracing Belief Systems through Iconography Iconographic analysis is broadly the study of imagery with regard to the belief systems it reflects. Iconography studied on pottery may comprise naturalistic illustrations or abstract symbolism (Figure 7). This sort of analysis generally is concerned with depictions as the basic data source – that is, with decorations as vessel features rather than with entire pots or assemblages of pottery. Inherent in archaeological iconographic analysis is the assumption that imagery on pottery of prehistoric or pre-industrial societies is an expression of beliefs and practices, as opposed to meaningless embellishment. Even when there are few clues to the meaning of iconographic representations, they can be used to trace historical cultural relationships or inter-cultural contacts. A complex representation, for example, may be repeated with different permutations in adjacent culture areas, indicating a relationship between the belief systems of the two areas.

Figure 7 An example of simply modeled iconography on prehistoric pottery from the Virgin Islands, probably representative of a mythological character or spirit being.

If there is complementary information from other sources, such as other artifact classes, recorded mythology, or related known cultures, then iconography can be mined for meaning. In some instances, iconography on pottery has been very productive in the understanding of religion and ideology, in addition to activities and objects of daily life that may be depicted. Although it is difficult to eliminate subjectivity from iconographic analysis, standardized procedures increase rigorous data collection and comparability. Complex iconography can be broken down into its component parts, and observed rules of composition (such as orientation and repetition) can serve as data in themselves. In a thematic approach, iconographic elements are related to ideological themes as known or estimated from other sources of information. For example, if bats are known to be associated with spirits of the dead in a particular cultural tradition, then bat representations can be traced through various forms, as expressions of the theme of the spirit world. Further, a humanoid image with bat characteristics, by following the same theme, potentially can be interpreted as an ancestor in the spirit world. In ceramic traditions that are especially rich in pictorial representation, entire mythological narratives have been identified in images on pottery.

Concluding Remarks It is important to re-emphasize that stylistic ceramic analysis is multi-faceted and is conducted from diverse theoretical perspectives. The only consistent factor is that stylistic analysis is not primarily concerned with the chemical or physical properties of the ceramic material itself (although even such data are sometimes connected with stylistic data at the interpretive stage). There have been many different analysis methods championed by their practitioners, and methods are often not easily transferable between regions due to the nature of pre-existing data. A few of the possible research objectives and associated ceramic analysis methods have been discussed here in order to illustrate variety within the field; this is by no means exhaustive. In fact, ceramic analysis approaches and methods are continually undergoing reinvention, especially with regard to new opportunities made possible by new technologies. Within diverse research communities, stylistic analysis itself has fluctuated in popularity. With pottery fragments such an abundant resource, however, ceramic analysis by whatever name remains an obvious avenue for understanding the past. No matter how theoretical paradigms may fluctuate, a basic level of primary data analysis is essential as a foundation for higher level explanations.

PRESERVATION, MODES OF 1891 See also: Ceramics and Pottery; Classification and

Typology; Culture, Concept and Definitions; Image and Symbol; Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis; Seriation; Statistics in Archaeology; Vitreous Materials Analysis.

Further Reading DeBoer WR and Lathrap DW (1979) The making and breaking of Shipibo–Conibo ceramics. In: Kramer C (ed.) Ethnoarchaeology, pp. 102–138. New York: Columbia University Press. Nelson BA (ed.) (1985) Decoding Prehistoric Ceramics. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Power

Olin JS and Franklin AD (1982) Archaeological Ceramics. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Orton C, Tyers P, and Vince A (1993) Pottery in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Quilter J (1997) The narrative approach to Moche iconography. Latin American Antiquity 8(2): 113–133. Rice PM (1987) Pottery Analysis: A Sourcebook. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shepard AO (1956) Ceramics for the Archaeologist. Publication 609. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington. Skibo JM (1992) Pottery Function: A Use-Alteration Perspective. New York: Plenum Press.

See: Identity and Power.

PRESERVATION, MODES OF Kristin D Sobolik, University of Maine, Orono, ME, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary calcination (of bone) The decomposition of carbonates and other compounds by heat. carbonization The term for the conversion of an organic substance into carbon or a carbon-containing residue through burning (pyrolysis). sporopollenin A major component of the tough outer (exine) walls of spores and pollen grains.

There are differential factors which influence why some biological remains are preserved at an archaeological site and some are not. Each site is deposited under diverse conditions that affect whether the site becomes preserved in the archaeological record at all and whether biological remains at that site can be recovered. Preservation of biological remains is mainly influenced by the presence or absence of saprophytic organisms in the surrounding matrix, although material durability is also important. The presence of saprophytes and the interconnected preservation of biological remains are affected by biological, environmental, and cultural factors.

Biological Preservation Factors Many biological factors influence the preservation of biological remains at archaeological sites, although the presence of saprophytic organisms is key. Saprophytes are plants and animals which live on dead material and obtain all their nutrients (nitrogen compounds, potassium, phosphates, and oxidation of carbohydrates) by breaking down organic matter. Saprophytic organisms can include larger scavengers and rodents, but the term mainly refers to small organisms such as earthworms, insects, fungi, bacteria, small arthropods, and microbes (see Archaeozoology). These organisms cause the decay and decomposition of most organic material, including biological materials at archaeological sites. Environments in which saprophytic organisms flourish are detrimental to biological preservation. Material robusticity, durability, and density also affect biological preservation (Table 1). The more durable a bone or plant part is, the longer it will survive attempted decay by saprophytes as well as chemical decomposition. Plant remains which are most frequently preserved are those which contain materials that have a structural or protective role for the plant and are therefore more durable (see Paleoethnobotany). Such constituents include cellulose, sporopollenin (the main component of pollen), silica (the main component of phytoliths), lignin, cutin,

1892 PRESERVATION, MODES OF Table 1 Relative preservation potential of biological remains Preservation factors

Bone

Shell

Plant remains

Pollen

Organic component

Mineral component

Biological Saprophytic organisms Material durability Carbonization/calcination


þ þ

0 þ þ


þ þ


þ þ


þ þ/


Environmental Acidic soils Alkaline soils Mechanical destruction Weathering Hot, arid conditions Cold, arid conditions Anaerobic

þ


þ þ þ


þ

þ þ þ


þ

þ þ þ

þ/



þ þ þ

þ/



þ þ þ

Cultural Processing Cultural use


þ/



þ/



þ/



þ/



þ/


þ ¼ Postive preservation factor.
¼ Negative preservation factor. 0 ¼ Neutral preservation factor. Source: Sobolik KD (2003) Archaeobiology. AltaMira Press.

and suberin which are found in pits, seeds, rinds, spines, woody components, resin, pollen, and phytoliths. Bone is the most frequently preserved biological material from archaeological sites. Bone, horn, antlers, teeth, hooves, hide, and shell resist chemical and saprophytic decay due to their robust structural elements of keratin and collagen (horn and hooves), phosphatics (bone, antler, teeth), chitin (insect and crustacean exoskeletons), and/or are calcareous (shell). All bone, however, is not created equal. Some bone is more resistant to decay and destruction due to its density. Different bone elements and bone elements from different species vary in structural density. Bone from medium and small animals is less dense than that from larger animals; therefore, their bone remains tend to decay more frequently. Mammal bone is denser than fish and bird bone and thus is more frequently recovered. Carbonization (burning) of botanical remains and calcination of bone makes them more resistant to destruction. During the carbonization process, chemical constituents are converted to elemental carbon, a durable substance which offers no nutrients for saprophytic organisms. In many regions of the world in which archaeological plant remains are usually degraded, wood or plant charcoal may be recovered. Burned bone, representing various stages toward calcination, will also tend to preserve better than unburned bone as burning removes protein, which saprophytes digest, and alters the calcium content. Calcined bone is pure white, friable, and porous. Calcined or almost-calcined bone preserves well in areas with acidic soils where unburned bone is degraded through chemical action.

Environmental Preservation Factors Environments that are conducive to saprophytic organisms are not conducive to biological preservation and vice versa (Table 1). Carbone and Keel in 1985 listed four environmental factors that influence preservation of biological assemblages: soil acidity, aeration, relative humidity, and temperature. Saprophytic organisms are intolerant of highly acidic soils and live almost exclusively in alkaline soils. Therefore, acidic soils will tend to preserve organic components of biological materials, whereas alkaline soils will tend to have poor biological preservation of organics due to increased saprophytic activity. An example of this is pollen preservation in the southwestern United States. Because soils in the Southwest are highly alkaline, preservation of organic materials in open areas tends to be rare. Bryant and colleagues in 1994 analyzed 509 pollen samples from soil collected by a CRM firm along a proposed pipeline route in deposits ranging in age from 1000 to 5000 years old. The deposits all had a pH value above 6.0 with anhydrous carbonates as the most common compounds. Only 243 (48%) of the samples contained a significant amount of fossil pollen with a mean pollen concentration value of 6 545 grains/gram of soil. As a control, 90 modern surface soil samples were collected in west Texas, and area where the soil is less alkaline than in the Southwest. All of the samples contained a significant amount of pollen with an average concentration value of 21 311 grains/gram of soil. Pollen has an outer covering (exine) made of sporopollenin, one of the strongest natural substances

PRESERVATION, MODES OF 1893

known. However, alkaline soils are conducive to fungi and bacteria which eat pollen, creating a biased array in which pollen with more sporopollenin in its exine is better preserved than pollen with less. However, it is well known that preservation of biological remains is usually excellent in the southwestern United States due to the dry/arid conditions which do not allow saprophytes to thrive even though the soil is alkaline. Preservation is mainly found in enclosed areas (caves, rockshelters, pueblos, etc.) rather than in the open areas because the latter have increased exposure to weathering (wind, erosion, rain). Conversely, alkaline soils tend to preserve mineral components better than acidic soils. Bone is made up of minerals (hydroxyapatite, calcium carbonate, trace elements) and organics (collagen, bone protein, fats, lipids) in an approximately 2:1 ratio. The organic components of bone will tend to be eaten by saprophytes in alkaline soils, leaving mineral bone components intact. Therefore, the mineral (structural) components of bone are preserved and can be recovered in alkaline conditions. Bone tends not to survive in acidic conditions because acids dissolve structural bases of minerals. While alkaline soils tend to destroy organic assemblages (plant remains and organic components of bone) due to saprophytic activity, such soil types tend to preserve the mineral components of bone and shell better than acidic soils. For example, soils in Maine tend to be acidic, which limits the preservation potential of the mineral component of bone. When bone is preserved at interior sites it has been calcined. Although calcined bone is preserved in interior sites with acidic soils, bone (mainly uncalcined) is prevalent at archaeological shell midden sites along the coast. Bone preserves in these sites because weathering and degradation of the calcareous shell matrix produces an alkaline environment conducive to preservation of mineral components of bone. Therefore, bone preservation at archaeological sites in Maine depends upon site location and soil alkalinity. Preservation of biological remains is also influenced by mechanical destruction through seasonal freeze/thaw cycles, increased biological preservation in dry/arid, or dry/frozen regions, and anaerobic environments which decrease saprophytic activity therefore increasing preservation. For example, although soils in Maine are acidic and tend not to preserve mineral components of bone, such acidic soils, because they inhibit saprophytic organisms, should preserve other organics like botanical remains. This is not the case, however, because of the seasonal freezing/thawing cycle which mechanically destroys chemical composition. Preservation of organics in

this type of environment can be achieved when they have been carbonized or burned making them more structurally durable. Cold temperatures also limit the decay of biological remains because saprophytes do not live in such an extreme, cold environment. Biological assemblages in the Arctic can be as well preserved as in dry/arid regions. Saprophytic organisms cannot live without oxygen, so anaerobic (lacking oxygen) environments will be conducive to biological preservation. Such environments include peat bogs, which are famous for preservation of ‘bog bodies’ and other biological remains, and waterlogged sites (see Sites: Waterlogged), where wood is commonly preserved, such as stakes from prehistoric fish weirs. Relatively anaerobic conditions also exist under thick layers of clay or silt deposits, a good environment for preservation of biological materials. Depth of deposit is an important component of preservation in such environmental conditions: the deeper material is buried, the more anaerobic the environment is, and the better the preservation potential.

Cultural Preservation Factors Humans affect the preservation potential of biological materials (Table 1). Before biological remains are deposited, people can affect their robusticity and structure, decreasing or increasing their preservation potential. People burn plants (carbonization) and bones (calcination), either intentionally or unintentionally, generally increasing the probability that those remains will be preserved. But humans also break, macerate, pound, chop, boil, and otherwise manipulate biological materials before deposition, decreasing their chance of preservation. Humans also dig pits for various purposes, exposing underlying archaeobiological material to a more aerobic environment, potentially reducing their preservation. This type of cultural transformation is seen more frequently in large, multicomponent, or stratified sites where human activity was more extensive and diverse than it was at small, single-component sites where activity tended to be centralized and less invasive. Humans will also tend to store biological materials in more protected environments, such as pit structures in any site, therefore increasing their potential preservation as they can be removed from external weathering. See also: Archaeozoology; Caves and Rockshelters;

Frozen Sites and Bodies; Paleoethnobotany; Sites: Mounded and Unmounded; Waterlogged; Soils and Archaeology.

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Further Reading Bryant VM, Jr., Holloway RG, Jones JG, and Carlson DL (1994) Pollen preservation in alkaline soils of the American Southwest. In: Traverse A (ed.) Sedimentation of Organic Particles, pp. 47–58. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Carbone VA and Keel BC (1985) Preservation of plant and animal remains. In: Gilbert RI, Jr. and Mielke JH (eds.) The Analysis of Prehistoric Diets, pp. 1–20. Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Lyman RL (1984) Bone density and differential survivorship of fossil classes. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 3: 259–299. Sobolik KD (2003) Archaeobiology. AltaMira Press.

PROCESSUAL ARCHAEOLOGY Amber L Johnson, Truman State University, Kirksville, MO, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary new archaeology Mid-twentieth century approach to archaeology explicitly focused on social dimensions of past societies. processual archaeology Combination of learning strategies focused on how to use the archaeological record to make inferences, develop, and test theories about past sociocultural dynamics.

‘Processual archaeology’ and ‘new archaeology’, while often treated as if they refer to the same intellectual tradition, in fact have distinct referents. As advances in radiocarbon and tree-ring dating in the middle of the twentieth century freed archaeologists from relying on the combination of stratigraphic excavation and seriation of items of material culture to develop chronologies, many researchers began to explore what else could be learned from the archaeological record. These explorations led to a number of approaches both for reconstructing social organization beyond subsistence and settlement systems and for beginning to offer explanations for the recorded archaeological variability over space and time. While they share several central figures, ‘new archaeology’ refers to a wide range of innovative approaches for studying archaeological material which were undertaken in many distinct intellectual traditions by archaeologists who were completing graduate study in the 1950s and early 1960s. Further, these approaches depended upon a wide variety of both assumptions about what the world was like and goals for pursuing knowledge of the past. The precursors to most modern approaches to archaeology can be found among the initial contributions which collectively became known as the ‘new archaeology’.

The diversification of research interests and an optimistic view of what could be learned from a systematically excavated archaeological record led to the development of new standards for fieldwork. When chronological control was the primary focus of archaeological research, only the artifact types which were thought to be diagnostic of time had been systematically recorded and studied. This was a tiny portion of the total artifact assemblage. In the early twentieth century, cultures were defined by the presence and absence of culture traits – relative frequencies were not considered relevant. Researchers attempting to learn a new range of things from the archaeological record began to record the full range of materials recovered from surface survey and excavation. Passing all excavated sediments through a screen and recording detailed provenience of artifacts, ecofacts, and features are two such innovations in field methods which are standard archaeological practices today. ‘Processual archaeology’ is just one of many intellectual traditions which were established during this period of experimentation with new strategies for learning from archaeological materials. The primary goal of ‘processual archaeology’ is to explain variability in the archaeological record by reference to general cultural processes. Thus, in terms of its learning goals, ‘processual archaeology’ is firmly aligned with the natural sciences, which seek general explanations that allow prediction across a range of phenomena, rather than with the humanities which seek nuanced explication of particular phenomena. What distinguishes ‘processual archaeology’ from many other contemporary approaches to archaeological explanation is a twofold focus on: (1) epistemology, the study of how new knowledge is produced, which results in (2) studying the archaeological record in terms of itself, rather than as a substitute for a past cultural system. From the beginning, there has been a focus on challenging unwarranted assumptions, propositions, speculations, opinions, and other existing ideas about what the world is like by testing their implications for archaeological patterning. Formal arguments regarding the

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necessary relationships among variables are preferred to less formal interpretations of archaeological patterns. The initial focus on testing pre-existing ideas about what the world is like led early proponents of ‘processual archaeology’ to emphasize the utility of deductive reasoning – starting with an idea or theory and reasoning to the implications for what archaeologists should see if this idea were true. Many authors have misinterpreted the statement that deduction was a necessary part of any mature science as an argument that deduction was the only acceptable learning strategy in science. Thus, ‘processual archaeology’ is often associated specifically with the hypothetico-deductive approach to research. However, testing hypotheses using deductive reasoning presupposes there are pre-existing ideas about what the world is like – those ideas can come from many places, but those which are founded on more than speculation often result from inductive research, or pattern recognition and theory development. As traditional ideas were tested, ‘processual archaeology’ shifted its focus from testing existing ideas using deductive reasoning to developing new ideas relevant to archaeological observation by developing pattern recognition strategies and using inductive reasoning. Today, there are enough new ideas about how the world works, and why it works that way, to begin a new phase of deductive testing to find the limits of their utility. The growth of learning strategies is a major contribution of ‘processual archaeology’ and well worth exploring further. The earliest work in ‘processual archaeology’ challenged existing conventions for interpretation of archaeological patterning (especially how to recognize migration, diffusion, and invention) while simultaneously promoting the analytical potential of the archaeological record for learning about variability in settlement, subsistence, and social organization. Testing the existing conventions and providing alternatives to traditional interpretation proved to be much easier than developing a systematic body of integrated knowledge on which to build general processual explanations for archaeological variability. Several early proponents of ‘processual archaeology’ drifted away after their initial optimism was replaced by the frustration of realizing the field didn’t have enough basic knowledge to accomplish the goal. However, those who recognized the enormous learning potential of the archaeological record saw this as an irresistible intellectual challenge and went to work learning what was necessary to pursue the explanatory goal. Subsequently, ‘processual archaeology’ focused on developing methods for observing the archaeological record and for recognizing patterns in the data

produced from these observations which served the goal of explaining variability. This work is commonly referred to as middle range research, or middle range theory. Middle range research comprises studies of archaeological patterning resulting from both natural and cultural formation processes (Schiffer’s N-transforms and C-transforms). Archaeological study of formation processes, taphonomy, and ethnoarchaeology largely resulted from middle range research questions raised by work in ‘processual archaeology’. More recently, researchers working in this intellectual tradition have returned their attention to the development of learning strategies for building the larger-scale general theory regarding culture process which was the original goal of ‘processual archaeology’. The primary learning strategy in contemporary ‘processual archaeology’ is to organize large data sets (Binford’s ‘frames of reference’ or Wandsnider’s ‘bodies of reference knowledge’) to use as a foundation for pattern recognition and analytical comparison. This strategy can be used to study variability in any observable phenomena at any temporal or spatial scale of comparison. Recent examples range from global comparisons of hunter-gatherer subsistence, mobility patterns, group size – even beliefs about death – to comparison of large-scale patterns in archaeological sequences, regionally focused studies of site locations given detailed knowledge of resource availability, and site-specific studies of formation processes given detailed knowledge of palaeo-environmental conditions and/or ethnographically documented activities in similar ecological contexts. As pattern recognition and inductive reasoning leads to the construction of new theories about why the world is the way it appears to be, a new round of testing should focus on identifying the conditions under which these theories do and do not work. Since initial efforts at theory-building must begin with broad generalizations, there is an enormous potential for learning what other things must be equal for the theory to hold. This research has already produced predictions about the character and timing of long-term patterns of culture change which can fuel the development of archaeological knowledge, method, and theory for many years to come. Accumulation of intellectual tools and organization of large data sets provide a solid foundation for future developments in ‘processual archaeology’. Using a combination of ethnographic, environmental, and archaeological data sets, archaeologists who seek to explain archaeological patterning by referencing general cultural processes are poised to make substantial theoretical contributions relevant to the entire field of anthropology. This is an exciting arena for future knowledge growth.

1896 PSEUDOARCHAEOLOGY AND FRAUDS See also: Agency;

Ethnoarchaeology; Interpretive Models, Development of; Middle Range Approaches; Taphonomy.

Further Reading Binford LR (1962) Archaeology as Anthropology. American Antiquity 28(2): 217–225. Binford LR (1972) An Archaeological Perspective. New York: Seminar Press. Binford LR (ed.) (1977) For Theory Building in Archaeology: Essays on Faunal Remains, Aquatic Resources, Spatial Analysis, and Systemic Modeling. New York: Academic Press. Binford LR (1983) In Pursuit of the Past: Decoding the Archaeological Record. New York: Thames & Hudson. Binford LR (1983) Working at Archaeology. New York: Academic Press. Binford LR (1989) Debating Archaeology. New York: Academic Press. Binford LR (2001) Constructing Frames of Reference: An Analytical Method for Archaeological Theory Building Using HunterGatherer and Environmental Data Sets. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Provenance Studies

Studies.

Binford LR and Binford SR (eds.) (1968) New Perspectives in Archaeology. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. Fitzhugh B and Habu J (2002) Beyond Foraging and Collecting: Evolutionary Change in Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Systems. New York: Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Publishers. Flannery KV (1971) Archaeological systems theory and early Mesoamerica. In: Stuart Struever (ed.) Prehistoric Agriculture, pp. 80–100. Garden City, NY: The American Museum of Natural History, The Natural History Press. Flannery KV (ed.) (1976) The Early Mesoamerican Village. New York: Academic Press. Flamery KV (ed.) (1986) Guila´ Naquitz: Archaic Foraging and Early Agriculture in Oaxaca, Mexico. Orlando: Academic Press. Johnson AL (ed.) (2004) Processual Archaeology: Exploring Analytical Strategies, Frames of Reference, and Culture Process. Westport, CT: Praeger Press. Leone MP (1972) Contemporary Archaeology: A Guide to Theory and Contributions. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Watson PJo, LeBlanc SA, and Redman CL (1971) Explanation in Archeology: An Explicitly Scientific Approach. New York: Columbia University Press. Willey GR and Sabloff JA (1980) A History of American Archaeology, 2nd edn. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.

See: Neutron Activation Analysis; Europe: Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance

PSEUDOARCHAEOLOGY AND FRAUDS Kenneth L Feder, Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CT, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary domestication The adaptation of an animal or plant through breeding in captivity to a life intimately associated with and advantageous to humans. Domestication concerns a population or a species as a whole, usually. pseudoarchaeology The interpretation of material remains and sites (which are not necessarily genuine) using methodology that is not part of the established scientific method.

Introduction In the prologue of his 1953 novel, The Go-Between, English writer L. P. Hartley phrased it lyrically: ‘‘the past is a foreign country: they do things differently

there’’. To many people, the past, indeed, is like an exotic, foreign country, a place of intrigue, characterized by astonishing mysteries. Many are fascinated by such mysteries: How did humanity come to be? What does the cave art of the Upper Palaeolithic mean? How did ancient Egyptians build the pyramids? What was the purpose of Stonehenge? Public interest generates an appetite for solutions to these mysteries and the demand for solutions creates a ready supply of researchers and writers ready to provide them, commonly by proposing highly speculative interpretations of actual data and, in the extreme, through the agency of outright fraud.

Archaeological Fraud: In the Name of Religion To be successful, archaeological frauds ordinarily need not be clever, well conceived, or convincing – indeed,

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Figure 1 The Cardiff Giant, in situ, in October 1869 on the Newell farm. Stub Newell appears beside the giant in the pit (Courtesy, New York State Historical Association).

they may be transparently unconvincing to professional scientists and yet still be successful. What is key to the success of an archaeological fraud – in fact, it is at the core of much of pseudoarchaeology – is that it fulfills a need, it meets an expectation, it provides a desired solution, or it supports a preconceived notion about the human past. For example, the Cardiff Giant hoax of 1869 was thoroughly unconvincing and clumsy, at least in the minds of those scholars who investigated it (Figure 1). Ostensibly the petrified remnants of a ten-foottall man who, it was suggested, had been an inhabitant of upstate New York before the biblical deluge, the giant was immediately declared a humbug by palaeontologists, geologists, and even sculptors. For example, geologist J. F. Boynton of the University of Pennsylvania examined the giant and pointed out that it could in no way be interpreted as the mineralized imprint of a human being. Boynton concluded that the giant was not the human equivalent of a petrified tree trunk, but merely a carving done in gypsum, a soft rock which, based on the erosion seen on its surface, he suggested could not have been in the ground for much more than a year. Noted sculptor Eratus Dow Palmer identified marks left by the tools of whoever had sculpted the giant, concluding that it was entirely artificial. Upon his examination, Othniel C. Marsh, one of the most highly regarded American palaeontologists of the nineteenth century, declared the giant to be nothing more than a remarkable fake. This scientific and artistic skepticism, unfortunately, was for naught. The public embraced the notion that on a small farm in a rural community in the state of New York, a simple farmer digging a well had unearthed proof of biblical stories of giants.

Stub Newell, the farmer who discovered the giant, showed remarkable business sense when, the day after its discovery, he erected a circus tent over the in situ remains and began charging people 50 cents to view it. Though precise attendance figures were not recorded, later testimony indicates that in the week after its 16th of October discovery, an average of several hundred people daily visited the farm to view the giant. The number of visitors swelled to more than 2000 on each day of the first weekend after its unveiling. At that point, a bit more than one week after its discovery, a consortium of Syracuse businessmen purchased a three-quarter interest in the giant from Mr. Newell for $30 000, hoping to exploit more fully its potential as a tourist attraction. Of course, the entire thing had been a fake and general rumors to that effect, along with Mr. Newell’s apparent inability to keep quiet about his highly profitable humbug, resulted in a confession by his partner in crime, his cousin, George Hull, who, apparently, had been the brains behind the operation from the outset of the conspiracy. Hull admitted in a later newspaper interview that he had purchased a block of gypsum from an Iowa quarry and shipped it to Chicago where sculptors produced, at Mr. Hull’s request, the image of a giant, naked, recumbent, man. Shipped to New York in a crate labeled ‘‘unfinished marble’’, Hull arranged with his cousin to bury the sculpture on the farm where it remained interred, almost precisely as Professor Boynton had suggested, for one year before its ‘‘discovery’’. It is clear that public acceptance of the giant was based, largely, on its seeming to lend support to biblical accounts of antediluvian giant human beings (see Biblical Archaeology; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology). When local ministers referred in their sermons to the ‘‘Goliath of Cardiff’’, they were not making a simple analogy to Goliath of Gotha; they were stating forcefully that the remains of the Cardiff Giant furnished archaeological evidence that a biblical story was, if only indirectly, based on fact. Ironically, George Hull’s inspiration for the giant was religiously based as well. Hull was an atheist and the idea for the giant was born after a heated argument with a minister concerning the literal truth of stories told in the Bible. Hull freely admitted that, based on his conversation with the minister, he saw an opportunity to exploit gullible believers who would want to accept evidence supporting a Bible story, and who would be willing to pay for the privilege of seeing such evidence. The giant currently resides as an exhibit at the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, New York, were visitors can continue to pay to see the marvelous petrified man supposedly from before Noah’s Flood (see Figure 2).

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Figure 2 The Cardiff Giant in his current circumstance, at the Farmers Museum, in Cooperstown, New York (KL Feder).

Archaeological Fraud: In the Name of Science There is no better known example, no more egregious case, no more influential instance, and no better model for archaeological fraud than that of Piltdown Man. To understand why it was such an enormous success, the context of its evolutionary implications, had it been genuine, must be addressed. The second half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth were heady times for those pondering the origin of species, including the origin of our own. Charles Darwin’s watershed work, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, was published in 1859, just three years after a fossil calvarium (skull cap) had been found by workers building a roadway in the Neander Valley in Germany. The fossil’s find spot provided the name for the now well-known archaic variety of human beings, the Neandertals. Beyond a passing remark in the final paragraphs of his seminal work, Darwin avoided applying his theory to human beings. This, however, did not prevent other scholars from contemplating the evolutionary implications of the discovery in the Neander Valley as well as the significance of other fossils found throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa that seemed to

represent archaic, perhaps ancestral, varieties of human beings. Many evolutionists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries embraced an evolutionary paradigm for human beings characterized as ‘brain centered’. Briefly, the brain-centered paradigm was based on the recognition that the characteristic that most clearly distinguishes us from other animal species is our great intelligence made possible by our large brains. The logical underpinning of the brain-centered paradigm can be phrased in this way: because humans exhibit the most significant difference from other creatures, including our nearest evolutionary relatives, the apes, in terms of brain size and configuration, it must have been the brain that first marked our departure from those relatives in our separate evolutionary trajectories. If the brain was our most changed, most highly developed feature, the argument went, it must have taken the longest to develop and, therefore, must have begun its divergence first. This perspective led thinkers to predict that in the fossil evidence of human evolution yet to be found in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, researchers should find a large-brained version of what amounts to, in all other respects, a chimpanzee. This view is exemplified in the writing of Arthur Smith Woodward of the British Museum (Natural History), who maintained: ‘‘The growth of the brain preceded the refinement of the features and of the somatic characters in general.’’ The brain-centered paradigm was preferred, at least in part, because it allowed for the early evolution of our intelligence, our ability to think, to communicate, and to create. These are the things that truly define, distinguish, and separate us from other animals. It seemed sensible and, perhaps, it was comforting, to believe that the organ that made those human skills possible, our large brain, had been the priority of evolution. The brain-centered paradigm, however, was continually challenged by palaeoanthropological data collected in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. An ancient calvarium recovered in 1891 on the island of Java and estimated at the time to be more than 0.5 million years old, was too large to be that of an ape, but far too small to be a human being’s. Found nearby was a femur that appeared to be entirely modern in its configuration. Eugene Dubois, the Dutch physician who collected the specimens, concluded that the femur and calvarium belonged to the same individual, asserting that the ancient human ancestor, colloquially called Java Man, was small-brained and bipedal. An ancient human being with a human-like body – at least one capable of our uniquely bipedal locomotion – and an ape-like brain was precisely the opposite of what the brain-centered paradigm predicted.

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Though the original Neandertal, and all subsequent specimens placed in the same category, were large brained, their crania reflected a morphology that seemed more ape-like than human, characterized by a sharply sloping forehead with little room for the forebrain, a flattened cranial profile unlike the modern human configuration which is tall and round, a forward-thrusting, muzzle-like lower face, and a substantial, continuous ridge of bone above the eye orbits. Though there was quite a bit of controversy concerning the precise nature of the Neandertal gait, their postcranial skeletons showed very clearly that they walked upright. So even at a fairly recent point in human evolution – no more than, perhaps, about 80 000 years ago – the Neandertals seemed more human below than above, again, the opposite of what the brain-centered paradigm predicted. This detailed exposition provides context for the discovery in England of a fossil that called into question the significance of the Java and Neandertal specimens and once again elevated the brain-centered paradigm to center stage in discussions of the process of human evolution. Tucked into a section of news announcements in the 5 December 1912 issue of the even then venerable British science weekly Nature, was the announcement by a Mr. Charles Dawson of the discovery in the Piltdown region of Sussex, in the south of England of ‘‘a human skull and mandible, considered to belong to the early Pleistocene period’’ (Figure 3). Dawson was a lawyer by training, but, by disposition, was a dedicated collector of geological, palaeontological, and archaeological specimens. In fact,

Dawson was considered so lucky at finding such things, his envious colleagues nicknamed him, ‘‘the Wizard of Sussex’’. In publications, Dawson maintained that the first piece of cranium found in a pit at the Barcombe Mills Manor, had been handed to him in 1908 by workers gathering gravel. Four additional cranial fragments were obtained by Dawson in the same pit in 1911 whereupon he personally commenced the search for additional bones. Dawson was joined at the site in the summer of 1912 by previously mentioned British Museum scientist Arthur Smith Woodward and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest with a lifelong interest in science in general and human evolution in particular. Working together, initially they found yet another human-like cranial fragment and the bones of a number of extinct animals. Later in that same summer, half of an ape-like mandible (lower jaw) was recovered from the same pit and still later a canine tooth that fits comfortably within the mandible was also found. In 1914, the team found a large chunk of animal bone carved into a shape that seemed a remarkable match for the bat used in the British game of cricket. Called, in fact, the ‘‘cricket bat’’, no one suggested that ancient humans were playing the game in antiquity, but, at the same time, no one digging at Piltdown yet recognized that someone was having a good laugh at their expense. As Dawson and Woodward emphasized in the first detailed published description of the discovery, the cranial fragments had come from a large, humanlike skull that also exhibited some primitive features, in particular, relatively thick cranial bones. The lower

Figure 3 Workers at the Piltdown Man site: Robert Kenward, Jr., a tenant of Barcombe Mills Manor; Charles Dawson (seated); workman Venus Hargreaves; Chipper, the goose; and Arthur Smith Woodward (Courtesy of The British Museum).

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Figure 4 Artist’s depiction of Piltdown Man as it appeared in the Illustrated London News, January 11, 1913, New York Edition.

jaw, on the other hand, was very ape-like, heavily buttressed by bone and lacking a human chin. The age of the specimens could not be determined precisely, but their stratigraphic context implied that they were far older than the Neandertals and likely older than Java Man (see Figure 4). To some, the cranium and mandible represented the equivalent of a chimera, a monstrous and unnatural combination of parts of two distinctly different creatures. German scientist Franz Weidenreich went so far as to suggest that the cranial fragments and mandible were ‘‘the artificial combination of fragments of a modern-human braincase with an orangutan-like mandible and teeth’’. To others, however, the remains at Piltdown seemed to be just exactly what was necessary to revitalize the brain-centered paradigm: a creature with a brain of apparent modern human size and configuration, but with ape-like features below that modern brain. The discovery at Piltdown grabbed the attention of the scientific community for several reasons. Certainly, the fact that it seemed to confirm the brain-centered paradigm preferred by many when all previous finds had contradicted it, was an enormously important part of its appeal. At the same time, the discovery at Piltdown provided for the British their first ancient human fossil. All the better, it must have felt to the British, that in Piltdown they had, not only their first important ancient human remain, but a specimen that

seemed to relegate the fossils found in other nations to side branches, diversions off the main trunk of human evolution. If humanity possessed, at the base of its evolutionary tree, a creature with a large, humanly configured brain, and an ape-like mandible and body, then more recent creatures, like Java or Neandertal Man, with their ape-like heads and human-like bodies, must have been unsuccessful and not terribly important creatures, backsliders off the main pathway leading toward humanity, in other words, evolutionary dead ends. Where the Cardiff Giant had been a clumsy fraud that was unable to fool any scientists who examined it, Piltdown had to be more convincing, perhaps because it had to fool a much more skeptical, better informed, and more sophisticated primary audience – evolutionary scientists. Trained scientists they may have been, but like the public who accepted the Cardiff Giant, many of them suspended their skeptical sense and accepted the validity of the Piltdown fossil because it seemed to support a cherished belief – albeit a belief that related to science rather than a religion – the brain-centered paradigm. The Piltdown fraud was not definitively exposed until 1953 when, through the application of fluorine/ nitrogen analysis (a relative dating procedure), the cranium and mandible were shown to be of entirely different ages. A close examination of the mandible confirmed the suspicion of some that it had been intentionally broken at the point of articulation between it and the cranium, apparently to prevent researchers from determining what should have been obvious, that the two bones didn’t belong to the same individual or, it as turns out, even the same species. Indeed, the cranial fragments were those of an anatomically modern human being; radiocarbon dating indicates that it was only about six-hundred years old. Franz Weidenreich had been precisely correct, however, about the lower jaw. The hoaxer had obtained the mandible of an orangutan, had broken off the condyle where it would have articulated with the cranium, and placed it in the same pit with the human cranial fragments. Though many have been accused of perpetrating the Piltdown hoax, there is no definitive proof of who was responsible. Charles Dawson’s presence at every major discovery, his remarkable luck at finding the only seemingly confirming evidence (he claimed to have found the fossil fragments of another, similar creature, called Piltdown II, in 1915), a history of association with questionable discoveries, and the cessation of all related finds immediately upon his death seem convincing proof that he was, at least, a major player in the fraud. Whether he had professional help has been the focus of several investigations, not

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to mention books, and perhaps, the Piltdown ‘‘whodunit’’ has gotten to be, as archaeologist Christopher Chippendale puts it, a pointless Victorian parlor game. It is of far greater importance to remember that while the definitive exposure of the fake did not occur until more than 40 years after the announcement of its discovery, Piltdown had, long before this, been relegated to the status of a curious footnote among palaeoanthropologists in their evolutionary scenarios. The frenzy of palaeoanthropological research that followed and was, at least in part, inspired by Piltdown’s discovery, resulted in not a single similar, confirming fossil, at least by anyone other than Charles Dawson. All subsequent discoveries in Europe, Asia, and Africa confirmed the evolutionary pattern exhibited by the Java and Neandertal discoveries; upright walking predated the modernization of the cranium and brain rather than the other way around. Revealing Piltdown as a fake in 1953 shocked few. It merely confirmed what many, by that time, suspected; Piltdown had been an egregious fake. Much as many wished to believe that the modern brain had begun its evolutionary trajectory into the modern form as the first step in human evolution, it simply was not the paradigm supported by the data.

Archaeological Fraud: In the Pursuit of Fame If Charles Dawson of Piltdown fame was the ‘‘Wizard of Sussex’’, a title earned for his spectacular luck at finding important geological, palaeontological, and archaeological specimens, he surely was trumped by Shinichi Fujimura upon whom was bestowed by his colleagues the sobriquet ‘‘the hand of God’’. Fujimura was the ostensible archetype of the amateur who makes a significant contribution to scientific knowledge, not because of formal, university training, but as the simple result of his great inborn love for science. Fujimura had no particular background in archaeology but, instead, worked in the 1970s for an electronics manufacturer in Japan. Fujimura, however, had a passionate amateur interest in the human past in general and that of his home country, Japan, in particular and began to participate as a volunteer in digs in the 1970s. He quickly garnered the respect of many professional archaeologists and established a reputation for having an uncanny, some called it divine, ability to find important and surprisingly ancient specimens. When Fujimura began his amateur quest in the 1970s, the prehistory of his nation was comparatively shallow, its oldest sites dating to about 30 000 and, at most, 35 000 years ago. Compare this with the much deeper record on the Asian mainland, where fossil

hominid sites dating to more than 500 000 years ago had been known since the early 1930s (the oldest sites in China now may date to more than 1.5 million years ago). In the 1970s, Japanese prehistory appeared to be a mere afterthought. Fujimura changed all that. Following his spectacular discovery in 1981 of the then oldest artifacts ever found in Japan, dating to more than 40 000 years ago, Fujimura was able to devote his time entirely to Japanese archaeology when grateful colleagues acknowledged his contribution by appointing him to the important post of Deputy Director of the Tohoku Paleolithic Institute. Fujimura appeared to use his time well. Between 1981 and 2000, almost yearly, Fujimura or archaeologists working under or alongside him found successively older archaeological sites in Japan. Student and professional archaeologists from across Japan and, in fact, from all over the world, came to excavate with the man who had the ‘‘hand of God’’, and they rarely were disappointed. In this period, Fujimura worked on upward of 180 ancient sites and, by 2000, he had nearly single-handedly expanded Japanese prehistory more than tenfold, from a relatively shallow 30 000 years to an impressive and expansive 400 000 years. Fujimura had become a respected member of the scientific community and a wellknown, even revered, public figure. An undercurrent of rumor and innuendo, admittedly some of it based on resentment of Fujimura’s incredible luck, but some based on reasonable doubts about his remarkable and singular ability to find old sites, swirled around his work. Skepticism about his uncanny abilities to find ever older sites was generally ascribed to little more than professional jealousy. Nevertheless, in late October 2000, in an attempt to address these rumors, a Japanese daily newspaper, Mainichi Shimbun, took the extreme step of setting up a hidden camera at a site on which Fujimura was working. In an extraordinarily dramatic turn of events, that camera caught Fujimura actually planting artifacts in an ancient stratigraphic layer. Within 24 h, Fujimura ‘‘discovered’’ those same artifacts in his excavation of the site. Investigators held back with their damning evidence of fraud, hoping to see what Fujimura would do next. They did not have to wait long. Unaware entirely that he had been caught, Fujimura called a press conference the next day to announce his spectacular ‘‘discovery’’, asserting that he found the stone tools under a geological layer firmly dated to 570 000 years ago, making them, by far, the oldest human-made objects yet found in Japan. Less than a week after the press conference, in the 5 November edition of Mainichi Shimbun, still images

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from the hidden video revealed the terrible truth to Japanese prehistorians, a Japanese public fascinated by their own prehistory, and the world at large. A shaken, contrite, and clearly devastated Fujimura, his head down and shoulders slumped, made a public confession, apologizing profusely and piteously to his countrymen and to archaeologists everywhere, initially admitting to fraud in only two instances, the taped incident and at one additional site. Fujimura complained that he was a victim of his own success. His ability to find progressively older sites, he explained, had led to the expectation on the part of his colleagues that he would continue to find sites older still. His moral and ethical lapse, he rationalized, were the result of this enormous pressure. Unfortunately, this turned out to be another lie in Fujimura’s web of deceit. Mainichi Shimbun continued its investigation and determined that Fujimura planted artifacts, not at two sites, but at more than 42 sites, leading textbook publishers in Japan to announce that new editions of works detailing Japanese prehistory would be published, retracting the claims of great antiquity based on Fujimura’s fakes. A combination of a longing for the respect of and acceptance by the archaeological community and a desire to provide his nation with a depth of antiquity the equal to any led to Shinichi Fujimura’s deceit and, ultimately, his disgrace. With the exposure of Fujimura’s fakery, Japan’s deep time has evaporated. Japanese prehistorians are faced with the difficult task of untangling Fujimura’s frauds from legitimate finds tainted by his association with them as Deputy Director of the Tohoku Paleolithic Institute. Only in this way can the damage wrought by Fujimura be addressed, and only in this way can it be determined if Japanese prehistory is back where it was more than 30 years ago before Fujimura began his career of fakery, with a time depth of no more than about 30 000 years.

A More Satisfying Past Underpinning much of pseudoarchaeology is an underestimation of the capabilities of ancient people, particularly in terms of their ability to develop, by themselves, complex technologies, especially those that require the application of sophisticated mathematical concepts, engineering principles, and architectural skills. Pseudoarchaeological claims, in fact, flourish in instances where the archaeological record clearly reflects great achievements in antiquity in construction, metallurgy, writing, calendrics, and astronomy. Pseudoarchaeology often seems inspired by the inability of its followers to accept the assumption that the ancient, indigenous people of a region

characterized by complex technologies, sophisticated art, etc., were capable of achieving such things through the application of their own intelligence, skill, and hard work. Great monuments, accurate calendars, sophisticated metallurgy, fine works of art, astronomical knowledge, and the rest are ascribed to the intervention of outsiders, ranging from presumably genius cultures already known in the ancient world, to denizens of a lost civilization, or, in its most extreme application, to interlopers from another planet – so-called ancient astronauts. Lost Continents, Lost Civilizations

Atlantis was the literary invention of the Greek philosopher, Plato. The notion of a lost civilization located on a continent in the Atlantic Ocean is not mentioned in any Egyptian, Greek, or other ancient history but first appears in one of Plato’s dialogues, written after 355 BC. Plato presents Atlantis as a militarily powerful, economically wealthy, and technologically sophisticated nation bent on world domination. As such, Atlantis was a literary device whose function was to exemplify the efficacy of its primary adversary in Plato’s tale, an equally imaginary ancient Athens, a society Plato concocts with a social, political, and economic structure based on his own construct of a perfect society as laid out in his best known work, the Republic. Greek philosophers and historians who followed Plato knew full well that it was his invention, never bothering to respond to it, either to support or refute its historical validity. Though there were occasional disputes concerning Plato’s intention, it was not until 1882 when United States Congressman and writer, Ignatius Donnelly, wrote Atlantis, The Antediluvian World, that popular debate concerning the reality of Atlantis became a full-blown industry. At the core of Donnelly’s argument was his fundamentally low opinion of the intellectual abilities of ancient humanity on both sides of the Atlantic. Donnelly interpreted the reliance on agriculturally based economic systems by ancient cultures of the ancient Old and New Worlds, their construction of great, pyramidal monuments, their possession of a writing system, employment of the arch in their architecture, and their common practice of metallurgy as proof that they had borrowed these cultural practices and developments from a single, common, superior source. That source, for Donnelly, was Atlantis (Figure 5). Donnelly did not recognize that some of the commonalities he saw were far too general to support the claim of a common source and, when looked at in detail, were different and distinct and almost certainly independently developed. Of course it was true, as Donnelly pointed out, that civilizations on either

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Figure 5 Map showing the ostensible extent of Atlanean influence in the ancient world (all areas in white were, according to the mapmaker, under the sway of Atlantis). From Ignatius Donnelly’s Atlantis, The Antediluvian World (1882).

side of the Atlantic based their subsistence on domesticated crops (see Plant Domestication), but the fact that those crops were entirely different – wheat, oats, barley, and rice in the Old World and maize, sunflower, quinoa, beans, and squash in the New World – argued for independent development. The pyramids of Egypt are, technically, true geometric pyramids (with four triangular faces that share a common apex), and served as the tombs of pharaohs and other members of the elite classes (Figure 6a). The pyramids of the Maya, Aztecs, and their predecessors, are truncated pyramids, elevated platforms with steps leading up to their flat tops where temples and palaces were constructed (Figure 6b). Not only did these pyramids look and function differently, they dated to entirely different time periods with the last of the Egyptian pyramids constructed centuries before the first built in the New World. In other examples cited by Donnelly, Old and New World writing systems are not mutually intelligible (see Writing Systems), the form of the arch in the Old World (with the structural element called the keystone) and in the New World (characterized by corbelling and lacking the keystone), and metallurgical technologies based on essentially different processes producing different alloys all argue against a common source. Archaeological evidence gathered since

Donnelly wrote has supported the scenario of independent invention with clear evidence in the archaeological record of separate, lengthy developmental sequences for the technologies enumerated in both the Old and New Worlds. Donnelly ended his book on Atlantis predicting that in 100 years (in other words, by 1982), the museums of the world might be filled with artifacts from lost Atlantis while the world’s libraries might be filled with the written wisdom of that lost civilization. That this has not come to pass strongly supports the conclusion that Atlantis was a fiction and that those who support its validity are practitioners of pseudoarchaeology. Popular writer, Graham Hancock, follows in the tradition of Ignatius Donnelly in asserting that the common threads underpinning ancient civilizations including sophisticated calendars and impressive monuments were not developed by their own people independently, but borrowed or inherited from a greatly ancient, enormously sophisticated civilization, as yet unrecognized by professional archaeologists. This ancient civilization, whose remains may be ensconced beneath the Antarctic ice mass, dating to an ancient period when the climate there was considerably more temperate, is the practical equivalent of Donnelly’s Atlantis.

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Figure 6 Egyptian pyramids (top) and those found in Mesoamerica (bottom) are fundamentally different in form, function and chronology. There is abundant archaeological evidence for their independent development and they supply no supporting evidence for the claim that they were inspired by a single source like Atlantis (Top, MH Feder; Bottom, KL Feder).

Those who argue for the existence of a highly advanced lost civilization on Earth may lack evidence to back up their claim but, at least, they credit a group of human beings for the development of ancient civilizations. The same cannot be said for Swiss author Erich von Da¨niken who has written more than two dozen books purporting to show that the great technological and intellectual achievements represented in the archaeological and historical records cannot be credited to human beings at all, but to the intervention of technology-proselytizing extraterrestrial aliens. von Da¨niken’s work is based on three faulty claims: (1) standard evolutionary processes cannot explain human evolution; human beings, in von Da¨niken’s view, are the result of the ‘‘fertilization’’ of ‘‘a few

specially selected women’’ by extraterrestrial visitors; (2) the archaeological and historical records are replete with examples of artistic representations or written descriptions that can best be interpreted as the renderings or descriptions by our human ancestors of ancient extraterrestrial visitors to earth; and (3) the archaeological record is replete with examples of great leaps in technology that were far beyond the capabilities of our ancestors and must have been introduced from the outside. von Da¨niken’s hypothesis represents the ultimate libel against our ancient ancestors, denying that humanity had the requisite intelligence, skill, and determination to develop the marvelous and impressive achievements reflected in the archaeological record. von Da¨niken asserts that

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the appearance in the archaeological record of such things as pyramids, calendars, writing systems, mummification, metallurgy, and so on is abrupt, reflecting fully formed and perfected abilities. He ignores, or is unaware of, abundant archaeological evidence of the evolution of such ancient achievements, evidence that clearly shows trial and error, mistakes, and mishaps, the very human pattern that would be expected as human beings develop their technologies. von Da¨niken’s pseudoarchaeology represents nothing more than a foolish disdain for the capabilities of our ancient human ancestors and as such has become an archetype of pseudoarchaeology.

Conclusion For some, a past populated by biblical giants, largebrained, ape-jawed ancestors, lost continents, lost civilizations, and peripatetic extraterrestrial aliens just seems more appealing than the past as presented by archaeologists which is filled, instead, with ordinary human ancestors who developed an extraordinary suite of cultural adaptations and who created the foundation for the technologies on which the modern world is based. If the past, indeed, is a foreign country, then archaeology provides our only viable passport and the extraordinary fables concocted by the pseudoarchaeologists must be rejected for the stories that only a scientific investigation of the past can provide.

Public Archaeology

See also: Asia, East: Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures; Biblical Archaeology; Modern Humans, Emergence of; Plant Domestication; Popular Culture and Archaeology; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Writing Systems.

Further Reading Chippindale C (1990) Piltdown: Whodunit? Who Cares? Science 250: 1162–1163. Dawson C and Woodward AS (1913) On the discovery of a Paleolithic human skull and mandible in a flint bearing gravel overlying the Wealden (Hastings Beds) at Piltdown, Fletching (Sussex). Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society LXIX: 117–151. Donnelly I (1882) Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. New York: Harper. Feder KL (2006) Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience In Archaeology, 5th edn. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hancock G (1995) Fingerprints of the Gods. New York: Three Rivers Press. Normile D (2001) Japanese fraud highlights media-driven research ethic. Science 291: 34–35. Russell M (2003) Piltdown Man: The Secret Life of Charles Dawson & the World’s Greatest Archaeological Hoax. Stroud, UK: Tempus. Smith GE (1927) Essays on the Evolution of Man. Oxford: Oxford University Press. von Daniken E (1970) Chariots of the Gods. New York: Bantam Books. Weidenreich F (1943) Piltdown man. Paleontologica Sinica 129: 273. Williams S (1991) Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

See: Interpretation of Archaeology for the Public.

R Radiocarbon Dating

Religion

See: Carbon-14 Dating.

See: Ritual, Religion, and Ideology.

REMOTE SENSING APPROACHES Contents Aerial Geophysical

Aerial William S Hanson, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary shadow site The pattern revealing an extant archaeological site created by the shadows it casts in low sunlight. soilmarks The pattern of differences in soil color, texture, temperature, or water content revealing a buried archaeological site. cropmarks The pattern of differences in agricultural crop growth, either positive or negative, revealing a buried archaeological site. parchmarks Negative cropmarks in grass. soil moisture deficit Moisture loss through evapotranspiration of the growing crop which exceeds rainfall causing crops to suffer moisture stress and wilt. hyperspectral scanning The recording from an aircraft or satellite of variations in reflected radiation from the earth’s surface across a wide range of electromagnetic wave bands. light detection and ranging (LIDAR) The recording from an aircraft of detailed variations in the elevation of the Earth’s surface by means of reflections from a scanning pulse laser.

Origins and Development of Aerial Archaeology The first serious application of aerial reconnaissance to archaeology came in the 1920s following the rapid development of aircraft in World War I. The potential was recognized, apparently independently, in both Britain and France by O. G. S. Crawford and A. Poidebard respectively. It was subsequently developed as a primary mode of archaeological fieldwork after World War II, particularly in Britain by J. K. S. St. Joseph based at Cambridge University. As Eastern Europe has opened its skies since the 1990s, its application has continued to expand across Europe, with archaeological aerial reconnaissance now regularly undertaken, for example, in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Poland, and Ukraine.

How Sites are Revealed from the Air The earliest applications focused on extant sites, whose outlines were more readily appreciated from an aerial perspective, though it rapidly became apparent that sites could be revealed in a number of ways.

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Where sites are extant, even if so little survives above ground level that they are not readily appreciated from the ground, they may be revealed from the air by virtue of the pattern created by the shadows cast in low sunlight, producing what are known as shadow sites. This effect can be enhanced by a light covering of snow resulting in differential drifting or thawing (Figure 1), or emphasized by slight differences in texture or vegetation cover. Sites may also be revealed in bare soil where any differential surface topography has been removed by years of ploughing. These soilmarks reflect the presence of buried archaeological sites through differences in soil color, temperature or water retention, or through different materials transported to the surface. They are best revealed in shallow soils where there is a strong color contrast between the subsoil and topsoil (Figure 2), but may disappear as the ploughing regime stabilizes. Variations in the concentration of stone on the surface may reveal buried foundations, as in the famous examples of Roman villas and temples photographed in northeastern France by R. Agache. More ephemeral marks can occur simply as differences in moisture content caused by buried archaeological features which affect the spectral reflectance of the soil above them. This

variation in moisture content can also result in sites being revealed by differential thawing in some areas of continental Europe, as demonstrated by O. Braasch. By far the most important method by which buried sites are revealed from the air is as cropmarks, differential growth in agricultural crops. Water is essential to plant growth, both in its own right and as the means by which minerals are carried up from the roots. When moisture loss through evapotranspiration of the growing crop exceeds rainfall, a potential soil moisture deficit (SMD) is established which in a dry summer can build up over time. Once the growing plants have exhausted the water stored in their rooting zone, they begin to suffer moisture stress and to wilt. Plants growing over buried stone foundations or road surfaces will have a more restricted rooting zone and exhibit signs of moisture stress before other plants in the same field. Their growth will be less tall and luxuriant and they will ripen more quickly, creating what are referred to as negative cropmarks outlining the archaeological structure (Figures 3 and 4). The opposite occurs where plants are growing over buried pits or ditches, producing positive cropmarks, that is areas of relatively enhanced crop growth (Figures 4 and 5). The quantity and quality of cropmark production depends largely on weather factors.

Figure 1 Shadow site enhanced by a light covering of snow of an Iron Age hillfort, linear earthworks, and prehistoric plowing at Woden Law, Scotland. Crown copyright: Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.

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Figure 2 Soilmark of burial mounds and Roman road, Vanatori, Romania. Copyright: I. A. Oltean and W. S. Hanson.

Figure 3 Negative cropmarks of stone buildings within the settlement outside the Roman fort at Cigmau, Romania. Copyright: W. S. Hanson.

Positive cropmark Normal crop

Negative cropmark

Road Subsoil

Ditch

Figure 4 Cropmark diagram. Copyright: I. A. Oltean and W. S. Hanson.

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Figure 5 Positive cropmarks of two adjacent later prehistoric ditched enclosures at Burnfoot, Scotland. Copyright: W. S. Hanson.

A consistently dry summer will generate good cropmark recovery, but there are many localized variations associated with microclimates, soil variations, and different types of crop. Best results are obtained from deep-rooted crops, such as cereals, though in very dry summers marks can be obtained from shallow-rooted grass, usually referred to as parchmarks. It is possible to predict cropmark recovery to some extent on the basis of SMD figures in areas where these are produced for the farming community. Figures in excess of 100 mm are generally required before cropmarks become apparent (see Soils and Archaeology).

Biases and Limitations More sites have been discovered as cropmarks than by any of the other described phenomena, but not all areas produce cropmarks with equal facility. Welldraining soils, such as sands and gravels, produce the best results, though even some clay soils can generate cropmarks under the right conditions. However, the combination of factors which best suit cropmark production – well-draining soil types, dry weather patterns, and extensive areas of cereal production – tend to generate consistent biases in their distribution toward those areas where these factors are more consistently favorable. This potential bias can be further exacerbated by the tendency for those undertaking aerial reconnaissance always to focus on the most productive areas, the so-called ‘honeypot’ effect. Aerial reconnaissance is good at discovering larger features, such as ditched enclosures, but much less effective for more ephemeral remains such as shallow

gullies or posthole structures. This means that there is a further bias in terms of the types of archaeological sites which tend to be recorded and accordingly some periods, such as those involving hunter-gatherer communities, are generally ill-represented in the aerial photographic record. Moreover, even when sites are recorded, the photographic record will be only partial compared with what could be recovered from more detailed work by excavation or possibly by geophysical survey. Finally, because of the way in which the phenomena are revealed, an aerial photograph will not readily distinguish between different phases of human activity on cropmark sites. Thus, although the two enclosures in Figure 5 overlap slightly, it is impossible to determine from the photograph which is the earlier.

Acquisition of Aerial Data Traditional archaeological aerial reconnaissance has involved selective oblique photography of sites identified by observation from light aircraft flying at a height of less than 2000 ft (e.g., Figures 1–3 and 5). There is an ongoing debate, however, about the need for more extensive vertical block coverage specifically for archaeological purposes so as to maximize recovery rates and better facilitate the process of producing detailed site plans from the photographs. The vast bulk of aerial photography, however, is not taken to aid the discovery of archaeological sites, but for mapping or landscape monitoring purposes. This is generally vertical photography taken from a much greater height, usually 15 000–20 000 ft or more. But,

REMOTE SENSING APPROACHES/Aerial 1911

Figure 6 Roman fortification (now destroyed by housing) and adjacent burial mounds near Constanta, Romania, visible on Second World War military reconnaissance photography. Copyright: The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives, University of Keele.

since the principles by which archaeological sites are revealed are in no way dependent on the mode or scale of photography, any existing aerial photography has the potential to record sites if it has been taken at the right time of year and in favorable conditions. Thus, archives of existing photography can also be consulted in the search for sites, especially where they may have been destroyed or badly damaged subsequently. The potential of those archives which hold historical photography, such as the Aerial Reconnaissance Archive at the University of Keele in England, which contains coverage of large areas of Europe obtained during World War II, has yet to be fully exploited (Figure 6).

Impact and Applications of Aerial Archaeology Aerial reconnaissance is the single most important way of discovering new archaeological sites in temperate Europe. It has had a huge impact on empirical data collection, with large numbers of new sites being found, particularly as cropmarks in lowland arable areas which have experienced long-term plowing. At least 50% of all known sites in Britain, for example, are aerial discoveries. Aerial photography also facilitates a landscape approach to archaeology and has made a major contribution to archaeological research, enabling sites to be appreciated within their wider geographical and archaeological context and

demonstrating the time depth of that landscape. Finally, it makes an important contribution to cultural resource management, enabling known sites to be easily recorded and regularly monitored.

Future Developments Visible light represents only one range of wavelengths within the electromagnetic spectrum. The archaeological potential of other wavelengths, such as in the near infrared or thermal ranges, is still undergoing assessment, but it has already been demonstrated that such hyperspectral scanning has the potential to address some of the biases in aerial data recovery referred to above. Variations in ground surface texture, vegetation cover, or moisture content have different spectral signatures which can be recorded by a scanning electron spectrometer and may produce patterns facilitating the identification of potential buried archaeological features. Light detection and ranging (LIDAR), which involves analyzing the reflections back to the aircraft of a scanning pulse laser, provides a means of recording variations in surface elevation in considerable detail. This uses the same identification principle as that for shadow sites, but provides the opportunity to exaggerate the height differential or change the light direction, or angle of view in order to maximize the visibility of archaeological sites which are barely extant.

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Finally, with the recent great improvements in resolution and ease of access, the potential of satellite imagery for archaeological aerial reconnaissance has increased considerably. See also: Europe, West: Historical Archaeology in Britain; Remote Sensing Approaches: Geophysical; Seasonality of Site Occupation; Sites: Catchment Analysis; Formation Processes; Mapping Methods; Soils and Archaeology.

Further Reading Agache R (1971) De´tection ae´rienne des vestiges protohistoriques, gallo-romains et me´die´vaux dans le bassin de la Somme et ses abords. Amiens: Socie´te´ Pre´historique du Nord. Bewley RH and Raczkowski W (eds.) (2000) Aerial Archaeology: Developing Future Practice. Amsterdam: IOS Press. Braasch O (1983) Luftbild archa¨ologie in Su¨ddeutschland. Spuren aus ro¨mischer Zeit. Stuttgart: Schriften des Limesmuseums Aalen. Brophy K and Cowley D (eds.) (2005) From the Air: Understanding Aerial Archaeology. Stroud: Tempus. Mills J and Palmer R (eds.) (2007) Populating Clay Landscapes: Recent Advances in Archaeology on Difficult Soils. Stroud: Tempus. Riley DN (1987) Air Photography and Archaeology. London: Duckworth. Stoertz C (1997) Ancient Landscapes of the Yorkshire Wolds: Aerial Photographic Transcription and Analysis. Swindon: Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England. Wilson DR (2000) Air Photo Interpretation for Archaeologists, 2nd edn. Stroud: Tempus.

Geophysical Apostolos Sarris, Foundation for Research & Technology – Hellas, Rethymno, Greece ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) Also called electrical resistivity imaging (ERI), a geophysical technique for imaging subsurface structures from electrical measurements made at the surface, or by electrodes in one or more boreholes. geographic information system (GIS) A system for capturing, storing, analyzing, and managing data and associated attributes which are spatially referenced to the Earth. ground-penetrating radar (GPR) A geophysical method that uses radar pulses to image the subsurface. This nondestructive method uses electromagnetic radiation in the microwave band and detects the reflected signals from subsurface structures. remote sensing The method of acquisition of data through a variety of sensing or recording devices without a direct or physical contact with the object of study. The science of remote sensing includes also the methodology for the analysis and interpretation of information gathered.

Archaeological Prospection an Introduction The evolution of archaeological research has gradually expanded its horizons from the narrow study of artifacts and monuments to the study of culture interactions and settlement patterns. After the realization that the archaeological space acts as a continuum of past human interactions and being under the pressure of modern interventions, archaeological research was in need of exploring large landscapes using sophisticated mapping techniques. Ground and space remote-sensing techniques were adopted and modified to the existing requirements for obtaining the maximum information about the subsurface relics without or prior to excavation. Geophysical remote-sensing devices, active or passive, can measure contrasts in the properties of the soil (anomalies) and obtain a detailed map of the features below the surface in a nondestructive way. Within an archaeological context, geophysical prospection has been used in planned or rescue excavations, in regional and landscape applications, and in monument conservation and cultural resources management (CRM) studies.

Milestones in Archaeological Prospection Although early experiments in physics are mainly responsible for the development of the physical principles of remote sensing, shallow depth geophysical prospection techniques were adopted by the mainstream of geophysical exploration and later on by archaeological research mainly after the end of World War II. In 1946, R. J. C. Atkinson introduced soil resistance surveys in an archaeological context. In 1957, J. C. Belshe´ used a proton magnetometer in a reconstructed Roman kiln. The work continued by M. J. Aitken and E. Hall at Oxford University and later on by G. A. Black, E. Lilly and R. Johnson, who carried out the first systematic archaeo-magnetic survey (at Angel site) in North America. The decade 1960s evidenced the development of alkali vapor and fluxgate gradiometers and electromagnetic methods. In the same period (1964) Linnington also tried the first application of micro-gravitometry in an archaeological context. In 1970 Aspinall and Lynam developed the Twin Probe array for resistivity surveying, which is widely used even today due to its simplicity in operation, efficiency in time of survey and its well-defined signal. The first trials of ground penetrating radar (GPR) were carried out in 1975 at Chaco Canyon by R. S. Vickers, L. T. Dolphin, and D. Johnson, followed up by a number of surveys in historical sites by B. W. Bevan and J. Kenyon. Since 1980, a number of systems such as wheeled-driven resistivity arrays, magnetometer, and radar configurations aim toward

REMOTE SENSING APPROACHES/Geophysical 1913

a faster acquisition of measurements. Evolution of instrumentation continued further and the recent developments of computer hardware and software boosted even more the technological aspects of archaeological surveying.

Methods and Principles of Geophysical Prospection Techniques Electromagnetic Techniques (EMs) and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR)

Techniques that exploit electromagnetic radiation include soil conductivity meters, metal detectors, and the GPR. Pulsed induction metal (PIM) detectors were used in the past but they were gradually withdrawn due to their limited accuracy and sensitivity. EM soil conductivity meters use either fixed space or movable coils (vertically or horizontally aligned) which generate a time-varying magnetic field (usually <30 kHz) and measure the phase changes in a secondary (induced) field caused by changes in conductivity (units of Siemens/m) or susceptibility (units of part per thousand) of soil. Clay content in soils promotes conductivity, whereas silty loams are characterized by low conductance. Pits and burnt features display small values of conductivity and metallic pieces or areas of high moisture content exhibit higher readings. Electromagnetic methods (or ‘slingram’ techniques) have been used since the 1960s and their advantage lies in the fact that they provide measurements of both magnetic susceptibility and electrical conductivity without a direct contact with the ground (Figure 1). It has also been suggested that at high frequencies the quadrature component is more sensitive to the conductivity (larger penetration depth), whereas at low frequencies the in-phase component is proportional to the magnetic susceptibility. Similarly, the GPR (radio direction and ranging) measures the time difference between the transmitted and reflected electromagnetic signals (
50–1000 MHz) to locate the position of different subsoil layers and any objects present. When the transmitted signal reaches a reflector layer with different electrical properties (conductivity and/or dielectric permittivity), part of it is reflected back to the surface and registers to the receiver antenna. In a profiling survey the GPR system, consisting of a transmitter and a receiver, is towed along transects. Radargrams are formed through the registration of the amplitude of the reflected signals and represent the time difference between the transmitted and reflected signals. Knowing the velocity of propagation of the EM waves over specific soils, it is possible to obtain a depth estimate to the suspected targets. An advantage of a radar

survey is that it is possible to produce a detailed map of the vertical stratigraphy within a depth range of 1.5–10 m, depending on the frequency of operation and the electrical properties of the ground. Penetration depth depends on the antenna frequency (the smaller the frequency, the larger the penetration depth and the smaller the lateral resolution capability). Features of sharp discontinuities and dielectric contrasts, such as walls, cellars, cavities, tombs, and compacted earth, can be quite easily resolved. On the one hand, radar can be easily used in urban areas; on the other hand, it exhibits serious problems in areas of conductive clayey soils because of the strong attenuation of the signal. Amplitude averaging techniques over specific depth ranges of radargrams obtained along parallel GPR transects provide depth (or time) slices of the subsurface and a three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of it (Figure 2). Soil Resistance

Electrical methods are either passive (e.g., ‘selfpotential’ techniques) or active (e.g., direct current resistivity or induced polarization techniques). In archaeological prospection, the direct current resistivity measurements are most commonly used. Geoelectrical methods are successful in differentiating between materials of different resistivity, permittivity, and electrochemical activity. Resistivity surveying is suitable in detecting walls, cavities, layers and other localized structures of differing electrical, permittivity, and electrochemical properties. In geoelectric surveys, a DC or AC of low frequency is fed into the ground by two metallic current electrodes with low stake resistance. Measurements of differences of the potential field are carried out between two other well-grounded, nonpolarizable potential electrodes. The soil resistance of the underlying medium is calculated by Ohm’s law (I ¼ V/R, where V is the electric potential, I is the electric current, and R is the resistance of the medium). The term ‘apparent resistivity’ (ra) is frequently used in the interpretation of resistivity data in order to overcome difficulties arising from inhomogeneous ground. Thus, ra represents the true resistivity of the ground, assuming a homogeneous, isotropic, and semi-infinite (in extent) subsurface material, and it can be used as a diagnostic tool to examine the differences in resistivity over a particular area. Soil resistivity field procedures may involve one of the following methods. ‘Vertical electric soundings (VESs)’ are used to measure resistivity variations with depth by increasing gradually current electrode separation while the center of the electrode configuration, where electrical potential is measured, remains stationary. For each

1914 REMOTE SENSING APPROACHES/Geophysical

Figure 1 Geonics Limited EM38 (left) and EM31 (middle) conductivity meters. The instruments measure electrical conductivity and magnetic susceptibility of the subsurface with a penetration depth of
1.5 m and 4–6 m below the surface correspondingly. Penetration depth depends on the frequency of EM waves and the distance between the coils existing at the ends of the instruments. Recently, multifrequency conductivity meters such as the Profiler EMP-400 have been introduced allowing different penetration depths (right – photo credited to Geophysical Survey Systems, Inc.).

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Figure 2 Left: Radargram showing the stratigraphy of the subsurface on the hill of the Roman Cemetery at Kenchreai, Greece. Middle: Radargram showing the GPR reflection signals above a tomb of dimensions 4  4  2 m at the cemetery of Kenchreai. Right: Depth slices computed by averaging the reflection signal amplitude from the old Turkish schoolyard at the city of Rethymno, Crete, Greece.

electrode configuration, plots of the apparent resistivity versus electrode spacing are compared with theoretical curves for modeling the strata of the subsurface. ‘Resistivity profiles’ employ a fixed electrode spacing array, the center of which is moving along the profile for measuring the lateral changes in resistivity at a specific penetration depth. In ‘resistivity mapping’ a number of parallel transects is scanned creating a 2D image of the resistivity at a specific depth. ‘Electrical resistivity tomography (ERT)’ refers to a method that provides information for both lateral and vertical variations in resistivity. The method can be applied either along a profile, or along parallel profiles. The latter can be used for the 3D resisistivity reconstruction of the subsurface (Figure 3). In all cases, iterative inversion algorithms (such as Marquadt’s method or Occam inversion) are needed to produce an interpretable image of the subsurface resistivity distribution.

Electrode configuration influences the depth, resolution, and speed of the survey. A number of electrode configurations (such as the wenner, square, dipole– dipole, pole–dipole, twin, and schlumberger) have been proposed during the evolution of resistivity surveys. Selection of the appropriate array depends on such factors as the size of the survey, the nature and depth of the targets, properties of the subsoil, depth of investigation, as well as the array’s behavior characteristics. In smooth and conductive soils, multiprobe, wheeled, and tractor-based systems have also been developed to speed up resistivity surveys (Figure 3). Soil resistance anomalies are defined as the variations or disturbances of the electric field or the current density, which are caused by the existence of subsurface targets of different geoelectrical characteristics. Architectural features, voids, caves, tombs, wallings, and rocky structures appear as strong

REMOTE SENSING APPROACHES/Geophysical 1915 SIKYON y Layer 2, Depth: 0.35–0.75 m.

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Figure 3 In smooth ground, specially designed frames are employed that keep the electrode spacing at a constant distance and can result in the simultaneous measurements of different electrode configurations (left). Measurements taken with different probe spacing or from ERT methods are used for obtaining depth slices representing the soil resistivity at different depths. The particular example shows the outline of a Late-Christian basilica, built at the middle of the Agora of ancient Sikyon, Peloponesse, Greece (right).

anomalies of high resistance. Trenches, concentration of organic material, and conductive soils appear as weak anomalies of low resistance. Magnetic Susceptibility

A critical factor for the success of the magnetic prospecting is the magnetic contrast between architectural subsurface features and the surrounding soils. Sometimes the anthropogenic soils have magnetic properties distinct from those of the background that encloses an archaeological site. Soils contain small magnetic particles that behave like small magnetic dipoles. The magnetic behavior of these particles arises from the orbital motion and spin of the electrons in the material. Iron oxides such as hematite (a-Fe2O3), maghemite (g-Fe2O3) and magnetite (Fe3O4) are mainly responsible for the magnetic properties of soils of inorganic origin. Even the organic soils exhibit magnetic properties due to the concentration of small magnetic particles by certain bacteria and marine organisms. Depending on their magnetic properties we have three main categories of materials: diamagnetic, paramagnetic, and ferrimagnetic. The grain size is an important variable of the magnetic properties of ferrimagnetic substances. The large ferrimagnetic grains are composed of a series of smaller volumes, called domains, each of which is oriented along one of the directions of easy magnetization, where magnetism is facilitated relative to the crystalline lattice. Multidomain grains (>15–17 mm) are defined by low magnetic susceptibility. Single domain grains (<15–0.03 mm) exhibit a larger susceptibility, while for grains smaller than single domain size (<20–40 nm radius), magnetic behavior is paramagnetic with relatively high values of susceptibility (superparamagnetic). Grains of sizes in the SPD/SD boundary are characterized by a frequency dependence of their susceptibility.

The (mass) magnetic susceptibility is defined as the ratio of the intensity of magnetization I over the strength of the applied field H (w ¼ I/H). The enhancement of soil susceptibility due to the conversion of nonferrimagnetic forms of iron to ferrimagnetic ones is carried out mainly by the low temperature (150–250  C) oxidation of magnetite, the heating mechanism/burning (up to 600  C), referred also as the Le Borgne process and related to thermoremanent magnetization, the dehydration of lepidocrocite (gFeOOH), and the fermentation mechanism (reduction–oxidation cycles). The above mechanisms can be moderated by a number of agents such as climatic changes, soil bacteria, and anthropogenic activity. For the upper soil strata, magnetic susceptibility can be used as an indicator of the broad definition of an occupation site or for the inner examination of a site pinpointing parts of industrial character. The ‘Le Borgne contrast’, that is, the vertical variation of susceptibility, can provide information regarding the multiple occupation layers of a settlement and predict the potential of a site for magnetometer survey. Measurements of soil susceptibility are usually carried out by dual frequency sensors which are able to distinguish the multidomain grains most likely derived from natural rock, from the single-domain (larger frequency dependent) grains of soil affected by human activity. Heating experiments are also conducted to define the nature of the magnetic constituents of soils. Magnetic Prospection

Magnetic methods of prospection are based on the potential field theory, similar to gravity methods. Magnetic methods are based on dipolar fields, of variable direction, which are time dependent.

1916 REMOTE SENSING APPROACHES/Geophysical

Magnetic measurements deal with variations of the geomagnetic field, which are caused by contrasts of the rock magnetization or by soils rich in magnetic oxides. The unit used for the measurement of the magnetic flux density of the geomagnetic field is the SI unit 1 nT ¼ 109 T ¼ 1 gamma ¼ 1g ¼ 105 oersted ¼ 105 gauss. The geomagnetic field is strongest at the poles (
70 000 nT) and weakest at the equator (
25 000 nT). It consists of three components: the main magnetic field (of internal origin), a smaller external field, and the local magnetic field. The internal magnetic field varies slowly with time, whereas the external field varies more rapidly. On the other hand, the local magnetic field, which is of our main interest, is constant. The magnetization of rocks contains shares of inductive and remnant magnetization. The inductive magnetization originates from the magnetic earth field and depends on its actual strength and direction and on the susceptibility w of rocks or soils. In contrast, the remnant magnetization is constant and is not changed by alterations of the recent magnetic field. The remnant magnetization is a long-term effect, which is independent of the recent geomagnetic field. Only iron and ferrimagnetic minerals can be strongly magnetized. The latter are mostly oxides and sulfides of iron. The magnetic effects of magnetic bodies are dependent not only on their magnetization, form and size, but also on their depth, because the magnetic field weakens with increasing distance. Subsurface targets with magnetic properties different from those of the surrounding soil matrix change the local magnetic field at some large or small degree, creating a ‘magnetic’ anomaly. In archaeological investigations

various constructions such as kilns, ovens, or fireplaces show increased remnant magnetism, thus producing pronounced magnetic anomalies. Magnetic storms that cause diurnal variations of the geomagnetic field, regional magnetic trends, and external noise by modern facilities and metal fragments may introduce severe noise levels to the magnetic measurements. Two general families of magnetometers are usually employed aiming toward the measurement of the total intensity of the magnetic field or its vertical or horizontal components. Proton magnetometers calculate the total field intensity through the measurement of the free-precession frequency (Larmor precession frequency) of protons aligned in a direction perpendicular to the Earth’s magnetic field. Proton magnetometers may be used either in differential mode (using one rover and one base station sensors) or in gradiometer mode and have a sensitivity of about 0.1 nT. The optically pumped alkali vapor magnetometers (such as cesium vapor magnetometers (Figure 4)) make use of the Zeeman effect, where a monochromatic light passing through a magnetic field in a substance breaks into several lines whose spectrum is a function of the magnetic field intensity. The operation of the instrument with a high Larmor frequency produces a high signal to noise ratio and a sensitivity up to 0.001 nT. Based on the same principle, the electron spin resonance magnetometers make use of the Ovehauser– Abragam effect, where the apparent susceptibility of a liquid is raised using a free radical (such as triscetone-amine-nitroxide) dissolved in the liquid by pumping with a high radio frequency electromagnetic field. The instrument has a good signal to noise ratio resulting into a sensitivity of up to 0.01 nT.

Figure 4 Left: Cesium vapor magnetometer at vertical configuration measuring the vertical difference of the total magnetic field. Middle: Fluxgate gradiometer measures the vertical magnetic gradient of the Earth’s magnetic field. Right: Magnetic map and its corresponding interpretation produced by vertical magnetic gradient data obtained from the Early Copper Age (c. 4500–3900 BC) settlement of Ko´ro¨slada´ny-Bikery, Visztu, Hungary.

REMOTE SENSING APPROACHES/Geophysical 1917

Fluxgate gradiometers measure the field component parallel to the axis of symmetry of the measuring coils (Figure 4). The output of a fluxgate gradiometer is proportional to the difference in the vertical component of the field registered by a lower and an upper sensors and has a sensitivity of about 0.1 nT m–1. The instrument is almost insensitive to the orientation of the sensors and can be used to identify small anomalies within strong regional trends (signal drops as 1/d3 for shallow dipole objects approaching 1/d4 for similar deeper sources, where d is the distance to the target, that is, more rapidly than the corresponding drop of the total field signal), but it is vulnerable to mechanical problems. Seismic Techniques

Seismic or acoustic methods measure the travel times of the reflected or refracted waves detected by a series of geophones placed on the ground surface and are able to estimate the location and depth of the targets. Since seismic wave propagation depends on the elastic properties of the subsurface, seismic

techniques can detect both lateral and depth variations of the stratigraphy based on the different estimates of the seismic velocities. Seismic techniques are employed in studies of the stratigraphy, reconstruction of the palaeotopography, and detection of large monumental structures (Figure 5). There are two main methods used in seismic surveying. ‘Seismic refraction techniques’ measure the arrival times of the initial ground movement generated by an artificial source recorded at a variety of distances. The derived data (times vs. distance) are then interpreted in terms of the depths to subsurface interfaces and the speeds at which motion travels through the subsurface within each layer. Seismic refraction techniques require the velocity of acoustical waves to increase with depth. ‘Seismic reflection techniques’ study the acoustical waves that have been reflected off subsurface interfaces through the examination of the arrival times, amplitude, and shape of the reflected waves. Reflection seismic techniques require smaller distances

Figure 5 Top left: Picking of the first time arrivals of reflected seismic waves. Middle left: Time vs. distance plots for the different geophones along a seismic profile. Bottom left: Resulting geophysical structure model along a seismic profile. Right: Case study of seismic survey at Pryniatikos Pyrgos, E. Crete. Overlay of the boundary model between the top alluvial deposits and the Neogene sediments, created through the integration of different seismic transects, on the aerial image of the coastal region of the archaeological site of Pryniatikos Pyrgos.

1918 REMOTE SENSING APPROACHES/Geophysical

between the source and the receivers compared to the refraction techniques and can work independently of the variation degree of the velocity with respect to the depth. The common mid-point (CMP) array between source and receivers is usually employed in seismic reflection techniques. In a seismic survey, an impact source (such as a sledgehammer, gun, or explosives) is needed for creating repeatable (of specific energy amount and time duration) seismic waves into the ground and geophones (usually 24–96 geophones are typical for a survey) for recording the ground motion at different locations. Microgravity Techniques

The gravity prospection methods are similar to the magnetic techniques and are characterized by monopolar, radial fields, which are time independent. In microgravity, measurements of the Earths’ gravitational field, which varies between 9.78 and 9.83 m s2, are carried out by highly sensitive instruments and variations of it caused by voids, cavities, mine workings, shafts, tunnels, or monumental architectural works are detected. These features cause small differences compared to the regional gravitational field, of the order of magnitude of 1–200 microgal (¼1  108 m s–2). The underlying principle of the gravitational method depends on the detection of locations having a different mass density from the subsurface geological context. The resolution of the method depends on the size or volume of the targets. Gravitational data are seriously influenced by regional attributes or local features (e.g., elevation differences and regional geological trends) and thus, intensive processing and modeling techniques are required for calculating the exact location of the features, their depths, and shapes. Inversion methods may also be applied by feeding the model through complementary information originating from coring, GPR or ERT. Phosphate and Chemical Analysis

Soil chemical analysis (phosphate, zinc, pH, calcium, magnesium, iron, copper, and potassium) has been recently used as a marker of anthropogenic activities, such as agricultural functions or animal husbandry. High phosphate, calcium, and pH values have been found within buildings, foundation trenches, midden deposits, and in areas of possible animal activity. Phosphate analysis is usually preferred over magnetic susceptibility methods due to the better knowledge of the enhancement mechanisms of phosphorus. Phosphate concentrations have been found in bodies and excreta of living organisms. Phosphorous can be re-deposited in organic form and tends to bind strongly to the clay-size fraction of soils, evolving

slowly to inorganic forms. Macroscale studies of phosphate involve the discrimination between the on-site and off-site concentrations and are usually accompanied by comparison with the surface scatters of ceramics or lithic remains, aiming toward the definition of the extent of a site and the land exploitation practices. In the microscale phosphate concentrations are aiming toward the identification of the function, intensity of occupation, and processes that took place at specific areas of a site. In their most detailed form, phosphate studies involve the type of residues (inorganic/organic, soluble/soluble, bound/ unbound), its transformation process, and quantity in terms of the pedogenic processes of the past. Similarly, trace element analysis, through the spatial distribution of certain metals and their accumulation levels, can be used for identifying different types of processes (such as industrial or workshop activities) or land-use practices. Finally, the chemical stability in soils of certain organic chemical compounds (e.g., coprastanol) may act as a biomarker of the human presence at a particular location. Chemical analyses are conducted in different ways: Phosphate analysis is carried out through in situ measurements, fractional or bulk laboratory calorimetry measurements. Atomic absorption spectrometry or inductively coupled plasma emission spectrometry are usually exploited in trace element analysis. Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry methods are used in the analysis of the biomarker compounds.

Processing and Interpretation of Geophysical Data Manipulation of the geophysical measurements is necessary due to the small wavelength and small amplitude nature of the geophysical signals. Simple processing, such as equalization of the gray scales, amplification of the signal and noise reduction can be achieved with digital filtering. De-spiking of pointlike interference, crispening of the local brightness of an image, smoothing and high-pass filters, removal of geological trend, block matching, and edge detection are among the most common processing techniques of geophysical measurements. Potential field data can be further processed through downward or upward continuation algorithms, rectification techniques, or other more sophisticated filtering (e.g., spectral analysis, estimation of power spectrum, FFT, etc.). Inverse (finding the source based on the corresponding data) and forward (comparison of signals to the anomaly produced by a well defined target) modeling techniques can also be applied. Other more specific data treatment procedures are required depending on the needs of the prospection

REMOTE SENSING APPROACHES/Geophysical 1919

technique. Image segmentation techniques and changepoint analysis are applied for reducing background noise in soil phosphate data caused by postdepositional processes. Gain filters, trace averaging, and stacking and time slicing are commonly applied to GPR data. Aerial and satellite images are processed by usual image processing algorithms with emphasis to the classification of them based on the extraction and recognition of the spectral signatures of cultural and geomorphic characteristics. Interpretation of geophysical anomalies depends on past experience and theoretical models, while it may be also influenced by geological or surface features. The refinement of the interpretation of the geophysical maps can be achieved with the cooperation of both archaeologists and geophysicists and the confirmation of a selected number of candidate targets.

Presentation of Geophysical Maps Presentation of results of a geophysical survey is in direct relation to the interpretation of the data. Presentation of data has to be comprehensible for both archaeologists and geophysicists and has to be based on the different number of responses resulting from the variety of the instruments and the techniques. The results of a geophysical mapping survey are represented by a matrix of numbers. In the past, stacked trace plots or isometric line traces were used for presenting geophysical measurements along a profile. Dot-density plots or symbol plotting relating the number of dots or symbol overprinting to the measurements were employed for distinguishing features by the tonal contrasts of the plot. Today, the most direct method for 2D data presentation is the drawing of contours through various interpolation algorithms. The choice of contour intervals depends on the mean background value and the range of values due to

underlying anomalies. The advent of modern computers and high-quality printers allowed the production of high-resolution gray scale or color scale maps of photographic quality. Pseudo-relief maps resulting from illumination by an artificial light/sun are used to give a relief-perspective on 2D data (Figure 6). 3D perspective maps can also dramatize the 2D data.

Aerial and Satellite Remote Sensing Aerial photography is widely used in archaeological prospection due to its potential to recognize site locations, record and monitor changes of their landscapes through time, and even discover subsurface features by means of the topsoil characteristics or by stereoscopic examination of images (Figure 7). Inspection of low altitude oblique and vertical photographs can detect textural variations in soil, such as shadow marks, crop marks, and soil marks, most of which are caused by the disturbances of the soil’s matrix by the presence of underground features and the corresponding differences in moisture conditions. Conventional and infrared aerial photography conducted by manned or unmanned airborne platforms, kites and tethered balloons has played a critical role in site reconnaissance. Re-evaluation of old satellite imagery (Corona keyhole or KVR-1000), prior to the recent changes of the landform and the terrain by the modern cultivation practices and technical works, has helped the detection of sites. Satellite systems, recording the surface attributes in the visible and nonvisible parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, had a major impact on the regional archaeological studies. Multispectral imagery is particularly useful in scanning areas of different spectral signatures and tracing features of extended dimensions. Space-borne radar sensors (such as space shuttle SIR-C/X-SAR, radarsat and envisat radar altimeter) have been applied in the past and are increasingly

Figure 6 Presentation of geophysical data is vital for the final interpretation of them by both geophysicists and archaeologists. The particular example indicates the gray scale map (left) of the magnetic data from ancient Dodoni, Greece, the corresponding 3D shaded relief map (middle) and the diagrammatic interpretation of the magnetic anomalies (right) registered to the topographic layout of the site through GIS techniques.

1920 REMOTE SENSING APPROACHES/Geophysical 1971

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Figure 7 Left: High-resolution satellite images provided by Google Earth (earth.google.com). Above, an image of the geoglyphs of Nasca, located at Perou (500 BC–AD 500). Below, an image of the Qal’at al-Bahrain multiphase tell (2300 BC–1500 AD), capital of the Dilmun, on the top of which a Portuguese fort was built. Right: Time series of low-altitude aerial images of the fortification of Ali-Pasa in Epirus, Greece, indicating the change of landscape through time.

Conservation status Protection zone / conditions

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Figure 8 The recent trends in remote-sensing consider a cohesion of different technological means. Results of geophysical surveys can be used as a verification of GIS modeling (top left: study of the fortification outline of Palaepaphos, Cyprus) or even for constructing VR models (top right: study of the Neolithic/Mycenaean settlement of Dimini, Greece). At the final stage, the integration of diverse information through GIS can lead toward a CRM model in a regional scale.

employed in surveying areas covered by thick jungle canopies or located in desert environments. Similarly, lidar sensors contribute to the construction of digital elevation models (DEMs). The spatial and spectral resolutions of the recording sensors remain key issues in satellite remote sensing, especially in recognizing the ‘signatures’ of the

suspected targets. Recently, the launching of hyperspectral systems (such as ASTER and Hyperion) comprising tens to hundreds of bands or high spatial resolution (<3 m) satellites (such as SPOT5, Ikonos, Quickbird, Eros, Formosat, and Orbview) has upgraded the quality of the satellite images. Satellite remote sensing has been applied for mapping sites and prehistoric

REMOTE SENSING APPROACHES/Geophysical 1921

agricultural fields, detection of ancient irrigation ditches, studies of regional settlement, and adaptation patterns, CRM, etc. The current dissemination of satellite imagery through internet portals, such as Google Earth, is also expected to have a major impact in archaeological studies and management of cultural resources (Figure 7). At the same time, GIS is increasingly upgrading its role in archaeological prospection due to its ability in integrating diverse geographic datasets and contributing to the management of cultural monuments (Figure 8). Multivariable statistical analysis on GIS, based on the geographical elements of the terrain (proximity to water and raw resources, elevation and aspect, slope, transportation corridors, sight analysis, etc.), can contribute in site catchment analysis, settlement pattern modeling, and in constructing predictive models for locating areas of potential archaeological interest in combination to satellite imagery.

geophysical method. Experimentation with new methods and arrays (such as 3D seismic and ERT, SQUID magnetometers with resolution of less than 0.00005 nT, capacitance coupling and induced polarization techniques, and thermal sensing) may also introduce other nonintrusive exploration techniques. High-resolution hyperspectral sensors (such as the compact airborne spectrographic imager (CASI)), will also enhance the regional coverage of archaeologically sensitive regions. Issues such as neural networks, virtual reality interfaces, and artificial intelligence have been continuously enhancing the latest developments of GIS technology. Environmental pressures and natural disasters will demand an increasing fusion and cohesion of the above technologies aiming toward the finer exploration and management of cultural heritage. See also: Pedestrian Survey Techniques; Remote

Sensing Approaches: Aerial; Soils and Archaeology.

Conclusions and Future Outlook The integrated use of ground-based and space-borne sensors has allowed a synthetic approach to archaeological prospection through the detection and mapping of sites and the study of diachronic settlement patterns and land uses practices on a regional scale. Remote-sensing approaches have radically changed the traditional exploration of archaeological sites. Geophysical methods provide accurate details of the subsurface relics and distinguish areas of different habitation activities, contributing in the reconstruction of the ancient environment. Regional trends such as settlement distribution, land use patterns, and communication modeling can be further explored through satellite imagery and GIS models. Remote sensing will experience more advances in the future. Ground-based prospection techniques are expected to be further enhanced through the development of portable or vehicle-towed multifrequency and multisensor systems, allowing the use of GPS positioning and featuring wireless data communication. This is already evidenced by multichannel or frequencymodulated GPR units or integrated mobile units that allow the simultaneous operation of more than one

Rescue Archaeology

Further Reading Aitken MJ (1961) Physics and Archaeology. New York: Interscience Publishers Inc. Bevan BW (1998) Geophysical exploration for archaeology: An introduction to geophysical exploration. Midwest Archeological Center Special Report 1. Boehler W, Heinz G, Qiming G, and Shenping Y (2004) The progress in satellite imaging and its application to archaeological documentation during the last decade. International Conference on Remote Sensing Archaeology. Beijing, China. Doneus M, Eder-Hinterleitner A, and Neubauer W (2001) Archaeological Prospection: Fourth International Conference on Archaeological Prospection. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press. El-Baz F (1997) Space age archaeology. Scientific American 277(2): 40–45. Linford N (2006) The application of geophysical methods to archaeological prospection. Reports on Progress in Physics 69: 2205–2257. Sarris A and Jones R (2000) Geophysical and related techniques applied to archaeological survey in the Mediterranean: A review. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 13(1): 3–75. Scollar I, Tabbagh A, Hesse A, and Herzog I (1990) Archaeological Prospection and Remote Sensing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson R and Oldfield F (1986) Environmental Magnetism. London: Allen and Unwin.

See: Cultural Resource Management.

1922 RITUAL, RELIGION, AND IDEOLOGY

RITUAL, RELIGION, AND IDEOLOGY Mary Ann Owoc, Mercyhurst College, Erie, PA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary cosmology The study of the Universe in its totality, and by extension, humanity’s place in it. materiality The state or quality of being material, or physical. Understood as a symmetrical engagement between physical properties, and material categories and meanings. phenomenology The philosophical study of consciousness and the manner in which people apprehend the world and objects within it. ritualization In ritual theory, a pratice or strategy that creates privileged distinctions between activities in different settings and circumstances which also has consequences for social relations. shamanism A range of traditional beliefs and practices concerned with communication with the spirit world. votive deposit An object left in a sacred place for ritual purposes.

Introduction It is somewhat ironic that despite the discipline’s long history of interpretative and methodological involvement with the material residues of burial, pictorial performance and monument construction, as concepts, religion, ritual, and ideology have only recently received critical attention within archaeology. The reasons for this are complicated, but could be seen as arising from the material nature of the archaeological record itself, coupled with a pervasive mind–body dualism in the sciences that falsely separates the material from the ideal. Additionally, the framing of the archaeological record as a ‘ladder of inference’ that accompanied the development of modern archaeology meant that matters of spirituality, belief, and ideation were generally perceived as inaccessible, and, moreover, separated from the more mundane, physical or technological elements of society modeled as cultural system. Further, archaeology’s traditional, and more comfortable, gaze has been situated at the level of the culture, the society, the settlement, or the community, but rarely on the individual, for whom matters of subjective belief and understanding have been extensively explored in disciplines like philosophy and theology. It is no small wonder then, that sophisticated treatments of the subject matter of this contribution have been avoided, or are only of comparatively recent vintage, and that discussion and explication of key terms continues.

An alternative conception of the potential of archaeology to fruitfully explore matters of belief and spirituality begins with the recognition that the human involvement with the material world has an antiquity of at least 2.5 million years (as represented by nonperishable artifacts). Material expression has constituted or framed our primary engagement with our surroundings and each other then, for far longer than we have been human. For the past 60 000– 100 000 years that expression has involved a representative capacity, and behavior that transcends the boundaries of what we would identify as purely functional. That material record of past and present societies has also revealed a variety of practices that undermine our categorical distinctions between the secular and the sacred, or the rational and the irrational, hinting that the study of religious behavior is far more complex than heretofore imagined. Contrary therefore, to hindering our foray into the realm of the ideational, the archaeological record provides ample and unique evidence of humanity’s capacity for materializing it. Termed, ‘technologies of belief’ by Michael Parker Pearson, these material traces of religious, ritual, and ideological practice constitute one of the primary avenues of archaeological exploration. Investigations into the material remains of religious activity have largely been dominated by investigations of death/burial, monument construction, cult activity, and pictorial representations. More recent studies have augmented the depth, but also the breadth of inquiry. Today, the ideology and materiality of death, performative and social aspects of rock art, and the nature of past cosmologies as materialized in monuments and landscape inhabitation are all subjects of study. Further, the cognitive capacity of early humans, shamanic practices, the ideological and meaningful qualities of material culture, technologies of the body and the construction of gender, and the interwoven nature of the ritual with the domestic and technical constitute additional avenues of current exploration.

Terminology Until fairly recently, the comparative lack of a critical engagement with the terms religion, ritual, and ideology in archaeology has meant that discussion and exploration of these concepts has resulted in a number of variable understandings and treatments. It is therefore worthwhile to briefly explore the archaeological appropriation of these oftentimes problematic concepts.

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Religion is not a term that is extensively employed in the archaeological literature. Indeed, it is somewhat avoided, particularly by prehistorians who have eschewed this term in favor of ritual (see below), or avoided it altogether. Its origins as a term within Christian dialogue, its very definition and analysis from the situated perspective of secular modernity, and its position within the typological evolutionary constructs of anthropological scholarship have all served to make religion somewhat problematic for archaeologists (see Biblical Archaeology). In particular, its historical definitions have served both to misleadingly demarcate religion as a particular sort of practice separate from other categories of past activities and, to contrast ‘traditional’ or small-scale belief systems with large-scale practices initially emerging in the later second and early first millenniums BC. ‘Religion’ has been far more visible in archaeological analyses of practices found among the literate world religions of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism, among which can be found powerful deities, universal membership, world renunciation beliefs, and concerns with salvation and the transcendence of death. The developmental precursors to these early ‘world religions’, as well as the range of past activities having a spiritual or belief component, have been less analyzed as evidence of ‘religious’ practices, though a strong syncretist argument has been made by Timothy Insoll that elements of similarity persist between all of them, upon which less categorical understandings of religion may be based. To add to this, within the literature generally, ‘religion’ has not been consistently defined. A myriad of simple and more complex definitions have been forwarded by scholars concerned with either the social role, meaning content, representational attributes, communicative, and/or reflective nature of religious practice. A number of scholars including Insoll have recently argued that we should avoid attempting to define religion, since its subject matter is so all encompassing and, moreover, ever present in all aspects of human life (see below). Indefinable then, religion exists as a complex system or merely a set of practices that includes both intangible or unclassifiable attributes such as individual or social beliefs, thoughts, and concepts as well as tangible ones like practices, actions, material culture, and space. Although such concepts and practices often involve notions of the holy, the sacred, or the intangible, and are often concerned with realities of the human condition, observational evidence in and out of archaeology indicates that religion appears to have far reaching importance as a pivotal, structuring force within ‘all’ aspects of social

life and technical performance. A move away then from definitive definitions of what religion is toward more elemental analyses sensitive to the historical and contextual variability and role of religious practices characterizes the emerging discourse on this subject. Ritual

The precise nature of what is meant by ritual, its relation to religion, and its status as a particular practice informing the creation of the archaeological record is complex and variable. As an ‘element’ of religion and form of social practice, ritual has been historically misunderstood and compartmentalized by being associated with nontechnical symbolic behavior and communication. Its very definition, therefore, has created and perpetuated categorical distinctions between religious and more rational, effective or technical components of human societies. Identifying the origins of such a problematic dichotomy in a Western, or post-enlightenment worldview, some archaeologists have sought to avoid the term altogether, arguing that it compartmentalizes the study of the past into autonomous spheres of practice that, further, had no real existence for actors. Yet ritual remains as an important anthropological and archaeological concept, based upon the general recognition that it shapes the human experience of the world, and plays an important role in the perpetuation of knowledge and society. This observation requires that archaeologists confront it critically even as they seek to adopt it as a heuristic concept informing their inquiries. Scholars of ritual have emphasized a variety of related features of ritual practice that are particularly conducive to archaeological inquiry and appropriation. Gilbert Lewis has commented on the alerting quality of ritual, which highlights its practice for observers as somehow out of the ordinary, and therefore significant. This quality has been further defined by Catherine Bell as relating to ‘ritualization’ – strategies that differentiate one sort of activity from another through practices which distinguish and privilege what is being done in certain settings or circumstances. Such practices, through not exclusive to ritual, include the presence of overt rules which guide or inform action, a concern with sequences or temporality, and performative elements involving movement, directionality, and spatial orientation. Further, the manipulation of the body, bodily relations, and the manipulations of objects, as well as the creation and alteration of particular places and spaces, are often found in ritual practice, as is the use of sensual stimuli such as light, sound, color, texture, size, or smell. Many of the aforementioned elements are archaeologically recoverable

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from multiple contexts of practice. Further, the performative nature of ritual both public and private, and the experimental, flexible, fluid, or open-ended nature of practice encourages an attention to the particular contexts of ritual practice in the past. It has been particularly noted that although ritual is often concerned with ephemeral concepts, it is grounded in the everyday, human world. What most scholars now agree upon, is that for the purposes of study, ritual should not be clearly demarcated from other kinds of practice. This is to say that ritual, like religion, is not a kind of strange ‘irrational’ merely symbolic action that is distinct from some ‘rational’ technical, or craft activity, but instead cross-cuts all aspects of human existence The implications of this understanding have meant that archaeologists have increasingly sought to appreciate and explore the dialectic between ritual and daily life – looking both beyond particular kinds of behavior in the past in the search for the material traces of ritual and religion, and also, more deeply into what appears to be an uncomplicated, straightforward archaeological record. Ideology

Ideology has had a far more extensive and critical treatment within the archaeological literature than either of the aforementioned terms. Its perceived role as a powerful structuring force in past societies has meant that many investigations of religious practice have been predominated by analyses of ideology and its operation. A useful link between religion and ideology for the purposes of this discussion takes as its starting point Talal Asad’s assertion that the identity, truth, authority, and strength of religious representations must be understood as relating to contextually and historically distinct disciplines, or social discourses. Couched within an argument for rethinking the nature and definition of religion in anthropology, Asad’s focus upon the ‘formation of religious subjects’ stresses the social and political aspects of religious practice. In Anglo-American archaeology, the relationship between religion, ritual, and ideology has been extensively explored within Marxist, or Marxist-inspired perspectives such as structural Marxism or neo-Marxism (see Marxist Archaeology). Within these approaches, ideology has largely been constructed as an instrumentalist phenomenon – that is, as something which serves the interests of a dominant class or group. From an archaeological perspective therefore, the relationship between ideology and religion has largely rested upon the understanding that ideological aspects of religious practice serve to mask or naturalize the real

relations of power in ways that benefit hegemonic groups. Such a narrow conception of the role of ideology (termed the ‘dominant ideology thesis’), however, fails to appreciate its multiple functions in the negotiation and perpetuation of social relations. Alternative approaches to the role of ideology in religious or ritual practice have sought to define ideology broadly, as the totality of forms of social consciousness – perceptions of reality that arise from social relations of power. Such perceptions may be mystifying, in that they forward particular appearances of reality for multiple groups. In this construction, ideology is an important structuring force involved in the relationship between consciousness and power, and serves the interests of both dominant and subordinate sectors of society. Additionally, depending upon historical context, the ideological dimensions of material culture, space, or the body, for example, may be of greater or lesser significance, and the analysis of this variability constitutes an important avenue of current exploration.

Origins and Persistence The study of the origins of religion, ritual practice, and ideology has until recently largely been a concern of anthropology rather than archaeology. Located primarily in the rich body of literature from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the interest in the origin and form of early religious practices and beliefs emerged from investigations into the evolution of cultural forms and elements. For much of the modern period, many archaeologists and anthropologists, in an effort to avoid cultural evolutionary pitfalls, have avoided such inquiry, preferring instead to document the appearance and disappearance of more particular elements of practice or belief, and to investigate their form and function. More recently though, the subject of the origins of religious and symbolic thought and practice has been reopened in archaeology by cognitive-processual practitioners interested in developing an ‘archaeology of mind’ (see Cognitive Archaeology; Modern Humans, Emergence of). In this school, topics like the human capacity for language and symbolic behavior, and the evidence and nature of early shamanistic practices, have been examined within broader explorations of the development of cognitive complexity among Homo sapiens sapiens and their premodern ancestors and Neanderthal contemporaries. Examples of this work include Steve Mithen’s work on the evolution of the mind from generalized, domain-specific intelligence to cognitive fluidity, in which he argues that things like religion and language became possible only after previously isolated modules in the mind dealing with things like social intelligence,

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technology, and natural history began to communicate with one another. Further, a variety of scholars have investigated the capacity for symbolism and linguistically structured behavior among European Middle Palaeolithic and Middle Stone Age communities in Africa through analyses of stone tool sophistication and morphological variability, decorative artifacts, and the evidence for pigment use, deliberate burial, and grave goods. It is important to point out that these studies pursue a somewhat different avenue of research to that found in the contemporary work on past religion, ritual, and ideology described below. For the most part, religious thought and ritual practice in these studies are primarily equated with symbolism, and the particular, historical, and variable nature of intentional religious/ritual/ideological practice and belief is eschewed in the search for broader patterns of cognitive development. Finally, while no definitive answers to the origins of religion or language have been forwarded by these studies, they have, to a great degree, broadened the understanding of what might, in cognitive, behavioral, and material terms, constitute a capacity for religious thought and practice. The origins of religious/ritual practice, and the activities of early religious practitioners, have both been investigated in a variety of recent studies of ‘shamanism’. Beginning with the assumption that shamanism represents a primitive and possibly primary form of religion, many of these works have drawn upon cross-cultural similarities between shamanistic practices, and the ethnography and ethnoarchaeology of contemporary foraging societies in southern Africa and Australia, to investigate cognitive complexity and prehistoric social life through analyses of prehistoric rock art (see Rock Art). This particular ‘archaeology of mind’ approach is best exemplified by the works of David Lewis-Williams, who has applied his extensive work on southern Africa San cosmology and ritual practice to an analysis of European Upper Palaeolithic cave paintings. In particular, Lewis-Williams’ work explores how certain experiences, and entoptic or exaggerated images created or experienced in altered states or hallucinations during shamanistic trances are the product of universals in human neurology. Further, he explores how shamanistic experiences may both account for the location of particular pictoral panels and explain the nature of the relationship between the maker and cave topography. Additionally, the extent to which shamanistic practice forged particular understandings of consciousness and subjectivity particular to communities in this period is addressed in his work. Some of the cognitive-processual work described above has parallels with, or is in part inspired by, a

variety of contemporary approaches to the evolutionary psychology of religion exemplified by Pascal Boyer, Robert McCauley, Daniel Dennett, and others. Contrary to intellectualist, Marxist, or symbolist approaches to religion, much of this work, which is neo-Darwinist in orientation, has dismissed religious definitions and explanations that center on emotional responses, irrational concepts, concerns about mortality, social coherence and representation, or particular beliefs, in favor of sophisticated functionalist analyses that focus on the developmental, cognitive mechanisms that make religious thought possible, attractive, and beneficial for human social groups. Arguing that religion has a limited number of traits or characteristics, the study of the emergence and persistence of such elements, along with other things like language (understood as ‘memes’), becomes a complex analysis of long-term cultural selection. Given the recent growth and popularity of neoDarwinist approaches in archaeology, it is likely that approaches to religion, ritual, and ideology that adopt a selectionist perspective will become more visible in the discipline.

Themes in the Archaeology of Religion, Ritual, and Ideology The following overview is not meant to be a comprehensive account of the topics addressed in the archaeology of ritual, religion, and ideology. Indeed, such an account would be impossible in a contribution of this length, given the depth and breadth of the current discourse. The themes and examples considered below are presented as a framing device through which a better understanding of the range of studies on this topic may be achieved. Further, it will be evident that each of these topics overlaps with one or more of the others, so that analyses of burial, for example, are necessarily related to investigations of past subjectivity and social relations as materialized through the body as material culture. Additionally, rock art and hoard deposition in the past were both influenced by people’s inhabitation and construction of the landscape. This is an important observation, as it indicates the complexity and power of religious practices in the past in as much as they involved a conjoining of multiple symbolic media and human experiences. Death and Burial

For many societies, the human experience of death is a central focus in religious belief. Further, death, and the dead, provide important platforms for the ritual to work through a number of social issues. Mortuary practices, as forms of the ritual communication

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of social and religious ideas and ideological strategies, have received extensive treatment within archaeology. John Barrett, for example, has considered how the changing ritual discourse of burial and memorialization in southern Britain exemplified in fourth through second millennium sites contributed to the structuring of later prehistoric society. Focusing on the corpse, ritual topography, and temporality, he suggests that changes in funerary rituals beginning in the later third millennium involving grave excavation, fixed burial locations, inhumation, and later, cremation, the use of grave goods and a spatial ordering of burials and monuments served not only to create particular social identities for the dead, but also provided the means through which important social and genealogical relationships among the living and the dead were established. Randall McGuire and Lou Anne Wurst have addressed the degree to which cemetery burial, and particular nineteenth century gravestone forms and symbolic motifs in Broom County, New York, were actively used to either downplay or highlight class differences, and material success and wealth. Their work on the relationship between actual institutions, class and gender relations over time, and their variable appearance in funerary material culture and cemetery patterning has revealed how gravestones as active symbols materialize different ideological strategies (Figure 1). In a similar vein, Mike Parker Pearson’s study of changing mortuary practices in nineteenth century Cambridgeshire, England, examines the manner in which the social context of death and attitudes to death and the dead changed the nature of funerary ritual and materialization, masking real relations of power in society. Further, he notes how

deceased individuals may be actively manipulated by the living via funerary ritual and expenditure for purposes of status aggrandizement (see Social Inequality, Development of). Parker Pearson’s observation that the symbolism of ritual communication may refer to idealized expression of the social order and the actual relations of power is evident in the work of Mike Shanks and Christopher Tilley, whose analysis of skeletal remains from fourth millennium (early Neolithic) Wessex tombs in south England focused upon the nonrandom selection and deposition of skeletal material between and within these sites. They argue that contrasts between bone positions within the monuments, left and right sides of the body, and male and female remains, as well as the nature of articulated and disarticulated deposits reveal structuring principles informing particular strategies of ritual performance. Such strategies, which sought to make metaphoric links between the physical and social body (see below), objectified and forwarded ideological notions of collectivity, social solidarity, body symmetry, and gender and age relations in communities with lineage-based kin structure. Many analyses which address the religious and ideological aspects of burial are also closely linked to recent studies in landscape archaeology, particularly those that address the relationship between landscape and monumentality. Landscape and Monuments

Studies of religion, ritual, and ideology that focus on monuments and landscape have appeared most often in postprocessual studies, which favor a

Figure 1 Large monuments in US cemeteries of the mid-late nineteenth century materialized notions of patriarchal authority and highlighted the rising social importance of wealthy families. Photo by Mary Ann Owoc.

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phenomenological approach, or a dwelling perspective, rather than cultural ecology models for framing the relationship between humans and their environments. In such a conception, the human understanding and description of the world, including the landscape and its elements, is a meaningful construction rooted in embodied experience, which in turn frames action. The degree to which this experience has influenced monument construction, modification, and related activities has characterized many recent studies of monumentality in the past. Further, the subject of the ritual experience of participants in built monuments has also received a considerable degree of recent attention. Attention towards the manner in which the internal spaces of such monuments enhance or muffle sound, deny visitors light or visibility, or draw attention to carved images, colors, or textures of structural materials has enhanced the capacity to better understand the nature of these sites and their abilities to frame perception and understanding (Figure 2). Recent work conducted in the Stonehenge and Avebury landscapes in southern Britain has sought to reinterpret the archaeology of the third and second millenniums in this region in light of participant experiences with monuments, topography, and natural substances. One element of this work has focused on the manner in which particular linear monuments, such as the Stonehenge cursus, and the stone and earth avenues of Avebury and Stonehenge, as well as the River Avon (which flows through the Stonehenge landscape) directed the movement of participants. Structured via large-scale structures and activities which framed perception, processional, linear movements and group journeys between sites and past old and new monuments in different parts of the

landscape have been understood as seasonal, ritual experiences through which communities established particular relations with the past, renewed social relationships, and performed ancestral obligations. Seasonal visits between the Durrington Walls concentric timber circles, and the physically similar site of Stonehenge to the south have been identified as important for constructing relationships between the living and the dead that relied on metaphorical understandings of the properties of wood and stone, and related notions of permanence and transience. Research on Classic Mayan sites in the first millennium AD has considered, among many other things, the manner in which the natural landscape was imbued with sacred meanings. Features in the natural world such as caves and mountains formed the basis for the monumental mortuary designs and ritual centers at Copa´n, Palenque, and Tikal, and in some cases were incorporated into their constructions. In this way, the associations of such natural places were instrumental in effecting transformations from person to ancestor, so important in the burial rituals of this period. Further, the referencing of cosmological principles, such as alignment and orientation at important residential ritual sites, served to situate and ground the authority and permanence of particular elite or royal dynasties. The investigation of past cosmologies through the study of monuments and ritual construction can be exemplified more particularly by Colin Richards’ research on Neolithic henge monuments of the late third millennium in Orkney, Scotland. Richards has explored how the monuments embodied physical representations of the surrounding landscape through homologous constructions that referenced important features and elements like hills and water. Richards

Figure 2 Color and texture attributes of key granite structural members on Isles of Scilly entrance graves were combined with their position in the sites to create particular readings of interior space and monument significance. Photo by Mary Ann Owoc.

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argues that water, as an important symbol of transition and division in the henge ditches, derived its potency from the surrounding landscape, in which the sites were isolated on narrow promontories surrounded by water and encircled by hills. Further, henge entrances structuring ritual passage into and out of the monuments, encouraged movement between them that also involved water passage in the landscape. The notion of monument as landscape leads to yet another avenue of exploration in the archaeology of religious practice. As Richard Bradley has recently pointed out, archaeology is not just the study of built forms, but also of people’s engagement with ‘natural places’. His work on this subject has explored how notable qualities or characteristics of particular places have shaped and directed human action. In overviews of prehistoric votive deposits throughout Europe from Scandinavia to Crete, Bradley notes that the locations of such sites in springs, bogs, rivers, caves, rock outcrops, or hilltops are just as significant for understanding the nature and significance of these practices, as their content. Examining the changing relationship between content and place, he and others have contributed to knowledge about the biographies, or particular life histories of various objects, their significance in relation to other items of material culture, and their active role in the pepetuation of social relations. Finally, John Clottes and others working on European Palaeolithic cave decoration have examined the sensual components which influenced participant experience in these natural sites through a focus on the manner in which cave topography, and directed movement through it, framed the physical experiences of visitors. They have suggested that the creation of images must be understood within a larger controlled experiential discourse involving natural and guided restrictions on bodily movement through these spaces, accompanied by variable and dramatic experiences of darkness and light. Rock Art

The relation between the symbolic production of rock art and its creator’s experience of the landscape in which it was created has been a subject of recent interest in the archaeology of religious practice (see Rock Art). The association of rock art with unmodified places of the natural landscape is a common denominator among these sites. Studies of this phenomenon have extended their inquiries beyond the content of the images to include the process of their production, and the location, variable accessibility and remoteness, and natural qualities of the sites in which it was created. This active experiential component of rock art production characterizes the recent

avenue exploration of this phenomenon and enhances its potential to inform on past religious behavior. Such studies situate the production of rock art within a larger context of terrain inhabitation and construction, such that it may be better understood within the context of settlement patterning, subsistence activities, and movement. Further, such work has been enhanced by in-depth analyses of the symbolic and metaphoric qualities of the pictorial images themselves. Rock art as ritual practice has been considered by David Robinson in a review of California Chumash image production. Robinson notes that the unfolding of meaning in Native American practices such as dance or rock art takes place through actions or motion such that images, for example, presence this enactment, and reference other related activities such as body painting. He considers the extent to which the perceived powers of particular places within Chumash myths and oral tradition, as well as their physical qualities, influenced the use of pigments and the location of designs, noting that rock art is a polyvalent act referencing powers of place, design enactment, and material attributes. Chris Tilley’s analysis of motif form and patterning on first millennium BC southern Scandinavian rock art panels at the site of Ho¨gsbyn, in southwest Sweden, reveals the extent to which this form of evidence may be used to understand past cosmologies and their influence on social relations. Further, his work highlights the importance of landscape context to both the meaning of the images, and the ritual enactment of particular carving episodes. Tilley suggests that timed north/south directional movement from one rock art panel to another by participants, as well as pictoral trends in the images themselves and their metaphorical associations, served to construct a complex cosmological narrative in which the human life cycle, as well as social and sexual identity, were connected with ideas of regeneration, time, celestial movement, and seasonality. Material Culture and Materiality

Materiality and its significance for understanding the meanings of objects, and the special uses to which they have been put, has understandably received a great deal of attention in archaeology. The choice and manipulation of material culture in the past were informed and structured by conceptions of its meaning, significance, and value which themselves rested upon physical qualities and attributes. Further, the technologies of material manufacture were learned and often rule-bound exercises or performances that served to constitute, reproduce, and change social

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relationships. Similarly, the exchange of such items was a loaded practice, often conducted in highly charged or controlled settings. Archaeological investigations of materiality which examine the relationship between, on the one hand, manufacture, physical form, and quality, and on the other, use and deposition, have contributed much to the study of religious practice in the past. Further, many archaeologists studying material culture have examined the practice of fragmentation, in which objects appear to have been deliberately destroyed either during, or expressly for, deposition. Although previously analyzed as evidence of accidental breakage, or as storehouses of scrap material to be reworked, fragmentation now appears to have been a necessary deliberate practice in the life history of certain objects, particularly metalwork and ceramics. Attributing sentience or destructive power to objects, many contemporary peoples have treated these things in accordance with concerns for their own welfare or the welfare of the community. Archaeologically, parallels between the treatment of artifacts and that of bodies in mortuary contexts hint at complex metaphorical associations between them. In Australia, stone ax trade in the Mid- to Late Holocene was conducted within a ritual gift exchange which likely conferred particular social benefits on participants. Despite availability of local materials, axes from quarries as far away as 1000 km were regularly moved through exchange networks. Paul Tac¸on and Adam Brumm have noted that historically, such quarries are associated with particular clans and Dreamtime myths, and artwork reveals that axes held important symbolic properties throughout the prehistoric period. Further, the fragmentation of stone axes, and their deposition in a variety of unexpected or unusual places like burials or pits, and quarries, as well as their associations with other items like quartz crystals, reveals the importance of these items in a variety of complex ritual practices. The Australian stone ax evidence has parallels in the archaeology of Neolithic Britain as explored by Richard Bradley, Mark Edmonds, and others. Although stone axes had important economic roles as tools during this period, certain aspects of their use, appearance, and deposition are nevertheless not explained by this function. Many of these objects were subjected to partial or complete polishing, and many bear no traces of usewear. Further, some are too large to have been used effectively. Their appearance in particular mine shafts, at quarry sites, or in structured domestic or votive deposits has been examined as evidence of structured deposition involving this class of material. Complex and far-reaching trading networks existed for stone axes during the fourth and third millenniums, and the ability of these objects to

structure and influence particular trading relationships has been related both to associations with their source quarries, which would have been presenced by the objects themselves, and to their possible symbolic or powerful properties or associations. The metaphorical properties of material culture which allow it to be referred, through action, to different items, places, or concepts is powerfully illustrated by textile and basketry designs amongst Pueblo communities in the Mesa Verde region of the American Southwest. Scott Ortman notes that certain of these decorative patterns are also replicated on painted ceramic bowls, such that pottery is equated with textiles in a Mesa Verde worldview grounded in container imagery. The significance of this homologous construction becomes even more evident when considered alongside the architecture of ritual kiva sites. These sites incorporate walls painted in textile design and thatch roofs which reference basketry coiling techniques, materializing an earth bowl-sky basket cosmos. The cross-referencing between the spheres of kiva and household facilitated by material culture in Pueblo society serves as an excellent example of the manner in which spirituality and belief systems are actively entrenched in multiple contexts of past practice. Soil, unmodified stone, and sediments are also forms of material culture that were used by past communities in religious/ritual practices. The sensual properties of these materials, as well as their landscape origins, contributed to their construction as active, powerful, and sometimes animate elements in the past. The understanding that materials commonly used in daily realms of practice have sacred qualities also enhances our appreciation of the permeable boundary between the ritual and the everyday. Paul Tac¸on has investigated the use and symbolic significance of pigments and bright, colorful stones among contemporary Australian Aboriginals and their ancestors. For contemporary peoples, the brightness and color of these materials are related to their perceived power, life force, and ancestral or totemic associations, hence their importance in a variety of rituals involving Dreamtime painting, group or individual transformation, and material culture decoration. This research has influenced interpretation of the abundant evidence of the use of ochre pigments in the burials and paintings of the Australian Pleistocene and Holocene. The divine and auspicious aspects of plastering clays in Indian society, and the role and significance of clay for Early Neolithic peoples in Anatolia, have been explored by Nicole Boivin in a study of the intimate link between the sacred and the domestic. She argues that perceptions of soil, particularly its

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associations with purity and its transformational properties, facilitated the development of a Neolithic society characterized across multiple contexts by substantial and lasting changes to the natural world. Finally, the practice of funerary mound building among the Hopewell of the eastern United States involving the deliberate use of sod blocks and layers of light-colored silt or sand has been examined by Doug Charles, Jane Buikstra, and Julieann Van Nest. They suggest that particular constructional practices involving these materials created a construction that mirrored the tripartite world present in Hopewell cosmology, and also reenacted a proto-Earth Diver myth which detailed its creation. Space

Space, as shaped and meaningfully constructed though human routine and social engagement, has much to offer the archaeology of religion, ritual, and ideology. The structuring of space, be it household, public site, or landscape, both incorporates and furthers cosmological principles, situating action within a web of meaning and significance. Further, space as a structuring principle in religious actions has been used to create social divisions and realms of practice in the past and attribute them, and the actors within them with values and meanings via symbolism. Space is also perceived and created on the basis of bodily form and movement in the world. While certain spaces may be understood as ‘sacred’ by past communities, it is equally the case that ‘sacred’ principles may influence the construction and use of nonsacred spaces. The manner in which space has been instrumental in informing religious practice and ideological constructs has been considered within a range of archaeological studies focused on, among other things, the astronomical properties or associations of sites and landscapes, and the nature and occupation of sacred space. The sweat lodge or sweatbath is a space of ritual importance in the history and prehistory of the Americas. Wendy Ashmore and Pamela Geller have indicated how, in Classic period Maya society, symbolic associations of liminality, purity, and supernatural powers structured the location, architecture, and decoration of these sites, framing an understanding of the processes of birth and ritual purification. Located in particular regions of temple complexes, these buildings served as important purification spaces for individuals physically transitioning from profane, to more sacred dance platforms and temple spaces. While there, images of male and female earth deities presenced supernatural powers and conferred identity to the spaces. Further, the sacred geography of the

cave, which formed part of the Maya cosmological, concerned with birth and liminality was recreated in the space of the sweatbath through hieroglyphs and architectural features. Roberta Gilchrist has examined the extent to which the structuring of space within the English medieval Christian church served to both reproduce symbolic concepts in the Christian cosmology, and create and reproduce particular social categories. The floor plan of the church further structured action within this space and served to symbolize both the Christian life course, and reproduce gender identity. Infant baptismal fonts located near the western congregant entrance signified entry and the beginning of the Christian life path, while seasonal symbolism on the west door further related the human to the agricultural lifecycle. Division between eastern chancel and western nave was marked by a tall rood screen which served to divide the space of the church into sacred and profane zones, each associated with particular categories of people and actions. Imagery over the chancel entrance depicting judgement day was followed, upon entry into the chancel, by dramatic imagery of the risen Christ. Gender and social status determined one’s physical proximity to the chancel and visibility past the rood screen, with wealthier individuals occupying positions near the chancel, and women and men, or gendered saintly images, segregated into respective north and south sections of the nave and rood screen. Gender and the Body

The body, in either active engagement with others, or as a whole or fragmented element of material culture to be manipulated by others, is a highly charged material symbol in the religious practices of past and present societies. Further, in such practices, bodies as social subjects are constructed through ‘techniques’ which can be understood as controlling or framing physical actions involving the body in some relation to others, or to space. Further, those techniques, which may also be understood as technologies involving physical treatment, or decoration of the body, involve both material culture and space. As the philosopher Michele Foucault has pointed out, such technologies are often institutionalized in a society, leading to the creation of social subjects and the perpetuation of forms of social control. As illustrated above, past religious practices focused on the physical body often serve to construct the individual or group social body through decoration, deportment, physical treatment, or spatial segregation. Rosemary Joyce has investigated the manner in which gendered selves were created in Aztec society

RITUAL, RELIGION, AND IDEOLOGY 1931

through a series of ritual bodily manipulations and dress restrictions that began in infancy and extended into adulthood. Timely body piercing, as well as hair growth, clipping or binding which corresponded to age grade rituals served to publicly transform genderless individuals into gendered subjects. Further, sexually charged performative encounters between men and women during celebratory exercises marking adulthood transition were highlighted by distinctive costuming, linking gender with notions of beauty and sexuality. In addition, the variable presence of elaborate costumes on corpses, and the presences of ceramic stamps for body modification in young Aztec women, suggest that the bodies of the dead in funerary rituals also served as important symbols structuring gender. The Domestic Realm

Once overlooked in studies of religious practices of the past, the domestic realm has recently been a rich site for investigating the meaningful attributes of material culture and space, as well as the manner in which ritual and belief structure everyday life. Studies have examined how house construction, abandonment and occupation, refuse deposition, tool manufacture, subsistence activities, and food preparation all exhibit structured patterning and other attributes which clearly deviate from functional necessity. Seemingly uncomplicated deposits like pit or ditch fills, upon closer inspection, are revealed to be the product of complex structuring rules which themselves are based upon important beliefs about the meaning and significance of items and substances. Further, acts of plowing and grain storage in the past appear to be influenced by notions of fertility and fecundity, and are themselves ritualized in a variety of ways through, for example, associations with the dead, or architectural elaboration. Joanna Bru¨ck and Jacki Nowakowski have addressed ‘unexpected’ practices on a series of late prehistoric domestic sites in Britain. Nowakowski, studying processes of house abandonment, has noted that domestic structures of the mid-second millennium BC are often deliberately ‘closed down’ through actions involving the removal of posts and the filling or blocking of postholes, the filling of ditches with domestic refuse, the deliberate deposition of artifacts, and the leveling and filling in of abandoned house hollows. Practices like these parallel the deliberate destruction, by fire, of houses in the south-eastern European tell settlements of the fifth millennium Late Neolithic. The destruction by fire of the tell houses has been interpreted by some as a symbolic act of commemoration which occurred after the death of a household

head. In both of these periods, the house was the central architectural feature which structured space and framed productive activities in the settlement. Further, its physical embellishment during the late fifth and earlier fourth millenniums BC in south-eastern Europe through painting and plastering, animal and female sculptural depictions, and in some cases, hearthfocused spatial artifact patterning indicate that notions of the house, gender, cooking and baking were part of a complex set of ideas that constituted a Neolithic world view and shaped household practice. Additionally, Joanna Bru¨ck and Richard Bradley’s examination of the appearance of unusual deposits in and around settlements and structures has provided evidence of the ritualization of domestic life. Such deposits include animal parts, pottery sherds or broken vessels, quern stones, human remains, and metal artifacts or fragments. Suggesting that such deposits are a product of the presence of complex metaphors used to structure and conceptualize agrarian life and technology, they highlight themes of transformation and regeneration that influenced the spatial patterning and associational relationships between particular objects. Such themes, they note, cross-cut the lives of individuals, the processes of artifact production, and the natural cycles of growth and decay.

Conclusion: Resituating Religion, Ritual, and Ideology Traditionally situated in a few rather narrow avenues of inquiry, the archaeology of religion, ritual, and ideology has recently broadened its view to include multiple dimensions of practice in the past. Studies of ideology have conjoined the symbolic with the everyday social and material relations of production in analyses of the negotiation of class relations and the formation of social subjects. Additionally, archaeologists have increasingly come to recognize that ritual and religion are not separate from, but rather involved in, the daily lives and activities of past communities. This is to say that beliefs about the nature of the world, selfhood and social relations, as well as the existence of ancestors and spiritual beings, the qualities and importance of elements and materials, and the origins of the land and people shape human activities from the overtly ritual to the quotidian. Timothy Insoll, asserting that religion is a central structuring mechanism in the reproduction of all human groups, has argued that archaeologists need to reassess how they conceptualize it in models of past societies, from the autonomous and peripheral to the more central and embedded. This has important and exciting implications for how archaeologists define the objects of their inquiry, decide what data

1932 ROBOTIC ARCHAEOLOGY ON THE DEEP OCEAN FLOOR

to examine, and interpret the residues of past practices. While properly resituating religion, ritual, and ideology in interpretations of the past may require a considerable departure from our contemporary worldview, the results of such an endeavor, already begun, promise to considerably enhance the practice of archaeology. See also: Archaeoastronomy; Biblical Archaeology; Cognitive Archaeology; Image and Symbol; Interpretive Art and Archaeology; Marxist Archaeology; Modern Humans, Emergence of; Postprocessual Archaeology; Rock Art; Social Inequality, Development of.

Further Reading Bell C (1992) Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Bowie F (2000) The Anthropology of Religion. Oxford: Blackwell. Bradley R (2005) Ritual and Domestic Life in Prehistoric Europe. London: Routledge.

Bru¨ck J (1999) Ritual and rationality: Some problems of interpretation in European Archaeology. European Journal of Archaeology 2(3): 313–344. Garwood P, Jennings D, Skeates R, and Toms J (eds.) (1991) Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Monograph 32: Sacred and Profane. Oxford: Institute of Archaeology. Gibson A and Simpson D (1998) Prehistoric Ritual and Religion: Essays in Honor of Aubrey Burl. Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing. Hodder I (ed.) (1982) Symbolic and Structural Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Insoll T (ed.) (2001) Archaeology and World Religion. London: Routledge. Insoll T (2004) Archaeology, Ritual, Religion. London: Routledge. McGuire R (1988) Dialogues with the dead: Ideology and the cemetery. In: Leone M and Potter PB (eds.) The Recovery of Meaning. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. Miller D and Tilley C (eds.) (1984) Ideology, Power, and Prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mithen S (1999) The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science. London: Thames and Hudson. Parker Pearson M (1999) The Archaeology of Death and Burial. Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing. Renfrew C and Zubrow E (eds.) (1994) The Ancient Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

ROBOTIC ARCHAEOLOGY ON THE DEEP OCEAN FLOOR Thomas F King, SWCA Environmental Consultants Silver Spring, MD, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

transponder An electronic device that when interrogated with a specific acoustic signal from a hydrophone responds with its own signature signal back to the hydrophone. Connected to a tracking system this signal is then computed as an x, y and z coordinate.

Glossary

Introduction

anomaly Anything that stands out from the background; anything different. In this case, something that side-scan sonar shows as different from the surrounding seafloor. bathymetry Measuring ocean depths and using the results to map the seabottom. GPS Global Positioning System; the system of satellites and transceivers that makes it possible to locate a GPS-equipped object, person, or vehicle with great precision on the face of the earth. provenance (aka provenience) The original location and associations of an object. ROV Remotely Operated Vehicle, in this case, a submersible vehicle adapted to perform archaeological survey, investigation and excavation controlled from the surface by an operator. side-scan sonar Sound-location technology used to highlight and map anomalies on the ocean floor. transducer A device which converts energy from one form to another. In side-scan sonar this is usually a piezoelectric crystal (a ceramic material which has the property of physically changing shape when a voltage is applied across it).

When we think of an archaeologist working in the field, we usually think of someone with a bush knife, map, and compass hacking through the jungle looking for ruins, or down in a trench scraping away dirt with a trowel. In simple, vivid terms, those images do capture the essence of most archaeological fieldwork – survey on the one hand, excavation on the other, both performed by people with hand tools. If we envision underwater archaeology, we tend to think of something similar: SCUBA divers swimming along under their clouds of bubbles, scanning the seafloor below for the remains of ships and their contents, or similarly equipped divers gathered over the barely recognizable hulk of a shipwreck, carefully dusting away the sediments that cover it. These images, too, are generally accurate ones. But what if we need to find and excavate something on the floor of the really deep ocean – 500 m down, a

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thousand, even two thousand? How do we find a site, a shipwreck for example, down there? Even more challenging, how do we excavate it? Until recently, the answer was a simple one: we don’t. Oh, we could tow an array of electronic equipment and get some idea of what’s down there, but the images we obtained would not tell us whether the steel wreck we had located was of welded or rivet construction, or allow us to reliably judge if a pile of long skinny things represented a wooden warship’s cannons or a pile of discarded pipes. We might go down in a submarine or a diving bell and send a diver out, but the depth and conditions might not allow this. We could use deep-water grabs and dredging equipment to bring the remains of a shipwreck to surface, but we might destroy more than we get, and we would lose the contextual information that is basic to any archaeological study. Anything that had gone to the deep-sea bed was down there for good, beyond our ability to recover it using archaeological methods and principles. In the twenty-first century things are different. The development of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and associated tooling, equipment, and technology allows the marine archaeologist to observe, closely and in great detail, shipwrecks that a few decades ago were beyond the range of human investigation. Now we can do archaeology on the deepest of seabeds, from the comfort of a control van where monitors, computers, fiberoptics, and other technology enable the ROV to serve as the archaeologist’s hands and eyes. Just as we can send robots to investigate the surface of distant planets, we can now explore the great ocean depths.

The Origins of Deep Ocean Archaeology Our ability to do deep-ocean archaeology is, of course, the product of modern technology. Although much of the needed technology was first developed by the military, and for commercial applications such as the placement of transoceanic telephone cables, its widespread availability is largely the product of the oil and natural gas industry. Everyone – at least on television – has seen oil and gas offshore installations – drilling and pumping platforms standing out in the ocean. Building such offshore platforms requires specialized equipment; servicing them and the drills and pumps that penetrate the seabed below them, requires technology. While many of the platforms do not stand in terribly deep water, most of the technology that works at 50 m can be made to work at 500. Some oil and gas platforms – many in the North Sea, for example, both fixed and floating, are in deep

water – 200 m, 500 m deep. Whether they are floating or standing on the bottom, they need technology to manage their drills, pipes, and moorings. In the early days of deep ocean oil drilling, in the 1970s, oil companies found ways to send hard-hat divers to considerable depths, but the costs were very high and the risks were great. Technology – much of it developed originally for military use – came to the rescue. Robotic submersibles – that is, ROVs – were equipped with video cameras and a variety of manipulators and suction devices so they could swim down to the bottom under remote supervision and perform functions ranging from opening and closing valves to moving multi-ton pieces of equipment. As these ROVs became more common their cost declined, and they began to be within the economic reach of people other than oil companies. They became the basic tools of deep ocean archaeology (Figure 1). Of course, before one can excavate a shipwreck one has to find it, and the technology to do this in the deep oceans is also largely the product of the oil and gas industry, together with the defense establishment and the telecommunications industry. Oil and gas companies have to run pipelines across the ocean floor, telecommunications companies lay fiber-optic cables, and the military has to know a great deal about the seabed to allow its submarines to navigate safely and stealthily through the depths. These practical requirements have resulted in the development of remote-sensing technology. Remote sensing in the ocean involves electronic equipment that can be towed behind a ship or fitted to the hull and is able to map the contours and features of the ocean floor using sound waves. With high degrees of accuracy, such technology can pinpoint anomalies like shipwrecks that can foul cables and trip up pipeline laying equipment. Coupled with Global Positioning System (GPS) technology – the satellites that give you interactive street maps in your car – these remote sensing systems have made it possible to locate and accurately measure the position of shipwrecks on the seabed.

Who Does Deep-ocean Archaeology? All of this technology costs money, as do the ships from which it is deployed, and the skilled crews to operate them. It is a very rare museum, university, or other research institution that has long-term access to such equipment, and those that have it usually have to share it among departments investigating deep ocean geology, biology, hydrology, and other sciences as well as archaeology. As a result, with very few exceptions, virtually all deep-ocean archaeology today is being carried out

1934 ROBOTIC ARCHAEOLOGY ON THE DEEP OCEAN FLOOR

Figure 1 An ROV named ZEUS, the eight-ton, 205 horsepower remotely operated vehicle (ROV) used by Odyssey Marine Exploration, is raised from the Atlantic after a trip 1700 feet deep to the shipwreck of the SS Republic. (Photo credit: Odyssey Marine Exploration).

by commercial marine salvage companies. This fact outrages many traditional archaeologists, who believe that there is no room for accommodation between the interests of archaeology and those of treasure salvage (see Ethical Issues and Responsibilities). Some archaeologists, however, have reached working relationships with shipwreck exploration and salvage companies (Figure 2). It works like this: the salvage company that wants to recover treasure from a shipwreck enters into a contract with archaeologists, and where law requires it, with government regulatory bodies, under which it is agreed that fieldwork will be performed according to high archaeological standards. Research designs are formulated and approved, and the work is carried out accordingly. What is recovered is divided into two big classes (often with various subdivisions) – one made up of material that must remain together and be cared for as a research collection, the other made up of material that can be sold. The research collection includes the remains of the ship itself, the personal gear of the crew and passengers, elements of the cargo – essentially, everything from which much can be learned about the ship, its people, and the times in which it operated. The marketable collection includes coinage, bullion, sometimes other manufactured material like bottles and other goods recovered from

Figure 2 Coins on seabed. (Photo credit: Odyssey Marine Exploration).

the shipwreck in large quantity. Sometimes things like coal from a ship’s engine room are offered for sale. Little more can be learned from such material once basic information has been recorded – the dates and types of coins, the weight, shape, purity and surface markings of each gold bar, the type and date of each bottle and what it probably contained – so nothing is lost if it goes into the stream of commerce after

ROBOTIC ARCHAEOLOGY ON THE DEEP OCEAN FLOOR 1935

archaeological documentation. The more valuable material – coins, for example – is also usually very carefully conserved and graded by companies with expertise in this area, and these companies keep elaborate records, simply because the material is so valuable. If someone someday wants to study all the coins from Shipwreck X, they may find the coins better preserved and more accessible in private hands than they would be in academic study collections. Arrangements like this make it possible for an ethical archaeologist to cooperate with treasure recovery operations, because the information for which the archaeologist is responsible is collected, conserved, recorded, analyzed, and reported appropriately. The salvage company is able to justify the archaeology to its stockholders – that is, explain why they’re spending money on very careful excavation rather than just grappling the stuff to the surface – because the archaeological work actually increases the commercial value of the material. A well-documented artifact is worth more than one whose provenance is poorly recorded. But few such collaborations between treasure salvage firms and archaeologists have actually been undertaken, and those that have gone forward have happened largely in shallow waters. In fact, at this writing, Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. of Tampa, Florida, may be the only company doing deep-ocean archaeology. Most salvage firms still have trouble finding qualified archaeologists who will work with them – so strong are the professional biases against such collaboration. However, it can be predicted that treasure salvage-supported archaeology will increase in the years to come; the treasures are on the seabed, and they are recoverable using technology that with few exceptions only commercial salvage companies can afford.

Deep-ocean Survey Finding an archaeological site on the floor of the deep ocean, like finding one anywhere else, requires background research and patient, systematic, sometimes very boring fieldwork. Although prehistoric and early historic onceterrestrial sites are found on the seabed – swamped prehistoric villages, sunken towns like Port Royal, the Jamaican pirate haven that sank into the ocean during an earthquake in 1692 ACE – most deep-ocean sites represent ships that floated and aircraft that flew over the ocean surface. Background historical research is a vital first step in locating such sites, and for that matter in even discovering that they exist. Commercial records, military records, the logs of ships, ship

losses reported in newspapers and the diaries of passengers and their relatives, all can help identify wrecks worth searching for, and then narrow the search to something smaller than an entire ocean. As an example of shipwreck research, consider the Sussex, a seventeenth-century British warship that is currently being studied by Odyssey Marine Exploration. In the mid-1990s an independent researcher discovered papers in a Paris archive describing the loss of a British ship in the Strait of Gibraltar in 1694. The ship, named the Sussex, was recorded as carrying a large cargo of coinage meant for the Duke of Savoy, a duchy in what are now northern Italy and southeastern France. The researcher offered the information to Odyssey, which purchased it and launched a major archival study to reconstruct the circumstances and location of the wreck. This involved research in the United Kingdom, France, and Spain, which eventually verified that the Sussex had indeed gone down in the Strait, provided a detailed description of the ship and its sinking, and gave a rough fix on where its loss might have occurred. Although the area of highest probability was fairly concentrated, the research indicated that the wreck might lie anywhere in an area some 400 square miles in extent. Field survey began with marking out grid lines in search blocks. At the same time, a bathymetric survey mapped the contours of the floor which in the Strait is around 800 m deep. Some mapping information was already archived and available; other data had to be collected anew using echo-sounding equipment. Then Odyssey launched the detailed survey, using side-scan sonar. This involves towing a sensor behind a ship along each grid line, just above the seabed. The sensor emits sonar signals and receives them as they bounce back, measuring the distance to objects around and below it. Modern side-scan sonar produces an accurate and detailed picture of the sea bottom, but it is very time consuming; Odyssey’s research ship steamed back and forth like a tractor plowing a field, eventually covering the entire 400-square-mile block and plotting 419 anomalies on the sea bed. From a vessel on the ocean surface equipped with an inspection ROV carrying video cameras, each of the anomalies that looked worthy of further investigation was visually inspected to determine what it was. Some anomalies turned out to be geological features; some were big coils of wire, others 55-gallon drums. Some were aerial bombs. Others really were shipwrecks, including what appear to be Roman and Phoenician wrecks, which were carefully recorded for future reference. One site – at a depth of 811 m

1936 ROBOTIC ARCHAEOLOGY ON THE DEEP OCEAN FLOOR

(2660 ft) was a long mound on the seafloor dotted with heavily concreted cannon, consistent with those aboard the Sussex.

ROV: The Deep-ocean Trowel As of June 2006, the site thought to be the Sussex has not yet been excavated, though a thorough predisturbance survey including core sampling has been completed. Additional test trenching and further work is planned. Because (if it is the Sussex) it is a warship, and therefore the property of the British Crown, Odyssey has entered into a contract with the British Ministry of Defense governing how the excavation will be carried out and how anything recovered will be cared for. Odyssey is also working cooperatively with the governments of Spain and Andalusia, the Spanish autonomous region on the nearby shore. Another Odyssey project, the SS Republic – a sidewheel steamer that went down in a hurricane shortly after the American Civil War with a rich cargo of coinage meant for economic redevelopment in the defeated South – illustrates how deep ocean excavations are carried out. Odyssey located the Republic using the same methods employed in the Sussex case – detailed background research followed by painstaking bathymetric and side-scan sonar sweeps. The ship finally was revealed, sitting upright on the ocean bottom at a depth of approximately 500 m (1700 ft); her walking beam engine and two side-wheels plainly visible (Figure 3). After initial photography and mapping, Odyssey prepared for archaeological investigation and excavation. An important part of archaeology is recording enough data to recreate the site as it was before the archaeologist disturbs it and removes anything, and

Figure 3 The Republic’s starboard paddle wheel. (Photo credit: Odyssey Marine Exploration).

then at each step in the excavation process. As in all types of archaeology, it is vital on the seabed to keep track of precisely where each recovered object and structural feature is located. This includes recording the context of each object, that is, its relationship to other objects and its location in the seabed layers. On land and in shallow-water sites, we do this by establishing firmly located datum points from which all measurements are taken, and then imposing a grid of some kind over the site – marked with stakes and strings on land, often with PVC pipe underwater. We label all the grid squares, and dig within them, drawing and noting the locations of everything we find. We cannot do quite the same thing hundreds of meters down, but with a well-equipped ROV we can do something that serves the same purpose (Figure 4). In the case of the Republic (and the Sussex will be excavated the same way) the Odyssey team first placed electronic transponders around the wreck. These transponders, located with high precision using survey software and GPS, communicate with the navigation electronics aboard the ROV, and a continual record is maintained of precisely where the ROV is at every moment, in both horizontal and vertical space. Having set the transponders, the team imposed a grid on the site of the Republic, but it was not marked with stakes and string or with PVC pipe; it was a virtual grid, stored in the ship’s and ROV’s computers. Whenever an archaeologist, pilot, or surveyor wanted to refer to it, it could be brought up on the screen and superimposed on the real-time images of the site coming up from the ROV. These images came up to three of four control areas aboard the research ship: the ROV Control Van (from where the ROV is piloted), the Online Room (for survey and data-logging), and the Offline Room – equipped with large screen monitors and a computer where the archaeologist can oversee operations on the seabed through a communication system with the ROV operator. The fourth critical control area, of course, is the ship’s bridge, responsible for ship navigation and holding a stable position over the wreck site. Photography is a vital component of deep-ocean archaeological investigation. The ROV used on the Republic – named ZEUS – was configured with seven cameras. The ROV pilot had four cameras to monitor the vehicle; three other cameras were dedicated to archaeological recording. The high-resolution cameras, combined with Halide Mercury Incandescent (HMI) lighting, supplied the archaeologist and ROV operator with high-quality images. Every second of the expedition was video recorded on DVDs, and all images flowing into the ship’s onboard computers were logged and retained, so there is a complete and permanent record of the excavation (Figure 5).

ROBOTIC ARCHAEOLOGY ON THE DEEP OCEAN FLOOR 1937 SS REPUBLIC artifacts collected between Dives 13 and 244 0006.00 N

0005.00 N

0004.00 N

0003.00 N

Bottles Gold and silver coins Brass/Bronze Ceramic Coal Engine components

0002.00 N

Glass Miscellaneous Personal belongings Religious artifacts

0001.00 N

Ship fitting Wood 0001.00 E

0002.00 E

0003.00 E

0004.00 E

0005.00 E

0006.00 E

0007.00 E

0008.00 E

Figure 4 SS Republic artifact distribution map. (Photo credit: Odyssey Marine Exploration).

1

2

4

3

5 6

Figure 5 Components of deep-ocean excavation. (Photo credit: Odyssey Marine Exploration).

Having chosen a grid square within which to dig, the operator positions the ROV over it. Though ZEUS is about the size of a large sport utility vehicle – roughly a 10 foot square cube that weighs about 8 tons – it can hover over the site with a high degree of stability, or rest lightly on the bottom, maintaining position with small thrusters. The ROV is neutrally buoyant and before a dive can be made heavier or lighter by the addition or removal of lead weights. Once the ROV is in place, excavation can begin, all under the watchful eye of the archaeologist several hundred meters above (Figure 6). The ROV has several kinds of excavation and recovery tools. Odyssey’s ZEUS typically carries two seven-function master/slave manipulator arms fitted at either side of the front of the vehicle, a dredge pump, a specialized sediment sifting and collection device, and a limpet suction device. The pump – called a venturi – creates suction with no moving parts. This allows any small artifacts that are sucked up to fall out and be collected undamaged. The pump then blows the silt out high enough in the water column to be distributed without obscuring visibility on the

1938 ROBOTIC ARCHAEOLOGY ON THE DEEP OCEAN FLOOR

Umbilical

Flotation block Acoustic beacon syntactic foam Axial thruster (STBD/FWD)

Umbilical camera Strobe beacon

Crash frame

Axial thruster (STBD/AFT)

Sonar

Umbilical float

HMI light

Compass

Axial thruster (PORT/FWD)

Termination boxes (oil filled)

Manipulator (7 function) Limpett

Venturi suction hose

Color Lead weight camera (Buoyancy adjust)

Landing skids Tool strage

Figure 6 Parts of an ROV. (Photo credit: Odyssey Marine Exploration).

Figure 7 Gold coin on limpet. (Photo credit: Odyssey Marine Exploration).

Figure 8 Drakes Plantation bitters bottle recovered from seabed. (Photo credit: Odyssey Marine Exploration).

bottom. The operator uses the dredge tip like a trowel and brush, gently removing sediment and exposing whatever lies within the grid square. The dredge can be operated with a high degree of precision, maintaining close control over depth and horizontal location. When it is time to collect an artifact from within the square, its precise location is recorded by the data loggers in the online control room, and of course imaged by the video and still cameras. Then the ROV can either grasp it with its manipulator arm, or lift it with the suction limpet device – the latter device is especially good for very delicate items (Figures 7 and 8). Either way, the item is picked up and placed in a collection basket, which the ROV then places in a labeled section of a larger divided lifting container for retrieval to the surface. The same is done with whatever small items have been collected by the dredge – just as in a land excavation, where small finds caught in sieves are collected and recorded. At intervals, the lifting container is hoisted up to the ship, and the material recovered goes straight to the on-board conservation laboratory, where it is recorded, logged, photographed and given first-aid conservation treatment to stabilize it until it reaches the main conservation facility on land. The ROV also performs many other functions – for example, flying over the site at controlled depths taking thousands of photographs from which photomosaics can be constructed, performing detailed mapping, collecting sediment, water and biological samples, and recording environmental features (Figure 9).

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together with popular publications and exhibits. In the case of Odyssey, the company has built a conservation facility in Tampa, Florida, where its shipwreck artifacts are conserved and stored. The collections that have value for ongoing research and public interpretation are made available for study and presented to the public through scheduled lab visits and educational programs offered to the local schools.

Conclusions

Figure 9 SS Republic photomosaic. (Photo credit: Odyssey Marine Exploration).

After the Fieldwork As in any archaeological excavation, the fieldwork on a deep-ocean site is only part of the operation. Conservation of whatever is recovered is an important next step, particularly because the artifacts have been resting on the seabed, in the complex chemistry of seawater and bottom sediments, and have usually experienced a variety of physical and chemical changes. Sometimes, after years in a saltwater environment, they can react violently when exposed to oxygen, cracking, crumbling, and falling apart. They usually have to be kept immersed in seawater at first, gradually replacing the salt water with filtered fresh water so the salts in the artifacts leach out. Depending on what the artifacts are made of, different kinds of chemical preservatives may need to be applied, together with such techniques as electrolysis and freeze-drying, Meanwhile, further recording, analysis, cataloging and research continue. In the end, as in every other kind of archaeological research, reports and technical papers are prepared,

The discipline of deep-water archaeology is in its infancy and is often questioned by traditional academics because of its association with the commercial sector. It is hard to imagine, however, how deep-water archaeology could be carried out at all without such a relationship. During the last 15 years deep-water archaeological investigations have successfully been conducted at various sites around the world. The techniques for mapping sites, controlling the ROV, and recording data have evolved and been refined. A close working relationship has developed among the ROV operators, technical crew, and the archaeologists. The system is complex and challenging, but it works. However, deep-water projects are expensive, and require detailed planning and working partnerships. Ongoing assessment and auditing are required to keep focused on the archaeology. Every deep-water project faces unique challenges that require innovation, so each project has to provide for expensive trials of equipment and techniques. Recent deep-water archaeology has been groundbreaking in the development and testing of new tools, systems, methods, and techniques. It has set high standards for archaeologists and salvage firms alike who are willing to carry out joint archaeology/commercial ventures in the deep ocean. It remains to be seen whether the mainstream archaeological community will embrace such ventures, and how both they and the technology they employ will evolve.

Acknowledgements The author is grateful to Ms. Ellen Gerth of Odyssey Marine Exploration of Tampa, Florida, for information, images and helpful suggestions. See also: Conservation, Archaeological; Conservation and Stabilization of Materials; Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Maritime Archaeology; Sites: Conservation and Stabilization; Underwater Archaeology.

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Further Reading Dobson NC (2001) Cambridge Expedition 2001. An Archaeological Investigation. Odyssey Marine Exploration. Dobson NC (2005) Developmental deep-water archaeology: Investigation and excavation of the 19th-century side-wheel steamer SS Republic, lost in a storm off Savannah in 1865 In: Proceedings of MTS/IEEE. Tampa, FL.

Gerth EC (2006) Bottles from the Deep; Patent Medicines, Bitters and Other Bottles from the Wreck of the Steamship Republic. Tampa, FL: Shipwreck Heritage Press. HMS Sussex Deep Ocean Marine Archaeological Project Plan Edited for Public Distribution. http://shipwreck.net/AbridgedSussexProjectPlan.pdf Vesilind PJ (2005) Lost Gold of the Republic. Tampa, FL: Shipwreck Heritage Press.

ROCK ART Robert G Bednarik, International Federation of Rock Art Organizations, Melbourne, VIC, Australia ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary cave art Rock art occurring in caves. petroglyph A rock art motif that involved a reductive process in its production, such as percussion or abrasion. pictogram A rock art motif that involved an additive process in its production, such as the application of paint, dry pigment, beeswax. Pleistocene The geologic timescale from 1 808 000 to 11 550 years BP. rock art A somewhat arbitrary term describing nonutilitarian humanly made markings on natural rock surfaces.

‘Rock art’ is a somewhat arbitrary term describing nonutilitarian human-made markings on natural rock surfaces, made either by an additive (the application of material) or by a reductive process (the removal of rock material). The former result is called a pictogram or rock painting and this form includes also pigment drawings, stencils, and beeswax figures; the latter is a petroglyph or engraving, sometimes called carving. The term rock art is usually not applied to human markings on prepared or dressed stone surfaces, such as may be found on buildings or rock-hewn structures. Nor does it include human-made but unintentional rock markings (such as those occasioned by bulldozers), utilitarian rock markings (e.g., drainage channels on ax grinding panels) or markings made by nonhuman animal species, even if made ‘deliberately’ (e.g., certain forms of cave bear claw marks in European caves). Broadly speaking, the term rock art refers to anthropic (humanly made) markings on natural rock surfaces; they may be prehistoric or historic, and they may occur in caves or out of caves.

Rock art is a very widespread phenomenon on our planet, occurring in nearly all countries. Its uneven distribution across all continents except Antarctica is, however, not so much attributable to differences in cultural conventions, as primarily a taphonomic attribute, that is, a result of preservation bias. For instance, the high-pH and low precipitation regimes of arid and semi-arid regions have greatly facilitated the preservation of rock art in various parts of the world, such as the Sahara, Arabia, Central Asia, the American Southwest, Peru, and Australia. Another major determinant of rock art distribution is geology. Some of the largest surviving concentrations are those found in the sandstone facies of the former Gondwana plate, that is, in southern Africa, India, Australia, and northwestern Brazil. These sandstone deposits have facilitated the formation of rock shelters that provide excellent preservation conditions, especially for rock paintings. Similarly, the practice of Upper Palaeolithic rock artists to place some of their productions in deep limestone caves has significantly helped the survival of some of that period’s rock art. Prehistoric rock art represents by far the largest body of evidence we possess of humanity’s cultural, cognitive, and artistic beginnings. Through its relative permanence, it has profoundly influenced the beliefs and cultural conventions of subsequent societies up to the present. It is therefore an integral part of humanity’s collective memory, and the greatest surviving witness of our cultural evolution.

Cave Art When rock art occurs in caves it is called ‘cave art’. Although found in several regions, the most famous traditions of cave art are those of the Upper Palaeolithic period in southwestern Europe. Occurring primarily in northern Spain and across France, this has become one of the world’s best-known forms of rock art. Officially, it was discovered by Don Marcelino Santiago Toma´s Sanz de Sautuola

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(1831–88) in Altamira, Spain, in 1879. Le´opold Chiron had already in 1878 found engravings deep in the French cave Chabot, and in 1890 more at another site, Figuier. In 1883, Franc¸ois Daleau excavated engravings on a wall in Pair-non-Pair that had been covered by Pleistocene sediment. However, all archaeologists precipitously rejected de Sautuola’s discovery, and his treatment by the discipline deterred others from publicizing new finds. In 1895, a bison engraving was discovered in the French cave La Mouthe. Emile Rivie`re, who had seen the Altamira paintings, then found more rock art in La Mouthe, and 4 years later a Palaeolithic lamp. Thus the evidence in favor of Palaeolithic cave art mounted, but full acceptance by the archaeological establishment did not occur until the end of the nineteenth century. At that time, a young Catholic priest had begun to develop a great fascination for the subject of cave art. Abbe´ Henri Breuil was to dominate the field for the next six decades, contributing greatly to our knowledge of the Palaeolithic rock art traditions. Many more sites were discovered during his reign, including Lascaux in 1940. Brevil was succeeded in the 1960s and 1970s by Andre´ Leroi-Gourhan, after whose death Jean Clottes became the key scholar of Palaeolithic cave art. Throughout the twentieth century, a stylistic sequence for the art was refined and honed by successive scholars. Its basis was the plethora of stylistic genres perceived by the leading researchers, often constructs of a tenuous nature. According to these models, cave art developed from the most simple to the most complex and ornate styles, from about 35 000 to 10 000 years ago. This fundamental tenet, and with it the stylistic chronology of cave art, fell with the 1994 discovery of Chauvet Cave, and the dating by Clottes in 1995 of some of its ultra-sophisticated rock art to about 32 000 radiocarbon years. This demonstrated the inexpedience of simplistic evolutionary schemes in the interpretation of Pleistocene art traditions (Figure 1). Palaeolithic cave art has been reported from over 400 sites, but the art’s attribution to the Pleistocene has remained intangible at many sites. For instance, there is currently no validated claim for Palaeolithic rock art in Central or Eastern Europe, despite many such postulates having appeared. Similarly, various claims made about the occurrence of Palaeolithic rock art at open schist sites in the Iberian Peninsula remain unsubstantiated by dating evidence (see Dating Methods, Overview). Cave art has also been found in 45 caves across Southern Australia, much of which seems to be of the Pleistocene as well. It lacks figurative depictions, as does all early Australian rock art. Another region noted for its cave art includes parts of Central

Figure 1 The Upper Palaeolithic ‘spotted horses’ in the cave Pech Merle, France. Photograph by R. G. Bednarik.

America and the Caribbean islands. Specific clusters of sites occur in Cuba, Hispaniola, and in the general area of Belize, Guatemala, and Yucata´n Peninsula. The cave art of the last-mentioned region is attributed to the Maya and some 22 sites are currently known. A remarkable series of cave art sites has also been located in the Kentucky-Alabama region of North America, popularly known as ‘mud glyph caves’. More isolated occurrences of cave art occur in many other regions.

A Brief History of Rock Art Research The total number of known cave art sites worldwide is well under one thousand, while the number of open rock art sites is likely to be up to one million, and they often present vastly greater numbers of motifs than the cave sites. Yet, in comparison to European cave art, their study has been relatively neglected. For instance, no publication about Chinese rock art had appeared in English until 1984, although the earliest literary mention of rock art is from China. The philosopher Han Fei (280–233 BC) provided the first known reference to rock art, while the geographer Li Daoyuan (AD 386–434) described numerous rock art sites in China and even mentioned occurrences in India. In South America, Captain De Carvalho found rock art in 1598 in what is now Brazil, and published his recordings in 1618, while in Europe, the first known recordings, made by Peder Alfsso¨n in Denmark in 1627, were not published until 1784. More determined scholarly efforts commenced during the nineteenth century, focusing initially on Russia, Scandinavia, and northern Africa, later on southern Africa, parts of South America, Australia, and eventually India. With the beginning of the twentieth century, after archaeology finally accepted the authenticity of Franco-Cantabrian cave art, the study of rock

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art became nominally integrated into mainstream archaeology. However, this merely promoted the proliferation of simplistic stylistic constructs and the development of various unproductive methods. For instance, some archaeologists considered that taxonomic constructs and statistical analyses of stylistic or morphological matrices of motif types would provide empirical interpretations, in the same way other artifacts were classified and interpreted statistically. However, rock art has no archaeologically perceptible time depth, and most major rock art sites are cumulative assemblages deriving from different eras. Lumping these different traditions together and treating them as a ‘style’ because they happened to occur at the same place served no useful purpose, and this is even before the complex issues of selective survival (taphonomy) are considered. Thus, the greatest barrier to integrating rock art successfully into archaeology was the intractability of its dating. Worldwide, there have been only about 20 instances of reasonably convincing minimum dating by finding rock art under supposedly datable sediments. Archaeological age estimations, generally by considerations of style and ‘content’, have varied greatly for specific corpora. For example, there is a distinctive tradition of shelter paintings in eastern Spain, the Levantine genre. Over the course of the second half of the twentieth century, it has been attributed to every single archaeologically perceived cultural period from the Perigordian to the Iron Age (i.e., to every age from about 35 000 to 2500 years ago), yet its true age, now thought to be Neolithic or later, remains still unknown. Much the same applies throughout Eurasia. In Portugal and western Spain, a corpus of engravings known to be no more than a couple of centuries old was consistently described as being from 20 000 to 30 000 years old. The ‘oldest known rock art site of Central Asia’, at Zaraut-Kamar shelter (Uzbekistan), is now thought to have been painted in the nineteenth century, as is a series of ‘Palaeolithic’ cave paintings in Mladecˇ Cave (Czech Republic). These and hundreds of similar examples suggest that age determination of rock art by stylistic or archaeological means is tenuous at best. The paradox is that, without some idea of its age, rock art has little archaeological relevance, and it is difficult to separate components of different traditions at sites. Some archaeologists have suggested that the study of rock art should best be left to ‘specialists’; others have vigorously opposed this view. The last few decades of the twentieth century witnessed the emergence of rock art research organizations in many parts of the world, beginning in North America, Australia, and Western Europe. In 1988

these bodies formed the International Federation of Rock Art Organizations (IFRAO), which currently has over 40 affiliated member associations, covering in effect most of the world. One of their principal aims is to introduce scientific methods, grounded in such diverse disciplines as geology, semiotics, or cognitive science. This trend is currently replacing interpretative endeavors with contextual studies, and concerns with meaning are giving way to epistemological rigor (see Oceania: Australia).

The Science of Rock Art One of the priorities in contemporary rock art research is the development of methods for estimating the age of rock art motifs. During the 1980s, this led to the replacement of stylistic or iconographic dating by forms of ‘direct dating’, in which the age of dating criteria physically and directly related to the rock art is determined. Propositions of the chronological relationship of these criteria with the rock art must be testable, that is, refutable. The dating criterion may be of the same age as the rock art (e.g., an organic binder contained in the paint residue of a pictogram, or the fracture surfaces caused by the impact that occurred when a petroglyph was made); or it may be older than the rock art (e.g., its support surface, or a lichen thallus dissected by an engraved line); or it may be younger than the rock art (e.g., a superimposed insect nest, or a mineral accretion concealing the art). There are numerous types of such directly relatable criteria, most of which have been provided by geochemistry so far. However, direct dating offers no actual ages of rock art; it merely generates testable propositions about the relevance of specific physical or chemical data to the true age of rock art. The interpretation of this relationship demands an understanding of the method used, of the circumstances of sample collection, and of the limitations applying to stated results. The principal difficulty experienced with this approach is that the interpretation of its results is usually contingent on such complex qualifications that they are difficult to relate to immediate concerns of archaeology. To practitioners seeking certainties, expressions of probabilities or intricate formulations of explanatory scenarios are frustrating and seem to limit the practical use of such data. The first method used in this quest was radiocarbon analysis of mineral accretions containing atmospheric carbon, such as carbonates and oxalates. These are often found in direct physical relation with rock art, but the utility of their results is limited by a complex set of qualifications. Uranium-series

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dating (thorium–uranium) has also been applied to carbonate. Most widely used has been the carbonisotope analysis of inclusions in mineral accretions or in paint residues, and the determination of the age of charcoal pigments. Here, the qualifications are somewhat simpler. In the former method, the principal limitation is that, to obtain valid estimates, the nature of the analyzed substance must be determined, either at the object or molecular level. Until recently, all such determinations referred to bulk samples, but in 2005, an Italian team succeeded in isolating the dated substance molecularly in rock paintings at five Libyan sites. The determination of carbon ages of charcoal pictograms is a straightforward method, but unfortunately, the date refers to the time when the tree in question assimilated carbon from the atmosphere, not to the time of rock art production. Ancient charcoal might have been used in this, and often was, which introduces an obvious limitation to such results. The most reliable results from any pictograms so far are 137 carbon isotope determinations obtained from beeswax figures in Northern Australia. An experimental approach is to use sand grains embedded in wasp or termite nests directly related to rock art to determine when they were last exposed to light, using the optically stimulated luminescence method. Petroglyphs may be more difficult to date than paintings, because they offer no substance relating to the time of their execution. The mineral dust then yielded is probably not recoverable. Nevertheless, the surfaces freshly exposed and the mineral crystals broken or truncated at that time experience significant changes over time, which are utilized in microerosion analysis. Two forms of this method have been used so far: the determination of erosion on rocks with components that weather at very different rates and the measurement of micro-wanes on fractured mineral crystals. The second version is the more developed, but its use is limited to very erosion-resistant rock types containing crystalline quartz, such as granite, whereas sedimentary rocks are usually unsuitable (Figure 2). A very robust analytical method, microerosion analysis yields reliable dates for petroglyphs manufacture, but they are typically imprecise and several preconditions need to be met. Recently, digital colorimetry has been applied to both repatinated petroglyphs and pictogram, after surprisingly consistent results were secured from historical inscriptions of known ages. Other approaches, so far not effectively applied, would be to use lichenometry or rock surface retreat for estimating the ages of petroglyphs, or the use of weathering zone growth rates and

Figure 2 Microerosion analysis of Neolithic petroglyph at Rupe Magna, Valtellina, northern Italy. Photograph by R. G. Bednarik.

macro-wanes. There is thus considerable scope for extending the range of viable direct dating methods. While the scientific study of rock art may still be in its infancy, it is not limited to issues of antiquity. Investigations of the technology of rock art have involved several productive approaches, including the study of the tools used in making petroglyphs, of paint recipes, of microscopic inclusions found in paint residues, and of the sourcing of pigment materials. Nanostratigraphy – the microscopic excavation of strata of paint residues, mineral accretions or weathering and patination zones – was first introduced in the 1970s, and has been developed to great sophistication already. Its principles are rather similar to those of archaeological stratigraphy, but its methods, obviously, are very different. To some extent, this method might even overcome the limitation of rock art being, in contrast to archaeological sediment strata, apparently two dimensional. This potential is well shown by Alan Watchman’s extraction of ten radiocarbon ages from a stratigraphical sequence of pigments and mineral deposits totaling only 2.11 mm thickness, in north Queensland. The results were all in sequence, covering a period of 26 000 carbon years. Various other issues have been explored by rock art science in recent decades, such as the establishment of criteria for the effective discrimination between human-made rock marks and natural markings on rocks. This had been a major problem in archaeology, with hundreds of cases of misidentification of both types of rock markings. Most of these mistakes refer to petroglyphs and natural markings resembling them, but there are also a few prominent cases of pictograms on record. One of the most promising areas of scientific investigation of rock art concerns the holistic analysis of its physical, cultural, and cognitive contexts. This includes the examination,

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often by field microscopy, of traces related to the production of rock markings, especially in well-preserved condition (particularly in caves). The methods used closely resemble those of forensic science (matching of microscopic striae, identification of microscopic organic traces, and so forth), and are designed to determine the gestures involved in making the rock art. Their results can be correlated with other evidence in the same context (e.g., subterranean mining of flint and possible medicinal use of speleothems, probable indications of ritualistic behavior; some examples of the latter are the intentional placing of cave bear bones or other objects, or the systematic marking of cave walls by deliberate activities not yielding rock art). Recently, a trend has become evident to explore the cultural and cognitive development of humans through rock art, especially of the Pleistocene period. Cognitive evolution, informed by advances in neuroscience and psychology, is increasingly becoming relevant to the understanding of the earliest art. Pleistocene rock art and portable art-like productions can provide evidence that may help test particular models as to how human cognition may have eventuated. As research into cognition and neuroscience continues apace, rock art and other palaeoart become primary data sources for it. Underlying principles and universals need to be identified, and the material of the Middle and Early Upper Pleistocene requires much more attention than has been evident in the twentieth century. This reflects another change from traditional preoccupations to new approaches. It will endeavor to place Pleistocene palaeoart into the context of cognitive evolution, explore its semiotic dimensions, and consider implications for technology and culture during the Palaeolithic period.

The Recording of Rock Art Since rock art has begun to be recorded, centuries ago, the purpose of such records has always been to create a visual register of those aspects of the art that were deemed important. This has remained so until quite recently, and it follows that rock art recordings are usually interpretations of individual observers, not objective data. Indeed, this principle is embodied in a ruling of the High Court of Austria in 2003, that rock art recordings are copyrighted because they are individual interpretations by the recorder. This is now changing with the introduction of sophisticated digital recording systems that yield much more objective results. Nevertheless, the ready availability of computer equipment and electronic image manipulating software does not necessarily obviate other recording

techniques. The discipline has in the past made the mistake of ignoring useful approaches, such as rock surface cartography as initially developed by Franc¸ois Soleilhavoup. It would be precipitate, therefore, to jettison all earlier methods, but it is certainly appropriate to discard all those that are invasive or threaten the research integrity of rock art. Many of the latter have been used extensively in the past, but there is absolutely no justification now to continue with any of them. These physical enhancement methods have included the application of clear liquids to close the pores of silica skins or other thin accretions, thus improving photographic records. The liquids used in this have ranged from water to motor oil, from kerosene to clear lacquer. Another common practice has been the outlining of rock art with chalk and a variety of other markers, including dye, pencil, lipstick, and felt pen. Archaeologists have contaminated the geochemical fabric of thousands of square meters of petroglyphs by applying organic white and black paints, to facilitate manual recording. The use of pressure-sensitive films, rubbings made with a great variety of materials, the production of casts from latex, plaster of Paris, papier maˆche´, thermoplastic resin, and so forth have all been found to affect the rock art, and in some cases have caused spectacular damage to it. The use of transparent film to copy the art can also be damaging, because these sheets tend to be electrostatic and the movement of pens or fingers can attract small flakes of material from paintings. Even the use of aluminum foil tamped gently into petroglyphs before it is backed by stiffer material, regarded as a reasonably safe method, has at last been opposed by a chemist working with rock art (Figure 3). There is one very simple rule now in recording: unless the rock art in question is about to be destroyed by other factors, no invasive method, no

Figure 3 Damage caused to petroglyphs by contact recording, Vorobiovo site, Siberia. Photograph by R. G. Bednarik.

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contact is acceptable. The first consideration in all rock art recording work must be that it would be selfish to prejudice any future analytical methods rock art scientists will bring to bear upon the rock art, centuries from now. Since we have not the faintest idea what these future methods will involve, there is only one possible solution: all rock art recording today must be by noninvasive methods, except in circumstances where the rock art is subject to other imminent threats. There is no need to resort to damaging and superseded methodology. Photography, sometimes in combination with noncontact enhancement techniques, is now universally available. Raking light photography (oblique lighting at night) is far more effective in recording petroglyphs than manual recording, which is a cumbersome and subjective procedure. It can be most conveniently accomplished with battery-powered movie lights. A variety of filters and special films are available to improve photographs of rock art. Cross-polarized photography, using two light sources with polarizing filters, can greatly enhance contrast. It is important that a calibrated color and gray scale be included on all rock art photographs, the most widely used being the IFRAO Standard Scale. This has a number of purposes, the foremost being the facility of color reconstitution. All photographic records are of distorted color, and all of them fade with time; therefore, a color profile included on a photograph permits the digitized recovery of original color of the object at the time the image was taken. The equipment now widely available to rock art recorders includes high-resolution digital cameras which, combined with the use of laptop computers in the field, have revolutionized rock art recording. Photographs can now easily be color-corrected on site, as soon as they are taken, right at the panel being recorded. The digital image processing programs now available have replaced the laborious enhancement procedures of the 1980s. In addition to this basic system, several more sophisticated recording options have recently become available. Some remain very expensive but, judging from previous experience, it is only a matter of time before they, in addition, become stock-in-trade, and ever more powerful tools are introduced at the high end. The use of photogrammetry, which has been sporadic in rock art survey work, has experienced a revival due to the introduction of digital elevation model (DEM) software. This can generate accurate three-dimensional recordings of petroglyphs. An alternative approach is the use of laser scanners to produce virtual digital models of great accuracy and versatility. This technique evolved from the need to record the topography of

groove shapes, such as those of Scandinavian rune stones. Manual groove topography of petroglyphs, still done in the late 1990s, has now been superseded by automated laser scanning. It yields visualization algorithms that facilitate the use of such recordings in the application of computer-assisted drawing (CAD) programs to rock art, which can create virtual rock art sites. Micro-topography of rock art has also been attempted with a CCD camera by obliquely projecting a grating fine grid (40 lines per mm) over the rock art. The alternative method of reproducing panels or sites is the production of physical rock art facsimiles. This has been used for many decades, but only sporadically because of the high cost involved. The most celebrated rock art facsimile is Lascaux 2, a partial copy of the famous cave in France. Having been created at the cost of $8 million, it is now viewed by about half a million tourists per year and its cost has been recovered many times over. Facsimiles are constructed by first acquiring the necessary topographic data, traditionally either by photogrammetry or the use of precision theodolites, but more recently by laser equipment. The rock panel is then recreated and the rock art projected onto it. This process is very laborious and involves considerable artistic skills.

Conservation and Site Management Humanity lavishes billions of dollars annually on its art objects, art repositories, and art industry. By comparison, its endeavors to look after its oldest and most valuable art treasures are miniscule. Despite its appearance of relative robustness, rock art is quite fragile, and what we see today is only the tiny surviving fraction of what was once created. Two factors need to be distinguished in the deterioration of rock art: the effects of natural processes, and the damage occasioned by human agency. The mitigation of the former is often difficult, whereas that of anthropic destruction is in most cases easily achievable. Importantly, deterioration by humanly introduced factors far outweighs natural degradation. In understanding the interplay between these two factors it is important to appreciate that the rock art that exists today does so because it has survived a great many natural decay processes, often surviving in a state of relative equilibrium with its ambient environment. Hence, it is likely to persist much longer unless there is a significant change in its preservation conditions, especially one introduced by human intervention. This may be as simple as the introduction of human visitation to a formerly pristine site, or as complex as the occurrence of acid rain caused by industrialization. The principal natural agent of rock art loss is moisture, mainly in the form of rainwater, capillary

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moisture in porous rock, condensation in caves and shelters, freeze-and-thaw cycles, surface run-off, and secondary effects such as salt efflorescence or exfoliation. Physical weathering of rock art panels occurs as insolation (solar radiation), lightning strikes, brushfires, Kernsprung, tectonic adjustments, and kinetic damage (aeolian, gravity, or water induced). Many forms of biological factors can contribute to weathering, including bacteria, fungi, lichens, algae, mosses, larger plants, insects (mud-daubing wasps, termites, bees), nesting birds, and various larger animals, especially domestic and feral species. For many of these threats, protective measures have been found. Site hydrology, for instance, can be controlled by artificial silicone driplines in shelters; condensation can be eliminated by climate control. One animal, however, is causing far greater rock art destruction than all other factors taken together. Of the many forms of damage occasioned by humans the perhaps most repulsive is that occasioned by researchers, be it through misguided recording activities or through their role in permitting or condoning the destruction of rock art by industrial or infrastructure development. The former has been largely eliminated in recent decades, but the latter continues unabated. At one Australian site complex alone, at Dampier, it has been responsible for the obliteration of about 100 000 petroglyphs. Tourists and site visitors contribute to rock art deterioration, though it has often been found necessary to sacrifice some sites to them in order to preserve many others. The locations of new sites are no longer made public, and well-known pristine sites such as Chauvet, Cussac, and Cosquer Caves in France are totally closed to all, except a few researchers who only enter these sites with careful precautions to prevent contamination. For instance, researchers are not allowed to walk on the floor of Chauvet Cave. In Australia, most of the cave art sites are only accessible to two or three researchers and their locations are generally confidential. There are very few professional rock art conservators worldwide, and the standards they apply vary from one region to another. Their tasks include graffiti removal, moisture and climate monitoring and control, and the design of site management measures. The latter differ according to local circumstances, and include such measures as the erection of fences to keep out animals, the installation of visitor boardwalks and paths, and in some regions protective grilles. In modern site management practice, the concept of ‘site fabric’ is paramount, referring to all physical and nonphysical aspects of a place, including accretionary deposits on the rock, even its ambience or religious significance. The primary principle of intervention at a rock art site is that any modifications

must be fully reversible. Today’s site conservation and management practices may well be superseded tomorrow, and the cultural resource in question is, after all, not renewable.

Global Distribution of Rock Art (Figures 4–15) The pre-eminence of the Franco-Cantabrian cave art has in some respects overshadowed the appreciation of the many other rock art traditions of Europe. In France, for instance, the extensive corpus of Fontainebleau receives scant attention, simply because it is of the Holocene rather than the Late Pleistocene. Much the same can be said about Spanish traditions,

Figure 4 Part of the southern wall of the quartzite cave DarakiChattan, India, bearing some of the oldest known rock art of the world. Photograph by R. G. Bednarik.

Figure 5 Petroglyphs believed to depict skiers, Zalavruga site complex, northern Karelia, Russia. Photograph by R. G. Bednarik.

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Figure 6 Petroglyphs at Ain Jamal, Jabal Qara, southern Saudi Arabia. Photograph by R. G. Bednarik.

Figure 9 Bushman/San paintings near Bethlehem, South Africa. Photograph by R. G. Bednarik.

Figure 7 Neolithic petroglyphs at Shuwaymas site complex, northern Saudi Arabia. Photograph by R. G. Bednarik.

Figure 8 Petroglyph of ornate zoomorph, Helan Shan, Ningxia Province, China. Photograph by R. G. Bednarik.

Figure 10 Petroglyph of a malevolent spirit being, Woodstock region, Western Australia. Photograph by R. G. Bednarik.

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Figure 11 Paintings of initiates at Garnawala, Wardaman tradition, Northern Territory, Australia. Photograph by R. G. Bednarik.

Figure 12 Macropod and other beings, Victoria River District, Northern Territory. Photograph by R. G. Bednarik. Figure 14 Petroglyph of a quadruped, which seems to resemble a ‘barking dog’, southern Peru. Photograph by R. G. Bednarik.

Figure 13 Recent pictograms at Nourlangie, Arnhem Land, Australia, painted by Nayambolmi in 1964. Photograph by R. G. Bednarik.

such as the Galician petroglyphs or the Levantine paintings. Alpine petroglyphs have fared somewhat better, especially in the western Alps at Mont Be´go and southern Alps in the Tellina and Camonica valleys. There are scattered sites or smaller concentrations in nearly all European countries, but the only other major series of sites extends across Scandinavia, from Denmark to Karelia. It comprises mostly petroglyphs, but pictograms do occur, especially in Finland. Little is known about the rock art of the Balkans and Greece, but there appears to be a fair amount of it. Portugal, Britain, and Ireland are well endowed with petroglyphs, typically nonfigurative. Most of European rock art has been attributed to the Metal Ages, some may be older, and traditions that are more recent certainly exist. It needs to be cautioned that credible dating is rarely available, and revisions still have to be anticipated. For instance, the Scandinavian

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Figure 15 Typical style of the petroglyph complex Toro Muerto, Peru, with animated anthropomorphs and copulating zoomorphs below. Photograph by R. G. Bednarik.

petroglyphs are mostly attributed to the Bronze and Iron Ages, but it is possible that more recent people, such as the Vikings or the Saami, were involved in their making. Asia, of which Europe is only a small appendage, comprises several large bodies of rock art that surpass numerically any European regional corpus. Most of the countries of the Middle East are rock art rich, especially Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel. Here, early inscriptions often occur alongside petroglyphs, helping to unravel the chronology, and suggesting that much of the art dates from between 3000 and 1400 BP. With the advent of Islam, rock art production was severely reduced although practices did continue. The rock art of the Caucasus region has only begun to attract interest recently, and very little is known about Turkish or Yemeni rock art. Researchers have noted the occurrence of concentrations in Pakistan, but so far no research of substance has been conducted there, while in the several countries to the north, it has only begun in the most recent years. Across Central Asia, including the Tibetan Plateau, there are numerous reports of rock art, but a great deal has been destroyed by Moslems, for instance along the Silk Road. Much better explored is the rock art of Siberia, of which concentrations appear along the Yenisey (impact petroglyphs) and Lena rivers (abrasion petroglyphs and few paintings). In Mongolia, the greatest assemblages are found in the Altai Mountains. The impressive iconography of the Central Asian regions, sometimes dominated by apparently human faces described as ‘masks’, or by extraordinarily ornate ‘deer stones’, continues into China, especially in the Ningxia Province and Inner Mongolia. Among the more than 10 000 Chinese sites, those in the north are almost entirely of impact petroglyphs, while the situation is

reversed in southern China. Nearly all rock art there is of pictograms, especially in the rock art-rich Yunnan Province, or in Guangxi Zhuangzu with its incredible site at Huashan, where monumental paintings extend to 40 m height. Japanese rock art is mainly found in small occurrences on boulders and stelae, but information is often unreliable. The countries of Southeast Asia all feature rock art, but publications are very sparse and no researchers have worked in most areas. A notable exception is Borneo, with its numerous limestone cave art sites of paintings and stencils. In the Philippines, sound ethnographic observations concerning cave paintings are available from Palawan. India offers one of the largest and best-explored rock art bodies in Asia, with paintings dominating in all provinces except in the far north and northwest, in the Deccan and the extreme south. The richest repositories are found in the rock shelters of the central regions, particularly in Madhya Pradesh. They include the best-known Indian site complex, Bhimbetka, of about 500 painted shelters (see Asia, South: Paleolithic Cultures). Africa, too, boasts some massive rock art concentrations. These begin with the several art regions of the Sahara, extending from Morocco to Egypt. The arid conditions have greatly facilitated the preservation of rock art of the last six milleniums. In terms of its artistic finery, Saharan art is matched by few traditions, one of them being the Bushmen/San rock paintings of southern Africa. Other painting and petroglyph traditions occur also in that region, and the Pleistocene finds of portable paintings in Apollo 11 Cave, Namibia, imply that very early traditions once existed. Other portable art from Africa is even older, but no African rock art has been convincingly

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demonstrated to be of the Ice Age. There are extensive corpora of rock art in Tanzania, Kenya, Gabon, Sudan, and smaller occurrences in probably all remaining African countries, but as in Asia, there are also great gaps in our knowledge of distribution. The situation is considerably better in Australia, where all major rock art regions have been identified and the issue of antiquity is somewhat clearer. The major bodies in the rock art-richest country are the petroglyphs of the Pilbara, the paintings of the Kimberley and Arnhem Land, and the mixed rock art of the Victoria River District and Cape York Peninsula. Other notable complexes are the stencil-dominated sites of central Queensland, especially in Carnarvon Gorge, the Sydney sandstone petroglyphs, and those of the Olary district in South Australia. In general, the number of sites increases from south to north, with the limestone cave art along the southern coast and in Tasmania forming an unusual feature. A remarkably large part of Australian petroglyphs seems to be of the Pleistocene, having been estimated to be as great as 20% of a corpus thought to be well in excess of 100 000 sites overall. Many of the islands of Oceania are also well endowed with rock art, among them New Guinea, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Canada’s rock art is comparatively sparse, with minor concentrations in British Columbia and relatively isolated finds in most other states. The United States, by contrast, has major occurrences, especially in the southwestern states. The Chumash paintings and Coso Range petroglyphs in California, the numerous sites across Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico all form a massive body composed of many traditions. Most other states also contain rock art where suitable conditions pertain. In terms of antiquity, North American rock art seems to be consistent with most of the rest of the world: all or nearly all the rock art is of the Holocene. The western art province continues in the neighboring Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, with notably impressive painting sites in Baja California. Smaller concentrations occur in much of Central America, and there is hardly a major island in the Caribbean that lacks rock art. In both regions, paintings as well as petroglyphs occur. All countries of South America feature rock art sites, but the major corpora are found in the Andean region, from western Venezuela to Patagonia. The largest single site is perhaps Toro Muerto in southern Peru, consisting of several square kilometers of petroglyphs. Other notable occurrences in Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina have been subjected to detailed study, as have the extensive traditions of northeastern Brazil.

Temporal Distribution of Rock Art The geographical distribution of global rock art is thus relatively well established, even though the regional details are often still of poor resolution. Its temporal distribution, however, remains surrounded by uncertainties and controversies. In part this is due to the very limited credible dating work conducted so far, but it is also the result of almost countless unfounded age claims from many parts of the world, and their often specious but strenuous defense. The usually stylistic rock art sequences we have in many world regions are often based on spurious evidence or frivolous notions. To select one example, the chronology of the massive corpus of Saudi Arabian rock art is based on the work of one single scholar who wrote four books about it without ever having set foot in that country. It is based on such evidence as the occurrence of objects shown across the waists of male figures that look much like swords. This author, however, thought that they depict ‘giant toggle-pins’, and since much smaller such objects in Israel were earlier than the late third millennium BC, he considered this observation to date the relevant Saudi petroglyphs. He invented more than 20 styles for southern Arabia, none of which was found to represent a temporal group. Most coexisted in preliterate as well as postliterate times, as shown by thousands of accompanying inscriptions. For one of these styles, even an ethnic Negroid group was invented, on the strength of perceived head shapes. When scientific dating and colorimetric sequencing recently tested this chronological sequence, it was found to be false in almost every detail. This is not an exceptional case; much the same can be reported from many other regions. Eurasia and the Sahara have been particularly fertile grounds for the invention of styles, traditions, and cultures, and for reifying these constructs by providing them with names, identities, and notional datings. In particular, there has been a tendency to claim Pleistocene antiquities for rock art that is in fact significantly younger. This has commonly occurred across Northern and Central Asia, where at present no confirmed Ice Age rock art is known, as well as in parts of Europe. Ice Age rock art occurs at many sites of southwestern Europe, but it is thought to be far more common in Australia, where favorable environments and a historical absence of iconoclastic traditions have facilitated preservation. All Pleistocene rock art of Australia is of cultures of Middle Palaeolithic technologies, whereas in Europe it all seems to belong to Upper Palaeolithic tool industries. The only exception there is the earliest rock art known in Europe, a series of small cupules (cup marks) found

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on the underside of a limestone slab placed over the grave of a Neanderthal child, in the French cave La Ferrassie. The oldest currently known rock art, however, was only recently found in the Indian state Madhya Pradesh (Figure 4). So far, the Acheulian (Lower Palaeolithic) antiquity of about 550 cupules and four engraved lines in two quartzite caves, Auditorium Cave (Bhimbetka) and Daraki-Chattan, has been confirmed by excavation. At the first site, two petroglyphs were encountered in an archaeological excavation; in the second cave, more than 30 had exfoliated from the walls and were recovered in occupation strata, together with numerous hammerstones that had been used in making these markings on the extremely hard rock. Similar petroglyphs at a few other sites in the region may prove to be of comparable age, as may cupules recently found in the Kalahari of South Africa. Remarkably, the oldest known rock art of both Americas, although significantly younger than that found in the three Old World continents, also consists typically of cupules and linear grooves. It may be tempting to see this as an indication of a universal culture of archaic Homo sapiens, expressed also in wide-ranging consistencies in Middle Palaeolithic stone tool typology. However, if the oldest types of rock art, the world over, are also the most deterioration resistant, taphonomic reasoning suggests that it is likely that cupules are not the earliest form of rock art produced. They simply had better prospects of survival than more ephemeral forms of art. Rock art of the Pleistocene remains a very rare phenomenon, always limited to exceptionally favorable preservation conditions. Its surviving instances do, however, increase in number toward the end of the Pleistocene. Present indications of rock art ages suggest a significant increase of quantity during the early to mid-Holocene, perhaps 7000 or 6000 years ago. Large corpora in arid regions begin simultaneously around that time, which is again perhaps a taphonomic phenomenon rather than an indication of cultural practice. In temperate regions, large bodies of surviving rock art first appear by the Neolithic or Bronze Age, where local lithologies are suitable. Finally, in regions of limestone and other less weathering-resistant rock types, rock art at open sites typically begins occurring after 2000 years BP. Therefore the temporal distribution of rock art is universally related to preservation issues, especially those of lithology and climate.

The Interpretation of Rock Art The interpretation of the iconography of rock art, that is, what it is thought to depict, its meaning and

its cultural role in ancient societies have been the primary preoccupations of researchers for centuries. There are, however, significant limitations to our access to these intractable dimensions of rock art. Most rock art motifs are not sufficiently adequately detailed naturalistic depictions of objects to permit reliable identifications, and such pronouncements are almost never testable for prehistoric rock art. The only blind test ever conducted of the ability of an alien researcher to effectively identify meaning in rock art, by N. W. G. Macintosh in 1977, concerned the rock paintings in Beswick Cave, Northern Australia. More than 20 years after he, an anatomist, had ‘identified’ the numerous zoomorphs and anthropomorphs depicted at this site, he discovered that some of the artists or their immediate relatives were still alive, so he took these experts to the site to tell him what each motif depicted. He found that 90% of his identifications were wrong, and he discovered that a beholder who is not an intimate participant of the culture could not determine the relationship of apparently juxtaposed images. He also reported that to correctly associate and integrate individual motifs into a whole to ‘‘express the purpose and thought context of the paintings’’ was totally dependent upon direct cultural information. Such access is of course impossible to prehistoric cultures; therefore, it would be imprudent to rely on the ‘identifications’ of scenes, figures, or artistic intentions by contemporary scholars posing as experts. Our own perception does not define reality, and even less can it define the realities perceived in other cultures. Our interpretations are freestanding constructs involving autosuggestion, reflecting our interpreting intellect and perception. They are not necessarily false, but their veracity is untestable and on balance they need to be regarded as reflections of the way we interpret reality – which we need to assume differs from the reality construct, cognition, and visual or mental perception of the now mute artist. Valid ethnographic interpretation of rock art is very limited indeed, and is largely restricted to Australia, although a few isolated cases elsewhere are known. It has been given much less prominence than the fanciful interpretations of rock art by humanist scholars, which usually involve shamans, trance visions, space travelers, rituals, religion, head-hunting, cannibalism, and a whole gamut of less entertaining variations. These interpretations provide insights into the perception, cognition, and cultural and academic conditioning of the interpreter. Because of the inadequate state of rock art dating we can in most cases not even know to which period, culture, and people the rock art in question is attributable.

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Other forms of rock art interpretation have been neglected but are more promising. For instance, semiotic analysis to examine the syntax of rock art seems viable, and the study of work traces and of contextualizing rock art within spatially related evidence of other activities is most promising in cave sites. Psychological interpretation, for example, in terms of graphic universals, is likely to yield testable information. Perhaps most importantly, the systematic application of such universal principles as those of taphonomic logic would lead to a variety of useful scientific propositions about rock art, but its potential has not been explored so far. As in all areas of rock art research, there is much room for improvement, which is precisely what renders this discipline so exciting and promising.

Rockshelters

See also: Asia, South: Paleolithic Cultures; Conservation and Stabilization of Materials; Dating Methods, Overview; Oceania: Australia; Sites: Conservation and Stabilization.

Further Reading Bednarik RG (2001) Rock Art Science: The Scientific Study of Palaeoart. Turnhout: Brepols. (Second edition 2007, Aryan Books International, New Delhi.) Flood J (1997) Rock Art of the Dreamtime. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. Le Quellec J-L (2004) Rock Art in Africa: Mythology and Legend. Paris: Flammarion. Leroi-Gourhan A (1982) The Dawn of European Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ucko PJ (ed.) (1977) Form in Indigenous Art. London: Duckworth.

See: Caves and Rockshelters.

Roman Eastern Provinces

See: Asia, West: Roman Eastern Colonies.

S SAMPLING METHODS, THEORY AND PRAXIS James W Mueller, Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia, PA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary cluster or nested sampling Divides the project area into arbitrary primary clusters that can be subdivided again for the selection of sampling units. Cultural Resource Management (CRM) CRM is the American practice of performing archaeological investigations prior to ground-disturbing construction so that archaeological resources, values, and information are preserved for future generations. It is sometimes referred to as public archaeology. In America, this practice is driven by the amended National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. ditch The low area surrounding an earthwork fortification and the dirt from its construction excavation is ‘thrown up’ to form the interior parapets. The geometry of the ditch and the parallel parapets defines the fortification, for example, a hexagonal star, rectangular, etc. glacis The outer plain that surrounds, and extends beyond, the ditch and which is cleared of vegetation so that an attack can be detected early. parade The central space of an earthworks fortification and is protected by the elevated parapets. parapets The elevated perimeter of an earthworks fortification from which quartered militia can fire at approaching attackers. Parapets define, protect, and separate the inner, parade portion of fortifications from the exposed glacis on the exterior side. primary cluster Refers to cluster sampling and to the initial creation and location of a block of space, the primary cluster that should be a microcosm of the variability in the target or sampled population. In nested or multistage sampling the primary cluster is subdivided several times into sub- or sub-sub-clusters before the desired sampling units are isolated and selected. project area A nonsampling, colloquial term for a site or region in which research, usually fieldwork, will be conducted, corresponding under certain sampling conditions to the target population. Planning Policy Guidance, no. 16 (PPG 16) Guidance issued in November, 1990, by England’s Secretary of State for the protection of archaeological remains and monuments when they are threatened by development and construction. PPG 16 outlines the necessary procedures and organizations involved in archaeological protection. It appears to be a more detailed English equivalent of the American Section 106 process under the National Historic Preservation Act (see CRM in Glossary). research design A written plan of the archaeological research to be accomplished and the methods to be employed.

sample size/fraction The number of sampling units selected for data collection and usually expressed as a fraction or percentage of sampled population. sampled population The larger area from which smaller sampling units are selected for data collection and analysis. It is nearly synonymous with the frame as a list of all sampling units that are accessible to the researcher for investigation and study. sampling element The smallest unit of observation and measurement for a given research design and objective. It is substantive and cultural in nature, as distinct from the completely methodological sampling unit. sampling unit A spatial unit of survey or excavation that is defined by its shape (quadrat or transect, rectangular, linear or square) and by its size (55 ft or 100 sq. ft, or a 10500 ft transect). The size of the sampling unit is not to be confused with sample size/fraction (see above). simple random sampling (SRS) The most basic kind of sampling that insures that each equal-sized, non-overlapping sampling unit has an equal probability of selection into the overall sample for data collection and eventual analysis. stratified sampling The least arbitrary sampling scheme in which the project area is divided into culturally or environmentally meaningful zones that are called strata from which sampling units are chosen (by SRS or unaligned) for investigation. subclusters and sub-sub-clusters Used, respectively, in the two- and three-stage cluster sampling schemes when the primary cluster is divided twice and three times, respectively, before reaching the level of sampling units. In two-stage cluster sampling, the sampling units are selected randomly (SRS) from the subcluster. In three-stage sampling, the sampling units are selected randomly (SRS) from the sub-sub-cluster. The unaligned technique may be used in lieu of SRS, but the systematic variant should be avoided. systematic sampling A variant of SRS that results in sampling units being located at randomly selected, equally spaced intervals across the sampled population. target population The largest spatial area or conceptual topic for which the interpretations of research are statistically valid. It is the sampling equivalent of the project area under certain conditions described in the text.

Sampling is a methodological tool of selection, discovery, and analyses used consciously and unconsciously by archaeologists in library, fieldwork, and laboratory work at all levels. Formal, quantitative sampling is based on probabilistic theory which is also associated with statistics. Therefore, this essay will include a limited statistical discussion, but focus mainly on the concepts and the mechanics of

1954 SAMPLING METHODS, THEORY AND PRAXIS

sampling, using actual survey and excavation projects, supplemented with experimental sampling, as illustrative examples. In preparation for fieldwork, certain publications selected for study help to create the research design, while other publications are not studied. During the discovery phase of fieldwork, space is sampled during survey and excavation to discover unknown cultural and environmental data about a region, site, feature, or artifact scatter, while some other data-bearing spatial areas are not selected for field investigation. During laboratory work, certain features and artifacts are selected for further study, while certain others are not selected for analysis. Of the selected features, artifacts, and ecofacts, certain attributes/variables are further selected for study from many possible attributes, while other attributes/variables are not selected, depending on the project’s research design. During report writing, certain attributes of the many recorded data classes are selected for textual description and interpretation, while others never make it into the final report. At all levels, archaeological research is a continual sifting and selection process, a winnowing down, many times over, to separate the proverbial chaff from the grain, a winnowing down from concepts and research objectives to objects and three-dimnensional space to qualities of the newly discovered data and to the past cultural meanings of all of the above. At any one, or all, of the above levels in the hierarchy of archaeological research, this selection process has been referred to as sampling. Sampling is beautifully suited to archaeological research because it is also hierarchical, as will be discussed herein. At the outset, it should be stated that complete coverage in library/archival research, survey, excavation, laboratory analysis, and report writing is the ideal and is usually preferable to sampling. However, the real-world constraints of costly and time-consuming, labor-intensive archaeology frequently demand the use of sampling as part of the archaeologist’s tool-kit.

Types of Samples Archaeologists have been using informal, very humanistic sampling (that is based on neither statistics nor probability theory) since the beginning of the profession. A vast body of archaeological knowledge has been built on this approach in the formative decades of the profession. In general, the emphasis in the body of knowledge has been on the spectacular and unusual finds, which constituted romantic conceptions of archaeology, and the opportunity to find what no else has seen or touched in hundreds or thousands of years. In addition to the phrase, intuitive sampling, other terms have traditionally been used to refer to related

variations of haphazard, nonprobabilistic sampling. These terms include purposeful, typical, judgmental, and grab samples. Purposeful samples might be those intentionally selected by the archaeologist to hit something cultural, for example, the top of hill where a site/ scatter might be expected. Typical or judgmental samples are those areas targeted to recover typical remains or to get at high-density artifacts scatters. At the other end of the intentionality spectrum, grab or haphazard samples are more or less thoughtless, data-free samples selected spontaneously and that continue to be used in spite of late-twentieth-century archaeological scientism. Investigations conducted by these means are part of what has been called descriptive surveys. Samples gathered by any of these informal means have very restricted analytical value, and the corresponding statistics can only be used to describe the data in the sampling units from which data were collected. Statistics applied to such samples cannot be used to generalize to any larger group, not to the larger population of which the sample is only a small part (see Statistics in Archaeology). However, in the second half of the twentieth century, biases and distortions in the interpretation of the archaeological record were realized. In that time period, new theoretical approaches (i.e., paradigms) to correct those distortions arose as scientism crept slowly, and with much internal professional resistance, into the practice of archaeology. Environmentalism, public archaeology, postmodernism, computer applications, systems theory, and model building are parts of the paradigm shifts. The introduction, thoughtful/ reflective use, and in-progress evaluation of many kinds of sampling has been part of the new methodological rigor and postmodern paradigm shifts. In the 1960s, the formative years of the shift, archaeologists used the sampling literature of sociologists and cultural geographers as guidance for developing parallel applications of sampling to archaeological investigations. This dependence is a continuation of the trend in American archaeology’s parent field, anthropology, that has a centuries-old tradition of borrowing concepts from related social sciences. For many years, the various kinds of probabilistic sampling have been traditionally identified by their scheme, for example, simple random (SRS), systematic, stratified, and cluster (to be described later herein). Recently, these traditional schemes have been grouped and labeled as conventional designs or designbased approaches. Adaptive and nonstandard designs (bootstrap and jackknife subsampling) were added to the sampling repertoire of statistical theory and social science beginning in the late 1970s. These new statistical additions are finding their way into archaeology. They may be considered more user-friendly to the

SAMPLING METHODS, THEORY AND PRAXIS 1955

nonquantitative archaeologist who feels peer pressure to employ probabilistic sampling. Opposed to those conventional, design-based approaches are modelbased approaches in which a constructed model is used to provide assumed, partially empirical information about the population being researched. The distinction between probabilistic and nonprobabilistic sampling has weakened since about 1980 in the intellectual postmodern era, as has the traditional emphasis on sampling without replacement. Jackknife and bootstrap subsampling are two techniques in this intellectual gray zone between probabilistic and nonprobabilistic sampling. In a word, jackknife and bootstrap subsampling are means of secondarily studying the behavior of selected samples, are statistically similar to sampling with replacement, and are needed for estimating population parameters more accurately. Bradley Efron contributed to the description of these techniques. They are suited for complex sampling schemes, for example, the multistage cluster, complex stratified schemes, and combinations of both cluster and stratified. Jackknife and bootstrap subsampling seem to be statistical solutions to the archaeological research paradox. This paradox says that empirical information about the ‘substantive elements’ of research interest (sampling elements, e.g., sites, features, artifacts, household room blocks) can only be found by investigating artificially contrived, methodological units of observation, that is, sampling units (cf. ‘Glossary’). This artificiality, this paradox creates a vast disconnect between archaeological research and statistical theory and has been described by Mueller as ‘‘Archeological Research as Cluster Sampling’’ and by Orton. More research is needed in this area.

Sampling and the Research Design Sampling is, or should be, embedded in a project’s research design, written before fieldwork is initiated to spell out such topics as research objectives and questions, existing knowledge, data requirements, investigator bias, sampling plan, strategic methods, and tactical techniques. Generally, the research design is written at least for the fieldwork phase of a project. In the best of all possible worlds, the research design should also include pre-fieldwork, library/archival research, laboratory investigations, and report writing, three aspects that are occasionally given short shrift in written research designs. Library/archival research to accumulate existing knowledge and previous archaeological investigations is frequently done hand-in-hand with the writing of the research design, particularly in American Cultural Resource Management (CRM) type archaeology. Project proposals required in the worlds of American CRM and English Planning Policy

Guidance, no. 16 (PPG 16) and funding grants in the academic world force archaeologists to write research designs. This is a good thing since all of the above topics are crystallized on paper; the competitive nature of winning proposals and grants forces archaeologists to think through the entire process from library through laboratory and possibly back to library again for writing the report. The general steps in a research design/sampling plan have been crystallized by Cochran and imported into the archaeological literature by Orton: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

assimilation of existing knowledge, objectives, population to be sampled, data to be collected, degree of precision required, method of measurement, the frame, sample selection, the pretest, fieldwork organization, summary and analysis of data, and information gained for future surveys.

These steps reflect the accepted worldview that sampling is part of statistical theory and that certain statistical decisions need to be made, especially at the fifth, sixth and tenth steps above. Concerning the fifth step, precision is the average size of the difference between estimates obtained from a series of samples . . . and the true value of the parameter. Precision is not to be confused with accuracy. Efficiency, another statistical descriptor of samples, is based on precision and states that the more precise sample scheme (the one with the lower calculated value of precision) is the more efficient, given that sample sizes are the same. Orton makes the valid practical point concerning the fourth step that perhaps budget restraints prevent sufficiently precise results about the target population and that some projects should not be undertaken if they cannot attain the needed level of statistical accuracy, precision, and bias. In the real world however, such statistical considerations rarely stop archaeologists who many times take nonstatistical, backup approaches. An important statistical point involves the sixth and the tenth steps. The statistics selected to summarize and analyze the data must be compatible with the method of measurement. Measurement refers to the type of variable used to describe something in the archaeological record (artifacts per grid unit, a feature’s dimensions, contents, and location, distance between in situ artifacts, etc.) and come in four types from simple to complex – nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio. Certain statistical measures are compatible with

1956 SAMPLING METHODS, THEORY AND PRAXIS

only nominal variables while other statistics are compatible with interval variables. Statistical power is maximized by making this match, while a mismatch results in the under-use or over-use of statistical measures and tests. One overarching, dominating principle governing sampling at all levels is samples should be representative and this is heard repeatedly among archaeologists. Another way of saying this very important principle is that a sample should include all the known diversity in the target population. The negative way of saying this is samples should not be biased; bias elimination is a goal of any scientist using sampling procedures. Bias, as a statistical concept, measures the difference between the mean (or any other parameter) of a single population and the mean of a very large number of means calculated for that sampling scheme. The mean (or any other parameter) of a single population is that which is customarily calculated by an archaeologist after a sampling-based field data collection. For instance, if he/she uses stratified sampling to collect data, but then uses formulas based on SRS, the bias would be large. Procedurally, bias results when the frame consists of sampling units that are beyond the target population or when sampling units within the sampled population are omitted from the frame. Repeated rounding errors or nonstandard observational abilities by field workers are other sources of bias. Bias cannot be eliminated by the sample size or by taking more samples. A second overarching, dominating principle governing sampling at all levels is that maximizing prior information known before fieldwork starts will improve the sampling plan and hence the interpretive results. Step #9, the pretest (or pilot project), is one way of gathering a little more information that will exponentially enhance the sampling plan; multistage research designs and adaptive sampling are other strategies for pretests. (Bayesian statistics is another method, albeit more theoretical than sampling approaches.) The research planning decisions that are traditionally associated with sampling (sample size, scheme, etc.) are made at the third, seventh and eighth steps above. Formal, probabilistic sampling derives its analytical advantages over intuitive sampling because it is a subset of probabilistic theory and applied mathematics. The likelihood (probability) of finding and observing any archaeological characteristic from an unknown (and perhaps unknowable) larger class of observations can be measured and quantified due to the interconnection between formal sampling and probabilistic theory. ‘‘Therein lies the power and utility of probabilistic sampling’’. Expressed differently,

probabilistic sampling allows a researcher to extend generalizations from the collected sample to estimates of the larger target population through a process known as statistical inference. In some situations, probabilistic sampling may not be needed. These situations include initial, pilot studies in which an academic archaeologist wishes to gain familiarity with a certain research area or in which the archaeologist wants to find some suggestive data that may help him establish working hypotheses that can be tested by a rigorous data collection effort. These exploratory studies frequently involve small sample sizes where drawing the sample is not justified in cost or in precision gained. Adaptive sampling, situated conceptually in the gray zone between probabilistic and nonprobabilistic methods, may help the archaeologist. Another situation occurs also in the world of CRM and contracted public archaeology where there is no need to generalize to the larger, target population; interpretation of the archaeological record of the sampled population is the only goal. In these cases, nonprobabilistic sampling is the necessary and sufficient method to determine what spatial areas to examine. In all these nonprobabilistic situations, the archaeologist is generally limited to descriptive, instead of the more powerful inferential statistics.

Sampling Terms – Substance and Method In order for an archaeologist to utilize this power of probabilistic sampling, the substantive concepts of target population and ‘sampling element’ and the methodological units of sampled population, ‘sampling unit’, and frame must be understood. The target population is conceptual and substantive in nature and relates to research questions/objectives of the behavioral past. For example, for a prehistoric project, the hunting practices of the Late Archaic in the Upper Schuylkill River drainage and, for historic projects, the entire archaeological site of Gridley’s fort in Figure 1 is a typical example of a target population. (The figures in this essay are based on a prehistoric survey and a fort excavation in two American CRM projects in which the author participated in the 1960s and 1990s.) The fort provides a clear example of spatially discrete areas that serve as good schematic illustrations of the site’s cultural-military diversity for the cluster and the stratified sampling schemes to be discussed later. Figure 1 basically shows the fort’s glacis, ditch, and the combined parapets-parade zone as covered over by the modern park walkways; the four cluster blocks were added to illustrate this essay. The 1990s excavation project occurred at Colonel Gridley’s Revolutionary War hexagonal star fort, built overlooking Boston Harbor in May, 1776,

SAMPLING METHODS, THEORY AND PRAXIS 1957 Glacis

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Figure 1 Site-level, illustrative cluster sampling scheme at Gridley’s fort. Four kinds of cluster samples are shown, and all, or more, may be needed to get to a respectable sampling size/fraction, provided that the proper cluster sampling formulas are used for data analysis. The figure shows the location and layout of the primary clusters so that all the fort’s anatomical diversity (the glacis, ditch, and paradeparapet, known from historical records) is represented in each cluster. Figures 5 and 6 illustrate various methods of selecting sampling units within these four primary clusters (PP, The forts parade-parapet area; the fort’s ditch; MOD, modern paved (outside clusters) walkway).

as a hilltop deterrent to the British navy. The Gridley fort excavation employed nonprobabilistic, purposeful samples primarily to identify fort features and secondarily to collect military artifacts. However, two overarching probabilistic sampling principles were employed in locating all excavation sampling units: (1) the principle of maximizing existing historical information and (2) the principle of locating the test units so as to capture all of the site’s historically documented military diversity. (The true outer limits of the target population are shown incorrectly by Figure 1’s rectangular border. The true, historically meaningful limits of the target population should have been the impaling, palisade-like abatis which can be also used as the true outer limit of the glacis, as well as of the target population. However, in this project, the location of the abatis was not shown on historical documents and was beyond the project area.) During the field discovery phase, the target population is also the largest spatial unit in the sampling hierarchy. On the other hand, the sampled population is observable and methodological in nature and usually relates to the present, for example, contemporary riparian zones, mixed deciduous forest, and

inaccessible areas that cannot be investigated, including trees and their surface root zones, blacktop paths, culturally sensitive areas, and political jurisdictions that denied archaeological permits for fieldwork are ‘not’ part of the sampled population. Such areas are part of the target population, but not the sampled population, which is spatially the smaller of the two; in Figure 1, the sampled population consists of the entire site ‘minus’ the paved walkways labeled Mod. The sampled population refers to the totality, the collection of all the sampling units that can actually be investigated. Differences between the sampled and target population may be due to modern disturbance and to transformations of the archaeological record of interest. The author suspects that many project titles and report titles that refer only to the target population may be incorrect. This occurs when data was collected from only the sampled population, but no data was collected from the target population. There are two such cases: first, for the excavation work at Col. Gridley’s fort, the parade ground, the parapets, and the superstructure of the magazine (probably located beneath the parade ground) were destroyed when the fort became a recreational park in the

1958 SAMPLING METHODS, THEORY AND PRAXIS GENERAL JOHN THOMAS WALK

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1060N

1040N

1020N

1000N

980N

960N

940N

920N

900N

880N

Figure 2 Site-level, nonprobabilistic, purposeful sampling used in the 1990s excavation of Gridley’s Revolutionary War star fort. A simplified version of this site plan is used as the base map for Figures 1 and 5–7.

mid-late nineteenth century. The grade level areas of the combined parade-parapets were destroyed and their subgrade levels were neither tested nor sampled in the mid-1990s excavations and so the interpretations rightfully only apply to the ditch, the gate entrance, and the magazine floor. The crucially important parade could not be sampled, and the two sampling units in the glacis were not appropriated interpreted as the fort’s glacis, but rather as stratigraphic control pits. Yet with those spatial limitations, Mueller, Pendery, and Griswold’s report title (listed below) gives the incorrect impression that the entire fort was investigated. The discerning reader will realize that not all fort parts were investigated and be accordingly disconcerted, a situation caused by the failure to differentiate between the target and sampled population. Second, the same failure to differentiate the two kinds of population at the regional level occurred in the Paria Plateau Survey. Part of the Paria Plateau, located in the Arizona Strip of northern Arizona near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, was surveyed (Figure 3) in 1967 and 1968 by the Museum of Northern Arizona on Federal land managed by the US Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management that funded the survey project. It was designed to be a complete, 100% inventory survey. Based on this 100% survey, Mueller conducted a sampling experiment designed to compare

extant (in 1970) aspects of sampling. Figures 3 and 4 herein are taken from this work. Only the southwestern portion was surveyed and the remaining three cardinal quadrants were not surveyed. The sampling element is the smallest substantive concept at the other extreme end of the size spectrum from population. The sampling element is the basic unit of measurement for which information is sought. For the excavation of Gridley’s fort (Figure 2), the smallest sampling elements, according to the project’s research design, were at the feature level of analysis – defining the fort’s ditch feature. Additional discoveries made in the process of defining the ditch included additional fort features – the gated entrance with its irrigation channels and the magazine foundations. The glacis area was tested, but could not be confirmed archaeologically. Artifacts were not the sampling element because they were considered only as dating means to verify that the discovered features belonged to the time period of Gridley’s eighteenthcentury fort. The Gridley fort example shows that the precise nature of the sampling element will be determined by a project’s research design. For other projects, for example, in environmental archaeology, when settlement patterns are the research objective, the larger unit of the region (e.g., the Paria Plateau as a region, Figure 3) is considered the target population, while

SAMPLING METHODS, THEORY AND PRAXIS 1959 UTAH ARIZONA

KAIBAB PLATEAU

P A R I A L A T E A U

P

Bia Ridgo (5)

RI VE

R

Northern (7)

Valley (6) Son

DO

Valley (6)

dm

LO RA

ill (8

N

CO

)

LEGEND INTER-PLATEAU LOCALE (1) DETRITAL LOCALE (2) RIM LOCALE (4) MESA LOCALE (3) UNSURVEYED

5 mi

0

5 mi

Figure 3 Regional-level, environmentally defined strata on the Paria Plateau survey. The named locales become strata for the sampling purposes and were numbered for computer ease.

UTAH ARIZONA

1 KAIBAB PLATEAU P

P A R I A L A T E A

U

3

4

5

6

RI

1

VE

2

R

1

DO

1

5 ml

0

5 ml

CO

LO

RA

7

N

Figure 4 Regional survey using the multistage, cluster sampling scheme with the township-range-section of the Paria Plateau. Cluster 1 is a noncontiguous cluster. The primary clusters are numbered and divided into the second stage clusters listed in Table 1.

sites, artifacts, and geo-biological data (noncultural pollen cores, pond sediments, etc.) are considered the sampling elements. When the reconstruction and explanation of contemporary, community patterns such as family structure and intra-village exchange patterns are the goals of research, sites or components of the same time period become the target research

population and residential units (pueblo rooms, hearth-centered artifact concentrations, etc.) become the sampling units of analysis. When food-storage patterns constitute the research goal, features (and possibly house floors) become the population with bone and botanical remains becoming the units of analysis, that is, the sampling elements.

1960 SAMPLING METHODS, THEORY AND PRAXIS

The methodological units of frame and sampling unit are convenient constructs that help the archaeologist implement the sampling strategy. The frame is the spatial inventory, the complete listing of all sampling units that are being investigated in a region or site. In a regional survey project, the sampling units may be quadrats or transects that can be investigated by foot survey. Quarter sections within the township-range grid system are an example of a quadrat, while transects are generally long, thin rectangles that crisscross several environmental zones. The inventory of all surveyable sampling units (of whatever shape) constitutes the frame and the sampled population for the survey project. (Such an inventory does ‘not’ constitute the target population.) In a site-level excavation project, the sampling units may be arbitrary excavation units, 5 ft  5 ft, some of which are selected for excavation by the archaeologist. The collection of all excavatable 5 sq. ft sampling units constitutes the site, and, in sampling parlance, is also called the frame. In these two examples, quadrats and 5 sq. ft excavation units are imposed units that usually have no basis in prehistoric reality, and hence, they both are methodological, not substantive, in nature. They are spatial units of observation that will be subdivided and/or combined to form artifact scatters and ecological niches that have cultural and environmental meaning. At the artifact level, the same artifact may be a sampling element for one research objective and become part of a population for another research objective. For example, a biface may be a sampling element to establish hunting loci to reach the goal of establishing subsistence patterns within a region. As a sampling unit, the same biface may simply be a carrier of percussion flaking attributes when the research goal is lithic reduction strategies.

The Sampling Paradox and the Archaeological Research Paradox The goal of sampling is to obtain data that is representative of a given target population (s) of research interest. Of course, if the population were completely known, then there would be no need for collecting additional information. This is what is known as the sampling paradox. (The guideline that the best sampling designs are those that maximize prior information is also part of the sampling paradox.) Properly speaking, representativeness refers to characteristics of a population including its central tendency (means, mode, median) and variability (the nature of its dispersion from central tendencies). It is easy to describe the central, most common characteristics of a population (e.g., ‘mostly bifaces in test unit 5’ or

‘polychrome is dominant at scatter 101N, 13S’) because centrality can be summarized as univariate. Dispersion, on the other hand, is more difficult to describe because it is more complex in nature. For years the model of SRS was an overly simplistic, thought-free, data-free way of assuring representativeness of the sample. SRS has also governed the thinking of archaeologists using other kinds of probabilistic sampling (e.g., stratified, the cluster scheme). Under SRS, each unit has to have an equal probability of selection of elements (‘epsem’, in sociological sampling terms). This epsem was operationalized in archaeology by forming equal-sized, nonoverlapping sampling units. Epsem is no longer thought to be a requirement. For example, with the ‘cluster sampling scheme’, units in the selected cluster have a greater chance of being selected than those outside the cluster(s). This easing of epsem was brought to light by the recent introduction of adaptive sampling. Adaptive sampling basically is a procedure for selecting additional sampling units based on the results of certain variables observed during a pretest or an earlier phase of the project. It is an extension of the principle that the best sampling designs result from maximizing prior information and that data collection results must be constantly evaluated. It is also a refinement of the pretest/pilot project and of Redman’s multistage strategies and is designed to add to variability in the sample. Initially applied in biological and environmental situations, it has been combined with the cluster sampling scheme, is based on a neighborhood concept, and can be summarized as follows: prior to survey, a neighborhood of units is defined on the basis of spatial position compared to an initially selected sampling unit. After the results of the initially selected unit have been completed, additional units that meet certain empirical conditions (e.g., more than six artifact scatters of 20 or more pieces of debitage per transect) and the original positional requirement are added to the sample and examined. Any unit not meeting the empirical and locational conditions will stop the sampling process – no further units are examined. This simplified example excludes the cluster and network concepts that are more fully explained by Orton, as well as by Thompson and Seber. This example also shows that every unit does not have an equal probability of selection (epsem); those units closer to an initially selected unit have a greater chance of selection. Nested and cluster sampling are two nearly synonymous terms related to the hierarchical nature of archaeological methods and of archaeological data. The terms refer to the scale of the archaeological record, data, and their context. For example, regions

SAMPLING METHODS, THEORY AND PRAXIS 1961

are subdivided into townships and then into sections that are selected to survey for sites and scatters. Sites themselves are subdivided into behaviorally meaningful zones (e.g., food preparation, residential, trade, trash, etc.) that are redivided into arbitrary grid units that are selected for excavation. The site contents include three-dimensional soil strata and features that themselves contain pollen profiles, faunal evidence, and artifacts. Soil strata, features, and artifacts each contain attributes/variables of observation (at the nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio scales) that are initially selected for study in the laboratory and then subsequently selected for description and inclusion in the monograph reporting on a project. However, the recent recognition of the cluster sampling approach (as opposed to the cluster sampling scheme discussed in this article) may have affected the existing body of archaeological knowledge. The cluster sampling approach refers to the fact that archaeologists are sampling space during the research process; during survey, methodologically convenient quarter sections, for example, are surveyed to discover and recover information about cultural and environmental variables to which we ascribe prehistoric meaning. During at least the initial stages of excavation, grid units are also being examined for cultural and environmental variables. Prior to field investigations, we do not know information about sites, features, and artifacts; we must discover this information by sampling space. Sociological statisticians have long realized (since the 1950s at least) cluster sampling as the approach when the unit of sampling differs from the unit of observation and measurement. They have also used a different set of statistics and formulas to interpret data collected by cluster sampling. In archaeology, fieldwork is a sample of space, because detailed information (as specified in the research design) about the artifacts, scatters, and sites are unknown. In the big picture, it is possible that there are some false positives in the accumulated body of archaeological knowledge; some statements that have been accepted as true are actually false, a type II error. (The reason for this is that the proper statistical tests have not been used. Both the cluster sampling approach and the cluster sampling scheme requires its own set of statistical formulas for population estimation and for hypothesis testing. The conventional, normally used formulas for simple random samples and epsem do not apply to either the cluster sampling approach or to the cluster sampling scheme.) This distortion in archaeological knowledge probably most often goes unrecognized at smaller scales where variability would be understated. In other words, populations that are determined to

be statistically different are really statistically the same. This distortion also goes unrecognized when areal (sites per environmental stratum) or volumetric (artifacts per soil or feature stratum) ratios are calculated. For these examples, propertied space (not arbitrary space) loses its methodological characteristic and becomes substantive, part of prehistoric meaning. Another ramification is that smaller sample sizes may be needed to distinguish between two samples collected.

Sample Size/Fraction and Sampling Unit Sampling design also involves choices of the interrelated factors of sample size/fraction and the sampling unit (shape and size). They are interrelated because of statistical considerations and because of the costs of doing archaeology. In statistics, sample size is usually expressed as the number of sampling units that will be, or have been, investigated. In popular political polling, the results frequently mention, for example, that 4123 people responded out of 10 000 questionnaires; 4123 would be the sample size while 10 000 would be the sampled population. In archaeology, sample size is best thought of as sampling fraction because it is usually expressed as a fraction or percentage, for example, 10% sample, meaning that 10% of the project area, site, or region is being investigated. Sample size refers to the number of sampling units needed to obtain a certain level of precision and can be determined by solving statistical formulas for sample size after possible precision levels and other archaeo-statistical factors are determined. Sampling unit is the methodological unit, usually spatial in nature, through which archaeologists look in order to observe the past. Sampling unit consists of the size and shape. For example, quadrats (square or rectangular) and transects (rectangular) are two types of sampling units in regional survey. Rectangular trench excavations (manually dug or by backhoe) and square grid units (large block excavations, e.g., 25 ft on a side, 625 sq. ft) are analogous shapes in site excavation. A larger number of smaller sampling grid units increases the cost of locating the units and works best for descriptive CRM/PPG 16 surveys. For distributional research questions concerning relations and associations among various data classes, larger, square sampling units are preferred, but such units are difficult statistically. Sample size is also related to sample comparisons through the concept of significance. As sample size increases for two samples being compared, the probability of any given difference between the samples decreases. In other words, it is easier to show statistical differences through significance with larger sample

1962 SAMPLING METHODS, THEORY AND PRAXIS

size; samples may in fact become too large. On the other hand, when sample size is small, it may be difficult to show that two samples are statistically different. A ‘via media’ solution balances the costs and benefits of large sample sizes/fraction against large sampling units and against the stated research objective.

Sampling Scheme The choice of sampling scheme is usually the most basic sampling decision to be made. At the same time, the choice is one of the most information-sensitive, methodological decisions of the entire research design process. The four basic, conventional kinds of schemes to choose from are ‘SRS’, cluster, stratified, and systematic sampling. The sampling scheme is the common way of referring to the sampling plan; archaeologists are frequently heard saying that they used ‘stratified sampling in the excavation of site XXX’ or that they used ‘cluster sampling on the XXX survey project’. (In written reports, archaeologist’s complete description of the sampling plan includes the choice of (1) the sampling unit (that includes the size and shape of the unit) and (2) sample size, which is a slight misnomer because it refers to the number of sampling units chosen from the population. See the preceding section.) The choice of scheme should be determined by the amount off pre-investigational information available to, and used by, the research archaeologist. SRS should be used when little or no information about the target population is known, regardless of whether the target population is thought to be patterned or unpatterned. SRS crosscuts both patterning and nonpatterning in the target population and is commonly thought to the ‘safest’ and least challenging scheme that can be used, requiring the use of no existing information to create a sampling-based research design. The initial exploration and testing of sites about which no subsurface information exists is a good situation to use SRS. Overall, SRS results in a haphazard scatter

of sampling units across a project area and may increase survey costs due to their possibly far-flung locations within the target population. Sampling units may be determined with the aid of a random number table or generator. The cluster sampling scheme, as opposed to both the above SRS approach and the cluster sampling approach, is best used when moderate amounts of existing environmental or cultural information about the target population are known. The cluster sampling scheme subdivides the spatial population, the project area into arbitrary, grid-like areas that crosscut both obvious, known and hidden, undiscovered zones, for example, artifact-based cultural zones at the site level and environmental zones at the regional level (Figure 1 for clusters at the site level and Figure 4 and Table 1 for clusters at the regional level). The cluster sampling scheme is best used in two situations: (1) in sites or regions that are assumed, believed, or proven to be relatively homogeneous for any given cultural or environmental variable and (2) in sites or regions where arbitrary grids can be constructed so as to constitute a microcosm of the entire project area. Sites that contain only large, single-raw-material, artifact scatters and relatively few features, but without architectural residences, typically qualify for the cluster sampling scheme. Each cluster is a replica of other clusters in the project area (see Figure 1 where each of the four rectangular clusters contain portions of the three excavatable portions of the fort – the glacis, ditch, and parapets-parade), and the variability/diversity of the target population is minimal. The cluster sampling scheme results in a tightly clustered distribution of sampling units that frequently makes fieldwork easier and reduces its costs. The single-stage cluster sampling scheme is plotted on the fort site plan (Figure 1, left) with selected sampling units shown in the detail of Figure 5. Single stage refers to the fact that primary clusters are

Table 1 The stages of cluster sampling on the Paria Plateau Primary clusters

Second-stage, sub-clusters

Cluster number

Township range

Section numbers

1

41N, 3E 40N, 3E 39N, 3E 40N, 4E, W-1/2 40N, 4E, E-1/2 39N, 4E, W-1/2 39N, 4E, E-1/2 39N, 5E, N-1/2 39N, 5E, S-1/2

14, 23, 24, 26 2, 11, 34 3, 10, 15, 23 19–21, 28–33 22–27, 34–36 1–9, 16–31 3–3, 10–15, 22–24 4–9, 16–18 19–21, 28–30, 32, 33

2 3 4 5 6 7

Number of sections

11 9 9 12 12 9 8 70

SAMPLING METHODS, THEORY AND PRAXIS 1963

920 Glacis

D

940E 1-Stage B SRS

960E

M O D.

D

M

980E

O D

D. A 1-Stage

1000E

PP PR

System

1020E MOD 1040E

Sampling Units selected for excavation

D 1060E

PP

Glacis

1000N

900N

960N

940N

920N

900N

880N

Figure 5 Site-level, single-stage, intra-cluster sampling at Gridley’s fort. Top: The ‘B’ primary cluster was divided in a single stage to 10  10 ft sampling units which were selected by SRS, producing a less-patterned arrangement of selected sampling units than systematic below. Bottom: The ‘A’ primary cluster was divided in a single stage to 55 ft sampling units. The bias-creating patterning characteristic of systematic sampling is shown by the linear, diagonal arrangement of selected sampling units (see Figure 1 for legend).

divided only once and then directly into sampling units; there are no intervening divisions between the primary cluster and the sampling unit. In Figure 5, ‘A’, the reader can count the small, solid-line squares to see that the frame consists of 72-5  5 ft sampling units (that are called test or excavation units in nonsampling archaeological parlance). The units that would be excavated were selected by systematic sampling (see below in this same section) within the primary cluster. In Figure 5 ‘B’, the reader can also count the solid-line squares to see that the frame consists of 24-10 10 ft sampling units (that are called test or excavation units in nonsampling archaeological parlance). The units that would be excavated were selected by simple random sampling (SRS, see above in this same section) within the primary cluster. Both examples in Figure 5 illustrate a 10% sample fraction ‘within the cluster’. However, the overall ‘site sampling fraction’ would have been a minuscule 0.4% for ‘A’ and 1.4% for ‘B’. Hardly any archaeologist would be satisfied with that and, hence, additional primary clusters can be laid out and the above procedure repeated.

Multistage cluster sampling schemes are variants of single-stage cluster sampling and involve several divisions of the primary cluster. In the two-stage cluster sampling of Figure 6, top, the primary cluster is spatially subdivided twice – first into six subclusters (the heavy dashed lines) and then the subclusters are each divided into four sampling units (the light, solid lines). This process resulted in a frame of 24 sampling units in the sampled population. Within ‘each subcluster’, consisting of four 10  10 ft sampling units, a single sampling unit could have been randomly selected for excavation. This process would have produced a 25% sampling fraction which differs, for illustrative purposes, from the 10% sampling fraction of single-stage cluster sampling (Figure 5). To reduce the 25% sampling fraction of the twostage cluster sample (Figure 6, top) the following process was used – as a standard process of randomly deleting subclusters to attain the exact sample size/ fraction desired: 1-number the subclusters 1–6, as shown; 2-from a random number table, randomly draw single digits between 1 and 6; 3-the first two such digits would represent the two subclusters

1964 SAMPLING METHODS, THEORY AND PRAXIS

Glacis

Feet 20

SRS-2-Stage

0

Sampling units

Scale 20

40

N

MOD

D

Glacis PP

D

3-Stage-systematic

1160N

1140N

1120N

1100N

1080N

1060N

1040N

1020N

Figure 6 Site-level, multistage sampling within clusters at Gridley’s fort. Top, two-stage: Six subclusters were laid out on paper and only two were randomly selected for choosing sampling units in order to reach a 10% sample size/fraction within the primary cluster. Bottom, three-stage: The primary cluster was divided three times into subcluster, sub-subcluster, and sampling units which were selected by the systematic method, producing two-way linear patterns of the sampling units.

from which a 10  10 ft sampling unit would be selected for excavation. These two units, out of the 24 in the frame/sampled population, result in a 1/12th intra-primary cluster sampling fraction, close to the intra-primary cluster 10% of the single-stage example of Figure 5. The point is that the elimination of subclusters has to be done randomly to qualify the sampling procedure as probablilistic. Another point shown is the difficulty of exactly attaining a specified sampling fraction with large (1010 ft) sampling units. Figure 6, bottom, illustrates three-stage cluster sampling with 55 ft sampling units. The multistage sampling procedure begins with locating and outlining the primary cluster, which is then spatially subdivided three times – first, into eight subclusters (the bold, dashed lines) and, secondly, the subclusters are each divided into four sub-sub-clusters (the bold, dotted lines) which, thirdly, are then each subdivided into nine sampling units (the light, solid lines). Thus, this process would have resulted in 288 sampling units. Within ‘each sub-sub-cluster’, consisting of nine 55 ft sampling units, a single sampling unit was systematically selected for excavation – systematic because it was the same numbered sampling unit in each

sub-sub-cluster. In this case, the first sampling unit would be excavated because the digit ‘1’ was selected randomly from among the eligible digits of one to nine. This process produced an 11% intra-primary cluster sampling fraction (1/9th), close to the illustrative standard of 10%. However, the overall site sampling fraction would have been a minuscule 0.4% for two-stage and 1.5% for three-stage. Hardly any archaeologist would be satisfied with that and, hence, additional primary clusters can be laid out and the above procedure repeated. Also, the lesson to be learned is that, with smaller sampling units and another stage of dividing the primary clusters, it is easier to reach a desired sampling fraction. Requiring the maximum amount of pre-investigational information, stratified sampling subdivides the spatial population, the project area into real, nonarbitrary areas, such as architecture residence zones, trash areas, burial loci, catchment areas, microniches, and vegetative zones. A large project area to be surveyed is generally stratified on the basis of contemporary environment, but stratifying on the basis of prehistoric environment would be better (but it

SAMPLING METHODS, THEORY AND PRAXIS 1965 x

920

Glacis

x 20

M O D

Glacis 940E x

0

20

40

Scale

Feet N

D x

960E D M 980E

PP

O D

x

PP x

1000E

Glacis

x

1020E

x

x x

1040E

MOD

x

x

D

Glacis

x

x

x

MOD

PP

x PP

D

1060E x

x

x

x x

x

1160N

1140N

1120N

1100N

1000N

1060N

1040N

1020N

1000N

980N

960N

940N

920N

900N

880N

Figure 7 Site-level, stratified sampling, disproportional, scheme at Gridley’s fort. Seven sampling units were selected by SRS from each of the unequal sized strata, producing strata-specific, sample fractions that were also unequal – this is what is meant by ‘disproportional’. Although randomly selected, many selected sampling units turned out to concentrated in the ditch and parade-parapet on the fort’s north side (PP, the fort’s parade-parapet area; the fort’s ditch; MOD, modern paved walkway; x, 5  5 ft sampling units (21) selected for excavations).

requires a lot of known, prehistoric environmental data). At the site level, a prehistoric excavation project may subdivide the site into artifact concentrations of various raw material types. A prehistoric site that has been tested may be found to contain spatially discrete subdivisions such as a trash scatter, an artifact scatter, a burial area, a feature area for outdoor food processing/preparation, and an area of architectural residential units. Each of these spatially discrete areas constitutes a stratum and can be excavated in greater depth through the use stratified sampling. At Col. Gridley’s historic fort site, the strata (Figure 7) are the parts of the fort – ditch, glacis, and parapets-parade. Stratified sampling emphasizes internal distinctions within the project area, and each strata should be as different as possible from other strata. Stratified sampling is best used when variability within the target population, within the project area, is maximum. With stratified sampling, boundary problems become significant because the sampling units are generally grids while cultural phenomenon are not geometric. The distribution of sampling units in stratified sampling across a project area is fairly haphazard, similar to SRS. Stratified sampling can be combined with SRS

(as was done in Figure 7) as a means of selection within strata; the unaligned technique can also be combined with stratified sampling to randomize the selection process within. By comparison, the basis for the cluster sampling scheme is more arbitrary, intuitive, and impressionistic, while stratified sampling tends to be more data based, easier to describe, and more verifiable. Figure 7 illustrates the stratified, SRS, disproportional scheme, so named because the sampling fraction in each stratum is disproportional, that is, the stratum sampling fractions are unequal. This happens because the surface area of each stratum is different and the author selected seven 55 ft sampling units in each stratum, resulting in unequal sampling fractions. Overall, the site sampling fraction would have been a minuscule 1.06%. Proportional (read ‘equal’) sampling is the other major kind of stratified sampling. For illustration, proportional sampling could be attained in this fort case by making the number of selected sampling units proportional to the area of each stratum. The choice of sampling scheme is also related to anthropological-like assumptions about human behavior and the archaeological record. If one assumes, believes, or has proven, for the immediate

1966 SAMPLING METHODS, THEORY AND PRAXIS

project area, that the archaeological record and the human behavior that produced it are primarily random and unpatterned (as, perhaps, during the past ascendancy of chaos theory), then any of the above schemes can be used indiscriminately with no preference for one scheme over another. This may have been a popular approach consistent with the intuitive sampling generally employed during the preprocessual days of the 1950s and earlier. Systematic sampling is frequently used in survey level projects because of mechanical convenience; sampling units (shovel tests, collection grids, and walkover units) can be easily selected on a regular basis. If, however, the research archaeologist assumes, believes, or has proven, for the immediate project area, that the archaeological record is primarily nonrandom and patterned, then systematic sampling should not be employed by itself or in consort with any of the three other basic types of schemes. This is because systematic sampling selects sampling units in a patterned way; the patterning or interval in the sampling units on the frame may select all of a certain kind of cultural item in the archaeological record or may select none of a certain kind of cultural item in the archaeological record. Systematic sampling has these inherent, hidden conceptual risks that usually are ignored because of its mechanical convenience. Because of this hidden disadvantage, systematic sampling is considered almost as a nonprobabilistic technique, somewhere between judgment sampling and SRS. The systematic interval between sampling units is determined by dividing the number of sampling units on the frame by the sampling fraction, and the quotient is the upper limit of the starting point the first sampling unit selected (one is, perforce, always the lower limit!). The unaligned technique can be used, instead of the systematic scheme, in combination with stratified sampling to randomize the selection process within strata, avoiding the patterning disadvantage of systematic sampling. This inherent bias in systematic sampling can be corrected by a statistical treatment known as post-hoc analysis.

The Past and Future Experimental sampling was part of archaeology, but probably not part of other social sciences. The reason for this, as stated above, is that archaeology imported, with healthy skepticism, sampling theory from sociology and cultural geography. The sampling paradox and the archaeological research paradox both came in with the sociological tide, both paradoxes remaining under-appreciated to this day in archaeology. More research concerning the ‘archaeological research as cluster sampling’ paradox

and its possible solution by jackknife and bootstrap subsampling is needed. Before adopting the sociologists–geographers sampling as their own, archaeologists had to convince themselves with empirical proof that the theory worked on real archaeological data, as opposed to sociological or geographical data. Therefore, we stayed indoors, as armchair archaeologists, and compared fictive, hypothetical samples to total 100% archaeological populations based on our own previous, semi-good, old fashioned field work. Did experimental sampling work? Did it increase the use of probabilistic sampling in archaeology? The answer is probably yes. Was it necessary? Probably not, because the theory of statistics is so strong that our case studies are pale in comparison. Has experimental sampling contributed anything to archaeological knowledge or to sampling theory in general? Probably not. Within the last 30 years since the late 1970s, probabilistic sampling has loosened its collar, so to speak, with the advent of model-based designs, such as reflective, bootstrap and jackknife sub-sampling, and of adaptive sampling. What used to be perceived as vast differences between probabilistic and nonprobabilistic sampling is evaporating into postmodern space. Rather than a traditional view of probability as an onerous straitjacket, Mueller and Orton, among others, have realized that sampling and statistics can be used creatively to enhance a project. One such use is the intellectual freedom to operationalize an anthropological concept in terms of the empirical reality of the archaeological record. One archaeologist may operationalize a concept one way, while another archaeologist operationalizes a concept another way. This is the accepted subjectivity of statistical inference as a logical tool; sampling and statistics also have their objective sides, as is commonly known. A second creative use is finding the proper match between the statistical test, the method of measurement, and the sampling scheme to fit the project’s research objectives. Thirdly, one can express one’s doubts (or conversely, one’s confidence) about a tested idea/hypothesis both quantitatively and graphically. Quantitatively, one can say that there is a 5% chance, for example, that the observed values between two samples will be greater than what we observed. Graphically, the critical value (or interval) can be plotted on the x-axis of a distribution curve and its relation to the mean and to the population’s dispersion can be expressed visually. And finally, the most powerful creative use is the ability to generalize from a small sample in one project’s data collection to a large target population and measure the probability that the generalization is correct.

SEASONALITY OF SITE OCCUPATION 1967 See also: Statistics in Archaeology; Computer Simulation Modeling; Seasonality of Site Occupation.

Further Reading Cherry JF, Gamble C, and Shennan S (eds.) (1978) Sampling in Contemporary British Archaeology. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. Cochran WG (1976) Sampling Theory, 3rd edn. New York: John Wiley. Cowgill GL (1994) Unknown sampling bias is not a license to ignore statistical theory. In: Johnson I (ed.) Archaeological Method Series 2: Method in the Mountains: Proceedings of the UISPP Commission IV Meeting, pp. 7–11. Sydney: Sydney University. Efron B (1982) The Jackknife, the Bootstrap, and Other Resampling Plans. Philadelphia, PA: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Kintigh KW (1989) Sample size, significance and measure of diversity. In: Leonard RD and Jones GT (eds.) Quantifying Diversity in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Seafaring

Mueller JW (1974) Memoirs of the Society for American Archeology, Vol. 39(2): The Use of Sampling in Archaeological Survey. Washington, DC: Society for AmericanArcheology. Mueller JW (1975) Archeological research as cluster sampling. In: Mueller JW (ed.) Sampling in Archaeology. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Mueller JW (1987) The ‘Beauty of the Beast’: Human creativity and probabilism. North American Archaeologist 8(4): 327–340. Mueller JW, Steven RP, and William AG (1998) The Fort on the First Hill in Dorchester: Archeological Investigations of Colonel Gridley’s Revolutionary War Star Fort at Dorchester Heights, Boston National Historical Park, South Boston, Massachusetts. Silver Spring, MD: National Park Service, Applied Archeology Center. Orton C (1982) Mathematics in Archaeology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Orton C (2000) Sampling in Archaeology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Thompson SK and Seber GAF (1996) Adaptive Sampling. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

See: Ships and Seafaring.

SEASONALITY OF SITE OCCUPATION A J Legge, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Mesolithic A period in the development of human technology between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods of the Stone Age. Neolithic A period in the development of human technology that is traditionally the last part of the Stone Age. seasonality Part of a year a in which particular activity takes place. Upper Palaeolithic The third and last subdivision of the Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age. Younger Dryas The Younger Dryas stadial, named after the alpine/tundra wildflower Dryas octopetala, and also referred to as the Big Freeze.

Information on the seasonal duration of occupation at an archaeological site is crucial to our understanding of how the former inhabitants lived. Was residence at the site year-round, or for one season only? This is an important question because, with evidence

that a site was seasonally occupied, it becomes possible to identify other sites within the area which might have been used by the same community. The archaeologist can then work toward understanding the annual settlement pattern of a community in past times. Examples from hunting-gathering communities in the recent past show that seasonal mobility was a common response to the fluctuating availability of food, water, or other essential resources, and that several sites may have been occupied in a seasonal round. Herding peoples too may have extensive seasonal movements, and even now in Europe, certain communities move between winter and summer pastures, moving from lowland to upland with the change of seasons. Appropriate archaeological studies can elucidate much about the life histories of these communities and their seasonal changes. In all but modern, energy-dependent societies, there was some degree of fluctuation in the availability of many foods according to the season of the year. Modern highenergy expenditure in refrigeration and transport allows most foods to be used throughout the year. In earlier times, few sorts of food could be stored for

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long-term use, mainly cereal staples such as wheat, maize and rice, which are characteristic of settled farming peoples. Even so, it should not be assumed that all sites with evidence of charred cereals were permanently occupied as cereals can be exchanged or transported away from the site where they were grown. Evidence for the seasonal use of certain foods allows the archaeologist to build up a picture of landscape use, but only when all of the evidence has been carefully considered can an interpretation of the settlement be made. Archaeological evidence for the seasonal occupation of sites is seldom unequivocal. Anthropological studies with recent huntinggathering peoples show that a seasonal abundance of a particular food may bring many people together at one site, followed by their dispersal to other sites when supplies become sparse. The scarcity of a vital commodity such as water can also bring larger numbers of people together. A few hunting-gathering communities are also known who were able to live a sedentary life, though without agriculture. This adaptation is possible only where an exceptional local biodiversity is found, with different foods of highenergy value being available through much of the year and with some forms of food storage practiced, these usually involving the drying, salting, and smoking of foodstuffs. Studies of surviving hunting-gathering peoples are of immense value in highlighting a range of possible adaptations to seasonal abundance and scarcity, though no peoples of the recent past can be taken as the exact parallel of those from earlier times (see Ethnoarchaeology). Apart from these few rather special situations, the storage of large amounts of highenergy foods only became widespread with the emergence of agriculture, when wholly sedentary life could emerge. The evidence for seasonal occupation at archaeological sites is most often found from the remains of animals and plants, usually present as food wastes, and careful excavation methods are used to ensure good samples. Most organisms grow and change in response to the changing seasons, and frequently it is possible to identify the time of year in which each foodstuff was collected. The principal techniques of study are as follows: 1. The determination of age at death from the juvenile dentition in mammals. Many species of wild mammals have a marked birth season and, under similar environmental conditions, this would have been the same in the past. From studies of modern mammal populations, we can establish the rate of bone and tooth development and use this to predict the death season in which a deer or antelope was killed by ancient hunters. The natural variation in

birth date and growth rate must be considered and as the young mammal approaches maturity, there is a declining precision in the method. Obviously, it is essential to have detailed evidence from modern comparative studies of the same species. Given these cautions, this is a valuable technique. 2. The presence at a site of bones from fetal, neonatal (newborn), or very juvenile mammals from species with a well defined birth season. The problem here lies in identifying the age of the young mammal from the development of the bones, which might be from a late term fetus through to a month or so of age. Modern comparative studies are again important. 3. Bone growth in the young mammal. This technique was first used over 70 years ago in studying reindeer bones from an archaeological site near Hamburg in Germany. Newborn mammals have small bones while bones from the adult form are much larger. In deer, births are highly seasonal and most growth is complete within a year or two. In this method, measurements are taken from the juvenile bones and more adult bones, and these are plotted in a visual form. When a site was permanently occupied, there will be bones of all sizes from the very young to the fully adult. On the other hand, if bones are found corresponding to only certain size groups, there is good evidence that no animals were killed at certain times of the year. A large number of measurements are needed for this test. Again, comparative studies of the same modern mammals will allow the season of killing to be inferred. 4. The study of incremental growth structures in hard tissues. Variations in growth rate may be recorded in animal tissues, influenced by the changing seasons. For example, seasonally related variation in growth is found in the dental cement of mammals, in the otoliths (ear stones) of fishes, and in fish vertebrae and scales, as well as in the shells of mollusks. 5. The antlers of deer grow and are cast (shed) in an annual cycle, which is determined by changing day length. Unshed antlers can be used to determine season of death, while the presence of cast antlers cannot as the site inhabitants could collect these antlers, saving them as a valuable raw material. The presence of shed antlers need bear no relation to the season of occupation at a site. Use of this method requires caution. 6. The presence of bones from migratory animals at an archaeological site, from species with wellknown seasonal movements. These are usually migratory birds and fishes. 7. The determination of oxygen isotope ratios from marine mollusc shells, which are often found in archaeological sites as discarded food waste. This isotope ratio in the sea is dependant upon

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temperature. During the shell growth, the prevailing isotope ratio is fixed so that measurements on a sample series taken through a suitable shell can be used to determine the annual fluctuations in water temperature and, at the shell margin, to fix the season of the year in which death occurred. 8. The presence of seeds or fruits from species of potential food value, which show evidence of charring or other human interference. The fruiting bodies and some other structures in plants are highly seasonal in their development and, given good archaeological samples, this is a highly valuable and informative technique. 9. Evidence from other markedly seasonal events, such as the production of pollen. The problem here lies in the abundance of pollens in many archaeological deposits and the difficulty of relating pollen deposition to cycles of human activity. The determination of season of occupation from these methods is seldom clear-cut and often different interpretations of the data are possible. Obviously, it is preferable that several methods should be brought to bear on the problem and the account below focuses on some specific examples where interpretations of seasonal or sedentary settlement have been made at particular sites.

Historical Background Interest in human seasonal movements from the study of archaeological data goes back to the mid-twentieth century. In the 1930s, Late Upper Palaeolithic sites were excavated in North Germany by Alfred Rust. The site at Stellmoor was occupied at the end of the last glacial period, a time of very cold climate. The large mammal bones at the site were mostly from reindeer. Measurements were made of the lengths of their limb bones, both young and adult. If the site had

been permanently occupied, then bones of all sizes would be found from the smallest infant to those of fully grown adults. Yet the archaeologists found that this was not the case, as there were certain missing size classes from the growing bones of young reindeer. This is shown in Figure 1 which gives measurements from the humerus shaft length. Infantile bone shafts were found from reindeer in the first few months of life, which measured up to 190 mm. Then there is a gap in the distribution of bone lengths until much larger specimens were found where bone growth is much more complete, being from reindeer about a year old. This gives good evidence of a seasonal presence. The very small reindeer bones show that the site was occupied early in the summer, at or near the birth season, and the spread of measurements indicating that the human occupation lasted for a few months (Figure 1). Then there are no measurements from intermediate bone sizes typical of young reindeer in the late summer and winter. Presumably, the reindeer had moved elsewhere, and it is likely that the people too moved, following the herds to winter feeding grounds. The deer, and the people, would return to Stellmoor by the following May or June. Alternative theories about the site have suggested that people remained through the winter, the community living on meat frozen in the severe climate. This is an interesting example of the early development of thinking about seasonal occupation in archaeology, but more work is needed for the complete understanding of this important site. The work at Stellmoor in Germany was published in 1943 but, for obvious political reasons, this was little known in Britain and America. Stellmoor first came to wider notice with the publication in 1952 of Graham Clark’s influential book Prehistoric Europe. Clark was influenced by the work on the bone and antler remains at Stellmoor, which introduced new concepts in the archaeology of that time. Clark’s interest had also been stimulated from a paper

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Figure 1 Humerus shaft length of reindeer from Stellmoor, Germany.

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published in 1939 by D. F. Thompson. In this he described the seasonal cycle of a group of indigenous people living in Australia: . . .an onlooker, seeing these people at the different seasons of the year, would find them engaged in occupations so diverse, and with weapons and utensils differing so much in character. . .he would be led to conclude that they were different groups.

Against this background of thought, Graham Clark published his excavations at the Mesolithic site of Star Carr in Yorkshire, England, in the 1950s. This publication was to become influential in the development of archaeology in Britain and elsewhere. Clark followed the methods used at Stellmoor in his study, and, at Star Carr, he argued for the first example of a seasonal occupation shown at a site in Britain. His evidence came from deer antlers found there, from red deer (Cervus elaphus), elk (Alces alces), and from the smaller roe deer (Capreolus capreolus). There were also bones from these deer species and from wild cattle (Bos primigenius), wild pig (Sus scrofa) and a few smaller species. Clark focused upon the cycle of antler growth in Red deer

the red deer and elk to determine the season of human presence, setting out his evidence in a classic chart (Figure 2). He noted that antlers of both red deer and elk were found either attached to the deer skull, from killed deer, or found as naturally cast antlers from the living deer. The seasons of full antler growth and of antler shedding are well known and the evidence led Clark to conclude that people were present at the site between December and March– April to obtain these by gathering or by hunting. Clark thus interpreted Star Carr as a seasonal, lowland winter settlement, occupied by a group who were elsewhere at other times of the year. Clark later suggested that the summer territory was in adjacent upland areas where scattered Mesolithic sites are also known. His interpretation was also based on the annual movements of red deer in Scotland now, from a region where these have lowland to upland movements from winter to summer and back again, suggesting that the people would have followed the deer herds in this way. Thus, human settlement at Star Carr was carefully related to the regional landscape and the likely annual territory of a human community. However, later Elk

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indicates times at which the site must have been occupied. indicates period during which animals could have been obtained. Figure 2 Clark’s original 1954 interpretation of human occupation at Star Carr based on the growth and shedding of deer antlers.

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analyses since Clark’s work showed that much of his interpretation required revision. First, Clark overlooked the fact that virtually all parts of the red deer and elk antlers at Star Carr had been worked into elaborate tools, or were the waste from tool making. Antler was an important raw material and much found at the site could have been from animals killed years before, even in other places. The shed antler too might have been gathered months or years earlier. Further, while Clark had included evidence on the growth of roe deer antler in his chart (Figure 2), he ignored this in his interpretations. Further examination showed that the roe deer antlers there were wholly characteristic of the ‘summer’ season. None of these antlers shows any significant human use, and were therefore likely to be a waste part of the hunted roe deer and not collected as a raw material. This evidence, with a re-examination of the other bones from Star Carr, showed that the site was occupied primarily during the summer season rather than the winter. The tooth development in the juvenile roe deer jaws showed that these were killed at about 1 year of age, in early summer. Some juvenile red deer mandibles were also from summer kills. There were also a few bones of newborn red deer and elk, which would have come from the birth season in May, and there were some bird bones from summer visiting species. In sum, roe deer antler, juvenile deer jaws and the bird bones all indicate summer occupation, while no bone remains were from animals killed in the winter season. Star Carr has therefore been reinterpreted as an early summer hunting camp, and people were there for a rather special reason. In late spring or early summer the mature female deer give birth and they then drive away the young of the previous birth season, especially the young males. These immature deer must now fend for themselves, a hazardous time and the inexperienced young fall easy prey to hunters. The experienced human hunter can attract young deer by imitating their cries as they seek the company of others.

studies have supported alternative interpretations. The well-known site of Abri Pataud is located in south-western France and the reindeer bone remains there were intensively studied by Arthur Spiess. He used several different techniques to determine the season of their death and thus the probable season of human occupation. First, study of the juvenile reindeer mandibles showed that these came from animals killed between September and March. There were also the bones of unborn reindeer, which were carried to the site with the carcasses of adult females. Comparison with the size of modern fetal reindeer bones showed that these too came from mid-winter kills. Further evidence came from the sectioning of reindeer teeth. The dental cement fixes the tooth roots in the jawbone, and seasonal changes are reflected by zones of differential growth in the cement as this is deposited. In section, these zones appear as translucent during rapid summer growth and as opaque during slower winter growth. These zones can be counted under a low power microscope, and correspond to the number of seasons passed since formation of the tooth root. Figure 3 shows a sectioned reindeer tooth from Abri Pataud, the opaque (dark) zone at the margin of the cement showing a winter kill. Tooth sections made from four different species at Abri Pataud all gave results from winter kills. The three techniques used at Abri Pataud made a persuasive case that the cave was predominantly used as a winter settlement, but cannot ‘prove’ that fact. In the absence of apparent summer food supplies, we can infer that the inhabitants moved elsewhere for that season, but this remains an interpretation. It is strengthened, however, by other studies of Late Palaeolithic sites in the same region, where evidence has also been found of predominantly winter-spring occupations. A general pattern emerges in which the remarkable richness of the Upper Palaeolithic of the Dordogne in south-western France can be seen

1st winter

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Modern Approaches to Seasonal Studies Important recent investigations have been made into to the season of occupation at the famous caves and rock shelters of southwestern France, which were intensively used during the late ice age. The Upper Palaeolithic of this region is famous for its richness and diversity, not the least for the wealth of cave art found there. Some caves there show human occupation through many millennia and French archaeologists have generally believed that such sites were permanently occupied, being in a region that offered favorable living conditions. However, more recent

Figure 3 Section of the dental cement of a reindeer tooth from Abri Pataud, South-Western France.

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process is related to the animal’s age. Goitered gazelles replace their milk teeth at just over one year of age. Figure 4 shows the data for the crown height of the lower third milk molar taken from the sample of modern gazelles. The birth date of the individual gazelles is not known, though their birth season is short, being no more than a few weeks. For this study the birth date was taken as approximately mid-May, as in this species of gazelle now. The crown height of each milk molar from the modern sample was measured and this was plotted against its weeks of age, counting from mid-May to the death date. The third milk molars of the ancient gazelles, from Mesolithic and Early Neolithic Abu Hureyra, were then compared with the modern specimens in Figure 4. The ancient gazelle milk teeth were found to be in one of two wear states, either unworn or heavily worn. None were found between these extremes. If the cull of gazelles was year round, milk teeth at all states of wear would be found, so that the data immediately suggested that the gazelle cull was highly seasonal. The average crown height measurement for the two groups (unworn and heavily worn) was compared with the modern data. The unworn milk teeth were of newborn gazelles, from the birth season in May. The heavily worn milk teeth were also from gazelles killed in May, but one year older. The absence of intermediate wear states showed that the gazelles were killed in a very short season. This remarkable result led on to another question. Did the people of Abu Hureyra move elsewhere for most of the year? The answer to this comes from the charred plant remains. These too were abundant, having been carefully recovered during the excavation, and provided the vital evidence which explained the nature of this early settlement. Gordon Hillman’s remarkable analysis of these charred remains showed that at least 120 different wild plant species had been used for food 10 Enamel crown height (mm)

as the product of an especially favorable refuge where the steep valleys offered winter shelter for both the herds and their human predators. Under such conditions, it would be possible to form large seasonal agglomerations of people, the cave art being a product of the heightened social interaction that would follow from this. Other well-known examples of seasonal activity at archaeological sites come from the buffalo kill sites of the North American plains. The buffalo were extensively hunted by the early American peoples through into recent times. These mammals were an essential resource, especially for winter food, and were often taken by means of mass drives into artificial corrals, or over low cliffs, or by trapping in natural gullies. Whole herds were killed in these drives so that the season of killing can be determined from the dentition of the immature buffalo that made up part of the herds. In buffalo there is also a close relationship between tooth eruption age and calendar age in the first two-and-a-half years of life, and this relationship is well known from modern studies. The evidence shows that the mass kills commonly occurred in the autumn or early winter months, the meat being processed and stored for winter use. The autumn meat was also fatty and this was important, even essential, for human survival. It is likely too that these winter sites represent the gathering of people in larger numbers, both to take part in the collaborative mass hunts and to use the stored meat that followed. In the warmer and dryer landscape of Syria, the study of the seasonality of food supplies at the site of Tell Abu Hureyra has been of fundamental importance in explaining the origins of agriculture in south-western Asia. This site is of exceptional size and it was occupied from the Mesolithic period, and through the Neolithic, providing a vital record of the emergence of agriculture. The Mesolithic levels at the base of the mound give an insight into a society at the very threshold of agricultural innovation. The inhabitants of Abu Hureyra hunted the goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturossa), the onager (Equus hemionus, a type of wild ass) and occasional wild cattle, pig, fallow deer, and some smaller mammals. The early levels, occupied from 11 500 to 8300 BP, contained huge numbers of gazelle bones and many of these were from very young individuals. This raised questions about both the manner of the hunting and the season in which this was done. The University of Moscow has a good sample of modern skulls of these gazelles, each with a known death date. A study of this sample provided the background data for understanding the hunting at Abu Hureyra. In grazing mammals the process of tooth wear quickly reduces the height of the deciduous (milk) teeth and this

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Figure 4 Enamel crown height of the third milk molar of modern gazelles (Moscow collection) compared with ancient specimens from Tell Abu Hureyra, Syria.

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during the Mesolithic settlement at Abu Hureyra; a time before farming had begun. Gathering activities were year round, as the seasons of use for these plants were different, and together these spanned most of the year. For example, five species of wild cereals were harvested in early summer and later in the year other plant foods such the nutlets of Club Rush (Scirpus maritimus) were available. The nearby Euphrates river valley then provided tuber and root foods which were at their best in winter. The depth and detail of this important study gives convincing evidence that the people of Mesolithic Abu Hureyra were indeed wholly sedentary, a situation that is a necessary precursor for the development of full-scale agriculture. How was the seasonal supply of gazelle meat used in a sedentary community? Evidence from the archaeology and from historical writers showed that the gazelles and onagers were migratory, moving north to the region of Abu Hureyra in spring to give birth. The gazelles were intercepted by driving them into huge enclosures, specially built for that purpose, where the entire herds were killed. European travelers’ tales from Syria in the recent past commonly tell us that salted, dried gazelle meat was widely used there. There is evidence from the bone remains that the gazelle meat at Abu Hureyra was preserved in this way too. Thus, the season of gazelle killing bore no relationship to the season of gazelle meat consumption, which was year round. Later in these same levels there is a marked reduction in the diversity of plant foods, caused by the onset of a severe climatic deterioration known as the Younger Dryas. This severe cold oscillation came just as the ice age was ending, and this again reduced the diversity of wild plant foods that were available in the Syrian steppe, thus initiating that most worldchanging event of them all: the appearance of the first domestic cereals, the beginnings of agriculture. The first domestic cereal was a type of wild rye (Secale cereale) which appeared in a new form through human interference during the later Mesolithic occupation. Soon after this, cultivated species of wheat, barley, and lentils are found, with domestic forms of sheep and goat. Without the evidence from the charred remains of plant foods, the Mesolithic settlement might have been interpreted as a seasonal encampment from the bone evidence. Abu Hureyra thus presents an illuminating example in which different but complementary investigations have revealed how the first settled communities in this region moved toward the domestication of the important species of food plants and animals that we use now. The determination of season of death in domestic mammals presents more of a problem as their birth season may be less clearly defined. In wild species the

timing of the birth season is conditioned by natural events such as changing day length and other seasonal factors, leading to births at a time best suited to the survival of the young. Under domestication, it is possible that human intervention might significantly modify the birth season, usually by controlling contact between the adult males and females during their fertile cycle. Such means can be used to extend the birth season, even over several months, when the human owners see a reason to do so. Thus, while we may reasonably assume that certain wild mammals in past times gave birth in spring since they do so now, this assumption cannot readily be made for mammals under direct human control. A large sample of sheep mandibles from an Iron Age and Roman temple site near Harlow in Essex, England, provided better evidence for the birth season in ancient sheep flocks. Many young sheep were sacrificed at the temple site, and the tooth development in their mandibles showed them to be from two quite different age classes. The youngest group of sacrificial lambs were aged between 6 and 8 months, and the second, older groups were aged from 18 to 20 months (Figure 5). Both the prehistoric Iron Age levels and those of the Roman period showed the same pattern, suggesting a strong continuity in religious practice through this time. Sheep in England now give birth in spring, the season controlled largely by changing day length. If we assume that the Iron Age and Roman sheep also gave birth in spring, those aged 6–8 months would have been killed in late summer or autumn, and the older group aged 18–20 months would also have been killed at this time. This is a pattern very like the gazelle cull at Abu Hureyra, though for a very different reason. If human interference had caused these Iron Age and Roman sheep to give birth through much of the year, it would then have required very careful selection to produce the distribution of ages that were found. The person choosing the sacrificial lamb would need to closely scrutinize the teeth to make sure that the right age was selected. This is rather less likely than an alternative explanation, that the Iron Age and Roman sheep were born in the spring, then as now, and that they were all killed at one time of year, in a single season of sacrifice around harvest time. Presumably, the age selected, either a lamb or a yearling sheep, depended upon the wealth or devotion of the person who made the offering. Valuable evidence for seasonal use of foods can also come from incremental growth structures in the skeletons of fishes or from similar growth patterns in molluscan shells, each related to seasonal variations. Periods of unequal growth, usually in response to changes in day length and seasonal temperature, are

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Figure 5 Age at death of lambs from Harlow Roman Temple, Essex, England.

expressed by the formation of banding, sometimes visible as surface ridges (‘annuli’) in bony structures like vertebrae, scales, and otoliths (‘ear stones’) of fishes. The banding in fish otoliths is composed of wide opaque zones formed during rapid growth and narrow translucent zones formed during slower growth, these zones caused by the annual seasonal fluctuation, akin to the zoning in the dental cement of mammals. The season of capture can be determined from the zone that was formed at the margin of the otolith. Where any of these methods is used, it is vital that adequate samples of the local fish or shellfish populations are studied as a basis for comparison with the archaeological material. Mesolithic middens were investigated on the island of Oronsay in Scotland in precisely this manner. Careful sieving during excavation yielded large numbers of otoliths of juvenile saithe (or coalfish, Pollachius virens). The archaeological analysis of the fish otoliths began by the catching of a sample of local saithe to provide otolith data from individuals of known capture date and body weight. These modern otoliths were first studied to confirm the utility of the method, and to establish the relationship between age of the fish and body weight. In fact, in these juvenile fish with rapid growth, the length of the otoliths alone was sufficient to provide good evidence for seasonal capture, each archaeological site having otoliths only of certain size classes. Such methodology has a very great advantage in its simplicity; length measurement is rapid, accurate, and cheap, and is easily applied to the entire otolith sample without the need for laboratory preparation or microscopic examination. More elaborate methods may give excellent results but are costly in time and equipment and, for this reason, the

archaeological sample tested may be rather few. At the Oronsay middens, the distribution of otolith length measurements showed two peaks of abundance, one from smaller fish and one from larger, though the season of catching differed from one midden to the next. Each peak represented a different age class, but both groups were killed in the same season. The data showed that the different middens were occupied in a different season, the fish at one site being taken from the end of June to mid August while at another the fish catch was early September to early December. Shellfish are commonly found in archaeological sites, in numbers varying from a few shells to many millions in huge shell mounds, well known in Europe from Denmark and Portugal and widely in other continents too. In Europe the shell mounds were accumulated through the Mesolithic period and have attracted much archaeological investigation because of their great size and the huge numbers of shells they contain. Some archaeologists have viewed these middens as year-round settlements because of the sheer magnitude. Possibly this was so, but evidence for the season of use and of other potential foods must be considered before such judgements are made. Oysters and other shellfish have a rather low food value of about 50 kcal per 100 grams of meat and for this reason alone it is unlikely that people were sustained year-round on shellfish as a major staple. An active person living in a cool climate needs at least 2500 kcal of food energy each day. A person would need to eat several kilograms of shellfish meat each day to maintain this energy intake! In most instances we now know that shellfish were a rather minor component of the annual diet, and that occupation at shell

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middens was often in short episodes, at one or more times through the year. The collection season of the shellfish can usually be determined by a number of means. This may be as simple as the measurement of shell size, a method that is of use with fast-growing species. When gathered in one season, the shells will show a restricted size distribution. This was found in a species of scallop (Argopecten irradians concentricus), collected during summer in Florida waters. Thin sectioning of the shells is also valuable in some instances, and recent work has concentrated on sectioning the dense hinge region of the bivalve shell. In one such study a large sample of modern oyster shells were examined in a blind test and the annual lines formed in them allowed rather more than 90% to be determined for the season of collection. A more elaborate technique applied to marine shells relies upon the measurement of the oxygen isotope ratio in the shell. The stable isotopes 18O and 16O exist in a ratio which does not change through time. However, the different mass of the isotopes means that their ratio in seawater depends upon the temperature. During growth of the shell, oxygen is used in building the shell material and the prevailing ratio of the two forms of oxygen is thus recorded. Closely spaced samples are drilled from a radial section across the shell and the isotopic ratio in each sample is measured by means of mass spectrometry. The resulting data are plotted and show the rising and falling temperatures of one or more summer–winter cycles. When this cycle is established from a sample of shells, and with well-preserved archaeological shell material, it may be possible to sample only the margins from a larger series of shells to establish the time of year in which the shells were collected. The value of these marine foods in huntinggathering societies lay in their predictability, in the comparative ease with which they were captured, and in the simple technology that was needed. This provided a secure food supply, which was only part of a highly diverse annual diet. Yet the discarded shells have a very high visibility in the archaeological sediments when compared to other food wastes, and this led to the belief that shellfish were of a higher importance in the annual diet than is likely to have been the case. An excellent example of modern shell midden studies is shown in recent work at the Turner Farm site in Maine, North America. Here, a shell midden was largely made up of the soft shell clam (Mya arenaria). Analysis of shell sections from two prehistoric levels showed that the shellfish were gathered in late winter and spring. Yet other evidence showed that the site was occupied for much longer, even through most of the year, in particular evidence from the teeth and bones of white-tailed deer

(Odocoileus virginianus). There is a brief gap in the occupation evident in mid-summer, when it is suggested that the community relocated to another site in the area, probably to catch migratory fish. The faunal remains at Turner Farm include several other species of terrestrial and marine mammals, besides fish and bird bone – and the highly visible shellfish. However, the excavator has interpreted the shellfish as only a ‘secondary’ resource when compared with the abundant mammalian fauna, which were a more important energy source. The study of seasonal occupation at archaeological sites has developed greatly in recent times as archaeologists have made critical attempts to comprehend the meaning of their data. There has been increasing interest in the human use of landscapes and the patterns of occupation within a regional context, rather than the focus on individual sites. The determination of the seasonality of food supplies and of residence at particular sites is an essential component of these investigations. The available techniques of study are many, though these vary in complexity, and in the expenditure of time and cost that are needed. The study of growth and development of teeth and bones in young animals is important, as are examinations of the seasonal growth episodes in otoliths or shells. These methods are cheap, reliable, and are simple in use. Simplicity is an important advantage as rapid techniques allow observations to be made on larger number of specimens. When the seasonal use of a food is established, it then becomes important for the archaeologist to consider the value of this resource in the annual diet. At the seasonal bison kill sites in North America or the reindeer hunting sites in Ice Age Europe, few other human foods beyond animal fats and protein of the prey have been identified and, in a very cold climate, it is unlikely that and such alternative foods were available. Elsewhere, in more temperate regions, it remains an important task to fill in the annual cycle of hunting-gathering peoples, both in the locations of their sites and in possible dietary shifts through the year. It must always be remembered that, at any archaeological site, the seasonal use of any one food does not demonstrate that the site was occupied only in that season. Only when there is good evidence for the seasonal use of ‘major’ food resources, and with an evident lack of foods available at other times, are there grounds for interpreting the site as a seasonal encampment.

See also: Americas, North: Plains; Archaeometry; Asia, West: Mesolithic Cultures; Europe, Northern and Western: Mesolithic Cultures; Invertebrate Analysis; Stable Isotope Analysis; Vertebrate Analysis.

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Further Reading Clark JGD (1952) Prehistoric Europe: The Economic Basis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frison GC (1991) Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains. New York: Academic Press. Lee RB and Daly RH (1999) Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Legge AJ and Rowley-Conwy PA (1988) Star Carr Revisited: A ReAnalysis of the Large Mammals. London: Birkbeck College. Moore ATM, Hillman GC, and Legge AJ (2000) Village on the Euphrates; from Foraging to Farming at Abu Hureyra. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rocek TR and Bar-Yosef O (1998) Peabody Museum Bulletin 6: Seasonality and Sedentism. Harvard: Peabody Museum Bulletin. Spiess A (1979) Reindeer and Caribou Hunters: An Archaeological Study. New York: Academic Press. Spiess AE and Lewis RA (2001) Occasional Publications in Maine Archaeology 11. The Turner Farm Fauna: 5000 Years of Hunting and Fishing in Penobscot Bay, Maine. Augusta, ME: Maine Archaeological Society and Historic Preservation Commission. Thompson DF (1939) The seasonal factor in human culture illustrated from the life of a contemporary nomadic group. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society (NS) 2: 207–221.

SERIATION Geoffrey McCafferty, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Cholula An important city of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, dating back to at least the second century BCE, with settlement as a village going back at least some thousand years earlier. seriation A method in relative dating in which artifacts of numerous sites, in the same culture, are placed in chronological order, to work out a chronology by arranging material remains of a cultural tradition in the order that produces the most consistent patterning of their cultural traits. stelae Carved stone slabs, which depict rulers along with hieroglyphic texts describing their genealogy, military victories, and other accomplishments.

Seriation is one of the fundamental techniques used in archaeology. The criticisms of the last few decades do not invalidate its usefulness, if used with due critical judgement. The basic premise is to arrange in sequence objects of material culture (anything from microliths to monumental architecture) based on degree of similarity. Variation is assumed to be the result of spatiotemporal dimensions: greater similarity implies proximity either in space or time. Seriation is most commonly used in archaeology as a means of relative dating, where the sequence is arranged from earlier to later and objects along the continuum are datable ‘relative’ to other artifacts in the class. Note that there is nothing inherent about the sequence to determine the temporal direction, i.e., which end is earliest, so this technique is generally used in conjunction with stratigraphy or other independent dating techniques.

Seriation as a concept grew out of biological classification, and its first application in archaeology is generally credited to Sir Flinders Petrie. Analyzing grave lots from discrete burial contexts, Petrie arranged the lots by similarity until he had arrived at the most internally consistent pattern. For example, some ceramic urns had pronounced handles, while others had only slight ridges where the handles had been. He assumed an evolutionary trajectory in which the handles became increasingly less pronounced through time, and used this characteristic among others to organize the assemblages. Shortly after Petrie’s introduction of the technique, Herbert Spinden employed a variation using anthropomorphic sculptures from the Maya site of Copa´n. Using body proportions from 25 stelae, including measurements of the length of the face and the chin to the top of the girdle, Spinden arranged the stelae in sequence. He was then able to recognize other patterns such as an increase in feather adornment and eye shape. The most convincing line of evidence was that hieroglyphic dates on the monuments ranged from earlier to later, in accordance with his sequence. Note that at the time the Maya hieroglyphic system was poorly understood, and Spinden’s sequence was a key to decipherment of the calendrical system. Change through time is assumed when using seriation for relative dating, with the causal mechanisms relating to changing technology, availability of materials, or simply popularity. Imagine ordering an assemblage of 100 automobiles from the twentieth century based on music systems: absence, tube radios, transistorized radios, eight-track cartridges, cassettes, CDs, and MP3 players. A graph of the results, by year, would show the introduction of a new technology followed by the gradual increase in

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popularity, until another technology is introduced and that original type decreases in relation to the increasing popularity of the new one. This graph is typically called a ‘battleship graph’ because the diamondshaped patterns look like a bird’s eye view of a fleet of battleships. This scheme was used archaeologically by James Ford, who created an ‘abundance matrix’ based on the percentages of different ceramic types collected from the surface of the lower Mississippi Valley. By graphically illustrating the relative frequency of each type in each collection unit on strips of paper, Ford then ordered the strips until they created the ‘best’ series of battleship curves, representing the most likely chronological ordering of the sites surveyed. An entertaining exercise in this methodology is available in Daniel and David’s An Archaeology Workbook problem on Petristan, a fictional region named in honor of Sir Flinders Petrie. Note that these early implementations of seriation lacked rigorous means for assessing the validity of the patterns. With the rise of the New Archaeology in the early 1960s, more scientific methods were emphasized, including new dating techniques such as radiocarbon and potassium argon. While these superceded seriation to some extent, other aspects of the New Archaeology actually augmented seriation analysis. The introduction of quantitative methods, including powerful computer systems, and a scientific revolution in the philosophy behind archaeology resulted in more rigorous analysis of the data. Additionally, greater concern for anthropological models created a tighter linkage between observed patterns and inferred behavior. During the 1970s, particularly, numerous statistical methods were introduced for manipulating data, including means for testing the validity of seriated sequences (see Sampling Methods, Theory and Praxis; Statistics in Archaeology). An example of these statistical methods for testing the results of a seriation sequence comes from a ceramic analysis of Postclassic Cholula, Mexico. Cholula was one of the largest urban and religious centers of central Mexico in the final centuries prior to the Spanish conquest. Several studies of the archaeological ceramics have been published, with Eduardo Noguera’s based on stratigraphic pits in and around the Great Pyramid, a massive mud brick structure that has undergone 2500 years of sequential use and modification resulting in a highly mixed deposit. For his evaluation of the existing ceramic sequence, McCafferty chose dispersed primary deposits from the UA-1 residential compound about 1 km from the Pyramid. Thirteen midden assemblages contained polychrome and monochrome pottery that was classified into 19 types.

The seriation analysis proceeded in steps. First, each pair of assemblages was converted into similarity coefficients using the Brainerd–Robinson Index of Agreement where the total difference between the percentages of each type is calculated, and this total is subtracted from 200% (the maximum possible level of disagreement). Thus, a high index value will show greater similarity, and a low value will represent greater dissimilarity. A. E. Gelfand recommends a method for generating a seriation, that is, both rigorous and replicable, where the Brainerd–Robinson values are systematically sorted by order of similarity and then the rankings of each row are averaged to produce the best possible seriation. The final step was to calculate the average rank order for the 13 different seriation results. The rank average is determined by dividing the rank totals by 13. These rank averages were then graphed to show not only the order of the assemblages, but also clusters based on similarity. As a result of this analysis the Cholula Postclassic ceramic sequence was significantly modified, and clustering of assemblages was used to refine the Postclassic chronology into five subphases. One of the most eloquent demonstrations of the validity of seriation analysis derives from historical archaeology, where grave monuments encoded detailed iconographic symbolism, variations in form and material, evidence of technological change in terms of carving and transportation, and all important dates for fine-tuned analysis. The best known of the gravestone studies was conducted by James Deetz and Edwin Dethlefsen who investigated the religious symbolism of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Massachusetts. The succession of death’s head, cherub, and urn and willow images on the stones represented a change through time, but the authors further delved into the meanings behind those transformations. In a subsequent study, they considered the spatial dimension of images radiating out from the urban center into the rural hinterland. The strength of these studies (and the many other gravestone studies that followed) is that they consider not only the details of change through time, but also the cultural processes that result in change. Seriation is a technique that has been used by archaeologists for over 100 years, and despite remarkable innovations in the discipline it is still a valuable tool for interpretation. The technological development, from colored strips of paper to computers, has greatly enhanced the speed and statistical significance of the technique. The lasting importance of seriation relates to its capacity for identifying patterns that may have cultural significance. The challenge for archaeologists is to move beyond the statistics to find the behaviors that generated the patterns.

1978 SETTLEMENT PATTERN ANALYSIS See also: Sampling Methods, Theory and Praxis; Statistics in Archaeology; Pottery Analysis: Stylistic.

Further Reading Daniel S and David N (1982) An Archaeology Workbook. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Deetz JF and Dethlefsen ES (1967) Death’s head, cherub, urn and willow. Natural History 76: 29–37. Ford, JA (1962) A quantitative method for deriving cultural chronology. Pan-American Union, Technical Manual No. 1. (Reprinted as University of Missouri, Museum of Anthropology, Museum Brief No. 9). Gelfand AE (1971) Seriation methods for archaeological materials. American Antiquity 36: 263–274.

Marquardt WH (1982) Advances in archaeological seriation. In: Schiffer MB (ed.) Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory: Selections for Students, vols. 1–4, pp. 416–464. New York: Academic Press. McCafferty GG (2001) Ceramics of Postclassic Cholula, Mexico: Typology and Seriation of Pottery from the UA-1 Domestic Compound, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Monograph 43 Los Angeles: University of California. Petrie WMF (1899) Sequences in prehistoric remains. Journal of the Anthropological Institute 29: 295–301. Shanks M and Tilley C (1987) Re-constructing Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spinden, HJ (1913) A Study of Maya Art: Its Subject Matter and Historical Development, Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology No. VI, Cambridge, MA. (Reprinted 1975 New York: Dover Publications.).

SETTLEMENT PATTERN ANALYSIS Andrew K Balkansky, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, IL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Mesoamerica A region in the mid-latitudes of the Americas, specifically the culture area within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Zapotec An indigenous people of Mexico, concentrated in the state of Oaxaca.

Definitions, Aims, Procedures Surveys have set the current research agenda in many regions, generating new data and new hypotheses for further research. But much is changing about settlement pattern studies. The region-centered approach to settlement studies is breaking down in the face of new survey data on the macroregional scale. Effective theory building now requires that we model the effects of not one, but multiple interacting regions on local settlement systems. Older theories of culture change must now account for the variation in settlement patterns over successively larger spatial scales up to the macroregion, or be discarded. Regions and Macroregions

Spatial Analysis: Settlement Pattern Analysis In an assessment of research trends Sabloff and Ashmore ask, ‘‘what has been the single most critical theoretical or methodological innovation in archaeology since WWII’’, and answer their question with ‘settlement pattern studies’. One reason for this conclusion is that settlement patterns discovered via regional archaeological surveys are the unique means of gathering systematic data on the large scale, potentially encompassing entire civilizations. This contribution focuses on those surveys in the physiographic cores of ancient states that use full-coverage methods to find every site visible on the surface. The broader purposes of these surveys are to measure the long-term evolution of civilizations; to make comparisons for theory building; and to establish long-term research agendas within particular regions.

Archaeological study of the macroregion is an extension of studies of social structure from household to regional levels. The region is the basic unit of analysis for settlement pattern studies (usually the physiographic boundary of a river valley). Macroregions are two or more contiguous regions that cross regional or cultural boundaries. Macroregions are the minimal unit of analysis needed to understand early civilizations and are measured in thousands of square kilometers rather than hundreds as in the typical regional survey. These data needs force archaeologists to undertake decades-long and multigenerational survey projects, making student training and future job prospects a significant concern. Data Requirements

With the continued growth of the survey database, the contemporary era has faced new challenges in

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managing the enormous data flow from the cumulative regional studies. Geographic Information Systems has become a basic part of the surveyor’s analytical repertoire for database management. Remote sensing has moved beyond air photographs to include declassified and commercial satellite images. Regardless of the format in data presentation, the essential empirical contribution of regional surveys is comparable data on site size through time for all sites visible on the surface (including the data flow from initial site visit to final settlement pattern map). Related concerns are the comparability of regional data sets and the growing body of unpublished survey data. Measuring Hierarchy

Of the varied approaches to regional survey data, the study of settlement hierarchies is fundamental to making cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary comparisons. Hierarchy is one way to measure changes in complexity such as urban emergence. This includes studies of horizontal complexity (or heterarchy) for sites occupying the same hierarchical level. Other typical measures of hierarchy are degrees of urbanization, regional system scale, rank-size, and centralization. The application of central-place models in archaeology has been especially productive of new ideas about ancient settlement patterns, and is preferable to making impressionistic inferences from maps. Although many spatial approaches have built-in assumptions that were not necessarily true in the past (e.g., market economies), the observed differences in settlement hierarchies are measuring something real that must be explained.

Case Studies That Compare Regions Three world areas have sufficient high-quality survey data for making systematic regional comparisons. Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, and the Southwest are compelling for having similar degrees of spatial variation in settlement patterns. These cases suggest that survey results in one region cannot be assumed for others and that the largest possible frames of reference are needed. Mesoamerica

Surveys in the Basin of Mexico (1960–75), Valley of Oaxaca (1971–80), and Mixteca Alta (1990–99) meet the criteria for macroregional analysis and offer the best example of sustained surveying from a core group of researchers. The Basin of Mexico surveys were ecologically focused, and designed to reconstruct the agricultural, settlement, and population history in the

area around Teotihuacan. Settlement data were used to analyze microgeographic variation among interacting regions. The Valley of Oaxaca surveyors enlarged the focus, viewing sites as central places and applying spatial models derived from economics and geography to understand settlement patterns. The Valley of Oaxaca was modeled as a discrete functional region, Monte Alba´n as its principal central place, and the Monte Alba´n/valley survey area as the core region within Oaxaca. The Mixteca Alta’s contiguous fullcoverage surveys are equivalent in area to the Valley of Oaxaca and its satellite regions, allowing comparative studies of the Mixtec and Zapotec civilizations from within a single universe of sites. Each of the three macroregions has shown differing urban forms and patterns of change in otherwise contemporary and interacting civilizations. Mesopotamia

Urbanism in Mesopotamia has been a regional question since Robert McC. Adams’ pioneering surveys in the 1950s and 1960s. In a recent review of the survey literature, Wilkinson makes macroregional comparisons between the irrigated southern regions of the Tigris–Euphrates river basin (Iraq) with the latest survey results from northern Mesopotamia (Turkey, Syria). Few studies have attempted to compare urban trajectories over this vast area in the heartland of cities, but Wilkinson notes several recurrent patterns. Settlement changes were synchronous across Greater Mesopotamia, though subject to significant spatial variability. Some regions were abandoned entirely during certain periods only to be re-occupied later on, while adjacent regions could show the reverse pattern. This flux and instability on the large scale is especially apparent during the urbanization of the fourth and third milleniums BC. Surprisingly, settlement densities were higher during pre-urban Ubaid times in northern Mesopotamia. An important conclusion is that capital centers in the south such as Uruk should not be viewed as the unique sources of Mesopotamian civilization (see Asia, West: Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad). Southwest

One of the major research issues in Southwestern archaeology concerns the Hohokam abandonment of southern Arizona. To address this question, Hill and others have drawn upon a macroregional database covering virtually every significant pueblo site in the four corners area (Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah) and adjacent parts of Mexico dating from AD 1200–1700. The basic data on size, location, and date for every site with 12 or more rooms are shown

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on settlement pattern maps divided by 50-year increments. The Hohokam abandonment is usually attributed to extreme events, including warfare, disease, land degradation, and environmental change. However, the authors of this study refer to settlement changes throughout the Southwest, and observe that there was no mass exodus or rapid disappearance from Hohokam land. Rather, the decline was drawn out over a 150-year period (AD 1300–1450), and likely involved multiple factors none of which was immediately catastrophic (see Americas, North: American Southwest, Four Corners Region).

The Future of Settlement Pattern Analysis Our conceptions of the core component of ancient civilizations has grown in recent decades as regional surveys have moved into peripheral regions outside core zones of emergent civilization such as Monte Alba´n and Uruk. The fundamental result from these surveys demonstrates that the variation among early civilizations worldwide also existed within these same civilizations, though to a degree that challenges our capacity to make sense of the regional data sets. This realization is one of the main reasons for the global survey program to continue. Recent efforts at analyzing macroregions suggest that variation in settlement patterns will be among the crucial building blocks of new theory. See also: Americas, North: American Southwest, Four

Corners Region; Asia, West: Mesopotamia, Sumer, and

Akkad; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Pedestrian Survey Techniques; Political Complexity, Rise of; Settlement System Analysis; Sites: Mapping Methods.

Further Reading Alcock SE and Cherry JF (eds.) (2004) Side-by-Side Survey: Comparative Regional Studies in the Mediterranean World. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Ammerman AJ (1981) Surveys and archaeological research. Annual Review of Anthropology 10: 63–88. Balkansky AK (2006) Surveys and Mesoamerican archaeology: The emerging macroregional paradigm. Journal of Archaeological Research 14: 53–95. Billman BR and Feinman GM (eds.) (1999) Settlement Pattern Studies in the Americas: Fifty Years since Viru´. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Hill JB, Clark JJ, Doelle WH, and Lyons PD (2004) Prehistoric demography in the Southwest: Migration, coalescence, and Hohokam population decline. American Antiquity 69: 689–716. Kowalewski SA (1990) The evolution of complexity in the Valley of Oaxaca. Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 39–58. Parsons JR (1972) Archaeological settlement patterns. Annual Review of Anthropology 1: 127–150. Sabloff JA and Ashmore W (2001) An aspect of archaeology’s recent past and its relevance in the new millennium. In: Feinman GM and Price TD (eds.) Archaeology at the Millennium: A Sourcebook, pp. 11–32. New York: Plenum. Wilkinson TJ (2000) Regional approaches to Mesopotamian archaeology: The contribution of archaeological surveys. Journal of Archaeological Research 8: 219–267. Wright HT (1986) The evolution of civilizations. In: Meltzer DJ, Fowler D, and Sabloff JA (eds.) American Archaeology Past and Future: A Celebration of the Society for American Archaeology 1935–1985, pp. 323–365. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

SETTLEMENT SYSTEM ANALYSIS Robert D Drennan, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Demography Study of the distribution, density, and vital statistics of populations. Propinquity The principle, often called upon in archaeology that things located closer to each other are more strongly related in some way than things located farther apart. Settlement pattern The social, political, economic, or other relationships that make the settlements in a region into an integrated functioning whole. Settlement systems Sites in a particular region during a particular period of time, and their social, economic, and political relationships

The term ‘settlement system’ signified a major conceptual breakthrough to some writers in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as studies of settlement patterns came into their own. Since then, ‘settlement system’ has often been contrasted with ‘settlement pattern’, although the distinction between the two has become somewhat fuzzy over time. An initial emphasis on ‘settlement pattern’ as a static arrangement of archaeological sites on a landscape in contrast to ‘settlement system’ as a more dynamic set of inter-relationships between sites has given way to the vaguer notion that ‘settlement pattern’ refers to the observable distribution of archaeological evidence of human activities across a landscape, and to the analysis that identifies patterning in this distribution, whereas the interpretation of that

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patterning of evidence in terms of the activities of living, breathing human beings is ‘settlement system’ analysis. In language more fashionable several decades after the inception of settlement studies, we might well define settlement system analysis as focused on the study of the social landscape comprised of the diversity of interactions which define and constitute human communities at various scales. Early advocates of a settlement pattern approach in archaeology envisioned its operation at a range of scales, from that of the individual structure through that of the community to that of the zone or region. The most common kind of structure in many societies is, of course, the residence, and households and families were foremost in early writing about settlement study at this small scale. Such issues are at the heart of what has come to be called ‘household archaeology’, which has easily identifiable intellectual roots in the smallest scale of settlement study (see Household Archaeology). The scale of the individual structure or household is no longer generally considered part of settlement study, which strongly implies a regional scale of analysis. Regional scale usually means the study of areas measuring in the hundreds or thousands of square kilometers, although the term is sometimes applied to analyses of a few tens of square kilometers and occasionally even to areas of only a few square kilometers (see Settlement Pattern Analysis). It should come as no surprise that settlement system analysis relies fairly heavily on notions that are most applicable to people pursuing a ‘settled’ way of life. Its attention is resolutely focused on where people ‘live’ and what that can tell us about their social, economic, political, religious, and other activities. The very notion of where people live becomes quite slippery in the context of a highly mobile way of life. While settlement system analysis does not depend on fully sedentary residence patterns, beyond some point a residence system may be so fluid and dynamic that it can no longer accurately be called a ‘settlement’ system, and settlement system analysis is entirely out of place.

Settlement or Settlements? Just as the United States Civil War has been said to have been fought over a point of grammar (whether to say ‘the United States are’ or ‘the United States is’), there is an important conceptual difference between a system of settlement and a system of settlements. Most, though not all, settlement system analyses have been based on the notion of settlements as basic units of analysis, and a one-for-one correspondence between archaeological sites and human settlements has often

been assumed (usually implicitly). Sites are frequently classified into a settlement typology, with different settlement types reflecting functional differences and particular kinds of relationships between settlements. Since settlement system analysis has frequently been an integral part of research on the emergence and development of complex hierarchical societies, the settlement typologies utilized have often reflected the hierarchical relationships between communities that constitute regional-scale political and economic organization in such societies – schemes like hamlet, village, town or district center, and city or regional center. Such procedures have been criticized for ignoring evidence of human activities that can be found outside what are conventionally identified as archaeological sites. In their more extreme forms, these criticisms have gone so far as to deny that human settlements or communities even exist. This is an obvious exaggeration, since the essential notions of such settlement typologies are derived from concepts of different kinds of communities. These have amply demonstrated their usefulness in characterizing settlement variability which is readily observable ethnographically. Typologies of settlement can become so central to settlement system analysis, however, that careful attention may be required to recognize that, in at least the best of such work, sites are not the basic observational units in the field but are defined post hoc on the basis of artifact densities and distributions, and the typological classification is explicitly justified in these terms, as well as in terms of archaeological features visible on the surface. It is also true that in some cases, archaeologically observed distributions of settlement evidence defy characterization in terms of discretely identifiable settlements or local communities. In such instances, some commonly pursued modes of settlement system analysis cannot be applied.

Demography In its focus on where people live, settlement system analysis is quintessentially demographic in character. Explicitly or implicitly, most settlement system analysis is based on an assessment of how many people lived where. In some instances, these assessments can be made by counting actual residential structures (e.g., house mounds in the Maya lowlands) or even rooms (as in the pueblos of the US Southwest). More often, when the archaeological evidence on the landscape consists primarily of artifact distributions, quantification is more complicated. Settlement system analysis has relied on the numbers of archaeological sites in different locations, on measurements of areas across which artifact distributions are

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spread, or on measurements of such areas qualified by measurements of the densities of those artifact distributions. The fundamental assumption at the core of such demographic analyses is that, other things being equal, larger numbers of people leave larger quantities of debris on a landscape, and that at least some constituents of this debris are preserved as archaeological remains in the vicinity of the locations where that debris was produced. Other things that must be equal (or that steps may need to be taken to equalize) include patterns of use of easily preserved artifacts such as ceramics, length of chronological periods, and permanence of residence patterns.

Propinquity The propinquity principle, so important in so many ways in archaeological interpretation, is no less so in settlement system analysis. Conclusions about the use and control of resources in settlement system analysis often revolve around the least-effort principle that, other things being equal, people tend to live relatively near what they spend most of their time doing. For the preindustrial agricultural societies, often the subject of settlement system analysis, most people probably spend more time farming than anything else, so the distribution of settlement in a region with respect to the distribution of its agricultural resources and/or constructed agricultural infrastructure (such as terraces, canals, or raised fields) is often taken to reflect patterns of exploitation of agricultural resources, and the distribution of elite settlement to reflect patterns of control of agricultural resources (or the lack thereof). The same sort of propinquity argument is applied to other resources as well, as in the identification of mining, fishing, woodcutting, or other potentially specialized economic activities. Propinquity also underlies distance-interaction principles, which are used in settlement system analysis to define communities at various scales from local to regional, following the notion that, other things being equal again, people interact more, on average, with nearer neighbors than with more distant ones. The fundamental idea is applicable to interaction of social, political, economic, religious, or any other character, and plays a major role in the study of the regional-scale centralization so important in complex social organization.

When Other Things Are Not Equal Settlement system analysis is often associated with ecological and economic issues, because historically many of its practitioners have espoused materialist perspectives, and because ecological and economic variables are accessible to it with particular clarity (just as they are to many other kinds of archaeological study). This has sometimes led to the contention that settlement system analysis is based on materialist assumptions, when, in fact, it can provide potent arguments against the importance of environmental or economic variables. This happens, for example, when settlement system analysis provides direct evidence that people did not choose their places of residence on the basis of some identifiable aspect of economic rationality. Such a result comprises an empirical demonstration that other things are not always equal, and can lead to the identification of which other (noneconomic) factors became especially strong at some point in a sequence. This is one of the principal ways in which settlement system analysis provides a basis for reconstructing the dynamics of politics and polities, warfare and raiding, religious activities, and other spheres of past human societies. See also: Household Archaeology; Paleodemography; Settlement Pattern Analysis.

Further Reading Cherry JF, Davis JL, Demitrack A, Mantzourani E, Strasser TF, and Talalay LE (1988) Archaeological survey in an artifact-rich landscape: A Middle Neolithic example from Nemea, Greece. American Journal of Archaeology 92: 159–176. Drennan RD, Peterson CE, Indrisano GG, et al. (2003) Approaches to regional demographic reconstruction/Quyuxing Renkou Guimo Chongjian Zhi Changshi. In Regional Archeology in Eastern Inner Mongolia: A Methodological Exploration/Nei Mengu Dongbu (Chifeng) Quyu Kaogu Diaocha Jieduanxing Baogao, pp. 152–165. Bejing: Science Press. Parsons JR (1972) Archaeological settlement patterns. Annual Review of Anthropology 1: 127–150. Peterson CE and Drennan RD (2005) Communities, settlements, sites, and surveys: Regional-scale analysis of prehistoric human interaction. American Antiquity 70: 5–30. Sanders WT, Parsons JR, and Santley RS (1979) The Basin of Mexico: Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization. New York: Academic Press. Trigger BG (1968) The determinants of settlement patterns. In: Chang KC (ed.) Settlement Archaeology, pp. 53–78. Palo Alto, CA: National Press Books.

SHELL MIDDEN ANALYSIS 1983

SHELL MIDDEN ANALYSIS Julie K Stein and Amanda K Taylor, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary culture historical sequence A chronological ordering of suites of artifacts and events. diagnostic artifacts Artifacts that are distinctive in appearance or in other characteristics (e.g., raw material), and that were used only during specific times and places. geoarchaeology Archaeological investigations that incorporate geoscientific methods. Pleistocene A geologic period 1.8 million–10 000 years ago, the Ice Age. site formation processes The natural and cultural processes that create and alter archaeological sites by depositing and removing sediments, shell, and artifacts. vibracoring A coring machine that uses vibrations to penetrate water-saturated sediments with a hollow tube. When the tube is pulled out, the sedimentary structures are preserved in the core extracted by, and then extruded from, the tube.

Shell middens are archaeological mounds of refuse containing shell (Figures 1 and 2). They form in coastal and riverine settings where people collect and process shellfish to acquire food, bait, and construction materials, and to manufacture shell tools. A handful of Pleistocene-age shell midden sites have been discovered in the Old World, the earliest of which is 125 000 years old, but most date to after 10 000 years ago. This may be because people more intensely exploited marine resources after the Pleistocene, or because older sites were submerged when sea level rose. Common characteristics of shell middens include low densities of artifacts, high densities of shell, high porosity, and high alkalinity. Current research on these sites addresses a broad range of topics including past human diet, local ecology, climate change, site formation processes, and prehistoric technology. Archaeological investigations of past human diet at shell middens focus not only on what people ate, but also how and why people exploited shellfish and other marine resources. Researchers study whether human foraging depleted local shellfish populations, and they question whether shellfish were a valued source of protein or a last resort. Archaeologists also address the social organization of shellfishing. Ethnographic evidence suggests that in most cases, collectors were women and children; thus, shell middens are important for exploring their role in past societies.

Another facet of shell midden research reflects increased interest in environmental issues. Since different species of shellfish have different tolerances to environmental factors, archaeologists often track shifts in frequencies of species to investigate change over time in local ecology. They also establish climate chronologies using stable oxygen and carbon isotope compositions in shell to provide evidence on surface water temperature and salinity. From another perspective, researchers use regional spatial analyses of shell middens as well as underwater investigations and vibracoring to track the rise and fall of sea level related to climatic and geologic phenomena. Other geoarchaeological shell midden studies address site formation processes. This research focuses upon processes acting to transport and deposit the shell, artifacts, and sediments to the location, and the alterations by decomposition, compaction, weathering, and leaching.

Figure 1 Excavation of the English Camp shell midden, San Juan Island, Washington.

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integrate the interdisciplinary research results of a long-term study of agricultural origins in the Eastern Woodlands at shell mounds on the Green River, Kentucky. Synthesis of different lines of evidence allows researchers to test hypotheses more rigorously, and to enrich interpretations of past lifeways. See also: Caves and Rockshelters; Frozen Sites and Bodies; Invertebrate Analysis; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Methods; Sites: Mounded and Unmounded; Waterlogged.

Further Reading

Figure 2 Excavation of the Carlston Annis mound, Kentucky.

Archaeologists also study the artifacts found at shell midden sites. Past work centered on using diagnostic artifacts to establish culture-historical sequences for sites and regions. Currently, the technological organization of the people who made the artifacts is the focus of research. For example, Bruce Bourque details change over time in material culture at the Turner Farm site in the Gulf of Maine to investigate the relationship between environmental change and human culture. Angela Close reconstructs procurement, manufacture, and discard patterns at a shell midden on the San Juan Islands, Washington to draw interpretations about the social organization and lifeways of the people who lived there. The above review provides many perspectives from which archaeologists investigate shell midden sites. This diversity reflects the multitude of geologic, chemical, faunal, and cultural data that can be recovered from these sites. Thus, a major theme in recent shell midden studies is interdisciplinary research. For example, William Marquardt and Patty Jo Watson

Bailey GN and Craighead AS (2003) Late Pleistocene and Holocene coastal palaeoeconomies: A reconsideration of the molluscan evidence from northern Spain. Geoarchaeology 18: 175–204. Bourque BJ (1995) Diversity and Complexity in Prehistoric Maritime Societies: A Gulf of Maine Perspective. New York: Plenum Press. Burman J and Schmitz B (2005) Periwinkle (Littorina littorea) intrashell d18O and d13C records from the mid-Holocene Limfjord region, Denmark: A new high-resolution palaeoenvironmental proxy approach. The Holocene 15: 567–575. Cannon A (2000) Settlement and sea-levels on the central coast of British Columbia: Evidence from shell midden cores. American Antiquity 65: 67–77. Claassen C (1998) Shells. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Close AE (2006) Finding the People Who Flaked the Stone at English Camp (San Juan Island). Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press. Easton NA and Moore CD (1991) Test excavations of subtidal deposits at Montague Harbour, British Columbia, Canada – 1989. The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 20: 269–280. Erlandson JM (1988) The role of shellfish in prehistoric economies: A protein perspective. American Antiquity 53: 102–109. Kennett DJ and Kennett JP (2000) Competitive and cooperative responses to climatic instability in coastal southern California. American Antiquity 65: 379–395. Mannino MA and Thomas KD (2001) Depletion of a resource? The impact of prehistoric foraging on intertidal mollusk communities and its significance for human settlement, mobility, and dispersal. World Archaeology 33: 452–474. Marquardt WH and Watson PJ (eds.) (2005) Archaeology of the Middle Green River Region, Kentucky. Institute of Archaeology and Paleoenvironmental Studies Monograph No. 5. Gainesville: Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville. Sanger D (1988) Maritime adaptations in the Gulf of Maine. Archaeology of Eastern North America 16: 81–99. Singer R and Wymer J (eds.) (1982) The Middle Stone Age at Klasies River Mouth in South Africa. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Stein JK (ed.) (1992) Deciphering a Shell Midden. New York: Academic Press. Vellanoweth RL and Erlandson JM (2003) Coastal paleogeography and human land use at Tecolote Canyon, southern California, USA. Geoarchaeology 19: 141–165.

SHIPS AND SEAFARING 1985

SHIPS AND SEAFARING George Indruszewski, The Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde, Denmark ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary bow The foremost part of a vessel. clinker (building method) The method of hull construction characterized by overlapped strakes fastened to each other with rivets. In this case, the term denotes the way of fastening according to ON. hnoðsaumr (riveted seam), hnjoða, hnita (to hit, to pound). cog Northern European merchant vessel developed in the Early Medieval period and characterized by full bodylines; keel-plank; flush-laid bottom planking (Southern Baltic); clenched lap side planking; moss caulking; raked, partially rabbeted, and straight stem and sternpost. deck Boards laid horizontally to cover the interior of a vessel. They can be laid in between bitar (Skuldelev 3, Gokstad 1, Oseberg) or at the upper beam level (Skuldelev 1). Deck space for the helmsman (ON. lypting,-ar) seems to have covered the space after and forward of the rudder frame. dugout (logboat) Craft built out of a single trunk of wood. According to the method of construction and the kind of wood employed, the dugouts are classified as hard and soft dugouts. flush-laid Method of hull construction where strakes are laid edge to edge. Like carvel-built, the term does not imply any connotation defining the fastening method. framing Main transverse reinforcement system composed of one (rib) or several joined elements. hull The ship’s finite body without rigging. keel The longitudinal timber placed at the centerline of a hull bottom. lapstrake Method of hull construction where the seams of the overlapped strakes are secured with a variety of fasteners, such as treenails, treenails and rivets, clenched nails (clenched lap) or iron nails driven through treenails. In Southern Baltic shipbuilding, it denotes the method of construction where overlapped strakes are fastened to each other with treenails. mortise Rectangular or square cut of variable depth made to receive another element. overlap Assemblage where the edge of one element overlays the edge of another element. plank Long wooden board used in the building of the hull of a vessel. A plank bears a different name, depending on its position in a hull. Among the best indicators for shipbuilding in archaeological contexts, a ship plank undergoes a totally different conversion than a plank destined for general construction purposes: it is radially split with a variable profile (ellipsoidal or irregular trapezoidal) that enhances mechanical strength; its main dimensions stay within a prescribed range fit to the ship dimensions and to that particular shipbuilding tradition; and exhibits features such as the long-side lining of relatively regular hole intervals for strake-to-strake fastening, few and largely spaced strake-to-frame fastening holes located around the middle width of the plank; and a long and narrow carved-in depression following the outside edge of the strake-to-strake fastener-line used for placing the watertight material. post Wooden timber fastened at both ends of a keel designed to hold the ends of the planks or the wings of a vessel.

pram Term used for flat-bottomed vessels (OSl. pramu´, ON. pramr) used in inland navigation. rigging Generic term used to designate the ropes used to support the mast (fixed rigging) and the ropes used to maneuver the sail and the yard (running rigging). rivet Metal fastener composed of a nail whose end is hammered over a rove. rove Metal piece of variable shape perforated in the middle in order to allow the end of the nail to pass through. seam The overlap between strakes where fastenings are driven. starboard The right side of a vessel viewed from the stern. In the Baltic shipbuilding, it usually denotes the side where the quarter-rudder is attached (ON. stjo´rnborði). stem The post fastened at the forward end of the keel. sternpost The post fastened at the after end of the keel. strake Planks scarfed to one another to form a continuous line of planking from sternpost to stem. treenail Cylindrical piece of wood carved with a distinct head and used to fasten parts in a hull. wedge Tapered piece of wood used to lock a treenail in place.

Introduction Ships of the past are fascinating objects of study for the modern mind, especially when they are found underwater. Their study provides us today with important clues about the technological level of a certain society at a certain time, the life of man at sea, the goods that were traded, the wars that were fought, and the navigation knowledge that established seafaring routes long before the advent of radar, satellite positioning, and radio communication. Our present knowledge of ships and seafaring is in fact a dissemination gauge of the scientific discipline that produced that type of knowledge, and one cannot talk about ships, seafaring, and the sea without mentioning maritime archaeology by name. Furthermore, only by gaining insight into the details of this nascent discipline, one can realize the fullness of information about ships and seafaring of the past. Until recently, maritime, and more specifically nautical archaeology, was characterized as a nascent discipline preoccupied with the research of the remains of human activity in an adverse environment: in and under water (see Underwater Archaeology). Struggling since the nineteenth century to shed its treasure-hunting and looting aspects, maritime and nautical archaeology found itself in the pursue of its own identity, established only after postwar (as late as the 1960s) when land archaeologists, navy officers, biologists, ship engineers, and other enthusiasts learned how to discover, record, and curate the underwater historical treasures with the help of the J. Y. Cousteau’s self-contained

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breathing apparatus (SCUBA diving apparatus). Since then, maritime and especially nautical archaeology evolved in genuine scientific disciplines practiced in numerous countries and firmly accepted in the academic world through degree-earning programs at various universities around the world. The subject of maritime archaeology is concerned with all aspects related to human activity over stretches of water (marine and nonmarine) since the beginning of history, whereas nautical archaeology, as its name implies, is restricted to the study of ships and seafaring regardless of their place of discovery. Intrinsically, this specialized branch of maritime archaeology is closely connected to the field of nautical experimental archaeology, whose ultimate aims are the faithful reconstruction of the original, of the cargo, and a best approximation/reconstitution of the sailing ability of the historical vessel, including its routing.

Short History of Nautical Archaeology Although nautical archaeology (maritime archaeology) is considered to have began with the recovery in 1900 of various art objects, Rhodian and Coan amphorae, an astronomical device, and other small objects from a first century BC shipwreck off the islet of Antikythera, the beginnings can be pushed back well into the nineteenth century when several ‘flagships of nautical archaeology’ were investigated and/ or excavated: in 1863, K. Engelhardt completed the wetland excavation of a spectacular fourth century AD derelict at Nydam, in Southern Jutland, Denmark (Figure 1); in Norway, the majestic graved vessels that

came to symbolize the ships of the marauding Vikings came to light at Borre (1850–52), Tune (1867), Gokstad (1880), and Oseberg (1904); while in the British Isles, J. Deane and C. W. Parsley led the first organized efforts of recording and salvaging several shipwrecks (HMS Royal George, Mary Rose, Colossus, Venerable, etc.) sunk around the coastlines of the British Isles. These early benchmarks in the history of nautical archaeology, followed afterward by other twentieth century important excavations (Hjortspring on Als (1921), Lake Nemi ‘barges’ (1928–32), Sutton Hoo (1939), etc.) predicted in fact the blooming phase of nautical archaeology that came to pass after the 2nd International Congress of Underwater Archaeology from Albenga in 1958. The initiation of systematic investigations of Roman period shipwrecks like Mahdia (1948; investigations led by J. Y. Cousteau and E. Poidebard), Antheor (1948), Albenga (1950, 1957), Grand Congloue´ (1952–56; by a diving team led by J. Y. Cousteau and F. Benoit), ), La Chre´tienne A (1953–54, 1962), Titan (1956–58), Dramont (1956–59), and Spargi (1958) created the necessary practical framework onto which an original methodological breakthrough was developed within nautical archaeology during the following decades. The documentation and/or recovery of the early seventeenth century Swedish man-of-war Wasa (1956–61) a brilliant engineering project resulting for the first time in the recovery of an intact hull from the seabed; the recording in situ and the recovery in 1957–60 of five sunken and broken vessels near Skuldelev, Denmark; the excavation in 1960 of the Late Bronze Age (c. BC 1200) shipwreck

Figure 1 Nydam B displayed at the Gottorf Castle in Schleswig. Photo: G. Indruszewski.

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from Gelidonya, which was ‘‘the first shipwreck excavation carried out to completion on the sea bed, the first directed by a diving archaeologist, and the first conducted following the standards of terrestrial excavation’’ (Bass 1996: 29); the excavation and documentation of the two Byzantine shipwrecks off the Yassi Ada islet, Turkey; the 1967–69 excavation of the fourth century BC Greek merchant vessel off Kyrenia, Cyprus; the documentation, raising, and conservation of Henry VIII’s warship, the Mary Rose during 1965–79; the excavation of the Zwammerdam derelicts in the Netherlands (1968–71); the remote sensing investigations of the Titanic (1985–96); the investigation of Quanzhou (1975) and Shinan Gun (1975–76) vessels in the Far East; the excavation of the HMS Pandora in Australian waters (1977–2001); the excavation and preservation in Israel (Sea of Galilee) of the ‘Jesus boat’ (1986–1995); the excavation of the Late Bronze Age (c. BC 1340–30) sunken vessel at Uluburun (1984–95); and the investigations of the Early Helladic II (c. BC 2200) shipwreck from Dokos in Greece (1989–92) opened a mature period in the history of the new scientific discipline, where the accent fell not only on the technical aspects of excavation and recording, but also on the education of the general public coupled with the creation of an institutional and legal framework able to support the work of future generations of nautical archaeologists. The expansive number of institutions and individuals working within nautical and maritime archaeology (see Maritime Archaeology) led to the creation of maritime archaeology programs at numerous universities and the establishment of several forums of discussion, the most important being the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology (IJNA) and the organization of regular international conferences (the International Symposium of Boat and Ship Archaeology (ISBSA), TROPIS). Changes in legislation on national, regional, and international level helped in the establishment of an effective legal shield that protect any sites with hull remains, effectively supporting the creation of marine sanctuaries and the establishment of museums/departments with marine profile in Europe, Australia, Asia, the Near East, and the Americas, represented globally by the International Congress of Maritime Museums (ICMM).

Nautical Archaeology: An Emerging Scientific Discipline Since the excavations of the impressive Lake Nemi Roman ‘barges’ (1928–32), nautical archaeology was in want of a clear methodological framework that would not only cover the specific mapping needs in

the field, especially when working underwater, but also would set up the standards for recording and documentation for any type of ship remains in any working environment. In general, the main research components of nautical archaeology are: survey, excavation, recording, recover (including conservation), and publication. The quality of work dedicated to each of these components is critical to the quality of the overall result and the amount of reliable information extracted about the object of study. The survey component encompasses both pre-excavation survey of a known site, which may begin in the dusty halls of archival repositories, and also the search for an unknown site which can be carried out through a wide array of methods ranging from visual diving inspections (swimline, towing search, etc.) to the use of geophysical devices such as side-scanning sonars, sub-bottom profilers, magnetometers, and even remote-sensing underwater vehicles (ROVs). Once the site is located, the mapping of the researched object ranging from simple trilateration, gridding, stereophotogrammetry through to the use of computerized direct survey mapping (DSM) and automated mapping systems (Electronic Distance Measuring Systems (EDMSs) such as Sonic High Accuracy Ranging and Positioning System (SHARPS)) takes precedence over all other work tasks. The choice of the mapping system and the manner of execution of measurements influences directly the accuracy of obtained data. The successful application of the mapping method permits the accomplishment of site excavation which can be made through various methods, depending on the geological settings, location (dry, wet, or underwater), size, shape, preservation state, and the construction of the vessel. Not the least, the process of hull recording has to be a standardized procedure that documents even the most insignificant technical detail. These details are irreplaceable as they are extracted in the course of the irreversible process of excavation. The recover of vessel remains and/or its accompanying artifacts is a complex and financially costly decision that has to balance different factors including potential and real dangers to the site, the state of in situ preservation and the cost of postexcavation conservation, the educational value of the wreck related to the knowledge gain and the public interest. Not the least, the publication of harvested data should be aimed to address the gaps in the current cultural knowledge, as well as the discrepancies related to the applied ship terminology. All these require of the nautical archaeologist specific skills and knowledge from naval architecture and engineering, woodworking, mechanical drawing, materials science, computer science, mathematics,

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and not the least from the diving science and practice, making the education and training of nautical specialists a daunting challenge.

The Roots of Shipbuilding: Rafts, Skinboats, and Dugouts Mankind was attracted to water since the very beginning of history, water as primordial element occupying a central role in most ontological mythologies around the world. Therefore, it is assumed almost unanimously that man made its appearance in the aquatic environment accidentally or purposely through the use of the available naturally floating materials of that time: by lashing loose tree trunks to make rafts, by using animal skins and/or tree bark to make seagoing craft, and by carving a single log of wood to make a sturdy logboat. In nautical archaeological parlance, all these craft are considered the ‘roots’ of shipbuilding technology, out of which all types of craft evolved in the course of history. The first traces of such craft were registered in the Netherlands, where the logboat from Peese, with its earliest 14C dating (8760  145 year BP), ranks as the oldest in Europe. The dating of European logboats made J. N. Lanting to distinguish two continental zones of earliest logboat appearance and diffusion: one comprising the coastal zone stretching from Normandy to Denmark and the other, shaped like a cove, comprising Northern Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia–Herzegovina. Due to their perishable nature, the other two ‘roots’ of shipbuilding are not so clearly discernible in the archaeological context, as the Bronze Age site from Dalgety, Fife (Scotland), with its graved coracle imprint shows, and this situation led to the creation of positivist theories emphasizing the logboat primacy over the other two less-trackable ‘roots’ of shipbuilding. However, nautical anthropology cannot thrive only in the narrow confines offered solely by the archaeological evidence notwithstanding its power of persuasion, and for this reason it needs to search for information from other sources. Fortunately enough, the ethnographic evidence from the last century confirmed the existence of both skinboats (the curragh/coracle type in Ireland and the British Isles) and that of barkboats (Borneo bark logboats, North American canoes, etc.) and historical sources indicated the use of hideboats in Mesopotamia, the Iberian Peninsula, Northern Adriatic, Normandy, and the British Isles. As regarding logboats of large dimensions, they were reported ethnographically from the Far East, especially from New Zealand, Borneo, from Polynesia, South America, Africa, North America, Siberia, and from Europe. Expanded logboats were particularly sought for their lightness by the FinnoUgric peoples living on the vast expanses of forested

land stretching from the banks of the Obi River in Siberia to the Saami/Finnish Baltic regions. The existence of these craft until nowadays seems to confirm not only their ubiquitous usage but also their endurance as watercraft type throughout the history of mankind. Although relatively simple to manufacture, without requiring extra tools and expensive materials, these primary craft fulfilled the transport needs of the Stone Age man and his successors up to our times.

Polynesians and the Arctic People The beginning of watercraft building and seafaring is shrouded in darkness, for which no direct archaeological evidence seems to have been preserved today. For the reconstruction of the ‘palaeo-boatbuilding and seafaring’ one has to appeal once more to indirect evidence, such as the existence of archaeological settlement traces in remote Melanesian and Polynesian archipelagos (see Oceania: New Guinea and Melanesia; Migrations: Pacific). The large Melanesian archipelagos were seemingly populated already by the time Greater Australia (Australia and New Guinea) was settled, therefore it seems reasonable to assume that movement of people over large stretches of water began about 60 000 years ago if not earlier. Thus, by the time of the legendary Greek conquest of Troy, the bearers of the Lapita culture reached Fiji and Western Polynesia. Their skilled navigation can only be assessed based on ethnographic information about catamaran sailing and on simulation results of computer modeling. By using their large paired dugouts to increase stability, the Lapita people steered seemingly their vessels first into the prevailing easterlies only to afterward begin exploration and colonization of the new islands on the return leg. This original way of navigation was seemingly the safest on the vast stretches of water of the Pacific Ocean where dry land is so scarce. The same ethnographic, archaeological, and anthropological data suggest also another path of maritime exploration and colonization, this time in the Arctic. In northern Europe, the appearance of the Comsa and Fosna-Hesnbacka cultures mark the beginning of a human habitat exclusively oriented toward a maritime economy where seal hunting constituted the main subsistence activity. Characteristic for these cultures, as the representations from Alta stones show, is the use of skinboats whose construction can be traced today in the classical umiak of the Greenland’s native people, and the fifteenth century find from Pearyland, Greenland. In spite of the absence of direct evidence about seafaring in this region, the linguistic closeness between the Inuit of Alaska, the Eskimo of North Canada, and the native Greenlanders and their

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traditional way of living strongly suggests that these hunting people were in close contact throughout history and that they traveled by sea covering large distances in the Beaufort Sea, the Baffin Bay, and the Davis Strait. However, these regions were not the only ones that witnessed an apparent explosion in shipbuilding and seafaring. In the Gujarat province, near to the India–Pakistan modern border, remains of huge docks bear indirect witness to the seafaring abilities of the Harrapan cultural agents in the second half of the third millennium BC (see Asia, South: Indus Civilization). In the Mediterranean, the royal cargo of the Uluburun wreck is perhaps the best indication of the maritime trade connections in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Bronze Age was in fact the period which saw the first thalasocracies that created longdistance shipping lanes for rare raw materials (e.g., obsidian in the Neolithic times, tin in the Bronze Age) established, outlining the importance of seafaring and shipbuilding at this early date in the history of mankind.

The Seaworthy Craft of the Egyptians, Phoenicians/Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans The next stage in the evolution of shipbuilding technology was the building of coherent hulls made of more than one piece of timber. Based on actual archaeological data, this important step is attributed to the Egyptians, who in spite of not being a seafaringoriented society, managed to produce some of the first multiplank hulls in the world. As the ship finds from Abydos, Cheops, Dashur, Liszt, and the tomb depictions of courtier Ti show, the irregular planking of these hulls were joined in most cases by lashing with vegetable cord and with mortise and tenon joints, the former being adopted from reed boatbuilding while the latter being borrowed from general carpentry (Figure 2). This type of joint would remain in use for more than four millenniums, becoming a hallmark of Mediterranean shipbuilding. The quest of joining multiple planks into one coherent structure was, nevertheless, tried in other parts of Europe, the best example coming from the Greek Islands, especially from Syros where the third millennium BC terracotta ‘frying pans’ are considered one of the earliest ship models, and from the British Isles, as the boat remains from North Ferriby, Caldicot, Brigg, and Dover have shown. Here, the main fastener used to hold together the carefully worked planks was the cord. The sewing technique survived in each of the aforementioned European regions, including Northern Europe, as relicts of older boatbuilding traditions were depicted in the multitude of ship representation carved in different places

Figure 2 Planks joined by mortise and tenons affixed with wooden pegs.

throughout the Scandinavian Peninsula. The cord, as universal hull fastener, was replaced in the Mediterranean by the mortise and tenon joining, which in turn would be replaced later during the first millennium AD by treenailing and metal nailing. This coarse evolutionary outline, however, did not happened everywhere as the stitched hulls of the shipwrecks from Giglio, Bon Porte´, Comacchio, Marseille (Jules Verne 9), Cervia, Aquilea, and Ma’agan Michael (partially) have shown. The mortise and tenon joinery used to join the flush-laid planking in wooden hulls bloomed especially during the first millennium BC when the Phoenicians, followed by Etruscans, Greeks, and other people, led the way in the colonization and exploration not only of the entire Mediterranean realm, and as the fifth century BC voyage of the Carthaginian Hanno shows, but also beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar Strait). Their main concurrent, the Greeks, made an early debut in the Mediterranean during the last centuries of the Late Bronze Age, by continuing the art of building seagoing ships of their earlier predecessors, the Minoans from Crete (the best example being the elegant ship frescoes from Thera Santorini). The vestiges of Greek seafaring are found not only at the bottom of the sea, but also in the poetic rhymes of mythological verses of Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad (for the Aegean and Mediterranean seafaring) and the legend of the Argonauts (for the Black Sea seafaring). The Greek wars against almighty Persian fleets and especially their quest of coastal land propitious for the foundation of new city-states led to the perfection of several ship types, such as the famous warship, the trireme, and the less famous but clearly most efficient cargo ship illustriously represented by the Kyrenia vessel. The apogee of multiplank hull building happened later at the beginning of our era when the

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Mediterranean became a Roman ‘lake’. Initially a state with a clear land orientation, the Romans realized during the first Punic War (BC 264–241) that control on the sea is the key to supraregional hegemony, hence their swift adoption of nautical skills from their most powerful competitors, the Carthaginians and the Greeks from Magna Graecia. The Roman period (c. BC 250–500 AD) witnessed not only devastating sea battles but also intense commercial shipping in the whole Mediterranean realm, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Black Sea, and the Aegean, and on inland waterways, specifically on the Rhine, Rhone, and the Danube. Shipping lanes connected all major Mediterranean portsof-call (Alexandria (Egypt), Caesarea Maritima (Israel), Athens (Greece), Syracuse (Sicily), Pompeii (Italy), Cadiz (Spain)) with Rome’s harbour in Ostia. The large volume of seafaring unavoidably left behind a rich collection of wrecked vessels of all sizes and types, with large wreck concentrations in the Lyon Bay, the Ligurian, Tyrrhenian, and the Adriatic Seas. Adaptation to local environments and adoption of non-Roman nautical technology led to advances in shipbuilding and ship navigation. After more than half a century of research, nautical archaeology revealed that ship types were even more numerous and functionally adapted than those shown on the Late Roman (third to fourth centuries AD) Altiburus Mosaic. The complete investigation of the Madrague de Giens wreck (BC 60) showed how merchantmen of the corbita and ponto types could carry thousands of amphorae in just one shipment; from a constructional point of view, these double-planked hulls (outer layer of pine, fabric between plank layers, main dimensions

L 40 m, B 9 m, H 4.5 m, hull sheathed with lead, bolted frames to keel) were indeed the flagships of the Mediterranean mortise and tenon strake-joining. But in spite of the introduction of certain standardization procedures in shipbuilding (metrological standardization of scantlings) as the large Zwammerdam prams in the Netherlands have shown, the Romans were not able to displace techniques used in local shipbuilding, their mixing with Roman technological traits being apparent in both seagoing and inland craft. The Barland’s Farm (Wales, Great Britain) wreck (c. 300 AD), for example, representing a doubleended, small-sized, coastal vessel with mixed propulsion, was built flush-laid oak planking nailed to the framing in a kind of ‘frame-first’ construction, the nails being driven through treenails and doubleclenched afterward. The other important examples come from the Rhine area: in Mainz, Germany, five medium-size military vessels that patrolled one of the most disputed borders of the Roman Empire were built with clenched iron nails instead of the Mediterranean mortise and tenon joinery (Figure 3). The joinery is thought to have been typical of the Romano-Celtic shipbuilding tradition, which, as the Bevaix and Yverdon craft have shown, was characterized by the use of sturdy flush-laid oak planks fastened not to each other but to a heavy framing inside the hull.

Northern European Craft: The Scandinavians, the Baltic Slavs, the Eastern Balts, the Saami Development in shipbuilding happened not only in the warm waters of the Mediterranean, but also around

Figure 3 Late third century AD Roman patrol vessel from Mainz. Photo: G. Indruszewski.

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the brackish waters of the Baltic Sea, and perhaps it is not a coincidence that the first European seagoing vessels fastened entirely with iron fasteners in clinker-built fashion (the fourth century AD rowing vessel from Nydam) appeared in this less corrosive environment (Figure 4). However, the boatbuilders of this region seem to have adapted their joining methods after the main hull fasteners: if the Pre-Roman Iron Age (late fourth century BC) large paddled canoe from Hjortspring, on the Danish isle of Als, was made of long strakes stitched together in a beveled overlap, the appearance of nails in the Roman period (first centuries AD) induced seemingly an overwhelming preference toward the full overlapping of planks in a hull. And while the Scandinavian and seemingly the Old Prussian boatbuilders preferred to forge metal rivets to fasten the overlap between the strakes (Figure 5), their Baltic Slavic counterparts used the technologically lessdemanding treenails to secure the same hull joints, while the Saami boatbuilders remained faithful to the ancient stitching method of plank joining. In a way, each cultural and ethnic group of the Baltic realm was adopting its own emblemic identity in a boatbuilding tradition, which secured visual identification on a sea crossed in all directions by busy communication lanes (see Ethnicity). The sea acted in fact as a binding factor among multiethnic communities, aspect forcefully stressed by the historical phenomenon known largely as the ‘Viking Movement’ overseas that saw the opening of river routes in Russia from Archangelsk in the north to Byzantium in the south, and of transatlantic routes between Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland, and even North America.

European Vessels: From the Celts to the Dutch The legacy of early shipbuilding technology of the Celts and of the Romans can be traced in one form or another throughout the entire medieval European shipbuilding. This period, however, has been marked by another important milestone in the evolution of the shipbuilding. The most obvious technical difference that split the European continent was the way of joining strakes in a hull: in the north, the hulls were manufactured by overlapping the strakes, while in the south and on the continent the hulls were manufactured with flush-laid strakes. The kernel of development started when the iron fastenings, increasingly used during the Imperial Roman period in major hull joints, started to replace the ubiquitous mortise and tenon joints in the planking. As the Byzantine hulls from Yassi Ada have shown, iron nails started to be used increasingly to affix the planks

not to each other but to pre-erected framing. This technical shift that happened gradually from the fourth to the seventh centuries AD led to what is known as the ‘carvel construction method’, where the flush-laid planking is affixed to the internal skeleton of the vessel. This way of assembling the hull produced a radical change in the conception and manufacture of hulls with flush-laid strakes, whose construction started to rely increasingly more on templates and drawings than on oral and visual inspection. In the Mediterranean, this development was triggered by many factors, including the reorganization of the Byzantine Imperial fleet after the Arab naval impact and later by the need to build larger vessels that could transport the crusaders to the Holy Land. The Late Middle Ages (fourteenth to sixteenth centuries) saw the Mediterranean ships readopting the square sail and the carrack emerging as the best oceangoing ship of the Iberian Peninsula. The new method of hull construction reached at this time the French and Dutch shipyards from which it expanded soon in the Northern European realm which was dominated by the lapstrake-built Hanseatic cog. This workhorse, that made its appearance in the first centuries of the second Christian millennium as the most reliable cargo vessel of Northern Europe, enabled the Hanseates to expand their shipping offices throughout Northern Europe from London to Novgorod. This ship type indicated how quick and effective techniques used basically in inland boatbuilding can be successfully adapted to building seagoing vessels: the cog’s characteristic flat bottom was ideal for docking in shallow waters, while still maintaining the old method of strake overlapping. Hygiene at sea became also more scrutinized than before, as the existence of a toilet on board the Bremen cog (dated to c. 1380) seems to indicate. But the cog’s construction did not lose the time race without yielding resistance, and different solutions were tried: the Bergen ship remains have shown how stacked crossbeams can increase the size of the riveted lapstrake hull, the Gellen wreck (off the Hiddensee isle) with its wooden panels filling the offset of the lapstrake indicated how a ‘fake’ flush-laid impression could be obtained without renouncing to the lapstrake method of construction, finally the sixteenth century carrack Grace a´ Dieu with its triple-layered planking was a testimony of strength in lapstrake hull construction. In spite of all these experimental searches, the run for size ended to the advantage of the carvel-built hulls, and the ships of the European Renaissance came to be represented first and foremost by the Dutch inland tjalks, prams, and aaks. The warships, on the other side, saw an evolution from heavy hulls with fore-and-aft castles to ships

2000

0

4000 Kilometers

AD 4−200 AD 201−312 AD 313−423 AD 424−1025 Nrivets & nails.txt Legiocastrum.shp Limesgen.shp Lakes.shp Romrivers.shp Nafrica.shp Kaldarhöfdi Vatnsdalur Osnes Rosvik Holmedal Langesete Vestlandet Rossaland

Scar

Avaldsnes Kiloran Bay Ballywillin

Flo

Fore Hov Mo Lekanger Nesna Leika Luroy Fosnes Horstad Snotra Lo Haug Röttingsnes 5

St. Dal

Sele

Molen Ostre Vatne Foulum Brokær

Jarrow York

Sanddal

Wremen

Ladby

Yliskylä

Sjökalla

Valle Utne

Pappilannaki

Backas

Ristimaki Pietilä

Plakun

Ullbro Kvarnbo Botkyrka

Alvastra Gunnerstad Simris

Nabberor Klinta Gnezdovo

Enekrogen Haidaby Ralswiek Gr. Strömkendorf

Victrix Balladeole Barton on Humber XX Valeria Victrix Thoroe by Norwich Snape 1 XXX Ulpia II Augustra Rochester Britsnnts Ozengel Germania Minerva XXII Primigenia Sarre Inferior Gallia III Italica VIII Augusta Belgica X Gemina Germania I Audiutrix Raetia XIV Gemina llé de Groix Noricum Superior Gallia II Audiutrix II Italica Pannonia V Macedonia Lugdunensis Superior VIII Gemina Dacia IV. Flavia VII Claudia Pannonia Gallia XI Claudia Aquitania I Italica Inferior Da Narbonensis Moesia l m Moesia Dramont A VII Gemina ati Punto A Inferior a Superior Helopols A Flumicino F Hispania Port Vendres A Tracia Sparg Taraconensis Capo Testa B xxxx Lusitania

Pontus & Bithynia

Figure 4 Spatial distribution of iron rivets and nails (dotted white squares) throughout Northern Europe and iron bolts in the Mediterranean realm (dotted colored circles) in relationship to the Imperial border (red crossed squares denote legionary castra).

1992 SHIPS AND SEAFARING

Meditbolts1.txt BC 110–AD 3

SHIPS AND SEAFARING 1993

the existence of a specific group of people in the local community: the boatbuilders called biswakarmas in West Bengal. Further east, the Chinese medieval ships whose hulls were built of up to six layers of planking reached as early as the nineth century AD the Gulf of Aden and the African coast.

The New World: From War Canoes and Skinboats to Ironclad Men-of-War

Figure 5 Clinker construction: planks joined by iron rivets driven through the overlap.

with superimposed gun decks, the Mary Rose being representative for this technical transition. This was the time when more and more cannons were aligned on the ship’s sides whose tumble-home construction predicted in a way the superb form of the ship-of-theline of Napoleonic Wars.

The Middle and the Far East: The Arabs, the Hindu, and the Chinese The great geographic discoveries led to a multifaceted cultural exchange between the European and nonEuropean societies, with the net result that European shipbuilding practices were adopted, copied, or just simply ignored in other parts of the globe, notably in India and the Far East. In spite of all appearances, the local methods of shipbuilding did not vanish, but were maintained throughout the centuries, as the survival of lashed and pegged hulls of the mtepe boats on the Kenyan and Somalian coastlines is showing. More than that, some types seem to have been copied back to Europe, the best example being the Portuguese caravela whose design seemingly was copied after Arab fishing craft. And while the Arab dhow was the basic goods carrier in the Persian Gulf until and after the appearance of the European craft in the region, the Indian subcontinent witnessed a multitude of craft, from dugouts with or without outriggers and catamarans to keeled planked vessels of complex construction. Even today, one can document in different parts of the Indian subcontinent the traditional watercraft, their longevity being in fact maintained by

The situation in the New World changed drastically after Columbus established the first European outpost in the Caribbean by the end of the fifteenth century, as the Europeans relied heavily on ships and shipping, thus introducing and heavily employing their own naval products and experience in the ‘New World’. As a result, indigenous watercraft found themselves delegated to fulfill local needs and only in inaccessible areas such as the Orinoco and Amazon deltas in the South and the Pacific coast of North America, the logboats remained in use until recently. These logboats, up to 20 m in length and 2 m wide, were used for longer coastal voyages, fishing, whaling (Nootka tribes), carrying warring parties, and other transport needs. The native nautical knowledge extended vastly over two continents from the seaworthy skinboats of the Aleutians, called baidarkas by the Russians, and the bark canoes of the Iroquis to the reed rafts of the Uros Natives from Lake Titicaca. The canoes were in fact so well adapted to local conditions that the European fur traders, active in the Great Lakes area from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, adopted the canoes as their only mean of long-distance transport. The large-scale shipbuilding remained, however, the exclusive domain of the ‘newcomers’, and few regions of the world can boast a richer heritage than the Caribbean Sea and the continental waters of the Americas, where sunken wrecks of the Spanish treasure fleets, such as the Nuestra Senora de Atocha (sunk in 1622 off Florida Keys) or the Padre Island 1554 Spanish Fleet, are a permanent attraction for treasure hunters. In addition to such highly marked wrecks, underwater investigations of sites like Port Royal, the Red Bay Basque wrecks off the coast of Labrador (Canada), or the cenotes of Central America added new dimensions to the New World heritage. While the sea surrounding the Americas is the natural place to look for underwater sites, it yielded several times to sites found on inland waters that also contained significant cultural remains. Among those, one can note the sites from Lake Champlain (Vermont, USA), exhibiting eighteenth and nineteenth century American and British watercraft, the sites of the Cairo, Bertrand, and Arabia, all wrecks belonging to the so-called ‘steamboat archaeology’, and the pre-Columbian canoes from Lake

1994 SIBERIA, PEOPLING OF

Phelps (North Carolina, USA). To all these, one can mention also sites that have been partially investigated and/or declared national sanctuaries under the Abandoned Shipwreck Act (1988), such as the ironclad Civil War vessels, the USS Monitor (sunk in 1862) and the USS Tecumseh (sunk in 1864).

Conclusions As in the past and at present, ships and the adventurous voyages of those who sail them will continue to fascinate the human mind regardless of age and professional occupation. And in spite of the overwhelming reliance and use of modern shipping, electronic steering, and satellite-based navigation, many of us will still prefer sailing on a gondola on Canal Grande in Venice or onboard a replica of a historical ship than be on the command deck of the last generation of tankers or airplane carriers. See also: Asia, South: Indus Civilization; Ethnicity; Maritime Archaeology; Migrations: Pacific; Oceania: New Guinea and Melanesia; Underwater Archaeology.

Further Reading Arnold B (1995–96) Pirogues monoxyles d’Europe centrale: Construction, typologie, e´volution, tomes 1 & 2. Neuchaˆtel: Muse´e cantonal d’arche´ologie (Archeologic neuchateloise 20-21).

Shipwreck Archaeology

Bass G (1996) Shipwrecks in the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology. Ankara: Do¨nmez Offset. Bruce-Mitford R (1975) The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial. Cambridge: British Musuem Press. Crumlin-Pedersen O and Olsen O (eds.) (2002) Ships and Boats of the North 4.1: The Skuldelev Ships – Topology, Archaeology, History, Conservation, and Display. Roskilde: The Viking Ship Musuem in Roskilde and Centre for Maritime Archaeology of the National Musuem of Denmark. Delgado JP (1997) Maritime archaeology. In: Delgado JP (ed.) British Musuem Encyclopaedia of Underwater and Maritime Archaeology, pp. 259–260. London: British Musuem Press. De Kerchove R (1948) International Maritime Dictionary. An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Useful Maritime Terms and Phrases, Together with Equivalents in French and German. New York: Van Nostrand. De Weerd MD (1988) Schepen voor Zwammerdam. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. Green J (1990) Maritime Archaeology – A Technical Handbook. London: Academic Press. Greenhill B and Morrison J (1997) The Archaeology of Boats & Ships. London: Conway Maritime Press. Holland C (1994) Arctic Exploration and Development c. 500 BC to 1915. An Encyclopedia. NewYork: Garland Publishing. Muckelroy K (1978) Maritime Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rajamanickam GV (2004) Traditional Indian Ship Building – Memories – History – Technology. Delphi: New Academic Publishers. Steffy JR (1994) Wooden Ship Building and the Interpretation of Shipwrecks. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press. Ray PH (2003) The Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. UNESCO (1972) Underwater Archaeology: A Nascent Discipline Paris.

See: Maritime Archaeology.

SIBERIA, PEOPLING OF Pavel Dolukhanov, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Acheulean Early Palaeolithic industries recognizable by the occurrence of bifaces (particularly, hand axes) – stone tools, symmetrically worked on both sides. Usually associated with early hominids in Africa, Europe, and Asia and dated between 1.65 million and 100 000 years ago.

archaic industries Human-made tools manufactured from cobbles and pebbles and often associated with early hominids (Homo habilis, H. erectus). See also Oldowan and Acheulean. blade technique Manufacturing of thin and long blades struck off ‘prismatic’ cores and later reshaped into various tools, commonly used in the Upper Palaeolithic. microblade industry Small-size tools, often of geometric forms, manufactured from ‘microblades’ less than 2 cm in length, and used as components of composite projectile points. They became particularly common in Europe and the Near East during the late Upper Palaeolithic (15 000–10 000 years). Mousterian Middle Palaeolithic industries spread in Europe, the Near East, and Northern Africa and characterized by the use of points, hand axes, and scrapers, as well as flakes manufactured

SIBERIA, PEOPLING OF 1995 from especially prepared cores (‘Levallois’ technique). Dates between 300 000 and 30 000 years and often associated with Neanderthals. Oldowan The earliest human-made industry first recognized in Eastern Africa (e.g., Olduvai Gorge) and dated to 2.5–1.5 million years ago. It includes chopper cores and flakes, large scrapers, hammerstones, and a range of smaller tools. Usually associated with H. habilis. oxygen isotope stages (OIS) Variations of climate based on the ratio of the mass of oxygen with an atomic weight of 18 to the mass of oxygen with an atomic weight of 16 present in calcite of the oceanic floor samples. During the Last Ice Age the following stages are recognized: OIS 5 (transitional): 128–75 thousand years; OIS 4 (cold): 75–64 thousand years; OIS 3 (transitional): 64–32 thousand years; OIS 2 (maximum cold): 32–13 thousand years OIS 1 (transition to modern): 13–0 thousand years. Upper Palaeolithic Industries based on the wide uses of tools (scrapers, burins, points) made with the use of blade technique, and the occurrence bone and hammer implements. First manifestations of artwork (cave paintings and bas relieves, sculpture). Dates between 40 000 and 10 000 years, and usually associated with anatomically modern humans.

The earliest evidence of human occupation of Siberia comes from the open-air site Diring Yuriakh on the Lena River 140 km south of Yakutsk. The age of archaic pebble tools was estimated as 3.2–1.8 million years, comparable to that of early hominid sites in Eastern Africa. Thermoluminescence measurements suggest a much younger age of 370–270 thousand

years. Archaic industries with Oldowan and Acheulean elements were reported from the Altai Mountains (Ulalinka), Tuva (Torgalyk), and the basin of the Middle Amur River (Filimoshki, Ust’-Tu, Borodinskoye, Kumary), yet authenticity and age of these sites are not certain. In view of the absence of any skeletal remains one may suggest only rare penetrations of early hominids into Siberia. The Neanderthals’ presence in Siberia is alleged based on the occurrence of Mousterian industries in the Altai Mountains, both in the open-air sites (KaraBom and Ust-Karakol-I) and rockshelters (Ust-Kyn, Strashnaya, Denisova, Okladnikov). The Mousterian level in the Okladnikov Cave yielded five teeth and three postcranial skeletal fragments with no major deviations from the morphology of modern humans. The sequence of Kara-Bom includes the levels attributed to Mousterian and Early Upper Palaeolithic, which yielded statistically similar radiocarbon dates in the order of 43.3–30.9 thousand years (Appendix 1, 91, 92). These levels contain identical animal remains and similar categories of artifacts. According to an alternative view, both the Mousterian and Early Upper Palaeolithic industries are deemed as reflecting an early expansion of anatomically modern humans spreading from Africa via the Levant and Eastern Europe (Figure 1).

0

Seas and lakes

Glaciers

Scale 2000 km

Sites

Groups of sites

Directions of migrations Figure 1 Palaeolithic sites 43–30 thousand years. Source: Dolukhanov P, et al. (2002) Journal of Archaeological Science 29: 593–606.

1996 SIBERIA, PEOPLING OF

The initial spread of early modern humans occurred during oxygen isotope stages 3 and 2, which in Siberia included the Karginian Interglacial (50–22 thousand years) and the Sartan Glacial (22–10 thousand years). The Karginian climate was colder than now, by 4  C in summers and 6  C in winters, with the annual precipitation lower by 80–50 mm. During the milder episodes, forests spread far to the north along the Yenisei River Valley. Forests and forest-steppe occurred both in the South Siberian mountains (see Asia, Central, Steppes). The animal world consisted of large herd mammals and included the mammoth, wooly rhinoceros, wild horse, reindeer, and elk. The bison, mountain goat and sheep, red deer, bear and leopard were common in the Altai Mountains. During the Sartan Glacial ice sheets developed on the exposed shelf of Arctic Ocean partly expanding to the West Siberian Lowland with only minor glaciers on the elevated plateaus of Central Siberia and the mountains of Siberia’s North-East. Small-size glaciers occurred in the Altai and Baikal areas. Quantitative reconstructions show the winters to be colder than today by 7–15  C, summers, by 1–7  C and the precipitation remained unchanged. During the Karginian Interglacial, the sea level was at least 40 m below its present position. The sea level dropped below 130 m during the Sartan Glacial maximum. The shoreline moved by 400–700 km seawards, exposing vast areas of the continental shelf. This led to the emergence of the Beringia landmass linking the Siberian mainland with Alaska. During that period the Asian continent became connected both with the Sakhalin Island and the Japanese Archipelago. The land bridge remained in place until 10 thousand years. During the Karginian Interglacial Palaeolithic settlements encompassed considerable areas of Siberia. Apart of the Altai Mountains, the sites with radiocarbon dates in the order of 31–39 thousand years were obtained for the sites in Baikal area of southern Siberia: Makarovo 3 (Appendix 1, 59) and Varvarina Gora (Appendix 1, 63). Their animal remains consist of woolly rhinoceros, red deer, roe deer, Mongolian gazelle, and argali sheep. Conventional radiocarbon dates in excess of 30 thousand years were obtained for the sites on the Yenisey: Thousand Kamennyi Log (Appendix 1, 37), Kurtak-Berezhkovo (Appendix 1, 38), and the upper stretch of the Angara River: Druzhinikha (Appendix 1, 53), Ust-Kova (Appendix 1, 8). The radiocarbondated sites on the Angara River include: Military Hospital in Irkutsk (Appendix 1, 10) and Arta 2 (Appendix 1, 66). In eastern Siberia the sites on the Aldan River, Ust-Mil’ and Ikhnie (Appendix 2,

117, 119) yielded the radiocarbon age of 32–30 thousand years. In the Russian Far East, the age of 32.6 thousand years was reported for the Geographical Society Cave, in the mountain range north of Nakhodka (Appendix 2, 127). The animal remains at that site include the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, wild horse, roe-, and red deer. These sites usually combine the blade technology with archaic flakes and Mousterian elements. The next stage in the peopling of Siberia by early modern humans occurred during the time-span of 30–18 thousand years (Figure 2). This was the coldest period of the Sartan Glacial that included the Last Glacial Maximum. The sites of that age were identified on the Yenisey River: Kurtak 4 (Appendix 1, 40), Novoselovo (Appendix 1, 28), Tarachikha (Appendix 1, 23), and Ui 1 (Appendix 1, 29) in the Yenisey’s upper stretches. Their animal remains consisted of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, wild horse reindeer, bison, and wild goat. A large concentration of sites is observed in the upper basin of the Angara River. This cluster includes the best-explored Upper Palaeolithic sites of Siberia: Mal’ta (Appendix 1, 57) and Buret (Appendix 1, 11), which yielded both zoomorphic (Figure 3) and anthropomorphic (Figure 4) figurines. Other sites include Masterov Klyuch (Appendix 1, 69), Igeteiskii Log (Appendix 1, 14), Alekseevka 1 (Appendix 1, 16), and Shishkino 8 (Appendix 1, 17). This stage also includes Kurla 3 on the northwestern shore of the Lake of Baikal (Appendix 1, 68), Ikhnie 3 on the Aldan river (Appendix 2, 120), and Ogonki 5 on the Sakhalin Island (Appendix 2, 136). The final stage in the colonization of northern Eurasia by modern humans falls to the time-span of 18–10 thousand years (Figure 5). At that stage the frequencies of sites in Siberia reached an all-time maximum. This stage includes several open-air sites near Minusinsk, in the middle stretches of the Yenisey River, forming the Kokorevo (Appendix 1, 31–34) and Afontova Gora (Appendix 1, 51–52) groups. Skeletal remains of anatomically modern humans, including a frontal bone, a radius, a humerus, and child’s teeth, were found at Afontova Gora. Animal remains consisted of the wild horse, aurochs, red deer, wild goat, and arctic fox. The group of Golubaya sites (Appendix 1, 44) on the right tributary of the Yenisey is distinctive by the higher rate of retouched blades and microblades. The sites stylistically affiliated to the Afontovo group lie in the upper Yenisey Basin, including Maina and Ui 2 (Appendix 1, 41, 30). Their animal remains include the bison, kulan, red deer, and

SIBERIA, PEOPLING OF 1997

Scale 2000 km

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Groups of sites

Directions of migrations Figure 2 Palaeolithic sites 30–18 thousand years. Source: Dolukhanov P, et al. (2002) Journal of Archaeological Science 29: 593–606.

Figure 3 Mal’ta. Ortnitorphic effigies from mammoth ivory (A,B – swan, C – partridge). Source: Abramova ZA (1962) Paleoliticheskoe iskusstvo na territorii SSSR [Palaeolithic Art on the Territory of the USSR]. Moscow-Leningrad: Nauka.

Siberian goat. Strizhevaya Gora (Appendix 1, 54) lies further east. This stage includes a group of sites in the Trans-Baikal region of Southern Siberia, which inventories contain the microblade component combined

with wedge-shaped cores. A series of AMS dates with the mean value of 17.4 thousand years was obtained for Studenoe-1 on the Chikoi River (Appendix 1, 111). Other sites in that area with the similar

1998 SIBERIA, PEOPLING OF

component reveal a younger age: Ust’-Menza (Appendix 1, 65), and Sokhatino 4 (Appendix 1, 74). This stage also comprises the sites of the Dyuktai Culture on the Aldan River, including Dyuktai Cave (Appendix 2, 118) and Ust’-Timpton (Appendix 2, 115, 116). Culturally related sites were found near the Arctic coast (Berelyokh, Appendix 2, 122) and Siberdik (Appendix 2, 123). Still further to the east, this stage includes Ushki 2 (Appendix 2, 137) on the Kamchatka Peninsula with radiocarbon dates 13.6– 10.3 thousand years. Another cluster of sites arose in the Maritime Region of Russian Far East. It includes Suvorovo 4 (Appendix 2, 130) and Ustinovka 6 (Appendix 2, 131), the sites which feature the wedge- and boatshaped cores, leaf-shaped bifaces and the microblade tradition. Several sites on the lower stretches of the Amur River: Gasya, Hummi, Goncharovka, Novopetrovka, and Gromatukha (Appendix 2, 131– 135), include organic-tampered ceramic wares. These sites yielded radiocarbon dates in the span of 14–10 thousand years. This period corresponds to an intensive migration of Late Palaeolithic groups along the

Figure 4 Buret. Female effigy from mammoth ivory. Source: Abramova ZA (1962) Paleoliticheskoe iskusstvo na territorii SSSR [Palaeolithic Art on the Territory of the USSR]. MoscowLeningrad: Nauka.

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Directions of migrations Figure 5 Palaeolithic sites 18–10 thousand years. Source: Dolukhanov P, et al. (2002) Journal of Archaeological Science 29: 593–606.

SIBERIA, PEOPLING OF 1999 Appendix 1 Radiocarbon dates of Palaeolithic sites in eastern and central Siberia Nos

Index

Site

Date

Sigma

Cluster size

Lat N

Long E

Material

Position

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

IM-887 Le-1434 Le-1549 Le-1984

Haergas Yanovo Telezhnyi Log Nizhni Idzhir 1 Sabanikha Biryusa-3 Proskuryakov Cave Ust-Kova Ust-Kova 1 Military Hospital Buret Ust-Belaya Sosnovyi Bor Igeteiskii Log Verholenskaya Gora Alekseevka 1 Shishkino 8 Ust-Kyahta 17 Kunalei Kamenka 1 Avdeikha Bolshoi Yakor Tarachikha Malaya Syya Bolshoi Kemchug Dvuglazka Tashtyk 2 Novoselovo 13 Ui-1 Ui-2 Kokorevo 2 Kokorevo 1 Kokorevo 3 Kokorevo 4 Berezovyi Ruchei Divnyi 1 Kamennyi Log Kurtak-Berezhkovo Kurtak 3 Kurtak 4 Maina Maina Kashtanka Golubaya-1 Pritubinsk Tonnelnaya Listvenka Yeleneva Cave Biryusa Bol. Slizneva Cave Afontova Gora Afontova Gora Druzhiniha Strizhova Gora Tolbaga Krasnyi Yar Mal’ta Makarovo 2 Makarovo 3 Ust-Kyahta

16000 30700 15480 17200 22930 34000 40770 34300 28050 29700 21190 11930 12060 23508 12570 22410 21190 11500 21100 31060 15200 12400 19850 20300 10980 44400 13550 21580 17520 11970 13330 13980 12690 15460 15210 13220 33740 31880 14390 24180 12120 15200 29400 13050 15600 13840 13700 12085 14480 13540 14000 11330 43580 12000 15100 19100 21530 11860 31200 11630

200 400 500 140 350 1500 1075 900 670 500 100 230 120 250 180 480 175 100 300 530 300 150 180 350 55 1600 320 480 130 230 100 1200 140 320 800 150 500 350 100 560 120 150 400 90 495 345 720 105 400 500 550 270 8800 150 520 100 1360 200 500 140

1 1 1 1 5 1 3 9 2 1 1 1 1 4 1 1 1 3 1 2 2 6 2 5 2 8 1 3 4 3 5 7 1 2 2 1 8 9 4 6 19 19 5 6 1 2 6 10 7 2 9 11 1 9 4 1 11 3 1 6

60.00 54.51 55.05 52.05 54.22 55.55 54.15 58.17 58.17 52.34 52.57 52.5 52.36 53.25 52.34 54.04 54.01 50.31 50.36 51.43 59.24 56.13 73.04 54.23 54.27 54.35 54.37 54.58 52.56 52.26 55.05 55.05 55.05 55.05 55.1 55.05 55.05 55.09 55.09 55.09 52.57 57.57 55.07 52.57 53.53 55.5 55.56 55.56 56.04 56.09 55.58 55.58 56.54 55.48 51.77 53.44 52.49 53.55 53.55 50.31

117.22 90.55 92.11 92.22 51.06 89.04 89.21 100.19 100.19 100.25 103.3 103.31 103.49 103.56 104.25 105.29 105.4 106.16 107.48 108.15 112.45 115.44 86.5 89.25 89.3 90.51 90.55 90.57 91.05 91.05 91.1 91.1 91.1 91.1 91.12 91.15 91.23 91.28 21.28 21.28 91.28 91.28 91.3 91.32 92 92.1 92.22 92.29 92.32 92.55 92.57 92.57 93.22 95.46 108.33 103.22 103.33 105.51 105.51 106.16

Bone Tusk Bone Charcoal Chaocoal Bone Bone Charcoal Charcoal Bone Bone Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Bone Bone Bone Bone Charcoal Charcoal Bone Charcoal Charcoal Bone Bone Charcoal Bone Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Bone Bone Charcoal Wood Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Bone Charcoal Charcoal Bone Bis Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Bone Bone Bone Bone Bone Charcoal Bone Charcoal

Level 6 Arch. level Arch. level Arch. level Level 3.7 m Level A Arch. level Lower level Lower level Arch. level Arch. level Level 14 Level 3B Lower level Arch. level Arch. level Arch. level Level 5 Level 3 Complex A Level C Level C Level 3A Arch. level Level 1.0 m Level 5 Level 2 Arch. level Level 2 Level 4 Arch. level Layers 2,3 Arch. level Level 2, 2.6 m Arch. level Arch. level Level 4B Level 3B Hearth, 2.8 m Layer 11 E.S. 3, level 2 E.S. 6, level 3 Level 2 Level 3, hearth Level 3 Level 6 Layers 6–9, 12 Hearth, 5.5 m Level 3A Level 8 Layers 2–5 Upper level Arch. level Level 14 Level 0.75 m Arch. level Layer 8 Level 3 hearth Lower level Hearth, 2.9 m

Le-1409

SOAN1875 GIN-4440 SOAN-1680 GIN-5329 GIN-5328 Mo-441 Le-3931 AA-8882 GIN-6214 SOAN3133 IM-236 Le-3821 SOAN1125 Le-4801

Le-629 Le-540 Le-4895 Le-4806

SOAN2854

SOAN3315

Le-4894

GIN-5330

GIN-7067

Continued

2000 SIBERIA, PEOPLING OF Appendix 1 Continued Nos

Index

Site

Date

Sigma

Cluster size

Lat N

Long E

Material

Position

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114

SOAN3404 Le-3950

Podzvonkaya Balysheva Varvarina Gora Kamenka-1 Ust’-Menza Arta 2 Kurla 1 Kurta 3 Masterov Klyuch Kuhor-Tala Muhino Altan Artin-2 Sokhatino-4 Bolshoi Yakor’ Ust-Karenga Nizhn. Dzhilinda Sumpanya Chernoozer’e-2 Volch’ya Griva Mogochinskaya Strashnaya Okladnikov Cave Okladnikov Cave Ust-Karakol 1 Kaminnaya Cave Kaminnaya Cave Tomskaya Kara Tenesh Mohovo-2 Kara Bom Kara Bom Kara Bom Shestakovo Malyi Yaloman Kandabaevo Priiskovaya Ust’-Ulma 1 Ezhantsy Ikhnie 1 Biryusa 1 Dvuglaszka Novoselovo 13 Kashtanka 1 Tashtyk 4 Novoselove 7 Maininskaya Maininskaya Bol’shoi Yakor Tolbaga Studenoe 1 Studenoe n Studenoe 2 Ust’-Menza

26000 25100 34900 28060 16980 37360 15200 24060 24360 11240 13270 18760 37360 15820 12330 12880 11280 11970 14500 14450 27300 31510 33500 40700 28960 10870 13930 18300 42165 30330 43300 30990 21280 22000 33350 38460 25825 19360 17150 16660 4480 22500 15030 21800 14700 15000 12690 16540 12390 27130 12440 12510 17780 16810

920 940 780 475 150 2000 1250 570 270 360 140 200 2000 300 250 130 80 120 500 110 400 2615 700 1100 1880 150 1070 1000 4170 445 1600 460 440 1990 1145 1100 290 65 345 270 400 600 620 200 150 300 1060 170 250 1640 460 80 775 835

2 2 6 10 7 1 2 2 1 2 1 1 1 6 1 5 1 1 1 2 3 3 7 7 12 5 6 1 5 2 11 11 11 17

50.35 57.3 51.47 51.43 50.15 51.15 55.43 55.43 51.19 51.43 52.51 52.29 51.15 52.01 56.13 54.26 52.26 60.03 55.44 54.42 57.42 51.45 51.38 51.38 51.23 52.16 52.16 56.28 51.02 54.33 50.11 50.11 50.11 55.53 50.25 50.57 50.15 51.50 60.31 32.06 55.50 54.08 54.35 55.10 54.35 55.01 52.59 52.59 57.55 51.45 50.10 50.10 50.10 50.15

107.35 107.48 108.15 108.15 108.37 112.15 109.28 109.28 110.39 110.39 111.01 111.32 112.24 113.31 115.44 116.31 116.52 64.36 73.58 80.07 83.35 83.51 84.19 84.19 84.41 84.49 84.49 84.56 86.17 86.21 86.41 86.41 86.41 87.58 86.30 108.40 108.32 129.20 135.05 133.40 92.29 90.58 91.01 91.56 91.01 90.59 91.29 91.29 114.00 108.15 108.30 108.30 108.30 108.35

Bone Bone Bone horse Bone Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Bone Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Bone Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Bone Mam organics Bone Bone Bone Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Bone Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Bone Bone Charcoal Bone Bone Bone Bone Bone Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal

Arch. level Level 2 Arch. level Complex A Level 20 Level 5 Hearth Level 3. hearth Trench 3 Trench 3 Level 3 Level 13 Arch. level Level 3 Level 8 Arch. level Lower level Arch. level Hearth Arch. level Arch. level Level 3 Level 1 Level 3 11, Layers 2–9c Level 11A Level 11–14 Hearth, 3.5 m Level 2.0 m Level 2.5 m Level 6 Level 5A Level 3 Layers 17–24

Le-2967 SOAN1396 SOAN1397 AA-8888 SOAN32467 GIN-5791 Le-2402 Le-2967 GIN-6468 Le-1952 Le-1812 GIN-622 SOAN111 GIN-1701 SOAN3219

GIN-2100 SOAN2861

SOAN-2500 SOAN-1625 AA-8891 SOAN-2619 IM-459 IM-452 Le-3777 Le-1433 Le-4896 IGAN-1049 GIN-262 GIN-402 Le-2135

9

4 8 18 4 5

Layers 2–4 Bone Layers 3, 5–9 Layer 4 Layers 14–19 Layer 13 Layers 4–5 Layers 17–21

Note. Mean values are given for clusters of measurements. All dates are uncalibrated BP. Sources: Dolukhanov et al. (2002) Colonization of northern Eurasia by Modern Humans: radiocarbon chronology and environment. Journal of Archaeological Science 29, 593–606 and Vasil’ev et al. (2002) Radiocarbon-based chronology of the Palaeolithic in Siberia and its relevance to the peopling of the New World. Radiocarbon 44, 503–510.

SIBERIA, PEOPLING OF 2001 Appendix 2 Radiocarbon dates of Palaeolithic sites in eastern Siberia Nos

Index

Site

Date

Sigma

Cluster size

Lat N

Long E

Material

Position

115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137

Le-898 Le-920 Le-1000 GIN-404 GIN-1020 SOAN-3185 Le-908 LU-147 MAG-916 Le-3697 SOAN-784 SOAN-3827 IGAN-341 Le-1566 GEO-1412 AA-9463 Le-1781 AA-13392 AA-25437 AA-20938 AA-20939 AA-20864 GIN-167

Ust-Timpton Ust-Timpton2 Ust-Mil Dyuktai Cave Ihnie-2 Ihnie-3 Verhne-Troickoe Berelyokh Siberdik Ushki 1 Ust-lgrima Malye Kurutachi Geograph Society Pereval Ustinovka 6 Suvorovo 4 Gasya Hummi Goncharovka 1 Novopetrovka Gromatukha Ogonki 5 Ushki 2

10650 10300 33000 14000 31200 20080 17660 11830 13225 11120 11350 14200 32570 10100 11550 15105 12960 13260 12055 11720 12830 19320 13600

80 50 500 100 500 150 250 110 230 500 180 130 1510 100 240 110 120 100 75 95 120 145 250

4 1 7 7 10 3 3 14 1 2 1 8 1 2 2 2 2 3 1 1 1 3 7

58.45 58.45 59.38 59.35 62.53 62.53 60.25 70.26 61.35 56.12

127.11 127.11 133.08 133.11 134.13 134.13 134.41 144.25 149.49 159.58

50.17 42.52 42.55 44.16 44.14 50.35 48.44 49.20 50.41 51.47 46.46 56.12

130.19 13.01 133.06 135.18 135.22 137.11 135.37 134.55 127.42 128.39 142.31 159.58

Charcoal Charcoal Wood Charcoal Wood Bone Wood Wood Charcoal Charcoal Bone Charcoal Bone Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Organic residue Organic residue Wood Charcoal

Level 6 Dwelling Level 1.9 m Level 7b Level 1.2 m Arch. level Arch. level Level 1.6 m Level 3 Level 7 Level 1.5 m Arch. level Arch. level Arch. level Level 3 Arch. level Arch. level Lower level

southern margin of the Bering Land Bridge and further south along the Americas’ Pacific coast. See also: Asia, Central and North, Steppes, Deserts,

and Forests; Asia, Central, Steppes; Asia, East: China, Paleolithic Cultures; New World, Peopling of.

Further Reading Alekseev VP (1998) The physical specificity of Palaeolithic hominids in Siberia. In: Derevyanko AP (ed.) The Palaeolithic in Siberia, pp. 329–331. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Derevyanko AP, Markin SV, Shunkov MV, Petrin VT, Otte V, and Sekiya A (2001) Palaeolithic of the Altai. Occasional Paper 1. Brussels: Richard Liu Foundation, European Institute of Chinese Studies. Dolukhanov, et al. (2002) Colonization of northern Eurasia by Modern Humans: radiocarbon chronology and environment. Journal of Archaeological Science 29: 593–606. Dikov NN (1977) Arheologicheskie Pamyatniki Kymchatki, Chukotki I Verhnei Kolymy. Moscow: Nauka.

Simulation

See: Computer Simulation Modeling.

Level 2b Level 6

Dixon JE (2001) Human colonization of the Americas: timing, technology and process. Quaternary Science Reviews 20: 277–299. Goebel T and Aksenov M (1995) Accelerator radiocarbon dating of the initial Upper Palaeolithic in southeast Siberia. Antiquity 69: 349–357. Goebel T, Waters MR, Buvit I, Konstantinov MV, and Konstantinov AV (2000) Studenoe-2 and the origins of microblade technologies in the Transbaikyl, Siberia. Antiquity 74: 567–575. Kuzmin YV and Orlova LA (2000) The Neolthisation of Siberia and the Russian Far East: Radiocarbon evidence. Antiquity 74: 356–64. Mochanov YA (1977) Drevneishie Etapy Zaseleniya Chelovekom Severo-Vostochnoi Azii. Novosibirsk: Nauky. Mochanov (1993) The most ancient Palaeolithic of the Diring and the problem of nontropical origin for humanity. Arctic Anthropology 30: 22–53. Vasil’ev, et al. (2002) Radiocarbon-based chronology of the Palaeolithic in Siberia and its relevance to the peopling of the New World. Radiocarbon 44: 503–510. Waters MR, Forman SL, and Pierson JM (1999) Late Quaternary geology and geochronology of Diring Yuriakh, an Early Palaeolithic site in Central Siberia. Quaternary Research 51: 195–211.

2002 SITES/Catchment Analysis

SITES Contents Catchment Analysis Conservation and Stabilization Formation Processes Mapping Methods Mounded and Unmounded Waterlogged

Catchment Analysis Robert J Legg, Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary economic range A term which associates with travel distances and associated costs. At some point, travel costs will begin to outweigh the economic returns and an approximate boundary is established. Typically this range is set as a distance 1–5 km for horticulturalists and as far as 10 km for hunter-gatherers away from home-base settlements. environmental determinism An assumption that the physical environment in contrast to social conditions determines culture. Geographic Information System (GIS) A computerized system for capturing, storing, analyzing, and managing spatial data and the associated attributes. home range An assumption that all, other than exceptionally nomadic, species will confine their movement to a limited area.

Introduction Site catchment analysis (SCA) was originally introduced into archaeological literature in the 1970s with an approach that involved an extension of the least-cost principle to the analysis of the relationship between technology and those natural resources lying within economic range of an individual archaeological site.

Methodological Framework In practice, a three-part methodological framework establishes the SCA approach in archaeological investigation. The first part of the methodology involves identifying and recording information about archaeological sites in terms of locally available resources within a given economic range. These resources include those that are found within the surrounding area of an archaeological site, and those that were habitually used by the group in question. Specifically, these resources

comprise sources of food and materials for toolmaking, in addition to plant evidence, animal remains, and artifacts associated with individual sites. Underpinning this approach, the peoples associated with given archaeological sites are assumed to have exploited a local territory or home-range area immediately surrounding their sites. The second methodology in the SCA approach ties closely with the concept of home range and involves reconstructing the ‘limits of influence’ on the site’s local economy. Essentially the kernel of this method stipulates that the farther one moves away from a given site, the greater the economic costs associated with exploiting resources. Eventually the economic costs reach a point where they exceed the return and an economic boundary is defined. The process of establishing an economic boundary is linked with estimating the reasonable walking distance of approximately 1–2 h time around a given archaeological site. Establishing this boundary will take into account the nature of the local economy and the type of cultural group in question. This boundary, in simplest form, can be defined by drawing a circle around the site with a roughly estimated radius set at 1.5–5 km (i.e., an hour’s walk) for horticulturalists (see Figure 1) and as far as 10 km (i.e., two hours’ walk) for hunter-gatherers. More sophisticated analysis, however, may also include analysis of the local physiographic conditions such as slope, elevation (Figure 2), and water features, since these physiographic factors impose friction on ease of walking and can result in a reduction of travel distance. Once the economic boundary is established, the necessary resource data are assembled using map algebra overlay techniques along with data sets identified in the first stage of the methodological framework. The third stage in the methodological framework involves using the assembled data to make comparisons between different sites with the goal of identifying the similarities and differences between compared sites. Using this information, the researchers can further develop an understanding of the activities and patterns associated with different groups of people

SITES/Catchment Analysis 2003

SCA and Theoretical Criticism

Archaeological site

0

1

2

3

4

5

km Figure 1 A simplistic circular 5 km boundary delineated around a given archaeological site to approximate a catchment region. The boundary was delineated using buffering procedures readily available within most GIS software packages.

While SCA is presented here in positive light, the approach is not free from theoretical criticism. SCA in practice can be criticized for being too functionalist and too simplistic in nature. In addition, it is possible for the approach to become heavily based on environment data, as environmental data layers tend to be more readily available than cultural data layers. The use or overuse of environmental data may direct the research to ignore characteristics of the culture that are separate to environmental factors. In this situation, if the researcher does not address the limitations of an environmentally biased approach, the work is open to criticism for being founded on principles of environmental determinism. In light of these theoretical criticisms, any researcher carrying out SCA must report the benefits and limitations of their research approach. Not doing so will leave their work open to serious theoretical criticism.

SCA and Geographic Information Systems

Figure 2 This Digital Elevation Model (DEM) displays the mainstream information source for acquiring elevation and slope and aspect data for a given study area. These data are compatible with most commercial and freely available GIS software packages.

and with cultural groups. For example, a distribution of contemporary sites from a particular region may exhibit different settlement patterns when evaluated using the SCA approach. Sites used for croppingbased activities, for example, may associate more with rich fertile soils, whereas those used with livestock and pasture-based husbandry may associate with more hilly environments and soils of inferior quality. Using such information, the differences between physiographic conditions may help to focus the research or to shape better understanding of the settlement pattern-associated sites in a particular region or period than known previously. Thus the SCA technique can base an objective method for analyzing relationships between site location, technology, and available resources.

While SCA methodologies can be carried out manually, the use of a Geographic Information System (GIS) will accelerate the process substantially. When carrying out SCA, a GIS can be used as a tool to both assemble and manage spatial layers including site locations, the home-range boundaries, and the available resources within surrounding areas. In addition, tools within the GIS software allow the operator to carry out both simple and complex mathematical calculations. These calculations can be used to measure simple distances or may involve more sophisticated mathematics that estimates the cost–distance values for different physiographic conditions within the immediate vicinity of a site. As circular site catchment boundaries may be too simplistic, the analysis of physiographic surfaces can lead to the development of precise catchment boundaries, which take into account the local geographic setting associated with each site. In addition, an added benefit of using a GIS is the resulting data will remain in a digital environment direct transfer into statistical software packages (see Statistics in Archaeology).

Conclusion Currently the concept of SCA remains similar to the original theories established in the 1970s, and involves analyzing and comparing archaeological sites in terms of the economic resources available in their localized area. While the approach was originally carried out manually, the application of GIS provides automated tools to advance these manual

2004 SITES/Conservation and Stabilization

techniques and allow researchers to rapidly assemble data for further analysis. The main strength of SCA is that it equips the researcher with an objective methodology for systematically comparing sites and potentially identifies patterns among sites previously unknown. Despite these strengths, the procedures are not without some shortcomings and the main criticisms of this technique are that it can be heavily biased with environmental data and can be too functionalist, lacking inclusion of social aspects of a culture. See also: Computer Simulation Modeling; Sites: Mapping Methods; Statistics in Archaeology.

Further Reading Bintliff JL (1977) British Archaeological Reports Supplementary Series 28: Natural Environment and Human Settlement in Prehistoric Greece. Oxford: BAR. Foley R (1981) A model of regional archaeological structure. Proceedings of the Prehistory Society 47: 1–17. Gaffney V and van Leusen M (1995) Postcript-GIS, environmental determinism and archaeology: A parallel text. In: Lock G and Stancic Z (eds.) Archaeology and Geographical Information Systems: A European Perspective, pp. 367–376. Oxford: Taylor and Francis. Hunt ED (1992) Upgrading site-catchment analyses with the use of GIS: Investigating the settlement patterns of horticulturalists. World Archaeology 24: 283–311. Tiffany JA and Abbott LR (1982) Site-catchment analysis: Applications to Iowa archaeology. Journal of Field Archaeology 9: 313–322. Vita-Finzi C and Higgs ES (1970) Prehistoric economy in the Mt. Carmel area of Palestine: Site catchment analysis. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 36: 1–37. Wheatley DW and Gillings M (2002) Spatial Technology and Archaeology: The Archaeological Applications of GIS. London: Taylor and Francis.

Conservation and Stabilization David Watkinson, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK Mike Corfield, Gnosall, Stafford, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary archaeological site Any concentration of artifacts, ecofacts, features, and structures manufactured or modified by humans. cataclysmic event Severely destructive event. conservation The protection of artifacts, environmental evidence, and archaeological sites through activities that minimize deterioration and damage and that prevent loss of context and content. decay The process of gradually becoming inferior.

desiccation Winter injury sustained on exposed turf areas when subject to high winds. erosion The wearing away or loosening and transportation of soil or rock by water, wind, and ice. ground environment The soils, hydrology, chemistry and microbiology of the site, or of features within the site. oxidizing conditions A condition where materials tend to lose electrons and more readily combine with ions with an excess of electrons like oxygen ions. perched water table A reservoir of water held above the general water table by an impermeable layer of soil or rock. pH Measure of hydrogen ion concentration. Normal range of scale is 0 to 14. Values below pH 7 (neutral) are acid (increasing hydrogen ion concentration) and above it alkali (reducing hydrogen ions concentration). redox Measurement of oxidizing and reducing power of an environment. reducing conditions A condition where materials tend to gain electrons and more readily combine with materials with a deficiency of electrons like hydrogen ions.

Introduction What Is an Archaeological Site?

Archaeological sites are locations where former human activity is manifested. Possible evidence of events within sites includes structural features, artifacts, macro-, and microscopic flora and fauna, as well as molecular evidence such as lipids, DNA, and stable isotopes. Conservation and protection of sites may be required either before or after excavation. The abundance of archaeological sites, changing patterns of financial resource, and ever-improving investigative scientific techniques mean that modern archaeological resource management, particularly in Europe and North America, seeks to preserve sites with minimal intervention rather than by excavation. Conserving archaeological sites requires an understanding of what is likely to survive within them and how these materials interact with their environment before and after excavation. Site formation processes will dictate the survival of buried archaeological-sites and the evidence they contain. Cataclysmic events such as the eruption of a volcano or inundation by silt-laden floodwater normally provides exceptional survival of evidence, but gradual abandonment of sites provides poorer survival of structural, artifactual and ecofactual evidence. Between these extremes exists a wide range of survival possibilities. The quality of evidence extractable from decayed buried material will depend on the chemistry of the ground environment and the degree of physical protection afforded to site structures. Material decay is expected to be initially rapid on the ground surface, but slows in the changed environment provided by burial. Rate of decay will be dictated by the prevailing burial conditions, which may often favor very

Conservation and Stabilization 2005

slow decay; this is not the state of equilibrium previously postulated. Sometimes decay during burial is stopped by the absence of an essential decay parameter, like oxygen or water; again this is not true equilibrium. Subsequent changes in ground conditions will influence the stability of a buried material and excavation will return objects to a state of rapid change and decay. Leaving archaeological materials undisturbed in the ground normally offers them a better chance of survival than excavation if there is no provision for their ongoing conservation and curation. Provision for Protecting Archaeological Sites

Conservation of sites begins with an understanding of their material needs and the protection of the law. Although there is no overarching legal protection for archaeological sites, there exists a body of international charters promulgated by UNESCO and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), such as the Venice Charter of 1964 that sets standards for the protection of sites and monuments and the Lausanne Charter of 1990 that focuses specifically on the protection and management of archaeological heritage. At a national level, an increasing number of countries are bringing in regulations designed to protect sites from the effects of development. The English Planning Policy Guidance Note 16, Archaeology and Development, for example, emphasizes the need to mitigate the impact of a development on the prevailing archaeology. Too Many Archaeological Sites to Preserve?

The archaeological record will always pose pragmatic questions for society and government. In many countries the sheer abundance of archaeological sites begs the question: can all sites be preserved? In situ preservation is a possibility once the ground environment of a site is known. The goal of this strategy is to minimize the impact of changed land use or modern development on the buried archaeology. International charters such as the UNESCO Lausanne Charter and national policies such as the Planning Policy Guidelines of the United Kingdom, favor preservation in situ and minimizing the effects of development over whole-scale excavation.

Risks to Archaeological Sites Decay: Natural Phenomena

All things decay. It is a basic fact of thermodynamics and the laws of entropy that whatever has been created by the input of energy, either by nature or by human effort, will favor a return to its former disorganized state. Iron that is made by using heat to

extract it from its native ores and then forge it into usable objects will react in ways that aim to release this energy input and return the metal to its ores. Fallen trees will be colonized by insects, plant life, and microorganisms that derive energy from the tree cellulose, as part of well-established natural cycles for carbon and oxygen that have ensured these elements remain in the best balance for life on Earth. All efforts to maintain archaeological sites and preserve the material evidence excavated from them essentially works against the natural cycle of life. This an important point to remember when considering the ethics of conserving archaeological sites – the concept of a finite life is embodied in nature. It is also important to be aware of the beliefs of indigenous populations to whom the concept of disturbing an ancestral site may be at the least distasteful and at the worst, sacrilegious. Tribal elders in New Mexico were supportive of the concept of reburying sites (see below) because it was their belief that all things came from the Earth and all things should be returned to the Earth. Climate

Climate plays a significant role in the preservation of buried archaeological sites and water is one of the most important factors contributing to decay. It is an integral part of many materials and an excellent media for many chemical reactions. Living organisms that degrade organic materials and some inorganics require it to support life-promoting functions. Organic materials like timber structures normally decay rapidly in damp oxygenated mid-range pH environments, but very slowly in dry climates. In countries such as Egypt and Chile, dry climates desiccate organic materials and produce well-preserved bodies and associated leather and textiles from burials. Similar levels of preservation can be seen in extremely cold parts of the world where free water is bound up as ice. Also, prevailing low temperatures slow down chemical reactions and reduce decay rates. In the Mongolian permafrost outstanding preservation of Scythian tombs is seen, and mammoths are found in increasing numbers as the Siberian permafrost melts; while huts and artifacts left by the Scott Antarctic Expedition of 1911 survive, although recent studies have found that climatic events and human interference may initiate decay of materials in these cold environments. Metal corrosion needs only limited moisture and is typically found on objects from all regions. The solvating effect of large amounts of water can be dramatic. Physical damage caused by dissolved salts repeatedly crystallizing out in porous substrates during dry events, and then dissolving during wet periods, can lead to total loss of an object or

2006 Conservation and Stabilization

structure (see Caves and Rockshelters; Frozen Sites and Bodies; Sites: Mounded and Unmounded). Oxygen is normally present in most burial environments to support oxidation of metals and respiration of microbes that degrade organic material. In waterlogged soils, where it is absent or much reduced, survival of organic-based materials normally occurs, as evidenced at the Flag Fen Bronze Age site in Cambridgeshire England, where a massive timber alignment over a kilometer long was found, and at many sites in Denmark where whole fully clothed Iron Age bodies have survived in bogs. Buried sites may be considered as macroclimates, but they will have microclimates across their profile. Clay-lined pits may offer a waterlogged environment to aid the survival of organic material in otherwise aggressive free draining soils. Similarly, a clay lining excluded oxygen from a pit in Scotland containing some seven tons of Roman iron nails, resulting in their surviving almost entirely uncorroded. Climate data, local geology, and knowledge of the type of structures and materials likely to be buried can create enough knowledge for predictive assessment of material survival on a site. This can be used to plan excavation or estimate how factors like water extraction by industry would influence the condition of an archaeological record. Above ground climate causes erosion of sites by wind and rain, frost damage and pollution. The water table is a significant factor since the site will be the interface between the ground and the atmosphere. Water drawn up into the fabric of the site will bring with it soluble salts that will crystallize as the water evaporates. If the crystallization occurs within the fabric of porous materials such as brick walls and tiled floors – known as crypto–crystallization – the resulting pressures could lead to weakening and ultimately dramatic failure of the integrity of the materials. In hot climates this can be seen typically at the base of walls and this has been a considerable problem at Mohenjo Daro, the Harrapan city site in Pakistan, and the Rahim abad Khoushk at Bam in Iran (Figure 1). In more temperate climates it may manifest itself when impermeable coatings have been applied to plasters or renders; when the surfaces are decorated with, for example, murals or sculptural detail, the losses may be considerable. This can also occur via poor conservation procedures that introduce impermeable polymers to consolidate loose and porous plasters; also modern cements can act as a source of soluble salts and there is now increasing emphasis on the use of traditional porous lime mortars that are more compatible with the historic fabrics. An increasing impact on buried archaeological material may be expected from climate changes: the

Figure 1 Bam Iran: erosion at base of mud wall due to crystallization of soluble salts. Photo courtesy of Mike Corfield.

problems resulting from the melting of permafrost have been mentioned; sea level rises and increased storminess will erode many coastal sites with little opportunity to excavate and recover their archaeological information. The sheer scale of potential changes will mean that difficult decisions will have to be made about what should be saved and what will have to be sacrificed. Additionally, climate influenced by pollution like acid rain will damage limestone and in Scandinavia there has long been concern that acid rain may increase the decay of buried metalwork. Geological Risks

Archaeological sites are particularly at risk in geologically unstable areas. While the scale of destruction from earthquakes is probably greater than for any other threat, there will generally be a sufficient level of survival for information about the site to be recovered. The catastrophic earthquake at Bam caused major damage to the old city and citadel, but subsequent archaeological clearance showed that the greatest damage appeared to have been caused to more recent work; furthermore, the earthquake opened the possibility of a re-evaluation of the site. Little can be done to prevent earthquake damage but the drafting of a disaster plan to dictate action following such events will protect what remains by offering a clear course of action and rehearsed procedures. Volcanic eruptions such as that of Vesuvius can completely bury sites, but, as has been discovered at Pompeii and Herculaneum, the structures and other evidence are not necessarily destroyed and preservation might be exceptional. Rock and mud slides are increasingly common as hill slopes are deforested. Sites that might be at risk will need to have their hinterlands carefully managed to avoid being overwhelmed by such events.

Conservation and Stabilization 2007 Human Factors

Designating a site as being of archaeological significance will not of itself result in its preservation. Ironically, bringing it to public attention may lead to looting, which ranges from using sophisticated metal detectors to the careless digging seen on Etruscan tombs in Italy. International agreements that ensure looted materials are returned to their country of origin have reduced sales of stolen material on the open market, but not on the black market. Temple sites in Southeast Asia have had sculptural elements removed to feed the insatiable demands of the illegal antique trade, leaving vandalized statues with missing heads. Opening sites to tourism may aid their preservation by raising consciousness, providing state protection, generating support and income, but it is no ultimate guarantee of site conservation. Countless feet walking over apparently durable mosaic pavements will result in erosion of the surfaces. This is magnified at coastal sites such as Paphos in Cyprus where abrasion from sand-laden shoes increases the erosion rate. Weaker surfaces will require the construction of walkways. Often sites gain little benefit from tourism as their management is often in the hands of agencies whose objectives are to generate maximum income, with little or none of this being returned for site maintenance and visitor supervision. An unexpected risk to sites may come from archaeologists themselves. Excavations must be well planned to avoid damage to a site. Preliminary investigations should be carried out to assess the ground conditions and the possibility of exceptional preservation, for example waterlogged deposits; the risk of damage to adjoining areas by misplaced soil heaps or changes to the ground environment will have to be determined; plans will have to be made for the recovery, investigation, conservation and deposition of the recovered evidence; and in particular plans will have to be made for the proper closure of the site at the end of the site. Current work at Merv in Turkmenistan includes research into proper backfilling of excavations carried out over the past 100 years. Ground Environment

By measuring environmental parameters on a site, it may be possible to predict the likely survival of materials buried there. The amount of water and free oxygen present in the ground often dictate the survival of archaeological evidence. On marine sites it is not a simple matter of shipwrecks being submerged that causes their survival, but burial in the oxygen-free seabed silt. Two-thirds of the hull of the ‘Mary Rose’ wreck survived due to its burial in silt, while the

remaining one-third protruded above the seabed and was lost through the actions of marine borers, microorganisms and physical erosion. Also of importance is pH, which is a measure of the concentration of hydrogen ions in an environment and indicates its degree of acidity or alkalinity. Some materials survive well in acidic conditions while others are preserved well in alkaline ones. Materials like bone survive better in neutral or alkaline soils, like the chalk downlands of Wiltshire where skeletal material is sufficiently well preserved for surface traumas to be identified. In contrast, acid soils like Sutton Hoo dissolve bone – and skeletons are either absent or exist as stains in the soil. Acidic peat bogs completely dissolve bone so that the previously mentioned bog bodies are intact apart from their skeletons. While oxygen concentrations within burial contexts can be measured, so-called redox potential is more generally used as a guide to the oxidizing power of a saturated soil. It is typically used to determine whether the site will have reducing conditions (low oxygen levels), which will result in an anaerobic environment that will contribute to the preservation of organic materials and often considerably slows the corrosion of many metals. Redox and pH can be combined graphically to produce a predictive tool known as a potential/pH diagram (Figure 2). Redox potential and pH can then be used to predict how buried materials are likely to react with their environment. For instance, plaster is unaffected by the amount of oxygen (redox value) in a soil, but will weaken and dissolve where the pH is moderate to strongly acidic (below 5.5) (Figure 2). It will survive well in any region around or above a neutral (pH 7). Most metals will tend to corrode in acidic conditions (below pH 7). They will corrode more slowly and with different corrosion products where oxygen levels are low (negative redox potentials) (Figure 2). Many metals will form protective corrosion products in alkaline conditions (above pH 7). Predicting what will happen to buried materials is complex and is influenced by many factors including chlorides in the soil, carbon dioxide, and sulfur and its compounds. Detecting the concentration of these ions and compounds would allow for even more accurate predictions regarding how materials will have corroded and their likely rate of corrosion.

Conservation Methods Predicting Preservation

Preliminary evaluation of a site will facilitate planning of excavation and conservation strategies. In some

2008 Conservation and Stabilization 1.4

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rel

−0.4

−0.6

ne

0

2

4

6

8 Neutral pH 7

10

H 2o 12

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Figure 2 Potential/pH diagram: solid parallelogram illustrates naturally occurring conditions in burial contexts. This is bounded by pH 3.5–9.5 and the limits of oxidation and reduction of water.

countries this evaluation is considered to be a part of environmental impact assessments and is used to clarify the archaeological nature of the site, rather than to assess preservation of archaeological evidence and identify the nature of the ground environment. This is unfortunate because without any record of how well preserved the archaeological evidence was, it will not be possible to assess how effective any mitigation strategies might have been. Evaluation of sites in England’s Humber Wetlands and in the Netherlands made extensive use of wood, bone, and pollen samples to determine the possibility of long-term site preservation. These can be used for future comparison with new samples taken from the sites and any changes to the environment can be detected. As part of site conservation procedures, both excavation records and scientific samples should be properly curated, ready for future use in reference contexts.

Conservation of Un-excavated Sites

Left undisturbed and with their environment unaltered, archaeological sites can be expected to survive with the evidence they contain in a relatively stable state. Disturbing a site will affect the ground environment and potentially impact on still buried evidence. Construction work may allow greater oxygen ingress, which will raise redox potential and make metals more susceptible to corrosion (Figure 2). Decreasing soil pH, perhaps by acid rain or industrial processes, will also cause more corrosion to metals by dissolving corrosion layers that may otherwise slow corrosion rate. The increasing emphasis on site preservation and mitigation of construction impacts or land use changes requires close collaboration with both developers and their architects or with land managers. For

Conservation and Stabilization 2009

developments the priority is to minimize its impact on the site. In practice, a figure of 5% loss of evidence has become the norm, as this was deemed acceptable in a study of the redevelopment of the City of York. By working with developers archaeology may be protected in matters like redesigning building foundations to ensure that piles avoid sensitive areas or reuse existing piles. Even with good collaboration this is not a straightforward process, as there is limited study of piling effects, and distortion of deposits adjacent to piles has been observed. Also piles may open pathways for water movement through otherwise impermeable layers, leading to dewatering of perched water tables or movement of contaminated water into uncontaminated layers. Reactions may occur between the alkaline cements of piles and archaeological deposits of lower pH. This is thought to have occurred between a concrete slab foundation and organic rich deposits in York. Increased soil compaction caused by the weight of a construction may damage objects and structures, as well as cause changes in soil moisture content by reducing voids between soil particles. Knowledge of the soil properties may allow for some prediction regarding these effects. Excavation

Sites with fragile environments and those under extreme threats from basements, underground garages, mineral extraction, and cuttings cannot be preserved in situ and must be excavated. Site conservation here is neither physical reburial nor the creation of an open access monument, but curation and conservation of the resulting archaeological record. In contrast, excavation driven either by research or by a curiosity designed to extend the boundaries of knowledge, will involve preservation of both the site and its record. Such excavations should be planned without risk to parts that will remain unexcavated. Excavation strategy will detail either reinstatement methodology or consolidation of structures intended for permanent display. Good site conservation must come via a clear excavation framework which progresses from initial proposal, through evaluation to full excavation with analysis of discoveries and publication of results. Ideally, excavation approval should only be given once funding and resources are in place for this progression, as set out in English Heritage’s Manual for Archaeological Practice (MAP2) (Figure 3). For each stage of the MAP2 process results are reviewed and progression only occurs if the information gathered warrants it. If the process is not completed, the information and finds recovered up to that point are archived.

Reburial of Excavated Sites

Reburial of sites can be a complex procedure. It involves reinstating an environment the same or similar to the original and guarding against climatic and other influences. Structures to be buried may be repaired with soft mortars and clays and secured with geotextiles. It is essential to design the water flow down through the soil so as to avoid physical damage to the archaeology, to avoid feeding oxygenated water into anoxic deposits, and to inhibit worm and insect action. Site reburial is a task that requires professional skills and, often, hi-tec materials. Uninformed and careless use of plastic sheeting to ‘protect’ buried surfaces may lead to disaster from factors such as worm action between the plastic and the archaeology that it covers, as well as from the disruption of groundwater flows. Reburial of boats is a specialized task and has received considerable study in the Netherlands, where hundreds of vessels have been discovered and reburial is the only option. Working toward successful strategies for reburial of wood relies on scientific research into wood decay in the laboratory, experimental burials, and study of existing burial sites. Research underpins good reburial practice. Collaborative research between the Getty Conservation Institute, US National Parks Service and ICCROM aims to identify optimum methods for reburying Pueblo Indian preColumbian sites that have been exposed for many years. Reburied sites may need proper management. The footprints of early hominids preserved in volcanic rock at Laitoli in Tanzania were reburied following their excavation in 1978–79. In 1985 the site was found to have been colonized by acacia trees leading to concern that the roots may be damaging the footprints. Between 1993 and 1998 the Department of Antiquities of Tanzania and the Getty Conservation Institute undertook a program of assessment and conservation to develop a reburial strategy. This included the construction of a replica site so that the effectiveness of the actual site could be evaluated. Because of the isolated location of the site, it was necessary to involve the local community in its care and a ceremony was held by the elders of the local Maasai tribe to bless the site and adopt it as a sacred site. Consultation is important, as people and politics can be an important factor in successful conservation strategies. Conservation of Exposed sites

Successful exposure of sites for tourism requires careful planning and an appropriate budget. Risk

2010 Conservation and Stabilization Phase

Action

1. Project

Stage

Decision

Product

Initiate a project

Planning

Proposal

Costing project

2. Fieldwork

Decision

Project design and

Project design

costs agreed Data

Fieldwork

Site archive

collection Review

Proceed to

Yes?

No?

assessment? Proposal

Identify assessment costs

3. Assessment

Decision

of potential for analysis

Assessment costs agreed

Data

Assessment

Assessment report

collection Review

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No?

analysis? Proposal

4. Analysis and

Decision

Report

Costed and updated

Updated

project design

project design

Updated project design and costs

Preparation

agreed Data

Analysis and report

Research

collection

preparation

archive Report text

Review

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dissemination? Proposal

Identify dissemination costs

5. Dissemination

Archive deposition

Project archive

and SMR Publication

Published report

Figure 3 Flowchart for archaeological projects. Information taken from Andrews, Gill (1991) Management of Archaeological Projects, 2nd edn. Historical Building and Monuments Commission for England, London, p. 13.

Conservation and Stabilization 2011

assessment of exposed archaeological structures must be followed by solutions that protect from weather, visitors, theft, and vandalism. Shelters or cover buildings may be necessary if risks from the weather cannot be managed. Provision of long-term maintenance schedules will control progressive decay of a site. Shelters

Even in the most benign climates of the Mediterranean region, shelters may be necessary: at Paphos in Cyprus shelters range from timber and masonry buildings to tent-like hexashelters. In northern climates more substantial cover buildings are generally needed. A novel cover building has been created at Vergina in Greece where a tumulus covering the supposed tombs of Philip II of Macedonia and his family has been entirely removed to expose the tombs then replaced with a concrete dome of similar proportions. Within the space created it has been possible to install auditoria and comprehensive exhibitions of the outstanding finds of the tombs. A similar solution has made it possible to display a Bronze Age wooden funerary chamber in situ at Sza´zhalombatta in Hungary. At the Pueblo site of Aztec in New Mexico, the remains of a Great House have been preserved under a reconstruction of the roof structure. In England possibly the earliest cover building at the Roman villa of Bignor in Sussex was built in 1813 in the form of thatched barns. Custom-built buildings, like the imaginative and stylish construction at Brading Roman villa on the Isle of Wight, use walkways to prevent physical access to the archaeology while offering a full visitor experience of the site. Brading is run by a charitable trust and entrance money is plowed into site welfare. Cover buildings can protect or damage archaeology according to their design. Their construction should create an internal environment in support of conservation strategies for the covered structures, rather than for the comfort of visitors. Solar gain and its influence on humidity can be problematic in poor designs. Materials like corrugated steel roofs can create baking internal temperatures in hot climates and may cause dripping condensation with cooling at night. In cold humid climates they may form ice overnight which melts during the day and drips onto the site. At Piazza Armerina in Sicily a range of buildings with outstanding mosaics were covered with a lightweight steel framework glazed with plastic sheeting. The impact of the hot Sicilian climate was extreme, rising damp is a problem, and the visitors suffer from the very high temperatures. In the original 1950s design air conditioning was included but due to cost constraints was never installed.

Good management would have altered the design to account for the lack of air conditioning. Conversely the old, but massive construction present in the rustic buildings at Bignor has generally performed effectively as a climatic buffer and it is only in recent times that there has been serious rising damp. The water table has been a problem at the Roman Palace close to the sea at Fishbourne in Sussex. Following excavation in the 1960s, the mosaics were preserved in situ. Because provision had not been made in the construction of the cover building to manage the groundwater, it became necessary to lift the mosaics and re-lay them onto a concrete floor. Repair and Consolidation In Situ

Exposed sites must have ongoing maintenance if they are not to deteriorate. Weather, visitor-generated damage and improper climates within cover buildings will damage fragile remains. In Tunisia a collaborative program with the Getty Conservation Institute, through its project ‘Conservation of Mosaics In Situ’, has as its aims the better understanding of the causes of deterioration of in situ mosaics and the training of professionals and technicians in their maintenance, conservation, and management. It is essential that these aspects of care for in situ sites should be undertaken by professionals who understand the risks that might result from the use of inappropriate materials and techniques. The materials used to conserve archaeological sites require careful application. Modern materials are not necessarily the best choice. Although they may be more durable than natural materials, their properties may be very different from those of the original materials. This may result in loss of porosity to a monument, uneven strength distribution, discoloration, and difficulty in removing the repairs. The choice of repair and reconstruction materials must lie with professionals. When in doubt it is often better to use weaker and less durable materials that can be readily reversed in the future. Consolidating wall paintings with moisture impermeable waxes or synthetic resins can cause subfluorescence of salts that will lift and flake the plaster surface, where in the past the salts would have crystallized relatively harmlessly on the surface of the plaster. Some materials like adobe mud brick have received considerable research attention to determine the best way of consolidating them. There also remain ethical arguments regarding the visual appearance of conserved monuments and whether reconstruction is appropriate. Old restorations of wall paintings, such as those at Knossos, Crete, where only small fragments of the original survive, can be rather imaginative and

2012 Conservation and Stabilization

it is debatable whether they offer an accurate record of the original. Decisions have to be made about the degree of intervention that is acceptable. Should mosaic floors be treated as works of art and be re-laid onto beds of concrete, or worse still have their finest parts removed to museums? Alternatively should these actions be considered to be destroying the archaeological integrity of the site? If mosaics or other architectural components are re-laid onto iron-reinforced concrete, it is probable that at some time the metal will corrode and in doing so will break up the concrete. This was seen to be happening to an isolated fragment of gladiator mosaic at Kourion in Cyprus. At many sites visitors are permitted to walk over unconsolidated mosaics with the inevitable result that tesserae are misplaced or even stolen and the quality of the floor is degraded. Enclosed spaces need special consideration if their contents are not to be damaged. At the Lascaux caves unlimited access following the discovery of the outstanding Palaeolithic paintings caused microbiological growths that were destroying the rich colors that had survived for millennia and the only solution was to close the caves and build a replica alongside. At the tomb of Queen Nefertari in Egypt, unrestricted visitor access was altering the internal humidity and causing salts to crystallize both on the surface of the paintings and within the supporting plaster. Here the solution has been to severely limit visitors to 150 per day. Outstanding sites should not be seen as unrestrained sources of income to national coffers. Maintenance is essential and is a continuous process. Vegetation soon takes hold of a site and will disrupt floors and topple walls. How to deal with the vegetation may create issues of health and safety that require risk assessment if toxic chemicals are used to control flora growth in areas accessible to tourists. Visitor routes must be monitored for signs of wear, especially where these involve traversing original surfaces. New routes or raised walkways may reduce risks. At a time when the World’s climate is changing, a continuous watch must be kept for signs of its effects on exposed and unexcavated sites – water tables may rise, coastal sites may be eroded, higher levels of rainfall may exceed the capacity of gutters and drains, and increased temperatures may cause greater salt efflorescence. Whenever excavation reveals outstanding structural remains, there is a temptation to press for the site to remain open. This is an unwise strategy unless there are the resources and expertise for initial conservation, ongoing maintenance, site management, and proper security. Reburial is often the safer and more predictable option.

Conclusions Care of archaeological sites will never be an exact science and it will always be influenced by money, resources, and politics. Much more research and coordination work needs to be carried out to ensure that the consequences of actions carried out in the name of site preservation are known. There are a lot of small parts that contribute to make the whole: consolidation, reconstruction, investigation of environment, shelter design, and finance management. These subjects lie within many disciplines that include chemistry, microbiology, geology, architecture, business, and engineering. The challenge is to discover and test procedures and combine the resulting knowledge and solutions into a coherent package that can be continuously developed and utilized by those seeking to conserve archaeological sites. See also: Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation; Caves and Rockshelters; Conservation and Stabilization of Materials; Environmental Impact Assessment and the Law; Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Frozen Sites and Bodies; Historic Preservation Laws; Illicit Antiquities; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act; Native Peoples and Archaeology; Preservation, Modes of; Sites: Mounded and Unmounded; Waterlogged; Taphonomy; Tourism and Archaeology; World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

Further Reading Brothwell DR and Pollard AM (2001) Handbook of Archaeological Science. Chichester, UK: Wiley. Corfield M, Hinton P, Nixon T, and Pollard M (eds.) (1996) Preserving Archaeological Remains in situ. Proceedings of the Conference of 1–3 April 1996. London: Museum of London Archaeological Service. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites (1999) Vol. 3(1&2). Special Issue on the Presentation of Archaeological Sites. London: James and James. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites (2001) Vol. 5(1&2). Special Issue on Protective Shelters. London: James and James. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites (2004) Vol. 6(3&4). Special Issue on Site Reburial. London: James and James. Hodges HWM (ed.) (1987) In situ Archaeological Conservation. Proceedings of a Meeting 6–13 April (1986). Mexico: J. Paul Getty Museum. Mattsson E, Nord AG, Tronner K, et al. (1996) Deterioration of Archaeological Material in the Soil: Results on Bronze Artefacts. Report 10. Stockholm: Central Board of the National Antiquities and the National Historical Museums. Michaelides D (2003) Mosiacs Make a Site: The Conservation in situ of Mosaics on Archaeological Sites, Proceedings of the 6th Conference of the International Committee for the Conservation of Mosaics, Nicosia, Cyprus, 1996. Rome: ICCROM.

Formation Processes 2013 Nixon T (ed.) (2001) Preserving Archaeological Remains in situ. Proceedings of the 2nd conference 12–14 September 2001. London: Museum of London Archaeological Service. Stanley Price N (1984) Conservation on Archaeological Sites with Particular Reference to the Mediterranean Area. Rome: ICCROM. van Heeringen RM and Theunissen EM (2002) Desiccation of the Archaeological Landscape at Voorne Putten. Amersfoort, The Netherlands: Rijksdienst voor het Oudheidkundig Bodemonderzoek (Nederlandse Archaeologische Rapporten 25). http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/upload/pdf/MoRPHE-ProjectManagers-Guide.pdf.

Formation Processes Paul Goldberg, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA Richard I Macphail, University College London, London, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary dark earth Dark-colored and pedologically modified occupation deposits formed over decades and centuries. As a consequence, the original stratigraphic integrity of pedogenesis and time of the deposits is largely obscured. diagenesis Chemical and physical changes in a sediment occurring at surface conditions after deposition. loess Wind blown silt deposits found worldwide. pedogenesis Soil formation that results from factors of climate, living organisms, parent material, topography, and time. Quaternary Geological Period dating to about the last 2 Myr and including the Pleistocene and Holocene (last 10 000 years) Epochs.

Introduction The concept of ‘site formation’ existed in scholars’ minds (e.g., F. E. Zeuner) for decades before it was concisely articulated by archaeologist M. B. Schiffer in his seminal work on the subject. A human and physical geographical approach was advanced by K. W. Butzer who considered the interplay of cultural and natural processes that go into forming a site. Even now, the notion that site formation develops through a combination of natural and anthropogenic agencies is still often overlooked. Site-formation processes can be broadly divided into those processes that occur before, during, and after occupation. These include natural sedimentation, anthropogenic deposition and modification, soil formation (pedogenesis), and other postdepositional effects. The occurrence of any of these processes is quite variable at a given site, and depends upon

(among others) age, climate and location/setting of the site, and type and complexity of occupation (hunter and gatherers vs. complex societies).

Natural Sedimentation Natural sedimentation follows most of the processes found in modern geological environments (e.g., beach, alluvial, aeolian, and lacustrine) and most sediments reflect the available energy of deposition: higher energies are associated with beach and stream cobbles, whereas lake basins are low-energy settings; the latter may also be the locus of chemical sedimentation where carbonates and other salts may accumulate. For prehistoric sites typified by hunter and gatherer occupations, natural sedimentation predominates at most open-air and cave sites (see Caves and Rockshelters; Sites: Mounded and Unmounded). At sites such as Lower Palaeolithic Boxgrove (UK), hominin occupation appears to have had negligible effect on estuarine and mudflat sedimentation, and periglacial solifluction. In caves, detrital sedimentation of windblown sand and silt, mud flows, and sheetwash are commonly accompanied by organic-rich inputs of bird guano, as well as chemical sedimentation of carbonates (speleothems and flowstone/travertine) and phosphates. In volcanic terrains meter-thick layers of ash and lapilli can bury large settlements, such as Pompeii and Cere´n (El Salvador).

Anthropogenic Deposition/Activities Archaeological deposits often have more complicated site-formation histories than natural ones because they encompass a potentially infinite variety of anthropogenic activities (see Figure 1). Thus, at a tell or mound site, for example, we might observe combinations of interdigitated features and constructions (e.g., walls, plazas, and kilns); domestic occupation, including combustion zones and pene-contemporaneous rake-out of ashes charcoal (see Figures 2 and 3), and bone; and agricultural practices adjacent to the site (e.g., plowing, manuring). Moreover, people can rework and modify archaeologically contemporaneous features and deposits, as in the case of pits (see Figures 4 and 5), fills, and dumps. Furthermore, all of these types of activities can often take place on the same existing substrate, thus making it difficult to isolate individual strata and associated events. Anthropogenic deposition and alteration become particularly noticeable from the Middle Palaeolithic onwards (after c. 250 ka), ultimately encompassing most Holocene sites in the Old World, and particularly Late Holocene mound sites in the New World.

2014 Formation Processes

Figure 1 Field photo of an archaeological profile at Huizui, loess plateau, Henan Province, China; Yangshao (Neolithic c. 5000– 3000 BC) construction of lime floors (LFs) over buried alluvium or possible paddysols (soils); also visible are burned daub (Collapse), the upper homogenized (Reworked) levels, and plastic downpiping monoliths (Samples) for soil micromorphological investigations. Collaboration with La Trobe University, Australia and Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing.

Pedogenesis and Other Postdepositional Processes Soils form on natural sediments, on anthropogenic deposits, or on previously formed soils. Pedogenesis brings about changes in color, texture, composition, and structure of the material on which it develops. The types and degrees of transformations and soils, are well documented, and are a function of the combined effects of climate, organisms (biota), relief (e.g., slope and altitude), parent material (geology or anthropogenic deposit), and time. Prime examples of the effect of pedogenesis on anthropogenic deposits are the formation of Roman and medieval urban dark earth in European urban deposits and stratigraphy, and the formation of black earths such as terra preta on Mesoamerican occupation sites. On more regional scales, the formation of soils on alluvial or aeolian landscapes (e.g., loess deposits in Europe and Asia) furnish detailed palaeoenvironmental information that can be commonly linked with past occupations. Moreover, when viewed over the span of the Quaternary, soils form relatively quickly and thus constitute distinct temporal markers that can be traced over large areas and thus permit the correlation of soils, deposits, and sites. In addition to ‘traditional’ pedogenesis, other postdepositional processes can substantially alter the integrity and nature of archaeological sites and deposits. Bioturbation, for example, is a well-known process, but its effects are often under-appreciated;

Figure 2 Scan of thin section M500b (context 4907; period 9) of typical room occupation deposits from the Medieval Canons’ Infirmary, Spitalfields Hospital, London, UK (Museum of London Archaeological Services). The thin section shows an alternating series of constructed ‘orange’ brickearth floors and ‘blackish’ laminated (trampled) beaten floors. Width is
50 mm. Bulk analyses of the brickearth constructed floors demonstrate generally low amounts of organic matter (LOI) and heavy metals (Pb, Zn, and Cu), with little enhancement of magnetic susceptibility, although phosphate may be enriched because of floor-use contamination. Average bulk analysis of constructed floors: (1) organic matter (loss on ignition – LOI) ¼ 1.70%; (2) phosphate ¼ 2.05 mg g1; (3) magnetic susceptibility ¼ 31.2  108 SI w, 4) 2.50% wconv; (4) 128 mg g1 Pb, 36.3 mg g1, Zn, 34.2 mg g1 Cu. Bulk data from John Crowther, University of Wales, Lampeter, UK, unpublished report by Macphail and Crowther to Museum of London Archaeological Service.

original stratification can be effaced and artifacts substantially moved from their original positions (see Figure 1). Human activities, such as trampling (Figures 2 and 3) and cleaning, can have similar effects, along with activities involving reuse and discard of artifacts and materials within dumps or offsite. Finally, postdepositional chemical modifications also act to contribute to the formation of sites. In more classical situations, diagenesis can involve cementation of deposits by carbonate derived from groundwater, or iron precipitation/dissolution resulting in

Formation Processes 2015

Figure 3 Photomicrograph and detail of thin section M500b, illustrating three trampled layers, the middle one rich in charcoal, ash, burned soil and kitchen waste such as burned bone; the uppermost layer is characterized by brickearth soil trafficked in from brickearth floors. Oblique incident light (OIL), frame width is
4.3 mm. Bulk analyses by Crowther also found that charcoalrich layers contrast with the brickearth layers by being more organic, more phosphate- and heavy metal-rich, and display an enhanced magnetic susceptibility because of included burned mineral material (e.g., from hearths). Bulk data: 2.83% LOI, 4.09 mg g1 phosphate-P, 62.3  108 SI w, 5.37% wconv, 980 mg g1 Pb, 52.4 mg g1 Zn, 82.1 mg g1 Cu.

Figure 4 Photomicrograph of thin section M80, from another important Medieval context at Spitalfields – an enigmatic pit fill (context 1485; period 9); this illustrates the presence of calcium phosphate cemented human cess (latrine waste) within which are embedded plant fragments (legume testa?) probably relict of the ingestion of vegetables. The presence of cess was also identified through independent palynological (pollen) and macrobotanical studies. PPL, frame width is
5 mm. (The thin section also underwent elemental mapping by microprobe, see Figure 5.)

yellow, brown, or reddish mottling as in gleyed horizons. In more subtle instances, diagenesis – particularly within cave settings – can be responsible for the complete destruction of bone and organic matter, and

Figure 5 Microprobe map of a part of thin section M80 (combinations of the elements Ca, P, and Si). Two distinct materials are present: probable mineralized human cess (Ca–P – pale blue) at the base (and as fragments above) (see Figure 4); and silt-rich layered, probable stabling waste (Si – red) intercalated with stable crust phosphate (pale blue). Scale bar at bottom of photograph is 2 mm. Microprobe analysis of the cess layer confirmed the dominant presence of calcium phosphate – probably as hydroxyapatite: 7.87% Ca, 3.44% P, 2.46% Si. Bulk analysis (by Crowther) also found the deposit to be extremely organic and exceptionally rich in phosphate, as well as containing anomalously high amounts of zinc: 51.6% LOI, 72.4 mg g1 phosphate-P, 0.388  108 SI w, 0.285% wconv, 266 mg g1 Pb, 809 mg g1 Zn, 172 mg g1 Cu.

concomitant formation of secondary minerals that include phosphates (Figures 4 and 5), carbonates, sulfates, and nitrates. Thus, postdepositional effects can result not only in the wholesale removal of fundamental parts of the archaeological record (e.g., bones) but also modify textures, colors, and other aspects of the deposits which in turn hinder recognition of the original depositional characteristics and associated stratigraphic relationships (Figures 6 and 7) they can also render difficult the excavation and retrieval of components of the artifact record.

Investigative Methods Methods of investigating site formation depend on the nature and scale of the site and the types of questions being asked. Nevertheless, site formation is best understood first with a thorough understanding of the geomorphological setting of the site, including position in the landscape, types of bedrock and Quaternary deposits, as well as knowledge of soils and sediments near the site. Such investigations are

2016 Formation Processes

Figure 6 Site of Wilson-Leonard, south central Texas showing stratigraphic sequence of deposits that span from Early Palaeoindian at the base (c. 11 300 BP) up to Late Prehistoric at the top (c. 1000 BP). The sequence here consists of fluvial gravels at the base that are overlain by interfingering cienega, organic rich silty clays (Icl) and overbank silts (Isi), stony colluvial and alluvial silts (II) that become successively rich in organic matter and rocks resulting from the use of anthropogenic rock ovens dating to Archaic through Late Prehistoric Periods (IIIa, IIIc); a more geogenic, less anthropogenic silt (IIIb) separates these two oven-rich layers.

by soil micromorphological techniques, including the thin section analysis of undisturbed sediments and Transform soils using the petrological microscope, coupled with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray analyses (e.g., microprobe and X-ray diffraction), and Fourier Transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometry, which are effective means to examine microchemistry and mineralogy (Figures 4 and 5). Bulk chemical (organic matter, phosphate, trace elements) and physical (bulk density, magnetic susceptibility) analyses (Figures 2 and 3) are also often utilized to determine, and/or corroborate independently, depositional and postdepositional processes (see Soils and Archaeology). For example, soil micromorphology of the high medieval deposits in the precincts of Magdeburg Cathedral, Germany, found burned and ash-rich deposits formed under open-air conditions, which included nonferrous metal fragments. This was consistent with an enhanced magnetic susceptibility (induced by burning) and the enriched copper content found in the associated bulk sample. Complementary microprobe and archaeometallic analyses on the thin section identified the fragments as corroding bronze alloy fragments composed of copper and tin, which contained the appropriate amount of lead required in bells. This supplied an inferred link between these deposits containing bronze casting droplets and supposed local medieval bell manufacture for the Cathedral.

Conclusions

Figure 7 Middle Palaeolithic anthropogenic deposits about 50 ka from the West wall of Kebara Cave, Mount Carmel, Israel. The bulk of the deposits are intact combustion features comprised of ashes and organic-rich layers. In this part of the cave, all of the ashes have been diagenetically altered from their original carbonate composition, and instead are composed of various phosphate minerals; no bone occurs in these altered deposits. In the upper part of the photograph the well-defined structures disappear and the deposits are more homogeneous. Such homogenization is a result of bioturbation, presumably by micromammals, and an elliptical burrow is shown in the upper left part of the photograph (b). Red line is 1 m.

usually carried out with the aid of satellite and aerial photography, maps (topographic, geological, soil survey), and geophysical techniques (e.g., magnetometry). In the laboratory, grain size analysis has traditionally been used to scrutinize these processes. Within the past two decades this approach has been supplanted

Two decades after the appearance of Schiffer’s volume, researchers are finally becoming more sensitive to the concept of site-formation processes and the variety of techniques that are currently being used to reveal the type of natural and human processes/events that together are responsible for the buildup that they are excavating. Furthermore, they realize that without such an understanding, their ability to comprehend what they dig out of the ground is severely compromised and that studies of site formation should constitute a fundamental aspect of any excavation. See also: Caves and Rockshelters; Sites: Mounded and Unmounded; Soils and Archaeology; Volcanism and Archaeology.

Further Reading Berna F, Behara A, Shahack-Gross R, et al. (2007) Sediments exposed to high temperatures: reconstructing pyrotechnological processes in Late Bronze and Iron Age Strata at Tel Dor (Israel). Journal of Archaeological Science 34: 358–373.

Mapping Methods 2017 Butzer KW (1982) Archaeology as Human Ecology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Courty M-A, Goldberg P, and Macphail RI (1989) Soils and Micromorphology in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Duchaufour P (1982) Pedology. London: Allen and Unwin. Goldberg P and Bar-Yosef O (1998) Site formation processes in Kebara and Hayonim Caves and their significance in Levantine prehistoric caves. In: Akazawa T, Aoki K, and Bar-Yosef O (eds.) Neandertals and Modern Humans in Western Asia, pp. 107–125. New York: Plenum. Goldberg P and Macphail RI (2006) Practical and Theoretical Geoarchaeology. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific. Holliday VT (2004) Soils in Archaeological Research. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sites/Frozen

Karkanas P, Bar-Yosef O, Goldberg P, and Weiner S (2000) Diagenesis in prehistoric caves: The use of minerals that form in situ to assess the completeness of the archaeological record. Journal of Archaeological Science 27: 915–929. Macphail RI (1994) The reworking of urban stratigraphy by human and natural processes. In: Hall AR and Kenward HK (eds.) Urban–Rural Connexions: Perspectives from Environmental Archaeology, 47, pp. 13–43. Oxford: Oxbow. Schiffer MB (1987) Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record. Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press. Stiner M, Kuhn SL, Surovell TA, et al. (2005) Bone, ash, and shell preservation in Hayonim Cave. In: Stiner M (ed.) The Faunas of Hayonim Cave, Israel, American School of Prehistoric Research Bulletin, vol. 48, pp. 59–79. Cambridge: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.

See: Frozen Sites and Bodies.

Mapping Methods Ian Johnson, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary GIS (Geographical Information System) Software for capturing, managing, analysing and presenting spatially referenced data. Raster (cell-based) systems provide the best analysis capabilities, whereas vector systems provide the best mapping capabilites. Most modern systems are hybrid. GPS (Global Positioning System) A worldwide system of navigation satellites allowing a portable receiver to triangulate its position on the earth’s surface to within a few meters. Differential GPS (DGPS) uses one or more fixed base stations to provide a correction signal, improving accuracy to submeter or centimeter level with higher grade receivers. remote sensing Non-invasive recording of site or landscape features. The term is used to cover both high-altitude recording (satellite and airborne sensor imagery, aerial photographs) and sub-surface recording (magnetometry, resistivity and ground penetrating radar). total station A theodolite with electronic distance measurement, digital readout and data logging.

What and Why Do We Map? Introduction

Sites and maps The notion of the site, and the use of maps to describe them, is based on an implicit

understanding that human behavior is inherently spatial, and the identification of concentrations of archaeological material which are equated with past settlements or activities. Site maps – in many cases more accurately referred to as plans, since they generally use a local coordinate system and reference plane – provide a concise method of recording the limits and structure of the sites we define, the processes of sampling and excavation, and the extent and spatial structure of archaeological material. Site maps are frequently used to present interpretations of the material recorded or excavated. As a result, they have been a fundamental component of site recording since the early eighteenth century. The process of site mapping not only generates site maps, but may also generate an underlying spatial database susceptible to analysis and to alternative modes of presentation (including web delivery, multimedia, and 3D visualization). Sites and scale Sites may range in size from a transitory campsite, covering a few square meters, to immense settlements such as Teotihuaca´n in Mexico or Angkor in Cambodia (Figure 1), extending to hundreds or even thousands of square kilometers. These large sites are palimpsests of many features occupied, reused, and adapted over time – temples, villages, workshops, stores, houses, wells, bridges, etc. – which are often treated as sites in their own right. Naturally, different techniques are required for mapping across such vastly different spatial and temporal scales, and

2018 Mapping Methods

Figure 1 Archaeological map of Angkor in Cambodia, a vast low-density city composed of many smaller sites. The archaeological features were digitized in ArcGIS from aerial photographs and airborne radar imagery. Interpretation of features was based on field observations using GPS and low-level aerial observation from an ultralite aircraft.

different scales of recording are appropriate to addressing different archaeological questions (see Settlement Pattern Analysis; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites).

For large sites, a combination of different mapping methods will be used. The overall structure of the site will typically be mapped using satellite images, aerial survey, surveying equipment, and/or Global

Mapping Methods 2019

Positioning Systems (GPS). Local detail may also be mapped with surveying equipment, but is often recorded through hand-drawn scale diagrams (Figure 5), which will later be integrated into the broad framework. Geographic Information System (GIS) and Computer Aided Design (CAD) software are now routinely used to integrate mapping data from many sources and generate printed or digital site maps. Sites and content Brief occupations with a limited range of material on a level surface are naturally much easier to map than deeply stratified and complex sites with a wide range of material, such as large mound sites and dense urban areas occupied over millennia. Site mapping deals with all aspects of the archaeological record: ‘natural features’ (e.g., outcrops, gulleys, springs, cave walls); ‘artificial features’ (e.g., buildings, tombs, roads, ditches, post holes, robber trenches); ‘deposits and interfaces’ (e.g., ditch fills, overlapping layers, disconformities); ‘individually recorded objects’ (larger items or items judged as significant, such as statues, bronzes, stone tools, grindstones, cylinder seals); ‘undifferentiated material’ (often by-products such as slag, flaking debris, charcoal, chemical variations, and building rubble); and last, but not least, ‘the sampling process’ (e.g., grids, excavation trenches, shovel tests, auger holes, samples, sections, and detail plans). Maps as documents All mapping is of course subjective. The process of mapping inevitably entails selection and recording of what we believe is significant or wish to demonstrate, which is fundamentally conditioned by our current understanding. The maps we draw, whether sketches in the field or for final publication, present a further filtering of information recorded through generalization and symbolization, and thus inherently reflect our perception and interpretation (or in the worst case, intentional distortion) of the phenomena mapped (Figure 2). Mapping in archaeology is generally treated as a technical exercise whose validity is taken for granted. Issues such as accuracy, selective representation, interpretation, and the relationship between current perceptions and those of the original inhabitants have rarely been subjected to critical analysis, as has occurred in geography. The constructions of alignments through arbitrary selection of features – ley lines and a plethora of astronomical alignments at Stonehenge, for example – are cautionary tales of the uncritical use of maps. Difficulties in establishing contemporaneity have frequently been glossed over or simply ignored. Kidder’s 1992 re-analysis of Poverty Point in Louisiana demonstrates the speculative

creation of map features based on false assumptions, accepted uncritically and perpetuated in later maps.

The Role of Site Mapping

Documentation In the first place, site mapping is used to locate the site with respect to local topographic and geological features which help us understand the processes which located, formed, and transformed the site. These may include defensive position and availability of water; deposit formation processes and raw material sources; and postdepositional factors such as soil movement, erosion, and redeposition (Figure 3). Second, site mapping is used extensively as a means of documentation to describe the layout of the site grid, the positioning of trenches, baulks, sondages, coring and sampling areas, and the location of stratigraphic sections and detail plans. In this role site plans document the process of recording and/or excavation and provide a reference to other documents. In some site assessment work, the site map may be the main form of documentation recorded and may only take the form of a sketch map with measurements. Sketch maps are also useful as preparatory documents for survey or excavation (Figures 4 and 5). Third, site mapping is used to record the products of human activity, in the form of structures, features, deposits, interfaces, concentrations of undifferentiated material, and individual portable artifacts. These records are fundamental to the analysis and interpretation of the archaeological record (Figure 6). Analysis and interpretation Site mapping provides the information necessary to analyze spatial relationships between structures, features, portable items, and the by-products of human activity. Whether formally analyzed using quantitative methods applied to the underlying spatial database, or simply evaluated qualitatively from the site map, spatial relationships are at the heart of site interpretation as past human activity space. Issues such as social organization, power relations, economic activities, and task specialization generally have a spatial dimension, for which site mapping provides essential data. Even in narrow culture-historical interpretation, spatial provenance and related groups of objects are taken into account. The New Archaeology of the 1960s and 1970s brought an awareness of spatial processes and the interpretation of spatial patterning in terms of activities. Researchers such as Lewis Binford and Jim O’Connell carried out mapping of recent campsites (Figure 7), coupled with ethnographic observation and interviews with residents, as a means of linking

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archaeological signatures with the activities that generated them. Mapping of conjoins – fragments of the same object (often flaked stone) from which one can generally deduce a sequence of events impacting the object (such as breakage and reworking) – led to further awareness of the site as activity space. This new awareness of sites as ever-changing spatially differentiated systems in which existing material is reworked and added to, rather than simply being superseded, leads to the use of site maps to examine

shifting occupations and tease out chronological ordering and change. Site mapping can also help us understand hydrological systems, such as the canals and reservoirs of Angkor, the irrigation systems of taro agriculture in the Pacific, eel traps in southeastern Australia or the Roman water supply. Mapping forms the basis of a search for patterns, including formal planning (e.g., Roman Centuration of Corinth), astronomical alignments (e.g., alignment of the pyramids), prehistoric

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Figure 4 Sketch plan of Prasat Tonle Sngout site, Angkor, Cambodia. This plan shows the setting out of an excavation to investigate the existence of a bridge by reference to the center line of the building complex and surviving laterite paving.

Figure 5 Strangways Springs telegraph station site, Central Australia. Aboriginal and European archaeological material is supermiposed on georeferenced aerial photography showing vegetation, tracks and erosion. Archaeological material was recorded on localized plans (inset) located with GPS and integrated with the background map in a GIS.

measurement units (e.g., the ‘megalithic yard’), or specific patterns representing intentional structures (e.g., the identification of stone circles or hut outlines from patterns of stones or post holes). A classic 1954

study of Star Carr in Yorkshire, by Grahame Clark, was one of the first cases to use the spatial distribution of bone and stone objects to understand the nature of the habitation area.

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Figure 6 Tell Um Hammad, Jordan. A sequence of plans documenting stages of a deep stratigraphic excavation.

Dissemination Site maps have an increasingly important role in the indexing and delivery of archaeological information, for research, heritage management, and public information. Printed maps The most obvious role is in publication of survey and excavation results, where site maps have been integral to many projects, large and small. Classic examples include the extensive mapping of the Viru´ and Teotihuaca´n valley occupations in the 1940s and 1960s, work on early hominid sites in the East African Rift Valley from the 1950s, or the intensive piece-plotting of the Magdalenian camp sites at Pincevent near Paris from 1962.

The density and spatial overlap of mapped data has in the past presented problems for publication of site maps. The physical limitations of hardcopy site maps, particularly monochrome publication maps, force a great deal of selectivity, most often resulting in a series of thematic and/or detail maps illustrating different aspects of the site. Smaller, less complex sites may only require in-page or foldout maps, but major site surveys, such as that of Teotihuacan (Figure 8), have required costly supplemental volumes of folded maps. Owing to the limited demand and high cost, color has rarely been used. Highly selective printed site maps will continue to be used in interpreting sites to the public, as well as to

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illustrate points in published arguments, but the future of site map publication lies in digital technologies as archaeologists become familiar with their potential. Digital maps Digital maps allow comprehensive site maps of unlimited size and complexity, nesting of detail down to individual artifacts, and the overlay of many layers or themes of data within a single comprehensive document (Figure 9). Layers can be switched on and off, filtered, resymbolized, or mapped thematically, drawing on a far wider range of symbology and graphical methods (including color, animation, extrusion, transparency, and charts constructed on the fly) than is possible in print publications. Interactive site maps can also be used as a catalog front-end to access more detailed plans, sections, photographs, feature descriptions, cores, geological and chemical analyses, and artifact databases. Maps and data can now be delivered across the web, making them more rapidly and more widely accessible. Using free GIS viewers, digital site maps can be delivered at a fraction of the cost of printed materials, either on

CD-ROM accompanying a published volume, in a museum or visitor center kiosk, through the web, or on-site through mobile phones and other portable devices. This mode of publication fundamentally changes the interpretive possibilities of site maps. We are just beginning to see digital maps and site databases archived and made available for download through repositories such as the Archaeology Data Service in the UK http://ads.ahds.ac.uk. Sustainable interactive map systems are more problematic – for example, the data formats and software of the ZEMP project, which published map data for Angkor in 1992, are already obsolete. However projects such as the Theban Mapping Project http://www.thebanmappingproject.com and various articles in Internet Archaeology http://intarch.ac.uk use web-based site maps as an effective front end to find, display, and interact with detailed data, with the understanding that these interactive maps will require migration as technology changes. Web map delivery also offers the potential for incremental addition as new data is collected. Some projects have put in place

Mapping Methods 2025

Figure 8 Overview map of Teotihuacan published in 1973 at a scale of 1:40 000. A separate volume of 147 folded maps provides detail at 1:10 000 and 1:2000.

daily web updates from the field (e.g., C¸atalho¨yu¨k in Turkey) but this has not generally extended to primary data and site maps. Site interpretation Site maps – on-site, in museums and visitor centers, and on the web – have an important role to play in the interpretation of sites to visitors. Apart from basic navigation to features of interest, site maps allow visitors to understand the relationships between archaeological material and reconstructions of structures and activities. Interactive maps in kiosks can be used to engage visitors and allow them to explore the site and drill down into data. Interactive maps on the web can provide preand post-visit access to information. Well-constructed static site maps can still excite the interest of visitors, as well as contributing to the appeal of books on history, archaeology, and architecture (Figure 10). Cultural resource management The maps of the Roman Forum in London published by the Museum

of London in 1987 provide a classic example of the accumulation of map data from unplanned sources, built up from a century of archaeological work on unrelated small developments. With the increasingly widespread availability of GIS technology in public institutions and local government, digital site maps play an increasing role in heritage management (Figure 9). By integrating many sources of information – aerial photography, topographic survey, historical maps, geophysical survey, information from cores and sections (in cellars, tunnels, wells, and construction work), and excavations – they can provide a means of assessing the impact of development work, of locating construction to avoid significant features, of integrating features within a development (recent examples include archaeological remains displayed in situ in new Athens metro stations) or of planning site visitor facilities such as pathways, visitor flow, and points of interpretation. Ongoing monitoring and updating of site maps, or periodic re-mapping of a site, can provide valuable

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PARRAMATTA HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLGICAL LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT STUDY Prepared for the HSW Heritage Office, November 2000

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Figure 9 Interactive Time Map Java applet web map of the Parramatta Historical and Archaeological Landscape Management Study (PHALMS) showing georeferenced historical maps, modern cadastral units, and Archaeological Management Units (AMU). The map can be zoomed in for detail and individual layers can be turned on and off or interrogated. The AMUs are linked to detailed information on unit history and heritage management requirements.

Figure 10 A site map used for on-site interpretation. Interpretive maps can be used to guide visitors, as well as explaining the history and interpretation of the site.

information on site degradation and conservation needs. Site maps may also be used as a basis to predict future impacts, particularly in relation to urban development, or to deliver information on heritage management requirements.

History of Site Mapping Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

The mapping of archaeological sites has its roots in the work of the antiquarians and treasure hunters

Mapping Methods 2027

of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, initially concerned with unearthing beautiful and interesting objects and recording extraordinary sites. Driven by the eighteenth century passion for detailed description, William Stukeley (1687–1765) is credited with the first accurate maps of Stonehenge and Avebury, as well as many smaller sites (Figure 11). The resources available in the colonial period, along with developments in accurate military mapping, resulted in detailed inventories and mapping of spectacular sites in exotic locations, such as the work done at the end of the eighteenth century by Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt (published from 1809 in the 19-volume Description de l’Egypte). In the same period we see surveys of Babylon and Nineveh. These projects employed skilled draughtsmen and architects, resulting in precise, detailed, and often very beautiful maps. Nineteenth Century

It was not until the 1840s, in both Europe and the Americas, that systematic excavation and contextual recording started to develop, along with attempts to understand the past based on evidence, rather than on fanciful speculation. At this time new understandings of geology and biology, and their importance to the interpretation of the archaeological record, were developing. Maya cities were discovered and mapped

in Central America, Indian mounds were mapped in Ohio and Mississippi, systematic excavation and recording began at Pompeii and the Archaeological Survey of India was founded. Twentieth century

The work of Pitt-Rivers and Flinders Petrie, operating at the end of the nineteenth century, and Mortimer Wheeler in the first half of the twentieth century, led to a focus on controlled excavation and stratigraphy rather than the horizontal spatial structure of sites. After the Second World War, we see a shift from stratigraphy recorded in section as the prime document (e.g., Jericho, Maiden Castle) to the use of plans or sequences of plans (e.g., Wroxeter, Pincevent) (Figure 12). A good discussion of developments in the use of site plans is to be found in Stratigraphic Archives: The Archaeological Plan (Harris, 1979, chapter 8; see also Barker, 1993, chapter 8). In the period after the Second World War, major north American projects recorded and mapped sites in south and central America. The Teotihuacan mapping project started in 1962 is amongst the classics, generating detailed mapping of thousands of structures over more than 30 sq. km. (Figure 8). Quantification (enabled and significantly driven by the spread of computers) and an increasing awareness of the spatial component of human behavior and the

Figure 11 William Stukeley’s map of Abury (Avebury, 1743). Stukeley was a pioneer of archaeological site mapping at a time when antiquarians were largely interested in the objects of curiosity dug up from sites rather than their context.

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significance of scale, led to a variety of projects focusing on detailed analysis of site mapping data, including the use of statistical measures of spatial association and the visualization of artifact distributions as density plots, contours, or interpolated 3D surfaces (Figure 13). Useful overviews of development of archaeological practice can be found in Willey and Sabloff (1993) for the Americas, and Daniel (1975) for Europe. Modern

The last couple of decades have brought even more rapid technological change – personal computers, digital surveying instruments, GPS, mapping and visualization software and the Internet – coupled with reflection on the ownership and meaning of the past. Site mapping has had to adapt to new, more efficient tools and to new requirements driven by Cultural Resource Management, community participation, global access, and the pressures of development and contract archaeology. Commercial pressures have forced standardization and recording by rote, while a concern with reflexivity has forced archaeologists to engage with contemporary communities, including indigenous groups and museum audiences, and to modify the ways in which data is collected and used (Figure 14).

Site Mapping Methods Site mapping methods today are changing rapidly with developments in survey technology and falling costs, leading to the widespread use of GPS and Total Stations (theodolites with electronic distance measurement and digital data logging). Differential GPS (DGPS), with a normal accuracy in the range 0.5–1 m, provides an effective solution for mapping larger sites, laying out grids or determining ground control points to allow integration of airborne sensor and satellite imagery, oblique aerial photographs and historical maps into a site GIS. Total Stations, with centimeter accuracy, come into their own for precision surveying and detailed site mapping over small areas (Figure 15), or where GPS cannot be used (caves, rockshelters, forest canopy, steep valleys, and urban canyons block the GPS satellite signals). Accuracy and Precision

In setting up to map a site, the archaeologist must choose appropriate techniques which reflect the type of site to be mapped and the aims of the mapping. These include a consideration of scales of recording appropriate to the questions being asked and the appropriate levels of accuracy and precision required.

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Figure 13 Byzantine fortification, Agios Georgios Kolokythias, Kythera, rendered as a plan and as a three dimensional visualization through extrusion of mapped features. The plan and visualization were created during fieldwork using GPS and GIS software.

Figure 14 GPS training workshop for staff of the APSARA authority, Cambodia. Management authorities and local communities in developing countries are becoming increasingly involved in site mapping and the application of participatory GIS methods.

The power of modern instruments tempts us to record an excessive level of accuracy and/or detail, simply because we can. This can lead to unnecessary expense and may obscure the real aims of the exercise. In general it is more important to record the relative location of adjacent features than the absolute position of features across a large site. A clear distinction must therefore be made between mapping ‘precision’ (small-scale detail, often required to the centimeter) and mapping ‘accuracy’ (absolute positioning of features, rarely required to better than a meter). Site mapping will generally require operations at two different scales, most often applying different techniques. A good review of survey and mapping techniques for archaeological sites can be found in Napton and Greathouse (1997). They also reference ‘classic’ site mapping exercises.

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Figure 15 Left, backpack DGPS being used to survey abandoned agricultural features on the island of Kythera, Greece. Right, precise local survey of a small temple site at Angkor, Cambodia using a Total Station. Reflectorless measurements and remotely controlled auto-tracking instruments allow survey by a single operator.

Figure 16 Left, digitization of archaeological features from AirSAR airborne radar imagery; Angkor, Cambodia. The imagery is georeferenced and overlaid with modern landscape features. Right, georeferencing and rubbersheeting an historic map to modern coordinates using cadastral data as reference; Barkers Mill Site, Sydney.

General Survey

The first step in studying a site is normally a general survey to map the overall context of the site, record the surface topography, establish a datum and grid system, establish control points for integration of scanned aerial images and maps, and map the location of major contemporary and exposed archaeological features – cliffs, terraces, gulleys, roads, buildings, cisterns, vegetation, boulders, rockshelter walls, etc. (Figure 3). As late as the 1980s, initial site survey was carried out somewhat laboriously with compass and tape, or with plane table, alidade, dumpy level, and graduated staffs, often necessitating the establishment of multiple survey stations and considerable skill in surveying practice. Today, the widespread availability of Total Stations and GPS receivers, means that many sites can

be rapidly surveyed from a single survey station or by using a GPS (Figure 14) to follow (‘occupy’) the outlines of features on the ground. The results are stored within the instrument or an attached data logger and can be uploaded directly to surveying, CAD or GIS software (Figure 13). After a framework has been established, the survey may pull in information such as existing topographic or street mapping, satellite imagery, airborne sensor data, and aerial photography (Figure 16). For urban areas and development sites large scale maps are often available in digital form (often as CAD drawings). Some major projects may commission aerial photography and the application of photogrammetry, as was done for the Teotihuaca´n map. Smaller sites and sites in isolated areas may simply be surveyed on the ground from scratch. Historical maps may also be

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added to the site map (Figures 9 and 16) to provide information on features which are no longer visible or the use of abandoned features, or to reveal the taphonomic history of the site, such as changed river courses or quarrying. Finally the survey may call for geophysical methods (resistivity, magnetometry, or ground penetrating radar) to locate buried features such as trenches, graves, or kilns. Heads-up digitizing of features from scanned maps and imagery, allows rapid generation of general site maps with a very small amount of on-the-ground work. The map of Angkor (Figure 1) shows thousands of features mapped from air photographs and AIRSAR radar imagery, many of which are undetectable on the ground and/or cannot be visited due to physical conditions. Aerial photography has been widely used, particularly in the UK, where exposed structures, soil and crop marks, surface topography, and other evidence of buried features have been mapped by English Heritage over more than 30% of the country to systematic standards and accuracies in the range 2–10 m. These techniques are covered in more detail in the entry on Remote Sensing (see Remote Sensing Approaches: Aerial; Geophysical). The development of powerful Desktop Mapping and GIS on desktop PCs provides an excellent tool for integration of these many sources of information in a single, seamless database with a common coordinate system. Since this coordinate system can be tied to locations on-the-ground through survey or GPS navigation, the site database can be used to target fieldwork – including detailed surveying, surface sampling, and excavation – in relation to identified features, even if they no longer show up on the surface. The availability of GIS, CAD, and survey software, combined with the ease of use and falling cost of GPS and digital survey equipment, has more or less removed the need for a trained surveyor on most projects. Local Mapping

Having established the overall framework of the site, detailed localized mapping will generally be required for exposed features and/or as part of the excavation process. Local mapping may be carried out either with a Total Station – a well-developed example is McPherron and Dibble 2002 – or using manual measuring and drawing methods – Barker 1993 provides a comprehensive account. Manual methods include the use of a drawing frame to subdivide grid squares for rapid but accurate sketching (Figure 17), and measurements made relative to trench walls, grid squares actualized with pegs or hanging plumblines, or within

a local grid centered on a survey point (used particularly to sample scattered features across large open sites). Local maps are generally drawn on special map forms or squared paper (Figure 5), while ancillary data such as artifact coordinates and descriptions are entered on related forms or in field notebooks. Portable data loggers may also be used, allowing rapid integration of results into a master site database. Some sites use bar coding to efficiently relate collected material to the mapping data. More automated methods of generating detailed local plans at the trench or grid square level have also been used. These include the use of low-level vertical photography from a monopod, bipod, tripod, or gantry (Figure 17) – used to print local plans which can be annotated in the field – and various forms of pantograph or video-based tracing systems. Some projects have also applied low-cost methods of aerial photography such as balloons, kites, and model planes. The widespread availability of digital cameras and software developments promise to streamline these methods of local plan production. The end product of local plan production, particularly on deeply stratified excavations, is large numbers of overlapping plans which must be merged into usable composite documents. For extensive single context sites, such as surface artifact scatters or rapidly sealed ‘living floors’, this is generally a straightforward process, easily achieved within a GIS or CAD package. For stratified and complex excavations, a great deal of manual work will be required, perhaps assisted by CAD software, in order to build a series of maps tied to stratigraphic records representing the phases of the site (Figure 6). GIS packages are less suitable as they cannot generally represent a 3D volume. Object-oriented GIS perhaps hold more promise, but as yet these systems are insufficiently developed. Some excavations have experimented with the use of true volumetric (voxelbased) software, developed for the mining industry, but no excavation has relied on this technology as a core system. Coordinate Reference Systems

Horizontal coordinate system Maps for smaller sites are normally prepared relative to a local site datum. With the increasing availability and use of GPS and GIS for site mapping, we can expect most new projects on larger sites to adopt standard map grid references as their basic reference system. In other cases the site coordinate system may or may not be aligned to true north. Often the axes will be oriented for convenience with respect to landscape features, urban plan, cave walls, or magnetic north

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Figure 17 Field methods for creating local plans. Left, a drawing frame in use for manual planning of a trench. Right, low-level vertical photography for detailed mapping of a pebble pavement; Regentville, Sydney.

(which often diverges several degrees from true north). In these cases, the site may be tied to geographic coordinates simply by citing a map reference and elevation, and by indicating north on the site map. In other cases the site datum may be accurately surveyed with respect to official benchmarks and in rare cases the data may be transformed to geographic coordinates. Site grid For practical recording during fieldwork, people generally require a convenient reference grid which allows fieldworkers to describe locations and carry out local detailed mapping without the need to reference long numerical geographic coordinates. In the past, grids on British- and US-run excavations were often in units of 5 or 10 ft, but today metric grids have been widely adopted. Grids on large sites will often be laid out as quadrats of 100 m, 500 m, 1000 m, or even more, which are then subdivided. Combinations of letters and numbers are often used to describe grid locations, which may also be used as sampling units. Elevations Site maps will often indicate the elevation of surfaces either through spot heights (routinely

used in localized recording) or contours (used to indicate the general lie of the original surface or the interface between horizontally extensive contexts). Contour lines in the past were generated either by following and mapping contours in the field, by measuring a grid of regularly spaced spot heights and interpolating between them or by photogrammetry from stereo aerial photographs. Today they are generated with ease from regular or haphazard distributions of spot height measurements, using GIS. The accuracy of these procedures is rarely reported. For larger sites, digital elevation models (DEM) – a regular grid of elevation values – are often available from mapping authorities. DEM for the entire globe, as well as more detailed coverage of particular areas, have been obtained through radar interferometry from aerial sensors and satellites flown by agencies such as NASA. Unlike conventional maps, excavation site maps often record depths below the site datum rather than elevation above a datum. This strangely counterintuitive practice reflects the fact that excavators measure downwards from a datum level established by an optical instrument, horizontal string or water level, and do not a priori know how far down deposits will extend.

Mapping Methods 2033 Data Loggers and Mobile Computing

Discussions of mobile computing – GPS, handheld computers, data loggers, wireless connectivity – emphasize efficiency gains, but do not generally consider the implications of these devices for the way archaeology is practiced, due to changes in what data is collected and how it is interpreted. For example, use of data loggers and digital cameras may lead to more in-field data recording rather than artifact collection and laboratory analysis. Recent work by Simon Holdaway in western New South Wales, for example, has exploited the speed of a Total Station to individually piece-plot artifacts in relation to topography across the landscape, rather than apply gridded collection, allowing more detailed distributional and taphonomic study. The ability to navigate easily and accurately to sampling locations using GPS and to record actual survey and collection tracks, encourages more sophisticated sampling strategies and more precise recording (Figure 18). Special Site Types/Mapping Difficult Sites

Certain types of site present particular problems and are beyond the scope of this entry. Cave sites often present difficulties through restricted access, limited space and convoluted topography involving the third dimension. Underwater sites present problems of harsh and/or awkward working conditions which limit the range of applicable instruments, restrict time on-site, and limit visibility. Extreme heat and cold can cause problems for humans and instruments

alike. Excavations within development sites can pose particular hazards and require rapid recording within a narrow window of opportunity.

Future Directions Technological change will continue to have a profound influence on-site mapping methods and the use of site maps. Increasing availability of low-cost digital recording methods (cameras, data loggers, GPS, and survey instruments), along with new ways of collecting spatial information (such as 3D scanning with LIDAR, automatic photogrammetric reconstruction from uncalibrated photographs, and site-level electronic triangulation for coordinate readout), will result in richer and perhaps less selective recording of spatial information. Ubiquitous connectivity will create new opportunities for on-site delivery of information, as well as democratization of the data collection process, supporting multiple viewpoints and real-time update of digital site archives. Closer integration of maps, field observations, and attribute data in object-oriented site databases will offer new opportunities for analysis, exploration, and representation of alternative interpretations. Maps and 3D visualization based on site mapping will become more widely used as interfaces to primary data, developing into collaborative web-based environments for discussion and negotiation of interpretations.

Acknowledgments

Figure 18 A PDA wirelessly connected to a Bluetooth GPS receiver provides a compact, mobile navigation and data logging system for large sites. The PDA runs a stripped-down GIS program (ArcMap) which shows location on a map display and records field notes and attributes with attached location for later download to a site database. Digital camera photographs can also be located by matching their timestamps with the GPS tracklog.

I would like to thank Damian Evans and Andrew Wilson for their help with maps and information sources, and for critical reading and comments. I remain responsible for any inaccuracies and omissions. Permission to reproduce site plans and photographs has been kindly given by Christophe Pottier and Damian Evans (Figure 1), Basil Hennessy (Figure 2), Ted Robinson (Figure 3). Alison Betts (Figure 6), Jim O’Connell (Figure 7), George Cowgill (Figure 8), Rare Book & Special Collections, University of Sydney Library (Figure 11), Pincevent excavation team (Figure 12), and Damian Evans (Figures 16, 18). I would like to thank Andrew Wilson for the remaining plans and photographs, and for preparation of the figures. See also: Pedestrian Survey Techniques; Remote Sensing Approaches: Aerial; Geophysical; Settlement Pattern Analysis; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites.

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Further Reading Barker P (1993) Techniques of Archaeological Excavation, 3rd edn. London: BT Batsford. Bewley RH (2003) Aerial survey for archaeology. Photogrammerctic Record 18(104): 273–292. Daniel GE (1975) A Hundred and Fifty Years of Archaeology. London: Duckworth. Harris E (1979) Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy. London: Academic Press. Kidder TR (1992) Mapping poverty point. American Antiquity 67(1): 89–101. Kroll EM and Price TD (eds.) (1991) The Interpretation of Archaeological Spatial Patterning. New York: Plenum Press. McPherron SP and Dibble HL (2002) Using Computers in Archaeology: A Practical Guide. Boston: McGraw-Hill/Mayfield. Millon R (1973) Urbanization at Teotihuacan, Mexico. Austin/ London: University of Texas Press. Napton LK and Greathouse EA (1997) Archaeological mapping, site grids and surveying. In: Hester TR, Shafer HJ, and Feder KL (eds.) Field Methods in Archaeology 7th edn., pp. 177–234. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Renfrew C and Bahn P (2004) Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice, 4th edn. London: Thames and Hudson. Willey GR and Sabloff JA (1993) A History of American Archaeology. New York: W. H. Freeman. 384 pp.

Relevant Websites http://ads.ahds.ac.uk – Archaeology Data Service. http://www.thebanmappingproject.com – Theban Mapping Project. http://intarch.ac.uk – internet archaeology, the premier e-journal for archaeology.

Mounded and Unmounded Patty Jo Watson, Washington University-St. Louis, MO and University of Montana-Missoula, MT, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary ecofacts Animal bones or other faunal remains (e.g., fish scales and mussel shell), charred plant parts or ancient pollen, and geological data (e.g., from analyses of sediments in or near sites, or from study of regional landforms) that provide information about the floral, faunal, ecological, and physical contexts of archaeological sites. jump site A specific kind of ‘kill-site’ where wild herd mammals were driven or stampeded off cliffs or over the steep sides of incised water courses. kill-site A single-activity or limited-activity site where animals were killed and processed for storage or consumption. Usually an unmounded open site containing fragmented faunal remains and few artifacts (see ‘jump site’). lithic scatter A thin array of chipped stone tools covering only a limited area and not found below the surface, represents a temporary camp or other short-term use of a specific locale.

shell mound, shell midden An open site, either mounded or unmounded, near a river, lake, or seacoast where the cultural deposits contain conspicuous remains of shellfish. stratification Layering of cultural deposits at mounded open sites (and many rock shelters). Unless there has been significant disturbance of the original deposits, the earliest material is at the bottom of the sequence, with successively younger remains higher up. In large mounded sites, for example, the remains of ancient towns and cities, the earliest deposits may be completely buried, or may be accessible only on the periphery of the mound. Sumer, Sumerians The earliest complex, urban, literate, state-based society in the world was created by the Sumerians (their name for themselves: ‘black-headed people’) in southern Mesopotamia (which they called ‘Sumer’) between 5500 and 5100 years ago.

Introduction Mounded and unmounded open sites are the most common types of archaeological deposits. They may be found anywhere that human groups camped, lived, or worked, and they are highly variable in shape, size, and other characteristics. Open sites range from a single hearth or a thin scatter of flint flakes to entire ancient cities such as Ur and Babylon in Mesopotamia, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in southern Asia, the Great City Shang in northern China, and Teotihuacan in Mexico. Besides abandoned cities, towns, and villages, the category of mounded open sites also includes several kinds of burial mounds (e.g., for one or more people, for ships, wagons, chariots, oxen, horses, and other animals, usually accompanying important people) and earthworks (e.g., earthen sculptures symbolizing or portraying sacred mountains, sacred landscapes, or supernatural animals). In many coastal and riverine areas around the world, there are shell mounds, shell middens, or shell rings accumulated during long-term seasonal use of shellfish and other aquatic resources by human groups camping in such locations: these are also mounded open sites. Unmounded open sites include monuments; stelae; rock carvings or pictographs; historic standing structures such as derelict factories, palaces, or fortresses; agricultural features (e.g., old fields, terraces, irrigation canals); battlefields with attendant fortifications (e.g., the Roman site at Maiden Castle in England); as well as occasional finds of projectile points and other items lost while ancient folk were hunting or working in outlying areas. This category also includes lithic scatters, lithic quarries, and workshops; salt and mineral (e.g., copper, turquoise) processing zones, including mines; kill-sites and butchering locales; as well as linear scatters of mussel shell and of other aquatic faunal remains along riverine, lacustrine, or marine coastal resource zones.

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Examples Mounded Open Sites

Ur in southern Mesopotamia (southern Iraq). Because there is no stone in the Tigris–Euphrates floodplain of southern Mesopotamia, the communities built there thousands of years ago (and, in fact, well into the twentieth century AD) are constructed of sun-dried mud brick. When abandoned, mud brick buildings disintegrate into low heaps, which may be leveled and used as foundations for new structures, or may simply be left if occupation shifts to an adjacent area. Thus, archaeological remains of the ancient city of Ur are a series of mounds and undulating cultural deposits covering a large area (some 150 acres (60 ha)), and comprising collapsed remnants left by generations of private and public mud brick buildings marking the history of Ur from c. 5000 BC to the Islamic era (which began in the seventh century AD). Several Sumerian cities so far identified in southern Mesopotamia are larger than Ur – Nippur is estimated at 800 acres (320 ha), Uruk at 1100 acres (450 ha) – but Ur is better known in the Western world because it is mentioned in the Old Testament as the birthplace of Abraham. (See Asia, West: Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad). Tell al-Muqayyar, the modern name for the ruins of Ur, was first excavated in 1853–54 by the British vice-consul stationed in Basra, then again by other archaeologists for brief periods in 1918, but most of what is known derives from long-term work directed by Leonard Woolley from 1922 to 1934, funded by the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Woolley was an excellent field archaeologist by the standards of his day, and made headlines in Europe and the United States by his finds at Ur, especially those from what he called the Royal Tombs. Within what he identified as the Early Dynastic Sumerian Royal Cemetery (dating to approximately 2500 BC), he excavated 660 burials, 16 of which were of the ‘royal’ category. These tombs were quite elaborate architecturally, and a few contained multiple retainers (up to a total of 73 people in the largest one), as well as abundant grave goods, some made of precious exotic and imported metals (gold, silver, electrum) and gemstones (lapis lazuli). Woolley’s workmen also uncovered the remains of numerous structures (walls, temples, administrative buildings, storerooms, private residences) and exposed the great Ur ziggurat (a massive, multiterraced temple platform that had risen more than 85 ft (26 m) high), which he reconstructed in the years before World War II. Viking ship burials in Norway. As demonstrated by the Royal Tombs of Ur, and as is the case in many other

societies, the Iron Age inhabitants of Scandinavia during the Viking Age (eighth–eleventh centuries AD) provided their elite dead with rich arrays of grave goods, covering the grave sites with low, round, or oval earthen mounds. Some of these burials also included large, well-built sea-going ships. Several such vessels have been excavated from the mounds that covered them, and have provided detailed information about when and how they were constructed. One of the best-preserved Viking ship burials is that from Oseberg on the shore of Oslo Fjord in Norway. Together with two other ships excavated elsewhere along Oslo Fjord, the Oseberg ship is on exhibit at the Viking Ship Museum in the city of Oslo. Tree-ring dates obtained for all three ships indicate that Oseberg is the oldest, having been built c. AD 815–20, and buried (according to dates for the burial chamber housing the ship’s owner) in AD 834. The royal personage in the Oseberg mound was a woman (actually, fragmentary skeletal remains of two women were recovered from this tomb), accompanied by the richest array of goods and equipment ever found in a Viking tomb. Besides the ship, there were also, for example, seven sleds (three of them elaborately decorated), a wagon, 12 or more horses, four dogs, a peacock, silk and woolen tapestries, goatskin shoes, combs, pins, spindles, scissors, wooden buckets, a loom, and other domestic equipment including the remains of down-filled bedcovers. The Carlston Annis shell mound in Kentucky, USA. Shell mounds or shell middens comprise a site type found in many parts of the world where abundant molluskan resources were permanently present, and were collected and processed at seaside or riverside locales. Such middens date back at least as far as the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods in Europe and eastern Asia, and to the Archaic period in the Americas. They vary considerably in size, shape, and internal composition, but the Carlston Annis shell mound on the Green River in west-central Kentucky, USA, provides one good example (Figures 1–4). The Carlston Annis site dates approximately 3000 to 2000 BC, and has been under cultivation for many decades. As a result, the surface contours are different from what they were prior to plowing, planting, and harvesting of corn (maize) beginning in the early twentieth century. The mound is now a long oval approximately 100  75 m (325  244 ft), but was formerly roughly circular and 80–85 m (65  84 1=2 feet) in diameter. The maximum depth of cultural deposit is somewhat more than 2 m, and contains varying amounts of mussel shell from the adjacent Green River, fragmented sandstone (used in hot-rock boiling and roasting) from the bluffs that

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Figure 1 The Carlston Annis shell mound (15Bt5) near Logansport, Butler County, Kentucky, USA (photo by William Marquardt, Shell Mound Archaeological Project).

0

10 10 1

X Shell–free midden

B Plow zone

Bank–side deposits and colluvium

Shell midden

N Colluvium 101.00 100.00

⌾⬘

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97.00 96.00 Meters

Lake silts Bedrock Bank–side deposits pre-midden

98.00

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Figure 2 Geoarchaeological profile of the Carlston Annis shell mound (15Bt5), Kentucky, USA (figure provided by Julie Stein, Shell Mound Archaeological Project).

outcrop a mile or so back from the river, hundreds of human burials as well as many dog burials, broken animal bones (fragmentary remains of wild fauna such as deer, turkey, fish, turtles, etc., hunted and eaten prehistorically), charred plant remains, and numerous stone and bone artifacts. Because the shell mound is rich organically, and is located in a region with high rainfall, relatively mild winters, and hot humid summers, the ancient deposits are inhabited by many different kinds of burrowing creatures from earthworms and other insects to crayfish, snakes, mice, gophers, and groundhogs. Hence, documenting human cultural remains and activities requires careful attention to what is known as bioturbation (see section titled ‘Methods’ ahead).

Unmounded Open Sites

Head-Smashed-In, Alberta, Canada. In many places around the world, locales where one or more wild animals were killed and butchered have been preserved. Some such unmounded sites represent a single episode when one or two mammoths or mastodons, for example, were brought down by skillful and daring human hunters, or were killed after being injured or impaired in some manner. Another type of kill-site contains the remains of multiple drives whereby dozens of herd animals (e.g., bison, wild horses, and gazelle) were stampeded over cliffs or into natural or artificial enclosures and killed. One such site of the latter type (known in North America as a ‘jump site’)

Mounded and Unmounded 2037

Figure 3 Close-up view of cultural deposits at the Carlston Annis shell mound during excavation. Marks on the North arrow are 1 cm wide (photo by William Marquardt, Shell Mound Archaeological Project).

Figure 4 View of Carlston Annis shell mound after the surrounding agricultural field had been plowed. Note contrast between the dark mound deposit and the lighter soil of the field. Tree line beyond the mound marks the course of Green River (photo by William Marquardt, Shell Mound Archaeological Project).

is Head-Smashed-In near Fort MacLeod in western Canada within the province of Alberta. Beginning in the Archaic period more than 5000 years ago and continuing into the nineteenth century, American Indians, cooperating in autumn hunts, drove groups of bison over a low cliff killing them, or severely injuring them so that they could be easily dispatched. Most of the resulting meat would have been sun-dried or smoked and kept for use throughout the winter. The copper mines of Isle Royale in Lake Superior, Minnesota, USA. Surface mines are yet another type of unmounded open site, and are known from many parts of the world where valuable natural resources or raw materials such as flint and salt, precious stones such as turquoise, and metals such as copper were

quarried to be used locally as well as exported. By 7000 years ago, Archaic people in the Lake Superior region of northeastern North America were obtaining native copper, probably from both open (streamdeposited, or exposed by stream erosion) and embedded deposits. Later pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Great Lakes area intensively mined rich copper veins on Isle Royale near the northern shore of Lake Superior itself. Hundreds of pits and trenches (some up to 3 m (10 ft) deep) dug c. 6000–1500 years ago by Late Archaic and Early to Middle Woodland miners as they followed copper seams, are still visible on Isle Royale as are large quantities of the hammerstones used to remove workable copper nodules and chunks. Occupation sites containing fragments of worked

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copper are also known on Isle Royale, and there is some evidence from as far south as Alabama, Florida, and Georgia that Lake Superior copper was widely traded prehistorically. The Little Bighorn Battlefield, Montana, USA. A third example of unmounded open sites, one that is widely distributed in time and space, is that of the battlefield. Battlefields are known both archivally and archaeologically from as long ago as the Bronze and Iron Ages in Europe and the Mediterranean regions, but the most detailed investigations are currently being carried out on historic sites dating to the last few centuries or decades (e.g., Civil War battlefields (1860–65) in eastern North America, US ships sunk by the Japanese in 1941 at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii). Detailed archaeological and osteological investigation was begun recently and is continuing at the Little Bighorn Battlefield in eastern Montana. Here, on 25 June 1876, Sioux chieftains, warriors, and their allies wiped out the US Seventh Cavalry, commanded by General George A Custer. Fieldwork carried out at the Little Bighorn site (now preserved as a National Monument) between 1985 and 1989 yielded detailed documentation on bullets, cartridge cases, textile fragments, Sioux and Cheyenne artifacts, and some osteological remains of Seventh Cavalry troopers. Laboratory work included distributional analyses of the artifacts recovered, especially the bullets and cartridge cases, to produce detailed information on specific locations of cavalrymen and Indians during the battle.

Methods Archaeological methods and techniques used at open sites are basically the same as those used at other types of sites. In fact, techniques devised during the early history of archaeology as a distinctive discipline in nineteenth-century Europe, England, and the Americas were nearly all developed at mounded open sites. These center upon plotting the site’s location within a specific landscape, mapping the site surface prior to excavation; documenting surface materials; digging small, carefully placed, deep trenches to reveal site stratigraphy; and cutting larger, shallower openings chosen to reveal horizontal variation in deposits at a few occupation levels. Depending on the size and nature of the site, and upon the research objectives being pursued there, archaeologists select a series of sampling and recovery procedures to obtain detailed information on

Sites/Spatial Analysis

Sites.

architectural, artifactual, and ecofactual (i.e., archaeobotanical, geoarchaeological, and archaeozoological) remains. As at any and all sites, careful attention must be given to postdepositional disturbance or destruction of the deposits being investigated. Such disturbance results from geological and biological processes. The former are referred to as ‘geoturbation’, and include flooding, erosion by water and/or wind, freezing and thawing, and slope failure. The latter are forms of ‘bioturbation’, a category that includes burrowing by many different kinds of animals from earthworms to badgers, as well as effects of plant roots up to and including those of large trees. Major alteration and destruction of archaeological deposits also result from more recent human activities on older cultural deposits and materials, for example, the digging of storage pits, burial pits, or house foundations, or simply the trampling, kicking, and scuffling of older sediments by later visitors or residents at the site. All such factors and processes must be understood before archaeologists can reveal the human stories recorded by mounded and unmounded cultural deposits at open sites. See also: Asia, West: Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad;

Butchery and Kill Sites; Shell Midden Analysis.

Further Reading Andrews A (1995) First Cities. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Browman D, Fritz G, and Watson P (2005) Origins of foodproducing economies in the Americas. In: Scarre C (ed.) The Human Past, pp. 306–349. London: Thames and Hudson. Christensen A (2000) Ships and navigation. In: Fitzhugh W and Ward E (eds.) Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, pp. 86–97. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Fitzhugh W and Ward E (eds.) (1998) Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Frison G (1991) Prehistoric Hunters on the High Plains, 2nd edn. New York: Academic Press. Marquardt W and Watson P (eds.) (2005) Archaeology of the Middle Green River Region, Kentucky. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. Martin S (1999) Wonderful Power: The Story of Ancient Copper Working in the Lake Superior Basin. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Scott D, Fox R, Jr., and Connor M (1989) Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Woolley L (1950) Ur of the Chaldees. London: Penguin Books Ltd. Zettler R and Horne L (1998) Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.

See: Settlement Pattern Analysis; Spatial Analysis Within Households and

Waterlogged 2039

Waterlogged Barbara A Purdy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In the Preface to his monumental volume about excavations at Star Carr in northeast England, J. G. D. Clark states clearly the significance of waterlogged archaeological sites: The discoveries at Star Carr illustrate the importance of excavating sites capable of throwing light on animal and plant life and on the utilization by man of the organic materials these provide (Clark 1954:v).

Definition There are many archaeological sites in wetland areas, but to be included in a category labeled ‘waterlogged’, a site cannot have undergone any drying episode throughout the time period of its existence. When dried, the fragile organic component disintegrates, sometimes in a matter of hours. Degradation is particularly deleterious for botanical specimens. The survival of organic materials entombed in a waterlogged context can be attributed to anaerobic (oxygen-free) conditions that inhibit or minimize activities of aerobic (oxygen-requiring) bacteria (Figure 1). There are, however, microorganisms that exist in anaerobic or poorly oxidized environments that can eventually destroy 95% of the carbohydrates (cellulose and hemicellulose) of plants leaving only a skeleton of lignin, which most bacteria cannot digest. The voids left by the removal of cellulose and hemicellulose are replaced by water. The reason that objects disintegrate rapidly when a waterlogged environment becomes desiccated, or when items are removed from their protective matrix, is because the water within the voids evaporates and the cellular structure collapses. When the moisture content of a waterlogged deposit or a waterlogged item falls below a certain percentage, the process is irreversible; that is, no amount of rewetting will undo the damage. Wood, for example, shrinks, splinters, and warps, and its former shape is no longer recognizable. The fact that the survival of waterlogged materials depends upon interment in oxygen-free conditions has an unfortunate consequence: the objects are invisible until accidentally discovered as a result of erosion or economic pursuits. Severe damage often occurs to specimens and sites before their significance is recognized.

Waterlogged Sites as Archives While all waterlogged sites share the common denominator of permanent saturation, the information furnished by each site differs depending upon its cultural affiliation, antiquity, climate, geography, and soil chemistry. The unique contributions to knowledge of individual waterlogged archaeological localities are best grasped by the following examples. Bog Bodies

To look upon the lifelike faces of one’s ancestors became possible only after the development of photography in the nineteenth century, but well-preserved mummies also render fairly faithful ‘portraits’. Mummified remains survive as a result of desert climates, volcanic action, embalmment, freeze drying, or waterlogged conditions. They have been found in several areas of the world, including China, ancient Scythia (north of the Black Sea), the Alps, Herculaneum (Italy), Egypt, South America, the Arctic, and in northern European peat bogs. Peat was, and is, used as fuel in many countries of northern Europe. Since the fifteenth century, nearly 2000 bog bodies have been discovered during peat cutting activities. Sometimes the peat cutter’s spade

Figure 1 The Ozette Village site, Washington. Careful excavation using hydraulic techniques uncovered the walls, sleeping benches, and planks of House 1 scattered by the force of a mudslide (looking west). Copyright Ruth Kirk.

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has sliced off a head or an arm or leg. Van der Sanden presents detailed recent information about the specific conditions necessary for the survival of skin, hair, nails, brains, intestines, and organs, such as kidneys and liver. Bone, however, may dissolve in the acid soil leaving only well-preserved but flattened skin. A large number of the bodies date to the Iron Age (just before and after the beginning of the Christian Era), and many of these individuals were executed by strangling, throat slitting, or other means. Ropes still remain around the necks of some victims (Figure 2). Studies of these ancient human remains have revealed unprecedented information about such things as a person’s last meal, his or her clothing (including hats and shoes), hair and hair styles, injuries, sex, age, local vegetation, climate, and most importantly, cultural practices in the absence of written documents. All of these waterlogged organic components would deteriorate at upland sites and therefore would not be available for analysis. Swiss Lake Villages

In the winter of 1853–54, low water levels exposed wooden pilings along the shores of several lakes in Switzerland. Dredging of lake muds near Zu¨rich brought up quantities of stone axes, bone points, pottery, metal ornaments, decorated textiles, and wooden tools. When reports of these discoveries were published, people from all over Western Europe showed up with steam-driven engines and other tools of destruction to collect the artifacts. They

ignored the pilings and timbers that once had supported the owners of the items. Originally, it was believed that the houses were built on piles in the water, but it was later determined that the lake dwellers occupied former shorelines that were inundated seasonally and became submerged permanently by rising waters when glaciers melted at the end of the last Ice Age. The sites date from more than 6000 years ago and document human activities from the Palaeolithic to the Middle Ages. On an upland site, only the stone axes, pottery, and metal ornaments would have survived, thus severely limiting the archaeologists’ ability to interpret the lake dwellers way of life. Similar lake-dweller villages have been reported from other countries, such as Italy and Germany. Key Marco

The artistic achievements of people from diverse areas of the ancient world are fascinating, and they also reveal insights into belief systems. In cultures lacking metals and metallurgical techniques, or in locations where stone suitable for carving was not available, art objects were created from plant and animal species that seldom survive or are recovered from upland sites in extremely deteriorated condition. In Florida, wood was the only raw material available for building and for carving large statuary. Key Marco, on the Gulf Coast of southwest Florida, was discovered in 1895 while a property owner was digging garden muck. The site affords a rare opportunity to behold the imaginative genius of

Figure 2 Tollund Man, found in Bjeldskovdal on Jutland, is the best-known bog body in northwest Europe. The body dates from the last centuries BC. Courtesy of Silkeborgmuseum, Denmark.

Waterlogged 2041

Figure 3 Field photograph (1895) of wooden masks from Key Marco. Courtesy of Marion Spjut Gilliland and University Press of Florida.

Native Americans who sculpted intricate forms in usually perishable organic media. Frank Hamilton Cushing called Key Marco ‘‘The Court of the Pile Dwellers’’, comparing it to the Swiss Lake Villages, but the quantity and variety of the artifacts and other evidence – wood, cordage, netting, cucurbits, bone (including human), antler, turtle shell, shell, stone, and pottery – set Key Marco apart from any other known site in the world at that time. Utilitarian and decorative items manufactured from wood, bone, and shell were abundant and informative, but the survival of painted wooden masks and figurines was unparalleled (Figures 3 and 4). It would be 70 years before another site with comparable materials would be excavated. Key Marco was occupied from c. AD 0 to AD 1500. Florida has numerous other waterlogged archaeological sites dating from c. 12 000 years ago to modern times that furnish valuable data about climate, environment, diet, human physical types, burial practices, artifacts, culture change, and much more. Because most organic soils in Florida lie directly on limestone, marl, or are associated with Indian shell middens, they are neutral or alkaline pH and favor the survival of both plant and animal remains. Bone, however, does not survive in the acid environment of peat deposits that are underlain by sand because calcium carbonate, a main constituent of bone, dissolves in the presence of acid. Ozette

The Ozette site is located on the Pacific coast of Washington at Cape Alava, the westernmost point of the contiguous United States. Excavations in

Figure 4 Feline figure from Key Marco, Florida. Courtesy of Barbara A. Purdy and University Press of Florida.

1966 and 1967 revealed that the site represents a well-developed maritime economy. Severe storms in 1970 eroded and undercut the midden causing wooden carvings and basketry fragments to slump onto the beach. For the next 11 years, hydraulic techniques were used year round to remove sand and clay overburden and expose several houses and their contents that had been buried by successive mudslides over hundreds of years. The villagers appear to have been

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caught by surprise, perhaps as they slept. Tool kits of related items were found intact as if put away for the night. The environmental and cultural materials were so abundant and so well preserved that the site has been called the Pompeii of North American archaeology. Techniques and processes of manufacture could be identified on most specimens especially those dating to the last 400 years. In a brilliant assessment of the problems and responsibilities of excavating waterlogged sites, the project director Richard D. Daugherty describes the challenge of funding, recovering, stabilizing, analyzing, storing, and/or exhibiting approximately 1 000 000 faunal and floral remains, and 50 000 artifacts. Among the artifacts are woven materials, weaving equipment, hunting and fishing gear, containers, and carvings (Figure 5). It is doubtful that another site will ever be found that equals Ozette’s wealth of preserved organic material and interpretive potential.

Other Waterlogged Sites and Features

Waterlogged archaeological sites exist sparingly in many areas of the world. From cenotes (sinkholes), peat bogs, rivers, swamps, lakes, saturated shell middens, and mudslides have come diversified and spectacular materials. Wooden trackways, dugout canoes (log boats), mortars, and isolated objects also fill in missing pieces of the puzzle that is the past. A single location will not contain all possible or needed information to reconstruct ancient events or cultures, and that is why it is important to examine a variety of sites representing different geographic, temporal, and environmental settings.

Preservation Waterlogged sites should not be excavated without adequate funds for analysis, long-term storage

Figure 5 Wooden container realistically carved in the shape of a reclining man from the Ozette Village site. Copyright Ruth Kirk.

Figure 6 (a) An AD 900 canoe from Clay County, Florida; (b) the same canoe 2 years later after being placed in a holding pond that went dry during drought conditions. Courtesy of Barbara A. Purdy.

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facilities, and the services of a conservator knowledgeable about preservation techniques for wood, plant and body parts, and bone. Forty years of experimentations with polyethylene glycol (PEG) have shown that this product, using the proper combinations of molecular weights, sometimes in conjunction with freeze drying, successfully preserves ancient wood in most cases. But there are many variables to be considered and examined that are not within the scope of this article. A fixative such as formalin acidic alcohol (FAA) prevents the further decomposition of stems, seeds, and other plant parts. Bone usually does not succumb as drastically to deterioration as botanical specimens when removed from a waterlogged context. Nevertheless, a mixture of a polyvinyl acetate emulsion and water is recommended as a precautionary treatment. Archaeologists working at waterlogged sites are fortunate that The International Council of Museums (ICOM) has an active and productive Working Group on Wet Organic Archaeological Materials (WOAM).

Discussion Archaeologists as anthropologists become frustrated when they try to understand the way of life of people from the past without written documents and without 90% of the material culture. Water-saturated archaeological sites yield a large portion of environmental information and material culture making it possible to learn how, why, when, and under what circumstances people produced and carried out activities associated with tools or ornaments, how they fit

into the total functioning of the culture, and what prompted them to change through time. But the added knowledge comes with a huge responsibility. When an object is removed from a waterlogged environment, it may look well preserved, but it is not (Figures 6a and 6b). Archaeologists need to present granting agencies with budgets that include the recovery and stabilization of materials other than the usual stone and ceramics found at upland sites. The price is high, but so is the reward. See also: Bioarchaeology; Bone Tool Analysis; Conservation and Stabilization of Materials; Osteological Methods; Preservation, Modes of.

Further Reading Clark JGD (1954) Excavations at Star Carr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coles B and Coles J (1989) People of the Wetlands. London: Thames and Hudson. Cushing FH (1897) Exploration of ancient key dwellers’ remains on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 25(153): 329–448. Daugherty RD (1988) Problems and responsibilities in the excavation of wet sites. In: Purdy BA (ed.) Wet Site Archaeology, pp. 15–29. Caldwell, NJ: The Telford Press. Doran GH (ed.) (2002) Windover. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Gilliland MS (1975) The Material Culture of Key Marco, Florida. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Glob PV (1969) The Bog People. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Purdy BA (1991) The Art and Archaeology of Florida’s Wetlands. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Purdy BA (ed.) (2001) Enduring Records. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Van der Sanden W (1996) Through Nature to Eternity. Amsterdam: Batavian Lion International.

SOCIAL INEQUALITY, DEVELOPMENT OF Jeffrey Seibert, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary culture Historical archaeology: A school of archaeology concerned primarily with developing regional chronologies. functionalist archaeology This theoretical approach sought to examine how past cultures functioned as systemic entities. post-processual archaeology A series of approaches to archaeology that sought to examine the particularities and individual historical trajectories of given cultures. Not a unified school of thought, but instead a series of allied theoretical camps.

processualism The study of culture process through the analysis of archaeological materials. This school of thought seeks to examine cultural change as a series of evolving sociocultural processes.

The question of the relationship between elites and commoners in past societies is as old as the social sciences themselves. Such magnates as Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Karl Polanyi have written about the nature of social stratification and the social organization of preindustrial societies. It was not until the development of the scholarly fields of archaeology, epigraphy, and ancient history developed, however, that more formal investigations into the social

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organization of past societies were embarked upon. In this article, I will examine various data and theories relating to the nature of the relationships between elites and commoners by drawing examples from three societies, the ancient Maya, the ancient Mesopotamians, and the ancient Andeans. This will be followed by a more complete sketch of the development of these institutions in the Maya area of Mesoamerica.

Why do Societies Become Complex: A Brief Overview The development of social inequality is a vexatious social question, with its roots in the social sciences as a whole, but ultimately becoming the focus of social anthropology and archaeology. Many of the forefathers of social science (e.g., Marx, Weber, and Durkheim) speculated about the development of social inequality in society. Some earlier scholars, such as Thomas Hobbes, saw the history of preindustrial peoples as being of little interest, and epiphenomenal to our understanding of the development of the modern world. Other scholars, such as Marx, saw the sum of human history as being vitally important for understanding modern history and the development of contemporary social relations. Marx, and subsequent generations of Marxists and Marxian scholars, saw the development of social inequality as being a central problem in understanding social relations the world over. He saw the essential contradictions in the class structures of non-Western societies as being essential components of their social development and ultimate demise. Marx studied classical history widely and, along with Frederick Engels’ complementary work regarding the Iroquois social organization, wrote extensively about the hypothesized origins of inequality in antiquity. Of course, there were two primary problems with the approaches taken by these scholars: their analyses were somewhat teleological (they believed all social change would ultimately result in communism, and were looking for proof of this social evolution in their research) and lacked the data that would be brought about by the epigraphic and archaeological research that would be conducted in the twentieth century. That is not to say that Marxian questions about social evolution will not come back; we will return to them later. As the discipline of archaeology began to develop, many scholars became acutely interested in the development of social inequality. Scholars working in the culture–historical school of archaeology did study the appearance of important socially defined artifactual, architectural, and artistic characteristics in assemblages in an attempt to classify the cultures that they

were studying into developmental schema and typologies. In all three of the areas being considered in this article, these characteristics were considered important diagnostic fingerprints giving insight into the degree of inequality present, but very little was written about the social processes or developmental functions of the increasingly complex forms of social organization. Instead, priority was given to dating when each social phenomenon appeared in which society. The functionalist school of archaeology sought to examine both the functions of various social institutions and formations and how societies functioned as a whole. Questions relating to the development of social hierarchy and inequality were central to these discussions, and it was at this time that the question of social relationships between elite and non-elite segments of society became increasingly important for archaeologists to study for reasons related more to social organization than relative chronology. Functionalism had a strong sociological aspect to it, and functionalist interests in how various social groups behaved in relation to one another resulted in an increasing amount of interest not just in the development of inequality but also in its machinations. In addition, the functionalists first became interested in how non-affluent or common peoples lived in past societies, in part in opposition to previous studies that privileged the perspectives of the elite (see Marxist Archaeology; Processual Archaeology). Some functionalists became concerned with questions relating to social stability and equilibrium, the relationship between elites and commoners, and how this issue affected society at large became increasingly important. These questions became increasingly temporal, in order to link the development of social hierarchy to the notion of social process. This conceptual approach became known as processualism, and this became the most influential theoretical development of the mid-20th century. This processual school of archaeology, as was mentioned before, portrayed social change, and for that matter social equilibrium, as being part of more abstract social processes that underscored and ran through the history of humanity. These processes were seen as being principles that guided the evolution of various societies, and as such, were approached with methodological rigor and an epistemological claim of using the scientific method in their analysis and investigation. With this in mind, the development of social inequality was seen as being a key rung on the ladder to social complexity, and as such, was seen to exemplify certain core cross-cultural values, important for comparative purposes. The development of

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inequality was seen as being both a cause and effect of social complexity and was portrayed as being essential for understanding social change over time. The study of the elite was approached from a number of perspectives, including managerial ones, where they were seen as the managers of society through leadership and stewardship, and thermodynamic approaches, which saw them not only benefiting but also directing much energy expenditure in a given society. Various approaches, influenced by systems theory, were particularly fond of the notion of the elite as organizer and director, in a large part because elites were seen as being essential for keeping the overall system that was a given culture operating. Commoner contexts were also increasingly being studied, in part to create a behavioral base line against which to compare the elite, but also to understand the relationship between people and the environment, a key concern of processualism. Interest in commoners was also spurred in part in reaction to what was seen as the antiquarian fixation that culture historians had with regards to the more elaborate, and more readily datable, components of elite material culture. Very few would now argue that this increasing importance that has been placed on nonelites by processual archaeologists is a negative thing: indeed, processualists opened scholars’ eyes to what was up until then an understudied component of most early civilizations. Processualism had an even stronger behavioralist and empiricist component than its predecessors, and social processes were seen by some as containing social laws of a sort, that could be deciphered, distilled, and applied cross-culturally. In questions relating to social hierarchy some archaeologists began to look for what they perceived of as being unequivocal indicators of human activity and behavior, and as such, expected processes of social stratification to behave in specific and predictable ways. As will be discussed in the next section of this article, this simply was a misguided notion, but one that resulted in much wasted ink. One of the principle problems seen with processualism, both by its proponents and detractors, was that by emphasizing process and behavior at the expense of analyzing individual events, many practitioners of this approach denied the importance of the individual and unique. Also, because of recognition of this deficiency, and partly because of dissatisfaction with the worst excesses of empiricism and law-generating on the part of the processualists, a series of post-processual archaeologies developed, spawned by critical theory, postmodernism, poststructuralism, and marxist social thought. While it is beyond the scope of this article

to detail how all these various strains approach the question of hierarchy, it is worth offering a brief discussion. It is important to note that there is not one postprocessual archaeology, but instead many, inspired by the diversity of thought mentioned previously that was focused on redefining archaeology after processualism. Many of these approaches to archaeology are intimately interested in the development of social stratification and hierarchy, and see these important social developments as being the products of specific historical trajectories as opposed to more general cultural processes. Archaeologists working in this tradition have often portrayed examples of increasing hierarchy as fundamental ruptures from earlier forms of social organization, emphasizing the messiness of the archaeological record as opposed to the much smoother theoretical approach of the processualists. Many of these postprocessual approaches to examining past social phenomena, including the development of inequality and hierarchy emphasize the unique historical aspects of individual cultures, and downplay the importance of comparative studies. These scholars argue that the historical trajectories, cultural variables, and other unique attributes of any culture’s move towards a less egalitarian social system are historically unique enough so that cross-cultural comparison is not only uninformative, but downright misleading in some circumstances. This is because comparisons tend to muddy the unique nature of any of these cultural trajectories, eliminating important details in the quest to compare phenomena cross-culturally. Many scholars working in the postprocessual tradition, in particular marxian variants of the approach, tend to view the development of hierarchy neither as an important step in the increasing complexity of society nor an organizational necessity, but instead emphasize the negative aspects of social complexity. This theoretical trend developed in part as a ‘backlash’ of sorts against many processual archaeologists who emphasized the managerial role of the elite, without emphasizing their exploitive tendencies in past and present societies. The adoption of critical perspectives emphasized that the elite operated in their best interests in a number of contexts, not placing the society’s interests at center stage as many earlier scholars had suggested. These archaeologists also saw many examples of resistance to incorporation into more complex societies on the part of less hierarchical societies in their own archaeological and ethnohistoric research. This gave an empirical base from which to critique the progress-driven metanarratives that generations of scholars trained in the functionalist and processualist believed drove society.

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Instead, the question of domination and resistance in the formation and reformation of hierarchy became a central topic. An important related area of research that scholars working in the postprocessual school have begun to examine is the notion of heterarchy and its application to the study of hierarchy in a number of social contexts. In its most general sense, the concept of heterarchy does not contradict or negate the idea of hierarchy; instead it argues that hierarchies are not fixed, and the relationship between various members of a given society are subject to multiple hierarchies, sometimes operating in contradictory ways. This approach takes the position that hierarchies are situational and somewhat transient, reconfiguring themselves in different ways in different contexts. This position does allow for more individual and small group agency, unlike the more systems-driven approaches of some of the processualists. Perhaps the approach furthest removed from the systems-driven perspectives of the processualists is the agency approach to examining social hierarchy and stratification. This perspective, in theory, suggests that social structure is maintained and social change is brought about through individuals interacting with and redefining social structures. In practice, in many cases this became a rigidly individualistic approach to examining society. From the standpoint of the development and maintenance of social hierarchy, many scholars who embrace the agency approach have almost taken the position that social complexity and inequality is the result of a few Machiavellian people in the past manipulating and subverting social norms for their own ends. This approach is not inherently flawed, but its application is in many ways, largely because of it having become the ‘big man’ approach to social change and processes of stratification, almost denying larger social factors that operate on a level of abstraction and historical detachment and are not readily observable except in retrospect. In recent years, a more moderate approach to understanding the past, including the important processes discussed in this article, has arisen. This approach is what Bruce Trigger has referred to as the holistic approach to understanding the past, insofar as it tries to approach the past from a perspective that recognizes both process and history, both the abstract and the concrete. This perspective tries to examine the abstract culture processes that are at work in a number of different cultures, but recognizes that these processes may be very different, or altogether absent in some cultural contexts. In addition, history is given a degree of importance that processual archaeologists long denied it. Part of this approach stems from the recognition that cross-cultural comparisons are

interesting as much because of the differences that are found between cultural contexts as the similarities. This holistic approach examines questions of hierarchy and social differentiation from this perspective, looking for similarities and differences in the development of social hierarchy in a number of cross-cultural contexts around the world and through time. It is important for a number of reasons, the main one being that it effectively tries to bridge the generalist and particularistic approaches to the discipline briefly outlined earlier, and develop a new approach to the past that recognizes the importance of both history and process in understanding the development of past social institutions. This holistic approach also does not seek to have all of the answers. A degree of messiness and uncertainty is recognized to be inherent in any culture, and this is, of course, only compounded in cross-cultural contexts.

Attributes of Elite and Commoner Status in Early Civilizations The study of hierarchy in early civilizations is measured through a series of proxy material and symbolic indicators of social status. These measures were arrived at over years of analyzing social status in a number of cultural contexts for the theoretical reasons outlined above. At this point, it is worth offering an outline of how archaeologists approach questions regarding social status and furnishing examples from Ancient Southern Mesopotamia, the Andes, and the Maya area. Residential Architecture as an Indicator of Social Status

Residential architecture offers one of the most sensitive indicators of social status in pre-industrial societies. It is an important measure of social status because, in many ways, it is the truest measure of household wealth. This is because in most societies, and all civilizations, residential architecture represents the single largest material investment that a given household possesses. In all of the societies being discussed in this article, residential architecture represents an important class of evidence for examining questions regarding hierarchy. Residential architecture is present in all of the societies in question, but represents very different types of houses in all three cultures. The lowest level commoners in these societies tended to live in simple abodes, whereas the highest status elite lived in sumptuous and elaborate palaces. Beyond this simple division, however, there is a high degree of variability in both elite and commoner housing. In many Mesopotamian cities commoners, both relatively affluent craftspeople

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and less affluent families, lived in what can be best described as row-housing lining the labyrinthine streets of cities like Ur. That is not to say that smaller rural communities were not present in Mesopotamia, but instead that the majority of people, elite and commoner, lived in cities. Andean society was much less urbanized than Mesopotamian, and the majority of commoners lived in multi-family villages located in the countryside. The Classic Maya fall somewhere between these two societal extremes, having both rural and more urban commoners. These people tended to live in single or extended family compounds, made up of a series of houses and specialized structures organized around one or more ambient spaces such as courtyards. The elite in all these societies lived in much more elaborate housing than the commoners. Mesopotamian palaces comprised a large residential area often found adjacent to important religious architecture. In Mesopotamian society, especially in early times, there was an important connection between the palaces of kings and the realm of the religious practitioners, the temple. Both of these institutions were involved in the collection and redistribution of tribute, effectively centralizing the economy. From the outset, these elite households were diverse, as they were made up of the elite and their servants and retainers. As the realm of the temple was subsumed by the palace as time progressed, the Mesopotamian palace became a socially complex and heterogeneous place, as priests, bakers, brewers, and service people were incorporated into the realm of the palace. Andean palaces were variable in antiquity, differing across time and space. Among the most spectacular palatial complexes located in the region are the palaces located at Chan Chan, the capital of the Chimu Empire. These palace complexes combined storage space, bureaucratic structures, and the domiciles of the elite. Similarly, many Classic Maya palace complexes were complex aggregations, made up of series of residential structures organized around outdoor courtyards in hierarchal fashions. They were made up of much more expensive materials than lower-level elite and commoner houses. In addition, Classic Maya palaces often incorporated symbols of authority that were held in common by members of the elite, but were not always important or germane to members of local vernacular traditions. As mentioned early on, in all of these societies residential architecture did not paint a picture of a simple black-and-white dichotomy between elite and commoners. In all the societies discussed, a middle stratum developed between the uppermost elite and the commoners, who fulfilled different functions in different contexts. Among the Classic Maya, for

example, there is ample residential architectural evidence of a middle stratum that fell between the elite and the commoners. Classic Maya middle-stratum architecture perhaps more closely resembles the architecture of the commoners than the elite in terms of its scale, but it does incorporate more stone architecture than commoner architecture as well as some of the symbols of authority that were employed by the uppermost elite. This is best exemplified in the Sky Band group at Copan, Honduras, which is an uppermiddle/low-level elite compound that actively emulated the signs and symbols of the elite in this city center. The Archaeology of Interments and Burials

The archaeology of interment, both in the form of skeletal and mortuary analysis, also gives a great deal of insight into social stratification. One of the most obvious ways in which this works is through the analysis of mortuary remains and interments. The study of tombs and their contents give archaeologists very personal insights into the social status of the buried individuals who are buried. This is not a direct one-to-one correlation, however, and caution must be employed in mortuary analysis as many ethnographers, sociologists, and ethnoarchaeologists have pointed out. That being said, this form of analysis is particularly useful for examining social status. In all three of the societies being discussed, there are marked differences in elite and commoner burial practices. The famed Royal Cemetery of Ur is one such example: this series of burials is notable because all the graves involve lavish grave goods, burial architecture and, perhaps most importantly, the presence of deceased retainers, presumably killed for the purposes of the burial. Among the Inca, the mummies of deceased kings were held up as examples of the power of the royal family and maintained much of their power and prestige ‘after’ death. That is to say that the mummies of former Inca rulers were maintained by a retinue of retainers who also maintained the property of the dead ruler after they died. Dead Maya kings did not receive this auspicious treatment, but were buried in lavish tombs with elaborate artifacts and their tombs were encased by major pieces of architecture, such as the pyramids at sites like Tikal. The burial practices of people of lower status are quite variable, tied in part to family wealth and also to local religious traditions. The burials of Mesopotamian commoners differed both in scale and nature from the most elaborate burials seen among Mesopotamian elite, such as the aforementioned cemetery of Ur. Lower status Maya burial practices, conversely, reflect similar cosmological and social principles as those seen among the upper strata, albeit

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in less dramatic and less ‘expensive’ forms. An example of this is the residential shrines seen in a number of nonelite residential groups in the Maya area. These shrines effectively replicate the large funerary pyramids seen in site centers on a smaller scale. Osteological and bone chemistry studies paint similar pictures of social differences. In most archaic states, osteological differences are apparent between higher and lower status individuals. Higher status individuals are often larger, showing evidence of better and more varied nutrition. This is confirmed by isotopic studies, which show varied and broader diets, once again suggesting a strong division in the diet and nutrition in many of these societies between elites and commoners. Writing, Iconography, and Art as Indicators of Social Status

Writing and art paint a similar picture of societal cleavage. All of the societies being discussed have examples of symbolic and written (or recorded) symbols and tools of power. Writing is present in both Maya and Mesopotamian society, whereas ancient Andean states recorded information using a complex mnemonic system of knotted strings, referred to as khipus. These khipus were used by ancient Inca administrators to record populations and labor obligations, and give insights into the ways in which the Inca elite dominated subservient populations. Classic Maya writing did record written language, and gives a number of insights into specific historical events, especially related to war, and the stratification of elites and sub-elites. Maya hieroglyphs recorded a number of official titles related to elite and sub-elite ranks, ranging from the rough conceptual equivalent of ‘emperor’ to scribe. Mesopotamian writing and monumental art is interesting in comparison to the previous two cases because of the nature of what was being recorded. Mesopotamian writing expanded into a rich literary tradition by the second millennium BCE, but began as what amounted to a complex system of accounting in the third millennium. This system recorded, among other things, economic transactions between families and individuals, and between the palace, state, and individuals. This class of evidence gives a brilliantly detailed record of social hierarchy and stratification, because of record of these debts and assets. The material discrepancies between rich and poor, royalty and peasant are recorded with such specificity that they give incredible insights into social stratification. Evolution of Inequality Among the Maya

At this point, it is worth giving a more detailed and explicit sketch of the evolution of social inequality in

a specific historical context in order to illustrate some of the processes and approaches discussed earlier. This article examines the evolution of inequality among the Maya in large part because this is the author’s own area of specialization. The origins of the Maya are murky and complicated, depending on the sub-region of the area being discussed. What is clear is that by about 1000 BCE, a series of subregional traditions were beginning to coalesce into what scholars would refer to as the Maya culture. The roots of inequality in this region, however, have their antecedents not in the core of the Maya area, but in the southwestern periphery of the region, along the Pacific Piedmont of Southern Guatemala. In the Ocos and Barra archaeological phases in this region (c. 2000 BCE) scholars have found evidence to suggest that prominent people were holding feasts that involved the production and distribution of both beer and beer-drinking jars as part of a larger nascent prestige economy centered around aggrandizement and feasting. These scholars have also found evidence of social differentiation in housing, suggesting that the earliest ancestors of the elite that would later come to characterize the upper echelons of Mesoamerican society were already beginning to coalesce into an embryonic social aggregation. In the Maya lowlands, we do not begin to see the intensification of social inequality until the Middle Preclassic (c. 1000–600 BCE), and even then only in uneven and poorly understood ways. The site of Cuello, located in Northern Belize, does show early evidence of social differentiation in terms of both the presence of prestige goods (including goods traded with the Olmec) being found with limited numbers of individuals, as well as emerging differences in residential architecture. It is worth noting that the aforementioned exotic goods were found interred with the bodies of individuals, beginning a trend towards differentiated burial, which would continue until the practice was suppressed by the Catholic clergy during the conquest. Once again, we do not see fully developed elite as a social class at this site, but we do see a move away from relatively undifferentiated agrarian villages. During this time period at the site of Nakbe, located in the Mirador basin of Northern Guatemala, we begin to see more profound shifts towards both sociopolitical complexity and social differentiation. Like most other Maya centers, the origins of Nakbe are somewhat unclear. What is clear, however, is that towards the end of the Middle Preclassic period (between 600–400 BCE) massive architecture had been erected at the site, and Nakbe dwarfed its neighbors in terms of its size and the size of its buildings.

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During the Late and Terminal Preclassic periods, this discrepancy between the elite and commoners becomes even more pronounced. This is due in part to a general shift in ideology towards kingly rule, as the institution of kingship coalesces in the region. At a number of sites during this time period (e.g., Lamanai and Cerros) monumental art associated with this office first appears in the form of kingly iconography being found in association with pyramidal structures, presumably used as performance platforms. A number of important iconographic depictions of kingship date from this time period, as do symbols associated with royal costume and regalia. Elite palaces, as opposed to more ornate houses, first appear during this time period, suggesting once again that the lifestyles of the uppermost elite and commoners were significantly diverging. These very early palaces do not appear as elaborate as the Classic Period ones that are discussed ahead. Suffice it to say that what little is understood of Late Preclassic palaces suggests that they were larger than the residences of non-elites, typically made of more elaborate materials than commoner houses (dressed stone as opposed to pole and thatch) and tended to be more centrally located than non-elite houses, although a direct correlation between a house’s location and social status of its occupants is not possible. At this time, the uppermost elite in society was being buried with increasingly diverse exotic and prestige items in important, and in addition were being buried in important and elaborate locales. As an example, it was during this time period that the North Acropolis at Tikal, which would serve as an important royal acropolis for centuries, was first constructed. This architectural complex signifies the increasing importance being placed on continuity and space by the Ancient Maya, particularly as these concepts relate to burial and land tenure. It is important to note that these concepts of place and land tenure apply equally to commoners in Maya society, and that the primary difference between the commoner and elite practices is one of scale. This edifice also contains the earliest identified vaulted room in the Maya lowlands, which was to later become an important architectural hallmark of elite architecture, both residential and ceremonial. In addition to the development of these very important markers of elite status, namely palaces, elite burials, and paraphernalia, an important additional line of evidence comes into being sometime during this time period: writing. Mayan writing at this time period is not particularly well understood, and most examples of writing using this system from this time period come from portable objects. One major exception is the recently discovered Late Preclassic San Bartolo mural, which pictorially

details a number of mythological scenes including imagery related to kingship and coronation, which has suggested to epigraphers and art historians that rulership was divinely sanctioned at this early date. The glyphs themselves are opaque with regards to meaning. The Classic Period (comprised of the Early Classic (CE 250–600), the Late Classic (CE 600–800), and the Terminal Classic (CE 800–900)) represents what has traditionally been associated with being the apogee of social stratification in the Maya area. Much of our understanding of the Early Classic is obscured by the fact that in most locales, particularly city centers, remains from this time period have been built over by later construction efforts. The Early Classic did, however, see the first introduction of writing in much of the region, and an expansion of the class structure seen in many regions in previous time periods. The Early Classic saw the development of a number of truly impressive palaces, including the Central Acropolis at Tikal and Structure A-V at Uaxactun, both of which would become important loci of power during the Late Classic. Elite burials continue during this time period, and the interments of the highest ranking members of society, the kings and queens, are among the most impressive edifices erected at this time and contain sumptuous remains. The kings, attested to through iconography in the Late Preclassic, become fully historical personages at this time, as the writing system is adopted more fully and more widely. It is important to note that in AD 378 the nature of rulership changed, as a series of important kingly symbols were introduced from the highland Mexican center of Teotihuacan. The nature of the interaction between the Early Classic Maya cities and Teotihuacan is unclear, but is suggestive of some sort of profound and relatively long-lasting interaction. At the beginning of the Late Classic (c. CE 600– 800) the trend towards increasing social stratification reached its apogee. This time period saw the erection of the largest palaces in Maya history, the most elaborate funerary architecture among the elites, and what has been suggested to have been the greatest social distance between the commoners and the elite. The epicenters of major sites like Tikal and Calakmul literally bristled with royal edifices such as pyramids and raised roadways and the large palaces of the royal elites. Major cities also appear to have controlled smaller centers, complete with lower level elites with all of the material trappings of the upper elite. This time period also saw the beginnings of the proliferation of a middle stratum, conceptually similar to (but not identical to) the middle class that developed in renaissance Europe. This middle stratum

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appears to have developed as a managerial class of sorts that oversaw certain aspects of Classic Maya economies in peripheral areas. In addition, in urban areas, a middle stratum of craft specialists appears to have emerged, which likely overlapped to some extent with craft specialists who were lower-ranking members of the elite. This occupational specialization is indicative of the degree to which economic specialization and social status appear to have been linked in the Late Classic. It is important to note that because of the inadequacies of the archaeological and epigraphic record what these middle-stratum people would have specialized in is often very difficult to ascertain. As was alluded to above, this middle stratum showed many of the material trappings of the uppermost elite, mixed in different ways with the material attributes seen among lower ranking commoners. Commoners during the Late Classic lived variable lives depending on which kingdoms they were citizens of and the amount of agricultural land that they had control over. Almost all rural commoners appear to have been farmers, although some were certainly more affluent than others. For the most part, they were still living in multi-house household groups centered around ambient spaces such as courtyards and patios. In urban areas, these people might have served as semi-skilled or unskilled laborers, although this is uncertain. In the Terminal Classic (CE 800–900) the rigid social stratification seen in the Late Classic appears to have dissipated somewhat. During this time period, lower level elite and members of the middle stratum were often making bold and brash statements about their own affluence such as the aforementioned Sky Band group. This was a result, in part, of the increasing power vacuum that came about as the Classic states faltered, but also appears to represent a new form of power-sharing strategy. In some sites, such as Lamanai where the collapse had little effect, there was little in terms of a reorganization of social hierarchy, which suggests that these changes in social organization might represent a fundamental societal shift that happened in response to changing power dynamics. Throughout the Postclassic (c. CE 900–1500 ) these patterns persisted, with the period around the time of conquest perhaps representing one of the most socially heterogenous times in Mayan history in terms of

social stratification. Spanish chroniclers detail concentric settlement patterns in cities, where the elite live in the site core, with social status declining as one reaches the realm of peasants in the hinterlands. While this ethnohistoric model has been questioned to some extent, other ethnohistoric as well as archaeological studies do indicate that these cities were, at the very least, socially complex and heterogenous entities, with a number of people of different social backgrounds and statuses being present.

Conclusions It is important to understand that this represents a brief overview of the kinds of studies that archaeologists interested in social hierarchy and social status engage in. This is a complex topic that needs to be approached with a certain theoretical and methodological openness, and willingness to accept one’s findings, even when they run contrary to expectations. Perhaps more importantly, scholars interested in the study of social stratification in past societies should undertake the endeavor with a willingness to engage in comparative research, and examine both similarities and differences in cultures. See also: Americas, Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya; Marxist Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology.

Further Reading Demarest AA and Conrad GW (eds.) (1992) Ideology and Pre-Columbian Civilizations. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press. Flannery KV (ed.) (1976) The Early Mesoamerican Village. New York: Academic Press. McGuire R (1992) A Marxist Archaeology. San Diego: Academic Press. Pollock S (1999) Ancient Mesopotamia. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sharer RJ and Traxler LP (2005) The Ancient Maya, 6th edn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Trigger BG (1989) A History of Archaeological Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press. Trigger BG (2003) Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wason PK (1994) The Archaeology of Rank. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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SOCIAL THEORY Michael Shanks, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary personhood The recognition of status as a person. social change Change in the nature, the social institutions, the social behavior or the social relations of a society, community of people, or other social structures. social structure Refers to entities or groups in definite relation to each other, to relatively enduring patterns of behavior and relationship within social systems, or to social institutions and norms becoming embedded into social systems in such a way that they shape the behavior of actors within those social systems.

Most archaeology aims to understand the remains of the past by connecting them to the people and societies that generated them, to construct accounts of past societies and the changes they underwent. Even if it is not explicitly acknowledged, this project of a social archaeology requires a body of social theory. This can be defined as a tool kit of concepts that define the components of human society and how they interact (a social ontology), and of concepts that define how knowledge of past society is to be achieved (epistemology). Social theory often involves models of how societies work and has long been divided into different schools of thought: for example, Marxist, functionalist, structuralist. Building such social theory became a prominent focus of debate from the 1970s in Anglo-American archaeology. Many were keen to make a case for archaeology being a respectable branch of anthropology, a social science capable of developing sound knowledge of the past that was explanatory rather than descriptive – explaining the emergence of state societies, for example, rather than describing in historical narrative the features of the first civilizations. Processual Archaeology in the United States became explicitly concerned with the character of social process among structured human behaviors adapting to the natural environment. It adopted an epistemology that modeled social science on the natural sciences, a program initiated by the sociologist Comte in the nineteenth century. This effort to build social theory in archaeology accompanied a considerable growth in the numbers of archaeologists researching in universities, investment in tertiary education and its infrastructures, such as state sponsorship for research, and an expansion of

academic publishing. By the 1980s social and cultural theory was a prominent part of academic debate generally, with ideas hotly contested about the nature of cultural identity or the social force of economic expediency, for example. Most academic curricula in archaeology by the 1990s came to include a core component dealing with social theory, and the theoretical foundations of archaeological research into past societies have come to be a critical component of research design, funding applications and awards. There is now a healthy diversity of standpoints regarding social ontology and epistemology and by no means an accepted orthodoxy of social theory in archaeology. There are also several regional traditions, with, for example, a well-developed body of Marxian theory in Hispanic archaeology (Spain and the Americas). Before outlining general features, it should be pointed out that the relative lack of debate in archaeology about social theory before the 1970s should not be taken to indicate that archaeology did without such theory until then. There is a long intellectual genealogy to every feature of current debate that goes back to the eighteenth century and earlier. Social theory is, after all, concerned with understanding the character of social and political order, complexity, diversity and change, economic and cultural values and exchanges – all classic concerns of political philosophy and political economy since the Enlightenment. While much contemporary debate around social theory in archaeology may be about newly publicized, and so intellectually fashionable, perspectives, it is also not difficult to see that debate as the legacy of many of the issues raised with the origins of modern sociology in the nineteenth century. Marx, Durkheim, and Weber are rightly cited for their sophisticated treatment of themes still at the heart of social theory: evolutionary change and the shape of history, the ordered structure of society, social norms and their relation to the individual, the relation of modernity to ‘traditional’ society, the rationality of human practice, the force of cultural and economic values. The archaeologist Gordon Childe can be appropriately mentioned here as one who openly acknowledged the importance of such general discussion, though he did not call it social theory. From the 1920s Childe used a modified form of Marxian social evolutionary thought, tied to a concept of culture that has its origins in German romanticism as framework, for his archaeological accounts of European prehistory and the ancient empires of the Near East. Soviet archaeologists, again from the 1920s, have also been seen as early exponents of an archaeology that was explicitly

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informed by social theory – Marxist historical materialism (see Historical Materialist Approaches; Identity and Power; Marxist Archaeology). After this call for recognition of the long history of social theory in archaeology, here follows a checklist of themes and key concepts. The bibliography will readily supply many examples of each. Society and culture. While culture may be restricted in its reference to values, attitudes, and ways of life upheld by a community, and society taken to refer to the organization of such groups, a radical distinction between the two concepts is now rarely upheld, and social theory in archaeology is often the same as cultural theory. Social organization and social order. This is one of the classic concerns of archaeologists – the structure of past societies. Typically, societies are conceived as being organized internally according to horizontal and vertical divisions. Class and rank divide a society horizontally; ethnicity, for example, divides vertically. Such divisions may be quite visible archaeologically, in, for example, the distribution of wealth within a community, or in the way social groups symbolize their identity using artifacts of different style. The attempt to understand social variability may involve reference to demography – the shape of a population in terms of age, mortality, health, for example. There may be spatial variability – a rich city-state on a fertile plain of farming villages, differences that require a cultural geography of city versus countryside, city-dwellers and peasants, for example. The borders of a society or community may be an issue – intergroup relations are, or course, connected with exchange and interpolity relationships such as imperialism. Is the variability within a society an ordered system of inter-functioning parts? Society has often been so conceived as a unified whole, or at least aspiring to such a state. Such systems thinking, the mainstay of Processual archaeology from the 1960s, has been augmented with sophisticated understanding of societies as complex networks that display emergent structure – concatenations of individual behaviors out of which emerges social structure. Other approaches to social order inspired by Marxism emphasize contradictions within social organization. What maintains such social variability? Is it the force of tradition and of social norms? This is the question of social structure – why do people keep on doing what they do? People are socialized through childhood into ways of life, and conformity is maintained through means such as systems of reward, threats of exclusion and violence, as well as the sheer weight of expectation and social institutions. Power is a key variable here. Power over others, and also the power to act in certain

ways to realize one’s goals or desires. This is an expanded notion of social power that runs counter to common sense which usually associates power with the ability to command others. Social theory has often developed such counter-intuitive concepts. So while individual people are born and socialized into social systems, the ordering of those very systems depends upon the collusion of individuals – society is maintained and only exists through the acts of individuals. While notions of public and private may be involved, this relationship between structure and individual is captured in the concept of agency which became current in archaeology in the 1980s. This concept has been a way of reintroducing the individual into archaeology. What capacity do people have to act as individuals, furthering their own ends? Can this be summarized under a notion of rational behavior, people, perhaps, tending to maximize benefit to themselves? Agency also implies a duality of structure – that society is both the medium and outcome of individual practices. A contrast is often drawn here between behavior, as an expression of a social norm, and practice, as action informed by meaning, performed by agents who think about themselves and their world. This distinction was crucial in the development of postprocessual or interpretive archaeology in the 1980s. Among other things, it has led to considerable work on how people do things or make and use communicated messages and meaning – about the ways people think and about the way their world is structured and categorized (for example, through the making of pottery or the building of a megalithic monument). This connects symbolism and communication with social order and power. It also brings in many more questions of identity, with people frequently communicating through the horizontal and vertical divisions in a society. Key concepts here are gender and ethnicity. Archaeologists are now beginning to explore personhood – how people become persons through actions upon themselves and others, dressing up or down, modifying their bodies and the environments that make them who they are. This interest in communication and agency has involved an expansion of the archaeological understanding of technology and artifacts from a traditional focus on materials and techniques to an exploration of making as design, with archaeology taking as its subject the materiality of society – the social fabric – from manufacture to discard and decay. Material Culture Studies is now a well-established subdiscipline operating with a principle that making things makes people. Power is clearly connected with political economy – the distribution of wealth and power through the organization of production, systems of value, the

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exchange, distribution, and consumption of goods. An influential collection of archaeological case studies in the 1980s, edited by the processualists Colin Renfrew and John Cherry and published by Cambridge University Press, was entitled Ranking, Resource and Exchange – a tripartite summary of a whole social theory. Social complexity. Why do some societies become more differentiated internally than others – with more horizontal and vertical divisions? This emergence of social complexity is frequently, in history, associated with the state, involving class structures and disparities in the distribution of goods – wealth, monopolies of legal force, and violence, institutions such as organized religion, and manifestations in material culture such as the city. The main approach to such a question of social change is still an evolutionary one. The idea is that the mechanisms of biological evolution offer a way of understanding social change such as the emergence of the state in the wake of agriculture. Do societies adapt to environments like biological species? Selective advantage is certainly a powerful principle that can govern the design of a social institution as well as an organism. We are here invoking the question of the boundaries of the ‘human’ and the ‘social’. Much social archaeology since the 1960s has focused on social interactions with the natural environment – how a society feeds itself and uses material resources, local and distant, through trade and exchange, and how

variability in environment may be a factor in social change. The tendency now is to discount simple causes and to blur a radical distinction between the natural and the human. Just as people are intimately associated with their goods, so too they are intimately connected with other species and the environment – through economic, religious, and communicative practices. Archaeologists, for example, are less inclined now to explain agriculture through environmental factors or economic advantage, but rather locate farming within complex cultural ecologies, which have people thinking of other species in new ways in settled architectures that speak of new cosmological understanding. See also: Engendered Archaeology; Evolutionary Archaeology; Historical Materialist Approaches; Identity and Power; Individual, Archaeology of in Prehistory; Marxist Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Social Inequality, Development of.

Further Reading Preucel R and Meskell L (eds.) (2006) A Companion to Social Archaeology. Oxford: Blackwell. Shanks M and Tilley C (1987) Social Theory and Archaeology. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Trigger B (1990) A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

SOCIAL VIOLENCE AND WAR Nam C Kim and Lawrence H Keeley, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary ambush (or raid) A form of combat commonly employed in warfare among small-scale societies involving small groups of men sneaking into enemy territory to kill a few people. band A small, autonomous group of people made up of nuclear families that live together and are loosely associated with a territory. Often numbering as low as 20 or as high as a few hundred, bands are typically found amongst societies with foraging subsistence economies. bastion A projecting portion of a fortification barrier that allows flanking fire against attackers approaching the curtain. chiefdom Society headed by individuals with certain skills, authority, and power. Chiefdoms are associated with greater population density and are marked by signs of social ranking and

stratification. Chiefdoms tend to be more complex and organized than smaller-scale societies such as tribes. curtain The outer or enclosing wall or barrier of a fortification. earthworks Types of fortifications constructed from large quantities of soil. palisade A fence of posts forming a defensive barrier or curtain. ramparts Fortification consisting of an embankment, often with a parapet built on top. siege Act or process of surrounding and attacking a fortified place in such a way as to isolate it from help and supplies. state An autonomous political unit, encompassing many communities within its territory and having a centralized government. The government usually has the power to collect taxes, draft men for work or war, and decree and enforce laws. Also, states represent a major departure from earlier kin-based societies and state leaders usually possess a monopoly over the use of deadly force. tribe Loosely defined as a large collection of bands, leadership tends to be based on charisma and skill with an absence of official or political offices containing real power. Kinship ties and family structures form the primary bonding mechanisms.

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Introduction The subject of social violence and warfare is of profound interest to researchers across the social sciences as forms of human behavior and social interaction, violence and warfare have been a part of humanity throughout recorded history. Much of the earliest written records from all over the world indicate the presence of violence. The history of many civilizations plainly shows how warfare has influenced the political, social, and economic dynamics of the modern world. The ethnographic record also demonstrates the significance of social violence for many societies. To understand the diachronic patterns, conditions, and causes related to forms of social violence, research must move beyond more recent manifestations and incorporate data from the distant past. Past forms of social violence and warfare can help inform discussions of our present and future conditions of conflict, even if we are only to consider the past 40 000 to 45 000 years of Homo sapiens history. Some researchers assert that only centralized, state-level units cause and engage in warfare, or that warfare is a relatively modern phenomenon. However, increasing amounts archaeologically accumulated data suggest that warfare was a part of humanity within the deeper recesses of our past, in times and places where humans did not live in social units analogous to the states and empires of the modern and ancient world. There is growing evidence that warfare has played an instrumental role in shaping social and cultural development for many smaller-scale, and relatively less complex, non-state societies in various areas of the world. Beyond detecting proximate and long-term causes of warfare, archaeology can help us to determine how warfare contributed to sociopolitical changes in human societies. Material markers for identifying warfare allow researchers to estimate the scale, intensity, and frequency of the behavior, that is, of warfare’s social importance.

Social Violence: Murder Versus Warfare Violence and aggression among humans occur in various forms. Distinctions can be made involving acts of violence between individuals and those between groups. Put simply, homicide or murder involves the killing of one human being by another. Although some theorists postulate that interpersonal violence has been a part of humanity during the evolutionary development of our species, documenting forms of either homicide or warfare before anatomically modern humans is especially challenging. Before the emergence of anatomically modern humans, archaeological documentation of social violence rested largely

upon osteological remains (see Osteological Methods), as various assemblages of stone tools crafted by hominids cannot be easily categorized as weapons for fighting. For instance, researchers have reported the possibility of cannibalism among Neanderthals, citing the manner in which bones were broken and damaged as indications. This interpretation, however, can be countered by arguments that signs of damage may have resulted from funerary rituals or animal scavenging. In general, while evidence of trauma has been found on the skeletal remains of hominids, protohumans, and early humans, they do not unequivocally point to social violence. Accidental death or postmortem skeletal damage can potentially be the cause for what appear to be signs of homicide. For example, one study of Neanderthal remains found that 40% of their crania showed evidence of ‘bluntforce’ traumas. The cause of the trauma is unclear, especially since Neanderthal postcranial skeletons show evidence of frequent traumas that are unlikely to be the result of intra-hominid violence. Therefore, in addition to osteological signs of violent trauma, other evidence is required. Without a high degree of context an embedded projectile point, for instance, can simply be the result of a hunting accident. The task becomes comparatively easier when considering the archaeological record of modern humans within the past 40 000 years. Here skeletal remains have been found within certain contexts and in association with other artifactual clues, thus yielding less equivocal representations of social violence. Evidence of murder, and not necessarily warfare, appears as soon as modern humans appear. There are several instances of suspected homicidal deaths during Palaeolithic and Mesolithic times from various sites in parts of Europe, northern Africa, and the Near East. Several of the cases provide strong contextual evidence that humans were intentionally killing other humans, and evidence includes projectile points embedded in bones, scalp marks on skulls, and cranial fractures. At Grimaldi, Italy (c. 32 000 BP), the skeleton of a child was found with a bone projectile point embedded in its spine. At around 20 000 BP, a male skeleton found in the Nile Valley, Egypt, had several projectile points in his abdomen and a partially healed one embedded in his arm. Especially revealing is evidence from certain burial contexts throughout the ancient world. Given the scope of evidence, these cases suggest the occurrence of social violence on a scale greater than simple murder. While murder appears to be at least as old as modern humanity, archaeological evidence suggesting the presence of warfare appears as soon as there are sufficiently large burial populations. Cemeteries in Czechoslovakia (dating between 35 000 and 24 000 BP)

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and at Gebel Sahaba in Egyptian Nubia (14 000 to 12 000 BP), for example, have several men, women, and children exhibiting either direct evidence of weapons trauma or projectile points associated with their remains. Research at Gebel Sahaba shows that several of the adults and had received multiple wounds, and that many of the children had execution style wounds on the head or neck. Over 40% of the 59 people buried there had clearly died from arrow wounds, often multiple. In addition, many of the adults exhibited signs of healed parry fractures on their forearm bones, an indication of nonaccidental trauma for victims of violence. Victims were sometimes buried in small groups, indicating that several were killed simultaneously. In distinguishing acts of murder from patterns of warfare, additional contextual clues are necessary to make stronger or conclusive inferences about what we are seeing in the ground. While warfare can be a possible cause for the numerous violent deaths seen with the victims at Gebel Sahaba, for instance, it may be that extreme levels of intra-societal violence marked their society. Without a package of material signatures, it is difficult to conclusively identify patterns of organized violence beyond simple homicide. When occurring between two independent and autonomous social units, the killing of a person could be part of a larger pattern of organized violence. Simple documentation for the existence of social violence in prehistory is not enough. For reconstruction of the past, it is vital for archaeologists to employ techniques and methods to distinguish between isolated incidents of murder versus events of warfare. To do so requires recognition for what constitutes warfare, and social scientists and historians have proposed various definitions. Definitions tend to be either too broad or too narrow, depending on the criteria being used, with certain forms of organized violence being included or excluded. Narrow definitions maintain that warfare can only occur between complex societies such as chiefdoms or states (see Political Complexity, Rise of). Within this view conflicts between smaller-scale societies tend to be ignored or trivialized. Such a perspective runs the risk of limiting the kinds of data that researchers examine in formulating universal theories about warfare. Broader definitions allow the analysis of the broadest range of cases for deadly conflict between human groups. While some of the tactics, strategies, and weapons and defensive technologies might vary between smaller- and larger-scale societies, the ultimate objectives and devastating social costs are often similar. Accordingly, many cultural anthropologists and archaeologists consider a wide range of forms as validly subsumed within a broader definition of warfare.

Accepting that warfare can also occur between decentralized, less complex, and non-state societies, a definition should subsume various types of tactics used by societies of varying scales of complexity. Such tactics include revenge murders, raids, ambushes, sieges, and standing lines of warriors or soldiers. Much consensus currently seems to revolve around generally conceptualizing warfare as organized violence between politically autonomous groups, communities, or societies, usually in pursuit of social, economic, or political gain. Warfare involves the overall participation of more than two people, although the killing of one person by another can certainly constitute an act of war. What distinguishes war from homicide is that the killing occurs within the context of a wider political or social struggle. Sporadic outbreaks of violence between smaller-scale societies such as bands can be represented as microlevel battles within a wider war. A review of the ethnographic literature shows that forms of organized violence range from raiding, ambushing, formal fights, battles, and sieges that can take place almost continually or at least annually. Consequently, what may appear to be homicide might actually be a casualty within a wider context of interpolity warfare. Accordingly, researchers must move beyond any set of archaeological clues that demonstrate violent death. Also to be considered are other strands of evidence that indicate any possible wider context of organized violence between two autonomously distinct societies. In sum, there are several defining characteristics that distinguish warfare from murder and isolated homicide. Warfare involves many perpetrators and victims, and duration of violence tends to be lengthy. A war may consist of various episodes or battles that take place over weeks, months, years, or even decades. Murder, however, tends to involve only one or few perpetrators with one or few victims. The duration of violence tends to be very brief and isolated from other events. Also, whereas murder tends to be indiscriminate in terms of the participants’ demographics, in warfare the perpetrators and victims are mostly young men. Murder and warfare also differ in level of material preparation involved, with the former requiring little to none. In warfare, there is considerable material preparation, much of it involving highly specialized weaponry, armor, shields, fortifications, and the like. The preparation also extends into the training of groups. Whereas people are not specially trained for the commission of murder, warriors and soldiers tend to be highly trained for military actions. Thus warfare will be much more ‘archaeologically visible’ than murder.

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Material Indicators for Violence and Warfare Within the last two decades, knowledge of prehistoric warfare has advanced dramatically as a result of renewed anthropological interest in war. Renewed interest has been complemented by development of new methods for identifying and characterizing the practice and prevalence of social violence. A growing body of evidence demonstrates the existence of violence in a variety of environmental and social contexts. The research has had two overall effects for theory building. One, research has focused attention on the general patterns of warfare discernible in various regions and times of prehistory. These comparative analyses have contributed to theoretical considerations about the common conditions that can lead to warfare. The second major effect has been to demonstrate just how culturally varied the manifestations of warfare can be over time and space. The richness of comparative studies has shown that some aspects of war, such as effective principles of fortification design and of battle tactics related to surprise and superior position, are fairly universal across cultures. However, in other aspects of warfare, such as ideas about warrior identities or the rituals that precede and succeed battle, there is considerable diversity across cultures. Archaeological examination of violence in prehistoric settings is not without its inherent challenges. Some instances of violence and conflict may be archaeologically ‘invisible’ and leave very little to no material remains for recovery. In other cases, the scale, type, and nature of violence may not be altogether clear. Smaller-scale societies engaging in warfare might leave different material signatures than larger-scale counterparts. Varied cultural beliefs, perspectives, and practices around violence, combined with differences in material resources, can result in very divergent forms of weapons and tactics for warfare (see Weapons and Warfare). Given the diversity in forms of social violence and warfare, archaeological visibility and documentation will vary from case to case. Research pertaining to prehistoric Mesoamerican warfare, for instance, has shown how military practices, weapons, and tactics in the same regional area changed through time. During the early formative setting, the earliest Mesoamericans were hunter-gatherers organized in relatively small extended families and warfare was likely sporadic and limited to raiding. As more stable agricultural resources allowed larger groups to settle permanently in single locations; the first settled communities appeared between 2500 and 1400 BC. This emergence of sedentary lifeways led to economic and social differentiation, increased the

importance of territorial control, and encouraged the rise of formal leaders. Occasional raids gave way to more serious conflicts, and settlement defense became increasingly important. With the creation of fixed assets, people could no longer simply flee from conflict situations. The nature, intensity, and frequency of warfare changed from sporadic raiding to increasingly expansionistic conquest warfare. Several independent lines of evidence are thus necessary because warfare is an activity that involves the behavior of many individuals, and it affects several aspects of social life. As a result, debates hinging on a single question of interpretation, such as the functions of a tool-weapon or wall, are best served through exploration of a variety of evidentiary sources. Archaeologists must marshal an array of techniques and lines of evidence to circumstantially reconstruct past events, and the strength of claims rests upon the amount of circumstantial evidence that is available. There are two general categories of evidence, direct and indirect, indicating the possible presence of social violence generally, and warfare specifically. The most direct and unequivocal evidence consists of human skeletons with weapons trauma and fortifications. Other forms of direct evidence include arson or deliberate burning of structural features, iconographic depictions of organized violence, and surviving weapons or artifacts for killing. Indirect evidence includes the deliberate selection of defensible sites for habitation and buffer zones, as well as sudden disruptions of cultural patterns. While recovery of evidence from any one of these general categories of material data alone does not substantiate claims for warfare, the strength of an argument depends on the amount of data that is available. Skeletal Remains

There are several challenges to the archaeological visibility of social violence with human remains. First, some unhealed (i.e., fatal) injuries are difficult to distinguish from secondary, post-mortem damage. Second, any sustained injuries to soft body tissue are beyond archaeological recognition. In addition, cremation was a prevalent burial practice for many societies throughout human history, thus leaving little to be recovered. Finally, archaeological sources may not be able to provide evidence of the large number of people lost in warfare battles, and of the other war casualties that could not be buried. Despite these challenges, osteological data represents a strong form of direct evidence for the presence of violent behavior, whether on an interpersonal scale or a collective scale. Telltale signs involving human remains include embedded projectile points,

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fractured skulls, scalp or cut marks, cannibalism, parry fractures, and dismemberment or other signs of trophy taking. Additionally, mass graves, exposure burials, and unceremonious burials without grave goods can all be potential indicators, as well as a higher frequency of adult male deaths within a cemetery. Finally, the mutilation of bodies is also a potential indicator of inter-societal violence, since few societies would mutilate their own dead. The act of decapitation and trophy-head taking can thus indicate the possible presence of warfare. Archaeological evidence from prehistoric and early historic eastern North American sites provides numerous examples of skeletal trauma. Victims of violence consist of skeletons with points embedded in bones, distinctive purposeful trauma such as cranial vault fractures from celts, or signs of mutilation including scalping. Wounds sustained on the sides or backs of victims indicate people were killed in ambushes or attacked when fleeing. Archaeological evidence for warfare is also exhibited in treatment of bodies after death. One telling characteristic for organized violence is a tendency for victims to have suffered from ‘overkill’, as mutilated skeletons provide compelling evidence of conflict between two politically distinct societies. Several prehistoric cases, such as Gebel Sahaba and burials in the Ukraine, demonstrate how many individuals were attacked repeatedly and continuously while lying on the ground. Such examples of bodily mutilation have been attested to ethnographically, for example where Native Americans have attacked defeated American cavalrymen in similar fashion. In addition to overkill, another form of mutilation involves the taking of war trophies – heads, hands, or other body parts. In some instances, the mutilation is also accompanied by acts of cannibalism. For many societies, a warrior’s prestige or spiritual power could be augmented by the reputation of his defeated foe, and often the head served as a personal manifestation of that foe. Cases from the ethnographic record also attest to this phenomenon, as illustrated by Spanish accounts describing the taking of trophy heads by 16th century war chiefs in the Cauca Valley of Colombia. Mass graves can also indicate some form of mass killing or possible genocide. The mass grave at Talheim in Neolithic Germany dating to about 5000 BC also shows strong evidence for a mass killing. The communal grave contained the remains of 18 adults and 16 children, all piled on top of one another unceremoniously, with all showing clear signs of violent traumatic death by repeated ax blows to their heads. Evidence of war trophy taking is seen at the Late Mesolithic site of Ofnet Cave (7500 BC) in Germany. Here researchers uncovered two pits containing the

remains of 33 individuals. The two caches contained 33 skulls arranged ‘like eggs in a basket’. With the exception of four adult males, all were females (nine) and children (20). Studies indicate the adult males were struck across the back of the head with an axe. Cut marks were visible on skulls and vertebrae, indicating decapitation. At Crow Creek in South Dakota the remains of over 500 men, women, and children dating to AD 1325 were found heaped in the fortification ditch of a large village. Over 90% of these individuals bore scalping marks on their skulls and many showed traumas from axes and ball-headed clubs. Defensive Structures and Features

Both state and nonstate societies have built defensive features and fortifications, and these structures clearly indicate the presence of conflict. While many ancient fortifications tend to remain visible on the landscape or can be detected in aerial photographs, assessment of dates and construction details requires excavation. Within the range of defensive features are a number of structural types, including palisades, towers, bastions, moats, ditches, ramparts, walls, earthworks, and other structures that require investment of labor and resources for construction and maintenance. In addition to fortifications, another potential indicator for warfare is the use of refuges. In general, fortifications and refuges represent a very strong concern for defense, representing a materialized expression of fears from attack. They are the costliest and largest-scale pieces of pre-industrial technology, and thus demonstrate that threats of attacks were strong enough to warrant such costly constructions. Defensive features surround a settlement or other desirable locations, inhibiting entry and shielding defenders from the weapons of attackers. Fortifications might also have projecting bastions at intervals that eliminate safe ‘dead zones’ by allowing defenders to direct flanking fire at attackers reaching the wall. Gates, which are the most vulnerable parts of fortifications, often exhibit special features that make them more dangerous to attackers. The most common forms of such entry defenses are ‘baffle gates’. The simplest form involves having the curtain wall overlap at entry points in such a manner that attackers can only enter the interior by passing single-file down a narrow corridor. Often the baffles require attackers to expose their unshielded (i.e., right) side to defenders on the walls. The diversity in fortification types reflects culturally specific ways of practicing warfare. The level of technology required for adequate defensibility is completely dependent upon the level of offensive

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capabilities. In other cases, societies practicing offensive warfare may not build fortifications. Also, since most fortifications are permanent and stationary fixtures that only protect a small point in the landscape, their use would have been restricted mostly to sedentary or semi-sedentary societies. Therefore, the absence of fortifications does not necessarily indicate the absence of warfare, as generally nomadic societies would not invest the time and energy into such constructions. Finally, some of the earliest fortifications, such as wooden barriers or shields, probably left no material traces. Some researchers question the defensive or military function of certain architectural structures because features do not conform to obvious principles of defense. Doubts around military function arise because some sites bear no trace of occupation or are too far removed from a settlement to have guarded houses or crops. However, as demonstrated by certain archaeological and ethnographic cases, such as refuge caves in Hawaii and the pa of the New Zealand Maori, refuges have been used by many different kinds of societies, even if these refuges were located far from settlements and were not occupied continuously. In addition, the existence of refuges instead of fortified settlements can provide some indication about the frequency or expectation of warfare within a region. In other cases, researchers dismiss possible defensive functions of structures because the buildings in question served some ritual or symbolic function. For example, researchers working on Moche and Inca structures in Andean prehistory have stressed the religious, ritual and nonmilitary functions of buildings. However, other research indicates that various structures with seemingly religious or ritualistic functions probably had defensive value. Fortified sites might acquire additional economic, social, or ritual functions through being a place of safety or gathering. Cultural, ceremonial, and ritual functions are not mutually exclusive with defensive ones, and functions can and do change over time. Arson and Destruction

While the presence of fortifications can indicate a concern over warfare, deliberate destruction of property and structures provides strong contextual evidence for the occurrence of warfare. The burning of structures is a common consequence of war, and the archaeological evidence of burned structures and settlements can therefore help document actual attacks. Researchers must be careful, however, to separate instances of deliberate burning due to violence from accidental fires and intentional fires for clearing, ritual, or ceremony.

In research on prehistoric warfare in the El Morro Valley of New Mexico, there is considerable evidence of large-scale burning of property dating from the thirteenth century AD. Archaeological data indicate that the Scribe S site was attacked and burned, and that stone was removed from most of the room blocks to build nearby Pueblo de los Muertos. Evidence of burning at the site comes from rooms that had in situ deposits, including bowls, ladles, storage jars and large quantities of burned corn. There is no evidence from any of the rooms of post-burning occupation, and although not all of the rooms were burned, there are multiple cases of burned rooms from discrete room blocks spaced well apart. All room blocks were stone-robbed, and in situ assemblages in both living quarters and storage facilities were present in both burned and unburned rooms. Taken in combination, the data offers a strong signature for warfare. If the burning were accidental then the fire should not have affected separate room blocks simultaneously. Deliberate burning would not have resulted in foodstuffs and other valuables being left in place, and ritual burning would have been confined to select, special rooms. Iconography

Iconographic depictions in the form of rock art, sculptures, figurines, and pottery decoration can serve as a rudimentary type of historical documentation. Depictions of social violence and warfare-related activities, warriors, and associated paraphernalia offer clues about past lifeways in general, and might even provide glimpses of actual historical events and battles. They can also provide some culturally specific and functional context for the weapons and tactics of different societies. However, a disadvantage of relying on iconographic representations pertains to their scarcity and irregularity of spatiotemporal occurrence. While such art clearly demonstrates that the society is aware of warfare, it does not speak to the frequency or intensity of warfare for that society. For instance, military scenes became less frequent on Classic Greek vases as combat became more prevalent during the Peloponnesian Wars. Another problem with these representations is an uncertainty over whether they represent scenes of real life or fictional and mythological events. Dating from various points over the past 20 000 years, Palaeolithic rock art has been found in Western European contexts depicting forms of violence. A variety of examples depict scenes in which human or anthropomorphic figures have been struck by projectiles or are possibly being tortured. Although violence is illustrated in these cases, it is difficult to determine

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whether they represent actual cases of warfare. More definitive examples are contained in a collection of Neolithic rock paintings, known generally as the art of the Levant, which have been discovered in parts of Mediterranean Spain. Dating from approximately 4500 BC, the art consists of battle scenes depicted in greater detail, where separate groups of people are shown fighting using bows and arrows. An additional benefit of iconographic depictions is that they can sometimes convey some sense of the ideological and social importance carried by warfare and warriors. With chiefdoms and states, warfare was intimately interwoven with the economy and ideology of societies. Moche society in Andean prehistory (c. AD 500), for example, offers depictions of warfare, warrior prestige, and battle paraphernalia in the form of relief murals and ceramic vessels. It is through the rich Moche narrative art style as preserved on fine ceramic vessels that we see rulers wielding weapons that symbolize power and warrior prowess. In another case study, research on the American Southwest indicates how rock art depictions indicate the growing social importance of a warrior class during troubled times in Anasazi contexts in North American prehistory (c. AD 1200). Similarly, scenes depicted on bronze artifacts recovered from Metal Age Southeast Asian prehistoric societies (during the first millennium BC) of the Dian Culture of southern China and the Dongson Culture of northern Vietnam clearly indicate an ideology associated with military power and a warrior class. Weapons

Depending on context, weapons designed for use against humans can indicate the presence of warfare. The main challenge lies in delineating a military function for various implements, to separate tools from weapons. In many prehistoric contexts weapons were virtually indistinguishable from everyday tools, and in some cases many implements were used for both military and everyday functions. Various researchers have pointed out the long-term process of separation and distinction between everyday tools and specialized weapons. Over time the tools of war began to be distinguished from the general category of tools, leading to the manufacture of objects with a combined use, then others that were predominantly used as weapons, and finally others exclusively for use against people. Axes and adzes are common archaeological artifacts in many regions and time periods over the past 10 000 years. In most cases, they are interpreted as woodworking tools only. However, some examples of axes and adzes had clearly acquired more violent

functions. The stone axes and adzes of the early Neolithic people of northwestern Europe and those of the Late Prehistoric Midwestern US were certainly used to kill people as the skeletal remains at Talheim and Crow Creek attest. The archaeological record clearly shows the emergence of specialized weapons of warfare as the product of a long evolution in tool technologies. Examples of specialized weapons for warfare include closerange shock weapons such as tomahawks, maces, lances, daggers, and swords, as well as long-range projectiles. Projectile points used primarily for war often have stems and barbs making them difficult to extract, or that increase the likelihood they will cause an infection. Many war points had easily slipped shafts allowing the head to remain embedded when the arrow or spear shaft is removed. In contrast, hunting points were tightly hafted. Some ancient implements of copper, bronze, and iron, such as swords, halberds, daggers, and broad axes, had no other possible or plausible direct use except as weapons of war. Some researchers interpret these artifacts as only symbols of wealth and status, given the geographic rarity of metal ores and the labor-intensive costs of their reduction to implements. However, the symbolic values for these items only arise from their actual or possible use in fearsome activities of warfare and social violence. It was through their practical application that these implements usually acquired additional symbolic and ritual significance. In regards to visibility of weapons, various factors can lead to a reduction in the number and quality of weapons found archaeologically. Firstly, many societies made weapons out of perishable, organic materials. Some wooden javelins or spears, maces, clubs, and other items have been recovered within Palaeolithic contexts, indicating the possibility that many more existed. Furthermore, written sources from antiquity and ethnographic accounts demonstrate their use into more recent times. For example, historical documentation indicates that parts of the Persian army under Xerxes that invaded Greece in 480 BC wore armor made of organic materials and used wooden weapons for assault. Without historical documentation, our knowledge of the use of such tools or implements of warfare would have been sorely lacking. Secondly, some morphologically atypical weapons elude archaeological interpretation, as these are only exceptionally retrieved in specific, functional contexts, such as hand-thrown stones or pebbles used as slingshots. Another group of weapons difficult to grasp archaeologically is represented by all-purpose tools (such as knives and axes), animals (such as war dogs), and poisons or objects. Finally,

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highly specialized weapons, those with social significance, were rarely left in their original archaeological contexts in settlements or on the battlefield. Along these lines, warrior or elite burials can provide better clues as to both the existence of war weaponry and the social significance of warfare. Evidence from the prehistoric Longshan period in China, during the third millennium BC, demonstrates how elite burials had symbolic weapons and paraphernalia, including prestigious and labor-intensive jade. The presence of these weapons not only documents the possible presence of warfare, but also hints at an emerging ideology linking warfare, relatively high status for males, and ritual. The trend becomes intensified during the early Bronze Age, when the earliest identifiable state emerges in the central Yellow River valley. In this manner, both iconography and specialized weapons can inform discussions around warrior ideologies and the social significance of military activities within societies. Warfare and its effects on the social fabric of communities can be significantly impacted by the introduction of new and superior weapons technologies. Gunpowder and nuclear weapons clearly illustrate this in a more modern context, and similar patterns are discernible in the distant past. In general, the emergence of a new military technology can exacerbate warfare, where military advantages conferred by new weapons can lead to exploitation by possessors. Research on the introduction of the more powerful sinew-backed bow in the American Southwest indicates how such a new technology can play a role in the onset of violent conflict. In situations where neighboring, autonomous societies such as chiefdoms did not have clear military advantages, larger political consolidation may have been less likely. The introduction of a considerably superior weapons technology, however, can dramatically impact the social evolution of those societies. For example, the introduction of the sword, lance, and chariot as part of aristocratic warfare throughout Europe from the early second millennium BC and onwards coincides with the rise of a new type of chiefdom structure based upon the institution of warrior aristocracies and retinues. Elsewhere, the potential social impact that a new weapon can have is almost certainly what prompted General Hideyoshi of sixteenth century Japan to collect and confiscate all of the muskets within his domain, merely a few decades after the introduction of firearms by the Portuguese. Defensible Site Locations and Buffer Zones

The potential presence of warfare can be reflected in how communities choose strategic or defensible sites

for settlement. Examples of such locations include canyon rims, prominences, cliff overhangs, and hilltops. Settlement patterns changed dramatically throughout the Pueblo III period (AD 1150–1300) of the Mesa Verde region of North America, when there was an increase in the occupation of defensible locations. This apparent change coincided with harsher ecological conditions that may have exacerbated competition and warfare. Priority clearly shifted from settlement concentrations on productive soils to locations with optimal defensibility. Another potential indicator for conflict comes in the form of buffer zones or ‘no-man’s-lands’. Active hostilities along a border between two politically autonomous societies can lead to development of a no-man’s-land, as settlements nearest a potential enemy move or disperse to escape the effects of persistent raiding or attack. Such buffer zones have been reported in various contexts from Africa, North America, South America, and Oceania where inhabitants flee war-torn and heavily raided frontiers. This refugee effect is plainly evident in more historic and modern contexts, as attested to by the millions of refugees displaced by warfare in the modern world. Moving frontiers between different cultures may have been especially war-torn. For instance, most fortified Linear Pottery settlements of northwestern Europe (c. 5500–4500 BC) were concentrated on the frontiers of the colonist farmers’ settlement zone.

Regional Case Studies While the revival of archaeological interest in warfare is relatively recent, it is clear that several regions during certain periods were either very war-torn or remarkably peaceful. Thus far, such periods are only discernible in those regions that are among the best archaeologically covered and most intensely studied in the world, implying that when other regions become as well known, more examples will be identified. The skeletal remains of late Mesolithic huntergatherers of northwestern Europe indicate a high level of violent death, including massacres of men, women, and children. At several Late Mesolithic cemeteries (c. 6000–5000 BC), evidenced by arrow points embedded in their bones, as much as 8 to 15% of all those buried died violently. (To put such percentages in perspective, during the four-day battle of Gettysburg, about 4% of the soldiers engaged were killed.) At Ofnet Cave, the skulls of 38 Mesolithic men, women, and children were found in two contemporaneous pits; most adults had holes knocked into their crania by stone axes and almost all had cut marks on their neck vertebrae indicating decapitation at or just after death. The following Early

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Neolithic period (c. 5000–4200 BC), many human remains show unhealed weapons traumas (as high as 16%!), some villages are fortified by palisades fronted by deep ditches with baffled gates, arrowheads are common although hunting was rare, and there is clear evidence of wholesale massacres of hamlets and small villages. The best known of the latter is the mass grave at Talheim where the remains of 34 men, women, and children were found thrown into a large pit. Almost all the skulls, especially for men, bore traumas from axe blows, multiple blows any one of which would have been fatal (i.e., ‘overkill’). The later prehistory and, of course, the history of Europe usually has been war-torn. In central and Eastern North America, certain prehistoric regions and periods have been very violent. In the Midwestern and eastern US, Late Archaic period (c. 4000–1000 BC) human remains often show weapons traumas, particularly embedded arrowheads. Later, after AD 800, warfare again became especially prevalent in this large region as attested by common weapons traumas and mutilations (especially cut marks from scalping) on human skeletons, village and town fortifications, occasional finds of weapons of war and depictions of them in use. Similar evidence of intense warfare has been found, at about the same time (AD 800–1500), in the Pacific Northwest, the Santa Barbara Channel, the American Southwest and the middle Missouri valley (i.e., the Dakotas). The most horrific evidence of a pre-Contact massacre was found at the prehistoric (c. AD 1325) village site of Crow Creek in South Dakota. The skeletal remains of 500þ people were found thrown into the fortification ditch of a burned village. These remains bore traumas from arrows, clubs and axes, most (90%þ) bore cut marks from scalping, many had been decapitated and their remains had been left exposed to scavengers and the elements for a few months before they had been collected and hastily buried in the village’s ditch. Estimates based on the number of houses imply the village population was about 800. As young women are very underrepresented among the buried corpses and, at least for a few months, it seems there were no survivors left nearby to bury the victims, apparently many of the young women had been taken away as captives. The reasons for these periods of intensified warfare are still being debated. Environmental changes seem to be associated with several cases. Intruders fleeing desiccation of the Plains seem to have played a role in the middle Missouri Valley case as did frequent droughts in the Southwest. A rapid change in the temperature of coastal waters with a subsequent loss of marine resources coincides with the increased prehistoric violence evidenced along the

Santa Barbara Channel region. Political consolidation may have played a significant role in the Southwest and the Pacific Northwest instances. Both the Early Neolithic and the middle Missouri cases involved colonization by newcomers. ‘Crowding’ of prime hunting-fishing-gathering or farming locales may have exacerbated conflicts among the Late Mesolithic, late Early Neolithic and Late Archaic groups of their respective regions. The first settled villagers of Levantine Near East (Natufian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) cultures, 11 500–7000 BC) were remarkably peaceful. There are almost no weapons traumas found on their skeletons and their villages of stone-mudbrick houses were unfortified (the function of the only known exception – the PPNA wall and tower at Jericho, c. 7200 BC – is unclear). The Natufians were hunterfisher-gatherers while cultivation and herding seems to have supplied some food during the PPNA. The Middle Woodland period (AD 100–800; especially the Hopewell and Adena cultures) of the eastern Mississippi drainage was also very peaceful by any measure. Despite building some spectacular earthworks for burial and ceremonial purposes, these villagers did not fortify their settlements. Also, unlike in the very violent preceding and following periods, human skeletons bearing weapons traumas are almost unknown. As with the PPNA of the Near East, some plants were cultivated by the Middle Woodland villagers. These two cases clearly contradict the hypotheses claiming that warfare began when humans ‘settled down’ and/or started farming. The reasons why these two regions during these time periods were so free of violent conflicts are obscure since many other early farmers were much more bellicose.

Possible Factors and Causal Conditions for Social Violence Demography and Environmental Stresses

Social scientists have suggested that increasing populations and higher population density can lead to more warfare. Rapid population increases can create pressure by increasing demand in the economy and stressing the capacity of social institutions. Also, population increase provides a larger manpower pool to absorb the losses that more frequent combat entails and allows formation of larger war parties that are more likely to be successful. Another characteristic of growing populations is the development or introduction of new technologies in food production, transportation, and weaponry. However, the ethnographic evidence indicates that the frequency of warfare and social violence is simply

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not a consequence of human density or crowding. Groups with smaller population densities are just as likely to engage in warfare in a given timeframe as groups whose densities are hundreds of times higher. A reasonable expectation to be drawn from the ethnographic record is that warring societies are equally common and peaceable ones equally uncommon at any level of population density. Archaeologists, then, need to be aware of signs of warfare whether the population densities of their prehistoric cases are high or low. It cannot be assumed that violent conflicts reach significant levels only when regional densities and social complexity have reached a certain threshold. In some instances an increase in human density and social complexity has not been accompanied by any increase in violence. Between 13 000 and 11 000 years ago, during the development of the Natufian culture, the Near Eastern Levant experienced a large growth in both regional and local human density, along with an increase in the sedentism of foraging communities. The period is marked by an absence of any indications for warfare at all. In contrast, the last Mesolithic foragers of Central Europe (c. 7500 BP), whose density is estimated to have been quite low and whose way of life was nomadic, seem to have been quite violent. The food or resources on the territory, or lack of them, may be a significant factor that makes a region prone to warfare. Ethnographic and archaeological evidence indicate that environmental stresses related to hard times lead to outbreaks of violence and increase the likelihood of warfare in a region. While many societies are able to cope with small-scale hardships and disasters, violence often occurred after large-scale natural calamities such as severe drought. War-prone groups tend to initiate conflict when recouping losses due to calamities, to replace deteriorating pastures and fields by territorial expansion, and to cushion the effects of expected future losses. For example, the increase in fighting among South African Bantu tribes in the early nineteenth century seems to have resulted in part from years of decreasing rainfall following forty years of better conditions during which both human and cattle populations had increased. Archaeological evidence of disaster-driven warfare is discernible in the Crow Creek massacre in thirteenth century South Dakota. The violence followed shortly after a climate change. The bones of the victims showed signs of chronic undernourishment. Borders and Frontiers

Some anthropological research maintains that frontiers between different cultural groups are peaceful. In this perspective, boundary regions serve as settings

for the peaceful exchange of goods, labor, spouses, and information between two societies. However, frontiers are also places where resources and goods are displayed, resources that are just beyond the limits of one’s society. Should desperate times arise, the needy know where they must go to obtain required resources. Thus some studies indicate that frontiers, whether static or moving, can be places of conflict. Frontier areas can be violent because cultural and social restraints mitigating violence are minimal or absent. Disputes in frontier areas have no recourse to adjudication by a higher authority, thus making outbreaks of violence more likely. Frontier zones tend to be less peaceful also because of their proximity to the outside and to potential enemies. Settlements along borders are very vulnerable to raids because they are less densely populated, easier to surprise, and easier to retreat from if resistance proves too great. The greater degree of vulnerability and volatility of frontiers explains why no-man’s-lands have often buffered them and why their settlements tend to be fortified. Moving cultural frontiers can be especially violent places where the risk of warfare is much higher than within cultures or on static frontiers. A moving cultural boundary usually involves the expansion of one human physical type, language, culture, or economic system at the expense of another. Though there are cases of peaceful expansion, research shows that warfare often accompanies the movement of a frontier and occasionally may be the only mechanism by which it can advance. This is especially so when the movement of a frontier involves colonization by newcomers on a large scale, which leads to competition over land and resources. Historical examples include the Romans and Celts or Germans in Western Europe, the late medieval Spanish and the Gaunche tribesmen of the Canary Islands, and the medieval Japanese and the Ainu tribesmen on Honshu. From the archaeological record, one example is the movement of Mississippian peoples into various regions of eastern North America between AD 900 and 1400. This migration was marked by the fortification of almost all new settlements in these areas. The Crow Creek massacre occurred on or near a fluctuating frontier between middle Missouri and Coalescent farmers between AD 1050 and 1300. In Western Europe some 7000 to 6000 years ago, colonizing Early Neolithic farmers appear to have encountered a hostile reception from indigenous Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, as evinced by the presence of fortified villages and no-man’s-lands. In the end, fortification of pioneer and border settlements provides strong indication that hostilities were more likely at moving cultural boundaries.

SOCIAL VIOLENCE AND WAR 2063 Trade and Conflict

Political Consolidation and Dissolution

A common assumption made by many researchers is that societies exchanging goods and marriage partners are likely to remain at peace with each other. Other researchers believe that this is generally true only for short timeframes, and that societies engage in cycles of trade and warfare. Modern cases, such as twentieth century American–Japanese interaction, clearly demonstrate how trading partners go through cycles of peaceful exchange and deadly conflict. The ethnographic record also yields examples of this phenomenon. For instance, the Tupinamba of coastal Brazil made periodic truces with their inland enemies, during which they traded coastal goods for inland commodities. It is quite often the case that trading partners, due to logistical considerations, are societies that share a border. The closer two parties are, the easier the logistics to interact, whether those interactions take the form of trade or war. Hence, while not a sufficient cause for warfare, territorial contiguity and the forms of interaction it fosters can be a contributing factor. However, mere proximity does not explain why some interactions are benign while others are violent. In most tribal economies, the bulk of commodities are exchanged through various forms of reciprocity and ‘gift-giving’ rather than by direct barter or purchase. Failure to reciprocate acts of ‘gift-giving’ can engender grievances that escalate into warfare. Thus in tribal societies, failure to reciprocate is equivalent to default or fraud in a more commercial system. Another common source of warfare over trade arises when one social group holds a monopoly over a particular commodity, usually because the only source lies within its territory. Two commodities that serve almost universally as the foci of such tribal conflicts have been hard stone for tools and mineral salt. The interchangeability between trade and warfare becomes clearer when we consider their ultimate physical results. Trade, intermarriage, and war all share a common overall effect of moving goods and people between social units. In warfare goods are moved as plunder, while people are moved as captives and slaves. In peaceful interactions of exchange and intermarriage, goods move as reciprocal gifts, trade items, and bride wealth, whereas people are moved as spouses. This is a particularly important observation for archaeologists, since some researchers automatically interpret the presence of exotic goods at a site as evidence of prehistoric trade and exchange, thereby ignoring the possibility that the goods may be spoils of war.

Many researchers have linked social violence and warfare with the development of large-scale, socially stratified, and politically centralized polities such as chiefdoms and states. Archaeologists and cultural anthropologists have noted that warfare increases during periods of political consolidation, for example, when tribes coalesce into chiefdoms, and chiefdoms into states, or small states into empires. Case studies from both the ethnographic and archaeological records seem to demonstrate a relationship between social complexity and warfare, though debates continue as to causal direction. Whereas some researchers believe only state-level societies participate in warfare, others hold that the formation of states occurs through conquest-related warfare. The material record offers evidence that ancient states have developed within regions of competing chiefdoms, and researchers maintain that the emergence of complex polities occurs through subjugation and conquest of other polities. Overall, it does appear that emergence of state-level society in many regions is highly correlated with the increased frequency and intensity of collective violence. Conversely, warfare seems to have increased during the decline, collapse, or fragmentation of larger political units such as states and empires. External pressures are cited for the decline of societies, and they include increased threats or attacks by foreign groups. There are examples of collapsing state societies empirically linked to predatory non-state neighbors. According to researchers, the collapses of states throughout history are more likely to result from attacks by large numbers of predatory neighbors than from natural catastrophes. States not geographically vulnerable to conflict with non-state neighbors tended to enjoy greater stability and longer life spans. In Asia, for example, ancient states in northern Indian territory tended to last no more than a century or two without drastic changes, whereas Southeast Asian states lasted two or three times as long. The two regions shared many similarities in terms of environment, resources, population densities, and government institutions. The main difference was that the states of northern India were much more susceptible to attack by aggressive non-state neighbors (see StateLevel Societies, Collapse of). See also: Americas, North: Eastern Woodlands; American Southwest, Four Corners Region; Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Europe, Northern and Western: Mesolithic Cultures; Osteological Methods; Political Complexity, Rise of; State-Level Societies, Collapse of; Weapons and Warfare.

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Further Reading Arkush E and Stanish C (2005) Interpreting conflict in the ancient Andes. Current Anthropology 46(1): 3–28. Carman J and Harding A (eds.) (1999) Ancient Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives. Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing. Guilaine J and Zammit J (2001) Origins of War: Violence in Prehistory. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Haas J (2001) Warfare and the evolution of culture. In: Feinman G and Price TD (eds.) Archaeology at the Millennium: A Sourcebook, pp. 329–350. New York: Kluwer/Plenum. Keeley L (1996) War Before Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Keeley L (2001) Giving war a chance. In: Rice G and LeBlanc S (eds.) Deadly Landscapes: Case Studies in Prehistoric Southwestern Warfare, pp. 331–342. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press. LeBlanc S (2001) Warfare and aggregation in El Morro Valley, New Mexico. In: Rice G and LeBlanc S (eds.) Deadly Landscapes: Case Studies in Prehistoric Southwestern Warfare, pp. 19–50. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press. Milner G (2005) Nineteenth century arrow wounds and perceptions of prehistoric warfare. American Antiquity 70(1): 144–156. Otterbein K (2004) How War Began. College Station: Texas A&M University Press. Vencl S (1984) War and warfare in archaeology. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 3: 116–132.

SOILS AND ARCHAEOLOGY Richard I Macphail, University College London, London, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary apatite A calcium phosphate mineral forming bone and coprolites. calcium oxalates Crystalline mineral material found in leaves and roots, and in the human body. diagnostic soil horizon System employed by the United States Department of Agriculture to classify soils, using defined characteristics. fecal spherulites Calcite (CaCO3) crystals found in unweathered dung/dung remains of ruminants that are typically <20 mm in size. grain size analysis An estimate of the proportion of particle sizes present in a dispersed soil that has passed through a 2 mm size sieve, normally reported in soils as percent clay (<2 mm), silt (2–63 mm), and very fine to very coarse sand (63–2000 mm); material larger than 2000 mm (2 mm) is termed gravel and stones. Grubenha¨user Sunken feature buildings of broadly Saxon origin, probably used as sheds with suspended floors. image analysis A digital method of analyzing images, for example, from a soil thin section. magnetic susceptibility A measure of magnetization of a material when a magnetic field is applied (e.g., using a magnetic susceptibility meter); magnetic susceptibility (w) of volcanic minerals such as the magnetic iron mineral magnetite is very high; a soil’s w is enhanced through natural topsoil formation and by burning. manuring The enhancement of soil fertility generally through additions of dung and household waste, in order to increase amounts of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, and sometimes to lower soil acidity. microfacies A layer or context with homogeneous visible, microscopic, chemical and physical properties, and fossil and microfossil content; examples are specific domestic floor and stable floor deposits (Figures 7 and 8), and various topsoil and subsoil horizons, and geological strata.

microprobe An X-ray technique which can map the distribution of elements and make quantitative elemental analyses of materials and soils. textural pedofeatures A specific type of soil micromorphological feature where soil has been mobilized, dispersed, and moved (normally by soil water) and forms coatings and infills voids locally or down-profile, for example. waterlogging A process whereby the soil is permanently saturated with water (and oxygen excluded) and organic matter is preserved, and iron is lost by leaching; intermittent waterlogging leads to loss and redeposition of iron and manganese, which for example produces soil mottles.

Introduction Soils and archaeology as a subject developed during the 1950s and 1960s when the effects of humans on natural soils were first investigated. This was carried out using soil profile description and standard soil science techniques. During the following years, soil phosphate as a specific analytical technique came to prominence alongside such studies as mineral magnetics, particularly magnetic susceptibility (sometimes termed w), and landscape-scale investigations commenced. It can be noted that soil micromorphology applied to archaeology also has a very long pedigree. This article briefly examines the history of soils and archaeology, describes some of the techniques that have been the most rewarding, and details some of the progress that has been made over the last 50 years, including experiments. Archaeological soils and associated sediments are categorized in terms of the impact humans have had on them. This article thus progresses from the basics of soils that show – compared with ‘control soils’ (see below) – a small amount of human impact, to soils that are strongly influenced by humans and their occupation.

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The Early Development of Soils and Archaeology The blending of archaeology and geology – now termed geoarchaeology – had already been established at the Institute of Archaeology, London, by F. E. Zeuner during the 1950s, when I. Cornwall wrote probably the first textbook on archaeological soils and began to support excavation with soil analyses – a trend continued by S. Limbrey. Cornwall’s findings helped decide where to locate the Experimental Earthworks (see below). Like many of his day (e.g., J. C. C. Romans and L. Robertson), he was impressed with the potential of soil micromorphology in archaeology, because of the way W. L. Kubiena was using it to understand pedogenic processes better. Other environmental archaeologists, such as G. Dimbleby and J. G. Evans who had their own specialisms (palynology and mollusks, respectively), were very keen to record soil data during excavation. In a 1987 review of soil science in archaeology in England, 21 Neolithic sites alone included soil data, thanks to the above-mentioned workers. There were parallel developments in archaeology and soils of mainland Europe and the New World concerning anthropogenic influence on soils.

Figure 1 Overton Down Experimental Earthwork 1960–1996, Wiltshire, UK; chalk bank (CB) buried soil (BS) – a humic rendzina developed on chalk; changes (mean values) to the chalk-buried soil are compaction, from 18 cm to 11 cm, reduced organic matter content from c. 18.9% to c. 13.6%, and an increase in pH from pH 6.9 to pH 7.9 – the last because of post-burial earthworm mixing (Bell et al., 1996, 107); sampled with Kubiena boxes (KB).

Methods Field

There are numerous field and laboratory soil methods that can be, and have been, applied to archaeological sites. Features targeted by remote sensing (e.g., air photos to geophysical surveys) can be groundproofed in the field by augering (coring) ahead of expensive trenching and excavation, with hand augers being adequate for soil/archaeological soil survey and motor-driven augers able to provide cores from depths of several meters when searching for deeply buried landscapes. Core samples can then be both described and sampled, for example, for phosphate survey purposes (see below) and, when totally undisturbed, for soil micromorphology (see below) and for the complementary recovery of stratified microfossils (e.g., pollen and diatoms; see Pollen Analysis). Similarly, soil pits, larger sondages, and excavation trenches provide soil profiles/archaeological sections that can be described and sampled. There should be exact correlation between bulk samples (used for grain size and chemistry; microfossils such as pollen) and undisturbed soil blocks used for soil micromorphology – sometimes taken in tins called Kubiena boxes or plastic down-spouting (Figures 1 and 3). If all this is recorded in a geographical information system (GIS), which is then utilized to investigate multiperiod landscapes, all the better.

Figure 2 Overton Down Experimental Earthwork 1960–1996; photomicrograph of turf bank buried soil showing compacted soilturf stack junction containing oak charcoal (OC) that had been spread on the ‘old land surface’ before burial, and newly formed iron and manganese (FeMn) fine mottling induced by localized waterlogging. Plane polarized light, frame width is
5.5 mm.

Standard Soil Science and Geoarchaeological Techniques

Ways to measure grain size, organic matter, pH, cation exchange capacity (CEC), sesquioxides (Al2O3 and Fe2O3), for example, are given in standard texts, and heavy metal and total elemental analyses have been applied to archaeological sites. More than 30 methods of phosphate analysis have been applied to archaeological soils. Normally, a measurement of ‘plant available phosphate’ is not useful in archaeology when investigating past activities, and ‘total phosphate’ is extracted. This is because in alkaline conditions phosphate may become ‘fixed’ as calcium

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soil where organic material including pollen is largely oxidized. Podzols (Spodosols) exhibit a high C:N which results from low bioactivity due to acidity, and this in turn permits ‘stratified’ pollen to be preserved in the soil profile; thus, like peat (Histosols), they are important as a palynological record of past environments, and hence the study of earth mound-buried podzols. Organic matter in the Bh horizons of some unburied podzols in Europe have radiocarbon mean residence dates of over 3000 years, showing that podzolization actually predated Bronze Age clearances on some very poor soil substrates. Figure 3 Later fourth millennium BC Neolithic Easton Down long barrow, 11 km from Overton Down; turf and chalk bank (CB) over thin (0–3.5 cm) buried soil (BS) – a humic rendzina sampled by a Kubiena box (KB).

phosphate, for example, as ‘apatite’ formed from bird or bat guano in limestone caves. Under acid conditions or where there is alternating oxidation and reduction, phosphorus is often fixed by iron, as crystalline vivianite or as amorphous Fe/Ca/P compounds, the latter elemental combinations being identified by X-ray analysis (microprobe). Phosphorus that has been leached down-profile, for example, in a podzol, becomes concentrated in the subsoil illuvial (e.g., Bs) horizon, and this is the horizon that needs to be sampled during a phosphate survey. Some techniques are, however, of limited use if employed blindly. For instance, grain size analysis of disaggregated samples may be meaningless if transported soil clasts are present, or if there are attempts to interpret anthropogenic dumps in the same way as natural sediments. The use of loss-on-ignition to measure organic matter content also has to be employed sensibly. Temperatures over 550  C will affect carbonates, and some workers believe that 375  C is the maximum temperature that should be used if no carbonate is to be lost, and correlations with organic carbon measurements are required. Organic matter like pH is a labile or potentially unstable characteristic, which is commonly affected by postdepositional changes (see below), with oxidation of organic matter being influenced by conditions of burial. Equally, although the magnetic susceptibility (w) of soil materials is often regarded as stable, strong leaching under acid or waterlogged conditions can markedly reduce the magnetic signal because of iron mineral transformation. In natural soils, carbon/nitrogen ratios broadly reflect bioactivity (mull C:N
5–10 vs. mor C:N
10–20). Archaeological deposits with high amounts of charred organic matter have anomalously high C:N ratios, despite being once bioactive; an example of this is dark earth (see below), a base-rich

Soil micromorphology This is the study of undisturbed, resin-impregnated soil in 20–30-mm-thick thin sections, using a petrological microscope. These are generally viewed under plane polarized light, crossed polarized light, oblique incident light, and through fluorescence microscopy – all with the same microscope; whole thin sections can also be scanned digitally and the resulting images manipulated in order to observe large features. Essentially, organic matter and minerals, and their organization, either resulting from natural soil-forming processes or caused by human activities, can be observed, identified, and interpreted. As in geology, microfacies analysis is carried out. Description is augmented by optical semi-numerical or numerical analysis, or image analysis, so that a specific soil horizon or archaeological unit can be characterized. These findings can be utilized, with any available complementary data (bulk analyses and microfossils), to produce consensus interpretations that also involve the input from cultural archaeologists (e.g., finds recovery and context). For example, a layer containing high amounts of microscopic burned soil, ashes, and bone debris (e.g., kitchen hearth rakeout) will also have both an enhanced magnetic susceptibility and phosphate content. This analytical procedure parallels that for the identification of ‘diagnostic horizons’ in soils. Experiments

From the outset it is necessary to state what a ‘control’ soil is, in the context of archaeological experiments. In most parts of the world, it is extremely difficult to find a soil that has not been partly or wholly affected by some kind of human activity. Therefore, at the UK Experimental Earthwork Project for example, control soils were simply the local unburied profiles, in landscapes that had been anthropogenic since the Bronze Age or earlier. For experiments in palaeoagriculture and ethno-archaeology, a control profile is often a localized comparison that has

SOILS AND ARCHAEOLOGY 2067

not been plowed (cultivation) or trampled (occupation surfaces/floors) during the experiment. Experiments, such as the Experimental Earthworks Project, UK, and international ethno-archaeological studies (e.g., ancient cultivation, house reconstructions, and animal management) have markedly advanced our understanding of the effects of burial on soils and the impact of increasingly complex societies, and associated site-formation processes (see Ethnoarchaeology; Experimental Archaeology). On the chalk rendzina soils (Typic Rendolls) at Overton Down, Wiltshire, UK (constructed 1960, and regularly excavated up to 1992), the thickness of the buried Ah (topsoil) horizon had decreased from c. 180 to c. 90–100 mm; this took place in part through organic matter loss (c. 11.0% to c. 7.59–7.88% organic C) (Figures 1–4). An open microfabric characterized by 55% void space, and showing signs of earthworm working and grass-rooting, had become compacted (minimum 14% void space at 1 cm depth); the crumb and blocky structure had become massive. Buried earthworms mixed the junction of buried soil and overlying turf stack core of the chalk bank. Soil was mixed both upward and downward, obscuring the old land surface. This phenomenon can be found in accumulating alluvial soils and effects some earth mounds if soils are bioactive, the degree of pedoturbation often being either overemphasized or underestimated on archaeological sites when soil micromorphology is not applied. Under the chalk bank at Overton Down, earthworms mixed chalk into the underlying decalcified soil, and raised the pH of the soil from pH 6.9 to 7.9. Fine iron and manganese mottling seemed to be a possible initial stage in replicating iron pans that can

Figure 4 As Figure 3, a photomicrograph of the Neolithic buried soil showing included charcoal (C) and burned soil (BuS) fragments, relict of a fireplace(?); Crowther found that this burning enhanced the magnetic susceptibility (w ¼ 2.11–2.24 mm3 kg1) compared to Overton Down (w ¼ 0.357–0.455 mm3 kg1). Plane polarized light, frame width is
5.56 mm.

develop along artificial soil boundaries in some earth mounds. At the poorly bioactive and acid sandy podzol experimental site of Wareham, Dorset, the most obvious change was the decomposition of the surficial L, F/H (O horizon) humus, from a putative c. 70 mm to 1.6–3.6 mm from 1962 to 1980/1996. Mainly, only the least decomposable organic material (e.g., lignin/bark and charcoal) was preserved. This produced an artificial concentration of charcoal that could be misinterpreted as a preconstruction ‘clearance’ event or fire, whereas in reality it simply reflected a management practice – regular burning of the heath. Experiments and ethno-archaeological investigations in palaeoagriculture have included: plowing with ards, replicating, for example, both Neolithic cultivation of the European loess (wind-blown silt of Pleistocene date) belt and Iron Age soils of southern England; Iron Age to Migration period ‘slash and burn’ versus manuring agriculture in Sweden. Some major findings are that surface horizons become homogenized in the Ap (5–10 cm deep for the ‘Neolithic’; 30 cm for the ‘Iron Age’). Soil disruption and the physical mixing of soil from different horizons sometimes causes these to slake when wet and form concentrations of fine soil in voids (textural pedofeatures) either in situ or down-profile. Biological activity associated with cultivation can fragment these textural pedofeatures or simply be the dominant process in manured soils that become enriched in organic matter and phosphate for example, features common to both modern agricultural and ancient agricultural soils for example. The sustainable Iron Age cultivation of barley in boreal Sweden could only be maintained by a mixed farming economy that manured with cattle dung. Geoarchaeological identifications of use of space have been applied, for example, to complex societies of the Near East. This has become possible through both local ethno-archaeological investigations and the studies of ‘floors’ from domestic houses (‘beaten floors’) and stables at reconstructed sites (e.g., Butser Ancient Farm, Hampshire, UK) (see Figures 7 and 8). The stabling floor (which varies laterally) can be characterized by a calcium phosphate cemented (hydroxyapatite) crust composed of trampled, horizontally layered dung, and grass and straw bedding and fodder; this was still easily recognizable after 5 years of burial. This floor deposit is highly organic, phosphate rich, and is characterized by a low magnetic susceptibility and high pollen content, compared with the domestic/beaten floor sample, which is relatively much more minerogenic, poorer in phosphate, but which shows an enhanced magnetic susceptibility because of vtrampling around the clay oven. Pollen

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preservation is poor, but its greater diversity demonstrates tracking-in from multiple sources; stable floor deposits have a homogeneous pollen content that commonly reflects a restricted variety of fodder and bedding inputs. These findings are applied below.

Archaeological Soils Human Impact on Soils

Natural soil-forming processes produce soil horizons, for example, the A (topsoil), B (subsoil), and C or R (parent material) that are essentially homogeneous. The effects of human impact can be identified because anomalous soil characteristics are produced. As noted for cultivation (above), the A horizon may become mixed, and homogenized with the subsoil (B horizon) by plowing. This mixing of subsoil material is exacerbated if cultivation is accompanied by down-slope soil loss (erosion), and plowing of an eroded soil increasingly mixes subsoil into the Ap (plowed topsoil). Colluvium accumulated toward the base of the slope may well include topsoil mixed with subsoil and even eroded parent material and bedrock if erosion is severe. Another example of human impact on soils is when soils are manured, and once-impoverished soils like podzols become fertile and over-thickened. Not only dung may be added, but also turf from other localities (grassland and woodland), ashes, and other domestic waste. The resulting ‘cultosols’ (e.g., plaggens) may thus include allochthonous (‘foreign’) inclusions relict of this manuring. Although humans may have had no or negligible impact on soils, soil data are extremely relevant to the reconstruction of past environments. In the Quaternary, soils provide important information on the landscapes that hominins inhabited. At Boxgrove, Sussex, UK, soil studies showed that Early Palaeolithic hominins visited mudflats during low tide more than 480 000 years ago, where they seemed to have hunted and butchered animals, and manufactured flint tools. These investigations also showed that, through time, mudflat sediments weathered into an immature palaeosol, which was also occupied, and that hominins were present – at least during interstadials – after the climate had become cold and humid (glacial period). Clearance Several forms of clearance can be carried out. Brush can be grubbed up and burned. This normally only disturbs the uppermost part of the soil profile, which when preserved (e.g., by rapid burial) can retain charcoal fragments. Sometimes, piles of brush are burned in one place and produce a reddened

soil patch, which is also characterized by an enhanced magnetic susceptibility (w). In contrast, the heat from simple burning of scrub and shrubs in a landscape does not penetrate deeply into the soil, and there may well be no reddening or enhanced w. Tree-throw holes are features that are often worth investigating. Due to many archaeological investigations taking place on eroded landscapes, negative features (ditches, pits, tree subsoil hollows) may contain the only soils that are contemporary with the archaeology. The fragments of soil that these negative features contain can therefore be vital clues to the earlier soil cover. Tree-throw holes are formed when a tree falls and the soil around the roots is disrupted and thrown up, creating a hummock and hollow landscape if many trees are involved through time. Under natural conditions, the infilling of the hollow is slow – perhaps taking 500 years or so. In plan, often two-thirds of the hollow is filled with subsoil and parent material falling off the root bole, while the other third fills more slowly under the fallen tree, and includes high amounts of organic matter, for example, leaf litter. The land snails present in the fill and the relict enhanced organic content reflect this humic infilling – the latter perhaps ‘preserved’ as iron and manganese mottle concentrations. At some sites, these tree-throw fills contain both charcoal (for instance mainly only from one species) and burned soil. This implies that people were involved, the fallen tree being burned in situ. Possibly, the tree was ringbarked and died before being pulled over. There are both Neolithic and Beaker examples of this in the Midlands of the UK. The evidence of clearance of shallow rooting brush, and/or ‘slash and burn’, may be more difficult to recognize because the effects are less deep in the soil, and thus much less obvious. Subsequent soil homogenization by biological activity will destroy micropedological features of this clearance and once-coarse charcoal will become finely fragmented. Trampling can exacerbate this. Homogenization is less rapid on acid soils because levels of biological activity are lower. If sites are rapidly buried, for example, by an earth mound or rampart, evidence of clearance may consist of charcoal and soil mixed from several horizons; management by fire may also lead to concentrations of phytoliths and fine charcoal (from burned Gramineae). This burning can lead to a more rapid loss of bases (from ash) and eventually to soil impoverishment – as in the case of some European lowland podzols. As noted above, concentrated areas of burned brush can produce reddened soils. A number of features produced by clearance can be confused with those caused by cultivation, and this is especially the case if clearance is followed

SOILS AND ARCHAEOLOGY 2069

by short-lived cultivation. Prehistoric ‘middening’/ occupation can also produce concentrations of charcoal (see below). Cultivation Experiments and case studies have shown that cultivation evidence can be highly variable and reflects soil type, slope unit position, technology and culture, and thus has to be investigated on a case-by-case basis. For example, cultivation on a slope may induce erosion and ‘plowing’ into the subsoil and parent material, whereas down-slope cultivation may be taking place in an accumulating soil. In the latter, features such as ard marks may become buried in colluvial layers and be difficult, but not impossible, to discern. Experiments involving plowing with ards show mixing of the plowed soil and the potential for soil to become destabilized, forming textural pedofeatures in situ and down-profile. This is consistent with findings from both modern agronomy and archaeological soil studies. It has been found that some European soils when cultivated in prehistory at a time manuring was not commonly practiced (e.g., Neolithic) were strongly destabilized by plowing as their natural organic content – and its binding properties – was depleted (as found in modern arable soils). This led to erosion on slopes, and the exposure of less humic and, consequently, less stable subsoils to plow impact. This resulted in the translocation of much fine soil through voids down-profile. Manuring regimes As societies became more complex, the need for sustainable agriculture became important. Household waste (e.g., Near and Middle East), nightsoil (e.g., Medieval Europe and Far East), animal dung from mixed farming (e.g., Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe), dung, household and plant ashes (e.g., c. 1500-year-old Peru) were all employed; in New Mexico, USA (AD 1000–1500), terraced sols were ‘manured’ through runoff entrapment. In the historic infield cultosols of the Scottish Isles, Medieval to modern plaggen soils (e.g., podzols thickened with additions of turf and stable manure), and terrace ‘garden’ soils worldwide, agricultural soils show high organic contents and fertility (e.g., bases and P), and have highly biologically worked microfabrics. Such soils may often demonstrate little evidence of soils being mixed from different sources because everything has been efficiently homogenized. Horticultural activity can be long- or short-lived. At St. Julien, Tours France, horticultural activity is recorded from the Late Roman (third century) to the eleventh century in an area between two remaining urban centers at Tours. In contrast, at Colchester and London, UK, building debris, apparently relict of the Boudiccan

revolt and destructions (AD 59–60), was briefly cultivated – perhaps over 5–10 years – before urban reconstruction took place. Other types of cultivation can be cited from dry areas (irrigation) and the Far East where paddy soils from prehistory onward are typically characterized by waterlogging features and additions of organic fertilizers (and rice phytoliths); terra preta (Amazonian dark earths) are seemingly variable according to their origin as occupation or manured garden soils – and are still favored today for cultivation.

Records of Human Occupation Animal Management

The domestication of animals began in the Neolithic. Cattle, sheep, and goats were herded, and in western temperate and Mediterranean Europe pastures were developed through the opening up of woodland – first for browsing, and second to produce grassland or other herbaceous cover. Leaf hay (the twigs and leaves of trees) was also utilized as fodder as demonstrated at both Swiss Lake villages (e.g., white fir trimmings), and in the Italian and French Mediterranean caves (e.g., evergreen oak). Pastoralists used rock shelters for over-wintering their stock and thick ashed Neolithic stabling deposits have been recorded. The sediments are typically composed of alternating pale gray and dark brown layers. Experimental data have been used to show that each two-layer sequence may represent a stabling episode. The dark layer results from the charring of urine and phosphateenriched trampled dung and bedding ‘stable floors’, whereas the gray layer is formed from ashed dung (coprolites of sheep/goat and cattle and fecal spherulites) and twig and leaf fodder (calcite ash and calcium oxalates). As such deposits are easily weathered they are rare outside cave sites, but it is possible that ashed evidence of leaf hay use is recorded in Saxon England, and leaf hay foddering continues in the present-day Mediterranean region. Stabling deposits as desiccated remains have been recognized in prehistoric sites both in central and north Africa and Israel, for example. These are comprised of the comminuted remains of local herbaceous and scrub plants, grasses for example producing phytolith-rich remains (Figures 5 and 6). In tells, stabling deposits and related refuse also often include phytolith-rich cereal materials – preserved by both desiccation and silification in places. In the complex societies of prehistoric to Medieval date, track and drove way deposits can be rich in the remains of dung and fodder remains. In Early Roman London, large roadside dumps of stabling refuse accumulated

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Figure 5 Example of Iron Age trackway soil (road between wheel ruts), Malmo¨ City Tunnel Project, Sweden 2003; photomicrographs of compact phosphate-rich (0.2% P compared to background of 0.01%P; Johan Linderholm, pers. comm.), moderately humic sandy soil, where trafficking and animal waste have caused soils to puddle; likely phosphate-enriched (analogue microprobe studies) dark reddish brown clay (C) has become mobilized – infilling and coating soil voids. Plane polarized light; frame width is
2.3 mm.

Figure 6 As Figure 5, showing a mass of amorphous organic matter-stained phytoliths – relict of mesofauna-worked animal dung concentrations. Plane polarized light; frame width is
2.3 mm.

because of the large number of domestic stock including horses, in this ‘frontier town’. The typical character of such in situ or dumped deposits is that they are layered with long plant remains or compacted dung, have a very high phosphate and organic content (e.g., as measured by LOI), but low magnetic susceptibility – consistent with experimental results. As noted above, the utilization of stabling refuse was an important part of mixed farming, as manure and its preserved residues can be found in prehistoric to Medieval pits, postholes, and Saxon Migratory period Grubenha¨user, as ferruginized (iron-replaced), waterlogged, and ashed material, for example (Figure 7). Animal trampling in open environments (e.g., stock yard, corrals, and droveways) can produce ‘poached’

Figure 7 Early Medieval (AD 1060–1140) London Guildhall, London, UK; little disturbed horizontally layered highly organic stabling refuse; chemistry: John Crowther found 43.4% LOI, pH 6.8, 10.4 mg g1 Phosphate –P, magnetic susceptibility ¼ w 50.0 x108 SI kg1, 7.17% wconv; heavy metals ¼ 245 ppm Pb, 116 ppm Zn and 168 ppm Cu; palynology: Jill Cruise found a typical dung-stable refuse mix of Poaceae-cereal t.; microprobe analysis: 0.0% Si, 0.0% Al, 1.59% P, 7.19% Ca, 0.0% Na, 0.0% Mg, 0.01% Mn, 0.41% S, 0.98% Fe, and 0.29% K; elemental map: Ca and P cemented with much K, stained by Fe and weakly stained by Mn. Data are consistent with experimental Moel-y-gar stabling findings from Butser Ancient Farm (Macphail et al., 2004). Thin section scan, width is 6.5 mm.

soils – soils becoming slaked and compacted, with surface and near-surface crusting and textural pedofeature formation. Unlike trampling by humans, stock often produce textural pedofeatures enriched in organic matter and phosphate, also including dung fragments and phytolith concentrations (Figures 5 and 6), and high levels of burrowing (by earthworms and dung beetles) may also be recorded. Domestic (and/or ritual) floors According to site conditions, floors and floor remains (occupation surface deposits) can be found in situ or secondary positions. Floors may simply be composed of trampled soil, natural biologically porous topsoils becoming compact and massive structured in a relatively weatherproof, roofed environment. Experiments have shown that this can happen within weeks. Soil from outside, which may include plant fragments, biogenic calcite of earthworms and slugs, etc., and inside, for instance, kitchen and hearth debris (burned soil, burned bone, charcoal and ashes; Figure 8), can contribute to a mineralogenic deposit that can have an enhanced magnetic susceptibility resulting from this

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Figure 8 Medieval Spitalfields, London, UK; a series of compact mineral-rich beaten (domestic) floor deposits, with coarse and fine black charcoal, fine bone, shell, ash, burned eggshell and earthworm granules; affected by post-depositional burrow (B). Findings are consistent with experimental Pimperne house data from Butser Ancient Farm (Macphail et al., 2004). Thin section scan, width is 5.5 mm.

inclusion of burned material. Inclusion of iron slag would strongly enhance this magnetic susceptibility. Although organic materials (straw, dung) may be included from the roof, other rooms, and outside, organic matter concentrations are usually less than in stables/ byres sensu stricto. Floors can be moderately enriched in phosphorus (e.g., from ashes) according to levels of ‘hygiene’ and amounts of food waste and trampled-in human coprolites present. Abandoned houses/rooms may be used as casual latrines. Floors can also be constructed from building clay, or mortar, or be plaster-coated, for example. Numerous ritual plaster layers have been recorded in some rooms found in tell sites from the Neolithic onward. Building Decay and Postdepositional Processes – Dark Earth

Earth-based building materials include turf, natural ‘clay’, and adobe/mud brick. Building ‘clay’ is often a natural loam – the fine sandy silt loam brickearth of England or silt loam loess of mainland Europe – which was used for ground raising, constructed floors, and timber-framed wall slabs. Quarrying for these materials is recorded from Roman to Medieval London and Paris, for example. Walls could also be composed of wattle and daub; the latter is often a mixture of earth, dung, and straw. Various types of

mud bricks (adobe), which can be found across the Near East to Asia and also in Mesoamerica, can be tempered with plant material or not, and either handshaped or made in wooden formers. Substantial walls (e.g., parts of the Great Wall of China) can be made from rammed earth, and ramparts (e.g., parts of Hadrian’s Wall, UK) and some huge earth mounds (Moundville, USA) and burial monuments (barrows/ tumuli) can include local soil such as turf. The Experimental Earthworks Project investigated the weathering of these. Although the composition of the turf walls – for example, in Viking houses – is not critical, a turf roof has to be of a low pitch, and be made up of a ‘living’ well-rooted grassland mull topsoil, as in the Scandinavian tradition and the ‘soddies’ of Ireland and North America. A moder (woodland LF humus horizon), mor (acid LFH humus horizon), or peat (Histosol) roof will simply decay and oxidize. Examples of manufactured building materials are lime plasters and mortar, although the use of gypsum (CaSO4) plasters has been recorded well before (c. 9000 years BP) modern gypsum plasters were ‘invented’. Lime plaster (e.g., fine-tempered with sand), over a layer of lime mortar (e.g., coarsetempered with gravel size material), was for example used to coat Roman walls – the plaster often being painted; floors could also be plastered. Here the ‘cement’ is formed by micritic (fine crystalline) calcite (CaCO3), after the manufacture of quick lime (CaO; burned limestone/chalk). Hydraulic (waterproof) mortar, or Roman concrete, for opus signinum surfaces and cementing aqueducts, differs by containing brick fragments and/or volcanic rocks (pozzolunic cement) which cement through the neoformation of aluminum silicates. The above constructional materials are subject to weathering. Earth-based building materials – turf and unburned daub – are quickly reworked by rain and biological activity if not protected. Decaying mud brick can erode and form colluvium at tells. Lime plaster and mortar become decalcified and sand and gravel are liberated, respectively, into ‘soils’ that in Europe are often termed dark earth. This buildingdebris-based soil is initially calcium carbonate rich, because of the presence of relict lime plaster and mortar. As shown in studies of postwar Berlin, thin ‘pararendzina’ soils form initially in constructional debris, and such immature soils have been found in Roman London reflecting weathering of abandoned urban space. In Europe, 0.30–2 m thick dark earth soils are recorded between the Late Roman (typically fourth century AD) and Medieval (e.g., ninth to eleventh centuries AD) periods, but the thicker soils reflect the use of abandoned space for middening during the Late Roman and Early Medieval periods, for example.

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At many sites (e.g., across London and at Worcester, UK), there is a clear period of pedogenesis – c. fourth to tenth centuries – when dark earth becomes a decalcified soil sensu stricto. There are, however, examples when dark earth – as an occupation soil/ sediment – provides a record of continuing ‘urban’ land use as in northern and central Italy and at the sites of Pevensey, England (Roman, British, Saxon, Norman) and St. Julien, Tours, and Colle`ge de France, Paris, France (Roman, Early Medieval, Medieval).

Summary and Conclusions This article attempts to provide a history of archaeological soil research and outline some of the methods and approaches employed. In addition, some mainstream topics have been used as examples of where archaeological soils interface with other environmental disciplines and cultural archaeology. Both standard soil science and sedimentological methods are utilized alongside key techniques such as phosphate, magnetic susceptibility, organic matter measurements, and soil micromorphology (and associated X-ray techniques such as microprobe). Some insights into the use of these techniques are given. Examples from the experimental base – earthworks, palaeoagriculture, floors, and animal management – and their application to site studies concerning human impact, use of space, and sustainable land use in complex societies are all briefly discussed. Finally, earth- and lime-based constructional materials, their use, and their weathered residues (e.g., the enigmatic dark earth) come under scrutiny. Clearly, archaeological soil studies have progressed enormously over the last 50 years, and have now become more focused upon site/cultural-specific questions, compared to

before when soils were simply described as part of the environmental background to a site. See also: Animal Domestication; Caves and Rock-

shelters; Ethnoarchaeology; Experimental Archaeology; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Methods; Phytolith Analysis; Pollen Analysis; Sites: Formation Processes; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites.

Further Reading Barham AJ and Macphail RI (1995) Archaeological Sediments and Soils: Analysis, Interpretation and Management. London: Institute of Archaeology. Bell M, Fowler MJ, and Hillson SW (1996) The Experimental Earthwork Project, 1960–1992. Research Report, Research Report 100. York: Council for British Archaeology. Courty MA, Goldberg P, and Macphail RI (1989) Soils and Micromorphology in Archaeology. Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crowther J (2003) Potential magnetic susceptibility and fractional conversion studies of archaeological soils and sediments. Archaeometry 45: 685–701. Goldberg P, Holliday VT, and Ferring CR (eds.) (2001) Earth Sciences and Archaeology. New York: Kluwer/Plenum. Goldberg P and Macphail RI (2006) Geoarchaeology: Theory and Practice. Oxford: Blackwell. Macphail RI (1987) A review of soil science in archaeology in England. In: Keeley HCM (ed.) Environmental Archaeology: A Regional Review, vol. II, occasional paper no. 1, pp. 323– 379. London: Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England. Macphail RI and Linderholm J (2004) Neolithic land use in southeast England: A brief review of the soil evidence. In: Cotton J and Field D (eds.) Towards a New Stone Age Research Report 137, pp. 29–37. York: CBA. Macphail RI, Cruise GM, Allen MJ, Linderholm J, and Reynolds P (2004) Archaeological soil and pollen analysis of experimental floor deposits; with special reference to Butser Ancient Farm, Hampshire, UK. Journal of Archaeological Science 31: 175–191.

SPATIAL ANALYSIS WITHIN HOUSEHOLDS AND SITES Jeffrey Seibert, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary built environment A term used to refer to human-made environments, ranging from simple structures like huts to cities. functionalist archaeology This theoretical approach sought to examine how past cultures functioned as systemic entities.

processualism The study of culture process through the analysis of archaeological materials. This school of thought seeks to examine cultural change as a series of evolving sociocultural processes. space syntax Formal spatial analysis approach that seeks to look at rules of spatial patterning and cognition as expressed in the built environment cross culturally.

The formal spatial analysis of archaeological remains at the levels of the household and site forms one of

SPATIAL ANALYSIS WITHIN HOUSEHOLDS AND SITES 2073

the key components of the archaeological endeavor. Spatial analysis on these scales can provide fundamental insights into past human behavior, as well as various other subjects, ranging from subsistence to ideology. Spatial analyses of archaeological remains at the intra-site level are as old as the discipline itself, with the context and provenience of artifacts being recorded in excavations of archaeological sites since the beginnings of modern archaeology. The techniques employed in early excavations of archaeological sites were often crude by modern standards with regard to their recording of spatial data, and it was not until the late nineteenth century that methods of recording the provenience of artifacts were comparable to modern archaeological standards. Despite these early spatial approaches, most scholars would concede that explicitly spatial approaches to archaeology developed in conjunction with the functionalist approach to archaeology. These analyses sought to explain the correlation between spatial patterning of artifacts and architecture in sites and the way that past societies functioned as systems. The importance of spatial analysis was underscored by Walter Taylor in his discussion conjunctive approach to archaeology, which emphasized the importance of all forms of material evidence from archaeological sites and the spatial relationships between these lines of evidence. With the development of processualism, spatial analyses continued to be important as archaeologists sought to explain intercultural regularities through the analysis of the spatial patterning of architecture and artifacts. The work of Lewis Binford perhaps best exemplifies this approach, with his assertions that one of archaeology’s main goals should be to develop ‘laws of cultural dynamics’. This was applied to intra-site spatial analysis by comparing ethnoarchaeological observations about the spatial patterning of artifacts with the archaeological past and attempting to discern regularities between past and present societies. In a related vein is the work of early ethnoarchaeologists who were working on similar problems regarding the spatial organization of present societies and their relevance to archaeological interpretation. Following the principles of processualism, these early ethnoarchaeologists sought to provide case studies of human spatial behavior to serve as aids to archaeological interpretation (see Ethnoarchaeology; Processual Archaeology). Kent Flannery and many of his students also employ overtly spatial approaches in their studies of Mesoamerican archaeology. This approach is perhaps best exemplified in The Early Mesoamerican Village, an edited volume that examines the study of

early Mesoamerican villages from an explicitly spatial standpoint. Much of this volume is devoted to the analysis of community organization and the organization of households. The studies in this book employ a variety of statistical approaches to examine the patterning of artifacts and architecture, and draw social inferences based on these analyses. In effect, this book has become an archaeological ‘how-to’ manual about the spatial analysis of small-scale agrarian societies, complete with amusing anecdotes regarding the follies of pseudo-fictitious Mesoamerican archaeologists. Formal household archaeology (see Household Archaeology) as a focus of research can be seen in many ways to have originated with the advent of processual archaeology, crossbred with the activity area studies of the functionalists. The work of Kent Flannery and his students truly revolutionized household archaeology, and developed it into a separate field of inquiry. Indeed, much of the early work in household archaeology was conducted in Mesoamerica. Many of these early household studies were concerned with the formal spatial analysis of materials recovered in a household setting, and viewed the spatial relationships between artifacts, architecture, and features as being key to understanding social organization at the household level. In Great Britain in the early 1970s a number of approaches to the spatial analysis of archaeological materials also developed, in many ways in a parallel fashion to developments in the Americas. Later in the 1970s an overtly ‘scientific’ approach to spatial analysis in archaeology was championed by David Clarke and his students. Clarke’s analyses hinged on complex studies of the interrelated nature of societies, and he sought to examine the spatial components of a society as part of a larger sociocultural system. Hodder and Orton, building on his approach, called for a more explicitly quantitative approach to the study of spatial patterning, and applied statistical methods to all levels of spatial analysis. As this normative approach to spatial analysis became dominant in Anglo-American archaeology (as well as parts of Europe), some scholars began to question the relevance of such an approach. The late 1970s saw increasing interest in overtly social approaches to spatial questions in archaeology and the development of postprocessual archaeology (or archaeologies as many scholars have argued) resulted in a number of scholars questioning the normative assumptions made by the processualists, and beginning to examine aspects of human behavior in a less deterministic and rigid light. This new theoretical focus affected the ways in which archaeologists approached spatial analysis by focusing more on the social and cultural implications of spatial relations

2074 SPATIAL ANALYSIS WITHIN HOUSEHOLDS AND SITES

in past societies. This thread was present in both the functional and processual approaches to spatial archaeology, but postprocessual archaeology expanded on these earlier concepts (see Postprocessual Archaeology). Some scholars, influenced by cultural geographers and anthropologists, sought to analyze the built environment constructed by past peoples. These scholars looked at the social, cultural, and ideological aspects of past buildings and cities. Some of the more recent work by Flannery has begun to address questions such as these, although many of his earlier ideas still remain in this more recent literature. An outgrowth of this is analyses of the spatial arrangements of the built environment, which have also been approached through space syntax analysis, developed by Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson. Space syntax analyzes the ways in which the built environment constructs and constrains space. It describes this organization using a standardized lexicon, and represents it through a series of standard visual conventions. Through these standardized forms of visual representation and description, it becomes possible to analyze the social relationships inherent in the spatial arrangement of the built environment. In archaeology, numerous scholars utilize space syntax analysis and represent the growing importance of this approach in the field. An important aspect of the spatial analysis of households and archaeological sites is the study of urban landscapes, an area heavily influenced by human geography. Michael Smith, for example, notes the importance of urban landscapes in the constitution of society and discusses how power was idealized and realized in the urban landscapes of ancient Mesopotamian cities. He suggests that these power structures were inherently spatial, and that the active manipulation of urban space underscored the success of strategies of domination. The work of Ashmore also explored connections between urban built forms and social organization. Ashmore’s work suggests that urban landscapes in the Maya area reflect broader political affiliations, and that site plans among lower order centers often emulate the site plans of important cities. Timothy Pugh has approached similar topics from an explicitly quantitative standpoint by employing statistical approaches to examine the spatial organization of Mayapan, Mexico. In recent years, household archaeology has also become increasingly influenced by studies conducted in archaeology’s sister disciplines of social anthropology and sociology. The relationship between spatial organization and domestic architecture is explored from an interdisciplinary perspective in a volume

edited by Susan Kent that draws together work examining the spatial organization of residential architecture from a number of cultures. Similarly, Richard Blanton has examined the nature of domestic architecture, the spatial organization of activities and their influence on household organization in a number of contexts. In classical archaeology, recent scholarship has addressed similar questions regarding the relationship between domestic architecture, household units, and space. All of these studies employ varied approaches to the study of spatial analysis in domestic architecture, including statistical approaches, space syntax, and various approaches that seek to gain insight into cognitive concepts of space, but all of these scholars seek to gain insight about the household as a social unit through these analyses. Spatial analysis at the levels of the household and site continue to form an important part of the archaeological endeavor. Indeed, it could be argued that the analysis of the spatial organization of archaeological sites and households forms one of the cornerstones of any archaeological project being conducted at these scales, because of the insights that this form of analysis gives into one of culture’s foundations, the spatial constitution of societies. See also: Household Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Settlement Pattern Analysis.

Further Reading Ashmore W (2002) Decisions and dispositions: Socializing spatial archaeology. American Anthropologist 104: 1172–1183. Binford LR (1980) Willow smoke and dog’s tails: Hunter-gather settlement systems and archaeological site formation. American Antiquity 45: 4–20. Blanton RE (1994) Houses and Households: A Comparative Study. New York: Plenum Press. Clarke DL (ed.) (1977) Spatial archaeology. New York: Academic Press. Flannery KV (ed.) (1976) The Early Mesoamerican Village. Toronto: Academic Press. Hillier B and Hanson J (1984) The Social Logic of Space. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hodder I and Orton C (1976) Spatial Analysis in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kent S (ed.) (1990) Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space: An interdisciplinary cross-cultural study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pugh T (2003) A cluster and spatial analysis of ceremonial architecture at Late Postclassic Mayapan. Journal of Archaeological Science 30: 941–953. Smith A (2003) The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities. Berkley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.

STABLE ISOTOPE ANALYSIS 2075

Stabilization of Materials

See: Conservation and Stabilization of Materials.

STABLE ISOTOPE ANALYSIS John Krigbaum, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary apatite (or bioapatite) Informal term for hydroxy(l)apatite, a group of phosphate minerals that comprise the mineral portion of bone. collagen A fibrous protein that is a principle constituent of bone, cartilage, and connective tissue. isotopic fractionation The difference in stable isotope ratios between food (substrate) and consumer (product) that occur during biochemical reactions. mass spectrometer Analytical instrument used to measure stable isotope ratios in sample materials compared to stable isotope ratio of a known standard. stable isotopes Chemical isotopes of an element that have an equal number of protons in their nuclei but differ in the number of neutrons present.

Arguably the most important analytical approach in archaeology since radiocarbon dating, stable isotope analysis of recovered archaeological remains provides semi-quantitative evidence for past diets and ecology. Light stable isotopes of carbon (13C,12C), nitrogen (15N,14N), and oxygen (18O,16O) are routinely used in biological and geological investigations to interpret isotopic variability in natural ecosystems. Heavy stable isotopes of strontium (87Sr/86Sr) and lead (208Pb/204Pb, 207Pb/204Pb, 206Pb/204Pb) are used to characterize place of origin and source of biological/ geological material. The application of stable isotope analysis using bone/tooth and other tissues in archaeology offers independent evidence to interpret individual and group patterns of subsistence, status, life history patterns, ecology, and provenience. Light stable isotope studies have proved a robust method for reconstructing human palaeodiet – inference of past subsistence (‘you are what you eat’) using chemical signatures from an individual’s tissues. Such primary isotopic evidence, derived directly from human remains, complements secondary subsistence evidence (faunal and floral remains) recovered from the archaeological record. Critical to interpreting stable isotope ratios is understanding their variation

and cycling in natural ecosystems, and establishing baseline data using modern plants and animals and associated archaeological remains. The dichotomy between terrestrial and marine ecosystems is particularly illustrative in delineating different subsistence regimes. Ecosystems such as freshwater systems are isotopically complex and future work must address these complexities in interpretative models using stable isotopes. New research questions focusing on palaeoclimate and provenience have expanded the scope of bone chemistry studies while advances in sampling and instrumentation have improved resolution and raised new research questions (see Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Methods).

Stable Isotopes and Ecosystems Stable isotopes of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen are most commonly used in archaeology studies exploring palaeodiet and/or palaeoenvironment. Problemoriented research in both field and laboratory settings underscores the validity of the technique. Stable isotopes of strontium and lead vary geologically and although detailed discussion falls beyond the scope of this review, their utility and import in archaeology is mentioned below. Table 1 presents a summary of the major isotopes used in stable isotope studies, their properties, their abundance, and their utility in archaeology. Stable isotopes of a given element have an equal number of protons but differ in the number of neutrons present in their nuclei. This in turn influences their atomic weight, resulting in differential reactivity, and permits subtle distinctions to be made in biological materials that can be measured by means of mass spectrometry. Carbon’s three isotopes serve as a classic example. The heaviest isotope, 14C, is unstable and decays at a known rate (half-life), while its two lighter isotopes, 13C and 12C, are stable, their mass unchanged over time. The carbon isotope ratio, the difference in ratios of 13C and 12C within a given sample, is compared to the ratio of a known standard. The final calculated ratio, its ‘delta C-13 value (d13C)’, is expressed in parts per thousand or per

2076 STABLE ISOTOPE ANALYSIS Table 1 Element

Stable isotope ratio

Delta notation

Source variation

Principal standard*

Archaeological utility

Carbon

13

d13C

PDB

Diet and ecology

Nitrogen Oxygen Strontium Lead

15

C3 plants (
19 to
35%) C4 plants (
9 to
15%) CAM plants (variable) Trophic level/water stress Climate/altitude/water stress Bedrock Bedrock

AIR PDB or SMOW N/A N/A

Diet and ecology Provenience and ecology Sourcing and provenience Sourcing and provenience

12

C/ C

N/14N O/16O 87 Sr/86Sr 208 Pb/204Pb 207 Pb/204Pb 206 Pb/204Pb 18

d15N d18O N/A N/A

*PDB ¼ PeeDee Belemnite (Belemnitella americana); SMOW ¼ standard mean ocean water. The major isotopes used in archaeology studies.

mil (%). For carbon, the standard is ‘PDB’, a marine carbonate, which is arbitrarily set to 0%. Most naturally occurring materials have lower 13C/12C ratios because they have less 13C and therefore more negative d13C values. The following equation is used to report isotopic data:
ð%Þ ¼ ½ðRsample
Rstandard Þ=Rstandard   1000 Stable isotopes react chemically in the same manner, but vary in natural systems due to differences in mass. Significant differences are maintained in biological systems and tissues through fractionation, whereby chemical and physical properties during biochemical reactions between tissues affect baseline values. With carbon, for example, the offset value is most significant between primary producer (plants) and primary consumer. Further isotopic differences can be explored between tissues of the same organism. Fractionation differences are a result of isotopic and kinetic effects as they become incorporated into different biological tissues. For terrestrial carbon, photosynthetic pathway is key to d13C variation in plants (primary producers) and consumer tissues. Plants can be grouped according to how they fix their source carbon (atmospheric CO2). Presently, atmospheric CO2 has a d13C of c.
7.0% while preindustrial values were c.
5.5%. This industrial effect must be addressed when interpreting d13C values in past systems. Plants that follow the Calvin (C3) photosynthetic pathway initially produce a three-carbon compound and include most trees, herbs, shrubs, and temperate grasses with modern d13C values averaging
27% (
23% to
35%). In contrast, plants that produce a four-carbon compound at the start of photosynthesis follow the Hatch–Slack (C4) pathway and include arid-adapted tropical grasses with values averaging
12% (
9% to
15%). Significantly, the d13C ranges of C3 and C4 plants do not

overlap. A third group of plants that utilize crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) photosynthesis include succulents such as pineapple and prickly pear – their d13C values overlap both C3 and C4 plants. Marine source carbon in the oceans is dissolved bicarbonate (HCO3
d13C ¼ 0%) with most of its C3 plants (phytoplankton, most algae, etc.) averaging
19%. Where C4 foods do not contribute to the diet, d13C values can be utilized to distinguish between terrestrial and marine-based dietary sources. d18O reflects temperature and relative precipitation, and has long been used as a proxy of ocean temperature, as indicator in sea cores to establish temperature curves. Although complex, d18O values are increasingly used in archaeology to infer seasonal patterns and mobility. d15N values vary by trophic level in both terrestrial and marine systems as a result of where plants obtain their source nitrogen. Plants have lower d15N values, especially N2-fixing legumes (beans, peas, etc.), while animals are enriched in 15N and have consistently more positive d15N values. Stable oxygen isotope values vary by temperature, principally, and extent of precipitation. As such, their utility is with respect to past climate patterns. In geochemistry, d18O is used as a principal proxy to infer ocean temperature based on CO2 derived from the shell of zooplankton. Greater d18O values (18O/16O) correlate with warmer conditions, due to the ease of movement of the heavier oxygen isotope. Animals that consume plants mirror the isotopic value of their diet in all of their biological tissues, including bone and teeth. Fractionation factors between plant and animal tissue are complex, and particularly germane with regard to d13C and d15N. With respect to d13C values, there is c. þ 8% enrichment with bone collagen and c. þ5% enrichment with bone/tooth apatite. For d15N, there is c. þ3% enrichment per trophic level, thus in marine systems, d15N values tend to be quite high in value.

STABLE ISOTOPE ANALYSIS 2077

Methodology Sample Materials

Most stable isotope ratio analysis in archaeology uses bone/tooth tissues from recovered human and animal remains. Other biological materials such as hair, nail, and muscle tissue may also be used if preservation is extraordinary. Residuals, such as encrustations on pottery, may also be analyzed using isotopic methods. Good bone preservation is paramount to producing good results, particularly with regard to retrieving its protein component, bone collagen. Bone apatite, its mineral component, also provides a biological signal and can be retrieved. Ideally, bone samples should have good cortical integrity and have not been applied with any preservative. Tooth enamel is used in palaeontological and palaeoecological applications, and increasingly in archaeology. Tooth enamel is less prone to diagenesis than bone, although rather than representing average diet over a period of years (as is represented by bone), ‘bulk’ analysis represents dietary intake during the time of crown formation (e.g., 2–3 years, for human molars). Advances in securing small samples at precise locations of dental tissues represents a means of coupling life history data with diet and ecology, reflecting dietary and environmental changes at weekly or monthly intervals. Preparation and Instrumentation

Methods for preparing bone and enamel samples for isotopic analysis are well established. Bone/tooth apatite is first physically cleaned and ground to a powder. The sample is then chemically cleaned in dilute bleach or hydrogen peroxide to remove organics. To remove secondary carbonates dilute acetic acid is used and then rinsed to neutral. For insoluble bone collagen, the sample is physically cleaned and demineralized in dilute acid (e.g., HCl), rinsed to neutral pH, and then freeze-dried for analysis.

Application Stable isotope analysis in archaeology was first clearly demonstrated in the late 1970s and focused on d13C from Woodland period human remains (bone collagen) in eastern North America. Here, pre-maize populations, with a C3-based diet, could be clearly distinguished from those populations dependent on

maize, a C4 plant. Diffusion of maize into eastern North America could be identified; however, d13C values suggested maize did not become a significant staple until well after its introduction to the region. Stable carbon isotopes provided independent evidence for maize consumption. When C4 foods do not factor in the diet, terrestrial C3 versus marine diet contrasts can be distinguished. d15N values also permit discrimination of marine diets and relative degree of carnivory. Advances in discrimination between fractions and the use of different isotopes permit nuanced assessments of palaeodiet. Application of heavy isotopes, in particular 87Sr/86Sr, have been used along with d18O values to infer provenience and patterns of migration in the archaeological record. See also: Americas, North: Eastern Woodlands; Bioarchaeology; Chemical Analysis Techniques; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Methods; Trace Element Analysis.

Further Reading Ambrose SH (1993) Isotopic analysis of paleodiets: Methodological and interpretive considerations. In: Sandford MK (ed.) Investigations of Ancient Human Tissue: Chemical Analyses in Anthropology, pp. 59–130. Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach Science. Ambrose SH and Katzenberg MA (eds.) (2000) Biogeochemical Approaches to Paleodietary Analysis. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Bentley RA (2006) Strontium isotopes from the earth to the archaeological skeleton: A review. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 13: 135–187. Bocherens H, van Klinken GJ, and Pollard AM (eds.) (1999) Special issue: Proceedings of the 5th Advanced Seminar on Paleodiet. Journal of Archaeological Science 26: 593–728. Koch PL and Burton J (eds.) (2003) Special issue: Bone chemistry. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 13: 1–113. Krigbaum J and Ambrose S (eds.) (2003) Special issue: Bone chemistry and bioarchaeology. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 22: 191–304. Lambert JB and Grupe G (eds.) (1993) Prehistoric Human Bone: Archaeology at the Molecular Level. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Price TD (ed.) (1989) The Chemistry of Prehistoric Human Bone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schoeninger MJ and Moore K (1992) Bone stable isotope studies in archaeology. Journal of World Prehistory 6: 247–296. Sillen A and Armelagos G (1991) Special issue: Second advanced seminar in paleodietary research. Journal of Archaeological Science 18: 225–416.

2078 STARCH GRAIN ANALYSIS

STARCH GRAIN ANALYSIS Judith Field, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary amyloplast A colorless plastid (specialized body in the cytoplasm of a cell) containing one or more starch grains. It acts chiefly as the center of starch formation. chloroplast Specialized cytoplasmic body containing chlorophyll. compound grains Compound grains may be composed of >2 granules to more than 100 individual granules, for example, Festucoideae and Chloridoideae grasses. faceting A small, smooth, flat area on one or more surfaces of a starch grain which forms either through tight packing grains with a cell or as a genetic feature of the granule. fissure A long narrow opening in the starch surface, usually around the hilum. It may be a feature of the grain or a flaw caused by dehydration or chemical attack. grain The grain may be either compound or simple. granule The individual part of a compound starch grain. hilum The nucleus or center of a starch grain around which layers of starch are deposited. lamellae Layers of the starch grain visible under certain light conditions which reflect the structure of the grain and are comprised of alternating layers of amylose and amylopectin. raphides Needle-like crystals composed of calcium carbonate or calcium oxalate. They are found in idioblasts, which are specialized plant cells and occur in yams and tubers of some plants and can often be identified to species from their morphological features. simple grain Consists of a single granule and are found in many taxa in the grass subfamily Panicoideae. starch birefringence When polarized light is used to view starch granules under the microscope, the individual granules exhibit a phenomenon known as birefringence. A characteristic ‘Maltese cross’ pattern is produced by the refraction of polarized light by the intact crystalline regions in starch. usewear The examination of the used edges of tools for patterns of wear. The four features usually documented are: polish, striations, rounding, and scarring. Individually or in combination, these attributes can be used to define the task, contact material, and in some cases duration of use of the artifact. voucher specimen Is an identified plant specimen that serves as a basis of study and is retained as a reference, usually in a staterun herbarium (see http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/).

Introduction As plant foods comprise a major part of the human diet, it is perhaps not surprising that the residues from the preparation of meals are preserved in sediments and on artifacts recovered from archaeological sites. Starch has become a major archaeological research tool in recent years, as the potential for identifying genus and species from the morphology (size, shape,

and surface features) of starch granules has been realized. The seminal work of E. T. Reichert in 1913 involved a comprehensive microscopic study of a range of starch-producing species. But only in the last 10 years or so have these principles been systematically applied to the interpretation of use-related residues in the archaeological record.

What Is Starch? Starch is a polysaccharide; specifically, a polymer of a-D-glucose. Starch is formed in chloroplasts in the green parts of plants, and in the amyloplasts of plant storage organs such as tubers, seeds, and sporocarps. Starch granules in chloroplasts are termed transient starch, are very small, and often have no distinguishing features. The starch granules formed in amyloplasts do not contain chlorophyll, are much larger than those produced in chloroplasts, and exhibit a range of morphologies. The size and shape of starch granules is governed by plant genetics and environment. There are two chemically distinguishable entities in starch: amylose (linear polymers) and amylopectin (highly branched polymers). Starch grains grow from a central point called the hilum with the accretion of layers of amylose and amylopectin (Figure 1). In transmitted, polarized light, starch granules exhibit a birefringent effect seen as an extinction cross (Figures 2a and 2b). If the angle of polarizing filters is changed, the extinction

20 µm

Figure 1 Plan view of a starch grain from Solanum tuberosum (potato) showing the hilum and lamellae (concentric lines) typical of starch. A fissure is present at the hilum of one of the starch grains. Photographed using a transmitted bright field microscope. Photograph: Judith Field.

STARCH GRAIN ANALYSIS 2079

10 µm 10 µm

(a)

(b) 10 µm

10 µm

(c)

(d)

10 µm 10 µm

(e)

(f)

Figure 2 (a) Starch granules under cross polars in a section of kernel from the black walnut, Endiandra palmerstonii. (b) The same section as (a), but viewed with differential interference contrast microscopy. (c) Plan (upper granules) and profile (lower granule) views of starch granules from the fern Marsilea drummondii, commonly referred to as nardoo, under differential interference contrast microscopy. Note the irregular margins, the folding of the surface, the faint lamellae, and the flattened area around the hilum. The apparent pinched ridge down the center of the grain shown in profile produces a different extinction cross to that seen when viewed in plan. Starch preparations shown in (a), (b), (c), (e), and (f) are mounted in Karo syrup, and (d) is mounted in Euparal (d) Plan views of starch granules from the tuber of Dioscorea bulbifera (hairy yam). Note the eccentric hilum (arrow) and the differences in shape and hilum position between this and the other starch granules. (e) Starch granules of the aquatic taxa Triglochin sp. (water ribbons). (f) Starch granules (compound form) of the grass Eragrostis eriopoda (woolybutt). Note the very small size of individual grains. Photographs: Judith Field.

cross follows the rotation of the filters, with the cross axis around the hilum. This feature allows the easy identification of starch in residue extractions. The investigation of archaeological indicators of starchy plant food use primarily involves the evaluation and documentation of the morphology of starch from different plants and plant organs, rather than the study of starch residue biochemistry. The analysis of

starch grain morphology is particularly useful as conclusive results can be obtained from the typically small quantities of starch recovered from archaeological sediments and artifacts (e.g., for soil: 50 granules/ 10 gram of sediment). Importantly, the questions most commonly asked of starch residue analysis relate to identifying specific and/or multifunctional plant use, and the identification of the plants being processed.

2080 STARCH GRAIN ANALYSIS

Identification of Utilized Plants Starch granules can often be identified to family, and in some cases to genus. Not all starch can be identified to this level because there are significant overlaps in size and shape between some species. Numerous identification keys have been developed for starches, but these are often difficult to apply to archaeological residues that commonly consist of a ‘soup’ of material recovered from a stone surface. Starch granule identification is most likely when ethnographic evidence indicates a limited list of possible species, and/or where accessory plant material such as tissue remnants, phytoliths (see Phytolith Analysis), and raphides (calcium oxalate crystals) are also present. Comparative Reference Collections

Modern comparative reference collections are an essential component of starch research. A comprehensive reference collection of economic and noneconomic starch-producing species obtained from the study area can provide a clear indication of the expected types that may occur in the archaeological sample. Because relevant economic species vary from place to place, comparative reference material needs to be compiled on a regional basis. Species lists for a particular area are mainly compiled from local informants, ethnographic accounts, and botanical surveys. A detailed description of these assemblages is the important first step to identifying starch to family or genus. Consultation with botanists and their collections is important for obtaining advice on collection techniques, herbarium preparation (including voucher specimens), and for compiling reference collections that include multiple specimens of each species. Variation in starch grain size is known to occur with changing environmental conditions, and the magnitude of this variability must be assessed among all reference taxa before archaeological assemblages can be effectively assessed.

Preliminary microscopic examination (low and high power) and documentation of residues is essential, prior to extraction and processing. Microscopic examination provides information about the location and type of residues present on the artifact. Starch granules, distinctive by their birefringence and extinction cross under polarizing filters, can easily be observed at this stage. The isolation of starch residues should also be undertaken with consideration to other residues that may also be present on the tool surface or edges. For example, the study of phytoliths from a tool surface has the potential to provide strong supporting evidence for the interpretations drawn from starch analysis. Other related plant material, such as fragments of xylem and phloem or raphides, may also be preserved on the artifact surface. If the tool was a multifunctional item, residues of blood, hair, or feathers may also be present (see Blood Residue Analysis). It is extremely advantageous to tailor the extraction procedure for the maximum recovery of residues from an artifact surface. Following microscopic documentation of an artifact, the residue can be extracted from the tool surface for more detailed study. Analysis can proceed by employing ‘whole tool’ extraction techniques, or by targeting specific areas on the artifact surface, thereby conserving some of the residue. The samples are then processed using heavy liquid and centrifugation to isolate the starch granules from the original sample. It is essential to verify that the residues analyzed are the original remnants of processing in antiquity and do not represent contamination from the surrounding depositional matrix. An analysis of the sediments both close to and distant from the artifact studied and from the unused surfaces may influence the interpretation of results. This is why a hierarchical approach (microscopy, documentation, extractions, etc.) to the study of residues is so important and that sound positive and negative experimental controls are incorporated into any research design.

What Residues and Where? An artifact used for the preparation of starchy foods is likely to retain some of the residues associated with use on its surface. The processing of tubers, fruits, seeds, or roots generally results in the accumulation of starch and associated material (e.g., raphides, other cellular material) on most of the tool surface. Material that has been heavily impacted onto the surface (through pounding or grinding) is more likely to survive. In general, the survival of material occurs on or near the used surfaces/edges and in imperfections in the tool surface (see Organic Residue Analysis).

Starch in the Burial Environment When starch grains are heated in the presence of water, the intermolecular bonds within the starch begin to break down and the molecular order within the crystalline region of the grains is disrupted. This process, known as gelatinization, causes starch grains to lose their birefringent properties. Gelatinization may occur over a relatively narrow temperature range (a window of 5–10  C) and is complete when all granules in a population exhibit irreversible changes in optical properties. Gelatinization

STARCH GRAIN ANALYSIS 2081

temperature varies with size and species, with large granules apparently the most susceptible to gelatinization (from approximately 50  C). Remarkably, ethnographic studies of the preparation of toxic starchy plants in tropical north Queensland, Australia, have shown that starch may retain its birefringent properties after baking of whole material (at temperatures in excess of 100  C), followed by pounding and leaching in water. The mechanisms determining the survival of starch in sediments and on stone tools are poorly understood. That it does survive for thousands of years in archaeological contexts is well documented. Some archaeological/fossil starch survives aggressive chemical treatment, including heating, during the extraction process. Starch in sediments has been recovered from arid zone contexts dating to over 100 000 years and from soils and artifacts from tropical sites dated to over 5000 years. Suggested explanations for the protection of starch from degradation include the formation of some type of silica coating making it inert, and association with/adsorption onto mineral surfaces, such as stone tools, soil minerals, ceramics, or bone

mineral. Further research is needed to fully understand the processes involved in starch preservation and degradation in the burial environment.

Starch Attributes Starch granules exhibit a diverse array of morphological characteristics. Granules vary in size from just a few microns in maximum dimension up to at least 100 mm in a few instances (e.g., Figures 2c–2f). While some starch granules have a very distinctive size and shape, the majority require consideration of a range of additional features before they can be securely identified. When dealing with largely variable archaeological starch assemblages, a useful initial characterization involves an analysis of maximum dimensions within a statistically significant sample, usually 100 granules for comparative reference samples and 30 granules from an extracted archaeological residue (Figure 3). Other important morphological features in the identification of starches are whether the granules are compound or simple in form, the presence or

70

60

Length (µm)

50

40

30

20

Marsilea drummondii

Calostemma purpureum

Acacia aneura

Panicum decompositum

CS6023B

10

Figure 3 Box plot plus outliers of maximum dimensions of selected reference material presented with the range of starch granule sizes from an archaeological grinding stone (CS6023) from the semi-arid zone site of Cuddie Springs in southeastern Australia (>100 granules measured). Most grains from this tool fall within the range of Poaceae and Acacia. The extraction contained granules that were compound grains typical of grasses (as opposed to Acacia, which have simple granules). Furthermore, phytoliths typical of grasses were abundant in the same sample and wear traces on the stone surface were consistent with highly siliceous (cf. grasses) contact material. Illustration: Braddon Lance.

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absence of lamellae, granule shape (defined in terms of standard botanical descriptors); fissures at the hilum, eccentricity of the hilum, and granule faceting. It should be noted that the shape of the extinction cross is not an accurate descriptor, as its shape changes depending on the orientation of the granule under polarized light (see Figures 2a and 2b).

Research Outcomes Used in conjunction with other analyses including usewear, studies of other organic remains, and ethnographic evidence, studies of ancient starch have shown great potential for investigating past subsistence practices and the emergence of plant-processing technologies such as the development of seedgrinding technologies in different parts of the world and the use of roots/tubers in tropical regions. For example, at site Site 8-B-11 at Sai Island in northern Sudan, starch granules and phytoliths are associated with flat bright polish on pounding tools dated to around 200 000 years and have been interpreted as an indicator of modern human behavior. Other research has provided compelling arguments for the development of grass seed grinding in the Australian arid zone around 27–30 thousand years ago, the appearance of which has been tied into a changing resource base and local environmental change; grinding of barley and wheat at 20 thousand years ago in the Near East; and the systematic use of taro around 10 thousand years ago at Kuk Swamp in the New Guinea highlands. Starch analysis, in conjunction with examination of macrobotanical remains (see Macroremains Analysis), has been important in identifying the nature of plant use in the Orinoco Valley in Venezuela. Linda Perry’s study tested the notion that certain artifact types performed a single function and were associated with the processing of particular food types such as maize. Her results demonstrated that there was not a focus either on manioc or maize; instead, a broad-based diet consisting of root crops, maize, and palms was evident. It is apparent from this and the other studies mentioned above that starch grain analysis can provide an important avenue of research in identifying artifact function and plant use through time from a variety of contexts ranging from the tropics to arid zone locations. Starch residue

analysis is at the cutting edge of current archaeological research, the potential of which is only now being realized. While documenting and extracting residues for study is relatively straightforward, the analysis of archaeological starch residues is a relatively new field. Ongoing research will establish standardized methods for quantification as well as determining the mechanisms responsible for the preservation of starch over archaeological timescales. See also: Blood Residue Analysis; Macroremains Analysis; Organic Residue Analysis; Paleoethnobotany; Phytolith Analysis; Pollen Analysis.

Further Reading Fullagar R and Field J (1997) Pleistocene seed grinding implements from the Australian arid zone. Antiquity 71: 300–307. Fullagar R, Field J, Denham T, and Lentfer (2006) Early and mid Holocene processing of taro (Colocasia esculenta) and yam (Dioscorea sp.) at Kuk Swamp in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Journal of Archaeological Science 33: 595–614. Fullagar R, Field J, and Kealhofer L (in press) Grinding stones and seeds of change: Starch and phytoliths as evidence of plant food processing. In: Rowan YM and Ebeling JR (eds.) New Approaches to Old Stones: Recent Studies of Ground Stone Artifacts. Equinox Publishing P/L. Hather JG (ed.) (1994) Tropical Archaeobotany: Applications and New Developments. London: Routledge. Pearsall D (2003) Maize in ancient Ecuador: Results of residue analysis of stone tool from the Real Alto site. Journal of Archaeological Science 31: 423–442. Perry L (2003) Starch analyses reveal the relationship between tool type and function: an example from the Orinoco valley of Venezuela. Journal of Archaeological Science 31: 1069–1081. Piperno DR, Weiss E, Holst I, and Nadel D (2004) Processing of wild cereal grains in the Upper Palaeolithic revealed by starch grain analysis. Nature 430: 670–673. Reichert ET (1913) The Differentiation and Specificity of Starches in Relation to Genera, Species etc. London: Chapman. Torrence R and Barton H (eds.) (2006) Ancient Starch Research. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, Inc. VanPeer P, Fullagar R, Stokes S, et al. (2003) The Early to Middle Stone Age transition and the emergence of modern human behaviour at site 8-B-11, Sai Island, Sudan. Journal of Human Evolution 45: 187–193.

Relevant Website http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu – Preparation of Plant Specimens for Deposit as Herbarium Vouchers, Florida Museum of Natural History.

STATE-LEVEL SOCIETIES, COLLAPSE OF 2083

STATE-LEVEL SOCIETIES, COLLAPSE OF Gyles Iannone, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary Akkadian Empire The state that grew up around the city of Akkad north of Sumer, reaching its greatest extent under Sargon of Akkad. collapse The loss – sometimes quite abruptly – of a significant degree of extant sociopolitical complexity. Harappa An ancient fortifed city, which was part of the Cemetery H culture and the Indus Valley Civilization, the ancient city existed from about 3300 BCE until 1600 BCE near the former course of the Ravi River. Indus Valley Civilization An ancient riverine civilization that flourished in the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra river valleys in what is now Pakistan and northwestern India. Mesoamerica An archaeological culture area within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Mesopotamia The region now occupied by modern Iraq, eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and Southwest Iran, often referred to as the ‘Cradle of Civilization,’ since it was here that the first literate societies developed in the late 4th millennium BC, using a highly sophisticated writing system in the context of the emergence of the first cities and complex state bureaucracies. Mohenjo-daro Literally meaning ‘mound of the dead’, it was a city of the Indus Valley Civilization built around 2600 BC and is now located in the Sindh Province of Pakistan. Tikal It is the largest of the ancient ruined cities of the Maya civilization.

Scholars and laypeople alike have long been captivated by the ‘ruins’ of ancient civilizations (Figure 1). Nevertheless, the romantic appeal of crumbling buildings and fallen monuments has rarely translated into focused efforts to understand what caused the various ‘collapses’ that have been documented in places such as Mesopotamia, Mycenaean Greece, Rome, Han China, South Asia (Indus civilization), Southeast Asia (Angkor Wat), Mesoamerica (the Maya, Teotihuacan, and Monte Alban), and the Andes (the Moche and Tiwanaku). The questions that immediately emerge when one considers these various examples of collapse include: Why did a particular state collapse when it did? Why did some early states collapse, whereas others did not? What made some states more vulnerable to collapse than others? The examination of the various instances of collapse is important for two main reasons. For one, the study of early states has tended to emphasize stability, expansion, and the irreversible nature of evolutionary progress. In contrast, the study of collapse requires

scholars to deal with the opposing concepts of societal flux, contraction, and the concomitant reversibility of fortunes. As such, one of the reasons that collapse studies have such value is because they force us to look at early states in ways that are more often than not directly opposed to our traditional viewpoint. Collapse studies can therefore bring a more balanced perspective to our understanding of the character of early state formations. In broader terms, our current interest in the collapse of early states is not simply tied to our innate attraction to romantic mysteries. By studying the collapse of early states it is also hoped that archaeologists will be able to illustrate some of the mistakes that were made in the past, and in doing so, provide lessons that are useful for contemporary society.

What Have We Learned About the Collapse of Early States? Although scholars have spent considerably more time examining the ‘rise’ of early states, the study of their collapse has also generated some key insights. Some of these are discussed below. How Stable Were Early States?

One area of consensus emerges from the fact that few scholars support a societal model which considers states – or other sociopolitical formations for that matter – to be perpetually stable. It has been demonstrated time and time again that no early state demonstrated a pure linear progression from its rise to its fall. All exhibit developmental sequences that are punctuated by eras of growth and decline – a fact that is captured by what has come to be referred to as the ‘dynamic model’. These smaller-scale cycles of integration and disintegration imply that holding an early state together was a difficult task. Nevertheless, it is important to stress that, although collapses can be viewed as components of a larger developmental sequence, which also includes smaller cycles of expansion and contraction, collapses themselves are unique in that they are far more impressive, and final.

What Are the General Characteristics of Collapse? There is also increasing agreement as to what constitutes a collapse. Here the author follows the widely held definition which considers a ‘collapse’ to be the loss – sometimes quite abruptly – of a significant

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Figure 1 Tikal’s temples rise majestically above their jungle shroud. (Photo by Gyles Iannone.)

degree of extant sociopolitical complexity. The actual characteristics of a collapse can vary, but they generally include a number of the following: (1) a shift toward less sociopolitical complexity; (2) a continuation of some of the characteristics of the state, such as the institution of kingship – but this is often accompanied by significant ideological changes, greater power sharing, and the involvement of multiple individuals in the ruling process (i.e., council rule); (3) less prominence given to individual rulers; (4) a decline in economic specialization – this occurs on the individual, community, and regional scales; (5) less centralized control of the economy and decision-making process; (6) less behavioral control; (7) less emphasis on elite culture, such as monumental architecture, art, status symbols, and writing; (8) some centers witness an abrupt halt to elite construction projects (sometimes in mid-construction); (9) art and art styles often change, and become less standardized; (10) communication networks that previously linked the various components of the state breakdown; (11) redistributive and trade networks breakdown; (12) there are fewer overall linkages between the various communities within the region; (13) a dramatic decrease in the size of unified territories; and (14) to varying degrees, there is a decline in population and abandonment of communities – the upper tier communities are often the first to go; however, people may continue to live within

the ‘ruins’ of the cities, and smaller communities may also be abandoned over time.

Where Do We Disagree? Lest one takes the aforementioned points of consensus as indicative of the fact that scholars are in general agreement when it comes to the subject of collapse, it is crucial to point out that there are many more points of contention. These are discussed in detail below. How Significant Were Collapse Events?

On one level, there is considerable debate as to how significant collapses were. Traditionally, collapses have been viewed as devastating events which lead to rapid socioeconomic, sociopolitical, ideological, and demographic degeneration that played itself out on a regional, or sometimes even a wider, scale. Recently, however, scholars working in many parts of the world have questioned the validity of such apocalyptic scenarios. These researchers make the important point that, even when states ‘collapse’, not all economic, social, or political institutions are affected equally – some of the building blocks for a new state often remain after the ‘fall’. In addition, there is great variability with respect to the degree of demographic decline that coincides with a collapse. For these reasons, some researchers shun the term collapse altogether in favor

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of less loaded labels, such as transformation, transition, and realignment. The point being, when discussing the developmental cycle of a particular early state, the terminology one uses is crucial. The definition employed herein, which views a collapse as ‘‘the loss – sometimes quite abruptly – of a significant degree of extant sociopolitical complexity’’, seems to apply in most instances. But, it is still incumbent upon the researcher to make a clear distinction between whether a state simply went into decline, or whether it ceased to exist altogether. What Is Deemed to Have Collapsed?

Another point of contention also emerges from the need to be clear about what has collapsed. Specifically, it has been argued that archaeologists need to be more precise with regard to whether a society, civilization, empire, or state has collapsed. The collapse of a civilization refers exclusively to the decline of a ‘great cultural tradition’. In other words, it implies the collapse of a culture area encompassing a number of empires and/or states. More common is the collapse of an empire, which refers to the demise of a long-lasting sociopolitical federation encompassing a number of previously independent states. Even more frequent is the collapse of a state, which, as one might expect, involves the fragmentation, or balkanization, of a single state. Finally, the most ambiguous concept is that of the collapse of a society. Nevertheless, it remains a useful notion if one considers the fact that the demise of a ‘society’ is different from the ‘collapse’ of a civilization, or the ‘political fragmentation’ of a state. After all, social breakdowns can occur without the political breakdown of a state, and vice versa. Why Did Some Early States Collapse?

Without a doubt, the area of greatest debate within the realm of collapse studies continues to revolve around the question: Why did some early states collapse? A myriad of data sets, and a plethora of theoretical frameworks, have been marshaled to answer this question. At this juncture, there is little consensus as to what the key causative factors were. However, we are getting closer to developing a general model for collapse that can guide our thinking as we evaluate specific case studies. In general terms, explanations for collapse tend to fall into two broad categories: external and internal reasons. External explanations focus on causative factors that are environmental and/or inter-societal in origin. In contrast, internal explanations emphasize causative factors that originate within the economic, political, or ideological

spheres of the society, civilization, empire, or state that is deemed to have collapsed. External reasons: ecological and environmental factors In discussing external reasons for collapse, one must emphasize causative factors that were, for the most part, beyond the control of the entity that has collapsed (e.g., droughts, or invasions). One ecological disaster that has been postulated to have caused collapse is epidemic diseases, but evidence for this is limited at best. Some of the other environmental, and/or ecological, factors that have been suggested to have played a role in the collapse of early states include natural catastrophes, such as volcanoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes. One problem with these explanations has always been that, although some centers may have been affected by these calamities, there is little evidence to suggest that they would have devastated a wide enough area to stimulate a regional collapse. In addition, it has been pointed out by some that catastrophes happen all the time and states have always found ways to deal with them. The most convincing environmental explanation for collapse continues to be the mega-drought hypothesis. A number of researchers have employed archaeological and palaeoclimatic data to suggest that increased aridity and long-term droughts caused many of the collapses that have been documented throughout the world during the Holocene. Of significance here is that, although inter-annual and decadal droughts are not necessarily always devastating, multidecadal and multicentury droughts are clearly much more difficult to contend with. Also crucial to this explanation is the fact that the shift into and out of these drier periods may be quite abrupt – occurring over less than a decade. The drought-induced collapse models vary in their expectations. Some see droughts as bringing an abrupt, and cruel end to a society – people died of famine and thirst because of a climatic change that they had no control over. Others give people more credit, arguing that, faced with uncontrollable drought, societies consciously shifted to less complex forms of sociopolitical and socioeconomic organization, and abandoned large, urban centers in favor of smaller settlements that were easier to support in the new conditions brought on by the sudden climatic shifts. The key for most of the advocates of this model is that societies are neither powerless in the face of these shifts, nor do they exhibit unlimited adaptability in the face of these climatic changes. From this perspective, collapses were actually adaptive responses to stresses that were impossible to overcome because social, technological, and subsistence innovations could not be developed

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quickly enough to counter the pace and degree of the climatic shifts. In the end, the mega-drought hypothesis clearly has some efficacy, particularly if it is combined as part of a multicausal model. If, however, it is employed as a single-causal explanation for all collapses, it must be considered both deterministic and overly simplistic. External reasons: inter-societal factors The second external model suggests that conflicts with another complex society can lead to the collapse of one, or both, of the states. An alternative model suggests that dominant states can even be overthrown by a weaker one (e.g., a ‘barbarian invasion’). There are a number of problems with such models. For one, state level conflicts more often than not lead to periods of centralization and decentralization, rather than true collapses. In addition, where one state is able to get the upper hand in a conflict, it is often because the other state has already entered a period of decline (i.e., the subsequent invasion is a ‘result’ of the collapse, rather than its cause). Finally, if a state is invaded when it is still comparatively strong, the tendency is for the invading state to amalgamate the conquered one. Thus, collapse is technically avoided. Internal reasons: economic factors In terms of internal causative factors, economic problems have long been touted as explanations for the collapse of early states. There are, in fact, many variations on the economic disaster model, but most follow a similar pattern. To begin with, it is suggested that the emergence of settled communities, and the concomitant increase in populations, inevitably led to greater strain on natural resources, and the environment in general. Key here is that an agricultural economy, which has almost always been a prerequisite for the emergence of large communities – and eventually states – requires clearing of large sections of the landscape, and the creation of artificial ecosystems. These artificial habitats almost always work against the checks and balances of the natural ecosystem; there are fewer plant types, less ground cover, greater levels of soil erosion, and ongoing depletion of nutrients. Agricultural economies invariably strip the land of resources, and unless fertilizers are used, or fallow systems employed effectively, landscapes are quickly stripped of their ability to support plant growth. Irrigation is even more damaging because this mode of agriculture creates an even more artificial environment. Central to this model is the fact that, when resources are abundant, and the state is in expansion mode, it is not only the number of producing households that grows, but also the elite segment of society. This is

crucial because unchecked elite growth will quickly tax the system as progressively greater percentages of the production surplus will be appropriated to support elite initiatives, and the overall state apparatus. As a result, greater levels of agricultural intensification will be required, which will initially lead to higher yields. But, from a negative perspective, it will also further population growth, and eventually require the expansion into new, but less productive lands. If this process continues, elite demands on the agricultural economy will inevitably increase the degree of environmental damage, outstrip the productive capabilities of the agrarian economy, and hasten collapse. With respect to the explanatory potential of this model, it is noteworthy that environmental degradation has been demonstrated to have occurred as part of a number of collapse sequences. Nevertheless, it is often difficult to determine whether it is a ‘cause’ or an ‘effect’. In fact, although some argue that unchecked population growth is the primary cause for the collapse of early agrarian states, it is likely more accurate to say that population growth leads to political instability because the agricultural economy can no longer support the state apparatus at its present level of complexity. This is because state revenues often start declining even though its expenditures are still increasing. Internal reasons: sociopolitical factors The various sociopolitical models for collapse are firmly grounded in the notion that states are inherently unstable because they are rife with conflicting relationships. One area of perpetual conflict exists within the ranks of the nobility. Among these societal elites the rulers often come into conflict with the rest of the nobility, and the rest of the nobility are invariably at odds with each other, because the various members of the upper class strive for greater wealth and prestige through conflicting claims to the state’s surplus agricultural yields, labor, raw materials, and manufactured goods. The palace intrigue that customarily ensues has been well documented by almost every book ever written about historic states. Another point of perpetual conflict emerges between the rulers and their support population. This is because the rulers attempt to centralize political power within the institutions they have direct control over, whereas the rest of the population strives to maintain political power within their more traditional, localized political institutions. Thus, the ruler and his/her centralized bureaucracy are often in conflicting relationships with the more established nobles, farmers, and craft specialists who inhabit the rural zones of the state. To continue to grow, or for that matter exist, the

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center must extract surplus produce and labor from their support population, and they need to justify the extraction of these resources because these are goods and services that could be put to good use by the various social units inhabiting the rural areas falling within the state’s territorial ambit. To justify the appropriation, the state provides defense, dispute-solving mechanisms, access to trade networks, greater wealth through the expansion of territorial claims, and special connections to the gods. The elite claims to surplus are also aided by a propaganda machine that strives to promote collective state identity. As long as the support population considers the return for the resources that are extracted from them to be acceptable, the state will remain relatively stable. Nevertheless, the more traditional organizational structures of the support population are never fully controlled by the state, and thus there is always a level of conflict and contradiction between the two. This is another reason why the state is almost always in a state of flux: when the wants and needs of the more stable institutions of the support population are no longer being met, either because they are being ignored by the state, the state has entered a mode wherein it is attempting to maximize its extraction strategies at the expense of other sectors of society, or because the state can no longer provide the services expected of it, the various leaders within the support population may be less forthcoming with respect to providing goods and services. When the state can no longer extract the resources it needs to sustain its various institutions, collapse will occur. In the end, the institutions of the support population will outlast the less well-established institutions of the state because the former are based on more stable, and traditional, kinship-based economic and social relationships. In summary, the political models for collapse seem to have a high degree of explanatory potential. However, it is once again advisable to consider political breakdown as one component of a multicausal explanation, because it is clear that economic and ideological factors are also at play in this model. Internal reasons: ideological factors Collapse models based on ideological factors are not only the most variable, but also the least data driven. Some of the more popular models suggest that early states collapsed because: (1) the ‘creative spirit’ of the state starts to break down, and the majority of the population begin to feel disconnected with the elite minority, which leads to disunity; (2) the shared ideological beliefs that once held a populace together begin to dissipate; or (3) states are governed by prophecies and/or cyclical, preordained periods of growth and decline.

One of the more eloquent models for ideological collapse suggests that societies, and civilizations, are more stable when they are built upon internal conflicts and contradictions that can never be satisfactorily overcome. States with such internal rifts tend to last longer, on the order of milleniums, because the constant conflict, negotiation, and temporary compromises breathe continual life into the various relationships that recreate the society on a daily basis. In contrast, societies, and/or civilizations, that are grounded in a harmonious ideology are ‘too perfect’, and hence too static, and thus vulnerable to any internal or external change. Such organizations, whether they are societies, civilizations, or states, tend to have shorter life-spans – on the order of centuries – because they are predisposed to collapse. The problem with all of these theories is that they are very difficult to prove. That is not to say that ideological factors did not figure prominently in the various examples of collapse. Nevertheless, it is highly unlikely that a once successful civilization simply ‘thought’ itself into ruins. There must have been some tangible, economic, social, and/or political factors involved as well. Collapse as a Complex Phenomenon

Most contemporary scholars agree that it is unlikely that any collapse was a single causal event. At the same time, it is equally problematic to fall back on the idea that collapses occurred because a lot of things went bad all at once; we must seek a middle ground between these two approaches if we are going to learn from the past. Equally important is the fact that how a society responds to crisis will reflect its unique economic, social, political, ideological, and cultural institutions. Individual collapse sequences are historically contingent – as will be demonstrated in the following discussion. Nevertheless, from a scholarly perspective, it is still useful to try to develop more inclusive models that can ‘guide’ our thinking about collapse in all instances, regardless of the unique details that one must contend with when dealing with individual collapse sequences. This topic will be addressed in the final section of this treatise.

Case Studies Mesopotamia: The Collapse of the Akkadian Empire (c. 2350–2200 BC)

Between c. 3000 and 2350 BC, the ancient Mesopotamian city-states emerged in what is now Iraq, eastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey. Each of these citystates had a central hub which was signified by a walled, urban community. Although the various

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city-states were politically independent, they shared an economy based on grain farming, focused on barley and wheat, and the herding of sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle. In the latter part of the third millennium BC, Sargon the Great set out to unify the competing city-states under his rule. His Akkadian Empire emerged in the alluvial plain between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and it linked northern Mesopotamia, with its rain-fed fields, and southern Mesopotamia, and its extensive irrigation systems. Sargon began his conquest from the city-state of Kish, and eventually established a new capital at Akkade. Sargon’s rule put an end to the endemic warfare between the various city-states in the region – at least for a while. Sargon’s control over the other city-states was hegemonic in nature, although he also installed his own officials to administer alongside the local rulers. Sargon’s officials were specifically charged with making sure that the overarching hegemonic citystate received its share of the surplus produced by the various tributary city-states he controlled. In order to depict his royal qualities, Sargon cultivated a variety of new artistic traditions, including the creation of cylinder seals. Naram-Sin, Sargon’s grandson, would manipulate the ideology further, when he began to use the semantic classifier ‘divinity’ to suggest that he was different than normal humans, and that his claim to the office of king was based on divine authority. Nevertheless, regardless of the many political and ideological changes that had been initiated to justify, and legitimize, the new world order, the Akkadian Empire collapsed shortly after the death of Naram-Sin. There are various theories as to what caused the Akkadian collapse. Some have argued that the Akkadian Empire was unstable from the outset. This instability was particularly evident during the transition period from one ruler to the next. Such periods were rife with factional competition. Even when the hegemonic empire was at its strongest, conflicts between the King’s officials and their local counterparts over land allocations, and the redistribution of surplus resources and labor, were never-ending. A second problem emerged because the empire likely extended itself too far in efforts to gain more territory. Specifically, the costs of funding both the conquest wars, and the administrative apparatus that was required to maintain the new territories, put great strain on the domestic economy. Unable to mediate these two areas of conflict, the Akkadian Empire collapsed. Ultimately, the costs associated with political unification, and military expansion, were too great. The traditional rulers eventually pulled away, and the various city-states regained their autonomy.

Thus, from this perspective, the collapse was caused by a combination of insurmountable economic and political problems. An alternative explanation posits an ecological explanation for the collapse. This model suggests that the Akkadian Empire rose during a period of wetter conditions. In contrast, the onset of the collapse coincided with a sudden shift to a more arid climate. Specifically, there is evidence to suggest that a 300-year dry-period began in and around 2150 BC. Even though water-management and food-storage strategies had been adopted by the Akkadians, these, apparently, could not stave off the collapse. In summary, the ecological model implies that a sudden climatic shift, and the onset of a multicentury drought, may have caused the collapse. The Mesopotamians were not at fault; they were simply unable to respond effectively to climatic changes over which they had no control. A related theory argues that the Mesopotamian economic system was inherently unstable. This is because civilizations that emerged in this region were reliant on water storage and irrigation because rainfall was generally low, and because the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers are at their lowest between August and October – when the crops most needed water. Initially, water storage and irrigation solved these problems, but only in the short-term. Given the high evaporation rate, the salt content of the irrigated lands soon rose. In addition, waterlogging was prevalent due to the low permeability of the soils, and the slow rate of drainage in the flat lands. The only solution to this problem is long periods of fallow and the cessation of irrigation. But, the structure of Mesopotamian society did not allow for this. In fact, the problem was exacerbated over time due to rising populations, the need to feed the growing state apparatus (i.e., bureaucrats, soldiers), the costs of elite construction programs, and increasing competition between the various city-states. This meant that intensive agricultural production only increased, leaving no room for an efficient fallow system because the short-term needs of the state outweighed the longterm damage being done to the environment. In summary, this last model suggests that, rather than making useful changes on the societal scale to deal with their environmental and economic issues, the elite sought old answers to new problems (e.g., larger temples, more grandiose rituals and ceremonies, increased irrigation, shorter fallow periods, and misappropriation of surplus). In the end, they tried to intensify production, which only hastened the decline. As a result, this model implies that the people of southern Mesopotamia were clearly responsible for their collapse.

STATE-LEVEL SOCIETIES, COLLAPSE OF 2089 South Asia: The Rise and Fall of the Indus Civilization (2600–1900 BC)

Indus civilization emerged in what is now western Pakistan, along the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra Rivers, and the adjacent region now comprising northwestern India. In this macro-region the subsistence economy was based on the growing of wheat and barley, and the herding of goats, sheep, and some ‘humped’ cattle. The first signs of incipient urbanism make there appearance here during the Integration Era – or what is also referred to as the Mature Harappan Phase (2600–1900 BC). At this time we not only see the emergence of true cities, but also a whole range of satellite communities. Writing also becomes more prevalent, a taxation system appears to have been introduced, and there is a clear social hierarchy. It was also during the Integration Era that we see a shift away from regionalism, to a greater degree of macro-regional homogeneity. The material culture that supports this interpretation includes unifying symbols on ritual items, painted pottery, and ornaments, as well as standardized weights and measures, and the adoption of similar urban plans. All of this implies that the various cities were unified on a cultural level – although there is no evidence that they were politically unified. Indications are that there were at least five main Indus cities: Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, Ganweriwala, Dholavira, and Rakhigarhi. These cities were comprised of large mound complexes enclosed by walls, and surrounded by extensive, organized settlement. Some view the central mound complexes as having had an administrative orientation – others disagree as to their function. There is also little consensus as to the nature of Indus Valley political organization. However, most support the idea that they were organized as a series of independent city-states. After a relatively short period of prosperity, these various city-states began to encounter problems that eventually led to a return to regionalism, and the breakdown of the economic and political structures that developed during the Integration Era. Specifically, by 1900 BC Indus civilization witnessed a period of significant balkanization that led to the reemergence of smaller communities, and their local leaders, as key power-brokers. The unifying artifacts of the previous period also disappeared, and the connections between the various regions diminished dramatically. As part of the decline, seals and writing fell out of use, as did the taxation system, and the system of standardized measures and weights. Further cultural changes are signified by changes in ritual objects and mortuary practices. Finally, the city-states themselves witnessed varying degrees of abandonment.

Mohenjo-Daro was virtually abandoned in 1900 BC. Harappa was not totally abandoned, but its population did shrink dramatically – it was clearly not a ‘city’ anymore. Ganweriwala, Dholavira, and Rakhigarhi also declined to the extent that they could no longer be considered cities. There were also population decreases and abandonment in the smaller settlements throughout the macro-region. Some prefer not to call what happened in the Indus Valley at the start of the second millennium BC a ‘collapse’. However, given the aforementioned evidence, what happened clearly fits the definition of ‘collapse’ as ‘‘the loss – sometimes quite abruptly – of a significant degree of extant sociopolitical complexity’’. What remains to be determined, therefore, is not whether this was a ‘collapse’ or not, but rather what caused the demise of the Indus city-states. One environmental explanation for the collapse suggests that: (1) the trade networks and political alliances were vulnerable to environmental changes and downturns in agricultural production; (2) the Indus River began to change its course repeatedly, flooding many settlements, and burying some under massive amounts of silt; and (3) the frequent floods and changes to the river courses wreaked havoc upon the agricultural system, and hence the economic foundations of the Indus states were negatively impacted. A related economic model contends that – as was the case in Mesopotamia – agricultural intensification through irrigation was required to generate the surpluses needed to feed the burgeoning support populations, bureaucrats, craft specialists, soldiers, priests, and elite who comprised each city-state. Because the Indus Valley was arid, the soils were impermeable and prone to waterlogging. Irrigation thus served to raise the water table which, due to the high evaporation rate, led to increased salt content in the soils. Significantly, there is again evidence that the Indus Valley civilization emerged during a period of favorable, wetter climatic conditions. However, a period of dryer climate began shortly thereafter, around 2200 BC. This would have exacerbated the salinity problem. In the end, the damage done to the field systems by the rising salt levels inevitably led to a decline in crop yields, and the eventual demise of the city-states. Finally, a purely ideological explanation for the collapse has also been put forth. This model suggests that the Indus Valley centers were based on a shared and harmonious ideology that was ‘too perfect’. That is, because it was too harmonious, and without the types of conflict and negotiation that characterize long-lived civilizations, the Indus ideology was also inherently static, and thus vulnerable to any internal or external change.

2090 STATE-LEVEL SOCIETIES, COLLAPSE OF Mesoamerica: The Collapse of the Classic Maya City-States (250–900 AD)

The first ancient Maya city-states emerged in the Late Preclassic period (c. 400 BC–250 AD), in what is today eastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and western Honduras. These communities were initially based on slash-and-burn, or ‘swidden’, agriculture, with a particular emphasis on maize, beans, and squash. Over time, however, more intensive farming methods were adopted – such as terrace agriculture. Other cultural characteristics included: (1) the construction of monumental architecture, and large, royal court complexes; (2) participation in long-distance exchange networks; (3) a complex writing system; (4) an elaborate calendar system; and (5) the creation of a myriad of art forms in stone, ceramic, shell, and bone. The onset of the Classic period (c. 250–900 AD) witnessed the rapid expansion of the Maya city-states in terms of both their size, and overall numbers. This created a political landscape comprised of a myriad of comparatively small, self-governing, city-states which were at various times incorporated into larger, hegemonically organized, city-states or ‘leagues’, each centered on a single capital. Within these hegemonic leagues dependent, or ‘tributary’, city-states likely continued to be self-governing except for when it came to defense or foreign policy, and they usually had to pay tribute to the overlord of the hegemonic city-state and contribute troops and supplies in times of war. After many centuries of apparent economic, social, and political achievement, many of the city-states went into a decline that has long been referred to as the ‘Maya collapse’. Most Mayanists agree that the collapse was not an abrupt political fragmentation that impacted all of the city-states in the southern lowlands simultaneously. Rather, it was a protracted process that played itself out over three centuries, beginning around 750 AD, and ending approximately 1050 AD. For some city-states the collapse was both rapid, and final. For others, and for support populations in general, the decline was often more gradual. The characteristics of the collapse include: (1) a decline in the erection of monuments, along with their associated dynastic texts and iconography of rulership; (2) the demise of polychrome ceramic production; (3) the abandonment of many forms of inscriptional art; (4) the termination of elite building programs, in some cases quite abrubtly – in midconstruction; (5) a cessation in the construction of elaborate tombs; (6) a dramatic alteration in the form of governance; and, (7) significant migrations and population losses. Although a few dissenters

remain, most scholars view the collapse as a widespread sociopolitical and socioeconomic transformation that was most detrimental to the elite sector of ancient Maya society. In other words, what really ‘collapsed’ in the southern lowlands was the Classic period-style kingship institution and all of its constituent components. A number of theories have been offered as explanations for the collapse. One of the more widely accepted environmental models for the collapse is based on the idea that the Maya city-states succumbed to drought – when their crops failed, so too did their economic and political systems. Support for this model is tied to the fact that the period between 800 and 1000 AD was likely the driest time span in the mid- to Late Holocene Epoch. Even more importantly, some researchers have been able to show that, within this dry period, peak periods of aridity – or multiyear droughts – were likely centered on 760, 810, 860, and 910 AD. These dates articulate nicely with our current understanding of the collapse chronology. The consistent results, deriving as they do from divergent data sets, do suggest that drought was likely a key component in the collapse sequence. Diametrically opposed to the drought theory are models that see the collapse as an ideologically determined phenomenon. Some of these theories revolve around the idea that prophecies based on cycles of death and regeneration foretold of the collapse (i.e., the world came to an end at the termination of a specific calendar cycle). An alternative theory views the collapse as a result of a calendrically prescribed shift in the May ‘seat’ (i.e., locations of power that shifted from one center to another based on the 256 year May cycle) from Tikal to another center. This shift appears as a collapse in the area around Tikal, but in reality, it actually reflects the changing fortunes of this center based on the transfer of the ‘seat’ from it to its successor. A more complex theory posits that the Maya collapse was tied to three dynamic, and interconnected factors (presented in their order of importance): (1) population growth led to environmental damage due to intensive and extensive land-use – this led to over-exploitation of other resources, declining per capita income, and famine (droughts, etc., would exacerbate this); (2) increased competition for land and other resources – this led to a period of powersharing, and an expansion of warfare; and (3) the failure of the elite ritual program – this manifested itself in inappropriate elite response to problems, and the rejection of the institution of kingship, along with the ideology that supported it. It is argued that these factors, in combination, led to the significant political

STATE-LEVEL SOCIETIES, COLLAPSE OF 2091

truncation that occurred at most centers early on in the collapse sequence. This ‘collapse’ did not, however, coincide with the immediate abandonment of the various royal court complexes, or the surrounding regions. In fact, although individual ruling houses may have met their demise, many noble families continued to exist (especially those not closely connected to the ruling line, or those who had sufficiently insulated themselves for the downfall), and many even prospered for a time.

Toward a General Model for the Collapse of Early States The case studies presented above, although by necessity short on detail, do illustrate some of the key characteristics of collapse. They also outline some of the more popular theories that have been used to explain the fall of early states. As the reader may have noted, the author avoided commenting on the validity of these various collapse models in the discussions of the three case studies. This was purposeful. In truth, each model likely has some legitimacy. The author’s feeling is, however, that they gain their greatest efficacy when they are combined as part of a series of case-specific, multicausal interpretations. After all, collapses were complex phenomenon, and they therefore call for equally complex explanations. The case studies also reaffirm the fact that we need to be precise in our language when we discuss individual examples of collapse. In particular, what is deemed to have collapsed must be clearly specified in each instance. For example, in returning to the three case studies presented above, it is notable that the Akkadian collapse is primarily related to the breakup of a hegemonic empire, and the return to a landscape of competing city-states. In contrast, the Indus and Maya case studies involve the collapse of multiple city-states over a wide area, and the concomitant disappearance of some previously widely shared cultural characteristics. The latter two collapses therefore differ markedly from the former. Not surprisingly, the case studies also demonstrate that each collapse sequence has its own unique qualities. Although many of the causal factors may be the same – or at least similar – they will manifest themselves differently, and to varying degrees, based on the specific set of circumstances. To reiterate, ‘collapses’ are historically contingent. Nevertheless, when different collapse sequences are viewed cross-culturally, similarities do become evident. This suggests that it may be possible to formulate a general model for collapse that might be applicable in most cases, if only in a general sense. Three components of such a

model, each of which emphasizes a different aspect of collapse, are discussed below. Declining Marginal Returns and the Collapse of Early States

Some collapse specialists have suggested that as states become more complex, they inevitably develop more expensive economic and administrative structures. This forces them to increasingly turn to more costly productive, tributary, and taxation systems, which puts further strains on the state’s natural and human resources. Eventually, costs can begin to outpace income, and the state enters a period of declining marginal returns. When this occurs, the problem cannot be solved by simply moving to even more costly methods of energy acquisition, because this will only exacerbate the problem of diminishing marginal returns. New technologies and new forms of energy are therefore required to stimulate growth. If these do not emerge, the best option, or only option, is disintegration and the conscious or unconscious breakdown of the system to less complex structures where the cost to marginal return ratio is better. This pattern is noted in many examples of collapse, including the case studies presented herein. Pyramid Schemes and the Collapse of Early States

Other writers have argued that civilizations are like pyramid sales schemes – they only flourish when they are expanding. This is one reason why most early states appear to have collapsed at the moment of their greatest achievements. It is at this time that states are manipulating their natural and human resources to the greatest degree, and making the greatest expenditures on monumental architecture, prestige goods, ceremonies, and mortuary rituals. If the state apparatus is working at maximum capacity, and no new forms of energy and/or technology emerge, the state will enter a period of diminishing marginal returns, and the system as a whole will become susceptible to the deleterious affects of fluctuations in climate and other natural elements. If droughts, famines, erosion, crop failures, diseases, etc., take hold, the state apparatus will break down, sometimes very quickly, at other times in a more prolonged, drawn-out process. Once again, these elements figure prominently in many of the collapse sequences archaeologists have examined. The Revenge of the Traditional Power-Brokers and the Collapse of Early States

Once a state has entered a period of diminishing marginal returns, and stopped expanding (i.e., the

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pyramid scheme model), the rulers are inevitably forced to enter into negotiations with local leaders in order to shore up their crumbling economic and political organizations. The end result of these negotiations is invariably some type of power-sharing. That is, greater powers are dispersed to the local leaders, who now begin to control more of the land, and more of the surplus. They also start to figure more prominently in the state’s decision-making processes. Eventually, because these local leaders employ their economic and political capital quite effectively, they begin to develop greater levels of independence from the state. This, in turn, adds to the miseries of the state, because the king is unable to compete with the revitalized power-bases of the local leaders – the latter being more firmly grounded in long-standing, and hence more ‘traditional’, economic, social, and political relationships. For many of these local leaders, who themselves are members of the nobility, a collapse is actually quite beneficial, because more natural and human resources now revert to them. In fact, those with the most political acumen may foresee the fall of the state, and the benefits that this will have for them, and they therefore actively work to hasten the demise of the state. As such, the end result of a collapse rarely coincides with the complete depopulation of a region. Rather, collapse involves political truncation, and the devolution of powers to a myriad of more traditional power-brokers who normally outlive the state. In some cases, however, the local leaders only survive for a short time after the demise of the state apparatus. If these traditional power-brokers also meet with troubles, it is likely because the environment is too damaged, and/or the climatic change too extreme, to support even traditional levels of sociopolitical complexity. Once again, the reemergence of local powerbrokers on the eve of collapse has been documented in numerous studies, including those discussed herein.

Conclusions Are states maladaptive organizations, as the archaeologically documented declines and ‘collapses’ seem to suggest? Not necessarily. Most early states were highly successful, long-lived organizations – even those that did eventually collapse. It is also true that the vast majority of people inhabiting the Earth today live comparatively well in state-type societies. Still, it is clear that things can go wrong very quickly for even the most successful sociopolitical organizations. If we turn our focus to contemporary society, we can, in fact, see many of the same problems that plagued

the early states: rapidly expanding populations, increasing levels of pollution and environmental damage, and the concentration of greater wealth and power in the hands of fewer people in fewer countries. We also see the world’s elite striving to maintain the status quo (and their lifestyles) at all costs. There is, in fact, a general resistance to change throughout society (not just amongst the rich and powerful), and a continued, undying devotion to the current economic system – regardless of the long-term costs to people and the environment. Some have even argued that the inability to see the long-term impact of our actions may be characteristic of our society. The question remains, are we nearing a point in time when our states will be running at peak capacity in terms of their available social and ecological resources (or ‘capital’), with no new energy sources or technologies on the horizon to help us maintain our ‘growth’? If so, the severe environmental fluctuations that are predicted to be on our doorstep have the potential to be particularly detrimental, because we will be unable to react effectively to the resulting downturn in production. Our archaeological investigations imply that, given such a scenario, a planned ‘collapse’ may be the best option. Nevertheless, our story is not yet fully written, and we may yet find ways to keep our current ‘pyramid scheme’ going for a few more centuries. See also: Americas, Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya; Asia, West: Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad; Asia, South: Indus Civilization; Political Complexity, Rise of.

Further Reading Culbert TP (ed.) (1973) The Classic Maya Collapse. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Diamond J (2005) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking. Ponting C (1991) A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations. Toronto: Penguin. Spengler O (1918–1922) The Decline of the West. New York: Alfred Knopf. Tainter J (1988) The Collapse of Complex Societies. New York: Cambridge University Press. Toynbee AJ (1946) A Study of History: Abridgement of Volumes I–VI. New York: Oxford University Press. Turchin P (2003) Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Webster D (2002) The Fall of the Ancient Maya: Solving the Mystery of the Maya Collapse. New York: Thames and Hudson. Wright R (2004) A Short History of Progress. Toronto: Anansi. Yoffee N and Cowgill GL (eds.) (1988) The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

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States, Rise of

See: Political Complexity, Rise of.

STATISTICS IN ARCHAEOLOGY Robert D Drennan, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

quantitative analysis Analysis of information that comes in the form of numbers, relies heavily on the tools of statistics. sampling bias Selection of a sample in such a way that some members of the population are less likely to be included than others. vagaries of sampling The variation that can be expected to occur by pure random chance between different samples selected from the same population.

Archaeological data are irrevocably (although not exclusively) quantitative in nature. The phenomena that archaeologists work with (including artifacts, ecofacts, features, remains of architecture, and many more) are classified, counted, and measured in various ways. The results are numbers, often quite a lot of numbers. Describing things quantitatively, then, along with finding patterns in and comparing numbers, are essential archaeological tasks. Statistical analysis is especially associated with certain schools of thought in archaeology; for example, it was strongly advocated as processual archaeology developed (see Processual Archaeology). Counting and measuring different kinds of things found in the archaeological record, however, are so fundamental to the process of using material remains to reconstruct past human activities, that statistical analysis cannot be ignored by any school of thought in which it matters to know what people did in the past. The importance of statistical analysis in archaeology is evidenced by the number of books published in recent years with the purpose of introducing and explaining the tools of statistical analysis in a specifically archaeological context. Any of these works can be consulted for further discussion of aspects of statistical analysis touched on here. Traditional statistical tools and terminology developed between about 1920 and 1950 are most often used in archaeology, although the perspectives and vocabulary of the more recent ‘exploratory data analysis’ school are becoming more widely known.

Description Categories

The basic tools of descriptive statistics are really quite simple and well known. Classification (especially of artifacts, but also of other things) has long been a quintessential archaeological activity. When things are classified, and how many of them there are in the different categories is determined, the results are one of the two basic kinds of numbers archaeologists work with: counts (as summaries of categorical variables). Counts are often usefully expressed as proportions, or percentages, especially for comparisons – as, for example, when the proportions of different ceramic types recovered from different sites are compared with each other. It is proportions that make it possible to compare two or more sets that contain different numbers of things. Thus, for example, flakes are more strongly represented in an excavation unit where they comprise 25% of the artifacts recovered than in a unit where they comprise only 15%, even if the 25% in the former unit consists of only 10 flakes (out of 40 artifacts) and the 15% in the latter consists of 30 flakes (out of 200 artifacts). This common sense use of percentages, familiar from elementary school, is sometimes referred to as standardizing for different sized collections, or samples, although it is probably better to reserve the term ‘standardize’ for a more precise and specific statistical use. Proportions are commonly represented graphically in many different ways, some much more effective than others. Bar graphs are perhaps the simplest and clearest of such graphics. The ease with which commonly available computer programs can be used to draw very complicated forms of bar graphs, often with showy three-dimensional effects, sometimes undermines the utility of this, and other graphic techniques. Figure 1 illustrates good and bad approaches to representing a relatively simple set of percentages graphically for comparative purposes. Measurements

The other, fundamentally different, kind of number archaeologists often work with (in addition to counts) is measurements, such as length, width, height, thickness, area, weight, etc. Measurements are made in

2094 STATISTICS IN ARCHAEOLOGY

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Figure 1 Good and bad ways to illustrate the proportions of artifact types for comparison of the assemblages from different sites. Stacked bars at the upper left are confusing and do not make it easy to recognize patterns. A bar chart in three dimensions at the upper right is almost entirely undecipherable. It can be difficult to resist the temptation to use such glamorous graphics, but simple, flat bar charts like those at the bottom are much more effective presentations of information. In these charts it is easy to recognize that sites A and C have similar assemblages, dominated by artifact types 5 and 6, while the artifact proportions at sites B and D differ sharply, both from sites A and C and from each other.

defined units along scales that are, in principle at least, infinitely subdivisible. Sets of measurements, often called ‘batches’, have several properties it is important to be aware of when engaging in fundamental description. In the first place, measurements of a single kind of thing tend usually to bunch up around a clear central point along the measurement scale. In what is called a ‘normal’ shape, there is a single central bunch of numbers with a symmetrical shape or distribution tapering off on either side of the central point when displayed as a stem-and-leaf plot or as a histogram, the two most common ways to represent the shape of a batch of measurements graphically (Figures 2 and 3). It is useful for basic description, and fundamental for further statistical analysis, to have a single index of the center (or ‘measure of central tendency’) for a batch of measurements. The mean, or average, which is as familiar as percentages, is most often used. If the batch of measurements has ‘outliers’, as in Figure 3, the mean may not provide a very sensible index to represent the center. In such cases, the median (essentially the middle number in the batch) may be a more useful index. Similarly, if the batch has a very asymmetrical shape (is ‘skewed’), as in Figure 3 the mean

may not be a sensible index of its center. The median may, again, be more useful, or, for statistical analyses that depend on the special properties of the mean, the batch can be transformed to make its shape more symmetrical, for example, by using the squares or square roots or logarithms of all the numbers instead of the original measurements. Occasionally, a batch of measurements may show two or more clear bunches of numbers, as in Figure 4. Once again, simply calculating the mean of such a batch produces nonsensical results. The batch must be separated into two or more sub-batches, because the presence of multiple clear bunches of numbers is an unmistakable indication that more than a single kind of thing is represented. Exploration of the shape of a batch of measurements is an essential first step in almost any statistical analysis of it, so as to be sure that a sensible and relevant index of its center can be identified.

Inferences from Samples Beyond simply exploring and describing the patterns observed in batches of measurements or counts of

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Figure 2 The distribution of a batch of 128 measurements ranging from 5.7 to 75.7, displayed graphically in a stem-and-leaf plot (left) and a histogram (right). The mean of 39.1 provides a sensible index of the center of this batch because it falls at the middle of the main bunch of numbers. The shape is not perfectly symmetrical, and there is a small ‘valley’ in the 25–30 interval. Such small valleys in a distribution of site sizes have sometimes been taken to indicate two different kinds of sites and thus settlement hierarchy, but such an interpretation is not warranted. Batches of measurements rarely conform perfectly to theoretical distributions, and this example is as close to a normal shape as can be expected in a sample of this size.

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categories, and perhaps comparing them with other batches, looms the issue of using a batch (or ‘sample’) to characterize a larger set (or ‘population’) of things not available for study. Sometimes archaeologists consciously select samples from larger populations, as when they choose some squares in a site grid for excavation or some artifacts for raw material sourcing from those recovered in an excavation. Sometimes the process is less obvious, as when an archaeologist describes, say, Formative period flaked stone tools. In this case, the population is very large and vaguely defined – all the flaked stone tools made during the Formative period in some region – and it is characterized on the basis of those that happen

to have been recovered and are thus available for observation. Even if 100% of the flaked stone tools that have been recovered are studied, it is still a question of samples and populations since the description is ordinarily taken to apply to all Formative projectile points. Many archaeologists do not recognize this, and for this and other reasons, the archaeological literature is rife with misunderstanding and misuse of statistical tools. Sampling Bias

Whenever statements are made about a population on the basis of a sample, there is at least some risk of

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error. The tools of inferential statistics cannot eliminate this risk, but they provide powerful ways of assessing it and working with it. Practically every analysis in archaeology (whether statistical or not) involves characterizing a larger set of things than are actually observed, so the perspectives of inferential statistics have implications for archaeological analyses that reach far beyond the quantitative contexts they were designed for. The risk of error in characterizing a population on the basis of a sample arises from two fundamentally different sources. One is that the process of selecting the sample from the population may systematically produce a sample with characteristics different from those of the population at large. This is known as ‘sampling bias’. It happens, for example, when lithic debitage is recovered by passing excavated deposits through screens with 6 mm mesh. Lithic debitage is known to include very small waste flakes, many of which will pass through mesh of this size, so the sample recovered from the screen will be systematically larger than the complete population. The mean weight of such a sample of waste flakes would be higher than that of the population as a whole, and any statement made on the basis of this sample about the weight of waste flakes in general would be inflated as a direct consequence of this sampling bias.

Precisely the same is true even in entirely nonquantitative analyses. An archaeologist might subjectively characterize the lithic technology of the Archaic period in some region as reflecting a broad application of a high degree of technical skill. If this characterization of the large, vaguely defined population consisting of all lithic artifacts produced in the region during the Archaic period is based on a sample recovered by artifact collectors who value well-made bifacial tools and never bother to keep anything as mundane as a utilized flake, then the sample is clearly biased toward well-made tools, and the breadth of application of high technical skill will be overvalued as a direct consequence of sampling bias. Rigorously random procedures for sample selection are designed to avoid bias, and neither of the sampling procedures in the examples above is random. There are no statistical tools for removing bias from a sample once it has been selected, whether by screening deposits through large mesh or by collectors. Indeed, the tools of inferential statistics are often said to ‘assume’ that samples are unbiased, and thus to be inapplicable to the analysis of biased samples. This is not a useful way to approach statistical analysis in archaeology, because archaeologists are often forced to work with samples they know to be biased. The prescription offered in other disciplines (collect another sample with rigorously random procedures that avoid bias) is often impossible in archaeology. Fortunately, there are at least two common ways of working with biased samples. Archaeologists may want to say things about populations that would not be affected by the bias present in the available sample. It might, for example, be perfectly possible to make unbiased conclusions about the proportions of raw materials represented in lithic debitage on the basis of the screened sample discussed above. It would only be necessary to assume that different raw materials would not occur among the small waste flakes that fell through the screen in proportions very different from those among the larger flakes that would not escape the sample in this way. Biased samples can also often be accurately compared to each other if the same biased operated to the same degree in the selection of all samples to be compared. Thus, two samples of lithics recovered from 6 mm screen may show rather different flake weights. Such a difference cannot be attributed to sampling biases if the sampling biases were the same in both cases, and it is valid to say that the flakes in one sample are heavier than those in the other. Precisely, the same principles apply to subjective and qualitative comparisons. To compare the application of technical flint-knapping skill to the production of lithic tools in the Archaic with that in the

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Formative, it may well be possible to work successfully with biased samples. (This is likely to be necessary in any event.) As long as the same sampling biases operated in the recovery of both Archaic and Formative artifacts, then they can be compared. If, however, the Formative tools come from systematic excavations and the Archaic ones are those accumulated by artifact collectors, then the sampling biases are different and likely to affect very strongly precisely the characteristics of interest. Such a difference in sampling biases affects any comparison based on the abundance of ‘nice’ well-made tools, whether the comparison is quantitative or not. To repeat, statistical tools cannot eliminate bias once a sample has been selected (and the utter elimination of all kinds of sampling bias from the process of archeological recovery is an unrealistic goal in any event). Statistics, however, does provide two very useful things: first, a reminder of the important effects that sampling bias can have, and, second, some useful concepts for thinking about sampling bias and how serious a worry it is in the specific context of particular observations of potential interest. Vagaries of Sampling

Sampling bias, then, is one of the two principal sources of error in making conclusions about a population on the basis of a sample. The other is that samples selected entirely without bias still differ from each other and from the population they were selected from because of pure random chance. This is often referred to as the ‘vagaries of sampling’ and is easily approached by imagining tossing a coin. When a coin is tossed honestly four times, it is a completely unbiased sample of four from the infinitely large population composed of all the times the coin could be tossed. Assuming no prior knowledge at all about the principles of coin tossing, this sample of four could be used to infer the proportions of heads and tails in the large population of all possible coin tosses. The inference made would not always be the same, because while common sense tells us that the proportion of heads in that large population is 50%, it also tells us that in any given sample of four, it might well not turn out exactly that way. Sometimes, in a sample of four coin tosses, the proportion of heads would be 50%, sometimes 25%, or 75%, and sometimes even 100% or 0%. An analyst with a sample of two heads and two tails would conclude that the proportion of heads among coin tosses in general was 50%. An analyst with a sample of one head and three tails, however, would have to conclude that the proportion of heads among coin tosses in general was 25%, and one with a sample of four tails would have to conclude that the proportion of heads among coin tosses

in general was 0%. It is easy to see that an analyst making conclusions about a population on the basis of a sample from it will sometimes be right and sometimes wrong. This is true even if sampling bias can be completely ruled out (as it can in this hypothetical example); the erroneous conclusions are the result of pure blind luck – the completely random vagaries of sampling (see Sampling Methods, Theory and Praxis). It is the vagaries of sampling that the tools of inferential statistics deal with. They are derived ultimately from a consideration of the range of possible outcomes in selecting a sample of a given size from a given population. In the coin tossing example, the 16 possible (and equally probable) outcomes for a sample of four are easily enumerated: HHHH, HHHT, HHTH, HHTT, HTHH, HTHT, HTTH, HTTT, THHH, THHT, THTH, THTT, TTHH, TTHT, TTTH, TTTT. The ‘correct’ outcome of a ‘representative’ sample (one that represents its parent population accurately) is easily seen to occur six times; four times heads are 1/4 or 25%; four times 3/4 or 75%; once 0/4 or 0%, and once 4/4 or 100%. Several of the important principles underlying inferential statistics are easily seen in the samples of four coin tosses. First, an unbiased sample gives an accurate answer more often than it gives any other single answer. Second, it is possible for a completely unbiased sample to represent its parent population inaccurately. Thus, contrary to common belief, random (unbiased) sample selection is no guarantee that a sample is ‘representative’. Third, a sample very strongly different from its parent population occurs less often than one fairly similar to the parent population. Thus, when reasoning from samples to populations, serious errors are less common than moderate errors. A final fundamental principle of inferential statistics is firmly embedded in common sense as well: larger samples are more reliable than smaller samples. The specific implications of this principle for the coin tossing example can be seen by expanding the thought experiment to samples of eight. That is, instead of imagining tossing the coin four times, we imagine tossing it eight times. For eight coin tosses, there are 256 equally probable different outcomes. The most seriously ‘erroneous’ sample results for estimating the proportion of heads in coin tossing are less common than with a sample of four. Samples with a proportion of heads of 25% or less or 75% or more, for example, represent only 74/256 or 29% of the outcomes, compared to 10/16 or 63% for samples of four coin tosses. Larger samples, then, are more reliable, not because beyond some point they are guaranteed to give an absolutely accurate result, but rather because, as sample size increases, results will be fairly

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accurate a steadily growing proportion of the time. The effect of the vagaries of sampling, then, is reduced when sample size is increased. This effect depends entirely on the size of the sample; contrary to widespread opinion; it has nothing to do with the size of the population or the proportion of the population included in the sample. Estimates, Confidence, and Significance

These principles are often summed up and expressed as statistical confidence. For example, an archeologist recovers a sample of sherds from a site, and 35% of the sherds recovered are from serving bowls. If the sample is unbiased (i.e., if the recovery process would not systematically privilege collecting either bowl sherds or non-bowl sherds), then the best guess that can be made (the one most likely to be near the ‘real’ population value) is that 35% of the sherds at the site are from bowls. Clearly, however, it is entirely possible that the vagaries of sampling could produce a sample of 35% bowls, even though the proportion in the parent population was different from that figure. Just how much risk there is of error in the estimate of the proportion of bowls in the ceramic assemblage as a whole, can be expressed as an error range for a given confidence level: say, 35%
6% at the 95% confidence level. This means that one can be 95% confident that the proportion of bowl sherds in the ceramic assemblage as a whole is between 29% and 41%. Statistical confidence is not just a yes-or-no concept; it is a continuous scale. Choosing to speak at the 95% confidence level means being right 95% of the time (and, inevitably, wrong 5% of the time). Being 95% confident that a ceramic assemblage consists of 35%
5% bowls means there is a 5% chance that the ceramic assemblage actually consists of more than 41% bowls or less than 29% bowls. One could speak at a higher confidence level, say 99%, on the basis of the same sample, but only at the cost of less precision, reflected in a larger error range: with the same sample, one can be 99% confident that the proportion of bowl sherds in the assemblage is 35%
8%. Conversely, one can speak more precisely on the basis of the same sample, but only at the cost of statistical confidence: one could say that the proportion of bowl sherds in the assemblage is 35%
4%, but only with 80% confidence (i.e., a 20% chance of being wrong). Statistical confidence, then, takes the form of a statement (or ‘estimate’) about a population with an error range for a specified confidence level. Estimates like these can be compared graphically, as in Figure 5. Here the proportion of bowl sherds at a site, as estimated from the sample discussed above, is compared with the estimate for another site. The

55 50 45 % 40 35

99% 95%

30 25

80% Confidence level

Figure 5 A ‘bullet graph’ comparing proportions of bowl sherds in samples from two sites. The proportions differ by 10%, and since each proportion falls outside even the 99% confidence level error range for the other, one can have greater than 99% confidence that bowl sherd proportions do differ in two site assemblage populations the samples came from. Expressed in significance terms rather than confidence terms, the difference between bowl sherd proportions at the two sites is very significant (p < 0.01).

error ranges for different confidence levels are represented graphically, showing that either site’s estimate falls outside even the 99% confidence level error range for the other. One can thus be more than 99% confident (based on the two samples) that the proportions of bowl sherds in the complete assemblages from the two sites do indeed differ. The 99% confidence level means that there is less than a 1% chance that the statement is actually wrong (i.e., that bowl sherd proportions are actually the same in the two complete site assemblages). Precisely this same issue can be discussed in terms of statistical significance, which is simply the mirror image of statistical confidence. The difference between these two ceramic assemblages could be said to be highly significant (p < 0.01), meaning that there is less than a 1% chance that two unbiased samples with such different bowl sherd proportions would be selected from populations that did not differ at all with regard to bowl sherd proportions. In sum, one would have very good reason to explore what the difference in bowl sherd proportions might mean, because it is extremely likely that the difference observed between the two samples does indeed reflect a difference between the two parent populations that are ultimately the objects of interest. That is to say, it is extremely unlikely that the difference between the two samples is attributable to just the vagaries of sampling. The two samples are of adequate size to make it possible to talk with high confidence about differences between the two sites in regard to bowl sherd proportions. If the samples had been smaller, the error ranges would have turned out to be larger for any given confidence level, and differences

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between the sites would have been identifiable only with less statistical confidence. The differences, in such a case, would be said to be less significant. It is, unfortunately, a common practice to report results with a significance probability (p) of greater than 0.05, as simply ‘not significant’ and then ignore them. A p value greater than 0.05 simply indicates more than a 5% chance that the results observed are only a consequence of random processes operating in samples too small to detect the quantitative effect of interest. This is the same as saying one has something less than 95% confidence in the results. Clearly, results with very low significance levels (indicated by very high p values) do not merit much attention. On the other hand, p values modestly greater than 0.05, are decidedly worth knowing. A significance probability of 0.10 (twice the level often taken as the threshold of ‘not significant’) is equivalent to statistical confidence of 90%. While a higher confidence level would be desirable, results one can be only 90% confident of are definitely worth being aware of. Colloquial speech recognizes this by cautioning that some things must be ‘taken with a grain of salt’. Results we are only 90% confident of should, indeed, be taken with a grain of salt, but they should not be ignored; results we are only 80% confident of must be taken with an even larger grain of salt, but they, too, may well be worth attention; and so on. By the same token, it is important to remember that confidence in excess of 95% or even 99% is still not equivalent to certainty. Providing the actual confidence level (70%, 80%, 90%, 95%, 99%, etc.) of results is common practice. Providing the actual significance level (p ¼ 0.30, 0.20, 0.10, 0.05, 0.01, etc.) is less common, but makes considerably more sense than just branding results as ‘significant’ or ‘not significant’. Relationships between Variables

Error ranges for specific confidence levels are attached to estimates made for populations on the basis of samples. These estimates can either be of proportions (corresponding to counts of categories of things, as in the examples above) or of means (if the observation of interest is a measurement). A completely different, but fully equivalent, way of talking about this task is in terms of relationships between variables. Comparing proportions of bowl sherds between two sites is equivalent to studying the relationship between two variables: ‘site’ and ‘vessel form’. For each sherd, there are two pieces of information contained in two categorical variables. The categories for the variable site are A and B; the categories for the variable vessel form are bowl and non-bowl. It is usually easier to think about this

information as proportions of bowl sherds at different sites, but the problem can also be formulated as one of the relationship between the variables site and vessel form. If there is a very strong relationship between the two variables, then one site will have a substantially higher proportion of bowl sherds than the other. The bigger the difference in proportions, the stronger the relationship between the two variables is said to be. When the samples involved are large enough to permit talking about the difference between the sites with high statistical confidence, then the relationship between the two variables is highly significant. ‘Strength’ and ‘confidence’ (or ‘significance’) are two related but quite different concepts. To repeat, in this example, strength has to do with how big the difference between the samples is; confidence (or significance) has to do with whether, given the strength of the difference, the samples are large enough to make it possible to speak of a difference with much confidence that it exists, not just between the samples, but also between the populations the samples come from. If tossing a coin twice turns up two heads, the result (100% heads) is very strongly different from our theoretical expectation of 50% heads. The result is not, however, very significant since it is quite likely that such a sample could be produced by nothing more than the vagaries of sampling. On the other hand, if we toss a coin 2000 times and turn up 75% heads, the result is not as strongly different from our theoretical expectation of 50% heads, but it is considerably more significant because it is very unlikely that just pure random luck would produce such a high percentage of heads in such a large sample. When examining the relationship between two variables, it is important to consider both the strength and the significance of the relationship. When the two variables are both categories of things which we count, a common approach to evaluating strength and significance is the chi-square test. It yields a significance probability (p), as discussed above, and various measures of strength, including Crame´r’s V and phi. Crame´r’s V provides a number on a scale from 0 to 1, where 0 means a relationship of no strength between the variables (i.e., no relationship) and 1 means the strongest possible relationship. In the example of Figure 5, where two sites have 35% and 45% bowl sherds, respectively, the value of Crame´r’s V is 0.1, indicting a strong enough relationship to be meaningful, even though it seems not very different from 0. A Crame´r’s V of 1 in this example would be produced only if one site had 100% bowl sherds and the other had none. Phi is the same as Crame´r’s V when there are only two categories for each variable, as in this example: two sites (A and B) and two vessel

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forms (bowls and non-bowls). When more than two categories are involved for one variable or the other, Phi becomes an open-ended scale and is much more difficult to interpret in absolute terms. Different statistical tools are needed if the two variables under consideration include one categorical variable and one measurement, as, for example, comparing utilized flake lengths between two sites. In this case, the two pieces of information for each artifact are which site it came from (two categories) and how long it is (a measurement along a continuous scale). The strength and significance of any difference can be characterized and represented graphically as in Figure 5, except that the vertical scale, instead of proportion of bowl sherds, represents mean flake length. Alternatively, the strength and significance of the relationship between the two variables ‘site’ and ‘flake length’ can be evaluated with a t test. The t test yields a significance probability (p) and a measure of strength (t), on an open-ended scale. When the categorical variable consists of more than two categories, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) can be used to produce the usual significance probability (p) and a measure of strength (F), on an open-ended scale. If the two variables are both measurements, no categories are involved, and the problem cannot be formulated as a comparison between categories. The most powerful statistical approach is regression analysis, which again produces a significance probability (p) and, as a measure of strength, the correlation coefficient (r). The scale of r ranges from 0 to 1 (in both positive and negative directions), with 0 indicating a relationship of no strength and 1 (or 1) indicating the strongest possible relationship. If the two variables were ceramic vessel wall thickness and

Stone Tools

rim diameter, an r value of 1 would indicate a perfect positive correlation – the larger the vessel, the thicker the wall. An r value of 1 would indicate a perfect negative correlation – the smaller the vessel the thicker the wall. The square of r is often taken as an indication of the proportion of variation in one variable that is ‘explained’ by the relationship with the other variable. If the correlation (r) between rim diameter and wall thickness were 0.85, this would be a strong positive correlation, in which 72% (r 2 ¼ 0.72) of the variation in wall thickness is accounted for by rim diameter. See also: Archaeology Laboratory, Overview; Proces-

sual Archaeology; Sampling Methods, Theory and Praxis.

Further Reading Aldenderfer MS (ed.) (1987) Quantitative Research In Archaeology: Progress and Prospects. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Baxter MJ (1994) Exploratory Multivariate Analysis in Archaeology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Cowgill GL (1977) The trouble with significance tests and what we can do about it. American Antiquity 42: 350–368. Drennan RD (1996) Statistics for Archaeologists: A Commonsense Approach. New York: Plenum Press. Fletcher M and Locke GR (1991) Digging Numbers: Elementary Statistics for Archaeologists. Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology. Shennan S (1997) Quantifying Archaeology, 2nd edn. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Thomas DH (1986) Refiguring Anthropology: First Principles of Probability and Statistics. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Wilkinson L (2000) Cognitive science and graphic design. In: Systat 10 Graphics, pp. 1–18. Chicago: SPSS, Inc.

See: Lithics: Manufacture.

Stratified Societies

See: Political Complexity, Rise of; Social Inequality, Development of.

STRATIGRAPHIC ANALYSIS 2101

STRATIGRAPHIC ANALYSIS David Alan Warburton, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary chronology In stratigraphy, the organization of archaeological sequences into temporal sequences, which can be either absolute (e.g., organized in ‘solar years’) or relative (e.g., organized in archaeological periods, millenniums, or C-14 years). The sequences can be established by the study of stratigraphic sequences, but the actual dating of the chronology (absolute and relative) is based upon analysis of elements (e.g., diagnostic potsherds, coins, wood used for C-14 dates) found in the deposits and is not stratigraphic. deposits Any type of stratigraphic unit (even a wall or a floor or a layer of wall plaster) can be viewed as a deposit. In the geological approach, these are the fundamental units. excavation unit The arbitrary units by which the excavator removes earth while excavating. These can be absolutely arbitrary, as specified three-dimensional units (e.g., 1 m long, 2 m wide, and 20 cm deep), or correspond closely to stratigraphic units (e.g., specified layers, sublayers, pits). fill Specific type of debris. It can be rubbish, sand, rubble, or even material which was originally deposited as floors in houses (etc.), used as deliberate filling in, for example, foundation trenches or leveling operations. Such deposits are not characterized by the horizontal stratification typical of floors. findspot The particular specific place in which an object (or group of objects) was found. The findspot must be located in terms of the stratigraphic terminology of the excavation. floors In the technical sense of Near Eastern excavations, these are generally accumulations of deposits (generally in rooms or courtyards, but conceivably also in streets) which are directly related to the occupation of a building. In their ordinary form, they frequently appear to be similar to natural accumulations resulting from deposition by wind or water. The primary differences between them are (1) that human movement regularly compresses floor deposits and (2) objects in floor deposits are in situ in terms of human deposition, whereas objects in such natural deposits have been moved from their original position. isochronous A unit or line which belongs to the same relative time. The analysis of the layers should lead to the identification of isochronous lines which can be used to isolate larger packets of layers that can be termed levels. layer Occasionally this term is used to designate the excavation units; occasionally it is used to designate an objectively existing stratigraphic deposit. In both senses, it is the basic unit of stratigraphic excavation. Understood as stratigraphic units, layers can be divided into sublayers, cut by pits, abut walls, or be eroded by natural or human actions. level Occasionally this term is used interchangeably with ‘layer’ (in the sense of a unit of deposition); occasionally it is used to designate an interpretive stratigraphy in which the stratigraphic units are grouped into larger units (e.g., the construction, occupation, and collapse of a building or group of buildings); occasionally it is used in the strict sense of an absolute altitude.

locus One of several different designations for a basic stratigraphic unit. Most loci are viewed as having horizontal extensions, with the sequence of layering providing a vertical extension. pedological Analysis of the composition of layers largely consisting of soil (as opposed to geological – or stone – layers). periodization Interpretation of stratigraphic sequences in terms of a relative chronological order. The interpretation can be based either on the stratigraphic features, or on typologically diagnostic elements found in the various stratigraphic units. phase Occasionally this term is used to identify a layer or a packet of layers (in the sense of a ‘level’ as an interpretive unit); occasionally, it is used to refer to relative chronological units (such as part of, for example, Late Bronze or Old Babylonian). Such differing usage is a relic of the confusion surrounding the understanding of stratigraphy as the analysis of deposits as opposed to stratigraphy as a chronological tool. pit A deliberate hole made from one surface (which may today be well under the actual surface) into layers representing earlier deposits. The walls of a pit are an isochronous line which must be viewed as contemporary with the layer from which the pit was dug. The fill of the pit dates to a later period; it is also possible that the original layer from which the pit was sunk was removed. Thus the chronological assignment of material from pits poses grave stratigraphic difficulties. Functionally, a pit can be a rubbish pit, a hole used to mine clay for bricks, an irrigation canal, a drain, a tomb, or a foundation deposit, etc. In practice the fill of a pit can be related to its purpose, or it can be simply wind- and water-borne deposits caught in the depression over time. section Usually understood as being the drawing of a stratigraphic sequence visible on a vertical surface resulting from an excavation (or an existing one which was merely cleaned). In reality, of course, the section is also the cut itself which allows a view to site formation. stratigraphic column A vertical sequence of superimposed stratigraphic units. A single square of an excavation can have several different parallel stratigraphic columns (e.g., inside and outside buildings). stratigraphic unit A deposit which can be distinguished from other deposits (pit, layer, wall, etc.). wall Usually a three-dimensional structure deliberately made by humans with some architectural purpose. Usually collapse, floor, street, and courtyard deposits can form against and over a wall. The fill of a foundation trench is not similar to such deposits as it can simultaneously go under and against a wall.

Stratigraphy and Stratigraphic Analysis In principle, stratigraphic analysis is the study of the deposits at an archaeological site. The word ‘stratigraphy’ itself is a modern compound linking a Latin term (which may be understood here as relating to ‘layers’) with a Greek term (which may be understood here as relating to the recording of such material); the etymology implies that ‘stratigraphy’ is the documentation and thus differs from the ‘stratification’ which is the material thus ‘recorded’, but like geologists, archaeologists frequently refer to ‘stratigraphy’ as

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being synonymous with ‘stratification’ (i.e., confusing the records with the actual sequence of layers visible on the edge of an excavation as opposed to the drawing of the section). Thus, in practice if not in principle, ‘stratigraphic analysis’ should be understood as being more interpretive and ‘stratigraphy’ more graphic, descriptive, or analytical; both aspects will be treated here as components of ‘stratigraphy’. In practice, for archaeology today, stratigraphy is viewed as a matter of ‘sequencing’. These sequences are generally viewed as being of chronological importance, although it is recognized that the content of the layers can also provide information about climate, construction techniques, and the use of the site. Broadly speaking, ‘archaeology’ is the study of the material culture and traces left by mankind, with a view to understanding the human experience; ‘stratigraphy’ is one of the two fundamental and specifically archaeological tools, the other being ‘typology’, the study of artifacts and types. Common to both stratigraphy and typology is that their subject matters (layers, objects) are not only the means by which archaeology approaches its human subjects, but are themselves the products of human activity. In this sense, both stratigraphy and typology differ fundamentally from their geological and biological counterparts, where the phenomena (geological formations, living creatures) being classified are not intentionally created by the very subject of the study. As archaeological tools, the two should complement each other, with typological analysis pursued separately from stratigraphic analysis. Stratigraphic analysis should be used exclusively with respect to the analysis of the deposits and the sequence of deposits at an archaeological site. Typological analysis should be applied to the artifacts and monuments. Both should contribute independently to the conclusions of archaeological work. Stratigraphic analysis allows the excavator to gain access to decisive information about the formation, use, and relative chronological sequence of an archaeological site. In the publication of archaeological excavations, it is ultimately this analysis which is the basis of the interpretation of the architectural history, the context of individual small finds, and the arguments about dating, etc. Thus only the correct identification of stratigraphic units ‘during the excavation’ can assure that the ‘published’ analysis of the finds is assured sufficient material support for argumentation. Thus, in principle, (1) the analysis of stratigraphic deposits during the excavation should serve to guide excavations by endeavoring to follow and excavate stratigraphic units, and (2) the analysis of the stratigraphic records made during the excavation should

be the point of departure for the interpretation of the excavation. However, the analysis of the stratigraphy is usually associated with chronology and sequences rather than architecture, etc. Less Technically Correct Utilization of ‘Stratigraphy’

There are two other fashions in which archaeologists use the term ‘stratigraphy’ which are strictly speaking incorrect, but the logical result of the understanding of ‘stratigraphy’ as merely a variant of ‘chronology’: so-called ‘horizontal stratigraphy’ and so-called ‘reversed stratigraphy’. In general, ‘horizontal stratigraphy’ is used to describe the chronological development of a cemetery (or similar arrangements where a series of similar structures are spread across a site) whereby the earliest tombs are located in one area and the latest in another, and a gradual spreading of the cemetery can be followed between the two areas. Occasionally, later tombs are actually sunk into earlier tombs and thus the sequence is clear – but it is equally evident that this is ‘stratigraphy’ in the sense of ‘the superposition of layers’ and thus ‘stratigraphy’ in the sense understood in this article. Usually, however, the use of the term ‘horizontal stratigraphy’ is related to the means of identifying the development of the cemetery based upon the typological analysis of the offerings in the tombs: the offerings are assigned relative chronological dates and the spread of the cemetery thus established in chronological terms. In fact, therefore, ‘horizontal stratigraphy’ refers to a procedure which is exactly the opposite of stratigraphy in terms of depositional layering, since stratigraphic analysis refers to the study of the sequence of layers more or less independently of the objects. The study of the objects and their interpretation is ‘typology’. In principle, conclusions based upon stratigraphic analysis should play a role in attributing dates to objects; the use of the typological analysis of the objects alone to determine chronological relations and development of sites is not stratigraphic analysis, but rather typology. (However, the term ‘horizontal stratigraphy’ is so widespread that there is no reason to dispense with it; one must merely view it as a chronological rather than a stratigraphic tool.) Technically equally incorrect is the term ‘reversed stratigraphy’, which is based upon the same conceptual understanding of stratigraphy as a means of studying chronological sequences via typological analysis. The term is usually used to refer to the situation in which the most recent overlying material is at the base of a deposit and the earliest material at the top of the deposit, as, for example, in the spoil heaps from an

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excavation (either due to construction or to an archaeological excavation). In fact, of course, the sequence of the deposition of the layers is chronologically correct in that the deposition of the lowest layer preceded the deposition of the highest. Usually the character of the deposit is betrayed by the presence of older objects in upper levels and younger objects in lower levels, and thus the chronological interpretation is based upon the typological analysis of the objects rather than the stratigraphic sequence. In general, the typological analysis leads to a detailed review of the stratigraphic sequence and the recognition of the fact that the deposit consists of reworked archaeological deposits. In theory, it would be better if an analysis of the stratigraphic deposits were to lead to the recognition of the situation immediately, but it must be stressed that the stratigraphic sequence is not always as clear cut as one would wish, hence the need to study the stratigraphy constantly.

reconstructions, and the discussion of artifact types in larger comparative frameworks. Any argument about the results of an excavation usually ultimately centers on the interpretation of the stratigraphic relations. Even an impeccable presentation of results can lead to a dispute if there is disagreement about the interpretation. Such disagreements can range from details such as the context of a find (e.g., the relative value of a find in primary context, in situ on a floor, as opposed to a tertiary context such as ‘fill’) to the identification of artifact classes used to provide a chronological framework (e.g., Perigordian points). Thus stratigraphic analysis in the field is of equal importance to correct and speedy publication (and very frequently the publication of excavation reports is delayed due to inadequate stratigraphic observation and recording during excavation).

History and Schools Levels of Stratigraphic Analysis

Origins and Current Debate

Stratigraphic analysis in archaeology involves four distinctly different activities. Two of these are related to excavation in the field, two to publications and debate. The first, primarily geological–pedological but also architectural, is the analysis of deposits as related to the processes of site formation (see Sites: Formation Processes). The second, primarily artifact-typological, is the identification of deposits with the object of specifying the origin of the objects recovered in an archaeological excavation. The first of these goals depends upon the identification of the deposits in geological or pedological terms. The second depends upon relating such deposits to the units employed in an excavation. The two must always be done in conjunction, yet the difficulties of stratigraphic analysis in archaeology arise primarily because it is impossible to excavate in units which invariably correspond exactly to the stratigraphic deposits. This obstacle is compounded by the fact that it is frequently impossible to actually recognize and classify the deposits correctly during the excavation. Unfortunately, however, the success of an archaeological excavation depends upon the mastery of the stratigraphic sequences and the publication of the results in a scientifically compelling fashion, since only the published results are available to other scholars. The third, analytical and interpretive, is precisely the presentation of the sequences and the arguments in the publication of the excavation. The fourth, interpretive and polemic, involves the incorporation of the stratigraphic sequences in the interpretations of historical events and developments, chronological

Although the methodology of stratigraphic analysis is hotly contested among archaeologists today, the procedures are among the oldest developed in scientific archaeology. By the end of the eighteenth century, stratigraphic methods were gradually being applied to the understanding of both archaeological and geological deposits, and thus Thomas Jefferson’s pioneer efforts at stratigraphic excavation in 1794 antedated Christian Thomsen’s typologically based ‘three-age system’, introduced with the opening of Copenhagen National Museum (1819). Yet, ever since the development of typological methods, archaeological theory has largely centered on typology and typologically oriented issues, whereas stratigraphic theory and debates have remained more or less subsidiary issues, and thus lag far behind the discussions based on typological analysis (e.g., world systems, diffusionism, style, ethnicity, etc., aside from art historical approaches). The result is that where stratigraphy comes to the forefront, the internal theoretical debate involves several fundamental differences (concerning the importance and character of excavation units and layers and the correct terminology) which are completely unrelated to the public interpretive debate over chronological and historical questions. The Case of Tell el-Dab’a

Before moving on to a survey of forms of stratigraphic thought, to illustrate the disparities between the various types of discussion today, we will use a relatively prominent and highly contested site, that of Tell el-Dab’a in the Egyptian Nile Delta. Excavated

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by an Austrian mission under the direction of Professor Dr. M. Bietak, the site provides unusually good stratigraphic sequences with artifacts in layers and in tombs, as well as monuments, which can be linked to the Aegean, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. As the materials themselves can be linked to both chronology and historical developments in the entire eastern Mediterranean, the site has attracted considerable interest from both Aegean and biblical archaeologists, as well as from Near Eastern and Egyptian archaeologists. Inevitably, most of the public debate has centered on the issue of the chronological position of various features, such as parallels for fragments of Aegean-like paintings and actual Palestinian type axes and pottery unearthed in the excavations. The excavations thus offer an intricate web of interrelated issues, and all of these questions involve stratigraphic aspects, since the chronological attributions of the monuments and the artifacts depend upon their stratigraphic context. In fact, however, the entire argument has taken place in the absence of a publication of the stratigraphic evidence, as a stratigraphic survey remained unpublished more than two decades after the chronological debate began to get quite warm. Instead of sections, the excavators have published sequences of artifacts (some derived from tombs); instead of an independent stratigraphic nomenclature for each excavation and excavation trench, the excavators published material in terms of overarching stratigraphic sequences (in an alphanumerical soup of almost unfathomable complexity) which are ultimately chronological rather than depositional or architectural or typological in character. In one of the few published sections, one can note that the term for the ‘layer’ or ‘level’ ‘E’ combines floors and debris from collapse and apparently depositions from different periods. Thus the rapid survey of a couple of meters of a single section (one of hundreds of meters of unpublished sections, representing hectares of excavated area) reveals that this unit is neither a stratigraphic unit (neither in the sense of a depositional ‘layer’, nor an interpretive unit such as a ‘level’) nor a chronological unit (in the sense of a discrete uniform unit). In fact, therefore, the common point in this section is a wall, and the common point for the overall excavation strategy is that E ¼ Hyksos period. It is thus a typologically and defined chronological unit used for a historical period, and does not have a specifically coherent architectural, typological, or stratigraphic character. Significantly, virtually none of the debate about Tell el-Dab’a discusses the premises of the stratigraphic excavation nor the methodology, but rather centers on shifting the various pseudo-layers up and

down on a chronological scale, depending upon typological and historical considerations. From a methodological viewpoint, this is effectively inadmissible because any stratigraphic argument must depend upon the stratigraphy and not upon the typology or the interpretations of historical developments. The public debate is usually about the chronological alignments whereas the criticism here concerns the failure to incorporate a deposit-oriented approach. Thus, four different issues are in fact confounded: typology, architecture, chronology, and deposits. However, the key point is the fact that although the chronological debate is invariably referred to as ‘stratigraphic’, the stratigraphic underpinnings of the argument do not usually enter the discussion. Philosophical Origins

In principle, therefore, it must be recognized that both the methodology and interpretation of excavations are ultimately dependent upon stratigraphy. Unfortunately, it must be admitted that the case of Tell el-Dab’a is far from exceptional: most archaeological debate about stratigraphy consists of what are effectively chronological, historical, and typological discussions. It is even more regrettable that many of the discussions concerning the theoretical debate about stratigraphy are dominated by debates on terminology rather than methodology. To understand the difficulties which have led to this confusion about the use of stratigraphy, we must turn back to the various interpretations of stratigraphy. In principle, the earliest approaches to stratigraphy can be recognized in two different traditions. One is that used in the Palaeolithic excavations of France where layers are viewed geologically, and distinguished both in terms of (1) actual composition and sequence and (2) the typologically classified artifacts enclosed in those layers. Thus, the analysis of the composition of the layers and the faunal remains can reveal climatic changes and the analysis of the artifacts in the layers provides chronological indicators. Layers or sites are thus classified in terms of the glaciations (e.g., Wu¨rm or Riss) and in terms of chronologically recognizable artifact categories (e.g., Perigordian or Gravettian). This method can be traced back to the earliest excavations in Europe, and represents the strongest tradition in the understanding of archaeological stratigraphy. However, this approach suffers from the major difficulty that most archaeological excavations are historical, and the composition of the layers is not only pedological (rather than geological), but also occasionally strongly influenced by human activity, including, for example, architecture. Therefore, the

STRATIGRAPHIC ANALYSIS 2105

other mainstream approach, classifying according to architectural levels, is more recent and equally common today, being largely a development from the late nineteenth century and Schliemann’s excavations at Hissarlik which he identified as Troy. The same model has been applied to numerous other sites, including, for example, Koldewey’s excavations at Babylon and Woolley’s at Alalakh. At such sites, the sequence of levels is based on construction phases, and each phase is identified in terms of either historical (e.g., Hellenistic, Homeric, Hammurabi) or typological (e.g., Early Bronze, Late Bronze) criteria, which are in turn assigned a chronological position, based primarily on the typology. The layers and the architecture are intimately linked. These two approaches represent the two important philosophical approaches to stratigraphy, and the greatest challenge facing archaeologists is trying to link approaches involving stratigraphic deposits and architecture, and most of the theoretical debate about stratigraphic analysis today involves these issues. It should be noted that such a discussion is methodological and effectively a completely different discussion than the debates surrounding the interpretation of the ‘layers’ at Tell el-Dab’a. Current Understanding

Today, the study of stratigraphy is a complex and highly contested field, with differences ranging from a highly geological approach to a highly architectural approach. In practice, there is a great divide between the theoretical tools and the realities of excavation strategies. It should be evident that every single archaeological excavation is unique in material, goals, and strategies (as well as funding and time), and thus any theoretical framework must be adapted to the practical project. Furthermore, regardless of intellectual spirit, every excavator is influenced by that individual’s specific educational environment – and the methodologies used by individual excavators will change as they gain experience. The result is that not only are there numerous variations of the theoretical approaches, but there are also myriads of specific approaches visible in publications – and the published versions differ distinctly from the methods used in the field, which are constantly changing. Therefore we simplify. In principle, despite many differences of detail, broadly speaking, there are three fundamentally different approaches to stratigraphic analysis: typological, architectural, and geological. There are many variations of the various systems, and any given system will usually incorporate elements of several systems, so that in practice, all three are invariably present in any given system of

stratigraphic analysis, but usually one of the three approaches is dominant. One of the most prominent typological approaches is that based on the Harris matrix. The basic conceptual idea is that excavation units are separated during excavation and become ‘stratigraphic units’ when a sequence of the excavation units is arranged in a Harris matrix (Figure 1). If each of the units is correctly recognized and separated during the excavation, and correctly labeled on the excavation drawings; the groups of artifacts are correctly tagged and the plotting of the three-dimensional positions is correct, then the objects can be assigned a specific threedimensional position which can be arranged on a two-dimensional Harris matrix. The objects recovered from the excavation thus provide a sequence which can be organized chronologically. Sections are viewed as superfluous and replaced by the Harris matrix, which is a completely logical and coherent schematic organization of the information about the sequence of units in an excavation. Since the units are not dependent upon the units drawn in sections, the goal is thus a comprehensive account of the sequence of all units without giving the inevitably misleading impression that the sequence visible in a section is somehow representative. This is important as it is a familiar fact that sections are not necessarily even representative of the sequence of layers present in the trench from which the section drawing stems. It is highly significant that although the system creates a relative chronological skeleton, minor changes can lead to entire groups of excavation units being shifted in time without any complications, meaning that the system is highly flexible. On the other hand, however, the lack of published profiles is disadvantageous since scholars have no means of assessing the reliability of the interpretations made in the field. Furthermore, the rejection of the analysis of the composition of the units means that there is no built-in deliberate effort at distinguishing floors from rubbish and collapse. One of the most prominent architectural approaches is that developed by the German Archaeological Institute’s Oriental Department for the excavations at Uruk. Although the definitive version differs distinctly from its antecedents, the principal elements can be recognized in Koldewey’s methodology at Babylon. The basic conceptual idea is the identification of architectural sequences, with deposits and objects related to the buildings. The sequence of buildings provides the basic skeleton upon which the excavation is reconstructed. The sections stress the architectural sequence, and the layers are treated as linking the architectural features (Figure 2). History is viewed in terms of architecture, and thus the site

2106 STRATIGRAPHIC ANALYSIS

1290 859 560 749 838

350

880

759 Figure 1 A (fictional) example of a Harris matrix applied to excavation units. The reconstruction of the stratigraphy and chronology are based upon the interpretation of the excavation units (whose relations to one another are carefully recorded during excavation, and dictate the relations between the boxes). In principle, the purpose is to assure the relative position in the sequence of the artifacts drawn from the various excavation units. In principle, no interpretation interferes with an ‘objective’ account of the relations, and these relations are based upon the excavation records. However, without published section drawings, it is impossible for an outside observer to verify the stratigraphy, and the analysis of the stratigraphic units is not the basis of the excavation, but rather the excavation units.

comes to life through the sequence of the deliberately erected monuments (which remain in place) rather than the pottery and other rubbish (which can move through space, and thus confuse dating of layers through artifacts). However, with layers and architecture so intimately connected, even minor changes can lead to virtually irresolvable complications, which can never be resolved as both the recording and the published versions make it impossible to identify exactly what should be changed. Furthermore, the method itself makes it impossible to establish a sequence at a site if no link can be found between two buildings, as was the case at Uruk. The strictly geological approach is still most commonly encountered in Palaeolithic excavations where the sequence of layers is virtually geological in character (i.e., devoid of architecture and very slow in terms of accumulations). However, the basic approach has been advocated for use in historical excavations as well. There are two quite different variations to the approach, one largely biblical and one largely Near Eastern. The biblical approach was originally developed by Albright who simply adopted the geological approach used for the French Palaeolithic and applied it to the

Level l Level ll Level lV Level V Level Vl Level Vll Level Vlll Level lX Level X

Level Xl Level XllA Level XllB Level XllC Level Xlll

Level XlV Level XV Level XVl Level XVll Figure 2 An example of the architectural approach to stratigraphy: the stratigraphy of Alalakh, as presented by Sir Leonard Woolley (from D. A. Warburton, Archaeological Stratigraphy, p. 6; after L. Woolley, Alalakh, Oxford, 1955, figure 2). Stratigraphy in the sense that deposits are subordinated to the architecture.

STRATIGRAPHIC ANALYSIS 2107 5

10 m

0a 0b lla llb llla lllb1b lllbd2

*Wall 5/10

IVa

Occupational deposits covering earlier wall

Wall 4/5

0a 0b I IIa IIb

4.0. 4.1.1. 4.1.2. 4.2. 4.3.1. 4.3.2.

IIIa2a

4.4.1.

IIIb1a IIIb1b IIIb2a IIIb2b IIIc12

4.4.2. 4.4.3. 4.4.4.

IIId2 IVb

Wall 1/4 4.4.5. 4.4.6. 4.4.7.

lVb

Occupational deposits accumulating against wall and covered by debris of collapse of same Figure 3 Example of the Near Eastern approach advocated by the author (from D. A. Warburton, Archaeological Stratigraphy, p. 59; based on D. A. Warburton in Northern Akkad Project Reports 7 (1991), plate 1). The sequence of layers (as stratigraphic units, Arabic numerals) serves as the basis for an interpretation in terms of levels (Roman numerals). The layers are linked to one another and to the architecture horizontally and vertically. In principle, an interpretation of the relations between the deposits is the precondition for the designations of the layers, and a mastery of this interpretation is the basis for the separation of the layers during excavation. The social history of buildings and neighborhoods can be followed based on the stratigraphy. The excavation units (from which objects are taken, and upon which chronological periodization depends) are identified with the stratigraphic units, and thus the typological analysis of the finds provides an independent method of using the stratigraphy.

historical archaeology of Palestine. In this method, the objects in a layer were assigned the role of dating the layers, and thus the typology dominated the stratigraphy and the sequence was only used to coordinate the overall understanding of the site. The strength of the approach was the fact that different sites could be chronologically linked through the identification of similar artifacts, which allowed typology to be linked to both chronology and stratigraphy. The greatest weakness of the system is the dependence upon artifact classes where changes in terminology and chronology can lead to endless confusion, which again can never be resolved. Furthermore, the reliance on artifact classes leads to the creation of layers which have never been found, since their existence is postulated due to the artifacts which should be associated with them. One of the other prominent geological approaches used for historical excavations with architecture is that developed and used by some Near Eastern archaeologists working in Iraq and Syria (including the missions of the Universities of Ghent, Louvain, Chicago, Frankfurt, and Geneva). The overriding conceptual idea is that of following the sequence of deposits, with the object of separating and analyzing the stratigraphy in the field (Figure 3). The stratigraphy is used to guide the excavation during the excavation, and the stratigraphy is also used to study the architecture, through the recognition of floors, foundation fill, debris, etc. The stratigraphic analysis is based on sections and architectural plans, and the objects are discussed in terms of stratigraphic

context, understood in terms of pedological units, meticulously described in the reports. The main stress is on the link between excavations and stratigraphy. In principle, only a few archaeologists actually deny the importance of analyzing the deposits, and thus the method widely reflects an ideal shared by most field archaeologists. The greatest weakness of the approach appears to be its complicated character (and its overall intention seems to be less clear to other scholars than to the author). Furthermore, the use of a cumbrous terminology has drawn debate away from the methodology to the terminology. Although this division into ‘schools’ is itself both arbitrary and an oversimplification, the principal differences between these schools can likewise be understood only by vastly oversimplifying. We assume that the differences can be approached by the role played by ‘layers’ or ‘deposits’. According to the Harris approach, the analysis of the deposits is of no importance: it suffices to recognize the units during excavation and to separate them. The object of an excavation is to be able to recreate a chronological sequence of such units. According to the German approach, the understanding of the layers is subordinated to the architectural sequences. The object of the excavation is the study of architecture and objects. According to the biblical approach, the layers are viewed as ‘envelopes’ containing the objects. The object of the excavation is to establish a chronological sequence based on these layers as envelopes containing objects which are diagnostic, and which can be related to historical developments. According to the Near

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Eastern approach, an archaeological site consists of layers; both the excavation and the interpretation must be guided by the layers. The object of the excavation is not only to recover objects and monuments but also to understand the formation of the site both in terms of original activities and also events which took place subsequently. In general, the approach developed by Harris has been adopted by many archaeologists, precisely because it is widely assumed that stratigraphy is primarily a chronological tool, and that the analysis of the deposits cannot usefully serve other purposes in an historical excavation. This assumption ultimately rests upon the role of stratigraphy in geology rather than its role in archaeology, and thus it fails to take account of the role that stratigraphy can play in the analysis of themes ranging from seasonal and climatic change to architectural reconstructions.

Stratigraphy in Excavations From the archaeological standpoint, there can be little doubt that Bietak’s excavations at Tell el-Dab’a are of high quality, and that the difficulty here is really a matter of methodological details compounded by the lack of adequate publication. In principle, the system used at Tell el-Dab’a is a combination of the typological and architectural approaches mentioned above. As noted, these represent the major currents of stratigraphic thinking in historical excavations, as the geological–pedological approach is more widely used in prehistoric excavations. In principle, there is general agreement that the stratigraphy plays a fundamental role in excavations, but the treatment of stratigraphy differs significantly, given the different approaches which are viewed as valid by the members of the respective schools. The principal bones of contention are the importance assigned to objects and architecture. Some excavators (including the author) are convinced that stratigraphic understanding is the precondition for excavation, and that excavation depends upon mastery of the stratigraphy. Others are persuaded that stratigraphic analysis is a time-consuming activity which can ultimately only realistically be handled as part of the ‘post-excavation’ analysis. It should be evident that only the first view can be regarded as scientifically defensible, whereas the second approach corresponds to widely accepted practice. In fact, of course, any excavation is a compromise between these two views, as virtually every excavator will aspire to excavating stratigraphically. The primary difference between the deposit-oriented approach and the others is that the drawing of sections is viewed as a precondition to excavation, and the

understanding of the sections is viewed as a precondition to drawing and analysis. Where difficulties arise, sections of test trenches sunk to expose difficult problems can be drawn. In other approaches, the material is excavated and the stratigraphic sections drawn afterward. In this fashion, any information in the sections cannot be used to guide the excavations, and no effort is made to ascertain the stratigraphic sequence in advance. Harris actually opposes the analysis of the deposits (assuming that the subjective factors will simply not aid the excavation strategy) and likewise opposes the drawing of sections (as there is no reason to believe that any given trench walls will be representative of the sequence excavated). For Harris, the absolute prerequisite for the creation of the sequence is the recognition of the principal relationships between the units: which are superimposed on which, which are cut by which, which are sealed by which. The key is thus recognizing the interfaces during excavation and separating the units accounting to the interfaces. If this is done faithfully, the final listing of all of the excavation units will provide a virtually objective sequence, without interpretation. However, as noted, most archaeologists assume that a certain amount of interpretive data should accompany the classification of deposits and excavation units. Yet, there are great differences among those who study the deposits during excavation. One approach assumes that the material can be identified in the field immediately. Thus the analytical description of the layers includes interpretive terms such as ‘fill’, ‘collapse’, ‘floors’, etc. The more rigorous approach (advocated by the author) argues that deposits should be described in detail, so that the descriptions can serve to aid in the interpretation (or more frequently, ‘reinterpretation’) of the stratigraphic sequences, so that classifications such as ‘fill’ do not appear until a second step, after the sections have been described and drawn. This approach also argues that any stratigraphic analysis should implicitly include a conscious reflection about the relationships between the deposits while describing and drawing the material in the field. Thus, the absolute precondition for an excavation is the separation of the ‘excavation units’ from the ‘stratigraphic units’. This applies to both multileveled tells, and ‘one-period sites’ alike, as any archaeological site invariably has a stratigraphic depth, even if that depth only includes one chronologically isolated period. The excavation units (labeled ‘lots’, etc.) should correspond to a unit which can clearly link the objects found in an excavation to the description of the material in which they were found and to a position which can be related to both plans

STRATIGRAPHIC ANALYSIS 2109

and sections. The stratigraphic units (deposits) should be likewise linked to both sections and plans. In an ideal case, the excavator will be able to make the arbitrary ‘excavation units’ the same as the ‘stratigraphic units’ (deposits), and thus the sequence of excavation units will correspond to the order of deposition. In general, this is simply impossible for practical reasons, and the excavator should aim at simply separating material as carefully as possible; excavation units can be reassembled into other types of analytical and interpretive units at a later stage. In principal, there are two methods of attempting this: one is to use arbitrary excavation units and specify their dimensions; the other is to attempt to recognize stratigraphic units during the excavation and model the excavation units (which are nevertheless necessarily arbitrary) as closely as possible to the deposits. In principle, the method based exclusively on arbitrary units has been largely abandoned, and most archaeologists attempt to excavate according to stratigraphic units understood as reflecting the deposits. In principle, the easiest method of recognizing the deposits before excavation is to use a test trench (or sondage) to recognize the deposits in section before excavating them in the horizontal surfaces. This demands that the trench always be extended so that it allows the excavator to look below the lower interface of the unit being excavated, and preferably actually sufficiently deep as to allow the excavator to view the entire thickness of the unit below the one being excavated. This method necessarily entails that the sections be drawn and analyzed during the excavation rather than at the close of the season. When drawing and analyzing sections, the excavator must move quickly as the fresh section is far easier to read than a section that has been exposed for a substantial period of time (particularly in the Middle East). It is probably not advisable to draw too many lines in the section with a trowel as these can mislead one about the stratigraphy when attempting to draw on paper. One can successfully combine the excavation of horizontal exposures with the deepening of a test trench by leaving detailed analysis and drawing until after the day’s excavation. This has an added benefit since it is always advisable to take advantage of the evening light which is softer than either morning or daylight, allowing faint traces and lines to be recognized. Obviously, ideally sections should be arranged so that the section drawn remains visible during the excavation of the deposits in the relevant ‘square’, and thus the excavation should be to the west of the section. Obviously, it would be equally desirable to excavate only when the soil is slightly moist, and the sun not permitted to ‘burn’ sections. Equally obviously, such ideal conditions cannot

possibly determine an excavation strategy, and the excavator must adjust to construction schedules, local customs, academic calendars, local topography, and the specific goals of the campaign, etc.

Stratigraphy in Publications The interpretation of the stratigraphic material is generally done after the excavation, and it is usually the interpretation which gives rise to raging debates. In general, it is assumed that any archaeologist will have selected the most suitable methodology for the excavation of the site, and thus it is generally viewed as incorrect to criticize the methodology so much as the conclusions which are drawn from it. Regardless, it should be evident that any interpretation can only be based on the stratigraphic evidence, and the quality of that evidence depends upon observation and recording in the field. Usually, any debate about the interpretation of the excavation reflects weaknesses either in the methodology of the excavation or the delay of publication. Usually the delay in publication can be traced back to methodological difficulties during the excavation. There are thus two fundamentally different aspects of ‘stratigraphy in publications’. The first is the preliminary presentation of the stratigraphy in the publication of an excavation. The second is the discussion of the interpretation of that evidence. This begins with the interpretations presented by the excavator but continues in the academic debate where other scholars exploit the publication for their own purposes. Publication of Evidence

All of the published material should be based upon observations recorded in the field during the excavations, and thus the observation, recording, and publication are drawn together here. The interpretation of deposits takes place on several different levels. The lowest level is that of analytical identification and description, separating the units. The following level is that of interpretation. It is only after this analysis and interpretation that chronological, typological, and historical elements should be included. Analysis In general, the publication of the stratigraphy of an archaeological excavation should consist of (1) sections, (2) plans, (3) descriptions of the deposits, and (4) tables correlating the various elements (either as charts or Harris matrices). The stratigraphic deposits which appear here might include ‘layers’, ‘pits’, ‘walls’, etc. This process should include the presentation of information about, for example, the

2110 STRATIGRAPHIC ANALYSIS

identification of boundaries of deposits, components, shape of components. In stratigraphic terms, an effort should be made to distinguish walls, foundation trenches, and floors, etc., so as to facilitate the interpretation of the stratigraphic sequence and to contribute to architectural history. In this context, it is imperative to observe whether or not surfaces were exposed to wind and precipitation (a distinction which will appear as, for example, streets and courtyards as opposed to rooms and halls in the level of interpretation). In terms of chronology, the key element is to recognize, identify, and follow the most important isochronous lines and to distinguish deposits which may actually be chronologically homogeneous. It is imperative to distinguish between, for example, the isochronous line marking the excavation of a pit which can cut through several layers and the fill of a pit which may represent a very different phenomenon. In certain cases, the fill of a pit might include a tomb or a foundation deposit, but it is more frequently a slow stratified accumulation of rubbish, which itself may be in situ and clearly datable due to sealing by layers above – even though the pit itself is intrusive. When significant deposits are encountered during excavation, the excavator should be prepared to prepare samples for radiocarbon or micromorphological analysis, etc. Together, the published material should allow the reader of an excavation report to gain a relatively clear idea of the context of any significant material discussed or presented in the excavation report. Interpretation There are several levels of interpretation. The most basic involves the classification of the deposits (as, e.g., floors, in situ), and their assignment into bundles of layers (e.g., involving the excavation of foundations of a building, the filling of the foundation trench, the walls, the floors, the collapse debris). Thus, architectural and social history can be followed in an excavation, without any discussion of the artifacts in terms of typological or chronological categories. Periodization and chronology After the analysis and interpretation of the stratigraphy has been taken as far as possible, it is essential to include the typological characteristics of the objects found in the excavation into consideration. The value of any particular object depends upon its stratigraphic position: a humble easily classifiable potsherd found in situ on a floor or in clearly recognizable collapse has a higher value for the interpretation of the stratigraphy than does a gold coin which was in the fill of a pit that cannot be dated. When the material and sequences are dated by

means of the artifacts, it is also possible to return to the stratigraphy to study, for example, architectural and religious practices based upon the stratigraphic evidence (where patterns of movement or methods of construction are recognizable without regard to artifacts) and to assign them a specific historical or chronological identity. Most of this methodology depends upon defining not only the youngest artifacts in a deposit, but also the character of the deposit itself in stratigraphic terms, before it can be used for chronological purposes. Inversely, the establishment of typologically typical assemblages of artifacts should be based upon clearly identified in situ deposits. Details Terminology The terminology used to distinguish the various elements (excavation units, excavation squares, excavation areas, stratigraphic deposits, interpretative units, chronological units, etc.) should be mutually exclusive and easily recognizable. The choice of any specific terminology is not important as the methodology must be stratigraphic; however, it would be useful if archaeologists would agree upon a terminology which facilitated the understanding of excavation reports. Micromorphology One of the most promising solutions to the challenges of stratigraphic analysis is the micromorphological approach which relies upon the analysis of the components and layering of deposits. The study of the components can permit the student to reconstruct landscapes, recognize seasonal usage, distinguish open spaces from covered ones, and even, in one exceptional case to recognize abandoned buildings left standing. Stratigraphy in Debate

Debates over stratigraphic analysis take three forms. The most common debates are those over the interpretation of the chronological significance of artifacts and monuments found in different levels (as in the case of Tell el-Dab’a) or over the historical importance of a particular level (such as the date and causes of the destruction level at Hasanlu IV in Iran). The second most common type of discussion revolves around the modification of minor details in a sequence proposed in an excavation report or in a synthetic discussion. The third variety of discussion is that of the polemics over terminology and methodology. It should be evident that until the debate over terminology and methodology has produced some kind of consensus about recording and publication, debates about interpretations of unpublished archaeological levels will continue to

STRATIGRAPHIC ANALYSIS 2111

flourish, and the underlying problems will continue to fester. Unfortunately, those participating in the debates tend to find themselves isolated from mainstream discussions of archaeological theory (and so the subject rarely appears in discussions of archaeological theory or scientific methods), and thus the most important aspects of stratigraphic analysis have been shunted to a sideline.

Concluding Note One of the greatest obstacles to the study of stratigraphy in terms of archaeological deposits is related to the different aspects of the discipline of archaeology. Most archaeological excavations touch deposits of historical periods whereas deposit-oriented stratigraphic analysis is frequently viewed as being pertinent for prehistoric excavations and less relevant to historical period excavations. Furthermore, the field suffers from a Manichean division by which stratigraphic analysis is separated from excavation methodology, so that in this debate the terminology and methodology of stratigraphic analysis is not viewed as being fundamental to all excavations, but rather as a prerogative of individual excavators. This has opened the way for the importance of typology to largely eclipse stratigraphic methodology, in terms of theoretical discussions and analysis, but also as a means of analyzing stratigraphy. The result has been that stratigraphic methods directly relevant to the excavation of historical sites have developed without a balanced approach to the architecture and the artifacts on the one hand and the deposits on the other.

Survey

See: Pedestrian Survey Techniques.

Symbol and Image

See: Image and Symbol.

Ideally, stratigraphic analysis must be separated from chronological and typological analysis in order for each to occupy its own rightful position in archaeological analysis (see Classification and Typology). See also: Biblical Archaeology; Classification and Typology; Goals of Archaeology, Overview; Sites: Formation Processes.

Further Reading Eichmann R (1989) Uruk: Die Stratigraphie. Grabungen 1912– 1977. Mainz: Ausgrabungen Uruk-Warka Endberichte 3. Harris EC (1989) Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy. London: Academic Press. Harris EC, Brown MR, III, and Brown GJ (eds.) (1993) Practices of Archaeological Stratigraphy. London: Academic Press. Matthews W (1995) Micromorphological characteristics and interpretation of occupation deposits. In: Barham T and Macphail TR (eds.) Archaeological Sediments and Soils, pp. 41–46. London: Archetype Books. Schiffer MB (1987) Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Stein JD (1987) Deposits for archaeologists. In: Schiffer MB (ed.) Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 11, pp. 337–397. Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Stern E (ed.) (1993) New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land. New York: Simon & Schuster. Warburton DA (2000). Stratigraphy: Methodology & terminology. Proceedings of the First International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, pp. 1731–1750. Rome: Herder. Warburton DA (2003) Archaeological Stratigraphy: A Near Eastern Approach. Neuchaˆtel: Recherches et Publications. Waters MR (1996) Principles of Geoarchaeology: A North American Perspective. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.

T TAPHONOMY Mary C Stiner, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary agent Any force or process that accumulates and/or modifies biological remains; agents may be biological entities or physical forces such as chemical reactions or gravity. assemblage A collection of objects that occurs within the limits of a definable space or locality. crystallinity The size and orderliness of the crystalline lattice of a material. density In vertebrate taphonomy, two distinct uses of the concept to describe skeletal materials are important: structural density refers to the variations in the porosity of a material in relation to volume and holding material class constant (e.g., bone as opposed to tooth enamel); mineral density instead refers to the relative proportion of organic and inorganic components in a material (e.g., mature mammalian tooth enamel is about 95% calcium phosphate mineral, whereas mature bone is composed of about 65% of the same mineral). diagenesis Chemical transformations of materials postmortem, including mineral dissolution, recrystallization, and replacement. dissolution Chemical breakdown assisted by water, most often provoked by an imbalance in the pH of a sedimentary environment. equifinality Similar consequences or signatures arising from two or more distinct agents, processes, or causal pathways. fossilization Any process by which the original components of a biological structure are replaced or altered by dissolution, mineral precipitation, or both, but preserving the appearance or surfaces of the original structure. inorganic In biological remains, the component of a material composed of mineral compounds. in situ attrition The loss by deletion or decomposition of materials from a locality where they accumulated previously. organic In biological remains, the component of a material composed of organic compounds such as protein, lipids, and sugars. phytoliths Silicious structures formed within the soft skeleton of plants, some of which are diagnostic of broad plant taxonomic groups. porosity The proportion of the volume of a material taken up by holes, tubes, or irregular voids; in zooarchaeology, the structural density of material traditionally is measured as the relation between volume and weight and more recently by application of photon densitometry and computed tomography techniques. specimen Any discrete object, whole or broken. superficial damage Visible modifications of the surface of a specimen such as etching caused by contact with plant roots,

burning by fire, exfoliation provoked by atmospheric weathering, gnawing damage by animals, cut marks, or battering from tools. uniformitarianism A highly influential analytical concept of time-independent process originating in geology (C. Lyell) but integral to all historical or interpretive sciences, including taphonomy; assumptions of constancy, regularity, or consistency of key processes or structures in nature, biological and physical. zooarchaeology The study of animal remains from archaeological sites; analyses are most often organized around economic questions but may also include uses of animals or parts of animals in ritual contexts or as sources of raw materials in technology.

‘Taphonomy’ represents a family of scientific methods developed principally in the service of palaeontology, archaeology, and forensics. It is concerned foremost with historical reconstruction of past events or processes that lead to the formation of a collection of associated objects, most often biological remains. Taphonomy first emerged as a discipline in the nineteenth century, mainly among European palaeontologists inspired by uniformitarian approaches from geology, with some contributions by American researchers. The discipline expanded rapidly in the second half of the twentieth century in response to new questions about depositional environments, consequences of differential decay, and the forces of accumulation and modification of animal and plant remains in sedimentary records. J. Weigelt is recognized as a formative influence in vertebrate taphonomy, not least for his notion of ‘biostratonomy’, the study of the processes that operate on organismic remains from the time of death to their integration into the geological record. The broad applicability of Weigelt’s work stems from his preoccupation with decay and burial processes, which he observed in contemporary environments as a means for understanding the formation of fossil records. R. Richter also employed uniformitarian concepts in his version of actualistic paleontology (aktuopala¨ntologie), which focused on the accumulation and alteration of skeletal materials prior to fossilization. A. H. Mu¨ller instead examined the effects of diagenesis

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(fossildiagenese) following the burial of organismic remains – geochemical transformations including mineral replacement that occurs during fossilization. Early developments in the field were highly varied and problem specific. I. A. Efremov is credited with synthesizing the diverse aspects of experimental, actualistic, behavioral, mechanical, and geochemical research into the discipline now called taphonomy. Prior to the 1970s, two scientific traditions existed within the discipline, one in palaeontology and the other in archaeology (mainly zooarchaeology). The goals of analysis and the methods commonly employed in the two traditions overlapped greatly, however, and considerable cross-fertilization is evidenced in the literature particularly after 1960. Convergence of the taphonomic traditions in palaeontology and archaeology is readily apparent in the works of C. K. Brain, B. Kurte´n, G. Haynes, and others, who applied taphonomic methods to problems of Pleistocene animal behavior and human evolution. Biological remains that frequently come under taphonomic investigation are vertebrate skeletons, mollusk shells, and plant pollen and phytoliths (see Pollen Analysis; Phytolith Analysis). An essential distinction is drawn analytically between organic and inorganic components of biological remains, and taphonomic methods and techniques tend to specialize within these material categories. The chemical make-up of a material greatly influences its susceptibility to decomposition, and the organic and inorganic components are nearly opposite in their susceptibility to variations in sediment pH (acidic to basic chemical conditions). The geological conditions that affect the preservation of organic and inorganic components of materials in sediments therefore are also important for estimating the extent of preservation bias. This essay deals mainly with the taphonomy of vertebrate and mollusk skeletal remains, particularly the inorganic components. In vertebrates, the inorganic fraction of skeletons is dominated by calcium phosphate minerals and those of mollusk shells by the carbonate minerals, aragonite and calcite. It is the mineral component of skeletons that tends to retain diagnostic macrostructures postmortem. The taphonomic methods used by zooarchaeologists, palaeontologists, and forensic scientists benefit from reference cases, constants, and natural principles drawn from both the physical and biological sciences. Inferences about past events are strengthened significantly by reference to independent recent cases of known history, whether derived from natural or experimental contexts. These sources of reference provide the inferential bridges between the observations about a collection of older materials and the processes responsible for their formation. More than one process may

produce the same kind of pattern or signature, however, and thus referents or analogs are most valuable in taphonomic studies for illuminating the range of potential causes. Reference data may also be useful for eliminating some potential explanations, but their value for this purpose is more limited. Common referents in taphonomic research include the typical age composition of organism populations, the duration of each reproductive generation (turnover rate), organism anatomy and physiology. Also important are experimental data on size and shape sorting of organismic remains by water currents or gravity, chemical reactions provoked by changes in the pH of sediments or water surrounding the remains, and superficial damage resulting from chewing or digestion by other animals, plant roots or atmospheric exposure (‘weathering’). It is assumed that the reference data employed in a study accurately represent a timeless (uniformitarian) process or a constant property of a physical structure. Examples of time-independent or ‘uniform’ processes include the effects of gravity and biological decay. Examples of structural constants include simple yet crucial expectations of the number of limbs in the complete skeleton of a species, and, more generally, the chain of predator–prey relationships (trophic hierarchy) in a food web. Taphonomists tend to focus their studies on assemblages of specimens rather than on the history of isolated finds, as the former is a richer source of information about the past. Most primary observations nonetheless are taken specimen by specimen, in addition to observations about sedimentary context. The data are then examined in aggregate for diagnostic patterns of damage, spatial distributions, and other indications. Because the history of each object in an assemblage can differ from the next, overall assessments of assemblage formation tend to be complex and are built from arguments of probability. Taphonomists therefore seek to identify not only the identity of dominant and secondary agents of accumulation, modification, and preservation for the assemblage as a whole, but also the sequence of agent effects (exemplified in Figure 1). The span of time over which an assemblage forms may vary from a few seconds to thousands of years. The longer the formation time of an assemblage, the greater the likelihood that multiple factors have contributed to shaping the overall character of that assemblage. The cause(s) of assemblage accumulation and/or modification normally is assigned to one or more agents. These agents can be biological, such as animals that prey on other animals or collect their bones, or physical forces such as gravity or solar radiation. Analyses of superficial damage on skeletal specimens most

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Figure 1 Examples of singular and sequential damage on marine shells: (a) wave-induced abrasion of fractured shell; (b) bore hole of molluskan predator in prey; (c) damage sequence that began with death caused by molluskan predator followed by wave-induced abrasion.

Figure 2 Atmospheric weathering of bones leaves characteristic traces, affecting the exterior surface first; weathering eventually may reduce an entire specimen to dust if exposed on the ground surface for long periods; burial in sediments tends to prevent or arrest the weathering process.

Figure 3 Gnawing marks from a medium-size carnivore (dog).

often focus on the positive indications of alteration. Weathering damage from atmospheric, especially solar, exposure (Figure 2) is indicative of the rates of burial or vegetal overgrowth, because the process generally ceases once the specimen is sheltered from the elements. Gnawing damage from carnivorous animals (Figure 3) or rodents (Figures 4 and 5) may imply that specimens lay exposed and available to consumers for extended periods. Burning damage on bones in archaeological sites usually indicates human activities, and variation in the distribution and intensity of burning damage in these contexts can be used to diagnose firecentered activity areas, intentional waste disposal, or cycles of hearth rebuilding, since the act of cooking seldom results in extensive or repeated burning of bones directly. Tool marks on bones resulting from contact with the sharp edges of chipped stone tools (Figure 6) or blunt hammers (Figure 7) are also diagnostic of human activities and, in many cases, provide additional layers of information about butchering, marrow extraction, or fat-rendering practices. Abraded or polished surfaces on bones or resistant plant parts may develop under a wide variety of conditions. The distribution and microscopic characteristics of abrasion and polishing damage often allow researchers to determine their cause. Rolling of materials down a dry slope, trampling by large animals, rounding or etching from digestion in the gut of a consumer all tend to affect the entire surface of a specimen while producing distinctive textures. Other agents produce asymmetrical or localized abrasion or polishing. Bones half buried in a stream channel, for example, will be abraded locally as the water pushes sediment particles across the surfaces that remain exposed. Microscopic polish (use-wear traces) found on the working surfaces of bone, antler, or wooden tools (Figure 8) are nearly always localized and position specific. Tool function sometimes can be determined from a combination

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Figure 4 Gnawing marks made by a porcupine on a cow limb bone.

Figure 5 Gnawing marks made by small rodents on a segment of deer antler.

of tool design and the distribution and types of microscopic textures or glosses on the artifact (see Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear). Direct observation of the phenomena of interest is not possible in the historical disciplines of palaeontology, archaeology, sedimentary geology, and forensics. Cause instead is inferred from the remains and traces left by those phenomena. Causal agents may be identified from the diagnostic patterns of damage that they create, typical assemblages produced in recent contexts, or both. Signatures or patterns may not be unique to one type of agent, however. This is the interpretive dilemma of ‘equifinality’. The range of potential explanations for an observed case ideally is reduced through a stepwise process of hypothesis testing (a series of logically ordered, constrained ‘if– then’ conditions). Cross-referencing of distinct lines of evidence is essential for excluding the competing explanations. In the case of marine shells in an archaeological site, for example, a high incidence of burning

damage coupled with consistently sharp break edges on the shells of large-bodied species might be expected if they represent waste from humans’ meals; wave-worn small shells with fresh perforations in the same site might instead suggest the use of the shells as ornamental material (Figure 9). Other (nontaphonomic) classes of evidence often are needed to fully eliminate or confirm each proposition. For example, if the shell material described above occurs only around hearths (fire places) in an archaeological site and never outside of the site perimeter, then noncultural explanations are very unlikely. The order of events that contributed to assemblage formation can also be very informative. If two types of surface damage indicative of two distinct agents are encountered in an assemblage, overprinting of one type with another on bone specimens would, if consistently expressed, indicate the probable sequence of modification events. Some agents may be incompatible in the same space and time, such as a hibernating bear

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Figure 6 Cut marks from stone tools on deer bones from an Upper Palaeolithic site.

Figure 7 ‘Cone’ or conchoidal fractures (arrows indicate contact points) that may be produced by compression in the jaws of a large carnivore or, more commonly, by impact from a hammer (stone or metal) wielded by a human; cone fractures tend to be generated by consumers when breaking open large bones to obtain marrow; tool-induced cone fractures often display a roughened, shallow depression at the point of impact.

Figure 8 Polished surfaces caused by repeated use of a pointed bone tool (awl) designed for puncturing hides or basket-making.

versus noisy humans and their fires in the same cave, or atmospheric weathering that requires exposure on the ground surface versus fossilization (mineral replacement) of the same bone following its burial in sediments. Evidence of incompatible agents in an assemblage of bones may therefore suggest that the material accumulated over an extended period of months, years or longer.

While damage to skeletal remains is a rich source of information about the history and causes of assemblage formation, it undermines the identifiability of the remains (Figure 10) at the taxonomic, individual, and anatomical levels. Losses in identifiability (attrition) can be disproportionate, or biased, because of the differential fragility of species’ skeletons and the heterogeneous structure of elements within the

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Figure 9 Examples of marine shells modified into ornaments by Upper Palaeolithic humans: (a), (b), perforated specimens, one wave worn and one in fresh condition, implying that at least some of the shells selected for ornament making were obtained from dead, beachcast sources; (c), (d), details of holes made by humans using a punch tool, which resulted in accidental breakage of shell lip in one case (c) and scratches from punching tool near the perforation on another (d).

Figure 10 Burned mammal bones subjected to trampling; because high temperatures cause bone materials to become brittle, burning damage coupled with compaction may greatly reduce the identifiability of skeletal specimens.

skeleton. With time, these conditions often lead to significant biases in content relative to what was originally present in the accumulation. The issue of differential attrition was explored formally by C. K. Brain in the 1960s in a comprehensive study of fossil and recent bone assemblages in South Africa. The concept and the tools for its investigation were refined further in the 1980s onward by R. L. Lyman and others. Diverse causes of attrition in situ have been identified, ranging from ravaging and selective deletion by carnivorous animals, to high-energy water transport, weathering, and mineral dissolution. The first objective in studies of attrition is to determine what components of once-whole organisms or their skeletons are missing relative to a complete anatomical model. The second question may focus on why and

how the biases came about, using multiple lines of evidence and including superficial damage patterns. Two distinct domains of attrition are now recognized, mechanical types described above and chemical types, and they differ in their potential biasing effects. The distribution of bone macrostructures in the skeleton bears a loose but predictable relation to resistance to mechanical forces of decomposition, less to the effects of chemical decomposition. Preservation conditions, and the biases introduced by differential preservation, can be predicted partly as a function of variations in skeletal macrostructure (e.g., differing porosity of compact and spongy bone, aka structural or bulk density), chemical stability of the material, or mineral density (the percentage of organic vs. inorganic constituents within the material). Alteration of materials can occur at any structural scale, from molecular to macrostructural. However, differential destruction of mammalian skeletons is most often considered in terms of the relative proportions of spongy (cancellous) versus compact bone parts, bones versus teeth, and immature versus mature bone, because of a historical (and often necessary) preoccupation with the biological identity of the materials under investigation. Studies of chemical alteration, or ‘diagenesis’, have expanded greatly in recent years. This area of taphonomic research developed principally from discoveries in structural biology and applications for stable isotopic analysis, a technique that uses mass spectrometry to measure the different isotopic forms of low mass (light) elements such as oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur in samples (see Stable Isotope Analysis). Diagenesis refers to molecular changes in skeletal materials postmortem, including alterations in chemical makeup, mineral crystallinity, porosity, and mineral dissolution and replacement. Chemical alterations of animal or plant remains are tied directly to sedimentary conditions, especially matrix pH as

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influenced by water and any kind of organic input that raises the acidity of that matrix. Taphonomic methods have revolutionized scientific and lay perceptions of the nature and behavior of extinct organisms, including humans and human ancestors. Establishing the agents of bone collection and modification is prerequisite to dietary analyses in the archaeology. In zooarchaeology, taphonomic data provide critical insights about the carnivorous behavior of prehistoric humans and, in the Early Pleistocene, ecological competition between extinct members of the human evolutionary tree (taxonomic tribe Hominini of the family Hominidae) and large cats and hyenas. Widespread integration of taphonomic analyses in archaeological research is also responsible for the decline of ‘living floor’ or snapshot reconstructions of archaeological sites in favor of dynamic or cumulative models. Recent innovations in taphonomic methods offer numerous means for distinguishing activity areas within archaeological sites, selective transport of animal parts, and differential preservation in sediments, as well as more effective ways to investigate food-processing practices and their energetic consequences in prehistory and the recent past. Perhaps more than any other subset of archaeological research, taphonomic approaches have promoted a fundamental shift from static to dynamic conceptions about how archaeological and palaeontological records form. See also: Archaeozoology; Behavioral Archaeology; Invertebrate Analysis; Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear; Phytolith Analysis; Pollen Analysis; Sites: Formation Processes; Stable Isotope Analysis; Vertebrate Analysis.

Further Reading Behrensmeyer AK and Kidwell SM (1985) Taphonomy’s contributions to paleobiology. Paleobiology 11: 105–119. Binford LR (1978) Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology. New York: Academic Press. Brain CK (1981) The Hunters or the Hunted? Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DeNiro MJ (1985) Postmortem preservation and alteration of in vivo bone collagen isotope ratios in relation to palaeodietary reconstruction. Nature 317: 806–809. Efremov IA (1940) Taphonomy: A new branch of paleontology. Pan-American Geologist 74: 81–93. Gifford DP (1981) Taphonomy and paleoecology: A critical review of archeology’s sister discipline. In: Schiffer MB (ed.) Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 4, p. 365–438. New York: Academic Press. Haynes G (1991) Mammoths, Mastodonts, and Elephants: Biology, Behavior, and the Fossil Record. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kurte´n B (1976) The Cave Bear Story. New York: Columbia University Press. Lyman RL (1994) Vertebrate Taphonomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mu¨ller AH (1963) Lehrbuch de pala¨ozoologie, band. I allgemeine grundlagen. Jena: Gustav Fischer Verlag. Richter R (1928) Aktuopala¨ontologie und Pala¨obiologie, eine Abgrenzung. Senkenbergiana 19. Voorhies MR (1969) Contributions to Geology, Special Papers, No. 1: Taphonomy and Population Dynamics of an Early Pliocene Vertebrate Fauna, Knox County, Nebraska. Laramie, WY: University of Wyoming. Weigelt J (1927) Rezente wirbeltierleichen und ihre pala¨obiologische bedeutung. Leipzig: Max Weg Verlag (English translation by Schaefer J, 1989, Recent Vertebrate Carcasses and Their Paleobiological Implications. University of Chicago Press: Chicago). Weiner S, Goldberg P, and Bar-Yosef O (2002) Three-dimensional distribution of minerals in the sediments of Hayonim Cave, Israel: Diagenetic processes and archaeological implications. Journal of Archaeological Science 29: 1289–1308.

TEXTILES Carol Bier, The Textile Museum, Washington, DC, USA Mary M Dusenbury, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary carding/combing Processes of aligning fibers for spinning. carpet Large flat rug generally used as a floor cover. cloth Woven fabric, sometimes specifically to plain weave. drawloom Loom for weaving patterns by means of a series of harnesses manipulated by a person who controls each warp. dyes/dyeing Liquid containing organic or inorganic coloring matter, sometimes with a mordant, to impart to fibers, yarns, or

fabrics by a process known as dyeing; dyes form a chemical bond with fibrous material (unlike pigments). embroidery Technique, or result of such technique, of embellishing cloth with accessory threads worked by a needle. felt A nonwoven fabric of amorphous structure made by the compacting of fibrous materials using heat, moisture, and pressure; as used, often implies wool, the scaled surface of which is well suited to making felt. foundation The ground weave of a fabric generally composed of one set of warps and wefts. loom A structure designed to hold warp yarns taut, often with one or more devices to raise or lower warp threads in groups. pile A loop of yarn, sometimes cut, that projects from the plane of a fabric to form a raised surface often obscuring the foundation. plain weave Most basic weave structure in which each warp and weft intersect at right angles in an over-under alternation.

2120 TEXTILES plaiting Technique of interworking by deflection a set of elements fixed at one end. pseudomorph A substance or structure of definite form (e.g., a textile), the form of which is defined by another substance to which the form does not belong (i.e., a textile fossil). satin Basic binding system derived from twill, in which interlacing sequence of warp and weft has longer floats, for example, over five under one. selvedge The naturally occurring stable edges of a textile formed in weaving by the return passage of successive wefts. supplementary warp, supplementary weft Textile structure used for patterning in which there is a set of warps or wefts supplementary to the foundation. tapestry Woven textile in which the design is formed by discontinuous wefts of different colors. textile (1) Anything made of fibrous material fashioned by human hands (note: this broad definition includes nonwoven structures and unspun materials). (2) Woven fabric (note: this narrower definition, derived from Latin, textere, to weave, is restricted to materials made by the interlacing of warp and weft). twill Basic binding system in which interlacing sequence of warp and weft spans more than one element (but fewer than five), creating floats often with diagonal alignment. warp Longitudinal set of elements generally held taut by a loom. weave structure Description of relationships of warp and weft in a woven textile. weaving Process of interlacing warp and weft to create a textile. weft Transverse elements that interlace with warps to create a woven textile.

Textiles and the Archaeological Record The pervasive presence and cultural importance of textiles is not reflected in the archaeological record. As products of technology, objects of trade, markers of identity, and bearers of constructed meanings, and sometimes as works of art, textiles can convey massive amounts of information about human societies and their economies. They represent a range of forms and functions; they are expressive of cultural ideals and norms, government decrees, and human ideals, desires, and aspirations. Textiles articulate relationships among individuals, identities, and cultural groupings. Representing sophisticated understandings of materials and their properties, and manipulated through diverse technologies, textiles embody human ingenuity, creativity, and pragmatic solutions to everyday problems of the human condition. But, in spite of their profound significance, they factor minimally in the archaeological record due to a variety of factors such as their fragile nature, organic composition, patterns of use and wear, and general tendency to decompose in most environments. With few exceptions (in areas of extreme dryness, permafrost, and anaerobic or low-oxygen environments), historically, textiles have either been absent from archaeological contexts, or neglected in the course of documentation because of their scrappy condition. Today, newly developed analytical techniques permit a vast array of data to be extracted from tiny fragments, so that textiles are beginning to attract the

attention they deserve in relation to the roles they serve in all cultural traditions. Many approaches to the study of textiles and society can contribute to the interpretation of archaeological remains. Ethnographic documentation and analogy, art historical analysis of pictorial representations, the recognition of influences in other media, and the exploration of structures, patterns, and patternmaking as visual expressions of mathematical ideas, are among the approaches that offer great potential for understanding textiles within the study of human societies based on archaeological remains.

Textiles and Society The role of textiles in any society is both pervasive and diverse, for textiles serve everyone in many ways. Textiles are created to serve the daily and ceremonial needs of nearly all individuals, literally from birth to death. Enfolding a newborn in cloth is usually the first act a woman does for her infant that an animal does not; being clothed or wrapped in cloth is the first mark of the infant’s incorporation into the human community. Most cultures also pay close attention to the garments with which they prepare their dead, a habit that has engendered preservation of extraordinary textile remains such as those excavated at Pazyryk in Siberia and at various sites along the desert coast of Peru. Intimately intertwined with human experience, textiles have served throughout history as a medium of interaction between humans and the world they inhabit. Textiles function as garments, as furnishings, as containers for storage and transport, as architecture (tents) and architectural elements (e.g., doors, walls, floors), as bearers of belief systems and cultural heritage, and in the care of domesticated animals. From cradle to grave, cloth enfolds us, protecting, defining, and embellishing our persons, the spaces we occupy, and the activities in which we engage. In all categories of the world’s populations, individuals require textiles regardless of age, sex, status, belief, or occupation. Yet textiles by their design and function also serve to distinguish among individuals and among groups of individuals, in terms of class, religion, activity, gender, stature, and respect. The basis of fashion, textiles distinguish by means of drapery, form, and cut, by color and texture, by the fibers and how they have been prepared, by processing and finishing of the fabric. Combining aesthetics and technology, the textile arts represent nearly all human activity and express much that is valued in any given society. A major component of material culture, textiles are intended to serve defined purposes. Lightweight, flexible, and sometimes worth their weight in gold, textiles have served as vehicles for commerce and communication from prehistoric times to the present. They have been used to proclaim an

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individual’s age, gender, status, wealth, profession, and religious affiliation; to highlight individuality and/or foster group identity; and to support, defy, or subvert social organization and political power. An integral part of many religious and civil rituals, textiles can embody and make visible belief systems (see Ritual, Religion, and Ideology). Imbued with the power of the image or the authority of a ruler, textiles may serve to legitimize, to provide a blessing, or to unify people around a potent symbol such as a banner or flag. All textiles, including those that have survived only as scraps, derive from particular places at particular times. Each textile or fragment represents a complex set of human interactions between user and viewer, which implies a social response, and between user and maker, which sometimes results from an economic transaction or transactions among buyer and seller, lender, merchant, and trader. Suppliers of raw materials and market officials adjudicating fair trade and quality control may also have been involved. The quality and appearance of any given textile results from the contemporaneous conjunction of such factors as desire, taste, knowledge, technology, social traditions, aesthetic preference, style, fashion, political and economic circumstance, market conditions, organization of the household, availability of raw materials, and local ecology. In short, every textile ever produced, from oversize carpets to the tiniest shred of a fabric, is the product of its own environment, made and used in response to a particular set of historical circumstances. Analyzed with care, a great deal of information about the environment and historical circumstances that produced a textile can be deciphered from even a small, discolored fragment hundreds or even thousands of years later.

Textile Technologies Since prehistoric times, textile production has relied upon human ingenuity and has fostered both inquiry and experimentation. It always depends upon several successive processes from the gathering or harvesting of raw materials (plant or animal) to the compacting of fibers to produce felt, or to the preparation of pliable elements (through techniques of retting, hand splitting, or joining fibers; carding, combing, spinning, and/or reeling), to the interlacing of these elements into cloth (weaving and plaiting), to the dyeing of the fibers, threads, or woven cloth and to patternmaking. Sometimes, experimentation has led to ingenious inventions and applications of technologies, contributing significantly to the breadth of human knowledge and development. Such is the case with the development of computers from programmed looms – the Jacquard loom is credited with this invention, which brought on what has been called the

Industrial Revolution. It was created to expedite the interlacing of multiple warps and wefts and used commercially to produce complex woven structures and highly complicated designs and patterns. Its development provided crucial intellectual advances and applications that led to the invention of computers. At the other end of history, the whorled spindle, invented to twist finite elements of plant or animal fiber into a continuous strand, some consider to have served as a prototype for the invention of the wheel. Textile technologies are dependent upon local materials, human insight, and regional traditions. In the production of textiles, there are clusters of locally specific and diagnostic features, which can be identified. As with other technologies, textile processes are integral with, and inseparable from, the cultural systems within which they emerged.

Textile Structures and Patterns Textiles are patterned with infinite variety. Patterns emerge from the structure of the fabric through the interlacing of warp and weft according to many possible sequences (plain weave is the simplest logical possibility, over-one-under-one; twill involves over-two or over-three and under-one, -two, or -three; satin has longer floats with passages over more warps or wefts, and under-one or more; tapestry uses discontinuous wefts; compound weaves utilize more than one set of warps or wefts; float patterns are derived from the basic binding systems; velvet is a pile weave with a compound weave structure). In pile carpets, the pattern is carried by the pile, which is perpendicular to the interlacings of warp and weft. Apart from weave structure, patterns can be added as surface design by painting, printing, or resist dyeing. Textiles may be embellished after weaving with stitching and with the addition of accessory materials such as beads, jewels, shells, buttons, and supplementary layers of cloth (quilting, patching, applique´). Felt is prepared as compacted fibers without the use of yarns. Color may be introduced to the fibers, the yarns, or woven fabrics through the use of dyes which chemically bond with textile materials, or pigments, which reside on the surface of the fabric and do not form a chemical bond with the fibers.

Archaeological Finds As mentioned above, the prevalence and importance of textiles in human cultures is not evident from the archaeological record. Textiles, composed of organic matter, decompose naturally in a comparatively short period of time from exposure to water, air, minerals, insects, and fungi. Where they have survived in archaeological contexts, such natural agents of decay

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and deterioration are generally absent. This condition is restricted to very dry desert regions, such as Egypt, the Taklamakan Desert in China, and the coastal Central Andes in South America; areas of permafrost, such as Siberia; bogs in northern and central Europe; and other low-oxygen environments such as sealed tombs. In the Eurasian continent, major archaeological textile finds have been located in Egypt, the Caucasus, Siberia, Central Asia, and northwest China. In the Americas, the most numerous and significant finds have been in the desert of the Southwest United States and northern Mexico and along the arid Peruvian coast. Many such finds are associated with burials and often affiliated with lands beyond areas of potential cultivation. The care and rituals with which the human dead are treated, and local ecology in regions not easily adapted for agriculture or grazing, are circumstances which combined together have facilitated longterm preservation and survival of textile specimens. Archaeological textiles, like other artifacts, reveal the most when their context is fully documented. But textiles pose different sets of issues and problems than those of more durable materials. For adequate retrieval from extreme areas of dryness, processes of rehydration and stabilization have needed to be developed. And the documentation of textiles requires careful analysis of fibers, fiber and yarn preparation, and weave structure, to provide critical data for interpretation and comparative study. Excavated and recorded with care, textiles can provide information about local cultures, particularly when studied within broader cultural contexts, to determine regional patterns and inter-regional contact. The Silk Road, for example, reflects local and long-distance patterns of trade, influence, and movements of populations as well as merchants. Although the term itself is modern, the paths of human interaction and contact it signifies extend back for many centuries if not millennia. Critical analytical and comparative studies of patterns, designs, colors, materials, weave structures, accessories, and the techniques and processes they imply, can illuminate trade and tribute relationships, routes of migration and pilgrimage, even missionary activity, or relations among nomadic and settled peoples. The flexibility and mobility of textiles have served to render them particularly important as signifiers, if not themselves actual agents, of cultural exchange. As objects of material culture textiles are expressive of human interactions across time and space. Buddhist imagery, for example, was literally carried by itinerant monks from India and Central Asia east through Dunhuang to China, Korea, and Japan, as painted or patterned textiles, easily rolled or folded and transported manually from place to place. Another example is suggested by the presence of cotton, which requires intensive water for its cultivation,

and generally relies upon systems of irrigation that need to be maintained for sustained production. Wool, by contrast, is the renewable resource drawn from flocks of sheep and goat, managed through husbandry, which often depends upon migration to find suitable pastures for seasonal grazing, and is therefore associated with groups following patterns of nomadic adaptation. The presence of wool and cotton finds in an archaeological assemblage might signify trade or other relations among nomadic and settled populations; such is the case with Turkmen storage containers of different sizes for various functions (mafrash, torba, and chuval) in which the visible front face is constructed of a wool pile on a wool foundation with small bits of bright white, bleached cotton or bits of brightly colored silk dyed with cochineal (an insect dye, readily available only in certain areas). Like cotton, silk is a textile material associated with settled population groups, who engage in cultivation of mulberry trees, the leaves of which they feed to the silkworms. The cocoon is unreeled to produce the silk filaments, which are often bundled to make a yarn suitable for weaving. In the case of cochineal and other dyestuffs, the presence of a color achieved by a colorant only known from a distant source may indicate patterns of trade. Particular designs or patterns, and styles, may also be indicators of local traditions with wider application.

Significant Finds of Archaeological Textiles Egypt and the Near East

Several sites in Egypt have yielded quantities of textile remains. For Pharaonic periods, royal tombs have produced linen textiles recently receiving attention, and textiles have been retrieved from the site of Amarna. From periods of late antiquity, early twentieth century excavations resulted in numerous textile finds executed in tapestry techniques using wool, and pattern-woven silks indicating international trade (Antinoe, Akhmim): these are today predominantly in European museums. A recent find of a carpet fragment with pile dated c. 400 CE suggests trade or tribute from Western Asia. Textile fragments of early Islamic date, from the dumps of Fustat near Cairo, include a range of materials. Among these are fragments from garments imported from Yemen (striped cotton dyed with warp-resist techniques, some embellished with inscriptions in gold foil and ink providing date and place of manufacture in Sana). Similar ikats of an earlier date (as determined by C-14 analysis) were found in Israel. From the late medieval periods there is clear indication of longdistance trade in printed cottons from India, evinced by textile finds from sites along the Red Sea coast (Quseir al-Qadim; Qasr Ibrim).

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In the Middle East, there are fewer textile finds due to climate. Sites in Iraq (at-Tar caves) and Iran (Shahr-i Qumis) are exceptions. From the Caucasus and Central Asia, there are several sites that have yielded textiles (Moschevaya Balkha), and several sites excavated to reveal palaces with wall paintings depicting textiles (Afrasiyab, Panjikent, Lashkari Bazar). From the Roman period onward, there is clear evidence of silk from China entering the Middle East. Related to the manufacture of patterned silk textiles is the drawloom, which enabled the mechanical repetition of designs to form patterns. This technology emerged sometime between the fourth and seventh centuries, resulting in extensive commercialized production and trade, but the origins and early development have not been decisively determined. The rapid spread of luxury silk textiles in weft-patterned compound twill weaves is extraordinary and has recently been attributed to the possible role of textiles in the dissemination of newly developed mathematical knowledge. Bearing imagery related to iconography of the Sasanian court, such textiles span the globe from church treasuries in Europe to temple repositories in Japan. Two models of scholarship may be highlighted as relevant to the information offered by archaeological textiles. Vogelsang-Eastwood has analyzed plain weave fragments of linen from the perspective of seams, hems, selvedges, and cut edges so as to reconstruct the wardrobe of Tutankhamen in Egypt. Stronach relates aspects of Achaemenid court ceremonial in Iran to the representation of decorative motifs and the arrangement of design elements executed in colorful pile on the Pazyryk carpet that was excavated in the tomb of a nomadic chieftain in Siberia. East Asia

Textile archaeology in China began in the early twentieth century when Europeans, such as Sir Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot, and the Japanese Otani expedition explored the desert regions of northwest China (present-day Xinjiang) including the sites of Lop-Nor, Astana, and the cave temples at Dunhuang. Most of the textiles, documents, and many of the paintings that they found are now in European, Indian, Japanese, and Korean museums. Beginning in 1949, Chinese archaeologists began systematic excavations. One of their most important early finds was the Western Han tomb at Mawangdui, Changsha, Hunan Province, excavated in 1972–74, which included a finely embroidered funerary banner with elaborate imagery that contributed to knowledge of Han Dynasty religious beliefs and ideas about death and the afterlife. Since then, they have made extraordinary discoveries of textiles, many of them along the so-called Silk Road as it branched north and south of the perilous Taklamakan

desert in Xinjiang. (The Silk Road was a vast network of routes used by merchants, monks, government officials, and the military that, at its most expansive, stretched from Japan in the East to the Mediterranean in the West with branches extending south to India and Afghanistan.) Elaborately dressed corpses excavated from various sites in Xinjiang and now housed in the Xinjiang Museum in Urumqi have contributed to lively scholarly debate about the early inhabitants of the Tarim Basin and trade and migration patterns. One of the most significant finds in the recent past has been a vast complex of Tibetan tombs at Dulan in Qinghai. Although only a small number of tombs have been excavated, the textiles are remarkable for their quantity, quality, and variety. In 2000, Dulan was listed by World Monuments Watch as one of the world’s One Hundred Most Endangered Sites because of the importance of the site and vigorous activity of tomb robbers. The Dulan tombs include types of textiles known from Central and West Asia, as well as from the heartland of China, including some that are the earliest examples of a particular type to be found in China. One brocade with a Pahlavi inscription appears to be the only extant example of an eighth century Persian brocade with embroidered inscription. The textile discoveries at Dulan testify to its importance on a branch of the Silk Road hitherto considered insignificant, underscore the rich heritage and vast resources of the Tibetan rulers of the area, and also point to the probable presence of a hitherto unknown group of Persian and/or Sogdian weavers in Qinghai, possibly including weavers who had fled from the disruption associated with the collapse of the Sasanian empire. Some scholars now believe that Dulan was the source of most of the Western compound weaves found at archaeological sites along the Silk Road in China. In China, the East Asian archaeological record is expanded by a superb cache of textiles that was found in an underground repository of the Famen Temple in Qinghai in 1987 and textiles and documents preserved in Cave 17 at the temple complex of Dunhuang at the point where the Silk Road branches north and south around the Taklamakan Desert. In addition, the treasury of the Ho¯ryu¯ji Temple and the Sho¯so¯in Repository of the To¯daiji Temple in Nara Japan have preserved thousands of late seventh and eighth century textiles, many of them imported from China. Some were associated with the eye-opening ceremony of the Great Buddha in 752 CE; others were used in the palace and were donated to the temple after Emperor Shomu’s death in 756. The Ho¯ryu¯ji textile exemplified the profound cultural interactions, exchanges, and transformations that took place along the many branches of the Silk Road in the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE). It is

2124 TEXTILES

executed in weft compound weave, a technique that moved from Persia and Central Asia to China and allowed larger and more complex imagery. As noted above, it was often accompanied, as here, by elements of Sasanian and post-Sasanian iconography such as the beaded roundel, mounted lion hunter and symmetrical format. The characters (mountain and felicity) are a Chinese addition and are one indication that the textile was woven in China. The textile may have been brought to Japan with an expedition returning from China in 702, at a point when the Tang court was protecting the displaced heir to the Sasanian throne and enthralled with Persian material culture. By the Kamakura period (1185–1336), the lion hunters were tentatively identified in Japan as the four Buddhist Guardian Kings, protectors of the four directions, a transformation of identification that served to embed the textile within a meaningful cultural matrix in Japan. Europe

Textile traditions in Europe evolved at a later stage than those of Egypt and the Middle East; from medieval times onward there was a heavy dependence upon designs and technologies developed in Byzantine and Islamic domains. Europe’s chief contribution to the history of textile technologies comes with the rapid industrialization of cloth production beginning in the eighteenth century. Archaeological efforts in Europe have been devoted to Roman settlements, Iron Age sites, and the recovery of Viking materials. Generally, the humid and temperate climate has precluded the survival of textiles in archaeological contexts; textiles have been recovered, however, in bogs, waterlogged sites, shipwrecks, and barrows. Research efforts have focused on tools and implements, textile conservation of recovered artifacts, and attempts at reconstructing ancient technologies. Analytical studies have evolved dramatically in recent decades, yielding new kinds of data sets from the study of archaeological textiles, often reported in the biannual Archaeological Textiles Newsletter, and in a succession of annual publications of the North European Symposium on Archaeological Textiles (NESAT). South America

Several of the richest deposits of archaeological textiles in the world are from burials in the arid terrain along the Central Andes coastal region in what is now Peru. In the large cemetery at Paracas (c. 200 BCE– c. CE 200), multiple layers of finely woven, painted, and embroidered textiles were wrapped around corpses bound in fetal position, an assemblage known as a mummy bundle. Textile makers exhibited extraordinary skill with few tools, creating textiles

that employed most textile techniques ever invented, including at least one (interlocking warp and weft) that, so far, has been found nowhere else. These nonliterate civilizations appear to have used the complex structures, patterns, and color sequences of their textiles and even the direction of twist of a single element as important repositories of cultural information, belief systems, ideas about the conceptualization of space (and perhaps time), as well as mnemonic devices and markers of identity, social status and power. Major sites extend from Sipan in the north to Paracas and Nazca in the south and date, variously, from c. 3500 BCE to the Spanish conquest in CE 1532. Few textiles have survived in the Andean highlands but the appearance of animal fiber, such as alpaca, in textiles found in coastal burials, and iconographic relationships between coastal textiles and highland imagery on durable surfaces, such as stone and ceramics, suggest significant contact between highland and coastal peoples. North America

Textile finds in the arid regions of the American Southwest and northern Mexico date back 10 000 years and include fur and feather blankets, mats, nets, baskets, woven and painted cotton and plant fiber cloth, and intricately plaited yucca-fiber sandals. Some sandals, particularly from the Basketmaker III period (c. CE 500–700), have patterns so distinctive that their imprint could have served to identify their owner as clearly as a signature identifies a member of a literate society. One of the most distinctive finds is a threecolored cotton blanket fragment with a complex step and diamond pattern woven in diamond twill tapestry with interlocking wefts, a particularly difficult, and unusual, variation of tapestry weave (Grand Gulch, Anasazi culture, twelfth century CE). Until recently, textile finds in central and eastern North America were generally dismissed as too fragmentary and discolored to yield much information. Recently, however, powerful microscopy and a number of new methods of chemical analysis have enabled researchers to glean information from even the tiniest, charred scraps. New data suggest that the Hopewell and Mississippian civilizations that extended from Florida to New York in the east and Wisconsin in the northwest from c. CE 100 to the early 1500s produced locally distinctive patterned textiles.

Amplifying the Archaeological Record Historical textiles have survived in nonarchaeological contexts, which can contribute to the interpretation of archaeological finds. Among the most significant groups are the church and temple crypts and treasuries. In East Asia, these include the recently

TEXTILES 2125

discovered crypt of the Famensi in China of Tang date, and the treasuries of temples in Nara, Japan, especially the seventh century Ho¯ryu¯ji and the eighth century Sho¯so¯in Repository of the To¯daiji Temple. Church treasuries throughout Europe preserve medieval textiles that were used to wrap saints’ relics. Each of these preserved archives of ancient textiles offers a range of comparative materials for the interpretation of excavated fragments, such as those from Egypt, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and China. Contemporary textual records may also provide contextual understanding. Such records include inventories, trade documents, bills of lading, receipts, wills, travel accounts, sumptuary laws and regulatory codes, legal documents, letters, poetry and literature. Extensive documentation on Sumerian and Akkadian clay tablets beginning in the third millennium BCE reveals that the production of textiles was a major industry in which state-controlled mills employed thousands of workers, overseers, and supervisors. Textiles were Mesopotamia’s leading commercial export commodity, and although the textiles themselves have not survived, some idea of what they were like can be gleaned from textual descriptions, as well as from depictions of clothing in ancient Mesopotamian art. By the third millennium, however, it is clear that textiles were the major economic generator, involving social and administrative hierarchies and a local bureaucracy. Representations of textiles provide valuable information about the use of textiles in context, and sometimes document traditions not reflected in the archaeological record. Outstanding sources include the wall paintings at the cave temple complexes in Dunhuang and Qizil, China, paintings in the caves at Ajanta, India, rock reliefs at Taq-i Bustan, Iran, and wall paintings in palaces at Panjikent and Afrasiyab, Uzbekistan, and Lashkari Bazaar, Afghanistan. When the Spaniards conquered the Americas, artists documented local costume, providing invaluable information about local traditions and pre-Hispanic textiles. Contemporary practices often reflect historical traditions, so ethnographic documentation, used cautiously and critically, may provide parallels or analogies for understanding indigenous traditions of technological process, functions, and meanings. Ethnographic research in Iraq and Iran in rural areas accompanying archaeological excavation has yielded parallel sets of information to augment the archaeological record and lend significance to local practice. Considering textiles in the colonial world, the presence of Chinese silks in Spain and Portugal, Javanese batiks in Holland, Kashmir shawls and Oriental carpets in Europe and America, all emphasize passions for luxury and exotic goods expressed through textiles. Such historical evidence clearly reinforces

the profound impact of textiles throughout the world, a perspective that current practice extends to everyday wear and household decor. See also: Africa, North: Egypt, Pharaonic; Americas,

South: Historical Archaeology; Animal Domestication; Asia, Central, Steppes; Asia, East: Chinese Civilization; Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Caves and Rockshelters; Europe, Northern and Western: Medieval; Exchange Systems; Frozen Sites and Bodies; Plant Domestication; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Siberia, Peopling of; Sites: Waterlogged.

Further Reading Barnes R (1997) Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt.The Newberry Collection in the Ashmolean Museum. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bier C (1995) Textile arts in ancient Western Asia. In: Sasson J and Rubinson K (eds.) Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, pp. 1567–1588. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Bier C (2005) Pattern power: Textiles and the transmission of mathematical knowledge. In: Bier C (ed.) Appropriation, Acculturation, Transformation: Proceedings of the 9th Biennial Symposium 2004, pp. 144–153. Madison: Textile Society of America. Dusenbury MM (2004) Flowers, Dragons and Pine Trees: Asian Textiles in the Spencer Museum of Art. New York and Manchester: Hudson Hills Press. Eastwood GV (1993) Pharaonic Egyptian Clothing: Studies in Textile and Costume History, vol. 2. Leiden, The Netherlands: E.J. Brill. Eastwood GV (1999) Tutankhamun’s Wardrobe: Garments from the Tomb of Tutankhamun. Rotterdam: Barjesteh van Waalwijk van Doon & Co. Emery I (1966) The Primary Structures of Fabrics: An Illustrated Classification (reprinted 1980). Washington, DC: The Textile Museum. Frame M (1986) The visual images of fabric structures in ancient Peruvian art. In: Rowe AP (ed.) The Junius B. Bird Conference onAndean Textiles, pp. 47–80. Washington, DC: The Textile Museum. Gunzburger C (ed.) (2005) The Textile Museum Thesaurus. Washington, DC: The Textile Museum. Kent KP (1983) School of American Research Southwest Indian Arts Series: Prehistoric Textiles of the Southwest. Santa Fe, NM, and Albuquerque, NM: School of American Research and University of New Mexico Press. Matsumoto K (1984) Jo¯daigire: 7th and 8th Century Textiles in Japan from the Sho¯so¯-in and Ho¯ryu¯-ji. Kyoto: Shikosha. Schorta R (ed.) (2006) Central Asian Textiles and Their Contexts in the Early Middle Ages. Riggisberg, Switzerland: Abegg-Stiftung. Spanier E (ed.) (1987) The Royal Purple and the Biblical Blue: The Study of Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog and Recent Scientific Contributions. Jerusalem: Keter. Stronach D (1993) Patterns of prestige in the Pazyryk carpet: Notes on the representational role of textiles in the first millennium BC. In: Eiland ML, Jr., Pinner R, and Denny WB (eds.) Oriental Carpet and Textile Studies, vol. iv, pp. 25–40. Berkeley: San Francisco Bay Area Rug Society and OCTS Ltd. Wild JP (ed.) Archaeological Textiles Newsletter (published serially). Manchester, UK. Zhao Feng (ed.) (2002) Recent Excavations of Textiles in China. Hong Kong: ISAT/Costume Squad.

2126 TIME AND HISTORY, DIVISIONS

Thermoluminescence Dating

See: Luminescence Dating.

TIME AND HISTORY, DIVISIONS Daniel F Merriam, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA Published by Elsevier Inc.

Glossary aspect A group of focuses. component Similar characters at a site. correlation To put or be in relation; to demonstrate correspondence. deposition Laying down or accumulation of any material. focus Traits occurring in more than one site. geologic time Implies a long duration and remoteness in the past. hominoids Manlike. horizon A distinct spatial continuity of cultural traits limited in time. phase Characteristic traits to distinguish in time a site from other units. radioactivity Emission (radiation) of energetic particles during radioactive decay. tradition Temporal equivalency represented by technology. variant A unique expression of a culture tradition.

The concept of time can . . . be intimidating, to institutions as well as to individuals. (Claude Albritton, The Abyss of Time, 1986)

Time is a human invention. We recognize time by changes in ourselves and our environment in the long term, but in the short term, these changes are barely if at all perceptible unless they are catastrophic. We have developed ways in which to measure time so that we can place in perspective events of the past, permit the making of schedules, give a reference for comparisons (correlation), allow projection into the future, etc. The dictionary defines time as ‘‘. . . the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues’’. Time can be measured from nanoseconds to light years. Time marches on and is recognized by a sequence of events, such as starting (being born), developing (growing), maturing (aging), and ending (finish and death). These progressions or cycles occur in nature and can be repeated over and over but are never exactly the same. In geology, there are numerous progressions or cycles through time, and it is one of the basic concepts in the geologic stage of events.

Humans have been intrigued with time since the beginning. At first, all of Earth history was accounted for in myths and stories of the ancients. Numerous age estimates of the Earth were made based on these tales and a value of 6000
years surfaced. But eventually, the early natural philosophers realized that all of Earth’s history could not be condensed into such a short period. By the eighteenth century, the immensity of time was suspected but difficult to comprehend. In 1751, Carolus Linnaeus, the great Swedish naturalist, was one of the first to have an inkling of the enormity of time as he stated: ‘‘I feel dizzy as I stand on this height and look down before the long time period, which has passed like waves in ¨ re) sound, and left behind them almost wornthe (O out traces of the former world . . .’’. In 1788 James Hutton, the founder of modern geology, mused in his Theory of the Earth that for the Earth: ‘‘. . . we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end. . . ’’. From that time on, the age of the Earth was determined to be greater and greater until today we know it is approximately 4.5 billion years old. The subject of time was crucial in the stages of development of geology and archaeology. Enough time was necessary to allow all of the events, including evolution of living forms as envisioned by Charles Darwin, to have taken place.

Measuring Relative Time Geological time is the same 24 hour day, one week, year, decade, and century as customary time that measures the age of the Earth. So, how is time measured for these past events? Scientists have developed numerous ways to estimate time. There are ‘relative’ dates and ‘numerical’ (‘absolute’) dates. Relative dates give approximate times and can be used to correlate events from one place to another including human activities as reflected in the archaeological record. Correlation, or deducing events that occurred at the same time in different places, allows the reconstruction of Earth history. One hint of the duration of time is the measuring of sedimentary deposition rates. That is, how fast (or slow) different types of sediments (limestone, shale, sandstone, coal, etc.) accumulate under different

TIME AND HISTORY, DIVISIONS 2127

conditions. The duration of time, then, can be estimated based on the sediment type and the thickness of the sedimentary unit. Sedimentary varves, for example, are a seasonal record just as tree rings. These methods do not take into account the time in the interval when deposition did not occur or when sediment was removed by erosion. The use of such approaches is useful, but limited. Another qualitative estimate of time can be made by the erosion rate on the denudation of the land surface, usually by wind or water; the rates normally are higher in young (high-relief) terrains and lower in old (low-relief) ones. Thus, in mature areas such as the US Midcontinent, they are steady but with accelerated rates in times of crisis such as floods or wind storms (e.g., tornadoes). Normal rates generally prevail between the catastrophic events. The rates of denudation can be estimated by measuring the amount of material carried by streams and rivers in a unit of time. This may be reported as so many inches (or centimeters) per decade or millennium. Occasionally, some unique technique allows another type of measurement.

Numerical (Absolute) Time Prior to the discovery of radioactivity, time and rock correlation were determined by the fossil record, the assumption being that rock units with similar fauna were the same age. Unique events, such as volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, or floods, also served as markers for correlation. The use of annual growth tree rings, or dendrochronology, to determine the age of events proved useful for dating the recent past, as was the interpreting and understanding of ancient history calendars (see Dendrochronology). However, it was not until the end of the nineteenth century with the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Ro¨ntgen, the promotion of the use of radioactivity by Marie and Pierre Curie, and development of radiocarbon dating by Willard Libby that a procedure for using absolute dates was developed and used (see Dating Methods, Overview). Numerical (absolute) dates are obtained by analyzing the radioactivity decay of minerals contained in the rocks and are absolute only as far as conditions are optimum and the analysis is precise. The method entails determining the ratio between the ‘parent’ and the ‘daughter’ of the decaying mineral, for example, uranium and thorium to lead, rubidium to strontium, or potassium to argon. These methods are for determining long time durations because of their slow decay constants. By the twenty-first century, the age of the Earth had been pushed back farther and farther to the age accepted today.

Development of a Geological Timescale A geological timescale is constructed as a reference and for the purpose of correlating other events in other places to determine the history of an area. The correlations can be made in time (absolute) or in sequence (relative). Correlations are made by direct tracing of rock units from place to place or relating them by their fossil content. It should be kept in mind that rock units, even thin or unique ones, when traced far enough, cross time lines.

Time and the Geologic Column The geologic time scale consists of major and minor time divisions arranged in proper order, corresponding to segments of the geologic column that are defined on a time basis. (R. C. Moore, Historical Geology, 1958)

Although time is continuous, the rock succession is not. By noting the relation of one rock unit to another, a relative timescale can be constructed by using such basic geologic principles as the oldest bed is on the bottom, the bed cutting another is younger, strata are laid down horizontality and continue until truncation by erosion or dislocation, a faunal succession becomes more complex with time, and by determining the ratio of living to extinct fauna. These principles and others were used by the first workers in the British Isles to construct a relative geologic timescale for the Palaeozoic (Primary). Then all other geologic events were referred to this standard. Each of the divisions or Periods were named for convenience after the area where the sequence was recognized and defined (Figure 1). Cambrian, Ordovician, and Silurian were named after ancient Celtic tribes in Wales. The Devonian for Devon, England, and the Carboniferous for coal-bearing sediments in the Midlands of Britain. The Permian was named for the Russian Province of Perm. The Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous of the Mesozoic (Secondary) are names that came from the European Continent. The Primary, Secondary, Tertiary (third part), and Quaternary (fourth part) were a nomenclature partly carried over from an earlier primitive classification proposed by A. G. Werner in the eighteenth century. Each major unit was defined by a break or gap (hiatus) in the sequence. Although time is continuous, the geologic record is not. The Periods were grouped into ‘eras’ – Palaeozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic (zoic ¼ life and Palaeo ¼ early, Meso ¼ medial, and Ceno ¼ late) – to denote major breaks in the overall classification scheme. This classification was a good one and has lasted with minor modifications and additions for more than a century.

2128 TIME AND HISTORY, DIVISIONS

Modern scale Archaic scale as applied in Britain Eras

Epochs or series

Neogene (1853)

Holocene (or recent) (1885) (1883) Pleistocene (1839) Pliocene (1833) Miocene (1833)

Palaeogene (1866)

Oligocene (1854) Eocene (1833) Palaeocene (1874)

Alluvium Diluvium

Eon (1931)

Quaternary (1829)*

Periods or systems

Cenozoic

(Recent life) (1841)

Tertiary (1759)

Secondary (1759)

(Old Red Sandstone)

Phanerozoic

Mesozoic (Middle life) (1841)

Permian (1841) North America: Pennsylvanian (1891) Carboniferous (1822)

Palaeozoic

(Ancient life) (1838)

Transition (of Werner) (1786)

Primitive or primary (1759)

Cretaceous (1822) Jurassic (1795) Triassic (1834)

Mississippian (1870)

Devonian (1837) Silurian (1835) Ordovician (1879) Cambrian (1835) Ediacarian (1982)

Prephanerozoic or Precambrian (local subdivisions are used, but their worldwide correlation is difficult)

Figure 1 Generalized stratigraphic column showing classical geological nomenclature.

The numerical (absolute) timescale was constructed as radioactivity dates became available and related to the relative geologic rock classification scale. These dates had to be made at recognized geologic events in order to be integrated and be merged with the standard scheme to resolve the timing of different segments. As more dates became available, the timescale was refined to its present detail. Modifications and refinements continue in the development of the stratigraphy as a new approach, quantitative stratigraphy, is gaining acceptance among workers (see Stratigraphic Analysis).

Archaeological Timescale Knowing the age of an archaeological site is critical to understanding the broader archaeological record and thus understanding the developments of humans actions over time. (R. J. Hoard and W. E. Banks, Introduction to Kansas Archaeology, 2006)

The presence of hominoids on Earth timewise is insignificant in the overall time scheme, being on the scene for only about the last 4 million years. This

recent appearance of hominoids dates back only as far as into the Pliocene (Late Tertiary) (Figure 2). The 4 million years in comparison with the 4.5 billion years since the Earth was formed is only about 1:1000th (0.001) of our planet’s history. Although humans appeared on the scene late, they have played an important role in the world as we know it. Because archaeological time is concerned with only about 4 million years of Earth history, a refined and more detailed timescale is developed for determining cultural sequences and correlations in each homogeneous region. These timescales are not only based on the geological events in the area, but on material remains of hominoids. Each time interval is recognized by its diagnostic artifacts such as projectile points, tools, pottery shards, craft products, trade goods, and burials. Marker horizons and index artifacts can be recognized and used just as fossils of fauna and flora are in geology. This approach, dating by seriation, is putting these intervals in relative order. Dendrochronology and carbon 14 are used to construct numerical (absolute) archaeological timescales. Carbon-14 is an ‘absolute’dating procedure. It is used because of its rapid rate

TIME AND HISTORY, DIVISIONS 2129

Million years ago

Period

Era

mya

(mya)

Epoch/series mya

Würmian .075 Wisconsinan Riss–Würm .12 Sangamonian

U

Rissian

A

Mindelian

Anthropogene

R E

.48

Günz–Mindel

Pleistocene

N

Günzian

A

.6 .8

Illinoisan Yarmouthian Kansan Aftonian Nebraskan

Donau–Günz 1.4 Donau 1.7 Pre-Nebraskan

R Y 2

.17

Mindel–Riss .23

T E

Recent

Holocene .01

Q

C

Europe North America stage mya

Biber–Donau 1.9 Biber

2

N

Venturian

Piacenzian 3

Repettian

Pliocene Zanclian

T O Neogene

Messinian

E 10 Miocene Z

R 23

25

T

7 Tortonian 10 Serravalian 14

Mohnian

Langhian 16 Burdigalian 22 Aquatanian

Relizian

Luisian

Saucesian

Chattian 29

Zemorrian

Priabonian 39

Refugian

Bartonian 42

Narizian

Oligocene O

Delmontian

5

I

Rupelian 34

A

Palaeogene

I 50

Eocene

Lutetian

R

50

Ypresian

Penutian

55 Y

Buletian

Thanetian

C

Ulatizian

61

Palaeocene

Ynezian Danian

65

65

Danian

Figure 2 Detailed stratigraphic column for the Tertiary in Europe and North America. Note that hominoids appear about 4 million years ago in the Pliocene (Neogene, Late Tertiary) (Pan Terra, Inc., 1994).

of radioactive decay and thus a short half-life, which makes it valuable for dating recent and short periods of human history, plus its ubiquitous presence in charcoal and other cultural deposits in so many sites.

An early major archaeological time division was the recognition of the sequence of the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages. As time progressed, this classification was gradually refined as new data became

2130 TIME AND HISTORY, DIVISIONS

available and the chronology of events for an area was determined. Unfortunately, local and regional time sequences were proposed so that time equivalences in different places were not always known. However, when absolute dates became available, correlation of events and a reconstruction of the

sequence of history was possible in more detail and for correlation on a larger geographic scale. An example of a regional archaeological time chart for the Holocene is the sequence of Kansas cultures (Figure 3). The sequence can be related to time because the numerical ages of the cultures are

Physiographic provinces

Modern

Cultural period

Date

Dissected Till plains

Osage cuestas

Arkansas river lowlands

Flint hills

Subsistence pattern High plains

AD 1950

Americans, including Indian nations, and immigrants of many cultures AD 1900

Industrialization, mechanized agriculture

Service economy, light industry, mineral petroleum exploitation, farming, ranching

Historic

Historic

AD 1870 Iowa, Sac Fox, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Delaware, Wyandotte, Shawnee

Shawnee, Sac Fox of Mississippi, Ottawa, Peoria Kaskaskia, Wea Piankeshaw, Chippewa, Potawatomi, Miami

Comanche, Cheyenne Arapahoe, Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache, Sioux, Pawnee

Reservations, equestrian bison hunting; maize-based horticulture east; equestrian nomads west

Comanche, Cheyenne, Wichita, Comanche, Arapahoe, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache, Sioux, Kiowa-Apache Cuartelejo Apache, Pawnee

Equestrian bison hunting, equestrian nomadism; maize-based horticulture trapping east

Cherokee

Osage, Kansa

Immigrant tribes Late ceramic

Kansa

Osage, Kansa, Wichita

Osage, Kansa, Wichita

AD 1700 Oneota Tradition

Middle ceramic

Protohistoric

AD 1800

Neosho Focus

Dismal River Aspect

Great Bend Aspect,

Great bend Aspect; White Rock Upper republican, Smoky Hill, Odessa phases; Pratt complex

Great Bend Aspect, White Rock Phase, Smoky Hill Phase, Pomona Variant

Great bend aspect

AD 1500

Dismal River Aspect

White Rock, Nebraska, Steed Kisker Phases, Pomona Variant

Pratt Complex, Bluff Creek Complex

Hunting, gathering; maize horticulture east; some supplemental horticulture west

Early ceramic

Prehistoric

Pomona Variant AD 1000 Grasshopper Falls Phase, Valley Variant, Kansas City Hopewell

Greenwood, Grasshopper Falls, Cuesta Phases

Grasshopper Falls, Greenwood, Schultz Cuesta Phases

No Known Early Ceramic Cultural Manifestation

Keith Phase

Hunting, gathering; cultivation and domestication of native plants east

AD 1 Nebo Hill Phase

Nebo Hill El Dorado Phases

Walnut and El Dorado Phases

Unclassified Archaic Cultural Manifestations

Palaeo archaic

500 BC

Munkers Creek Phase

Munkers Creek Phase

Vermillion, Chelisea, Munkers Creek Phases

Hunting, gathering; incipient cultivation of native plants east McKean Complex

3000 BC Logan Creek Phase

Stigenwalt Complex

Logan Creek Phase

5000 BC Dalton, Cody Complex, Cllen, Fredrick

Hunting, gathering

7500 BC 1000 BC

Clovis, Folsom, Plainview

Figure 3 An example of an archaeological time chart. Sequence of Kansas human cultures by physiographic province in chronological order is established using a hierarchical classification of aspect, component, and focus. A classification of archeological sites includes the terms for space and time: tradition, phase, horizon, and variant.

TOURISM AND ARCHAEOLOGY 2131

based on radiocarbon dates determined on material from archaeological sites. The relation of human cultures by physiographic provinces in Kansas is shown in Figure 3. The Neosho Focus is related in time (1700 AD) to the Dismal River Aspect, which represents a group of focuses, as is Oneota Tradition. Other correlations have been related in time (500 BC) by similar characteristic traits, for example the Nebo Hill and Walnut/El Dorado phases. The Pomona Variant (1000 AD) is a unique expression of a culture tradition that can be placed in the time sequence. The use of these hierarchical terms, phase, focus, and aspect in some respects parallels the use of member, formation, and group in stratigraphic geology. The use of this nomenclature facilitates communication between workers. See also: Amino Acid Racemization Dating; Carbon-14 Dating; Dating Methods, Overview; Dendrochronology;

Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Obsidian Hydration Dating; Luminescence Dating; Stratigraphic Analysis.

Further Reading Albritton CC Jr. (1986) The Abyss of Time. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher Inc. Faul H (1978) A history of geologic time. American Scientist 66: 159–165. Hoard RJ and Banks WE (2006) Introduction. In: Hoard RJ and Banks WE (eds.) Kansas Archaeology, pp. 417. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Jackson JA (1997) Glossary of Geology, 4th edn. Alexandria, VA: American Geological Institute. Pan Terra Inc. (1994) A Correlated History of Earth. Afton, MN: Pan Terra, Inc. Renfrew C and Bahn P (2004) Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice, 4th edn. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. Shaw AB (1964) Time in Stratigraphy. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co.

TOURISM AND ARCHAEOLOGY Uzi Baram, New College of Florida, Sarasota, FL, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary archaeotourism An alternative form of cultural tourism that, within the frame of tourist activities, aims to promote the passion for the historical-archaeological and the conservation of the historical sites. cultural anthropology The branch of anthropology that has developed and promoted ‘culture’ as a meaningful scientific concept; it is also the branch of anthropology that studies cultural variation among humans. heritage tourism A branch of tourism oriented toward the cultural heritage of the location where tourism is occurring. World Heritage List The list of the world’s cultural and natural heritage recognized as exhibiting outstanding universal value.

Tourism and Archaeology Tourism is widely recognized as the world’s largest industry. For many countries, regions, and locales, it is a major economic pillar or a promising source of revenue. Cultural anthropologists have examined tourism and tourists in terms of the consequences of tourism on a particular location, the relationship between tourism marketing and self-identity, the use of tourism to propel nationalism, ethnicity, and

other identities that increase tensions or build understanding, and the relationship between tourism and development. Archaeologists have started to examine the impact of tourism on archaeological sites and the impact of tourism on the understandings of the past in order to comprehend the dynamic, recursive relationship between marketed presentations of the past and the understandings from archaeology (Figure 1). Tourism is a bundle of cultural practices that are under constant negotiation and that are part of broader social and historical processes. Cultural anthropologists have focused on the relationships between guests and hosts to bring out the power dynamics of tourism. Embedded in tourism are concepts of leisure, wealth, and movement. There are many definitions for tourism because is it a historical, multifaceted, fragmented, and complicated set of discourses and approaches. Tourism is a practice and it is a business that includes services, transportation, hospitality, and descriptions of locales. The World Tourism Organization (WTO) differentiates tourism from activities that provide payment or long-term stays; for the WTO, tourism consists of short-term visitations that require travel, changes from one’s routine. Archaeotourism visits to archaeological sites and landscapes, offers two types of change, one geographic and the other temporal, by providing access to the past.

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Figure 1 For tourist consumption. Representing the past for tourism, such as the wooden horse at Troy, is one of the concerns regarding marketing the past for tourism.

The broader term is heritage tourism, a term that includes visits to a locale that is themed as historic, natural, or cultural. Archaeology is intertwined with tourism because archaeological excavations and historic monuments provide tourist sights and exhibits for display (Figure 2). On that simple level, archaeology has intersected with tourism since the Grand Tour. The Grand Tour refers to the conventions of travel, starting in the sixteenth century, by British elite crossing the Channel to Europe and south to the Mediterranean. The Grand Tour was educational in character; young men, and occasionally young women, gained social polish by traveling to the sites of Classical Antiquity. A primary goal of the seventeenth-century Grand Tour was Italy, where the children of the elite, aspiring political leaders and young writers and artists, went to experience first-hand the ruins of Classical culture. At its height in the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Grand Tour continued to Greece. By the nineteenth century, voyages continued to the Holy Land and the ancient splendors of Egypt. As archaeology expanded and transportation became more readily available, travelers became tourists and visits to excavated sites allowed tourists to claim education as a feature of their travels. With travelers and tourists visiting archaeological sites, directors of large-scale projects have invited participation in digging. The current incarnations include dig for a day, an approach that makes excavations into a tourist experience. Whether tourists are excavating or photographing sites, the popularity of

Figure 2 Tourists at a site. Tourists at the Pantheon: the popularity of archaeological sites, due to tourism, raises apprehension over preservation.

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sites can endanger fragile remains because heritage tourism is one of the fastest growing components of global tourism (see Popular Culture and Archaeology; Who Owns the Past?). Heritage tourism has become a key concern for archaeology. Some professionals envision an accelerating partnership between archaeology and tourism; tourists provide financial resources for revealing and preserving material remains from the past and archaeology can be an interpretive vehicle for discovering the past of a specific, marketed location. The success of tourism highlighting archaeology means that tourist sites constitute some of the most famous archaeological sites (to invoke just a few renowned examples, Machu Picchu, Masada, the Pyramids at Giza, Mesa Verde, Stonehenge, the Pantheon, the Great Wall of China). Tourist resources facilitate conservation and presentation of sites, although rarely without controversy. Controversy grows out of new understandings of archaeological and historic resources, in heritage tourism, as capital to be exploited in a rational manner. The archaeological record, rather than a resource for scholarship, becomes an economic value for a community or a government. The success of an archaeological site, under this framework of significance, does not depend only on the finds and their presentation but also on the vagaries of the tourist market and to concerns over what will be popular for tourists. As a neoliberal approach to archaeological sites, heritage tourism encourages particular ways of knowing the past and material culture that situate the appropriate uses of the archaeological record, uses that might be at odds with the profession. And as heritage sites move beyond their historic and/or emotive value and constitute economic value for the tourist market, they can become sites for violence. Archaeological sites and historic monuments have become targets of aggression, both from nationalist fervor and during wars. The spectacular examples include the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, India (1992), the Mostar Bridge in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1993), and the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan (2001) as well as the attack on tourists visiting the Hatshepsut Temple in Luxor, Egypt (1997). The danger of violent attacks on historic monuments because of their symbolic value, the menace of popularity endangering fragile, and even sturdy, features, and the value of antiquities leading to the looting of artifacts are major growing concerns for the profession. Interactions with the tourist industry and national government are facets of the intersection of archaeology and tourism. Contemporary ethics encourage archaeologists to work with local and descendant communities, usually referred to as stakeholders.

Acknowledging the politics of archaeology opens up the ownership of the past, particularly the past as presented to the mass audience. One of the key examples is Masada, a Roman period fortress in Israel. Excavated as a nationalist endeavor, Masada is a famous archaeological site, renowned for the heroic story of Jewish rebels against the Roman Empire committing suicide rather than submitting to slavery and for its dramatic vistas near the Dead Sea. The 1960s excavations brought attention to the material remains on the plateau and the popularity of the site has brought the architecture and artifacts to mass audiences. The marketing of Masada encourages those who wish to see the historic story; tourism creates expectations that archaeology will shed definitive light on the past. Those expectations have led to scholars raising questions about the accuracy of the current interpretations. The challenge comes from the tourist industry being a stakeholder that promotes more tourists to see the site with interpretations for the tourist sight. For archaeology, this raises questions over the appropriate analysis of the material remains. As tourism continues its growth trajectory, archaeologists face the paradox of the tourist industry, as new stakeholders, demanding more materials and particular interpretations from the archaeological record. At sites that have integrated archaeology into their research project for public consumption, like Colonial Williamsburg, there are concerns regarding authenticity. Interestingly, accuracy is the enticement contested in heritage tourism. Even at theme parks, places of the imagination like the Holy Land Experience in Orlando, Florida, the goal is accuracy in material details. Archaeology is seen as a tool providing objects, imagery, and authority; the tourist industry provides the representations of the materials. Archaeologists, because of the many in the profession whose work is being intertwined with archaeo-tourism and heritage tourism, are critically examining the implications of archaeological actions within the parameters influenced by the new set of possibilities and paradoxes. These dynamics are encouraging archaeologists to engage in participant observation on the impact of the tourist industry. Methods to bring out the complexities of the paradoxes involved in heritage tourism include the examination of the legal framework for UNESCO’s World Heritage List and exploration of government policies that stress particular aspects of the cultural landscape for tourism. Tourist advertising, souvenirs in gift shops, and the layout of signs and visitors’ centers illustrate the conundrums of representation. Ethnographic interviews with visitors, designers of historic parks, and owners of history theme parks

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bring out the contingencies of decision making. Such studies find local-level responses and negotiations that come with asymmetrical interrelations. With globalization, similar forces are influencing the implementation of conservation, preservation, and presentation of the archaeological past. With local responses and decisions varying greatly, the intersection of archaeology and tourism requires sustained exploration and research. See also: Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Popular

Culture and Archaeology; Who Owns the Past?; World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

Further Reading AlSayyad N (ed.) (2001) Consuming Tradition, Manufacturing Heritage: Global Norms and Urban Forms in the Age of Tourism. New York: Routledge.

Ben-Yehuda N (2002) Sacrificing Truth: Archaeology and the Myth of Masada. Amherst: Prometheus/Humanity Books. Bruner EM (2005) Culture on Tour: Ethnographies of Travel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Handler R and Gable E (1997) The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg. Durham: Duke University Press. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett B (1998) Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rowan Y and Baram U (eds.) (2004) Marketing Heritage: Archaeology and the Consumption of the Past. Walnut Creek: AltaMira. Silberman NA (1997) Structuring the past: Israelis, Palestinians, and the symbolic authority of archaeological monuments. In: Silberman NA and Small D (eds.) The Archaeology of Israel: Constructing the Past, Interpreting the Present, pp. 62–81. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press. Silverman H (2002) Touring in ancient times: The present and the presented past in contemporary Peru. American Anthropologist 104: 881–902. Slick Katherine (2002) Archaeology and the Tourism Train. In: Little B (ed.) Public Benefits of Archaeology, pp. 219–227. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.

TOXIC AND HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS Joel W Grossman, Bronx, NY, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary GeoTIFF A public domain metadata (data format) standard that imbeds and links metric and coordinate data to each pixel of a TIFF (Tagged Image Format) digital, or raster, image file. HAZMAT (Hazardous material) Refers to US Government health and safety regulations for the investigation or clean-up (remediation) of dangerous toxic substances that pose a threat to humans or the environment. LIDAR (laser-radar or Light-Imaging Detection and Ranging) Near-laser 3D recording technology which records the coordinates and dimensions of objects and surfaces through the measurement of the time it takes for a beam of nearlaser light to bounce back from an object or surface. Photogrammetry A 3D and/or stereoscopic recording technology that uses multiple photographic views of a subject taken with a metric, or flat field, dual or single camera system to compute and extract real-world coordinates or dimensions.

Introduction The archaeology of contaminated or toxic places can be, and often is, dangerous. It behooves the practitioner to be clear as to why and how it is done. As an arena that permits little room for knee-jerk solutions based on blind adherence to popular theories or paradigms, it also forces the profession, and regulatory agencies, to address some basic questions of

feasibility and safety. Are traditional approaches and generally accepted field techniques adequate? Or, are some cases of compliance too difficult, too dangerous, and too costly and beyond the technical and logistical capabilities of the profession? Can the work be done to the highest standards without watering down quality, precision and range of recorded information? The premise of this chapter is, ‘Yes’, archaeology can be done safely, to the highest standards, and without scientific or regulatory compromise. This overview will draw from two recent examples of emergency rescue archaeology in extreme settings, one site highly contaminated and the other damaged by natural disaster. Both illustrate the uses of applied technology to provide enhanced levels of data control in restricted time frames so as to do justice to the damaged or soon-to-be-lost resource. While the individual technologies may be transitory and quickly superceded by new innovations, the strategic and tactical reasoning behind them is not. Accordingly, the following case studies will highlight not the specifics of these strategies, but rather the assumptions, mandates and rationale behind their implementation. Legal and Regulatory Mandates

The archaeological investigation of contaminated or hazardous environments generally takes place because it is mandated by law. As a result, major

TOXIC AND HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS 2135

discoveries, including the two discussed here, were made in heavily developed, disturbed, and contaminated or toxic contexts. It is likely that many of these localities would not have come about without the ‘blind eye’, or – to be precise – the ‘regulatory objectivity of the law’. With the passing of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA), agencies within the United States began undertaking evaluation studies to guarantee that significant archaeological resources are either avoided or documented before government monies or permits are granted. This early legislation addressed funded or licensed undertakings, but did not specifically mandate the need to address archaeology in contaminated or dangerous places. The expansion of legal protections for work in dangerous and toxic environments came about between 1976 and 1986 through a series of new laws. In 1976, Congress passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and in 1980 the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) commonly known as ‘Superfund’, to mandate Federal management, response and funding to address environmental hazards. The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA) provided increased funding and required all Superfund actions to consider existing State and Federal environmental laws and regulations (see Environmental Impact Assessment and the Law), as well, including, by extension, the need to study the archaeology of contaminated settings. These new regulations mandated that all archaeologists and specialists receive hazardous materials training (HAZMAT) and be medically monitored as a separate set of considerations on top of standard archaeological tasks and guidelines. In the 1970s and the early 1980s most emergency field situations were due to unexpected ‘discoveries under construction’. As of the late 1980s, however, unlikely and often heavily disturbed landscapes became venues of emergency and archaeological excavation in major Superfund projects to remove potentially dangerous chemical and radioactive contamination. The criteria for investigation and evaluation stayed the same: How big is the site? How deep is it? What are its limits? Is it significant under local, regional or national criteria? Can the project be redesigned to avoid or minimize impacts? How these levels of definition were achieved required the adaptation of new approaches and a re-evaluation of the traditional timing and scheduling of archaeological tasks. These new health and safety mandates added several critical new logistical considerations to the planning and organization of archaeological investigations: 1. The need to work in ‘all-weather conditions’ regardless of season and temperature,

2. The need to implement ‘non-random site testing and definition strategies’ that reduce the likelihood of chance encounters with dangerous areas or objects, 3. The need to have immediate data control over number, function and age, as well as the relative conservation and stabilization needs of excavated materials, 4. The need to ‘use remote recording’ technology to reduce the ‘duration, level of exposure, and proximity’ of the archaeologist to contaminated and dangerous objects or contexts, and 5. The serous health and safety consequences of bad judgment, poor planning, or inappropriate techniques. Finally, it can be said that while the structure and standards of archaeology are the same, the time frames for traditional tasks – planning, mobilization, deployment, excavation, data processing, analysis, documentation, and reporting – are generally severely compressed. They are commonly reduced from months or years down to, at times, weeks or days. Assumptions and Antecedents

The baseline assumption behind each of the technologies and strategies discussed is that archeological evidence and resources are primarily three-dimensional, geospatial and quantified. This ‘geospatial’ view thus treats an archaeological site as ‘a stratified series of geo-referenced planes, deposits, or surfaces’, or simply put, as ‘a digital layer cake through time’. Given this set of premises, and regardless of the individual technologies involved, the following strategies use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as the primary organizational framework for the control and analysis of all of archaeological evidence, geophysical results, and existing conditions, surveys, etc., each treated as a layer in a scaled series of superimposed maps (see Remote Sensing Approaches: Geophysical). Two archaeological strategies have been consistently applied to facilitate, and expedite, the safe and cost-effective compliance with preservation laws and standards: (1) ‘Technologies for safe discovery and definition’: GIS and air photo image processing (remote sensing), coupled with, non-random, targetspecific geophysical survey to avoid ‘flying blind’ in dangerous places and (2) ‘Technologies for safe remote documentation’: High-speed, noncontact, 3D recording to quickly and safely record archaeological resources with minimal or no human contact. Both of these approaches were used to reduce the time as well as the level of on-site exposure and contact during the site ‘definition and recording’ activities while upholding the care and precision of traditional control of archaeological excavation and exposure.

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Each category of applied technology was adopted as lateral transfer from other ‘unrelated’ disciplines or professions. Only after having been proved to be feasible and effective in nonarchaeological contexts, was it used to expedite and enhance archaeological capabilities. Each illustrates the concurrent deployment of multiple examples of ‘technologically integrated, synchronized and partially redundant’ classes of applied technology as a buffer against over-reliance on a single brand or category of hardware or software. Some of the highlighted technologies are mundane or common place, others advanced. Several were initially applied in early emergency rescue archaeology projects dating back to the late 1970s. Although not contaminated, these early ‘discoveries under construction’ were commonly resolved though the adoption of applied technology solutions that would later continue as ‘core’ tool sets for the investigation and documentation of hazardous or contaminated sites. These included the 1978 introduction of a highspeed computer transit, or electronic distance meter (EDM), followed in the mid-1980s by the introduction of Total Station survey systems linked to integrated data collectors with built-in data storage and conversion. These early applications also included custom-built all-weather shelters, geophysical survey, and stereo-photogrammetry. Out of the field, these innovations incorporated the introduction of concurrent on-site laboratory processing, analysis, and conservation facilities as well as early micro-computers and early database management systems. Other technologies, including single-camera photogrammetry, advances in 3D geospatial visualization and modeling, satellite image projection software and most recently, laser-radar, represent critical advances in capacity, speed and precision. These in turn provided solutions to logistical challenges that would have been difficult or impossible to address otherwise. In some cases, such as those discussed here, these advances are helping to address difficult compliance issues that are simply beyond the capabilities of normative – and often peer reviewed – method and theory.

Archaeology of Hazardous Places and Natural Disasters: Two Case Studies Two large-scale emergency archaeological studies, one of a contaminated Civil War site, the other of a National Register District that was damaged by natural disaster, both directed by the author, will be drawn from to describe context and rationale for the choice of applied technology solutions to implement archaeological compliance in toxic or hazardous settings. Both describe the rapid mobilization of small,

self-contained, all-weather, multidisciplinary field and laboratory teams in extreme conditions, some natural, and some political, others toxic and all logistically challenging. Each illustrates the concurrent deployment of multiple categories of integrated, synchronized, and partially redundant classes of applied technology. Both were discovered as significant national resources despite the fact that their existence and significance was counter to accepted theoretical models and the documentary record. At times, these otherwise unavailable lines of evidence contradicted the written record. At others, they filled gaps in critical economic, environmental, or military history: for example, at West Point Foundry, the cadmium-laced archaeological evidence revealed a little-known Civil War R & D program in heavy, rifled ‘Super guns’. It also revealed previously unrecognized intelligence operations and capabilities in Lincoln’s administration. Similarly, the recent 2004 deep-winter emergency rescue effort in the highlands of New Jersey exposed the unexpected and otherwise undocumented, survival of the earliest engineering dam of the Morris Canal. The first case comes from the staged, five-year long, archaeological mitigation of the first major US Government-mandated archaeological investigation of a contaminated Superfund site, the Civil War cannon factory of West Point Foundry, located opposite West Point Academy on the Hudson River. In addition to the need to train and equip archaeologists and laboratory personnel in federally mandated HAZMAT procedures and regulations, it underscores the critical role played by all-weather shelters for the protection the crew ‘and artifacts’ in extreme conditions (Figure 1). It also highlights the importance of concurrent on-site laboratories for decontamination, conservation, and real-time computer inventory of excavated materials, during the excavation, instead of long after, when it is too late to make course-corrections in field strategies. The second example draws from a recent, 2002–04, emergency archaeological response to a natural disaster, the deep-winter protection-through-redesign and emergency archaeological documentation of flood-damaged historic elements of the Morris Canal Historic District in the highlands of northern New Jersey. It highlights the critical role played by the advent of recently developed high-speed, remote, noncontact, true-color 3D laser-radar, or light detection and ranging (LIDAR) for emergency rescue archaeology in difficult contexts – quickly, remotely and safely. The deep-winter data recovery operation also demonstrated the critical role and utility of GIS, photogrammetry, and satellite image reprojection. Together they enabled the creation

TOXIC AND HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS 2137

Figure 1 1989–94/Cold Spring, New York. This rescue excavation of the Civil War-era West Point Foundry was the first major archaeological mitigation mandated by the US government at a contaminated ‘Superfund’ site (Marathon Battery Corp. along the Hudson River). HAZMAT-trained and medically monitored archaeological teams excavated under fixed, all-weather shelters (reinforced, dewatered and heated) to document the 1863 testing facilities for the Parrott rifled cannon. ã 2007 Joel W. Grossman, PhD. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

of emergency base, or planning, maps and remotely recorded metric plans and profiles. Both tools helped avoid time-consuming investment in hardware, engineering, and staff required to deploy and setup elevated or overhead stereoscopic and photogrammetric camera suspension systems. Finally, these contrasting emergency settings represent polar extremes in organizational and logistical structure. The large multi-year Superfund project was done by a multidisciplinary team of archaeologists, artifact analysts, soils, plant, and animal bone experts, computer aided design (CAD) and database specialists, conservators, scientific illustrators, photographers and fiscal, logistical, and corporate support personnel. All were backed by a dedicated contract administration and budget control staff. In contrast to this concentration of manpower, the deepwinter emergency deployment of the first generation of true-color laser-radar was, with the exception of a temporary field assistant, planned, tasked, implemented, analyzed, and reported by a staff of one. In emergency or dangerous field situations, ‘small’ is often better than large. The fewer people there are, the fewer there are to be injured. Similarly, very oftenemergency situations are more easily resolved by small, flexible tactical teams, without the institutional controls and constraints of large multilayered private and/or public institutions. None of the technologies or strategies discussed is viable without flexibility and security in budget authorization, indemnification against liability or the institutional

and logistical ability to process and facilitate contractual and budget changes without delay. The Archaeology of a Contaminated Superfund Site: West Point Foundry

Between 1989 and 1995, the US Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers mandated the first large-scale archaeological investigation of a contaminated Superfund site. The cleanup area coincided with the Civil War era cannon factory of the West Point Foundry, situated on the Hudson River opposite the West Point Academy. Dangerous cancer-causing deposits of cadmium from a postWorld War II battery factory built over the historic foundry needed to be removed, both from the land and from the marshes bordering the river. As a federally funded and licensed program, historic preservation laws dictated that the cleanup could not begin until significant elements of the historic site, scheduled to be impacted by the superfund program, had been fully documented. The Superfund effort posed critical health and safety constraints and fieldwork needed to be expedited under often adverse allweather conditions. It also represented a logistical and scientific test case over the ability of archaeology, as a discipline, to meet federal preservation laws in contaminated and potentially dangerous contexts. The five-year archaeological rescue effort resulted in major discoveries in Civil War military history, including the preserved wood and iron heavy testing platform of Parrott’s 30 000 lb. rifled cannon,

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and beside it, the cannon hoist tower for lifting the new class of heavy rifled ordnance, a buried prehistoric village and the well-preserved workers’ housing of some of the Foundry’s military engineers and iron workers. Two large caliber ‘100 pounder’ cast iron rifled shells – one a standard exploding piece, the other an example of Parrott’s little-discussed binary incendiary shell which was deployed to burn Charleston in 1863 – were probed for traces of explosives with Army ordnance disposal personnel and then, once declared safe, conserved for exhibition. The cannon platform was recorded with 3D photogrammetry, its metal elements conserved, decayed wood elements replicated and then reconstructed for exhibition at the secure Harriman State Park museum complex of the Orange County Historical Society. A range of applied technology solutions were deployed to facilitate the safe investigation and documentation of the contaminated remains. The buried Civil War cannon testing facilities were initially detected using false-color air-photo image analysis of aberrant vegetation and tree cover patterns of the project area. A patchwork of irregular, ‘multicolored’, vegetation patterns suggested subsurface traces of past human disturbance within the otherwise unmapped areas. The aerial false-color remote sensing evidence triggered the intensive terrestrial geophysical survey of a football-field-sized shoreline area that was designated for cleanup and land reclamation. Computer transit surveys provided accurate existing conditions maps. Early CAD software was used to plot, define and subtract anomalies caused by modern twentieth

century structural debris from the large number of magnetic signals detected by the magnetometers. The marine portion of the investigation utilized scaled comparisons of historic bathymetric surveys to reconstruct the Civil War era topography of the river channel. Side-scan sonar and marine magnetometer instruments crisscrossed the river in front of the Foundry to identify, avoid and protect any submerged historic ships, barges, and/or historic ordnance dumps prior to dredging. Vertical ‘Vibra-core’ sediment columns were collected to define the depth of the historic river bottom. Spikes in trace elements of lead and copper, by-products of initial production of brass canon in the 1820s, showed that the former pre-Civil War channel bottom was buried under three feet of more recent river sediments. Five categories of applied technology and logistics, some mundane and some representing recent innovations and enhancements in capability, were pivotal to the successful and timely completion of the multiyear archaeological Superfund program: (1) the effect of HAZMAT training and procedures, (2) the specialized roles of GIS and geophysical survey in a contaminated context, (3) the importance of blast-proof all-weather shelters, (4) the role of on-contact 3D recording systems (computer transit and photogrammetry) and finally, (5) the critical role played by, and reasons for, on-site laboratories for real-time computer database inventory, decontamination and conservation for 150 000 Civil War era artifacts, concurrent with ongoing field and data recovery tasks (Figure 2).

Figure 2 1989–94/Cold Spring, New York. HAZMAT-trained archaeologist and conservator at on-site X-ray facility – part of concurrent decontamination, inventory, and conservation laboratory at the cadmium-laced Superfund site. Concurrent inventory and stabilization labs provided (1) mandated decontamination before artifacts could be moved and (2) immediate feedback about which areas and artifacts were sufficiently diagnostic or datable to warrant specialized treatment during ongoing fieldwork (rather than long afterwards, when it would be too late or too costly to adjust project resources). ã 2007 Joel W. Grossman, PhD. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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HAZMAT archaeology All crew members were certified in HAZMAT and medically monitored for possible exposure throughout the project. With the new Superfund legislation came the mandate that all field archaeologists and laboratory personnel take a 40-hour HAZMAT course in the use of protective equipment (chemical-proof Tyvek suits, respirators, steel-toed boots, protective gloves, and monitoring instruments) and in the decontamination of people and equipment. The new stipulations brought stringent contractual and liability requirements, and required archaeologists to adhere to government confidentiality and security regulations. In addition to formal proposals, scopes, and budget submissions, archaeological field programs had to plan archaeological tasks in compliance with detailed ‘health and safety plans’. These plans, generally developed by outside experts, matched potential areas of exposure, with specific levels of protection (Figure 2). HAZMAT-certified archaeologists work in four ascending levels of protection, from Levels D to A. The highest level, Level A, is defined by a fully encapsulated suit with supplied air. While Level A was seldom associated with archaeological projects, it was not uncommon for HAZMAT archaeologists to work in toxic environments in levels B, C, and D. The least stringent, Level D, is limited to protective disposable Tyvek suits, disposable gloves and booties, and, depending on conditions, facial dust filter masks. Level C was the same, with the addition of high-quality, ‘fit-tested’ full-face masks and contaminant-specific filter cartridges capable of protecting against organic vapors, toxic compounds, and radioactive particles. The third, Level B, required supplied air, either in air tanks for via air hoses, from an external compressor. All levels are distinguished by the signature use of large amounts of duct tape to seal gloves, boots and Tyvek shells. Crew members carried walkie-talkies to guarantee quick rescue and support, and bayonets, taped to the suit, to quickly cut them off in case of a break in the sealed protective outer shell. If that occurs, the exposed members are decontaminated by HAZMAT-equipped rescue personnel with heavy scrub brushes and high-pressure hoses before being medically evaluated. Finally, aside from the constant threat of heat exhaustion, one of the major logistical drawbacks of having to work in protective HAZMAT equipment had to do with the difficulty of manipulating small instruments through thick layers of protective gloves. This element of reduced dexterity and tactile sensitivity added another consideration to the selection and employment of the different classes of applied technology. The potential systems not only had to be

effective and capable of continued operation in adverse climate and field conditions, but were also selected for easy use. What is difficult under normal conditions can become impossible in field situations of extreme physical stress. The role of geophysics and GIS in dangerous contexts At West Point Foundry, the integrated use of terrestrial geophysical survey and early CAD for digital mapping provided target-specific testing strategy as an alternative to the common practice of relying on statistics-based random sampling to define a testing strategy. Bad testing strategies in ‘pure research’ environments seldom have real-world consequences. The unnecessary testing of disturbed areas can be wasteful under normal circumstances and often leads to a false sense of scientific accountability. Ill-conceived or random subsurface probes into contaminated contexts, unexploded ordnance, toxic heavy metals, or radioactivity can be dangerous or lethal. At West Point Foundry, there was a high potential for encountering large clusters of unexploded ordnance as well as high concentrations of toxic heavy metals. Terrestrial geophysics and early geospatial mapping were used to develop a non-random, target-specific testing strategy. Site-specific geophysical remote sensing techniques (e.g., receptivity, magnetometers, and ground penetrating radar) ‘can’ define the boundaries of a site as well as often isolate the number, location and approximate size of subsurface anomalies. In archaeological contexts that are toxic or dangerous, geophysical survey has emerged both as a means of identifying potentially important subsurface cultural features and as a means of ‘avoiding’ the ‘random’ or unexpected contact with potentially dangerous or toxic deposits and features. GIS are commonly used for the scaled comparison and analysis of different sets or layers of contemporary demographic, environmental, or economic data (e.g., population density of school children relative to community sales of tennis shoes; crop yields relative to regional contrasts in soil chemistry). In archaeology, GIS provides a geospatial framework for the treatment of archaeological data as both contemporary and as diachronic, or chronological, comparisons of modern-to-past conditions. The control of these changes provides a 3D window into the development and changing composition of a site. In hazardous or toxic environments, GIS has also proven to be an essential visual and geospatial framework for the successful deployment and interpretation of terrestrial and geophysical surveys. Specifically, in these contexts, GIS has proved particularly important as a tool for the correlation and elimination of spurious ‘signals’ or ‘targets’ from

2140 TOXIC AND HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS

modern debris or structural remains that could skew or confuse the detection of important subsurface remains. In the context of contaminated or dangerous archaeological environments, scaled comparison of geophysical results as part of a multilayered GIS series of site attributes has emerged as an important a ‘non-random’ alternative to the inadequacies and uncertainties of relying on ‘random sampling’ in hazardous and toxic environments. At West Point Foundry, the entire complex was both contaminated and obscured by a mantle of modern industrial debris (elements of collapsed twentieth-century structures, piles of brick, an abandoned used car lot, and sections of old chain link fencing) which obscured and interfered with the identification of archaeological features. The site was first surveyed and laid out with a reference grid at five-foot intervals. A Proton magnetometer recorded magnetic fluctuations along both axes of the site grid. The results were plotted as both contour and 3D ‘terrain models’ of the electromagnetic readings. The magnetometer survey identified a large number of ‘hits’ or electromagnetic fluctuations. It also detected a comparable number of spurious signals responding to modern debris. To separate and subtract the spurious electronic ‘debris’ from actual archaeological features, each visible piece of surface metal, piles of bricks, rusted fence sections or cement platform elements were surveyed with the on-site digital transit, or Total Station, and plotted to scale as a separate layer over the geophysical survey map. These scaled cartographic comparisons, or overlays, provided a concrete basis for concentrating subsequent subsurface tests on only those magnetometer anomalies that did not overlap with any of the plotted locations of identified nodes of modern industrial debris. Any anomaly or ‘hit’ that did not correlate with a node or element of modern debris was deemed of potential archaeological interest and tested for the presence of buried Civil War era remains. Anomaly number 35 on the geophysical map revealed the buried hoist tower and gun platform for the ‘proofing’ of Parrott’s thirty thousand pound rifled cannon. This integrated geophysical and geospatial approach also facilitated the allocation of project resources on only high integrity, and high yield, areas of little or no disturbance, and the avoidance of contaminated and dangerous areas. All-weather winter shelters Fieldwork was completed in deep winter under heavy custom-built steelreinforced, blast-resistant, shelters covered with inflated, forced-air-insulated, plastic skins. High volume four-inch pumps operated around the clock to lower the water table to the level of the buried Civil

War surface, five feet below. Commercially available greenhouses were customized and retrofitted with skid-like bottom sections so that they could be easily moved. A double layer of plastic sheeting was sealed and inflated to create a low-drag shell that both insulated and withstood heavy gale-force winds. Two person HAZMAT archaeology teams were scheduled to work each night to repair leaks in the protective shells, monitor fuel for heavy dewatering pumps and 400 000 BTU outdoor heaters, connected to each excavation shelter by long sections of insulated ducting. Had the pumps and heaters within the shelters failed, the shoreline excavation would quickly have frozen into a 4  30  60 ft block of ice, four feet below the water level of the Hudson River (Figure 1). Although safe, dry and warm, the deep winter shelter systems presented the HAZMAT field team with a critical logistical constraint. Earlier projects, involving simple emergencies in uncontaminated contexts, had used a c. 18 to 20 ft-high bipod camera suspension system to capture stereoscopic and overlapping photo-mosaic coverage of excavated surfaces. The stereo-camera suspension system had been developed in the 1980s to expedite the documentation of a buried colonial port in New Jersey and the remains of the midseventeenth century building foundations and cobble floors of the Dutch West India Company under Lower Manhattan. Weather permitting, the linked sections of 20  30 ft greenhouse units were simply pulled apart to provide a gap with sufficient width to raise the bipod, take several pictures, and then move the portable shelters back into position. However, forecasts of severe and protracted winter conditions suggested that moving the shelters would not be an option at West Point Foundry. For each targeted area of subsurface investigation, two 30  25 ft custom-built ‘greenhouse’ shelter units were linked together to form a c. 25  60 ft climatecontrolled environment. Each was sealed against the elements and guyed down in a fixed position for the duration of the winter. Once sealed and fixed in place, the total height under the shelters was no more than 8 to 10 feet, some 10 feet too low to accommodate the earlier bipod system. A better recording system was needed to provide the high-speed remote recording within winter shelters over the Superfund site. Non-contact recording: Single-camera photogrammetry This environmentally imposed limitation prompted the adaptation of a more flexible photogrammetric system capable of working within the confines of the fixed position greenhouse shelters. The solution came in the form of a new generation of a single-camera photogrammetric recording developed in the late 1980s by the Rollei Corporation.

TOXIC AND HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS 2141

The wide angle, 90 , flat-field macro lens of the metric camera captured a high-precision 3D record. Most importantly, it was able to operate at close range with a flexibility of c. 20 for each photo view and position. The single camera system had been developed for the documentation of air crash sites, crime scenes, and espionage. A Canadian team had also shown its archaeological utility for remotely documenting and mapping the wide-area distribution of prehistoric pit features and house outlines from the air. It was deployed at West Point together with remotely controlled monopod camera support system for full 360 coverage, both under and outside the shelters. Even in clumsy HAZMAT protective gear, and within the confines of a winter shelter, this single-camera system permits a field archaeologist to throw a meter scale into the field of view, and quickly snap a series of ‘candid’ views at various angles in a circular path around the subject – literally in a matter of minutes. Each film image essentially represents a frozen record of embedded coordinate and measurement data that can later be extracted as needed. Desktop computer software correlated and ‘rectified’ each set of views into a single geo-referenced coordinate system. The system facilitated the safe and rapid metric documentation of the foundry’s cannon testing platform and hoist tower in plan and profile. It also enabled the field crew to remotely and safely record, and reconstruct, long stratigraphic profiles throughout the site, despite the proximity of thick bands of highly toxic mineral cadmium in the sidewalls. However, while the field recording was very fast and could indeed significantly reduce human contact and exposure to toxic contexts, the subsequent photogrammetric coordinate rectification phase was labor intensive and costly. The early software was written in German, tedious to implement and required several days of post-field computer processing for each set of 8 to 12 image captures per subject. This secondary level of effort rendered the system good for rapid data capture, but poor in terms of its ability to quickly produce metrically accurate 3D results. The photogrammetry system was not adequate to address the fast-track emergency response and decision-making requirements for emergency rescue archaeology that would later have to be confronted in the context of a natural disaster. Concurrent, on-site, laboratory decontamination and data control The pressures of emergency unexpected ‘discoveries under construction’ and dangerous hazardous environments also affected the timing of the laboratory tasks. Traditional academic practices of delaying tedious laboratory tasks until after the fieldwork was done could not provide the necessary

and timely feedback. Beginning with the emergency rescue efforts in the 1980s – and the promulgation of new government standards and guidelines for the proper treatment of archaeological collections – concurrent laboratory facilities and tasks were established on-site and in tandem with the excavation. They provided (1) early chemical first aid and stabilization to fragile artifacts and (2) high-speed feedback as to the nature, number, and implications of what was being uncovered. Funding and review agencies were interested in the amount and nature of the materials being excavated; corporate project managers needed to know immediately how much of the site was disturbed and potentially open to continued construction, and what areas needed to be avoided. In noncontaminated situations, the decision to budget for the concurrent operation of on-site laboratories amounts to good planning. In contaminated or toxic environments, the on-site laboratory is both mandated and a critical component for safe field operations. With the advent of rescue excavations in contaminated and toxic contexts, archaeologists could no longer remove artifacts without first decontaminating them. Under the new Superfund regulations, transporting ‘dirty’ artifacts from a Superfund site could create a second Superfund site, which could have serious legal and/or health and safety consequences. These constraints in the timing and feasibility of moving and transporting the excavated materials have emerged as a major logistical consideration in scheduling and staffing of archaeological projects in toxic environments. At West Point Foundry, all excavated materials were cleaned, decontaminated, initially identified and computer-inventoried as a ‘first cut’ evaluation or ‘triage’ of material, function and date in the on-site laboratory before being taken offsite for in-depth analysis and curation. In this case, the on-site laboratory facilities were set up in two 12  60 ft trailers with the laboratory tasks subdivided and equipped to sequentially process the artifacts from dirty to clean. At the ‘dirty’ end were storage and decontamination facilities. The middle section contained artifact sorting, computer inventory, and analysis facilities. At the clean end, dust-free close-up photography and database-enabled portable computers recoded and tabulated the continuous stream of Civil War era cultural materials. Portable X-ray equipment was installed to ‘see’ through rust and corrosion to determine which artifacts warranted decontamination, conservation and analysis (Figure 2). In addition to six HAZMAT-qualified field archaeologists, a crew of six to ten laboratory technicians – under direction of two conservators – washed, sorted,

2142 TOXIC AND HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS

decontaminated, chemically stabilized, conservedand the collection of Civil War artifacts at a rate of 2500–5000 per week. Using walkie-talkies, laboratory personnel were able to provide immediate feedback to the field crew on the identity, age, and origins of the cleaned and chemically stabilized artifacts. The early availability of laboratory results provided a concrete basis to also determine within hours which areas or layers of the site were disturbed and which contained high-integrity deposits worthy of more intense investigation. This capability, in turn, resulted in the almost exclusive recovery of significant, ‘high integrity’ Civil War era artifact associations and deposits. Disturbed contexts of no stratigraphic or structural integrity were abandoned. These enhanced levels of decision-making and data control also facilitated quick responses to official queries from government officials and corporate managers. They also enabled the timely evaluation and management of budget and resource allocations on an ongoing basis. Highly resolved, task-specific, budgets coupled with real-time data control enabled the quick adjustment of initial budget and labor estimates to accommodate changing artifact yields and conservation needs. Data and laboratory processing tasks and cost estimates were sequentially funded by units of 5000 artifacts. Each time the ongoing database inventory reached this benchmark, a ‘change order’ was authorized in controlled increments over the initial budget (Figure 3).

High-Speed 3D Documentation in a Natural Disaster: Furnace Falls Dam, New Jersey 2002–04

With the exception of live ordnance and radiation, one of the most dangerous archaeological rescue cases involved the 2002–04 deep winter emergency exposure and documentation of flood-damaged components of the Morris Canal Historic District in the Highlands of northern New Jersey. In the summer of 2000, 1000-year flood levels breached three dams on the Musconetcong River. One dam dated to the 1830s and was significant both as a contributing element to the Morris Canal Historic District and in association with an important northern Civil War era cannon foundry. The flooding destroyed or damaged elements of the historic foundry; a beautiful cut-stone bridge and portions of the modern and historic dams associated with it. The site was also the primary production facility of the Compac Corporation, whose modern factory spanned the river channel and overlay the buried remains of the historic foundry (Figure 3). Emergency repairs mandated by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection for the damaged dam (discovered during fieldwork beneath the 1927 cement spillway) could not proceed until the loss of historic components was either avoided through engineering redesign, or documented through archaeological data recovery. In addition, New Jersey land-use, natural resource, and stream encroachment permit restrictions pushed both the critical dam repairs and

Figure 3 2003–04/Stanhope, New Jersey. Emergency rescue archaeology and high-speed 3D documentation at Furnace Falls Dam took place under severe, sub-freezing, winter field conditions, shown at onset of fieldwork after a storm dumped 8 in of snow in what was reported as ‘‘the coldest January since 1977’’ (CNN). ã 2007 Joel W. Grossman, PhD. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

TOXIC AND HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS 2143

any archaeological work into winter (reported in the local media as the coldest since 1977) to protect fish habitats. Mitigation through redesign and avoidance The first phase of the mitigation effort involved the development of a background sensitivity study and documentary synthesis of what was already known about the history, layout, and function of buried structural elements within the initially ill-defined area of the Civil War canal system and industrial complex. The mitigation plan used GIS and historic map comparison and reprojection to first define, limit and if possible, avoid potential impacts. Available background information and historic map analysis was used to develop a minimally intrusive – joint engineering/archaeological – Mitigation Plan stressing preservation in place and avoidance through redesign. As an alternative to cutting a 30-foot wide bypass channel through buried elements of the mid-nineteenth-century cannon foundry, the river was diverted overland with six large and environmentally passive siphon pipes. Steel sheet piling across the channel was moved upriver to avoid sensitive components of the historic channel. Only for those elements that could not be avoided through redesign, was it necessary to develop a detailed budget and strategy for documenting the historic site, concurrent with ongoing, deep winter emergency dam and spillway repair, or ‘remediation’ work. Logistics of deep winter data recovery At the outset, the project was hampered by five major tactical hurdles: (1) the lack of both accurate digital basemaps for the overall study area and time to contract survey teams and wait for finished drawings, (2) the need to record any and all endangered archaeological features without interrupting critical industrial deliveries to the modern production facility, (3) given the severe winter conditions, a constricted window of access to the exposed and dewatered channel of no more than a day to fully record all historic elements, including the historic dam, (4) the need to operate advanced technology systems near their tolerance levels of 14  F, and (5) the inability to work on, or next to, the historic structure because of dangerous overhangs and the constant threat of renewed flooding (Figure 3). Winter field tasks were completed in two steps. Both phases were undertaken as a tightly coordinated logistical collaboration between owner, engineers, contractor and archaeologists, in tandem with, and without delays to, ongoing construction. The archaeological fieldwork was completed by a team of two archaeologists (a Russian-trained Cuban

archaeologist and the author) and a three-person team of GPS and LIDAR surveyors and engineers. The first stage of the field program took place in almost continuous rain. The access road into the factory and into the planned construction staging area were investigated and ‘cleared’ in six days in October. Two near-surface historic features (a foundation and foundry blast furnace smoke stack base) were excavated and recoded in three days each. The fast-track recording schedule needed to avoid any interruption to military-critical deliveries of raw materials and fuel to the continuously running plant. It also needed to facilitate timely access by heavy equipment for the next stage of site preparation and remediation tasks (Figure 4). Then, and when the archaeological team returned in December and January after a two-month hiatus during which the contractor prepared the site for the archaeological investigation, the exposed historic dam and channel were documented. This highly focused six day field effort took place while the river was diverted overland and dewatered, in subfreezing conditions, and concurrent with construction and flood control. Construction crews built two large stone gravel causeways along each bank to provide unfettered heavy equipment access along both sides of the historic channel (Figure 4). The most important site preparation task was the design and construction by the contractor of a set of six massive siphon pipes that diverted the majority of the high volume river flow overland, around by the zone of archaeological sensitivity, and without impacting buried historic elements along each bank. Working with the constant threat of flooding, the fieldwork was planned to permit uninterrupted exposure and recording tasks within a circumscribed, sub-freezing, temperature range of 15 to 30  F. The selected advanced technology systems and hardware engineered to operate down to temperatures as low as 14  F. The removal of mud and debris from the damaged dam with heavy equipment left the exposed riverbanks as steep, ice-covered slopes with overhanging cement elements from the dam. Above freezing, mud and debris became dangerous slurry which continuously threatened, and on several occasions did, to burst into the channel and potentially engulf both the site and the field crew. However, at temperatures below 30  F, the waterlogged debris and the sides of the channel froze into a solid matrix that both stabilized the channel and offset the need for destructive steel safety sheeting. Based on these two parameters, the field effort was designed to take place between 14 and 30  F to avoid having to install metal sheeting while the historic elements were being documented.

2144 TOXIC AND HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS Archaeological tasks by time and temperature for winter dewatering and LIDAR documentation of furnace falls dam

F

Climate conditions

Temperature dew point

ne

ur sd

ay

ay sd

ay

1/12/2004 1/13/2004 1/14/2004 1/15/2004 1/16/2004 1/17/2004 1/18/2004 1/19/2004 1/20/2004

Th

W ed

sd Tu e

da y M

on

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Joel W. Grossman, Ph.D., 2004

1/21/2004 1/22/2004

Wunderground.cor

40 30 20 10 0 −10

Rain/ ice

Weather Temp.

Clear/ Snow/ Rain Cloudy arctic arctic Arctic

Arctic Snow

Clear

Clear

Clear

Rain / ice

0 − 23+F 20 − 23 F. 30 − 34 F. 32 − 09 F. 10 − 8 F. 14 − −5 F −5 − 22 F 10 − 30 F 23 −17+ F. 14 − 23+ F. 10 − 24 F. 35 − 10 F.

Contractor benchmarks Bypass river Dewater channel Coffer dam Second pump

Dewatering depths/day Top of weir

830 828 826

Water level (ft.)

Elevation ft

824 822 820 818 816 814 812

1/12/2004 1/13/2004 1/14/2004 1/15/2004 1/16/2004 1/17/2004 1/18/2004 1/19/2004 1/20/2004

ay ur sd

Th

da y ne s W ed

da y Tu es

ay on d M

nd ay Su

ay rd Sa tu

ay Fr id

Th ur

sd

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ay sd W ed ne

ay Tu es d

Archaeological tasks:

M

on da y

810

1/21/2004 1/22/2004

Field exposure - Profile trench-channel at weir - Exp. channel wall - Expose dam - 5 ft. - Expose dam - 8 ft. - Demobilize -snow - Expose dam - 16 ft. - Prep site for recording GPS - Survey foundry wall - Establish datum control - Survey LIDAR targets Rolleimetric photogrammetry 3D LIDAR Scan - 6 hrs Figure 4 Table of one-week emergency, deep winter archaeological field tasks by time and temperature at Furnace Falls Dam documenting logistics and scheduling of (1) bypass of Musconetcong River using massive overland siphon pipes; (2) heavy equipment and dewatering pumps; and (3) deployment of LIDAR to produce a high-speed, 3D metric color record of the site in severe hazardous subfreezing field conditions.

TOXIC AND HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS 2145

The channel was dewatered, cleared of debris and mud over two three-day efforts – interrupted by a blizzard and renewed flooding on the third day – (Figure 4). An earthen coffer dam was built upriver to trap and hold the water in collection basin for pumping. Heavy pumps drained the cofferdam of seepage after the primary gravity-fed siphon bypass system was activated. On the morning of the sixth day, the lowest of the three heavy pumps was removed from the foot of the historic dam, the site brushed of snow, and control targets placed on the dam and along the walls of the channel, surveyed as datum reference points and cleared in preparation for laser-radar documentation. Finally, over a six-hour period in sub-freezing conditions, a new generation of color laser-radar, or LIDAR was deployed from eleven positions to document the historic 1830-era dam and channel in 3D color, to a precision of

6 mm, or c. ¼ in. The new equipment worked as advertised, at the temperatures down to 14  F. Only the batteries for this and other systems failed quickly, in a fraction of their advertised life, in the extreme cold. 3D geospatial solutions In addition to the previously deployed ‘core’ technologies (computer transits, high-resolution Geospatial Positioning Systems (GPS) and photogrammetry, on-site concurrent lab facilities and data processing), four ‘partially redundant, interdependent and synchronized’ geospatial sitedefinition and recording strategies were deployed to overcome the logistical challenges posed by the deep-winter emergency rescue effort: (1) ‘Air photo re-projection technology’ to create ‘on-the-fly’ emergency base maps (2) ‘Historic GIS’ for the scaled reprojection of historic maps to identify, locate and

Figure 5 2003–04/Stanhope, New Jersey. At Furnace Falls Dam, emergency base maps were quickly developed from inexpensive digital scans of 1986 black-and-white aerial photo coverage, which was geo-referenced and reprojected to the modern state coordinate and site grid system. This procedure expedited the emergency planning by avoiding delay due to lack of readily available project base maps or the need to delay fieldwork while waiting for outside survey and engineering teams. ã 2007 Joel W. Grossman, PhD. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

2146 TOXIC AND HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS

target buried archaeological features and to transform candid or oblique metric images into accurately scaled, or rubber-sheeted, ‘false-overhead’ photographic plan and profile records, (3) ‘High-resolution, satellitelinked, GPS’ established real-time grid control as the site was being exposed and immediately before the laser-radar scan, and finally, while the river was diverted overland, (4) The latest generation of ‘terrestrial color 3D laser-radar’, or LIDAR, to produce the first true-color, mm-precise, 3D record of an archaeological site (Figure 5).

Emergency digital base maps As in other such emergencies, no modern digital maps of the entire project impact area were available at the outset of the crisis. There were detailed engineering CAD drawings of the immediate channel section of the project site. None, however, existed for the much larger Civil War era Foundry complex bordering the river. Archived paper surveys from the 1950s did not provide sufficient information to accurately scale and plot archaeological and historic features. To offset the lack of data control and avoid delay, dedicated satellite

Figure 6 2003–04/Stanhope, New Jersey. An 1858 ‘Map of Lands Lying in Stanhope, New Jersey and Vicinity’, geo-referenced to the modern 1986 air photo of the project area, showed that the original historic dam was not simply a 20-foot spillway, but rather part of an approximately 400-foot long pre-Civil War stone structure that spanned the valley. ã 2007 Joel W. Grossman, PhD. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

TOXIC AND HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS 2147

reprojection software was employed to convert digital scans of low altitude aerial photos into ‘on-the-fly’ digital base-maps. Commercially available monochrome 1986 Agricultural Extension Service air photos were scanned, geo-referenced and reprojected to the current State Plane coordinate system to produce a high-resolution emergency planning map of the project area (Figure 5). Targeting with GIS GIS and satellite image reprojection software was also used to scale and align historic maps to define and target the precise location of historic components of the mid-nineteenth-century site. An 1858 map of the area was digitized and georeferenced to the air photo-derived digital project base map. This example of Historic GIS suggested that the original 1830 dam was (1) significantly longer than the modern spillway spanning the flood swollen river and (2) that it could still be preserved in line with, and directly ‘under’, the damaged modern

(post-1927) cement spillway (Figure 6). The historic map evidence also helped the archaeologists argue against premature demolition of the flooddamaged spillway and what emerged as the underlying 1830 dam – in line with the geo-referenced pre-Civil War map projection – when the channel was later drained. Similar techniques were also used to locate buried historic elements of the Civil War foundry (Figure 7). Two historic, 1:200 ft. scale, ‘Sanborn’ Insurance maps from 1886 and 1909 were scaled and overlaid onto the digital air photo-derived emergency base map. The digital reprojection of the historic maps also indicated two near-surface mid-nineteenth century features, one identified as a foundation and the other as one of the foundry’s blast furnace smoke stacks. They were later found within five feet of their projected locations. Both were exposed and recorded, in two days each, in plan and profile to 1/100th foot precision on the third day (Figure 8).

Figure 7 2003–04/Stanhope, New Jersey. As an alternative to random sampling, definition of buried and endangered historical features locations (to within 0–5 ft over the c. 1000 foot extent of the site) was targeted from a composite of scaled historic map overlays, georeferenced from the 1858 Stanhope map, five eighteenth and nineteenth century Sanborn insurance maps (at 10-year intervals), and two modern property surveys of the Civil War-era Musconetcong Iron Works. Excavation revealed that the buried historic features were accurate to within 0 to 5 ft of their indicated locations. ã 2007 Joel W. Grossman, PhD. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

433 865

433 860

433 855

433 850

433 845

753 110

753 110

753 095

753 090

753 090

4333 865

753 095

433 860

753 100

433 855

753 100

433 850

753 105

433 845

753 105

2148 TOXIC AND HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS

Campac access road-geo-referenced feature 3 -Chimney 3 New Jersey state plane coordinate system -NAD83

Feat-3-Excav. Outline-NE Corn.

North 753 110

Feature 3 - stack3 Plot of total station data Compac Corporation Stanhope/Netcong, New Jersey

Access road Access road

753 105

Elev. 845.42

15

ft.

Feat-3-Control-9 Feat-3-Outline

Coordinates and elevations

Feat-3-Control-6

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753 100

Feat-3-Control-2Feat-3-Outline

Projected centroid of chimney ft 7.5

Fence post

By Joel W. Grossman, Ph.D. November 9,2003

Elev. ca. 846

Feat-3-Control-8 Feat-3-Outline Feat-3-Outline

Feat-3-Outline

East - 433, 854 North - 753, 097

Feat-3-Control-11 Feat-3-Outline

753 095

Feat-3-Outline

East 433861.512 433858.821 433860.197 433854.559 433856.156 433849.033 433854.379 433842.118 433868.150 433855.726 433852.386 433854.557 433857.523 Feat-3-Excav. 433857.699 Outline-SE Corn. 433858.266 433858.281 433860.264 433861.589

North 753096.566 753099.533 753102.903 753105.680 753102.629 753092.758 753110.601 753100.256 753096.611 753085.661 753105.262 753102.179 753100.747 753104.933 753098.453 753094.835 753094.040 753099.469

Elev. 845.807 845.754 845.783 845.42 845.54 846.386 845.575 845.728 845.94 846.385 844.896 844.752 845.623 845.593 844.946 844.897 845.378 845.791

Point id. Feat-3-Control-11 Feat-3-Control-21 Feat-3-Control-6 Feat-3-Control-8 Feat-3-Control-9 Feat-3-Excav. Out.-Cent-FPost. Feat-3-Excav. Out.-NE Corn. Feat-3-Excav. Out.-NE FPost. Feat-3-Excav. Out-SE Corn. Feat-3-Excav. Outl-SW FPost. Feat-3-Outline Feat-3-Outline Feat-3-Outline Feat-3-Outline Feat-3-Outline Feat-3-Outline Feat-3-Outline Feat-3-Outline

Elev. 845.81

Fence line and posts

753 090

Elev. ca. 846 Trench outline

Access road 0 1 2 3 4 5

Feat-3-Excav. Outline-SW FPost.

East 433 845

433 850

433 855

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NAD 83 NGVD 29

Feet

Figure 8 2003–04/Stanhope, New Jersey. Satellite image reprojection software and precisely surveyed targets were used to quickly ‘rubber-sheet’, or reproject and convert candid perspective metric field photographs of exposed historic features into ‘near-overhead’ digital plan views. This time saving technique was completed within a two-day window of site access for each excavated feature, without delay or the need to build and implement complex, time-consuming overhead camera suspension systems. ã 2007 Joel W. Grossman, PhD. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Feat-3-Ex.cav. Outline-Cent Fpost

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Photogrammetric feature documentation As a highspeed alternative to complex and often precarious overhead camera suspension systems, this satellite image projection and coordinate conversion technology was used to produce formal metric plans and profiles from candid, or perspective, metric photographs. A computer transit measured the coordinates of some 15–20 major structural vertices, arctangents and corners across each feature. Numbered coordinate control targets were placed at each of these nodes and surveyed to 1/10 in precision. Oblique views were taken at various angles from eight locations around each feature with a film-based medium formed metric camera to provide 360 coverage, both from the ground and at 45 from a 10 ft high wheeled scaffold. The coordinates of each numbered and surveyed field target were entered into the image reprojection and rectification software as reference points for each of the scanned photographic views. The software then stretched, or ‘rubber sheeted’, the scans into undistorted and geo-referenced ‘false overhead’ digital images and saved them in a special raster file format, known as GeoTIFF image files, with all coordinates embedded in the picture, or raster image. From this rectified or stretched digital photographic reprojection of the original perspective views, the location and dimensions of any element of interest can be plotted as line drawings by hand or converted into CAD-compatible output to produce formal measured plan and profile drawings of each feature. The combined exposure and documentation tasks for the ‘Access Road’ into the site proper were completed within the designated time frame of one week without interrupting or delaying critical deliveries to the modern factory. This high-resolution 3D recording and data reduction, which integrated a metric film camera with digital image-reprojection software, was completed in one day by one person (Figure 9). Total 3D data capture – color laser-radar, or LIDAR Antecedents Long used for mapping from aircraft and satellites, laser-radar, or light detection and ranging (LIDAR) has now been engineered to operate from the ground to survey and record high-resolution 3D coordinate information with precision and speed. The newer systems are able to record three-dimensional information from distances of up to c. 600 ft without human contact. The idea of using terrestrial laser-radar scanners to document the damaged historic district was as a result of learning that the technology had successfully been used in the defense, oil and movies industries. It was also the only identified technology capable of recording a site of this size and complexity

both under dangerous conditions and in a fraction of the traditional timeframe (Figure 9). The development of terrestrial LIDAR provided a remote, non-contact, safe and rapid means to capture the form, dimensions, coordinates, color, and texture of a monument or archaeological resource without extended human contact with the subject. High-resolution laser-radar scanners and software were first released as a joint venture between Chevron Oil and the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to record existing conditions, and unmapped hardware additions, on unmapped oil platforms. The technology was first released for public and commercial applications in 1998. Parallel government-supported research and development was also supporting field tests of the new technology on high suspension bridges in Montreal, Canada, and for the mapping of deep caves in France. It was soon also adopted by the Hollywood movie industry, where animated interstellar bugs were precisely positioned onto a large set model of a cave-nest for the science fiction film Star Ship Troopers. The US Department of Interior had used an early version to capture a monochrome record of the Statue of Liberty and other potentially threatened national monuments after 9/11. The author himself had deployed the initially released 1998 generation of LIDAR in 1999 to address an unexpected archaeological discovery in Albany, New York. While the initial 1999 attempt was not successful, this most recent one delivered excellent results under adverse conditions. The laser-radar sends out a vertical stream of pulses that create a point cloud of measurements. Each is reflected back to the instrument and recorded as x,y, and z coordinate points, each initially referenced to an arbitrary, or ‘floating’, grid. Previously surveyed control targets, on the subject and visible in each scan, linked, or ‘geo-referenced’, the ‘raw’-point data to real-world coordinates. The 3D LIDAR software systems integrate the independent point clouds into a single data set of uniform coordinates, and then use the coordinates of the previously surveyed controltargets to ‘reproject’ the 3D LIDAR data into a uniform map reference system of the operator’s choice. The LIDAR reduction software also is able to link the millions of points into a 3D mesh, or surface, model of the subject as well as CAD-compatible vector, or engineering, files. Benchmarks and criteria This 3D scanning technology has undergone important refinements and enhancements since its original release. The earliest release of this technology was hampered by three

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Figure 9 2003–04/Stanhope, New Jersey. The Riegl true-color LIDAR ‘laser radar’ system at Furnace Falls Dam, shown with integrated, high resolution (6 Mp) digital camera (released only in Summer 2003). This system was deployed for the first time in archaeology to capture a high-resolution (mm-precise), 3D record of a flood-damaged historic site. Single-camera photogrammetry, with Rolleimetric camera and software system (inset), was used in tandem with the LIDAR to record, remotely, difficult-to-access or dangerous archaeological contexts. Real-time datum control and reference targets were provided by (1) independent computer transit, total-station system; and (2) on-site, sub-decimeter, dual calibration GPS; these systems were used to geo-reference the LIDAR scans with real-world coordinates of the site grid (Nad83). ã 2007 Joel W. Grossman, PhD. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

technological limitations of relevance to emergency rescue archaeology: set-up time and coverage, data processing limits, and the lack of color. The first generation of laser-radar was restricted to scan arcs or coverage of only 30–40 . Each scan segment needed to be saved, the LIDAR unit reset and a new file name assigned before the next slice of the horizontal scan sequence could be continued. The short arc coverage of each scan segment meant that each survey station or set-up location would require at least 10–12 scans to attain 360 coverage. This meant that between 50 and 100 operations and independent data sets needed to be processed. In contrast, the newest equipment is able to continuously scan 360 horizontally and 90 vertically from each set-up. This

order-of-magnitude increase in coverage and speed drastically reduces the number of equipment set-ups and requires only 1/10th of the previously necessary data processing time. And for this flood emergency, the enhanced capabilities of the 2003 systems for the first time suggested to the client and government agencies that the soon-to-be destroyed historic structure could be documented by these means – to the highest standards and within the restricted time frame imposed by deep-winter emergency repair work. The first generation LIDAR hardware could record dense ‘point clouds’ of millions of coordinate points and could extrude the raw data into primitive geometric forms, such as cylinders and blocks, but was unable to convincingly reproduce the subtlety

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Figure 10 2003–04/Stanhope, New Jersey. Overlapping digital photo composite of the visible color channel (what the LIDAR ‘saw’) of the exposed eastern face of the 1830-era Furnace Falls Dam, produced by a Nikon digital camera computer synchronized with the Riegl LIDAR scan. Each color pixel was matched, pixel by pixel, to the 6 mm-precise, LIDAR scanner-derived, coordinate points – rendering the true color, 3D data captures of the formerly submerged dam. Temperature range during this operation: 10–14 F. ã 2007 Joel W. Grossman, PhD. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

and complexity of irregular and often subtle forms of man-made artifacts or structures. Also, although metrically accurate, the early, 1998–2002, software produced false-color (orange to lime-green) image facsimiles that reflected only variations in signal strength, not the surface characteristics of actual color or texture (as can be indicated by speckling or color variations over 3D surface bumps) (Figure 10). The problem of color was solved in the summer of 2003, six months before the scheduled field program at Stanhope. The second generation of laser-radar integrated a 6 Mega-pixel digital camera that was synchronized with the motion of the scanner. Each pixel of color was matched to a laser-radar coordinate point to produce the first high-precision, true-color 3D record of an archaeological site (Figure 10). The 2003 release of newer hardware and software systems, capable of producing geo-referenced color LIDAR output, also addressed an emerging issue in emergency rescue archaeology and historic preservation. In a pivotal 2001 article entitled ‘Pitfalls of virtual archaeology’, Harrison Eiteljorg II raised the scientific and legal issue of ‘representation’ vs. ‘documentation’. He argued that in order to be scientifically

accurate and useful, archaeological data-capture and visualization needs to include the full range of data (i.e., color and texture, as well) with sufficient accuracy and detail to enable the scientist to ‘query’ the model to investigate and document unaddressed aspects at a later point in time. Accordingly, the ‘simulation’ of projected color or decoration with computer-graphic techniques of ‘surface mapping’ – the lamination of ‘life-like’ digital photos or artistic renderings – over the monochrome surface model would not be adequate as ‘documentation’. In the context of emergency rescue operations to mitigate the loss of significant cultural resources, this form of embellishment could not offset the loss of the original data. The 2003 release of integrated digital color-LIDAR provided, for the first time, the capabilities to meet Eiteljorg’s conditions and criteria (Figures 11 and 12). The latest generation of 3D color-LIDAR provides a safe and highly accurate means to remotely measure difficult or dangerous structural elements in hazardous environments. It also meets the criteria of being able to later query and investigate unaddressed elements. In this case, because of the threat of collapse within the unstable channel and flood-damaged

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Figure 11 2003–04/Stanhope, New Jersey. Virtual 3D color-LIDAR, or laser-radar scan from c. 30 ft. high, birds-eye, perspective view of exposed 1830 Furnace Falls Dam, one of the earliest structures of Morris Canal Historic District, discovered preserved under modern cement spillway after the fast-moving river was diverted overland and dewatered with heavy pumps. The scanner captured a ‘point-cloud comprised of millions of coordinate readings and associated color records. Reference to precisely located control targets enabled the 3D record to be geo-referenced to real-world coordinates to produce a rapid, safe 3D metric record without endangering field personnel. ã 2007 Joel W. Grossman, PhD. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

cement wing walls, the historic dam was too dangerous work on, or next to, for detailed inspection or measurement. However, once out of the field, the archaeologist was able to ‘fly back’ into the site to inspect, measure and record from the safety of ‘virtual space’ (Figures 11 and 12). Metrics The historic 1830 dam and water control elements of the Morris Canal were scanned and captured in six hours, in eleven equipment set-ups, each – excluding moving and preparation time – lasting about 15 min. Three scans from each position were averaged to produce a total of nine gigabytes of raw data. Each scan episode captured a dense ‘point cloud’ of coordinates with a resolution of 6 mm (c. ¼ in) per point (c. 1/100 ft), at an interval of 15 mm (3/4 in) between points and a rate of 12 000 points per second. The geo-referenced color-LIDAR data was saved into several common CAD formats, including AutoCAD and Microstation (dxf, dwg), as well as several 3D modeling file types, specifically 3D color ‘*.obj’ and web-friendly virtual reality modeling language (VRML) (Figures 10–12). Integrated LIDAR and photogrammetry As the final step of the emergency archaeological recording/ mitigation process – and after being scanned by LIDAR – the dam was cross-sectioned and then documented with a combination of photogrammetric

recording and LIDAR to yield a geo-referenced measured drawing of the historic structure in profile. Immediately before its destruction, the dam was cross-sectioned under archaeological direction to expose and document its internal structure (Figure 13, bottom). The 90-degree, wide-angle, flat-field macro lens of the single-camera photogrammetric system captured a high-resolution color film record of the cross-sectioned dam. In order to produce the first composite photogrammetric-LIDAR record of an archaeological monument, the photograph was digitized, scanned and geo-referenced to a LIDARderived vertical digital profile (Figure 13, top). The dual recording strategies provided a safe and remote means of documenting the damaged historic dam, in 3D, to government standards, with little or no human contact. Public interpretation and dissemination The ready availability of 3D color imagery and animations of what was captured, by-products of the LIDAR data reduction process, as well as the regular use of digital photography and video as an added bonus helped address some local distress over the lack of public access to the site during the deep-winter fieldwork. The concentration of heavy machinery along both sides of the frozen channel area made such public access too dangerous. The archaeological recording technology inadvertently also provided audio-visual

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Figure 12 2003–04/Stanhope, New Jersey. Virtual 3D color LIDAR perspective (looking southwest) that highlighted the removed, noncontact recording of Furnace Falls Dam’s finished northeast cut-stone corner and inaccessible stone step element of the dam. The ability to ‘reinvestigate’ the site in geo-referenced 3D color space, once out of the field, provided otherwise unavailable access and proximity to areas of the dam too dangerous to approach during the excavation. ã 2007 Joel W. Grossman, PhD. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

by-products of the documentation and reporting that helped offset these constraits. The results were disseminated among the local communities and institutions (schools, libraries and community groups) on CD Rom. The multimedia disks included a digital copy of the final laser-radar report, a digital-video documentary of the emergency field operations, and 3D animations of the color-LIDAR scans. This effort made both the process and the results transparent and quickly available to the concerned public and preservation community.

Scientific and Regulatory Significance and Implications While specific categories of applied technology are transitory and often rapidly obsolete, often sometimes with longevity of no more than six months to a year, the underlying ‘strategies and capabilities’ have been consistently applied with little alteration by the author, initially to address discoveries under construction and then later for archaeological investigation in toxic and hazardous environments. In addition to a ‘core’ of basic

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Figure 13 2003–04/Stanhope, New Jersey. (Bottom) Metric photo of sectioned historic dam profile, captured with Rolleimetric camera as the historic dam was sectioned and impounded river water was released to unblock the flood-damaged channel. Note the imbedded calibration marks used to correlate metric photograph with real-world coordinates recorded by the laser-radar. (Top) Digital composite of Rolleimetric photo of cross-section of 1830-era cut-stone dam – the metric photo is scaled, overlaid, and geo-referenced to LIDARderived elevation and dimension profile measurements. ã 2007 Joel W. Grossman, PhD. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

archaeological techniques, the investigation of dangerous and/or toxic contexts has consistently relied upon a common set of strategic and logistical approaches and toolkits: (1) the use of geospatial procedures to control existing conditions and provide historic map correlations as well as for the evaluation of terrestrial geophysics to target buried resources, (2) on-site concurrent laboratory data control and conservation, (3) highspeed remote and non-contact 3D recording systems, (4) all-weather environmental control systems, (5) selfcontained power, dewatering, heat, and communication systems, (6) adherence to HAZMAT health and

safety procedures, through on-site decontamination of artifacts and staff when required, and finally (7) the precondition that all archaeological tasks be defined by highly resolved task-specific budgets, pre-authorized to include data-derived benchmarks, or triggers (e.g., concurrent laboratory-derived increments in artifact totals) for seamless changes in projected levels of effort and budget allocation. In addition to these shared characteristics, both of the cases presented here demonstrate the integration of a range of applied technology solutions in order to facilitate the safe and rapid investigation of

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logistically challenging, contaminated or dangerous archaeological settings. The West Point case also proves that the profession of archaeology is able to operate in tandem, and in full compliance, with existing Superfund regulations and constraints, in the context of dangerous or toxic environments and without scientific compromise. The success of the archaeological rescue effort in Stanhope underscores the emerging ability of modern archaeology and new technologies of site recording to jointly do justice to important cultural resources, to the highest standards of the US Department of Interior, even in the face of restricted time frames and difficult conditions. It also demonstrates the ability to mobilize, plan and resolve archaeological emergencies in tight coordination with ongoing emergency repair or rescue activities, under extreme weather conditions and without delay. At the policy level, the near-total data control provided by the new generation of 3D geospatial recording technologies present cost-effective alternatives to traditional methodological impediments to implementing historic preservation mandates in hazardous situations or natural disasters. Finally, these new, and constantly improving, capabilities also now suggest that the old Hobson’s choice (a choice that is not a real choice) of ‘history versus progress or’, in this case, ‘history versus natural’ disaster, may no longer apply.

Acknowledgments The emergency rescue work in Stanhope was conducted under contract with Compac Corporation. The work at Cold Spring was done under contract with Malcolm Pirnie, Inc. under the auspices of, and with funding by, the US E.P.A, with project oversight provided by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

See also: Cultural Resource Management; Environmen-

tal Impact Assessment and the Law; Remote Sensing Approaches: Aerial; Geophysical.

Further Reading Allen KS, Greene SW, and Zubrow EBW (1990) Interpreting Space: GIS and Archaeology. Basingstoke, Hants: Taylor and Francis. Beven B (2006) Geophysical Exploration for Buried Buildings. Journal of The Society for Historical Archaeology 40(4): 27–50. Clark A (1990) Seeing Beneath the Soil: Prospecting Methods in Archaeology. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd. Eiteljorg HH (2001) The pitfalls of virtual archaeology. Computer Graphics World 24(9). Greene RWH (2002) Confronting Disaster: A GIS Handbook. California: ESRI, Redlands. Grossman JW (1980) Defining Boundaries and Targeting Excavation with Ground Penetrating Radar: The Case of Raritan Landing. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, vol. 1, no. 2. Plenum Pub. Grossman JW (1994a) High Caliber Discovery [The Historical Archaeology of West Point Foundry]. Federal Archaeology Vol. 7, No. 2, 38–43. Summer 1994. (Web: National Park Service: Featured Articles: http://www.cr.nps.gov/archeology/ cg/fd_vol7_num2/caliber.htm. Grossman JW (1994b) The role of espionage and foreign intelligence in the development of heavy ordnance at the West Point Foundry, Cold Spring, New York. In: Geier C and Winter SE (eds.) Look to the Earth: The Archaeology of the Civil War, pp. 215–255. University of Tennessee Press. Grossman JW (2003) From Raritan Landing to Albany’s Riverfront: The path toward total 3D archaeological site recording. In: Fisher C (ed.) New York State Museum Bulletin 499: People, Places and Material Things: Historical Archaeology of Albany New York. Chapter 15: Battles and Breakthroughs, pp. 167– 186. Albany, NY: The University of The State of New York, The State Education Department. Holzer H (1995) Lincoln’s secret arms race. Civil War Times 34(4): 32–39. Mehrer MW and Wescott KL (2005) GIS and Archeological Site Location Modeling. Oxford: Taylor and Francis.

TRACE ELEMENT ANALYSIS Julie Farnum, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ, USA Mary K Sandford, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary diagenesis The process of chemical and physical change in deposited sediment during its conversion to rock.

Introduction Evaluation of dietary components and the general health of early peoples has been advanced through the use of analyses of skeletal materials for major, minor, and trace elements. Early work, during the 1970s, optimistically focused on developing new analytical techniques and baseline data. Three basic approaches to trace element studies involved the analysis of single elements (such as lead or iron), multiple elements, and ratios of elements (such as

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strontium and calcium). Potentially, use of these approaches, combined with other site information and statistical evaluation, holds promise for understanding of diet and health at the most basic level. However, as research in this area progressed, it became apparent that what had initially seemed a simple matter of gathering data and interpreting it, was beset by diverse problems. The first and most complex problem to arise was the observation that buried and unburied archaeological remains undergo chemical changes over time, known as diagenesis. These changes are related to the environment surrounding the bones, and are dependent on many factors, such as soil composition, water movement and composition, climate changes, and others. The modern researcher hoping to draw accurate conclusions from the data obtained from sophisticated elemental analysis techniques must be fully aware of these factors. In order to avoid inaccurate data interpretations, a number of interpretive tools have been used. The use of multiple methods of analysis for the same set of samples, coupled with statistical methods and cautious interpretations, can yield useful data. The data collected from archaeological remains are often put into context by comparing it with data gained from living modern peoples. Used together, this information can shed light on archaeological diet, lifestyles, and health, and, in some cases, expand our knowledge of modern health.

Sampling and Analysis Archaeologists who want to incorporate elemental analysis of human remains into their research designs need to carefully consider sampling criteria and requirements for various types of instrumental analysis. Samples are usually taken from mid-shaft cross sections of dense cortical bone of the femur or tibia. These bones are the thickest in the human body and the least likely to be significantly altered by the burial environment. Although most of the instrumentation now used in elemental analysis can utilize samples of 200 mg or less, collecting larger cross-sections is still desirable to allow for multiple sampling for light or scanning electron microscopy (SEM) in order to assess the preservation and suitability of that bone for dietary reconstruction. The sample also must be of sufficient size to allow for the removal of external and internal surfaces during preparation for instrumental analysis. A starting sample of approximately 2–5 g will be sufficient in most cases. Multiple soil samples from areas adjacent to the skeletons/burials and other locations at the archaeological site should also be collected to use as comparative samples to measure elemental contents of the environment.

The analysis is also enhanced by the addition of faunal and botanical samples, which can be used to measure elemental content of the trophic systems of interest to the investigator. An excellent example of this approach is seen in the 1988 Sealy and Sillen study of marine and terrestrial food pathways in South Africa. Samples are processed for analysis using a variety of techniques designed to remove external contaminants and maximize the amount of elemental information that can be recovered. Poorly preserved samples should be discarded if they yield results for biological element levels that are out of the range of modern samples, unless there is a known explanatory model, such as in the case where numerous studies have documented high lead level toxicity in both historic and prehistoric populations of the Americas and Europe. Once the sample is cut and cleaned, it is typically ground to a powder or dissolved in solution for analysis, depending on the chosen analysis method. The most common techniques currently being utilized are inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and neutron activation analysis (NAA) (see Neutron Activation Analysis). Both of these methods give reliable analyses of a wide range of elements in human and animal bone, soil, and other biological and geological materials. NAA is less labor intensive, but not as widely available as ICP-MS. The elemental concentrations of the archaeological bone samples are determined by comparing their elemental signals to those of known standard samples. New techniques involving laser ablation ICP-MS are promising since they are less destructive to the samples of interest and may be useful to analyze multiple small portions of the same sample (such as dental enamel which forms at different ages during childhood). Another innovative approach involves mapping elemental concentrations across bone tissues using scanning electronic microscopes. The combination of these techniques is a powerful way to show where contamination or postmortem change has occurred in the bone and possibly indicate areas chemically changed due to pathological conditions in bone that occurred during life.

Interpretation and Application The interpretation of the trace element results can be very challenging and should be collaborated by other types of dietary reconstruction or palaeopathological studies. The combination of multiple methods to address sample questions has always been the strength of bioarchaeology.

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The elements of interest for dietary reconstruction are those that are known to travel through terrestrial or marine trophic pathways concentrating in tissues of different organisms as related to their level in these pathways. Therefore, the focus has been on nonessential elements for human health. Essential elements are regulated by the physiology of the body and are less likely to reflect trophic-level differences. They may, however, show differences among pathological and normal tissues or even changes with age of the individual. Even the interpretation of the distribution of nonessential elements in archaeological bone samples is complicated. Strontium exchanges with calcium in bone tissues during life and is often reported as a ratio. These ratios have been used to assess whether plants, animals, or combinations of plant and animal foods were present in the diets of past peoples. Because plants tend to have higher strontium concentrations than animal foods, intake of a diet that relied on gathered plants or agricultural resources results in higher ratios of strontium to calcium in bone. Strontium is absorbed more slowly into the human body; however, once incorporated into bone, the turnover is much less rapid, leading to a higher ratio of strontium to calcium for terrestrial foragers and early agriculturalists. Studies of strontium to calcium ratios for archaeological remains may be compared with the comprehensive study of the relationship of dietary supplements of strontium, plasma levels, and outer and inner bone strontium enrichment in living people. Zinc and copper concentrations are higher in animal foods than in plant diets and animal foods are rich in magnesium and barium. Attempts to apply simple analysis or ratio models to studies of ancient diet proved to yield ambiguous results, since simple relationships are not usually found in the reconstruction of early diets. In order to understand the complex relationships that exist, multielement analysis approaches need to reach beyond simple ratios. For example, in the case of marine diets, strontium levels incorporated into bone should increase, since these diets are richer in strontium than terrestrial diets. However, the use of strontium to calcium ratios may be unreliable indicators of seafood consumption because these ratios may fall close to the values for terrestrial foods. Barium is very low in marine foods, much lower than in terrestrial foods. Therefore, the barium-to-strontium ratios and the barium-to-calcium ratios might be considered as possible indicators of marine versus terrestrial diets. Unfortunately, raw ratios from bone analyses have

been shown to be inaccurate and may have larger errors than their original measurements. Additionally, ratios do not approximate normal distributions (see Stable Isotope Analysis). It has become more obvious during recent years that multielemental analyses provide a better approach to the study of archaeological human remains since there is a need for sophisticated comparisons with surrounding environmental samples, as well as analysis of elements that may be interdependent or related in complex ways. These issues may be approached through the application of nonlinear multivariate statistical techniques. Statistical analyses of multivariate data can be cautiously applied to provide information that may help to eliminate or minimize the effects of diagenesis, to compare data sets to each other, and to explore the reliance of early people on marine or terrestrial resources, and to test archaeological data against modern data. An example utilizing multivariate statistical modeling of trace element analysis data, SEM, soil extraction, and comparison of ancient and modern bones can be seen in our work on diet and diagenesis at the Tutu Site, US Virgin Islands. We were able to identify contaminants inside the bone matrix using SEM and eliminate any significant contamination of the dietary variables Sr and Ba. The levels seen in those variables were consistent with mixed marine and terrestrial diets when compared to levels from other more marine-reliant sites in South America. See also: Archaeometry; Bioarchaeology; Burials: Dietary Sampling Methods; Chemical Analysis Techniques; Neutron Activation Analysis; Sampling Methods, Theory and Praxis; Stable Isotope Analysis; Statistics in Archaeology.

Further Reading Dahl SG, Allain P, Marie PJ, et al. (2001) Incorporation and distribution of strontium in bone. Bone 28: 446–453. Price TD (ed.) (1989) The Chemistry of Prehistoric Human Bone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sandford MK (ed.) (1993) Investigations of Ancient Human Tissue, Chemical Analyses in Anthropology. Langhorne: Gordon and Breach. Sandford MK and Weaver DS (2000) Trace element research in anthropology: New perspectives and challenges. In: Katzenberg MA and Saunders SR (eds.) Biological Anthropology of the Human Skeleton, pp. 329–350. New York: Wiley-Liss. Sealy JC and Sillen A (1988) Sr and Sr/Ca in marine and terrestrial foodwebs in the southwest Cape, South Africa. Journal of Archaeological Science 15: 425–438.

U UNDERWATER ARCHAEOLOGY George F Bass, Institute of Nautical Archaeology, College Station, TX, USA Donny L Hamilton, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) A crewless, untethered submersible that operates independent of direct human control. diving physiology Functioning of organisms or their parts during diving. remotely operated vehicle (ROV) An unmanned subsea vehicle remotely controlled from a vessel or an offshore platform. scuba Self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. shipwreck The remains of a wrecked ship. sonar A technique that uses sound propagation under water to navigate or to detect other objects underwater archaeology The process of excavating archaeological material covered by freshwater or seawater.

Underwater archaeology differs from terrestrial archaeology only in its requirements for different tools and techniques. Their aims are identical. The underwater archaeologist, unless using robotic devices operated remotely from the surface, must dive, which requires carrying a tank of compressed air or being tethered to the surface with an air hose in order to breath. The development in the 1940s of modern scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) freed divers from hoses, helmets, and cumbersome diving suits, providing the freedom and agility required for delicate archaeological work. Even scuba, however, cannot free the underwater archaeologist from the physiological limits of diving caused by the weight, or pressure, of water, which increases as depth increases. As humans descend, they must breathe air at a pressure equal to that of the water around them to prevent their lungs, ears, sinuses, and other air-filled body cavities from being crushed. Diving equipment, whether scuba or that dependent on air pumped down from the surface through a hose, provides the necessary pressurized air. Even so, the diver’s depth and time are limited.

For physiological reasons, air cannot be breathed at great pressure, so the deepest underwater site so far excavated on an air supply was a Bronze Age shipwreck 145–200 feet deep off Uluburun, Turkey (Figure 1), and even that required specialized techniques and equipment. Excavators can descend deeper by breathing various gas mixtures, especially helium and oxygen, as during the excavation of an ancient shipwreck off Sicily, but it greatly increases costs and complexity. There are, however, myriad sites worthy of excavation in air-diving depths. The main factor that separates underwater archaeology from terrestrial archaeology is the limitation of time, again caused by diving physiology. The pressurized air breathed by divers is absorbed by their bodies. If divers rise too quickly, this air will come out of solution and form bubbles in their blood, like the bubbles that form when the cork is removed from a champagne bottle, suddenly releasing the pressure. Bubbles in the blood can cause pain, paralysis, or death. To avoid this illness, commonly called the bends, the diver must rise to the surface in stages, following carefully calculated schedules, breathing off the pressurized gas. The deeper the dive and the longer the stay, the longer the decompression. For practical purposes, an excavator working 120 feet deep is limited to two dives of 20 min each day. In contrast, in only 33 feet of water the limiting factor is comfort. Compare the ability of a terrestrial archaeologist to survey or excavate for many hours at a stretch. Clearly, then, archaeologists who search for underwater sites cannot duplicate their terrestrial counterparts, who can walk for hours while observing the ground beneath their feet. Nor can underwater archaeologists, even in the clearest water, visually observe large areas at a time, as from airplanes that conduct aerial surveys for land sites. Instead, they often must depend on remote sensing equipment to locate underwater sites (see Remote Sensing Approaches: Aerial; Geophysical). Sonar emits sound waves that are reflected from underwater objects, producing images on monitor screens or on paper, even if, like the ship Titanic, the

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Figure 2 The Institute of Nautical Archaeology’s submersible Carolyn over a fourth-century BC cargo of amphoras off the Turkish coast. Reproduced with permission from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology.

Figure 1 Excavators airlift sediment from Canaanite jars on a fourteenth-century BC shipwreck at Uluburun, Turkey. Reproduced with permission from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology.

objects lie miles deep. Sonar does not yet provide images of photographic clarity, however, so the sonar operator cannot always distinguish ancient cargos of pottery from rocks on the seabed. Nevertheless, sonar produces targets that can be examined and identified by lowered television cameras, or from human-occupied submersibles. Sub-bottom sonar penetrates the sea floor and can detect remains that lie invisible below sediment, but because it must be aimed almost directly downward, it cannot search large areas at a time. Magnetometers detect iron, making them especially useful in surveys for wrecks with steel hulls, or with large iron items such as anchors or cannons. Detectors for other metals, however, are usually so limited in range that they are not useful for random surveys. Surveys for shipwrecks in shallow water have been conducted successfully from the air, in some instances by observers using hot-air balloons from which they spot mounds of ballast stones, but visual surveys by divers for the better-preserved, deeper wrecks are normally unable to cover great distances efficiently. To overcome both time and depth limitations, visual surveys can be conducted from submersibles (Figure 2), ranging from those capable of diving only a hundred or so feet deep to those capable of descending for miles, or by means of closed-circuit television, especially if part of an ROV (remotely operated vehicle, connected to the surface by cables) or an AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle, which independently travels a predetermined course like a torpedo).

The types of sites discovered by underwater surveys do not differ radically from those found on land (see Pedestrian Survey Techniques). Although archaeologists who specialize in the study of ships, called nautical archaeologists, often work below water, they also study watercraft on land, such as Viking ships buried in Scandinavia or Greek and Roman hulls in silted Mediterranean harbors or steamboats whose rivers have changed course in the United States, leaving their hulls and cargos under dry earth. Similarly, inundated towns resemble terrestrial habitation sites. Even cenotes, the sacred wells of Middle America, do not differ greatly from caves in which generations of worshippers have dedicated gifts to their gods. One difference between underwater sites and terrestrial sites is that the former, often resulting from shipwreck or earthquake, contain complete spectra of material remains from specific moments in time, usually remarkably well preserved, and undisturbed by later human activity. An example of a site at which cataclysmic destruction kept the contents of its houses and other structures intact is Port Royal (Figure 3), Jamaica, which sank during an earthquake in 1692. Once a site worthy of excavation has been identified, it is excavated with the same exacting controls as any land site. Underwater archaeologists, like their terrestrial counterparts, have a responsibility to document the progress of their excavations (Figure 4), since once excavated a site is destroyed and cannot be excavated again. Hand measurements with meter tapes can be useful for mapping shallow sites, where time is less limited, but on deeper sites mapping must be accomplished more rapidly, usually by digital photography, if the water is sufficiently clear, combined with various computer programs. To overcome lack of visibility in the York River, Virginia, archaeologists

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Figure 3 Excavating at the seventeenth-century sunken city of Port Royal, Jamaica. Reproduced with permission from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology.

Figure 4 Mapping the hull of an eleventh-century Medieval shipwreck at Serc¸e Limani, Turkey. Reproduced with permission from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology.

constructed a cofferdam around a ship lost in the American Revolutionary War and clarified the water inside with industrial filters. Overburden is usually removed from underwater sites by fanning the sediment gently away by hand, especially if there is a slight current. This gives underwater excavators the ability to dig as carefully as land excavators using trowels and brushes. Either airlifts or underwater dredges keep water clear in front of the excavator by transporting the disturbed sediment away from the site. Airlifts are nearly vertical pipes, usually of plastic, that suck up the suspended silt and sand and discharge it high above the site, usually into

a current but sometimes into a sieve floating on the surface. Underwater dredges operated by pressurized water carry overburden away horizontally. Heavy objects or groups of object can be raised to the surface by cranes and other lifting devices, but also by balloons that are attached to the objects and then inflated on the sea bed. An adjustable vertical pipe in a rising balloon allows expanding air to bubble out of the balloon’s top, thereby preventing the balloon from becoming so buoyant that it might escape the control of a diver ascending with it. Although shipwrecks thousands of feet deep have been accurately mapped by remotely operated cameras, and although machines have been built that allow shipboard operators to pick up the tiniest of artifacts with small suction hoses at these depths, no underwater site has yet been fully excavated by such devices. Once on the surface, artifacts must be conserved. Waterlogged artifacts should not be allowed to dry quickly, for wood and other organics will shrink and warp beyond recognition, and metals will oxidize; even ceramics suffer from uneven drying of the exterior and interior clay (see Sites: Waterlogged). Conservation, conducted by trained conservators, can continue for years after the excavation is completed. Its primary objective is to extend the life of specimens so they will be available for study and display for future decades. This is a simple goal but a complex problem. Salt water is highly corrosive to metal artifacts, which become encrusted with thick layers of marine concretion, thoroughly disguising them. Waterlogged and sea-encrusted metal artifacts, ranging in size from single coins to anchors or cannons weighing tons, require special conservation procedures, such as electrolysis for iron, to keep the material from deteriorating (see Conservation and Stabilization of Materials). Each encrustation must first be radiographed, however, to determine the nature of its encapsulated artifacts, which must be mechanically extracted; if the iron inside the concretion has disappeared through corrosion, the cavity it leaves in the concretion can be filled with liquid epoxy which, when hard, makes a perfect replica of the original object. Once removed from concretion, the different metals, organic materials, ceramics, and glass require different procedures to conserve and ready them for analyses to determine their manufacturing technology, origins, and parallels at other sites. Wood, for example, must be chemically treated, often with polyethylene glycol, which can take years. Research is continuing to develop new conservation techniques, such as the use of silicone oil, to conserve fragile organic material. It is only after the work of the conservation laboratory is

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completed that final reports can be written and museum displays prepared. See also: Conservation and Stabilization of Materials; Pedestrian Survey Techniques; Remote Sensing Approaches: Aerial; Geophysical; Robotic Archaeology on the Deep Ocean Floor; Sites: Waterlogged.

Further Reading Delgado JP (ed.) (1998) Encyclopedia of Underwater and Maritime Archaeology. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hamilton DL (1996) Basic Methods of Conserving Underwater Archaeological Material Culture. Legacy Resource Management Program. Washington, DC: US Department of Defense.

URBAN ARCHAEOLOGY Nan A Rothschild, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA Diana di Zerega Wall, The City College of New York, NY, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary community archaeology A relatively new development, understood as a distinctive set of practices within the wider discipline. Its most important distinguishing characteristic is the relinquishing of at least partial control of a project to the local community. urban archaeology A subdiscipline of archaeology specializing in the material past of towns and cities where long-term human habitation has often left a rich record of the past.

Introduction Urban archaeology, the archaeological study of cities, has been a subject of interest to archaeologists for centuries and in fact their interest has inspired some members of the public to equate the whole field of archaeology with the study of cities such as Teotihuacan, Machu Picchu, and Uruk. In 1979, Bert Salwen (often referred to as the ‘father of urban archaeology’ in the United States) made an important distinction between two different kinds of urban archaeology: archaeology in the city and archaeology of the city. He defined archaeology in the city as the excavation of sites that happen to be located in modern cities, but which may or may not reflect the development of those urban centers. Port Mobil, a 9000-year-old Native American site located in what is now New York City, is an example of an important urban site that does not reflect the history of its city. Archaeology of the city, in contrast, is the study of sites that relate to the development of the city in which they are located; it examines the urban process, how cities form and develop, and how archaeologists can recognize urbanization in material remains.

Furthermore, archaeology of the city views the city as an artifact and examines the functions of its various parts, exploring how these relate to events and histories in the world and how they have changed with modern global processes. Until relatively recently, most archaeological studies of the city focused either on ancient cities or on the deeper history of modern cities – for example, the Roman, Viking, or medieval periods of London’s history. It is only within the last few decades that urban archaeologists have turned their attention to the study of the modern history of modern cities, in other words, the last 400 or 500 years of urban history. It is the archaeological study of the modern city as exemplified by the study of the cities of Britain and some of her former colonies that we discuss in this entry. We begin by briefly discussing what we mean by ‘a city’ and how urban entities develop. While there are many definitions, perhaps the simplest is that it is a central place in a region where settlements have become differentiated in size and function. Towns as well as cities are part of the urban process because they are centers of power and are the initial sources of modernization. They serve to integrate the surrounding areas through their markets, creating a magnet for industry as it develops. The early British model of a town (from which most American towns derived) shows a layout adapted from the original Roman town plan in which a castle, a church, and a market were centrally located. For example, Sheffield, which was located at the intersection of trade routes in the seventeenth century, had these features and developed the manufacturing of cutlery – axes, razors, sickles, knives – thus enhancing its growth. Transportation was also essential in determining the locations of cities and towns, which developed at the intersection of trade routes. In order to succeed, subsequent forms of transportation had to privilege the town’s location. Annapolis, Maryland, for example, lost its centrality to Baltimore when the railroad

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bypassed it. In contrast to those communities developing at intersections, many American towns, formed away from the coast in the ‘wilderness’, were explicit gambles, investments in the promise of the area. Wherever these formed, they represented a shift from agricultural use of the land to the characterization of land as a commodity which could be subdivided and sold. Successful towns are able to grow and modify their land use patterns through time. Once industrialization is in place, urban formation accelerates and the specialized use of land becomes more marked. Conflicts emerge among the users of urban space. City government in the form of planning agencies tries to control the use of space (and society) through design, but conflicts between landlords, tenants, industrialists, and workers develop, and it is they who negotiate land use. One of the common phenomena reflected in British-derived urban landscapes, no matter where in the world they are found, is the creation of hidden places and locations designated as slums. This label often serves to create a safe place for socially marginal residents, such as ethnic minorities and the poor. Many of these urban processes, developments, and conflicts are amenable to archaeological and documentary examination, through historic maps and records of land use, such as deeds, plats, etc., and through artifact and soils analyses.

History of the Exploration of the Modern City London, as one might expect of the oldest city discussed here (it was founded by the Romans almost 2000 years ago), has the longest tradition of the ‘archaeology of the city’. Much of the city, including over a third of the City of London itself, was destroyed during World War II and had to be rebuilt. After the war, archaeologists felt an enormous urgency that excavations take place on a wide scale so that the city’s heritage would not either be destroyed by that redevelopment or rendered inaccessible for generations. But although they became seriously interested in the study of London in the late 1940s and 1950s, until relatively recently they concentrated on its earlier history, before post-Medieval times (see Europe, West: Historical Archaeology in Britain). The study of the archaeology of the modern, post-Medieval city, is a new field. There were several individual sites that proved to be potent catalysts to the study of London’s post-Medieval past. One was the Rose Theatre, where many of Shakespeare’s plays were first performed in the sixteenth century. This theater, built in 1587, was excavated in 1989 when an office tower was about to be built on the site. Its discovery and

threatened destruction resulted in international public protest, with theater people particularly forming a concerned ‘descendant community’. The study of most of the provincial English cities has followed a similar trajectory: a long-term interest in the archaeology of the older history of these towns was only supplemented with an interest in the post-Medieval period during the last few decades. A good example is provided by the city of York, where the site of Jorvik, left by the Vikings, is one of the most famous sites in the world. But it is only recently that the archaeological study of the modern city has been undertaken. The archaeological investigation of many of the cities of the former British colonies, on the other hand, has followed a different trajectory but with similar results. In most of these colonies, ‘cities’ only arrived with colonial settlement. The indigenous peoples of North America, Australia, and Southern Africa, for example, did not have cities at the time of the European arrivals. Modern cities only began there with the act of colonization, which occurred, first, in the US by the Spanish in La Florida in the sixteenth century, and then elsewhere by the English, Dutch, and French in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, well into the post-Medieval period. Therefore, any interest in the study of the cities in these outposts of empire by definition is confined to the post-Medieval period. Prior to the mid-twentieth century, most of the excavations of modern cities in the United States were done by amateurs who worked on their own with little institutional support (see Americas, North: Historical Archaeology in the United States). In New York, for example, William Calver and Reginald Bolton conducted excavations of colonial and Revolutionary War sites particularly in upper Manhattan. Some of the earliest urban projects done by professionals took place in Philadelphia, with the National Parks Service excavations at Benjamin Franklin’s home in Franklin Court and several sites in Independence Park in the 1950s. These excavations were extremely important in that they proved to American archaeologists that remnants of the relatively recent historical past could survive in heavily urbanized areas. Since the 1980s there have been innumerable projects in many cities, and in some cases these projects have more recently been synthesized into books on the archaeological study of particular cities, including St. Augustine, FL; Philadelphia; PA; New York; Denver, CO; and London. In Australia, the archaeological study of the city also began in the early 1980s with the excavation of such sites as the Hyde Park Barracks, First Government House, and the Royal Mint, all in Sydney. And

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Figure 1 The excavation of the 19th-century Cumberland/Gloucester Street Site in the Rocks, Sydney (Godden Mackay Pty Ltd).

in 1987–88, part of the working-class neighborhood of ‘little Lon’ (for Little Lonsdale Street) in Melbourne was excavated. But the excavation that brought Australia to the forefront of the study of the archaeology of the city was the excavation of the Rocks, the famous working-class neighborhood in Sydney (Figure 1) (see Oceania: Historical Archaeology in Australia). There have also been important excavations in Canada’s cities. Archaeology has proved extremely significant in the construction of national identity in the Francophone cities of Quebec and Montreal. There has also been archaeological study of Cape Town, South Africa.

Digging the Modern City One of the ongoing problems of urban archaeology is the fact that it is very expensive. Because sites are often deeply buried under the modern city and because they require the movement of great amounts of soil, urban excavations require the use of expensive equipment, such as backhoes and front-end loaders, to remove the overburden and to truck it off the site. Furthermore, cities by definition have dense populations and have undergone intensive use of the land. These facts make them stratigraphically very complex, and of course sites with complex stratigraphy take longer to excavate. In addition, because they lived either during or after the industrial and consumer revolutions, the peoples of modern cities have

many more things – a much denser material culture – than people of earlier times. This in turn means that collections from modern urban sites are extremely large, and such large collections are extremely expensive to process, analyze, store, and curate. Therefore the archaeological study of the modern city really only began in earnest after the development of heritage and environmental legislation that required that developers (in some cases) pay for archaeological projects on the land they were about to develop before the sites on that land were destroyed (see Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation). The archaeological study of the modern city often involves the examination of large sites, sometimes made up of several city blocks, and therefore required a new methodology. The first step is the careful examination of many forms of documents recording the history of the property. If the areas involved are enormous, a sampling plan with a rationale needs to be developed. The second step is a phased field strategy whereby parts of the site are sampled through excavation. This is then followed, if warranted, by recovery or mitigation, where a large sample of important deposits is excavated prior to their anticipated destruction. If destruction can be avoided, these remains may be kept intact and, in some cases, small segments of the site are preserved or restored and placed on exhibit for the public. Usually, however, urban excavation is performed in conjunction with development and thus unexcavated deposits are destroyed. The regulations that require archaeological evaluation before construction in urban areas vary from country to country. Some urban centers have plans in place to protect and recover archaeological resources. Much of the legislation in the United States is modeled on the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, which states that archaeological sites have to be considered whenever there is federal involvement in a development project. This legislation is mirrored on the state and the local levels. Some American cities have formal programs which evaluate the impact of new construction (notably Alexandria, VA), while others have agencies (such as New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission) that are more or less effective at protecting archaeological sites, usually by defining their value rather narrowly (i.e., in some cities only seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sites are deemed worthy of protection). England is, in many ways, the country with the greatest protection for heritage resources. Their procedures, PPG-16, attempt to balance the priorities of development with those of heritage, and employ longrange planning to minimize conflict. They have an intensive archaeological program focused on 30 major

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cities. An effort is made to emphasize the potential value of archaeological remains and not just to view them as impediments to development. One significant tool which has contributed to urban archaeological practice there is the use of Urban Archaeological Data bases, especially in cities such as York, Winchester, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and Lincoln. These are based on geographical information systems (GIS) and consist of a series of layered maps, each of which records known sites from a different time period. Thus, when development is planned, a predictive model can be generated that rapidly reveals what is known about the project area so that it can be evaluated, for example, to see if there are known historic structures or archaeological sites there, or if archaeological work has already been done in the area. These databases may also include documentary information that has been collected previously, such as leases or other land records. This type of database will presumably come to be used in other cities in other parts of the world.

Topics Archaeologists writing about cities have focused on a number of topical themes. One important topic concerns the common characteristics of urban growth in cities in many parts of the globe. Growth is often viewed from a landscape perspective, although landscape encompasses other subjects as well. Linked to this topic is infrastructure and the ways in which cities have handled common problems that accompany growth and the development of industrial capitalism. The social composition and characteristics of urban dwellers by race, ethnicity, and class are also significant issues which have engaged urban archaeologists. We will discuss each of these, although we note that in many cases they intersect with one another.

Landscape The notion of landscape implies a large-scale view of the urban environment, although it does not imply a specific view or particular boundaries. Landscape perspectives try to go beyond description to include issues of power and how its exercise – and resistance to it – alters urban space. A particular place may be part of many landscapes as different groups and individuals appropriate it within their own framework. Space is not neutral and cities in particular demonstrate inequalities and the imposition of the dominant group’s priorities on a cityscape. Urban landscapes are more intense and complex than rural ones, with more specialized kinds of land uses. One of the byproducts of this attribute is the spatial sorting of postindustrial city-dwellers according to socioeconomic

criteria. Some of the cross-cultural studies of slums noted below fit within a landscape view as these spaces are often marginal, off the grid or found in atypical places. A few examples that incorporate a specific landscape perspective include Burke’s study of an Australian town, which views the imposition of ideology on the townscape; Rothschild’s discussion of the social geography in eighteenth-century New York City; and Baugher’s and Piddock’s analyses of the placement of specific urban institutions within the city. Less typical is Matthews’ work on a single structure in Annapolis, MD, and the ways in which it was remodeled to reflect the changing image of the city around it. Burke’s study of Armidale in New South Wales is an example of the use of a landscape approach to understand the way in which ideologies of power and the dominance of capitalism were expressed through the construction of space and architectural style. Armidale was created by British settlers in the mid-nineteenth century, when its economy was based on pastoral capitalism. By the early twentieth century, its economy had been transformed to one based on industry. Burke’s analysis shows that broadly defined groups (workers and owners) used different architectural styles to manifest their class differences. Owners borrowed features from classical architecture used in public buildings such as banks to legitimize their sources of power. Workers established links to one another through the use of common stylistic details that were different from those used on the homes of the elite. The study of cities in terms of the placement of a range of institutions and the residential locations of various groups of people is another characteristic of landscape analysis. Susan Piddock and Sherene Baugher both examine institutions for the poor, one in Adelaide, Australia, and the second in New York City, NY. In both cases, as in many modern cities, important political institutions are located in central loci while those that, for example, care for the indigent, sick or elderly are placed on the city’s margins. Rothschild discusses the placement of a variety of colonial institutions in New York City, including markets, churches, and taverns, and the relationship of their locations to the formation of neighborhoods. She further considers the ways in which ethnicity as a basis of residential clustering is modified over time and gradually is succeeded by class-based settlement. Wall shows the geographical separation of nineteenth-century New York into a business district and residential neighborhoods that were also segregated by class. Matthews shows that changes in the landscape of a single home, the Bordley-Randall site, correspond to

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Annapolis’ transformation from colonial center to, first, a peripheral antebellum city, and, then, to an Ancient City embodying history. Ancientness allowed Annapolis to maintain an important role in the state and mitigated for the absence of the railroad and other modern innovations, which focused on Baltimore. Formal gardens that had been designed by Bordley in the 1750s, when Annapolis was a colonial center, were replaced by more practical elements as the city declined after the Revolution. Then in the midnineteenth century, Randall bought the house and recreated some of its refinement but also established a series of kitchen gardens that could produce vegetables for sale, balancing front-yard elegance and backyard production.

merchant vessel which had been stripped of all of its hardware, floated out into the river, and tied into a bulkhead line. Then, its hull was filled with ballast and it was sunk in place. Archaeologists have also excavated the waterfront in many other cities, including Philadelphia, Boston, and London.

Cemeteries

Archaeologists have been able to make important contributions to the documentation of the infrastructure of cities by recording the sewers and water pipes, landfill, wharves and piers, and other features that make cities work (Figure 2). This topic is particularly important because most of the infrastructure was constructed using vernacular traditions, which were not recorded but rather were handed down orally from master craftsman to apprentice. Therefore the only way that we have to learn about these construction techniques is through archaeological study. For example, from the seventeenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries, the port of New York was located along the East River, a location where much urban development occurred in the 1980s; there were several archaeological projects done there recording the landfill and waterfront structures such as wharves and piers. One of the most spectacular of these sites was 175 Water Street, where a ship was discovered that had been sunk in position to hold the mideighteenth-century landfill in place. The ship was a

There have been many studies of cemetery populations in urban areas. These studies are important because of the information they provide about the lives and deaths of the people interred, including their burial customs as well as the length of their lives and the state of their health. In the United States, there have been a number of studies of AfricanAmerican burial grounds, including two cemeteries associated with the First African Baptist Church in Philadelphia and the Freedman’s Cemetery in Dallas, which was in use in the late nineteenth century and where more than 1100 burials were exhumed in the early 1990s. But the most remarkable of these excavations was that of the African Burial Ground in New York City (Figure 3). Here, archaeologists were surprised to discover that a Negroes’ Burial Ground that had been in use from at least as early as 1712 until the 1790s had not in fact been destroyed by later construction as they had thought, but had been preserved. In the course of the subsequent archaeological excavations in 1991–92, over 400 graves were disinterred. This project is extremely important for a number of reasons. It has provided information that was completely lacking on the state of the enslaved in New York City during the colonial period and it has brought home in no uncertain terms the fact that enslavement was as deeply embedded in the northern American colonies as it was in the south – a fact which most New Yorkers had preferred to forget. Finally, the project provoked protests and demonstrations on

Figure 2 The interior of a late 18th-century wooden wharf from the Assay Site, New York City (New York State Museum).

Figure 3 The excavation of a burial at the 18th-century African Burial Ground, New York City (US General Services Administration).

Infrastructure

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the part of members of the city’s African-American communities. They were ultimately successful in stopping the excavations and having its results analyzed by scholars with Africanist historical and cultural perspectives. Their successful protest has revolutionized the way that archaeologists in the United States approach the study of African-American communities as well as those of other groups. Now they try to work with community members in uncovering the past. The term ‘descendant community’ has been expanded to include members of many groups other than the Native Americans to whom it was first applied. Another extremely important excavation took place in the vaults of Christ Church Spitalfields, in London in the mid-1980s. Here, archaeologists excavated almost 1000 burials that had been interred between 1729 and 1853. This excavation was unusual for a number of reasons. It was the first large-scale excavation of a post-Medieval English cemetery. In addition, because of environmental conditions, preservation at the site was incredibly good. Bone and teeth were well preserved, as was soft tissue in many cases. And finally, the coffins of almost 400 of the interred still bore legible coffin plates with the names and ages at death of the dead, allowing research into the lives of the people whose remains had been disinterred, so that their occupations, socioeconomic standing and ethnicity could be taken into account in the study.

Ethnicity Many archaeologists have been concerned with expressions of ethnicity and/or ‘race’ in cities, and the ways in which they intersect with class. Ethnicity is an identity held by an individual that is based on a place of origin (either real or imagined) and is defined in opposition to other ethnicities. Such identities are often expressed materially and are thus accessible to archaeological study. Discussions of ethnicity have been approached in several ways. One early method involved the search for traits – either individual or patterned – found in association with specific ethnic groups which could thus serve as ethnic markers. For example, the discovery of opium pipes at a site would indicate the presence of Chinese residents there. More recently, archaeologists have become more sophisticated in their analyses. They view the material world as the expression of complex forms of intersection, in which groups of individuals negotiate identities through a variety of strategies. William Askins, for example, has used material culture to examine the intersection of ethnicity and class among AfricanAmerican oystermen in Sandy Ground, Staten Island,

NY. Edward Staski has examined diet as a mirror of the relationship between Mexicans and Anglos in El Paso, TX, suggesting the development of a combined ‘border diet’. Contemporary archaeologists have become involved in a discourse about the ways in which members of different ethnic groups interact, using models of acculturation, assimilation, creolization, and hybridity to represent cultural and sometimes genetic mixtures of peoples. This discourse often relies on the identification of specific traits and a range of theories about stimuli resulting in certain forms of blending. Not all of this discussion centers on cities but much of it does, especially in postindustrial settings, because cities and towns are where the greatest heterogeneity is found. Much of the conversation on ethnicity focuses on easily identified, visible, ‘racially’ marked groups such as African-Americans and Chinese. Cities, perhaps particularly those in the American South, were appealing to free African-Americans, especially prior to the Civil War, because they were places of relative freedom and economic opportunity, where residents could learn skilled trades and hide if need be. Cities, both in the South and North, brought people of many backgrounds together and helped to foster the development of an African-American culture there. Free African-American settlements in several cities reflect some consistent traits. In cities like Alexandria, VA, and New York free African-Americans settled in clusters on the urban periphery, often with a church at the settlement core. As these cities grew, the settlements became incorporated within them. Other African-American communities were formed in contested, interior urban places, such as back-alleys in Annapolis, MD, and Washington, DC. As a consequence of this settlement pattern, several cities were places of notable residential integration between blacks and whites, although a clear class hierarchy based on race was strongly maintained. Several archaeologists have examined AfricanAmerican consumption of material culture. Mullins, for example, focuses on these patterns among AfricanAmerican in Annapolis, MD, suggesting that a variety of practices were used to resist and reject racism and the dominance of white culture. He shows that the use of material culture is complexly determined and specific practices must be deconstructed. For various reasons different ethnic groups may prioritize different items of material culture on which to spend money. New Orleans was an unusual city in that it exhibited a specific ethnic culture referred to as Creole. The term Creole originally referred to a Francophone individual of French, Spanish, or African descent who was born in the New World; it was a category that

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crosscut race and class. Later, it came to mean a person of mixed European and African ancestry. Creole homes are distinctive in New Orleans in that they featured interior patios. There has also been extensive archaeological investigation of overseas Chinese communities, as many workers left China to labor in Anglo-American cities and mining towns and on transport systems such as railroads. Some recent studies focus explicitly on the degree of cultural change among the Overseas Chinese. Both Jane Lydon, who studies the Chinese community in the Rocks, in Sydney, Australia, and Mary and Adrian Praetzellis, who examined Sacramento, CA, explored the relationship between Chinese and Westerners in the nineteenth century. Lydon points out that although Euro-Australians stereotyped Chinese people and saw them as exotic and frightening, poor and immoral, in fact little united the Chinese community but Western perceptions and a common origin; the community was subdivided by class and included a range of occupations. Chinese merchants in Sacramento were similarly responsible for managing immigration for their countrymen and mediated between the larger California sociopolitical system and the Chinese community, many of whom came through Sacramento on their way to employment elsewhere. The Praetzellises also found a similar collection of mostly Chinese material culture with admixtures of Victorian ceramics, the dishes of choice among Euro-American Californians. Ethnicity that is self-selected (as opposed to that assigned by others) and class aspirations are both relevant here. Ethnicity may crosscut or parallel race and class. Boundaries are created on the basis of shared traits (language, cuisine, religion, dress, customs) and peoples’ notions of their own history, but all of these factors are amenable to change. It is not uncommon to see people suspend their identification with an ethnic group when an opportunity for socioeconomic advancement presents itself. Such upward mobility is less possible for those who are racially (i.e., visibly) different than for those who visually resemble members of the dominant group.

Class Some archaeologists have focused on the study of class in urban areas. The post-Medieval period coincides with the development of the capitalist world system and the development of the class system that became the one we know today. Some of these studies have focused on the working class. Although their middle class contemporaries referred to workingclass neighborhoods as slums and demonized them, from the perspective of those who lived in them, they

were of course ‘home’. The slums discussed in Mayne and Murray’s The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes: Explorations in Slumland provide a good introduction to many of the most important archaeological studies of working-class urban neighborhoods in many parts of the world. The Five Points was New York City’s most notorious slum, and its archaeological study has resulted in a great number of publications focusing on many aspects of life in this working class neighborhood. The excavations at the Boott Mill complex in Lowell, Massachusetts, allowed archaeologists Mary Beaudry and Stephen Mrozowski to compare the ways of life of the mill workers – both the native-born young women who formed the labor force in the mid-nineteenth century and the immigrant families who succeeded them – who lived in boarding houses with those of the agents who ran the factory. The excavation of the Rocks in Sydney, District Six in Cape Town, and West Oakland in California’s Bay Area have all provided insights into the lives of the working class. Archaeologists have also looked at the middle class. Diana Wall examined the transformation of the role of middle-class women in New York City in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She discovered that women through their actions (including reducing the number of children they bore, increasing their use of household servants, and changing the styles of and spending more on the china they used to set their tables) were active agents in the redefinition of gender during this period. In a similar vein, Robert Fitts looked at middle-class gentility in neighboring Brooklyn, and noted that the similarities in ceramic patterns suggested that the desire to ‘‘keep up with the Joneses’’ remarked upon in the mid-twentieth century actually began a full century earlier. Paul Shackel’s Personal Discipline and Material Culture explores the social function of objects in eighteenth century Annapolis, MD, and their relationship with the development of the capitalist social relations of the modern world system. Focusing on such diverse items as toothbrushes and dishes, he shows how the manipulation of material culture allowed personal discipline and social hierarchies to be viewed as natural and inevitable, and not as social constructs. Several of the archaeologists who have worked in Annapolis have also looked at the colonial urban elite. Mark Leone, in an article which is now a classic, used a Marxist analysis based on Althusser to examine the garden of William Paca, a member of the eighteenth century Annapolitan elite. By exploring the perspective used in planning the garden, Leone demonstrated how the garden served as both a representation of, and an instrument for, preserving the class structure.

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Conclusion The archaeological study of the modern city is in an exciting position filled with potential. Archaeologists have collected enormous quantities of data from cities throughout the world and they have already begun to study changes in particular cities through time. But it is now possible for them to compare different cities on a national or global level. To date there have been very few studies involving global comparisons, but this presumably is where the next frontier of urban archaeology lies. See also: Americas, North: Historical Archaeology in the United States; Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation; Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Ethnicity; Europe, West: Historical Archaeology in Britain; Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline; Landscape Archaeology; Oceania: Historical Archaeology in Australia.

Further Reading Burke H (1999) Meaning and Ideology in Historical Archaeology: Style, Social Identity and Capitalism in an Australian Town. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Cantwell A-M and Wall D diZerega (2001) Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology of New York City. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Urbanism

See: Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of.

Cotter J, Roberts DG, and Parrington M (1992) The Buried Past: An Archaeological History of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Haynes I, Sheldon H, and Hannigan L (2000) London Underground: The Archaeology of a City. Oxford: Oxbow. LaRoche C and Blakey M (1997) Seizing intellectual power: The dialogue at the New York African Burial Ground. Historical Archaeology 31(3): 84–106. Leone MP (1984) Interpreting ideology in historical archaeology: The William Paca Garden in Annapolis, Maryland. In: Miller D, and Tilley C (eds.) Ideology, Power, and Prehistory, pp. 25–35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mayne A and Murray T (eds.) (2001) The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes: Explorations in Slumland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mullins PR (1999) Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer Culture. New York: Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Publishers. Praetzellis M and Praetzellis A (1997) Historical Archaeology of an Overseas Chinese Community in Sacramento, CA, vol. 1. Rohnert Park, CA: Anthropological Studies Center, Sonoma State University Academic Foundation, Inc. Rothschild NA (1990, 2007) 2006 New York City Neighborhoods, the 18th Century. Clinton Corners, NY: Eliot Werner Publications, Percheron Press. Staski E (1985) Beneath the Border City, Vol. 1: Urban Archaeology in Downtown El Paso. University Museum Occasional Papers, no. 12. Las Cruces, NM: New Mexico State University. Wall D diZerega (1994) The Archaeology of Gender. New York: Plenum Press. Young AL (ed.) (2000) The Archaeology of Southern Urban Landscapes. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.

V VERTEBRATE ANALYSIS Peter W Stahl, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary diagenesis Physical and chemical modifications that can take place in bone specimens between burial and recovery. equifinality A source of ambiguity in faunal analysis that arises when one event can affect a number of different modifications, or different events can affect the same modification. minimum animal units (MAU) The minimum number of animal units of a given taxon required to account for the NISP of that taxon in the sample. minimum number of elements (MNE) The minimum number of skeletal elements of a given taxon required to account for the NISP of that taxon in the sample, disregarding size of body. minimum number of individuals (MNI) Minimum number of individual bodies of a given taxon required to account for the NISP of that taxon in the sample. number of identified specimens (NISP) Basic counting unit in faunal analysis and refers to the numbers of bone specimens in the studied collection that are identified to a certain taxonomic or osteological category. stenotopes Specialist biological organisms that tolerate a narrow range of conditions and thus can have potential use for palaeoecological inference.

Recent vertebrates include sharks, skates, rays, bony fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Portions of their relatively durable skeletons and teeth are often preserved in archaeological contexts as byproducts of intentional consumption and subsequent deposition, or through accidental intrusion. Vertebrate analysis applies our identifications of archaeologically recovered bone specimens to inferences that we generate about past subsistence and ecology. We can examine a range of potential questions about past subsistence by identifying and analyzing preserved vertebrate specimens in association with their archaeological contexts: what kinds of animals did humans exploit, how important were they as dietary items, when, where, and how were they procured, were specific sexes or ages preferred, how were they processed for consumption, and in what ways were they consumed? We can also study the biology of

identified animals by examining their skeletal morphology, temporal or spatial variation, biogeography, and individual health. In addition we can speculate about ecological conditions that prevailed at the time and location of their death. Nevertheless, it can be difficult to generate reliable and valid inferences about human subsistence and palaeoecology from preserved vertebrate specimens and their associated contexts. In either case, we must first attempt to understand how representative our sample of recovered and identified specimens is of the originally deposited assemblage. This is not a straightforward matter because the recovered sample usually differs from the assemblage that was initially deposited. During the period between deposition and recovery, assemblages can be altered, removed, added to, and spatially rearranged. Moreover, when asking questions about the past, we must be critical of how reliable and valid our supporting data are. Whether we ask questions about human subsistence or past ecological conditions, it is essential to evaluate whether all or only portions of the deposited and subsequently recovered assemblage are relevant to the inferences we wish to generate. Questions about human behavior require analyzed samples that are representative of an assemblage that was originally deposited by humans as a byproduct of human consumption. Questions about past ecological conditions require an analyzed sample that is appropriate for deriving inferences about past ecological conditions. In either case, it is during identification that we seek clues for evaluating the relevance of our sample to the questions we ask in our subsequent analyses. Here again, the identification of indisputable clues is not always straightforward. The fundamental problem stems from an interpretive ambiguity associated with equifinal evidence. Using preserved evidence to identify an event that modified the assemblage is often ambiguous because one modifying event can produce numerous different outcomes, or very different events can produce similar outcomes. Frequently, no evidence is preserved because it was either not deposited in the first place or was subsequently obscured. If we

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wish to generate reliable and valid inferences about past subsistence and ecology, we must proceed with caution. The foundation for this lies in the appropriate identification of faunal specimens.

Identification of Vertebrate Specimens Identification of archaeologically recovered vertebrate specimens is fundamental to all subsequent zooarchaeological analysis. The task begins with osteological identification within the framework of zoological classification, and also includes recognizing the many possible factors that can influence how our study assemblage preserved (see Osteological Methods). During identification, we make additional observations that help us to interpret the circumstances surrounding assemblage accumulation and deposition, subsequent burial, and field recovery. Although many of these clues may eventually lead to equifinal determinations, they remain fundamental to the reliability and validity of inferences that we generate about past subsistence and palaeoecology. Osteological Identification

Osteological identification is accomplished by comparing unidentified bone specimens with identified skeletal materials. Archaeologists can consult major museum research collections which are usually developed by and for zoologists, or they might have access to purpose-built collections. In either case, using comparative skeletal material to identify an unknown specimen is preferable to depending exclusively on illustrations in published guides. The different perspectives that three-dimensional bone elements provide are always superior for purposes of identification, especially as most archaeological specimens are fragmented. However, osteological guides can be useful for presorting specimens by expediting subsequent verification in the comparative collection. Identification is multifaceted and begins by locating the specimen within the skeletal system. Although a relatively straightforward exercise, identification can be obscured by fragmentation. Fragmented bone specimens can be too small to identify to any level of acuity, and it is frequently the case that larger animals produce larger unidentifiable fragmented bone specimens. Skeletal elements are variably dense throughout their structure, and portions that are relatively resistant to fragmentation can retain identifiable landmarks. Some elements with fewer diagnostic features are intrinsically difficult to identify, regardless of their preserved state. Teeth are particularly durable and highly identifiable. In the case of a fragmented specimen, its directional location on the element

when compared to anatomical position in medial/ lateral, dorsal/ventral, and cranial/caudal orientation is noted where possible. Bilateral symmetry in most vertebrates also permits left and right sides to be differentiated for many elements (see Bioarchaeology). Zooarchaeologists organize their identifications within a comprehensive and ordered taxonomic system. The hierarchical nature of zoological classification can accommodate the relative specificity to which any specimen can be identified, depending upon the kind of element and organism from which it originated and its associated state of preservation. With the exception of skull anatomy and dentition, zoological systematists generally base their inferences about natural populations on various criteria that do not preserve in the archaeological record. Teeth, in particular, are believed to represent genetically derived morphology, and to reflect diet and habitat. As a result, certain elements within the vertebrate plan, like durable dental material, are diagnostically more useful than others for higher resolution identification. Depending on their relative diagnostic utility and state of preservation, most vertebrate specimens can be identified within an ascending scale of acuity approximating species, genus, family, order, and class, in addition to using modifying attributes like size (e.g., small canid, large mammal). Although these interrelated factors clearly influence the relative specificity to which any specimen can be identified, the acuity of identification is also determined by other less obvious factors. Certain vertebrates are simply easier to identify because they are better studied, or because their skeletal morphology is relatively rare or unique. The skeletons of many highly speciose vertebrate taxa can be indistinguishable from one another. Often, differentiating between commonly indistinguishable skeletons is presumed because of associated spatial or temporal context. For example, a specimen that could equally represent a domesticated cow or wild bison might be identified as either because its associated context is of an age where domesticates are unexpected, or because it was recovered in an area where bison are unlikely to have lived. Size differences may be similarly used; for example, a large canid specimen may be identified as a wolf because it is large, or as a fox because it is small. Also, the reliability of an identification may be directly related to the spatial, temporal, or demographic completeness of the reference collection, or simply as a factor of the relative experience of the analyst. Zoological identification is never immutable; taxonomic adjustments necessitated by evolutionary change or subsequent reclassification are to be expected. Further osteological observations of preserved specimens are necessary for establishing the sex of the

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animal or estimating its age at death. This evidence is useful for inferences about subsistence and ecology. In some cases, sex can be determined by the presence of sex-specific characteristics on certain bone elements, or through the use of measurements which might differentiate between sexes on the basis of size differences. Age at death can be estimated by comparing the relative fusion of growth centers and eruption of teeth with published fusion/eruption schedules. Occlusal wear on teeth or the accretion of incremental growth in many elements can be used to establish age at death, or along with context, season of death. Aspects of individual health can be assessed by recording pathological or age-related change in bone. In some instances, overall shape and size, or the presence/absence of specific structures can be used as evidence for animal domestication. Inferences about the early domestication of some taxa are substantiated by noting proportionate size changes through time, using standardized measurements of specified skeletal elements. Identification of Recovery Bias

It is important to understand how different field recovery techniques have affected the numbers, kinds, and condition of bone specimens in the sample assemblage. The reliability of our inferences depends on whether the presence/absence, relative abundance, or condition of any specimen in the sample is simply related to the way that the sample assemblage was recovered in the field. During identification, basic physical characteristics of each specimen are recorded. In the absence of more specific evidence, specimen weight can supplement the simple numbers of identified specimens (NISP) as a proxy for bone volume. Although a laborious task, measuring the maximum length, width, and depth of each fragment provides a better approximation of bone volume, and can be useful for empirically estimating how field recovery techniques may have affected the sample assemblage. The volume of bone, overall abundance, and proportion of small fragments increase with use of smaller aperture screens and water separation techniques. What is the relationship between specimen size and the accuracy to which it can be identified? Is a proportionate increase or decrease of small and unidentifiable bone simply a factor of the method used to recover the sample in the field? Is the sample of identified specimens affected by the potential gain or loss of diagnostic specimens of smaller animals that can be easily missed in coarsegrained field recovery? If we can understand these relationships, we should be able to gauge the effect of recovery in differently sampled contexts, and adjust our inferences accordingly.

Specimen recovery in the field, and subsequent processing and handling for identification, can lead to fragmentation. Bone breakage is relevant to our inferences only if it was not the recent product of archaeological recovery. Bone specimens often break during excavation and exposure and can be fragmented through screening, water separation, and rough handling. Fortunately, the freshness of these breaks can be identified by distinct coloration, which also facilitates the necessary but often labor-intensive task of refitting what were once larger specimens. Identification of Assemblage Accumulation

The reliability and validity of our inferences about past subsistence and ecology depend upon understanding how, and under what circumstances, the assemblage was originally accumulated. If we can demonstrate that a bone assemblage was originally accumulated by humans for their consumption, then we can establish its potential relevance for subsistence studies. The identified animals within this assemblage may also have some relevance for palaeoecological inference; however, it must be understood that they represent a collection that is biased according to the preferences of its human accumulators. This assemblage does not adequately represent the range of animals that existed in and around the site at the time of deposition, and if originally introduced from an entirely different context, would be completely inappropriate for inferences about local palaeoecology. If we can prove that a bone assemblage was not originally accumulated by humans, its relevance to questions about human subsistence is usually moot. However, its relevance for inferences about local palaeoecology can depend upon identifying who the original accumulator was and recognizing the biases that it can introduce into assemblage composition. Human accumulation Identifying how the assemblage was originally accumulated begins with archaeological context, and involves preserved evidence on bone specimens. Observations supporting human accumulation can include evidence associated with the cultural butchery and consumption of animals. Resulting modifications can involve bone breakage, marks left by tools, and carcass disarticulation. Zooarchaeologists note the anatomical location of breakage, morphology of the actual break, nature of breakage surfaces, and evidence for what may have caused the breakage. Nevertheless, supporting evidence is often ambiguous because not all the preserved modifications are necessarily unique to any specific bone-modifying event. Patterns of breakage often tend to be governed by properties of the bone that was broken rather than the event responsible for its

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breakage. We examine in detail the location, orientation, function, and morphology of butchery marks potentially left by human tools. In particular, various attributes of mark morphology, including its shape in various perspectives, frequency, and orientation are heavily relied upon in human butchery studies. Nevertheless, human butchery marks tend to be rare, especially as they are often incidental to their purpose. They can also be inconsistent to their original purpose, and prone to idiosyncrasy. Patterning in disarticulation, on its own, is unreliable for identifying who or what modified a carcass because this tends to be controlled by anatomical variables, rather than characteristics unique to any specific event. Reliance on any or all of these clues to establish human involvement is best achieved through multiple lines of evidence and archaeological context. Heat modification is often used as a criterion of human accumulation for the purpose of consumption; however, equifinality is always possible because human behavior is not a necessary prerequisite for burned bones. Heat modification can occur after assemblage deposition or may be entirely incidental to human involvement. Furthermore, although heat is regularly used in the human consumption of animal products, the actual burning of bone is commonly a factor of refuse discard and deposition rather than food consumption. Cultural heat modification, such as boiling in pots or roasting deboned meat, may leave no burned bones. Nonetheless, during specimen identification, zooarchaeologists record evidence for the relative intensity of, and length of exposure to, heat. This can be inferred from coloration which is associated with the degree to which organic content within bone has combusted. Empirically derived comparisons of coloration and fire temperature are available in the literature. The patterning of heat modification on bone specimens can be used as evidence for purposive human use, particularly if consistently associated with specific anatomical areas or related to certain identifiable techniques (e.g., spit roasting). Heat modification in direct association with breakage and verifiable tool marks can be relevant for bone modification activities like human marrow extraction or bone tool manufacture. Modified tools and digested bone constitute direct, albeit relatively rare, evidence for purposive human use. Wherever possible, zooarchaeologists note the element and kind of animal from which the tool was made, any surficial modification that may have resulted from use, and its possible function. Bone tools are often treated separately from other specimens in the assemblage. Humans do not regularly ingest bone that can pass through the digestive tract and preserve in a state which is readily identifiable to

any great precision. In the rare event that this might happen, unambiguously establishing that it was eaten and expelled by a human is difficult. One obvious exception is the preservation of dietary bone in coprolites, which would necessarily include diagnostic fragments of smaller vertebrates that may have been ingested relatively whole or with minimal mastication. Specific characteristics of the coprolite and its archaeological context can be used to identify its origin (see Coprolite Analysis). Nonhuman accumulation Bone assemblages are frequently accumulated, either whole or in part, by events other than human activity. We must be able to distinguish the different accumulation histories that may be represented in any assemblage. Nonhuman animals often impart vertebrate specimens as byproducts of their consumption activities. Larger carnivores can compete with humans for larger prey sources, and their accumulations can be identified through marks left on bone specimens during the course of reducing prey carcasses for consumption. As with human tools, various attributes of mark morphology, including shape in various perspectives, frequency, and orientation are heavily relied upon to identify large carnivore accumulations. Tooth marks, in particular, are much more common on comminuted bone, and can be identified through comparison with bone damage observed in actualistic studies of carnivore feeding. Bone specimens that have been swallowed and subsequently passed through digestive tracts can also be identified on the basis of visible digestive modification. Sometimes, the producer of the coprolite can be identified from characteristics of the scat, its contents, and archaeological context. However, in some temporal or spatial contexts, positive identification of the animal accumulator can be difficult, especially where different predators share similarities in masticatory apparatus, consumption behavior, and digestive properties. Microvertebrate assemblages are commonly accumulated by nonhuman carnivores. These assemblages invariably consist of small-bodied prey that was swallowed either whole or with minimal mastication. Denning carnivores can deposit scats that include bone which passed through the digestive tract, and many roosting owls and raptors deposit undigested bone material in regurgitated pellets. In either case, digestive modification can be identified on bone and tooth specimens and compared to results of actualistic feeding studies of various carnivores. When preserved, adhering pellet or scat material can be used to identify the source of accumulation. Zooarchaeologists also rely on the relative proportions of surviving skeletal elements and associated archaeological context to

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corroborate their interpretations; however, these are not immune to ambiguity. Vertebrate assemblages are also deposited as the by-product of bone collection and consumption by noncarnivores. Bone modification as a result of consumption for mineral nutrients has been studied in certain animals. Other animals such as wood rats or ants are also known to collect bone. Many rodents collect and modify bone through a need to file their ever-growing teeth. Distinct tooth marks, often of different color from the rest of the bone surface, can be identifiable. The location of these gnaw marks is also important as they tend to be restricted to accessible edges of bone specimens. The relative size of bone specimens, and archaeological context, can also offer clues about the identity of the bone collector. Potential concentrations of vertebrate skeletal material in buried contexts can be deposited through the death and decay of animals that frequent underground substrates. These assemblages can become contextually associated with archaeological materials deposited through other means via intrusive burrowing. Differential coloration of the intrusive specimen may be used as evidence, especially in cases where the intrusion occurred after deposition of the rest of the assemblage. Associated clues involve skeletal completeness and archaeological context, and most notably whether or not the specimens are those of a fossorial animal. Accidental entrapment and the subsequent death and decay of soft tissue can also introduce vertebrate specimens into certain archaeological contexts. Here again, zooarchaeologists use similar clues such as specimen coloration, relative skeletal completeness, ecology of identified animals, and archaeological context to support their interpretations. Bone assemblages can be accumulated and modified through fluvial transport, as moving water can sort different elements according to their respective shape and structural density. Certain skeletal elements are prone to hydrodynamic transport under lower velocity conditions and are capable of dispersal over longer distances. Characterizations of specimen shape can be examined by manipulating maximum length, width, and thickness measurements, and the relative structural density of bone portions is published for many taxa. Specimens should also be examined for abrasion that might have resulted from modification through tumbling action in moving water; however, events other than water action can also abrade bone surfaces. Archaeological context can also be taken into account when assessing hydrodynamic transport, particularly through studying surrounding sediment matrix and noting patterns in specimen orientation.

Identification of Modification after Deposition

After deposition and before burial, accumulations are prone to continued modification by addition, subtraction, and spatial rearrangement. Accumulators are also dispersers. Assemblages can be modified by the addition of new specimens, or simply through increased fragmentation which increases sample size. Exposed bone accumulations can be selectively scavenged or completely redeposited through natural and cultural dispersal. Recognizing the sequential position of a recovered sample within a complex taphonomic history can be very difficult. In some cases, the analyst might be able to establish a relative succession of events by observing any preserved overlap of relevant clues. For example, a human butchery scar that underlies a carnivore tooth puncture can reveal important evidence about the order of events within a longer taphonomic sequence. Surface assemblages are exposed to atmospheric weathering, which can lead to further destruction, particularly through desiccation. Interrelated factors, including the intensity of atmospheric processes, length of exposure, local environmental conditions, the kind of element that is exposed, and from what kind of animal it originates, can affect both the degree and speed of weathering. Where appropriate, zooarchaeologists typically note arbitrary stages of weathering within a continuum from fresh to disintegration, which are based on actualistic studies of cracking, flaking and subcortical bone exposure. Exposed bone material can be subjected to trampling by humans and nonhumans alike. Depending upon the substrate, trampling can bury specimens in loose sediment or displace them horizontally in compact sediment. Trampling can further modify bone through fragmentation and abrasion. Experiments have demonstrated that scratch marks can be produced through trampling; however, they can be morphologically difficult to distinguish from damage produced by other agents. In these cases, their orientation and positioning on bone specimens are examined for corroboration. Bones can be modified by acid secretions from roots and fungus which leave distinct dendritic ‘root etching’ patterns both prior to and after burial. After burial, bone assemblages can be physically and spatially altered, subtracted from, or added to. Sediment overburden can modify buried bone through deformation and fragmentation. Postburial weathering continues as bone material is disintegrated by physical and chemical agents in the burial matrix. Modification of buried bone material is influenced by the burial environment and factors intrinsic to skeletal material. Size, shape, fragmentation, and porosity of the buried specimen, along with soil

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chemistry, water, temperature, and microbial activity, all contribute to the rate and extent of subsurface weathering. The effects of diagenesis, which involves the physical and chemical alteration of buried bone material, must be taken into account by the zooarchaeologist. Any evidence for the dissolution of bone material in the burial matrix is noted, as are mineral concretions adhering to bone surfaces. Postburial breakage may be identified through fracture morphology, fracture coloration, fragment size, conjoinability, and archaeological context.

mediated by differential structural density of bone material. However, this can only demonstrate an ultimate cause because numerous different attritional events can be responsible for density-dependent survivorship. We must rely on observations of the recovered assemblage in order to suggest reasonable possibilities about proximate causation. Here, the likelihood that our assessments are correct is strengthened through corroboration from multiple lines of evidence (see Archaeozoology).

Analysis of Vertebrate Specimens

If it is reasonable to assume that the recovered assemblage was originally accumulated and deposited by humans for their consumption, then we can ask questions appropriate to human subsistence. However, we must be aware that quantitative and qualitative differences in the studied assemblage can result from factors that contributed to its modification during the time between original accumulation and eventual analysis. The basic analytical unit for all subsequent inferences is the NISP of animal taxa that are relevant to inferences about prehistoric consumption. However, different values of NISP can vary for reasons that are irrelevant to our inferences about subsistence. They may reflect simple variability between species and element, and are strongly affected by fragmentation, differential preservation, and the method of field recovery used. Subsistence inferences based solely on NISP would be misleading, primarily due to specimen interdependence. Therefore, NISP is normally presented alongside an estimate of the minimum number of individuals (MNI) of a given taxon required to account for the NISP of that taxon in the sample. In its simplest form, MNI is equal to the highest number of either left or right paired element portions for each given taxon. The minimum number of elements (MNE) is similarly computed without distinguishing body side, and can be easily converted into minimum animal units (MAU), which relate MNE to individual bodies. Although not without their attendant problems, these derived permutations of NISP offer units of analysis that are more usable for questions about diet. Increasingly robust and reliable inferences about dietary contribution are possible when coupled with appropriate utility indexes. These are empirically determined estimates of total food value represented in different skeletal portions of different animal taxa. Archaeological data can help us to identify what kinds of animals humans exploited, which sexes or ages were preferred, and when, where, and how they were procured, processed, and consumed. Nevertheless, the exact quantitative relationship between the

Identifications of studied bone specimens, and information from associated archaeological context, are fundamental to interpretation. It is often difficult to arrive at specific conclusions about bone assemblage formation because identifiable traces tend to be elusive and ambiguous, even when preserved. They are, however, crucial for establishing the reliability and validity of any inference about past subsistence and ecology. Equifinality

The exact identification of clues surrounding assemblage accumulation and preservation often remains elusive because of equifinality. Cause and effect can be difficult to establish because dissimilar events can produce similar results, or because unvarying outcomes do not consistently result from the same event. The problem is compounded because an assemblage originally impacted by one variable can be subsequently modified by another. Bone assemblages usually bear multiple signatures that are often the result of disassociated events. It is our task to identify them as best we can, understand their origin, order their sequence of appearance, and evaluate their importance to the questions we ask about subsistence and ecology. The ultimate cause of bone preservation lies in the variable structural density of its constituent materials. Harder portions of the vertebrate skeleton have a greater chance of surviving attritional forces. Evaluating the nature and degree to which the preserved assemblage was subjected to density-mediated attrition is of first-order importance for understanding how adequately the study assemblage reflects the original accumulation. Zooarchaeologists have established independent means to assess the variability of structural density in skeletons of different animal taxa. Through comparing skeletal part frequencies with a hypothetical assemblage that survives on the basis of structural density, we can assess whether or not assemblage preservation was influenced by any number of attritional forces whose effects are

Subsistence Analysis

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recovered and deposited samples remains unknown. Moreover, we can never be certain how representative the deposited assemblage is of the original sample of animals that was procured and consumed by humans. Therefore, it is usually difficult to establish anything but a rough estimate of relative dietary contribution. Palaeoecological Analysis

If we can establish how the recovered assemblage was originally accumulated and deposited, and understand how attributes of the study assemblage reflect biases introduced by the accumulating agent, then we can ask questions appropriate to palaeoecology. Again, we must be aware that quantitative and qualitative differences in the studied assemblage result from factors that contributed to its modification during the time between original accumulation and eventual analysis. However, we can never be certain that the quantitative structure of our recovered sample accurately reflects either the structure of the original accumulation or a hypothetical population of animals in the past. Reliable palaeoecological inferences are never based on treating taxa within the assemblage as variables, but as attributes that are either present or possibly absent. Palaeoecological inference rests on analogical reasoning. It uses relevant attributes of analogous contemporary taxa whose archaeological counterparts are represented in archaeological context to inform about environmental conditions at the time and location of deposition. Animals that lived locally to the site of deposition are preferred for palaeoecological inference, as are narrow-niched stenotopes or specialist species that tolerate a narrow range of conditions. Our inferences assume that the ecology of contemporary taxa has changed little from similar taxa in the past, and that they are stable in time and space. Their validity also rests on the assumption that archaeological resolution is clear and that the identified taxa used for palaeoecological inference were not transported to the site of deposition from far away. The likelihood that our palaeoecological inferences are correct, is strengthened through corroboration from multiple lines of evidence, particularly by using suites of taxa that point to similar conclusions.

Standards for Reporting and Curation Any analysis of vertebrate specimens recovered from archaeological context involves a potentially long list of recorded variables. Zooarchaeologists recognize the need to standardize reporting, but they do not agree on how this should be achieved. Ideally, it would be necessary to include some discussion of criteria used to establish taxonomic identification, as identification is

fundamental to all analyses. Most published analyses include a list of taxonomic abundance; however, it is difficult to evaluate the reliability of identifications without recourse to a corresponding list of identified elements and some discussion of the criteria used in their identification. Reports should also include information on how the sample was recovered in the field, in addition to descriptive data that can be crucial to all subsequent interpretation, including: physical dimensions of specimens, skeletal element and portion, side, fusion, evidence for age and sex, different forms of preserved modification, and archaeological provenience. Although it would be ideal to include sufficient data to allow future researchers to undertake analyses without recourse to the original material, this goal remains somewhat unrealistic. Lamentably, traditional outlets are increasingly reluctant to publish long lists of basic data; however, the practical ability for digital storage looms on the horizon. Nevertheless, we have no idea what possible data future researchers may consider as important. Today, promising research fronts include the use of biomolecular identifications, which would require access to the original bone tissue. Furthermore, we cannot expect our taxonomic identifications to be permanent because they are inherently mutable. Moreover, we must accept that taxonomic categories change through reclassification and/or evolutionary modification. It is inherently difficult to establish universal standards of reporting because the research priorities of archaeologists vary in time and space. What may be irrelevant to one analyst may be crucial to another. The only effective way to deal with these problems is to curate the material for future restudy. Here, storage with labeled identifications from previous analyses could be considered. However, it is of utmost importance to curate specimens along with all relevant archaeological provenience information, for without this, a specimen is only a meaningless bone fragment. See also: Archaeozoology; Bioarchaeology; Coprolite

Analysis; Osteological Methods; Taphonomy.

Further Reading Andrews P (1990) Owls, Caves and Fossils. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Behrensmeyer AK (1978) Taphonomic and ecologic information from bone weathering. Paleobiology 4: 150–162. Driver JC (1992) Identification, classification and zooarchaeology. Circaea 9: 35–47. Grayson DK (1981) A critical view of the use of archaeological vertebrates in paleoenvironmental reconstruction. Journal of Ethnobiology 1: 28–38.

2180 VITREOUS MATERIALS ANALYSIS Grayson DK (1984) Quantitative Zooarchaeology. Topics in the Analysis of Archaeological Faunas. Orlando: Academic Press. Lyman RL (1994) Vertebrate Taphonomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shaffer BS (1992) Quarter-inch screening: Understanding biases in recovery of vertebrate faunal remains. American Antiquity 57: 129–136. Shipman P, Foster G, and Schoeninger M (1984) Burnt bones and teeth: An experimental study of color, morphology, crystal

structure and shrinkage. Journal of Archaeological Science 11: 307–325. Voorhies M (1969) Contributions to Geology Special Paper No. 1: Taphonomy and Population Dynamics of an Early Pliocene Vertebrate Fauna, Knox County, Nebraska. Laramie: University of Wyoming. Watson JPN (1979) The estimation of the relative frequencies of mammalian species: Khirokitia 1972. Journal of Archaeological Science 6: 127–137.

VITREOUS MATERIALS ANALYSIS Julian Henderson, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary enamel A glassy, colored, opaque substance fused to surfaces of metals, glass, and pottery as an ornamental or protective coating. faience A substance produced in a variety of ways which is a combination of a crystalline silica and a vitreous network. glaze A semi-transparent or opaque vitreous coating which often covers all or part of the exterior of pottery. mold A pattern, hollow form, or matrix for giving a certain shape to something in a plastic or molten state.

Introduction The term ‘vitreous’ literally means a material with a glassy state. Thus a consideration of the full range of ancient vitreous materials should include faience, Egyptian blue, glazed steatite, glass, glaze, and enamel. A vitreous layer may have been formed adventitiously in a high-temperature environment in which plant ash and silica combined, such as during metal smelting. However, this is not considered here. The chronological sequence in which vitreous materials appeared was the following: the earliest faience appeared c. 4500 BC at about the same time as glazed steatite. The first glass appears to have been made c. 2500 BC and the first glazed pottery and enameled metal some 1000 years later. The first appearance of all of these vitreous materials seems to have occurred in the Middle East or in an adjacent area. Since the bulk of ancient vitreous materials are glass and pottery glazes, most discussion here will be focused on these categories. Faience, a material consisting of a core of silica held together with a vitreous phase, has much in common with the earliest glass. Both materials were produced

with silica, plant ash, and a colorant. However, the earliest glass was formed by a complete fusion of plant ash and silica so that there are no discernible separate phases. Colorants were added to produce one of the more distinctive visual characteristics of vitreous materials. Initially, low-level glass production occurred for the production of decorative trinkets like beads; 1000 years later (by 1500 BC) the first (core-formed) vessels were made as part of an elite production sphere associated with Bronze Age Royal palaces. The description of glass production in cuneiform texts indicates that ritual played an important part. Hellenistic cast glass vessels were mass produced, and soon after glass-blowing was invented (c. 50 BC) mass-produced glass vessels become available to many more people in the Roman world. The first sets of mold-blown glass vessels were produced. Glass windows were first made in the first century AD, with arguably the largest-scale production in the high medieval period in the West. The period saw an increase in the volume of trade in finished vessels and scrap glass (cullet). In China, jade was used instead of glass in many contexts. Nevertheless, there is evidence for innovation in Chinese glass production from c. 800 BC with diagnostically different raw materials being used from those in the West. In the Far East, glazed pottery production reached a high level of sophistication well before this occurred in the West (Figures 1 and 2) (see Ceramics and Pottery).

Why Analyze Vitreous Materials? Vitreous materials have been found in a range of archaeological contexts that may reflect their social, ritual, economic, and religious values. The scientific analysis of vitreous materials can therefore: 1. Show whether the role that the object played in society can be related to its chemical composition.

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Figure 1 A blown Mamluk mosque lamp with a complex and delicate range of enamelling and cufic inscriptions (source: author).

For example, objects found during excavations of graves, temples, urban settlements, rural settlements, production sites, and shipwrecks will have had quite specific values depending on the specific roles that they played in society at that time and in that place. 2. In purely technological terms, analysis provides evidence about the raw materials used to make vitreous materials, including primary raw materials, colorants, opacifiers, decolorants, and clarifiers. 3. Through chemical analysis it becomes possible to determine the ‘basic’ properties of vitreous materials: these properties are especially critical for glazing where the composition will determine how well the glaze will ‘fit’ the pot surface, and for glass, when it is blown. 4. The analysis of evidence from production sites, such as furnace fragments with raw glaze or glass adhering, glassworking evidence such as blowing moils and crucibles with glass adhering, partially melted vitreous materials (frit), and the materials which are excluded when a glass is melted (scum), helps to reconstruct the production processes involved. 5. It is possible to determine the ways in which the recipes changed over time in different places. 6. It can be possible to determine the extent of (glass or enamel) recycling. 7. Analysis is increasingly providing evidence for the ‘provenance’ of vitreous materials which, in the long run, should make it possible to construct trade routes in raw glass from (primary) production sites

Figure 2 Sherds of glazed Ottoman Iznik ware. The changing decorative style of Iznik wares can be dated quite tightly to within 30 year periods because the same decoration was used for tiling in minarets and mosques that were built at the time for which we have construction dates (source: with kind permission of the Benaki Museum, Athens).

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and trade in finished objects made from vitreous materials (see Europe: Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies). 8. Finally, the reason for carrying out such analyses, an overarching one, is to attempt to reconstruct the chaıˆne ope´ratoire (a linked series of operations involved in production associated with specific decisions at various times) involved in each social, economic ritual or religious context (see Ritual, Religion, and Ideology). It is clear that when an analytical project is first conceived, samples should be securely

Figure 3 Calcium antimonate crystals rendering an Egyptian fourteenth century BC glass sample of an opaque white color. Produced using a scanning electron microscope.

dated and be in sufficient numbers to answer the research question(s) posed.

The Techniques Used A range of analytical techniques are described in the contribution Chemical Analysis Techniques. Scientific techniques that have been used for the analysis of vitreous materials can be nondestructive, microdestructive, or completely destructive. Although object size and surface weathering are important factors, nondestructive techniques include energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy, neutron activation analysis, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). However, to produce quantitative analyses that make it possible to compare the results directly with others, a flat polished surface is normally required. Thus, microdestructive techniques are frequently used. Commonly used examples are (wavelength-dispersive) electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) and (energydispersive) SEM. With suitable standards of a known composition, these techniques not only can make it possible to analyze small samples quite accurately, but also can potentially provide separate elemental maps showing the co-occurrence of elements in the sample. Imaging of faience, glazed steatite, glazed ceramics, opaque enamels, and opaque glasses is especially important because separate crystalline phases (in faience, glasses, glazes, and enamels: see Figure 3) or body, slip, and glaze (in pottery sections) can be analyzed individually (see Figure 4). Bulk chemical

Figure 4 A thick section of an Ottoman (Iznik) glazed pot showing four layers, which top to bottom are the glaze layer, the interaction layer between glaze and slip layers, the slip layer, and the body of the pot with a network of glass.

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analysis using wet chemical techniques, such as atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS), inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICPAES), or inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICPOES) are suitable only if a single-phase material is being analyzed or if an averaging of the components in separate phases is desired. Moreover, by using a laser ablation mass spectrometry technique (LAICP-MS), it is possible to analyze microdestructively and the mass spectrometer provides isotopic information. Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), can be used microdestructively, but it can be difficult to produce quantitative results. Static SIMS has, however, been use successfully to image glass weathering. Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) is a very sensitive technique and can produce semi-quantitative results at very low levels of detection (parts per million or parts per billion) with a submicron spatial resolution, allowing separate phases to be analyzed. It also provides information about the isotopes generated. Synchrotron (SR)-induced XRF is another equally sensitive analytical technique, but it currently lacks the spatial resolution of TOF-SIMS. Proton-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) has been used for the analysis of vitreous materials, but, as with SR, the depth of penetration of the beam can make it difficult to separately analyze different phases. MS can also play an important role in provenance studies, either as ICP (LAICP-MS) or the more sensitive technique, thermal ion mass spectrometry (TIMS).

To produce data which can be compared with existing databases and which have an inherent value, the accuracy and precision of the techniques need to be determined on a regular basis.

Interpretation of the Results Analytical results can consist of major, minor, trace, and trace trace levels of components. The relative levels of these components provide evidence for the type of primary raw materials used for making vitreous materials and contribute to the chaıˆne ope´ratoire by showing how specific types of raw materials used may have been selected, refined, melted, and worked using traditional techniques and deposited in specific archaeological context types. By comparing relative levels of components using simple bivariate plots, it becomes possible to establish compositional groupings (Figure 5). Thus clear compositional distinctions between glasses made with various sources of alkali, made from halophytic plant ash, natron, tree ash, or seaweed may be seen. The different alkali types used will not only contain distinctive major components, but will also be associated with different minor impurities. EPMA and SEM can be used to produce this information. Ideally well-dated samples from secure archaeological contexts are analyzed. By comparing new data with existing databases, it becomes possible to show changes in technologies over time. Equally, by examining trace levels, the geological source of a mineralogical colorant, like cobalt used in faience,

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2184 VITREOUS MATERIALS ANALYSIS 0.7096 Raqqa raw Raqqa vessels Raqqa plants Raqqa Natron Banias raw

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glass, or glazes, may be revealed by the impurities associated with the cobalt-bearing mineral deposit that was exploited. Different trace impurities in opacifying crystals may also be an indication that a different geological source has been used. A range of sensitive techniques may be used to determine such trace components such as LA-ICPMS, TOF-SIMS, and SR-XRF. For the provenance of vitreous materials, it is important, where possible, to work with samples from sites where primary production has occurred. Provenance is an essential starting point in getting a clearer picture of trade and exchange networks. TIMS, in particular, has been used to determine strontium, neodymium, oxygen, and lead in an attempt to provide a provenance for ancient vitreous materials. Strontium is chemically associated with the calcium used in glass (in plant ash of shell fragments), neodymium is chemically associated with silica sources used, and lead isotope determinations can sometimes be used to source the geological deposit used in glass and glaze production. This work relies heavily on the scientific analysis of the glass made at a primary production sites (Figure 6). This can help to minimize

the possibility that recycling of enamel or glass has occurred. Indeed, isotopic determinations can help to shed light on the extent of glass recycling. All of the interpretations associated with the compositional analysis of ancient vitreous materials should be set within the social context in which the objects made were made and used. See also: Ceramics and Pottery; Chemical Analysis Techniques; Europe: Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies; Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis; Stylistic; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology.

Further Reading Freestone IC, Gorin-Rosen Y, and Hughes MJ (2000) Primary glass from Israel and the production of glass in late antiquity and the early Islamic period. In: Nenna M-D (ed.) La Route du Verre, pp. 65–84. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient Mediterraneean-Jean Pouilloux. Henderson J (2000) The Science and Archaeology of Materials. London: Routledge. Henderson J, Evans JA, Sloane HJ, Leng MJ, and Doherty C (2005) The use of oxygen, strontium and lead isotopes to provenance

VOLCANISM AND ARCHAEOLOGY 2185 ancient glasses in the Middle East. Journal of Archaeological Science 32: 665–673. Leslie KA, Freestone IC, Lowry D, and Thirlwell M (2006) The provenance and technology of Near Eastern glasses: Oxygen isotopes by laser fluorination as a complement to strontium. Archaeometry 48: 253–270.

McCray P (ed.) (1998) The Prehistory and History of Glassmaking Technology. Ceramics and civilization, Westerville, Ohio: The American Ceramic Society. Pollard M and Heron C (1996) Archaeological Chemistry. Letchworth: Royal Society of Chemistry.

VOLCANISM AND ARCHAEOLOGY Shane J Cronin, Karoly Nemeth, and Vincent E Neall, Institute of Natural Resources, Palmerston North, New Zealand ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary lava flows Overland flows of molten rock that burn and bury everything in their path. They have several surface characteristics and flow patterns depending on viscosity and composition, but are typically slow flowing (<1–10 km day–1). Hence, they generally cause few, if any, fatalities, though they render land infertile for long periods after emplacement. lahars and debris avalanches Overland flows of mixtures of sediment and water resulting from: rainfall remobilization of pyroclastic products, eruptions through crater lakes, or collapses of volcano flanks. These bury or sweep away almost everything in their path. pyroclastic flows Superheated (>600  C) dense mixtures of particles and gas that travel rapidly (at times >300 km h 1) down the flanks of mountain volcanoes or outward from eruption columns. These can be low-energy dense flows generated by the collapse of hot lava domes on mountain volcanoes, or they can be higher-energy and more mobile when generated by collapse of dense portions of an unstable and high-eruption column. These flows kill and burn everything in their paths and leave an outer singed area around their final deposition sites. surges/base surges Low-density mixtures of hot particles, steam, and air that are blasted laterally from volcanic vents especially where magma encounters water. Surges are normally restricted to within a few kilometers of the vent area. They flatten and destroy most obstacles in their path and are typically instantly fatal for humans in range. volcanic ash/tephra Particles that are ejected into the air above a volcano to form an eruption column or plume and then settle by falling. Column height, wind speed, and wind direction are important since tephra can be dispersed hundreds of kilometers downwind of the volcano. Eruption columns of <3 km height typically affect only local areas (within a few tens of kilometers) and are distributed by the common low-level SE ‘trade winds’ of the tropical parts of the SW Pacific. Large magnitude explosive eruptions produce high plumes >3 km and up to 15–20 km, which enter strong westerly airflows and can be dispersed several hundreds of kilometers downwind (i.e., to the east of volcanoes). Tephra fall is not normally fatal for humans or plants, but can be highly damaging, stripping vegetation and burying crops. Near-source falls may involve ballistic impacts of

large particles (lapilli, 2–64 mm; blocks/bombs, >64 mm) that can cause fatalities and fires. Heavy falls, and those during rain, may cause collapse of buildings/shelter. Other impacts include chemical contamination and respiratory problems.

Introduction The relationship between humans and volcanoes has always been dualistic. On the positive side, volcanoes are the sites where fresh rock material is brought to the Earth’s surface. Hence, volcanic deposits rapidly weather to form soils of excellent physical and chemical properties for plant growth. In addition, mountain volcanoes are often locations of safe surface waters, abundant freshwater springs, hot springs, and with volcanic landforms, also serving as natural points of defence or ceremony. These properties draw human settlers to volcanic regions and provide the conditions for them to flourish. On the negative side, volcanoes can also be agents of destruction, with spectacular catastrophes that may destroy cities overnight, such as St. Pierre (Martinique, West Indies), where 30 000 people died on 8 May 1902 from an eruption of Mt. Pele´e. These dramatic events mean that the most commonly perceived juxtaposition of volcanism and archaeology are cases of catastrophic burial of human towns and cities. These events preserve an unparalleled ‘snapshot’ into the lifestyles, art, and technology of past cultures. Thus, the Italian cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, buried by the AD 79 eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, became a test bed for development of modern archaeological investigative techniques. These sites have not only become invaluable in the reconstruction of Roman arts, technology, lifestyles, and physical attributes, but the scale and drama of the disaster were also a spur for investigation of the eruptive processes involved. The event was fortuitously recorded in unprecedented detail in letters of Pliny the Younger. In addition, examination of the physical and chemical properties of the deposits has

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led to development of many of the techniques used in modern volcanological study. Of major importance to volcanic hazards evaluation, forensic-medical aspects of eruptions were also preserved at these sites. Another major Mediterranean example of cultural heritage preserved by volcanic disaster is the Bronze Age city of Akrotiri (Santorini, Grece), buried by tephra falls and pyroclastic flows from the eruption of Thera volcano in the late seventeenth century BC. Investigations into this event have also spawned one of the longest-running controversies in archaeology and anthropology; that is, whether the Thera eruption had a significant enough impact to have caused the decline of an entire civilization and thus change the course of Mediterranean history. Debate has waxed and waned over this issue, with most scholars now accepting that the eruption preceded the decline in the Minoan civilization by around 200 years, negating a simple cause-and-effect relationship. Elsewhere around the globe, cultural implications of individual large volcanic events have been no less important, with one of the best-studied examples being the mid-third century AD eruption of Volcan Ilopango (El Salvador, Central America). This eruption, devastated >30 000 km2 with pyroclastic flows and tephra fall. Archaeological studies in the greater surrounds show that the eruption led to long-term social changes in the Mayan culture, primarily through the long-term displacement of >300 000 evacuees from the area. Following these well-known examples, many archaeological studies relating to volcanism have been preoccupied with catastrophic events and their role in the rise and fall of civilizations. Similarly, many geologists have inferred major cultural disasters solely based on estimates of the magnitude of past volcanic events. These hypotheses are often founded on a close or approximate coincidence in time between a largescale geological event and an apparent cultural change, with little other substantiating evidence. A fact commonly overlooked with volcano–human relationships, however, is that most eruptions are small, and despite creating short-term inconvenience, their benefits to surrounding populations often outweigh the risk. Similarly, despite ongoing serious volcanic threat, human populations persist in hazardous areas due to either population pressure or the natural resources of some areas. Hence, it is in this intermediate state with damaging but not catastrophic volcanic impacts that most human communities have lived for the longest periods of time. Despite this, only a handful of international works describe examples of long-term coexistence with volcanism, including adaptive strategies of the Aleuts to frequent eruptions along the Aleutian Island chain, and the apparent

uninterrupted habitation of the area around the repeatedly explosive Arenal Volcano of Costa Rica. The most pragmatic overlap of volcanism and archaeology occurs when volcanic deposits, particularly ash layers (tephras), are used for the dating and correlation of anthropogenic remains and horizons. However, beyond aspects of chronology, little research has gone into the potential non-disastrous impacts volcanism may have had on past societies – including the possible development of adaptive technologies, construction mechanisms, strategic resettlement, or agricultural practices to mitigate volcanic hazards. A further poorly known dimension is the potential for volcanic influence on the development of religious practices and artistic expression. In the southwest Pacific, archaeological studies started relatively late, but they generally followed classical research from Europe and the approach has also been dualistic. Either volcanic impacts were considered as society-changing catastrophes (e.g., Kuwae, Vanuatu), or their potential role was completely ignored in the development, location, migration, or change of cultures (e.g., Tonga). Described here is a range of case studies that overlap the issues of archaeology, anthropology, and volcanology in the southwest Pacific. Few coordinated studies have been carried out between the three discipline areas, resulting in a fragmented perspective of Pacific history. Here it is contended that a holistic approach is essential to bring fresh ideas into the collaborative research of volcanologists and archaeologists. With a clear understanding of the volcanic and related geological history, along with consideration of oral tradition evidence, a higher-quality analysis of cultural development in the southwest Pacific can be achieved. The main themes presented here are designed to promote debate and propose new research directions for southwest Pacific archaeology and include: instances of overplaying the volcanic card; instances of ignoring the influence of volcanism; and evidence of development of an unsteady equilibrium, through long-term adaptation of humans to coexist with volcanoes in the southwest Pacific.

Southwest Pacific Region Human settlement in the southwest Pacific was characterized by several unique features. Most of the area has been occupied by humans very briefly in comparison with many other areas of the world. All areas outside of Australia, Papua New Guinea, and parts of the Solomon Islands (so-called ‘nearOceania’) have been habited for <3500 years (see Oceania: Australia). Human expansion has apparently occurred in waves; settlement of the Papua New

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Figure 1 Map of the volcanic portion of the southwest Pacific including the major tectonic and structural geology elements of the area, including many of the sites discussed in the text. The boundary of ‘near’ versus ‘remote’ Oceania is shown by the dashed line.

Guinea area probably commenced from c. 40 000 years ago, and Papuans expanded relatively slowly into the Solomon Islands. Between 3500–3300 years BP a sudden explosion of human occupation occurred, with the mainstream theories indicating a new group of Austronesian people fanning out into ‘remote-Oceania’ (Figure 1), including Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga, and Samoa. They brought with them a distinctive type of pottery known as Lapita (Figure 2). The origins of these people have not been confirmed; and there is also debate as to whether they were a ‘people’. However, the main school of thought proposes that people carrying the Lapita technology

traveled from the Bismarck–Solomons area out into the broader Pacific. Recent DNA work on the Pacific rat associated with the incoming population imply that they may have been new arrivals from southeast Asia. These pioneers had an intensive agricultural practice, bringing with them domesticated plants and animals to form the founding settlements in many areas. After a consolidation period of up to 1000 years, a Polynesian people or culture began to spread to remaining areas of the Pacific, including New Zealand. A great deal of southwest Pacific archaeological research focuses on the development and variation of

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Figure 2 Lapita pottery, a rare large and mostly intact piece found within slope-wash or colluvial sediment containing a large component of volcanic material at the Teouma site, Efate Island, Vanuatu. This lapita burial site is subject of ongoing studies by Dr. Stuart Bedford and Professor Mathew Spriggs, Australian National University and the Vanuatu Cultural Centre.

ceramic traditions over time and throughout different areas. In addition to Lapita (with characteristic dentate stamped patterns, which is also associated with plainware), paddle-impressed, incised as well as applied-relief ware has been recognized. Relationships between these ceramic traditions within and between geographically different areas have been difficult to establish and recent work suggests that while the Lapita tradition may have been initially homogenous, stylistic variations on this probably followed independent courses in different areas. Settlement of the greater southwest Pacific, despite being initially rapid, was not without its challenges for the new arrivals. The area is vast; over 30 million km2 and primarily this is open ocean, dotted by almost insignificant areas of land. The estimated 25 000 islands in the southwest Pacific make up only <0.5% of the area. Even if the ‘large’ landmasses of Papua New Guinea and New Zealand are considered, land coverage is still <3% of the ocean area. This isolation and the harsh traveling conditions appeared to be of little hindrance to the expansion of the human arrivals since they had a high level of seafaring technology. However, the overall lack of land meant that any suitable habitation site was attempted, and often persisted with, even in the face of potential volcanic hazard. In the first instance, many of the existing low atolls and coral islands were submerged in the midHolocene (c. 6000–5000 years ago), only rising above the waves as the sea level dropped by 2–2.6 m over the next few thousand years. Hence, biodiversity on these islands was poor, along with difficult water

supply, lower soil fertility, and a greater isolation relative to the volcanic islands. By contrast, volcanic islands were particularly fertile, with good water supplies, although there may have been an issue of malaria present in inland mountainous areas. The overall comforts of the volcanic islands may have been a reason for an apparent later settlement of more easterly lying coral islands compared to the western, mainly volcanic, islands. The main volcanic areas of the southwest Pacific are located along part of the so-called ‘ring-of-fire’, which marks the location of plate-subduction systems along the edges of the Pacific Basin (Figure 1). This includes areas of high concentrations of active volcanoes in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tonga, and New Zealand (see Oceania: New Zealand). Many individual volcanoes formed mountain or caldera (large collapsed crater) structures, with a volcano or overlapping volcanoes comprising the entire island. In addition, a larger number of submarine volcanoes dot the seafloor along this volcano line, some of which also appeared and disappeared above and below the waves over time. In all of these areas, many eruptions have occurred in the last 200 years of recorded history. In addition to the plate boundary volcanism, so-called ‘intraplate’ volcanoes occur in parts of the Pacific, particularly Samoa, and parts of Fiji (e.g., Taveuni), as well as older and smaller tectonic features that may be currently inactive but still capable of causing volcanism (e.g., Kadavu, Fiji). Many of these areas also have either historical volcanic activity or at least evidence of eruptions in the last few hundred years.

Southwest Pacific Case Studies Volcanic Catastrophes?

In central Vanuatu (Figure 3), an eruption of cataclysmic proportions has been described from research during the mid-1990s, apparently one of the largest eruptions of the last 10 000 years. Evidence of this event is recorded in oral traditions, describing in detail the main phases leading up to what was clearly a major eruption. The events were later considered momentous enough to have generated a few generations of warfare among tribes and cultural disruption in the area. The eruption magnitude was based upon calculation of 32–39 km3 of volume erupted, represented by a caldera structure (collapse-formed crater) located north of Tonga Island (Figure 3). This volume figure was compared to the Santorini Minoan Age eruption, and hence the catastrophic import of the Kuwae event was also assumed. Since then, archaeologists in Vanuatu have searched elusively for distal

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Kuwae Estimated limits of devastation Efate

Port Vila

Teoma site

18⬚

Erromago N Yasur

Tongoa), there are a series of stratigraphically different (i.e., of different ages) pyroclastic flow deposits from different sources (both north and south of Tongoa Island) that were erroneously attributed to one apparently momentous event. The total pyroclastic flow deposits are small in volume (1 km3), and despite being proximal to the vent area, the flows were very restricted in runout (<1 km), pinching out on the moderate slopes of Tongoa. This evidence implies that the pyroclastic deposits were of relatively low mobility/ energy and from multiple separate small eruptions. Hence, while these were locally destructive, and probably generated fatalities, they were hardly catastrophic or regionally important as portrayed by the mid-1990’s research. Unfortunately, a tendency to ‘search for’ catastrophic events during this period was also extended to the nearby Ambrym volcano, where another very violent and regionally destructive eruption was inferred from geological exposures. Again, archaeologists with tephra layers at distal sites have initially assumed correlations to this event. Recent geological study, including re-examining the same exposures and additional sites, support rather the 1960s–70s geological conclusions reached in this area, that is, there is no geological evidence of any large-scale explosivity on Ambrym.

Tanna 20⬚

100 km Anatom

Figure 3 Kuwae Caldera located in central Vanuatu, with the reported limits of the area affected by the interpreted catastrophic eruption. Volcanic islands of Ambrym, Lopevi, and Ambae are also shown, islands where people coexist with regular and ongoing volcanism.

eruption products from this giant event, or, upon discovering unknown volcanic ash layers in distal sites, automatically attempted to relate them to it. Reanalyzing the evidence reveals serious uncertainties in the assumption of a truly catastrophic event at Kuwae. The eruption site was chosen based on newly available results of submarine surveys north of Tongoa, despite the fact that many legends clearly describe the giant eruption as being from the south of the island. This was also counter to the findings of previous geological work in the area. In addition, the northern caldera structure was assumed to have been formed in a single giant eruption, when it could be a composite feature formed during many events, or even a fully submarine eruption. Recent geological investigations have revealed that instead of one homogenous pyroclastic flow unit blanketing the main nearby islands (especially

Violent Eruptions – Island-Wide Calamities

Scaling down from regional catastrophes, some historic southwest Pacific eruptions have been large enough to devastate entire communities or regions, for example, Lamington, Papua New Guinea in 1951, Rabaul, Papua New Guinea in 1994. In cases of past volcanism in Melanesia, where separate cultural groups with their own distinct languages form a myriad of independent communities, it could be expected that entire tribes or chiefdoms were wiped out by such islandwide disasters. However, the example of Savo Island (Figure 1) shows that even for one of the most violent volcanoes of the Solomon Islands, local coping strategies have led to preservation of a distinctive cultural group over repeated eruption cycles. The population of Savo retains traditional and characteristic dance, song, and storytelling, along with traditional healing, sorcery, totems, taboos, tribal organization structures, and a unique language (Savosavo), distinct from any in the Solomon Islands and other parts of Melanesia, including its grammar. What makes this seem unusual is geological and oral tradition evidence outlining at least three major explosive pyroclastic eruptions on the island since AD 1567. At least two of these events rendered Savo almost completely desolate. The largest event, the

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toghavitu eruption (7000 or 1007 depending on translation), is described in all versions of the oral tradition as leaving no one alive on the island afterward, with the number referring to the death toll. Only a few survived, apparently by escaping to neighboring islands, especially Guadalcanal. Oral traditions also indicate that following the toghavitu event, the community had developed coping mechanisms for eruptions and recognized the warning signs for their onset. These include noting long-term changes of the islands’ shape and size, as well as short-term phenomena including: filling of the central crater with water, earthquakes, local tsunamis, vegetation die-off and unusual animal behavior. Less violent, but very widespread and highly damaging large-scale ash eruptions in Papua New Guinea were experienced repeatedly by many communities. In a similar fashion to the example of Savo, these cultures developed coping strategies for surviving during the long periods of ash fall and passed these on through oral tradition. Locally Violent Eruptions

Numerous volcanoes in the southwest Pacific generate eruptions that may be locally violent or destructive, but are only likely to affect small parts of islands or even single villages. Their impacts were often important enough or frequent enough that related oral tradition or other cultural knowledge was developed by the surrounding community. Questions remain as to whether other coping strategies were developed by the communities. The presence of a volcanic threat on Taveuni Island, Fiji (Figure 1) only came to light during archaeological studies on the island. A 2-m thick volcanic ash fall layer was found overlying a fortified settlement in the southern part of the island. This site was re-settled some 800 years later, only to be affected again by a nearby lava flow and ash fall eruption. In addition, three other sites were found where habitation sites and ceramic artifacts were buried by lava flows, lahar deposits, and tephras. Recent calculations show that there were at least 25 eruptions on Taveuni during the period since humans first occupied it, and at least 58 events since Lapita people first arrived in the greater Fiji group. The low violence of eruptions on this island means only areas of between 5 and 30 km2 are typically affected and the hazards were probably avoidable by humans. Despite this, life was made difficult for the inhabitants by the regular recurrence of volcanism, including a high-frequency period of events between c. AD 400–1100 which may have led to the abandonment of the southern part of the island. The eruption impacts were not limited to

the destruction of villages and crops, but they also included long-term devastation of important natural resources in the southern portion of the island, including reefs, soils, and water supplies. In other areas of Taveuni, isolated and small-scale eruptions apparently had little impact on inhabitants, with rapid resettlement, or continued occupation, reflected by concurrent habitation sites in nearby areas. These events have led only to fragmentary and localized oral traditions describing past eruptions as well as place names that are descriptive of volcanism, such as Tavuyaga (burning mountain). A similar scale and nature of volcanism has occurred throughout the period of habitation on Ambae and Ambrym Islands, Vanuatu (Figure 3). Historic events on Ambrym have destroyed villages, crops, and reefs through explosive, lava flow and lahar events. On Ambae, recent significant eruptions occurred only in prehistoric times, although the memory of these were strong enough to engender a rapid evacuation response to an eruption in late 2005. Like Taveuni, ceramics and habitation layers in parts of Ambae are inter-bedded between repeated deposits from local, but explosive, eruptions (Figure 4). The same type and nature of volcanism and its impacts have also been an ongoing part of the history associated with settlement of the largest islands of Samoa (Figure 5). A lesser-known third example comes from Mt. Taranaki/Egmont in the western North Island of New Zealand (Figure 1). Mt. Taranaki erupted on at least six occasions during the probable period of Maori occupation of the area. Two encampment sites on the eastern volcano flanks have been excavated from beneath pyroclastic fall deposits of around AD 1500 and 1655 to show that the settlers not only persisted in this area, but also ranged to within close vicinity of the volcano. These eruptions razed and/or carbonized much of the forest on the volcano’s northwestern flanks leading to widespread lahars that reached the coast at 25 km distance. Around AD 1500 a pyroclastic surge or blast also radiated out to well beyond 15 km west of the volcano’s summit. Records of these events are contained within the place name Okato (place of tidal wave), which was inundated by lahar deposits of this period. The tidal wave translation is a ‘red-herring’, since at 90 m above sea level and 4 km inland, this area is unlikely to have received a wave from the sea, rather a ‘wave of sand’ or lahar from the volcano. Oral traditions from the same area apparently record at least one of the eruptions, most likely the AD 1500 pyroclastic surge event. A famous Taranaki chief, Potikiroa, called out to bring sands from distant Hawaiki to his boulder-strewn coastline south of

VOLCANISM AND ARCHAEOLOGY 2191

1

2

3

(a)

1

2 3

4

(b)

5

Figure 4 (a) Section exposed by coastal erosion near Longana Airstrip on eastern Ambae Island, Vanuatu (Figure 2). Two separate cultural horizons containing ground oven structures, middens, charcoal, and broken pottery sherds are indicated by the white arrows. 1, A recent ash/lapilli fall deposit capping the youngest occupation horizon; 2, a tuff deposit emplaced by explosive pyroclastic surges from a nearby eruption center, which overlies the lower occupation horizon; 3, an underlying lava flow from an earlier generation of localized volcanism. (b) Section exposed by coastal erosion near Mangarisu, southern Tongoa, Vanuatu (Figure 2). Two separate cultural layers (indicated by white arrows) are separated by a number of eruptive products: 1, ash/lapilli fall deposits of the AD 1425 Kuwae interpreted catastrophic eruption; 2 an ash/Lapilli unit covering cultural deposits of the lower layer (that includes artifacts as old as c. 2500 years BP); 3 and 4, older ash/lapilli fall horizons from earlier separate nearby eruptions; 5, the top of a sequence of lava flows.

Cape Egmont. In response, a dark cloud appeared on the horizon, and rapidly advanced towards the community, charged with a heavy burden of sand, along with lightning flashing and thunder rolling. A darkness

like night settled, only illuminated by the vivid lightning, whilst the wind roared, and the rain fell as sheets of water. The people in the great black darkness fell where they stood and were buried in the sands.

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of volcanism is often of low intensity and magnitude, although it is interspersed by sporadic bursts of slightly higher levels of eruption. Yasur volcano on Tanna Island, along with Marum and Benbow Volcanoes on Ambrym, have been in a semi-constant state of eruption for at least 300 years. The low-level, dominantly ash-fall and gas eruptions from these volcanoes produce low-level, chronic health problems, and repeated periods of crop damage. However, populations have lived nearby both these centers for long periods. The volcanoes have been incorporated into the lives of the local inhabitants, with adaptations in agricultural practice, development of cultural ceremonies and beliefs, and restriction of areas of access being part of the mitigative responses made to the volcanic threat. Ignored Volcanic Histories

Figure 5 Church destroyed at the former Saleaula Village, Savaii by a lava flow during a 1905–1911 eruption from an eruption vent over 10 km away. The passive nature of this lava flow meant that no people died in this area, but a large area remains a wasteland to this day and most of the former village and gardens were relocated.

Most of the houses and cultivations and all the surrounding country were deeply buried in sand. A hundred people are said to have lost their lives in this catastrophe. Despite these relatively frequent punctuations to life in Taranaki, Maori have continuously occupied this area, made extensive use of the highly fertile soils, marine reserves, and used the volcanic landscape elements as aids in constructing fortifications. One adaptive practice that may have resulted in Taranaki is that traditions dictated that no one should settle east of Mt. Taranaki in the line toward the central North Island volcanoes. This was ostensibly because one day the volcano was expected to return to the others, but more likely relates to the dispersal of the thickest ash falls from the recent eruptions (e.g., AD 1655). Ongoing and/or ‘Passive’ Volcanism

In some inhabited areas volcanism is a semi-continuous feature of the landscape or environment, for example, Yasur and Ambrym, Vanuatu; Stromboli, Etna, Italy; and Masaya, Niguaragua. This ongoing style

In a variation to the examples described above, in many parts of the Pacific, volcanic history is effectively ignored. This is either (1) because it was unexpected that volcanism was young enough to seriously affect people (e.g., Kadavu and Taveuni, Fiji; Tarawera, New Zealand), or (2) because it was not seriously considered that the main populated areas were actually impacted (e.g., Tonga), or (3) because deposits enclosing artifacts and burying occupation sites were not formerly recognized as being of volcanic origin (e.g., Efate, Vanuatu, Figure 2). The Tongan archipelago should be a prime area for demonstrating an ongoing interrelationship between volcanism and humans. The main inhabited islands are flat or gently sloping, uplifted coral platforms, but they are located 70–100 km east of a parallel chain of subaerial and submarine volcanoes. Knowing the surface ‘trade winds’ of the area blow from the opposite southeast direction has been enough for archaeologists and most natural scientists to consider that there were no major eruption impacts on the inhabited islands. These conclusions have been maintained since, apart from exploratory work, there has been little systematic study of the volcanic history of the main volcanoes along the Tongan arc. As contrary evidence to the above views, the soils of all three of the major inhabited island groups are exclusively formed in deep, weathered, volcanic ash. Despite this recognition, deposits of significant volcanic eruptions on habited islands have not been recognised within archaeological sequences and histories, or palaeovegetation studies. Due to high weathering rates in the region, recurrence of single major (i.e., catastrophic) tephra falls was estimated at c. 10 000 years, with the last major episode being too early to generate human impact.

VOLCANISM AND ARCHAEOLOGY 2193

(a)

(b)

Figure 6 The youngest large-scale ash/lapilli fall layer in the central Tonga region is dated at AD 1440–1640; (a) 30 cmþ cover over cultural sites on the central islands (dashed line indicates lower level of the volcanic horizon); (b) up to 80 cm thick in places (dashed line indicates lower level of the volcanic horizon and upper part of a palaeosoil unit containing pottery artifacts, cooking stones, and charcoal).

When the high-level wind patterns are examined for the region, it is apparent that constant and strong westerly winds are a feature of the local atmosphere above c. 3 km elevation. Hence, large eruptions from the western Tongan volcanoes should reach the inhabited islands. Recent coring of lake and swamp sites from this area, along with soil stratigraphy studies, show that ash-falls not only reached the inhabited islands regularly (every 500 years), but some individual falls were >0.5 m thick (Figure 6). In addition, ash-fall impacts are described in oral traditions. Such traditions are related to large caldera-forming eruptions of Niuafo’ou (northern Tonga) and Tofua (central Tonga). In these, marauding Samoan teevolos were frightened by local deities as they fled east of the volcanoes (and over the inhabited islands of Tonga). This caused them to drop their spoils. The latest large Tofua eruption, which these legends may refer to, deposited between 30–80 cm of tephra (Figure 6) over inhabited islands in central Tonga around AD 1440–1640. In a similar fashion, oral traditions of a battle between demigods led to a recent hypothesis that volcanism may have been more recently than anticipated for Nabukelevu volcano at the western end of Kadavu Island, Fiji (Figure 1). This volcano was formerly considered extinct and hence of no relevance for early inhabitants of the region. Closer inspection in areas around this volcano revealed two debrisavalanche deposits and a pyroclastic flow deposit containing pottery fragments, human bone fragments, and anthropogenic charcoal representing major volcanic events affecting people c. 2400, 1750, and 250 years BP. A third example comes from the central North Island area of New Zealand (Figure 1). The AD 1886 eruption of Tarawera volcano inflicted a heavy

toll on the lives of surrounding Maori and was also witnessed by many Europeans in the area. The Maori accounts of this eruption, however, begin with stories that took place five centuries before the 1886 event. These likely relate to the time of the Kaharoa eruption, dated at AD 1314. They describe the tale of the ancient tangata whenua (ancestor), Tamaohoi. Tamaohoi was a fierce cannibal who lived on Tarawera. To rid the area of this scourge, the Te Arawa tribe’s high priest Ngatoro-i-rangi created a huge chasm on Tarawera, forced Tamaohoi into it and buried him in the heart of the mountain. The mountain was used as a burial site and a strong tapu was placed on the area (i.e., it was forbidden to go there). The middle peak of the volcano is named Ruawahia (‘chasm burst open’) and is the location where Ngatoro-i-rangi forced Tamaohoi into the Earth. This is also one of the major vent locations of the early phases of the AD 1314 eruption; it was initially a crater that was later filled by a lava dome. The Kaharoa eruption probably lasted for 4–5 years, allowing ample opportunity for observers to witness the slow processes of crater excavation and filling by lava domes and flows. If the tradition of Tamaohoi and Ruawahia represents a description of the Kaharoa eruption, it implies that this part of New Zealand was settled pre-AD 1315, somewhat earlier than the most popular current hypothesis of ‘late’ settlement (i.e., post-AD 1315). It also implies that Maori were impacted by a very large-scale eruption.

Discussion The above examples demonstrate a range of scenarios where volcanism has or has not been considered as one of the drivers for cultural development or change in archaeological, natural science, and anthropological

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studies. A series of inferences can be made from these examples that reflect the relationship between humans and volcanoes in the southwest Pacific, and give rise to potential new areas of research between the fields of volcanology, archaeology, and anthropology. The southwest Pacific is similar to many other areas of the globe in that volcanic sites were favored for settlement because of their natural resources. This means that there has been a concurrence of people and eruptions for several thousand years in many parts of remote Oceania, or several tens of thousand years in near Oceania. Outside the southwest Pacific region, a similar range of volcanic impacts on past societies has been identified and hypothesized. Large-scale catastrophic volcanic impacts have not yet been confirmed in the southwest Pacific. The examples of apparent catastrophes at the Vanuatu volcanoes of Kuwae and Ambrym do not stand up to closer geological and anthropological scrutiny. Targeted archaeological studies in these areas could help shed light on interactions between humans and these volcanoes. At present it appears that the claims of volcanic catastrophes have at times been overplayed in the region. Elsewhere, aside from the AD 79 Vesuvius events and the debated Minoan/Santorini cultural catastrophe, an extremely large eruption of Volca´n Ilopango in El Salvador was inferred to have been catastrophic for central and western El Salvador. This has also been proposed as the cause of a 100–150 year-duration demographic collapse for a broad region – well outside of the eruption’s direct impacts. The causes of this collapse were thought to stem from a combination of: direct impacts, evacuations, starvation, and regional economic fallout. Similarly, a huge AD 720 eruption of the White River volcano in Alaska caused long-term depopulation of the nearby region and a major migration of people recorded in oral traditions. In all of these cases outside the southwest Pacific, the eruptions have been of a type and magnitude that is very rare in the region. Most eruptions of this enormity appear to have been deep submarine events in the southwest Pacific, and hence of less potential threat to the regional population. The scale of volcanism, in terms of explosive violence and the distribution and inundation-thickness of products appears to be the major control on whether cultural disasters or traumas may occur and be represented in the archaeological or anthropologic record. In the brief timeframe of human occupation of the southwest Pacific, oral traditions are a powerful additional tool for understanding the cultural and geological history of an area. In relation to volcanism, it appears that, the larger scale of a volcanic event, the better chance there is of generating long-lived oral traditions.

Volcanism has not hindered settlement and the ongoing habitation of Pacific Islands. Volcanoes would have been familiar to the people responsible for the rapid colonization remote Oceania (associated with Lapita ceramic traditions), since they derivedfrom or passed through the Bismark Archipelago, with its abundance of active volcanoes. Once settled into remote Oceania, however, eruptions often led to abandonment of habitation sites for several hundred years. Hence archaeological records are often piecemeal on volcanic islands, with distinct cultural levels located between primary volcanic deposits (e.g., Figure 4). It is often difficult, however, to determine if the impacts on these populations were sudden or fatal, or whether they were able to move away in time to avoid destructive impacts. Some cases show clear evidence where human remains are incorporated within volcanic deposits generated by violent processes (e.g., Kadavu; Fiji). Other cases, especially where the impacts were localized, show that people in nearby areas may have carried on life as normal (e.g., Taveuni, Fiji). On a similar scale/magnitude, sedentary village lifestyles and cultivations were effectively uninterrupted by repeated explosive volcanism from Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica. This was put down to a relatively ‘simple’ culture that was more resilient to volcanic impacts than those more strongly affected by the Ilopango eruption in El Salvador. However, the Arenal eruptions are of a type that generates mostly ash fall downwind of the volcano. Hence these events would have had little chance for causing fatalities, and in this humid environment, rapid revegetation and weathering of tephra would have occurred, enabling a rapid community recovery. More serious cultural disruptions are recorded in the southwest-Pacific analogous archipelago environment of the Aleutians. The Aleutian case shows, however, that despite direct impacts on the populations and its food sources, populations persisted, although starvation and warfare may have been the resulting cultural cost. The southwest Pacific examples show that volcanism, if frequent or with similar repeated impacts, leads to development of cultural practices that are passed down through oral tradition to allow later communities to mitigate impacts. This leads to the preservation of distinctive cultures or tribes even following the most devastating volcanic disasters – such as in the Savo Island example of the Solomon Islands. Volcanism appears to have also led to other coping strategies, including preferential avoidance of areas for settlement as well as agricultural practices to improve resilience of communities. Although not part of the southwest Pacific, Hawai’i shares the same setting and human culture. Here, the volcanism is not normally violent, similar to Samoa or Taveuni. Response

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to past lava flows has led to local upheavals for the Hawaiians, but they persisted in the area and incorporated volcanism and all its characters and moods in strong oral and spiritual traditions, commonly involving Pele – the goddess of fire. In some of the volcanic areas of the southwest Pacific region the history of volcanism has not been researched with the same degree of vigor as the anthropological and archaeological studies. The absence of consideration of volcanism in the cultural history and cultural development within the Tongan archipelago appears to be the most acute example. Recent geological studies may pose new solutions or alternatives to the complex changes in power and lineage described for Tonga.

Conclusions The human history of the greater part of the southwest Pacific is brief, but it has been punctuated in many areas by recurrent volcanism on a variety of scales and types. While no strong evidence indicates regional catastrophes related to volcanic events, there are many examples of local destruction of populations through violent eruptions. At this juncture, there needs to be a greater cooperation between archaeologists, volcanologists, and anthropologists to untangle the complex web of factors that have led to the cultural development and change of cultures in the southwest Pacific. There is an overall paucity of geological information in the southwest Pacific, its remoteness has hindered the degree of research required to refine the record of natural disasters including volcanism. Studies targeted toward quantifying the volcanic history record is required in most areas of the southwest Pacific to re-evaluate cultural histories, prune out ‘mythical’ catastrophic eruptions and bring a more realistic understanding of the interaction between human populations and volcanism. Specifically, studies oriented toward dating eruptions, and chemically identifying volcanic deposits will allow more thorough mapping and correlation of volcanic events with cultural deposits. These types of studies, along with the careful re-evaluation of oral traditions with help of linguistic and cultural anthropology studies, will lead us to a more holistic view of the interaction of communities and their natural environment. On a more pragmatic note, these types of studies may also help us understand the response and recovery of past communities to volcanic eruptions in order to develop effective and culturally appropriate community-based emergency planning. Worldwide, volcanoes have strongly attracted human settlement because of excellent soils and

water supplies surrounding them. These benefits sometimes came at a high price for communities impacted by sudden volcanic outbursts. Mostly, however, volcanic impacts were a brief passing threat, or, of low intensity. Hence, an unsteady human– volcano equilibrium has developed. This enduring relationship means there is commonly a link between volcano science and archaeology. Unfortunately archaeologists and volcano scientists tend to approach both sides of the relationship independently. The results of this are often polarized perspectives; either the cause-and-effect relationship between volcanism and cultural change is overplayed, or, the effects of volcanism on cultural development and adaptation are ignored. To counter this, a holistic approach to archaeological research in volcanic areas of the world is required to explore not only disaster events, but also the potentially subtle impacts and adaptations that volcanoes generate in their surrounding communities.

Acknowledgments SJC and VEN inputs are supported by FRST-PGST contract MAUX0401 ‘Learning to live with volcanic risk’ and KN contributions supported by FRST NZ S&T contract MAUX0405. See also: Migrations: Pacific; Oceania: Australia; Micro-

nesia; New Guinea and Melanesia; New Zealand.

Further Reading Bedford S (2006) Pieces of the Vanuatu Puzzle: Archaeology of the North, South and Centre. Terra Australis 23. Canberra: Pandanus Books, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. Blong RJ (1982) The Time of Darkness, Local Legends and Volcanic Reality in Papua New Guinea. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Buckland PC, Dugmore AJ, and Edwards KJ (1997) Bronze age myths? Volcanic activity and human response in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic regions. Antiquity 71: 581–593. Cronin SJ, Ferland MA, and Terry JP (2004) Nabukelevu volcano (Mt. Washington), Kadavu – a source of hitherto unknown volcanic hazard in Fiji. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 131: 371–396. Dull RA, Southon JR, and Sheets PD (2001) Volcanism, ecology and culture: a reassessment of the Volca´n Ilopango TBJ eruption in the southern Maya Realm. Latin American Antiquity 12: 25–44. Lowe DJ, Newnham RM, McFadgen BG, and Higham TFG (2000) Tephras and New Zealand archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Science 27: 859–870. McCoy FW and Heiken G (2000) The late Bronze-age explosive eruption of Thera (Santorini), Greece: regional and local effects. In: McCoy FW and Heiken G (eds.) Volcanic Hazards and Disasters in Human Antiquity. pp. 43–70. Geological Society

2196 VOLCANISM AND ARCHAEOLOGY of America Special Paper 345, Boulder: Geological Society of America. Monzier M, Robin C, and Eissen J-P (1994) Kuwae (1425 A.D.): the forgotten caldera. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 59: 207–218. Parslow CC (1995) Rediscovering Antiquity. Karl Weber and the Excavations of Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabiae. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Petterson MG, Cronin SJ, Taylor PW, et al. (2003) The eruptive history and volcanic hazards of Savo, Solomon Islands. Bulletin of Volcanology 65: 165–181.

Schmincke H-U (2004) Volcanism. Berlin: Springer. Sheets PD and Grayson DK (eds.) (1979) Volcanic Activity and Human Ecology. New York: Academic Press. Simkin T, Siebert L, McClelland L, Bridge D, Newhall C, and Latter J (1981) Volcanoes of the World. Stroudsburg, PA: Smithsonian Institution, Hutchinson and Ross. Spriggs M (1999) Pacific Archeologies: Contested ground in the construction of Pacific History. The Journal of Pacific History 34: 109–121. Torrence R and Grattan JP (eds.) (2002) Natural Disasters and Cultural Change. London: Routledge.

W War

See: Social Violence and War.

WEAPONS AND WARFARE Francisco M V R Queiroga, Universidade Fernando Pessoa, Porto, Portugal ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary caetra Small round concave shield made out of hardened leather and a round shield-boss. This was a typical shield of the light infantry Callaican warrior from the Iberian Northwest. Cangaceiros Social banditry and guerrilla in the Brazilian Northeast in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Cangaceiros lived hiding in the arid landscape, and raided the rich land-owners’ properties fighting with revolvers and rifles. hoplite Greek heavy infantry militia warrior that first appeared in the seventh century until the rise of the Macedonians. The heavy protecting armor was dominated by the large shield that was the base of close rank fighting tactics of the contemporary Greek armies. mercenary A professional soldier who is not bound by political, ideological, national, or ethnical reasons. Mercenaries have existed in all times, and have been an important support for warfare particularly in Antiquity. Although their objective was the gain, most mercenaries had a strong sense of fidelity and discipline, to the extent that in many occasions they were preferred for elite corps and personal guards. siege Model of confrontation where one of the forces – normally the weaker – lies under the protection of a fortress, whereas the besieging force attempts to overcome the defenses in order to attain direct combat. Sea Peoples An as yet vaguely known confederacy of seafaring warrior peoples that wandered in the western Mediterranean area from the late thirteenth century BC onwards. Probably originating from Anatolia, they raided the Middle East shores and even penetrated Egypt, thus causing a substantial turmoil and shifts of political power. skirmishers Very swift and nimble light infantry – or cavalry – warriors, sometimes with no armor and few weapons, such as the slings. Skirmishers were normally mercenaries who added to the conventional army composition of close rank heavy infantry. Their role was to attack and harass the enemy’s formations in order to produce casualties and break the ranks.

Introduction Weapons are the base of warfare – men fight with tools – and the technical superiority of weapons may confer an important advantage over the opponent. The diachronical relation between weapons, warfare, and societies is so immense that only some of the more representative aspects can be presented here. War produces power, and also allows the survival of systems which depend on power and domination. Therefore, both weapons and warfare are part of an eternal cycle based on survival strategies of many societies. This is probably why warfare is nearly as old as humankind. A large number of published studies, with approaches from various areas of expertise, have so far tried to explain why societies engage in war, and yet the subject is still not consensual. War is all about domination, at both personal and social levels, sometimes lasting centuries, other times as ephemeral as one single battle. Societies developed complex cultural systems in order to feed this need for war. Developed niches within their structure to place warriors implemented new technologies and design of weapons, and intellectual creativity applied to strategy, policy, and philosophy. The way wars are conducted and fought is also of cultural design, since war is a state of socially organized aggression. The theoretical historiography over war has been generally organized around two main issues. One is to draw upon the real need for war in the world, and associated with that is a desperate quest for the peoples where violence and war are not common or do not exist. The other is to present war as a common and necessary feature in the historical process. Indeed, there is nothing like past moments

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of glory to ease both the individual and the social frustrations of an apathetic present. Although based on violence, the objective of war is not violence, but rather to overcome the opponent, to be victorious, and to benefit from all related profits. A degree of social cohesion is indispensable for a community or nation to be able to engage in war. On the other hand, the state of war is a catalyst of social discipline and social cohesion as people gather around one common objective and forget their internal disputes. Therefore, some social systems have developed the need for an intermittent state of war, to an extent that peace is just an intermediate period, or a pause, between wars (see Social Violence and War). The origin and nature of warriors lies within the particular configuration of their social and economic systems. In many societies, military training, and sometimes even combat and killing an enemy, were a fundamental part of the rites of passage to manhood. The integration of youth in warfare activities has been an important regulator of the social systems of many cultures, thus producing warriors with particular ethnic profiles. Throughout military history, this ethnicity was repeatedly celebrated. From the Greek and Iberian mercenaries in Mediterranean late antiquity, to the North American Iroquois auxiliaries to the French army, and the Gurkhas in the British army from the early nineteenth century to the present day; these ethnic groups of warriors played an important role in both the composition of armies and in the outcome of battles. Chinese and Tibetan armies used mercenaries, and around the Mediterranean shore during the first millennium BC Greeks, Celts, Numidians, the Sea Peoples, Scythians, Balearians, and Iberian, just to name a few, are referred to by the historical sources as reputed mercenaries.

Weapons and Warfare Military efficiency is a functionalistic relation between the warrior’s capabilities, the quality of the weapons, and an adequate strategy. Military leaders tried to combine the fighting ability of the soldiers with the capabilities conferred by their weapons for a particular purpose. Types of weapons often define the style of fighting, and this also demands an association, or set, of weapons. A short sword is only suitable for nimble close-range combat; and will not be efficient without a shield and, eventually, a helmet. So, weapons are the tools that soldiers use to gain supremacy over the adversary. The types of weapons utilized throughout times over the world are too vast to be referred to here, and even to summarize their categories can be risky in such a short essay. Weapons

can be so important as to confer an unthinkable superiority to an able warrior. Let us remind ourselves how Francisco Pizarro in 1530 conquered the Inca Empire by facing an army of many thousand Inca warriors with his mere 180 soldiers. The difference rested on horses and weapons that were not just different but technologically superior, made out of good Spanish steel. Military intelligence can be an important weapon. To know the intentions and movements of the enemy or of the people who are bound to become an enemy in the future has proved to be an important handicap in warfare. This was acknowledged from the very early wars in the Near East, and became increasingly important with time, once military leaders realized how the outcome of war depended on informed decisions. Sun Tzu argues that ‘‘what enables an intelligent government and a wise military leadership to overcome others and achieve extraordinary accomplishments is foreknowledge.’’ This can only be brought to mind here, to add to the extensive paraphernalia of the available weapons. Protection of the Body

Cuirass The protection of the body against offensive weapons has been one of the major preoccupations of warriors. The evolution of weapons and their efficiency in combat gave rise to a major development of effective protection designed to resist specific weapons. The solutions are innumerable. A Mongol warrior, similar to the Japanese samurai, would wear a hardened leather composite cuirass that conferred reasonable protection against sword slashing, but would be of questionable efficiency against arrows. So he wore a silk robe under the cuirass to better remove the arrows that might hit him. The bodyprotective gear evolved from the plain composite breastplate and armor made out of leather and bronze, to the massive and heavy medieval steel armor. The effectiveness of the cuirass depended on its strength, and yet strength often prevented mobility. Articulations were designed according to particular fighting techniques and movement needs, to the extent that the armor of a foot soldier and that of a horseman would greatly vary in design. The use of composed cuirass made out of small metal plates – an old model used mostly by aristocracy – opened up the way to the invention of chain mail. Its first use is recorded in Celtic Europe, around the fifth century BC. Although it conferred a substantial mobility to the fighter and a good protection against cutting, it did not prevent perforation from arrows and spears. The rigid bronze breastplate gained substantial popularity in the classical world with the emergence

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of the hoplite. It conferred reasonable protection against perforating and cutting weapons, and matched efficiently with the round shield – the hoplon – and the helmet. Helmet The protection of the head is one strong concern of protective gear from all historical periods, since the head and the important organs it bears are the most fragile and disabling parts of the body. Early helmets were mostly made out of hardened leather in later prehistory, but the spread of bronze metallurgy made bronze the preferred metal for helmets (Figure 1), even until later phases when iron became common. This is probably due to the ductility of bronze, which enabled the crafting of the helmet from one single metal piece by using the hammering technique. The Greek Corinthian helmet was a major typological improvement, as it protected the neck and face, being the model widely adopted in the Greek world throughout the first millenium BC. The structure of helmets did not vary so substantially with time, being the cap-type, such as the Montefortino used by early Roman legions from fourth century BC – the most widely used model in Celtic Europe (Figure 2). Only medieval armor would later introduce noticeable variations in helmet typology and the widespread use of steel.

Figure 2 Two bronze helmets of Montefortino type dating to the first century BC, found in one Northern Portuguese Iron Age hillfort, at Castelo de Neiva, Viana do Castelo. Each helmet was crafted from one single piece of bronze, and hammered to shape, then polished and profusely decorated. The Montefortino type was a very popular protective item in Western Europe during the late Iron Age, used by both Roman Republican soldiers and the various Celtic peoples. Source: Photo taken by Francisco Reima˜o Queiroga.

Shield The Celtic world shared the use of the round shield with the rectangular model (Figures 3 and 19). Celtic shields were mostly of wood pieces often coated with leather and reinforced with metal parts, like the shield-boss. Their shape and structure varies

Figure 1 Calchidean style bronze helmet dating to 525–500 BC. The helmet has efficient neck and nose guards, and the cheek guards are in the shape of ram’s head. Source: National Archaeological Museum of Naples, Inv. n 5737.

Figure 3 Celtic style long shield retrieved from the Thames River. The long shield is a widespread model mostly for footsoldiers fighting with spear or long sword. Weapons thrown into rivers, probably as offerings to water deities, are common throughout Europe from the Bronze to the Iron Ages. Source: The Celts: Europe’s People of Iron, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, page 144. ã The British Museum.

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not only with culture but also mostly with fighting patterns. Callaican light infantry warriors, for example, used a small caetra, or wood and leather shield, that being concave would drive the impact of the attacking weapon towards its center, where a metal shield boss would both absorb the blow and retain and redirect the opponent’s weapon, thus opening the way to counter-attack (Figure 4). Fighting in close rank formation, as the hoplites or the Roman legionnaires did, demanded larger shields that covered a wider surface of the body. Greave Greaves are a very ancient protection of the infantry soldier, recorded to be used by Goliath, and commonly used in the Bronze Age Levant and by the Greek Hoplites, the Roman legionnaires, and the Celts. They could be of padded cloth, hard leather or metal pieces. Their function was to protect legs from frontal attacks, and they could cover just the lower leg, or extend to the thigh. Combat with Blades

Edge weapons The use of blades to slash or perforate the opponent is the most widely spread and

Figure 4 The Callaican warrior in full combat gear. A nimble and swift infantry soldier, according to Strabo, he fought with a short sword and spear, and was protected from blows by a small concave leather shield. Drawing of one-granite statue found in the North of Portugal, dating to the first century BC/AD. Source: Silva, A.C.F. A Cultura Castreja do Norte de Portugal. Pac¸os de Ferreira, 1986. ã The author.

extensive in the history of warfare. Knives, daggers, swords, have been an indispensable item to the warrior’s gear to the extent that, regardless of his preferred weapon, a warrior would always carry at least one type of side knife or dagger for close-range defense. The shapes of knives and daggers vary immensely. They are designed for particular models of hand-tohand fighting, or display, or ritual purposes, and the shape of the blade is modeled accordingly. A knife with a blade made out of gold, for example, is useless as a fighting weapon, but a remarkable item for social display and ritual purposes. The materials used range from flint or ivory to silver, gold, bronze or steel, in addition to the even more varied hilt and scabbard decorations and inlays. Swords survived and have kept their prestige in present-day military gear as display and parade weapons. Copper daggers of the Bell Beaker culture were small, since copper was scarce. The Bronze Age brought the availability of a stronger metal, with a bigger tensile strength, and swords emerged, such as the Carp’s Tongue sword – an elaborate model designed for slashing and stabbing. The longer the sword is the safer the warrior is at the opponent’s distance. Yet, only steel would provide enough strength to enable the increase of the sword’s length; but then again its weight increased. Handling a long sword also demands a strong hand. Long swords were preferred by the Northern European peoples, such as Germans, Celts, and Vikings. The post-medieval development in steel metallurgy enabled the thinning of the blades, so they became much lighter. The numerous types of swords range from short to long straight blade swords, and short to long curved blade swords. The best example of the short sword is probably the Roman gladius, used by legionaries from third century BC onward in close range combat, and the early first century AD Roman cavalry adopted a longer gladius, the spatha, which became the model for long swords until middle age. Among the short curved blade swords, the falcata is an unusual model used by the southern Iberian peoples, from the fifth to the first centuries BC, both in combat and rituals. This weapon is typologically affiliated to the Greek kopis, and southeastern European mahaire. The Iberian falcata is a short powerful weapon for the foot soldier, adequate for the close range combat of light infantry to the extent that its effectiveness was referred to by Caesar and Polibius. The long curved blades are later, dating to The Middle Ages. The most significant representatives of these models are the Japanese katana and the Middle Eastern scimitar or the Persian shamshir.

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Bow The bow developed enormously the art of fighting and killing from a distance. The use of the bow both for hunting and warfare spread surprisingly fast from the late Palaeolithic onwards to virtually all cultures in the world. It was the most characteristic weapon of the Bell Beaker warrior, judging by the wrist-guards and arrowheads found in graves. This simple, and yet effective weapon, gained a particular role in both land and sea battles when handled by specialized warriors: the archers. The bow’s technical simplicity did not evolve noticeably from Neolithic onwards – except for the use of metal arrowheads – until the composite bow was developed by the Scythians from the Pontic steppes. This fascinating warrior people is fairly well known to us thanks to the accounts of the Greek historian Herodotus, written in the mid-fifth century BC, and the numerous finds from their mound tombs, the kurgans. The Scythian bow was slow and carefully built from a single wooden core to which plates of special wood, bone and antler were added, glued on and wrapped round with animal tendon and horse hair string, all seasoned for five to ten years (Figure 5). This bow was extremely powerful, and its small size, normally not exceeding one meter, made it ideal to be nimbly handled on horseback. The fighting effectiveness of the Scythian composite bow cannot be dissociated from the penetrating and damaging capacities of the poisoned three-tongued barbed arrowheads (Figure 6), in addition to the mastery of this weapon by fierce warriors on horseback at full speed. The three edges enabled the razor sharpening of both point and edges before battle, thus implementing an extraordinary penetrating power. In addition, the arrowheads were impregnated with a poison known in antiquity as scythicon, a recipe referred to by Theophrastus, Aristotle and Pliny. It was a blend of putrid poisonous snake, human blood and dung, which may have formed a cocktail of poison, bacteria, and gangrene germs only comparable today to the ‘Komodo dragon’ bite, so even a slight wound would prove fatal on a short term. Scythian weapons and horsemanship were the predecessors of the military excellence that became characteristic of the peoples of the steppes, among them the Huns and the Mongols. The technological successor of the bow – the crossbow – was first used in battle in China in the fourth century BC. It survived throughout Classical Antiquity not as a hand weapon but rather as a ballista, to throw large spear projectiles, until it suffered a substantial evolution in Middle Age, as a reaction against the development of the protective armor of

Figure 5 Magnificent gold bowl depicting aspects of a Scythian warrior’s daily life. A Scythian warrior is setting the string of one bow, while another bow is hanging from his belt in its special quiver, the ‘gorytus’. Scythian bows were the most elaborate, and certainly the most effective, weapon known in the Iron Age. Bowl, probably of Greek craft, found in the Kul’-Oba kurgan, dating to the fourth century BC. Source: Web source. ã The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

Figure 6 Three-edged Scythian arrowhead. The structure of this weapon made it easier to razor-sharpen before battle. In conjunction with the powerful composite bow, the penetrating capacity of this arrowhead was unparalleled prior to the emergence of firearms. Source: Web source.

mounted warriors, over AD 1000. The crossbow became so powerful by the end of the medieval period that a bolt could penetrate a steel breastplate at over fifty meters distance, and certainly changed the course of military history until the introduction of firearms. This weapon had become so lethal in the twelfth century that Pope Innocent II condemned the use of crossbows in wars between Christians. Slings Testifying to the early use of this weapon are the frequent references in the Bible, and its depiction on a cave wall near C¸atal Hu¨yu¨k, dating to the

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Figure 7 Composite army of Assyrian slingers and archers fighting on close ranks in a bucolic setting of vines and trees. Mural scene from the palace of Sennacherib seventh century BC. Source: Mesopotamia: The Mighty Kings, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, page 111. Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology, ã The British Museum.

seventh millennium BC. Assyrian representation of slingers (Figure 7) is abundant (thirteenth century BC), thus suggesting the importance of this weapon, but they were also frequent in the Mycenic (sixteenth century BC); have been found in the tomb of Tutankhamen (c. 1323 BC) and are depicted Greek art from geometric period on, Egypt, Scythia. Being made of perishable materials very few remains were preserved to the present day. It has never been a prestige weapon, however its simplicity and effectiveness in the hands of experienced slingers made it a widespread weapon in battle and its use is known in the Mediterranean shore from prehistory to middle ages. The use of slings can be spotted by the presence of sling projectiles, such as round pebbles, clay balls or, more rarely oval lead sling bullets. The latter were used in Grece from the fifth century, often engraved with political propaganda or just plain insults to the enemy. Many Iron Age hillforts throughout Europe show deposits of variable size of sling stone bullets, but the most acclaimed slingers in antiquity were the Balearic islanders, who were widely used as auxiliary troops in the Punic Wars. Siege weapons The first sedentary agricultural communities became vulnerable to the incursion of neighboring societies who envied their economic surplus, so early sedentary cities became defended by walls in order to prevent attacks. This is the case of the biblical city of Jericho where massive defensive walls encircled the city, built in the eighteenth millennium BC. In the western Mediterranean, where the communities settled much later, so did the first heavily defended sites, such as Los Millares (in Spain) and Zambujal and Vila Nova de S. Pedro (in Portugal). So, from their early stages of sedentarization, European

and Asian communities gradually disseminated strongholds, a feature that was not so widely spread in Africa and in the Americas. From defended villages and defended cities to forts and castles, where only a military garrison lived, the spread of defended places starts reshaping the strategies of war. Defenses, which were normally formed by one or more defensive walls, and sometimes reinforced with ditches and ramparts, provided reasonable stability for the inhabitants. This panorama soon promoted the need to fight from a distance, and therefore the emergence of adequate weapons to overcome the defenses: the siege weapons. These are a product of military engineering in permanent response to the evolution of defense engineering. The first siege weapons were plain slings and bows. Hamoukar, a Mesopotamian city dating to 3500 BC was literally destroyed by a bombardment of sling pebbles. Soon the variety and complexity of siege weapons increased. Assault towers were siege weapons used to safely transport troops approaching the defended site and allow them to gain its interior. Other weapons relied on the destruction of the gates and walls in order to gain entrance. To achieve this they could use catapults to throw projectiles such as large stones either against the walls or into the interior of the enclosure, in order to damage both buildings and besieged, or then hammer walls repeatedly with a battering ram. The Chinese had a rather advanced engineering knowledge and knew extensive chemistry principles. They are reported to have catapulted pots containing a mixture of arsenic and lime which liberated poisonous gas in the wars against the Tibetans. Philip II and Alexander from Macedonia promoted a remarkable development of siege weapons,

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close only to the Romans who improved greatly the engineering and practical use of several types of catapults and siege devices. Deployment of Weapons

Horse For many centuries, and prior to the introduction of mechanized vehicles in the early twentieth century, the horse has been an efficient means of combat and displacement, to the extent of being considered a weapon in itself. The horse has been the basis of military supremacy for some peoples, not only for the power and fast deployment of horsemen in battle, but also for the ability of a mounted army to cover vast distances in a very short time and therefore to surprise the unaware enemy. It has been suggested that, in as early as the fourth millennium BC, there would be warriors on horseback wandering through the steppes around the Black Sea, the Caspian, and the Caucasus. The early use of the mounted horse in warfare expeditions in the Mesopotamian area dates to the early second millennium BC. From then on, cavalry developed and attained an enormous prestige both in war and in social status. The almost permanent political turmoil of the Near Eastern and Anatolian regions, where much action was going on in the course of the second half of the second millennium and onwards, makes it no surprise that the continuous warfare gave rise to substantial developments in both weaponry and fighting techniques. Chariot Soon after the horse was domesticated there started the use of wagons and chariots for displacement and combat in the steppes. It spread to other regions such as the near eastern kingdoms where vehicles were technically developed toward local specific needs, mostly by Hittites and Egyptians (Figures 8 and 9). The geographical dissemination

of the war chariot was relatively limited and never became popular in the western Mediterranean due to the irregularity of the terrain. Nevertheless, the ritual prestige of the wheeled transport reached Celtic Europe where aristocracy was buried in highly prestigious wagons. Ship Boats and ships were built in innumerable materials and shapes. The Callaican and Bangladeshian leather boats and the early Egyptian reed boats, used mostly for inland waters, are examples of simple technology, but only wood would provide the necessary robustness to a cargo or battle boat, to which metal was added at a later stage. The capacity to be in constant movement, throw projectiles of high damaging capacity and at the same time displace troops for swift attacks, turned battle ships into an important and effective weapon. The Mediterranean basin saw an early development of both seamanship and boatbuilding, since the inhabitants of its shores were already engaged in trade and in warfare in the third millennium BC. At first, warships were mere means of transportation (Figure 10). The celebrated, as yet vaguely known, Sea Peoples, raided the western Mediterranean in the twelfth century BC, moving southwards with their families towards Egypt. The use of boats in battle depended on two major aspects: the mobility and the capacity to maneuver. The first was approached with sails, but only the introduction of oars enabled mobility regardless of climatic conditions. Oar propulsion, already in use in the Egyptian old kingdom, was extensively used from that time onward. Still, the major revolution took place in Greece, where in the beginning of the first millennium propulsion was improved with twobanked gallery and, later in 800 BC, the creation and development of the ram transformed the ship into a

Figure 8 Queen Nefertiti parading on a war chariot, followed by pharaoh Akhenaten. Mural scene from Amarna, Egypt (circa 1340 BC). Source: Web source.

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Figure 9 Gold war chariot pulled by four horses, carrying a driver and what appears to be a warrior nobleman. The chariot shows careful technological craftsmanship, namely the knobbed wheels, to prevent sliding at full speed. This piece from Afghanistan was a part of the Oxus Treasure, dating to the fifth/fourth centuries. Source: Persians: Masters of Empire, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, page 111. ã The British Museum.

Figure 11 Stone slab of funerary nature, from Gotland, Sweden. This slab depicts the tale of a Viking warrior who dies in the battlefield and is carried to the Valhalla on a drakkar. Rituals of passage, for both integration and disintegration, were important for the cohesion links among warrior societies. Source: Vikings: Raiders from the North, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, page 31. ã Statens Historiska Museum, Stockholm. Figure 10 Bronze Age rock carving representing one ship carrying warriors who are brandishing their weapons, apparently swords and axes. From Late Neolithic onwards, ships of various sorts and sizes became common in the Atlantic shores and the Mediterranean for trade and warfare. Image from the rock art complex from Bohuslan, Sweden. Source: Early Europe: Mysteries in Stone, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, page 138.

weapon in itself, due to its ability to collide with and sink other boats. Outflanking and encircling the enemy ships in order to better throw projectiles, or even find a weak spot to ram became standard naval practices. The joint evolution of these aspects gave rise to the state of the art battleship of Mediterranean antiquity. The addition of successive layers of oars created the biremes, triremes, quinquiremes, and so on, to which were added variations in the number of oarsmen per oar. Triremes were certainly fighting naval battles in the early fifth century, namely at Salamis and in the Peloponnesian war. The maneuvering of the ships was done mostly by the synchrony of the teams of oarsmen, rather than

the efficiency of the rudder, which at this time was an oar mounted at the rear end of the ship. This system had been known in the Mediterranean since 3000 BC, and only at the end of the twelfth century did a more effective model – the stern-mounted rudder – make its appearance in Europe, although it had already been in use in Chinese junks from the first century AD. Unlike Roman oarsmen, who were mostly slaves, Greek oarsmen were trained professionals from lower classes. Athenian battleships were reinforced with side armor for protection against ram collision; but with Alexander the triremes and quinquiremes evolved, becoming armored platforms for ramming, boarding, artillery and throwing a reasonable variety of missiles available at the time. The Viking drakkar was a remarkably eclectic ship designed for speed and dexterity and used in both warfare and exploration (Figure 11). Equipped with one square sail and oars to provide more speed and self-sufficiency when wind lacked, the Viking longship had a long and narrow hull, as well as a shallow draft, ideal to ease landings and troop

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deployments in water as shallow as one meter deep. This boat could navigate up small rivers and even be transported over land to overcome river falls.

Models of Warfare throughout History The manners in which warriors fought are very much related to both the objectives of the confrontation and the weapons they carried and were experts on. Again, there is no evolutionary pattern in time or space. We can see the formation of early empires, in the Late Neolithic and the Bronze Age, based on elaborate armies composed of warriors who specialized in various weapons, using military strategies and, on the other hand, we can see warfare episodes many centuries later which show disorganized bands with incipient weapons and lack of any military strategy. To fully understand weapons, one has to see them fit with a particular warrior and in the course of military action. This is the field in which they were designed and evolved. So we will review a few military actions as representative of this triangular symbiosis between soldier, weapons, and fight, and see how they become representative of types of warfare. Raiding and mercenarism Raiding was probably the most widespread warfare model in prestate societies and survived throughout history until the twentieth century, sometimes in the shape of brigandage, as with the Brazilian Cangaceiros. Raiding is a war expedition called and lead by one chieftain whom warriors decide to obey, although this may not last longer than the expedition itself. The reason is normally economical, the search for pillage, and sometimes revenge for prior attacks, but the hidden underlying reason is clearly sociological. Sometimes their society of origin has to export their military impetuosity which may cause excessive internal stress, and they leave in a quest for glory and wealth. They were engaged as mercenaries to fight in other country’s wars, incorporating larger armies, quite often acting as the first shock waves during battle, since they were expendable. This picture has a very early start in the history of warfare. Mercenaries acted as early as 1500 BC in Egypt under Ramesses II, and have been omnipresent where large armies needed an eclectic composition of wings composed by warriors specialized in the use of diverse weapons. Curiously, during many centuries this specialization retained an ethnic origin (Figure 12) associated to fighting expertise and typical weapons, like Balearic slingers, Scythian archers, or Numidian horsemen, thus adding to a multifunctional composition of the armies.

Figure 12 An example of a Viking warrior acting as a mercenary body guard to the Byzantine emperor. The Varangians were reputed Viking mercenaries known for their fidelity to the emperor to whom they became attached. During the tenth and eleventh centuries AD a substantial number of Viking warriors from the Scandinavian countries migrated to Byzantium to join this elite corps. Endemic widespread mercenarism is known in Europe and the Mediterranean from the Bronze Age onwards. Source: Vikings: Raiders from the North, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, page 73. Mosaic from the church of Nea Moni, at Chios, Grece.

The early battle The remarkable economical growth and wealth attained in the area bound by Anatolia, Egypt, and Mesopotamia in Neolithic with the process of sedentarization produced powerful cities, city-states, and kingdoms. These centers of wealth needed protection and, thanks to social differentiation a class of specialized professional warriors was born, commanded by nobles and under the authority of a king. These armies were often increased with mercenaries of various sorts and tended to become organized in divisions according to the profile of the soldiers. It was soon discovered that dealing with such an army in battle called for organization. The choice of a particular ground, the use of a given association of soldiers during the battle, just to name two aspects, proved to be decisive and allowed the

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balance of outnumbering. So there was a prompt development of what we know as military strategy. The tactics and maneuvers brought up another need, that is, to communicate during the fight. There is no available information for battles prior to the late fourth millennium BC, in Mesopotamia, and yet by around 2600 BC war appears to be endemic in the region. This is the date of an important artifact known as The Royal Standard of Ur, and one of the earliest representations of a Sumerian army in what appears to be a display of victory (Figure 13). The early use of bronze weapons was probably the reason for the Mesopotamian domination over the surrounding peoples. The depiction shows rows of infantry soldiers and war chariots, an archaic four-wheeled model, and a substantial number of subdued individuals, apparently prisoners, wounded, humiliated, and some struck with axes, being presented to the king. The uniformity of the warrior’s gear suggests professional soldiers organized in groups according to their weapons and fighting expertise. By this time, the same reality is depicted in Egypt, now united as one whole kingdom. From here on we learn that war will always be about power and domination; personal power over men and territory. This is the pictographic message from early antiquity to the present, covering the world and various diachronical cultures, which we will find in Egyptian pyramids and temples, American Maya and Inca temples, Greek and Roman domestic and public architecture, in addition to the newly established media of propaganda invented by the Greeks: the coinage. With the emergence of the Hittite empire, war became more visible in both the archaeological and

historical records. Weapons had developed substantially: the two-wheeled chariot was then much lighter and faster, bronze weapons were being overcome by iron weapons, and the Hittites gained substantial supremacy. Kingdoms and their territorial warfare range also enlarged. The battle of Kadesh, in 1274 BC, between Hittites and Egyptians, is a good example of both the changing configuration of war and the growing territorial scope of kingdoms. In addition, both sides employed mercenaries, the socalled Sea Peoples tribes from Asia Minor, and were organized into divisions. The masters of war Much was achieved during the first millennium BC regarding armor and military science. The spread of iron brought new and more solid weapons, although bronze remained preferred for defensive weapons for quite some time. This was a time where the Mediterranean regained leading role, and new empires were built, based on military excellence. The empire of Alexander and the Roman Empire set new standards in the way military resources were to be used. It all started with a new system of warfare: the phalanx, created in the late seventh century BC in Greece and based in the hoplite soldier. The hoplite was a heavy infantry soldier who was literally encased in bronze armor; a set that could weight over thirty kilos. From the seventh to the fifth centuries BC the panoply consisted of one helmet of Corinthian type, breastplate in bronze, greaves, a short sword, the hoplon shield (Figures 14 and 15) and one long spear. The fighting approach was good coordination,

Figure 13 The Royal Standard of UR. This is one of the earliest representations of an army on parade. Decorated panel from a Sumerian wooden artifact dated 2600 BC. Source: The British Museum.

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Figure 14 Corinthian helmet (seventh to fifth centuries BC). The heavy protection conferred by this new type of helmet made it the head protection of choice for the hoplite soldiers. Source: Geoffrey Parker Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare, Cambridge University Press, 2005, page 16.

Figure 15 Battle scene with two armies organized as phalanxes. The artist outlined a significant individuality in the armor of each soldier, mostly in the ‘hoplon’, the round shield. Corinthian vase dating to the second half of the seventh century BC, depicting what may be the oldest image of one phalanx. Source: Geoffrey Parker Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare, Cambridge University Press, 2005, page 14.

close ranks and effective weapons. Endemic warfare between the Greek city-states greatly improved the training of the close-rank battle, thus promoting discipline and cohesion. A major turnover was to originate from Macedonia, where one warlord was unifying the city-states through war, and creating an extremely efficient military structure. With the victory at Chaeronea, over the Greeks, in 338 BC, Philip II established the beginning of the Macedonian hegemony. His untimely death two years later gave the power to his son Alexander the Great. Under these two leaders warfare was raised to a previously unseen level of expertise. Philip had created a military state where the phalanx was reshaped and closely articulated in battle with a lighter infantry corps, the hypaspists and other corps of projectile-thrower infantrymen, such as archers, spearmen and slingers, in addition to heavy cavalry strongly armored for impact. The lengthening of the sarissa to over four meters made it harder to handle, but improved phalanx efficiency, since five ranks could now block the enemy’s advance. At the same time, the shield and other protective gear became smaller and lighter. The phalanx was a surprisingly strong body and its progression was virtually unstoppable. However, it was ridiculously weak against side and rear attacks, or once enemies had penetrated the formidable barrier of spearheads. This was the army Alexander took over and greatly improved by taking advantage of the remarkable coordination between cavalry, phalanx, and the other infantries, in addition to a permanent dialogue with military engineers. This tactical use of an army was entirely revolutionary and it became virtually invincible against the regular armies. A standard battle would start with throwing projectiles to shake the enemy’s lines, and then the cavalry strike to break the ranks, followed by light infantry, the hypaspists, to keep pressure while the slower phalanx came to make contact. The other innovation was purely strategic, and brought a new ideology of warfare: the classical frontal shock was replaced by mobility, a quest for the enemy’s vulnerable spots, and composite attacks often dealing with the adversary interaction, creating reaction through diversion maneuvers. This could not be done without extreme coordination, and herein lay Philip’s military legacy that Alexander used in conquering a reasonable portion of the known world. The idea of phalanx and the composite army was established, and would define warfare for centuries to come. Before the unification of Rome, some of these approaches to war had been adopted by various peoples, amongst them the Etruscans. They were the source from which the Romans in the course of the fourth century BC raised their model of phalanx:

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the legion. The new idea that the Romans developed was the one of a disciplined and united body which was more adaptable to the irregularities of the terrain during progression, and that could maneuver more swiftly without weak flanks. To add to this eclecticism, the larger unit was divided into smaller maneuverable maniples, which were transformed into cohorts by Marius’ reforms. In the third century BC Rome expanded very audaciously to gain the control of the western Mediterranean against both Macedonians and Carthaginians, and by the late second century BC her territories spanned the whole Mediterranean. The Roman legion was accompanied by a vast complex of infrastructures, such as military engineers; medical personnel and infirmaries; tradesmen for supplies and to absorb loot and slaves; payroll service; arms and armor; weapon-smiths and carpenters; and even itinerant brothels. With expansion outside Italy, Roman legions developed a surprising self-sufficiency. They could build a military camp or a city; or build one bridge within a few days, as was done over the Rhine; build ships, catapults and siege machines; or even dig ditches miles long, as in Alesia, or ramparts to reach inaccessible hill-forts, such as in Massada. A military career was long lasting, although reduced to 16 years by Marius’ reforms, and so legions were supported by experienced and disciplined veterans, which accounted for coordination and adaptability to both terrain and maneuvers. Republican period standard military equipment for infantry was the large curved rectangular shield (scutum), one heavy and highly penetrating throwingjavelin (pilum), and a short dagger. Chest protective armor was the metal lorica, of which there were several models, such as the segmentata (metal plates), the hamata (chain mail) and the squamata (fish scale plates). In addition, all infantrymen wore a helmet with cheek and neck guards. This set could vary with the soldier’s function and status, whether he was a velite or a triarius. Working as a compact body, a Roman unit benefited from considerable protection, from shields bound together as a continuous surface. The penetrating power of a shower of pila had a damaging effect on the enemy’s armored ranks, thus adding to the effect of archers and slingers, (Figure 16) and also of the Roman and auxiliary cavalry. Upon impact, the legion might easy and effectively engage in melee combat, pushing the enemy with the shields while swiftly stabbing with the gladium. Cavalry was a small prestige corps where young aristocrats could start their political career. To add to their small number, Gauls, Iberians, and Numidians were recruited as cavalry mercenaries. The cavalryman’s gear was a small round shield, one helmet normally

Figure 16 Slinger from an auxiliary corps of the Roman legion, represented on Trajan’s column, Rome. This is a very light footsoldier without armor and only a side dagger to add to the sling. Source: Web source.

with mask, exclusively cavalry type, and body armor. The weapons were the gladium and one or more javelins. Legionaries and cavalry were the core of legions, however, often largely reinforced by corps of auxiliaries who mastered different weapons and were mostly used as skirmishers. The siege The spread of fortifications promoted a particular type of combat, with one party attacking both the fort and the besieged. Strategies and machinery devoted to this particular warfare evolved greatly with time; most were concerned with throwing projectiles against the wall and the defenders in order to damage both as much as possible. In the early sieges only simple weapons were available, such as slings, arrows and spears, and assault ladders, as recorded in the Egyptian sieges of Hatwaret and Meggido, in the second millennium BC. The Assyrians already used siege machinery, and this practice soon became extended. The battering ram was a very simple and effective weapon to demolish the gates, although the

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maneuverers were too exposed, and so it evolved in association with wheeled assault towers. The course of the first millennium BC was particularly prodigal in technological development of siege weapons, and tortoise sheds, ancillary machines, catapults and ballistae, became common in siege warfare. The projectile throwing devices also gained particular importance with naval warfare, and accompanied the evolution of both naval warfare and warships. Thudydides mentions a flame-throwing device, used against wooden fortifications, during the Peloponnesian wars; so technical excellence and originality was the trademark of this type of war, of which the Trojan Horse is just an example. Siege machines were extensively used by Carthaginians to attack the Greek Sicilian cities during the second Punic War. The siege of Syracuse became an historical milepost due to the inventions of Archimedes and this was the first time a catapult was used, as claimed by Diodorus. Alexander The Great had greatly profited from this knowledge and tradition, and made a substantial development to siege engineering in the course of his campaigns. Although the development of the expertise attained by Greeks and Chinese in chemical and flaming projectiles was somehow neglected by Roman engineering, the more ‘conventional’ siege devices were greatly used and their field use developed during the formation of the empire. Siege weapons were transported, dismantled, and often built from scratch in the battle or siege area by army engineers. Artillery, such as ballista and onager, were used in most military confrontations, not just for sieges but also to breach the ranks of enemy armies. They were used, respectively, to throw darts in a supposedly straight trajectory, and to throw any kind of projectile, such as stones or fireballs, in a curve shot. The damaging effect of these devices was added to by the work of Roman sappers, undermining the walls, and building tunnels under the defenses, while properly protected by shelters, the vinea. Battering rams were particularly effective for damaging both gates and walls, while its operators were comfortably protected by a tortoise cover that was covered with fireproof materials. The assault tower is what could probably be seen as the predecessor of today’s tank. It was armored, mobile, and carried weapons and soldiers as a fighting unit. This was a metal-plated wellprotected mobile wooden tower, normally as high as the walls, which had several platforms to bear both soldiers and artillery weapons, rams and draw bridges to assault the walls. From the Roman Empire to the end of the Middle Ages the siege became the most common form of warfare, and therefore fortification techniques

evolved along with siege devices until the major changes imposed by firearms from the fourteenth century onwards. The riding hordes The waves of mounted warriors – such as the Scythians, the Huns, and the Mongols – that emerged from the Euro-Asian steppes in several periods, provide significant examples of warfare superiority and innovative military strategies. The impressive speed with which these mounted armies deployed, not only in the battlefield, but also in the course of invasions, was often fatal to the enemy. These warriors mastered the use of their weapons, particularly the short composite bow, which they used charging at full speed on horseback while shooting arrows with astonishing accuracy. While there were slight variations from tribe to tribe, in general Mongol light cavalry warriors wore a cuirass made out of lacquered leather strips, and protected their heads with hard leather helmets or traditional fur-trimmed Mongol caps, and also carried a shield covered in thick leather. As offensive weapons they had a short sword, two bows, for long and short range respectively, at least two quivers, a lasso, and a dagger strapped to the left forearm. The difference with heavy cavalry riders is that they used a scimitar instead of a short sword, carried a battle-ax or mace and a hooked spear. Under Genghis Khan, in the early thirteenth century, the Mongols conquered a vast territory from Eastern Europe to the China and Pakistan. They faced a greater diversity of enemies than any other army in military history, including Alexander. The nomads from the steppes, the European heavy cavalry (Figure 17) and a variety of Chinese armies, in addition to numerous defended cities – for all these the Mongols found particular strategies, never exposing themselves too much whenever they could be hurt by enemy superiority. A standard battle would be based on two main movements: the approach of the cavalry, who often encircled the enemy at full gallop while dispatching clouds of arrows with impressive accuracy as they charged ahead, and the charge with heavy cavalry to break the enemy’s lines. However, the military success of the Mongols was not exclusive to the cavalry. The development of their expertise in military tactics, siege weapons and even psychological pressure enabled the fast advance of the Mongol army over vast regions. They used siege weapons and knowledge from the Greco-Roman period and added innovations by using technical information from the conquered peoples, mostly the Chinese. In the course of a siege of a city, a Mongol catapult would not only throw stone projectiles against the city walls, but would also throw corpses, infected with plague and

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Figure 17 William the Conqueror invades Great Britain with his cavalrymen, in 1066, and faces Anglo-Saxon resistance at Hastings. The Bayeux embroidery is a pictorial tale of the whole expedition, and provides a remarkable insight info the fight and the weapons used by both sides, also illustrating the most typical soldier’s protective gear. Source: Web source, Bayeux Museum.

other contagious diseases, inside the city. The other effective weapon was of a psychological nature: fear of the reputed Mongol savagery. Their self-sufficiency in supplies was original, since they could be in the field in permanent movement for over six months by eating horsemeat, mares’ milk and, in emergency, horse blood. Each horseman kept sixteen horses, sometimes more when long expeditions increased the need for supplies. Barefoot warriors Another extremely effective use of swift and nimble light infantry with little weaponry can be found in the early nineteenth century Zulu army (Figure 18). Zulus were a small tribe who inhabited the south of Africa and, in the end of the eighteenth century, started very deep transformations which changed them from a peaceful people of shepherds into one of the most formidable armies of the time, under the command of Shaka, the mastermind of all these changes. Although the Zulu kingdom embodied a substantial part of the south of Africa, it was very ephemeral as a social and economical system. And yet Zulus faced, and sometimes defeated, armies with far superior firearms. All young men were engaged in the army from youth until the age of forty, thus becoming particularly well trained in fighting and enduring barefoot running over long distances. Zulu warriors wore very little clothing and had no protection other than a oval shaped shield made with leather tied to a wooden frame. Their only weapon was a newly designed assegai, or short spear, of large blade, which they handled in a sword-like manner. Specializing in lightning-fast approach and

Figure 18 Image of a Zulu warrior in full combat gear. The light and thin leather shield was mostly used to divert the blows, rather than to absorb weapon frontal impact. The spear was the main attack weapon, and the new design introduced by Shaka made it halfway between a short spear and a long-handled dagger. Source: Web source.

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Figure 19 Military display of cavalry and foot warriors followed by trumpeters. Some of the bowl-shaped helmets, probably Montefortino type, are topped by an animal figure of totemic nature. Horsemen wear spurs, and the horse gear set appears to be elaborate. Celtic and Germanic horsemen often acted as auxiliary troops in the Roman legions. The ‘Gunderstrup cauldron’, probably originating from Thrace, dates to the first century BC. Source: The Celts: Europe’s People of Iron, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, page 62. ã The National Museum of Denmark.

charge, their combat technique was to push the enemy’s defense aside by striking sideward with the shield, and then striking the opponent in the stomach with the spear thus provoking a fatal wound. Battle strategy was similarly simple: the Zulu army presented a strong center to hold the enemy’s attention and two wings to encircle the flanks, in addition to one reserve, held in the army’s rear. The sea raiders Like the Sea Peoples from the twelfth century BC, the Vikings, from the eighth to the eleventh centuries AD, were another fascinating combination of weapons, warrior valor and strategy, for whom the swiftness of deployment had an important role. Vikings were a people of farmers, craftsmen, and traders where warfare was a valued and prestigious activity. Their raids were recorded from the late eighth to the late eleventh centuries, and covered all the Atlantic shore down to the Portuguese coast. The Viking warfare strategy was to sail along the coast, sometimes continuing up rivers, and to land taking by surprise cities and monasteries that then would be savagely pillaged. During the Viking era the Atlantic coast of Europe was almost permanently under siege, to the extent that some populations paid the Vikings a kind of protection fee in order not to be attacked. Being mostly foot warriors, the gear of these horsemen would include one iron chain mail shirt, covering from chest to knee, one iron helmet in the shape of a rounded cap, and a wood round shield with a

diameter of over one meter or less, reinforced by a metal boss. The offensive weapons were the wooden long bow, the spear, dagger, battle-ax, and the long sword, just under one meter long, which the warrior used single-handed in conjunction with the shield. However, probably the most important item in Viking raids was their particular ship, commonly known as the Drakkar. The ship, as described above, permitted to navigate in shallow shores and small rivers, and also allowed a fast and easy landing of the party. The conjunction of sail and oars made the Drakkar the fastest ship of its epoch for sea cruising, and the mobility it conferred gave Vikings a military supremacy in coastal Europe. The ecological warfare Warriors from simple societies in the past and present were experts with their choice weapons, like the spear, arrow, mace, and battle-ax. They also appear to have taken an excessive zeal in decorating their bodies with massive ornaments and paintings, and sometimes even piercing. And yet, warfare appears to be performed not to kill enemies, nor to gain territory, nor to obtain loot. The Wintu people, of northern California, called off hostilities once someone was injured. In some warrior societies of the Indonesian and the Pacific islands and in southern Africa, and also among the pre-Zulu Nguni, for example, war, on the whole, became a very ritualized and complex setting. Fighting and battles were more a choreographic display rather than a struggle. Armies faced each other for hours at a safe distance, exhibiting their warrior’s fierce

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body-paintings and gear, hurling, and shouting abuse. Display was very important as forces were measured in the course of this process without any bloodshed. Eventually, warriors might step forward and throw projectiles that harmed one opponent. Should something come out of balance then fighting occurred. Hostilities tended to stop when anyone was wounded or killed. See also: Social Violence and War.

Further Reading Campbell B (2002) Warfare and Society in Imperial Rome, C.31 BC–AD 280. London: Taylor & Francis. Drews R (2004) Early Riders: The Beginnings of Mounted Warfare in Asia and Europe. London: Taylor & Francis.

Duby G (1985) William Marshal. The Flower of Chivalry. New York: Pantheon Books. Friday KF (2004) Samurai, Warfare and the State in Early Medieval Japan. London: Taylor & Francis. Graff D (2001) Medieval Chinese Warfare 300–900. London: Taylor & Francis. Haas J (ed.) (1990) The Anthropology of War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hanson VD (ed.) (1993) Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience. London: Taylor & Francis. Nicholson H (2003) Medieval Warfare: Theory and Practice of War in Europe 300–1500. Palgrave: Macmillan Publishing. Parker G (ed.) (1995) The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Quesada Sanz F (1997) El armamento ibe´rico. Estudio tipolo´gico, geogra´fico, funcional, social y simbo´lico de las armas en la Cultura Ibe´rica (siglos VI-I a.C.), (2 vols.). Montagnac: Monographies Instrumentum. Swietoslawski W (1999) Arms and Armour of the Nomads of the Great Steppe in the Times of the Mongol Expansion (12th–14th centuries). Lodz: Oficyna Naukowa MS.

WHO OWNS THE PAST? Lynne Goldstein, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary accountability The acknowledgment and a commitment by archaeologists to make every effort to actively consult with affected group(s) in the areas in which they work, in order to establish a relationship that can be beneficial to all parties involved. engagement Making a commitment to a region and to the people living in that region when conducting archaeology there. Realizing that archaeology goes beyond the work at the site itself. NAGPRA The US Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, passed in 1990, which mandates the repatriation of materials in any museums that receive federal funds, and also outlines procedures for human remains found after the implementation of the Act. repatriation The return of human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony to tribes and nations who have legitimate claims to them.

Introduction To most of us, the concept of ‘owning the past’ may seem odd. Shouldn’t the past just be what happened? What is there to own? The past is a series of events, or a set of stories, or a collection of artifacts from past cultures, or all of the above. While documents and

artifacts can perhaps be owned, in what sense can the past be owned? And if the past can be owned, why is it an issue? Doesn’t it belong to everyone? For a very long time, archaeologists did not even consider the concept of ownership of the past – from their perspective, the past belonged to everyone. Indeed, most archaeologists would still argue this is true. They see themselves as agents who discover the past and open it or lay it out for present and future generations. Historians find manuscripts and written materials that have been long forgotten or left uninterpreted, and archaeologists find material evidence that has left no written record. Sometimes, in the case of historical archaeology, archaeologists can weave together the written and unwritten past. For the most part, people have been pleased to know about the past as presented by archaeologists, and the professions of history and archaeology have been considered honorable ones. In the late 1970s, this view of history and archaeology as honorable or benign began to change. Some linked archaeology and history to colonialism and/or scientific imperialism, and a case can be made that archaeological data and interpretations have been used by some to justify colonial and imperial behaviors. It is also true that scholars did not always carefully consider and try to address some of the inherent biases in their data. In addition, archaeologists and other kinds of anthropologists have not always kept the

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people they studied foremost in their research; on occasion, although they acted within the norms of the particular time, their actions, when viewed through today’s norms, might appear ethically questionable. To put it simply, scholars in the past did not often consider the biases of their data, and they did not often consider or incorporate the perspectives of native peoples (see Native Peoples and Archaeology) into their interpretations.

Ethics and Accountability Native Americans, a number of other indigenous peoples around the world, and a number of scholars began to complain about the way archaeology had been conducted. In particular, they called for codes of ethics, as well as for the return of some excavated human remains and sacred objects to appropriate groups. Laws were passed in the late 1980s to begin to address these concerns. In 1995, the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) outlined a series of ethical principles for archaeologists. Principle no. 2 is that of accountability: Responsible archaeological research, including all levels of professional activities, requires an acknowledgment of public accountability and a commitment by the archaeologist to make every reasonable effort, in good faith, to consult actively with affected group(s), with the goal of establishing a working relationship that can be beneficial to the discipline and to all parties involved.

This principle represents two obligations on the part of archaeologists: an acknowledgment of general accountability to the public who is paying for research, and an obligation to make every effort to actively consult with affected groups and to develop working relationships with these parties. The SAA statement ends with the notion that these relationships should be ‘‘beneficial to the discipline and to all parties involved’’. Given this mandate, what kinds of relationships have archaeologists formed, and what kinds of problems, successes, and failures have resulted from these relationships? To what extent are archaeologists obligated to evaluate how their work affects others? And, once acknowledged, what is the evaluation of how it does so? What are the consequences and obligations of being engaged? Answering this question helps us get to the larger question of ‘who owns the past?’ A number of archaeologists have viewed this principle as reflecting a reaction to problems that archaeologists have had with indigenous peoples and human remains, as well as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) (see Native

American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act), but in fact the issues raised in this principle are universal – archaeologists’ work always affects others in direct or indirect ways, and there are always a number of stakeholders who have concerns or questions, and who may wish to participate in (or even control) developing, planning, and interpreting the work done. The principle of accountability can be seen as one of engagement. To do what the principle mandates, it is difficult to enter a place, do a quick field project, and then disappear. Even though some projects may be fast and relatively isolated, the principle implicitly encourages placing such work within a long-term framework – as part of ongoing regional research in areas where people know you and you know them. It asks the archaeologist to invest in an area, in terms of commitment and engagement. Many archaeologists have long seen this as an optimal way to conduct research, but generally speaking these conversations have not been placed in ethical contexts – one tends to do better work within a regional context and frame where one understands the details of the archaeology and the basic research questions. The SAA was not alone in developing principles of ethics in the mid-1990s – organizations such as the Archaeological Institute of America drafted similar ethical principles, and the American Anthropological Association also revised its code of ethics. The issues raised here are not limited to NAGPRA or to Native American concerns. They are universal, and represent a sea change in the way archaeology is done, and can be done. Whether archaeologists like it or not, it is extremely difficult to do archaeology the same way it was conducted 30 years ago – those archaeologists who entered the field to get away from having to deal with living people are discovering that that is no longer possible. The discipline has long argued that archaeology is critical to understanding what really happened in the past, but archaeologists are sometimes surprised that people are now accepting its claims and want to participate in the interpretation.

Archaeology of Engagement Some of the most productive work in archaeological engagement has been in Africa, where archaeologists have worked with and trained a number of local, native scholars. It is the second generation of these native archaeologists who seem to be doing some of the most exciting fieldwork, and who are now documenting the full range of cultures that represent their past. In the May/June 1999 issue of Archaeology, one of these

2214 WHO OWNS THE PAST?

archaeologists, Tereba Togola, talks about ‘‘The Archaeology of the Soul’’, and how archaeology has helped develop an understanding and appreciation for Mali’s heritage. Togola is especially pleased with the surge in local pride in the ancestral past, and the importance of that past in understanding their identity, and in placing themselves in cultural context. Interestingly, the concern is not about ownership of the past. Historical archaeology has perhaps been the most successful in involving stakeholders in the research process, and in practicing the art of engagement. The reasons for this are more than the obvious fact that historical archaeology represents a more recent past to which people can more easily relate. In a 1998 anniversary issue of Archaeology, Kathleen Deagan outlines a series of contributions that historical archaeology is almost unique in being able to contribute: 1. It gives voice to the disenfranchised of the past (e.g., African-Americans, women), who could not leave a written record. 2. It examines processes of colonization, capitalism, and contact that cannot be examined otherwise. 3. It provides a global perspective. 4. It can document urban processes and landscapes. 5. It raises the possibility that ‘ideas can be studied archaeologically’; that is, that ideology and world view shape the material world at same time as the material world reinforces ideology. Archaeologists today frequently find that their interests and interpretations conflict with those of other people, and the concerns of the present may conflict with the possible concerns of the future. As ethical considerations matter more and as people care more about the question ‘who owns the past?’ there has been a change in the way the broader public sees archaeologists, and the way archaeologists see themselves. If we follow our ethical principles, the answer to the question is that no one owns the past, and that we all own the past. Engagement is difficult and time-consuming, and not always rewarding. Even when one thinks everything has gone well, things can fall apart. Educating the public does not mean that people will agree with you or that you have changed minds; educated people often disagree. However, as vitally important as

public education is, direct engagement with stakeholders throughout the research process is critical. Things may not work out well, but they likely would have been worse if stakeholders had been ignored. Archaeologists must try more systematically to practice an engaged archaeology because the work does effect others; there are alternative interpretations and explanations; they need to share their findings, and obligations remain. Archaeologists may or may not lose control, but they gain a perspective that has not yet been fully developed. This is hard, timeconsuming, sometimes unpleasant, and not always successful, work. Not everyone is always in a position to undertake such work, but within a regional framework it is more likely to happen. Archaeologists must be ready to defend their actions, and the hope is that enough respect and trust will have been developed so that people can even respectfully disagree. Hopefully, the answer to the question of ownership will be approached in a way that protects and preserves the past while respecting all sides – we all have an obligation to, and a responsibility for, the past. See also: Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Histori-

cal Archaeology: Future; Interpretation of Archaeology for the Public; Interpretive Models, Development of; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act; Native Peoples and Archaeology; Politics of Archaeology.

Further Reading Bray TL (ed.) (2001) The Future of the Past: Archaeologists, Native Americans, and Repatriation. New York, NY: Garland. Deagan K (1998) Rethinking modern history. Archaeology 51(5): 54–60. Fforde C, Hubert J, and Turnbull P (eds.) (2002) The Dead and Their Possessions. London: Routledge. Foner E (2002) Who Owns History?: Rethinking the Past in a Changing World. New York: Hill and Wang. Lynott MJ and Wylie A (eds.) (2000) Ethics in American Archaeology, 2nd edn. Washington, DC: Society for American Archaeology. Mihesuah DA (2000) Repatriation Reader: Who Owns American Indian Remains? Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Morell V (1995) Who owns the past? Science (268): 1424–1426. Togola Te´re´ba (1999) Archaeology of the soul. Archaeology 52(3): 59.

WORLD HERITAGE SITES, TYPES AND LAWS 2215

WORLD HERITAGE SITES, TYPES AND LAWS Sandra Pelegrini, State University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary cultural heritage The legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future generations. Natural heritage is also an important part of a culture, encompassing the countryside and natural environment, including flora and fauna. cultural heritage site Cultural heritage sites include hundreds of historic buildings and town sites, important archaeological sites, and works of monumental sculpture or painting. natural heritage site Natural heritage sites are restricted to those natural areas that (1) furnish outstanding examples of the Earth’s record of life or its geologic processes; (2) provide excellent examples of ongoing ecological and biological evolutionary processes; (3) contain natural phenomena that are rare, unique, superlative, or of outstanding beauty; or (4) furnish habitats for rare or endangered animals or plants or are sites of exceptional biodiversity. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) A specialized agency of the United Nations established in 1945. Its stated purpose is to contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through education, science, and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, the rule of law, and the human rights and fundamental freedoms proclaimed in the UN Charter.

Cultural heritage is the legacy that we receive from the past, experience in the present, and transmit to future generations. Etymologically, the terms ‘heritage’ and ‘patrimony’, used in Romance languages, are linked to patrimonium. They foreground ‘inheritance from the fathers or ancestors’ and are a reference to monuments inherited from previous generations. The English language prefers the word ‘heritage’ to typify inherited monuments. The economic and legal definitions of the word refers to the concept of ‘cultural property’, which the Italians properly call beni culturali (literally, ‘cultural assets’). The expression ‘historical monument’ became current in French dictionaries in the middle of the nineteenth century. The term was adopted on the establishment of the department for the supervision of historical monuments during the administration of Guizot, France’s Minister of the Interior, who made the preservation of the signs of French national history a subject of public interest. The concept is traditionally associated with different areas of scientific knowledge. UNESCO consultant

Hugues de Varine stresses that cultural heritage welds representations of social memory which may be subdivided into three main groups. Whereas the first and second groups refer respectively to the environment and the human intellectual production accumulated throughout history, the third aggregates cultural goods that result from the process of human survival. Consequently three types of patrimonial site, or rather, natural, cultural, and mixed sites may be acknowledged. Exceptional physical, biological, or geological formations, animal habitats, endangered species of vegetation, and areas with scientific, historical, or aesthetic value constitute the natural sites. Cultural sites include material and immaterial goods related to the identity and memory of different groups of human society, which manifest themselves through different forms of expression: scientific, artistic, and technological creations; objects, documents, buildings, cultural landscapes, urban groups, historical, and archaeological sites. Mixed sites are formed by both the natural and the cultural elements which the World Heritage Committee considers to be of outstanding value. These include 644 cultural, 162 natural, and 24 mixed properties in 138 partner states of the World Heritage Convention – UNESCO (1972). Certain cultural sites and items are placed on the danger list when conflicts, wars, civil wars, earthquakes, and other natural disasters, pollution, poaching, uncontrolled urbanization, and unchecked tourist development cause major problems to World Heritage Sites. Danger may be real when threats are proven specific and imminent, or potential, when a property faces threats which may have negative effects on World Heritage values. Thirty-one out of 830 world cultural heritage properties were enrolled on the danger list in 2006. Among these sites, the most noted are the national parks of Garamba, Kahuzi-Biega, Salonga, Virunga, and the Okapi Wildlife Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Rı´o Pla´tano Biosphere Reserve in Honduras; the historic town of Zabid in Yemen; the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan; the Walled City of Baku in Azerbaijan; and the city of Bam in Iran. The exceptional urban and architectural heritage of Kathmandu Valley in Nepal, Patan, and Bhaktapur has been severely affected by uncontrolled urban development (Figure 1). The safeguard of the archaeological heritage is a source of knowledge on the remotest periods of human activities since the analysis of material culture establishes and furthers the study of several intrinsic

2216 WORLD HERITAGE SITES, TYPES AND LAWS

Figure 1 Kathmandu – Nepal.

elements of the history of populations and of the different natural and manmade landscapes. The rediscovery of aspects from daily life through archaeological artifacts not only reveals the complex relations existing among human beings, but demystifies points of view concerning isolation which have often been fabricated in the historiography of the remotest civilizations (see Artifacts, Overview). The so-called ‘Venus’ of Willendorf, discovered in the Palaeolithic site located near Willendorf, Austria, in 1908, by archaeologist Josef Szombathy, is a typical case. It is a small red ochre-pigmented sculpture, about 43/8 inches (11.1 cm) in height, made approximately 25 000 years ago, in oolitic limestone, a material which is not extant in the region where the sculpture was found. The statue represents a female whose aesthetic characteristics point toward concepts of fertility owing to the prominence of its breasts, belly, and genital organs (Figure 2). Studies on industrial heritage appeared in England in the 1950s through the initiative of Professor Donald Dudley of the University of Birmingham, who organized visiting excursions to old factories in the region. The idea of preserving the remains of industrialization triggered a type of research interested in the spatial and human elements of material culture which refer to the industrial society. It provides the material and technical circumstances linked to the origin of the construction of industrial establishments or equipments that marked the life of the population or of social groups. In fact, the analysis of the cultural, social, and economical changes that occurred in the wake of the capitalist organization of production

Figure 2 The ‘Woman of Willendof’, discovered in 1908, by archeologist Josef Szombathy, in the Palaeolithic archaeological site located in the proximities of Willendorf, in Austria. Oolitic limestone 43/8 inches (11.1 cm) high. Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna.

constitutes a theme of the highest impact in mankind’s history (see Marxist Archaeology; Historical Materialist Approaches). Although the conceptual and methodological advances in the cultural heritage field are undeniable, the sites are continually threatened by flaws in the strategies of monument protection, which seem to become worse due to inspection difficulties and belated decisions (see Historic Preservation Laws). Although the Stonehenge monolithic complex on Salisbury Plain is acknowledged as one of the classical monuments of megalithic civilizations, with inscriptions that range from 2800 to 1100 BC, it has only received intensive protection since 1985 when visits to the place were restricted and the celebrations of the summer solstice or the June festivals, which attracted thousands of people for more than 20 years, were suspended. Although belated, restrictions eventually inhibited damage to the stones and the surrounding landscape, but failed to stop time’s destructive action on the drawings and inscriptions (Figure 3). The lack of previous prospective research on the environmental impact of real estate or extractive enterprises, coupled to deficient information of the population in the region close to the sites, also represents threats for the conservation of material culture (see Environmental Impact Assessment and the Law). The development of tourist activities and the uncontrolled flux to certain sensitive areas drastically affects ecology parks, historical cities, and archaeological

WORLD HERITAGE SITES, TYPES AND LAWS 2217

Figure 3 The monolithic compound, Stonehenge, located in the south of England, on Salisbury Plain.

Figure 4 The Amazonian landscape – Brazil.

sites. Vandalism is frequently practiced on prehistoric cave paintings, while graffiti writing by careless tourists is also a source of concern in the preservation of material culture. However, the most dangerous threats to World Heritage Sites lie in the predatory action of great multinational enterprises that do not hesitate to implode caves and underground caverns for mineral extraction, change river courses and waterways, and destroy areas teeming with biodiversity (see Ethical Issues and Responsibilities). The case of

the Amazon region in Brazil is highly emblematic (Figure 4). The occurrence of similar activities is now worldwide and foregrounds the fact that, even though many countries adopt hard and fast rules for the preservation of their heritage, these should be considered as an initial stage in the protection of archaeological heritage. The preservation of World Heritage Sites has been ruled by international cooperation agreements, by normative documents that enhance grassroot principles

2218 WORLD HERITAGE SITES, TYPES AND LAWS

with a global range, by regional and national plans of protection, and by law enforcement. The protection of historical sites is based on well-defined recommendations made by international congresses since the 1930s. A close reading of these documents, coupled to the mediation of UNESCO and the International Council of Monuments and Sites (1965), makes possible an exchange of experiences between specialists and the materialization of interventions worldwide. The broadening of the heritage concept, as defined in The Hague Convention (1954) and the Declaration of Amsterdam (1975), not only favored the preservation of great and notorious heritage sites and artifacts, but also included ‘low-key’ monuments, urban groups, or cities, that have acquired cultural significance through the centuries. Further, the ICOMOS Cultural Tourism Charter of 1976 set objective guidelines on the fruition of historical heritage derived from tourist activities. Motivated by a critical analysis in the wake of the spread of international tourism, the Charter warned about the deleterious effects of unplanned tourism (see Tourism and Archaeology). World archaeological heritage issues received special attention in the 1990 Charter of Lausanne. After 14 years, the Convention for the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage proposed the acknowledgment of remains of human existence underwater periodically or continually during at least the past 100 years. The Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003) and the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of the Cultural Expressions (2005) insisted on the urgent need to safeguard the world’s cultural heritage, while enhancing the dangers and challenges that face it. See also: Artifacts, Overview; Environmental Impact

Assessment and the Law; Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Historic Preservation Laws; Historical Materialist Approaches; Marxist Archaeology; Tourism and Archaeology; Who Owns the Past?.

Further Reading Clark K (1999) Review. In: Palmer M and Neaverson P (1988) (eds.) Industrial Archaeology, Principles and Practice, pp. 239–240. New York: Routledge.

Choay F (1992) L’Allegorie du Patrimoine. Paris: Le Seuil. De Varine H (2002) Les Racines du Futur: Le Patrimoine au Service du De´veloppement Local. Chalon sur Saoˆne: Collection De´cision Locale. Funari PP (2000) Conservation of cultural heritage in Brazil: some remarks. Archaeologia Polona, pp. 191–201. Warsaw: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences. Funari PP (2001) Destruction and conservation of cultural property in Brazil: Academic and practical challenges. In: Layton R, Stone PG, and Thomas J (eds.) Destruction and Conservation of Cultural Property, pp. 93–101. New York: Routledge. Gombrich EH (2005) The Story of Art. London: Phaidon. Halevy J-P (2001) Patrimoine mondial, patrimoine franc¸ais. In: Les Cahiers de la Ligue Urbaine et Rurale. Paris: Patrimoine et Cadre de Vie. Herrero P and Luis C (1998) Historical heritage as a factor for economic development. In: International Congress Vallodolid. Funadcio´n del Patrimonio Historico de Castilla y Leo´n. ICOMOS (1964) The Venice Charter. http://www.international. icomos.org (accessed Mar. 2007. ICOMOS (1976) Letter of Cultural Tourism. International Seminar on Contemporary Tourism and Humanism. http://www. international.icomos.org (accessed Mar. 2007. ICOMOS/ICAHM(1990) Letter of Lausanne. Charter for the Protection and Management of Archaeological Heritage Lausanne. http://www.international.icomos.org (accessed Mar. 2007. Jokilehto J (2006) A History of Architectural Conservation. http:// www.iccrom.org/eng/e-docs/ICCROM_05HistoryofConservation.pdf (accessed Mar. 2007. Pelegrini SCA (2004) La Cultura y el Patrimonio Histo´rico. Las estrategias de preservacio´n y rehabilitacio´n del paisaje urbano. In: Latinoame´rica. Revista de Estudios Latinoamericanos – No. 38. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional de Me´xico. Pinard J (1985) L’Arche´ologie industrielle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Rambelli G (2002) South America, underwater archaeology. In: Orser JR and Charles E (eds.) Encyclopaedia of Historical Archaeology, pp. 516–519. London: Routledge. UNESCO (1954) Hague Convention: Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. http:// www.international.icomos.org (accessed Mar. 2007. UNESCO (1969) European Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage. Council of Europe. http://www. international.icomos.org (accessed Mar. 2007. UNESCO (1975) Declaration of Amsterdam. Congress on the European Architectural Heritage, Council of Europe. http:// www.international.icomos.org (accessed Mar. 2007. UNESCO (2001) Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. http://portal.unesco.org/ (accessed Mar. 2007. UNESCO (2003) Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. http://portal.unesco.org/ (accessed Mar. 2007. UNESCO (2005) Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of the Cultural Expressions. http://portal.unesco. org/ (accessed Mar. 2007.

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WORLD SYSTEMS THEORY P Nick Kardulias, The College of Wooster, Wooster, OH, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary incorporation The complex process whereby peripheral groups become members of a world-system dominated by a core. The core typically exerts pressure on peripheries in the attempt to extract raw resources and labor, but the level of involvement in the world-system varies on a continuum from weak to strong. ingot A block of metal produced by smelting of ore and cast into a shape that facilitates storage or transportation.

In the search for comprehensive explanatory models, archaeologists have turned to a number of different approaches. Overall, we can divide these approaches into those that espouse a broader, generalizing perspective that is applicable to many times and places and others that stress the particular ways that specific groups structured their lives in the past. Worldsystems theory is one of the former approaches. World-systems analysis covers a broad range of issues and topics, but this article concentrates on a basic definition of key terms, and some problems, and suggested alterations in the theory to accommodate the work of archaeologists, especially in terms of core/ periphery relations and the process of incorporation. World-systems theory shares with other models that emphasize intersocietal interaction the basic tenet that past cultures did not exist in pristine isolation; rather, constant contacts, both direct and indirect, affected groups involved in exchange networks. Where worldsystems theorists differ with other interaction models is in the geographic extent they consider, the stress on the hierarchical nature of systems with a focus on economics, and for some, the desire to outline longterm cycles of expansion and contraction in system structure and intensity. World-systems theory developed as a generalized approach to the study of intersocietal contact, and originated with the work of Immanuel Wallerstein, who studied the emergence of modern capitalism. According to him, world-systems ‘‘. . . are defined by the fact that their self-containment as an economicmaterial entity is based on extensive division of labor and that they contain within them a multiplicity of cultures.’’ He uses the term ‘world’ to refer to interacting politico-economic units, and not some global entity. Furthermore, he distinguishes between two

types of world-systems; world empires and world economies; the difference is the presence in the former of a single political structure over a vast area. Furthermore, the operation of a world economy requires the presence of core-states and peripheral areas. Core-states possess complex political structures (stratified class systems with large bureaucracies) and, by means of superior technology, exercise control over the major facilities of production, transportation, and communication. Political organization in peripheral areas is at the pre-state or incipient state level and is relatively weak compared to that in core-states. Corestates incorporate peripheral areas into the capitalist world economy because these peripheral regions often contain important natural resources. Through political and economic control of the system, Wallerstein contends, core-states exploited the labor and material resources of peripheral areas and received a disproportionately large share of the surplus or benefits. He argues further that European nationstates, through colonization, competed among themselves for control or access to peripheral areas in order to increase profits. Interposed between cores and peripheries are semi-peripheries which often act as intermediaries between the two extremes of the system. Over the past three decades, various scholars have significantly augmented the original world-systems formulation in order to address a series of issues. Wallerstein’s study of the relationship between core-states and peripheral areas provides an excellent model of European expansion in the early modern period. One problem, however, is his treatment of incorporation into a world economy as one-sided. Thomas Hall, among others, argues that one must study the local conditions in peripheral areas as well as the capitalist economy in core-states in order to understand fully the nature of incorporation. Hall notes that incorporation into a world economy is a matter of degree and that nonstate peripheral societies play a more active role than generally believed. This aspect is particularly true for various periods in antiquity when complete domination of a peripheral zone was technologically and politically impossible. As a result, incorporation was less encompassing in antiquity. Furthermore, some scholars note that people on the periphery can at times negotiate effectively because they control access to a key resource. Peripheries exhibit variation. In general, peripheries tend to have decentralized political and economic systems, especially when compared to core regions. Furthermore, there are several types of peripheries.

2220 WORLD SYSTEMS THEORY

One type is an extraction zone that supplies raw materials to core-states. In such places, indigenous populations perform most of the labor required to procure raw materials, and can be identified by the presence of quarry pits, but with minimal evidence of processing (e.g., metal quarries with initial processing of ores into ingots, but not finished products). Second, a fully incorporated periphery will have evidence of foreign installations that indicate the incursion of a core-state, complete with administrative structures and central storage facilities. A third type is the contested periphery between competing cores. In such areas, there may be fortified outposts facing each other in strategic locations; barrier walls may also be present. A major issue for archaeologists is the degree to which the world-systems model applies to the ancient world. Wallerstein suggests the world-system was an outgrowth of capitalism and is thus a creation of the sixteenth century. Archaeologists have applied the approach to Mesoamerica, the American Midwest, and other regions. For the Old World, Philip Kohl has modified world-systems theory to fit ancient conditions. In a critique of the primitivist views of M. I. Finley and others, Kohl cites many examples of price fixing, inflation, and market mentality that demonstrate the complexity of ancient economies. He builds a strong argument for the existence of an intricate multicentered world system during the Bronze Age in Southwest Asia. Unlike many modern technologies, ancient ones were often portable and could be moved easily from core to periphery. This fact, along with the lack of major colonization, made it possible for peripheries to retain their autonomy and precluded the exploitation and underdevelopment characteristic of the modern world system. Kohl argues that the barbarian peripheries had a significant impact on how core regions developed. Gunder Frank argues that areas on the margins of the Near East, while important as regions of economic interaction, were subject to the influences of the ‘super powers’ of the time: Egypt, Assyria, the Hittites, and other states in Mesopotamia. Frank contends that an Afro-Eurasian world system has existed for 5000 years, since the origins of the state in Mesopotamia and Egypt. In addition to the long history of the world system, Frank lists five other theoretical premises: (1) the seminal importance of long-distance trade relations, (2) the accumulation of capital (‘cumulation of accumulation’) drives history, (3) core/periphery structure is a key trait, (4) shifting hegemony and rivalry characterizes the world system, and (5) economic development of the system occurs in long cycles of alternating ascending (or A) phases and descending (or B) phases. Reviewing world-systems applications, Edward Schortman and Patricia Urban suggest the units of

study should be society and ethnicity, which are connected by the flow of information. Their archaeological work in Mesoamerica stresses the role of elites (see Social Inequality, Development of) who used regional interaction to generate and sustain their elevated status. Christopher Chase-Dunn and T. D. Hall go further and argue that change occurs not within individual societies, but in world-systems. Their goal is to provide a comparative matrix within which to study contacts for all societies, even stateless foraging groups. Of special relevance is their definition of two kinds of core/periphery relationships. What they call core/periphery differentiation involves groups of varying sociopolitical complexity that engage in active interchange. Core/periphery hierarchy refers to the situation in which one or more groups dominate others in the system. They argue this distinction is necessary because exploitation does not necessarily characterize all interactions between cores and peripheries. Chase-Dunn and Hall also propose a typology of world-systems based on societal complexity and mode of production: (1) kin-based mode dominant, (2) tributary modes dominant (urban cultures), (3) capitalist mode dominant, and (4) socialist mode dominant. Category 2 includes both primary empires and multicentered world systems in which peripheral zones, empires, and autonomous states interact. One important hypothesis derived from this model is that social innovation occurs readily in semiperipheral zones because they receive input from cores and peripheries and are not burdened by excessive core controls. Chase-Dunn and Hall have issued a call for case studies by archaeologists to provide the comparative database necessary to test this hypothesis. They also suggest that world-systems are multiscalar, providing a means to examine large empires and ‘small worldsystems’ of foraging or horticultural societies, such as the Wintu of Northern California. In addition, Hall and Chase-Dunn suggest that there are four types of boundaries in world-systems; these parameters rarely coincide. The boundaries are: (1) a boundary of information or cultural flows; (2) a boundary of luxury or prestige goods flows; (3) a boundary of political/military interaction; and (4) a boundary of bulk goods flows. Mundane materials, which often constitute the majority of bulk goods, are typically embedded in the information and prestige nets, yet are distinct from the military net. Prehistorian Andrew Sherratt has used the term ‘margin’ to refer to a zone that does not interact directly with a core, but does provide materials that are critical to the operation of a world-system. He points to the role of amber from the Baltic region and various metals from Central Europe in the Mediterranean trade system. The urban core of the

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Near East and the Aegean in the Bronze Age stimulated the exchange (see Exchange Systems) of many commodities through multiple links, without members from either geographical extreme ever coming into direct contact. Parts of this system go back to the Neolithic. Sherratt implies that the Bronze Age is aptly named, not simply because of the artifacts, but because this metal alloy fueled the economic expansion on which many early states depended. More recently, Mitch Allen has added the notion of contested peripheries, that is, those areas in the interstices between empires that the latter struggle to control (see above). On occasion, people in the contested region have the ability to negotiate with the contending parties to gain the best deal for themselves. One of the important aspects of world-systems theory is its ability to crosscut disciplines in an attempt to determine the nature of cultural change over time. The approach brings together sociologists (Chase-Dunn, Hall, Wilma Dunaway), political scientists (David Wilkinson, William Thompson), historians (Richard L. Slatta), economists (A. G. Frank), archaeologists (Kohl, Sherratt), and others in the examination of intersocietal interaction, often with a focus on antiquity. In this way, world-systems theory acts as a bridge among the social sciences. Volumes that demonstrate this interdisciplinary nature include works by Chase-Dunn and Hall, Frank and Gills, Hall, and Kardulias. See also: Exchange Systems; Social Inequality, Development of.

Further Reading Blanton R and Feinman G (1984) The Mesoamerican World System. American Anthropologist 86: 673–682.

World Wide Web

See: Internet, Archaeology on.

Chase-Dunn C and Anderson EN (eds.) (2005) The Historical Evolution of World-Systems. New York and London: Palgrave. Chase-Dunn C and Hall TD (eds.) (1991) Core/Periphery Relations in Precapitalist Worlds. Boulder: Westview. Chase-Dunn C and Hall TD (1997) Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems. Boulder: Westview. Gunder FA (1993) Bronze age world system cycles. Current Anthropology 34: 383–429. Hall TD (2000) A World-Systems Reader. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Hall TD (2006) [Re]periphalization, [re]incorporation, frontiers, and nonstate societies: Continuities and discontinuities in globalization processes. In: Gills BK and Thompson WR (eds.) Globalization and Global History, pp. 96–113. London: Routledge. Hollis S (2005) Contact, incorporation, and the North American Southeast. Journal of World-Systems Research 11(1(July)): 95–130. Kardulias PN (1999) World-Systems Theory in Practice: Leadership, Production, and Exchange. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Kohl PL (1989) The use and abuse of world systems theory: The case of the ‘‘pristine’’ west Asian state. In: Lamberg-Karlovsky CC (ed.) Archaeological Thought in America, pp. 218–240. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pailes RA and Whitecotton JW (1975) The Greater Southwest and Mesoamerican ‘world’ system. In: Savage WW and Thompson SI (eds.) The Frontier: Comparative Studies, 2, pp. 105–121. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Peregrine P (1992) Mississippian Evolution: A World-System Perspective. Madison: Prehistory Press. Schortman EM and Urban PA (1987) Modeling interregional interaction in prehistory. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 11: 37–95. Shannon TR (1996) An Introduction to the World-System Perspective. 2nd edn. Boulder: Westview. Sherratt A (1993) What would a Bronze-Age world system look like? Relations between temperate Europe and the Mediterranean in later prehistory. Journal of European Archaeology 1(2): 1–57. Wallerstein I (1974) The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press. Wallerstein I (2004) World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

2222 WRITING SYSTEMS

WRITING SYSTEMS Denise Schmandt-Besserat, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA Michael Erard, Austin, TX, USA ã 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary alphabet A writing system based on a set of letters, each standing for a single spoken sound. codex (pl. codices) A book made of bark or hide that folded accordion-style; a writing surface was usually created with a thin coat of lime. cuneiform The writing system developed in Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC. The script was written with a triangular stylus, which gave the strokes their characteristic angular shape. glyph An individual sign in a Mesoamerican writing system. pictograph A character in the form of a picture representing either the sound of the word evoked or the object represented. stelae A stone monolith on which Mesoamerican glyphs were written. syllabary A writing system based on characters each representing a syllable, or unit of spoken language consisting of at least a vowel with, sometimes, additional vowels or consonants. tablet A lump of clay prepared in a cushion shape to support a written document. Uruk The Sumerian metropolis where writing is held to have been invented. writing A system of human communication by the mean of arbitrary visual signs.

East can writing be traced to an antecedent. The signs of the Near Eastern cuneiform script derived their shape, meaning, and economic function from a 4000-year-old system of counters called ‘tokens’. The long evolution from tokens to writing can be summarized as follows (see Asia, West: Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad).

The Near East Starting about 7500 BC, from the Eastern Mediterranean coast to the confines of present-day Iran, tokens served as counters to keep track of agricultural products. The small objects were modeled in clay in striking shapes, each standing for a specific unit of a commodity (Figure 1). The tokens reflected an archaic counting system called concrete counting, which was characterized by the use of special numerations, or

The Origins of Writing According to the present scholarly consensus, writing was invented independently three times on our planet Earth: in the Near East, about 3200 BC, in China about 1250 BC and in Mesoamerica around 650 BC. By ‘writing’, we mean a set of graphic marks that represent (systematically, if not consistently) the units of a specific language. The linguistic units to be represented (whether individual sounds, syllables, parts of words, or some combination of the three) are a function of the structure of the language, the needs and traditions of the society that uses the system, and the capabilities of the human brain. These three writing systems were chosen for discussion because they have been, or are being, deciphered. Because it is not known what language is represented by the Indus Valley script, another ancient writing system, it will not be covered here. In addition, clear evidence exists that these three are autochthonous. Carbon 14 dating disproves the claims that Egyptian hieroglyphics were created earlier than the Mesopotamian scripts. Of the three instances, only that in the Near

Figure 1 Tokens from Uruk, present day Iraq. Each token stands for units of goods such as one jar of oil, one animal, one measure of grain, or one length of textile.

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sequences of number words, to count different commodities. For example sheep or goat, were counted with tokens in the shape of cylinders that symbolized specifically the animal numeration, and small and large baskets of grain were counted with cones and spheres that stood for the grain numeration (see Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant). About 3500 BC, the budding Mesopotamian state administration created round clay envelopes in order to keep together in storage the tokens representing outstanding debts. This innovation prompted the remarkable changes described below: 1. Tokens were impressed on the surface of the envelopes to show how many counters of what shape were included inside. (Figure 2) The token impressions reduced the three-dimensional counters to two-dimensional signs. Wedges and circular signs replaced the cones and sphere tokens to symbolize numbers of baskets of grain. 2. The token impressions were laid out on the surface of the envelopes according to the following rules a. signs of the same kind were entered on a line. b. the number of units of merchandise were shown in one-to-one correspondence. For example, three small baskets of grain were shown by three wedges. c. The lines of signs representing greater units were placed above those of lesser units. For example, a line of circular signs representing large baskets of grain was inscribed above a line of wedges representing small baskets. 3. About 3200 BC, tablets – solid clay balls – replaced the hollow clay envelopes (Figure 3). The signs impressed on the archaic tablets were the same as those impressed on envelopes.

They also followed the same rules of one-to-one correspondence; the arrangement of signs in lines; and the hierarchical order of the lines. 4. About 3100 BC, a reed stylus with a prismatic tip was used to trace the outline of tokens instead of impressing the actual tokens. In the Near East, therefore, it took writing 4000 years to achieve its format. The earliest signs of the archaic impressed and incised script derived their form from tokens. They were inscribed on clay tablets that derived from clay envelopes. The use of a reed stylus presaged the stylus with a triangular tip, adopted about 2800 BC, which created the characteristic nail-shape of the Mesopotamian cuneiform script. This format, with only minor changes, continued as long as the cuneiform script was used in the Near East.

Mesopotamian Archaic Writing During the two centuries following its invention, writing made great strides in Mesopotamia to communicate data more and more efficiently. First, about 3100 BC, the notations in one-to-one-correspondence that suited the archaic method of concrete counting, were superseded by the appearance of abstract numerals – signs that represented abstract numbers used indiscriminately to count various commodities. The impressed signs for measures of grain, the wedge and circular signs became the first numerals standing for 1 and 10. Thirty-three jars of oil were no longer shown by 33 oil-tokens or 33 oil-token impressions. They were indicated by three circular signs and three wedges (Figure 4). Second, about 3000 BC, personal names were recorded with phonograms – signs standing for

Figure 2 Envelope from Susa, Iran, bearing two lines of signs impressed with the tokens stored inside. Each of the three lenticular disks stand for ten animals (sheep or goats) and each cylinder for one animal amounting to a total of 33 animals.

2224 WRITING SYSTEMS

2 5

Figure 3 Tablet bearing two lines of impressed signs standing for two large and three small units of grain, from Godin Tepe, Iran.

Figure 5 Gold bowl, from the royal cemetery of Ur, inscribed with the name of Meskalamdug.

Figure 4 Tablet from Godin Tepe, Iran, illustrating an incised sign standing for a ‘jar of oil’ preceded by three circular signs each standing for ‘ten’ and three wedges each standing for ‘one’ ¼ 33 jars of oil.

sounds. These signs are dubbed ‘pictographs’ because they consisted of small sketches of things easy to draw. The signs, however, did not refer to the object they represented, but to the sound of the word they suggested. The drawing of an arrowhead was read ‘ti’ which was the sound of the word for ‘arrowhead’ in Sumerian, the language spoken at the time in the south of Mesopotamia. It is particularly important to note that the stage of ‘pictographs’ never meant writing with small pictures. Instead, the ‘pictographs’ heralded the Mesopotamian phonetic syllabary – the earliest script in which signs represented the sounds of words syllables. The earliest fully phonetic texts consisted in inscriptions on art objects such as gold vessels and lapis lazuli seals from the Ur Royal cemetery, c. 2700 BC. The short texts merely transcribed the sounds of an individual’s name into signs, for example: Meskalamdug, (Figure 5) or a name and a title, Puabi, Queen. These texts were no longer economic, listing numbers of

goods. Instead, their function was funerary. Namely, their purpose was to satisfy the Mesopotamian belief that preserving the name of the dead secured eternal life in the underworld. At a next stage, worshippers’ statuettes were inscribed with a deceased’s name, title, patronymics, the name of the god or the temple to which the statue was dedicated, and a plea for a long afterlife. This second type of funerary text was a total departure from the logographic lists of goods for bookkeeping. They transcribed the names of individuals, gods, and temples and therefore were almost entirely phonetic. They included verbs and complements, introducing syntax. The texts written on the statuettes started to emulate the sound and structure of spoken language. This represented the take-off of writing. A century later, around 2500 BC, the Mesopotamian cuneiform script was used, for example, to write a lengthy royal text describing the divine birth of a king, his victory against his neighbors, the ensuing treaty and a powerful curse against eventual violators.

3200–2900 BC The Extension of Mesopotamian Archaic Writing The 300 archaic impressed tablets, dated 3200– 3000 BC, have been recovered over a wide geographic area. (Figure 6) Some were excavated in Uruk and Khafajah present-day Iraq, and others in Godin Tepe, near Hamadan, Iran, and Susa and Choga Mish, in Elam, present-day Iran, as well as Habuba Kabira and

WRITING SYSTEMS 2225 34⬚

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26⬚ beveled-rim bowl find greatest density of finds Inscribed tablet finds Uruk IV Uruk III Proto-Elamite Other finds Impressed tablet Hollow clay sphere 23 Number of finds at site Ancient coastline Ancient course of river Scale 1:8 000 000 0 0

Figure 6 Map. Distribution of the impressed tablets.

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Ur Eridu

2226 WRITING SYSTEMS

Jebel Aruda, Syria. It is quite remarkable that, with exceedingly rare exceptions, the impressed texts shared exactly the same tablet format and sign layout. This suggests that scribes of the Uruk metropolis established precise rules concerning the direction of the script and the organization of signs on a tablet which they imposed on the subject states of Elam and Syria. With the collapse of Uruk, writing disappeared from both Elam and Syria. After a hiatus of one century Elam created its own script, proto-Elamite, which owed only the numeral system to the archaic Mesopotamian tablets. Egypt followed, borrowing the Mesopotamian phonetic rebus system. But the analytical processes involved in writing and reading must have felt threatening to the Iranian Plateau, Anatolia, and the Levantine cultures who remained nonliterate. In fact literacy was adopted by few select cultures in the third millennium BC, among which was the Indus Valley Civilization, which devised a script about 2500 BC. Crete and the Aegean countries used linear A and B between 2200–1300 BC.

The Mesopotamian Cuneiform Script The word ‘cuneiform’ derives from the Latin word cuneus, meaning ‘wedge’. It refers to the wedge- or nail-shaped signs of the Mesopotamian script after the adoption of a blunt reed stylus about 2800 BC. (Figure 7) In order to write faster, the scribes exchanged the previous prismatic stylus for one with a triangular end that could be rotated quickly between the fingers to impress strokes in 8 different positions. In time, the cuneiform signs became more and more simplified. The sign for sheep and that for an arrow head were reduced to a few strokes that no longer looked like the original token or pictograph they derived from. Philologists generally advocate that the cuneiform

Figure 7 Cuneiform economic tablet, from Drehem.

signs became rotated 90
counter-clockwise early in the third millennium BC, but the fact that the script on the monumental inscriptions always remained vertical does not support this assumption. The scribes strived to enter more and more information on the clay tablets by covering all the faces of a tablet; the obverse, reverse and sometimes even spilling along the edges. Writing on the reverse meant turning the tablet on the side (like the page of a book) or more frequently rotating the tablet over the lower edge. The economic tablets became partitioned into multiple cases, each dealing with a separate transaction and long texts were divided into horizontal or vertical columns. No punctuation was used and neither was there any division between words. After a short phase when writing was entered boustrophedon, that is, alternately reversing course at each line, the direction of the script from left to right became standard. Tablets could be fired to ensure permanence, but in practice only the texts of royal archives were subjected to the kiln. The Mesopotamian cuneiform script always remained a complex system which relied on a mixture of several types of signs such as logograms, determinatives and phonetic signs. Common terms such as ‘sheep’ udu, or ‘shepherd’ siba, were never spelled out, but were indicated by a logogram. Determinatives were signs placed before or after a logogram to clarify the general class of items the object belonged to. For example, a star indicated the name of deities. There were also determinatives for birds, fish, plant, trees, objects of wood, leather, and stone, rivers, towns, or countries. Finally, names were written phonetically with signs standing for sounds. The drawing of the head of a man stood for the sound LU and that of the mouth for KA; these were the sounds of the words for ‘man’ and ‘mouth’ in the Sumerian language. The syllables or words composing an individual’s name were written like a rebus. For example, the modern name Lucas, could have been written with the two signs mentioned above ‘lu – ka’. Foreign loan words like MA-NA, a measure of weight, or TAM-KAR, merchant, were also among the first words transcribed phonetically. Polyvalence and polyphony were added difficulties in writing, reading and deciphering Mesopotamian cuneiform. Polyvalence refers to the instances when one sign bore different meanings. For example, the star-shape sign could be either the determinative for a god’s name, or it could stand for ‘An’, the sky god, as well as for ‘sky’. Moreover, signs could be used in two ways: as a logograph or as a phonetic sign. For instance, the sketch of an arrow could stand for ‘arrow’ or for the sound TI that was the sound of the word for arrow in Sumerian. This does not seem

WRITING SYSTEMS 2227

to have bothered the scribes who knew according to the context if the sign was to be read logographically or phonetically. For example, if the sign for ‘arrow’ was preceded by a numeral, it meant a number of arrows. But if the sign was preceded by a star, the determinative for ‘god’, it meant the familiar personal name ‘God is life’, because the word for ‘life’ in Sumerian was pronounced ‘ti’ the same way as that for ‘arrow’. Polyphony refers to the many signs that had several possible phonetic values. The Sumerian agglutinative language had few verbal inflexions to be translated phonetically because each word or verb was expressed by a single syllable modified by prefixes and postfixes. For example, du, was the verb ‘to build’, i-du ¼ ‘he builds’, nu-i-du ¼ he did not build. Plural was indicated by adding ‘me’ to nouns. For example ab-me is translated as ‘elders’. Literary texts were already present in the Early Dynastic III period c. 2500 BC at Fara and Abu Salabigh. But cuneiform writing reached its classical period about 2100 BC, during the rule of Gudea of Lagash, when the texts achieved an unprecedented clarity and precision of language. At the time the cuneiform script was still used predominantly to register economic transactions. But there were also lengthy cuneiform royal texts written on large hollow cylinders; literary and religious texts including hymns, incantation and prayers; lists of omens according to the observations of the livers of sacrificial sheep; private or state correspondence; lexical texts entering the corresponding signs in two or three languages, and school texts. Writing gave great prestige to Mesopotamia and in particular to Sumer, the culture deemed to have invented the first script. Writing was therefore adopted by neighbors and conquerors such as the Akkadians, Elamites, Eblaites, Hittites, Luwians, Hurrians, and Persians. About 2330, the adaptation of the cuneiform script, created for the mostly monosyllabic Sumerian language, to the Semitic-inflected Akkadian tongue – meaning that words change forms to indicate the grammatical function, gender, number, or tense (like the Latin cases) – proved particularly awkward. The Akkadians adopted the Sumerian phonetic values while also adding their own. For example the sign for ‘hand’ could be read ‘A’, as the Sumerians did, but also ‘IDU’ ( or ‘id’, ‘ed’, ‘it’, ‘et’, ) the Akkadian word for ‘hand’. Wherever it was adopted in the ancient Near East, writing brought schools. The first Mesopotamian schools, such as that at Nippur, played an especially important role in the standardization of the script. Despite the distance that separated the various cities, all Mesopotamian student scribes were learning signs

for all possible things, such as plants, utensils, geographical names or professions, from identical lists, written in the same way and even in exactly the same order. This avoided the creation of multiple local writing systems that would have complicated communication. Of course the Mesopotamian schools had only a few students. Even the Mesopotamian kings did not know how to read and write but had to rely on their scribes for their correspondence. It is difficult to assess the rate of literacy in ancient Mesopotamia from the distribution of tablets. The houses of the elite yielded a few tablets, generally found scattered in several rooms. Archives of cuneiform texts were recovered at the sites of Girsu, Drehem, Mari and Nineveh. Formal libraries were uncovered at Umma, Sippar and Larsa. The most famous library remains that of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal at Nineveh that may have held some 5000–6000 tablets. It was sacked by the Babylonian and Mede coalition in 612 BC. The cuneiform script stands out as a unique source of information on the ancient Near East. It portrays powerfully and vividly the values and beliefs, the myths and legends of long vanished civilizations. But starting in the first millennium BC the cuneiform script waned, challenged by alphabetic scripts. The transition was slow and incremental, for example, in the seventh century BC the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal was dictating his edicts to two scribes. The first wrote the king’s words in Akkadian, impressing the corresponding cuneiform text with a stylus on a clay tablet. The second wrote in Aramaic, a language spoken by many subject peoples. Aramaic was an alphabetic script that was traced with a flowing hand on a papyrus scroll. The last known cuneiform clay tablets are dated to about 300 AD.

The Alphabet Several alphabetic scripts appeared about 1800–1500 BC in the Levant along the Eastern Mediterranean coast. Among them, short Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions were found engraved on votive objects at the turquoise mines of Serabit al-Khadim in the Sinai. Proto-Canaanite ostraca or texts scratched on pottery sherds were recovered at Gezer and at Lachish incised on the blade of a bronze dagger. Finally, the famous Bronze Age Mediterranean harbor of Ugarit produced an abecedary impressed with a triangular stylus on a clay tablet in the same style as the cuneiform script. The first lengthy and intelligible alphabetic inscription is a funerary text written in the 22 letter Phoenician alphabet on the sarcophagus of Ahiram, a king who ruled Byblos about 1000 BC. All of these early alphabets shared the same acrophonic principle,

2228 WRITING SYSTEMS

i.e., the pictographic signs stood for the initial sound of the word they suggested. For example a sign representing a house, stood for ‘B’, the initial sound of ‘bay’, the word for ‘house’, in the Canaanite language spoken at the time in the Levant. Also, the first alphabetic scripts represented only consonants, or sounds that stop or restrict the air flow of speech such as b, c, d, f, g, etc. There were no letters for vowels, or a, e, i, o, u. These sounds had to be guessed. For instance, the English word ‘love’ would have been inscribed ‘lv’. Because they use the same acrophonic and consonantal system, all the early alphabets are held to derive from an earlier still unknown original prototype. The great innovation of the first alphabet was to systematically create a special sign to match each phoneme or distinct sound of a language. It is likely that the individual or scribal school that invented the first alphabet took the idea from the Egyptian hieroglyphic system, which included phonograms standing for a consonantal sound, among other syllabic signs, logograms, and determinatives. For example the hieroglyph in the shape of a zigzag line stood for ‘n’and the sign representing a horned viper stood for ‘f’. The alphabetic principle was particularly advantageous because languages use only a limited number of sounds. As a result, the alphabet streamlined writing to 40–22 signs, compared to the 600–150 signs used in previous syllabaries. In turn, this signified that alphabetic writing and reading became more accessible and literacy ceased to be the privilege of the scribal elite. The second great advantage of the alphabet was to be easily adaptable to different languages. The Phoenicians sea-merchants, located in present-day Lebanon at the turn from the second to first millennium BC, played a major role in its dissemination as they crisscrossed the Mediterranean Sea peddling their goods. The alphabet spread south when it was adopted by the Hebrews and Aramaeans and towards the West to Greece, perhaps as early as twelfth– eleventh century BC. The Greeks adapted the Semitic alphabet to their Indo-European language adding 7 signs for vowels. As a result, their 27-letter alphabet could accurately and completely transcribe every spoken word, leaving no ambiguity. For instance, words sharing the same consonants as in English ‘bad’, ‘bed’, ‘bid’, could be clearly distinguished. Phoenician, Archaic Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek daily life texts were cursive scripts written on papyrus or parchment. Papyrus was a paper-like material made from the stem of the papyrus plant. Parchment made of sheepskin or vellum, of calf skin, were also used for alphabetic writing. The Etruscans, who occupied the present province of Tuscany in Italy adopted the Greek alphabet, only

modifying the shape of letters. In turn, the Etruscan alphabet became that of the Romans when they conquered Etruria in the early sixth century BC. Subsequently, the Roman or Latin alphabet was imposed on all the nations of the Empire, such as the Gauls, the Angles, and the Germanic tribes who inhabited present day France, England, and Germany. The alphabet used today in the West is the direct descendant of the Latin alphabet. The alphabet was thus invented only once in the Levant in the second millennium BC and ever since was incessantly manipulated to accommodate many tongues and cultures. In other words, all the present-day Arabic, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Armenian, Ethiopian, Tamil, Ethiopian, Navaho, as well as the Western Latin alphabet all derive from the same unknown original prototype (Figure 8). Alphabetic systems are now used on all the continents of America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. China is unique in preserving its own system. The alphabet that prevails throughout the word is now 3500 years old. The cuneiform script had lasted for three milleniums. It replaced the 5000year-old token system. Each of these communication systems exhibits an unmatched stability among human creations.

Chinese Among the writing traditions of Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, and China, the Chinese is the only one with an unbroken record of use over the last three milleniums leading up to the modern time. The first evidence of writing in China comes from north central China in the Shang region and dates to about 1200 BC. There is no evidence that the Shang were solely responsible for developing writing in China, but there is also no evidence of Chinese writing at any other place at an earlier time. Approximately 4500 symbols have been identified on shards of turtle shell and cow bone that were used in divination practices. Questions to an oracle were written on the shell or bone, which were then heated in the fire; the resulting cracks were read, and the answers given were also inscribed in the bone. About 1500 of these 4500 symbols have survived as modern Chinese characters. Early forms of simple marks or tallies scratched onto ceramics date to 5000 BC, but these do not qualify as precursors of Chinese writing, as no evidence exists that they represented either meanings or sounds. Other ceramics with graphically complex marks and designs come from the Liang chu and Ta wen k’ou cultures and date to 5000 BC; many of the images depicted animals and may have been emblems for names of clans. Though these are often considered to be candidates for precursors of writing, they do not

WRITING SYSTEMS 2229 Ethiopian

Aramaic

Jewish Arabic Proto-Canaanite

Phoenician Hebrew

Archaic Greek Latin Greek 1700 B.C. 1600 1500 1400 1300 1200 1100 1000 900

800 700 600

500

400 300 200 100

0

100 200 300 400 500 600 A.D.

Figure 8 The transmission of the alphabet.

represent linguistic units themselves either. No archaeological evidence has been uncovered to push back the date of the origins of Chinese writing. From AD 1250 onwards, Chinese writing evolved in three steps: 1. A logographic stage, where a written sign conventionally represented a single word. In this stage, objects, persons and events were graphically represented. Conventionalization of the signs transformed them from visual images, or pictographs, to logographs, or representations of words. Gradually the signs became less depictive and more abstract. (Figures 9 and 10). 2. A demi-logographic or ‘rebus’ stage, where a sign represented either (1) a name or a word or (2) homophones or near-homophones of words in (1), particularly if the homophone was graphically difficult or impossible to represent. For instance, the logograph for ‘elephant’ (hsiang) was also standardized during the Ch’in-Han period to write the word for ‘image, apparition’ (hsiang), and is now used in numerous other words with the same pronunciation. During this stage, Chinese writing acquired its polyphonic character, in which the same signs represented more than one homophone, a process further aided by the fact that Old Chinese words were primarily one syllable. 3. The development of graphical elements called ‘determinatives’ that were attached to signs. The number of signs invented during stage 2 created

substantial ambiguity about the meaning and pronunciation of signs, so determinatives, or ‘secondary graphs’, were added to logographic signs. For instance, the character for ‘horse’, ma, was also the character for ‘mother’, and to distinguish the two the graphic particle for ‘woman’, was added to ma. Because this process was recursive, hundreds of modern Chinese characters carry more than one determinative. For linguistic and cultural reasons, the writing system did not take the final step toward representing only phonetic units, not semantic ones. However, contrary to the Western misunderstanding that Chinese characters represent pure ideas without reference to the mediation of sound, 90% of the characters have some phonetic component. From the beginning, Chinese was written vertically, the columns read right to left. (Modern conventions have also added horizontal, left-to-right reading.) Early Chinese writing had several variants. The ‘great seal’ script, ta chuan, was used in 1200 to 800 BC, on bronze vessels and carved on character seals, and was also used in all other writing. Other seal scripts were the most diverse of formal writing. From 403 to 221 BC, a number of independent states developed their own script styles, but from 221 to 206 BC, the Qin (or Ching) dynasty established a standard script called hsiao chuan, or ‘lesser seal script’. This gave way to li shu, the ‘clerkly script’, a straighter style that was easier to write, developed by the staff of the imperial

2230 WRITING SYSTEMS OBI graph

Modern reading

Meaning

1.

hsiang

‘elephant’

2.

niao

‘bird’

3.

k‘ou

‘opening, orifice, mouth’

4.

mu

‘eye’

5.

yüeh

‘moon’

6.

t‘ien

‘cultivated field’

7.

nü

‘(kneeling) woman’

8.

chi

‘(osier) basket’ (mod. )

9.

t‘ien

‘overhead’ > ‘sky, heaven’

10.

yang

‘sheep, ram’

ma

‘horse’

kuei

‘turtle’

yü

‘fish’

ting

‘tripod, cauldron’

chi

‘grasp, hold in the hands’

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Modern character

Figure 9 Shang oracle-bone inscriptions as recognizable pictograms.

democracy and used from 206 BC to AD 220. Around the second century AD a third formal style, the standard script (or kai shu), was developed. Archaeological work plays an important role in the study of Chinese writing by continuing to endeavor to push back the date of the earliest writing. It also helps historians to distinguish myths about the origins of writing from its actual development and use. Because the Shang texts that have been discovered are oracle bones, it is often thought that Chinese writing developed exclusively for religious or divinatory reasons, unlike the origins of writing in Mesopotamia, which arose via accounting, or in Mesoamerica (see Americas, Central: The Olmec and their Contemporaries; Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya; Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica), which arose for the keeping of aristocratic lineages. It has been hypothesized that religious record keeping, in conjunction with recording divinations and family lineages,

might have motivated the creation of writing. Because hard evidence of this may never be found, archaeological work remains necessary for (1) describing the technological, spiritual, and economic characteristics of ancient cultures that may have led to writing; (2) describing technological precursors to writing, not just its semiotic precursors; (3) mapping the extent of these cultures’ influence on other groups; and (4) providing material evidence of the providing material evidence of these cultures. Until the early twentieth century, all dialects of Chinese were written in a literary dialect that dated to the late Old Chinese period, about 1100 BC to AD 100. This meant that literate Chinese wrote in a way they themselves did not speak. This form persisted, in part, because of the Chinese civil service’s power in creating and maintaining the written standard for some 2000 years. However, in the early twentieth century, a reform movement in China

WRITING SYSTEMS 2231 OBI graph

Modern character

Modern reading

Meaning

1.

jen

‘person’

2.

yu

‘hand’ > ‘hold, have’ (mod.

3.

( pi)

‘nose’ (mod.

4.

erh

‘ear’

5.

( tsu)

‘ancestor’ (mod.

6.

niu

‘ox’

7.

ssu

‘(silk)’ thread, line’ (mod.

8.

chou

‘boat’

9.

t‘u

‘earth, ground’

10.

shui

‘water, stream’

11.

yü

‘rain’

12.

ch‘ung

‘insect’

13.

yen

‘speech’

14.

shou

‘head’

15.

tsu

‘foot’

)

)

)

)

Figure 10 Shang oracle-bone inscriptions without recognizable pictograms.

adapted modern spoken Chinese as the basis for written Chinese. Now writing is done in Modern Standard Chinese, a dialect close to the Mandarin spoken in Beijing. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Chinese writing is the size of its character set. Since around AD 100, when the scholar Xu Shen created a dictionary of 9353 characters, the number of characters has steadily increased to about 60 000. Most of these characters, however, are archaic words, variant characters, or proper names. For the modern Chinese writer and reader of Chinese, 1000 characters account for 90% of all occurrences in texts, and 2400 characters cover 99% of occurrences. In other words, only a slight fraction of the total number of characters is required to be fully literate in contemporary Chinese societies.

Mesoamerica In pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, what is now southern Mexico and the countries of Central America, as many

as 13–15 different writing systems had been developed by AD 900. They include the Zapotec, the Maya (in several stages), the Mixtec, the Aztec, and the EpiOlmec. Archaeological discoveries have demonstrated that all of them were used around the region for a substantial time span. The earliest of these, the Zapotec, emerged around 500 BC, and as late as the seventeenth century AD the Aztec and Maya writing systems were still being used by remnants of the civilization. It is thought that writing emerged in Mesoamerica at the early stages of state formation, around AD 600 as a tool that enabled competition between local rulers. Writing was used to establish royal lineages, mark auspicious birth dates, identify vanquished rivals, and mark political territory, as well as important moments in rulers’ lives, such as marriages, births, and deaths. Early scholarship on Mesoamerican writing held that it amounted to astronomical and calendric record keeping, and did not represent linguistic units. Therefore, it was believed that Mesoamerican writing did not contain historical texts. This

2232 WRITING SYSTEMS

began to change in the 1970s, when the phonetic components of these writing systems, particularly Maya, were finally recognized. Since then, major work deciphering Mesoamerican writing has taken place, giving us unprecedented access to written pre-Columbian history. The most visible and best-known example of Mesoamerican writing is Maya, which flourished from AD 250 to 900. Precursors of Maya writing have been discovered that date to 300 to 200 BC. Examples of Maya writing survive mainly on freestanding stone monoliths known as stelae and on the stone interiors of palaces and temples, as well as on ceramics. Maya was also written on books made from bark paper or deer paper as well. Four Maya codices are known to exist, named for the cities in which they now reside: the Dresden codex, the Madrid codex, the Paris codex, and the Grolier codex. All Mesoamerican writing was heterogeneous, in that each system mixed iconic, logographic, ideographic, and phonetic elements. Over the centuries, each system varied in the proportions of each element used. Though it is supposed that iconic (or pictographic) signs were the earliest to be used, not all of the systems evolved unilinearly toward the representation of linguistic units. In Maya, signs were known as glyphs. About 1000 Mayan glyphs are known to exist, though only 600 glyphs were in use at any particular time. Though a small fraction of these signs represented syllables of the language, Maya has the highest number of known phonetic glyphs of any Mesoamerican writing. Most of the remaining glyphs represent royal names. As a result of phoneticization, nouns, verbs, adjective and adverbs can be read in Maya texts. It is supposed that the glyphs written between AD 250 and 900 represent an older form of a Cholan language, perhaps Chorti or its ancestor, Cholti. (Figure 11). On the stelae, the glyphs were always written in paired vertical stacks and read top to bottom, left to right, in a zigzag fashion. Each glyph organizes several smaller elements known as graphemes and contains a main grapheme with one or more diacritics. The diacritics can appear to the left, right, top or bottom of the main symbol. The sequences of graphemes in a glyph are read, more or less, from the upper left corner to the lower right. Glyphs represent words, morphemes (or basic units of words), syllables (consonant þ vowel sequences), as well as determinatives. Maya scribes used the same signs to represent different words and represented the same word with different signs. Unlike in modern alphabets, this polyvalence offered opportunities for a visual poetics of writing. Because there was no set standard for glyph construction, writers often

1

c(u)

11

cutz

2

tz(u)

12

tzul

3

l(u)

13

buluc

4

b(u)

14

can tzuc

5

k(a)

15

lub

6

m(a)

16

kati

7

t(i)

17

kam

8

u

18

ukah

9

h(a)

19

pax

10

p(a)

20

Mam

Figure 11 Mayan glyphs with syllabic values.

presented the same word in many different ways, even in the same texts, and writers seemed to take pleasure in creating these variants. Despite its prominence, Maya writing was not the oldest Mesoamerican writing. The earliest undisputed writing in the New World is Zapotec writing, which was first developed in Oaxaca between 600 and 400 BC. It was used until AD 1000. Zapotec glyphs, which represent an ancient version of the Zapotec language that has not been reconstructed, represented personage names, nouns, verbs, and place names. The body of known glyphs in Zapotec is very small, only about 100. Many appear to represent words; a few represent syllables. It is not known how many are purely phonetic. It is thought that Zapotec writing marked the evolution beyond a purely pictographic form that could not represent place names or dates. The number of texts containing glyphs is also very small, only about 570. Were Maya and Zapotec writing related to each other? Though the two cultures were in contact with each other (for instance, we know from archaeological evidence that they exchanged ceremonial ceramics), their writing systems differed from each other. The body of individual glyphs differ, as well as the determinatives, which reflects the fact that

WRITING SYSTEMS 2233

the two writing systems were used for unrelated languages. Nevertheless, there are three scenarios for the relationship between Maya and Zapotec writing: (1) they represented two independent but parallel developments; (2) they had a common origin and evolved unique characteristics later; and (3) through cultural contact, one group borrowed writing from the other. The archaeological evidence that may provide definitive answers has not yet been discovered. Another writing system that predates the Maya is called Isthmian (also called Epi-Olmec or the La Mojarra script). Only five legible texts have been discovered, the most recent in 2004. Though scholars generally agree that the language represented by the text is an archaic form of Zoquean, efforts to decipher the texts are in doubt. The earliest writings that are recognizably antecedent to later scripts date to around 650 BC in the states of Tabasco. In 2002 archaeologists M. Pohl, K. Pope, and C. von Nagy announced the discovery of a roller stamp and plaques with glyphs, which were found near the Olmec site of La Venta in Tabasco. Evidence that the glyphs count as writing and not visual representation comes the inclusion of a frequent element in Mesoamerican writing systems, a shape coming from the mouths of figures called a ‘speech scroll’. The inclusion of the speech scroll may signify that the glyphs they contain represent spoken language. Two forms of writing in Mesoamerica a rose after the Classic Maya period, Mixtec and Aztec, about AD 1100 to 1600. In contrast to Maya, these writing systems were less phonetic and more pictographic. As Marcus describes the difference: ‘‘Whereas the Classic Maya scribe could use a pure hieroglyphic text to state that a ruler had been born, married, acceded to the throne, conquered a rival, captured a prisoner, and died, the painter of a Postclassic Mixtec codex might have to use a whole series of captioned drawings to show that many events.’’

This is significant because it demonstrates that writing systems do not necessarily evolve in the direction of increasing phoneticization; rather, the level of linguistic representation reflects the uses to which the script is put. Mixtec and Aztec were still in use during the early colonial period, so these texts are largest in number and have been deciphered. These texts do not tend to contain only hieroglyphic signs but mix pictures with labels for names, dates, places, and titles. Archaeological work continues to play an important role in our knowledge about Mesoamerican

writing, though the relationships among archaeologists and epigraphers (who work to decipher the glyphs) have been fraught. Because the known Mesoamerican texts deal mainly with royals, the decipherment of these texts leaves unanswered questions about the common people, which excavations are better equipped to answer. On the other hand, decipherment and the linguistic knowledge it deploys has produced significant advances in our understanding of these civilizations.

See also: Americas, Central: Classic Period of Meso-

america, the Maya; Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica; The Olmec and their Contemporaries; Asia, East: Chinese Civilization; Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad.

Further Reading Boltz WG (1994) The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System. New Haven, Conn: American Oriental Society. Carrasco D (ed.) (2001) The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures. New York: Oxford. Chadwick J (1990) The Decipherment of Linear B. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coe M (1999) Breaking the Maya Code. New York: Thames and Hudson. Davies WV (1987) Reading the Past: Egyptian Hieroglyphs. London: British Museum. Englund RK (1998) Texts from the late Uruk Period. In: Bauer J, Englund RK, and Krebernik M (eds.) Mesopotamien: SpaeturukZeit. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, 160/1. Freiburg: UniversitaetsVerlag. Houston SD (ed.) (2004) The First Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Keightley D (1978) Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Marcus J (1992) Mesoamerican Writing Systems. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Possehl G (1996) Indus Age: The Writing System. Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press. Robinson A (2002) Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World’s Undeciphered Scripts. New York: McGraw-Hill. Rogers H (2005) Writing Systems: A linguistic Approach. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Schmandt-Besserat D (1996) How Writing Came About. Austin: The University of Texas Press.

Relevant Websites http://www-oi.uchicago.edu – The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. http:cdli.ucla.edu – Cuneiform Digital Library.